Wendy Brown-Baez's Blog: Wendy's Muse - Posts Tagged "gratitude"

Today I am pondering once again how quickly winter is descending. As the light fades early from the late afternoon sky and the stars come on, we approach solstice, once celebrated as an ancient festival to honor the division of light and darkness, a ritual that marked the turning of the wheel of life.

There was a Thanksgiving when I was young and idealistic and stayed awake all night basting turkeys to feed the homeless. That was the same Thanksgiving I had asked local supermarkets to donate turkeys to us; we anticipated feeding at least 100 people. Three days before Thanksgiving, as I checked the freezer and consulted the list of complimentary foods available from the food bank, I was shocked to discover that someone had stolen the turkeys, presumably for beer money! But we did find three more at the last minute. The meal we served included as much whipped topping on your pie or in your coffee as you could possibly want, since the food bank had cases of it about to go bad.

There was another Thanksgiving when my partner and I flew to Italy, his ancestoral home, to celebrate his 50th birthday with his family. Because his father had once worked for the military, his mother had access to the air force base's turkey dinner with all the (American) trimmings at the PX. I was dismayed to be spending what was left of my Italian vacation eating sweet potatoes with mashmellow topping when all I wanted was pasta, pasta, pasta! (I didn't really like the self-absorption of Eat, Pray, Love, but I can identify with indulgence in Italian feasting). This Thanksgiving, on his birthday, it will be more than eight years since Michael passed away. He suffered from bipolar disorder and finally liberated himself from his depression.

There was another Thanksgiving that I spent at Christ in the Desert Monastery grieving the death of my son. I couldn't bear to spend the holiday in the company of cheerful friends. Being with the monks was perfect and their prayers had to stand in for the ones I was unable to make. I wept through the Gregorian chanting and walked a silent, solitary pilgrimage to the Rio Chama where we had scattered Sam's ashes that summer. Feeling desolate was echoed in the desolation of the canyon walls and scrubby desert fields, and yet it was filled with a poignant light and a gorgeous natural beauty. I returned somewhat relieved to ordinary life, although the pages of my journal were still blank and the only writing I managed to do was in a writing support group.

What does any of this have to do with being a writer or a poet? This year I count as one of my blessings that I have been able to record these memories, that I have continued to find inspiration and nourishment through words: yours and mine. Books have been like diving into a cleansing sea of forgetfulness or being upheld by someone else's journey into the unknown countries of illness, death, loneliness, and sorrow. Or because I could finally, after the tears had scoured me inside out, find words and raise my voice to be heard. I am grateful that I didn't lose my urge to write nor my urge to sing those words aloud, on the page or in front of an audience, that I am still searching for meaning using the tools of language and leaps of associations, intuition and play, diving down and emerging transformed.

I am grateful finally, this year, to have made it to this season, as the Jews pray, and there were times when I didn't know if I would ever feel that way. And so I offer poems as a prayer that you, too, may find gratitude, no matter the rockiness of your road, the weight of love and sorrow that crush your heart, the wonder of being human beings on the planet, the joy of finding a bridge between our hearts through words.

I have learned to live with more and more. Long gone are those youthful days of traveling with only one bag, a Bible, a toothbrush, a nail clipper in my pocket, and one change of underwear. Long gone as well the ability to sleep on a table, a cement floor piled with ragged clothing, a hammock, a springy pull-out couch, a piece of porch, a few blankets thrown on the desert floor. This is not only a matter of my physical discomfort, the aging process, the newly acquired security of a paycheck and a condo bequeathed to me. This is also choice. This is knowing the limitations of being blinded by vision that required sacrificing pieces of my soul and realizing the deep connections felt in those fleeting encounters were only that—fleeting.

I have learned to live with more and more blessings and I know how to count them. The children have increased from the ones I birthed to the ones I raised as a nanny to the twenty in my classroom, each unique, each bringing gift of challenge, of satisfaction, of endearment. The friendships that solidify with each admittance of failure and need of assurance,. that age along the path with me, the people I allow to see my tears, my frustrations, who let me be wild, who like it when I am delighted, who aren’t afraid to tell me what they think and when I admit I am following my own star, they trust that it is ok even when it doesn’t make any sense.

The blessings of poems as well. How they gather, how they are given away. The presence I have grown into when I communicate with an audience.

I have learned to live with more and more and sometimes I imagine going back to simplicity. What if I had only one small bag, one room, only one best friend next to me? If I could chose only one poem to be taken along, which would it be? If I had only one year or one month to live, what would I let go of? What would I give away if I knew I could take nothing with me but my own heart and my own song?