of kindness, and cabbages, and the death of my father

Today marks one week since my father died.

It's not easy to write about my father. At least, it is not easy to write about my father in the manner people expect you to write about a father after he has passed. We did not have an easy relationship. He wasn't really such a good father.

The morning after my father died I walked seven miles before lunch. I crossed the railroad tracks to the spacious tree-lined neighborhood just east of my home, where the houses seem to preside rather than populate the streets. I usually walk in my own well-ordered neighborhood: small Craftsman homes, rope swings dangling over sidewalks, roadside vegetable gardens, beehives, bikes heaped on porches. But that morning I wanted to wander without knowing exactly where I was, so I crossed over tracks and past the golf course. The roads, no longer gridded, meandered as if they'd lost all track of time. The houses, too, were dreamlike—facades like elegant faces with half-lidded eyes, enormous shrubs like well-coiffed hair. The only people visible were landscapers armed with blowers and wackers.

I walked. Sometimes I cried. I didn't greet anyone because there was no one to greet.

When I was a child many people told me I was like my father. As I grew up this seemed to me more a burden than a boon. My father was not a happy man, and his bleak outlook on life seemed to drain joy and spontaneity from any endeavor. I did my best to not be like him, and yet many of my personality traits flowed directly from him anyway. The list of interests we shared is endless: photography, rock collecting, birding, weaving, botany, theology, paper-making, recycling, to name a few. Even making soup—the one kind of cooking I do without consulting a recipe, and by far my only polished skill in the kitchen—was one of his best as well.

Today my best friend sent me a poem. I texted her, this is the best poem ever! She replied it was written for you! But it could as well been written for my father.

T H E   A R T   O F   D I S A P P E A R I N G
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

*  *  *  *  *

I am that grocery store cabbage, ducking down the aisle to avoid neighbors. And it's safe to say that my Dad was that cabbage too. He didn't go to parties. He didn't like restaurants where the tables were close together. He was a quiet, private person; more comfortable alone than in a room of people. I am the same way: I endure parties, taking long breaks to walk outside. I have spent many a party reading in the car (I rarely feel this is a poor choice).

A few weeks ago, when my father was still able to carry on a conversation, he said something along the line of It's not easy, but that's just how it is. Life is hard. And I cringed. As a child, it was oppressive for me to hear this message over and over. Life is unfair. Life is hard. People are ungodly. People will disappoint you. I countered my Dad that day, even though I'd sort of given up on countering him at this point. My life hasn't been all that hard, I said. And it is true, all the doom and gloom I'd expected after my childhood never panned out. In fact, the opposite happened. There was so much light and beauty everywhere, people wanting me to do well. Helping me. Light pouring in every window, slipping through every chink in the wall. Some people were bad eggs, yes, and bad things happened: disappointments, heartbreaks, mistakes. But overall, the good seemed so much more substantial; the beauty so much more compelling. And somewhere along the line I found that the darkness bending around the corner was more a challenge to be met than a condition to endure.

In the last days of my Dad's life we read to him from the Chronicles of Narnia. He'd read those books to us so many times as children, and we knew he loved them. It seemed fitting to read them back to him now. And yet I puzzle over my Dad's love C. S. Lewis' imaginary Narnia—where no matter how bad things seemed there was a griddle on the stove with bacon cooking and buttered bread, where light and solemnity and joy were abundant—with his own darkly suspicious outlook. It seems to me that Lewis' fantasy world was not made up of inaccessible things: friendship, food, valor, beauty, kindness, and honor are available to almost anyone. (Well, of course I'd also like a crimson cloak, a healing cordial, and a friendship with a courtly talking mouse).

Which brings me to this: while I inherited many traits from my father, depression was not one of them. Once I was able to reject the murky worldview of my childhood, things got a whole lot better. Although I may want to hide from people in grocery stores, it's not because they are—or I am— rotten or evil. It's because I'm an introvert and find small talk exhausting. So many of the things my father seemed unable to appreciate and value in himself, I find also in myself. And yet, here's the rub: they are a source of joy and pride to me. Solace, enjoyment, meaning, hope, mastery, connection, and even professional fulfillment spring from these same traits and interests I share with my father. I protect these things in myself, finding ways to be that let them shine most fully.

That day after my Dad died, while I wandered along sloping lawns and under old maples, I opened the On Being podcast on my phone. A new podcast popped up, a conversation with the poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Nye is one of my favorite poets, and has been posted on my blog many times before. But that day she talked about a poem of hers with which I wasn't familiar: Kindness. As I walked and held the loss of my father—a loss more keen for the sad brokenness of what wasn't—her words on loss, on sorrow, and on kindness walked with me. Her voice creating a path through the sadness, like light streaming through the leaves overhead, and kindness walking beside me.

K I N D N E S S
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

moving beyond no

T H E   P A I N

Like the human brain, which organizes
The swirls and shades of the bathroom tiles
Into faces, faces
With expressions
Of exhaustion, of disdain. The
Virgin Mary in the toast of course
But also the penance in the pain, and the way
My mother invented
Plums and tissue paper, while
My father invented the type of
Sudden kindness
That takes you by surprise
When you’ve expected to be chastised
And makes you cry

—Laura Kasischke

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A few weeks ago our WB teacher circulated an article among us entitled The Gift of No, mentioning that many parents struggle with saying "no" to their children. I smiled; I really do not have this problem with my kids. In fact, I may be too good with no in general; it's become an attitude on which I am all too apt to rely.

"No" is a powerful little word. I remember years ago, after my divorce, I tried using it silently with waiters or other strangers. The dating scene in NYC was bewildering, and after a few broken hearts, I felt the need to practice my blanket refusals. The first time I tried this was at a café on the Lower East Side—some hip, well-lit establishment done out in wood and concrete—with a sleepy-eyed waiter wearing a stocking cap and a five- o'clock-shadow. When he came to take the order I regarded at him as if he'd just asked for my phone number. Silently I said "No, no way. I don't think it will work out," then ordered a scone and a latte. I was thrilled by how easy this was. And, like exercising, it got easier and easier. By the time I met my now-husband, I had gotten fairly good at it. I remember one evening in particular, during Lent, when some hungry parishioners—including Charles—were lingering around after church, chatting and making furtive attempts at planning dinner out. I was intrigued by this tall, opinionated man, but I knew better than to waste my time trying to get to know him. I turned to a girlfriend next to me and said, "Let's get going. Do you want to grab a bite to eat?" We made quick work of a general good-bye and headed out into the passages to the street. A few moments later I heard heavy footsteps coming down the passage. It was Charles, running after us, asking if he could join us for dinner.

But I had so much more no to learn. It was only after marrying Charles and moving into Manhattan that I came to understand that I had coasted by in life with as little conflict as possible. Neither my work or my personal relations had asked too many difficult no's of me. And by difficult, I mean the kind of no's that are followed by negotiations; where you stay in a difficult moment and ask for what you want, where you find out what the other person wants. Where, when faced with conflict, you don't turn tail and lay on the bed crying. So, unpleasant as it was, I learned yet more kinds of no.

Then there were children. Saying "no" to children is not so difficult to learn. They are small, impressionable, and and can be forced to do things. In fact, a few strong no's seemed to put them at their ease. At the same time I was raising children, I was learning about social negotiations. How to keep my boundaries and my integrity while engaging my neighbors and community. This is not something I've by any means mastered, it is one of the most difficult parts of my life. And I think, perhaps, I've learned to rely too much on no, quickly distancing myself from people or activities I find difficult, draining, or untrustworthy. Walking my son to school the other day, I found myself coaching myself in this direction—to be honest, courageous, direct. I caught myself. You don't need to be more honest, Amber, you've got that down. You need to be more kind.

There it is: I do need to be more kind, and gentle, and open-hearted. Being more comfortable with my boundaries, I can risk being kind. Because, ultimately, kindness transforms. Being strong and brave and honest—saying no—can only take me so far. Invulnerability is not my goal. It is vulnerability that invites grace, and it is grace that "takes you by surprise / When you’ve expected to be chastised / And makes you cry."

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