tragedy, humility, sauerkraut

A raccoon is on my roof eating Asian pears. It is dark, and everyone is asleep—besides me and the raccoon. Every once and awhile a pear drops with a thud and then I hear a scamper or a dragging sound. In the morning there will be half-eaten Asian pears on the ground. It is also garbage night, which means that every hour or so a car pulls up in front of our house and someone pokes around in the bins at the curb. In Manhattan people did this all the time, pushing grocery carts heaped with black bags of cans and bottles, like a troupe of homeless Santa Clauses moving along the trash-bag piled sidewalk. I recognized the regulars. But I haven't gotten used to it here. Should I stick my head out the door and say hello, as a security measure of sorts? Or—more reasonably—let them delve in peace?

Tomorrow is the first day of school. A cute little school with cute kids and well-dressed parents, the teachers kind and friendly. Everyone speaking French, unsnobbishly. I will drive my children, with their lunchboxes packed with healthy food, in their well-chosen clothes, to their white-and-yellow private French school. And then I will get a latte. Meanwhile the world is in horrible, horrible shape. Iraq! Ukraine! Gaza! Ebola! For a few weeks I refused to register the events in Ferguson, Missouri because there was just no room for them in my head. Sorry, glass full of tragedy already. I am having a hard time reconciling my life with the world at large. I am fretting over the ingredients in the seaweed snack packs, the too-largeness of of kids' yogurts containers, what kinds of grasscloth roller shades to purchase; meanwhile people are being beheaded. Worse things. I suppose this has always been the case? I fret about my little problems while somewhere else people are fleeing for their lives, hiding their children in garbage cans.

I could just cry. Which I do to little end. What can I do? The atrocities of ISIS are beyond my circle of influence, though clearly not beyond my circle of anxiety. A few weeks ago our priest circulated a letter written by the metropolitan entitled A Pastoral Letter Concerning Violence and Extremism in the Middle East. I read the letter, which may be a first for me. OK, I didn't even read it, I skimmed it, but for long enough to find this:

If we are truly concerned about the strife in the world today, let us begin by overcoming anger in our own hearts by striving for meekness and humility. If we are upset by the violence and destruction in the Middle East, let us direct our energy to bring peace to the conflicts within our own families. If we are horrified by images of human beings injuring and killing one another, let us offer an image of Christ by giving alms to those in need in our own neighborhood.

That's the spirit. I'm not pretending that I come anywhere near this in practice. I can think of a few ways I could have overcome anger in my heart and been more humble in the last few days, heck, the last few hours. But I can take sausage and sauerkraut to my Dad. I can read my children the same book for the fifteenth time. I can sit with my son when his anger overtakes him. I can let my daughter wear pink and purple together. I can be patient when Charles and I have yet another of those conversations where we seem to be talking entirely past each other about the same exact thing for five minutes. I can feed raccoons; I can stop fretting about trash-pickers, grasscloth shades, seaweed snacks. I can be grateful for the good life that's been given to me.

Because it is a good life. And of course, there are some things I can do:

ACRO Mosul Appeal
Samaritan's Purse

a return to poetry wednesday: burdens unwieldy and those less so

T R U S T 
by Liz Waldner

If I could be walking down the road
you told me to imagine and I would and find
a diner kind of teacup sitting on its saucer
in the middle then I would feel so good
in my life that is just like mine
and I would walk right up and look into my face
eclipsing the sky in the tea in the cup
and say, "Thank you, I have enjoyed
imagining all this."

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I am in the middle of one of the busiest weeks of my life, or at least it feels that way. But I won't bore you with the details because who really cares, not even me. Except that in the middle of the day yesterday, walking from a meeting at my son's school to an appointment, my eyes welled with tears. That morning in the Parent Room the diminutive grandmother of a student in my son's class spoke briefly about her life. It was all sorrow. She spoke quietly and with a heavy accent, but I got it; I had no words but only my hands to grip her fingers. The face of her granddaughter rose in my mind—her large sad eyes next to my son's brave face on the first day of school.

When I got home I sat for twenty minutes, knitting furiously. I got up and went to fetch my daughter and attend yet another meeting. A few hours later I took Genevieve to a dentist appointment because a mysterious tooth has appeared behind her baby front teeth—one of which is already strange enough, being germinated. Genevieve's appointment and accompanying x-rays only confirmed my fears. She was referred to a pediatric oral surgeon who I was assured would be more familiar with these kinds of dental abnormalities. I came home and knit furiously, thankful for Anely who had already made the children's dinner.

Today was still busier than yesterday; I had no time for knitting. I felt tears well again, but not in sympathy for anyone but myself and the frantic mess of my apartment and schedule. But also because my baby's teeth are seriously messed up, and although it shouldn't be a big deal—she's not ill—a burst of anger and sadness accompanied me throughout the day. I recognize, all the same, the providence of that conversation with the grandmother in the Parent Room, framing the space around Genevieve's teeth as though to remind me of what is a tragedy and what isn't. Because teeth can be fixed, but there are many things that are permanently broken. There are far more unwieldy burdens to carry.

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