Conversation Time With Jordan

Hello, friends! Long time, no...well, blog. To put it lightly, I've been busy. And while I promise a much longer and more informative blog to come on just what I mean by busy, I just wanted to take a moment to say just how thankful I am for this relaxing Saturday. It's only 10:00, and I've had a fabulous day so far. Chase slept in, so I had time to take a bubble bath (long enough to read some Hamlet and shave my legs!), get ready for the day, watch some Food Network, and do a quick straighten-up of the house before I was greeted by a sweet, giggly boy. And, I got a phone call a few minutes ago that included an invitation to Saturday morning breakfast at my Mom and Dad's house....Life is good. And there will be more blogging on this Saturday. I could not ask for more.

My baby boy, Chase, turned six months old this week. I love watching him grow and do new things, and I more than love the increasing level of emotional interaction he can have with me, but the swift passing of his baby-ness has suddenly hit me in the stomach.

I have always been the kind of person who runs through life...I go as fast as I can and hit as many bases as I can as I chase whatever is just beyond the horizon of possibility, but over the past few years I have been trying to train myself to slow down, to stop and enjoy the good parts of time before it passes. Train as I might, I'm just not wired that way. I'm built for challenges. I put one foot on the ground in front of the other and I run toward them and face them head on. Sometimes I don't win, but usually I surprise myself. Even when I'm exhausted and sore and running on blistered feet, I find that, if I keep running hard enough, the blisters will callous over and it won't hurt anymore...my skin thickens as I beat back against the world that challenges me.

The past six months have been full of challenges...graduate school, life-changing decisions, difficult relationships, the death of a loved one...and of course learning how to be a mom to a newborn. They were a beautiful six months, but probably the hardest ones I've ever faced, and I have to admit that I haven't taken much time to stop and allow myself to juice the good feelings. I have at times let stress and fear overshadow my happiness and overwhelming gratitude to the universe for blessing me with this amazing little creature. I have focused on chasing the challenges away, on thickening my skin to protect myself from the threat of pain.

Chase can't walk yet, but he tries. The earth has not yet pushed itself against his sweet, soft, innocent feet. He doens't know about challenges...he doesn't know about pain...he doesn't have anything to be afraid of. And the thing that is so heartbreakingly beautiful about it all is that he doesn't even know to appreciate it...he just wants to go, go, go. I want so badly to speak his language, to beg him to just slow down and enjoy this short time of being a sweet and innocent baby in a mean world...I want those feet to stay soft just as long as they possibly can.

But when I snuggle up to those soft, sweet feet, that innocence that I just can't preserve, I realize that my heart isn't calling out to him...it is screaming at my own mind - slow down, enjoy this short time; the challenges are going to come anyway...there is no need to chase them; You will be strong enough to face them when they come...no need to harden yourself up right now.

So tonight I pause...tonight I revel in joy and gratitude at the gift of this little boy and his power to reach me in unbelievable ways and teach me unlearnable lessons. I love you Chase Jackson Gross.

When I reminded my sister in law which one of my grandmothers it was who had passed away, she said, "Oh, the tiny one? I remember her...she was fancy." If there is one perfect word to encapsulate my memory of Gran, it is definitely fancy. I only got to know her for what seems like a short twenty three years of her very long life, and now that she is gone, I have become painfully aware of all that I did not know about her life before I was born. For the greater part of my memory, Gran has always been a small and delicate looking woman. Especially in the last few years, after pancreatitis and the loss of her true love, Dudley, took their toll on her body, Gran's fragile body seemed almost breakable at times. It didn't hold her back though. She was always going and doing...and she ALWAYS looked fancy. In just about every memory I have and every photo I've seen, that tiny little body of hers was decorated with the latest vibrant and colorful fashions. She was always decked out in some beautiful, sparkly something...Her outspoken beautiful fragility reminded me of a butterfly.

Sometimes when I'm driving, a butterfly will fly close to my car, and I just know that even if I don't hit it directly, the winds I've stirred up will have pulled that beautiful, fragile body in and smashed it up or thrown it down under my tires. But often I'm surprised to look in my rear view mirror and see, a few yards behind, that the little thing has somehow fought the wind and the monstrous gravity caused by my disturbance, and caught smooth air again. That was my gran...she managed to remain delicate in a world that doesn't take care of delicate things. So many times she was up against something much bigger and stronger than her, and she somehow managed to survive with impossible beauty and grace.

Some butterflies spend their entire active lives flying over three thousand miles to find a warm place for the winter. They fly for months, encounter who knows how many predators, and bring unspeakable joy to those who are blessed to witness some part of their journey. After making the impossible trip, they bask in warm sunlight for the rest of their lives. Gran made it through many impossible things, and she got to that warm place when she found Dudley. I am blessed to have seen her beauty and felt her love for a small part of her long and beautiful journey.

I'm reading a book right now that says the purpose of life is to seek happiness. I find this idea interesting and hopeful. I desperately need life to have a purpose. I need to know that I've come to be who I am and where I am for a reason...that I'm not just going through the motions everyday. The truth is, the motions are hard. Even the best things about life are hard...loving a person, acheiving success, expressing yourself. These things do bring great happiness, but they, like other things, are a tightrope walk of designed intention and tremendous effort. And then there are the hard things...the scary things, the painful things. Why participate in any of it if there isn't some purpose...some magnificent and individual purpose just for me?

So...seeking happiness. It seems simple enough. It could be a purpose, I think. I could work through life one day at a time just for the purpose of putting forth a valiant effort toward finding an ultimate happiness. I guess in a way that's what I'm doing, or maybe what I should be doing. But you know what, at the end of the day, I've read a little too much poetry to believe that's all there is to it.

I think finding happiness is just a piece to a much bigger puzzle. I think that the need to seek just the good in things may be a part of human nature that life is trying to train out of us. We can do our best to try believe that we can have mostly just the good things if we are good enough people, maybe even imagine that we have some control over it all...but eventually the hard things are going to beat their way in, and we are going to have to feel them; we are going to have to learn how to deal with them.

No, the ultimate lesson in life cannot only be about how to find happiness. That's way too easy. I think the thing about life is that we just have to learn how to let it be...how to relinquish the delusion of control and try to be the best people we know how to be through everything...to try to carry around and share as much happiness as we can and to be prepared to let life get in the way of that sometimes...to reconcile ourselves with the fact that even sadness has a purpose. I am thankful to have a little poetry to help me deal with that reality...

The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)
From the album Let It Be

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be...

So..lately, I've been bombarded by death. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that this whole civilization thing is the reality, but my inner animal comes to the surface way too often for me to be fooled for long, especially when it comes to death. I think, as living and thinking creatures, we spend our lives doing this crazy, instinctual dance with death, even though we know that, as always, we will have to succumb....again and again and again. Not just physically, in the end, but also mentally, with the deaths of our loved ones, the deaths of strangers that we hear about daily, the lost pets on the sides of the roads we drive on, the bugs on the windshield. Death reminds us everyday that it is reality, and yet somehow we manage to compartmentalize that reality, always putting it in a place that we don't believe will effect us, at least here and now. My civilized side does its best to put death in its appropriate box, covered by its appropriate lid, and believe that the lid won't come off until that day, far in the future, when I decide that I'm ready to take the lid off and deal with it. My animal side is still pretty strong though, and it knows that no lid is going to keep death away...it won't even keep the idea of death away. My animal side knows that no one could ever really put death in a box anyway...it's like air. It's always there...it is in the food that I eat, the books that I read, the songs that I sing, the relationships I make...it is, as Walt Whitman said, under my boot soles. I heard a song this weekend that said, among other things, "Life taught me to die." I wonder if anyone ever really learns that lesson...I guess it really doesn't matter if they do. Either way, the only thing I'm learning is that boxes don't work...life happens in circles.

So...I've been lacking a little motivation/inspiration lately. I am off work and school for the entire month of May, and I thought that meant I'd finally have some time to dedicate to my creativity, but, instead, I've hit a long and powerful lull. But, I've finally summoned the courage to power through...so, here we go.

It is a crazy time in the life of the Gross family. We have lots of things up in air right now, and the future has become suspended in a limbo-zone of hopes, fears, and thousands of possible scenarios that are consuming my mind at all times. I resigned my one great wish of being able to glimpse into the future many years ago...of all the gifts I've been blessed with, psychic power isn't one of them. But I've also resigned myself to another truth: if I could go back to any other point in my life and tell myself just one thing, I wouldn't tell myself all the answers. I would simlply say, "Everything is going to be okay...everything is going to be beyond okay...you are going to be blessed in so many ways beyond any of the possibilties you ever could have imagined."

Things pretty much always turn out exactly how they are supposed to. I know this, and yet it really doesn't soothe any of my anxieties. If only I had a nickel for everytime someone told has told me that "God has a plan for you" or "If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans" or something along these lines...I always nod politely, thankful for the advice, but in my mind I'm thinking..."Yeah...uh huh..but who ever got anywhere without a plan?" I've always taken a "50% work and planning 50% fate" approach to life. In the end, do I really have any control over how my life is going to turn out? Not much, but maybe a little...and I'm going to juice that little bit of power just as much as I can.

I am a major planner. I create timelined plans for accomplishing goals...small term goals that contribute to greater long term goals. Michael and I are in various stages of different sets of plans and goals, both individually and as a team. These plans are our attemts to manage and maximize the little bit of control we do have over our lives. I throw myself into these plans and attempt to micromanage every part of my life...even things like my creativity.

So, while I scheduled May out to be a time for extreme creative output before another three hectic semesters of school, life threw me one of its many curveballs and hit me with a dry spell. During the past few weeks, I have had moments of desperation...wondering if my creativity will wither and fade and die...wondering how I will ever be able to call myself a writer when I can't even manage to squeeze out a weekly blog. In these moments, I summon my future self's advice: "Things will be okay...things will be more than okay...you are going to be blessed in so many ways beyond any of the possibilities you could have ever imagined."

I feel like I am constantly learning one lesson in life over and over again...it is all about balance. I have to learn to feel comfortable balancing that little bit of control I can hold onto and the roller coaster ride of fate. I have to have a little faith that it will all work out, somehow, someway, and usually my wildest dreams will be surpassed. Dry spells end and difficulties are overcome and you can't really plan how or when it will all happen. All you can really do is suck the life out of every single day and make as much of what you want to happen happen...and try as hard as you can to be thankful for every moment you get to experience in this crazy world.

So I am going to seize the opportunity and learn from the difficulty of this limbo world. I am going to focus on having faith that the best thing will ultimately happen and I am going to power through this dry spell and believe that pretty soon, the magic will return to me....perhaps it is busy elsewhere these days, make unseen, unknown changes in my world, sprinkling fairy dust on the seedlings of a future beyond my own imaginings...

Wwwwhhhhheeeewww....Sorry, but I had to start this post out with a giant sigh of relief. I have been fighting battles for this day for several months now, and it is finally here! I survived this semester of craziness...I had a baby, checked off six more hours of graduate credit, finished my last semester as a full time tutor in the writing center (it's on to teaching next semester...yikes!), and along the way I also juggled the rest of my responsibilities, a little financial stress, and some crazy postpartum hormones. Today is a day of sweet relief. Michael is at a fishing tournament, and I am getting to spend some much needed quality time with my baby boy.

Last night we went out to celebrate, just the three of us...and of course the crazy scary tornado weather had to come and try to blow us away, but we managed to survive and actually have a pretty amazing night together. I think it was an appropriate way to cap off the whole experience of this past semester. When we got home, the three of us huddled up together to watch the weather and Michael said, "We're going to be just fine." It was so simple but also so transcendent.

I think that I have finally reached the realization that Michael and I can weather pretty much any kind of storm together successfully. It is days like today, when I have some time to reflect, that I stand in awe at the tremendous power of our unlikely relationship.

We are two of the most different kind of people you will ever meet. In a nutshell, I would hesitantly label myself an academic. I go to school for the pleasure of learning...I cherish free time spent alone with books and even (gasp) paper writing, although I wouldn't have told you that earlier this week. I am a little neurotic, very sensitive and analytical...a moody introvert.

Michael, on the other hand, is pretty much always happy. He is satisfied by working on little (or big) tasks of any kind. He can find a way to laugh (and make others laugh) at almost anything, and he hasn't read a single book since we started dating seven years ago. He doesn't care about underlying meanings or analyzing feelings...He's more about figuring out the facts and making things happen than sitting around thinking about who/what/when/where/why and how things come to be the way they are.

We met when we were practically babies, and got married, I'd say, right around the toddler stage. Most people thought we were crazy...I'm pretty sure they were right. We didn't have money or a plan or anything going for us except for an intense desire to wake up next to one another every morning and fight through life side-by-side.

In some ways, I think the two of us are kind of like step-siblings on hormonal overdrive or something (only less creepy)...he is more like a brother to me sometimes...protective, bossy, doing his best to annoy me. And I feel like our relationship is the only place I can safely relinquish the bitchy teenage sister inside my soul. We spend much of our time bickering about stupid, little things and even more time wrestling and laughing and making fun of one another.

There have been many times when I have been full of doubt when it comes to the two of us...how can two such different people who have about nine million obstacles ahead of them make it together in a world where most people end up divorced...especially the ones who try to make a marriage work when they are as young as we are? And yet, somehow, against all odds, the two of us prove me wrong through every challenge.

I only have to look at our son to see why. As I have gotten to know his emerging little personality, I have come to the realization that, together, Michael and I make the best kind of person. Chase has inherited such distinct qualities from each of us...he is such a serious joy spreader; he just makes everyone so insanely happy. And for the most part, he is so mellow and calm. He wants to get his hands on things and move around, and he already tries to stand up and even take little steps. Those things come from his daddy. But he also has these moments in which you can tell he is just a little old soul waiting for his baby body to grow into his mind. You can tell that, as soon as he can get his mouth to do it, he is going to start spouting out all the little wonderful, intense thoughts he is already thinking. And he has these wild explosions of emotion...these things come from me. I can already tell that he has the perfect tools to cut out his own unique and amazing path through life. He is going to make it, and he is going to do awesome things because he is just the right combination of a doer and a thinker...just the right combination of a lover and a fighter.

He is the perfect example of why our relationship works so surprisingly well even when there are tornados and hurricanes and earthquakes going on around us all the time. I am certain that as long as the three of us continue to wake up each morning with the desire to fight through one more day together that we will make it through a whole lifetime of challenges like this past semester with more smiles and laughter and love than is really fair for one family to have. We will blaze our own trail through life, one never traveled before, and be thankful for the blessing of every obstacle that we are given the chance to overcome together. We're going to be just fine.