Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Tuesday Afternoon



I had my toenails painted this afternoon despite the hurricanes whipping up over the Atlantic again, despite the persons displaced by the last hurricanes still digging themselves out of the muck, despite the huge earthquake that hit Mexico City this morning and killed hundreds of people, despite the Rocket Man speech that the Sexual Predator in Chief of the Disunited States gave to the United Nations, despite the threat of nuclear annihilation, despite the displaced millions in Syria, despite the melting ice-caps, despite the half million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar spilling into Bangladesh -- well -- you get it. I have nothing to bemoan or to complain of, other than 22 years of watching my child seize and suffer and the burdens of caregiving, and even those are nothing, nothing in comparison.  Are we connected to one another in suffering? I sat in the raised chair while a woman I don't know knelt at my feet and painted my toes a brilliant purplish pink. I go to Sophie's room every single morning expecting her to have perhaps died, and I realize that sounds dramatic and perhaps neurotic, except it's not. The thing is, we do that. We put our children to bed at night like newborns except we do it for years and years and years, sometimes decades, and we hope they don't die before us and dread that we might die before them. What's it all about? my seven year old son cried one afternoon, watching his sister seize and his mother weep. This isn't a post about privilege, however aware I am of it. I'm just musing on what it means to know suffering, how the demands of caregiving as mother, the detail of it, the tedium of it, the relentless ongoingness of it,  has honed me, made me aware of the more giant undertone that is the suffering of the world. How I can't do anything about it and do everything about it, every single day.

15 comments:

  1. Your toenails are beautiful. I am going to go get mine done on Monday with my daughters. Despite everything. Because of everything.
    Whatever.

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  2. Fuck this health care madness. Fuck Trump. Blessings on you and Sophie. I kneel at your feet.

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  3. oh yes, you have hit the nail on the head, yet again. I understand completely the feelings of which you speak. I live those feelings every day, as you do, and have hope anyway. Share the love I have to give anyway. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself, which I feel like I have no right to feel, and sometimes I am so grateful for it all, I weep. Each tiny thing feels like such a miracle. Each breath, a gift.

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  4. Maybe we're bound together by love and relate to one another in our suffering. ...Then we do the hokey pokey, (over some food and a few drinks), and *that's* what it's all about. ...maybe.

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  5. Your beautiful words brought to mind these beautiful words: "Lila had borne a child into a world where a wind could rise that would take him from her arms as if there were no strength in them at all. Pity us, yes, but we are brave, she thought, and wild, more life in us than we can bear, the fire unfolding itself in us." Marilyn Robinson, Lila

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  6. I love that photo. The light on your feet and your pink toenails is amazing! Suffering is universal, and all we can do is plug away at our own little lives and try to live them as conscientiously and mindfully as possible amid the craziness. That's my theory, anyway.

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  7. If we could cancel out another person's misery with our own, if our own suffering could be used to set off that of someone else.
    I don't know. But your toenails help.

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  8. In spite of everything, because this is what we have. Thorny and terrifying and everything else. Shine on, you and your bright toes. xo

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  9. What's it all about? Brilliant and deep words for a small child. I can't say I know that answer to that question even now. I just know what it's not about. I am in awe of your sons.

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  10. What's it all about? Now that is the essential question. The mouth of babes, especially your babes, deep-thinking as they are, with you as their mother, and Sophie as their sister, and their loving good-soul hearts. Such a profound post.

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  11. Despite everything indeed, Life must go on... Pretty Toenails helps!

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  12. I just gave a dharma talk on mudita, sympathetic joy. Happiness for another. In spite of the fuckery. In honor of your brilliant toes, I'm gonna go get me some tomorrow.

    Shine on, bright one, shine on.

    Love, Beth

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  13. Yes. Exactly. So well said. If our own suffering doesn't connect us to others' suffering, then, truly, "What's it all about?"

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