Clawing My Way to Calm

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Art intersects life again and again and again.

I am in the midst of a very long bittersweet season. The beautiful and the brutal. Births and deaths and sickness and health. It has been long. I feel as though have been clawing my way to calm for years, day by day. Sometimes hour by hour. Even minute by minute.

This week, I found myself reading Shauna Niequist's Bittersweet: Thoughts on Grace, Change, and Learning the Hard Way, and rediscovered how we are all more alike than different, that the journey I'm on is shared, and that finding hope, understanding more about who God is, and stretching yourself can be truly bittersweet...in the best possible sense. And that's a beautiful thing. Even clawing your way to calm day by day is a beautiful thing.

bittersweet cover

Niequist's essays in Bittersweet chronicle and explore those small and big moments, momentous and fleeting, that are bitter, sweet, and decidedly both. She describes her quest to grow to know God, herself, and others better in the midst of the groans and laments, the exaltations and triumphs, as well as through the ordinary, easy pleasures in between (like swiping handfuls of fresh-picked blueberries all day long from the lake cottage countertop).

I feel a kinship with Niequist. Her experiences, musings, and pleasures parallel some of my own....like a deep, abiding ardor for Lake Michigan ("Learning to Swim"), finding myself through books and writing, pursuing a writer's life ("Your Story Must Be Told"), soul nourishing girls' weekends ("Alameda"), the joys and pains of motherhood, cooking ("What We Ate and Why It Matters"), seeking balance, gatherings of true friends together around a table ("Feeding and Being Fed"), the pain of losing babies ("Heartbeat" and "What Might Have Been"), and learning to lean into God and away from self.  Like other memoirists whose main form is essays, (such as Glennon Melton's Carry On, Warrior), I feel as though Niequist gave voice to some of my deepest laments and eloquently explored the questions that have been at the forefront of my mind during this bittersweet season. Which brings me back to this touchstone idea....we are more alike than different. Art intersects life. Again and again.

To me, her words are profound and true, unadorned and plain spoken, and speaks right to where I've been or where I currently sit. Her style is approachable. Thoughtful. Kind. Grace-filled. Like sitting with a wise friend, who not only knows how to walk through pain, and but can sit with others while they walk through their own.

Teaching my son to breathe through intense pain. Losing babies. First smiles. First laughs. First words.Watching my boys struggle.Losing a parent. Books. Meeting new friends. Saying goodbye to old ones. Having a beautiful, diverse, far-flung tribe of friends that feel like family. Sunsets.Celebrating a new home while saying a long goodbye to the old.Bringing people together, in community, around the table.The joyous sound of my husband's laugh. Bittersweet.

As I write, I am stretched out on a couch in my baby's hospital room. He's recovering from major surgery. Bitter. It appears to be successful and he has been a peaceful, compliant patient. Sweet. I have relearned, especially today, that God's in control and I'm not. Sweet, but HARD SWEET, eucharisteo, if you know what I mean. My big boys are missing us, and we are missing them. Beautiful bittersweet.

That's life, I think. We don't get it all easy, or we won't grow. We don't get it all hard, or we won't grow. The bittersweet is just the right fertilizer for our seeking little souls.  At least, it is for me.

Other books by Shauna Niequist:

Bread-and-Wine-Cover

cold tangerine

Barbara and Me

You know that game where you can choose three people, living or dead, famous or not, to invite to your simplyfabulous dinner party? It is ridiculous how much pleasure I derive from this exercise. I love dreaming about the guests, where they would sit, what questions I would ask them, and what their answers might possibly be. Have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE that game? My guests tend to shift and change based on what I'm reading, thinking, or learning about at any given time. Sometimes it's a blend of the famous and the beloved, like my surrogate grandfather and Harry Truman (because I would have LOVED to see the two of them talk), or Gandhi and Chris Rock. What would that look like? Princess Diana and Kate Middleton. (I KNOW. I am embarrassingly starstruck by princesses and am a more than a little bit embarrassed to admit this). Nelson Mandela and the entire cast of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. (They would not understand each other at ALL. Insert immature giggles here).

There is one person that has held the third place in my imaginary dinner party for almost twenty years running. The questions I want to ask her never change. And I always can count on her for interesting conversation with a polite Southern drawl and a pointed, yet gentle, intellect. (See how fun this is when you invent characteristics for people from their public persona?)

Barbara Kingsolver has been my imaginary dinner guest, my writing mentor and (imaginary) friend for a very, very long time. For years and years and years. She just doesn't know it. YET.

animal dreams

We met during Animal Dreams. What an introduction. In a summer where I was reading some seriously weird stuff to fulfill an undergraduate literature requirement, this book was different. I fell HARD. Exquisite in its construction and character development, and laser focused on the plight of migrants and the relationship between native and non-native cultures, Barbara had me at hello. Animal Dreams is a love story so beautiful, poignant, and memorable, that it is a part of me nearly twenty years later. Heady, beautiful stuff for my nineteen year old self. A beautifully constructed story with a side of social justice? Right up my alley.

I was converted and turned into a verifiable Kingsolver evangelist. My need to read her work was insatiable. To date, I had not yet read the work of a contemporary, ALIVE writer who wrote with such intensity, authenticity, thoughtful and elegant construction, and, for lack of a better (or even a real) word, rawness than Barbara.

Then I found Pigs in Heaven. And then The Bean Trees. More more more more more. Barbara knows, I'm a greedy little friend. So she happily keeps feeding this beast.

HighTideInTucson

To my utter delight, I discovered that she also wrote ESSAYS and nonfiction. Hooray and hallelujah, my favorite genre! I read High Tide in Tucson in one sitting and reread it nearly every year. Civil Disobedience at Breakfast? Hilarious and heartrending and as real as the sun.

Poisonwood_Bible

And then came The Poisonwood Bible. Her masterpiece, in my opinion. That book is so richly drawn and vividly imagined, and perfectly circular in its structure that it left me breathless upon completion. This was the book that cemented Barbara's place at my table forever and ever and ever.

animal-vegetable-miracle

Don't EVEN get me started on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction piece that chronicles her family's transition to complete consumption of only locally grown food (I think coffee was the only thing given a pass). That book transformed my thinking about food, family, cooking, and farming. It informs decisions I make at the grocery and guides me as to how I choose and prepare food (Most of the time. I do love me some Fritos). Occasional junk food notwithstanding, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle taught me to be thoughtful and mindful about agriculture and its precarious sustainability.

Barbara characterizes herself as a storyteller-scientist. I also think she needs to include teacher. Without fail, whether reading her architecturally structured fiction or her delightfully informative non-fiction, she leads her reader into a moment of transcendence, to a moment when what you knew before gets upended, and you will never look at that aspect of the world in quite the same way again. It happened for me in Animal Dreams, in High Tide in Tucson, in The Poisonwood Bible, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in Prodigal Summer. (She and I had issues with each other during The Lacuna. I got over them).

It also happened in her newest book, Flight Behavior.

flight behavior

One dreary morning nearly one year ago, I was listening to NPR when I heard the news. I was in a low, low place. I felt trapped in the vortex of infant and toddler care with no end in sight. Several of my dearest friends had moved away, and I was feeling sore alone. I had literally been tethered to my little nursing man, who would not take a bottle, for MONTHS, and my soul was feeling beleaguered and heavy. I could hardly read anything more intellectually taxing than People magazine before getting interrupted or falling dead asleep. I felt like my intellect was atrophying.

But this news! This news made me stand up straighter, it helped to reawaken my foggy, sleep-deprived, postpartum brain, and gave a glimmer of hope to my worn out soul. Overly dramatic? Perhaps. But try telling that to this girl a year ago and see what kind of response you get.

THE NEWS: Barbara Kingsolver had a new book coming out and was going to do a reading at the National Cathedral in a week. IN A WEEK! And come hell or high water, I was going to be there. My real life dinner party moment had actually arrived.

In the week between the news and the event, I listened to every radio interview she gave on Flight Behavior, read every review, and ordered my copy. The tickets were waiting at will call. I was ready.

After running late and getting horribly lost, I finally arrived at the majestic cathedral, met my waiting friend Cristina, and hightailed it into the sanctuary to listen to Barbara herself read from the novel.

As imagined, her voice in person was melodious, with a delicious Southern lilt. She speaks slowly, thoughtfully, with great care, whether she is reading from her work or answering a question. Words seem to matter very much to her, and it seems as though they are thoughtfully considered before they leave her mouth.

Cristina and I sat, mesmerized, listening to Barbara's soothing tones as she read the opening scene from the novel. The protagonist, Dellarobia, sets off up the mountain in too-tight boots to meet her "ruination." But, instead of a tryst with her erstwhile lover, Dellarobia discovers something that will ultimately, utterly transform her life. The reading was, in a word, exquisite.

Then it happened.

The dinner party moment.

I was the last person called on to ask Barbara a question. I ACTUALLY GOT TO ASK HER THE QUESTION THAT HAS BEEN BURNING WITHIN ME FOR YEARS! I couldn't even believe my great good fortune.

The Breathless Question: "In reading both your fiction and nonfiction over the years, I have noticed how circular and architectural in structure your books are. Can you explain your writing process? How do you go about crafting your pieces?"

Barbara's Response:

"First of all, thank you so much for noticing that. I try to create my books in a process similar to that of an architect."

Here's me, inside my head, screaming, I KNEW IT!!!!

She then launched in to a delicious explanation of her writing process, which was everything I had imagined and more.

And then she thanked me again for asking. I was so filled up with joy that I floated back to my seat. Cristina and I beamed at each other and deemed the response perfectly exquisite.

Then just like that, the reading was over and we were invited to line up to get our books signed. The line was instantly enormous; snaking from one end of the cathedral to the other. The hour was late, the baby was hungry, and I was filled up. So, we walked to the front of the line, I snapped a picture of my friend Barbara, and drove home after a full and very satisfying dinner with one of my favorite guests.

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