Wednesday's Word -- Trust

I'm not one to follow celebrities (or think that what I think about them matters one lick), but I have to admit that I have always admired Maria Shriver.  She is a strong, smart, capable woman.  Have you read her 2009 Shriver Report on women?  You should.  Right now (whether she cares or not), my heart is aching (and still admiring her) for what she's enduring.

So this week I'm thinking about the word TRUST, and what happens when it is gone.

"Trust" means "firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing."  It is "something committed into the care of another."  Like the word ENDURE, it comes from the Indo-European root deru-, meaning "hard."  The word TREE comes from the same root.  So fitting, because I really can't imagine anything more trustworthy, steadfast and immovable than a tree.  

Times like these --  trust chopped to the ground -- leave a woman sitting on the stump, mustering the strength to get up and go plant her heart in more fertile ground.           

Monday's Metaphor -- Open Trench

So many of my metaphors find me while I'm running.  I (literally) almost tripped over this one.  I've joked that I'm going to silkscreen the sign I wrote about here on a baby t-shirt, but I can imagine wearing this one emblazoned across my own chest:  OPEN TRENCH.  I know it's not Wednesday (and this isn't one of my Wednesday's Word posts), but indulge me.

The metaphor is probably obvious to you (because you too have likely had your heart carved out at some point over the course of the cruel days that sometimes make up our lives), but it improves with some dictionary help.  A trench is a "deep furrow or ditch."  Indeed, the word comes from a root meaning "to cut."  Trench may also be defined as "a long narrow ditch embanked with its own soil and used for concealment and protection in warfare."

Sometimes when your insides have been carved out from within, the remaining cavity at least provides a hiding place.  Caution advised for passersby.

Birthday/Deathday

You know, this really never gets old.  Enjoy.

Wednesday's Word -- Forgive

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."  (From The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, p. 359)

My musings on The Brothers Karamazov (along with circumstances in my own cell) have me thinking about forgiveness.  The word means "to excuse for a fault or an offense; to pardon."  To forgive is "to renounce anger or resentment" or to "absolve from payment of a debt."  Breaking the word apart, it comes from the Old English for-giefan, meaning to give away (for = away and "giefan" = to give).  The related Latin word "perdonare" means "to give completely, without reservation" (per = thoroughly and donare = to give).  And I like that the word "forget" (so often attached to forgive) means "to lose one's hold."


Give it (the right to exact a pound of flesh) away and let it (the pain) pack up and go.  Easier said than done.

Also makes me think of a favorite poem on the topic.  A forgiveness tree bears sweeter fruit than a poison tree, after all.      

Wednesday's Word -- Encourage

Fortitudo by Botticelli

I'm not afraid to admit it.  I'm an introvert.  And I have two daughters who are too.  Ironically, I expend all sorts of effort trying to encourage them toward extroversion.  In truth, I don't know that you ever transform an introvert into an extrovert, bibbety bobbity boo.  Some pumpkins are just pumpkins.  

Despite the coaching I impose on my daughters, though, introversion is not a disease.  In many important ways, it's an asset.  While I don't expect (or even really wish) to change them, I do very much want to instill a confidence in them that the world can't shake.  When the moments call for it, I want them to stand up, and speak with strong, intelligent voices.  That ability can indeed be nurtured and developed.

So the word I'm thinking about today (with daughters braving the back-to-school world) is:

Encourage

This is one of my favorites, because it's the kind of word that you've seen and used countless times, but yet you've probably never really seen it for what it is.  Break it apart.  It is en and courage.  The prefix en means in or within.  The word courage means the state or quality of mind or spirt that enables one to face danger or fear with self-possession, confidence and resolution.   Courage comes from the Indo-European root kerd, meaning heart.  So, to encourage means to instill courage (or heart) in another person.  And on the flip-side, to DIScourage means to take it out.

In a real sense, that is what a parent tries to do for a child -- to pour heart into that child until it overflows as goodness, kindness and virtue, and the child can face all manner of dangers with a self-possession that shines like a well-polished shield.   

Ice Would Be Nice

FIRE AND ICE
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

~Robert Frost

So, what do you think -- fire or ice?  From what I've tasted of summers in Phoenix, I think I hold with those who favor ice.  Temperatures aside, both icy hatred and fiery anger are powerfully painful.  It's a toss up for me.  Which do you think is worse -- when someone gives you the cold shoulder or silent treatment, or when someone just lets you have it?  

Mother Bird -- Determined or Dim-Witted?

About a month ago, my girls and I discovered a bird's nest on the top of a high cabinet on our back porch, tucked in among some old shoes and an unused weed whacker.  We were thrilled, but knew the angry king would not be.  In addition to his disdain for glitter, he despises bird poop anywhere close to the house.  So we kept it quiet.  But he was observant, and several days later, the nest was inexplicably gone.  The girls and I were sad, but what could we do?  (Choose battles, and this is not one of them.)

Well, a couple of weeks later, that determined momma bird (or some relative perhaps) was back.  She built a new nest in the exact same spot.  Laid three new round, white eggs.  And plopped herself down for the wait.  My first reaction was to question what the bird could possibly be thinking.  Does she have a death wish for her baby birdies?  At least pick another corner of the cabinet.  But no, she chose the exact same spot.

It has been two weeks now, and the nest remains.  That devoted mother sits and sits and sits.  You can get very close to her, and she'll hold still like a statue, but won't fly away.  She's a determined one.

So, the unasked question is this.  Does the angry king know about the nest?  My guess is he does, and he's decided to grant a pardon.  But the girls and I aren't taking any chances.  Top secret.  Good thing he doesn't read my blog :)

Post Script:  Husband asked nonchalantly on Sunday (Mother's Day):  "Did you notice we have a bird on top of our cabinet?"  "Yes, but the girls and I were hoping you hadn't."  Pardon granted!  

Wednesday's Word -- Mother

Given that this coming Sunday is Mother's Day, my word of the week was an easy pick.  But not entirely, because I must admit that I'm no fan of Mother's Day (at least when it comes to honoring me as a mother).  If I get the time, I'm going to work on an "Ode on a Mother's Day Corsage" (in the spirit of Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"), but for now, I'll settle for the word "mother."

Mother

"Mother," in its most literal sense, means "a female parent."  It also can mean "a person or thing that is very large, powerful, or impressive."  (As in, "I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams."  Or "I hit the motherlode.")  But my favorite definition is simply this:  "the origin, source, or protector."  "The origin of or stimulus for something else."  "Origin" means "something from which anything arises or is derived."  "Stimulus" means "something that incites or quickens action, feeling, thought, etc."  If you have given birth to children, you are indeed the origin and beginning for your offspring.  And you should be the protector and stimulus as well.  But you don't have to give birth to be a mother.  Regardless of whether you have children of your own, you still can (and should) be the origin, source, protector and stimulus of the next generation.

The word "mother" originates from an Indo-European root (mater) that (appropriately) means "mother."  (Mother is the source and origin, after all!)  The word is based on the baby-talk form ma (a linguistic near-universal found in many of the world's languages).  Here is something I quite like.  The IE root for mother is also the origin for tree trunk, matrix, substance, stuff, matter, and metropolis.

Makes me think of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree.  And the tree loved the boy.  Very much.

    

Bulletin Board Wisdom

A friend shared these words with me years ago,

Ever since, they hang pinned near a window.

Reminding, chiding, advising.

What appears to be,

May be temporary. 
It may be hiding what's next.
Or perhaps what always was.

What good advice.   

"When you come to something, stop to let it pass 

So you can see what else is there."  

Here's the full text of the poem, by Kenneth Koch (born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1925 and died in 2002 of leukemia.  Koch  received degrees from Harvard and Columbia University and many awards and honors for his writing).

One Train May Hide Another
(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it’s best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person’s reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you’re not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother’s bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter’s bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother’s
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love
As when “I love you” suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when “I’m full of doubts”
Hides “I’m certain about something and it is that”
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you’re asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you’d have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

Shakespeare's Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of both Shakespeare's birth, and his death.  As my 7-year-old daughter commented, "that must have been a bad birthday."  Today is also my 16-year wedding anniversary.  As a lover of Shakespeare (and my husband), I like April 23.

So for today's post, I thought I'd share a sonnet.  How to improve on Shakespeare?  Have Rufus Wainwright sing the words and show scenes from Pride and Prejudice.  

And here's the text:

SONNET 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

My favorite line?  "With what I most enjoy contented least."  Doesn't that capture the sickness of our day?  "Content" means "satisfied with things as they are."  How much better off we all would be if we all were.    

Against Myself the Sharp Days Slobber in Vain

{I am hosting a slumber party for four young girls tonight, and there is not much slumbering going on.  So let me be brief.}

Isn't this excerpt from an E.E. Cummings' poem lovely?  It fluttered into my mind today, and I thought I'd share.

you are like the snow only
purer fleeter, like the rain
only sweeter frailer you
whom certain 
flowers resemble but trembling (cowards 
which fear to miss within your least gesture the hurting
skill which lives) . . .
. . . you give me 
courage
so that against myself
the sharp days slobber in vain

I just love this.  Love is a good thing.  The kind of love that makes you more courageous.  The kind of love that makes you stronger and impenetrable so that the sharp things life throws at you slip off.  Liquified.  Thwarted.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, or to a Camel?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?*

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

~ Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare~

*Actually, being compared to a summer's day in Phoenix, where I live, would NOT be a compliment.

The other day, I was fully engaged in the morning scramble -- getting my kids and myself dressed, fed, presentable and out the door to school and work (which deserves to qualify as an Olympic event in and of itself).  I stopped to take a breath, push my hair out of my face and look at my husband.  He shook his head, saying:  "You don't eat, you don't sleep, and you still look beautiful.  It must be grace."  Parts of that statement aren't true, but I will, nevertheless, store those words away like a camel*, and draw on them when in need of sustenance on my trek through the desert I call my life.

Animal locomotion: [Twenty consecutive images of a camel running]. Eadweard Muybridge, photographer. c1887.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

For me, there's nothing like a sincere, un-canned, unexpected, unsolicited compliment to make my day.  Do words have that power over you?  Some years ago, I read a book called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and learned (no real surprise) that words of affirmation have the power to make me happy.  My husband, on the other hand, couldn't care less what I say; he only really cares about what I do (acts of service).  Anyway, it's an interesting way to think about how you can make the people you love (including your children) feel loved.

*By the way, did you know that camels don't actually store water in their humps?  They store fat, although they can go for long periods of time without water.  And, did you know that some say the word "camel" comes from an Arabic word derived from a root meaning "beauty"?  Who knew?!  Some days I do in fact feel like a beast of burden.

Loving the Things (and People) We Love for What They Are

I've been thinking of a poem by Robert Frost called "Hyla Brook."  Do you know that one?

By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat--
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are. 

This is a poem about a brook that runs strong in the spring, but by June is either dried up or has been taken over by weeds that are too weak to even stand up in the wind.  And the singing Hyla tree frogs that hang out when the brook is at its best have all disappeared.  By summer time, the brook is nothing to anyone other than those "who remember long."  But those who truly know the brook can see it with different eyes, even when it has dried up and gone underground.  As Frost says:  "We love the things we love for what they are."

I love this poem, because we are all like that brook.  Some days I do feel like a "faded paper sheet" or like "weak foliage that is blown upon and bent," and anyone observing me at that moment in time wouldn't know my potential to be more and better than my current self. 

And truth be told, the people I love most in this world are sometimes like that brook in June, "run out of song and speed."  But because I have seen them in one of their "springtimes" -- so beautiful and vibrant (with the Hyla breed "shout[ing] in the mist") -- I can (try to) see them with those same eyes even in drought.  I can (strive to) be one who "remembers long."  When someone I love least deserves it, that's when I try to try the hardest to serve and to love -- incanting softly as I go "We love the things we love for what they are" and "We love the things we love for what they are."  

It works for me.  It might work for you.  What do you do to see yourself or someone you care about for what you/they are?