Last Spring I reluctantly fixed a broken bone that hid itself inside my body. The Orthopedist laughed when I told him I had no real idea how it came to be that I had a fracture in the ball joint of my hip at the age of 53. I vaguely recall being bumped in the whole general "hippal" region by a Hyundai, with a hurried, unhappy, tiny, little man, who's head was so small that his ball cap looked like a helmet, backing up in a Walmart parking lot - which somehow felt like my just desserts for being in that horrible spot to start with. I also recalled hurling my own body out of the icy lake on many occasions, slamming it like a flopping fish onto my waiting, solid surfaced, blue kayak, after having dove off it, then gone swimming with my children on many hot summer days. It would be more likely then not that I'd at least break something doing that unnatural and ugly task, including damaging the poor kayak itself. But I couldn't say how it happened and I'd ask myself over and over, why it had to happen, but it just did. And it seemed to be for no reason...
My favorite Poet, Mary Oliver, died recently and I cried over the loss as if she were my closest friend; most faithful pet, doting Auntie, coveted old flame, darling companion and in some ways, she was all of those things to me. She moved me to tears with her intelligence and sensitivity, her charming ruggedness and love for all things natural. She somehow, with her words and wisdom imparted to me that I was, in fact, a forgiveable human being and there is no one else, not even our sweet lord Jesus, who has ever gotten that notion to take solid root inside of me. She made me want to write more, because I took in how it fueled her so. And her writing fueled me so. She was an inspiration of the purest kind. I loved everything she wrote and there is not another single Author I can say that about. Everything she did was my favorite. She was perfect and she died and I cried for her. Not for her dying, because she let me know in her writing that death did not disturb, yet enchanted her. I cried for myself, because I felt a rare and perfect love for another human that had never and would never be dulled or damaged, as most loves become, even our best loves will be. If I believed in coincidences, I'd say that I coincidentally came down with the flu when she passed away, leaving us behind in this beautiful world she described like no other ever could, but I know better then that. My flu symptoms began the day my Orthopedist told me I needed "a total hip replacement kinda like yesterday" and the flu itself lasted about ten months and ended about two days ago. AND I HAVEN'T FELT THIS WELL IN WAY TOO LONG.
"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift". Mary Oliver
As I read many of Mary's works this past week, I was, as always, struck by things she said and instantly, like a tightly closed oyster, shucked from it's shell, untrapped, wide open to all possibilities, full of comprehension and knowledge about myself and "my place in the family of things", I began to understand that my bad fortune involving the broken bone, the unpleasantness and complications that came up in my personal health as a result of that surgery, the death of my much loved father and the gaping hole he's left in my life, coupled with every single choice I made for my family and the predicament we've found ourselves in, simultaneously over the past ten months, were all bits and pieces, dimensions and layers in my box of darkness and that all these things, these challenging, heartbreakingly complex and painful things, have now, with time, revealed themselves to me as gifts.
And so today, in honor of my favorite poet, and because I would not wish to spite her, I accept my gifts, my box of darkness gifts and I just open myself up to myself, to my accountability. One of the curses which comes from the blessing of knowing something is, that you can't unknow it.
"Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it"
Mary Oliver
As much as I haven't felt like much of a writer much lately... (much) It's who I am and despite not doing it much, it's what I do and... I love it along with all the other embarrassing truths about myself. Thank you Mary Oliver for always waking me up to myself and for reminding "what it is I plan to do, with my one and only, wild and precious life".
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