This week

This has been a fucking long week.

Yesterday, I went to the zoo with an very good friend and our babies. Whenever I am in crowds of people, I think, I wonder if I email with someone in this crowd. I wonder who has lost a child, who is part of my tribe, who has howled here and why. What is that family's story? "Do I read your blog?" I want to ask the woman who looked at me knowingly. "Do you have a dead baby?"

During my impressionable late teens, someone said to me that when each of us look in the mirror, we see our flaws, our sins, our scars...I always imagined I had a scar on my forehead from where a mop handle hit me at age 3, but truth be told, only I see that scar, you know, because I know I bled from that spot. Others notice nothing, except a dimple. The other part of that thought is that when other people see you, they see your good features. They see the person you put forward, make up, done hair, contacts...And what we do is compare our flaws with others' perfections.

The beauty about this community is that we talk about our flaws. We come out of our houses in our stained jammies, and with our glasses and sand in our red eyes. We call our flaws by their proper names, and in that way, we lessen their power. We make our flaws our distinctive features.

:::

I try to be honest in this space. I have an almost fanatical devotion to my truth, and then every once in a while, my husband reads this blog and says something like, "The pilot never said the word 'emergency.'"
"What?"
"On your blog post about our trip to Panama, the pilot never said 'emergency.'"
"That's what I heard."
"Well, he didn't."
"Does it matter?"

And that really is the truth about truth.

Addled and anxious, I heard something different than my calm husband. The end result is the same, we landed, but how we got there is different. Sam experienced some turbulence. I experienced the scariest, most nauseating turbulence of my life. According to Sam, Beatrice stayed in her seat. According to me, if Beatrice hadn't been strapped into her seat, she would have been thrown to the ground. See what I mean? I heard catastrophe, and Sam heard challenge. But that blog post wasn't about what the pilot said. It was about how I felt on our flight home--apocalyptic, scared, anxious, traumatized.

So today, I feel a swirling of guilt, sadness, anger, fear, curiosity...maybe it doesn't matter what the reality is, maybe it is simply each truth that matters in this community.

:::

I see a lot of people retreating from our community right now. Confused. Protecting themselves. Exhausted from the sadness. I understand that impulse. It can be toxic to try to read so much suffering, and discerning the truth between words. I get caught in the thinking that there is one truth and one reality too.

And the other part of retreat is a simple reality of our community. It can be difficult to absorb so much grief and suffering when you are simply treading water in your own life. Besides our own grief, and the grief of others, between bills and work, and a marriage or relationship and a blog, children or trying...so much of our hearts are invested here, it seems so risky to get it broken for someone whose first name you might think of as phrase. When we are trying to rebuild our faith in the universe, it doesn't help to get it consistently shattered by tragedy.

What is this place, though? It is an idea. We imagine we are talking around a table, that someone has invited us into their home and is sitting with us. But let's be clear, we are looking at a projection of someone's world. We are looking at the person they chose to show us. I try to be faithful to who I think I am, flaws and all. Fatness and impatience. But I am sometimes much jerkier or actually much cooler than I let on. We all know this about ourselves, why do we not remember it about others?

It is beauty of this community, though, that defines us. Our compassion, our love, and our support of one another that truly matters. Despite someone's ugly thoughts, we still remember their past, their story, their vulnerabilities, their losses...we take into account why, and react with compassion. Wouldn't it be beautiful if we could react to the people in our every day life in that way?

So from my perspective, right now, patience, love, compassion, kindness, trust, and light, those are amazing qualities. This community is beautiful in its instincts. Giving that in the world, whether the person is deserving or not, is the real point. I don't think I will be the same person after this week. Part of my faith in humanity and the universe is both strengthened and shook. I just think that when we reflect on this week as a community, I hope we can see the lightness and beauty of our love rather than the darkness of our fears.