Burns

I burned myself last week.  I've had a lot on my mind lately and gazing out the kitchen window, I got a bit lost watching the leaves fall like amber snow upon the lawn.  There is something slightly bewitching about the sizzle of a roast; searing before it will be nestled into the pot, draped with onions and herbs, and left immersed in broth to simmer.  Something snapped me out of my reverie and turning I reached for the metal tongs now left for long minutes in the flame...

Two inches of the flesh on my palm--the kind of burn that you almost hear before you feel.  I must of made a sound as my son was quickly in the doorway.  I stood quietly with my hand submerged in the dishtub.  "Are you alright, mum?" he asked. 

I smiled, "I will be."

For that is the secret, isn't it.  No matter how deep the pain, how unbearable it seems as it scrapes and tears and breaks our bodies, our dreams....our souls.  No matter the wound, there is the balm of time.  The bandage of memory, the antiseptic of grace. 

Funny how the physical pain fades so much more quickly than that of the heart.  I've come to possess such a tolerance for corporeal injury as to constantly wear a smattering of bruises I've no idea how were acquired, scrapes and cuts that I'm amazed to discover when pointed out by the boys.  These are merely the companions to a life of labor; refinishing furniture, installing floors, sanding ceilings precariously perched atop a ladder I'm certain holds a personal dislike of me.  And then there is the treacherous land of the kitchen--knives and fire do not mix well with hurry and distraction.

I didn't want to look at my hand.  To see it somehow makes it hurt more, doesn't it?  Kind of like mulling over an insult or argument.  I sprayed on the Bactine (I believe we own four bottles of this magic mist--even keep one in the car...this probably says something about our family), covered it with gauze, and returned to finish getting dinner started.  Oh, how it burned.  Seemed about to ignite the bandage, did it rage so.  I bit my lip...tears in my eyes, though perhaps it was due to the onions I sliced. 

Life goes on.

There would be hungry children lingering about in three hours and there was still potatoes to mash and laundry to fold and floors to sweep and.....

That second hand ticks....and the clock turns.

I wish there was a Bactine for the heart.  Sometimes a single sentence uttered in anger lingers so long as to tattoo itself on the walls of my mind.  I wish I was better at dismissing, banishing these things to the woods where they would be lost amongst the ferns and trees, so much mulch. 

I'm not.

Then again, if I were, perhaps I wouldn't be as careful at guarding my own tongue.  I am conscientious to an extreme, painstakingly so, of the agony unscrupulous words can induce.  We all must live with the tragedy we cause....some learn from the past, some do not.  I have made mistakes I care never to repeat.  This tapestry of life is woven of a million threads.   

We choose the colors.



It's raining today.  The green of summer is fading, relinquishing life to give birth again in spring.   As I type I can feel the pull of the new skin on my hand.  The damaged tissue cracked and peeled, now replaced by soft pink flesh.  Unlined still, its tenderness is a constant reminder for me.  Not only to be more prudent where I choose to daydream, but that I am stronger than I sometimes feel.  That healing is innate as much as of will....that new flesh, new hopes, new mornings await. 

 

On Waiting

Inside of the dash and scramble, the glory and anguish, the blaze and murk of gloom - within this story we are writing as we breathe and love and hate and dream, are moments that define us.  Much as ink on parchment....

The rasp of my charcoal seems loud in the room as I sketch the arch of the brow.  Black dust drifts across her cheek, I blow it away.  Bars of afternoon sunshine trace lazy patterns on the floor, shifting as the curtains billow in the breeze of the open window.

I am waiting.

Waiting is a hiatus.  A pause.  A breath held.  I find few things tell me more about a person than watching them wait.  The ability to wait with elegance is a component I believe supremely important to a complete childhood upbringing, it's the foundation of civilized life as we know it.  Waiting to speak, play, ask.  Stand in line, raise your hand, take your turn.  Waiting, if carefully nurtured, gives birth to anticipation; delicious appreciation of the moment achieved.  However, if not practiced regularly with self-control and discipline, it can spawn rage, frustration, and an acidic impatience rooted in self-centeredness that will slowly eat away at any joy you hope to hold. 

For waiting is like the air.  As the seasons and the sun and death and summer rain....waiting is inevitable.  From the moment of conception, we wait.  For dawn, we wait.  For dusk.  For first kisses and true love and bended knee, we wait.  For winter's end.  The bread to rise, the light to turn, the children to sleep....we wait. 

What do you do while you wait?  My mother told me once, never to pray for patience.  For such a prayer was the unleashing of disaster in your life; the upending of plans and goals--messes upon hold-ups upon delays--all which would, in the end, lead to patience.  But a lesson of cost, be careful.  I've never prayed thus, but still chuckle with friends about one day writing a book titled, "Living In The Two Percent."  For by golly, if there is a 98% chance that all will work out just fine....I am in the two.  Every.  Time.  And honestly, my closest friends laugh, cringe a little...and agree.

All is not lost, however, for within the hospital stays and duplicate paperwork and broken plans, I have found indeed almost a....kinship with waiting.  Perhaps it is that this world is endlessly fascinating to me.  I can be mesmerized by the dust as it frolics on the wind and have spent an afternoon on my knees in the damp soil, taking pictures of the bleached skeleton of a tiny bird.  The bones were like ivory threads, knit together with such artistry, such symmetry, their grace nearly took my breath away.  Loveliness left in death's cold wake.  I was waiting for the boys return from fishing that day; I never would have found those ossien beauties if I hadn't been stranded, time on my hands.

I've written some of my best work in the doctor's office.  Composed poetry while in line at the bank.  I carry pencils and charcoal in my purse, napkins and the back of old lists becoming my canvas when the waitress is lagging or the train late.  I'm not claiming a passive acquiescence at all times, trust me--there is a storm abrew once in a while--but I find conquering my internal turmoil, my desire to demand and shout, to be strangely cathartic.  Proof somehow, that I may not be able to control the world--but I can control my response to it.  The way we wait defines us, much as my chalk defines the shape of her eye, the curve of her cheek.  Within that exercise of the art of the wait, I find peace.  Time I wouldn't have had to reflect, contemplate....time to ruminate and wonder and muse. 


The art of the wait.



....I've been thinking about the patience
of ordinary things, how clothes
wait respectfully in closets
and soap dries quietly in the dish, 
and towels drink the wet from the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.                                     

                                          Pat Schneider