Second Hand Saturday

Taken from July 24, 2011

If I had known- when I was six or seven- that climbing the apple tree out in the back orchard after school would later save my life, I don't think I could have understood the gravity of it all. When you are six or seven, sitting in your father's apple tree with your skinny legs dangling over the fruitful limbs that early fall brings, you don't think that you will come back to this place in your adulthood as a refuge when the pain gets intolerable. As you bite into that delightful apple with only simple worries in your growing mind - spelling tests, being caption of the kickball team, avoiding vegetables at dinnertime- you don't know that years later, when you are cycling downward into a spiral of deteriorating health in a hospital room, that you will come back to this perfect moment. I go there, he told me, over and over again. Those apple trees on my father's farm just might save my life. From my front porch where my son parks my wheelchair, I can still see them across the yard and they are glorious.

Second Hand Saturdays: writing from the archives

Calibrated and Synchronized

From Fall of 2010

Light weight jackets have finally come out to play in our home. Ben and I tossed open the windows to allow a cool, fall breeze to refresh our home. At night, when the temperature dips into the 50s or even 40s, we grab our jackets before heading out to campfires, go star gazing, planting bulbs, or Red Lobster with Pat. Upon returning home last night I noticed in my periphery that Ben and I doffed our jackets with almost precise synchronicity: first the right sleeve then the left. I realize that this coordinated movement is no award winning choreography piece performed by the Joffrey Ballet but this simple mirror image of myself in another person got me thinking about relationships, synchronicity, and connection.

When Ben and I were dating long distance (me in Minnesota and he in Chicago), we craved the normal everyday things you do in the presence of each other. We verbalized our desire for watching television together on a single couch, sharing Chinese take out, strolling around the block to get ice cream, or renting a movie. Phone conversations was a just-bear-able substitute for normal side by side activities. One evening, still in two separate states, we decided we would both tackle cleaning our rooms together. We set up our webcams so that they could view the width of the room and we began cleaning. Occasionally I looked over to the screenshot of Ben to discover that he was vacuuming at the same time as I was (only 400 miles away!). Later he was collapsing sheets over the bed just as I was tossing my sheets in the air. This made me smile.

Finding synchronicity with other people is what makes me most happy. I need at least one person who is tuned in to where I am at and vice versa. An out of sync relationship can wreck my brain. Here's the thing though: part of having a true connection with another person requires having your very own independent rhythm to start. It would be cheating if I was only copying someone else's movements and calling it "synchronized". The beauty of finding that you are connected with another person is knowing that you were doing your thing and they were doing their's and then suddenly, you were together rocking and rolling in the same direction.

Mirrored facial expressions, pedaling your bike to the same rotation as another also pedaling their bike, finding humor in the same joke, being inspired by a similar activity. I think of little, delicate, spidery strings connecting my mind or limbs to another person's mind and limbs in these very moments. When I witness one person stand during a worship service at church and then watch the entire congregation follow I am moved because it is one living and breathing connection between each individual in the church body and God. If I went all spiritual-meets-X-files I would say that in that moment, a million little spidery strings would be bursting from the heart of each person in the congregation and stretching all the way to where God lives. Connection synchronized to the beat of the kick drum that my own husband taps during a worship song in the front of the church with his foot steadily in rhythm.


* One of the challenges with switching to a new website last year (from www.twosmallmonsters.com) was that I worried about leaving behind some of my favorite pieces of writing spanning from 2003-2011. Second Hand Saturdays is a little attempt to pull forward and integrate some of my favorite pieces into astringofstories. For long time avid readers (think: 2004) like Kelly, Stef, and Agnes, they will just be repeats :o)