Uncontained

It's a small thing, really. But it's catching my eye at unexpected times, in unexpected places, and I can't seem to shake it.

Over a year ago, I set up a card table in my family room and covered it with craft supplies––paper, stickers, glue, jeweled embellishments, decorative tape, ribbons, and glitter.  Yes, glitter, fine red glitter, contained and congregated in a small jar. When family gathered at my house, some accepted the invitation to sit at the craft table to play and create valentine cards.

No one played harder than Calvin, my three-year-old grandson. To him, there was no such thing as sprinkling glitter, only pouring glitter. Red specks generously billowed about him, with just a fraction landing on their intended target. Calvin happily created a brightly colored, sparkly, shiny, sticky, beautiful mess.   

During February, it was a mess I enjoyed. But at month's end, I bagged up the craft supplies and put away the card table, taking broom, dust cloth, and vacuum to the area, cleaning it up as best I could. 

Like sand that comes home from the beach with you, later found in your children's ears and hair, in the creases of your car, the bottom of your purse and your washing machine, my red glitter inhabited unlikely spaces.  It rested between and within books on the shelves, couch cushions, edges and ledges of my home. I can't trace their journey, but some of those invasive red flakes traveled to my mountain cabin fifty miles away. 

Though they sparkle with the same brightness as they did the day I bought them, now when the shiny specks catch my eye, they no longer hold the beautiful memory of fun times at our craft table. Instead they carry condemnation. They tell me I am sloppy, that I always leave things undone, and that there's no hope for me. They were intended to embellish cards celebrating love, yet now, weightless as they are, they transport heavy, damning messages:

I can't contain my glitter. I can't contain me. I haven't finished cleaning up from a project I started 13 months ago. How dare I move on to the next thing, not having tidied up from the last thing? The accusations fly and land me in a decades-old memory.

I returned home from Los Angeles, where I had completed a two-day examination to become a certified court reporter. I was tired but elated, floating on a wave of emotions, and still dressed in an outfit that made 20-year-old me look and feel professional, competent, legitimate. 

"How did it go?" my dad asked from his chair in the corner of the living room, while I was just a few steps into the entryway. Through a beaming smile I told him how well I believed I had done, how relieved I was that the test I worked two years to prepare for was behind me. My words spilled out.

Having overheard me describe my time, my mom marched from the kitchen and planted herself a foot from me with her fisted hands on her hips. She was a beautiful woman, but the anger scribbled across her face in this moment blotted out any signs of that beauty. "Yeah, but is your room clean?" The words, uncontained, flew from the jar. Like the glitter I still can't clean up, they were red, they landed in unintended spaces, and just when I think I’ve remembered the last of them, they catch my attention yet again. 

Anymore, it doesn't really matter what comes after the "Yeah, but." I can quickly render as illegitimate the ideas that rise up in me. 

“Oh, I’ll send Carol a card,” I think to myself. “Yeah, but what about Shirley?” 

“I’ll weave those thoughts that have been dancing through my mind into a poem,” then, "Yeah, but what about that piece you never finished, or those writings you thought about but never even started?” 

I long to speak hope into others during this weary, drawn-out time of the Covid pandemic. “Yeah, but I myself am often weary and discouraged,” and, “Yeah, but there are so many voices out there hoping to bring light into dark places." The "yeah-buts" circulate about and get too much time on my mind's stage. 

From the ampitheatre of Earth, I look up at the night sky and see the stars, still multiplying, God lavishing the universe with sparkles. They swirl and float, those captivating curlicues, brightening my dim eyes, satisfying my thirst for wonder and awe. If there is more room for stars in the sky, is there space for a sparkle, a fleck of light, another word carrying a glimmer of hope? Can I yield to God's pouring into me then through me words that bring courage, trusting they will land on the hearts of those who need them? 

A scene I recall from a 9/11 documentary re-enacts two men buried deep under rubble from an exploded building next to the World Trade Center towers. The men lay injured and trapped a good distance from each other. A small stream of light from above squeezing through the rubble could be seen by one of the men, while the light's ray was blocked from his comrade’s view. They knew as long as there was light, there was an opening through which someone could reach them, a sliver of hope. The man who could see the light kept reassuring his friend of its existence, until the rescuers reached them.

I look down in church on Sunday, and my eye catches a miniscule red sparkle in the center of my phone. I sigh. Again I look down, this time at a Bible placed on the end of the pew. White glitter, catching the light, is strewn across its cover. I look up to see the pastor's wife has decorated the sanctuary for winter, with glimmering snowflakes resting on green pine boughs surrounding the ceiling’s edge. I smile to realize she also could not contain her glitter. It feels like hope, for me, to know that others move forward beautifying the world with their creative ideas, even though they may leave a bit of a mess behind. 

If I can see the sparkle when you can't and you can see it when I can't, let's tell each other about it, shall we? Let's remind each other of the light, even if just a flicker.

It's no small thing, really.

Inconvenient Truth

When I try to write, I feel like I am making myself do something, trying to manipulate me somehow. No matter how healthily I attempt to look at it, that several-foot distance between me and my keyboard is packed with dread.

I hate dread.

If I could bypass it, I would. Maybe I can. Maybe the answer is out there, the little previously unnoticed route around the dark valley.

It ought not be this way. I’ve been given a gift, to be received, delighted in, and shared. Instead I hang onto it like it’s a gift card, dreaming while I roam around Target trying to decide how to spend it. So. Many. Possibilities.

And what if I make the “wrong” choice? What if I spend it on toilet paper when I should have spent it on eyeliner? Hairspray? A new shirt? Batteries for my husband (he would be so happy)? I’m certain the giver of the gift intended that I find joy in it rather than angst. 

Meanwhile I gaze at others finding joy and freedom in expressing themselves, in first receiving then sharing what’s been given them. The cousin who can’t stop composing new music, her hands dancing across piano keys. The son who prolifically writes satire, word after clever word. The painters, the poets, the songwriters, the decorators, the choreographers, the gardeners—all producing something.

“Diane doesn’t DO anything.” I can’t even tell you whether this was ever spoken, but it’s a message from my childhood lingering way beneath the surface of me. To find its source seems like more digging than I’m up for. But then when one pulls a big weed from the ground, is it necessary to find out how it got there? Maybe not. Maybe let’s just get the weed out and plant something lovely in its place.

Diane dreamed. Diane thought. Diane danced and climbed trees. Diane observed. Diane giggled. Diane made up songs. Diane absorbed things in her heart. Diane sought and often found meaning in everything. Diane admired beauty. She pondered and played, her pondering being more her reality than her play. She swam. She enjoyed people. She loved. 

I suppose she couldn’t be put into a box. “This is our child who plays piano.”

“This is our child who enjoys animals.” “This is our child who reads incessantly.” 

No, there wasn’t one box to put me in. I was inconvenient in that way, perhaps.

How inconvenient that Diane is in drill team. That means we have to get her to the school early on Saturdays so she can march in parades. That means we have to buy her nylons at 7-eleven on the way (why were my parents always surprised I needed new nylons for every parade?). Frantic realization, followed by heavy sighs, followed by a rushed three-mile drive. 

My needs seemed a bit too much. I seemed a bit too much. And I wonder whether I now treat myself and my desires as an inconvenience. 

How inconvenient that I have ideas to write about some things, about many somethings, in fact. That means I have to step up and meet that need to express myself. That means I have to travel the dreaded “three miles” from where I sit to my computer. Frantic, followed by heavy sighs, followed by possibly dragging myself to where I need to be. A victim of my own gifts and desires? 

I don’t know. I know that my writer friend Ruth was seen and embraced by her parents. I wonder what I would be like now if I had been treated the same. Her dad, when she was eight years old, told her, “Write down the things God whispers to you.” He saw her and encouraged her to step into who she was.

I suppose I am angry I didn’t have encouragement to be who I am. I suppose I think it’s all rather unfair that my guiding factor was to see how little trouble I could be, to attempt to need as little as possible, to not overwhelm the already chaotic family (albeit fun) system in which I lived.

I needed to write this today.

It’s okay to need. And dream. And ponder. And be angry. And heal.

Diane Mann 2019

Fragrant Threads

"That's my favorite scent," my great Aunt Helen said every time she drove me past the orange groves on Monte Vista Avenue. I was nine and ten and eleven and twelve and so on. After some deep, slow inhaling, she would go on, "I just love the smell of orange blossoms!" Wow, she really does like that smell, I said to myself, since she tells me about it every single time we pass this way. I wondered whether she thought I forgot what her favorite smell was, if she were to question me about it, I might fail the test. I wondered whether she forgot she had passed that news on to me dozens of times before.

She was savoring and relishing something that gave her delight. Looking back forty years later, I believe she most likely spoke the same words aloud when she was driving alone. I just happened to overhear her gratitude for something that triggered joy in her. I just happened to be sitting on the sidelines of her worship.

I have other piecemeal memories of her. The way she sang, "Yoohoo," when me and my five siblings would enter her home. She sang the same tune when she and Aunt Bu would come over to my family's house. I knew that I knew that I was her favorite of the Carver Kids, and everyone else knew it too. She held the purse strings in her family (she and her two sisters lived together, none ever marrying), and she sometimes spent some of what was in that purse on me. I remember a red bathing suit that was purchased for me while all the Carver Kids were there. It really wasn't fair, but she did it anyway. She was at the hospital when I was born, the story is told, while my dad was at work. Maybe that is why Aunt Helen felt a special bond with me.

She was frugal and opinionated, principled, a horrible cook, sharp, and conservative.  A retired physical education teacher, she was slim and agile and measured under five feet tall. Aunt Bu, one of her older sisters, used to bellow, "Merry Christmas!" as we arrived to their home, no matter what month it was. We soon learned she wasn't joking. As dementia worsened, she babbled things that made no sense but babbled them with pleasant feeling and expression. When we drove to day outings, picnics and the like, Aunt Bu read the words on every billboard we drove by out loud. Aunt Helen, long before "Prevention" magazine was a thing, subscribed and tried vitamins and healthful foods that might help her sister. She was always on the lookout for a remedy, hoping the next thing, or the next thing, would bring healing.

When I was engaged to be married, she gave me a silk pouch filled with embroidered fabric handkerchiefs. A beautiful design was woven into each piece of fabric. One by one she unfolded them, telling me which special occasion they were attached to. She got to the last one, held it in her hands, and said, "This is the handkerchief I carried the night I met the only man I ever loved." Her eyes filled with tears, her voice quivered, her lips tightened, and she said no more. After she died, I learned the man's name was Phillip. They had fallen in love over a summer. When summer was over and they returned to college, she learned he had been engaged to be married to another. He wanted to break his engagement to marry Aunt Helen, but she felt that would be wrong. She never loved another.

She always promised me, but never delivered, a train ride wherein we would sit facing backwards. "Someday we will ride on a train, you and I. And we will sit in a rear-facing seat. You see more when you're facing backwards," she told me. "It's the most amazing thing."

My sister Susan, two and a half years older than I, warned me, "Watch out. Aunt Helen is going to give you 'the talk,' just like she did me and Paula. She's going to tell you all about how she started her period on a church picnic." I swore this would not happen to me, that I would avoid this awkward scenario at all costs. But one day when I was twelve, she was helping me clean out my room and  opened a small drawer that housed my underwear. A red felt pen for some unknown reason was in the underwear drawer. For another unknown reason its cap had been removed, and the red ink had soaked into the crotch of a pair of underwear.

You really can't make this stuff up.

She saw this as her chance to tell me about when she "became a young lady" and how I also would. Having been warned by my big sisters, I saw it coming and bolted to the bathroom, hiding out until she left my bedroom. She never did get to tell me the story.

Once my family borrowed Aunt Helen's car. She needed it the next morning and didn't want to be a bother to anyone so walked over to our home and drove her car to the store. Meanwhile we woke up and called the police to report a stolen vehicle. Aunt Helen exited Alpha Beta and went to her car, where police officers waited, ready to arrest her for stealing a vehicle. She was eighty. Then there was the time in the same parking lot she made a quick trip into the store, leaving Aunt Bu in the car for a bit. Aunt Helen returned to an empty car and went on a search for her sister. She finally called the police, who found Aunt Bu in the dressing room of a clothing store having a nice conversation with herself while looking in a full-length mirror.

So many stories, the kinds our family tells again and again—those stories that begin with, "Remember when," that change a bit every time and end in a chorus of laughter.

Once in a while I get a longing, a longing that aches for the people I knew and loved in my early years to be able to know the people I know now. I want my kids to know Aunt Helen, my grandma, their two sisters, Carrie and Bertha (Bu). I try to tell them what they were like. God gave me a dream once, shortly after my grandma died and my third child, Karis was born. He let me walk my grandma over to her cradle, where I said, "Grandma, this is my baby girl, Karis." They met and loved each other.

I woke up with a wet face.

My face is wet today as I sit in quiet prayer. My tears are potent with longing to share the people I loved, who are woven into the fabric of my heart, with the people I now love, who are also woven into the fabric my heart. They all make me who I am.

I sit on the loveseat in these early morning candlelit moments, relishing these tears of longing, allowing them to remain on my face awhile. The train moves forward. I hop onto a seat facing backwards, inhale deeply, and enjoy the fragrance of orange blossoms.

Telling Time

Campfire Girl and Bluebird Pins - Time Flies

     In first grade I learned to “tell time,” filling in worksheets with clock faces and hands pointing different directions. Telling time came easily to me, learning the small hand on the three means :15, on the four means :20, and so on.

     One could say I practiced math in my home by learning to subtract 15 minutes from any number on the clock. My parents always set the clocks 15 minutes forward – I suppose, to give margin to our schedule. The message it ended up sending me is, it never really is whatever time the clock says it is; I really have more time than is represented by the timepiece.

     “I don't have TIME to go to the bathroom,” I often heard my mom sigh throughout her busy days in my childhood home.

    At a women's retreat where we were going to do a skit including some hymns,  I wondered why, even though I grew up in the same church as many women present, they knew they some completely unfamiliar-to-me hymns. After asking around, I learned it was because the hymns we were performing were songs sung in the beginning of church services. I knew all the songs we sung at night church, and I knew all the songs of invitation and commitment sung at the end of morning services but had never heard the songs sung at the beginning. “Just as I am” and “Have You Any Room for Jesus?” were woven into my being, but “Oh, for a Thousand Tongues” was foreign to me, both the tune and the words.

     I am not exaggerating when I say our family was NEVER on time for morning church. There was a “late room” attached to the west balcony in our sanctuary. A speaker was mounted high on the wall for latecomers to hear the sermon. This was our usual place of worship. However, if we were only, say, ten minutes late or a less-than-embarrassing amount of time, we would sneak in (as though no one would notice a family of eight tiptoeing in) behind the pews in the sanctuary to sit on some folding chairs tucked above and behind the pews. Once, one of the three pastors sitting on the platform jokingly whispered to the pastor next to him, “We can start now. The Carvers are here.”

     Bluebirds fly up to become Campfire girls after third grade. A ceremony was held in the amphitheater at Ganesha Hills Park in our city, Pomona, to commemorate the big event. I was dressed up in my uniform excited to “become a Campfire girl” at my flying-up ceremony. When I and my family arrived, alas, my group had already flown without me. Time flew a little faster than our Volkswagen van traveled across Valley Boulevard then up White Avenue to get us to the park.  

     I wanted to turn back time so I could experience my special moment. My dad was comforting me while I cried.  Then my mom came up with an idea, trying to make things better, and said, “Paul, let's just do a fast little something of our own.” They retrieved my pin from my leader, arranged a fake ceremony for me on the grass behind the amphitheater and flew through the motions, with my siblings lined up and looking on while I walked across a pretend stage to receive my pin from my dad.

     Fast forward ten years. My mom is driving my brother and me to high school. She is going 45 miles an hour in our VW van down Monte Vista Avenue with the car in second gear. “Mom,” you need to shift gears,” my brother pointed out. “I don't have TIME to switch gears,” my mom said. That year my brother and I were late for school every day. We found out at the end of the year our mom thought school started at 7:45, when it started at 7:35.

     For Saturday parades in which I marched for drill team, I was required to have a brand-new pair of Legg's Suntan pantyhose for each performance. Every Saturday we would race to 7-Eleven to pick up a pair of pantyhose on the way to the school. There was no time to plan ahead for this known need, so the purchase of pantyhose was treated as an urgent surprise each week.

     Sometimes my siblings and I waited over an hour to be picked up from choir practice at church. We would use the payphone in the patio to call our mom and got a busy signal.  My sister Susan knew how to call the operator to interrupt a phone call, and she would eventually get through.  After piano lessons, sometimes I would wait for a ride home sitting through the next person's 30-minute lesson then sit on a chair against the wall in Ruth Calkin's dining room watching her back while she typed prayer poems at her table.  So arriving to places on time was challenging, as well as getting picked up from places, due to a seeming lack of time. 

     Two words come to mind when I think of time: “not enough.”

     When I was in my early 30s sewing Flintstone costumes for three of my four children (Ryan wanted to be Hideo Nomo, a baseball pitcher, rather than be Fred or Barney), I was piecing together with frustration Wilma's necklace. It was taking more time than I thought it would, and I had to keep ripping seams from the large felt pearls to get it right. A messy house surrounded me. “I don't have time to sweep the floor,” I said with tears streaming down my face. “I don't have time to vacuum. I don't have time to do the dishes.” 

      Four-year-old Karis, seeking to bring comfort to me in my obviously desperate state, came close to me and said, “But you have time to sew Wilma's necklace.” Her wise words ushered me into the present, to the task at hand, the one thing that was allowed to be on the front burner of my priorities -- sewing Wilma's necklace.

     I sometimes re-live that scene when I find myself thinking of all I am NOT doing. Jesus was not healing people when he was at a wedding turning water into wine. He was not casting out demons when He was walking with His disciples. When he was preaching in the synagogue, he was not multiplying loaves and fish to feed the thousands. Yet He had enough time to do His Father's bidding. He had enough time to be who He was and accomplish what was at hand.  And I have time to sew Wilma's necklace.

     I am learning to settle into the “now” of each moment, and it is a process, my default being to treat time as though there is not enough of it. Time will tell, as I learn to tell time.

     What would I tell time, if I could? “God created you to be a gift to me. I will embrace you as my friend. Forgive me for not being grateful for you or for trusting that you are enough.”

     That's what I would tell time, if I could.

Diane Mann, 2016