memories from a song #2

"summertime, summertime
brought me back to thinking you were mine
all those times
we laid it down and left it all behind, we were blind
oh, the summertime.

we could ride, we could ride.
take my hand and watch the world go by.
laugh or cry, well we need to try,
get off the line, time to fly
oh, the summertime.

go on ahead
and let it fade away
no looking back
you know the past will stay.
it's you and me, we could get out of here
jump in and go and we could drive for years
where we could feel alive...

here we are, here we are,
windows down we see a falling star
stop the car
waiting for nothing but our beating hearts,
going far
oh, the summertime.

so feel the air, feel the air,
take the map and point to anywhere
i don't care
fingers through your hair,
the sky i've seen is blue and green
oh, the summertime.

driving away, leaving it all behind.
just driving away, away, away...
driving away, leaving it all behind.
just driving away, away, away....


its the perfect temperature because the windows are down and we are driving fast and there's a breeze and i'm not even cold, even though im always cold. my hand is hanging out the window and i'm moving it through the wind with fascination, feeling it rush over and under and shape me even as i am shaping it. you are next to me but we are in bucket seats so i dont feel the warmth of your body. we aren't touching because we're not at that place yet, although in a few years, unbeknown to us both, our hands will be joined by a minister and our ring fingers will permanently display a promise. for now, in this moment in time, you are driving me through the neighborhoods of greensboro with the windows down (the sunroof would be open, too, if it werent broken) and you are teaching me that this city is a grid. you ask me to choose and we take a turn here and there, just to see where it will take us. no matter where we turn, you know where we are and i settle deeply down into this bucket seat and feel safe. we share a love for nighttime driving, for driving as leisure. we share the same sense of freedom as we feel the summer air wash over us, saturated with its scent of sun and heat and earth. i feel totally unfettered, letting all the sounds and sights and senses become a part of me and move me to breathe deeply, sing out loud, drum in patterns on my bare knees. summer had melted into my skin, caressed me golden, and my mind a window thrown open, its curtains billowing out beyond the sill. were you already captured then?

(song lyrics "Summertime" by Mae)

the Blueberry

i pull into the parking lot, a bronze B&W before me, a yellow mustang with black racing stripes behind me. my '02 blue mazda protege 5 is sheepish between these two money-stacks and i wince when it squeals against the cold and hurls me against the roof when we go over the speed bump as if it had no shocks at all. we each settle into a space between white lines and i wait for a few minutes, fiddling with my keys and slowly taking the last few sips of coffee while i watch my students rise from their vehicles like titans from chariots. i sit quietly and reflect. i pat my dusty dashboard and alight cheerfully onto the curb.

invited in

"One of the signatures that has developed out of our marriage that I love most is the fact that when our door is unlocked, people don't even knock--they know they are going to only hear the call "come in!" and no one is going to get the door for them anyway. I love this because it says to me, 'I know I am welcome.' " (www.fisselsonamission.blogspot.com)

i wrote this as i was updating our fissel blog about our married life. when i wrote that last line, i was overwhelmed with this sense that THAT is something i want to be able to say when i come into the presence of God. i want to feel like i am being invited in, not that i'm barging in. i want to walk into the moment with Him as if i were walking into my own house, comfortable, familiar, at ease. i want to know he is waiting at the top of the stairs, relaxed with a cup of coffee in his hand and another on the table waiting for me, just the way i like it. and in this embracing atmosphere, i want to settle in and talk and talk and talk. talk until i am absolutely blue in the face and have no breath left, and not suddenly feel that i am sitting alone.

by myself.

in an empty room.

one coffee mug before me.

and that i am very, very silly.

about cages and tears and other depressing things

gosh, it was a rough day today. i don't cry very much, but when i do, it's quite a production. after all, it's been building and building, waiting behind the curtains for that one event that throws them back to start the show. there are no dress rehearsals for tears in my world. no sniffles and single tear drops trailing down my cheek. just floods.

i was able to wait until i was behind the wheel of my car before it began. even between sobs, as i took deliberate breaths in and out to even my breathing, my lips were quivering with an emotion too heavy to hold in my chest.

the whole way to my friend's house, i cried. i imagined myself coming down the walk to her front door and collapsing into a puddle in her arms at her greeting. but i coudn't do it. i couldnt be as vulnerable as i wanted to be. and i wanted to be, let me tell you. i did manage to be honest, to be what i felt in that moment without trying to control the hurt in my voice, the water welling behind my eyes, but it was a very deliberate, concentrated effort and i feel exhausted by it all.

my eyes have felt dry and heavy all day. even standing in line at the golden wok, i felt somewhat a shell of myself, having been emptied in a mazda protege 5 and a soft couch off of whilden. i felt like people could notice. the thing about crying, the thing about being vulnerable, is that all that stuff that you have fashioned into bricks and then stacked carefully one by one into a hefty retaining wall--what was the original thought? oh yes, the thing about crying is that your wall has been utterly demolished, and there is nothing between you and the world, between you and that person next to you who could do or say who knows what and you would have no defense against it. maybe that's why when the guy in front of me turned to ask me for directions to the panda express five miles away when you take a left off of bridford parkway onto west wendover, i stuttered and said i didnt know.

most of the time, this nakedness is terrifying. well, it always is. but...there was this one time that i spoke at a women's conference. it was really difficult to sit in front of those women and pour my heart out to a wide range of souls--close friends, new acquaintances, total strangers. after getting through my speech, some of it intelligible despite the tears, i experienced such a stripping of self, such a fragility that i was terrified when i stood to walk back to my seat among the crowd. who would i sit next to? what would they think of me--or worst, say to me--in response to this personal outpouring?

ah, it was so beautiful. i was immediately surrounded by unspeakable love and affection--friends who enveloped me with arms and hearts so quietly, so gently that i wanted nothing but to fall back into their warmth and light with no inhibitions. i dont think ive felt anything quite like it. it was a mysterious thing, this emotional filling up--so tangible that i felt the pouring into me like a physical substance. and it was because i was wide open and undefended: a garden stretching beautiful and natural into wide open space. i never would have felt such a saturation if i had been sitting securely behind my walls, quickly deflecting, making sure i didn't let anything in that could potentially weaken me or show me to be weak.

i dont know where i got this inclination to hide myself, to push away. when was the first time i raised a shield in my own defense? was it held in the tender hand of a 7 year old? when did it become a behavior, as much a part of me as my own fingers? in puberty? earlier? does everyone easily become an expert in isolation? is it a human thing, an American thing...a Laura thing?

ive been home since 1 and now at 10 i still havent unlocked this cage around my heart to talk to the one whom i desire to know me more than anyone else. ha ha, well, i was talking about my husband, but i just realized how closely that description matches someone else...

no, i havent been able to talk to him yet either.

a hairy conspiracy

"I'm shedding like a cat!" I cry and the student I am helping giggles, but I can't concentrate on her question. My eyes are attuned to see each spiraling hair dangling from glove, hanging from the edge of a sleeve, clinging to the collar of my coat and all driven back to my body by the pull of static when I try to remove them. Even now, there is one mysteriously hidden down the front of my shirt and I conveniently can't reach down to fish it out for the sake of propriety and the innocence of my students. When I look around, all I see are hairs. I gently pull one from the fibers of my hand-warmers and hold it to the side like a worm ready to be hooked. I watch it float with feathery lightness to the ground just to make sure it's not still grabbing hold of me. I survey myself: my hands, my sleeves, each shoulder, and sigh with relief to see myself purged. My hairs grin wickedly at one another, barely able to contain their glee in a soft swish when I move my head.

Moments later, I start the ritual over again.