Carry On, Warrior Read online

  “I am not going to hurt her,” John said. John is a good, honest man, and we all knew he was The One for Sister. But we were still scared to death. None of us was sure, after walking through the pain, that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. When Sister accepted John’s proposal, I gave her a necklace that said, “I am not afraid. I was born to do this,” a quote attributed to Joan of Arc before she charged into battle. I knew that for Sister, entering marriage again took every bit of her courage.

  On their wedding day, I gave a toast in which I explained that as Sister’s In Case of Emergency, I know what a responsibility it is to be the best friend and caretaker of such a masterpiece of a human being. To John, my parents, Craig, our friends and family, and to Sister, I said:

  Sister. She’s a masterpiece. People feel it when they first meet her. They sense it even when they walk by her. Last week we were out shopping and three different middle-aged men stopped us on the sidewalk and said, “I’m sorry, but I just have to tell you how beautiful you are.” She smiled and thanked them graciously but without a hint of surprise, because it happens to her all the time.

  But there are beautiful people, and then there is beauty like my Sister’s. Beauty that comes from being born with unshakable, superhuman integrity. Beauty that comes from intelligence matched with wisdom. Beauty that is compassion combined with courage. The beauty that comes from being a woman who can be trusted. All who are lucky enough to know her know this beauty. We know that she’s a work of art. But not everyone knows the process the artist used to create her.

  I do. My whole life has been about paying attention to my Sister. Everything she has ever learned or feared or dreamed or wondered has been important to me, and so I’ve memorized it all. I know what she wore every single first day of school since kindergarten. I know she still has most of those outfits. I remember the entire speech she gave when she ran for president of her elementary school, and I remember word-for-word the commencement speech she delivered at her high school graduation. I know the name of her first Cabbage Patch Kid and the names of our, I mean her, future children. I know what she’s thinking right now and exactly what her facial expression will be when this toast is done and the colors she’ll paint her first house. I am my Sister’s biography. I am the song that should be written about her and the poem and the play and the prayer. I’ve got it all, right here. Recording it all, bearing witness to such an amazing life, has been the honor of my life.

  Being Sister’s sister is like being a museum curator charged with both protecting and displaying a priceless piece of art. When someone comes close to look, I have to make sure he gets it. I have to make sure he’s paying enough attention. I have to make sure that he understands the value of the artwork. I have to make sure he’s approaching with the right mix of curiosity and reverence. I have to make sure he’s in the proper state of AWE.

  But when I explained all of this to Craig, he told me that those museum people, the ones who tell you all the things about the art? They’re annoying.

  And he said, “John gets it. He gets her. He knows. He soaks her in. He is in awe.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Enjoy your masterpiece, John. You deserve her. I know, from experience, that with her in it, your life will be filled with joy and magic. And a lot of shoes.

  • • •

  If you are blessed enough to be someone’s In Case of Emergency and you are called upon, keep being who you have always been. Do what you’ve always done. There is a reason your friend chose you for that role, so don’t freeze. Keep moving. Trust your instincts.

  Go to her. Don’t call first, because she won’t know she wants you there until you arrive and sit down. Don’t ask, “What can I do?” She doesn’t know. Just do something. When you go to her house, bring a movie in case she doesn’t want to talk. If she does want to talk, avoid saying things to diminish or explain away her pain, like, “Everything happens for a reason,” or “Time heals all wounds,” or “God gives us only what we can handle.” These are things people say when they don’t know what else to say, and even if they’re true, they’re better left unsaid because they can be discovered only in retrospect. When her pain is fresh and new, let her have it. Don’t try to take it away. Forgive yourself for not having that power. Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They’re sacred. They are part of each person’s journey. All we can do is offer relief from this fear: I am all alone. That’s the one fear you can alleviate. Offer your In Case of Emergency your presence, your love, yourself, so she’ll understand that no matter how dark it gets, she’s not walking alone. That is always enough to offer, Thank God.

  Grief is not something to be fixed. It’s something to be borne, together. And when the time is right, there is always something that is born from it. After real grief, we are reborn as people with wider and deeper vision and greater compassion for the pain of others. We know that. So through our friend’s grief, we maintain in our hearts the hope that in the end, good will come of it. But we don’t say that to our friend. We let our friend discover that on her own. Hope is a door each one must open for herself.

  Today, Sister and I are both brokenhearted in all the best ways. She helped heal me, I helped heal her, and we heal each other all over again, every single day. We are honored to be wounded healers. Good has come of it all.

  Sister and John just welcomed their first child into this beautiful world.

  Love wins.

  Inhale, Exhale

  Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale. If I am not reading and writing regularly, I begin to suffocate and tend to climb the nearest person like a frantic cat, clawing at the person’s eyeballs and perching on his head, desperate to find a breath of air. This is why my husband is supportive of my writing, because he is generally the nearest person. So Craig and I think it’s imperative for a girl to have a place to inhale and exhale. Some place safe to tell the truth.

  We’re not often permitted to tell the truth in everyday life. There is a small set of words and reactions and pleasantries we are allowed to say, like, “I’m fine, and you?” But we are not supposed to say much of anything else, especially how we are really doing. We find out early that telling the whole truth makes people uncomfortable and is certainly not ladylike or likely to make us popular, so we learn to lie sweetly so that we can be loved. And when we figure out this system, we are split in two: the public self, who says the right things in order to belong, and the secret self, who thinks other things.

  At one point I got so sick of listening to my self drone on to other women about little league and countertops and how fine I was, that I decided to kill my public self. The truth is that I am very rarely fine. I am usually so far behind fine that I couldn’t find fine with binoculars. Or so far past fine that I expect the birds to notice my superhuman joy and start speaking to me. Based on the successful Tess experiment, I told Craig I was going to start introducing my secret self to other moms at the playground and the mall. The introduction would sound something like this:

  “Hi, I’m Glennon. I’m a recovering, well, everything, and most recently I’ve been struggling with isolation and intimacy with my husband and I’ve also been getting quite angry with my kids for no reason. I feel awful about these things. But yoga is helping. Also deep breaths and baths. How are you?”

  If she answered honestly, great—new friend! And if she ran away, great too! At least we’d know right away that we didn’t match. I thought it was a brilliant, efficient plan.

  But Sister said, “Please, honey, promise me you won’t do that. For the sake of your kids and the community.” She went on to explain that these types of things are not appropriate to share at the playground even if they’re true. Strangers trying to help their kids across the monkey bars don’t necessarily want to hear about my anxiety and ecstasy and confusion. She said that
sometimes it’s right to filter what we are really thinking to protect ourselves and family from utter humiliation and just to keep society running smoothly. I asked her if “filter” meant “lie,” and she said yes, definitely.

  Of course, Sister was right. I understand. But I still think it’s vital for a girl to share her truthful, secret self somewhere. In order to avoid going a little batty, she must have a place to say the things she is actually thinking when she is either saying appropriate things or saying nothing at all due to the filter/lying policy.

  So it goes for a child, too, because the split between the secret self and the public self happens early and hard. Every little girl is told at some point that the world does not want to see the ugly, afraid, secret version of her. Sometimes the people who tell her this are advertisers, sometimes they’re people close to her, and sometimes they’re just her own demons.

  And so she must be told by someone she trusts that this hiding is both necessary and unnecessary.

  She must be taught that, in fact, some people will want and need to hear about her secret self as badly as they need to inhale. Because reading her truth will make them less afraid of their own secret selves. And she must be taught that telling her truth will make her less afraid too. Because maybe her secret self is actually her own personal prophet.

  She also must be warned that her truth will undoubtedly make some people uneasy and angry, so she’ll need to share it strategically, perhaps through art, which God offers as a safe way to express joy and madness. And she’ll need a trusted person to help her find her medium, so she won’t feel that she has to hide or hold her breath any longer. Because when she exhales, she’ll discover that she’s created the space to inhale again, and that will keep her going.

  And this, the importance of this lesson, is why I became a teacher.

  Now I didn’t tell all of this to my students, because many were only three years old.

  But sometimes, when I could see that one of my students was feeling really angry or left out, I would call her over to the writing table and write the words MAD or LEFT OUT in big red letters and read it to her with gusto. Sometimes I added lightning bolts and a frowny face. And occasionally her eyes would light up because she’d figured out that I have a mad, left-out secret self too—that it feels like lightning and frowns just like hers—and she would smile.

  Usually, though, she’d look perplexed and start talking about how her dog peed on the family room carpet the night before. And I’d say, “Awesome. Wanna write about it?”

  Smelly Coughy Guy

  Here’s why I really love and need yoga: because of Smelly Coughy Guy.

  I am easily overwhelmed. There are lots of things I have to do each day to remind myself that everyone is okay, including me. Yoga is one of these things I do to stay calm and remember. Yoga is like a sabbath; it’s how I prove to myself that I am not in charge, that if I drop off the face of the earth for an hour with no other goal than to breathe, the world will keep spinning without me. Because, as it turns out, I am not the one causing it to spin. I’m just along for the ride. I practice yoga to find quiet and peace and stillness: to prove to myself that those things exist. I also practice yoga to learn how not to be bothered by things that are out of my control. That’s how I want to be. And people have to practice if they ever hope to be how they want to be.

  I practice yoga at my local gym. When I am not writing or frantically searching for sippy cups, I am at the gym. Not because I am really all that interested in fitness, but because my gym has a wonderful nursery full of people who will take my kids, so I “work out” a lot. If my post office had a wonderful nursery full of people who would take my kids, I would mail a lot. Sometimes Adrianne and I meet at the gym and just sit on the stationary bikes and talk. We don’t even move our legs. After Adrianne and I finish not working out, I go to yoga. She doesn’t go because she thinks yoga’s stupid.

  So I say bye to Adrianne, and I walk into the dark, quiet yoga room. I get my mat and set it up way over in the corner. I make a border with my water bottle and shoes as a subtle hint that nobody should get too close to me. I smile at my instructor and get into the lotus position and close my eyes and start breathing deeply through my nose. Aaaaaah . . .

  And then . . . Smelly Coughy Guy walks in the door. I know it’s him right away because I hear him and I smell him. Smelly Coughy Guy smells and coughs. That’s all he does. And so every time he walks into class, I panic and I pray silently and ferociously: pleasenopleasenopleasenodontsitnexttomedontsitnextome. And every single time, he sets up his mat right next to mine. Every single time. Sometimes he even moves my water bottle to get closer to me. And he smells and he coughs throughout the entire class. He smells and he coughs so insistently and consistently that when the instructor says to breathe deeply, I’m not sure that’s in my best interest.

  I spend the first half-hour of class silently cursing Smelly Coughy Guy. I fold my hands in prayer pose and bow my little head and half-close my eyes, and then I ignore my instructor’s pleas to focus and stay in the moment, and I glare sideways at Smelly Coughy Guy every time he coughs. I often get caught by my instructor, who smiles zenly at both of us. And that makes me share my glare with her. And I keep saying to my poor beleaguered self, Why me? Why why why? I’m with three screaming kids at home all day. Is it too much to ask for just an hour of peace and quiet?

  I do this every time. Still.

  But here’s what I’m learning from Smelly Coughy Guy and my patient, nonjudgmental yoga instructor: I think I may have had the wrong idea about what peace is.

  I pray and pray for God to help me feel some peace and stillness in the midst of my mommy life instead of feeling constantly like a dormant volcano likely to erupt at any given moment and burn my entire family alive. And God says: Well G, here’s the thing. Peace isn’t the absence of distraction or annoyance or pain. It’s finding Me, finding peace and calm, in the midst of those distractions and annoyances and pains.

  So he sends me Smelly Coughy Guy, a kind teacher, and an otherwise quiet room to practice finding peace.

  Smelly Coughy Guy is actually part of the answer to my prayers. He’s helping me.

  I am learning a little more each day.

  For example, last weekend my family was running late for a birthday party, and when we finally got everybody’s shoes on and the whole family strapped into the van, gifts and sippy cups in sticky little hands, the garage door wouldn’t open. We were just sitting in the van, kids yelling because they were afraid we’d miss the party, hands freezing, for a solid ten minutes, and Craig couldn’t fix the door. It was not good.

  But I didn’t even burst out crying. I said to myself, “Self, this too, shall pass.”

  And this, my friends, was progress. Or maybe it was the fumes. Either way, Craig called it a “miracle.”

  Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.

  —Robert Fulghum

  COMMITTING

  Birthdays

  Let’s head back to the morning of March 20, 2003, for a moment, shall we?

  Craig and I have been married for six months. Chase, our firstborn, is two months old. Skip the math and stay with me. I’m home on maternity leave and spend my days alternating between the ecstasy and despair that accompany caring for an infant. I’m a little worn out.

  But on March 20, I wake up renewed, refreshed, and tingling with excitement because as soon as I open my eyes, I remember: it’s my birthday. MY BIRTHDAY! I lie in bed and wait for the surprises and festivities and celebration of me to begin.

  I wait. Then I wait a little longer. I look at Craig sleeping soundly and think, Ooooh—this is gonna be good. He’s still asleep! He must’ve been up all night preparing for my big day. Can’t wait.

  Still waiting. Staring at Craig.

  Craig opens his eyes, turns to me, and smiles. Happy birthday, honey. I bat m
y eyes and smile back.

  Craig gets up and stumbles to the shower.

  I stay in bed. Still waiting. Waiting patiently.

  He comes back twenty minutes later and says, “Can I make you some coffee?”

  Um. Yeah.

  I climb out of bed. I put my hair up and throw on some makeup so I’ll look nice in the pictures Craig’s sure to snap of me when I emerge from the bedroom and see all my balloons and flowers and perhaps the string quartet he’s hired to play while I eat the fancy breakfast he’s prepared.

  I take a deep breath and fling open the bedroom door with much birthday gusto. I prepare my most surprised face.

  Turns out there was no need to prepare. I am surprised. Because there are no balloons. No quartet. No nothing. Just Craig. Smiling, hugging me. “Happy Birthday, honey. Gotta go. See you for dinner tonight?”

  Craig leaves. I sit on the kitchen floor of our teeny apartment wondering if this is a practical joke. I repeatedly open and close the front door in case he’s hiding there with all of my friends whom he’s flown in from the ends of the earth to yell “SURPRISE!” at me. No friends. Nothing.

  I sit on the couch, shocked. I am misunderstood. I am unappreciated.

  • • •

  Growing up, birthdays were a big deal. Bubba and Tisha made the world stop on my birthday. I never knew what would happen, but I knew it was going to be good. Tisha served breakfast in bed with flowers and gifts, and out-of-the-ordinary things happened all day. In high school, Bubba sent roses to my fourth-period history class with a card that said, “From your secret admirer.” Nobody was allowed to get flowers delivered to class, but Bubba knew people. He also knew that those flowers would make me the most popular girl in school for the day, and they did. I walked around shrugging my shoulders when people asked me who they were from, glancing nonchalantly in the direction of the captain of the football team, who didn’t know my name. Anything was possible on my birthday.