Allowing for Magic

My grandmother was born a fatherless child and her mother was confined in a sanitarium. She grew up in an orphanage and in the homes of less-than-loving relatives. She was abused. She was unloved by those who should have loved her, unsheltered by those who should have sheltered her. But she was a woman of great spirit, intelligence, and strength, and she ran away from those dark places at fourteen to find new paths in the big world.

Of the many accomplishments of her life, she raised three bright and curious daughters. But my grandmother was perhaps too distracted with her own overpowering instincts of survival to give much time to nurturing a deeply loving relationship with her own children. And when you’ve never known a mother’s love, how do you try to express the mother’s love in your heart to your own sweet daughters?

My grandmother died in the slow thaw of early spring. As her daughters gathered around her deathbed, they nurtured her with a motherly love that had been able to grow in their own hearts because of the decisions she had made long ago. And while it may have taken all of my grandmother’s energy and resolve to end the cycle of abuse in her own life, the echoes of that choice will be felt for generations. Because her daughters knew a mother’s love even if they didn’t always feel it. And because of her, I know and deeply feel my own mother’s love.

In death, I feel her spirit more clearly than I ever did in life, free from the hazy static of those lurking demons that she fought so hard to silence. In death, the love she felt in her heart courses freely without the pain of living to impede its way.

It took just one conversation for me. One unassuming but deeply felt exchange between two souls. The first time I really fell in love, that’s all it took. One amazing conversation and a hug goodbye.

And I walked through the back alleys toward home, past dumpsters of trash, unmarked doors, and murky rain puddles, but I stopped in my tracks and looked up at those blazing stars above me. I shimmered at them, and they shimmered back.

“So that’s what it feels like,” I whispered to the stars in amazement and continued on my way.

“People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I’m sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is a fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?”

This is a quote said by Graham Hess (played by Mel Gibson) in a scene from M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. This is one of my favorite movies, not only because it references so much of Hitchcock’s style of filmmaking, but also because it focuses on a question that has been pestering me for most of my adolescent and adult life.

As a child, I would unquestionably put myself in group one. I seemed more in touch with the magic of possibility. I loved the mystery of things like that. I felt, deep in my bones, the thrill of believing that things always happened for a reason. It just made sense to me. But as I got older, I focused more on developing my logical brain, focused more on reason, and tried to navigate the tempestuous waters of adolescence. I still maintained some of my whimsy, but I was observant enough to know when to rein that in and when to let it loose. I adjusted.

In college I developed my intellect even further, but not so much my faith. By the time I graduated college I was solidly in group number two, battered down a bit more by life’s disappointments, lowering my expectations for what life had to offer me as a way to protect myself. And I really had to be put through the ringer before I could start to see that existing in group two really just kept running me into a dead end.

Things are the way things are, no matter how I choose to look at them. So it’s come down to the fact that being the kind of person in group one is just a more freeing, more exciting, more fulfilling way of living life. The logical side of my brain is still skeptical, still afraid of what it can’t rationalize. But I’m learning that I don’t always need to understand, I just need to trust.

Why does it never feel like quite enough? Enough money, enough connection, enough time, enough energy?

I’ve always asked myself, “Am I strong enough?”
I often come off as the little, blonde, sweet one.
Never hurt a fly. Do as you are told.
One day I finally knew that my strength is not steely or loud or large.

My strength is water.

Flexible, flowing, unfettered. Steady, persistant, gently eroding.
A quiet, nourishing rain or a torrent of rageful, storming weather.
I’m a trickling, pensive stream and a tidal wave of love.
Don’t be fooled by my liquid nature, water carves rock.

It’s messy. It’s up and it’s down. But when you feel yourself returning to yourself, the self you knew when you were a carefree child, but also a new version of yourself that you’ve never known, that is discovery. That is joy and aliveness and peace.