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Friday
Sep282007
Confession
September 28, 2007
So what is it, inside me, that chooses the wrong things for comfort?Â
It's not that ice cream is bad. It's not. It's not even that I'm unhealthy, because I'm not. I eat well. I drink mostly water. My vices are usually too much pasta, brown sugar in my coffee, coffee. I don't smoke anymore, unless I'm with an old smoking friend in Canada and just have to light up for old times sake.Â
But sometimes eating ice cream feels like the smoking in the alley behind my house that I used to do, late at night, when everyone was sleeping and I felt that teenaged hollow feeling, the hurting that I just couldn't understand. I loved that house. We had just moved from the suburbs, where we were homeowners, to a rental in urban Edmonton. For my parents it might have been a sad move, but for fifteen-year-old me, it was heaven. Thanks to an understanding landlord, I painted my room a green called "Ireland's Pride."  You can imagine the shade. I also ragged it off, giving my walls the texture of a ferny rainforest.Â
It was the beginning of my love affair with old houses and gardens and lit windows. At night I'd sit on my couch in front of my long, tall window, and gaze at the enormous house that I could see on the next block. I'd watch their windows with the lights pouring from within, thinking about towers and nooks and little rooms, and I'd dream of the people who lived in that large red house. They loved books and cats. They ate yogurt for breakfast. They were professors. And then that ache would get to be too much and out I'd go to sit in the alley with a cigarette.
Last night I found out that my grandmother is very sick. I knew she was struggling with her health, but none of us had received any real diagnosis, yet, and the truth suckerpunched me in the gut. I sat on the couch. I called her. I cried. I called my husband. I prayed for a while, my hands on my stomach. I wrote a little. I turned on the television, then turned it off. I picked up my knitting, put it back down and then went for the food.Â
What is that? Once again, it's not that food is bad, it's just that it's not all that comforting. You're all shovel and chomp and then you end up burping. Baking is comforting, measuring out ingredients. Cleaning, reading the beautiful words of God. But nothing calls like the siren song of junk food. I believe this is called bingeing.Â
I did only end up eating about a third of a pint, hardly a binge. But there was some Pirate's Booty involved, and some peanut butter cups, also. Not many, but still. All designed to distract.Â
My grandmother is one of the strongest women that I have ever met, strong in that incredibly refined way, like the Queen of England. Except that she's Scottish, Scottish-Canadian, the kind of woman who enjoyed her childbirthing, the kind of woman who gets tears in her eyes every time she thinks of my baby brother, who died, and yet was the only member of my family I could bring myself to ask for the full details about him and several of the other family tragedies, because she processes grief by remembering, by talking about it. She is a woman of detail, the kind who remembers every single birthday of every person she's ever met, who sewed all of her own clothes and her children's clothes, the kind who retired at seventy-eight.Â
I can't think of her sick.Â
This troubling tendency toward distraction in myself is something that I'm working on. I bet we all are, to some extent. I've been coming up with a group of practises, harvested from different Christian traditions, different homesteading and artistic traditions, which I am using to reconstruct my life. I know what I believe, I feel rock solid in my faith. But what do I practise? How do I live this life, how do I reap the most out of it?
Probably not by eating ice cream and channel surfing. I don't want to be too hard on myself, and if you could see my little heart right now you'd see that it is tender towards nine-year-old me gazing glassy-eyed at the t.v. that she had previously ignored on this writing retreat.Â
These practises that I'm working on are almost like bookmarks, like things I can return to again and again. I hope to come to a place where I reach for the things that will truly comfort, even in times of great need. Even when someone I love so deeply is sick, when the idea of too much change threatens to rock me a little too hard and tip me over.
I will pray for my grandmother and keep calling her, keep telling her I love her and hear her trying to reassure me as she says, "I know you do, dear."
It's not that ice cream is bad. It's not. It's not even that I'm unhealthy, because I'm not. I eat well. I drink mostly water. My vices are usually too much pasta, brown sugar in my coffee, coffee. I don't smoke anymore, unless I'm with an old smoking friend in Canada and just have to light up for old times sake.Â
But sometimes eating ice cream feels like the smoking in the alley behind my house that I used to do, late at night, when everyone was sleeping and I felt that teenaged hollow feeling, the hurting that I just couldn't understand. I loved that house. We had just moved from the suburbs, where we were homeowners, to a rental in urban Edmonton. For my parents it might have been a sad move, but for fifteen-year-old me, it was heaven. Thanks to an understanding landlord, I painted my room a green called "Ireland's Pride."  You can imagine the shade. I also ragged it off, giving my walls the texture of a ferny rainforest.Â
It was the beginning of my love affair with old houses and gardens and lit windows. At night I'd sit on my couch in front of my long, tall window, and gaze at the enormous house that I could see on the next block. I'd watch their windows with the lights pouring from within, thinking about towers and nooks and little rooms, and I'd dream of the people who lived in that large red house. They loved books and cats. They ate yogurt for breakfast. They were professors. And then that ache would get to be too much and out I'd go to sit in the alley with a cigarette.
Last night I found out that my grandmother is very sick. I knew she was struggling with her health, but none of us had received any real diagnosis, yet, and the truth suckerpunched me in the gut. I sat on the couch. I called her. I cried. I called my husband. I prayed for a while, my hands on my stomach. I wrote a little. I turned on the television, then turned it off. I picked up my knitting, put it back down and then went for the food.Â
What is that? Once again, it's not that food is bad, it's just that it's not all that comforting. You're all shovel and chomp and then you end up burping. Baking is comforting, measuring out ingredients. Cleaning, reading the beautiful words of God. But nothing calls like the siren song of junk food. I believe this is called bingeing.Â
I did only end up eating about a third of a pint, hardly a binge. But there was some Pirate's Booty involved, and some peanut butter cups, also. Not many, but still. All designed to distract.Â
My grandmother is one of the strongest women that I have ever met, strong in that incredibly refined way, like the Queen of England. Except that she's Scottish, Scottish-Canadian, the kind of woman who enjoyed her childbirthing, the kind of woman who gets tears in her eyes every time she thinks of my baby brother, who died, and yet was the only member of my family I could bring myself to ask for the full details about him and several of the other family tragedies, because she processes grief by remembering, by talking about it. She is a woman of detail, the kind who remembers every single birthday of every person she's ever met, who sewed all of her own clothes and her children's clothes, the kind who retired at seventy-eight.Â
I can't think of her sick.Â
This troubling tendency toward distraction in myself is something that I'm working on. I bet we all are, to some extent. I've been coming up with a group of practises, harvested from different Christian traditions, different homesteading and artistic traditions, which I am using to reconstruct my life. I know what I believe, I feel rock solid in my faith. But what do I practise? How do I live this life, how do I reap the most out of it?
Probably not by eating ice cream and channel surfing. I don't want to be too hard on myself, and if you could see my little heart right now you'd see that it is tender towards nine-year-old me gazing glassy-eyed at the t.v. that she had previously ignored on this writing retreat.Â
These practises that I'm working on are almost like bookmarks, like things I can return to again and again. I hope to come to a place where I reach for the things that will truly comfort, even in times of great need. Even when someone I love so deeply is sick, when the idea of too much change threatens to rock me a little too hard and tip me over.
I will pray for my grandmother and keep calling her, keep telling her I love her and hear her trying to reassure me as she says, "I know you do, dear."
Reader Comments (11)
No words of wisdom from me this late Friday night, but I couldn't read this and not send you cyber-hugs. Wishing you and your grandmother much comfort,
Rebecca
Sun isn't up here yet. Listening to the birds, the crikets, the ducks, the dog. Watching the cool breeze blowing the curtains up. One young sleepy cat on the bed. There is never nothing happening. (Peaceful Warrior)
Peace be with you and your Grandmother.
She'll love that! She needs to hear from you! Just be glad that she can understand still, and that she is still "here". My dad is not and that makes it harder because usually he does not even know who I am! That's hard for me, even though I joke about it!
Prayer is good.....good for her and good for you! Remember that God is the one totally in control!
oh my. perhaps it is good that you could sit and stare at the screen and eat ice cream. Thanks God for ice cream and coffee!! I lift you up, dear friend. And for a fun note: I lived in a house once,similar to what you described. It had 25 windows and a mini turret and a whole room devoted to dust and books and secret attic hide away spots where my children scampered like little mice and spied on their parents in bed. OH NO! Inside I had a ferny room too with the walls all sponged off green and the library shelves were bright yellow and the hall blue. Did I mention it was two story and when I lay in bed I gazed out 2 windows into a treetop and watched the birds. Sometimes wise old owls landed on my window sill and stared at me and woodpeckers lived in my attic. But it was cold in this old house and I shivered and wore wool and coughed.
Ah, I see where you get some of your beauty: a strong grandmother. I was just thinking of my strong, beautiful grandmothers (I was lucky enough to know both) yesterday morning.
Old, beautiful houses are metaphors for old, beautiful grandmothers.
I think going for ice cream (or hot cocoa and cookies) is very much like babies to the breast; it trivializes the need for comfort to call it a binge. Our babies (when they're still nursing) go straight for the breast when they want comfort; and their whole lives when they really, really need comfort they turn to us. Your granny is sick and you needed comfort--so you called hubby, you hugged yourself, and you ate ice cream.
Eminently sensible and I hope it helped you, because there's no cure for the impending loss of your beloved granny. It shortens the available wise woman generationally and puts more of a burden of longevity on our mothers. And if a mother isn't all that granny was, we know we're going to (some day) suffer a terrible loss.
I still miss my grannies the same way I did when they first died, especially my paternal grandmother, just as I miss my daughter... but my grandmother was wisdom and kind arms incarnate.
I'd say the prayer and the phonecalls, the crying and the reflection are comforts to the soul, the spirit. Pirate Booty and peanut-butter cups comfort for the flesh. Yes we are spiritual beings but these bodies crave comfort too! Especially when your husband isn't nearby to hold you while you cry and pray for precious loved-ones. Enjoy the rest of that Ben & Jerry's and know that you and yours are lifted up in prayer today.
Oh, Rae. Thinking of you, thinking of your grandmother. Your words are true and familiar.
i'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother...
i see beauty in your writing...in your reaching for comfort...
I will be thinking of you during this time. I know what it is like to have a sick grandma, she was incredibly amazing also, and it is a very hard thing. My prayers are with you and your grandma.
I am so sorry for your grandmothers sickness but I am very happy that you have the Lord to comfort you through this trial. And icecream. And pirates booty. Sometimes if that's what it takes, then we can allow it during times of trial. :)
Your post reminded me of one of my favorite lines from a book by Anne Lamott (the most recent one-- what was it called?) that said something like, "It is difficult to remember that you a cherished spiritual being when you're burping up apple fritters and cheetos."
She was writing about learning to feed herself, physically and spiritually, and sometimes making the choice to binge on food even when she knows it won't satisfy her.
I can identify with that feeling...
I'm sorry about your grandmother's illness, and wish your family the best.