On being gentle

Coming back from the drugstore, my hands hold Old Spice, blue razor blades. This is being gentle.

Crunchy and brittle are listed as synonyms in the thesaurus. They aren’t. Because right now, as the muggy summer turns to crispness, I don’t want the particles my homemade deodorant forgot to seep into my new, elbow-padded sweaters. And I wish that homemade deodorant worked better than this. My armpits belie my DIY books.

Cleaning out an old deodorant applicator, melting olive oil and pellets of beeswax, adding essential oils. Finding a spray bottle to fill with baking soda and water. A double deodorizing scheme. Yet, here I am, my hands clutching Old Spice and razor blades. 

One summer in college my friend Terrence lived with my roommate Roma and me for two weeks. After his shower, the bathroom would smell like boy-smell, as we called it. We would smell his Old Spice body wash as we sat on the toilet. After he left, we missed that smell. We asked our friend Mark to shower in our shower. He did. The next day I smelled my loofah and it smelled of boy-smell. I didn’t use that loofah again.

Walking out the store, my hands filled with Old Spice and pink-tax-free razor blades, I thought about femininity, and what it means to mine that I am purchasing products marketed to men. What it means to my crunchiness that I am purchasing products at all. But, again, crunchiness isn’t brittleness. Old Spice isn’t brittly [it’s a word in Old English] unfeminine. I can still bend without breaking. 

The Big Pit

When I was seven, my family went on a vacation to Arizona, which included a trip to the Grand Canyon. As we looked out over this geological phenomenon, this holy site of the Pueblo people, I said, “It’s just a big pit.”

The more my parents simultaneously scoffed and laughed at my commentary, the more I repeated it, as seven-year-olds tend to do. I repeated my quip about “The Big Pit” so many times that it became the title of our Grand Canyon scrapbook page.

I’ll read Wuthering Heights or The Boston Girl or any of a number of other books in which beautiful, complicated child characters will have had a deep connection to the moors they lived near or to the sea, which they saw for the first time when they were 16. I’ll read these books and wonder why, if I am the complex creature I’ve found myself to be, it took me years to feel connection to the earth and to adventure.

Growing up, I didn’t like to be outside; I thought roses were plain and funny smelling; I didn’t care to look out the window on road trips through the Appalachians; and I thought the Grand Canyon was nothing but a big pit. I would have chosen a book over an adventure any day—and I am grateful for my connection to the written word, but I sometimes fret that I missed too many experiences for the sake of getting transition over and done with and getting back to my books.

This may be the reason that I am in love with the Pacific Northwest. I’m soaking in all the natural beauty that I ignored as a child twenty-zillion-fold. In Portland, I could literally stop and smell the roses the entire way to work.

If I ever write an autobiography, it would be dishonest of me to begin by reminiscing about my connection to the maple tree in my backyard or to Lake Michigan. The romantic, English major, four on the Enneagram side of me aches to be able to say these things are true. But the genuine, human, gentle side of me knows that it’s alright that I spent more of my childhood hours reading about adventures than having them and eating McDonalds instead of basking in the sun pockets beneath the trees.

My story doesn’t have to fit the mold of the young girl who intuitively understood her connectedness to the people and spaces around her. My story can be—and is—about the woman who can spend hours walking on the beach on Whidbey Island and jumped off the cliffs at Tubbs Hill with a college best friend. And I can find solace when I remember that there was a little bit of this spunk in me when I was a girl, since I was the one who discovered the hidden raspberry bush in our backyard, I auditioned for countless plays from middle school through high school, I interrupted my teacher in the middle of her rendition of "The Highway Man" because I knew I could read it with more feeling. It just looks a little different than it does in the novels.

Support, and what that means

Since August, in additional to serving full-time at a day shelter for women and children in Portland, OR, I've also been living in an "intentional community." What I mean by that is that I've been living with six other full-time volunteers, and we've all decided to live with each other for the year, sharing community expenses and committing ourselves to being more than just roommates. We are investing in each other's lives and experiences, are present to support each other and encourage each other, and most importantly to celebrate with each other and share each other's joys. In a society that is so focused on individualism, we've decided to focus on the strength that comes from community.

On Mother's Day, the agency where I serve, Rose Haven, held the First Annual Reigning Roses walk to raise money to continue serving vulnerable women and children in Portland. It was a very fun, very long day. I had been asked to see if I could gather some of my community members to volunteer at the walk, but I was nervous to ask. They all serve full-time at their agencies as well, and we all like to have weekends for self-care and adventures. However, I asked for their help and they pulled through. Four of my housemates came to volunteer for nearly six hours on their Sunday in order to support my and my agency. They got to meet so many of the people I work with and talk about every day, and thus were able to get a better understanding of what my day-to-day is like away from our home, which is a more intimate kind of knowledge than I'd realized before that day.

We were all tired after a long and early day, but I came back from the walk with a heart full of gratitude--a gratitude that came from feeling more strongly supported than I'd felt in a long time. It means a lot when family supports me, but there's something about having friends support me that really strikes my heart. They don't have to support me, but they do, and that feeling is incredible.

From left to right: Jared, Caroline, me, Katrina, Sean. Aren't we cute?

A Reflection on Simple Living

Since August, I've been living as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to have dinner with some members of Jesuit Volunteer EnCorps, a volunteer program for those over 50. Here is a reflection I wrote about that dinner--I'd love to hear back about other people's experiences with living simply.

I moved to Portland, Oregon a little over a month ago. Here's a little of the beauty I've found here:

Dedicated to my great-grandmother, who missed the Titanic

Dearest Robert,

I’m sure you’re thinking of my third-class cabin

leaking loudly, creaking, squeaking slowly sinking.

But it’s a fine day at Mayneen and Bridie and Colleen are baking inside.

Tickets to Chicago are always dear, but with the fear of Titanic

we’ll not have to postpone our wedding a year or make it less lovely

with no Guinness for beer to make ends meet.

In the cabin next door one could hear little children crying, crying endlessly crying, “Momma, what’s happening—are we dying?” And I lay in bed, ruing the day that the gleaming seams of that “Ship o’ Dreams” left me without the means to return from Queens—the port from which she sailed.

The next morn’ Papa brought in the paper and then my anger tapered, more quickly than a candle with the flame blown out.

I never heard her name, but her face came in an instant:

The woman who slept in my cabin.

When I entered the game, I never thought I’d win and now the grin on my face

is replaced with the knowledge that we will get married and send

grandchildren to college and that woman is buried

in the Atlantic.

Robert—they denied my passage because they hadn’t received the message

that my ticket was part of that sweepstakes. And I guess that’s all it takes sometimes:

a mistake and a person who can pay for the ticket.

I’ll be home in a few weeks to wipe those tears from your cheeks.

Your beloved’s alive and our marriage will thrive because now we know

that fate wants us together.

Love,

Nora