Grief tilts you.~Matt Haig (From How To Stop Time)

It doesn't feel like Valentine's Day. I'm sitting amidst unopened boxes at my new location. I am up high on the second floor of the room that will eventually be my place to write. Rain is streaming down the windows. The day is lit with gray glare.  My desk is cluttered with papers and folders. Framed pictures not yet hung. I am tilted on this day of love, bent over with the chaos associated with moving, but also tilted with grief. One of my dear friends lost a family member to COVID-19. The man was only fifty. He left behind a wife, four children, his parents, my friend and countless extended family, friends and colleagues. The family invited me to watch the memorial service online. I could not stop my tears when this man's twenty-year-old son stood and spoke of his father's love and generosity. This beautiful man who looks so much like my friend honored his father. His voice did not tremble. His eyes bright with courage.

This loss is incomprehensible to me.

chiaroscuro {kee-ahr-oh-SKYOOR-oh. Noun and adjective}

~MEANING: This is a word whose literal meaning, "light-dark," describes a sufficiently universal quality for it to be applied to a wide range of "things": style, method, treatment, effect, sketch, print. Figuratively, chiaroscuro can be "used of poetic or literary treatment, criticism, mental complexion, etc., in various obvious senses, as mingled "clearness and obscurity," "cheerfulness and gloom," "praise and blame."~From Endangered Words, A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers by Simon Hertnon

All the while, we rode with the sound of classical music drifting from the car radio, rain drizzling down the windshield under a sky the color of a silver nickel. We'd driven out to the country, about twenty miles from our new home, hoping to discover a DMV that would be less crowded. I couldn't help but observe the multiple contrasts as we roamed the smooth, less-traveled blacktop. Miles and miles of lanky pines. Stately homes in the middle of a lonely field, white columns holding up the porches, doors painted red or turquoise. Other homes with caved-in roofs and peeling paint, the windows still intact. A red-brick church with a sign outside its doors that proclaimed: "A half-truth is still a lie." Another church, dilapidated, rain dripping on concrete floors from holes in the roof, the Last Supper with New Testament characters depicted in a faded, wooden display near the church entrance, now bizarrely open showing the empty facade. A pristine red and white Coca-Cola truck delivering product to a run-down convenience store. Then a line of cars--people waiting to be tested for COVID-19 next to a sign that advertised, "Twenty Ribeye Steaks For $30." 

In the place where they were told, "You are nobody," this will be the very place where they will be renamed "Children of the living God."~Romans 9:26 (The Passion Translation)

A letter waited for me in the post office box yesterday. A high school friend wrote that she'd found an old photo of me and my mother she'd snapped when I was eighteen. The photo in the envelope showed me with long hair wearing a pair of maroon bellbottoms, platform shoes peeking from under the flared hems. My mother, younger than I am now, smiled widely, her hair a brown bouffant helmet styled to last for a week--her arm around my slender waist. As I looked at the faded photo I wondered, "What if I'd believed I was not a 'nobody' then?" "What if I'd believed even though I was invisible to the 'popular crowd,' I was not insignificant?" 

I think about those questions now. I wonder where that location was where I was renamed. I believe that locale was my mind. My belief system. As I gazed at that little square of memory, I realized that at eighteen, I believed I was "nobody." I didn't see myself accurately. Plenty of others did. My high school friend often said, "You are so pretty, Prissy." My mother did. Father too. My parents often said they were proud of me. An English teacher pulled me aside one day before high school graduation and said, "You have a real talent for writing. I hope you'll keep at it." I didn't believe any of them.

"Artist Makoto Fujimura is a student of kintsugi--'golden repair'--the Japenese art of mending broken ceramics with laquer mixed with precious metals, restoring a bowl or cup to wholeness and function while highlighting, rather than masking, the fractures. Objects repaired by kintsugi masters are often stunningly beautiful, veined with gold, silver, or platinum that trace a history of traumatic destruction and sublime redemption."~Julie Polter (From the article God Is In The Making, Sojourners, February, 2021)

I found my way back to the page earlier than anticipated. Perhaps because my sabbatical from writing each week became more than I could bear. I ran back to the page almost like I would run toward the daylight. Writing is warmth for me, a constant and loyal companion. 

When I read of Makoto Fujimura's art of "golden repair," I matched the concept with my own experience with the art of writing. When I've encountered life-fracturing events, writing has acted like the laquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum to mend the broken places. The crack has not been cosmetically removed, but rather curated into something beautiful. Something better. In a society where we often discard cracked things or attempt to cover up the fractured place, this type of restoration might even be considered too good to be true, likened to the grace of God.

Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?~Matt Haig (From How To Stop Time)

I realized in that moment that others view me as old. And it's not only the silver hair. I sat in the waiting room prepared to see the optician for my annual eye exam. Due to COVID, I was the only patient. The doctor opened the door to the waiting room and when he saw me reading, asked, "Priscilla, have you returned to school? I notice you reading a book." Somewhat confused, I looked up, put my finger in the book to save my place and replied, "No, it's a library book. I always bring a book with me when I think I might have to wait." He said, "Oh, people don't usually read 'real' books anymore unless it's a text book. The screens--they're actually hard on the eyes--interfere with circadian rhythms and all that. I'm trying to go the old-fashinoned way, you know, take my kids to the library." I nodded, realizing how holding the book aged me. Placed me in the category of "vintage." "Yes," I said. "Libraries are one of the most civilized and comforting places I know." And with that, he ushered me into the low light of the exam room and began to peer into my eyes.