words and notes: thoughts of a writer, singer, and teacher
Mist falls from the sky
all day covering the grass
in tiny droplets.
When the dog gets out
we lure him back with butter
and a soft cooing.
She poses for a
picture, holding her baby
in front like a shield.
“How are the bees?” he
asks. She tells him spring was too
cold for much honey.
Driving home from a
party she stops short; a thin
red fox ‘s eyes glow.
When I was five years old, my father told me I had until I was six to move out. I think we were in the kitchen, and my mother must not have been there because she never would have let me believe that. As it was, though, I spent the next few months awaiting January 11th, a date which used to mean joy and pancakes and a few gifts at dinner. Now it was the first day of living on my own.
I don’t remember being very afraid. A little, probably, because I couldn’t drive, but what I remember most was the planning. If I had to be on my own, I’d do it in style. I emptied my ballerina bank on my bedroom floor and counted the coins and few dollar bills, somewhere around nineteen dollars. Okay, that should get me pretty far. I had my journey all laid out: first, I would walk down the street to the Calabros’ house. They were kind and would understand. After resting up there for the night, I’d walk a few towns over to where my mom’s friend lived. She lived alone and surely she’d take me in for a little while. From there, I would use the phone to call my grandfather, and I had no doubt he would rescue me from my wandering. I’m not sure why I didn’t call him from the neighbors’ house. Part of me thinks my five-year-old self wanted at least a bite-sized adventure.
I don’t remember the night before my birthday, but the next morning is engraved in my memory. I got up, got dressed, and packed my backpack with my favorite outfits and my toothbrush. I tucked the nineteen-ish dollars in the front pocket and headed down the stairs. I said goodbye to my parents and I walked down the street.
My dad came after me, laughing.
“Catherine! Catherine, come back!” he said, catching up to me right before I reached the Calabros’.
I was confused – hadn’t he been saying I had to leave? It was January 11th, I was sure, and I’d made all these plans…
It’s a story my parents still like to tell, my mother with a little more embarrassment than my father, but with a good laugh, anyway.
Twenty years later, and I’m in those same few months, awaiting a big move. My Dad learned his lesson pretty well that first time, and he’s never even tried to kick me out since. He’ll tease occasionally – “How can I miss you if you never leave?” is one of his favorites – but I know that moments around the dinner table and evenings of Jeopardy are times he would never trade for twenty long years of empty-nesting.
But I’m twenty-six, and the time has come to be out on my own. I won’t lie that it’s a bit later than I expected, that it’s taken longer for me to get my feet under me. The strange thing is, though, that I sometimes feel as shocked as that little girl.
What? I need to move out? Are you sure?
I mean, I’m pretty little.
I am getting better at holding two emotions in tandem, and this is one time where that skill is vital. There are times when my mom is talking to me, and I have no idea what she’s saying because I’m so preoccupied with September first. With renting a U-Haul and getting the day off and finding a gym membership. I am so excited for this move that I daydream while driving about not driving and being able to walk to a coffee shop or to get a good beer. I imagine having friends over for wine and cheese and crusty bread, and there are times when I can’t wait.
And then, there is the morning I woke up and the birds were singing. I took my coffee out to the herb garden and sat by the pond and thought this is what I’ll be missing – this morning sun and the sound of the breeze through the birch tree. What am I thinking, leaving?
I wrote an essay my senior year of college about graduating. I wrote about how I didn’t know where I would live: would I move to Cambridge as Kayla and I dreamed? Or would I go home to my parents, pay back my student loans, settle in? I desperately wanted to move away, but the truth was I knew if I went home, I’d never want to leave. I knew the longer I stayed, the harder it would be to pack that car and say goodbye.
That was four years ago. Year after year, things have not lined up, people have not shown up, and I’ve chosen home. But this year, suddenly, my eyes lit up with talk of an apartment. Was it possible that I might get to live with two of my favorite people? I held my breath while decisions were made, and then they were made. Then we found a place. Then we signed the lease. Then, it was real, I wrote the check, and we started talking about couches and parking permits and laundry.
I have 25 days until I load the U-Haul and head forty-five minutes south and a world away. That’s 25 mornings to brew coffee and drink it while honeybees pollinate tall purple flowers and a hummingbird dips its beak into hollyhocks. And 25 nights to lie in my girlhood bedroom and remember all the dreams I’ve had. I’ll get to sort through them, sift out the ones I want to keep, and push the rest off on a flaming dory into the dark sea.
On September first, I’ll wake early and start loading the car. I’ll probably be manic because change can make me that way, I’ll forget to eat, and I’ll drink too much coffee. We’ll move quickly past each other, joke as much as possible, and begin to imagine a different life.
I’ll head for the car, take out my keys, and look behind me, a little part of me hoping to see my Dad running after me.
So I’m sitting on the roller coaster and the bar comes down. A. looks at me, her eyes wide, and she leans in to whisper, “Catherine, I kind of have to go to the bathroom.”
“Ha, well that’s terrible timing,” I say, hoping the need is fear-induced.
Suddenly we’re making the ascent, the boys looking back at us with big grins because they know how much I am about to scream. Most people are putting their arms up high in the air, getting ready for the zip, but I clutch the bar instead. This is only my second roller coaster ride, after all.
At the very top is a sign that reads “Absolutely No Standing,” and I barely have time to wonder why in the world they would need that sign before we are careening down the steep wooden coaster and I am screaming like a little girl.
Unlike the little girl sitting next to me. She barely makes a peep, just flings her arms around and looks at me once in a while to see how I’m doing.
I wonder for a minute why I do this to myself.
Why we do this to ourselves.
What is it about adrenaline that is so addicting?
Oh, right, it’s a brain-thing.
As we zip around the corners and I hear the wheels crunching and turning, I’m proud of myself for getting on. For allowing myself to be buckled in. For choosing to feel like my stomach was going to fly out of my mouth.
Because they’d begged me to go on the ride, and I knew for some reason this was important to them. They wanted to share the fun with me, I think, and a little bit of them wanted to hear me freak.
But it had a little bit to do with love, too.
I’ve been thinking about love a lot these days, as I ponder how best to love my family after I move, how to be a good friend, how to care for my students. This might sound far-fetched, but I was loving those kids by getting on that ride.
I was telling them making them happy was more important to me than not dying.
I was telling them that making myself uncomfortable was worth seeing joy in their eyes.
And most of all, I was showing them that sometimes you do things you wouldn’t normally do because you care.
I’m sure they aren’t thinking about this stuff at all – that they are just glad they’d convinced me to get in line and that there’s no turning back now.
But I still want to show them what it looks like to stare an old wooden roller coaster in the rickety rails and say:
Bring it.
It brings it. My ponytail falls out and my hair’s flying and we all stagger a little bit when we get off.
I didn’t die.
She looks at me with her big eyes and says, “Okay, now I really have to go to the bathroom.”
I found it a few days ago, tucked into a book as an impromptu marker. I’d used one of my favorite notecards and I remember writing the letter in February, sitting in the little white chair in my bedroom.
I’d meant to send it, like any letter, but somehow it’s been hidden for the past five months.
I toyed with sending it now, but my curiosity got the better of me. I tore it open, read the words I’d meant for a friend. A time capsule, this letter that was never meant for my June-self, contained not only comfort, but truth.
I had no idea the difficult conversations I’d be having over the next few weeks, nor the “change” (really, changes) I felt coming. All I knew was what I read, what I felt, and how beautifully scripture pairs with Mary Oliver in a handwritten letter.
“For I am the Lord your God,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar —
The Lord of hosts is his name.
I have put my words in your mouth,
and hidden you in the shadow of my hand.”
-Isaiah 51:16
Dear K,
This was part of my Lenten devotional — good ol’ Henri Nouwen! — and it struck me for a few reasons. The biggest one, though, is that God’s words fill our mouths. God fills our mouths with his words. There is so much power in that but the number of times I do not feel God’s words coming out of my mouth would seem to disprove this fact. So in those moments when we are most afraid, most vulnerable, most ready to throw our hands up and despair, that is when the power of God’s Word (God’s words) can lift us out of ourselves.
But hand-in-hand with this power is God’s protection. I think it was this combination of truths that brought this verse so deeply into my heart. Because as little as I feel God’s strength and power within me, I would say I feel his protection even less. Sometimes I feel I march through the gates of whatever “righteous” battle I’m waging at the time, but despite God’s power, I am left unprotected, easily hurt, and most often very confused.
I think perhaps there is a little bit of your New York in that: full of strength in the beginning, a sense of extreme vulnerability, and a feeling of no protection afterwards.
I feel on the cusp of some “great change,” and I don’t necessarily mean factual, physical, geographical. I think this Lenten season holds a mystery for my discovery, and when I woke up and read my devotional, writing to you became the first step in that pursuit of quiet, of rest, of opening up to hear God speak.
Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted –
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
wether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
Love,
Catherine
I spent the last three months in a house with wind chimes. I woke up in the middle of the night to the music of them in the breeze, and there was an eeriness to it. I had to grow accustomed to its sound.
But I did grow accustomed, and soon I will miss the music of wind in glass.
I have never awaited summer with less anticipation.
[She hugs me, tucking her head in like a child, and her face is red. “It’s just hitting me now,” she sobs into my shoulder, “everyone is leaving.” I take her hand and say, “I know this is hard, I know. But you’re going to have a wonderful summer, and next year, the first day of school will be just as exciting and fun as every other first day of school. It’s just hard right now.” And I try to get her to act – to put on the performing persona she does so well in homeroom – but the pictures are proof that hiding pain only works for so long.]
Good evening, my name is Catherine Hawkins, and I am an Upper School Latin teacher.
I hand out awards one after the other. I try to speak slowly because I rush when I want to be done. I pass out two Perfect Scores on the National Latin Exam; I clap for a row of students so long it has to loop around the stage.
I jump into a class photograph — right in the middle — but I do not tear up once the entire evening.
Someone has to hold it together.
And we all know Jim wouldn’t be able to [cough, cough, no-emotion-man].
I have never awaited summer with less anticipation.
[“Magistra, I will spit out my gum every morning at my new school in honor of you.”]
I packed up my room. It is hideous and you would never imagine such learning and fun and difficult conversations happened here.
I am not even leaving forever — I’ll be back in September — but there is something about this year that was precious to me. Too dear, maybe, in a way that could not be sustained.
Good thing I have a good memory. Good thing they have left me better than the way they found me.
~ ~ ~
The past few months, I have questioned my work in a way I have never done before.
Is it valuable?
Is it challenging enough?
Is it the easy way out?
Is it glorifying to God?
This past week, tear-stained cheeks, awkward middle school goodbyes, and a gift I will proudly hang on my wall prove that this is valuable work I do.
[“Catherine, he’s been working all day to make you something special.”]
I grew accustomed to saying the same few names over and over in class: Refocus. You need your textbook, not your workbook. Sit down. That’s hilarious, but NEVER DO IT AGAIN.
I grew accustomed to these faces, these voices, these antics that — on my more tired days — were not quite as endearing as they’d hoped.
I grew accustomed to being their Magistra, but now, as many of them move on, I will forever be their Swagistra.
[Photo: Rie H]
Today as I sat at my students’ high school graduation, I thought: I hope I never have to give a commencement address.
It doesn’t matter how engaging the speaker, how moving his or her message. Really, what we want to see is that student’s name called, watch her walk across the stage, get the diploma, move her tassel to the left, and throw her cap in the air.
We want to witness that smile that can’t be stopped because the work is done. Finally.
Only so much wisdom can be digested in moments of anticipation.
This was the fifth graduation I’ve been a part of — whether as a student or as a faculty member — and I remembered my own high school graduation. Eight years ago.
I remember singing a song that was entirely inappropriate for a graduation because I’d been asked to sing and I didn’t have a lot of repertoire.
No one wants to hear “Pur di cesti, o bocca bella” when their children receive their diplomas.
And I have yet to see a flattering mid-singing photograph.
I remember the strangest things about that day. I remember being so happy, driving my bug with the top down. I remember crunching a row of baby turtles on my way to school and crying because I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless.
I remember hardly believing high school was over and I remember being terrified of what September would bring.
I remember eating a celebratory lunch at Striper’s restaurant and overlooking the river.
But mostly, I remember feeling very grown up.
~ ~ ~
I don’t think I will ever be asked to give a commencement address. I’m more of the pep-talk teacher, the one who encourages in one-on-one conversations.
But if I did give one?
If I did try in ten minutes to bestow some sort of wisdom on young minds which couldn’t bear to handle one more ounce of wisdom?
I’d probably say the following:
Chill out. Please.
I know you think you are grown up. And you are, sort of. But not really. And by the way, I haven’t met many people who feel it and are.
I know you feel sexy in those five-inch heels, but trust me, you look far more elegant in flats and confidence.
People tell you “don’t have any regrets.” I tried that — I tried living in a place of denial, in a place that said, “I did everything right and I wouldn’t change a moment.” This place does not really exist. You will have regrets. It’s about what you do with that regret that matters.
You are full of ideas and dreams and expectations. (I still am. I hope I always am.) But wait. You might study music and never sing at the MET. You might get your dream job and loathe your existence. It might end up that college isn’t the road you should take. Don’t be embarrassed that you were wrong. Embrace the second chance.
Do not be surprised when you learn the same lesson twice. Or three times. Do not think you are dumb or naive. Sometimes it takes more than one experience to hammer in a new idea, a fresh lesson in growth. Let yourself be imperfect, but don’t let yourself stay exactly the same imperfect.
And this one might be the most important:
Choose without knowing the future. Take action without waiting for lightning. Make the best possible decision with the knowledge you have, and when you look back, give yourself grace. Do not chastise your past self for making the best possible choice with limited sight. This will paralyze you.
~ ~ ~
In May of 2016, I will walk across the stage and receive my Master’s diploma. There will be a commencement address. I will try to listen. I will strain forward or sit back with the ease of taking it in.
But my mind will be filled with life — my past, my future — and most likely, I will be feeling exactly the way my seniors did today: excited, a little afraid, but mostly hopeful.
So I’ve been a little busy chaperoning my 8th graders’ D.C. trip.
I haven’t been answering my emails.
I’m loving this spring weather. And eating at a restaurant right next to where Lincoln was shot.
I have a thousand text messages, but I’m just too busy checking out national monuments to reply.
My coworker loves showing me around. We’re really bonding.
And I’ve been eating super healthy on this trip. I’m determined to come back thinner than ever.
The kids are getting a little tired of looking at my pigtails that look like piglet-ears from Winnie the Pooh, but I forgot a hairbrush, so they’ll have to do.
I’m Jim’s righthand-man, and he loves posing for pictures with me. I’m the bad-cop in our co-teacher relationship: “You’re out of dress code! Spit out that gum! You’re late for homeroom again! Give me your cell phone!”
All these 8th graders really know how to brighten my day. There isn’t a moment when I’m not wearing the same exact smile on my face this entire trip.
So, if you’re looking for me, I’m a little busy hanging with the coolest almost-high-schoolers ever.
[Fear not – permission was obtained before posting these pictures.]
You’ve got to do things that make you happy, Cath. It’s okay to take care of yourself.
So I brew lemongrass-ginger tea in my little brown teapot.
I curl up on the couch and knit a blue sweater with white whales on it.
I ask for book suggestions on the sovereignty of God, on the unknown. I start to read Brother Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God, Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor, A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy. There is comfort in these words.
I journal in haphazard ways, round and around with no goal. I think about making sure I burn all my journals before I die.
I sit beside my roommate as she sings me this song. I sit and look out the window while she plays the guitar.
I buy a few too many dresses for the weddings and other occasions this summer. I wear the mint-green one to work.
I drive with the top down and feel the sun on my winter-skin.
I listen to all the music I love: The Lone Bellow, Ivan and Alyosha, Ray LaMontagne, Josh Garrells.
I sit at the piano and play hymns. We used to sing them with my great-grandmother in the living room, and now they are as much a balm to my soul as they are an offering to the Lord.
I preoccupy myself with apartment searching. I go a little crazy, a little manic. I apologize to my friends profusely, but it pays off. September first will find us moving into a city-apartment that I never thought we’d find.
I re-read old poems, old blog entries. My past self speaks to my present self, and I try to believe her and not feel like I’ve let her down.
I sit by the lake and sip a Dunkin iced coffee. My feet dangle like I am happy, but really it’s just because I’m short.
I imagine teaching my new courses next year. I make a list of books to read, activities to do. And then I stop when this feels overwhelming.
I think about our annual trip to the Cape and the ocean and the fact that the ocean is still there.
It’s been there all along.
So I do these things that make me happy, and I practice patience and trust. Risk involves not knowing what will happen, I know this. Time will tell, they say, and it will.
Give thanks in all circumstances. Like I wrote almost a year-and-a-half ago, we do not know how to praise God because we do not know all that he has spared us from.
We are sitting in the darkness of a church I don’t attend. We sit silently, and it is now that I feel communion — we do not need to talk, we only need to be.
Scripture after scripture goes by, and the candles are lit slowly, the light progressing through the sanctuary. I am restful, but my skin prickles with anticipation: with the light comes the end of darkness, and I wait.
It comes, as I knew it would, because that is the beauty of the liturgy.
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
Tears spring to my eyes. I listen as the familiar words are read, and I think back to the winter of darkness when my friend said over the phone, “Cath, you know that dry bones passage in Ezekiel? I can’t get it out of my mind.” And I remember reading it after we hung up and being caught up in the redemption of Israel.
The redemption of all Creation.
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
All I can think about is how bizarre it is that God should choose to breathe life into my dry bones.
He does choose to, though; once, at a specific moment in history, and again, daily, hourly, every moment. As He chooses to breathe life into me, I become more and more my Creator’s creature.
The real man is at liberty to be his Creator’s creature. To be conformed with the Incarnate is to have the right to be the man one really is. Now there is no more pretense, no more hypocrisy or self-violence, no more compulsion to be something other, better and more ideal than what one is. God loves the real man. God became a real man.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
This passage reverberates in my brain, and I feel released from the pressure to reach perfection. God loves the real man. Now there is no more reason for self-violence, for self-hatred, for shame.
And I raise my hands in song. I open them with gratitude.
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
Most of the time, I interpret myself into those dry bones. It is my brokenness that is healed. It is my redemption I see.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
For the first time, though, I wonder what it would be like to be Ezekiel. To hear from the Lord this impossible command: Prophesy to these dry bones!
I’m sorry, Lord, but that’s crazy.
There is no redemption here.
There is no hope.
I know what the possibilities are, and life is not one of them.
“I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life...Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
Lord, do you know what you’re saying? These people, this person, this situation, this destruction cannot be redeemed.
It is broken beyond repair. The bones are dry.
I cannot prophesy because I do not believe.
Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”
How can Ezekiel believe that God would revive the brokenness of Israel? His belief is just as unfathomable to me as the sinews and tendons stretching over these newly formed bodies.
I am as in awe of Ezekiel’s faith as I am of the living and breathing bones.
Not only am I walking, breathing evidence of God’s redemption, but I am called to be Ezekiel.
I am called to speak hope.
I am called to look at the dry bones in my life — in the world — and speak truth over them.
I am both the dry bones redeemed and the bringer of the news of redemption.
Lord, help my unbelief.
[Scripture from Ezekiel 37:1-14]
[Painting: Leptit Monde]
[Photo: Anjan Chatterjee]
[Photo: Bill Liao]
I am walking along roads I know well — well enough to anticipate dips and turns without thinking. I am walking in the slanted light of morning, and the air smells like spring.
I pass an older woman in purple slacks. She carries a purse, so I know she isn’t out on a leisurely stroll like I am. She has a purpose, a place. I have a purpose, too, but it’s not quite so tangible.
There aren’t many places I feel closer to God than when I am walking. Walks are my response to uncertainty, to fear, to wrestling. I walked around and around on 9/11, and again the day of the Boston Marathon bombing. I walked as graduation approached and I mourned the loss of my little life at college, and I walked the day I realized I would not be able to take that job with AmeriCorps back in 2012.
As I go, I talk to God. I slip in and out of actual conversation with him and conversations with others in my life. I shape thoughts and how I feel and how best to convey these things to other people. But God listens the whole time, and I feel his shaping of my words, too.
I stop by the stream and sit on the crooked cement slab, watching the water flow from under the road. It foams and swirls and swirls together, one floating foam into another, until they converge and slip over the rocks and down the stream.
I think about how we are all “others” and how this is scary.
That seeing and accepting another’s otherness is what community is about.
No one drives by to see me in my striped hoody by the stream, and I know what waits for me on my return home: Bonhoeffer and YA literature, a couch made soft with blankets and the sound of the neighbor children racing their bikes in the street.
I sit for a moment longer, and I want to sing to the Lord. I want to sing a song of trust and faith, a faith that covers and holds up all the brokenness and sadness I sometimes feel.
I want to sing, but no song comes. I wait. I am open.
I want to sing.
But there, by the stream on that quiet road, with birds chirping in the weeping willow, no song comes.
At first, I am concerned. Where is my song? I want to have an offering, but my hand — my throat — are empty.
And then I think that maybe my offering is too much me and not enough listening.
Too much sound and not enough quiet.
Too much struggling for answers and not enough allowance of questions.
And so I sit a moment longer, get up, walk home.
An offering of listening.
Get every new post delivered to your Inbox
Join other followers
