Año Viejo*

Debris from fear and anger uncontrolled.
Leftover expectations misinvested,
   Hurts visited by others,
   and those that I provoked.
Bits of self-absorption unprotested.

I lay them in a pile: my might-have-beens.
One by one, I shape with them an effigy -
   my stunted best intentions,
   my must-begin-agains -
and in my imperfection write the elegy.

By choice I lay them down:
   my rightful unmet claims,
   the unfilled aspirations once held dear:
and watch the flames convert  
my año viejo sacrifice
into ash that sanctifies this coming year.

-cs 123116

*In Ecuador, an effigy is built of the Old Year (Año Viejo), then burnt on the stroke of midnight of December 31.

(c) Can Stock Photo / ragsac

Thank You for Your Service

It’s Veteran’s Day and I’ve been pondering. There’s a journey that lies behind every veteran we meet. They’ve done something. They’ve been somewhere beyond themselves. At some point in their lives, they stepped forward to serve and we rightly honor them.

It’s Veteran’s Day and I’m glad it comes after the harrowing race for power we’ve just been through. It wasn’t the bad toupees and pantsuits that got to me. It was the years of politicians and pundits and radio entertainers telling people to embrace their anger and fear, telling them that anger and fear would give them strength. It’s the months of watching candidates expertly tap into that same toxic well, leaving us with a country on the edge and a populace that is both angry and fearful.

We have children chanting in school about building walls. Signs taped over water fountains, one labeled “Whites only.”  The twin parasites of anger and fear consume their hosts and spill into the streets, and this country that our veterans have sought to protect against external threat is in turmoil from the inside out.

My father was a veteran. He was a man of service. After he took off his last uniform, he continued serving until his last breath. Thinking of Dad, and Veteran’s Day, and the pain this country is in, I'm thinking there's something we can all do. 

Serve.

Let’s each find ways to go beyond ourselves. Let’s stop posting angry or fearful messages about those who are angry and fearful and instead reach out to them with peace, even if we have to do it five or ten or a thousand times.

Let’s take down the signs over water fountains, hug an immigrant and, if we must, teach children songs about purple dinosaurs again. Let’s honor our men and women in uniform by taking our own journey of service.

To those of you who now or once wore the uniform, I wish you a Happy Veteran’s Day.

And to all of you - thank you for serving.

(c) Can Stock Photo / Qingwa

Scars

My life is a tapestry of scars.

When I was nearly eight, the top item on my birthday wish list was my very own pocket knife. We lived in the jungle. There were so very many things I could do with a knife in the jungle. My brothers had knives. I needed one. So I pleaded and begged and my birthday arrived and my parents gave me my perfect, silver pocket knife – and a caveat. If I cut myself, I had to give it up until they decided I could handle a knife properly.  

They had good cause for imposing that caveat. I have a long history of unwittingly inviting harm to my person. When I was three, my brother was using a machete to cut weeds in the yard. I thought it would be fun to sneak up and surprise him… barefoot. That scar is still faintly visible.

When I was five, my other brother’s pet monkey bit me. I was nearly six before I learned to crawl under a barbed-wire fence without tearing up my backside.

I was thinking about scars the other day (as I held my finger in the air, stanching the flow of blood). Embracing life is almost an invitation to accumulate scars, both inside and out.  I was thinking about free choice (as I rummaged for bandages), and how it means we get to choose our response to the things life throws our way. We can roll ourselves up in metaphorical bubblewrap, too frightened to walk out the front door. We can arm ourselves to the teeth – literally and figuratively – determined that we will get before we are gotten.

Or we can incorporate our scars and keep embracing life. Messy, painful, rewarding life.

On my eighth birthday. I took that beautiful, silver pocket knife and ran out to find something to carve. Less than two hours later, I tried unsuccessfully to sneak back into my room to hide the knife before Mom or Dad could see the trail of blood behind me.

Losing my knife didn’t stop me. There’s the scar from the chisel, from when Ruby and I tried to make wooden shoes (we couldn’t.) That’s next to the scar from the butcher knife, on the hand with the scars from sailing off my bike into a pile of sand and gravel. Dogs, plastic boxes, car doors, turtles: there was no malice and yet I bear the scars that prove our paths once crossed.

Scars create texture in our stories and I don’t regret my collection. I actually cherish a few of the ones you can’t see. Scars form when there’s healing, and I’m grateful for healing.

As I stood there wrapping my latest wound, I thought about my parents and how they could have only protected me from harm by keeping me from life. I’m grateful they didn’t.

My finger will soon sport a new scar. I must be slowing down, though. This time I cut myself on the soap dish.

[canstock csp21011106 / Milo827]