call to prayer

Here is how I knew I was in Somaliland. As I slept on the floor atop a flimsy mattress covered by a cheap, scratchy sheet, distant voices called sleeping souls to prayer. In those deep, dark hours between night and morning, they woke a whole city. Then, louder: the mosque next to our school started its call, weaving in and out of the other softer voices already singing. The strange words were carried on a tune that sounded at once eerie and ancient to my Western ears. I pulled the soft, fuchsia scarf I used to cover my head by day, my sleeping body by night, up over my head and willed myself back to sleep. After the call, the still, silent morning returned.

to catch words one day

I want to catch words one day. I want to hold them
then blow gently,
watch them float
right out of my hands.

from Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

***
(photo: sunset at Griffith Park)

my many people

On my drive home today, I listened to a virtual bookclub from a podcast I just started listening to. In the conversation between the regular host and her friend, they discussed how much they like this one particular memoirist. Then, one of the hosts started rattling off a list of authors to whom she pledges allegiance. I recognized the names, and have read some of their books, but I didn't recognize the names as those of my authors.

Which got me thinking, who are my authors? Who are the people I'll buy a book from as soon as it comes out, whose books all appear on my shelf, whose mantras or ideologies or quotes tether my heart to life in a specific way? I thought of a few novelists whom I enjoy, and then a few nonfiction writers whose one or two books or essays mean a lot to me. But none to who I'm loyal, or whom I feel are loyal to me in that particular way that fans can feel.

In this short mental search for my authors, I started to feel a little desperate, and then a little sad. It went deeper, because I realized it wasn't really about being able to name my own personal tribe of authors, it was about being able to name my own personal tribe of friends. Or, even more importantly, those one or two who will always be there for me.

Now let me say - I have some incredible friends who love me and have my back. They feed me, volunteer airport pickups and drop-offs (a true test of friendship in LA), bring food and keep my company when I've overextended myself in planning an elaborate dessert party, listen to my sometimes in-cohesive reflections, and tell me I'm ok. But here's the thing: I've always wanted a person. Some might say I had one growing up. My best friend and I knew each other since the time we were five and were often inseparable, and yet there were always other friends who came in and out of the picture and, to my scared and lonely heart, threatened our relationship. Now, friends have husbands and families and college friends and their own important things going on. Sometimes I wish their important thing were me.

I write this knowing that it points to my core brokenness: that one way (or, one of the ways) in which I will always feel an ache of what's missing. My senior year of high school, that best friend I'd met at age five had already graduated and left town for a city a few hours away, and then for another continent. I felt incredibly lonely, only intensified by the fact that I knew she was making new friendships during a new, meaningful experience in her life.

It was the struggle of that year without her that still defines me today: I would learn to let go and trust that I'd be ok even if I didn't have a person.

Or, rather, it was the realization that I could have many people. Since then, I have had many close friends, but nobody I would call a best friend. And I hesitate to do that (possibly still out of brokenness - will they then leave, to?). It is a discipline I practice: welcoming others, offering myself, cultivating a sacred in-between-us space. What this has allowed is a life full of persons without attaching myself fully to a person. Knowing a friend as one of many instead of my one and only has made space between me and her for others to be in my life. (And, if I can go there, for Jesus to be my one and only.)

It all does come back to the books, because if you come to visit me, you will see a really random assortment of authors and styles that fill my shelves. Some may see this and point to my lack of self control at bookstores (and they may be partly right). But I would also say that I've developed a way to let many voices and hearts in, and I'm still learning to enjoy the way this practice simultaneously crowds and empties my ever-searching heart.

***
PS I realized after writing this that I do have an author. Henri Nouwen is my guy, which is a little ironic because it was probably his writing that influenced this approach to keeping sacred distance in relationships.

(photo: alone with my shadow, Minneapolis, 2015)

literary, lately: what in the world edition

I'm back in LA but my heart is elsewhere (mostly, still in Kenya). I jump between trying to snap out of it so I can get on with life and looking for ways to transport myself back. Maybe that's what a lot of us are doing now - simultaneously busying ourselves with both remembering and forgetting. Here's some wonderful and beautiful and touching and powerful stuff that's helping me remember (because that's usually the way to go).

Read this story. It's about refugee poets, about not remembering but trying to remember, about the intricacies of language, both tongue and heart, about empowering young people, about so much more.

How could anyone look at Trayvon's baby face and not see a child? And not feel an innate desire to protect, to cherish? How? ... I needed words. It's been an(other) difficult summer in America. I have few words for it, but thankfully others are strong, bold and fearless enough to write some. I read this essay and am now reading the book it's from. Good stuff.

A poem by a friend in East Africa. Yes.

For hope, listening to these words. Truth.

Watching this to keep feeling Kenya. I will always love the melody and poetry with which they speak the English language. (Without thinking too much about the history or politics of it anyway...)

***

(photo: bringing in the goats for the night, Kenya 2016)

called by my name

Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name…Isaiah 43:1

We walked out of the airport in Nairobi, pushing our carts piled with bags and treasuring the feel of cool, fresh air on our skin after hours in an airplane. Our Kenyan friends stood by the curb to greet us with warm, eager hugs. Mercy was among those waiting for us. She is sixty years old and wears her decades advocating for young girls across Kenya in a deep, dark scar on the right side of her jaw and in eyes that bear both kindness and an unknowable depth. My friend who leads this trip calls Mercy “mom,” and the more I know Mercy, the more I understand how true this name is. She is one who labors, bears, nurtures, releases.

Mercy’s voice is a melody, so that even her most piercing questions carry within them the comfort of a light blanket. After our hugs, she asked about our travel, about the drone and video equipment one of our members carried in his bags, about our day-long drive to the rural area the next day, where we would spend a week of our time and do the bulk of our programming. I don’t remember now what I said to her about the activities I’d been planning for the youth, but I must have conveyed some of my anxiety about how my new ideas would take shape over the next few days. “You are Betsy!” she responded. “It will be wonderful.” And then she moved on to the next person, wanting to hear more about our plans.

I hadn’t moved on. I stood still and let her words sink in. it was as if, in calling out my name as reason enough for our programming to succeed, Mercy summoned something yet to be realized - but which she saw a glimpse of. What was so moving to me is that she doesn't know me that well. Empirically, she had no way of knowing whether I really had what it takes. She also had no way of knowing how much I had struggled leading up to this trip. How much I self-doubt I had wrestled against. How deeply I’d felt that I didn’t have what it would take to pull off the things God was putting on my heart. There was too much I wasn’t familiar with, and too many ways in which I’ve known myself to fail or give in to fear in the past.

It was as if, in saying my name, Mercy knew it to hold what is most true. She called me Betsy as one who is able to do good things, who is able to grow, one who is filled by the Spirit. One who is known and becoming known by her and by this country of people I love.

***

(the words are coming slowly and a bit rough. more to come, i hope... photo: girls with whom i learned more about the meaning of being one who is called by name, Endonyolasho Primary School, 2016)

it just takes a little effort

I am a comfort person... But I don't want to rest on something just because I have in the past. I really enjoy challenging myself, I really enjoy being in new places. It just takes a little effort for me to keep putting myself in those new places.

- musician Sara Watkins via here.

Glad I have some company on this (thinking of this recent blog post...).

PS Sara Watkins has a new album out today! and my earliest Sara Watkins love when Nickel Creek was still a thing (RIP).

***
(photo: city lights from a new-to-me rooftop restaurant.)

never before seen, never before done

My sister and I talk on the phone, a preamble to prayer. I sit on my couch, the light outside swelling slowly into day, while 3,000 miles away she walks around in the full heat of the New Jersey summer mid-morning. Lately, we do this once a month: talk, then pray. Before work (for me), after walking the kids to school (her).

We are talking about my work. I have just finished telling her how my strange tendencies to avoid unknown things had me procrastinating on an important project. I hate doing unfamiliar things, is the subtext of our conversation. Especially publicly, especially high-stakes, especially alone. 

Another story I could have told her is how on Saturday, when I helped set up for my friend’s wedding, the coordinator showed me to two wood planks decorated with words and told me to tie flowers to the top. I looked at the spooled twine and sprays of eucalyptus and dahlias and thought, but I’ve never done this before. As if she should choose a better candidate from the parents and aunts and husbands-of-bridesmaids that had showed up to help and were busily carrying things from one place to another and setting up tables and chairs. For a minute I stood alone, looking from the flowers and back to the planks, unsure how to start. And then I did. I cut stems and twisted twine and held it up to the planks. I prayed while I did this, an act that might seem over-reaching to some, futile to others. But it struck me that the Spirit who searches out the deep things of God might know something about the beauty I sought. Might know something about teaching me to do something I don’t yet know how to do.

And then there are these plans for Kenya, in which I am leading 40 young Maasai people in creative writing, photography, scripture. I have never done this (well, except the scripture part) in America, what makes me think I can do it in rural Kenya, with young people whose experience of the English language and the world around us is so different? This thought arrived in the storm of last week and landed like the heaviest snow of late winter, freezing all that hope that hard started to sprout up. The next thought that came was grace: I won't be alone. The Spirit will be there, will be in me, will do more than I ask or imagine. 

In the middle of encouraging me about work, my sister stops talking suddenly, her thought interrupted by something that catches her vision. I just saw this beautiful yellow bird, she tells me. I never saw one like that around here before. Grace, again. I understand it as a sign.

***

(photo: from wedding, exhibit a)

tell me to come to you

Then Peter called to Him, "Lord, if it's really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water."

"Yes, come," Jesus said.

So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water towards Jesus.

-Matthew 14:28-29

***

(photo: surfers in Venice Beach)

i want to give you something

For all sorts of mistakes are possible when you are dealing with Him. Long ago, before we were married, H. was haunted all one morning as she went about her work with the obscure sense of God (so to speak) 'at her elbow,' demanding her attention. And of course not being a perfected saint, she had the feeling that it would be a question, as it usually is, of some unrepented sin or tedious duty. At last she gave in -- I know how one pulls it off -- and faced Him. But the message was, 'I want to give you something,' and instantly she entered into joy.

-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I could tell you a few different stories about this book: how I started reading it after looking for a different book but finding this one instead, how the text on the cover intrigued me. How I found the receipt still stuck inside, telling me I bought it in 2012 but not telling me why. How, halfway through reading, I shoved it into a canvas bag to take it with me to read at the pool over Memorial Day Weekend and found the bag minutes later on the counter where I left it, swimming in the pool of water from my water bottle leaking everywhere. Now its pages are crumpled and stained.

But here's what I will tell you instead: you don't have to have experienced the loss of a wife (or a husband or a child or a parent or a friend) to find Lewis asking questions you have at some point wondered about. Lewis's nonfiction writing is decidedly philosophical, apologetic, heady. But this book, taken from a few moleskine journals he wrote in during the weeks or months following his wife's death, is much more reflective and raw.

I found myself reading the first half as a kind of observer. It's much more focused on the experience of losing his wife. At some point, Lewis notes a shift in his experience where the fog of grief lifts and he's able to experience his wife's presence in a much more clear way. It's at this point where he starts asking questions about his experience of God. His idea of God, shattered by the experience of his wife's death, has to be shattered again and again, he says. We cannot understand. The best is perhaps what we understand the least. He writes of being utterly mistaken as to the situation he is really in, and always understands God as being more generous, more loving, more present than the person thinks. The mistake is to think Him absent, inattentive, unwilling.

[On a writerly side note: I have heard so many times how good prose writing is built on the foundation of good sentences. I would always nod my head. Yes, intuitively that made sense. But Lewis's sentences are good. Their length, their feel, their shape lends a kind of subdued intensity.]

***
(photo: book on table, before the water incident)

i read this book of poems

"Coda" by Danielle Chapman
     from Delinquent Palaces

Beyond the speeches we're given to when young--
the crystal moon, the harlot moon, the moon
big as the sun elongating scrolls
of banisters on the skin of someone
else so young--beyond the still moon cut
from a royal purple sky we stare into
as into the pupil of a beautiful
machine--beyond our grand stupidities--
the urgency won't perish: to be known
in one's own person as crocuses are known
by sun, conceiving green to breathe it,
for ravishment by light, to grow
into the moment in our cells when we open
ourselves as a plant uncoils pistils
and become refulgent whether looked at or not.



When I was in high school, my best friend started dating a guy who wrote poetry. So she started writing poetry, too, and sent some of her poems to me. Then, she bought me a small journal with blank pages and encouraged me to write poems, too. I wrote some really bad ones and stored the journal away for a very long time.

Since then, I've read books of poetry and books about poetry and even took a class on poetry. I found the journal and read my own early poetry. My conclusion: I'm no poet. And though I still read poetry, I'm sure that half the time I'm missing what's meant to be noticed. But poetry is forgiving. Just keep reading it over and over, and soon things emerge that you didn't see at first. I think that's why I love it so much. Surprise and discovery will keep you going after something.

So, I read a book of poems and here is my favorite one. I keep reading it over and over, each time finding something new.

***

(photo: blue sky over Michigan, at writing conference where I bought and read this book)

already with you

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
     by Jane Kenyon

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years...

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper...

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me...

I am food on a prisoner's plate...

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills...

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden...

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge...

I am the heart contracted by joy...
the longest hair, white
before the rest...

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow...

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit...

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name...

***

(a favorite, always...)

the breath, the Spirit, the beginning

There is always something happening, even it if is only the breath.
                                                                                                            -Alicia Jo Rabins

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering...

                                                                                                            -Genesis 1:2

Writing hasn't come easily the past few weeks. Ideas that feel promising when I think of them on my drive to work fall flat when I sit in front of a computer to type them out. I hold down the delete button to eat my words back up. I can tell you it has something to do with working through some hard-wired shame, which makes words feel too small and throws everything into chaos, something like that "without form," that darkness that existed before the light did.

Speaking of chaos, there's a lot of it right now. And I'm not just talking about politics and race and the things we all see posted all over Facebook. There are broken marriages, there is cancer, there are interrupted dreams and unanswered prayers. The other day, my dad's car slipped on ice, and now his body is sore muscles and painful bruises. I didn't hear about it until my mom texted me three days after it happened. I didn't know what to text back.

Sometimes writing feels like this, like groping around in the dark for the right words to counter deep fears and uneasy hurts. But then I've heard some writers talk about how, after periods of long silence, certain stories flowed right out of them. They weren't easy stories, but the words had germinated inside for months or years, who knows how. When it was time, out they came, ordered and beautiful and full of the stuff that pierces darkness and covers over shame. A whole universe, it seems, formed of words.

The past few months, I feel as if I'm being taken back to a beginning, learning where words come from and how to use them. In the beginning was the Word... and through Him all things were made. I go back and forth about how explicitly I want my faith to show through my writing. I've been timid because of the way Christian artists get labeled as sentimental, derivative, not as quality. Words like Jesus and the cross are somehow too definitive and carry too much baggage. Better to be vaguely spiritual, to use words like faith or spirit (with a lowercase "s"). But when I think about using words, it is God's Word that I want to fill my heart first, to show me how to speak them in way that brings light, that opens up darkness. Without him was not anything made that was made.

Spirit of God, hover. Be the Word that is in the beginning.

literary, lately

A few links, if you're interested...

I love awards season. Though this year, the Golden Globes were underwhelming - the acceptance speeches too self satisfied, the nominees mostly ones I care little about. I'm afraid the Oscars won't be much better. BUT! We always have literary awards. Today, the Pen literary awards short list was announced.

Unofficial goal this year: read more fiction by African authors. Just added a few of these to my list.

And another reading list, this one from authors presenting at a writing conference I'll attend. Love this list of authors, some favorite and some new ones to explore.

Make this part of my writing mission statement - from Sarah Manguso in her piece on envy and what drives our writing

The purpose of being a serious writer is not to express oneself, and it is not to make something beautiful, though one might do these things anyway. Those things are beside the point. The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair. If you keep that in mind always, the wish to make something beautiful or smart looks slight and vain in comparison. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.

Lastly, I give you my favorite new instagram account: Hot Dudes Reading, Female readers, you're welcome. Male readers, take note.

look, count, if you can

“Look up at the sky and count the stars…” – Gen 15:5

It was the middle of September. It was the beginning of leaves changing to rich, deep shades of fire and gold, colors that could fool you into believing life was now just beginning. But soon enough you would see leaves turn and fall and be swept away with the wind.

He was my first love. One night after nightfall, he parked the car at the edge of campus and we walked onto the empty golf course, far enough from street lights and buildings and cars that the darkness showed us a full night sky. I would have spread out the blanket that we laid on. Our backs were held by the ground beneath us, his hand reach behind his head, my head rested in the pocket it made. We looked up. We would have talked about his day meeting students on campus, my work at the after school program, the shapes of constellations in the night sky. Or we would have been silent, knowing each other by what is communicated in warmth, breath, heartbeat. The sky was a dome that curtained us, our very own tent of stars and promises.

Three months later, all that possibility slowly fell in on us. Once, as a child, I made a tent with my best friend out of blankets and chairs and pillows. It stretched to the size of her living room. We hid inside and made up stories. Light filtered through the bright colors of blankets. But then her cat came and pounced on the blankets, and our imaginary world was just a pile of soft, flimsy material. The sky didn’t hold.

But it was true that in that moment, looking at the stars, all things seemed possible. I remember that night as my favorite with him. I was searching for something that, that night at least, I thought I had found.

A few years later, I sat with a therapist every other week. Our last session together, she gave me a piece of paper and crayons and told me to draw. I fashioned firm ground and a rooted tree, and covered them with a limitless dark sky with stars. Our interpretation didn’t seem all that nuanced at the time: look at the stars. It’s something that gives you peace. After that, I sometimes drove toward the mountains above my city, away from the lights, to see what kind of view of the sky I could get. I searched the darkness, but I'm not sure I really knew what I was looking for.

Here is what is true about the night sky: it is not a dome but the universe, which is limitless, and expanding. You could try to count the stars, but their number is infinite. New ones are still being discovered. If you look long enough, they will appear to be moving, some across the sky, some around each other. There are things happening out there we will never be able to know.

When an old, childless man wondered aloud if he would have to settle for a servant as his heir instead of his own son, the answer given him was no. The proof was the sky, and all the stars. Look and count, he was told. If you can. Even the One making the deal considered the infinite nature of what he was giving, the seeming impossibility of the promise. Now, as I read this story, I'm challenged to think of stars and sky as more than just a metaphor for something big and good. Look. Count. Spend your lifetime comprehending how big the universe is and how many stars live up there. Drive up the mountain again and again if you need to. Keep your tally, if you can. Then you will know my intentions toward you, I hear the One saying.

The old man went out, looked, counted. I wonder how long he stood there, how he could grasp what was being said to him, what made him believe it to be true.  

all the paths

Good and upright is the Lord;
    therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right,
    and teaches the humble his way.
All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
    for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

    -Psalm 25:8-10

they will inherit the land (or, some rambling thoughts)

Speaking of black bodies: Fighting Environmental Racism in North Carolina

I clicked on this article because I was curious about the term environmental racism, and also because my sister lives in North Carolina. In my few short visits there (to only one part of the state - close to the area spoken about in this piece), what I've seen has made me curious about race, segregation, and how history has shaped what is now. This story provides a glimpse of a kind of modern-day racism that is more systemic and perhaps for that reason, more silent. It is yet another way we sacrifice black bodies for the comfort of the Dream. (See Between the World and Me for more...)

What I loved most is how the story ends. A local activist and son of the area's first black police chief, who was involved in the beginnings of this particular fight for justice, says, "I don't feel anybody should fight as long as we've been fighting for something that's God-given." He's speaking of the promises made to residents more than 40 years ago that are only now being fulfilled by local authorities, after years of trying to prove discrimination. Never mind that people had made promises - he recognizes that justice is of God's own heart and is given at his hand, even while it can be blocked by people with other (evil?) intentions. And he's right, it shouldn't take that long. But, as he says, "you fight until it's done."

The story brings new light to a psalm I've been meditating on, especially with the imagery of land:

Do not fret because of evildoers, 
    do not be envious of wrongdoers,
For they will soon fade like the grass 
    and wither like the green herb.
Trust in the Lord, and do good, 
    dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
...
For those blessed by the Lord 
    will inherit the land.
...
For the Lord loves justice; 
    he will not forsake his saints.
                                                                               - (Psalm 37)

Amen.

open letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates after reading between the world and me

Dear Mr. Coates,

I read Between the World and Me in just a few sittings, over the course of a few days. Most of it I read last Saturday evening, alone in my apartment, my body stretched out on my couch, back supported by pillows and legs warmed by a heavy blanket my mother knit. My stomach was full, my pulse was resting, the only strain that of holding the book, turning its pages. I read fast, wanting more of your words and images. They made me want to text my sister, who is also reading your book, to say something to someone about what I was learning. But I knew her body would be lying in her soft bed under the peaceful blanket of night dreams.

Two days later, at work, I approached the subject of your book with my coworker. My black coworker, the one who has published books and spoken in front of audiences about her writing, the one is often the only black woman - the only black person - in the room, the one who was told that she is too pretty to be a writer, the one whose body has survived the violence of cancer and the chemical weapons used to fight it, which continue to tear apart her insides, the one who grew up in the L.A. Jungle and now drives a Benz, the one who tells us stories about her one daughter and paints herself as a fierce mama bear, the one who has worked here longer than me and bled on my papers to teach me much of what I know and who remained when I was promoted to supervise her, the one with whom I have talked about the complexities of this new arrangement but not the part about being black and white. When I brought up your book, she confirmed that yes, she's reading it too. "Slowly," she said. "It hurts." And I wondered how it hurt, what the pain feels like for her, where it touches her, how she carries it in her body. And I felt the slightest bit of shame in telling her I was nearly finished. I was reading fast. I have far less pain to deal with.

On some level, though, I do understand why she would need to read it slowly. Your language about the body is physical. One page I earmarked talks of "fruits secured through bashing children with stovewood, through hot iron peeling skin away like husk from corn." When I read this, I feel some of the discomfort and violence conjured by these images. But my mind quickly takes over and observes with what skill you write, deconstructs the specificity of image, the choice of words. As a writer, I am changed, but what about as a human? I can't say.

But there is this: during college and for a number of years after, I spent time with kids living in cities. To some people I called them "at risk urban youth." To others, I called them my neighbors, because they were. They all had skin that was some shade of brown or black. The contexts in which I knew them were connected to my belief in Jesus and his exhortation that to truly love God, we must love those whom the world calls "poor." With these kids I led bible studies, formed mentoring groups, met in clubs in which we had fun and talked about God. I remember becoming acquainted with street culture through the stories they told me. I also remember my very noble-feeling ideas about how to change their ways of responding to the people around them. I thought about scriptures in which Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, pray for our enemies, wait for God to contend with those who contend with us. I still believe that these are not just sentiments or good life principles, but that they hold great power. And yet I knew I was missing something. There was something I didn't get.

You unapolagetically assert that "spirit and soul are body and brain." You don't believe in God, and you acknowledge this shapes how you understand the body to be destructable, the violence done against it to be destroying what is most holy about us. I appreciate that you admire others who do even while admitting your inability to make this faith your own. While my faith and the stories we tell gives me a different way of looking at these things, I needed to understand how brown and black bodies endure violence, have for generations, and the kind of fear this instills. Though I still believe scripture speaks into these wordless places, knowing what I understand just a measure more deeply now, after reading your book, I might respond to the kids I hung out with differently. Or maybe I wouldn't. I don't know. I wonder if anything I ever said to them stuck. I hope that something did. The gift of seeing something now that I was blinded to years ago - this is grace, and I wanted you to know that your book helped to bring this, to me and, I hope, to those kids who are adults now, some of them parents raising their own black or brown kids. I hope they knew, or know now, that I was still figuring things out alongside them. Even when my best intentions failed, I hope they felt loved, body and soul.

There is so much more I wanted to say, about bodies and Dreams and your writing. Part of me also wants to say "thank you," but those words feel trite. I don't think you are wanting thanks or praise, but a willingness to be uncomfortable, to struggle alongside you, to try to understand. I'd like to say I am trying.

-B.

seeing

1. Over the river, through the woods

On Christmas night, I drove from my sister’s house in northern Jersey to my parents’ along the edge of Pennsylvania. My nephew Andrew begged to come along instead of waiting until the morning to drive with the rest of his family. The night was dark and damp. The first leg of the journey was a straight shot on highway, rain pouring onto us only occasionally. When we reached the end of New Jersey, we drove through a small town lit up by holiday lights, then turned onto a tiny bridge to cross the Delaware river.

The rest of the drive would take us on winding roads through Pennsylvania countryside until we arrived at my childhood home. Andrew sat so quiet and still behind me that I wondered if he was still awake. Night felt like a heavy blanket around us that Christmas lights and approaching cars poked tiny holes into. At one point, I saw a deer along the side of the road, so still and peaceful in its gaze that later I wondered if I’d imagined him.

A few days later, I would make the same drive back, only in daylight this time. I saw everything I hadn’t known was there by night. Small brick ranch houses with cars parked in their driveways, wide open fields that stretched into the distance, small silos on farms that stored what had grown over the summer. Trees that seemed to show their age in the midwinter, naked of leaves. It was everything I might have guessed was there. My childhood made me familiar with these surroundings. And yet, I was seeing it all new.

2. Glasses

I was the last to wake up that first morning at my parents house. I shuffled down the stairs in my baggy pants and hooded sweatshirt, hood up, covering my messy hair. I wore my glasses, as I usually do after I wake, waiting to put in my contacts until I cleaned myself up later. My mom and dad and Andrew watched tv and talked in the den while I brewed coffee. It trickled and spat slowly into the pot, and I tried to keep myself from cursing the old, neglected machine.

When I joined my family with my mug of coffee, my dad asked me about my glasses. “Do you wear those for show?” I had bought the new pair over the past year, since the last time I’d seen my dad. He seemed to be completely earnest.

I had to remind him that I’ve needed glasses since third grade. “I just normally have my contacts in,” I said, self-consciously pushing my glasses further up my nose.

It made me laugh to myself and, later, text a friend: “I think my dad thinks I’m a hipster.”

I wondered, as I so often do, how my dad sees me.

3. An exercise in seeing

Later that day, my sisters and their families arrived to celebrate Christmas. I had my family each pick the name of another out of a hat. A little while after, we sat in a haphazard circle, nearly outgrowing my parents’ den. Each held their slip of paper with a name on it. Kids exercised patience and stole glances at the gifts waiting for them under the tree. But first, we would each share one reason we’re grateful for the person named on our slip of paper. It was an exercise in seeing. My mom expressed how thankful she was to Tim for being such a good husband and father to her daughter and grandchildren. Tayte had picked his mom, whom he said he was glad to have read to him. Andrew announced to everyone that he likes me because I’m “fun, and full of happiness.” I told my dad how much it means to me that he wants to talk about my trips to Kenya and asks me lots of questions about my time there.

As each one shared, some with more words than others, I looked first at the person speaking, then at the person being spoken about. The words help me to pay attention. Living so far away, I sometimes forget to really see them.

Top Ten Things of 2015

It's that time of year when all the Best Of lists are coming out. It has me feeling simultaneously feverish to fit in all the good stuff that 2105 has to offer (only 16 days left!) and quietly reflective, judging the good, bad and in between, wondering if  I've valued it all right. 

In any case, I decided to make a little list of my own. Here it is, with a plain title and in no specific order: Top Ten Things of 2015.

1. City - Minneapolis

I almost didn't go to Minneapolis because - why would I? That was my thinking. I don't remember now what changed my mind about going to the writing conference there. My first day was rainy, cold and without anything interesting to see or eat. But then I got into the little neighborhood where I stayed in a hostel, and all the sudden I could see myself living there. It felt understated, and like there was a lot of personality if you stuck around and dug for it. I can respect that - I'm the same way.

2. Podcast - Bullseye

I tell everyone I think might be remotely interested about this one. There are many things to love about it: the is host insightful and personable (he seems so comfortable with his guests!) and he curates an eclectic line up of interviewees that revolves mostly around comedy, hip hop and diversity. My favorites were Keegan-Michael Key (of course), the episode shared by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Allison Jones, and Jemaine Clement.

3. Coffee Shop - Found Coffee

Sometime around Easter, I made my first trip to Found Coffee in Eagle Rock. It became my spot for cappuccino, for writing, for journaling. The coffee is great. The vibe is just a little trendy but mostly relaxed. The late afternoon light through the front windows hints at something hopeful. And the music is usually M.I.A. and Lauryn Hill, which gives me a buzz as much as the caffeine.

4. Books - All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Teows; Brother I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat; On Immunity by Eula Biss

All three of these books, I devoured. All of them left me wanting more. All of them made me want to write better. Read them.

5. Songs - All You Had to Do Was Stay by Taylor Swift; Leave a Trace by CHVRCHES; Till the End by Waterdeep

Taylor Swift's 1989 rocked my world not because it is great pop music, but because I finally had to admit that I'm a Swiftie (is that what they're called?). It came out in 2014, but this year I had All You Had to Do Was Stay on repeat, especially in the car or when I was in the mood for a solo dance party.

I also discovered CHVRCHES this year (I know, where have I been?) and loved Leave a Trace.

And Waterdeep came out with a double album. Till the End is so beautiful and funky and true.

6. Movies - Far From the Madding Crowd; Selma; Room

For some reason, no one movie jumped out in my memory. I really loved Far From the Madding Crowd, but what woman wouldn't love the idea of being pursued by three men and ending up with (spoiler alert) Gabriel Oak. Though I have to say that if she'd had more sense she could have married him to being with and saved herself a whole lot of trouble. But then there'd be no movie (or book), right?

Selma and Room both stick out in my memory for the writing. I watched Selma on the flight home from Kenya, which seemed to add an extra layer of intensity to it. I remember being so moved by the scenes where MLK speaks publicly, and so passionately. A week or two later, I saw a friend-of-a-friend film critic at a party and we talked about the film. He told me then that those speeches weren't actually MLK's original words - those speeches are copyrighted by the family. Instead, the director (who isn't credited as a writer - that's another story, apparently) wrote the speeches inspired by his originals. Wow. Incredible writing. And in a completely different way, Room took my breath away. Go see it.

7. Bookstore - Letters Bookshop

When I visited my sister in Durham, she suggested some used bookstores. Yes, please. On Saturday, we drove downtown with the kids, stopped for a coffee, and walked over to Letters Bookshop. Most used bookstores stack books in piles beside the crammed bookshelves. There's a certain charm to that. But this store was different. Books are displayed intentionally, and only ones likely to sell (interesting titles, good condition) are bought to then be sold. And, I have a secret: I also had a little crush on the owner. I overheard him talk to a few customers about books and authors and I totally fell for him. A day later, I called to have another book put on hold and had my sister drive me back downtown. I was too shy to start a conversation, but I did try to smile real nice for him.

8. App - Moon

I love the moon, and bought an app to understand more about its phases. When I got this notification from my moon app, my coworker informed me this is usually this opening line for booty calls. Apparently the moon was loving me back, or something like that. But I don't think that's what the moon is after. He just doesn't want to be a reflection of a thing all the time.

9. TV Show - Master of None

Aziz Ansari will always be a favorite of mine. I binged on all ten episodes of his new show in one weekend (which isn't hard to do if you have three hours to kill while you're babysitting your goddaughter after she goes to sleep...). Everyone is talking about the episode called Parents, which was charming. But my favorite was Indians on TV, partly because I have a crush on Ravi Patel.

10. Day -

I could tell you about the day I spent in a cabin in Ojai, The rain came after a morning hike. I started a fire in the woodburning stove and spent the day praying. Or, there was our last day in Nairobi, when we finished all our clinics. The next day we would leave for safari. Our team went to dinner at our hotel together, where another group had hired a dj. Veena and I took on the empty dance floor and soon our team joined us, along with a soccer team from Zanzibar. There was also the day spent at a coffee shop with my friend visiting from Hawaii, both of us doing our work and taking a break every once in a while to laugh about something together (probably she had a verbal hashtag for something). Her companionship that weekend was just what I needed. There are other days, too, that I could tell you about, but I have a feeling that there wasn't just one day of the year, and that it probably couldn't be identified by things I think make it great. The best day might have only held a seed of something new, and I'll only know the full measure of it in years to come. And really, I wouldn't have wanted this year to have only one of those days, I wanted all of them - the ones I cried too many times to count, the days I questioned myself, the days I felt abandoned or useless. They all count.

dreaming of books, and the time to read them

This fall, I nearly applied to a grad school program that would have me writing and reading all the time. My dream was to quit my job and hole up somewhere (really dreaming, I thought maybe the woods of North Carolina or along a river in Pittsburgh or in a small village in Kenya) with just books and my computer. I didn't want to be a hermit, per se, but I just wanted to have more time to read, think, write, explore.

That is not happening, and for good reasons. Life is about other things, for now at least. But there is a little violin playing soft, sad songs in my heart during this season when all the 'best of" book lists are being released. I want all of them.

Dreams are still fun, even when the firm edges of reality don't line up with them. This best book list from NPR not only gives you titles of great books, it also helps you pick out the rights ones for you. And this list from Buzzfeed shows the best book covers (and some of the best titles, too, I think). I would also direct you to the bookstore - my photo is taken here - where you can get even more crazy with your book dreaming. Just give someone your credit card before you go in.

PS A trusted friend's list and more recs in the comments. Love it.