The Stories Our Pictures Tell Us, Or, What I Learned from Sitting Alone for Two Hours in a Closet

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot — “Little Gidding”

I just got back from a wonderful weekend in Philadelphia with my family. I always tell people from out of town that though I grieve summer’s end, the best time to visit PA is in the fall, where the gold, crimson red, and yellow trees will call you into attention, causing you to notice every little thing around you that you’d normally overlook. This weekend was no different. The sun shone all weekend, tall trees telling tales in goldenrod and setting sun orange.

It was a good weekend. One of those weekends that make you look deep inside of yourself and feel absolute gratitude for getting to experience it, all of it. I spent the majority of the weekend at Villanova University where hundreds of students put on the world’s largest student-run event for Special Olympics. Cheering loudly, I’ll never forget the way they lined the walkway back to our cars, and high fived each athlete, as though we were married couples walking out to a procession line. When I told them thank you for their abounding energy, they just smiled, and replied, “We love this. It’s our favorite weekend all school year.”

I woke up the next morning and got to run with Special Olympics athletes in a 5k, delighting in the sun meeting my bare legs. November 2nd is far too into fall to be able to wear shorts, but today is different. The sweet 70 degree sun smiled at our legs. We danced the night away in the gym at the annual dance the students run, there we did the Cha Cha Slide, the Cotton Eye Joe, and The Wobble, whose choreography and lyrics I still don’t understand.

I watched my sister play soccer Sunday. For far too long in our relationship, she was the one watching me, and now I was thrilled to give back that time and attention to her. It was, perhaps, a moment of reconciliation, as if to make up for lost time.

As Sunday evening approached, the sun sunk at 4:58 PM thanks to daylight savings time. An extra hour of sleep? No thank you, I’d take an extra hour of daylight over extra sleep anyday. After sunset, I went upstairs and noticed a journal peeking out from my closet. Curious, I decided to take a look. Inside lie four boxes filled with letters, greeting cards, old swimming times, old swimming workouts, high school and graduation pictures, and friends’ wedding programs. There were printouts of old AIM conversations with boys I had crushes on. My polka dot scrunchie I wore way after scrunchies stopped being cool. I’m always a good 3-5 years behind the latest fashions.

A strange, but wonderful sense of nostalgia warmed me up like chamomile tea on a snowy day. I’m re-reading a wrinkled letter from one of my good guy friends from high school. One of my best friends created a senior project where students were asked to anonymously submit essays describing their experiences of love in order to “purge their feelings and maybe come to some resolution.” I don’t think it was until my binge in the closet that I fully appreciated the magnitude of her endeavor. Guys and girls alike anonymously poured out the most vulnerable parts of themselves on paper. I can’t believe he even gave me his letter, so personal. So visceral. I felt like I was reading a journal entry from a 35 year old who’s looking back on the thing or two that he’s learned from the journey he’s been on since he said “I Do” at an altar.

Their were greeting cards marking birthdays, apologies, thank you-s, and just-because’s. There was that note that my neighbors wrote me right before we all thought I’d be leaving for Peace Corps. Though I’ve made peace with my decision, it still stings a little bit each time I come across that name, or see a piece of paper of something I signed in the copious amounts of paperwork that the process entails. It hurts a little when dreams die. It hurts a little when you remember a part of yourself that was so filled with life, pulsating, passionate life. If I’m honest, there’s a part of myself that I never fully regained when I said no to my dream. Even though I’m most grateful for the ways in which I’ve healed since that time, looking back on ourselves and our lives can be hard, can’t it?

There’s my grandfather’s passport. I never got to meet the man, but from what I hear of him, he was the most amazing person. I’ve only ever seen pictures of him with the family or alone in solitude in his church robes. He was a pastor, a thinker, and I’d love nothing more than to pick his brain. He died at all-too-soon age of 53 from a heart attack in the middle of his kitchen. It hurts, doesn’t it, when you don’t get to meet the people that you want to meet? When lives are interrupted without your permission? Now, all that’s left in my hands are a picture of him at this last church service in Illinois before he and the family moved to PA and his old passport. I began prodding my dad for passport explanations. Why did he go to Russia, and South America, and who did he go with, and how long was he there for? Half of the stamps we couldn’t decipher, after all it was an expired passport from 1971.

There’s cards from my grandmother that all looked pretty standard: Hallmark cards signed in small, shaky cursive- “with love, Grandma.” I loved her; I know I did. It’s just that she had an aneurysm in 1985, just a few years before I was born. My only memories of her are of when she was in a walker. She and my aunt would come over for every birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas you name it. We would blow up whoopie cushions, put them under her seat, and after we heard the fart sound, we’d erupt in laughter while she proceeded to ask us to stop it. We would just keep laughing. And we never stopped it. I loved her presence; it felt like home whenever she was in our house. I just doubt that as a kid, I fully appreciated her. And she’s gone now. I still remember that dreaded phone call at my friend’s graduation party in June 2003. When the phone rang on my friend’s house line- I didn’t own a cell phone at the time- it was my mom on the other line. “I need you to come home now. It’s about Grandma.” And so, as soon as I got home, we went to Artman Nursing Home, where I saw a dead body for the first time. It was weird. And I didn’t like it. So I cried. We left, not talking much, and a week later I went to my first funeral. Our neighbors were there, as they have always been for every major life event. I still remember Mrs. Beerley giving me a big hug, as she looked me in eye and said, “It’s ok.” I hope Grandma knew how much I loved her, even when I didn’t express full interest in her life. I know she’s chock full of stories, like her husband (my grandfather), whom I also didn’t get to meet because life was cut short.

There were newspaper clippings from our local newspaper. I grew up in a neighborhood in which teachers came to school early to provide homework help. It felt safe. One time, the crime section read: “Three flags stolen from Flourtown Country Club golf course.” Really, I’m not making this stuff up. There’s also that time, because our town was so small, that I got in this same crime section for careless driving. It was an early morning, a long day and even longer night on July 2nd, 2005, as friends and I spent the day at Philadelphia’s Live 8 concert advocating for global action to end poverty, especially in Africa before the G8 summit. At 12 AM on July 3rd, I crashed into a telephone pole, wrecking public property (along with my car) and was even told I had to pay for it. A week later, I re-lived it all over again as I read “Melissa Otterbein, 18, cited for reckless driving….” Fortunately, I’d built enough rapport with the parents whose kids I coached and babysat. As I received cards from these families, all I could think was, “Hopefully they didn’t read the newspaper.”

I found some old CDs in the memory boxes, including a couple Christian cds. I stopped listening to Christian radio about two years ago when I grew tired of hearing infomercials about how there’s new aged speakers on Oprah who are leading people astray and if we really love people, we shouldn’t let them listen to these people. I grew tired of their cheesy slogans that they would repeat multiple times per hour. “Family friendly, kid safe.” What about those of us who don’t have kids? Does that mean public radio is evil? I hardly think so. Anyway, as I drove home later on, after I had left the closet, a strange familiar came over me as I found myself nervously singing the words again for the first time in a long time. I thought about the times when those songs carried me though difficult nights, when things weren’t so good at home. Or when I’d have those occasional teenage relationships dilemmas, experiencing life’s stress, but oh, I was happy. It didn’t even feel weird anymore to sing these songs. The attachment felt peaceful, like I could enjoy it while keeping it a safe arms-length away. I guess that’s where I am with Church now. I love God, but seem to keep Church that arms-length away. It wasn’t God who scared me, it was Church, well, just some Churches, that often minimized how I could find the love of God in my sister’s smile instead of ancient text that angered me most of the time.

It’s funny, I spent almost two hours in that closet and left the room a lot messier than I found it. I figured it would give me a good reason to go back in there the next time I’m home. It’s amazing where photos and cds, or letters and decorations and old newspaper clippings can take us. It’s amazing how words on crinkly paper from a decade ago can help you make sense of today. It’s amazing how a box of photos that we can no longer reprint because we stopped using 35 mm film about the same time we stopped playing with pogs can spark up warm fuzzies and fear all in the same memory. TS Eliot once said,

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

I sense that in my boxes of nostalgia. I sense that we’re on this journey and the good, the difficult, the crushed, the joyful all carry us into our future in untied fragments. Someday, some great-grandchild might finger through our letters and CDs— what the hell were those, never the less tapes?–and smile. Perhaps they’ll ask their parents about us or put us back in a box. Or perhaps if you lived a life bold enough, they’ll proudly place your picture on a nightstand and smile at it when they wake up in the morning on their way to work.

It’s a strange life. We live it once. That’s it. And all that’s left are the memories. Half of them, we forget about, until an old photo jogs our memory as though we need basic instructions on how to look back on very own lives that we created. We do things everyday that we won’t even remember doing tomorrow, let alone 40 years from now. That’s weird.
But I hope when you go to bed tonight, you feel the love of those people.
I hope you keep taking those photographs, even if you’re scared to document this time of your life because you don’t want to re-live the pain you’re going through right now by finding it buried in the pixels of an old photograph. I hope you keep writing those journals, even if you don’t want to read the sad tale you documented on paper ten years from now.
Or maybe you’re having the time of your life, too busy to sit down and even capture it. But one day, though, someone’s going to look back in order to find themselves because they got lost too. We all get lost. I’m trying to keep up with these memories in order to make sense of my life and maybe you are too. It’s amazing how five people can experience the same event, but none will recall it the same exact way with the same exact details. We each bring forth our little vignettes and keep our lives sustained into another year, another decade, another century, or even millennium. It’s ok to look back on your pain. It was a part of your struggle. I only hope that the painful parts of your story will find some healing. I hope there’s days you can’t pen down because you were so overwhelmed by the privilege of being alive that even if you tried to write it down, no one would get it. Perhaps you too, just like TS Eliot will live along some day and be able to put back the pieces. We’ll find ourselves and lose ourselves until we glance up to the endless sky in these cracks and crevices of darkness and of light.

“It’s a victory to remember the forgotten picnic basket and your striped beach blanket. It’s a victory to remember how the jellyfish stung you and you ran screaming from the water. It’s a victory to remember dressing the wound with meat tenderizer and you saying I made it better…” -Jenny Hallowell, A History of Everything, Including You

Like Contrails in the Sky

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

Source: CORE Aviation

“It’s like those streams in the sky that airplanes leave when they fly,” I told him.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

I told him about a quiet summer day back when I was 17, lifeguarding at a mostly empty pool, deeming it safe enough to take a few moments to stare up at the sunny, blue sky instead of the one adult floating steadily on his back in a shallow pool. Growing up not too far from the Philadelphia International Airport, it was always easy to find a couple airplanes in the sky at any given moment. I counted all that I could see from my two little eyes- from the innermost tear duct, to the outermost corner of my eye just before sclera meets skin fold. There’s three; There’s four, I noted, continuing to count, only halfway through my inventory of the azure sky. But rather than counting, I found something else that caught my attention: the evaporation of those white, jagged, cloud-like lines that the planes leave behind. Turns out they’re called “contrails,” short for condensation trails. Contrails are formed when the water in jet exhaust meets the wet, cold air of the atmosphere at 30-some-thousand feet. Upon this collision of jet exhaust and moist air, the contrail condenses and freezes into ice crystals, making a thin cirrus cloud. How long these vapor trails remain in the sky depends on the temperature and humidity at the altitude of the contrail’s formation.* Regardless, whether seconds or minutes, slowly, the end tail will dissipate, showing no evidence that the plane was once hundreds of feet behind, in another position of the sky. Gone. Nothing you can do can bring those jet lines back.

It’s a lot like life, I realized that summer day on the lifeguard stand.

Now, I walk around each day with this strange, sickening sense that whatever I’m doing right now with my fingers, or whatever conversation I’m having with the person next to me, is just like those contrails, never able to be repeated in that specific place, time, and date. I go to bed each night, thinking about what happened since I left it this morning. I can’t remember half of it. What did I eat for breakfast, anyway? Did I tell my parents I loved them today? Yikes, did I really gripe in my head over who was the last one to discard the free newspaper full of ads that unwantedly finds itself on our sidewalk each week?

I feel like I walk around, and each moment is slowly evaporating, never to be tasted, touched, patted, embraced, changed, re-shapened, molded, or experienced, ever again, at least not in real time. There’s nothing I can do to bring back what happened 15 seconds ago. Whatever you’re doing, and I’m doing, right now, will change, in just a few short inhales, exhales, and blinks, almost imperceptibly, perhaps. But change it will. This hour will not last. This day will not last. This year will not last. And you too, no matter your age, will become old one day, perhaps if we’re lucky enough to see the rising sun on our one hundredth birthday.

We live life forward.
We look back on old pictures.
We try to remember.
Often, we forget.

That is, until Aunt Lou, or your college roommate, or your dear parents remind you of something. The still frame that they remember in their head.

Some story.
Some funny thing you said.
Some detail you couldn’t recall.

Some bit of the scene that you didn’t quite remember, but now, upon provocation, comes forth, memory jogged by this person’s memories. This causes your heart to quicken and a smile to slide up your face, as though you were wearing lose suspenders, and now tightened them for a satisfying fit. You then chime in your memories of the new scene you now remember, your contribution to this mutual, shared memory.

But that’s it; that’s all they are now. These still photos.

We look at the past, and no matter what shade of awful we went through, we can now talk about the hard practice we survived as a high school varsity football player, singing about our glory days. Or that immensely intense triathlon race, that in the present moment, leaves you half miserable, in fervent longing for it all to be over, and yet, you keep running, half flooded with a bizarre energy that sustains your movement until a finish line tells you to stop, tells your endorphins to surge, and your heart rate to decelerate. Now that it’s over, and you’re re-visiting the experience as a memory, we’re glad these kinds of experiences were so hard. It makes us look like champions, looking at these still photos of our hard work in the comfort of our own home, heart rate relaxed.

We smile at the graduation pictures. Smile at the pictures of our parents, before they were our parents. We laugh at how silly we looked in our teddy bear vest on 5th grade picture day.

All of this leads me to wonder, awe, and melancholy over the mystery that is the passage of time.

I mourn it.

For all intents and purposes, that time is gone.
How is it that our minutes evaporate?
How is it that we can’t go back?

It’s like a locked door, with no key to open it.
We scratch our head, looking up for answers. Did it even happen? Did all of this even happen?

I yearn for yesterday’s moments all over again, from my morning bike ride commute, to the belly laugh that my roommate and I shared, as if to have one extra day of life. I want to re-experience the morning of April 4th, as I was about to embark on my flight to Portland for four days, a sojourner excited to interact with west coast folk. I want today, and I want the future, to enter in and out of each of these scenes with ease and possibility. No locked doors, just tall, open bay view windows, and a warm breeze to lull you in and out of the past and present, forward and back, back and forward. Any direction you chose, any moment you wish to re-experience again.

This lament over the passage of time is the same reason why I both weep a little each New Year’s Eve, recounting all of the events, new people and travel that took place over the course of these past 365 days; and in the same breath, the very same reason why just moments later, I beam my face into the moonlight of the dark January 1st sky at 12 AM, bright, optimistic, satisfied, hopeful. The people of the 1800s are dead now. They don’t get to have this moment, not here on Earth at least. The people who will one day be born in 2100 are just future zygotes, not here on Earth right now either. But you and me, we’re here right now. On the verge of something great, unprecedented and un-experienced. I stand hilltop, watching New Year’s early morning fireworks, just for one moment, wanting to cup the year securely and lovingly in my two hands, gently whispering to it: “It’s ok. Let go. You’re in a new year. You take with you all you learned last year, and years’ past. You’re lucky enough to see the aurora of a new year, a fresh calendar. It’s all there, right in front of you, untouched, like early dawn snow free of any human footprints. Yes, something wonderful is going to happen this year. Something hard will happen. Something unexpected will happen. But, perhaps, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll be here again in 365 days wondering where all this time has gone, each turning of the monthly calendar a mere contrail into the vast, bottomless vat known as the passage of time. So enjoy this moment of newness.” I un-cup my hands and spread them high over my head, a “namaste” to the night sky on the first of the year. Free, outstretched, fingers loose, winter air flowing in between each finger, I clamor for the power to hold onto every ephemeral moment.

It reminds me of family vacations at Rehoboth Beach as a kid. When I needed some solitude, perhaps after too much teasing from my older brother, or after I had enough of my sister’s wails as seagull after seagull snatched her Cheetos from her beach towel, I would plop myself on the shoreline, digging my feet into the cool, mushy sand. As waves pushed and pulled around me, my feet sunk deeper into the wet sand. Eventually, once satisfied with the proper dosage of introverted loneness, I’d step out of my footprint and watch the next wave take away a bit of it, footprint still mostly visible. And then another wave would come forth and retreat, taking away a pinky toe imprint along with it. And another wave followed, erasing another toe, and another, and so on, until that footprint was no more, washed away. Dissolved. Recycled by the ever constant flow of ocean wave. I’d then walk back to my sister’s towel, seagulls having moved on to some other child’s unattended snack, my brother now gone, having left the ocean for the pool, sick of the sand. Most of this afternoon was now gone. Soon, we’d seeing the last hours of our vacation, and head northbound up 95 back to PA, codifying each day’s activities, the highs and lows, so that one day we can look back on Family Vacation 1995 and actually have something to say.

And so the continuum of time proceeds, right off the reel.
Back to remembering and forgetting, lamenting, and praising our time on this planet.

I guess the good thing about getting older is you get to keep experiencing time, making new memories, printing out more pictures for your frames and refrigerator magnets. And maybe, just maybe, if all I’ve been taught about what happens when you die is true, I’ll realize that we never even had the proverbial hourglass of time. Or perhaps we did, but once all the grains reached the bottom, the hourglass automatically flipped itself to begin the release of sand grains all over again. It will keep on going infinitely, whether stored in my cognition, or flat out in front of me like a red carpet.

Time’s gone by. 26.5 years for me, in fact. The passage of time will never stop. But like contrails in the sky, I’ll keep on flying this girl high on an airplane into the unknown freedom of a blue sky, gripping every minute in gratitude, lament, joy, life transcendent, documenting my flight, and yours too, for some other kid to look up into the sky and trace the contrails with her or his fingers. Together, we’ll dizzy up the sky with our vapor trails until we’ve lost track of time. Until we learned to live outside of it, freed of the obsession of time. Out of time, in one sense, and in another, having all the time we’ll ever need.

The saddest thing about life is you don’t remember half of it.
You don’t even remember half of half of it.
Capture memories, because if you forget them, it’s as though they didn’t happen;
it’s as though you hadn’t lived the parts you don’t remember.

~ Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

*http://contrailscience.com/why-do-some-planes-leave-long-trails-but-others-dont/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail

Thoughts in the ICU.

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

I have her black and white newspaper picture hanging on my bedroom door. She’s 17, an exchange student on the beach in Brazil, riding a motorcycle. Her Brazilian community wrote a newspaper article about her in Portuguese. It’s probably my most favorite picture of her, telling me the story of my mom before she was a mother. She seems so full of life, so spunky. I bet we would’ve been friends had I been around during the ’60s. But I guess I got lucky; instead of just a friend, I got a friend and a mother.

She’s not “La Garota da Motocicleta” (The Girl On The Motorcycle) right now, but that spirit is still in her; I see it, even though there’s tubes and cords and a central line running through her body. I’m with my family in the ICU at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia. It’s quiet, minus the steady beep of the EKG monitor, signaling life, and hope, and of the steady rhythm of another day to be alive. My dad touches her forehead and my sister pats her on the shoulder. I kiss her on her cheek, pausing, grateful for this moment. It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed my parents, especially on the cheek. But in this moment, I’m grateful to be close and at peace.

We sit there, in silence, with the occasional interruption of updates from the nurse. “We’re monitoring the blood pressure; as you know it’s low again. This is just more fluids to help aid in that process,” she says, changing an IV bag.

…

The first person my age that I knew to lose their parents was my friend Sarah, during the last month of our senior year in high school. Her parents died in a car crash and her mother was the art teacher at our middle school. It was the first funeral I’ve been to for someone’s parent, and shortly after, friends and I headed to Sarah’s home. That’s the first time I was introduced to “sitting Shiva,” a practice in Judaism in which family members receive visitors in the home of their deceased love one, for seven days. Shiva translates to “seven” in Hebrew, based upon Job grieving the death of his father for seven days. Traditionally, during the period of Shiva, mourners sit on low stools or boxes while they receive condolence calls. Often, doors are unlocked to allow visitors to enter quietly without knocking. Once in the presence of mourners, it is customary to wait until the mourner speaks before greeting the mourner. A minyan (prayer service) is held for the mourners each day during shiva. Shiva creates an atmosphere of condolence and support while allowing one to disengage gradually from the life of their deceased love one.* There’s something about this tradition that I find so beautiful.

Though I am hopeful for my mother’s recovery and personally not anticipating death, I think about Shiva. Sitting in this room in soft silence and occasional chatter between my family, I feel as though I’m celebrating a living shiva, feeling melancholy, and yet a very real, sincere peace.

There’s some connection I feel to my mother, as I think about all she’s experienced during her lifetime. My dad shows me a picture of the two of them, before they were engaged. My dad is on the left with dark, shaggy hair, and my mom to the right, in long, blonde pigtails and bell bottom jeans.
“Who is that?” we ask my 29 year old sister, who has Down Syndrome, while pointing to the photo.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s Mom and Dad,” I tell her.

“Looks weird.” She states, never having been a bashful one.

We laugh.

I watch her breathe with the support of intubation. Occasionally, she tenses and one of the tubes fills with liquid. She’s sleeping and under heavy medication, but still able to make small coughs that help bring the fluid from the pneumonia that’s gathered in her lungs. It’s strange to think, in this moment, that there was another time, and another place (not the ICU), in which my mom and I were once connected. I feel as though right now, I’m a fly on the wall, or a shadow of my spirit, zoomed out, as I picture my mom holding my brother, then my sister, then me after birth. It’s a humbling experience to think about a day I can’t even remember, but a day that was quintessential to my very life. It’s in this moment I’m acutely aware of what a gift it is to have loving parents to bring you into life in this world. I suppose I may never know fully unless I become a mother one day, but here, in this moment, I’m as close to “getting it” as I might ever be. We all make sacrifices for each other. Fathers. Mothers. But right now, I see most clearly the amazing gift we each receive from a woman who uses her very body to provide life to another. Don’t get me wrong, women who choose not to have children can live every bit as sacrificially as those that do, but for right now, I’m looking at my mother in a hospital bed. And I’m so grateful that she, along with my father, made my life possible.

“Better get going,” my dad motions to my sister and I. Lauren, my Aunt and I are going to go home to make dinner, then head to the movies for a laughter break.
But I don’t want to leave.
I’m so sick of living my life focusing on getting tasks done.
I’m tired of half-listening to my roommate when I come home each day, as I tend to the dishes and listen to her talk in between my clanging of pots. She never does this when I talk to her. She stops what she’s doing and looks you into the eye…No, no, no. She looks into your heart.
Dinner can wait, I think.?We can order takeout to make it quicker. This time is much, much much more important. My sister and I linger over her bed for another twenty minutes. The nurse told us that even though she’s under sedation, she can still hear us, and encourages us to talk to her in short whispers as part of the healing process.

“Love you Mom,” I whisper softly and give her another slow kiss.

My sister and Aunt and I leave the room, and I glance back through the glass window to see my Dad, currently on furlough, sitting quietly beside her, where he’s been since her admission ten days ago. Last weekend, I watched him brush her hair, gingerly, especially at the ends where a few tangles had gathered. As my siblings and aunt and I talked in her room last weekend, he stood beside her bed, touching her forehead every few moments or so. As I walk further away from my mom’s hospital bed, I admire his love. He always knew how to keep people a priority and go out for a run when his head needed clearing. I love that about him.

I don’t think this is it, but I was told there’s always a chance. I think that spunky young woman on a motorcycle is going to beat the pneumonia, heal from the staph infection which triggered her initial hospital admission last week, and come back from this in due time.

But what do I know.

What do I know about death.

What do I know about what it must feel like, to be near it, or perhaps around it, or perhaps still far from it, but not too far.

I don’t know.

But I remember the words of my youth pastor who watched her own mother pass away:

“I will tell you all this–never be afraid when this time comes. You could actually see Mom’s spirit leave her body, hover a while, and go. She looked so happy, so peaceful. It was one of the most amazing moments of my life.”

I cling to this hope, and the hand of my sister as I whisper “I love you,” steadfast with the optimism that I will be back here tomorrow, watching her chest rise and fall. But even if for some reason, I cannot, I let the words and experience of my youth pastor nestle deep into my heart until a satiated peace comes over me.

I’m sitting a living shiva.
And I’m so thankful for the prayers and support of friends and family like you.

*http://www.shiva.com/learning-center/understanding/shiva/

I’m Taking Off My Rose-Colored Glasses.

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

CC MO Apr. 2013 Portland, OR

I’m taking off my rose-colored glasses.

They never fit quite right.
Things begin to look a little blurry when you put them on, a little naive, over and under inflating the challenges and joys of life.

Sometimes, when I look out, I see nothing but beauty, ecstasy, the thrill of future dreams coming into life, one soft rose petal at a time.
And that’s great for a little while,
But then I’ll miss all the beauty straight in front of me. Too farsighted. Drats.

Other times, I put them on, consumed by the thrill of the moment right here, the dance, the romance, the pleasure in the here and now, that I forget about long term consequences of decisions and how to create a future of hope of joy. Nearsighted. Drats.

But I don’t want to live that way anymore.

I want to see in plain vision, in living colour.

To see things as they are, not as I idealize them to be.

To stare down the hard, cold realities of life, like death, and aging, and growing up, and leaving friends, or having friends leave you, as you move on and move forward. To meet with courage each of these realities in a way that melts away fear, turning it instead into a soft-glowing candle of acceptance.
Accepting that my twenties will come to end, and my 30s and 40s too, for that matter, and I will not live in a pseudo-forever young state that’s stuck in the past and evades responsibility for the future.

I want to accept that my parents will die one day, and find abundant ways to thank them for specific fond memories I have of them. Perhaps they won’t understand, and consider me an a maudlin sentimentalist. But when they die, and die they will, I know they will have heard every bit of my appreciation, words having been spoken, words having been heard and digested into the heart.

I want to accept that much of life is finding joy in the daily-s, not mountain highs of bucklist completions, but that doesn’t make life itself any less exciting or beautiful. After all, there is much opportunity to be had in menial tasks, like grocery shopping, for example. When we were kids, my dad used to run down the aisle, cart in tote, and then hop on the cart about halfway down the aisle. “Weeeeeeee!” This only worked when the nursing home bus filled with seasoned seniors had left the store, and the clueless four year trying to help Mom has gone to bed… he’d usually do this with, say, the 8 PM grocery shopping crowd. I still catch myself hopping on the grocery cart for a ride, too, sometimes. What can I say, it is fun.

Creating joy like that in the daily-s allows me to see the reality that life can still be beautiful even in despair. Because perhaps the worst thing about white-knuckling life in rose-colored glasses is robbing ourselves of the opportunity to feel the most raw and real parts of life. It makes way for someone to hold your hand when you’re truly at your lowest, proving that you will not be left alone in your sorrow, sweet child. It enables you to fully enjoy life’s most pleasurable experiences without the background of worry, nothing robbing you of intense joy, nothing tainting something so beautiful with cobwebs of anxiety. Instead of seeing life skewed the way I want it, I’ll look up when I can’t get out of my head. The cathartic stars will remind me to see the night sky daily, not just walk around aimlessly underneath it, but instead, to really soak it in, each sparkle singing of illimitable mysteries that cannot be easily solved. Hindsight may be 20/20, but there’s clarity to be found when we decide not to sugar coat our lenses of the world.

Un-squint your eyes.

Un-scrunch your face.

Open up your hands.

Look toward the sun.

Let the light in.

It’s time to be brave.

Hurry Up and Don’t Die (Re-learning lessons from life/death experiences)

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

I fell asleep at the wheel when I was 18 years old, summer after graduating high school. I woke up at 12:15 AM with the caustic blast of an airbag flying into my face, quickly discovering that my car was halfway on the sidewalk, the other half still on the road. I ran into a telephone pole, splitting it in half, the upper portion now dangling from the telephone wire. I immediately called 911. Police came and asked if I had been drinking. “No. You can breathalyze me!” I called out, “I fell asleep!” “It’s just that this is a lot of damage for just having fallen asleep,” the officer retorted. The arrival of the ambulance ended our back and forth. I was brought to our nearest hospital with tears in my eyes, shocked but relieved that I felt ok, and quite scared of what my parents would say. Someone had already notified them and my dad met me bedside in an exam room. “I am soo. soooo. sorry,” I tell him, leaning in for a hug. He reached back immediately. “I’m just glad you’re ok; I’m glad you’re ok.” After the x-rays came back showing no broken bones, I was handed some gauze and a prescription for pain and then sent on my way. “I’m sorry to wake you up, Dad. I’m really sorry for doing something so stupid.” “It’s ok; I’m glad you’re ok,” he persisted. I fell asleep (in my bed this time) and woke up to a raw, scraped chin, fresh tender skin scattered amongst hardened scab. In the days to follow, I had loving support from friends and family. Two ten-year old girls that I coached came to my house with handmade, colorful cards. I remember telling them that I was afraid parents wouldn’t trust me driving their kids anymore as a babysitter. “Don’t worry, they’ll still trust you,” their little selves promised me. They gave me some hugs and went back to play at the pool for the rest of the day. One of the moms on the swim team I coached gave me a hat. “You’ve got to keep that chin exposed to as little sunlight as possible,” she said, patting my shoulder. A few days later, I found my name in the police report section of our local newspaper, ashamed and embarrassed that the whole community could see my recklessness. All of that was countered, though, by the love I received. Family emailed me and gingerly encouraged me to slow down. To stop doing so much and to try just being me, doing what I’m doing, confident that it’s more than enough. I listened. For a little while at least. But I often think of that memory now and feel an impulse to “hurry up” and “do more” because I learned that we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, tonight, or the next hour. And I’ve been driving myself crazy ever since.

I’ve cut corners trying to breeze through seasons of pain, doubt, confusion, and suffering because hey, we could all die tomorrow, right? And if I might die tomorrow, I certainly don’t want to waste today in pain and sadness. So rather than allowing myself to fully experience pain or difficult “wilderness” seasons, I’ve tried to skip that step altogether. But that’s not how growth works, turns out, and no one is exempt from sadness, anger, and pain just because they might die tomorrow. I wish I would let myself go through painful processes without white-knuckling my way through, trying to control my emotions, my circumstances, rather than let God do God’s thing God’s way. In the process, I end up seeing my dirty fingerprints all over my life when I could have seen even more of God’s tender fingerprints implanted on every scrapbook story page day of life.

I’ve rushed through conversations so that I can go talk to that person, only to rush through that conversation to talk to this person, in hopes of developing rich, meaningful relationships as quickly as possible, forgetting that people aren’t penciled in items on a to-do list; we’re chock full of emotions, stories, things to learn from others, things to teach others, and these deep connections, the ones that mean the most and are savored the deepest, take time. And time never seems to be on your side when you’re living like you might die tomorrow. Life never seems long enough when you act like it stops the same minute as your heart, forgetting about all I’ve been taught about life after death, the hope of Heaven, etc. I guess I’m a little scared of it turning out to be fallacy, but I know in my darkest moments that I need this hope of heaven; my soul would die without it. I can live as if life ends at the grave or I can dare to dream that there is something bigger, something larger, something longer, something that will never, truly ever end.

The “do more, quicker” mentality has caused me to be erratic rather than learning something about patience, about seasons, about the beauty that comes from living with the questions, the uncertainties. It’s caused me to search for the answers now, which has some perks to it, but often has downfalls of arriving at wrong conclusions in a harried attempt to maximize time. We can’t know how things will turn out. We don’t need to, either. As Rainer Maria Rilke once said,

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I guess that’s it- that’s where I want to be right now. I want to live the questions, live the uncertainties, live the risks and searchings and yearnings. Live that now. The answers will come in their own timing. We have 24 hours a day and I can loathe that they aren’t enough or I can assert the fact that this is all we have, so enjoy them and be present for them.

And I’m also learning that although we’re not guaranteed tomorrow, there is such a thing as adulthood, and older adulthood, and retirement… so if my things aren’t crossed off my bucketlist by the time on 30, that’s ok, in fact that’s great-each of us just might have a lifetime of adventures to look forward to, maybe, just maybe…

So may we live today like it could be our last and may we remember that we have a God who has a home for us even when that last day comes.

May we savor sweet conversation, taking our time through each word, hug, tender kiss.

May we realize that we will always want more time in the day, but even on our death bed, our time really hasn’t run out.

“I’ve told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.” -Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross

One of the girls I coached, who gave me the angel figurine featured in this picture shortly after the accident. July 2005

Just a few thoughts before race day about not being silent and changing the world…

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

Opportunities in life don’t always come for the swift, the fastest. Sometimes opportunities come for those who are willing, who are looking, who are ready. And so, sitting here in this plane listening to the songs that guided me through … Continue reading →

Boulder, 2013 ((Transforming Inequality Through Peaceful Rebellion))

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

“Swatting the air with the back of his hand, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme says he has nothing to say to a group of female cyclists hoping to one day ride in the sport’s greatest race.” That familiar grit returned to … Continue reading →

“This is the only time in your life…”

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

“This is the only time in your life when you can focus on your sport and your sport alone,” his stolid words echoed through the natatorium while writing today’s workout on the whiteboard. Sounds like hell, one side of me … Continue reading →

A few telescopes, some friends, and plenty of stars.

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

Saturday, June 8th, Solider’s Delight Natural Environment Area:

“That doesn’t look like a swan,” someone in the group mutters aloud.

“Well, you have to have an imagination. Remember, when the Native Americans, Greeks, and Arabs named the stars, they could see them billions at a time; there was no light pollution to inhibit their view,” an astronomer whiz shares with us.

It’s late Saturday night, and some friends and I are at Soldier’s Delight for a stargazing night put on by the Westminster Astronomy Club. Volunteers set up their elaborate telescopes for the community to use the second Saturday evening of each month. And this month, some friends and I decide to not miss out on the opportunity to look up in wide-eyed wonder.

“That’s M21 out there, you see it, to the right?” our instructor, Skip, motions.

“No, but what’s M83?” I ask.

“One of the galaxies.”

“Oh.. it’s also the name of a great band,” I share, feeling some celestial connection of music and stars.

The stars elicit questions a mile long.

What was the transit of Venus all about? What was the most memorable stargazing experience you’ve ever had? What’s the difference between a red dwarf and a brown dwarf?

“How many satellites are in the sky on any given night?” I ask.

“Well, it depends, you might be seeing an in-tact satellite, or a glove falling from a satellite, or just general space junk…” Skip muses.

“Space junk, is that anything like Space Jam?” my friend Rajni asks. We all laugh from the ground, bodies sprawled out on grass and cement in wonder and gratitude.

It’s 10 PM, which segues into 11 PM, but time is put on hold for now, and I try to stay here in this moment, in this solitude, underneath this sky, with these friends that I yearned for when I moved to inner city Baltimore a couple of years ago, lonely, and wondering what the hell I was doing was with my life.

A warm gratitude relaxes my body, like a soothing cup of hot tea, and I lay my head onto the grass. It’s amazing how many satellites you can trace with your finger across the night sky if you sit down long enough to look up.

We take turns looking through high-tech telescopes, pointed at double stars, galaxies, and Saturn. I peer into the lens. Inside, a round, pale yellow circle enclosed by a thick ring stares back, a distant object the size of my pinky fingernail.

“Woah!”

“Wow.”

“Awesome.”

Each phrase becomes a prayer, connecting us to the universe around us, back to a Maker, a Creator, that larger presence that some of us don’t mind calling God.

I find hope, awe, wonder, humility, and faith looking into each telescope lens, scientific tools enabling us to learn and unlearn of a world we cannot understand, of a largeness and vastness that just keeps going and going and going to… where? I don’t know.

But up above our heads gracefully dangle bands of gas that have swirled together to sustain a planet light years away, light from something so far away that we’re merely looking back in time to what it was lightyears ago, a time-space continuum that baffles my mind, like Back to the Future, or traveling back in time, a perpetuity I’m half-scared and half-ecstatic to enter to into, wondering if you were catapult yourself into this space, what time would it actually be?

A few telescopes, some friends, and plenty of stars bring my mind into the past and the present and future all at once. My memories drift back to the night sky of Botswana, Africa in August 2007. My 20 year old self is sleeping under the African sky with a tent full of snoring “macoas” (white people) and crickets. Just on the edge of the horizon, The Southern Cross peers out, playing a peek-a-boo game with sky and Earth. Alas, in winter solstice, that’s all we see of it this night, though hardly a disappointment. There’s stars everywhere, and they shine like the smiles of each child I met over the past two weeks here, some in orphanages, some in villages, some walking back home from school, waving jovially.

I enter back into the stars of the present, my night at Soldier’s Delight with friends, my heart drenched in melancholy for Africa, a pining so emotive, I remind myself of the promise I made to myself: to return to Africa by the time I’m 30, and I re-commit to it with alacrity.

I guess that’s what the stars do to us: awaken our sense of curiosity and wonder, our desire to learn more ponderings of how we got here, and what does it all mean, and this can’t be it, right? A pep talk sans spoken word, just twinkling of molecules daring each of us to dream bigger and surround ourselves with people who will believe in you, who will nurture the restless adventurer inside who never ceases to explore, ready for another question, a brand new musing.

And so tonight it seems there is much to be thankful for. Friends, genuinely good people, the ones I’d been trying to find in this city for the previously lonely past couple years. My life feels rich and full and like it’s about to exciting, because these dreams in my mind refuse to stay quelled as a mere idea, no— they’re ready to leap out into daylight, into air, into existence in movement and dance. I want to see it all unfold. New visas. Plane tickets. A life of making merry and mess and saying what I want to say even if my voice trembles. I want to experience a love sopping wet with life and adventure, disheveled wet drops pouring over two lovers who view everyday by asking, “How much fun can we create today?” One dream lending itself to another, another one birthing out of the completion of the former.

Alas, we drive home, but my mind is still creating new possibilities. I pay attention to car headlights meeting cement, occasionally glancing to the side to check for deer along the tree-filled roads. My friends and I talk quietly in the car, softly, sleepily, but my mind is somewhere else— Still grappling with the fact that the planet I learned about in middle school science class, drawn in a text book, not only hangs above us in the night sky, but is able to be viewed by our little eyes if only we stop to look. It’s in the sky, right now, as I type, as you read this; it’s so so far way away, appearing like a mere sticker through a 150 power telescope. But it’s out there.

Hope.

It’s out there.

Peace.

It’s out there, again and again, night after night after night after night; these sunsets, these stars, these planets, all hovering above us, never shouting, nor demanding our attention, but exuding a captivating pull, begging us into a story of wonder and awe.

I’m back at the house, eyes closed, trying to fall asleep. All I can see is the ingrained image of Saturn, an image I know will come back to me time and time again as I live out this next week. A soothing image massaging my shoulders, whispering a loving, “Don’t you worry, Child,” to all who ponder its mystery. “I won’t,” I promise back. Tomorrow, maybe, but for right now, I won’t worry. And if I’m lucky, Saturn’s image might come back in and speak that love song of serenity into my soul, into my toes, into my finger, oh I’ll live blown away…

Dear Mom…

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Melissa Otterbein

Dear Mom,

Happy Mother’s Day.

It’s taken me a while, but I think I’m starting to see what this day is about… and also what is isn’t.

You see, society has ingrained in us to see this day as a day to express gratitude for you, a mother, giving me, a child, life. Moms giving someone life. Motherhood, then, inseparable from its relation to other people, thus establishing an identity through what you’ve done, what you’ve produced– offspring, life, a living, human, pulsating, oxygen-breathing, wide-eyed curious human being through you. A type of experience involving every part of you- your heart and love, your intellect, your very body, day in day out, for the past 32 years since my big brother was born (now that I see that number, I’m grateful to be the youngest, not the oldest).

All of this is good, is great; it’s sacrificial, and quite beautiful.

I’m so in awe, now, of all you -and all those moms out there- do. The pain you went through just to introduce someone like me into this world. The challenges you faced in balancing the scales of work, life, and family, perhaps like a juggling acrobat on a tightrope wire, all without falling off. The stories you told me of gender discrimination at work, circa the time you were pregnant. The daily patience you exhibited when I was a whiny, ungrateful kid, with a knack for spilling things (some habits don’t change) and wanting your attention for every single underwater hand-stand at the pool and climb of monkey bars. Your financial support that went into not just sustaining my life, but enhancing it. (Remember when I used to take art classes? Well, that didn’t go a lot further than my clay lime popsicle I found on a shelf gathering dust in my room when I was home a couple months ago. But those swim lessons you put me through as a kid, even when I would hide in the bathroom when it was time for them to start, turned into a love for the water that has given me a blessing thousand times fold, and shaped who I am today.) From everything within me, thank you.

Thank you.

But if can impart some wisdom to you, as you’ve done for me, may I remind you that this day isn’t just about motherhood. It’s not just for those who have had biological offspring. It’s for every woman out there who’s ever looked out for a child, as a coach, mentor, leader, teacher. It’s about personhood. It’s about you and the fabulous human being you are, regardless of whether or not you procreated. There’s a reason, Mom, why I have that picture of you on a motorcycle in Brazil when you were an exchange student taped on the front door of my room. You were cool then; you’re still cool now. You have an identity apart from me, apart from Eric, and even apart from the time-consuming role you’ve had in raising a child with Down Syndrome, my sister, both of whom I love and cherish to have as siblings.
I value that identity.
Though I know you as a mother, I desire to know you as a person. Though I know you as a parent, I aspire to know you as a friend. Though I’ve known you for the past 26 years, I want to know more of you who you were before then– say, when you were 26.

I’m still not sure where I am with this whole motherhood-thing. There’s some days where I don’t want to have kids. Ever. I think about all the uncomfortable changes your body went through just to help me be here typing these words right now, and I still contend with God that sitting on eggs would be a much more enjoyable option than, well, you know. You dealt with it. The whole ordeal sounds pretty awful to me. But to give someone the opportunity to breathe, to think, to discover, to wonder, to dream, to play, to laugh, to experience every ounce of feet touching Earth or sky, well… that’s pretty beautiful. Pretty special. Quite a gift.

I’ll think on that one a little longer.

In the meantime, happy Mother’s Day to you.

I’m grateful for you.
I love you; I always will.

Mel.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.