xiii. (lucky.)

by bam

PUAC 13

13. or, if you’re feeling latin, xiii.

according to one of my encyclopedias, “13 (thirteen) is the natural number following 12 and preceding 14.” well, then. it is also the sixth prime number, the smallest emirp (yes, that’s a word, a mathematical word, and it means a prime number that is a different prime number when its digits are reversed, 13/31), and it’s a pair of digits with a whole load of baggage, both good and not-so-good. you’ve heard all about the unlucky; in fact some of you might be holding your breath all day today, seeing as it’s none other than friday the 13th. freighted with fears of misfortune, the number 13 was not used in the indy 500 from 1915 to 2002. nor, to this day, is it ever used in a triathlon.

but we are neither the indy 500 nor a triathlon, and — ta da! — the ol’ chair is 13 today, which in jewish tradition would mean it’s arrived at the age of reason, and in italy — where 13 is abounding with luck, and where fare tredici (literally, “to do 13”) amounts to “hit the jackpot” — it’s reason for joy. i’m going with the jews and italians.

13 for our purposes means we’ve traced the years, the undulations of seasons and soul, round and round and round again, pulling up a chair every friday for all of those, and mondays through thursdays as well for the first year of what was then a daily gathering (this happens to be the 945th chair posting).

13 means that i leapt into this mysterious black hole when my little one was a kindergartener, and tomorrow that same kid is riding a greyhound bus home from his first semester of college, where he will spend the next week writing three final papers. and that means this carved-out sacred space has become the place where i’ve most heartfully recorded his growing up, and his big brother’s as well (though by virtue of the fact that that kid was, hmm, 13 when i started the chair, i kept my musings about him closer to the vest and not nearly as frequent, and, truth be told, i fall to my knees in endless thanks for that miracle of having recorded priceless words and moments of both their lives before they slipped away, forever forgotten).

when i first set out on this adventure i was utterly uncertain where i was going, but i was led by an unshakable sense that the stories that unfolded in the quotidian — in the rare sacred hush, or the cacophony of chaos — were stories worth plumbing. i sensed that eternal questions loomed here where most of us live our lives. i believed that the simple act of rising before the dawn, wrapping myself in the sanctity of a new day beginning, and mining the landscape for moments and questions that begged deeper attention just might reveal a thing or two. a thing or two worth holding up to the light, worth pressing hard against my heart, maybe even pointing a new way forward.

what’s happened is nothing short of holiness, indeed. the circle of faithful readers (aka “the chairs”) has ebbed and flowed and buoyed my heart in a thousand thousand ways. always, always we’ve stayed true to the shared code of kindness, of deep consideration, of illumination through story, wit, or wallops of wisdom. there’ve been plenty of days where i was certain i hadn’t a single illumination to add to the planet, and days when i might have been wiser to say nothing at all. but i kept at it, committed in some deep down place to write to the close of the chapter. and if that chapter was the growing up of my second-born miracle child (there isn’t a child on the planet who isn’t a miracle), well then perhaps that chapter is all but written.

and so it’s uncanny that yesterday — the actual anniversary of the chair, started once upon a time on december 12, 2006 — a most breathtaking serendipity happened. what happened is that my once little one, the kid now in college, he had his very first byline, an op-ed column in his college newspaper. 13 years ago, he was a pink-cheeked sound-asleep angel curled under mounds and mounds of covers the first morning i tiptoed down the stairs to begin telling whatever story most captured my imagination and heart. now, all these stories later, he has a byline and he’s beginning to tell his own.

i can’t imagine waking up on a friday and not sitting down to type. but maybe i’ll be more apt to share the words of wiser more poetic souls i bump into along the way. maybe since i spend so many hours of my life inside the pages of other writers’ books, i’ll use this space as something of a commonplace book, a compendium of wit, wisdom and poetry snipped and culled from wherever it’s found. sometimes the stories might be mine. but maybe, now in certain adolescence, i ought to lean more on the wiser ones who surround us. and maybe i’ll ask the kid with the brand-new byline to bring one of his musings here to the table where at least one of us fell in love with him over and over again every time we put his story to the page.

with my whole heart, thank you to you who never fail to follow along, and those of you who amble by only by chance and only every once in a blue moon. a writer needn’t be read to be a writer, but when it’s a two-way street it’s all the holier. you’ve made this one of the holiest places, a living-breathing prayer in my life.

thanks for sticking around for all these years, and all these soulful meanderings.

much love,

the chair lady

just for the pure joy of it, here’s a series that pretty much captures the little one at the start of the chair. in action with my beloved beloved brother, the magnificent “uncle michael”….