at heart, it’s survival
by bam
in this moment of pandemic, amid news reports that make us sometimes want to plug our ears, amid barren calendar pages turned week after week, our everyday tasks are shifted. gone is the dashing here and there (and that’s a very fine thing). gone are the awful tugs and pulls, the guilt strings that tell us we should be doing X,Y, or Z.
instead, it’s distilled to more of the essence: the few things that really do matter, the ones that matter all the more because all the distraction’s been whittled away. we’re left with essential. and essential is this: exercise your heart, your voluminous, many-chambered heart. use it for its highest purest purpose. use it to love. use it to survive. use it for survival, plain and not so simple.
or, as my online-college kid put it last night, as he pounded out one of his pile of end-of-semester papers: “corona mom, keep your boys safe. and sane.” (the emphasis on that second sentence, the way he emphatically tacked it onto the first, made it clear that that’s every bit of my job these red-ringed-dodging days. and i couldn’t take it more certainly to heart.)
i’d been thinking a bit about how–in between hours of proofing and re-proofing pages for a new book–my corona days have boiled down to a whole lot of caretaking. how hunting and gathering inform my weekly rhythms (primarily in the form of my hazmat-outfitted grocery-store runs). how feeding is hardly an afterthought. how each night i’m taking time to plot out some serious semblance of dinner, even if, like last night, tearing open bags from the freezer is part of the equation, and it’s hardly all scratch cooking. (though there are days when simmering pots on the stove are as close to incantation as a kitchen might be.) how spritzing pillow cases with lavender water, how scrubbing out the bathtub and sink, how all of it feels essential, verging on straight-up survival. yes, even the scrubbing.
and then, of course, there are the interludes when i’m plopped on the side of someone’s bed, rubbing little circles on someone’s weary forehead. or putting aside those pages of proofs when someone asks, “can you help me with this grilled cheese?”
it is all a part of essential. especially, emphatically, now.
and then i read an essay from a brilliant filmmaker (and lawyer), kalyanee mam, once a cambodian refugee, born during the god-awful khmer rouge regime, one of seven children whose early years were spent in a work camp, before her family escaped through jungle and landmines to a refugee camp on the thai-cambodian border. during the years of the khmer rouge, mam writes that her mother sustained her brood with umami soups, chicken rice, and fried noodles. and that template of nourish-to-survive is the one to which mam has turned in these corona times. she writes:
During these past weeks, I’ve thrown myself into the role of caregiver, as my mother once did. As I soak and sprout beans and rice, chop onions, carrots, and celery, mince and sauté garlic, knead dough, and bake bread, I am finding certainty, meaning, and purpose in preparing and sharing food and conversation with family, friends, and neighbors. In taking care of my loved ones and making sure they are fed, nourished, healthy, and well, I am also being fed. Time has stopped and nothing feels more important.
nothing feels more important.
it’s not every day that we realize that tending to the domesticities of our lives matters at all. most of the time, in the days before corona, that was the almost-disregarded part of what some of us did. those were the chores. the necessities. but maybe, somewhere along the way, we’d come to misunderstand necessity, confused it for meaningless. when, in fact, it’s everything but.
or, as kalyanee mam put it:
care and love are not luxuries: they are necessities, the essence of all life and our survival. in the worst of times and in the face of adversity, care thrives….when our basic human needs are threatened, including our need for certainty, meaning, and purpose, caring emerges to inform us that we are not alone.
it’s this instinct to care, to take care, to make care, that might make all the difference. that might be the essence of why we’re here at all.
in pondering caring, and what it means to take care, mam writes of the anthropologist margaret mead and her idea of the first sign of civilization. it’s an insight mead long ago revealed in a lecture, and it was retold in a book by the eminent surgeon dr. paul brand, titled, the gift of pain. the revelation, and brand’s take on its meaning, unfolded like this:
“What would you say is the earliest sign of civilization?” Mead asked, naming a few options. A clay pot? Tools made of iron? The first domesticated plants? “These are all early signs,” she continued, “but here is what I believe to be evidence of the earliest true civilization.”
High above her head she held a human femur, the largest bone in the leg, and pointed to a grossly thickened area where the bone had fractured and solidly healed.
“Such signs of healing are never found among the remains of the earliest, fiercest societies. In their skeletons we find violence: a rib pierced by an arrow, a skull crushed by a club. But this healed bone shows that someone must have cared for the injured person—hunted on his behalf, brought him food, served him at personal sacrifice.”
With Margaret Mead, I believe that this quality of shared pain is central to what it means to be a human being.… And the presence of a caring person can have an actual, measurable effect on pain and on healing.
“civilization,” mam concludes, “begins with care.”
and so, we are, all of us, called to care, to share the pain of those we love. to exercise that glorious vessel, the heart. the one anointed and appointed to love and love lavishly. to love as we would be loved. to love as if there’s not a tomorrow. to love with all the urgency of now. as if it might keep us alive. because, truly, it might.
and with that, may your mothering day — a day for all who mother, who care, who love tenderly and fiercely and without end — may it be blessed.
your thoughts on taking care, on the exercise of the heart, and the necessity of love and survival? in any time, but especially now?
So much to ponder here. My favorite lines are:
“…tending to the domesticities of our lives matters.”
“Civilization begins with care.”
Every Thursday, we take a home-cooked meal down to our son who lives near Wrigley Field. Some weeks, the meals have been more elaborate than others. Yesterday’s delivery was simply grilled chicken and pesto pasta. Even so, he was incredibly grateful. I have been surprised by how much this caring gesture matters to him.
We can’t bring home-cooked meals to our daughter and son-in-law in Madison, but we did send them some Lou Malnati’s pizzas via UPS. They also were incredibly grateful to have a little bit of home delivered to their door.
The day when we can all gather around an actual real table again will be a sacred moment.
i love that you’ve made that your ritual. sacramental ritual, indeed. one played out in tupperware and miles on odometer. i love that lou’s carries that love to your far-off firstborn. i love how we find ways to love, to feed. and all the way the one we sustain most certainly just might be our very own self.
love, the original mystery. the balm with no end.
bless your world-loving self, dear hh.
I think of so MANY ways that you show your caring — to your family, your neighbors, all of us here at the table, and beyond. With food. Words. Notes. Books. And your care ripples out to so MANY others beyond.
In 1993, I had a desk piled with work, feeling the stress of gotta-get-it-done, when the receptionist walked into my office crying so hard I couldn’t understand her words. Finally I understood — someone who had worked with us, but had moved on to another job, was dead. He was 53. He had hired me and was a dear, long-time friend of my boss, who was sitting in the next office, and to whom I then had to tell the devastating news. It looked like I had punched him in the gut, he physically bent. After awhile, my office quiet again, I looked at all the paperwork and thought — none of it matters a whit. Everything that moments ago was so all-fire important didn’t matter.
That’s part of what’s been so difficult about this pandemic — there’s so little we can do to change the trajectory of tragedy.
But.
Truly, loving those around us, being able to accept love in return (a little harder for some of us), doing the “small things with great love” as Mother Teresa said — there’s nothing better in this world. And no one better than you at showing us how to love and care. Bless you. xoxo
oh, my that story packs a mighty wallop. i feel the kick to the gut. can picture the bent-over pain of hearing the news.
in this awful terrible time, we can’t change the big picture, but each and every hour, and each and every minute nestled inside each of those hours, those are ours to change. the petit-point as a friend of ours practices. we can embroider the beauty, the love, the trying so hard into every minute we so choose. small things, indeed, with magnifying love.
you, sweet friend, are a master of making those minutes miraculous. i know; i’ve received from you soooo many times. xoxox
I sit and absorb your words and those of the spirits around the table and am
grateful for the essence of your souls.. of lessons learned….Kalyanni’s reflections, the healed femur, your own Motherly dedication to soul-comfort.
What’s it all about? What it has been about all along, that we have been too
rushed to notice…this tribulation has drawn most of us into the recognition that love and caring for and about one another is a wisdom gift that gives for
a lifetime, if well tended and nurtured…particularly in trying times. This is
what has mattered and been life-giving all along. The pile of paper on the desk has been blown away by discovery.
beautifully, beautifully put, dear HH. thank you for your keen attention, and your wisdom. always wisdom…..
bless you.
your friend, b
I love you too, our bam.
this took my breath, this gift from a beloved friend, this passage from rebecca solnit for mothering day. i’ve written about how i embrace mother, the verb, but i’ve never written about the many mother forms out there–animate and inanimate–surrounding us, reaching out for us, sometimes saving us.
from my beautiful friend andrea, who received it from a beautiful friend of hers. that’s how mother friends work…
by Rebecca Solnit:
Mother is a verb as well as a noun, so I hope everyone can honor whatever mothers them and whatever capacity to mother they have, or the equivalent in whatever gender language works for them. I think of the healthcare workers, the mostly female volunteer maskmakers across the country, the mutual aid projects, and all the other ways people are taking care of each in this most unusual mother’s day in memory, and here’s something I wrote a while back:
Some people had great mothers but lost them, some had or have mothers who never mothered them or stopped mothering them for some reason, treated them as adversaries or as worthless, and Mother’s Day can be a punitive day for all those for whom this is true. The other half of the question of what there is to celebrate is what mothered and mothers you, how you mother yourself, how you celebrate and recognize what cares for you and takes care of you, and what do you care for in return.
I remember once looking at the Pacific Ocean, to which I often reverted in trouble, and thinking “Everything was my mother but my mother.” Books were my mother, coastlines, running water and landscapes, trees and the flight of birds, zazen and zendos, quiet and cellos, reading and writing, bookstores and familiar views and routines, the changing evening sky, cooking and baking, walking and discovering, rhythms and blues, friends and interior spaces and all forms of kindness, of which there has been more and more as time goes by.
And of my own mother I wrote, in The Faraway Nearby: Like lawyers, writers seek consistency; they make a case for their point of view; they do so by leaving out some evidence; but let me mention the hundreds of sandwiches my mother made during my elementary school years, the peanut butter sandwiches I ate alone on school benches in the open, throwing the crusts into the air where the seagulls would swoop to catch them before they hit the ground. When my friends began to have babies and I came to comprehend the heroic labor it takes to keep one alive, the constant exhausting tending of a being who can do nothing and demands everything, I realized that my mother had done all these things for me before I remembered. I was fed; I was washed; I was clothed; I was taught to speak and given a thousand other things, over and over again, hourly, daily, for years. She gave me everything before she gave me nothing.
May you locate the ten thousand mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves.
“who love tenderly and fiercely and without end” thank you Barbie for your love walk and this table (you) that has touched so many – many times.
Love your descent into anthropology and femurology!
This is a profound finding indeed. The femur healed
s t r o n g e r after than before. And someone cared for the breakee — the dawning of intervention, of sacrificially loving for a n o t h e r thus the emergence of civilization. Speaking of BONES I broke my tibia
in 1972 and many friends and family signed my cast on my left leg. This was civilized, made me feel special and honored that I was in the healing business and I was seen, recognized and SIGNED.
My fav line from Avatar “I C U” (my spelling to emphasize the care giving in the words.) Barbie thanks for always saving a chair for your oldest younger brother, and I like your blog name that starts with an active verb! ♥️🎈🎵
pure joy to find you here at the table, MEM. i too loved unearthing that bit of anthropological truth: that the art of healing marked the beginning of what we know as civilization. and may that be true clear to the end…..
“who love tenderly and fiercely and without end” thank you Barbie for your love walk and this table (you) that has touched so many – many times.
Love your descent into anthropology and femurology!
This is a profound finding indeed. The femur healed
s t r o n g e r after than before. And someone cared for the breakee — the dawning of intervention, of sacrificially loving for a n o t h e r thus the emergence of civilization. Speaking of BONES I broke my tibia
in 1972 and many friends and family signed my cast on my left leg. This was civilized, made me feel special and honored that I was in the healing business and I was seen, recognized and SIGNED.
My fav line from Avatar “I C U” (my spelling to emphasize the care giving in the words.) Barbie thanks for always saving a chair for your oldest younger brother, and I like your blog name that starts with an active verb! ♥️🎈🎵
another morsel brought to the table a few days later. i was reading a lovely interview with an activist and social justice warrior who works mostly with latin/x communities in california’s farm country. he was talking about learning to love in the lessons of his grandma and her tortillas. this is what he said:
…of the lessons of his “grandma’s tortillas. Though she is in the above and beyond, I can see my children learning to love like her in the way they roll and knead the tortilla dough, when they wait patiently to flip on the comal, when they taste a shared meal, and the way they send and give our tortillas to neighbors and friends in this time of social distancing. In all of this, they are learning to do ministry as my grandma did: in the midst of deep suffering and pain, showing an abundance of love and healing.“