pull up a chair

where wisdom gathers, poetry unfolds and divine light is sparked…

Tag: marking time

April 19, 2024

solitary vigil

hospital breakfast tray: one year ago

there are days we mark in silence, days best kept in solitude, in the quiet deep down places where only we can trace the contours of the shadow, the weight of how they’ve changed us, cleared the lens through which we see.

they’re the days that have left their mark on us, indelibly. the days in our lifetime that will forever inscribe the demarcation, time divided starkly––before and ever after. 

one by one, or one alone, they’re the days, the dates, the hours that constitute our subterrain, the strata by which our soul is shaped and stretched and textured. it’s the timeline that draws us into depths, to keener understanding of what it means to be alive. or our life, anyway.

it might be a death or disfigurement. it might be birth, or betrothal. a beginning or an end. most often, both at once. to close one chapter is, by definition, to open the next. and while some of those days are duly announced, and bracketed with anything from helium balloons to holding our breath, it might be the weightier ones––the ones whose mark is most unexpungable––best kept in solitary vigil.

it is in the profound spaciousness of unspoken thoughts that we find the room to grope for consequence, that we fumble toward those few faint stirrings that draw us closer and closer to what becomes our truth. we can’t really find our way without the grace of our aloneness, the room where knowing comes. in the beginning and the end, we tread the thin-bare thread of life with but our God to take us by the hand. or so i believe.

and here’s a truth: by the time we’ve hobbled through a few decades (or less or more, depending on our lot), we all accumulate those days. the days whose dates we don’t forget. the day we met our one true love. the long night of our first miscarriage. the house fire that chased us out. the last look into someone’s eyes. the first time the doctor put breath to the word cancer, and quickly added how surprised he was they’d found it deep inside us. 

we keep those days in cloak of silence because we are sifting still through all the ways they’ve reconfigured who we know ourselves to be, and how we move through time. 

yesterday was one such day for me. one year since i awoke on a gurney, my surgeon by my side. i shudder  now to remember it, though at the time i didn’t shudder at all. i was brave that day. it hadn’t sunk in so deeply yet. ever since, and all year long, i’ve had glimpses both of bravery and brokenness. i’ve cried buckets and, then, i’ve set my shoulders firm; i’ve faced the worst of my fears with unflinching questions, endless hours reading, and airplane rides to doctors i wish i’d never needed to know. i’ve slowly, slowly, tried to imagine adding numbers to my years. 

april 18 is a date i’ve uttered umpteen times in the last year. date of surgery: date of diagnosis. date of new beginning. date of counting time with deeper intention and attention. 

maybe the date will dim, as i move on from it. as 2024 fades to 2025 and . . . (and hallelujah for the 4 that now sits firmly where the 3 began.) a year ago today was the first time i saw my life measured in the span best known as five-year-survival rate, the chance you’ll be around five years hence. believe you me, it’s a bracing thing to count forward and hope and pray you cross the line to––bing! bing! bing! your magic number is….––04.18.28. the date now yours with odds attached. 

i’m going for broke here, and placing bets. but that’s only because at this very moment what swells in me is hope. quick as the clouds scuttle across an april sky, i might flinch, get scared, and pull my money from the table. 

my point is simply to say that there are days that define who we are, and we keep those days in silent vigil, wrap those days in certain grace. and we pray to God we come out the other side, with lessons learned and underscored, as we reach and reach toward that one repeating prayer: dear Holy Gracious God, let me make of this one most sacred day every iota of blessing that is mine––and yours––to give. 

some mornings are so much clumsier than others; this is a clumsy one, but my vow to try–even when i mostly miss–is one i take to heart. to write raw is its own peculiar dare. but here’s the why: because every fleeting while you just might catch a dust mote of life as you know it. and thus i will keep swatting at the passing motes, in hopes of putting words to those ineffable pieces of the puzzle. because we are all bumbling along together here, and in good company we find light and air.

as you look back across the plane of your life, are there days you’ve not forgotten, days you note alone and without mention, because you know how lastingly they’ve marked you? and that’s a questions whose answer you needn’t give voice to here. but just a prompt.

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December 10, 2021

almost old enough to drive a car…

fifteen years ago, on a cold and dark december dawn, i picked a name, a font, a picture, and i began to type. following the faint outlines of a dream, a vision, a sacred place where the ordinary—the quotidian—was lifted up and plumbed for universal truths and wisdoms and epiphanies. sometimes made sacramental, a transfiguration of domesticity, of the everyday, the plane where most of us live, far from fanfare, from headline, from public debate.

this old chair, pull up a chair—an invitation and a welcome—is now old enough that i nostalgically think back to the beginning, when a kindergartener was asleep upstairs. when the patterings of his pajama-bottomed feets syncopated the rhythms of this house, and when i could—and would—sweep him up in my arms, perch him on a hipbone, and bring him along, my sidekick to whatever was afoot. he’s 20 now. and he shaves.

one whole school year, this old chair (sometimes thought of as the old maple table where elbows and mugs are planted every friday morning) traveled to cambridge, our year of thinking sumptuously in the deep bookshelves and densely-packed lecture halls of harvard college, poking around in the wilds of walden pond, calling it all home sweet home from our third-floor aerie high above franklin avenue and the bells of harvard square.

two boys grew up under my close watch here; their inimitable lines and antics inscribed here. a moon walk, a lesson in the art of seeing (binoculars optional), the adventures of the long and crooked way home. and more and more…

over the years, i’ve marked deaths, and lifted up ones we dearly loved: a grandfather, grandmother, dear dear friends (mary ellen and ceci, to name two). a house, and, yes, even a beloved family cat who went by the name of turkey baby meow meow choo choo. but, too, i’ve captured birth: a niece, and a nephew who’s turning nine today.

we’ve weathered dark days—in our souls and in our one republic under God. we’ve gathered shards of light. so many, so so many.

we’ve ticked off the seasons, savoring each one for its parables, its wisdoms, and its beauties.

four books* have been birthed from here, beyond my wildest, wildest dreams. what matters is not their royalties (enough to buy a donut at the donut shop, perhaps with side of coffee) but their simple quiet existence and their placement on two particular shelves, where some day they might be pulled down, opened, read. and rememberings will come. if i’m blessed, my heart and soul will jump off the pages, and they’ll be wrapped again in my most essential murmurings. they will know, once again, how i loved them. and exactly how i made my mac ’n’ cheese.

i’ve recorded here chapter endings: my leavetaking after almost 30 years at the chicago tribune, the newspages that brought me love, joy, and lasting lessons; the leavetaking just this past year of my very own prize-winning architecture critic. high schools have been graduated from, and college, too (with another one of those now moving squarely onto the horizon). and a law school, to boot.

i’ve watch suns rise and moons illuminate the night. heard cardinals sing. and awaited the viburnum’s deliverance as it punctuates the springtime with its magnificence and its spicy perfume. 

i’ve discovered saints and poets. unfurled poetries. penned ten thousand prayers. made lasting friends. 

you’ve allowed me to be my truest self: quiet, shy in a way that can also be effervescent and effusive. profoundly prayerful, outside the bounds of any walled cathedral. you’ve allowed me to bring my heart’s many aches. and no one once has ever shamed me, a condition i was hard-wired to fear in my growing-up years.

most of all we’ve made this the sacred quiet gentle place we all believed in, and all built together. stories have been told, tears shed, laughter arisen. you’ve made me wiser, made me gasp, and taken my breath away with your wonders, your wisdoms, your ways with words.

for 15 years. almost old enough to drive a car…

bless you and thank you, thank you, thank you, from my old chair here at this most blessed table.

you have made these chairs a holy table. without you, this would be a hollow echo in a long-lost nook or cranny.

xoxox

*a fifth book is coming, and it’ll be the first whose roots are not directly traced to here. it’s my first from-scratch book, and it’s titled: The Book of Nature: The Astonishing Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text, so clearly its spirit is rooted here…..

where were you in december of 2006? and how did you find the chair?

in the category keepin’-it-humble, i had a spectacular fail last friday when i was giving a zoom talk to some 300 souls, gathered for a virtual First Friday Club of Chicago lunchtime talk, and my laptop first stuttered then died, right in the middle of 50 carefully curated slides and words. some of you might know that i get spectacularly nervous before any talk (which is why i would never ever mention an upcoming talk here), and even though wings seem to carry me most times, this was a doozy. pretty much a zoom nightmare in real time. the good folks in the control room were able to re-record the part where the fail happened, and splice it to the rest. so, thanks to the wizardry of tech geniuses, you can’t quite tell anything was amiss. but i know, and i might have a hard time forgetting. it was a talk titled, In the Stillness of Winter, Stirring Assuredly Comes. it’s about half an hour, and if you want a bit of chair come to life, minus the blooper, here tis.

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February 2, 2018

-30-

ct-tribune-tower-sold-0928-biz-20160927

in the newspaper world, -30- means “the end.” at the bottom of every reel of type flying off the typewriter, once upon a time, a big-city scribe tapped four keys to signal the end, so the typesetters knew to move onto the next big story in their end-of-day unreeling of the hot breaking news.

all these years, the -30- stuck. only i grabbed it from my typesetting keys this morning not because of an ending, really, but because a bespectacled scribe i happen to love, one whose flight i’ve witnessed from an up-close unedited perch, he’s been waiting and waiting for today. today is the day he gets his 30-year watch. thirty years of calling himself a “chicago tribune reporter.” thirty years of chasing down just about any I-beam that dared to move in this old town. thirty years of thumbs-up or thumbs-down on wild-eyed architects’ intentions to make no small plans.

but more than what’s beautiful, soaring, inspiring, or not, he sees the way the carved-out hollows and high-rises of a big american city might move the human species into communion, or tear them apart. he understands the nuts and bolts of design, but he’s keen on justice and social equity; he understands the political powers and petty feuds that sometimes stand in the way of what makes a city — and its peoples — work, or not work.

and he’s spent three decades teaching all of us, teaching anyone who turns the pages of every day’s news, to do the same. it’s a way of seeing he’s intent on not keeping to himself.

and ever since the hot august morning of 1987 when he strolled into the chicago tribune newsroom in his navy brooks brothers blazer, white oxford, and khakis — aka “the uniform” — i’ve been watching. took another year till i rose to my rank as “girlfriend,” and then another three years before “wife” was affixed to my status (we had a lot to figure out, mostly in the religion department, during those long should-we-or-shouldn’t-we years).

so i know, more than almost anyone, just how much it means to him to have hit the sweet 3-0. to know that tonight, at the annual bacchanal that is the tribune awards hoopla, he will, at last, get his chicago tribune watch. actually, in a move that is so classily elegant and fair-hearted and loving as to be a signature BK move, he’s getting two tribune watches tonight. he put in an order for a pair, one for each of our boys, so someday, both will have a relic from their papa, one he wrote soooooo many stories to snare, one that in some scant way captures the nights after nights that he kept watch over stories, called in corrections to the desk, gave up a friday night dinner, surrendered a holiday, took yet another call from a “source,” chased a hot tip. because when you’re the son of a newspaper man (and he is) getting the news and getting it right, and never ever backing down from the truth, well, that’s religion to him. and he is devout, if anything.

and that might be the beauty of nights like tonight: they squeeze you into the think-back machine. have a way of making you stop in your tracks, think back across the long arc of your history, sift for those gold nuggets of meaning. (and you know i never ever miss a chance for gazing back over my shoulder, for rubbing my palms against the fine grain of time, squeezing out every succulent drop of “significance.”)

it’s the pause in the plot that always, always holds the possibility of taking life up a notch. that slows us down long enough to realize this isn’t just a race to the finish line, but rather a slow contemplative unspooling that is best lived and best understood, most certainly held up to the radiant light, if we pay close close attention to all the unspoken strands, the subtle and poignant shifts along the way, the moments where we rose up to champion status, where we lived with every ounce of hope and faith with which we were created and dreamt into being, and where we humbly account for our stumbles, realign our compasses and set forth again.

it’s a magnificent reel, this thing called our life, and it’s most closely savored when every once in a while we watch it in slo-mo, stop-gap, how’d-we-get-here, hallelujah style. and then, to anoint the moment, we bend knee, bow head, and whisper a holy thank you.

never, ever, in a million years did i imagine this 30 would bring my bespectacled scribe — and me, and thus W and T (our two and only double-bylines) — along this most blessed road to here.

a billion blessings, BK. and thank you.

-30-

BlairKamin4-1

have you hit the pause button lately, to look back on the road to where you are now? what have you gleaned, and what lessons might you carry forward?

p.s. an emphatic post-script to clarify, clarify, clarify: BK is NOT leaving the tribune, merely collecting his 30-year watch. he will be writing and writing and writing. so sorry for leaving wrong impression. it’s a tribune tradition that you get your watch and get right back to work. so so sorry if i left anyone thinking this was The End…..

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December 11, 2015

nine.

nine

we mark time to measure something far deeper than the number of days. we mark time to take stock of our soul. to plumb its depths. to trace across its undulations. to peek into the shadowy places, and bask in the patches of pure illumination.

tomorrow, the twelfth day of the twelfth month, this old chair will once again glide across the stretch of shadow and light on which it began. its ninth circle round the sun. nine years of keeping watch, of perking my ears to the faintest of whispers. the whispers of the heart, yes. but just as certainly the wind rustling the leaves. the blue jay’s squawking. the world holding its breath. the pounding of bare soles against hardwood planks, rushing to the door to welcome love home.

at the break of dawn on december 12, 2006, i tiptoed down the stairs to a little nook of a room where a screen glowed, a screen waiting to be filled with words, with pictures, with postcards from the front — the homefront, in this case. the heart and soul of the homefront.

i had no real idea how all of this would unspool. but i knew that i wanted to carve out a hollow of quiet, a tide pool along the rushing river of life, where you and i might plop our bottoms onto a rock, might dip our finger into the current, might watch the light shifting, listen for the crunch of the forest under the wee padded feet of the creatures who call the woods home.

i knew i wanted a sacred someplace. a place where kindness prevailed. a gentle place, a home for tenderness and telling the truth. a place where we could bring our brokenness, or, just as emphatically, our bold claims of hope.

it would be an enchanted someplace. or at least that’s what i prayed.

i’ve long believed in enchantment. long believed in the possible. and the power of divine imagination. you can, sometimes, if you’re spectacularly lucky and a whole lot blessed, will your way to the landscape of which you dream.

when i was little i spent long hours in the woods across the way from the house where i grew up with a motley crew of four brothers. i plunked sticks into the pond where the ancient turtle basked on a log. i splashed across the rocks in the stream where crawfish bobbed from deep down in the dark.

that’s where i learned to believe in so very much of what still matters — the sanctity of silence, the incandescence of heavenly light, the blessing of being alone, the joy of muddy boots.

and maybe, too, that’s where i learned to believe that, fueled by imagination and spiced with a good dash of faith, i just might carve out a holy place.

and if there’s come to be anything holy about this make-believe table, circled with so many old chairs, it’s thanks to the good grace of your company — your day-after-day, week-after-week, year-upon-year coming by to share a few words, or a story, or kindness or wisdom. and ladles of love.

looking back over the nine blessed years — and thanks to the wizards at wordpress who keep track of these things — i can see at a glance just where these 729 posts have taken us, a bit of a roadmap in reverse, a by-the-numbers snapshot of what’s captured our imagination: 39 posts have considered the angels among us, 16 times i’ve laughed at myself (clearly, no one was counting), stillness has been a subject 22 times, motherhood 101, motherlove 44, mother prayer 17. we turned to cooking — for comfort, for joy — 42 times. blessings have been the subject du jour 64 times, paying attention 51 times, worry 11 (yet another serious under-estimate), wisdom only once (egad!). savoring moments, at 89 posts, is solidly a leitmotif.

and in just the last year here at the chair, we’ve traversed death and grief, awe and hope and hearts that are shattered by the most intimate of devastations or those played out on the world stage. we’ve considered quiet and the eloquence of silence. and this year, blessedly, the trumpets blared at the prodigal homecoming of my firstborn. i’ve written of words and books and harper lee. but if i had to pick three posts that will stick with me forever, it would be the prayer of remembering, the day my little one tried his hand at healing the sick, and, more than any other this year, the magic day at the magic hedge, where my most beloved friend and i pressed each sacred hour against our hearts, knowing, too well, the hours — and she — would soon slip away, a hole in my heart will ache till the end of time.

bless you. and thank you. for every kindness. for every dollop of wisdom. for your patience, your faith, and your blessedness. for the times you make me laugh out loud. and for every time you’ve made me wipe away a tear. from my heart to yours, a never-ending embrace.

may we never give up on the promise to infuse this weary old world with all the love and goodness we can possibly muster.

much love, b.  images

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