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If only

If only

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Tuesday mornings, I meet with members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group. We gather at 9:00 am at the home of one of our writers. We chat and catch up with each other for about a half hour and then spend an hour and a half writing, often in response to a suggested “prompt.” At eleven, we regather and read aloud what we have written, inviting comments and critique. The prompt for this last Tuesday was “if only …”

This what I wrote …

If only she had placed her foot just a little bit to the right …
If only she hadn’t been wearing the Birkenstocks …
If only she had agreed to switch places after she told me she couldn’t see her feet …
If only I had waited until our son could help me move the bridges into the woods …
If only COVID had not meant she was teaching her last semester remotely here in
Maine instead of in person in Iowa …

If only I had not built the bridges in the first place …
If only I had not the built the trail that required the bridges in the first place …
If only we had not bought the home in Blue Hill with seven acres on which to build a
trail in the first place …
If only we had never lived in Maine and would not be drawn back to it …
If only we had never lived …

“If only” is a rabbit hole of despair. Each “if only” wishes away a little piece of my life, a little piece of me. And as the “if only’s” multiply, gratitude gives way to bitterness, anticipation is overshadowed by regret, and my once hot-blooded life turns colorless and listless while my soul feeds only on itself.

She had the better idea. Almost immediately, she began making a list, a long list, of all the good things that resulted from her accident. It was not to ignore the loss or deny the grief, but to embrace her life as it is, as it now is, because of the accident. Her list includes Jeanine, the ICU nurse who lives on our road, and Jeanine’s parents who live on our road, too, and who are now, because of Jeanine and because of the accident, counted among our friends. Her list includes tangible expressions of care from new friends in our Deer Isle church and the Deer Isle writers’ group. Her list includes a September retirement party in Iowa with both of us now able to attend which would not have happened had the accident not cancelled her May Iowa trip.< And her list includes me, shopping and cooking and washing dishes, doing laundry and prepping her shower and managing her meds, loving her in new ways because this is what it is.

“It is what it is.” It’s one of our favorite phrases. “It is what it is” is an antidote to “if only,” said not with begrudging resignation, but with clear-eyed honesty and bold acceptance. “It is what it is” embraces the here and now because it is here and now and because it is the only here and now we will ever have.

“It is what it is” is a conscious and even joyful choice for faith over despair, for hope over resignation, for life over something that may resemble life but is mere emptiness.

It is what it is … and it is good!

A different kind of communion

A different kind of communion

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This morning, in the meeting of our Deer Isle Writers’ Group, we were prompted to write about an animal encounter. This is what I wrote …

 

I was a boy.  I was a fish, swimming and diving, exploring the cerulean waters of the remote Catalina cove.

I was there because of my father.  He came to mentor university students in the way of following Jesus and brought his family of five with him.  We had driven five days from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, then taken an hour shuttle across the bay to Avalon, where we were taken by launch to Gallagher’s Bay and Campus by the Sea.

Campus by the Sea was one of several summer leadership camps developed by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  There was also Bear Trap Ranch in Colorado and Cedar Campus in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Campus in the Woods in Ontario.  I had been to them all with my father, but Campus by the Sea was my favorite.

Because it was rustic and primitive and wild.  We slept in tents, one-room half-walled wooden platforms with tattered canvas roofs and no amenities: no kitchen, no shower or toilet, no running water at all.  We used outhouses and ate in a common mess tent and had to keep watch for rattlesnakes and wild boar.  I loved it.

I was there because of my father.  And I was there, in the water, because of my father.  At the age of four, he taught me to swim and the waters — the clear and soothingly warm waters of Sebago or Winnepesaukee or Saturday Pond, or the clear and exhilaratingly frigid waters of Prentiss Bay on Lake Huron or Dog Lake in Ontario or Penobscot Bay — have been like a second home, another realm for me to live in and move in and be in, ever since.

I was a boy.  I was a fish, swimming and diving and exploring.  I spied something, something bright and shiny, maybe it was a bottle cap, on the bottom, five or six feet below me, and I dove for a closer look.  As I reached for that serendipitous treasure, I happened to look up.

And I saw and I was seen.

The truth of the matter was that I straightaway swam up and away in adrenaline-infused alarm, but that is not really the truth of the matter.  There was the moment of seeing and being seen, an almost timeless moment, sharing space, sharing consciousness, sharing being with something wild … almost endearing, almost a kind of communion, almost the making in that moment of a cross-species friendship, my face and its face just inches apart, I and the stingray.

Relay

Relay

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I had an epiphany this morning.

I was running on the treadmill, listening to Louise Connell and Andrea Von Kampen on my Nano, mind wandering among memories of summer hikes in Baxter State Park and New Hampshire’s White Mountains and Acadia, when a sudden recollection of another run, another race, came into my head.

It was the spring of my sophomore year in high school. It was the season-ending Cape Ann league track meet hosted by my school, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School. It was the meet’s final and deciding event, the mile relay. And it was the highlight of my brief career as track and field athlete.

In the mile relay, each of four teammates run a quarter-mile, once around the four hundred forty yard oval, passing a short metal baton from one runner to the next. I was selected by our coach to run the second leg.

The first leg was run by Neil Smith, another sophomore, a distance specialist, a miler. He ran a brave race, hanging tough with the sprinters. When he passed me the baton, our team was in third place, three or four yards out of second.

I turned and threw myself into a dead sprint. I shot past the runner in second place and fixed my eyes on the back of the runner in the lead. For fifty-three seconds, I saw nothing the back of his singlet, straining with everything I had to catch him. I closed the gap to three yards, but no closer, and as we came off the final turn and headed down the home stretch to where the next racers awaited us, I could push no harder and he began to increase the distance between us.

I do not remember the name of our third runner, but he blew away the rest of the field. When Dave Belton, our senior anchor, took the baton, he had a thirty yard lead and by the time he finished his lap, it was fifty. We won the race! We won the meet! It was an exhilarating, intoxicating, most proud moment.

And yet, over the years, the sweetness of my recollection of that race has been tempered by some doubt and regret. We won, but it was our third and fourth runners that brought us the victory. I failed to pass the lead runner. I closed the gap so quickly, but could not finish the job.

But I held my ground. That was my epiphany this morning. I held my ground. I held my ground and did my best. I did my job and put my team in a position to win. I didn’t win the race, but my team would not have won without me.

History is a relay. This moment in our nation’s history is a relay and we are the runners. I do not win or lose on my own. You do not win or lose on your own. But we must, each of us, hold our ground, give our best, do our job.

When we do, when we keep our eyes fixed on the prize, when we run the race, each of us, with everything we have, not giving up, pushing hard until the end, we will win.

We will win.

The Box

The Box

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This week, a member of the Deer Isle Writers Group, which I have recently joined, emailed us this challenge:

Miss our group. Here is a challenge if you wish to take it. Select an object that has been important to you and write about it. Share with the group. Add a photo if you like!

I wrote this piece yesterday in response …