Ocean View
Jan­u­ary 13, 2010
By Jude Rittenhouse

Only two of the past dozen win­ters have been con­sis­tently snowy here on Rhode Island’s shore. We often get rain while snow is falling to the north but, as 2009 flowed into 2010, tem­per­a­tures got stuck below freez­ing. Estu­ar­ies and salt ponds clogged with ice. On days like this one, snow stretches its white dis­guise inter­rupted only by stone walls and trees. Beyond this illu­sion of a black and white land­scape, ocean wears a per­fect blue, reflect­ing an unre­lent­ing cloud­less sky. NPR reports that pro­duce and cit­rus crops in Florida will suf­fer from this extended cold envelop­ing the entire East Coast. How lit­tle con­trol we humans have, despite all our tech­nol­ogy, despite our desire for certainty.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ously lived in Ohio’s snow­belt, Chicago, Boul­der, and Mil­wau­kee; I’m almost grow­ing used to the kind of skin-ripping cold I knew before my life on this more mod­er­ate coast. I’m reminded how humans can become accus­tomed to and bear almost any­thing. Almost. Yes­ter­day, my neigh­bor told me she had received a late-night call, inform­ing her that her youngest brother had com­mit­ted sui­cide. This call came soon after a cri­sis in her mother’s health that required a trans­fer to ICU. After years of a soli­tary life plagued by excru­ci­at­ing daily headaches, pos­si­bly around the time his mother’s health dete­ri­o­rated and crashed, this man felt he could bear no more. I think of his pain, his mother’s, his sis­ters’ and brother’s. Extrem­i­ties of phys­i­cal and emo­tional pain need com­pan­ion­ship. Although my neigh­bor and I rarely con­nect, we feel com­forted, know­ing that we are nearby in emergencies—a word so akin to the plural form of emergence.

In the final days of 2009 as a new decade pre­pared to begin, I wrote in my jour­nal about con­nec­tions, about life and death, real­ity and illu­sion. On the evening of Decem­ber 29th while watch­ing a wax­ing gib­bous moon rise high enough to cast a long and decep­tive shadow, I noticed the maple out­side my office win­dow. This tree has three forks grow­ing from its trunk, yet the shadow cast by moon made it appear to lose one of its selves, reveal­ing only two of its trio. I didn’t know where this image would lead on that evening when I’d been up since 3AM, when I was tired yet deeply awake. I had been watch­ing a video of Peter, Paul and Mary—a Christ­mas gift from my pre­cious only sis­ter. She had watched the trio on TV in Illi­nois before the hol­i­days and thought of me, so went on-line, ordered the disc, and sent it to con­nect across the twelve hun­dred miles sep­a­rat­ing us.

My love and I saw Peter, Paul and Mary per­form in Prov­i­dence last year, just months before Mary died. I won­dered on this end of a decade night: are they now two? Or, like that maple’s shadow pro­claims, is death an illu­sion made of angles, shadow, light? That same day, I had received a 1992 photo of my mother and long-dead father laugh­ing on their couch in Illi­nois. My youngest brother in Wash­ing­ton emailed it to his five sib­lings scat­tered across the coun­try. This brother, like so many peo­ple, recently became unem­ployed, despite nearly two decades of ser­vice with the same com­pany. In what began as some­thing verg­ing on an act of finan­cial des­per­a­tion, he has set in motion the prob­a­bil­ity that he’ll soon leave to work in a Mid­dle East­ern coun­try for a year, assum­ing he sur­vives that year. Dis­tance, sep­a­ra­tion, con­nec­tion, dis­con­nec­tion: these felt kin­dred to that illu­sion of a two-forked tree-shadow stretch­ing across our yard while ocean’s skin turned to a smoke-like mist. As tem­per­a­tures drop near zero, ocean’s omnipresent invis­i­ble mist freezes, gets exposed by light hit­ting ice crystals.

Earth brings such sur­prises when we let her. When we cease our false cer­tainty. When we release each belief, every known. That night, as I floated in exhaustion’s foamy wake won­der­ing what is true, earth answered me with evi­dences that pro­claimed the false­ness of absence. At what tem­per­a­ture would my father’s laugh­ter once again become audi­ble? What trick of light might erase my mother’s demen­tia? Is Alzheimer’s dis­ease like that gib­bous moon cast­ing a tem­po­rary false image? When dawn’s rasp­berry tongue licks the sleep from my eyes, will I once again see the truth of my mother? Day­light shows me that maple’s tril­ogy. When I lis­ten, I hear all the old voices singing.

My mother is still teach­ing me. She seems hap­pi­est when she lets go of try­ing to know. At those times, her anx­i­eties van­ish. She relaxes into what­ever the moment presents to her, no longer agi­tated about what may or may not be com­ing, about what she should have done or should be doing. Her best moments seem to come when those around her exude hap­pi­ness, love, or just a sim­ple calm­ness. Yet earth does bring phys­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties: being in a body means that we feel pain and loss. The lessons here are intri­cate and mus­cu­lar, like a bal­let. They refuse to be stripped naked and nailed down into an over­sim­pli­fied logic of sen­tences. So I’ll go into this tem­po­rary leav­ing with a poem, trust­ing that this dance of con­nec­tions will con­tinue emerging.

Humankind

Today’s light hides
night’s nations of con­stel­la­tions.
Exposes the bones
of sky, ocean, trees, stones. Imag­ine
each of us liv­ing
like those unseen stars: from our molten
hearts. Each soul
doing its part of what we came, together,
to do. We
could not help but inspire each other.
Could not help
but help but each other bear
truth. Which is to say:
the illu­sion of unbear­able losses. Come
with me now
beyond shad­ows cast by light’s inevitable
obsta­cles. Remem­ber­ing
the nature of form and sub­stance: being
in bod­ies. Hurtling
along with earth’s slow deaths and rebirths
beneath the intol­er­a­ble speed
of light.

Adden­dum:
After I had writ­ten this entry, news about the earth­quake in Haiti began to over­whelm us all. The mag­ni­tude of phys­i­cal losses con­tin­ues to clar­ify as the cold wave here breaks and snow begins to melt. Far to the south, peo­ple kneel against earth, dig­ging with their bare hands, des­per­ate to save those who may still be saved. No won­der we often pre­fer to focus on light and its warmth. Earth’s hard sur­prises become far too real, and her heavy body feels dan­ger­ous. Times like these remind us of our pre­car­i­ous­ness, our fragility. They also teach us that, phys­i­cally, we are all we have. When we remem­ber this, we also become what saves us.

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Jude Rit­ten­house has received a Writer’s Grant from the Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter, a first place short story award, and var­i­ous poetry awards. In addi­tion to her holis­tic prac­tice, Inte­grated Heal­ing Ser­vices, Jude teaches at con­fer­ences, retreats, schools, hos­pi­tals, alter­na­tive health cen­ters, and domes­tic vio­lence shel­ters. She is also an inspi­ra­tional speaker and pre­sen­ter for lit­er­ary audi­ences, can­cer sur­vivors, spir­i­tual gath­er­ings, high school and col­lege stu­dents, and other groups. In all of her endeav­ors, she strives to empower oth­ers as they explore their unique jour­neys toward wholeness.

To learn more about her holis­tic prac­tice or to inquire about her poetry chap­book, Liv­ing In Skin, con­tact: [email protected] or call (401) 348‑8079.
www.IntegratedHealingServices.com
www.JudeRittenhouse.com