So I've been thinking about this defunct blog for awhile, just sort of acknowledging in the back of my mind that it existed, and that I hadn't posted anything in a while. Then tonight I logged in and saw the last post was dated 2008. Holy cow!
This is, of course, a perfectly appropriate analogy for my life. When I last posted here, I was pregnant, taking long walks, contemplating theological questions, writing extensively in my journal, etc. Then the last two-and-a-half years happened, feeling alternately like a freight train and a waiting room.
That little being I was contemplating last time I wrote...she'll be two in a month. She is delightful, and strong-willed, funny, and loud. And that wordy, reflective grad student who was waxing philosophical about existence...well, I'm still here, but in the meantime I've finished grad school, moved back to West Virginia, and been totally turned inside out psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually by the process of becoming a mother. Probably I've been changed by just getting a little older, too, but it's impossible to separate that from the experience of parenthood that has so defined and circumscribed the past years. That process continues, but for the first time in a long time I feel like I'm maybe beginning to get a handle on it, on some deep level. There are at least moments in every day when I feel like I'm riding the wave, instead of fighting the current, gasping for air, or just trying to stay afloat; not necessarily in the practical things, but in my experience of my self and my life.
I'm looking at this funny little published diary, then, and thinking that it's nice to have a record of sorts of 2008, which was in many ways a seminal year. I'm thinking also that it seems fitting to pick it back up at this point, because I am literally for the first time in years feeling that I have some creative energy for things like poetry or songs or pictures (or blogging). It's energy that in 2009 and 2010 was certainly present, but channeled for the most part into the more practical creative pursuits of parenting, gardening, renovating, cooking, walking, yoga--things, for the most part, that are physical, immediate, and without words. That was a strange and defining feeling of the past couple of years, the sense of just not having words for things and experiences. Clearly, this is not usually a problem for me, hyper-verbal as I am. And it was really kind of refreshing and beautiful in its own way.
As I write this, I am realizing two things. First is that I have been an absolutely voracious reader, mostly of short articles and stories, since my daughter was born. I wonder, thinking about it now, if part of the way I dealt with feeling unable to articulate or process my own 'story' was by immersing myself in other people's worlds and words. Second, it strikes me as interesting that my own sense of language coming back to me is happening almost concurrently with my daughter's development of language. She is right in the middle of the developmental phase where language just explodes--new words every day, a whole new level of thinking and of memory and of making sense of her world and interacting with it through words. Of course, there's plenty of other developmental leaps, and burgeoning independence, that might have something to do with me feeling more settled and centered. Still, something about the mirror and the metaphor of that process--her language acquisition and my recovery of language--rings true to me.
Enough with the words for now. One big reason I was motivated to post this is because I finished a song! I've never been prolific as a songwriter, but this was the first in years. I'm not going to go on about the process of writing it and what it's about, because it should speak for itself. I am so grateful to a good friend of mine who, though her own process of beginning to sing and play again after a long creative dry spell, motivated me to work on it (and basically wrote the chord arrangement), and also to Drew who totally indulged me by playing the guitar on the impromptu recording, which we made in the kitchen tonight. I'm going to try to post it here, once I figure out the technical side of it. (Update: here it is!)
