Thresholds

Beginnings, endings, and what we can hold

Around this time last year, we started planning a small remodel to the back of the house. Where there was a high window, we wanted to put in a sliding glass door, so we could easily watch the kids playing in the backyard from the kitchen. Just beside that, we wanted to replace the original back door with a large window, and bump the wall out a few feet to extend the width of the tiny landing leading to the basement playroom, where I do laundry and homeschool the kids.

This was the first time we could even think about taking on something this big— even though, as remodels go, the project was quite small. Small, we thought, and yet it took the better part of a year to go from planning to designing to permitting and finding a contractor. Small, we thought, and yet so much more detailed and expensive than we’d imagined at first.

Eyeing my due date (tomorrow!) with our fourth child, we anxiously watched and waited as the contractor worked, through snow and hail and the many, many other varieties of precipitation that grace us in a Pacific Northwest spring. Would the weather allow him to finish everything in time? Would we still be in the middle of construction when the baby came? There were lots of interrupted naps, and plenty of awkward, pregnant sidling through floor-to-ceiling plastic barriers as I carried loads of laundry up and down the stairs. And then, all at once, it was finished.

It’s a strange feeling to walk through a door that wasn’t there before.

Where before we had shadows and a messy pile of boots and coats, now we have light pouring into the kitchen, and a little back porch where my early-rising daughter likes to sit, barefoot, in the cool morning air. Now when one of the kids asks me breathlessly, Did you see me on the monkey bars, mama? as I’m slicing apples at the kitchen counter, I can honestly answer, Yes!

It’s almost May, and I’ve walked through our new sliding door many times, carrying towels and flip flops and juice cups as we soak in the first sunny days above 70 degrees that we’ve had since October. The past few days have been such a gift, lifting my mood and taking my mind off its endless loop of the same question, When will this birth begin?

What a season of thresholds. I have been watching and waiting for the miracle of these warm days, for an end to the endless rain. For the soil to dry out enough to plant potatoes, and for an extravagance of pink magnolia buds to open on my favorite tree. I’ve been waiting to move from winter to spring, from acupuncture student to graduate, from pregnant to postpartum.

At Easter, I walked through a door that I’d never imagined opening for me, as I entered the Catholic church as a new convert. It felt both utterly new and so familiar to receive communion for the first time, in full participation in the mass and union with the Church. I am still processing that experience and exploring what it means to be Catholic, as I expect I will be, in some ways, for the rest of my life.

With plenty of time to take a close-up look at these moments of change and transition, I’ve been noticing how interconnected they are— endings and beginnings, beginnings and endings. A sliding door turns a solid barrier into a permeable one, where it’s possible to be both inside and outside at once. The end of the nine-month preparation for Catholic confirmation is also the beginning of discipleship, the end of discernment and the beginning of a new kind of freedom. Birth is itself a series of transitions, with layers of opening and intensity that lead two people from one way of being connected to a new version, a separation that is itself another stage of growth and change.

When we talk about thresholds, we also mean capacity. How much weight can a joist bear in a home under construction? Have we reached our limit of rainy days, even as stalwart Oregonians who refuse umbrellas? What’s my ability to endure the pain of childbirth, and how will it be different this time around? And how is it that out of pain and difficulty, from dark and rainy days, from uncertainty and mess and dust, there can come so much light, the beginnings of new life?

Christ does not come to make us happy/ but to stand with us in the pain of life/ until joy like a seed rises, writes poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes. There is something about the two— about joy and sorrow, joy and suffering— that is like a sliding glass door. On earth, it seems, the two are not separate. Or they give birth to each other, the way a mother is made by a child, and vice versa.

During this long winter-spring, I’ve been reading Dorothy Day’s journals, The Duty of Delight, alongside Ross Gay’s new book, Inciting Joy. They are possibly the perfect companions— which maybe shouldn’t be surprising, given that Gay’s previous book is The Book of Delight, a catalogue of the kind of beauty that grows up through the cracks of an overly-asphalted world.

Ross Gay’s sensibilities as a poet make his essays sing. I love the exuberance of his writing, his subversion of genre conventions, the way he weaves the mundane and the un-literary— references to Fraggle Rock, skateboarding, the Fedco seed catalog— through deeply serious essays on the death of a loved one and environmental racism. His writing itself incites joy. It bubbles up, irreverent, on every page.

And what he says about joy, over and over in this book, is that it is an act of solidarity. We meet one another, we find communion, in our shared sorrow— which is unavoidable, inherent to human life. It’s in the garden bed of pain that joy grows. Where it, in fact, must grow.

Dorothy Day (founder of the Catholic Worker) had something to say about that. A tireless advocate for the poor, she somehow managed to keep a diary through the Depression, World War II, the tumultuous changes of the 1950s and 60s, and beyond. The Duty of Delight shows us that though far from perfect, she was astonishingly resolute in her faith. She held unpopular views on pacifism and Communism, and persisted in her work in the face of near-constant criticism and setbacks. As a community, the Catholic Worker home in New York City was always on the move, often short on rent, and frequently host to some of the city’s most undesirable tenants— eccentrics, alcoholics, the poor, the ill, the difficult.

This phrase that springs up over and over again in her journal entries— the duty of delight— comes from poet and artist John Ruskin, in a meditation on God's presence and providence in the beauty of the natural world. Yes, he writes, we have a duty to self-sacrifice, a command to work for others in God’s kingdom. But perhaps more truthfully, we have a duty to delight in what God offers us, daily, everywhere. We are not meant to earn peace, but to receive it. We are meant to rejoice in the ways in which God is always and already working for us.

Isn’t that breathtaking? I love that this was a constant prayer for Dorothy. Over and over again in her journals, as she struggled with feelings of fatigue, irritation, and even hopelessness over the difficulties of living in community, Dorothy reminded herself of her duty to delight. To receive God’s blessings, and to receive others, just as they were. I find that so comforting. That there’s a place in the work of solidarity for not working, for simply being with others, and thereby being in the presence of God.

There’s more than just a place for delight and joy, perhaps, in the face of pain. Maybe they are indivisible, a mystery knit into us at birth, mixed into the soil. Maybe they are the flowering of everything we are made to be.

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Book Recs

Mother’s Day is coming up and I want to recommend four books by mother writers I know and admire. If you are looking for a Mother’s Day gift for someone in your life, consider one (or all!) of these.

Create Anyway, by Ashlee Gadd. I had the great joy of reading this as Ashlee wrote it, and it is an absolute breath of fresh air. She writes with such grace and candor about the possibility, the necessity, and ultimately the mutuality of pursuing creativity alongside motherhood. Founder of some of my favorite literary spaces (Coffee + Crumbs and Exhale Creativity), Ashlee has long been an indefatigable cheerleader of mothers and creatives. It is impossible to pick up this book and not feel inspired to pick up your pen, paintbrush, or camera. At Bookshop, Amazon, and Target.

Gluing the Cracks, by Katie Blackburn. Katie is another Coffee + Crumbs writer whose work and life inspire me. This is a collection of essays on raising a son with autism, and it is for everyone, not just those of us whose lives are impacted by autism. Few books in recent memory have moved me to tears and made me laugh in quite the way Katie’s book did, and that is testament to the depth of her wisdom and her great gifts as a writer. Available on Amazon.

All Who Are Weary, by Sarah Hauser. I’m just about halfway through this book on finding rest in God, in a culture that in many ways encourages exhaustion and perfectionism, especially for mothers. This is a much-needed invitation to set down our burdens and examine the lies we’ve been led to believe about ourselves. Sarah’s message of hope is illuminated by her skilled storytelling, grounded in scripture, and made accessible by thought-provoking reflection questions. At Bookshop, Amazon, and your independent bookstore.

A Little Bit of Land, by Jessica Gigot. I met Jess in grad school, and it has been a delight since then to watch her publish two books of poems and now a memoir, all suffused with her characteristic humor, humility, and brilliant writing. A mother, farmer, writer, musician, and teacher— I’m not sure there’s anything she can’t do. This memoir gives us insight into how she became a farmer, and issues of sustainability and health in small-scale agriculture in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a beautiful book. At Bookshop, Amazon, and your independent bookstore.