“Waiting for the Unknown Gift that
the Brokenness Offers.” *
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I had a deep, disturbing dream the other night/morning.
(Don’t despair,
Dear readers.
There is a great gift
Awaiting us
At the end
Of this tale.)
I dreamt I had written and was acting in a play.
We prepared and prepared.
As the time of opening got closer
I got less and less sure,
More and more
Frozen.
What were the words?
I didn’t know
The words.
I had my guitar.
I was to play in the opening song.
What were
The words
Of the song?
In terror—
We opened the curtain.
Nobody was there!
Hastily we closed it.
We
Regrouped,
Reimagined,
Re-thought
The play—
To no avail.
I still had no words.
Nobody had the script.
I was doomed—
I had to
Just go
Forward
Without
Knowing.
We opened the curtain again.
There were a few people.
We went on.
I held the guitar
Close,
But no sound
Came from Her.
I opened my mouth,
But no words
Emerged
From Me.
It was
Dark,
Lonely,
And
Shameful.
Dark, lonely, and shameful.
~~~
I was a stutterer.
Forever and always.
From my first words till…
???
It never really ended
Inside of me.
Perhaps the shift began
By getting sober,
Having to introduce myself,
Having to read aloud,
In all those meetings?
Dark, lonely and shameful
Began ever so slowly,
Minutely,
Nanosecond
By
Nanosecond
To crack.
This dream from the other night,
Received by
Me,
At age 72 & counting…
That was the first time,
The FIRST TIME
I could truly
Feel
The
Pain
Of
Me,
The pain
Of that
Child
That I was
That Child
That
I
Am.
~~~
School:
Counting the number of kids reciting
Before me.
Calculating what vocabulary word
Or stanza
I would have to
Read
Aloud.
Terror.
Practicing inside my head.
More terror.
Writing a bathroom pass
In Spanish class
In high school,
To miss
My turn
Reading
Vocabulary.
Sitting on the toilet
In the girls’ room
Trying to gauge
When
To
Return
To class
Safely.
Telephone:
Phone ringing in the kitchen,
Where we sat
My mom and me.
Running upstairs
To answer it
In my parents’ room,
So not to stutter
In front
Of
Her.
Hanging up
If my friend
Gail’s mother
Answered…
I couldn’t say
Her name.
I had to wait
For her
To answer.
Then say hi.
Safely.
~~~
Pretending it was okay.
It wasn’t.
Pretending nobody noticed.
They did.
It was the 50’s.
The prescribed attitude was
PRETEND YOU DON’T NOTICE…
That didn’t work so well,
Because every time
I opened my mouth,
I
Notice.
And
Others
Noticed.
It was—exhausting.
I don’t remember
Being bullied.
I don’t remember
Kids laughing.
I was so far away
From everyone.
I had left
Long before.
~~~
My parents
Never talked about it,
My stuttering.
Yep, the glorious ‘50’s.
But I remember,
I remember
Sitting on my daddy’s lap
Snuggled into him
And his words,
“Nan,
you can be
Anything
Anything
You want to be.”
I knew his words
Were impossible
And
Ridiculous,
While a part of me
Deeply inside
Somehow
Fully received
And
Fully believed
In
His
Blessing.
He was right.
From my frozenness
Came great powers of
Creating synonyms,
Words meaning
The same.
From the constriction
In speaking
Came
Love
Of
The fluidity
Of writing.
Out of
The greatest trauma,
The greatest shame,
The greatest brokenness
Emerge
My
Greatest
Gift.
The gift
Of
My voice.
My voice
As teacher.
My voice
As writer.
My voice
As Me.
““`
No introduction needed:
~~~
Here is a reading of a poem I adore, The Thing Is, by poet Ellen Bass:
~~~
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again
by Ellen Bass
~~~
And, from his London concert in 2008, the best, Leonard Cohen:
~~~
Dear Friends,
I don’t write any of this
To shield us from the
Inevitability of the pain.
I write it
To give us
The courage
To keep going
Through it.
With gratitude,
Aruni
* Title is a quote by John Paul Lederer, peacebuilder, professor, activist.
