The Beauty of Imperfection

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Five years ago I made a trip that changed me. After hours on a plane and a short train ride, we arrived in the stunning train station of Kyoto, Japan.  I had long wanted to see this architectural glass wonder. But after a day of traversing the 171 steps of staircase and tiring of hip restaurants and high priced shopping, I found myself drawn outside where I was captivated by the historic streets, the local people, the carefully sculpted gardens, and a charming pottery shop.

 

On the third day of our visit, I found my way down the cobblestone streets back to the pottery shop that smelled of sandalwood and displayed local art framed like treasures in the windows. At the back of the shop was an artist painting floral designs on teacups and plates. A kind clerk treated both the pottery and the customers with reverence. I was searching for a gift for my mom when the clerk showed me the blue cup. It was Mother’s color. My dad had died recently, and in her stoic midwestern way, my mom was grieving.  We all were. After a serious fall, she agreed to move into assisted living. “Perhaps I am old,” she announced firmly, “But I am not broken.”

But she was. For weeks I had watched  Mom shuffle ahead of me to the dining room from her new apartment; and I could tell each step was painful as she hobbled. While she forced a smile, I had seen the scans of her back—several of her discs had disintegrated into near dust.

 

 

The Kintsugi Cup

I bought the cup with the silver lines etched like Pollock strokes across it. I bought it because it was not outrageously priced.  I bought it because the crooked lines reminded me of the films of my mother’s crooked back. I bought it because it felt like a sacred act to share it with my mom who could not see herself as broken. But mostly I bought it because it reminded me of the wisdom found in the art of Kintsugi, a wisdom my beautiful mother carried in her.

The art of Kintsugi may have been invented around the fifteenth century. A shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, broke his favorite cup. When he sent it to China to be repaired, he was told it was unsalvageable. Refusing to accept the news, the shogun found a Japanese craftsman who agreed to transform the cup into a work of art by filling the cracks with lacquered resin and powdered gold.  The outcome was a jewel. The practice became a revered form of art.

Kintsugi teaches us that when something is broken, it can be repaired and perhaps the flaws or imperfections can be made even more beautiful. As we journey through life, we learn that imperfections are a part of being human. Kintsugi reminds us to accept our flaws, learn from them, and embrace the beauty of moving forward.

After returning from Kyoto, I gave Mom the cup. She gushed over it. I thought I would explain Kintsugi to her in the right moment. But the moment never came, and I began to realize that as one who had managed the relentless challenges of aging, Mom already held inside of her the wisdom of finding beauty amid life’s struggles.

For two more years my dear mom hobbled forward with her crooked, painful back, and all the while, she made every effort to fill her imperfections with the silver and gold to be found in this life. I miss her, and each day I think of her “kintsugi wisdom.”

My Kintsugi Mom

 

Love in the Time of COVID

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I dug out my passport, and I bought both the plane tickets and a pair of badly needed low-heeled shoes. I was ready to boogie to James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is.” Kate and Drew had planned their Cabos San Lucas wedding far in advance, believing we would have left COVID behind. Like most of us, I just needed a good party. An event. Remember those?

Two weeks before the wedding the Omicron variant began to jack up the number of COVID cases in Arizona from 3,000 to 12,000 and then 30,000 new cases a day!  I became jittery, but I got my dress cleaned, paid my hotel bill, and pulled the suitcase down.

Within days Omicron ripped my wedding plans in two. Steve’s small engineering company who practiced social distancing and masking from the start of the pandemic had as many cases on that Monday as they had tracked since the start of this outbreak. The good news was the Cue testing kits that the company had helped to build worked like a charm.

The bad news was the number of people who were testing positive around us, and the impossibility of juggling all the illness and supply chain shortages, scattered our plans like a ripped-open bag of confetti. I emailed my physician who advised us to stay stateside until this surge was over. I called the mother of the bride to cancel, and then I sat down, cried a bit, and poured out the pain on paper.

While I felt profoundly sad, I quickly realized that given all the losses that have been faced in these times, my loss was small, and did not deserve my energy. A wedding was unfolding. Valentine’s Day was near. I began to research love and scrawl my thoughts.

From the Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to Taylor Swift’s “Lover,” I realized we are a culture awash in love. When I thought about it, I realized most of what we sing about and “long for” is romantic love. Psychiatrist Neil Burton noted that our longing for undying love with one other human, or romantic love, “is a modern construct” that emerged with the romance novel – books like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.  Who does not remember the tug of emotions unfolding in Elizabeth and Darcy as they “fall in love.” Hmm. Did we create this spin on love? I was curious.

Dr. Burton goes on to argue there are many forms of love that are far more available and potentially more fulfilling than romantic love. We can track all of these back to the Greeks.

 

  1. Eros – passionate love
  2. Philia: intimate, authentic friendship
  3. Ludus: playful, uncommitted love
  4. Storge: unconditional, love for family
  5. Philautia: self-love which can be healthy or go overboard
  6. Pragma: committed, companionate love
  7. Agápe: empathetic, universal love for others

Instead of going to Mexico that week, I went to my Zoom writing classes to be with my writers. My refuge. Fourteen women were engaged in exploring how the power of perspective impacts both our writing and our lives. As if cued by my research, Nora began to spin a tragic story. “My nephew fell in love with a tall, lanky girl at his school. Pretty girl. They dated and eventually she dumped him. His perspective was limited. He thought she was the only one he would ever love. He jumped off a bridge. Suicide at nineteen. If only he waited and learned to see love can be more.”

The ensuing discussion made it clear that I would need more than a blog, perhaps a book, to explore love. Later as we chatted, Nora added, “As we grow our perspective of love, we learn how it can be shared with others. I come to this group to hear your words and honor them, and you do the same for me. We come together in community with a love for each other and a love for our words.”

I thought about what Nora said and what Dr. Burton had argued. My life was richly threaded with many kinds of love. I felt love for the work I did with my writing groups – agape. I felt love for my students as we shared our words and our personal stories – philia. I even felt love for my son when he interrupted my class by calling – storge.

As I made this list and acknowledged the richness of many kinds of love, my phone began to buzz. When I tapped it on, I discovered that a stream of photos was flooding my text feed. A picture of a bride in a stunning white lace dress. Photos of a groom reciting a poem he had written to honor their love. The light in their eyes as they gazed upon one another.

As I scanned the photos, it hit me. Romantic love is indeed an idea we have created. A wonderful one when it blooms as in this moment for Kate and Drew. But when we stop to think, humans have always created new words and ways of understanding our lives. Indeed, philia, eros, and all forms of love as defined by our ancestors help us understand and explain love more fully.

Our words shape our understanding of life, and our writing and stories, give it greater meaning. This coming month I am going to celebrate not only Kate and Drew, and the magic of that comes of romantic love, but also the magic of being able to love in so many divergent and beautiful ways.

Happy Valentine’s Month!


This blog is dedicated to my friends Kate and Drew!

Words of Wonder

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I am dancing all over the kitchen and singing in the shower. I am trying to throw pixie dust on a New Year. After the last two pandemic-centered years, I am creating a picture of a better year. The creative joy of dancing, singing, and even creating a few crazy words or songs lifts us up. Let’s embrace the joy to be found in a new year.

Do you have a word that just makes you silly-happy? How about enjubiphoric? It is not a well-known because I just created it, and I guess you can guess what words I used to invent it. Enjoy. Jubilant. Euphoric. If your put those feelings into one word, I think it bursts with happiness. I want that for the coming year. Indeed, this is how words and the languages that come of words have been created for thousands of years.

According to the latest report of the Ethnologue, a resource that counts languages, there are currently 7,139 human languages on our planet. We are gifted at creating words. Here is the journey of one such word that millions of people love. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

In 1931 Helen Herman created a silly word that has brought cheer to thousands in audiences throughout the world. She created a word of “all words in the category of something wonderful.”  In an editorial for The Syracuse Daily Orange, Helen shared her word – supercaliflawjalisticeexpialidoshus.”

This silly word comes to us from a story we have come to love. Mary Poppins was a series of children’s books published in 1934 by an Australian author, P.L. Travers. While Travers real life family inspired the story of the Banks family in Mary Poppins, in truth, the story is a reframing of her difficult childhood. When she was quite young Traver’s actual mother attempted suicide, and her father died after a seizure, but in a New Yorker article (2005) Travers stated she “always believed the underlying cause was sustained, heavy drinking.”

After her father’s death, Travers grew close to her great-aunt Helene Morehead or Aunt Sass. In the semi-autobiographical book, Aunt Sass, Travers described her aunt as a one-of-a-kind character who was rigid and firm but oh so fun. She could create words, songs, and adventures that would captivate any child. Probably any adult. Years later when she had the idea to write her series of books, Travers found herself inspired by her aunt who became her nanny. In Aunt Sass she wrote,

“We write more than we know we are writing. We do not guess at the roots that made our fruit,” she writes. “I suddenly realised that there is a book through which Aunt Sass, stern and tender, secret and proud, anonymous and loving, stalks with her silent feet. You will find her occasionally in the pages of Mary Poppins.”

It was no wonder that Walt Disney fought for years to bring this story of Aunt Sass to the screen and when he finally did, he gave us an iconic story of a magical nanny who could create words or rhymes, pull hat racks from her bag, carry you on magical adventures, or create words like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious.”

Although the real-life Mary Poppins, Aunt Sass, created many nonsense words, she did not invent this one. The songwriters for the film, Richard and Robert Sherman, who wrote the song lyrics probably created or recreated this fun-filled word. Although no one can prove this, one of the brothers probably stumbled upon Helen Herman’s fantastical version of the word penned in 1931 and tweaked it to fit their catchy song. Voila! Millions of people have been crooning “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” since Julie Andrews first appeared on the screen singing it in 1964. I am humming it as I write!

Last fall when my young friend, Mason Berchman, was signed to star as Jane in Mary Poppins, at the local Hale Theater, I signed on to go with friends. After two years of hibernation, I felt like a COVID hermit. Since I had my shots and my booster, I wanted to weave my way back into my community, and this small theater was a good excuse. Before I had a ticket, I was already infected with that delightful ditty. “If you say it slow enough, you’ll always sound precious!”

Indeed, Mary Poppins was the perfect segue way into somewhat-normal-again. Mason could not have charmed an audience more by creating such a charming character who carried us into the story and her passion for it. Amid the actors dancing and singing I was carried into the moment and into the magic of living that can be lost amid a pandemic.

Some words hold us. Mesmerize us. Lead us to magical stories such as Mary Poppins. For this I am grateful, and I am prepared to carry that magic forward into this beautiful day and into the coming New Year. May we all find magical words and experiences to sustain and grow us in 2022. Happy New Year!