Letters From My Kitchen Table - Self Appointment

Several days ago, my wife Ty asked me to write something for her blog.  As a way of lending something of my words to her words, something further.  I’ve sat with this idea for these past days not really knowing what I might write.  While I write quite a bit in my life, I wasn’t really sure what I might contribute.  The more I thought about it the more I thought that what I’d love to have, is a letter.  A letter from someone who is thinking of me and might share some small glimpse of what they are going through during these troubled times and what they’re doing to find their way.  So here I am writing a letter to all of you.

As I write to you this morning, I am sitting at my kitchen table, a nice cup of Earl Grey next to me, hot.  The dishwasher across the room is slightly ajar from where I retrieved my tea cup this morning, it still needs to be emptied of clean dishes from yesterday.  There is a soft grey light filtering in my windows from the overcast morning outside, the sun not yet awake enough to poke through the clouds.  I’m not sure it’ll make an appearance today, but I hope it does.  The house is quiet, Ty in the other room and my pup, Parker, is asleep on the floor next to me.  I’ve opened all the shades, turned the furnace up and the house is starting to feel warm and cozy, after the chill of the early morning.  Wearing a nice thick hoody, my cashmere beanie and my furry slippers, just add to that feeling of cozy.  It feels good to be sitting here writing to you and on any other morning at any other time, this would be a wonderful way to begin my day.  If I weren’t here at the house in quarantine, that is.

I’ve been wandering around the house for weeks now dislocated from the day to day activities and schedule that marked my “normal” life.  The rhythm and beat of the day now aimless and not quite knowing what to do with itself.  Should I watch something on Netflix, play a game, read, write, sing, dance?  Should I call my Mom today?  She’s not much of a phone person and I don’t want to be a bother, but I worry about her in this time.  Should I go look at the charts again?  No. Definitely wait a bit before going to look at the charts again.  Such are the wonderings of my present days.

I imagine that many of you have been as obsessed as I have, with pouring over data charts showing daily exponential growth.  Listening to the radio report on numbers, missing masks, how long the virus lives on surfaces and suffering around the world.  Hunched over the electron campfires, we call them our devices, looking for signs of warmth.  Some little sign, a little light for the end of our tunnels.  Feeling some solidarity with the endless posts and news that the peak of the virus will be soon, not knowing when, but soon.  That somehow the peak will be the end of the matter and we can finally get out of this house and back to the rhythm and beat of our schedule, back to our “normal” lives.  

However, the more I hunch over my own electron campfire, the more I realize that even when the rhythm and beat returns, it will sound different.  It is starting to dawn on me that what once was, will never be again.  Not wanting to say such things out loud, this thought scares me.  Yet, somehow, saying that things will never be the same again feels pretty good to write down.  Strangely, it lets me turn my attention towards the house I’m writing to you from.

There’s a thought that I have been wondering after for years about my house.  The four walls that hold my pillow.  The place where I rest my head night after night.  We’ve all heard that popular phrase, “Home is where the heart is”, but I’ve often thought that we’ve had it backwards.  It has always felt better to me to say, “Heart is where my home is”.  This has been especially true during these strange and ungrounded times.

Heart is where my home is, has become a wonderful way for me to orient in these troubled times.  Instead of thinking about how and when I’ll get to leave this place, this home, I have come to see it as the very place where all my work to be a good person in the world plays out.  My home or better said my household, is the very place that I’ve done all my personal work for.  My household is the context for all of my meditation, my yoga, my therapy, all the books I’ve read, conversations I’ve had and of course the letters I’ve written.  Basically, everything that I have ever learned in my whole life lives here.  My household, is the place where I want all of my good work to actually make a difference.  It is the very place that I both live and love.  The place where I want my heart to feel two sizes to big.

So.  I’ve begun to wonder after why I might be so antsy to leave this household, this place of heart.  Maybe it’s because like so many of us I too have had to adjust to this new way of being.  Finding my way towards a different kind of schedule.  Finding my way past the idea that quarantining was some sort of vacation, it’s not. It’s not a staycation either.  

I’ve had to realize that the adjustment I was going though meant that I wasn’t supposed to be striving to be as productive as I would normally be.  There was a getting used to that had to happen.  I had to adjust to the new way and I had to find my way back to the skills of my life that I have learned through all of my attempts at being a good person in the world.  I had to find my way back to myself and to my self appointment.

I have talked for years with the people in my life and those I work with in my psychotherapy practice, about the Skills of Household.  The skills we have to learn to bring our good work home with us.  Skills that we are often not taught, even in our therapeutic work.  

The Skills of Household always begin at one place.  The place where we self appointment ourselves to our adult lives.  What I mean by “self” is you and you alone.  No one else can do this part for you.  It’s up to you.  “Appointment” here means that you have to decide or resolve to step forward, to step into your life.  The two together means that you can be the one who decides to step out of your absorption, to move away from the me of you life, and into a new direction that more resembles We than Me.

My own self appointment during these strange times has looked like a lot of different things.  It’s looked like me cleaning up after myself.  Making sure that the dishwasher is empty, I’ll get to that soon after I’m finished writing to you.  It’s meant that I make sure my laundry is done and folded and put away.  My bed made.  It’s looked like me finishing up many of the unfinished projects scattered around the house undone.  The ones that I would have gotten back to, eventually.

Most importantly, my self appointment has looked a lot like the people in my life that I love.  I find that self appointing myself to looking after the people in my life to be very helpful.  First, it has meant that I’ve moved away from my own self absorption and begun to think of others more than myself.  I have noticed that when I move out of my own hunger and think of these people, I become food for them.  These people are just as hungry as I am.  After all they are going through the same strange times.  They need food too.  I can be that for them.  I can make of myself a feast.  Kindness is the best seasoning.

It has meant thinking of more than just the people underfoot in my own living room too.  I’ve made it a point to stop and talk with neighbors while out walking Parker.  Albeit from a good distance away.  Just this morning I spent some time with a neighbor telling me of yet another neighbor who had a stroke last night.  Just those few moments together good salve for the obvious need for her to connect with another human heart.  It has meant taking a moment to be kind to the workers I encounter when I venture out for supplies.  As well, as trying to reach out by phone and touch base with those I haven’t talked with in a while.  Of course there’s social media, but there is something quite different about having a person’s voice ring in your ear, to see their face, even if its on the other side of that electron campfire in a video chat.

Simple things have been the place where I’ve seen the most impact.  Like bringing my Beloved a cup of tea or snuggling with her on the couch as we watch a show together.  I find myself wanting to dance with her, maybe something for us to do later tonight.  Reaching out and taking her hand, as I know she is struggling with finding her own way with the demands these times place on her.  The demands on those she cares for, starving as they are too, make her edgy.  I can feel those edges melt in the warmth of our touch and conversation.  It’s telling the people in my life that I love them.  Asking if I can help with what they are doing or simply helping to carry the box into the other room.  Simply making the effort to be kind and helpful can be food for those I love.  Snacks help too.

To self appoint to looking after the needs of those in my life that I love and the real place of my household, is the beginning of the path.  The first skill of my household.  The one that I have to return to again and again, just as I return to my breath in mediation.  Picking my head up when I hear someone in the other room or a nudge from the pup at my feet.  A path that leads to this house that is my life.  This place of my heart.

Speaking of, I can hear my Beloved beginning to stir in the other room now, another newsletter finished.  So I should sign off here.  I’d love to have the dishwasher emptied and the kettle on, before she wanders into the kitchen.  I wanted to write this letter to you, so that maybe you might find your way towards your own self appointment, by catching a glimpse of mine.  That we might begin to make the journey away from the me and towards the we, together.  That we might love our households more than we’re inclined to.  That we might find our heart where our home is.

I wish you and your people health and a full heart.  One that’s two sizes too big.

Wings wide!

Raven