Eyes Like Sky

How do you see the world with new eyes when your eyes are 28 years old? I know, I know, 28 is young in a life-span kind of way. But 28 years is nearly 10,000 days. That’s 10,000 days my eyes have watched come and go, enough days for a lot of really amazing things to become routine, old news. This, to me, is very sad.

 I’m finding, though, that in this quest to see things anew, it really helps to have a nearly-two-year-old around. Especially a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed one that I adore. Her name is Sky, and she is the reason I have not posted on this little blog in so long. Sky has the freshest of fresh eyes. She is alive with delight at everything around her and the continual gifts the universe seems to throw graciously in her lap.

 Reason #1 for Sky that the world is a place of endless wonder: Someone has completely and with abandon covered the place in rocks, sticks, and pine cones. They are literally everywhere. Step outside your front door and there’s probably a little rock lying on your doormat. If not a rock, then an interesting piece of fuzz or a gum wrapper. All of these are equally wonderful to her, and we have spent a good amount of time in the last few months collecting a small treasure trove of underrated pieces of the world. Why are these things so magnificent to her? Because they’re smooth, rough, scaly? Because they’re just the right size for her tiny hands? Because they’re abundant and free? I haven’t the faintest. All I know is that for her they are the equivalent of expensive jewelry or jet skis or fancy new patios for other people.

 So you can imagine how blissful a walk around the block on a sunny day can be for her. Yesterday, we took such a walk, and she could not take more than a few steps without crouching down to pick up a chunk of broken gravel or examine a tulip bud or run her finger down the crack in the sidewalk and feel the mud there. Slowly, she would collect enough little treasures that her hands were full, and then she’d give them to me so she could find more. When a stray cat meandered through a yard next to us, Sky nearly burst with her excitement about the “Neow” and almost followed it into a neighboring garage. When the wind sent a piece of newspaper tumbling down the street past us, she couldn’t have been more transfixed. She stopped abruptly, said “Oh no!” under her breath, and stared as the newspaper tossed about and eventually collided with a car coming the other way. This walk and its wonders absorbed her fully.

 What a brain to be in, a brain for which everything is a source of discovery and knowledge. As far as Sky is concerned, life is a lot like the rabbit hole was for Alice, all mystery and surprise. Based on what she’s seen so far, almost anything is possible; the scientific rules and limits have not yet been set. Thus, something as simple as a rock is interesting and important and able to inspire awe.

 I want to get back to this. Maybe not to getting excited over a pinecone, but to being impressed by the beauty of things, ordinary things. I want to develop that heightened sensitivity to what is constantly happening around me that I am often too busy to notice. And so, with this goal in mind, here is Beautiful Thing about the World #1: A Toddler’s Brain. (Also, sticks, rocks, and pine cones.)

Credit Where Credit is Due

I keep meaning to explain the title of my blog and give credit where it is very much due. Now I will do this. Perhaps my favorite book of all time--oh, so many favorites, how can I just have one?--okay, the book that has perhaps influenced my way of thinking about life more than any other is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. I have put off writing this post because I have oh so many gushing and doting things I could say about Annie Dillard, and I simply do not know where to start.

Maybe with a little sample? Okay. Here you go: "It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your simplicity bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get" (from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek). Oooooh, I love it.

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard basically goes out in nature and writes down her observations about plants, animals, bugs, life in general, and the meaning or lack thereof that moves behind the whole show. The reason I love her books (another great one is The Maytrees) is that they strike me as so true. Does that make any sense? If not, you really should just go check one out at the library.

One of the chapters in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is called "Seeing." In this chapter, Dillard writes about a book she's reading in which blind people have been given an operation and are able to see for the first time. One of the newly sighted people describes seeing a tree for the first time. The woman sees not a tree-shaped object called "tree" like we see when we walk outside, but a "shape with lights in it." Throughout the rest of the book, Dillard describes looking for the tree with the lights in it. It's all about seeing the world with new eyes, seeing it afresh. I love that, and it strikes me as a good title for this blog, in which I am recording things that mean something to me and have helped me to see life with new eyes.

The bottom line: Annie Dillard is fantastic. I am indebted to her for my blog title and for my way of thinking about life.

On Being a Lady Cheetah and Conquering Thyself

A few weeks ago, I ran the Top of Utah Marathon. This was my second time tackling this distance, and I add that little bit of information only to emphasize the fact that I did it again. Meaning, this time I did it knowing what I was in for. I know, I know, the pride is so loud it's hurting your ears. But I really do feel good about having done it. Also, it was an amazing experience, as I think a lot of really, really hard things end up being, so I'd like to write a little about it here.

Here is what was hard about running this marathon: The mental stuff. In my opinion, this was the whole feat--running 26 miles while left alone inside my own brain. For the entire four-hour time span, I had to keep my traitorous mind from dipping its little wandering fingers into any pools of negativity. If it did that, I knew I was finished. Or at least in for a pretty miserable four hours.

For the first 18 or 19 miles of the race, my dear friend Maizy and I ran together. This was nice because the miles simply flew behind us while we talked about life, boys, and our thoughts on the universe. I even tried to get her to play twenty questions with me, but she politley declined. We had a great time, though, and even though we stopped for the porta potties at least 1,000 times, we were running along at a good pace. After a while, though, we split up, and I began to feel rather alone and rather tired.

Luckily, I had prepared myself mentally for my alone time with all kinds of mind tricks I could pull out at the first sign of deflation. One of these was to say a little chant to myself over and over, in time with my footsteps. I once knew a boy who ran the last ten miles of his marathon chanting under his breath, "I'm an animal. I'm a robot. I'm an anibot." My own little chant went something like this: "My body is relaxed. I'm running in line with my chi." I'm not really sure what this meant, but it made me picture a giant tunnel of air blowing behind me and taking me along in its stream. All I had to do was loosen up and be pushed along. This mental image kept me going for a good many miles.

Another mental trick I had prepared was to dedicate every two miles to someone I know who is struggling with something or who I just care about. My mom had given me the idea, so the night before the race, just before I was turning off my light to go to sleep, I wrote down thirteen names on a piece of hotel notebook paper. I also wrote two thoughts I liked and wanted to keep with me. One was "The body wears out, but the mind lasts forever." The other was "I am a lady cheetah." Funny, but it motivates me. I put all three sheets of paper--my list and the two quotes--in my sports bra so they would be close if I needed some little reasons to keep going during the race. For the first twelve miles or so, while Maizy was still with me, I just pulled out my little list every two miles to see who the next two miles were for and then thought of those people for a few minutes. A couple of the miles during this time were for one of my nephews who has a hard time believing in himself. I pictured him as a confident and happy person someday and imagined that my persevering in the marathon would somehow allow him to become that way. Some kind of karma, you know. It was amazing how motivating this was; it made the running feel like a collective task. A couple of the other miles during this time were for a student of mine who is a recovering meth addict and is trying desperately to quit smoking. We had talked recently about how her sticking out another day without smoking is similar to my finishing another mile without stopping. Her task is a lot harder, but the principles are the same. I thought of her in the hard miles of the race and how much she probably wanted a cigarette sometimes, and I kept going. The most euphoric, adrenaline-charged miles during this time happened to be for my two little nephews and one little niece who all died in my sister-in-law's belly before they were delivered. As I was running, I tried to imagine myself experiencing the pain and the tedium and the adrenaline for those little babies since they would never get to feel these things. I focused on how miraculously alive I felt. Even the pain developing in my left butt cheek was a sign of my aliveness. I told myself I had a life and legs and could do things like run marathons, and this grandma-like admonition to myself strangely placed me on top of the world. During these miles, I felt like I could run three marathons. They were spectacular.

At about mile 21, however, after Maizy and I had parted ways, I began to get very tired of running. My whole body was tightening up in a hard knot, my stomach felt as empty as the grand canyon, and I was going crazy not having anyone to distract me from my self-doubt. I had just run 21 miles, and I felt pretty satisfied with that. The next 5.2 miles just seemed superfluous. I wanted to stop runnning, walk off the course, and go shopping for the rest of the day. To keep myself going, I began to really focus on the people I had designated my miles for. Two of these miles were dedicated to my mom. I thought about her and how she has influenced me and the person I have become more than any single person in the whole wide world. She is really beyond amazing. Anyone who knows her can affirm that. I knew as I was running that she was thinking of me and sending good thoughts my way. This mattered so much. I knew she would be at the finish line and would tear up and hug me and feel proud of me for doing it. My favorite memory of running my first marathon was crossing the finish line and having my mom there with her arms open and a huge teary smile on her face. She is wonderful. I also had dedicated two of these later miles to my dad, who had just had knee replacement surgery on both knees. These were hard miles for me, and I had to pretend that my dad was running with me with his post-surgery knees, and I was trying to get him up the slight inclines that made up these two miles. I kept saying "Come on Dad. Come on Dad," of course only talking to myself.

A few other things that motivated me during this time: running next to a guy with a stereo bouncing up and down in his pocket playing "Crazy Train," a lot of wonderful people along the side of the road cheering loudly at really hard parts, and the man just before mile 26 who chided me for taking a walking break and screamed, "You've only got .2 to go! Run!"

Of course, the best part of any race is running across the finish line. It's hard to describe how good it feels to turn the corner and see the big finish sign within reach after all that work. In fact, that feeling is one of the biggest reasons I decided to run another marathon. It must be as addicting as any drug. The crowds were lined up along both sides, and I ran ecstatically through, searching desperately to pick out my family in the crowd. I spotted my mom first, and immediately I reverted to my six-year-old self. I felt like screaming, "Mom! Look at me! Look at me running a marathon!" Then I saw my dad, my dear old dad who had just had his knee surgeries and was there sitting in a lawn chair, having endured an hour's drive in pain to come see me finish my race. Have I mentioned that I love my parents? Well, I do. With them in sight, I summoned all my remaining strength and ran across that blessed finish line.

The bottom line of this experience: running is a good thing because it is a hard thing. I'm in the middle of a book called "What I talk About When I Talk About Running." It's by Haruki Murakami and is basically a runner's memoir. Here is a little piece I would like to close with:

"Most runners run not because they want to live longer but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog [...] Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running and a metaphor for life."

Adventures on Land and in the Air

Wow, I am a dedicated blogger, aren't I? A year between posts? I am mentally bringing myself to task.

Remember that story in the news a while back about the guy who tied a bunch of balloons to a lawn chair, grabbed his most reliable shotgun, and took off up into the sky for a leisurely day of floating? Well, ever since I heard that story, I have wanted to do a little floating of my own. Sometimes in college when I was tired of doing homework, I'd get on the internet and look at pictures of hot air balloons. Once I read how someone who had ridden in one described the experience as feeling like a little piece of the sky. I wanted to be a little piece of the sky. Last Saturday my little dream came true. I got up at 5:00 in the am, put on my warmest fall clothes, and drove to Park City with Ty for a little open-air floating 3,000 feet above the ground. I am pretty terrified of high places--pretty terrified, like I nearly go into cardiac arrest riding on zip lines fifteen feet above ground--so on the way to Park City, I was rather nervous. We got some snacks at a gas station before meeting the balloon company, and while we were in the parking lot, a big van pulled up with a balloon basket in a trailer in the back. For some reason, it reminded me of Something Wicked This Way Comes and the crazy witch in the hot air balloon at the end. It was still dark outside, and I felt like we were in some kind of twilight zone and they were hauling our coffins right there on the back of the van. It didn't help my nerves.

Here are some of the highlights of the balloon ride:

When we first left the ground, I didn't even know it was happening. I was talking to Ty and taking pictures of the other balloons around us that were inflating. The next thing I knew, we were hovering about five feet above the ground. Then we were five hundred feet and then probably about 2500 feet. It was so gradual and still that I couldn't even feel the motion. Ty said he just felt like we were in a tall building looking down. It was true. It was like getting the view from an airplane but without walls around us, like being a cloud or something. Yes, I learned what it feels like to be a cloud. How poetic.

We floated for a little over an hour, sinking and rising to catch different wind currents, watching our shadow float across red and orange hillsides, and passing over houses, freeways, giant supermarkets, and fields with deer. A lot of cars honked and waved at us, and one nearly-naked man who was apparently not a morning person came out of his house and shook a fist at us for "waking him up." (Don't ask me how a hot air balloon wakes a person up. Another mystery of the universe.) Miles, our "aeronaut," kept us entertained with corny jokes and the science of hot air balloooning. I kept trying to get some horror stories out of him, but he told us he had to save those for after we'd landed. He also told us about the first ballooners, French brothers who in 1783 decided to tie a bunch of silky women's dresses to a wooden platform and put a fire under them. Up they went into the sky and over the faraway farms of other villages. When they landed in some confused farmer's field, the poeple of the town were waiting with pitchforks. Anything that unusual had to come from a dangerous other world or be inspired by the devil, right? Silly people. Soon, the brothers began to take bottles of champagne with them on their flights to hold out as a peace offering when they landed in the next unsuspecting village.

When it was time to go back to the ground, Miles made a landing as smooth as the surface of jello. As we tapped the ground, he handed me a rope and told me to pull it, so I did. The top of the air balloon un-velcroed itself, and the whole thing deflated to the ground. We had fired ourselves up 3,000 feet in the air and slowly fallen down, held up only by velcro. I was glad I hadn't known this before we started.

Overall, the experience was not the action-packed adventure I had prepared my nerves for, but a peaceful, picturesque experience that I enjoyed like I enjoy a swing in the hammock. I can now safely say I would recommend a hot air balloon to even the most squeamish about heights. On the way home from Park City that day, I began to formulate how I could someday become an old woman with long grey hair who owns her own hot air balloon and takes it for Sunday morning rides with her dog and and a good book. That's my new dream.

Chocolate Oatmeal and Flocks of Birds

There are a few really good things, and I think these things change at different times of your life, so you have different good things for different periods. That's a little out there, so I'll be more concrete. Today for breakfast, I tried chocolate oatmeal. You just take some oatmeal and mix in a little cocoa powder and a little brown sugar, and voila, chocolate oatmeal. Ty had told me about it and I thought, I simply must try this. So I made it this morning, and holy cow, it's really, really, really good. Just what I hoped it would be. So that's a really good thing. Chocolate oatmeal.

Another really good thing is flocks of birds. I was on a bike ride yesterday down on the new legacy parkway trail, and I was passing this quiet field where a bunch of cows were drinking from a stream and looking lazy in the heat. All of the sudden, as I went by, about fifty birds lifted up from the field with a big whoosh. They came out of nowhere, and it was like this choreographed panic dance, where they all swooped around in the same exact circles over the field until I had gone past, and then they all settled back into the grass at the exact same time to get back to their feeding. How do they do this? It blows my mind. Which one of them sounds the alarm that sends them all up together? And how can they possibly be so in sync? Who is the leader of them all as they move around in the sky doing the exact same thing? It's uncanny. I love watching this. It's one of those things I've wondered about since I was born, one of the things that makes life really mysterious to me. It's seriously amazing. Anyway, that is another really good thing. Flocks of birds.

If I think of more really good things, I'll write them here maybe.

Removing the Wisdom Teeth

Wow, I am really amazed at the power of anasthesia. It's scary. Today, I had my wisdom teeth pulled out, and it was the first time I've ever been put to sleep. It was so wierd! All that is recorded in my mind is the following:

I am sitting on the chair in this room and my mom and the nurse are in there. I have three heart monitor patches stuck on my belly and chest and a thing on my finger. The heart rate monitor is going all over the place, reading 158 bpm then 83 bpm then 105 bpm, and I keep laughing and telling the nurse that I'm really not that nervous; my heart rate is actually really pretty steady. Something must be wrong with the heart monitor. She says I must have good skin, because sometimes good skin makes the monitor do that. (Don't ask me. I'm pretty sure she said that.) The doctor comes in and puts the IV in my arm, and then a nurse comes on my other side and says she is going to give me a little oxygen, and she puts a mask on my nose. I breathe it for a second and it feels thick. I laugh because of the whole heart monitor thing, and the nurse asks me if I feel funny. I say no, and then the ceiling starts to shift into two pieces and move back and forth. I say, "Now I feel a little funny." That's it. Then my brain's register cuts right to a feeling of being hoisted up, and the nurse saying, really far away, through thick fog, "Amanda, wake up." I open my eyes, but she keeps telling me to open them. Okay, I open them. She tells me I need to wake up and open them. I swear they are open. "Amanda, you need to open your eyes. We need to get you up." This time I really open them. She asks me if I feel sick, and I just start laughing. I can't help it. This is soooo funny. She tells me she is going to help me stand up. I literally cannot stifle my laughter. She is hilarious. She pulls me up and ask me what's funny and tells me I need to keep my eyes open, and a string of giggles bursts out. What a funny nurse. But I am also very sleepy. Next thing I know I am lying in a recliner, and I can hear my mom's voice and the nurse's voice talking. Again it strikes me that something is so funny. I cannot hold it in. I burst out in laughter, like I'm in a junior high math class and I'm not supposed to be laughing, but I just have to. This is really hilarious stuff, whatever is going on. So I laugh when they walk me out to the car and then in between sleeping on the way home, I wake up and laugh and go back to sleep. I laugh the whole time there and all the way home. That anasthesia is some kind of something.

So that was my experience having my wisdom teeth removed. I feel pretty good right now, just a little numb, but not very much pain at all. Hooray.

Celebrating the 28th of June in West Bountiful

Yesterday West Bountiful celebrated the 4th of July a week early, probably to avoid competing with bigger cities' festivities on the actual day--a pretty good idea. So I went along with my family to the parade and the carnival afterwards and showed up with Ty later on for the fireworks show. Let me just say that it was fabulous! It was one of my favorite days so far this summer. If this was a poem, I'd say I drank the day up like cherry kool-aid.

I started the day off sitting on the cement at the parade next to five little girls, squinting in the hot sun and waving like crazy with them at the floats that were throwing candy. We were all thirsty and very hot, but we wouldn't have left for anything. Things got more exciting when a big Noah's Ark float broke down right in front of us and all the other floats had to maneuver around it. Noah was stuck on top awkwardly waving to the same crowd for the rest of the parade. Finally, I think he just sat down. Every time a new float approached the narrow situation, the crowd drew in its collective breath and didn't let it out again until the float had passed without running over any people or broadsiding the broken-down Noah's Ark. It was priceless. Just the kind of thing you write about. The parade went on like this, and of course by the end, each of the kids had collected their own kingdom-sized piles of colored taffy. Every year, about the middle of the parade, as the mother of the year car and the Miss West Bountiful buggy go slowly by, I wonder why I like parades. They are, after all, pretty boring. But I love them in the same way I love those orange peanut-shaped marshmallows--They don't taste all that good, but they come pure and direct from my barefoot childhood.

After the parade, we went over to the carnival. It was all excitement for the first twenty minutes or so, but then the heat and the empty stomachs mixed together to make everyone a little grumpy. In the late afternoon, I ended up in the shade under a tree with my family, eating a banana snow cone that was more snow than anything banana. I had just paid ten dollars to buy Ashley an all-day ride pass, and she had ridden two rides and then announced she was ready to go home. My dad was asleep on his back, my mom was off waiting in an endless food line, and Danny was eating a root beer snow cone and expressing his wish to be home getting things done in his yard. The kids were everywhere, sunburned, tired, and still wanting to play forever. For all of this, the scene was absolutely perfect.

Later on, I went back to the park with Ty to watch fireworks. We got there in the middle of the show, and making our way through the awed and quiet crowd in the dark, only lit up by the frequent flashes of orange and green light, somehow reminded me of walking through an electric cemetery or something. We ended up sitting next to Ty's friends, a couple whose little boy clung to his dad in a mix of absolute terror and wonder at the big things happening in the sky. When it was over, Ty and I left the park laughing, I don't remember at what, and feeling good.

The day was basically a perfect piece of imperfect life, another reason I love summer.