25: A LONG DISRUPTION IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Each year, around my birthday, I try to write a “letter to me” in the hopes that one day, just maybe, I’ll find in my wake a collective narrative of the woman I’m becoming, and the little pieces that emerged along the way. Here’s this year’s.

Just before the lights went out on your 26th birthday you wrote: “I feel a little at a loss for words as I look over the last year. It’s been a year of having a front row seat to a deep sampling of almost all the beautiful and hard things life has to offer: birth, death, beginnings, endings, anniversaries, illness, birthdays, deep sorrow, learning, delight, surprise, fear, wonder, fragmentation, travel, stillness, bedlam, quiet, and accompaniment. For the gift, and lesson, and memory of it all, I’m grateful.”

This year has been one long disruption in the right direction. And boy have things been disrupted - dreams, expectations, people, structures, communities, patterns, and deeply held understandings of the way things “this side of heaven” unfold.

You’ve emerged from this year much more whole than you could have imagined but you’ve gained a few fine lines and cracks in your spirit along the way too. That’s ok. The Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery - Kintsugi - is where we’re all headed anyways.

Let’s start at the beginning. You rang in 25 in stereotypical Hannah fashion - on the road. You spent lots of this year on the road despite your best intentions. You discovered spaces like D.C. and Winnipeg. You flew for four weddings, taking a very long train ride and road trip for the other ones. It was so worth it. Quebec City, Toronto, Abbotsford, Vancouver, and Nanaimo emerged as spaces of deep love and enfolding. The theme of all the weddings - in your own mind - is this: “they do not walk alone.”

You didn’t always do the travelling. So many people came to you. They came for 24 hours of honesty, post-night shift, and to introduce you to the people they were falling in love with. They came for very late night tea, just for dinner, when they were sick, and made time on breaks from their conference. They even swung by on the way to the cottage. Your parents came too, just to see this place you’re calling home.

You were the recipient of infinite amounts of wisdom over the phone. You were enfolded and transported back to the most magic bits of your childhood. Did you know you come from the best sort of people? Earnest, unpretentious, and deeply cozy. You savoured the way the moon hits the lake of your childhood park. No wonder you have an imagination.

You thought last year was your “better together” year, but I think the lesson is that every year needs to be your “better together” year. Your community reminded you of that as they continued to insist, resist with, and be sustained by love. So you said “yes” a little more determinedly to poet Gwendolyn Brooks assertion that “We are each other’s business,” and even carried a giant sign home from work that boldly reads: “To heal a nation we must first heal the individuals, the families and the communities.” It took 30 minutes to carry that damn sign home because of the wind, but you propped it up proudly in your room - even though it doesn’t really match the decor. Because what it says is the beginning and the end of belonging to one another.

What else to say? There were so many beautiful, tiny moments of glory they almost passed you by. But you were determined to keep track. Here are a few you want to remember:

You celebrated the hard won achievements of dear friends not once but twice in a calendar year. You cheered with your whole heart. You had a front row seat as another dear friend chose to devote his entire life to the church. This will be part of your year of awe. You gave thanks for neighbours who became advocates and giggle buddies. They have been good to you. Almost every other day, you gave thanks for your “cottage” apartment, nestled amidst the treetops.

What else? You fell back in love with music. You gained a kindred spirit. You were brave and drew some lines in the sand. You took a ballet class and a French class too. You love learning so. People mailed or carried countless bags of coffee to you as a way to say “I love you.” One was accompanied by a note that said, “Thank you for your unflinching kindness.” You flinch all the time, but the coffee and that note reminded you that to love despite the flinching is a sort of brave all on its own.

You took a page from Kate Bowler’s book and began to ask, “What in the course of a regular day is big and brave and also small and snuggly?” You looked for resurrection. You fell in love with a house that accompanies refugees - all more strong and brave than you - in the first few months of their new life. They love you back. This was part of both your undoing and your making. You went on an unexpected and somewhat hilarious campaign to get everyone you know to read your favourite book. Some even very kindly complied. (Others have practiced beating a hasty retreat if the conversation begins to be skillfully turned in that direction...yet again!)

You gained a determination for delight. It began with a party you were literally pulled right into, and a big bunch of red balloons stuck on the ceiling of an elite college you were only visiting. Remember the story of this night. It still feels like a dream. You will make the startling discovery that you feel most yourself when you speak a language other than English. It’s your Dad’s fault. You don’t mind.

You found the following things to be profoundly hopeful: small children, the hilarious animals in your neighbourhood, unexpected connection, the piano at city hall, the antics of your pet, waiters who take the time to remember your name.

You were reminded that we dance to feel alive. You spent the rest of the year saying yes and amen to that. You celebrated two little babies brought earthside. They took your breath away. You celebrated a 60th anniversary and two 90th birthdays. You cried at both. It seemed too wonderful that people can live and love so beautifully for all that time. You resolved to do it too, if given the chance.

The first 90th birthday was for your grandfather. He has ruined you for the ordinary in how he has loved your grandmother and lived his life. His quiet, steadfast kindness is the standard against which you subconsciously hold all other men to. It’s an impossibly high standard, but one you’ve seen sustained for all your live long days. The second 90th birthday was for a cheeky 90 year old who has created space for you in his and his wife’s heart. You will be endlessly grateful for his joy and his zest for life.

By the way, NYC is still holy for you. You still think of Poland almost every week. Speaking of Poland and NYC...while in NYC you found God in the eyes of a young man you first met in Poland who years before posed to you the question of what it meant to be holy in a small square in Krakow. You’re both still asking.

There were really hard parts too. Just before Christmas, you sat in a cold church while a young couple sobbed over the death of their stillborn baby. Just a few months later, you asked your sister to drop flowers outside the house of another girl you grew up with who lost her son in almost the same way. Life felt cold for a while.

You stood stock still in the middle of wedding set up as someone quietly told you about a spot on their lungs. Their voice all but disappeared as the room spun. You admitted that you had found a lump in your breast too. Your second scan came back clear. His didn’t. You got the news at work and sobbed as your colleague pretended to have to go to the bathroom to give you some privacy.

Other things broke you a little this year as well. Some frightening texts of deep pain. The ending of things at least in the form that you had known them to be, deep unkindness, the letting go of people. You took to calling this the deep sad. You also said goodbye to certain dreams and mourned the idea of a life you didn’t know you needed to let go of.

You experienced loneliness, sadness, and periods of deep introspection. You experienced more physical pain and illness than in any year before. You were reminded that you are not a machine. These moments were not all bad. Much of the hard disguised gifts of deep clarity, space, and freedom. You just needed to get there first.

Let’s return to the magic though. People surprised you. They showed up for coffee in airport terminals. They picked you up from the airport just to get 25 minutes in the car with you. They rolled out of bed at 6:00 in the morning to help you be a road marshal at a race that raises money for the refugees in that house that was now very dear to you. 80 people slept in a heritage house, dormitory style to celebrate two of the best people you know saying “I do.”  They organized a potluck for your birthday.

They crammed into an old house you return to again and again. They snuggled in to receive hard news in tears right alongside you. They let you see those tears. They taught you the kind of quiet kindness you hope to carry with you. You felt stronger when they are near. Others still looked you up for lunch every time you shared a city. A friend wrote and asked, “who are your people right now” and you knew who they were in an instant. These ones too. They packed you lunch when you slept over at their house. They gifted you their couch. The 10 other kids in your group of sisters and cousins turned out to be 10 other lifelong best friends waiting to be made all over again as adults.

Here are some other things I hope you remember: Remember the moment in which one of your oldest friends told you to “stand tall and let your heart dream big.” Remember how you learned to watch for God in the dark. Remember that your love life is just that: your whole life. Remember again that "One small act of kindness can tip the scales of justice and transform the world." Remember that you are resilient. Remember to let sweetness surprise you. Remember to “see to it that no one misses the grace of God.”

This year, you gave thanks, not for the first time, that your imagination doesn’t dictate the trajectory of your life. You gave thanks for the gift of encounters years in the making that can, in a moment, serve to make you whole all over again.

You literally woke from a dream this summer with words you hope to carry with you all your livelong days. They were: “And so in this way there is no room for big love. Only ordinary love in all its tenacity.” This year, you’ve written about love being a skill, the whole syllabus, and remembered that it is always, as a Toronto taxi driver once told you, the bottom line.

A friend will write the words “there is no syllabus for the course you are now on.” and won’t that be the truth. Further up and further in, this was 25. Remember it always. You carry it with you.