Moonlight & Tenderness

on chicken cutlets & being awake to see the shimmer

all images from the author’s sketchbook

The other night I couldn’t sleep. Prednisone, again, and I am assured to be restless, uncomfortable with a constant stomach ache, and at night that can mean large bouts of wakefulness. I was lying in bed, mostly still, playing a soothing video game to pass the time. At some point the moon, almost waxing gibbous, descended into view out our west-facing window, and its light poured across our bed. I gazed at its beauty in the snow-filled woods, the long shadows and glistening and then I put my game down and turned toward my soundly sleeping husband. Well, the moon seemed to be reaching her slender fingers right toward him and her light illuminated the back of my husband’s head. His white hair caught the light and shimmered, like threads of starlight. It was so unexpectedly beautiful that tears welled up in my eyes, not from sadness, but from astonishment. All I could think was: How lucky am I to be awake. How lucky am I to witness this. How lucky am I to be lying beside someone I love so very much.

I have been crying a lot lately. It’s the smallest things, really. Ordinary things. This is a new way of being for me, and some days I don’t quite know what to make of it. It’s rare that the tears come from pain, even though physical pain seems to have taken up permanent residence in my life. Sometimes the tears come from stories I hear, or a friend’s sad news. The other day it was a letter, I had unexpectedly received, my friend’s delicate handwriting and tender words settling my heart. Sometimes the tears come from witnessing the wind lifting snowflakes into a slow dance of sparkles around a breakthrough ray of light in an otherwise winter-grey sky. Mostly, I am ashamed to say, they are evoked by utter frustration.

I am crying, a lot.

For my whole life I have had an aversion to eating and cooking meat of any kind. (Bear with me for a bit, this has relevance.) I still do it because after many years of being vegetarian and even vegan, I’ve learned that for my own health I occasionally need the kind of protein animal foods give me, and fewer of the carbohydrates of plant-based proteins. I will say also that I am never without some anxiety when I prepare or eat animal foods. Recently, I discovered that my local grocery store sells pre-pounded chicken breasts in gluten-free breadcrumbs. They are affordable enough and far more manageable for my hypocritical squeamishness. This small convenience makes it possible for me to eat chicken more often, because I have such a difficult time pounding it myself (my heart physically aches when I do it), but I also have an easier time eating the meat when it’s thin. This sounds ridiculous, I’m sure, but it is my own inconvenient truth.

The other night, as I prepared the pre-pounded chicken, my mind made one of those strange, sparkling leaps it sometimes makes. I thought: This is why I feel so tender. This is why I cry so easily. I have been pummeled by life and circumstance until I am as tender as can be, just like a chicken cutlet.

The more I thought about it, I realised that this newly felt intense tenderness does not feel like a weakness. It feels more like permeability, as though the membrane between me and the world has grown thinner, but not in a harmful way. It’s like everything arrives at once now, love, grief, beauty, fear, gratitude, without clear boundaries between them. They all mingle together in the moonlight. My opinions don’t feel as acerbic as they could often be. My compassion and empathy feel emboldened beyond their previous capacity. It’s like I have a magical cloak that allows me to feel and not be weighed down by it. The tears just flow and evaporate.

This is simply me making an observation and writing it down, wondering if someone will read it and say, me, too. It is not something to fix or to get through. Maybe it’s simply a season of being awake enough to see shimmer wherever and whenever it appears and to feel the weight and the gift of being here. How can I really know such mysteries. I don’t need to dig too far. Fleeting, breathing, tenderest human things. I’m here for them all. And yes, my eyes welled up every time I read this through.