Yellow Shoes

​“Ugh, your blogs are just so depressing!!” a well-meaning friend confided to me in a phone conversation earlier this month. This took me aback.
 
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I intend them to be upbeat.”
 
“Oh, come on! You’ve been hanging on by a thread for almost a year now, living in limbo, canceling vacations and other plans while hoping Jory gets a job. You’re living off the money your parents left you and this is not how they intended you spend it, you know.”
 
In fairness, while I am all too well aware of the stress I live under, I am unaware that my blogs have been downers. This is probably because I have been spending hours every morning for the past few months consumed with writing a book about a man who snuck letters out of a Nazi internment camp to his wife and children in the winter of 1942. Therefore, my frame of reference has been: no Nazis, no starvation, no hypothermia, no separation – we’re good. A low bar, but one we are crushing here in Albuquerque.
 
Except then, the woman who found and translated these letters decided she wants them buried. She thinks to publish them would be to court danger. I am stunned by her reversal. These haunting letters reveal such hope, such optimism, such love in the face of brutal hatred. I have wept over them, and feel that to silence his voice will be to enable the haters. It’s like erasing Anne Frank because her diary isn’t convenient. But this woman is the man's granddaughter, and she is genuinely afraid of the obvious growing anti-Semitism around the world, especially in France, where she lives.
 
What I know to be true is that fear is never a good motivator, ever. I try to verbalize this, but am told that I am unaware of how bad things are. To argue that you are aware to someone who says you don’t understand is to dive into a pointless rabbit hole.
 
Thankfully, the man’s other granddaughter, who is American, is incredibly wise and patient. She listens to her anxious cousin, holding back judgement. It takes a lot of courage and strength just to listen. 
 
I take a breath and focus elsewhere. Easy to do, as there are so many other situations clamoring for my attention. I decide not to worry about the broken washing machine (which costs the same to fix as buying a new one), and spotlight my middle child, who continues to struggle socially. She texted her birthday invitation to some friends. They all said they love the invitation, but not one of them said they want to attend the actual party. Having received help from her school, I now go to the library, seeking books on how to help tweens and teens make friends.
 
I check out the first book I find, written for teens. I expect it to be full of social etiquette, stuff like: ask others questions. Smile! Give compliments. Instead, what I find blows my mind. (I love the book; my daughter feels it's weird.) The first chapter says the best way to make friends is to live mindfully: in the present moment, and without judgement. Living with one foot regretting past scenarios and another anxiously awaiting the future doesn’t allow us to see the people in front of us. Furthermore, the judge and jury that play in our heads certainly doesn’t allow us to listen to what the people in front of us are communicating, both verbally and non-verbally.
 
Is this why it’s so challenging for us to make new friends? 
 
Living mindlessly, on autopilot, has become both a default and a defense for us, even at a national level. To bring it to the family level: it’s my 7-year-old, so afraid of boredom that he craves constant food and screens to escape the present moment. It’s me walking the dogs, feeling great that my son will be at school on time with his backpack AND jacket, only to realize that I forgot poop bags (I go back and pick up the poop in penance). It’s my oldest getting out of the car at school and giving herself a concussion by hitting her head as she closed the car door. It’s my husband not noticing this happened. (Yes, she got a real concussion. She had to miss days of school, and still is needing lots and lots of rest. But I digress.)
 
To live mindlessly is to go to the movies for the popcorn and miss the show. Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr puts it better: we must not confuse our life situation with our actual lives, our essence, our souls.
 
So, to answer my friend, yes, the situation my family has been in for the last year has truly been  discouraging, frustrating and scary. However, my actual life, from which my writing comes, has been one of discovery and connection.
 
Our actual lives thrive on gratitude, intention, and love, because these things feed our soul. This is the reason those letters from the Nazi internment camp resonate so deeply with me. This man was in the absolute worst of life’s situations, and yet, he didn’t let it define him.
 
In case you never get to read his letters, I will share that in the first one, he asked his wife to send him yellow shoe laces. This is because the Nazis confiscated shoelaces and belts, to keep French inmates from using them to kill themselves. But why yellow? The answer appears two lines down, when he asks her to send yellow shoe polish. He was wearing bright dapper yellow shoes in a Nazi internment camp, and he intended to keep them looking their best. This to me is a symbol of joie de vivre, of resistance, of hope.
 
So now matter what daunting circumstances life may be throwing our way, let us not confuse our current situations with our lives. (Take that, mountains of laundry and broken washing machine!) Let’s find our equivalent of yellow shoes, walk tall, and even dance when we are mindful enough to hear life’s rhythm.