An Ordinary Miracle

I’m going to love you for the rest of your life
All I need is a miracle
All I need is you
— Mike + The Mechanics

I’m taking a writing course led by author and Northwestern University professor, Rachel Jamison Webster. In the last session she said a few things that have stuck with me:

As women, we have a deep longing to be seen for what we’ve survived and for what we know about things. We also have a deep fear of being seen.

We’re told we can only be one kind of woman, but we are complicated.

Writing is only good when you’re vulnerable.

Amen.

I feel all those things deeply when I sit down to write. I want to be seen. And I want to hide. I want to create a niche. And I don’t want to pick a lane. I know my best writing feels exposing. And vulnerability sometimes feels lethal.

Rachel encourages her students to embrace our contradictory experiences. To be all of our selves. And to write about ordinary moments, not just the most intense ones. She prompted us to spend eight minutes writing a story, based on a memory from the past, about an ordinary miracle.

My story started with me sitting on the trampoline in my backyard in Lake Forest, Illinois, paging through the membrane-thin pages of the Peterson Guide. This tome was a sacred text for college-bound teens in the pre-internet era, the exhaustive source of information for what seemed like four billion colleges and universities. There, I dog-eared the University of Washington page, along with some other possible options.

I wanted to move West but had no earthly idea what or where Seattle was except what I learned from the movie Singles. On a whim, I applied to UW, and to my delight, was accepted. I visited with my parents on a bluebird day in the spring of 1995 and immediately knew UW was the place for me. I felt it in my bones.

My story ended by reflecting on what has transpired since that afternoon on the trampoline, and how my life might have unfolded in an alternate universe had I made another choice. My curiosity quickly degraded into a sick feeling when I realized that a different path would have meant a life without the three people who mean the most to me.

Understandably, I’ve been dwelling on the preciousness of this ordinary miracle because on Monday, my husband Kjell and I celebrated our 24th anniversary. It gets harder and harder to remember what my pre-Kjell life felt like. I have memories from that time, but it’s been a quarter-century and half of my years on this planet since I was that version of myself.

My mom used to say, “I love who you get to be with Kjell.” I don’t know what exactly she meant when she said that, but I hear Rachel Webster’s words in what it means to me.

With Kjell, I get to be seen for what I’ve survived and what I know. He’s the witness to the best of me and the parts I’d rather hide. With Kjell I get to be all my complicated selves.

Strong and stubborn. Fragile and small. Soft flesh protected by a crunchy exoskeleton.

Sharp witted and critical. Compassionate and openhearted.

Serious and anxious. Playful and childlike.

Organized and diligent. Directionally illiterate. Clumsy.

Difficult. Magnetic. Exasperating. Compelling.

Little did I know that when I made the ordinary choice to move to Seattle, I would get a miracle: to be loved unconditionally, cherished unreasonably, and supported totally.