In some seasons of my life, it can feel like being is divided into three layers. On the surface is the layer of action, where the day to day bustle of life happens. In the innermost one, people meet and share their souls, and find camaraderie and sympathy and compassion, and it’s there they are plugged into the rich stuff of life. For whatever reason, periodically, the third layer welts up in my life- the layer that is in between the outside one and the innermost one, and it surrounds my consciousness, and I find myself trapped between the two, muted to both what’s going on around me, and to the connections that usually buoy my life. I suppose many people go through these seasons, but they can be hard. They are periods of loud loneliness, where you are, but you feel marooned spiritually from everyone else. Changes in actual yearly seasons seem to often trigger this in me- mostly, I think, because I sense life is passing, and the seasons illuminate its stride.

Blue tonight, I stayed home and decided to take a shovel to a rock-filled bed in my backyard. For some time, I’ve wanted to put a garden box over this slice of potential off of my back door and plant vegetables in it. I’ve toyed with the thought across two years now. Tonight, with the cut-off feeling weighing on me, it was good to just get off of my duff and do something active. I first pulled weeds out from the rocks and soil in the bed. I then shoveled and raked out the dark lava rock nuggets covering the soil, and moved them into a pile in another bed off the back wall. After moving rock, I swept up the remaining stems and leaves and dirt that was scattered across the porch, and swept up some other porch areas, getting some of the dead stuff bagged for the trash man.

It was odd, though, as I worked, that my mind zeroed in to reflect on a few scenes from a book I had read last month. And more odd to me was what they ended up making me chew on in my mind.

In “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn”, the story is about the childhood and youth of Francie Nolan growing up in said city at the turn of the twentieth century. Written in first person, Francie tells us about life in her family with her brother, her hard working mom, and her disappearing dad. She grows up surrounded by poverty, but somehow comes into adulthood poised to thrive despite her social and financial limitations.

Early on in the book, though, we learn about how her parents, Katie and Johnny, met and married. Johnny was dapper and a great dancer; Katie was a quiet beauty who was reticent with love. Johnny caught her eye and then her heart, and with the idealism of youth, they married, headed into a future of fortune.

Shortly into their marriage, though, Johnny discovers two practices that contribute to his, and his family’s, hardships: drinking, and disappearing.

We learn halfway through the book that Johnny, a loving man when present, goes on a final bender and disappears for a last time, dying a still young man, leaving a family behind.

When I read the book, I didn’t think heavily about Johnny or his issues at the time. He was a character- the hard drinking Irish guy who struggles to keep a job, and consequently, who soaks himself in alcohol to get through his days. He was just one figure in the text.

Tonight, for some reason, though, thinking about my own life, and my own history of relationships, it was as if I suddenly understood him. In my own history, I’ve worked to develop relationships with a few women who I’ve done well to establish a strong connection with. However, for some reason, I seem to reach a point with any possible partner that I feel like my hand has all been played, and that I have nothing else to play to keep them interested in the game. I reach a point of fatigue in effort, and then am left feeling helpless, unsure of if I’ve done enough to keep them interested in me. And then I end up feeling incapable of keeping their love. After all, I must always win it, and never simply be awarded it just because.

And so, tonight, there stood before me Johnny Nolan. I understand it now, Johnny, why you were always running away, why you were always girding yourself with drink. Once you were married, you were never sure you were good enough. You were never sure you had anything of what your family needed. I understand why men shrink and shirk in the face of love. They doubt their ability to be the rock they want to be to their wives and families. They doubt their ability to be enough of a man. They doubt that they themselves are enough to be loved.

God bless you soul, Johnny Nolan. I hope you found peace at last.

Life can be hard on everyone- men and women, rich or poor- leaving them wondering at times, and at different stages, despite their best efforts, if they are enough. “Am I enough- to love and be loved?” Sadly, most of us are too quick and too sure to hear “No.”

So goes the mind when I move rocks.

If anything, it was good to stop thinking and to just do. I struggle with doing. Especially when my mind slips into the middle layer.

Loneliness is common among everybody. I reckon I’ve been lonely for a long time, though, and as a friend pointed out, to a deeper extent than some.

It was nice to end the evening looking west at the sunset. I looked up from the horizon, and there in my view was the crescent of the moon. The air was cool and the neighborhood was quiet, so I just looked and smelled for a bit before I picked up the tools, and went in and found some dinner.

“A lonely day is God’s way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you.”
― Criss Jami