Remembering to Show Up

By Andrea Lingle

This is a list of things in my car:

• Wet wipes left over from the summer backpacking trip that my son went on. It was his second time. To say it changed his life is both true and cliché.

• A 20 ounce stainless steel cup with a lid with luke-warm herbal tea. Winter is too cold for water.

• A box of 100 flexible fabric adhesive bandages. Sometime life hurts, and it is nice to have a little something to help.

• Three pairs of cheap sunglasses—none of which is boring.

• My backpack.

• Gum in some kind of mint flavor. During the pandemic I went through a decided cinnamon phase, but, now, my masks smell like spearmint or wintergreen or Artic Ice.

• Two sweatshirts and a vest. Optional layering options.

• Granola bars.

• A minty mask. Today’s is black with adjustable ear straps. I have gotten picky.

• Two charge cords: one for Apple and once for USB-C.

• A hair tie hooked around the gear shift.

To remember is to become present to our lives. To pause to notice what actually surrounds us is what it means to show up. Elaine Heath teaches that the first motion in the contemplative life it so show up. Not to meditate for three hours a day or levitate. To show up. As I have tarried with Frederick Beuchner this month, I have been struck by his enjoinder to remember. To remember is to show up to the past, to what brought us here, to the constellation of experiences that are you.

Showing up can hurt. It means feeling and naming and staying in it—even when it is uncomfortable. It means learning the difference between harm and discomfort and refusing the one and accepting that the other is inherent to living life alive. Showing up can mean turning toward your rapidly beating heart and clammy hands. It can mean stopping the relentless task-list to see the clouds and the leafless trees.

This week, my family will gather around a table for a meal. We will make recipes that are the legacies of our ancestors, remember that Grandma used to make lefsa on a corncob-fed cast-iron stove, recall the little dishes and forks that Grandmother Dot would set out for sweet pickles, and, at some point in the meal, someone will “call” thankful fors. Then we will, as we do for every meal, go around the table to list something we are thankful for. As my turn approaches, I will think about the many things about my life that I am thankful for. I will think about the help I receive raising four kids, the ability to swing my legs out of bed, the softness of my dog’s belly.

I will remember.

Thank you, Dispersed Community, for reading. May you be met with joy and the courage to remember.