The Torture of Sisyphus

Living life as a full-time student at 51 years old has been challenging. There is never enough time in the day to complete all my school work, finish all my grading, help my children with their homework, and still have time to make half-hearted attempts to bring some order to the chaos that my life and home have become.

Simone de Beauvoir said, “Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day,” and I barely try any more. I helplessly hope that my daughters won’t need endless years of therapy for the dirty jeans worn to school two days running, or the dust bunnies accumulating above our ankles, or the pasta and pizza we’ve eaten for the fifth day in a row. The youngest one rather enjoys that I never seem to remember to remind her to take showers. She doesn’t care that her hair looks more like strands of limp seaweed than human locks; I have learned to let go of my ideals and accept her feelings on comfortable grooming.

There are times when the chaos becomes so blatantly beyond reason that my psyche begins to unravel. It is at those points, when I am grasping for sanity and feeling it slowly slip through my fingers, that the farm will send a small gentle reminder, a hint of the sublime unknowable wonder in life, and I can stop my world, step off for a few moments to be still in myself and at one with the world around me. The gentle reminder becomes a grounding and centering that fills my soul with a renewed sense of self, remembering my place in the world.

One of those moments came to me as I sat in the car, working up the energy for what had become the Herculean effort needed to open the car door and walk into the house. It had been raining for weeks, the house was swimming in a sea of mud, and the sump pump was barely keeping up with the cataracts of water streaming through my basement. As I sat wondering where I would find enough strength to finish the long day ahead of me, a sudden flash of color, almost unnoticed, gently tugged at my attention. It was a bluebird, rosy-bellied and gorgeous, with brilliant blue back and tail, feeding on the newly sun-warmed insects beginning to emerge from the long wet winter.

As I sat watching, the bluebird was joined by a merry fat robin. Plump brown wrens joined the feeding flock. A few minutes later, a brilliant blue jay appeared above the throng of birds feeding in front of my car. I sat mesmerized for many long minutes, until the birds had their fill and all finally fluttered away. It was a breathtaking moment of spring.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” I think often about what that means – a child that knows poems. As a child, I never liked poetry; I found it difficult to understand, long-winded, lacking in personal meaning. I began to understand poetry when someone introduced me to Mary Oliver, whose visual imagery captured my imagination and sent it soaring with the wild geese I read about in my first Oliver poem. I found the world offering itself to my imagination, calling to me “like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,” and I began to devour poetry. Since then, I have had the privilege of introducing many children to exciting poetry that fires their imaginations and calls them to the wild places within themselves. I think there can be no greater gift than to hear a child read her first poems to you, full of rich imagery, pulling at your despair and showing you your place in the family of things.

And so, like the child that knows poems, I slid from the car, rejuvenated by the avian dance of spring, opening my heart to the possibilities, finding once again within myself the pure joy and hope that offer relief from chaos -- my psyche made whole again.

Spring has arrived, and with it, a renewal of hope.