J. Ivy rabbit holes are nothing new for me. This one, though, was different. This time, I knew I needed to bring Nate down the rabbit hole with me.
September / October 2010
Cold iced coffee – tall, from Starbucks. Headphones on. Kanye’s full-length Runaway in my auditory peripheral. Switching at rapid, warp speed from that into everything and anything lyrically related.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered the rest of College Dropout for the first time.
It’s gonna take a lot more than coupons to get us saved.
Whoa.
The peak of my photo-manipulation deep dive hadn’t quite hit, but those words did. I still haven’t conceptualized art to do them justice.
Then,
We are all here for a reason on a particular path
You don’t need a curriculum to know that you’re apart of the math
Cats think I’m delirious but I’m so damn serious
That’s why I expose my soul to the globe; the world
I’m tryin’ to make it better for these little boys and girls…
Coming in the few months immediately following my verbal confrontation with a peer in student activities, harmony was on my mind. The “Cotton Ball Incident” had happened seven months prior, and I was noodling through how to tie sustainability better into events.
I had a vision – epiphany – that day, of an international music festival. The one thing that should know no color, no citizenship, a mutual respect for the Earth; the one thing to unite it all: music.
But beyond my rise ‘n grind
That day, J. Ivy’s words changed my game. My life – those words, on that day, continuing on to what I quoted in my wedding vows, in the eyes of a God I’m trying to rediscover. Those words, on that day, made balmy Indian summer heat cooler than a crisp autumn breeze.
The goosebumps. The chills. The tears that only beautiful spoken word to the tune of heavily manicured beats lit a fire inside of me.
If I were on the highest cliff, on the highest riff
And if you slipped off the side and clinched on to YOUR LIFE
In my grip I would never ever let you down
I couldn’t have known then that what those words made me emote, ache for, would come darting (literally) at me less than two years later, but they did.
Those words. Determination, Dedication, Motivation sum up the fire with lyrical prowess.
Those words.
I never could have predicted that a year and a half later, my family in shambles and my mom kicked to the curb, with fate twisting a sea salt grinder over her fresh wounds, would come back and take on a whole new meaning. For 22 years, my mom had made it all about me. She taught me 80% of life’s most important lessons, and the remaining 20%, I couldn’t have learned without her pushing me to spread my wings and fly.
At that time, I clinched on to her life, in my grip, and was never, ever going to let her down.
And this Finn – I don’t even remember why I called him second, in shambles – broken.
But I did. And it was fate. I don’t for a second believe that the timing there was a coincidence.
And without really knowing me, he did then what he’s done every day since – without question, without hesitation, opened his home to me.
Clinching on to my life, in his grip, he would never, ever let me down.
And when these words are found
Let it be known that God’s penmanship has been signed
With a language called love
There’s a reason for everything.
I didn’t know then that his father had burned a deep, still open wound to the right of his chest. Close to the heart, but far enough that the ever-pumping machine’s ability to heal itself treated the wound like a cul-de-sac u-turn. His dad didn’t even know his sister’s name.
Perspective’s a bitch.
My sister only got made into a scapegoat for a divorce.
And in a town where the name “Finn” was earned; reserved not just for my future husband, but his grandfather, the All-America WW2 veteran / legend at Valparaiso University; his grandmother, a founding members of Valparaiso University’s first social club for women, Sigma Nu; his aunt, a 1989 Inductee to his high school’s Athletic Hall of Fame; and the one he can never forget, his dad, the town drunk.
Nature vs. nurture hasn’t been resolved by debate for thousands of years. No child wants to feel unloved, and mean nothing to their parent. Fuse the two and you have a fundamental existential crisis on your hands.
All the self doubt, fear of failure – while some influenced by the events of the time, could generally be root-cause-analyzed to Hell and back, only to discover that the true root laid at the heart of his father not loving him.
I don’t question that on a surface level, there’s enough defense mechanisms present to choke a horse. But defense mechanisms by nature only exist when something needs defending. And after 35 years, the raw pain was, and is, still very much alive.
Let’s backtrack a smidge.
After having my mind blown on repeat with his verse on College Dropout, I periodically dove down the slam poetry rabbit hole (the genre as a whole, but inspired usually by that track popping on), always wishing to hear more of this mystery, under-the-radar Checagoan. The poet from Chicago – my city, and the greatest city in the world. I nearly always turned up empty-handed, until one day last summer when the Spotify algorithm figure me out (finally).
I heard Dream Big for the first time.
Burned out, struggling to come out significantly past break-even in the San Francisco Bay Area, the first few lines cut through 102° heat, where the weather reports think they’re breaking earth-shattering news by telling me it “felt like 107° outside.
T-1 Week until he left for Indiana. Almost our one-year “in the Eyes of God” wedding anniversary. Portillos, ordered. My trips / stop-offs on the walk home by the turtles became ever more frequent. After he flew out, I made it maybe four days before I gave up on trying to balance dogs, work, and solo evenings, and ran to my mom’s.
Home really is where you make it. She has this knack, dedication to creating a home where, the minute you come within a mile of it, you instantly feel your soul become more grounded. It’s centering. Serene, calming, home, in a tiny port town named Garibaldi.
The 101 in California weaves an winds its way to her home in Northwest Oregon, where she lives four houses off of it. It’s tolerable to live so far from her – for only a few reasons: same time zone, same highway, and good weather in California.
Once in Oregon, I plowed through Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly and probably one or two others. I actually don’t remember the deep dive that led to discovering this book – all I remember of those few weeks was a truly miserable chronic sinus infection, working on a Doctor Who quilt design for Nathan for Christmas, and trying to help him stay as sane as possible from afar.
He ended up not getting to fly back July 3 as planned, and stayed a few more days until his mom got her stitches taken out. It was knee surgery #1 of two for 2016. Claustrophobic, fueled by a “drop everything when your mom truly needs you” commitment, my heart hurt for him. I wouldn’t trade places with him (hey, at least I’m candid…) but somewhere on that deep dive, I stumbled across the promotional website for his (J. Ivy’s) book.
All he wanted to do, that entire time, was get back to building the life he felt destined to create. He’s a writer who dabbles in digital marketing, and more often than not, especially in the years I’ve known him, the marketer side won the attention battle – it paid the bills – with the writer left to the confines of a claustrophobic brain.
I found myself saving snippets, quotes – partly to remind him that these things dragging him down, the client work, the mountains he was carrying for his mom, they weren’t the end game. Just temporary hurdles. His creative confidence was struggling. His identity as a writer more doubt than dogma. Not writing wasn’t an option, but for a ###LEFT OFF HERE
True, life may seem at an all-time low;
You’ve tried everything,
But you can’t seem to find your flow,
So success comes slow and problems tend to grow.
You’ve seen your friends shine like it’s 100°,
While you chillin’ at 10 below.
It’s cold out here,
It’s freezing.
The bad times are increasing.
Bad energy is all that your surroundings are releasing,
So misery’s been feasting on your soul.
Vices grab hold,
And loads get heavy,
You feel so HEAVY.
But you can’t BLOCK your blessings
You got to be ready,
Ready to receive.
You got to shake off the fear and believe,‘Cause at times we’re tested,
Tested to see how STRONG we really are,
How far we’ll really go.
There’s an army GROWING but you can’t join unless you know what you’re fighting for,
‘Cause if you stand for nothing, You’ll fall for anything.So stand tall.
Know that you can’t walk until you crawl,
You can’t run until you walk,
You can’t fly without a running start.
So pump your arms when you come off the blocks,
And it won’t do you no harm to come off your block,
Get out and see the world,
‘Cause everyone has their own mountain top.
It wasn’t promised to a few, but promised to those who knew,
So climb the way you breathe and never stop,Inhale your best, exhale the BS.
Keep on keepin’ on.See where you’re going and work on getting there.
Don’t hate on others when others get theirs,
‘Cause you go’ get yours.
You go knock down your own doors,Know that GOD go take care of you and yours.
That’s why miracles happen out of the blue,
So know that and remember that can’t nobody stop you but YOU‘Cause Dreams Don’t Come True,
They Are True,
So Dream Big!
Then after that,
Dream even Bigger!!So BIG that Martin and Coretta are up in heaven holding hands,
Smiling down on us,
With a tear in their eyes,
And joy in their hearts,
Saying, “Amen…Amen…Amen!”
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