LIFE INSIDE THE PAUSE
Life inside the pause
One of the things I am most proud of is my meditation practice. I started ten years ago, shortly after the birth of my second child, mostly because I felt like I was going to go crazy trying to take care of two children under age three, work outside the home, as well as speak in full sentences and shower regularly. I figured I either needed to start drinking more wine or start meditating, and, as money was tight, meditation won.
My favorite part of meditation is the pause. To practice, you take time out of your busy day to do what looks like absolutely nothing. In life, you try to consciously take moments out of your day to notice. Sometimes it is just how you are breathing, or to take in the full beauty of a sunset or to approximate exactly how loudly your seven-year-old is screaming at her sister (yes, there is an app for that). Over time, you learn how to consciously take these pauses more frequently, which has the cumulative and seemingly magical effect of slowing time down enough so that you can do what you need to do.
But then there are the pauses that are thrown at you, against your will. These come in two flavors, moments of dread and moments to be seized. With the first kind, I am usually waiting anxiously for something to happen. My Costa Rican debit card comes to mind.
During the six years I lived in Costa Rica, my local debit card failed regularly, for no particular reason. Perhaps it had gone unused for a few weeks while I was traveling outside of the country, as if to punish me for leaving it. Or it would stop working in a boutique where it did not care for the clothes. I would just be lulled into a sense of stability that I would be able to actually purchase the large cart of perishable grocery items, and not have to give them to the scowling clerk to return to the freezer section, when it would decide it needed a break from working so hard.
So it was with this history in mind that I stood holding my breath (I find breathing during a moment of dread particularly difficult) in front of the cashier at the small grocery store a short walk from my apartment in Beirut. I had really hoped to avoid the grocery store on this particular day, to be honest. Somehow, moving to a new country had increased everyone’s appetite, and I couldn’t seem to keep the shelves stocked for more than a day or two at a time. To be more precise, I couldn’t buy enough bread and cheese. When faced with too many new things at once, my children had deferred almost exclusively to grilled cheese. It was the culinary equivalent of white noise, drowning out the zataar and haloumi and eggplant matabal that surrounded them outside the house. Over the last week I had made about 100 grilled cheese sandwiches for them, cycling through blocks of Irish cheddar cheese, thick sticks of unsalted french butter, and whole wheat sandwich bread at a pace of a loaf a day. So, I hauled myself off to the store, sick of bread and cheese, out of cash and dubious about my debit card.
About halfway to the market I caught the sweet smell of cantaloupe, so strong it stopped me. This was one of those moments to be seized. It came from a small storefront across the narrow street. I stopped and watched as several people went in and out. A couple of stooped octogenarian ladies in navy blue flower dresses and boxy brown handbags. A skinny Philippine maid in a pink uniform with a white baby doll collar. A man in a red polo shirt and jeans, who barely looked up from his cell phone as he navigated the pockmarked sidewalk and opened the door.
I walked across the street and looked in the window, and saw a dark cement cave-like store, filled to the brim with produce. A wrinkled, white-haired man beckoned to me in Arabic, offering me a small plastic bag. I waved to the man but did not go in. His smile was just the moment I needed. I continued on for my bread and cheese and I am happy to report that my debit card worked on the first try. As I stepped out of the market the Call to Prayer began.
The Muslim Call to Prayer is a prayer that to me sounds like a song. It rings out from the loudspeakers on top of the local mosques five times a day to, among other things, remind Muslims that it is time to take a break from life and pray. This is an aspect of Islam that I already love. Beirut is many, many things, but quiet is not one of them. I swear, during the Call to Prayer in our neighborhood, there is a hush. You have to actually listen for it, because it isn’t readily obvious. It is subtle. It isn’t so much that activity stops, but it is like the voices coming from the tops of minarets all over the city weave together to create a blanket of softness. The jackhammers aren’t quite as jarring, the car horns slide into the background, the whir of air conditioners and generators decreases an octave. It is a collective pause. A reminder that there is more to life than bread and cheese and unpredictable debit cards. There also can be bounty inside what looks like a dreary hole of a store, a welcoming smile from a stranger, and quiet amidst the noise.