Month: April 2013

City of my heart

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On Sunday, the day before Patriot’s Day and the Boston marathon, Grace ran her first road race.  On the marathon course.  I was in New York for work, so I missed it, but I was sent this fantastic picture.  My heart swelled with both pride and shock, because really, how can my baby be that old?  That tall?

On Monday, Patriot’s Day, as you know, there was an explosion at the Boston marathon.  That tall, lanky girl, for whom I think the word coltish may have been coined, dissolved into a puddle of anxiety.  I told both she and Whit what had happened the minute I heard (they were home from school, sitting in the room next to my office), mostly because I was so startled by the news.  She hovered around my office all afternoon, lurking, asking constant questions, reading over my shoulder.

Right before the explosions, we had been talking about groups of people from the Marines (or Army, I admit I don’t know) who ran the course in their uniforms with backpacks.  Grace’s first reaction to the events, and to the few pictures she saw of the devastation (before I turned the TV off), was: “But those poor people just came home from war, where they saw this all the time.  They weren’t supposed to see it at home.”

Indeed, they weren’t.

I spent the afternoon toggling between bewilderment at this world that we live in, trying to understand what feels like a relentless wave of violence, and hugely heartened by it, as I received more texts and emails than I can count from people from all corners of my life (and the world) checking that we were okay.

But most of all, this: the city of my heart, my home, is bleeding and broken, under attack.

On our day of celebration, which starts at dawn with reenactments of the battles of Lexington and Concord and ends with the last runners limping across the finish line long after the sun has gone down.  Our day of inspiration and striving, of humanity at its finest: I am always moved equally by the runners who push themselves past all reason and by the spectators who come out to watch the river of dedication and devotion.  Marathon Monday is a pure celebration of our beating hearts and of our feet walking on this earth.  This day, this Patriot’s Day, our day, is now forever marked by explosions, lost limbs, dead children (my GOD – an eight year old – Whit is eight – how is this possible?), senseless death and hurt.

I hate that it happened on our day, on Patriot’s Day, on Marathon day.  I hate that this happened at all.

I ache for my city, the city I was born in, the city I’ve lived in since I graduated from college, the city I love, my home.

I know that many other cities in our country have been visited by tremendous pain and brutality over the last several years.  I feel a sense of “it’s our turn,” followed immediately by outrage that I could ever say that. What world do we live in where that’s the deal?

 

Leaning in, doing it all, and packing lunches the night before

I recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.  I know her work is controversial (though I’m not totally sure why, to be honest, after reading her book), and my goal is not to review the book.  But I will say I loved Lean In.  I found it supportive and inspiring, and while I agree there are big problems with the “system,” I was personally motivated by Sandberg’s focus on what we can do within the constraints of today’s reality.

Accepting the reality of right now, and embracing what is, is, of course, a big theme of my writing – and of my life.  Where that begins to bleed into capitulating to things that are unacceptable is a topic for another day.

People ask me a lot how I “do it all.”  The truth is, of course, that I don’t.  None of us does.  I’m not the only person who has written extensively on this topic, nor am I the only one to conclude that the definition of “it all” is both an intensely personal and a vitally important thing.

Lean In triggered a cascade of thoughts and reflections for me.  One was that discussion of “work-life balance” (a term I personally dislike) tends to fall into two categories: big picture theorizing and granular advice.  The former is complicated, and all I can say for sure is that any discussion of the topic of working and mothering touches some deep ocean of feeling buried deep inside me, as enormous as it inchoate.  Within a page or two of any book or article on the subject, I am in tears.  I need to spend more time thinking about what those feelings are.

It is the latter category that I want to talk about today.  No matter what it is that each of us juggles – and while I know that that assortment looks different for each of us, I also know that almost everyone’s plate feels hugely full – we all have tricks for minimizing dropped balls.

My appetite for talk about these particular, specific strategies is almost endless.  I love to hear about the ways that others make it all happen, and always learn something when the conversation turns to this topic.  I wanted to share some of the tactics that make life work for me right now.  None of these are rocket science.  But they help me.  I’d love to hear your tricks and strategies:

  • Living close to both my kids’ school and my office.  Limiting my commute has made being engaged in Grace and Whit’s school lives (drop off every day, occasional pick up, conferences) feasible.  It has had costs, of course: we live in a small house and do not have a yard.  But every time we talk about it, Matt and I conclude that this is the right choice for now.
  • Pack lunches the night before.  Always, without exception.
  • Early bedtimes.  For the children and for me.
  • Pick your battles.  Grace goes to school every single day in black leggings.  She loves them and has 5 pairs.  Do I love the look?  No.  Is it easy, and – more importantly – does it make her happy to have control over this choice?  Yes.  It also simplifies and smoothes the morning routine.
  • If you have a spare 5 minutes (early to an appointment, finished with grocery shopping faster than planned) fill up the car even if it doesn’t need it or get cash at the ATM even if you don’t need it.  You will be glad you did.
  • Treat your babysitters extremely well.  I don’t ever cancel within a few days without offering to pay, and I usually round up when settling.  I’m never late.  I over-communicate.  And as a result: I have hugely loyal babysitters who go out of their way to help.  It makes a big, big difference.

What are some of your particular pieces of advice for managing a very full life?

 

to recognize the gods in me and the gods in other men and women

“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”

-D.H. Lawrence

Thank you to Patti Digh’s beautiful blog, 37 Days, for reminding me of this beautiful passage.

Things I love lately

A Childless Bystander’s Baffled Hymn – this piece by Frank Bruni is both laugh-out-loud hilarious and deeply, pointedly true.  “They are toddlers, not Pakistan,” he points out, and asks, crucially, why our generation seems to think that this parenting effort is fraught with brand-new dangers and worries instead of one shared by centuries of humans.  Bruni made me think of my father’s oft-repeated adage to my sister and me, which I loathed as a child but find brilliant now: “You must be mistaking this for a democracy.”  Ultimately, I think his conclusion, which meshes with my belief that children are north of 80% nature instead of nurture, is tremendously liberating.  Just love them.  And give them boundaries.  Maybe it’s that simple?

When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice – this book by Terry Tempest Williams just blew me away.  What an outrageously beautiful meditation on speaking out and staying silent, on the power of the natural world, and on the endless, complicated, echoing ways the mother-daughter relationship twists through all our days.  I loved it.

On Being Lost and Found – Ali Edwards’ lovely words on reclaiming herself, on wanting to live the length and the width of her life, really resonated with me.  As I wrote in my comment, for me the question is always: how do I reconcile the desire to reclaim something that was with the reality that sometimes we, and our lives, change in permanent ways?

Inhabiting a Moment – I love everything Katrina writes, that’s no secret.  But this post, about “the flotsam and jetsam that add up to days lived,” about the value and importance of recording the smallest details of an ordinary moment … well, it leveled me.  Just: yes.

Reasons My Son is Crying – This tumblr of pictures and captions reminds me of Honest Toddler with its hilarious rendering of the sometimes-absurd nature of life with small children.  So, so, so funny.

Lululemon studio pants – this has been a very busy week for me at work, and I’ve barely left my desk, let alone my house.  I have also basically not taken these pants off.

I write these round-ups of things I love lately about once a month.  They are all compiled here.

What are you reading, listening to, watching, and thinking about these days?