“From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone. ”
– Jane Hamilton
We had a marvelous – albeit looooong – holiday break. There were two highlights that I can’t stop thinking about. The first was a visit, in the snow, to Old Sturbridge Village on Boxing Day. Because of some combination of these two factors, the place was deserted. We were very nearly the only people there. We walked around in the gently falling snow, and I couldn’t stop thinking about where this country began, and of feeling pride in how tenacious, brave, and stubbornly determined those who came before us were.
Then, the next day, my entire family (my parents, my sister and her husband and two daughters, and Matt, Grace, and Whit) went to see some of my late grandfather‘s pieces of art at an art museum in western Massachusetts. He donated them before his death. The pieces of art are undistinguished, I think, from an artistic standpoint, but they hold tremendous sentimental value. In a room where a large portrait of a Chinese man looked down on us, four of Pops‘ grandchildren looked at some of the snuff bottles that he brought back from his childhood in China and displayed in his homes.
I was overcome with memory. The portrait had hung on the wall of my grandparents’ home in Long Island, site of so many of my childhood memories. Then it had moved to the wall of the apartment my grandparents moved to, the apartment both lived in when they died. The snuff bottles hold a real place in my memory too, particularly the story my mother tells of coming around a corner in the Long Island house to see the toddler me, having pushed a chair against the wall, inches away from grabbing one of the fragile bottles.
This portrait, these bottles, along with the scroll that hangs on the wall of our home and Pops’ fluent Mandarin until the day he died: these were all relics of his childhood, spent in Beijing. I often forget how extraordinary this small detail is: my grandfather, with his four siblings, grew up in Beijing. In that small room in western Massachusetts, four of Pops’ great-grandchildren leaned over treasures that he had brought back from his own childhood in Asia: tiny bottles carved out of ivory and coral, the portrait of a Chinese man. Their childhood, my childhood, his childhood: the room was full of memory, and years banged together, reminding me of all that had come before.
It is such an immense world, and we are so small. Two of the four children in that room lived in Israel for a year as small children. The two grandchildren in that room, now women in their (late!) 30s, grew up largely in Europe. I felt a flush of shame at my family’s unadventurousness, I’ll admit: we’ve stayed a lot closer to home than anyone else in the room. But still: all of our paths are different, and they take us into the world, no matter where we go.
Both of these experiences, in their own way, involved the past glinting through the present. Whether it was with respect to America in general or my family in particular, I confronted where I came from on that trip, was reminded of the spirit of both endurance and adventure that marks my and our history.
I thought about my friend Amanda’s wonderful post, Do you see me? all through the holidays. December is, of course, a season rife with images of perfect celebrations, of handmade cookies and advent calendars and faces aglow with candles and wonder. And I won’t lie: we had our share of those things here (well, not the perfect, but the cookies and advent calendars, the candles and the wonder). But there was also plenty of bickering, of exhaustion, and more than a few tears.
Amanda‘s musings on what we share, both easily and haltingly, what we reveal and what we don’t, really stuck with me. I think about this all the time, particularly because I’m often asked by people I know and those I don’t what it is like to write so openly here. “Don’t you feel too vulnerable?” people often ask me. It’s always that word. And my response is always the same: no. Everything I share here is true, but I also get to choose what it is I write about. This choosing, this filtering, is something I think about all the time. One of my favorite posts from last year, It’s Not All Shiny, focused on this exact question.
This is related, I think, to what Amanda’s talking about. What can we learn from the things we are ashamed of and the things we hold back? Surely our instinctive reaction to hide certain truths and realities tells us a lot. Are we disavowing the things that we don’t like about ourselves and our lives? Does not displaying certain things mean we are denying their truth?
I am not sure, but I don’t think so. Surely some degree of filtering is necessary to operate in the world. It’s a slippery slope, of course, that runs between being discerning about what we reveal to others and being disingenuous or, even, dishonest. And in certain relationships and at given moments, it makes sense to share even the darkest contents of our hearts and minds. But to broadcast them doesn’t feel right to me. In fact sometimes I think that sharing the messy and ugly stuff is almost a defensive move, to preempt judgment, somehow, and it can put the recipient of the reveal in an awkward position.
What I do know, though, is that I’ve grown more cautious about what I share. In my real life people often tell me that it is hard to get me to talk about myself. Some of this is innate, and some of it is a wariness that comes from having been stung by all the ways I have been misperceived over the years. The truth is this concerns me, and makes me second guess my deep sense of settling more comfortably into my own life. If I’m growing quieter, and more tentative, does that mean the opposite is true? Or am I just more protective of the discoveries I have made, many of which have been of glittering, shimmery things in the piles of life’s ordinary dust and mundane moments.
I am in love with my life. With all of it. I embrace the shadowy valleys that are as integral to the topography of my life as are the peaks and the wide, sun-drenched plains. After all, we are only here for a brief, shimmering second; the least we can do is throw our arms around – and ourselves into – the whole of our lives, as they are, right here, right now.
These sentences, which I wrote almost a year and a half ago, are still absolutely true. I believe fiercely in the power of recognizing and acknowledging and, yes, loving, everything in our lives: the ugly and the broken as much as the beautiful and the beloved. I still think, though, that it is our prerogative to decide what we share and when. I am an open person but also a private one. I personally think those two things can coexist. Still, as Amanda says, I think there’s value in looking closely at the things we hold back; casting out shame as much as we can, embracing the whole, sharing when we feel comfortable doing so. That’s my plan for 2014, at least.
What do you share and what do you keep to yourself? Do you think there’s something to be learned about understanding what falls into each category?
Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?
– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
self-portrait (I just cannot use the word selfie) at sunset last week.
I believe the past, present, and future are all woven together in ways I can’t fully understand. I also believe that a central task of adulthood is accepting, making peace with, and celebrating our individual pasts and histories. This is the only way we can embrace what is, let alone what lies ahead.
Today, 2014 dawns: clear, cold, brand-new.
As part of my desire to understand the past in order to fully move forward into the future, I have been reflecting on the year that has passed.
What did I learn in 2013?
Life is a lesson in letting go. It never ends, this learning, and it seems like every single day there’s a new thing on which I need to release my grip. Over and over again, I feel like I am endlessly saying goodbye, acknowledging losses. Of course I am also welcoming new things, people, and learning, though sometimes the former swamps the latter for me.
I am an immensely attached person. That makes the aforementioned letting go really hard.
Green juice – specifically grapefruit, ginger, and kale – is a terrific way to start the day. Also, I will never be hungry for breakfast.
I am going to get a cold, a bad one, every single winter. No matter what I do to try to stay healthy.
Poetry is my lingua franca. It is in poetry that I feel the most at home, poetry that I remember most vividly and most often, poets to whom I relate most intensely.
That “it’s rarely about you” lesson that I aspired to teach Grace as she turned 10? I need to learn it too. Again and again.
Maya Angelou said there are years that ask questions and years that answer. 2013 was a year of questions, but then again so were 2012 and 2011. It feels as though I’ve been in a period of more questions than answers, more uncertainty than clarity, more shadow than bright light. What I don’t know is whether that is fact or about my growing and sometimes-overwhelming awareness of everything around (and within) me.
Music is about lyrics for me (see above point about poetry – aren’t lyrics just poems set to music?) It’s hard to name favorites, but immediately Fix You, Home, Let Her Go, Breathe, Circle Game, and The Story come to mind as some I hold dear.
I asked Grace and Whit what they learned in 2013, and they had these observations to offer: Whit learned that Leonardo da Vinci’s parents were not married and how they made candles in the 1800s. Grace learned a lot about Samuel de Champlain, and how to write and edit a novel (she participated in NaNoWriMo). Just over two years ago, they cited noticing things, manners, and using the potty, so I’d say they’re moving in the granular (though perhaps less practical) direction.
What did you learn in 2013? How do these learnings inform what you aspire to in 2014?