Month: January 2015

The Here Year: vulnerability

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Aidan has chosen vulnerability as this month’s Here Year theme, and I’m thrilled by that selection.  I hear that word a lot.  People ask why I’m so comfortable making my self vulnerable on this blog, and I also am quick to say that it’s people who are real and vulnerable themselves who most interest me.

But what does the word really mean? I fear that “vulnerability” has become a bit of a catchphrase, in the vein of “authentic,” and I want to really understand it.  I turned to Google and found one definition that I particularly liked: “the inability to withstand the effects of a hostile environment.”  It reminded me of years ago, when I learned about a syndrome called atopy: “a group of symptoms that demonstrate acute sensitivity to the world.  I am reactive to the air, to the very stuff of everyday life.  Just living in the world is a stress on my system.  This seems like a physical manifestation of my emotional porousness.”

So, yes.  I am familiar with vulnerability.  When I talk about being porous to the world, maybe I am simply describing vulnerability.  But it’s not quite that simple.  People ask me all the time whether writing this blog makes me feel vulnerable.  I’m not sure I know how to answer that, to be honest.  In some ways, yes.  Clearly I write about personal topics and share the prickly, complicated contents of my heart and spirit.  But in other ways, no.  And candidly, part of the reason I’ve backed away from writing a book-length memoir is my unwillingness to share certain aspects of my life.  I’m comfortable being vulnerable when it comes to my own issues, wrinkles, and flaws.  No question.  But when it comes to being open about others in ways that make them vulnerable, I balk.  This is true with my husband and children in particular, and I realized that with a book-length memoir the expectation for disclosure was much higher and more universal than it is on my blog.

So here I am, happily sharing things that are true and honest, trying to be candid about the good and the bad.  One of my favorite posts I’ve ever written, It’s Not All Shiny, dealt with this particular question, that of the gulf between reality and perception.  I share photos on Instagram with the hashtag #everydaylife in part to try to show the good and bad and messy and beautiful.  It’s true that one of my most fundamental goals in life is to see the glory and the holiness even in the most mundane moments.  I wrestle with this, because I doubt myself and think: does that mean I’m glossing over the ugliness?  But I don’t think so, ultimately.

Maybe the practice of showing what is and trying to see the beauty in it is the essence of vulnerability.  Do you think so?

For me, vulnerability is wound around being present to, and in, my daily experience.  I can’t really engage with my life – with the dark hole at the center of it, with its joys and pains – without letting down my guard.  The practice of showing up here day after day for years on end has forced me to confront both the beautiful and the difficult aspects of this life of mine.  That has made me vulnerable.  To myself, to those close to me, to anyone reading.  I’m still understanding the precise contours of the relationship between vulnerability and presence, but I know they’re strongly related to each other.

I’m looking forward to thinking about and writing about vulnerability this month (I also have a great guest post planned!) and am eager to hear your thoughts on the topic.

 

 

this heart-heavy openness

When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you.  Your mind floods with oxygen.  Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows.  You laugh hard every day.  You think about the future and read about global warming.  You realize how nice it feels to care about someone more than yourself.  And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more.

– Amy Poehler, Yes Please

A quiet break, the Phantom Tollbooth, skiing on rocks, a foam sword, and New Year’s Day at the beach.

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We had a very quiet winter break.  Two weeks at home.  A few days before school got out, on 12/19, I joked to a friend that while some downtime sounded good at that moment I was also pretty sure we’d all be at each others’ throats within a couple of days.  I’m happy to say I was wrong.

Last year Grace made a scavenger hunt for Matt and me which brought home how meaningful the smallest moments can be.  This year, the universe gave me the same message again.

We made Christmas cookies and our Advent candle burned down to a stub.  We saw our family, both those we were born into and those we’ve chosen through dear friendships, in the days leading up to Christmas.  It is my family’s tradition to celebrate Christmas Eve with Ethan‘s family.  This family was one of the cornerstones of my childhood and they remain very important to me.  Grace and Whit both used a saber to take the top off of champagne bottles, we sang Christmas carols, and we talked at dinner about the world, travel, photography, gratitude and love.  On Christmas Day both of our children slept in and Whit came racing downstairs at 8:30 and asked, without hesitation, “where’d you put my book?”  Not: can I open presents?  But: where is my book?  If there is a pinnacle of motherhood for me, that might have been it.  I had had to take away The Phantom Tollbooth the night before when I busted him reading it by headlamp at midnight.

On Christmas Day we saw my parents for present-opening and then Matt’s parents and brother and family for dinner.  After that the four of us went for a walk in the cold, clear darkness.  We walked around our familiar neighborhood, and I felt a deep sense of contentment take root inside of me.  This is Christmas, I thought to myself (that’s when we took the photo above).

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We went skiing for the day, enjoying warm temperatures but working hard to avoid the rocks poking through the thin snow cover.

We went to a Harvard hockey game which was great fun, though I was shocked by the negative cheering and booing of the other team’s fans, among whom we sat.

We spent a lot of time at home.  I did some work.  Grace and Whit read books, enjoyed their Christmas presents, watched movies, did a lot of skating, and played with friends who were also local.

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The outrageous, saturated blue of the sky and an Instagram from Kelle Hampton made me think of these words from Barbara Brown Taylor, which I love.

On New Year’s Eve, we celebrated as a foursome, as has become our custom.  We had a nice dinner by candlelight, played a family game, had brownie sundaes, and watched a couple of episodes of Modern Family.  Matt and I went to bed before 11 and Grace an Whit stayed up to watch the ball drop.  The next day they told us that Grace heard a noise downstairs that made her nervous so Whit came down (his bedroom is a flight up) with his foam sword and shield to protect her.  The heart palpitates at the chivalry, no?

New Year’s Day dawned bright, clear, and cold.  We drove to one of our family’s truly holy places, and walked on the winter beach.  Grace and Whit slept in, so it was later than it is often is, which means we weren’t alone on the beach.  We watched people dashing into the freezing water and dogs prancing along the frozen sand through eyes that watered from the cold wind.  I photographed our shadows.  We didn’t stay long, but it was gorgeous.

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It was a lovely, full, empty two weeks.  Full of love and empty of expectations.  Maybe that combination is the secret of life.  I cracked my shins on altars regularly.

Welcome, 2015!

 

What I learned in 2014 and what I hope for 2015

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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.

So, onward into 2015.  Last year I opened the new year with some reflections on what I’d learned the year before (as well as with that paragraph above, which I think bears repeating).  I wanted to do so again.  Some of these are new lessons, others are continued of lessons that I seem to need to need to re-learn over and over again.

What did I learn in 2014?

No amount of being here now helps ease the essential pain of time’s passage.  It gives me rich memories, yes, but it doesn’t change my sorrow at how fast this life flies.

The cliche that raising a tween and teen is the most difficult part of parenting seems to have some truth in it.  That I feel I can say that as I embark on this new phase fills me, I’ll admit, with something approaching dread.

The best way to clear my head when I feel sad or angry or upset about something is to go for a walk.  To gaze up at the sky and the branches, to feel the air around me, to observe the familiar streets near my home.

40 is officially the age when you start taking your health seriously.  That means that when something’s wrong, all the what-ifs rear their ugly heads and suddenly have credence.  The worst could be.  But it also means that on a daily basis I feel aware of the great miracle that the human body is.  I strive not to take my own health for granted.  I’m sure I don’t do nearly a good enough job, but I do try.

My soul speaks in poetry.  It’s not an accident that so many years ago, I chose to write my senior thesis in college on poetry (and I love the instinctive choice that I recognize now as some kind of deep, essential knowing).  It’s most often poetry that runs through my head, and it’s in reading poetry that I feel most at home, most soothed, most comfortable.

Let go.  I must keep learning to let go.

There’s no marathon in my future.  There’s probably not even another half marathon.  30 years of running has accumulated on my knees and the wear is beginning to show.  I hate, hate, hate this fact.

Perhaps the biggest thing I learned in 2014 is how dearly I love my own life.  What I most devoutly want in 2015 is more these days, more of my shining, painful, ordinary life.  My wish for the new year is as simple and as arrogant as that: more of this.

What did you learn in 2014?  What do you hope for in 2015?

 

 

the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn’t know

And yet, even as he thought of all these things, he noticed somehow that the sky was a lovely shade of blue and that one cloud had the shape of a sailing ship.  The tips of the trees held pale, young buds and the leaves were a rich deep green.  Outside the window, there was so much to see, and hear, and touch – walks to take, hills to climb, caterpillars to watch as they strolled through the garden.  There were voices to hear and conversations to listen to in wonder, and the special smell of each day.

And, in the very room in which he sat, there were books that could take you anywhere, and things to invent, and make, and build and break, and all the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn’t know – music to play, songs to sing, and worlds to imagine and then someday make real.  His thoughts darted eagerly about as everything looked new – and worth trying.

“Well, I would like to make another trip,” he said, jumping to his feet; “but I really don’t know when I’ll have the time.  There’s just so much to do right here.”

– Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth