Month: July 2015

World Cup

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Like so many others, I loved watching the Women’s World Cup and was deeply moved by the United States team’s decisive triumph on Sunday night.  The sea of red, white, and blue and the national anthem all felt incredibly fitting at the end of the Fourth of July weekend, but more than anything, I was wowed by the athletes.

Yes, by their ferocious play.  By how they didn’t give up.  By their clear orientation towards teamwork.  I love what I read (and I can’t remember where) about someone asking one of the women what their “secret” was, and her response that “My secret is I’ve trained my butt off for 12 years.”  Amen to that.

I loved how after the win the team went and stood in front of the section of the stadium that clearly held their families.  They had tears and delight in their eyes as they danced, wept, and pointed up to their loved ones who’d been watching.  Abby Wambach kissed her wife, who leaned over so perilously I worried for a sec she’d fall.  It was abundantly clear to me that the US women wanted to celebrate first with each other (and I love all the photographs of them hugging, in huge groups) and immediately after, with their families.  I loved the way there was no drama about the way the two elder statesmen of the team were the ones to hoist the cup.  The person who won the game with her three goals (Carli Lloyd) and the big names on the team (Alex Morgan, Hope Solo) walked to the podium without complaint or hesitation, leaving the honors to the women who’d been on the team the longest, Abby Wambach and Christie Rampone.

I loved the clear dedication and loyalty I saw between each and every member of the team.  I mentioned to Grace that I loved the way the team looked communicating with their families.  She agreed, but added, “Well, I also liked how whenever someone from USA or Japan tripped each other or collided that patted each other on the back.  They just seemed really respectful.”  And how.

I’m hardly the only mother in America who’s jubilant at these newly-famous role models for our children.  My friend Kennedy wrote this on Facebook, and it brought tears to my eyes.

And now I coach my daughter, who is one of 2 million girls in the US who play soccer. Hopefully her heroes will be Carli Lloyd and Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, who talk all about team, and sacrifice, and hard work. They are elite, awesome athletes who don’t get red cards, don’t whine, don’t dive, don’t scream or curse on TV. They play their asses off, they pick each other up, and they never stop fighting.

They are truly wonderful representatives for our country.

And now, today, they are champions of the world.

The only thing that marred the final match for me was the Robert Palmer girls who came out at the end, holding trays of medals.  After such a fantastic, triumphant celebration of what womens’ bodies can do, it felt jarring and incongruous to observe this focus on what womens’ bodies look like.  I watched the women in tight, short black dresses and high heels mince onto the field with a fair amount of shock.  I know I’m not the only person who note this.

Let’s change that, FIFA.  Grace may not be playing soccer anymore, but I’m thrilled at what these women represent for both she and Whit and for all of our children (and adults!): the value of teamwork, respect, hard work, and never giving up.  #likeagirl, indeed.

Everyday life

I use the hashtag #everydaylife on Instagram a lot.  My goal is to convey the deep appreciation I have for my own ordinary existence.  Am I sometimes frustrated, cranky, tired, and ungrateful?  You bet.  Am I even more often thankful, aware to the point of pain, and struck with wonder?  No question.

So, I thought I’d share some of the #everydaylife moments from an absolutely spectacular three-day weekend.  For many years this has been a family weekend (no doubt driven in large part by the fact that my mother’s birthday is the 3rd).  It’s a weekend I look forward to all year.  My sister, our husbands, and our collective four children all gather with my parents.  It brings a lump to my throat to even write that, by the way.  I’m intensely conscious of how fortunate we are.

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Thursday night we arrived in time for a late dinner, and to witness my father reading Swallows and Amazons to the four cousins.  I loved this book as a child, and have vivid memories of him reading to me when I was a child (Treasure Island and The Water Babies feature most in my recollections).

Friday morning dawned clear and beautiful, and Hilary and I enjoyed a supremely special and immensely rare lunch with our mother for her birthday.  I honestly can’t recall the last time the three of us had a sit-down meal alone, together. I’ll spare you the selfie I took of the three of us leaving, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment won’t ever forget it.

Friday night was birthday dinner, with presents and cake and candles and photographs of Nana with her four grandchildren that I prize.

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Saturday started with the small-town parade that we all love.  The children love the candy that the floats throw, we all love the music, and my favorite is the ever-dwindling number of World War II veterans in the parade.  I remember when some of them used to walk.  There was red white and blue, small waving American flags, marching bands, and homemade raspberry, blueberry, and yogurt popsicles by Grace.

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We all went out on my parents’ boat and through a series of unexpected twists ended up not joining the yacht club sunflower raft as planned but instead going out for a short sail.  The code flags that we had hoisted to celebrate the holiday ripped off the halyard.  Back on the mooring, we needed to get the halyard, which was billowing loose towards the top of the mast.  First Grace went up in a bosun’s chair, hoisted by my father and Matt. She didn’t make it to the top before we realized the block that the line hoisting her up went through as broken, and quickly she came down.  It was Whit’s turn.  About 2/3 of the way up he started shouting.  “Mummy!  Mummy!  I am terrified!”  We encouraged him to keep going, and he did.  He went all the way to the top of the mast, captured the loose halyard, and came back down again.  It’s hard to see in the picture above, but that’s him at the top of the mast.

I told him the bravest thing I thought he did was admitting he was terrified.  And then doing it anyway.

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We had dinner at the yacht club, a location which always gives me slight goosebumps and where the past glints particularly brightly in the present (it’s the location where Matt and I celebrated our wedding reception).  We watched the fireworks, breaths bated.  Grace noted the way you could see the reflection of the starbursts on the water.  Whit said he liked the ones that looked like falling stars best. I thought about how many years we’ve watched these same fireworks, at this same spot, marveling at time’s elasticity, amazed, as I am on a daily basis, at how quickly this life runs through my fingers even as I grasp at it.

We walked home and said goodbye to Hilary and her family, a farewell whose bittersweetness was tempered by how exhausted everyone was.  I woke up missing them yesterday and feel sad that a weekend I anticipate for so long is over.  Sunday was a quiet day, with sleeping in, tennis (we played singles, and it is near the end of days: Grace almost beat Matt, and Whit took two games off of me in a set), and an afternoon when Matt, my Dad, Grace, and Whit went sailing with a friend and Mum and I puttered around.

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I was sad leaving yesterday afternoon, and wistful as we drove home (slowly).  Summer is flying too quickly by, as is life itself.  Grace and Whit head to camp in only a couple of weeks, and at that point it’s incontrovertible that we’re into the second half of the summer.  As we crossed the Charles River into our home town, Matt pointed out the colors of the sky, the boathouse, and one of the Harvard houses.  Yes.  There is so much beauty all around us.  And so much sorrow, too.  Lambent colors, seen through the haze of tears.  That what #everyday life is.  It is full of beauty and gratitude and loss and memory and love.  It shimmers.

other marvels

I have learned to release my expectations.  Sometimes, you have to be content to face east instead of west, miss the eclipse, feel the strangeness at your back, and know there will be other marvels.  You have no idea.  The world is full of them.

– Jillian Lauren, Everything You Ever Wanted

The second half

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There is so much beauty in my front yard.  No, this metaphor doesn’t escape me.

Last Friday morning, I spilled an entire cup of coffee on my laptop.  It died immediately.  I spent the next several hours at the Apple store, then, once home, on the phone with Apple customer service because setting up the new computer did not work as smoothly anticipated.  And by that I mean it was not smooth at all.  I was particularly panicked because the computer’s hard drive was shot and the only chance I had at recover 25,000 photos and two books and a zillion essays was my external hard drive.

Thankfully, it worked eventually, but it was a long, emotional day, made harder because I was so furious at myself for knocking over the coffee in the first place.  Stupid and careless, yes.  Human, yes.

And let me say I’m aware of my great good fortune in even letting this be an issue.  Yes, I could go buy a new computer, and this is hugely lucky.  I know.  This is the definition of a first world problem.  All of what’s going on with me right now is a first world problem.

But somehow the computer, and the stupidity, and the unanticipated expense, and the overwhelming terror that I had lost so many things that matter to me just broke through some final, gossamer-thin reserve.  I lost it.

I’m just really tired. The truth is this has been a difficult half-year.  Since January there have been a parade of health concerns and unanticipated stresses in our lives.  I’ve struggled to sleep and we all know that makes everything more difficult. Everything is fine.  Yes.  Everything is fine.  But it’s felt like a slog, more than any other year I can recall.

There is still so much beauty.  I see it every day (which you can see on Instagram).  I hear poetry and quotes in my head on a daily basis, too, and they remind me powerfully of how extraordinary and rich my every day life is.  These observations buoy me; I described them in aggregate once as a sense of sturdy joy, and that’s what they are.  I bob on these swells of awareness every day.  What I’ve learned is that this can be true and I can still feel not-great.  I try not to complain, and I’m aware how miniscule my concerns are in the grand scheme of things, but the truth is I’m really worn out.  This has been a challenging 6 months.

And yet it is just life, isn’t it?  All of this.  The obstacles and the difficult days, the tiredness and the bickering children and all the ways adult life has wound more circuitously than we’d imagined.  This is life itself, and if I know one thing it’s that waiting for the challenging stuff to be over is the ticket to wasting your days.  These obstacles are life.  And as long as I can see the beauty, and bury my nose in the hydrangeas, and gasp out loud at a sunset, well, then I think I’m still doing fine.  I read my friend Tara Sophia Mohr’s post yesterday with a deep, settling feeling of recognition, identification, and thank-goodness-me-too.  This incarnation is not for the faint of heart.  No.  No, it is not.

Still, I wish a few days of ease, a few nights of sound sleep, some rest and peace.  That’s what I hope for now.  Today is the first day of the second half of 2015, and I’m ready.