blogging

Questions & answers

I’m answering the thoughtful questions on my Six Year Anniversary post slowly, savoring them.  Thank you to those of you who took the time to say something!  Today, questions about writing and blogging in particular:

Do you always think blogging will be a part of your life? Ever entertained a hiatus?  What is your favorite part of writing? And do you have advice for other writers regarding the craft of writing?

It is hard for me to imagine life without blogging.  It is so central to my life now, such an ingrained pattern, and as I’ve noted, I honestly believe that the practice of writing here has fundamentally changed the way I engage with the world.  I’m trying to do some real writing outside of this blog, and now and then I think: well, I should stop blogging, free up some time for the other projects.  But I just can’t seem to do that.  Every writing-related change and joy in my life is directly due to my work here.  How could I step away from that?

A hiatus, I do think about.  I’ve loved the last two August breaks, where I just share pictures.  I generally re-share my favorite posts from each month at the end of December.  But I guess those are not true hiatuses, because I am still coming here.  Truthfully, I do think about a real break, mostly because I fear I’ve become incredibly repetitive here.  But I’m afraid I will come back to crickets.  And of what losing the practice of this process will do to the rest of my writing and life.

My favorite part of writing is surely when I hear that something I’ve said touches a reader.  One of the central pleasures in my own life is the feeling of reading someone’s words and thinking oh, yes, that’s what I mean, though I could never express it, and thank goodness I am not alone.  The idea that I may be able to provide a similar sensation to someone else, even very rarely, is reason enough to put pen to paper.  It’s a reason to live, in my opinion.

Advice.  It seems absurd to ask that of me, who is still such a novice, such a hack, who has so very much to learn herself.  I don’t have any wisdom to offer, unfortunately, other than open your eyes and pay attention.  And then write it down.  And do it again the next day.  And every day after that.  That is all I know how to do.  That is the extent of my practice, my knowledge, and my advice.

A few things I love lately

photograph taken last month at a special place on the New Jersey shore

Once in a great while I like to share some things that have caught my attention around the interwebs (and the world).

Barnstorming – It’s rare that I find a blog that I relate to this intensely.  I read the whole thing in one single gulp, practically, tears rolling down my face, gasping often.  Emily refers to the top of the ferris wheel, she quotes Madeleine L’Engle, she talks about how what she witnesses in this world brings her to her knees, she cites my favorite poem, Wendell Berry’s The Work.  I’ve found a more elegant, more eloquent version of myself.

A Mighty Girl – a site with deep, detailed reviews of books, music and movies for “smart, confident, courageous girls.”  I have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s here, but I’m already smitten.  I have found books to suggest to Grace here and I definitely intend to use it as a resource for birthday presents for my goddaughters and other girls in our lives.

Cherries and Cheese: O’Hare Revisited: I can’t get Emily Rapp’s powerful words out of my head.  They glow with truth, with wisdom, with all that I’ve ever believed: “I feel, as that moment opens, so truly alive that I am surprised that the world doesn’t burst open: a perfect mix of bottomless sadness and heart-swelling joy.”  I love everything this woman writes, but this piece moved me even more than usual.

Mumford & Sons’ Babel – I’m hardly alone in loving this new album.  But I do.  Especially I Will Wait and Lover’s Eyes.

Camouflage – I’m just feeling camo lately.  Skinny pants from the Gap, a studded jacket from Zara: I can’t get enough of the print.  Luckily my 7 year old son thinks it’s about the coolest thing, too.

On Loving a Teenager – Karen Maezen Miller has been inspiration, guide, and teacher to me for a long time.  These words about parenting a teenager – “Love is the space between us. There is so much space.” –  both frighten and reassure me.  I can see this next stage of motherhood over the horizon, and I’m so grateful to have Karen’s wise counsel as Grace and I move towards it.


I’d love to hear what you are loving, reading, immersing yourself in lately, either online or off!

 

Both sad and liberating

As usual, I was both fascinated and touched by your questions on my Sixth Blogging Anniversary post.  I wrote about what I am reading, and which blogs I most devotedly follow.  Now, a different question:

Parenting “emerging adults” is an exercise in letting go and it’s both sad and liberating. If you ever want to write about “healthy consequences” or “natural consequences,” that would be interesting to me. What I mean is letting kids learn from negative experiences rather than constantly rescuing them. This discernment has been hard for me because it’s a balancing act–trying to figure out when they need scooped up and loved versus when you should let them squirm in their own doings and let them figure their way out themselves.

I have thought about this a lot.  I believe absolutely in letting kids learn from negative experiences, and in resisting the urge to rescue them every time they trip. In fact I would call this one of the central challenges of parenting.  I return, again, to Erdrich’s red string that ties our hearts: we have to give children enough rope that they can learn to fall and get up, while trusting that they are still close, that they know the bond we share doesn’t fray when it’s stretched.

As with all things, I only have my instinct to guide me here.  And a whole lot of love.  I’ve been mulling the question almost non-stop since I became a parent 10 years ago.  Several years ago, I wrote this:

It (developing resilience, letting children fail) is about letting my children be, even when there is conflict between them. It is about letting them lose at games and sports. It is about not shielding them from the world’s ugly and hard edges, not coddling them when things are going to hurt. It is about sticking with rules even when they cause disappointment or, more likely, screaming tantrums. It is, fundamentally, about teaching children that the world – and my world – does not revolve around them. This is a hard lesson to impart, full of discomfort and sadness. But it is also probably the most important thing I can teach Grace and Whit.

Obviously parenting, and the need to let go, is on my mind often.  More recently, I wrote this:

They don’t belong to me. On that I am absolutely clear: the crystalline, sharp clarity of sunshine on icicles. No way. I brought them into this world and that is all.  I love my children too much to handicap them with over-protection. I love them so much that I continue to challenge myself to let them go a little bit, knowing that that letting go lets them build muscles, physical and emotional, that will help them stand steadily in life’s waves. To let them go I have to trust them. And myself. And I do.

I read these two passages now and I nod, because I still agree with every word.  It’s actually reassuring to me, a reminder that our parenting philosophies are formed early, and remain sturdy, even as they adapt to the various seasons we move through.  There’s a particular poignancy to the idea of letting go right now, though: it feels keener, this need to release my grip, and closer, the day when they will leave me for good.  This is true particularly of Grace, who grows so fast, in every sense of the word, daily.

I don’t know how to actually answer my reader’s thoughtful, thought-provoking question.  I wish I did!  All I know how to do is vigorously agree that this is both a challenge and essential.  I do believe that this effort – watching our children fail or err while simultaneously making sure they know they are profoundly loved and supported to the best of our abilities – is central to parenthood.  I am still very much figuring out how to do that.  I know that my efforts are helped by my fierce belief in both a benevolent universe and the sometimes-surprising strength of my own children.  \

I would love any of your thoughts on this: how do we toe the line between support and space, between prodding our children to become independent while also filling them with security and the knowledge that they are deeply, unequivocally loved?

Questions and answers

A couple of people who commented on my Six Year post asked about what I am reading, both in terms of books and blogs.

Books is the easier answer.  I am currently reading Teach Your Children Well by Madeline Levine.  I recently ready Amy Sohn’s Motherland and re-read Operating Instructions by the incomparable Anne Lamott.  Next up is Lee Woodruff’s Those We Love Most.  After that, my list includes Allison Pearson’s I Think I Love You, Molly Ringwald’s When it Happens to You, Andrew McCarthy’s The Longest Way Home, and Will Schwalbe’s The End of Your Life Book Club.

Blogs.  I read a lot of blogs.  There are some I read in full every single time they write something, others that I tend to skim.  It’s hard to pick my favorites, and even trying to list the ones I read makes me nervous because I know I’ll forget someone.  Some of my favorite blogs are dormant right now, so I don’t list them. But here is a partial list of people whose blogs read most devotedly: Katrina Kenison, Jena Strong, Amanda Magee, Denise Ullem, Aidan Donnelley Rowley, Pamela Hunt Cloyd, Meredith Winn.  There are so many more!  There are over 100 blogs in my Google Reader, and I check that several times a day.

I read blogs in other categories, too.  I read several style blogs religiously, a handful of cooking blogs, and a couple of hilarious commentary-on-celebrity blogs.  I read a lot of what Lisa Belkin shares on Parentry at the Huffington Post and many pieces on Literary Mama.

For years I joked that you could tell a lot about someone from the magazines they read.  After all, I have such a varied magazine list that a stranger on a plane once commented on it.  I think that the same is true of someone’s Google Reader.  What they value, what they love, what interests them: these are all apparent from what is contained in their Reader list.

If that’s so, I think my Google Reader selections demonstrate someone who cares passionately about excellent writing, who thinks often and hard about parenting, who likes clothes and fashion and Hollywood news, and wishes she cooked more often and more successfully than she currently does.

What do you read?  Books, blogs, magazines?  What do your selections say about you?

Life, Loss, Love

Recently Chris Yeh, my friend and business school classmate, and I both lost someone very dear to us.  My 94 year old grandfather died in August and Chris’s beloved 12 year-old dog passed away in September.  What they had in common were long, full lives and relatively short illnesses at the end.

Chris and I didn’t know each other that well at HBS.  We have developed a friendship since then that I prize highly, and it occasionally produces thoughtful exchanges like the one we had almost two years ago about optimism, the underrated virtues of melancholy, and the conundrum of memory.

Our recent conversation, about grief, the way it can derail even the most prepared people, and how we talk to our children about death, began when I commented on Chris’s thoughtful post about Kobe’s death.  Chris and I are the same age, 38 (Chris is still 37 for another three weeks, he wanted me to note!), and I think that’s relevant here, as we both careen into middle age and towards the inevitable passing of the generation(s) above us.  Our conversation was a powerful reminder that try as we may to prepare, life’s losses will startle and destabilize us.  Here’s what we shared:

Lindsey:

So sorry, Chris. I love the way you describe Kobe, and in particular how you enriched these last few months. Xo

Chris:

Thanks Lindsey!  As you know yourself, I find writing therapeutic.  Writing out my thoughts helps me get them out of my head.  It’s going to be a tough conversation with the kids tonight.

Lindsey:

Oh, wow.  Yes, it is.

Talking to Grace and Whit about Pops’ passing was difficult because this is their first real experience of death.  I found they were interested in both the enormously granular details: what does the urn look like?  Do the bones burn when you cremate someone?  What happens to his clothes? And in the biggest of the big picture questions, also: where does Pops go?  Is he able to see Gaga (my deceased grandmother) now?

I love how you said that no matter what walls of rationality we erect, the experience of losing someone dear smashes through them.  I had this experience with my grandfather’s death last month.  Yes, he was 94.  And of course it was not a surprise, at least intellectually.  But it was still a loss, and still sad, and though I know people mean well when they point out what a wonderful and full life he had it somehow feels like they are denying the loss.  I hope that you aren’t feeling that way when people comment on how marvelous Kobe’s time here was.

Chris:

It’s funny how kids fixate on the specific details.  Marissa, for example, saw one of those Discovery Channel specials on one of those services that stuffs your pets after they pass away.  She asked me if we could get Kobe stuffed.  In the end, I decided I didn’t even want her ashes.  I have many wonderful things to remind me of Kobe, including a host of photos and videos.  I don’t need some carbon atoms that happened to be in her body at the end.

I do appreciate all the well wishes from friends—it’s amazing how much you hear from folks on Twitter and Facebook as well.  The thing is, the people who point out what a wonderful life she had are right—she did have a wonderful life, a fact which I’m sure I’ll appreciate much more in a few weeks.

I remember writing about this at some point in time—like many people, I deceive myself into believing that I can fix anything.  Whatever the problem, I can pull some strings, or talk to someone, and I can make it go away.  But when cancer comes knocking, there’s no insider you can turn to, no secret treatments.  It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or how many people you know.

And that’s scary as hell, especially for folks who are used to thinking of themselves as bulletproof.

Life has a way of reminding us that we’re not, and that’s something we just have to accept.

Lindsey: 

I so utterly, absolutely agree.  And maybe this is just a classic thing to happen in your late 30s, this reminder.  I look ahead and I see so much mortality and stuff we can’t control ahead, just as I had started feeling like I have a vague handle on it.  And now I am newly aware that I certainly do not.

Chris:

This year has been one long message from the world.  From Kobe’s death, to my friend Don’s successful fight with cancer, to my having to walk with a cane for two months because of my own misadventure.  While I’ve adamantly insisted that these are just freak occurrences, and not the signs of age, I’m starting to lose that conviction.

When I’m focused on other things, I can pretend that Kobe’s death was just a dream, and that she’ll return from a trip, same as ever.  But whenever I really think about it, I can’t escape the images and memories.  I notoriously hate hospitals.  And no matter how kind and helpful the doctors were, all I can remember is Kobe getting weaker and weaker until finally she couldn’t even stand.  That’s a concrete reality that changed how I look at the world.

I knew that Kobe would die someday, just like I know that my parents will die someday, just like I know that I will die someday.  But until a week or two ago, that was an abstract, far-off knowledge.  Now it’s all too real.

I’ll admit that in the past week I’ve thought about how it will feel when my parents die.  I’ve even thought about my own death.  I imagine that I’ll fight to the end, but if I lose consciousness, death may take me unawares.

But I’ve also learned a lot about grief and grieving.  Kobe was a daily part of our lives, which means we’re surrounded by reminders of her.  I decided that the best thing to do was to face them head on, and focus on the happy memories.

I placed a canvas print of Kobe above our kitchen table, so that we all see her at every meal.  Quite coincidentally, I had just ordered a photobook of Kobe’s pictures—the most recent was taken the week before her death—Marissa had dressed her in a bikini top and grass skirt, and she’s looking at the camera with the same expression of patience she always had with Marissa.  Both Alisha and I have taken to looking at the book every day.  While it brings up the pangs of grief, seeing all those happy pictures pushes those hospital images out of my mind and lets me focus on happy memories.

Lindsey:

What you say about death being abstract until, suddenly, horrifyingly, it is concrete resonates with me.  I know that a large part of my grief about my grandfather’s death was my anxiety about advancing another step on the big board game of life.  Now my parents are the only generation above me.  And of course this has implications for them that scare me: thinking about my parents being ill or – devastatingly – passing away absolutely cripples me.  I can’t even begin to fathom what that will be like.  Some of it is more selfish, I suspect, too.  We grow ever closer to the top of that ferris wheel, as I often think of it.  Before we know it, it will be us and just us.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about moving into midlife, into the afternoon of life (as Jung called it), and how my children are coming into full bloom just as I begin to sense those ahead of me fading.  Not my parents, yet (and what a blessing that is) but others around me.  It’s a multi-layered thing.  It’s teaching my children about death.  It’s watching them deal with it for the first time.  It’s realizing that I can be distracted from my own grief because I’m so busy taking care of theirs.  It’s learning to sink into my role as the center of a family, and accepting the sometimes-heavy responsibilities that go with that.  It’s not easy, and sometimes – often – I just want to curl up on my grandparents’ couch, fall asleep, and have my young, vibrant father scoop me up and carry me to the twin bed upstairs that used to be my mother’s when she was a girl.

Chris:

One memory that has always stuck with me is the day my grandfather died.  It was 1986, so I think I was 11 going on 12.  My grandfather passed away quite suddenly of a heart attack while undergoing dental surgery.  I was sad when my mother told me, of course, but what I always remember is when she told my father.  This was before cell phones, so he had no idea that his father had passed away until my mother told him.  She pulled him aside to their bedroom for privacy, so I didn’t see when she told him.  When I next saw him, it was clear that he had been weeping.   In my entire life, I had never seen my father cry until that day.  I’m sure that he knew his father would die someday, but it was still a terrible blow.

As we rise up that Ferris wheel, I think the greatest comfort we can have is our children, and our children’s children.  Think of the Bible, and its endless droning litany of descendants.  Yet as I get older, I begin to appreciate the power of that litany.

Scientists tell us that as we get older, time passes ever more quickly for us.   By the time we reach age 13, we’ve lived half of our subjective life (your 80th year passes a lot more quickly than your 5th).  Kind of depressing.  But life gives us a way to fight that passage.  When I’m with Jason and Marissa, time passes much more slowly (this isn’t always a good thing!).  As parents, I think we get great joy and benefit out of seeing the world through our children’s eyes.  Then, as the wheel continues to turn, we see the world through our grandchildren’s eyes, and if we’re lucky like your grandfather, our great-grandchildren.

When I talk to people about parenting, I tell them, “There is no substitute for having children.”  I always meant it in the economic sense of substitution, i.e. there is no equivalent experience.  But now I see that having children is probably the most common yet fundamental way we have of defying the passage of time, aging, and the inevitability of death.  To create life, however transitory, is the strongest statement we can make about our existence.