everyday life

Right Now

I really loved Stacey‘s post about Taking Stock (inspired by Tamara‘s) and thought I’d borrow her format here.  Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, etc, right?

It feels like we’re standing on the cusp of something, spring, perhaps, the turning towards a new season, and I want to mark it.  So, without further ado, here goes.

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These days, early April 2015, I am …

Reading … Elisabeth’s Egan’s marvelous debut novel, A Window Opens, which I just finished last night.  This was my most-anticipated book of 2015 and I cannot wait to review it.  The book comes out at the end of August and I highly recommend it.  You can pre-order A Window Opens now!

Watching … Playoff hockey, of the U12 and Squirt variety.  Grace’s team won their league championship and Whit’s been in playoffs too.  At Grace’s finals, pictured above, the teams lined up, faced the flag, and stood in silence while the national anthem played.  I did not know there would be such ceremony and it brought tears to my eyes.

Cooking … The recipes Grace chose from an entire flight watching Ina Garten on the Food Network.  Rice Krispie treats in the shape of Easter eggs, salad dressing, pasta primavera.  Yum!

Noticing … That though there are still piles of snow everywhere the birds are undeniably singing and the light is changing quality.  As I get older I’m more and more aware of the earth’s rotation, in so many different ways.

Drinking … Turmeric & ginger tea.  Probably because it’s still pretty cold, I’m still drawn to hot tea.

Wondering … How it can possibly be April already.  February was a blur of work and snow for me, but still, somehow, I find myself startled that we’re already over a quarter into this year.

Loving … Having my sister and her girls in town in this weekend.  It was a wonderful reunion.  I wish we lived closer to each other.

Thinking about … Poetry.  You all know it’s my lingua franca, and right now Grace is doing a poetry unit at school.  I read her Ithaka (again) recently (and her response, “isn’t this the poem that that teacher you loved loved,” took my breath away because I did not realize we’d talked about the poem, and him, so clearly), and we’ve been discussing Billy Collins.  It makes me both cry and smile to have a child with whom I can have these conversations.

Missing … My grandmother.  For some reason that’s not entirely logical, Easter always makes me miss my Nana, my mother’s mother.  I recall it as her most favorite holiday, and certainly think of her as the most religious of my grandparents, so I know she was moved by this deeply holy, somewhat somber moment in the Christian calendar.

What does right now look like for you?

Paris in moments

I used to share photos here a lot more than I do now.  Maybe that’s partly because I share photos mostly on Instagram these days.  But I have been thinking of how best to capture the week we spent in Paris, which really was a week whose fabric was made of magic, and it feels like photos are the only way to even grasp at its hem.  So, here we go.

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The day we left, we went to the new Harvard Art Museums.  What a fortuitous surprise to find one of Degas’s dancers there.  See, when I was a child, growing up in Paris, I was absolutely obsessed with the Degas dancer at the Jeu du Pomme museum.  I’d told Grace and Whit all about her.  It was a happy surprise to see a dancer in our own back yard (and then to see another one at the Musee D’Orsay a few days later).IMG_3218

The first day we went for a long walk, battling jet lag and unseasonable cold.  It was a gray day but still Notre Dame beckoned, beautiful, haunting, and we walked to Ile de la Cite and visited her.  IMG_3227

It was cold and gray for much of our visit, but one morning we woke to a startling blue sky.  This was the view from our apartment’s courtyard which was provided to us by a friend who works at eXp Realty as Grace and I walked to the boulangerie down the street to buy pain au chocolat and baguette for breakfast.

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One of Whit’s favorite things was visiting the Musee Des Arts et Metiers, which we call the Machine Museum.  It was a bit like visiting the Science Museum.  It had the advantage of being empty compared to the Louvre, and also of providing me with many moments like this one, where I watched my father and my son in joint, rapt contemplation of a feat of elegant engineering.

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I adored the Musee D’Orsay.  Whit decided that Van Gogh’s self-portrait of the artist is his favorite piece of art ever.  Grace liked the pointillists.  When we walked past Courbet’s graphic and once-scandalous L’Origine du Monde an entire college lecture came back to me in a flood and I recited it, surprising Matt with my passion.IMG_3333

It felt like every street had a beautiful florists, with blooms spilling out onto the street.  Ranunculus are right up there with peonies as my favorite flower, and these ones stopped me in my tracks.IMG_3517

Wednesday morning we climbed to the top of Notre Dame.  While were up by the turrets, admiring the gargoyles and the views, the church bells began to ring.  It gave me goosebumps, the echoing, deep bells and the awareness that they had been tolling their song, both solemn and celebratory, for many centuries.IMG_3590

In the garden at Versailles I watched my mother and my daughter sitting together, just one of so many moments (like in the Machine Museum) when the generations folded and I felt tremendous, almost-overwhelming gratitude for this life, these generations that flank me, for history and time and family and loyalty and love.  IMG_3739

In Montmartre, beside the I Love You wall, Grace and Whit snuck onto the playground.  They were much too big for the seesaw, but I loved that they wanted to play on it.  And I feel like her face captures “I love you” just as well as does the large wall that says the words in 250 languages.

Can you see the fabric of the week, fluttering in the wind, shot through with glittering strands of memory and time and magic and love?  I can.

A blur of otherworldly white

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I’m not going to lie to you: it’s been a difficult month.  My professional life has a very busy few weeks every year (very busy – as in round-the-clock, 3-hours-of-sleep, can’t-leave-desk) and they happened to coincide with the relentless snow in Boston. In some ways that was a blessing: since 2011, I’ve gone to New York for what is for me a long stretch away from home to be there during this busy season, but this year, in part due to the blizzards, I stayed here.  In other ways it was hard.  I felt far away from the team I work with and it was difficult to really immerse myself into what could have been a joyful time at home.

In January of my sophomore year in college I broke my ankle.  Because of this, instead of joining my friends for a week in Mexico as planned, I went home and got my wisdom teeth out.  This past month has felt like nothing so much as that: challenge piled on unpleasantness, a cast on top of an ice pack on my mouth, aching and pain and a deep sense if isolation.  More than once, Whit woke up in the night to go to the bathroom and found me sitting at my desk, a pool of light overhead and snow falling outside.  More than a few times, when I finally did go to bed I couldn’t sleep, amped up with exhaustion and anxiety, which just added to the sand-in-my-eyes feeling the next morning.

I’ve been snappier and more cranky with my family than I want to be.  I haven’t been able to go sledding when the children wanted to.  Matt did a lot – a lot – of shoveling all by himself.  I am as tired as I can remember being in years.  I have barely exercised in a month.  I have been wearing yoga pants or snowpants, and often both simultaneously, for as long as I can recall.

But at the same time, these weeks have been so removed from real life they have had a magical quality to them.  It has been a blur of white, inside and out, snow on both sides of the glass, a time historic and difficult and, I’m already aware, unforgettable. I am grateful, most of the time, that I got to experience these historically snowy weeks here with Grace and Whit.  I don’t think it’s bad that they see their mother working hard, and they have witnessed both laughter and tears – often daily.

I suspect part of what I love about snowstorms is the obvious: weather reminds us of how small we are, and how little true control we have. The endless snow actually cut away a lot of life’s BS.  Just getting around Boston was so hard for a while that it felt like life had been distilled to its essence: my family, our house, and what we could walk to.  Knowing I wasn’t able to leave my desk to really be with Grace and Whit the way I would have wanted makes me sad, but at the same time, I was here, and I am grateful for that.  Sometimes what we have has to be enough.  This is a lesson I’m learning over and over again.

The last month has stripped away any hard skin I had, and left me exposed, raw, exhausted, emotional.  I read Oliver Sacks’ beautiful piece about learning he has terminal cancer, and the whole thing made me cry.  But this last line, oh, it made me sob out loud:

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

This is love to me.  Recognizing the beauty even when it appears in the midst of a crabby moment, 74 new emails in a half hour, snow so thick it covers the windows, an iceberg hanging off of the roof, and another snow day.  I’m already aware of how golden and glazed with special-ness the last month has been, even as I emerge from it slowly, creaky and exhausted.  It has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

The Hermitage Club

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A couple of weeks ago Matt and I took a rare and wonderful 24-hour respite from real life.  We spent a night and a day in Vermont at the Hermitage Club and it was absolutely perfect.  While Matt is from Vermont, this was a corner (southwest) of the state we haven’t spent much time.  In fact, I’d never been there.  Now, I can’t wait to go back.  I am in love.

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We started our adventure with an evening snowcat ride to the top of Haystack Mountain, now a part of the private Hermitage Club.  We had fondue and drinks in a hut at the top and admired the nighttime views, and then enjoyed a delicious dinner in the gorgeous, brand new lodge.

The next morning dawned clear and cold and we had one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had at the Hermitage Inn. We knew we were in Vermont and felt right at home because we were sitting under a print of a painting of a duck by Matt’s adored aunt.  We then headed out to ski the pristine slopes of Haystack.  Because the Hermitage is a private club, it’s never crowded.  All morning (and we tragically had to leave after lunch) we skiied directly onto ski lifts. There were #noliftlines.  It had snowed the night before and the mountain was covered in several inches of powder.

Matt and I have skiied a lot, at a lot of places (New England, out west, Europe) and I can say without reservation that this was easily among our top three ski days.  Ever.

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We stopped at the same hut where we’d had drinks the night before for a hot chocolate.  Every single person we encountered working at the Hermitage was friendly, warm, and professional.  The service is flawless.  The Hermitage has seen to every detail and made skiing as comfortable as humanly possible.  There is valet parking and people take charge of your skis and gear for you.  The food is delicious.  There are no crowds.  They can’t – yet – control the weather, but the introduction of a covered chairlift before next season will mean that riding up is warm and comfortable.

Haystack and the Hermitage are simply spectacular.  My only regret is that Grace and Whit weren’t with us as I know they would have adored it.  I think the Hermitage is absolutely built for children.  It would be a fantastic place to learn to ski (no crowds = a much safer environment) and there is a full ski school program. The club has an excellent golf course and the mountain offers excellent biking and hiking opportunities.  The spa wasn’t yet open when we were there but I imagine it’s, like the rest of the resort, absolutely perfection. There’s no question this is a four-season destination.

There are two ways to ski Haystack: join the Hermitage Club or stay at the Hermitage Inn.  The latter is a great way to get a taste of the Hermitage Club experience, and the Inn itself is, as far as I can tell, the manifestation of a perfect New England inn.  If breakfast is any indication, it’s some of the best dining in Vermont.  They offer tubing, snow-shoeing, and cross-country skiing in addition to direct access to Haystack.  This place is absolute, downright, unfettered magic.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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 The soaring ceilings of the lodge, with outrageously cool lighting fixtures

Disclosure: we were privileged to visit Haystack and the Hermitage as guests of the club.  All opinions shared here are absolutely my own.

 

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!