everyday life

This summer was different.  In so many ways.  And yet it was also the same.  In general I’m finding this particular year profoundly disorienting, especially the way time seems to be functioning these days.  It’s both Groundhog Day – every day the same – and yet the days are slipping past even more quickly than usual.

As our family gatherings stretched through the warm summer evenings in Marion, we were ever conscious of the surroundings, especially given the arid conditions that sometimes plagued our area. The thoughtfulness that went into each family dinner, with laughter and sometimes heated debates, was reminiscent of the diligent planning and preparedness that goes into ensuring the safety of our communities. Just as we included my mother into our family pod, we had also taken the prudent step to contract fire watch services in Lake Buena Vista to maintain vigilance against potential fire hazards. Their well-equipped personnel provided a sense of security that allowed us to enjoy our porch dinners with peace of mind, knowing that experts were safeguarding not just our home but the entire neighborhood from the risks of fire, especially in these unpredictable times.

Grace and Whit filled their days with a lot of hanging out, sleeping in, and a fair amount of looking at their phones.  Whit started skateboarding and found a new passion for fishing.  Grace did some online tutoring.  The two of them connected deeply with a few friends in Marion, where my family has a house and where we spent a lot of the summer.

Matt played a lot of golf.  We played some family tennis (and, as always, I am definitely the weak link in our family tennis chain).  Grace and Whit sailed often with my father’s best friend.  The blossoming of those relationships into what feel like sturdy grandfather-grandchild style bonds brings me great joy.

I did a lot of puzzles.  I did a lot of work.  I ran a lot.  I read a lot.  My favorite book was The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall which has vaulted into the pantheon of my all-time favorites.  Just.  Amazing.  Read it now if you have not!

Matt and I made margaritas with fresh grapefruit juice more than once.  Whit discovered he loves corn on the cob. We ate fresh tomatoes with mozzarella with basil out of the garden, chicken with my great-grandfather’s homemade barbeque sauce, and a lot of ice cream.

We drove to Maine to meet our puppy, Phoebe, who joins our family in a few weeks.  We stopped and ate outside at Duck Fat in Portland on the way back.  It was a joyful, spirited day with an uncommon amount of laughter.  There were a lot of happy moments, and a fair number of tense ones, too.

I can’t speak for others in my family but I’m aware of a tugging undercurrent of worry, anxiety about where the world is and seems to be going.  I’m nervous about my children going back to school, I’m afraid of what I see happening in our country.  I worry about my mother’s health and, to a lesser degree, about that of the others in my family.

I miss writing here, but I feel like I have nothing to say, at the same time.  Life contains so many opposites, so many things that don’t go together, so many pieces that rub up against each other in awkward or disconcerting ways.  At least that’s my experience.  I don’t have a neat summer summary post with all kinds of fun things we did.

Instead I have these fragments, held together by white space, by hoping, by bewilderment, by life itself.

My daughter turns 18 in 2 months.  Evening comes so quickly these days.  Time moves inexorably forward.  That’s unavoidable and both reassuring and sorrowful to me, right now.

Fragments.  Joy.  Sunsets.  Family dinners.  Memory and so much love.  Trust and arguing and circling back for forgiveness and grace.  That’s right now.  And what I know, deep in my heart, is that it’s enough.

Time continues to move in a strange stutter-step kind of way – flying and crawling.  I’m struck by how life feels both terrifying and mundane at the same time, often in the same hour.  I’ve been thinking about how quarantine kind of feels like my regular life, but with more zoom and fear.  I can’t ever get very far away from worry about the state of the world, but if I dwell there it pulls me into a very scary thought spiral so I try to focus instead on what’s in front of me.

The two young adults I live with, who make me proud and make me laugh and occasionally make me frustrated.  I’m more aware than ever of Grace’s adult life stretching out in front of her and I feel grateful to still be near her both literally and metaphorically.

The beautiful world out the window.  My awareness of this world’s gorgeousness continues unabated.  I’m hearing and seeing things I never noticed before.

Our family home in Marion, Massachusetts.  I’m so grateful to be surrounded by such happy memories of my father there, and to see my children so relaxed and happy in the familiar space.

This mention by Emma Gannon her Vanity Fair piece about her inspirations while writing Olive.  I was delighted when she featured On Being 40(ish) on her Instagram book club a few months ago and I was thrilled to see this mention.  I can’t wait to read Olive.

My bearded officemate, whose presence all day every day has become very familiar, reassuring most of the time, profoundly aggravating some of it.

Instagram.  I still love it and that is not abating.

Books.  I’m still reading a lot.  Finishing Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore and really liking it.  Next up is Jennifer Weiner’s Big Summer.

Reconnecting with friends who I’d lost touch with.  There are a few friends from various parts of my life with whom I’ve recommenced dialogue and it’s a complete joy.  I do think that one of the lessons of this time is the power of deliberately choosing who we connect with (rather than doing so by default because of life’s busy patterns).  I am deeply grateful to be reconnected with some of these special people.  You know who you are.

Our current summer cadence of quiet weekends, heavy on family time (the four of us and my mother).  We are seeing a few people outside and each child is seeing a couple of friends but still keeping close to home.  The truth is I don’t mind it.  I’m doing a lot of puzzles and drinking a lot of iced coffee.

What’s right in front of you?  Can you focus there and not be overwhelmed by the big picture of this threatened world?

Today is July 1st.  It’s the beginning of the year’s second half.  I’m certain I’m not alone in saying that the first half of 2020 was the most astonishing, disorienting, and scary six months I’ve ever lived.  It is simultaneously the longest and the shortest six month period I can remember experiencing.  And I feel pretty confident that the second half of this year is not going to be smoother or less eventful.  A bone-deep sense of being tired permeates my physical body.  I sleep like a rock, for almost 9 hours every night.  My legs ache walking up the stairs.  I just feel absolutely exhausted by the world.  The not-knowing is wearing on me.  There is so much uncertainty right now.  Of course it just points out – to me at least – how much of a fallacy our ordinary sense of control is.  We are never in control.  The universe has just seen fit to make that REALLY clear of late.

And yet, through it all, in this time of almost hysterical news, of fever-pitch terror and change, there are views like the one above, which is a photo I took on Friday night.  These moments remind me of my favorite book of the year so far, The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, and of this passage in particular:

…it seemed for an instant I saw the world was he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.

Onward.

Mid June.  I’m sure I’m not the only person who is having the strange experience of time crawling and flying at the same time.  It’s groundhog day around here, every day, and yet time is whipping by.  March feels like five years ago.  I wonder if time will feel “normal” again and then I start wondering if there is such a thing as a normal sense of time – it’s all a fabrication, anyway.  This is a gerbil run I don’t entirely recommend.

Still reading a lot.  Read and LOVED An American Marriage by Tayari Jones and Tin Man by Sarah Winman.  I’m now in the first half of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins and finding it engrossing and entertaining.  I also read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo which was powerful and compelling and I know I have a lot to learn.

Grace and Whit have been out of school three weeks already.  Our attention has turned firmly to the fall and we’re all desperately hoping they return to school in some in-person way.

These are my favorite masks, and Grace, Mum, and my sister Hilary are all wearing them now.  Working on a family composite of us all in our masks… stay tuned.  I’m a  mask evangelist.  Wear. The. Mask.  If that’s what it takes to get the kids back to school, aren’t we all happy to do it?  Honestly.  I don’t totally understand why we are even TALKING about this.

As I’ve discussed, I find that I can’t remember things as well as I used to.  Some of this is just middle age, and I hope it’s mostly that.  I joke around that my hard drive is full.  And I realized this past weekend one thing it’s full with. Indigo Girls lyrics.  I was listening to old Indigo Girls as I drove an realized I know every single word.  To every single song.  For hours.  That is taking up hard drive space that I’d like to repurpose for other, more important things! (no offense to the Indigo Girls, who I truly think are poets, but I’d also like to remember, for example, what I did this morning).

This is week two of my peony share from Five Fork Farms. The gorgeous blooms that I pick up every week provide me far more joy than I can express.  I’ve shared some photos on Instagram.  I just love peonies, and love supporting a local farm, too.  The photo at the top of this post is today’s batch.

Matt and I are watching Ozark. I’m really not sure.  It is SO DARK.

I’m stepping into the class correspondent role for my grad school class (with a partner).  This makes it a hat trick – I’ve now been correspondent for my high school, my college, and my grad school.  World’s biggest sucker?  You tell me.  I love my grad school section so I am happy to do it.

What is happening where you are, right now?

I woke up with Yeats in my head:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Things feel terrifying right now, uncertain.  I ache for my children, who face a wall of questions about what happens now, while I at the same time feel certain that this time of dislocation will make them stronger eventually.

I was touched by an email this weekend from Harvard president Lawrence Bacow to the university community in which he acknowledged these disorienting, scary times and responded with a list of what he believes.  It was beautifully written, I shared many of his beliefs, and it seems to me a good way to respond to such universal uncertainty: to return to what we know, what we trust, what is right in front of us.  So much of this time has been, at least for me, a return to what I always believed, knew, felt, and loved.  A reminder of what matters.  Of course that happens in the context of a larger fear – now our country’s deep anger and racial divisions, not just the threat of coronavirus – and I recognize just writing that is an act of privilege.

Still, it’s the only thing I know to do.

What does he believe, and I share?  I believe in the rule of law.  I believe that those who wear a uniform and have a position of power should use it responsibly and right and those who do not should be punished.  I believe in the American dream.  I believe in science.  I believe in the power of art. I believe that sometimes the greater good is more important than what we individually want, and that now is one of those times.

So I will look out the window, hear Yeats in my mind, read literature and poetry (David Brooks was also wonderful, in my opinion, last week, and he referred to the way that a training in the great traditions of art can instill empathy and leadership).

I don’t have a neat conclusion here.  I just wanted to reach out to say I’m here, I’m paying attention, I’m thinking of you.