everyday life

My life has simultaneously narrowed and widened

People ask me, with some regularity, how I “do it all.”  Of course, I don’t.  There is plenty I don’t do.  And I have been thinking about that a lot lately, of the immensely different ways we each populate our hours and what they say about what we value.

Every hour of our life is a choice, a trade-off between competing priorities and desires.  We are all given the same number of hours in a day.  What do you prioritize?  What do you care about?  Where are you spending your time?

In the last several years my own life has simultaneously narrowed and widened.  It has narrowed because I have substantially cut down on external (non-job and non-family) commitments.   I say no much more often than I say yes.  And even beyond commitments about my physical presence, I’ve withdrawn in a real way: for example, I spend much less time on the phone catching up with friends.

But even in this narrowing my life has startled me with an unforseen richness.  It’s like I stepped into a dense forest but then I looked up to see an enormous expanse of the sky.  Somehow, in my turning inward, I have learned to see the glittering expanse of my own life.  Maybe it is not having the other distractions.  Maybe it is that is training my gaze I have opened my heart.  I am not sure.

I spend my time with my family, I spend my time writing, I spend my time reading, I spend my time with a small number of people I entirely trust and wholly love.  I run at 5:30 in the morning because that’s the only time when the trade-off isn’t too steep for me.  It is very rare for me to have dinner, drinks, or lunch with a friend one-on-one.  The same is true for Matt and me with other couples.  On the other hand there are many evenings where I sit and read to the kids while they are in the tub, when I get into bed at 8:15pm with a book, and there are a great many days full of work.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. – Annie Dillard

Let’s all decide to no longer hide behind the excuse that we “don’t have time.”  The truer response would be “I don’t care enough to really protect the time.”  This may be harsh, but I think it’s also true.  Let’s take ownership of our choices rather than bemoaning their results.  Do you want time to meditate?  Time to go to yoga?  Time to spend reading with your children?  Well, something else has to go.  Unfortunately time, at least in the framework of a day or a week, is a zero sum game.  The ultimate one, perhaps.

Think long and hard about how you spend your precious hours, the only currency in this life that I personally think is actually worth anything.  A lot of these decisions are made instinctively, without deliberate thought or analysis.  But that’s how life is, isn’t it?  We know what we care most deeply about, and we run towards it, chins ducked.  We protect fiercely time for those things and people and events we truly value.  And those things, people, events we never seem to have time for?  Well, that tell us something important too.

I believe that if you look carefully at the map of your hours over a week or a month, you will see a reflection of what it is in this life you prize most highly.  Do you like what you see?

Ordinary thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was full of experiences that carried the mantle of important, moments I could feel turning to memories even as I lived them.  Most of all there was our Friday evening celebration of my in-laws’ 45th wedding anniversary and the 9th anniversary of my father-in-law’s successful heart transplant.  My in-laws had their three sons and five of their six grandchildren together (the sixth, 8 months old, was not able to stay up so late!) for a lovely dinner.  My sister-in-law and I made a book of photographs of the last 9 years for our father-in-law, and the memories contained in its pages brought everyone in the room to tears.  Also of note: my turkey was damn good.  I think my cider-based brine (which I pretty much made up) was a hit.  I think I was proudest, though, that all of my dishes were done before dinner was served.  A big achievement for such an ardent believer in clean as you go as I.

It was two far less weighty moments, however, that stand out for me as the most crystalline.  They were moments with a surprising, surreptitious power, the kinds of mundane experiences that I have learned can turn into the most sustaining and vital memories.  I hope that Grace and Whit remember days like these with the same affection and gratitude that I do.

On Friday morning Matt had to work so Grace, Whit and I took our skates to be sharpened and then stopped by a playground on the way home.  I sat on one of the swings (swinging alone is one of my favorite things to do) while they played together for 15 minutes … 30 … 45.  I swear.  I watched in wonder as they cooperated, laughed, and made up an imaginary world where the ground was lava.

The sky was crystal clear, the branches were all bare, and we didn’t see another human being the whole time we were there.  It was so warm both kids shed their jackets.

The sun shone on that hour.  And in its light I saw something glinting.  My life.

On Saturday afternoon Grace, Whit and I walked to a nearby movie theater to see The Muppets.   They are generally amenable to my walk-whenever-we-can policy, parroting now my points that it is better for both our health and for the environment.  On our way home we detoured past the house Hilary and I were born in.  I pointed out the windows to the living room, where I told Grace I remember walking in circles around the room reciting my times tables.  When I was in third grade.  With the homeroom teacher who is now her Math teacher.  And they are learning their times tables.  Sometimes it all swirls together so blindingly I have to blink and hold onto something so I don’t get dizzy.

The three of us played for a long time on the seesaw, which has three weighted balls that you can slide from side to side to even out the weight.  I wished my physicist father was with us to answer some of the questions I got.

Then they hopped on the swings and went for a while, holding hands.  They made up songs and sang them at the top of their lungs.  I sat over to the side, watching them.  The light turned their faces golden as it sank towards the horizon, and then everything cooled and dimmed when it slipped below it.  I looked at my children, and I looked at the light of the hour.

I am as proud of my children for their imaginative play as I am for any of their more conventional accomplishments.  I feel intensely grateful that they are still overjoyed by a playground, that they can run and jump and swing and invent a world.  That they want to do this together adds immeasurably to my joy.  This pride is linked to my belief about the power of fairy tales, I’m sure of it.  I want my children always to experience wildness (a central reason I love the cemetery so much, another place we went this weekend).  I want them to rejoice in the freedom offered by unstructured situations.  I want them to enjoy moving their bodies, to prize the fresh air, and to laugh together.

And they did.  And I was grateful.  The holiday held a plethora of gorgeous moments, for sure, many of which I’ll never forget.   The two that I felt were the purest expression of thanksgiving, though, were these two hours at the playground.

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving.

I am thankful for so much that I sometimes feel gratitude like a swell in my chest, pressing on me from the inside out.  And yet, there is still so much here I do not understand (Adrienne Rich).  Loved ones circle around tables and take time to consider that which matters most, the world turns ever-faster towards the darkest day of the year, our family in particular remembers the heart transplant, nine years ago, that changed all of us forever.

This is a particularly evocative time, for me, in the natural world.  The shadows gather earlier and earlier and the trees lose the last of their leaves.  The light right now carries a particular charge of both life and loss.  This weekend we will probably return to one of our favorite places, the tower at Mount Auburn, where last year my children took my breath away with their wisdom.  Perhaps we will go back to Walden.  For me this is always a quiet, thoughtful weekend, replete with both sorrow and hope.  Thanksgiving is the holiday of grace incarnate.

Maybe this is what grace is, the unseen sounds that make you look up. I think it’s why we are here, to see as many chips of blue sky as we can bear. To find the diamond hearts within one another’s meatballs. To notice flickers of the divine, like dust motes on sunbeams in your dusty kitchen. Without all the shade and shadows, you’d miss the beauty of the veil. The shadow is always there, and if you don’t remember it, when it falls on you and your life again, you’re plunged into darkness. Shadows make the light show. – Anne Lamott

Isn’t it, after all, the interplay of light and shadow that provides the texture of our lives? The darkness creates contrast, but it also scoops out some emotional part of me, allowing me to contain – experience, recognize, feel – more joy. I am grateful, I realize anew, for way my lens on the world is striated with both light and dark.

I am thankful today for evening light on bare trees, for the deep, glowing blue of the afternoon sky, for the words of a friend that make me feel less alone, for the tousled hair of sleepy children, for the lyrics of a song that bring tears to my eyes, for the moments when I am really and truly present, when I feel my spirit beating like wings in my chest.

So, this is happysad day for me, in a reflective season. My heart swells with awareness of my tremendous blessings, of the extravagant beauty that is my world. My thoughts are quiet and shadowy, but lit by incandescent beams of light. Like a night sky whose darkness is obliterated over and over by the flare of roman candles exploding, their colors made more beautiful by the surprise of them against the darkness. Like my life.

(I wrote these paragraphs in 2009 and they still feel as enormously, specifically relevant today as they did then, so I share them again)

Still

This bird, which I think is a sparrow, has lately taken refuge in the corner of our front porch’s roof every few days.  The first time I saw him I had to look again, closely, wondering if he was alive.  I stood in the open door, watching for long minutes before I grew quiet enough to  finally see his little chest expanding and contracting. Yes.  He is alive.  The second time I saw him I thought: oh, wow, what a coincidence.

Now he’s familiar, no longer a shock, no longer a coincidence.  The first time I pointed him out to Grace and Whit they reacted in a way that surprised me: instinctively, their voices fell, their demeanor softened.  When he comes, they each choose to stand in the front door gazing up at him for much longer than I would have expected.  They are riveted, charmed, enchanted.  For some reason they treat him, and the space around him, with a kind of respect and reverence that is rare in the rest of their lives.  Now it is they who point him out to me, and his little corner is the first place they look every time they pass the door.

“Can I name him?” Grace asked me recently.  Of course, I answered.

“I’m going to think about it,” she said.  A couple of days later, she was sitting at breakfast eating her Cheerios in silence.  She chewed and looked quietly out the window.  I cleaned out the coffee maker.  Out of nowhere, she said, “Still.”

I turned to her.  “What, Grace?”

“Still.  That’s the bird’s name.”  I nodded at her.  Tears sprang to my eyes.  “Because he’s so still.”

And, I thought, because he’s still here.  He is still, motionless, quiet, calm.  And he is devoted, dedicated; he comes back.  And now, every time I see him, I can feel something solid and velvety burrow in my chest, can feel my exhales deepen.  And I think:

Still.

Little wonders

Last week we biked to school.  Grace had her 9 year checkup so wasn’t going to stay at school.  I ran alongside them on the way there and was reminded of how close we live to school.  Then Grace and I took the bikes home (me riding Whit’s bike: major thigh work out.  Good GOD.).  Whit was so thrilled about this adventure that he put his helmet on before his pants that morning, and talked about it all week long.  I’m so proud that my son is still delighted by such little wonders.

On Friday, 11/11/11, Whit and I sat in the kitchen and watched the various digital clocks tick towards 11:11.  This screen shot was the closest I could get to capturing the moment because the clocks didn’t display the date.  I know, I know – it is an entirely artificial construct, this 11:11 on 11/11/11 thing.  Nonetheless, we both anticipated the moment and shared it with a quiet seriousness that verged on reverence.  Celebrating another little wonder.

On Sunday we raked leaves.  Our “yard” is small, so this takes about 20 minutes.  Grace and Whit put patagonias over their pajamas and spent long moments trying to throw the pods that a neighbor’s tree sheds from the porch into the big yard waste bag.  Then we all fell into silence when a familiar cardinal arrived, perched on our fence, looked around.  They watched him, awed, quiet, admiring a little wonder.

On Sunday Grace and I had what may well have been our last lunch at the American Girl store.  She’s still playing with her American Girls, but I know the days of imaginative play with Julie and Samantha are numbered.  All of her friends have already moved on.  I tried not to dwell on the last-ness of our lunch, but it was hard.  As she looked down at the menu, I snapped this picture.  I love it.  My mother’s childhood nickname for me echoes in my mind as I look at this picture, pressing itself into my lips.  It’s what I want to call Grace.  Mum always called me her little wonder.

Am I the only person who finds the very pavement a bewitching, beguiling, constantly changing poem?  I can’t stop looking down.  Well, that is, when I’m not looking up (aside: maybe it’s no wonder I trip more often than the average non-toddler.  I’m simply so absorbed in life around me that I don’t pay attention to my footing.  Surely there’s a metaphor here…) Everywhere I step I’m walking on color, on pattern, on message and beauty.  Little wonders, all around.