everyday life

These are the years they will remember

Most mornings, I walk Grace and Whit into their respective school buildings.  Occasionally, if I have to make it to an early meeting or something, I do “live drop off” instead, letting them hop out of the car while I idle at the curb.  For some reason this always brings tears to my eyes.  There’s something about their backpacks bobbing away from me, their independence, their resolve, their enthusiasm for school – all of it mixes up into a cocktail that brings tears to my eyes as surely as onions on the chopping board or Circle Game on the radio.

The other morning was no different.  I drove away, blinking back my tears, and suddenly I thought: these are the years they will remember as their childhood.  We had driven to school all belting out Edge of Glory together, and then we had sat in the car near school singing along until the song ended.  I looked in the rear view mirror to catch them grinning at each other, overwhelmed again with the realization that tiny things can bring sheer joy for them.

I remember when Grace turned four thinking: okay, this really matters now.  That is because my own memories of childhood begin when I am about four.  I actually don’t have that many memories of my childhood, and those I do exist in a slippery kind of way: am I remembering the actual event, or the picture I’ve seen so many times of the event?  I wonder if part of why I write things down so insistently now is to address this very fact, this inability to remember when I so desperately wish I could.

My flashes of memory, as limited as they are, begin in the second apartment we lived in in Paris.  I was four-ish.  So, my assumption was that Grace and Whit would start remembering things from the same general time period.  Certainly, they will remember these days.  The power of the most mundane moments and experiences – something I’ve long believed fiercely in – was probably particularly on my mind after reading The Long Goodbye last week.  For sure, O’Rourke’s memoir had me thinking particularly of the memories of our mothers that endure.

And so I drove into Boston, my eyes still blurry with tears, watching the outrageously beautiful trees that line the Charles, the river that throbs through the heart of my home, wondering what it is that Grace and Whit will remember of these days.  We are “deep in the happy hours,” as Glenda Burgess put it in her stunning memoir The Geography of Love, and one thing I’m certain of is that it will be the small moments that most sturdily abide.  Will they remember the notice things walks, the trips to the tower at Mount Auburn, trapeze school, and chocolate cake for breakfast?  Will they remember the hundreds of nights that I read to them, tucked them in, administered the sweet dreams head rub, did the ghostie dance, turned on their familiar lullabies?  Will they remember Christmas, and Easter, and Thanksgiving, and their birthdays?

I have no idea what specific events and experiences will be the ones that rise up for my children, out of the dust of the years, some surprising, some familiar.  I could easily drive myself insane trying to make sure every single day is stuffed with memories.  But I choose not to do that, because, as I’ve written before, the memories that I come back to, rubbing them over in my mind like a hand worrying a smooth stone in my pocket, are almost all from days and moments that were utterly unremarkable, unmemorable, as I lived them.  I assume this will also be true for Grace and Whit.  So I suppose all I can do is try to be here, paying attention, to the vast expanse of ordinary days we swim in.  And to remember, every single day, what an immense privilege each one is.

Lately

Last week I mentioned how tired I am lately, how quiet and reserved I’m feeling.  That is manifesting in a lot of ways, and one of them is a real lack of inspiration to write.  But I am determined to honor my commitment, here and elsewhere.  So, a few things that I’m thinking about and doing these days.

  • I am trying to run a few days a week, shorter distances and slower than before, because of the aforementioned exhaustion.  Still, for my mental health, I need to get out there.  I hate treadmills and run outside all year long, including in the rain or snow.  Mostly, I run at 530 in the morning because that is the only time I can reliably go.  In these weeks, before the clocks turn back, it is pitch black at that hour.  I ran last week in the pouring rain, in the dark, and felt like the only person in the world.  It was strangely soothing.  I need to be extra careful not to trip though, something that’s a hazard for me even in full sunshine.
  • I am reading The Long Goodbye and finding it incredibly beautiful, though also deeply sad.  Next up is The Bread of Angels, the author of which my sister has met in Jerusalem.  I figure it will resonate on many levels, and will start getting me in the mindset for our trip to Israel in December.
  • I am writing fiction.  Well, I’m trying.  My friend Kathryn has been urging me on in this direction for a while.  We’ll see what happens.  One observation so far: I am sure there is some meaning, some subconscious message, in the tense we instinctively choose.  My automatic voice is in the present tense.  I often have to go back and correct, like a first grader in grammar class, basic verb tenses, because my voice is always tugging towards the present.  I wonder what this means.
  • Hilary is homesick.  A little.  And so are her girls.  And she told them the perfect truth: “you know, you can feel two things at the same time.”  Yes, yes, you can.
  • I am listening to Something Beautiful, by Alexi Murdoch, on repeat.  Enormous thanks to the vivid, gorgeous, and wise Jen Lemen for pointing me to it.

May the grace of God be with you always, in your heart
May you know the truth inside you from the start
May you find the strength to know that you are part of something beautiful …

What are you listening to, reading, doing, thinking about, and feeling lately?

Turning inward

During September I got several signs from the universe to slow down.  And then in early October, another.  And so I listened.  I took to my bed.  For the first week of October I slept.  Oh, wow, did I sleep.  8-9 hours a night, and naps every day.  I was – and still am – exhausted.  I turned inward.  I didn’t write.  I hardly read anything other than magazines.  Mostly I rested in bed, and talked aimlessly to Grace and Whit, and  rested in bed some more.  And I cooked.  I’m doing another cleanse, like the one I did this summer, but this time for a month.  So I have to cook a lot.  I enjoy cooking, so that’s okay, though the confluence of exhaustion with demands to be in the kitchen was a little daunting.

I’m still feeling very inward.  I wonder if I’m contradicting what I just said two days ago, about how we must not hoard our spirit and our love.  But I don’t think I am: I am just saying, to myself, that for now, things need to happen at my cadence.  Which is different than normal.  This past weekend I slept and slept some more.  And I went out with the kids twice – once to go apple picking, and once for a notice-things walk in the blooming fall foliage.  Each time I had to go home and lie down after, so exhausted was I from the physical, emotional, and mental exertion.  But it was gorgeous to be outside.

And, as usual, the words of someone far more articulate and brilliant than I came to my mind:

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. (Thoreau)

Right now, it’s all about the sky, the trees, the leaves, my children, and my bed.  I go out when I need to – for work, for example.  But I am feeling fragile and quiet, bruised and wary, sensitive and somewhat sad.  What is new for me – when I really think about it, astonishing – is that I don’t feel panicked.  I know this is a phase which will pass as surely as the moon waxes and wanes and the tides rise and fall.  So I’m just sinking into it.  Into the blazing evanescence of the red leaves, into the ready embraces of my children, into the white sheets on my bed.  Sinking in.  Turning in.  And it’s okay.

Flecks of gold

“And in a day we should be rich!” she laughed. “I’d give it to you, the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig up. I think you would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn’t to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the gold specks fly!”

-Kate Chopin, The Awakening

I have loved this quote since reading The Awakening in college (the book featured in the introduction of my thesis) and it has been on my mind a lot in the last few days.  I have been thinking about it as something other than a joyful statement advocating spendthrift behavior.  I’ve been thinking about all the things that pirate gold is, in our lives, beyond actual gold.

The tiny things – tying cleats, reheating noodles, checking homework, driving to school on a rime-frosted morning, folding pajama bottoms – these are not things to be rushed through so that I can finally get to Life.  They are life.

They are the gold flecks of life itself.

Only when we realize that these moments are the gold of life do we fully appreciate the gorgeousness of their flight.  And, of course, the startling truth of their impermanence: what passes more quickly than gold flecks hurled into the wind?

I also read Chopin’s words, now, as an exhortation to spend, not to hoard: our time, our love, our energy, our spirit.  It’s such a cliche, but I also grow ever surer of its truth: we only have today.  So why save up for a future that is unsure?  Certainly, one of the basic planks of my personality is frugality, and you’ll never talk me out of that.  But I am aware of an instinct, in myself and in others, to sometimes hunker down, preserve, conserve.  As though somehow our energy and love are zero-sum affairs.  That may be true of energy, as I get older, but I’m sure love is limitless.  By spending it we just see more gold shimmering in the sky.

So I guess what I hear now, when I read this long-loved passage, is this: throw yourself out there, as much as you can.  And make sure you watch the incandescent gold pieces as they float by.  If you blink, you can miss them.  So watch.