Today is the last day of school. If history is any indication I will be crying by 8:40 (the end of year assembly starts at 8:30). Full report tomorrow.
For now: my two favorite pictures of the first day of school, September 2009. Seems like a lifetime ago and yesterday at the same time.
This weekend in New Hampshire:
Number of my godchildren I got to hang out with: 2
Number of children with an eye almost swollen shut bc of bug bites on Sunday am: 2
Number of children sleeping past 6:30am: 1
(total number of children): 8
Number of mothers drenched to the skin in the water bumper boats: 3 (of 3)
Number of rides Grace went on at Santa’s Village: approximately 20
Number of rides Whit went on at Santa’s Village: 2
Days of the year that it’s Christmas at Santa’s Village: 365
Number of fleeces purchased at Santa’s Village because it was cold: 2
Cups of coffee drunk each morning: 3, and nowhere near enough
Number of members of my family who found a tick on his or her body: 3 (of 4)
Number of times per day I doused my whole body in DEET: approximately 6
Hours that I slept in a twin bed with Whit Saturday afternoon: 1.5
Pages read this weekend: 0
Pages written this weekend: 0
Minutes of silence (other than aforementioned nap) all weekend: 0
Joy of children on scale of 1-10: 11
Odds that this weekend becomes an annual tradition: close to 100%
Be open to your happiness and sadness as they arise. – John M. Thomas
I love this (also yet another sky photograph). As my Landslide post described, happiness and sadness arise for me out of thin air sometimes, swamping me like an unanticipated wave. At other times they come up with a steadier drumbeat, reaching a more conventional crescendo.
This is, I believe, one of the major tasks of my life: to learn to ride these various swells and ebbs without fear, to honor each moment as it comes, to trust that sadness will eventually make way to happiness again as firmly as I already know that joy will fade away to melancholy.
And after all, the happiness means nothing without the sadness. That is another of the few things I know for sure. What I’m not sure of is whether this is about capacity or contrast. I lean towards capacity, but I’m not entirely certain. I don’t love The Prophet, but one of Gibran’s lines encapsulates this more perfectly than I ever could: The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
(a repost from last summer, as we cruise into summer here. So much is the same and so much is different. I am still oscillating between happiness and sadness, still zigzagging along the border of light and dark, still moving in those undulating rhythms of life that move me somehow forward and back at the same time.)
“What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.” (Annie Dillard)
Yesterday was just another ordinary day. A day of my life, bracketed in the morning and the evening with reminders to open my eyes and to appreciate what is right here. It’s amazing, now that I see these nudges, how many of them there are. I wonder how myopic I must have been, all those years with my eyes focused on that next thing, to have missed so many messages from the universe. Well, were the messages from out there or were they from in here, the most intimate place there is? From my spirit, my soul, my very life?
Early in the morning I set off to take the subway (the T) to a meeting. I was walking down the familiar street to the T stop, a walk I’ve made hundreds of times in the nine years we’ve lived in our house, my nose buried in my iPhone. I literally stopped dead in my tracks when I stepped onto a carpet of pink petals.
You can see I had made my way onto the edge of this gorgeous drift of pink petal snow before I woke up, literally. I stood there and took pictures, breathing in the faint smell of the blossoms, their perfume spring incarnate. (not quite Princeton’s magnolias, but close). I looked up and saw the cerulean blue sky through the pink branches. And I was ashamed, truly, that I would have missed this.
I tucked Whit into bed tonight hugging Jimmy, the class teddy bear who spent the weekend with us. Every weekend Jimmy visits a different classmate in Whit’s Beginner class, and this was ours. Grace and I were just starting to read about Hermione and Harry’s vociferous defense of Sirius Black when I heard a strange sound from upstairs. I paused. “What’s that, Gracie?” We both listened. Nothing. I started reading again. The noise started back up. It was Whit, weeping
After a few moments where I tried to figure out if he was posing – yet another new trick to postpone bed? – she and I went upstairs to check on Whit. He was lying in bed, face awash in tears, clutching Jimmy. I sat on the edge of his bed and asked him what was wrong. His words were punctuated with sobs as he choked out how upset he was to say goodbye to Jimmy tomorrow. “Oh, Whitty,” I said. My heart felt like it leaned over in my chest, angling towards him. Deep in my chest I recognized his pain, the brutal symmetry of love and loss, so much on my mind lately. I told him I know how hard it was to say goodbye to things we love.
A few minutes later, Grace and I were reading again when I heard Whit ask quietly, “Will you snuggle me?” I looked up to see him standing forlornly on the stairs, Jimmy held against his chest. “Of course,” I answered. After I kissed Grace goodnight, I went upstairs and lay down on Whit’s bottom bunk.. I curled behind him, singing along in a whisper to his lullabye CD’s version of You Are My Sunshine, listening to his sobs grow slower and quieter. After days of being all bravado and bluster, he had dissolved back into my emotional son, my little boy with big feelings, and I thought about how often he will shuttle between these two poles over the next few years.
“Are you ready for me to go?” I murmured against his neck. “No,” he said quickly, quietly, and so I lay with him for another song. And here I am now, at my desk, eager to get going on a new essay idea I have. But first I have to put pictures of Jimmy’s visit into the class album, with narration of his weekend activities. I’m not annoyed that I have to do that before my “real” writing. This is also writing, in its own way, the writing of my ordinary life.
