everyday life

August break

As I have for many years, I plan to take August off from blogging.  There’s a lot happening in this final month of summer: campers coming home (Whit), children preparing to leave home (Grace) and for new schools (both).  We have shopping and packing and laundry to do, as well as our final family dinners in this particular season.  It brings tears to my eyes to write that, so you can bet I’ll spend chunks of this next month in tears and morose.  But I’m going to do my damndest to live it well, to let go of my fear about what’s coming, and to pay attention, and I’ll be back in September.

I hope to see you then.

Turning

It may shock some of you to hear this, but I can be heavy lifting.

I know.

Someone as melancholy as me, as attuned to both loss and sorrow?  Hard to believe.  But it’s true.

And it is getting more pronounced.  Well, to be accurate, my sensitivity is getting more pronounced all around, which means I’m more aware of both the dark stuff and the outrageous beauty. I try to focus on the latter.

But there are times when I’m swamped by all that feels difficult.  That’s not true right now: as I wrote just last week, this has been a summer full (so far) of uncommon beauty.  Of course, I also acknowledged that that patina is likely burnished by the endings and departure that lurk under everything right now.  But still, there’s a lot of beauty right now.

In the last week, though, I started noticing that the days were getting shorter again.  The nights are falling a bit earlier, and I am already aware of summer’s end even amidst all the riotous hydrangeas and hot days and beach swims. It’s as though the next season, and its accompanying darkness, is already encroaching in around the edges of the light and beauty of right now.

It’s that old preemptive regret thing, the way I can’t focus on what’s in front of me because I’m too distracted by what I can sense on the horizon. Everything is turning, so fast I can barely catch my breath: summer turning towards fall, Grace turning towards her leaving, Whit turning towards teen-hood and being a young man.  We are all inching forward on the ferris wheel and I am breathless at the view but also at what I know lies ahead.

I’m not the only person in my family who evinces this sensitivity.  On Sunday night, Whit was sad at bedtime.  It took me a while to drag out of him what was wrong (planting the seeds of another post, about the ways in which we should run into the burning building, or about how it is when those we love are at their worst that they need us the most) but he finally admitted, tearfully, what was on his mind.  It was a long list, but one of them was that “the summer’s already halfway gone!  It feels like we just got out of school!”  He was very upset. “I mean, summer is basically almost over.”  He swallowed, wiping tears from his face.

“I know what you mean, Whit.” I told him, rubbing his back.  I had no idea what else to say, since the truth is the awareness of how fast it all flies brings me to my knees on a regular basis.

With effort, I turn my face back to what’s in front of me, and take a deep breath.  My time on earth turns forward no matter what I do.  The bitter aspect of my orientation towards bittersweetness is unavoidable (so, by the way, is the sweet part).  What I can choose is where I place my attention.  So, once again, I try to do that right here.  Right now.

 

Around Here

Everything lately has a particularly heightened sheen.  Maybe this is because of Grace’s impending departure.  Maybe this is because after a cold and rainy spring we are having spectacular weather that we’re grateful for.  Maybe this is because of an on-and-off back pain that’s made me hyper aware of what I can do when I feel fine. Maybe it’s for a host of other reasons that have pointed a spotlight of grateful awareness onto our everyday lives.

No matter, really, why: life has a patina lately, and I feel keenly conscious of all that is glorious. And, simultaneously, of how fragile it all is, and how fleeting.  For me at least, I can’t have one of those feelings without the other.

some screen shots from Whit

Whit got a phone.  Enough said.

sunset from the air over San Francisco

I had a quick trip to California, complete with my second redeye in six weeks (two too many).  On the upside, I saw a dear friend from business school and had some powerful encounters with the sun (both setting and rising) as I traversed the country.

my sister with her children and mine, swimming in the ocean

We had a marvelous visit with my sister and her family over the Fourth.  This annual visit, which is also a celebration of my mother’s birthday, has become a cherished annual tradition for our family.  I watch as each child gets taller and sleeps later and says more interesting things, and I love everyone even more every year.

the sun on Vineyard Sound as we headed back to Falmouth

Grace played in a tennis tournament in Edgartown so we spent a sunny Saturday on the Vineyard.  Taking the ferry was great fun, as was wandering around Edgartown and having ice cream before our ride home.  My college roommate, who has a house nearby, was free at last minute to come say hi.  A regular Saturday turned spectacular just like that.

dinner at Brick in Fairhaven

Whit came home from sailing bubbling over about a pizza place he’d heard about.  We decided to go on Saturday night and, because I’m a huge dork, I called to make a reservation.  They agreed, and that was that.  We showed up to a place that is totally casual – think, you order at a counter. There was one booth open, and we bee-lined for it before noticing a small “reserved” sign on it.  Oh, I sighed, we should go over here, steering Grace and Whit to another table.  Mum, Whit hissed, it’s reserved for us. And it was.  And the pizza was delicious.

I used to write posts like this more often, and I am grateful for the reminder of life’s small good things my archives are.  I think part of why I do so less often now is that I use Instagram in this way now.  I’d love for you to find me there, and to find you!

 

Tradition and adaptation, metaphor and flying

I have written a lot about traditions, and how they can form the scaffolding of family life. That’s certainly true for us.  For many years our family’s calendar has been dotted with traditions big and small.  As the kids have grown, some of these have fallen by the wayside and others have shifted but remained present.

There’s both tension and the possibility of power, I’ve come to believe, in how we adapt our traditions to fit our changing lives.  Many years ago, I took Grace and Whit to Storyland for a night at the end of the school year.  It was a wonderful trip – so great that we went back the next month.  For several years we did that, and then one year we did something else (a treetop course at Cranmore) and this year we went ziplining.

We got to Gunstock on Saturday morning and signed lots of waivers.  Matt took a pass on ziplining because of his leg, so Grace, Whit and I went up the chairlift together.  As we rode to the top of the mountain, we watched some people pass on the zipline to our left.  I could not believe how high they were or how fast they were going.  I took a deep breath and caught Grace’s eye.  What were we in for?

We ziplined a short distance from the chairlift to the top of the longest, highest zipline of the course.  The kids went together, ahead of me, and I followed them. As we wound up a rickety spiral staircase to the platform I felt dizzy ad paused.

“Are you okay, Mum?” Whit asked me from above.  I nodded, but waited a moment to regain my bearings.

“I’m a little nervous, too,” he whispered to me when I reached the top. I felt the world swirl below us, and standing with my feet further apart than normal, to feel balanced, I reached for my phone to take a photo.

They got ready to go.  The lines soared away from the platform, and with a thumbs up over their shoulders, they did too.  I stood and watched them go, leaping into the great wide open, flying away from me.  The metaphor hit me over the head and I stood alone on the platform, slightly stunned and grateful at the same time.

In a few moments it was my turn.  Channeling their openness, I stood while the attendant hooked me to the zipline, and then I jumped.  And I flew.

When I arrived at the next platform, I saw Grace and Whit standing there, waiting for me, grinning.  I had tears in my eyes as I landed and joined them.  I thought back to another day, years ago, when the three of us flew.

We went to the hotel we have stayed at for so many years, had dinner at our beloved Red Parka Pub, played at the water park, and fell asleep in a small room.  There are few things I love more than the four of us sleeping in one room.

Everyone fell asleep before me, and I lay in the dark room, thinking back to the early Storyland years. They were animate in the room, I felt, and the 5 and 7 year old versions of Whit and Grace floated in my memory.  I miss those years, desperately, but I’m so glad we’ve found a way to keep celebrating who the children are – who the four of us are – right now, and to keep our family rituals alive.

As we drove home on Sunday, Grace noted that she loved our annual celebration trip, and I swallowed hard to hide the tears from my voice when I agreed with her.  Oh, me too.  It is only by releasing our grip on what was that we can fully embrace what is.  The truth of that hit me hard this weekend.  I miss the days that were, but my God, that sorrow isn’t going to get in the way of my grabbing the days that are.

This is ritual at its most powerful, I believe: a way of honoring what was and of celebrating what is.  A reminder of the sturdy underpinning of family life. A confirmation that something bigger than each of us holds us, and a plain say of love. This is who we are, Grace and Whit: a family that honors June each year, and one that trusts that when you jump off a platform into the sky, you’ll fly.

Change

The moment of change is the only poem. – Adrienne Rich

Once again, a time of change. Oh, the change makes music. – James Taylor

I am living in a poem, in a time of glorious music.

Everything is changing. Grace and Whit are both going to new schools after 8 and 10 years respectively at the school around the corner. Grace is leaving for boarding school.  Matt and I are both in new jobs, and mine is in a brand new company.

Literally nothing is the same as it was last year.

And of course so much is the same. Our parents are healthy, as are our siblings. We are surrounded by love and immense good fortune. We still live in the same house, on the same street, and the same tree across the street that I’ve watched for 16 years now is in full-on summer bloom.

We have each other.

But I’ll be honest: what’s new is more present for me than what’s constant. I feel buffeted by change and upheaval, most of all by Grace’s impending departure but by everything else, too. I struggle with change.  I always have.

But now and then there are glimpses of another way of being, and they are as fleeting as they are seductive. Like a bicycle slipping into gear, once in a while I have a sensation of freedom, as I can briefly embody the be-here-now philosophy I wish so desperately was mine all the time. It is as though for a passing moment, I feel permission to just live the moment I’m in, without being paralyzed by my concerns about what is coming. To be clear: even these glimpses are new. I am accustomed to traveling through my experience with a white-knuckle grip on each day, my desire to inhabit the moment frankly equaled by my inability to release my worries about what’s coming.

So it feels like a benediction, or a blessing, to let go of this for a fleeting moment.  Is this what life in the moment really feels like? Maybe this is what sports psychologists refer to as flow. It does remind me of the sudden, startling ease of hitting a ball with a tennis racquet’s sweet spot: everything feels smoother, simpler, easier.

I have no doubt that these moments are grace.

What I don’t quite know is what brings them to me, or whose permission I’m receiving to simply enjoy my 14 year old as she is, rather than fretting overwhelmingly about her moving out.  I wish I could figure out what triggers these moments, since I want to live more that way. Somehow, I suspect that working hard to figure out what it is that allows this grace to pass through me is a lost cause, though, or a fool’s errand.  If anything, these moments of fleeting being-here-now seem to whisper that the secret is in letting go of my grip, not tightening it.

My practice this summer – a brief, shining window before our new formation this fall – will be to simply allow these transcendent experiences to descend, and to welcome them as they come.  I will try not to worry about when I’ll next be allowed to peek into life without the penumbra of what’s coming looming.

I will hear the music of the change.