musings

Thinking back over the year

One of my favorite blogs out there is All & Sundry, written by Linda.  She’s funny and smart and wise and manages to make me both laugh and cry with many of her posts.  She writes an annual recap that for years I’ve pondered doing, and this year I’m going for it.  Thank you, Linda, for the inspiration (here, and frequently).

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

Took the summer off.  Took the children to Storyland and to Legoland.  Signed with a literary agent.  Parted ways with that literary agent (she is wonderful, I just wasn’t ready).  Wrote a draft of a book.  Began taking a writing class (probably in the wrong order, those two!).  Watched one child turn 8 and the other 5.  Watched my husband turn 40.  Went to BlogHer.  Hosted the class gecko for a week and unexpectedly found him totally adorable.  Saw Wicked.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.  I’ve also never chosen a Word of the Year, though one is presenting itself to me somewhat forcibly right now and I’m considering that.  

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes.  Four of my closest friends from college (three #2s and one #3).

4. Did anyone close to you die?

My great-aunt.  She was not close to me on a daily basis but she represented something substantial and her death made me reflective.  The grandmother of my oldest friend, who was a signficant part of my childhood (and of my life now since she lived in the same town).

5. What countries did you visit?

None.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

More forward motion towards writing a book.  Or else clarity that I should give it up.  A more even keel with my children (this is improving, but I have a long way to go).

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 31-August 4, the trip of a lifetime to Legoland.  December 24, another Christmas Eve in the ER (now at a 33% lifetime average) for Whit.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Nothing comes to mind, which makes me really sad.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Progress towards my book.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

What feels like non-stop colds, sore throats, sniffles.  I want my immune system to grow stronger (and my Swedish fish, chocolate, Diet Coke and white wine diet surely is a culprit here).  Also, a bum right hip that bothers me when running.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Several books: Devotion, by Dani Shapiro, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, by Katrina Kenison, The Geography of Love by Glenda Burgess, and Hand Wash Cold by Karen Maezen Miller.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Into the bank.

13. What did you get really excited about?

My summer off with Grace and Whit.  Several books that I read (see #11).  Working with Dani Shapiro and meeting Katrina Kenison.

14. What song will always remind you of 2010?

California Girls by Katy Perry and Hey Soul Sister by Train were the soundtrack of a summer that I’ll never forget.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? Happier.
– thinner or fatter? The same.
– richer or poorer? Probably have marginally more money in the bank.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Written.  Really looked at my children.  Sat on the floor with Legos or American Girls.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Stressed.  Had insomnia.  Cried.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

At home.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

The only TV show I watch is Gossip Girl, which I mostly watch through iTunes on plane rides.  I’m addicted.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

See #11.  For fiction, Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout and Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Nothing really new, other than Annie Lennox’s Christmas CD.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

I hardly ever go to the movies other than with the kids.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I took the kids to day one of a new camp and then spent the day mostly alone.  My parents took me out for lunch.  Matt had dinner with a friend in Cambridge (I was at the beach with the kids).  I was 36.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

More moments where I slowed down and just paid attention.  

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?

75% Juicy Couture sweatpants, 25% skinny jeans and heels with sequins thrown in.

26. What kept you sane?

Running.  Reading.  Writing.  My family.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

Praying is saying thank you.

How sheer the veil is between this world and another

Matt has had a lovely assistant, M, for four years. I’ve spoken to her thousands of times (at least) on the phone, and I finally met her a couple of weeks ago at the firm’s summer event in Chatham. She was friendly and warm, her voice familiar even though her face was new.

M died last night. She was 39 and left two children in their early teens. It was entirely unexpected.

I feel sad today, for her, for her family, for the abrupt loss of someone who had so much ahead of her. I feel as though something chilly has brushed past me in the dark, something I can’t see but something I can feel. Yesterday, I spoke to her. Today, she is gone. Where? My mind still struggles with this truth, which is maddeningly abstract and painfully concrete at the same time.

I also feel keenly, shiveringly aware of how close we all tread to the line of our worst nightmares every single day. The yawning terror of what might be, of that we most dread, exists just off to the side of our lives, and though we skirt it and forget it it still threatens. We live on the precipice, walk on a tightrope, exist in a world where the boundary between normal and tragedy is far more gossamer and fragile than we ever let ourselves imagine.

Death has actually been on my mind since my Aunt E’s funeral, actually, and since a dear friend lost his mother unexpectedly in July. As I sat in the pew at my aunt’s memorial service, I thought about how there are many more funerals ahead of me than behind me. And when my friend’s mother died I had an eerie sense of what is to come as the generations fold and my peers and I take our place at the head of the line. Both of these thoughts give me goosebumps, and not in a good way.

I’m sorry for this not-at-all-upbeat post. It seems incongruous, as I sit here on vacation, waiting to pick my boisterous, tired, and sunburned children up from the bus that bears them back from summer camp. But that is the point, I guess: to remember, always, how sheer the veil is between this life and another, between good news and terrible, between just another regular day and the day it all grinds to a halt.

There’s only one way to honor those who have stepped through this veil, one way to turn this tragic reality that flickers at the edges of our experience: to use the awareness of what might be, and of the proximity of the chasm, to heighten our awareness and celebration of the days that we remain safe. To remember, always, those trite sayings that are also so achingly true: today is all we have. Seize it. Take nothing for granted.

I’ll be hugging these two extra hard when they get off the bus today.

Originally written in August 2010

Day 25 of Reverb10 – Photo

December 25 – Photo – a present to yourself

Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

I had trouble picking one, so here are three.  There are actually probably only about 10 pictures of me from the thousands I took in 2010.  I take pictures of everything, but there are very very few of me.  That’s part of the deal with being the official photographer, both a benefit and a burden.

The first photo is from Easter.  I’m with my daughter and my goddaughter, and this photograph reminds me of the tight community my family is fortunate to be nestled within.  The two women who form the other two legs of the stool are dearer to me than I can express, and I am immensely grateful that our children are growing up together.

The second photo is one that Grace took of me one evening in Legoland.  I am reminded of what it felt like to say yes to them.  To fully lean back into my life with my children, to watch the wonder in their eyes as I agreed to adventures previously unimagined.  It was a magical summer in my life with Grace and Whit and I would like to be that mother more often.

The third photo is from the Mother’s Plunge in Boston in September with Karen Maezen Miller.  This day brought to fruition many of the relationships that I’ve built in the ether over the last year or two.  I loved seeing Corinne and Denise, pictured here, as well as spending the day swimming in the wisdom that both Karen and Katrina Kenison shared with us.

I guess the theme that connects these photographs is community, and a sense of belonging.  In each of them I felt fully relaxed, embraced, seen, and known.  This is a fleeting feeling for me, and one that is rarer than I’d like.  May I find it more often in 2011.

Moment of truth by the tub

On our last day in Sanibel, Grace and Whit were horsing around in the pool. She dunked him aggressively and he was very upset. My mother immediately reprimanded her, asking her to get out of the pool for a few minutes. Grace, in classic form, dissolved into tears. She sat on a chair by the pool, wrapped in a towel, hot pink goggles pushed up onto her forehead, forlorn and in full-blown pout mode.

Finally I asked her to come back to the condo with me and we walked, hand-in-hand but in silence, through the parking lot. She was sniffling and, I could tell, making a real effort to calm herself down. Often she asks for “deep breaths,” where she sits on my lap or we hug and take deep breaths together – this has been effective but I am now thinking she needs to figure out how to calm herself down without me. Anyway, she was trying hard and I could tell.

We got to the condo and I turned on the tub for her, because she was freezing and her purple lips were chattering. As she stood in the bathroom, naked and shivering, I looked at her suddenly all-grown-up body. She is so tall now she comes up to almost my chest. She seems startlingly unfamiliar, lean and lanky, with endless limbs, though I can still see that faint birthmark, more texture than color, on her left hip. I remember noticing that birthmark for the first time when she was mere days old.

She turned to me and I could see she was still crying. Overcome with identification and empathy, I crouched down in front of Grace, realizing that she is at that awkward height where standing I’m too tall but crouching I’m too small. I looked up at her tremulous face. “Gracie?” she looked at me, a tear spilling over her right eyelid onto her cheek. “It’s hard to be the older one, I know. Isn’t it?” she nodded at me. “I was that, Grace. I know. Everybody expects you to be grown up all the time. It’s hard, isn’t it?”

Her face just crumpled. She leaned into me, hugging me awkwardly as she was now taller than I was. “It’s so hard, Mummy. Sometimes I just get carried away and I lose control,” she choked on her words, crying hard now. I pushed her away only so that I could look her in the eye. “I know, Gracie. I know,” I said, firmly, “sometimes what you feel is really strong, isn’t it?” She nodded mutely, tears flooding down her face. “I know, love, I know.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I folded her body, all angles and long, skinny bones into my arms. We stayed like that for a long moment until she broke the embrace, wiping her eyes. She looked at me and I could tell she felt embarassed. “Grace.” I looked at her, almost sternly. “I know. And I know what a good, good girl you are, and how hard you try. I know. I promise. And I can tell you that your feelings, for the rest of your life, will be really strong. I still feel like I lose control sometimes. And it’s scary.”

She stared at me, a combination of fear and thanks in her eyes, and I could see how much she wanted to believe that I was being sincere. I think we both felt we’d revealed a lot, so she stepped into the tub and we moved on to other matters, but something essential happened in that bathroom. I saw a young version of myself and she saw that the strength of her emotions was going to be a lifelong battle. Yes, Gracie, I know what it is to feel out of control. I know what it is to feel pressure to be the “good one” and to do as others want you to do. I know all of those things. I wish I could teach you how to stop those feelings, but i can’t. I honestly have no idea. I wish I did.

Retrospective repost from March 2010