Things I Love

Drama Queens – this excerpt from Lisa Damour’s upcoming book, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood, really spoke to me.  It was fortuitous timing – and a loud message from the universe – when my friend Lisa Heffernan sent me an ARC of the book just a couple of days later.  I can’t wait to read it.

On Life and the Pathway to Joy – this piece by Tina Bustamante is just gorgeous.  So much I can relate to, even though some of the particulars are different.  “Life is filled with beauty and wonder and grandeur and also overwhelming loss.”  Yes. Tina points out that things happen that we don’t recover from, and asserts that there’s a certain power and loveliness in moving forward anyway.  I thought of Anne Lamott’s famous quote about learning to dance with the limp.  Truth.

Boys Have Deep Emotional Lives – I loved this Atlantic interview with Rosalind Wiseman, who has just published a book about boys, Masterminds and Wingmen (her Queen Bees and Wannabes was hugely influential, for good reason).

Katie Den Ouden – I’ve written before about Katie Den Ouden, and of how much I adore her work.  She leads regular cleanses (my experience with them is here) as well as an annual Skinny Dip Society program.  Katie helps women make choices that support energetic, happy, full lives, and I am in full support of her mission of empowerment, liberation, and health.

We’ve been baking and cooking, as befits the Boston winter.

Smitten Kitchen’s whole wheat goldfish crackers are a new obsession.  I make them in little squares, as you can see, not in teeny goldfish shapes (there is a limit to my craftiness) and they are delicious.  The adults in our house prefer when these are made with sharper cheddar, and the children prefer more mild.

We also baked bread for the very first time successfully using Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread Recipe.  For full disclosure, this was our second attempt, and the first failed.  The only change we made was to bring the bread dough, while rising, into a warmer part of the house (the bowl sat on my desk overnight, not in the kitchen).  The bread was delicious, and the house smelled fantastic.  Highly recommend.

What are you reading, thinking about, and loving lately? 

I write these things I love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

The Mother of All Loves – This beautiful piece by my friend Allison Slater Tate brought me to tears.  That’s not a surprise; I love Allison’s writing.  This is probably my favorite piece by her, ever.  Each word resonates.  I am grateful every day that Allison and I are walking along this parenting road approximately side by side (her first child is just months older than mine).  She describes the heavy-hearted hope and head-spinning wonder of parenting better than anyone I know.

48 of the Most Beautiful Lines in Poetry – I’m grateful Meghan shared this link with me.  Poetry is my spirit’s language, I’m sure of it, and this list has some of my very favorite passages on it.  It also has some that I didn’t know before.  Do yourself a favor and click through.  Glory awaits.

99 Rules to Live By – I love this piece on Medium (focused on men, but so applicable to women too).  So many are just plain true.  Some favorites are 16, 26, 38, 56, 61, 81, 95 (I loathe this saying).

I’ve started off the new year with some excellent reads. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario was compulsively readable and reminded me so much of my dear friend Gloria.  Home by Marilynne Robinson was as gorgeous as I knew it would be (and why I hadn’t read this before, when Gilead is possibly my favorite novel of all, is a great question).  And while I’m still finding words to describe how I feel about When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, I was enormously moved.  It’s safe to say that it is on the short list of books I’ve found most powerful in my entire life.

What are you reading, thinking about, and loving these days?

I share these posts of what I’m reading/thinking about/loving lately approximately monthly.  You can find all the others here.

The Breaking and the Blessing of Motherhood – This On Being piece by Courtney Martin absolutely took my breath away.  One of the most resonant and relatable things I have read in a long time.  This?  Yes.  Every word: “But one of the gifts of obliteration is that I just don’t hold on as tightly to my own agenda. I don’t measure as many of my days by to-do lists. Productivity and social status have lost their glean almost entirely. I’m humbled. I just to want to express some small part of who I am in the world, to love people well, to spend time with those who don’t have time for any other bullshit. So motherhood narrowed me, but it’s also focused me. It’s made me as clear as I’ve ever been about what matters — and what doesn’t. I spend so many more of my moments on what does. I let go. I let go. I let go.”

Dear Future Man Who Loves My Daughter – I can’t wait to read Mary Louise Parker’s new book, Dear Mr. You.  This piece made me cry so hard I could not read through the tears and my desk was wet.  I love every word of it, and in particular the way she evokes the brother-sister bond.  I share her view that “almost all I need” is for Grace and Whit to love, and to have, each other.

One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty Please – I found this Modern Love column particularly powerful.  Like many people I love flowers, and I’ve always been struck by their short-lived-ness.  I can’t describe how much it moved me when a friend sent me this link and told me that the last line reminded her of me.  “How startlingly beautiful impermanence can be.”  I couldn’t put it anywhere near so beautifully, but I do think that’s one of the central tasks of my life: calling attention to how much loveliness (and how much heartache) can exist in that which is transient.

Caitlin Moran’s posthumous advice for her daughter – As I expect from Caitlin Moran, this letter made me laugh out loud at the same time.  She is writing to a daughter about to turn 13, which is deeply familiar to me as well.  I love every single piece of advice in this letter, but the final paragraph is my favorite: “Babyiest, see as many sunrises and sunsets as you can. Run across roads to smell fat roses. Always believe you can change the world – even if it’s only a tiny bit, because every tiny bit needed someone who changed it. Think of yourself as a silver rocket – use loud music as your fuel; books like maps and co-ordinates for how to get there. Host extravagantly, love constantly, dance in comfortable shoes, talk to Daddy and Nancy about me every day and never, ever start smoking. It’s like buying a fun baby dragon that will grow and eventually burn down your f***ing house.”

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can see all the former ones here.

What It Really Means to be Happy – I love this piece on Tiny Buddha, which asserts that happiness is an orientation towards our lives rather than a single mood.  Oh yes.  As someone who has publicly decried the emphasis on “happiness” as life’s ultimate goal, this piece really spoke to me.

9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings – Thank you to Tracy, who sent this link from Maria Popova’s wonderful site to me.  It won’t surprise you, probably, that my favorites are #4, “build pockets of stillness into your life,” #6, “presence is a far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity,” an #8, “seek out what magnifies your spirit.”  The whole list – concise, wise, powerful – is worth reading.

Motherhood is Always Saying Goodbye – “Mothering holds within it, then, ancient wisdom that comes from millennia of women devoted to the hard practice of letting go.”  Yes.  Nothing I can say to add to the glory of this piece, which asserts that motherhood and life itself is about letting go and living with farewells but YES.  I often find the work on Literary Mama resonant, and this essay touches me more than most.

I’m reading Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family and finding it compelling, both a call to action and a reminder that I am doing okay.  I had the privilege of meeting her last week, which was absolutely fantastic.

We are back into Homeland and I continue to think it’s incredible.  Top 40 again continues to dominate my playlist (which is almost entirely in the car) – right now, loving Rob Thomas’ Hold On Forever and I’m still not sick of Passenger’s Let Her Go.

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

I write these Things I Love pieces approximately monthly.  You can see all previous posts here.

A Teacup in a Leotard – I love all of Annie Flavin’s work, but this piece really took my breath away.  It exhorts us to put our technology away, to listen to our children, and to recognize all the ways that “prayer” can look in the world.  “People may find a bright side, and there may be an actual bright side, but that does not eliminate the dark side. It is still not easy. It is still not fun. It can be lonely.”  Amen to this.

Limiting All – Amanda Magee is another writer whose work I love, always, every single word.  Sometimes I think she and I are the same soul living in different bodies.  This post resonated even more than many.  This paragraph right here took my breath away: “We can’t keep every single thing that we collect or sustain an impenetrable awareness of value. I cannot be entirely childlike or perfectly adult; it’s why each chunk of life is so beautiful and maddening. Time softens what we remember, yearning polishes what we don’t yet have, but in between, if we allow it, we can let the corners touch.”

I read My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story by Abraham Verghese (based on Brettne’s excellent advice) and loved it.  I’ve long been extremely drawn to doctor-writers (Oliver Sacks, of course, and Atul Gawande are among my favorites).  In my childhood dreams of my life I was always a doctor.  Verghese’s memoir of being a small town doctor as the AIDS epidemic arrives in America is compelling and, of course, beautifully told.

I’m about to finish Rebecca Stead’s wonderful Goodbye Stranger and am looking forward to Grace reading it too.  I love the middle school voices in Stead’s book and was impressed with how delicately she handles the complicated issues of self esteem, friendship, and social media.  I really can’t wait to hear what Grace thinks.

In August, Matt and I started watching Orange is the New Black.  I’m not sure why I resisted so long.  We’re now midway through season 2 (no spoilers please!) and I really like it.  Terrifically smart writing.  Funny and wise with a deep undercurrent of melancholy about the state of race in America and the prison system.

The soundtrack of right now is mostly Top 40 – a lot of Taylor Swift, Cheerleader, Renegades, and Stitches.  Just a couple of weeks ago I was driving three 7th grade girls and one 5th grade boy from hockey practice in the evening and we spent the entire 20 minute drive belting out songs along with the radio.  They were unself-conscious and joyful and so was I.  I’ll never forget it.

What are you reading, watching, listening to, and thinking about these days? 

I write these Things I Love Lately posts approximately monthly.  You can find the others all here.