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The last night of the year. As usual new year’s has me reflective and introspective, and somewhat sad. Matt and I put the children to bed (Gracie in her new sleeping bag from QB, on top of her bed!) and then I made dinner – a delicious rack of lamb from Savenor’s which we had with a beautiful 1975 Medoc that Eric gave us last week. And homemade brownie sundaes for dinner. Yum.
I will keep details until everything is final, but big changes coming up for the Mead-Russell family. 2007 is going to be a year of transition, changes, new opportunities. This fall, and the process at Providence, has raised a lot of issues and questions for me. I realized that I’ve lost sight of ME in the past few years; my identity as myself has been subsumed by that as mother, wife, employee, board member, etc. I need to find some ways to get the essential LEM back. Working on it. I am optimistic, at least on some fronts. Picture above is in honor of that effort. Many thanks to those who offered wise counsel and patient listening as I worked through the pros and cons of this Providence opportunity. Ultimately, providence intervened – I will provide details as soon as I am able.
So, goodbye to a good year, a year with some upheaval and much status quo. And we open the door on a new year, sure to have more changes and less status quo. As we know, the only constant in this world is change. The challenge for me is to learn to embrace it. And so much love to those who are dearest to me – you know who you are.

“Never travel in a line if you want an education.” – Reynolds Price, The Surface of Earth

“Ah, I have asked for too much, I plainly see.” – Ovid, The Loves

“Her life stayed closer to the skin than most people’s.” – Alan Gurganus, Blessed Assurance

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.” – Danny Kaye

I’m sitting in front of this gorgeous vista in the pouring rain. We had a lovely Christmas, with presents and breakfast at home with Nana and Poppy followed by a blessedly uneventful (though woefully short on Whit sleeping) ride to Vermont. When we got here we bundled the children up (unnecessary as it was 40 degrees) and let them run wild in the fields outside the house. Grace and Whit were excited to see Grandma and Grandpa (and Whit has added “Bobo” to his ever-expanding vocabulary, which means Grandpa). Everyone crashed early and is still tired today so we are having a day of vegging in front of the TV and the computer (and Matt is, given, on a conference call). The rain contributes to the day-after, let-down mood around here. My present was a great new camera so I’m going to spend some time figuring that out!
I’m putting off emailing Glenn to tell him I can’t take my dream job. Sob. Need to do that today.
I like the picture of the children and me because I imagine that we’re looking forward into 2007.

Yesterday: a day of naps and decisions.

Morning was Grace, Matt, Marti, and John at the Pops while Whit and I went to the Lavallees’ brunch in Chestnut Hill. We all came home and passed out – Matt on the couch, Whit in his crib/cage, and Gracie and I in our bed. It was heavenly. Then more frenetic activity: stopping by the Brennans’ (where Grace kept eating the raspberries from the bar, intended for the bellinis, and incurred the bartender’s wrath), dropping the children at home, and then hitting the Jacques/Shattuck party and finally dinner at the Harvest bar (our favorite place). Yesterday was apparently THE day for festivities – we missed the van Ogtrops’ party and also the Youngs’ tree trimming.

At the bar, over burgers and zinfandel, there was some reckoning.

I am not taking the Providence job.
Matt is pursuing his opportunities in New York.

Here comes 2007, with a commuter relationship and a studio apartment in the City …

“And so we turn the page over/ to think of starting. This is all there is.” -John Ashberry

“Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light.” – Tennessee Williams

“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.” – Richard Bach

The solstice. Another year turning towards the light again. Tonight we celebrate, with many of our friends coming at last. Lacy, I think of you on this day, always – of the sunlight on our hair and of our shared intuitive understanding of the importance of the solstice. I miss you. And special love to Emay today as well, who gave me the most wonderful frame last night with the stool’s three monograms (EMW, LMR, CML – not sure I realized before that all of our maiden names started with M … am reminded of Susan Eldredge’s best friend from college, Sally Edwards, because they met when seated in alpha order). I spent yesterday afternoon in Providence and am thoroughly flummoxed. This is the job I’ve always wanted (though I never knew I wanted it), the people I want to work with, and I’m just not certain about the personal and family price I’d have to pay. This decision goes to the absolute core of much that is unresolved in my life, of all that is complicated about me.

Toward the Solstice, 1977

The thirtieth of November.
Snow is starting to fall.
A peculiar silence is spreading
Over the fields, the maple grove.
It is the thirtieth of May,
Rain pours on ancient bushes, runs
Down the youngest blade of grass.
I am trying to hold in one steady glance
All the parts of my life.
A spring torrent races
On this old slanting roof,
The slanted field below
Thickens with winter’s first whiteness.
Thistles dried to sticks in last year’s wind
Stand nakedly in the green,
Stand sullenly in the slowly whitening,
Field.
My brain glows
More violently, more avidly
The quieter, the thicker
The quilt of crystals settles,
The louder, more relentlessly
The torrent beats itself out
On the old boards and shingles.
It is the thirtieth of May,
The thirtieth of November,
A beginning or an end.
We are moving towards the solstice
And there is so much here
I still do not understand.
If I could make sense of how
My life is tangled
With dead weeds, thistles,
Enormous burdocks, burdens
Slowly shifting under
This first fall of snow,
Beaten by this early, racking rain
Calling all new life to declare itself strong
Or die,
If I could know
In what language to addrses
The spirits that claim a place
Beneath these low and simple ceilings,
Tenants that neither speak nor stir
Yet dwell in mute insistence
Till I can feel utterly ghosted in this house.
If history is a spider-thread
Spun over and over though brushed away
It seems I might some twilight
Or dawn in the hushed country light
Discern its greyness stretching
From molding or doorframe, out
Into the empty dooryard
And following it climb
The path into the pinewoods,
Tracing from tree to tree
In the falling light, in the slowly
Lucidifying day
Its constant, purposive trail,
Till I reach whatever cellar hole
Filling with snowflakes or lichen,
Whatever fallen shack
Or unremembered clearing
I am meant to have found
And there, under the first or last
Star, trusting to instinct
The words would come to mind
I have failed or forgotten to say
Year after year, winter
After summer, the right rune
To ease the hold of the past
Upon the rest of my life
And ease my hold on the past.
If some rite of separation
Is still unaccomplished,
Between myself and the long-gone
Tenants of this house,
Between myself and my childhod,
Between the childhood of my children,
It is I who have neglected
To perform the needed acts,
Set water in corners, light and eucalyptus
In front of mirrors,
Or merely pause and listen
To my own pulse vibrating
Lightly as falling snow,
Relentless as the rainstorm,
And hear what it has been saying.
It seems I am still waiting
For them to make some clear demand
Some articulate sound or gesture,
For release to come from anywhere
But from inside myself.
A decade of cutting away
Dead flesh, cauterizing
Old scars ripped open over and over
And still it is not enough.
A decade of performing
The loving humdrum acts
Of attention to this house
Transplanting lilac suckers,
Washing panes, scrubbing
Wood-smoke from splitting paint,
Sweeping stairs, brushing the thread
Of the spider aside,
And so much yet undone,
A woman’s work, the solstice nearing,
And my hand still suspended
As if above a letter
I long and dread to close.

I love lighthouses. Always have. Today, I’d like to transport myself to the foredeck of Brea on a July bluebird day, sailing past Bird Island light (at left) with no cares in the world. Or, as my father insists, “being sailed.” Fine by me. Just being away from the world, nothing to think about but the wind and the waves. Where’s my time machine?