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Grace came home from a day of her second week of third grade with two announcements.  The first was that this year she had Mrs. S for music, who also taught me, back in the dark ages.  The second was that they were learning Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game.  Whit, with his uncanny ability to suss out things that will pierce right to my heart, immediately took an interest.  They spent a day or two learning the words, and I kept promising we’d listen to the recording (which of course I have).

Circle Game is up there with Landslide on the list of songs whose associations are so strong as to often overpower me.  They are both songs that were a part of my own childhood, both songs whose lyrics grow ever more poignant as I grow up myself.

So the other afternoon we listened to Circle Game in my bedroom, dancing and singing along.  We danced in a circle, holding hands, and Grace’s and Whit’s voices rang with Joni Mitchell’s.  I tried to sing but was mostly crying so I could not.  Several times I thought I should stop and take a picture, but I didn’t want to let go of their hands.  Grace and Whit kept looking at me, emotion frank in their faces.  It was a rare moment that I knew was becoming a memory even as I experienced it.  For four minutes I said: be here, Lindsey.  Don’t step out of the frame in order to photograph this.  Just live it.

And I did.  With tears streaming down my face and a little hand in each of mine and words as familiar as my own name ringing in my head and in my heart.  I was there.

When the song ended, Whit flung himself onto the small Oriental rug on the floor and sighed, “I am already dragging my feet to slow the circles down, Mummy.”  And he is.  But wow, so am I.  I am mostly frantic about and occasionally resigned to the rotation of the years.  It occurred to me that Circle Game could well be an alternative title for the book I’m writing.  Subtitle : captive on a carousel of time.

Are there songs that are laden with memories and emotion for you?  Are there song lyrics that speak directly to your heart?

So, the final installment of the marvelous anniversary questions … I have saved the big questions, the ones I really struggled with, for last.

How has writing changed my living?

Certainly writing here, and in other places, has made me pay more attention to the details of my life.  There is no question I’m more mindful – I even meditate sometimes, which those of you who have known me a long time will find hilarious, even shocking.  In some ways, however, this is just another manifestation of an essential trait.  I was always slightly removed, the official photographer, and I still am, hovering a bit at the edges, watching, observing.  I still take a lot of pictures, but I’m often composing sentences in my head, paying close attention, trying to engrave the details of a moment on my brain.  So while I think there has been a change, for sure, I think the basic tendency always existed.

Has writing improved my ability to linger in the moments?

This is a hard one.  I think it’s improved my commitment to do so.  For sure.  Writing has made crystal clear for me that my life is right here in the moments, and has thus shown me how critically important it is to really live them.  But has it made me better at doing so?  I’m honestly not sure.

Does writing about the heavy stuff take it off my chest or result in more pondering?

To the extent that writing helps me figure out what it is I’m thinking about, it takes things off of my chest.  But the truth is I’ve always got heavy thoughts with me, weighty stuff sitting right over my lungs.  I never shed that, or rarely, so I’m not sure it makes a huge difference, writing through it here.  That said, I’m not sure my goal is to get rid of it, either.  I think it’s just part of who I am, a component of what beats through my veins as surely as the stuff in my blood.

What are my dreams, and what does the wild inside of me dream of?

I’m shocked by how hard this is for me to answer.  I dream of writing and publishing a book.  I dream of my children growing up happy, content, and knowing who they are and what road they want to take.  My sister’s sojourn in Jerusalem is awaking a long-buried desire for adventure, so I dream of finding ways to incorporate that in my life with my family.  I’m a little ashamed that I can’t answer this more completely or compellingly.

Do I talk about these questions with my friends and family? Do I live my life this deeply?

I talk about these questions with certain dear friends.  There are a few, and I do mean a few, native speakers with whom I discuss these topics.  Mostly, truthfully, I fear that the contents of my heart and mind are a bit too weighty for the average friend, and I fear scaring them off.  So if I don’t have these conversations more often, it’s in large part because I don’t think it’s wanted by the other person.
Do I live my life this deeply?  I think so.  I have written before about how the person in this blog is the authentic me, and the in-person me is still figuring out how to entirely embody all that I know I care about and intend.  So nothing here is artificial, and given that I write about what it is to live a life I think it follows that I do live this deeply.  But I’m curious, to those who know me (if any of you are still reading), what you think of this.  Do I?

Thank you so, so, so incredibly much for your warm and thoughtful wishes last week on my 5th blog anniversary.  I can’t quite imagine it either, for the record.  And the thought of five more years here seems both daunting and inevitable.  I want to respond to your questions, and will do so in a couple of posts because a few constellations of themes emerged.

Several questions grouped around the topic of why I started blogging, what the journey has been like, and how I feel about sharing personal things about myself and my children here.  Is there anything I regret or would change about my kind of blogging, what did I hope to gain from it, has writing here led me down unanticipated paths, when I started did I imagine I’d be writing the things I am now?

Of course it’s taken me 37 years to realize that it is not a coincidence that you’re asking me questions that have already been on my mind lately.  Launa can tell you that I’ve been thinking about these very topics recently.

I started blogging because there was so much I was afraid I would forget.  The first year of my life as a mother is a blur, to be honest, streaked with tears, rain, a baby’s colicky cries, late-night phone calls about heart transplants, and more tears.  An ocean of tears.  Eventually, once I found my balance again, I became aware of all the small things I didn’t want to lose.  I remember writing Grace a letter on her 2nd birthday (a tradition I’ve continued on this blog) – that is probably the first time I felt pushed back to the page, to the keyboard, in an effort to memorialize the mundane moments that I somehow knew were the stuff of my life.

My blog came out of that impulse.  Even before I was consciously aware of it, something deep inside me knew that life itself was in these little things, the light in the sky, the lyrics of a lullabye, or the funny things my children said.  This was just one example of what I now recognize as a pattern in my life: something essential is known to me in a deep, inchoate way long before I could articulate it.

And, yes, absolutely, this blog has led me places I never imagined.  I definitely thought of it as a personal or family scrapbook for a long time.  And then, imperceptibly but irrevocably, it became something else.  The five years of archives here are a record of my own awakening, my own gradual movement into a set of questions that continue to fascinate and preoccupy me.  I now have a map of my wandering around my own brain.  Also, importantly, blogging reminded me of my intense passion for writing, something I had frankly forgotten.  Because of this blog I have started – and finished a draft of – a memoir, written half of a novel, joined a writing class with my writing idol, and allowed myself to dream of a life in which writing is a central part.

Now, the stuff that has been on my mind.  Is there anything I’d change, anything I regret, do I worry about putting pictures of the kids up here?  In short no, no, and yes.  I wouldn’t change anything about what I share here, because of all the ways that writing this blog has enriched my life and my sense of myself.  My writing is instinctive and I can’t imagine blogging about less personal things.  But it is true that as my children get older I feel more concerned about sharing certain things about them.  I have always tried to write about my experience, but Grace and Whit are the main characters in these stories.  I feel more and more aware of certain things belonging to them now, and not to me.

I have always written frankly about the things I find difficult in mothering and about Grace and Whit’s challenges and struggles.  This candor marks me in person, too: I have written about how I feel both aware of and guilty about my willingness (need?) to present the unvarnished truth of my life.  I assure you, I have been judged on the playground.  As Grace and Whit get older, though, I feel newly constrained about sharing certain things.  There remains plenty of conflict and struggle for me on this mothering journey, and I’m wrestling with how to represent my path and experience honestly while respecting those two little people who didn’t ask to be written about.  Why do I have to represent it at all?  Because I figure out what I think when I write.  And, much more importantly, because I benefit so tremendously – I feel encouraged, taught, and heartened – when I read similarly honest accounts from other mothers about their own paths.

As to the photos and personal details, well, yes, that’s something I fret about too.  A reader emailed me several months ago saying that my willingness to put those things out here reflected my belief that the universe is a benevolent place, a generosity of spirit that she hoped would be reflected back to me.  I don’t know that I had thought about it that way but on reflection I think that is part of my motivation.  Also, more simply, I started writing and sharing photos when nobody was reading.  I oscillate between thinking that actually anyone can find anyone on these enormous interwebz and suspecting that I ought to be a lot more guarded in what I present.  I don’t have a good answer here, but I can tell you I think about it a lot.

More questions and answers soon!!  Thank you again for your thoughtful and thought-provoking responses, last week and always.

Grace watched some cartoons yesterday morning while I unpacked groceries in the kitchen.  She must have seen something on TV about the 10 year anniversary because came bouncing downstairs and asked, casually, “Mummy, what’s 9/11?”  I stopped in my tracks and looked out the window at the gorgeous, unbelievably saturated blue of a sky that was exactly like that day 10 years ago.  My mind wheeled.  We had recently talked about the 9/11 attacks and about Osama bin Laden, and I grasped for what specifically I had said.

I turned to look at her.  “Remember, Grace, when we talked about the day the planes flew into the buildings?” She nodded.  “Well, that happened on September 11th.  9/11.  10 years ago today.”  She looked at me, somber, thinking.

“Why, Mummy?”

“Well, Grace, the people who did it really hated America and they wanted to hurt and to scare us.”

“Why do people hate America?”

I struggled with this answer more than any other.  I told her about how we had freedoms in this country – about what we say, what religion we practice, who we love – that other countries don’t necessarily share or agree with.  I don’t know how fully she grasped this, but she tried.  The conversation veered to the specifics of the day.  She wanted to know how the pilots were overpowered and what the people on the plane did, and then what it felt like to be in the buildings.  “Did they know they were going to die?” she asked me, and my eyes filled with tears.  I have no idea.  I can’t answer that, I told her honestly.

Later in the day Grace had more questions.  She wanted me to assure her that she would always be safe on an airplane.  I said I couldn’t do that, but that the odds of a problem were incredibly low, lower than those of a car crash.  Then she wanted me to promise that I would always keep her safe in the car.  I said I swore I would always try, but that those are promises that I can’t make.  She looked at me, her desperate wish that I could promise I’d always keep her safe vivid, unmistakable in her eyes, and impossible.

I hugged her and told her, whispering into her hair, that the world was full of risk, but that we still had to walk out every day and see all the grandeur that was there, too.  We stood on the front porch and I pointed to the outrageous blue of the sky.  “See, Grace?  Like that.  There is so much beauty in this world.  I promise.”  I wondered if I’d said too much, though I will never forget a lesson my father taught me about risk being an inherent part of life when I was just a bit older than she is.

All day long I felt sad and melancholy, remembering 10 years ago.  I remembered on my  morning run that day thinking of how I had to call Hadley and John to wish them happy first anniversary.  I did call, but to say something else, and I never got through, because circuits to New York were impossible.  I remembered standing in a conference room on the 31st floor, watching the words “Boston high rises being evacuated” scroll across the bottom of a screen.  I remembered the friend from work, Beth, with whom I spent most of the day (including a long way home from Boston because we were afraid of getting on the T).  I remembered the night before and eating dinner on our porch with Quincy, eating the just-unfrozen top of our wedding cake (which we’d had the night before for our first anniversary) for dessert.

Most of all I remembered that Matt had been undecided whether he was going to fly out to LA the night before or that very morning on flight 11.  I remembered the voicemail I saved for years, where he said “Hey, my meeting got out early, so I’m going to run to Logan to try to get out tonight.”  That bleak ghost had brushed against me and I felt its chill in my spirit.  I also felt, then and again, yesterday, the deep knowledge, guilt and gratitude mixed together, that there are others on whom that fog had descended permanently.

The veil between the mundane and mysterious details of our life and the horror we can’t even bear to imagine is as thin and delicate as a cobweb.  The risk is unavoidable.  And the sky is so, so blue.

Skipping rocks, Vergennes, Vermont, August 2011.  On how the generations echo.