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Present Tense with Laura Munson

I read Laura Munson’s memoir, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness, over the summer, and adored it.  The book grew out of  Laura’s summer 2009 Modern Love column, which I remember reading with interest.  This Is Not the Story You Think It Is begins with Munson’s husband of many years coming home and telling her he’s not sure he loves her anymore.   Instead of responding with anger or throwing him out, Munson simply responds, “I don’t buy it.”  She commences a period of steadfast patience.  She is certain that her husband’s wavering has to do with him, and not her, and she is committed to waiting him out while he works through his crisis.

Munson’s memoir traces the months of this season, during which she waits, determined to save her marriage by demonstrating her deep commitment to it and to her husband.  This commitment takes the form of space, tolerance, and tremendous faith.  She chooses not to give in to the urge for drama, not to hurl accusations.  This is challenging beyond measure, and of course there are moments she loses her cool.  On the whole, though This Is Not the Story You Think It Is showcases the power of devotion and what can happen when we remember to put the prize we seek above our moment-to-moment personal needs.

Beyond being a story about marriage and midlife, though, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is is about becoming the source of one’s own joy.  It is about shifting the power over our own moods back to ourselves.  It is about the things that are possible when we fully commit to something, even when that effort is difficult and draining.

Munson talks about the teetering stack of books on her bedside table, many of which are about spirituality, peace, self-help.  She has been a lifelong seeker, she tells us, but it is not until this moment, with her marriage in crisis and fault lines running through a foundation she assumed was stable, that she really starts to understand what she has been seeking.

“But,” I whimpered, “I’m in a spiritual cul-de-sac. I don’t know how not to want. I’m very, very attached. Not in the least Zen. More . . . I don’t know . . . Episcopalian.”

It’s not simple, this letting go of how she imagined her marriage would be, this strident attempt to … not attempt so much.  Of course Munson falters.  She is funny and wise, humane and deeply human as she relates the ups and downs of her waiting season (an aside: like Munson, I’m an Episcopalian, very, very attached, and a lifelong seeker).

Munson wrote This Is Not the Story You Think It Is from the white-hot center of the experience; not for her was the advice to get a healthy remove from an emotional moment before writing about it.  No, she wrote in real time, as she lived through her summer of waiting, her weeks of doubt, her moments of surprising peace.  As she moves through time, she grows more and more clear about the process she is engaged in, which proves to go far beyond the situation with her husband.

“It’s about not taking things personally. Even when you feel the world is crumbling around you. It’s about choosing happiness over suffering. It’s about retraining the way we think.”

Of course, this is no small achievement; it might be the goal of a lifetime.  At least for me.  Many things go into choosing happiness; among the most important is learning to appreciate that which is right in front of you.  When Munson dives into what it means to not choose suffering, she hints at some of the nuances of her ordinary life, and suggests that it is in the embrace of these things that freedom, and joy, can come.

“Suffering sucks. Don’t do it. Go home and love your wife. Go home and love yourself. Go home and base your happiness on one thing and one thing only: freedom. Choose freedom, not suffering. Create a life of freedom, not wanting. Have some really good coffee and listen to the red-winged blackbirds in the marsh.”

I’m so glad to have found Laura Munson’s words, in both her book and in her blog, These Here Hills.  She writes for the Huffington Post, the New York Times (her recent Lives column, about a mother and her growing-so-fast daughter, made me cry), and on her blog.  Go read her words now – you won’t regret it.

1. When have you felt most present?  Are there specific memories that stand out for you?

Giving birth to my children, writing books, riding horses.  All three of these things require us to be in the present moment.  Like no other experiences I’ve known, they warn of the dangers of the mind.  Of engaging fear.  Of not being present.  All require a loosening, an opening and letting go; non-resistance.  Receiving what is…the illusions of the past and the future melting away.

2. Do you have rituals or patterns that you use to remind you to Be Here Now?

I have a very busy mind.  So in order to quiet it, I need easy, broken down methods.  So it’s three deep breaths when my mind is a-whirl.  Or it’s saying a prayer that I memorized as a child in time to those three breaths.  Or a heart shaped rock I hold in my hand to take pause—I collect them and keep them all over my house.  It’s silent and it’s simple.  And mostly it’s about identifying those destructive thoughts we all have, and loving them into submission.  I used to think we needed to hunt them down and make them die violent deaths.  Now I realize that when we’re doing that, we’re at war with ourselves because we’ve created those voices.  They’re of us.  So to love them like a scared child works much better for me.

3. Do you have specific places or people that you associate with being particularly present?  Who?  Where?  Any idea why?

The woman who I ride horses with is the most present human being I’ve ever met.  She has had a hard life and you never hear her complain and you rarely hear her speak about yesterday or tomorrow.  It’s “look at the immature eagle,” or “that mama doe has a new fawn hiding in that field,” or “that’s a mountain lion den” or “aren’t the larch trees stunning this year?”  We may get into conversation, but she is always keenly aware of what is happening around her and with her horse.  It keeps her calm and it keeps her safe.  I have worked with this woman for ten years and more than anything else, I’ve learned how to clean my mind and be present, all from our travels by horse in the woods of Montana.

4. Have you ever meditated?  How did that go?

Writing is my meditation.  It’s my practice.  It’s my daily prayer.  I have always been a seeker from a very early age.  And I’ve always had a rich prayer life.  My prayers have become lean.  More like little casts into a slow-moving stream—a few words.  Thanks.  Help.  Yes. I find great solace and inspiration in reading the work of the mystics from most religions who are all about love and the freedom of the present moment.  And yes, I have meditated in the sense of repeating a phrase in my mind in a deliberate way in a quiet place.  But for me a walk in the woods is the best meditation.  I always come back feeling clean-slated.

5. Has having children changed how you think about the effort to be present?

I try to teach them to be aware in the moment.  That all the suffering comes in our attachment to the illusion of past and future.  To own what they can own and then let go of the rest.  I try to teach them the freedom that comes from that awareness.  I’m a student and a teacher then, I guess.  When there are people you love and you see them suffering and you feel you have ideas and practices that pull people out of suffering, it’s easy to go into teacher mode, but I find that it’s much more effective to simply practice more than preach.

6. And just cause I’m curious, what books and songs do you love?

Jim Harrison is my favorite writer.  I love all of his work, and especially his poetry.  I love the book THE BROTHERS K by David James Duncan.  e.e. cummings and Rilke and Rumi and Neruda.  Salinger, especially FRANNY AND ZOOEY.  Truman Capote’s A CHRISTMAS MEMORY.  Annie Dillard.  And music…well…I love Bach.  I love the Durufle Requiem.  And old timey folk tunes.  My musical taste is all over the map.  From Puccini to Joni Mitchell to James Taylor to Ella Fitzgerald to The Velvet Underground to the Grateful Dead to the Violent Femmes.  Dixieland jazz.  Big Band music.  Depends on the weather.  The song I play on the piano, its lyrics appearing in my high school year book senior page, is CORNER OF THE SKY from the Broadway musical, Pippin, so there you have it.

The tiniest bit unlike I anticipated

Grace and I saw Wicked on Saturday.  We went with a dear friend of mine whose two daughters are close friends of Grace’s as well.  I had heard over and over how marvelous the musical was, and fully expected to enjoy it.

Wow.

I wasn’t, however, expecting to both laugh and cry, nor that I would be left with such weighty, interesting questions and thoughts.  Wicked is a parable about how nobody fits the simplistic labels we like to assign to them, an exploration of two women who are both deeply complicated and profoundly human.   The play also riffs on one of my favorite themes, that we ought to slow down our rush to judgment, take the time to hear the stories of others, and extend kindness whenever we can, because everyone has their private struggles.

The central characters in Wicked are Elphaba, more commonly known as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch.  Both women are revealed to be much more complicated than their good and evil categorization suggests, and ultimately, both are deeply relatable and human characters. Their authentic friendship, which transcends their massive differences, is the beating heart of Wicked.

Elphaba, who is born with green skin and carries with her the heavy weight of her father’s disappointment as well as her own sense of responsibility for her mother’s death, is the obvious heroine of Wicked.  She is the underdog who makes good, the character who grows from nervous, shy little girl to brave, truth-seeking woman.  Elphaba is smart and loyal, compassionate towards all, especially those who are, like her, marked by difference.  The witch’s hat and broom are accidental accoutrements whose power as tropes were unanticipated.  Elphaba transcends awkwardness and ugliness to become a startlingly empowering, beautiful character.  She loses it all to pursue her truth.

Glinda is everything Elphaba is not.  She is pretty and blonde, privileged and conceited, and the most popular girl in school.  She gets the groupies and the boy and almost faints when for the very first time things do not go her way.  Through an accident, she and Elphaba become roommates, and then, improbably, friends.  It is in this, the thawing of her glossy, icy shell as she begins to genuinely care about Elphaba, that we glimpse that there is more to Glinda than we first imagine.  Glinda follows Elphaba as far as she can, though ultimately she turns away and returns to a conventional – and eventually a public – life.  Where Elphaba is a brave rebel, Glinda is more shackled by her fears.  She does not ever shun Elphaba, though, and we witness her deep affection for and commitment to her best friend.

Elphaba is the showier character, the easier one to root for, but it’s Glinda that I find myself thinking about still.  She takes seriously her public role as Glinda the Good (in one scene she, hilariously, mutters to Elphaba that she is expected to be encouraging).  She loses her best friend and the man she loves, and yet she never, not once, becomes bitter.  Glinda is a woman whose life turned out precisely as she planned it, and who tries mightily to put on a happy face about that despite deep hurt inside.  In the song “Thank Goodness,” Glinda is speaking before the crowds in Munchkinland.  She is trying to reassure them that she has never been happier, and that they ought to likewise rejoice, while inside we know she quakes with fear about her fiance and her friend.

That’s why I couldn’t be happier
No, I couldn’t be happier
Though it is, I admit
The tiniest bit
Unlike I anticipated
But I couldn’t be happier
Simply couldn’t be happier
… ‘Cause getting your dreams
It’s strange, but it seems
A little – well – complicated
There’s a kind of a sort of : cost
There’s a couple of things get: lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn’t know you crossed
Until you’ve crossed
And if that joy, that thrill
Doesn’t thrill you like you think it will
Still –
With this perfect finale
The cheers and ballyhoo
Who
Wouldn’t be happier?
So I couldn’t be happier
Because happy is what happens
When all your dreams come true
Well, isn’t it?
Happy is what happens
When your dreams come true!

Glinda represents the imprisonment of the good girl.  She embodies the ambivalence of having your dreams come true, especially when the dreams are both outdated and, possibly, traps.  She is to me, an equal heroine of the story: she accepts what she is and is not able to do, and, bowing her head in the acknowledgment of her private pain, she rises, glittering, to her responsibilities.  Her courage, though different from Elphaba’s, is no less salient.  Glinda grows out of the very shallow girl she is at first to an empathetic character whose fierceness and intelligence are handicapped only by her deep need to play by the rules.

Present tense with Katrina Kenison

This winter a blog reader sent me a link to a YouTube video that I clicked on (uncharacteristically, since honestly I don’t much like watching video). Before a minute had elapsed tears were streaming down my face.  Before the video was over I’d ordered the book that Katrina Kenison read from in it, The Gift of an Ordinary Day.  I am eager to share this gift with all of you, and so please read down to find out more about winning a copy of each of Katrina’s books!

And since the day I watched that YouTube video, the universe has been taking very good care of me.  One morning this summer I bumped into Katrina, in my town, by chance, and at a small coffee shop around the corner.  I recognized her, at first noticing that she was reading a book by Sylvia Boorstein that Dani Shapiro wrote about in Devotion.  We talked, we made a date for the next morning, and I fell more deeply into my admiration of all things Katrina.  Sometimes I feel as though life is one great stream, and all I really should do is stop trying so madly to direct everything and just let it carry me.  And reading Katrina’s words, discovering the connections we had, and then meeting her in person all felt like that.  I’m immeasurably grateful to know Katrina, both as a writer and as a person, and am already hard-pressed to describe fully the profound impact she’s had on me.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day moved me when I read it, and I’ve returned to it over and over since then, recalling resonant themes and specific images recommending it to everybody who will listen.  I’m just finishing Mitten Strings For God now and it is having a similar impact.  The book is inspiring me in a very real way to be a better and more present mother.  Just today, I surreptitiously read it in between interviews I had with candidates for my “real job,” and came home newly reminded of how important it is to be engaged for Grace and Whit.  We ate a relaxed dinner, enjoyed a long bath time full of laughter, and forfeited television in lieu of reading.  I doubt it’s a coincidence that this was one of the smoothest and most joyful evenings that I can remember with my children.

Katrina is, as I wrote in my review of The Gift of an Ordinary Day, a poet of the everyday.  In her sure and gentle hands the most ordinary moments are burnished into gems.  Through the lens of her eyes I am reminded over and over of the holiness that exists in every single one of our days, and I am called back again to the practice of noticing it.  Katrina writes often on her blog of her own struggles with the very things I grapple with every single day: how to cope with the transience of time, to accept the loss that limns every day, and to be more present in her own life.

If I have learned anything at all these last couple of months, it is that I am still learning how to let go, still caught so often between my wish to stop time in its tracks and my longing to accept with more grace the transience of all things.

When I read these words a couple of weeks ago I gasped audibly: I’ve never heard such a lucid and elegant description of the central tension of my own life.  How did this woman climb into my head?  My heart?  Never mind.  I don’t care how.  I’m glad she did. Katrina expresses the ineffable sadness and incandescent joy that dance together at the heart of the human experience with an eloquence that I regularly feel so keenly it’s like an ache in my chest.

I urge you all to read Katrina’s work – her blog, her books.  She will move you, I guarantee it.  When she read at the Mother’s Plunge on September 18th there was not a dry eye in the room.  Yet they were the special kind of tears that inspire joy, commitment, and engagement even as they acknowledge sorrow.  Katrina’s books stir something deep in me, touch that molten core of what it means to be a person in this world.  Run, don’t walk, to read them.  They will change your life.  That is not an exaggeration.

Because I believe so fiercely in Katrina’s work, and can speak so personally and authentically about how it has affected me, I’m eager to share this with you all.  My first giveaway!  I’m delighted to give away a signed copy of both Mitten Strings For God and The Gift of an Ordinary Day.  Just leave a comment and I’ll draw names in a couple of days.  You won’t regret it, I swear.  The only person I know lucky enough to have a signed copy of The Gift of an Ordinary Day is my own mother (no pressure, Mum, but you can read that at any time), and that’s because I got it for her the other weekend.

And now, without further ado, I share Katrina’s wise, and incomparably thoughtful responses to my questions.

1. When have you felt most present?  Are there specific memories that stand out for you?

Surprisingly, some of my most difficult, painful moments of parenthood have also turned out to be the moments that remain indelibly imprinted on my brain.  An unexpected turn of events, a child’s poor decision, a surprising discovery or confession — and suddenly we are both in brand new territory.  That can be pretty scary, knowing that my reaction in this moment could either support my child’s growth and continued trust in me, or make an already distressing situation even worse.  Whether it’s having third-grade son come to me in tears because he’s being bullied in gym class, or walking in on a sixteen- year-old sneaking a cigarette, these are the kinds of memories that remain sharp and viscerally clear for years afterward.

I’ve found that what I need to do in these moments is to stop, take a deep breath, summon all my love, and then proceed carefully in the direction of truth —  no matter how hard the truth is to say or hear, and even when the behavior that’s led us to this place may not have been lovable at all.
It’s always been easy for me to feel whole and connected with my kids in the sweet, precious moments when all seems right with the world.  What’s hard for me is keeping those lines of love and communication open when the going gets rough.  One thing I’m still learning is that  being fully present in these moments means not reacting from a place of fear or anger — all too easy to do when it feels as if your child’s entire future is at stake — but rather from a place of authentic care and concern.  That kind of response demands a certain vulnerability on my part, and a willingness to be totally present, even when it hurts.  It calls for faith, too, lots of it–faith that no matter how hard the moment is, we’ll all get through, we’ll be okay, all will be well.  It’s taken years, but I’m finally getting to the place where I truly believe that.

2. Do you have rituals or patterns that you use to remind you to Be Here Now?

My yoga practice has definitely helped me to be less reactive to the ups and downs of everyday life. Confronting challenges on a yoga mat, year after year, really has given me a way to move through life with a little less attachment to outcomes, and a great deal more appreciation for process.  As my first teacher, Rolf Gates, used to say at the end of class:  “We show up, we burn brightly in the moment, we . . . ., and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.”  THese days, as the mother of a seventeen year old and twenty year old, I feel as if my life is all about knowing when my work is done, and when it’s time for me to step back and let go.

3. Do you have specific places or people that you associate with being particularly present?  Who?  Where?  Any idea why?

Four years ago, a very dear friend, just my age, was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer.  She entered treatment with incredible courage and determination, and not a day has gone by when she hasn’t inspired me to live my own life with more awareness.  Her appreciation for each ordinary day she’s been given has been a powerful reminder to me that that every moment is precious, every day meaningful, every loving gesture significant.

My friend never wanted to be anyone’s spiritual teacher, she just wanted to be a mom and a wife and to live a good, long purposeful life full of simple pleasures and family times.  Instead, she was handed the job of showing all of us who love her how to look your own mortality in the eye, and, at the same time, how to find the joy in each day’s doings.  When I sit with her now, as she concludes her work here on this earth, we are both fully, absolutely present.  It is so rare, so extraordinary, to cut right to the essence of things in every conversation, to be fully aware of the fleeting beauty of the moment.

4. Have you ever meditated?  How did that go?

I’m well-intentioned and sporadic .  I have meditated for periods of time over many years, and then drifted away for a while–usually when I need it most — and then come back to it.  Right now, there is a lot of intensity in my life, so much going on that seems to need processing and that takes up a lot of time and energy.  And I’m returning to my spot, meditating as a way to step out of the flow and reset my course. Sitting very still in the midst of all the drama feels like a great relief.  I am learning that I can put down my burdens, sit on the floor, and just be quietly aware — this feels more and more like an essential thing to do, and my mat a safe and restorative place to be.

5. Has having children changed how you think about the effort to be present?

I have had children for so long now that I can’t even remember life before kids.  My sons are 17 and 20, which means that these days they come and go.  And so when they both happen to be home at the same time, every single family meal feels precious.  Every night that they are in their own beds in their own rooms is a special night.  I’m getting used to the fact that they both have lives elsewhere, that my mothering job has been transformed, that the time I thought would never come–children grown and away from home–is already here.  That is poignant and wonderful, both.  We raise them to let them go.  But when my kids ARE around, oh my, I am totally present.  And grateful.

6. And just cause I’m curious, what books and songs do you love?

I love being in the car with either one of my boys and listening to their iPods.  Fortunately, their tastes are wide-ranging and excellent and they are happy to play DJ for me and introduce me to their music–Cat Empire and Jamie Cullum are current favorites of mine, thanks to Jack and Henry.
Left to my own devices, I usually listen to Kundalini yoga chant, Deva Premal, Snatam Kaur, Krishna Das.  And then, always, a little Alison Krauss, Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux.
I was the editor of the Best American Short Stories for sixteen years, which meant that I read thousands and thousands of short stories.  I still love them–John Updike, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore are in the pantheon.  But mostly these days I read memoirs –Dani Shapiro, Florida Scott Maxwell, Maya Angelou, Gail Caldwell, Karen Maezen Miller, Elizabeth McCracken.  Right now, I’m listening to The Great Gatsby on audio with my son Jack, and we’re both in awe of every sentence.  And if I could be re-incarnated as my favorite writer, well, that would be Mary Oliver.  No surprise there.
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It’s hard for me to add anything here, so I won’t even try.  Other than to express my profound gratitude to Katrina for answering these questions, and, maybe more importantly, to the universe, for bringing her, her words, her example, her wisdom into my life.  I’d love to hear from those of you who have been similarly affected by Katrina’s work – I know there are many out there.
Please leave a comment for a chnace to receive a signed book of Katrina’s!

Above the clouds

Sky Above the Clouds, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1962-63 (one of my favorite paintings, ever)

Our big adventure to Legoland began on Saturday morning. After we boarded the plane, Whit pushed up his window shade and stared, wide-eyed, at the airport activity outside. “Mummy! A cart full of luggage!” “Mummy! What are those bright orange lighted sticks that man is holding for?!” I kept asking him to keep his voice down but I was laughing at the same time, touched by his excitement and the eyes through which everything is still new and amazing. His wonder was contagious.

As the plane taxied towards the runway, I noticed that Whit and Grace were holding hands. I felt the pressure of my heart in my chest, fell headlong into one of those moments so swollen with emotion that I’m unsure that I can physically contain it. Both childrens’ heads were turned towards the window so they did not see the tear that rolled down my face.

As the plane took off, angling upward, Whit looked at me with absolute awe in his eyes. “Mummy, do we go above the clouds?” he asked. You could tell he could not quite believe the answer might be yes. “Yes, Whitty, we do!” I replied.

“Grace did you hear that? Above the clouds?” Grace is sitting between us, and undoubtedly heard, but Whit wanted to make absolutely sure she was aware of the miracle we were living. Right that moment.

As the plane soared into the clouds, Whit whispered to himself, “Wow. Everything is getting so small.” And then, after pondering another moment, he turned to me, “Mummy! Everything is getting so small!” I smiled at them both, and reached my hand over to join theirs in a three-way embrace as we lifted into the sky.

Fear {21.5.800}

So I’m a little late to the game with Bindu’s 21.5.800 challenge. Truth is, I wanted to participate, but I don’t like to sign up for things and not do them. That goes against my grain and makes me feel terrible. And I knew I would not deliver on the 5 days of yoga. Then Bindu told me I could do savasana, which sounded an awful lot like Lianne’s advice to sink deeply into rest, and … well, here I am. A week late and at least a dollar short. Oh well. I’m here!

I found her prompt to write about fear both daunting and inspiring. I am in a season that looks deceptively calm. My everyday life has ground to a halt and I’m finding myself with long swaths of unscheduled time (by which I mean hours, not more than that) unfurling in front of me in the most gorgeous way. But my emotional life is not as settled as the surface would suggest. It is this hidden turbulence, I suspect, that responded to Bindu’s suggestion to write about fear.

Fear. I am intimately familiar with fear, though often shy away from looking it right in the face. I have written a lot about my fears, mostly about my deep discomfort with uncertainty, and about how I grasp awkwardly for faith. Despite these lurching attempts I’ve mostly found my palm empty but I’m beginning to suspect that may actually be faith, that empty palm.

When I think about fear the Carl Sandburg line about fog keeps coming to mind: “The fog comes on little cat feet.” Seems to me that’s mostly how fear arrives for me too. Creeping, gradually, quietly enough that I don’t realize it’s approaching until it has surrounded me.  That’s the most insidious thing about fear, at least for me: it arrives without warning, and I am suddenly swamped by it, unprepared.

Now this is different from change, of course, whose arrival is always long in coming, deeply anxiety-producing.  In fact, the way that I can anticipate change, and count down the moments until it comes produces the worst kind of fear for me.  Seems incongruous that one of the things I fear most – change, and its cousin, uncertainty – has such a different pattern of arrival, such a distinct rhyhm than does the actual fear.

The other things I fear are more diffuse, less connected to facts (ie I am leaving my job.  This is a change.  I am afraid of change) – these are the fears that arise, unbidden and unexpected, and who surround me like a fog I cannot escape.  The old, familiar fears – I am not good enough, I will soon be revealed as the fraud I really am, I am all surface and no depth – jump out from behind corners of ordinary days, startling me into submission.  This fear is all tangled up with my far-too-powerful (though not as simplistic as it initially seems) concern about what others think of me.

The deep fear that I will be abandoned, that those I love most will leave me animates the vaguely frantic sense that accompanies me some of the time, ebbing and flowing to the beat of an irregular and inscrutable metronome.  I have a lot of friends but I have  truly let in very few.  And I live in fear that those beloved people will see all the things I fear about the heart of me and decide to leave.

There are a million other things I fear, small and big: aging, my own and my parents, the fragility of my childrens’ health, the recurrence of my childhood friend’s cancer, not being able to sleep, trying new and intimidating foods, certain intimidating people, the pitch black, and roller coasters.  I could probably write this list all day, and sadly it comes to mind as easily as did my list of things that make me very happy.  Something to think about during today’s savasana.