What’s In Front of Me

Time continues to move in a strange stutter-step kind of way – flying and crawling.  I’m struck by how life feels both terrifying and mundane at the same time, often in the same hour.  I’ve been thinking about how quarantine kind of feels like my regular life, but with more zoom and fear.  I can’t ever get very far away from worry about the state of the world, but if I dwell there it pulls me into a very scary thought spiral so I try to focus instead on what’s in front of me.

The two young adults I live with, who make me proud and make me laugh and occasionally make me frustrated.  I’m more aware than ever of Grace’s adult life stretching out in front of her and I feel grateful to still be near her both literally and metaphorically.

The beautiful world out the window.  My awareness of this world’s gorgeousness continues unabated.  I’m hearing and seeing things I never noticed before.

Our family home in Marion, Massachusetts.  I’m so grateful to be surrounded by such happy memories of my father there, and to see my children so relaxed and happy in the familiar space.

This mention by Emma Gannon her Vanity Fair piece about her inspirations while writing Olive.  I was delighted when she featured On Being 40(ish) on her Instagram book club a few months ago and I was thrilled to see this mention.  I can’t wait to read Olive.

My bearded officemate, whose presence all day every day has become very familiar, reassuring most of the time, profoundly aggravating some of it.

Instagram.  I still love it and that is not abating.

Books.  I’m still reading a lot.  Finishing Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore and really liking it.  Next up is Jennifer Weiner’s Big Summer.

Reconnecting with friends who I’d lost touch with.  There are a few friends from various parts of my life with whom I’ve recommenced dialogue and it’s a complete joy.  I do think that one of the lessons of this time is the power of deliberately choosing who we connect with (rather than doing so by default because of life’s busy patterns).  I am deeply grateful to be reconnected with some of these special people.  You know who you are.

Our current summer cadence of quiet weekends, heavy on family time (the four of us and my mother).  We are seeing a few people outside and each child is seeing a couple of friends but still keeping close to home.  The truth is I don’t mind it.  I’m doing a lot of puzzles and drinking a lot of iced coffee.

What’s right in front of you?  Can you focus there and not be overwhelmed by the big picture of this threatened world?

 

Notes on a Silencing

I finished Lacy Crawford‘s book this week and am still processing it. I am proud to call Lacy a dear friend and have known her since 1992. This book is absolutely spectacular: unflinching, brave, gorgeously written. It’s hard to read on a number of levels: as someone who loves Lacy, as a woman who’s seen up close how common these stories are, and as the mother of a girl who goes to boarding school.

Notes on a Silencing evokes incredibly powerfully how our lives can be shaped in indelible ways by singular experiences, how the years can unfurl from a specific moment in a different direction than we anticipated, how the past echoes through the present even when we devoutly wish it wouldn’t. It also dares to examine the structures of power that shame and silence victims.

Oh, Lace, this book is a nothing short of a masterpiece. I’m grateful to have read it and to know you so well that I felt like we spent this week in conversation – your voice comes through with crystalline strength. Unwavering. Honest. Unafraid. In “burning it down,” as you have (and as your beloved said), you’ve held up an important light for others. Thank you, thank you, thank you

originally posted on Instagram

the second half of this extraordinary year

Today is July 1st.  It’s the beginning of the year’s second half.  I’m certain I’m not alone in saying that the first half of 2020 was the most astonishing, disorienting, and scary six months I’ve ever lived.  It is simultaneously the longest and the shortest six month period I can remember experiencing.  And I feel pretty confident that the second half of this year is not going to be smoother or less eventful.  A bone-deep sense of being tired permeates my physical body.  I sleep like a rock, for almost 9 hours every night.  My legs ache walking up the stairs.  I just feel absolutely exhausted by the world.  The not-knowing is wearing on me.  There is so much uncertainty right now.  Of course it just points out – to me at least – how much of a fallacy our ordinary sense of control is.  We are never in control.  The universe has just seen fit to make that REALLY clear of late.

And yet, through it all, in this time of almost hysterical news, of fever-pitch terror and change, there are views like the one above, which is a photo I took on Friday night.  These moments remind me of my favorite book of the year so far, The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, and of this passage in particular:

…it seemed for an instant I saw the world was he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.

Onward.

 

Around here

Mid June.  I’m sure I’m not the only person who is having the strange experience of time crawling and flying at the same time.  It’s groundhog day around here, every day, and yet time is whipping by.  March feels like five years ago.  I wonder if time will feel “normal” again and then I start wondering if there is such a thing as a normal sense of time – it’s all a fabrication, anyway.  This is a gerbil run I don’t entirely recommend.

Still reading a lot.  Read and LOVED An American Marriage by Tayari Jones and Tin Man by Sarah Winman.  I’m now in the first half of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins and finding it engrossing and entertaining.  I also read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo which was powerful and compelling and I know I have a lot to learn.

Grace and Whit have been out of school three weeks already.  Our attention has turned firmly to the fall and we’re all desperately hoping they return to school in some in-person way.

These are my favorite masks, and Grace, Mum, and my sister Hilary are all wearing them now.  Working on a family composite of us all in our masks… stay tuned.  I’m a  mask evangelist.  Wear. The. Mask.  If that’s what it takes to get the kids back to school, aren’t we all happy to do it?  Honestly.  I don’t totally understand why we are even TALKING about this.

As I’ve discussed, I find that I can’t remember things as well as I used to.  Some of this is just middle age, and I hope it’s mostly that.  I joke around that my hard drive is full.  And I realized this past weekend one thing it’s full with. Indigo Girls lyrics.  I was listening to old Indigo Girls as I drove an realized I know every single word.  To every single song.  For hours.  That is taking up hard drive space that I’d like to repurpose for other, more important things! (no offense to the Indigo Girls, who I truly think are poets, but I’d also like to remember, for example, what I did this morning).

This is week two of my peony share from Five Fork Farms. The gorgeous blooms that I pick up every week provide me far more joy than I can express.  I’ve shared some photos on Instagram.  I just love peonies, and love supporting a local farm, too.  The photo at the top of this post is today’s batch.

Matt and I are watching Ozark. I’m really not sure.  It is SO DARK.

I’m stepping into the class correspondent role for my grad school class (with a partner).  This makes it a hat trick – I’ve now been correspondent for my high school, my college, and my grad school.  World’s biggest sucker?  You tell me.  I love my grad school section so I am happy to do it.

What is happening where you are, right now?

Recent reading

In the last few years I’ve written a “best books of the half-year” post (2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015).  This year feels different, and I’m not going to do the same, but I have been reading a lot and I wanted to share some of those titles.  This is only books since I last wrote about what I’m reading, so it’s far from comprehensive.  I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading and enjoying lately.

The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel – I loved this book, which spoke so beautifully of the past, ghosts, regret, and the road not taken.

The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer – I love this writer’s voice, which I encountered for the first time in Andre Agassi’s Open: An Autobiography.  Still reading this one so not done yet, but oh, so beautiful.  My favorite line so far: “we exalt what is at hand.”

Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid – A truly unconventional narrative structure which worked, in my opinion.  This made me think a lot of A Star is Born and I loved it.

Still Life with Bread Crumbs, Anna Quindlen – I’ve read two Anna Quindlen novels during the quarantine (the other: Every Last One) and preferred this one.  Lovely. The idea of making art out of our lives really resonated.  Perhaps what I mean is: we exalt what is at hand.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne – as you can see I went on a large Boyne tear (The Heart’s Invisible Furies is one of my all-time favorites).  All I have to say is WOW.  This one, about a child’s perspective on Auschwitz, is gutting and beautiful at the same time.  Boyne knows heartbreak and loneliness, that’s for sure.

History of Loneliness, John Boyne – More loneliness, in the title and pervasively throughout.  One of my strange fascinations is the papal conclave, so I was interested in this view on the papacy as well.

A Ladder to the Sky, John Boyne – This novel has a Talented Mr. Ripley feel, and some entertaining references to famous 20th century writers.

Moonlight Mile, Dennis Lehane – Found in the Little Free Library by our house.  I love Dennis Lehane.  So Boston, and he can write a gripping page turner populated by deeply humane characters, which is a combination I love.

Friends and Strangers, J. Courtney Sullivan – I read this before quarantine but it comes out June 30th and I could not recommend more highly.  A thoughtful and fun (again, that magic combo!) exploration of motherhood today, and what it means to work, friendship, and marriage.