Things I Love Lately

Let’s Just Skip September – Oh, how I love this piece by Jill Kargman.  I agree entirely, and the roller coaster going up feeling is one I’m deeply, uncomfortably familiar with.  I also agree with her on the use of “summer” as a verb.  No can do.

The Absolute Necessity of the New-Mom Friend – My friend Nina Badzin shared this piece with the comment that she felt the same way about being a mother to teenagers; friends who can share the road are vital and, as Sullivan says so perfectly, “…to a new mother, a woman with a child a few months older than yours is a prophet.” It is true that the last time in my life I made a group of close friends was as a new mother.

Zero – I highly recommend this powerful, honest piece by Garance Dore about depression. She’s honest and open about her experience, and about what it took for her to rediscover her joy.  She’s also frank about knowing that happy endings don’t always happen, which I read as the implication that this is probably the start of a winding road rather than a one-way trip back to Normal and Happy.  I relate intensely to what she writes.  These are my favorite lines: “Breaking your wings is a shocking experience. Getting lost in darkness also means understanding it’s always there, not far, waiting for us, and that you have to take care of your joy.”

I read two books lately on the topic of midlife, and devoured them both.  I highly recommend both There Are No Grown-upsby Pamela Druckerman and How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson.  Different but both as thought-provoking as they are entertaining.

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

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

paradoxical peace of mind

And there was that paradoxical peace of mind that emerged with middle age. As I accumulated more and more memories – good and bad – the pain of each individual bad one was blunted. What’s one more mile when you’ve already run forty-nine?

 

-Scott Jurek, North

Eighteen years

This picture was taken by my college roommate’s mother as we left our wedding reception.  We don’t have that many pictures from our wedding (I shared a few yesterday here) and so I am now recycling them, so long have I been writing anniversary posts to mark the years as they tick by.

This year was one for the ages, no?  I’m still finding my footing and I know you are too. Certainly the last year of our marriage held the most transition of any since we got married.  These haven’t been easy months.  We are both volatile and fragile at the same time, and treating each other with gentleness, surely always a core tenet of marriage, is something we’re learning how to do (and the importance of) all over again.

I’m frankly without words when I try to write something commemorating today. And as you know that rarely happens to me.  I feel overcome with all there is to say at the same time as I feel so spent as to find it hard to really say anything at all.

On Valentine’s Day I wrote a short post on Instagram which feels like the best way to summarize right now:

Twenty years, five continents, one apartment, one house, two MBAs, two howlingly (literally) unmedicated labors, two astonishing children who are now young adults, eight jobs, countless family dinners, a million photographs, one surgery, eight weeks lying flat in the living room, two fathers gone and two funeral eulogies given in last five months.

That was February, and it’s all still true (though now, almost 12 months). Right now feels enormous, heavy, gorgeous, fraught, and fleeting.  I’ve never been more aware of how fast it all goes and of how ephemeral our lives are. I know sometimes the way I wrestle with this reality is frustrating.  The week or two before Grace left, when I labored under suffocating weight of her pending departure, were surely not your favorite of our marriage.  They weren’t mine either.  And I know that can be traced back to this awareness, not new but newly keen, newly visceral, newly urgent, of how fragile and evanescent this life is.

And despite those messy weeks, despite the times I don’t act with gentleness, despite the heartbreak and difficulty of the last year, despite the dishes in the sink and the rush out the door in the morning, despite it all, you’re still the one I want to be walking with. Into the mystic we go. I’m still amazed.

Happy eighteen years, Matt.  I love you.

Be still

Be still,
So your blessings can reach you.

– Olivia Jade

Another beauty I found on A First Sip.  A good reminder as we head into the fall, which is the busiest time of the year for me.

Summer 2018

This was the hardest summer of my life.  It was also the quietest and the fastest, and those things (hard, quiet, fast) all feel opposed. But they coexisted, reminding me yet again that life is about contrast and contradiction and that just as soon as we think we have things figured out they shift again.

In addition, amid all the irritation, crankiness, and sorrow, there were, moments of great beauty. Already the specifics of this summer’s difficulties are fading into a generalized memory of snappiness, tears, and frustration.  This reminds me of how, so long ago, I described my experience of the first months of motherhood:

It’s fascinating the way the mind recovers and copes, isn’t it? My memory has smoothed over those weeks of tears and panic like the airbrush facility in photoshop: the pain is still there, I can’t forget it, but its pointy, prickly granularity is sanded down to a more general, uniform memory.

I definitely want to remember the bright moments, of which there were many. Isn’t it interesting that while the difficulties fade away into a generalized slurry, the joyful memories can sometimes become more brilliant, crystallizing somehow as they solidify into our recollection?  Maybe this too is its own coping mechanism.  Some of the highlights of the summer included:

We had a marvelous visit with my sister Hilary and her family

Grace and I made a last minute decision to go see Taylor Swift in concert (the uncharacteristic nature of that decision was part of what made the evening so wonderful) and it was great fun

Matt, Grace and I drove to the Cape to visit Whit and we had a great lunch

Matt and I spent a day on the Cape together before attending Cup Night at Whit’s camp

We played family doubles and swam to the line at the beach many times as a twosome, a threesome, and a foursome

Grace, Matt and I went to spinning (Grace and I in our matching camo leggings)

Whit and Grace took out Little Brea, the boat donated to the yacht club after gifts in my father’s memory and named for the boat he and my mother sailed for 20 years (see photo above)

Grace and I went to the MFA one rainy Saturday and loved seeing the pastels as well as the American art

I went for my first sail without my Dad, which was emotional but lovely

But when I reflect on the summer, I realize the time that stands out the most for me are the weeks that bracketed Summer with a capital “S,” early June and late August.  The weeks we were at home, the four of us, with not a lot else going on. They were the most ordinary of weeks.  We played family Hearts and went for walks for ice cream and watched movies that made us laugh (The Heat was the funniest, and we’re still quoting it).  They were also the sweetest.  I struggled with the last week or two, overwhelmed as I often get with This Is The Last – the anxiety of the endings and of the pending transition swamped me. I may write more about that.  But still, what I recall about those last ordinary weeks is how wonderful they were.  And now: into the next season, with barely time to take a breath.  Onward.