A Design So Vast

we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is

November 23, 2017

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.
…
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

– W. S. Merwin

Thanksgiving and the fullness of life

November 21, 2017November 21, 2017

This is always a poignant time of year, and this year it feels more so than usual. I wrote last year about Thanksgiving 2002, when Matt’s father had his heart transplant, when the course of our family’s life bent permanently. Last year Matt’s whole family gathered to celebrate his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, which was also the 14th anniversary of his transplant. It was a gathering none of us will ever forget.

Of course things are very different this year. Matt’s father is gone, and his sudden departure has punched a big hole in all of our lives. On Wednesday we’ll gather with his family, and on Thursday with mine. I can’t stop thinking of that morning in 2002, with our colicky newborn in the back of the car and my father-in-law still in a coma at Mass General. I can’t stop thinking of Thanksgivings in Vermont, before that, when Matt woke up before dawn to go hunting with his father and brothers. I can’t stop thinking of last year, and the spectacular Florida sunrises, and the heartfelt toasts to mark 50 years. The memories feel thick and close this week, sharp, vivid. The people who are gone feel near, and I wonder, as I often do, where they are. There’s so much I wonder about death, so many questions I have, both metaphorical and literal.

I wrote on Instagram last week of how this year I’m particularly aware of the losses that 2017 has brought to us. Of course, there have been many beginnings, too. We began this year with a strong sense of optimism, aware that 2016 had been a difficult year, and the first months were full of good news. Then, of course, came some bad news and some endings, Matt’s father’s death the most significant by a mile of a longer list. We come to the end of this year in a more reflective mode than we began it, but perhaps that is a normal rhythm. It strikes me that it probably is.

As the ghosts and memories swirl around me, what I feel, more than anything, is gratitude. I feel privileged to have lived those moments, even the difficult ones, and to have known and loved (and been loved by) the people who are no longer here. I feel thankful for the family who remains, who hold some of the same memories I do. I feel a tangible sense of honor to be on this earth, taking pictures and writing about my experience, looking at the sky, loving my family.

Kunitz’s words, “how shall the heart be reconciled/to its feast of losses?” run through my head. How to honor what is gone while also remembering what has begun? That is the task of these weeks for me. I feel thankful in a newly deep way, a gratitude shaded by the awareness of life’s losses and heartbreak. Maybe this is adulthood: an elegy for what is gone and a song of celebration for what is at the same time.

I think what I’m saying is that as I get older, difficulty and glory are more closely intertwined, the light and the dark of life more inextricable. Every joy is striated with awareness of sorrow, but the reverse is true, also. That’s either the most depressing thing I’ve ever written or the truest, I don’t know which. Maybe it’s both. But this period of my life is marked by a simultaneous embrace of what is – of thanks for what still is, in some cases – and the aching, echoing reminder of what was.

As I write these words it occurs to me that I am talking about nothing less than holding the fullness of life. The losses and the beginnings, the heartbreak and the beauty, the mundane and the magical. All of it, all the time, simultaneous, bittersweet, dazzling. Life itself.

We need you

November 16, 2017

You’re not too much. You probably haven’t shown the world nearly enough. We need you to be your strong, imperfect, direct, funny, brash, hilarious, sometimes intimidating self. We need you to surround yourself with people who don’t need to diminish you in order to feel more secure. We need your ideas, your vision, your leadership, your presence… all of it, 120 proof. If we need a chaser after being around you, that’s up to us to figure that out.

-Steve Wiens, An Ode to the Women Who Are “Too Much”

I may be shy, but I’ve also been told more times than I can count to take it down a notch, that I’m too intense, that I need to stop taking everything so personally. I’ve been offered unasked-for feedback more than once. I say sorry too much, and so does my daughter. I love this short piece and am sharing it with her.

what we do every day

November 14, 2017November 14, 2017

What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while. – Gretchen Rubin

If this blog has a theme (and it doesn’t, as I’ve established), it would likely be wonder, but close behind that is a preoccupation with daily-ness, with the small activities, thoughts, and emotions that make up our days and therefore our lives. I think at least daily of the quote that last year’s family holiday card featured: “How we spend our days, is, in fact, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard

Or of the salient reminder that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” (I’ve seen this ascribed to Aristotle, Cicero, and others, so I’m not sure precisely who to attribute it to).

I also like the Gretchen Rubin’s assertion of the importance of what we do every day. So I’ve been thinking about what I do every (or most) day(s). And, conversely, what I rarely do. Just as I think we can look at a week or a month of our lives and view our time allocation as a map of what matters to us, I think we can draw conclusions about what we care about through looking carefully at what we do (and do not) do regularly.

Every day I read, most days I exercise, every day I work, every day I spend time with Matt, Grace, and Whit, most days I text or email with a small circle of dear friends and family. Every day I brush my teeth, every day I change into pajamas at the earliest opportunity (sometimes in the morning if I’m working at home), most days I cook for my family, most days I do laundry. Most days I take pictures of the sky, some days at sunset.

Rarely I go out, rarely I talk on the phone for personal reasons (though I do all day for work), rarely I watch TV

What do these small, mundane acts say about my priorities? I think they say my family, my work, and our home comes first. I think they say that I’m an introvert who prefers my pajamas to a night out. I think they say sometimes I need to work harder to get exposure to the wide world out there.

I’m comfortable with what my priorities look like when I stare in the mirror, when I map out what I do every day, how I spend my days, how I spend my life. Far from perfect, but entirely aligned with my values.

What do you do every day, and what do you do rarely? Do you like what these answers say about what you value?