The wings, while lovely, are a farce. This is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
John is staying here tonight, so I tried something I have NEVER done before – putting the children in the same room. Literally they have never shared a room. Not once. I’m ashamed of this – it’s one of those things like not being able to drive stick and never having tasted an oyster that I just should suck up and do. I made a little bed for Grace on the floor, with a folded up comforter as a mattress and her sleeping bag from Quincy on top. She was very excited. We talked at great length about the rules: this was a special treat, everybody had to sleep, sleep all night without any peeps, and go to sleep without yelling or crying. Or else I would take Grace out of Whit’s room. We read a book and I tucked them in. All was well.
Until about 10 minutes later when Grace came out of the room and, sighing dramatically like a teenager, informed me that Whit would not be quiet and she could not sleep. I shepherded her back into the room to her “bed” and told them both in no uncertain terms that if I had to come back in the little adventure would be over and I’d find Gracie another, quieter corner of floor. No surprise that ten minutes later I had to make good on this promise. I’m a big believer in keeping your threats, so I hauled the little bed out of the room and made Grace a new nest on the hardwood floor in my room. Like a champ she curled up and went to bed without a sound. Whit, not so much. First he jumped up and down in his crib like a maniac, screaming about how he wanted Gracie back in his room. I went in and told him that I was not going to come back in, that he had heard that he had one more chance and he blew it, and that we would try again another day when he felt like he could be quieter. He’s been in there for about 15 minutes and he is wailing. He started off with “I am a sad boy! A very very sad boy!” which made me giggle in a happy-sad way. Then he addressed Gracie as though she could hear him, pleading for her to “come back to my room! sleep near me! Gracie! I can’t find you!” Now he’s wearing himself out, sobbing intermittently and choking out assertions that “It isn’t fair!” I feel like I am Ferberizing again. But it’s harder because he can actually say what he is thinking.
A failed experiment to say the least.

I occasionally get depressed by the sheer fact that there will not be enough time in my life to read all the books I want to read. This is demonstrated by the rising and falling of the stack of books on my bedside table (well, underneath it). As the stacks get tall, I get anxious and start to get very goal-oriented about my reading (which is kind of a bummer in its own way). My recently acquired ability to put down a book that isn’t captivating me helps a little, but I still have a lot I want to read. I just wish I could read faster. For a snapshot of my random reading tastes, here is the current book queue (in no particular order):

Escape from Corporate America – Pamela Skillings
Vanishing Acts – Jodi Picoult
Hurrah For the Next Man Who Dies – Mark Goodman
Hopscotch and Handbags – Lucy Mangan
Birth – Tina Cassidy
On Writing – Stephen King
The Black Ice – Michael Connelly
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys – Michael Thomopson and Dan Kindlon
Attachment – Isabel Fonseca
Autobiography of a Wardrobe – Elizabeth Kendall
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child – John Gottman
Twilight of the Superheroes – Deborah Eisenberg
Winter’s Tale – Mark Helprin
Daniel Isn’t Talking – Marti Leimbach
The Burning House – Ann Beattie
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides

I’d better stop blogging and start reading.

What an astonishingly wonderful gift to come home today today. Gloria sent this book, clearly from when we were at Exeter together, with a lovely, tear-jerking inscription. I have this book, but haven’t read it fully, and will cherish this new copy wholly.
Exeter has a tradition known as the senior meditation. Each senior writes a “meditation,” which (as I recall) is a personal essay with few limits than a general length guideline. Each Thursday morning there is a meditation period, when a member of the faculty, staff, or senior class reads their essay in the chapel (pictured above, still one of my favorite buildings ever). Mr. Valhouli, my beloved teacher, was an ardent lover of this tradition and when he read his personal comments in 1991, I was lucky enough to be sitting in the pews. This book, a compilation of some of the readings from 1983 to 1994, is dedicated to him:

This book is dedicated to the memory of Jim Valhouli, whose inspired teaching and love of words have taught us to believe more fully in the stories and adventures that shape our lives. Just as Odysseus did so long ago, Jim, in his journey to Ithaka, teaches us that it is the journey, not the arrival, that matters.

These words remind me of the dedication of my senior thesis, also to Mr. Valhouli:

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of James Valhouli (1942-1994). Mr Valhouli, Your inspiration will always be with me. Thank you for teaching me passion for Ithaka. I trust you are there.

I am going to dive into this book tonight and know I will find writing that is both elegant (one thing Exeter does well, after all, is teach you how to write!) and thought-provoking. I love this tradition and admire the tenacity and commitment demonstrated by Exeter’s protecting of 30 minutes a week for pure personal storytelling. In a world where each academic minute is squeezed, I am sure it is hard to maintain this tradition (and, in truth, I don’t know if it is still alive – it was important to me when I was there, though).

It takes guts for a school that’s measured so often on quantitative measures like test scores and college admissions to defend the value of the story. I am sure many alums, however, would tell you that the stories they heard, from peers and teachers, are the single most valuable thing they took away from the school. This was the central theme of Gloria’s remarks at assembly the other week, and it wasn’t until she sent this book that I connected those words with the meditation tradition and with Mr Valhouli. These are influences on my life that have privileged the individual telling of experience, that have valued highly the learning inherent in telling and hearing stories.

How often I think of you, Mr Valhouli – of your profound, quiet dedication to the beauty that lies along the way, to the value describing what we see. I am looking at your picture right now, on the board in front of my desk, and you look at me with that familiar, serene gaze that is at once calm and utterly penetrating. I am such a restless soul, and I am walking a winding road that is both exactly what I planned and nothing like I could have imagined. I find it grounding to remember that my feeling lost isn’t the point; it’s the stories I can find in each day that matter. I don’t think this book was written before he died, but I know Mr Valhouli would have loved this quotation, which I’ve shared with only one close friend who also has a fascination with story telling:

I am listening to and very much enjoying Atul Gawande’s Better in the car. I read his first book, Complications, and loved that as well – this is similarly thoughtful in its mulling of both the details and higher order questions involved in medicine.

One quote today really struck me:

“The hardest part about being a doctor is knowing what you have power over and what you don’t.”

This reminded me, of course, of the marvelous Reinhold Neibuhr prayer that asks for the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change those we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This also made me think about how I often act as though sheer force of will or kilowatts of anxiety will allow me to extert control over whatever unruly thing/person/issue is bothering me. How wrong and foolish I am! As Gawande points out (in the context of medicine, but it’s applicable broadly) the boundary between where we have power and where we don’t is often conceived as a bright line, but it’s in reality a fuzzy gray distinction, interpreted differently by everyone. Perhaps I ought not beat myself up too much for not having accurately and definitively mapped that border just yet. Perhaps it will never be permanent; perhaps it is always shifting.

I was then expecting Gawande to extemporize for a while about the need to know when to let go. He didn’t. He launched, instead, into a passionate defense of the power of fighting for something or someone. He gave several examples, all compelling, and it really made me think about the ways we fight for things. The ways our small choices demonstrate whether or not we believe in something. What it means to fight for something – the words are dramatic, the act is often not.

This turn of narrative flipped my reminiscing on its head, and made me wonder whither the distinction between fighting for things and people I believe in and irrationally trying to control the uncontrollable universe. A similarly blurry boundary, I imagine. Accepting what I do not like has never been a strong suit; I’ve been bratty and childish when I did not like an outcome, I’ve whined and cried and complained when my own firehose of effort did not change an unpleasant reality. But perhaps in these reactions one can see a kernel of goodness, an earnest desire and dogged commitment to making my corner of the world into what I’d like it to be. In this interpretation, taken to the extreme, just letting go seems to be giving up.

Which is which? I think the answer is “it depends” (one of the least favorite comments of a woman who likes certainty). For now, I’ll feel somewhat heartened by Gawande’s defense of the power of determination and belief, and will let it relieve some of the pressure I feel to learn to let go. I surely have enough control neurosis to be able to relinquish some and still have plenty left.

The Summer Day – Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?