Two of my favorite television characters of all time are Harriet Hayes from Studio 60 and Nancy Botkin from Weeds. Was thinking this morning about what appealed to me about both of them, and I think it has to do with the way that they visibly struggle with their own flaws and vulnerabilities. Similarly unafraid to show the world their imperfections, both are also tangibly engaged in an effort to master these internal conflicts.

Harriet’s character centers on her resolute faith, and on the ongoing on-and-off romance she shares with Matt Albee. At one point, during yet another argument, Matt says to her: “You can’t walk away, so you are burning down the house.” This stuck with me because it’s an approach I so often take – rather than addressing the actual core of the issue, Harriet (and I) chooses to broadly attack and try to tear down the scaffolding of the entire relationship.
I have also always been envious of people with profound, abiding faith like Harriet’s. I remember a conversation with Melissa Schettini at Princeton, where I fought tears while telling her how much I envied the bedrock that true religious belief provided for a life.

Nancy’s character is similarly complex and appealing. A young widow, she fights daily to hide her struggles from her grieving sons. Raising a teenager and a 9-year-old alone, in a judgmental and narrow-minded community, Nancy seems at turns the same age as her sons and also oddly old, ossified in her loneliness. She is constantly portrayed playing with the straw in an iced coffee, and this affectation plays with her youthful looks to make her seem like one of the high school girls her son pines for. Other moments remind us that she’s an adult woman, with depths of darkness we only occasionally glimpse: a chance encounter in a dark alley with an unsavory character, and fighting with fierce loyalty for her son when he is teased on the soccer field.

I love and relate to both of these women. I felt the same way about Elizabeth Gilbert in “Eat, Pray, Love.” These women are profoundly reassuring to me in the same way a conversation with a dear friend is: a simple reminder that we are not alone.

Someone’s boring me. I think it’s me. – Dylan Thomas

What a bittersweet parenting weekend. It felt like a lot of work, as we lived through it: children (Grace and Whit only – Benjamin and James were perfection!) were fighting at every turn. There was shouting and screaming and pushing and pulling. Everybody fought going to bed, and Grace was up at 3am throwing up and wound up in our bed. Parenting seemed like an endless slog of noisy discord.
And then we got home, I put the pictures online, and both children promptly fell asleep in their very own beds. Looking in on them napping peacefully, my heart swelled to that I-can’t-contain-it size. I remembered the popsicles and the swimming and the fact that we’ll never again get this weekend back.
And then I read Catherine Newman’s column this week, and blinked back tears yet again.

Blogging from the Acela … headed down to NY to spend two days with my Lever House buddies.

To be alive at all involves some risk. – Harold MacMillan

There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. – Cynthia Heimel

What a desire! To live in peace with that word: Myself. – Syliva Ashton-Warner

So whatever you want to do, just do it … making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential. – Gloria Steinem

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves. – Herman Miller

There are times when to be reasonable is to be cowardly. – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Thinking about risk, and decisions, and the choices we make that change the direction of our lives. Matt has to make a call here, and I am trying to be a reasonable sounding board without being too stubborn about it. The choice he makes has big ramifications for me as well.

The train is passing through Connecticut, gorgeous sunset over water vistas on each side … ahhh. This is a nice way to travel.

A splash in the pool, a plastic cup of white wine on ice, Grace entertaining herself with Clemmie and Bronwyn, and easy conversation with old friends from the first days of mom-hood (Jen and Heidi). Altogether, a lovely afternoon.

Driving home Grace fell asleep in the car. I found myself musing on the idea of strength. I think I am physically strong, but I have no faith whatsoever in my emotional strength. Is there a correlation? Probably not. I think back to the crazy commitment I had to a drug-free labor, to the grueling, but ultimately successful, 36 hours delivering Grace, and I realize I must have known I had it in me to do that. Somehow, deep down, I had faith in my body’s strength and ability. Now I need to find a wellspring of faith in my psychological strength. So often, I feel weak. So often, I feel daunted by the enormous amplitude of my moods and emotions.

I wish I could find a way to draw strength from all the experiences that have shown me my own fortitude: thinking of that hour in the pitch black blizzard at the top of Kilimanjaro, of the day I ran 11 miles just to prove a point, of the sense that my body was cracking open as I delivered two babies. How to translate those memories, those moments, into a kind of muscle memory of strength, which would in turn give me some solace and belief that I can survive any oscillation?