We reached a ticket kiosk at Paddington Station with enough time to realize we might make an earlier train. “If we take the 8:03, we’ll have an hour to add to our day.” My husband looked apprehensive, but that may have been related more to a ticket machine that didn’t always seem to function as intuitively as we expected. I turned to look at the status boards above the trains. “We can make it.”
Category: Gratitude
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On Birthdays and Learning
Yesterday was my 58th birthday.
I have never been someone who could not wait until her birthday arrived, thinking its timing coinciding with Back to School made it convenient to ignore. The worry of wearing scratchy, too warm clothes the first day of school coupled with concerns about whether I’d like my teacher(s), and outright paranoia about the moment that teacher called out my name in class during attendance always seemed to take precedence over celebrating the day I was born. When I think back over the years, unsurprisingly, not many of my birthdays stand out. Other than the good memories that remain of a few adolescent slumber parties, I remember my 20th because it seemed a milestone to no longer have teen attached to my age. My 40th stands out because in defiance of the impending school year, I told my husband I wanted to go to Las Vegas. The significance of this is probably lost on anyone who hasn’t taught school and can’t imagine the potential terror of going away for three days just before school begins, minus lesson plan books and teaching resources, to relax and have fun. It remains one of my best memories because it was a spontaneous decision. My 50th will always be remembered because my husband and very best friend organized a lovely dinner party for me at her home. Family and friends attended, waiters passed with trays of tasty tidbits, and dinner was enjoyed outside under a late August evening sky.
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The Last Summer Vacation
It seems no matter where I am on the web right now, someone somewhere is headed Back-to-School. Mothers are sad summer is over (or secretly not), healthy lunches are discussed (or those not so healthy tsk-tsked over), and teachers are settling in with yet another year’s classroom full of children. The smell of crayons and freshly sharpened pencils waft through the streets.
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Thirty-four years ago, tomorrow.
Tomorrow my oldest will be 34 years old. My first boy. The one I remember thinking wasn’t real when I found out I was pregnant. I was unmarried, and not quite 22.
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A Five Year Retrospective
I think it was this weekend five years ago my husband orchestrated my 50th birthday party with the help of my best friend who graciously held the party at her home. It seems longer ago than five years, and considering all that has happened in that time, it qualifies as yet another of my lifetimes.
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Almost a Year
I’ve been awake for hours trying quietly to relax the pace of my heart, breathing slowing, drawing huge breaths in and then letting them go. It works most of the time and I can close my eyes and find a cool spot on my pillow to lull myself back to sleep, but it didn’t work today.
No, today is important. Today is the day that I can, after a bit more than a year, actually see the light at the end of the tunnel, and although I’m not quite there, know it will come. All the students are finished and have gone home, but the finishing touches of yet another school year are left to be completed, so I’ll busy myself with those in much the same way one fits the remnants of a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle together, glad to be done with it.
I’ve missed quite a few things in the last year if you consider that the several before it I was able to write down my reactions to events in the world, to note the often quiet passing of time, or not so quiet family milestones. My writing stopped here, and although I tried to jot a few things down on a calendar kept next to my bed, with the exception of a few desperate bursts of anxiety, that stopped as well. I funneled what little energy I had into my food writing, but even that has slowed to a trickle. Not so surprisingly, the 365 project has saved me, allowing me to “say” something — anything — each day since the first of the year with a photograph.
Salvation.
When I scan through the shots in my iPhoto library taken in the past year, much of what I’ve taken has been of food, and if you know me, that isn’t a surprise. What you may not realize is that each of those photographs tells me so much more than what I was learning about a particular recipe I’d tried, or a meal we might have enjoyed. They help me remember where our lives were at a particular moment that no one else would understand when looking at them, like the bagels I made last June when our old doggo Jones could barely move. That was when we took her to the vet for some pain-killers and bought the non-skid treads for the stairs so she could follow me around like she always has. Or the Bittman salads I made through the summer and into the fall thinking, surely I can keep this going and stay healthy, keep my food writing going, and divert my attention from what I was doing all day to something sustaining in the evenings. There was the bakewell tart around the time of my son’s first shave, and the amazing peanut butter banana mallow mars I made about the time we got Lizzie to brighten up our lives, making us laugh when we most needed it.
In a year’s time we’ve had a family wedding, succumbed to a brief, but nasty run in with H1N1, watched another niece enter college, wished my mother and her Romeo bon voyage as they set out to travel around the country, and sadly, mourned the loss of our dear, sweet Jones who passed on to doggy heaven the day after Thanksgiving.
This year has also been my son’s last year of high school, and one marked with the added surprise of his having to ride a bike to and from school each day — a ride that is downhill all the way, and of course uphill all the way back. If you know the hill we live on, then you might understand his feeling of accomplishment the first time he made it all the way to the top without having to get off and push his bike the remainder of the trip. You’ve missed what could have been my raging at the injustice of having that bike stolen the very first day of school, and then my response of simple acceptance and the purchase of yet another bike.
I traveled to participate in my first food conference in San Francisco, we made our annual trek to Las Vegas, and then pathetically, I dragged myself into the holidays and right up to January 1st when I decided to join so many others in taking a photo a day. I can look at each one now and say that pictures do paint a thousand words — words that I’ll most likely never write. My husband has heard them all and it has been far less than easy. Poor man.
Going back to work for a year has added 25 pounds to my already padded body, has challenged me to keep up with any kind of routine diet or exercise, and has caused me to think critically about my health and life in general more differently than I ever have. However, I can be thankful for construction bills now paid off, and tuition for my son’s first year of college. I am happy for new friends and interesting people I’ve met and worked with. But I’m especially grateful for the opportunity to know that when I left my profession the first time, it was the best decision I ever made.
This time, it’s for good, and for all the right reasons.
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Wednesdays and Looking Forward
It’s Wednesday and I’m nearly wordless. Nearly wordless for someone like me is about as quiet as I get. I’m tired. It’s odd that with acceptance, energy is devoted nearly 100 % to doing what one has to do. Evenings are when I look forward to sinking into my couch and watching inane shows on the television with people I love.
At some point, whatever book that lies open on the floor next to my bed begins to call my name and often reluctantly, I give in to the fact that my day is over. As much as I look forward to bedtime after a busy day, I know that sleep just brings the next day more quickly, and so I give in to that as well.
I don’t like looking forward to the weekends. Time passes too quickly when that happens, and so I’ve begun to pay attention to what I appreciate about each of my days in a much different way than what I have in the past few years. It takes some practice considering that the effort admiring a drop of condensation on the leaf of a honeysuckle vine is much different than appreciating that the red message light on my phone isn’t lit when I arrive at 7 am.
But I have much to look forward to, and I don’t plan on missing any of it.
Happy Wednesday — even if it’s not quite wordless.
What are you looking forward to?
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Thinking at 4am
Lizzie woke me up at about 4am today purring so loudly at the end of our bed, I decided to collect the sleek, lanky kitty that she’s become, ball her up against my chest and tip toe downstairs in the dark to start a pot of coffee. I can’t think of a better way to start a weekend after a hectic week than to add a few more very quiet hours to it on the front end.
So here I sit. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
It’s taken me almost five months to adjust to going back to something I thought I’d never do again — something that, at one point in time, caused me physical discomfort whenever I saw something that reminded me of the experience I’d had. That fear was so palpable, it has caused me and my family quite a bit of angst as I’ve worked through it over the summer, each day having to revisit it and wonder why it is we allow ourselves to get to that point with anything.
I’ve gone from intense anxiety, to choosing flight over fight, strange sensations of loss and grieving that were the most confounding of all I’ve experienced, anger so sharp I wanted to throw things and strike out, reluctant giving in, and finally, acceptance. It’s been quite the ride, and I’m not sure exactly what sustains me right now, but am thankful that I’m no longer terrified. In the long run, I made a promise, and I believe that is what is keeping me on track. I’ve chosen to throw in the towel a few times in my life in circumstances when many people would have stayed. I’ve rationalized it because I tell myself I’m worth it and that I shouldn’t have to do anything I am intensely opposed to.
And then the mental litany of comparisons begins: men and women are fighting in foreign countries and have had to leave their families behind; children are born into poverty and dependent on adults who shouldn’t have children because they can’t take care of themselves; lovely people discover they have incurable diseases and make the most of their lives in spite of that…
Who am I to say that I don’t appreciate what I have when I compare myself to them?
But I’m learning that it’s okay. I’m learning that I can be very thankful for what I have and that I can want more — that my wanting isn’t connected to tangible objects (regardless of how pleasant some of them are) like a new car or a piece of beautiful furniture. It’s more connected to who I believe I am, and what I want to become.
I crave it. It’s there just beyond my reach and has been for such a long time. It’s infuriating that others making choices for themselves give the impression that it’s so easy and I plod along wondering and questioning, requiring a complete standstill to even begin to see a fuzzy version of who I imagine is me out there in the distance.
This all sounds corny, doesn’t it?
Not too long ago, woman I barely knew died. Although she wasn’t well and hadn’t been in a long time, she had a resilient spirit and her big personality conveyed something otherwise about her intent to live even knowing that her life could end at any moment. And that’s what happened.
I’m sure that experience has bolstered me to some extent. I’ve found myself saying that if she could live the life she did considering all of her medical problems, then I should be able to get out of bed, get dressed, and use the knowledge and experience I spent 25 years developing. I can be purposeful about it. Pleasant. Constructive. Respectful.
And I can promise myself there will be an end to it because I truly believe that my life depends on it.
On the last day I saw the woman I mentioned, she thanked me and we embraced. Although she was struggling to even be there because she had just spent a difficult week in the hospital, her gaze was unwavering as she told me she was leaving and I knew she was going to die. Standing in front of her I realized she had finally given in and was leaving something behind that was very important to her while I — the recipient of what she was leaving– had given in and accepted that I would not be able to leave. It was my birthday.
So here I am. Relatively adjusted and thinking about the second half of my life. The half that will grow while I’m finishing what I promised to do. In the meantime, I’ll read and think about what James Hollis, Ph.D. has to say about it all — that I “will still need to pass through all the trials of life, that [I] am surrounded by distractions, and that [I am] undermined by fear and by powerfully repetitious history” but that like the knights who searched for the medieval Grail, “[my] journey is [my] journey, not someone else’s.”
And he expects me to respect myself.
So that’s the hard part.
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Moving right along.
As is often read, time heals all, and I’m slowly becoming accustomed to being out in the working world again. The adjustments I’ve had to make are minor compared to what others may have to experience under similar circumstances because I haven’t had to worry about finding childcare, or trouble anyone about taking over the few responsibilities I’ve accumulated in the past two years such as car pool. My pets are relatively trouble free now, and there’s no long commute to plan for. Surprisingly, most of my work clothes still fit, which is a sort of accomplishment, I guess.
No, that hasn’t been all that difficult. What has been troubling is the loneliness I’ve been feeling. It’s severe at times — so much so that I’ve been reduced to tears, surprised, and a bit unsettled about my unexpected emotions. Although I’m thankfully past the worst of it, I sense a void that reminds me of a similar feeling I’ve experienced before — that of leaving something behind unwillingly, of loss.
It’s fairly painful.
For days, I struggled to think of pleasant things, and to busy myself with activities I enjoy, but wasn’t as successful as I’d liked. I fell easily into my old habit of thinking of others less fortunate than myself. Of so many who now find themselves without work and struggling to keep their homes. And I tried to understand the uncomfortable pressure on my chest that all but screamed I was making an enormous mistake.
To help focus on the positive, I sat down with the MoH and we made a list of all that I’d like to do with my income over the next year: repair the lighting and drip system on the patio; replace the fencing; install an energy-efficient hot water system, put organizers in the closets, repair a few old dining room chairs, have two other chairs reupholstered….Not quite as glamorous as others may think, but concrete enough to allow me to see that a year of my time at this point in my life counted for something.
I’m a strong believer in the idea that things happen for a reason. That opportunities are placed before us all the time, and the extent to which we allow ourselves to see them determines whether our lives are rich and fulfilling, or mundane and guarded. The ironic aspect of it all is that when I take the steps I do in new directions, I rarely realize whether it’s the best decision for me and those I care about. Instead, it’s more an unknown, a tentative decision at best, and I attempt to keep my mind open to whatever may lie ahead truly believing that a unique experience is just over the hill.
All the while, I’m chastising myself, shaking my head over maudlin thoughts and pathetic self-absorbtion. It’s grossly embarrassing, yet I can’t prevent it. So I heave with countless cleansing breaths, and try to relax. I give in to the sadness and then try to snap out of it. I count what I should feel fortunate about, and move ahead. I look for beauty in small things, and count stars at night. I wonder how on Earth something so good could feel so wrong.
Only those with common experiences seem to understand how closely lives can be linked, how much one can grow to depend on community, on friendship and camraderie gained while sitting in front of a computer. Over the past two years, lovely people who live a state, a country, or even an ocean away have truly and unexpectedly become part of my small world and enriched it more than I can describe.
Sadly, I’m missing all of them right now, and no amount of organizing my garage, digging in my small garden, or cooking the next recipe on my endless list will make that feeling go away.
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The Effect of Stones and Moss on Life
There may be an interesting change on my horizon, and as I mulled over the possibility of it while sipping my coffee this morning, I felt the urge to sift back through my writing here — all two years of it. I’ve laughed aloud, winced, and cried all in the span of an hour, wallowing in the memories.
At another point in my life, I’d have needed to sift through old photos kept in boxes, or read entries in dusty notebooks to gain what I’ve enjoyed today just sitting here. Although I’ve been tempted to print the text of my accumulated posts more than once, I know it wouldn’t be the same as being able to read through them here, and to remember what mattered on a given day in February last year, or feel again the angst a particular teacher caused our family the year before. No, the pages would end up in a box somewhere like so many other aspects of our lives we believe matter.
Instead, I’ve decided to make private most of what I’ve written here. I can’t give it up completely, so it seemed the best compromise.
Change is good, isn’t it?
We learn and grow from the decisions we make about our lives and experiences. And you know what is said of rolling stones and moss, right?
