The View

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A couple of weeks ago, I got sick and had to stay in bed for the day. It felt like heaven. Just like heaven.  It felt so good to not have to be anywhere, do anything, or have anyone expect anything of me. It took the flu to get me to stop, but once I stopped, I realized just how fast I had been going.

The last few months have felt like life is just flying by so fast. It’s like I am riding on some fast train. The view is always rolling by, but you never get to fully take it in, to appreciate it. The train rolls on and you say, “Oh, look, a farm. With three horses. And an old toilet…what’s the old toilet doing in the field?”

But before you can answer that question, or even ponder the delight of the simple fact that there is a toilet in the field, the train moves on. And on. And you roll past some woods, past a pond, past a little village. You get a glimpse of these scenes, but you don’t really get to experience them. You don’t see what types of trees are in the woods. If there are kids swimming in the pond. What kids of people live in the village.

But that’s where the good stuff is, in the details. And that’s what I have been missing these past few months, the glorious, up close details of my life.

I've been missing things like good stories from my friends, both here and in the walking around world. Missing the magic of nature as it brews up this crazy warm winter. Missing the goodness I feel from  stretching and growing in my body and in my mind. I am seeing these wonders, but they are blowing be so fast that I am not feeling really present with them.

I pondered all this when I was sick, and wondered how I could give more of my attention to the details. My job will continue to make demands of me. My growing daughter will continue to amaze and confuse me as she enters a time of pre-adolescence (be with me, God.) There is still laundry to do, reports to write, library books to return, dog hair in the corner of each room, groceries to buy. There is still so much that I need to do. And in all that doing, how do I find time to just be?

Turns out that maybe just breathing is a good start.

When I was sick, I read Thich Nhat Hahn’s book You Are Here.

The book gives beautiful, expansive thoughts to living mindfully, but it always comes back to the idea that by the simple act of breathing, we reconnect ourselves to the moment, to the earth. He writes:

“You respect your in-breath, your out-breath, your physical body and your mental formations. The in-breath moves inward, the out-breath moves outward. Breathing reminds you that you are here for life; and if you are here for life, life will be here for you. It’s that simple.”

Breathe and smile. It’s that simple. And it is. Kind of. It takes a while to remember to be present this way. But I am working on it.  And when I do, when I breathe and become present, it slows me down. Slows down the train so I can take in all the view has to offer.

The Fitting

I was talking to a friend the other day about bra shopping and told her this story. It made me laugh all over again, so I am again sharing it with you.

Spring time means for me, among other things, the annual trip to get some new bras. Usually that means picking up a few lovelies at Target and throwing them in the cart along with the dog food and toilet paper.

This year, I decided to spend a little time in the process and get a real bra. So I headed off to Victoria’s Secret. Help is what I got, as there were lots of twenty-year-old sales people milling around the store, each offering to help. One woman approached me with a special tape measure and explained to me how most American women are wearing the wrong bra size. Would I like to have my measurements taken?

Sure! I had read about this, too. It’s an epidemic; the majority of American women are trapped in the wrong bra size. This tragedy has led to the need for professional bra fitters and, at last count, 21,393,458 men who have made the joke that being a bra fitter would be the perfect job for them.

So, my helpful bra fitter got started. “There are two measurements,” she explained. “One measurement is the band size and one is the cup size. Let’s start with the band size.” She read out the number and it was spot-on. At least I had been getting that part of my size right. Phew.

We moved to the cup size where she took her trusty measure and provided the reading of: “D, no wait, Double D. No D. It’s D.”

I said “D, like in Dog? 

Geez, I guess I have been wearing the wrong size. 

She looked at me, shaking her head and said, “You are soooo totally not a D.” Nope. Not even close.

In her effort to save the fitting she ended with “I think it’s your sweater.”

Maybe. And, maybe I’ll skip the new bra and wear this sweater a little more often.

Blooming

There is something magical about looking forward to the new year. When you sit in a quiet holiday cocoon, quietly dreaming of what you will do and how you will be in the new year, the possibilities seem endless.

When I was looking to the new year, I set Grace as my word.  Grace would be my talisman, following  me around and showing me the way. ln addition to Grace, I also set other goals. Mindfulness. Slowness. Taking care of myself. Being a better friend. Writing more.

With all that goodness in my mind, I set forth in the new year with high hopes.

But then the holidays ended and the new year kicked off. I was immediately back on the tilt-a-whirl of life, holding on tight.  Rather than grace and mindfulness, the past couple of weeks have been full of deadlines, meetings, schedules, tempers, and general grumpiness. Everything feels off. Off because not only is there so much to do, there is also the “new” way in which to do it; a renewed way of living that I am clearly not living into.

Where is the grace in this chaos, I wonder.

As I write this, I can see our forsythia bush outside the kitchen window. This bush is always beating the daffodil's time, announcing spring well in advance of all the other flowers in the garden.

This year, the weather has been unseasonably warm, and the forsythia bush has sprouted a blossom. One beautiful, sweet, yellow blossom. In January.

Pay no mind to the fact it’s blooming two months early, it was this flower’s time to shine. The flower felt it.  It felt the warmth and the rain and it reached down into itself and said, Now. Now is my time. Here I am.

And if I listen to this flower, I can hear it’s wisdom. It’s telling me that my time to bloom is also not mandated by the calendar, but by when I am ready. When I have done the work and felt the sun and stretched and grown and am ready to change.

Here is a quote that I found last year, when I was struggling with some of the same ideas. It’s the words of  the Irish teacher and poet John O’Donahue, who writes:

“The beauty of nature insist on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always captures us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it."

Ah, right. So just as the little forsythia bud is just blossoming when her time is right, we too will blossom with our time is right.  We’ll blossom not because it’s the first weeks of the new year, but because it is our time to bloom. All we need to do is find stillness and pay attention to the “gradual slow beat, always inching its way forward...” showing us the way, until there is no other way of being.

Listening for the New Year

I love the new year. There is something so satisfying about turning the calendar over and finding that another year has passed; a new year is about to begin.

It’s around this time that I like to pick a word for the new year. The word becomes my talisman, my guiding principle.

This year, my word for the year got presented to me like a gift.

My sister and I went out for lunch right before Christmas. While we were there, a party of nine people came in. They were a varied group, all in their early sixties. Included in the group was a woman who was blind. I noticed her immediately not because she was blind, but because she had the most beautiful smile and wore it constantly.

One thing led to another, and before you know it my sister and I were sharing stories with this happy group of people. For over 25 years, they have been gathering in the same place to celebrate each other’s friendship and share holiday cheer.

As we were all talking, the blind woman asked if my sister and I would like an angel word.
She had a bag of words she had brought with her. Each of her friends had drawn a word, and she wanted to give us a turn.

My sister pulled out the world “perseverance,” which I loved. When it was my turn, I put my hand in and pulled out

Grace.

And the blind woman wrapped her hands in mine and said, “Grace, that will be your word for the year. I believe it.”

I wrote about Grace in April. It was a time when I felt stuck, where things weren’t going my way and I wanted something better.  It took a while, but I came to understand that living with Grace gives you the power to just let life be. So, instead of asking what I did wrong, I asked  “What is this experience teaching me?”

 I wrote:

"So the job that isn’t fulfilling is asking something of you. And the friendship that feels unsatisfying is asking something of you. And the feeling of accomplishment over mastering a new task is asking something of you. All of life, all of our experiences, all of our relationships are asking something of us. And when we live with Grace, we live into the answers that get presented from simply living our lives."

Living with Grace let’s you live life in a more open way. You can let the things that go wrong go wrong and not obsess about how being smarter/more organized/nicer/prettier/wealthier would have prevented those things from happening. Things happen, and what you need to do is simply ask, “What is this teaching me?”

But here’s the tricky part: You need to be listing for the lessons that get presented. Living life with  Grace opens you up to new lessons, new experiences. But if you’re rushing through life - working, parenting, checking your iPhone, looking at Facebook updates, trolling for the latest news - the powerful lessons that Grace has been trying to get you to understand can pass you by.

So that is my hope for the new year. That I have the wisdom to live a life full of Grace and the stillness to know when I’ve found it.

I like my chances for success. After all, when I beautiful, wise, smiling woman holds your hand and tells you that Grace belongs to you, it has to be true.

The Spirit of Christmas

"Until one feels the spirit of Christmas, there is no Christmas. All else is outward display--so much tinsel and decorations. For it isn't the holly, it isn't the snow. It isn't the tree not the firelight's glow. It's the warmth that comes to the hearts of people when the Christmas spirit returns again."
-Anonymous

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50

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I recently reread the book Tuesdays with Morrie, where a young man sits with his dying professor and learns the lessons of life. The first time I read this book, I related to the young man who was the student. Now, thirteen years later, I connect with the wisdom of the old Morrie.

In the book, one lesson in particular really jumped out at me. Morrie, struggling with ALS and losing all the basic functions of his body, was asked,  “Do you ever feel envious of people who are younger and healthier than you?”

His response is a lesson in the glory of age. He says:

"The truth is, part of me is every age. I'm a three-year-old, I'm a five-year -old. I'm a thirty-seven-year-old, I'm a fifty-year old. I've been through all of them, and I know what it's like. I delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own...How can I be envious of where you are when I've been there myself?"

I celebrate this message. It means that whenever I want to, I can touch all the ages I’ve been.  I can be a six-year-old playing dress-up with my twin sister. I can be a twenty-year-old dancing in the coolest dress with the biggest shoulder pads. I can be a 30-year-old business person travelling all around the country. A 40-year-old giving birth. I can be all the ages I've ever been.

And today, I am proud - and a bit astounded -  to be a wise 50-year old woman.

The Road to 50 - Better Off

Final in my series about the road to 50 (I turn 50 on Wednesday!)  This time about money.

I used to be really concerned about money, how much I had, how much I had in comparison to others. Now I now that contentment doesn’t come from money.

I heard a story on NPR that took a new look at how bad the economy is. The story included a survey of people who were asked how they felt about the economy. One of the questions posed to the group was “Do you think your kids will be better off than you are?”  

Overwhelmingly, the response was no, my child will not be better off than I am.  

And so, for the first time in 60 years, the idea that the next generation will do better than the past generation is in question.  And that was cause for alarm, according to the story.

I struggle with how we define better. In this story, it sounded like better means to be economically better -   a better education, a better house, a better (higher paying) job.

I wondered about my daughter E and what the quality of her life will be when she grows up.  If I subscribe to the premise of the story, if my daughter doesn’t go further than I did in college, or have a job as good as mine, or lives in a place that is smaller -  whatever trophy you want to assign to it - her life will be less than mine.

Which got me thinking about money and the place it holds in our lives. 

When I was young, I was more focused on money. I  looked at other peoples’ money and how they displayed it and compared it to my own.  My focus on money wasn’t  just about how much I had, but how what I had compared to others.

I’ve lived through yuppiness of the 80’s, the dot.com boom of the 90’s and the real estate boom of recent years. I know how fast things can grow, and how fast we get caught up in striving for our piece of that booming pie.

But for each of these booms, there was a bust, and it was living through the bust that changed the way I look at money. After the dot.com boom, my husband and I were both laid off,  unemployed. Our daughter E was one-year old at the time, so here we were, this new family without jobs, without the healthy income that we had come to take for granted. 

It was a scary time, full of uncertainty. Yet for all of it’s challenges, I also remember it as a time of such gratitude. In a time of absence, I became abundantly grateful for the simple gifts that we did have. A roof over our head. Food to nourish us. Each other to lean on.

One of my favorite memories of that time is of the three of us gathered in the kitchen.  I’d roast a chicken while E would sit in her little throne of a high chair and B told stories. E would shove sweet potatoes in her mouth and run them through her hair and laugh with delight at it all.  It was warm and safe and good in that kitchen, it gave us comfort. We had no money coming in, our saving was whittling away, but in the glow of that kitchen we found a goddess that sustained us. 

We eventually emerged from that time, got jobs, got back on the track of making money. But the experience fundamentally changed me. Since then, I’ve held on to the feeling of being grateful for the gifts that we have, the abundance in our lives. I no longer have to look around at what others have to see the value of what I have right here in front of me.

What I want for E when she gets older is to be as happy in her life as she was in the warm kitchen running sweet potatoes through her hair. If she is a waitress, an artist, a high powered lawyer or some combination of all of those, I want her to know that it’s not the amount of money she has that matters. What matters is peace in her heart and a feeling of gratitude for all that life has given her.

Better off, indeed.