Joy and Wonder

The Fitting

2012-01-20T10:16:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-31T14:31:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-24T15:50:00.000-05:00

"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

Source: shopruche.blogspot.com via M?uche on Pinterest

50

2011-12-21T00:00:00.013-05:00

Source: weheartit.com via Jamie on Pinterest

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

2011-12-18T11:30:00.001-05:00

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.

Soul Mate

2011-12-11T15:30:00.000-05:00

Another post on my journey to 50 - this time, about love.

A while ago I had a conversation with a friend who is in her mid-twenties. She was telling me about the man she had met and fallen in love with. With much sparkle, she described him as her soul mate. Since this was the second soul mate she had met in last year, I asked her what she meant by soul mate.

“Oh, he’s sooo interesting and smart. We share so much and have such a good time together. I feel better when I am with him. He’s become my best friend” Then, using the line from Gerry McGuire, she said, “He completes me.”

My cynical brain was saying she must be having some great sex. But all I said was, “Wow, I am happy for you.”

Though the term “soul mate” has always made me wince, I could see her point. Her description of this relationship brought me back to one of my old boyfriends, someone I met when I was the same age as my young friend. In thinking about that relationship, I could see why she was seeing “soul mate” in these boys.

When you’re young, relationships can seem so magical and the people can take on importance that feels so all encompassing - it gives you this thing that is so big, so important, that you question how you ever got along without it. Without them. No wonder you feel like you were incomplete.

But of course you’re not incomplete. And of course, your life is bigger than just this one person. And over time, as the newness of the relationship fades and you spend more and more time together, the person who was idolized as a soul mate could become, well, human.

I started this post and was contemplating this soul mate idea the other day. I walked into the kitchen and there was my husband B. He was suffering from a cold and a case of man-flu*, wearing a bathrobe, holding a bottle of NyQuil. Maybe it was the NyQuil talking, but he choose that moment to impersonate the cartoon character Fat Albert, saying “Hey, Hey, Hey” as he left the room.

I thought, “There goes my soul mate.”

When we’re young, it’s easy to see that some shiny new boyfriend is your soul mate. But to me, a soul mate is something that evolves over time. Over the last twenty years, B and I have shared much happiness, some sadness. We have had flush times and times that were frighteningly lean. We have traveled and we’ve made a home. We had time that was just the two of us, made a baby and now share in the journey of raising that child.

Most of all, we’ve shared the joyful munandeness of every day life.

Together, we manage (juggle) the logistics of family, of work, of life. We make meals, enjoy meals. I drop off, he picks up. I create clutter, he moves the clutter. I sleep on the left, he sleeps on the right. I win at Clue, he wins at trivia. I get parking tickets, he pays them. He helps our daughter with math, I help her with “language arts.” We sing from the same hymnal, laugh at the same jokes. We both find our own ways of being imperfect, and we tolerate imperfection in each other.

And at the center of all this living is love. It takes love to create a life with someone; it takes loves to transform the mundane routines of each day into something special. And that’s what we give and get from each other - love that gives us strength and courage to go out and be the best person we can be. Love that helps us to experience each day like the miracle it is.

*Man-flu - a condition that seems to only affect men, making every sickness they contract more painful, difficult, and longer than usual. Other symptoms include the need to talk about the sickness at length and the use of non-essential medicine (see: NyQuill.)

Beauty from Struggle

2011-12-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

This is a short, edited essay by an unknown author that appeared on the website The Business School of Happiness. I loved it.

So often, we are looking for solutions to our problems. We want it to be better. We forget that the beauty is in the struggle.

Enjoy the essay. And the struggle.

One day, as a young woman sat in her garden, she noticed a cocoon hanging from a nearby branch.

Before long, a small opening appeared in the cocoon. The woman watched for several hours as the butterfly within struggled to free itself from the envelope in which it had recently been transformed.

Then, it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if the butterfly had gotten as far as it could and it could not go any further.

So the woman decided to help the butterfly: she took a pair of scissors and cut open the cocoon, from which the butterfly then emerged easily.

But, to the woman's surprise, the butterfly didn't fly away. Instead it crawled out onto the branch and sat there. As the woman looked more closely, she noticed the butterfly's body was withered, its wings were tiny and shriveled.

The woman continued to watch because she expected that, at any moment, the wings would open, enlarge and expand sufficiently to support the butterfly's body.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a withered body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly...

What the woman, in her kindness and her goodwill did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening, were Nature's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.

If life was without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as we can be; possibly unable to fly.

As someone once said, "I received nothing that I wanted... But everything that I needed."

Live life without fear, confront all obstacles and know you can overcome them.

The Road to 50 - Perception

2011-11-26T09:25:00.000-05:00

Taking inspiration from my 11-year old daughter's essay on the way she used to do things and the way she does things now, I am celebrating my upcoming 50th birthday by writing about how I used to be, and how I am now that I am almost 50. The second post in the series is about perception.

A while back, I heard a story about the speech Bruce Springsteen gave when he inducted Bob Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In that speech, he said:

“The first time that I heard Bob Dylan I was in the car with my mother...and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind, from 'Like a Rolling Stone.' And my mother, who was - she was no stiff with rock and roll, she liked the music, she listened - she sat there for a minute, she looked at me, and she said, 'That guy can't sing.' But I knew she was wrong. I sat there, I didn't say nothin', but I knew that I was listening to the toughest voice that I had ever heard...”

I loved this story for the fact that his mother - though she was no stiff - thought Dylan couldn’t sing. Of course, for Bruce Springsteen, it was a life changing moment. One person hears a voice and their life is changed by it. The other person changes the station.

It got me thinking about the idea of perception.

I used to spend a lot of time working on how people perceived me. I worked hard to make sure people thought I was swell - smart, pretty, funny capable, talented. It took work because to be sure they would think I was all those things, I first had to get a sense of what they were looking for, what they valued. Then, I’d project that thing, that quality, that I thought they wanted to see.

Over time though, I got a bit tired of all that wasted effort. Because no matter how hard you try, you can’t know what is inside people’s heads, their hearts, so how can you change what they perceive? Most importantly, while I was playing this perception game, what I lost was the chance to experience the power of simply being myself - to honestly present who I am, what I think, what I believe.

Now I don’t waste time, I simply show up as I am. In doing that, I know that people’s reaction to me is an honest response to who I really am. And, like Bob Dylan, there will be some people for whom I can “kick open the door of their mind” while others, well, maybe they’d prefer to not listen.

As I enter into being 50, this feels like one of the most important lessons of my life. I know that this life - my accomplishments, my mistakes and my lessons - come to me honestly, simply by being who I am.

Photo is from the wonderful Etsy Shop Vintage 50s Eyewear

Thankful for Miracles

2011-11-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

As we approach Thanksgiving, I was reminded of this post I did a while back. It's one of my favorite posts. Ever since I wrote it, not a day goes by when I don't mutter the word "miracle." Some days I say it louder than others, but really, each day includes one miraculous event or person or bit of nature that stops me in my tracks and astounds me.

Wishing you all a joyful Thanksgiving and a season full of miracles.

I was at the bookstore a while back and at the checkout I saw these little silver discs with writing on them. It said:

You can live as if everything is a miracle. –Einstein

Which I thought was just great, so I followed my impulse and bought one and slipped the disc in the pocket of my jacket.

A few weeks later, I wore the jacket again, put my hand in the pocket and found the disc. I pulled it out and read it again. It said:

You can live as if nothing is a miracle.

“That’s not very inspiring,” I thought. “What kind of spiritual impulse buy was this?” I stuck the disc back in my pocket.

A couple of days later, scrounging for change to feed the parking meter I pulled out the damn thing again, and read:

You can live as if everything is a miracle.

What the? I turned the disc over and realized there are two sides to it, of course. (see post on the Middle Age Brain to fully understand how this can happen). The whole quote is:

You can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Thank you, Einstein.

I loved that there were two sides to this, and loved the fact that I got so mixed up about it. Because in my real life, do get baffled by that fact. I walk around like everything is good. fine, okay, but don’t often take the time to really look, to wonder, to shake my head and say, “Wow, what a miracle.”

So, one day, I decided to live as if everything was a miracle.

I started out the day with the usual long commute, but on this day there was a really bad accident. Three cars, lots of crushed metal. Yet there were no ambulances and everyone was out of their cars, looking safe. “What a miracle no one was hurt,” I thought.

A miracle, see, this is good. Let’s see what other miracles this day will hold.

I got to work and it dawned on me how, in a time when there are so many people who are struggling with the lack of work, it’s a amazing that I have this work that supports me and my family. Miracle.

I started writing and cranked out some really good pieces. I am so grateful that I have been given a gift that enables me to put sentences together and have them make sense, but on this day, I held it as a miracle.

Later, I went out to lunch to see what miracles I could find over chicken salad. At the café, I spied an adorable baby near me, and immediately started to make faces to get the baby to smile. The adorable baby’s mother told me that she and her husband were in the process of adopting this little seventeen-month old baby. She said they’d had her as a foster child since she was six months old, and the baby’s biological mother had just decided she can’t care for her. The Mom said, “We’ve wanted a baby for a long time, and if all goes well, by the end of the week, she’ll be ours.”

Honestly. Miracle, miracle, miracle.

Back to the office where the drudgery of the afternoon is broken up by a chat with my wonderful friend who makes me laugh every time we talk. Friendship, miracle. Laughter, bonus miracle.

Get in the car to drive and home and then get stuck in traffic, which is truly stretching the everything is a miracle theory. But, since I am stuck in traffic, I get to hear this story on NPR about a British DJ called Bonobo. He creates some really beautiful music which I’ve never heard before, so miracle.

And then I am home. I pour a glass of wine, and we que up iTunes to play my daughter E’s new favorite album, the sound track of Parent Trap 2 (which is really good, small miracle). I make dinner while my husband B and E play games and the dog stretches out on the floor. I sip my wine and dinner cooks. The Loving Spoonful sings “Do You Believe In Magic” and we all share our stories of the day.

And in that moment, I give thanks for the miracle of the food on our table, the warmth of our home, the goodness of stories and the simple yet glorious miracle that we all made it safely back to our table once again.

You can live as if everything is a miracle.

I highly recommend it.

The Road To 50

2011-11-18T08:09:00.000-05:00

Next month, I turn 50.

That fact doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Yet when my husband said it out loud last week, I burst into tears. 50 not a surprise; the tears, that was a surprise, and I wondered why.

In the midst of my pondering, my daughter E came home from school with some the work she had been doing in class. One of the projects she showed me was an essay she wrote comparing who she used to be and who she is now. E looked back in time at her 11 years and reflected on how she changed. She wrote, “I used to be scared of performing in plays, but now I know I can do it and it will be okay if I mess up.” And, “I used to be afraid of dogs, but now I know my dog is my friend.”

As I read her essay, I realized that part of the emotion I was feeling around my age was the simple yet remarkable realization that I’ve walked around the earth for as long as I have. During that journey, I’ve come to understand my world and my place in it in ways that I didn’t understand before.

I think that’s called wisdom.

So for the next few weeks, I am taking my inspiration from E and will be exploring with joy and with wonder the ways I used to be, the way I am today, and the lessons that got me there.

I’m starting with the lessons of friendship.

“I used to put work and boyfriends before my friends, sometimes changing plans with my friends at the very last minute. Now I know the value of these relationship and try to make them a priority in a crowded life”

When I was younger, there was a lot of stuff that could get in the way of my friendships. I was working hard, because I thought that in order to get promoted, I needed to do everything at work and do it exceptionally well. Same with the boyfriends. I wanted to do everything I could to make them happy so they could see that I was the best girlfriend. Ever.

And since I was working so hard with these efforts, the thing that I was able to move around, to be not be so good at was my friendships. They’d understand if I rescheduled. Again. And again.

And they did understand. They put up with it. They stayed friends with me. Which showed me that while I was working hard get people in other parts of my life to see how great I was, my friends were over there, waiting for me, all ready seeing that I was great.

And finally, I got it. If these are the people who love me, even when I am messing up, then why am I not devoting my time and energy to them?

So, finally, I put my friends where they belong - right next to me.

If there is one thing that remains constant to me, it’s the fact that I am blessed beyond to belief to have the group of friends that I do. It’s with these friends where I am myself. Where I share my fears, my hopes, my joys, my disappointments. And they share theirs. And together we laugh and scheme and hope and dream and give each other what we need until the next time we can get together for more of the same.

When I was younger, I made choices based on what I knew to be true at the time. But if there’s one lesson that I value more than anything, it’s the importance of keeping these beautiful friends right by my side.

God is in the Cheese - Again

2011-10-30T16:32:00.001-04:00

Today, I was running around Trader Joe's like a mad woman. I was in a rush, as I have been all week. I was being rude and impatient. I hate being like that. I was winding down and had one last thing to get - some cheese.

As I was looking over the selection, a woman came up next to me. She was blind and had her helper dog right next to her, along with the cutest Trader Joe's employee. I looked at her and her dog, and realized that she was the beautiful woman I had met a year ago at reading by Anne Lamott. I said hello, and told her about how we had met before, and how she had told me the best story. And she said, "And here we again, meeting over the cheese."

I think God has a tremendous sense of humor.

Here is our original story...

Last week, I went to a reading by the author Anne Lamott. She is such a wonderful writer. I am particularly fond of her essays, which beautifully talk about life, motherhood, dogs, children, beauty, politics, aging, oh, and God.

While I was waiting in line to go into the theatre where the reading was taking place, a blind woman was escorted to the end of the line behind me. I asked if I could help her and she laughed and said, “Just keep telling me when the line moves!

Standing in line, I met her dog Beau and we chatted about dogs and being blind and what spring smells like. As I was talking to her, I was thinking about what courage it takes to be out in the world as a blind person. To be in utter darkness with just your dog to show you the way. If I were blind, I think I would never leave my house.

We navigated our way into the theatre and took our seats. Beau curled up in front of us. We kept talking and started in on Anne Lamott’s books. We agreed on how much we loved them, what a great a writer she was. Then my new friend said, “But sometimes when I read her books, I am like what’s up with all that God stuff? It was like God, God, God everywhere.”

“Hmmm,” I said, looking around for my soapbox. But before I could start spouting my thoughts on an all–loving God, my new friend said, ”But then, one day I started to see what she means. I got it. I was in Harvard Square, and I wanted to so much to go Fromaggios, the cheese store, to get some cheese to bring for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh Fromaggios! Yes!” I said, “But that’s a huge walk from Harvard Square. I’d walk that far for cheese, but still, it’s quite a journey.”

“Oh so you know, you get this! It would be so worth the trip, but it was far, and I was unsure. So I stopped and asked a man for directions, and he started to tell me but then he said ‘Why don’t I just take you there?’ even though he wasn’t going in that direction. He ended up walking with me for twenty minutes. He finally said he had to go, but that the store was up ahead, about three blocks.”

“So you were close?” I asked, trying to imagine making this journey without sight.

My friend continued, “Well, I walked a few more blocks but still wasn’t at the store. I stopped to get my bearings and a car pulled up and a woman asked me if she could help. I told her where I was going and the woman said ‘Oh, it’s a bit further than that. Get in, I’ll drive you’. So I got in the car and she drove me to the cheese store, while Beau played in the back seat with Twinkles, her dog.”

I was just shaking my head, “Wow, so much trust to be able to do that.”

"Well she seemed very nice. She took me to the cheese store and I must have spent ages there. It was heavenly, all the smells and the wonderful cheeses, I tasted so many. I finally choose a nice selection for Thanksgiving, while this kind woman waited for me outside. And get this, when I came out of the store, she offered to drive me home. So I let her.”

“After that experience, I thought, well, there must be a God, and he’s right here with us. He’s in these great people that showed up and helped me with my trip to get cheese for Thanksgiving!”

"Yeah," I sighed. “That’s kind of where I find God, in the good people who show up in my life and help me with my journey. But how great is that, you were looking for cheese and you found these great people, you found God.” I said as Beau rested his head on my foot and tears filled my eyes.

Sometimes I wonder what God’s up to when bad things happen like miners dying or wars or Haiti. But God gives me a huge smile when he does stuff like help this kind blind woman find her way to getting the best cheese in town. God makes me smile even bigger when he puts this amazing woman in the path of God-loving, cheese-loving me so she can tell me her story.

And I can tell you.

A Toast! To Motherhood!

2011-10-23T10:29:00.001-04:00

My daughter E and I went out for dinner the other night. It was just the two of us, eating in our favorite neighborhood restaurant, talking to our favorite handsome waiter, Bo. E had a “Shirley” (her name for a Shirley Temple), I had a Chardonnay, and over drinks we talked about our day and doodled on the paper table cloth.

Part of the restaurant was blocked off for a birthday party. Just a curtain separated the party from the restaurant, so while we couldn’t see the people party, we could hear their voices.

With the ting ting of the knife against a glass, we could hear the toast begins. The toasts revealed that it was a woman’s birthday, a woman who seemed to be loved and admired by her fiends, especially the two friends who performed a rap song in her honor. I imagine it’s a only your really close friends who could write and perform a rap song that rhymed Gefilta Fish with Make a Wish.

Finally, the birthday woman’s son made a toast. He wanted to celebrate his mother on her 80th (!) birthday. He had a list of things he was grateful to his mother for bringing him. I took the red marker I had been doodling with and made some notes:

"Mom", he said. “I am grateful to you for many things:

for the way I can never find my glasses
for starting me in therapy in third grade
my coronary disease
my addictve personality...”

Really, I thought? You can do better. She’s 80 after all.

Fortunately, he continued... “And I am thankful:

for my siblings
for the way you modeled healthy love
for sobriety
for the way you were always my protector, my champion
for love, for your pure unconditional love”

I was on the other side of the curtain, yet I still cried. And clapped.

I looked at my E and said, “What do you think you’ll be saying at my 80th birthday party?

“Oh, Moo,” said E, rolling her eyes.

God willing, we’ve got some time for E to work on her toast. But my ringside seat to this son’s beautiful testament to his Mother’s life gave me pause. If E were to deliver a toast to me later in life, what would I hope she says? And, am I living in a way that lives up to that?

I hope her toast would come close to the beautiful words I heard this son deliver. Clearly, their life together wasn’t always easy - addiction, coronary disease, all the time spent looking for lost eye glasses. Still, from the toast, it was clear that love was always in abundance. No matter what he did, he knew that his mother loved him, would do all she could to protect him, support him.

It seems me that unconditional love is the best possible toast.

“Cheers!’ I said to E, clinking our Shirley and our Chardonnay. “I love you. No matter where you go or what you do, I love you”

“Oh, Moo.”

Hope

2011-10-19T20:49:00.000-04:00

My daughter E’s class has been reading a book called Bud, Not Buddy. Bud is a young African American boy who is growing up during the depression. Clearly, Bud, not Buddy, has a hard life. But when E tells me about the book, it seems to me that Bud’s outlook and perseverance will get him through the difficult times in which he lives.

Tonight, E was working on her homework. Her brilliant teacher asked her to give examples of hope in the book. E’s next question to tackle was “What does hope give us in our lives?”

With E’s permission, I am sharing her response here:

“Hope gives you strength, courage, joy and gives you confidence. Life is easier with hope. And hope can give you a lot. It can give you the courage to stand up to people you don’t like and other problems. Hope can also give you some good things like ideas. Hope teaches you how to love.”

I would just add that hope also gives a big giant lump in your throat and amazing faith for the future.

Recalculating

2011-10-13T06:17:00.001-04:00

We got a GPS for our car, much to my chagrin. I am not a GPS girl, I much prefer the adventure of needing to find my way rather than have someone tell me which way to go. But, someone I love is that kind of person, he likes to know the directions, the way forward. So, I said, “Yeah, sure, let’s get a GPS.” If anything, I thought, it will take the map-reading pressure off of me. No longer will I have to be the authority on when to turn right, he can simply look to the GPS.

So the GPS became part of our car trips. My daughter E named the GPS Gabriella Parmigano Satellito. I gave Gabriella at British Accent because if I was going to have someone telling me where to go, I wanted her to sound lovely and knowledgeable.

Gabriella cracks me up with her know-it all ways. Of course she always knows exactly where we are at any given time, and she always knows how to get us to the next place - and she can avoid highways. She is firm with her instructions, “Turn Left on Commonwealth Avenue.” When we screw up and miss a turn, she simply sighs, and in her British Accent, says sternly, “Recalculating” I can feel her eyes roll while she says it, but take comfort in the knowledge that Gabriella has never driven in Boston.

I’ve come to like Gabriella. Things are busy, and life feels like I need to have everything together; to always know the way. I need directions, and I need to follow them, which I hate because I’ve always loved to get lost, to lose my way and then find it again. It’s that discovery that makes life worthwhile for me. But right now, being on time takes priority over discovery, so I use Gabriella.

Funny, though, as follow Gabriella’s directions, I find she is the one who is giving me a renewed way of looking at the world, or at least my day.

I was winding my way around a rotary, or for those outside of Massachusetts, a roundabout, and Gabriella was instructing me to take my sixth right. I lost count and ended up making a few trips around the rotary. Gabriella was in a constant state of readjustment. She kept calling out “Recalculating recalculating recalculating recalculating”

Me, too Gabriella, me too.

With life so full, it’s easy to feel as though I am not getting it right, that some one is going without, or something isn’t getting done in a way that feels perfect. I feel a bit overwhelmed by it all and then the overwhelmed feeling takes over. But now, I take my cue from Gabriella. When I start to feel like I am not enough, I take a deep breath and chant, “Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.” When I recalculate, I come out from under the bundle of anxiety that I have buried myself in. I start to see things a bit clearer. I can understand myself, this life, in refreshed way. I get a sense of what is important and what matters. The direction forward.

Thanks, Gabriella.

The Wonder of Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T21:45:00.003-04:00

In 1985, I'd always walk to work with my Walkman in my hand. I'd switch back and forth between by two favorite tapes, Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA and The Talking Heads Stop Making Sense. I'd walk by the Charles River with my headphones plugged into my tape player and marvel and dance at the idea of portable music.

Flash forward 20 years, I am walking by the same river to a different job. The Walkman was replaced by a giant white iPod, with 16 gigs of memory and loaded up with music. I again choose Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA, and walked along the same path. Only now, instead of just Born in the USA, I had the entire Bruce Springsteen library loaded on my iPod. I could probably walk to Asbury Park before I'd play the same song twice. And once again, I marveled at the idea of portable music.

Like so many people, I was saddened by the death of Steve Jobs. I read the news on my iPhone while I was making dinner from recipe I was reading on my iPad. Nearby, my little girl was playing games on her iPod which was handed down from my husband. Apple computers are in our house; the influence of Steve Jobs is everywhere in our lives.

Like so many things in life, explaining this death to my little girl helped me understand why this news hit me so hard. I explained to E how Steve Jobs was the genius who influenced the invention of so many things that touch our lives - our music, or phones, our computers - the way we communicate. When I explained it to E, I realized that no other person or company has influenced the lives of both me and my daughter the way that Steve Jobs and Apple have.

I started to think about how he died the day after Apple's big announcement of the latest product releases. It reminded me of when my father was dying, and all his children were gathered by his bedside, waiting. A wise hospice nurse told us that my Father wouldn't die when his children were around. I think when we were around, it was clear that we still needed him.

I kind of wonder if the same it true for Steve Jobs, that maybe he wouldn't die until he knew that the company he created could go on without him. Maybe seeing yesterday's meeting made it okay to go.

I don't know if it's ever okay to go at the age of 56. It feels like there is so much more that he could have done - who knows how the could have continued to shape the world if he had more time.

Still, I am inspired by his wonder and his innovation. He leaves the world a different place and for that, I am grateful.

"Don't let the noise of others opinions drown your own inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart & intuition ~ Steve Jobs

One Better

2011-10-03T06:00:00.007-04:00

My little girl turns 11 today. 11.

I can’t say 11 without thinking of Nigel the rockumentary Spinal Tap. It’s that scene where he talks about the volume of the amps: “Most amps go up to 10, but these go to 11. You see, it’s one louder.”

One louder.

And so it is with E. 11. She’s one louder, one bigger, one smarter.

We went to the doctor’s this week, and E and I waited in the same exam room that we were in on our very first trip to the doctor, now almost 11 years ago. She sat on the table, long legs dangling off the ends, her body sitting up straight. I looked at her, totally amazed that this is the same being that use to lay cooing on the the exam table take up all of two feel of space.

It made me realize how much I have been witness to in the past 11 years. I’ve watched E grow from baby to toddler to kid to Little Miss. I’ve gotten to see how E can make a friend and be a friend. I’ve watched how her curiosity and openness lead her to trying new things - rock climbing, Irish Step dancing, violin. I have seen her struggle and struggle and keeping struggling. I have listened with love as she teaches me the lessons that she herself has learned. I have felt her compassion for me, for our family and for the world around us. And I’ve heard about 1,356 knock-knock jokes.

I celebrate all the ways E has changed over the past 11 years, but I also take such joy in the qualities she has held onto. She’s like a tree - her growth, her changes, her lessons learned have created these beautiful new rings, yet at the center of her is still this loving, beautiful core that feeds the outward growth of her rings.

Like all her birthdays,11 feels big, feels like we’re heading into some dramatic - which I mean literally - changes. All I can hope for is that we both hold on the goodness of her core and the lessons of the last 11 years. I think we will.

In the meantime, we'll celebrate all that 11 holds. Happy Birthday, my little girl.
Welcome to 11. It’s one better.

The Cloud

2011-09-24T14:53:00.001-04:00

I recently moved from a paper calendar to an online calendar. Now all the appointments and tasks and deadlines that I dragged around in my paper planner are now kept in "the cloud” where I access them from any device, any computer, any time. Putting my tasks in the cloud felt as though I was lifting these commitments up to a higher place, a puffy sort of cloud that follows me around. And sitting on my task cloud is some Raphael-like guardian angel, shaking her head at this pile of tasks, saying "This is a train wreck waiting to happen."

And she’d be right. Life is really full right now. Well, it was full before, but now my work has changed, become more challenging, more rewarding, more time consuming. My lovely E is moving into pre-adolesence, which, depending on the day, fills my heart with love or my head with confusion. Then there’s the stuff that never went away, the long commute, the dog-hair-infested house, the over due library books, the laundry that never makes it to the drier from the washing machine - add these same demands of every day life to the list, and you have my dark and stormy task cloud.

Last week, I was on a business trip to Chicago. The road to Chicago was a long one, there was a lot of work to do to make this event successful. Even after I arrived, there was still so much to do. On the night of September 11, after working all day, I needed to grab some dinner and head back to my hotel room to work on a presentation for the next day.

On my way back to the hotel, I ran into this wonderful puppet show. Its the PuppetBike guy and he performs puppet shows from a hut he built over his bike. I didn’t have to pull my task list down from the cloud to know that I had this presentation looming, work to do, yet I couldn't leave the puppets. I stood there and watched and was warmed by this incredible peformance happening on the streets of Chicago. I became swept up in the creativity, the silliness, the laughter. I became part of their joy.

Filled with happiness from my new puppet friends, I went back to my hotel room and worked on my presentation. For inspiration, I played Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album over and over and gazed out at the view of this beautiful city. It was Sunday night, I was away from my family and finishing what felt like the 100th huge project in a week. And I was full of joy.

I scroll down the list of my tasks and realize that they are just that, tasks. What matters is how I do them. I can choose to blow through my life at a fast speed, getting things done and checking them off my list. Or, I can pay attention to the way I get those things done. I can slow down and let myself be touched by the silly, the beauty, the wonder that crosses my path. I can choose to find joy.

Here is a part of the fun of the PuppetBike!

Remember

2011-09-10T05:23:00.002-04:00

I write this a few hours before I have to get on a plane for a business trip, a fact that feels especially daunting this week. All week, I've been hearing stories about loss and sadness. About how on September 11, life changed for some many people. “I kissed him goodbye, he left for the airport, and that was the last time I saw him.”

This anniversary makes us all think about where we were and what we were doing on September 11. My experience with that day was one that felt gentle in the midst of all the horror going on around me. My daughter was just about to turn one. Scared about the ways the world was falling apart, I picked her up early during nap time at her school. She woke up and saw me and smiled a huge smile. I spent the rest of the day holding her close.

The lessons of September 11 would not present itself for months later. I was reading the New York Times Portraits of Grief section. Each day, they would run these little stories about the people who died in the Towers. Stories like, “Always believed in the Mets!” Or “Was the life of the party, adored by his 13 grandchildren. I read each of them everyday; it felt important to.

One day, I was reading these stories and I came upon a woman who had been married for five years. She had an eighteen-month-old child. She worked full time and had recently moved to a job in the Towers. Her story talked about how she and her husband share responsibility for caring for their child. One of her responsibilities was the bedtime routine, only now their son was asking, “Where’s Mommy?”

I put my hand over the story of a life that so closely paralleled my own life. I had been married for five years. I had a child who was around one year old. I share this life, these responsibilities with my husband.

Only, for some reason, I got to be the lucky one. I get to live this life.

Those are the words that I have held close for the last ten years. On the dark days, the days where am not sure I have what it takes to do all that I have to do, when I and not sure I am getting it right, I say these words

I get to live this life.

I’ve thought about this woman and her family a lot over the last ten years. About the son who didn’t know his mother. The husband whose life has moved on without the woman he loved.

And I think of all that I have gotten to see, all the joy and hardships and love and goodness that I have received in the last ten years. How much I’ve had, and how easy it is to take it for granted.

This woman and her life remind me not to do that. She reminds me to see the goodness that’s in front of me. And on the days when I am really struggling, the days where nothing is making sense, I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear a different voice in my head, she’s whispering

You get to live this life.

And I remember. I remember to thank God the simple fact that I get to put my feet on the floor to start another day.

Photo by Saul Blumenthal

Reunion

2011-08-31T17:40:00.000-04:00

This weekend is my 30th high school reunion. There was a time in my life that I couldn’t imagine being thirty, how that’s as many years that it’s been since I graduated from high school. Age, geeez.

Sometime after college, I began to loose touch with the people I knew from high school. It was only in recent years, in the Facebook years, that I started to again feel connected to my friends from that time. Through their status updates, the names and faces of people who were once a distant memory became part of my daily life. I now get to share in their lives - their travels, their hobbies, their children's milestones, their music, their frustrations, their successes.

It’s that online connection that made me decide to go the reunion. I wanted to see these people, to talk to them and hear in person what I’ve been experiencing through the window of Facebook.

And that all seemed like a great idea a couple of months ago, but as the event draws near, I find myself a bit daunted by the whole thing. Because it’s one thing to give a great status update on Facebook. It’s a completely different thing to say, in person, this is me. In the last 30 years, this is who I have become.

I started to think how great it would be so show up at the reunion and be able to say, “And then, after travelling in Europe for a few years, I invented the Internet.” Or maybe, “I am about to publish my second book, which is scary given the success of my first book.”

Alas, by story lacks the dazzle of those stories.

In the last 30 years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’ve succeeded I’ve made great choices and choices that have taught me a lesson. I’ve had my heart broken and found great love. I’ve traveled all over and I’ve made a home. I’ve lived alone and now have a family. I’ve experienced hardships that I never expected and always found my way back. I’ve met the most amazing people. I’ve felt great sadness and I laugh often. On most days, I am happier than I ever thought possible.

In other words, I’ve lived a life. A rich and full life. And the lessons from that life have helped me to become the person that I am.

So, I have that going for me.

And if all else fails, I can always make up a good tale about how it was me and Al Gore who invented the Internet.

Thirty years is a long time. This is going to be a great adventure.

The Leap of Faith

2011-08-21T09:28:00.000-04:00

Last week was my daughter E’s last week of day of camp. As it came to an end, were talking about all the adventures she had at camp. In the last eight weeks she:

Built a birdhouse
Made a ceramic bowl
Acted (beautifully) in two plays
Made a new friend but kept her best friend close
Discovered a new beach, a new zoo, a new amusement park

Of all E’s accomplishments, it’s the activity called adventure challenge that I marvel at the most. It’s an incredible thing, really. It’s a structure that goes up about 30 feet in the air. Campers are in a harness, the way you are during rock climbing. There are different courses you can climb - you can go straight up a pole, go straight up a pole then walk on a wire between two poles, or climb straight up the pole and traverse these series of circles that swing in the air.

The part of adventure challenge that E loves the most is called the leap of faith, pictured above. The leap of faith requires you to climb a pole about thirty feet up, navigate yourself on to this wooden plank, then, leap off into the air - fly - and try to strike the ball that hangs nearby.

The leap of faith.

E’s summer and my summer held very different activities. While she was having a range of new adventures, my summer was filled with the same people, the same work, the same commute. Very different, yet the one place where our summers collided was in making a leap of faith.

My leap of faith came from finally trusting my own intuition. I realized how often it was that I had the answers, knew the solution, could see the way forward. And how often it was that I talked myself out of those answers.

I know that a lot of us do that. We listen to the voice that delivers a different version of the truth than our intuition. That’s the voice that’s tells us what we should be doing, the voice of that tells us what is “right” or what we “deserve.”

This summer, I finally stopped listening to those voices and started to trust my intuition in earnest. When I did that, when I listened to my gut instead of my mind, so much goodness got revealed to me. My writing flows. I say out loud what I believe to be true. I make choices that end up being the best choices. When I listen to myself, I know what foods to eat, what time it its without looking, that the person I met will be my friend forever. There are times when it’s a struggle, but I am living into a place that tells me that when my intuition is talking, it’s her voice that should be listened to above all.

So at the age of 49 and half, I took that leap of faith. I told the voice of reason, the voice of history, the voice of others to stand back, and I just trusted that what I was feeling was the way forward.

Like E’s leap of faith, it took a bit of courage, a lot of preparation, and a deep sense of trust. But when I really listen to the voice inside, I too can fly.

Blank Page

2011-08-18T06:46:00.000-04:00

It's been a really busy time for me. Work is creeping into the other parts of my life. It's hard to still my mind to write, it keeps going into other directions, gets muddled with other thoughts.

Then, like a gift from God, I read this essay from Barbara Crafton. She's an Episcopal Minister and a most beautiful writer. In her blog, the Daily Emo, she posted an essay called Blank Page. It's a wonder filled testament to writing, to creating, to being.

So while I sort out the work and the writing, I thought I'd share Barbara's beauty with you. Here is here essay:

What a blank page holds depends on the day. Sometimes it's a discouraging sight: the cupboard is bare. Something must be written, but no obvious ingredients are at hand. I run through recent offerings, checking to see if any of the usual suspects have been neglected of late: I recently wrote a piece about the cats, and the last one featured Sunday's sermon. There was one about global warming, sort of, and one about my travels. Is anything missing? One with a recipe? Maybe -- it's been a while since I did one of those. But nothing strides to the front of the room and takes the stage. It can be hard to identify gaps in a body of work as jumbled as the eMos.

On other days the blank page is an adventure just waiting to begin. Anything can happen. Then writing is like sewing: a garment grows from a flat piece of cloth, cut, folded, forming itself into breast-shaped curves where none were before, every stitch important, even the stitches nobody sees. Then I am confident: I can do this. This is what I do. There is much to say in this world, and I'm going to say some of it this very day.

Every day, everybody, all over the world -- everybody has ideas. Lots of them. Everyone sees a bird or a flower or a train or an old-fashioned suitcase like one his grandmother had. Everyone hears an odd remark, notices something she sees every day, as if for the first time. And every one of these ideas, sights, remarks has layers: there is what you see, hear or think, and beneath it is what it brings to mind. Beneath that is another thing it brings to mind, and another, and another. Every object in this universe has an ancient history. So does every idea, and every emotion. We are all old as the hills.

So there is no shortage of things about which to write. Just choose one. Take it easy, though, and choose only one. You don't sew six or seven dresses at once; you sew one at a time. Much damage has been done to stories that would have been good if too much hadn't been stuffed into them.

There will be another blank page tomorrow. There is always another blank page

My Father's Eyes

2011-08-07T09:38:00.000-04:00

Part of the glory of summertime is that I have a bit of extra time in the morning. E’s camp starts later, the sun is up earlier and the combination means that there is more time for reading the paper, for writing, for staring out the window.

The other morning, I was focusing on the staring out the window activity when I heard the cackling song of a cardinal. I found him over on the neighbor’s clothes line, regally perched next to the underpants.

Cardinals always make me think of my father. In his retirement, he set up a bird feeder in the back yard. Well, several feeders. Having squirrels eat food intended for the birds drove him nuts, so he went through many models of bird feeders. He finally settled on one complex contraption where the squirrels would climb all over it, fall off, and leave without so much as a sunflower seed. Foiled again. He loved it.

But it was the cardinal that brought him the most joy. He called the cardinal The Chairman. “Chairman at the feeder!” he’d call out, reaching for his field glasses. On good days, Mrs. Chairman would visit at the same time as her husband. The cardinals, the squirrels, all were part of this small little world that he created and loved, and oversaw while he was staring out his own window.

When my father died, the cardinal became a symbol of his spirit, which represented him perfectly. His elegance, his manner, his charm. In the early days after his death, I’d look everywhere for a cardinal siting, some sign that we was still present, still with us.

That was twenty years ago, but as I watched the cardinal on the clothes line last week, I once again felt the ache of missing my father. He died when I was 29. I’m now 49, so the balance of years lived with him on the earth and years without him on the earth is beginning its shift toward the without column.

There is so much of my life that has happened without him. He died without knowing my husband, without meeting my child. Without seeing me become the person I was meant to be. It’s a beautiful life I have here, filled with such goodness. I just wish that some how he could sit with me at my table for a while and I could share it with him, in person. I wish he could see how the story turned out.

That’s why the regal cardinal holds so much important to me. It’s some physical representation that he’s here, he’s seeing all the goodness and wonder that is my life.

I shared that thought with a friend who had also lost her father. I said they here, part of it all. She agreed, but how? How do you think they can see it? Where does their energy go?

The question gave me pause. Maybe the idea that they can see things, be part of our lives is just a romantic notion that gives us comfort, helps us to move forward in the world without them.

As I was pondering that question, my daughter E made a joke - one of several very sarcastic and very funny jokes she’s been making lately. She cracked herself up, and in her laughter her face filled with joy. It made me think of my father and his humor, how much he would have loved to hear E tell this joke, to see her laugh.

And in my heart, I knew he was a part of it. He was part of it because he helped to make it happen.

The way I live my life, the person that I am is due in large part to him. The way I tell stories, the way I see the world, the humor, the wisdom - all of those qualities were his gifts to me, and are now my gifts to E. Sharing those gifts, making them a part of my life is my way of keeping him alive, of honoring his presence. In doing that, I am helping him to “see” all the ways in which his life lives on.

“Off into separate futures we will go. But we leave parts of ourselves with each other. I am part of everyone I have ever known and loved, So are you. So are we all. “
--Barbara Crafton

Good Things

2011-08-03T07:47:00.000-04:00

Tough times in the world. A dysfunctional congress passed legislation to cut trillions of dollars and God knows what’s in it and what it will do to those people who can’t help themselves. Suffering in Somalia. Struggles for freedom in Syria. War that goes on in Afghanistan.

My daughter E is taking it in, too. The Somalia discussion of yesterday stayed with her, and last night before bed she was feeling anxious. When she gets like that, we play the favorite things game. It’s kind of like Maria and the VonTrap kids gathering in Maria’s room, but without the singing.

Summertime seems to be the best time for this game, as there are so many delicious things to see, to experience. Last night’s list included:

Holding hands and jumping waves together at the beach
Eating ice cream anytime we want
The way our dog smiles when she pants
Our dog
Freckles that make their appearance even though we slather sunscreen with SPF 1,000 all over our faces
Vacation, vacation, vacation
Sandcastles - making drip sandcastles where you take wet sand in your hand just let it drip through your fingers.
Painting toenails - bright pink for me, blue for Eleanor
Hydrangeas that change color and sparkle with dew in the morning sun
Hope

I love to end the day this way. It reminds me - and I hope gives E some understanding - that the same world that holds so much suffering is the same world that bring so much joy. We just need to remember to see all of it.

This is Our World

2011-08-02T10:25:00.000-04:00

My little E and I stopped at Starbucks on the way to camp. When we walked in, this was the image that we saw on the cover of the New York Times. I explained to E how things were hard in Somalia. The drought, the famine, and the controlling government that makes it difficult to get aid through.

"What can we do?" asked E with tears in her eyes.

"We can pray. We can give money. We can hope."

"We should," E said.

"Yes, we should."

We sat at Starbucks for a while. I watched E drink her chocolate milk, and thought about the mothers in Somalia who are watching their children die a slow painful death from starvation. Sometimes, I can't bear my good fortune.

We're giving money to UNICEF. They are in Somalia and getting some aid through. They estimate they reached 3,500 children last week. There's so many more children who need our help. And our prayers. And our hope.

A Time of Amazement

2011-07-24T10:44:00.000-04:00

I was cleaning out a closet this weekend and discovered some of my old journals. This discovery forced all cleaning to come to a halt. I sat on the floor next to my half-finished project and read with much interest about what life was like the year I was 25.

Being 25 was one of my most favorite times of life. I had my first job that felt important, working in the advertising department of a bank. I had a studio apartment in Boston, an impressive collection of power suits with shoulder pads, and a loving circle of friends. I had created a life where I supported myself, made decisions for myself, spent time by myself. I’d walk to work singing the theme song to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, thinking you are going to make it on your own.

And for the most part I did. Along the way I made mistakes, and, like everything else I was doing, those mistakes also belonged to me. I wince at some of the choices I made back then, but I was working with my best heart, my best mind. I was working with what I knew then. In the end, all of it - the mistakes, the successes, the relationships - were all part of my journey to myself.

As I read these journals, I began to wonder: As I have become smarter about life and about myself, did I leave behind the sense of of wonder that led me to those discoveries in the first place?

Written in these pages was so much excitement for all that I was doing, experiencing. I wrote for three pages on how I got asked to go to a meeting. Later, I wrote more about another meeting where I made a point. A good point. I wrote about discovering new people and what a miracle it was that I had met them. Simple things like walking to work, taking the train, going to the laundromat were all done with such wonder, always revealing some hidden joy.

I read about my life then and I miss the way the world seemed like one incredible adventure after another.

I am now nearing 50, which means the number of years I was alive when I wrote this journal is the same number of years it's been since I was 25. God. Nearing 50 means you have been around a while, you’ve experienced so much it’s hard to be surprised any more. Or hard to let yourself be surprised. Experience can get in the way of wonder. I am much too experienced to be excited about a meeting. To think that a friend will change my life. To sing while I am walking. That’s for the younger crowd.

But, what if you can combine the wisdom of being 50-ish with the discovery of a 25 year old? If we leave behind our wicked smart experienced selves and let our naive wonder-seeking selves show through more, what possibilities could open up? What experiences could be presented? What new lessons learned?

When I am 75, and I’ve hired someone to clean out my closet, I want to discover the journals that I wrote when I was 50. I want to sit on the floor, pour over the pages that beautifully answer those questions. I want to say, “Wow, 50, that was quite a year. A year of amazement.”

The Sea

2011-07-15T20:50:00.000-04:00

I am so lucky to have grown up next to the ocean. I remember being small and walking on the beach with my father - the beach, my father, were so large, they were my whole world. Later, when I was a bit older, I remember spending hours in the ocean, learning to jump the waves and body surf. I remember eating picnics and having to wait an hour before going back in the water.

In high school, my friends and I would spend hours sitting on the rocks while the waves crashed around us. We drank beer and talked about all that was happening our lives then and all that we hoped for the future And we laughed, oh, we laughed.

Years later came the day when my father couldn’t walk on the beach with me any more. When he died, my sisters and I spread his ashes on the same part of the beach where we had had our picnics and learned to swim.

The power of the ocean has stayed with me my whole life. It’s the place I go to to think, the place I go to celebrate, the place I go to grieve. When I am near the ocean, I am reminded of the life that happened next to the pull of the tide, and I feel the love of the people who were with me in those moments.

This past weekend, I got back to the beach for the first time this summer. There is something so magical about the first visit to the beach, that beautiful instant when you first arrive. You see the magic of the sun lighting up the ocean. You feel with warmth of the sand between your toes. You smell the sea. You get the same warm happy feeling you get when you are reunited with someone you love.

And, like seeing someone you love, you can’t wait to experience everything with them. So I played with my daughter in the freezing cold ocean. We eat sandwiches with gritty bits of sand mixed in with each bite. I taught E how to make drip sandcastles, pretty much the most relaxing activity you can find on earth. I took a walk by the water. I sat on the shore and watched boats on the horizon.

Best of all, I got to lay on a blanket, close my eyes, and listen to the sounds that were all around me. The chatter of conversations, crying babies, kids screaming, laughter. What I really heard in that restful moment, what lived louder for me than anything, was the gentle rhythm of the ocean waves hitting the shore. Each crashing wave reminded me of the times by the ocean. Of the people I love yet don't get to see any more. Of the goodness that happens when you can still your heart and mind and let the crash of the wave come over you, settle you, make you whole.

Bumbling

2011-07-05T11:27:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I walked through the park for about an hour, bouncing from one flower to another, looking at trees, smelling grass. I was officially bumbling, a term I learned when I wrote this post about The Ideler.

It's summer, a perfect time to slow down and savor.

A time to do a bit more bumbling.

A friend read my last post and told me about an article she read about a man who’s devoted his life to …idleness. His name is Tom Hodgkinson and he’s based, like so many good things, in the UK. His mission is to remind people of the forgotten simple pleasures of doing nothing.

To do that, he publishes books, a website and a magazine called The Idler. (All of this seems a tad ambitious for a man known as “The Idler” but I digress...)

Here are Tom Hodginson’s tips on how to be an idler:

Banish the guilt. We are all told that we should be terribly busy, so we can’t laze around without that nagging feeling that we need to be getting stuff done. I rejected my guilt upon learning that Europeans in the Middle Ages felt no shame for lolling about. Their favorite philosopher, Aristotle, had praised the contemplative life, and the monks spent a lot of time just praying and chanting. Guilt for doing nothing is artificially imposed on us by a Calvinistic and Puritanical culture that wants us to work hard. When you understand that it hasn’t always been this way, it becomes easier to shake it off.

Choose the right role models. Most of the great musicians and poets were idlers. So feed yourself a diet of John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and the like. Carrying a slim volume of verse in your purse or pocket can be therapeutic―something from Keats, who wrote of “evenings steep’d in honied indolence,” or Wordsworth, of course. (What could be more idle than wandering lonely as a cloud?) It’s delightful to read a few lines while you’re on a bus or a train, then stare out the window and ponder their meaning.

Sketch a flower. If you are new to idling and feel compelled to be purposefully occupied, sketching a flower at the kitchen table can be an excellent way to bring some divine contemplation into your life. The act of drawing makes you observe the bloom in a way you never have before. All anxieties fly away as you lose yourself in close study. And at the end of it you have a pretty little sketch.

Go bumbling. Bumbling is a nice word that means “wandering around without purpose.” It was indulged in by the poets of 19th-century Paris. They called themselves flâneurs and were said to have taken tortoises around on leads, which gives you an idea of the tempo of their rambles. Children are good bumblers. Try making a deliberate effort to slow down your walking pace. You’ll find yourself coming alive, and you’ll enjoy simply soaking in the day.

Play the ukulele. The ukulele is the sound of not working. My wife hates it for that very reason: The twang of those strings means that I am not doing something useful around the house. I keep my ukulele in the kitchen and play it at odd moments, like while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.

I am going work on my idleness and try some of these out. With the exception of the ukulele. I’m just not sure how well my husband would take it if I become and idler and started to play the ukulele. One step at a time.

To Savor

2011-06-28T20:57:00.001-04:00

My little girl E and I were enjoying our first ice cream sandwiches of the summer. As we sat at the kitchen table, warm sun pouring into the kitchen, I watched E eating her treat, approaching it the way a sculptor would approach a pile of clay. Eating her sandwich by taking ice cream from the sides, eating part of the brown cookie bit, then shaping the ice cream from the inside into the shape of a pyramid.

She looked at the half-eaten ice cream sandwich I had just devoured and said, "I like to savor my ice cream."

Savor. 

It struck me that my ten year old daughter was aware, oh so aware, of what it means to savor. Her ice cream sandwich had changed shape dozens of time, her fingers tips had brown cookie stuck to them, her mouth was a gooey mess. Ice cream sandwich? Savored.

I like to think that I had a hand in helping her learn to savor that which she loves. Like to think that the way we enjoy our time, our treats, our treasures, are felt with so much love and goodness that savoring becomes a way of living. I like to think that I showed her the way to all that. Yet, really, while it was me who gave name to it, it was E who taught me how to savor.

It was E has showed me how to slow down and see, really see, the world around me in a different way. To notice how a babies’ tears can be so big. To see how much an ant hole can change in five minutes. To experience the way reading books together changes the story. To feel how wonderful it is when someone you love reaches for your hand, and how strange it feels when they stop reaching. It was E who taught me that life really comes down to a series of beautiful, wonderful moments. Moments to savor.

Most of all, E has made me savor the joy of seeing a baby become a toddler become a little girl become a Little Miss.

It’s E who has given me the joy of watching a person grow and change and become the person they were meant to be.

Half-Birthday

2011-06-21T00:00:00.003-04:00

Today is my half-birthday!

I know that the idea of the half-birthday may be weird to some, but to me, it’s an important celebration. My real birthday is on the winter solstice, December 21. It's the shortest day of the year, and the outside is usually dark, cold, and jammed with people getting ready for Christmas. My half-birthday, by contrast, is on the longest day of the year. Outside, it’s usually warm and sunny. People are in a great mood and the day goes on until well into the night.

I love the way both solstices celebrate the light. They both are beautiful marks of the time of year, on where the sun is in the sky. What could be better than to share your birthday with such celebrations?   

This year, my half birthday holds kind of a special meaning to me. Today, I am half-way to 50. In six months, I’ll mark the day that I’ve been walking around the planet for half a century. Yikes.

When I turned 49, I made list of things to do before I turn 50. A bucket list of sorts. I read this list in my journal and saw some pretty grand plans. Find a new job, get in shape, publish an article. Somehow, this list was my guide to turning 50. If I could knock off all these things on the list, then turning 50 would be, what, okay?

Thankfully, I came across the wise soul Jennifer Louden. She led the retreat I was on a few months ago, and recently did a thoughtful blog post on creating a Thimble List. Yes, a Thimble List. As she beautifully defines it:

A list of very small ways to savor life.

I define savoring as mindfulness + gratitude = touching your essential goodness.

 So, rather than coming up with some grand plan on all that I needed to accomplish by the time I turn 50, I am spending the next six months savoring the small. For example, on my half birthday, I just might:

Celebrate, not curse, the birds that wake me at 4:00
Call a few friends and discover, for the millionth time, what a miracle it is that I get to experience these people in my life.
Make my little E laugh and really listen to the sound of her laughter. Take in the way her eyes shine.
Write, and then maybe write some more. Just to experience the good feelings that come from creating.
Buy a new lipstick. Something summery.

This is actually a pretty aggressive list for a thimble list, but what the heck, it’s my half-birthday. I’ll ease up tomorrow.

It seems to me that we spend a lot of time planning and thinking about what’s next, what we need to accomplish to be good, to be worthy. There is certainly room in life for huge goals like running the Boston Marathon or seeing polar bears in Antarctica. But creating a list like the Thimble List opens us up to all the small, spectacular miracles that cross our path each day; the beautiful little gifts we sometimes miss when we’re focused on our big, huge accomplishments.

Even if it’s not your half-birthday, you can make a thimble list. Just be open to what gets presented - look at a flower, taste the strawberries in season, hear your own laughter. Oh, and maybe do some calculations to see when your half-birthday is. Just so you have one more beautiful thing to add to your thimble list.

Daddy

2011-06-19T07:53:00.000-04:00

When I first met my husband, B, I didn’t spend a lot of time wondering about what kind of father he would be. There were more important things to think about – his humor, his politics, his sense of adventure, kissing.

Flash forward a few years. We got married and started to talk seriously about having a child. A little part of you, a little part of me, how great would that be. And that, in a nutshell, is how we became parents.

In hindsight it’s kind of a risky proposition. How do you know what kind of parent your partner will be? I knew how much I loved him as a person, and of course being a parent would, to a large extent, be an extension of who he is. But navigating the ins and outs of parenting often takes a set of skills that you don’t even know you have until you need them. Did he have what it takes to be a parent?

Lucky for me and for our daughter E, B turned out to be a truly an amazing father. His care, compassion, and common sense guide us as a family. He is patient and kind. He can be a bit of a hard-ass at times, but only when it’s called for. He provides the voice of reason that offers up the clarity we need to navigate this life.

Plus, he’s really good at math.

I love to watch E as she talks to her Daddy, there’s so much love there in her face. She looks up and him with her eyes all wide, hanging on his every word. As he was tucking her in the other night, E said “Daddy, I love you from one side of the stars to the other.” And though E is now ten, I can still hear traces of her tiny little girl voice every time she says "Daddy”.

Seeing the way B has evolved as a parent helps me to better understand the way love in a marriage also evolves. The love that you have in the early days of your relationships – all that newness and wonder – gives way to the rigors of work, raising a family, and trying to find time for yourself. In managing all of that, you can easily loose who you are as a couple. You look back on the early days, when the love and goodness flowed between you so easily, and wonder where it all went.

But it’s there; the love and the goodness are still here, just living in a different way. I watch B help E with her math, or listen to the way they crack each other up with knock-knock jokes, and I again feel a deep sense of love. Not like the love of the early days, but a different, thoughtful kind of love. A love that comes from the years spent building a life together.

To B and to all fathers who bring joy and love to their own families, Happy Father’s Day!

Reach

2011-06-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, I got to watch my daughter E on the climbing wall. It’s a huge wall that goes up about thirty feet. I love the site of her up on the wall, reaching, climbing, going higher and higher - it still takes my breath away.

For this session, E has a new, wonderful instructor who challenges her to take more difficult ‘routes” on the wall. So there was E, climbing up and up making progress on this really difficult route. She was close to the top, but then I could see that she was stuck. I could hear the instructor talking to her, guiding her and encouraging her on how to make her next move. “Stand up slowly, bend your knees, reach! reach! reach!” she was calling out to E. And there was little E, following her instructions, trying really hard, but still unable to reach the next point.

And as I sat there watching her get really challenged by this, I realized that there was nothing I could do to help her. This was her challenge to meet - the directions, the struggle, the reaching, the encouragement. It was all hers.

In that moment, it dawned on me how my role as parent is changing. I’ve spent a lot of the last ten years helping her do things, showing her how to do things. But now, the helping, the doing is giving way to letting her do it, to having her find her own way.

And really, none of that is a surprise. And all of that is a surprise.

Of course that’s what is supposed to happen,. We raise our kids to be independent people who can care for themselves. But in these early days of independence, it makes me stop and wonder how the lessons I gave her as a small child will - or won’t - be adopted by this independent kid. More and more, she will be making her own choices, and the lessons form those choices will be hers to master, hers to learn from. The foundation was created by both of us, but the growth,where she takes it from here, will be hers.

And, like that day watching her on the wall, I’ll watch her struggle. I’ll see her try, fail, and try again. And, on really good days, I’ll watch her reach with all she has and pull herself to the top. I’ll get to see her beam at her own triumph. My independent girl.

Beauty Right Where You Are

2011-06-08T21:36:00.000-04:00

I was at the gym this weekend, plugging away on the elliptical machine. While I was flailing my arms and legs back and forth, I could hear this heavy beat and saw that there was some kind of hip hop dance aerobics class going on. The instructor had orange sneakers, wore a bandanna and had the most amazing dance moves. But the women in the class all seemed to be struggling. They spent a lot of time watching each other and pulling their shirts down over the bottoms. I imagine it would be hard to find your groove when you are watching how someone else does it or while trying to cover your ass.

I gave up on group exercise a while ago for that very reason. When I’m in a group, I get caught up in watching other people, and seeing how strong and capable they seem makes me feel a bit weak and incapable. For me, it’s better to work out alone where I am only fighting myself.

I make an exception to the group exercise rule for yoga. Doing yoga relaxes me and stretches me and makes me feel whole. So when I saw that my favorite yoga teacher Diane was teaching a class that followed the hip hop dance class, I got off the elliptical and joined her class.

The last class I took with Diane was called “restorative” yoga, where we did poses like piling blankets under our arms and legs, laying on the floor and breathing deeply for five minutes. This yoga class, it turns out, was not restorative but, well, let’s call it the really-difficult-advanced yoga class for women who know all the poses and have practiced them for years.

Fortunately for me, I was in the front of the class, right in front of the instructor. So as we moved from one difficult pose to the next, she could point out where I was going wrong, (lift your hips off the floor!) and I then could attempt that in front of the whole class. Restorative!

We moved to our pinnacle pose called Wild Thing, pictured above. The instructor asked “Who knows wild thing and can demonstrate it for the class?” The swan of a woman who was on the mat next to me raised her hand. I’d been watching her for most of the class, and she was amazing - strong and graceful. Her half pigeon practically flew off the floor. She flowed into the Wild Thing pose, moving from her front to her side, balancing on one hand and her feet. She ended with her body in the air, reaching back and stretching. To me, it looked impossible.

But I tired it, with the modification of keeping one foot in front of me. As I was stretching, or really, as I felt my muscles twitching with pain, I watched the Swan next to me, holding her prefect full wild thing and breathing deeply.

The instructor Diane looked down at me in that wild thing moment and gently said, “You don’t need to look at anyone else. There’s beauty right where you are.”

Beauty right where you are.

And for whatever reason, I started to cry and moved in child’s pose so no one would see (and so I could rest my wild thing muscles.)

I think I cried because those were powerful words to hear when you’re in a class that feels beyond you. But as the week has gone on, I am beginning to live into the power of what it means to find the beauty right where you are.

We live in a world where we’re constantly looking around to see how we’re doing. We find our place not as how we see ourselves, but how we compare to others. Who has the bigger car, the most followers, the nicer house. Who’s wearing the coolest clothes, has the best hair and smoothest skin. Who has the highest achieving kids, who volunteers at school the most, and who’s the just the nicest person.

It’s exhausting. Because no matter now hard we try, there’s always going to be someone who is richer, thinner, prettier, nicer, better at yoga, than we are. When our sense of who we are comes from someplace besides ourselves, we’ll never be enough.

Worst of all, we’ll miss all the beauty that is us. If we are spending our time seeing how all we compare with others, we miss the chance to fill ourselves full of the things that give us our beauty - our triumphs, our mistakes, our connections, our lives. Our own, beautiful lives.

There’s beauty right here. Right here, where you are right now. See it?

Assisted Living

2011-06-05T20:34:00.001-04:00

Last weekend, we visited my mother-in-law and her husband in their new place. They’re now living in an assisted living facility.

It’s been quite a journey for these two. They’ve been married for seven years, he’s 78, she’s 80. He’s been in the early stages of Alzheimer's for a while, and she has just begun her journey to the same place. Over the last two years, they’ve lost their ability to drive, to remember to take medication, to care for their house. Sometimes, she forgets to eat. They’ve had help come to their house, but in the end it wasn’t safe for them to be alone.

So, now, they’re not alone. They are cared for at this wonderful facility, and that is an amazing gift for them and for everyone who loves them.

I have memories of visiting my grandparents when they were in a nursing home. It was a cold, sterile place that smelled. I can’t remember what was going on with my Grandparents physically or mentally. I do remember that they were in separate rooms, on separate floors. My Grandmother, Marion, had lost all her teeth and sat up in bed looking frightened. My Grandfather was grumpy. I remember him asking my Mother if we ate rutabagas, and when her three little girls asked what rutabagas were, he in turn asked my Mom, “What are you raising, a bunch of queers?”

Assisted Living is a bit different. It’s got a much more homey feel, less of an institutional feel. The place is filled with pretty curtains, wood trim, and nice wall paper. We walked by people’s rooms, and the doors were open to reveal these homey little spaces with big recliner chairs and personal stuff all around.

And while the atmosphere was lovely, what really surprised me about this place were the residents. In looking at the people who were living there, you could see a range of personalities - some were really friendly, some were grumpy, some were someplace else. But as I watched them interact with each other, you could also see the way they all had connected in some way. Among these people who are living in a place that may be the last place they live, there was a spirit of togetherness that was present.

I saw that gift of friendship in the stories that people shared with each other. They shared stories about their fears, their families, their hopes. They were all in the same place in life - the end of life - and they understood each other ways that no one else could.

My favorite was a group of four women, each with grey hair, two with oxygen, all with rolling walkers. The leader of the group appeared to be a woman who had about three teeth and had just had her hair done. Whenever she greeted her friends in the hall, they’d all start to sing:

“I love coffee, I love tea, I love the boys and the boys love me.’

At the word boys, they all moved their sweet, frail hips from side to side. Then they all started to laugh, which made me laugh. The youngest of the group told me that whenever they see each other, they always sing that song, every day.

The sweet leader of this group, the one with the new ‘do and the three teeth, smiled so broadly that I couldn’t help but tell her how beautiful she looked. She then started to follow me toward the door. The attendant in the hall said “Annie, you’re going the wrong way.” To which Annie said, ”I know where I am going, I am just saying goodbye to my friend.” And she gave me a hug.

The beauty of this place is in the way they care for each other, how they live in the community they formed for whatever amount of time they have left. Amidst the oxygen tanks and the walkers and the bingo games and the jigsaw puzzles, they have mixed in friendship, laughter, and stories. It’s this community that gives them hope, strength for what comes next - even if what comes next is the end of life.

I’m not sure why I am surprised by the presence of this powerful community. At each stage of my life, each struggle of my life, I have been blessed with “assisted living” - been helped along by the good people who are part of my community - my friends, those that I love. What delighted me about this visit to the assisted living facility is the knowledge that, even at the end, there is a community to help you on the path to what comes next.

Miss or Ma'am

2011-05-27T11:15:00.005-04:00

I was walking the dog last night when a young police officer pulled his cruiser up next to us and said, "Good Evening, Ma'am. Were you just walking on Greenough Street?" As I looked at him, I realized there was a reason he called me Ma'am. He was no older than 25 which is like, well, which is younger than me.

"Yes, officer, I was." I replied.

Well, Ma'am, we had a report of a barking dog on Greenough Street. Any chance it was your dog, Ma'am.?"

I looked down at my silly black lab, Jetta, who was had retrieved a baguette from under a park bench and way carrying it in her mouth. "Well, she's been known to bark, but tonight she discovered a loaf of bread on the ground, and now she's carrying her kill back home. Nothing could make her drop that bread, so I think we can scratch her off the list of suspects.""Thanks, Ma'am. I don't have a problem with the barking, but we did have a complaint, so I just needed to look into it, Ma'am. You and your dog have a good night, Ma'am."

Were you counting? I was. Six Ma'ams in a one minute conversation. I don’t mind being my age, I like the wisdom and the comfort that comes with it. But for some reason , term Ma’am is just intolerable to me.

I think it's because I just don't see myself as a Ma'am, as old enough to qualify for Ma'am status. I am in my late forties, yet I think of people in their 30's as being “my age’. I don’t think it’s just me that sees themselves this way.

I think in we all tend to see ourselves as being younger than we really are.

Research backs this up. The Pew Research Center did research that found no matter what their chronological age, most people say that they aren't yet "old" — and that they feel younger than the number of birthdays they've had. In the study, the average age considered "old" by respondents was 68 — but there were real differences in perception depending on the age of the person you ask. People under 30 said the average person becomes old before 60, but by the time people turn 65, they say that old is not old until you are 75.

I am with the people of the research. No matter what the calendar says, I feel much younger than I actually am, and I happily live under that illusion. Happily, until someone calls me Ma'am.

Which brings up back to the issue of Ma’am. If not Ma’am, then what? Is there a better greeting than Ma’am?

Miss? I remember a visit to Trader Joe’s when the young handsome cashier called me Miss. I talked about it for days, but really, the Miss felt as wrong a the Ma’am - I’ve accomplished too much in my life to be a Miss.

Lady? Another time, a lovely man at Church was thanking me for facilitating a small group. He said how much he enjoyed it and continued, “You are a really nice Lady.” This man appears to be older than me, yet he called me a lady. “Lady” felt sort of like an elegant version of “Ma’am.” There is loveliness to it, but still feels better suited to someone like, um, my Mother.

Finally, I was presented with the greeting that works for me. I walked past a man who gave me the impression that maybe he didn’t spend all his time in this world. That may be the reason why he was so enthusiastic and friendly. His greeting: “Looking good, my Sister!”

Sister, I am going with that one. It feels ageless, and right.

The Rapture

2011-05-22T13:04:00.001-04:00

I am happy to report that I am still here. The Rapture, a prophecy of Harold Camping that the world would end starting at 6:00 p.m. yesterday, didn’t pan out. The chosen weren’t taken to heaven. The non-believers aren’t enduring a plague. The world spins madly on.

I didn’t hold much faith in The Rapture. I think that if God wants to end the world, he’ll probably let all of us know, not just a select few. That’s how my faith works.

Still, as the day came closer, there were times when The Rapture entered into my consciousness. Just talking about the world ending, even in a joking way, made me think, geez, the world will end someday. Or more specifically, my world will end someday. Yours too, sorry to say. None of us really knows when our last day on earth will be. If it’s not The Rapture, it could be disease, a bad fall, crossing the street, not drinking enough coffee. We just never know.

So, while the whole Rapture thing now seems a bit silly, maybe the value of this non-event is the way it served as a reminder that our days living out this life are numbered. We are living on limited time. It’s sacred stuff we get to do here each day, and it’s easy for us to forget that. We forget to see the beauty in each step we take, the love in each friend that makes us laugh, the healing of the tears that clean our pain. We forget what an absolute miracle it is that we wake up, put our feet on the ground, and walk into another day.

But when we remember, when we find the goodness that comes from simply living our lives, we can’t help but be swept away by a feeling of pure rapture.

Life-ish

2011-05-15T08:28:00.001-04:00

I met my dear friend G for dinner the other night. We always meet at the same place and always leave the time flexible. 6:30-ish we’ll say.

G’s life is really full – she’s a professor of communications and has three kids and a successful consulting practice. Me, one child and a job that includes an hour commute. So when we meet, we know well enough to leave it at…ish.

The last time we met, I got there first, sat at the bar ordered a glass of wine and read the paper. This time, I got there after G and she was at the bar. I never worry about my timing or about G’s timing. I know we were both fine because when you’ve got the ish on your side, there’s no late and no early. You’re right on time.

It’s the power of ish.

Over dinner, we talked about the ish and how there are people who don’t embrace the idea. Come at 5:00 means come at 5:00. If you’re fifteen minutes late, they ask where you’ve been. They just don’t see the goodness of ish.

But I do. I embrace it. And since my dinner with G, I’ve been thinking about letting go of needing to meet a specific target and moving into a place where coming close is more than enough. I know there are some things that require an actual target - baking, math, capturing Osma Bin Laden. But with all that needs to be done in our lives, giving ourselves permission to simply come close to a target is a way to open ourselves to new ways of doing things, to new ways of seeing successful.

This ish ideas works for small things. The house is clean-ish simply means I vacuumed like a mad woman. If I had tried to do all the things that I needed to do to make the house clean, I would have felt overwhelmed and given up. So I vacuumed up the all the dog hair and that feels good. Exercise is done-ish. Did I go to the gym and lift weights and burn a thousand calories? No, but I took a long walk which cleared my mind and presented me with the most amazing flowers.

It works for the big goals, too. I want to do more writing, to publish an article – that’s my goal, my exact goal. But if I can bring my ish to it, I realize how I am writing here in this blog. Wonderful people are reading me here, giving me amazing feedback here. In a sense, I am fulfilling the goals of publishing an article here.

I don’t mean to imply that we should all give up on our goals – there is certainly room for specific goals in our lives. But I do think that when we give ourselves a break and let ourselves accomplish those goals in different ways, we open ourselves up to the beauty of the journey, not just the destination. And it’s the journey where all the good stuff happens. It’s where life happens.

Lessons of Motherhood

2011-05-08T07:28:00.004-04:00

For a long while, I was on the fence about having children. I wasn’t sure I had what it takes to be a good mother, and that was cause for concern. It seemed to me that becoming a parent meant that you were completely responsible for the life of another human being. Given the enormity of that task, I think you’d want you know in advance that you’d at least be competent.

I remember talking to friends about what it’s like to be a mother. These conversations always made me feel like parenthood was kind of like a cult. These mothers would describe this beautiful love, the way this magical person comes to your life and changes it. I would listen and wonder, “What about sleep, do you still get to sleep?

In looking back on that time, I am not sure what I defined as being a “good” mother. Maybe someone who was patient, kind, forgiving. Someone who didn’t need much sleep. Someone who could play interactive, educational games non-stop without getting bored. Someone who made wholesome organic foods and shunned high-fructose corn syrup. And she’d do all while working outside the house, bringing home some bacon, and frying it up in pan.

In other words, someone who was perfect. And I just couldn’t see myself being that perfect.

With the help of some wonderful people, I started to realize that while I won’t be perfect, maybe I had what it takes to give it a go.

And that’s how I became a beautifully imperfect mother. And how I now can’t imagine life without the presence of this love, the magical person who came into my life and changed it.

What’s changed me the most, I think are the lessons that my daughter E has taught me. There's the little stuff like learning all the state capitals. Or being able to recite the names and details of the all the Presidents, including a juicy bit on how William Howard Taft was the heaviest President and also got stuck in a bathtub. Through E, I learned that the Blue Wiggle is also the cutest Wiggle.

Where I feel E’s mark most are the lessons that need to be felt to be completely understood.

Understanding, for example, that you will feel your child’s pain just as much, if not more, than they do. That’s there’s no more satisfying laugh then when your child makes you laugh. That you can actually feel your heart grow when your child takes your hand. That I never feared dying until I became a mother.

If I hadn’t become a mother, I would have missed all that.

And I would have missed the chance to teach my girl my own lessons, too. There’s the basics like saying please and thank you. That you need to not laugh but to say excuse me after you pass gas. And that you always need to take a hand when you cross the street, if only to make your Mother happy.

And as she gets older, these lessons continue to evolve and become even richer. The other night, over homework, I had a huge discussion with E about how her homework doesn’t need to be perfect, but she does need to try; to try her hardest. I told that that in the trying, you learn so much, you can see things in a way that you’ve never seen before.

There is a theory in the Montessori way of teaching that you don’t really know something until you can teach it to another. And as this journey of motherhood continues to unfold, I realize I how much of life I didn’t really know until I could teach it to E.

To all the wonderful mother’s whose lives touch mine, I wish you a wonderful celebration today! You are perfect. Just perfect, each and every day.

Beautiful

2011-05-06T14:05:00.000-04:00

A while back, there was a gorgeous article in Real Simple magazine. They asked several authors this question: “What makes you feel beautiful?”

The responses themselves are just beautiful. My favorite one comes from Anne Roiphe, who wrote that it’s words from her late husband that makes her feel beautiful. She writes:

”A week before my seemingly healthy 82 year-old husband died, he emerged from his office…and said to me ‘You have made me very happy. You know that you have made me a very happy man.’ There I stood with my white hair and my wrinkles and the face I was born with, although now much creased by time, and I felt beautiful.”

I find that to be an amazing question to ask of yourself, what makes you feel beautiful?

For a while, my sense of beauty was a bit twisted. Growing up, I had a twin sister who I saw as truly beautiful. She was blonde, blue-eyed, had all traits that to me defined beauty. I wasn’t going to be the “pretty one” and my brilliant older sister had dibs on being the “smart one,” (my alternative learning style had not been fully recognized at this point, but that’s another post.) so I became “the funny one."

This worked well because I was actually very funny. I had been blessed with my father’s sense of humor and built on that gift to spread a bit of merriment each chance I got. I still do.

So I would describe myself as funny yes, but beautiful, not so much. This attitude went on for a while. Until one day in my twenties. My sisters and I got together to have our picture taken as a gift for my father. It was a late summer day, and we all gathered near the ocean for the shot. The picture came out great. There are my beautiful sisters, smiling and looking lovely. But here is me, with my mouth open and my head back in laughter. I remember seeing this picture and thinking, “Wow, I look beautiful.”

Since then, I’ve made peace with my looks. But I always feel I look my most beautiful when I am in the throes of a good laugh. It’s funny (pun intended) that the very thing I had used as a way to compensate for the wrong-headed notion that I wasn’t beautiful is the very thing that helped me find my way to a feeling of utter beauty. In laughter, my eyes crinkle up and my smile beams, there is an energy that lives below my skin and shines like a light. In laughter, I am beautiful.

As Anne Roiphe says in her essay “…I don’t believe that positive thinking improves your skin tone or that loving or being loved changes the shape of your nose or restores the thickness and color of your hair. But I do know that there is a way of being beautiful, even as age takes its toll, that has something to do with the spirit filling with joy…”

What makes you feel beautiful?

Find Your Buddy

2011-04-30T09:02:00.000-04:00

During school vacation, E and I went to the JFK Library to explore the life of the John Kennedy. It’s an amazing place, packed with exhibits and details on JFK’s life, his family, and his presidency. It also features a few of Jackie’s dresses, so there’s something for everyone, really.

After we got on the bus to get to the library, a group of school kids got on, too. They looked like they were in kindergarten or first grade. They all wore the same shirt and were bursting with energy and excitement.

True to good field trip etiquette, each of the kids on the field trip held the hand of their buddy. When it came time to get off the bus, the leaders all said, “Okay, find your buddy.” Which set off a mad scramble for hands.

During our visit, we kept running into this group of exited kids. They were at the drum concert, eating their lunch, exploring, learning, getting into trouble. Finally, we saw them getting ready to leave, each taking the hand of their buddy for the trip back on the bus.

A buddy. What can be better than a buddy? A hand to hold, a trusted friend by your side, walking the same path of exploration as you. There is something about having a buddy by your side to make the trip easier and more fun. It’s the power of the buddy.

A story in the New York Times talked about this very subject, the power of friendship. Part of the article talks about a study where they took a group of college students to the base of a steep hill and fit them with a weighted backpack. They were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the exercise, while others were alone.

The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. Here’s the best part, the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.

It got me thinking about my buddies, about the friends who grace my life. These are the friends who listen to me, who put up with my quirks, laugh at my stories, and tolerate my swearing. In other words, these are the people who really know me.

I’ve held some of these friendships close for a long time - 25 years, 15 years, and in the case of my dear twin sister, my whole life (and then some). Those dear friends, combined with the amazing people I’ve met in recent years, make my hill seem less steep. My life more rich.

And though there are times when we’re moving in different ways, our lives are taking different paths, there’s a trust, an unspoken knowledge that we will find our way back to the goodness of the friendship. That just like buddies on a field trip, we can be off exploring different things and learning new lessons. But at the end of the day, there’s still a hand to hold when we get back on the bus.

Springtime

2011-04-27T15:15:00.002-04:00

Springtime in Boston can be an elusive thing. Around mid-March, we see our first crocus and all thoughts turn to spring. Spring, however, has other plans. She goes away and leaves us with our snow, our freezing rain, and our daffodils laying down on the ground like soldiers in defeat.

March melts into April an still we wait, we hope.

Then one day, we look around and all we can see is Spring. She is here and she is here to stay.

So it was on Easter day - a glorious day of sun and warmth and celebration. And so it is today, a beautiful day were everything is in bloom.

As I am home sick with a brutal headache, I was reminded of my all time favorite springtime walk. It made me feel better. I hope it gives you some joy, no matter where your spring is.

I walked through the Public Garden in Boston around six o’clock last night. The light was so soft and yellow and it cast a beautiful glow onto all that was in front of me. It lit up the green of the willow trees and the pinks of the flowering trees that have burst into bloom. There were no less than four different colors of tulips. To add to the picture, two black lab puppies were rolling over each other on the grass while a couple walked past me with their newborn baby. All of this beauty was reflected in the pond where the Swan Boats floated, all tied up together. I’ve never seen this park look so beautiful.

It felt like God was showing off. Just a bit.

This is a magically beautiful time here in Boston. It seems to last for about five minutes, but it so amazing when it’s comes. It is the time when all the creatures seem to know that winter is really and truly over and all come out and celebrate.

Next winter, I will trot out this memory, this beautiful feeling of renewal and hang it in front of me like a carrot.

My friend Saul captures the essence of the city so beautifully in his photos, and I am so grateful to him for letting me use some of his work here. I encourage you to take a look at more of his work by www.saulblumenthal.com.

Om Shanti

2011-04-19T11:56:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, I gave my daughter E a pad a large post-it notes. Using these notes, she created a series of blueprints for various houses. The first house was her dream house, which included a floor plan of rooms for all the things that she loved: a book room, an American Girl room, a rock climbing room, a ice cream room, a Beatles room, a Parent Trap room, a violin room, a dog room, a bath room and a hot tub (the hot tub remains a mystery.)

She went on to make a floor plan of a house for my husband, B. His house included all the things that he loves: a golf room, a martini room, a book room, a putting room, a music room, and piano room (no hot tub).

Finally, she created my dream house. It had one room. A wine room.

“Just one room? A wine room? What’s up with that?” I indignantly asked. “Okay fine,” said E, quickly adding a writing room.

I do enjoy a glass (or two) of wine at the end of a hectic day. I find that one glass of wine takes the edge off, brings my shoulders down from my ears, unclenches my teeth, puts a blush in my cheeks, and brings me back to normal.

But wine certainly isn’t the only focus of my life. If it were, I wouldn't need the wine. I talked to my wise friend A who noted that , “You appear in all the other rooms of B and E. You are so into their rooms that it probably seems to E that you don’t need any rooms of your own.”

The more I thought about that, the more I thought A was right. I live in a supportive, loving way for my family and friends. I love living that way. It is such a part of who I am, and it’s a large part of what makes this life so great.

But E’s blueprint of my house also reminded me how I need to also spend some time giving myself the same gifts I give to others. I need to spend some time filling up the rooms of my own house.

That’s what this weekend’s retreat was all about.

And that’s what this retreat delivered. It’s hard to go wrong with all that was available to me - - meditation, yoga, walks in the woods, food prepared in accordance with the Ayurveda diet. Just being in this space with all these delicious choices open to me felt wonderful.

But at the heart of the weekend was a workshop that was led by Jennifer Louden, an incredibly wise, joyful, and supportive woman who generously shares these qualities with the people in her presence.

At the workshop, I discovered that I am not alone in my quest. I met some amazing women who, like me, are seeking the time and space to figure out what we want. It seems like there’s quite a few of us women wandering around, serving agendas and goals and ideals that someone else set out for us, or that we think someone else set out for us. We do it for lots of reasons, but whatever the reason, we end up so busy in the doing that we completely loose site of what it means to ask ourselves what it is we want; how what we are doing serves us.

And together, we learned what amazing things that can happen when we do ask ourselves what we want. When we stop and recognize that voice inside us that say, “Yes! This!” or “Nope, this is too much” or “Hey, what about me?” When we allow ourselves to feel what we feel and, here’s the big part - state it out loud - we acknowledge that what we feel and want matters, that we matter.

This applies to things that are big, like what we choose to do for work and things that are small, like whether to take a yoga class or take nap. But not matter the size, it’s just simply naming our own desire that counts.

It’s that simple. And that complex.

I’m back in the real world now, living out all that I took in this weekend. I am standing up taller from my time on the matt doing yoga, and I'm greeting my colleagues with the words Om Shanti, (peace). They’re not sure what to make of it.

I’m not naive enough to think that I’ll be walking in some empowered state of bliss from here on in. There’s still work to be done, life to be experienced, challenges to meet.. But I do feel changed by this weekend. I have come to a place where I realize that my life is my story to tell, to shape and create the way I choose. And to create that story, I need to make choices that reflect what my heart desires.

I think E’s going to need some new post-it notes.

Om is a sound symbolizing reality. Shanti simply means "peace". In Buddhism as well as in Hinduism the threefold Shanti is generally interpreted as meaning the Threefold Peace in body, speech, and mind - peace in the entirety of one’s being.

Shanti Shanti Shanti, dear reader. Thank you for coming on this trip.

Help

2011-04-15T11:12:00.007-04:00

I am not a materialistic person. I am generally satisfied with the many blessings I have in this life. Upon occasion, though, there are times when I am envious of the wealthy. Not for not for the stuff money can buy but for the way money makes life easier.

Long time readers of this blog will remember my Hazel fantasy, where I mentally go through what the day could look like if I had really great maid to help me along. I still dream of Hazel, but lately, I’ve been reading more about other services that might also be appealing, if only I had the resources.

Gwyneth Paltrow did a post in her blog about how her friend, who is a mother and an investment banker, manages such a full life. As a working mother, I am always looking for ideas on how I can be better at this,so I read the post with interest. And indeed, Gweneth’s friend is very good at balancing this life. Let’s start with this tip: “I start my day by having my personal trainer come to my house. It keeps me committed to my workout if I have someone showing up at my door first thing in the morning.”

Another celebrity with resources I admire is Oprah. She has a similar tip on how to eat a healthy diet, it’s called a personal chef. She said that having someone prepare her meals helps to ensure she’s eating a balanced healthy diet, the freshest food, and the right portions.

Then there’s writer Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame. She got paid to take a year and travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. I read this book, got through her heartbreak and her eating journey in Italy, but I stopped relating to the story when she was halfway through India, meditating for four hours a day at an Ashram.

The thing is, I think it’s easy to care for yourself and discover inner peace when you have the time to dwell in a cave and focus on nothing else. It’s easy to stay in shape when your handsome, buff trainer (if I hired a trainer, I’d insist on these qualities) shows up at your door. Who couldn’t eat well when you have someone to shop, prepare and serve up beautiful meals on a lovely portion controlled plate?

But what about the rest of us? What about those of us whose time at the gym is limited, forcing us to stare down the woman on the elliptical so she’ll move it along? What about those of us who have to sell our families on how fun it is to eat grilled cheese sandwiches three days in a row because there’s nothing else in the fridge? How do you find inner peace when you are late and stuck in traffic on your way to pick up you child?

Well, you breathe, you smile, and you try again. Because some days that is the best that we can do. And it’s enough. Because finding inner peace in the chaos that is our daily lives is, I think, a peace that is more glorious because of the work you had to do, the stuff you had to overcome, to find it.

At least that’s what I tell myself. As usually, I believe it.

But lately, I haven’t quite been able to make it to the peaceful place. I need a little help to get there. I am kind of kind of one step away from inner peace.

So this weekend, I'm on a mission to recapture that inner peace. So for a couple of days, I am joining the likes of Gwyneth, Oprah and Elizabeth, and calling in some help. I’m chucking all my responsibilities and heading out to the Kripalu Yoga center for the weekend. I’m attending a workshop called Creative Comfort, doing yoga, eating healthy food prepared by them, and engaging in some deep mediation.

Ommmm and Yummmm.

I don't know where I'll end up at the end of this weekend, but I do know that just asking for this help and creating the space and time for this experience, was probably the most important part of the weekend.

As part of the retreat, we had to put together images, pictures of our selves, and quotes that are meaningful to us. I keep a box of such things and as I was going through them, I found this quote that was on a card that I loved.

“When she desperately clutched her dreams they would often wiggle free and swim away, it wasn't until she learned to swim that it became clear...they were trying to show her the way...

Inner peace to you this weekend!

Grace, Defined

2011-04-10T11:45:00.000-04:00

I love the idea of grace. To me it feels like a goodness, some love and kindness wrapped up in an essence that makes you glow. But while I've always thought of grace as being an important part of my being, I’ve never been sure how to actually define it.

I wanted more clarity on this, so I looked up grace in the dictionary. Those definitions didn’t help clarify grace, either.

- merited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification

- a virtue coming from God
- a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace
- a suppleness of movement or bearing
- used as a title of address or reference

I can do away with the “suppleness of movement” definition, though there are days when I seek that form of grace as well. I can also do away with the form of address, though I would welcome a “Good morning, your Grace” from time to time. And while I am a big supporter of the grace that comes from God, I do think it’s probably easy to be full of grace and to give grace when you are, well, God.

But for the rest of us humans, mucking around on the earth, where do we find our “merited divine assistance”? How do we enjoy a “divine state of sanctification” when there is work to do, schedules to maintain, children to raise, relationships to work on?

As I continued to contemplate the idea of grace, the perfect vision of grace on earth presented itself to me. Vicky, a beautiful woman with a beautiful blog posted that she had been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. Her posts took a dramatic shift from writing about motherhood and kid’s hockey games and warmth and family to writing about doctors appointments and MRIs and alternative therapies and the power of community.

And as she wrote about all of this, you can clearly hear Vicky’s faith - in God, in life, in the world. You can also hear the presence of grace. Because in her writing, in this journey, she is seeking an answer to this question:

What is this experience asking of me?

And when I think of what it means to live with grace, I believe it all comes down to that one question:

What is this experience asking of me?

To live with grace means that we understand that everything in our lives has a reason. All the people, experiences, events are given to us so that we can learn and grow and understand the world and our place in it, even though we may not understand it - or like it - while it’s happening.

In my quest for a definition of grace, I found an article on that appeared in Ode Magazine which said:

Grace accepts. It does not judge but allows. It allows because it does not fear or try to prevent the natural flow of life. It accepts that life is just life and doesn’t always make sense in the moment.

When we are graceful, we allow life to just be, and tend to feel happier because we are not fighting with our lives. We can relax and assume that everything will be made clear at the right time. We see that something going "wrong" is not indicative of our unworthy nature.

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.

Visit Vicky's blog to read more about her journey. And support her fight with a purchase of a bracelet.

This glorious photo was taken by friend and photographer Saul Blumenthal. See more of his great work at his website

The Slow Internet Movement

2011-04-03T12:40:00.000-04:00

Last Friday, NPR did a story on the slow Internet movement. The story talked about how in hipster places like there Portland Oregon and Williamsburg, Brooklyn there’s a movement on to slow down the Internet. Part of this movement includes cafes that offer only dial-up access - smart phones are not allowed and the walls are lined with lead to prevent wireless signals. These cafes give customers “Slow pours and slow Internet. Here, you can order your coffee and spend four hours checking your email. All for .99 an hour.”

The story highlights an interview with a scientist who said that in studies of using “slow Internet our perception of time changes. When it takes a minute to download photo, we perceive it as four minutes. So while the slow Internet can’t make us live longer, it can make our lives seem longer.”

And maybe it was because it was a Friday night. Or maybe it was because we just got five inches of snow. Whatever it was, fell for this April Fool's story. Hook.Line.Sinker.

So fooled.

What fooled me was the way that even though the story was made up, I totally connected with it. Just hearing the eeerrrrreeeeewwwww noise of the dial-up connection made me remember the early days of world wide Interweb. I remember the feeling of dialing up, hearing that connecting noise, and then - boof! being magically connected to the Internet.

It was that process of dialing-up, of making that connection that made you feel as though were being transported, that you had moved to a different place, the online realm. And nothing was better at letting you know that you were someplace different that the eeerrrrreeeeewwwww sound of the your dial-up modem.

Fast forward to today. I carry the Internet in my hand. It is on my phone and I take it everywhere I go. I now need to make a conscience effort to not be connected to the Internet.

Having access to the Internet all the time, anywhere you go is a remarkable thing. I can find a recipe for dinner while I am at the market. I can immediately correct my husband with a simple Google search. Yet even with all it’s benefits, having total access to the Internet can sometimes blur your online life and your in person life.

If I am having dinner with my husband and I am Googling Shaka Smart at the same time, am I really present in that dinner? If I am checking email while watching my daughter on the swing at the park, am I taking in all the beauty of her at that moment?

A brilliant part of the April-fools story on NPR featured an interview with Alice Waters, who is a leader in the slow food movement. She said she wasn't surprised by the slow Internet movement, that it was a natural progression from the slow food movement. It’s about how we want to live our lives.”

I want to live my life consciously. In the olden days, getting online required the conscious, time consuming act of dialing-up. Now I can, and do, pick up my phone all day long and look for updates, for news, for messages. I love my online access, but realize I am often not making a choice to access this information, I am doing out of habit, or to satisfy some need for constant updates. Sometimes, I am not even really sure why I do it so often. Which is kind of the point.

Slow Internet, maybe not. But maybe less Internet. Or less need for the Internet. Or maybe, just being conscious of when I am in person, when I am online, and when I am badly attempting to do both, is enough.

Kindness

2011-03-29T12:59:00.001-04:00

I have been feeling a bit discouraged by all that is happening the world. The earthquake and tsunami, and nuclear disaster of Japan. The horrible violence in Libya. The outrage of those in the Middle East and Northern Africa who want basic rights of freedom.

When I hear these stories, I feel at once a passionate need to help fix the world and a complete and utter powerlessness to affect any kind of real change.

So when I read Jennifer Louden’s blog post about the sadness in the world, I felt like I could do something positive. In the post, she writes about the importance of really feeling sadness in these troubled times. She then talks about practicing 19 random acts of kindness over the next few days as a way to be of service to a world that needs it.

I loved this idea, and set about practicing some kindness.

Keeping track of my acts of kindness made me happily notice that I approach most people and situations with kindness and respect. It comes naturally to me. A special thank-you and compliment to my regular barista at Starbucks. A “well-done” to my insightful auto mechanic. A listening ear to the other dog owner at the park. Picking up trash, helping the elderly, letting people in front of me, I am there.

Yet even with all this goodness flowing around, there is still one relationship where I am lacking, one place where kindness doesn’t rule. At all. In this relationship, I can be cruel, extremely judgemental, and very slow to forgive.

It’s the relationship I have with myself.

Keeping tabs on kindness exposed to me to the notion that in my efforts to be kind, I might want to start by looking in the mirror (and not at the wrinkles). I might want to focus on bringing kindness to the way I treat myself.

Because, honestly, if a friend talked to me the way I talk to myself, I’d really never speak to her again.

All day long, while the world receives my message of love and kindess, there’s me reminding myself of the need to be better, faster, stronger, and more organized. And when I am not better, faster, stronger, or more organized, I just can’t seem to stop telling myself how much I have failed, and how the world would be a better place if I could just get it all together. Sigh, if only.

Conversations like this one: I took up a new project at work, organizing this big event. I’d never done this type of event before, and there were lots of details, lots of vendors to coordinate, lots of deadlines, lots that could go wrong. And while a few things did go wrong, most things went right. If I were a friend, I would say "Wow, how amazing you are to take on this project with such grace. Wow, you've learned so much! You put it together so beautifully. So a few things didn't go right, but hey, you learned, didn't you?" That's what I would tell a friend.

But in conversation with myself, the tone is so harsh. I say repeatedly what a huge mistake I made, how could I have let that happen, how could I not have seen that one coming? And I’d be sure to remind myself of the hugeness of this mistake again when I am lying in bed at 2:00 in the morning, just in case I didn’t hear it the first time.

I know I am not alone with this. I know others speak to themselves with the same level of criticism and negativity. All to often, we are our own worst critic, our harshest opponent, our own nemesis.

So when we look at making the world a better place with our acts of kindness, I am advocating that we each start with ourselves. Let’s improve the quality of the conversation that goes on inside our heads and make room for compliments and good words and celebrations of greatness there, inside.

By treating our own selves with kindness, we can feel a sense of okayness, of love, that can then enable us to go out into the world and risk the kind of love and goodness that will truly make the world a better place.

My Daughter, Myself

2011-03-24T15:42:00.003-04:00

On Tuesday, my Daughter E had to take the latest in a series of standardized tests. It was the long composition test. I hate standardized tests. E hates long composition. Yet I tried with all my might to encourage, love and support her. And she tried with all her might to do her absolute best on the test.

The latest struggle in on the path of growing up made me think of this post I did a couple of years ago. Since then, I E has exhibited qualities that differ from me somewhat, yet I still see so much of me in her. And her in me.

When my daughter was born I remember holding her tiny, tiny hand in mine and just loving that moment. Then feeling a bit of shock at just how much her hand resembled a little baby version of my own.

Time went on and she grew to look more and more like me. When she was four we walked down the street and an elderly man stared at us like freaks and said “Jesus! I’ve never seen anything like it! You look EXACTLY alike!”

It’s funny having a child that looks so much like you. When I look at her face, I see nothing but beauty. I guess it's looking at her face in that way that has helped me make peace with the things that I haven't always loved on my own face. The freckles. The upturned nose.

As E has gotten older and her personality has emerged I find that in addition to looking like me, we also share many of the same personality traits. A lot of the same traits. The way we learn. The way we interact with people. Our humor. The way we can’t spell. Sitting in her parent teacher conference at school was like a flashback to my own second grade experience. It scared me.

This discovery made me want to sit her down and say, “Look, I’ve been there before and here’s what we are going to do to fix it.” Show her the way and give her the help she needs so that the she doesn’t have to struggle the same way I did.

But as I watch her, I realize how perfectly capable she is of figuring this all out for herself. On separate occasions, two people that I love have called her an Old Soul, and I think they see her perfectly. She has a wisdom about her. There are times when challenges throw her into a spin, but her overall outlook remains clear.

So while some of her struggles may be the same as mine, her way of dealing with them will be her own. And while I will be here to help her, she will be the one to try. There will be times when she will be successful, times when she will fail. And the lessons learned from all of that will be hers.

And while she is learning, I have the feeling that, just like I learned to love my freckles, I will also be learning. Learning all the lessons my wise Old Soul has to teach me.

Bound by the Same Humanity

2011-03-17T12:30:00.000-04:00

“We are all bound by the same humanity.”
-President Obama

We are all bound by the same humanity, and it’s that bond with makes what is happening in Japan so wrenchingly painful. I go through my day doing those day things -- working, cleaning, eating, loving, laughing, sharing – and I think of the thousands and thousands of people in Japan who aren’t doing any of those things. And whose way of doing those things have been changed, possibly forever.

When disaster strikes, I cling like a cat in a tree to the words of Mr. Rogers. He said that when explaining disasters to young children, look for the people who are doing good. Look for the helpers. I’ve used his wisdom to explain disasters like Haiti to my little girl. It not only helps her, but also gives me a feeling of peace. Helps me to believe that the goodness of the world is still in place, it’s just been shaken around a bit.

Yet the hugeness of the disaster in Japan has made it really hard for me to find the good, the hope. I am left with this helpless feeling of despair.

There are people in the world who can see through the pain and destruction. This beautiful example came from Ryu Murakami writing in The New York Times. At the time of the earthquake, he was in a hotel in Tokyo. And though there is so much in doubt, so much that is in question, he is staying in Tokyo. He writes:

“… evacuation centers are facing serious shortages of food, water and medicine; there are shortages of goods and power in the Tokyo area as well. Our way of life is threatened, and the government and utility companies have not responded adequately.

But for all we’ve lost, hope is in fact one thing we Japanese have regained. The great earthquake and tsunami have robbed us of many lives and resources. But we who were so intoxicated with our own prosperity have once again planted the seed of hope. So I choose to believe.

I read that with this earthquake, the island of Japan moved eight feet. The earth looked different after this earthquake and I pray that it’s not only the landscape that has changed. I pray that we as a people have also changed, or can be changed by these events. That we, a smart industrialized nation who is also intoxicated with its own prosperity, can start to plant our own seeds of hope.

And in this new world, not only do we need to look for the good, we need to become the good. We need to be a force of hope in a world that is falling apart around us.

Dog Day

2011-03-13T18:23:00.000-04:00

Today I turn my blog over to my Daughter E. We both have been delighted and inspired by the blog My Life by Buster where Buster beautifully relates the news from his world.

So, as we made our way through our Saturday, E though it would be fun to look at the world as if we were our dog meeting other dogs.

Here’s our day, as told from the perspective our of dear dog, Jetta (but written by E!)

Here is Jetta and here is our day.

One day my people went out and saw dogs. Here are the dogs they saw.

Mercedes

They saw Mercedes. She just got a hair cut (she was fuzzy).

The winter was hard for her. She is low to the ground and we had a lot of snow.

She has bushy eyebrows, which they didn’t shave off.

Baxter

My people like to read so they went to the library and got books. When they came out of the library, they saw Baxter. Baxter was five years old (I am seven) and had a lot of energy. He was exercising by running in circles. Baxter was excited and happy to be exercising.

He was moving so fast but then he stopped. He sat down and My People took his picture.

Honey and Shamus

Honey is on the right and Shamus is on the left. They met by My People’s car. They didn’t know each other, but they smelled each other and became friends. They were very cute and were the same color and they were the same size.

Ellie

On My People's way to get coffee and chocolate milk, we met a dog named Ellie. Ellie is also the nickname for my favorite person. Ellie was friendly and energetic. She licked the face of both of my humans.

It was a great day!

"woof!"

love, from Jetta (and her Humans!)

Faith

2011-03-10T21:21:00.000-05:00

I started out the day on Wednesday visiting the pharmacy to get sick supplies for my daughter E. I woman came up behind me in line and she had black on her forehead. I said “You’ve got a little dirt on your forehead, there.” She smiled and said, “Actually, it’s Ash Wednesday.”

Of course it is.

There was a time, in the not so distant past, that I not only would have known it was Ash Wednesday, I would have a whole Lenten plan mapped out. Adding prayers, taking away lattes, travelling on the journey to Easter.

This year, my faith isn’t with me. And I miss it.

I try to look for the reasons why I am struggling with my faith. It starts with our church, I think. It’s gone through some changes. The spiritual leaders there are wonderful people, but they are not touching my soul with their words.

On top of that, our all ready full lives got even fuller when my mother-in-law’s health changed, requiring trips away on the weekends and forcing us to miss our dose of church.

Without this centering service on Sunday, I find my faith to be wandering, not with me the way the way it used to be. Or the way I want it to be.

When I struggle with faith – indeed when I struggle with many things in this life – I turn to the most faithful person I know, my dear friend. C. C has been gracing this planet with her presence for more years than I have, and she knows things. I told her about my struggle with faith. In her comforting way, she told me simply that faith can be like that. It can ebb and flow and you just need to trust that it will return. She also suggested that God might be a good person to be with about this.

And I think she’s right.

So that’s my journey this lent. To find the time and space to listen for God. To search for my faith. To be still and to listen.

Because when I listen, I find that God is still there, holding my faith in his hands. In fact, I get the feeling that God was really present on Wednesday. First with my faux pas with The Ash Woman - I am sure God has a sense of humor and had a good laugh over that one. But later, that same God gave me the gift of this poem via Bonnie at the Original Art Studio Blog. It gave me faith, or at least the hope of faith.

FAITH

I want to write about faith, about the way the moon rises  over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,  slowly becoming that last curving and impossible  sliver of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself  I refuse it even the smallest entry.
Let this then, my small poem,  like a new moon, slender and barely open,  be the first be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

-David Whyte

Puppy Love

2011-03-07T09:38:00.000-05:00

I saw a t-shirt in a catalog that said “Greet everyone the way you greet your dog.” It was a lovely sentiment, and I thought I’d give it a go. I found that while I may greet the world that way, people don’t respond to me by jumping up and down, turning in circles three times, and licking my face. Some do, but few humans live up to the greeting I get from my Dog Jetta.

We adopted Jetta three years ago from a lab rescue. She came to us from Arkansas. Given her home state, I’d describe her as having more dogmatic qualities of Mike Huckabee that the charisma of Bill Clinton. She is mostly lab, but I think there might be a bit of boarder collie mixed in. She has eyes that reveal the depth of her soul and eyelashes to die for.

There are times when I just shake my head with amazement that we have this living creature in our house. Even more amazing is how much this animal loves all of us, how she is so much more than a dog; she is part of our family.

My daughter is an only child, yet she seems to find her sibling squabbles with her four-legged furry sister. “Jetta’s staring at me!” she’ll complain from the backseat of the car. They share toys beautifully, Jetta taking E’s Barbies in her mouth and parading around the house. There's Barbie, toes pointed out and blonde hair hanging down, smiling through it all. E will play a game called Dog Treat Fairy, where she skips around the house, tossing dog treats out of a basket. They both go crazy.

Jetta has also touched the heart of my husband B. The other morning, I heard him telling Jetta in detail what the day held for him. Jetta looked at him with her ears up, head cocked to the side, wagging her tail in empathy, or for a treat. It’s hard to tell some days.

Jetta has been my faithful girl since she came to live with us. She is always close by, but never as close as she was in the days a couple of years ago when my mother died. It was a hard time, and when I was home by myself, Jetta would follow me all around the house, never leaving my side. When I would finally settled down, she would put her head in my lap and look up at me with those eyes.

The writer Ann Lamott describes her dog as “Jesus in a black dog suit” Jetta has a little work to do to achieve that status. She has a deep hatred for Poodles, all poodles. Grrrrrr. She also holds a grudge against the old cocker spaniel that lives around the corner. When we have people over, Jetta tries to heard them to the table by nipping their ankles, showing her inner boarder collie. We’re working on it.

But it’s Jetta's shortcomings that make her such a perfect part of our family. We love her imperfections just as she loves all the nutty things the humans in her family do. Unconditionally.

The House

2011-03-02T08:49:00.001-05:00

The last part of my long commute home winds through a really beautiful neighborhood. I love this part of the drive, especially in winter. I am a total voyeur, and in the winter, the houses are neighborhood are lit up with light, giving me a view into the homes, the lives of the people who live there.

I go by the house with the dining room that has a huge abstract painting in it. I go by the modern house with the shades that only let you see shadows inside. I go by the house with the garish blue room. I go by the house with the room that is seemingly only lit by a computer screen. The house where no one is ever home.

Of all the houses I pass, there is one house that stands out for me. I adore this house. It’s a beautiful yellow Victorian house. I used to live on the other side of this house, and my kitchen window overlooked their kitchen window. My commute home now puts me in front of the house at a stop sign, where I get to take a moment and again take in the beauty of The House. The sweet details like the scalloped woodwork and the huge front porch. The Cathedral windows. The Christmas wreath. The full bins on recycle night.

What I love most about this house is the way it’s so lived in. In the fall, there are always bikes and balls laying on the lawn. There are lots of benches and chairs on the front porch, all of them mismatched and well used. There’s a Celtic cross made of stained glass in the window.

My glimpses inside the house have revealed a small nook where there’s usually someone working on a computer. Sometimes there are two people present, and I imagine that there’s homework going on. The dining room always is bathed in warm light and there’s usually flowers on the table.

When I look at this house I feel a sense of life coming from it. There’s a warmth and energy that radiates from it, and I find myself wanting to be a part of it.

The other night, when I drove by the house, the road was blocked off and there were fire trucks on the street. No traffic was getting through, so I had to take a detour. The following night, on the way home, I saw the reason for the fire trucks. It was The House. And as I stopped at the stop sign, I looked for the signs of warmth and love that I usually see, but all I saw was disaster. Fire had ripped through The House, leaving a whole side of it charred with black. The windows were gone and boarded up. There was a red X with a box around it painted onto the house.

I wondered about the family who lived there. The silhouettes of people who I saw from my car. Were they safe? Were they scared? Where are they taking their meals? What would they do, and would they ever feel secure again.

When I pass The House now, I am reminded of how our lives revolve around the routine. Every night, I drive the same route home at the same time of day. And when I do, there they are - the people in The House, living out their own routine, doing their homework, putting flowers on their table, making dinner.

Until, one night that, changed. One night the people in the house weren’t there, and their routine and their lives were dramatically changed.

Which also changed me. Now, when I complete my routine and arrive home and see the lights in the windows, I feel deep sense of gratitude for all that is still standing, all that is inside my house. Gratitude that is sometimes blurred by the same routine that presented The House to me in the first place. The routine where days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months, then years. In the monotony of the routine, it’s easier to look into someone else’s windows and see the beauty of their life than it is to see the beauty that is right in front of you.

But it’s there, if only you look for it.

The Library

2011-02-26T11:30:00.006-05:00

I was so moved by the protests in Egypt. The site of so many people who for so long were forced to live in ways that weren’t their choice, coming out to say “Enough.” They organized, they tweeted, they protested, and in the end they made their nation their own.

In all of the stories that came out of Egypt, my favorite was a story about the library in Alexandria. The miracle of this library is that as the demonstrations were going on, protesters broke away from their rallies to form a human chain around the library. The Library was held as sacred ground, and by the end of the protests, it emerged unscathed - no windows broken, no damage at all.

The head of the library, Ismail Serageldin said "What happened was pure magic. People from within the demonstrations broke out of the demonstrations and simply linked hands, forming a human chain around the library. They said, 'This is our library. Don't touch it.'"
He went on to observe that the library, by promoting tolerance and freedom of expression, contributed to the intellectual climate that led to Mubarak's eventual overthrow.

The library.

Closer to home, the Republican controlled House of Representatives are making decisions on how to cut the budget. Of course we need to make cuts, but what is as important as making cuts are the way in which we make those cuts and the places we choose to cut.

Take public broadcasting, for example. A place where millions of kids learn to count and get along with others. A place where millions more people learn how to cook, build a houses, paint, and garden. A place to find culture. A place that helps us to understand where we are in the world. Home of NPR, where I learned about the uprising in Egypt and the role that the library played in making that happen.

Public broadcasting is a source of learning, information, and culture. It fosters an intellectual climate where things like freedom of expression and tolerance can thrive. Kind of like the library in Eqypt.

Yet this is the one of the first places Republicans are looking to make cuts, cuts that in the end won’t add up to a make a huge difference if we don't also look at making changes in areas like social security and oh, maybe defense.

And in the era of these kinds of cuts, I can’t help but think of the library in Alexandria, and libraries everywhere. What truly amazing things that can happened when you give all people access to information, to knowledge. What advances can be made, what kind of leadership can emerge? A dictator can be toppled, new ways of leading can emerge.

Can we protect this resource that gives so much to so many? Let’s form a human chain around public broadcasting. Visit 170 Americans and learn how you can be involved and support public broadcasting.

Motherhood and Sacrifice

2011-02-20T10:16:00.000-05:00

A colleague of mine just returned from maternity leave. I walked into the lunch room and found her staring into her bowl of soup. She looked exhausted. Next to her was her backpack that she totes to and from the ladies room to pump her breast milk.

“How’s it going?” I asked her. She responded with “It’s Good! Yeah, Good!” Her eyes were bleary with exhaustion, she was wearing a big sweatshirt over her changing body, her hair pulled back in a loose pony tail. Yet through her bleary eyes, her face lights up when she talks about her baby. She says “The baby just started to smile and it’s wonderful to see that, to know the she recognizes me. Oh, and last night the baby slept for four hours which was great.”

And now, here she is at work, working and pumping.

I told her the thing that I wanted to hear when I was in her shoes: “It gets easier. Just take it one step at a time.” She smiled at that, and walked off to pump.

I got back to my desk and had a quick chat with my good friend G. She had had just been celebrating the birthday of another friend who is our age and a mother. G said that at this birthday celebration, they got to talking about goals, or the absence of goals in their lives. Another year goes by, and what have we done, how have we grown as a person.

G had to go before we could fully explore that question, so I was left to wonder: As mothers, what happens to our personal goals after we have children? In living our lives caring for our children, do we put aside our personal achievements so we be fully present to helping our children achieve all that they can?

I’m not so much of a goal setter. My Franklin Planner rarely has plans further out than three months. But I am an explorer. Before I had children, if I wanted to pursue a new career, I did it - I put time and energy into creating new opportunities. I knew how I wanted to feel physically, and spent time at the gym to make that happen. When I wanted to learn something new, I took classes and studied.

After my daughter was born, all of that exploration became more difficult. To pursue my own goals requires me to fit them in among all the other things that need to get done in the day, the week, the month. When I do that, it’s easy to see how a year can go by without feeling like I’ve made progress on those goals. And it’s easy to see how one could feel a bit defeated by that fact.

I thought of my colleague in the ladies room pumping . One step at a time, I had told her. Because that’s all she can do. And really, while we are raising our kids, that’s all any of us can do. So maybe the secret is to not attack my goals with more passion and more time, but rather to understand what is realistically possible for me right now and to be open to the lessons that those accomplishments are teaching me.

But still, I wonder - does settling for smaller, manageable accomplishments mean that I am admitting defeat, wimping out. Or am I just being realistic?

If you are a mother, how do you balance your personal goals with the commitments of being a mother?

Sisters

2011-02-13T09:47:00.004-05:00

At the time I started time writing this, my sisters and I were celebrating the magical six weeks in the year when we are all the same age. This year, it’s six weeks of all being 49. That’s 49 49 and 49.

The three of us were all born in the same year.

It’s one my defining stories, the one that I’ve told all my life. I am one of three girls and we were all born in the same year. My older sister, M was born in February and then my twin, C and I came into the world prematurely in December.

Reactions to this story vary depending on who you tell it to. Those who haven’t had children hear the story of three children in one year and are astonished - kind of like seeing a dog who can do math. When you tell the story to those people who actually have children, their eyes widen and then they shake their head. Three girls.One year. Really?

Really. We all came into the world in the same magical year, and we’ve been travelling the same path ever since. Three little babies, three little toddlers, three little girls, three adolescents, three girls in college, three grown women with loves and families and lives of their own.

And in the hectic chaos of those daily lives, we don’t get to see each other as often as we would like. When that happens, I miss them terribly. I miss the chance to catch up with them, to share the news, to see how life is treating them. But the thing I miss the most is the chance to touch the shared tapestry of our past. I miss the way being with my sisters connects me to the stories, the history, the love of our family. Not just the love that we share today, but the love - in all it’s shapes and forms - that we all experienced growing up; the love that helped us to become the women we are today.

It wasn’t always easy growing up as one of three. It was sometimes hard to feel loved for the person that you were alone, rather than the person you were as it related to the others. We all sort of figured out our roles and where we had the chance to stand out, for good or bad. In finding our way in the family, we bumped up against each other and our parents. We fought, we laughed, we rebelled, and we aimed to please. We aimed to please a lot. We did all those things together, learned those lessons together, and when we are together now, all of that history is with us, helping us to understand ourselves in ways that we don't get with other people.

When I think of the journey that got me to where I am in my life, it’s impossible to imagine it without the presence of these two strong women by my side. In the laughter and the fights, in our competitiveness and in our love, always in love, they helped to shape who I am.

My sister M has now turned 50 and is once again the “eldest.” The next time we are all the same age we will all be 50. When I think of that fact, I realize that being a sister is a role that I have played all my life. My parents are both gone now - which is another part of our shared history. We’re no longer daughters, but of course we are sisters. And I hope we will be for a very long and healthy time.

Nature is in Charge

2011-02-06T09:55:00.004-05:00

On Thursday, and I was driving to work following a large dump truck full of snow. I know it was full of snow because the snow was blowing off the truck, onto my car. It was my own personal snowstorm, which, after just dealing with around two feet of snow, I could have done without.

This past month has dumped an unusually huge amount of snow on us. It’s snow like I’ve never seen, dropping one –two feet of snow each week. We haven’t had a full week of school or work since the first week of January, and there are huge piles of snow everywhere. The shape of how we move around, indeed how we live, have all be changed by the snow.

This winter, nature is in charge.

It reminds me of last summer when the ash cloud was erupting and airports in Europe were closing and travelers were stranded. Since I wasn’t stranded, I felt sort of cavalier about it and said, “Hey, Nature is in charge, so make the most of it. Go explore a part of London you didn’t see the first time. Surrender to nature and see what you can discover.” Make the most of the way that nature has forced you to change the route of your life.

And I started to think that maybe I am missing something with the way snow is impacting us. It’s definitely been bruiser of a winter, but maybe if I can just surrender to the fact that nature is in charge, I can start to see it differently.

So I did. And I found that these snow days are creating something really lovely. We’re inside with no place where we can go so there is no place we need to be. We are forced into this small world of our house and our family and the smallness and slowness of that creates discoveries that you might miss if you blew past them on a normal day.

Small little details like the way my daughter E’s head bounces up and down as she and the Beatles sing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” How I can recognize the Cardinal singing his chirpy song before I even see his flashy red self . The way the wet and dry ingredients combine to make chocolate chip cookies. How roasting a chicken warms the house in ways that heat alone never could. The way E does 15 “pick a card any card” tricks and on the 16^th try, I got say, “Yes!! That is my card!’ How naps are more healing when it’s snowing out.

Today, it’s sunny and the sun will be warming us for a couple of days. And while the weather channel says there is a “Wintery Threat” hanging over the mid-west and heading our way, I say, “Bring it on!” There is so much more to discover this winter.

Snow days are also old musical days in our house. This is a favorite from White Christmas. “I’ll wash my hair with snow…” there’s an idea!

Making Change Real

2011-01-30T09:58:00.007-05:00

January is almost over and I must say, good riddance. As months go, I find January to be the absolute worst month of all. The.Worst.

January always starts with such promise. Fresh from the glow of the holidays, we begin the year anew. “Time for a new start!” we say with hope and promise. We’ll leave behind all the bad behaviors of the past and begin the new year doing it “right”.

The reality of living out our new resolutions is hard enough, but to live them out during one of the coldest, darkest months of the year seems like a cruel joke to me.

Where I live, January has brought us: snowstorm, snowstorm, snowstorm, frigid temperatures, snowstorm. There are huge piles of snow everywhere. Today, I saw people out and about, trying to navigate normal life amidst the ruins of January. There was a woman doing a high-wire act on top of a snow bank as she attempted to feed the parking meter. Pushing the walk button at the traffic light required reaching around mounds of snow. I saw a man walking his St. Bernard and thought “Give that dog a little cask for his neck and he maybe he is the perfect dog for the city.”

Brutal.

So here we are at the end of this long month, and I talk to so many people who are feeling defeated by their lack of commitment to their new way of living.

I’ve set enough New Year’s resolutions that never made it to February to know that feeling. All good intentions, but the resolutions never lasted. I think that it’s because change isn’t something that happens all at one time, especially during the month of January. You don’t wake up one day and say “Today, I am a fit person who works out each day and reads The Economist.” It takes time to make that kind of change.

So as a start, I am changing the frame of how I see January (just in time!) It is a cruel month, to be sure, but it’s part of the process of nature. We need to go through January to get to spring. As humans, we too too are creatures of nature. And like most things in nature, change doesn’t come all at once. And that is exactly how we should look at our resolutions - not as a goal that needs be accomplished all at once in January, but as a slow gradual process of change that unfolds throughout the year.

I read this words by the Irish teacher and poet John O’Donahue. It inspired me to think about change in a new way. It also reminded me of the promise of spring, which is exactly what I needed.

“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."

Just like spring, change, real sustainable change, comes over time until we just become the change. And then we can look nowhere without seeing it.

Incredibly beautiful Photo by Saul Blumenthal

Fear of the Tiger Mommies

2011-01-21T12:06:00.007-05:00

I’ve started to grow weary of Amy Chua and her book about being a Tiger Mother and parenting the “Chinese Way.” I don’t really love her style of parenting, and love even less the way she wrote the book one way, but appears to be representing it another way in interviews.

Still, there are some passages of the book that are providing great fodder among the mothers I know. Like when she throws her three year old out in the cold for not practicing the piano correctly “You can’t stay in the house if you don’t listen to Mommy.” Or how she makes her two daughters’ music lessons so grueling that one of them starts gnawing on the piano. Or, my favorite, when she tells her daughters that the birthday cards they made weren’t good enough, saying, “I spend half my salary on stupid sticker and eraser party favors. I deserve better than this.”

Yet despite the Mommie Dearest tones to this book, I hear from mothers who say that there’s something to this idea. Maybe we should be putting more emphasis on achievement; maybe we should be bringing more of this Tiger Mother approach to our parenting.

I think what they are saying, what I am feeling too, is the fear that if we don’t take this approach, will we be raising soft, laggard children of the “west” that are bad at math and science? Shouldn’t we be raising children who are successful and achieving great things so that they can grow up and be successful and achieve great things?

And if my child isn’t doing that, isn’t excelling, what does it say about me as a mother?

Sigh. So for the, 2, 378 time, I wonder if I am doing enough as a mother. In just loving the child in front of me, and helping her to be the best her there is, am I doing enough?

In the midst of my wondering, I blessedly came across an article by Michelle Blake. She writes about having children who have grown into adults. To her delight and surprise, her kids turned out to be, well, the person they had always been. As she says, “…I can see that my children are, to a large degree, who they have always been, those small three-dimensional people I was just too busy and too worried to comprehend.”

My favorite part of the article comes from the way she looks back on raising her children. Here she says:

“Looking back, I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time just looking, watching to see what each of them did when I wasn’t propelling them toward the front door or away from the television. There was a lot in the way – team tryouts and application deadlines and pet vaccinations – as well as my own strident fears about what my children needed to do and master and the schedule on which they needed to achieve their mastery in order to be fine, in order to be safe. When all along, on some level, what I needed to do was stand still and discover what forms those lives yearned to take. My fear got in the way. And oh yeah, the head lice.”

I’ll never be a Tiger Mother, this I know. But hearing this woman’s experience of bringing her children into adulthood has given me a renewed perspective. It’s given me the wisdom to simply see who my daughter is and the courage to just love her and guide her in the process of bringing her true self to the world.

And really, watch out for head lice.

Hope

2011-01-17T08:32:00.003-05:00

It is Martin Luther King Day here today, which got me thinking about a post I wrote on this day two years ago.

January 2009 was such an amazing time. Barack Obama was on the verge of being inaugurated and I was full of hope.

And then reality set in. It’s not been an easy two years. There have been so many struggles for so many people - the economy, the wars, the fights on health care. Yet lately, from the ashes of this tragedy in Arizona, I find myself once again feeling a bit hopeful. And hope feels good.

So does hearing Dr. King’s speech. So here’s the post of two years.

To hope.

In the last few days, I have heard Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech several times. I heard it in the quiet voices of fifth graders reading it on stage and my daughter’s assembly. I heard it surrounded by voices of a choir. And through the magic of the internet, I heard if from Dr. King himself.

This speech has always moved me to tears. I can hear clearly the suffering of the past and the painful struggle for equality. But this year, the election of Barack Obama as President has given new meanings to these words. The speech now feels more like a dream fulfilled.

There are clearly many issues that face us as a nation. I believe that the challenges we have with race in this country, while improved, will still take time to heal.

But when I listen to the speech, I feel so joyful that we have gotten to where we are. There is one passage in the speech that feels especially true this day:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“I have a dream today.”

Nothing compares to hearing Dr. King deliver these words himself:

Life is Short

2011-01-12T11:07:00.005-05:00

I was talking to my good friend T about the passage of time. I told him how my husband had just turned 50 and he told me about his friend who was now in his 50’s. We both were remarking how it seems that turning 50 brings a change in perspective; it sets a new mark for where you are in your life.

T went on to say that his friend had done the math and realized that he only has about 23 summer holidays left. His friends said that after 23 holidays, he may still be around, but he’ll most likely not be in shape to enjoy them in the same way.

23.

That thought immediately set me about doing my own math. How many summer holidays are left for me? How many Christmases? How many more birthdays?

“God that’s sad,” I said. Then T suggested, “Well, really, it’s all how you look it at. You can say it’s sad, or you can say I better get busy and make the most out of what you have left.”

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the passage of time. It’s true that I am entering an age where I am getting older. There is a lot of water under the bridge. And while the end isn’t in sight, it’s starting to appear on the horizon. The distant horizon, but still, the horizon.

For the first time, this phrase popped into my head:

Life is too short.

I’ve said it before, but since this conversation, I am really feeling it, which makes me realize that my friend is right – I’d better get busy making the most of it. So I made a list:

Life is too short to worry about small, stupid shit that happens at work and won’t matter in a month. Or a week. Or by the end of the day.
Life is too short not to notice all the ways my daughter E is growing and to be a loving, active part of that sometimes difficult, sometime boring, sometimes painful, but always amazing process.
Life is too short to listen to people who are selfish, bigoted, shallow, and who don’t return the favor and listen to you. In fact, life is so short, that it may not be a bad idea to tell people when they are being selfish, bigoted, shallow and aren’t listening.
Life is too short not to watch the way the sky changes in the morning. Or the way the snow sticks in the trees. Or how the ocean looks in December. In short, life is too short not to be out in the world with your eyes wide open.
Life is too short not to dance and sing and to love with open hearts and to dance and sing and love even louder when people tell you to sit down and be quiet.
Life is too short not to eat cheese. And life is too short to eat too much cheese.
Life is too short to not just be the person that you are. If there’s not much time left, then really, why spend it being living in a way that’s not really authentic, really true to who you are?

In making this list, I started to feel good about the future. Not just the far away future, but the journey to the future. How taking in the richness of each day will unfold to a beautiful week, which leads to an amazing month, which leads to an incredible year. And when you string a few of those incredible years together, you have a life well led.

Listening

2011-01-07T22:21:00.004-05:00

I had a rare day off from everything this week – not working, not parenting, and not caring for the dog. It was a delicious day that included the gym, a manicure, and flirting with an adorable barista who put a heart in the foam of my latte (literally not metaphorically).

The best part of my day off was a trip to the movies. Oh, yes, the movies. In the middle of the day, all by myself. On a Monday.

I went to see The King’s Speech. It’s the story of King George VI who had a terrible speech impediment. He stammered horribly and at the time of his reign, radio was just becoming an important medium. This, combined with the start of World War II made speech an increasingly important part of being a leader. As King, his role was to inspire people with his words, but what if those words couldn't be spoken?

For help, he goes to see Jeffery Rush who plays a non-traditional speech therapist. As the movie goes along, the two men develop a close friendship that gives the King a chance to share his story, the details of a very painful life. It was in that sharing, of receiving the gift of a friend who listened and being truly heard that helped him to become the leader that he was meant to be.

The world was made different because someone listened.

I’ve felt the power of that gift myself. There was a lot going on in my family growing up, and it was hard to get listened to or to be seen for who you were. Without that confirmation growing up, you enter the world presenting other voices - the voices that you think deserve to be heard. When you do that, it’s always difficult to be understood.

But then I met some amazing people who I felt really believed in me. And that belief was made present to me by the way that they listened. They heard me and understood me in ways that I didn’t always understand myself. By listening to who I truly was, they gave me the power to speak and act from my authentic self and to be the person I was meant to me.

As human beings, I think that’s the pretty much the best gift we can give to each other. To show up, to listen, and be present for the person who is in front of us. It can change a person. In fact, it can change the world.

Walking in Circles

2011-01-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

There was a story on NPR a few weeks ago about a scientist in Germany who has done research on the human tendency to walk in circles.

In his experiments, he blindfolded his subjects by putting hoods over their heads and told them to walk in a straight line for a half hour. They did these experiments in the woods, on the beach and in the desert, all with the same results – people just couldn’t do it. They’d walk in a straight line for a while, but ultimately would start to turn and find themselves walking in a circle.

And after all that research, they are still unsure as to why people walk in circles when blindfolded. I’m not sure either, but I do know a good a good metaphor when I hear one, and the “walking in circles when blindfolded” metaphor is one that is too good to be ignored.

Hearing about this experiment reminded me how there have been times in my life when I continue to do the same thing over and over. I bump up against the same issues, return to the same patterns of behavior. I continue to walk in these circles because I am, metaphorically, blindfolded and not letting myself see the way forward.

My recent route of circles comes from not taking care of myself, of doing too much for others and not leaving enough time, space and energy for myself. After a while of wandering in this circle, I get a bit cranky, then my being cranky makes me feel like I failing at taking care of everyone, which is bad because that’s supposed to be the thing that I am doing best.

As I have come to know many of you who read this blog, I think I am not alone in this journey.

This morning, I stopped in my tracks, right in the middle of my circle. I had just wearily taken the dog for our morning walk. There was a huge snow storm here last week, and as result there’s slush, sand and salt everywhere. When we got home, I took a warm washcloth and sat in front of the dog as she daintily handed me her paw to be rubbed. I felt like I was giving the dog a manicure. “Did you pick your color?” I asked her. As I was massaging her paws, I looked at my ragged nails, and wishing someone would hold them in a warm washcloth and rub them.

I think if you got sick of wandering around blindfolded during the research project, you could jut say “Enough of this!” and take off you blindfold. I know I would have.

I don’t think it’s as easy when we have our metaphorical blindfolds on. Our circle walking comes from well worm patterns and habits that are hard to break. Still, they are certainly worth looking at.

With the New Year comes a chance to do just that – to remove my blindfold and look at where I am going. To figure out why I don’t take time for myself and come to terms with the reality that not everything will fall apart if I m not doing it all all the time.

So this year, my one goal is to see where I am going. To take the time to look closely at my actions and to know that I am travelling in the direction that is true to all that I am and all that I want to be.

Glad follows Glad

2010-12-31T09:27:00.004-05:00

I was given Sark’s new book “Glad No Matter What” as lovely gift. I was reading through it, well, reading is a strong word, I just randomly opened the book as was presented with Sark's amazing words:

"…And the strongest inspirations I’ve ever found are:

Love

Joy

Delight

We are

Awakened by Joy

Escorted by Love

Driven by Delight

And glad follows glad…"

As we end one year and enter a new one, I extend wishes of love, joy and delight to each of you!

(image by Sark)

Voices Raised in Song

2010-12-28T15:59:00.007-05:00

Choirs have followed me everywhere this Christmas season. On my daily commute, I listened to the beauty of the Choir of King’s College. Their music is an amazing celebration of faith, beauty, and worship. It all just brings me to tears, especially their version of “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

Then, during the most frenzied of my shopping trips to the mall, I was stopped by a live choir. There they were, these real life people with serene faces amidst all this chaos, singing “Joy to World.” I just stopped mid-stride, forgot my rush and my stress and took in their beautiful sounds, their message of wonder.

Finally, on Christmas Eve, the choir at our church lit up the service with more beautiful hymns. As always, my favorite part of this service comes after communion, when the lights all dim and the choir leads us in “Silent Night.” My daughter E held my hand and I sat in the pew and wept. Holy night, indeed.

There is something magical and so touching to me about the sound of a choir. The way all these voices join together and create not just music but something more powerful, more beautiful. They create something sacred.

This passage from the book The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the perfect testament to that feeling of sacredness that surrounds me when I hear a choir:

“Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is full of vulgarity and triviality and consequence and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size and there’s this life we’re struggling through, full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck – it all disappears when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life banishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion…

Every time, the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close; I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So much, too much, emotion at once, it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong.

And I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everday life instead of being an exceptional moment during a choir. In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.”

Believing

2010-12-23T09:30:00.003-05:00

I had a conversation with a friend who told me that her husband had come clean about Santa with their daughter. The daughter was getting teased about believing at school so the Dad had a frank discussion with her about what he believes is the truth.

I don’t know what I would do if I was asked a direct question about the realness of Santa. My daughter E still believes in Santa, but I think her view of Santa is sort of a larger picture, magical sort of belief. Telling her to let go of that belief would be like telling her not to be who she is.

For guidance, I went to the authority , Francis P. Church. He’s the former editor of the New York Sun and the man who wrote the famous “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Clause” letter to the little girl who wrote to the paper to ask.

His response is beautiful testament to believing in the unseen.

“..Nobody sees Santa Claus but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof they aren’t there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You can tear apart a baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man nor even the unified strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside the curtain and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.”

I read that and I believe all over again.

Best wishes to you for a Christmas filled with the joy of the unseen.

First Snow

2010-12-21T00:00:00.001-05:00

Today we had our very first snow of the season.

And it’s my birthday.

The combination is leaving me a bit giddy.

In celebration, I am sharing this quote on the first snow. Though in reading it again, I think the same emotion can be applied to birthdays.

“I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything.”

-- Anne Sexton

Christmas Present

2010-12-19T12:14:00.004-05:00

This weekend, I got to celebrate Christmas with P and D, two of my oldest and dearest friends. We’ve celebrated Christmas together for almost twenty-five years, through so many different phases of our lives. And the while the nature of the celebrations has changed over the years, the tradition of being together, of celebrating the holiday and the gift of our friendship remains constant.

At this year’s celebration, my friend D introduced some of the Polish traditions that she learned from her dear Grandmother who passed away this year. Before the meal, we practiced one of the most revered Polish customs, the Breaking of the Oplatek. The Oplatek is a wafer, and before the meal, each person offers the wafer to another, along with a blessing for peace, for health, for happiness.

Breaking the Oplatek with someone is symbol of forgiveness and reminder of the importance of Christmas, God and family.

I loved how D brought part of her Grandmother’s traditions to our celebration of Christmas, and it struck me how that is really what Christmas is all about. It’s honoring all the Christmases that came before. It’s about brining the goodness, the lessons, and the love that grew out of those celebrations to the present day.

So today, as I hang ornaments on the tree with my daughter, I am feeling the presence of all those Christmases with me. The last Christmas I had with my father and the first Christmas I had with my daughter. The Christmas spent alone and the first Christmas I celebrated with my husband. The Christmas of plenty and the Christmas where we made all our gifts. Christmases of heartbreaking sadness and Christmases of utter joy.

And when I think about it, honoring traditions is what Christmas is all about. It’s a time to regain hope by retelling and celebrating the stories that are the foundation of my religion. So it feels right to celebrate my stories alongside the stories of my faith, and to find joy and wonder in the retelling of those stories, too.

Miracle

2010-12-12T16:24:00.007-05:00

I was at the bookstore a while back and at the checkout I saw these little silver discs with writing on them. It said:

You can live as if everything is a miracle. –Einstein

Which I thought was just great, so I followed my impulse and bought one and slipped the disc in the pocket of my jacket.

A few weeks later, I wore the jacket again, put my hand in the pocket and found the disc. I pulled it out and read it again. It said:

You can live as if nothing is a miracle.

“That’s not very inspiring,” I thought. “What kind of spiritual impulse buy was this?” I stuck the disc back in my pocket.

A couple of days later, scrounging for change to feed the parking meter I pulled out the damn thing again, and read:

You can live as if everything is a miracle.

What the? I turned the disc over and realized there are two sides to it, of course. (see post on the Middle Age Brain to fully understand how this can happen). The whole quote is:

You can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Thank you, Einstein.

I loved that there were two sides to this, and loved the fact that I got so mixed up about it. Because in my real life, do get baffled by that fact. I walk around like everything is good. fine, okay, but don’t often take the time to really look, to wonder, to shake my head and say, “Wow, what a miracle.”

So, one day, I decided to live as if everything was a miracle.

I started out the day with the usual long commute, but on this day there was a really bad accident. Three cars, lots of crushed metal. Yet there were no ambulances and everyone was out of their cars, looking safe. “What a miracle no one was hurt,” I thought.

A miracle, see, this is good. Let’s see what other miracles this day will hold.

I got to work and it dawned on me how, in a time when there are so many people who are struggling with the lack of work, it’s a amazing that I have this work that supports me and my family. Miracle.

I started writing and cranked out some really good pieces. I am so grateful that I have been given a gift that enables me to put sentences together and have them make sense, but on this day, I held it as a miracle.

Later, I went out to lunch to see what miracles I could find over chicken salad. At the café, I spied an adorable baby near me, and immediately started to make faces to get the baby to smile. The adorable baby’s mother told me that she and her husband were in the process of adopting this little seventeen-month old baby. She said they’d had her as a foster child since she was six months old, and the baby’s biological mother had just decided she can’t care for her. The Mom said, “We’ve wanted a baby for a long time, and if all goes well, by the end of the week, she’ll be ours.”

Honestly. Miracle, miracle, miracle.

Back to the office where the drudgery of the afternoon is broken up by a chat with my wonderful friend who makes me laugh every time we talk. Friendship, miracle. Laughter, bonus miracle.

Get in the car to drive and home and then get stuck in traffic, which is truly stretching the everything is a miracle theory. But, since I am stuck in traffic, I get to hear this story on NPR about a British DJ called Bonobo. He creates some really beautiful music which I’ve never heard before, so miracle.

And then I am home. I pour a glass of wine, and we que up iTunes to play my daughter E’s new favorite album, the sound track of Parent Trap 2 (which is really good, small miracle). I make dinner while my husband B and E play games and the dog stretches out on the floor. I sip my wine and dinner cooks. The Loving Spoonful sings “Do You Believe In Magic” and we all share our stories of the day.

And in that moment, I give thanks for the miracle of the food on our table, the warmth of our home, the goodness of stories and the simple yet glorious miracle that we all made it safely back to our table once again.

You can live as if everything is a miracle.
I highly recommend it.