I heard that Google was shutting down unused accounts... and so I decided that I'd better check in here so it's not unused anymore! I've been thinking about picking up blogging again...
Is anybody still out there? Hello? It's been an age!
Let me know if you want to catch up! <3
Love, PollyAnna
Sometimes I feel like my entire life up until now has just been a warmup.
A 54 year warmup.
The early years were spent just trying to figure things out - up from down, right from wrong. I got conflicting messages in those early years: I thought I knew right from wrong, and I was trying to do right, but I kept hearing how wrong I was. I don't have the clearest memories of that time: it was a time of confusion, and my confusion colors the memories, swirling and fading and glowing with bright light and sudden darkness and misty gray and the discordant sensation of spinning upside down without gravity to tell me which way to go.
Somewhere in my teen years I started to figure a few things out. I keep swirling and tipping over but sometimes I could glimpse sky or ground and think "ah so that's up and down" but then darkness and light and noise and flashing and silence, and so I kept holding on to those glimpses of stars and earth and trying to remember them so that I could affix myself into my space.
This looked like noticing when people were making things up. This looked like identifying my own desires, and stubbornly adhering to my longings, even when people in my life told me that my longings were strange and not for the likes of me. This looked like deciding that I was someone who wanted an education, that I wanted freedom - wings to fly the world, filled with ideas and dreams and possibilities. This looked like seeking independence. Sometimes it sounded like me telling my parents that I couldn't be them; sometimes it looked like refusing to take help. It looked like sex, and saying no, and experimenting with my power as a young woman. It also looked like shrinking from that power, so untested and strange, and hearing voices tell me that I would be burned by it, that it was imaginary, doomed.
A brief flash of time in my 20s that looked like travel. Graduation. Living alone - with houseplants and a cat and easy access to city amenities on the weekdays - delicious dinners and funny movies and on the really good days a play or a concert - and weekends spent in the woods, calling out "on your left!" and passing people the entire way before lounging at the lake, occassionally slapping a mosquito or diving in to glacial melt, feeling alive deep in my bones.
And then: marriage. A house. The deep call within myself to have a child - a girl, please let it be a girl, because if it is a boy how can I worship him and still love myself? A daughter, my very own, delivered into my arms. to teach me what love should look like and how much it hurts and all that is possible. To teach me all of my failures, to build my strength, to help me to dream again - first for her, then for me.
The failures, fast and furious. Mistakes were made. The wrong partner, the wrong life, the old messages creeping in and creating a swamp around my brain telling me that my dreams were too big, too free, too much. Staying small to make a small person feel better. Watching my own tiny small person become bigger and bigger, fighting to keep pace with her, always one step ahead, so that I wouldn't be too small to love her in the big ways she needed.
The failing of body. Of hope. Of my day to day routines, once taken up with playdates and grocery stores and Target runs and an infinite number of snacks and bedtime stories about princesses and elephants and cowboys and dinosaurs and orphaned girls who found their bliss and a girl on a prairie and a mouse who could dance but didn't understand that you're supposed to let the boys catch you (and wondering why not). My days now doctor's appointments and reading "Sammy's Mommy Has Cancer" so much we memorized it, finding strange comfort that it was not only us.
Years of this. Years of lonely and pretending. And then... the hope that the old dreams weren't wrong. Saying no to all of it, yes to career (faltering, failing, flying). Back to alpine lakes. Watching my girl child struggle, deep in her own sorrows, the childhood of cancer and divorce permeating her bones in a way I could not reach.
Grief, that old companion, whispering that it would never get better.
A year trapped in our homes, doors slammed, our deepest experience a trip to the grocery store to restock. Missed opportunities: there were no creative outbursts, no new fitness peaks, no home projects completed. Only holding on, the sensation of loss of gravity returning with force, nausea returning.
Sudden leaps. The daughter departs, finding her own wings, looking back over her shoulder and calling "I'll be back... sometime." Spinning, flailing, wondering. Grasping straws - pouring love into my students, grateful when they give it back. Finding my own way. Books, paddling, countless picnics with a basket near a tree by the sea and falling into someone else's stories. Imagining the fairy princess ending, spinning in a blue -then pink- then blue - dress in the arms of a prince.
No prince.
A trip to Italy better than a prince. Standing on an ancient bridge with my beloved child, swimming in a champagne prosecco sea, bathwater warm, effervescent. Astounded. This is - still possible? Are we really here?
Setbacks. Disneyland is an imaginary place, the rough and interesting edges smoothed off, dollars flying out of my pockets in return for - what ? For pretend experiences with pretend characters in a pretend town. Effervescent sliding back, the water gone still.
Out of stillness, something new again.
What if... what if, there is still more? If it was always Italy and a warm sea and my daughter's laughter in her blue bikini, healthy and strong and uncaring about anything except what we care about?
What if, right here, right now, on my walking treadmill, facing my backyard with the small brown rabbit who lives under a bush and the pink dogwood that is in stick season and teh grass that always needs mowing and the foxglove that plants itself whereever it pleases and the moss on the garage roof; what if here, with birds on the wires and houseplants everywhere and pictures of the women who believed I could and a pocket thesauras (so old fashioined) and candles and crystals and a notebook with a fox and a tin of pens and soft music playing from my phone and sweat on my skin and my mind seeing stars above and earth below, what if... what then?
The story writes itself. The girl inside me could not imagine the house with space for a treadmill ordered impulsively, hopefully, or the candles or the plants or the music. The young woman dreamed of it, determined. The young mother had it, but lost it, over and over in succession. The middle aged divorcee survivor begged for it, spinning again.
And here I am. The witchy woman with infinite power not yet controlled, the gifts unfurling at their own pace - the intuition that doesn't lie, the figures of speech that spring to mind, the glimpses of stars, the gripping of ground to try not to fall. All the rest has just been a warmup what is next.
My skin is warm, the treadmill still unfamiliar. The words are the right words but not there yet, not at all.
I didn't choose the childhood, the adulthood, the fall, or the rise. They revealed themselves to me in the ordinary ways, but I grabbed them by the shoulders, calling, "Why? Why? WHY?" until, on the good days, they gave the answers.
I know the answers. I know the hopes. I know that I have a path in front of me, if I'll only take it. That there are grizzlies, and treatment centers, and Gilmore girls, and houseplants, and a bunny, and a girl who is hours away trying to find her stars and earth. I know which path will lead me to where I want to be, and which will not.
Sweat on my skin, plastic keys at my fingertips. If I just keep walking, the stories reveal themselves.
I've been on a round the world trip that has always looped back to this spot, and the exhaustion is real. And now I'm in the right place to do my real warm up, for the new training regimen. I know where the stars are, and I know how to hug the forest to ground myself, and that I am made of saltwater. I know. So I am warming up my body, steadying myself, and deciding to go.
For real this time. Because one day it will be too late, but it isn't too late yet.
54 years is long enough for a warmup. Actually, it's the right amount of time, of this I am sure. I've been looking for signs, and the signs are getting tired of showing up for me, their frequent visits wearying them. My pocket is full of four leaf clovers, magic mushrooms, dorsal fins and seal faces and eclipses and foxglove that plants itself and visions that come true and knowing that knows.
Yes. Now then. Now. Yes.
Yesterday Tessa and I went on a spontaneous day trip to Vancouver to play tourist and have a good day together. We started on Granville Island (and I bought a delightfully witchy home made broom from an artisan shop there - I've been coveting it for years and finally splurged), walked up and down Robson Street, had dinner at a location overlooking the water at English Bay. It was lovely. Tessa and I wore sundresses, chatted, saw the city, ate good food, bought books. Tessa even had her first cocktail in a North American bar - the drinking age in Canada is lower, so we had pre-dinner Aperol Spritzes. It was lighthearted, relaxing, and fun. My heart felt joyful.
Tessa and I have reached a peaceful place in our relationship that I'm loving thoroughly. We've been enjoying each others' time this summer, and a day telling stories and listening to Taylor Swift in the car on the way up, with a stop at Starbucks to fill our commuter mugs (coffee for me, lemonade for her), was almost as fun as the actual trip. Looking at the artisan items at the market - prints, jewelry, pottery, glass, and so much more - and enjoying them together with no intention of buying them was just as wonderful. She bought ketchup potato chips and Smarties and Coffee Crisp at London Drugs: such small pleasures - but such deep pleasures.
While we were in the bookstore Indigo on Robson Street, we separated (me to look at literary fiction and witchy books; her to look at books about female spies in WWII and murder mysteries), each happily browsing and lost in our own thoughts, and the song "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter came on in the store.
"Bad Day" and I have a long history. It came out when I was newly diagnosed with breast cancer, and I'd sit in my chemo chair as the poison dripped into me, listening to it on repeat on my iPod shuffle. I'd play it over, and over, and over, reminding myself that this was just a bad day - not a life, just a bad day, and that it would pass. I don't even know why it gave me as much comfort as it did, but the idea that I could have a bad day to this degree (more frightened than I knew was possible, often lonely with an intensity that scared me) but still frame it as just a day that would pass, changed me and helped me to cope. I don't hear the song that often, and I don't choose to listen to it on my playlists anymore, but when I do hear it I'm instantly awash in those old feelings and memories.
So there I was, having a really, truly, deeply good day with my daughter, lingering in a bookstore in a beautiful city across the border on a hot sunny day, merely because I wanted to, my heart full and happy, and the song came on and hit me with an intense wave of remembering all of it.
I paused for a moment to take it in. The good days that I dreamed of back then, that seemed like a fantasy on Cinderella or lottery levels, had come to reality. My bad days were, miraculously, good.
It wasn't just the vacation day, it's everything that leads to that day being possible. It's having a job that gives me summers off, having a daughter who chooses to spend time with me, having work that not only pays the bills but is deeply enjoyable. It's about ending the relationships that made me feel lonely - because lonely and alone are NOT the same thing - so that I could pursue a life that made me feel joyful. It's about having a good therapist, and good health, and a million dreams. It's about having a calendar filled with lovely plans, and a phone buzzing with texts from my favorite people, and snapping selfies with Tessa. It's about feeling at home in bookstores, and about enjoying the fact that Tessa feels the same way (we aren't at all the same person, but having some overlaps to what we love is truly a gift).
I let the feelings wash over me, remembering the really truly bad days and reveling in this really truly good one... and then I went back to browsing. I felt peaceful.
Minutes after hearing the song and reflecting on it, my phone pinged, and I checked it, expecting a message from maybe Susan or Carolyn about our upcoming trip. It was my estranged brother, telling me that my mother (from whom I am also estranged) was just diagnosed with breast cancer.
For a moment, the world around me trembled, threatening to crumble. Time shimmered, this wonderful bookstore travel day warping into the old days of being in a family where boundaries are not understood or allowed, where yelling and name calling is commonplace, and where the hopes and dreams that make me who I am are mocked and disparaged. I felt the cool, teal plastic feeling of the chemo chair, the ache of my tender skin around the portacath. I felt the metallic nausea in the back of my teeth, where it always hit me first. I felt the pasted on smile of trying to be kind to the nurses while I longed to rip the tubes away and run to the forest. I felt the indescribable exhaustion of trying to parent a toddler through it all; I felt the brave terror of putting on a swimsuit over my mastectomy and taking my daughter to a pool, watching the whispers of "that poor woman" as the sun reflected off my bald head and I pretended not to care.
I felt the loneliness of my parents saying "you don't mind if we go on a road trip as you start treatment, do you?" and hearing my own voice say "of course not, you take care of yourselves" and realizing that I was entering a deeper loneliness than I knew possible.
And I felt that of course I love my mother, and long for reconciliation and wellness, and that I wish for a world in which she was deeply well in mind and body, and that I'd never wish this upon her, and that part of me wanted to show up with a lasagna and some distracting magazines and attend every doctor's appointment...
And all of those feelings collided together, the joy of today and the pain of yesterday and the wish for my mother and I to be well and the reality that brought us to estrangement and I felt dizzy, as if the world was blurring and shimmering like a mirage, and my legs weren't quite steady.
I found Tessa sitting at a table, engrossed in a book about a Parisian spy, her pink and black sundress a playful tribute to summer; her shiny long hair hanging down her back and draping around her face. I shared my phone with her, and saw her face as she absorbed the news, quickly looking up and examining my face for a response. She murmered, "I hope she's going to be okay..." and then she softly asked, "How are you?"
How am I? Do I know?
I do. I do know.
I am incredibly sad that my mother has to fight this stupid disease, but delighted that her single tumor is quite small, and that if I'm right, it looks like her prognosis is excellent, and that her treatment should be much less invasive than mine. I know for certain that I want her to be well, that I hope that her treatment goes smoothly, and that this will become a blip for her, not a life defining or ending moment. She's in her 70s, and I hope she still has decades to live.
I also know that I cannot change my boundaries because of this new information.
My boundary, at the most basic level, is "No yelling, no name calling, and no belittling." I've repeated that boundary in writing and verbally to my parents, and I'm clear about it. The estrangement started when my father yelled, "I'm ashamed to be your father! I'm ashamed you are my daughter!" and hung up the phone on me because he disagrees with my politics, and I realized in that moment, after many years of struggle and inability to hold boundaries, and his name calling and my placating and my mother excusing, that this was not okay, and that I could never change them, and that I couldn't be true to myself and in relationship with them at the same time.
A few years into estrangement, one of my best friends (who has known my parents since we were in high school), called my mother to try to set things right, believing that my mother could see reason. My mother responded with anger and tears, and told my friend "I gave her a perfect childhood!" and then my friend called me in tears and said, "It's worse than I imagined, and she's in denial, and she made it all about her..." and we agreed that NOBODY has a perfect childhood, but mine was remarkable in many ways that were so far from perfect that it's laughable. My friend said, "I realized in that call that it will never change, and I'm so sorry" and I actually felt relief that she saw what I saw.
My parents are products of their own upbringing. They had genuine struggles in their families of origin, then they married each other when they were just babies (19 and 21) because they were pregnant with me. They quite likely did the best they could, using the only tools they had. Unfortunately, though, they didn't have enough tools, and they doubled down and refused to look for more tools. Their relationship with one another is both loving and deeply dysfunctional and painful for me to watch: I knew from an early age that I didn't want what they had, and that my father's yelling and my mother's crying were both manipulative, scary, and unhealthy. Unsurprisingly, though I tried to find something different, my marriage was in too many ways a reflection of theirs.
But it's not what I want for myself, and it's not what I want for my daughter.
I don't want my mom to be sick, or lonely, or scared. I want her to be healthy, happy, and peaceful.
But that's what I want for myself too, and I do not know how to be healthy, happy, or peaceful with people who shame or belittle me, and it is not my job to try.
***
My life is - mostly - a series of really good days these days.
I'm single, but I'm not lonely.
I am proud of my relationship with my daughter, and of the way we talk to one another, and the structure of our relationship. She's not perfect, and I'm not perfect, but my love for her is immense and I feel her love in return. We enjoy each other's company - most of the time! I don't expect her to be like me, to like all the same things I do, and we certainly have our differences, but those differences make things interesting and I love the way we accept each other not despite the differences but often because of them.
I feel connected to my community. I have long term friends, and I make new friends, and I have work friends, and neighborhood friends, and I feel rooted in West Seattle.
I'm healthy. I walk, paddle board, do yoga, hike, and (rarely but I'm trying!) run. I eat pretty well. I do therapy, and I try to grow to be the best me that I can be. I often make changes, trying to find new exercise patterns or to change a way of thinking, and I challenge myself to be my best me. I often fail at this, but when I see a failure I try to make a correction (no blame, no shame, just growth).
I do work that is meaningful and important, and I love it, and I'm good at it. I think my work as a teacher makes the world a better place, and I'm always trying to learn more and to become a better teacher.
I am learning to be a traveler again, and whether it's Italy, Maine, or California, or just up the road to British Columbia, I love finding new ways to adventure.
I'm learning to be a writer, to follow that bliss, even when it's painful.
I'm learning to open my heart to romantic love.
I'm learning to love myself, and to accept that I'm imperfect with a lot of room to grow, but that doesn't stop me from being amazing and worthy of all of the goodness that life has to offer.
***
Yesterday was a very good day, with a memory of bad days, and the fear of more bad days. But while I can't control whether my own cancer returns, or whether I will find true love, or a million other things, I can control what I let into my life, and I can control my own boundary setting.
I hope my mom doesn't have deeply bad days. I wish her love, and health, and peace. I wish it could be different between us. But because I know what good days and bad days look like in my own life, I can't swoop in to help her. I can't make her bad days good again, and I won't unlearn all of my hard lessons about boundaries and their truths. I do not have the power to heal what is between us, and if I sacrifice my health and well being it will not actually make things better - it will only harm the years of growth I've worked so hard to achieve.
My days are mostly good days because I have boundaries. We teach people how to treat us, and we set boundaries over what we will and will not tolerate in our lives. We set boundaries about how we will live: about what time we will get up, about where we choose to work hard, and where we choose to celebrate, and about who joins us in the hard work and the celebrations. We set boundaries around the work we will or will not do. We set boundaries about how we will and will not live, what we will and will not tolerate, and about who gets to see our tender hearts and who doesn't.
***
The song "Bad Day" reminds me that some days really are rotten... but they're just a day. A day passes, and a new day comes to replace it. My life is filled with goodness - some of it gifted, and some of it hard earned. I have to work hard to keep the good days, and to fight off the bad ones. I'm never going back to a place in my life where I give anyone else power over me to dictate my good and bad days.
The boundaries stand, so that the good days can win.
I had a good day.
Yesterday I hit the wall a bit. I had a lovely start to the day, got a few chores done, walked to meet a friend for brunch... and then, I just stopped. I didn't plan on stopping - I had a long list of things I could or should do - but, without my deciding to stop, inertia took over.
Welcome, phase two of summer.
Last year was tough at school. I can't quite put my finger on the why: it wasn't traumatic and insane like the quarantine year, or a huge adjustment like hybrid teaching (let's never do that again), or even an adjustment back to "regular" teaching. In some ways, it was a normal year... but it didn't feel normal. I'm still sorting out out, but I saw that my colleagues struggled more than usual, as did I; I saw that the kids were falling apart. And from about March onward, I was just holding on by my fingernails.
The first phase of summer is a joyous gasp - I made it! Delight rises up past the exhaustion, and the world feels hopeful again. There is reconnecting with friends, getting the house back in order, spending time outdoors, making fresh salads for lunch and delighting in the fact that I have the time to do so. There's paddle boarding, long walks and short runs, picnics. There's more gardening in a week than I did in the past ten months.
And now... the second phase, which I didn't plan, but has arrived right on time. Slowing down. Staring into space. Sleeping in a bit. (At 53, I find that 8am feels the way 2pm used to - insanely decadent and surprising and a bit disorienting.) Realizing that summer won't last forever, and feeling it slip away a bit. Starting to ponder what I need to do, what I long to do. It's tinged, strangely, with a bit of boredom and restlessness: my friends aren't available to play with me all the time, and my daughter is doing 20 year old things, and I feel a bit at loose ends. It's not horrible, but it's not that great, either. There is no exhilaration, there's more deflation.
But I wonder if this is where the good stuff starts? If this is where I can get real with myself, and now that I've rested a bit and burned off the frenetic energy of surviving what came before, if I can see if I can turn that boredom into some new creative energy? If instead of running to the sea, I can sit with my thoughts long enough to gently reshape some parts of my life? I think that phase two is about getting real with myself, taking on some chores - housework, yardwork, soul work, financial work - and making some real progress.
I'm working on the book. I get so scared, but I went back and re-read the first chapter of what I'd written, and I got excited. There's something there. And if I can only work past my fear, I will get there.
Phase two gets real. Let's hope that I can use it wisely, and start settling in to the real me - messy and hopeful, still yet productive.
And there's still time for summer. Today is the outdoor theater festival and I can't wait to sit in the sun and listen to Shakespeare. I'm doing this one solo - it's not easy finding Shakespeare friends! - but I don't mind. It's time to go and be myself.
But first... it's time to write. Phase two.
I'm two weeks into summer and figuring out a few things, as I do every summer.
Every summer is a reset for me. I absolutely love being on the academic calendar, which seems so much more civilized than the grind of go-go-go all year round with only a week here or there to recover. What I've learned is that it actually takes me a full week to come down from the school year. The first week off is about recovering - outdoor time, sleeping in (although, at 53, my body thinks that 8am is wasting away the day, and I can rarely sleep past 7:30am, which my 20-something self would think was getting up at the crack of dawn), reading, spending time at the beach, catching up on laundry. The first week passes in a blur, even though there are times with friends and glasses of wine on the deck.
But the second week, I can start to think, and to plan, and to remember who I am, and to start to pull myself together for real.
Over the course of the school year, I forget who I am outside of teaching. In summer, I remember again.
Yesterday, I did so much gardening that my face dripped with sweat, and when I had a shower afterwards the water washed away brown. The weeds in my yard have grown atrocious and unfriendly, and they'd choked out the strawberry bed. Digging in the soil, yanking them out by their roots, and filling the yard waste bin is strangely satisfying. Adding compost and mulch, watering deeply, I could see the plants smiling in relief and gratitude and joy - or maybe that's just how I felt. It's too late for this year's crop of strawberries, but tending to the earth is its own joy, and it feels so darned good.
Today I'm going to tackle another part of the yard. Bending over, wrestling with thick roots, lifting the yard waste container is quite a workout. My body complains about it for sure - but I can feel the glow, too. My body is not made to hunch over a desk in florescent lighting. My body longs to be outside, to move, to bend and twist and lift, to take many steps. The soil in my yard longs for compost. The soil in my soul longs for it, too.
It's so easy to get caught up in the cycle of early alarms, students with never-ending needs, sitting in a car during the commute, struggling to figure out dinner again. During the school year, I often forget what feeds my soul.
Gardening isn't my answer - there's no one answer, and if anyone saw my yard they'd know that I'm not much of a gardener (yet - there is always time!). But it's a piece of the answer.
My body loves to move (even when I don't want to). And it loves the fresh salads I've been making myself, with farro and lentils and fresh tomatoes and greens from the farmer's market. It loved dinner the other night, verdure griglia - lovely eggplant and peppers and a zucchini from my friend's garden, brushed with a wonderful olive oil filled with herbs and garlic - with a side of polenta and grilled halloumi. It felt decadent, but the truth is that it was just so incredibly simple.
Or is it? Maybe it's the most complicated thing ever: to sit on a deck with a peekaboo view of the Sound, surrounded by trees, eating fresh food in the sunshine with my daughter... maybe that's the most complicated, best thing ever. To do so after a day well lived (books, music, yard work, friends, errands) makes it sweeter. To be aware that this is a season where I have time and energy not available all year round makes it even sweeter. That meal was the cumulation of of a year's work... of a lifetime's work.
It's taken me a lifetime to feel this good. To see my daughter thriving in college, to living in community surrounded by good people I call friends, to have enough in my bank balance to keep panic at bay, to have work that is right for me and to know that I'm good at it and adding value to the world - this is the best of life. That dinner on the deck wasn't just about throwing some veggies on the grill, it was the result of decades of hard work.
I'm trying to work even harder so that I can figure out the next joys, too. I'm trying to forget old messages given to me by people who, in their own hurt and confusion, hurt me. I'm trying to remember the truth of my soul, not just because it's summer, but because it feels like the summer of my life. I've made it through some dark times when firewood was scarce and I felt like the cold might do me in, and now the sun is on my skin and the water is sparkling and the meadows are sweet.
My birth family has some tragically unhealthy habits, and the hurts they carry seeped into my bones, too. I feel for them: their wounds are raw and visible, even though they pretend they're not. My marriage threatened to make that my life, too - my marriage rules were dangerous to my soul, threatened to drown me. (In service of what, I wonder? It didn't serve him, either.)
But here I am, a decade away from the end of my marriage, and six years from the end of my relationship with my parents, and the pruning and weeding I've done is starting to pay off. My field was fallow for a long time, trying to forget what hurt me, but now I feel myself coming into life in a new way, remembering what came before the hurt, the things that I've known all along, and calling them into my life.
I'm writing again, and - gasp! - I like what I'm writing. It doesn't hurt to write this story, it doesn't call on me to have a dark night of my soul, to reveal the wounds and debride them. I'm having fun with it, exploring and wondering and feeling a deep tug within myself.
I'm moving my body more, and whether it's yoga, running, walking, SUP, hiking, or gardening, my body is grateful. I avoid the scale - unlike Bridget Jones, I refuse to let it tell me how much I'm worth - but I can feel the gentle changes, and I know it's trying to remember what it's meant to be, also. I'm reading more than I have in years. I've filled 1.5 journals so far this year. My garden is filled with fresh herbs. My daughter is filled with stories. My calendar is filled with plans. My toes are painted a color called "Follow your bliss." My bookcase is filled with old friends, and new treats awaiting me. My car is loaded with beach chairs and paddle boards and picnic blankets.
This is what summer is for. Every summer, I think, "oh - yes, this is who I am!" and get closer to who I am meant to be. Every summer I get a little closer, back to the person I'm trying to be. It's a gift, to be given this time, and I hope to use it wisely (which is not always "productively" - there is such joy in sitting on a log at the beach, or reading a fun novel*, or having a glass of Aperol spritz with a friend, and those things are not to be foregone in order to be productive; productivity has its place but so does relaxation).
It's time to forget patterns that don't serve me, and to remember who I am, and who I'm meant to be.
I'm creative. I was made to love and be loved. I'm a nature girl. I'm part mermaid. I am light. Well - that's the goal, anyway, and the journey today feels really good.
Happy summer!
* Emily Henry's "Happy Place" is such a joy. I sent copies to my two oldest friends to enjoy, too. It's a great love story, but more than that it's about friendships, and about overcoming old patterns. Ahhh. Delight!
I have a difficult relationship with the Fourth.
For one thing, it reminds me that I didn't start here: I'm a Canadian at heart, a transplant below the 49th parallel. My American roots are deeper than my Canadian ones because I moved here at 16, many more than 16 years ago. I've had my citizenship many years, and I've never voted in a Canadian election, only in American ones, and yet if I was a salmon, I'd migrate back to the Fraser River, or maybe Goldstream, a little lost but sure it's where I came from. The Duwamish is my adopted homeland and beloved, but though the landscape is familiar, the trees and flowers and seasons assuring me that I am at home where I belong, the politics will forever be foreign to me.
In America, there's the guns (and the fact that the first thing I do every day as I enter my classroom is prepare for a school shooting by relocking my classroom door and putting a magnet over it, so that if the active shooter is in the hall I can quickly pull the magnet and lock him out). And the lack of healthcare (I never, ever, ever forget that Emily - who did not have health insurance at her breast cancer diagnosis, almost identical to mine, died many years ago, and I'm still alive because I had great insurance). And the fact that instead of coming to some kind of agreement with the British, like the Canadians did, the Americans needed to grab those guns and fight in the revolutionary war. It seems like a good idea the way the Americans tell the story, creating a nation in which all men could be "equal under God," but the reality is much more complicated; many groups weren't even pretended to be included in that "equality." As a woman, I still am not equal in the eyes of the law in America, and I know how lucky I am to be born into white skin that grants me unearned privileges that my POC sisters do not receive.
It's not perfect in Canada, but...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/
https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/the-gender-pay-gap/
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/14-28-0001/2020001/article/00003-eng.htm
In Canada, the average pay gap is 7% less than it is for American women. Furthermore, the gender pay gap in America has basically stalled out since the early 2000s, whereas it's fallen 7% since 1998 in Canada.
In Canada, I have a right to my body. In America, a woman loses that right with pregnancy. I am livid about that.
In Canada, we sing of our "home and native land" and "the true north, strong and free" but in America we sing of "the rockets red glare" and "bombs bursting in air."
To celebrate, Americans today will set off fireworks - bombs in the air, indeed. We are experiencing drought, and undoubtedly there will be fires. I'll go to my favorite little beach tomorrow with a trash sack, and pick up fireworks debris left there by those who don't care about my favorite seal who resides along the shoreline there (she's medium gray with darker gray markings, and she has the prettiest eyes, and she let her baby swim up to my paddle board once).
I don't get it. I don't get it at all.
And yet...
And yet, I have the right and the power to critique my government, and here I am, typing things that would surely land me in jail if I lived in Russia or Saudi Arabia. "The land of opportunity" has allowed me to get an education, to work for a living wage, to live in comfort in a home with more space than I need, with cupboards and a refrigerator bursting with food. The water that comes out of my tap is clean (clearly I don't live in Flint), and my connection to the power grid is stable (so clearly I don't live in Texas or California). I have a home filled with books, and music, and houseplants; it's often filled with friends. In the summer, my daughter comes home from college and fills the home with her laughter (and her messes!).
I love my life, and I love my adopted homeland. But love isn't permissive: a true and faithful love has strong boundaries, and calls out the best in the beloved. I need to rise up as a lover of America and fight to make her the nation she deserves to be; America needs to do a better job of figuring out the "equal" doesn't mean "equal for some."
My relationship with the Fourth is complicated, indeed. But there is a rhubarb raspberry galette that just came out of the oven, and some juicy tomatoes just waiting to be turned into caprese salad, and a neighborhood party with kids running around. I'll go, and maybe nobody will notice that I left off the blue in my red, white and blue outfit.
Happy Fourth, everyone, whether or not you celebrate. I dream of an America where you may receive equality that grants you opportunities regardless of your gender, sexuality, race, or ethnicity; I dream of an America where we value our children more than guns; I dream of an America where my body is nobody else's business; I dream of an America where health insurance isn't an indicator of health outcomes. And because I'm an optimist, I still think we can get there. Slower than I want for sure, but I'm hopeful.
This Canadian American is hopeful.
Hello, old friend.
Writing is my old friend. The first time that I remember feeling like a writer was in the second grade: I had only been able to read for two years (up until my friend Cheryl P. asked me if I wanted her to read me a book while we were in kindergarten, and I looked at her, shocked, and said something like, "Kids can read?!" and immediately got down to business to learn how), and our teacher asked us to write a myth. I wrote a story about polar bears - how they turned white, I think? - and while we were tasked to write a paragraph or such, I wrote pages. Pages and pages... and I didn't feel done when I turned it in, I felt like I could write forever.
I should rephrase that. I didn't feel like a writer at all - that was akin to feeling like a unicorn, or a Douglas fir tree, or a million dollars. It was unimaginable that I could be a writer, because I didn't feel talented or special - and I was sure that writers were the most talented, special people on the planet - but I knew that I needed to write. If only I had better understood semantics at the tender age of seven, I would have realized that my drive to write meant that I was a writer.
I scribbled in my journals. I wrote poetry. I imagined stories. I submitted a poem to the festival (?) on Mayne Island one summer, and I labored over it. Why I still remember it, I don't know...
Playing on the rocks and sand
I feel a tiny crab gently pinch my hand.
I turn around and see a fish,
And then I hear a gentle "wish.
Seals and otters playfully glide,
Gleefully jumping in the tide...
There was more, but that's all I remember. It wasn't Rumi, but it was the truth of my summers, and somehow I'd captured something that I felt about what it meant to be barefoot and lost in the tidepools of the rocky beaches. When I won a ribbon, I was genuinely astonished - why would anyone want to read something I'd written? Why would anyone relate to my experiences? I think I was somewhere between 9-11 when I wrote it.
In junior high, the yearbook published a poem I'd written. I refused to let them put my name on it, sure that it was a trick, that maybe some mean girl was mocking me. I don't know why I felt that way: I wrote because I had to, and my teacher submitted it because he liked it, and why wouldn't someone else like it?
A couple of years ago I decided to get published within the year, no matter how small the publication, and I set it as a New Year's Resolution. A couple of weeks later, I saw a call for letters to the New York Times, and I put something together over lunch at work and submitted it between classes. They published it, and my heart sang - I think they published 40 letters of the 1000 or so they received, and I was so proud. So proud that I was terrified of the feeling, and I didn't write anything for close to a year after that.
And then I decided to write my book, the Serious Book that was about Important Things that had been floating in my brain for years. I worked on it, fell short, worked more... and stopped again, frozen once more.
And then I went to my friend's wedding - the famous friend, the one who is (among other things) a writer, and she introduced me to all her of wonderful friends as "she's a writer" and I felt like crawling in a hole, because I knew that I was a fraud with constant writers' block and a brain prone more to fog than brilliance.
And yet...
And yet, I long to write, and I know that there is something there there.
So I'm changing my ways. Slowly, but surely, I am..
I'm letting go of the idea that I have to be smart, or good, or important.
Release.
I'm opening up my heart, my mind, my soul to the knowledge that whatever I write, it will be enough. I long for the world to read it and find delight and healing... but even if I am the only one who finds delight and healing* it will be enough, because I was born to write. I'm ready for the gift to appear; I'm ready to take risks and ask for help and dedicate time and try.
I have been holding tight to some old ideas, passed down through the generations to me. Ideas like "life is hard so work harder" or "you are nothing and nobody" and "what makes you think you're so special?" and - on my bad days, when my father's words echo in my brain - "you're stupid and lazy and what the hell's the matter with you?!"
It's time to release. Whether I'm a genius or an idiot is irrelevant. I'm letting go of all of those definitions of myself (which were really definitions given to too many in the world) and receive.
Receive.
I keep thinking about the imagine of a fist, holding tight to whatever treasures it contains. The fist protects, the fingers clutching the gifts, fearful of dropping them or having them taken, the fingers squeeze until they cramp and the fingernails bite the palms and the weary soul says "just hang on..." I've been hoarding my idea of writing like that, holding it tight to me to protect it, in fear that if it sees the light it will crumble to dust, or reveal its ugliness, or I will simply find that it doesn't exist.
But...
But if I open my hands, unfurling my fingers like flower petals, then the gifts can breathe. Then my writing can be in the world, open to receive new ideas, new readers, new life. If I open my hands, I might find a butterfly landing on them, or the warmth of sunshine, or a dog's wet nose, or the hand of a belove.
I'm going to try very, very hard, with all the might I have within me, to release fear so that I can feel the light. Whatever the shape of the thing I hold in my hands, it is suffocating in my fist. What will happen if I loosely clutch it, hands open, so that I can see all of it, from every angle? What does it really look like, anyway, after so many years in the dark? If it's more raisin than fruit I couldn't blame it - I haven't given it sunshine or nourishment; the rain hasn't been able to reach its skin.
I love the feeling of rain on my skin: an upturned face to the sky, mouth open to catch the drops. I love dashing through puddles, giggling as I get drenched. I am a lucky one: I've always had a place to go when I was finally too cold and wet to stay outside, and there is such joy in toweling off damp hair, putting on warm cozy clothes, and curling up with a hot mug of tea as the rain pelts the windows. Sometimes the rain is cold and the puddles muddy or greasy... but the joy of coming home, getting dry and warm, is only possible if one experiences the rain first... otherwise it's just another day walking in the door.
I've started taking notes on my phone when I get ideas, and I've got a slim red notebook that I carry in my purse to write down ideas. Every time I go for a walk or a run by myself, new ideas pop into my head. Stories of witches (oh, I'm releasing the idea that I have to be brilliant and wise, and I don't care about anything but telling my stories now, so maybe I don't have to be so serious), essays about mothers and daughters, small poems about my secret heart.
I have it in my head that my writer's block is connected to my lover's block: that believing in myself enough to write is my true self love, and that only when I have self love like that will I find my true love. It's a lovely symmetry, and life is rarely quite so symmetrical, but I think... I think maybe I'm right. And I feel myself letting go of the blocks, ready for what comes next in a creative life.
(Do I curse myself to put that in writing, like a wish that can't come true if I tell it? Or do I manifest my heart's desire? Well... whatever it is, I'm letting go of that old fear.)
I have things to say, and I have love to give.
So it's time to write. It's time to love. And in between, I think I'll go on a walk. It's teacher summer, and I'm hitting the reset button on what doesn't serve me. I'm ready to be ME.
*healing: My stories spread love and light in the world, and offer healing. The world longs for healing, and I long to heal. Does that make me a healer as well as a writer? Let it be so.
***
Today I went to the memorial service for a friend of 18 years - he was a neighbor, but more importantly, he was my daughter's dear friend's father. Since our girls were toddlers they've shuffled back and forth between our two houses, with countless sleepovers and playdates. They've shared every single birthday, one quincenera, two graduations. The parents drove them to roller skating, birthday parties, pools, ice skating. There were more shared meals than I could possibly count - because at the end of the playdate, wouldn't it be nice if you just stayed over? There were Halloween parties annually, and one memorable snowy Christmas where we got snowed in but since we could walk to each others' homes we shared our celebrations. It wasn't just the girls going back and forth - it was their parents, too, mothers and fathers meeting at the rink, or in the living room, or the trailhead, and enjoying our daughters but enjoying each others' company, too.
It's hard to believe that this loving, warm, funny, and crazy-smart father is gone.
He gave me a gift before he left.
The last time he was in my house, it was for a dinner party. I was in the kitchen, and he followed me there, and gave me a small speech about how much it meant to him that I had been such a big part of his daughter's life, and how much he appreciated my support of her, and my presence in his own parenting journey. He told me how much I meant to him.
It was the last time we ever spoke - I had no idea (and nor did he) that these would be his parting words to me.
His daughter is in my home right now, after a day of attending his memorial - our two girls are snuggled under fuzzy blankets on the sofa, eating the snacks of their childhoods, laughing at a movie they're watching together. The movies have changed, but their friendship and connection hasn't changed, and having them here together feels as natural as breathing, even though my daughter's just finished her sophomore year of college and his daughter is a dancer in NYC, even though they sold their home near ours a year ago, even though there have been life struggles and changes that those little sparkly toddlers couldn't have imagined.
But I keep thinking about that conversation, and how he pulled me aside and looked me in the eye and told me how important I was in his daughter's life, and how much she needed that, and how much he appreciated me. In hindsight, it seems like foreshadowing of a request. He loved his daughter deeply and well, and while there are many people in her life who love her, he passed some part of that torch to me. His final words were about the importance of my presence in her life... and I am thinking about them.
20 is still far too young to lose a parent. Isn't 20 really just a kid?
I'm committed to helping that kid navigate life without her father. I'm committed to being a loving a solid presence in her life.
Old friend, I miss you. I fear I took you for granted, never fully understanding your brilliance, athleticism, depth. I admired you, but I think there was so much more to know, and in that way, I feel the failure of missing out. But this I will not fail in: I will love your daughter, be part of her circle of wellness, safety, refuge. I will never be her parent, but I will take your words as a reminder of where I am needed and show up every time. Thank you for the parting gift of your great kindness, of your acknowledgement of all that we have shared in our parenting journey. I'm so grateful that I knew you, and I'll keep doing the joyful work of being in your daughter's life. I promise.
In loving memory of JS - gone too soon.
Michelle Obama titled her book Becoming, and perhaps one of the reasons that it was so popular is that most of us can relate: we're all becoming.
I am no different. I've been on a journey, but that journey is a process that I can't entirely predict, except to say that I'm determined to get a happy ending, whatever that may mean.
Lately, I'm working on my process more. It's the end of the school year - two weeks left! - and I'm barely holding on, fighting what Urgent Care says is likely walking pneumonia, and definitely under the weather physically. But the end of this school year is so close, and it is such a relief to think that I've made it this far, and that I will likely make it across the finish line (even if I am stumbling, I'll make it). Summer opens up a world of possibilities, and a chance to set the reset button, as well as to have adventures, and I'm SO ready for that. It's a time of year when I process what's working in my life, and what I want to do more or less of.
I have things I'm looking forward to - a long list. I can't wait to sit on a beach and read in the sunshine (and every day of my life I'm so grateful that a lovely park with a beach is a mere mile - walking distance - from my home). I can't wait to have the neighbors over for BBQ or Aperol Spritzes. I can't wait for summer concerts (I have a number of tickets, including the much coveted Taylor Swift concert), for long hikes, for camping. And I've got a long list of projects: painting my bedroom, fixing a leaning fence, gardening.
But the biggest project of all is myself.
I'm back in therapy, and we've only had one session so far, but she's my favorite therapist from long ago, and I was able to return to her because now she takes my insurance. Even though our one session so far (the next one is next week) could only cover a tiny amount of ground, it set the wheels in motion for me to think about who am I, who I am not, who I long to be, and all of the patterns - good, bad, and neutral - in my life. This is a wonderful time for me to start therapy, because I'm not dealing with anything 'big' - my life is, for the most part, really good. I just want to make it better, move on to the next plane of my existence, fulfilling some of my potential that is yet untapped.
I do think it's working.
Recently (and the details really aren't important) someone at work crossed a boundary in their behavior to me. I calmly asked them to stop; they continued. I asked again, slightly more firmly. They were clearly offended that I asked for this (entirely reasonable) boundary, and stomped off, stuck in their own feelings. Usually, in this type of situation, I would have gone to that person to try to fix, solve, explain, and engage. Usually I would have carried the weight of it inside me, processing how I could have made it go better, whether or not I was in the wrong, how I could help them see my side.
But not this time, and not because of my relationship with this person, but because of my relationship with myself. This time, somehow I knew with certainty that I was "allowed" to have boundaries, that my boundaries are reasonable, and that "hurt people hurt people" and that this person's behavior was about them, not me. I shook my head and thought "what the actual ***!" but then I moved on. Not unsurprisingly, after a few weeks, this person contacted me, still not understanding that their behavior was inappropriate (because hurt people hurt people, I keep reminding myself), and wanted to engage further. Again, I set my boundaries - clearly stating that I did not appreciate being yelled at or talked over, and that I could not sign up on a project with them knowing that such behavior was likely to be repeated (this was not the first time I've had difficult interactions with this individual).
There's some discomfort - now they won't like me! Maybe they can't see it my way! Maybe they will say things about me to other coworkers! - but there is also... peace.
I know who I am, and I know that people don't always do or say what I wish they would - and that's okay. I also know that when someone crosses my boundaries, I am allowed to state my needs and hold the boundary.
Honestly, reading this, it seems like a giant, "duh!" and like the most obvious statement ever... but if it was so obvious, it wouldn't be so hard. I grew up in a family where boundaries were not encouraged or respected, and sometimes they were even mocked. I was taught to place my parents' (and brother's) needs before my own, and that if I didn't do so it was because I was selfish, or lazy, or stupid, or unloving.
Case in point: sometime around the time I was ten, my mom was crossing boundaries (yelling at me, not respecting my clothing choices if they were different than hers, keeping me close to her and saying that if I loved her I wouldn't go with my friends, I'd want to be with her...) and I got mad and told her to stop, and that she was being unfair. Her response was to cry, and to say, "Well, since I'm such a terrible mother, I guess I'll just put you up for adoption so that you can get the family you deserve..." and her ploy worked. I was SO frightened that she would follow through, that I begged for her forgiveness and told her she was the best mom ever and that I'd do better.
I learned my lesson: setting boundaries leads to withdrawal of love and support. Is it any wonder I had difficulty setting boundaries after learning such lessons so young? The lesson was repeated over and over. I've been out of contact with my parents for several years (my father shouting "I'm ashamed to be your father! I'm ashamed you are my daughter!" in response to something political I put on Facebook was my final straw...!) but a couple summers ago my mom was sick with Covid and I feared she would die, so I called her. The call was horrible. She said she missed me, and I said "I would love to have a relationship with you. If you can agree to no name calling, yelling, or belittling, I can be in relationship with you..." and she said, huffily, "Oh? So you've got boundaries now?!" and basically ended the call.
So no, I haven't done the best with boundaries in all parts of my life. But - and this is the key part - what has happened in my past doesn't define me, and I CAN learn. I've set boundaries in a number of places in my life, and the more I do it, the easier it gets somehow.
So, telling this coworker that I had a boundary and that I was holding it, well, it was a big deal to me. And knowing that I can't control their reaction, and that they might be mad at me (oh how I have struggled to "let" people be mad at me!) is ground breaking. They might not like me, respect me, or understand me. They might be mad.
But I like me. I respect me. And I understand that I AM allowed to put reasonable boundaries in my life. And it's okay if someone's mad at me. People get mad. *I* get mad. And we all muddle through.
It feels pretty liberating to know that I can manage this, that I don't need to replay conversations in my head.
Although my experience is much less dramatic, it makes me think of how Kanye stole Taylor Swift's moment at the MTV awards - a very upsetting and public display - and how years later she wrote "and then it happened one beautiful night: I forgot that you existed!" Kanye is allowed to be mad, to be protective of Beyonce'. And Taylor was right to say, "But you don't get space in my life."
*I* get space in my life. And I get to say what works for me, and take the consequences of my decisions. This feels like brand new territory, because while I've set boundaries before (isn't divorce the biggest boundary, really?) I've also tossed and turned over the minutia of my decisions, longing to explain myself, trying to make everyone happy. And now:
I know what my boundaries are. I hold them. If they need adjusting I will adjust, but if they're working and I feel that they're reasonable, I won't adjust.
It's that simple, and that complicated.
53 years old and this old dog is definitely learning new tricks. I hope that I can help my beloved daughter to learn this if she hasn't already, because my life would have been significantly better if I'd figured this out approximately 50 years ago, and I want her life to exceed mine even as I reach for my own stars.
Celebrating this small/huge success! (By going to bed early. Walking pneumonia sucks. G'night!)
I write today from beautiful Orcas Island, my last day of a little visit here that has been incredibly restorative. For the past two days the sunshine has been abundant, the skies blue - I even hiked in a tank top, enjoying the warmth on my shoulders (but with my puffy coat in my pack, because at this time of year it can change in an instant). I've seen countless bald eagles, one river otter, one deer. There is a heron who resides in the bay in front of me, and I've watched him fishing. I walked out to the little island in a pair of rubber boots purchased from the drugstore just for that purpose, marveling at the enormous oysters growing all over its surrounding rocks, but avoiding going up onto the island as it's a nesting area for gulls and geese. In the evening, the Canadian geese traipse all over the verdant grass of the park below me. I've eaten wonderful food (the halibut tacos at Buck Bay are likely to inhabit my dreams), including some things I brought with me from home. Dinner last night was smoked salmon, rosemary raisin crackers, cheese, eggplant dip, and grapes (along with a lovely glass of wine - Readers Cabernet). I've dropped some money into local shops, picking up soap, lotion, books, oracle cards, a mug. I've done a 40 minute yoga session (thanks, Yoga with Adriene) two days in a row. I've sat on beaches. I've journaled dozens of pages.
Looking up, my heron friend is nearby, flying low and slow over the water, landing on a little rocky outcrop. Have I mentioned how much I love it here?!
But as I was saying... I've had deep and meaningful (still processing) conversations with random folks, and I've pet many strangers dogs. I've read. And then I actually wrote - really writing - the opening chapter for my new book idea. The words are just flowing out of me, and I have a plan to keep going.
As a matter of fact, I've created a plan to write every day, and I am determined to complete a draft of this book this summer. I am tired of playing small, tired of telling myself that I am not enough. I'm enough, I have something to say, and I trust myself.
Pause. I noticed a funny feeling in my legs, and looked down, surprised at myself. I was so drawn to write that I am still on my yoga mat, feet tucked under my bottom. I had just completed the practice ("Awaken the Artist Within") and went to pause the video, and then these words flowed out of me before I even noticed what I was doing.
I have a new plan for my life, and I understand it better now. This year, my words were "love" and "write" and I thought maybe that I would seek love and that I would write, but now it doesn't feel like that. I'm not seeking, I am being. I am in love with writing, and I love myself enough to commit to it. My daily practice will be from 7-9pm, and it is not a burden or an obligation, it is a gift to myself. Sometimes I might show up here to say something on my mind, but mostly what I'm doing is writing my book and some stories. In order to do this, I need to move my body more - the mind body connection is so real, and if kneeling on a yoga mat to type on a computer placed on a chair after completing "Awaken the Artist Within" isn't a sign, then I don't know what is.
(Other signs: an elderly by vibrant woman kissed my cheek and called me 'little girl', a river otter ran in front of me and paused for a long time, eagles keep flying back and forth in front of me, I found a cluster of wild orchids in the woods...)
So, I am rearranging things. The focus is my book, and by the time I go to Maine I want to have a copy of it ready to be proofed. Sunday-Thursday I will write between 7-9pm; on Friday and Saturday I will find the time that works best.
Embarrassed confession: if I turned off the television and looked away from my phone, I'd find that I absolutely have enough space in my life to do this.
I am all of this. I am not less than this. It's been true since childhood, and when I ignore it I feel the ache in every cell. I came to the island to remember this, and on this, my last day, I am sure that I remember.
Move my body every day. Write every day. Nothing more, nothing less. I am certain that this is my magic formula, and that if I do these two things, it's a kind of love like never before.
(And I look up, and a juvenile eagle floats by my line of vision. I look left, and its parent is patrolling the bay, majestic but giving it space. Signs everywhere. Does everyone see these signs? Are these signs always there? I have been surrounded by eagles lately - they fly by the window during yoga class. It is not a coincidence.)
The weather changed today; the sea is a stormy dark gray, and the sky is a flat, pale gray. Yesterday's bright blues and smooth water have been replaced by a choppiness; the wind is constant. Yet - and this is key - the sunshine within me hasn't faded at all. It's burning inside me, a warm fire that makes me feel lit from within, full of power and energy.
Love. Write.
Let it be so.
Updated 4/15, 9:48am:
No. This wasn't right. Yes, I have lots of joy. Yes, I seek joy. But the trick isn't to find a circus act filled with joyful tricks, or at least that's not right for me. This is a time for focused joy. Love. Write. Nothing more, nothing less. The joy will come through the love of writing, and my writing is a love letter to the world. Not scattered joy, but focused joy. I see it more clearly now.
***
T.S. Eliot told us that it was April, but he was wrong.
March is when I wonder if I will make it to the school year, if the leaves will ever return to the trees, if I will ever catch my breath properly. March is when I question all of my life's decisions, sure that somehow I'm getting it all wrong.
But it isn't me. It's March.
Teaching is a joy for me: I know I'm good at it, and I love my kids, and (mostly) they love me back. My test scores are good (or even great). I love creating curriculum (currently, we're completing a ChatGPT unit - the skill we're working towards is a synthesis essay, and I'm working hard at creating conteporary, relevant, meaningful connections for the kids). But so many of my kids have horrific mental health struggles, and they seem to have lost their joy and zest for living. Some are just apathetic - they've given up even at their tender ages. They simply do not see the point of trying anymore, so they go through the motions, eager to get back to their bedrooms where they can zone out with screens. Some of them are rats on treadmills in some awful social experiment to see how much they can fit into their lives to be successful, striving ever harder, faster, longer to reach a life that they cannot see.
On Friday some students hung out in my room after doing some make up work, and as we were all packing up for the weekend I asked them their plans. Their affect didn't alter - no brightening, no lifting - as they told me, "Nothing." They had homework, SAT practice. I pushed them for more: the weather forecast was for sun! In Seattle! On a weekend! In MARCH! Still nothing. I said, "But you could meet a friend for coffee at an outdoor café, or have a picnic at a park, or go to the lake... and don't teenagers do things like go to the movies, or roller skating (I knew that last one was a stretch but I said it anyway), or have friends over for a sleepover?"
They looked at me with sad eyes. "That was for middle school," they told me.
They are 16-17 years old and they are bone weary, and they don't see any way out.
Now, I know it isn't every kid, but it's a LOT of kids. And it hits me in the gut. There they are, so filled with potential for things I probably can't even imagine... and they are deep in a societal malaise for which they see no end.
And me. Where do I fit in to that vision of society, of teaching, of my own life?
***
Luckily. something in me has always been determined to find the joy in my life, even when it seemed invisible. It's what made me know - deep in my bones - that I wanted an education for myself, even when my parents didn't see the value in it. It's what kept me fighting through cancer, believing that if I could just make it one more day, that somehow I'd connect to joy again. It's what gave me the courage to divorce, knowing that this was not how I was meant to live, and that a better life awaited if I'd just have the courage to reach for it.
Lately, that joy has seemed dimmer for me, too. Work has unending demands, and I am so damned tired at the end of the day. I'm still adjusting to the emptiness of an empty nest, and the newfound quiet of my evenings at home. (Dinner for one has no ceremony to it, no shared pleasures.) I'm a decade past divorce, no partner possibilities at the moment, wondering if it's time to admit that this is how it will remain for me.
And my body is a stranger. My shape has shifted, my proportions changing not only in my waist and hips but also in my face, my hair. Some of it is size - this thickening I feel in my middle is harder and harder to fight - but some of it is that older women and younger women are simply not meant to inhabit the same shapes, and there is no confusing me as youthful. If I am not youthful, and I'm not partnered, but I'm also not a retiree or a grandmother, then... who am I? What is my role?
Interesting questions. If think about them in the right way, they're filled with possibility and redefinition and the possibility of new powers. But if I see them in the shadows, they might swallow me up, embracing me in a darkness that is cold and clammy, feverish yet chilling.
***
Lately, I find myself just holding on, falling into worn grooves of patterns, plodding one foot after the other, too tired to be innovative, excited, or powerful.
But just as my lilac tree has tight buds of green leaves at the ends of bare branches outside my living room window - the potential utterly obvious, annual, and guaranteed - and just as daylight savings has forced a shift in our waking hours the brings daylight to evenings, I'm ready to shake myself up a little. I'm tired of winter. I'm bored of my boredom. And I just refuse - refuse - to gray out.
Make no mistake, my hair is not the dark glossy waves of my 20s and 30s. Those days are behind me. But nor do submit to a flat gray. I have a bolt of silver - my stripe - streaking through my hair on one side. What if I call it silver, not gray? What if it's not a fading out, but a lightening strike?
Stubborn gladness (Jack Gilbert's line, not my own, but the words ring true in my life). Even when it's not called for. Especially when it's not called for.
***
It seems to me that the smallest, simplest things are usually the most life altering.
Sleep.
Food.
Exercise.
Nature.
Books.
Deciding.
***
I won't bore you - or myself - by listing how I can do a better job with most of that list. We all know the drill about the importance of sleep hygiene and healthy food, blah blah blah. I need to work on all of the above, putting my phone away.
But today I'm thinking about deciding.
What if I built one thing into my life each day for the sake of joy?
What if I intentionally planned out something daily with the purpose of purpose in my life? What would that look like?
I'm not a fool. I can't cure cancer, end climate change, or head to the Eiffel Tower just because I want some fun and meaning. I'm thinking much, much smaller than that.
What if, at the end of a long day, I used Grandpa's tea pot (the one he gifted me in my early 20s because "every young lady needs a bone china tea pot"), and re-read a few pages of Jane Austen, because I love it?
What if I stopped at the beach on my way home from work to sit on a log and see if my seal was nearby?
What if I wrote real letters to friends, pulling down the lid to the secretary, grabbing a favorite pen, and planning the words of caring and connection?
What if I plugged my phone in and walked away - what would I do with that time?
What if I forgot to watch TV for a month? What would I do instead?
What if I planned picnics, day trips, museum visits?
What if I - once again - became a hiker, my pack in a constant state of updating, filled with sandwiches and trail mix, my boots pulled out of hiding and put to use?
What if I explored different parks around the city, taking advantage of longer days?
What if I made more room for these things, which give me joy? And what if that joy bubbled out of me in other ways, into work, and relationships?
***
March is halfway done, but this is my plan:
Once a day, I'm going to do something joyful. I'm going to find a moment that is filled with beauty for beauty's sake. Deep relaxation that contains true rest. A burst of energy that reminds me of bolts of silver, not gray. Meaningful connection with those I care about, and solitude that is the opposite of loneliness.
I'll tell you about it here. And let's see if it makes a difference.
Because I am not meant to plod along in a worn out groove, walking in circles and feeling weary. Sure, life is filled with chores and problems and long hours at work and health struggles and... well, you know. But I insist - INSIST! - that there is room for joy. For daily doses of peace and fulfillment, for wonder at the beauty of life and the possibilities it contains.
***
Day 1: Yesterday. I grabbed the French market basket that Tessa gave me a few years ago (still such a favorite, so perfectly designed), and filled it with a thermos of herbal tea and the two little enamel mugs from Cinque Terre, the sandwiches Tessa purchased at Bakery Nouveau, books, and a picnic blanket (cheery blue and white fleece stripes on one side, and a waterproof backing on the other). We went to Lowman Beach, just a mile from home, and laid it out in the grass. The park was full of people, mostly families with little kids, because the sky was blue and the air was warm and - bliss of bliss - we didn't even need to wear coats. Tessa chatted about her life and we watched our seal (the one who hangs out there year round) swimming in the sunlight, her wet fur gleaming as if reflective. We read, the sun on our skin. We ate the good food. We lingered for two or more hours on a Saturday afternoon, not needing to go anywhere, not needing to do anything else.
It was glorious.
A Saturday afternoon needs to have room for two hours like this. Books from the used bookstore, sandwiches, herbal tea, a blanket, a place near home. This is not too much to ask for.
Everyone deserves that. And I'm better for having done it.
Today I am looking forward to the farmer's market, brunch, maybe some more reading. I need to work, too. And I need to prep for the week. I did my laundry on Thursday so that when I picked up Tessa from school she'd be able to take over the laundry room (and take over she did - wowza that kid hasn't done laundry in ages, and the machines will be busy for some time!). Today will have less leisure than yesterday, and Monday even less.
But the sadness in my students reminded me that I've got my own sadness, and I just absolutely refuse to embrace that sadness. I am raging against the dying of the light, sure that if I do so the light will not die. It's not time for that (and it's certainly not time for 17 year olds to let the light die!).
I'm pretty sure that if I do this right, not only will my lives shift, but theirs will, too. Are the adults in their lives showing them how to have joy?
Daily joy. Real, meaningful joy. Not "should" but because I choose it. Stubbornly, and despite the odds.
Let's see what today brings.
What do you do for joy? Do you embrace joy daily? How? What are your ideas for me, for practical (I don't want to spend money, and nor do I have time for hours daily) yet wonderful ways to reconnect with the meaning of life?
