Vivid Living

This is a month of paradox. Our four children are winding down the summer and gearing up for school. Me, too, for as readers know, I’ve just begun a two-year MFA program in creative non-fiction writing at Goucher College. All week we’ve been purging old clothes, shoes, toys, books, papers and other mindless knick knacks, while making room for the requisite back-to-school sneakers, supplies and the like.

This “letting go” and “taking in” feels especially poignant to me right now since graduate school has me thinking a lot about balance.  Much as I would love to apply the intensity, discipline and solitude of my two-week Goucher residency to life at home, I can’t.  This focused time away to attend lectures, workshops, read, write and engage in community with other writers was a sacred and particular experience. To think that I can clone that platform anywhere else is plain foolish. I wear too many hats, as most of us do.

And yet, it is possible, I hope, to distill some of my experience by embracing balance. Routines will be set once school begins but weekends and vacation are more unstructured by definition, and therefore, thornier for working moms with fluid schedules. Time stops but moves along, too.

It’s a privilege to be a mom, responsibilities and all. It’s a privilege to be someone’s life partner and to help care for our home and family. It’s a privilege to be a daughter and friend and colleague. And it’s a privilege to be finding my voice as a writer.  Together, the parts add up to the whole.

“The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” 
 Euripides (And woman!!!)

So I’m at the Starbucks tucked inside Barnes and Noble the other day, killing an hour in-between appointments. It’s about Noon. “I recognize you,” says Jeannie Ritter, Colorado’s First Lady.  “And I recognize you,” I reply.  I remind the First Lady of my name, that her daughter and my stepson are friendly, and of the few times we’ve met.

“Tell me what you’re doing these days,” she asks me, genuinely interested in spite of the fact the efficient-looking executive assistant standing beside her clearly wants to keep her boss on schedule.  I understand, I’ve been there, too. But Jeannie is all talk today so I begin to tell her about the kids, my writing, and my new endeavor beginning an MFA program in creative nonfiction writing. “Good for you. Good for you,” she says, and means it.

We talk for a moment about her next adventure once Governor Ritter leaves office. “I’m thinking about it,” she says, warmly.

We say goodbye and I sit down to tweak a speech I’m writing which happens to also be about seizing adventures. Minutes pass, maybe twenty. I’m lost in thought, concentrating deeply, oblivious to the fact that the First Lady has just sauntered over to my table.

“Sit up straight!” she whispers just loud enough for others to hear.

“You’ll be a hunch-back old woman if you’re not careful,” she warns, those earnest blue eyes of hers fixing my gaze.  I can tell she cares.

I’m a bit embarrassed, of course, but the First Lady happens to be right.  I thank her for the reminder – and I am thankful since slouching is a bad habit.

“Bye Jeannie, thanks again,” I say as she dashes back to her assistant and to do what First Ladies do.

* * *

Three days have passed since my rendezvous with the First Lady. And still I find myself smiling over our little chat about adventures, the importance of parental modeling, and naturally, her admonishment. I’m stepping into my new world today at Goucher College (while still holding up the old world, too) and plan to take the First Lady’s advice to heart. She might have only meant it in the physical sense, but to me, her message is all about standing tall and proud, refusing to slump.

So I’m finally reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

I’ve been meaning to read the book for a few years but have resisted largely because of its grim plot.  Typically, I have no interest in books built around violence and destruction.

And yet this book is different. For those of you who haven’t read it (and I hope you do), I won’t give away the apocalyptic story line.  For me, I’m moved on a few levels. The writing is sparse and powerful.  “There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death. He wasn’t sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness.”

Beyond the pitch perfect writing, the story is so raw and primal that it has deeply unnerved me. I’m dreaming in vivid colors – black rage, red fear, purple anxiety. Last night I dreamt that I got arrested for stepping off the curb with the wrong foot. The previous night I had lost my way and was running, en route to my children, who were lost and waiting for me. My first husband was in the dream and also my stepson.  I can’t quite make it all out but I woke to my own cry of “No.” Steve jumped.

For someone who usually can’t remember any aspect of her dreams, I find all of this fascinating.

I suppose I really shouldn’t read dark subjects before bed. Yet what lingers for me is that light and hope persist in the darkest of times.  That is what moves me deepest.

Because I know, and I understand.

Ciao. Ciao.

I’ve been away, in Italy, as I mentioned in my last post.   My husband and I took this special trip – just the two of us – to celebrate his milestone birthday.

The thing I love most about Europe is the way the old and new come together so seamlessly. On one corner stands a monument two thousand years old, the remains of a parliament building. Steps away is a gelato shop and boutique selling handmade paper.   The streets are cobbled, uneven and dusty, and the buildings, layered with paint and ridged with cracks.  It’s hard to imagine such a confluence of beauty in the U.S., but in Europe, I’m struck by how antiquity is preserved and even made modern and stylish.

It’s true in our own lives, too:  the past infuses the present.  Embracing our history, I’m certain, makes for a more graceful future.

While in Agrigento, in Sicily, Steve and I spent some time visiting the marvelous ruins at the Valley of the Temples.  Empedocles, one of the city’s great philosophers  from 490 BC (a period of wealth), summed up his fellow citizens like this:  ”The people of Acrogis enjoy the pleasures and luxuries of this world as if they were to die the next day, but make their buildings as if they were to live forever.”

What a powerful philosophy: live vividly, with passion and exuberance; enjoy the riches of this world, large and small; trust that the foundations you build will endure, and that your spirit lives eternal.

My friend Julie and I celebrated our 40^th birthdays at the Red Mountain Spa in picturesque St. George, Utah.  We’re four years late, but who’s counting?

Julie and I were fresh-women roommates at Northwestern University (sorry, fresh-men just doesn’t sound right) and in large part, she beckoned me to Denver in 2006.

Back when life was simpler – when we weren’t juggling quite so many jobs, kids, schedules and losses – we tried to carve out special time once a year or even every second year, for a girlfriends’ getaway.  In more recent times, life’s been full for both of us, and while we manage to squeeze time for lunch or a walk, celebrating our friendship in this way – with three days of hiking, talk time and pampering – was a rare and wonderful thing.

Being with my friend, of course, was like diving into a velvety chocolate sundae. It feels so good and sweet that you just want to stay and play.

There’s more to it though.  Being a friend is one of the roles I hold dear, right there with wife, mother, daughter, sister, writer, and advocate. And yet when life pulls the way it does, it’s impossible to keep up with all the people in life who matter. We mean well; we just can’t be all things to ourselves and others all of the time.

Celebrating the part of me that is a friend proved to be just the elixir of wholeness I needed. I came back from Utah ready for action.

Make time for those friends that matter to you, when and how you can.

Celebrating friendship

I recently finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, Committed.  As you probably know, she authored Eat, Pray, Love.

In Committed, I particularly like how Gilbert wrestles with the idea of love:  What if love never finds you?  What if you never find love?  Can you marry your own life?

It’s this last question that really leaps out at me.

Gilbert explores this scenario through the eyes of her 40-year-old friend, Christine, a single woman who decides to forgo loneliness for life.  She sets a small wooden boat adorned with rose petals and rice on fire. Then, she let it go – “releasing along with it her most tenacious fantasies of marriage as an act of personal salvation…She had finally married her own life, and not a moment too soon.”

I love this image of Christine transcending her perceived tyranny, and moreover, the notion of her “marrying her life.” To me, this concept means many things: stepping out; facing fears; plunging forward; accepting what is; celebrating the everyday; and having faith.

I have many single, fabulous women friends, some of whom marry their lives without ever realizing so.  They plan trips, take classes, make dinner plans, and run marathons. Yes, they bemoan not having a life partner, but this sense of loss doesn’t prevent them from living.

I lost my first life partner, and now I have another.  And yet I, too, am married to life. It’s the commitment I cherish most. My experience has taught me that when I nurture all that I am and all that I aspire to be, I am the best woman, wife, mother, daughter, friend and colleague that I can be.  This is a vow I’ll be glad to make daily.

It’s rather serendipitous that my husband, Steve, bought me a card today with this perfect quote from Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”

Yes!

Here’s how a typical morning goes:

Where are my keys?

Where is my cell phone?

What day do the library books need to be returned again?

Why can’t I remember…?

The other day my friend Cindy called to ask me the name of the baker who created the one-of-a-kind cake for my wedding not even two years ago. The one shaped like our house with custom rooms for the four children between us.

“Oh shoot, what was his name again?” I said aloud. “B something. Barbar? Barbat? ”

“You have C.R.S.!” Cindy told me. “I’ve got it, too,” she said.

C.R.S. stands for Can’t Remember Sh*T!

Call Julie, I said with resignation, ”She’s got C.R.S. too but she’ll probably remember.” Which she did.

Hmmm. This C.R.S. is a slippery slope.  I’m not exactly a  ninny and I’ve had some incredible career experiences along the way.

Still, gone are the days when I could spit out phone numbers for neighbors or the birthdays of third cousins.  As far as I can remember, my “brain drain” began in my 20’s, once I began to shed all the knowledge acquired from my $100K education at Northwestern University, which today would be more than double that amount. One particularly fond moment – which I still remember because I recently wrote about it – happened when I forgot to drop the garbage in the bin while living in Hoboken, NJ more than 20+ years ago.  I was so lost in my thoughts that I boarded the bus into Manhattan with that bag of foul garbage.

This brings up a salient point about life and memory. It occurs to me that I’m still in the “meaty” years. By which I mean, life is thick with the demands of children, teenagers, marriage, SAT’s, college, careers, writing, grocery shopping, laundry, bills, sports and so much else.  Often times I feel like a multi-tasking madwoman who juggles it all even as the balls drop around me.  It won’t always be this way. The older boys are steps from independence and the twins will grow up. Someday, this sizzle will simmer down and then, perhaps, the sharpness of my memory will return.

I hope I’m right. For now, I’m stocking up on blueberries.

Now why the heck did I put the hot dogs in the cupboard with the dinner plates?

Can any of you relate?