Becca Rowan is a writer and the author of Life in General, a collection of essays about mid-life as experienced by an American woman in the 21st century. Becca loves creating connections by sharing stories on her popular blog.
summer ends~
evening shadows
fall too soon
Just this week, there is a noticable difference in the length of days. By the time I've cleared up supper dishes and watered plants, the western sky has started to glower at me. Hurry up, it chides, put on your walking shoes or grab your bike, there's not much time left before darkness swallows the sun.
When it comes to decision making, I'm a ditherer, a hand-wringer, a me-oh-my what shall I do-er. Shall it be fish or chicken for dinner? Florida or California for vacation? Walk in the neighborhood or park? Fiction or non-fiction for Sunday Scribblings? Just DO IT, my inner voice persistently chides me. To quote my high school orchestra director ~ "For god's sake, girls, just do...SOMETHING!" Invariably, though, once I've embarked on one route, I immediately start wishing I had chosen the other. "Decidophobia" it's called, and there are a plethora of Internet cures available, from wonder drugs to hypnosis tapes.
Actually, I'm not really a phobic in the strict sense of the word. These are people who are too paralyzed by fear to perform their jobs or even get up in the morning. In truth, I move through the business of daily life with great decision...I complete all tasks promptly and on time, I attack my job responsibilities with gusto. However, I admit to being stymied by personal decisions sometimes, and occasionally this leaves me feeling as if my life were a stalled race car, desperately revving its engine but going nowhere fast.
Part of the problem is often my imagination ~my penchant if you will, for seeing too many opportunities as well as too many pitfalls. It's like perusing the aisles at the grocery store - where once there were only Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran, now there's Corn Flakes with strawberries, or almonds, or organic corn flakes, or low fat cornflakes, or...well, you get the picture. Life presents us with too many tantalizing choices - how's a girl supposed to pick just one?
Therein lies my real problem with decision making, the fear that each decision is not only irrevocable, but represents an opportunity lost. There are so many things I want to experience in life, and I'm fearful that choosing one will deny me the ability to experience the other. I really do want to sample all those flavors of Corn Flakes -I'm just impatient, and don't want to do it one box at a time. I want to buy up every variety and sit down to a different one each morning. Similar to Forest Gump and his famous box of chocolates, I'd love to bite into each one and see what I get.
Unfortunately, decisions often mean irrevocable choices - that's just life, too. Because I decided to buy two homes in Florida, it probably means I won't ever be able to live in England. Because I decided to get two dogs, I probably won't be able to travel as much as I'd like. Because I decided to go back to my school job, I won't have as much free time to write this winter. Because I decided to have only one child, I'll probably never have big bunches of grandchildren to comfort me in my old age. Big decisions have big consequences, and the older I get, the more dire they seem, since there's just not as much time left to sample all of life's varieties.
I'm afraid there's no cure for my hand wringing, dithering, decision making dilemmas. I'll probably always worry my way through the process, and then later on wish I'd made another choice altogether. Hopefully, the consequences won't be too painful, and I'll be able to accept them gracefully.
As I write this, a cool breeze from the fan overhead gently lifts my hair, the soft whirring of its blades a counterpoint to the clicking computer keyboard. One dog (Molly) lies stretched full length in the doorway, sleeping soundly, while the other (Magic) is perched on the bed gazing attentively out the window, awake and on the lookout for a squirrel, or his favorite neighbor from across the street. Dusk is falling, earlier now that summer is on the wane, and soon I'll need to switch on the desk lamp, but not yet...I can still just barely see the keyboard in the hazy blue glow from the monitor. A glass of white wine rests on a slate coaster beside me, beads of sweat forming around it as the chill liquid inside meets the warm air of the room. "Writing is about learning to pay attention and communicate what is going on," writes Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird. "In order to be a writer...you have to learn to be reverent."
Life is in the details, someone once said, and for the writer, learning to observe everyday details and make them important for the reader is vital to creating character, setting, and moving plot along. In my first paragraph, I was trying to give you a word picture of where I was (a bedroom/writing room), the weather (hot, as evidenced by the ceiling fan and the sweaty glass), the type of person I am (someone who writes, drinks wine, and loves dogs, because they lie on my bed!) But I was also trying to convey a sense of reverence for these homely details about my life and this room where I come to write.
"We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded," says Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones. "This is how writers must think, how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived."
The writing I love to read is full of details - about people and places, some might call it minutiae, but for me the details are what make the story and the era come alive. I love to know what people were having for tea in Jane Austen's drawing room, how they dressed for the party in Scarlett O'Hara's American South, and in more contemporary work, the cars they were driving, the TV shows they were watching, all those kinds of everyday details that help me identify time, place, and character. And often I am surprised by the beauty evident in those seemingly ordinary moments.
"This is our goal as writers," Lamott continues, "to help others have this sense of wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break into our small, bordered worlds. There is ecstasy in paying attention."
Since I've been writing, I have found myself more open to observing details in the world around me, everything from the new ochre colored paint on the walls in my favorite coffee shop to the glorious rosy sky in the morning sunrise. I'm find myself thinking about the people I encounter - the young man I see walking the street morning and evening, winter and summer, wondering about the restless energy that is so apparent in his nervous stride. What is his story?
"To be engrossed in something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind," Lamott concludes. Finding a sense of wonder in the details of the world around us, in the people before us, all the little things that make us who and what we are.
"This is what it is to be a writer," Goldberg tells us. "To be the carrier of details that make up history."
One of the greatest gifts of this information age is the ability to learn from the amazing experiences and feelings that other bloggers share so unselfishly. These five bloggers are just a few of the many that give me pause for reflection and renew my spirit.
~Joan, of Rivanna River Days, has opened my eyes to the beauty of the natural world in an entirely new way. Her gentle and insightful posts about the environment, as well as her gorgeous pictures of her home on the river, give us all food for thought...
~Deborah, aka Jane Poe, of Nevermore, shares her perspective on life in general in a stirring poetic commentary that always merits multiple readings, and always makes me shake my head in wonder at her ability to find the perfect words to express her feelings...
~Darlene, at A Walk in My Shoes, has taken us with her as she lives day to day with lupus and as she worked to bring her son back to life after a horrific auto accident. Her beautiful smile and artistic talents shines through in all her words, and she brings beauty to my daily walk...
~My friend Deirdre, at Writing Anam Cara, has a luminous way with words that takes the reader directly into her experience, whether she's describing her hopes for the future, her struggle to recover from the loss of her sister, or just an ordinary day. She writes the way I wish I could...
~Patti Digh, at 37 Days is probably already familiar to many of you. Her philosophical posts about life always make me smile, think, and marvel.
I've been completely distorted lately. I was trying to come up with a word to describe this sensation of feeling disproportionately out of sorts with myself, my life, and everyone I come into contact with, and "distorted" seems to fit perfectly. Yesterday, as I sat holed up in my writing room, I tried to reflect on the reason I was behaving like a petulant teenager, throwing mini-tantrums and storming around "loaded for bear" as the saying goes. Truthfully, these feelings are not unfamiliar. They used to happen on a regular basis - about once a month, to be exact. Any of you who happen to be female know exactly what I'm referring to. However, since I haven't been bothered with that monthly occurrence in well over a year, I thought I was done with all that.
But this week, it came roaring back with a vengeance, the attack of the raging hormones. It's really as if an alien has invaded my psyche and injected me with lethal doses of impatience, dissatisfaction, restlessness, anxiety - all those awful feelings that women dump into the category of PMS, premenstrual syndrome - or, in my case, post menopausal syndrome.
Now, I've since realized why this has happened, and taken steps to remedy the situation (I'll tell you about that later.) The interesting thing - the rather frightening thing - is the way I have felt completely out of control, completely not myself. I literally want to do violence to people and things. I hate everyone I know (and love!) and have this almost overwhelming urge to get in my car and drive it off a cliff - seriously.
This has got me thinking about the ways women really are different from men. And these thoughts are completely antithetical to the feminist way of thinking I've been raised with. But it occurred to me that if I were the President of the United States right now, I might be sorely tempted to push that famous button and annihilate anyone and everyone who was getting in my way.
Of course, being the good girl that I am, I always stop myself from committing any act of violence worse than tossing dishes (plastic!) against the wall. Even in this state of hormonal havoc, I retain my sense of control, because I generally have great control over my emotions. (Whether that's good or bad, only my therapist knows for sure.) But some women are completely ravaged by their hormones - we've all read the horror stories of seemingly "normal" women who murder their children while suffering from post partum depression.
Luckily, when I woke up this morning, I could feel my sense of emotional equilibrium returning to normal. I did some yoga, rode my bike, went to church, and haven't felt like killing anyone (yet). But this episode reminded me once again that our bodies can play vicious tricks on us, and it's well to be wary of them.
By the way, here's the reason this happened - at least, this is my best guess. A couple of weeks ago, I started taking Black Cohosh as treatment for hot flashes, which were really driving me crazy this summer. As I looked at the bottle, I realized I was taking these 540 mg capsules twice daily, when the recommended dosage was once daily. So, I think I may have experienced an "herbal overdose." I cut back immediately, and started to feel better. Another lesson learned - even "natural remedies" can be dangerous if not taken properly.
