The Joy of Snow

We had more snow today - lots more snow, actually, and while you might think that would send me into paroxysms of despair, it was actually a rather nice day. I love snow days.  Always have.  I love being able to stay inside all day, with nobody really expecting me to do anything else but be safe and warm and off the street.  I love the sense of hunkering down and cozying up, love to while away the extra time with books, magazines, hot tea, and warm puppies.

So it might seem odd, in a winter where I've done nothing but complain about cold and snow, to say I wish tomorrow were a snow day too.

But I do.

How about you?  Did you have a snow day today?  Did you love it?

Present and Accounted For

If you've been out there in cyberspace calling my name over the past 10 days, I'm finally raising my hand and saying "Present!" At least partly.

If you've been reading this space very often this winter, you know I've been struggling a bit.  Part of me feels guilty for sharing that struggle here in the open, but then this is my place to talk about life in general and my own in particular.  Lately, I'm working to find the meaning in either one.

Last night I attended a dinner concert and was seated at the table with a couple whose children were members of the high school choir I accompanied years ago.  The mother, a woman in her mid to late 40's, was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer about three years ago.  She's been fighting valiantly to save her own life - she's a hospice nurse, of all the ironies, and has no misconceptions about her chances of longevity.  However, she still has a 13 year old daughter at home, and is doing her best to give that girl a mother for as long as possible.

She speaks frankly and comfortably about death. "If I'm still here next year" she commented matter of factly, referring to her younger daughter's entrance into high school.  I overheard her talking about writing cards and letters to all her children, to be opened at specific times of their lives - weddings, graduations, childbirth.  "At those times when they would need to have their mother around,"  she says.

Looking at her - and she looks perfectly healthy and well, by the way - I was struck dumb by her courage.  I wanted to feel inspired by it, but all I could feel was demoralized.  Because in her place, I felt as if I'd never have that gumption or determination to live.   I just don't think I want it bad enough to fight that hard.

Probably I'm wrong - probably if the doctor told me tomorrow that I'd  be dead within the year, I'd start Googling medical trials all over the world, sign up for the most intensive course of therapy offered, barter my soul for the privilege of staying alive just one more day.  God knows, I have at least half a dozen friends and acquaintances doing that very thing as we speak.

But there's something about my life in particular these days that doesn't seem worth the effort.  In the great roll call of life, I may be accounted for, but I don't feel as if I'm present.

Where am I, then?

Living in a small cottage somewhere on the Atlantic coast, walking the beach every day with my dogs, eating fresh clams for dinner, spending my days writing, reading, listening to the waves lap against the shore.

Driving a convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway, meeting friends for coffee by the bay, playing music, having drinks on the terrace as the sun sets.

Sitting on the front porch of my house in Small Town, USA, drinking iced tea, talking to friends and neighbors as they meander past on their way to the market.

But I'm so far from any of these places, from any of the dreams I once had for my life, that it actually hurts sometimes to be present in this one.

I opened a new book earlier today, and the frontispiece had this line from a Mary Oliver poem as an epigraph~

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

How do I go forward into the next phase of life, the one I'm so very fortunate to have an opportunity to plan?  This time  it has to be what I need - not because someone expects it of me, someone needs me, someone wants me to do it.  I have never in my life made a choice that wasn't largely based on the needs or expectations of someone else.  Perhaps that's why I'm not present in my own life - because it isn't mine. It's my parents, my husbands, my sons - even my friends and my boss'.

It's not mine.

At some point in my wild and precious future, when my name is called  I want to jump out of my seat and shout "Here!"

I don't know how to make that happen.  But I hope I don't have to die trying.

Chaos Theory

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection

and order and meaning, it is also awe

and reverence and mystery and magic.

~Toni Morrison

Sometimes it seems we're bombarded with stimuli from the moment we awake.  Cell phones and internet, texts and instant messages, television and iPods, people's voices and dogs barking - the constant barrage of things calling for our attention can make us feel as if our heads are literally spinning around.

Taking time to write each day forces us to slow down and find a quiet place within ourselves so we can make sense of all the bombastic noise and disturbance around us.  Sometimes that means letting all the chaotic thoughts spill out of our heads onto the page, willy nilly, so we can start to make sense of it.  Because there's usually a nugget of gold, of something pure and meaningful begging to be sifted from the mass confusion that is modern life.

You just have to be still and find it.

Let the chaos of your life spill onto the page.  Then take a moment and look for the nugget of pure gold that helps you make sense of it all.

Angry Birds

Have you seen (or played) this latest super-addictive Facebook/iPhone game?  I'm not much of a gamer, but these little guys caught my attention the other day because I was mad about something or other and thought my facial expression probably looked a little bit like this:

I get angry kind of easily these days, because it's cold and miserable and kind of ugly around here.  But truthfully, I'm not good at expressing my anger.  I don't go around with a scowl on my face like this red-bird here and I always try to be pleasant and cheerful.  If I get really mad, I'll wait until I get home and throw something at the wall.

But then I go back to being nice.

I don't think that's the healthiest way to express anger.  But I was taught that anger was one of those "not nice" emotions...like jealousy and spitefulness.  If you were angry about something, you'd best just get out of sight until you got over it.  No foot stomping or screaming fits were tolerated.  And because I was an only child, constantly surrounded by adults, there was no other outlet for anger.  No younger sister to bully, no older brother to pummel with my little fists.  I learned to control this emotion at a very early age, to swallow those angry feelings like the bitter pill they were and pretend that everything was hunky dory.

Traditionally, women in general are not encouraged to have angry feelings.  Angry women are "shrews" or "witches" (or worse).  We're never taught to express anger correctly, because we're not even supposed to be angry in the first place.   But anger can be constructive if we know how to use it.  The Hawaiian goddess, Pele, is said to have become enraged when her boat became entangled in the roots of a hala tree.  She ripped the tree to shreds and threw the remnants across the island, where they sprouted and grew into strong, beautiful trees which the Hawaiian people have been enjoying ever since.

I can actually imagine myself doing that if I happened to be in Hawaii, and happened to get my boat entangled in the roots of some stupid tree.

If you get angry enough and you know how to channel that anger into something productive, then the repercussions can be positive and long lasting.

Case in point - the Egyptian people, who have taken their anger about years of repression, and turned it into a strong enough rebellion to affect major changes in their government.

On a smaller, and much more personal level, I've been angry about my job lately, an anger that I've been swallowing for a long time in keeping with the teaching of my youth.  Finally, after some long talks with a colleague, my angry feelings spurred me to think about ways to change things and to talk to my boss about starting the process of that change.

Sometimes it's alright to be an Angry Bird.

How about you?  Do you acknowledge and express your anger constructively?

Starting Places

We are all tied to one another - ourselves and those who came before us.  We were ourselves, but others too; our past written on us like lines drawn on a palimpset, or the artist's rough sketch beneath the surface of a painting."   from The Charming Quirks of Others, by Alexander McCall Smith.

I have always been fascinated by origins - how do we become the people we are?  Not just our hair color, or height, or ability to play an instrument.  But our character and personality.  What makes one person quiet and shy, and another boisterous and outgoing?  Why is one person prone to anger, born with the proverbial chip of their shoulder, and another calm and accepting of the world and its inhabitants?

"We are all tied to one another - ourselves and those that came before us."   The seeds  of who we are today begin growing in the past, generations of  personalities and genetics combining in each human being.

Think about people in your past and write about the ways they've influenced who you are today.  These people are your true Starting Places.