New Thoughts for The Journey

While I’m sitting here in my cozy room very early on a bitterly cold winter morning, my husband has just left for a meeting at his office about 30 miles away. He is not a morning person, and when a 7:00 a.m. meeting is called, my heart sinks for him because I know how difficult his day will be. He has worked in the professional world for almost 40 years now, and during that time has spent long, long hours hunched over drafting tables and computers. He has crawled through scaffolding in probably every automotive assembly plant in this country. He traveled to China thirty years ago (before it was cool to do so) to instill “American quality standards” in his company’s operational facility in a small village in Outer Mongolia.

But his working days are winding down, and we are blessed that his current job allows him a great deal of flexibility in time and working  conditions. These early morning meetings are rare, and he can often work from home if he chooses. In fact, I was somewhat surprised to hear him say recently that he wouldn’t mind working at this job until he was 65 or even older.

Nevertheless, we are beginning to think about another new stage in our lives. The Third Act is a term I’m hearing bandied about among folks our age - that time when your children have all not only flown the nest, but are independently managing nests of their own, when you’ve “retired” from the daily grind, when you’re still (hopefully) physically fit enough to live without assistance.

I’ve been re-reading Katrina Kenison’s book Magical Journey (which was this week released in paperback). I read the book for the first time last January, and was so moved by the way she wrote about facing the challenges of mid-life and how a woman re-fashions her life during this time of change. But here is what I love about re-reading…now, a year later, I come to the book at a different stage in my own life, and with a new focus and interest. Last year, so intent was I on my own inner journey, that I didn’t fully absorb what Kenison has to say about what happens to a marriage during this time.

To grow without growing apart, to allow the one you love to be different today than he or she was yesterday and to love him or her anyway, even as you struggle to figure out what’s changed: Perhaps this is the challenge that must ultimately be surmounted in every long term relationship if it’s to remain fresh and resilient, rather than growing stiff with age, too brittle to bend and stretch with time. I know my husband and I love each other. But now it seems we’re both coming to see that love alone isn’t enough to keep a commitment alive; we need imagination, too. And enough creativity and courage to create a new form for our marriage, a marriage that’s growing old and being forced to adapt, just as we are.

I think of the evolution of our relationship over the 37 years we’ve been married, how we slipped easily and naturally into roles often driven by the demands of Jim’s work. Because he worked SO much, was gone from home for many long hours, even weeks sometimes, I became the one who kept the home fires burning. The details of domesticity were things I could handle to give him as much free time as possible. When Brian was born, I became the primary caregiver, happy to be a “SAHM" and devote much of my time and energy to making a home. I became accustomed to doing my own thing, to setting my own schedule, to finding ways to nurture my own interests. And although we remained close as a couple and still loved our time together, in some ways we led separate lives which intersected whenever Jim’s workday happened to end.

Now the dynamic is very, very different. I realize I’ve been chafing against that for a while, with one foot in that old life where I run things on my schedule, based on my calendar and my needs. Who is this interloper, I was thinking, this man hanging around my house so much of the time, interfering with my plans for laundry and cooking and piano practice?

But I feel a shift in my attitude these days, a sense of gratitude for his presence, for this extra time we’re able to share. After all those years of being apart for hours and hours every day, now there are many days when we potter around the house together, doing our separate work and meeting in the kitchen for lunch. On nice days, he joins me for the morning dog walk. We start every day (even early morning meeting days like today) with coffee and our books.

"To grow without growing apart, to allow the one you love to be different today than he or she was yesterday and to love him or her anyway, even as you struggle to figure out what’s changed…"

Change. There’s that word again, the one I used to be so afraid of.

But now when I say it, when I think of it in terms of our relationship, I feel a tiny frisson of anticipation. We talk about ways we can spend winters in a warmer climate, how we might even like to spend a few months living in the UK once, just to see what that’s like.  We wonder about ways to pursue our mutual interests in music. We smile at thoughts about watching our grandson grow up and imagine the things he might do. And even knowing there will inevitably be hard changes ahead does not dampen my enthusiasm for this new opportunity to renew and re-imagine our relationship.

“I stepped into marriage twenty five years ago,” Kenison writes, “convinced that passion would sustain us; now I know better. We will endure by the grace of acquiescence, cooperation, patience, and the small daily rituals that keep us close even as change transforms the landscape of our lives."

We have certainly grown so much from those dewey-eyed 20 year olds who committed ourselves together for life, not knowing what would be written on the landscape of our years together. So as we travel into the future together, still not knowing the details, I’m confident in our ability to sustain through the “grace of acquiescence, cooperation, patience, and the small daily rituals that keep us close."

And I’m so grateful for my partner on the journey.

Magical Journey is a transformative book, one I keep on my bedside table to dip into at regular intervals for a dose of guidance and inspiration. It was released in paperback this week, and I was thrilled to have an opportunity to participate in the launch team. I’ve purchased several copies that will be gifted to close friends. You can be one of those people - if you’d like a copy of the book, please leave a comment below and tell me a little about where you are on life’s journey. I’ll choose a random winner on January 30, 2014.

Magical Journey (paperback)

Author: Katrina Kenison

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, a Division of Hachette Books

Pages: 288

Buy a Copy: Amazon|Barnes & Noble

Hopelessly Devoted

For several days I’ve been waking around 4 or 5 a.m. - not with the kind of agitation and anxiety to which I’m prone, but with a sense of quiet energy and anticipation. I don’t bother fighting my wakefulness, but slip as quietly as possible out of the warm nest of blankets and dogs and make my way to the kitchen. While the coffee is coursing its way through the Cuisinart, I take a few moments to stand at the window and greet the silent, snowy day, before I empty the dishwasher and preheat my favorite mug. With my coffee balanced on a small, cloth lined tray, I make my way back upstairs and into the Room of My Own, the bedroom in our house that’s become my de facto office/reading room/retreat. For the next few hours, I read, write, think.  As the sky brightens outside the window, I allow myself to sink deeper into my ideas, my thoughts, my memories. By the time my family is awake, I am spent, but also energized. I feel a sense of accomplishment, and excitement. The words are taking me places I’ve never been, and I’m excited for this journey.

This is my work these days, and I am devoted to it.

Devotion is my key word for this year. It is a word layered with many levels of meaning, a word that began to crop up in my thoughts several months ago when I decided this would be the year I devoted to myself, my projects, my creativity. It is a word that carries traces of the holiness which I hope to bring to daily life. It is a loving word, a word that means giving freely of time and attention to that which is important. It is a gentle word, that implies persistence without the need for perfection.

It is a word I bring to my writing, but also to my body with all its desires and imperfections. To my husband and our marriage, in honor of true generosity and faith. To my mother, whose needs increase with age but whose love is proportionately far greater than her expectations of us. It is a word I bring to Life in General, with a growing awareness and acceptance of what makes me happy and a genuine dedication to seeking it in my daily living.

Enjoyment, then, is another important layer in the concept of devotion. It feels almost sinfully luxurious  to have the time and ability to ponder and pursue these things - this writing, this life, time to sit with what I’ve learned and explore things I want to learn more about. It’s like receiving a box of Belgian chocolates and knowing you can eat as many as you want without gaining an ounce. I smile at the very thought, don’t you?

For the past year or two, I’ve been about the business of stripping away layers - layers of clutter, of memories, of  expectations. So much has changed during that time. I’ve streamlined my living, literally and figuratively. I once thought change was evil - I dreaded it and fretted over it and hung around the edges of it as long as I could. But if there’s one thing that’s certain in life, it’s the fact that nothing stays the same, nothing is static. I’m finally starting to be okay with that idea. Lately, change has been good to me, and for me.  Now I can devote myself to seeing where it all will take me.

The Reading Life: The In-Between Hour

 The In-Between Hour, by Barbara Claypole White Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: Harlequin MIRA; Original edition (December 31, 2013)

Publisher’s Summary: Bestselling author Will Shepard is caught in the twilight of grief, after his young son dies in a car accident. But when his father’s aging mind erases the memory, Will rewrites the truth. The story he spins brings unexpected relief…until he’s forced to return to rural North Carolina, trapping himself in a lie.

Holistic veterinarian Hannah Linden is a healer who opens her heart to strays but can only watch, powerless, as her grown son struggles with inner demons. When she rents her guest cottage to Will and his dad, she finds solace in trying to mend their broken world, even while her own shatters.

As their lives connect and collide, Will and Hannah become each other’s only hope—if they can find their way into a new story, one that begins with love.

If it sounds like the characters of this novel have a lot on their plates -well, they do. Author Will Shephard has been dealt a double whammy, between the sudden loss of his five year old son and his aging father’s descent into dementia. In addition, Will still has unresolved feelings about his mother, whose mental instability made his youth miserable. Meanwhile, Hannah Linden is desperately trying to save her grown son from his own demons and from following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who committed suicide.

The summary of this novel pushed all my interest buttons - caring for an aging parent, adult children with mental illness, dealing with grief - and I wasn’t disappointed on any level. It was a compelling, well researched novel, with complex and believable characters.  And setting the novel in the North Carolina foothills provided the author with an opportunity to use the natural surroundings to enhance the mood. The title of the piece refers to the time of day between daylight and dusk, the time once know as “the gloaming,” and many of the characters find themselves at such a period on their lives, at a crossroads between light and dark.

The intersection of Will and Hannah’s lives was my favorite aspect of the story. Merging two disparate lifestyles as well as the very demanding needs of family members is a daunting task for any couple, but the reader is left feeling as if they will indeed be able to manage it, and provide each other with some much needed stability for the journey.

Barbara Claypole White writes and gardens in the forests of North Carolina.  Her son’s battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have inspired her to write love stories about damaged people. The In-Between Hour goes a step beyond most conventional women’s fiction, with it’s authentic focus on the havoc mental illness can create within a family, and the legacy it leaves for generations to come.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this novel.

Still Writing

It’s a fine line we writers walk, the line between wanting to be a writer and actually doing the work of it. As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing. I love having written.” Sometimes, sitting at my writing desk in the mornings, trying to restrain my itchy fingers from clicking on the Facebook icon one more time, I sigh in frustration. Where is that inspiration they kept promising me would come if I showed up faithfully every day? I want to go downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee. I really should put in a load of laundry. And there is, of course, Facebook and Twitter to check.

Instead, I pick up Still Writing, Dani Shapiro’s new book. I open it up and read:

It’s so easy to forget what matters. When I begin the day centered, with equanimity, I find that I am quite unshakable. But if I start off in that slippery, discomfiting way, I am easily thrown off course - and once off course there, I stay. And so I know that my job is to cultivate a mind that catches itself.  A mind that watches its own desire to scamper off into the bramble, but instead, guides itself gently back to what needs to be done. This kind of equanimity may not be my nature, but I can at least attempt to make it my habit.

If, as I have said to myself, that for this year at least what matters to me is this writing work I have set out to do, then I must be ever vigilant about guiding my mind back to what needs to be done, shepherding it gently away from the list of distractions all too ready to lasso it and wrestle it to the ground.

I must learn to be still. And write.

This book of Shapiro’s, this small square volume,  sits now always on my writing desk, always at hand. It serves as a guide, when the writing road becomes rocky and my mind has wandered into the bramble. It is my devotional, a dose taken daily even before I touch my finger to the keyboard, before the screen blossoms into life. “The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life,” the book is subtitled, and Perilous it can seem at times, to have chosen a life of words, of weaving expressions smooth as silk from nothing but rowdy thoughts that flit and flicker across the valleys of my mind.

But oh, the Pleasure to be had when mind and fingers work in tandem, when thoughts form as tangible things in tiny icons of black and white, marching steadfastly across the blank page. When words mirror the images in your head, brush them with the glow of painter’s finest bristle, and set them alight for the world to see. When you finally understand that thing that has eaten away at you for most of your sad, sorry life, when the words have worked it around in your head until at last you say “Aha! Of course! That is why I am the way I am!” When you write, and write some more.

When hours go by and -  still - you are writing.

There it is, then, the reason I sit down at this table every morning, the reason I shush the voices that beg me for coffee, that chide me about laundry, that niggle me for news from the Internet.  

Be still! I tell them. Go away with you.

I’m writing.

Still Writing 

Author: Dani Shapiro

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Pages: 230

Buy A Copy: Amazon|Barnes & Noble

Snow Birding

We are hunkered down here in the midwest, heeding weather forecasters who predict another barrage of snow on top of the storm that ushered in 2014 earlier this week. But it was sunny and bright during the early part of the day, and we walked down our frozen street wearing the unlikely combination of sunglasses and earmuffs. Between the holidays and two big snowstorms back to back, I’ve found myself with a totally unprecedented amount of quiet time. Is there anything I like better than quiet time?

Not much.

Of course I can always find ways to keep busy. I’m surrounded by books, I have hundreds of movies and TV shows at my disposal (thank you, Netflix, Amazon, and TiVo). I always have the Book Project to fall back on should I find myself bored. (ha!)

But as snow falls gently and steadily outside the window, I’m content to sit in my chair, my hands wrapped around a steaming mugful of tea, and watch the chickadees and goldfinch flocking to the feeders. My interest in birds is a new one, and because there are so many birders in our neighborhood who feed and water them regularly, there is a large assortment always available for observation.

A friend sent me an interesting article about chickadees - apparently their little birdbrains physically expand by 30 % every winter to accommodate memory storage of all the places they’ve hidden gathered seeds during the fall. When spring comes, their brains “shrink” back to normal size. "They grow more brain when they need to remember things; then shrink that brain when the "remembering" season ends."

As recently as 1994, scientists did not believe this was possible - in birdbrains, let alone in human brains. But guess what? Homo sapien brains can expand too. Every time we learn something new, we grow brain cells.

Learn enough, and the concept of big-headedness will be more than metaphorical.

That’s kind of comforting, isn’t it? Especially when you’ve reached the age where recalling the spot you left your coffee mug, book, and reading glasses can lead you on an hour long wild goose chase through the house.

So yes, bird (and presumably all mammals) can grow brain mass and power. But it’s the second part of that sentence which really caught my attention.

That their brain shrinks when the remembering season ends.

Sometimes it seems like old age marks the end of the remembering season. Especially when folks become infirm and  have to move out of their homes and into care giving environments. Although they might provide “memory-stimulating” activities, it seems like they're really just false approximations of the real-life events our brains are designed to work with.

Even at my stage of life, I can sometimes feel my brain stultifying (especially after too many hours on Facebook!) I really want to stay firmly rooted in the remembering season. That’s another reason why I love reading, writing, and playing music  - those activities are the nuts and seeds I gather all year round, expanding my brain cells with every page written and read, every note played.