Pieces of the Past: Destination

 I’ve been spending a lot of time sifting through eight years of blog posts and essays to include in my book, Life in General. Since many of my Facebook friends indulge in something called “Throwback Thursday”, posting photos of themselves from the past, I thought it might be fun to do something similar here, posting some of my favorite “ Pieces of the Past.”  Here’s one from 2006:  

Do you know where you’re going to?

Do you like the things that life is showing you?

Do you know?

Theme song from the movie Mahogany, originally recorded by Diana Ross, 1994

My husband I recently purchased new bikes to use at our home in Florida. It’s a perfect five mile ride around the perimeter of our gated community, with lots of inland waterways to admire as you’re pedaling along, and very little traffic to avoid. We try to get a ride in every morning, and Jim gets the bikes out of the garage while I lock up the house. Then it’s time for the big decision - which way to go? We can ride to the end of our street and turn right or left, making a perfect, neatly prescribed circle around the outside of the complex and returning right where we started from. There are no obstacles, no choices about turns, not even any bridges to cross. There are a couple of speed bumps, but it’s generally smooth sailing - a real no-brainer of a ride.

However, we could also ride through the interior of the community, which is a veritable maze of curving streets, glittering ponds, and arched bridges, requiring fancy gear shifting on the bridges, sharp braking on the downhills, and directional decisions all along the way in order to find your way back home.

Jim will usually say, “I don’t care which way we go. You pick.” If you know me very well, you can probably guess what my inclination is - the safe route, with no chance of getting lost, no challenges to face, just easy riding. Lately though, there’s been a nagging voice inside urging me to take the more adventurous way, the “road less traveled.” My husband, perceptive and gentle encourager, will sometimes save me from the decision and say, “Why don’t we start out toward the Town Center?,” knowing this will take us on the path into the unknown. I’m game to follow his lead, nimbly shifting into lower gears on the uphill bridges, flying down on the opposite side and whirling into a sharp turn at the bottom. We’ve gotten lost a time or two, requiring us to stop, take stock, and then venture bravely toward the way we thing we should be going. So far, we’ve always landed safe and sound at our original destination.

Generally I like “knowing where I’m going to.” I’ve traveled though life on well traveled routes that have taken me toward safe destinations with a minimum of challenge or risk. But I have to admit that sometimes I don’t like the “things that life is showing me.” My choice of destinations, while safe and secure, can be - dare I say - BORING. Maybe the destinations for the next part of life’s journey should be a little less predictable, a little more out of the way.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be quite so afraid to head down the opposite side of the road, where adventure might await.

After all, I have become quite fond of flying down those bridges, full speed ahead.

Rings of Remembrance

Jewelry is one of my passions, and I especially love wearing jewelry that belonged to someone in my family because it connects me to them in such a tangible way. For a long time I wore two slender gold wedding bands on the middle finger of my right hand - they belonged to my mother in law and my aunt, and each morning when I slipped them on my finger I gave these two women a tender thought. In June of 2011, I took the rings off and put them into a heart shaped box I keep in my nightstand - it seemed like time to move on, to let them rest quietly in my memory without that daily nudge against my heartstrings. This month I’ve been wearing my grandmother’s pearl ring on my right hand, because April is both the month of her birth and the month of her wedding anniversary. My grandfather bought the ring for her birthday, and although I can’t remember which birthday, I wonder if it might have been her 60th. I was old enough to recall going along on the shopping trip he took with my mother to pick it out. If she were turning 60, then I would have been 11 years old, and that seems to fit with the physical memory I have of myself in the jewelry store with my mom and my Granddad.

Wearing my grandmother’s ring this month has given me a chance to reflect on how important she was to me - how important both my grandparents were in my life.  They lived with us for most of my childhood, and became my de facto baby sitters and playmates. My grandmother spent most of her time in the kitchen, but she would always stop what she was doing, wipe her floury hands on the cotton apron she wore over her housedress, and take the book I had proffered to our favorite chair where we would cuddle and read for as long as I liked. My grandfather took me on daily walks through the woods where we imagined elaborate games of hunting wildlife, me carrying my little plastic Winchester cap rifle, our cocker spaniel trotting happily ahead with nose to the ground.

She taught me to sing - the hymns she once played on the piano at the Baptist church in their hometown. He taught me to play poker and hold that toy rifle steady. Fifty years later, those memories bring back a feeling of contentment, of being loved and valued.

I was luckier than most children in those days, and certainly luckier than most children nowadays, who more often than not have grandparents in different states or even different countries. My own grandson is one of those, and when I feel badly that we live 1500 miles away from him, I remember that his maternal grandparents live about 15,000 miles away in Thailand, and have never even seen him.

The other day I was out shopping with my friend when a Face Time call came in from her daughter and granddaughter in another time zone. The baby, an eight month old, looked seriously perplexed, staring at our faces in the little box on the phone screen. “All of these kids are going to grow up thinking their grandparents live in a tiny electronic box,” I joked. And while technology is a wonderful aid to see and hear in real time what the little ones are doing and how they are growing, sometimes those Skype and FaceTime calls reminds me of TV shows where people are visiting their family members in prison, talking to one another over a telephone, pressing fingertips and lips to the plexiglass screen that separates them.

It’s easy for me to have a personal pity party over the fact that I rarely see my grandson, that I can’t babysit for him while his mom and dad go out, that we won’t have many holiday traditions or regular sleepovers. But when I think about how much my grandparents taught me, how much I loved listening to their stories about life when they were children, what a close relationship we had based on the things we did together every day, then I realize that Connor and all the other little ones like him are missing something too.

Parents try so hard to give their children every advantage - the best schools, creative toys and playthings, access to every sport and enriching activity imaginable. In the modern world it’s easy to lose sight of other things that also important. Extended family can provide a quality of unconditional love and attention, a legacy of family history, a wise and calm perspective that is- well, in the words of the famous commercial - Priceless.

Each morning this month when I put my grandmother’s ring on my finger, I connect with all those wonderful memories I have of her and with what I know about her and my heritage. From her came my desire to play the piano, my understanding of the importance of books and reading. I don’t think I inherited her ability to bake (although admittedly I’ve not given it a fair shot) but I’m afraid my generalized anxiety and impatience are all hers!

I like knowing where all that stuff in me comes from. But I love having memories of the of hours, days, years, I spent in the company of my grandparents. Their love made me feel cherished in a way I’ve never felt since - as if I could do anything, as if I could do no wrong. It was a wonderful feeling.

Sometimes, when I put the pearl ring on my finger, I can still feel it. 

 How about you? Do you wear any jewelry that connects you with someone special in your family history?

Pieces of the Past - Lovliest of Trees

Sifting through eight years of essays and blog posts to include in my book Life in General, has brought some persistent “themes” to light. One of them is Time - the quick passage of it, the constant dilemma of never having enough of it, the consistent question of how to make the best use of it. Many of my Facebook friends indulge in something called “Throwback Thursday”, posting photos of themselves from the past. I thought it might be fun to do something similar here, posting some of my favorite “ Pieces of the Past." Like this one from 2006. “Lovliest of Trees":

Too fast. That’s what I think about time.

It travels much too fast.

Remember how the days once crept by, every minute larger than life and filled with opportunities - for play, for laughter, for being with friends, for having fun. Did you ever give a thought to time running out, to not having enough of it?

When was the moment you first noticed the swift passage of time? For me it was my 16th birthday (and I need a calculator to determine exactly how long ago that was!) There’s a Polaroid picture of me in an old photo album somewhere, leaning in to blow out the candles on my cake, dressed in the plaid skirt of my school uniform, my long hair in two braids draped over my shoulders. Truthfully, I look more like 6 than 16 in that picture. Yet I recall looking in the mirror that day and thinking: “Someday you’ll be old.” Old like my mother, who was all of 45 at the time. Old like grandmother, who was 63.

Looking back on all the years since then, who could have believed they would travel so swiftly, a blur of college and marriage and motherhood. Like fast motion photography, it sped past me - my LIFE - leaving me standing here in the chill wind of ghostly memories. I brace myself each day, digging my heels into the earth to keep myself grounded firmly in this moment, whatever it might be.

I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m healthy, and strong. I’ve never faced mortal illness or danger. My family is rife with long-lived women, and thanks to advanced in modern medicine, I could conceivably count more years than any of them.

Yet those years fly by so fast, and there is still so much left to do.

There’s a poem by A.E. Housman, set to music by Ralph Vaughn Williams. It’s called Lovliest of Trees. It’s a lyric, poignant song which many of the high school girls I accompany choose to sing as a festival piece. It goes like this:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride,

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy spring a score

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

If you do the math, the narrator of this poem is 20 years old, lamenting the thought of “only fifty more” springs. It makes me smile to hear teenage girls sing this song, trying to grasp the idea of a finite amount of time in which to save the cherry blossoms.

Well, I’ve had fifty springs, and more besides. They seem to roll around more quickly every year, those cherry blossom months. Soon, another long Michigan winter will have passed, the robins will return, and the sun will warm my skin. I’m grateful for that, although it reminds me of the swift network of time I’m traveling through.

So excuse me while I go wander the woodlands. There are cherry blossoms to savor.

Top of the List

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want my life to look like in the next 20 or 30 years. Many of my dearest friends are at least 15 years older than I am, and these women in their mid-70’s are busy, engaged, active, and interesting. They’ve honed their lives down to the most important elements, knowing what it is that they excel at, how they want to spend their time, but also knowing their limits. One of them travels extensively, one still works as the music director of her busy church and finds time to swim and do yoga, another of them founded a community theater group several years after she retired from full time teaching. My mother has a dear friend who has been struggling with depression, a struggle that has manifested itself in a lack of interest in living, an inability to do any of the things she once loved to do. A devout and committed Catholic, she has stopped attending church, stopped all her volunteer activities, and even stopped singing in the choir which she once told me was her “saving grace."

My mother is concerned about her friend, as well she should be. I only half jokingly remarked that  if I were ever to stop reading, writing, and playing music, then my family would know I was near death. But it’s true - when people suddenly give up the things they are passionate about, the very things that have always given them the most pleasure and been the most life-inspiring, then something is very wrong.

I’ve had some experience with depression, which occurred during a time in my life when I was overwhelmed with painful and stressful situations.  Because I am the kind of person I am, I denied my feelings and continued to push through my busy days, never acknowledged the hurt until my body forced me to seek help. With the help of a good therapist and the love and support of my family, I finally put all my energy into getting better. 

But given different life circumstances, I could so easily have been someone like my mother’s friend, who has faced periodic depression her entire adult life.  As a child, I was highly sensitive, overprotected, shy, nervous, timid. I worried about everything. I had nervous tics, like tying my hair in knots and even pulling it out.

Going to school saved me. I had wonderful school experiences, and am so grateful to my elementary school teachers who encouraged me and helped me feel almost normal. I remember them still, 50 years later - Miss Kamm, Miss Strale, Mrs. Heitzner - these women showed me how to use my brain and cultivate my talents. By the time I reached middle school I had more confidence, was proud and sure of my abilities in writing in music, and enjoyed friendships and social activities like any “normal" teenager.

And I have been blessed with so much love - from my parents, my grandparents, aunts and uncles. My husband, who has loved and supported everything I’ve ever wanted to do since I was 17 years old. This kind of unconditional love is such good medicine, even during the darkest days. Not everyone gets that for even a while, certainly not for their whole life.

When I was in therapy some years ago, my therapist suggested I act as if I were happy. While that may seem like a simplistic exercise, it helped me. I made the effort to smile more often. I forced myself to talk to people, to write, to take daily walks. After pretending for a while, the pretense started to feel natural. My emotions started following my behavior. The exercise also forced me to think about what happiness really meant for me, something I had never consciously done before.

One of the things I most appreciate about mid-life is the ability to look both backwards and forwards with the wisdom of experience and self-knowledge. I've learned what makes me happy and I’m (finally!) learning how to balance my needs with the needs of everyone else out there. (Hint: It involves using a tiny two-letter word that heretofore has been absent from my vocabulary.)  I’m becoming cognizant of my limits, physical and mental, and I try and listen to my body. I know I need regular meals and six hours of sleep. I need coffee in the morning, a walk outside every day, and dogs at my feet. I like to sleep in my own bed with a pile of good books on the night table beside me. 

I know my surest path to depression is letting the needs of the outside world overwhelm me and rob me of my daily routines and time at home with the people I love. 

I realize now that I don’t have to apologize for needing these things. My life doesn’t have to look like my friend’s life, or my mother’s life, or my favorite celebrities life.

It only has to look like MINE.

And right now the picture is as nearly perfect as it’s been in a long time. It’s the picture I want to paint and put on a vision board as my goal for the next 20 or 30 years  (well, maybe minus wintry weather we’ve had for the past four months.) I want to carry this vision forward into the next part of my life. I want to be the kind of “old lady” who is eager, interested (and interesting!) and engaged in the world around her, who knows what she wants from her one life and is willing to work to have it.

Because then I won’t be OLD at all.

I’ll just be the best, happiest version of me.

The Lives of the Poets

Lately I’ve been reading and studying about the lives of poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. Frankly, I’m obsessed with them.

It all began with a quote of Hall’s which led me to some of his prose writing, which led me to his poems, which led to more of his prose, which in turn led to Kenyon and her poems…and well, here I am, surrounded by piles of books about two people whom I’ve never met but with whose lives I feel utterly familiar.

This isn’t the first time I’ve become enthralled with the lives of poets. When I was a teenager, it was Emily Dickinson who caught my attention, that brilliant recluse in her white dresses, floating through the woods with tiny scraps of paper drifting behind her. Then in college I developed a macabre fascination with Sylvia Plath, her life, her work, her death, all of it appealing to a morbid streak I’ve never been able to quell. My bookshelves are still testimony to both these obsessions, overflowing with texts by and about these two women.

Is there a purpose to such enchantment, besides my simple curiosity? Are poets and writers my “celebrity” obsession, the way some people fixate on movie stars or sports heroes? Or am I looking for insight into my “teachers,” the people whose work and minds I admire?

I think (or at least I hope) that it’s more the latter. Writers like Hall and Kenyon have a rich inner life which they translate into magical poetic imagery. But their outer lives, their day to day existence, is really much like my own. They loved their home, they protected their solitude, they were happy slaves to their daily routine. They cherished the mundane, yet gave us a body of literature conveying life’s sacredness.

I often write about the extraordinary ordinary, how the seemingly small events of everyday life take on great significance if you look at them with an awesome perspective, the way these poets often do in their verse. “The newspaper, the coffee cup, the dog’s/impatience for his morning walk/These fibers braid the ordinary mystery,” writes Hall in his poem The Coffee Cup. “Ordinary days were best/when we worked over poems in our separate rooms,” he writes in Letters With No Address, after Kenyon’s death. “In the bliss of routine/coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems/we feel we will live/forever…"

Kenyon focuses her bright poet’s eye on the “Luminous Particular," imbuing powerful emotion into a particular  image or event which in turn becomes luminous in importance. “I scrub the floorboards/in the kitchen, repeating/the motions of other women/who have lived in this house./And when I find a long gray hair/floating in the pail/I feel my life added to theirs.”

These days I am living in what Hall would probably describe as one of the best years of my life.  They are the years, he said, that “you remember least because nothing notable happens.” They are not the years of disease or sadness, not even the years of great events or travel. They are the years filled with one ordinary day after another. “The best moments of our lives,” he wrote, “were the days of repeated quiet and work.” Work meaning doing the things they loved - reading, writing, walking their dog, climbing the mountain, eating sandwiches, watching baseball, playing ping pong.

“It might have been otherwise,” Kenyon writes in what is probably her best loved poem (Otherwise) as she lists the things she does on a day she obviously considers one of the best. Getting out of bed on “two strong legs", eating cereal with “sweet milk, a ripe flawless peach,”  taking the dog "uphill to the birch plantings", eating dinner with her mate at “a table with silver candlesticks.”

“But one day, I know,” she concludes, “it will be otherwise.” As of course it was, when just a few months after writing those words she was diagnosed with leukemia and was dead just a year later.

How extraordinary is the best of everyday, especially when seen in the light of what might be otherwise. Even today, when yesterday’s promised hope of spring has dissolved and the sky hangs heavy with clouds and cold icy rain. I am blessed with my warm house, with the companionship of these small dogs who are sentinels at my feet. With tea in a green cup crafted by the hands of a friend. These fibers “braid the ordinary mystery."

The lives of the poets remind us. Their work gives us a way to see it anew.

Because we know otherwise will come.

*April is National Poetry Month. Poetry has always been important in my life. I’ve written more about that here.