Creating Connections

"We yearn for connections. Through shared stories we find them."

Those words are from the Introduction to my book, Life In General, which was published this week. When I originally decided to put together a collection of essays I’d written over the past eight years, essays that explored all the experiences, feelings, learning and growing I was doing on this journey into mid-life, I intended it to be a personal project, a tangible preservation of that particular time in my life. I had the idea I would give a copy to my family and a few friends, a token of my passion for writing and my gratitude for their presence in my life’s journey.

I never expected the overwhelming positive response I would receive after publishing this little book. So many friends and family have reached out to me, wanting to connect through the stories I’ve shared about my small, ordinary life.

It proves I was right in the statement quoted above. We yearn for connection with others. Something in us knows that we need it, like we need air to breathe and food to eat. 

Some of us connect in large and gregarious ways, with busy active social lives, with speeches or with dinner parties. But I am a quiet person, one who most often chooses to stay home with her books, her dogs, her little family. Still, I have the yearning for connection with the world around me and the individuals who dwell within it.

 I connect with stories. The stories I read. The stories I write. The stories I share about simple life, the one I live every day in the midst of working, loving, cooking, cleaning, walking my dogs.

“I don’t think people allow themselves to value their lives anymore,” wrote memoirist Patricia Hampl. “It’s the idea that every life is sacred and that life is composed of details, of lost moments, of things that nobody cares about, including the people who are wounded or overjoyed by these moments. By honoring one’s own life, its possible to extend empathy and compassion to others."

This has been an amazing week. My small book of stories is finding an audience out in the wider world, and I am celebrating and creating connections I never dreamed were possible.

I have also - thanks to the talents of my long time blogging friend Kerstin Martin and her new web design company Lattes and More -  moved into this gorgeous new internet home here on Squarespace. 

It has been a week filled with gifts, with lessons, with love. With connections between my heart and yours.

What more could I ask of Life In General?

Thankful

In my tiny corner of the world, there is much to be grateful for this holiday season - good health,  family and friends who love me, a safe warm home, plentiful food to eat. They may seem like ordinary things, but in the overall scheme of life they are momentous. Everything else is just gravy (pardon the pun). Today’s post was originally written in 2010, and it's one of the essays included in my book, Life in General, which was published just this week.  Reading it brings back lots of memories for me, and I hope it will for you as well. Even more importantly, whatever you do this weekend, I hope you create some lovely memories to carry with you through the rest of your life in general.

"I can’t tell you how much I used to dread Thanksgiving,” my mother said yesterday as we headed out to the grocery store to do our shopping for the big dinner. “My mother used to invite everybody over and then bitch about it for days. She made life miserable for Dad and me for weeks.”

I looked at her aghast. My childhood memories of Thanksgiving were pure happiness. I never sensed any tension or angst...all I recall were the wonderful aromas and tastes of my southern grandmother’s cuisine. The huge turkey, slowly roasting all day long in the oven (“Oh, yes,” said my mother, “she woke us all up at the crack of dawn to get that turkey in the oven by seven o’clock so it could cook all day long”), stuffed with the moist, savory dressing (“I had to search all over town for fresh sage to put in that stuffing”), and smothered in rich brown gravy (“She wouldn’t let anybody else stir that gravy for fear it would be lumpy!”).

Well. Who knew? I was so tickled at the prospect of a house full of people, all my favorite aunts and uncles with their interesting conversations, laughing and telling stories about family members I’d never seen. And all the while the day had been filled with aggravation for my mother.

Of course, fifty years later, I’m no stranger to the memory of aggravating holidays. When Jim and I married, it somehow evolved in our little family that his mother would prepare the Thanksgiving Day dinner at our house. (The one they so graciously sold to us when we got married while they moved into a tiny apartment that was of course far too small to serve Thanksgiving dinner.) So every year she’d appear (at the crack of dawn so she could get the turkey in the oven) and then be puttering around in my kitchen all day, muttering about the way I arranged things or cleaned things or didn’t have the right kind of things.

However, if you were to ask my son, he might recall the times he stood on a tiny step stool and helped Grandma prepare the turkey, watching intently as she cleaned out the cavity and tied the drumsticks together with twine. Or he might remember running into the kitchen each time the oven door opened, so he could hold the baster and squeeze hot pan drippings over the bird’s golden breast. He might not have had any inkling that his mother was in her bedroom, silently screaming.

 All that’s left of those holidays are memories—for my son, who lives far away and is never home on Thanksgiving; for me, who has dinner with an ever-diminishing number of people; and for my mother, who prepares the meal for the three of us in her own kitchen and in her own expert and individual way.

 Thanksgiving is becoming more and more the forgotten holiday, crammed in between Halloween and Christmas, which garner a lot more attention in this consumer-driven society of ours. We’re even having our regular trash pickup on Thursday—as long as I’ve lived here, pickup was postponed until Friday on Thanksgiving week. I’m not sure I approve of that. I think the sanitation workers should have Thursday so they could enjoy dinner with their families and friends same as nearly everyone else.

Thanksgiving is a holiday built around emotions—of being grateful for family and friends, for health and happiness, and food on the table. It’s not about buying presents, or wearing costumes, or elaborate fireworks displays. It’s not even about concerts of beautiful music or rooms of gorgeous decorations.

 It’s simply about making memories, good or bad. I hope you make some lovely ones this year.

Digging Up Doubt

It’s so easy to doubt, to mistrust decisions and life choices and current paths. This world is overflowing with choices, and lurking behind each one are the gleaming eyes of another potentially more successful one.Most of the time I manage to keep doubt at bay, largely because I make safe choices. I don’t go out on limbs, I follow the tried and true path, the road well traveled. But on those occasions when I stick my neck out and take a risk, I have to force myself to put the shovelful of doubt aside and maintain faith in my forward journey.

I’ve stepped out on a fairly large limb (at least it is for me) by publishing a book. The final proof of Life in General is in transit to me right now, and as I wait for it to arrive I feel the seeds of doubt beginning to sprout in my mind.

The book should be shorter, the paper should be ivory instead of white, the cover is the wrong color. I am a bad writer. The whole thing is stupid.

 Doubt. Doubt. Doubt.

Wait a minute, I say to myself, this shovelful of doubt poised halfway out of the fertile ground of my mind. Remember why you did this in the first place? This book is mostly for YOU, to preserve this writing journey you’ve been on for the past eight years, to collect the thoughts and experiences you’ve used words to clarify for yourself. It’s a book for YOU, the woman who loves books and paper and words preserved in black and white (or ivory!). Some people paint, some throw pots in clay, some sew or quilt or knit. You write. You craved a concrete expression of that gift.

I’ve just joined a new Facebook group dedicated to sharing the beauty of everyday life, and aside from my family, there’s nothing to which I’m more dedicated than the art of daily living. “The Extraordinary Ordinary,” I call it, and I celebrate it in a myriad of ways every day. It keeps me centered and grounded when I feel those stirrings of doubt - maybe I should have taken that new accompanying job at the high school, maybe I should look for a “real” job so we can save more money for retirement, maybe I should go back to school and learn how to do something productive for a change. Maybe I should die my hair blonde. Or take a Zumba class.

But then I recall the profound contentment I feel here in my home, making my own schedule, volunteering, playing music, taking care of my family, helping my mom. I know if I were bound to any of those other choices that sometimes beckon me with their glittering possibility, I would be anxious and worried and fretting and miserable. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

We have to plant the seeds of faith over and over throughout our lives, because they will get unearthed at times by doubt and fear and uncertainty. Doubt can only be dispelled by faith in the reasons we have for doing what we do, and by faith in ourselves and in knowing what we need to be happy.

Sometimes it takes as much courage to follow that road as it does to strike out on a new one. 

TLC Book Review: Christmas at Tiffany's

Christmas at Tiffany's

Christmas at Tiffany’s, Karen Swan

Paperback: 592 pages Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (October 28, 2014

About the Book:What do you do when the man you pledged your life to breaks your heart and shatters your dreams? You pack your bags and travel the big, wide world to find your destiny—and your true love . . .

Ten years ago, a young and naïve Cassie married her first serious boyfriend, believing he would be with her forever. Now her marriage is in tatters and Cassie has no career or home of her own. Though she feels betrayed and confused, Cassie isn’t giving up. She’s going to take control of her life. But first she has to find out where she belongs . . . and who she wants to be.

Over the course of one year, Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with her best friends living in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris, and London. Exchanging comfort food and mousy hair for a low-carb diet and a gorgeous new look, Cassie tries each city on for size as she searches for the life she’s meant to have . . . and the man she’s meant to love.

I’ll be honest...I read about 50 pages of this book and put it aside -  but NOT for the reason you think! I put it aside because it’s SO GOOD and it’s just the kind of book I love to read during the holidays. It’s fun, it has great characters that are believable, have a good backstory, and get themselves into interesting situations. It’s fat and juicy, it has a cute cover, and I’m SAVING it for those hustle bustle holiday times when I want and need the perfect book to keep me company in my soft reading chair. This is IT.

And you know I mean it because I’m writing in all capitals- internet shouting in a very good way.

Buy yourself a copy (here!) and put it away as a little Christmas present for YOU. When the cold winds of December howl, when the holiday crowds drive you crazy, when family demands make you nuts, then go home, brew yourself some hot tea or stir up a hot toddy and grab Christmas at Tiffany’s.

I can’t wait to do just that.

About the Author: Karen Swan began her career in fashion journalism before giving it all up to raise her three children and an ADHD puppy, and to pursue her ambition of becoming a writer. She lives in the forest in Sussex, writing her books in a treehouse overlooking the Downs. Her first novel, Players, was published in 2010, followed by Prima Donna and Christmas at Tiffany’s in 2011.

Thanks, TLC Book tours, for the opportunity to enjoy this book! I’m looking forward to it.

One Year Out

Were I living in the 19th century, today would be the day I cast aside my black clothing, stepped out the front door, and re-entered the world around me. Today my year of mourning for my father would be over, and I could take up my normal life once again. It’s almost laughable, isn’t it, the way this custom has changed. No year spent wearing black dresses and being tastefully excused from everything except church services on Sunday. When my father died a year ago today, I boarded a plane to Florida the very next morning and spent a couple of days helping my stepmother arrange for his cremation. That accomplished, I then flew back home where I went straight from the airport to a weekend spent rehearsing with my handbell group.

And then life returned to it’s normal pattern – not just musical rehearsals, but grocery shopping and dog walking, doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, checking emails, talking with friends.

 But underneath all those regular everyday activities -  the things that grounded me in so many ways during this year of coming to terms with being really and truly Fatherless - there was always a pervasive sense of vulnerability, of teetering on a precipice of disaster. A deep chasm opened up beneath my feet, a large chunk of the very earth on which I stood was scooped out from under me. I sometimes felt myself free-falling into danger, with no one there to rescue me.

 I was one of those golden girls, the ones whose fathers protected them and coddled them and pampered them. All I had to do was ask, and it was given to me, done for me, made to happen. More than a protector, more than a spoiler, my Dad was my Champion, the one who believed in me, who never doubted my value, who thought I could do anything and be the best at whatever I did.

 One of my clearest childhood memories is of running a foot race at my dad’s Lodge picnic and seeing him at the finish line waiting for me, arms outstretched, a huge smile on his face as he cheered me on. “Come on Beck! You can do it!” he called.

I won the race, a truly amazing feat for a child who was never allowed to run because it might cause an asthma attack.

 But on that day my feet had wings.

 So it is that sensation I miss the most. I miss having the lasting support of that man who cornered my soon-to-be husband in the church basement minutes before our wedding with a solemn warning that he had “better treat my baby right.” And even though it had been years since my father could actually do anything concrete to help me, I believed he was still in my corner, still rooting for me to be happy whatever that took.

 Life goes on after loss, and it goes on faster in this 21st century than ever before. We present a semblance of normalcy to the world when sometimes we feel anything but. We wobble and waver when the bulwarks of our past leave us. We feel unearthed and unsettled without those people who gave strength to our weakness, added joy to our accomplishments and sustenance to our spirit.

Unlike my 18th and 19th century sisters, I never wore the outward trappings of mourning, didn’t spend the last 12 months sequestered away from polite society. But in my heart there dwells a small quiet chamber that holds only memories, the ones I keep like treasures to remind me of a man who held me so dear.