Write On Wednesday: Desperate Distractions

I’ll be honest - I nearly cried when I looked out my window this morning.

Snow fell in wet, white sheets, and the sky was gunmetal gray. Skeletal tree branches rattled in the wind, and the chickadees clung desperately to the feeder as it swayed dizzily back and forth.

It wasn’t going to be a good day.

This winter has seemed plagued to me, with illness and unrest, bitter cold and gray skies. I’ve been sick again this week, some odd combination of maladies that appeared out of nowhere.

The winter of my malcontent, I’m calling it. 

So far, 2015, I am not impressed.

I had great plans for the day too - nothing scheduled outside of the house, so I was going to catch up on writing, make headway on publicity for an event involving both my handbell ensemble and the community theater I volunteer with, and maybe even do the taxes (or at least gather the paperwork - yes, I’m one of those tax procrastinators.)

But my energy and ambition fell with a wet thud, just like those snowflakes that were piling up on the porch. 

 Most successful writers will say it’s necessary to put yourself in inspiration’s path: show up at the page every day, don’t wait for inspiration to come find find you. 

One of my favorite writers, Dani Shapiro, whose book Still Writing sits on my desk, talks about the pattern she has for her writing life. “Three pages every day, five days a week,” she maintains. But then she goes on to note that if you “do the math,” this means she could write a novel length manuscript in half a year. 

“I have never written a novel length manuscript in half a year,” she admits. “In fact, two years would be fast for me."

So what happens? As author William Styron put it - “the fleas of life” get in the way. Shapiro agrees. “The dog has a vet appointment; the school play is at noon; it’s flu season, a snow day, who knew there were so many long weekends? The roof springs a leak; the neighbor’s house is under construction; a friend calls in a crisis. Life doesn’t pause to make room for our precious writing time. Life stops for nothing and we make accommodations."

There is an incredible amount of willpower necessary to write, especially when writing isn’t your “bread and butter.” Distractions abound - not only the alluring call of the internet, but homelier distractions as well. Like the bed sheets that should be changed, the towels that needed washing. There is always tea to be made, maybe it would help settle my queasy stomach - or if not that, some toast, dry but still something after all. While the tea brews, perhaps just a few more pages in that new novel I just started. Maybe I’ll finish the chapter before the tea cools, and then go back upstairs to write. By then it’s time to take the dogs outside, which means another pass with the shovel so their short legs don’t become encumbered with icy snowballs.

Ah yes, you know the drill, I can see you nodding your heads guiltily out there. After a while, it all becomes a little desperate, doesn’t it? Sort of like the way we feel when we open the window and see another snowstorm, another gray sky, hear the thunk and scrape of the snow blade as it passes down the street for the 10th time today.

Perseverance. I managed to put myself into the chair, open the page, start to write. Time slips by, you get lost in whatever world you’re creating. For the writer - and I suspect for the musician, the painter, the cook, the seamstress - it’s all part of the same battle. Put yourself where ideas and inspiration will find you. 

And hope it doesn’t get sidetracked by distractions of its own on the way.

The Sunday Salon: Second Chances

I’ve never been one of those readers who will “solider on” with a book to the bitter end even if I don’t care for it. I’ve always felt the searing truth of the saying: “So many books, so little time.” Most of my books come from the library where I have a habit of dashing in, plucking a sackful of books off the new release shelf, taking a quick pass through the stacks to see if there’s anything I might have missed or if an old favorite might be calling my name, and then making off with them like a bandit. (Sometimes, I still feel like the entire concept of libraries is too good to be true - I mean, they really let me come in and just take a dozen books home with me?) 

I admit, it’s harder to set aside a book I’ve bought and paid for than one I’ve borrowed from the library, so I’ve learned to be very selective in the books I purchase because I know I’ll feel a stronger compulsion to finish them. 

On Monday,  I started reading a library novel by a new-to-me author, Sally Beauman. I had finished In This House of Brede early Monday morning, and gave myself the entire day to let it “digest” before starting something else. I found it’s necessary to do that after reading a book that was particularly entrancing, and I was definitely deeply immersed in Godden’s 1960’s novel about a contemplative monastery of nuns.

Although I gave myself the day (and a busy day it was) to release Brede from my mind, I still struggled with The Visitors during my regular evening reading time, and also well into the hour I give myself for reading each morning. The early stages of the novel were set in Egypt, circa 1920, and recounted a good bit of detail about Egyptian archeological expeditions. It’s well written and researched, but not an area of particular interest to me. I was contemplating giving up on it. With the same library haul that yielded The Visitors, I had also brought home a number of quite interesting novels, as well as a memoir I was eager to read. 

But then, I hit the second section of the book, almost 200 pages into a 450 page novel. Suddenly we were back in England, near Cambridge. Our main character was dealing with a very interesting, complex new person in her life. We were meeting her father for the first time, and learning what an absolute dolt he was. The author was filling in the back story of this young girl who had lost her beloved mother, and was on a psychological search for a family of her own, just as the English archeologists were searching for royal tombs in the Egyptian desert.

Suddenly, I was hooked. I can’t put the book down. I’ve been carrying it around the house every since, and read a few more pages whenever I have a few moments to spare.

I’ve had this experience a few times before - almost ready to set a book aside, I decide to read on a little more, when suddenly the author pulls a rabbit out the hat and lures me completely in. Naturally I have to wonder if some of the other books I’ve put aside unfinished might have fulfilled their initial promise if given a second chance. Reading teaches us so much, in so many ways.  Of course there is a life lesson to be learned here as well: second chances sometimes pay off. 

Now, back to The Visitors..I can’t wait to see what happens next.

How about you? Have you ever been tempted to give up reading a book only to find yourself completely sucked in within the next chapter?

Making Strides

We just got home from a walk outdoors, our first in many weeks thanks to the frigid cold and icy streets we’ve had for the past two months. This morning, even though the temperature is only in the teens, the sun shines brightly and (almost!) warmly. There is no wind, the streets are dry, both dogs have a definite spring in their step. It felt good to suck in that fresh air after so many days inside the house. 

We have some friends who are leaving today for a month long sojourn in southern Florida, quite near the city where we once had a vacation home. Winter has been extra hard since we sold that house in 2012. Although we were never able to spend entire winters there, I realize now that even spending a few days there every month made a huge different in our ability to withstand the rigors of a Michigan winter. 

Even so, I’ve often thought that were I able to spend a signifiant length of time in Florida (or any warmer clime) I would choose the months of January and February. By the time March arrives, I feel as if I’ve survived the worst, as if I will make it to spring. 

When March comes, I am hopeful. 

Perhaps it’s because March is my birth month, so I feel anticipatory (yes, even at my age).  The calendar says spring arrives this month, although I have seen many a nasty snowstorm come in on March 21. Still there is something in the air in March, a perceptible lengthing of daylight, a definite intensity to the sun that lifts my winter weary spirit.

With those changes come a sense of wanderlust for me, and this year I really feel it. I’ve become aware of a stirring in my own heart lately, something nudging me to fling wide the door and set out, take big strides, see new things. I’ve never been one who craves travel, unlike many of my friends. I’ve always been happiest and home, and most especially so in these past couple of years as we’ve moved and been settling into our condo. Just last year I wrote these words in the Home Life section of Life In General: “I love being home. I enjoy my own company, my own space, and my own time to practice all the homey things I like to do. Sometimes I think I am dangerously close to crossing the line between homebody and hermit. I am so enamored of this house and this place that I must have a really good reason to leave."

I still love my home, still love being in it and doing all those “homey things.” But I’ve noticed a tiny rustling in my spirit, a little bit of longing when I see those commercials for the Viking River Cruises, and slight tug at the heartstrings when I hear the roar of a jet engine overhead. I thought I was immune to that desire. But maybe not.

Maybe my feelings are changing.

The other day I was talking with a young friend who is staying home with her three children after working in a professional career, one she studied long and hard to achieve. “Colleagues keep asking me when I’m coming back to work, but I really don’t want to go back to work. Maybe I should?” she questioned. “But I just don’t, and I’m not sure I ever will."

During the time she’s been home, she’s uncovered an immense creative talent in painting, sewing, and crafting - a talent she never explored or even knew existed until a few years, after a life spent in science and medical field. But this creative work is feeding her soul right now in a way she obviously needs. 

“One thing I’ve learned,” I told her, in a rare moment of motherly type wisdom, “is that the needs and desires for our lives can change drastically during the course of a lifetime. What interests and nourishes us when we’re 25 may be totally different at 35. It’s happened to me, it will happen to you, too.” 

It’s true, the desire for change comes to all of us - even to me, one of the most change resistant people on the planet. It may not occur in the fashion we Michigander’s use to talk about the weather (if you don’t like it, wait five minutes and it will change), but it comes in it’s own way and time. A little over a year ago, I would have said I didn’t care if I ever traveled anywhere, would have insisted that traveling was way overrated, that I was perfectly happy just staying home forever and always.

And yet. That blue sky, that open road. The rolling hills of southern England. The lapping waves of the Gulf of Mexico. The sidewalk cafes of Paris. They are whispering in my ear - come, see.

Ironically, these feelings come at a time when we are less able to travel than ever simply because of our situation. My mother’s health is not good, and she depends on me for so much right now. We have the dogs to consider, our fur babies who have never been left with anyone but my mom who is finding it increasingly challenging to care for them. These were the things I once used to justify my unwillingness to travel, to explain why I never planned trips longer than four or five days. Now it feels more like being held back, when I really want to loosen the reins of my existence. And this is a situation that is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

The need for change, the desire for change - it comes to us whether we want it or not. Sometimes it creeps up quietly and settles in a remote corner of the heart. Sometimes it rushes in like the March wind. In 2013, I wrote: “There are times when the need for change become palpable, when the yearning for something fresh and new insistently clamors for attention and cannot be ignored."

As I open the door to March and to the promise of “something fresh and new” in the natural world, I want to open myself to these new feelings, notice this change of heart and find ways to satisfy these urges within the set of limitations I have. 

When the need for change begins to clamor, it does no good to ignore it. 

The Sunday Salon: Old Friends

“Old friends, old friends, sat on the park bench like bookends..."

Paul Simon’s poignant tune has been running through my mind all week as I’ve been re-reading a book I first read over 40 years ago. In This House of Brede, a novel by Rumer Godden, is the story of Phillippa Talbot, 40 year old woman who leaves behind a successful career in business and enters a Benedictine monastery to become a contemplative nun. 

“Is it easier to be than to do?” she inquires of a friend, who questions her decision to eschew a life of productive activity. And though the book was written almost 50 years ago, this question is one we ask of ourselves more and more in the 21st century. For this group of nuns, the work of their lives is of spiritual being - the majority of their days are spent in prayer and worship for people in the outside world who seek supplication and intercessory prayer. As a community they perform the Divine Office. They write books and create artwork designed to uplift and sustain spiritual life. They humble themselves before God and each other.

The novel, besides being a fascinating look inside the life of monastic nuns during the early 1960’s, is also one of those ensemble novels I always enjoy reading. The story is as much about the other nuns and postulants as it is about Phillippa (who becomes Dame Phillippa when she takes her solemn vows). Dame Catherine Ismay, who becomes the reluctant, yet clear-headed Abbess; Sister Cecily, the extraordinarily beautiful and musically gifted  young postulant a whose mother nearly disowned her because of  her vocation; Dame Agnes, old and wise, who is wary of Phillippa because sees something worldly her that is impossible to leave behind. 

When I read this book the first time I was maybe 15 or 16 and had just started attending Catholic high school. My only religious experiences to date had been sporadic attendance at a small Baptist church. The liturgy and ritual of the Catholic church quickly captured my imagination, I was eager to learn more about it. Many of my teachers were nuns (not Benedictine, of course, but Felicians), and I wasn’t quite sure how to relate to them. Becoming acquainted with Godden’s characters helped me understand them and feel more comfortable with them.

As I read this battered old library edition with it’s hard cover and rigid heavy-duty binding, it’s pages yellowed and stained after sitting on the shelf for 40 years, I wonder how long its been since someone read this book.  There are so many new books calling for our attention these days, books with beautifully designed covers, whose authors pop up in our Facebook and Twitter feeds. I picked it up at the library one day when I was wandering through the stacks and heard it beckon me from the shelf, whispering “pssst, over here” in a tremulous voice.

Just like an old, old friend.

It’s good to get reacquainted.

In Which I Adjust My Expectations...Again

Most of my Facebook friends will know I’ve been having some struggles and concerns with one of my little dogs. Magic, the older of the two at age 12, has been “inappetant” (in veterinary jargon) for the past year. He refuses his food, goes long periods without eating, and last summer developed a severe case of gastroenteritis (inflammation of the intestinal tract) as a result. He was actually hospitalized for three days in a specialty veterinary hospital about 40 minutes away from our home. He was discharged looking thin and haggard, and acting his age for the first time.

When he came home from that hospitalization, I made it my mission to feed him three meals a day. I followed him around the house with dishes of roast beef, grilled chicken, baby food, buttered noodles - anything I thought might possibly tempt him. “Just try it,” I would coax, scratching him behind the ear with one hand and offering tiny bites with the other. All this babying worked for a while, but right around Christmas time he started resisting food with a vengeance. He was either sick of his menu, sick of me constantly haranguing him, or maybe just plain sick. The less he ate, the more worried I got. How long could a dog go without eating? He began to look droopy and listless, walking around with his beautiful plume tail dragging on the ground. He shivered convulsively every time we went out in the cold, and cried to be carried around in my arms.

Per my usual, I went into full blown crisis mode. We made numerous visits to our vet, and then back to the specialist we’d seen in the summer. We tested blood, we tested urine (what can you do to dog pee that would cost $356? I wonder.)

All the results were normal. Which was good, but...

Meanwhile, Magic still wouldn’t eat. Even the “cookies” and “spicy treats” he had always eaten before were being refused with his characteristic turn of the head and slinking away. I was at my wit’s end.

I texted a friend who has much experience with animals. “Try something completely different,” she suggested. “Like a vegetable or fruit.” I remembered how much Magic liked canned green beans (ick), but I found a can lurking in the back of the pantry. I heated them up, rinsed off the salty broth, and offered him one with bated breath.

He grabbed it so fast he nearly ate my finger with it. After a few beans, I started sneaking bites of dog food into the mix. Before long, he had eaten an entire dishful. Since that day - as long as I offer a green vegetable as an “appetizer” - he’s been eating almost normally.

I say almost, because his appetite is not the same as it used to be. I always fed my dogs three small meals a day - it’s easier for little dogs to digest smaller portions more often. But now Magic doesn’t want to eat until about 1:00. He’ll have a few “cookies” for breakfast, but that’s about it. He needs things with a little bit of spice, which makes me wonder if his olfactory senses aren’t as keen as they used to be. 

He is, after all, 12 years old. In people years, that puts him around 70. With age, his needs and desires have changed. I’ve been expecting him to act and behave in the same way he did when he was young. Worse yet, I’ve been trying to force him to.

One of the most difficult of life’s lessons is learning to adjust our expectations. We often expect we will want the same things we did ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. We expect to sustain the same levels of excitement, anticipation, and interest we had when we were young. We expect to look and feel as good as we did in the “prime” of life, when in fact we have gray hairs and wrinkles around the eyes and a little too much weight around the middle. 

Sometimes it takes a long while to come to terms with those changes. We fight it every step along the way, with miracle creams and body shaping garments and frequent trips to the hair salon for highlights. We travel and join groups and do yoga and lunch with the ladies. 

But after a while, it all seems a little frantic. After a while, we get tired. 

I’ve adjusted my expectations for my own life many times in the past 10 years. It doesn’t mean I’ve “settled” for not looking or being my best. It means that I now know I don’t have to wear a size 6, don’t need to have perfectly smooth skin, don’t have to say “yes” to every request to help or work or go out for the evening. It means I pick and choose more carefully the ways I spend my time because I know it (and my energy!) are limited. 

So now I’ve adjusted my expectations for Magic as well. If he only wants to eat once a day, then  I can live with that. If he wants vegetables and cheese instead of cooked chicken or even his dog food - well, if that’s what it takes to make mealtimes pleasurable for him, then I’m fine with it. At his age, life should be as pleasant as possible, which doesn’t include a nerve-wracked woman chasing him around the house shoving bites of food in his face. 

I’m happier and healthier when my life is aligned with my expectations. 

I think his will be too.

How about you? Do you adjust your expectations on a regular basis?