Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 12

On walking the labyrinth, 2014

You take a step forward, and another, still not sure you’re on the right road.  And yet, there is something deep inside you urging, this way.  The child-in-you is afraid. You look around for confirmation, for some wiser, older “adult” kind of person to nod “yes.” If only someone else would fall into step beside you, someone who could take your hand and tell you who you really are and where you’re meant to go. Instead, every morning you wake up and set out once again, a fumbling beginner on the path of awakening.

The road is full of travelers. (You think: Does everyone else have this all figured out? Am I the only one who’s lost?) You can – and do — follow in another’s footsteps for a while.  But ultimately, you have to find your own way.   This life, this trail through the wilderness, is a creative journey: your own.  It’s full of unknowns; no map or guide is going to tell you what’s around the next corner.  All you know for sure is that the view isn’t ever quite what you expected.  The plans you make?  No guarantees, no promises.

And so you have no choice but to proceed on faith.  Little by little you learn to trust:  the murmurings of your own heart, the wisdom in your own two feet, the forces at work in the world that are larger than you.  What you need, you have.  What you want changes moment to moment.

Road-weary, you begin to let go of the wanting and the craving.  You move more slowly, more quietly – taking time to listen, to look, to wonder.  Befriending the silence, you turn away from the chattering voices in your head. You see into the depths of things.  And what you come to understand, as your pace slows and your heart opens, is that not all desires need to be met. That there is a kind of beauty in accepting yourself as you are, your life as it is, the path you are already on.

Once you slip through the net of your own fears, there is mystery in every step.  Out here, in the open space between the “yes” and the “no” of judgment, you discover the treasure that’s been yours all along: your life is filled with grace.  You stand still for a moment, overcome by the shock of it.  You weep.  You look around, through new eyes, and are suddenly filled with compassion for all those who are walking ahead of you, behind you, beside you.  There is nothing to do but love them all.  There is no other place to be but here.  There is nothing to feel but gratitude.

A New Year’s Wish and Benediction

My heartfelt thanks to all of you who have joined me in this space, to read and write and share this magical journey that is everyday life.  You are the ones I keep writing for.  As long as you keep showing up to read, I will show up, too, deeply grateful for your company.   May we continue to travel well together, to support one another along the way, and to celebrate the gift of all our ordinary days.  Blessings to you and yours in 2014 and beyond.

(Each New Year’s Eve morning, volunteers in our town painstakingly tape this labyrinth onto the floor of the town hall, creating an exact replica of the famous 13th-century labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral.  In silence, townspeople arrive throughout the afternoon, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day, to walk the path and reflect.  It has become a special tradition in our family.  Yesterday, as I traveled through the labyrinth with my husband and son, I was surprised by the emotions that came up.  Such a simple ritual.  And yet, so much mystery.  So much beauty.  So much.)

The post On walking the labyrinth, 2014 appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

A glorious granola recipe (plenty to give & some for you, too)

My grandmother Kenison crocheted afghans and made the world’s best doughnuts, two skills I still wish I’d learned from her before it was too late.

She was also the first person I ever knew who made her own granola, back in the days when “health food” was considered a fad, “organic” might as well have been a foreign word, and the cereal boxes in our kitchen cupboard at home ran from Raisin Bran to Cap’n Crunch.

At least, on a visit years ago when I was newly married, I did have the foresight to write down Grammie’s recipe.  And although I can’t present every member of our family with a hand-made afghan this Christmas as she once did, I am following in her footsteps. With the exception of books (I always give books!), most of the gifts I’m getting ready to wrap this year aren’t coming from stores.  They’re coming from me.

My granola isn’t exactly like my grandmother’s. I’ve taken some license with her original recipe over the years.  It’s fun to play with new combinations of ingredients, and it never turns out quite the same twice anyway.  (She liked carob powder in hers; lately, I’ve been experimenting with cardamom in mine.) The one thing I always do, though, is make a lot.  And it’s always delicious.  I think of my grandmother every time I start gathering the ingredients, and I feel happier creating something simple from scratch than clicking a “buy now” button on my computer or wandering through stores looking for the “perfect” gift.

As I type these words, the smells of maple and cinnamon and cardamom are still lingering.  Steve and Henry have been nibbling with every pass they make through the kitchen.  The floor is littered with stray oats and walnuts and sesame seeds.  The counters are sticky with syrup and crowded with every huge bowl we own. I haven’t set foot outside all day, or spent a penny, or thought once about the Christmas party we all agreed not to attend.  I haven’t answered an email, checked Facebook, or looked at my to-do list for the rest of the week.  There are all sorts of things I have yet to do.

But something good has happened here, as the apricots and dried plums were chopped, as the trays went in and out of the oven, as the jars on the table were filled, and as my husband and son stepped in to help wash some dishes.

I’ve been reminded, once again, that I don’t have to go out in search of Christmas spirit.  I can create it here in my own kitchen, with a yellowed, handwritten recipe falling out of an old notebook, a few pounds of rolled oats, an abundance of nuts and fruit, and a day given over to being right where I am, doing just one thing at a time.

Food made with love and given in joy is always gratefully received. I can pretty much guarantee that a jar of homemade “glorious granola” is a gift no one will shove in the back of a closet or need to return on Dec. 26.  Just be sure to keep one jar for yourself.

Are you making any gifts this year?  If so, what?  What is the best home-made gift you ever received?  I’d love to hear from you!

Glorious Granola (to keep or give away)

a basic recipe with some variations

1 14 oz. jar of organic coconut oil

4 T. unsalted butter (more butter = more clumps; feel free to increase or decrease here)

2 T. dark brown sugar

1 cup dark maple syrup

1 T. vanilla extract

1 T. good quality cinnamon

2 tsp. cardamom (optional)

8-10 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup of organic unsweetened coconut flakes (optional)

4-6 cups raw, unsalted nuts (I generally use a combinations of sliced almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and  pumpkin seeds, but sometimes I switch in cashews, pistachios, and/or pecans.)

1-2 cups raw sesame seeds

4 cups mixed chopped dried fruit in any combination you like (sour cherries, cranberries, apricots, raisins, golden raisins, dates, plums, blueberries.)

½ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger (optional)

Sea salt or Maldon salt flakes

1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

2. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, heat the coconut oil, brown sugar, maple syrup, and butter until oil and butter are melted, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in a generous pinch of salt, the vanilla extract, cinnamon, and cardamom if using.

3. Place the rolled oats and the mixed nuts in a large mixing bowl and pour the oil/syrup mixture over. Stir with a spatula to coat the oats and nuts evenly. Divide the mixture between three jellyroll pans. (Make thin, even layers; you should have enough left in the bowl for at least three more pans after the first batch are done.  If you like, line the pans with parchment – sometimes I do, but not always.) Taste for balance of flavors.

4. Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes, rotating the sheets and stirring every ten minutes.

5. While still warm, stir in the dried fruit and ginger and sprinkle with more salt flakes to taste.   Cool completely before covering.  The mixture will keep in a tightly covered container at room temperature for at least a week.  Store the rest in your freezer in zip-lock bags or pack into jars to share.

A few tips

1.   Feel free to play around with this basic recipe.  As long as you don’t over-sweeten or over-cook, you can’t go wrong.  Taste your way along.

2.   You can use more butter, for a toastier, richer flavor and more clumps.  Try fruit puree (apple is good) in place of the oil for a lighter, crunchier result.  Cut back on the syrup or leave out the brown sugar if you prefer your granola less sweet.  Canola or vegetable oil works fine in place of the coconut oil.  Even a light olive oil works well. Any neutral oil is fine.

3.   Be liberal with the Maldon salt flakes and taste to get desired result.  What sets my granola apart is the perfect, subtle balance between slightly sweet and slightly salty. 

4.   Try different combinations of spices, sweeteners, nuts, and fruits.  (I choose organic ingredients whenever possible.)

5.   I like these:  apricot/cardamom/crystallized ginger; grated orange zest (mix in with the oats and bake)/cranberry/maple; lavender buds/lemon zest (again, bake in with oat mixture)/honey.

6.   Other things you can add, or not:  carob powder, flax seeds, hemp seeds, dried mulberries, gojii berries.  The recipe above is gluten-free; you can add wheat germ if gluten-free isn’t a requirement for you.

7.  Don’t overcook but make sure granola is evenly browned throughout, stir every ten minutes, never bake the fruits; always mix them in to your still-warm granola.

8.  Cool completely before covering, stirring occasionally.  

9.  Consider the recipe above a work in progress and allow it to evolve as you go.  This will make plenty of granola to divide up into generous gift portions, with some left for you.

10.   For a lovely presentation, pack your granola into classic Weck Tulip Jars, available online at http://weckjars.com

The post A glorious granola recipe (plenty to give & some for you, too) appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

The Soul of Solstice

One December when our sons were little, I hung a piece of paper painted a deep dark blue in our kitchen.  “A sky,” I told them.  I painted another piece of paper gold, cut out about a hundred small stars and put them in a basket, along with a glue stick.

My hope was to distract the boys a bit from the idea of “getting” things for Christmas, and to shift the emphasis instead to the kinds of simple acts of kindness that actually make us feel good inside ourselves.

I knew I wouldn’t have much luck telling them that the shortest route to happiness isn’t paved with possessions.  (Try explaining that to a six- year-old who has been trying to prioritize his Christmas list.) They wouldn’t believe me if I suggested that more stuff doesn’t ever equal a better life.  Or that a sure-fire antidote to restlessness and craving is to do something nice for someone else.

I wanted them to discover for themselves the joy of giving, the deeper meaning of the season.

And so, for every random, unsolicited act of kindness anyone in the family did during the day, we placed a star into the sky.  Each night at dinnertime, we turned off all the kitchen lights, lit candles in an Advent wreath on our table, held hands and said our grace.  And then, as the painted sky filled with stars, we talked about opportunities we’d each found during the day to do good deeds.

The December of Good Deeds was such a long time ago.  For some unknown reason, we only did it once.  And yet it is one of my favorite holiday memories, ever.

Last night, Henry and Steve and I grabbed the afghans and lined up on the couch together to watch a couple of Tivoed episodes of “The Daily Show.”  The clips of shoppers mauling each other in a race to claim discounted printers, dollar DVDs, and Rachel Ray cookware on Black Friday were more horrifying than funny.  Jon Stewart didn’t need to say much about the stabbing in Virginia over a parking space, the shooting at Kohl’s, or the mayhem at Wal-Mart.  There was no need to comment on Sarah Palin’s claim last week that she loves the commercialization of Christmas, because it reminds us all that this is the “most cheerful holiday on the calendar.”  All he had to do was play the footage.

This morning, I woke up early, still haunted and disturbed by those scenes.  We are warm and dry and safe and well-fed here.  There is nothing anyone in my family needs or wants so badly that we would line up outside a store at 6 a.m. to get it. No one went shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

But I also realize what a luxury our comfort is.  I don’t want to take any of what I have for granted – not the food in our refrigerator, not the heat rising from the grates on the floor, not the laptop on which I type these words, nor the fact that, at 6:30 in the morning, I am privileged enough to be sitting on the couch in my pajamas writing a blog post, rather than driving through darkness to get to work on time.  I can’t even begin to know what it’s like to live in a constant state of not-enough.

And yet, I’m certainly not immune to the pressures of the season.  I may not agree with Sarah Palin in extolling the commercialization of Christmas, but I can’t always resist it, either.  In this season of short days and long, cold nights there is, perhaps, a nearly universal impulse to dispel the darkness.  And what better way to escape the discomfort of our own dark places, anxious thoughts, and fears of scarcity than by rushing forth — out to the bright lights and cheerful music and super sales at the shopping mall?

The winter solstice is a time when the natural world is still and dormant. Outside my own window this morning, the ground is frozen solid, the trees lightly coated with a scrim of ice.  The only lights to be seen are the neighbor’s holiday decorations, left aglow all night.  The truth is, I would prefer complete darkness.  I realize that my own desire as the winter solstice approaches is to unplug, to fully experience the shortest days, the longest nights, the deepest shadows.

Sitting here while the rest of my family sleeps, I’m reminded how healing it feels to take my cues not from the culture but from nature.  Each day this month, I can make a choice to slow down, to sit quietly, to turn inward, to reflect on my own hopes and goals for this season.  Instead of banishing the silent darkness, I can welcome it.   Instead of trying to escape my complicated, pre-holiday feelings of sadness for times past and anxiety about the days to come, I can simply acknowledge them: my annual desire for things to be just so, my annual worry that they won’t be.

Later today Henry and I will decorate the Christmas tree he and Steve have already set up in living room.  We will put on our favorite music, bring the decorations up from the basement, test out last year’s strings of lights.  My December to-do list is long – there are meals to plan, presents to buy and make and wrap and send, cards to write.  Jack will come home.  We will visit friends and uphold traditions. As always, the whole extended family will gather here on Christmas day for gifts and a brunch that lasts for hours.  I love and cherish every moment of it.  But I can also get a little overwhelmed  thinking about all I have set myself to orchestrate and plan and do.  The other day, feeling my old, familiar December panic setting in, I confided to a friend that part of me would like to skip this month altogether.

But that’s not really true.  What I want is to fully embrace it instead – in my own way and at my own pace.  Instead of thinking about “producing” Christmas, I want to align my heart with the soul of solstice.  Here in the pre-dawn darkness, I am seeing more clearly just  what  I wish to cultivate and bring into the light this season.  Such simple things:  love, laughter, ease, togetherness, gratitude, hospitality, joy.  Perhaps it doesn’t  have to be hard.  Perhaps all I need to do is recreate, in my own mind at least, that long-ago piece of blue paper taped to the refrigerator.   And then fill it up with stars of goodness.

How do you honor the soul of the season in your heart? In  your home?  I would love to know!

 

 

 

 

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A bit more about Gracie, gratitude, and you. . .

“A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.”

– from E.B. White on Dogs

I almost didn’t write about losing our beloved dog Gracie last week. My grief felt so raw, so private, and so painful. I wasn’t sure I could put it into words or share it in public. Our family was in mourning, tender and sad. My first impulse was to turn inward, to hunker down in my house and have a long cry.

On the other hand, for the last four years I’ve made a practice of writing here about both the joys and challenges of my life, reflections that are always personal but that also, I hope, touch something universal. I had written about our Gracie while she lived. It seemed only fitting to let you know she was gone.

Each day this week, I lit a candle in the midst of a makeshift Gracie altar in the middle of our kitchen. We have taken some solace in having lots of photos of her propped up along the shelf. Her empty collar is here. Her leash. Her tennis ball and ball flinger. A bit of her white tail hair, tied in a ribbon. It feels both good and sad to have these things, and to have a place to go when we wonder why she isn’t where she belongs, curled up in a tidy oval shape on the rug or sitting, alert, on her favorite rock in the back yard.

And each day this week I’ve also read your beautiful, wise, consoling comments — some of them several times and through tears. And so, on this Thanksgiving evening, I simply want to let you know how much your words have meant to me and to all of us who loved Gracie.

I am still a bit stunned by the depth of caring and compassion that can exist between people who may not know one another in person but who share a bond. Everyone who’s ever lost a cherished animal knew exactly how to reach out and exactly what I needed to hear. You understood, too, just how bleak and quiet life can feel. How empty a house can be and how long and lonely the nights are when there’s no one snoring softly at the foot of the bed or scratching at the door at dawn.

Reading your words over these past days, I’ve felt less alone. I’ve loved hearing about your lives and your special pets. With each story and condolence, you helped me remember there will surely be another dog for us to welcome into our lives and into our hearts, not to replace Gracie but to love in a different way. And you reminded me that the beloved dogs who bring such joy to our days also teach us much about letting go.

I wish I could write a personal letter back to each and every one of you who took the time this week to write me or to leave a comment. But I couldn’t have done that and also managed to teach my yoga classes, clean the house, get the laundry and grocery shopping done, and make Thanksgiving dinner for my family. So, instead, I will simply offer my heartfelt thanks here and hope that it’s enough.

This year, for the first time, the Thanksgiving baton was passed to me. After more than 50 years of hosting our family holiday dinner, my parents were ready to be guests instead of cooks. These are huge shoes for me to fill. Till today, I’d never cooked a turkey in my life (Steve and my brother, on grilling duty in separate households,  began texting about times and temperatures at 7 am this morning).  I’ve never coordinated a meal with so many required dishes, or used all the burners on my stove and every rack in my oven at once.

“Start tomorrow,” my mom advised me on Sunday night. And then she read me her recipe for stuffing. Henry arrived home on Monday afternoon and the two of us got busy. All week I kept meaning to sit down and write a blog post, but there was never a moment.

Now, the dishes are done, Steve has put his mom’s silver back in its wooden box, the left-overs are stacked in the refrigerator, and everyone’s gone home. It’s too late, and I’m too tired, to write any more tonight.   But I’ve just read a beautiful essay about gratitude my friend Pamela posted this morning. I don’t even remember writing the lines she quotes from my blog from a year ago but they seem almost prescient now, certainly just right for today. This, I think, is why I write in the first place — to tell myself what I most need to hear and to remind myself of what I already know. Which is simply this: Life will always offer us our share of losses and challenges. But it also offers countless opportunities to pause and give thanks for all we have.

From my blog, November 20, 2012:

For gratitude, as we all know, is not a given but rather a way of being to be cultivated. It doesn’t come packaged like the Stouffer’s stuffing mix nor is it ensured by the name of the holiday. No, real “thanksgiving” requires us to pause long enough to feel the earth beneath our feet, to gaze up into the spaciousness of the sky above, and to stop and take a good, long, loving look at the precious faces sitting across from us at the dinner table.

Life can turn on a dime. Not one of us knows, ever, what fate has in store, or what challenges await just around the bend. But I do know this: nothing lasts. Life is an interplay of light and shadow, blessings and losses, moments to be endured and moments I would give anything to live again. I will never get them back, of course, can never re-do the moments I missed or the ones I still regret, any more than I can recapture the moments I desperately wanted to hold onto forever. I can only remind myself to stay awake, to pay attention, and to say my prayer of thanks for the only thing that really matters: this life, here, now.

Signed books for Christmas.

I’ll be joining 19 other local authors on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 2, from 2-4 at my local independent bookstore’s Holiday Fair.  If you’re in the area, stop by the Peterborough Toadstool and say hello.

Happily, you don’t have to be my neighbor to get a signed, personalized, and gift-wrapped book for someone on your list.  Just click here.

And of course I’m always honored to receive a request for signed bookplates.  Click here.  I will mail yours right off to you.  

The post A bit more about Gracie, gratitude, and you. . . appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Gracie, 8/20/00 – 11/18/13

Everyone we know who’s ever loved and lost a dog told us the same thing: that she would let us know when it was time to say good-bye. And of course, she did.

Yesterday morning we let Gracie go, with sad hearts but also certain that it was her day to leave us.

Since she was diagnosed with cancer just a month ago, on Oct. 17, Gracie rose to the challenge of treatment just the way she did everything else in her life: willingly, without fuss or fanfare, and with complete trust in her humans to do what was best for her. We took a big swing at it, with three rounds of chemo, and were amazed and thrilled as she gained back weight and strength and her zest for life.

A week ago, she was like her old self — up at dawn, taking long morning walks, playing in the leaves, chasing balls and sticks. (Steve took this photo  last weekend, as Gracie eagerly did her part during fall clean-up at my parents’ house.)

There were no bad days. These past few weeks have been about massages and Reiki and hand-feeding, lots of special, home-cooked food, visits with all her friends, treats and walks and togetherness. We had the great gift of getting her back for a little while, knowing as well that things could turn at any moment. When they did, we took our cues from her.

Yesterday morning Steve and Debbie and I had breakfast together, while Gracie dozed on her bed beside us in the sunshine. After a long, difficult night, she was breathing peacefully. She was “present” and, at the same time, so clearly ready to go. We played the Brandenburg concertos on the stereo (the Saturday-morning pancake music of her puppyhood), loved her and kissed her and held her. I told her the story of her life, all thirteen wonderful years of it, and read her poems from Mary Oliver’s “Dog Songs.” She had a lovely, pain-free morning, which felt like another gift. And then one last ride in the car, to the vet who has been so kind and helpful through this journey.

Gracie passed at 11:25, with her sweet head in my hands and Debbie holding her body. She leaves a great hole in all our lives. I know we will find tennis balls on every walk we take in the woods for years. And we will miss her, and remember her, always, the companion of our lives.

Tonight, sitting here in a quiet house without her in it, I am sad and raw and lonely. Every spot here speaks her name. Each time I think I’m done with crying, the tears flow again. I want her back. It is as simple, and as impossible, as that.

Instead I turn yet again to Mary Oliver, who knows as much as anyone about loving and letting go of dogs:

“And it is exceedingly short, this galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old–or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.”

I think, when I wrote this passage in Magical Journey, I was attempting to prepare myself for the inevitable.  Of course, I thought I was prepared.  Only to find I wasn’t prepared at all.  At any rate, this excerpt does serve as a eulogy of sorts, a portrait of Gracie as she was,  and so it seems worth sharing  here.

from Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

Gracie was a puppy when our sons were little boys. The three of them came of age together, amid baseballs sailing through the backyard, tennis balls and Frisbees and badminton birdies in flight. If it could be tossed or caught or hit or chewed, Gracie was there, hunkered down, all sharp ears and eyes and attention as she awaited her moment to leap, her mouth parted just slightly in what we all were certain was a smile of anticipation. From the moment we brought her home as a squirmy two-month-old black and white ball of fur, until first one and then the other son aged out of Little League, she never missed a single game, could be counted on to sit fully engrossed—if pained to be excluded from the action—on the sidelines, jaws snapping shut every time a ball slapped into a glove. On a couple of memorable occasions, she managed to give her collar the slip and take off in a blur of pure border collie velocity, straight out to her customary spot in the outfield, where she’d spin around and crouch into position, ready to make a catch. Games were stopped in order to return Gracie to the bench, but no one ever really minded; she was a vision of athleticism and exuberance. In our own backyard, she was always a starter, an essential part of every team; she knew just how to get herself under the arc of a ball, how to receive it in her teeth and relinquish it with grace to the pitcher. The rules were modified to accommodate her lack of an arm, but not much. Gracie was a serious player; she commanded respect.

Now I see how both Steve and I have come to depend on her to mitigate the silence, to fill the emptiness left in the wake of two absent boys. When our sons were little, Steve was greeted as he walked through the door each night by cries of “Daddeeee’s home!” and entreaties for a game of catch in the yard. The balls and gloves would be located, the most urgent news of the day hastily dispensed with, and out they would go. I’m not sure who looked forward to this daily play time more, my husband or his boys, but it was just one of many small rituals that made family life rhythmic, predictable, and good. And Gracie was an essential ingredient in that mix, too.

Thinking of those days now, I see that our dog has simply carried on what our sons, growing up as sons do, could not. Having lived through and absorbed their childhoods into her being, she sees it as her job to continue traditions they outgrew long ago. It’s been years, of course, since our sons came running to meet their dad at the door, but Gracie still does it, still dances at his feet and begs for a ball game before he’s even had time to put down his bag or change his shoes. And Steve, as ever, is happy to oblige. It is good to be loved, to be welcomed, to be needed, whether by boy or dog.

But even this ritual is changing, for much as Gracie wants to do what she’s always done, it’s the idea and the memory of that sacred routine she holds on to now and acts out with unflagging enthusiasm every evening. At eleven she’s too old to chase down an endless stream of balls as she used to do. But still, she and Steve go through the motions. He bends down to greet his girl; she urges him outside; he tosses the ball high and she snags it, expertly and on the fly, as she has done thousands of times before. But once is enough now, maybe twice on a good day—though God forbid they should ever pass on the game altogether.

And suddenly I think I understand why Jack has been campaigning for a puppy, looking at border collies online, and insisting that we need to give Gracie time to train her successor—impossible as it is for any of us to imagine life without her. For Gracie is the bridge between what’s over and what is unfolding now. She, unlike the two aging humans in the household, has moved without regret into this new chapter, rejoicing in every  homecoming and stoically accepting the inevitable farewell nose kisses. When Henry’s home, she sleeps in his room and keeps an eye on his suitcase, attuned to the moment when there are more clothes going back into it than coming out. When Jack is here, she will still give everything she has to give in order to play defense under the basketball hoop. He picks up the ball and she’s suddenly two again, every bounce an excitement requiring a move, a quick response, even though the price is high: he will have to carry her up the stairs at night.

When her boys are gone, when it’s just the two of us here, she acquiesces to less thrilling entertainments—early morning walks with me and Steve, brief pursuits of the wild turkeys in the yard, digging a hole under the rhododendron. Imprinted for life with the beauty of balls and boys, she hasn’t relinquished her passion for either. But like us, she’s adjusting to this new life even as she carries all our yesterdays within her and upholds our family ways, embodying for each of us the beauty of continuity and the illusion of permanence.

Joy and love: the contents of a dog’s heart. No wonder, upon seeing Gracie, our fully grown sons drop to the floor, face-to-face and nose to nose, and eagerly become their younger, sweeter, sillier selves. And no wonder my husband and I catch ourselves talking to her as if she were a child herself, as if in carrying on the traditions born in our sons’ childhood years, she is also allowing us to play our old parenting roles for just a little longer. Our sons may be grown and gone, but Gracie, loyal companion of their boyhoods, is still here. Still here and, though decades older than all of us in dog years, still exuberantly herself, reminding us that to live well is to honor both the beauty of routine and the enchantment of the moment that is right now. I’m beginning to think Jack is right: she is a good teacher.

Enter to win Mary Oliver’s new book

I’m certain anyone who shares their life with a dog will love Mary Oliver’s new book Dog Songs as much as I do.  A gift from a dear friend, it’s been the one book I’ve returned to over and over lately, finding both solace and kinship in its pages, not to mention a much-needed reminder to simply be grateful for all that is in this beautiful world, even as I mourn what has come to an end.  In honor of Gracie, I’ve bought another copy of Dog Songs to share here.

To enter to win, you must be subscribed to my blog (you can subscribe now, if you haven’t already), and then simply leave a thought or two about dogs in the comments below.  I will select a winner at random, using random.org, on November 30.  To those who have already written notes of support and concern during our journey with Gracie, know how grateful I am.  Your words have meant much.  Thank you.

The post Gracie, 8/20/00 – 11/18/13 appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Change

I’ve been paying close attention to the weather lately.  Over the last few days, frost has claimed the last of the nasturtiums outside the kitchen door.  The maple tree, as of yesterday, is bare, save for two golden leaves stubbornly clinging.

“The leaves fell so much earlier than usual this year,” I’ve been saying to my husband, as if we’ve been deprived of something; an extra week of gazing at them perhaps.  “It’s gotten colder sooner.”  He doesn’t believe me, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

And then it occurs to me:  I have a record.

It was just a year ago that two young filmmakers from Boston drove up to our house in New Hampshire to shoot the book trailer for Magical Journey.  I was watching the weather pretty closely that week, too, worried it would be freezing by the time we finally had a shot list together and that late October would prove too stark and wintry to allow for the kind of carefree outdoor moments I’d been envisioning.

I haven’t watched the video myself for a year, not since the day I okayed the final cut and sent it off to my publisher to post on YouTube, with fingers crossed that it might inspire a few book sales.  Perhaps some movie stars get used to seeing themselves on film or hearing the sound of their own recorded voices, but I doubt I ever will.  It’s easier not to look.

A year ago, making a book trailer was just another item on my pre-publication to-do list, one more thing to worry about getting right and submitting by the deadline.   This morning though, aware of all that’s changed since we spent a day filming footage for a three-minute movie, I clicked on the link and allowed myself a different kind of magical journey: a short trip back in time.

I have no idea if this brief excerpt ever moved anyone to buy a copy of my book.  Unlike the video I made for The Gift of an Ordinary Day, which surprised everyone by going viral — with well over 2 million views despite its nearly 8-minute length –this one has had a far smaller audience.  But I have to admit: sales or not, I’m grateful now for one October day in my life that was not only lived, but captured for eternity.

Watching the film that resulted from that day of shooting, I’m reminded once again of something I know deep in my heart to be true: it is the ordinary stuff of life that is most precious – the light through the kitchen window, a walk in the woods with a friend, tossing a ball for a beloved dog to catch, raking leaves into a fragrant pile, a chat over a cup of tea, a son’s quick kiss on his way out the door.

As I type these words, I can’t help but marvel at how relentless change is.  How inevitable, how eternal, how unpredictable. I think of our two sons, each of them living now in distant states and following paths neither could have foreseen a year ago.  They check in, text their dad during the World Series games at night, ask us to send them a few things  from home.  But the ties that bind are lengthening, stretching, and growing thinner all the time.  Change propels us forward, urging us to unfold, to grow, to risk.  Change separates us, too, demanding that we release our hold on what’s over.

And, at the same time, change challenges us to surrender, to accept, to soften into what is.  Bright fall days give way to grey winter afternoons.  The last leaves finally do drift from the trees. The ground hardens over, the sky darkens, a season ends.

Our dog Gracie, so eager to show off her fielding skills a year ago, tearing across the yard to snatch a ball out of the air, is thirteen and battling a sudden, advanced cancer.  A week ago, we almost lost her.  And then to everyone’s astonishment, she rallied, responding to good care, a barrage of drugs, and an enormous gush of love. (I always said I’d never cook for a dog.  Last night, Gracie had beef stew for dinner, which she lapped — delicately, out of a spoon – while lying down on the dining room rug.)

“We have to take it day by day,” the kindly veterinarian warned last week as I took notes about her chemo treatments and wrote down what side effects to watch for and the schedule for her pills at home.

For the time being, she is doing well enough, holding her own.  But as I sit next to her on the floor, kissing her nose and feeling with my fingertips to see if the lymph nodes on her neck are shrinking, the words “day by day” assume their own resonance.  This, after all, is the way each one of us must approach our lives, appreciating all that we have for as long as we can.  Day by day.  Hour by hour.  Precious moment by precious moment.

I will write more about Gracie.  For now, though, I think I’ll simply say this: how glad I am that the need to make a book trailer last fall prompted us to catch our dear, fleet-footed girl on film when she was still healthy and in her prime.  And how grateful I am for every quiet, pain-free day she is granted now.

As two fellow dog lovers reminded me last week, “She will let you know when it’s time to say good-bye.”   I will trust in the truth of that and hope, for her sake and for ours, that we are wise and gracious enough then to let her go.

Meanwhile, for the record, it’s Steve who’s right.  The hard frost came and the last of the autumn leaves fell this month just as they did one year ago.  It happened  the very same week, in fact, while the October Hunter’s moon waned in a cold, clear, star-strewn night sky.  It is only in my own imagination, faulty and greedy as it is, that I’ve been short-changed — yearning as always for a few more mild hours, another golden day, a little more sweetness, a bit more time.

News. . .

It is a special pleasure to contribute to a new venture, especially one as elegant and eloquent as the lovely digital magazine Compose.  The second issue, just published, is a treat for anyone who appreciates good writing.  It is certainly a treat for me, as I find myself here in the excellent company of some writers who are both dear friends and esteemed colleagues, including Beth Kephart with an excerpt from her terrific new book Handling the Truth, and Marion Roach, who offers some of the best time-management advice for writers I’ve read anywhere.  My own essay, about mean mail (ouch, yes, I’ve gotten some) is here.  Take a look, and then please do share the magazine with your friends.  If ever there was a publication deserving of some good word of mouth, this is it!

Congratulations to Gina Ricks, winner of a signed copy of “Ready for Air” by Kate Hopper.  And a heartfelt thanks to all who took time last week to share intimate, moving stories about challenges faced and survived, losses endured, and lessons learned in life’s darkest moments.  Your comments touched my heart.  If I could have answered every one of them, I would have.  Instead, as things turned out, I was making many trips to the vet, nursing our beloved Gracie, and adapting in ways large and small to our own “new normal.” Meanwhile, you reached out and wrote to one another, offering kindness and compassion and conversation.  Thank you, dear readers, for being here and for making all those caring connections in this space.  I am honored to share this online “home” with you!

The post Change appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Ready for Air–and a give-away

It wasn’t lost on me that I read Kate Hopper’s lovely memoir, Ready for Air, earlier this month, while in the air myself.

Beside me, squeezed into the too-small middle seat, my 6’1″ son Jack was reading his own book.  I kept glancing over at him, aware that this was the last trip the two of us would take together for quite a while.  Aware, too, that I was already preparing myself for the moment when I would bid him goodbye in Atlanta, leave him to his new life as a student there, and fly home without him.

Kate’s subtitle is “A Journey through Premature Motherhood.”  It sounds specific, and it is.  This is a story about a baby girl born too soon, about a young woman’s struggle to be strong and brave in the face of one terrifying complication after another, of a marriage that is tested and ultimately strengthened by adversity, of a baby whose struggle to survive offers both a compelling read and something better: a reminder that, in the largest sense, our human stories are all variations on a theme.  For isn’t the real journey — through motherhood, through every relationship we ever have, through life itself  — really about learning to work with things as they are rather than as we wish they could be?

It’s ridiculous how careful I was during my pregnancy,” Kate writes.  “I didn’t use synthetic cleaners; I drank only filtered water; I ate pounds of broccoli and cheese and yogurt—calcium in any form; I bought only organic fruit; I avoided fish because of the mercury.  But it didn’t matter.  None of it could make her stay inside me and keep growing until she was full term.  I followed the rules, I did what I was told, and it didn’t matter.”

Coming upon these words at an altitude of 10,000 feet, I suddenly realized why it was entirely appropriate for me to be reading a harrowing birth story at the very moment that my own “baby” was leaving the nest.  There, buckled into my window seat and twenty-one years out from my own blissfully uneventful final month of pregnancy, I found myself absorbed by Kate’s intimate, profoundly personal account of her daughter’s rocky arrival on this earth.

It wasn’t just the narrative that engaged me, although Kate writes vividly of the unfolding drama in which she suddenly finds herself: the severe preeclampsia and skyrocketing blood pressure that leads to an emergency C-section, her two-pound baby’s fight to survive, oxygen tents and tube feedings and breast-pump miseries, a raging, life-threatening sepsis infection just when things are looking up, and Stella’s long, slow pilgrimage from her tiny isolette in the NICU to her own bed in her own home.

What struck me even more, and made me grateful for this raw, uncensored account of a birth story gone awry, was its powerful reminder that motherhood – and indeed, life itself — at any age and at any stage is about surrender and acceptance, and that love and loss are always inextricably intertwined.

“We raise our children to let them go,” the old grandmothers remind us.  But of course the letting go isn’t just about children growing up and leaving home; it begins at once and it continues for as long as we are parents.

Day by day, from the moment our babies are delivered out of our bodies and into our arms, we are reminded that we aren’t in control.  We can mourn for what we wanted and didn’t have, or we can begin to trust in the rightness of the challenges we’re handed and in our own ability to weather the unknown.

“Live the questions now,” a wise friend suggests, quoting Rilke in a note to Kate after she leaves the hospital without her newborn.  “And perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into the answers.”

This, I think, is what Ready for Air is really about and why, in an odd way, it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time.  For me, the raising part was relatively easy.  I’ve loved being a mom, loved having my two sons at the very center of my life for so many years. It’s the letting go part that’s always been hard.

And now, as my second son makes his way in the world as an adult far from home, I find myself living the questions all over again.  There are no assurances for his future, any more than there are for mine or yours.  I want to know that he’ll be fine, that he’s made the right choice, that all will be well.  I can’t know any of that, of course.  Instead, I try for patience.  I attempt to abide quietly with the unknowns.  I promise myself to live the questions, just as both my sons are doing.

Ready for Air drew me in deep and delivered the message I seem to need to hear again and again: our children’s destinies are not ours to decide, their lives not ours to live or shape. We may put everything we have into the work of being a mother or a father.  We may love our children with all our hearts.  But we don’t get to call the shots.  We can’t choose their paths for them.  And we don’t get to decide how the story unfolds.

For Kate and her husband, the work of letting go begins with a pregnancy that goes overnight from difficult to high-risk, with a two-pound infant fighting for her life in the netherworld of a neonatal intensive care unit, and with a string of unforeseen challenges and setbacks.

It begins in fear and in protest:   This isn’t fair.  This isn’t what we signed up for.  This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

And then, slowly, This isn’t fair is transformed into This is how it is. Fear melts away, giving rise to acceptance.  Faith is tested and redefined.  Letting go becomes an act of surrender, of love, of trusting in the bigger picture and the greater forces at work in the universe.   And in the softening, there is a realization:  Here we are.  And we aren’t alone.

There was a moment near the end of our flight when Jack looked over my shoulder.  He couldn’t believe I’d read almost an entire book, barely looking up once.  He was surprised to see I’d been reading about a baby, of all things.  I flipped open my calendar (the leatherbound notebook I still use for everything, a handwritten extension of me). I showed him the photo I keep inside the front flap, of the two of us when he was about six months old.  He is a wispy-haired, pudgy armful, snuggled up close under my chin, burrowing in and looking out at the world from the protection of my embrace.  I am younger than seems possible, my skin still fair and smooth, my eyes wide with mother-wonder.

A lifetime ago.  Just yesterday.  Both.  A different story entirely from the one I was in the midst of reading.  And yet, in the way that matters most, perhaps not so different at all.  For the lesson we are all here to learn is essentially the same.  We arrive on the shores of adulthood with a white-knuckle grip on our own carefully honed vision of the way we think things ought to be. And then life has its way with us.

Growing up, it turns out, isn’t about realizing the vision after all.  It’s about surrendering to the truth of what is.  Is there a mother, anywhere, who hasn’t been shaken by loss or by some unforeseen reality that defies the best-laid plan?  Who hasn’t found herself traveling in foreign territory, stumbling down a road that wasn’t on the map, with only love and instinct to guide her way?  It may be, as it was for Kate, a hushed room in the NICU with a two-pound preemie.   Or, it may be years later — a phone call from a stranded teenager in the middle of the night, the threshold of a rehab center, a plane ticket to join the Peace Corps, a choice that rocks a family to its core, a diagnosis that changes everything. We raise our children. We let them go.

And along the way, we share our stories with one another.  Stories of our children growing, falling, learning, living, and sometimes even dying.  And our own stories of growing right along with them, of loving and stumbling. Of reaching out for help, of holding on and letting go. And of finding our way, step by step, in the dark.

A teacher now, and the mother of two healthy daughters, Kate helps other women write the stories they need to tell.  “Your stories matter,” she tells her students.  “Putting them down on paper and crafting them matters.”  This brave, beautiful book is a testament to that truth.

I have a giveaway copy of Ready for Air  to share with a lucky reader.  Just leave a comment below, and I will choose one winner at random on Saturday, Oct. 26.  You can answer the question: When, in your own life did you find yourself lost, without a map, and thinking, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way!”?  Or, if you’re feeling shy, just let me know you’d love to read this book!  

University of Minnesota Press is going to donate 15 copies of Ready for Air to neonatal intensive care units in the US and Canada.  Kate  would welcome suggestions of hospitals that you wish to be considered.  Put the details in the comments, including an address and to whom the book should be sent.  In early November, she will draw 15 hospitals and send each a signed copy of her book.  You can read more about this giveaway here.

 

A welcome, and a thank you

To all of you reading here for the very first (or second) time, welcome!  I’m thrilled and grateful that my post last week about turning 55 inspired you to find your way to this website, my online “home.”  I would love to hear from you.

It would be an understatement to say I was thrilled and moved by the response to “This is 55.”  Watching my reflections go viral, seeing them shared thousands of times on Facebook, hearing from women from ages 30 to 80, and reading all the thoughtful comments here and elsewhere, just confirmed for me something I already suspected:  we are all hungry for an intelligent, honest conversation about how things really are and how we really feel as we grow and change.  My thoughts got the conversation started.  The best thing was that you all continued it.  I loved reading your responses and wish I could have answered every single one – although, as my husband pointed out, I would be 56 by the time I finished.

Fortunately, you responded to one another, you shared your own stories, you offered words of encouragement, and the ripples have continued to move outward from here – on Facebook, on Maria Shriver’s Architects of Change website, and even on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls page.  Exciting!  And thought-provoking.

Thanks so much for reading and sharing.  I’m glad you’re here!

The post Ready for Air–and a give-away appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

This is 55

I’ve been fifty-five for a little over a week now. Rounding this corner, finding myself squarely in the long-shadowed afternoon of my own life, has given me pause.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately gazing out the window in my kitchen, watching the sunlit leaves float from tree to ground.  The days, the hours, even the moments, feel ripe and full — time to be cherished rather than rushed through.

And so, on this autumn afternoon I shut my laptop.  For the first time in years, I pick up a pad of paper and a pen instead.  I grab a sweater and head outside to write.  Perhaps what I’m yearning for is a different kind of knowing – words that come from the still, silent place in my soul, a glimpse of my own depths, some intimation of my rightful place in the world now that I’ve crested the arc of life and begun my descent down the other side.

55.  How strange it feels to write that pair of fives, to associate them with me. Have I really been alive that long, half a century plus five?  And what exactly am I, now that I’m no longer technically middle-aged but not exactly old yet, either?

I turn to a fresh page, brush a stray leaf from my hair. 

This is 55. . .

Fifty-five is being aware there are fewer years left ahead of me than I’ve lived already.  It is understanding, in a way I couldn’t have at twenty-five or even forty-five, the bittersweet truth of impermanence. It is knowing that tomorrow isn’t a guarantee, that every plan is provisional, that life isn’t a promise.  Fifty-five is dreaming less of the future, dwelling less in the past, and learning (yes, still learning) to be here, in the now.

Fifty-five is realizing that being present is my choice to make, again and again and again – not always the easiest choice for me, but always the best.

Fifty-five is asking the same “What next?” question I was struggling with when I graduated from college.  It is knowing there are an infinite number of answers.  And that none of them are wrong.

Fifty-five is two sons in their twenties.  It is still-fresh memories of motherhood as it used to be: intensely physical, all consuming, endlessly challenging, viscerally satisfying.  And it is finding my way, day by day, into this new, arm’s-length role of mother to young adults. Fifty-five is holding on to faith in their best selves and letting go of fears for their well-being.  It is holding on to all I love in each of them and letting go of my need to have them under my roof.  It is holding on to a vision of their destinies and letting go of my ideas about how they should get there.

Fifty-five is not knowing where my children are, who they’re with, what they’re doing, what they ate for dinner, or what’s on their minds.  It is resisting most of my impulses to text or call. Fifty-five is learning to worry less and to trust more.

Fifty-five is pride and delight in the two young men who come home to visit us. It is laughter around the dinner table and help with the dishes and crowding together on the couch to watch The Daily Show.  It is honest, heartfelt conversations and easier partings. It is growing used to empty bedrooms. It is being in the home stretch of paying for college.

Fifty-five is being a couple again.  It is having the central task of our marriage – raising a family – completed.  It is re-invention, re-negotiation, and renewal.  It is a different kind of commitment.  Fifty-five is looking at my husband’s nearly sixty-five-year-old face and seeing, even now, the same face I fell in love with all those years ago as a girl of twenty-three.

Fifty-five is twenty-six years of marriage. It is routines and rituals, family traditions and jokes told a thousand times. Fifty-five is knowing my husband so well that his story has become my story.  It is a mountain of photographs, none of which are organized.  It is realizing I’ve lived more of my life alongside this man than I lived before I knew him.

Fifty-five is not sweating the small stuff (the ice cream scoop left on the counter, the toilet seat left up, his tendency to talk too loud) and being grateful for the big stuff (loyalty, forgiveness, humor, love).

Fifty-five is feeling the ten-year age difference between us in the slowing pace of our morning walks and not feeling it at all when his arms are around me. It is less about trying to change the man I married and more about loving him as he is for as long as I can. It is knowing the words “till death do us part” will one day come true.

Fifty-five is passion transformed into tenderness.  It is the end of “the quickie.”  It is love that’s long and slow and unguarded.  Fifty-five is less often but with more feeling.  Fifty-five is less self-conscious and more trusting.  It is less awkward but more exposed.  Fifty-five is still good.  Fifty-five, my husband says, is better than ever.

Fifty-five is discovering that my heart has no notion of time or propriety.  It is admitting that love can still surprise me.  Fifty-five is my pulse quickening at the touch of a hand; the blood rushing to my cheeks at the sight of a smile; a funny flip-flop in the pit of my stomach at a sentence in a novel that puts into words everything I never dared say out loud.  Fifty-five is invisible when I’m walking down the street.  Inside, fifty-five is as chaotic and as confusing as fifteen.

Fifty-five is tears and laughter every day; sometimes, it’s both at once.  It is joy and sorrow intertwined.  It is shadow and light. It is admitting I’ve learned as much from my losses and failures as from the gifts that have been laid at my feet.

Fifty-five is going to bed in pajamas and fleece and socks.  It is being stark naked at 3 a.m.  It is my husband knowing better than to mistake this for an invitation.  Fifty-five is hot flashes and night sweats and Swiss cheese for a brain.  It is bedclothes off and on and off again. It is sleepless nights and staring at the ceiling and Tylenol PM and earplugs.  Fifty-five is getting by on fewer hours of sleep than I ever thought possible.  Fifty-five is standing outside in the wet grass, watching the sun come up.  Fifty-five is being astonished, still, by the resurrection of morning.

Fifty-five is jeans that stretch, bras that lift, shirts that cover, and shoes that don’t pinch.  It is knowing I’m too old for the Gap and not rich enough for Eileen Fisher. It is throwing the Victoria’s Secret catalog in the trash on my way back from the mailbox.  It is one pair of good black boots.

Fifty-five is making peace with my habits: a cup of dark roast coffee every morning laced with half and half, a class of wine with dinner.  It is saying yes to champagne and no to mixed drinks. It is cooking meat for my family without ever being tempted to eat it myself. It is drinking extra glasses of water, taking “Wiser Woman” vitamins, skipping dessert more often than not.

Fifty-five is standing in front of the mirror and drawing the sagging skin of my neck up and back.  It is glimpsing the possibility of looking a decade younger. It is considering getting a little “work” done.  It is turning away from the face that looks too old to be mine and getting on with the day.

Fifty-five is accepting there are some things I used to do that I may never do again: downhill skiing, rollerblading, galloping across a beach on a horse, hot yoga.  It is realizing how much I long to do some other things before it’s too late:  sleep outside under the stars, swim naked in the dark, sit by a campfire, hike the White Mountains, visit my best friend from college in Santa Fe, wear a cocktail dress and heels, take a trip with my mom.

Fifty-five is knowing that some of my secret, youthful fantasies aren’t ever going to come true: living in a cabin by a lake, spending a month in Paris, learning French, writing a best-seller. Fifty-five is realizing I’ve outgrown those fantasies anyway.

Fifty-five is talking less and listening more. It is choosing less screen time and more real time. It is saying “no” to things I don’t want to do. It is craving solitude. At the same time, it is a willingness to be more open, more intimate, more vulnerable with the small handful of people to whom I’ve entrusted my soul .  Fifty-five is knowing what makes me happy: time alone, time in nature, time with dear friends, time with my family, time with a book.

Fifty-five is reading glasses and wrinkle creams and concealer for the dark circles under my eyes.  It is a root canal.  It is a basal cell removed and a new, worrisome place on my forehead.  It is a groin pull.  It is a stomach growing softer and shoulders growing rounder.  It is a pair of tweezers kept in the glove compartment for plucking the stray black hair that sprouts from my chin, which I discover (always) while sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to change.

Fifty-five is also twenty-six miles walked with friends to raise money for cancer research.  It is a three-minute plank pose.  It is breathing deeply in headstand.  It is running just for the fun of it.  It is two strong legs and a strong will and an undiminished sense of adventure.  Fifty-five is still going strong.

Fifty-five is knowing what it is to lose a friend.  It is being there right till the end.  It is death growing more familiar and hitting closer to home.  It is grieving with a mother who’s just lost her son, a boy I’ve known since the day he was born.  It is an email bearing news of a diagnosis.  It is a loved one calling from the hospital.  It is a new understanding of the word “random.” It is learning that finding meaning where there appears to be no meaning is part of our spiritual work.

Fifty-five is two parents just shy of eighty.  It is the joy of still allowing them to parent me.  It is knowing that one day I will be there to care for them.  It is a whispered “thank you” for every family gathering, for my dad’s grilled turkey on Thanksgiving, for my mom’s handmade cards, for their voices on the other end of the phone.  For all that was and all that still is and all that someday will be no more.

Fifty-five is finding my sense of purpose in unexpected places.  It is teaching yoga after years of thinking I could never be a yoga teacher.  It is writing for the joy of writing rather than to be recognized as a writer.  It is sitting on the floor, feeding our old dog by hand. It is helping my son hang a shower curtain in his new apartment.  It is proofreading another’s son’s job application and not changing a word.

Fifty-five is sitting quietly with someone in pain and it is celebrating another’s joy as if it were my own.  It is driving a neighbor to the doctor, making dinner for the millionth time, answering a letter from a reader, cutting sunflowers and putting them in a vase.  It is holding hands with my dearest friend, heart brimming.

Fifty-five is ordinary.  It is the relief of not being exceptional.  It is recognizing what is precious and beautiful in someone else. It is choosing not to live in drama but in harmony. It is less ambition and more appreciation.  It is gratitude for things as they are rather than grasping for something just out of reach.  It is seeing the futility of comparing and judging and craving.  It is a deepening sense of compassion. It is gratitude. It is plain and simple.  It is less clutter.  Fewer words.  More love.

Fifty-five is learning to approach each day as a blessing, each word as a benediction, daily life as my practice. It is being open to what comes, offering prayers of hope and healing for the universe, trusting there are forces at work here that are larger than I am.

Fifty-five is the joy of waking up each day and taking part in this great, ongoing human conversation. It is mystery.

How old are you, and what does your age mean to you?  I’d love to know!

(With thanks to Lindsey Mead whose post This is 38 inspired me to gather up these thoughts.)

The post This is 55 appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

September afternoon

A Saturday afternoon in September, the last of them.  Where the air leaves off and my skin begins, I can’t tell. They are the same temperature, the same softness, the same.  There is no need for a sweater or shoes. I sit in the lawn chair by the garden, eyes half closed, listening to the low, incessant churring of crickets, the intermittent hammer taps of a woodpecker in the maple tree overhead, the chatter of birds, their wing beats as they come and go from the feeder, the acoustic hum of bees burrowing into the jeweled nasturtiums.

It is that gentle, golden, in-between moment, no longer summer but not fully fall, either.  The sun, already sliding down the sky, casts long purple shadows across the grass and, elsewhere, creates translucent pools of light. It feels nearly holy, this luminous glimmer shafting through the trees. Everything is softening, crumpling, fading.  And yet, on this mild, sun-kissed afternoon it isn’t an ending I feel, but a thrumming continuum of energy, an urgent, insistent turning toward life and change.

Any day, the hummingbirds will depart our New Hampshire yard for warmer climes, but for now they are here still, a busy iridescent blur vibrating in and out of the purple petunias, intent upon visiting each cascading blossom.

The sunflowers are spent, their heavy heads drooping upon slender necks. But I’m in no hurry to cut them down, not till  the finches and squirrels have finished  feasting on the seed heads.  Today, they are like a crowd at a banquet — eager, gathering around, intent on the work at hand. A neighbor’s rooster crows, heedless of the fact that dawn was hours ago.  A red squirrel perches on the stone wall, chittering to no one.

On the other side of the house, I can hear my son laughing with his friend, the thwack of the basketball in the driveway, occasional cheers for shots made or missed.  Another day, and he and I will be on a plane heading south, delivering him to his new life at school.  What I feel — hearing him play as he always has, seeing his suitcases open on the bed upstairs, making our shopping list for Target in Atlanta — is not the sadness of an imminent good-bye, but readiness.  He is ready, too.

It’s not his first leave-taking.  Four years ago this fall he went away to boarding school.  That time, the house rang with silence, as if a door had abruptly slammed shut on his childhood, on my day-in-day-out job as his mom, on the only life I knew.  I could hardly bear the sight of his empty room, his chair, the shoes he’d left by the back door.  A year ago this month, we caravanned to Boston in my dad’s borrowed pick-up truck, our old van, the car, all packed to the brim, and moved him into an apartment in Boston for a gap year of back-healing, working, growing up, figuring things out.  Time well spent, as it turned out. And now, with two broken vertebrae mended and a year’s experience of living on his own under his belt, he’s eager to step into the long-envisioned future that has finally become the present.

I came outside an hour ago with a stack of mail to open, a bound galley to read, my phone in my hand, my mind buzzing with its own plans and busyness.

But all I’ve done is sit.  Listening.  Feeling. Being.

The quieter I am, the more I hear.  The longer I am still, the more I see.  The more my heart opens, the more it fills. Doing nothing, I am perhaps doing the only thing that matters. To be here now is not only a gift but a practice. And I am rusty.

“Remember this,” I tell myself:  the rise and fall of boys’ voices, a ball keeping time on pavement, birdsong, the bees’ tuneless canticle, the time-addled rooster’s piercing call. No need to hold on or to mourn, nothing to regret or anticipate.

The pliant, golden leaves rustle overhead, like the whisper of a curtain being drawn slowly back.  The sun slips out from behind a cloud. The day gives up its meaning slowly.  Silence becomes its own kind of language.  And this language without words yields its own kind of understanding.  There is a secret key that unlocks the world:  attention.

In attention there is presence.  In presence there is grace.  And then, into that grace arrives a blessed revelation:  it is enough, more than enough, to be here.  To be quiet.  To do nothing at all but sit in a chair in my front yard and receive what the world has to offer – the afternoon  leaning toward dusk, a finch poised on a sunflower, my sweet old collie sprawled in the grass beside me, a son turning the next page of his life, radiance everywhere – just now, just here, just for this moment.

Already the light is draining away.  A flash of red and a cardinal disappears into the pines, his graying mate bobbing along in his wake.  The basketball falls silent.  The back door opens, closes. A car engine turns over. Tires crunch down the gravel drive. The air grows cool.  I gather my sweater, my flip flops, my untouched pile of work, and head indoors to flick on lights, shuck corn, make dinner for my husband and our son.

 

 

The post September afternoon appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Time in a bottle

I spent most of yesterday morning in the kitchen with my son Jack, windows open to the September air.  In ten days he will move to Atlanta to begin his new life there as a student.  But for now, the two of us find ourselves home alone together.  (Henry left last week to return to his alma mater, St. Olaf, where he’s helping out with the fall musical; Steve has been away for a few days on business. And so, it’s just two of us here, a rare mother-son combination that hasn’t happened for years and may not recur any time soon.)

All summer, I have mourned the end of summer.  Back in June, my family laughed at me for regretting the passing of time before the time I’d been anticipating had even arrived.  (Yes, I know, it’s crazy.) The days were still getting longer, they pointed out, and already I was imagining how I would feel when they began to grow shorter.  The lake water was perfect for swimming, and I was wondering how many more swims we would have. A piercing awareness of the preciousness, the transience, of everything is, I suppose, both the blessing and the burden of my temperament. It is also the price my family has to pay for living with me.  I am always reminding them (myself!) to notice, to appreciate, to be aware of all that is and of all we have.

The truth is, I write so much about inhabiting the moment largely to help myself remember that it’s where I want to be: simply present.  My tendency, always, is to live with a lump in my throat.  I experience the pain of endings even as I cherish the tenderness of beginnings.  I allow every joy to be shot through with a thread of sadness.  And I see in all that lives, all that has passed;  in all that is, all that one day will no longer be.

And so  I sit in my garden amidst the wildly blooming nasturtiums and feel the fleetingness of their splendor.  I adore our thirteen-year-old dog all the more for knowing her days are numbered.  (When she placed her head on the bed this morning at 6 am and pleaded for a walk, I swung right into action – because, of course, I can so easily imagine the future, when there will be no need to be out taking a hike at dawn.)  I fill our basement freezer with strawberries and blueberries and raspberries picked at the height of the season because I am always conscious of the season’s inexorable turning.

Hanging out with my soon to be 21-year-old son yesterday, I reminded myself to simply enjoy the moment, without layering on the fact that in a few weeks he’ll be in his own new kitchen a few thousand miles away and we’ll be texting instead of talking.

Being present, without regret for the past or anticipation of the future, feels to me like a lifelong practice.  It’s a lesson I keep on learning, one I need to take up again each day.  But Jack has always been good at keeping me in my place:  here, now.

(“Do you want me to write out some recipes for you?” I asked him, envisioning the notebook I could create, with printed recipes slipped into plastic sleeves, complete with shopping lists – chili, chicken soup, corn chowder. . . . “Grandma did that for Dad when he moved away to live on his own,” I said, “so he would have a few things he could cook for himself.” My son declined.  “That’s nice, Mom” he said. “But we live in a different world now.  If I want to make chili, I’ll go online.”  Right.)

So, I will resist the urge to send him to Atlanta with my recipes.  Instead, yesterday, we just made some food together.  I had twenty pounds of heirloom apples, gathered up from the ground around my friend Margaret’s hundred-year-old tree.  The gentle, deeply resonant voice of Bhava Ram, my current favorite singer, filled the house.  Jack sat at the table and cut the knobby apples into quarters.  I stirred them down over low heat, adding cinnamon, anise, lemon.  Good smells bubbled up.  We talked about this and that, nothing special.  It was just a day.  I didn’t need to shape it or mourn it or grip it — or do anything at all, other than live it.

And yet, as I ladled the thick sauce into jars, the refrain from an old Jim Croce song kept running through my head:  “If I could save time in a bottle. . .”

It felt as if that’s just what I was doing.  Bottling not only the apples, but time itself.  The quiet of the day, the sunlight pouring through the windows, the togetherness with my young adult son, the easy pleasure of making something good to eat. We have had our struggles, he and I.  We still do. Let’s be honest:  he is twenty, and we are different, and nothing is easy. And yet, our bond is close.

Perhaps, as we haltingly find our way into a new relationship with each other as two adults, we are closer than we’ve been in years.  The more space I am able to give him, it seems, the more comfortable we are with each other.  I don’t know what thoughts went through his mind yesterday; I didn’t ask. And for once I didn’t feel the need to tell him what was in mine either: a sense that no matter what mistakes we’ve made with each other in the past or what challenges we may face in the future, there is beauty in the now – and now is enough.

Can I bottle that wisdom, too?  No.  But perhaps, some winter night I’ll take a jar of our applesauce out of the freezer, warm it on the stove, and allow good memories of being with my son to mingle with the goodness of learning how to let him go. Again.

(I’ll confess: I’ve been listening to that Jim Croce song this morning as I write this post.  And I’m here to report that, yup, the song holds up.  Which is to say, it still makes me cry.)

“Time in a Bottle”

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I’d like to do

Is to save every day

Till eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I’d save every day like a treasure and then,

Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I’ve looked around enough to know

That you’re the one I want to go

Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes

And dreams that had never come true

The box would be empty

Except for the memory

Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do

Once you find them

I’ve looked around enough to know

That you’re the one I want to go

Through time with.

Perfect, no-fuss applesauce

6-8 pounds of organic apples

juice of half a lemon

3 inch-wide strips of lemon peel

3 cinnamon sticks

3 whole star anise

dollop of raw honey (to taste; I use about 3 T.)

1/4 cup water

Cut apples into quarters.  Place everything in a large, heavy pot over low heat.  Stir occasionally, for about 15 minutes, till apples are completely soft and sauce is thick.  Taste for sweetness.  The lemon and sweetness should achieve a nice balance, enhancing the apple flavor.  You can eat as is, run through a food mill, or whiz in a blender.  I put mine in my high speed blender till smooth.  The pink-ish jars?  I added a few handfuls of my frozen raspberries for the last minutes of cooking.  Applesauce will keep in the freezer for a year.

Still in a fall-cooking frame of mind?

It seems like a long time ago that Margaret and I were at her house, getting ready for our books to come out, plotting and planning our joint New England reading tour.  We also shared my favorite lentil soup, which I’d forgotten all about til she re-posted my recipe on her blog yesterday.  It looked so good, I went right out and bought some lentils.  Dinner tonight!  Click here for the whole story, and my recipe.

The post Time in a bottle appeared first on Katrina Kenison.