Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 14

Summer afternoon

“Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”                                             – Henry James

I took a long walk yesterday, listening on my headphones to poet David Whyte talking about “What to Remember When Waking.”

I confess:  I was two miles down the road and completely under the spell of  Whyte’s romantic English accent before it even occurred to me that he is not referring to waking up literally, as in what to remember as you roll out of bed in the morning, but rather to waking up in a spiritual sense.  In other words, waking up to your life.

Suddenly, in the heat of the day, trudging back up the hill toward home and dripping with sweat, I got it.

Each day offers me a choice.  I can keep my head down, my heart locked up, my soul tethered to my to-do list, my feet on the same old well-worn path.  Or, I can wake up.  I can pay attention to the subtle currents of my life, and allow them to carry me in a new direction.  I can feel my feelings, rather than avoid them.  I can be fully present, rather than half here.  I can wake up to the challenges of the journey, the conversation I don’t want to have, my fears about where I’m headed, the truth of who I am, the gifts and and losses of my life as it is.

Today is as good a day as any other to wake up.  It is a summer afternoon. Why not wallow like a hedonist in the fullness of the  present moment?   Succumb to the fleeting beauty of June. Allow your tender heart to open, both to grief for all that’s over and gladness for what remains.  Eat strawberries.  Watch a robin splash in the birdbath. Blow bubbles with your kids. Go for a swim, or a bike ride, or a walk. Watch the clouds drift past. Pick daisies for your table.  Snap some peas.  Hang your damp sheets on the line. Sit in a lawn chair.  Read a book.  Close your eyes.  Take a nap.  Wake up.

 

The post Summer afternoon appeared first on Katrina Kenison: The Gift of an Ordinary Day.

Peonies

The peonies at our house bloomed this week, bursting onto the scene with the fanfare of a chorus line. A hundred or more voluptuous beauties, as fragile as they are flamboyant, in all shades of cream and palest pink and scarlet, each one worthy of its own lipstick shade or rare perfume label.  For a day or two they hold their heavy heads up high and I snap photo after photo — trying, in vain of course, to somehow capture their brief moment of perfection.

And then, too soon, always too soon, the heavy heads bow toward the ground, brought low by the sheer weight of their own extravagance.

Yesterday, beneath a gathering of storm clouds, I walked through the damp grass, bending down to gaze into one fragrant, implausible peony heart after another.  And then I cut them all.

Already, here in the bittersweet beginning of summer I anticipate the poignance of its ending.  I wait all year for the peonies’ burst of glory and then mourn the moment’s passing even as it arrives. I know exactly how this languid season will bend overnight to fall; how the water in the lake I have yet to swim in will turn suddenly cold; how the spikes of goldenrod will appear by the roadside as I run down the hill toward town on an August afternoon; how we will walk through the house to close windows at dusk, speaking wistfully of how short the days have grown, marveling at the early darkness and wishing we’d had more dinners on the screened porch when we still had the chance.

My family has been teasing me for days:  “It’s only the first of June and Mom’s already sad because summer’s going by too fast!” It’s true.  I want so badly for it all to last that I miss it before it’s begun. Which means, of course, that I’m in danger of missing it altogether.

Last night the rain came down in torrents, keeping me awake.  I didn’t mind, really, for the hours of a sleepless night slip by slowly, offering time and space for thoughts to drift.  (I’m learning through these menopausal years that “trying” to sleep is always an exercise in frustration, that allowing for wakefulness can actually be less stressful than willing sleep to come.) And in fact, I love lying in bed in the darkness, love listening to the steady thrum of rain on the roof while I’m curled up warm and snug within, no place to go and nothing to do but wait it out. As the storm intensified toward dawn, I thought of the peonies, glad I’d had the foresight to gather them up in time and save them from this relentless lashing of wind and water.

Of course, they won’t last long in the house, either. But my rescue mission has afforded them a few more days at least. Every vase I own is full, as if we’re preparing to host a wedding here, or a funeral.  The air is sweet, each silken petal a work of art demanding admiration, right here, right now: within a week, they really will be gone.

It occurs to me as I sit typing just inches away from the pitcher full of pink blooms on the kitchen table, that perhaps I cherish my favorite flowers as much for their impermanence as for their beauty.  If I lived always amidst such spectacle, how soon would it be before I’d take it for granted, or fail to notice it at all?

Finally, a weak, intermittent sun peeks through the clouds and I’m lured away from the computer, ready for a break. I pour a second cup of coffee and take the time to drink it slowly, sitting outside on the granite step by the kitchen door.  The swallows are more determined in their work this morning than I am, swooping in and out of the birdhouses, bringing food to their babies.  Fat bees bounce from blossom to blossom in the salvia and a steady procession of swallowtail butterflies hover over the poppies.  A dragonfly glistens, emerald green, on the walkway and then lifts off, coming to light briefly at the edge of the birdbath.  A chipmunk, cheeks stuffed like a cartoon character’s, pauses, quivering at my feet, before scampering off with his stash to a hole in the stone wall.  It’s a busy world out here.

I linger in my spot, watching, for a long time.  Everything, it seems, is in harmony with everything else: the insects, flowers, birds, all have given themselves completely to the lushness of this early summer day. Slowly, it dawns on me. These creatures, each industriously tending to the urgent work of being, count their brief lives not in months but in moments, and yet they have time enough.   So do I.

Eventually, everything ends.  Nothing is permanent.  Time isn’t ours to own, to measure and mete out in portions.  It just is.  Instead of wishing for my flowers, or this June day, or summer, or life itself, to last longer, I am simply meant to be here. My only task: to live into whatever the here and now has to offer.  Perhaps this is all there is to it – put one foot in front of the other on the path toward being at peace with what is. And just as lying awake feels easier when I don’t struggle to achieve sleep, accepting the truth of impermanence again and again brings me gently back into alignment with reality.  There is joy to be found both in seizing the day and in letting it go.

On Sunday my parents will come over for dinner.  We’ll eat out on the porch and celebrate Father’s Day. Our own sons won’t be with us, and I’ll miss them, but absence is part of the fabric of our lives now, their comings and goings woven into this larger, more complex and forgiving family tapestry.  So, I’ll set the table for four instead of six, light candles, put on music, write a card for my dad.  If the peonies have all gone by, there will be daisies to pick.  Perhaps I’ll find strawberries at the market, prepare the first shortcake of the season for dessert.  Whatever the day brings, I’ll welcome it.

It’s so obvious, really, and at the same time such a challenge — to let go of our battles, large and small. I keep reminding myself that it’s what we’re all here to do, this ongoing spiritual practice called being alive: notice, give thanks, and open our hearts to things as they are.

 

Housework, Soulwork

“Shall I strip the sheets off the bed?” I asked my friend, a prolific writer who happens at the moment to be between books.

“No, no, leave them,” she insisted.  “I’ll change the sheets.  I love having an excuse to interact with my house.”

An acclaimed novelist whose books settle onto bestseller lists for months at a time, she is also, in her heart of hearts, the happiest of housewives.

When I visited her in May, the two of us stayed up way too late talking about other writers we know, ideas for new projects, the books we were in the midst of reading, the ones we’d set down before finishing.  And then, in the morning, we made breakfast smoothies, hauled out a stack of cookbooks and her notebook full of clipped and saved recipes, and perched on stools in the kitchen, comparing notes on our favorite vegetarian dishes.   We took time to admire the brief, sudden bloom of the climbing rose bush in the back yard, to take her dog for a long walk around the neighborhood, to check on the herbs growing in pots on the porch.

I loved interacting with my friend’s house, too.  It is a well-loved home, not grand or flashy or huge, but warm and nurturing and soulful, tended with care and deeply inhabited.

I’ve thought of my friend’s response often over the last few weeks.  What’s stayed with me, I realize,  is not only the beauty of the life she’s created but also the simple joy she allows herself in each day’s doings — joy she experiences fully and without second guessing her efforts, whether she’s sitting at her desk and crafting the first lines of the novel she’s been working out in her mind for months, or taking an elderly friend to the grocery store, or spending twenty minutes at the stove caramelizing onions, or (as she always insists on doing), driving me to the airport, even if it’s rush hour.

What  freedom there is in such joy: the freedom of not judging our work but choosing instead to see the value and the meaning in all of it.  There is, after all —  as my wise friend has figured out — no hierarchy, other than the one we impose on ourselves.

Who says that an Op-Ed in the Times is more important or meaningful than an arrangement of fresh flowers in the guest room or a pizza made from scratch? And yet, how tempting it is to draw that line, and then to start right in analyzing and evaluating.  How reverently we place the “creative” work above the line (this matters!), and consign everything else a lesser status – the dishes in the sink, the recycling to be sorted, the vegetables to be chopped, the dried mud to be swept from the floor.

I do the dishes and sort the bottles and chop the veggies. I stay on top of the routine household chores. But I often catch myself rushing, too, distracted and contrite, as if the keeper of some invisible Writer’s Time Clock is frowning down upon my domestic labors and finding me wanting, failing to live up to larger expectations.  “What, you spent two hours putzing around in the garden this afternoon, and you didn’t get a single paragraph written?”

Perhaps it’s because  writing doesn’t come easily to me that I always feel as if everything else I do, even the most essential domestic task, is really just some slightly disguised version of  playing hooky.

A choice between a mountain of laundry to fold and a blank page?  No contest.  Give me the dirty clothes! I actually love the beginning, the middle, and the end of laundry duty – from the physical exercise of lugging the heavy baskets down two flights of stairs to the washing machine in the  basement, right through that moment when everything is neatly stacked and sorted back upstairs on my bed, socks matched and rolled the way my husband likes them,  t-shirts folded into squares, towels in thirds, dish cloths ready to go back in the drawer.  But it’s a guilty satisfaction. I know that writing is harder, that I’ve chosen the easy way out.

“You should be doing something more meaningful, more productive with your life, than folding pillow cases,” my inner critic chides.  “You haven’t written anything for a week,” she reminds me.  “What kind of writer are you, anyway?”

The answer, at the moment, is: I am a writer who isn’t writing much.

After a year of daily writing to finish a book, and then months spent on and off the road trying to sell it, my writing self seems to have  declared a sabbatical. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to catch up on my email.  I’ve mailed off a stack of hand-written thank you notes and birthday cards.  I wrote my first guest blog post (yes, a deadline is helpful), a few comments on Facebook, daily grocery lists.  I’ve spent time working on a book of quotes I’ve collected for a friend, from books we’ve shared and loved – nice pens in different colors, careful penmanship, the pleasure of copying beautiful sentences onto beautiful paper, of being reminded all over again of the indelible potency of language.

Other than that, I’m afraid I don’t have much to show for myself, writing-wise.

But my house! Finally, the screens are in, the kitchen floor is washed, the outdoor pots are spilling with blooms.  There are fuschia rhododendrons in the vases.  Tender sunflower seedlings are growing by the stone wall, spinach and arugula and lettuce from the garden will fill the salad bowl tonight.  My closet is clean.  I bought a new tablecloth for the dining room table, got the spots out of the old placemats, ironed the napkins. For the first time since before Christmas, we’ve had friends over for dinner.  It felt so good to sit around the table, catching up with loved ones and watching the candles drip down that, two nights later, we did it again.  I’ve been pulling out my own cookbooks, trying new dishes. Stuffed peppers on gorgonzola polenta, roasted eggplant with buttermilk sauce, kale pesto, haddock Florentine.  Perhaps the subtle creative forces haven’t abandoned me after all; it could be they are just assuming a different form, recharging in the kitchen amidst the makings of dinner.

In a couple of days, Henry will leave for his summer job on the Cape; this week, every last meal and shared moment feels like an occasion.  Soon we will be two here again, re-adjusting to silence and solitude. Last night, while Steve mowed the lawn and Henry practiced the music for Die Fledermaus (he’s determined to know the scores for all nine summer musicals by Friday), I made pasta and roasted vegetables and marinated steaks for the guys. The windows were open, the scent of fresh-cut grass wafting through the kitchen, the sound of the lawnmower a steady comfort.  My husband and son and I were all absorbed in our labors, busy and peaceful and content.

The Keeper of the Time Clock was silent.  Perhaps she’s finally gotten the message:  there is no line.  There is nothing to judge.  No one else cares how many words I write or how clean my floor is.  And the only thing that really matters is the attitude  I bring to the task at hand, whatever it may be.  What I aspire to this summer, then, is this: to do my work, all of it, with conscious intention.  With love, not judgment.  And with gratitude for the great gift of this life, for its countless blessings and small miracles, and for the daily actions of living that create a home for the soul, a place where both joy and effort can flourish.

As so often happens, in the midst of writing this post, I came across a poem that spoke directly to my heart.  Thank you, Claudia Cummins at First Sip, for the beauty and inspiration  your lovely site brings across my threshold each weekday morning.  And yes, yes:  ”One must never ignore the instinct to create” — be it scones or novels, a poem or a terra cotta pot overflowing with pale petunias. There is no line, just our own beautiful offerings, our songs.

Irreverant Baking 

I should be upstairs with the others, drumming up ways

to heal the world, save the animals, pray for water

in a far-off continent, devote the remainder of my days

to a catalog of restorations. But this morning it was the matter

of scones that drew my gaze, and my feet remained

planted in the kitchen. One must never ignore the instinct

to create, is what I told myself, and soon the counter was stained

with flour, my hands sticky with dough, the house inked

with the smell of blueberry possibility, and I knew I was not wrong.

This was my prayer, my act of healing, my offering, my song.



~ Maya Stein

 

P.S.  I’m always amazed at they way my online friends and I find ourselves connected by invisible threads of inspiration.  Coincidence or synchronicity that Dani Shapiro and I have echoed each other today — giving voice to that question that apparently haunts us both, though in different ways:  What kind of writer are you?  To read her thoughtful reply, click here. 

 

On telling the truth

I don’t think I’ve ever done a Q&A session with readers when the question hasn’t come up:  ”How do your family and friends feel about being written about in your books?”

The answer is, well, complicated.

So when memoir writer and teacher Marion Roach Smith invited me to contribute to her new “Writing Lessons” series on her terrific site  The Memoir Project, I figured it was time for me to tackle the thorny subject of truth-telling head on.  This is my  first guest post, and I’m honored to be part of this smart, practical series devoted to the art and craft of memoir.

So, please CLICK HERE to read my essay, meet Marion, and leave a comment on her site.  (Yes, Marion’s giving away a copy of Magical Journey, too!)

 

Ordinary Days, everywhere (and, finally, the words to the video)

A funny thing happened last weekend.  I turned on my computer to check email, and there were a dozen letters from Australia, each bearing kind Happy Mother’s Day wishes from down under.  There were even more messages for me on Facebook.  I was puzzled at first, but then the fifth note I read explained what was going on:  “Your Gift of an Ordinary Day video is going viral in Australia,” a mom of two wrote to me.

Sure enough.  I paid a visit to the YouTube link: 200,000 more clicks in just a couple of days — and suddenly my three-year-old video was inching right up toward 2 million views.  (When I told this to my friend Ann Patchett, she promptly pointed out that Fifty Shades of Grey first went viral in Australia, too, which is probably not relevant, but who can say?  I’m pretty certain her email is the only time the titles Fifty Shades of Grey and The Gift of an Ordinary Day have appeared in the same sentence, and that alone gave me pause.)

“But where can I find the words to your poem?” my Australian correspondent asked. “What I really want is the coffee table version of this video so I can read it again and again.”

I wrote her back, but I couldn’t give her what she wanted. The fact is, I didn’t envision the video script as a poem, but it isn’t exactly a direct excerpt from my book either.  To write it, I did take some sentences from The Gift of an Ordinary Day. But then I thought about my children and and about ordinary days and all the things I worried about and loved and missed, and I added some more sentences in order to create a piece that could stand on its own.  Then I tried reading the whole thing out loud to a friend.  There were two problems.

Given that I was still smack in the middle of that raw and tender place of having sent one son off to college and knowing his brother would soon be gone, too, I couldn’t get through it without tears.  And it took me over seven minutes to read out loud.  “I know it’s way too long for a video. No one will watch,” I said to my friend. (The whole point of doing the video was to spread the word about my book — and everyone had told me that three minutes was the maximum amount of time anyone would pay attention.) But try as I might, I couldn’t find a line to cut.

In the end, I just went with it.  I practiced a few times, so I could read about my  children growing up without choking up myself, and then we filmed it.   To my surprise, people did watch.  And they shared with their friends, who shared with their friends, which is how a reading I did three years ago in my living room for my book group and my neighbors came to be seen by thousands of moms in Australia last weekend. (Turns out, they were also reading my blog, including my cake recipe from a few weeks ago, which gave rise to some more questions:  ”What is a stick of butter? How many grams is that?” and “I wish I knew what a tube pan was!”)

Over the last couple of years, I’ve received many requests for the written words to the video, especially in the springtime, with the end of the school year approaching, graduations looming, and big life transitions right around the corner. For a long time, I held off (I was hoping people would buy the book, after all), but since there will never be a coffee table version, I decided the best way to answer  the demand would be to just print the words here, for anyone to read and use.  Three years later, and I haven’t changed my mind:  the gift I still cherish above all else is the gift of a perfectly ordinary day. It seems, from what I hear, that mothers and fathers everywhere feel exactly the same.

Click here to watch the video.

 The Gift of an Ordinary Day

by Katrina Kenison

You think the life you have right now is the only life there is, the one that’s going to last forever. And so it’s easy to take it all for granted — the uneventful days that begin with pancakes for breakfast and end with snuggles and made-up stories in the dark.  In between, there might be a walk to the creek, a dandelion bouquet, caterpillars in a jar.  Countless peanut butter sandwiches, baking soda volcanoes, and impassioned renditions of The Wheels on the Bus.  Winter’s lopsided snowmen and summer trips to town for cookie-dough ice cream cones.  Cheerios poured into bowls,  fingernails clipped, cowlicks pasted down with warm water. Nose kisses and eyelash kisses and pinky swears.

Of course, I worried.  I thought if I didn’t carry my four-year-old back to his own room after a bad dream,  he would sleep with us forever.  I thought, when one son refused to share his favorite puppet, it meant he’d never play well with others.  When my first-born cried as I left him at the nursery school door, I believed he would always have trouble separating.  Sometimes, out in the parking lot, I cried too, and wondered why saying good-bye has to be so hard, and if maybe I was the one with the problem.

“All the flowers bloom in their own time,” my 85-year old-grandmother said when I confided my fears.  Of course, she was right.

There were disappointments — teams not made, best friends who turned mean for no reason, ear aches and strep throats and poison ivy.  A cat that died too soon, fish after fish gone belly up in the tank.  But mostly, the world we lived in, the family we’d made, childhood itself, felt solid, certain,  enduring.

What I loved most of all was a boy on my lap, the Johnsons baby shampoo smell of just-washed hair.  I loved my sons kissable cheeks and round bellies, their unanswerable questions, their innocent faith in Santa Claus and birthday wishes and heaven as a real place.  I loved their sudden tears and wild, infectious giggles, even the smell of their morning breath, when they would leap, upon waking, from their own warm beds directly into ours.

For most of us, the end comes in stages.  Baseballs stop flying in the back yard.  Board games gather dust on the shelves.  Baths give way to showers, long ones, at the oddest times of day.  A bedroom door that’s always been open, quietly closes. And then, one day, crossing the street, you reach out to take a hand that’s always been there — and find you’re grasping at air instead, and that your 12-year-old is deliberately walking two steps behind, pretending he doesn’t know who you are.

It hit’s you then:  you’ve entered a strange new territory, a place known as adolescence.

Arriving on these foreign shores, you feel the ground shift beneath your feet.  The child you’ve loved and held and sacrificed for has been transformed, en route, into a sullen, alien creature hunched over a cereal bowl.  And you wonder where you went wrong.

The thing is, you can’t go back and do one single minute of it over.  All you can do is figure out how to get through the rest of the day, or the midnight hour when your mind keeps replaying the last argument you had with your tenth-grader, and wondering: How can I do this better?

Slowly, you begin to get the lay of this unfamiliar landscape, just as it dawns on you — the life that once seemed like forever has already slipped away.  The old routines don’t work anymore.  Instead, every day now, it’s like you’re learning to dance all over again, with strangers, spinning faster and faster.  Holding on, letting go.

You do what you can to keep up.  You fill the refrigerator, drive, supervise, proofread, and fill the refrigerator again.  You negotiate curfews and car privileges, fill the refrigerator, confiscate the keys, set new limits.  You celebrate a part in the school play, a three-pointer, a hard-earned A-minus.  You fill the refrigerator, and you fill in every bit of white space on your calendar:  SAT s and ACTs and SATIIs, playoffs and performances and proms.  You ignore a bedroom that looks as if it’s been bombed, write lots of checks, try not to ask so many questions. You fill the refrigerator, count the beer bottles in the door.  You willingly give up the last ice cream sandwich in the freezer,  buy pizzas when their friends come over, keep the dog quiet on Saturday morning till you hear feet hit the floor upstairs.  You learn to text, and to pray.

There are many nights when you trade sleep for vigilance.  You become an expert in reading the rise and fall of a phone conversation muffled behind a door, the look in their eyes as they walk through the room, the meaning of a sigh, the smell of a jacket, the unspoken message behind the innocuous,  “Hey mom.”  “Hey,” you say.  “Hey, hon.”

Before you know it, you’re in the homestretch of high school — and face to face with a truth you should have known all along:  this time of parents and children, all living together under one roof, isn’t the whole story after all; it’s just one chapter.  Hard as it is to live with teenagers, you can’t quite imagine life without them.

And yet this time of  24/7, zip-your-jacket-here’s-your-sandwich mothering by which you’ve defined yourself for so long, is coming to an end.

So, you remind yourself:  Learn the art of letting go by practicing it in the present. Instead of regretting what’s over and done with, savor every minute of the  life you have right now:  A family dinner.  You and the kids, all squeezed onto the couch to watch a movie.  A cup of tea in the kitchen before bed.  Saying goodnight in person.

If motherhood teaches us anything, it’s that we can’t change our children, we can only change ourselves.

And so, instead of wishing that the kids could be different somehow, you try to see, every day, what is already good in each of them, and to love that.  Because any moment now, you’re going to be hugging a daughter who’s turned into a woman. Or standing on tiptoe, saying good-bye to a son who’s suddenly six-feet tall, and heading off to a college halfway across the country.

They leave in a blur — packing, chatting, blasting music, tearing the closets apart in a desperate last-minute search for the gray sweatshirt or the Timberland boots.  And then, too soon, they really are gone, and the house rings with a new kind of silence.  The gallon of whole milk turns sour in the fridge, because no one’s home to drink it.  The last ice cream sandwich is all yours.   Nobody needs the car.

You look at your husband across the dinner table, which suddenly feels way too big for two, and wonder, How did it all end so fast?

The bookshelf in my own living room is full of photo albums, nearly twenty years worth of well-documented birthday cakes and holidays,  piano recitals and Little League games.  But the memories I find myself sifting through the past to find, the ones that I’d give anything now to relive, are the ones that no one ever thought to photograph, the ones that came and went as softly as a breeze on a summer afternoon.

It has taken a while, but I certainly do know it now–the most wonderful gift I had, the gift I’ve finally learned to cherish above all else, was the gift of all those perfectly ordinary days.

 

 

 

 

Parenting wisdom & a Mother’s Day gift for you

A few years ago, I packed all my child-raising books into shopping bags and delivered them to the used bookstore.  It didn’t mean my mothering days were over, of course, but I figured that from here on out I should be able to manage on my own.  My sons were young adults, after all, our struggles over bedtimes and screen time and green vegetables and messy rooms were already ancient history.  We were forging new relationships with each other – complicated, yes, but I couldn’t imagine ever again turning to an “expert” for advice on how to get along with my kids.

And then I met Bonnie Harris.  Bonnie is a faithful yogi like me, and we often find ourselves side by side in the challenging class we both like to take on Thursday nights.  I’d known since moving to town that Bonnie is a revered family counselor and parent educator, that she’s in demand as a speaker all over the world, and that we even shared a New York publisher.  I’d heard good things about Bonnie’s book When Kids Push Your Buttons even before meeting her in person.

But what really impressed me about Bonnie was her headstand, which she performs with ease right out in the middle of the room.  (I’m not the only one who admires Bonnie’s ability to hang out upside down; in class she’s known as Headstand Bonnie.)

Eventually, Bonnie and I became friends outside of class, and that’s when we first exchanged our books.  “Reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day was like having coffee with my best friend,” Bonnie told me, as we finally did sit down to have coffee together.

And reading Bonnie’s most recent book, Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids, was like meeting my long-lost parenting soul mate.  It made me a little sad, too, as I found myself wishing we HAD been friends for years, instead of waiting so long before we finally rolled up our yoga mats and started our conversation.

I try to stay away from regret for what might have been, but I’ll admit to some here.  “If only I’d had Bonnie in my corner fifteen years ago,” I found myself thinking on every page.  “If only I’d read this book back when the gap between the parent I yearned to be and the day-to-day reality often seemed unbridgeable.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that my own parenting journey would have been much smoother if I’d known about Bonnie’s philosophy of Connective Parenting all along – back when my son’s temper tantrums were so scary and confusing to us both, or when every instinct I had was telling me that “time-out” wasn’t a great idea but I wasn’t certain enough to try an alternative, or when my desire to be the best mother I could be came up against other people’s ideas about how my children should behave or how I should discipline them.

Bonnie is the parenting guide I yearned for during all those years of raising two very different, uniquely challenging little boys.  She’s the wise teacher I searched for in vain in my stacks of how-to books, books that never quite spoke to what I knew in my heart to be true:  that the key to success for both parents and children isn’t to improve our kids, but to improve our relationship with them.

And here’s the funny thing:  I was absolutely wrong about not ever needing any more advice about motherhood.  In fact, there isn’t a single relationship in my life that couldn’t benefit from a little more compassion and empathy, from a little nurturing attention, from a wise observer’s thoughtful insight.

The foundation of  Connective Parenting is pretty simple, and it’s all about perception.  Connective Parenting begins with the understanding that a child’s resistance or defiance doesn’t mean that he or she is being a problem, but rather that he or she is having a problem.  That’s it.  And suddenly we are looking at our child’s behavior not as something that we need to “fix” but as an important clue to their inner struggle in any given moment, a reminder that the way forward is to turn our anger into compassion.

To put this in Bonnie’s words:

Connective Parenting means that the parent takes responsibility for 100% of everything she says and does but does not take responsibility for the child’s feelings or behavior. That is his job, which he learns well through connection, problem-solving and conflict resolution.

Connective Parenting gives parents the methods of connection that nurture, encourage and focus on the child’s strengths rather than inadequacies while setting necessary limits to ensure self-respect and respect for others. It engages the child’s innate sense of fairness and logic.

If we want our children to listen to us, we need to say what they can hear. Not give them what they want, but simply acknowledge and respect what they want. Connective communication encourages listening and talking and feeling important to someone — interaction. Disconnection occurs when we are indifferent as well as critical, blaming and punitive — when we unintentionally push our children away.

It probably goes without saying that this truth doesn’t just apply to screaming toddlers or cranky ten year olds or surly tweens.  It goes across the board.  As soon as I pause long enough to remember that my husband, my grown son, my dog, my neighbor, my sister-in-law’s behavior arises not from some secret desire to drive me nuts, but from their own pain or fear, then we are well on the road to connection.  It’s amazing how quickly anger can be transformed into compassion, resistance into cooperation, annoyance into empathy.

Once every other week, Bonnie’s Connective Parenting newsletter arrives in my email inbox.  Usually, when I see her later at yoga, I can’t resist telling her that the latest issue seems as if it were written just for me – even if she’s advising a mother of a twelve-year-old who’s just been caught lying, or the parent of a kindergartener afraid of the dark.  It’s not the ages of the children, or the specific parenting issues, that make every post she writes so relevant, but Bonnie’s reminders that no matter what problem I’m struggling with in my own life, there is always something else going on beneath the surface.

My job isn’t to come out swinging and attack the problem, but to explore the root cause – to lead with my heart and to go in search of the truth.  With truth and compassion as my compass, I do feel more confident – whether I’m hashing out a budget with my son, disagreeing about a vacation plan with my husband, or engaging in an inner dialogue with my own closet-cleaning-averse self.  (I can beat myself up for being a hopeless hoarder of outdated clothes.  Or, I can unravel the complex emotions that go along with admitting I will never wear a certain black lace dress again.)

No matter where you are on your own parenting journey, my guess is that Bonnie will meet you there, just as she did me.  (To experience her warmth and wisdom first-hand, spend a few minutes with her video.) A few weeks ago, after yoga, Bonnie and I hatched a Mother’s Day plan: to introduce our mothering communities to each other and to give away signed, personalized copies each other’s books on our sites.  Bonnie and I are both all about connection, and it’s our pleasure to connect our readers to one another!

 

So, here’s how you can win:

Leave a comment below.  If you have a favorite parenting book, or a beloved novel or story about motherhood, make a recommendation. (This will turn into a great reading list for all of us.) Or, if you’re feeling shy, just say, “Count me in.”

Then, to double your chances to win a book, head on over to Bonnie’s blog and leave a comment there, too.  I’m giving away signed copies of When Your Kids Push Your Buttons and Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids here.  And Bonnie’s giving away signed copies of The Gift of an Ordinary Day and Magical Journey over at her place.  We will both draw winners, using Random.org, after entries close at midnight on Saturday, May 18.  Good luck to all, and Happy Mother’s Day!

 

 

A go-to cake recipe, and (final) Magical Journey readings

I long ago lost count of how many times I’ve made this cake.  The recipe, clipped from the Boston Globe in the pre-internet age, is pasted with rubber cement into a notebook of recipes I began keeping the year before I got married in 1987.  The pages are all loose now, held together with a rubber band.  But I know exactly where the yellowed, glaze-spattered cake recipe is, should I ever need a quick refresher.  In fact, as I realized while creaming the butter and sugar yesterday morning, I don’t really refer to the recipe anymore. I know it by heart.

Years ago, when the dad of one of Henry’s classmates was dying of cancer, I made this cake every day for nearly a month.  Richard and I had become close during his illness, and I usually spent part of each afternoon, before school pick-up, at his house.  He and his wife had decided that his would not be a lonely death, but rather a carefully, lovingly populated one.  They wanted company.  They wanted their home to be filled with life and laughter and the sound of children’s voices even as the end one young father’s life drew near.

It was an education for me to be a part of that thoughtfully orchestrated leave-taking, an honor to be invited in, and an indelible memory that returns each spring as the daffodils bloom in my garden.  One day that early May, struck by the disconnect between the explosion of life and color in the world and the slow leaching of life from my friend’s body, I cut every single daffodil in my yard, well over a hundred in all, and arranged them in jars in his room.

It seemed right, somehow, to take everything of beauty I could put my hands on and deliver vessels stuffed full of springtime into this household.  Everyone had some version of the same impulse it seemed — to meet death with life, grief with love. Other friends brought music, artwork, foot rubs, poems to read out loud.  The kitchen was always full of people, the tea kettle always on boil, the refrigerator always full of good food.

But as Richard’s appetite waned, there was just one thing he wanted to eat, just one treat that actually tasted good, even if he could manage only a bite or two: a sip of coffee and a small slice of my lemon cake.  I couldn’t do anything about the relentless progression of his illness, but I could make cake.  And so I did, again and again and again. Even now, thirteen years later, I never begin the process of grating lemon peel without thinking of Richard.

Yesterday, the daffodils were blooming at last in my New Hampshire garden.  The forsythia buds were opening before my eyes, the grass greening by the hour. And I found myself feeling  just a touch blue as I considered the fact that after many months of sharing readings and appearances with my friend Margaret Roach, author of The Backyard Parables, we were facing our final “duet” together.

We weren’t sure how many people would be willing to leave their back yards on such a glorious spring Sunday afternoon to go listen to a couple of authors talk and read.  But for the two of us it was a bittersweet moment, the end of the road for this book publication journey we’ve shared since our memoirs came out within a week of each other in January.   I wanted to mark the occasion, to offer her a sweet something by way of saying “Thank you for being my friend and partner.”  (What we’ve both learned is that book tours are lots more fun with a buddy!)

There was really just one thing to do:  make my lemon cake.  As it turned out, about forty-five people came to the bookstore and yet I’m pretty sure everyone who wanted a sliver got one.  We talked together about friendships and endings and the fact that nothing lasts.  And we shared stories and celebrated spring and acknowledged the beauty of beginnings.  For those of you who couldn’t be with us, I’m sharing the recipe.

Glazed Lemon Cake

(Simple.  Dense. Lemony. Sturdy.  Good.)

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar (I use half a cup less)

3 eggs slightly beaten

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup buttermilk

2 heaping tsp. grated lemon rind

3 tblsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice

Set your oven to 325.  Grease a ten-inch tube pan, line the bottom with piece of waxed paper cut to fit exactly, grease the paper, and then lightly flour the pan.  Set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one tablespoonful at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt, and add to to dry ingredients with mixer on its lowest speed, alternating with the buttermilk and beginning and ending with the flour.  Beat in lemon rind and juice.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake on middle rack of oven for 65 minutes, until the cake begins to pull away from sides of pan. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and glaze (optional) while still warm.

For the glaze:  In a mixer cream together 2 cups confectioners sugar and 3 T. butter.  Add 3 heaping T. grated lemon rind and 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice.

 

 Magical Journey — my last three readings (for a while, anyway)

I would love to see you at one of these events! And if you can’t make it, please put the word out to friends in Nashville and Minneapolis.  

Thursday, May 2, 6:30 pm:  Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN  

Saturday, May 4, 7 pm:  Seventh Annual Motherhood & Words Reading, The Loft, Minneapolis, MN. 

Monday, May 6, 7 pm:  Common Good Bookstore, St. Paul, MN.

To stay up-to-date on future book news, the latest posts, and other doings, “Like” my Facebook page by clicking here. 

And to order signed/personalized copies of any of my books, click here. 

 

 

 

 

Mending the world within our reach — and a video to inspire

I suspect I’m not the only one feeling a little wary and vulnerable in my skin these days.  A week after the Boston bombings, as people across the nation paused yesterday afternoon to observe a moment of silence at 2:50, I stood alone in my own quiet kitchen, sad and somewhat at a loss for what to do next.

There is so much in my life to be grateful for. No one I know was injured last week.  All my loved ones are fine.  Nothing visible in my world has changed. And yet, I find myself blinking back tears at the slightest provocation or criticism or harsh word.  There is too much violence in the world.  Let us not add to it, not even with one more negative word or gesture.

The headlines in the newspaper are both an accounting and a measure of our collective sorrow: the suffering that spills across the pages in articles and images, the anger and confusion still searching for an outlet, the grief still so fresh and raw.  Looking at the photos of two brothers, one dead and one facing death or life imprisonment, I search in vain for some clue that would explain such calculated, senseless evil.  And then, because I am myself a mother of two boys, I can’t help but think: these boys are also someone’s sons.

At the same time, photos from the funerals remind us of all the other parents who are mourning.  The losses, and the ripples from those losses, are unfathomable. Yet in the midst of loss, there is extraordinary grace, too, and resilience. On TV, a composed young dancer’s face lights up as she tells Anderson Cooper how glad she is to be alive, even as she envisions her new life without her left foot.  She will dance again, she insists, leaning into her husband’s arms and gazing down at the bright pink bandage that wraps her stump.  And then she makes a promise: somehow, though she’s never been a runner herself, she intends to return to the Marathon next year – as a participant, even if it means she walks or crawls across the finish line.

There is more than one path toward healing, no one right way to grieve or to recover.  But after a week of monitoring the unfolding developments in Boston, after listening to this courageous young woman try to articulate why she is choosing not to look back in anger but to move forward with hope, I sense it’s time for a break from the relentless onslaught of news.  Time to find my own still center and embrace the texture of life as it is – not an easy task in the best of times, perhaps even more challenging today.

The sight of my welcoming house at the end of a long car ride Sunday night filled my heart to overflowing.  Hugging my husband and son after a weekend on the road, receiving a sweet text just now from a friend, bending down to the floor to snuggle my aging dog, reading a poem I love, watching the sun slip behind a cloud, just being – alive and aware and fully present in my own ordinary life – feels emotionally demanding, too.  It’s as if everything has become heightened, both the fragility of my own brief presence here, and the exquisite, complicated beauty of our interconnected human existence on this earth.

Maybe, for a time, we are meant to be this raw and tender.  Forced to acknowledge the dark shadow side of human nature and to feel the full brunt of that knowing, we have to face the truth:  People hurt each other.  Violence and suffering are intertwined, one giving rise to the other.  And somehow, it is up to each one of us to do better, to soften our hearts, to sing our songs even in the midst of sorrow, to take better care of ourselves and of one another.

I think of how many opportunities I have each day to be brave and vulnerable, to offer a hand, to make love visible – and how many of those opportunities I squander, because I’m too annoyed to be expansive, too scared to reach out, too distracted to notice, or too busy to bother.  And then I’m reminded of words I turn to again and again by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, words that guide me home when I stray away from the person I aspire to be:

Be brave…

“Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion. Be outrageous in forgiving. Be dramatic in reconciling. Mistakes? Back up and make them as right as you can, then move on. Be off the charts in kindness. In whatever you are called to, strive to be devoted to it in all aspects large and small. Fall short? Try again. Mastery is made in increments, not in leaps. Be brave, be fierce, be visionary. Mend the parts of the world that are within your reach. To strive to live this way is the most dramatic gift you can ever give to the world.”

 Inspiration. . .

I first met Carrie Carriello three years ago, when she attended a reading of The Gift of an Ordinary Day.  She told me she was thinking about writing a book herself, and asked if I would read a few of her essays.  Her humor and  courage were evident in every paragraph.  I couldn’t imagine how this busy young mother could possibly take care of five rambunctious children, including an autistic son, and find time to write a book, too.  And yet I also had a feeling nothing was going to stop her; she was that determined to tell her family’s story and to share her special little boy with the rest of us. Today, What Color is Monday? is published.

It’s my pleasure to share Carrie’s video with you, in which she recalls the moment she knew for certain her special son would find his way in the world, thanks to a stranger’s generosity – a beautiful example of the way one small act of kindness can transform a life. Listening to Carrie, I’m inspired to reach a little higher myself — to love more, to be better, to be braver, to be kinder.  “You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion.”

Click here to watch.

 

 

Working toward compassion

I try, pretty much every morning, to be present for the dawn, even if it’s only to stand outdoors shivering in my flip flops and pajamas, gazing eastward. Often I snap a photo as the sun makes its entrance, amazed always at the silent miracle: the gift of another day.

Although I tend to wake up with all sorts of emotions already swirling through my consciousness, indifference is never one of them. Instead – and I don’t think I’m alone in this – I’m often as not overcome with a wild brew of feelings as I stand on my small patch of earth and try to contemplate the much larger world out beyond my view and understanding.

Early yesterday morning, unguarded and unsettled, ears attuned to birdsong and wind, watching the sky brighten and the landscape glow with golden light, it was hard to imagine how life can possibly be both so beautiful and so horrific.

How, I wondered, am I to hold in my small, imperfect human heart both the tragedy that unfolded in Boston on Monday and, at the same time, gratitude that no one I know was hurt? How do we process the unimaginable?

On Monday afternoon, I drove a dear friend to the doctor and then we stopped for ice cream downtown. We sat outside in the mild sunshine eating peppermint stick and chocolate, happy in our innocence, our only worry the fact that we were filling our bellies way too close to dinner time. At home a few minutes later, lacing up my sneakers to take a walk, I had no idea what to make of a text that arrived from Jack saying, “I’m safe.” My first, thoughtless response was, “Well of course you are.”

Only when I opened my computer a moment later, and saw the scrolling news on the Boston Globe website, did I realize how lucky I was that the very first news I heard of the bombings came in the form of assurance from my younger son that he was all right. And yet, alongside my own relief was the realization that thousands of others were still awaiting news of loved ones, and that when it finally did come, not all the news would be good. Indeed, for many it would be devastating.

When tragedy strikes, it feels as if the entire world should stop and reassemble itself into some new pattern. Given the way grief, loss, and violence rip through our own precious complacency, we look around for some corresponding external shift, half expecting the moon and sun and stars to change course, too; wanting the entire universe to register and accommodate our human loss and somehow render it fathomable.

It doesn’t happen.

The sun rises in the morning, unperturbed. The sky turns bright and sheer as a veil and slowly, imperceptibly, the last rim of snow vanishes under the eaves on the north side of the house. Out front, as they do each spring, the indefatigable pansies tip their tiny purple faces toward the warmth. The birds take up their song, regardless. Overhead, a pair of great blue herons glide silently toward the pond, reminding me of the steadiness of their return, year after year. The world spins on, abiding.

How we choose to live in it, and where we look for meaning, is up to us. Standing outside in the early morning — open, attentive, reverent – I allow myself to be filled with the solace of nature’s eternal rhythms. Here, in the gentle breeze upon my cheek, in the joy of watching my dog run at full tilt, pouring across the field, in the squish of mud beneath my boots, I am nourished and restored even as the weight of sadness sits heavily in my heart. Reminded that I’m never far removed from the source and mystery of things, I’m reminded, too, of all that is beyond my comprehension and control.

Two days later, as the investigations into who and why and how grind on, the best response to the violence I can come up with is this: to reaffirm my faith in kindness and to commit myself even more deeply to a practice of living and speaking with compassion.

If I can remember that versions of what happened on Boylston Street on Monday afternoon are occurring each day, all over the world, then I’m reminded that we are all connected, and that there will be no lasting peace for me until there is peace for you, too, no matter who you are.

If I stop to consider that the attack that feels singular and incomprehensible to us – an assault on our home, on our Marathon, on our innocent people – is not unique at all, but the opposite, then I remember that until all people are safe, no one is safe.

If I can dissolve my own barriers and assumptions enough to taste the experience of life from inside someone else’s skin, then I take a small step out of the numbness and daze which keeps me separate from the mistakes and miseries of our own messy human creation.

Last night, Jack called and we talked on the phone for a while. “It didn’t really sink in until today,” he said, “how close I was to what happened. How it could so easily have been me, or anyone I know, there at the finish line.”

“Yes,” I said. “It took me a while to grasp that, too.”

Now I’m coming to think it is our task — as citizens of Boston, of America, and of the earth itself — to hold the truth in our hearts and minds: we are all one, and it is only through our willingness to reach out and touch the pain of others that the world will change.

Let’s get together. . .

Appearances

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I are both looking forward to reuniting at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, this Friday, April 19 at noon.  For the price of a book, you will get a catered lunch, a reading, and time to chat with the two of us too! Call the store at (860) 868-0525 for more info and to reserve your place. (And to read a lovely article about this special bookstore, click here.)

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change this weekend, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so we can finally meet in person.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

                  Housekeeping . . .

MOTHER’S DAY isn’t far off.  I’m happy to sign book plates for your gift books (just send me an email through the Contact link.) Or, you can order any of my books — signed and personalized as per your instructions — directly through my local independent bookstore, The Toadstool, here in Peterborough, NH.  I asked Willard, the owner, if he’d be willing to gift-wrap books as Mother’s Day gifts, and he said “Sure.”  To order, click HERE.   This will bring you to an order form at the Toadstool’s website.  Leave a note with your order, letting us know if you want your books personalized and/or gift-wrapped.  I’ll sign them, we’ll wrap them beautifully, and we’ll get them right off to you or to the special moms in your life.

I’ve loved hearing from so many of you!  Your letters never fail to make my day — they remind me all over again how lucky we all are, to be part of a community of readers, seekers, thinkers, nurturers.  If you feel inclined to write a bit MORE, however, I will say that each and every reader review on  Goodreads and on Amazon is hugely appreciated  and hugely helpful too.  Thank you for spreading the word!

 

 

Inhabiting a moment

“Everything that is not written down disappears except for certain imperishable moments, people and scenes.” — James Salter, “The Art of Fiction No. 133,” The Paris Review

On the bed where I sit cross-legged, leaning against the headboard: eyeglasses, a couple of paperbacks, a new but already much loved hardcover novel, half-read, its pages folded over, the margins scattered with lightly penciled exclamations, each one a silent, emphatic yes. Two pens, gray and black, a notebook with a dark brown cover and magnetic clasp. A pile of down pillows pushed aside, the familiar quilt, softened by age and use, sun-faded. The folded comforter.

Beyond the tall triptych of windows, the view that is the backdrop of all my days and nights. Sloping fields still patched with snow, the stone walls that define our edges here, meandering tendrils of wood smoke curling skyward, the final exhalations of a slow-burning brush pile. The maple tree that’s almost close enough to touch, its dark limbs silhouetted against a twilight sky: rose, transparent blue, violet and gold. The fading palette of an April dusk. Tiny, tight-fisted buds where just yesterday there were none.

A platoon of robins that descends as if summoned to the yard. They work away at the newly bared patches of earth, eyes cocked like surveyors taking measure of the land. The mushy, receding snow. The flat, matted grass. A lone yellow crocus still clenched shut, withholding its bloom. The distant mountains drenched for one singular instant in the day’s last light, already slipping into shadow as the sky drains of color. The ticking clock on the bedside table. The quiet way evening settles in.

One son on his way tonight to New York City — hopeful, off to answer a call, a long-shot opportunity to take one small step closer to his Broadway dream. The odds aren’t good. He knows that but goes anyway. This is what it is be twenty-three and wishing for something, anything, to happen — you say yes and figure out the details later. The brief heart-tug when he left an hour ago, fresh shaven, clothes shoved into a pack, one eye on the clock, car keys jangling in his hand. Imagining him tomorrow morning at ten, climbing the stairs of some building in Times Square, giving his name at the door, slipping into a much-coveted seat at a pre-Broadway workshop where, just maybe, he can convince somebody he’d be a useful guy to have around.

From the kitchen below, the muffled sound of a Celtics game on TV. The rise and fall of my younger son’s voice and his dad’s responses, their staccato, companionable conversation punctuated by alternating cheers and cries of despair. The pleasurable stillness of the house in the hour after dinner when the dishes are done. The slow, unwinding hours before bed. The sense of embrace.

All week, I’ve been thinking about the line quoted above, Salter’s idea that “everything that is not written down disappears, except for certain imperishable moments.” By imperishable, I assume he means the big ones – the birth of a child, a phone call bringing good tidings or bad news, a vow spoken, a declaration of love, of betrayal. We don’t need to preserve those moments that instantly engrave themselves upon our hearts; for better and for worse they become part of who we are, our own unwritten enduring history.

But everyday life — the life we fumble through and take for granted and get distracted by – this ordinary life is comprised of little else but perishable moments, random strings of details, most of them barely worthy of our notice: the slant of sun across the breakfast table, the coffee steaming in the mug, the brush of a hand across a brow, the dog’s head in your lap, a son’s casual, quick embrace, a handful of stars flung across a vast night sky, few notes worked out on the piano. The flotsam and jetsam that add up to days lived, days forgotten.

It takes a kind of determined willingness to pay attention, an eye deliberately refreshed and attuned to nuance. And it takes time, time I rarely spare of late, to pause long enough to truly see. To sit in silence and slowly, haltingly, put what is fleeting and ephemeral into words. The inescapable truth of the present moment: it’s already gone by the time I manage to set it down upon a page.

And yet, I do believe there’s something to be said for trying. Something to be said for inhabiting stillness and then looking out at everything as if for the first time. For me, it is always the same lesson, one I learn by lingering in one place for a while and softening my gaze. Making myself at home in the moment means allowing time and space for each thing to become wholly itself, distinct and beautiful in its own way, each bearing its own secret revelation.

What I’m noticing as I sit in bed this evening and take stock of the fading, golden light, the muffled sounds of home, the unimportant particulars of here and now, is this: the simple act of recalibrating my attention calls me back into relationship with my life.

Perhaps a day will come when I will be grateful even for this humble record, this snapshot of an unremarkable time. I still believe with all my heart in the gift of an ordinary day. But I also have to remind myself, again and again, to accept that gift for what it is: proof that every moment offers another quiet opportunity to be amazed.

So, why not try this? Step gently through the opening, into now. Close your eyes. Draw a deep breath in and then exhale a long, deep breath out. With soft gaze, open your eyes and see whatever is at hand. This is where you are. Before the moment sheds its skin and assumes a new shape, weave a skein of words around it. See how the very act of noticing is something akin to wonder.