Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 16

Gifts

It is still dark as I type these words, though I’ve been awake for hours on this snow-hushed morning of the year’s shortest day.

Soon, I will turn lights on, brew coffee, let the dog out, confront the pile of unwrapped Christmas gifts in the basement. But here in the shadowed quiet before dawn, I’m thinking of gifts that aren’t wrapped and placed under a tree. Gifts that are hidden within each of us, waiting to be brought forth and shared with the world.

This week, to celebrate Henry’s birthday, our family went to see the dark, dazzling revival of “Pippin” at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard Square. “How far will you go to be extraordinary?” the show’s narrator asks Pippin, an aimless young man with oversized hopes and dreams who’s desperate to find his “corner of the sky.” Will he choose a life that’s mundane and ordinary, or sacrifice all in exchange for one blazing moment of glory?

Last night, we went to another production, right here in our home town: an abridged version of the medieval Shepherd’s Play, performed in a church hall by members of our local life-sharing communities, men and women whose mental and physical challenges require special care in special homes devoted to their well-being.

Rehearsals for each of these performances began months ago. All fall, the actors in each committed themselves to the work of learning lines and music, preparing for their roles. And then, when the moment came to shine, each and every one of them got up on stage, took a long deep breath, and offered everything they had to give.

In the case of “Pippin”: death-defying, gasp-inducing acrobatics; soaring, searing interpretations of the killer Stephen Schwartz score, and a faithful recreation of Bob Fosse’s dazzling original choreography. Thrilling moments of pure, over-the-top theatrical magic and stripped-bare moments of aching, human vulnerability.

And at The Shepherd’s Play: simple lines painstakingly recited (with some unobtrusive support from unflappable volunteers and patient staff members), age-old songs and exuberant comic bits, a few inevitable stumbles and a few unexpected onstage tears. And, yes, here too, thrilling moments of theatrical magic and stripped-bare moments of aching, human vulnerability.

In the plush theatre, my eyes filled as a young Broadway star sang an exquisite love song to the older woman who finally cracks open his heart. And in the dusty church hall, I wept again, as a stout, shy young Mary hesitantly lifted her arms in silent rapture to receive the divine touch of an awkward, determined angel Gabriel, a Gabriel whose hair stuck up and whose mouth was a little odd and whose words were a little garbled, and whose white tunic didn’t quite fit his gawky frame.

At the end of both of these plays, the audiences leapt to their feet. The ovations were long and heartfelt and joy-filled– our grateful human response to gifts shared openly, offered in good faith and with nothing held back.

There is, of course, no way to compare these two productions, the extravagant New York- bound musical and the humble small-town pageant. One is not “better” than the other; they are both special, both worthy, both performed with all the love and courage their players had to offer. I wouldn’t have missed either of them.

And side by side, they have set me to thinking. All year, I’ve been squirreling presents away in closets; yesterday, I was out in the stores, buying yet a few more. But today, as I wrap these gifts and put them under the tree, I realize how quick I am to judge my own gifts and find them wanting.

I love finding the perfect something for a friend, surprising a loved one with just the “right” treasure, taking time to spend with those near and dear, answering letters from strangers. I take deep satisfaction in sharing the books I love, the food I prepare, the seats at our dinner table, the hours in my day, the freshly made bed in the guest room.

Yet, I am much less sure when it comes to sharing the gift of myself. Looking at my schedule of bookstore visits and public appearances in January and February, my stomach clenches into a tight little knot. Can I really go out and do all that? Will I disappoint readers who expect more from me than I can possibly deliver? Do people understand that, just because I’ve written a book about growing older, I don’t actually have all that much figured out? That I’m still grappling myself with losses and changes and questions that leave me at a loss for answers?

At the end of his two and a half hour search for fulfillment, Pippin discovers that his own “corner of the sky” isn’t fame or fortune after all, but the place in his heart that’s filled with love for others. His search ends not with a blaze of glory, but with acceptance of his own ordinary, un-glorious and imperfect but truly compassionate self. He chooses a life that’s authentic and meaningful to him, rather than a flashy trick to impress an audience.

The message hit home. As I watch my own two sons at twenty and twenty-three, each struggling in their own way to make sense of their inchoate hopes and dreams, each wondering what mark they’ll leave on the world, I do know what they cannot possibly have learned yet: it’s the journey itself, not the destination, that matters most.

Only time and hard-won experience can teach them this lesson, that the more truth they are willing to risk along the way, the more courageously they are willing to give of themselves, the more they will have to offer. And, of course, each time they do step forward and bring their own humble gifts into the world, the more they will receive in return.

Perhaps that’s exactly the reminder I need myself at this vulnerable moment before my new book arrives in bookstores. And perhaps this is my task for now: to remember that my job over these next few months isn’t to judge the worthiness of my gift, but to find the courage to show up and offer it.

For what, after all, do any of us really want from one another? Certainly it is not more stuff. Nor is it perfection or fool-proof answers or second-hand wisdom. We want more presence, not more presents. And the most valuable gift we have to give is, always, the unvarnished, unadorned truth of who we really are. Joy comes when we are both courageous and generous – brave enough to be who we are, and as generous with the gift of our own flawed, vulnerable, unique selves as we are with the gifts we wrap up in pretty paper and ribbons and bows.

A quick MAGICAL JOURNEY update – and books to give away!

Events: I hope to meet you in 2013! To see where I’ll be and when, visit my events page by CLICKING HERE. (Check back often!)

News: My deep gratitude this week to fellow travelers David Abrams and Beth Kephart, two much-admired writers who graciously share their own gifts by generously celebrating the works of others. I am honored to be featured on their websites.

CLICK HERE for Beth’s. And HERE for David’s.

Finally, it’s not too late to win an advance copy.

You can enter to win one of ten that Goodreads is giving away by clicking HERE.
And, I have five author copies right here on my desk, waiting to be signed and shared with you. To win, subscribe to my weekly newsletter (if you haven’t already done so), and then leave a comment here. (Any comment at all will do, but feel free to share a gift you’ve given this year, or one you’ve received that touched your heart.) I’ll draw one winner at random each day from December 26-30.

Joy! In the meantime, from my house to yours, warm wishes for a most wonderful holiday. May you both generously give and gratefully receive the precious present of presence!

Light, Dark

Light. Last Sunday afternoon. The brief, brilliant sun bedazzling through the high window in the town hall auditorium. The audience arriving, shedding coats, searching for friends; the musicians warming up on stage. Henry in his tux, a quick smile (just for me) as he files past to take his place on the risers, preparing to sing. My neighbor Debbie sitting beside me, sharing her chocolate chip cookies. Familiar faces in the crowd. Christmas trees festooned with white lights, men in holiday sweaters and red neckties, the lady selling homemade baked goods at the table in the back, the rustle of programs, the golden light, the expectant hush that hovers just before the first note of song bursts through the silence and takes flight. My son, who will turn twenty-three this week, standing onstage before a packed house in our home town; his deep, sure tenor filling the room, filling my heart till it pushes against my chest and overflows and I am brushing away happy, astonished tears. All these years, and I’ve never once heard this most private child of mine sing out loud — till now, here, this deeply felt solo performed in a room packed with people who have paid money to come.

Dark. The night before, crowding into the small room at the funeral home, surrounded by family from near and far. The photograph of my uncle as a young man himself, crew-cut earnest and just out of school, gazing toward an unknown future that would hold more than its share of heartbreak. The small urn full of ashes, a fishing scene etched onto the side, and above it that photo I’ve known all my life, the same photo that hung on the parlor wall of my grandmother’s house alongside two more, a triptych of brothers framed in gold and presiding silently there through the long quiet afternoons of my childhood, when I would study every ancestral image, every picture in the crowded gallery of family likenesses.

Reassembling those memories to meet the present: the dear, familiar faces of aunts and uncles and cousins, each one softened and creased by age and time; it has been too long since I last saw them. My cousin’s children, suddenly grown and confronting a new truth: even larger-than-life grandfathers die. (Wasn’t it just yesterday that they were children running wild with my own boys through the frozen November field behind my parents’ house?)

Anecdotes gathered up and shared haltingly. The unaccustomed effort of giving voice to what’s hard and sad and lost. The three brothers who have suddenly become two, oldest and youngest, the one in between gone at seventy-one. An image in my mind from years ago: my brawny uncle with his sideburns and beard and aviator glasses, his inexhaustible supply of stories, holding forth at Thanksgiving dinner, spinning tales from events he remembered that everyone else had long since forgotten. And then, later, the long trip home, fighting to stay awake as my father drives down the empty highway. The odd sensation of being both a fifty-four year old mother of two grown sons and, at the same time, a child again myself, sitting alone in the back seat of my parents car, the backs of their heads as familiar to me as my own two hands.

Light. It is dusk. The only lamp on in the dark, silent house is here, beside the sofa where I sit surrounded by evening shadows. I type these words slowly, from within a small, golden patch of brightness.

Dark. The paragraphs above, written early yesterday morning, so trivial today, as the news from Connecticut settles upon our shoulders like a heavy, black cloak of brutal knowing. Innocent children dead, families ripped apart, the nation shaken once again by tragedy beyond reason or comprehension. Grief and anger, the deep sense of failure and helplessness. Gratitude for a life that is intact intermingled with mourning for lives lost and for lives ruined.

Sun and shadow. Joy and heartache. Life and death. To be human is to become intimate with both darkness and light. It has always been so. Yet on this somber December day, we are asked to do even more: somehow we must carry on with our lives as they are and, too, we must stop in our tracks, and look with clear gaze into the ruins.

How to respond to such a random, meaningless act of violence? How to honor the grief caused by this rampage of mindless destruction? How to accommodate and embrace both the darkness and the light of today?

Perhaps there is no good answer, other than to honor the sanctity of life by loving more and loving better, whatever that means for each of us. Compassion is the thread that binds us to one another. Compassion is the balm that heals the soul. Compassion is the offering we carry to the altar of regret and anger and grief. Compassion is what clears our vision, so we may begin to see, even in the midst of the darkest and most unspeakable horror, the light of something larger than our own understanding at work. Compassion is what allows us to seek redemption in the midst of tragedy — to reach out a hand and step toward rather than away from, to act rather than to wait for others to act in our stead. Compassion is, perhaps, the point of the journey, both our purpose and our calling, the place where healing and hope for tomorrow resides. A reminder that in all its shadow and its light, this fragile, fleeting life is full of beauty and meaning nonetheless.

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Things I love: timeless books

I set out this morning to write about a few of my favorite things, beloved treasures I’m pleased to own and excited to be wrapping for special friends and family members this holiday season. But I hadn’t gotten far when I realized I’d have to break my list into two parts. Books today (there are just so many I adore and want to share); everything else, next time. (Links are in blue.)

Charlotte’s Web, written and read by E.B. White

At dinner a few weeks ago a dear friend and I talked about our all-time favorite books. Charlotte has been at the top of my list for decades. I cherished it as a child, read it many times to my own sons, and then, as they learned to read themselves, loved hearing them read it to me, complete with voices for each animal. (When I read, I would always have to hand the book over to one of the boys for the last chapter; I could never make it through without tears.)

Last spring the New York Times published a piece in honor of Charlotte’s 60th anniversary; turns out E.B. White couldn’t read the final pages of his own book without choking up. It took him 17 tries to get through Charlotte’s death; even so, he read the ending with a catch in his voice. I never knew an audio version existed, but of course I ordered it immediately and I finally listened this week, on my daily dog walks. In short: pure pleasure. The book holds up (more than that, it soars; every word is perfect). I smiled all the way through. I cried at the end. And then I came home and ordered more copies, for my dinner companion and for all the other book lovers on my list, young and old.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (and read by him, too)

My friend’s all-time favorite book is William Maxwell’s small, haunting reminiscence of a childhood friendship shattered by murder. I first read this spare, tender novel 27 years ago and it broke my heart then. My friend’s admiration inspired me to take it from the shelf again. On Thanksgiving night, I settled in by the fire and re-read it cover to cover. My friend is right: Maxwell has no peer.

In a few austere, breathtakingly powerful chapters, he explores the meaning of friendship, the scars of childhood loss, the price of passion, the meaning of love, the redemptive power of self-forgiveness. Turns out, Maxwell, who died in 2000, also recorded an unabridged version of his classic novel. And even though it’s fresh in my mind, I’m listening to it now, feeling as if I’ve just discovered a precious, priceless treasure. My holiday mantra for William Maxwell: Read. Listen. Give unto others.

Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. (And Frog and Toad Audio Collection, performed by the author.)

Yes, I’m definitely on a listening kick. A lifelong passionate reader but a recent convert to audiobooks, I find myself looking forward to any excuse these days to lace up my sneakers, put in my earbuds, and head outside. (True confession: I’ve also missed a few exits on the interstate, so caught up have I been in the story unfolding over the car speakers.) Finding some of my all-time favorite works read by their authors has been a joy, and hearing the stories I love told to me as if by a friend is not a substitute for reading, it is a different experience entirely – intimate, intense, and wonderful.

Frog and Toad were, hands down, the most popular books in our household. Billed as “I Can Read Books,” they are so much more than beginning texts for six year olds. They are profound. They are hilarious. They are unforgettable. These two best pals are also so true-to-life in their depictions of friendship and the challenges of being alive and growing up that we all quote our favorite lines even now. Ask anyone in our family, “What literary characters reside permanently in your heart?” We would answer unanimously: Frog and Toad. We will never outgrow them. Nor will you.

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.

When my boys were born, a friend of my mom’s began sending us a carefully chosen Christmas book each year. Over the years, as our library grew, these books became a sacred part of our holiday tradition. On Thanksgiving, we would carry the box of books up from the basement and then, each evening until Christmas, we would sit down on the couch and read aloud together. No matter that we read the same books over and over again; the best ones became our own private classics. The books that were truly magical, we discovered, never grew old.

The Snowman, a wordless story told in soft yet unforgettable pastel images, IS magic on a page. Sometimes we would “read” this book in complete, companionable silence. Sometimes we would talk about the snowman’s nocturnal adventures with the little boy who built him and and became his friend. Later, we bought the video and discovered that rare thing: a book that is actually enhanced by its leap from page to screen. Fortunately the video is also wordless; an exquisite, unforgettable score is the perfect accompaniment to the animated images, rendered painstakingly from the book and even more moving when brought to life. This book (once again available in hardcover – don’t buy the small boardbook edition or any of the knock-offs!) and/or video would make a memorable gift for any family on your list.

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote.

We came late to this small, lovely reminiscence of a little boy’s holiday preparations with his odd, outcast aunt. Eight years ago, spending our first Christmas away from the house our boys had grown up in, we were all at a loss, feeling more sad and cranky than cheerful. One night after supper, in a somewhat desperate attempt to foster some holiday spirit, I literally forced my family to sit down for a story. There was grumbling and sighing – trying to get an 11-year-old and a high schooler and a husband to all agree to be read to is like herding cats – but, somewhat to my surprise, Truman Capote captivated us all.

We haven’t missed an annual read-aloud in the last eight years, and we often share this little-known classic now with assorted guests and friends who are delighted to hear it for the first time. This book, published in 1956, inspired Jack, at 11, to declare Truman Capote his favorite writer. Each year, we marvel anew at the perfection of the prose, the bittersweet humor, the way a strange, eccentric lady taught a sensitive child about the real meaning of Christmas and the grace of unconditional love. (For someone really special, look for the now out-of-print slipcased hardcover edition; it is still available from used booksellers, and worth having in your library.)

The House of Belonging by David Whyte.

This is the collection I will press into the hands of every poetry lover on my list this year. “Poetry,” says David Whyte, is “language against which we have no defenses.” I can say this: I have no defenses against the poetry of this soulful, wholehearted writer. Every poem I read by this man gives voice to what lives in my own heart. Reading him lifts my spirit, reminds me who I am and what I care about. He writes of dailiness and small moments, of nature and rootedness, hearth and home, love and belonging. This is poetry unadorned, simple and graceful and true. It is poetry that invites you to stop and listen to what is deep and silent within you, to pause in gratitude for your life, and to honor that life enough to nurture all that makes it good: our own work, solitude and connection, writing and reading, gardens and clean sheets, our children, our partners, our friends.

I hope you find as much pleasure in the words and voices (and images) of these writers as I have. It is a great pleasure to widen this reading circle, to introduce my most cherished literary friends to you. And do tell me: What books are you reading and sharing this holiday season?

From “The Winter of Listening” by David Whyte

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

Even with summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

All those years

listening to those

who had nothing to say.

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make itself heard.

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong to everything

simpy by listening.

And the slow

difficulty of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

Silence and winter

has lead me to that

otherness.

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own.

(I encourage you to shop at your own independent bookstore this season. Links to Amazon may yield a small commission if books are purchased; I use those commissions to fund book giveaways on the website.)

A duet with a friend — and some good winter soup

I practiced a visualization all through last winter, one I returned to again and again as I sat alone writing in my son Henry’s upstairs bedroom. In my mind’s eye I saw my friend Margaret Roach at my side, finished books in our hands, the two of us doing a reading together.

Margaret, I knew, was holed up in her own snug little house three hours from mine, working on her garden memoir, “The Backyard Parables.” Most mornings, before settling down to serious work, we would send each other a Skype greeting.

“You ok up there?” she’d type, usually around 6 am, the hour both of us consider the best for getting any real thinking done.

“Yes,” I’d type back. “Plugging away.”

“I’m here,” Margaret would answer. And somehow, just knowing that she was, brought me comfort. We were a writers’ group of two, with book deadlines just weeks apart. Whenever the going got tough, as it seemed to at some point in nearly every day, either one of us could reach out. Commiseration was never more than a click away.

We didn’t show each other our manuscripts until we had both finished writing – among other quirks we have in common is a need to work in deep privacy. But when Margaret came to the end a few weeks before I did, I felt inspired to push onward myself – I knew she was waiting for me at the finish line, eager to exchange our first drafts.

What we found, as we each began to read, was perhaps inevitable. Margaret was chronicling a year in the garden she has loved and tended for twenty-five years. And I was writing about the challenges of adjusting to a new stage of life without children at home. Yet it turned out that, unbeknownst to either of us, many of our themes were identitical: loss, change, acceptance, transformation, aging, gratitude, grace.

Some of the parallels made us laugh as we scribbled exclamation notes in the margins: Turned out we had both stood in front of our respective bathroom mirrors, tugging our middle-aged, crepey neck skin up and back, contemplating the very distant possibility of a nip or tuck to tighten things up beneath the chin.

But we also realized, as we read one another’s work, that perhaps what had seemed unique to each of us as we labored away in solitude is in fact universal: married or single, mother or childless, employed or not, rich or poor, gay or straight, each and every one of us must eventually find a way to navigate the tricky passage between youth and age.

It seems that the great challenge of our middle years is to figure out how to move into and through the second half of life with joy. Joy even in the face of inevitable loss; equanimity even in the face of relentless change; wisdom and grace even as old roles and old dreams fall away and new ones are slow to take shape. We may travel different paths through life, and yet perhaps there is no woman anywhere who doesn’t long at some point for an inner road map, some kind of guidance as we are called to release our illusions of control, to let go of who we once were and to embrace who we have become.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me at all that my friend and I have both spent the last couple of years quietly grappling with these very challenges – for aren’t these also the topics of conversation whenever women come together and summon the courage to drop our public faces and share our true struggles and stories?

As it turned out, our publisher decided to bring our books out within a week of each other. And suddenly, it seemed that my sustaining vision – the two of us together, holding finished books in our hands – might actually become a reality. In October, at the New England Independent Booksellers’ Association meeting, we tried our idea out on some booksellers.

“You can have us separately if you want,” we said. “But we’d also be happy to come to your store together.” By the end of the weekend, we had a whole list of bookstores that liked the idea of our “duet.” And so it was that last week, the two of us sat side by side on a couple of stools at Margaret’s house and read aloud for the first time, to a room full of invited guests – our dress rehearsal, so to speak, to make sure the program we’ve been imagining all these months would actually work.

Wine was poured, dinner was eaten, and the conversation flowed. Our test audience was kind and enthusiastic, and the passages we chose to read seemed to speak to one another in two-part harmony – two friends, two lives, two voices, two books, with much in common and much to share. By the end of the evening, a room full of women who had arrived as strangers to one another were all chatting like old friends. I looked around and took a moment simply to allow myself to be grateful: for cameraderie and home made cookies, and also for the deep, spontaneous connections that the written word, when shared aloud, can always inspire.

“That was pretty fun,” Margaret and I agreed the next day over lunch, as we ate some lentil soup I’d brought to share with her. And so, come January, we are taking this show on the road.

In the meantime, learn more about our friendship, and The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life at Margaret’s blog, A Way to Garden.

You can read excerpts from both Magical Journey and from The Backyard Parables simply by clicking on the titles.

But perhaps the best way I can introduce you to my friend is by sharing her video with you. (To watch mine, just click HERE.)

It was Margaret’s idea to share the soup recipe as well. That’s below, followed by a list of all our joint appearances this winter. Mark your calendars! We’d love to meet you.

lentil soup, adapted by katrina

ingredients

2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, chopped finely, or one large shallot chopped
1 leek, white part only, chopped finely
2 celery branches, diced finely
4 twigs of thyme, chopped finely
½ teaspoon saffron
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon turmeric
3 branches of parsley or cilantro, plus more to garnish
sea salt and pepper
large can of diced tomatoes with their juice
2 tablespoons double concentrate tomato paste
2 cups dry French green lentils
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 cups peeled and diced ‘Butternut’ squash
4 cups water
2 cups white wine (or vegetable broth)
2 bay leaves
4 garlic cloves, finely minced

steps

In large pot, heat oil, add thyme, cumin, turmeric, shallot, leek, celery, and cook, stirring, about 5 minutes, till veggies are softening.
Add tomatoes, tomato paste, cook one minute.
Add lentils, carrots, squash, cook one-two minutes.
Add water, wine, bay leaves, cilantro, season w. salt and pepper, cover and simmer till lentils are tender, about 25 minutes.
To serve: Ladle soup into deep bowls, top with a poached egg, a heaping tablespoon of creme fraiche (sour cream or yogurt can substitute), chopped cilantro or parsley leaves, and a dash of paprika.

(Recipe liberally adapted from “La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life” by Beatrice Peltre)

about our upcoming events

Margaret and I will be reading together from our two new books, “The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life” and “Magical Journey” An Apprenticeship in Contentment,” at bookstores and other venues around the Northeast this winter. Come join in our conversation–or invite us to visit your library or bookstore or book group (virtually by Skye, or in person) by emailing using this contact form.

Saturday, January 19, 2 PM: at R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT.
Saturday, January 26, afternoon: at Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, VT.
Sunday, January 27, 3 PM: at Buttonwood Books, Cohasset, MA.
Wednesday, January 30, 7 PM: at New England Mobile Book Fair bookshop, Newton Highlands, MA.
Sunday, February 24, 3 PM: at the Concord (MA) Bookshop.
Thursday, February 28, evening: at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY, hosted by memoir-teacher and author Marion Roach Smith.
Saturday, March 2, 1-3 PM: at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA.
Sunday, March 3, 3 PM: at Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY. (I’ll do a “365-Day Garden” lecture that same day at Battenkill, starting at 2 PM.)

First peek: Magical Journey video & excerpt (and win an advance copy)

I’ve always loved this solstice season of short days and long, cold nights. It is as if all of nature is reminding me: it’s time to slow down, be quiet, turn inward and embrace the darkness.

Yet, with a new book about to be published – my memoir, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment, will be in stores on January 8 — my task this December is all about going forth and spreading the word.

The good news for me: I know I can call on you, my readers here, to help me generate a bit of essential pre-publication action.

The good news for you: We don’t even have to leave our comfy armchairs in order to create a little “buzz.” (No fancy clothes or bullhorns needed.)

What you can do to help:

1. Watch the video, and then share it on Facebook and with all your friends. There’s a “SHARE” button on the top frame of the player above. (Don’t see a “SHARE” button on your screen? Click HERE instead, and copy & paste the link at the top of the page.)



My video for The Gift of an Ordinary Day, which I simply emailed out to 200 friends three years ago, has had nearly 1.7 million views on YouTube. This one, as you’ll see, is completely different, but it’s just as close to my heart. Hope it speaks to yours, too.

2. Click HERE – and read an excerpt. And then share that, too.

3. And finally, pre-order your own copy of MAGICAL JOURNEY now. (Click HERE to do that.)

First review just in, from Publishers Weekly: “An intensely moving tribute to the importance of enjoying every moment of life. . .[Kenison’s] journey will inspire tears and determination, and remind readers that anything, ‘done from the heart, changes the world in some small way for the better.’”

“Why pre-order?” you may ask.

Well, two reasons: First, your book will be delivered to your doorstep on January 8, the same day Magical Journey is released (and that is just a nice thing to look forward to, a week after New Year’s). And, even more important, pre-orders and online activity are the booksellers’ best indication that “something is happening” with a new book. Which means they are more likely to have it in stock, to put it on their front tables, and to let other readers know “it’s here!”

Thank you! (And please do let me know what you think, I’d love to hear from you!)

Meanwhile, my early holiday gift to YOU:

I’m waiting to receive my very first finished author’s copy of Magical Journey (it should be arriving any day now). And I’ve decided to sign and personalize it to give away to one of you. Here’s how to enter to win:

Take any – or preferably ALL THREE — of the helpful actions above, and then leave me a comment here. I’ll pick one winner, at random, after entries close at midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 11. If you win, you’ll have your copy before they are available in stores. (In fact, you should even receive it before Christmas – and I’ll gift wrap it myself.) Good luck to all!

Oprah doesn’t want me anymore

I didn’t think it would hurt, to be rejected by a magazine. But, at age 54, I guess I should have learned that it takes a while to recover from unrequited love.

Apparently, according to the editors at O, I should also have my life figured out by now. I should know exactly who I am and what my work is here on this earth. Those thorny questions about meaning and destiny? “By the time you’re 40 or 42,” said Oprah in last Sunday’s New York Times, “you should have kind of figured that out already.”

Oprah is not happy about the fact that the average age of her reader is 49. Times are tough at the magazine, which has seen a decline in readers and advertisers since her talk show ended eighteen months ago. And it seems I am part of the problem, one of those aging hangers-on who still want to read articles with substance and depth about women’s health, finances, spirituality and personal fulfillment. Enough already!

At 58, Oprah is looking around at the rest of us (late) middle-aged women, the ones who came of age seeking and searching right along with her, and wishing we would quietly go away. She wants, she says, to attract women in “their 30s or perhaps 20s, to be able to reach people when they are looking to fulfill their destiny.”

So, I’ve let my mom know she doesn’t need to renew my Oprah subscription for Christmas this year. I’ve been faithful, a devoted fan of the magazine since its very first issue. (In fact, I wrote a few articles and essays for O in the early years, and have never missed an issue since.) But Oprah’s not one for sentiment, and now she wants to make sure we all get the message: it’s not really a relationship. “Ultimately,” she told the Times, “you have to make money, because you are a business.”

I get that. But still, in an unexpected way, it was painful to learn that my age makes me not only invisible but undesirable. And I’m certainly not going to moon around where I’m no longer wanted or appreciated for who I am: a woman who is still unfinished, still growing and changing, still asking big questions, still seeking and searching and reading.

The thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. My friends and I may not look like a sexy demographic to the powers that be at O, but I think we are quite an interesting bunch. As I consider the women I know, I see a remarkable span of challenges and possibilities, from divorce, illness, and financial crises to new careers, revived passions, and ambitious creative endeavors. From thrilling new romantic relationships to adult children in need of support and elderly parents in need of care. From a new ability to say “no” to unwanted demands to renewed commitments to community service, friendships, and family.

My female friends in their forties and fifties are running companies, writing books, going on pilgrimages, passing the bar exam, recovering from a husband’s sudden death, taking up the cello, selling the family home, taking painting lessons, dealing with chronic illness, volunteering in a community garden, running marathons, taking religious vows. We are also making dinner, experimenting with new wrinkle creams, walking the dog, doing the laundry, going to yoga class, buying groceries and winter coats, reading books.

And what we all have in common is that the changes of midlife have invited or compelled each and every one of us to reinvent ourselves, to ask those “Who am I?” and “What now?” questions all over again, with just as much urgency and wonder as we brought to them in our twenties and thirties.

The difference is that we know now, in a way we couldn’t have possibly understood then, that time isn’t infinite. We’ve watched friends die, seen neatly ordered lives shattered by loss, close-knit families come unraveled, careers upended in a day. Knowing that my own steps are numbered, that whole chapters of my life have ended, that I’ve already lived more days than I have left ahead of me, I sometimes feel as if everything is up for re-examination, as if all my choices matter more. And yet, I still yearn to find my own true path and walk it –if anything, even more thoughtfully and deliberately than before.

Which makes me think maybe Oprah’s right after all. “You’re never going to run out of people who are looking for a more joyful life,” she says. And that is true. But I’ve also learned that life is complex, joy is fleeting, and there are no easy solutions. “Living my best life” these days is as much about being as doing, more about acceptance than pursuit, more about expressing gratitude for what is than about grasping for more. So perhaps I also need to acknowledge that the inspiration I’m looking for now probably isn’t going to be found in the pages of a slick women’s magazine fat with ad pages and geared to thirty-year olds. Maybe, Oprah, I’ve outgrown you, too.

If you’re a regular reader here, you know already that my book MAGICAL JOURNEY will be out in January. Even so, I hope you’ll take a moment to “Like” my Author page on Facebook — which is where I’ll post book news and events as they happen. There’s already an excerpt there, and more to come. (I’ll be posting a new book trailer video next week, which I’m excited to share with you.) And if you’re a new subscriber to my blog, welcome! I’m glad we’ve found each other!

Blessings

What happens when we begin to count them? The day becomes a poem, the list a prayer, life itself a gift.

sunrise

flannel sheets

cold water

hot water

peppermint soap

oatmeal

long underwear

iTunes

sturdy legs

running shoes

dogs

silence

online friends

close-by friends

new friends

forever friends

traditions

sons with jobs

nephews and neices

oranges in a bowl

peppermint tea

tech support

hardcover books

1.50 reading glasses

a good haircut

a good husband

cardinals

clouds

stone walls

old trees

pink geraniums

piano music

faith

photos

grandmothers

grown children

little kids

handwritten notes

child pose

new kitchen sponges

Mary Oliver

parents

laughter

magazines

folded towels

matched socks

candlelight

cloth napkins

soup

resilience

forgiveness

footrubs

wrinkle cream

peppermint ice cream

chocolate sauce

sunset

stars

the moon

the sky

space

wonder

the words “good night”

flannel sheets

dreams

breath

today

tomorrow

this

now

Inspired by my friend Maezen

Thanksgiving

Tomorrow night, for the first time in months, both our boys will be home, everyone sleeping in their own beds under one roof.

And on Thursday afternoon we will gather round the table at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner with the whole extended family. For well over forty years, with barely a miss, I’ve spent Thanksgiving in that very same kitchen, have eaten my dad’s grilled turkey and homemade ice cream, my mom’s pumpkin pie and peas and mashed potatoes. The cast of characters around the table has changed over time, of course. Various cousins and aunts and uncles and significant others and spouses have made entrances and exits. Dear loved ones have passed on and dear little ones have been born and grown up. And, along the way, each one of us has created our own enduring memories: brisk walks in the woods; skating on the pond (long, long ago, when there was ice in November); a fiance’s first appearance at the table; a grandfather’s final one; a grandmother’s last apple pie; a baby who is suddenly grown-up enough to sit with the adults; a sullen teenager miraculously transformed into a mature and engaging young man; an aunt and uncle determined to make a trip all the way from Florida so as not to miss dinner.

What’s been constant however, through all those decades, through all those comings and goings and births and deaths, is the house that somehow contains us all, the stories that get retold year after year as the plates are passed, and the presence in that house of my parents who, even as they’re rounding the corner toward eighty, still manage to make a Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings look effortless.

Each year, when my mother gets out her old gravy-stained notebook and begins her Thanksgiving countdown (pretty much the same to-do list, whether there are going to be 8 of us at the table or 38, as there occasionally were in the old days), she pulls out the crayoned drawing my cousin Paul made thirty-five years ago, when he was seven, the one that says: “I love going to the Thanksgiving house.” My mom cherishes that faded picture; she always sticks it up on the refrigerator, where she can see it as she cooks. And then, three days before we all show up for dinner, she gets busy, shopping for groceries, making stock, setting the table, brining the bird.

My parents are the keepers of the sugar and creamer set shaped like turkeys (which always sort of grossed out my Uncle Chet, who didn’t like to see his cream pouring out of a ceramic gobbler). They have the ice cream maker, the pie servers, the turkey platter, the covered dishes, the baster and twine, the big cutting board and carving set, plenty of dishes and silverware to go around. The tried-and-true recipes, annotated for crowds. The notes my mom has kept, religiously, about who came to dinner and what was said and who was missed this year.

Even after all this time, my mother and father are happy to put the meal on the table for the rest of us – grown children, spouses, grandchildren, and assorted invited guests. All we have to do is show up and appreciate the gifts they gladly offer — not only the food but, even more important, a spacious day of togetherness. And so it happens that once again this week, my family will come together in the house that has always been home base for all of us. At the same time I can’t help but think: It will not always be so.

At 54 years of age, I have yet to cook a turkey myself. Somehow, thanks to my mom’s dedicated service in the Thanksgiving house decade after decade, it’s a rite of passage I’ve managed to avoid. But the day will arrive when the baster will need to be passed. I think I’m going to take myself out of the running. Henry is going over to his grandmother’s house tomorrow afternoon to give her a hand with the potatoes and the squash. He knows the drill, and I have a feeling he would be honored to inherit my mom’s Thanksgiving notebook when the time comes.

For now, though, I don’t want to contemplate the future, but to fully immerse myself in the present. Two grown sons both at home tomorrow night. A couple of too-short days of togetherness. Time set aside to slow down and take stock of all that is good. 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.

I’d love to know: What are you grateful for today, here, now?

Friends: My new book Magical Journey will be in the stores in early January — just weeks away. In the meantime, I’ll post all the news, including where I’ll be and when, on my new Author page on Facebook. I would love it if you’d “LIKE” me there: http://www.facebook.com/kkenisonbooks

And of course pre-orders are ALWAYS appreciated. Order now, and have a book on your doorstep on January 8.

Carrying on

It was little more than a fleeting inconvenience here, the mighty storm that stole the homes and lives and livelihoods of so many others. Standing in my kitchen on Monday afternoon, the phone pressed to my ear, I watched as the wind lifted our storage shed up and away, and lodged it amidst some roadside trees. Steve and Henry and I put on boots and raincoats and headed out into the gale, but there wasn’t much at stake – a lawnmower, some flowerpots, bikes and gas cans and gardening tools. A neighbor stopped by and gave us a hand, and an hour later we had filled the basement and garage with our stuff, thrown our sopping clothes into the dryer, and settled down to listen to the wind and rain lashing the windows. We ate soup at five on that wild, windy night and by the time the power went out at six, the dishes were done. In the morning, with the lights back on and the clocks reset, we turned to the tv to see what was happening beyond our horizons.

All week, the images of devastation have burned into our collective consciousness. Having ascertained that friends and loved ones are alive and safe, we watch the news with a combination of horror and disbelief and grim fascination. How could this be happening? The heartbreaking scenes of fire, flooding, destruction, and loss are almost too much to assimilate here in the comfort of my own business-as-usual life. The coffee drips and the heat kicks on and the laptop pings the arrival of email, while not at all far from here, in homes and neighborhoods no different from this one, thousands of people wait for the basics to be restored: water, lights, gasoline, phone lines.

“Overwhelmed emotionally,” a friend typed at dawn this morning. Although she is fine, the city she called home for decades is not. How to make sense of that?

I’m not the only one who’s laid awake this week, in the grip of vague fear and nameless anxiety, safe and yet unsettled by the knowledge that while I snuggle into flannel sheets in a warm house, others go without.

“It seems almost like a betrayal,” I said to Steve at breakfast this morning as we ate cereal and read the New York Times, “to have it so easy while so many others are suffering. I’m not even sure how to feel, other than helpless and lucky and sad all at once.”

This afternoon, another email from a dear friend: “I just want to return those baby boys to their mother and the photographs to those who lost them and life to the man who was crushed by the tree. I want to do what can’t be done.”

That is surely the crux of it. Wanting to do what can’t be done, we’re reminded that all life is fleeting, security an illusion, suffering part of the human condition, the threshold of death never further than a step away.

Perhaps the only way to move beyond fear and helplessness is to cultivate a different response. Aware that we are, all of us, participants in this great ongoing dance of both living and dying, we can gently transform sorrow for all that’s lost into gratitude for all that is. Awakened to the fragility of our own existence, we do see through fresh eyes: each moment is a new thing, life itself a gift. And any act of kindness, no matter how small, brings a bit more light into the darkness.

Compassion, it turns out, is a powerful antidote to helplessness. And so I remind myself to simply stop, and look around. There is always some way to be useful, someone nearby who could use a hand, a hug, a listening ear, some kind of sustenance, be it physical or spiritual or emotional.

“Anything you do from the soulful self,” says activist and writer Clarissa Pinkola Estes, “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.”

She goes on to offer an assignment particularly suited for these chaotic and confusing times, one that just may be worth ordering an entire life around: “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 the world.”

Slowly then, day by day and bit by bit, what is broken will surely be healed. Each and every part of the world is within someone’s reach. Sometimes, our arms are even longer than we know. Meanwhile, with full hearts, we carry on. We do what we can, with what we have, from where we are.

Details

The process of publishing a book has changed a bit since my own early days in the business. Looking back at my beginnings as a fresh-out-of-college editorial assistant, I marvel at how quaint it all seems now, sort of like a profession from another era. Well, I guess it was.

My first task, on my very first day of work at Ticknor & Fields (a small, long-defunct New Haven subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Company) back in January of 1981, was to sit down with an empty scrapbook, a pair of scissors, and a jar of rubber cement. There had been some recent press about Houghton Mifflin’s resistance to a corporate buy-out. (Loyal, long-time authors like Kenneth Galbraith and Louis Auchincloss had made their voices heard, and the powers-that-be had listened. Houghton Mifflin, in 1981, was determined to remain fiercely independent. ) I was given the assignment of sorting through a huge stack of newspapers sent to us by the hired clipping service (talk about quaint!), carefully cutting out the articles, and pasting them neatly into the scrapbook. I worked on a stool in the kitchen, where it was also up to me to keep the coffee pot full and the sherry glasses washed. (Tea was served in the front room at four; sherry on Friday afternoons, or when well-known writers came to call. Calvin Trillin’s visits were occasions for cloth napkins and Chinese take-out.) I was twenty-one years old and in heaven.

In our tiny subsidiary, we all did a bit of everything, which meant, as time went on, that I often had a hand in book publicity as well as editorial work: writing press releases, putting press packets together, and then, of course, pasting all the positive newspaper reviews and feature stories into those precious scrapbooks.

It was a perfect way to familiarize myself with the names and faces in my new company, with the authors I was getting to know and the books I’d eagerly carry home to read over the weekends. Soon, I was also taking dictation and typing letters for my boss (three carbon copies of each for the files, a bottle of Wite-Out close at hand), fact –checking manuscripts in the reference room at Yale’s Sterling Library, packing up pages to be overnight mailed to authors, scribbling phone messages on little pink pads, studying the Chicago Manual of Style, and learning to wield a blue pencil as I began to proofread copy.

What amazed me the most about my thrilling (to me!) new career in publishing was the realization that every single book was really the physical manifestation of countless details, all lovingly and expertly attended to over the course of many months, and in some cases, years. It boggled my mind to watch the process unfold — from an innocuous, unread pile of typewritten pages secured with rubber bands to boxes of finished, pristine, beautiful books, ready to be stacked up on a book store’s front table.

How extraordinary it was to witness this alchemy up close, to become part of it, to understand that every single book I’d ever read had required the faith and expertise of so many different people, from the acquisition editor who said the first determined “yes,” to the copyeditor who carefully considered the placement of every semi-colon, to the production manager who inspected the glue application on the inside binding. Countless decisions to be made, and a nearly infinite number of tiny questions to be answered: fonts, margins, paper, leading, initial caps, space breaks, advertising budgets, print runs — the list went on. Names to be verified, serial commas to be made consistent, every line of every page of proof at every stage of the process to be checked, from sample pages to final pass. Every color in every jacket was examined against its Pantone original, while in the back room, our meticulous designer worked with a ruler and Exacto knife to ensure that every word of type on the front cover was perfectly placed into position – by hand.

Flash forward thirty-plus years, to my current life on the other side of the process and in a very different world. A world that can be summed up in a word: digital. What was once done laboriously and time intensively (searching for the spelling of some obscure actress’s name in an old edition of Who’s Who, for instance) can now be done in an instant, with a click of a key and a Google search. Long gone are the antique tools of the trade as it once was. Including paper.

The first manuscript I ever worked on was a first novel by a young author who appeared at the front door of our office with his 700-page mystery neatly typed and packed into three dark blue Brooks Brothers shirt boxes. A few months ago, I delivered my own manuscript to my publisher — by hitting a SEND button. Weeks later, when the copy-edited manuscript was returned to me, I opened it not as a meticulously hand-edited original typescript sent in an insured and tracked padded manila envelope, but as a Microsoft Word document. And then I set to work learning how to accept or decline the editor’s changes online, in the digital margins of my text, carrying on a virtual color-coded conversation with my copy editor, whose actual voice I will probably never hear. (Even a ringing phone is largely a thing of the past; why call and talk to a stranger, when you could text or email instead?)

As a writer with a new book coming out, I hold out little hope for print reviews; most of the small newspapers that do survive these days have long since shut down their book pages. My print run this time will be half what it was for my last book; that’s how many readers my publisher estimates have shifted to electronic devices.

And even though I have a publicist in New York who is already hard at work arranging my visits to bookstores and sending out bound galleys, the process of spreading the word about a new book has gone largely digital as well. Which means that my job as author no longer ends with writing the final lines and holding forth in a few publication-week interviews, but extends into the equally essential and ongoing industry of ensuring that, in the midst of this busy, distracted on-line world, potential readers actually know that my book exists.

For the first time, my latest book contract included a clause about social media. Maintaining a website and a Facebook presence and a Twitter account is now part of the writer’s job description. (I think I’m supposed to bone up on Pintrest and Tumblr, too.)

Three years ago, when The Gift of an Ordinary Day was published, a friend suggested it might be fun to make a video to go along with it. I invited my book group and some neighbors over, read a few pages out loud in front of the camera, and pulled a bunch of my husband’s family photos out of the albums. It was fun. And the video took on a life of its own, becoming a virtual messenger for the themes of the book.

This time, there was no question: Nowadays, nearly every new book arrives with its own book trailer video. The truth is, all of these new publishing to-dos have been making me anxious. Not only have I felt the pressure of making the book itself all it can be, but also the pressure of fulfilling my authorial obligation to initiate word of mouth about it in every possible venue: updating my website, planning a blog tour, producing a video, setting up events at bookstores. In other words, going public. (If you are someone who chooses to spend much of her life sitting quietly at home alone in a room, the prospect of making self-promotion your new full-time job — even if it is largely on-line — is enough to keep you awake at night. It does me.)

All summer the video project loomed. I had an idea, but no certainty that my vision would actually work. The friendly crew that filmed my first video had moved on. Finally, the deadline was upon me. I had no choice but to put my faith in the process, hire a couple of strangers to come film it, and begin.

And what I found myself thinking this week — as shooting began on my four-minute film, as Steve snapped countless potential author photos, as the book jacket was being finalized, and as plans for recording the audio version were made — is that much as things have changed in this business, it is STILL exacting attention to detail, and the concerted efforts of many passionate people, that make book publishing such a special and uniquely collaborative endeavor.

The scrapbooks of my publishing youth may be gone, my manuscript may exist in pixels instead of on paper, my book may not ever be reviewed in the pages of the Boston Globe or the New York Times, and yet the process remains as exacting and, in its own way, as deeply collegial, as viscerally satisfying, and as detail-oriented as ever.

The other day, three final jacket proofs arrived from the designer, real covers to be spread upon my dining room table, the type in each a slightly different shade of burnt orange. Which to choose? The audio producer sent me the script, printed out in large type, so that I’ll have time to practice reading it aloud before heading to New York next month to record in the studio; careful attention to detail is what will make our four days together go off without a hitch. And for two days, as our house became a film set and as Tom and Melissa of Long Haul Films shot hour upon hour of footage here, I marveled at their ability to maintain enthusiastic concentration as they focused their lenses upon the minutiae of my tactile, ordinary, everyday life and somehow turned it into art. Perhaps it is simply the willingness to pay such close attention, to bring such devotion to the details, that is, in the end, what lifts any process from mundane to meaningful.

It took one whole extra trip from Boston to New Hampshire to nail the shot the film makers wanted of hands around a steaming mug of tea. Six takes of zipping a jacket, tying up shoes. Lots of waiting around for the clouds to break and the sun to shine. Gracie, making tennis ball catch after tennis ball catch for the camera. And during that time, as my family and two dear friends willingly gave up big chunks of their day to assist in this project, and as a slew of last-minute emails arrived from Grand Central, my publisher in New York, I found myself feeling suddenly and immensely grateful for the entire team that fate and circumstance have brought together here, to help guide one modest midlife memoir into the world.

Of course, all this makes me see that what really matters to people who work with books has not changed at all in thirty years: A passion for a well-told story. A profound, ongoing love affair with words. The quiet thrill of holding a new hardcover in your hands, turning the first pages, receiving the urgent, insistent news that is shared between human beings when we summon the courage to reveal ourselves to one another.

In January, this book I’ve been laboring over for the last year and a half will be published. But the Magical Journey, I’m happy to say now, didn’t conclude with the final sentences I wrote last spring. In fact, that brief moment of ending simply marked the beginning of another journey, from the intensely private work of writing to the very public work of sharing. How lucky I am to be accompanied on this new path by such a dedicated group of friends and readers and co-workers, each of whom is as delighted by and as dedicated to the details as I am. Already I feel less alone. And even, dare I say it, excited about the next leg of the trip. Stay tuned!