Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 17

Hard lessons

I’m probably not the only person who abandons her good habits when life speeds up, or who fails to practice when practice is the only thing that might actually save me from myself. My guess is that there are others like me, who get so frazzled and overwhelmed and caught up in the stresses of events and obligations and misunderstandings that we don’t even see the plain truth staring us in the face: there is another way. A small shift in perception, a different attitude, a quieter approach.

And yet, knowing I’m not alone, and that failure is part of being human, doesn’t make it easier to confront my shortcomings.

Writing this morning as the sky lightens, waiting quietly for words to come rather than rushing and grasping to get something down on paper, I realize that what I’m really waiting for here is a glimpse of the thread that might lead me back to me, or at least back to the person I still aspire to be: reflective, aware, moving slowly and attentively in the world rather than racing through it, all sharp elbows and jangled nerves and oblivious hustle.

The dawn sky is peach and turquoise behind the thinning canopy of golden leaves beyond my bedroom window. The clock ticks steadily on the nightstand. Gracie sighs and stretches and then goes back to sleep on the floor. My husband, away on a business trip, isn’t here to see how quickly in his absence the other side of our bed becomes strewn with notebooks and pens, a wicker basket full of paperwork, a pile of books and pillows and half-done projects.

The day ahead is already pressing in – the housework I’ve postponed, emails that are unanswered, a daunting list of book tasks and family tasks and outdoor tasks needing attention. A long drive to reconnect with a cherished college friend after a gap of nearly twenty years. It’s tempting to leap out of bed and get started, to go tearing into the day, as if by moving faster I might actually come out ahead, might win the big race to some invisible, constantly shifting finish line. Perform well enough, and I just might grasp the brass ring, might magically transform this scattered, overcommitted life I’ve created into the artful, more deliberate, simpler life I keep straining to achieve.

But looking back over the last week or so — a week of moving ever faster only to feel myself slipping more and more out of control — I do at least know this: the best thing I can do, both for myself and for those I love, is to remain here propped amongst the bed pillows for a while longer. To start the day in stillness, to sit, to breathe, and to patiently allow my heart its own slow refueling.

Gratitude for things just as they are seeps in slowly. It takes some patience to refill a soul, patience and a certain faith, too. Faith that the blessing I hunger for is already mine. I need only breathe in to receive it, exhale to offer it forth. Faith that grace isn’t a prize to be earned or claimed but rather the gift of being alive, right here and right now, in this moment, no matter how many challenges await. Faith that who I am – this deeply flawed and wanting human self – is enough. Faith that life as it is – messy and muddled and fleeting — is life just as it is meant to be. Faith that paying attention is my true spiritual practice; kindness, my real work; and love the most creative and demanding path of all.

Practice, I know now, doesn’t make perfect. The harsh, inescapable truth is that to live in this world is to both harm and heal. So is it really any wonder that we bring the greatest pain to those we care about the most? This week, I deeply hurt a friend. The injury I caused was unintentional, but no less damaging for that. Tending to these wounds, flinching at the raw and tender places in a relationship that means the world to me, I wonder how to make amends. There’s nothing to be gained by dissecting the errors of my ways all over again. That list is long, and nothing special. And, as poet Mary Oliver reminds, “You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need any more of that sound.”

What can I do but this: Say “I’m sorry.” Bow low and accept forgiveness as its offered, in whatever form it takes. Set down the heavy, awkward burden of shame and take up in its place the worthy work of paying closer attention. Be humbled before all that I don’t know. And then move mindfully forward, taking even greater care. Commit all over again to love, to kindness, to the inestimable gifts of friendship, to practice.

What have I learned? Only to keep trying. And to be grateful for every second chance, every opportunity to become more skillful in these demanding arts of living and accepting and loving.

I Want to Remember

I want to remember waking from the soft flannel nest of sleep beside my husband, pulling on warm clothes and stepping outside in the dark in time to see the day begin.

I want to remember the holy hush just before dawn, the mists rising out of the valley, the sharp, clear sky still pricked by the bright eye of Venus. I want to remember the way light returns slowly to this earth, taking its time. How it arrives at last from behind a curtain of rose and purple clouds. How glad I am to be here.

I want to remember the sudden uprise of Canada geese bursting through the silence, honking and flapping and lifting into to the sky, oblivious to our astonishment. I want to remember their wild call as they jockeyed into a ragged V before shearing off through the clear veil of morning. The way my husband and I smiled at each other, silent, as we watched them go.

I want to remember the cold smell of Gracies’s coat when I bury my face in her neck, her silky hair so dry it fairly crackles. She is twelve. I want to remember everything.

I want to remember the September woods. The rich, smoky, earthy smells of nature concluding a season’s business. I want to remember the great buttery clumps of mushrooms, such fecund, untouchable bounty. And when, exactly, did the pliant maple leaves grow brittle and thin enough to see through? How subtle was the moment when summer’s green palette was exchanged for the golden hues of fall? I want to remember the exquisite turning of this page, as the blue-green hills I’ve gazed upon all summer begin now to glow with color. I want to remember this: Don’t blink. Every hour the scene repaints itself. We are heading toward brilliance, fleeting and irrepressible.

I want to remember the nasturtiums, how they came up everywhere this year, tumbling through the garden like handfuls of jewels, tossed and scattered with wild abandon. I want to remember the shy orange poppies; all summer they held back, only to bloom now at the end of September, long after I’d given up all hope of them. I want to remember the greedy, glorious, rampant pink and violet petunias, spilling out of their pots, cascading over the steps, taking advantage of every barren crack in the walkway. I want to remember the hummingbird that comes each afternoon to drink their depths. I want to remember these days before frost lays claim to every cherished, fragile blossom.

I want to remember the industriousness of bees, the hum in the garden. I want to remember the slow undulation of a Monarch’s wings as it sips from a pink zinnia. I want to remember the robin splashing like a hedonist in the birdbath beneath a stand of exhausted sunflowers, their drooping, heavy heads plucked clean of seed. (I should cut them down, haul those useless stalks to the compost pile.) I want to remember how reluctant I am to see anything come to an end, and how even now I leave the dead flowers standing standing there, patiently waiting for me to summon resolve.

I want to remember the last breakfast on the screened porch, the penultimate bouquets, the hydrangeas drying on their curved stems, the end of peaches, the first Macouns from the trees up the road, the puckery sweetness of a Concord grape splitting on the tongue.

I want to remember Henry’s oatmeal cookies and the rich buttery smells in the kitchen, Diana Krall singing “Love Me or Leave Me” as he washes dishes at the sink. I want to remember how good it is to have a son come home.

I want to remember my favorite sandwiches, made without bread: sliced Brandywine tomatoes and white mozzarella ovals and basil leaves still warm from the sun. I want to remember the briny grit of sea salt, and juice dripping off my elbows, and not minding.

I want to remember dozing in the lawn chair with a book in my lap, as the first yellow leaves spin to earth. I want to remember days with windows wide open, and the way cold seeps through the house as soon as the sun disappears behind the trees. I want to remember Henry practicing Rachmaninoff. I want to remember lighting candles at dinner again, and how it feels to live in one place for five years, to feel one’s own roots sinking into the earth. I want to remember that change is part of being alive. I want to remember to take time to sit in silence, to breathe into the still point, where past and future are gathered. I want to remember some lines by T.S. Eliot:

Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point,

there would be no dance,

and there is only the dance.

I want to remember that in the week before I turn 54, I am vexed by a private catalog of imponderables. I want to remember that even these most perfect days and nights have been limned with sadness, punctuated by sleepless hours, a host of worries, questions without answers. I want to remember that sometimes I can set my troubles aside, choose instead to see my life as a blessing. I want to remember that surrender is always possible, and that I can be sad and grateful at the same time. Filled up and emptied out, both. Even a heavy heart can overflow with contentment. I want to remember to keep my eyes open, to pay attention. Life is short. I want to remember: this is it. There is only the dance.

Tell me, what do you want to remember?

(I write today inspired by my friend Lindsey’s poignant post on this theme at A Design so Vast. Thank you Lindsey!)

Happy Birthday Henry

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Henry, twenty-one years ago today I gave birth to you, and nothing was ever the same again.  This morning we called you early, to say "happy birthday," and to marvel at the fact that you're all grown up.  You have two more finals to take before you get to board that bus for the airport and catch a flight home for Christmas.  And we won't get to go out to Harlows for that legal drink I promised you till Tuesday night.  But all day I've been thinking about that bitterly cold morning twenty-one years ago, when you arrived on the planet, all six pounds of you, and turned me and your dad into parents.  The transformation was profound. Whatever, whoever, we'd been the day before -- well, we could barely remember that innocent young couple, so intensely focused were we on the astonishing fact that we had suddenly been blessed with a baby, with a brand new life, placed into our humble, unschooled hands.  Were we up to the job?

"A child is born!" proclaimed a sign alongside the road as we drove you home from the hospital just three days before Christmas.  Yes! I thought, and began to cry at the enormity of it all.  Little did we know that the combination of exhaustion and hormones and joy and wonder would produce a river of tears over the next days -- every Christmas carol and newspaper headline and tiny baby gift brought me to my knees.  We dressed you up in a red velvet Santa suit and passed you around to each adoring family member on Christmas day, marveling all the while at what we had wrought -- you!  Since that day that you found your way out of my body and into my arms, you have led me to just about every place I've needed to go; the spiritual journey that is motherhood began for me in the moment I gazed into your eyes for the very first time, and it continues now, as I learn to trust your wings, to have faith that we have given you all we can and that you are ready to fly.  So much of what I know about being a mother I learned from you -- how to love without condition or expectation, how to believe in the rightness of things as they are, when to push and when to wait, when to trust my inner knowing and when to ask for help, when to hold tight and when to let go.   

In a few days, you'll walk through the door, dump your bags upstairs, open the piano, play something from the Christmas song book, and then, surely, something I've never heard before.  I'll try to keep my cool, try not to get all mushy on you.  But I can't fool you.  You know I can't wait for that moment to arrive, for your music to fill the house and for our family to be gathered again under one roof.  Happy birthday Henry, and hurry home -- we've got the tree decorated, the lights in the windows, all our favorite books piled up in the living room.  But Christmas won't really start till you get here.  

Getting Naked

[image error]Writing is so hard.  I am always convinced that it must be harder for me than it is for everyone else.  That I am slower, less creative, less deep than the writers I admire.  That while I am sitting here laboring over a paragraph, my more talented friends are cheerfully tapping away, fully certain of what they want to say, knowing how to get it said -- brilliantly -- and get on with their day.  As I type these words, I look up and see that it's already dark outside, the oatmeal box from breakfast is still on the kitchen counter, I haven't vacuumed the crumbs off the floor.  The post I've been working on for most of the day isn't in any shape to publish, and now I'm out of time.  There is dinner to make, house-straightening to do.  

Meanwhile, I've been conversing with a gifted younger writer friend who is struggling with her own manuscript, a memoir.  She is floundering, not sure how to proceed.  I read her pages over the weekend and found myself hungry for more than she had been willing to offer, yet at times a bit impatient with what was actually on the page.  I couldn't honestly tell her that her book is a book yet; it isn't.  But such feedback is as painful to give as it is to receive.  I'd much rather be her cheerleader, jumping up and down and waving pom-poms, than her critic, searching for words to explain what isn't working.  And yet, most of us need both -- support and honesty; not to mention the encouragement to keep going even when the road ahead seems anything but clear.  

How much easier it would be if someone could tell us exactly what to do, the way I was once taught, back in my editing days, to create a profit and loss statement for the books I wanted to acquire. If only it were as simple as:  fix it like this, write about that, change this around, and you'll have it.  

Writing isn't rocket science.  There is no right way, no wrong way; we writers are allowed to break all the rules, to make it up as we go along, to have things our way.  But the alchemy by which words on a screen or printed page become greater than the sum of their parts,  missives aimed right at the heart of some unknown reader, is not easily understood.  If there were a manual that explained how to do this -- how to craft a compelling story, how to grab a perfect stranger's attention and hold it, how to take the stuff of our own everyday lives and make it interesting to the rest of the world, well, a lot more of us would be doing it.  

I'm not sure if I wasted the the last four hours, or if the post that I'm not posting will ever see the light.  But it's time now to go see what's in the refrigerator, to let the day's work be what it was (at least the e-mails got answered!), and to take some comfort in the fact that, although writing is hard for me, it's probably almost as hard for everybody else, too.  And it's worth it.  There is no manual, but in lieu of the how-to book, I go back again and again to the words of May Sarton.  She can't tell me how to be a writer, but she sure does tell me what's required. 

 "I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with our personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human beings and as artists, we have to know all we can about each other and we have to be willing to go naked."

 

The other side of the sweet side

[image error]Checking my e-mail before bed the other night, I found a note from an online friend.  She is a reader I've never met, a fellow mom and blogger with whom I've corresponded a bit over the last year.  I read her posts, she reads mine, and in the process we've come to know one another as well as two simpatico strangers can. 

"I just had to tell you that your blog post this week was just what I needed." she wrote. "I so dread the days my kids are 'off at college' and you showed me the sweet side, the coming home and basking in them part."

I thought about the words I'd written in a rush on the morning before Thanksgiving.  Sometimes, I spend all day just getting a few paragraphs to sound right.  But that day, with both of my sons still asleep upstairs and just an hour to spend at my kitchen table before we needed to be out the door and on our way to an orthodontic appointment, I wrote quickly, a spill of words that captured all I was feeling at that very moment--acceptance of who they are and gratitude that they were home, along with a touch of surprise at how easy things can seem these days, compared to where we were two years ago, in the midst of a younger son's adolescent struggles.  

My friend went on to say that she had wept into her pillow the night before, mourning the transformation of her sweet seventeen-year-old-son, "the treasure of my heart," into "what I hope is a temporary self-absorbed ogre."  

I wrote her back to say something like, "Hang in there, it gets better."  And it does.  But her letter also made me think about the snapshot of our life that I'd offered the world a few days earlier.  Those of us who write memoir (or blogs) know that what finds its way onto the page or into the post is not ever the whole story.  It may be true, but it is also, inevitably, a curated version of the truth, a version that is edited for style and impact, narrated in order to make a point and tell a story, condensed for readability, censored, perhaps, for privacy.  I had written about a fleeting moment in time, words straight from the heart for sure, but words that evoked only the tiniest corner of a bigger picture.  

And just as tears soaking a pillow is not my friend's typical response to a hard day of motherhood, neither is rhapsodic domestic harmony an accurate picture of mine.   Things just aren't that simple around here, or anywhere, for that matter. 

Again and again and again, I'm reminded that my work as a parent -- and as a person -- is mostly about letting go of my ideas of the way I want things to be so that I work with things as they actually are.  Certainly boarding school was never part of our plan for either of our children, and yet there came a moment when my husband and I both knew that the best thing for our younger son was not another dismal year at the public school in our town -- much as he insisted he wanted to stay there with his friends, and much as I yearned for two more years of him at home.  Letting go of my idea of what it meant to be a "good" mother (a picture that included a happy, hardworking teenager living at home and participating cheerfully in family life)  was almost easy, compared to the pain of actually letting go of the boy himself.  For two months I cried every day as the school bus he used to take drove past our house in the afternoon without stopping.  I avoided downtown at 3, when all the high schoolers could be found hanging out.  I skipped over the sports pages in the newspaper, unable to read about his former team mates' exploits on field and court. I mourned the loss of the lovable little boy who had turned into a self-absorbed, angry adolescent I no longer recognized, and I mourned my failure to live up to my own high expectations of myself as a mother. 

But slowly the teenager who had claimed not to care about going go college, who had forgotten the joy of sports and the pleasure of a good book, who said he just wanted to be "another brick in the wall," began to get his mojo back.  Away from home, suddenly accountable to adults other than his parents, he ran cross-country and got excited about math; he took up squash with a passion and figured out how to take notes, turn in his homework on time, and go to his teachers for help.  He won some awards and also made some mistakes, weathered the consequences, and realized how much he'd come to love his new school.  He started investing in his future by making good decisions in the present.   

And slowly, I eased up on myself.  I began to think that being a "good" mom isn't necessarily about preserving an ideal that doesn't exist anyway, but rather about being realistic about what our children actually need from us in any given moment. Sometimes what they need most of all is for us to let go of our image of the way things ought to be, so that we can love life as it is, love our children for who they are, and love ourselves simply for doing the best we can.  

Last week was far from perfect at our house.  There wasn't enough "family" time, in my opinion (there never is!); there was way too much computer time, too many late nights and late mornings, too much junk food, a few sharp words and hurt feelings.  And yet, in our own ways, we were all doing the best we could.   We managed a few fires in the fireplace, a game of Bananagrams, a Thanksgiving feast for forty at my parents' old house in the woods, a festive family birthday dinner for Jack, and an afternoon at the new wing of the MFA in Boston. We saw friends and tended to haircuts and dental work, and we debated, among other things, curfews and sleep-overs and car keys, whether pot should be legalized, how many times I should have to walk into a dirty kitchen on a given day, the fact that someone failed to turn down the heat and turn off the lights at the end of the night. Our days were full of one another, for better and for worse. I watched Jack make pancakes and listened to Henry play the piano, and I reminded myself to focus on all that was good.  To be grateful, and to release my old grip on regret, regret for what never really was, for what isn't now, and for what never will be again. 

Family life is never just one way or another, good or bad, black or white, peaceful or tense, happy or sad.  It just is -- messy and complicated and wonderful and disappointing and exhilarating by turn.  There are no charmed lives or perfect children or flawless families, and yet there are charmed moments in every day, and all of our kids are perfect, each in their own blessedly imperfect way, and most of us wouldn't trade our own flawed family for any other family, no matter what.  Yes, my friend, it does get better.  It gets better the very moment that we allow ourselves to be ok with things just as they are. 

Boys

They grow up.  They leave home.  And then, of course, they come back.  They  return bearing bags of dirty laundry, stray socks, T-shirts you've never seen before, strange cords for charging various digital devices.  They are different, in a way you can't put your finger on.  Taller, yes, but that's not quite it.  Bigger in some other way; deeper, with knowledge that won't be shared with you. They are clean shaven (because they know you love that).  They wear their hair short by choice -- now that you're no longer the one saying, "You need a haircut."  They use words like "fundamentalist" and "metaphorical" and are eager to test your knowledge on constitutional amendments and C.S. Lewis.  They want to know your thoughts about original sin, and whether you can still scan a line of poetry.  They realize that you will be of no help on the paper they have to write analyzing the thematic and rhythmic structure of Gershwin's "An American in Paris."  They are hungry.  Really, really hungry.  You go through a dozen eggs a day, a gallon of orange juice, a gallon of milk.  They spend hours on Facebook.  Their rooms, pristinely vacant these last months, are instantly in shambles.  You are not the least bit tempted to pick their jeans up off the floor.  They want you to watch clips of the Daily Show at midnight, and you do, even though your bedtime lately has been closer to 10:30 than 12. (Well, admit it, you're often in bed even earlier than that.)  They ask for the car keys, and you're happy to hand them over.  When you say, "Be home for dinner," they don't even protest.  (They appreciate your cooking!)  When they're running late, they text, to let you know.  Their friends come over. . .and seem genuinely happy to see you -- eager to talk, hang around in the kitchen, tell you about their lives as they eat your food. They say "thank you" for the meal and put their dishes into the dishwasher without being asked. You hear the thwack of ping pong balls in the basement, cries of victory, deep laughter.  You don't tell anyone what time to go to bed, or worry about what they're doing down there after you're asleep.  You wake up at four, in a dark and silent house, and allow your thoughts to drift.  The very thing you once took for granted -- two boys asleep in their own beds down the hall -- has become rare.  You used to think that you would never get "your" life back, the one where you got to choose how to spend your own time, or what to watch on TV, or how loud the music in the car should be.  But of course, it's been your life all along, and those little boys were always on their way out the door, growing up and growing away from you, even as they were pressing your buttons and driving you nuts and forgetting their homework and not brushing their teeth.  You wonder if you paid enough attention, if you cherished those days enough, if you ever really grasped the fact that your life was always in the process of turning into something else.  You don't want to be too hard on that younger, more impatient self.  But you are perhaps a little wiser now, more attuned to the moment, how precious it is.  And so you don't mind being awake, listening to your husband's gentle breath rising and falling beside you, the dog's soft snore, the wind tossing the bare branches outside the window.  Everyone is home, glad to be here. You give thanks for that.

"Stop"

 [image error]It was unfamiliar, the strong, clear inner voice that spoke so sternly to me yesterday morning as I woke up from the first good night's sleep I've had in weeks.  

And the words surprised me.  "Stop.  Just stop."

I lay quietly in bed for a while, letting the instruction sink in.

Grief is still new territory.  Well-meaning friends ask, daily, "How are you?" and I pause, tongue-tied, unsure how to respond.  How can I explain that, though life is apparently back to "normal," no place quite looks like itself?  Everyday things feel strange, my own inner landscape foreign and fragile.  My thoughts veer between scattered and obsessive, so that I can't trust my own heart -- fine one moment, ambushed the next.  What am I to make of emotions that are so misplaced and unpredictable that each day feels like its own new roller coaster ride, twisting and turning through an unpredictable course of peaks and plummets.  I have no idea how I am.    

What I do know is that there is a hole right at the center of everything.  And I've been been circling around its rim like a dervish, trying in vain to fill that terrible, empty place.  As if by reaching out to every single person in need, reconnecting with every old friend who's fallen out of touch, answering every email in my in-box,  grabbing for dear life at every friendly hand extended in my direction, I might somehow manage to dispel the darkness and avert my attention from the void.  

This is my brain on Concern Overdrive: If I'm busy and distracted enough, perhaps I can escape the sadness.  If I'm needed enough, and if I'm helpful enough, perhaps I can strike a bargain with pain:  give more and do more, in order to feel less.  And if I can throw enough stuff into that dark chasm, perhaps it won't seem quite so deep anymore.  So, I've been keeping busy.  I've gone to yoga class and book group and out to lunch with friends.  I've hosted house guests and visited my mom and driven to see Jack on his birthday and baked bread and written sympathy notes and read friends' kids' college essays and put on dinner parties and taken walks and edited papers and written recommendations and read manuscripts and returned phone calls and donated money to good causes.  It's all a bit of a blur. I wonder if I've babbled, or acted weird, or been inadvertently rude.  I honestly can't remember.  Part of me has been visible, present, making an effort; but another part of me has been absent altogether, out to sea, riding the dark waves of sorrow and confusion.   

I'm not sure where yesterday's firm voice came from, or even who it was that spoke the word "stop" to me with such conviction.  But I was just awake enough to get the message. To struggle, to feel sad, to know loss -- this is all part of life.  And so I paid attention to that knowing voice, and today I remind myself to be quiet and still instead of frantic and preoccupied. It's a challenge, to give this time of death and transformation its own mood and space.  And yet, I don't want to run from what is real.  Not when my soul is urging me to turn inward and to settle into some peace with what is -- this human mystery that is, after all, as natural as day and night, sun and moon,  summer and winter. 

A couple of weeks ago my son Jack wrote me a note. Somehow, at the time, I managed to read his words without absorbing the simple wisdom he was trying to offer.  "Feeling sad isn't a waste of time," my eighteen-year-old spiritual teacher suggested.  "You shouldn't try to distract yourself from the sadness, it's going to come out one way or another. And the longer it is before you start to feel it and process it the harder it will be."

We learn, as Roethke observes, by going where we need to go.  And sometimes, we learn by staying where we need to be.  Right now, I sit at my kitchen table, watching the skies clear after a night and morning of driving rain.  The clouds lift from the mountains like luminous shrouds, dissolving into light.  

As always, I find comfort in the view beyond my window, and in the pages of the books I love, the words of the poets, priests, and seekers who have journeyed through and survived their own dark nights of the soul.  "Sorrow will remain faithful to itself," John O'Donohue reminds us.

"More than you, it knows its way 

And will find the right time

To pull and pull the rope of grief

Until that coiled hill of tears

Has reduced to its last drop."

 

 

 

Blessings

[image error]"But listen to me: for one moment, quit being sad.  Hear blessings dropping their blossoms all around you."   --  Rumi

There was no need to go, no reason, really, to drive for seven hours in the rain just to say "happy birthday."  I knew this.  Knew that the trip was more for me than for my son, who didn't mind at all spending a birthday away from home.  We had sent him a card, promised a family dinner over Thanksgiving break, planned to call in the evening.  But in the end, I baked an orange and chocolate cake, put Neil Young's "Prairie Wind" in the cd player, and headed south.  Eighteen years ago, I gave birth to a boy.  Yesterday, it seemed more important than anything that I put my arms around him, if only for a moment or two. 

On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered for my friend Diane's memorial service.  Diane herself had chosen the music and the readings weeks ago, and then she'd marveled at how strange that felt -- both the wrenching process of letting go of so much she cared passionately about, as well as the opportunity to envision and, to some extent, orchestrate her own goodbye.  And yet, once she knew that she'd been given a job she never wanted -- the grave task of completing her work here on earth and then figuring out how to leave -- she set about that challenge just as she had done everything else in her life. Quietly, privately, with thoughtful determination and a desire to ease the way for those she loved.  

As the first mournful strains of Barber's Adagio for Strings poured forth from the choir loft, it seemed that her spirit filled the church, too. Surely, having given us the solace of this timeless music, she was there with us, listening.  And as hearts opened and tears flowed, something  began to shift deep within me, sadness drawing itself up into a kind of newfound intention -- to live more consciously, to love more fully, to serve more generously, to stay in closer touch with my own capacity for joy.  

Perhaps this is grief's paradox -- that in acknowledging the pain in our spirits, in tending with mercy to that which is breaking open within us, we are also given an opportunity to undertake the beautiful, aching work of becoming more fully ourselves,  committing more deeply to our own true path.   

And so it was that I made a trip yesterday that I might not have undertaken with such urgency even a few months ago, before I watched my friend grapple with her own grief over all that she would miss and then make her fragile peace, instead, with gratitude for all that she had had.  

"Sounds like a lot of driving," Jack said, when I told him I was coming.  

"Well," I admitted, "the truth is,  I can't quite let the day pass without seeing your face." In my mind, November 8 is always bleak and blustery, a day of bare trees, lowering skies, intimations of winter. And it is also a day whose chill is offset by my own consuming happiness, and by my memories of the day eighteen years ago when our son Jack arrived and made our family complete.  What solace it brought me, to hand him a birthday card with an "18" on it, a bag of winter hats and socks from home, and a chunk of homemade cake.  I took him out for a steak dinner, we talked about school, his college plans, his friends.  And then I drove him back to his dorm and kissed him good-bye.  

It feels as if there is no way, anymore, for me to be the mother I still wish to be -- close by, all-knowing, participating in the minor ups and downs of every day.  But of course my young adult son neither needs nor wants such a mother now; he is living a life he loves, thriving, finding his own way away from us.  So I embrace instead the precious hours when we are together, giving up at last on the idea that I'm still preparing him for life's voyage, that I might yet come up with the scrap of advice, the single line that will make all the difference and point the way.  There is no such thing, of course. What's more, the ship has  sailed; he is already on it, charting his own course.  

Still, driving home alone late last night, under clear, cold November skies, I felt the opposite of lonely.  A little raw still, but not quite so stricken.  One thing I've realized these last few days, is that I can tune right in to what I'm coming to think of as the "Diane channel" in my mind.  I listen, and I know exactly what she would have me do -- go forth, give everything, cherish everyone, be grateful.  I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't have driven for seven hours just to have dinner and a hug if not for lessons learned from her.  And I know, absolutely, that she was with me all the way, that somehow she came along for the ride. Which makes me realize: her legacy is something I'm only beginning to understand.  I've had a glimpse of it, though.  Already, blessings are dropping their blossoms all around me.    

Cleaning

[image error]White vinegar, Citrasolv, and water.  This is my cleaning solution of choice, and cleaning, it turns out, is about all I'm good for these days.  

There are plenty of other things I should be working on, so many tasks left undone over the last few weeks, while my heart and hands and attention have been elsewhere.  I've lost a friend and also, I realize now, a clear sense of my own purpose.  She needed me. I was there. How simple is that? It's been just over a week since she died, and now, of course, it's time for the rest of us to keep going.  Except that I can't quite figure out where I'm headed. 

I'm home again, but it's hard to focus, hard to even care much about the to-do list. Here in New Hampshire, the leaves have all fallen from the trees, and the world beyond my kitchen window looks as stark and barren as my own inner landscape.  I don't want to go out to lunch with friends, or work on my book proposal, or write that speech for next week.  Cleaning, however, feels wonderful.  And so I dust, I vacuum, I wet-mop the floor.  Things really do look good enough.  But I can't stop myself.  I grab a pile of soft rags -- Jack's beloved old cloud sheets from when he was ten, ripped up now and stuffed into the rag bag -- and get down on my hands and knees.  The smell of vinegar and orange soothes my senses.  It's a relief  to do something with a visible outcome, to feel some measure of accomplishment somewhere, to transform all this love and heartbreak into a job that supports our life in the here and now.  The sun pours in.  The floor gleams golden. My tears flow, and the soft cloud-sheet rags wipe them away.  This is work I can do without thinking, work that satisfies some deep yearning for all that is constant and familiar and necessary.  Someone needs to get the crumbs out of the cracks, the smushed raspberries off the counter, the scum out of the sink.  It might as well be me.  

Life, death, and everything in between -- it is all such a mystery.  For today perhaps it is enough just to be at ease with things as they are. Perhaps it is simply time to cry and clean the house. 

So much goodness

[image error]I didn't know it would be our last real conversation.  I wish now that I'd taken note last week of every word, paid more attention to the sunlight falling across the bed, the single rose in the vase, the light in her eyes, the smile she offered as I kissed her good-bye and promised I would be with her again on Tuesday.  "What are you coming down for," she asked, as she always did when I told her what day I'd be back.  For once I simply told the truth:  "I'm coming to see you."

I do remember this.  As I left the room, she told me to go home and have a wonderful weekend with my son Henry, home from college for three days. "There is so, so much goodness in the world," she said, uncharacteristically insistent.  "So much goodness."  

For the first time since I began to write in this space over a year ago, I find myself this morning, sitting in my kitchen, at a complete loss for what to say.  Early Saturday morning, my dear friend Diane passed away.  (Even typing these words gives me pause -- I hear her voice in my head admonishing, "don't say 'after a long battle with cancer!'" Ok, dear, I won't say that.)  I have no words yet for what I feel, for where I've been, for the sadness, the loss, the hole that is left in the place where just a few short days ago a vibrant heart still beat.  

A month or so ago, my friend Karen Maezen Miller said, "You know, when the time comes, everything will be exactly as it is meant to be."  I held on to those words all through these last days, and found them to be true.  Those of us who were meant to be there were there.  Food appeared on the table, friends from near and far appeared at Diane's bedside, the new puppy peed on the floor, the teenagers came and went, wine was poured, tears were shed, fires were lit, sheets were changed and dishes were washed.  There was laughter, even in the midst of great sadness.  Above all, there was love--unconditional, infinite, all powerful. 

Death and life, one inextricable from the other.  What I know for sure now is that a heart can accommodate both, a home can accommodate both, a family can accommodate both.  Last week, with love and instinct to guide us, Diane's family and dear friends transformed an upstairs bedroom into a sacred space. And each of us who were blessed to abide there for a while soon found our own fears transformed as well. We may not know what to expect from death, or whether we are truly up to the task we've taken on.  And then, having made clear our intention to be present come what may, we find that even in our most challenging transitions, we do know what to do.  Our hearts tell us how to make love visible. Our hands know, instinctively, how to soothe a brow, change a sick bed, tend a body.  Dying is hard physical work.  And, despite the most attentive ministrations, life's final stages are not always beautiful.  To be human, it seems, is to suffer and to pray for an end to suffering. And then, in life's final moments, there is peace, and grace, and even, for one brief instant, a glimpse of the great mystery beyond this earthly realm.  

Returning from this vigil, taking up residence in my own house again, I'm not quite sure what to do with this new knowledge.  I do know, beyond a doubt, that Diane was right:  There is so much goodness in the world, so much goodness even in the most wrenching circumstances.  But at the moment I'm tired, and sad, and raw.  A bit in awe, still, of what I've seen and lived and learned over the course of this last week.  It feels tender yet, this place of grief.  So I find my way back into the mundane one step at a time.  I am grateful to my own dear husband, for drawing me a hot bath, putting me to bed, folding the laundry and loving me back into our life together.   I bring Tylenol to Jack, who is home from school with a cold.  I make corn chowder, search the garden for a few last blossoms, and wonder again and again, "what now?"