Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 9

empty

I awake this morning to a leaden, pre-storm sky, not yet light, the room silent but for my sleeping husband’s quiet breathing. The holiday season over, the work of this new year not yet begun, I gaze out the window near our bed, studying the dark shadows of the mountains beyond and searching for the right word to put to my feelings.

Melancholic. Yes, a little.

We said good-bye to Jack yesterday, knowing it will be early June before he’s home again. The departure of a grown child, even to a life he loves and thrives in, always brings with it a quick, sharp pang of parting. And although it’s only January 3 by the calendar, I’m more aware of endings at this moment than new beginnings. The year ahead will hold unexpected blessings, certainly, but there will undoubtedly be heartbreak, too. The poignance of more comings and goings, changes and transformations, as well as more permanent losses. And my soul, anticipating, has already shouldered some of that grief.

Tired. That, too.

It’s been a tough few weeks. First there was all the bustle and preparation of Christmas, the shopping and cooking and cleaning, the care taken to uphold our traditions, to create a special season, a lovely day, a whole series of delectable meals. And then, no sooner was the holiday ushered out and the house set to rights, than we found ourselves entertaining an uninvited guest. Jack and I, and our neighbor Debbie, were all knocked flat within the same hour by a violent intestinal bug. Instead of the movies and dinners, winter hikes, and family activities I’d envisioned for the wide-open days after Christmas, we shared a catalog of unspeakable symptoms, trips to the ER, twin IVs, slow recoveries. Tired is an understatement.

Gratitude. Of course, always.

In the midst of our sickness, Steve and Henry leapt to the rescue, cleaning bathrooms and running loads of wash, making countless trips up and down the stairs with buckets and rags, glasses of Pedialyte, cups of tea, stacks of Saltines. My friend Maude brought ginger ale and homemade turkey soup and healing potions. We were well nursed and yesterday, finally, six days into the ordeal, our bellies rumbled once again with hunger. (I was so sure I’d feed Jack up while he was home and send him back to school carrying a few more pounds on his tall, lean frame; instead, I’m pretty sure he’s had to tighten his belt another notch.)

And so, perhaps it’s fitting somehow that the word I finally land on to describe my inner state is this one: Empty.

It’s not just that my innards have been thoroughly scoured this week, although I’m definitely feeling emptied in a physical way. But my spirit feels as if it’s been poured out, too. I am in need of sustenance of every kind — soul food and real food, replenishment both spiritual and literal.

Later, after the breakfast dishes are done and Steve and Henry have left for the day, I pull my worn, well-read copy of Gift from the Sea from the bedroom shelf. I’m not even surprised when the book falls open to the very passage I’ve come in search of:

“Traditionally we are taught, and instinctively we long, to give where it is needed – and immediately. Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.”

Yes. How satisfying it is to see another’s need and to meet it, quietly, without a fuss. How swift I am to find my own purpose in easing the way for someone else. Indeed, the more uncertain I’m feeling about myself, the more insistently I ask, “How can I be useful here?” Simply answering the question reveals the path forward.

But as we all know, it’s easier to give to others than to ourselves. Easier to spill our energies than to replenish them. Easier to quench another’s thirst than to acknowledge our own.

Today is a day to fill my pitcher to the brim. I turn up the heat, start the dishwasher, and sit down in the kitchen, a stack of books and notes at my side. I read a few more pages of Ann Morrow Lindbergh, grateful as always for this uncanny sense of kinship that transcends time and space, amazed that a woman writing before I was born remains so vibrantly alive in my imagination, as if she is herself a trusted friend, nearby, ready at any moment to whisper straight into my heart.

“I do not believe that suffering teaches,” Anne insists. “If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”

Yes, again.

Her words remind me: there is no escape from the reality of things falling apart. “Everyone suffers.” The choice I have, the only choice really, is to plumb the possibilities for growth and healing even in the midst of pain. And growth can’t happen in the dark. Growth requires sunlight, water, care, and space. Healing doesn’t occur in a vacuum.  Healing goes hand in hand with allowing, accepting, softening.

Filling the pitcher means taking time — time to reflect, to rest, to read poetry, to look at beautiful art, to get lost in a novel, to walk through the woods at dusk, to sift through thoughts and feelings and to make room for all of them. Grief and joy, fear and courage, despair and hope.

I close the book, turn off my laptop, and set all of my things aside. It is indeed both wisdom and solace I’m thirsty for; these are the qualities with which I long to fill my pitcher. But perhaps on a cold, sere January morning, “empty” is not a bad place to be.

Emptiness is also readiness. Emptiness is potential. Emptiness is a space swept bare.   Emptiness is a willingness to sit here very quietly, for as long as it takes, allowing things to be just as they are.

The post empty appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

spark joy (and my go-to holiday recipes)

When our sons were young, there was no holding off Christmas. Henry, born December 18, absorbed holiday melodies in the womb, from “Jingle Bells” to the Messiah. His in-utero nickname was Bing, for Crosby, which morphed into Der Bingle after a visiting friend introduced us to the German diminutive. (Of course, we had no way of knowing then that music would turn out to be his “language” of choice but now, looking back, it seems almost pre-ordained; he arrived in a season of shimmer and twinkle, surrounded by love and borne into our arms on a wave of joyful noise.)

That year, in the final weeks of my first pregnancy and with a December due date looming, my husband Steve and I were organized in a way we’ve never been before or since: all our gifts bought and wrapped and shipped weeks in advance, a tree up and decorated the day after Thanksgiving; holiday cards mailed December first and a newly appointed nursery awaiting its tiny occupant. All was in readiness, every diaper and onesie neatly folded and stacked, every holiday ornament shining in its place.

Four days before Christmas we brought our precious newborn home from the hospital, dressed him up in the miniature velveteen Santa suit my brother had given him, and snapped our first family photo in front of the tree.

And so it was that the holiday and Henry were linked for life. At three, he donned his own Santa hat and sat at the dinner table on Christmas eve, singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” by heart while his newborn brother Jack dozed in my lap, just over a month old but already a bit too big to be squeezed into that wee hand-me-down Santa suit.

The traditions accumulated with the years: driving through nearby towns on an appointed wintry evening to view Christmas lights in all the different neighborhoods with Bing Crosby and Leon Redbone providing a familiar soundtrack in the warm, dark car and the kids singing along at full tilt from the back seat. Unpacking the boxes full of miniature fir trees I’ve collected over the years and creating small forests of them on the mantel and shelves. Placing the slender metal angel silhouette on the top of the tree. Baking cookies and cranberry bread and spiced nuts. Attending the Christmas Revels in Cambridge with our dear friends and former next-door neighbors. Reading Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory out loud in front of the fire.

Always, Henry has been the instigator of Christmas in our household, and the rest of us are generally content to let him take the lead. It was Henry who made sure the box of Christmas books was carried up the basement stairs and unpacked the day after Thanksgiving. And it’s Henry who insists our Christmas morning breakfast include both oatmeal scones and Jimmy Dean sausage balls, which he willingly makes and freezes a few days early, knowing that if I had my druthers we would quietly eliminate Jimmy D. from the menu.

It was Henry who, at age six, organized the first of many annual Christmas shows, with all the kids in the neighborhood singing carols under his direction and, in later years, performing on their various musical instruments. And this year it was Henry, now on the faculty at his old high school, who taught the students the choral arrangements for the annual Nativity pageant — yet another tradition embraced and passed on.

But this year, as Thanksgiving came and went, I found myself resisting Christmas even as those around me were eager to embrace it. The very thought of hauling the decorations out made me feel irritable and tired and overwhelmed. It seemed as if there was already too much – too much to think about, too much to do, too much stuff in every nook and cranny of the house.

Maybe everyone has their moment: the sudden realization that you simply can’t move forward without first turning around and digging into what’s been piling up around you. I do wish my own flash of motivation had come a few months ago, when things were just a little less hectic, but we can’t control these things. I hit my breaking point the day Steve and Henry arrived home with a Christmas tree tied to the top of the car.

“I just don’t think I can start Christmas yet,” I admitted to them. “Please, give me a couple of days.”

And then I picked up a small book that’s been sitting by bed for a while now, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. According to author Marie Kondo, there really is magic in order, happiness in tidying, transformation just waiting to happen as soon as we start taking out the trash.  A few weeks earlier I’d read the first few pages and immediately decided I probably could part with the years worth of old New Yorker magazines I’d piled into the bookshelves in our bedroom.

That first, heady purge led to several bags of books, pulled off the shelves and donated to the local library. The newly emptied spaces in our bedroom seemed to glow in the sunlight and the newfound sense of spaciousness inspired me to vacuum under the bed and clean my bathroom drawers. Pretty soon, though, I got busy again and the cleaning came to a halt. But I didn’t forget the sense of relief I’d felt at finally tackling just a few of my cluttered spaces.

The New York Times has called Marie Kondo, a phenomenon in her native Japan, a kind of “zen nanny,” and so she is, at once likable and firm. She’s a little woo-woo, too: Socks have souls? Sweaters prefer to be neatly folded? Our personal possessions have lives of their own and brighten under our care? And she’s nothing if not down-to-earth: “Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, discarding must come first.”

I was in.

Marie has one rule of thumb, and it makes me laugh. “The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away,” she suggests, “is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: ‘Does this spark joy?’ If it does, keep it. If not, throw it out.”

And so I spent the first few days of December in search of some joy of my own — not stringing lights or shopping for gifts or baking cookies, but cleaning out the basement, and holding one random item after another in my hands.

I applied the “joy test” to old clothes, to winter hats and gloves, to boxes of my own unsold books (including multiple copies of foreign editions –what to do with ten copies of Mitten Strings for God in German??). I applied it to the kids’ school papers, tablecloths and dishes from a suburban life that ended a decade ago, lamps without shades, still perfectly good but hardly harbingers of happiness. I texted photos to Jack in Atlanta: a moldy basketball, a box of Magic cards, an old guitar amp, a tangle of cables and a box of unidentifiable electronics. By the time I got down to vacuuming mouse poop and swabbing grimy hidden corners and sweeping spider webs away, I didn’t even mind doing the dirty work.

The basement led, a day later, to the cellar storage freezer where I discovered, among other hoary artifacts, rock-solid remnants of the 2010 Christmas ham, carefully wrapped and labeled. The bags of blueberries we picked last summer? Yes, there is joy in every one; we will be eating blueberries on our morning oatmeal all winter long. Those petrified loaves of bread covered with freezer frost? Not so much. Another trash bag, filled and carried out the door.

On a roll, I headed up the stairs to the pantry. There, I was met with half-gone boxes of pasta, a small shop’s worth of expired spices, old cans of things and old things in cans. There is no joy in an unlabeled bag of unidentifiable grain, nor in a bottle of cloudy vinegar, nor in that dusty box of faro purchased for some summer salad that never got made. But it was, indeed, a joy to take every single thing off the shelves, wash every surface, and carefully choose what went back. It was a joy to send a box of good things to the local food bank. And how happy I was to find the blackberry jam I bought at the farm stand last July and then forgot all about.

By day three of my cleaning extravaganze, I felt as if I’d set down a heavy burden I hadn’t even been aware of carrying. I kept slipping into the pantry, just to have a look and smile. My step was lighter, my holiday spirit finally starting to simmer.

“You know, Mom,” Henry pointed out, “if you don’t stop cleaning and start decorating, Christmas will come and go and the tree will still be in the corner in the garage.”

He was right, of course. The office, the linen closet, and the laundry room can wait till 2015. We’ve spent the last few days readying the house for Christmas, in no hurry at all, playing our favorite Christmas music and carefully choosing what goes up and what gets put into a box to take to the still-good table at the recycling center so that someone else can find a treasure and bring joy home.

It feels as if getting rid of some things that no longer serve us well, that no longer make us happy, that no one in our family really needs or wants, has opened up some emotional space as well as physical space. Confronting my own possessions has made me less inclined to shop and more inclined to offer Christmas gifts of time, of food made with love, of experiences that can be shared. As Marie says, “We need to show consideration for others by helping them avoid the burden of owning more than they need or can enjoy.” Exactly so.

I could have spent Tuesday at the mall, but instead I spent it in the kitchen, making granola for everyone on our list. (My fool-proof and quite adaptable granola recipe is here; I hope you’ll try it, too!) Thursday, it was spiced nuts: the perfect stocking stuffer or holiday hostess gift. (The recipe I used is here. I increased it times ten and filled small Weck jars with nuts for a beautiful presentation.)

Saturday morning, as sun poured into the kitchen, I made a double batch of cranberry orange bread from the recipe my mom always used and then went out for a walk while the loaves baked. When I got back to the house and opened the door, the sights and smells of Christmas at home did indeed lifted my heart: baking bread in the oven, holiday greens in pitchers, cherished decorations carefully arranged. As my mom packs up a lifetime’s worth of things from her home, some of her favorite decorations have made their way to me this week, and now the Santa who once graced her mantle has found a new home on ours.

In a few days, Henry will turn twenty-five and, as always, Christmas and his birthday will be all wrapped up together. Jack will fly home and our family will be under one roof at last. As always, we will gather with our friends this weekend for the Christmas Revels and for chili and cornbread around their table afterwards, as our grown children make the same jokes they always make about the sword dancers’ dwindling numbers and the shuffling guys holding up reindeer antlers in the second act.

Some night next week, we’ll sit in our living room and I’ll read Truman Capote aloud till the last page, when I’ll pass the book over to someone else to finish so that I don’t have to read through tears. On Christmas Eve, Henry will play the service in the church where he served as musical director when he was just out of college. And the next day our house will be full with family and friends and dogs and all the stuff of Christmas.

There will be joy. There already is. Joy slipped in quietly and took up residence in the space I cleared for it.

I wish you and yours much joy and peace abounding through this holiday season and into the new year.  Thank you, my dear friends, for showing up here so faithfully and for engaging with me in this ongoing conversation about our ordinary, extraordinary days.  I am grateful for each and every one of you!

 
my mom’s cranberry-orange bread

(This recipe will make two loaves; I make the recipe two at a time, working in two separate bowls, so I can slip four loaves into the oven at once instead of two. I’ve also cut back on the sugar and upped the spices from her original.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2 C. whole wheat flour

2 C. white flour

1 T. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 t. cinnamon

½ t. nutmeg

1 t. ground cloves

1 C. brown sugar

½ C. white sugar

½ C. unsalted butter

1 heaping T. grated orange rind

2 eggs

1 ½ C. fresh orange juice

2 C. fresh cranberries

1 C. chopped walnuts

1 C. raisins

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Combine orange juice, eggs, orange rind. Add to flour mixture and mix until just wet. Fold in cranberries, nuts, and raisins.

Pour into 2 greased and floured loaf pans. Bake 55-60 minutes. Cool on wire rack after removing from pan.

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finding goodness

When I was child, my dad’s dental office was attached to our house. On one side of the door was our private, domestic world: home. Pass through the back room with its overflowing bookcases full of dental textbooks and journals, maneuver around the desk piled high with bills and paperwork, step through the small brown door by the laundry room, and you were in the reception area of my parents’ busy practice. Many afternoons I’d forgo the TV reruns my brother was watching in our den and slip into my dad’s quiet waiting room to read magazines. I loved the jokes in the Readers Digest, the photographs in Life, the lavish meals in Gourmet, and, most of all, the hidden pictures in Highlights.

There was a trick to solving those optical illusion puzzles with their lists of random objects hiding in plain sight. At first glance, all you’d see was the scene itself, a complex drawing of animals in the jungle, perhaps, or a crowded playground scene. But squint your eyes just enough to change the focus, and you could begin to discern the outlines of those other things: a slice of bread, a pencil, a teacup, a button. The only way to find the button amidst the tangle of palm fronds and swinging monkeys was to blot out everything else. You had to narrow your gaze and go in search of that one thing you most wanted to see.

My life lately has felt as complex as those multi-layered drawings of my childhood. On the surface, things appear orderly enough. But what I’ve experienced internally is a series of invisible, painful losses — each a challenge to my equanimity, to my sense of the universe as a fair and benign place. Feeling fragile and overwhelmed, I’ve been experimenting with an emotional version of that old eye-squinting thing. I keep thinking I’ll suffer less if I can just look more deeply into the picture. Somewhere, I know, goodness is hiding in plain sight. My task is simply to find it.

And so I repeat these words to myself like a mantra: “Look for the good.” And then I narrow my focus until I begin to see what I’m hunting for: the delicate outline of a blessing, some well-camouflaged scrap of goodness amidst the hurt, something to be grateful for.

“Look for the good,” was the intention I carried with me to Georgia last week, as I flew south to see my son Jack for the first time in six months. Six months! It’s still almost inconceivable to me that I could go so long without seeing one of my children. Since he left New Hampshire in May to change schools and begin working toward a degree in sound engineering in Atlanta, Jack hasn’t slept under this roof for one night. We stay in touch by phone and text, but I’d never seen where he lives, or met his roommates, or ridden in his car. He was about to turn 22. It was time to go.

Jack invited me to stay with him, on the futon in their spare upstairs room. Although I had a plan B in place – the serene guest suite of a young friend of ours who happens to live a mile away — I really did want to be with Jack, to see his life up close. And I was grateful that these three guys (and one nearly live-in girlfriend) were willing to welcome me into their midst for four days.

“I’d love it,” I said. “All I ask is a clean set of sheets and that you wipe down the toilet seat for me.”

I got a quick glimpse of the picture on my first night. Jack seemed too thin to me. I wasn’t crazy about the beard, dark and straggly. Although he’d washed some sheets, they hadn’t actually made it onto the bed. The spare room, my room, was a jumble of cast-off furniture, various cords and cables no one needed, a lamp that didn’t work. The toilet seat had definitely not been wiped. A cockroach skittered across the kitchen counter. There was clutter. A massage table but no sofa. Random piles of clothes in the living room. Dirty spoons and empty glasses.

The fact is, twenty-two-year-old guys don’t set up housekeeping the way fifty-plus-year-old women do. There are different standards for just about everything, but especially for how often a male face needs shaving, or a floor needs washing, or a toilet needs scrubbing.

But I wasn’t there to approve Jack’s facial hair or to pass judgment on his home or to grade the tidying skills of its occupants. I was there to spend time with my son and get to know his friends. My only agenda for the visit:  enjoy Jack’s company for four days and depart with a sense of what his life is like.

I narrowed my focus. “Look for the good.”

And sure enough, goodness was everywhere.

Jack and I made up my bed. We sat in the kitchen with his room mates and drank hibiscus tea. I saw how they were with each other: kind and easy and attentive. There was lots of laughter. It was obvious that Jack was happy and comfortable, that these kids don’t just live together, they care about each other.

I’d worried four days might seem too long for a mother to hang around, but it didn’t turn out that way. The time flew by. We shopped for groceries and cleaning supplies. (I was so happy to buy cleaning supplies!) Jack made me eggs and veggies for breakfast. We hiked up Kennesaw Mountain with their beloved foster dog Clyde, a sweet, well-tempered ten- month-old Lab-Pit Bull mix and we talked and talked.

On Friday, two days in, I swept the floor, donned a pair of rubber gloves, and scrubbed the bathroom. That night Jack and I made a huge pot of spicy lentil soup and a salad with oranges, grapefruits, avocados, and pomegranate. A couple of friends came over and we had a dinner party. That’s when I “got” the décor: all the other kids are chiropractic graduate students. They don’t sit around after dinner; they work on each other’s bodies and adjust each other’s necks and spines and occiputs. The living room, with its massage table and bongo drums and resistance bands and keyboard, works for all of them — a place to lift weights, exercise, stretch, make music, play with the puppy, and practice the art and craft of healing themselves and each other. The conversation was great – and after the dishes were done, I got my cervical spine adjusted.

By then it was apparent to me: the desire to live thoughtfully, healthfully, and well, is what binds this small household together. There isn’t a bag of Doritos or a soda in sight. But there are two refrigerators, and they are full to overflowing with kale, carrots, apples, broccoli and almond milk. There are good knives, good cutting boards, good pans. Two blenders. A compost bin. Purified water on tap. A sign on the wall that says “NO ICE CREAM.”   Jars of coconut oil and bags of raw almonds. Kombucha mushrooms growing on the counter, carefully wrapped in dish towels.

By Saturday morning, as we all piled into two cars to go to the Farmer’s Market, I was feeling like part of the household. Later, as we unpacked our bags, I asked Jack about the cockroaches.

“Yeah, we have a few,” he said. “We ignore them till they get big, then we do catch and release, and put them outside. They’re just trying to survive, like the rest of us.”

On the last night, Jack’s birthday, I offered to take everyone out to dinner. Jack shaved off his beard. They chose a funky raw/vegan restaurant in midtown Atlanta, their favorite “special occasion” place. There were four of us, me and Jack, his room mate Jules, and Jules’s girlfriend Melanie, who had led us in a “high intensity” interval workout in the park that afternoon. We passed on the “shots” (coconut water), and ordered a raw platter to share, quinoa bowls, salad. The food was fabulous. When the bill came, Jules reached for it. “Actually, we decided we want to take you out to dinner,” he said. “To thank you for cleaning our bathroom. It just feels so nice to walk in there now, I don’t really know why we never did it before. I took a bath this afternoon, and it was so relaxing.”

I told them what a great time I’d had, how grateful I was to them for making me feel so welcome. “You guys have created a really wonderful home together,” I said. They agreed.

“Yeah,” Jules said. “And it’s even better when there’s a mom around.”

Goodness in plain sight.

 sharing Lisa’s journey

To my dear readers,

I wanted to answer every single one of the kind, thoughtful comments on my last blog, but the time slipped away and pretty soon I was on an airplane to Georgia. And so, I hope this general “thank-you” will suffice. Thank you for reading and for writing and for being here. Your words validated mine. So often the conversation we most need to have is the one in which we all remind each other that we aren’t alone, that everyone struggles, that life is easier and more beautiful and more fun when we share our vulnerabilities and move forward arm in arm.

So many of you have written me expressing care and concern for my friend Lisa, that I want to share her story with you here, and the fundraiser I’ve launched to help ease her path going forward.

If you click the link below, you’ll see that this effort has become about much more than the money being raised to help support Lisa and her husband. It’s also an outpouring of love and appreciation for all the lives she’s touched, the difference she’s made for so many over the years. The decision to reach out and ask for help is never comfortable for anyone, but I’m reminded again and again these days that this is what we’re here to do: make the way a little easier for someone else. Every little bit helps, every kind gesture makes the world a better place, every loving word nourishes a heart.

Click here to find Lisa’s story.

Gratefully, Katrina

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the gift of presence

Last week I drove through lashing winds and wild rains to a small town in Connecticut, to give a talk to a group of library friends. Afterward, a woman from the audience approached me as I stepped between the podium and the book table. It was clear she had a question, one she preferred not to share with the whole crowd.

We chatted for just a few minutes, barely long enough for her to articulate her thoughts about being lost on the path of midlife, or for me to respond in any way that might be helpful. It was a conversation that really called for a walk, a cup of tea, time — not the rushed reassurance I tried to offer her while people were lining up to buy books.

But I’ve been thinking about her over the last few days, as I’ve done the mundane tasks of keeping my own life on track: watering the house plants, vacuuming, walking the dog, doing the laundry, paying bills and answering emails, raking leaves, planning dinner and shopping for groceries. Nothing terribly exciting or important, just the ordinary work of being me.

The woman’s children are grown and she’s recently retired from a full-time career that satisfied her for years. She’s neither young nor old, her health is good, her life is good. Her days, she told me, are busy still, taken up with family, volunteer work, seeing friends, and caring for others. She is making a difference in her world, grateful her new freedom means she’s able to be there for those who need her.

And yet, she said, there’s something missing. She’s not quite certain that what she’s doing is “enough.” There’s a nagging guilt, a sense of inadequacy, a suspicion that she’s not being productive enough or successful enough or impressive enough.

“I know that feeling,” I said to her. “I have it, too.”

Looking back over the last few months, I have precious little to show for my time. I’ve barely written a blog post, let alone an essay someone might actually be willing to pay for. I keep moving the words “book proposal” to the next page of my calendar, without ever actually sitting down and getting started. Apart from teaching my weekly yoga class, I’m essentially “unemployed.”

I’ve let the garden go this fall (there are no chrysanthemums in pots on our doorstep, no cornstalks propped at the threshold). I’ve not done a very good job of staying in touch with my friends, or made it to my book group, or, truth be told, found time to read the book. My summer clothes are still in the closet, augmented by the few sweaters and pairs of jeans that live there year round. I haven’t thrown a dinner party or even taken my mom out to lunch. I haven’t upgraded the operating system on my computer, or cleaned the pantry, or sorted through the old magazines piled up on the coffee table. I not only forgot a good friend’s birthday, but when I finally did call her, I had a momentary brain warp and had her age wrong by three years.

In addition, my sense of myself as a strong, hearty, physical person has come up against a new reality. Months of shifting but chronic pain have led me down one road after another, in search of an “answer.” I’ve spent a lot of money at the chiropractor’s, trying to keep my spine in alignment and my hips open and my legs moving, and more money at the office of the nurse practitioner who’s treating me for Lyme disease. The kitchen countertop is littered with homeopathic remedies and supplements, my closet floor is a jumble of shoeboxes (still trying to decide which pair of new orthotic shoes will give me the best hope of walking this winter without limping, and which ones should go back to Zappos), and I’m typing these words while perched upon my new Tush-Cush Orthopedic Seat Cushion, which is supposed to prevent me from further compressing my vertebrae.

Not exactly a picture of a high-achiever! As I confessed to my husband the other night, I sometimes worry I’ve become more of a liability in our household than a contributor. I’m definitely writing more checks than I’m depositing at the bank. (Thank goodness for royalty payments of any size!) When I look around at what my friends are doing – settling a ten-million-dollar law suit in a client’s favor, creating an early childhood program in South Africa, counseling families, writing books, hosting tours of their gardens, creating prize-winning websites – I’m proud of them and their accomplishments. At the same time, I have to admit to feeling considerably “less than.”

And yet from a distance, to the woman in the audience, I appeared to be someone who had it together and was doing a lot. “You’ve published these books,” she said, “and you also teach, you do Reiki, you have a website, you stood up here today and gave a talk.” And then, in the next breath, “And I’m not doing anything. At least, not anything that really matters.”

Ah, and there it was again, this age-old, heart-breakingly cruel thing we women do to ourselves. We compare ourselves to someone else and come up wanting. We look at what someone else is doing and feel our own contributions mean less, are worth less, amount to less. We assume other women must have things all figured out, and that we must be the only ones stumbling along in the dark, unsure of our choices, managing invisible aches and pains, uncertain of our purpose, hesitating to take the next step.

“No, no,” I rushed to assure her. “I haven’t actually written anything for weeks. I only teach a little. I mostly practice Reiki on myself these days.” It seemed important for me to let her know, in the two minutes we had together, that we were in the same boat.

But thinking about that brief conversation over the last few days, I realize we both short-changed ourselves. The woman who berated herself for not doing anything that “matters” had just told me about her family, her friends, and her volunteer work in her town. She offers her best self in places where she’s needed, and she gives her time as a gift from the heart. Tell me that doesn’t matter!

And, although it’s true I’ve been quiet lately, writing less and doing less out in the world, I also know deep down that what I have been doing is no less meaningful for being invisible.

Not having a 9 to 5 job means it’s been possible for me to be there for my friend who is sick. “Can you believe we’re doing this?” she said the other day, as I pushed her wheelchair through the hospital halls, on our way to her weekly blood test. I had just been thinking of the afternoon runs we used to take, the mountain we used to climb, the last hike we made on snowshoes. She’s right – no one could have foreseen this latest installment in our twenty-year friendship. But at least we both chose in that moment to laugh, glad — as always — to be together and making the best of things as they are. And it didn’t escape me that my own presence on this journey is a privilege. I can be at my friend’s side – driving her to appointments, dropping in mid-day with some lunch, cooking something healthy for dinner — because I’m not needed more someplace else.

I’ve been available, too, for a friend in crisis, just as I know she would be for me if the tables were turned. One step at a time, she’s negotiating the end of an old life and navigating the scary, unknown territory of a new one — the kind of venture no one should have to undertake without a companionable fellow traveler with whom to share the inevitable twists and turns of the road. Being present here means talking things over, going to court, reading the small print, hashing out a plan. I travel this rocky terrain with my friend because I can. Again, a privilege.

In both of these situations, I’m reminded every day that being present for someone else isn’t always about helping to manage the day’s challenges. Sometimes being present is simply about, well, presence. We live in a busy world, surrounded by people bent on getting things done. Our culture is fueled by our notions of doing — more, faster, better. But action isn’t always the answer. And a lot of what I’m doing these days involves a willingness to shift gears, to move gracefully and gratefully into a state of not doing. Sometimes, the best I have to offer is a willingness simply to be – with whatever the moment brings.

And so, I join my sick friend in the slow current of her “new normal.” We take a little walk and stop to watch the leaves fall, or we sit on the grass and pick shriveled beans off the vine, or we lie on our backs on an unseasonably warm October afternoon, gazing up at the sky, our thoughts drifting with the clouds. Back at home, I find myself drawn to solitude and silence, needing this time to refill the well and to reconnect with my own quiet center. Sitting down to dinner at the end of the day with my husband and our grown son, both home from work and with news to share, I look across the table and am overcome, as always, by the simple truth of life’s abundance.

I may or may not get the book proposal written. I definitely need some new shoes. I’ll take my Cat’s Claw and my magnesium and my various other pills and potions and do my daily stretches and hope for the best. I’ll fill the birdfeeder and make another meal and answer another letter from a reader. I’ll drive my friend to the doctor and bring her beautiful salads and do Reiki when her head hurts.

Meanwhile, to my own inner critic (never quiet for long) and to the woman at lunch last week, I want to say this: it’s never what we do that matters, but rather, how we do it. The secret ingredient isn’t ambition, but love. We make a gift of our lives, of ourselves, in simple ways – by being kind, by being compassionate, by paying attention, by being useful in whatever way we can, wherever we happen to be, in whatever time we have.

Postscript: Two years ago exactly, we were filming the book trailer for Magical Journey.  I watched it  this morning — to relive that autumn day and to have a bittersweet glimpse of our late, beloved dog Gracie running through the leaves.  But then I realized that what I really needed today was to hear my soul’s own message. How easily we forget what we know to be true!  Maybe I’m not alone in this?  Click here.

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26.2 things to be grateful for on a 26.2 mile walk

On September 21, for the fourth time, the members of Team Diane participated in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. And then, as always happens, life came rushing right back in, and I didn’t get to write the blog post I’d planned for the next day. But what stands out in my mind even now, two weeks later, is one over-arching feeling: gratitude. And I realize that even as I walked I was making a mental list in my head. Writing it down just now, it was hard to stop at 26. What was I grateful for? Well, among other things:

You! My dear friends, your words of encouragement and support filled my soul and gave wings to my feet. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to express my gratitude!


You, again. Thanks to your generous donations, I exceeded my own fund-raising goal this year. But more importantly, all the money raised by our group – over $30,000 this year alone — goes directly to Dana Farber oncologist Dr. Ursula Matulonis and her team of researchers, dedicated to finding better treatments for women’s cancers. Together, we’re making a real difference, improving the odds for every woman being diagnosed or treated today.


Team Diane! I feel blessed to be a part of this spirited band of women walking arm-in-arm for a cause that’s touched all our lives.


Marching orders. How proud our friend would be to see that we’re carrying on this work she herself began with such passion. This was the legacy Diane hoped for and the instruction she left us with: To live our own lives fully, and to do whatever we can to ensure better futures for all women with ovarian cancer.


Husbands. You know who you are: the ones who willingly got up at four in the morning and caravanned on the Mass Pike out to Hopkinton to deliver the members of Team Diane to the starting line. And my own husband, Steve, who not only took photos from start to finish but trailed along the route as sweep, ready to offer a ride to any one of us who needed to bail out. Hats off to you guys!


The heavens. They opened, the rains poured down for a solid hour and then, as if by magic or grace, the skies cleared at 6 am. We balled up our un-used slickers, tightened our sneakers, and put our hands together for a “Go Team” salute.


My new chiropractor. “No, it’s not a pulled muscle,” she said a few weeks ago, when I first arrived at her office, after limping with a mysterious hip and leg injury for over ten months. “I’m pretty sure it’s referred nerve pain from your L1 vertebrae, and that you’ll feel better after I adjust you.” She was right. I did. (Still mending, but at least I’m walking without wincing.)

Wright socks. If you, too, have tender feet, these really should be your socks.


Dr. Scholl’s Blister Defense Stick. A serious walker’s secret weapon, generously applied every couple of hours — and generously shared with anyone who has yet to discover that prevention is worth a pound of cure.  


The guys with the cowbells.Not sure why it’s uplifting to have cowbells rung for you en route, but it is, and we love them.
Porta-potties. Clean ones. For obvious reasons.
Enthusiasm. The cheers, the honks, the waves, the home-made signs, the lemonade stands manned by little kids in front of their houses, the orange slices handed out by the elderly couple in Newton, the man with the beautiful golden retriever who parks his truck every few miles and sets up his boom-box and plays music just to be nice, the thumbs-up from passersby, the hoots from dorm windows. Yes, we are all connected, and the energy of this day is infectious.
Tunes! Here’s to uplifting music, to a great playlist at every rest stop along the way, to songs from the pantheon that keep even the limp and the lame dancing, singing, and walking on. I’ve still got Stevie Wonder melodies running through my head.
Amazing volunteers. There are hundreds, every single one of them wearing a smile and making sure we thousands of walkers have everything needed to keep us putting one foot in front of the other. They put stickers on bibs, dispense high-fives and water and Gatorade and Luna Bars and apples, and make a point of thanking each and every one of us for every mile walked. The walkers walk, but the volunteers make it possible.
Stories. You hear about the woman who was diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer twice, and who is walking today, thirteen years later, in good health. You hear from the thirteen-year-old boys who are walking for a classmate with leukemia and who are determined to go all the way this year. You hear about a friend whose remission didn’t last. You listen. You cry. You pray. You say thank you. You walk further then you thought you could because, at least for today, you can.
Texts. There are a few special people each year who not only donate to the cause, but hold me in their hearts all day. And you know what? There’s no better feeling than this: knowing somebody somewhere is thinking of you, right now, at this very moment, wishing you well, cheering you on. A few words tapped into a phone, sent, and received are enough to lift a spirit, make a mile easier, warm a heart.
Time. The beauty of a ten-hour walk: there’s time enough to experience everything and space enough to let all your feelings flow in and wash right back out again – grief and relief, misery and bliss, exhaustion and exhilaration. Walk all day long and you get a glimpse of the full human catastrophe, or, as the Buddhists say, “this realm of ten thousand woes, ten thousand joys.”
Good friends. We urge each other on, tend to each other’s swollen feet, commiserate with each other’s aches and pains, and celebrate every single mile walked together. And we get to be side by side all day long, sharing the ups and downs and ins and outs of work, marriages, kids, and anything else that needs to be aired or debated or commiserated over. It probably goes without saying, but: none of us could do this alone.
Strangers. 8500 of them. And you aren’t too many miles into this thing before you realize: every one of your fellow walkers suddenly feels like a friend, a fellow traveler, another pilgrim on this path toward healing and hope.      
Memories. Some of us have done this walk for years now; some remember doing it with Diane, even after she got sick; some joined our group this September for the very first time. But we all walk with memories of past walks, and with memories of loved ones who have passed, and with memories that make each passing mile even more meaningful. We may walk in the present moment, but we carry in our hearts the memories of other days, other walks, other friends.
Yoga. We are ladies of a certain age. Fortunately, we’ve learned the benefits of stretching before, during, and after a walk. And at lunch time, we all take off our sneakers, form a circle, and share a yoga practice. This year, I got to lead us through our down-dogs and hip openers and hamstring stretches. An honor.
Ibuprofen. Because yoga alone doesn’t do it.


Carol Cashion. All the good intentions in the world aren’t enough to inspire and mobilize a group of busy, distracted, geographically scattered women and deliver them in the dark to a Boston suburb on a Sunday morning in September. We need a team captain for that, and I can’t imagine anyone who could do a better job of leading us through the maze of details than my dear friend Carol, logistics queen and the heart and soul of our collective mission. (Yes, the T-shirts do say 2013, but we wore ‘em again in 2014.)
The finish line. There’s nothing to compare with the moment. A long walk may be a small thing in the great scheme of life, but it’s a small thing done with much love. And when we link arms and proceed together across that line in Copley Square, laughing and crying and celebrating, we know this for sure: the love flows in all directions, and in ways that transcend both time and space.
Boston. Our home city, vibrant and generous of spirit, willing not only to welcome this monumental interruption on an autumn Sunday, but to embrace the cause, the crowds, and all the commotion, too. How lucky we are to walk a route that leads us straight into the heart of the town we all love.
Dinner. We’re a group that cherishes tradition, from our homemade scones on the ride out to Hopkinton to our team photos at the half-way point. And perhaps the most appreciated tradition, the one that keeps us going year after year, is the lovely dinner party hosted by Diane’s husband at the end of the day. A hot shower, a pair of flip-flops, a glass of champagne, good food, the joy of being together.


.2 You. One last time. Because you joined me on this journey, and that’s really what made it worth doing. My heartfelt “thank you” to all who donated.  And congratulations to Tanya Wilkinson, winner of Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, Volume One.

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a friend, a walk, a cause, a book, a thank you

In two weeks, I’ll turn 56, a birthday my dear friend Diane did not live to see. The photo above, my favorite of the two of us, was taken the year before she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

As always in the early fall, Diane, our friend Carol, and I had used my birthday as an excuse for a girls’ getaway at my parents’ house in Maine. For years we celebrated our time together with the same fool-proof menu: old Jackson Browne music on the stereo, lobster risotto (a collaborative culinary effort) and champagne for dinner, Diane’s scones and fresh fruit for breakfast, long walks, and no-holds-barred late-night conversations – the kind that can only happen between the most intimate friends, away from home, with no kids or husbands within earshot.

I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about how Diane spent her 55th year. It was she who originally inspired the phrase “the gift of an ordinary day,” for her delight in simple pleasures and time spent with her family and friends only deepened as she bravely faced both her devastating prognosis and a heartbreaking series of “lasts.” Diane negotiated the realities of ovarian cancer with the same determination and clarity she brought to everything she did – continuing with aggressive treatment for her disease while fully embracing the joys of her own everyday life. Under the care of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, she was able to do both for nearly four years.

During that time, she also worked tirelessly to support ovarian cancer research. As her own journey came to and end, Diane made clear her desire that her loved ones might carry on this effort in her memory.

Team Diane was formed in response to that wish.

Walking together in the annual Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk over the last three years, our small group has raised over $125,000 for Diane’s cause — money that, by Diane’s design, goes directly to her beloved Dana Farber oncologist Dr. Urusla Matulonis and her dedicated team of researchers. It’s a great achievement, but of course there is much more work to be done.

Next Sunday, on September 21, I will join Team Diane for the fourth time to walk in this event that’s become a touchstone of my life. I’m proud and grateful to be part of this committed group of walkers – some of us who knew and loved Diane, others who have joined because they’ve been moved by her story or touched by cancer themselves.   We are mostly women in our forties and fifties and sixties, and so we walk despite our own individual challenges – sore knees and cranky backs, cancer and Lyme disease, tight hamstrings and tender heels, the usual aches and pains of age. (Although I’ve got my own tricky back and gimpy leg to deal with this year, I didn’t for one moment consider dropping out!)

As always, we’ll begin the day in the dark, eating homemade scones on the pre-dawn ride out to Hopkinton (another Diane tradition, happily continued). We’ll hold hands for a moment at the start and then set out together, joining the more than 8,500 others who will be walking for a cure that day. En route, we’ll share our BlisterGlide, sunscreen, and Ibuprofen. We’ll urge one another on and catch up on one another’s lives. We’ll take plenty of stretching breaks and pit stops and remind each other to drink more water. And late in the afternoon we’ll cross the finish line arm in arm, with cheers and tears, remembering our friend, knowing how proud she’d be to see us carrying on her mission. And knowing, too, that we are making a difference. Collectively, working together, we can improve the odds for every woman who is diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Once a year, I reach out to you, my dear readers, to join me in this cause that means so much to me and to so many others. For, as we all know, cancer touches each of us. As I write, my dear friend Lisa is being treated by an extraordinary team of doctors at Dana Farber, while another is celebrating her recent recovery from ovarian cancer. And so, it’s little wonder that I’m more committed than ever to doing my part to help conquer this disease. I am deeply grateful for any support you are able to give. Together we’re walking and giving and working to change lives — and perhaps to save them.

Thank you. Your support and your presence in my life means more than I can say.

how to donate – and a special thanks from me

Each year when I invite you to support me and Team Diane’s efforts, I like to choose a book to give away here, one that has some special significance to this cause. I can think of none better than the first volume of Mary Oliver’s collected poems, perhaps my favorite poetry book of all time. Four years ago, Diane borrowed my copy and found deep solace in these poems; later, when the book came back to me, her slips of paper were still in it, marking the ones that spoke most deeply to her. This too was part of her legacy: she wanted to remind us to pay attention, to love life and to live it fully, with gratitude and awareness and wonder.

So, if you do make a donation, make sure to also leave a comment below and let me know.

On Friday, Sept 26, I will choose one winner at random to receive Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, Volume One. (Needless to say, I wish I could send a copy to each and every one of you.)

Donating is easy.

        Go to my personal fundraising page by clicking here: 

http://www.jimmyfundwalk.org/2014/katrina4teamdiane#sthash.9xacweAR.dpuf.

Or send me a check: Make your check payable to “Jimmy Fund Walk.” Write DIANE’S FUND on the memo line. Send it directly to me at: 101 Middle Hancock Rd., Peterborough, NH 03458.

Note: You may wish to check with your employer’s Human Resources department to find out if they  will match your gift and double the impact.

Every single contribution is both meaningful and deeply appreciated.  Onward, with gratitude and love!

The post a friend, a walk, a cause, a book, a thank you appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

this life

We’re all only fragile threads, but what a tapestry we make. ~Jerry Ellis

I

didn’t intend to go silent, back in July.

And here I am all these weeks later, hesitating, not sure how to start again. Writing anything after a long time away is a bit like trying to reconnect with an old friend who hasn’t been part of your every-days for a while. Where to begin?

Perhaps just here, now. On this quiet Sunday afternoon, the house is empty. The low, constant thrum of crickets signals the change in season even as the nasturtiums sprawl exuberantly across the stone wall, the sunflowers stretch ever skyward (no blooms to speak of, but that’s what I get for allowing the spilled seed from the bird feeder to go wild in my garden), and the temperature hovers in the seventies. My bathing suit and towel are still in the backseat of the car; driving past the pond earlier, I was tempted to swing in for a swim, knowing that cooler days are just around the corner and any plunge I take now may well be the last. Instead, I came home, cleaned the kitchen, and carried my notebook and laptop out onto the porch.

It’s time to sit, to be still, to gather up at least a few thoughts here and put them into some kind of order. The slant of the sun and the already-deepening shadows tell the story: summer has ended, as it always does, too soon. Time marches on and the only constant is change itself.

Since the day – it feels like a lifetime ago — when I last sat on this screened porch writing a blog post about a youthful trip to Paris and a lovely new cookbook, life has unfurled in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

What I remember about that sultry July afternoon was that I’d just finished writing when I took a break, picked up my phone and saw the screen was full of missed texts and calls – several from a dear friend’s husband and several more from my own. I called Steve back first, gazing out at the mountains, hands trembling a bit, already sensing something was amiss.

This is how life turns, right? You are chugging along, doing whatever it is you do, your mind full of plans and intentions – the work at your fingertips, the grocery list, the to-do list, some petty annoyance, the eye you must keep on the clock, the dinner you have to make, the movie you want to see — and then news arrives that shatters one reality and, in an instant, constructs another.

The words “inoperable brain tumor” are life changers.

Your beloved, strong, life-long friend who was fine when you saw her for dinner just a couple of weeks ago, has been rushed to the hospital. And with that, everything that seemed important five minutes ago fades to insignificance. The world tilts, grows sharper and, for an eerie breathless second, utterly silent. Your hands shake harder. For some reason, the words that come first to mind, right after “I can’t believe this is happening,” are the ones your father-in-law’s best friend, gone now for over twenty years, used to keep above his desk, to remind him that life is short and precious and finite: “No one gets out of here alive.”

It is a little easier, I realize, to write about this by slipping into the third person, as if I’m telling a story rather than struggling to articulate feelings that are painful and raw and complicated. But perhaps I don’t even need to say much more. We’ve all received some version of that phone call. We’ve all planned for one future and suddenly found ourselves confronted with another. And hasn’t sadness been a theme for most of us this summer? Who can read the newspaper or watch the evening news without despair? There is distress and devastation, violence and illness, suffering and grief everywhere. Heartbreak may be part of the human condition, but this has been, in nearly every corner of the earth, a particularly sorrowful season.

We wish so desperately for our loved ones to be healthy and happy, safe and at ease. Of course, to think about that yearning for even five minutes is to realize we wish such well-being not only for our nearest and dearest, but for everyone, everywhere, always. How could we not?

And yet, what life hands us, again and again, is not the simple ease we ask for, but something different: challenge, loss, pain. What choice do we have, but to figure out how to accept all of it — the care-free afternoons; the charmed moments; the ordinary days; and, too, the unexpected blows that bring us to our knees, the news that makes us want to curl into a ball on the floor and weep. (Maybe growing old – or, rather, growing up – means realizing that there will always be charmed moments, even in the bleakest of times, if we’re attuned to notice them, and that there is simply no such thing as a charmed life. Not for me, or for you, or for anyone.)

So it is that I’ve spent this lovely, mild, gone-too-soon summer finding my way in territory that is at once brand new and profoundly familiar. I know from past experience that grief and grace are two sides of the same coin. That healing is always possible and that it happens in the most unexpected ways. That laughter and tears can share the same moment, the same breath. That there is light even in the darkest night. That faith and mystery are inextricably intertwined, bound by wonder. And I know that showing up and quietly doing what needs to be done in the moment is a more helpful response than either dramatic rescue attempts or despair. For me, perhaps the greatest surprise of the last couple of months has been discovering how much gratitude and sadness it’s possible for one heart to hold at once.

My friend Lisa is much loved, and day by day the circle of support around her grows. Volunteers sign up to cook, and meals appear in the cooler by the front door. Family and friends share driving duties in the daily round trips to treatment. Notes and prayers and good wishes pour in from far and wide.  Nothing is easy, nothing is as it was before, and yet she is wholly, unmistakably herself – engaged, curious, calm, and kind.  By her own quiet example she inspires the rest of us to live in the moment, right here, rather than worrying about the unknowable future.  She is more than half way through her treatment, taking it one day at a time, choosing gratitude for what is good rather than worrying about what can’t be changed.  And because I’m lucky enough to live eight minutes away, and to not be bound by a regular schedule or by the demands of a “real” job, we are having lovely, precious times together – good visits and long talks and outdoor lunches and movies that make us laugh. Even our rides to radiation are times to cherish, and every candlelit dinner on the porch with our husbands is a special pleasure.   To be a part of this network of love and concern is to participate gratefully, joyfully, in the true work of being human – each of us doing our best to be present, both for Lisa and for one another, gently offering comfort and connection where we can.

Even so, finding meaning in a situation that seems utterly meaningless, random, and unfair is hard, slow work. The “new normal” keeps changing. It’s human nature to want answers and plans and promises. And instead we have only the present moment, mystery, and hope. (Of course, we’re kidding ourselves if we think any life is predictable, any outcome assured, any promise a guarantee.) But slowly, bit by bit, the incomprehensible becomes more manageable.

Surrendering to things as they are, we find a new way forward. Despair softens into acceptance. Fear of what might be in the future gives way to a desire to ease another’s path today. Meaning goes hand in hand with connection. And the one thing I know for sure is that we become our best, most compassionate, most resilient selves by stepping outside ourselves. I suspect we all do better when our hearts are fully engaged. And really, as we grow older, as things we love are taken away, one after another, what choice do we have, but to learn to give even more? To love even more? To bring more and more peace and more and more kindness into the world?

As Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein writes in Happiness is an Inside Job, the small, deeply wise, deeply consoling book that has lived in my purse and that has nourished my soul all summer: “Perhaps [this is] the clue about the happiness inherent in caring connections. The frightened ‘I’ who struggles is replaced by the ‘we’ who do this difficult life together, looking after one another. Holding hands.” Yes. Oh, yes.

So, maybe it comes down to a simple fact: to live fully is to allow ourselves to be broken open time after time, even as we grow in awareness and appreciation of all the ways we are upheld and mended and supported by one another. This is life as it really is – so much goodness and beauty, so much unwarranted suffering, so many fragile hearts beating as one.

This morning, I woke up early, while it was still dark, and lay in bed for a long while, listening as the birds began their song, one solo voice swelling and then, within moments, joined by a full-scale dawn chorus. Just after sunrise, Steve and I headed out for a walk with Tess, pausing to marvel at the layers of mist draped over the mountains, at the clear, golden light above and at the sun breaking through clouds.   Later, drinking coffee on the porch and reading the Sunday New York Times, I came across some lines excerpted from a letter by Steven Sottloff, the second American journalist slain by ISIS.

Reading these words, words written in captivity and smuggled out by a former cellmate of Sottloff’s, my heart broke for this innocent man, for his grieving family, for the suffering that yielded such urgent wisdom. And now, sharing them here, weaving this small connection between you and me and a young man whose life was violently taken, my heart heals just a little bit, too. We each awaken by degrees, our bruised hearts softening and growing more supple as we learn just how much is at stake, how much we need one another, how much we have to offer, what a beautiful tapestry we make.

“Live your life to the fullest and fight to be happy,” Steven urged his family. And then this: “Everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you have only one.”

The post this life appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

Buvette–food to love & a cookbook to win

Summer, thirty-five years ago. I was nineteen — ripe for adventure, ready to be inspired, in love for the first time, and headed for Paris.

My boyfriend (of whom my parents quietly disapproved) and I had worked and saved for a year to come up with $4,000 — enough, we hoped, to get us overseas, pay for a cheap used car and fund a summer of low-budget travel. I had my first passport, a few semesters of college French under my belt and a head still swimming with a thousand carefully memorized Art 100 slides.

For months, my more practical (but no more worldly) companion had studied the Michelin green guides and pored over road maps, planning possible routes across the continent.

My own self-assigned homework, less useful but considerably more titillating, had filled me with hunger and anticipation: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, A. J. Liebling, Henry Miller, Colette, M.F.K Fisher.

I’d read everything. Experienced nothing.

For a small-town girl from New Hampshire, Paris was a coming-of-age story, an irresistible invitation to leave my old unformed self behind and become someone altogether new – a person who broke bread instead of sliced it, who carried a cheese knife in her backpack, scribbled in a journal at sidewalk cafes, drank diminutive cups of espresso at dusk and pitchers of vin de table in the Latin Quarter by night.

Serious young Smith student that I was, I dutifully stood in front of the Mona Lisa, listened to organ music at Notre Dame, perused the book stalls along the Seine, visited the graves at Monmartre. We admired the view from the Eiffel Tower and wore our shoes out walking through one arrondissement after another, from the heart of the city to its outer edges.

But really, all I wanted to do was eat.

Our wallets constrained us, yet we barely registered deprivation. Every flaky croissant, every fragrant bowl of onion soup or round of goat cheese wrapped in a grape leaf and tied with twine was a delight for the eye and palate. Couscous was a revelation, café au lait a good reason to get out of bed in the morning. The night we wandered into a tiny bistro on the Left Bank and discovered the phrase moules- frites was life-changing.

The boyfriend didn’t last, but my love for all foods French has never waned. I left home that summer before my senior year of college having never cooked much more than baked potatoes and my mom’s beef stroganoff. By the time I returned three months later, I was as passionate about learning how to cook the foods I’d discovered as I was about eating them. Travel to foreign lands was wonderful adventure to be sure, but it now occurred to me that perhaps I could create my own adventures, right in the kitchen. Cooking well, it seemed to me, might actually be a way to live a more sensual, thoughtful life.

That long-ago summer was the beginning of a lifetime of experimenting, learning, savoring.   Over the years, I’ve tried my hand at hundreds of dishes and collected way too many cookbooks. What I’ve found is that neither the hunger nor the curiosity ever goes away. There’s always a new restaurant to visit, a new dish to try, a new challenge to try to recreate at home.

So when a food-loving friend told me about Buvette, a tiny bistro in New York with a decidedly Gallic twist, I couldn’t wait to go.  (Yes, I was charmed by the bike before we even walked through the door.)

Perched at a tiny table, elbow to elbow with fellow diners, dipping a hunk of baguette into a bowl of mussels Provencal and drinking wine out of a small water glass, the years melted away. The West Village neighborhood crowd is young and casual, the bar is packed, the mood convivial. People come to Buvette to cheerfully rub shoulders with one another and to eat food that tastes as if it were made by your best foodie friend rather than by a chef paid to impress.

Now, Jody Williams has brought the spirit of Buvette to the page in a new cookbook inspired by her beloved restaurant and devoted to “the pleasure of good food.” Here is simple, handmade, straightforward French comfort food that’s as satisfying to prepare as it is to eat. No architectural concoctions topped with obscure sauces here. No exotic ingredients or complicated presentations. Instead, Jody’s beautiful, do-able, casual-but-polished recipes re-ignite my own passion for fresh ingredients and thoughtful dishes made with care.

I don’t get to New York often, but if I did, Buvette would be my go-to spot for a morning coffee or an unhurried dinner with friends. So, it’s probably not surprising that Buvette has also turned out to be the cookbook I find myself pulling off the shelf most often this summer.  (Summer fruit salad, yogurt parfaits, tomato salad with cucumbers and bread, soupe au pistou, old fashioned lemonade, wax beans with pesto. . .intuitive dishes all, but ones I’m happy to be reminded to make.)

A few weeks ago, I gave a copy of Buvette to the friend who’d first tipped me off to the restaurant. Hours later, a photo arrived: shaved Brussels sprout salad. “I was inspired,” he texted.

That’s the kind of cookbook this is: you page through, feel a little twinge of hunger as you pore over the photos of fresh figs and cheeses and hearty soups, and then you get up and head for the kitchen, to see what you have on hand. And you realize that even a bunch of radishes from the farmers’ market can stand on their own, and are worthy of a bit of loving care as you bring them to the table.

As Jody says, “Buvette is more than a place; it’s also a feeling and an idea. It’s a way to cook, entertain, and live. It’s a recipe for living more meaningfully.”

I’ve made Jody’s Asparagus Milanese once a week for about a month. And every time, I’ve forgotten to snap a photo before I spooned it out of the pan. Last night was no exception. But I did remember to grab my camera just before the grilled figs and goat cheese disappeared.

I have one copy of Buvette to give away here, and I’m delighted to spread the word about this lovely cookbook.

how to enter to win a copy of Buvette

Simply leave a comment below.

Answer the question:

What are you putting on your summer dinner table these days?

Of course, as always, you can also just say: “Count me in.”

I’ll choose a winner at random after midnight on Saturday, July 26. Good luck to all.

(Just want to start cooking?  You can order a copy here.)

See you at the farmer’s market!

 

Buvette’s Asparagus Milanese

(serves two, but is easily doubled)

Coarse salt

Small handful of asparagus, tough ends removed

2 T. unsalted butter

2  good-quality large eggs

Freshly ground black pepper

Finely grated Parmesan cheese

Bring a small pot of water to boil, season with salt, add the asparagus and cook until just tender, about 2 minutes.  Drain immediately and transfer to paper towels and let dry for a minute or so.

Heat the butter in a skillet over medium heat.  Add the asparagus to the butter, with the spears together in the center of the pan.  Crack the eggs directly into the pan at the edges of the asparagus, sprinkle with a bit of salt, cover and cook until the whites are just set, about two minutes.  Sprinkle with a generous dusting of Parmesan cheese and a few healthy grinds of black pepper.  (I like a bit of chopped parsley, too.)

The post Buvette–food to love & a cookbook to win appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

bucket list

On Tuesday afternoons this past year I’ve been a traveling yoga teacher, lugging a bag full of straps and foam blocks and lavender eye pillows to a small elementary school in a nearby town.

My students, a dedicated handful of regulars, are all in their sixties, including the school principal and her now retired husband, who once taught English to my son Jack. We work gently together, accommodating a tricky hip (mine), chronic back pain, osteoporosis, balance issues, and the inevitable assortment of aches and injuries that are simply part of the territory now that we are no longer young.

Last fall, on the first afternoon I arrived at the school to teach, I was surprised by a few sudden tears the minute I walked through the front door. It hit me – suddenly, although certainly not for the first time — just how far down the road I’ve traveled from all that transpires each day in this tidy, welcoming brick building.

Everything I saw brought back a memory: The box of lost-and- found baseball caps and tangled sweatshirts, the collection of canned goods for the food pantry accumulating in the foyer, the children’s bright artwork on the walls, the sight of a lone L.L. Bean backpack forgotten in a corner, the distinctive smell of kids and chalk dust and used books and half-eaten lunches.

The question rose up hot and fierce as a reprimand in my chest: “Had I loved my life enough?”

The honest answer? Probably not. Back when my own two boys were small, what I now know to be evanescent felt as if it would go on forever. I made a hundred sandwiches, a thousand, with no end in sight. How many mornings did I urge my kids to hurry, warn them that they’d be late for school, lose my patience as they whined or dawdled or resisted some obvious necessity – hair combing, boots on the right feet, raincoats?

Much as I tried to pay attention, tried to remind myself nothing lasts forever, and certainly not first grade or third or fifth or childhood itself, I couldn’t possibly have anticipated the speed with which the years would fly by while I was in the thick of it all myself, mired in the details of doctors appointments and homework assignments and t-ball practice.

Perhaps it is ever so. Perhaps it’s only the lived experience of seasons passing that can teach us the truth of impermanence, as endings pile up willy-nilly.

Perhaps it is only by enduring a progression of lasts that an ordinary now is transformed into an achingly precious present moment.

Perhaps it is only in pausing every now and then to gaze behind to where we’ve been, that we can turn face forward again with hearts full of gratitude for the ground beneath our feet.

With the school year over, my Tuesday afternoon classes have concluded as well. Over time, I did get more comfortable walking down the hall, nostalgia for the past giving way to a kind of cultivated ease in the present.

Still, I would always stop to look at the bulletin boards, to enjoy the children’s artistic creations, to read the their names, to remember just how it felt to visit my own sons’ school all those years ago and see their latest efforts displayed in the hall.

As the last school day drew nigh, the children made summer “bucket lists,” sharing their hopes and dreams for the months ahead. There were lots of pictures of sunscreen tacked to the board, along with aspirations for summer vacation: play with my cousin, go to the beach, ride my bike, go camping.

I thought about making a summer bucket list myself. What would be on it? Read a book a week. Meditate every morning. Take a walk every day. Be more disciplined about writing my blog posts.

I got just about this far before I realized: my summer bucket list sounded suspiciously like a to-do list.

Last week, my husband Steve turned 65. A big one any way you look at it. Medicare. Senior citizen discounts. Fifteen years shy of eighty. Only thirty-five less than a hundred.

As it happened, I was away from home attending a book festival on his actual birthday. We’d both been busy all week, running in opposite directions, he with a board meeting to attend, me with a talk to deliver, no room on our calendars for a party or a dinner out, both our sons away.

I wracked my brain for an appropriate gift and came up empty. There is nothing he needs. Nothing he really wants that he doesn’t have already. Nothing except, of course, more time. The one gift money cannot buy.

And then it dawned on me – time was a gift I could give. No receipt needed, no return possible.

Steve played hooky from work and I planned a day for the two of us.

“Trust me,” I said. And he did.

We got up early, had breakfast with friends, then headed north to Vermont and our date with a rented double kayak. After a few hours of paddling down the Connecticut River and lunch at the Harpoon brewery, we made our way through an underground tunnel to enter an outdoor sculpture garden called, appropriately enough, The Path of Life.

Metaphors abounded – from the hemlock maze, signifying the adventures of childhood, all the way to the circle of dead oaks and charred carvings that evoke death, and finally the quiet grove of delicate white birches suggestive of rebirth and life’s renewal.

It was a weekday afternoon and we had all fourteen acres of this inspired, idiosyncratic garden to ourselves. It felt as if time had indeed slowed down a bit. There was space to talk, plenty of time to wander.

“I still can’t wrap my head around sixty-five,” Steve said as we approached a towering jazz combo exuberantly constructed of old wood and metal scraps.

“Sixty-five is old. But inside, I still feel the same. How can that be? I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to act at this age.”

We looked up at the faded, venerable musicians playing their silent song for the ages, perfectly embodying the spirit of creativity.

Maybe there is no “supposed to,” they seemed to say. Maybe the work of growing older is about finding your own song and singing it fearlessly, joyously; singing even when it seems no one is listening. And maybe aging doesn’t have to be about submitting grudgingly to loss, but rather about accepting and choosing life just as it is — and beating out a wild, heartfelt tune that acknowledges all of it, all the joys and pains and conflicts that are part of the human trip.

Knowing where our journey would wind up, we took our time. Why rush down the path of life, when one can choose to sit for a while under the tree of knowledge, survey the view from the top of the hill of success, meditate with a full heart upon one’s ancestors and absent loved ones from within the circle that represents family?

As the end approached, we moved even more slowly, lingering, wanting to make it last, determined to drink fully of every experience along the way. (Another revelation: as it is in the garden, so it is in life.) We made an offering to the Buddha, walked the labyrinth, lay flat out on the grass and closed our eyes and imagined our own final rest.

Back in the car at dusk, driving south toward a dinner of Thai food and listening to Willie Nelson sing my current favorite song, “Just Breathe,” we were both quiet.

I found myself brushing back tears, as does seem to happen more and more often these days. But these tears weren’t for the past, not at all. They were for the exquisite beauty of the moment, for our own shared, expansive, richly layered present.

And it suddenly occurred to me that I do have a summer bucket list after all. It’s not a to-do list. Nor does it include a fancy vacation or any grand ambitions or even the stack of books by the bed that I really do long to read.

What I want most this summer is simply to spend time with the ones I love. To have more days just like this one. Enough presence of mind to pay attention. And enough presence of heart to make gratitude my song, acceptance my refrain.

Yes, I understand that every life must end, uh-huh

As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, uh-huh

Oh I’m a lucky man, to count on both hands the ones I love

Some folks just have one, yeah, others, they’ve got none

                                   Stay with me…

                                   Let’s just breathe…

Do you have a bucket list — either for the summer or for your life?  What’s on it?  I’d love to know! 

how a (grudging) critic made my day

Although I’ve received quite a number of lovely letters from male readers, I suppose I do think of myself primarily as a women’s writer.  So I shouldn’t have been surprised that my book would meet with some resistance from the no-nonsense New York journalist Jesse Kornbluth. Aka The HeadButler, Jesse is the author of a highly opinionated, persuasive, and incredibly popular blog about all things literate, trending, cultish, or practical – from music and movies and books to gifts and gadgets to food and wine.  The HeadButler is nothing if not tough; he admits, right up front, that he was prepared to loathe my book, that he prefers a dose of denial to contemplation, that the very word “journey” drives him nuts.

And yet.  He chose to read Magical Journey. He read all the way to the end, despite the title, despite the subject, despite everything he was prepared not to like.

And this morning he published this amazing review, which made me bristle for all of about two seconds, and then made me laugh out loud, and then made me want to give him a huge hug and take him out for dinner.  How could I not share it with you?

Click here to read my one and only published review by a guy!

The post bucket list appeared first on Katrina Kenison.

dog love

If we had power over the ends of the earth, it would not give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet, devoted relationship to nearby life can give us.” ~ Martin Buber

D

ear Tess,

So, okay, I was wrong.

Love at first sight is possible after all. I wonder, though, was it the same for you? Did you really know I was your person, and that we were your family, just as immediately and as surely as we knew you were our dog?

I can admit this now: I didn’t actually believe I could give my heart away again — not so completely, not even to another black and white border collie with a paint-dipped tail and a coat of silken cowlicks.

Besides, I’d finally gotten sort of used to the pet-free life. Sleeping  a little later. Saving money on dog food and vet bills. Skipping the morning walk, the poop patrols around the yard. Staying in out of the rain. No one’s bladder to keep track of but my own. No dog hair on my black yoga pants, no stray bits of kibble crunching under foot, no new holes under the azalea or scratches in the pine floorboards. No one eating the appetizers off the coffee table or barking at the door to go in or out or staring at me with imploring eyes, telegraphing the unmistakable late-afternoon message: “Shut your laptop and put on your sneakers.”

Sure, there was an emptiness around here, but I’d almost stopped noticing it. Just as the silence after Henry and Jack first left home, crushing at first, became part of the fabric of my days, my wrenching grief over the death of your predecessor had softened over the winter into, well, a new kind of normal. We humans can get used to anything.

And then May came. The last recalcitrant snow finally melted, revealing a backyard still scattered with faded tennis balls. The sun woke us up at six, then even earlier. Birds sang. The world beckoned. Our boys came home, both of them at once.

“You said spring,” my dog-loving friend Debbie reminded me. “And it IS spring.”

She gathered up all the old tennis balls and piled them in front of the garden Buddha, an offering of sorts.

One night, Jack and I clicked on a link I’d bookmarked a while ago, back when Gracie was still with us — a border collie rescue farm in upstate New York.   And there they were: a hundred Gracie cousins all in need of homes, each one with a story to break your heart.

In truth, Tess, we skipped right over your photo that first night, seduced by roly-poly puppies and cavorting adolescents.

I printed out the adoption application, only to be stopped in my tracks by its lengthy essay questions (“Describe a typical day in your dog’s life. . .”) and the many requirements. Would we be willing to install a hard fence? Would we promise to enroll with our puppy in obedience school? How many hours each day would our dog be alone? Would we use a crate? Would we take a dog with special emotional needs? With chronic health issues?

Finally, there was just a week left before the boys departed again. If we were going to welcome a new member to the family, it did seem as if the family should actually be here to say hello.

And so I returned to the website, scrolled down past the youngsters, and there you were, hiding in plain sight – a four-and-a-half year-old orphan girl named “Princess” who’d seen way too much death and loss and change in your brief, chaotic life. Would you wait for us?

On a chilly Sunday, Henry, Debbie, and I made the five-hour drive to Morris, NY, knowing you might very well be gone by the time we got there. Another family was coming to meet you in the morning; they had first dibs.

Pulling up to the farm’s gate after our long morning on the road, I offered up a little prayer to Gracie, who I knew must be watching these proceedings from somewhere. “This is in your hands, you know,” I whispered. “Bring us the right dog.”

Right at that moment, the cold rain that had been intermittent all morning stopped for good. The sun came out from behind the clouds. I told myself not to see this as a sign.

And then there you were. As soon as I knelt down, you put your soft cheek against mine. “Princess” became “Tess” in that instant – as if you’d whispered your new name in my ear. That pretty much sealed it. “She’s the one,” I must have said. Or something like that.   Because, of course it was obvious, we already belonged to you.

Nearly three weeks into our new life together, you already  have it all figured out: chasing down tennis balls, barking at squirrels, come and sit and wait, leash walks and woods rambles.

You know the men who live in this house are different from the ones who hurt you in the past.

You know early morning is the best time of day, that the dogs we meet on the road are friendly, that people who come to the door are kind, that the bear who ambled into the yard at dusk the other night to raid the bird feeder was definitely not one of “us.” (Finally, we heard you growl, saw the white ruff on your neck bristle to attention.)

You know where to sleep and not to beg at the table and to stay off the sofa. You know that pockets hold treats, that grass is for rolling in, that tennis balls are reliable, ever-ready companions and that brand new plush toys can be destroyed in less than ten minutes. You know that when I leave a room, I always return. You know that car rides with your new family lead only to good places and that they will always end up right back where we started from: home.

You know the joys of rest and of play, and that here and now are the very best places to be.

Most important of all, though, you know just how to ask for what you need the most. A paw placed on my knee means it’s time for us to gaze deeply into each other’s eyes, for one of our many long heart-to-heart chats. You squint up at me, nose lifted just so, to receive a kiss or to offer a delicate one of your own.

“Tell me you love me,” you insist.

And I do.

 

upcoming. . .

I’m on the road a bit in June, and would so love to meet you at one of these events.

Friday, June 6

2:00 pm

“Wine and Words”

Bayswater Booktique

12 Main Street

Center Harbor, NH

603-253-8858

http://www.bayswaterbooks.com

Monday, June 16

4 pm

Minot-Sleeper Library

35 Pleasant St.

Bristol, NH 03222

603-744-3352

www.minotsleeperlibrary.org  

Fri. June 20 – Sun. June 22

Nantucket Book Festival

Nantucket, MA

http://nantucketbookfestival.org

The post dog love appeared first on Katrina Kenison.