Lindsey Mead's Blog, page 11

Monday morning thoughts: Hold On

Started Monday with a throwback song at spinning. “Hold On” reminds me intensely of college and the friends I made there, who remain the closest people to me in the world. I’m feeling a swirl of themes that feel correlated, after a wonderful Fourth with family and friends and the World Cup win.

Forgiveness because everyone has their own demons. Everyone grapples with the freight of life in different ways, and the best way forward is to assume that they’re all trying their best.  This is much easier said than done, at least for me!

Love because that’s all there is. Period.

Memory stitched into every day, bittersweet and beautiful. Being in Marion reminds me of my father, every minute of every day.  Maybe not every minute.  But frequently and keenly.  It’s still painful, but I can see that someday the memories will also make me smile.  My father had traveled more widely than almost anyone I’ve ever known, and yet I’m quite sure that the water off Marion Harbor was his favorite place in the world.

Time and retrospect bringing details into stark relief, their edges apparent, their meaning clear.  This weekend Matt and I reflected on our last sail with my father on Brea and how on the return to the harbor we found that the ensign had fallen off.  That never happened in the years I have sailed (or, more importantly, in the many years my father sailed).  In retrospect, knowing what we know now, it’s a detail I find imbued with meaning and eerily prescient.

Self-reliance and a simultaneous awareness that we can’t do it alone (thank you Catarina).  Taking ownership of what we want and going for it. Find your people, hold them close, and go. I think that’s my Monday morning lesson.

Best Books of the Half-Year

I’ve written posts like this for the last several years, and I really enjoy pausing at the year’s midpoint to reflect on what I’ve loved (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018).  I am always interested in books you’ve really enjoyed lately, so please share!

Memoir



All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf[image error], Katherine Smyth – This memoir, about a giant of a father, his death, and the echoing importance of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, took my breath away.  I shared a few thoughts about it here.  This is among the most gorgeously written books I’ve read in years.

Running Home[image error], Katie Arnold – Another memoir about the loss of a father, but couldn’t be more different.  Katie’s story, interweaving her childhood with her adult discovery of endurance running, is both moving and inspirational.  I loved it.

Novel

The Great Believers[image error], Rebecca Makkai – This book immersed me in a world I knew nothing about (the AIDS crisis in Chicago in the 1980s) and I fell deeply into it.  Makkai’s characters are nuanced and sympathetic, and this was a story I was very sad to see end.  Beautiful.

Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi – This novel captures time, and the often-unseen ways in which the past animates the present, in an intensely lovely way.  The book is haunting and gorgeous, and I am so glad I read it.  This is Grace’s all-school read this summer, and I’m looking forward to talking to her about it.

Gone So Long, Andre Dubus III – I loved this book, which is bleak in many ways but profoundly humane at the same time.  Dubus writes some of the most thoughtful female characters of all, in my opinion.

Late in the Day[image error], Tessa Hadley – There’s something about this quiet book, one of the first I read this year, that has stayed with me.  The characters, the complexity, the echoing absence of the beloved father.  It’s just lovely.

Other

Mostly Plants: 101 Delicious Flexitarian Recipes from the Pollan Family[image error], the Pollan family – I rarely buy cookbooks these days (oh, internet, how you have spoiled me) but this one spoke so directly to how I want to eat these days that I did.  It’s also beautiful. Plant-forward, but with a little bit of meat here and there, recipes that are both inspiring and flexible.  I love this cookbook and have already used it several times.

The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid[image error], Dylan Thuras – I love this book and gave it to all of my godchildren.  It’s not a surprise that I love maps and atlases, and this book is a fun, adventure-centric play on traditional books of maps.  It is a reminder that the world is large, and beguiling, and full of challenges and joys.

 

Disclosure: these are Amazon affilitate links.

Things I Love Lately

The Great Believers – I was slow to read this book and I’m not sure why, but wow.  Much like The Heart’s Invisible Furies[image error], which I read and adored last year, the novel is about a time and place I knew nothing about (in this case, the AIDS crisis in Chicago in the 1980s).  It’s thoughtful and beautiful and heartbreaking and engrossing all at once.  One of my favorite books of 2019 for sure. Highly recommend.

Forties Stories – I have mentioned this podcast before, and I love it.  It was an honor to be interviewed by Christy a few weeks ago!  If you want to hear a little more about my strange childhood (a tantrum about visiting the Berlin Wall, for example) please check it out.  I love all of Christy’s episodes and think the world needs more curiosity, more stories, and more empathy.  She’s contributing.  Give them a listen.

All-School Reads – I am fascinated by what schools choose as their All School Read.  I think it’s a telling choice in many ways.  Grace’s this summer is Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing[image error], which I’m going to read alongside her.  Whit’s school doesn’t have one this year.  I’d love to hear whether your children’s school or college has a required book and if so, what it is!

The Handmaid’s Tale[image error] – I subscribed to Hulu just to watch this series, which I started after re-reading the book in March.  I just started the third season.  Wow.  I know I’m only adding my voice to the (deservedly loud) chorus but I think this is a must-watch.  It’s terrifying and prescient, powerfully acted, and scary precisely because there are ways in which this dystopian world feels believable to me. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but in my opinion this is essential viewing.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can find them all here.

After the rain

A couple of Fridays ago, Matt and I had something to do in the evening.  I know!  Unusual in and of itself.  But that’s not my point.  It was the end of a week of rain (after seemingly months of rain in Boston).  It had been cold and rainy all day long, and I knew the evening’s celebration (for the retirement of one of Whit’s favorite teachers) was under a tent.  I felt not a little bit of dread.

Then, around 5, it began to clear.  It actually turned into a spectacular evening.  As we were driving Whit to a friend’s house on the way to the school, I marveled to Whit that it had turned to so lovely.

“And it is that way even though everything is wet, and despite having been such a yucky day,” Whit observed from the back seat.

I laughed to myself, realizing something for the first time.

“See, I actually think it’s more beautiful because everything is wet, and because it was so ugly earlier.”

I glanced back to see that he was looking at the window.

Maybe this is what midlife is.  Realizing that the rain and the storms make the clear skies that much more beautiful?  Knowing you can’t have one without the other. The glory and the grit, the sunshine and the rain, the love and the loss.  Flips of the same coin.  And, truthfully, each enriching the other in ways I have only begun to understand.

I like this definition of life in the middle: knowing that the light is beautiful because of the dark, not in spite of it.

Photo is from later that evening.  Grandeur all the more lovely because of the nasty day that preceded it.

 

Ferris Wheel

I ran early this morning in Chicago, and found myself passing the ferris wheel that Grace and I rode with her godmother Q and her son, T, many years ago.  It was a ride that inspired a post that I think about often, and an image that recurred in the introduction of On Being 40(ish)[image error].

I wrote about stepping into the afternoon of life.  I was 37.  I’m now staring at 45, and am far more aware than I was then of life’s fragility, of the speed with which things can change, of how quickly things I love and count on can vanish.  I also wrote about how sacred my friendship with Q was, and it still is, and if anything I’ve even more aware of and grateful for those dear native speakers I hold close.  Those friends have had their cages rattled over the last several years, with scares and losses both, and it’s not over.  Far from it.  But I am aware, and I am breathing, and I am thankful.  I think that’s all I can ask for.

And I wanted to share this photo from this morning and remember those posts I think of a lot.

Things I Love Lately

I miss you guys!  Popping in to share a few things that I’m reading and loving lately, and would love to hear from you.

Above: my favorite flowers, on our kitchen table.

The Farm[image error] – Wow.  I’m really loving this novel, written by a woman I went to college with.  It’s fascinating, entertaining, and thought-provoking all at once.  Highly recommend.

Attention is the Beginning of Devotion – I adore this Atlantic piece about Mary Oliver’s poetry, which exhorts the reader, almost above all else, to pay attention and to notice. These are themes that recur in my life, and it won’t surprise anyone that Oliver is my favorite poet.

The Difference Between Happiness and Joy – This David Brooks oped in the New York Times moved me.  Just, yes.  Magic.  A blaze of joy.  In this liminal season of commencements, awareness of our good fortune and of the farewells that fill our lives are heightened, and I experience the vulnerability that Brooks cites.

Forties Stories – I’ve been listening to more podcasts lately, when I run in the mornings (which I do only when it’s light out, don’t worry) and when I drive.  I found Christy Maguire’s wonderful podcast through my friend Nina Badzin and am so grateful for what she’s doing.

What are you reading, listening to, thinking about, and loving lately?

pressing pause

Sunrise over Boston harbor, February 20 2019.  I chose a sunrise on purpose.

Starting today, I am going to pause writing regularly here.

It feels strange to write that.  I’ve been writing here for twelve and a half years (with a few weeks off here and there, but mostly between 2 and 5 times a week).  Every January I have the previous year’s blog posts bound into a book, and those take up more than half a bookshelf.  I have written a lot, and I am really starting to feel like I’m just saying the same things over and over again.  My “real life” has gotten busier than ever and those two things, combined with my perception that fewer and fewer people are reading, leads me to think this is the right moment to take a break.

I may come back.  I don’t know.  In the meantime, I hope you will find me on Instagram.  I’m also on Facebook and Twitter, but it’s Instagram that I like the best and where I’m most present.

I began this blog on a whim in September 2006.  I could never have imagined the world I would find through this portal.   This blog has opened doors I never anticipated.  The practice of showing up here day after day, week after week, has taught me that writing is the true work of my heart (and it showed me what I think and feel, in so many cases; Didion comes to mind: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking”).  I still hope to write a book someday.  Most of all, this blog has led to connections with so many wonderful people, many of whom I call friends.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I am flashing like tinsel

I mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life – that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive, and hungry.  I could call it a longing for home and not be far wrong.  Or I could call it a longing for whatever supersedes, if it cannot pass through, understanding.  Other words that come to mind: faith, grace, rest.  In my outward appearance and life habits I hardly change … But at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel.

– Mary Oliver (Long Life)

Random Oscar Thoughts: pink, chemistry, and dreaming crazier

I love pink.  I loved all the pink on the red carpet.  My favorite dresses were pink: Gemma Chan and Julia Roberts.

I loved A Star is Born.  I love the music.  I love Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s performances.  I think they look at each other like they are in love.  Nowhere was that more apparent than in their duet on Sunday night.   The end of the song, when they were sitting next to each other on the piano bench, has gotten all the attention.  But it was the beginning of the song, when he was singing and looking at her across the piano, that most struck me.  Yowzers.

It was an ad that I loved most of all, though.  Nike’s Dream Crazier ad made me cry.  Run your own race, and don’t stop for anything.  This also resonates with Lady Gaga’s acceptance speech which I loved: don’t stop fighting.  It’s not how often you get knocked down that matters.  It’s only how much you get up that does.  Cliched, and true.

let us dance

We did not ask for this room or this music. We were invited in. Therefore, because the dark surrounds us, let us turn our faces to the light. Let us endure hardship to be grateful for plenty. We have been given pain to be astounded by joy. We have been given life to deny death. We did not ask for this room or this music. But because we are here, let us dance.

~ Stephen King

Yet another beautiful quote I found on First Sip.