The reason you are here on earth

“Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.  You have to love.  You have to feel.  It is the reason you are here on earth.  You are here to risk your heart.  You are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

– Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

(I’m an enormous Erdrich fan – this blog is named for a quotation from The Bingo Palace.  I’d read these lines before, and underlined them, and cried over them, and shared them.  But I read them last week on Ananda, and was reminded of them at just the right moment.)

Cleanse

I did a one-week “cleanse” in July and am finishing, this weekend, a one-month version.  Personally I think “cleanse” has become one of those words, like “cultural fit” (in my work life), which is so commonly used, in so many different contexts, as to be almost entirely devoid of meaning.  So let me be more specific.

I worked with Katie Den Ouden of Rooted Wellbeing, who I recommend whole-heartedly and entirely.  For a month I eliminated all dairy, gluten, sugar, soy, meat, alcohol, corn …  I did not, in the end, eliminate caffeine entirely though I reduced it significantly.  Shocking myself, I only cheated once or twice in the whole month period.  I really didn’t want to.  Katie provides detailed recipes – most of which I found delicious – and a lot of support.  I’ve had some complications this month that have nothing to do with the cleanse diet, and Katie was right there to help me think through them, suggest options, and make me feel basically not-alone in this endeavor.

Some changes have been really, really easy for me.  For example, shifting from drinking two venti skim lattes in the morning to one cup of brewed coffee with rice milk and a tiny splash of agave.  So easy.  And a big money saver too!  I don’t miss dairy or gluten anywhere near as much as I thought I would.  I don’t miss meat at all; I have not craved it one single time in a month.  I do miss sugar, and one of my “cheats” was when I had a bunch of M&Ms at Grace’s birthday party.  But you know what?  They didn’t taste that great, and I felt lousy that night.  So, the next morning, back on track.

I start my day with water with lemon in it, take probiotics, and don’t eat breakfast until I’m hungry (another Katie philosophy that I love, after years of having breakfast forced on me by any advice I ever read).  Breakfast is almost always a green smoothie, with flax seed and chia seeds in it.  Delicious.  And I have a whole serving of greens without even noticing it.  You remember, perhaps, how Whit does not eat fruit or vegetables of any kind.  The kid won’t eat raisins, or apple sauce, or buttered corn on the cob, or carrots with ranch.  Not any of the childhood standards.  Yet you know what he simply adores?  Kale chips.  Yes.  He can’t get enough.  All four of us have developed an addiction to them.

For almost a year now Grace has actively wanted to be a vegetarian.  I occasionally press her to have a bite or two of hamburger, worrying about her protein consumption, but in general I haven’t been very heavy-handed on the issue.  She was an enthusiastic supporter of almost everything I cooked all month, and has embraced lentils, beans, and chickpeas as part of her diet.  That has been one aspect of the cleanse I had not thought much about: it makes me cook a lot.  But I like cooking, so it’s not a problem, though occasionally finding the time has been a challenge.

And the results?  Well, I feel really good.  I sleep better (though I’m still having caffeine, I’m having much less, and I suspect the sugar and alcohol elimination has contributed significantly here) and my eczema has entirely cleared up.  Several people have commented that my facial skin looks good.  On the whole I feel much more comfortable digestion-wise than I have in a long time, and a general sense of malaise that had descended over me in recent years lifted.  I didn’t start the cleanse to lose weight, and I never weigh myself, so I don’t know if I have, though there hasn’t been any noticeable change (this is always peoples’ first question).  I haven’t gotten sick yet this fall, and am hopeful that this way of eating will improve my beaten-down and beleaguered immune system.  I know I wrote about being tired, and of feeling quiet and inward, but that was about an injury I sustained and my general state of mind, not about my health from the cleanse.

As I near the end of this experience I feel, more than anything, reminded that what we eat really, really matters.  I have been careless about this before and am grateful for the reminder.  I am committed to incorporating many of these changes on an ongoing basis.  I am deeply thankful to Katie for all of her help, support, and inspiration.  I highly recommend her services to anyone who wants to remember the power of what we eat, and wants to reconnect with the sense of well-being that should be a part of our lives.

Nine

Dear Grace,

Today you are nine.  I realize I’m an enormous, pathetic cliche, but: how?  How did this happen?  The day you were born – in a downpour more torrential than any I’ve seen since – was moments ago.  And yet somehow in those minutes we have crammed nine years of living.  In the last few months I’ve seen you begin to cross over an invisible threshold.  You have grown taller and simultaneously more self-assured and insecure.  I can see your teenager-hood glinting on the horizon, for the first time, and I sense in you both the desire to bolt towards that faint light and the lingering wish that you could curl up in my lap forever.

One of my greatest joys as a mother is that you love reading as much as I do.  My very favorite afternoons are the ones that we both climb into my bed and read, side by side.  You’re devouring some of the books I remember most fondly from my childhood, lately: A Wrinkle in Time, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, Tuck Everlasting, Little Women.  You also love to write; you write in a journal, you write letters, and you write stories.  Your first story was called Flying Sam, and it made nice use of magical realism.  You love school in general, and despite how much you like reading and writing, you tell me that your favorite subjects are Math and Computers.   That your Math teacher was my third grade homeroom teacher (the grade you’re now in) is just one example of the many ways the past and the present collide, throwing off glittering sparks that sometimes blur my vision.

You are playing on our town’s travel soccer team this fall, and I’m so proud of how you have embraced your team.  Historically you’ve been reluctant to participate in organized competitive sports (your lack of competitiveness here is something your father blames me for) but once you started with this team you really fell in love.  The girls on your team are from all over our town, from different schools, cultural backgrounds, and families, and you’ve found a place you feel very comfortable.  I how happy you are to be a part of a team and of a group who is more diverse than your school.  It’s also clear that you are listening to your coach and actively trying to improve your skills, an effort that makes me very proud.

There’s a core of sensitivity running through you that is surely your direct inheritance from me.  I am sorry about that, Gracie, and genuinely wish I could ease that burden.  I know I can’t, though, so instead I vow that I’ll keep reminding you of all the light, of all the joy, of all the ways that things that wound you are often not intended that way.  I’ll also sit with you when you feel “just sad,” make sure you know that the happiness will return, and tell you it’s okay to feel whatever you feel.  That’s all I can do.  I wish there was more.

You’ve begun to oscillate wildly between wanting me to leave you at the corner so you can walk alone, rolling your eyes and telling me I embarrass you, and still wanting me to carry you to bed sometimes.  I anticipate that this oscillation will grow in both amplitude and frequency in the next few years.  I try to be grateful that you still want me to listen to every single little thing, that you still cry out for me to watch your every move; I know that these days are numbered.

I know, primarily from being a daughter myself but also from academic study, that this back-and-forth is in service of something both essential and painful: separation.  You will, over the next nine years (you are halfway to eighteen!  to college!  oh … unbelievable) draw away from me in fundamental ways, gathering yourself into a Self that is independent and self-determined.  I don’t have to enjoy this process to know how vitally important it is.  Dropping you off at sleep-away camp this summer was one important step in that direction.  You cried saying goodbye to us, but I knew you would enjoy yourself and you did.  And you came home wearing a light mantle of confidence that I am delighted to see rippling about your shoulders.  You can and you will, my Gracie girl.

Happy ninth birthday.  As is our tradition, I’ll pick you up at school and take you on a special mother-daughter outing to a bookstore.  We will cross the street holding hands, you will pick out a pile of books, and we will have hot chocolate together.  Then we’ll have dinner at home and a black-and-white cake that I made for you from scratch (one of my favorite of your many quirks is that you dislike, and disdain, “store bought” cake, preferring those humbler treats made in my kitchen).  You’ll blow out candles and open a few presents – my commitment to anti-materialism continues, much to your chagrin.  Then we’ll go to bed like a regular night, with prayers and backrubs and hugs, and when I close the door you will have lived the first day of your tenth year.

I could never have dreamed what lay ahead of us, Grace, on that day nine years ago when I pulled you up onto my stomach myself after a long, brutal labor.  The pouring rain seemed to foretell, in retrospect, the ocean of tears that you and I would both cry in those first few months.  But as we all know, after rain like that you get rainbows.  And we have.  So, so many.  Thank you for reminding me to look at them.

I love you, Grace, my grace.

The most mysterious aspect of being alive

Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we’re going to die.  The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that — and poetry knows that.

I read these sentences, from Terry Gross, on Beth Kephart’s beautiful blog last week and I simultaneously gasped and welled up with tears.  As I wrote in Beth’s comments, the lines reminded me of a Stanley Kunitz quote I shared over the summer:

“Years ago I came to the realization that the most poignant of all lyric tensions stems from the awareness that we are living and dying at once. To embrace such knowledge and yet to remain compassionate and whole – that is the consummation of the endeavor of art.”

I write incessantly about the same thing here: about the passage of time, about the deep way that unavoidable truth gouges into my spirit, about the tears that surprise me with their frequency and power, about the surpassing joy that exists in the tiniest moments of my life.  Isn’t this all simply a less articulately-conveyed description of the very lyric tension Kunitz describes, of what Terry Gross avers that poetry knows?

Perhaps my inclination towards melancholy and my exquisite sensitivity to the clock’s forward tick is inextricably linked to my passionate love of poetry.  Maybe all of these things – traits, preferences, leanings – are manifestations of the same central seam of meaning that runs through the human experience.  Maybe the shadow that flickers across everyone’s life is universal, and it’s just that I’m particularly sensitive to it.  Wouldn’t be the first time.

As you know I am often frustrated with myself for what feels like an endless circling of the same question, like I’m turning over a stone incessantly, hoping that somehow I’ll eventually uncover some message etched into its surface.  Several people have commented that instead of a circle, maybe it’s a spiral; a continued revisiting of the same themes, but with new understanding with each trip around.

The image that recurs for me is of the exhibit at the science museum that was the first thing to hold my attention when I visited as a child with my father.  It’s the one where a black ball makes circles around a gradually sloped surface, tighter and tighter circles, drawn inexorably towards the hole in the middle, into which it finally drops.  I believe the exhibit is a display of centrifugal force.  It’s that circling black ball that I think about, over and over: I’m drawn in a way I can neither understand nor particularly name, in a spiral that grows ever tighter, to a black hole in the center of my life.  And that black hole, I realize, when I read Terry Gross’s words, and Stanley Kunitz’s, is perhaps at the center of all of our lives.

The challenge, for me, is to incorporate my understanding of this most mysterious aspect of life into my experience without being utterly paralyzed by it.  The question is how to find peace despite this yawning abyss.  Is it possible, though, that life is full of grandeur, beauty, and blinding pain not despite but because of this black hole?

These are the years they will remember

Most mornings, I walk Grace and Whit into their respective school buildings.  Occasionally, if I have to make it to an early meeting or something, I do “live drop off” instead, letting them hop out of the car while I idle at the curb.  For some reason this always brings tears to my eyes.  There’s something about their backpacks bobbing away from me, their independence, their resolve, their enthusiasm for school – all of it mixes up into a cocktail that brings tears to my eyes as surely as onions on the chopping board or Circle Game on the radio.

The other morning was no different.  I drove away, blinking back my tears, and suddenly I thought: these are the years they will remember as their childhood.  We had driven to school all belting out Edge of Glory together, and then we had sat in the car near school singing along until the song ended.  I looked in the rear view mirror to catch them grinning at each other, overwhelmed again with the realization that tiny things can bring sheer joy for them.

I remember when Grace turned four thinking: okay, this really matters now.  That is because my own memories of childhood begin when I am about four.  I actually don’t have that many memories of my childhood, and those I do exist in a slippery kind of way: am I remembering the actual event, or the picture I’ve seen so many times of the event?  I wonder if part of why I write things down so insistently now is to address this very fact, this inability to remember when I so desperately wish I could.

My flashes of memory, as limited as they are, begin in the second apartment we lived in in Paris.  I was four-ish.  So, my assumption was that Grace and Whit would start remembering things from the same general time period.  Certainly, they will remember these days.  The power of the most mundane moments and experiences – something I’ve long believed fiercely in – was probably particularly on my mind after reading The Long Goodbye last week.  For sure, O’Rourke’s memoir had me thinking particularly of the memories of our mothers that endure.

And so I drove into Boston, my eyes still blurry with tears, watching the outrageously beautiful trees that line the Charles, the river that throbs through the heart of my home, wondering what it is that Grace and Whit will remember of these days.  We are “deep in the happy hours,” as Glenda Burgess put it in her stunning memoir The Geography of Love, and one thing I’m certain of is that it will be the small moments that most sturdily abide.  Will they remember the notice things walks, the trips to the tower at Mount Auburn, trapeze school, and chocolate cake for breakfast?  Will they remember the hundreds of nights that I read to them, tucked them in, administered the sweet dreams head rub, did the ghostie dance, turned on their familiar lullabies?  Will they remember Christmas, and Easter, and Thanksgiving, and their birthdays?

I have no idea what specific events and experiences will be the ones that rise up for my children, out of the dust of the years, some surprising, some familiar.  I could easily drive myself insane trying to make sure every single day is stuffed with memories.  But I choose not to do that, because, as I’ve written before, the memories that I come back to, rubbing them over in my mind like a hand worrying a smooth stone in my pocket, are almost all from days and moments that were utterly unremarkable, unmemorable, as I lived them.  I assume this will also be true for Grace and Whit.  So I suppose all I can do is try to be here, paying attention, to the vast expanse of ordinary days we swim in.  And to remember, every single day, what an immense privilege each one is.