Month: March 2013

Proud

tryouts

I have said before, and I will say again, that demonstrations of independence, bravery, and kindness by my children make me prouder than conventional achievement.  Recently I have had an opportunity to see Whit in particular wade into these waters past where he is comfortable.  It has been both nerve-wracking and fabulous to watch him swim.

A few weekends ago, I took Whit to baseball tryouts.  Little league tryouts.  I live in a famously liberal town.  Whit has never played baseball before in his life.  Never.  Both of us were entirely, absolutely unprepared for what we encountered in that school gym.  The boys had numbers pinned to their backs and went through their paces, one a time.  Sprinting.  Catching.  Throwing.  Batting.  All while a lineup of adult men – the coaches of the various teams – watched, scribbling notes on clipboards as they did so.  I looked around, bewildered, wondering if I’d mistakenly stumbled into spring training.

As Whit stood in line to do his timed sprint, the first of the various drills, I caught his eye across the gym.  He looked somewhere between terrified and mortified.  My stomach twisted.  For an hour and a half I watched him in the various activities, feeling relief and anxiety rise and fall like tides inside of me.

There was no complaining, there was no posturing, there was no giving up.  He just found himself in an unfamiliar and intimidating situation, put his head down, and did his best.

Tryouts reminded me of this fall, when, after an uncomfortable encounter with our head of school, Whit walked into the gate the next morning, looked her in the eye, and said, “Good morning.”  He did it again the next day.  And the next.  And each morning, walking next to him, I was pierced with both powerful pride and an intense awareness of how much that eye contact and “good morning” took from him.  And for many days I told him how I felt when I tucked him in.  He looked at me, eyes gleaming in the dim light of his room, and I could tell that he felt acknowledged.  That he felt seen.

These experiences remind me of some of my dearest wishes for my son:

May he always look life in the eye and not flinch.  May he always welcome what is to come with open arms.  May he know that to do the best he can is all there is.  May he not shy away from trying, even when he doesn’t know if he will succeed.

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Photo Wednesday 38

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Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

Arlington National Cemetery

Proust Questionnaire

I love minutiae.  I’ve answered the Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire before, but that was two years ago.   I love it and wanted to do it again.  Clearly some answers will never change, while others fluctuate with the years of our lives.  I would love to hear any and all of your answers!

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Insomnia.

Where would you like to live?
Right where I am.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Kissing my children’s sleeping faces before I go to bed.  Being in my bed with a book at 8pm.  A cold glass of wine with ice in it on the porch of my parents’ summer home.  My annual weekend with my college friends.  The feeling when I come home after a long, good run in the rain or snow.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
The faults of people who doubt themselves, who stumble as they try to find their truth path, who have lost track of what they really want because the world’s input and affirmation is too loud.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Dumbledore.  He will always be number one.  Also, the Velveteen Rabbit, many of Raymond Carver’s stoic, hardworking heroes, Phineas in A Separate Peace, Harry Potter, and the butler in The Remains of the Day.

Who are your favorite characters in history?
Joan of Arc, Georgia O’Keeffe, June Carter Cash.

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Ina May Gaskin, Oprah, Anne Lamott.

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Hermione (Harry Potter), Mamah Cheney (Loving Frank), Charity Lang (Crossing to Safety), Lyra (His Dark Materials), Eve (Paradise Lost), Mrs Ramsay (To the Lighthouse), Irina (Three Sisters).

Your favorite painter?
Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe.

Your favorite musician?
James Taylor.

The qualities you most admire in a man?
Humor, calm, intelligence, and the difficult-to-define, difficult-to-find ability to make me feel safe.

The qualities you most admire in a woman?
Not taking herself too seriously, but not being flip either.  Willingness to say what she believes.  Ability to make her life reflect her true values.  Resilience.

Your favorite virtue?
Patience.  Positivity.  Constancy.

Your favorite occupation?
I am pretty sure I’ll never be able to pick just one.

Who would you have liked to be?
Someone more centered, more confident, more clear.

Multitasking

I used to so frequently parallel process and multitask that I actually didn’t know how to sit still or to do just one thing at a time.  I played Tetris during conference calls, needlepointed while watching a movie on demand, tapped out work emails while at the park with my children.  It wasn’t a deliberate behavior as much as it was my instinct.  I think I just kept moving, all the time, because that’s all I had ever done.  I was always in a rush to get to the next stop on the map.  Until I vaulted over the edge of that map, and realized I needed to start navigating by the stars.

That’s approximately when I started slowing down.

I’m sure it’s not coincidence that I now find many kinds of multitasking unbearably difficult.  This is most of all true when people talk to me while I’m engaged in something else, whether that is writing, reading, or listening to someone else.  It literally frays me to have my attention split like that.  I truly cannot stand it, and my poor children, who are frequently on the receiving end of a finger held up to say just one minute, can attest to this.

I sometimes feel like one of those many-armed Indian goddesses, and I need to sit down, take a breath, and remind myself: first things first.  One thing at a time.  Certainly part of this is a conscious effort I started making several years ago to be here now.  After all, my real life has already begun and I do not want to miss a moment of it.

But this feels like more than just my deliberate effort to be conscious of my experience.  When I’m interrupted when trying to write something, or when I try to do too many things at once, I sometimes feel like I’m going to leap out of my skin.  I feel a surge of sudden, overwhelming discomfort that verges on pain.  If I’m driving and don’t know where I’m going, for example, God help the person who turns on the radio: I will yelp and demand that you turn it off.  I need quiet to do a lot of things these days: not just navigate but read, write, think.

I still check my phone more than I should.  And I still sometimes play some quiet Tetris while listening to a call.  But on the whole my distracted, two-things-a-time behavior has gone way down.  And my irritation at being interrupted when I’m engaged in something has gone way up.  When I actually think about it, the change in how I inhabit the world is seismic.

Is this a symptom of old age and diminishing mental powers?  Or is it my slow turning towards genuine engagement in my own experience?  I can’t tell if it’s ironic or absolutely logical that this decreasing ability to parallel process coincides with my being busier than I have ever been.  It’s inconvenient timing, for sure, but perhaps it makes total sense.  I don’t know that there’s insight in the recognition that multi-tasking takes away from our ability to focus, but I do know that my own life, my own mind and heart, are giving me very real messages that I must more often do just one thing at a time.  I’ve tasted what life is like when I’m paying attention, and I am no longer willing to live any other way.