Month: April 2015

A weekend with Whit, and vertigo

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Whit turned ten in January, but we finally celebrated his birthday with a party (ish) on Saturday.  His best friend slept over on Friday night and we went indoor skydiving and surfing on Saturday at Sky Venture in Nashua, New Hampshire.  The boys had a blast.  The photos and video I have of Whit’s face in the skydiving chamber are priceless.

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After skydiving they went surfing.  This was really fun too.  I thought about the surfing camp I went to, in 2000, right before graduating from business school.  I found surfing really difficult.  Nevertheless, they were undaunted and unafraid.

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On Sunday, Whit’s baseball team had their first scrimmage.  For the first time in his life, he pitched.  I watched him on the mound and tears pricked at my eyes.  He has a long way to go but I’m proud of him for standing there alone, for trying, for opening himself up to failure like that.  It’s a lot of pressure, pitching.  I have a new respect for everyone who has taken the mound, whether in the World Series playoffs or on a Little League field.

Monday morning I woke up out of breath, the room spinning around me.  This has never happened to me before.  I had felt a bit off for days, truth be told: vaguely dizzy and just plain strange.  The best way I can describe how I felt last week is as though I was floating above myself, but not entirely inside my own body.  Monday I knew why.  I couldn’t stand up without falling over and the room kept spinning.  Thankfully Matt was able to stay home with me Monday and took me to the doctor who did some basic neuro tests and confirmed that this seems to be a garden variety episode of vertigo.

I’m writing on Tuesday morning and I still feel terrible.  Perhaps slightly improved over yesterday (I am sitting at my desk, but my head is hurting and spinning at the same time) but definitely not okay.  I still don’t want to drive.  I really just want to lie down.  There’s a limit to how long I can put my day job on hold.  I’m trying to accept the very loud message from the universe that I don’t control it – or anything.  This is both unpleasant and scary though, if I’m honest.

I keep thinking about Whit leaning forward into a tunnel of air or stepping onto a surfboard or the pitching mound.  I need some of his courage now.

Note: I was not compensated by Sky Venture for this post in any way.  This is just my personal experience.

Narrowing

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I loved Shauna Niequist’s post, Narrowing.  I read it several times, and relate to so much of what she says.  Well, other than the fact that she’s clearly a spring chicken still in her thirties!  But, seriously:

There’s a narrowing that takes place as you grow up, I think—you leave more and more behind: things other people want you to be, things you thought you might want to be, ways of living that never did actually fit, like shoes that are a little too tight.

Yes. Oh, yes. The letting go of what others wanted me to be resonates, but so, frankly, does the notion of letting go of who I thought I wanted to be.  I’ve had an on-and-off dialog with a dear friend from college about the concept of a Big Life, and of how, ultimately, that doesn’t really sound appealing to me.  What I want, I know now, is a small life, but one rich and deep and full of love.  A narrow life, I think is what I mean.

Not narrow as in narrow-minded.  Not at all.  More like a narrow passage I squeeze through and then, on the other side, I see a yawning chasm full of a beauty so sparkling it almost takes my breath away.  I’m reminded of something I wrote many years ago, about how I kept seeing glitter on the insides of my eyelids, about how when I narrowed my life I actually opened up passageways to a joy so expansive I could never have imagined it.

I wrote that I had glimpsed a planetarium sky that I want to study, to watch, to learn by heart almost four years ago and it’s only getting more true.  Now that I’ve crossed the bright line into my forties, I find the narrowing continues.  My oft-ferocious attachment to those things I love most can come across sometimes as rigid, I’ve been made aware of that and I can honestly see why.  That’s not my intention, at all, but I agree I can be nearly maniacal about protecting the things that matter the most to me.  I don’t want Grace and Whit to ever doubt that they and their father are the most important people in my life.  I want them to know that for me, time spent the four of us is nothing short of holy.  I need to sleep enough and get fresh air and I want to do a little bit of writing around the edges of my very full time job.  There’ s not a lot of me left after those things have been taken care of.  In fact there’s often not enough of me simply to give what I want to to those few (but large, and deep) buckets!

But there’s another reason that I can’t back away from the narrowing of my life, and it is something else Niequist refers to.  She mentions that she’s particularly permeable during writing times.  Candidly, that’s how I feel all of the time, and increasingly strongly.  I have written many times about my porous nature. What I let into the space around me – the sounds, books, feelings, and people – has a huge impact on me.

Now that I have seen the vast chasm that opens up once I narrowed my life – the geode lined with hidden glittering that Catherine Newman refers to – I can’t look away.

… I could feel it being painted within me

THIS MUCH I DO REMEMBER

It was after dinner.
You were talking to me across the table
about something or other,
a greyhound you had seen that day
or a song you liked,

and I was looking past you
over your bare shoulder
at the three oranges lying
on the kitchen counter
next to the small electric bean grinder,
which was also orange,
and the orange and white cruets for vinegar and oil.

Alll of which converged
into a random still life,
so fastened together by the hasp of color,
and so fixed behind the animated
foreground of your
talking and smiling,
gesturing and pouring wine,
and the camber of you shoulders

that I could feel it being painted within me,
brushed on the wall of my skull,
while the tone of your voice
lifted and fell in its flight,
and the three oranges
remained fixed on the counter
the way that stars are said
to be fixed in the universe.

Then all of the moments of the past
began to line up behind that moment
and all of the moments to come
assembled in front of it in a long row,
giving me reason to believe
that this was a moment I had rescued
from millions that rush out of sight
into a darkness behind the eyes.

Even after I have forgotten what year it is,
my middle name,
and the meaning of money,
I will still carry in my pocket
the small coin of that moment,
minted in the kingdom
that we pace through every day.

– Billy Collins

This is our story

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Last week was the 6th grade musical.  The play was Shrek and Grace was the donkey (there were several).  She’s been going to rehearsal a lot and I’ve had to run to Target to buy her a black tee shirt and then a black tank top, but on the whole I had very little visibility into the play.  We never practiced her lines.  We never practiced her songs.  We never practiced her dances.  I had definitely been very hands off when it came to her experience with Shrek.  So I was excited to see her perform last week.  It was absolutely marvelous.  Grace blew me away with her confidence and her humor – she was funny and she sang well and demonstrated a fair amount of swagger on stage.  It was great. I was proud and happy for her.  These reactions did not surprise me.

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What I was not expecting, though, was the swell of intense emotion, nostalgia, and joy when the entire cast sang the musical’s last song, This is Our Story.

We are witches, we are fairies
We are weirdos, I’m an Aries
We’re a giant different sampler here to try
We are puppets, we are rabbits
We are hobbits with bad habits
We’re a screwy but delighted crazy stew

We are different and united
We are us and we are you
This is our story, this is our story
This is our story

There was such tremendous power in watching these 55 children, many of whom have been in the same class since they were 4 years old, sing these words that I so loved.  .  Grace is twelve and a half, well on her way into the woods of adolescence, and there is much about life right now that doesn’t feel simple to her (or to me).  There are emotional and social and intellectual tangles aplenty at school.  But last week, as I watched children who I’ve known since they were nearly toddlers sing their hearts out, all of that was forgotten. Instead there was palpable joy and a tangible sense of triumph. They took it seriously, and they worked hard, and nobody was flip or blase.  They threw themselves into the performance, and I loved witnessing their enthusiasm, their commitment, and their energy.  I laughed and laughed, which I’d anticipated, but it was the throat-tightening rise of tears that took me by surprise.

This is their story indeed, and it’s my honor and privilege to be watching from a front row seat.

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Two years ago

it feels impossible not to acknowledge today, the marathon, the memory of two years ago.  I wrote this then and the picture gives me goosebumps.  Grace looked big then but of course now she’s two years taller and older.  At the last visit to the doctor, 5’1″.  And she runs more now – in fact my essay about Eleven for This is Adolescence revolved around the metaphor that cross-country has become (to me) for parenting.  Incidentally, it was a thrill to see that essay in Brain, Child’s newest issue.

But today is equal parts solemn and celebratory, with shadows of two years ago hanging heavily over a day filled with achievement for so many.  I have several friends running today, and I bow down to their commitment.  They are an inspiration to me, plain and simple.  So is my town, for the way we came together in the wake of a terrible experience two years ago.

City of my Heart

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On Sunday, the day before Patriot’s Day and the Boston marathon, Grace ran her first road race.  On the marathon course.  I was in New York for work, so I missed it, but I was sent this fantastic picture.  My heart swelled with both pride and shock, because really, how can my baby be that old?  That tall?

On Monday, Patriot’s Day, as you know, there was an explosion at the Boston marathon.  That tall, lanky girl, for whom I think the word coltish may have been coined, dissolved into a puddle of anxiety.  I told both she and Whit what had happened the minute I heard (they were home from school, sitting in the room next to my office), mostly because I was so startled by the news.  She hovered around my office all afternoon, lurking, asking constant questions, reading over my shoulder.

Right before the explosions, we had been talking about groups of people from the Marines (or Army, I admit I don’t know) who ran the course in their uniforms with backpacks.  Grace’s first reaction to the events, and to the few pictures she saw of the devastation (before I turned the TV off), was: “But those poor people just came home from war, where they saw this all the time.  They weren’t supposed to see it at home.”

Indeed, they weren’t.

I spent the afternoon toggling between bewilderment at this world that we live in, trying to understand what feels like a relentless wave of violence, and hugely heartened by it, as I received more texts and emails than I can count from people from all corners of my life (and the world) checking that we were okay.

But most of all, this: the city of my heart, my home, is bleeding and broken, under attack.

On our day of celebration, which starts at dawn with reenactments of the battles of Lexington and Concord and ends with the last runners limping across the finish line long after the sun has gone down.  Our day of inspiration and striving, of humanity at its finest: I am always moved equally by the runners who push themselves past all reason and by the spectators who come out to watch the river of dedication and devotion.  Marathon Monday is a pure celebration of our beating hearts and of our feet walking on this earth.  This day, this Patriot’s Day, our day, is now forever marked by explosions, lost limbs, dead children (my GOD – an eight year old – Whit is eight – how is this possible?), senseless death and hurt.

I hate that it happened on our day, on Patriot’s Day, on Marathon day.  I hate that this happened at all.

I ache for my city, the city I was born in, the city I’ve lived in since I graduated from college, the city I love, my home.

I know that many other cities in our country have been visited by tremendous pain and brutality over the last several years.  I feel a sense of “it’s our turn,” followed immediately by outrage that I could ever say that. What world do we live in where that’s the deal?

This piece was originally written and posted two years ago.