I’ve written almost incessantly about my particular struggle to live in the present, about the way my near-constant preoccupation with both yesterday and tomorrow quite often entirely obscures today. On Saturday morning I felt a simultaneous impatience for fall to arrive and a desperate sorrow that summer was ending, and the moment perfectly captured all of this agita: push-pull, hurry-slow, there-here.

There are lots of reasons that I’m this way. I’m just wired that way, sure. I’m sensitive and I cling and I fear farewells and abandonment and things cut me deeply even when they are not about me.

I recently decided, too, a connection might exist between when I was born and my difficulty with living now: I think my late-summer birthday may contribute to my sense of myself as liminal, to the automatic way that I lean forward or back, turn the page sooner than I need to, generally feel frantically unable to just be here now.

I think my childhood of hopscotching across the Atlantic may also be part of this: I was always in constant motion, always either anticipating a goodbye or getting over one.

But something hit me hard this morning. This is true Captain Obvious territory, I realize that even as I write it, but it was insight to me. I was at my parents’ house in Marion, which represents summer to me, sitting still for a moment, windows open. I listened to the cicadas outside (which always remind me of summer nights spent at my father’s parents’ house in Long Island, lying in a narrow twin bed at 90 degrees to Hilary’s, summer wafting in through the screens). I watched the light flicker on the trees and thought of Lacy, whose hair is like mine and of whom the turning-to-fall light always reminds me, and suddenly it occurred to me why it is that I’m so impatient, so forward-focused, so quick to dwell in the past.

It is often simply too painful for me look this moment in the eye. Doing so requires me to accept the loss inherent in every minute of my life. To recognize the red leaf in the green grass is to really live with the fact that summer turns to fall, that life cranks forward and I walk closer and closer to the end of it every day.

Suddenly, this morning, I understood. I’m hurrying into the future and hiding in the past to avoid staring into the sun of my life. To escape the reality that every minute is gone as I live it. To pretend that it’s not true that I can never have any of those moments back, ever. My life’s single most painful truth is the slow turning forward of my time on earth and the inherent loss that that represents.

It hurts to stare into the sun. I blink and my eyes water and sting. But that’s not a reason to hide. I know that in my head, and even in my heart. Making it so is harder, though. The impermanence of this life is truly heartbreaking to me. Every single day contains goodbyes and I find fact the of that nothing less than brutal.

But what is my option? I will be a lucky woman if I have another 36 years ahead of me. May I not squander them in the same fear that so eroded many of the first 36.

When I’m at home I almost always run the same loop.  A creature of habit through and through, I am.  The route takes me past the used bookstore that I used to go to as a kid with my sister and father, past a kid-friendly restaurant where I ate when both of my children were small, and past a front porch festooned with prayer flags.

It’s those prayer flags that are on my mind today.  They are tattered from from being whipped around by the wind, bleached out from the sun and rain.  Yet every day they recommit to the same task, snapping around according to the wind’s whimsy.  Even with their faded, worn-out fabric they continue to transmit their hopes, their prayers, to the world.

I feel similarly buffeted by the wind, likewise faded from the elements.  It’s been, as I’ve written, a summer full of wind and sunshine, memories and joyful moments, but also one that has bruised my heart and made me feel tired in a bone-deep way.  The reasons are personal and I’m aware of and sorry for being a broken record.

Still, the prayer flags snap away as their edges fray and their colors fade.  I’m not sure I have the same conviction about my prayers and hopes as do those small squares of colorful fabric, though I wish I did.   I picture them in my mind’s eye, take a deep breath, try to inflate my exhausted heart, and steel myself for more winds ahead.  May I keep waving.

Matt has had a lovely assistant, M, for four years. I’ve spoken to her thousands of times (at least) on the phone, and I finally met her a couple of weeks ago at the firm’s summer event in Chatham. She was friendly and warm, her voice familiar even though her face was new.

M died last night. She was 39 and left two children in their early teens. It was entirely unexpected.

I feel sad today, for her, for her family, for the abrupt loss of someone who had so much ahead of her. I feel as though something chilly has brushed past me in the dark, something I can’t see but something I can feel. Yesterday, I spoke to her. Today, she is gone. Where? My mind still struggles with this truth, which is maddeningly abstract and painfully concrete at the same time.

I also feel keenly, shiveringly aware of how close we all tread to the line of our worst nightmares every single day. The yawning terror of what might be, of that we most dread, exists just off to the side of our lives, and though we skirt it and forget it it still threatens. We live on the precipice, walk on a tightrope, exist in a world where the boundary between normal and tragedy is far more gossamer and fragile than we ever let ourselves imagine.

Death has actually been on my mind since my Aunt E’s funeral, actually, and since a dear friend lost his mother unexpectedly in July. As I sat in the pew at my aunt’s memorial service, I thought about how there are many more funerals ahead of me than behind me. And when my friend’s mother died I had an eerie sense of what is to come as the generations fold and my peers and I take our place at the head of the line. Both of these thoughts give me goosebumps, and not in a good way.

I’m sorry for this not-at-all-upbeat post. It seems incongruous, as I sit here on vacation, waiting to pick my boisterous, tired, and sunburned children up from the bus that bears them back from summer camp. But that is the point, I guess: to remember, always, how sheer the veil is between this life and another, between good news and terrible, between just another regular day and the day it all grinds to a halt.

There’s only one way to honor those who have stepped through this veil, one way to turn this tragic reality that flickers at the edges of our experience: to use the awareness of what might be, and of the proximity of the chasm, to heighten our awareness and celebration of the days that we remain safe. To remember, always, those trite sayings that are also so achingly true: today is all we have. Seize it. Take nothing for granted.

I’ll be hugging these two extra hard when they get off the bus today.

I was at BlogHer this past weekend. Honestly, the weekend was kind of underwhelming, but I don’t want to go into that here. What is on my mind is the reaction that several of the people I was most excited to meet had to me. I’ve heard more than once since the weekend that people were disappointed in me and that I didn’t seem to be the “same person” as on my blog. This from people who never actually talked to me.

How did I feel this weekend? Lonely. Awkward. Intimidated. As though nobody really wanted to talk to me. Not invited to lots of various events. And then, surprised by the reaction I heard about after the fact (and sensed in the moment). Startled that anyone who reads my blog expected that I would be outgoing, confident, and self-assured in person. I feel upset at my own inability to convey how I actually feel. I can try harder, and I will, but I worry that the enormous difference between how I feel and how I seem represents some deep and fundamental lack on my part.

The thing is, my words and writing here do represent the authentic me. This is the place where I really AM open and true. So to know me here is actually to know the contents of my mind and heart. I’ve heard from more than a few acquaintances, from all phases of my life, who stumbled on this blog, and every single one noted that knowing me in passing they never knew I thought about this stuff. This is the real me, and I’m struggling to inhabit her in my day to day life. Not the other way around.

I am lost, again, in the whitewater that fills the perilous lacuna between perception and reality. I feel disheartened to have alienated people who have come to mean a lot to me in this space. And I feel frustrated by the speed with which people seem to jump to conclusions about me. Disappointed in myself for a few assumptions I made, too.

We should not presume to walk the terrain of the hearts of others without guidance. We stumble on our own paths, so how can we imagine that we would be able to navigate those of others without finding surprising contours, confusing switchbacks, darkness and light that flicker and disorient us? This is true even for those we know best, and it is certainly true for those with whom we have limited interaction and small amounts of information.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to truly understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our lives to try.
– Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

I think this is easy to forget. It is easy to assume, to conclude, to extrapolate from tiny experiences and infinitessimal indicators. Let’s not. I recommit myself to remaining open, and I urge you all to do the same thing. In the meantime I promise and swear that any lack of warmth perceived this weekend was about my own insecurity and awkwardness and nothing else, but I am still sorry if I caused any hurt.

I love Kelly Rae Roberts’s post on being mothered, mothering, and becoming who we are meant to be. She writes beautifully about her own journey towards motherhood, the heartfelt progress of which I’ve enjoyed following. But the part that I’ve been thinking today is her reflection that ” i am mothered by so many people and friends in my life and that i soak in these moments as my favorite moments.” She writes about how she can’t get enough nurturing and mothering lately and that she is trying to “be present for these offerings” rather than dismissing them, as she might have in the past.

Kelly’s words summon two strong feelings for me: a familiar and tinged-with-sadness awareness that I feel a similar need for support now, and a deep gratitude for the people in my life who have provided the nurturing friendship she describes.

I relate intensely to Kelly’s description of a heightened sense of wanting to be taken care of. What I don’t understand is why.

I’ve been focusing this summer on my mothering, trying to be as engaged as I can be with my children. I’ve been trying to offer them special experiences some of which I hope will become the glittering gems of memory that stud our recollection of certain times in our lives (in this case, their childhoods). Despite all of this summer’s joyful adventures, though, I’m struggling. I ache to be nurtured, for the kind of gentle witness and patient holding that Kelly describes receiving from her friends on a weekend away. It’s easy to assume that I am tapped out from the effort of this active mothering, drained, but I know that interpretation is simplistic, and that the weather inside of me has a more complex source.

Some of this is just my baseline, and reflects both my persistent difficulty in receiving help and my discomfort with true vulnerability. But more than ever, I find myself feeling lonely, and un-seen, un-known, and I am unsure about the rising volume of this need. As I change and grow, are some of those sources of support I counted on the most falling away? Am I walking through a valley that I need to cross alone, before reentering a more comfortable, familiar world?

Though I am in a fallow period, on a lonely passage, I still feel tremendously thankful for the people in my life who do support and take care of me. My parents (and let me be clear that when I talk about being “mothered” I speak about that broadly, Mum, I am not speaking about you!), my sister, and some very special friends, the native speakers of whom I have spoken before. This small group of people, a handful or fewer, have made me feel not alone and not crazy more times than I can count. I am deeply grateful for their patience with me, who can be so difficult and dark.

I recognize this as a time of transition, so perhaps this sensation of chill is just that my native speakers are changing, new teachers emerging. My deep longing for nurturing likely has almost nothing to do with those people doing the supporting and everything to do with me. I am so very raw right now, for reasons both known and unknown to me, and I guess it makes sense that this is accompanied with a persistent sense of being alone. And I am acutely aware of the tremendous gifts that this rawness and sensitivity brings with it; I can feel them showering over me, even on my sad days.

In the midst of this ache for being known, which rises and falls from potent to vague, I still feel certain that I am headed in the right direction. Even in the darkest moments there is a shimmer of truth and of calm that is new. I am, I know, becoming who I am meant to be. I cling to this, and hold it close as evidence that this too will pass. It always does. “That is life’s greatest sorrow and greatest solace. It goes on.” (Mary Pipher, Seeking Peace)

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
- Sigmund Freud

Many thanks to Anthony Lawlor, from whom I found this quote on Twitter. I do believe this to be true, absolutely, though it’s so incredibly difficult to remember in the moments where the struggle seems overwhelming. The struggle which occurs for me on so many levels these days. The struggle to stop my crazy squirrel brain from frantically spinning over and over on the same questions. The struggle to remain patient and present with my lovely children who can be charming, curious, and incredibly aggravating. The struggle not to over-identify with Grace, to maintain the distance and perspective I need to parent her well. The struggle not to crush Whit’s effervescent spirit, whose enthusiastic bubbles sometimes challenge the rules and norms. The struggle to try to keep alive my professional and creative selves, as well as to have enough left over for those who need me.

“These are the day of miracle and wonder”
- Paul Simon

For some reason that lyric was in my head nonstop this weekend. My subconscious was trying to remind me of the richness of the present moment, I suspect, which can be so hard to really see.

It was a weekend with plenty of struggle as well as ample beauty. Somehow the struggle is so quick to occlude the beauty, so much more urgent and immediate, so hard to shake off. Does this make sense? It is here, on the page, and through the lens of my camera that I am more able to see the beauty. It rises more slowly, over time, asserting itself in memory rather than in the vivid moment. The beauty is in the smallest moments, infinity opening, surprising me every time, from the most infinitessimal things, like a world in the back of a wardrobe (there really are only two or three human stories, and we do go on telling them, no?). Why is it, then, that the struggles, also often small, can so quickly and utterly yank me back to the morass of misery and frustration, away from the wonders that are revealed in the flashing moments of beauty?

I wish I could change the dynamic between these two, but the beauty, fragile as it is in the moment, seems sturdier over the long arc of a life. Freud’s quote supports this, the notion that the beauty develops over time, like a print sitting in the solution for a long time, image gradually forming on the slick surface of the photo paper, slowly, haltingly hovering into being. It is, of course, the photograph that is the enduring artifact of the experience.

Yesterday Grace, Whit and I went back to Storyland. Our first visit was nothing short of magical and I wanted to experience that again. I am determined to jam this summer that I’m not working full of memories for the children. I’m anxious about what reality will look like once I go back to work, and I realize this may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. To that end, I just made plans to take them both to Legoland (yes, in San Diego, ie almost as far as you can get from Boston within the continental US) for three days in early August. I don’t know if I’m insane. After Whit melted down at Chili’s tonight I was convinced I was. But once I caught a glimpse of his angelic sleeping face in the rearview mirror, I decided again that it was a good idea. Stay tuned.

They had another marvelous day at Storyland. We left an hour earlier than planned because it started pouring. As I pulled out of the parking lot I felt a pang of real sadness, surprised by how unhappy I was that this much-anticipated visit was over. I don’t know when we will be back, if I’ll be able to just take them here on the spur of the moment next summer, or even what next week holds.

As we sat in traffic in North Conway, the kids descended into their annoying and predictable bickering. Whit snapped at Grace, “I don’t like you, Grace. Not at all.” She surprised me by saying to him, calmly, “Whit, I know you don’t mean that. I know you care a lot about me.” Conversation closed. She turned and looked out of her window, ignoring him for a while.

After a dinner pitstop at Chili’s we drove the last hour to Boston. Whit fell asleep clutching the threadbare and treasured animal that he’s taken to calling his Beloved Monkey, a name that for some reason charms me. Grace was tired but not asleep, gazing out into the evening. It was simply a beautiful night, everything soft around the edges, the world draped in the faint pink haze of sunset. “Grace?” I spoke into the quiet stillness that had settled over the car. She nodded, caught my eye in the mirror. “I thought what you said earlier about knowing Whit loves you even when he said otherwise was really smart. Try to remember that in life. People say a lot of things they don’t mean.”

“Yes. I think sometimes people say things because they are tired, and cranky, and angry.” She lapsed into silence again and my breath caught in my throat at my daughter’s wisdom. May she hold onto this particular piece of it; I know I for one could use the reminder on an almost daily basis.

The song “These Are Days” came on the radio and about halfway through I realized I was singing along under my breath.

These are days you’ll remember …
Never before or never since, I promise,
will the whole world be warm as this.

I was startled to feel tears rolling down my face. These familiar roads, this beautiful city that I love, on the horizon, wreathed in pale pink fog, these sleepy children, these days passing faster than I can bear. Yet again of the loss that limns every single minute of my life lurched up into the foreground. My heart is so full of aches and fears right now, of feelings so big they threaten to overwhelm me. No matter how determined or desperate I am to make this summer full of warmth for Grace and Whit, of memories and joy, it will end. There is nothing I can do to change that. The keening anguish of this fact is sometimes truly more than I can bear.

I noticed that the license plate on the car in front of me was BEACON. Yes. This is my beacon, there is no question: remembering that this is all I have brings me back, over and over again, to right now. I drove through the beautiful dusk, feeling again the haunting awareness of how fleeting it all is, acknowledging reluctantly the unavoidable truth that my grasping at moments just makes them run through my fingers more quickly. Following my beacon, my eyes dazzled by the deep summer blue sky smudged with faint pink and gray clouds, and light glowing from below the horizon, I drove my children home.

A couple of weeks ago, Whit had a high fever all weekend.  He was listless and not himself, he threw up a couple of times, and his fever just would not come down.  Plus for three days in a row he took 2+ hour naps in the afternoon.  As delightful as his sleeping and his unusual desire for extra cuddling was, I knew something was wrong.

On Monday we went to see our beloved Dr. Rick.  Dr. Rick who is leaving practice in the fall.  Sob.  Another farewell, another changes, another factor contributing to the earthquake.  I am very, very tired of goodbyes, endings, and changes.  Have I mentioned that?

Anyway.  Whit and I sat in the waiting room.  Well, I sat.  Whit lay down (see above).  He was quiet and subdued and altogether not himself.

“Whit, do you want me to read to you?”  (I was sitting in a third chair, by his feet)

“No.”

“Are you sure”

“Yes.”  He sighed heavily and lay there, staring into space.  I reached over with my right hand and rubbed his skinny little calves, marveling at how simultaneously tiny-thin they are and how grown-up-long.  With my left hand I read my email on my iPhone.

A few minutes later I felt him sitting up.  He curled up in the chair next to me, his legs drawn up under him, and leaned his head over onto my shoulder.  I put down my phone and turned to kiss his forehead.  Against my lips his skin felt hot.

“Whitty, are you okay, baby?”  He took in breath audibly and I pulled my face back so I could study him.  I could tell he had something on his mind.  “Whit?”

“Mummy,” he began, tentatively.  “What if the doctor can’t find anything wrong with me?”  He wouldn’t look at me, staring resolutely at the edge of the receptionist’s desk across the room.

“Why does that worry you, Whitty?”

“Well because if he finds something wrong then I’ll get better faster, right?”

“Well, maybe.”

“And if he doesn’t find something wrong maybe this is just how I will feel from now on?”

My eyes filled with tears.  Isn’t this the thing we all fear?  If we can’t name, and treat, or fix, or medicate the thing that is making us feel bad, then is it simply who we are?  I remember when the children were small being very relieved at an ear infection diagnosis, for two reasons – the first being that the antibiotics would quickly kick in, improving the screaming and up-all-night situation, and the second being that if there wasn’t an ear infection then didn’t that just mean that this cranky, yelling, ornery behavior was simply my baby’s personality?

I pulled Whit against me, cupping his bony, bird-like shoulder in my hand, squeezing him, feeling the fever radiate from his forehead and the exhaustion in his sagging body.  Of course a summer fever is not an internal demon.  Of course not.  But it did remind me of the deep human fear of that which we cannot fully understand or subdue inside us, and of the various ways this makes us act out, seek comfort, dull ourselves.  I was reminded of Where the Wild Things Are, of all the ways that we cope with the fearful demons we sometimes feel raging inside of us, and of the Jung quote that “the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

I am heavy and full right now, waterlogged with feeling, tired and a bit burned from exposure to the sun, both literal and figurative. The changes of the last month or two are settling in, making themselves at home, and the rhythm of this new reality (albeit an interlude for just this summer, which creates its own anxiety) is becoming familiar. I feel a bit out of words, but also as though there is a tide of them brimming up inside of me, the vague pressure slowly mounting. I hope I can ride this tide to somewhere that has meaning, and peace, and calm. I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I seek refuge, as is my habit, in the words of others. Today, Meg Casey’s essay, These are things I know now, spoke to me. I’ve quoted Meg before, and I think she’s one of the most exquisitely honest writers out there. Her journey resonates with me and I’m touched every single time I read her words. Maybe what I’m feeling right now is surrender to my empty bowl, to the trust that something essential and life-giving will fill it.

Meg, thank you, as always, for providing solace when I feel the undertow most strongly, for when I feel storm-tossed and run aground at the same time.

These are things I know now – Meg Casey

That sometimes the most beautiful innocence can be born from deep suffering, desperation and ugliness
That nothing is ever one thing and even the most exquisite joy and breathtaking beauty can be punctuated by sadness and loss and even the most heartbreaking grief can be tinged with a rosy kindness
That laughter and silliness and ridiculousness is sometimes the only answer to heaviness
That my heart will whisper to me exactly what I must do next
That angels most certainly must exist
That I have sisters who I will walk with and they will not leave me and I will not leave them because our paths are intertwined whether we like it or not (though we mostly like it)
That love (not sappy silly love by lionness roaring love) is alchemical — it is the magic ingredient and while it sounds so trite its true
That the youngest among us are extremely powerful and hold all the wisdom that we forgot
That miracles are like tsunamis and leave disasterous messiness in their wake and it is a saint’s job to clean up what comes behind, physically hold the wounded together to sutcher their souls.
Saints also bring lemon cake and stand on chairs tip toe to hang paper hearts from the ceiling

Emily (softly, more in wonder than in grief):

I can’t bear it. They’re so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I’m here. I’m grown up. I love you all, everything. – I can’t look at everything hard enough.

….

Emily (in a loud voice to the Stage Manager):

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t even have time to look at one another.

She breaks down sobbing.

I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners … Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

She looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears:

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage manager:

No.

- from Our Town, Thornton Wilder

Thank you to Martha for urging me to re-read this extraordinary play … I can’t wait to talk about it. And to Katrina, for your glorious essay whose timing cannot be a coincidence.