Filling In The Blanks

Diagram.

All I can think about is paint colors these days. Well, that’s not completely true (see above diagram), but my daydreaming has been overtaken by shades of gray, aqua, teal, greige, dun, mist and sunny yellow.

All for my new home.

My new home! My new home! I feel like I was trying to get pregnant…. I announced twice that I had bought a house… only to lose both of those houses. (And one of those houses I actually lost two times, but let’s not get into that, shall we?) So I kept this house a bit of a secret, but now I feel like it’s (almost) safe enough to shout it to the hills.

Of course, it’s gorgeous. I’m head over heels. Three acres of land. Hundreds of trees. HUNDREDS OF TREES. I can’t believe I will finally live at last the way I was meant to: surrounded by trees and plants and gardens and space and closets and…..

I’m just thrilled.

And it is so, so nice to feel that I am, finally, finding my way home.

The Boston Marathon bombings. What to say? It’s terrible, horrible, terrifying.

There’s the initial adrenalin as we are hearing scraps of news, trolling Twitter for the latest from eyewitnesses, scanning our mental Rolodexes to think of friends and family who might be in harm’s way.

And seconds later, there’s acrimony and search for blame. A desperate need to identify the perpetrator, as if tackling him to the ground will unmake these freeze-frame moments and put us back in our bubble of safety, which is always as thin and fragile as a soap bubble—more, so actually, because it doesn’t even exist.

I don’t turn away from the horror. I turn away from the rush to answers. I stare at the horrible, ugly truth of human nature, I witness all we try to solve in our worlds, in our lives, with failed experiments, misplaced anger, righteous disdain and separation.

And I forgive. And I embrace the day. And I get an even more electric thrill at hugging my kid hello at the end of the day. And I go to bed and pray that all of us can understand that we must let in the darkness—accept it as fact and truth, not an aberration—before we can turn it to light.

Or, put more beautifully, by wise soul Jill Salahub, I can turn it into “one wish.”

One Wish: That when we are in the midst of suffering, we can approach it with compassion, can be gentle and allow space for wisdom to arise. That we can be brave and keep our hearts open, that we can be tenderhearted warriors.

It is an interesting time for me right now. I am finally staring down the barrel of the upcoming move out of New York City, on my mind for years, in the works for almost two, and first written about here on this blog.

There is much to do, that checking-off-the-boxes kind of stuff: Formally list my apartment for sale? Check. Have photographer take awesome photos of said apartment? Check. Put a bid on the house I’ve been watching for more than a year in Garrison? Check. Win house. Check! Lose house. Oh, snap. That wasn’t in the plans, but a good wrench in the works reminds me that plans are drawn in stardust, not ink. Open house scheduled. New school visit and registration planned. Search for fulltime live-in caregiver commenced. Backup plan if don’t buy house in time secured (we can live in our rental, for a bit)…

A move like this seems like such a monumental thing from a distance, when in reality it’s a vision, a dream, slowly condensed into series of tasks, neatly defined and checked off—and then one day about three months from now, a big moving truck will come and we will wake up the next day somewhere strange and new that is home.

It all feels so right.

I have been wondering a few things about this move, its motives, my desired results, and as I get further into the downstream, I can feel things more clearly.

The way that I had the wind knocked out of me in 2010 left me reeling. And changed forever. (And still changing from it all, yes, still.) And I didn’t want to keep living in the shell of the life that I had had: a sparkly life, an ambitious life, a life where I was waiting for everything to fall into place, a life of forever possibility, of stir and excitement. Now my expectations are so deeply different: My parents are gone, I am older, what I want is much closer to the ground. What I want, in fact, is a literal grounding.

I am so excited about moving upstate, so looking forward to the daily embrace of trees all around, the crunch of the dirt roads, the discovery of a new rhythm and tempo. And as I get closer and closer to moving day, I can see that sometimes life changes so much—and changes you so much—you need to change the view along with it.

I just stumbled across an entire year’s worth of photos on my camera, when I started taking photos of my apartment for the real estate ad. (It’s getting so close! I can’t wait to list it!)

An entire year! I can’t decide what feels worst about that: that I had never paused to download any of the photos, for 12 long months; that half of the events I captured were times with me, Derek and Zack (ouch); or that in an entire year, I’d taken just 180 or so photos…

All three statements say a lot about what 2012 was like for me. Busy, sad, blurry.

So all to the even better, that I found some simply breathtaking photos. They may be breathtaking to me because Garrison is my happy place, fall is my favorite season, and Zack is my favorite companion, but whatever the reason, I’m happy to indulge myself in enjoying them!

Your turn!

This weekend, I attended an audition. My first. Or, well, my first since my tryout for the college chorus.

I was late. It was raining. The subway was at a crawl for the last four stops. Not exactly how I’d like to show up for an audition: breathless, damp and sweaty, apologetic.

I kind of laughed when I walked into the audition room, because there sat four women I know, at increasing levels of intimacy: Dusty, Amy, Holly and dear friend Varda. I had not been expecting to know everyone there. But of course I should have expected that. I was auditioning for the Listen To Your Mother show, after all, an idea spurred by BlogHer (my place of employ, but more than that: a longtime home for me) and ushered into being by the fabulous Ann Imig.

A set up my piece on the music stand (which I wasn’t expecting to have — so helpful!), took a moment to give Varda a long sympathy hug (as she recently lost her mother, too soon after losing her father), and said to Varda, “I’m sorry, but I’ll be reading about my mom’s death, of course.”

And off I went—”My mother had refused to speak to me for three days…”—disappearing into my piece and feeling only the words that I had written and all the notions and images I had corralled for one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written.

When it was finished, I may have taken a bow (excess adrenalin, that’s what I blame), and I definitely ran to give Varda another, longer hug. And then I waved and scooted out the door.

Truth is, I don’t even need to be picked as a performer for the show. (Though of course I would like to be.) But that singular experience of standing up and reading a piece about my mother, about me, about life and its gorgeous mishaps and mystical lessons, was rewarding enough.

Sharing who we are: it’s such a wonderful potion, a dose of concentrated humanity.

We can all hope nothing more than to be witnessed for who we are—which, of course, was what my piece was about. And for that experience this weekend, I thank LTYM, BlogHer and all the many, many deep, true friends I’ve made in the ether of the internet.

44! And so much more!

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. —Walt Whitman “Song of Myself”

It feels almost too easy — at least for me, a woman of words and literature — to quote Walt Whitman for myself on my birthday, but it feels so right.

Inspired by this poem, and the simple magic of its title, I offer up—to myself and the universe, to my friends and readers—a quick list of what I can sing to the heavens in celebration and appreciation of the person I am.

I feel I am a brave person; this makes me proud (though no less afraid)

I am so happy I feel compassion and empathy so deeply

I am vain in a totally appropriate way about my long, blonde hair; it brings me simple, daily joy

I love my long, slender fingers. I’m always amazed to see them in pictures. And my son has them, too.

I am lucky that words have always been my currency and coin, jangling around in my pocket. I am so satisfied that I have found ways to use my voice that bring me joy, peace and a sense of rightness

I am a good friend.

I am a good-enough and great mother.

I have an unbelievable memory, not for names but for moments, and clothing (what you were wearing when I met you), and the exact time I had any realization about life that made me go “oh!”

I do everything in a big way. Which used to worry me that I was artificially inflated. But in the last few years, I’ve become life size, and now know this is my simple, gestural truth: my drama is genuine. I think life deserves a sense of being eventful!

I am a poor loser when it comes to board games. Good thing I don’t lose that often. (And I really have to force myself to let my son win a game. And yes, I know how ridiculous that is.)

I love poetry, and I still hope to become a poet

I am at peace when I am in the middle of a grand landscape of nature—most especially mountaintops, forests. It is where I know I am home.

I am lucky. So lucky. Luckier than most. And today, I can really feel that.

And so today, I sing the song of myself, and I celebrate myself, and I am ever so very glad to have this space I can tell the truth of me and know it is always welcome.