Monthly Archives: January 2017

And this is the challenge…

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Five in the afternoon on a rainy, chilly late January day. The day began with freezing rain and sleet layered an inch deep. I worked from home today, which helped me get a tedious task done, but has left me feeling restless. I do some dishes, make hot chocolate, settle back on the couch with the laptop. My living room is warmly lit, dining table cluttered, trees barely visible out the back window against the quickly darkening sky. Running in the back of my mind is a list of tasks not done—bills to pay, a resume to update, a sympathy card to write.

This morning I heard the scrape of snow shovel on pavement and looked out the window to see my next door neighbor and his 2-year-old son shoveling my front walk, the 2-year-old bundled up in fleece, and a wooly hat, and boots, bashing the icy snow with his shovel. A kind gesture—snow shoveling is not recommended for someone with a newly installed hip.

img_0630Just a few days ago, on a warm, sunny day, I took part in a local march and rally that echoed and supported the Women’s March in Washington. An exhilarating day. Throughout the day I stayed in touch via text and email with friends and family around the country doing the same thing, marching, rallying, representing.

Today my Facebook newsfeed is filled with dire reports about executive actions; Cabinet picks; presidential temper tantrums; requests for phone calls, letter writing, donations. I want to act, keep the momentum going, and at the same time I feel overwhelmed, heartsick, deeply afraid. The exhilaration of Saturday fades.

I stand outside, stretch, breathe deeply in the cold, damp air. Daily life goes on. I work and remind myself that the work I do, even the tedious tasks, benefits children, brings kindness and respect for learning to the classroom. I connect with friends near and far. I welcome kindness and look for opportunities to give in return. It’s not enough but it’s a start.

And this is the challenge, isn’t it? To stay grounded in our ordinary lives, to hold on to hope where we can find it, to build out and up from there.

Silence and connection

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Sitting on the couch looking out at evergreens and gray sky. The microwave beeping at me to let me know my oatmeal is ready. The cat sitting on a chair staring at me, telling me she’s ready for any food I might pass her way.

I hear the furnace blower forcing hot air up through the vents, the microwave letting me know breakfast is ready, a car passing by. But there are no other voices, except the cat’s occasional cry. No radio on, no music. There have been times when I’d get up in the morning and turn on NPR or a morning talk show on TV. But these days I crave silence in the morning. Later, after work, I’ll turn on the TV or cue up a video, tap into Pandora, call up a friend for a long rambling chat. But mornings, I want to just be. To wake up slowly, let my mind drift, let the world emerge. I told myself I’d let writing percolate this week, but the bubbles are rising slowly, without much energy.

What’s one word you carry from the weekend? the Facebook post asked. Community was the first word that came to mind. Weekends are when I spend time with my friendship community—routines of contact that weave a strong web of connection—Saturday coffee with one friend; errand running and conversation with another; time spent standing on the town common with another, taking a stand about the doings in Washington; regular phone calls with another friend. Casual, ordinary, essential.

Our conversations touch on dailiness, the rough grain of our lives, the many small ways we get by, the moments when we thrive. Updates on friends and family members, commiseration on politics and the state of the world, shared strategies for coping or resisting or venting, new streaming videos to watch, books to read, movies to see. At times the talk meanders into deeper territory—a health fear, the indignities or frustrations of getting older, a wondering about purpose, about calling, how to live in our messed up and beautiful world.

And writing this I see that the connection and the silence feed each other, that each gives me a different kind of strength, and that both are essential, especially in these difficult and contentious times.

Soup and Singing

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Last night for supper I made Lentils, Monastery Style a favorite recipe from Diet for a Small Planet. These days I access the recipe on my iPad having long since lost the paperback copy of the cookbook that I first used, back when I was in my early 30s. If I still had the paperback it most likely would have gone the route of my other cookbooks from that era, the Vegetarian Epicure or the original Moosewood cookbook—spines broken, pages falling out, favorite pages so stained it’s getting hard to read them.

This is a simple dish—lentils, broth, onions, carrots, tomatoes, some seasoning, a surprising dash of sherry at the end and a sprinkling of shredded swiss cheese in the bottom of the serving bowls. I also add garlic because soup needs garlic and this time I added some turkey sausage.

Every time I make it I remember the first time I made it in the small kitchen of the Maynard Road apartment. It was a Sunday afternoon and friends were coming to make music—Pam with her fiddle, Beth with her dulcimer, Wil with guitar and mandolin, and me on guitar and dulcimer and penny whistle. We all sang, some of us managing to pick up harmonies, others holding tight to the melody. We’d pick and sing and then eat and pick and sing some more. We kept to this routine for a year or so and then got together less and less. I’m still friends with these people but we come together in different ways now.

But every time I eat this soup I’m back there, in that living room, snow on the ground outside, the sweet and savory goodness of the soup, its simple ingredients that blend to yield rich flavor, our voices and instruments blending as well.

Solitude’s “soft power”

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This morning I saw a link on Facebook to an essay by Donald Hall about solitude vs loneliness. I’d seen this before but hadn’t taken the time until today to read the essay. It spoke to me in some way this morning. My sister is 12 years older and was out of the house by the time I was 6 so I spent a lot of time alone as a child. I’m an introvert, a writer, a single woman. This question of when does solitude become loneliness has long been something I think about, even more so as I’ve grown older.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been recovering from a hip replacement operation. All went well and recovery has gone smoothly. In the first weeks there was a steady stream of people—friends and neighbors checking in, a visiting nurse and PT, someone to help with cat care, people delivering food. But after a few weeks I no longer needed those services and that level of attention, which left me with long stretches alone in my house.

Mostly I saw this as luxurious. I could move at a more leisurely pace, sit for hours at the dining table in the mornings watching the world wake up, lie on the couch and watch the birds out the front window, neighbors passing by, kids bundled up and playing on the piles of snow at the corner. I read, I daydreamed, I wrote.

In the evening, when fatigue hit (all part of the recovery) I retreated into streaming videos and dozing on the couch. Mostly I was content. But as Hall writes, “Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over.”

I’ve just started back to work–part-time for now but I’ll soon be back to full-time, juggling work, social life, writing time, longing for more down time, more reflective time.

Hall is 20 years older, not driving, increasingly frail, increasingly housebound. My recovery time has been a taste for me of what age might bring—an interlude—a bit of time travel into the future.