This is America

Let me preface this by saying that I am emphatically a patriot. The thing is, there's a slight difference of opinion about that. Many of the people who are out there describing themselves as patriots wouldn't consider me to be one. I think dissent can be patriotic. I don't think waving a flag around is enough. And I really, really don't think either of the wars we are involved in has anything whatever to do with patriotism. I think they are monstrous disasters.

So that's the background.

Yesterday was an amazing day. I got called to serve on a jury. As with many people, when the time came for me to put my patriotic beliefs into actual, inconvenient action, I had to heave a sigh and make myself act appropriately. But I got through it and drove to Sycamore to our beautiful old courthouse (last seen by our heroine on the day of her divorce).

I hadn't realized that on that very same morning, a Sycamore-based unit of the National Guard was scheduled to return from Afghanistan. There was to be a parade in their honor at the exact time court was supposed to start. Instead, the courthouse was (temporarily) closed, and the streets were lined with flags and people. The Boy Scouts were out. The high school band was there. People I know -at least one whose son was in the unit- and people I didn't. One little girl on a teensy pink bicycle was riding next to the soldiers, yelling "Look Daddy, I can ride my bike!!" There were babies and strollers and old people in wheel chairs. Judges and jurors and police officers lined the streets.

And there was not a a dry eye to be seen. Seriously, it was a picture right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Or a country music song. Honestly, if it were in a movie, you would have thought it was too sweet to be believable. But there it was.

I hate these wars. But it's also true that I have a brother who is in the Air Force. He's safely state-side at the moment, but I want it to be true that there are parades in his honor and people saying thank you, and (rather dreadful) bands doing their best to celebrate his heroism. I want the town to temporarily stop to say "oh my goodness, we are so glad you're back," and to take a moment of silence for the ones who can't come back. He deserves it; he really does.

And so... I'll stand with the other patriots. For a minute, we'll make room for each other, and celebrate other patriots who express their beliefs differently. They'll go home and, God willing, watch their children ride pink bicycles for a while. I went to the courthouse and did a different kind of duty.

Lucky, Happy Mom

That would be me. This is a photo from Mothers' Day. We went rock climbing and then out for beer and chicken wings. Flowers are for other moms. This is what I wanted. I am lucky and blessed. (And aren't they just the most gorgeous kids ever???)

Return to Sender

A while back I posted about returning Dave's mail and trying to stop acting like his wife. So, I returned some mail. I marked the letter "not at this address" and tossed it back in my mailbox.

You know the old kid's song "the cat came back"? Yeah. The next day, the mail was back, marked with a question mark by the letter carrier. So, on the same letter, I wrote "Really. He's not here." And I put it back into the mail box. You guessed it. It came back. So today, I wrote "Honest. I've looked everywhere. I'm pretty sure he's not here."

We'll see what happens next.

Wanna See?

Progress. I'm making progress.

I didn't get the chairs or the rug. They're just not right for my dining room. And no way my dining room is that airy and light; I wish it were. But that's my table. It'll be delivered in a few days.

If you're not scared, you're not paying attention

Is that even true? It's something I'm thinking about lately.

The last semester -particularly the last month- has been difficult. It's not Math-Fink's doing this time. No, this time, it was all me. This semester was pretty close to grace-less. I stumbled and bumbled and dropped balls I was trying to juggle, and generally made a mess.

Yes, I can come up with rational explanations as to WHY that happened. Yes, I know I can get better at all the things I screwed up. Yes, I know I'm being impatient with myself and expecting quite a lot.

The thing is.... other people expect quite a lot of me, too. And they have no reason or inclination to cut me any slack. In fact, for them to do so would be inappropriate. Employers, children, people whose job it is to enforce standards.... those people. They have very right to expect me to step up and get it done. Whatever "it" is, in their particular case.

So, I face again -anew- more things that scare me. Resentment builds up that I have to do this alone. And then I think, no... I GET to do this alone. What do I want? How will I organize this? And I cycle back and forth -like a person with a particularly rapid-cycling bipolar disorder- between panic and courage. So, is everybody afraid, and some people just figure out a path through the fear? Maybe some people are too naive or too young to be afraid. Maybe it's only smart adults who are afraid. Great.

Or maybe those people who seem to be serene AND high-achieving really are both. How do they do that? I have learned that I can't muscle my way through this. Rock climbing should have told me that. Muscle power never gets me anywhere; I have to rely on flexibility and coordination.

So, I tried will power, and I didn't have enough. I tried brute force, and I guess I'm insufficiently brutish because that didn't work either. But I have a life to get organized here. What is going to work? Is there a way to lead with MY strengths -flexibility and coordination and maybe a smidge of creativity? Would that work? Would that keep the fear at bay?

Or is fear just part of the human condition?

Mothers' Day Declaration

I know I post this every year, but I'll just keep doing it until people start paying attention.... Oh wait, that's a different "momily". Read this one instead.

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!


Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."


From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.


Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.


In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870

Does this just say it all???

For well over a week now, my glasses have been lost. I knew they had to be in the house because I got home;I wouldn't drive without them. But darn if I could find them. What's worse is that I remembered that tragic thought of "You're putting your glasses somewhere weird. This is gonna come back to bite you in the patootie." Did I actually act on that thought? Don't be silly.

And, being me, I had paid-for contacts. At the eye doctor's office. For six months, because he's never open when I'm available. Literally, they've been there for six months. No exaggerating, for once. It's time for my next appointment, and I haven't picked up the contacts from the last appointment.

So I had no glasses or contacts at all for a few days. Then I snuck out of work for a "lunch hour" at about 10:00 one morning (because the eye doctor is closed over the noon hour) and got my contacts. I was about ready to figure that I'd find my glasses one day a year from now when I rearrange the furniture, or clean out the freezer, or who knows what.

Today, I stumbled into my little workout area, thinking I'd blow off a little steam by doing some cardio, and .... there they are. If I'd been exercising the way I should, I would have found them 10 days ago. So I'm blind AND fat AND disorganized.

Forcryingoutloud. Pull yourself together, woman.

Meet Elite Mature Singles

I love facebook. I think it's not much shy of world-changing, this social networking stuff. I'll probably write about that at some point. But for now, I'm just frustrated at what happens every time I sign on to facebook.

I'm greeted by this handsome man, about my age, under the caption "meet elite mature singles." Doubtless this is because I've indicated that I'm single. I've ALSO indicated that I am interested in friendship and networking, rather than -I suppose- trolling for a new partner. Yet that seems not to matter quite so much.

First of all, who are the guys who sign up to have their picture splashed around on facebook? It's either narcissistic or desperate, I can't decide which. And WHAT is an elite single? It's probably meant to imply wealth. Or maybe it's code for "we know there are loser single guys our age out there, but we are not those guys." And I should believe this why? You're the one who paid to have your picture on facebook, after all. And "mature" is surely code for "old", in this case, and that kind of stinks. I certainly don't want an immature partner. Been there; done that. But jsut ick, that I'm in that category where it's considered impolite -or unmarketable- to use the accurate word. And how do we REALLY know that they are single at all? Math-Fink was playing around on matchmaking sites long before he was single. I've had women he was "dating" contact me through this blog, for heaven's sake.

I know plenty of people who've found partners -life-long (apparently) as well as just-for-now- - on social networking sites. To me, it feels soul-stealing. How can it be true that I feel this way, when I increasingly make no distinction between cyberspace and "real" space? My cyber-friends ARE my friends. I've "met" them in that loopy, roundabout way that we meet anyone. Someone knows someone who invites them into a group and we click -or not. We take care of each other. We challenge each other. We worry. We celebrate. It's real friendship.

And yet, I don't want to find a partner that way. More to the point, I don't want a life partner at all right now. Among other things, it's a time management problem. There are no minutes in my day into which to put a partner -which tells me I'm not ready to work very hard at it. There's no particular sadness in considering the possibility that I might always feel this way. It's not that a partner is not coming to me; it's that I'm not interested.

So, stop offering me "elite mature singles" for heaven's sake.

Safe Haven? Shipwreck Cove??

I'm not sure what the right metaphor is. But here's my thinking....

My 27 year old daughter lives with me. Neither of us ever thought this would happen, but it is so very working -for both of us, I think.

My thinking goes like this. When I was in college, many of my friends were told by their parents that from this point forward they were visitors in their parents' home. This wasn't seen as harsh, at all. It was more of a statement that they were fully launched now. Then, a few years later, kids were coming home after college to re-group and think. Parents -those parents who themselves had been told that to come home was only for emergencies- didn't know quite what to make of this. They certainly didn't want to define their children to be failing, but this situation wasn't good. The economy was hard. Suddenly a Master's degree was essential where before a Bachelor's degree had been sufficient.... A rationale for this situation was created.

But now, I think we're in a different place yet again. I really do. I'm not rationalizing here, at all. I think we're redefining family and adulthood to be less about independence and more about inter-dependence. This house, this big old falling-down barn, was a place of respite when I needed one. It's weird to think that a place -nothing more than boards and nails when you get right down to it- could be a sanctuary. Don't people, after all, consecrate a people to make it a sanctuary?? But... whatever the reason, I needed to be here while I healed and regrouped.

So, what's the problem if I share that space? Isn't there something wonderful happening if I can share that space with someone else, and have it offer that same sanctuary? Or the sanctuary they need? Family can look different at different times. I am so grateful to have another person in the house -another person whose life occasionally intersects with mine. In a real way, she's babysitting me. But it's not only that. I have space and resources and mom-stuff that she needs right now, too. And together, we can do things that we can't do alone.

I don't think this is a forever-type situation. I think she ought to live independently before (or whether or not) she lives with a family of her own making. For that matter, I think I ought to have done that. But, I also think we're re-conceiving family. On so many levels, we've defined it too narrowly for too long. It's so much more than a mommy and a daddy and a baby and a puppy. That can be a wonderful family. But it's also a middle-aged mom and an adult daughter and maybe a friend who needs a little more care and structure. Or a mom and several children and no daddy. Or two mommies and a baby. Those might all be wonderful families too.

We all need a safe haven.

Rumors of my demise, and all that...

My inbox is full of concerned messages. Bless your hearts, the dear ones in my life are afraid I may have fallen back into the black pit of despair. No, it's not that.

I've been thinking of all of you -worried that you might be worried. Every once in a while, a blog post would pop into my head. There was the one about being an ally to my gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered friends, family, and co-inhabitors of the planet. It was going to be brilliant, I'm quite sure. See? I even had a picture.






Then there was the one about the ongoing home repairs, trying to make this house into the functional, warm, welcoming place I know it could be. I'm not quite sure how I was going to make fixing the toilet brilliant, but funny was probably within reach. If Victoria and I can't figure it out -which we couldn't quite- then she invites people over to help her. They are apparently so smitten with her that they will even do this. There must be a joke here somewhere.












Then there are dear friends who dropped by and seem not to worry too much that I still don't have furniture. That one was going to be touching and heart-warming. Trust me.



And in other news.... I'm going to tear down the garage. Well, I'm going to have the garage torn down. And rebuilt. And I have a new personal trainer. Something has to be done about my physical health. I think this is going to be good. She's very gentle and attentive and supportive -with no tone of "For crying out loud, how did you let this happen???!". What else? Well, maybe I shouldn't tell you everything in one post. There could be more blogging left to be done.

Of course, none of those posts made it from fleeting thought to the keyboard. Work, research, writing, trying to keep myself pulled together... it's taking all I have and a little more. So, every day I get a smidge more behind. It's not a pretty sight around here, but it's not darkness and despair. Very far from that.

I think at some point I may have publicly said that I wanted to be really, really busy, because I didn't want to sit home alone and brood. OK, be very careful what you tell the universe you want. This is perhaps just a smidge more than I had in mind. Perhaps balance is the next lesson in the queue.

I'm Not Your Wife

I feel like a huge cranky-pants bitch, but I think -for once- I'm actually not. Cue the stunned silence, I know!

Mail for Dave periodically comes to the house. If it's not clearly junk, I forward it or arrange for one of the kids to deliver it. But really.... he hasn't lived in this house for two and half years. YEARS!! I'm thinking that he could have filed a change of address form by now.

And today I got a phone call on my cell phone -a reminder call from the dentist that he has an appointment tomorrow. I was reaching for the computer to send him e-mail, and then I thought.... "for the love of Mike, I'm not his wife. Stop acting like it."

I'm throwing away the mail, and I'm ignoring the phone call. I'm not going out of my way to block his forward motion, but I don't have to do his work for him. He either needs to get another wife or do the work himself.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

God's Nightgown!!!*

* It's a "literary" allusion. It's the curse that Scarlett O'Hara would use when she was ROYALLY pissed. And so is this southerner!

Just LOOK what I woke up to -in almost-April!! This is ridiculous. I, of course, left my car out in the driveway, because I'm smart that way. So it's encrusted in a case of ice. I need to traipse out into this mess and make sure there's bird seed in the feeder (which I know there isn't at the moment).

And what about my pretty purple crocuses?? Will they be ok?

Tip for surviving my temper today: Don't start with the "it looks pretty" thing. We know that drill. We say that to endure, and it might even be true in November. Now, this weather is just an affront to good manners.

Spring Forward

My sister has been lamenting about the lack of spring over at her blog. Winter can be a hard slog for relocated southern belles, and you'll just have to hold tight while we stomp our little feet and act generally put-out that it's not the weather we were brought up to expect.

But I'm here to tell you that there's hope. I own my very own house now:

And it comes with its very own gardens:






And there's this big mysterious thing that gardeners talk knowingly about: "putting your garden to bed." Last fall, when it was apparently time to do this -whatever it is- I nodded knowingly. "I KNOW!!!" I said. "Isn't it just too sad to be finished with the garden for the year." Heave a big sigh... and whew. I got away with it again. I didn't have the slightest idea what that meant. Put the garden to bed, indeed. Put myself to bed, with a nice hot toddy. THAT I can handle.

But I think it must have something to do with all those leaves and dead stalks and weird things that are covering the bright green things that are trying to grow. I think I was supposed to get rid of those things. (going out on a limb here!) So I told myself "never give up; never surrender" and that any forward progress is still forward and that I don't have to do everything today. And I went out there with one yard waste bag and the rake and the intention of cleaning out one -and only one- bed. I actually thought there wasn't enough stuff there to fill the bag, but I was so very wrong.

Anyway, in the course of cleaning, here's what I found.


And here's the big ol' yard being used for a hardly-any-planning, bonfire party -which is the kind of entertaining a girl can do when she doesn't have any furniture in the public parts of the house ;)




This whole thing is coming together. I'm stepping into my new life. The house and gardens are taking on a new vitality. Spring is just around the corner.

Well, what do you know!!

For several reasons (trying to get my groove back...trying to step into my dreams....) I've been getting up early in the morning to write. Sometimes, I sit at my desk or the table in the coffee shop, and nothing happens. At all. So rather than not write, I just write any old thing. Whatever spills out the other end of my pen is acceptable. As an antidote to yesterday's whiny post about not doing everything I want to be doing, this morning I started listing things in my life that I'm grateful for.

The first thing on the list was that I was grateful to be divorced. WHAT???? Not always. Not fully. But still. It was full-stop amazement when I realized that I had written something monumentally, unbelievably true. I never, ever believed this moment would come.

It's still new and tentative and odd-feeling. I can locate the familiar reasons to be sad with very little trouble. But it's time (and past time) to start rehearsing the newly-true thing. I am freed from being subtly belittled every single day. I am so happy that the people remaining in my life don't punish me by withholding. I am glad that I can begin to make my own way.

In an effort (a successful effort, by the way) to actually make myself plunk down the wad o' cash necessary to get myself and the purple luggage to Tuscany this summer, I watched Under the Tuscan Sun last night. Diane Lane says this, "Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce? It doesn't actually kill you. Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck. It should. When someone you've promised to cherish till death do you part says "I never loved you," it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that, trying to understand how in the world you didn't know. The light just never went on, you know. I must have known, of course, but I was too scared to see the truth. Then fear just makes you so stupid."

It is surprising. I thought it would kill me. And there are still days, as you know, when I don't feel quite this confident that it won't. But I need to shine the light (the Tuscan sun?) on these days rather than the bad ones. It's that new focus that makes all the difference in the world.

Re-Grooving

I was going to call this post "dumb-fuckery" but decided that my life coach would not be proud of me if I did that.

Last weekend, I was in Alabama to see my mom and my sister. It was wonderful. And I couldn't help but notice how much better this trip was than my list trip there. I was happier, more centered, more sure of who I am. I could get out of my own head enough to truly love seeing other people and how they are doing in their lives.

And then I proceeded to come home and screw everything up that I even looked at, much less touched. The Engineering Building has this place where that scary-grate-stuff covers a large walkway. I had my keys in my hand. You know what happened next. Of COURSE, I dropped my keys down there and the campus police had to rescue them -and me. I missed a meeting and almost missed a few others. I left my phone charger in another state. I am so behind at work that I might seriously pass myself. I got yelled at by not one, but two, faculty members this week -and neither one was anyone I had babies with. (Both were totally unwarranted, as it happens, but it still rattles a person. Besides, two other people could quite legitimately have yelled at me. They just don't know it yet, or they're too polite to say so. So probably it all comes out in the wash.)

So, there's clearly work to be done here. How do I get my groove back? (Not THAT groove. While I wouldn't rule out going to Jamaica and having a fling with a sweet young thing named Shakespeare, that does seem like, well, someone else's groove.)

As I have daily proof, one can lose track of one's personal power through nothing more earth-shattering than a series of really tiny decisions to accept less and less. And one day, you wake up and you don't recognize your life anymore. So, I suppose the converse (inverse? contrapostive?) is true as well. Perhaps nothing more important than doing -again and again and again- the small things that help me to live the dream will, in fact, lead me toward the dream.

So, what's the next right thing?????

Range of Motion

Sunday at rock climbing my hands were doing this weird thing they do -not closing around the thing I'm trying to grasp. And it's easy to see how that would be un-helpful in a rock climbing context. It does make an interesting metaphor, but we'll leave that for another day. I realized I had been neglecting yoga the week before, so I'm back to a regular practice this week.

As I work my way back to yoga this year, I'm having a hard time finding guided practices that are easy enough. I have a few, but mostly the ones I have are from a different time in my life. Last night I tried Shiva Rea's lunar practice from the Yoga Shakti DVD. I had to laugh; after an hour pretty much all I had done was the same posture over and over.

She wants me to do this.
My knees won't do that. I'll just modify like this.

.... over and over and over. But I almost always modified the same way, so I did the same posture again and again and again. Is this even doing any good??

I used to think, while doing yoga as a hyper-flexible person, that I simply wouldn't tolerate an inflexible body. I modified postures, but mostly based on things that will never change -like my height or arm length. My limber muscles allowed for a complete range of motion in almost any direction (my upper back has always been a holdout), and I wondered why one would accept anything less. Well, the Greek myths were right; hubris had the result it usually does.

But the opposing questions of hubris or being satisfied with too little are still around. Some limitations I can confront head-on. I have a working sense of how far I can nudge myself forward in uppavista konasana, for example. I'm not as flexible as I used to be, but I sense it's all still there waiting for me. It feels good to work my intelligent edge. Do I do the same thing with my knees, though? It doesn't feel right, so I don't.

If we let this process become a metaphor, it's not hard to see where it's going. Given my previous life experience with making myself small and still -which on some level led to these limitations- I am disinclined to limit my range of motion, ever again. I would prefer to work muscles and joints and life-skills, even if it hurts. Limiting myself taught me not to even notice anger, to accept very little from my life partner, to think that very little was all I deserved, and to step back from risk because certain humiliation awaited. None of that led to a life anyone would want to claim. My place in the world became tinier and tinier. At at least one point, I thought I would literally vanish. Not that I had a plan for doing anything to end my life; I just thought it would happen. I would disappear.

But when do I, both physically and metaphorically, extend and when do I hold back? How do I assess the difference? I'm afraid, now, of risking too little -of treating myself too gently. I'm deeply suspicious when someone suggests that I'm too old or too...something else... to even expect to be able to do something-or-other now. But I would also like to avoid ending up in a body cast or permanently injured.

Or maybe fragile knees aren't a metaphor at all and this whole thing is becoming needlessly tortured. Just haul yourself to a physical therapist and stop whining????

Learning to Listen

Let's just be clear. Two things are true here. One is that learning to listen to people takes a life-time and constant practice. And two, if I absolutely NEVER EVER go to another "listening skills" workshop, it will be totally fine with me.

But I'm not talking about that kind of listening. In the never-ending quest to become the grown-up in my own story, I am learning to listen to my house. I have lived in this house for 22 years, minus some travel time here and there, but I never listened to it. I relied on someone else to do that. Yet, without noticing the development, I realize now when the sump pump kicks in, or when the refrigerator starts humming, what the water sounds like in the pipes, when the furnace turns on, and a whole host of other noises that happen around a house. I'm not consciously attending to those noises, but when I heard an unusual sound last night I realized that I must have a sense of what "usual" is.

The sound I heard was nothing important. Thank goodness, because I don't know what I would have done about it if it had been important. I would tell you -and I would be right- that I have two black holes of intellectual disability -finding my way somewhere and figuring out how mechanical things work. But part of owning this house, and I do own it now, is figuring out how it works. I'm getting there.

And there's the parallel question of what do I want it to sound like. Gentle sounds, happy sounds, occasionally rowdy party sounds, a balance between people-around and solitude sounds... I need to think about this some more.

I Want to Be in Charge of Karma

I'm a despicable person.

I don't want to be the Executive Director of Universal Karma. I'm willing to be reasonable, here. I just want to be in charge of one person's karma, and you won't have much trouble guessing whose. I don't wish horrible, terrible, no good, very bad things upon his head. I don't want him to get hit by a bus; I don't want the people he loves to suffer -unless they're Argentinian and bottled blondes. (Whoops.... that just slipped out.)

I realized today, though, that I want him to regret the divorce. I want him to think it was a bad idea, and wish he'd never started down that path. I want him to suffer, for crying out loud. And he's really not. He's not looking back at all.

It feeds his ego for me to suffer, which is only one more of a million reasons why I should stop. Every once in a while, when it's been too long since the old ego had a snack, he tosses some trouble my way. But I'm only useful as a tool; he doesn't care about me as a person. Why doesn't that make it easier to let go, I wonder?

Beginner's Mind

I haven't read Suzuki's Zen Mind; Beginner's Mind since college. But I was clearing off a bookshelf (in the apparently endless process of freeing my life from furniture) and saw the book again. It rocked my world the first time I encountered it, and it has been on my mind again for the last few days.

The general idea is that beginner's mind is all about possibilities; the expert's mind isn't really closed but is decided. Think about a toddler playing in the Tupperware drawer. I can tell her "that's Tupperware. We use it for storing leftover food so that we don't waste it." She gives me a pitying look (in my imagination) and goes on to play with the Tupperware as though it were a drum, a ball, a storage device for Mommy's keys, an artistic medium for creating stacks and sculptures.... And it is all of those things, too.

I have made the mistake of being certain that my life was one thing -was going along a particular path- when, in fact, I could not have been more wrong. I cried, and argued, and suffered when that life was taken away from me -and I'm not so far from that possibility still, at least from time to time. But in a way, I had made the expert-mind mistake. I had chosen the path I wanted and closed my mind to other possibilities.

A beginner -and a child is the easiest embodiment of that mindset to examine- looks at the world as possibility and as an apparently endless series of amazements. People find two-year-olds trying, but I never did. I recall saying that it was exhausting, certainly, but amazing to have them around, because you never again engage the world with such a relentless need to examine and know and understand.

Well, why the heck not?? Why did I decide that, developmentally, that curiosity had to subside? I can get in the Walter Mitty-like thing of getting up, going to work, coming home and half-heartedly poking around with house projects, studying, reading, exercising, going to bed and getting up tomorrow to do it again. But that life is grey and small.

The same life can be described entirely differently. I am at the beginning of a new job. I am making this house a home newly and uniquely mine. I am learning new things and engaging with ideas, and little else on the planet gives me that much pleasure. I am finding healing and comfort in exercise. Things -all things- can be different now, and I don't have to understand at the outset how that's going to look. To borrow Mary Oliver's spectacular line, "I want to be a bride married to amazement." It's the same life -just looked at differently.

Writing the True Things

I have PLENTY of writing to do. There's my work, my research, my classes, this blog.... plenty to do. So, naturally, I want to write something else ;)

OK, that's just flippant. What's really true? What's really true is that writing this blog for over two years has invited writing back into my life. There is nothing spectacular about my writing or my thinking; I have no pretensions there. Nonetheless, people have been supportive and encouraging. And blogging has kept the writing muscles toned, as it were, and has helped me find my voice -and has not taught me to avoid mixing metaphors, apparently. Sigh....

Another true thing is that my family has pretty much cornered the market, I sometimes think, on premature babies. Still another true thing is that I knit. One more true thing is that my long-suffering life coach is encouraging (think "boot to the butt" here) me to do the things I've long talked about doing -writing being one of those things.

So, what's a writing, knitting, auntie to premature babies to do? Well, duh. Write a book with knitting patterns for preemies, that also has essays about what those babies have taught us and invited into our lives, that's what.

I finally have an outline. Well, you know.... I'm not promising that it will stay this way forever. But for now, it looks like nine patterns and nine essays. Something like this:

Essay #1 -teaching gentleness -a really soft blanket, with a satin binding, which is what babies like about blankets, anyway
Essay #2 –Shaking my fist at God –what would an angry knitting pattern look like? Bright colors, edgy designs…. For a baby?
Essay #3 –the courage to be fool-hardy
Why try again when you know this can happen?
Crazy-ass lace shawl for kangaroo days!
Essay #4 –for Thomas –here’s what triumph looks like
A sweater for Thomas
Essay #5 –preventing prematurity is more about women than babies
A sweater for mom
Essay #7 –getting by with a little help from technology
Pattern that allows for the machines to be attached
Essay #8 –getting by with a little help from my friends
Pattern –a gift for the nurses
Essay #9 –when prematurity stops defining you
A pattern for a bigger girl

This will be Rachel's and Thomas's -the most recent preemies in my life- book. I'll figure out what to do with it once it's written, but I do plan on posting the patterns and essays here, as well, since it was practically your idea in the first place.