Category Archives: gratitude

Accepting the Hard Stuff

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I’ve been in Florida for the past few days visiting my 92-year-old father-in-law, who was been plagued by dementia. Despite the warm, sunny weather and proximity to the beach, this is never a trip I look forward to–even as I’m touched by N.’s stretches of cogent lucidity between the storms of anger and confusion, where he talks poignantly about how sad he is that his life has changed so much. As someone who valued his independence above all else, as he continues to point out when asked to look back on some of the happier times in his life, having to succumb to 24-hour care and supervision often makes him feel that his life isn’t worth living any more.

But I know I need to accept things, he says to me over dinner. And enjoy what I can, like this food. And be happy that I can stay in my apartment, and that I have a wonderful family. I know I need to be grateful for all of that.

It’s an easy adage to repeat. But much harder for anyone–those with dementia and those without–to implement. How do we truly reach a place of gratitude and acceptance of whatever happens to befall us? Especially, when we can’t change the situation, but even when we think we can?

I recognize the extreme privilege I’ve had in my life up until now of not having dementia or some other life-changing debilitating disease. And yet, as both a continually aspiring and a recovering perfectionist, I find myself constantly navigating the question of when I should push myself to do something better than I’m currently able, and when I should accept the status quo. Especially in my creative pursuits. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about learning Kol Nidre on the piano, and trying to accept that I would likely never play it at the level I wanted to. And in writing, as well, while I’m generally pleased with many of the things I’ve written, it’s hard to stop berating myself for not writing as well as ____________ (hundreds of names could fill in that blank) or not having accomplished as much in my writing career as more recognized writers.

As I sit on the beach, I try to practice some of the meditation techniques I’ve learned from the app I’ve been using this past year. Label the breaths: in/out, try to match them up with the waves. I get distracted easily. There’s a radio playing. A helicopter overhead. And I’m still on edge from just having to tell N. at least five times–or seven–or ten–what the plan is for the next day. He’ll have lunch with his aide at the senior center, as usual. We’ll come over after he gets back–in the afternoon, and take him back to our place and make him dinner.

He frowns. I need to go to the senior center.

I tell him one more time that we’ll see him after the senior center.

The lady (his aide) will be lonely if I leave, he protests.

I’m sure she understands that it’s important for you to spend time with your family. 

I keep trying to understand things, he tells me. And when I ask someone to explain it to me, I can tell that they think I’m a pain in the ass, but I’m just trying to understand. 

You’ve always been very persistent, I tell him, remembering the hours and hours he put in every day, writing down steps, studying videos, when learning to ballroom dance. It’s both a strength you have, but now it’s also a curse, because there are some things your brain can’t process. Please trust us and don’t worry so much about tomorrow. The day will work out. 

But he doesn’t let go of the worry. And why should he, just because I tell him to? Cultivating  faith that things will work out is a hard habit for those of us who’ve spent our lives priding ourselves on our own agency in making things happen.

I get up from the beach. No way I’m going to get anywhere near a state of inner peace tonight. Yet, I make sure to express gratitude for the sloshy sound of the waves and their dependable rhythms as the world just keeps doing its thing–with us, or without us.

 

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Hiroshima Commemoration: August 6, 2023

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Thousands of people filled Peace Memorial Park on August 6. It felt, in some ways, like many of the large demonstrations I’ve attended over the years, with people displaying colorful posters and handing out flyers. A small group of girl scouts looked quite serious as they handed out programs, but also proud that they were doing such an important job. And the security people who searched bags in the extremely orderly array of lines were efficient and respectful as they handed people shrink-wrapped cooling towels, which seem to be a staple in the “wicked hot” Japanese summer–consistent temperatures in the 90s that feel even hotter due to the high humidity.

 

 

 

 

My husband and I got there too late to get seats under the tent, but with our NYC superpowers of threading our way through crowds, we found a small shaded spot on the ground at the tent’s periphery where we could hear well and see the speakers on the Jumbotron if we stood up. The ceremony was short, centering on the ringing of a bell at exactly 8:15 AM, followed by a moment of silence. Then, a whoosh of doves made spectacular shadows against the white tent canopy before they soared off, staying in our view-scape for barely a moment.

And yet, a moment was all it took for the bomb to drop and change everything.

The day before, we had gone to the city gardens and seen a large ginkgo, one of only three trees that survived the bombing. We also went to the Peace Museum and barely made it through picture after picture of burnt bodies, story after story of people wracked with despair as they stumbled through rubbled streets, trying to find their loved ones. This was made even worse by the short political exhibit that followed, which emphasized how the U.S. felt it was “worth it” to drop this new weapon on already nearly defeated Japan if it would keep the Soviet Union from entering the war and sharing the spoils.

How could anyone do this? The question, like a heavy bell clapper, pounded against my head. And especially, after learning about the unspeakable devastation and suffering in Hiroshima, how could they drop another bomb three days later in Nagasaki?

And what is it in humans that give us the capacity to torture and kill others when ordered, from instances of all-out-war, to the countless genocides of one group against another, to the shocking Milgram experiments?

But on the flip-side of such evil, one story that emerged was a story of goodness and hope. In 1945, medical people came from all over, risking their own health to help the victims. In each continuing generation since then, the city has continued to take it upon itself to educate people about the bombing, not in order to sink into the horror, but to come through it to a better place. As the mayor declared at this year’s ceremony, (referring to the city’s recent hosting of G-7 leaders this past spring) “Enduring past grief, overcoming hatred, we yearn for genuine world peace with all humanity living in harmony and prosperity. I believe our spirit is now engaged in their hearts.”

Later that night we went to see the lanterns in the river: hundreds upon hundreds of lights along the blank, each light symbolizing a dead body that was found in the river after the bomb exploded. While the mood was mixed, the thousands on the river’s banks were more hopeful than sunk. And, I too, was struck more by the beauty of the image than by its symbolism, a sentiment echoed by the two children who read a poem in the morning ceremony that gives hope for the future. I’m grateful for these children and their authentic, hopeful words. Here’s a piece of the poem:

Today Hiroshima is a city full of greenery and smiling faces.
Thank you for surviving
It’s because you survived that we were given our lives.

And there is something that we can do for others, too.
Thinking about how others feel before saying how we feel.
Finding the good in our friends.
Doing what we can to make others smile.

 

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Learning From My Dog

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Last night I finished Christian McEwen’s excellent book, World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. McEwen explores several ways to nurture creativity, a difficult task in a culture that revolves around overactivity and excessive screen-time. One of my favorite suggestions (and a practice I already regularly engage in) is walking in nature. I learned this from my husky-shepherd, Lefty, who quickly made it clear that the key to keeping him calm was a long off-leash walk in the woods every day. I found this break so nourishing, I’ve continued the practice. Even though he’s been gone for 12 years, I make a point of walking daily in all kinds of weather. And when I need an extra nudge to get my tired or tense torso out the door, I channel the ghost of my four-legged personal trainer, remembering that even at the very end of his life, he’d battle his own demons of arthritis, fatigue and lethargy for the joy of being in the woods.

Many cultures have recognized the benefits of nature walking. The Japanese even have a word for this: shinrin-yoku, which translates as forest-bathing. Devotees of shinrin-yoku recommend that you go into the forest without your phone or your camera, and with as little of an agenda as possible. It’s not even necessary to go anywhere. Simply follow your eyes, ears, nose, and feet, and immerse yourself in all the sensations the woods have to offer. This advice melds nicely with some of McEwen’s other suggestions around cultivating creativity: resisting “hurry sickness” (the idea that you have to complete a task to get to the next one), taking the time to observe your surroundings closely (with all your senses, not just your eyes), and paying more attention to the silence and the pauses between actions.

Having now read McEwen’s book, along with articles on shinrin-yoku, I can see that while I’m glad to have a nature-walking practice, I’m not yet skilled in engaging in it with this kind of quality. I’m often thinking about how long (or how little time) I can spend, and I’m often rushing up the trails I’ve chosen, setting an agenda that will give me good physical exercise, but not necessarily the best workout for my mental and creative health.

So again, I’m going to channel Lefty’s ghost, remembering that he had no agenda when he walked, and often wandered off on his own, following his nose for potentially tasty morsels, finding muddy puddles to roll in, and once making friends with a wandering coyote. I’m not about to squat at every tree or chase squirrels, but other than that, I’m wondering what it would it be like to walk in the woods with the mindset of a dog. To saunter along and sniff at whatever touches my fancy, and occasionally run my heart out for the thrill of the rush of the wind on my face?

How to truly take in the lesson that I don’t always have to have an agenda, a checklist, a time limit? Dogs don’t care about time. Why should I?

Time keeps on slipping… slipping… slipping… into the future. So says the well-known song by the Steve Miller Band. We can’t change that, but we can cultivate a sense of expanded time, by reining in our busy-ness and paying attention to what’s around us, especially the silence and pauses between actions, as McEwen says. Yes, I know that stopping to smell the flowers is a well-worn cliché, but when was the last time we actually did that?

 

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Navigating the Unexpected

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On the day after Hurricane Irene, I woke up and looked out my window and saw that the river had completely covered the fields across the street from my house. As the water lapped at the edge of the road, I wondered if I’d be trapped. We are on high ground, but our only way out is Route 47 North or South unless we want to walk across the Mt. Holyoke Range, or get hold of a canoe. Many of our neighbors have showed us pictures of their families escaping on boats during the historical floods of 1936 and 1938, which are commemorated by the flood marker I pass every day, about a mile north of my house.

The flooding from Irene never got to the road, thanks to the Hadley DPW trucks and their well placed distribution of sandbags, but I did lose my entire garden, which had been in one of the fields by the river. A truly sad day, even though the tomatoes were pretty much done and we’d already enjoyed several months of the harvest.

My garden is now on higher ground

closer to the house, and the flooding on the river plain in my neighborhood has been far less than we anticipated this time. When I look across the street I see deep pools, similar to what’s common in the spring, where people sometimes stand on the road and fish, though some of the corn is clearly lost.

However many farms in the area including two that I feel personally connected to: Grow Food Northampton,  Mountain View Farm and Stone Soup Farm lost nearly all of their crops.  And north of us in Vermont, the situation is much worse, with many homes and businesses devastated.

I often find myself pondering what I would do in face of tragedy, especially the sudden, unexpected kind that threatens the foundations on which I live my life: family, home, sustenance, livelihood. And the thought brings me right back to the week I spent in Matamoros on the Mexican border, walking past wet and sagging tents perched in the hot, muddy field, talking to people who lost everything when tragedy forced them to leave their home countries, people whose only remaining possession is hope.

My husband (who’s always been more attached to food than I am) still occasionally grumbles about the burgeoning crop of sesame seeds we lost in the Irene flood, which we’ve never been able to successfully reproduce. But in reality it was no big deal to lose my garden that summer. I’ve led an exceptionally privileged life whose tragedies, while still difficult, are expected outcomes in the cycle of life and death that all of us on the planet endure. And while sometimes acknowledging that privilege makes me edgy, it also reminds me of my responsibility to participate in tikkun olam, the healing of the world, and to feel gratitude for all that I have.

The farmers at Mountain View write, “We are going to take things one step at a time as we plan for how to proceed. We will continue to distribute farm shares with our heads held high for as long as we can with what we have left.” This seems in line with the mindset of many of the people I spoke with on the border. Despite how bleak their situation appeared, they kept pressing on, determined to get through each day and take one step closer to their dreams, no matter how unachievable they might seem.

Good advice–for all of us, no matter what our state of privilege/challenge might be and no matter how essential our goal(s) might be to our ability to survive. That, along with my meditation app’s suggestion of 10 deep breaths, a reset, and a step forward.

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Centering Home

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Returning from vacation often brings me face-to-face with that moment when the world pricks hard enough to make me sit up and notice that I’m no longer in that carefully constructed bubble of paradise geared to distract me from my life. And this time felt harder than usual. The daily news, successfully willed to a microscopic wisp at the edge of my consciousness as I lay in a hammock overlooking the mountains of Kings Canyon National Park, started to burn at my skin again, its smoky haze penetrating the air like the remnants of a wildfire. And my to-do list, which I could easily reduce to a vague thought and make it sound almost pleasurable in my mind while walking through a grove of foggy sequoias, now felt gargantuan–a tottering avalanche ready to tumble at any moment and bury me in its angry cascade.

Usually I can counteract these post-vacation moments fairly quickly by pivoting back into routines, but for some reason, this time it took over a week to get my bearings. I just want to get back to my life, I kept telling myself, feeling more and more frustrated as the days slipped away but the tasks on my plate stayed constant–or grew. And that led me to question, What was this thing I was referring to as “my life?” What was it I was trying to get back to that wasn’t happening?

On each of those initial post-vacation days I was doing familiar things: walking or biking, gardening, cooking, catching up with friends I hadn’t spoken to or seen while away. And on the days I took the time to assess whether I’d enjoyed my day, I could clearly express gratitude for the many parts of it that pleased me.  So what was missing?

Note: I did not put “writing” on the above list.

However, I was writing on many of those days. Mostly, I was pulling out half-finished poems and chewing on them, making a few tweaks, and putting them away again, not feeling very satisfied, or, more importantly, connected to what I was writing. And because I had such a long to-do list, it was easy to get up after a few minutes and do something else, before giving myself the chance to really revisit what I’d been writing and reset my creative clock.

And being disconnected from my writing made me feel disconnected from my life.

A week after returning from my vacation, I had a writing date with my friend, Lanette, which meant that for two whole hours I had to sit with her on the porch of Barstow’s Dairy Store (a great place to write, if you’re in western MA) and keep at it. I highly recommend writing dates with friends (either in-person or on Zoom) as a way of getting going. In addition to enjoying a brief visit before writing, I couldn’t just tweak a poem or two and then get up to succumb to the call of the unpaid bills or the weedy garden, because at the end of the session I knew we’d be reporting to each other on what we’d done and possibly sharing some of our work. Even as I flitted from poem to poem and took several breaks for Wordle and its Dordle and Quordle variants, not to mention checking email and social media, I kept coming back–until I could look at a poem and remember why I wrote it and why it might still matter. And that helped me finally make the shift back to my creative center.

Since then, I’ve been just as busy with tasks, social and family stuff, but I’m feeling totally differently about my life. I’m now connected to my words and my reason for writing them–even as I might continue to sift through and change them. And that means I’m home.

 

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Babies, Blessings, and the Bird’s Eye View

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For the past five days I’ve been living with my daughter, helping to take care of seven-month-old Baby Manu while her husband is away. Like most of life, there have been moments of  joy, moments of challenge, moments of laughter, drudgery, frustration, profound peacefulness, you-name-it. The only thing certain about life with a baby is that there’s rarely a dull moment.

As a grandparent I feel blessed by having a lot more perspective than I had when my own children were young. In my years of early motherhood, whenever my kids screamed, I worried that not addressing on some immediate need they were expressing would scar them for life, the fog of sleep-deprivation only adding to my anxiety. Now, as I carry Baby Manu around the house and try with my old arms to satisfy his need for incessant “jumping” (i.e. lifting him up and down as he flexes his leg muscles as a launching point on my lap) I feel wiser and calmer–even when he’s screaming. And I’ve thought about how like writing, taking care of a baby is really just an exercise in plunging in and dealing with a lot of trial and error as I try to find that “true north” point of connection.

With Manu this might mean reading a book and taking stops between each page for jumping breaks, or tango dancing around the house while humming riffs from Raffi’s greatest hits or rap songs I’m making up on the spot–all on the theme of Manu: The Life. It might mean playing hand games, or making funny noises, or going through an entire array of animal sounds. Or taking a moment to put him down to play by himself, recognizing in my new found older-age wisdom that both of us could use a little time to chill.  “Little” is the defining word here. All of these activities have proven successful–but generally none of them work for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

The writing process can sometimes feel similar. While I welcome the blessings of the time I feel “in the groove,” other times my words–and my brain–can feel jumpy and fragmented. These are the days I go into the garden to chill, just as I put Manu under his playstation, so he can shake his rattles and babble to himself without Grandma’s interference. And other times, when I’m struggling with trying to write that “one true sentence,” I realize I need to switch up the activity, which for me usually means putting a story aside to revise a poem, or putting the poem aside to work on another poem, or another story or essay until I find something I’m connected to enough in that moment to “re-see.”

But I’m counting my blessings and taking the “birds-eye view” as both a grandparent and a writer. Eventually Manu will grow old enough to tell me what he wants–and so, I hope, will my baby poems and prose in progress.

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Dayeinu

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In the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some of the exercises from Julia Cameron’s classic book, The Artists’ Way. As my children are grown and I’ve been blessed with the luxury of retirement and the ability to structure my “Act III” life to center around creativity, the book doesn’t speak to me as much as it would to those who trying to pull off whatever tiny pieces of life they can from the morass of work and family demands to nurture their creative selves. Yet, I’ve found the process of “morning pages,” (brain-dumping three pages of long-hand uncensored meanderings before I get out of bed in the morning) useful. And I’ve been glad to discover that unloading my mind’s detritus in purposefully pedantic prose hasn’t seemed to affect my ability to write more creatively in other contexts, as I first feared it would. It actually can be liberating to write without worrying about creating flow or metaphor, a clear difference from other stream-of-consciousness prompt writing that I try to load up with gems I can later grow into poems.

I usually end my morning pages with an intention for the day. And while I know that an intention is simply a way of focusing on the day’s array of opportunities, rather than some set of goals I must meet or feel bad about myself for not meeting, the tightrope between goal and intention is a fine line to balance on. In the last few weeks, prepping for Passover (extensive cooking and curating a new Haggadah) along with trying to meet my self-imposed deadline of revising an old novel and submitting it to my publisher have made it difficult to get through my general daily list of writing/revising/submitting poetry or short fiction, playing the piano, taking a walk in the woods, doing a cardio or yoga tape, and meditating–creative and self-care activities that have become essential markers of my day.

Then there are all the other weekly to-dos to fit in: writing political calls-to-action and doing immigration justice work, editing/giving feedback on writing to others, spending time (in person or virtually) with friends I care about, cooking dinner, making sure the house doesn’t fall into utter chaos–and what I call admin: emails to answer, calls and texts to return, bills to pay. The list can be endless.

And, in the last six months, I’ve spent several afternoons each week putting all of this aside to babysit for my grandchild, Manu, which is the best thing of all. In fact, for this moment with Manu, I say what we say every year on Passover, Dayeinu: It would have been enough for us.

Julia Cameron talks about the importance of making dates with your inner artist that are geared solely for playing rather than to get projects done. And in my experience, there is nothing more purely playful as putting your whole self–heart and soul–into the space of a baby newly exploring the world.

So, today, even as I will still stress about being behind on deadlines, intentions, goals, whatever, I will try to remind myself–Dayeinu. Gratitude. It’s all good.

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COVID in Cape Town

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Two days into my South Africa trip, I started getting cold symptoms. I tested for COVID and was relieved to be negative, so I went on a safari and for a walk with rifle-carrying naturalists in the wild bush, chalking up the fatigue I was feeling to two consecutive red eye flights followed by the eight hour bus ride to Kruger National Park. A few days later, when we arrived in Cape Town, my husband was also coughing and sneezing. Our symptoms felt like a typical cold, but just to make sure, we both tested again. BINGO! For both of us, a flaming red line.

All our plans for Cape Town were now upended. We had hoped to hike on Table Mountain, visit Robben Island–where Mandela spent 25 years in prison–see the penguin colony and the Cape of Good Hope. We also were very much looking forward to observing a rehearsal of a youth choir run by a friend of my younger child’s. And I’d been hoping to spend many evenings at venues that offered the lush South African a capella music I love so much.

But now, we had to totally shift gears. Even though there are no isolation protocols in South Africa, we were determined to keep others safe. While we were glad not to be quarantined to our hotel room, since other than mild congestion, both of us felt pretty well, we didn’t want to do anything that might inadvertently infect others. So, in the heat, we put on our masks and found places we could walk to from our hotel. We rented bikes and rode along the beach, and when we were done, we sanitized the handlebars with hand-wipes. It felt like 2020 all over again, except that we were the ones everyone was supposed to be afraid of.

Meanwhile, we’re hanging onto the fantasy that perhaps we’ll test negative before we have to leave and we can do some of the things we wanted to do. It’s kind of the way I feel sometimes when I let my hopes get the better of me when I’m starting a writing project. Perhaps this will be the breakthrough book–the one that will everyone will read and love, or the poem published in the hot-shot journal. But perhaps not. When I tested again yesterday, that extra line was still flaming positive. It’s fine to dream, but even more important is to deal with what life gives you and make it work. A writing project, like a vacation, will be what it will. Despite all my leanings toward perfectionism, I feel grateful for each snippet the muse throws my way, just as I feel grateful to the bi-valent vaccine, for making my experience of this illness that we’ve feared for so long feel like not a big deal.

So, probably no music for me, this trip–other than listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo on YouTube. How long before that red line disappears? Who knows? I’ll just have to be patient, put on my mask and be happy enough to sit on an uncrowded beach and watch the sunset.

 

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