Connecting

Today I was walking from a meeting and I put my music on.  I was feeling pretty glad because the meeting I had just left was full  of people who feel passionate about our shared work and I felt warm and connected.

Girl with Faraway Eyes by the Rolling Stones was the first song to play and it made me smile.

That song has the capacity to somehow bring me back to two places at once.  Or rather, more aptly, it takes me back to one place at once: Me.  But the two places I go first are these:
1. I am ten years old in a loud, smoky tavern with my parents.   The music is loud and I feel warm and surrounded and it's one of those good nights when it's just fun and I don't want to go home.  I like to fancy myself as a girl with faraway eyes.
2. I am twenty four years old and in Tad's apartment when we're first becoming friends.  That song comes on and I see Tad smile over at me from across the apartment and I can tell by his look, two things: He thinks I have faraway eyes. And he knows I fancy myself as someone with faraway eyes and he's laughing at me/with me with his own eyes.

So there you are and I'm walking down 6th and Wisconsin, listening to that song and smiling, and a man walking past me stops and says "What are you smiling about?"

This man is a complete stranger.  He has gray hair and a knit hat and a big sweater. He's wearing a backpack and he looks kind of hippyish and he's got a nice friendly energy so I stop.

"I'm listening to a good song." I tell him, popping the ear bud out of my right ear. I leave the one in my left and I can still hear Keith Richards and Mick Jagger faintly in my nearly deaf ear.

The man sort of looks back and notices my messenger bag. "Do you ride--"
"--What the bus?" I interrupt him.
"No...I was going to say a bike."
"I do ride a bike." I say. "But only when it's warm out."
"Do you live in Riverwest?"
"No. The west side."
He looks surprised. "The west side!?  Boring!"
And for some reason, I take my mitten off and smack him in the arm with it.  "The west side is NOT boring!"
He laughs and I tell him whereabouts I live and we talk about the Times Cinema.  He lives in Riverwest. Obviously.

So we talk awhile and then I smile at him and he smiles back.
"Have a nice day." I say.
"You too!" He says, pointing at me.

And we walk in seperate directions.   I put my right ear bud back in and now it's Leonard Cohen singing "Passing Through"

And I keep smiling as I walk.

Connection is so good.  For a lifetime, for an hour or for a couple minutes.  It just is good.

And if you're down on your luck

and you can't harmonize

get a girl with faraway eyes

And when you're downright disgusted

and life ain't worth a dime

find a girl with faraway eyes... 

Sometimes you feel so much so big it's just something else entirely...

The past few days have been weird...just big feelings...Mercury in Retrograde....longing....sadness....happiness all swinging from a pendulum that makes me laugh as quick as I cry.

When I lived in Estonia on the island of Kuressaare, there were weekends I would go for entire 48 hour periods without talking to anyone and my loneliness was big and the journey of my thoughts was miles deep.  One of those weekends, I walked to the school where I worked and on my three-mile walk home it began to rain.  That cold, wet, February rain...and by the time I got to my apartment I was soaked to the skin and freezing. My too-long pants were full of stones and when I unfolded them they dumped all over the hallway of my tiny dark apartment and I collapsed in a heap and cried so hard that you would have thought the biggest tragedy of life had befallen me.

After a while I realized that was how hard I was crying and just over a bit of homesickness and freezy wet weather... and suddenly I was laughing so hard and so hysterically.... I stood and saw my face in the hallway mirror and almost pointed in mockery and laughed some more.

Going from laughing hard to crying hard is one really inexpensive and natural way of feeling ALIVE.

Yesterday I cried all day long.  Today I feel joyful.  I love strong feelings whether they be horrid or wonderful because I love to feel wide awake and alive.

I decided I wanted to learn this Regina Spektor song on my ukulele.  But this song makes me cry big tears every time I listen to it and sure enough...every time I sing it. So there I was again, trying to learn this song and crying as soon as I got to this part:

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

And there I was again crying and then laughing immediately after, at myself trying to sing a song wholeheartedly that was making me cry...all alone in my house while my kids played next door with the neighbors.

Give this song a listen. And cry. Or laugh. Or both.  Or just hear it and know your own heart is pumping blood and you are alive.

And they grow and they grow...

I remember the days when I would have paid someone $10,000 a year just to get my kids out of bed, into clothing, fed and into the car for the drive to school.  I imagined myself there in the car, sipping my coffee, listening to a mix CD, waiting to receive my snowpants and boots clad children who would be ready to go--backpacks on, fuss free, in the car.
But alas, I didn't have $10,000 to spare and so I had to drag them out of bed and coax them through breakfast. I remember being like...
Put your boots on.
Put your boots on.
Here are your boots. Put them on.
Put your boots on!
Good! You're putting your boots on. Thanks for being such a good---
Why is that boot back off?
Put your boots on!
Why are you upstairs??? Come down here right now and PUT YOUR BOOTS ON!!!!! 
I remember slamming out of the house with the bags to put in the car, hoping upon hope that when I got back in their em-effing boots would be on already.  I banged my way out there, swearing up a storm and then remembered my wonderful neighbor next door who had raised twelve children (God bless her soul) could probably hear me.

I remember those days.

And then those days are gone just like that.

Today I get my kids up with one little shake. Sit on the edge of the bed. And that's it.  I go downstairs and get breakfast on the table and they get their own clothes out. And they get dressed themselves. And when it's time to go, they complain, yes, they still do. But they put their boots on.

And I make jokes.  "I didn't create the school start time.  I don't know what you're complaining to me for!" And we laugh. And we get there on time.  Fuss free.

It is lovely.

Tonight Tad made a video and we pretended we were having a cooking show as we made chocolate chip cookies after dinner, just because. We played Crazy Eights while we waited for them to bake and my kids made jokes that were hilarious and nuanced and weird and I felt just awestruck that we were all just hanging out.

And I know there are teenage years to come.  And it gets harder.

But we're in a sweet spot now and I like it. 

I don't mourn my childrens' babyhood.  I don't wish for those cooing, suckling creatures back.
I don't mourn their toddlerhood.  I don't wish for their chubby cheeks and dimpled elbows.
I try not to mourn those years or last year or yesterday.

We are marching on with time...and I think I'll just appreciate tonight...tonight.

The opposite of pomp

This year, I left many pissed of people in my wake, decorating for the holidays before the prescribed time.  I decorated at work the day before Thanksgiving and at home on November 30th.
I love the holidays. I love the feel of my office and my house all twinkly with lights and dangling baubles--snowmen and santa claus and reindeer.  The warmth that surrounds a Christmas decorated place is a magical thing. 
But to do so before December starts, before even our day of turkey and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and pumkin pie.. Well.... that's just deplorable according to some.

And now it is January 3.  Tomorrow school begins again.  Tad and I go back to work and the snow is no longer the white, fluffy thing of a winter wonderland--just another something sparkly to look at from the cozy warmth of your decorated house.  On January 3rd it's just cold and dirty and it makes you late for work.  It's a hallmark of the winter that will surely now last until sometime at the end of March and crop up again in April just when you thought it was over....

This is the day that marks the end of the holidays for me.  So I got up and made myself a cup of coffee and sat down in front of the tree to begin to UN-deck the halls. I was just holding the tenth taken-down ornament in my hand when I heard a noise from the other room.

"What are you doing?" Tad asked me in alarm.

See, as much as he wished to delay the tinsel draped yuletide season, he doesn't want to see it end.  Nor do my children.  It's like this every year.  I want to put it all up earlier than everyone and I want to take it all down earlier than everyone. 

But the decking and undecking of the halls have a thing in common.  Two sides of the same shiny golden wrapped chocolate coin you find in your stocking:  they are tasks that need to be done, scheduled in with all the other tasks that need to be done.  And I find a certain practicality in WHEN those tasks get done.  I decked before rightly I should have because it FIT INTO MY SCHEDULE... I had TIME to do so.  And so here we are. Tad is reading; the kids are watching Sunday morning television.  I'm ready to tick this task off my list of things.

But alas.  I sit here blogging because Tad convinced me to wait just a bit longer--to let the sparkly centerpiece of our living room remain for just a few more warm and cozy hours.

And then winter truly begins.

Twenty one books....

I love to read.  I consume books.  I gobble them up so fast, one after the other, so that at times, when people ask me what a book was about, I can scarcely remember.  So Tad suggested I keep a book journal and I started one on January 2015.    My book journal includes the book title and author, the date I started the book and the date I finished the book. It also includes quotes from the book that struck me enough that I wanted to remember them.  It also includes the books that I decided to abandon after starting them. It hurts a bit to do so, but this year I gave myself permission to abandon books that I just didn't love.  "It's not you. It's me" I told them.

I read 51 books this year from start to finish.  I abandoned 2. 

In May, my friend Kate posted a link to this Huffington Post article: 21 books from the last 5 years that all women should read. 

I decided to read them all.

So from May to December of 2015 I read each and every book on the list.  I would like to share with you my five seven favorites from that list in no particular order. 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

Yes Please by Amy Poehler 

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Room by Emma Donoghue

I loved these books in particular because they were all full of real emotion and beautiful truths. 

All seven of these books made me forget I was reading actual words and took me along on a ride somewhere. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: "That girl never understood that the first rule of life in Lagos. You do not marry the man you love. You marry the man who can best maintain you!     .....Amen...But sometimes one man can be both o."

Helen Oyeyemi: "When something catches your attention just keep your attention on it. Stick with it until the end, and somewhere along the line there'll be weirdness.  Ive never tried to explain it to anyone before but what I mean to say is that a whole a lot of technically impossible things are always trying to happen to us."

Roxanne Gay: "Death is a tragedy whether it is the death of one girl-woman in London or seventy seven men, women and children in Norway. We know this, but perhaps it needs to be said over and over again so we do not forget.  I have never considered compassion a finite resource.  I would not want to live in a world where such was the case.  Tragedy. Call. Great. Small. Compassion. Response. Compassion. Response."

Amanda Coplin: "It was only too bad that to gossip and support mean ideas was easier and more enjoyable, really, than to keep quiet and know in silence that the true story can never be told, articulated in a way that will tell the whole truth. Even if it is better to be quiet, quietness will never reign. People talked, even the best of them."

Amy Poehler: "Going from crying to laughing [that] hard and fast happens maybe five times in your life and that extreme right turn is the reason why we are alive."

I thought Room and Wild were both fantastic but didn't write down any quotes from them.

What a lovely thing it is to read.  To get lost in a story that makes you laugh or cry or better yet, to think.  I hope you check out some of these twenty-one books if you have not already. Let me know what you thought.

 

 

Why is your enthusiasm not as wide as mine?

I've noticed this phenomenon in which someone feels strongly about a piece of art like a song or a scene from a movie, or even a play in a football game or a strong statement that someone made...A person feels strongly about this thing...and they cannot BELIEVE that the person or people around them are not having the same reaction.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Picture this public example:

A football player on the field, looking up at the stadium, aghast, almost angrily flapping his arms up and down, asking for more enthusiasm from the crowd.  Why is he so angry about it? I often wonder to myself.  People are going to get as excited as they're going to get.  Yay! One of your teammates got a touchdown or a two point conversion. Amazing!  People are already cheering loudly; You make a hundred zillion dollars a year.  What more do you want?  Is their increased volume going to validate you and your teammates further?

Or this more private example:

A man at a party, playing a song that he absolutely loves for a group of people.  They smile, bop their heads up and down to the beat.  Listen closely to the lyrics. But still. This man is astounded that these people are not reacting with the life changing amazement that he did upon really hearing this song for the first time.  Their minds aren't sufficiently blown. What is their problem???  He wants to know why their enthusiasm for this piece of art isn't as resplendent as his.  I see this happen often enough and I always want to know...why is it so important to you that others react like you react. Does our lack of enthusiasm for this thing somehow discount your own? It shouldn't.

But we want people to share in our glory and our grief.  Our joy and jubilation, or distaste and outrage.  I do understand this.  I want it too. 

But there's a difference between contagious thrill in music, art or sport..and an almost ire in someone not sharing your same reaction... 

I'm trying to understand why this bothers me so much when I see it happen.  Is it because it annoys me when someone gets angry at another for a naturally occurring reaction (or non-reaction)?  I admit that I'm not the most comfortable with anger without forward action...  And I believe that anger always is the secondary emotion to something more uncomfortable to sit with...like pain...hurt...rejection.  So then, is it because of the validation so craved and needed in that moment? Does it make me become aware of the validation I also wish for? 

I suppose I recognize that the person trying to take, albeit sometimes in a forceful manner, the shared reaction of his or her fellow humans, comes from a place of simply wishing to share in something moving.  We all want community of a kind.  We want to share in the experiences of things strongly felt.  I think, in this age of face-book paced twittering on and on about our sandwiches, our babies, how long we worked out, our experience of the horrific things going on in this world with the same voracity,  we want to matter.

The tight end with his big bucks and heavily padded work life wants to matter.  The party goer with his discovery of a new beautifully produced song with smart lyrics wants to matter.  I want to matter. You want to matter.  

And we do. 

Multitasking

I know, I know. They say that multitasking isn't actually a real thing and if you're doing one thing then you can't really do the other thing very well at all.

Texting and driving.

Listening to voicemail and checking email.

Folding laundry and eating soup.

Case in point:

Tonight I called my dear friend Ryan for a catch up chat.  For a while, I just wandered around the house while I talked to him, but after a bit, I realized that I was sweating and that it was hot and stuffy in our house.  I remembered that I still hadn't taken down a few of our storm windows and I thought it would be a great idea to do that while I talked to Ryan.

As he told me what was going on in his life and I told him about mine, I got the front room storm window out, brought it in to the house, got a chair and the screen window and tried to put it up only to find that I couldn't reach it.  Bear in mind Ryan is still telling me a story at this point and I am listening.  As I carried the ladder up from the basement and out to the front of the house, bonking it into walls and corners and finally getting it outside, Ryan said to me, "What is going on over there?"

"Oh!" I laughed. "I'm taking the storm windows down. Am I making a lot of noise?"
"Yeah!" Ryan said, laughing.

We continued our conversation and I moved on to the dining room windows.  These windows are considerably more difficult.  They are high up on the house (almost to the second to last rung of the ladder I have to climb) and sticky.  I got the first one out and the screen in no problem.  The second one was stuck.  Going back into the house, still talking to Ryan, I climbed upon our built-in china cabinet and tried to tap at the window to get it unstuck.  Nothing.  So I went back outside, climbed the ladder and unhooked the screen window which was already in.  I went back in the house, and pushed it so it was halfway open, leaving me space to push from the inside and pull from the outside the winter storm window that was stuck.

Ryan was telling me a tale about work and I held the phone tightly between my ear and my shoulder as I ever so gently tapped the heavy stuck storm window out of its frame.  Suddenly, it was freed and then it was freed a bit too enthusiastically and I fell sideways on top of the china cabinet, trying to old fast to the falling storm window AND listen to my friend.  Well, that storm window was quite heavy and the sheer force of its fall tipped me forward and I dropped both the phone and the window RIGHT out the widow frame and into the garden below.

"Don't worry Ryan!" I shouted, leaning out into the open window frame. "I dropped you out the window!"
I clambered down from the cabinet and ran downstairs and outside, yelling "I'm coming, Ryan!"
Once down there, I found to my relief that the storm window was fully intact. I was sure it would have broken in the fall and was so glad it didn't.  Now at least I would have the option of NOT explaining what had happened to my husband when he returned.
But I couldn't find my phone.
"Here I am, Ryan!" I yelled, crawling around in the grass,  "I can't find my phone!  I'm coming!" I shouted as I rooted around in the bushes, "I'll find you! Don't go away!"
Finally I found the phone face up on the ground and to my delight, Ryan was still there.
"OH Ryan, you're still there! I dropped you out the window!"
"I'm still here." he said.  He was laughing "What happened?"
When I got up from the grass and looked up, my son was standing there, arms folded looking at me sort of scoldingly.  "Mommy." He said. "What are you doing?"
I looked up to the house and Lucy was in the half-open screen window, peering down at me. "Mommy. You're being very loud."

I ushered my children inside and finished my conversation with Ryan and decided that it might be best to save the activity of the taking down and putting up of storm windows for when you're not engaged in any other activities.

But it's done!