Tag: writing

always through, no matter what

A boy bringing in the new year.

“Get your shoes on. It’s time.”

Four days after Christmas, a few more days after Solstice, and one less than a few days after Chanukah. There is still New Year’s to look forward to or dread, but we are still in that breathing time amidst all these holidays. These are always days that I don’t expect to do or accomplish much. Not that these days are just for rest but for playing with paints or starting a 1000-piece puzzle or clearing that little pile of things with no place they belong on the kitchen counter or piling a whole bunch of papers from all over the house onto the in-box on my desk to be sorted at some unspecified future time. Nothing is resolved, but small movements towards big steps are being taken.

Yes, it has been like that these last few days.

Julia went to her day center last Friday. Ed and I went to the gym and then spent the afternoon on our laptops, reading, writing, and planning a weekend in NYC to see a friend’s play and to celebrate Julia’s 25th birthday. It will be cold—we remind each other a few times, thinking about where we will stay and how we’ll feel about public transport in the middle of January. And walking.

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on one hand, the other hand, and something else

A week, not quite, most of a week of forced quiet. I took last Wednesday off feeling the beginnings of something like being sick. I missed a Shakespeare class at Harvard and a choir rehearsal in the evening.  I slept a good deal of the day, wrote emails, figured out a new drug insurance for myself and checked on Julia’s, and started the book club book for this month. And was quiet.

I stayed home on Thursday, not going to see Cheshire and the boys.  Honestly, if it were not for the drive —a good 45 minutes to an hour and always in traffic— I would have gone for a short time. I was on the cusp of feeling better but not completely there.

Writing this, I realize that my RSV bout in January is influencing my behavior. I am slightly fearful of the good health that I have enjoyed.  Last January showed me that I could get sick. Good and sick.

And so, I stayed home to take care of myself, again being quiet for the day, catching up on small tasks that have slipped through a life with cracks and working on housing for Julia. 

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manifesto

A small truth gently unfolded itself very quietly last night.

I have been working on a book-length memoir for a few years, and it is close to finished. It needs one more good edit, maybe some beta readers, and another edit before I either try to get it published or create a Substack.  But.

But . . . but . . . but . . .

There is no way that I am going to get it finished. Not right now, not before the end of the year, or before my January birthday—both goals. Maybe I will never finish it. This is an awful truth. Maybe everyone else sees it, has seen it for a long time, and is rolling their eyes or mentally saying, “duh!” Okay, but not me. I am either that eternal optimist or someone who refuses to look reality in the face.

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vermont 1

Shelburne, Vermont. Definitely morning frost. And thank goodness it also turned chili at home before we left. The extra sweatshirt thrown into the bags at the last minute will be used!

Ed and I are ensconced in a sweet and small B&B owned by an architect turned painter and her husband, who is very nice, but I haven’t drilled him on his work life. Yet.

Julia is at Zeno Mountain Farm for a five-day, four-night weekend. She went to their fall weekend last year and was invited back for this year.  (She has not yet been invited for summer camp, which is my goal for her. Once invited, she can come up every year for the rest of her life.  Everyone does, and thus, the wait is long for a spot.) She helped me pack her stuff and then re-pack when we found out how cold it was really going to be. The ride up was pleasant and uneventful until we got to the country road part that goes up and down a mountain for almost 30 miles, okay, a small mountain. Julia began getting angry, anxious, and extremely unpleasant.  At one point, she lobbed a sweater at Ed, who was driving. She spent a good deal of time swearing at the mountain, the road, and us. By the time we arrived at the Farm, I had to spend time with her trying to figure out what she wanted to do. (Not at all sure what we would do if she wanted to not go to Zeno altogether.)

I was unsure if we could leave her.

And then she went through the big farmhouse doors, and someone said hello to her. And in almost an instant, or at least a few minutes, she was all smiles. Hugging two people she knew, ready to hand off her meds to the nurse and go to her assigned room on the third floor. When she came downstairs, she was ready to have us leave. She gave us happy hugs and went off to a giant bay window with couches in front of it to watch the sunset. 

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news of the week

Julia came home from The Price Center on Thursday with two pieces of news.  First, that she had gone to the YMCA with peers. She got on the van and spent the morning on the stationary bike, if she is to be believed. I am not sure she spent the whole morning there, but when she goes to the gym with me, mostly on weekends, she can do 40 minutes on the stationary bike. The big part of that news is that she was willing to leave the building!  She has gone on a few community visits, like the zoo, to help with watering plants, but that was of high interest to Julia—she loves zoos, loves watering. I know there is a lot more going out into the community that she can take part in.

Fingers crossed that this is a beginning. 

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process

Working on specific projects — this Sunday’s service at my church, the writing prompt for next week’s meeting of my new writing group at FUUSN, and the agenda for the writing class I’ll be facilitating at HILR in October. Both the writing groups are called Letters—In the Company of Writers.

I need to say that this was not the way I intended to spend my summer—I had “simplified” my usual routine and intended to be editing the “big” memoir all summer. I had blocked out days that were not going to be for anything other than writing/editing and had given up any wish for leaving town for any length of time.  

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no. 15

Fifteen years is a long time. I can tick off who has grown, where and how we’ve lived, who has come into my life and who has left, what I have learned and some of what I have forgotten, what new toys I have acquired and what I have let go of. It feels like a lifetime of change and it feels like a moment.

Fifteen years ago today, around lunchtime, David died. I still miss him. I can almost imagine sitting down and having a conversation with him. I have so much news and so many questions. At the same time, however, I cannot imagine it at all. He is too far in time and space and changes away.

Time seems to have wiped away, wiped clean, the most painful missings, the heart-wrenching grieving, leaving in its wake a sweetness, a place from which strength could be built. I know the pilings on which this life I now live rests.

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coming home

Home.  I have chewed on the concept and the actual location of the place for a long time.  I have lived in places where I never felt at home, sometimes gradually finding enough of my people in those places to hold on and not wither away. I lived in places that felt like home, left them with every intention of coming back, never to return. There are places in-between—places where I felt some connection with the air of the place and made important friendships. Boston is one of those places. I moved from Jersey to Cambridge in the middle 70’s to live with David. He had been at Brandeis, dropping out to play in the pit band of the show, Lenny, and then just staying on.  I liked the city then and the neighborhoods in Somerville and Cambridge where we lived.  I was willing to move back to somewhere around here after we finished our degrees. David wanted NYC as home and very certainly, I fell in love with NYC and had no regrets. 

We never returned together to Boston, and when we left NYC for the midwest, I forgot that I had feelings for Boston, the place. 

And I did not quite realize, when I lived in Madison for twelve years, how much that had grown to be a home. It was a hard place to leave. Not the home that I came from, I will never be a midwesterner but the place with the people who supported me, and Julia, those first years of her with us and all the years after David left.  

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another mother’s day

I brought my laptop to Julia’s year end recital at Berklee. Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education.  I will not get much time to sit and type but I was pretty sure I would want to get it out as soon as I sat down. I do and we have some time until recitals begin. 

This year the musical step taken is that Julia will play her cello without me sitting with her. This is the step forward after a few taken back. Back in Madison, when Julia was playing with Martha Vallon, she always played without someone sitting with her; however, when Julia emerged from Covid shutdown, she was not willing to be on the stage alone, not willing to do her own counting or take full responsibility for what she was playing.  I see some change now.  It has been a long way back.

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friday status

Hard week for me and for Julia, but our challenges pale in comparison to what is being inflicted upon young people who our universities invited here to study and practice being Americans.  Since law school, I have put a good deal of faith in our legal system, checks and balances, respect for the law, the ethics of judges. I don’t always agree, in fact, the republican packed Supreme Court disappoints me regularly; but I’ve believed in the process. That belief that is shattered daily. There is no way to keep up with the barage of awful news, but miss one day and life as I’ve always known it may turn completely upside down. No hyperbole at all.

This was not what I began to write but it is very hard not to follow rabbits down deep holes.

Today, I need to reset from the overwhelm of the week.  I am privileged to be able to sit back and take stock and right myself. I am aware of that.  

Morning painting after Julia was picked up, some writing, a quick vacuum of floors that have gotten very dirty in some unknown way, folding four, or is it five, loads of clothes (temporarily giving up on getting Julia to notice that an over full laundry basket is a good sign to wash clothes). I have reading for next week’s classes and writing that needs to be finished, but the sun is out, the gardens need cleaning and the sadnesses need airing before the day is finished. 

What was personally challenging and hard for us, for me should follow soon.

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