I am sitting in the loft with tired eyes, a big belly and an achy back. Ben is in Boston for work for two nights, and writing to a friend just now, I realized what I wish for right now is some luxury.
How glorious to wake up and find a packed suitcase by my bed, Silas already perfectly cared for, and plans for 5 days away at a small secluded resort: balmy warm breeze, massages, green tea, yoga in the garden, fresh organic food, cocktails on lounge-y cushions outdoors, a ceiling fan, a soft bed and a small pile of good books on my nightstand...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Hope?
An old friend of mine who is patiently muscling through the adoption process sent me a link to one of the NYT's Modern Love columns recently. The woman who wrote this column has lost multiple babies in failed pregnancies and is now standing with handfuls, closet-fulls, a home full of grief that seems to have no outlet in our culture. Below is a blurb from her article:
"Conventional wisdom tells us that hope is a good thing. Hope is what gets us through difficulty. But over these years I’ve come to realize that hope is sometimes slow torture. When hope keeps you anxious and bitter and stuck in some fantasy of the perfect nuclear family, then maybe hope isn’t what you need anymore. Maybe the most hopeful action one could take would be to abandon hope altogether.
Turns out I’m not alone in thinking this. When The New York Times Magazine recently published its list of the most innovative ideas of 2007, I got some satisfaction out of the inclusion of a study claiming that in certain cases hope can be an obstacle to emotional recovery."
I am a person who hopes a lot. In fact, much of who I am is built on the hope that God is in fact God. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of hope and faith as alike and wonder what the difference is. Both involve a confidence in what is not seen. Both involve a certain amount of trust, of powerlessness, of waiting, of wanting. Both involve risk.
...I just looked them up...
FAITH:
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof
HOPE:
1. the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best
So, hope is the sense or assurance that what we want will turn out for the best. And faith is a a trust in a person or a thing, a belief not based on proof. What becomes essential as we ask the writer's question of whether hope is worth giving up, is how we define the phrase "turn out for the best" in our definition of hope.
She talks about not needing a hope that "keeps you anxious and bitter and stuck in some fantasy," a hope that keeps you desperately fixated on a singular desire that may or may not be fulfilled. A hope like this is painful and full of risk because in it, "the best" easily becomes what we see as best, that thing that we most want.
When faith is involved, "the best" changes shape. Trust in a bigger purpose emerges. "The best" may actually turn out to be what we most dread and not at all what we hoped for, but the shock and pain of that fact is backed by assurance, the trust that the Greater is holding all the crumbly pieces, including our broken hearts, and that He is healing.
"Conventional wisdom tells us that hope is a good thing. Hope is what gets us through difficulty. But over these years I’ve come to realize that hope is sometimes slow torture. When hope keeps you anxious and bitter and stuck in some fantasy of the perfect nuclear family, then maybe hope isn’t what you need anymore. Maybe the most hopeful action one could take would be to abandon hope altogether.
Turns out I’m not alone in thinking this. When The New York Times Magazine recently published its list of the most innovative ideas of 2007, I got some satisfaction out of the inclusion of a study claiming that in certain cases hope can be an obstacle to emotional recovery."
I am a person who hopes a lot. In fact, much of who I am is built on the hope that God is in fact God. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of hope and faith as alike and wonder what the difference is. Both involve a confidence in what is not seen. Both involve a certain amount of trust, of powerlessness, of waiting, of wanting. Both involve risk.
...I just looked them up...
FAITH:
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof
HOPE:
1. the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best
So, hope is the sense or assurance that what we want will turn out for the best. And faith is a a trust in a person or a thing, a belief not based on proof. What becomes essential as we ask the writer's question of whether hope is worth giving up, is how we define the phrase "turn out for the best" in our definition of hope.
She talks about not needing a hope that "keeps you anxious and bitter and stuck in some fantasy," a hope that keeps you desperately fixated on a singular desire that may or may not be fulfilled. A hope like this is painful and full of risk because in it, "the best" easily becomes what we see as best, that thing that we most want.
When faith is involved, "the best" changes shape. Trust in a bigger purpose emerges. "The best" may actually turn out to be what we most dread and not at all what we hoped for, but the shock and pain of that fact is backed by assurance, the trust that the Greater is holding all the crumbly pieces, including our broken hearts, and that He is healing.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Food
Maybe it began with eat pray love and her descriptions of the pizza in Naples, maybe it has to do with being pregnant, or the winds that recently blew through southern california, or sheer boredom, but for the last two weeks, I have wanted to EAT. Not just snack, but eat. And I am not talking about a boneless, skinless chicken breast or frozen yogurt eating but a rich creamy chocolate ice cream, homemade macaroni and cheese, and whole milk-in-my-cereal kind of eating.
So, as of this week I have a new food philosophy. I've decided that instead of resisting these fatty demands as my conscience and culture well advise, I will cater to them. I will whip up a big steak and cheese sub, put lots of butter in my grits, eat white-flour pasta with butter and parmesan for lunch. The hope is that once I give in, these cravings will run their course. (Yes, do tell me if this strikes you as outlandish wishful thinking).
Part of this hungering -- if we could give it so much credit as to call it hungering -- I think has to do with wanting real and rich ingredients rather than the quick and less satisfying ones I often settle for when cooking. So last night I broke out Bon Apetit and Barefoot Contessa (which is what I would like to name my daughter, the whole thing, Barefoot Contessa, if it made any sense to name someone Barefoot -- what a perfect name) and made pork medallions with lemon caper sauce for dinner, a potato basil fritatta for breakfast, and later wandered over to Stater Bros and bought some more Ben and Jerry's.
I can't tell you yet whether all of this has hit the spot, but maybe at the very least it will usher me into better cooking. In the meantime, I will rejoice at the first forkfull of chocolate goodness from Alta (c/o Andrea -- thank you!) and try to listen closely enough to my body to stop when it says full...
Cheers to the Fatkins Diet (as Ben has fondly named it)!
So, as of this week I have a new food philosophy. I've decided that instead of resisting these fatty demands as my conscience and culture well advise, I will cater to them. I will whip up a big steak and cheese sub, put lots of butter in my grits, eat white-flour pasta with butter and parmesan for lunch. The hope is that once I give in, these cravings will run their course. (Yes, do tell me if this strikes you as outlandish wishful thinking).
Part of this hungering -- if we could give it so much credit as to call it hungering -- I think has to do with wanting real and rich ingredients rather than the quick and less satisfying ones I often settle for when cooking. So last night I broke out Bon Apetit and Barefoot Contessa (which is what I would like to name my daughter, the whole thing, Barefoot Contessa, if it made any sense to name someone Barefoot -- what a perfect name) and made pork medallions with lemon caper sauce for dinner, a potato basil fritatta for breakfast, and later wandered over to Stater Bros and bought some more Ben and Jerry's.
I can't tell you yet whether all of this has hit the spot, but maybe at the very least it will usher me into better cooking. In the meantime, I will rejoice at the first forkfull of chocolate goodness from Alta (c/o Andrea -- thank you!) and try to listen closely enough to my body to stop when it says full...
Cheers to the Fatkins Diet (as Ben has fondly named it)!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
back to reality
It's good to have people in your life who bring you back to earth, who remind you that your shoes are standing on concrete and that sweet life is moving in front of your eyes even more vividly than it's racing through your head. Annemarie is one of those.
She, a couple other friends and I have been reading eat pray love, which has, of course, sparked many fantasies about our childless, city-winding, island-exploring parallel lives. Gazing at my "other lives" for too long is one thing that can turn my days a dull graphite grey.
Today, though, Annemarie sent this and, once again, I live in Costa Mesa (where there is sunlight and Spring-green peeking out on the hills):
since i have shared the kid-free fantasy with you all, i should also share the kid-present reality...which was that last night i went up to feed claire around 10, and after she ate she just fell asleep on my shoulder. she was so warm and cuddly and smelled like baby soap and milk and i just sat there and thought my heart was going to explode listening to her breathe.
She, a couple other friends and I have been reading eat pray love, which has, of course, sparked many fantasies about our childless, city-winding, island-exploring parallel lives. Gazing at my "other lives" for too long is one thing that can turn my days a dull graphite grey.
Today, though, Annemarie sent this and, once again, I live in Costa Mesa (where there is sunlight and Spring-green peeking out on the hills):
since i have shared the kid-free fantasy with you all, i should also share the kid-present reality...which was that last night i went up to feed claire around 10, and after she ate she just fell asleep on my shoulder. she was so warm and cuddly and smelled like baby soap and milk and i just sat there and thought my heart was going to explode listening to her breathe.
this was after an evening where maddie and i spent an hour (after claire went down) making bead necklaces by the fire, in which she looked at me and said "it's fun to have the fire on" and then "you know what? i love you"
SOOOO. despite the lack of sleep and the lack of world traveling, I do want the life I have. and I don't think i actually would have enjoyed an ashram. I felt God as clearly as any "blue light" in that rocking chair last night.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Meditation
This afternoon, emerging from eat pray love, I was pretty sure I had been transformed and finally enlightened and would forever after be able to detach from the circumstantial, the daily and the difficult and to resign in the unmoving hub of God's grace and presence, firmly planted in the true self. Talk about living vicariously. Somehow reading Gilbert's instant changes (instant being over an agonizing disciplined 4 months), complete with the ability to let emotional muck slide off her back and to sense blue spiritual energy zinging up her spine while she meditated, made me feel like I too had radically awakened. Or at least that I would by the time I went to bed.
I have one relationship in my life that insists on being an especially trying one -- relentlessly so. I thought of it immediately when I read the following passage: "If something is rubbing so hard against you, you can be sure it's working on you... It burns away the ego, turns you into pure ash. It's supposed to be arduous..." (ch 52)
I know this relationship for me, like "the Geet" for Gilbert, exists in my life to kick my ass, to bore holes through my smugness and pride, to stretch me until I almost rip, to make me lose my sense of North over and over, and ultimately to help me find it again with more certainty and truth than ever before.
I have learned, slowly, that the pains of this relationship really have to do with me, my own reactivity, fears, control issues, and that that those are the parts that I have to (and hate to) work on... So today, operating from my new contemplative-enlightened state, I meditated in the loft, among boxes of Christmas stuff, sitting on the floor, freshly inspired by Gilbert's success.
In real life, I do not meditate. In fact, despite growing up in a Quaker school (where, let's be honest, Quaker meetings had nothing remotely to do with meditation or even quiet for that matter), my whole body usually rebels against it: my mind squirrels around racing, chattering, digging for excuses to leave; my body starts feeling creaky --back hurts, knees ache, neck feels stiff; and negative talk permeates the quiet with its assortment of whispery doubts.
But TODAY, determined and open, I found that I actually stayed put, that my body sat quietly (except for a weird throbbing in my right wrist that I kept expecting to receive a God-given message about but didn't ) and even my mind held no violent rebellions. Instead I perched calmly, weaving between my mantra come and my bouncing thoughts -- Ashrams, details of childbirth, the few friends I know who meditate, plans for a salami sandwich downstairs...
By the end of my 10 minutes, I was so proud of myself -- a sure fire sign that I had not transcended, blaringly confirmed later that evening when I talked to my difficult friend on the phone and lost my cool and all patience within the first 30 seconds and never regained it. *sigh*
So it turns out - surprise, surprise - that I have a ways to go still. Quite a ways. And it seems like 4 months cleansing and facing myself and my God in an Ashram in India would be a great way to start (though I think I'd actually find it ironically anxiety-producing, but isn't that part of the journey?). Or even living in a retreat community here with a spiritual director who would push me to inner depths and honesty would do wonders. Even for 1 month. But I see no way for either to happen in the next... oh, couple decades. So, something will have to give and come to life here in the loft with the dusty breeze and hush of traffic slipping in through the vents.
In the last couple of hours the Santa Ana winds have kicked up and are now howling at the skylights and tearing through the trees, littering the ground with the leaves and weak branches that refused to fall on their own. Maybe that's what I need too -- a raging Santa Ana that will knock me down, blow straight through me and clean me out.
come.
I have one relationship in my life that insists on being an especially trying one -- relentlessly so. I thought of it immediately when I read the following passage: "If something is rubbing so hard against you, you can be sure it's working on you... It burns away the ego, turns you into pure ash. It's supposed to be arduous..." (ch 52)
I know this relationship for me, like "the Geet" for Gilbert, exists in my life to kick my ass, to bore holes through my smugness and pride, to stretch me until I almost rip, to make me lose my sense of North over and over, and ultimately to help me find it again with more certainty and truth than ever before.
I have learned, slowly, that the pains of this relationship really have to do with me, my own reactivity, fears, control issues, and that that those are the parts that I have to (and hate to) work on... So today, operating from my new contemplative-enlightened state, I meditated in the loft, among boxes of Christmas stuff, sitting on the floor, freshly inspired by Gilbert's success.
In real life, I do not meditate. In fact, despite growing up in a Quaker school (where, let's be honest, Quaker meetings had nothing remotely to do with meditation or even quiet for that matter), my whole body usually rebels against it: my mind squirrels around racing, chattering, digging for excuses to leave; my body starts feeling creaky --back hurts, knees ache, neck feels stiff; and negative talk permeates the quiet with its assortment of whispery doubts.
But TODAY, determined and open, I found that I actually stayed put, that my body sat quietly (except for a weird throbbing in my right wrist that I kept expecting to receive a God-given message about but didn't ) and even my mind held no violent rebellions. Instead I perched calmly, weaving between my mantra come and my bouncing thoughts -- Ashrams, details of childbirth, the few friends I know who meditate, plans for a salami sandwich downstairs...
By the end of my 10 minutes, I was so proud of myself -- a sure fire sign that I had not transcended, blaringly confirmed later that evening when I talked to my difficult friend on the phone and lost my cool and all patience within the first 30 seconds and never regained it. *sigh*
So it turns out - surprise, surprise - that I have a ways to go still. Quite a ways. And it seems like 4 months cleansing and facing myself and my God in an Ashram in India would be a great way to start (though I think I'd actually find it ironically anxiety-producing, but isn't that part of the journey?). Or even living in a retreat community here with a spiritual director who would push me to inner depths and honesty would do wonders. Even for 1 month. But I see no way for either to happen in the next... oh, couple decades. So, something will have to give and come to life here in the loft with the dusty breeze and hush of traffic slipping in through the vents.
In the last couple of hours the Santa Ana winds have kicked up and are now howling at the skylights and tearing through the trees, littering the ground with the leaves and weak branches that refused to fall on their own. Maybe that's what I need too -- a raging Santa Ana that will knock me down, blow straight through me and clean me out.
come.
Body, Baby, Bulges
I am startled by this newfound round belly. When I was pregnant with Silas, the entire process was miraculous, mystical, magical -- the way my skin grew taught and body stretched unimaginably, the way this forming child, cute and curled, caused my whole body to defy gravity and balance. I watched the changes, riveted, disbelieving, delighted.
And then one day, out he came, and my body promptly forgot the brief time it had transformed into a sacred greenhouse, quite forgot the sensations of his moving just below the muscle, poking at the ribs, his constant presence. Before I knew it, I simply settled back into my self, slightly altered but much the same.
The experience was so complete, so beautifully contained, and concluded with such a blinding grand finale burst of a baby at the end, that it's hard to imagine I could possibly go through it or have such an experience again. When a good magician performs a trick that blows your mind, he won't show it to you second time. Yet inexplicably, here I am. (I know that being here is actually quite explicable, but regardless of any science involved, I can't quite absorb it).
This time around, the changes are happening surreptitiously. In this midst of Silas's and my daily testing each other's limits, playing at the park, digging in the sand, in the midst of making wedding invitations, working on my marriage, gulping down books, discovering my own rough edges, scheduling doctors' appointments, ceaselessly wiping noses (Silas's and mine, thanks pregnancy), I glimpse a half-volleyball-stomach and huge breasts in the mirror and realize, oh, pregnancy, this is my body again, and then can't quite connect with the familiarity of "again."
When I was pregnant the first time I felt I had some role in the transformation: all of the hours I sat with laser-attention bent on my middle must have willed the child to grow. But this time, the baby seems to be holding down the fort herself and even plotting sneak attacks. She is 5 1/2 inches long, apparently the length of your average bell pepper, and just this week has begun poking me. Perhaps this is her attempt to startle me into the belief that indeed she is the one in there, not just countless bowls of cereal, a little girl who has popped out my bellybutton and is letting me know that in no time, she will change me forever...
And then one day, out he came, and my body promptly forgot the brief time it had transformed into a sacred greenhouse, quite forgot the sensations of his moving just below the muscle, poking at the ribs, his constant presence. Before I knew it, I simply settled back into my self, slightly altered but much the same.
The experience was so complete, so beautifully contained, and concluded with such a blinding grand finale burst of a baby at the end, that it's hard to imagine I could possibly go through it or have such an experience again. When a good magician performs a trick that blows your mind, he won't show it to you second time. Yet inexplicably, here I am. (I know that being here is actually quite explicable, but regardless of any science involved, I can't quite absorb it).
This time around, the changes are happening surreptitiously. In this midst of Silas's and my daily testing each other's limits, playing at the park, digging in the sand, in the midst of making wedding invitations, working on my marriage, gulping down books, discovering my own rough edges, scheduling doctors' appointments, ceaselessly wiping noses (Silas's and mine, thanks pregnancy), I glimpse a half-volleyball-stomach and huge breasts in the mirror and realize, oh, pregnancy, this is my body again, and then can't quite connect with the familiarity of "again."
When I was pregnant the first time I felt I had some role in the transformation: all of the hours I sat with laser-attention bent on my middle must have willed the child to grow. But this time, the baby seems to be holding down the fort herself and even plotting sneak attacks. She is 5 1/2 inches long, apparently the length of your average bell pepper, and just this week has begun poking me. Perhaps this is her attempt to startle me into the belief that indeed she is the one in there, not just countless bowls of cereal, a little girl who has popped out my bellybutton and is letting me know that in no time, she will change me forever...
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Day of Mourning
Well, it looks like sheets have about a 7 year life (though somehow my mother still owns sheets that were my grandmother's decades ago -- how is that possible?) Many of ours are now threadbare or tearing, the cotton washed so soft that they tear a bit more each time we stretch them over the mattress. Throwing them out will be just as heart-breaking as getting rid of a perfect pair of jeans that now have undeniably gaping holes in the knees. To add insult to injury, after searching two days in a row on google, it appears that these sheets I love are now impossible to buy because for some ungodly reason they've been discontinued. And so I will bring a spool of thread and a needle downstairs with me and see if I can possibly save them, even for another month.
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