Tuesday and Emerson

I can't believe it's almost July. I remember as a child feeling like summers stretched on forever. This one seems to be zipping by on a freight train, flashing one month to the next with total abandon. I swear we just finished April.

I'm in the thick of this story I'm writing, taking it page by page. How long will it end up being? Maybe I'll know by the end of the summer? By the end of the year?

Cora is being quite adamant. She also is dealing with a rather long and tiresome cold, making my heart skip a beat when I remember our recent, awful winter months of isolation and sickness. This morning we bought new paint brushes and she spent the morning dabbling in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I stuck one of her masterpieces to the refrigerator with magnets. She took a bath afterward.

You've probably noticed by now that I have a thing for quotes. My mom gave me this book for my 20th birthday called A Guide for the Advanced Soul, a bunch of quotes compiled by Susan Hayward. The idea is that you close your eyes and ask a question, then open the pages and find insight.

Here's my quote for today:

"Do the thing and you will have the power."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hiding away...

...and writing. It's raining outside and the yard is filled with robins browsing the lawn for lunch. Walnuts are growing on our tree outside my window, and the squirrels keep checking them for ripeness. The apple and pear trees are showing their first beginnings of growth. I think writing is sometimes a lot like this...waiting for the rain, waiting for the fruit to ripen, waiting for the natural progression of things, and patiently watching the words fill up one page, and then another, as the story unfolds.

Chapters 2 and 3

I recently read that Barbara Kingsolver wrote her first novel, Bean Trees, mainly at night during her first pregnancy. She was suffering from pregnancy-induced insomnia. How often do you lie in bed at night tossing and turning, trying to find the right position to induce sleep? It happens to all of us at one point or another. Imagine if you got out of bed and started a novel.

One of my professors told me his friend wrote his first novel at the office, after work hours, by pulling all-nighters and showering in the locker room in the morning.

It's an interesting exercise writing a story while your baby naps. It's like 1, 2, 3 - lunch, potty, wash hands, read story, sing lullaby, snuggle into bed, kiss and - GO! Write that thing!

So, I'm off to do just that, except I'll also share this quote I have always loved:

"How much longer will you go on letting your energy sleep?

How much longer are you going to stay oblivious of the immensity of yourself?

Don't lose time in conflict; lose no time in doubt - time can never be recovered and if you miss an opportunity it may take many lives before another comes your way again."

--Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Story time

Brian took this picture on a vacation a few weekends ago after he put Cora down for the night in the pack 'n play. "Mause and Diddy" are her sleepy time must-haves.

Now it's a Monday afternoon at home. You know when you start the week with a big ho hum and sort of breathe out the sentiment Well, it's another week. I guess we'll get it started.

Hello, O Daunting Monday.

I'm a bit surprised to be able to say it's been a good one so far--and productive. Now Cora's asleep in her bed, mouse curled into her belly and piggy snuggled into her back.

And I have a story idea. It's the first one I've had in several months, so it feels like a big deal. I stumbled onto it this Saturday while walking Cora around Green Lake and drinking a very large cup of dark tea.

Fingers crossed that I can keep up the momentum once I get past the first sentence. I need to figure out a way to take this idea and place it carefully in a protective jar on my desk where I'll be able to find it whenever I need it. I want to write this thing.

Blast those mind-altering malls

I don't like malls--not in the sun, not in the rain, not in the dark or when in pain.

Rarely do I understand the phrase "shopping therapy." Today, if there was something that I should have gained from the experience, I was somehow left off the list.

I just became really grumpy.

I just went to return a bra that didn't fit, and I ended up getting SUCKED IN. Suddenly, I wanted to be insanely rich. I wanted to run out and spend thousands on a new wardrobe and new furniture for each room of the house and new stoneware for the kitchen. I wanted a FLAT stomach, the kind that requires a lot of crunches and very few crunchy chips. I remembered the income I used to bring in each month and I was swept up in this vision of all the things I would buy--new undergarments, new shoes, new hair. I wanted to wander off with all the clothes in Ann Taylor Loft.

My priorities were askew.

When faced with three levels of Nordstrom, I suddenly thought about my old job. I imagined going back to work and spending all that money on the kinds of things I just really don't NEED.

None of us do. But every time you buy one of those new things, you feel like you deserve it, you feel like it's necessary for your self-esteem, you feel like those shorts will make the whole summer more summery, you feel like it's just because your clothes shrunk in your new dryer, not because you need to lose a tad more weight around your middle. It's all about Pretty Woman sitting there while the salespeople bring her box after box of iconic shoes.

The problem, I have determined, is that I am not doing enough of my own writing. I'm not being creative enough. My brain is stagnating. I'm not writing stories. So all the internal stuff is going to waste, and my mind is beginning to fall prey to the humdrum status quo. All it took was a day at the spa and a new expensive bra for my birthday and it was like someone gave me a bit of crack and said, here you go, here's a taste of THINGS.

You know what I mean? Hey, I'm not saying we don't all enjoy and benefit from beautiful things. I'm not advocating that we bring the economy to a grinding halt by boycotting apparel stores. But it is so much better, me thinks, to wander around in an old T-shirt and catalogue the wildlife in our backyard or discover a new park than to spend time breathing that mind-altering mall air.

Warren Buffet says that if you can't imagine having it for 10 years, you shouldn't spend $10 on it. I have squandered so many $10s in my lifetime on useless things.

Surprise

After shipping me off the spa in the morning, Brian threw me a surprise birthday party yesterday. It was so wonderful to see friends and kids mingling in our backyard on a warm summer day. I haven't felt that pampered or relaxed in a really long time.

Today, I have a case of the Mondays. It's just not as fun to return to normalcy when the previous day was so much fun.

So, even after a big piece of leftover flourless chocolate cake, I can't seem to muster the gumption to write much here at all.

However, I do have one small thing to say, and that's just simply that I enjoy being in my 30s. It's easier somehow. The 20s felt like more of a challenge to get through. Although, let's be honest, I had better boobs back then.

And also, I took Cora to our neighborhood park this morning and looked at sprinklers dusting the ballfield with water while Cora spun around and around in sparkling grass. Does it get any better than that?

Quote for the Day

Be realistic:

Plan for a miracle.

--Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Metamorphosis

When I was a kid, I loved caterpillars nearly as much as I loved puppies. I think I liked them that much until I got a puppy. Their fuzzy coat was a tiny but furry replacement for the dog I wished I had. I would often put one it in my room next to a snail or a ladybug or a team of ants. I never had one for very long. I would take my pals outside for a bit of fresh air and invariably wander away to look at something else. Always, I'd come rushing back and find that they had wandered off, leaving me to look for new friends.

My mom used to read us Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She would finish the story with a flourish--"A beautiful butterfly!" she'd say, with reverent emphasis. "Look at all those vibrant colors!" And then she'd wax poetic about how Eric Carle was a spiritual being who was able to explain rebirth to children through such a simple story. But mom, I'd say, I like caterpillars.

Today we were playing in the backyard and a white butterfly flitted past us on trace paper wings.

I thought, If I could spin a chrysalis and hide fast to a tree, I'd so do it. If given the choice between two superpowers--being invisible or being able to fly--I'd be hard pressed. But wings win. Mine would be turbo charged.

The first thing I'd do, without a doubt, would be to fly to a foreign country and have lunch. Then I'd find a tree house or a castle somewhere and settle in for a long day with a desperately good book. When I returned home I would possess an entirely different perspective on life.

The caterpillar is just trying to get there, the butterfly gets to go.

I love the idea that things are different when you escape to a different place, that you are different--and I honestly believe it to be so. Place changes us. I like it when citified people exchange their civilized lives for dirt-stained feet, and vice versa. I like struggle with redemption. But struggling is hard. There's a lot of action in there. And it can start to be a lot about strategy, not dreaming. I like to dream.

I like metamorphosis. I like escape. I like imagining you can shed your skin.

I like good endings.

But I also really believe in the transformative force of hard work, and of taking time to hide away and depend on your own resources, to dig deep and then return to life with a new perspective, even a new self.

I dated this guy in college for about six months and when I met his grandparents I explained that I was going to be studying in Italy the next semester, and staying on to travel write through an independent study I'd set up with a few professors. His grandpa asked me why I wanted to travel--and why for so long? I paused, thinking Well now, that is an odd question, but I tried to remember that he was of a generation before our world of global communication; perhaps he thought all this back and forth across continents was a bit flabbergasting. I told him I thought it was important to spend time in other places in order to better understand our world, and ourselves. He chuckled and said he thought we could find everything we needed in our own backyard, that we shouldn't need to go anywhere to know ourselves.

Fundamentally, I think he's right. We should be able to know ourselves well enough to stay put and still be okay with what we find there. It is beautiful to be able to sustain ourselves through conversations with our neighbors and a strong sense of community, by planting gardens and sharing our food, by being satisfied with long walks in the woods instead of getting on a plane or in a car and spending the trip alive with the thrill zinging through our blood that tells us our best is yet to come.

It's easy to romanticize travel, to imagine it will be all about incredible European vistas, Amazon jungles, the highs of constant wonderment. But traveling was hard, actually. It was lovely and amazing--Italy, Ireland, England, France, Spain. But it was often also incredibly lonely. There was a lot of time to dip inside. I learned more about myself in seven months than I did when I was at home worried about what people thought of me. Instead, I just thought, and I thought a lot about where I wanted to be.

I think we all have our own versions of hope and turmoil and desire for metamorphosis which beg us to move forward, even if it's simply to find a new path home.

The world is getting much smaller these days. It doesn't seem quite like the untapped treasure chest I used to imagine. I never thought I would feel so much contentment in watching our daughter play in her sandbox and splash in her little wading pool under the bower of our apple tree. I like that she is making friends with children she might be able to grow up with, not ones that she'll lose when she moves, like I did when I wandered about and left behind my little insect friends.

I am in caterpillar mode.

But still. We saw a little white butterfly flitting through the air today and I thought, Oh yes. I know I would make good use of those wings. And I like to think if I was to land on my own window pane, I'd look inside longingly.

Five Years

Brian and I celebrated our wedding anniversary over Memorial Day weekend at a sweet Camano Island cottage overlooking the mountains and water and a rugged beach. We sat in the sun, went swimming, played on the sand with Cora, and held hands a lot.

I sometimes pause to wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't met Brian 13 years ago, and married him five years ago. He has been an anchor in my life for that long, in one respect or another, and my sense of self has become permanently entangled with his existence. First and foremost, his is my best friend. But he has a million qualities that guarantee I will be perpetually hooked. He is handsome and funny and loving and emotional and smart and moody and artistic and thoughtful and adventurous and homey and he has sexy hands and he's an amazing father and he makes me feel better when I'm in a bad mood and he doesn't spend Sunday watching football, and he loves the ocean, and...he's mine.

This weekend I looked at him and wanted, as I have wanted since I met him, to paralyze the moment. I'd like to have it in my hands, a tangible thing, so I can look at the grey in his hair and the way he holds our daughter. I want to be able to watch his feet walk in flip-flops on the beach. I want to always see him standing with his eyes closed, gathering sun between his brows. If I could freeze the moment and file it away, and if I could share it, I would have a bestseller book of loveliness. People from all around the world would rush to get their share of Brian.

There are some moments that have shaped me so intrinsically I am not sure who I would be otherwise. I have pulled out these memories so often they have become polished and genetic, are probably housed somewhere in Cora's DNA, however personal they are to me.

I was 18 years old and I wrote in my journal that I was ready to fall in love. I wanted a real boyfriend, but in order to fall in love with him he would need to be a very specific kind of person. I wrote down all the qualities about this imaginary guy. I thought about him to the point that I became surprised I couldn't just conjure him out of thin air. A few weeks later, I read my horoscope and it said the upcoming Saturday was auspicious. It is possible, it said, that I would meet the love of my life. (Horoscopes had a special draw to me back then. I was addicted. I could read a a prediction and swoon with happiness, or else suffer an attack of worry.)

That next weekend, I and my five roommates hosted a party in our Seattle house. We asked some talented friends to play '50s Elvis tunes, got my of-age sister to buy a big keg of beer, and invited a few people. Word must have spread that something fun was happening in the heart of a dark Seattle winter, because soon our house filled to capacity and then some, as 200-300 party animals in saggy pants and Seattle flannel shuffled through the house and started moshing in our living room. Brian entered the house and he looked like he was glowing, like a saint among common folk. I knew him slightly, had been in an art history class with him, and had talked on the phone a bit after I'd seen him at a party. But he seemed so shy, and stiff, and organized, certainly not the kind of free-spirited fellow I was used to dating. But that night he looked like a prophet of some kind, a glowing boy, and if it was only because he had the benefit of recently returning from San Diego and actually having a bit of a tan amongst our pale compatriots, I didn't think about it then. We danced and talked and leaned in because the music was loud and all those people were shuffling around us. When we kissed, I remember feeling a lifetime flash through me, a fraction of a second in which I could picture marrying him, holding his hand, rocking in old chairs on our front porch when we were old and gray.

We dated for nearly two years in college. It was like this: neither of us had cars, so dates were long walks to the lake, kissing by a river, picnicking at the beach, taking the bus, going for long runs, hiding away in the library with our textbooks and writing notes on each other's paper, finding small shores by waterfront parks and digging our heels into the sand. Whenever we went out of town, it was to go hiking or camping or on a ferry across the Sound. When we fought, it was emotional and wrenching and deeply dramatic, and eighteen.

Whenever he went away during winter or summer breaks, he would send me letters on giant sketchpad paper.

I was in Italy. We were no longer together, and I was nearly 22. (He went to Pasadena for school, we separated for two years.) He still sent me letters on giant sketchpad paper. I was wandering the streets of Rome and stopped at a magazine stand in the Campo dei Fiori. His art school was being profiled in the L'uomo (men's) Vogue. They chose a few of the art students there to participate in the photo shoot. He had said, check out the L'uomo Vogue, but he didn't prepare me for pictures of him laughing in a dapper suit. I turned each page to see his face while behind me vegetable vendors shouted about the price of tomatoes and beans.

A month later, he sent me a tape recording of Charles Aznavour, and an email that told me to imagine I was a princess in an enchanted kingdom and the world would roll at my feet. I was depressed and lonely, tired of Rome, and I headed out for a long walk. I turned on the music and listened to Aznavour's beautiful voice of butter and smoke sing "She." I can still remember that feeling of my heart high in my chest, my head down, as I walked to the Tiber and rewound and replayed these lyrics over and over and over..."She may be the first I can't forget, a trace of pleasure or regret...Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears, and make them all my souvenirs, for where she goes I've got to be, the meaning of my life is she..."

Later that year, I was back in Seattle and I returned from a run to find a letter from him. It was the closest thing to a marriage proposal I had ever received. The next day, I ran my first half-marathon and thought about that letter and about him--a boy I had felt fateful about since the moment he walked into my living room on February 10, 1996. A month later, I flew down to Pasadena and we drove up the coast back to Seattle, winding along the 101 and burrowing ourselves permanently into each other's futures.

We've been back together ever since--in the past nine years we've graduated three times (undergrad for me and Brian, graduate for me), married, lived in three cities, visited as many beaches as we could manage, made new friends, set up a house, worked at a number of challenging jobs, talked and talked and talked, and had a baby. As I write this, I remember countless times in the passenger seat with my feet on the dashboard and the window rolled down, laughing. Sometimes that's how I feel about our lives together: I know we'll keep heading in the right direction. Sometimes I have to remember it's okay to relax and enjoy the ride.

There is a list of all the little things that I could itemize, moment by moment, if anyone cared to listen. If given enough time, I could pull up all the frames that explain why I have lately started to really realize that there is a great beauty in simply being able to love and be loved. There is a wakefulness, an awareness of fragility, and a constantly renewing stream of gratitude.