A REFLECTION ON GRATITUDE

 

It's Thanksgiving morning.  Not yet dawn.  Up early to start to assemble my contributions to today's family meal.   But instead I ambled around the house taking photos of my Fall decor, of my many  reminders (taped to cabinet doors in the kitchen and on the side of a file cabinet in my office) to live a life of caring and integrity and strength.  I pass by these dozens of times a day, stopping to read them at least twice, sometimes three or four or more times to keep their messages alive to me.   I change them as I need/want/feel moved.  

And now I'm here at the dining room table, cluttered with receipts, chargers, yoga class prep notes, a birthday card to sign...with my coffee and my laptop, scrolling through email and social media, watching YouTube to see that Taylor Swift performance from SNL that everyone is talking about.  I'm ignoring the clutter to be busted before the family arrives later this morning, the stuffing to be made, the Brussel sprouts and yams to be cleaned and prepped for cooking.  I glance at my to-do list and decide to write here instead...

Thanksgiving.  A day for gratitude.  There have been years when it was hard to find gratitude.  On any given year I have also experienced exhaustion, overwhelm, grief, anger, resentment, dashed expectations, distractions, worries, fears, illness.  It's just a day, after all.  Nothing special.  

President Washington declared a day of public Thanksgiving, but it was unevenly celebrated in the new States.  In 1863 President Lincoln signed a proclamation that there be an annual Thanksgiving holiday on the last Thursday of November.  But in 1939 the last Thursday fell on the last day of the month and FDR thought this would cut into the holiday shopping with a negative effect on the economy, so he changed it to the second to last Thursday in November. But only 32 states went along with it, 16 retaining the last Thursday as the day to celebrate.  In 1941, to bring everyone together on a fixed date, Congress passed and FDR signed what was to become the date we all now celebrate -- the 4th Thursday of November.

Lesson:  Nothing is fixed, everything changes, what we take as "always has been this way" is wrong and it's just a day.  It could be any day.  Or every day.  And just because Hallmark and Normal Rockwell and turkey growers and grocery stores push us to create a perfect day of family, friends, and thankfulness  on this 4th Thursday of November for many folks that isn't an automatic state of mind and heart.  Life happens.

As for me...this year I sit in the still dark, hearing the rain hit the roof and run down the window obscuring my view of a neighborhood just waking up.  A few lights  in homes are coming on, a man is hunkered down against the deluge walking his dog, a lone car moves slowly up the street.  

And I feel grateful.  With no qualifiers.  I'm choosing where to put my attention, like that Pollyanna girl I have so despised for most of my life -- she with the sunny disposition and cheery optimism.  I thought her vacant and stupid.  

And yet, there is something to be said about the choice we have in how we view the world.  I am a clear-eyed realist.  I'm all too aware of the hurt, fear, anger, dread, and nastiness of the world and some of the people in it.  I could, and often do, dwell in my fears for our future, my rage at those who are cruel, my impotence to do anything about most of it, it seems.

And yet, I am grateful for my life; the family I came from, the friends I've had, those who sustain and support and love me still; for my comfortable home; the breathtaking beauty of the place I live; the places I've been; the experiences I've had; the work I've done.  I am privileged and blessed and I hope I am using that to help others in some way.  

I am grateful for my health, which as I age seems to become more precarious, with an increasing awareness that anything could befall me at any time to change what I now take for granted.  But I still have the ability to act on what I can control to try to stave off some disaster of physical or mental decline that will shove me to the margins and bring pain and fear to my days.  I am committed to my health.

I am grateful for my introspection, a never-ending journey toward greater knowledge of myself and what makes me "tick" as life throws challenges in my path, and in turn how I can be in closer connection to others who are different from me and others who might benefit from what I've learned.

I am grateful for my family, the one at one point in my life I never thought I'd have.  I have two sons who came to us through adoption as infants, their birthmothers having chosen us from a number of families who they could have chosen instead, but some "something" brought us together -- they with their fearless courage to make an adoption choice for their babies, us with our boundless love and desire to be parents.  My sons grew into beautiful men, who chose amazing women to love and marry, and one of them (so far!) has given me two grandchildren who are my reason for everything.

I am grateful for Hub.  Next year we will be 50 years married; 54 in relationship -- and all that entails.  The times of joy and challenge, commitment and break-up, reconnection and struggle.  Starting out as teenagers we've beaten the odds of still being together.  We joke we've lived several lifetimes together and that we literally grew up each in the shadow of the other.  We've gone through so much heartache, so much exhilaration.  And through it all, for reasons clear and obscure, we've endured.  It might be beyond us to know why.  But I am grateful.  We are at a moment in our time together that we both feel is better than ever, after a time not too long ago that threatened the whole enterprise. I'm grateful for the tools we've gathered, the work we've done, the commitment we've made to keep on, to keep talking, to keep opening, to keep everything we've experienced in the past and hope for in our future as the thing that holds us in love and partnership no matter what comes next.  

So, Thanksgiving.  A day, just a day.  But maybe it's OK to have one day set aside to slow down and take stock.  To find a quiet pocket of time to clear the skies of doom and gloom, of sadness and fear, of pain and overwhelm and just be with what "is" -- this moment, in this time, in this place -- and find even one small thing to be grateful for.  

At least, that's the view from here...©

YEAR-END REVIEW - OUT OF THE STORM, A RAINBOW

I'm seeing all the year-end, and decade-end, retrospectives coming out this week. As a documentarian and a sentimentalist, I love that stuff.  It's why I keep decades worth of old journals, both handwritten and electronic, and bins and files of photographs and a file drawer of basically old documents from various groups I've been involved with and greeting cards I've received.  I love seeing all those things that were (and many that remain) important to me, that formed my life, and contributed to who I am today.  So, in that spirit, let's run through the old-school hand-noted Day Planner for 2019, as I did last year, and choose some highlights:

January:  Hard.  Hard conversations with Hub.  Home alone for two weeks while he was away on the first of three annual monthly winter snowboard trips.  Started yoga teacher training and wondered if I had what it takes to keep going.  Came home from my first intensive training weekend exhausted, overwhelmed, in tears, unsure.  2019 did not start out so great.

February:  Snowpacalypse!  Record-setting snowfall in the lowlands while I was home alone again for a week during yoga teacher training weekend.  Big anxiety about ongoing relationship issues, driving in the slippery snow up hills, and the challenges of the training resulted in massive multi-day migraines.  Still, the kindness of one of our Yoga instructors saved me and others with an offer to spend the weekend at her amazingly artistic and nurturing home instead of braving the elements and barely passable roadways.  I survived!  And felt a growing connection to my sister yoginis.  A community was forming, born of hardship.

March:  Hub's last snowboard trip and finally feeling settled and excited about the Yoga Teacher Training.  Learning so much!  Then off to our annual Kauai vacation, where depression and exhilaration danced together in an odd off-kilter jig.  At least it was warm.

April:  Another week of migraines and from the looks of my calendar, a too-busy month with something scheduled every day.  But the end of the month took us to the Southeast to see friends near Charleston, South Carolina (where we lived for two years on a barrier island) and to Savannah, Georgia to see family.  Fun trip full of memories of times past.

May:  Hub's total knee replacement and difficulties navigating the caregiver/patient dynamics.  Glad for modern medicine, amazing technology, and Hub's ahead-of-schedule and better-than-most progress, likely at least partially due to his "I'll do it myself" insistence on independence during recovery.  I had to learn not to hover.

June:  A Girls Getaway to the ocean beach with friends.  Days of talk, laughter, ritual-making, and important insights.  The respite I needed under sunny skies and starlit nights, embraced in loving friendship.

July:  Migraines, GI issues, sadness.  I felt lousy a lot of the time early in the month.  I worried something was majorly wrong with me.  (Relieved to find there wasn't).  The end of yoga teacher training came late in the month with a 5-day learning retreat in the North Cascade mountains before a big graduation celebration.   The close bond we'd formed as a group left us all amazed and grateful.  After spending 200 hours together over 6 months of intensive learning and practice, it was both a relief and a bit sad to say goodbye to the experience...and to each other.

August:  We were off to Minneapolis for Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Team training. Discovered an unexpected fondness for Minneapolis (in the summer!)  and had fun exploring the city when not in sessions in a freezing hotel ballroom.  The majority of the month was very, very, very difficult.  Hub was gone for bit on an annual camping trip and then home to lots of very hard conversations that shook me to the core.  I didn't know I was capable of rage, but I am and it was cleansing.  Big learning in hard times.  Life-changing, actually.  I know myself and my limits and boundaries and strength in ways unknown before.  The tremors I'd been feeling between us for, well, quite a long while, finally shook my foundation.  It was no fun.

September:  Rebuilding.  Hub was away again to a favorite camping site for several days, then home to more relationship work, big epiphanies, intentional recommitment and reason for hope.  Forty-seven years into our marriage and this felt like a new beginning; a second honeymoon.  Gratitude and Grace abound.  Also a family trip to my great-niece's wedding in Scottsdale and late in the month a perfect trip for Hub and me to NYC.  Did I mention honeymoon? 😉

October:  Hub left with an adventurer friend for 3 weeks in Nepal, on a trip planned for months, to sightsee and also to visit the two students whose educations we have been sponsoring for 5 years.  Big Adventure!  Instead listening to me whine about staying home alone, my friends invited me to join them in Maui for 10 days where I soaked up all the warmth, sun, and silky warm waters I could before returning to the 'wet months' in the Pacific Northwest.

November:  Hub got home mid-month and we shifted into a very low gear, reconnecting and resting up for the holidays to come.

December:  And here we are.  (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the current president was impeached and that was awesome, but of course, not the end of his reign, yet.)

This has been the most mellow holiday season I can ever recall.  Family, friends, our annual seaside getaway, a couple of holiday outings....and all of it felt manageable and easy. 

The absolute highlight was shopping together for a modest, understated, but very lovely diamond wedding band -- a tangible reminder of what we'd come through this year resulting in a recommitment to our long marriage, promising to go forward with renewed intention, honesty, love, respect, and care.  When I look down at my hand and see that sparkle, I feel blessed beyond words.

It wasn't the easiest year, but a necessary one.  Into 2020 I take a revitalized marriage, my devotion to family, my treasured friends, memories of, and plans for more travels, a deep and joyful spiritual practice, and a determination to right the upside-down world of our national political landscape.  Into 2020 I take happiness, contentment, and optimism, which is such an unexpected blessing that I feel like I've had a personality transplant.  Well, I'll take it.

At least, that's the view from here...©

CLEARING SPACE

I got up this morning desperate to DO something about the overwhelm and sadness I've been feeling.  I feel like I'm drowning in the "clutter" of life -- can't figure out what's important to fight for, what's to be ignored, or what's to be discarded.  Can't figure out when my world started to tilt toward unrecognizable...

And I've decided it wasn't all of a sudden.  It wasn't November 8, 2016 and it wasn't 6 months ago or 3 days ago. The conditions for shock waves slowly take hold in unseen spaces as we blindly live lives we think we know, are sure of, will always be.  We think we've done the work of feminism, of democracy, of equality, of community-building, of relationships, of personal growth, of spiritual awakening, of health, of contentment...then suddenly the tectonic plates that have been inexorably shifting out of sight reach the point of no return and an earthquake erupts.  If you survive, there's a big mess to clean up.

So I got up this morning, headed to my office and attacked my bookshelf:  I'm cleaning up messes.  I've done a drastic clearing out of old books and made many book donations over the past couple of years.  But I cling to some that have special meaning and fond memories, some that I think 'someday' I'll read, some that seem like good references for future projects or topics of interest.

Today I let a huge number of my beloved books go.  Why hang on to old memories, when those times are gone?  Why assume I'll eventually read a book I never pick up to read?  Why assume I'll suddenly tackle a project I never prioritize?  Why continue to maintain a shelf of memories, forgotten dreams, and good intentions?  Even the well-read books seemed to sit there inert and dead in a way, no longer held in my hands, fingers giddily flipping pages of an engrossing story, hoping it never ends.  Everything ends.  Then the closed book taunts me to try to recreate that first blush of joy that can never be regained by merely keeping it around, its cover a reminder of the past.  Into the donation box.  Letting go of what was and what I thought might be there again.

I know many people my age who are doing the downsizing dance; selling their big homes and gardens and responsibilities and moving to smaller houses, apartments, condos.  They are neck deep in clearing out decades of "clutter" -- some junk and some beloved.  I admire their ability to cry through the hard parts and still to let things go.  I remain in my house, which I love, and  I wander through my gardens, still finding pleasure there.  I don't want to leave here yet.  Still, it's time to let so much of what has accumulated here go.  There's really no need for most of what's jammed on closet shelves, infrequently or never used, shuttered in the dark.  There's no need to try to predict what I might need someday. Predictions are a fool's errand.  Do I need it now?  No?  Gone.

Hardest for me is ridding the house of me.  I'm the family documentarian.  I keep bins of photographs and the computer hard drive full of even more; old journals, clippings of published pieces, poetry, essays, writing workshop first drafts; blog books I've created from these postings; mementos; cards I've received from loved ones with handwritten notes -- but, why hang onto to all that?  I think for me it is the fear of being forgotten.  If those things go away, so will I.  No one will know who I was or what was important to me or what brought me joy or sorrow, how I moved in the world, interpreting it and acting upon it.

How egotistical does that sound?  The quest for immortality?  The reality, of course, is that within three generations we are forgotten; my great-grandchildren won't have a clue who I was, nor care all that much.  One day all that stuff will be for someone else to discard, without a thought.  Well, maybe I'll leave it to them to do.  I'm not ready, today, to be disappeared.

But I am ready to let go of the things that no longer serve me: the physical "stuff" that grows moldy with neglect; the psychic "stuff" that haunts the mind; the precious "stuff" that breaks the heart.  There's a big mess to clean up.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit:  www.pixabay.com

AND THAT'S A WRAP...

I've been reading year-end lists and "year in review" articles all day.  I realize that so much happens, from the ridiculous to the sublime, to the tragic and the mundane, that for me it all often melds into an "I don't quite recall" mishmash of memory fragments.

So, I decided to go through my old-school Day Planner (I refuse to give those up!) where I can see a Month-At-A-Glance notes and entries, picking out those events that most impacted my 2018.  I wonder if anyone else does the same.  Do any of these resonate with you?

(Most of these highlights ended up in blog posts so look back in the archives for more detail.)

January:  Women's March 2.0 -- A disappointment for me.  There will never, ever, be another day like the first Women's March in 2017; life highlight.

February:  Sitting at Dairy Queen scarfing down a self-celebratory hot fudge sundae on Valentine's Day when the restaurant TV suddenly showed "Breaking News" and the Parkland shooting and it's aftermath was released upon us.  Unfortunately I've been as emotionally devastated with each mass shooting; that wasn't new.  But those Parkland teens and how they rose up in activism inspiring a nation (or at least a part of it) to action still gives me the most hope I've had for the future.  I hope I live long enough to vote for one of those 'kids'.

March:  Hamilton!  Lin-Manuel Miranda,  you are a god.  Gratitude to Son Two and his fiancé for the tix so I could be "in the room where it happened."
Also the "March for our Lives" national event on TV and marching in the local event -- see Parkland above.

April:  Annual trip to Kauai.  Surf, sun, aloha.

May:  Wellness.  Started Weight Watchers and committed to a vigorous and varied schedule of physical fitness activities.  Made progress.

June:  Dove into working on I-1631, the Washington State Clean Air/Clean Energy initiative and working with Common Purpose to register voters with an eye to the mid-terms.  Challenging, inspiring, exhausting.

July:  Stunning health diagnosis and scare for Hub.  Threw us both off kilter and focused us on what needed to be done; all else seemed superfluous.  As usual his calm kept me from completely losing it. (Also I hold the image of our family gathered at the hospital on the day of a procedure Hub had to have, love and support palpable.)  Incredibly grateful for modern medicine, sophisticated testing, smart, skilled doctors, and a diagnosis we can deal with.
Also July --  a Jackson Browne concert; also meeting and attending a workshop with John Pavlovitz, Resistance Hero and true Christian.

August/Sept/October:  Staring August 30 and continuing until October 4 our big trip to Great Britain -- our first to Europe -- on back to back Rick Steves tours.  We were gone for 5 weeks, but the pre-trip prep and post-trip recovery seemed to make for about a 3-month commitment! Amazing, frustrating, awesome, exhausting.
Also October -- Son Two and his gal officially got engaged!

November:  The long-anticipated mid-term elections.  Blue Tsunami in the House of Representatives!  A win for Progressives, diversity, women.  Finally we will have some oversight into all of the crazy, illegal, immoral shenanigans of the current president and administration.

December:  Here we are -- a month of festivities with family and friends; another birthday for me; and deep, deep gratitude for my health, my home, my life, and everyone in it.  My family is the through-line in all of this, the reason for most of what I choose to do.

I am grateful to end this year with a feeling of anticipation and optimism, curious to see where this blog goes in 2019, and hoping you'll be along for the ride.

At least, that's the view from here... ©