Nesting Selves

My ideal self?  My real self?  Hmmmmmmmm.
(Anne Lamott's essay got me thinking....)

I picture each of us like a set of Russian nesting dolls, all our former and hidden selves nestled in the outer one.

Some days, one of those mischievous inside selves pops out and shows its face and I shriek: Who's that?  What are you up to?  Sometimes I catch myself doing or saying something that seems to have come from someone I haven't even met yet!

Other days, I carefully choose which one to bring out--depending on what I need.

The one I needed this week was the one who takes herself to the doctors and checks for cracks.

First, the feet--those appendages that carry us from place to place, each with 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, and 19 muscles and tendons. (FYI: The 52 bones in your feet make up about 25 percent of all the bones in your body. )

For years, I've been getting monthly pedicures to (a) have pretty toes, and (b) take care of a niggling problem with one toe that causes me to avoid closed-toe shoes.  Now that I have a  dancing partner, and he's sent me a pair of dancing boots for Valentines Day, I decided to consult with an authority who (a) speaks English and (b) can possibly fix the toe situation for good.  Yesterday, a podiatrist did just that.  First, he numbed the toe, then he carved upon the nail, then he covered it with brown stuff.  All night it throbbed like a pulsing baseball, but it's on the mend today.

Second, I went to my regular doctor who prescribed over-the-counter Mucinex DM for coughing--because it (a) works better than any prescription drug, and (b) is loosens the phlegm that is "thick like buggars." (I told her I was impressed with her professional terminology, then proceeded right away to HEB to buy me some.)

Third, the eyes.  The optometrist pronounced my eyes healthy and updated my prescription, and I was good to go. This exam was necessary because (a) I wanted to keep my eyes healthy, and (b) Mike had sent me really cool frames that need lenses in them.

Just to round out the week of doctoring, I'm going to a free hearing clinic on Monday to see if I can discover why I have to strain so hard to (a) hear conversations in noisy restaurants and (b) understand the speech on TV.

For some reason, I've been eating sugar like a crazy woman--particularly drawn to Little Debbies, those oatmeal cream cakes that I'm sure contain every forbidden and unpronounceable ingredient in Cookiedom.  This sugar binge has been reflected (a) on the scales, and (b) in the fit of my jeans.

I am looking within, soul-searching, this morning.  I was quite certain that one of my selves--my ideal self--contained a thin version somewhere, a size 8 self who wears glamorous slinky clothes and calls to mind Katherine Hepburn.  I had every intention of inviting  her out and buying her some new lingerie or something.  But, alas, every single version is pear-shaped!

If, however, I'm to follow the sage advice of Anne Lamott, I plan to (a) just accept that fact and (b) enjoy the rolls!

Inspire Your Heart With Art

In honor of "Inspire Your Heart With Art Day" we offer this article on Art, which was was originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words:

This from Frederick Buechner's blog: Frederickbuechner.com


"An old silent pond.
Into the pond a frog jumps.
Splash! Silence again."

It is perhaps the best known of all Japanese haiku. No subject could be more humdrum. No language could be more pedestrian. Basho, the poet, makes no comment on what he is describing. He implies no meaning, message, or metaphor. He simply invites our attention to no more and no less than just this: the old pond in its watery stillness, the kerplunk of the frog, the gradual return of the stillness.

In effect he is putting a frame around the moment, and what the frame does is enable us to see not just something about the moment, but the moment itself in all its ineffable ordinariness and particularity.

The chances are that if we had been passing by when the frog jumped, we wouldn't have noticed a thing or, noticing it, wouldn't have given it a second thought. But the frame sets it off from everything else that distracts us.

That is the nature and purpose of frames. The frame does not change the moment, but it changes our way of perceiving the moment. It makes us notice the moment, and that is what Basho wants above all else. It is what literature in general wants above all else too.

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

The painter does the same thing, of course. Rembrandt puts a frame around an old woman's face. It is seamed with wrinkles. The upper lip is sunken in, the skin waxy and pale. It is not a remarkable face.

You would not look twice at the old woman if you found her sitting across the aisle from you on a bus. But it is a face so remarkably seen that it forces you to see it remarkably, just as Cezanne makes you see a bowl of apples or Andrew Wyeth a muslin curtain blowing in at an open window. It is a face unlike any other face in all the world. All the faces in the world are in this one old face.

Unlike painters, who work with space, musicians work with time, with note following note as second follows second. Listen! say Vivaldi, Brahms, Stravinsky. Listen to this time that I have framed between the first note and the last and to these sounds in time. Listen to the way the silence is broken into uneven lengths between the sounds and to the silences themselves. Listen to the scrape of bow against gut, the rap of stick against drumhead, the rush of breath through reed and wood.

The sounds of the earth are like music, the old song goes, and the sounds of music are also like the sounds of the earth, which is of course where music comes from. Listen to the voices outside the window, the rumble of the furnace, the creak of your chair, the water running in the kitchen sink. Learn to listen to the music of your own lengths of time, your own silences....

An essay by Anne Lamott

Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be
Anne Lamott


We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be. The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down. So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren't? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?

Here's how I became myself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.

Oh, yeah, and whenever I could, for as long as I could, I threw away the scales and the sugar.

When I was a young writer, I was talking to an old painter one day about how he came to paint his canvases. He said that he never knew what the completed picture would look like, but he could usually see one quadrant. So he'd make a stab at capturing what he saw on the canvas of his mind, and when it turned out not to be even remotely what he'd imagined, he'd paint it over with white. And each time he figured out what the painting wasn't, he was one step closer to finding out what it was.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.

I can't tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop. I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day I did stop. I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as a radical act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights. I wasted more paper, printing out instead of reading things on the computer screen. (Then I sent off more small checks to the Sierra Club.)

Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you. I cross one thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day. I don't know all that many things that are positively true, but I do know two things for sure: first of all, that no woman over the age of 40 should ever help anyone move, ever again, under any circumstances. You have helped enough. You can say no. No is a complete sentence. Or you might say, "I can't help you move because of certain promises I have made to myself, but I would be glad to bring sandwiches and soda to everyone on your crew at noon." Obviously, it is in many people's best interest for you not to find yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours—and your back's—and the whole world's, to proceed.

And, secondly, you are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined—it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a Hallmark card. It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days—like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things—but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.

Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. That is both the good news and the bad news: The solution is at hand. Wherever the great dilemma exists is where the great growth is, too. It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now. There's always something ending and something beginning. Yet in the very center is the truth of your spiritual identity: is you. Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you. Beloved of God and of your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears wash off the makeup and grime. The self that is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul's pipes. The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends' eyes. The self that is revealed in divine feminine energy, your own, Bette Midler's, Hillary Clinton's, Tina Fey's, Michelle Obama's, Mary Oliver's. I mean, you can see that they are divine, right? Well, you are, too. I absolutely promise. I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the snooze button; I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear; I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are.

Being Present

Imagine sitting across a table from another person, looking at each other for an extended period of time.  No distractions, no food or drinks on the table, no words spoken--just looking, eye to eye, face to face.  How long could you do that without one of you looking away?

The performance artist, Marina Abramovic, at the age of 63, created a piece at the Museum of Modern Art in which she sat in a wooden chair every day, all day, for three months, gazing at the person who sat in the opposite chair. People came from everywhere to sit across from her--as shown in the documentary, The Artist Is Present.

Words and gestures absent, the faces speak--in subtle movements, openings, and tears. Often both people would spontaneously put a hand to their heart in parting, as if to express the gratitude of being seen in that way.

When Marina's former lover appears--after many years apart--he sits across from her in silence, just as the other museum patrons do.  Her eyes overflow with tears as she looks into his face.  In a scene that rivals any brilliantly acted scene of passion, their eyes speak to each other in a way that is at once vulnerable and playful, full of pathos and knowing.

What a radical thing it is to see and be seen by another person!

As I watched it, I remembered my teacher Mary Frances whose definition of love is "being fully present." Martina's performance piece echoed that--as you could see what "fully present" looks like.

Monday at the Zoo

We've had spring-like weather all week.  Yesterday, Elena and I got to the zoo before it opened--just the two of us and one other 3-year-old with her grandmother.  For the first couple of hours, we practically had the zoo to ourselves.

She looked long at the snakes, the turtles, the birds, the zebras--pronouncing every one "beautiful."

The ostriches, the rhino, the crocodile, the flamingos--she loves them all. When she sees one of anything, she always looks to see if it has a friend or a daddy or a baby nearby.

There were two alligators, but only one crocodile.

"Why he doesn't have a friend in there?" she asked.

When we got home, we had a party on the porch (water and cheese and banana slices) and built a Lego zoo-pen for our imagined animals.

"I want to hope you," she said (hope her word for help) "Because you're my best friend and I love you so much."

As I was changing her clothes, she told me: "I'm a big girl and I don't wear diapers anymore....I'm three because I had a birthday party and a piñata.  AND my friends sang me Happy Birthday."

"You have a lot of good friends, don't you?"

"Thank you!" she said.

Valentine Part 3

When Mike and I talked recently about writing, I wondered if we'd do well to steer clear of this subject in the future--just as we do conversations about transmissions and carburetors in old cars.  How did I wind up with a Valentine Man who's not an avid reader?  And how did he wind up with me, who's never even glanced under the bonnet of my own car?

He likes to "get to the meat" of what he's reading, he says; I love the flavors and textures of well-made  phrases. He likes to restore classic cars to pristine condition; I just hope the Mini keeps humming along.  He builds and restores; I write and revise.

"Did you read my blog post yesterday?" I asked him.

"Tell me again how to find it," he said.

I sent him the link--again--and he read it, called back a couple of minutes later to say yes, he'd read it, it was good, really good.  I wanted more.  I hoped he'd tell me some phrase he liked. I wanted....

Well, I wanted the kinds of detail that writers and readers share!

To be fair, my responses to his projects have been similarly cursory "Beautiful car!" I've said.  I've not spent years learning the ins and outs of automobiles.  I don't have the language to say more about their mysterious parts.

"What are you going to do today?" I asked him this morning.

"I don't know," he says.  "I'm just listening to this fantastic CD (Mixed Bag) you made me and having a beautiful morning."  Imagine that! I thought--just listening to music, not planning out your day!  I like that.

Years ago, I read this advice to single women: "Make a list of a hundred qualities you'd like in a man."  The writer of the article claimed that naming the qualities would attract the man bearing those qualities.

(To encourage precision in list-making, she told about one woman who'd done this and found the man of her dreams.  Unfortunately, however, she'd forgotten to include "Single" in her list--thereby attracting a Mr. Right who was already taken.)

If I'd ever made such a list myself, I'd have included things like this:

Kindness
A sense of humor
Free-Spirited
Good dancer
Creativity
Passion for his own interests
Playfulness

(It would go without saying that he loves to read and watch foreign movies....)

Men on dating sites always list "walking on the beach" as one of their favorite ways to spend time.  (They know women like this.)  But--as a friend once said--if that were true, literally true, all we'd have to do to find a good man would be to hang out at the beach.  There would be a veritable parade of sensitive, funny, smart men there!

Women on similar sites (I've been told) say, "I want a man who makes me laugh." Until someone appears who surprises us with his unique qualities (the ones we didn't know to ask for), we resort to cliches.  Or maybe we just pick the features most obviously lacking in the last one.

But let's say we're  lucky and find all hundred qualities in one person.   Let's say he matches up to everything we think we're looking for.  Then what? Is it possible that we'll still try to tweak or change him?  "Okay, I know, I ordered chicken fried steak but really, deep down, I wanted salmon"--or vice versa.  Human beings (children, prospective partners or friends) are more than the sums of their parts.

When Mike and I met, I believe I told the waitress at the Life Diner: "Surprise me!"

Solo Pajama Party All Day!

I haven't taken off my pajamas all day--a lovely day outside and a day of reading on the porch as soon as I take myself a bath and get dressed.  Almost finished with Jhumpa Lahira's novel, The Lowland--which is excellent!

Got these photos from Veronica this morning, taken at Elena's Papi's house.  (Elena's goat, Scratchy, is the brother of this little goat.)

Valentine Part 2

As Valentine's Day approaches, I'm aware of both sides of that heart-shaped coin.

Joni Mitchell's song comes to mind:

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all....

From about second grade on, Valentine's Day can make you feel like part of the Club of Happy Partnered People, or it can make you feel like going to the garden to eat worms!

We've all known both sides--years when we got notes promising Love Forever, flowers, chocolate AND balloons, and years when we avoided even glancing at the card aisle for the whole month of February.

Right after my divorce many years ago, I remember the pang I felt when I saw happy couples walking together.  A friend told me she felt the same.  "When I was first divorced, I wanted to run down every freaking happy couple pushing a shopping cart in the grocery store!"

Recently, Mike and I attended a wedding in which the pastor read this scripture, Ecclesiastes 4:

Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.

I bristled a little when he read those words--knowing that many wedding guests were alone there, as I've often been alone at weddings. Not only is there a cultural bias in favor of being part of a couple (think of all the love songs that we all grew up on!) but--as the writer of Ecclesiastes says--those who are alone are to be pitied.

Every person we meet and every experience we have can be a teacher.  While I call this blog "Traveling Solo," the title is a misnomer.  My life (all these "single years") has been anything but lonely and pitiable.

Most single women I know (widowed, divorced, and never married) are very happy.  We've learned to navigate solitude and we've befriended ourselves and each other.  Most of us know that it's possible to be outwardly partnered and inwardly lonelier than we've ever felt single.

But on the other hand, I find myself this year, reading the Valentines cards, buying some,  and mailing them to Georgia!  The reasons we let each other go seven years ago--well, that might be a subject for a later post....

Though I may just skip all that back-story and write about the treasure of finding each other again, just when the time was right.

Short Documentaries

At Thursday night writing group, Janet recommended an excellent short documentary called "Slowmo." It tells the story of a 69-year-old doctor who ended his rat race lifestyle and moved to Venice Beach to roller blade up an down the beach front every single day.

If you go to New York Times and search for short videos, you'll find a whole section called "Op-Docs" and every one is terrific.

As a younger man, Dr. Slowmo asked a 93-year-old man, "How does a man like me get to be an old codger like you?"--to which the older man replied, "Do what you want."

How hard is that?

Maybe we should begin everyday with the question: "What do I really want to do today?"

Or, in the words of Mary Oliver, "What will you do with your one wild and precious life?"

Daisy and her red boots

When my daughter was born in 1971, we named her Day--a name that she inhabits like sunshine.  As a child, she loved making costumes out of whatever she could find: old scarves, paint, fabric, and sequins.  Never once have I heard her use the word, "bored."  She painted her tennis shoes, and she once made elf shoes out of old green felt for a play she wrote for a back yard show.

As she grew older, she would sit for hours making things and designer fashions. I've always felt a twinge of regret that when she was a teenager, I told her that we "couldn't afford" a particular brand of jeans she wanted and we bought the generic ones instead.  She never complained, but I felt that $36 for a pair of jeans (1982 or so)  was out of the question.

She grew up to be the president of her college sorority.  She was chosen by the university to represent Texas at the Women As Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C.  While there, she met Tom Terrific--and later married him.  They live just outside Washington in Falls Church, and their Cape Cod brick house is a jewel box of color and art made by Day.

On the night of the President's speech last week, Tom printed out Bingo games for Jackson and Marcus to encourage them to follow along.

Day and Tom are amazing parents!

And Daisy (her nickname) is still making things out of fabric--though she didn't choose fashion design as her career.  A high school English teacher, she's a Pied Piper for her students.

On weekends and days off, she likes to go to Unique, the thrift shop, and find treasures.  She can now afford any jeans she wants, but she still prefers poking around for things she can "make things out of" rather than buying ready-made clothes.

This week she sent me texts and pictures of her most recent finds.

"$15 Thrift Store Find," she wrote.

"Look what I found for $5 at Unique."

I've spent as much as three hours at a time with Daisy shopping the racks at Unique.  I've watched her look at skirts and jackets for details that she can translate into something entirely new.  I love the ways she puts unlikely scarves and chenille and lace together.

She gets so much pleasure designing and wearing her Daisy creations and her students think she's way cool.

Here she is modeling "gifted and thrifted" yesterday.  "The  scarf and red top are from you, Mom.  Vanderbilt jacket and jeans from thrift shop."

I'd like to send my precious daughter a box full of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, brand new, to make up for not having the money to buy that one pair when she was thirteen!  On the other hand, I wonder: would she have been as creative or uniquely Day as she is now--if she'd had everything she wanted back then?

Friday Night

"When you were a little girl, I used to be your mommy," Elena said tonight.  "And you would ask me and I would tell you things."

She was sitting in the bubble bath with a white bubble beard, telling me as casually as if it were a memory.

She just made a batch of chocolate cupcakes from scratch, with a little help from her former child--and we had chocolate drippings everywhere.  "We sure are messy girls!" she said.

In my bedroom are two giraffes.  We named one Gillian and the other Ginny--but then she decided we should name them both Gillian--Big Gillian and Little Gillian.

"Say Cheese, Big Gillian!" 

Conversation

Rilke said, "A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship."

I just had brunch at La Madeleine's with three old friends. Two of us have been friends for over 40 years, three of us have been friends for thirty-plus years, and one for a mere twenty years!

Over the years, we've gathered in cafes and talked about our lives, concerts, art, and books.  How stimulating it is to partake of what we've all learned since we last saw each other!

Marcus, my nine-year-old grandson and I have a date tonight to "have a conversation on the phone."  According to his mom's text, he's trying to improve his vocabulary and stop saying "crap" so much, and he wants to talk with me on the phone.  He's quite clear about the parameters: I'm not supposed to ask many questions, just listen!

David Whyte wrote: "A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want."

To my chagrin, I often go blank when I try to remember the plot of a particular novel.  But during the days and hours I'm inside the book--if it's really good--I feel I've been invited to the best kind of party, a party of two, just myself and the writer.  The plot may fade, but the quality of the conversation has an impact on all future conversations.

Asking Why?

Tonight before dinner, the gate closed, the horses prancing all around the yard, Elena and Nathan were building a leaf pile to jump into.  Since we couldn't find a rake, we used stakes with wilted balloons on them left over from the party on Saturday.

"Why are you doing it that way?" Elena asked her brother.

She asked him a whole lot of "Why?" questions and he finally said, "Elena, would you please stop asking me WHY all the time?  You know it irritates me."

Undeterred, unfazed, she asked, "Why I gotta stop asking Why?"

Movie Week

This afternoon,  I felt a need for a little narrative escape--not from anything in particular, just wanted to sit in a darkened theater and immerse myself in someone else's story.

A few minutes into Gone Girl, I realized that I had read the book already.  When I left the theater more than two hours later, I felt a little crazy and discombobulated.

Sunday night on Masterpiece is always a Look-Forward-To:  Downton Abbey followed by a new Masterpiece series that's very endearing: Grantchester. In the first episode the charming village priest joins with the police to solve a crime.

I plan this week are to see The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything and Selma.

If you missed the first episode of Grantchester, you can see it now at PBS.org.

And Downton, my my my! Those women are really breaking free of some boxes this season!  Of all the women on the show, it's Granny (on the surface shocked and prim in her Victorian views) is the most complex and interesting character.  It seems that Granny has some secrets of her own....

Elena is three years old.

Three years ago tonight, our family got our little premie girl--weighing in at less than five pounds.  "She's a tough one," said the nurses in Neonatal ICU.

Today we celebrated her birthday with her chosen theme, Princess and Purple, and one of the firefighters dressed up as Prince Charming.

The cotton candy machine didn't work so well--what with the January breeze--so everyone was running around trying to catch wisps of sugar on their paper cones.

A fire started in the gas grill and smoke billowed everywhere, but we had seven firefighters on the scene.

The goat roamed around the party like a dog, petted by all the guests.  Someone brought a brand new rescue puppy and she was the best part of the party in Elena's eyes.  For a three-year-old, princess  presents pale in the presence of puppies every time.

Sliding into Year Four

The Power of Language

As I often do, I woke up at 3 a.m. in the morning writing, this time about language.

A nice synchronicity: WhenI woke just now, I got this email from Frederick Buechner, the writer Carlene has been reading for years, entitled "The Power of Language."

I remember some forty years ago listening to cassette tapes with her and my brother of Buechner reading and I loved his "word wizardry" and savored his rich vocabulary.


Here Buechner is remembering his school years:

....I happened to have for an English teacher an entirely different sort of man. He had nothing of the draughtsman about him, no inclination to drill us in anything, but instead a tremendous, Irishman's zest for the blarney and wizardry of words.

I had always been a reader and loved words for the tales they can tell and the knowledge they can impart and the worlds they can conjure up like the Scarecrow's Oz and Claudius' Rome; but this teacher, Mr. Martin, was the first to give me a feeling for what words are, and can do, in themselves.

Through him I started to sense that words not only convey something, but are something; that words have color, depth, texture of their own, and the power to evoke vastly more than they mean; that words can be used not merely to make things clear, make things vivid, make things interesting and whatever else, but to make things happen inside the one who reads them or hears them.

When Gerard Manley Hopkins writes a poem about a blacksmith and addresses him as one who "didst fettle for the great gray drayhorse his bright and battering sandal," he is not merely bringing the blacksmith to life, but in a way is bringing us to life as well.

Through the sound, rhythm, passion of his words, he is bringing to life in us, as might otherwise never have been brought to life at all, a sense of the uniqueness and mystery and holiness not just of the blacksmith and his great gray drayhorse, but of reality itself, including the reality of ourselves.

Mr. Martin had us read wonderful things—it was he who gave me my love for The Tempest, for instance—but it was a course less in literature than in language and the great power that language has to move and in some measure even to transform the human heart.

- Originally published in The Sacred Journey

"Let it Go" from Frozen

While I've never been a big fan of the princess myth for little girls, it seems that the writers of Frozen have had the great good sense to create a song that takes Princess to a whole new level: sassy and independent and free.  I'm heartened that girls have a role model for bravery and courage and being who they are--never mind what anybody else says.  Here are the lyrics (with a few lines omitted), written by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.  

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight,
not a footprint to be seen.
A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen.

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.
Couldn't keep it in, Heaven knows I tried.

Don't let them in, don't let them see.

Be the good girl you always have to be.
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.

Well, now they know!

Let it go, let it go!
Can't hold it back any more.

Let it go, let it go!
Turn away and slam the door.
I don't care what they're going to say....

It's funny how some distance,
makes everything seem small.
And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all

It's time to see what I can do,
to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I'm free!...

I'm never going back; the past is in the past!

Let it go, let it go.

And I'll rise like the break of dawn.
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone.

Read more:  Idina Menzel - (Disney's Frozen) Let It Go Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

Valentine: Part I--September 2007

When I was a young lass of 58, I decided to take myself a long meandering solo road trip.  I could feel Sixty coming that year and I had mixed feelings about the number Six at the beginning of my age.

Actually, I wasn't all that happy about it.  My inbox that year was filled with depressing "senior citizen" cartoons in which we were drawn with drooping thisses and thats and broken down knees and missing teeth.  I didn't want to join this stupid club of decrepit, memory-ravaged Old People one bit!

But I was also off-the-charts excited that September day because I'd bought my first  Mini--and I'd been yearning for one for years.  She was Pepperwhite with colorful little decals all around the border, and I'd decided maybe she, the car, was the closest I'd ever get to romance.  Driving my little toy of a car down the back roads, no hurry to get There, I was euphoric and free and ageless!

When I pulled up to the Hope, Arkansas, depot-visitor's center to inquire about where I might find a Starbucks in town, I was not looking for anything but a cold glass of green tea.

The only other visitor in the depot (the Man-Stranger in Overalls)  said, "You won't find a Starbucks in Hope."

(These words, I admit, are not particularly promising words on which to start a romance.)

But as we walked outside together, I was feeling something stirring in me that I'd long ago put to sleep--I was attracted to this man, to his voice, even to his then-serious face with soulful eyes.

He liked my car, he said.  He kicked the tires, so to speak, man-style, as I turned on the ignition.  Willie Nelson's voice blared from the speakers.

He liked the Hilary bumper sticker I'd just bought next door at the Bill Clinton house, and I told him he could get one if they were still open.  He said he'd been listening to Willie, too, in his truck.

Mike was on his way home to Georgia and I was on my way to Cape Cod with a stop planned in Nashville and another in Virginia.  We were both headed down the back roads to Little Rock.

We said good-bye.  He gave me his phone number.  I went to Sonic for tea.

When I drove out of Sonic and saw his truck was still parked at the depot, it occurred to me that we might as well drive to Little Rock in tandem, so I pulled over and suggested I follow him down the road.

Bold, brave move--one I'd never have taken at home in Texas or with anyone else in the car!  But I was feeling bold and frisky and brave that day, and not so very old at all....

Here we are a few days later, when he'd already gone to Georgia and returned to Tennessee on his Harley to take me for a ride through the Smokey Mountains:

We were both traveling solo on the day we met, and we both preferred back roads to the main highway.  But on the day this picture was taken, I rode for many curvy miles on the back of his blue Harley and by the time we got to Gatlinburg, I didn't want to let him go.

Feeling good is a great idea

Will and Elena and Elena's Papi
on a cold Tuesday morning

Elena was sick on Tuesday, but we're hoping she gets well enough for her birthday party on Saturday.

Yesterday, while washing the dishes with her daddy, she said, "When I go to Yenna's house I posed to wash the dishes and she gets the knives off."

She coughs.  "Daddy, I'm okay."

"You don't feel bad?" he asks.

"No, but that's a great idea--that I don't feel bad....  Can we go see Yenna real quick?"

Two big horses and four miniatures
on Scenic Loop
huddled around a breakfast of straw

"So beautiful!" Elena said--
so we did a U-Turn to take a picture

"Let it Go"

I haven't seen the movie, Frozen--nor has Elena.
But like all little girls, she knows the characters and the songs.  She's wearing her princess dress on Saturday for her third birthday party, and the birthday cake is purple.

Today she was walking around the house singing "Let it Go" at the top of her lungs, her arms outstretched.

"Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back anymore." --this from a little girl who doesn't hold back anything!

We downloaded the song on the iPhone, put it on speaker, and she put on her Princess dress and ballet slippers and twirled all around the room, singing along as loud as she could.

Nathan then wanted to download Star Wars music and he did dance after dance with his light saber, then bowed down to Princess Leia (played by his little sister) when she walked into the room, he with his Darth Vader mask on.

I'm going to sleep now, with echoes of "Let It Go" and Star Wars music in my head--and the memory of two little people dancing their hearts out and singing without an ounce of reservation. If only we could keep that confidence all our lives!

A Storied Life

I just heard this phrase ("a storied life")  in an interview and I thought, "Oh yes, that's it exactly!"--the "it" being why I so love my life with writers.

Every time I meet with writers--whether at a cafe or at writing group or in salon--I get to partake in what makes us human: their stories, my stories, and the web that's spun when one story touches another and another....

We send each other links to stories.  "Check out this magazine!" Day said--and I went straight to Barnes and Nobles and purchased a copy of FLOW.  On the cover, it says, "Some beautiful things are more dazzling when they are still imperfect," Francois de la Rochefoucauld.

I haven't read the magazine yet, but am starting with an article about introverts--since I am one.  An introvert, the author writes, is not necessarily shy; she's someone who likes to have lots of time alone, to take her slow time forming thoughts and shaping stories.  She may love the energy of other people--which I do--but she also loves solitude and may find that she is exhausted after parties, which I am.

I spent the morning with a technician from AT&T who taught me how to watch the recorded programs I'd set the TV to capture before I left for Georgia.  I had recorded every episode of Super Soul Sunday and Masterpiece.

I'm glad I stayed home for his tutorial, because this morning I'm able to watch an interview with Ayana Mathis, author of Twelve Tribes of Hattie, a novel that's gotten rave reviews. I always find it fascinating to hear how books are born.  This young writer (she's 39) took her memoir to class at the Iowa Writer's program and received only lukewarm feedback from her classmates and teacher.  (Pulitzer-Prize winning author, Marilyn Robinson.)  She was devastated when her teacher told her that her characters were "insufficiently complex."

And so she began to try her hand at short stories--and it was those stories that were the foundations of the novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.

Every writing group is like Being At Home in this "storied life."  Home is the place (geography doesn't matter) where stories break though the surface of things and go to the core of what it means to be a human being.  Along with everyone else in the circle of writers, I find my emotions following the trail created by each person's story, sometimes with tears in my eyes, sometimes laughing out loud, and often feeling that spark that happens when someone puts into words something I vaguely knew but hadn't found the words for.

It's magical, revelatory, and brave--adding our truths to the storied lives of other people.

I met a writer in Atlanta last month and we connected instantly, as writers do. "Writers are people who tell the truth as we know it, at this particular moment," she said.  Even though I may not be quoting her verbatim, I loved visiting with her--and hearing that internal click we feel when we recognize another person as part of our tribe.

Writers may be introverted or shy--but when the conversation door opens between them, the conversation is vivid and intimate and subtle and layered. There are no big pronouncements of Truth--capital T; instead there are quiet bursts of color that emerge much like the colors we used to see while we waited for our Polaroid pictures to develop.

From the first stories I read as a child (every book by Lois Lenski in the library) to the novels and essays and poetry I read today, to the stories born in writing groups, I can't imagine life without the richness of other people's stories.

Damp and Frigid in Texas

I arrived back in San Antonio yesterday and it took all day for the house to heat up to 68!  I learned something: when one leaves a house on a warm day (as I did on December 26th) it's good to leave the heat on 60 at least.

Maybe there's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm too disjointed right now to find it.

I went to the Chinese Foot Spa on San Pedro for a $35 tune up this morning--as my muscles were aching from all the travel.  It's not like a real massage, but it got the crick out of my neck and I'm relaxed enough to lead writing groups and clean my house and unpack.

Mike and I found a beautiful green suede outfit in Georgia for Elena: rodeo chaps and vest--and had them embroidered with her name.  Her third birthday is a week from today!

Mike and I had two trips to the Greenville Airport (the first flight canceled) and I spent a total of six hours in airports, not counting the time in actual flight when they rerouted me through Houston yesterday.

Flying (in my opinion) is for the birds.
A car trip is way easier!

Flight canceled

Apparently Chicago is clogged with weather traffic, so here I sit in the Greenville SC airport waiting for Mike to pick me up--having left me here four hours ago

So tomorrow I will be back at this airport at six in the morning, am being re-routed through Houston, and should get home mid-morning.

It's COLD here in the South! Thirteen this morning....

Sent from my iPhone

Movies and Visits

Carlene and I made this a week of pure relaxation.  We saw five movies:

Unbroken and Wild--both based on books we'd read

And So It Goes--with Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas

Elsa and Fred--with Shirley Maclaine and Christopher Plummer.

And, finally, tonight: As It Is In Heaven--a beautiful Danish film.


Day called today and wanted us to check out this site: 365Grateful.Com.

The creator of the site gave a talk at Ted about her gratitude project: taking a Polaroid photo every day of one thing she's thankful for.  It's all there on the blog--very inspiring!

Here I am with Jocelyn--hamming it up for the smart phone.

Jocelyn and I

Today Jocelyn and Carlene and Mike and I all met for a fun lunch in Winder, between here and Athens

Mike and I

Mike drove from Hartwell in his 1968 Thunderbird.  He'll be picking me up tomorrow for my final two days in Georgia, then I'll be flying back to Texas on Thursday, with a stopover in Chicago.

I hope that the New Year, 2015, brings unexpected joys for us all-- through windows and doors we forgot we left open!

Carlene (my mother) in January of her 90th year

A couple of years ago, I gave Carlene the book, Daily Joy--365 Days of Inspiration, by National Geographic Magazine.  For Christmas, I gave her the other two in the series, Daily Calm and Daily Gratitude.  These three books pair inspirational quotations with beautiful photographs.

Carlene wakes up about 5:30 each morning for her quiet time before walking three miles with her friend Judy (who also happens to be the mayor)--though she's taking a break from walking this week.

When I woke up Saturday morning, she had already been up for a couple of hours and was playing a hymn on her iPad and reading  Daily Joy. "Let's read some of these and talk about them," she said.

First: "We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them," by Kahlil Gibran.

She's always liked Gibran.  I remember her quoting him when I was a child:  "Let there be spaces in your togetherness" and "Your children are not your children."  (I didn't get either one at the time, but they lodged in my brain and I puzzled over them for years.)

My take on "choosing joys and sorrows" is that maybe on some level we do choose the things we're going to experience in this lifetime; her take was that we choose how to respond to the joys and sorrows that come our way. Carlene's philosophy of life is that we decide how to respond to whatever happens and that nothing is ever wasted if we learn from it.

Then she read the Dalai Lama's words:  "Sleep is the best meditation." As a regular napper, I love this one--a validation of my daily hour-long nap, napping sign on the door and everything unplugged.

"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous,"  I read.  "Coco Chanel said that."

Carlene was making brownies from a mix. "Well, I sure qualify for that!" she said, grinning.

"Listen to this one," she said:  "Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open."  John Barrymore.

"Maybe that's how it is with you and Mike," Carlene said.  "You left that door open and didn't know it."

We've always loved sharing quotations and books.  When I was little, I used to wonder how she gleaned so much meaning out of a few words.  Without a doubt, her love of words prompted me to become an English major.  Poetry at the breakfast table and quotations taped to the kitchen cabinets whetted my appetite for a lifetime of loving language.

Carlene has had too many losses these past two months--two brothers and a sister-in-law who was like a sister to her.  She's sad, but she's also resilient, always looking for the thing to be thankful for in the middle of losses. I'm wondering how she does that so well, and  I'm taking notes.

How does she return to her balance and equilibrium after three deaths in a row?  How does she hold on to joy when she could so easily give in to sadness?  Here are a few things I've noticed about her:

Carlene squats, saunters and sashays like a woman half her age.

She knows when to let go of things that don't matter so much.

She has so many friends coming by to visit she needs a revolving door.

She sleeps with her hair wrapped in toilet paper, and she never goes to bed without Pond's Cold Cream--same as her mother, Mimi.  (She refused to let me capture this on my camera to show you, however!)

She always finds something to be thankful for, no matter what's happening.

And--she's "classy and fabulous!"