My kindle. Vanity Fair (that article about Tinder and mobile dating sites was enough to make you want to move to the freaking MOON). Netflix. My memory foam pillow. The NY Times. The New Yorker. Sleeping. The Huffington Post, Gawker, TMZ, People, Dooce, funniest mommy bloggers, NPR. Riley, Special K, Skinny Pop popcorn, Kind Bars. Sleeping. G-Mail, eBay, ShopStyle, Bloomingdales, Anthropologie, Decor8blog, Google, Facebook. Sleeping. Words with Friends, Word bubbles, Snapseed, Instagram. My blinds.
These are the things that have gotten me through a week of being sick during a heat wave when I feel not only like I want to die and might, but like I am missing out on the fleeting preciosity of summer. There are worse things (and much better things). Gosh darn gratitude goes to my cozy bed, my air conditioning, and the comforts of technology.
I’ve told you before that I am a bit of a hoarder. I’m not particularly happy with this part of myself, but ah, there it is. I have culled down repeatedly, sifting through the kid’s drawings (read: every paper they ever touched with a writing utensil), school work, so many photos that if I put them together I could make a flip book of their entire young lives. But it did occur to me the other day, as senior year is approaching in a couple weeks, and the house at 24 Elm will no longer be a house with kids or students, that to make a new life, which the emptying of the nest forces you to do, I will have to unfeather the nest first.
As I said, I go through spurts of emptying out the contents, of dumping the past into an extra strength Hefty bag, and giving away scads of clothes and toys, and games, but I never really complete the job. I never really pare down, as if holding onto that stuff will allow me to hold on to that time.
Member the movie “Dave,” where Bonnie Hunt is a White House tour guide and she says, “We’re walking, we’re walking. And we’re stopping.” You can’t stop. You gotta keep walking.
It seems more clear to me today, that holding onto that time doesn’t require holding onto those things. Also, by the way, you can’t hold onto any time, this life seems to work best when we keep moving forward. Step by step, staying in motion, advancing like the calendar. How can I give a welcoming bear hug to the next phase if I am still holding on for dear life, to the last phase?
It seems like it would be easier if I could just have someone come in and remove the past from my house. Like it would be really cool if Samantha from Bewitched could just screw up her nose and do that for me, rather than make me consider each piece of history that has made up my life, our lives. I hear she is a fictional character, so this is probably not going to happen. Which feels really unfortunate.
By the way, in case you’re thinking, “Good God woman, this is the most basic thinking there is, how did you not know this?” I did know it, but sometimes the same information gets to a different part of your brain on different days, and actually makes a different kind of sense. That’s what happened yesterday. I got very clear about the need to make things different, on account of the big change that is coming. It’s essential to go with the flow and keep moving. Being stuck in the past, especially in the clutter of the past, won’t do.
Maybe I dream of Jeannie will come and do her head bop thing and transform my past into my future. More than likely there is no magical cure to this excursion. We all have to do it ourselves.
It’s hard to keep perspective in well, perspective.
There are days where the news positively slays me. I think, how can we, what are we doing, how will we continue?
Other days, I don’t notice. I let the world’s issues slide off me like rain slides off my polka-dot raincoat. I am teflon.
I do realize it’s up to me what I let in, what I focus on, what I allow myself to perseverate on.
Is the world worse off if you’re not worrying about it? I think awareness is essential, but having a list in your head of things you can’t actually do anything about that can completely steal your zen doesn’t seem that intelligent. You need a mental colander to sift through what is actually important, what you can change vs. what you can’t do a darn thing about.
Worrying can wreck you. You really need to put it in the sugar category, and do what you can to cut down.
While sitting at Good Harbor Beach having a summer moment last Friday, my throat started to hurt. By the time our gang left, I felt like I was literally fading into a coma (I know I tend to exaggerate, but seriously, I felt my energy draining like the Rotor Rooter man had come to visit). I didn’t want to ruin the party, but I declined dinner, came home stuffed a few chips with guacamole in my mouth and hit my bed hard. And that’s where I’ve been since Friday. Yes, I did miss the last two unbelievably perfect days. And for those of you who do not live in Boston and do not have to contend with the post traumatic stress disorder brought on by last winter, you NOT will understand that missing two days of sunshine is not tragic, like gun violence, or ISIS, but devastating nonetheless.
Here’s the positive. I binge watched a great series on Netflix (oh, and indulged in cheese toast and strawberry ice cream). It’s called Bloodlines, and it’s filmed in Miami, so I got a great story along with totally gorgeous beach, which given my bed-ridden state, was almost as good as being at Crane’s (not at all). AND it has Kyle Chandler, Coach, from Friday Night Lights. And again he plays another straight up good, descent man trying his best. That dude is dreamy. If you’re up for a binge, this is a good recommendation. Strawberry ice cream doesn’t suck either.
Hold on to your hats (coats, boots, and sanity), The Farmer’s Almanac is predicting another over-the-top snowy, freezing cold , your-boiler-is-going-to-get-a-workout, winter.
Fuck me.
I am putting on black and beginning to mourn for summer.
I am also (as soon as this fucking one-sided sore throat, headache. I-am-so-tired-I-might-be-dead, feeling ends, going to drink up, seep up, BREATHE in every moment of warmth and sun that I can, in preparation for another winter of depressing hibernation.
Although, I cannot, CANNOT have a repeat of winter 2015. I won’t allow it. That was one miserable period. I am going to have to make some winter plans that can sustain me and mine. I mean, given that I can’t just go live somewhere warm from December to May, I will have to make some plans in this here region that makes life bearable. Maybe some salon-type parties (or saloon-type parties), weekly theme dinners with friends, game nights, I don’t know, igloo making contests? Who’s in?
I vow not to let this winter get the better of me. Bloomingdales is having a sale on cashmere this week. “Hear that, you cold bitch?” You’re not getting all up in my business again this year. Nuh uh.
Love is a slippery chameleon, a wondrous glimmer, a blinding lightning bolt. It can make you trip and fall, or float and giggle. It is a shiny penny in a sea of drab, a flutter in your chest, a waterfall in a sea of green. It’s rare and it’s common. It’s here and it’s over there. It has levels and depths and can be sneaky and stealth. It’s adept at making itself known in the wee hours, when you are alone and your heart speaks the truth. Its character is true blue, except when it’s not. It has plans to take over the world. And could. But it is only 360 happy when it sees its own reflection.
It encompasses our spirit, our underneath, our intricate biological make-up. It wants to spread itself thin, to rule, to touch as many lives as it can. But it can be elusive too, play hide and seek, come in and out of the room. It can haunt, and taunt, and hurt. It can disappear over time, but make no mistake love is tenacious when it finds a comfortable seat.
When all is said and done, in its purest form, it will make its home in you whether you like it or not. It can overpower even the strongest. You can try and distract it, and shoo it away, run it out of town. But when it lands, when it fits, when it is truly in its correct place, it stays put, its feet on the ground, its arms open wide.
It’s a funny thing about gratitude. The more effort you put in to find it, the more of it you can find. It’s like a free-flowing marathon movie. You pick your clip and you’re off. The way I see it is that just having even five minutes to appreciate something you have versus something you don’t have can give your body and mind a break from that feeling of longing, envy, jealousy, STRESS. You’ve spent five minutes thinking about the good fortune of having the thing you’re focused on. Indoor plumbing. A supportive bra for the girls. A refrigerator packed with food. Electricity. Flowers. Books. A computer. A dog. A bed. Leggings that suck in the fat (HALLELUJAH). The list is as long as a letter to Santa from a seven year old. And it’s always all yours. Anything you have, possess, own, pass by, or see, is up for grabs. Music, brilliant writing, a beautiful shoe in a store window, a sunset, ocean wave, hummingbird, a piece of jewelry, a sublime summer cocktail.
It’s the act of appreciation. It helps clarify what can be yours. It allows perspective a chance to kick up its heels. It eighty sixes the greedy monster inside that wants, wants, wants, and empowers the “everything I have is all I need” gene.
Gratitude is always right, never bad, or ugly, or spoiled. And it’s always available 24 hours a day, like an all night pharmacy, no matter the situation. There is something, always something for us to look at and think, “Damn, Im lucky.”
I was at my sister’s this weekend. She lives across from the water. We’ve had such a run of incredible sunny beach days, I just assumed Sunday would be one as well, but when I woke up, it was cloudy, not to mention sweatshirt-with-your-hood-up chilly. But the minute I took Riley for a walk, it happened–something even better than going to the beach.
I smelled the past.
I used to go to the Cape every summer for a month with my mom and usually I had a friend come to, and usually all sorts of people visited us. My dad’s anxiety was too overwhelming for him to come, as he thought his store would be broken into and our house would be pillaged (yes, PILLAGED). Uh huh, that was vintage my dad. Anyway, it was the best part of my year, because my dad wasn’t there, and there would be no yelling, or crazy, and my mom would let me try all the unhealthy foods my dad would never let into the house, like Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat, and Hamburger Helper, which my best friend’s mom made routinely.
Anyway, on rainy days, which I blamed my mother for, like she wasn’t just my mother, but Mother Nature herself, there was a very particular smell to the air. A very specific smell that was salt, mixed with rain, and calm, and wind, and puffy clouds, and freedom, and books, and shopping, and my mom.
And yesterday, I smelled that bit of the past in the air when I walked my dog. A trillion images of those summers, that lasted forever and sustained me through the rest of the year. The summers that had been. They were just in the air for the taking. And I grabbed them with every inhale.
*the gratitude-a-thon 