This trip happened because of a fight. I thought my husband had agreed to meet me in North Carolina next month after my week of Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault. We could do the B&B thing, I could share all my newly acquired wisdom with him, yada yada. Belatedly he happened to remember that he had a choir concert on the aforeplanned weekend. For some reason I took this to mean that I did not come first in his life. We fought. Or rather, I blew up and he looked puzzled. Continue reading
I’ve been wanting to go to a theater to see Inside Out. I never go to theaters any more; we always wait for the DVDs and watch movies in the comfort of our living room, with headphones and subtitles so we don’t have to strain to catch whispered, muttered, or lightning-fast dialog.
But Inside Out feels urgent. According to the reviews, it contains lessons on how to manage emotions, lessons that both young and old need to learn. (If you’re looking for a review of the movie, this is not it because I haven’t seen it yet. Read the reviewer who gushes over it in the staid NYTimes.)
I’ve been struggling with these lessons recently myself and I must be desperate if I’m thinking of turning to a Pixar movie for help. Continue reading
It is the first morning of Wood Thrush song, so loud and close I don’t recognize it at first. The flute-like whistles sound shrieky up close, but up close you can also hear the quiet churrs and burbles that follow the whistles. It is stunning. I sit on the porch and start to write but I can’t write while that is going on.
As I write that I can’t write, the song stops and then takes up again much farther off, as if the thrush is respecting my territory. Continue reading
I love a cool spring. It slows things down. On this last day of April it is 50 degrees so some daffodils are still blooming, their radial petals wrinkling and going transparent. I forced myself out for a walk yesterday, two-and-a half miles, collecting two grocery bags of roadside trash along the way. It was a beautiful, sunny day.
I don’t know why I had to force myself to do this, but I did. Even on the loveliest day I can be overcome by inertia and just want to stay inside and read, shove food into my face, and grow old. There is no excuse for this. It is just a fact. Continue reading
There are grandmother hormones. They have not been named yet but one day, for sure, we will know that there are actual chemical connections that make our arms itch to hold newborns and drive us to the floor to play pretend with preschoolers when we ourselves are well past childbearing age. Continue reading
I don’t eat cake. Even in the dream I had yesterday, in which a whole banquet of desserts was offered to me, my thought was, “I don’t eat cake.” Nevertheless, in the dream, I headed straight for the cake. A rainbow ice cream cake and a chocolate cake. I chose both. I woke up before I was able to taste them. Continue reading
Antoine, Alfie, and a tame orphan civet
A year ago, in the middle of a winter as vicious and snowy as this one, my friend Dawn and I made an agreement. She would retire from her job at the end of December 2014, and, as soon after that as possible, we would travel together to somewhere out of the country. Somewhere warm.
This trip would be no simple jaunt, however, because Dawn has multiple sclerosis. Continue reading
Sometimes I feel like retirement has allowed me to become appallingly lazy. But really, it is just revealing to me what life might have been like all along if I had been able to obey the preferences and rhythms of my human self.
Most people can’t afford to live like natural human beings but, instead, we have to be superhuman. We have to do more than we are built to do, exceed our capacity, and live with the consequent stress. Continue reading
Yesterday the little family, who had spent Thanksgiving with us, had to leave by 10 a.m. so my husband and I had Black Friday to ourselves. I spent it in front of the woodstove, reading. It was a Blank Friday.
I did not pick up the last of the toys scattered on the floor. I did not speak more than 10 words to Vic. I did not exercise. I did not go out of the house. I nibbled leftovers all day but, after making a breakfast frittata for everybody out of the leftover mashed potatoes with leeks, I did not feed anybody else. I did not go online and post pictures of our Thanksgiving table or our Thanksgiving snow. I did not go online, period. Continue reading
I have been seventy for three days now. Am I supposed to have some insights already about what it’s like? The tests and trials went on right up to the day itself, the morning of which I had a fight with my husband. Continue reading
the practical mystic 