Another Winter Day

I hesitate to write about the grueling winter, but it may be the only way forward for me, out of the paralysis I feel waking to leaden skies and polar temperatures. Every day of relentless cold, ice, snow – is depressing to the point of being debilitating, and I am curling farther into myself, physically, mentally and spiritually.  I feel pinched – as if I am collapsing into my chest.  I force myself to breathe deeply, shoulders back, stretch. Nothing to be done but carry on, feed the birds, cook, read and mark the days inching towards spring. February, at least, is a short month and the seed catalogues arrive almost daily.

The plows have piled more than 5 feet of snow on top of my strawberry plants – it’s hard to imagine they will survive – but they will and so will the purple sage and all the spring bulbs that bravely push through the last of the frosts. I try and always have a hyacinth or bunch of daffodils on the table as a fragrant reminder for what’s just around the corner. Really. And just for fun, I will inevitably over-order seeds to sow directly in only a few more months and maybe pre-order some heirloom tomato plant collections. The best seed deals and choices I’ve found are Pinetree Seeds of Vermont and Select Seeds from Connecticut.  While sometimes I am enticed by catalogues from Wisconsin or Oregon, it just seems to make sense to get seeds for my Connecticut garden from New England.

I cook.  A recent favorite is a recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, The Wednesday Chef: Zuni Cafe’s Chard and Onion Panade. It’s comfort food extraordinaire. I erred on the side of lots of stock but would use less next time in the hopes that the consistency wouldn’t be quite so soupy. And maybe add a little wine?  Definitely more greens rather than less.  Yum.

Also whipping through books.  David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, while exquisite reading was at first a little slow for me but is now a page turner and I’ll certainly finish this weekend. After reading last Sunday’s sobering review of memoirs in the New York Times Book Review, (“The Center of Attention: Taking stock of four new memoirs – and of the motives for adding to an already crowded genre.”) I read the title reviewer Neil Genzlinger did not pan: An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan and agree with him. It’s beautiful. The author’s poignant exploration of her grandparents joint suicide is like watching a riveting Bergman film — vividly drawn scenes and characters. No surprise the author has written for theater. I was drawn to this, of course, because of the suicide – but while the suicide is certainly a theme driving the story and the damage-done apparent in the author being haunted enough to pursue her questions (it is the questions we survivors are left with), ultimately it is a beautiful love story. And we know the author/survivor, has found her peace.

Genzlinger writes at the end of his memoir reviews: “…what makes a good memoir – it’s not a regurgitation of ordinariness or ordeal, not a dart thrown desperately at a trendy topic, but a shared discovery. Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.”  I’ve re-read this a few times over the past week – a challenge to myself.  I did not hit delete. It’s just a long, cold, winter – but spring is on the way.

When We Win the Lottery

Sometimes Rob and I indulge ourselves in the fantasy of what we would do with our millions if we won the lottery.  Sometimes, we even buy tickets – a quick pick and one with a mix of birthdays.  Lump sum – we want our winnings in one full swoop.  We think we’d keep this sweet little house but make it a little less, little.  From the pointiest part of our roof, I think we’d be able to see the Long Island Sound and that’s where I’d like my writing room to be.  Something closer to the water would be nice too, so maybe we’d get one of those mysterious, abandoned looking places out on the islands we kayak around in the summer.

Both of us say, we wouldn’t quit our jobs right away, but certainly would take time off. Mind you, I like my job – how can I not? It’s books I am selling. Still, I’d like more of those 40 hours a week for my own.  And that’s where our lottery fantasy really takes off for me – when I think about being able to structure my day-to-day life without the demands of a job.  Weekends (especially long ones) and my summer get-away-with-the-Studio 70 Sisters, offer a glimpse of what I would do.

Read. First I’d make my way through the piles of New Yorker Magazines.  Somehow, I actually thought I’d get around to reading this weekly and subscribed. I try to bring it in the car and read while waiting for M or for the morning manager to come and open the store, when I get there early.  If I get hooked on a story, I’ll read it over lunch – but back issues folded open to some half-read page have been abandoned in the back seat, and another stack is on the living room table.  For the first day or so in the Catskills last summer, I lay in the porch hammock and read through months of issues. In between napping, I got through them all.  If I won the lottery, I’d renew my subscription and read it weekly, as intended.

I’d tackle the piles of books around here.  Rob built me another bookcase and yesterday, I began almost-organizing my shelves, filling them with books I mostly haven’t read yet. And besides those crowded shelves, I have a NOOK – and my cyber library continues to grow.  Right now I am reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell and just the other day I bought Eden by Yael Hedaya – an Israeli author who was a guide at the United Nations at the same time as me.  Also on my virtual shelf are Franzen’s Freedom, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobsonand I have yet to read a page of them. I borrowed The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson thinking I’d indulge myself this weekend, and it sits like a big box of chocolates I’m afraid to open because I won’t be able to stop.  Time.

I bought the NOOK because I felt like I better embrace the party-line and now, sincerely do.  Yesterday, reading the New York Times (only weekend delivery and still hours added for reading that!) there was a piece about an author, David Vann who’s first book, Legend of a Suicide piqued my interest, and I was able to immediately find it on my NOOK.  I used some self-control and so far, only downloaded a sample although I think I am hooked on Vann’s writing and will have to go all the way on this one.  All of this, from the comfort of my couch.  Of course, to some extent, this is an oft discussed issue – is this cannibalization for the bookstore? But that’s a question for another blog entry — I’m planning my lottery-won time here, after all.

Travel. Lots of trips — although we’d still be constrained by M’s school schedule — we’d travel to warmth in the winter.  Sharing places I have been to and loved with my love, and bringing M to the town in Italy where she was born. Bali, Japan, China. New places -Argentina, Brazil, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, Israel, anywhere – everywhere. We’d visit friends around the world: Helene and Paul in South Africa, Jenny in Tasmania.

Garden. I’d build a much better fence to deter the creatures from eating everything. Plant more flowers and some fruit trees.  And get bees – although for this, we won’t wait for the lottery.  We decided against chickens although our neighbor’s fresh eggs were addicting. Birds just never really appealed to me as pets — I don’t want to touch them and I don’t think we could get away with that if we had chickens. Maybe a goat or two…

I recently finished an advance reader copy of And I Shall Have Some Peace There, a memoir by Margaret Roach, who, without winning the lottery, managed to choose the life she wanted. Roach clocked in many years in a high-powered job working for Martha Stewart and walked away to live the life she really loved, gardening, writing, and just being in the Hudson Valley.  Roach does not sugar-coat her new life, honestly sharing the pitfalls and struggles as well as the joys, in this compelling and inspiring read about what to do with one’s time.  Roach reminds us that our time here is limited so: carpe diem.

Write. With my new room (my own!) at the top of the house and a view of the Long Island Sound, I could disappear at any time to write.  I’d probably still stick to my morning regime when it feels like my subconscious is still boss.

Volunteer. I’d up my donations and time to the organizations I already love working with like Fairfield County First Book and The Bridgeport School Volunteers Association.  And I’d send lots of money to MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

What I would do if (when?) we win the lottery, is what I do anyway – but I’d do it more. And that’s the best part of periodically indulging in this fantasy – discovering we are already living the life we want.  It’s not more things we want — just more time.

A Year Later

Mostly Morning Musings remains an apt name for this blog, now just over a year old. It’s mostly in the morning when I ponder and write. These almost-weekly entries began when someone in publishing suggested that it is important to have an internet presence is. Letters from agents are still piling up in my cyber-reject file and my memoir has yet to find a home, but meanwhile, I am hooked on blogging.

For a fledgling writer like me, blogs are a great exercise in mustering the moxie to keep putting stuff out there. Finding this courage has been crucial to my writing and life. Writing my memoir (written first time around as a novel because it felt safer that way) helped me to process the crazy years of life with an addict and the shock of my husband’s suicide. Compulsively writing every morning before the sun rose, my story became a story instead of a dark shadow within me. The process was healing and cathartic but also my introduction to writing about what I love: nature, books, food, the seasons – this beautiful life.

Writing – thinking about writing, and actually doing it – helps me to step out of what can easily become a mundane march of day-to-day things to be done. In pausing, I really see the world around and within me and sometimes, even discover an insight to carry with me through the day. This is what I look for when I read and hopefully, you, my dear readers, find such pleasure here. I feel humbled and encouraged and thank you.

In-between

Waking on weekend mornings when I don’t have to go to the bookstore, it takes a few minutes for me to realize that the day is mine. I must veer my thoughts away from work-life: the calls I didn’t make, the tasks still waiting on my cluttered desk. Where I write from is so far away from that world and weekdays, while I try and rise early enough to have time to write, to exist in that internal place, there is never enough time. I need to be in almost a reverie when I work – best right out of sleep – my subconscious still primed from a night of dreams.  On work and school days, I have the finely tuned but harried, going-to-school and work rituals of making sandwiches, calling M to wake up, (again and again) before we bustle out of the door and roll into the dark morning towards our day-lives. But Saturdays and Sundays (two days in a row!) are precious – time to really look at things – within and without.

The dog still requires I venture outside and if I heed him early enough, the moon’s glow is still brighter than the sun’s. I revel in the magic between night and day, sleep and waking and these days, between the seasons. Over this past month, it is has gone from twilight to dark when I answer Tetley’s call for a quick morning walk down the street. This week, there were days when the weather was crazy-warm and as I made my way past the hedges, I heard the murmur of a summer insect, delightful and comforting.  An extension of the spirit of summer along with the weather.

There is a fleeting quality to these days. Autumn and spring pass quickly – the sweetness and drama between heat and cold and the melancholy of the brevity of this beauty is potent. So I pull myself out of the warmth of my bed, and for the time I have here in the now-cool mornings (we are reluctant to turn on the heat – as if waiting will keep the cold at bay) I do my best to pay attention.

Beach Morning

I pushed aside the curtain to the yoga class and knew I was too late. Chock-a-block sticky mats only inches apart from each other, guarded by their owners in various twists or (my favorite) corpse pose, waiting for the teacher to start. With so many bodies packed together, the room already smelled. I left. Maybe later I will pick up another class to shake out kinks from a week of too much sitting. Instead, I headed to the beach.

Parking near our kayak launch spot, I zipped my jacket and pulled up my hood. A cloudless sky but a decent wind made for brisk walking and I headed over to the sandy beach, deserted but for a distant man with a fishing rod stuck in beside him.  It was still early – not even the gulls were out to explore the morning’s pickings. This beautiful spot is only minutes from our home. During the summer, we get down here whenever we can to paddle away from shore in our yellow kayak.  We rarely step on to this sandy stretch – the beach where swimmers and sunbathers crowd. I am drawn here only when I know it will be deserted – early or late or during a storm. This morning, the water like glass barely lapping against the tightly packed sand. No waves today, at least, not yet.  Looking out at the islands we kayak around, I was tempted to rush home and pull Rob out of bed to join me in yet one more outing on the water.  But we get wet in our flat ocean-kayak and the thought of sitting damp in a boat with a stiff wind blowing was enough to keep me on my sandy trek up, and then down again, the length of the beach.

At one point, with a nod to the yoga class I was missing, I stretched. Hanging over, my arms heavy, releasing my back and gradually loosening until my fingertips barely touched the sand, the moving tide seemed also to be trying to reach my toes.  Breathing in and out of my nose, filling my lungs with sweet air and releasing again while marveling at the beauty on my doorstep. As a child growing up in NYC, I longed for such access to nature. Just to go outside, I needed to ride the creaky elevator and although magnificent VanCortlandt park was just across the street, I could not venture into the woods for fear of scary men. Remembering this, I feel grateful for my world and the morning’s too crowded yoga class.

Beyond Noise

From where I sit at the table by the window, lit by a slant of morning sun, the hum of the highway sounds louder than usual. Most of the time, the traffic is white noise, a whooshing punctuated by the louder roars of trucks, motorcycles. There are few places in Norwalk to escape the sound of automobiles. On the other side of town, the Meritt Parkway is another artery of noise. And in-between these two major roadways is the Post Road – a constant shifting gears as cars and buses crawl along between stop lights.

The best chance to escape is on the Long Island Sound, early in the morning or in the evening, and better on a weekday.  But even out on the water, there is rarely silence. Motor boats speed by, sending heaving waves into our boat. But worst is the hysterical motor-grinding of jet-skis around and around.  And of course, there are always airplanes, although the drone is so distant and quickly gone, they are easy to ignore.

Usually, I try not focus on man-made noises, instead tuning-in to sounds like summer insects. The volume of the Cicadas seems to change as the temperature does and at night, there is a different chorus of blaring bugs.  I notice the birds: the soft-drumming of a Downy Woodpecker on the stump of elm, the chirps of the Cardinal family, the weird, squawking Parrots (yes, Parrots!) swooping through to eye our trees. I let the dog out to bark at them, hoping to discourage nest-building intentions. Out by the butterfly bush, bees vibrate by and dragon-flys so close, I hear the extraordinary flutter of their wings.

Of course, I prefer these sounds of nature to the cacophony of man so try to cultivate a selective awareness.  There’s the key: of course my state-of- being affects my perceptions, and this week, I have been tightly wired and not particularly ‘conscious’. Triggered perhaps, by anticipating my daughter’s return from England and the always stressful trip to the airport to retrieve her.  She is home now, safe and sleeping upstairs, but the discombobulated feeling remains. Even the usually unobtrusive soundtrack of my daily life unsettles me.  After days of being irritated by everything around me, I admit to being the source of my own discomfort. I suspect it is because I have not been writing nor doing yoga – my anchors to peace.

Less than an hour ago, my focus was on what seemed the maddening noise of the highway. As my attention shifted, it was the birds I heard, the neighbor calling to her children, my fingers tapping on this keyboard, and finally, as I reel myself in closer to my elusive center, I find silence.

Artist Retreat

The walls of my bedroom are mostly windows, letting the cool morning air and sounds fill the space. Sitting on my bed, I feel as if I am outside. A bird has stopped to sing nearby and there is a brief flutter of wind from the wings of another, flying close. The river, continues like a relentless rain, churning over the rocks just across the way.

Today we must pack up and leave this lovely spot where, for the past week, 5 of us old friends have gathered to focus on our work – writing, drawing, playing the piano. We have done what we wanted, when we wanted to – seeking, at different times, either solitude or company and easily finding it. Effortlessly, scrumptious, healthy food was made, dishes washed, wine was poured.

This is the second year we have done this – gathered together as old friends, familiar and fond of each other. One of us said last year, it is that we have a common vocabulary. We recognize in each other, when to be silent, when conversation is welcome. We talk about anything together – and always, we laugh.

This week we walked the river together – climbing over slippery stones, stopping often to pick up the ones we could not resist hauling back with us. We swam in the sparkling swimming hole, letting the small falls beat on our backs, then slid down the rocks to float in the placid pool.  We sat on the porch, gathering around the table and then the chairs and the swing, catching up on time apart, remembering times and shared places of the past.

Rejuvenated, I am ready to go home and return to my family – my life of loving, of taking care of them, my dog, the garden. And hope to be back next year to do it again.

River Walk

This week away with my group of artist friends, I get to indulge my desire to write full time – at least for this week. With this lovely gift of time comes the problem of sitting for hours a day. I move from porch, to lawn, to chair to table – stretching in-between – but then return to write and thus, to sit.  Deciding I needed to move my body or suffer an increase in the pain I already could feel creeping into my hip, I went for a walk. Not wanting to repeat yesterday’s route, I crossed the street to the rocky-river bed and set off in my rubber shoes, to walk downstream.

Weaving at times, like I’d had to much to drink, I grabbed boulders to steady myself and search for firmer footing before moving on over the rocks, in and out of the water. Soon I felt in a trance, marveling at how sure I felt with each step.  Off in the distance, I heard the rumbling of a storm and rain drops fell.  The sounds of the babbling river seemed – a chorus of conversations at once familiar but incomprehensible – babel, indeed.

Again, I felt drawn to continue on around every bend, and then the next passing under a bridge where tadpoles darted, around a perfect swimming hole where a trout sped by. I walked on the dry stones, crunching beneath my feet and then, plunged back into the water first at my ankles and then lapping up against my thighs and thought about last night’s late night talk with my friends about prayer.

I admit to praying only when in panic mode and so, rarely do these days.  For a start, I am not sure, perhaps what it is I am doing when I pray, since I have no real faith in a God (the Catholic training has me capitalizing still) However, I do have a sense, a feeling – that something greater than myself exists – to me, that certainly doesn’t seem like a stretch. In a pinch, that’s the direction I send out my plea.  But prayer as something more: as contemplation – meditation does appeal to me as a pause in life to remember that which is important. And that brings me back to the river…

Today, like yesterday, there came a time when I need to decide to turn back. The road runs parallel to the river bed and I knew I could scramble up a slight hill and through some brush and walk easily back to the house – but I didn’t, loving the strain of keeping my balance, the feeling of being one with all of this beauty, this feeling of meditation, perhaps, even of prayer.

Balance

The sky is cloudless, the temperature is perfect and  I am torn between being in the dirt  planting vegetable seeds, tomato and jalapeno pepper plants – or writing.  Since I seem to only be able to write in solitude, when R leaves to run an errand, I drop my spade and dash inside to write, and when his car pulls in the driveway, I head back to pull weeds and water plants. And in this way, I find a kind of rhythm.

Here I am inside now – garden gloves abandoned in the dirt.  I have less than an hour before M is home from school.  A room of my own?  I imagine such a place for myself  and maybe, one day we can transform the crawl space – not quite an attic.   But if I could really disappear for hours on end to a cubby of my own, away from them and our shared life, would I? Certainly, if this was my ‘work’ but not now.  All moments beyond the hours spent at my job are carefully mined and  ultimately, it is the time I spend with these ones I love, that is most precious to me. But were I to win the lottery…

How to Start

“Whatever the story is about, it is something that is of interest to human beings because it amplifies some aspect of what it means to be living.” I lifted this sentence off of a website for writers (were I more adept at this, I’d provide the link here – one day!) and simple as it is, I find it a helpful beacon as I swim around trying to re-start my book.

Beginnings: how can I hook you, reader? What is my story? Why did I write it? What do I want the reader to take away from it?  Why am I so stumped on these questions when they are so fundamental and I have hundreds of pages of ‘book’?Are the answers in what I have written already? Or are they still to be answered? My brilliant sister gently guides me with these questions. For weeks I have been juggling different parts of already written chapters — to start here? or here? cutting and pasting in the hope that the new combination will make my story sing.  But it doesn’t yet. Not yet.

What began as an exorcism of anger and grief became a hopeful testimony of love and determination that my daughter’s life be better than mine, and that my life, be better than before.  And it is.  I could leave it at that, but after working in the book business for more than a decade, I might as well shoot for those dusty shelves myself.  And perhaps one day my tale will serve as someone else’s beacon of light.

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