Destiny's Child

I have been thinking a lot about destiny lately.  Whenever people hear the story of how my husband and I came to be together, they say something to the effect of, “It’s like you were fated to be married!”  When I describe my 180-degree career shift from social worker to florist, I get, “It was always what you were supposed to do!”  And there is the inevitable, “This was absolutely meant to be!” concerning the subject of my finally becoming a mother.  Having said all that, and acknowledging that my life feels nothing short of wondrous at times, I am not actually sure I believe in destiny.  I think what I mostly believe in is making choices. As a person with some fairly significant control issues, I battle with the notion that things are in any way preordained.  When confronting a particularly challenging set of circumstances, the concept of life unfurling “just as it should,” and according to some magical plan beyond my comprehension, sounds amazing.  I assert there is some truth to this - I have an indistinct sense that everything always “works out in the end.”  But I feel strongly that I have a hand in crafting the result and that, depending on the situation, my influence is anywhere from 85-99% of it.  The remaining 1-15% (author’s note: these numbers are not rooted in any scientific process) I suppose is some amalgamation of karma (at least my white, Jewish, suburban notion of karma) and dumb luck.  I never said it was sexy.

My husband and I have a really good thing going.  For his part, he is lovely, bright, thoughtful, totally friggin’ hilarious and a very involved father.  We share the same life goals, appreciate almost all the same cultural phenomena and have similar values around politics, social justice and generally how we want to function in the world.  How I landed him seems like magic, but the bottom line is I chose him.

We first met at summer camp, as teenagers.  Flash forward 17 years and we ended up married with a ridiculously adorable infant daughter.  This story is so ripe for the “meant to be” trope, it’s virtually impossible to resist.  And as much as I would like to wrap it up in a tidy bow, it feels critically important to appreciate how pro-active we both had to be to get here:

1)   How I knew Michael in the first place: As a child, I chose to participate in a Labor Zionist youth movement that offered a sleep-away summer camp.  Believe me, this is a highly specific choice.

2)   How I was in a position to date him: At age 34, I chose to leave my first marriage, recognizing that I had made a mistake.

3)   How we reconnected: I chose to reach out to him on Facebook, hoping we still might have some things in common.

4)   How the relationship developed: I chose to pursue our connection, despite being separated by 3000 miles.  I then chose to move across the country to give it a real chance.

5)   How we were married: I chose to make a life with someone that I not only loved but who treated me with respect and with whom I was a great match.

Don’t get me wrong: there was and is all manner of getting the vapors and birds chirping and stars trailing across the night sky.  However, the bones of what we have done and what we are doing together are the minute and monumental choices.  The future of our relationship depends entirely on these choices.  Are we going to be kind to one another?  Are we going to listen?  Are we going to stick around when things get tough?  Are we going to share domestic responsibilities . . . some of this is HUGE and some of it seems so piddly, I realize.  I would argue that every little choice piles onto the heap that tips the scales in favor of a partnership.

I was fortunate that someone like Michael was available for my choosing when I was ready.  It was also providence that our timing worked out just right.  But almost everything since has been instrumental and emotional elbow grease.

Chance has also played a role in my career.  I have been “lucky” to have a supportive husband, willing to bear the risk of my starting a business (and doing so smack in the middle of a global financial crisis!).  But I chose to leave a stable, essentially recession-proof career to go out on my own.  And every day I choose not to go back to a more secure position that carries fancy health benefits, so that I might create something more meaningful for myself.

The miniature cherub that lives in our home?  When it comes to her, things get a bit more complicated.  The relevant choice is that I decided to pursue and endure fertility treatments when it became clear that we would not have a child without assistance.  The staggering fortune is that it worked, and we had a healthy child.  Speaking of staggering fortune, we were also lucky to have the resources at our disposal for the procedures.  I will also say that had it not worked, I would have chosen among many other (equally taxing) options to have a child, all of which involve a healthy dose of rolling the dice.  Soon enough, we will be confronted with this crazy fusion of intention and chance if we decide to expand our family again.

The things of which I am most proud in my life — marriage, work, baby — have required a combination giving it up to the fates and making the arduous decisions of a warrior.  It gives me great solace to imagine that I am the author of my own future and that I don’t have to wait for “blessings” to be happy.  The good news is that means we can all change our lives for the better . . . it simply starts with choosing to believe that it’s feasible.

From Cannes, France...

Dearest Clara, August is for going to the beach, isn't it? I didn't necessarily used to think so always, but the older I get, the more I miss the salt water air and carefreeness that comes with hot summer days and cool ocean water.  We were lucky this year - the beach in Cannes called our name.  Maybe if we're lucky next year, it will call again.  Here are a couple of things I've learned from this beautiful coast:

• Rosé goes with everything: Everything.  Remember how I said prosecco goes with everything in Italy? Well here you can’t go wrong with rosé.  Lunch, dinner, aperitif, fish, chicken, anything adn everything . . . when in doubt, go pink.  And you can even throw in an ice cube or two.
• There will prettier girls sometimes: At least, that’s what you’ll think, even though it is not true.  And sometimes there will be thinner girls and ones with more money, a deeper tan, cooler sunglasses . . . This is a place where often people have more, and it’s easy to get caught up in comparisons.  But believe your mother on this one, you are just as beautiful as any person out there and it will be your confidence that makes you so.  Whether your bathing suit costs $20 or $200, the ocean water will be just as refreshing.  And when you come home, you’ll wonder why you did all that silly worrying.
• You can have cheese for dinner:  Really.  Our hosts are such wonderful entertainers and chefs, and evenings around the dinner table featured so many good things that were on endless parade.  Yet, one of my favorite meals is the night we were all tired, and we had “cheese for dinner”.  Of course, there were several different platters of all kinds, and accompanying breads, and baskets of fresh figs and honey.  The milk and the creams that go into French cheeses are so good, and the process still true to what it always has been.  Sometimes, something simple can steal the show – give it space to do so every once in a while.  And don’t forget the rosé.
• Enjoy a quiet night in the garden: Cannes has a way of feeling hectic sometimes, but it’s amazing how many pockets of solitude you can find, and absolutely everything that is beautiful and fragrant seems to grow here.  I guess that’s why so many perfumes are from here.  Enjoy these plants and smells…the lavender…the olive trees…the herbs…it all comes together in such a unique combination.  You’ll come back in the future just for that experience all over again.
• Go to the beach: That’s what you’re there for.  Whether it’s a little cove off the road, or in a full on beach club, go to the beach and get in the water.  Nothing sparkles quite like the ocean in the south of France – this is your chance to be part of it.

And of course, don’t forget your sunscreen.

All my love,

Mom

How It Began

When I am growing up, my grandmother often prints out thick packets of stories and legends about women who did things and sends them to me in large manila envelopes. After a while I have history and myth all mixed up, but I know more about Sacagawea and Joan of Arc, Jane Austen and the goddess Athena, than any of my friends in Mrs. Smith’s first grade classroom.

Every summer we make the drive to North Carolina to visit my grandparents. This time, I walk into the room where my sister and I always sleep and instead of the familiar stack of printed-out pages there is a small hardback book sitting on the bedside table. The cover shows a collage of train tickets, magazine photographs of the Eiffel Tower, and plastic figurines of women in traditional southern French dress. I like it right away. I have always judged books by their covers.

Postcards from France is a series of articles written back to her American hometown newspaper from a young woman spending a year living in Valence, a small city in the southeast province of Savoie. I finish the book in one day. I read it again the next year, and again, and again. Inside the back cover, in the careful, blocky handwriting of a child just starting to write, I inscribe, “This is a great book!”

From then on, I am completely obsessed with the idea of spending a year in France---of travelling the entire country, becoming fluent in another language, and making unforgettable friends. I will do this, too. And I do, in my own way.

YWRB: Dare

By Amy Turn Sharp I always pick dare.

Truth or Dare?

I am game. Game on.

Let's do this thing. I will get naked. I will kiss you madly.

I will run through the streets screaming.

Whatever. Why?

I think it is because it is easier than letting you inside of my mind. Inside of all the scary truths I carry like coins.

I think it's important to find your other side of the coin, the people who always pick truth.

They are not weanies. They are powerful totems.

Find them and hold them like lovers.

Teach each other how to be passionately truthful and daring.

Most of us are lacking in one side of the coin.

Truth or Dare.

Hold hands and walk into the future.

Encourage and take a chance.

It's all we've got baby.

The chance of a life well lived.

I dare you.

Conversations with Myself as an Old Woman

By Eliza DeaconKilimanjaro, Tanzania

Gnarled hands that are surprisingly pale, folded in her lap. Capable hands, although she never liked them despite their ability to reach one note over an octave on the piano. She’s always stayed out of the sun, not for vanity, but because she doesn’t like the sun or the heat---funny for someone who has spent the last 60 years of her life in Africa. You can look like leathery old strips of biltong otherwise, the intense heat of mid-day etched deep into crinkles and creases. Nice faces though, lived-in, they look like they belong here.

Here she became the person she never thought she was before---hidden away, in a too-tall lanky body, by insecurities and doubt, never entirely comfortable in the skin she was born with. It wasn’t so simple, but then this continent never is; it tests and challenges, weeds the strong of heart from those who shy from its extremes. It can drive you mad and it’s easy to stumble, the dusty earth is often rock-strewn and rarely flat.

She often used to wonder if this was a place to grow old; she never wanted to feel fear and it’s here sometimes---visits at night with the winds, with shiftas and waizi . . . thieves who come in when the moon is low, skulking around the perimeters in whispers. The dogs bark and the old Maasai askaris keep them at bay, but they’re still out there. And fear is an unwelcome guest, especially when you know your limitations.

She and the man she loves know of nowhere else to go. This place they call home is just that and has claimed them wholly. They have both been spat off the continent before, thrown out of the land they were bound to. For him, because the colour of his skin was deemed wrong, despite having the right passport. For her, because she was told she had just been there too long. But where else to go? Where else do you find the life that offers you the most extraordinary freedom, whilst always with cruel accuracy reminding you that this freedom comes at a price?

At times she wonders at how she can still find the thrill in that particularly African golden light that comes just before dark, that one-hour grace period when everything else is forgotten and the Gods smile down on all. And the moment when walking on the farm, she startles a wild animal and it’s frozen, staring with wide eyes, preserved in that drawn-out moment until neither can bear it any longer and the spell is broken.

She remembers things: bare feet on wet grass, stepping carefully in the darkness, the smell of sweet wild jasmine and night sounds in her soul, feeling giddy with wildness in the shadow of the mountain. And she remembers a dress covered in a thousand sparkling sequins. As they drove down the long farm road towards a moonlit gathering, it filled the inside of the car with colour, like stars that no-one could see but them.She files away all these memories, carries them carefully in a treasure box, revisits them at sunset when, sitting on the veranda with a glass in hand, the world slows down and sinking back into the past is easy and without regret. Old now, but there is so much that is good here. As much as you can ‘belong’, they know that they have been marked, carry the scars as well as the laughter. There is permanence and stability in its indelible stain and it ties them to that dusty African soil, a compass that always points them home.

The End of the Summer

TS Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock’s life was “measured out in coffee spoons.” My life has been measured out in back-to-schools. Every year of my life has featured a significant back-to-school transition. Even before I started kindergarten, my family’s routine shifted when my mother, a professor, went back to school. During the three years of my adult life when I was neither in school nor teaching, my wife was working in college student affairs, where the back-to-school season is strenuous, and feels like a marathon. Some of my most distinct memories are back-to-school related. I remember walking with my mother to my first day of kindergarten, and the very cool bag in which I carried my supplies (it featured an applique pencil).  I remember going to my high school before school started to pick up my schedule and walk through it several times so I could master the cavernous layout of the sixties-era monolith.  I will never forget (and I realize that phrase is overused, but in this case, it’s actually true) watching my parents drive away from my college dorm and feeling the strangest combination of feelings---excitement and fear and an intense sadness.  My first day of student teaching created a confusion of feelings.  Being neither teacher nor student left me in a sort of transitory space, and made the day more difficult to process.

Now, as an adult, one who is entering her eighth year of full-time teaching, I no longer find the back-to-school experience particularly momentous. There’s the change in routine, and a new pack of red pens, and new faces in the classroom, but it feels familiar, almost comforting. What is significant now is the end of the summer. It begins right about now as my teaching friends in southern states go back to work and it continues until I begin again right after Labor Day.

Last summer was a blur of parenting a newborn. I remember little beyond being exhausted and sometimes stopping for ice cream when we put the baby in the car to coax him to sleep through the rhythm of the driving. In a way, it was refreshing to know I could do no more than simply tend to him and my wife. That often meant that a day’s big accomplishment was picking up groceries or cleaning the bathroom.

This summer, however, I had plans. Yet, much like every summer, the season is winding down and I feel as though I have accomplished little of those plans. I’ve read books, but not as many as I’d like. My son and I have gone on many wonderful outings, but there have also been days when weather or timing have prevented us from doing anything memorable. Work, which should have felt far away, has encroached on my leisure through e-mails, the occasional meeting, and the fact that a teacher’s job is never done---there are always lessons to be tweaked or new texts to be considered.

It’s easy to let August turn into a Month of Regret. I ask myself what I could have done differently to feel more accomplished.   I try to carve out moments to satisfy my leisure goals while beginning to prepare things for my classes. I watch women’s Olympic soccer for the sake of both enjoyment and procrastination. Soon, it’s mid-August, and then it’s the end, and the whole month I feel a creeping sense of frustration. In June, the summer feels wide open. It’s freedom!  I know many teachers think of it as a “freedom from.” It’s a break from the early mornings, the capriciousness of young people, the grading, the planning. I try to remember that a teacher’s summer really is a “freedom to.” I want to grab the freedom to do more things than are reasonably possible, and it is that optimism in June that causes regret in August. In a way, it’s no different than how I felt as a child. The summer wanes, and real life presents itself again. It is bittersweet, but it comes with the season, and feels as familiar to me as the changing of the leaves.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Randon Billings Noble is a creative nonfiction writer living in Washington, DC.  A graduate of NYU’s MFA program and a former teacher of writing at American University, she currently writes the blog From the Hatchery while raising her 17-month-old twins.  Her essays have appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, Passages North and elsewhere.  You can read more from her at fromthehatchery.com, randonbillingsnoble.com, and on Twitter (@randonnoble).  When I was halfway through my one and only pregnancy, I stopped reading.

Before this I had always read.  I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read, and I was always a little jealous when I read about others learning to read – when C-A-T became “cat” and leapt off the page and into imagination.  According to my parents, when I was three years old we were driving by a billboard and I read “Rustoleum” right off it.  Rustoleum.  Impressive . . . but it doesn’t exactly leap into imagination.

In high school I tore through the classics assigned by my English teachers as well as the Sweet Valley High series I discovered on my own.  In college I branched out into Women’s Literature and Native American Literature and rooted back into Chaucer and the medievalists.  In graduate school I focused on Renaissance Drama until I defected from my English program into an MFA in Creative Writing.  There I read Proust, Bulgakov, Joan Didion, Andre Aciman . . .

I continued to read when I jumped the desk and became a teacher of writing instead of a student.  I read throughout my courtship with my husband and well into our marriage.  Then I got pregnant.  With twins.

The bigger I got the more immobile I became.  I was never on bed rest, but when your waist more than doubles in size and is heading towards the planetary, it’s tough to move around – even inside your own house.  For a few weeks I mostly just sat in a chair in our living room and read, but then I started to become stupid.  I couldn’t focus, even on the Sookie Stackhouse novels I was burning through on my Kindle.  Later I learned that your brain can shrink up to 8% during pregnancy.  Since I was carrying twins, I imagine my brain shrank 16%.

Finally they were born---each weighing well over seven pounds.  And for the next few months I was completely and happily consumed by them.  But then I started to miss reading.

When the weather got warmer, I began to take the twins out for walks in their fancy double-decker stroller.  One of our first outings was to the library.  Right by the front counter was a shelf of new releases whose breadth of subject matter made me almost giddy---a mystery set at Pride and Prejudice’s Pemberly, the latest installment in the Game of Thrones series, novels about werewolves (one starring Henry VIII no less), a collection of Alexander McQueen’s fashions, a thick volume of illustrated anatomy, a group biography of former North Koreans, a bunch of vegetarian cookbooks, The History of the World in 100 Objects.

I checked out three books that day and read them in less than a week.  My brain swelled like the Grinch’s heart bursting out of its magnifying frame.  I was myself again.  I was reading.

Here are some of my favorite finds:

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi St. John Fox, a writer, has gotten into the habit of killing off his heroines.  Mary Foxe, his made-up muse, objects.  She challenges him to join her in a series of stories where she, too, has a hand in their creation, and nine divergent fairy tales are the result.  The relationship between the writer and his creation grows more complicated, however, when Mr. Fox’s wife Daphne becomes convinced that he is having an affair and breaks into their narrative.  Will Mr. Fox have to choose between his fantasy muse and his flesh-and-blood wife?  Or will yet another story write itself?

One tale begins:

There was a Yourba woman and there was an English-man, and …

That might sound like the beginning of a joke, but those two were seriously in love.

They tried their best with each other, but it just wasn’t any good.  I don’t know if you know what a Yourba woman can be like sometimes.  Any house they lived in burnt down.  They   fought; their weapons were cakes of soap, suitcases, fists, and hardback encyclopedias.  There were injuries …

One day the woman stamped her foot and wished her man dead.  He died.  (And now you know what a Yourba woman can be like sometimes.)

She had a devil of a time getting him back after that one.

The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, illustrated by Nate Powell I was immediately struck by this graphic novel’s cover.  I wanted to know what these two men were looking at, and with such different expressions.  In a way, they’re both looking at the same thing: their hometown in Texas where in 1968 a civil rights protest turns deadly and five black college students are charged with murder.  Larry Thompson is the black activist who leads the protest.  Jack Long (a fictionalized version of the writer Mark Long’s father) is the white reporter who crosses the color line to film it.  Jack invites Larry’s family to his house on the white side of town and eventually testifies – for the accused students – at their trial.  Amid the hatred, violence, and misunderstanding in this story, there are also fishing trips, barbeques, rodeos, realizations, redemption and, ultimately, a sense of unity.

In this scene Larry’s family is at Mark’s house.  The kids are sent outside to play, conversation stumbles and an offer of drinks is refused.  But then Mark puts some music on …

We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser This collection features stories about a mysterious figure who emerges in a commuter town to slap people – hard – before disappearing, about a boy infatuated with a girl whose one white glove hides an unbearable secret, about the creator of clockwork automatons who finds himself in competition with a mysterious rival, about a knife-thrower who marks the people who flock to see him, about a museum whose endless bewildering rooms call people to return again and again …

These stories claim to be about others, but we are more haunted by the way they reflect back on us.

The title story begins:

We others are not like you.  We are more prickly, more jittery, more restless, more reckless, more secretive, more desperate, more cowardly, more bold.  We live at the edges of ourselves, not in the middle places.  We leave that to you.  Did I say: more watchful?  That above all.  We watch you, we follow you, we spy on you, we obsess over you.  We crave your attention.  We hunger for a sign …

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont A sad tale of love and loss and the sea, but set at a New England prep school – not aboard the Pequod.  When his best friend and sailing partner commits suicide, Jason Prosper transfers to Bellingham Academy, a second-chance school for the privileged.  But even as he forms new relationships at his new school, he is haunted by his past and threatened by a secret he only slowly unravels.

One of the surprise pleasures of this book was the wordplay between friends.  Despite its rather dark plot, this microcosm of teenagers is full of intimacy, prankishness and wit.   I’ll leave the revelation of the title line, the starboard sea, for you to discover as you read, but this passage gave me a whole new appreciation for the creative usage of SAT vocabulary:

Cal’s mother, Caroline, had once made up a deck of vocabulary flashcards, encouraging us to quiz each other in preparation for the SAT.  Cal’s favorite word was ‘abrasive.’  He’d misuse it every chance he could, inserting it into sentences where it didn’t belong.  ‘This ham and cheese sandwich is mighty abrasive.’  ‘That’s some abrasive foot odor.’  ‘I’m going to get abrasive on this ancient history exam.’

And the book I just picked up this week: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed This book is a collection of Dear Sugar advice columns from the online magazine The Rumpus.  Someone commented on Twitter that she was reading it with a highlighter but should have been with a tattoo gun.   As I leafed through its pages I felt the same way.

Every page of this book feels quote-worthy, but I’ll end with a piece of advice that Strayed, in her 40s, wrote to a woman in her 20s – something I wish I had read in that living room chair, trapped under the weight of 15 pounds of baby, feeling time slide away like a tide and wondering if I would ever get some fraction of my brain – my life – back.  Strayed writes:

The useless days will add up to something.  The shitty waitressing jobs.  The hours writing in your journal.  The long meandering walks.  The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not.  These things are your becoming.

I hope this reading will be part of yours.

Future Shock

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend-of-a-friend, in which he essentially said this to me (and I am paraphrasing here): “You know the main reason my wife and I decided not to have children is because I think the world is falling apart at the seams and we, as a species, are doomed.  I didn’t want to saddle another generation with this mess.”   My jaw fell slack and my response was an awkwardly managed and strangely delayed “Oh, MmHmm . . .” Having rather recently procreated, myself, I am, perhaps more sensitive to the insinuation that having children might be a selfish act and one that a reasonable and humane person would sacrifice, based on the state of the planet.  And yet, I was also surprised by my initial instinct which was to reply with, “I totally hear you and I mostly agree!”  Part of the reason for the bungled response was pondering whether the mother of an infant should be concurring that having children is crazy, all things considered.  It should be established that this person works in an industry that bears intimate witness to both the real impact of climate change and the barriers to spurring governments, individuals, and cultures to reverse course.  He also described a feeling more generally that he enjoyed a measure of freedom, loved to travel, etc., but his main thesis really stuck with me.  It got me ruminating about the rationale for having children and where we are as a society—you know, nothing heavy. In some ways, despite clawing my way to motherhood against tough odds and having a singular focus about it for years on end, I can utterly relate to the idea of not wanting children.  Like any haughty adult enjoying the relative ease of life and limitless possibilities that come with a child-free future, I have fantasies of coming home at the end of the day and flitting off to a movie or hopping a plane to Bermuda.  The beginning of the end of my first marriage started with a conversation in which my ex-husband declared he had decided he didn’t want children because, “What if I want to just, like, go to Costa Rica?”  At the time, he had never traveled outside the United States, save a solitary surf trip to Mexico, and he didn’t even have a driver’s license.  But this straw man danced around in my head and the phrase “Costa Rica,” eventually became code to me for “noncommittal.”

The other problem with this, obviously, being: When was I ever a person who was able to come home at the end of the day and flit off anywhere or hop a plane to anywhere?  Let’s face facts: I plan things.  Basic work-life functions and my own overdeveloped sense of responsibility slash free-floating anxiety have basically ruled this kind of behavior out for me a long time ago.  This truly has very little to do with newly caring for a living being.  I have always been more attracted to a cozy evening curled up with magazine, husband, and domestic beast than to painting the town.  I have a knitting phase in my history, I have hosted more than one “game night” at my place . . . you don’t need further elaboration, of this I am sure.

Traveling with children is a bit more intimidating, although I do have the goal of providing as many diverse experiences as possible for my kids.  While I realize that taking a child to a place that is inhospitable, inaccessible, dangerous, etc. is no longer in the cards, (which it never was for me, either, frankly) I don’t think my only option remains a Disney Cruise.  I have lots of examples in my life of people picking up and exploring exotic places with one, two, three (!) kids, even living abroad in somewhat “colorful” circumstances.   And the people I know who have gone down this road range from families with endless resources and major job security to those working with a shoestring and cobbling together freelance gigs to make it work.  So, let’s strike that from the list.

Now on to the issue of the world and how it appears to be unraveling.  There is no denying that we are in crisis with the environment.  But, how do I know that my kid won’t be the person who develops some sensational new technology that quite literally saves the world?  I worry much more about the way our politics, culture, and social norms have degraded.  Here again, I like the idea raising a person who might contribute positively in these areas, even better than we have.  And to experience the children of our friends and family and see what lovely, tiny human beings are all around us, I am increasingly confident that we can tip the scales in the direction of progress.

There is no doubt that some element of child rearing is profoundly narcissistic.  By definition, you are creating and shaping a person and then offering that person to the world in your likeness.  This is true whether or not you have biological children.  Then again, I still submit that if all of us out here---imperfect, but kind and loving (sometimes snarky)---raise children with good hearts and strong minds, there are larger benefits than just how it makes us feel to be loved and see ourselves reflected.

From Berchtesgaden, Germany...

Dearest Clara, When we lived in Vienna, one of our favorite getaways was in the mountains, just across the border in Germany.  We spent so many weekends there---we took you for the first time when you were barely two months old, and we absolutely had to go back during our return trip this summer.  There is something about these mountains that keeps drawing us in, and I suspect we’ll be going back for years to come, even though this wouldn’t be the type of place to top most people’s “places to go list.”  All the better I say, it just leaves more of this gorgeous landscape undisturbed for those of us in the know to enjoy!

Berchtesgaden can be a tricky place.  It’s so beautiful that you want to think it was laying here so peacefully forever, but the truth is that it had its role in a darker side of history.  And visiting there presents somewhat of a quandary about how to reconcile those two things.  For me, what I’ve learned over the years is that will always be your responsibility to know the history of the places you visit.  But be sure to separate the past from the future that any place is trying to build---by being aware of both, you’ll be able to feel out what your assessment is of the present.

In addition, I’ve learned the following from this charming mountain town:

• The view from the top is always worth it: There are no shortage of hills and mountains in this area, some that you have to walk, some you can cheat a little and ride a gondola  to the top.  I think so often we breeze through places like these and just take the time to see the town and move on, but the real treat is what you see from the top of the mountain, not the bottom, so make sure you always plan for a few of these jaunts when you come across elevation.
• Tradition should always have a home: When places are small and not on the beaten path, we are quick to write them off as closed and narrow. But some people work very hard to preserve their traditions.  This time around we stumbled onto a parade of local villages, all with families in their local variations of national costumes . . . all handmade. there are very few places where such craft by hand can survive.  Know when to let people keep their traditions.
• Beef should be expensive: This sounds funny right? But in the hotel that we always stay at, they often have “filet of local heifer” on the menu and the translation has always made us giggle a bit.  And it happens to be the most expensive item on the menu by far.  This is common in many alpine areas, even though the meat is local to the region.  But it takes a lot of time and resource to raise animals that are out on fresh pasture, with space and cleanliness and natural foods.  Of course there are faster and cheaper ways of raising animals, but ultimately, animals are living things and should be respected as such.  I guarantee you it doesn’t taste the same when you take a shortcut.  You won't be able to take the long way as often though.
• Change can come quickly: Much like near the sea, the weather in the mountains can change in what seems like an instant.  Many times we’ve started out in sunshine and watched black clouds roll in, erupting the mountains into flashes of lightning.  A little extra preparation and know-how will protect you in places where change is the constant.
• Protect what’s still clean: Near where we stay there is a beautiful lake which is one of the largest and deepest in the country, but is also the cleanest.  In fact, you can drink water right out of this huge body of water in any place on the lake.  That is a rare gift that this water has been taken care of so well over so many years.  When you find these pockets of clean air . . . water . . . land . . . it is your responsibility to help keep them that way---when you find pockets that have strayed, you still have to do your part.

All my love,

Mom

A Pink Envelope

I spent the weekend with my two best girlfriends.  Aren’t friends great?  Mine are.  We all live in different towns, so we don’t get to see each other as often as we might like.  But every time the three of us hang out I’m reminded how magnificently funny those ladies are.  Then I came back home and developed a less than stellar back spasm. It was not fun and I was cranky for a solid twenty four hours.  So my husband probably wasn’t thrilled either.  Sleeping was a challenge and although the tightness had abated some by Monday morning, I still spent the day propped up in bed.  Three pillows arranged behind me just so, one on my lap to set my computer on, and one under my knees.  It doesn’t make sense, but it was comfortable, sort of.  I had moved past the point of pain and was in the restricted movement phase, but I was still cranky.  I was uncomfortable, I had a crazy busy Monday as far as work was concerned, and I was behind on my writing.  It was just an icky day and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

And then I checked the mail.

In my mailbox, squeezed between the financial newspaper I never read, the bills to be paid, and the advertisements for appliances I don’t need, was a cheery pink envelope.  My sister had sent me a letter.  I immediately ditched the other mail and carefully sat down in the living room with my pink envelope.

I love writing letters just as much as I love receiving them.  Luckily for me, my sis seems to feel the same way.  So we’re occasional penpals.  We still email, and talk on the phone, and skype, and all that modern stuff, but we supplement with honest-to-goodness letters when the mood strikes. There’s something about opening an envelope and holding a piece of paper in your hand that brings the person a little closer.

So I sat down to read my letter, and then I started laughing.  My letter was a detailed description of a recent misadventure.  I chuckled through five pages of descriptions and anecdotes, and then I started back at the beginning.  Finally, I put the paper aside stood up and went back to my nest of pillows.  My back still hurt, but my mood was drastically improved.

That’s the power of a letter and a laugh.

Things

Whenever I tell someone that my husband and I went to high school together, I’m quick to point out that we weren’t high school sweethearts. Pat, always ready with a joke, will tell you that he didn’t even like me that much during those days. An impossibility, of course, but the truth is we’ve built our relationship on compromise, laughs, and most importantly to me after 8 years in New York, a common understanding of where we come from. We know that fish frys are eaten on Fridays, that the Penfield Patriots will always be the Chiefs, that the Park Ave Fest --- in Rochester, that is --- is the first weekend in August. There are inside jokes and stories that date back to middle school, way before “Pat and Ali” meant anything. We know these things inside out, these truths about our past and present, but there has always been a piece of my husband that I couldn’t grasp. When Pat was 19, just shy of his junior year in college, his father died. Suddenly, tragically. And in the blink of an eye, his whole world changed. His dad was his rock, his role model, his mentor in sports and school --- in life, really --- and one day he just wasn’t there. For 10 years, I’ve tried to understand, but the truth is, I didn’t. I couldn’t. And suddenly I do.

There’s a desk in our apartment that Pat has had for all the years I’ve known him. For most of those years, it was nothing to look at – scuffed, with old hardware and a shape too antique for my taste. What it lacks in looks, however, it makes up for in sentimental value. It belonged to Pat’s dad, and so it has moved with him from college, to several apartments in Rochester, and then to Brooklyn in the back of a U-Haul van. Two years ago, when we moved into our new condo --- our first “real” home together --- I was determined to get rid of that desk. We don’t have the room! I want a NEW desk, one with drawers that close properly! Let’s store it at one of our parents’ houses! I tried every argument in the book, but in the end it was my mom who saved the day. She first told me to shut my mouth --- and then volunteered to refinish it for us, to transform that desk into something new. It was a compromise, and I begrudgingly agreed. For weeks, my mom labored over the desk, meticulously following each step in the refinishing process and updating me nightly on her progress. Anyone who knew my mom knows about her penchant for "winging it," and so her commitment to following the directions here was both shocking and touching.  In the end, the desk was reborn into a better version of itself. Now shiny and smooth, it has since provided a place for Pat to spend endless hours studying for the CFA exam, and is my home base several days each week. I like to think that my mom and Pat’s dad are laughing together somewhere at the humor and irony in that.

As it turns out, I now find myself surrounded by my mom’s things. On my right ring finger sits her amethyst ring. Strangers stop me to take a closer look at the ring,  guessing that it must have belonged to someone special to me, while family and friends recognize it right away. I take my mom's pearl earrings out at night and put them back in first thing in the morning. My history of losing jewelry --- earrings especially --- haunts me, but somehow I don’t let these out of my sight. My mom’s purses line my shelves, and with each trip back to Rochester, I know I’ll return with more tangible reminders of her.

In the end, they are just things, like I told Pat for so many years. They don’t replace the memories or the laughs, and they certainly don’t soothe the tears. But then, they are more than that, too. They are a constant reminder that our parents are never far; perhaps out of sight, but never --- ever --- out of mind.

On (Un)following on Twitter

I've been wondering what Twitter is to me. While my favorited tweets reflect of my headspace, and encapsulate my strengths and flaws, my entire Twitter stream is the pool from which these highs and lows materialize—an idea-filled microcosm of my world, where my current interests lie. I've been thinking about the process of unfollowing, especially after reading Mat Honan's piece on Wired about unfollowing everyone. For me, the unfollowing process is active and ongoing, and while I've unfollowed people for various reasons, it's less about the account being unfollowed and more about me. My interests change from week to week, so I follow and unfollow to keep up with my mind, to keep the flow rushing and constant and healthy, to prevent debris buildups and mental cobwebs.

* * * * *

Earlier this summer, I noticed a a smattering of #TBEX in my stream, the hashtag for a travel blogging conference. I'm not a travel blogger, but in 2008, I'd created my Twitter account and my blog as platforms to complement my job at a travel website. In the beginning, I followed and networked with travel writers and travelers by default, but over the past four years, I've diverged from this path and discovered other interests and topics I enjoy writing about. It has made sense to unfollow publications and bloggers that no longer offer ideas and information that are relevant to me.

I still have friends and contacts from the online travel sphere and today find myself on the periphery of this world, yet wade in other currents that interest me, like technology and nonfiction, within my Twitter stream. I see how my Twitter feed is constantly evolving, not stagnant. It feels natural to follow and unfollow; to cull and prune; to find a balance, on any given day, between information and entertainment, hope and despair, and significance and irrelevance.

And I notice occasionally that when I unfollow someone, they immediately and automatically unfollow me in return (and sometimes on other networks, too). I find this kind of reciprocal following and unfollowing meaningless, but I understand people use Twitter, and other social media, in different ways.

* * * * *

I have my reasons for following each account on my list. I follow a handful of bloggers because I regularly read them; a group of people for interesting ideas on all things digital; a bunch of folks for general news, art and design, and pop culture; book handles of bigger publications like the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books; and then a sprinkling of accounts who add the necessary color, humor, and "padding" to my feed.

I've thought about what kind of irrelevance to keep in my stream. I don't enjoy reading complaints and the daily minutiae of a person's day, yet I don't mind the wickedly inappropriate trolling tweets of assholes. I hate when "LOL" or "LMAO" appear in my stream, but am completely fine with other abbreviations.

A systematic randomness, I suppose.

And I don't follow my closest friends. Not because I don't like them, but because I don't use Twitter to communicate with them. I also may love someone's photography so will follow them on Instagram, but that doesn't mean I will follow them on Twitter. (Can't I be drawn to just one facet of a person?)

* * * * *

But ultimately, do I have to explain this process?

So, I'm curious: do you actively follow and unfollow people on Twitter, too?

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Maggie Shipstead was born in 1983 in Orange County, CA. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House, VQR, American Short Fiction, The Best American Short Stories 2010, and other publications. "La Moretta," a story published in VQR, was a 2012 National Magazine Award finalist for fiction. Maggie is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and a recent resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She doesn't really know where she lives but is open to suggestions. Seating Arrangements is her first novel. After seeing it on every list of best summer reads (including this one and this one), we ran out to buy our own copies and suggest you do the same---unless you hate laughing. I tend to have a smorgasbord of books going, dog-eared and sometimes set aside for weeks or months until I’m in the mood to pick them up again. Which book to read before bed on any given day is a question I address much like I figure out what to wear: with lots of blank staring at the possibilities, maybe making a false start or two, wishing for an infinite selection, and then yielding to the necessity of making a choice. I don’t feel much enmity for e-readers, but, for me, an integral part of the pleasure of reading is the pleasure of selecting a book from bookshelves, either mine or a store’s. Last fall I spent a month in Bali, and the Ganesha Bookshop in Ubud was a treasure trove of weird paperbacks discarded by travelers from all over the place (but, okay, mostly from Australia). I love the associations that grow between books and the places I read them. A certain mystery with a cracked cover and pill-y, yellowing paper is inseparable from a corner of shade in my landlady’s pool, where I stood in the water for hours, trying not to fry in the tropical sun. In January, when I was doing an artist residency in Paris, a Left Bank bookseller handed me The Hare With Amber Eyes, a haunting family history by ceramicist Edmund de Waal that’s about Paris and Vienna and Tokyo and war and precious objects. I read it on a hard single bed in my Spartan artist studio while the city and its past slept outside in the cold. Perfection.

These days, my bed in San Diego is a much less exotic venue for reading, but here, nonetheless, are some of the books that have recently been the object of my fickle attention.

Just finished . . . A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer duBois A wise, crazy-smart, and heartbreaking debut novel built around the question of how to wage a battle that you know can’t be won. Sounds grim, but duBois’s writing is a treat: full of wry humor and incisive observation. Irina is a young woman from Boston living with a terminal diagnosis who embarks on a quest to Russia to track down a former chessmaster turned dissident politician, Aleksandr Bezetov, and see if he can give her any answers. DuBois also delves into Aleksandr’s past, starting in St. Petersburg in 1979. I have a lifelong thing for Russia, and—past and present—that sprawling, inscrutable country is the third lead in this book.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon Okay, so maybe this won’t actually be released until September, but a friend scored an advance copy for me back in the spring. Sweeeet! The novel follows two families living on the seam between Oakland and Berkeley, one white, one black. The wives are partners in a midwife practice, and the husbands own a record store. Chaos ensues. This is a fat, meaty, absorbing book, jammed with off-kilter characters and happenings and with Chabon’s signature riffs on pop culture.

The Honourable Schoolboy by John LeCarré I’m a big fan of LeCarré, especially his Cold War novels. This novel falls between Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy (best title ever) and Smiley’s People in a trilogy about George Smiley’s pursuit of his KGB nemesis Karla. Just on a language level, LeCarré is an amazing stylist—a very, very, very fine writer who is extremely nimble within the omniscient point of view—but he’s also a master at assembling complex plots and setting them spinning in a perfectly rendered, dreary-yet-fascinating, invisible spy world.

In the middle of . . . Look At Me by Jennifer Egan I’ve been meaning to buy this novel forever, and finally it appeared in front of my face at the right moment at the right bookstore (Books Inc. in San Francsico). One of the many things I admire about Egan’s writing is that she’s always experimenting with form and daringly fills her books with unexpected twists. In Look At Me, a model comes out of a car crash with eighty screws in her face, not disfigured but undeniably altered, and must figure out how her place in the world has also changed. That would be story enough, but other characters take turns behind the narrative wheel as well: a high school golden boy turned unhinged history professor, an outwardly plain teenage girl with a reckless streak, and a private eye, to name a few.

Arcadia by Lauren Groff I will always be obsessed with a short story of Groff’s that was in the 2007 volume of The Best American Short Stories and is called “L. Debard and Aliette.” The opening is set in New York in 1918 as a flu epidemic erupts and an Olympic champion teaches a girl recovering from polio to swim and, eventually, to do sexier things. The story is retelling of Eloise and Abelard and has a mesmerizing dreaminess to it that I’m also loving in Arcadia, which begins in a hippie commune in the 70s and, the reviews tell me, progresses all the way into the future. Groff’s writing has a matter-of-fact lyricism that allows her to write about very strange things very naturally and with apparent effortlessness.

Can’t wait to start . . . The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje I love ships and the ocean and Michael Ondaatje’s books, so I see no reason why I won’t love this book. It’s about an eleven-year-old boy traveling from Sri Lanka to England on an ocean liner, and I think it’s going to be beautiful.

Ramadan

Ramadan started last week. Around the world, Muslims are fasting, allowing nothing to pass their lips from sunrise to sunset. My husband is one of them.

At seven am the alarm goes off, often my husband is already awake, being one of those people with an annoyingly accurate internal clock.  He’s out the door for work before seven thirty.  He doesn’t have a cup of coffee or a granola bar for breakfast and he doesn’t kiss me goodbye before he leaves.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which means it gradually moves throughout the year. The first year my husband and I were dating, Eid, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, happened right around Thanksgiving.  The fact that holy month moves around the calendar combined with fasting times that are based on sunrise and sunset means fasting in July is different than fasting in November.

By the time my husband comes home at five, the hunger is present, but there’s still three and a half hours to go.  As the clock ticks towards 8:30, my husband starts preparing his meal.  He’s decided to celebrate the season by cooking Kitchari, a rice+lentil combination the color of scrambled eggs.  He’s also made Chicken Curry so spicy the fumes made my eyes water.

I stand in the kitchen, watching the digital readout on the microwave flip numbers as he arranges his plate and glass at the table.  I call out the time. 8:27.  My husband breaks his fast with a sip of water.  The first thing he has tasted all day.  Before he moves on to the spicy food, I lean in for a kiss (or three). Our first kiss of the day.  Finally, he’ll turn to his plate.

I’ve already eaten. Since I’m not fasting, I eat my dinner earlier in the evening.  I’ve never been a big believer in the old absence makes the heart grow fonder.  I think my heart is just as fond no matter the distance. But as I walk into the other room, I can’t help but think about the power of abstaining. It’s like pressing the reset switch.  My kiss at 8:30 in the evening seems to have more meaning, more something because I’ve waited for it.  It is not second nature or ordinary.  It is a treat, something infinitely special. I am reminded to be appreciative and grateful for all the small blessings in my life. The things that seem so ordinary that I’ve taken them for granted.  A nice place to live, food on the table, kisses from my husband.

Ramadan is less than a week old, but I’m already feeling the impact.  I’m going to appreciate the fact that I get to kiss my husband every single day rather than mistake it for ‘everyday’.

What little things are you appreciating this week?

Wine, Literature and Music

Imagine these three things at once. Imagine yourself sipping a glass of red Barolo wine, and reading your favorite book while listening to a song that has been the soundtrack to a cherished part of your life.

And now imagine yourself in Italy, in a beautiful village called Barolo, Piedmont, enjoying the fourth edition of the Collisioni Festival, a summer celebration of music, literature and wine. Every year Collisioni presents important authors and artists from different parts of the world, in a wonderful and dreamy atmosphere and in a setting that is definitely worth a visit, at least once in a lifetime.

This is the opinion of Patti Smith, special guest at Collisioni, who during a magical summertime afternoon shared her passion for Italy, and her thoughts about art, environmental issues, politics, and of course music. I couldn’t wait to see Patti Smith. I’ve been listening to her songs forever, but curiously enough have never attended any of her concerts. So I’ve always wondered how it would feel seeing her in person. From a few feet away, I can tell you that she is friendly, down to earth, interesting, smart and very passionate. It felt like I didn’t need to agree to what she said to appreciate her.

And now project yourself fifty years ago. It was 1962 when a twenty year old boy from Minnesota told the world that a new wind was blowing, blowing through poetry and songs. A wind that would soon become a hurricane, and, most importantly, the voice of young people trying to imagine a different future. Bob Dylan was in Barolo, too, the only Italian date of the legendary American singer-songwriter during the summer. I can’t describe my feelings when he sang Blowin’ in the Wind or Like a Rolling Stone.

And then there was Don DeLillo, speaking about his last (latest) books, Boy George, Vinicio Capossela, and Zucchero, and many other artists from Italy too.

Music and books among the vineyards, tasting local wines from the many small cellars that offered glasses of Barolo, Dolcetto and Barbera along the way – overall, this was just a perfect weekend.

THE LAND and THE VINEYARDS, AS I SAW THEM…

 

LAST WEEKEND THROUGH WORDS.

DON DELILLO ON TIME.

“Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.” from The Body Artist

PATTI SMITH ON TIME.

“Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.” from Just Kids

BOB DYLAN ON TIME.

Yes, how many years can a mountain exist / Before it's washed to the sea ? Yes, how many years can some people exist / Before they're allowed to be free ? Yes, how many times can a man turn his head / Pretending he just doesn't see ? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind / The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Tokens

This was going to be an essay about seedlings. Those tiny starts of plants that are so aggressively green that they’re nearly glowing. I was going to write about how good it felt to plant a pot full of herb seedlings: tarragon and mint and oregano. I planned to describe how delicious the soil had smelled in our tiny apartment as I pressed tiny plants into the soil and set a newly-minted family of plants on the windowsill to get sunshine and fresh air, how plants make a city apartment feel bright and vibrant, how their own will to thrive in a crowded space can feel like a metaphor for my own. But I realized as I was writing about these things, that the story is as much about friendship. More than the tarragon or the mint, it’s about the friend who called me up to tell me she had extra seedlings. It’s about the plastic wine store bag that she filled with soil using a cardboard berry basket as a shovel.

Growing up, my mother’s friends were always bringing plants to our house. They’d pull into our driveway and throw up the back of their station wagons to unload tangled piles of Evening Primrose or Rose of Sharon that’d gotten too big in their own yards. Theirs were gifts that didn’t cost anything but the generosity of spirit that took them from one yard to another.

My childhood friendships were full of similar tokens. Sporting sweaty ponytails and scraped knees, my friends and I gave gifts with great ceremony: sea stones and turkey feathers, miniature slipper shells, and skate egg cases. More often than not these treasures came home and were tucked into corners of my sock drawer, imparting subtle hints of low-tide to my childhood bedroom. They stayed around long enough to collect dust and lose their stink, but when I went to college the rock treasures were put out in the garden and the broken bits of shell and feather were mostly swept into garbage bags and thrown away. I don’t tell this bit with any sense of melancholy. It’s not the sticking around of these tiny gifts that matters so much as the moment of exchange. The moment when one person hands off something that they think another might just find precious. My new seedlings might not make it through a week out of town, but I’ll remember the phone call and the smell of the dirt as my friend prepared a tiny present.

My Story: Poetry and Prose

My parents are my heroes. I was their first child, born when they were 21 and 23, respectively. They were young, hopeful, and excited to become parents.

For the first four months, everything was normal. After that, things went downhill quickly. A bad reaction to an antibiotic sent my infant self into a quick spiral of electrolyte loss and malabsorption, until my tiny body was so taxed by constant vomiting and dangerously low potassium levels that my parents were told I was near death.

When I turned twenty-one—the age my mother was as she experienced all of this—I marveled. I could not imagine the pain that the two of them went through, welcoming their beloved first child into the world only to be told months later that the end was likely.

Finally, at six months, the doctor thought to test me for cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes a buildup of sticky mucus throughout the body—and also, incidentally, leads to very quick electrolyte loss. The diagnostic test came back positive.

My early memories of cystic fibrosis are a jumble of doctor’s appointments, strange machines, and leaning upside-down on a pile of pillows as one of my parents percussed my chest to help keep my lungs clear. There are other things that swim through my remembering as well, like the time my babysitter told me that if a necklace clasp worked its way around to the charm in front, it meant you could make a wish.

Crystal-clear in my memory is one sunny Sunday afternoon as I left church with my favorite necklace around my neck. The clasp nestled against the heart-shaped pendant. With childish fingers, I reached to pull it back, remembering as I did so the babysitter’s words.

That’s easy, I thought. I wish my CF would go away.

Still, my childhood was by and large a happy and very normal one, defined far more by the monsters that lived in my basement and my favorite park two blocks away than by my disease. I breathed easily, and could not remember those early days of endless hospitalizations. It wasn’t until high school hit—and with it, sleep loss—that the hospital became a part of my life again. Each winter, I would be admitted for a few days to begin a course of intravenous antibiotics. I would finish out the weeks-long course at home, needing a month or more after I’d finished the round to recuperate from the harsh effects of the strong medications.

And then, early in my junior year, everything changed.

High school had been a hit to my immune system, and I’d grown used to spending the winters fighting off one cold after another. At first, the virus I picked up around Thanksgiving of my junior year seemed like all the others: I was tired, my throat was sore, I had a cough, I was spending most of my time in bed.

But unlike all the other things that had come my way, this didn’t go away. Months stretched on. I was exhausted all the time, living in a half-awake world where even reading a novel was sometimes too much for my brain to process. Weeks would pass in which I never really left the house. I rotated from bed to couch to my parents’ back porch, where I would stretch out across two chairs and watch the squirrels jump from tree to tree in the backyard. I canceled plans with friends again and again. Even a twenty-minute phone call was enough exertion to leave me so drained that all I could do was crawl into bed, desperate for sleep.

Every few weeks, my mom drove me to the pediatrician for more tests. Nothing came back positive, and still my symptoms did not change. I began to have pain in my legs and feet; over time, the pain got so bad that I could hardly walk. I spent my days confined to places where I could have my feet propped up, my legs stretched out, to give my aching muscles a little relief. I left church early each week, roaming the building to find an unused room where I could lay down on the floor. The simple effort of sitting up had become exhausting.

Eventually, a diagnosis came. Ten months after that first sore throat, my doctor tested me for Epstein-Barr, the virus that causes mono. It came back positive. Another doctor explained that because of my weakened immune system, I hadn’t been able to shake off mono like most teenagers do; not only would it take longer for my body to fight off the virus, but I would be susceptible to relapses in times of stress for the rest of my life. He also said that I had developed Fibromyalgia, a muslce pain syndrome, as a complication of the mono.

I hardly recognized my own life anymore. Gone was the vibrant, energetic teenager; in her place was a girl I didn’t know, a quiet girl who found long conversations tiring and needed as much sleep as a newborn. I raged against this change, raged against the loss of the life that I had loved.

But slowly, so slowly, I learned to find the beauty.

Nearly a year after my diagnosis, I sat at my desk with my computer slung across my lap and felt bathed in light and loveliness in a way I had never quite experienced before. That afternoon, filled with a peace I had not felt in so long, I wrote these words:

There is a state, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, prose and poetry, that is entirely unique.

Colors seem brighter; sounds are sharper and clearer but, at the same time, gentler on the ears. Every movement you make—lifting a hand to brush at loose hair, blinking, turning to look beside you—feels lyrical, like ballet. You don't speak: there is no need for words. You simply are.

This, then, is one of the gifts that sickness has given me. This, the talent that some people are intrinsically born with, but I never was: the ability to slow down, to take things as they are, without preconceptions or misperceptions to cloud my vision. The ability to stop for a moment, and see loveliness in ordinary things: a mess on a table, a bag comfortably stuffed with contents, a plastic craft bead. The ability to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary, and understand the beauty of peace.

I have always been a writer. I would venture to guess that I probably spun stories and wove words in the womb; I certainly have for all the years afterwards. But, I think, as I silently uncurl my legs and shift my position on the chair, that it is sickness that has made me a poet.

YWRB: Rebel for Want

By Amy Turn Sharp I love that Amanda remembers the Brando quote.

Who the hell knows what we were rebelling against, except my soft soul back then, the girl who still had invincible skin left.

I was rebelling for the future. I was leaving the past in the dirt.

It was also that year that I met Gloria Steinem and in a large crowded lecture hall I was able to stand at the microphone and ask her a question after the event. My lips bumped the mic, there was quiet noise.

I just need some advice, I asked. My name is Amy Turn and I need some advice for my life.

And so Gloria shook her head and said {and let me tell you it was certainly like a movie}

Amy Turn, BE A WOMAN WHO TAKES NO SHIT.

The crowd roared and we all looked at each other and it was like church up in there. It was gospel. Always has been.

What are we rebelling against and what is happening at a young age as women?

Well, I hope we are all practicing what to want. How to to need and want to be treated, how to love, how to push away. All the parts to be a woman that are not taught in classrooms, but in friendships, love affairs, seedy bars, libraries, and offices.

In Praise of Essays

By Randon Billings Noble Yesterday afternoon the twins were napping, rain was just starting to prattle through the leaves outside my window, and I was curled up with a cup of tea and a collection of The Best American Essays.

This is when I realized:  Something happens when I read essays---something that doesn't happen when I read novels or short stories or even memoirs.  I feel . . . enlarged.

The essay in this collection that brought my attention to this feeling was  "After the Ice" by Paul Crenshaw.  I won't write much about the content of the essay---I'd rather you read it yourself and let it unfold for you---but here is a passage that starts to show what I'm talking about:

"After the funeral, while my family gathered in the living room of my grandmother's house and some of the men stood on the front porch and talked of violence, I walked through the woods on my grandmother's land.  It was stifling inside the house, and loud with the sounds that accompany death, but outside it was cold and still.  The air hovered right around freezing, and the light mist that fell could not decide whether it wanted to be snow or rain.  Late in the afternoon, the dark came early, and by the time I turned around to walk back only the porch light was visible.  The rain had finally made a decision, and the only sound around me was ice on frozen leaves."

Nothing really happens in this passage.  But something does.  A boy leaves a crowded house and walks in the woods.  Something elusive but meaningful shifts during this walk, even though we never learn exactly what: the passage ends with a section break, and on the other side of that white space a new line of thought begins.  But the moment is captured.  A dilated moment of meaning.

When I finished reading I sat for a while.  The rain was coming down hard and steady, filling the room with its fresh green smell, and there was thunder in the distance.  This moment---this moment on my couch with the tea cold at my elbow and the rain outside and the feeling of this essay settling in my mind and somehow lightly tingeing it forever---this moment felt enlarged.  It felt important.  It felt connected to the moments that Crenshaw describes, walking through the woods after the funeral or driving by an empty house or standing in the backyard at night after a snowfall.  And it promised me that my own future moments---tonight holding one of the twins after a nightmare, later this summer looking out a window in New Hampshire, years from now running my hand absently along a stalk in a field of lavender---these moments would have the same largeness, the same sense of importance, even if I never wrote them down.

And maybe that's what essays do: they call attention to moments---real, lived moments---and that's all that is needed.  Attention.  Attending.  We notice and we wait and we serve the silent shift that marks the internal change from "then" to "now and forever after."

A moment in the woods.  In the dark backyard.  On the couch with a hard summer rain falling outside.  Sometimes that's all it takes to know that our course has been subtly shifted---to whatever our new future holds.

Lovely illustration by Akiko Kato 

On Narrative and Country Music

My son took his first unassisted steps this week. It was pretty amazing, particularly because he took them while giggling hysterically. We had to buy him big boy shoes, and once we got home and he was toddling around in them, there were tears. I try not to be too much of a sentimommy, (that’s sentimental + mommy, I think I just coined it) boring people with maudlin stories; however, seeing him in those shoes walking on his own made me flash back to a year ago this time when he was a writhing, yelping, mess of a baby. When my son was brand new, I spent a decent amount of time alone in the car with him. Often, when he woke at dawn (or just before), I would whisk him out of the house to try and foster an hour of two of uninterrupted quiet for my wife to sleep.  If the weather was nice, we often went somewhere to take a nice walk, but if it was too hot or rainy, we just drove around a bit.

I found myself one morning listening to the “today’s hit country” station on the satellite radio. I have never had a strong feeling about country music one way or another. I’m from West Virginia, so it’s always been around, but it’s not the first genre of music I choose (I do, however, have strong opinions about people who say “I like all music except country” because it’s a coded statement about rural people, the same way I dislike “I like all music except rap” because it is a coded statement about urban people). All of that said, I have a trivia maven’s knowledge of country music. I know who major stars are, I can identify certain key songs, but I am by no means a fan.

Last summer, though, I went all country all the time.  When my wife asked me what the deal was, I had a hard time coming up with an answer. Part of it was having something new and different to listen to. For a period of time, every single song I heard was new to me (which lasted about a week before I could easily identify which songs were in heavy rotation). But, more significantly, so many of the songs had actual narratives. Stories! Country music has always been known for its stories, and while it’s not true for every song, it seemed to be true for many.  I followed each narrative to its end, and in a time when I couldn’t often find a moment to finish a magazine article, much less a book, it was a little bit of comfort at a chaotic time.

I began to discover recurring themes and motifs, much like I am always asking my students to do. Last summer there were several different songs getting a ton of airplay that made passionate arguments in favor of back roads rather than the interstates. Multiple songs name-checked Hank Williams (both senior and junior).  One made fun of men who eat sushi, drive Priuses, and drive on the interstate. In the bleary-eyed days of early motherhood, I threw myself into music that I can’t say represents much of my worldview.

Except for one thing---my worldview does value narrative. A story, even one told in under four minutes that I can’t personally relate to, can be truly transformative. Sleep-deprived and at times overwhelmed, I was soothed by the narrative structure of country music. I hazard that there is no other genre of American music that conveys as many narratives as country music (somehow, Katy Perry’s story of “Last Friday Night” doesn’t have the same push and pull of plot as, say, Martina McBride’s song about breast cancer, “I’m Gonna Love You Through It”).

One day, about five months later, I realized I had stopped listening to the country channel and had gone back to my old stations. My acute need for narrative had passed somehow. Maybe it was because I was more rested, maybe because I was about to go back to my day job of teaching high school English, but it passed. I listen to some of the songs from that time, but more because they remind me of the early days with my son than because I really enjoy the songs. I’m grateful for the solace that country’s narratives brought to me. Oh, and for introducing me to Miranda Lambert’s “Baggage Claim.”  That one is just a great song.