After nearly two and a half years in this space I’ve decided to move virtual “homes” to a new site, elizabethgrantthomas.com More than just a blog, this site features samples of my writing (some pieces which you will recognize from these very pages), links to published work, and provides a venue for readers to stay up-to-date on my writing.  I will still maintain a blog component of the site with the same writing that you have come to expect here at Life in Pencil.

Please take a moment to stop by and say “hello!” when you have a chance.  If you’ve bookmarked this site, please consider updating your favorites.  And if you link to Life in Pencil and would like to continue pointing your readers to my writing, I would be grateful if you could update your site with my new URL.

The other day Anne and I were talking, both finding it a little sad that this journey we started on nearly three years ago is coming to a close.  But nothing really ends, does it?  It just takes on new life somewhere else.  And that’s what Life in Pencil has always been about.  We’re both still out there, blazing new trails in the shadows of the old ones.

Thank you for the time you’ve spent in this space.  It will be missed.

Recently, a well-meaning person mentioned that the holidays must be easier now that I have a daughter of my own.  I mumbled something about how grateful I was for my little family and how happy I was to have the chance to make new memories.  Although these sentiments are true, even as the words were tumbling out of my mouth I was aware that they didn’t sound like me at all.  I am slowly realizing that once you have your “own” family there is a great deal of pressure to create new traditions, to move forward, to leave the past in the past.  Last year I found myself manically manufacturing memories in an effort to keep the old ones at bay. There were piles of gifts, a towering pine, and glittering sugar cookies.  I forced three-month-old Abra into an upscale toy store to select a special gift in the interest of capturing the perfect shot with my camera on Christmas Day.  She limply palmed the overpriced wooden rattle and screamed through the photos, turning eight shades of red, a visceral reminder that the shimmer of new beginnings can blind us to the realities of moving forward.  At the end of the season I felt hollow, as if my insides had been scooped out, the past gnawing more furiously than ever, my contrived efforts to start afresh having made things worse.  Joyful memories don’t overwrite painful ones; they merely exist alongside one another.  Whatever holidays I envisioned for the future, I realized, had to allow room for both.

There is a part of me that is conditioned to feel a creeping sense of dread when the calendar flips to November, a sensation that doesn’t fully pass until the whitewash of the New Year paints everything clean.  But the truth is that every year is different, and I often don’t know how I’ll feel until the season is pressing upon me.  There are some years where I try to feel happier – or sadder – than I actually am.  Ask any bereaved person and they will tell you that there is a script of how you “should” act in the wake of a loss, whether that loss is days or years in the past.  Although my mother died nine Thanksgivings ago there is something about the holidays that makes it feel as if it were yesterday.  At this time of year I often feel as if I’m negotiating a tightrope, trying to strike the right balance between still-mourning and now-living.  With a baby in tow the performance has become much more complicated; I find myself trying to scaffold a hopeful new life on top of the old, even as the structure threatens to crumble under the weight of new construction.

Last Thanksgiving came and went without much incidence, perhaps because I was too consumed with the chaotic business of caring for a newborn baby to give the weight of the day much thought.  Studying the photographs, I put on a good pantomime of what Moving On should look like.  There is Abra in a festive bib, me standing sentry over the turkey, guests caught up in the tinkle of laughter.  Perhaps this led people to believe that my daughter had erased whatever residue of my grief remained.  But this year, for whatever reason, I feel as if I am wading through a thick molasses of loss, dragging my feet through the sludge, my grief surprisingly raw.  By all accounts this year should be easier than last, but it is not.  Grief isn’t linear.  Loss is not a balanced equation.

Like most children, I loved the holidays.  But whenever I became too ebullient my mother was quick to say, “The holidays are hard for lots of people, for lots of different reasons.”  As a little girl this tempered me, confused me; even a bit of shame slunk in.  My mother also lost her mother relatively young (my grandmother was 53 when she died, my mother 35) and, never one to overtly express her emotions, I can see now that she was wrestling with the perpetual tug-of-war between the past and the present that unfolds this time of year.  There is something about the holidays that asks us to haul out everything we’ve kept neatly packed away and spill its messy contents all over our lives.  Old traditions clash against new ones.  Expectations gnash their ferocious teeth, threatening to swallow us whole.  And always there is the anchor of the past weighting us down as we attempt to journey forward.

As we move into the holiday season this week, filled with light and laughter, think about someone who has suffered a loss this past year:  a death, a job, a home, their health, a pregnancy, a relationship, a way of being in the world, a dream.  Don’t assume that they are healed, nor that they are hurting; grief has a timeline all its own.  Let them be who they need to be.  Loss comes in all shapes and sizes, and you don’t have to look very far to find someone whose life has been impacted.  Maybe you don’t need to look further than yourself.  If that is the case, handle yourself with kid gloves.  Know that, no matter what this year has brought, next year will be different.

My intention this season, as in all years, is to simply let the holidays be what they are, whether that means honoring the pull of the past, the reality of the present, or the promise of the future.  On Thursday, surrounded by a small group of friends and my little family, whom I love so much, we will feast on a heritage turkey, the one genuine holiday tradition that I’ve forged in this new life, the thread that connects the past to the present.  Between baking biscuits and making gravy and shuttling the turkey into the oven I plan on building a small altar:  a poem, the flicker of candles, photos old and new, a tangible reminder of what I am grateful for, a reflection of what I will forever miss.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers, wherever the day finds you.

For the past week I’ve had what feels like the emotional equivalent of a lump in my throat.  It’s that feeling of trying to hold back the flood of tears that threatens to breach the dam at any moment, even though you don’t know exactly what’s wrong.  Part of it is the late-autumn season which, for me, always hangs ripe and heavy with endings and goodbyes.  A few weeks before my mother died, at just this time of year, a friend’s husband died suddenly.  Although he had been sick he was very young, and the final chapter of his short life was not drawn out but abruptly slammed shut.  His death rattled me; it felt as if anything could happen, that life could pivot on a dime at a moment’s notice.  I remember sitting in a wood-paneled coffee shop near my apartment, the golden light of a late fall afternoon streaming through the long windows, and writing in my journal, “I feel as if the other shoe is about to drop.”  That’s a little what this feeling is like, as if my intuition is tuned into something that I can’t yet perceive rationally, its shadowy form lurking just beyond the horizon.

Abra is not a conventionally “easy” baby.  There are many days when she awakes in a bad mood for no apparent reason.  Today is one of those days.  I place her in the crib for her morning nap at the first sign of sleepiness, and she immediately began wailing.  Normally one to settle herself down quickly, her cries quickly escalate to frantic-sounding sobs.  I gently pad into the darkened room where she stands in her crib, her red, tear-stained face a crumpled mess.  I pull her from the crib and settle her in my lap on the creaky rocking chair, shrouding her in a soft blanket.  I think this will help.  These are the things I see mothers doing in movies and television shows, and it always works.  And maybe, if it was another Abra on another day, it would.  But today she will have none of it.  Instead, she alternates between nuzzling her head in the scoop of my shoulder and writhing like a caged animal.  She cries harder; I am making this worse.  After going through the typical assessment of what could be wrong and ascertaining that it is nothing obvious, that invisible dam finally ruptures.

As I continued to hold Abra – her sobbing, me gently crying –I realized that there is something scary and spiraling about emotions of an unspecified origin.  It makes us feel better to be intimately acquainted with the anthropology of our anger or sadness; otherwise, how do we make ourselves feel better when we don’t know what’s wrong?  Tears now flowing freely, I was overcome with a helpless feeling that there was nothing I could do for Abra, nor anything I could do for myself.  I wasn’t sure what this emotional lump was about except to say that it was lodged in a place of old wounds that will never be fully healed, pustules that flare up now and again.  Although I don’t feel consciously sad or grievous, as I listened to a friend tell the story of a coworker who suddenly died in the middle of his office, someone I didn’t know, that familiar lump rose from its resting place in my gut.  I’ve been greeted by bluebirds nearly every day for the past week, which has long been a powerful symbol of my mother’s presence.  Each time they swoop from the trees or flap their brilliant blue wings in my direction that lump makes itself known.

Soon this season will pass.  I will survive another Thanksgiving – my tenth – without my mother.  Then the effervescence of the holiday season will swallow me whole and spit me out on the other side of the New Year.  The lump will eventually subside on its own.  But today the only solution, for both of us, is to wait it out.

I decide to push us out into the world.  Normally an extrovert, it’s been hard for me to be out lately, as if the glare of humanity, glinting off my tender emotions, is a simply too harsh.  Abra continues to wail from the backseat and I know immediately that I’ve made the wrong decision.  Ten minutes later we arrive at the museum where a few of my friends are waiting, happily playing with their toddlers.  Abra has calmed down by now, but when I go to extract her from her car seat she, uncharacteristically, begins howling.   “I can’t do this today,” I whisper to her, and as soon as it becomes apparent that we are not going inside Abra quiets herself.  I point the wheels of the car toward home, that dam leaking again.  By the time I pull in the driveway Abra is fine, and so am I.  We spend a quiet afternoon at home looking at picture books, going on a walk, making dinner.  Just as quickly as the storm moved to shore it blew back out to sea.  There will be other storms, bringing fat tears that fall from the underbelly of their black clouds.  In fact, there’s probably one already forming somewhere just beyond the horizon, gathering its dark skirts.  Some storms we escape, some we seek shelter from.  Others we simply weather.

A few weeks ago my dad sent me an article from his local paper, reporting that the woman who bought my mother’s bakery shortly after she died was moving locations.  I studied the photograph of the woman in the paper, who stood smiling at the battered metal work bench that had been my mother’s perch.  I thought of the hundreds of hours my mother had planted herself in that very spot, pirouetting icing onto wooden picks to make sugar roses, a feat I had watched her perform a thousand times like magic.  My mother had a gift for transforming pedestrian objects into things of beauty, which is exactly what she had done with the spare warehouse space that she converted into a charming bakery when she opened its doors 15 years ago (writing that, I can scarcely believe it’s been 15 years).  It was the fall I was leaving home for college and my mom transferred the energy she had expended on mothering me into this newborn business venture.  She often worked 12-hour days, rarely taking vacations, all, undoubtedly, contributing factors that led to her suffering a heart attack at the age of 51.  So invested was she that The Bakery took on a life of its own, as if it was a character in her story or the newest member of our family.  Over time it became her life force:  the very thing that propelled her was what ultimately snuffed out her light.

As I read the article an unexpected wave of sadness crashed over me, its reverberating ripples still washing against me days later, and I wasn’t sure why; when my dad sold the bakery nearly 10 years ago I felt nothing but relief.  But now, the sands of time having obscured so much of the remains of my mother’s life, I realized that the bakery was the only physical structure that persisted.  The house I grew up in has been sold twice over.  Even the apartment my mother was living in when she died was converted to condominiums.  Although I haven’t been to visit the bakery in years, the place where she poured so much of herself in the final years of her life, I always knew it was there, a steady heartbeat thrumming in the world.  Over the years I had come to regard it as my mother’s mausoleum, a solid touchstone of her memory.

The last time I saw my mother was a week before she died.  It was early November and we went to an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum featuring the work of Frida Kahlo, a painter we both admired.  It was part of an exhibition on Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday where loved ones who have passed are honored.  Altars, filled with photographs, favorite foods, candles, and marigolds, are erected in people’s homes and public spaces.  Family members make pilgrimages to the cemetery where they lay out food for the departed and “welcome” the return of their spirits.  My mom and I were both fascinated by the ritual and beauty of recognizing that, as poet May Sarton says, “death ends a life, but not a relationship.”   Afterward, as we sat drinking coffee and discussing plans for her bakery, as we often did, she said a funny thing.  “If I died tomorrow, I wouldn’t have any regrets.  At least I know I died having made my dream come true.”

Last Sunday Abra, I, and a fellow group of mothers and babies marched in Albuquerque’s Dia de los Muertos parade.  I spent the week leading up to the parade dashing around town trying to find facepaint after Halloween (difficult) and dug costume pieces out of the recesses of my closet.  In the hours after Abra went to bed I transformed humble tissue paper into complicated marigolds to decorate her stroller, my fingertips stained gold and orange.  With each passing day I felt a deeper understanding of how my own mother had spent the same countless hours, stitching costumes, baking cakes, performing her own special alchemy.   As I pinned frilly marigolds in my hair and threaded calavera earrings through my lobes, the hassles of the week fell away; I smiled back at my painted reflection and thought, Mom would have loved this.

I pulled Abra’s festooned stroller from the car, a flurry of tissue paper flowers dancing in the wind.  We strolled around the staging area where homemade papier mache floats with dancing skeletons skirted the parking lot.  A sea of people, young and old, all festively dressed, smiled back at me and I thought, Mom would have loved this. We processed down the street, the world’s slowest parade, a series of fits and starts that allowed us to really take it all in.  I flung candy out to the children lining the street, who skittered to claim their loot.  I watched an old woman standing on her front stoop, a tattered sweater crisscrossed taut around her middle, bracing against the chill of the late fall afternoon.  I saw looks of sheer delight come over people’s faces when they saw our clutch of babies wheel toward them, and I couldn’t help but smile back.  A hard-looking man, thick arms blazing with tattoos, clapped his meaty palms together and shouted, “Let’s hear it for the moms!”  Even as I struggled to grasp once again the reality that, yes, I am a mother, the daughter in me couldn’t help but think, Mom would have loved this.

Someone recently asked me if I still miss my mother a lot.  “Every day,” I replied.  But the times I miss her most is when I find myself in the midst of something that I know she would have loved being a part of.  These are often small moments:  enjoying an especially tasty salad, discovering an interesting coffee house, or marching in a festive homegrown parade.  It is these times that life yawns wide, providing a space in which I connect with her spirit.  The bakery is incidental, a mere mantle of who she was.  My mother resides in the world around me – the crinkle of fall leaves, a bubbling apple crisp, the flap of a bluebird’s wing – and I honor her memory by connecting to these moments that life offers up every day.  As I held Abra snug after the parade, covering her against the cold that advanced into the lengthening shadows, Maikael captured a rare photo of the two of us both looking completely overjoyed.  It was a flash of what has passed and a glimpse of what is yet to come, a mother and daughter delighting in a shared experience.   Peering at this photo I understood, in the fullest way possible, that life goes on.

Last week The New York Times’ Travel section ran an article on Albuquerque that profiled The Church of Beethoven, described as “not church, much more than Beethoven.”  Founded in 2008 by Felix Wurman, a cellist who was seeking weekly ritual without religion, this Sunday morning chamber music series, interspersed with poetry and moments of silence, resonated with me.  All week I looked forward to going in sweet anticipation, having even arranged for a babysitter, but I awoke on Sunday morning in a foul mood, the previous night having been marked by fitful sleep brought on by another round of Abra’s teething.  When we arrived 45 minutes before the performance was to begin, only to discover that it was nearly sold out, my mood darkened.  We stood outside the converted warehouse space waiting with uncertainty for the possibility of standing room-only tickets, shifting from foot to foot as a duo of high school students played the accordion and oboe for spare change.  Everyone except me seemed to be enjoying soaking up the brisk morning sun and the music, and I wondered why I couldn’t do the same.

Once inside we stood in another long line that formed a serpentine around the perimeter of the packed room, waiting for espresso, and my black mood dug in even deeper.  Standing outside of myself it was clear that I was casting a pall over what was supposed to be an uplifting outing.  As I watched myself, simultaneously observing and chastising my behavior, I felt as if I was witnessing a runaway train that I couldn’t stop.  Ensnared in a net of my own making, I struggled desperately to escape this swift downward emotional spiral.  But like a helpless bug caught in a spider’s silken web the more I struggled the more entangled I became, inflated expectation having gotten the best of me once again.

My eyes swept over the cavernous space, which looked as if it had been outfitted from an obliging thrift store.  The rafters were strung with twinkly Christmas lights, old globes bobbed from the ceiling, and frilly lampshades were slung over antique lamps, casting pockets of warmth around the space.  The room buzzed with life:  the strains of the musicians tuning their instruments, the whoosh of the espresso machine, a timpani of chattering voices.  White light seeped through a stained glass window.  Suddenly I look to my left and notice a small vintage nightlight.  A little ceramic dog tugs at the coattails of a little ceramic boy, and the words “Let Go” are lit up at the bottom.  I point this out to Maikael, laughing, and immediately begin to feel a small shift inside myself.

It was a unique setting to listen to Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring, not a grand concert hall but a spare space.  When the conductor introduced the piece he noted that, while it has been famously arranged for large symphony orchestras, the original work was created for a small 14-instrument group like the one assembled before us.  As the opening strains of the music floated through the air, soft and slow, I heard someone cough.  I heard a violinist turn the page of her music in a papery rustle.  As the music built I heard the conductor grunt for emphasis, his fist punching the air.  I even heard the silence.  It was easy to notice these details in such an intimate setting, and by the time we reached the piece’s most iconic movement in a deep crescendo, the Shaker tune Simple Gifts, any darkness I felt that morning had been suffused with light.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight

After listening to a local poet we hear a two-person concerto, also by Copeland.  Coming quick on the heels of Appalachian Spring, the clarinetist remarks how that work always reminds him that less is more.  “As much as we like to think that things like iPhones are making our lives cleaner and simpler, they’re not,” he says, a wave of knowing chuckles rippling through the audience, causing the man seated next to me to actually put down his iPhone.  “Copeland always reminds me that all we really need are a few well-chosen connections and activities to make a life.”  These words settle deep into me, a sentiment I have heard a thousand times in different configurations, but which pierce me differently this particular morning.  When the clarinetist introduces the concerto, he notes that while a symphony is like a city and what we’ve just listened to is a village, this concerto is like being at home.  He is right.  It is quiet and intimate; I can hear each gasping breath he takes.  As he sways lyrically to the simple tune I think of the days when people gathered at home and listened to one another play music as evening settled in around them.  I have a dawning awareness that what I was searching for when I came here today was life like a concerto, a drawing in close filled with soft, humble ritual and simple rhythms.  And while this morning has offered the place of easy repose that I was hoping for, I realize that I need not have left home to access it.  The real “letting go” is learning to take a piece of this experience with me and carry it forward into my everyday life, where the concerns of the spirit are bound by nothing more than the modest walls of home.

Abra is taking her first wobbly steps into the world.  Like everything she does – from her delivery into this bright life, to the way she eats, to how she learned to crawl – her progress has been slow but steady.  She has been cruising for months, using anything at standing-height to help propel herself around a room.  For weeks I’ve listened to others’ declarations that she’d be walking “any day now,” knowing from past experience that she was nowhere near that milestone.  Although her personality is just unfurling from its tight coil, I can already tell that she is someone who must fully master a skill and feel confident in her abilities before moving forward.  This is nothing like me.  I have always crashed through life, leaping before I look, my head often lagging behind my heart.  I rarely read instructions, intuiting my way through thick problems.  I throw caution to the wind.  Needless to say I was a very early walker, and as parents are wont to do, I projected my own unfair expectations on Abra, assuming that she, too, would follow my trajectory.

After doing everything in my power to encourage her walking, I finally accepted the words that I had spoken so hollowly to every person who asked if she was walking:  Not yet, but in her own time.  As soon as I released my death-grip on the idea that she should be walking by now, she lunged from the coffee table to the couch, her little legs hitching forward.

I know that Abra has a great deal to teach me about patience and letting go.

I have never understood why parents spend so much time fawning over their child’s developmental milestones, the ones that every single human being passes through at one time or another.  Now here I am, snapping so many photos of her first steps in the world that I could create a flip book of her journey.  I have taken dozens of video clips trying to capture a significant sequence of sturdy steps, and I watch them over and over and over again, as if each loop will reveal something previously unseen.  Puzzled by my own behavior, it finally dawned on me as I was running this weekend – my old, practiced legs having carried me thousands of miles over a lifetime – that I wasn’t trying to memorialize a moment so much as I was seeking to understand myself.  Each time I see Abra working hard to master a basic skill that I tend to take for granted, such as eating or walking, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that I went through the same process.  I think of the years of slow and steady practice that were involved in allowing me to run for a full half hour around a sunny park on a crisp autumn morning.  As I learn to be a runner, huffing and puffing my way through the trees, I reach a point halfway through my run where I feel like giving up.  I remind myself to take it one step at a time, to concentrate on the slip of trail just in front of me and no more.

I love the motion blur.

On Saturday afternoon, as light streamed through our bedroom window, Abra launched herself from our desk toward the middle of the room, a clear runway of carpet stretching ahead of her.  Usually she takes a few halting steps, her arms raised overhead like a goalpost, a smile stretched gleefully over her face, before tumbling down.  But this time I stood in front of her with arms outstretched, urging her forward.  As I shuffled backward she confidently walked toward me, taking one and two steps, then a dozen, then a record twenty before falling down in a heap.  Struggling to understand the difference between this and previous attempts, I realized that she had been focused on me, that proverbial slip of trail just in front of her.  And in one gasping breath I suddenly understood a basic fact that had somehow escaped me all these years:  My own mother or father had been by my side as I took the same tentative steps into the world, agonizing as I teetered and threatened to fall flat on my face.  I was overcome by a rush of love and gratitude as I thought of the hundreds of hours that someone stood by my side, waiting to catch me if I fell, teaching me to move through life in the only way possible:  One foot in front of the other.  No matter what divergent roads our tired legs may have carried us down, despite the loneliness we sometimes feel, we all learned to walk with the help of somebody else.

We have had a hard day, filled with too much crying and too little napping.  Everything feels ragged and raw, as if we’re on the brink of disaster, ready to skitter into bedlam at any moment.  I am grateful when the clock ticks over to 6 pm, signaling the beginning of the end of the day.  I place Abra in the bathtub and, for reasons unknown, she begins wailing.  Her tiny chest heaves wet sobs, tears splashing into the lukewarm water below.  The shallow valley between her eyebrows glows crimson, a physical manifestation of how upset she is.  There is a visceral part of me that wants to scream back, stuff cotton balls in my ears, swaddle her in a towel and trundle her off to bed or, at the least, clutch my temples in despair.  But my overriding impulse is to slip into the chaos right alongside her.  The harder she cries, the greater my desire to sit with her and endure.

That evening I head to yoga class, my first time back on the mat without Abra since I was 40 weeks pregnant (which, as you can imagine, was not a very vigorous practice).  It is a yin style class, meaning that poses are held for longer periods, upward of five minutes.  I have never attempted this method, usually gravitating towards classes that move more quickly through poses, which seems “harder” and therefore, I reason, more worthy of my time, money and effort.  I sit cross-legged on the mat, simply breathing.  At first it is easy.  Then, after a few minutes, it becomes increasingly difficult to support my posture, and I begin shifting uncomfortably.  We swoop our arms overhead in giant circles, our palms coming together at the top in prayer pose, then easing down gently in front of our chests.  As we repeat this motion time and again the instructor reminds us that yoga is often a physical manifestation of our lives, this pose a tangible reminder of how we are often “brought back to ourselves.”

The next morning I go running.  I am halfway through a training program, working my way toward being able to complete a 5K run.  Unlike Maikael, who is a descendant of the Tarahumara Indians, a tribe of famed runners, my body is not built for running.  Whereas his long, lean legs could seemingly carry him forever, mine are drumsticks that begin aching almost immediately.  Within two days of starting the training program my ankles are throbbing with every leaden step, and I convince myself that I am not cut out for this.  After each run I do long series of complicated stretches, which don’t seem to help.  I have inquiring conversations with exercise scientists and long-time runners, wondering if I should throw in the towel, but the general consensus seems to be, “Take it easy, and keep going.”

Slung over the edge of the porcelain bathtub I “shh” over and over and over again, like a mantra, rubbing gentle circles between the scaffolding of Abra’s bird-like shoulder blades.  She stops for a moment, studying me with her doe eyes, and just when I think she’s finished she winds up again.  I continue my “shh-ing” and my patting for what feels like hours, but is probably only 10 minutes, breathing in and out, in and out.  For reasons unknown she suddenly stops, picks up the gauzy loops of the loofah sponge, and begins happily babbling.  We have made it to the other side.

Back on the mat we are descending into “pigeon pose.”  My front leg twists into a hairpin, my back leg a rod reclining behind me.  Much like the breathing it is easy at first, but as the minutes tick by heat radiates into the deepest layers of my thigh’s muscle tissue.  The impulse to release the pose and seek relief is gnawing at me, but the instructor, as if tuning into my internal radio broadcast, urges us to, “Stay with it.”  So I do.  I breathe in and out, in and out, and soon I am riding the wave of the heat.  Rather than focusing on how much it hurts I find my mind drifting to other topics of mental chatter, and it’s then that I know I’ve pushed through to the other side.

As I run I huff and puff, a steam engine charging around the park.  The first couple of laps are easy, but soon my energy begins to flag and I can feel my pace slowing.  I am aware of every heel strike against the pavement that sends shock waves through my legs, and each sharp breath singes my lungs.  But like The Little Engine That Could I find myself repeating to myself, “I think I can, I think I can,” and I stay with it.  Suddenly I realize that my ankles no longer ache, and I know in a rush of adrenaline that I’m going to make it through the rest of the training program.  I am Charlie in his great glass elevator, crashing through the ceiling of the chocolate factory, soaring high above the world.  I am floating and free, not just riding but inhabiting the wave.  Just when things should be getting their most difficult I hit my stride, and what was agony moments ago is suddenly effortless.

I remember someone telling me toward the end of my pregnancy, “Just when you think you can’t take it anymore is when you know it’s time to push.”  I can certainly remember that moment in my own labor when I crossed the valley of despair and emerged on the other side, knowing with every fiber of my being that I could complete the journey.  There is something about having given birth that has changed how I move through the world.  It is not that things are any easier:  I still want to run screaming from the room when Abra wails uncontrollably, and release the yoga pose, and abandon the run.  The difference is that I don’t.  There is an odd satisfaction – perhaps even pleasure? – in going the distance.  Each of us learns this lesson a different way (I am aware that some run actual marathons to fully live what it means to go the distance, something I don’t think I could ever do), but for me giving birth is what shifted my perspective.  It taught me that I’m capable of running a marathon, even if I’m a sprinter by nature.  And I’m beginning to see the benefits of learning to approach life as the marathon it is.  I’ve spent a lot of my life tearing through experiences, never letting myself sink into the discomfort that is inherent in the “working through” stage of any long-distance race.  But I’m beginning to see that in doing so I’ve robbed myself of the euphoria you feel when you push through to the other side, that moment when you realize that, even though there are miles yet to run, you are going to be just fine.

I scanned the airport terminal, searching for the woman whose face I only knew in profile from the black and white photo on her website.  It was funny when I recognized her from behind, a full-length shot in Technicolor, her back arched over the car rental counter and head dipped in concentration.  I’m not sure if it was her height, – I’d always imagined her to be tall – the argyle-print totebag that rested at her side, or the low ponytail gathered at the nape of her neck, but somehow I knew it was her.

We embraced, familiar strangers, marveling at how luck, fate, circumstance – divinity – had brought us together across the impossible bridge of time and space.  I’m not sure who found who in the universe of the World Wide Web, but we began visiting one another’s virtual “homes” shortly after each of us began blogging two years ago.  We exchanged emails from time to time, and while we didn’t really “know” each other, something told me that I’d like her if we ever had the chance to meet in person.  But it was Kristen who created the momentum for actually making that meeting happen, a plan hatched in the Twittersphere, a wouldn’t-that-be-cool idea soon developing into a concrete reality.

From the moment that the wheels of our car gripped the interstate for our hour-long drive to Kripalu we started a conversation that continued virtually uninterrupted, save for sleep, for three days.  Although the conditions of our lives and our backgrounds are decidedly different, we quickly unearthed many invisible threads that bound us together, threads that weren’t obvious from a casual web-based relationship.  We connected immediately over things big and small:  motherhood and chocolate chip cookies, career angst and fresh-baked bread, the work of Jhumpa Lahiri and an abiding fear of silent breakfast (a Kripalu policy).  In between yoga classes and writing exercises we discovered a shared taste in literature, swapping countless book recommendations.   Despite the fact that we both have young children in the house, making sleep as precious as gold, we slouched against the cinderblock walls of our simple room telling stories long into the night and spinning inside jokes, that most private of gestures.  More than once I glanced at the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock, silently promising myself that I’d go to bed in “just 10 more minutes,” but would find myself laughing an hour later.

At the end of each workshop session, Dani would lead us in a brief meditation.  One morning, as the fog rolled through the green hills just outside the expansive window of our meeting room, I gently closed my eyes and let the words wash over me.  We were directed to send loving thoughts to ourselves, a loved one, a “familiar stranger,” and I thought about how this particular year has brought me into contact with so many of these unique kindred spirits.  I cherish my long-standing relationships that exist in the comfortable, worn grooves created by years of treading a joint history.  But there is something sparkling in creating a new connection.  It is heartening to take a leap of faith with another person, the shared trust that exists when each party dives in head-first without knowing exactly how the other person might “turn out.”  As Kristen and I sat comfortably shoulder to shoulder in the airport terminal awaiting our respective flights home, announcements booming over the loudspeaker, I realized that there is something magical, akin to alchemy, in transforming a familiar stranger into a friend.  For somewhere between the countless hours of conversations, the car rides, the walk in the woods, and the shared meals, we had made that the silent, delicate passage into genuine friendship.

The older I grow the more these relationships – forged not through similar circumstances but through something deeper – mean to me.  I find I’d rather spend what limited leisure  time I have in the company of others with whom I share a deep and abiding connection, from familiar strangers to emerging friendships to those true-blue souls who have seemingly always been there.  Whether it’s stoking the fires of a long-standing friendship or kindling new ones, I am increasingly willing to go the distance – both literally and figuratively – in search of these “soul connections.”  Some might think I’m crazy for traipsing around the country to spend time with people I barely know, arguing that engaging “familiar strangers” in the virtual realm takes us away from the people who are present in our “real” lives.  I’d say that having the opportunity to meet these familiar strangers in person opens the door for them to become something more.  Sometimes I have parted ways with people knowing full well we’ll never see each other again, even as we call “see you soon!” over our shoulders.  But as Kristen and I plotted plans for a future adventure – someway, somehow we are going to converge on a writing conference next year  – I knew without a doubt that, when I step off the plane next year, she’ll be there waiting for me.

Last week I wrote about how sometimes we just have to surrender in order for things to move forward; that “the moment we stop trying so hard things just happen, exceeding our wildest expectations.”  Thanks to the generous introduction of a mutual friend, I had an opportunity to meet the publisher of Edible Santa Fe, a local magazine that is part the broader, national Edible communities, that I have long admired and pined to write for.  I happened to meet her on the day the fall issue was going to press, a day in which she unexpectedly found herself with a blank page to fill in said issue.  I happened to have the impulse to send her a few pieces of my food-related writing, and she happened to like one of them enough to occupy that blank page.

I relate this story in detail because it’s a perfect example of “life in pencil” at work; sometimes I have a hard time explaining what “life in pencil” is, and it’s often best to illustrate its inner-workings through real-life examples.  I’ve always been fond of the quote, “Luck favors the prepared.”  There were a lot of mysterious, serendipitous circumstances at work in my favor.  But I was ready for this opportunity to come by way, and although I didn’t know it, I’d been preparing for this moment for years.  Still, I can’t deny that there is a touch of divinity at work, the never-ending dance of the rational and the magical that is so often my life.

Yesterday, after receiving word that the magazine had hit newsstands, I spent all morning running around town trying to procure a copy, to no avail.  Finally I dashed over to the editor’s house, where a tower of white cardboard boxes sat stacked in the carport.  I used my car key to slash through the tape, a tingle of nervousness and excitement coursing through me.  After reading and re-reading the article approximately a million times, I had Maikael take this photo, which I love.

I am holding a manifest dream in each hand, cradling my present and my future.  It’s a reminder that I can go after two things at the same time, that I need not put my dreams on hold, that there is no “right way” to go about accomplishing goals.  Just after Maikael snapped this photo we noticed a brilliant rainbow dissolving out of the blackberry storm clouds, as if I had literally discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Today I am reveling in a feeling we don’t often get to celebrate in life:  that of a dream come true.  I’m particularly proud that my first piece of published writing revolves around my mother.  Although writing has always been an important part of my life, it was shortly after she died that I began writing in earnest.  The fact that this story concerns Thanksgiving, the day she died, feels like coming full circle.  My mom always believed in my abilities, and because of her life and her death, she is the reason I’m on this journey today.

If you are local to Central New Mexico, you can pick up a printed copy of the magazine at one of these locations.  If you live outside of the area, you can read an online copy of the article here (“flip” to page 50/51).

I lean into the mirror, carefully studying the half-moon of my eyelid.  A tract of mottled skin rides the inner crease, rising up like a jagged mountain range.  It is red and puffy, stinging like nettles each time I touch it, probably from too much rubbing.  It’s been nearly two years since this last happened; that time is lingered for weeks.  Finally, Maikael suggested I talk to our next door neighbor, a dermatologist, who explained that my eye makeup was the culprit.  “Sometimes, for reasons we don’t know, our bodies suddenly reject what was fine for months, even years,” he said.  “Change your eye makeup,” was his simple advice, but I couldn’t help but see the poetry of change contained in his words.  How many of us function in this fashion, limping along for years in one sad state, before suddenly giving out?  Most of us will continue our worn patterns, no matter how dysfunctional, until they cease to work one day, the pistons of our internal combustion system seizing in midair.  My body seemed to be spurning my way of moving through the world, as if to say, “What you’re doing isn’t working anymore.”  It was compelling me to change.

Our bodies reveal a secret language, and the fact that I was afflicted in the eyes, the proverbial mirrors to the soul, seemed significant.  Two years prior, when that same dry patch, like a crust of day-old bread, arrived as suddenly and unannounced as an unwelcome visitor, it was a week before returning to the country after eight months abroad.  That I had managed to avoid the host of illnesses the developing world taunted and teased me with for months on end, only to find myself hunched into a mirror in a palatial tiled bathroom in Quito, Ecuador, just before returning to my comfortable life in the States struck me as ironic.  I expected a dramatic change to occur, an intense shedding of skins, going into the experience, not coming out of it.  I had spent much of the past eight months wanting to go home, and now that reality was literally striking me in the face, my body seemed to be saying otherwise.

Standing in front of another mirror, a world away and two years apart, I am faced with the same sobering thought:  what part of your life isn’t working anymore?  And, perhaps even more troubling, did the last two years teach you nothing?

When my friend, Kristen, suggested we attend Dani Shapiro’s memoir writing workshop at Kripalu, a yoga retreat center in the Berkshires of New England, my mind screamed yes! and no! in equal measure.  I read Dani’s book Devotion just before Abra was born, a memoir that affected me deeply, and in which Kripalu appears as almost a character in the book.  The idea of one day visiting enchanted me; I immediately sent away for their quarterly catalog of offerings, and when Dani’s workshop appeared on Kripalu’s roster for September, it felt like kismet.  For months I’ve been paralyzed about how best to move forward with my writing, completely at a loss for how to harness my scattered energies.  A vague idea for a memoir has been brewing at the back of my mind for over a year, but the idea of actually sitting down to write one seemed impossible.  The thought of investing the time and money required to attend a workshop on writing a book that I’m not even exactly sure what it’s about, on the other side of the country, for 64 hours, seemed frivolous, if not ridiculous.  I think I secretly hoped that over the course of the weekend my fears would be confirmed, and that I could finally put the idea to rest before moving onto more modest writing projects.

“Writing a memoir is like running a marathon,” said Dani on the first day, which stopped me in my tracks.  As I have written before I am no marathon runner, preferring to sprint my way through life, even though I recognize that life itself is the greatest marathon of them all.  Despite the fact that I shouldered my way through college and graduate school I tend to lose steam when it comes to almost any slow-and-steady task.  And while, at the outset of the workshop, I stated my modest goal of simply “getting an inkling as to the next steps in my writing life,” a vision for a memoir quickly started to tiptoe out of my peripheral vision.  Something shook loose for me, and though I was terrified to realize it, by the end of the weekend the urgency to write this memoir was parading in front of me.

As my plane soared toward the flaming orange horizon on Sunday night, I read Melissa Coleman’s new memoir, This Life is in Your Hands, about her experiences growing up off-the-grid with back-to-the-land parents.  “It’s no life for dabblers.  You’ve got to dig in wholeheartedly, for if you don’t, you just simply won’t be happy nor successful at what you do.”  I continued to read, and as I absentmindedly touched the crease of my eyelid I noticed it was perfectly smooth.

This post was inspired by this post at Lindsey’s site, A Design So Vast.