Posted by Elizabeth

“Deep within my body, the past is still alive.  Everything that has ever happened keeps happening.” Devotion by Dani Shapiro

In order to rewrite our lives, we have to possess a deep understanding of how they were written in the first place.  Inspired by this post at A Design So Vast, which was adapted from this writing exercise, I bring to you my version of “Where I’m From.”

I am from the seafoam house stuffed to the gills with stuff, from towering stacks of aging National Geographic magazines and a junk drawer whose crusty bottom never saw the light of day.

I am from the place with an impossibly steep staircase lined with fuzzy gold shag, and chipped linoleum in the kitchen perfect for an indoor roller rink.

I am from the fuchsia rhododendrons peeking over the front window, delicate trilliums on the backyard “nature trail” that dad carved out one year.

I am from Friday Night Party Night, crouched in front of a tiny black and white screen, gobbling Hershey’s Miniatures and watching Sha-Na-Na.

I am from a long line of women – strong, risk-taking, and independent – each a mirror image of the other, from our squinty eyes to the crinkly bridge of our nose to our laugh with reckless abandon.

I am from thrift and practicality:  always buy a white car!

From “be careful what you wish for” and “follow your bliss.”

I am from faith without churches, spirit without God, an eclectic smorgasbord of beliefs from all around the globe.

I’m from the deep, cool shade of evergreen forests, from warm tartans and a feathery headdress, from dessert after every meal and silver shrimp forks.

From watery camping trips on the shores of Puget Sound with floating tents, and aquatic creatures who spent even the chilliest of Pacific Northwest summers caked with sand and salt.

I am from a musty warehouse sheltering decaying boxes of fading photographs.  There is no family home, no communal gathering place.  But the memories I treasure most I carry with me, right where they belong, making my home wherever I go.

Where are you from?

Posted by Anne

Before August, 2007, I’d never tasted a coconut macaroon.  Or if I had, it was a puny effort—a light and airy breed of macaroon no bigger than an inch or two in diameter.  Pathetic.  In 2007, I discovered a real macaroon.  That was the year I moved to Durham, North Carolina to complete the final year of my graduate degree in psychology…easily one of the most enriching and tough years of my life.

The work I was doing that year was rewarding, important, and challenging.  But it also made me anxious as hell.  Was I actually helping people?  Was I irritating my supervisors with my endless questions and consultation?  Added to my daily dose of anxiety was the fact that I seriously missed my brand new fiancé, our family suffered a crushing loss, and I had the travel budget of a pauper.  

As I loved living in North Carolina, it didn’t take long for me to feel homesick.  I began combing my temporary city for a place where I could surround myself with people—where I could feel at home without knowing a soul.  Yes, long before this blog, I was looking for a way to feel settled amidst a life that felt endlessly ambiguous and ever-so-slightly scary. 

Enter:  The Coconut Macaroon

The coconut macaroon gave me solace in that lonely, ambiguous year.  It can be found at Foster’s Market in Durham, North Carolina, and if you’ve never been there, I’m sorry.  You really should go.  Like…now.  Foster’s Market is a café/deli/specialty food store/coffee shop/old-time candy counter.  Take the Barefoot Contessa, strip it of the Hamptons accoutrements, add enamel dishes, throw in some (tastefully) funky mismatched furniture and top it off with ancient picnic tables and a cozy front porch.  You have Foster’s Market.

The first time I walked in, I sighed.  It was so ME—manifested in everything from the décor to the menu to the dishes.  And make no mistake—that place is strategically homey.  It’s not accidental…but it worked.  For the next 12 months, I went to Foster’s Market almost once a week.  On my measly budget, I could feed my body and my sad little emotional state with a bowl of soup, crackers, a cup of coffee, and…the best coconut macaroon on the planet.

These macaroons defy description.  First off, they’re chewy.  Not light…chewy.  Coconut-y.  Gooey.  And they taste like they should have about a pound of butter in them…except they don’t. 

After that first surprising bite, I couldn’t stop.  It became a sort of obsession—come Friday afternoon, I’d swoop into the market and blissfully carry away that macaroon in a brown paper bag like it was a fifth of vodka.  I’m telling you…that cookie had healing properties.

After 11 coconut-filled months, I was able to say I survived and graduated, leaving the macaroons behind.  Strangely, I’ve had the recipe for 2 years, and never made them.  I have no idea why.  Maybe because I thought they’d never be the same.  I’m no longer lonely, and I’ve been known to screw up a batch of cookies.  They needed to stay preserved in my culinary memory—I didn’t want them reinvented. 

But after 2 years of macaroon withdrawal, I gave in.  This week, I hauled out the forgotten cookbook, stared at the recipe, and told myself: “You know, even if they stink, it’s okay.  You don’t need this macaroon for emotional healing anymore.  Just the sugar.”

I made them.  And they rocked.  They took me back to that long year in the South, to my talented fellow interns with their encouraging hugs, to my patient supervisors, and my simple little apartment.  Those chewy, gooey concoctions remind me that I made it through a year of ambiguity, and I can always make it through another. 

What treat helps you through rough patches?

My finished product...

Posted by Elizabeth

Growing up, Sundays were special.  It wasn’t because we went to church, because we didn’t, but my family observed the Sabbath in our own way.  Sunday was the only day of the week that my mother didn’t work, so, desperate for a rest, the activity of the seventh day usually orbited around home and hearth.  Although it didn’t happen like clockwork, more times than not my mother made a special dinner, whipping up a dish that required the kind of tending that only hours at home could provide.   Pot roast would cozy us next to rustic apple crisp, steaming up the kitchen windows on a cold winter’s day.  Cool slices of banana cream pie – my dad’s favorite – would be dished up in the warm summer months.  These were not fancy, complicated meals served on our best, chipped china; rather, they were an everyday centerpiece to our small family of three being in one place, at one time, one day of the week.

As my thoughts turn towards my own soon-to-be family of three, I’ve become interested in resurrecting this particular version of the Sabbath; one that has not religious meaning but a personally spiritual one.  And it seems as if I’m not the only one concerned with rewriting what it means to take a day of rest.  Over the last year, I’ve noticed the publication of books like Judith Shulevitz’s The Sabbath World and Dani Shapiro’s spiritual memoir Devotion. I’ve dipped in and out of the blog A Year (or More) of Shabbats, tracing one family’s journey to share Friday night Shabbat dinners with friends.  Just last week, The New York Times featured an article (also by Shulevitz), Creating Sabbath Peace Amid the Noise, which highlights the different ways in which people are adapting ancient Sabbath rituals for modern times, from eating a special meal to forgoing shopping and disconnecting from technology.  Taken as a whole, I can’t help but think that, as a culture, we are itching to bring more quiet, more meaning, and more connection into our everyday lives.

Sometimes I let my mind run wild with visions of the small Sabbath feasts that I will make tradition in my expanding family.  Home-cooked meals will be served on the delicate Noritake china that my mother-in-law gifted me.  We will toast to the clink of the Waterford crystal goblets that were passed down from my parents.  We will sit around the stately cherry dining room table that was my grandparents’, swallowed whole by candlelight.  And this will happen every Sunday, without fail.  But just as soon as I create this gauzy vision it is withered by reality.  Once again, my imagination has set me up to fail, and I’ve missed the point completely.  As I think about rewriting my relationship to Sunday, I’d be smart to pay attention to two pieces of wisdom from Shulevitz’s article:
1.  “Sometimes doing things halfway is exactly what we need to do.”
2.  “The second you write down the rules, it doesn’t work.”

In other words, like living Life in Pencil itself, we’d be wise to create our own version of the Sabbath in a way that works for us, and to keep rewriting it as our lives change.  Traditions are wonderful, but we’re more likely to maintain them if we take a flexible approach.  As I reflect on the Sabbaths of my childhood, the shards of memories that glimmer from the corners of my mind are those of good food, quiet, and togetherness; you don’t need any elaborate ritual to do that.

Are you as enamored as I am with this idea of the modern day Sabbath? Do you have a Sabbath day ritual, secular or non-secular?  What ideas do you have for creating or maintaining a day of rest?  I encourage you to read Shulevitz’s New York Times article; it is short, but instructive.

Posted by Elizabeth

My grandfather, Gordon Wood Grant, died over Memorial Day weekend at the ripe age of 92.  Following the small but dignified service that he was entitled to as a Veteran of Foreign Wars, I had a chance last Friday to share my memories of Grandpa Gordon amongst my little circle of family.  I hope you enjoy the words I spoke to them, about rewriting a relationship, and how death rewrites life itself:

Gordon Grant didn’t like talking on the phone, and neither did I.  Most of our phone conversations were exceedingly brief, punctuated by short jags of small talk and ragged bits of silence, reaching its awkward crescendo just minutes later.  Perhaps it was because of our shared preference for outmoded forms of communication, as well as the distance between us – both in age and geography – that we struck up an old-fashioned correspondence.  I don’t remember how or why it started, but the earliest letter, part of a modest stack that I keep carefully bound by a thick band of white satin ribbon in a box in my closet, dates December 21, 2004, a year after I had moved to the middle-of-nowhere Missouri to complete my graduate studies.  It was the first time that I had lived so far from home and wouldn’t be in Seattle for Christmas, so he sent a letter in response to a Christmas card I had mailed his way a few weeks earlier:

Thanks for your nice card and voluminous update on your activities et cetera.  A veritable tome.  You’ve been a busy young lady, worthy of commendation.  I hereby comply.  Your Mom would be proud as punch; I hope you know we all are.

And so it began.  Like most of the letters that followed over the next four years, there was no earth-shattering news to report.  Instead, the pages – not fancy stationery but simple lined notebook paper – were filled with the details of his life, which he penned in graceful, yet straightforward, prose that seemed borne of an earlier time.  The letters were always rife with apologies for not having more to report and amazement at my own busy life (“limited horizons, limited content,” he said), but I always looked forward to tearing open the envelope and reading about his accounts of an extraordinarily ordinary life.

A perennially favorite topic was his garden, a modest plot that he scratched out of the hard earth on the hillside behind his home.  It was a far cry from the spread he maintained at his longtime residence in Burien, Washington, sprawling with proud stands of fruit trees, tangles of Concord grapevines, and flowers so big their heads lolled to one side in the afternoon sun.  But judging from the way he wrote about it, you’d guess he lived squarely in the Garden of Eden.

Mother Nature is usually kind.  The plants keep producing every year, the posies favor us with their elegance, the early bloomers are giving way after a good show.

What mattered most was that he had a place where he would dig his hands into the ground and nurture new life, one of the things he loved most.

He wrote often of his penchant for PBS; a “real treat” for him was settling down in the evening to listen to Andre Rien and his Dublin Orchestra.  In the beginning there were reports of afternoon jaunts to the bowling alley and morning computer classes (“a lost cause,” in his words).  He marveled at technology, maintaining a tenuous love/hate relationship with progress.  He was glad for the digital photographs of my world travels that my dad would share with him, but once included a list of “You Know You Are Living in 2005 When…” jokes, of which modern technology was the eternal butt.

I know email and cellphones keep you quite well comprised of things here and about; still, I’d like to add my 25 cents worth.

And I was grateful that he did, because nobody wrote more eloquently about the simple pleasures of life than he.

Chris and I made a trip to ‘Pill Hill’ this AM…Now we’re home, looking at the last rays of sun, bathing our hillside of Scotch broom and evergreens, that are looking up at an azure blue sky.  How’s that for a January weather report?

These are the moments – the thousands of sunrises and sunsets of our life – that pass most of us by.  These are not details fit for the fast-paced age of digital communication; he knew that there were some things that only the slow act of letter writing could capture.  Each letter always included an atmospheric update, not, I think, in an effort to make idle chit chat, but to connect me in the most tactile way to the world I was missing in Seattle, to paint a picture of the one he still inhabited.

Years ago, relatives seemed more important.  With news from all over, and transportation convenient, I ‘spose we’re normally attracted to the ‘rainbow.’  C’est la vie.

Only now, with retrospect on my side, can I see that he might have been saying, in his own way, “Come visit more often.  Why do your travels always have to take you so far from home?”

Without his letters, I never would have known how much he enjoyed a good meal.  He would often spend half the letter discussing how and what he was eating, the success of a day hinging on what sustenance had been provided.

Today, Dave and Nancy came from Gig Harbor.  We picked up Edell and went to Shari’s (Dave’s treat).  He asked Edell what she’d like best, and can you believe, she said, ‘A good breakfast!’  So the five of us, in one car, headed to the restaurant.  Each of us had something different.  Edell had pancakes with strawberries and cream on the side – coffee, too.  It was a treat to see how she enjoyed her meal.

It was clear that he savored these small acts of kindness, which fed not just his body, but his soul.  He especially delighted in home-cooked fare, and forever looked forward to family gatherings in which handmade meals were served.  The details of fleshy Easter hams and smoky Fourth of July barbecue danced across the page.  Living halfway across the country, the best I could manage was sending a jar of gooseberry jam and homemade oatmeal cookies – amongst his favorite foods – along with a letter, every now and then.

A lifelong penny-pincher, he was notorious for sending letters in unused return envelopes.  One letter arrived in the remittance envelope for Farmer’s Insurance, the “Have you moved lately?” box scratched out and, in its place, a note about the week’s average temperature (85 degrees).  And yet, he would often enclose a check or a crisp $20 bill, encouraging me to buy “a plant, or whatever.”  The real gifts, though, were the kernels of wisdom nestled in his words:

Do what you think is right, and you’ll probably be not far wrong.

We usually do a good job at something we enjoy.

Stay healthy.

‘A change is as good as a rest.’

He was quick to make keen observations about my temperament (“like your mom, you seem to thrive on excess”), and I think he worried that life might pass me by without me having taken it all in, for every letter closed with some version of the following phrase:  “Keep doing good and try to enjoy it.”  He knew as well as anyone the impermanence of life.  As the years ticked by, his reports of the computer classes and bowling league were slowly replaced by a never-ending parade of doctor’s appointments, tests, x-rays, procedures, and surgeries, a dizzying carousel ride that seemed unlikely to stop spinning anytime soon.

I’m starting another round of doctor’s visits.  Never knew how lucky I’ve been, wouldn’t mind some more of it.  We’ll take ‘er as she comes, and hope to tell you all about it.

He candidly apprised me of both the successes and the failures with his treatments, and told me bluntly in one letter, “Everything wears out.”

It was with great sadness that I watched his handwriting deteriorate alongside his body.  After a terrible fall that left him with equilibrium problems, letters would often take days to compose, which frustrated him to no end.  “Getting dingy in the head is one thing; realizing it is demoralizing.”  Although the letters stopped when he was no longer able to easily wield a pen, I kept writing.  He was forever apologizing for not returning the favor in kind – the first rule of a successful correspondence – but I certainly wasn’t keeping tabs.  I wrote letters because I wanted to.  I wrote letters because I knew that, halfway across the country, someone was excited to see an Albuquerque postmark.  Someone studied the carefully chosen stamp and saved the envelope.  Someone was reading my words with care.

I may have given you the impression that our correspondence filled volumes.  The truth is, the letters didn’t come very often, and they weren’t very long.  In flipping through the thin stack, I was surprised to discover that they only total half a dozen, because although our letter writing campaign was waged during the waning years of his life, I came to know my grandpa through those six letters more completely than the previous 26 years combined.  It was here that he revealed his thoughts and feelings about the things that mattered most to him:  his beloved garden; his pleasure with a good meal; his wife, Edell, who he doted on; the family members who cared for him, each in their own way, in body, mind and spirit.  In one of his final letters, as he realized that his broken-down body was getting the best of him, he said, “Cry me no tears.  For 89 years – almost to the day – I was one lucky dog, in more ways than one.”  That we should all be fortunate enough to feel the same way at the end of our lives.

The last time I talked to my grandpa was shortly after New Year’s, when he called to thank me for a batch of oatmeal cookies – and a letter – that I had sent his way.  I was surprised to hear his voice on the other end of the line; most of our conversations were a result of my dad passing him the phone at the end of one of our talks, but he had called of his own accord.  Unable to write, he expressed his appreciation by describing in great detail the attributes of a perfect oatmeal cookie:  thick, chewy, and filled with ample raisins.  Mine, he said, fit the bill, and he happily reported that he’d already eaten two of them.  We talked for a few minutes, and then said goodbye.  There wasn’t anything awkward about it.

We will feature our next Life in Pencil Moments of the Week next Friday, July 2.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, we’re compiling our readers’ contributions of moments, both big and small, in which you find yourself living life “in pencil.”  Please email Anne or Elizabeth your submissions by Thursday, July 1.

Posted by Elizabeth

Last week, I received a giant care package from my friend, Holly, who lives in Oregon.  I muscled the box into the house, excitedly tearing away the brown paper casing to reveal a treasure trove of hand-me-down baby items.  Nestled amongst the soft-worn onesies and a rainbow of bibs were special gifts bound carefully by cheerful ribbons.  Time for Bed and I Love You, Goodnight, two of her son’s favorite books, were included, as was a green knitted cap sprouting a pea pod atop.  I immediately set to work organizing my wares, meticulously folding and placing the clothing in the baby’s dresser, finding a perfect place for the books, moving a stuffed animal to different locations around the room at least three times.

By all accounts I appear to be “nesting,” that ubiquitous, gossamer curtain that all women seem consigned to pass through at some stage of their pregnancy.  Far transcending the organization of baby clothes, my life maintains a steady orbit around home these days, the radius of activity growing smaller, the scope bound by a strong undercurrent of nesting instincts.  The upheaval of our bathroom remodel project, while finally drawing to a close, can’t come soon enough.  I am an anxious mama bird, nervously fluttering around the entrance to the bathroom, pecking at boxes of tile, feathering dusty countertops, winging at tools – knowing full well that the delicate order I’ve created will be disrupted in a matter of moments.    “When will it be done?” I chirp, my constant birdsong.  “Soon,” Maikael assures me.

Unable to rest or focus as the work lingers on, I force myself out into the jagged world, but find the magnetic pull of home difficult to resist.  I set about tasks that will soothe my tattered nerves.  Cooking, a long-time passion, leaves me weary and irritable.  Instead, I find myself churning out golden banana bread, buttery cookies, and plump blueberry muffins at the (alarming) rate of a professional bakery.  I pore over my well-thumbed copy of Baking Illustrated, literally salivating, knowing where my seven pounds of weight gain last month came from.  While the day-to-day routine of cooking feeds the body, baking nourishes the soul:  right now, this is the sustenance I need most.

According to my birth class instructor, nesting is a real thing, a set biological function.  Holly, who attempted a full kitchen remodel in the midst of her own pregnancy, commiserated with my situation by relating how distressing it was to have the heart and hearth of her home exposed and gutted during this fragile time.  She sought refuge in the other areas of her house, continuing to build her nest by conducting a major spring cleaning while the work carried on.  She confirmed what my instructor emphasized:  “Husbands definitely don’t get it.”

But I don’t think the nesting instinct is confined to pregnancy.  We all nest in our own way during times of transition, whenever great change looms heavy on the horizon.  I recall periods of my own life when one stage was drawing to a close before another yawned opened – the end of school, jobs, relationships, and even seasons – when all I could muster energy for was painting walls, clearing out closets, and color-coding my library of books.  This is not frivolous activity:  our nests are a vitally important touchstone, a defined, tranquil space when the winds of change beat against the door.  It’s times like these that we work hard to bring order and structure to a situation that feels perilously out of our control.

And it doesn’t just apply to the physical realm.  Nesting involves gathering our resources, counting our reserves, and taking stock of our psychological storehouses.  We intimately acquaint ourselves with what we have before reaching out into the world to acquire more.  I find myself deepening old friendships rather than cultivating new ones.  I write long, rambling letters to dear friends, linger on the phone for hours with my most trusted confidantes, send cards just because, and stoke the fires of dwindling relationships over long lunches.  I sift through old photos and drench myself in sepia memories.  I fall back on the recipes I know by heart.  I wear the clothes I know best.  I trust the time-honored and the true, and hold the familiar close because who knows what’s coming next?

Before we can pass through the veil that shrouds our period of change and back into the bright, naked world, we owe it to ourselves to give due time and attention to building our nests.  We need a location that feels secure and out of harm’s way, where all we hold dear will be protected and kept close at hand.  I love the film Away We Go, wherein a young couple, expecting their first child, embarks on a transcontinental trip to find a place to make their home before their child is born.  From the blistered Arizona desert to the cosmopolitan pulse of Quebec, nothing fits the bill until they arrive at the sagging Florida house of the woman’s childhood.  Although dilapidated and long-abandoned, the house – perched on the side of a lazy river and nestled in mature citrus groves – is the first place that feels like home.  It’s the choice that makes no sense and perfect sense.  Wherever we build our nests, by necessity or choice, it’s our job to work around constraints to make it feel like home, weaving a cocoon of shelter, warmth, and security, sometimes in the most unlikely of places.

Nests are not feathered by reaching a long arm out into the world, but by drawing deep from what’s within arm’s reach.  A bird spins her nest from the scraps of life that are close at hand:  rough twigs and downy feathers, lacy ribbons of thread, shiny bits of candy bar wrappers.  Nesting is as much about the reorganization of our existing worlds as it is about painting the world anew.  While the veil is still pulled tight around me in these waning months of pregnancy, I remind myself that I can build a cozy refuge while the whine of saws whirls around me, and indulge in activities that feel restorative and soul-full.  My nest will be what I make it, because I already have everything I need.

In what ways do you nest?  How does nesting help you cope with the process of change?

Our next Life in Pencil Moment of the Week will be featured on Friday, June 11.  Email Anne or me with your submissions by Thursday, June 10.

Posted by Elizabeth

“The cases in which friends disappoint are the easy ones: either you discuss, forgive and forget, or you strike a line through the relationship. The calculus–when to let go, when to work through it–is complicated and fraught.” – Dominique Browning, Slow Love Life

My best friend, Heidi, and I have never ascribed to traditional rules of gift-giving.  In keeping with our personalities, my gifts usually come too early, and Heidi’s tend to arrive late.  I’ve received a birthday gift at the height of summer, or a Christmas package, wrapped in pastel paper, as the first flowers of spring shouldered their way out of the crusty earth.  I recently sent Heidi a psychedelic llama fashioned from baked marzipan, a souvenir from Ecuador that I’d been hanging onto for just the right occasion (which never came).  But more often than not we don’t hold onto gifts until the time is right, setting it free as soon as it’s in our clutches.

Our uneven style of gift giving has remained one of the only constants throughout a 16-year friendship that has been defined by transformation, marked by periods of intense togetherness, long periods of separation, and finally, today, balanced connection.  Heidi and I met each other the first week of school, both transfer students thrown into a pulsing student body midway through our high school career.  After auditioning for the student play, we lingered by our battered cars parked alongside the tennis courts, getting to know each other as the crisp autumn evening settled in around us.

Within weeks we were inseparable, “kindred spirits” a la Anne Shirley and Diana Barry.  We starred in grainy home videos together, dressed in thrift store finds from our regular scavenger hunts, and made pilgrimages to local ice cream parlors (Heidi has always been an ice cream fiend).  We holed up in our bedrooms and talked long into the night on the telephone; on more than one occasion I picked up the phone to call Heidi, only to find her on the other end of the line, calling me before the phone had a chance to ring.  Our friendship was sealed when she defended my honor in the face of a couple of Mean Girls, pledging her fidelity before she even had a chance to know if I was worth the risk.

After high school, our life paths rocketed in different directions.  I made my way to college and Heidi married quickly and young.  Within a year she lost both her marriage and the baby girl, Mary, she gave birth to ten months after her wedding.  We drifted apart for a number of years, two small boats bobbing uneasily on the choppy seas of friendship.  As a 20 year-old college student whose greatest concern was acing her final exams, the dual losses Heidi experienced made me intensely uncomfortable, and I naively –and selfishly – hoped that things could simply go back to the way they were.  Visits and phone calls grew farther apart until they vanished altogether, a sad disappearing act.  We were specters in each other’s lives, the ghosts of friendship past.

Four years after Mary’s death, wondering where in the world Heidi was, I sent a stinging email in response to a message she had sent me months earlier, like jabbing a sharp stick at a papery hornet’s nest.  I was surprise when I opened my inbox a few days later to reveal an impassioned message from Heidi, detailing the struggles she had faced in the intervening years.  I was done, I told her, but she wanted to talk.

In 2002, our friendship was nothing but a shred of string dangling precariously between two wounded souls.  Where I was ready to clip the ragged thread and move forward with my life, Heidi saw something that could be rewoven.  Dominique Browning says, “Some friendships evolve as your life changes; others hit the wall. It is a painful rupture, not entered into lightly. It doesn’t mean the friendship was wrong to begin with–it means it has reached an impasse, or died.”  If it had been up to me, Heidi would be just another friend on the discard pile, but where I saw dead, she saw merely stuck.  She knitted her way back into my life through small but sure motions.  Although we were living in different states by now, making reconnection all the more challenging, she called regularly when she promised she would, even when our first conversations were smattered with awkward small talk and long pauses, not unlike a chat with a distant relative.  But we pushed through our mutual wariness, and when things got difficult we fell back into soft, easy memories, swimming in the details of better days.

By the time my mom died suddenly a few months later, we had reestablished enough of a connection that she was the first person I called, in a calm state of shock, on that rain-streaked Thanksgiving night.  I understood why she had come back into my life when she had:  she was intimately acquainted with loss and grief in a way that most 26 year-olds could never know.  Although I had vilified her unreliability over the years, I suddenly understood that, in the wake of her own losses, I had been the absent one, unable to provide the kind of support she would come to give me.

Even though our external lives have continued on different trajectories – Heidi is remarried with three more blue-eyed beauties — our souls have continued to grow and flourish right alongside one another over the past eight years.  We have successfully hit the “reset” button on our friendship and created new memories on the backs of the old ones, but not without constant nurturing and care on each of our parts.  We send emails daily, talk on the phone weekly, and visit one another yearly.  Through our friendship I have learned that the most important things in life require our small, but sustained, devotion.  But even that is not a talisman against things falling apart from time to time.  It is only through the concerted effort of both parties, and a willingness to slog through the muck and not skim the silky surface, that something new is reborn from the smoldering ashes.   How fitting it was, then, when Heidi and I sought spiritual guidance during our annual “retreat” in Sedona last May from a woman named Phoenix.  Nothing worthwhile can be rebuilt overnight, but everything worthwhile must be rewritten.

On Monday I smiled when I received a belated birthday package from Heidi.  Stuffed inside was a treasure trove of maternity clothes, hand-scribbled pictures from her children, and a cream-colored teddy bear with doleful eyes and a pink bowtie.  Inside the birthday card – appropriately inscribed with the words “Wing It!” – was the explanation for the gift:

I agonized a little over what to give you.  In the end I want to give you this little bear.  When I found out I was pregnant with Mary this was the first baby item I bought.  It is a special bear to me and I have pictures with each of my kids with it. All my feelings as a mother are summed up in this bear – and now, you are a mother, too.

With tears sliding down my face I placed the bear in the rocking chair in what is slowly developing into a nursery.  Over the years I have benefited from the fact that Heidi’s always been a step ahead of me in life.  She guided me through the tidal wave of grief that crashed over my life following my mother’s untimely death.  She ferried me through my wedding day, recognizing the complicated constellation of joy and sadness that accompanied this important life passage.  She’s been with me through every step of my pregnancy, and will be there when my baby takes her first shrill cries.  Heidi’s gifts may be belated, but the real gifts she’s bestowed upon me – those of unconditional love, support, and wisdom – have always arrived right on time, when I needed them most.

We are changing our format!  With a desire to bring you more substantive pieces, we will only be posting three days a week.  Elizabeth will be featured on Mondays, Anne will contribute on Wednesdays, and Fridays will bring a rotating series of topics, including reader contributions, media reviews, tips, and other Life in Pencil-related topics.  (For example, this Friday will feature a Q&A with New York Times best-selling author Allison Winn Scotch!)  Each day will continue to revolve around our central theme of “rewriting life one day at a time,” and we hope this change will bring deeper thought and reflection to the everyday moments that help us to better live our lives in pencil.

Posted by Elizabeth

There are two types of people in this world:  those who love their birthdays and those who’d prefer to hide under a rock when their special day rolls around.  I happily belong to the former group, a diehard birthday-holic who tries to milk the occasion for all its worth.  Over the years my birthday has morphed from a single day of celebration to a month-long affair.  Tomorrow I am turning 32, and I’m proud to say that, this year, the festivities kicked off in early April, when I declared a particularly spectacular dinner in Bologna, Italy, “my birthday dinner.”  “We can go out on your birthday,” Maikael said.  “No,” I responded, “I’d like to remember this as my ‘birthday dinner.’”

Although 32 isn’t a particularly momentous year, I have a fun weekend of celebration planned, from high tea and a pedicure with a dear friend to a last-minute lunch invitation, from a twilight picnic at the symphony with my honey to a low-key barbecue.  It’s a fitting reflection of where I’m at in my life right now, an eclectic patchwork of interests and friends rolled up into a three-day period that hits all the right notes.

Birthdays are important to me not just because of the revelry and celebration, but because they are a way to mark the passage of time.  Birthdays are wrapped in tradition and ritual, of which there’s little left in this world.  They are a time of reflection, when I think about where I’ve been on my life’s journey the past 365 days, and where the next 365 will take me.  As the blog approaches its first birthday, a big part of my journey this past year has been learning to live “in pencil.” Although 31 wasn’t a year I’m likely to remember for any particular reason, there are so many moments that comprised that year that I’ll never forget.  And as I look forward to a year filled with birth and new life, sleepless nights and first steps, constant change and boring hours, family and friends, writing and more writing, transition and change, I know the one thing I can count on is the fact that my life will be rewritten on a daily basis.

I know I’ll be better at living my life “in pencil” on the cusp of 33 than I am at 32.

How do you feel about your own birthday?  Love it or loathe it?  Is it a time of reflection or a time of hiding out?

Today is the final day of Momalom’s “Five for Ten Challenge,” and the theme is Yes!

Posted by Elizabeth

I arrived home from a workout at the gym early Monday afternoon and made my way to the mailbox, where a slim envelope from the Social Security Administration was waiting for me.  My new Social Security card!  I held it in my hands and stared at the name typed in official block letters.  My new name.

Elizabeth Marie Thomas

Except this wasn’t my new name.  The name I had carefully penned on my application, after five years of hemming and hawing, was Elizabeth Grant Thomas, my maiden name nestled between the old and the new.  I immediately went into panic mode and began making frantic calls to the national and local offices of the Social Security Administration.  After being placed on interminable hold, I called Maikael at work, who suggested I go to the local branch first thing the next morning and straighten everything out.  “I can’t wait until tomorrow,” I shrieked.  “I’m having an identity crisis!”

When I got married five Julys ago, I didn’t feel strongly about keeping or changing my name.  I couldn’t settle on any of the myriad possibilities for a new name, so I decided to wait it out and see what emerged naturally.  But nothing – even my own maiden name – ever felt quite right.  I remained deeply ambivalent about what I should call myself, and, depending on my mood, alternated between different permutations of “Grant” and “Thomas” when introducing myself.  It was often confusing, both for myself and others, but because I felt such deep-seated ambivalence I chose the path of non-action.

Then we found out we were having a baby, and I felt a creeping desire to unite our growing family through a shared surname.  In a flurry of dialogue about choosing our baby’s names, Maikael and I had many conversations about this proposed name change, and in the end I settled on Elizabeth Grant Thomas because it was the name that had stuck the most over the past five years.  If nothing else, it was the name printed on the top of my stationary.

Names are an important piece of our identity.  They signal where we’ve been and who we are, and the decision to change or keep one’s name is a deeply personal decision.  Why I have felt such uncertainty about my own name is unclear to me.  The counselor in me sees all sorts of subconscious underpinnings here:  Am I uncomfortable in my own skin?  Does my identity not feel solidified?  Am I in a constant state of metamorphosis?  In a world where people tend to quickly change their names after they get married, or don’t at all, I feel like a name-changing pariah.

Once I arrived at the Social Security Office, I was briskly informed that, although my name had been entered into the system incorrectly, my surname was now Thomas, and without additional identification to prove my identity, nothing further could be done.  The logic seemed suspiciously circular – weren’t they the ones who had changed my name in the first place? – but what I was instructed to do was to get a new license that stated my name as Elizabeth M. Thomas, go back to Social Security with the license and change my name to Elizabeth Grant Thomas, and then return once again to the licensing bureau to have a new license issued in new new name.

The other option was to keep the name that the Social Security Administration had given me.

I slinked back home defeated, feeling more entrenched than ever in my mounting identity crisis, literally caught between two selves.  If I felt strongly about being a Grant Thomas rather than a Marie Thomas, Maikael said, I should go through the extra two steps to get the name I wanted.  He advised me to sleep on it and approach it fresh in the morning, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

How did I feel about Elizabeth Marie Thomas?

The truth of the matter is, it’s a version of my name that five years of deliberation had never generated.   Had fate intervened on my behalf?  Did an outside force push me out of my ambivalence?  How important are middle names?  Does my family name of Grant carry any more weight or importance than Marie, a name my parents chose for me?  Wasn’t Oprah’s iconic name the result of a similar clerical error?  Perhaps I should just leave well enough alone?  After spending the evening in deep contemplation, I realized that it wasn’t that I didn’t like the name; I simply didn’t know how I felt about it.  And maybe I never would, because I felt just as ambivalent about it as I always had about any of the other names I had considered for myself.  Once I got over the initial shock of seeing a name I hadn’t chosen for myself in black and white, I realized that I didn’t feel any greater affinity to “Grant” than “Marie.”

My objective had been to share a surname with my family, and ultimately, “Thomas” — whether prefaced with “Marie” or “Grant” — was going to take some getting used to.  Identities don’t change overnight, and neither do we.

Rather than fighting it, I’ve made the decision to keep the unexpected name that the Social Security Administration bequeathed upon me.  I know it’s not the decision that everyone would make, and there are undoubtedly some readers out there who are thinking, “Are you kidding? You waited five years to change your name to just the right thing, and you’re going to lie down and accept the name that someone decided you should have?”  And maybe you’re right.  Maybe I’ll live to regret this decision.  But I’m also not sure what the “right thing” is – and I’m not sure I’ll know anytime soon.

In saying “yes” to this unforeseen circumstance, I can’t help but feel that I’m symbolically stepping into a new world of surprises and unbridled possibilities.  I am approaching this name change as I am the next stage of my life, with eyes wide shut.  Perhaps that’s what saying “yes” to life really means:  taking a leap of faith into the unknown, even when it doesn’t seem to make a whole heck of a lot of rational sense, and trusting that you’ll land on your feet.

My name is changing right along with my life.

Realizing I am opening a can of worms here – and understanding that it’s a profoundly personal decision – how do you feel about the act of keeping or changing one’s name?  What do names signal about our identity?  Can we “rewrite” our identities by changing our names?  What do you think of Elizabeth Marie Thomas versus Elizabeth Grant Thomas (be honest)?  Am I crazy to let a behemoth governmental organization choose my name?

Posted by Elizabeth

In conjunction with Momalom’s “Five for Ten” Challenge, today’s theme is Courage.

Sunday was my first Mother’s Day.  Sort of.  I am 24 weeks pregnant with my first child, which makes me feel like a sort-of mother, but my friend, Sarah, thinks that I’m a full-fledged member of the club.  Last week she wrote in an email, “You are already a Mom in my book as you are already giving up your body and mind to take care of your little girl.”  Who am I to argue?

The day dawned brightly, with unexpected emails, Facebooks wall posts, and text messages wishing me a Happy Mother’s Day.  In the afternoon, the woman who shot our wedding photographs nearly five years ago came over to the house to take a series of pregnancy portraits, immortalizing the next chapter in our lives, this fragile moment in time, forever.  For two hours I was hyper aware of my bourgeoning status, cradling my growing belly, posing in profile, gazing downward.   When the photographer tilted the camera towards me to show me a favorite shot on the viewing screen, I could hardly believe my eyes.  I am going to be a mother.  I am a mother.

Still clad in head-to-toe black from the shoot, Maikael and I made our way to our favorite Mexican restaurant afterwards, where other mothers knowingly smiled at me as I guided my obviously-pregnant frame through the maze of tables.  Over fresh guacamole and handmade fruit drinks we picked up a long-standing debate where it had left off the day before:  how are we going to spell and pronounce our daughter’s name?  When we had exhausted that subject and left it as unsettled as before, we discussed another favorite topic:  what will it be like when the baby is here?  These discussions often feel as if our alter egos are talking, a version of us-but-not-us.  Sometimes I stand outside of myself and wonder, are we really having this conversation? On our way out of the restaurant, Carlos hands me a sturdy red rose from the refrigerator and says, “Para la madre.”  I am going to be a mother.  I am a mother.

On the car ride home, it dawns on me that I haven’t thought a great deal about the flip side of Mother’s Day:  being a daughter.  In the eight years since my mom died, Mother’s Day has passed more or less without incidence.  Although Mother’s Day never meant much to my mom, I felt I owed her memory bitterness towards the day, and those first few years I preferred to bury my head in the sand and avoid restaurants, brimming with happy mothers and daughters, at all costs.  As the years ticked by and the sadness chipped away, I began sending cards to my favorite mothers, my best friends who became mothers themselves one by one.  It felt like a better use of energy.

As I prepare to become a mother myself, I have the chance to rewrite my relationship to my own mother, to revise what Mother’s Day means.  Grief has a tendency to weigh us down, tethering us with guilt when we consider moving beyond its boundaries.  It takes courage to rewrite a relationship, to move on without feeling like we’ve moved on.  I’ll never forget Sherian Flowers Grant on Mother’s Day, but I can focus my attention on a new life without abandoning her memory.  I can be a daughter who still misses her mom each day.  I can be a mother who is grateful to have a daughter.

How have you rewritten your relationship to Mother’s Day, or any other holiday or tradition?  How do we breathe new life into a budding stage of life without forgetting what’s come before?

Posted by Elizabeth

Today I was supposed to lay forth the ground rules for the Technoless Challenge. I say “supposed to” because, to be honest, my heart just isn’t into it.  I realized somewhere in the last week that, when I set my mind to breaking a bad habit, I usually emerge the victor.  Remember the challenge I issued to myself last October, to break through my fitness plateau?  Once I made up my mind that it was a priority, I proceeded to hit my target weight in three months (and then I got pregnant).  And that’s how I break bad habits:  I make it a priority.  This whole Technoless Challenge is really just a reflection of the fact that I’ve never made an earnest effort to reduce my social email and networking site time.  For me, the solution is simple:  I’m going to make an effort by setting some self-imposed time limits while reducing the temptation (laptop sitting on coffee table all day = too tempting).  Period.  So for those of you who were gearing up to take the challenge with me, please accept my deepest apologies.  What can I say?  Things change.

The truth is, after the elation of spreading my good news on Friday, and a sorta disastrous Valentine’s Day, I find myself bathing in the emotional afterglow of a strange weekend.  Unlike Anne’s “Valentine’s-neutral” approach (she is so even-keeled), I have always found myself living life hanging from the highest rafters or dragging through the lowest valleys.  “Equilibrium” has never been my strong suit.  That’s why I was so proud of myself when Maikael and I decided to approach this year’s Valentine’s Day with a “no-big-deal, whatever-happens-happens” attitude.  To clarify, Valentine’s Day is not usually met with a great deal of pomp and circumstance in our household.  We usually exchange cards and go out to a nice dinner, and that’s about it.  However, we’ve been out a lot lately, and we are currently in the throes of a DIY bathroom renovation project that is taking twice as long to complete as we had originally bargained for (why does everyone delude themselves into believing that their project will be different?).  Given these circumstances, this Valentine’s Day would be met with even greater asceticism than usual.  And I was okay with that. At least, I thought was okay with that.

A good start.

On Friday night the UPS man dropped a package at my front doorstep; when I opened it, I was met with an asymmetrical, eggplant heart stuffed with truffles from the very fancy-pants Vosges chocolatier.  The weekend was off to a good start!  On Saturday we enthusiastically picked up the special-order window for our bathroom – the one we’ve been talking about installing for five years – which wasn’t what we’d envisioned.  Then, we cut a gigantic hole through the side of our house, which was higher than we’d thought it would be.  Amidst the sawing and banging I couldn’t take my customary afternoon nap – this pregnancy has left me dead-tired — so I made dinner instead, a Mexican feast, Maikael’s favorite.  The pork and potato tacos, simmering in a fiery red guajillo chile-spiked sauce, smelled delicious.  But apparently this baby does not like spicy food, and I spent the rest of the evening belching like a frat boy and trying to enjoy whatever crap we were watching as we flipped through TV channels.

Pretending to take a "shower" in our new stall. Still smiling at this point.

Sunday wasn’t much better.  After continuing to struggle with the window, we finally installed it.  Twice.  I was looking forward – with unusual enthusiasm – to watching Enchanted on USA at 6:30 that evening, but tuned in to find the credits rolling.  This was after I lost out on an eBay auction for a lamp that I had my heart set on, even though I said I didn’t have my heart set on it, in the final seconds.  And then came the leftover tacos!  Oh, and a dry cupcake for dessert.  By the time we sat down to watch Inglorious Basterds, my stomach was roaring and I wanted nothing more than to go to bed.  Which is why I thought it would be the perfect time to hop on the Internet and purchase our tickets for next weekend’s Taste of Albuquerque!  Let’s just say neither I nor the Junior League of Albuquerque is long on technology, and when you throw these two things together, utter confusion ensues.  And rather than simply hanging it up for the night, I pushed forward out of pure determination, beseeching Maikael for his sage advice as to how to make the website work.  Maikael, clearly exhausted after having spent 48 hours struggling with a bathroom window, may have snapped something about “don’t drag me into your projects.”  And then I may have snapped something about “you’re one to talk, I can’t even take a nap with all that banging.”  And then he may have said something about “spending every weekend on this project so that we can have a nice bathroom.”  And I may have said something about “what, and carrying your unborn child isn’t work?”  Or something like that.  I can’t remember the exact words, but rest assured, it was very dramatic. In any event, Valentine’s Day ended with me retreating to the bedroom and reading a chapter from Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs.  Last week’s resolution at The Happiness Project was to “fight fair,” and this week’s is “don’t expect praise or appreciation,” and I’m sorry to say I failed miserably at both.  We never even got a chance to exchange cards.

As I replay these events, it’s obvious that nothing altogether wonderful or awful happened this weekend.  In a funny way, it ended up being the “Valentine-neutral” holiday that Anne described yesterday.  At the end of the day, lost eBay auctions, missed naps, and indigestion are trifles.  So why, in the heat of the moment, did it all feel so doomsday?  Obviously, there was some undercurrent of expectation that I had created for this 48 hour period, whether I was aware of it or not.  If I really examine the mental images I’ve been carrying around, they are stuffed with expectation.  I thought we’d share a lingering dinner at home – one that wasn’t punctuated with low-energy conversation after a day of hard work or capped off with monster digestion problems.   I thought there would be less doing and more talking.  More smiles and less sighs.

We are always creating expectations for ourselves, even when we think we’re not.  We talk a lot about the pitfalls of setting high expectations, but it’s just as easy to create low expectations that are equally impossible to achieve.  Saying we’re trying to keep things “low-key” or “easy-going” is in and of itself an expectation, and given the constraints of our construction project, it was unreasonable to expect that there would be anything “low key” about this weekend.  The fact is, even though I knew the reality of this two-day period going in, even when I said I didn’t have expectations, I did.  We didn’t fail; my expectations did.

Rest assured that Maikael and I mended our fences and eventually exchanged our cards.  The construction project will continue chugging forward next weekend.  And that box of chocolates will be gone before you know it.

Did anyone else have sort of a miserable Valentine’s Day?  Any horror stories to share, from the recent or not-so-recent past?  Do you suffer from setting unreasonable expectations, either too high or too low?  Anybody else out there suffer from spicy food intolerance during pregnancy (a REALLY tough thing living in New Mexico, let me tell you)?