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.

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.

This morning in my gardening class Nissa talked about not getting too bogged down by creating the perfect garden.  “It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae,” she said, concerned solely with what the experts say is “right.”  “The important thing,” she emphasized, “is to enjoy yourself.”  These words, simple as they may be, are rife with complexity and contemplation, and it immediately got me thinking what good advice it was for living a life.  How often, I thought to myself, do I get mired in the day-to-day details that don’t really matter and forget the big picture?  How often do I tune in to others’ opinions before tuning into myself and my own sense of enjoyment?  Sometimes I feel like I am a radio dial being madly spun between stations, forever on “Scan,” never quite settling into my own groove.  It’s easy to spend our lives searching for the optimum and forget that “good enough” is usually just that.  Sometimes we are paralyzed into inaction, waiting for just the right moment, the ideal circumstances, to present themselves before moving forward.  But if that is our metric, most of us – myself included –might wait a lifetime to do anything.

Beauty in imperfection

I saw a great deal of this behavior at play in my work as a career counselor, especially with younger clients.  Having grown up in a world of so much choice and abundance it made choosing the “right” path an anxiety-provoking affair.  “Just do something – anything,” I would often say.  Although I often have a hard time living this simple truth, doing something is generally better than doing nothing, no matter how imperfect.  (Sometimes, I realize, sitting still is the best course of action, but even then we are doing something, even if the results aren’t outward or tangible.  Internal work, though largely invisible, is difficult and important.)  Because I am often disappointed when things don’t fully live up to (overinflated) expectations, during the past year my personal mantra has become, “Something is better than nothing.”  I don’t mean this to be defeatist and under-achieving.  Rather, this mindset helps me to accept and appreciate the moment for what it is.

Tomorrow I will head to the airport hours before the sun rides over the Sandia Mountains, bound for Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on a whirlwind 64-hour adventure.  It is a long way to go for the weekend.  The petulant part of me that wishes I was leaving today and coming back on Monday , that longs for a more leisurely getaway than I can afford.  But an even larger part of me is grateful to be going at all.  It is the part of me that is looking forward to the renewed pleasures of traveling light, reading a book in-flight, eating peaceful meals, having time to do yoga, focusing on my writing, enjoying the fall colors in a part of the country I’ve never been to, kindling online friendships in person, and simply being. And while I think the “old me” would have enjoyed this weekend, I don’t think she could have fully appreciated it.

Remember how, when I returned from my retreat with The Tribe, I concluded that my work for the year involved “manifesting a new reality?”  Part of that process was captured on film by my very talented fellow Tribe Member Sarah Gervais, a photographer and social psychologist who blends her two passions into a fascinating project called Repicturing Women. (She is also the one who coined what has now become an oft-repeated phrase, “The Universe has room for all of us.”)  On her site she features women — herself included — exploring their relationship to their bodies.  I am honored that Sarah decided to feature me at her site in this interview.  Thank you, Sarah, for the opportunity to be a part of the good work you are doing in the world.

On Thursday morning I made my way through the still-dark streets, my headlights searching the road for other signs of life and finding very little.  By the time I made it to Nissa’s house the sun had begun fingering its way into day as the pale moon still glowed above.  A small circle of women, just four of us, quietly gathered on tree stumps while I promptly planted by sneaker in a bed of cilantro.  After whispered introductions our first assignment was to find a spot in the garden that spoke to us and to write about it for a few minutes.  We’d visit this same spot in a month at the conclusion of this course, “Inside, Outside:  Learning About Ourselves Through the Garden.”  As someone who is constantly attuned to change – and of what stays the same amidst the chaos – I loved this idea.  My eyes scanned the overflowing, wabi sabi garden in search of inspiration.  I considered the sunflowers, whose gigantic heads drooped and lolled over the fence.  I thought about the lacy veil of beans.  But ultimately my attention was called to the pumpkins, which I first mistook for watermelons.

“I never knew how a pumpkin started:  small, round, hard, striped the color of seaweed.  But before that it sprang from a bright orange flower, a starfish in the garden, a soft tropical flower right here in the high desert.  Clubbed hands cascade and twist their way over the cool ground, the spiny stalks keeping you at a distance.  Just as the rest of the garden is beginning its slow descent back to the earth, singing its swan song, the pumpkin is just beginning its journey.  Soon these dark green globes will flame a brilliant orange:  waiting to be carved into toothy grins, baked into Thanksgiving pies, rending their seeds.  Its insides are scooped hollow, a reminder that all the best parts dwell deep inside us.  ‘Grow,’ says the sign looming above the pumpkin patch, its letters etched in cool metal.  That’s what I’m trying to do:  to cast aside the protective shell that keeps me from risking, digging deep into my flesh in search of the soft, tender parts that are my life force.  All around me one journey begins as another ends.”

I love this banner that hangs in the garden

I’ve never considered the garden a place of contemplation, but as I huddle for warmth against the cool morning air I am beginning to see why people retreat to these leafy oases.  Although I love the idea of growing my own food, gardens have traditionally been a source of stress for me.  I don’t know anything about caring for plants and my approach has always been slapdash and haphazard, the result of which, you can imagine, hasn’t been good.  There has been nothing intentional about my method, and I limited my time in the garden to the bare minimum required to keep it alive.  Sometimes days would pass without thinking about the garden, and when it entered my consciousness like a thunderbolt I raced out back to find a zucchini the size of a loaf of bread, tough and woody.  Unlike Nissa, who is clearly in her element, exuding quiet confidence, I am as wobbly as a newborn foal here. Her reverence for the garden is clear, and all around us Nissa points out lessons for living a life.  “We need to thin out the carrots,” she explains as she points to clusters of frilly shoots that have just begun their ascent out of the earth.  “They’re sort of like people:  they don’t like to be crowded.”  As I continue to misidentify plant after plant I am delighted when I recognize a verdant patch of strawberries by their telltale leaves.  Nissa laughs.  For years she had unsuccessfully tried to plant strawberries from seed.  Then, she believes, a tiny strawberry seed from her compost bin made it into the soil, the result of which is a burgeoning patch of strawberries.

I turned the story over in my mind as the day wore on.  How often in life do we try to bring something to fruition through brute force?  The more effort we exert, the worse the results.  The moment we stop trying so hard things just happen, exceeding our wildest expectations.  We let things unfurl in their own time and watch a miracle take hold.  This is the lesson of my life these days.  I’ve tried to manifest a new way of being through rigid schedules, regimes and timelines.  I’ve tried to coax new life out of dormant seeds that weren’t ready to sprout.  I’ve been going through the world with a battering ram this past year; I am the hard green pumpkin, waiting impatiently to turn bright orange.  Perhaps I am here not to learn about how to become a better gardener so much as a better person.

Fall blew in over the weekend.  On Saturday morning Abra and I took an early morning walk, donning jackets for the first time in months as we braced ourselves against the wind and cold that stirred around us.  I noticed that, literally overnight, the trees had begun to shed their leaves, leaving a carpet of crunchy brown at their feet.  Although Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer it rarely feels that way in New Mexico, with hot days often lingering well into October.  But this year feels different, for reasons not just pertaining to the weather.  It’s funny to have a child born on the cusp of a season.  The turn toward fall has taken on added weight and meaning, as I am discovering that the years are suddenly delineated in new ways.  Waking up on September 8 felt a bit like New Year’s morning; change was palpable as the world opened itself to new possibilities.  As an adult I don’t feel this same shift on my birthday – the world operates in fundamentally the same way as it did the day before – but beginning year two alongside Abra opens up a world of freedoms that I’ve been longing for.

Fall is here

No one knows how they’ll react when a baby enters their lives, which is part of why making the leap to parenthood, in its enormity and permanence, is so terrifying.  Our fundamental beliefs about ourselves are both challenged and confirmed, rattling the delicate cage that encircles the core of our beings.  It can be grossly uncomfortable to discover that you are not the person you thought you were, capable of actions and feelings you didn’t know you were capable of, even if they are largely positive.  In the same breath, the rigors and stresses of parenthood reinforce personal truths which, while unsettling, has the potential to be deeply clarifying.

Although I might have listed “independent” as an auxiliary personality trait – important, but not at the top of the list – this past year revealed otherwise.  I visited a psychic many years ago who described my personality as a horse running free in a big, fenced-in pasture.  “Even if you don’t see the fences on a day-to-day basis, you know they’re there.”  In other words, I need to be free to roam wild while sensing the parameters, and most of my life has passed in this bounded-boundless way.  But this past year?  I felt as if I was constantly running into fences.   I remember when Abra was about three weeks old we encountered a day that I’ve come to refer to as “The Terrible Saturday.”  I spent ten hours in a chair trying to nurse a baby that didn’t want to eat.  After frantically calling Heidi, who wisely suggested that I get out of the house for a change to scenery, I took a late afternoon walk around our park.  The ill-fitting maternity shirt I wore was covered in vomit.  My hair was a mess.  I had hardly slept the night before.  Feeling a bit like Dracula emerging from his crypt in the midday sun, I squinted against the glare of life going on around — and without — me.  As I took in a park full of carefree people enjoying a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, fat, hot tears began rolling down my cheeks as I pushed the stroller around the park, for in that moment all I saw was a future of being tied down to an oversized chair stretching before me.

My souful daughter, taken this week

Now, months later, I am able to reframe my situation as not tied down but tethered, and certainly not as intensively as those early months demanded. As the scope of her world widens, Abra needs me perhaps not less but in different ways – ways that, I’m beginning to see, involve a lot more independence on each of our parts.  And I can already tell that the wild horse in me is better suited to this stage of parenting.  So with the simple flip of a calendar, a new season of my life rushed in last week.  I finally feel as if I’m on the cusp of reclaiming parts of myself that circumstances have required me to set to the side.  I’ve got some exciting plans on the horizon that I’m looking forward to sharing with you in the coming months as I prepare to stretch my wings again:

• I am getting back into shape!  I just started a “Couch to 5K” program, and am reviving my lapsed yoga practice.
• The next four Thursday mornings I will take a class that my friend, Nissa, is hosting  in her beautiful backyard garden called, “Inside, Outside:  Exploring Ourselves Through the Garden.” (Isn’t that the best title?)  I look forward to learning more about myself and gardening.
• After years of intending to go, I am finally going to make it to the Festival of the Cranes at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.  As I’ve written before I’m passionate, although largely uneducated, about winged creatures, and the sight of wintering sandhill cranes is supposed to be breathtaking.  In other news, I was completely delighted when one of Abra’s first words was “bird.”
• In two weeks I am going to Dani Shapiro’s memoir-writing workshop at Kripalu, a long-held dream.  As a bonus, I am rooming with my blog friend, Kristen, of Motherese.  It promises to be a magical weekend.
• Have you heard of Freedom?  It’s a productivity application for your computer that locks you away from the internet for up to eight hours at a time.  I think it’s what I need to help me cut down on my on-line time.  This may be my last “full-time” year with Abra and I’d like to create memories with her that don’t involve spending hours a day on Facebook.
• Now that I’m no longer operating in survival mode, I am going to start taking some tangible steps towards starting a writing career.  I’ve got some exciting news to share on that account in a few weeks!

Like my friend Meghan, I’m a big believer in putting it all out there and seeing what flows back.  While scary and vulnerable, there’s real power in concretizing your goals.  So, in the words of Meghan, “Universe, do your thing.”

What goals are you working toward right now?  Do you consider yourself independent, or is that phrase fraught?

I’m not going to lie:  it’s been a hard week.  A really hard week. Maikael has been out of town on business and, like clockwork, Abra always chooses this time to cut new teeth.  The days are punctuated by crying, screaming, wailing, shrieking and fussiness that persist for hours on end, and the nights don’t offer much reprieve.  Despite my best efforts to stay calm, I am frayed.  As the author of an article I recently read said, “I don’t speak crying.”

At times like this, I search hard for life’s small but unexpected pleasures.  Luckily for me, they’ve been offered up in abundance this week.  Upon the recommendation of a friend who used to be a local librarian, Abra and I made a point to attend the Ernie Pyle Storytime.  Set under the leafy arms of an old tree, toddlers plopped down on colorful blankets to listen to stories, poems, and songs.  We played finger games as the sun peeked through the branches, casting a dappled kaleidoscope on the ground below.  Abra was more interested in the little girl sitting next to her, but I was content to sit in such a lovely spot for half an hour.

Afterward we peeked inside the tiny library, which is actually the former home of Ernie Pyle, a famed foreign war correspondent.  Inside, memorabilia from Pyle’s life is cleverly displayed amongst stacks of books.

Looking like a bibliophile’s dream house, old closets play host to towers of books.

The converted living room, which still boasts the original fireplace, houses the travel section.

We passed through the old kitchen to get to the children’s reading room, undoubtedly an old bedroom packed to the hilt with literature.  It had the feel not of a library but of a small town bookstore, an edited collection suited to browsing.  Completely charming, and a tangible reminder that bigger isn’t always better.

As we left the house, I noticed a beacon of green at the end of the street, a shimmering mirage in the late summer heat.  I was delighted to discover Hyder Park, a shady expanse of undulating emerald hills dotted by mature trees.  What a find in the middle of this high desert city!  Certainly a place to return with a picnic lunch.

One afternoon I went to the thrift store in search of picture frames, and as I was pawing through bins I stumbled upon a tray of old Polaroid cameras.  A number of my friends are Polaroid aficionados, and while I don’t consider myself a photographer, I’ve long admired the dreamy, ethereal quality of the images that the camera produces.  On a whim, I picked up a $6 Spectra and decided to buy it.  I don’t tend to do things just for fun; my inclination is to spend time at tasks that are part of some larger, productive goal.  I am also apt to invest my energies in activities that I feel confident or proficient in (i.e., not photography).  There was something thrilling in purchasing a piece of equipment that I have absolutely no clue how to use (seriously: I don’t even know how to turn the thing on), in pursuit of a pastime in which I hope the end result will be pure, idle pleasure:  a hobby in the truest sense of the word.

Finally, I am grateful to Trader Joe’s Spinach Ricotta Ravioli.  Abra devoured an entire bowl at lunch, offering the only smile of the day.

What small and unexpected pleasures are YOU grateful for this week?