White Christmas

My fall semester grades are submitted, my Christmas cards and packages have been safely sent their merry ways, and a fresh batch of online classes has been prepped for the New Year. Despite today’s mild temperatures, we’ll have a white Christmas here in Newton thanks to last weekend’s snowstorm, and I’ll be stepping away from my laptop for a much-needed break this weekend. Here’s hoping your holiday is restful and happy.

 

Homemade

When I returned home with a small handmade basket of beaded jewelry from last month’s open-house fundraiser for Connect Africa, I fully intended to take the basket to school, where I envisioned using it to hold the loose paper-clips and rubber-bands that always accumulate on my desk. Instead, the basket seems perfectly content to stay on the desk in my home office, where it is currently serving as a catch-all container for the aforementioned jewelry, a small box of binder clips, and several scrunchies.

Note to self: at next year’s fundraiser, buy several baskets.

This is my contribution to today’s Photo Friday theme, Homemade. Technically, these African handicrafts are handmade, not homemade…but I figured that was close enough.

 

Gossamer

J and I are really low-key when it comes to the holidays. Our shared attitude toward Thanksgiving is very similar to our shared attitude toward Valentine’s Day: if you’re grateful (or in love) 365 days of the year, it’s not hugely important to feel extra grateful (or extra in-love) on an officially sanctioned holiday. If you’re grateful (or in love) 365 days of the year, Thanksgiving (or Valentine’s Day) really is like every other day.

Yesterday morning, for instance, I took Reggie on our usual morning dog-walk. Along the way, I saw (and photographed) two different spider webs outlined in water-droplets: remnants from this week’s drizzly weather. Spider webs are even more difficult to photograph than raindrops are: spider-webs are often invisible, and even when you can see a spider-web, it’s often difficult to get a point-and-shoot camera to focus on something so delicate and insubstantial. Point-and-shoot cameras like to focus on things that are big and obvious, so something as gossamer-fine as a spider web is a tough capture.

It feels silly to admit it, but when Reggie and I got home from yesterday’s otherwise ordinary dog-walk, I felt absurdly grateful to have seen and photographed spider-webs: not one but two instances of serendipity in a single morning! Counting “spider webs” among one’s Thanksgiving blessings seems insanely sappy, but that’s how I felt yesterday morning. At that moment, “Thanksgiving” wasn’t a matter of counting big blessings, it was a matter of realizing the silly little things I appreciate each day: small blessings other folks might overlook.

On any given day, for example, I feel absurdly grateful to be healthy enough to walk the dog and tend to my work. When I come home from a long, tiring day teaching, I feel grateful to have a job that demands so much (every last bit sometimes) of my energy. Every time I go to the grocery store, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude to be able to fill my trunk with food, and I feel a similar sort of gratitude whenever I balance my checkbook or pay my bills. Beyond the basic blessings of having my health, a job, and enough money to provide food and shelter for myself, I find myself filling my journal day after day with scribbled sentences noting how satisfied I feel simply to sit at my kitchen table after another boring breakfast while Reggie lies sleeping on the floor. “I’m grateful for the sound of my dog breathing” sounds absurdly silly if you mention it as being one of this year’s blessings, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve said something similar in my journal, on plenty of days other than Thanksgiving.

I think we Americans need a holiday like Thanksgiving because most days, we live in a culture of complaint. When you turn on the TV, you’ll see talking heads shouting to see which political party can complain the loudest; when you turn on the radio, you’ll hear callers who have spent precious hours of their life waiting to voice their dissatisfaction with local sports, politics, or whatever. Around the office water cooler, workers whine about the boss, the workload, or the clients. At the local bar, you’ll hear folks complaining over cocktails about their partner, their mother-in-law, or their kids. Surfing the Internet, you’ll find a good portion of both the blog- and Twitter-sphere devoted to online rants and workday frustration. Venting is an important part of one’s emotional well-being, we tell ourselves, and complaining is one of the central ways we bond with other people. But why exactly should this be so? Why do we spend 364 days of our lives talking amongst ourselves about what’s wrong and only a single day-long holiday counting what’s right?

On this morning’s dog-walk, I noticed that both of the spider-webs I’d photographed yesterday were gone, having broken or been washed away under the weight of overnight rain. Now that those webs are no longer there, I’m even more grateful that I saw and photographed them yesterday when I had the chance. An annual Thanksgiving is like a point-and-shoot camera that focuses on blessings that are big and obvious, but most of the things we have to be grateful for are small, easy to overlook, and gossamer-thin. Today’s blessings might not be around tomorrow, so why wait another year to count those serendipities that can’t be numbered?

Click here for twelve random images from yesterday’s morning and afternoon walks around the neighborhood: a dozen ordinary blessings I’m grateful for.

 

After dark

Now that it is well past dark when I get home from teaching, I have to walk Reggie the moment I get home or not at all, for if I allow myself to linger in my warm and welcoming apartment, I’ll never want to leave. By the time Reggie and I return from a quick walk, all I want is to lock the door behind us, put on pajamas, and curl up for the night with a blanket and a book, my body believing it’s bedtime even though the clock says it’s barely 7pm.

 

Only connect

J and I have an ongoing joke about the number of perfect strangers who talk to us whenever we go anywhere in public. We regularly get asked for directions, or if we’re dressed in Bruins gear on the way to or from a hockey game, folks will ask us who the Bruins are playing, or what the score was, or what we think about a particular player. Folks will inquire about J’s camera, or they’ll make chitchat about the weather, how crowded the trolley is, or any other sort of random topic. It’s as if in place of the proverbial “Kick me” sign, someone stuck a sign on our backs that says “Talk to us: we’re friendly!”

J and I speculate that we must look normal, nonthreatening, and otherwise approachable: if you’re lost and need directions, you don’t want to look like a creep by asking a solitary member of the opposite sex for help, and you don’t want to bother a couple who looks Too Young, Too Hip, or Too Completely In Love to take time for your problems. J and I, on the other hand, apparently look Just Right. We don’t look like we’re too cool to be bothered, but we also don’t look like we’re so lonely and desperate, we’ll latch onto anyone who strikes up a conversation.

J and I look, in other words, perfectly average, and it seems that random strangers like to talk with average folks. Over the several years we’ve been dating, J and I have given countless directions to out-of-towners, once helped a guy in Atlanta buy baseball tickets from a sidewalk scalper, and last weekend tried (unsuccessfully) to explain to a young bewildered Asian woman why there were so many sports fans on the T even after the Red Sox season is over. (Apparently, they don’t play ice hockey where she comes from.)

Although neither of our respective exes was actively antagonistic toward strangers, neither J nor I had this experience of being so popular with strangers when we each were married. Although I occasionally had folks ask me for directions when I lived in Boston and took the T to and from school, strangers didn’t regularly talk to my ex and me when we were together in public. J and his ex-wife didn’t go to as many events as J and I do, so they had fewer opportunities to talk to strangers, but still, J insists that he didn’t talk to as many random folks when he was married as he does now that he’s dating me. Whatever secret conflicts and resentments both J and I experienced in our previous relationships, I’m guessing that tension was apparent to the strangers who didn’t talk with us. Sometimes you get a “vibe” that a silent couple is harboring hidden hostilities, and apparently J and I don’t project that vibe. Whereas my ex-husband often accused me of flirting or trying to upstage him if I simply behaved in my normal outgoing fashion, J doesn’t feel threatened if I speak up and act friendly with folks, so I do.

Yesterday afternoon, after having stopped to chat with a neighbor we’d seen raking leaves on our way to brunch, we dropped by another neighbor’s house for an open house fundraiser for Connect Africa, an organization that provides business and educational support for Ugandan villagers. While J and I browsed crafts made by Ugandan women working to support AIDS orphans, we chatted with the neighbor who had organized the open house, her husband, the friend who founded Connect Africa, and several women who were also browsing the handicrafts. “You should buy one,” I advised one woman who was tentatively considering a pile of intricately woven baskets. “Then you can use it to carry the jewelry you’ll want to buy.” I pointed to a small basket I’d filled with beaded bracelets and necklaces, and the woman nodded. Later, while J and I were selecting a colorful woven mat, agreeing that we’d find somewhere to put it, I saw the woman I’d talked to standing at the jewelry table filling a basket.

J and I ended up buying two armfuls of handicrafts, much to our hostess’ delight. “This is great,” J remarked, admiring a goblet-shaped basket he’d chosen as a desk-organizer. “Every time I look at this, I’ll think about where it came from, and the story behind it.” After we’d said our goodbyes and headed home with our African treasures, J observed, “You just spent more time talking to the neighbors in one afternoon than my ex-wife did the entire time we were married.”

 

Checking in

In the months after my divorce, a longtime friend I see only occasionally gave me a precious gift. At a gathering of friends who had learned only recently of my separation, M approached me apart from the others, looked me straight in the eyes, and asked, “So, how are you doing…really?”

It was an insightful question, borne from M’s long familiarity with the manner in which I’ll always put a bright face on any kind of hardship. Not swayed for a minute by my blithe insistence in public that I was doing fine, M wanted to know for sure, when there weren’t other folks around–when just the two of us could check-in, friend-to-friend, and when I didn’t have to maintain a Public Face–how was I doing, really?

Fortunately in that case, my public face matched my private one: I was doing fine in the months after my divorce, and I continue to do fine in the intervening years, since M has moved away so I see him even less frequently now than I did then. But M’s question has remained, like a koan, for me to contemplate, turning it over in my mind like a well-worn stone. “So, how am I doing…really?”

It’s a question, I’m coming to realize, that I revisit every morning in my journal. After I’ve scribbled about a page and a half about my to-do list, the weather, or whatever I did yesterday–after I’ve scribbled, in other words, about the superficial logistics of daily life–I find my writing typically shifts and settles, hunkering down and around this one question like a dog curled around a juicy bone. “So, how am I doing…really?” Apart from the mundane Must’s of today’s to-do list, what else is going on? Apart from the frenetic activity of work, chores, and social interaction, how are things when I’m not doing anything?

During the decade I devoted to pursuing my PhD, my life had very little room for contemplation. One of the most personally troubling things about that long slog was the sense that my dissertation–this big, unwieldy project–somehow had taken over my identity. Whenever I’d run into a friend, family member, or acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a long time, or whenever I met someone new and mentioned that I was a graduate student, I dreaded the inevitable question: “So, how is the dissertation coming?” When you’re in the middle of a decade-long slog toward a goal that seems distant and elusive, the last thing you want is to have to explain, again, that you’re still not done. During those dark days when the end seemed nowhere in sight, another long-time friend, himself in possession of not one but two PhDs, once greeted me with words that were sweeter than honey: “I don’t care how your dissertation is: how are you?”

It’s easy to define ourselves–or to let the rest of the world define us–in terms of what we do: how is our job, how bright and well-behaved are our children, how impressive are our accomplishments, or how big is our investment portfolio. But how am I, really? When you strip away the things I do, the things I own, or the obligations I am beholden to, who or what am I?

Each morning, my journal offers a place where I can contemplate this question, in a place where there’s no need for me to keep a bright public face. In the rest of my life, I check countless other things: as a teacher, for instance, I’m always checking my students’ work, or checking the syllabus to keep us on-topic, or checking the clock to keep track of class time. If I don’t check these things, after all, who will? But when it comes to the question of how I’m doing, really, nobody will check that for me, either. If I’m allowing myself to get swept up in daily details, who’s to keep me from being swept away entirely?

Sometimes we each have to serve as our own best friend. Even if you have a friend like M to inquire about your genuine wellbeing, it helps to check in with yourself every now and again just to make sure everything’s okay, really.

 

Home remedy

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling tired and achy, as if I hadn’t really slept. Worse yet, my throat was sore and scratchy, my body’s usual sign that I’m coming down with something. This morning, by contrast, I woke up feeling refreshed and energized, with not even a hint of a sore throat. My secret recipe for a 24-hour turnaround? Yesterday, I stayed home from school.

In high school, I was a Perfect Attendance kind of girl, and this habit lingered into both college and graduate school. Even on days when I felt sick as a dog, I’d drag myself to class and suffer through my symptoms, taking whatever over-the-counter medicines would get me through the day and feeling smug about my own hardiness. While everyone else was taking sick days to swaddle themselves in blankets, sip soup, and soak up some much needed rest and recovery time, I marched on like a good little soldier, never letting something as silly as sickness interfere with work.

In recent years, as my body has aged, I’ve abandoned the Perfect Attendance martyrdom of my youth. For one thing, I’ve learned that working while you’re sick only makes you sicker. I’ve learned from experience that the practice of tending to your presumably “must-do” to-dos when you should be resting usually backfires, as a drawn-out illness takes more time out of your schedule than does an infection you nip in the bud. I’ve also learned that while my immune system is probably stronger than most people’s, once an infection finds a chink in my proverbial armor, I’m prone to longer, more debilitating illnesses. Thanks to my asthma and allergies, I’m susceptible to respiratory infections, so even “just” a common cold often leads to laryngitis or bronchitis, two ailments I’ve spent entire seasons fighting.

In the past, when I’ve explained my time-tested home remedy of “l[ying] low–very low–at the first sign of a cold, quarantining myself in my apartment away from germ-laden college students and imbibing as much hot soup, tea, and Vitamin C as I can swallow,” I’ve felt like wimpy slacker. If I were healthier, tougher, or in possession of a stronger work ethic, I’d soldier on through sickness, like I did when I was younger. This year, in light of widespread fears over H1N1, the simple but incredibly sensible practice of calling in sick when you’re sick is suddenly fashionable. Not only have Keene State students and faculty been instructed to isolate themselves when they fall ill, even the federal government is instructing citizens to protect their coworkers by staying home when they’re sick.

So yesterday, I did my civic duty. Not only did I cancel my Tuesday classes in order to stay home and sip chicken soup and hot herbal tea, I spent a large portion of the day sleeping, keeping my germs to myself and bolstering my body’s natural defenses. Today, I feel 100% better, and I trust that tomorrow, I’ll be ready to climb back into the trenches, soldiering on as am employee with Almost Perfect attendance.

 

September stride

These days are perfect for walking. The mornings are as cool and crisp as the bite of a fresh cucumber, and the afternoons are filled to overflowing with sunlight, the air as dry as paper. On bright, brilliant days like these, I feel as if I could walk forever, my feet light and suntanned in my sandals, the way ahead of me smooth and wide as I settle into a long-gaited September stride.

It’s easy to feel healthy on days like today. It’s the second week of the semester at Keene State, and already I feel settled into a regular rhythm, rising in the morning with a clear sense of what I need to do and what can potentially slide. Slipping back into my weekday, academic-year schedule–the life I live in Keene on Monday through Thursday versus the life I live in Newton the other days–has felt like changing from one pair of comfortable, well-worn shoes to another. Here, in both places, is a schedule that has grown to fit me, a schedule that curls around the curves of my psyche like a well-worn glove. There is no burden and little effort in wearing a glove that fits, a glove that remembers the shape and movement of your particular hand. A good schedule, like a well-fitting glove, molds to the shape of your being; a good schedule, like a well-fitting glove, is as snug as a hug.

This morning I got up at 5 am without effort or complaint, as if my body already has been trained: “On Thursdays, we get up at 5:00.” It helps to have lived at a Zen Center, albeit years ago. Like riding a bike, the routine of getting up at five, bowing, and then sitting is something you never forget: you might fall out of the practice, but resuming it, once you’ve burnt off your initial inertia, feels like coming home, a single step into your own skin.

My routine in Newton is entirely different from my routine in Keene, and I’ve come to accept and even embrace that. It’s all about following my situation, recognizing that one morning regimen doesn’t fit all, nor does one morning regimen work for every morning. One of the most practical, helpful outcomes of my Zen practice is this flexible acceptance of routine. Every day at a Zen Center, you know exactly what you’ll do from 5 to 7 am, and every day on a Zen retreat, your entire day will be clearly and inexorably charted for you. On early days of retreat or when you’re new to Zen Center life, you might bridle against this routine, seeing it as monotony. In time, you’ll learn to embrace it, recognizing that nature’s most basic, life-giving, and creative rhythms–the inflow and outflow of breath, the regular beat of a heart, the daily cycle of sleep and awakening–are themselves monotonous. When you fight the schedule of retreat, it’s brutal and oppressive. When you grow tired of fighting and instead surrender to your situation, letting the schedule move you through your day as you simply show up at every allotted task, you find and tap into the Universe’s own energy, which can be spent but not irrevocably exhausted.

So at 7:15 I type these words, illustrating them with photos I uploaded last night; at 7:40 I’ll walk to campus to teach my 8:00 class to sleepy-eyed students. I will, in other words, simply show up for my life, not fighting or bewailing it. On a sunny September day that dawns in due time after its predecessor, I will naturally settle into the stride of clear-shining days.

 

Re-entry

I arrived back in Keene on Monday night, just in time to see scattered throngs of students walking home from their first day of fall semester classes. As I unpacked my car and got settled into my apartment, it occurred to me that I’m revisiting my own undergraduate days when I’d move home for the summer then return to campus the weekend before classes began, re-inhabiting a dorm room that felt like an empty shell upon entry.

It’s a strange sensation to move back into your own apartment after a summer away. I’d left the place tidy but not immaculate, and all this week I’ve been trying to reacquaint myself with the same old cupboards, closets, and quirks. I imagine this is what it’s like to return to a familiar vacation cottage every year: it takes a few days to remember where you put the colander the last time you used it, and it takes a few showers to remember exactly how hot the water runs. Here is my old, familiar bed, just how I’d left it with a few half-read magazines and a once-worn fleece tossed across the spread. How strange it is to sleep here alone after a summer of sharing a bed with boyfriend and beagle.

This week I’ve felt alien and odd on the streets of Keene as well as in my own apartment; so far, my classrooms are the only place where I’ve felt truly at-home, returning to a teaching ritual that, after more than 15 years of doing it, feels like second-nature. In my office at school, I nearly forgot the combination that opens my basement office, and once inside, I couldn’t remember my computer network password. But once I’m in front of a classroom of students, it feels like I’ve never left, with no fumbling to find a familiar but forgotten doorknob in the dark.

While I was gone, the quiet family across the street has been replaced by a houseful of college guys with pickup trucks; while I was gone, a handful of houses I regularly pass while walking the dog have begun remodeling projects. The houses that first arose as sticks at the start of summer are now finished and occupied, with lawn chairs out front that look like they’ve been there forever. While I was gone, in other words, the rest of the neighborhood has gone on living, not really noticing I was gone. It’s a lesson I should have learned long ago, but I have to learn it anew each year: time waits for no one.

 

Gone fishin’

On Tuesday night, I submitted my last batch of online grades for the summer, and yesterday afternoon, I sent my fall semester syllabi to be photocopied for next week. This means I’m pretty much off between now and Monday morning, when my next online term begins, with my first face-to-face classes in Keene starting on Tuesday.

When you’re a moonlighting adjunct, it’s rare to have a weekend (much less a long weekend) when you’re not teaching somewhere. Even during the weeks between online terms, there’s always grading from last term or course-prep for next term. And even during the summer months when you’re not teaching your face-to-face students, you’re still planning and prepping: already, I’m thinking ahead to spring term, when I’ll be teaching two sections of a new-to-me class as well as redesigning a class I’ve taught (and redesigned) countless times. When you’re a teacher who gives a damn about your teaching, there’s always something that needs tweaking and re-thinking.

In the meantime, yesterday afternoon I went for a long-overdue haircut, and last night I did some long-overdue laptop maintenance, installing software updates, backing-up documents, and doing a thorough virus and adware scan: the kind of things most folks do when they have a free weekend. And today, I’m turning my laptop OFF and am headed out into a cool and sunny day: the last few days of the “hoorah” called summer. I’ll see you on the flipside.