Today I noticed

Every day when I walk the dog, I try to notice at least one interesting thing. Sometimes I photograph that thing, and other times I simply notice it, making a mental note of the thing like an item checked off a to-do list.

Since Roxy is reactive around other dogs, we walk roughly the same route every day, predictability being our friend. This means I see pretty much the same things every day: the same Little Free Library at the junction of the same woodsy path, the same half-dead tree where either red-bellied woodpeckers or starlings nest, the same worksite where last year’s demolished house is resurrected as this year’s new construction.

On the mornings after windy trash days, the ground is strewn with items blown out of neighbors’ recycling bins: not exactly dirty laundry, but mementos, receipts, and notes that constitute yesterday’s news. Today I noticed a child’s art project proclaiming that Adian can count farm animals: as significant a milestone as any.

 

Hard candy Christmas

Our house has been playing Christmas music all November, and one of the songs in random rotation is a cover of Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas.”

Maybe I’ll dye my hair
Maybe I’ll move somewhere
Maybe I’ll get a car
Maybe I’ll drive so far they’ll all lose track
Me, I’ll bounce right back

The original is, of course, better–folks shouldn’t even try to cover Dolly’s songs since her versions will always be better–but still, the song is noteworthy regardless of who sings it because it is a prime example of a rare phenomenon: a song that passes as a Christmas song without being artificially upbeat and forcibly cheerful.

Maybe I’ll sleep real late
Maybe I’ll lose some weight
Maybe I’ll clear my junk
Maybe I’ll just get drunk on apple wine

Christmas is a complicated time: the season is unabashedly joyful for some but bittersweet or even downright tragic for others.

I’ll be fine and dandy
Lord, it’s like a hard candy Christmas
I’m barely getting through tomorrow
But still, I won’t let sorrow bring me way down

I’ve written before about Vince Guaraldi’s instrumental version of “Christmastime Is Here,” a song that is poignant and powerful precisely because it captures Charlie Brown’s existential loneliness during a season where everyone else is painfully happy.

Hey, maybe I’ll learn to sew
Maybe I’ll just lie low
Maybe I’ll hit the bars
Maybe I’ll count the stars until dawn
Me, I will go on

”Hard Candy Christmas” captures a similar mood. The song isn’t actually about Christmas, except for the mention of the holiday in the title.

Maybe I’ll settle down
Maybe I’ll just leave town
Maybe I’ll have some fun
Maybe I’ll meet someone and make him mine

Instead, the song is about trying to find one’s way in the face of disappointment and heartbreak.

I’ll be fine and dandy
Lord, it’s like a hard candy Christmas
I’m barely getting through tomorrow
But still, I won’t let sorrow bring me way down

The singer’s life is “like a hard candy Christmas” insofar as she is trying to put a brave face on heartbreak, resolving to be “fine and dandy” even as she’s “barely getting through tomorrow.” “Hard Candy Christmas” is a song about soldiering on, and I love that it slips under the radar of obligatory Christmas cheer.

 

Clinging

How exhausting it must be to be a tattered maple leaf weathering yet another day of brisk November winds, tenaciously refusing to fall.

 

Elsewhere

With Thanksgiving behind us, we’ve started the last two-and-a-half weeks of the face-to-face semester. Normally, I’d count down my remaining class days knowing the moment my on-campus obligations are over, I’d hunker down at home, ready to grade papers in pajamas.

This year, I have a different goal in sight. As soon as my class sessions are over and weather permits, I’m planning to drive to Ohio, where I’ll visit my Mom and help clean out her house by day, then grade papers by night. I don’t normally like to travel in December–the weather is too unpredictable, holiday travel is too hectic, and the reward for any busy semester is the ability to stay home and satisfy my homebody heart–but this isn’t any normal semester.

This year, my sights are aimed toward a quick getaway to Ohio then back home before the busiest season of holiday travel begins. So while many of my colleagues and students alike are struggling to get back into the swing of the semester, I have a renewed focus to blaze through my to-do lists, teach the final weeks of classes, then pack up the car and be gone. My car has always been one of my secret sanctuaries, and right now my heart is elsewhere.

 

Strange bedfellows

Last night, I dreamed I was visiting my mother. She was staying in an apartment complex I had never visited before, and I kept getting lost in a maze of corridors and courtyards.

As I circled the complex trying to find my way, I kept passing a leafless beech tree with a large cavity in its trunk. “That would be a great nest for an owl,” I thought to myself…and indeed, after passing the same tree umpteen times, I finally looked inside the hole and saw a great horned owl roosting next to a sleeping calico cat.

I snapped a photo of the two creatures then shared it on Instagram with the caption “Roommates.” When I finally found my Mom’s apartment, I excitedly told her about the owl and cat, but when I tried to show her the photo on my phone, I couldn’t get it to load.

 

Not yet flown

Out of respect for my Mom’s privacy, I haven’t said much about her current medical situation: that isn’t my story to tell. But if you were to ask me how I’ve been doing this past month, my honest answer would be I’m stuck in the unsettling uncertainty of anticipatory grieving.

People often talk about the stages of grief, a process that is less like a line and more like a spiral: here we go again, cycling through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, ad infinitum. When my Dad died in 2019, I took comfort in counting the seven weeks of traditional Buddhist mourning. Although mourning doesn’t end after 49 days, having a timeline was helpful, as I could tell myself I was moving through a process that would evolve over time.

Anticipatory grief, on the other hand, has no timeline, no schedule, and no landmarks to notice and check off. Anticipatory grief feels like waiting in a long queue leading to a crowded waiting room outside a destination you don’t want to go to. You have no idea how long you’ll be stuck, and you don’t know whether you should hope for things to hurry up or slow down.

When my Dad died, the most difficult moment was my first day back to work after flying to Ohio to comfort my Mom and sisters. Going back to teaching when my Dad was newly dead felt wrong in every way: somehow, I was supposed to return to normal as if nothing had happened.

These current days of anticipatory grieving feel wrong in a similar way. Then, it felt wrong to move on and return to normal when things were very much not normal. Now, there is no moving on or returning to normal because nothing has happened yet. The clock of grief hasn’t started, so moving on is a myth. Instead, I’m stuck in an unsettled limbo where my sisters and I know how my Mom’s story will end, but we don’t know when.

Anticipatory grief is like a time warp wrapped in uncertainty mired in sadness. On Thanksgiving morning, I heard Here and Now replay the story of Robin Young traveling to Vermont to see snow geese with her now-deceased uncle, and I burst into spontaneous tears.

Unlike Robin Young’s uncle, my Mom hasn’t yet died, and unlike the snow geese in the story, my Mom hasn’t yet flown. But even though the process of actual mourning hasn’t started, I grieve at the knowledge that there will be no more birding trips with my parents to see geese or eagles or nesting herons. Those days are already gone.

 

Sleepers awake

The other night I woke around 3:00 am and couldn’t sleep–well, I probably awoke around 2:00 but lay abed until 3:00 or so, when I got up and went to the bathroom. On my way I grabbed my tablet so I could look up the French term for the middle-of-the-night wakefulness that was common in the pre-industrial world, when folks would retire when it got dark, sleep until the wee hours, then wake and do things before heading back to bed for a second stint of sleep.

The word for this is dorveille, and it’s something I began to experience years ago during perimenopause, when I’d awake to waves of dry, sweatless heat: not night sweats, but something I called my Dry Roasts.

In those days, I’d fret over the phenomenon, worrying about the sleep I was losing. Eventually, though, I came to practice a bit of advice my Mom had given me when I was a child and had no problems sleeping. My Mom always said that if you find yourself awake in the middle of the night, don’t toss and turn. Just lie still and let your body rest even if your mind is awake. The rest, she said, will do your body good.

I practice this lying-quietly-while-mentally-wide-awake most nights…but sometimes, I get up, go to the kitchen for a drink, then stay up reading a while, still letting my body rest (albeit in an upright position) while giving my mind something to do.

So the other night, I got up, grabbed my tablet, then read a New York Times article about dorveille–a concept I first heard about in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle. But while Ray Carney uses his wide-awake middle-of-the-night hours to do crooked deeds, I use mine to read or mentally prep classes or write blog posts like this one in my head.

 

Abundance

Today, for the first time since 2019, J and I went to Davio’s in Chestnut Hill for Thanksgiving dinner. Although J and I regularly go out for lunch, we rarely go out to dinner, so tonight was a rare splurge, with salmon for me, filet mignon for J, and a handful of side dishes we shared.

After we finished our dinner, drinks, and dessert, J and I walked around the closed shops near Davio’s, enjoying brightly lit windows and holiday decorations. It was already after dark, so the full cases at Mia’s Brooklyn Bakery glowed like sweet beacons.

Every year, J and I have much to be thankful for: our relative good health, continued employment, and settled, comfortable existence. Every time there is still money in our checking account after I’ve paid our monthly bills, I feel a rush of gratitude. Window shopping on a brisk, already-dark November evening felt like an embarrassment of riches: so much abundance close at hand.

 

Some assembly required

When I taught at Babson on Monday, I found a cardboard box containing a handful of wooden letters. The letters didn’t seem to spell anything; instead, they seemed to be left behind after a student presentation or project.

I can’t think of a better metaphor for creativity than a castoff box of random letters. Here are the building blocks of meaning; you just have to arrange them to create your own message.

 

Ghost town

College campuses during Thanksgiving week are like ghost towns, with students and professors alike vanishing ahead of the holiday.

Yesterday at Babson and today at Framingham State, I held my usual office hours followed by optional class sessions with no lesson or lecture, just me in the classroom ready to answer questions and chat one-on-one with whoever showed up. It’s a way to give students a head-start on their holiday travel plans, me a chance to catch up with grading, and everyone a more relaxing start to a too-short long weekend.