Tag Archives: relationships

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Solitude and Community

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Steve and I have scheduled a Summit for today.  This is what we call our periodic “relationship discussions” where we aim our canoes and talk about where we’re headed and what we want.  I tend to have a deer-in-the-headlight kind of reaction to certain phrases that have been used in these intense forums simply because I get over-anxious about coming up with a “right answer”.  One of those phrases is “on the same page”.  I hate it when Steve uses that expression, and I have forbid it from future talks. It makes me freeze up. “What does that mean?  Do I have to think the same way as you?  Do I have to be you?  I don’t know how to do that!”  So he now describes what he’s after in a different way.  Another question that is beginning to have the freeze effect is “What do you want?”  I am dangerously close to over-thinking that one, too, and getting defensive.  “What do I want when?  Now?  5 years from now?  What do I want about what?  I don’t know what I want!”  It was really helpful when he put it to me this way: “We have a really great relationship.  But we can always do better.  What are some areas where you want us to do better or differently than what we’re doing now?”  Suddenly, I began to have thoughts and ideas where before I would just draw a blank.

The first area on my brainstorm list was community.  I want to do better in this area.  We are both nurturing our inner lives very conscientiously and intentionally, and I really like that.  I also want to work intentionally on community.  This morning, I received notice of a new post by thousandfoldecho.  The quote by Orhan Pamuk described the formation of a writer’s inner life so well.  The blog author then turned that question over to musicians and asked, “What do you think of the musician’s paradox of needing both solitude and community?”  I think this is probably any human’s paradox.  We all benefit from both.  The work of finding that balance in your own life is what keeps my partner and me coming back together for Summit meetings.

So how do you go about building community, finding and developing relationships where you can be your true, honest self?  I am more conscious of being myself in every encounter now that I’m focusing on that.  I used to just slip into roles very easily without a thought.  That was the actress in me.  It was a way of life that was smooth and slippery, easy to glide by.  I would be who people wanted me to be.  Now, I’m trying to allow myself to be…myself.  Even with the grocery clerk.  And my broker’s secretary.  And my voice students.  This is a no-brainer to many people, and they wouldn’t know how to do anything else.  I think I got into “acting” very young and had some early encouragement that kept me there.  My inner life was so different.  Writing is a way for me to really exercise that inner self, bring it out of hiding without costuming it for a certain audience.  One writer whom I really admire is Annie Dillard.  I just finished An American Childhood and even had a dream about meeting her.  I love how she writes about her inner life and becoming aware of others.  But I’ll save that for another post.  For today, I’ll leave you with this photo.  I think watching waves roll into shore is a good background for musing about solitude and community.  I invite you to share your thoughts on the subject, too!

Lake Michigan again

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What are you doing the rest of your life?

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Steve and I had a long ramble along the Ice Age Trail yesterday in the golden, muddy afternoon.  We got talking about decision making, finances, the next step of our lives.  These are tough talks for us.  They require concentration, attention, soul-searching, vulnerability, risk…and we love it. Really, we do.  Getting past drifting and down to brass tacks really feels good in a relationship.  It feels real, genuine.  This is not a dreamy romance.  This is a shared life.  Along the way, I took some photographs, and now looking at them, I like the way they illustrate the terrain of our conversation.

Are you bound to habits, a lifestyle, a way of thinking that is keeping you together in some way, but may not be allowing you to grow and change?

What do you see when you look out to the horizon?  Where are you “pointing your canoe”?  How will you use your energy to get there?

Are you keeping open to the flow of all different variables?  Are you aware of the constancy of change?  Are you able to employ your intuition and avoid getting hemmed in by dogma?  Are you remembering the elemental things, the things that are most important to you?  Do you want to move forward or stay where you are right now?  Are you willing to wear away at obstacles to get to a new place?

While we were standing at the spring, and I was trying to figure out how to change the settings on my camera to get the rocks into sharp focus and the water into that soft, fuzzy blur I see in other peoples’ photos, I realized that we were deep into an important conversation, and I had better put the camera away!  So I did.  We kept talking.  By the time we were driving home in the car, I was compiling a list of words to remind myself of the things we agreed were important to us in living our lives.  Helping, challenging, rehabilitating, keeping open a place for something to grow, nurturing, teaching…and outdoors.  When I got home, I decided to see what would happen if I put a combination of those words into the search engine.  I came up with something that really sparked my interest.  An ecovillage in northeastern Missouri called Dancing Rabbit.  So I’m investigating.  Stay tuned! (or as Stuart would say, “Watch this space.”)

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The Flow of Emotions

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Peace like a river.  After the burning of Valhalla, the Rhine surges its banks and brings everything back to a gentle equilibrium.  Sometimes I feel like I’ve burned out on the passions of the world and slipped into the calm of old age and wisdom….and then the flames flicker under the surface, and I dive into the drama with an eagerness that mystifies me.  Why do I want to go there?  Is it my ego grasping for some thrill ride?  Beginnings and endings are often infused with heightened emotion, even and maybe especially in the recollection of them.   There’s an excitement to those feelings that can be addictive.  I wallow in the concept of new love and the tearful goodbyes.  And then I get a headache and puffy eyes and wonder why I’m so masochistic.   I blame hormones.  And social traditions like Valentine’s Day.

I appreciate my partner and the safe but challenging environment he creates.  He asks me what I’m feeling and waits patiently while I try to fashion words from the vulnerable soup of my damp thoughts.  I am learning to be aware of myself, my cyclical moods and intractable psychological baggage.   He senses when I’m “stuck” and when I’m “flowing”.  And so, I dedicate this photo to him:

Thanks, Steve, for your compassion.

 

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New Year’s Eve

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The social tradition in this country is to spend New Year’s Eve with the person who is most important to you, someone with whom you’d like to spend your future.  That first kiss of the New Year is supposed to impart good fortune for the year to come.  For many Americans, then, it’s off to parties to drink up and link up in an attempt to avoid the curse of loneliness for the rest of your life.

Yeah, well, I’ve never seen it quite like that.  You see, New Year’s Eve is also my mother’s birthday.  We always spent it at home, having a family celebration.  When I got married and moved out, my new nuclear family did the same thing.  We dressed up in prom gowns and tuxes (and sometimes like pirates) and danced in the living room, sipping champagne and listening to the weirdest music we had.  Kisses were passed between husbands and wives and fathers and daughters and mothers and sons and sometimes siblings.  Our future was with the family; our past was with the family.  The two were intertwined, and we liked it that way.  We watched the ball drop in NYC some years, and sometimes we just let the kids run outdoors with big spoons and pots and pans and make all the noise they liked at midnight.  One year, we were visiting Jim’s best friend’s family, and the kids had a silly string fight in the middle of the street that afternoon.  They made a huge mess.   Which makes me wonder: who cleans up the confetti after New Year’s Eve in NYC?  How much gets recycled?

New Year's Eve 1992 or 1993?

Who do I want to be next year?  My future is rooted in my past and lived in the present.  I will always live with my family legacy coursing through my veins, pulsating in my brain.  I am my father & mother’s daughter, Jim’s lover, my kids’ mother, and that will stay with me year after year.  I am also Steve’s partner, a writer, a budding naturalist.  I hope to become a home economist & ecologist.  I want to keep on practicing awareness, appreciation, attitude and action.  Ultimately, the person with whom I will spend my future is…myself.  At the stroke of midnight, I’ll look myself in the eye and say, “You and me, kid!  It’s gonna be a great year!”  Hopefully, I won’t feel cross-eyed and alone when I do.  And I promise I’ll clean up after myself.

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Nerd Love

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Last night, we watched the 1955 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, “Marty”, starring Ernest Borgnine.  The year this movie was released was the same year my parents graduated from college and got married.  My mother could have played the heroine, a gentle, intelligent young woman with a narrow Celtic jaw and a fabulously stylish but thrifty wardrobe.  Except she was just 20 when she got married, and Clara in the movie is a dangerously spinster-approaching 29.  Marty is “the stocky fellow”, an Italian butcher and a bachelor at 34.  My dad was “that cute boy on crutches” who was a little soft around the middle due to a bum knee that kept him from vigorous exercise.  The social game of the day in New York City was to go to The Stardust Ballroom, a dance hall “loaded with tomatoes”.  Marty and Clara are the kind who get turned down for dances.  He owns up to the fact that they are “dogs”, but awkwardly, tenderly, they begin to treat each other like real human beings.  They speak honestly together while Marty’s Italian family covers up true emotions with white lies and secrets and his buddies pretend machismo.  The two of them create a little oasis of sanity in the desert of social confusion.  And it’s charming, really.

Happy nerds on opera night

All of us who grew up believing “that love was meant for beauty queens and high school girls with clear skin smiles who married young and then retired” (Tara Mclean) might find a champion in Marty, who recognizes a chance for happiness in being himself, like Motel in “Fiddler on the Roof” who asserts that “even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness”.   Why does our society put so much pressure and competition into the process of discerning your identity and living authentically?  I suppose that our economy runs on producing that neurosis.  “You couldn’t possibly find love or happiness without our product!”  Maybe there’s a lurking sense that civilization is actually advanced by feeding that neurosis in order to produce those marvelous, gorgeous, socially admirable types.   God forbid that the misfits should breed.  And so, the universal theme emerges: misfits and nerds are humans, too, and we all belong in that category, really.  The “in crowd” and the “out crowd” are fantasies.  We are ‘the crowd’, that’s all.

The Italian mothers in Marty’s neighborhood keep up this refrain: “You oughta be ashamed of yourself.  34 years old…when are you gonna get married!”  Shame.  God, what a horrible thing to put on someone.  I am a mother, I oughta know.  I used it enough.  Now I feel like shouting out, “Never mind what I said before!  Be happy!!”   Aren’t we all entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness  as long as we aren’t harming anyone?  Ah, yes, it can get complicated.  The pursuit of my happiness might impinge on the pursuit of your happiness.  It happens.  I can’t be a happy Italian mamma unless all my sons are married to Italian women and producing grandchildren that I can feed.  Maybe happiness has to be a responsibility that doesn’t require someone else’s participation.  Can I be a happy Italian mamma all by myself, cooking for myself, caring for myself, doing things I enjoy, entering into relationships by mutual agreement, not by obligation?  Marty’s aunt keeps saying, “I’m 56 years old, a widow.  This is the worst time of life.  I’ve got no one to cook for, to clean for…”  Marty’s girl suggests that she take up some “hobbies” and the old women stare at her as if she’s just shot a hole in her own forehead.  God forbid I should take responsibility for my own happiness!  No, make that “God require that I should take responsibility for my own happiness”.

Be happy, people!  Live happy, love happy.

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Giving Thanks, Part II

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Today I go down to Illinois to visit with my 4 children.  I am looking forward to seeing them and having some serious conversations about how we want to live on this planet.  They’re all in their 20s now, ripe for pointing their canoes toward the dreams and goals on their horizon and spending the rest of their lives paddling away in the directions of their choice.  I am also at a juncture of my life where I get to decide how to live out the rest of it.  So, what will we make of it?  Will we have some goals in common toward which we can paddle together?  I hope so.  We’ll see.  Family Summit Meeting 2011, here we come.

Oh, yeah.  More food and fun and cuddles all around as well!

Yesterday's table before guests arrived

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Giving Thanks

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One year ago, my house had been up for sale with no offers for 8 months, despite making huge drops in the listing price.  We celebrated our last Thanksgiving in the home we had occupied for 20 years with two of my daughters, my eldest’s First Mate, and two college friends of my youngest.  We filled the place with warmth, laughter, good smells and love.  Two days later, I got the offer.  Closing date was January11.  Without hiring professional movers, except for the baby grand piano, Steve and I moved out everything in the house, basement, patio and 3-car garage.  Numerous trips in the van distributed the contents to Madison, Chicago, Harvard, charities, storage and Milwaukee.  We had help from the First Mate’s dad and fireman friend for the couch and a super-heavy TV, but the rest we managed ourselves.  I remember trying to corral the cat after everything else was gone.  She had nowhere to hide, poor thing, and she refused to get into a cat carrier.  Steve agreed to drive the van with her in the passenger seat in the bottom portion of the carrier, top removed.  He petted her and talked to her soothingly as he drove the two hours here.  I drove Jim’s car, grateful not to be distracted by her.

Steve’s place was stuffed to the gills with boxes, furniture, books, and cat.  I marvel at how he made room for us.  He’d been living alone for about a dozen years, five years in this place.  We lived, worked, played, loved and engaged in our relationship intensely, doing the dance of supporting, caring, giving and taking.  There were many tearful times, there was a 4-week adventure on the road, there were late-night Summit Meetings and many long walks through the countryside.  I woke this morning and began to think of giving thanks.  I looked at him sleeping next to me, and my nose prickled.  A quiet stream leaked down my cheeks.  I am so lucky to have a best friend, someone who truly loves me.  I am so grateful to be here, to have a life I love, to be at home again.

For all of you, whatever your situation, I wish you Godspeed to your home.  Welcome.

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Table Talk

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What will you talk about around the table tomorrow?  Politics, religion, people, emotions, the minutiae of your daily life?  Do you talk about ideas with your family or do you avoid certain subjects because of differing opinions?  Do you stick to sports or music or family history?  Do you feel that honesty is the best part of conversation or that getting along is more important?  Do you provide conversation starters or verbal games to focus your group?

When my kids were in high school, I would often try to prime the pump at family gatherings to get them to talk about their values.  I knew their personalities were forming and changing rapidly, and I think I was a bit terrified that I didn’t know them at all.  I would have everyone list things they were thankful for on Thanksgiving and share favorite memories at birthdays.  I even had a book of conversation starters that I set on the table.  I admit that I was also keen on steering them away from pop culture references that they all shared that left out my husband and me.  How many times can you listen to the dialogue to “Anchor Man” at the dinner table before you lose brain cells?

I grew up in a family that talked about many subjects at the table.  An entire wall of reference books stood behind the dining room table.  My father would nip quarreling in the bud by saying, “It’s no use arguing about facts.”  Then he’d look up whatever piece of information was in dispute.  This was before you could Google everything in seconds.  I don’t remember feeling very comfortable talking about my opinions, though.  My father was a very strong authoritarian with a definition of “right” and “wrong” for everything.  I feared his disappointment and his wrath, and I didn’t feel smart enough to legitimize any of my own thoughts.  I would let my older sister or my younger brother engage in differences of opinion while I listened.  I would also look for an opportunity to tell an amusing story and make everyone laugh.  I just wanted to be liked.

Ideas are important.  We live in interesting times.  Values are important, emotions are important, knowing who your children are is important, appreciating your loved ones is important, challenge is important, peace is important, connecting is important.  I usually put in a lot of effort in the kitchen before a holiday meal, and I suppose the payoff is having people be willing to sit down together for a couple of hours minimum.  I’m really glad my kids are all in their 20s now so that is not too much to expect.  But I won’t see them until Friday.  Tomorrow, I’ll have Steve’s family at my table.  I am looking forward to getting to know them better.  I’m hoping we’ll share ideas and opinions and sharpen each other as well as appreciate and love on each other.  I also hope that I will be able to speak honestly about myself and let them get to know me.  And I’ll probably try to make them all laugh.  I can’t help it; I do that.

Ready so far: pecan pie and cranberry-orange relish. More to come.

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If Music Be the Food…Play On!

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Steve purchased 32 CDs through an e-Bay auction last week.  Beethoven, Bruckner, Handel, Haydn and Schubert, mostly.  I think he’s trying to collect at least one recording of every Schubert piece…and there are more than 900 compositions cataloged.   Last night, he put on Beethoven’s first symphony when I got home from class.  I poured myself a glass of Cupcake Red Velvet and settled in under the blanket on the squishy couch with him.  Closing my eyes, I got an immediate visual memory of my father in his brown chair with the matching ottoman sitting next to the stereo cabinet, reading glasses and a glass of Kirigin Cellars Vino de Mocha in a wooden coaster beside him on the redwood burl table.   My mother is in the red rocking chair, knitting away on another warm pastel hat for a preemie at the hospital.  There’s a fire in the fireplace, and I imagine myself and Steve lying in front of it on the oriental rug.  We are all enjoying early Beethoven together, eyes closing in pleasure, warm and satisfied against the chill of a dark November.

I wish that this were possible.  I even imagine Jim lying on the tan sofa opposite the fireplace and wish I could picture Steve’s dad there as well.  It comforts me to think that music bringing us all together.  Music has been at the foundation of all of our lives in different ways.  My father and mother courted by going to concerts in college.  Jim’s mother, my mother-in-law, was a concert pianist.  Steve and his dad would listen to records in their den, shutting out all distractions.  My dad, Steve’s dad, and Jim are dead, but they seem to keep resonating music nevertheless.  We listen to music intently, we feel it and breathe it.  There is no TV in the room.  We haven’t got headphones or ear buds.  We let the music fill the space available.   In this way, we live with music and it nourishes us.  That is something we share in common, something sacred, I think.

Of course, there are other ways to relate and other kinds of music.  My kids and I crank up Beetles tunes and sing along or belt out show tunes together.   I’m introducing my youngest to opera now, and wondering how much they choose to listen to “Classical” music on their own.   I know that my oldest cherishes the music she sang with her father when they were in Chicago Master Singers together.  Now, she’s the lead vocalist in a punk band.

But it’s all good.  If we’d lived 150 years ago before recorded music was available, I’m sure we’d be picking up instruments and singing to ourselves all the live long day.  It’s impossible for me to imagine our life without music.  And something about the darkness of the season makes the music seem all the more life-giving.

So, I think I’ll turn off this computer and go downstairs where Steve is playing his CDs.  I’m as thankful for this abundance as I am for food.