Alex is taking a finance class. And although finance sounds about as boring to me as watching paint dry (which actually, would be more interesting...), he has a fantastic extra credit assignment, which goes something like this: make a list of 100 things you hope to accomplish before you die. When he told me about the assignment, I immediately exclaimed "Oh! I want to do that too!" Today seems a good day to do this. We went to a funeral of a dear family friend, someone who seemed to embrace doing what he loved to do. And so there is his fingerprint on this list. It just seems fitting. In no particular order:
1. Go to India. I have wanted to go to India since my freshman year of college, when I took a seminar on Indian Civilization. My friend Jenny performed mudras in class. She went to India and brought me back a scarf with bangles. I still wear it today.
2. Reread all of Vonnegut's novels.
3. Go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with Alex, my favorite hiking companion. I am fascinated by pilgrimage in general. It is what I will do for my sabbatical in two years.
4. Learn how to make turducken. Because, why not?
5. Start painting again.
6. Go on a yoga retreat.
7. Finish my dissertation.
8. Reacquaint myself with Italian, well enough to reread Dante and Petrarch and Boccacio.
9. Learn how to play my ukulele.
10. Make quince jam. I have a quince tree. I should make preserves from the fruit. It seems only right.
11. Take my niece to New York and show her the Met and The Cloisters. Take her to a Broadway play, and to Serendipity for frozen hot chocolate.
12. Read all of Aldous Huxley. I haven't. But I have them all. So that's a good start.
13. Go to Petra. And Cappadocia. And anywhere else I can visit monasteries carved from rock.
14. Remember to screw the caps on things and shut the cabinets and so on...this seems like a no-brainer. For me, not so much.
15. Learn how to make all of my mother-in-law's Austrian meals. So that I can make them for our children. And our grandchildren.
16. Which would require children. I would like a child. Just one is good.
17. Keep in touch with old friends.
18. Keep in touch with former students.
19. Learn how to knit. Well. As in better than the kindergarten-looking, 8 foot long scarf that I made a couple of years ago.
20. If I have children, allow them to be children. And allow them to make mistakes. And not worry too much. And love being a child.
21. Learn German well enough to get by in Austria. And teach our children Alex's first language.
22. Teach an art history course.
23. Take a dance class again.
24. Go to Hawaii. My grandmother went there. She said it was her favorite place on earth.
25. Perfect my photography skills.
26. Be better about taking my vitamins.
27. Not be so afraid of karaoke.
28. Write a poem for Gran.
29. Do something meaningful with my Native American heritage.
30. Learn how to make injera. Seriously.
31. Write a book.
32. Actually join a Lupus support group.
33. Learn to sort of enjoy ski culture. Maybe.
34. Go to as many dance performances as possible.
35. Vague, but start a foundation for something. I live in Baltimore, after all.
36. Go back to Tartine and have their salmon a few more times.
37. Design the perfect sock.
38. More dogs.
39. Run in the rain more. I love that.
40. Get better at directions. I have no sense of direction.
41. Read all of Jorge Amado's books again. Make a painting out of them.
42. Learn to bake the perfect loaf of bread. Find someone to teach me this skill.
43. Let go. Just let go.
44. Be authentic.
45. When the wrinkles come, accept them as signs of a life well-lived.
46. But continue to wear sunscreen.
47. Travel, travel travel. That is all.
48. Take a year and live by the sea or the ocean. And write. Cherish every day of that year.
49. Be the good when things are bad.
50. Get better at framing pictures.
51. Get better at hanging pictures.
52. Just because I don't work in a museum anymore doesn't mean I shouldn't go to them. Museums need love.
53. Get over the things I will never be. Celebrate the things I am.
54. Come to terms with winter.
55. Save the seeds. Share them. Keep things generative.
56. Discover an appreciation for the rhododendron, because I currently do not have one.
57. Never lose my love of a good porch.
58. An act of love a day. Just do it.
59. Make sure my students and future unknown potential child do it too.
60. Always write cards.
61. Slow down.
62. Continue to wear my heart on my sleeve.
63. Add a protective layer of Teflon to that heart.
64. Sit in silence daily.
65. Continued wonder.
66. Embrace my introvertedness. It's okay to be this way.
67. And don't let it get in the way of living.
68. Thank Mom and Dad for everything. So much everything.
69. Bonsai? I always wanted to do bonsai, but does it hurt the tree?
70. In 2025, go to West Point for role call. I promised Gran I would.
71. Keep my promises.
72. Make sure future unknown potential child loves to read as much as I do.
73. Relearn the birdsongs.
74. Speaking of birds, find a cool picture of a pelican.
75. Hear Thich Nhat Hanh in person.
76. Go to a Joni Mitchell concert (does she still perform?)
77. Do the little things that make others' lives better.
78. Perfect my malfatti-making. It's almost there.
79. Always forgive.
80. Don't become angry.
81. Don't be a victim to someone else's anger again.
82. Accomplish the thing you didn't imagine you would.
83. Maintain imagination.
84. With future unknown potential child, foster imagination.
85. And may that imagination be used to better some pocket of the world.
86. Be the yin to Alex's yang.
87. Sing more. I'm not half bad.
88. Go back to Calvert Cliffs.
89. Always take stock of what matters.
90. Never let time or busyness prevent me from being appreciative.
91. Stop losing things.
92. Bring love wherever it is needed or wanted.
93. Sardinia because why not?
94. Portugal because why not?
95. A new set of pastels because Granddad would be proud to see me sketching and creating again.
96. Let the light in.
97. Keep the cold - temperature-wise and personality-wise - out.
98. Give more than you get.
99. Always acknowledge grace in others (inner and outer).
100. Let what survives of me be love.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Eighteen Months (December 2012)
On Thursday, he turned eighteen months old. That morning, I gathered him in my arms and he gathered me in his, and to mark the occasion, we blew bubbles in his bedroom. He sat Buddha-style in my lap: "Bubble? Bubble? Bubble!" he exclaimed, and he smiled, all magic, all-knowing, all little boy. All of a sudden.
I brought him into the bathroom with me while I showered so that the hot steam could loosen his winter's cough. He lined up the bottles of lotion and bubble bath, counting them " Three, three, THREE!", moving them from one area of the gray tiled floor to another. "Three!" He pokes his head around the corner of the shower curtain. "Hiiiiiiiiii," his sing-song voice cutting through the steam as a beam of light.
In the evening, after work and play, and a greeting from the neighborhood kitten, I put him in his "grandpa" flannel pajamas, buried my face in his neck, and said goodnight before leaving to meet a friend. He cries when I leave sometimes - real tears, the kind that taste like innocence, loss and love all at once. But in the moment of my leaving, he was busy at play with his daddy, bouncing yo-yo fashion on the couch, his flyaway hair full of static and boyish rebellion.
On Friday, before he awoke, I read three Emily Rapp pieces, and wept bitterly that her son has to die so soon. I drank my coffee by the Christmas tree, and watched him sleep on the monitor, his little bottom in the air.
Eighteen months can be measured and not. Before we know it, he will be "Three, three, THREE!" and our hearts will expand in tandem. May he count his days of innocence, and may we treasure them too.
I brought him into the bathroom with me while I showered so that the hot steam could loosen his winter's cough. He lined up the bottles of lotion and bubble bath, counting them " Three, three, THREE!", moving them from one area of the gray tiled floor to another. "Three!" He pokes his head around the corner of the shower curtain. "Hiiiiiiiiii," his sing-song voice cutting through the steam as a beam of light.
In the evening, after work and play, and a greeting from the neighborhood kitten, I put him in his "grandpa" flannel pajamas, buried my face in his neck, and said goodnight before leaving to meet a friend. He cries when I leave sometimes - real tears, the kind that taste like innocence, loss and love all at once. But in the moment of my leaving, he was busy at play with his daddy, bouncing yo-yo fashion on the couch, his flyaway hair full of static and boyish rebellion.
On Friday, before he awoke, I read three Emily Rapp pieces, and wept bitterly that her son has to die so soon. I drank my coffee by the Christmas tree, and watched him sleep on the monitor, his little bottom in the air.
Eighteen months can be measured and not. Before we know it, he will be "Three, three, THREE!" and our hearts will expand in tandem. May he count his days of innocence, and may we treasure them too.
Six bowling balls are in the trunk (2009)
Today I took a cab home from work. I had groceries. Lots of them. It was steamy piping hot and I had purchased vast quantities of aloe juice. Because, you know, I was thirsty. My work bag, I will freely admit, is vaguely Mary Poppins-ish in its size, but more so in the amount of things I manage to cram into it, which today included my laptop, a textbook, my planner, the school directory, two bottles of mineral water, a granola bar and one very sad apple, one bottle of coconut water, a stack of 70 student files that I brought home to read, random pens that work and don't work, and six highlighters. Oh - and a bottle of wine from a dear friend.
So I decided to cab it. When the driver arrived some minutes later, I didn't recognize him at first. Some people probably don't care about who drives them, or their lives. Some people want silence. I get that. A cab can be a meditative pause when one can exhale and not expect the person driving the car to say testily, "What's up with you? Why are you sighing?" It's a gift of time for many, and that makes sense.
I wrote previously about my love of a good cab, and the stories collected through conversation and fellowship. It's kind of like an internal version of Humans of New York, without the artsy photography, the recording of a person's experience, and the posting on Facebook. The post-it note memory instead is stuck to my heart as a really neat experience with an equally inspiring soul. Cab conversations keep me going.
So today, with my groceries and my aloe juice and highlighters, and those blasted ringlets that refuse to conform to my ponytail tickling my neck, I may have said something along the lines of "BLESS YOUR APPEARANCE AT THIS VERY MOMENT." It was an all-caps declaration. And then I realized in all that I was carrying, I didn't recognize Babu. He'd grown some facial hair. He too was hot. And tired. In that way that Babu has though, he said "Aww Paige, what has you down?"
Sometimes shame creeps along slowly, that snail that glides dolefully up one's neck. Other times, it hits one like a Mack Truck. Shame on you, Paige! He's hot, too! He's got things he's carrying! And you don't know a quarter of it! I did know that Babu has been trying to get his family to the States. They live in Nigeria: a wife, a son, two daughters. He misses birthdays and milestones. He misses the first lost tooth, the first day of school, his wife's cooking. "No matter," he shared with me one day. "We will find our way back to one another somehow, and when it is right."
Patience of Job, I say. And then some.
Today, Babu saw my impressive load and panic danced across his face. I think I witnessed at least five expressions in about ten seconds. "Ummmm...." he said, rubbing the new addition of the goatee. "The thing is Paige, six bowling balls are in the trunk."
I love it when people make statements of this sort, because they could easily be the beginning of a story. Sometimes, such declarations are stories without further embellishment. "Six bowling balls are in the trunk" is a terrific example of the mundane and the absurd, bound into one.
"Babu," I said. "I didn't know you bowled." At this point, I'm pretty sure the pineapple popsicles I purchased had melted.
"Oh I don't," he said.
"A friend bought them off of Craigslist and I picked them up for him. But he lives in Pennsylvania, and we were supposed to meet but he was deported so I just have them in my trunk now. They are just so big. I don't want them in my apartment."
Full stop. Unaware of frozen goods that were no longer frozen. Unaware of the bead of sweat trickling down the back of my neck. Completely oblivious to the Mary Poppins bag and its weight.
The weight of six bowling balls that Babu carried, in his car, unsure of where, when, or how to put them down. The weight of his friend recently deported, who apparently loves bowling. The weight of the car driving these bowling balls as passengers to so many destinations, none of which were theirs. Six bowling balls that had a life before they found their way to Babu's trunk. Six bowling balls that now spoke to Babu of the burden of loss and responsibility to a friend and carrying what is yours and what is not. That's a lot of weight.
And it also meant that Babu was paying more for gas, his trunk was full, and the back of his car sort of sagged in resignation.
We piled my bags next to me in the backseat of the cab. We talked about bowling and how heavy bowling balls are. We talked about the heat and how oppressive it was. We talked about air fresheners in cars, and how he can't find he likes.
When I said goodbye to Babu, I suggested that maybe he try to sell the bowling balls on Craigslist. He shook his head, rubbed his chin with his left hand and said, "Maybe he'll come back."
Maybe he'll come back.
So I decided to cab it. When the driver arrived some minutes later, I didn't recognize him at first. Some people probably don't care about who drives them, or their lives. Some people want silence. I get that. A cab can be a meditative pause when one can exhale and not expect the person driving the car to say testily, "What's up with you? Why are you sighing?" It's a gift of time for many, and that makes sense.
I wrote previously about my love of a good cab, and the stories collected through conversation and fellowship. It's kind of like an internal version of Humans of New York, without the artsy photography, the recording of a person's experience, and the posting on Facebook. The post-it note memory instead is stuck to my heart as a really neat experience with an equally inspiring soul. Cab conversations keep me going.
So today, with my groceries and my aloe juice and highlighters, and those blasted ringlets that refuse to conform to my ponytail tickling my neck, I may have said something along the lines of "BLESS YOUR APPEARANCE AT THIS VERY MOMENT." It was an all-caps declaration. And then I realized in all that I was carrying, I didn't recognize Babu. He'd grown some facial hair. He too was hot. And tired. In that way that Babu has though, he said "Aww Paige, what has you down?"
Sometimes shame creeps along slowly, that snail that glides dolefully up one's neck. Other times, it hits one like a Mack Truck. Shame on you, Paige! He's hot, too! He's got things he's carrying! And you don't know a quarter of it! I did know that Babu has been trying to get his family to the States. They live in Nigeria: a wife, a son, two daughters. He misses birthdays and milestones. He misses the first lost tooth, the first day of school, his wife's cooking. "No matter," he shared with me one day. "We will find our way back to one another somehow, and when it is right."
Patience of Job, I say. And then some.
Today, Babu saw my impressive load and panic danced across his face. I think I witnessed at least five expressions in about ten seconds. "Ummmm...." he said, rubbing the new addition of the goatee. "The thing is Paige, six bowling balls are in the trunk."
I love it when people make statements of this sort, because they could easily be the beginning of a story. Sometimes, such declarations are stories without further embellishment. "Six bowling balls are in the trunk" is a terrific example of the mundane and the absurd, bound into one.
"Babu," I said. "I didn't know you bowled." At this point, I'm pretty sure the pineapple popsicles I purchased had melted.
"Oh I don't," he said.
"A friend bought them off of Craigslist and I picked them up for him. But he lives in Pennsylvania, and we were supposed to meet but he was deported so I just have them in my trunk now. They are just so big. I don't want them in my apartment."
Full stop. Unaware of frozen goods that were no longer frozen. Unaware of the bead of sweat trickling down the back of my neck. Completely oblivious to the Mary Poppins bag and its weight.
The weight of six bowling balls that Babu carried, in his car, unsure of where, when, or how to put them down. The weight of his friend recently deported, who apparently loves bowling. The weight of the car driving these bowling balls as passengers to so many destinations, none of which were theirs. Six bowling balls that had a life before they found their way to Babu's trunk. Six bowling balls that now spoke to Babu of the burden of loss and responsibility to a friend and carrying what is yours and what is not. That's a lot of weight.
And it also meant that Babu was paying more for gas, his trunk was full, and the back of his car sort of sagged in resignation.
We piled my bags next to me in the backseat of the cab. We talked about bowling and how heavy bowling balls are. We talked about the heat and how oppressive it was. We talked about air fresheners in cars, and how he can't find he likes.
When I said goodbye to Babu, I suggested that maybe he try to sell the bowling balls on Craigslist. He shook his head, rubbed his chin with his left hand and said, "Maybe he'll come back."
Maybe he'll come back.
Smile breathe and go slowly (2010)
Yesterday I returned from three weeks in New England, two of which were spent in Maine's Acadia National Park. Today in Maryland it is 102 degrees, and if I so much as blink, I perspire. This is saying something coming from someone who would happily spend her life in tank tops and bare feet. When we left Maine, it was 75 degrees and the air smelled like that wonderful combination of pine needles and ocean. I cried. Several times.
Upon visiting Acadia, a Brit once quipped with a rueful sigh, "I do wish we had fought harder to keep it." The meaning of this statement was not lost on me as we celebrated the 4th of July last evening. Maine is home to me in ways that are inexplicable. I didn't grow up going there as a child. I don't have any relatives living there. I can't claim to have visited dozens of times. But it tugs at my heart and the moment I leave I am mentally putting away part of my paycheck so that I can return next summer. As I unpacked today, I assembled cairns around our house from the stones that Alex and I collected while we were hiking - an odd homage to wayfinding perhaps, but also an important visual reminder to continue navigating my life with the simplicity that can sometimes elude one on a day-to-day basis.
And this is what I love about my time in Maine. It all starts with how you frame your view. Our view, waking up each morning, was of the harbor. If anyone has had the gift of waking up to a sunrise, and not just noting it and moving on but sitting in the sunrise, well they're on to something.
The scent of pine and ocean cannot be successfully bottled. It can't and it shouldn't be. What one can do is sit in the moment of sensory bliss. And share it with someone. Because someone else deserves this too, always.
A meal can stretch for hours or minutes. At home, meals are fuel more often than they are sharing a memory. Maine offers the latter. Maine offers shoulders to assume their rightful place (not hunched under the ears in bodily protest).
Mornings are my favorite time of day. And they go slowly. As the arc of sun slips into view, and I am up alone, sipping tea and watching, minutes are pearls. They hold one in quiet reverie: "Sip this up. Sip it slowly. Let it work its way into your heart. Breathe it in."
Breathe it in.
Upon visiting Acadia, a Brit once quipped with a rueful sigh, "I do wish we had fought harder to keep it." The meaning of this statement was not lost on me as we celebrated the 4th of July last evening. Maine is home to me in ways that are inexplicable. I didn't grow up going there as a child. I don't have any relatives living there. I can't claim to have visited dozens of times. But it tugs at my heart and the moment I leave I am mentally putting away part of my paycheck so that I can return next summer. As I unpacked today, I assembled cairns around our house from the stones that Alex and I collected while we were hiking - an odd homage to wayfinding perhaps, but also an important visual reminder to continue navigating my life with the simplicity that can sometimes elude one on a day-to-day basis.
And this is what I love about my time in Maine. It all starts with how you frame your view. Our view, waking up each morning, was of the harbor. If anyone has had the gift of waking up to a sunrise, and not just noting it and moving on but sitting in the sunrise, well they're on to something.
The scent of pine and ocean cannot be successfully bottled. It can't and it shouldn't be. What one can do is sit in the moment of sensory bliss. And share it with someone. Because someone else deserves this too, always.
A meal can stretch for hours or minutes. At home, meals are fuel more often than they are sharing a memory. Maine offers the latter. Maine offers shoulders to assume their rightful place (not hunched under the ears in bodily protest).
Mornings are my favorite time of day. And they go slowly. As the arc of sun slips into view, and I am up alone, sipping tea and watching, minutes are pearls. They hold one in quiet reverie: "Sip this up. Sip it slowly. Let it work its way into your heart. Breathe it in."
Breathe it in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)