Category Archives: Magic

Dec20

Remembered Light

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Here is a offering from the English Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). Light is only a glancing aspect of this wishful, dreamy, time-traveling reverie. Yet within literature — and our imaginations — light is often the magical element, the unnamed presence that illuminates or acts upon a story to set events in motion.

Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turn’d so,
Some veil did fall, —I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death’s despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
Dec15

One Light Burning

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CSilence for too long, I know. And I promised (myself) to share words about light during this season of darkness, this time of short days and long nights … This evening, before the prayers are all whispered, the songs all sung, the matches struck, tapers lit, and flames blown out … tonight I make a beginning.

It is the last of the 8 nights of Hannukah, and just 10 days until Christmas. So many  festivals and rituals also occur around this time of year, and all of them celebrate, one way or another, light. I will share  excerpts from an interfaith service crafted by fellow Harvard Divinity Students over the next several days.

For tonight, let me just offer this excerpt of a poem first published in 1973.

‘A Winter Light’ by John Haines.

By candle or firelight
your face still holds
a mystery that once
filled caves with the color
of unforgettable beasts.

lascaux-cave-walls

Every added flame brightens the darkness: each one. Small lights, burning together, create great brilliance and potency. As do we … vivid spirits, radiant lives … made incandescent together, setting each other alight with humor, hope, compassion, resilience, forgiveness, and love.

Oct4

The Space Between

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The hours of sunlight are short. Yet the days are long, and time seems to move fast. We can’t measure our days by the brief hours between dark and dark, as John Updike once called them. We  count the actual up-before-dawn, waking-and-productive, getting-things-done, go-to-sleep-long-after-the-sun-sets span of a daily schedule, to truly sum up how much we work and accomplish in a span of 24 hours in this season.

This quickened pace, this buzz of energy and activities, this hum in our veins … we knew it was coming. It rises like the frantic work of bees before winter. It’s part of the arrival of the school year or the busy professional season.

Autumn heralds a return to longer nights, cooler weather and more focus on work and academics. Summer slowed us down (if we were lucky) or at least changed our rhythms and tempted us to pause, linger, and have fun in the heat and light. Fall winds us up. We move faster to stay warm, or because we’re playing a sport, or because there’s something to get done once we arrive wherever we’re hastening to.

It’s the season of gathering-in. Harvest. We reap the benefits of slower times. Set aside whatever bounty we can for the lean times. Savor the brief time of abundance. Prepare for the long, frigid, brilliant months of winter that await us.

At the edge of October’s cooler presence, there’s pleasure in finding heat. It’s a dance of comfort and discomfort. We wear layers on the coldest days: sweaters and socks, hand-warmers and scarves. Then catch ourselves growing too hot, and peel off the layers again. Grow chilled and pull the protective gear back on. Then lean once more toward sources of warmth … a cozy fire, a steaming hot beverage, or an open door into a heated space.

We don’t stand still very long, because the persistent cold catches up. Amidst our rush and busy-ness, there is beauty in this changeable time of the year. It’s worth noticing: crisp and vivid.

If you stop a moment, and focus, every hair on your head, every follicle and nerve-ending, every brain cell and heartbeat, seems to stand at attention. Alive. Drinking it all in. Capturing flavors and views, burning them into memory.

Detail from a painting of County and East Streets in autumn.

Can harvest colors really be so bright? Do aromas hang so vividly in the air that you taste them on your tongue? Can sounds snap and retort so sharply? Does the tension between warmth and cold make you feel so aware of everything, so strung with tension and awareness?

Yes. Life often happens along the edges, margins and boundaries. In the metamorphosis. During the transformation. In the changes between one certainty and the next, between the point of departure and the place of arrival. Life vibrates here, now, in this transitional season, in the “space between.”

Don’t you want to stare off and step into, for just a moment, the changing hues – crimson, green and gilded — bright against a clear blue sky? Smudge your finger through the richness of long purple shadows cast by a distant sun in this season? Be robed in a swirl of golden leaves whirling and dancing in a high wind?  Breathe in, exhale out, then watch your own respirations hang there, if it’s cold enough? Extend your arms to the veiled world on a misty morning when droplets of water cling to the air itself? Watch the lights wink on in the darkness?

There is magic in this time of change: autumn. Yes, it’s busy. These schedules demand more of us.

This season also wakes us up. Reminds us that we’re here. Alive. Calls us to pay attention. To be grateful for what has passed away,  what remains here with us, and what awaits.

Aug16

Belated Ode to London Olympics

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The Olympics are over, and I barely had a chance to see any coverage. Nor did I refer to them, in daily journals.

On the other hand, I had to call and make appointments, or negotiate social outings with friends, so that our visits didn’t interfere with the second half of final Olympic games. That’s how I navigated the past few weeks, in order to see people who watch the Olympics, when I was otherwise working, completing projects, or handling family logistics regarding college stuff for Sarah and myself.

So I haven’t even mentioned or acknowledged that the past few weeks were the Summer Olympics 2012 in London. And that we have friends in England who are covering these events for the BBC in their county. And that we’re cheering for US athletes, but also for every other big-hearted athlete in any competition, regardless of nationality. And that I sneak online to catch up on the highlights, but I have friends who rivet themselves to a large screen every night, watching-watching-watching. And that I cry when I watch.

Now Chris and I don’t follow any sports in particular. Not even baseball or football. We’re fans of New England teams, because they’re our “local” teams. Red Sox. Celtics. Bruins. Tigers (our home town team).

And yet, when I see out-takes of the great feats and competitions of these events, I weep while I watch. Yes, I’m a Kleenex-carrier, because I cry and sniffle at almost any emotionally-demanding experience, like weddings,  sappy commercials … or moving Olympic “final moments.”

Now if you ever DARE to compare your life experiences to those of an Olympic athlete … if you say, for instance, “Don’t you feel like you just ran a marathon? Or got a gold medal?” Well, anyone on those global teams might roll their eyes. It’s sort of like comparing your life experiences to being under fire with other soldiers, without ever having had that combat or military experience.

Sure, we can make comparisons. But if we haven’t lived through it, we can’t imagine it. Can we?!

And yet, the whole point of these games is, in part, to involve all of us in these adventures. To encourage us to identify with young, visionary athletes who dare to dream and strive and reach and fail and win. In a sense, we believe they’re like us, and we could be like them.

Well … let me say … there’s a certain level of justice to the comparison between every-day heroes and Olympic athletes. We all, I think, live through personal times that demand extreme efforts from us. We take on Herculean responsibilities, sometimes because we volunteer for them, and sometimes because we are required to undertake them due to circumstances beyond our control. Most of us, I think, are eventually called, one way or another, to rise up and respond  to an extreme situation.

Homework answer written by Jessie Doktor: Red Sox.

That’s why pediatric cancer patients, for instance, identify with their favorite athletes. We used to hold parties in the resource room during events like the Superbowl, and bald patients would paint team logos on their scalps. Why do they root for their team during baseball’s World Series or football’s Superbowl? Go, Pats! Go, Sox!

Does it matter who wins? Yes, and no. Symbolically, a child may be identifying with a superstar or an underdog team, and if they’re winning, then the child feels inspired by that win … maybe it metaphorically promises the possibility that a child will recover and survive, too. And if they lose … well, the child and other fans realize that a feisty team has put up a great fight, and shown the spirit that inspires us all to keep cheering and believing, against all odds.

In such circumstances, we can imagine ourselves as Olympic-level athletes or fierce warriors. Fighters. Competitors. Winners.

And in that circumstance, who will argue with the comparison? And in that time, don’t the Olympics inspire you all over again?

Maybe we won’t all break speed records or earn medals or stand on the risers while the world sings our anthem. And yet … yes, I do believe, we are all required to perform Olympic-sized feats in our own lives. And so these young athletes inspire us. Remind us. Challenge us.

Like them, we reach for more. Like us, they keep going.

Aug11

The Naked and Baked Truth

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The reason I was inspired to write this? Because I visited Christopher’s Table, which has sandwiches, bakery items and a wine bar. I stopped by the other night with a girlfriend for a sip of sauvignon blanc at the newly-opened wine bar. Posted the visit on Facebook, reminding folks that they’re open in the evening for a glass and a bite. And as I typed, here’s what came out (fat-fingers-on-small-virtual-smart-phone-keyboard syndrome).

At Christopher’s Table for the wine bar. He also makes baked items, including cupcakes!

  • Friend: Ooh, how was it? Can’t wait to try it there!
  • Me: Great atmosphere, good music and intimate setting for friends or couples. Nice selection of wine and small plate apps. Plus his naked goods. Great for evening out or probably as before or after dinner destination. We hung out a while. Relaxing. Nice. Very Christopher. ;)

Did anyone catch the typo above? Look twice. I tried to correct it, but the humor was already spilling out.

  • Me: baked goods, not naked goods. argh
  • Friend’s reply: I was wondering what that was about!??? :
  • Me: iphone typing and it substitutes its interpretation of your words. fabulous and embarrassing. argh again
  • Another friend: still open?
  • … Christopher: Hey, I’m glad you had a good time but would you leave my naked goods outta this!

Hah! Earlier that day, I had sampled Christopher’s baked goods (not naked goods) at an event celebrating one of Rotary’s projects: the centennial park, playing fields and recreational grounds it funded, which are now used by the local YMCA. Our local bank provided a tray of his cookies and cupcakes for the party. And yes, I had one.

Okay, don’t chuckle. After ranting in past entries about what we want and what we need, working to balance our cravings, and all those good-intentioned entries, I’m now writing about cupcakes.

Cupcakes, and the good they do in the world. I admit it. I’m a hypocrite, specifically on the subject of cupcakes. I’ve written about trying to maintain equilibrium. And admitted that food can be a challenge for me. But Christopher’s cupcakes have their own special place in my heart. They trump all the reasons for “why versus why not.”

So why cupcakes? Because they do good.

Our family’s foundation Bright Happy Power brings snacks into Childrens Hospital Boston when we host community events. We often bring healthy food and beverages (never soda).

We also bring white bakery boxes tied with string. Ordered from and prepared by Christopher’s Table’s. Filled with cupcakes! They’re carefully ported from Ipswich to Boston, displayed in cupcake trees, and shared with parents, patients and staff.

100-150 of them. Gone by the end of the party.

And let me tell you … you know when a cupcake is homemade. Or “baked-by-hand-in-a-commercial-kitchen-by-Christopher.” They’re just … delish.

Plus he’ll creatively top and decorate them for us, and make them with seasonal flavors. Pumpkin or apple-spice cupcakes in the fall, for instance. The families and patients know when his goodies are coming … they’re quite popular.

Now this means I’m bringing delicious, but indulgent goodies onto the hospital units. I’m a mom … I know what I’m doing. And even though Christopher is a well-informed father of two busy boys, he’s also an artist and a baker. So there must be a small amount of sugar  in what he makes. Sure, some of the ingredients can be described as wholesome, but perhaps only the naughty sense! Flour and eggs combined in ways that aren’t low on carbs, calories or anything else!

Note the cupcake tower in the background. Yummy!

Oh. So. Good.

That’s what Christopher’s cupcakes, in this setting, are all about. Indulgence. A small bite of something that tastes like home. An escape. A celebration of this particular moment.

All the reasons we shouldn’t eat it? (For instance, this sort of item is more commonly banned in classrooms now, due to allergies, juvenile diabetes, obesity and other concerns.) For a few hours at the hospital, we set those arguments aside.

At Childrens Hospital Boston on transplant and cancer units, the issues are larger. More extreme. Life-and-death. If you can deliver a small taste of something less critical, and transport people to a different place with their taste buds, for as long as it takes to empty the cupcake papers … that’s a good thing.

You see, food is one of many issues in a patient’s life. Staff are experts in nutrition, and its interaction with the disease, the infectious complications, and the medications used for treatment. Parents, even if they didn’t worry about diet and calories and the ingredients in food before this experience, quickly become well-versed in the necessity to eat well, to eat at all, to pay attention to menus, ingredients, diet and nutrition. Some foods are safe, some aren’t. Some children have so many sores throughout their GI tract from treatment, from gums and mouth to intestines, that they can’t eat anything (but one soft melty bite of cupcake just might slip through). Some are ravenous with specific cravings. Some patients don’t want sweet … they desire salt-salt-crunch-crunch. Some children receive calories and nutrition intravenously through an IV tube or pumped by nasal or stomach-tube, or other methods. Many need supplements. Some kids can’t keep food down; it comes back up. Some children can’t eat for extended periods of time, because they’re undergoing a procedure, or their system has been so badly damaged, that they’re not allowed any oral foods. We’ve personally experienced many of these scenarios.

As parents living with a healthy child and one on treatment, we strove to provide sound eating habits that could translate between home and hospital. Yet when it was a struggle to tempt Jessie to eat anything, we’d be happy if she wanted linguine with red sauce and sprinkle cheese, salty black olives, or sushi dipped in soy sauce (notice the salty undertones). And we’d gladly supply pancakes with syrup and mint ice cream and vanilla chai tea (notice the sweet cravings in that list).

Cupcakes would have been perfectly acceptable at that time. (Especially if combined with an apple.) So now, when we visit the hospital, there are always enough hungry, missing-home-and-a-taste-of-something-special fans to make the white pastry boxes a wise investment.

Party with cupcakes.

Plus the power of comfort food remains potent. It can ease a soul, as well as a belly. It can make someone smile, in the middle of unimaginable strain. It is delivered in a playful setting, when we bring crafts and games, and create a respite from the boredom, stress and ennui of extended periods in the hospital.

We just share the goodness. Some waist-watchers will maintain self-discipline and pass up the desserts. Others will nibble and ooh-ahhh. Families know, before they come to the party, that food will be offered. If it’s not okay for the patient, a volunteer might put together a kit for a staff member to bring to the patient’s, so they get the party without the temptation.

But before we leave Childrens Hospital, the white pastry boxes are empty, their cheer disseminated to nursing stations and patient beds for popular consumption.

The other aspect of taking care of yourself in acute circumstances? To keep up your emotional fortitude. Your morale. Your optimism and sense of hope. And that can be where goodies such as cupcakes …in moderation, of course … have a role.

That’s the bare, honest, naked truth … my confession … about my ongoing relationship with Christopher’s cupcakes.

Aug8

Among the Overgrowth: Cilantro

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Another week of picking up the share at Appleton Farms. You’ve heard me discuss the sometimes sacred and spiritual nature of these visits to the CSA. Other times it’s just a chore to cross off your to-do list.

Depends on whether you go out into the fields to pick, because most of the magic happens during the intersection of human action, plant eccentricities, and whatever critters might be keeping you company out there (birds, butterflies, bees, beetles, mosquitoes, and mice and other scurrying rodents, to name a few).

Some weeks, the skies are slung low with clouds or lightning tears across the sky, and we don’t go into the fields to pick. Other days, it’s so hot and dusty, you wonder if you’re sane to consider going out among the low rows of crops, to bend and stoop, snip and pluck, filling pint containers or bags with your harvest of flowers, herbs and (some weeks) vegetables.

This week, we gathered herbs and flowers. Along the way, we learned a lesson about persistence.

Specifically, we walked among the rows, hunting for cilantro. Its familiar name was missing among the stakes labeled by such savory titles as mint, oregano, parsley, thyme, dill and basil. The CSA uses signage to make it clear where each crop is grown, row by row, and where to pick. Yet we couldn’t find it. We quartered the field, back and forth, systematic, but undirected. No luck. No cilantro stakes.

Of course, we might have tried looking for it under other names. Did you know it’s also called coriander, Chinese parsley or dhania? (In our culture, when we speak of cilantro, we often mean the fresh green leaves. Its seeds are identified as the coriander.) It grows commonly in regions from Europe and northern Africa to parts of Asia, and now in North America; it’s a common ingredient in many international cuisines. Possibly the most widely used herb in the world. As eloquently stated by a writer for culinate.com, “For just about anyone who grew up in the diverse culinary traditions of Latin America, the Caribbean, Portugal, northern Africa, the Middle East, the South Asian subcontinent, and most of Asia, cilantro tastes like home.” The same lacey green fronds, regardless of label, add a biting zest to all sorts of dishes.

Another confession. I hunted for cilantro, though I have no intention of eating it. I’m a member of the population that doesn’t like its flavor. Yes, we come in two groups: like or dislike. You can’t be in-between, when it comes to a preference or distaste for cilantro.

In fact, the plant’s flavor is actually a polarizing debate among “foodies.” It’s loved or hated, nothing less. This topic has been covered by publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Smithsonian Magazine, and inspired movements such as ihatecilantro.com. For those who love  and eat it, because of its bright note of flavor in any dish, it’s hard to imagine why you’d turn it away. Cilantro-haters are often accused of being picky eaters. Yet there’s some evidence that the aversion to cilantro’s flavor is a genetic mutation; some tastebuds are just destined to revolt against it, because it transforms into a different chemical experience in measurable (but minority) percentages in any population. Cilantro-dislikers describe it as tasting like soap or hairspray, but to me it has the tang of aluminum. Ick. And I’m in good company. Per the same articles cited above, Julia Child felt the same way; she disliked both cilantro and arugula.

So I was walking through the field, hunting for an herb I don’t even enjoy, because my friend wanted some for her cooking plans. The whole point of the day seemed to become the triumph of finding a small bouquet of cilantro.

Finally, instead of giving up and returning wearily to the car after multiple hikes in and out of the field, we asked a farmhand. At first, she said there wasn’t any.

Then she winced sympathetically. “I know frustrating, isn’t it? We’re just getting tomatoes in, and we’ve had cilantro all season, and just when you want both, we’re running low. We planted another crop, so we hope there’s some later on this month.” Finally she added, “Well, we took down the cilantro sign, because it’s mostly all picked, and what’s left is hard to find because of the weeds. But if you walk past the dill, halfway down the row, and push aside enough weeds, you might find some.”

Back out into the fields we walked. Toward the weeds. And what they hid in their depths.

Now mind you, I have made a case for weeds. In my “garden” (dry, desert-like side yard), there are more weeds than healthy domesticated species. Spiky, tall, persistent and oddly lovely. Striking from my point of view, anyway. (You are welcome to your own opinion, of course.)

We turned right at the small feathery fronds of dill (also almost all picked and gone, also unlabeled, but visible if you knew where to look). Hiked beyond the knee-high growth of grass blades and vibrant weeds. Paused. Pushed aside leafy wild plants, seeking domestic satisfaction. Found the pungent leaves and stems of the cilantro. Worked our way down the row, reaching among the growth of unwanted plants, for the ones we did seek. Filled a small bag with cilantro, to use in cooking

The lesson? For me, it was the promise of finding what you want, if you don’t give up. If you look enough. If you go back once, twice and thrice. If you ask for directions. If you persist past the overlooked, overgrown appearance of the row. If you hunt among the weeds. You just might discover what you’re seeking.

And the worst case scenario, after time spent hunting among weeds and wildflowers? Even if you don’t find cilantro, you’ve gained the benefit of time spent in the sun and elements. Along the way, you’ve let go of the other stressful parts of life for a little while. It’s as good as yoga, as far as I am concerned, being out in the fields, picking part of your share.

This time, we harvested sunflowers and cilantro to be used in my friend’s favorite recipe for Thai vegetable spring rolls. And as I do every year, I’ll try a bite, always hopeful that I’ve somehow been converted to a cilantro-lover. But that’s another adventure … Today was just the journey of gathering the leftover cilantro from its exile out in the field, its row unlabeled, overgrown by weeds.

Aug6

Time: Then and Now

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I recently teased my friend’s daughter, almost outraging her, about freezing time so that she can’t grow older than 14 years. She is reaching for everything that comes after this year. High school. Summer jobs. Learner’s permit. Driver’s license. Voting. Graduation. And everything beyond that.

This young lady is the same age that my youngest child Jessie would be, if she’d continued to grow up.

Isn’t it provocative, to consider what you’d do if you could slow, stop or reverse time? It’s certainly been the subject of many stirring and playful plots by authors and screenwriters over the centuries. It could be a thriller or a life lesson, depending on whether you’re Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Audrey Niffenegger or H.G. Wells.

Time. Stopping it. Letting it flow.

At some points in life, we’re in such a rush. We want what comes next. Just like 14-year-olds. As children or teens, we’re looking ahead. Counting down. Or counting up, depending on your point of view. Striving toward the goal of being a grownup. Yearning for what seems so enticing.

Yet ask almost any recent high school grad. Wouldn’t they sometimes prefer to relinquish the pressures and responsibilities piling up on top of them, and just be a kid again? With only a child’s concerns? They’re staring adulthood in the face, feeling it shifting their frame of reference, altering their sense of the value of free time and work time, play and respite, labor and effort, privacy and intimacy and friendship and social liberty versus  commitments to college, jobs, loans, housing, relationships and many other binding connections.

A recent graduate might actually wish to stop the hands on the clock. Or spin them backward, to return to what seemed like simpler times.

If you look backward or forward with too much idealism, it’s basically a “grass is always greener” viewpoint. Every moment, past or future, is layered and complex and special and compromised.

In other instances, we’re wise enough or foolish enough, or at just the right cognitive developmental stage (babies, for instance) to loll around in the moment. Bask in it. Splash in it. Submerge ourselves inside it. Be present, here and now.

So recently, I was tugged into my own past during a lively reminiscence with this same 14-year-old girl about our favorite Disney television comedies. Hannah Montana, to be specific.

I found out, much to my shock, that the television series continued beyond the years I’d watched it. Why was I surprised? But I was. I’d missed some seasons, because we don’t have expanded cable access at home. And I don’t have a reason to watch it anymore.

So where did I originally watch this Disney series? When I spent endless hours at Childrens Hospital with Jessie. That was a surreal slice of life, living inside a climate-controlled atmosphere, unable to feel the touch of wind or sun most of time, shut inside an environment with its own rhythms and traditions and language, unlike anywhere else in the world: time lifted out of any other reality, stretching out from hours and days into months and years.

We spent time meaningfully. We conducted plenty of school work and tutoring, reading and writing. Creative projects with fabric and glue and paper and paints and clay and scissors and every sort of craft material you can imagine. Imaginative therapy with music and play and art and talking and role-playing.

But we also spent recreational time playing competitive video games, board games, reading books or watching hours of movie and television, when Jessie felt especially yucky.

Do I miss living in the hospital? No. Do I wish I could snuggle up next to Jessie in bed, watching her favorite Disney shows … yes.

Though the reality of Jessie’s mortality was always palpable, we couldn’t imagine a time we wouldn’t be able to feel her curl up close, still fitting into our laps at age 9, thin and graceful, long and prickly, moody and sweet. It’s impossible to imagine that you won’t be able to touch, protect, play, argue with and console your child. It’s impossible to imagine the emptiness where arms once encircle, or a weight that won’t press against you any more, or a breath, or a voice, or a giggle, or a brush of her fingers.

We’ll say good-bye again again, in a healthy, natural way when Sarah goes to college in the fall.

But a child’s passing? His or her permanent departure? You can’t imagine that will eventually feel like.

Yet the shadow of it  made us pay attention to the time we had with her, and each other, in the moment. In a sense, it focused us. Acted as a lens, and changed how we viewed and measure time. We tried not to take any of it for granted.

Afterward, time changes again. You must grow familiar with her absence hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year. Now we measure time, in part, by what came before. And after. For instance, as my conversation with a 14-year-old revealed, there are  years punctuated by High School Musical and Hannah Montana. And years without.

Some children will achieve those milestones that my friend’s 14-year-old yearns to reach. Others will never get there.

Yesterday during the PMC, I watched the results of time’s progression: its blessings and its losses. Survivors posed for a “Living Proof” photo, and many of them were once toddlers or elementary school students on treatment for cancer. Now they’re teens and young adults riding to support cancer research. Like Sarah, many members of those families grow up to study medicine of some kind. I also sought out and hugged sweaty panting adults riding in memory of their children. Others, whom I don’t know, rode for siblings, spouses, or parents.

Then there’s Hannah Montana-time. I realize that some parents don’t approve of the Disney channel. Or Hannah Montana. Mostly on principle. It represents some frothy, silly values that don’t gibe with feminism, for instance. It’s sort of like letting little kids play with Barbies. It demeans, in a way, a more intellectual and wholesome value system. There’s merit, of course, to that position.

Yet it doesn’t make me feel guilty or apologetic for enjoying Hannah Montana with Jessie.  I have written before about the importance of letting children feel like princesses. Role-playing. Therapeutic play. Externalizing experiences and developing scripts and games and roles around it. The potency of magical thinking and the power of fantasy, dreaming and escaping. (Aside: Hannah Montana was a big hit for little girls of Jessie’s age, in part because they could imagine themselves living a double life as “regular kid” and a “superstar.” The possibility of being either ordinary or fairy-tale … or both at once. And in Jessie’s case, perhaps her wishfulness extended to being healthy, as well as all tossing around all those long blonde tresses and rocking those great wigs and outfits.)

So yes, I appreciate the value of my Hannah Montana-years. But I don’t think I’d turn back time. Nor would I fast-forward it.

Here? Right now? A whole lot of life is happening in our family. Sarah’s last month at home before college. My final few weeks before graduate school. The start of a new season and transformation in our family’s life.

The same is true in most families, for a variety of reasons. Summer versus autumn. Vacation and camps versus school, sports, extracurriculars and work. We’re all in the height of this time of year, but it will come to a close soon enough. We’ll all be in the middle of transitions, and the stress that comes with them.

For now, I’ll just savor right where I am. Sure, maybe I’ll sneak in a new episode of Hannah Montana, in honor of Jessie and childhood and the silly ways we escape difficult realities, and the magic of both childhood and a rich adult fantasy life. (Trust me, hours upon hours of Disney channel didn’t steal Jessie’s ability to use her imagination … or mine.) But mostly I’ll try not to tune out; I’ll pay attention to the experience of my living daughter Sarah, who is letting go of childhood and grabbing onto adulthood, even as I write this journal.

Jul22

From Nothing, Something

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We, humans, are meaning-makers. (Okay, I borrowed this phrase … meaning-making … from a seminar title on my roster of classes at Harvard. But it feels, today, exactly true.) We read and interpret signs seen in our environment, whether rural or urban, outward or internal.

We impose emotion, logic, and purpose onto observations that might otherwise seem simple, random … predictable but elemental at their core … occurrences not moved by intention, but simply by innate laws of physics or nature of being.

Humans are storytellers: pattern-finding creatures. We discover rhythm and significance in every billow of wind, bluster of clouds, curl of sea, rise of flame, furrow of soil, concavity of stone. We see it in the dappled knuckles of tree roots or the dusty tornado of discarded paper and old city dirt whisked into storm shapes by blasts of air on an urban street. We read it in the spiral of our own fingerprints on a foggy surface, the span of our own toe and heel prints in the sand.

Perhaps not everything is ordered or ordained. Perhaps not everything is intentional or layered with deeper truths. I leave you to draw this conclusion in the context of your own belief systems.

Yet it is part of our human nature to find tales and explanations all around us. For instance, as people raised in a time of science that looks below the surface, we know that even when everything seems still, on a cellular level, particles are always in motion. Nothing is quite what it seems.

Everything around us and inside us is apt for our harvest of tales, of interpretation. One friend, Miranda Updike, reflected on the empty corner where the towering elm has been removed from Ipswich’s landscape. It had long shaped her childhood home, and been a character in her father’s writing. After it was gone, and we sat at Zumi’s mourning it, she said, “The absence of the tree is loud.”

Even the lack of something, its own passage, can be a story.

The poetess Mary Oliver contemplates this nature in humans: our drive for connection with our world. She narrates it in her poetry.

At first, we see only bits and pieces. Shards and remnants. The raw cut-down stump of an ancient elm. Or uglier things. The doggy-bag abandoned on the corner lawn, refuse in its sweaty folds. The bullet hole in a stained glass window. The canted spin of a too-small rusty bicycle, tossed to one side. The torn inner section of a week-old Sunday newspaper, its news already irrelevant.

Then, as we walk, collecting such detritus in our pockets, but also in our minds and hearts, this age-old magic happens. Something else, something more emerges. We find a line of meaning in it. A pattern.

Breakage

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

– Mary Oliver

Jun14

Filling Up Origami Bellies and Human Lives

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We have  a little more than 24 hours to go before the Coast of Hope bike ride this weekend. Then we set a flock of paper cranes in motion.

You know, we drop thousand of birds to launch the 100km/62mi Coast of Hope ride (and metric half and family rides). It’s an event that we organize once a year to help fund programs at Childrens Hospital Boston or to assist North Shore children and families living with cancer or other catastrophic challenges. (Most anyone who is reading this journal knows something about our family’s small non-profit foundation Bright Happy Power. The ride and the foundation were inspired by our personal journey through childhood cancer.)

Cyclists ride for lots of reasons. Because of the stunning North Shore scenery. Because it’s great cycling weather with quiet open roads. To be with friends. To exercise.

Or for a cause. During the Coast of Hope, parents, children, spouses, siblings and other friends and loved ones of cancer patients ride. Survivors themselves ride. Sometimes people on active treatment also join us.

Life doesn’t stop because of a cancer diagnosis. Or any sort of challenge. It might slow down. Take detours. Take us places we didn’t expect. But it doesn’t really stop.

And many of our riders choose their routes, and come out to ride or to volunteer, because they want the hours they spend this Saturday to make a difference.

If life stopped because we were scared or in pain, or too dreamy and totally sated, or because we’d heard words we never expected to hear or felt emotions we never imagined experiencing, we’d never do anything. Instead we – we as human beings — continue.

Yes, we might be transformed. Sometimes looking at the world from a new perspective. Moving in a different direction, at a changed pace, with altered values or capabilities or relationships. Yet we are always moving and interacting, affecting the fates of others at the same time we are shaped by those whose paths intersect with ours.

After all, life is what we experience as we go along. It’s an accumulation of daily moments between peaks and valleys, as well as our highs and lows.

If we only counted big moments  – good or bad – ours would be a brief span of time.

Our lives add up to so much more. Every day, all the time, with whatever seconds and minutes and hours we’re given.

Measuring time is one sort of standard by which to quantify life. Me? I have witnessed that quality matters just as much. You can do a lot in a little time.

Meanwhile, my mind is filled with numbers. Although math isn’t my favorite thing, I’m counting everything right now.

I’m surrounded by minutia. I’m adding up miles. Ounces of Gatorade. Sizes of t-shirts. Gallons of water. Quantities of signs. Stacks of forms and maps. Ranges of bib numbers and the birthdays of riders. Total volunteers at every stop.

It’s easy to get lost in the equations. The volumes. To forget why we’re riding and what’s important about these Coast of Hope numbers. What makes it all meaningful?

Well, right now the youngest registered rider is 13. Our oldest riders are 68.

And today, 1500 origami cranes arrived in a package through the mail, all folded by a fourth grade classroom in Pennsylvania. Plus we’re receiving hundreds more folded by high school students and a Brownie troop. We’ll drop about 3,000-4,000 cranes on Saturday (I haven’t counted all of them in a while, but there are lots).

You know, the paper crane could be just a square piece of paper. Or a lesson in transformation and empowerment.

Guess what’s most magical about a paper crane? After all, it’s just a sheet folded in 12 steps (depending on whose instructions you use) to become a bird.

But how does it come to life? You breathe into it and inflate it.

Until then, it’s flat. One-dimensional. The air you exhale – that intangible element of life – fills the belly of the crane and causes its wings to open, its head to rise and its body to expand and tip in anticipation of flight.

And once you know how to make one, it’s a skill like reading, that you can pass on to others. Share.It’s easy to make one crane. But to fold a thousand? It’s more fun to do that as a community.

Aren’t our lives much like the form of a paper crane?

We could just count up the number of folds we make. Tight creases. Sharp points. Those might be the highs and lows. We could stop after just one bird.

But to emerge as a graceful shape, to be inflated with the possibility of taking wing? We need all the moments between every fold, the time it takes to read directions, the messy attempts and re-folds and crumpled sheets of paper as we try and try and try again, that lead to a bird’s profile … and the exhalation of oxygen and hope and all of those simple, casual, everyday moments between each step in the folding, to puff up the crane and animate it, make it three-dimensional.

Our lives, like the crane bellies, are filled with wind, spirit and breath. And in many ways, with an accumulation of time … both mundane and special moments.

Plus there’s something magical when we — birds or human lives — dance together in the air.

On days like Saturday, we gather up these hopes and wishes and promises, our fears and sorrows and hurts, our flock of hard-won folds and imperfect shapes, and set them free in the sky. They’ll flutter. They’ll spiral. They’ll soar. They’ll land.

And we’ll scoop them up and do it again and again and again.

Jun11

Moose Migration: The Game

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Years ago, Sarah came home from middle school with a homework exercise: moose migration. Or maybe it was an activity they did in science class. We can credit a teacher in Ipswich for this tradition,but not sure who. (Raise your hand if this was your idea.)

Anyway, we thought it sounded fun, so we tried it at the dinner table. It became such a family favorite, we played it whenever we went out to dinner. Just the four of us, or with a group of friends or extended family.

Moose migration works really well at restaurants when you have restless children and adults trying to pass the time until the meal arrives. This activity engages anyone who can reasonably hold a pen and draw a line, and the results will make you laugh.

  • Pass out one blank sheet of paper and a pen or pencil (ideally all the same ink color) to each person playing the game.
  • One person can be guide for the game, and call out body parts.
  • I’m suggesting an order of body parts, but you can alter it as you choose.
  • First, each player draws a pair of eyes on her/his blank sheet of paper.
  • When everyone is done drawing, each player flips over her/his paper and passes it to the person on the left.
  • Once you receive the paper from your neighbor, turn it back up so you can see the eyes that your neighbor drew.
  • Now add four legs and feet. (No body, just legs).
  • Again, when everyone is done, flip over the paper and pass it to the person on your left.
  • Flip the paper back up so you can see the legs and feet that your neighbor drew.
  • Now add a tail. (No body, just a tail).
  • Repeat the flipping over and passing to the left after each body part you draw.
  • During each turn, you draw the following body parts, then flip over the paper and pass it to your neighbor: a pair of ears, horns, mouth, head and finally the body.
  • Once all the body parts have been drawn, flip the paper over one more time and pass it to your left.
  • When you turn the paper over so you can see the completed moose, invent a name for it, and write it down on the paper.
  • When everyone has named their moose, take turns holding up the papers and introducing the moose to each other.

Some finished drawings may look vaguely like a moose, or at least a mammal. Maybe more like a hippos or elephants. Others look like aliens. Or science experiments gone wrong.

They’re all silly and funny. Everyone plays. There’s no particular competition, and no “winning” result. It’s just fun to see what develops when the evolution of the animal is handed down a line of different artists of all ages, genders and connections.

Our family came in from four states to celebrate Sarah’s graduation and attend some recitals and shows this weekend. The first night we were together, we all went to dinnerat Ithaki.

To pass time, we introduced this game to Sarah’s young cousins: Ben, Jason and Neal. The magic of this game, among other attributes, is that it allows everyone to play with equal skill. In fact, skill doesn’t matter here.

And because it’s silly and inventive and fun, it’s easy to ask children to put away digital entertainment like Nintendo or Angry Birds on a cell phone, and participate in a game with everyone sitting together at the table.

The boys are affectionate, and willing to connect with us. But honestly, they don’t know us well. We see each other every few years. Sure, we Skype. Talk on the phone sometimes. But they live outside of Chicago and we’re here in Massachusetts. So it’s especially nice to have a game that allows us all to be relaxed and ridiculous together.

By the end of the game, we didn’t feel like such strangers anymore.

Soon they were sidling up next to Sarah or Chris or me, and sharing the stack of fabulously whacky sheets of paper, trying to determine who drew which pair or eyes. Or who started which sheet of paper. Counting heads. Identifying “signature” artistic elements. Using deductive reasoning (last person to hold a paper, minus number of turns and  number of players, to figure out who started which sheet). They had even named one moose after uncle Chris, and given him a moustache and beard.

For the remainder of the weekend, we often played their invented games. The boys worked together, carrying around small notebook and pen, creating lists. They liked to invent sports teams (these changed from football to soccer) and interviewed all of us about possible team names, mascots, colors and theme songs. Grandpa Ted mistakenly chose the theme song Yankee Doodle for one of his choices, and we all encouraged him to think of something a little more festive. Eventually, we all joined two of the teams and played various pickup games of football and soccer.

Other times, Neal, Jason and Ben quizzed about which college team played in which stadium. I can report, with great satisfaction, that I had a 100% inaccuracy rate.

And moose migation? It remains a family tradition. The boys asked to play it again.

And the adult members of the family, for the most part, remember endless rounds of this game shared with Sarah and Jessie across the span of many years. For the three of us, to play this moose migration is also to connect us with a playful and younger part of our own family life. A habit of fun and silliness that has mostly slipped away as we all got older, busier, and more focused on grownup habits.

We all need a dose of moose migration from time to time. Let the games begin!