A string of bad things came into my daughter’s life today, bam bam, two in a row, and I feel kind of inconsolable. I feel every one of the 1,744 miles between us. She is suddenly the little 4-year-old girl in my heart, the one who’d crawl into my lap, the one who would cry into my shoulder, the one whose trouble I could solve, and I wish I could solve the things that came to her today. She’s strong, and kind, and she loves her family, and she always tries her very best. Always.

She’s the one who has made special little treats every day this month and put them in her husband’s lunch, for a 2-week stretch of Valentine’s Day love. Sweet little things, treats that took time and heart. Just because. She is the one who makes sure our family traditions are carried on, because they mean so much to her. She is the one who always makes me laugh with her dry and wry sense of humor. She is the one who wants to be our family’s solid, strong anchor. She is also the one who came to NYC last year (a year ago, yesterday) and brought her brother back into our lives. She is the one who is obstinate, and stubborn. She is amazing, my first child, and I never wanted any bad thing to happen to her, ever. Of course she’s a human in this world and so bad things have happened to her from the beginning, and I’ve hated the guts of every single bad thing.

So in my impotence, I share this terribly alone feeling with you, other parents, who certainly know what I mean.

My posting has been a little sporadic, though not so much that it’s probably noticeable. I don’t post on the weekends because dadgummit I am loving my weekend digital breaks! I got tired of being fancy-schmancy and calling them “digital sabbaticals,” though I did love it when I started calling them that because it made me feel like it was a real thing I was doing. Now I’m fine with just taking a break from going online.  I’m amazed by how easy it was, because of the intensity of need-to-do-it that I felt before I started. Since we don’t have TV, and since the NYTimes has started charging to read their articles, I’m out of the loop about what’s going on in the world, at every level, and you know what? That’s a happier way to be, seriously. I do miss knowing the ins and outs of small news from my fellow bloggers, and I can glance at the NYTimes headlines when I need a jolt of worry (which I don’t need, honestly). I read my weekly issue of the New York Review of Books, I look at facebook and get the occasional longread from various longread-type feeds, I know how my kids are doing in a fine-textured way, and otherwise what’s coming into my head is more carefully selected. And it is good.

Also, last night I took something to help me sleep because this zombie thing is getting old, man. Like, really really old. This morning I slept until 9:40. NINE. FORTY. 9:40 a.m. Me. I slept that late. What finally woke me up was a dream that someone closed my bedroom door loudly, or I’d still be sleeping, I think. I feel like a dewy bud of happiness this morning. It’s so wonderful, I want singing birds to come perch on my windowsill and I’ll sing along. I want people to break into song on the sidewalk, and I’ll sing along. I want dancers to come down my street busting any kind of move, and I’ll dance along. Osteoporosis, be damned! I feel so great! Sleep is exclamation-point-worthy! MANY OF THEM!!!!!! If you sleep, never take it for granted. If you do not sleep, I know your pain and you know mine (and you celebrate the rare night of good sleep with me).

Much work to do today, and a busy (non-digital) weekend ahead, including Richard III on Sunday, followed by my long-delayed date with Will — a whole week late, but that’s just fine. Have a good one, y’all, whatever you’ll be doing this first week of February.

But one thing that has hit me about the show is the importance of grace and dignity, and carrying on. Of course that’s a stereotype about the British as a people, but the points are made explicit and implicit in Downton Abbey in such a moving way. It’s something I’ve thought about for decades; I wish I’d been able to be more graceful as a mother, with less thrashing-around. And now, as there are events going on in my life that require carrying on, and helping, and enduring through hardship, I think about it quite pointedly.

In one episode in Season 2, Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, said that we must help each other carry on, it’s what we must do. And he said something about doing it with grace. I realized this is a value, not just a cultural tradition, or one person’s or family’s attitude. It’s a value. And it reflects a particular belief and orientation to life, that it is worth the carrying on. It reflects an ethical understanding of connection, that we are here to help each other carry on through difficult times, to celebrate with each other, to mourn with each other. That we’re intimately interconnected, because we cannot always carry on all by ourselves.

It’s hard for me to have a good understanding of myself in this regard, as it may be for everyone. We know our innermost snotty thoughts, and whiny thoughts, and the ways in which we wallow and feel sorry for ourselves. We know those things better than anyone else, because we don’t share all the unpleasant things that we feel ashamed of. But we may act differently, and we may be there for others in the way we aspire to be! So our own recognition of our secret thoughts may lead us to misinterpret ourselves overly harshly. I am currently engaged in trying to help someone carry on, and it’s hard. It’s lonely, it’s difficult, it’s taxing, it’s draining. I want to do this with as much grace as I can, and I want to help this person endure it with as much grace as possible. Am I successful? I don’t know. I am feeling sorry for myself, and feeling annoyed, and aggravated, and I bite my tongue, and I sometimes want to shake the poor person I am trying to help, I want to say “come ON.” I feel petty as I desperately long for someone to take care of me for a while, for someone to surprise me with a thoughtful moment designed solely to lift my spirits, to help me.

Perhaps this is just human, this is just me being human, and the important thing is the degree to which I manage these things myself, manage these needs myself and ask for help from others, and just be there and support and help the person I’m longing to help, with grace and dignity and focus on the importance of carrying on. I think of the great AA line: “Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.” I try to imagine that the people I admire who do carry on with grace are also troubled by these kinds of inner thoughts, that they also whine and indulge in self-pity in their minds, but that I just don’t know it……as I hope the person I’m helping doesn’t know of my own troubled thoughts.

Remember how I had to frog Marnie’s Moby sweater? I frogged it completely and just started over, and I’m finally back at the point I was in the first edition (I’ve decided to refer to them as editions, like books). So here I am:

Ambergris, by Ann Weaver (2nd edition)

I do note with satisfaction that the cable ropes are all done correctly in this edition; there was one error in the first version that would’ve bugged me forever, so you know, you take what comfort you can from a situation like this. I’ve already divided at the sleeves, so now I’m doing the front up to the neck, and then I’ll do the back. Then two sleeves, each with cable ropes up the center, assembly, and a turtleneck. I hope I can finish this while Marnie still has time to wear it this winter; since she lives in Chicago, the odds are pretty good.

Tonight I’m having a date with Will, which I’m really looking forward to. We’re going to a cool little independent bookstore on Prince St. (McNally Jackson) and then over to an Indian food restaurant he loves, for dosas. It’s been such a warm and dry winter, it doesn’t feel like January at all — but I’m not complaining, especially for this evening, as we tramp around that great little neighborhood. One truly wonderful thing about all three of my kids is that we share a love of words and books. It manifests itself differently in the three of them, but I do share something special with each one of them around books, and that makes me happier than you can imagine. I like to think it’s my gift to them.

* * *

Here’s the next writing prompt — a 600-word story (a narrative describing a shared experience) told from the “we” perspective. No first person pronouns allowed! My first thought was to put the couple in therapy and have them telling competing narratives about something, but I got this idea and ran with it instead. It’s a piece of fiction, again, but again it uses bits of real experience for texture. My husband and I did go to Luang Prabang, which means the details of place are true, but the rest is entirely made up:

We woke up very early that morning because we wanted to witness the monks’ morning alms ritual; since we were staying at a hotel on the other side of the Mekong River, we had to get up early enough to walk across that long scary bridge – remember, honey? – and it made us nervous because of the traffic, especially in the dark. We felt so exhausted when the alarm went off, but we both knew how much you wanted to see it so off we went.

Right – it really wasn’t the kind of thing you like to do sugar plum, you’d rather visit the markets and the food stalls, but you were such a good sport about it. We just had no idea how it was going to turn out, did we? We thought we’d go to the main street, kneel at the curb, and watch the Lao women putting little clumps of rice in each of the monks’ baskets, and then get some breakfast on the way back to our hotel – remember how much we loved the breakfast at that one place? But it didn’t turn out like that at all. And you’re usually such a quiet guy, avoiding trouble. Sure, you’ll speak up if you feel you’re getting ripped off, but you never get involved in violence. You just never do that.

So there we were, walking across that bridge, in the dark. Remember how there weren’t any lights of any kind? Not even headlights, since cars weren’t allowed on the bridge? And remember how tiny the walkway was for pedestrians, with broken boards and loose nails? And how quiet the morning was – we heard the river, the cyclists passing on the bridge, the early morning fishermen, and the birds? You were commenting on the birds just as we left the bridge and crossed onto the sidewalk. We had to stop because your long skirt got caught in the clasp of your sandal, and you were kneeling down to untangle it. We were both a little bit on edge – do you remember why, now? It’s hard to imagine why we felt so unsettled, in Luang Prabang. We’d had such a great time, and felt safer there than anywhere else we’d been in Southeast Asia. Maybe it was just the very early hour, combined with the darkness that we’re not used to, since we’re from Manhattan where it’s never dark. Maybe we were just kind of punchy from exhaustion.

Well sugar, you say “we” were punchy, but “we” weren’t really punchy – you were. Remember?

You’re right – you were singing and laughing and commenting on how beautiful the river was in the dark, and how many stars you saw. OK, “we” weren’t punchy, point taken. But we were both a little anxious in the utter darkness, that’s definitely true. And neither of us expected someone to grab you – you have to agree with that!

No, we certainly never expected something like that to happen, that’s true.  Did you see him coming?

No, remember how we were both bending over – you were squatting – trying to get your skirt free? The guy just came out of nowhere, it seemed, and leaned over you, saying something we couldn’t understand.

You did overreact just a little bit honey, you have to admit. If it hadn’t been so dark we might’ve noticed that he was wearing orange robes, and had shaved his head. You didn’t have to punch the poor guy, he was just offering to help us! Granted, it was dark and you were trying to protect me, but come on. You punched a monk.

What I had was determination and a very strong will, and that’s pretty good. You can go a long way with that. But one day, Katie had been screaming for hours, I was exhausted by having so little sleep, and we’d had to leave the library because she was screaming and I couldn’t quiet her. I was furious, and bursting, and I scared myself. She was in a frontpack, held close to my chest, and I put my hands around her and shook with the effort to contain my frustration. I didn’t hurt her at all, but hours later my own arm muscles ached from holding in all those ‘nots.’ And I was scared. How much longer could I do this, relying just on muscle and will? She was just a baby, just weeks old, and I was already at this stage?! I was more than scared, I was absolutely terrified.

So we got home from the library and I put her in her crib and collapsed on the couch, exhausted and drained and blank with fear. Mindlessly, I turned on the television, which was always tuned to PBS, for Sesame Street. It was an old tv, and the image came up slowly, starting from a point in the center of the screen. My eyes watched the image emerge, and it was a gentle man whose face filled the center of the screen, and he was looking directly into the camera and speaking with careful intent, directly to me. Directly to me, Lori, shaking on the couch. He said, “I like you just the way you are.”

I was not stupid, I didn’t really think he was mysteriously speaking just to me, but I’ve got to tell you — I’d never heard those words together in one sentence. I gaped. My attention was drawn to him so much that I no longer heard Katie crying in her crib. It just became Mister Rogers and me, and he sang

It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now, (no, not me right now, Mr Rogers — I’m so angry and scared!)
The way down deep inside you– (deep inside me? you know there is something else inside me?)
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.

But it’s you I like–
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you, it’s you I like.

I was crying before he finished the second line. I certainly didn’t feel likable that day — not that I ever felt likable — but I listened to him. Before that episode was over, I got a very good idea: I’d act like him. I’d talk like him. I could watch him, and pay attention to what he said and how he said it, and just do that. Katie was an infant, she wouldn’t know I was acting, and my hope was that one day it wouldn’t be an act. One day, if I acted like him long enough, maybe I’d just know how to do it.

Years later, I wrote him a letter telling him what he meant to me, what he did for me and for the lives of my children, how his message and his life truly transformed my own, and how grateful I was for him. I told him a bit about my background and what I struggled with, and I told him how I tried to act like him. He wrote me a beautiful letter in return, thanking me and telling me how much I must mean to the people in my life. He told me he was proud of me (this makes me cry). I have the letter, it’s one of my most cherished things. A few years later, he was on Nightline (or Dateline, one of those Thursday night programs) and I didn’t see it, but friends of mine called me and said that he talked about a letter he received from a young mother…and the details were mine. There may well be dozens of people who wrote him, with the same details, but I like to think he was talking about me.

I’m not at all shy to tell people that Mister Rogers is my hero, that I am who I am directly because of him, that he helped me become a human being. I tolerate no smack being talked about him. EVER. I went to a talk once, by one of his producers, who said that the majority of his audience is actually elderly shut-ins. And think about it: it was often him, looking directly into the camera, speaking lovingly to the viewer. Who doesn’t need that. When he died, everyone who’d ever known me called to tell me, and to comfort me. I cried a lot, and can still feel the ache of him not being around.

Marnie just posted this on my facebook wall, and if you watch it, I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye at a minimum. Everything about him was just so wonderful. If I can ever be half the kind human being he was, I’ll be deeply satisfied.

Aside from my recurring pleasures of poetry group, book club, and dinners with friends, these are just some of the things booked in my calendar in the coming few weeks:

Faust, at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:

Aida, also at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:

Richard III at BAM, with Kevin Spacey as the hunchbacked wicked king (will he be as delicious as Ian McKellan was?):

The Cloud Gate 2 Dance Theater of Taiwan:

Marcia Ball and Beausoleil (the video is just Marcia Ball; Beausoleil is a cajun zydeco band, amazing):

See what I mean? SO MANY WONDERFUL EXPERIENCES! I’m sticking close to home on certain days of the week to help my husband through something difficult, but there is still so much. I do wish there were more of me, or I could shift myself through parallel paths in some way I can’t even conceive. Because this doesn’t begin to touch the list of books I want to be reading, the list of movies I want to be seeing, the time I need for a book I am writing, the beautiful outdoors I want to be photographing. Life is so precious, and so short, and we’re here to eat it up with a spoon, to get it all over our faces, to let it drip down our chins, to gorge ourselves on it, whatever it is. That’s why we’re here. That, and to be kind to others. To help each other when one of us is down, because our own turn at down will come soon enough.

Friday thoughts on this strange and windy day.

This seems like a non sequitur, but I promise it isn’t. Have you ever read A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry? (I feel compelled to tell you I read it before Oprah picked it for her book club….) It’s a beautiful, horrible, sad, tragic story of people trying to survive during The Emergency, in India. It’s so tragic, there were times I had to put it down because I simply couldn’t keep bearing it. Passages I had to read out of the sides of my eyes because I couldn’t tolerate them head-on. One of the characters, Ishvar, just endures more misery than should be possible, but he always says “life is long.” Although the longer his life goes on, the more misery he endures, that’s not what he seems to mean. It’s that life is long, whatever is happening now isn’t necessarily what will always be happening. There is room in the future for other things — better things, perhaps. Whatever is happening now isn’t the only thing that ever will happen.

Plenty of people suffer during the holidays, and feel excruciating pain and loneliness. Christmas Eve is more painful a time to be alone than Christmas, for me, but maybe that’s because of my Christmas Eve in 1970. Late that afternoon, when I was 12, my mother gathered me and my sister and brother and told us she was divorcing our dad. She walked us into their bedroom, where he sat, on his knees on the floor, and told us to tell him goodbye. He pulled us into his arms, sobbing, and told us how much he loved us. We told him goodbye, and walked out the door. Mother drove us to a motel — The Downtowner — where she had already secured adjoining rooms, and where my soon-to-be step-father was waiting for her. She and he were in one room, and my sister and brother and I sat on the ends of the beds in the next room, staring at the tv. We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas…..our eyes took it in, but I doubt any of us were really watching it. Could there be sadder Christmas music than that soundtrack? I don’t know of it, if there is.

So that’s my sad little holiday tale o’ woe…..we all have them, of one kind or another. I’ve come such a long way, and life has indeed been long. I’ve had joyful Christmas Eves, sad ones, lonely ones, endless ones, happy ones, hilarious ones, new baby ones, warm ones and cold ones, and next year’s celebration will be of another form, I’m sure. Life is long. If your holidays were lonely, I’m so sorry; it’s a particular pain, feeling lonely when the whole world seems to be connected and warm and joyful and spending time with loved ones. You aren’t the only one, and those of us who had a lovely time this year aren’t guaranteed those types of celebrations in the years to come. It’s life, and life is long, and you get to experience nearly everything if you live long enough.

I actually started thinking about this several months ago, during my monthly writing group. We take turns bringing one-word prompts and each month we spend several minutes doing spontaneous freewriting on each prompt. So this one time, the prompt was different than usual, it was simple: write what you’d do if you had a whole weekend all to yourself, to do whatever you wanted.

Our faces lit up (we’re all women, this “time all to yourself” idea is so novel!), and our heads went down and the pens were scratching feverishly over the paper. Usually one of us finishes in a couple minutes, and the others wind up shortly after that. This time, we just kept writing. Pages were being flipped quickly, and the pens just kept moving. The thing that was so surprising, when we finished and we each read our little piece aloud, the others listened with wide eyes to what were essentially simple things…..but the writer always seemed to think it was some kind of crazy, impractical, impossible dream.

So for the last several months I’ve been thinking about this. Given where I am in my life, what is my big dream, now? At this point, so many of my big dreams have been achieved: my children are here, in my life, and they’re also out in the world living big lives of their own, and they’re wonderful people; I not only went to college, I finished graduate school and earned a PhD, which I never even knew to dream about; I’ve traveled a lot and seen places I’d never even heard of, plus so many places I never dreamed I’d see, and learned that there are other places in the world that feel like home; I earn money by reading and writing.

So it’s not at all about “gee, what’s left?” but more like ok: now, given this stage of my life, what is my big dream? And again, my thinking is focused, not some vague handwaving. Focused. What is my big dream now, given where I am in my life?

Before I tell you mine, I wonder about yours. What is your big dream? Specifically.

p.s. Giving a shout out to women in my broad age group. We’re gorgeous! Check out this post on A Femme d’un Certain Age, see if you can find me among the beautiful others!

the cartwheel galaxy...cool, huh!

But otherwise, I enjoy seeing time happening. I enjoy feeling the shift in the air that means late summer is winding down, and one of these days that new feeling in the air, and the different way the light looks, will mean we’re in fall. One December I was standing at a crosswalk, heading home, and the Christmas tree stand was right there, crowded with people. A young mother and her little girl, maybe 4 years old, stood next to me while we waited to cross Broadway. I listened to the mother answering her little girl’s questions about Christmas, and I knew that my time to be that mother was long gone. Every year, every Christmas, there are new mothers with 4 year old girls standing at the corner. Every year a new wave. One of these years, my daughters will stand on some corner with their 4 year old children, and then one of these years, their time will be gone too.

Once I was crossing a quiet street near my apartment and had a strange experience where I felt like I’d seen time. It was like a special effect in a movie, the kind where the main actor is still and everything whizzes past in a blur, you know that kind of scene? It was like seeing people and the traces they left behind in each instant. Very neat, and it only lasted for a minute.

I don’t know what it is about impending fall that lends itself to this kind of thought, but it always happens to me. Life changes, that’s the main thing you can say about it. Life changes, I change, my interests change, my possibilities change, my circumstances change, people change, and now I’ve even changed from a coffee drinker to a tea drinker. That one is the most surprising of all.

I’m going to start by imagining that y’all are like me in this regard: You have aspirations to take excellent care of yourself in the widest variety of ways possible. Yeah, you’ll take good care of the physical, you’ll floss regularly and eat carefully and get bone-building exercise and moisturize and take enough care with your appearance whatever that means to you. You’ll tend to the emotional, you’ll value experiencing all the emotions there are and not stuff any away and you’ll express anger appropriately and you’ll take care when you feel low and you’ll spend your time with people who share themselves and make it easy for you to share yourself. You’ll take good care of the intellectual — you’ll read interesting or challenging material, you’ll value learning new things, you’ll engage in great conversation rather than empty small talk. You’ll tend to the spiritual, you’ll look at art and make it if you can, you’ll listen to music, you’ll go out and enjoy whatever natural setting you can, you’ll meditate or do whatever spiritual practice makes sense to you, you’ll practice mindfulness. Yeah, those are my regular aspirations.

I’ll start boldly, and to my surprise I even stick with some of it. Other bits, though, fall by the wayside, and then I notice I’m feeling gunky. The very coolest thing about life is that every single day is a new chance to do it. Every day. Every week. So after a royally crappy day, and after noticing that I’ve felt a very long line of royally crappy days, I reorient myself today:

• No more small, cruel, sadistic people who live to destroy others. As of today, I’m done with them. Life’s too short to have these people in my life, even if they live in another city. Hello, all my dear and loving friends who are such good people, and farewell to the rest.

• And on a lower scale but still dragging, no more people who just refuse to be happy, who refuse even the possibility of being happy. I’m sorry, I tried, and I wish you as well as you can tolerate, but this is a day of my life and I need it.

• Continue with the exercise (yay me!) and keep trying to eat more; this change is kind of rooted now so I just reconfirm it.

• I’ve been seriously neglecting the spiritual side of my life, and I think it’s a big part of my long run of gunk. Mindfulness, some meditation, and more walks in the beautiful park should help. And more effort at creativity, by which I mean creating something from myself. I so enjoy knitting, but I’m following someone else’s creativity. I need to birth some of my own.

• And finally, though I guess this is really just part of mindfulness, I reorient myself to remembering that this is a very precious day of my precious and brief life. How do I want to spend it? I don’t have an infinite number, this one is precious. Absolutely precious, and I am so lucky to have it. I get into a rut of forgetting that, of allowing the days to slip away with mindless junk, of allowing other people to take over to the point that I lose my connection to this fact. This is a day of my very very very precious life. It’s mine.

Thanks for the true knitting confessions, and for the advice. Kelly, I’m ordering a little stash of those red row counters, since that seems to give me the best opportunity to connect the count with the project. I could be prone to set the note card aside, or never find it when I pick up a project.