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Puffy Friday

Hi friends!!! Happy Best Day of the week. I read something lately that went something along the lines of “the best day of the week, is really the night before.” Isn’t that the truth? We humans love giddy anticipation. Is Christmas Eve (and was it, even in childhood) more exciting than Christmas Day? Maybe this is why Fridays are so great. They are filled with the anticipation of a fun and fulfilling weekend.

For old time’s sake, I am going to share a Favorite Things Friday item at the end of my post, but first, I want to add some questions I read from an article by a psychologist named Constantin Patrascu, to the thought museum we have here at Adulting – Second Half. Patrascu is not a believer in the term “midlife crisis.” He thinks that instead, around these middle years of our lives, we are more likely to come to a state of reckoning/reconciling (versus an actual crisis) about where we are, currently, in our lives. He says that in order to not act out unconsciously and possibly recklessly (i.e. crisis state), we should, instead, consciously focus on these hard questions:

What have you been avoiding?

What have you outgrown?

What are you finally ready to grieve or finally ready to say out loud?

Does the life you have still reflect the person you’ve become?

Now that’s a little heavy for a Friday post, I know, so on the lighter side (literally), here’s my new favorite:

Rise & Puff Gourmet Tortillas – These tortillas are only made from four ingredients: flour, water, avocado oil and salt. But what makes these tortillas stand out from the rest, is the fact that when you cook them, they rise and puff and bubble up. They are so fun to heat up! (makes me nostalgic for Jiffy Pop Popcorn) Rise & Puff tortillas are delicious! My local Sprouts grocery store has a hard time keeping them in stock. Rise and puff this weekend, readers! (I’ll leave that up to your own personal interpretation.) Happy Friday!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Bins

My future daughter-in-law has lately asked me more than once, to dive into my big plastic bin, to find specific types of pictures for all different events of their wedding celebration. I hope that I’m not the only one who never got into a creative scrapbooking phase, and who still has a big, full, messy plastic bin, jam-packed with pictures. “The Bin of Intentions” – The bin that has been on the vague side of my to-do list for probably decades has been opened and entered more times this year, than probably when I first hastily dumped all of the pictures in it, when we moved from North Carolina to Florida in 2011. (the bin also has a twin sister, jam-packed with our four kids’ (whose present day ages span 30-22) school art projects and crafts. The bin sisters both live surreptitiously, side by side, on a shelf in the garage.) We do have a couple of neat, organized, well-done photo albums, which we peruse through, here and there, and all of our modern day pictures are easily found on our phones, or projected up on our Aura frames, but the bin pics are from that in-between stage of life, when all of the real change seems to happen. The bin pictures are from a time when we were so busy raising four kids, and occasionally capturing these moments on camera, and then carelessly letting the developed pictures precariously pile up until I finally went to Walmart and bought giant plastic bins to dump all of the pictures in. These are the same bins that the movers rightfully groaned about, saying that they were too full and heavy.

“Full and heavy.” The movers were correct. And I’m not talking about physical weight. There is an emotional weight inside of those bins that I don’t like to approach. I don’t like the feelings of nostalgia and melancholy. And the bins are enormous Pandora’s boxes, loaded with high, high doses of nostalgia and melancholy. The bins are filled with evidence of so many different stages of life, that each stage almost seems to amount to a life unto its own. The bins are so full, of so much, it’s a wonder that they don’t just burst, like an overfilled balloon.

I was talking to my future daughter-in-law’s mother at the wedding shower about the childhood pictures, which we were both tasked to bring. When my future daughter-in-law, who is an only child, was a teenager, her father died, while her parents were in the middle of divorcing. My future daughter-in-law’s mother said to me, that it was surreal for her to pull out the old childhood pictures. “I had forgotten that at one time, we were so very happy. We, at one time, were such a happy family,” she said to me winsomely.

They say that pictures say a thousand words, but I don’t necessarily agree with this statement. Pictures never tell the whole story. Pictures are typically taken at times of celebration and reunion and joy. People pose for pictures. People smile for pictures, automatically, no matter what. Pictures are wonderful reminders of good times shared, and they are also snapshots of time, never to be retrieved again. I love to be reminded of the joyful moments, but my heart aches when I come across all that has been changed and lost – the loved ones who have passed on, the relationships that are now irretrievably broken, the places that even if you go back to them, will never be the same way as they once were, the reminder that you have been so many variations of your own self, as life has continually moved on, moment after moment, day after day . . . . I suppose that nostalgia and melancholy are made up of an intense feelings mix-up/mishmash of joy, pride, awe, disbelief and also a stomach-pitting grief. The bins promote feelings at an intensity that I can only take in really, really small doses.

Therefore, just for now, after a day of sorting, remembering, smiling, crying, feeling intense awe and gratitude for just how much of everything is packed into living the life and lives, of just one family, the bins remain closed. The feelings remain contained. The bins can hold them, until I am ready to feel them again.

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” – Marcel Proust


“How sad and bad and mad it was — / But then, how it was sweet!” – Robert Browning

“Nostalgia makes hallowed ground from mundane places.” – Caroline George

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday’s Musings

+ My husband and I have dubbed Mondays to be “Miss You Monday” because after a weekend of having fun, palling around together, doing whatever we please in the moment, Mondays sometimes feel a little quiet and lonely and too serious, to both of us. We miss each other, especially on Mondays. Of course once my husband fully retires and we are always palling around together, maybe we will both become a little winsome for some more time apart. Mondays in retirement may be dubbed “Miss You, Monday”. Who knows? But for now, it’s still “Miss You Monday”, honey.

+ I read that there is a resurgence of interest in “Grandma Hobbies” such as quilting, baking, knitting, etc. in even the youngest of generations. The article suggested that this current fad is due to examples shared on social media, and then ironically, from a desire to escape all things tech/screens/social media and get back to the very humanistic ability to use our hands to create. Apparently, the more technology grows, the more our desire to explore our humanity amplifies. The pendulum always swings.

+ Over the weekend, I was reading a book by Jaime Zuckerman about “finding your calm.” In the book she suggests doing an exercise which entails listing all of your relationships into these four categories: Family, Work, Friends, Romantic. She then says to take each name, and put them in circles, all surrounding a circle in the center, with your own name in it. Connect a line to your circle from each circle. Zuckerman calls this the Relationship Roadmap. Now, on each of your lines, rate each relationship as (+) Positive, (=) Neutral, or (-) Toxic. This gives you a real visual of your relationships. Is there a way to let go of, or at least put bigger boundaries around your toxic relationships? How could your neutral relationships be improved? Jerry Wise, a pastor and therapist, says to ask yourself, “If this person stays exactly as they are right now, what would my relationship with that person look like?“ (Wise claims that most of the times that people come to him for couples therapy, they are looking for tricks to change the other person, and that is just not possible. You can only change yourself.) When I did this Relationship Roadmap exercise, I was pleased to see that I didn’t have any toxic relationships on my road map. For most of my life, this wasn’t always the case. Jerry Wise says to use this mantra, “I do not need toxic people in my life. I DO need inner peace.” The older I get, the more I understand the value of inner peace. It’s okay to keep your circle small.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Never-Ending Story

My friends and I often laugh ruefully about the fact that no one ever warns you about the fact that motherhood (and fatherhood) is a lifetime gig, with no off-ramp. You go into it kind of like “oh, I really want to raise a baby, I really want to raise a family” with a whole lot of mysterious help from your hormones and instincts, and really, little else to go on . . . . Starting a family is mostly a deep, natural yearning of sorts, for so many of us. You realize that embarking on raising a family, is more serious and complicated than adopting a puppy, but no one person, nor any book, nor anything else, ever fully prepares you for the monumental feelings, and responsibility and vulnerability which you will inevitably feel for the rest of the entirety of your whole life.

Last night, as we were headed to bed, our youngest son texts that he was headed to do his first open mic at a comedy club. This is the first I had heard of actual, concrete plans for him to do this. He also mentioned that he was a little concerned because everyone else there had notebooks full of material. Our youngest son is truly really funny, and yet also, he is probably our most sensitive, emotional child, and he also has epileptic seizures that are most often triggered by stress. While simultaneously sending excited, supportive texts to him, my own stress levels started skyrocketing with this information, and as I was attempting calming breathing exercises, a few minutes later, our daughter (who now lives in a whole different time zone from us) called to tell us that she had been rear-ended and was on the side of the highway with the other driver, who was refusing to share her insurance information.

As we are currently having an eventful family year, that includes two of our children’s weddings and a college graduation, my husband and I naively dubbed this month to be “Absolutely All About Us August“. We figured that we would keep plans light this month, to take a beat and completely hit the reset button, until the second wedding festivities come upon us next month (did I mention that this second wedding is in an entirely different country?). How does the saying go – “when you make plans, God laughs”?!?

All ended well. Our daughter and the other driver were not hurt, there was little to no damage to the cars, and they managed to eventually exchange information with a little help from 911. Our son liked the open mic experience so well, he plans to do it again tonight. Our nerves shot, it took my husband and I a little while to fall to sleep last night, and when I woke up, I remembered that I had dreamt that I was let go by a mass shooter. I guess that this was my brain’s dramatic way to say, “you dodged a bullet, lady.” I did. And (as always) I thanked God continually for keeping my (adult) children protected from others (and from themselves). And mostly (as always), I thanked God for my children, to love for the rest of my life.

“Love is staying up all night with a sick child — or a healthy adult.” — David Frost

“You will always be your child’s favorite toy.” — Vicki Lansk

“I will pray over and for you as long as there is breath in my body… I will be your biggest fan forever and always.” – Unknown

“There really are places in the heart you don’t even know exist until you love a child.” — Anne Lamott

“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.” — John Wilmot 

“What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.” — Nicholas Sparks

“Parenting without a sense of humor is like being an accountant who sucks at math.” — Amber Dusick

“You must first teach a child he is loved. Only then is he ready to learn everything else.” — Amanda Morgan

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday’s Maxims

+ “Behind every great recipe there is a grandmother. We call ours “Cuddy”!” – from a package of Chunk Nibbles

This is the first time I have heard “Cuddy” for a grandmother’s name and I just love it. I do believe that the best recipes I have ever gotten are from my grandmothers and my great-grandmother. Not too long ago, I brought out some old recipes for a neighborhood gathering and I was told that they were total “crack” and couldn’t be left alone until they were all gone. So much is store bought these days, that baking from scratch tastes extra good, doesn’t it? Nostalgia must be the secret ingredient. My mother-in-law taught my daughter how to bake (I am not at all a kitchen wizard) and I still have fond memories of watching them spend an afternoon in our kitchen together. Baking is bonding.

+ “Adopt the pace of nature: Her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why do we go out in nature in order to relax? Because there is no “hurried” energy in nature. Nature is in acceptance of what is. Nature sits in faith that everything will unfold as it should, in its own time.

+ “The entire world you see is an afterthought.” – Alan Cohen

What are you seeing in the world? Are you wearing the right glasses? What you experience through your senses is then translated through your mind, using labels, beliefs, lessons, media, past experiences, emotion, other people’s influences, etc. We could both be looking at the exact same world and be translating it in entirely different ways. You could look at the identical object/scene you are observing today, and see it in an entirely different way tomorrow. Make sure that your translator is up to snuff.

+ “You fear losing what was never yours. Nothing belongs to you but the journey.” – Shams-e Tabrizi

We don’t even get to leave here with our bodies. Our true treasure is the adventures of our every day lives. Learning to let go of attachments is one of the hardest lessons in life, isn’t it?

+ “There is no fail. You either win or learn.” – Gary Keller

Our daughter has just recently started her new job and as always, she is being extra hard on herself for not being perfect at it, from the starting gate. If we learn from the lessons of our mistakes, there is never a loss. I know these words fall short on her now, but in hindsight, there is no doubt she will see the truth of it. What we learn “the hard way” is what sticks with us the most.

Happy Monday! Happy New Month! Happy New Week!

“Every dawn is a new beginning.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Joys and Serendipities

So this morning, I was thinking of some of the every day small things that bring me joy and make me feel totally unique and myself. Two things came to mind:

First, this is Celestial II:

I love betta fish. They are the most underrated pet you’ll ever have. They’re beautiful, they constantly want your attention (and by attention, I mean food), they’re curious and they are relatively easy to take care of, even among other fish species. I’ve had betta fish throughout my whole life, but in particular, Celestial I was more than a fish to me. He was almost like a “familiar” or one of my “soul pets.” He lived on my desk and watched me write for a good five years, until he recently passed. He was a cream colored betta fish with dark eyes. After Celestial I died, I decided that I will always need a “Celestial” betta fish mascot of sorts to live on my desk, watching me write, for the rest of my life. (I got the idea from the University of Georgia bulldogs mascot, Uga tradition. The current official Georgia bulldog, Uga, is number XI (11).) And so last month, I ordered Celestial II from eBay because I wanted a fish that looked almost exactly like Celestial I. Celestial II arrived from North Carolina in excellent condition and he already has me wrapped around his fins. He is demanding, commanding, active and dramatic and I absolutely adore him. I have two other bettas, Minka and Ice Baby, who live in the kitchen, and they each live with a helpful cleaning aide, their snails. (the snails are both named Gary) Unfortunately, just like his predecessor, Celestial II vehemently refuses to have anybody else living with him. He is vicious about his private space. He loves his solitude and so do I. Who ever thought that a fish could bring so much joy?

Another possession that brings me great joy is this little piece of art:

She’s filthy, I know. I’ve tried cleaning her off, but when I do this, some of her paint starts getting removed and I don’t want to destroy her. (I’ll have to get with a museum to find out how to do art restoration – wink). I bought my Namaste lady probably over a decade ago when I started driving convertibles. I consider her to be my friendly protector. Recently, my aunt and I drove my convertible to get breakfast and when we were leaving the car, my aunt asked me if I wanted to put the top up. I said, “No, I’ll just put my Namaste lady on the dash. She’s great at guilt trips.” I do look at this darling woodblock as a friendly symbol to anyone who passes by my car, even when I am not around. She’s also a reminder to me, to stay calm, when other drivers are in a crazed state. My Namaste lady was painted by an artist named Tiffanie Seiler, and here’s the crazy part: This morning, when I looked up what number the current Uga bulldog is, it turns out that the Seiler family, have been the owners/caretakers of all of the Uga bulldogs since 1956. Now I do not know if Tiffanie is related to these particular Uga Seilers, but I love coincidences and serendipities, so this kind of made my day and it’s only still the morning. (someone once told me that “Coincidence is just God being anonymous” and it has stuck with me ever since)

What are your favorite “little things” in your life that help you to be and feel uniquely you? I’d love to hear about them in my Comments.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Wednesday’s Whimsies

+ A wise friend recently gave me this tip when it comes to intrusive rumination. She said, “Envision a box or a file in your brain. When the same old worry thought shows up to be “solved” (Ha!) and ruminated on, tell yourself this, ‘I will put this thought in the box and I’ll take this thought back out, only when it serves me’. You will find that you will never need that particular thought again, ever.” (spoiler alert- these types of thoughts never serve you in a good way) I know that this trick sounds silly, but I’ve tried it, and it works. There’s apparently a science to it. First, this tip makes you notice and stop the thought train in its tracks, and second, it tricks the brain into believing that it is still “taking care of things” by keeping the thought “filed” for future use.

+ “We don’t need to save other people. We need to save ourselves from the belief that we need to save other people.” – Cheri Huber I think a lot of women, particularly us mothers, may have a tinge of “savior complex.” I know that I do. It comes from a good place and a noble motivation. Everything I’ve struggled with, I want to “save” the others whom I love, from the work and the angst and the fear and the heartbreak and the frustration and the shame and the doubts, that came from my ordeals. But if I’m honest with myself, some of my favorite traits of myself – resilience, authenticity, creativity, faithfulness, empathy, optimism, foresightedness, etc. were the outcomes of going through some of the toughest situations which I have ever endured. Fire forges steel. Why would I want to rob anyone whom I care about, the chance to meet their absolute best selves? Why would I want to make anyone I care about feel like they weren’t capable and best suited for taking care of themselves and creating their own unique lives, exactly as they see fit? Isn’t it a tad presumptuous and controlling to believe that anyone needs saving, and I am the one (wearing the cape) to do it? Isn’t the project of “me” enough for one lifetime?

+ “We won’t be distracted by comparison, if we’re captivated with purpose.” – Bob Goff

“Avarice never wrote a good novel; hate did not paint The Birth of Venus; nor did envy reveal to us that the squares of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides. Every creation of humankind’s mind that has stood the buffering of time was born of love – love of something or someone.” – Harper Lee

For most of my adult life, I have felt really purposeful about co-creating a healthy marriage and successfully raising a large family. There were trajectories in my husband’s and my heritages that we wanted to keep, and also ones that we desperately wanted to change. My purpose of creating and growing my family to adulthood was born of love – the greatest love that I have ever felt in my life. My love will always be a bedrock for my family, but now that my children are grown, I can focus more on other personal purposes in my life. When I write, I am captivated with purpose. This blog was born of love and it remains full of love. I love the action of writing. I love you, my readers, for validating the blog and it’s existence and the existence of my creations, just by being here and reading and witnessing. The “thought trick” that I wrote about in my first bullet point, is a really good tool to use, to make sure you are staying on the track of living out your life’s purposes. Purpose feels good and natural. It feels captivating and sometimes even feels time-stopping. Purpose is born out of love. Anything else that comes up that isn’t a compliment to your sense of purpose, needs to be put in the proverbial “box/file”. These negative thoughts and the painful emotions that inevitably come with these thoughts are not part of your purpose. The things/thoughts which you deep down know need to be put into that box (distraction, comparison, rumination, avarice, hate, envy) – these things DO NOT SERVE. These things are not born of love, they are not part of your purpose and therefore, they will not survive the buffering of time. Love is eternal. Love is. All else passes away.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

A Girl Named Sue

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize what most people want more than anything is a witness to their story. Why do we think that social media has become so popular? Most people just want someone to listen. Most people want to be validated and comforted that they are doing their best as they experience the incredulousness of living a life on this Earth. Yesterday, I was trying to get a million errands done because we are having company this weekend. However, the cashier who was waiting on me at one of my stops, clearly needed me to hear her story. I sensed this – intuitively but also because she mentioned to me more than once that she had not had an easy life. To be fair, I was also sensing my own inner aggravations about time limits, and I was feeling the impatience of the people behind me, but something told me that it was more important in that particular moment that I could easily fulfill an obviously strong need of another living being to be heard, by just intently listening. I am a big believer in boundaries, but I am a bigger believer in listening to my intuition and my inner spirit, and something deeply calmed in me, and so I became a listener, a witness, and a validator to a woman named Sue.

Sue was an orphan of Indian descent. She was raised by nuns in a convent in Ediburgh, Scotland. Most of the nuns were good, sweet ladies, but the head nun was horrific, mean and controlling. Sue was a natural student and so by the age of 15, the head nun had made Sue start teaching the other children at the orphanage. Sue knew that this was not right. Sue was still a child herself. She told the head nun this fact and was dearly punished for it. So Sue kept calm, put her head down, kept with her studies, and despite the nuns pressuring her to stay at the convent and teach, she left the orphanage at the age of 18 and continued at university, while also working and living in a small apartment with five other women. Sue became an educator in a school of her choosing, and won more than one teaching award throughout her career. Sue also met the love of her life, an older man and a doctor. They married, had two children and Sue was living the life of her dreams, but unfortunately her husband suddenly passed away. At that time, her two young children begged Sue to move from Scotland to New York City, as Scotland was the land of their father and there were too many memories for all of them to bear there. So Sue finished raising her kids in New York City, and both of them have gone on to be successful in their lives and have families of their own. Sue’s children and friends all thought that she should remarry, but Sue felt that she already experienced the one great love of her life. When Sue retired, for better winter weather, she chose to move on her own to Florida, with her children’s blessing. Sue likes cashiering because she likes to keep busy and to meet people. I told Sue, “You have always had a strong spirit, it seems.”

She sighed, “I didn’t have a choice.”

I said to her, “I know that you didn’t want any of these hardships, but you stepped up to the plate. You met them. You endured and even thrived.”

Sue clasped my hands and thanked me. “He died 22 years ago today,” she said with watery eyes. And it was then that my heart knew that I was right to listen to it, and to hear Sue. And not surprisingly, I got everything done that I needed to get done for the rest of the day.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Brows

The other day, I had an appointment in a part of town I don’t normally spend time in, but I needed some groceries, so I went to the chain grocery store in the nearby strip mall, and then the multi-tasking part of my brain kicked in, and me, knowing that I’ve needed my eyebrows waxed for weeks (okay, if I’m honest here, a lot of parts of my face needed waxing. In fact, lately, my face actually feels like it’s falling off of my face, like off of a cliff. Therefore, waxing my entire face seemed like a good idea to give it any kind of hair-free lift I can get. At least in my mind . . . ) On a whim, I decided to enter a nail salon, like you find in every strip mall that has a major grocery chain store it, and I asked them if they do waxing, so I could get yet another thing checked off of my list. A woman took me right back to their little waxing room in the back of the store.

I had never been to this particular salon, nor had this particular practioner ever done my waxing, so I started in with my emphatic lecture that I give every waxing professional I go to, about how I love my hairy caterpillar eyebrows and I want to keep them as thick as possible, and please err on the side of thick, heavy Brooke Shields, even Frieda Keilo eyebrows, yada, yada, yada, yada . . . .

“Yes, yes, just clean them up,” she nodded, clearly having heard these particular instructions from many clients in the past.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a chuckle. “Can you tell I have PTSD?” I said this off-handedly, thinking back to a time in my thirties when I just started getting my eyebrows waxed, and clearly my waxer, had just started waxing the art of waxing herself, and I lost half of one of my eyebrows. (and that was back at a time that I could count on my facial hairs growing back, in the right places)

My waxer did one of those half smiles that did not mask some deep pain. “Oh, I know PTSD,” she said. “My ex had PTSD from being in wars. He would wake me up every night, yelling and screaming. He kept two guns in the night stand.”

“Oh, wow, I’m so sorry. I was wrong to use ‘PTSD’ so lightly,” and I could feel my face turning red, not from the waxing, but from shame. And then the vain, self-centered part of me, started panicking, thinking that this practioner might just wax off half of one of my eyebrows to teach me a well-deserved lesson.

But of course, she didn’t. My waxer was lovely. She did a great job with my waxing, and she even did a sort of facial massage that felt absolutely wonderful. Clearly, my waxing practioner was a pro at what she does. And also, clearly she knows a hell of a lot more about PTSD than I ever have known.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday Got Me Good

“How alive your heart to feel such sorrow!” – from Catherine Newman’s bestselling book, Sandwich

So last month, I was out to lunch with two friends and our one friend gave each of us a different book that she had finished reading. She told us to read them and then to swap them. So the other day, my generous book-giving friend mentioned in a casual text to me that our other friend had finished her book. I hadn’t even started mine. So, in a frenzied mix of competiveness and a dutiful sense of consideration, I finished my book, front to back, all on Monday. That book was Sandwich by Catherine Newman, and it was essentially a heart-bearing, brutally honest account of a woman in the exact stage of life me and my friends are in – empty nest, menopause, having the people whom we love on both ends of our lives, slowly and methodically fading out of our lives, in different ways. Being in the “sandwich” stage of life, our adult children are moving out and on, and our elders are slowing, aging and sometimes even passing on. Newman mentioned something about us being at a “fulcrum” stage of our lives. Sandwich was a great, relatable read, mostly in how it touched on the big emotions and the almost feeling of disbelief, which this stage of our lives brings to the table. For me, the book was mainly a reflection of the poignancy of life and the beauty of love and living fully. Here is my favorite excerpt from the book:

“Here’s what foragers know: Most of what grows is neither delicious nor toxic. There’s a whole world between what we call the choice edibles- the hazelnuts and porcini and black raspberries- and say, the destroying angel mushrooms that will shut down all your organ systems after a single nibble. You can eat the grass, the lichen, and the inner bark of most trees, a thousand kinds of leaves. Not that you would, but you could. So much of privileged adulthood seems to take place here, in the space between the soaring highs and the killing disasters. It’s just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subtlety, its decency and dailiness.”

So after finishing the book, I felt a little more fragile than usual. My feelings were closer to the surface and at that moment, I remembered that I had to get six pictures of various stages of my middle son’s life to his future mother-in-law for their upcoming wedding shower. That entailed me and my husband opening up one of two enormous plastic tubs, with dusty lids, in the garage, full of photographs. Photos I haven’t viewed in years. Photos full of my children in baby clothes, and sports uniforms, and prom attire and cuddling with various pets. Photos full of vacations taken, birthdays celebrated, and sweet everyday moments which we were lucky enough to catch on camera, because something deep in us, wanting a sweet token of that simple moment for posterity. The box was full of pictures of people who are still in our lives at all different stages of their lives, and also of people who, for various reasons, are no longer in our lives. There were literally piles and piles of pictures of the life of our family, at every single stage of it. And so yeah, Monday got to me. Monday got me good.

Besides nostaglia, and meloncholy, and wishing that certain things had turned out differently, but also primarily feeling awe and gratefulness for how well most of those “raising the kids” years had gone, I also sensed myself feeling deep compassion for young mother me in all of those pictures. She was much prettier and thinner and obviously more engaged and earnest than I ever gave her credit for being. I was so damn tough on her a lot of the times. I wish I could reach back in time and offer her a glimpse of the grace I feel for her now. I guess the best thing I can do, is offer up that same grace to myself, now, in this meaningful stage of my life, so that when I am elderly and peering through the stacks (or reels) of photos and mementos, I can recognize myself as exactly who I am – a faithful forager, doing my best to enjoy and to savor my “just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subltety, its decency and dailiness.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.