A week ago I spend my Saturday journaling time making a list of highlights of 2011--what brought me happiness, and what brought sorrow. As I live with my list this week, I realize three things: 1) the joy far outweighs the sad; 2) without intentionality, I did not name the list successes and failures; 3) I drove every one of the pleasures, and the sorrows were all out of my control.
It felt like a hard year; I am surprised that the balance tips heavily toward joy. Why do we so often let the hard feel weightier than the good? It feels important that I don't think in terms of success and failure. Those words imply something completely different from how I am growing toward the sixth decade of life, and what is important to me. I didn't realize that before now. And, while there is always going to be disappointment and sorrow, we can't always control it; maybe we usually cannot. It is even true that sometimes with wishes fulfilled there is something lost. I don't believe that is always true, but often we must weigh the gain against the price and then proceed, or not. And when life gives us lemons, well, you know: we either make lemonade or jump into the disposal. Our choice.
I leave work at midday on Thursday to use some vacation hours. I feel a little lost; unsure of how to use my precious afternoon. I end up in the garden on what feels like a spring day. I go out to take the trash and recycling to the street, and don’t go back in. I start in on fall garden clean-up, without my gloves of course. It’s been so warm that a lot of the garden hasn’t died back in a timely manner. I start with the summer phlox. It is definitely dried up. I pull the annual penta out of the shard garden. I take a picture of the sun in the tops of the trees up through the dogwood. Without warning I am crying. I feel unbearable sadness. I take it out on the English ivy, just as I did when I began the garden nearly five years ago. It feels good to yank it loose, just as it did then. I get my gloves and clippers.
The banana grove has many dead leaves, but the stalks are still sturdy. I have been kind of enjoying the rattle when the wind blows. And there are several new leaves ready to unfurl. I cut off the leaves I can reach with my short clippers and leave the ones in the top. Perhaps they will protect the new leaves next week when the temperatures plummet to their lowest of the season after this weekend back in the mid-60s. (My mother wants to see another spring in the south before she leaves this life. She should have come for Christmas.) I don’t know what to do with the Purple Heart, the inspiration for the Global Purple front door. The dead parts are all tangled up with the not dead parts, and there is some new growth. I run my hands through it gently and throw out what comes loose, leaving the rest. It, too, will probably be gone after the coming cold snap. I feel like the Purple Heart. Much of who I have been in this city for the past 24 years is dead. I need to run my hands gently through my life and see what comes loose and what is left.
The year that was is gone, and I am looking forward. It is going to be an interesting year, for two things I am going to be a second time grandmother, and I will welcome a new daughter-in-law. Happy things. On day one the year is already unusual: I go out with friends and stay out to see the New Year open! We have dinner al fresco (yes, you read that right, outside in December). We walk among the revelers at First Night, and observe, but do not ride, the "similar to the one in Paris" ferris wheel in a downtown intersection; and touch for good luck, but do not stay to watch drop, the Raleigh acorn.
One of the experiences I am pursuing for this year is signing on to an online workshop called "One Little Word." Amelia did it last year and found it provocative and challenging. Participants choose one single word to invite into their life and engage with all year; to listen to and to see where it leads. Each month there is a prompt with a simple creative, writing, or photography project and a gentle reminder to check back in with your word. Presumably this time next year I will have a journal of some sort to look back on and see where my word took me.
I am not going to share here, right now, the word I have chosen. I need to let it dwell within me for now. I am sure you will see on the page where it is leading me. However, if any of you would like to join this venture with me, let me know. I will share my word with you, and embrace you and yours. Perhaps we can share our journeys on some online interactive web-something, or just between the two of us. Partners are always good when embarking on a new adventure. You can learn more at One Little Word.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover” (Mark Twain).
2 comments:
I don't know if Mark Twain understood women, though. I'm pretty sure I won't be sorry I didn't do more housework.
I took the one little word class last year and will be repeating many of the exercises this year with my new word. I hope you enjoy this process. It has been a practice I have followed for five years now and I am so pleased with the way it has shaped me.
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