Clock Thoughts

Remember when I said it might be nicer for us if I post shorter things about whimsical things? You don't? I said it two weeks ago. Go down there and look. 

Here is a fun thing for you to try if you are reaching your personal "fill line" as I call it, and wish to dabble in superstitious, quirky behavior that will make your kids wonder if you're eccentric already.

For reasons not worth mentioning, February was a trying month for me and come to think of it, most people I know except for my mother. (My mother's biggest complaint last month was the sound of Ted Cruz's voice. And appearance. And philosophy. And everything else. Off television, however, things were good for her). Gus also did well in February.

"I always do well."
---Gus Bonifant, writer cat

But for the rest of us, there were unhappy surprises, there was not enough good news, and because I care about my loved ones, ups and downs in their lives inevitably became my own. 

February started off as a three hour tour, and, well, you know that rest of that story. 

But it's March now, it's off to a good start, and we appear to be off the island.  

I'd like to thank my clock.

I practice a superstitious behavior which is this: when the hours and minutes of the time match, I wish a thing for someone who's having trouble, courage, strength, patience, a sense of humor, like that.  I don't plan it of course, or watch the clock because that would be odd.

I haven't studied my results, but in my wishful opinion, if someone seems at risk, and  I wish them a good thing, and things get better, or don't get worse, I credit my clock thought.

It also keeps my mind off my own personal fill line, to think about someone else's. 

Some days when I'm paying more attention than others, I catch it frequently:  1:11, 2:22, etc. Everyone gets a good, healing thought from me and I feel like Spirit Santa

. 

At lunch with my son recently, I held out my phone when the numbers matched and said, like a pre-eccentric person, "Quick, make a wish!"

  

He looked at me.

"No," he said. "That doesn't work."

Says you, I thought.

"It only works when it's 11:11," he said. 

If you are a loved one, or even a liked one, or, okay, if you're just a nice person I read about in the paper today, and the weather's started getting rough, and your tiny ship was tossed, you'll be on my list for clock thoughts.

Short Stuff

Sunday Gus

Every Sunday before the sun comes up, I listen to playlists with names like "Dissolving Clouds," drink coffee and watch Gus sleep while I think about stuff. 

I think through the past week's unresolved questions or problems, people I love who are enduring a rough ordeal, others who may just be coming out of one. 

I think about the twenty-something man who took a very elderly woman to see Maggie Smith's movie last night, and the guy I saw later on in a restaurant who all but stood on his head to cheer his sulky girlfriend.  

I think about what I'll make for dinner, and if I can maybe put the top down on the car if I also turn the heat up, and why Donald Trump can't do something about the white space his tanning goggles leave around his tiny eyes.

Stuff like that.

More than anything, I think about our kids and what I'm going to write about in the coming week. Today, I decided that I miss posting, but enjoy posting shortstuff and think that's what you'd rather read anyway. .

Today, since I have both raising children and writing in common with some, but have either of the two in common with many, I thought I would offer you a chicken or beef post of things worth mentioning in either category. 

Raising children

My four different people.

Raising four children who are as similar to each other as trees and fish and motorcycles and books, has taught me that I am better at foreign languages than I thought.

Every once in a while, I lapse into the wrong one when I'm communicating with them, and I get the same look you'd give someone who tried to tell you a joke or give you advice using words you've never heard before. 

I realize, this work in progress - to learn the unique language that came with each of them - joyously, has no end.

It is the easiest and the hardest thing I know about being a parent:  to explore the depth of our ability to know and love another person, whether or not they are like us, one fathom at a time. 

Writing 

Maybe I would focus
better if I moved the cat.

It takes me about twenty minutes to come around to what kind of writing I'll do for the day. And yet, if I interrupt that process to open a work in progress, I'll fall in until dinner time. If I could just learn that for keeps, I could spend that twenty minutes each day planning a dinner to reward my efforts. 

Ever since I read the Anne Lamott quote below, I am more mindful of what I want to accomplish in my writing life, and aware of when - and why - I'm avoiding the work of it. You just have to walk so far into that forest of thought and imagination. But I've also realized that the things I do while I'm putting it off, are things I'm bringing back to the page. So only some of the time does writing take place on the actual page, babies. When you don't want to be a writer, but need to be, that's what you do. All the time. 

Strange how mindful living works, but it does. 

Living life for realsies

I am a recovering perfectionist. It's okay, don't worry. 

Are you worried? 

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you.

I feel terrible.

I'm sorry.

Are you one of those? Do you know one of those?  

A while back, when I was a wee perfectionist, I saw a therapist to figure out why every day seemed "just out," as they say in tennis.

We only had a few sessions before he compared my way of living to the way rodents behave on a wheel. "The perfectionism thing has to go," he said.

He gave me a wrist clicker and told me to use it when I had that "perfectionist thing." He explained that seeing the number drop would be reinforcing and suggested I prepare a reward for myself. I said, "How about not having to see someone about my perfectionist thing anymore?"

We worked on it, things got better, we said goodbye and I walked to my car with his parting words in my head:

"You'll have this again. Remember, when you do, that perfectionism is about the way you make life look, not the way life really is."

In a conversation recently with someone who would also like to become a recovering perfectionist, I was reminded of another important thing I've learned since driving away from that parking lot years ago and it is this:

The more you do, when less is required, the less you're living for realsies.

The less you do, when less is required, the more you're living for realsies.

Godspeed, recovering perfectionists, and everyone else. 

Life is good, when it's realsie.

  

The biggest fan

Just look at the face on that adorable book.

Once, I went to Boston, an hour away, to attend a writer's conference. For the first time, I would meet an agent, and pitch a novel. 

I was nervous.  

I accessorized this future memory with the most luxurious detail available. I booked a limo and a room at the Boston Harbor Hotel, which is a place one doesn't visit, but experiences, between the Molton Brown skincare products and view of the harbor alone. 

I ordered lobster and stared at the water. In twenty-four hours, I thought, I would be mulling over new information about my career, because back then, I didn't know I already had that information.  

I carried a book by Elizabeth Berg, an uber-relatable writer who seemed a little like me, but who actually seems a lot like everyone. I wondered if people would ever think that about my writing.

I brought a collection of Enrico Morricone songs played by YoYo Ma. This, I planned, would be the soundtrack for my experience if down the road, I forgot the way this felt, to chase a dream that probably wouldn't come true, but, oh my God, might. 

And there we sat, me and next-me, eating lobster and looking at the harbor. Not the me helping kids into college, or encouraging a husband through a rough patch in his business, or running a household, or being a good sister or friend or daughter or community volunteer. 

The afternoon darkened over the water and I began to think about giving up. Next-me would be too hard. But how hard? I was afraid. But I was euphoric. I was going to lose something in the morning. But I was going to gain something in the morning, too. The something was hope.

Today, I'm a few years and two books and many articles away from that weekend at the Boston Harbor when I was introduced to the two people who encouraged me to stay in the game: the agent who requested a full manuscript, and next-me, my often fickle, but honest and lifelong fan who has been at my side every day of my writing career, saying if you quit, you won't know how it turned out.   

In May, I am planning to go back to that conference with another book to pitch. I'll meet an agent who might request a full manuscript. I'll send it and maybe I won't get a response. Maybe I will. I don't know. What matters is that I will not be figuring it out, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst, on my own. 

I'll be in the company of my biggest fan.  We're looking forward to it. 

Be that. Be your own fan. Be next-you. 

Never give up.

First baby, first a lot of things

Courtney Elizabeth Bonifant Watson Dollface,
Birthday girl of my heart

When Courtney Elizabeth Bonifant Watson Dollface was born thirty years ago, after a labor that was several years longer than I'd expected, I had two thoughts other than, "Wow, they weren't kidding about how much THAT hurts."

The first was that life as I'd known it now seemed behind me, a large room I'd exited in which the shades had been mostly, but not completely raised. Life had been a place I'd learned to navigate with my own welfare at the center of my travels.

But this – this new life was wide, brilliant and brighter. Anything was possible in this travel and my own welfare stepped right up and said, "I'm all set, give her my place." 

The other came later on when I realized I believed in God after all. I had no formal take on God, I wasn't feeling the robe and beard and walking stick kind of God, I had to make God up in my head. But I propped my tiny baby against my knees, stared into her drifty, navy blue eyes, and promised her everything in my power to protect her. From my heart, slipped a word aimed at something bigger than both of us, which was, "Please." 

There was no scary roar, the walls didn't shake, it wasn't like when Endora was mad at Darrin. Nor was it like the time I put my hands together as a child, closed my eyes and asked God to turn me into a cat for a day. God didn't respond with "Please what?" My God just went straight to the business of quid pro quo: 

Every minute of my life, I would love this being with my own, and in turn, I would find answers to questions in my head of how and what and what-if inside that big, brand new love in my heart.

Today, my tiny Dollface is thirty. I have asked my God more times than I can count to help me trust that she is safe when she's far away, that she's happy when I can't consult her eyes for proof, that she'll be strong in times of conflict, and that she'll know each minute of every day that she is loved for the brilliant, bright being that she is.

"Noted," says my God when I ask, because my God remembers that day like I do, when we all met.

Happy Birthday, my girl.

You are loved like you read about.

Fifteen things I observed in 2015

This is not a picture of Gus. It
is the last sunrise of 2015.

Knowing a writer is like hugging a pickpocket, someone once said.

I grew rich in 2015.

As a writer, I spend a lot of time watching people and thinking about what they do and, of course, eavesdropping in restaurants. If you've read this blog before, you know about my field trips to the supermarket, where connections between people are always on sale.

In 2015, I walked into a bar where my husband and I go for dinner now and then. A regular, about fifty and a dead ringer for Neil Young, squinted at me for several moments before he pointed at me with his glass. "I think I know you," he said. "You a townie?" I said, "Define townie." He slid a chair up, and in a half hour, we were arguing over which was the best Rolling Stones song ever.    

In 2015, I had a conversation with a man on a plane that started when he unplugged from his iPod, folded his arms, stared out the window for several minutes, then looked at me and said, "So what takes you to Cleveland?" Before the plane landed, I knew where he'd spent childhood summers, the siblings he was closest to, and the massive struggle each were facing as the first Christmas since his mother's recent and sudden death loomed.  "We got together last night to decide who would make her favorite dishes," he said. "It was pretty rough."

In 2015, I published two of the most honest essays I'm capable of. In one case, the piece connected me to others on an emotional level that astounded me. It brought multiple comments of appreciation and expressions of deep love. In another, I hit a nerve in readers who were not inspired, but eager to be vicious. One took a swing and the rest piled on.

Gentle essayist that I try to be, I was suddenly Piggy in Lord of the Flies.

But I learned something I will never forget. People, all people, will find and cluster around those who identify with their deepest feelings, the good, bad and ugly. They may be too blinded by their relief at belonging to know or care how they affect others. But if they can belong, they will actually take part in killing Piggy.

On the surface, we want to be like some, and try hard to be as different as possible from others. But when people are honest, and when they are asked with sincerity, and when they know their deepest feelings won't be held against them, it is stunning to realize that we crave commonality enough to find it in a conversation with a stranger.

Connection is that important.

For some, happiness is elusive and for others, impossible. I believe however, that for most, happiness is within reach. But it's not free. It takes real connection with another that is void of judgement, and heavy with truth and acceptance and curiosity about what is in the heart and mind of someone else. It takes trust, something I believe people hold onto like their biggest, private secret.

With that, I give you my unscientific, but honest impressions of how we get along, how we don't, and how we should, in 2016.

1. We need to recognize when someone's reaching out to us and respond. We're more important to people than we realize.

2. People are as loving as they feel loved. Judgmental, critical people show how little love exists in their own lives, and it goes the other way; loved, happier people are more open and accepting and tend to forgive their own mistakes more easily.

3. We should think about our words and why we must say them, but we should think hard about how another will hear them, which may not be at all the way we intended.

4. Solutions to other people's problems that seem obvious to us may not be easy, or even possible for them to carry out. Rarely are we the experts on another's true life that we think we are.

5. If there's a right thing to do, and for some reason we won't, our rationale will not look the same way, years from now. Even if it takes a long time, people should do the right thing. Even if it's complicated. Even if it hurts.

6. Pessimists are generally unhappy people, but they weren't born that way. It only takes a little heartbreak for people to believe that bad things are inevitable and good things are accidental. We should feel for them. We won't catch anything.

7. When we wrong someone unintentionally, and we've said we're sorry, and tried to show that we really are, and they still wish to hold it against us, it's time to realize they can't forgive because they don't want to. Sometimes, apology only moves one of us closer to the middle. 

8. It is not loving someone to tolerate who they are. Loving someone means wanting them to be nothing less than their truest, real self and changing your ideas of them accordingly.

9. We should not share personal, private things about our kids, and we should never tell people what they make. 

10. Some people who are stupid about what to say, would die before they'd hurt you on purpose.

11. We speak in headlines too often. We should have real points of view that mean something to us and let other people think the way they must.

12. If others insist on seeing us as we were, and not as we are, give them time.  You didn't change overnight.

THIS is a picture of Gus.

13. Those moments when you are doing something and think you should be doing something else are your mind's way of telling you it needs to play.

14. Don't lie to people who know who you really are and love you.  They'll know you're doing it, and they won't say so.

15. And finally, after a year of field trips to stores and banks and restaurants and doctor's offices, after months of observing people – all people – who are most real when they don't know someone is watching, I offer two essential rules to getting along with others:

First, let people come out before you go in. And second, don't block the intersection.

In 2016, be honest, be kind and may your happiest connections grow stronger.

Love,

Susan

Love and kindness at life school

Some of the subjects offered at life school

I saw a couple the other day at the supermarket, where I attend life school. 

They were mid-late seventies, although she seemed younger. He wore a cap imprinted with USAF, and he was in a wheelchair. She was dressed simply in a long skirt and sweater. Her hair, which she clipped in the back, was mostly gray with a little blonde. While he wheeled the chair along, she kept her fingers loosely closed around a handle.

They traveled the aisles, stopping when she spotted an item that she wanted to show him. They chatted about dinner.

"Oh, that would be good with..."

"You know, later this week we could have it with..."

"Maybe you could make  that recipe where..."

And so on. 

I'm assuming they were long-married and that this routine was a regular one, spending time at the store, engaged in planning a dinner they would go home and make together.

They were unaware of others unless she needed to wheel him out of someone's way.  

They talked about company they were expecting.  

They shared a story about someone they'd seen last week. 

They commented on the crowd today.

She laughed when he made jokes. He nodded when she spoke, "Uh-huh, that's true." She asked his opinion, "How about," or, "what do you think of..."

I imagined them in their youth. Maybe he was the more outgoing, while she was possibly the quiet one. Maybe he hung around the kitchen while she made dinner, telling stories of his day, and maybe she shared funny moments with their kids. Maybe they engaged in the self-congratulatory boasting that we all do in our own intimate company, when we agree that we are probably the most blessed people on the planet for all we have, all we've done together, and maybe, all we've survived.

I know that life, age, struggle, can weigh people down until it becomes something to deal with, like the days themselves. Conversations, expressions of our minds and hearts, can stall for the effort of launching them. Smiles can creep away, and faces can freeze in a state of half-interest and half-disappointment.  I see it all the time, and so do you.

But if the USAF man struggled to live in and out of that wheelchair, he wasn't bitter in his companion's company.  If his companion was tired, she was gentle, still, in his. One could see, that each looked forward to whatever ritual was in the plans for later, if only the preparation and sharing of dinner. 

It's what we all need, a later.

In line, checking out, she looked around at the day's crowd. The tender expression changed to a watchful one, a bit guarded, slightly puzzled.  But when her companion spoke to her, back it came, the other face, lines relaxed, eyes soft, her smile like a pretty day.  

Love and kindness.

It's what's for dinner, at life school.