Women's Work

Beach Reading

I don't really think of my reading as having "seasons" – winter, spring, summer, fall – but that said, summer is the time for "going to the beach," which is code for "reading a book at the beach." I don't look for a particular kind of book to read there, although almost any kind of nonfiction is out. I can only concentrate so much while hot, lying in the blinding bright light, and covered in salt. So the American Planning Association's suggestion that The High Cost of Free Parking made great beach reading went out the window (where, I think, it belonged). NPR has a whole webpage dedicated to summer reading, if you're interested. Here are three of my beach-worthy books:

In Pursuit of the Green Lion by Judith Merkle Riley. In medieval England, a midwife must go abroad to France to search for her husband, being held captive without ransom by a sadistic French noble. She's accompanied by her friend, also a midwife, and her husband, an alchemist. That gives you a very bare bones synopsis – it's much more lovely and magical than my two sentences. It's the second of three in a series – A Vision of Light and The Water-Devil are the other two. (Thanks to Martha Ann for introducing me to them!)

    "It was in the Year of Our Lord 1358, in the summertime, just two days before the Feast of Saint Barnabas, that a Voice spoke out of heaven into the ear of my understanding.

    'Margaret,' said the Voice, 'just what are you doing there?'"

Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg. About three sisters during WWII, two with beaux fighting overseas. I like that this is a story of American women during WWII, and it reminds me of stories my grandmother used to tell, of her and her sister, after my grandfather had left for the Pacific. (Thanks, Emily, for recommending this book to me!)

    "It was Kitty's turn to sleep with her head at the end of the bed. She didn't mind; she preferred it, actually. She liked the mild disorientation that came from that position, and she liked the relative sense of privacy—her sisters' feet in her face, yes, but not their eyes, not their ears, nor the close, damp sounds of their breathing. And at the foot of the bed she was safe from Louise, who often yanked mercilessly at people's hair in her sleep."

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I love the complexity of this novel. It seems inspired by Thomas Hardy* but thoroughly modern – especially the ending.

    "An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay—Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched southwestern leg—and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867."

 

*Not in a Jude the Obscure bad way, Em. J

The Summer of My Discontent

When I received the email outlining this month’s topic, I realized: Whoa!  I haven’t read anything of consequence so far this summer.  I don’t think Yoga Journals, newspapers, or airline magazines count.  Honestly, I can’t remember a period in my life where I’ve gone so long without devouring a book or two or three.

 

Very early in the summer, I did read one book (a friend’s recommendation): Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert.  Ms. Gilbert’s story struck a major chord (in a bittersweet minor key) because I’m dealing with extraordinarily similar issues.  Unfortunately, unlike Ms. Gilbert, I don’t have massive savings stockpiled to support a pleasurable culinary trip to Italy, or a soul-searching stay in an Indian ashram, or a final respite with a healer in Bali.

 

But her reasons…ah yes, her reasons…

 

I, too, am facing divorce.  Like Ms. Gilbert, we’re divorcing for reasons that our closest friends have difficulty fathoming.  We don’t fight, we don’t argue.  We’re basically kind to each other.  Even the mediators questioned why we are parting because, on the surface, we’re exceptionally compatible.  We’ve maintained a harmonious relationship throughout the divorce proceedings – in fact, we’re more companionable now than ever before.  Consequently, our decision seems puzzling.

 

Those looking in from the outside don’t know about the churlish snapping at each other, or the weary plodding through for the sake of the family, or the loneliness of being unable to bridge our vast distances.  And like Ms. Gilbert, I’ve spent too many late nights alone and questioning while my family slept.  I’ve battled self-recrimination and the demons that whispered I needed to stop wishing and whining, and then we could be happy.  It was only when my husband admitted to similar feelings that we finally took our first steps towards achieving peace and happiness for both of us.

 

So instead of reading on the dock, this summer has been devoted to dealing with practicalities: wending our way through mediation and parenting classes, plowing through court documents, disentangling our joint holdings, looking for a place to live.  He spent an irritating six weeks refinancing the house into his name.  And five weeks ago, I tendered an offer on a short-sale condominium that remains locked with the lender’s negotiator, keeping me nervous and slightly on edge.  A traumatic layoff at work – decimating half of our tiny department – sent me into a bit of a tailspin, too.

 

Sprinkled throughout the summer has been occasional weekend travel.  And in early August, I'll be flying to South Korea with 30 other adoptees to visit the places of my beginnings and to put out feelers for my birth family.  So I’ve been trying to plan and pack and steel myself mentally for that. A few days ago, my husband casually tossed out the glaringly obvious question: what will I do or how will I feel should I actually meet my birth family?  Surprisingly – stupidly, really – until he asked, it never occurred to me that I could possibly meet them, given the fact that I was abandoned with absolutely no records.  But he’s right; it could happen.  It has happened to other adoptees I know.  So now…more fodder for my already-overloaded brain.

 

And I admit to ennui and inertia for much of the summer.  Too many changes have crowded into my head space, jockeying for prominence.  There are too many thoughts living there, both positive and negative.  Too many dreams.  Too much hope; too much doubt.  Too much strength; too much neediness.  Plus, when I arrive home weary from 11 hours as an overdressed professional, all I want to do is crawl into my pajamas and escape into my writing and my (admittedly excessive) online socializing.  Cooking, cleaning, thoughtful reading, packing, even chatting on the phone (which requires inflection) – all those seem like too much effort these days.

 

It sounds like I’m making excuses.  And I am.  We’re only halfway through the summer.  There’s still time to unplug and settle down with a good book.  Suggestions, anyone?

Topic for July 2009

Hello!  The topic for July will be summer reading.  Enjoy!

The Ice Cream - Exercise Balance

The line between self-care and self-indulgence can be very blurry. Often the difference comes down to moderation. I define self-care as something that feels good now and later. A skein of yarn for a scarf I actually knit makes life better. Buying enough yarn for three sweaters and then feeling guilty about not knitting them doesn't feel good in the long run. 

I try to indulge in self-care more often -- regular walks and occasional ice cream. It feels pretty good when it is working. When it gets out of balance, I work on the strength for getting back into balance.

SPLASH

I really liked Susan's advice to save your own life first. She articulated what I am trying to do after too many years of trying to save everybody else first.  So I am walking every day, writing almost every day, and promising myself a massage....one day.  And a few private yoga classes ...maybe.  This saving one's self first is not easy.  Perhaps I just need to dive into the icy water head first!  Everyone else is on their own.

Place the mask over your own face before attempting to help the person in the seat next to you.

That's what they tell you when you get on an airplane, before they take off. 

What they mean is Save Your Own Life First. 

That's the best advice they can give you. 

It's also the best advice I can give you. 

Well, aside from Be Particular, Pay Attention, Follow Your Gut, Floss, and Have Cash. 

As far as I've been able to discern thus far, that's about all I can really do to take care of myself, but so far, so good. 

On NOT taking care of business

Although I belong to the generation which has made taking care of oneself (both physically and mentally) into a religion, I do NOT worship in that church.  In fact, quite a few of my pet peeves have to do with my fellow boomers.

I really can't be bothered with constantly taking my emotional or physical temperature.  What I've been doing for sixty odd years seems to be working just fine and if it stops working,  hey, guess what?  I've had a good run for my money and I'm satisfied.

Wendy the Witch

Miss Wendy was a witch. And not a good witch, either. Good witches are beautiful, usually wear white or palest pink, and are quite taken with body glitter and small white kittens. Bad witches are, well, ugly. They love toads, toadstools, and slime. People say they have forked tongues, or tongues like knives, or that they will give you a "tongue-lashing," but this is metaphorical, rather than actual.

Wendy was a bad witch, the baddest of the bad – cross-eyed, gimpy, with a tongue she wielded like a samurai sword, expertly, with deadly force. But somehow Wendy got it into her head that being a bad witch, especially the baddest of the bad witches, was, well, not good. So she cast a spell, as any witch can do. And the spell was to make her seem like a good witch. Like the best of the good witches. Her hair, once raven black and as fine as a spider web, turned yellow, long, and thick. She exchanged her black cape and pointed black shoes for white tulle and white ballet flats. And her tongue – her glorious, finely-chiseled tongue – she cut out. Not literally, but figuratively. The spell she cast coated her throat with molasses-thick, honey-sweet words. Where once she croaked, now she cooed. Where once she spoke her mind, now she only spoke what would please.

Wendy became the Best of the Good Witches. Good witches everywhere told her how they admired the change, how much better it was to be a good witch than a bad. For a while, she believed them. She liked how they praised her, how she felt as though she belonged among all these white and pale pink witches, sparkling tiaras in their thick, fair hair. But she found, after a while, to her very great surprise, that she wasn't happy. She missed black. She missed smelly things, like dirt, and henbane. She missed toads, and cackling, and she started to hate having to be pretty all the time. But most of all, she missed her tongue. She couldn't even speak her unhappiness, because it would upset her newfound friends, and this the spell would not let her do. So she did what any able witch, good or bad, could do – she uncast her spell.

Now Wendy is again the best of the bad. Her tongue has severed many an oversized ego from an inflated sense of self-worth. She plays in the dirt, has bad teeth, bad breath, and a wicked sense of humor. Best of all, she is happy. That's what every witch deserves.

Taking care of beefs

I'm taking care of myself by trying to remove several beefs from my life.

How do I do that? By moving across the Atlantic!

And here are the beefs I'm going to leave behind:

• Limited opening hours: all stores close at 7pm, expect for Thursday, when some are open late (as in until 9pm) for what's called the "long Thursday." Everything is closed on Sundays!

• No customer service: in an example related to the opening hours, many stores won't let you in anymore if it's less than 10 minutes to closing time.

• Lack of cultural offerings: granted, there is actually quite a bit going on, but most of it is in a language I still have problems with. So I'm stuck with mainly amateur stuff -- most of it pretty bad I'm sorry to report.

• French: a language I never cared for much, and living in a French-speaking region hasn't changed that. It's just so complicated and cumbersome!

• Expensive but mediocre restaurants: well, they probably exist everywhere, but here they rule! For a while I even stopped going out for dinner, because it made me so mad to pay a lot of money and get so little for it. Now I go for the social aspect, but I look forward to combining nice conversation and good food again!

• My boring job: I guess that's probably my biggest beef. I feel useless, not challenged, totally dispensable... It can only get better!!!

Of course, there will be other/new beefs -- the main one certainly that I'll be much further away from my family and can't just visit them for the weekend. But I will make up for that with longer visits. And I will miss the friends I've made here. However, I have the strong feeling that a lot of them will follow me eventually -- none of them is really happy here!

A World of Delights

Being a both a full-time parent and a full-time worker means taking care of myself in stolen moments.  It means finding pleasures in mini-delights, with a few gee-whiz indulgences scattered along the path.  It’s about those shimmery, jewel-like moments of happiness that cast a glow upon my day.

 

Here are just a few delights that bring me unabashed pleasure, plus some deliberate ways in which I renew my soul:

 

Simple Delights

 

Unleashing my inner diva by singing, loudly and badly, while driving alone. Shoulder shimmies are mandated at stoplights if the song happens to be ultra-cheesy or anything sung by ABBA.

 

Waltzing with Kimmy while singing, "Tennessee Waltz."  As my father used to sing to me.

 

Reading Cosmo or some equally non-intellectual, mind-numbing magazine.  Bonus points if there’s time and will for trying the suggestions (Avocado and mayonnaise in my hair?  Egg whites on my face?  No problem!).

 

A cat purring on my chest and loving me, just because I’m me.

 

Listening to Nicky sing.  Anything.  His voice is entrancingly pure, clear, and completely un-selfconscious.

 

Napping on a rainy afternoon, naked under flannel sheets and a cozy comforter, in a cool room with a gentle breeze.  Thunder as a backdrop is nice.  Oh, hell, throw in a crackling fire, too, as long as I'm dreaming...

 

And speaking of naked (get your mind out of the gutter)...any chance to be au naturel when sunning is lounge-like-a-lizard wonderful.

 

Teeth-hurtin’ good music blaring on the stereo, as loud as I want it, the kind that makes me want to dance.

 

Discussing matters both lofty and silly with Ben, usually about life and love, preferably over good coffee and a lip-smackingly decadent dessert.

 

 

Indulgent Delights (notice most are food-related!)

 

Caramel macchiatos from Starbucks (and one day I’ll be over-the-top indulgent and order a venti).

 

Tasty little nibbles on the perfect chocolate truffle.

 

Buying (or even better, receiving) the absolutely perfect flower (and ignoring the guilt that it is destined to die).

 

Strong, flavorful coffee – the kind that makes my throat tingle – mixed with the perfect touch of half-and-half.  None of that skim or lowfat milk for me, please.

 

Dressing up for a night at the opera (and ballet and symphony and theater...ad infinitum).

 

Relaxing in a steamy hot tub, preferably under a starry sky.

 

Himmarshee Bar and Grill’s apple cake, smothered in homemade caramel sauce.

 

 

Necessary Delights

 

Yoga, lots of yoga, for clearing my head and calming my soul.

 

Good books on my nightstand and time to read them.

 

Carving out time to write.

 

Finding a quiet moment to reflect.

 

My friends...the ones who love me and who keep me sane (while understanding my need to be crazy).

 

My family...the ones who fill my heart to overflowing and put the joy in my life.

 

 

Unexpected Delights

 

Receiving that “thinking-of-you” phone call, letter, email, or text at the perfect random moment, just when I need a boost.

 

Completing the entire crossword puzzle, for once.

 

Happening upon a full rainbow – rare, precious and magical.  I can almost visualize a unicorn rounding the bend.

 

A heartfelt hug from an unexpected source at an unexpected moment.  And sometimes, an unexpected kiss would be nice, too.