Life in Chicago

Miss Me?

If you're missing me this week while I'm Costa Rica then consider picking up a copy of this month's Yoga Journal at your local bookstore or magazine stand.

You'll find a piece I wrote on page 22, replete with a photo of me in savasana!

Going Out in the World

Greg and I leave early tomorrow morning for Costa Rica. I'm really excited about this trip -- neither of us have ever been to Costa Rica and, truthfully, I'm not sure that I ever considered going. I've heard wonderful things about the country, but there have been other places that I'm more curious about.

However, now that I'm actually going, I'm fascinated by the idea and I can't wait to crack the spine on my Lonely Planet Costa Rica tomorrow morning at the airport and read everything I can about this new place out in the world that I'm traveling to. We're going to be primarily in the rain forest, staying at an luxury eco-lodge and doing a lot of hiking.

Traveling is so important to me. There is nothing I like better than going somewhere far out in the world that is very different from where I generally reside. I have learned more about myself on each trip I've taken than a month spent in psychotherapy. My life and the way I live it has never seemed more clear to me than from a window seat in an airplane, a bench on a ferry, or a dampened rock by a hidden waterfall.

I think traveling is a cure for a thousand afflictions. I think it at once takes you out of your head and puts you in it...but back in the right place.

The funny thing about me and traveling is that it scares me.

I get very anxious as I prepare for a trip -- worried about my house and my pets, my little life that I strive to maintain and protect. I make lists and arrangements. I double-check obsessively and bite my bottom lip as I pack.

I'm very fearful of flying. This is an affliction I've battled for over a decade. Each flight. No matter if it's a jumbo jet or a puddle jumper, a 30 minute flight between little islands or an 18 hour one to Asia -- my knuckles whiten as I grip the arm rests, my breath shallow, my strange little prayers silent and desperate.

But no matter...each trip drives a hunger deeper into me to see more of the world, to be more and more a part of it all. And each trip finds me more grateful than ever for this life I live.

More on Blogging and Writing and a Little About Quiet Wednesday Mornings

It's only 7:30 and I've been up for an hour, drinking coffee, reading emails, chatting with Greg's parents. They've been here for about a week now. His sister was due to have her baby last Friday and still hasn't gone into labor yet and everyone is just kind of waiting.

The house has been full and bustling with the four of us for the last week. Everyone up early each morning, the bathroom door opening and closing continuously, water running, voices in each room, someone playing a video on the computer, the dishwasher swishing and humming, and the cats scampering across the hardwood floor.

I'm wishing for some quiet time but overall, it's nice to have them here. My new mother and father in law. They all just left for the day -- Greg and his parents -- and suddenly the house is so quiet. I can hear the train going by in the distance and the sound of a sprinkler in the grass downstairs. I'm grateful for this moment, at my little green desk in the front windows of our home in Chicago.

Greg and I are going to Costa Rica on Friday for a six day travel writing trip. I can't wait to get away. Life has been rushing by for the past couple of months and I'm looking forward to a brief interlude spent in the rain forest. And neither myself nor Greg have been to Costa Rica so it will be nice to experience something so new together.

Bill and Rita will be staying here while we're gone, which is nice because we won't have to worry about the cats or the house, but it also means that I won't really have any time before we go to clear my head and find some space before we leave -- something I like to try to do, in a metaphorical sense -- before going out in the world on interesting trips.

Regarding yesterday's posts, I'm really blown away by the generous and encouraging comments everyone left. It's remarkable to hear from friends, regular blog readers and strangers alike, and the passion with which all of you wrote was incredibly flattering and surprising.

This issue with some of my friends not liking this blog is a tricky thing. Regardless of how much I can rationalize and justify my enjoyment of writing here (and I have no intentions of stopping) it still doesn't make me feel very good to be somehow hurting people who love me. Yes, I wish they could see it as an extension of the writer in me and as something that I am driven to do and very much fulfilled by, but their feelings about it lend themselves to a somewhat harsh criticism of how self-centered all of this is.

I think my friend Lucy's words last weekend were something to the effect of, "It's like you just want everyone to look at your life all the time."

This comment felt like a slap across the face. I think my cheeks burned at the time. I think I apologized.

Again, I don't intend the blog this way. But when she said it, I could imagine, from her perspective, how it could seem that way.

I think this blog is more a way of me looking at my life, me showing myself my life, me just trying to get perspective on my existence and the meaning of it all.

I'm a writer. I always have been. There is a drive in me to put words on paper. To take experiences and turn them into prose. And I will always do it.

The Peculiarity of Blogging

It's past ten pm and I'm sitting on the couch, the Olympics going on the TV in the background, cats sprawled out all around in the living room, their little sleeping purrs reverberating through the couch cushions.

I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not usually up this late. Or if I am, I'm not usually very awake. Greg's brother Eric and his wife Kristin (my in-laws!) gave us a gorgeous espresso maker for a wedding gift and we used it for the first time tonight and made cappucinos with some yummy Intelligentsia espresso beans I bought over the weekend. They turned out pretty well for it being our first time...and are, of course, the reason I'm still awake right now and typing away right now.

I've been thinking about the concept of blogging. Or maybe just about the concept of me blogging. And I've been thinking about how much criticism I sometimes get from some of my close friends about blogging. In the last year I've had several very close friends tell me that they dislike reading my blog.

I'm always surprised to hear this. Namely because I don't expect them to read it. I really just don't care if my friends read it or not. I don't really care if anyone reads this blog. Well, that's not true. I really enjoy writing here and I put a lot of effort into it and I think that sometimes I write some good things here...and I hope that  someone somewhere likes it.

But that said, it's never been a requirement of being friends with me and so I find it confusing when my friends tell me that they don't like reading it.

The shared complaint they have is that it makes them feel distant from me. It makes them feel as though there is nothing special between me and them...that my whole life is out here for anyone to engage with and therefore, they are no different than the stranger in Australia reading these words.

This hurts me.

First of all, I don't think it's true. To me, it's apples and oranges -- I've never expected this blog to be a replacement for friendship or for my input into a friendship and, as far as I can tell, I've never tried to make it a substitute, preferring to catch up with my friends in the regular ways that friends do.

That said, this blog is also important to me. The things I write here are very real and very personal and very me. I'm very grateful for the people who read these pages, strangers and friends alike. And so when friends tell me they don't like reading this blog, I tend to brush it off, like it's not worth reading...but that's not quite what I mean either.

I started writing here in search of an outlet and a place to exercise my writing. And that's very much what it has remained. I'm grateful that I get to come to this place. I'm grateful that so many people read the things I write here. I'm often blown away by the support, encouragement and generosity of those who come here.

And I'm sorry that this blog has become such an alienating presence to some of the people I love. I never intended that.

(Greg and I have a new post up on She Wrote, He Wrote today/Tuesday: We'll Have the Meat, Please, But Without the Steroids and Hormones and Well, the Meat) 

The Last Five Years

This morning I was thinking about where I was a year ago..and then that led to me thinking about where I was in August each of the last five years.

Five years because that was how long ago my father died and each year since has been a defining one.

Five years ago August: Living in Los Angeles and my father had just died.

Four years ago August: Living in Venice Beach but spent August traveling through Europe, visiting friends of my parents and scattering my father's ashes.

Three years ago August: Living in Venice Beach and working at 826LA.

Two years ago August: Living in Venice Beach and in grad school at
Antioch.

One year ago August: Packing up my life in Los Angeles to move to Chicago. I also spent part of the month in Taiwan on a travel writing trip. Four years ago today I was in Kaohsiung, up early in a beautiful hotel on a misty river.

Looking at the last five years, broken down in this way, I'm amazed by what can emerge within in the space of a year. I'm looking at this photo on the right of a Confucian temple I visited in Taipei and I can viscerally remember standing there and taking that photo (click to enlarge). I remember the humidity and the smoky scent of incense in the air. I can almost remember who I thought I was in that moment and how different that woman is from the one who sits here, typing these words.

I think there is something comforting and surprising in the way our lives can change so dramatically from moment to moment. I think that it's at once terrifying and also absolutely harmonious.

And I look forward to who I will be a year from now.

Reflecting

It's Sunday evening and I'm sitting at the dining room table in a t-shirt and jeans. Greg is on the couch in the living room with both of his parents, all of them watching the Olympics.

My in-laws have been here since last Thursday and my friend Lucy from Atlanta was here all weekend as well. Greg's parents are staying in the living room and Lucy graciously took the couch. Quite a full house. Greg's sister is due to have her second baby any second now and is the reason Bill & Rita are here.

And although I'm so glad that everyone is here, so grateful for all the good people in my life, right now I'm feeling pretty tired. I ran around with Lucy all weekend, showing her Chicago and staying out late and eating deep dish pizza and trying to make sure she was having a nice time. And in my free moments I was making sure that Bill and Rita were comfortable and cooking dinners and monitoring a new kitten we got last weekend.

It's been an intense summer. It's been relentless and full with an endless flow of guests and trips and weddings and parties and dinners and running here and there and barely a moment to sit and breathe. And really, I've loved it...and created it...but right now, I'm feeling exhausted.

I'm looking forward to long, slow winter nights in front of the fireplace, just me and my husband, the cats, a good book and a glass of wine.

For now, I'm off to bed.

Thursday Morning

Oh, I really meant to leave time for a longer post today but my morning has caught up with me and I must rush to work.

Greg's parents are here this week as his sister is due to have her second baby tomorrow and my friend Lucy arrives from Atlanta this afternoon to stay the weekend with us. Lucy and I have been friends since we were 15 and have just been through a million things together.

Much more soon...

August 5

My father died five years ago today.

I'd been up all night the night before, holding his hand while he slept in the hospital bed in his bedroom.

It's an interesting thing to spend the very last hours of someone's life with them.

He was ready to go. He was never scared, never too sad. He was so grateful for his life and for all the things he got to experience. He ran his hand across my face on one of the last afternoons he was conscious, tears in his eyes, and he said, life is worth living.

I'll never forget how empty my life felt when he was gone.

After he took his very last breaths, and after I released his hands from mine for the last time I would ever do so, I went and stood outside on the little patio. The flowers and plants he'd always tended so carefully were all blooming quietly in the cool evening air, and I looked out across the horizon at the palm trees, the last light settling down across the rooftops, an airplane droned by overhead. My father was dead.

It felt as though everything had dropped out from behind me; like there was only a gaping emptiness there at my back. As if, were I to turn around, I might just fall. Infinity. Nothing. Silence or the empty sound of wind.
My father was gone.

That was five years ago. Births and deaths and heartaches and loneliness ago. That was moves and weddings and jobs and travels ago. That was days and days and hours and hours of trying to fill myself up again ago. That was me curled into a corner of the couch staining the cushions with tears ago. That was me standing at the end of the pier on a cool, dusky Venice night ago. That was me, over and over and over again learning how to stand, facing out at the emptiness, and how to see beyond that, ago.

That was me, finding my way here, to the corner of the dining room table on a Tuesday morning in Chicago, coffee cup warm at hand, cats tussling on the rug, husband creaking in his desk chair as he reclines to read the news. That was me, finding my way to this moment where my heart is the opposite of where it was five years ago, full and open and grateful.

Colpe di Fulme

It's a dark and stormy Monday morning in Chicago. I could hardly believe it was time to get up an hour ago -- there was so little light coming in through the windows and the whole world felt kind of hushed.

I was thinking this morning, lying there in the dark before I could make myself push back the covers, about things I'm grateful for. And Greg was the first that I thought of. Not that it's so unusual of a feeling but it sent me off musing on our two short weeks of married life so far.

I have to say that it does feel different. There is something slower and sweeter and more intentional about it. The frenetic energy of uncertainty isn't so plangent and there is simply something larger and more encompassing than there was before.

In a journal my mother wrote to me before she died, she wrote about an older couple whom she had loved to visit on Cape Cod, friends of her mother's I think. John and Tommy White. Tommy's real name was Thomasina, I think, but she went by Tommy and they were married for years and years and years. They were the most wonderful old couple and they just adored each other. My mother and I would always go over to their house during our summer visits to Cape Cod and sit and listen to them as they expounded on life and love.

In my mother's journal to me she writes:

You said to me last night, Mom, don't let me marry a jerk. You'll meet
so many men, will attract them like flies to honey. You have that shy
sweetness that men love. Don't marry anyone because of money, name,
class, need of any kind. Be so much in touch with who you are and what
you really want—then it will happen. Your complement will appear.

Remember what John White said about true love? Doing everything you
can for your loved one and having he or she feel the same way.

Find yourself and you'll find your other self. Give each other space
and respect. There can be no tiny nagging doubt. The Italians have a
name for it, which I've forgotten, but it's likened to being struck by
a lightening bolt when you meet, which I adore.

That phrase was Colpe di Fulme....I looked it up when I was in Italy just after her death.

Ever since I read this entry in her journal, just after she died when I was eighteen, I think I always kept in the back of my mind that this is what I was looking for.

I remember shortly after meeting Greg, going to look up this entry and reread it slowly, word for word, knowing for certain that I had found what I'd been looking for. And this morning was just one of those simple mornings in which I was reminded of the sweetness of it all.

(Greg and I have a new post up on She Wrote, He Wrote today: Lollapalooza Day 1 - D.A.R.E. Shirts, Fainting Nacho Buyers, Radiohead and a Hell of a Lot of People.)

The Beginning of August

I can hardly believe that it's August 1 already. The year has slipped past so quickly and there's been so much to try to grasp on to, so many moments I've wanted to hold for longer than they are.

I woke up feeling the worst yet with my summer cold and I finally relented and took some Sudafed. It drives Greg crazy that I refuse to take medicine ever, just vitamins and rest and fluids. But we're going to Lollapalooza all weekend and I've got to start feeling better if I'm going to enjoy it. I've never been to a big music festival and I'm a little nervous for some reason. I'm nervous that I'll get worn out by it or overwhelmed and that there won't be anywhere to recuperate from it. I keep thinking that I'll get really dirty too but Greg just shakes his head and laughs at me when I say that.

Greg's friend Joe flew in from New York last night. He and Greg have known each other since elementary school but I've only met Joe once briefly. We had a nice dinner out on the deck with the tiki torches lit and the trees rustling in the breeze overhead and Tarek joined us as well. We grilled swordfish that I'd marinated in cajun spices and lemon and alongside, I served roasted new potatoes, grilled asparagus and some grilled nan. And homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert.

It was a nice night and it had actually been a few weeks since we'd had a dinner out there. I got to use so many new things from my wedding registry that so many lovely people have so generously bestowed upon us: new wine glasses and silverware, place mats and napkins and plates and drinking glasses...and before going to bed Greg nuzzled my neck and told me how adult we are and how good I make him look...but I just shook my head and sniffled a little, feeling bashful.

Greg is at work now and Joe and I will walk to Lincoln Square for something to eat soon. It's hot today, the first of August. And although part of me is ready to move into fall, summer is another thing I keep wanting to hold on to.

Something about this post reminds me of some letters I've been reading lately. My favorite patient, the retired reverend that I visit every week, has a binder full of letters that his late wife wrote during their first year of marriage (which was in the 40s) and he was a new minister and they were living far from their midwest families in Alabama where he'd been assigned a parish. Her letters are filled with the delight of being a new wife, of learning to cook and entertain and mend and sweep and I'm always riveted by their simplicity and sweetness.

Greg and I have a new post up on She Wrote, He Wrote today: A Summer Cold is Not Enough to Keep Anyone from Experiencing Perennial.