The Fixer Upper

Posted on May 23, 2013 by

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On a recent trip to Lyon, I was exploring the city ,walking about on a cool and drizzly day. It was early afternoon and many of the shops were closed but, as I prefer window shopping to the actual activity, the time was spent in a most delightful fashion. And then I came upon this shirt with its English language slogan in an inexpensive lingerie shop window. “Oh no.” I thought, “It is everywhere.”

I believe that there are few things as inhibiting of spirit, creativity and growth as this drive to be perfect and I realize how much energy I have wasted in its pursuit and how much sadness I have created for myself in this, the most futile of all quests. Saddest of all, there are the many things that I could have done blissfully had I not had that inner dictatorial voice in my head hectoring me with “But is it perfect? It must be perfect!”

I grew up in a time when “standards” were something still talked about as an important thing to indoctrinate children with in their rearing, and I was indoctrinated quite well. This insured that my childhood was spent anxiously aware of where” the mark” was and whether I was hitting it or if I was falling short. Hitting the mark felt like it was very high stakes, do or die. Like anything else, there was a plus side to this. I was a high achiever in school, a hard worker in any job I was asked to do and, until I rebelled with gusto in late adolescence , an exceptionally tractable child. It also served as a sometimes useful counterweight to my native personality which is impulsive and dare I say it .. downright slapdash. Raising a child with impossibly high standards is undeniably good for society but it was I think a very mixed blessing for me.

All of this is in the forefront for me now as we, once again, try to envision our daughter’s life for her.

My daughter’s life, what it is, what it has been and what it will look like in the future is never far from my thoughts. When you have a child with special needs, this is always true, sometimes more so than others. While my friends with typically developing adult children sometimes wholeheartedly wish they could in fact plan their children’s lives, the reality of having that responsibility , a responsibility that extends even after your own death, can feel immense.

One of the things that it is recommended you do when you are a parent in this situation is to write something called “A Letter of Intent”. This document, while not legally binding, outlines your hopes, wishes, and by corollary , your fears, for your child’s life after your death. It is an auxiliary to your will and trust and it serves as a guidepost to the folks who will be there advocating for your child when you are no longer there to do it. The document needs to be updated as your child and circumstances change, ours is overdue for a rewrite. Much has changed in the five years since I wrote the last one. I put it off for no other reason than it is very,very hard to think of my daughter in the world without my love and direct protection even though I have the utmost faith in those we are entrusting to be there for her with love and discernment. But it is time, past time and so , I will do it now. I know I must.

Prior to the actual writing of this document though there is always a time of allowing a mishmash of ideas to float around and bang up against each other until, finally, a true intent can be crystallized and communicated …and one of these ideas right now is around the idea of perfection.

My daughter has had a lifetime of therapies, from many different disciplines and of many different sorts. Therapy, of any sort, starts with the premise that something is broken and that something can and should be “fixed”. I wonder what message that sends to a person over a lifetime, in particular, of course, I wonder what message that has sent to my daughter.

It all comes from love and concern of course. What responsible parent doesn’t try to marshall all possible resources and tools to help their child? Time, money, difficulty are all as unimportant as that parent’s own resources allow them to possibly be. When we were young , struggling financially and over extended in both energy and time , the money spent didn’t matter, the hours in waiting rooms and in consultation didn’t matter. Only one thing was important and that was making sure our daughter had available to her every single possibility we could possibly provide. The bottom line? The lion’s share of all this therapy, decades of it performed by a virtual army of dedicated and highly gifted therapists, has not actually resulted in a fuller life for her as far as I can make out. Then again, hard to prove a negative, would she be in worse straits without all of it? Who can say? I hope it is true that it has helped.

She is a grown woman now and here is the question that I am dealing with before I can put metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper and write this important document. When is enough enough?

At what point can she just breathe and be who she is? At what point does she have the right to be exactly who she is and not have to work so very ,very hard for that next goal? At what point does she deserve to be done with being shaped and molded from the outside? When can she cease being the “fixer upper” and just be the shining soul she is and has always been? My sense is that the answer is now. She has worked so hard for so long, she deserves , make that ,has earned the right to just be.

But, and here is the rub, what if there is that one thing, the one thing I don’t know about yet, and might not even exist until after my death, that might unlock doors for her, that might give her ease in her life, that might add sparkle and joy to her existence …and it can all come to her with a huge expenditure of effort on her part, with just more therapy? Or not. It might be just one more impossible mountain she is asked to climb. But there is that chance, however small, that it could work…

What then?

What do I advise about this in my letter of intent?

I haven’t a clue.

Posted in A well lived life, Family, Parenting a child with special needs | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

A Week in Boston

Posted on April 20, 2013 by

I moved to New England decades ago, this in itself does not make me a local. Around here you have to be native to claim roots and better yet, your great-grandparents need to have been born here to stake a serious claim of them.

I had come here from New York City, and always considered that city to be the place where my heart is held. I was a transplant there too but New York is long accustomed to an influx of strangers and it was an easy place to feel part of, to feel at home in.

Boston on the other hand, is a tough nut to crack, almost impregnable in some ways. At times the whole place and all of its people can seem to carry a a collective chip on the shoulder. Strangers might be treated warily. Over the years I have met and been embraced by some of the most wonderful and warm people I know here in Boston, but I never have felt “of ” this place. Returning home after a trip never made my heart jump in excitement the way the first sight of the Manhattan skyline still does.

This all changed five days ago on Marathon Monday. My shock , grief , anger and fear were a reaction to what had been done to My city, My people. I knew that for the first time in all these years I was a Bostonian.

Yesterday Boston and the surrounding suburbs were in “lockdown” with the populace instructed to stay inside,doors locked ,told not open their door for anyone but the police with proper identification. Rumors flew, on TV and in social media, actually the whole week had been like that. There was no way to know what was real , the whole population was clenched like a prize fighter’s fist.

I spent the day alternately glued to the often undependable news , listening to nonstop conjecture and then turning everything off ..and then baking … and then knitting… , in short, whatever I could think to do to feel centered and to calm my jumping bean nerves. I could only do this sporadically and could never relax into it completely… eventually tuning back in to the barrage of what was mostly non-news. And then, by near nightfall, it was all coming to a close. It was announced that people could once again venture outdoors, with the caveat to be vigilant as one suspect was still at large, “armed and extremely dangerous” . He was the surviving one of the two brothers held responsible for Monday’s horrid events (the other killed in a bloody gunfight in the middle of the night in a neighboring town). Minutes later,  we were told he had been found. He was successfully apprehended, wounded but alive. I was flooded with feelings of elation and gratitude. I felt so very proud of my city. The chip on the shoulder which I had previously observed now transformed in my eyes to a badge of courage, I was so grateful for and proud of the work done by law enforcement and by the citizenry. I went to bed, feeling utterly spent but fully safe.

Today, my feelings are more complicated . I am still so very grateful but the elation is quieter and the grief for the lives and the innocence lost have found their way back in. I am remembering this morning that there is a long road still ahead in healing for those victims who lost their family members, their legs, their joy… and for all of us to fully regain our sense of safety (which we know anyway is an illusion but it can feel blessedly real at times).

I think about people who live in parts of the world where every day is spent in the kind of turmoil one day of which left me feeling completely undone. I can’t even imagine what their lives would be like. I hope I never have to live life like that and I am filled with compassion for those who have to do so.

I feel sadder and wiser. I also know the Boston Marathon next year will be a thing of beauty . I know it will bring tears to my eyes… and I know I am not alone in this.

Love that dirty water… Boston, you’re my home.

Posted in Boston | 8 Comments

What Could You Do If You Knew You Could Not Fail?

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

Years ago I made a foolish purchase. It sure wasn’t my first and it wasn’t (and won’t be) my last.

This particular foolish purchase is a silvery looking ingot, heavy with some base metal, engraved with the words, “What could you do if you knew you could not fail?”

It is meant , of course, to be inspirational and I bought it to inspire me and to prop on my desk. It has been modestly useful as a paperweight … but it has never been a bit of use as an inspiration.

What could I do if I knew I could not fail? Well, I could do anything I had done competently before with the assurance that prior experience would likely guarantee me success. I could do things I knew everything about, with no unknowns to contend with. This would ensure I could go through life feeling successful, ensure that I never experienced failure.

The only problem with this? This way of living would ensure nothing so much as a very small life that could only grow smaller. What could I do if I knew I could not fail? … not very much really. I could do precious little, instead of doing so many of the things that have been extremely precious to me .

If I did only I knew I could not fail at, I wouldn’t have begun writing this blog. I wouldn’t have auditioned for theater roles that were outside my comfort zone. I wouldn’t have gone on an international bike trip just months after an ankle was put back together with plates and pins. I wouldn’t have taken on countless new projects. I wouldn’t have married. I wouldn’t have tried a hundred new things in the raising of our daughter.

And right this moment I wouldn’t be busily gathering materials for my application to culinary school to begin the journey toward becoming a professional chef.

It is not so much that I am brave by inclination, we have established this, I am not .But I do know this- the real risk is that if I don’t stretch myself, knowing full well that failure is always a possibility, I will not have fully lived my life.

How many times have I said in this blog after taking a leap, “I needn’t have worried”? I want to place my energy in the leap, not in concern for the safety net. Everyone has their own ways to grow and I believe this is mine.

So I will apply to school . If I am accepted, I will be in a setting where I will once again have to study for midterms and finals, work long days on my feet and I will be classmates with students many of whom will be less than half my age. I will be stretching creative wings in a way brand new to me. It is intimidating and it is very exciting.

In my Mom’s last year she lost the desire to eat and I, concerned, got her to drink a supplement with the brand name Ensure. My Mom always referred to it as Endure. I always thought she just had gotten it wrong, now I’m not so sure.  More and more it seems to me that a life lived with the main emphasis on “ensure” quickly becomes instead one that is merely endured.

I took a Sharpie (the purchase of a Sharpie is never  foolish :) ) and I crossed out one word and added a few more to my not very inspirational paperweight.This is how it now reads : “What could you do if you knew you could fail …but you went ahead and did it anyway…”

I think my paperweight just became truly useful .

Posted in A well lived life, Risk taking, Self awareness | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Visions of (actual) Sugarplums Danced in Our Heads

Posted on March 19, 2013 by

We crowded into the small room and commenced setting up folding chairs to sit in and watch as the Master Pastry Chef manipulated molten sugar into swans, into flowers, into golden braid, and into fruit blown from sugar, light as air. The work was fanciful in result and intensely focused in its achievement, molten sugar must be handled with the utmost respect.

Master Pastry Chef Jean Crevaux, now in his eighties (with the energy and enthusiasm of a man half his age) had done us the very great honor of inviting us into his home for a demonstration. At his side to assist was Chef Gil, a Master Pastry Chef in his own right and watching and translating for us was Chef Delphin Gomes who had accompanied us from New England where he, also a Master Pastry Chef, heads up the professional Pastry Program at The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts who had sponsored the trip.
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The demonstration was wonderful but the greatest treat for me was watching these three men together, their affection for each other and their mutual respect so very apparent. It was a remarkable opportunity to see such dedication to the art of sugar decoration, something that is so temporal, so seemingly frivolous and yet, in its execution, something that is anything but frivolous. Chefs Gil and Delphin had apprenticed with Chef Jean in their teens and these two men, now middle aged, clearly felt love for and gratitude to this third man, who had not only taught them how to be great Chefs…but also, one suspects, about life and about being a good person, about respect for their work and also respect for others. It, all of it, a privilege to witness.

I was on a culinary tour of France with an emphasis on pastry skills. We had begun in Lyon and wended our way via Beaune and Epernay to Paris. Armed with confidence from last fall’s bike trip that I took with a group of strangers to Europe,  I decided to do it again . I would once again close my eyes, jump in with a crowd of folks completely unknown to me and just see what happened.

Surprising myself completely with the result… but I am getting ahead of my story.

What I did not know, and what might have dented my brio a bit, was that, in addition to everyone else on the trip knowing at least one other person, most knowing several other people,  nearly every other participant was a professional chef in their own right. Gulp.

Actually, as it turned out it didn’t matter. They all were warmly welcoming and even the most advanced chefs among them were there to eagerly learn and experience, just like me. It was a wonderful group of people.

I had arrived in France a few days in advance of my culinary adventures, which allowed me the joy of a visit with a very good friend who lives on the outskirts of Lyon with her husband and two sons. It was such a delight to walk on the stone streets of her small medieval village, past (three each in as many blocks!) boucheries, boulangeries and flower shops and to talk and eat and laugh. I was so happy to see her in situ and see firsthand the beautiful life she has created for herself in France. I admire her bravery in setting up life in a country so far from where she was raised.

It was fun too to have some blocks of quiet time, to explore a city that was new to me all by myself and to shake off my rusty French and make myself understood! I had a blast.

And then the trip “proper” began! And what an absolute whirlwind it was! Dinners ending at midnight did not preclude early morning wake-ups. Wine at dinner did not preclude wine at breakfast! Seriously. I will explain. I promise. We learned, we made, we listened, we ate and drank , we talked and we walked…pretty much non-stop. We had culinary“back stage” access that I couldn’t have imagined. Throughout I felt the need to pinch myself that I was actually part of this… I was falling in love with this world.

The next twelve days were a blur of sights, sounds, sensation and tastes. We got to go behind the Madison Avenue like storefront of Bernachon to see the vats of chocolate ganache being stirred, the tin molds for Easter treats filled and cracked open by hand. We sampled the best Cassis I’ve ever had and learned how this is made and walked though the rooms filled with enormous vats of the stuff. We were up at 4am to visit markets, Le Marche Rungis was an extraordinary place, the largest wholesale market in the world with airline hangers dedicated individually to fruits and vegetables,to seafood,  to poultry, to game, to meat and to flowers. It is located on hundreds of acres, filled with dozens of hotels and restaurants to serve those who come here to buy and to sell. We donned white hats and coats to protect sanitary conditions as we wandered and we marveled at the variety and freshness. This market used to be in the center of Paris, its current location only dozens of years old but the atmosphere felt centuries old. The scene of the group of workers in their white coverall coats drinking their 7am wine after a long night’s work could have been been an oil painting done in the mid nineteenth century.
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Which brings me to the breakfast wine! Both here and the exquisite retail market Les Halles in Lyon feature breakfasts of charcuterie, croissants (the best I have had in my life was in the workingman’s café at Rungis), cheese, espresso…and wine. This was my first (and almost certainly) my last breakfast wine. I felt quite American in my initial shock at having it served at 7am and quite French in my ability to enjoy it!

We had a demo, an exquisite lunch and the chance to make our own dinner at the famous Institut Paul Bocuse located in a gorgeous castle like home outside Lyon. Our hosts surprised us with gifts to bring home, a set of knives inscribed with the institute’s name and an orange apron with the same. I will treasure both.

We had dozens of meals together, some amazing, some “meh” but the company was always good and that meant the meal, regardless of content, was always enjoyed. And there was more, the incredibly moving Hospice in Beaune, a quick tour of the Cathedral in Reims, wine caves and tastings of cheeses and wines, a visit to Mumm’s , a pastry demo by chocolatier Vincent Dallet, some tours of landmarks and specialty stores for kitchen equipment, chocolates and various delicacies… it just went on and on. And so could I but I will stop. Or I might never!

I went on this journey without any kind of expectation, perhaps that is the optimal mindset for a journey of any kind. It proved to be a cornucopia of surprises.

The greatest surprise? For me, personally?

I have decided I would like to go to culinary school.

Anytime you find me in a kitchen chopping or blending something, you will hear me humming…because I am just that happy.When I look at the couple of photos taken of me on this trip, my face reflects pure joy. I think I should follow that joy.

I love this world of food! I am so happy when I can make good food and feed it to those I love. I love learning from others and I love eating beautifully prepared meals.

This is where I believe I am meant to go next in life. I hope I can have the courage to take the plunge.

Wish me luck !!

I have visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.
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Posted in Culinary, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Delicate to Strong

Posted on January 30, 2013 by

We were having morning coffee, my friend and I . The two of us were visiting with a third friend. All of us had helped each other grow up as girls, before, during and after college and this was a long talked about, finally arrived, reunion. I was just off the phone from a series of calls to my husband, my daughter’s doctor. her housemother, the school nurse, and my daughter herself, sobbing and frightened. She had had still another life threatening medical emergency the night before and while all was now well, I was trying to pull all the pieces together while I was sitting on a porch in a foreign country, very far away.

I put down the phone at last and my friend approached hesitantly. “I don’t know whether I should say this or not…” she said.

Now in my experience, when someone starts with this, the only wise response is “Well, then… you probably shouldn’t .”  I have in fact said this in similar circumstances and more than once too. I mean…nothing good is going to come from such a beginning… right? No one after all says, “I don’t know whether I should say this or not … but these ginger scones you baked are the most heavenly thing I have ever tasted.” or “I don’t know whether I should say this or not … but you look like a fashion model with that new haircut!”. No . “I don’t know whether I should say this or not…” generally does not bode well for what will immediately follow.

Not to mention, as the mother of a now adult child born with frank brain damage (which over the course of her first year would in some ways become the least of our worries for her), I have heard a very lot of ignorant remarks from an awful lot of people. Many kindly meant…and some not. And many, many of those remarks began with , “I don’t know whether I should say this or not…”.

But I looked up to my friend’s face, this face that decades later still holds for me that of the eighteen year old friend with whom I had pored over lyrics of our favorite band’s latest release together looking for meaning. The friend who had known my deepest secrets. The friend I had had countless adventures with… and I decided to let her go ahead with whatever it was.

I squared my shoulders and girded myself..I could almost feel my very molecules stacking in crystalline formation as I prepared myself for what would come next and said “Yes?”

“When I first heard about M_ being born, ” she said “I thought to myself. ‘ Oh No! Of all people…’ You were so delicate, so creative, so happy-go-lucky and I thought ‘How is this ever going to turn out?’” She paused and her eyes began to fill with tears and she said “I am so proud of you.”

I told this story to two other friends back at home a couple of weeks later. Both also have children with special needs, roughly the age of my daughter. Both of them laughed when I got to the delicate part, they have only known me as a mom and both would use the word strong and never delicate to describe me (as I would them). And I am, it is true . I am  strong and I wonder if I would be without this amazing life entrusted to me… the strength was always in me, but I never developed it, never had to.

The countless ER visits (literally..I could not tell you how many, I have no idea how many..there have been SO many), running down the streets of NYC with a toddler in my arms to get her to a hospital when there were no cabs in sight, the surgeries, the evaluations, the conferences , the ignorance, the advocacy…raising a child with special needs who is also medically fragile in this world is undeniably hard, it just is. And then there is the parenting itself, helping your child navigate a world that has a higher than average amount of prejudice, bullies and ignorance. Making decisions for your child no parent should have to make. Being the one your child can count on to tell them the truth when it is far easier not to… all of it. Strength is called upon and grows in these circumstances… that is, it does if you are one of the lucky ones and I have always been lucky.

And I think people, on some level, know all this when they see from the outside the parenting that is involved for parents of children with special needs.. What is less easy to see are the things that make strength possible.

When I got back from my trip I drove out to the farm where my daughter lives for a “girls weekend”. On deck for we two : dining and shopping and a stay in a lovely old B&B nearby. The trip was unscheduled but the medical scare of the previous week had made me urgently feel the need to see for myself she was now well (even though I had been thoroughly assured that that was the case ).

That Friday night, in the middle of the night, her long and beautifully tapered fingers gently tapped my wrist. “Mom, Mommy?” she whispered. “What is it Honey?” I managed to get out from under the weight of sleep. “Can I hold your hand?” she asked. “Um, sure you can Hon.” I croaked out in a sleepy voice. I felt her hand firmly and gently in mine. A moment passed and then she said , still whispering, “Isn’t this fun ?” . I smiled widely at her in the dark, even though she couldn’t see me, my heart as light as the down in our pillows, “Yes. Yes, kiddo, it sure is. It sure is”.

It sure is.

Posted in Family, Parenting a child with special needs, Uncategorized | 18 Comments

New Year’s, Clean Slates and Other Mythology

Posted on December 30, 2012 by

This time of year, when we by agreement begin a New Year and leave the old behind,  we hear rather a very (very) lot about fresh starts and clean slates.

The house I grew up in was filled with antiques, most were passed down through the family on one side or the other, a few appealed to my parent’s sense of whimsy and were purchased. The whole concept completely eluded me as a child. Bubbling veneer and chipped enamel kitchen scales just seemed old ,depressing and not the least bit charming. I resolved to do things so much differently, so much better when I , at last, reached adulthood myself. My home would be filled with things that were new and bright and clean of line.

Among the many objects I found to be ungainly,unnecessary and worn was a child’s schoolroom slate; bound with fabric once red , by then a dusty pink, and hinged with leather so that the two pieces of slate could open and close like a book. This item both fascinated and repelled me. Fascinated because it was one of the few antiques (along with a doll and a desk) that I could actually use and repelled because it could never be wiped fully clean. Over the years it had been scratched and over the years it had been written on with instruments more permanent and less forgiving than chalk. Anything I could write or draw on the four sides of this little slate book was always only in the foreground of some earlier child’s pentimento. Cleaning and polishing were for naught…what was there was there.

And this is how I am coming into the New Year myself. I am indelibly written on by my experience,my relationships, my mistakes,my triumphs, my pain and my love. It is all there to be seen through the new things that I will do , I will see, I will experience in the New Year .  How those new things  will be incorporated to  color my life are not simply in themselves alone but rather how they blend with the colors already in place.

I’ve never understood how a person could say they have no regrets, I can only assume they have truly terrible (if awfully convenient) memory. My regrets in my life are absolutely rife and there is no reason to believe that that will change. In fact I have every reason to believe massive amounts of new regrets are just around the corner. I am okay with this inevitability though because I also know that regret is often the kiln in which new things will be fired and I can’t wait to see what they will turn out to be. And I know too , of course, that beyond new regret there will be new joys, new creative adventures, new risks and the privilege of long and treasured relationships that will continue to hold over this next year and countless more years.

As I sit writing this post in my (oh yes…oh,well ! ) antique filled room, I am content, no, grateful to know my slate is no longer fresh. I know that I absolutely for sure will not start 2013 with a clean slate. My slate is well used and well worn… and it is so ready and able to be drawn on anew. I wouldn’t have it any other way and I wish the same for each of you. Happy New Year to all of you, may your colors old and new blend for something wonderful in your lives this coming year.

Posted in A well lived life, Creating happiness, Risk taking, Self awareness | Tagged | 10 Comments

As the Bookworm Turns…

Posted on November 13, 2012 by

I fell hard for reading the moment I figured out how to do it. My head was in a book pretty much constantly…in the car, walking downstairs, under a backyard tree, in bed with a flashlight, even…to their great annoyance…when I went over to a friends’s house. My concentration was total, the escape from life complete. Once while waiting for a bathtub to fill I was, naturally, reading… only to be abruptly and frighteningly interrupted by pounding on the bathroom door and a chorus of frantic cries. The tub had overflowed, the floor and my feet covered in water , water was pouring into a clothes closet on the first floor…and I hadn’t even noticed…so lost was I in whatever magical world I was temporarily living in.

It made sense that I loved books so much. I was a “good” reader, but more than that…there was so much I wanted to hide from. My family environment was an emotionally difficult one , with more (metaphorically speaking) land mines than Princess Diana ever railed against. It was intense and surprising, a household where a small child could never know whether the next moment would contain laughter ( a highly prized commodity in my home) or actual rage. We lived on a wider spectrum than many families I suspect and while there are , in the security of hindsight, some benefits to that… to a child , well , it was pretty scary. In a book I never knew what was coming next either but I knew I was safe… so books are where I planted my feet, my mind and my heart.

I was an exceedingly odd child:  bookish, introverted , anxious and awkward. I not only read books…but also sought self confidence by quoting from them (without attribution). On the compliment I received for the armful of bangles and rhinestone earrings I had surreptitiously appropriated from my mom’s jewelry drawer and was wearing in a seventh grade classroom, “Thank you.” I said quite grandly, “I feel naked without them”. (Thank you Trixie Belden). And whenever I could drop it in, actually with rather impressive (or alarming, depending on your viewpoint) frequency, “My life is just a graveyard of buried hopes.” (Thank you Anne of Green Gables.) I am sure you can imagine how this was received by my middle school peers …pretty much guaranteeing that only a few would actually talk to me.

Changing schools and my hairdo between middle and high school gave me a new lease on adolescent social life. Upper class-men (being clueless to my long established hopelessness) took a shine to me in some amazing stroke of Providence ..leaving my peers to follow suit. I was, miracle of miracles, in with the “in-crowd”. And while I no longer had to read at the lunch table for survival , whenever I could , I read and read and read.

I am probably still very odd but as I no longer have masses of class-mates to eagerly point it out to me, I am likely just not as aware of it. I still struggle in large crowds of people. I still can feel anxious. But I’ve learned to cover my shyness and anxiety with (mostly) adept social ease and I have the great good fortune of wonderfully loving  friends and family. Life as an adult is a less treacherous path..

And still , for decades, I read and read and read .

Reading taught me that life can be viewed by a multitude of perspectives, that other viewpoints have validity. It has given me the gift of “being” in other times, other places, other cultures and mindsets. Reading was my first teacher in being human…and it remains one of my very greatest teachers.

But something is shifting. While I still read the paper daily and the New Yorker with frequency, I can now go days without reading a book. My attention is far more easily called away . I don’t know if it is because I am older and this is something that just “happens” with attention span or if my real life is more compelling…or even if because I most frequently these days use an electronic “reader” , making the experience subtly different and somehow less rewarding.

This makes me deeply sad and I wonder if this passion for books will come back to me,  I miss what they have always meant to me … and I miss the deep concentration that let a tub overflow…

I wish I could again read and read.

Posted in Love of reading | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments