True North

Sometimes, when we're lost, we refuse a map, even when offered.
Because the map reminds us that we made a mistake. That we were wrong.
But without a map, we're not just wrong, we're also still lost.
A map doesn't automatically get you home, but it will probably make you less lost.
(When dealing with the unknown, it's difficult to admit that there might not be a map. In those cases, a compass is essential, a way to remind yourself of your true north...)  - Seth Godin

Super Joe

You had your first "school dance" this weekend.  Dressed as Super Joe, you saw your friends and danced the day away. 

After the school party we came home and found some neighbors playing outside.  You were so proud to bring all of your toys out to play with the kids and when I asked if you were ready to go home (and leave the common area/patio) you reminded me "we are home!"    Thank you for reminding me to think beyond the four walls.  

On Sunday we got on our bikes for a game of police officer mama and Joe.  "We're after the thief who stole the strawberry cake and when we see him we're going to get him with our magical, monster truck rope and put him into the jail.  Roger that, Officer Mama" 

And our new song is an old song, Paul Simon's "Love me like a Rock".  Nothing could be more true and singing along to it while you pretend to strum a guitar and sing as many of the words as you can fills me up to the brim.   My boy, you are filled with more super powers than you could possibly know.

Whiplash via Design for Mankind

Bookmarking this perfectly articulated post by the always so articulate Erin at Design for Mankind.



I fell into a bit of an impromptu travel season this month – three back-to-back trips with a weekend between. Just enough time to empty the suitcase into the laundry cycle, to re-roll and re-pack once it was refreshed.
—
I know two things: (1) I love this job. (2) I love this family.
I am learning that one is not in direct competition with the other; that separation doesn’t always mean absence, that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive. That life, mostly, can be compartmentalized until it can’t.

When Ken and I travel for work – regularly for him, less regularly for me – we make a habit of not checking in. No Skype, no FaceTime. No phone calls. Just a few simple texts – the “safe and sound!”s, a few “i love you and miss you”s. Sometimes, a video of the littles, but mostly, space and silence.
After all, I’m in a New York diner and he’s wrangling a teething baby into a hot car seat, and wait a sec, my toast is here! – and would you just hold still?! – and hold on, you’re breaking up, and really, we know where this convo leads. The one who is away is away, the one who is home is home.
Hard jobs for entirely different reasons. No need to go around making a case for it.

Last weekend, Bee asks me when I’m leaving again. (Again was the word that caused the ‘oof’ in my heart, the lump in my throat.)
Saturday, I say.
She tells me that she’s not sad because she gets to watch Trolls while I’m gone, but would I like to take her favorite keychain in case I get sad?
Yes, I say. Yes, yes, yes.
And so, I find myself in Kansas City, and 30A, and New York. I find myself in airports borrowing Wifi, in diners ordering toast. I find myself in the back of a car en route to a hotel with white sheets where I’ll fall into bed, a gilded keychain on my nightstand.
—
It’s an odd thing, to receive the very thing you wanted. To receive the quiet of an empty room you’d wished for only weeks ago. To receive the alone time you crave, the silence you love.
The whiplash of it all.
The release from responsibility in one area, straight into the throes of responsibility in another.

Are your kids with you? the woman at the dinner party asks.
I tell her no, that they’re home and happy and that my eldest is probably gearing up for a rousing night of Trolls.
She tells me that she never travels without her kids. That she hires a nanny, that she can’t bear to leave them behind, that they’re simply too close, that it’s physically impossible.
I smile. I get it.
I tell her I prefer to compartmentalize when I can, and she blinks a few times.
—
It’s about presence, for me, I’ve come to know.
It’s about being gone when I’m gone. Being home when I’m home. Being all there, wherever I am, and resisting the temptation to bow out of social hour because I need to FaceTime the littles.
(Resisting the temptation to bow out of family hour because I need to hop on a conference call.)
And although I suppose there’s something to be said for letting your kids see you work and for letting your work see your kids, I know myself well. Some trips/speeches/workshops take such intense preparation – such focused presence – that a spilled juice box on a blazer would simply undo me.
But then again: last week, a rat scampered across my hotel lobby in Tribeca and I shuddered-then-smiled. Bee would’ve loved that guy.

I’m home now, just happily drowning in domesticity. The library fines, the broken washing machine, the van recall. There’s cauliflower to chop and fingerpaint to mix and it all feels so familiarly foreign.
My time away was good, and it was hard for me.
My time away was hard, and it was good for me.
—
The mind is a fickle thing. Days spent in yoga pants and avocado smears, emptying the forks from the dishwasher, scrubbing dog pee out of the rug. Some nights we fall into bed dreaming of feeling seen, noticed, celebrated.
And there are those few times when we get our wish – an hour or two swimming in cocktail rings and champagne – and on those rare and lucky nights, we find ourselves falling into bed dreaming of anonymity, of comfort. Your own quiet life, your own soft pillow, eyes wandering to the gilded keychain where you belong.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? By its very definition, whiplash – the back and forth, the jostle, the snap – forces us to turn our necks. It just begs us to pay attention, to notice, to look a bit closer, right here, toward the left.
To surprise yourself over how you can race home with the same speed and passion and anticipation as you left it just days prior.
To wonder how on earth it is possible that you can conjure excitement for Spanx while, every other day, you lament the basic trappings of a mere bra.
To baffle yourself over the idea that a dirty hotel rat can make you shriek and smile in a matter of seconds, just knowing someone you love would delight in such a terrible thing.
To laugh at how dizzying it all is, the swapping of a cocktail ring for a 5-year-old’s keychain.
To smile at how, today, right this very minute, you can’t possibly think of a better trade.

Poems

Some poetry on a beautiful fall morning.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

—Jane Kenyon

“It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?”
–Pat Schneider

Marie Howe, “Hurry”

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.
And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

The Everything Store

I'm overdue on recapping a few good books I enjoyed this summer.  Let's get started...

The Everything Store is the biography of Amazon as we know it today.  It includes a lot of anecdotes and history about Jeff Bezos without being "the Jeff Bezos story".  Every day my building lobby is filled with Amazon boxes and I certainly make multiple purchases per month - appreciating the ease and speed of the process.

I wanted to know more about a company that is critically changing life as we know it.  My son won't know life without 1-click, 1 day (or less!) shipping of what we need.  Jeff Bezos wasn't a passionate bookseller when he started the company.  He was, however, certain that the internet was going to revolutionize commerce and life and he wanted to be at the forefront.

I enjoy reading about visionaries -- creative thinkers who take enormous risk to push the boundary for the rest of us. I am forever interested in understanding the combination of factors and timing that make someone successful in accomplishing their mission.  I applaud the book for not making Jeff Bezos a flawless hero, straightforward boss or even-keeled decision maker.  Nothing that good comes easily.  His humanity - imperfect, brilliant and impactful - made the book a compelling read.

A link and an excerpt from his baccalaureate speech at Princeton

Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life -- the life you author from scratch on your own -- begins.

How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?

Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you play it safe, or will you be a little bit swashbuckling?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

HONK!

We stumbled upon this fantastic event over the weekend.   A completely eclectic mix of musicians performing in the streets for anyone and everyone to enjoy.   Toddlers danced, kids watched in awe, adults smiled.  For that moment there was only joy.

What is Honk?

Throughout the country and across the globe, a new type of street band movement is emerging — outrageous and inclusive, brass and brash, percussive and persuasive — reclaiming public space with a sound that is in your face and out of this world. Called everything from “avant-oompah!” to a “brassroots revolution,” these bands draw inspiration from sources as diverse as Klezmer, Balkan and Romani music, Brazilian Samba, Afrobeat and Highlife, Punk, Funk, and Hip Hop, as well as the New Orleans second line tradition, and deliver it with all the passion and spirit of Mardi Gras and Carnival.

Acoustic and mobile, these bands play at street level, usually for free, with no stages to elevate them above the crowd and no sound systems or speaker columns to separate performers from participants. These bands don’t just play for the people; they play among the people and invite them to join the fun. They are active, activist, and deeply engaged in their communities, at times alongside unions and grassroots groups in outright political protest, or in some form of community-building activity, routinely performing and conducting workshops for educational and social service organizations of all kinds.

At full power, these bands create an irresistible spectacle of creative movement and sonic self-expression directed at making the world a better place. This is the movement we call HONK!

Wake up

Wake up and say it's a great day to be alive.  In a world of mass shootings, bicycle accidents, car crashes and disease, we simply never know what life has coming.  I do know that I spent a weekend playing legos, soccer, doing races, art, tractor rides and cuddles with my sweet boy and for that, I am simply grateful.

Life can be a cruel teacher and a good friend.  And so it goes.  Onward always.  If the worst may happen, I can say my boy felt true love from his mama.  I slowed down to the pace that he wished to go and loved him as fiercely and bravely as I knew how to do.