Hadestown

 A few years ago, we started to attend more live performances.   Broadway in Boston has turned into a sincerely enjoyable past time and we even became season ticket holders.  One of the benefits of holding season tickets is that we have attended shows we may not have normally found the energy to see. 

One of those shows was Hadestown.   Although the story line sounds a bit unusual - an underworld, mythical Greek characters, the music in Hadestown is phenomenal and the show, like almost every show, challenges the audience to better understand our relationships, our viewpoints and our humanity. It became one of my all-time favorites.

If I had cassettes or records, this song would be worn out by now.  It is stunningly beautiful, with one of the best song intros of all time. 

[HERMES]
(spoken)
Orpheus was a poor boy
But he had a gift to give
He could make you see how the world could be
(sung)
In spite of the way that it is

(spoken)
And Eurydice was a young girl
But she'd seen how the world was
When she fell
She fell in spite of herself
In love with Orpheus

All I've Ever Known 

I was alone so long
I didn't even know that I was lonely
Out in the cold so long
I didn't even know that I was cold
Turned my collar to the wind
This is how it's always been

All I've ever known is how to hold my own
All I've ever known is how to hold my own
But now I wanna hold you, too

You take me in your arms
And suddenly there's sunlight all around me
Everything bright and warm
And shining like it never did before
And for a moment I forget
Just how dark and cold it gets

All I've ever known is how to hold my own
All I've ever known is how to hold my own
But now I wanna hold you
Now I wanna hold you
Hold you close
I don't ever wanna have to let you go

Now I wanna hold you, hold you tight
I don't wanna go back to the lonely life

I don't know how or why
Or who am I that I should get to hold you?
But when I saw you all alone against
The skies like I'd known you all along

I knew you before we met
And I don't even know you yet
All I know is your someone I have always known

All I know is you're someone I have always known
And I don't even know you
Now I wanna hold you
Hold you close
I don't ever wanna have to let you go

Suddenly the sunlight
Bright and warm

Suddenly I'm holding the world in my arms

Say that you'll hold me forever
Say that the wind won't change on us
Say that we'll stay with each other
And it will always be like this

I'm gonna hold you forever
The wind will never change on us
Long as we stay with each other

Then it will always be like this

Lion Hybrid Industries

Using this space to memorialize this chapter for J, Founder and CEO of Lion Hybrid Industries! 

J you are a boy who sticks to your guns.  When you were 2 or 3 you decided that your favorite color was red.  Since then, there has been no doubt what color you'd choose for the plastic gingerbread man in Candyland, your backpack, your new folders for back to school....   When you were 4, you shed tears in the car the night before your 5th birthday because "I don't want to be 5, 4 is my favorite number!" You've since added a little to that, and now 44 is you favorite number - and as you were learning to add double digits, the first combination requested was always a pair that would make 44!   

You're a boy of conviction.  A few years back, you decided lions were your favorite animal.  There's a lion calendar in your room, plenty of early I Can Read books were about lions and you memorized nearly every episode of the Lion Guard, Disney's successor to the Lion King, my guess - not watched by too many.  Nobody at Auntie Amy's house for Christmas of 2020 will forget your enthusiasm over your favorite gift, AN ASIATIC LION STUFFED ANIMAL!!  Just what you'd always wanted ;) 

I think it was a nature show when you first learned of the nearly extinct Barbieri Lion.   You needed to know more - it was black.  There was one in a zoo in Europe.  Somewhere between there and now, you have decided your future job will be a "Hybrid Lion Scientist" - extracting DNA from Lions and Big Cats and making combinations "Lither (Lion/Panther), Litah (Lion/Cheetah), and of course the Black Lion (Lion/Jaguar)!"

My favorite part of this chapter is watching your passion and creativity explode!  You have endless ideas and energy for your future company, Lion Hybrid Industries.   At school last week, the kids were invited to dress as their future careers.  We picked out a shirt on Amazon and you proudly wore it to school and described to your 3rd grade classmates what your future job would entail.  While other kids talked about a career in the NBA or a builder, you stood confidently and explained your role as a Lion Hybrid Scientist.  I asked if anyone understand your dream, you responded "most said 'I have no idea what he's talking about!'"   I said, "ha, they said that?"   You said, "no, but I could tell that's what they were thinking in their heads"

Oh my J.  Perfectly you.  Perfectly happy marching to the beat of your very own drum.  One of my only wishes for you is that you never, ever lose that sense of security about yourself.   The world is yours..... my smart, funny, creative, kind son. 

                                                                    Career Day, 3rd Grade

                        You assigned roles to many of your friends and I helped you draft a company org chart! 

What it's like: January 30, 2022

 For its first years this "garden in the web" was my intentional space to find some positivity and gratitude, or jot down a favorite quote for easy retrieval.  As J entered my life, it became a fantastic way to keep memories of what he was up to - the small treasures of life with a toddler, fleeting joy-filled memories that I knew would become a blur as time passed by.   

As I shifted careers, I found myself with less time in the office and the frequency of my posting slowed to essentially nothing.   I transitioned from a marriage that was no longer serving either of it's participants.  We agreed that life as it was could leave J with a very confused model of what "healthy adult" was and we agreed that J would be better with two healthy homes than one unhealthy one.  Walking through those woods was the most difficult period of my life but I knew one thing to be true, the only way through it was through it.  It could not be avoided if I wanted what I knew I could/would have -  where I am today. Gratefully it has been a few years now.  God sent me an angel, the only way I can really describe that, and that was S - a guy who loved me where I was and helped me get where I am.  Through unconditional love, tireless listening, my favorite sense of humor and energy to lead me on the world's most brilliant adventures, I was not only brought back to myself, but better.   My gratitude is deeper than the words on this page can express.  

So, as I moved from a soul in despair, seeking answers, to a place of gratitude and peacefulness, I also found myself with less of a reason to visit this space.  For the most part, my knots were untangled.  

Sometimes I post wordy thoughts on my social media accounts now so there lives a bit of a life-journal from the past few years when I haven't been here but I think this space is more appropriate and would like to return to it as I work out something that is currently on my mind.   So, for this season of the blog we'll likely hear a somewhat new voice, still observing and attempting to problem-solve, but perhaps the knots to untangle are less about the self and more about us. So here we begin musings of what life is like for a 41 year old female in Massachusetts living in 2022.  With plenty of joyful snip-its of life with my growing boy, of course.  

--

Kids continue to wear masks in school.  VA turns to a red governor as angry parents demand for more transparency (among other things...).   Blue musicians and authors leave Spotify in a revolt against Joe Rogan.  Canada hosts the largest trucking rally in the history of the world against vaccine mandates.  

The left hates the right.  The right hates the left.  It's hard to find a centrist media outlet because nobody wants to listen to a side that doesn't confirm what they believe to be true.  One pokes the other. The other pokes back.  I've noticed that they usually poke back about entirely different issues.  For example, "You anti-vaxxed people are ruining the country"  // "close the border, millions are coming in"    Discussion, tolerance, desire to understand, listen, forgive, compassion - harder and harder to find at least in the main stream circuits.  

In the physical world, I believe in very few absolutes.  As someone trying to become more educated in history, I see the patterns of mankind play themselves like a broken record and yet, change is too difficult a burden to bear.   So we find ourselves where we usually do - many in pain and and our collective suffering intensifies.  Joy is lost to sorrow.  Families unravel.  A tale as old as time. 

Like any growth, we meet ourselves where we are with a desire for a different outcome. We ask for the strength we need to do it.  

In the midst of Winter, when the days are cold and wind can pierce, remind us of the warmth of your love.

In the midst of Winter, when the days are short, dawn comes late, and dusk arrives early, remind us that in the darkness your light still shines. 

In the midst of Winter, when the flowers of spring still lie hidden in the Earth, when leaves are off the trees, and the world can seem bleak, remind us that Easter is but a short time away. 

And when in our lives we feel as if we are experiencing a season of winter, reach out to us with the power of your resurrection so that we may feel the warmth of your love and see your light that alone can take away the darkness of our soul.   - Cal Wick 

Bit of a nor'easter yesterday! 

Aging - Rupi Kaur

 I often daydream about the woman I'll be

when i leave the rush of

my insecure twenties

and pick-up self-assurance on the way

i can't wait to make

my eighteen year old self jealous

of the hell i raise

roaring into my thirties and forties

my soul becoming 

more potent with age

at fifty i'll sit with

my wrinkles and silver hair

laughing about the adventures

we've had together

talking about the countless more

in the decades ahead

what a privilege it is

to grow into the

finest version of myself 

Returning

Hello, old friend.   Trying to return here with a bit more consistency.     

Life has been good.  and for that I am filled with a happy heart and lots of gratitude.   

May you never stop trying....  

Collector of quotes

 Even though I haven't been posting, I still have been quietly screen-shot-saving quotes I find along the way.   I'd be surprised if I ever tire of the "YES!" feeling when another human to whom you never will know is able to so precisely articulate your experience.    A reminder that the human experience, though unique, is also quite shared.  

"I hope you find happiness one day.  Not the kind you share in a status update, but the enduring kind.  The quiet happiness that you've never really felt before and yet it feels as if it's always been inside of you, waiting to be found.  Like a house that's say empty for years, waiting for you to turn the lights on.  Waiting to be a home."   JM Storm.    

Hello from Newburyport

 A break on these pages usually implies a lot happening!  And so, here I am with the latest update: a move!  After 3.5 years of being an apartment-renting Cambridge dweller, I have returned to home-ownership and a bit more of a nest.   I purchased a beautiful home a few months ago and am settling in and unwinding into a season of classic New England charm and "town" life - I say town, because having lived in a suburb and more of a city, Newburyport is neither - it's walkable and alive and yet, neighborly and quiet.   A nice place to be.  

As significant changes generally invoke a reflection for me, I have been thinking about this move.  The move from Andover to Cambridge was so important to me and so beautifully necessary.  I needed to decompress.  I needed to not be challenged by suburban norms and home making when I really had no stamina for either.  I needed a place where I felt the status quo was a bit less defined and people a bit more transitory and global.  I found all of that.  I found a piece of myself - I found confidence, I found a new rhythm for Joe and I as a unit of two, I found friends I hope to always have and I found that the "grass isn't always greener" and extremes of political inclination can be exhausting.  It was an exercise in progress of self and when I felt ready, I was once again able to close a chapter.   Life, I'm realizing for me, may be a book of several short chapters rather than one long one.   There is no right way.  

J loves the house and he has a new adjective, "adaptable".   He learned about it in the context of the animal kingdom but I told him that he, too, is adaptable.  My little buddy - he goes with the flow and seems to enjoy each chapter as it comes.  He loves all the space in the new place and calls his 3rd floor "his private island".