Moments of clarity...

Life whirls along at a frightening pace sometimes, with so much to do and so little time that it's easy to get caught up in the "To-Do" lists and forget that life is a journey, and that each moment should be savored. With the end of the semester and 187 final projects to grade (not to mention the half dozen or so panicked students who "forgot" the class was ending and that assignments were due), a four-hour NCOA graduation ceremony on Thursday night, a trip down to Seward on Friday and Saturday, and then a whirlwind of household chores to wrap up on Sunday, you would think that I would have fallen into this trap over the weekend; I certainly have in the past, but this weekend, I resisted. Here were my moments of clarity:

(1) Lonnie dragged me to the NCOA graduation ceremony, and I was prepared for a long evening of stilted conversation and boredom. The only other woman at our table was about my age and pregnant with twins. I thought: We won't have much in common. And then I noticed her careful diction and proper grammar, and asked, "What do you do?" Victoria and I discovered that we shared a common history as radio air personalities and news directors, that she hailed from Texas (where I've unintentionally managed to spend 9 years of my life), that she holds a degree in Communications and a background in advertising, and has a 14-year-old stepson at home. We also discovered that both of us were new to Alaska, lived in Eagle River, and she had just made the transition from successful career woman to military spouse and full-time mom (and while excited about the changes, naturally feels some ambivalence).

The moment of clarity: Sometimes, we find a new friend when when and where we least expect it, and we should never make assumptions that close us off to new relationships...and if we look hard enough, we can almost always find a level of common experience that opens the door.

(2) Cindy called me at 4:30am on Friday, in labor, for moral support. A contraction seized her as we were talking, and she began to chant, "Owie, Owie, Owie, Owie..." and then told me after it ended: "I didn't expect it to hurt so much." I thought: She's only a child herself...how can she be ready to become a mother? During the next phone call, Matt assured me that she was being "a real trooper," and after the baby was born, I could hear the pride and awe in both of their voices. And I realized that they were three years older than Lonnie and I were when Matthew came along...

The moment of clarity: Having a child is part of the growing up process. We're all "too young" when the first child arrives in the sense that we're completely unprepared (regardless of how much we've tried to prepare); whether we're 18, 21, or 40--it's still just as frightening, just as overwhelming, and plays just as significant of a role in helping us to discover who we are and of what great things we are capable.

(3) We spent Friday loading the truck, packing up the dog, our bags, and sundry yard tools and equipment for the trip down to Seward. Our project for the weekend was to clean up the Veteran's Cemetary in Seward before Memorial Day. As we drove down Turnagain Arm and through the most magnificent mountain ranges I'd ever seen, I watched my cell phone for "No service" messages--Cindy was in delivery, and I didn't want to miss that phone call. I couldn't help but be awed, though, with the beauty that surrounded me, and when the phone call finally came, it caught me completely off guard. I thought: I'm a grandmother. I'm a grandmother. I'm a grandmother...and waited for it to sink in. I waited for something transformative to rush through me, for some sudden insight to come crashing into view.

The moment of clarity happened much later that day, as I knelt at a grave in the Veteran's Cemetary. "Jess" had died at 58, in 1985. Twenty-three years ago. On his grave, though, were flowers and monuments in various stages of decomposition, some of them shiny with newness: "I love you," they declared. Heart wreaths, small tokens, and a riot of colors told the world that--not only was "Jess" beloved when he passed away--someone still loved him, still missed him, 23 years later. It brought tears to my eyes. I suddenly realized that becoming a grandmother was about building a legacy of love to leave behind...nothing more, nothing less.

I was standing on the sea shore in Seward when all of these threads finally began to connect in my mind. Sea otters cavorted in the bay while a nearby sea lion leapt through the air with a still-fighting fish clamped in his jaws. Two Navy destroyers docked nearby, young men spilling out in boisterous groups, eager for a couple of days of shore leave. An elderly couple sat on a log holding hands, laughing together at the antics of the sea otters. Lonnie and Mickey bounded ahead of me over the rocky shoreline, both pausing ever so often to watch the ongoing battle between the sea lion and the fish. I stood, holding my camera, trying to decide which moment I should try to capture. Suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the mountain peaks in a wash of yellow and orange and pink, and I felt overwhelmed. How can I capture it all? I thought to myself, frustrated.

And then it came to me. Taking a deep breath, I slid the camera into my pocket and looked around. I could only capture it all by being there, really there, in the moment.

Making new friends...

We all struggle to adapt to new environments, and my experiences over the past few months have given me a deeper understanding of the anxiety, insecurity, and sometimes--sheer terror--that accompanies leaving everything and everyone you know behind and being transplanted somewhere new...even when that new place is a wonderful place to be.

This is Mickey. He's a 100 pound, four-year-old Alaskan Malamute, and a few weeks ago, his family had to give him up because they lost their home. We're adopting him from a local Rescue group, and during my search for articles and information on how to make the transition go as smoothly for him as possible, I ran across an article that encouraged new owners to try to see this process from the dog's perspective. Since Mickey's personality tends to be a little anxious anyway, I took the advice to heart.

Imagine--it suggested--that you are suddenly plucked from your home and family and placed into a noisy kennel, a brand new environment full of people and other dogs you don't know. New people come to visit you, moving in and out of your life like dream images, until one day, you're loaded into the car and taken somewhere new yet again. The new people in your life might be wonderful, and the new home may have everything you ever wanted--except that it's not your old home, and your family is still gone. The article suggested that it can take months for a dog to adjust to a new home--and that this is a fact that surprises many new owners.

Not me.

I've always dreamed of living in Alaska. I loved the idea of buying a home that had an amazing view of the mountains, where wildlife became a part of everyday life, and where each new day brought an increasing awareness of our place in the universe. And while I remember our years in North Dakota fondly--primarily because of the amazing and wonderful people who populated my life while I was there--I never planned to make it "home." And yet, when I moved 4,000 miles away to Alaska, it rocked my world.

I traveled halfway across the country by car, and then spent 3.5 days on a ferry--before arriving in Haines and driving through blinding snow on mountain roads for two days. For many, the trip would have been an adventure; for me, it was traumatic. Like Mickey, I tend to get a little anxious when I'm yanked so thoroughly out of my comfort zone. I'm not one of those people who thrives on change; I cling to routines, to the familiar, because chaos is destabilizing and frightening and tends to make me feel insecure.

Like Mickey, I had to leave my friends, my family, my community, and the life I had made for myself there. Suddenly, I had to learn new rules, a new town, a new job, and went through the stressful process of buying a home for the first time. The trauma lasted for months.

Last week, though, I came home from work, and as I walked through the front door, I felt that sudden, comforting relief that you feel when you come home...and I realized that, at some point, this had become my new comfort zone, my new home, and that slowly--but surely--I was acclimating to my new environment. I know the neighbors (and their dogs and kids) by their first names. I know the fastest way to get to campus, and I'm confident enough to argue with Google maps about the best route at a given time of day. I know the names of the mountains that surround our home, and I'm picking up the lingo: "the bush" instead of "the wilderness," "Cheechako" for "greenhorn," "break up" for "spring," and "Lower 48" for everything...well, in the Lower 48.

Yes, it will take Mickey time to adjust, and I'll be patient for as long as it takes him to decide that he, too, is finally home. It's all too easy to look at the situation from his perspective after the events of the past few months, and especially because he and I seem to share a cautious, anxious approach to new experiences. In fact, we'll probably make perfect companions for that very reason--then, when L. does take us out for new adventures that stretch our comfort zones, we can find solace in the idea that either way, we have each other to lean on...

What if?

You know what I love best about beginning a new project? The first sentence. I love coming up with a 'hook' that will draw the reader into the story, but I also love it for another reason: all of the possibilities it invokes. It draws me into the story.

Consider this first line: "You're fired."

What a great beginning! I know, I know--it sounds more like an ending, but the fun part is taking an ending and asking, "Who's fired? Why? And where does she go from there? What does this mean for the character? Is she struggling to make ends meet to begin with? Does she have someone depending on her for their financial well-being? A child? An elderly parent? Will she have to move? How will that affect her relationships? Will she have to leave her hometown--or return to her home town? And who or what will she encounter there? What if she's burned bridges? What if it's really the last place she wants to be?"

An ending is really a beginning, a place where one door closes and others are flung wide open.

I think about my students' first drafts, for example, and how they work through that first effort of "thinking through writing" about a specific topic. Over my years of teaching, I've noticed that it's usually in the conclusion of that first draft that they really discover what it is that they have to say, that the conclusion is really an introduction--a thesis--for their second draft.

I occasionally begin a new project with a character in mind, but most often, it's with a hook--with a single sentence that drags me into the story and forces me to explore who, what, when, where, and how...and most importantly: "What if?"

I think that life is the same way. We often fret and mourn our endings--which is completely natural and good; after all, we're leaving something behind, letting go--but we rarely realize the fact that endings are also, in essence, new beginnings. It isn't the end of the story, but the beginning of a new chapter in our lives.

When I finished my M.A., for example, I felt a little lost. For the first time in fifteen years, I wasn't registering for classes, wasn't compelled to write papers on a topic I was only vaguely interested in, didn't have deadlines looming over my head. I missed the intellectual engagement in the classroom, missed writing papers on topics I was only vaguely interested in, and missed those deadlines. School had become my comfort zone, and it was frightening to walk away.

When we come to an ending in our lives, we're forced out of our comfort zones. We're like a five-year-old on the first day of school--or an 18-year-old on graduation day: feeling overwhelmed, excited, sad, and incredibly overstimulated, all at the same time. And this is when we grow. When we're locked into our routines, into the known, safely in the confines of our comfort zones, we don't learn anything new about ourselves.

Endings in and of themselves help us to grow; they force us to see ourselves in new ways, to let go of something familiar, perhaps even loved, and we must mourn its passing. Sometimes we struggle against it; sometimes we rage. Sometimes, we're heart-broken. But once we go through the healing process, once we come out the other side, we realize that we face a new beginning, something to build on, a place full of possibilities, and an opportunity to ask, "What if?"

Anticipation

Since Janet so kindly reminded us of Carly Simon's song earlier this week, it's been running like a mantra through my head...and since this connects so nicely with Lisa's post this week about the "Massacre at Noon," I couldn't resist:

We can never know about the days to come, but we think about them anyway...

When I was an undergraduate elementary ed major, I took a course in Introduction to Teaching Reading, and one of the keys to teaching small children critical reading skills, we learned, was to teach them to predict and anticipate: "What do you think will happen next? Will Polly eat her peas?"

Anticipation is neatly tied to the concept of suspense, and we can anticipate good things or bad--like in a horror movie, when the heroine is running around half-naked trying to get away from the bad guy, and the music builds and builds and builds--we know that any moment now, that bad guy is going to suddenly be there, bloody knife in his hand and an evil grin on his face--and yet, when it happens (just as we anticipated), we still jump, let out a startled cry, and then watch as the anticipation begins to build all over again.

Why--when life is so darn suspensful on its own--do we feel the need to regurgitate this stuff in our fiction?

And tomorrow we might not be together. I'm no prophet and I don't know nature's ways...

Life is inherently suspenseful. We never know what tomorrow holds, when our time will end, when life is going to throw us a curve ball. The only thing that's certain is uncertainty. We imitate this anticipation and suspense in our fiction, I think, to help us deal with our very real fear of the unknown. Because many times, in fiction, the ending can be anticipated--and unlike real life, most of the time our predictions for fictional endings are pretty accurate (after all, we've been practicing since we were barely out of diapers, right)?

I'll...stay right here cause these are the good old days...

All we have is now. Today. This moment. We can anticipate tomorrow, next week, next month, but life's endings are much more difficult to predict. Tom Clancy once said, "The only difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to make sense." Making sense out of reality is obviously a much more challenging prospect...

Road Trip!

Imagine you're going on a trip tomorrow morning. You need to pack: what kinds of clothes will you need? How long will you be gone? Will you have access to a washer and dryer? You also need to arrange for transportation: will you drive? Fly? Take the train? Hike? And is anyone going with you? Who? Why? Where will you stay? What will you do? How long will it take you to get there?

Going on a journey clearly involves careful planning, and that planning revolves around understanding your destination. Before you can plan a trip, certain information is essential: where you're going, how long you'll be gone, who's going with you, etc. So why would we begin the journey of a lifetime without having a destination in mind?

I had a realization this week: human beings need goals. And I'm not talking about vague concepts like "happiness" or "balance," I'm talking about goals that are clear and measurable, tangible. It's human nature to work towards something, to have some sort of "ending" in mind, even though it's been shouted from the rooftops for decades by Oprah and her cohorts that happiness isn't about the destination; life is a journey, they tell us. Sure. Makes perfect sense. But how does one begin a journey without a destination in mind?

And what kind of results can you expect?

Aimless wandering, lots of dead ends, and lots of detours.

And we can certainly learn a lot from aimless wanderings, dead ends, and detours, but we'll encounter these even if we begin our journey with a destination in mind; after all, life has a way of throwing up construction barriers, natural disasters, and collapsed bridges to urge us down a different path. Without any idea of a destination, however, we have nothing to prevent us from simply sitting down in the ditch and resting for twenty or thirty years--there's no where to go, nowhere you need to be...until one day you wake up and realize that you're in a rut.

It seems to me that true balance must be about understanding that life is a journey, but that journeys inherently begin with a destination in mind. It's about being flexible should the original destination become less appealing because you've realized that it doesn't suit your needs any longer, but it's still about getting somewhere.

I prefer to think of life's journey as made up of several shorter jaunts, with a few side-trips and adventures thrown in for good measure. It isn't a long, straight highway; instead, it's a curvy mountain road, sometimes going uphill, sometimes down, and sometimes it's clear skies and sunshine, when BAM! suddenly you hit a patch of black ice and find yourself in the ditch. Success, though, is about knowing where the road leads--or at least, where you want it to lead for now--so that you're motivated to get out of the car, slog through the mud, and begin the often slow, painful process of getting your car out of the ditch and back on the road again.

Anybody have a tow rope?

Springing Forward...

I'm ready for spring.

While this winter really hasn't been any longer than any other, it seems at times as if it's lasted for a year (at least), and I'm anxious for it to end. I'm ready to see spring flowers pop through the melting mounds of snow; I'm ready to be awakened by birds chattering outside my window. I miss the warmth, the sunshine, and the long, lazy days of summer. I miss long walks, barbeques, and afternoons spent in the hammock with an engrossing novel.

Winter is cold and dark, the ground covered with snow and ice, the trees brown and bare. Nature is sleeping--I feel like I am sleeping--and I'm ready for the sun to begin creeping up over the horizon to reveal that dawn--and spring--is fast approaching.

I recognize that with the arrival of spring, the end of this busy semester draws near--and a new life, a new perspective, awaits. Longer days and small, green buds on the tree branches represent for me the beginning of a new journey, the rebirth of hope and optimism, and I'm suddenly anxious to begin seeing the signs that mark this new direction.

I'm reminded by a quote from Anne Bradstreet: "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

This year, spring is most welcome.