Writing in Relationship

Life sometimes surprises me. No that is not true, life is always surprising, it is me that is only sometimes aware of that fact. And when I am aware these days it mostly makes me laugh. And sometimes cry.

I don't really aspire to be a writer. I more desire to be conscious and aware, so when I am once again caught off guard by life it makes me realize how much I live without really thinking, something I so readily accuse others of doing. It is writing that helps me live more thoughtfully.

For a period of years, ten perhaps, beginning in my late thirties, I kept a journal and wrote almost daily. That practice grew out of keeping a sketchbook while getting my art degree and entering therapy when my mother died, but dwindled over time as I became busier living than observing. At least that is what I thought. And my journals were, are, private; I still have them, dusty and stacked on the highest shelf in a bookcase. I haven't read them in years but I think there is much that is repetitive inside the covers of those unlined books, and probably much that is not worth reading let alone remembering. But this morning I am wondering if they bear rereading, like history that could, if observed, not be repeated.

It is that time of night, morning, that is so early I cannot have coffee. Three o'clock is the time when I have had enough sleep to not be tired but not enough to carry me through the following day. It is the time I used to get up and paint when I was in my painting years, which parenthetically coincided with my journaling years; as often as I would paint at that time of day/night I would write.

I did not only write/paint in the wee small hours of the morning (okay I stole that but isn't it lovely?) in fact that was the exception more than the rule. It was just the time when things felt most urgent. Is that what I am feeling now as I write, a sense of urgency?

I will turn sixty-four soon, in a few weeks actually. Sixty-four is the year of the great Beatles song, whose music defined my coming of age and the beginning of consciousness. Sixty-four is also the age my mother was when she died unexpectedly. Both of those thoughts have occurred to me as I come into this birthday. And yes there is a sense of life speeding up, of things becoming more pressing, of a need to become more thoughtful once again. All of which describe a sense of urgency.

My husband is looking forward to his fifty-fifth high school reunion this coming month. I have another friend who just returned from her same fifty-fifth gathering. I have no such desire to attend a reunion but I can understand the pull. High school, particularly the end of high school and particularly if one had a good experience of high school, is a time when all things are possible. Everything is pregnant with possibility. We are coming into adulthood fresh faced without the scars of age. We have not yet made bad choices or mistakes that will define us. It is a time of Camelot.

Sixty-four, or seventy-three as my husband will be on his next, soon, birthday, is a time when one begins to wonder what is still possible. When choices may have hardened into patterns and lifestyles that we never saw coming. Or for some of us, when looking back, we realize how life is full of wonderful surprises that also never saw coming. And for most of us it is some combination of the two; there are some regrets that cannot be undone but there are people and experiences in our life that have, and continue to, enriched it beyond anything we could have imagined at seventeen or eighteen. And everything that happened between the two can fill volumes.

That is why I write. At first because I wanted to live a conscious life, something that came out of my painting and my therapy, and now because I want to share that process and the result of that desire with others. Not many mind you, mostly close friends and children and hopefully someday grandchildren too, but some. Anyone really who finds their way to my table and wants to share the fare.

My older son and his wife spend an hour every morning sitting and being, reading, writing (for he too journals), and now they have two of their three children join them for that quiet time. It is a lovely way to start the day and a way for a family to be together in their separateness. It is a practice I find enviable and surprising but mostly nourishing. Nourishing for the individuals but also for the group who are together in a way they will not be ten or twenty years from now. It is a practice in mindfulness.

My mindfulness is more haphazard and random. It comes at odd hours and odd days, when I am just waking from a sound sleep or when I am engaged in solitary work which I do so often as an artist. When I am walking or when I am gardening also. It comes more often these days and like my son, (and Winnie-the-Poo), mindfulness will bring me to my thoughtful place which is sometimes to my laptop and this blogspot. It is a practice that seems essential for these chaotic times and these diminishing years when some things are beginning to seem impossible.

And because there is that feeling dwelling around the edges of everything I do these days, the wondering if this is the last time I will have an experience of travel or renovating a house, two things that I dearly love, I want to be conscious in the process of deciding what I will give up and what I will fight to continue doing. I do not want any thing or any person I love to slip away without the awareness that I am letting it or them go. In the busyness of life it is easy to do that, and while they will find others to fill whatever void I leave I may just be left with an emptiness of my own making, becoming the product of my own laziness. The opposite of mindfulness.

So yes, life continues to surprise me, and I am fortunate that those surprises are delightful and fill my being with joy for the most part. And the answer to the question "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" is a resounding yes. Nourishing my soul is my job and my responsibility, writing in relationship is but one tool to accomplish it.

"Amen, sister", as my friend Rosie would say.