Tending Joy

So we talked. And talked some more. DH has been very cooperative about most things. He came back to NJ earlier than planned, citing unhelpful weather for drying out sails and clearing all the canvas off the boat. We talked some more.

Just when I think I know what we'll do, he throws me a lifeline of deep self-disclosing conversation. Just when he thinks the most important thing is to 'officially' notify them as need to know, I balk. Am I not sure what I want? No, that's not it.

What seems clear in this moment is that

* I'm still sure what kind of relationship I want
* I'm not as certain as I was last week about that being unavailable here
* I need to honor his slower processing time
* He needs to honor my desperation.

Back to our beloved and highly useful counselor this afternoon. The plot thickens.

Uneventful trip with the truck: Check.

Successful and easy unloading: Check.

All boat-stuff appropriately stored: About 75% so far. But the laundry is all done!

Week-long retreat with covenmates, affiliated covens, spouses, and about 450 other people: Check. We left about 18 hours early, at my request. Ritual together with the group was awesome, distance with disaffiliated spouse was challenging. Spouse had a lovely couple of days sitting in the outdoors with a book. As we left he remarked how much he liked the venue. 

For me, the venue is nice -- ex-farm beautifully converted to retreat center, trees and birds and cabins oh my. But it's also full of flashbacks to some of our most difficult moments when his overuse of alcohol and underuse of communication came to a head a few years ago.

For me, the flashbacks were the price I was paying for being here with the elders and siblings. For spouse, the moments of ritual (most of which he skipped) were the price he was paying for being here with me and feeling like he was honoring my request.

The Talk needs to happen today ... after two more rounds of shopping for necessary goat-fence parts (he's off doing that now).

In other news, some moving and shaking in the next generation of the family. A residential boat that has become untenable, and a lot of 'not sure what we'll do next'. Me, I'll stay tuned and help where possible.

Today I'm seeking love and light wherever possible, too.

 Keeping myself current, somehow -- oh, and keeping you current, too.

Relationships

Dear Husband and I continue in counseling. T'other day he acknowledged that he's getting value out of it, for himself as well as for the relationship. I'm getting value out of it too, more for myself than for any real or lasting improvement in the relationship. We are talking better -- which is excellent. Sadly, the more clearly we talk the more clear it becomes that we have fundamental differences that may not be resolvable.

He said not long ago that he thinks of life as a series of projects. Which might be great, except that whenever he's in mid-project he can't do anything else. He feels guilty if we take an afternoon off and aggrieved if I want his attention for something 'frivolous' like 'having fun together' instead of completing an obligation we have taken on. When we started in counseling the 'project' was the great boat rebuilding -- which had us in Guatemala for four winters running without ever leaving the boatyard village except for one weekend. We processed that to death, after the fact, but this spring he's done the same thing with the project of cleaning house for being on the market, and again with the project of putting up fences for goats.

But even when we're building fences I still need to do hospice work, to meditate, to do coven magic, to study, to weave, to dance, to cuddle. Somehow all these become distractions and ways in which I abandon him while he's stuck with the project. Even though I don't want him to be stuck with the project, I just want us to have some 'life' together in addition to the 'obligation'. The more we try to talk about this the more he insists that he has to continue to live his life the way he was brought up -- to be always committing to responsibility and always putting that responsibility first.

I, on the other hand, have spent much of the past 20 years trying to grow out of my own upbringing, especially sometimes when it seems that it doesn't support my growth and upliftment. The impulse to Calvinistic self-denial dies hard, but it can be reduced. I wish I could find a way to make that clearer to him.

In other news, the tone of conversation in the household has moderated. Now that it's really clear that we need to sell the property some resentment and backlash have given way to actual progress, both on 'clearing out stuff that won't go with' and 'figuring out where to move to, and how'. It will be a big wrench for at least three of us to separate into two pairs in different places, but it has become more and more clear that this is necessary. Too many things have been too far out of balance for too long. Affection is still there, but sometimes even people we love need to move on.

I haven't spent much time with the kids and grandkids this year, but we're in more touch via 'social networking' media. It's an interesting shift. And in another month I expect to have some time with a new grandbaby, due in September.

Writing

Pretty much nothing is happening. I write lengthy comments on other people's blogs, very occasionally, and sometimes a longish e-mail. But no progress on the memoir since the last Gotham Writers Workshop class ended in the spring. I'll get back to it, but I'm not sure quite when.

My advice to the rest of you is: Start writing your memoirs in your 40s or 50s, while you still have significant short-term memory to help you keep it all organized. Waiting until 60 was foolish.

Chaplaincy

Recently served as chaplain for a friend having surgery. Was accepted by the hospital personnel with a minimum of hassle. Continuing to like the feeling of helping people be present to the parts they want to focus on and release the unnecessary parts.

Medical

Seems the gastric distresses of the past couple of years are related to a combination of stress and stupid dietary indiscretion. Just because yogurt is easy doesn't mean I should try to live on it. Just because it's unavailable somewhere doesn't mean I should quit it cold turkey. Making sure I actually get both protein and fresh vegetables seems key. Possible gluten sensitivity but this doesn't seem to be a big problem just now. Gotta watch out for depression.

Otherwise I am in robustly delightful good health.

Celebration

One of the frustrations of my life is that we have utterly failed to find ways to celebrate that both of us enjoy. For our 25th wedding anniversary last year we agonized over what to do. Ended up that he took me dancing "for graduation" (from the MA I completed last year) and then I helped him give a party "for several reasons" including the anniversary. I like dancing, he doesn't. He likes parties, I don't. After all that we said we'd "be sure" to celebrate our 26th. But it was last week, and we were so focused on building fences for the goats that he canceled his birthday celebration and suggested we push back our anniversary for the following week. But that week was over yesterday. Did we celebrate? What do you think?

Magic

Lots of coven work this month, and I'm loving it. Put in my request to work toward initiation and have a plan for that work. Have started some of the pieces of it.

Sobriety

The occasional single glass of wine or beer. T'other night a gin and tonic, just the one. No difficulties, no confusion, not much pull to drink more. Looks like the Guatemala experience had more to do with deprivation than alcoholism in particular.

Spiritual Practice

I keep promising myself that I'll meditate tomorrow. What is THAT about?

Keeping commitments

I'm doing better at resisting the temptation to say Yes too fast. I'm doing better at being where I said I would be and doing what I said I would do. Biggest improvement: Actually calling people as soon as I realize I can't meet a commitment, rather than waiting to the eleventh hour and hoping against hope for a miraculous change in whatever's in the way.

Physical reality

I'm loving having goats. I'm also looking forward to selling them off in about three weeks, then starting over with a new batch of young kids.

Plans

We've started talking about the sailing trip up through Belize in February or March or maybe April. Haven't really started the planning process yet, but starting to talk about doing it.

In three weeks we go to Ireland with a group, planning to visit some sacred sites. I can't wait ... and I'm aware that I don't yet have all the information I'll need to make good plans. 

Overwhelm / Overbookedness

Finally took steps a couple of weeks ago to put myself on hiatus with several commitments while we sort out the goats project and get the house sold. Now it feels like there's room. I'm back to weaving and took the current project off the loom tonight. It's either 'finished' or tomorrow's in-depth examination will tell me I need to replace one or two of the placemats in the set. But then ... on to the next warp.

I am so glad for the people who read and respond to what I write here. It helps to feel that there's a place to dump the contents of my head, where I have a chance of being heard, listened to, understood.

Love, light and laughter to you all

 Amazing day Saturday -- plenty of good food for mind and body. Followed by plenty of good ritual that feeds the soul. I'd been at this ritual before, a few years ago. I recalled that the Deity invoked seemed actually to be present. I remembered that some of what the aspected Deity said struck a resonance in me.

Somehow I didn't expect that, as the clergyone doing the aspecting walked around, looking so familiarly like the person I know, the God would speak through his mouth while his eyes looked right at me, saying things that are so directly relevant to my life in this moment.

Your job on this Earth is to feel fully. Your job is to fully experience your life. To enjoy every aspect of this embodiment. To delight in your joys and to grieve in your sorrows. Your task is to remain fully present to everything that comes. And to make choices that serve your intention to experience this life. If you do not do that, it does not matter to Us. If you do not do this now, you can do it tomorrow. If you do not do it in this life you can do it in the next, or the one after that. It only matters to You. And it is the only thing required of you.

This came on the heels of a marathon session with a friend who needed a guinea-pig client to practice a specific form of counseling. I learned a great deal from being asked clarifying questions. What maintains the present pattern of putting the needs of this life last? What maintains the pattern of numbing myself to my deficiencies rather than doing the work I feel called to do?

Doing some Full Moon work yesterday. Our Guide had us meeting several Mysterious Ones, some familiar from mythology and some not. Each of them had something to say to me. Then came the last:

Demeter, arising out of an earthquake, the ground before me lifting like a bubble in hot tar, but brown and muddy ... and then Zowie! There she stood, radiant, wearing a dress of shining brilliance with sapphires and rubies shimmering as she moved. She offered me a handful of seeds and bade me keep one for future, and plant the rest. She beckoned me forward, then indicated I should turn and look behind me. In my footsteps a riot of color was sprouting -- lettuces and roses, peonies and snap peas, from every footprint several different plants moving at the speed of stop-motion photography on the Discovery channel.

[Full stop. Did I just compare actual life to a technological abbreviation of what it looks like? I did. Sigh.]

Where was I? Oh yeah.

I turned back from my amazement at the wonderful life arising from my footsteps. She was waiting for my full attention, looking down on my face from her height of seven or eight feet.

"You need to listen closely," she said. "I have watched you waiting through this winter, as if winter were a dead time, a punishment." She waved her hand and a pair of chairs appeared, cushy and inviting. We sat.

"Winter was never a punishment," she said. "The myth makers got it wrong. Winter was a time of resting, a time to look inward a moment and see what choices await in Spring, a time to scry ahead into the future.

"And Spring is here now, or nearly. You have waited long enough, and past long enough, and too long. You have important work to do. Look ahead, choose the next three steps, and act. Stop waiting for permission or agreement. Stop imagining that negotiation would bring you the minimum you require. Stop pretending that crumbs would be enough when what you actually need is the rich loaf of your life.

"Do you think I put you on this planet to play small?

"Do you think you were born into this lifetime to wantonly overuse resources in order to live an unsatisfying life?"

She looked deep into my eyes. I felt her love, her compassion, and her challenge.

Then she was gone. I sat in a comfy overstuffed chair in the middle of a field of flowers, fruits, vegetables, and books.

Our Guide told us it was time to go, and I went.

Now I have to choose the next three steps and act.

 Begin with the end in mind.

So the "end" I seek is enjoying my life.

Just now that looks pretty narrow. 

I start to talk about my general good health, and right away a paragraph emerges that is all focused on the momentary back spasms I've been having since about Thursday. I know what caused them, I'm pretty sure my chiropractor will give me lots of great help, the minutiae of exactly what happened and exactly what it's been like, moment to moment, is of no interest, even to me. But I've had to throw away that paragraph three times. I might not keep this one either.

So yes, part of "enjoying my life" is "enjoying my robust good health." More genuine exercise seems appropriate. I gave up a gym membership I wasn't using, but maybe it's time to go back? At least, I think I'll start regular swimming again. I could eat slightly more intelligently, but first I would have to be willing to give that some attention, which isn't happening this week.

Then there's the question of 'useful work.' 
 
Cherry Hill Seminary deserves more of my attention than it gets, many weeks, but other weeks I find myself diving right in and doing a decent job. I suspect my days of doing a stellar job might be over -- not enough consecutive memory, and a certain amount of dropping the ball -- but it's hard to tell if that's permanent. And in the meantime the Student Handbook I wrote has been mostly subsumed into the new Catalog with excellent results.

I continue to feel that I'd like to be volunteering at the University of Santa Monica, but I would have to live there to make that workable. And at this moment I'm not sure I really want to do that -- except for USM and the fact that one of my kids lives there, I don't enjoy a lot of Los Angeles sprawl-and-freeway life. If I live close, it's expensive; if I live far enough away to be cheaper, then it's a long freeway drive. So I don't seem to be moving in that direction at the moment.

Hospice volunteering continues useful and fascinating by turns, but highly variable. Offering Reiki to people with illness, injury, pain or disturbance continues to feel comfortable and valuable. And sometimes it feels self-serving. Does it provide genuine relief that people experience? or are they just being nice and allowing me to do something that obviously feels so right to me? Sometimes I'm not sure.

And what about companionship, relationships, interactions?

A few good friends. A few groups that seem to value me; sometimes I enjoy my participation, sometimes it's a chore, occasionally it feels like a "pass time" in the same way as playing solitaire. What is in my life just now that actually has value to me? Where am I attached to the wrong things? Where am I not attached enough?

Dear Husband is in Guatemala. I am here. When I'm on the boat, I wish we were sailing, I miss my loom, my coven, my friends, my New Jersey life. But here in New Jersey, I look around and wonder what there is in this New Jersey life that keeps me from sailing?

Perhaps what I'm experiencing just now is depression. Or perhaps it's the end of an era, a time of reassessing and culling and choosing. When we move out of this house, what will I keep? What space do I really require? What space would I prefer? Can I afford the difference? 

Perhaps what I'm experiencing now is the beginning of old age. First I gave away my ice skates (a bone scan with "osteoporosis" in the title is enough to say 'no more falling on ice for you.'). I want to go skiing this winter but it's been about five years since I did. Maybe I'm not really in shape for skiing just now, but what would it take to train for it? I want to imagine myself lean and lithe, flexible  and strong, but it might be wishful thinking.

My skin in the mirror is wrinkled, beginning to thicken. My hair is grey, beginning to thin. When I get dressed up I look dressed up, but no longer am I able to look ravishing or strikingly beautiful.

If my goal is to enjoy my life there are some things I'd better change.

Dunno what metaphor to be using just now. It feels like the spring breakup of the ice, when suddenly the surface of the river can move after months in stasis. It feels like someone pulled out the keystone log in the jam, and suddenly the river surface is alive with half-ton logs caroming wildly down river.

My cold's not fully over, but yesterday I had some energy and today I woke up with a serious head of steam up. My depression's probably not fully over, but today I feel like it's lifting.

It's not 2 pm yet and I feel like I've made serious progress on several fronts at once, as well as doing more decluttering and more laundry. I've worked on the student handbook's latest revision, looked at scheduling for the next 18 months and made some decisions (and identified two hard conflicts that I don't know yet how to solve), cleaned up my inbox in several important ways.

Part of this is probably physical. But part of it is certainly the result of a couple of valuable hours with my therapist in the past couple of weeks.

Sometimes there's nothing like a sharp-minded good listener who askes the right questions. Where did I decide that I can't stand up for myself? Where did I decide that I didn't have a voice, or had to come in second? What is it that shuts down my ability to negotiate until, finally, I have to 'get sick so I can go home' ? As, manifestly, I did during the end of February.

Process: follow the thread back.

From a present conflict between what my Dear Husband would like (me beside him in Guatemala even if there's nothing much for me to do there) and what I would like (important work, a sense of community effort in which I can participate meaningfully, plenty of deep and personal conversation with likeminded companions) ... and the freedom to come and go as I please ...

Back through the 1980s when I often felt that what he wanted, as he traveled in his job, was to come home and find me exactly where he'd left me, doing exactly the same things I'd been doing, with the same train of thought waiting at the same station. That is -- I felt that he wanted to be able to come home to 'the same' relationship as when he'd left. He didn't want to come home to a mate full of new enthusiasms or fresh from new experiences. Even though, of course, he'd had some new experiences while away. ...

Back through a previous marriage in the early 70s when I had even more strongly that same experience, with a man who traveled even more constantly ...

Back through my 1968 grief at losing my brother and my simultaneous overwhelm at new motherhood, and the slow-to-materialize awareness that my life had changed radically while my then-husband's life had changed little. ... and that this created trouble and distance for us. ...

Back into childhood, where (surprise) my father traveled on business in a predictable pattern, and so our life at home had a predictable rhythm. And here I can see the dysfunction: that predictable rhythm.

Dad liked order and neatness, well-behaved children who were more into 'seen and not heard' than otherwise.

Mom liked frivolity and tended toward clutter. Especially when deprived of the company of her mate, she liked children who were willing to play with her, tell her all their troubles, go for long rides with her.

So, we developed a pattern that was very orderly and neat when Dad was home, with dinner at 5:30 after Dad got home at 5:15, with breakfast at 7:15 so the first kid could go to the schoolbus at 7:30 and still have had breakfast reading homework while Dad read the paper, with committee meetings and scouts and choir.

Whenever Dad left, usually on a Saturday or Sunday, Mom and kids would relax into gleeful abandon. We might eat spaghetti for dinner at 7 or later; we might go out for a hilarious dinner at Friendly's culminating in a contest to see who could order the most peculiar mixture of their 28-flavors for desert. The next week, or usually two weeks, we might get our own cereal or we might have breakfast together, we might leave our schoolbooks all over the dining room table for a day or two at a time, we might not hang up our jackets at all. We might go shopping with mom all afternoon and then do our homework over take-out Chinese food.

Until Dad was due home. Then there would be two or three days of Mom screaming and yelling at us until we had put our rooms back in order, hung up all the coats, put away all the schoolbooks, cleaned up the kitchen, and helped her with the backed-up laundry. Then we would go pick up Dad from the airport and live orderly and neat lives for three or four weeks until the next trip. When Dad was home, they spent several evenings together each week, and didn't want much interruption from us kids. When Dad was home, it mattered which kid was not yet in bed at eleven, it wasn't okay for Mom to sit up and talk with one of us until the wee hours.

So ... Mom could live the way she wanted only when he wasn't there ... and saw it as her obligation to make all of us live the way he wanted when he was there.

Add to this that both of them saw it as her job to raise the kids while he traveled on business and worked in an office all day ... and that once the last kid was in school and she got the job they'd always talked about her getting, it turned out he hated the fact that she had it. And saboutaged it at every turn.

Hmm.

Fast forward to the way my DH and I each independently tend to negotiate anyway.

I like to put all the possibilities on the table and look at them together. It's not uncommon for me to let you have the first move after they're all out there. What would you like? What would you not like? What seems best to you? Now that you've said that, I might disagree ... but it would often be my preference to know where you stand before I say what I want.

My DH, on the other hand, often prefers to take a position: Here's what I want. And wait for the other person to say, No that won't do, here's what I propose instead.

If we were labor negotiators, my way might look like 'let's look at the company's budget and the cost of living, talk about what the company needs to spend money on and what kind of lifestyle the employees would like and then look for common ground, overlap, possible ways to generate a win-win solution.' DH's way might look like 'the workers want to get paid a zillion dollars for doing nothing and management wants them to work 168 hours/week for zero pay: where in the middle can we meet?'

There's nothing wrong with either technique, but we are constantly getting into trouble when we each try to use the one we like best, while the other is using the other method.

Just now I feel like 'all' I needed to do was let myself sit down and 'choose' what I want to actually do with the next few weeks. And suddenly it seems much easier to divide my time between home and Guatemala and other travel I feel like doing. So just now I don't have anything nailed down yet, but I have a pretty good idea what the dates will look like when the dust settles. Two phonecalls to make, and a conversation with DH, and then I should be ready to mark things on the calendar in ink.

Just now it's time to go back to work.

Yippeeeeeee!

Or choices, at least.

I'm fine as long as I stick with questions like, "What do you WANT to do?"

I want to be in exactly three places on February 1, and my Dear Husband wants me to be in a fourth. None could overlap.

There's a workshop I want to go to Feb 5-8 in Maryland, a conference Feb 11-16 in San Jose, California and another Feb 26-Mar 1 in Houston. Mar 22-25 I'd like to be in California on an outreach project.

If I plan my airplanes right it's cheaper to book it all up front. If I screw that up, the change fee could completely erase the savings.

Looks like leaving for Guatemala in late December is about right. Cheapest possible tix are traveling on Christmas Day itself, which I actually don't mind, but the layovers are weird -- 10 hours all day and then arrive in the middle of the night, exhausted, and like that. At least two wonderfully cheap fares require an overnight, but I'm just not up to sitting up in the terminal all night, so then there's the added cost of a hotel room.

Best predictions we can make just now about the boat's schedule is that we might possibly start provisioning about Feb 1. Which is just exactly when I'd rather be traipsing around the US than sitting at dockside stowing provisions. But I'm very painfully unwilling to give up all the February dates ... and then potentially find myself watching the grass grow.

There are a couple of folks in Houston I would love to visit (you know who you are) ... I keep thinking there are San Jose people, too, but actually one died, one moved away, and one has become rather reclusive in recent years, so maybe not. Maybe I'd settle for trying to find the old haunts, or maybe do exactly what my Dad used to do (and we always laughed at): travel across the country to spend the whole time in the hotel.

I think DH is on board with me flying back just for the San Jose conference, and I guess if we're provisioning by then, that's what I'll do. On the other hand, if the schedule continues to slip ... then all these other things become possible. Hmm.