BOTH, AND

A friend left me a phone message yesterday, asking excitedly, "Isn't this rain wonderful?"  

I could not enter fully into her excitement.  Yes, we need rain.  Yes, my garden is happy.  Yes, the big trees are happy.  And, yes, I am grateful not to be dragging hoses around.

But.  

There is so often a "but," isn't there?  

I am very happy it is raining, but the sudden barometer change affects my mood and energy, and not in a good way.  

Let's talk about the "but."

I have read or heard that it is good to change our "buts" to "ands." A but negates or, at the very least, takes the wind out of what came before. An and simply adds another fact, without taking away from the first one.  

So, instead of "I am glad it is raining, but rain affects my mood and energy," I could say, "I am glad it is raining, and rain affects my mood and energy." 

In the first sentence, the scale tips toward the negative.  In the second sentence, each clause has equal weight. 

Here are some others I have come up with:

I love spending time with my grandkids, and they are exhausting.

I dislike cooking, and I like to eat.

I love my house, and it's time to move.

I love spending time with my friends, and I never seem to have enough alone time.

I love my cats, and I want someone else to clean their litter box.

I like being alone in my house, and I would like someone to come and cook for me.

I am thrilled to have grandchildren, and I worry about the world they will grow up in.

I am grateful for all that I have, and I can't help but wonder why I have so much, while others have so little.

I am so glad I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I miss the friends I left behind when I moved here from back east.  

I have become happier in each decade of my life, and I would like to have my 40-year-old energy again.

You get the idea.  

We can hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, without one shoving the other out of the way -- can't we?  

                                                 Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

I'm going to try to be more conscious of my buts and ands.  

I would love to see your ands in the comments.  

THE LOVES OF MY LIFE

 

Yesterday, Valentine’s Day, I woke up thinking about the concept of “the love of one’s life.” The idea that each of us has one true love that is truer than all the others. 

 

After a very small amount of thought, I rejected the idea.

 

Yes, I can say without hesitation that my husband is the love of my life.  I have loved other men.  I have lived with other men.  But he is the romantic love of my life.  

 

The key word here is romantic.  Many of us can name the romantic love of our lives.  But does the concept have to end with romance?  

 

I think not.  

 

The other day, a friend told me about a podcast she had listened to, where someone had stated that the love of your life doesn’t have to be a romantic partner.  It can be a friend or even a pet.

 

I like this notion.  But does there have to be only one?

 

Again, I think not.

 

So, I want to write today about the non-romantic loves of my life. (I will stick here with sentient beings and leave out such things as writing and gardening.)

 

My daughters and grandchildren may be the greatest loves of my life.  For nearly 40 years, whenever I have heard the Beatles' song “In My Life,” I have thought of my daughters, and for nearly two-and-a half years now, the song has also brought to mind my grandchildren, who have joined this cohort of beloveds.

 

But this blog post is not for them or for my husband or my wider family, all of whom, I hope, know of my love for them. It is, instead, a love letter to my friends.

 

Yesterday, I recieved a double bunch of tulips in the mail (I don’t know how this is done---magic?) from two dear friends back east.  They were thinking of me as I approach a minor surgery next week.  Although the day of the flowers’ arrival was likely a coincidence, I chose to think of them as a Valentine.    

 

Yesterday, I also received a Valentine card from a friend of nearly 40 years, and messages of affection from others.  

 

How could they and my other close friends not be included among the loves of my life?  

 

These are the people who have seen me through—beginning with the one I met in the third grade and continuing straight through to the one I met last year.  These are the people who have comforted me and allowed me to comfort them.  These are the people to whom I have told secrets, who have listened to my news, helped me to solve problems, held me when I was devastated, laughed and cried with me.  

 

And here is the really amazing part—they have trusted me with their secrets, their joys and sorrows, their deepest selves.  And, get this, they have loved me at my most unlovable.  I said in the last paragraph that they had seen me through. But they have also seen through me. And they have not turned away.

 

As I think about the loves of my life, I am picturing myself at the center of a braid, with strands of different colors for family, lovers, and friends.  Some strands have the thickness of years; some are newer and thinner, but are no less a part of the whole that carries me through my life.  There are frayed patches where friends or romantic partners have dropped away or loved ones have died. There are also a few gaps where there has been a loss, followed by a reconnection. But neither the gaps nor the frayed bits have affected the strength of a braid that has been so many years in the making.  (And I like to think that those who have passed hover yet around its twists and turns.)

 

The older I get, the more I understand that I would be nowhere without those lives braided around mine. And even as I treasure time alone, I know such time would be intolerable without the embrace of the loves of my life. 

May we all cherish the people who have chosen to entwine their lives with ours, for who would we be without them?

 

 

 

 

 

HOW DO I LOVE THEE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS: Some Thoughts Inspired by a New Granddaughter **

I have a new granddaughter.  Her name is Daisy. She is not my first grandchild – we have five on my husband’s side and I adore them all.  But Daisy is the first child born to one of my two daughters.  She is the first grandchild who was still a tiny baby the first time I held her.  And this is the first time I have looked for signs of my family in a grandchild. 

 

I’m not going to bore you with a long description of my love-at-first-sight reaction to this baby.  (I will save that for conversations with other grandmothers.)  Although, I must say, I didn’t know I would feel exactly the same love for this baby that I felt when I first held each of my daughters.  A fierce love. An I’ll-do-anything-to-protect-you love. When I first held Daisy, and every time I hold her, my heart--like the Grinch’s heart--grows to three times its size. 

 

I was 38 when Daisy’s mom--my Mara--was born.  When she was a teenager, Mara would sometimes state wistfully that she wished she had younger parents.  I would patiently explain that if I had had a baby ten years earlier, that baby would not have been her.  There would have been no Mara, or there would have been a different Mara.  

 

Each baby is the product of a cosmic lottery.  If my mother and father hadn’t gone to the same youth hostel on a particular weekend, they would not have met, and I would never have come into being.   And even given their meeting, a very particular sperm, out of millions of sperm, had to join with a very particular egg for a baby of theirs to have turned out to be me. And so it goes, back through time -- If each of my ancestors had not created the very embryos they created at the very moment they created them, neither my parents nor I would have have entered this life. 

 

And so it appears that the odds of any particular being winning the lottery and entering the world are vanishingly small.  If, for instance, the ruptured ovarian cyst that nearly sent me into sepsis at age 24 had killed me or rendered me sterile, the daughters I call Anne and Mara would not exist.  And if I had met a different man, I might have had children, but not my Anne and Mara.

 

And if Mara hadn’t reconnected with a college boyfriend, married him, and gotten pregnant just when she did, there would be no Daisy--not this Daisy anyway.  What a chain of chance it took for this baby to be born, for this Daisy to join the chain. 

 

Of course, I would have loved a baby conceived five minutes later, but now that this baby is manifest, it is she I love--she, who in all of her particularity, has won my heart. 

 

I am so grateful that she is here, so grateful to have lived long enough to be a grandmother to both Daisy and the bonus grandchildren brought into my life by my husband. For them, and for children everywhere who have run the generational gauntlet to arrive in this world, I offer a version of the Buddhist Loving Kindness meditation:

 

       May you have an open heart.

       May you be free from suffering.

       May you be happy.

       May you be at peace.

 

May it be so.

**Yes, I stole the title for this post from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and, yes, she wrote her sonnet for her true love, Robert, but, honestly, I believe it is equally, perhaps better-suited to a parent’s or grandparent’s love.  

 

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.