I am steeped in beauty on Oahu. Turning 50 this year. Taking a reflective beat. This means I'm mainlining library books and Sunday NYT crossword puzzles (who doesn't save ten back issues of the Magazine for this purpose?) more than I'm writing. I'm feeling more than I'm thinking. And I'm decompressing after a road trip to Mt. Shasta and Ashland, OR with my kids during their Spring Break (which was fun but not to be confused with relaxing). Having put one daughter back on a plane from Honolulu to California yesterday, I woke up this morning in charge only of myself. My partner is here, although he's pretty good at being in charge of himself. I am admittedly grateful but also a deer in headlights, emotionally. Getting used to the rhythm of being a divorced parent takes practice. I miss my three teens acutely when I'm not with them, and I crave alone time—must THINK! PRODUCE! COMPLETE A SENTENCE THAT DOESN'T INDUCE EYE ROLLING!—after Day 4 or so as a single parent. This is shared simply by way of observation, not as an elegiac plaint. I'm fortunate in countless ways, which doesn't mean I've waived my right to (1) miss my people, or (2) crave time to cultivate my sense of self. For now then, it's together, alone, repeat. 



Came across this today, on the topic of the upsides of solo time ... 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/being-alone-6-reasons-to-_n_2456462.html


p.s. Above photo is from Surf N Sea in Haleiwa on the North Shore of Oahu, where my middle daughter had her first surf lesson this week (conquering a laundry list of fears), and I graduated from foamboard to epoxy (comfort zones, be damned). New is scary, we learned, but also very, very good. We refueled at Konos where the locals have honed their own rhythm.  

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1156/the-art-of-fiction-no-151-martin-amis

I'm posting on the iPhone, thus the brevity. I am near Mount Shasta with my kids, which is supposed to be a spiritual vortex but to the teens the accommodations are akin to the Overlook Hotel because there's no pool, no mall, no pay per view. They'll live.

As I told my middle, perceptive daughter, "We're enough." By the third hour, she had let down her guard/armor/artifice. Must be the mountain air. And that train in the distance.

No envy (per Amis), just us.

While I generally disagree with his politics, Brooks hit it out of the park with today's column, The Moral Bucket List: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?_r=0

A wise, hilarious, wordsmith friend (it's actually his job; he names companies, concepts) included the following sentiment in his thank you note after our Christmas gathering: "I enjoyed being part of the family trynamic!" He was referring to the fact that our holidays now include our kids, their father, my partner, my father, our friends and our (former) babysitters. In other words, the "through lines" that kept our family, while no longer "intact" per society's limiting labels, together, post-divorce.

Easter was another chance to practice said trynamic. Our ritual hasn't changed much in the last 16 years, except now there's an additional chair at the brunch and no eggs in the yard (the dog eats them and the girls prefer iTunes gift cards thank you very much). I directed, my partner made the scrambled eggs, my ex brought chocolate bunnies from his partner for the girls (she was invited but wasn't in town). Aside from my middle daughter still being somewhat reticent to weigh in on the topic du jour, namely the future of their father's new client, Planned Parenthood, the conversation felt natural. The merits of Bieber (done), One Direction (almost done) and Maroon 5 (so NOT done) were debated. It felt more dynamic than trynamic. Everyone laughed at the jokes, went back for seconds and when it was over, exhaled. 

The shore had been distant for so long. Wading out of the water and onto the sand is a profound relief. I'm grateful to each and every person who keeps coming back to the table with open arms and open hearts. Trying is hard, but not trying is harder. 


// 
* Side note: Not sure how I missed Maria Bello's essay on a related topic, the definition of "partners" in our lives. It's  one of the top 10 most popular Modern Love columns in the Sunday NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/fashion/coming-out-as-a-modern-family-modern-love.html?_r=0

Good on them. 

I, for one, will be picking up her new book, Whatever ... Love is Love: Questioning The Labels We Give Ourselves http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Love-Is-Questioning-Ourselves/dp/0062351834

... according to Baron Baptiste, are: 

It's Easter Sunday, so naturally I'm at Stanza on Haight (while my three daughters shop for the 8th grader's graduation dress at Wasteland, which for some is a religious experience) reading about our first feminist, Mary Magdalene, here:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/?no-ist

The opening graf hooked me: 

"The whole history of western civilization is epitomized in the cult of Mary Magdalene. For many centuries the most obsessively revered of saints, this woman became the embodiment of Christian devotion, which was defined as repentance. Yet she was only elusively identified in Scripture, and has thus served as a scrim onto which a succession of fantasies has been projected. In one age after another her image was reinvented, from prostitute to sibyl to mystic to celibate nun to passive helpmeet to feminist icon to the matriarch of divinity’s secret dynasty. How the past is remembered, how sexual desire is domesticated, how men and women negotiate their separate impulses; how power inevitably seeks sanctification, how tradition becomes authoritative, how revolutions are co-opted; how fallibility is reckoned with, and how sweet devotion can be made to serve violent domination—all these cultural questions helped shape the story of the woman who befriended Jesus of Nazareth."

Makes one wonder: if she was ALL THAT and the apostle to the apostles, why doesn't she get her own day? (As a saint, she gets a feast day, July 22, but that's not the same as Easter, now is it?) 


 

This Day 1 post goes out to women of a certain (perimenopausal) age and their partners: 

Memo to the men in our lives: 

1. On Day 1, we don't say what we mean and we don't mean what we say. Embrace ambiguity (while diverting our direct confrontational gaze).
2. Best to keep your distance. 
3. Lag time in text and VM responses will be viewed as unacceptable. Be forewarned. 
4. We are oppressed by everyone and everything. It will pass. (By Day 2.) 
5. This hormonal thing? It's WAY bigger than us. Perhaps you can imagine that we are Someone Else, someone challenging, complicated and complex for a day (and make that work for you). 
6. Salt is good. Cook us food with a LOT of salt. Salt licks not beneath us today. 
7. When all else fails, employ humor and know that we will laugh with you again (but not today; no f'n way).
8. The glass is not only half empty today, it's shattered. Agree with us unequivocally on this.  
9. We still love you without condition; we're just not acting like it. 
10. Choreplay = triple points today. To be redeemed on Day 3-4. 

This too shall pass ... in, say, a decade? Meanwhile, bear with us. 

On March 1st I took a vow, along with 39 other people, to meditate and practice yoga six days a week for 40 days, to modify my diet in a way that feels manageable (I'm a pescetarian, so I cut out caffeine, dairy and gluten) and to attend a class once a week on personal transformation. The program is based on a book by Baron Baptiste called 40 Days to Personal Revolution. 

In week four, we did a 3-day juice cleanse. As a recovering skeptic of the gluten-free tribe, I'm here to report that I've never felt better, especially during the cleanse. My skin even changed. We made our own nut milks (walnut, cashew, cashew/cacao, almond) too, which I will never NOT do again. Store-bought almond milk doesn't come close. 

I am feeling a renewed sense of clarity, both personally and professionally, but most important, I am enjoying getting to know the self-selecting people, the "40-dayers," as we call ourselves. We're a compassionate lot, all having arrived here for our own reasons, which we shared on Day 1, when we had to look each participant in the eye and state our intention for doing the course. 

Mine? Threefold: To let go, forgive myself and see what it feels like to truly nurture my mind and body in the year that I'm turning 50. 

I'm still nine days shy of the finish line, and have wicked tendinitis in my right elbow to prove it, but I can see it from here. And I like what I see.