Mozart

I'm recovering from a week of intense music making with The Mendelssohn Choir, Manfred Honneck and The Pittsburgh Symphony along with some fabulous soloists and F. Murray Abraham as speaker. It is a replay of a concert we did in 2014 at Carnegie Hall New York and it still tugs at my heart-strings. 

There is something magical about singing music you know someone was penning while they lay dying. The letter Mozart wrote his father about death being our "ultimate purpose in life" and living each day as if one might not wake up the next is echoing in my ears. It is advice we hear all the time and as someone who spent years working with the dying you would think it would be something I would obviously do. And yet.. life becomes somehow automatic and small in its everyday repetitiveness. I fear we have been isolated and forever changed by Covid adding a bit of hesitancy and distance to all of our interactions. So I am grateful for the reminder to think of the sacredness of each day and each relationship as we experience them. 

This morning the sky is blue and clear, the temperature is unseasonably cold and yet the birds are singing. I anticipate travelling to New York to hug my children and hold my grandchildren in two days. The Lenten Roses are blooming in my front yard. The garlic sprouts are pushing through their leaf mulch promising another harvest season..perhaps.

Gratitude

 I've been working with a life coach lately. Sounds funny.. I'm retired and NOW (?) I get around to working on me? But there it is. And I have to admit I am enjoying this.  I know it sounds cliché, but I wish I had started this years ago. 

Part of what drove this action was my observation that I had lost some of my innate positivity when my working persona was released. I was aware that I now dreaded someone asking "what do you do?". My response would be to hesitate,  then launch into an unnecessarily long description of how I came to my retired status, and that it wasn't my choice but a "corporate cruelness". 

Retired. The word used to make me cringe. People expected you to enjoy retirement and here I was mourning the loss of a lifetime of over-work and (corporate) under-appreciation. So I dutifully looked for work again and was hired at a corporate office as, of all things,  "Director of Wellness" for a few years until my sister's serious illness gave me the opportunity to step away from everything again on my own terms. Quite a leap to go from Family Medicine Physician to Hospice Medical Director to Director of Wellness to just me...

A lot has happened since I left medicine. I have been physically present for the birth of my first grandchild and welcomed another granddaughter during the first weeks of the Covid Pandemic. This spring we said goodbye to a treasured family pet of 22 years and hello to a first grandson. My sister died suddenly and far too young, but not from the horrible disease that could have taken her independence in a way she would have despised.  My parents are still together and enjoy the small everyday blessings of life now that quarantine is lifted.  My husband and I keep growing together over the years with more quiet time. I fear I take him for granted and want to work on nurturing our bond in a better way.

And so, I will start my gratitude practice. I will wake every morning thinking of a few close people, with us or gone too soon, and send my gratitude to them. Instead of a stress producing to-do list I will try to start with gratitude and love. "Oxytocin, not adrenalin" says the retired physician. 

Transition

It happens so gradually that it is hard to remain patient. There is no rushing change, it happens at it's own pace. I've been out of work for multiple years now and I profess to "looking for a new job"  because I am too young to retire; too young to "do nothing". But is that what I have been doing?  

I profess to some latent PTSD from my years of over-working as a physician. Years of putting other people before my family, my self care, my very self worth. It is remarkable now (and still daunting) to have a day spread before me with no preset over-booked schedule. It is also remarkable how long I have gone without really examining my goals, just letting the flow take me where it will. I have to admit I love the ability to change courses in an instant. To rummage through my fridge and create something from the many bits of flotsam and leftovers. To walk in the park and hear the bird song and the crickets and cicadas. To look for mushrooms. To pet other people's dogs. 

And yet, lately, I feel a pull towards another change.  One with more purpose and an overarching design. I see my children struggle in their career paths as they enter the part I barely remember now because I was so over-extended. I see them try to attend to their children, but hear the frustration beneath as they try to multi-task as they believe the world requires them to. I try to help them decompress by spending more time with my grandchildren. I still feel the sting of my own son's rebuke years ago when he was at my knee as I worked on computer at the kitchen table on the day's unfinished charting.. "no, Mom, Listen with your eyes!"  So I try to listen with my eyes, and my heart, and my whole body. 

Yesterday my listening eyes found a perfect handprint of my almost three year old granddaughter, Lilah, on a mirror in the bathroom. And I remembered when it occurred. She had been at my side as I washed my hands in the bathroom and wanted "up". She didn't say it but I felt it. I picked her up and she delightedly stood on that counter and promptly put both messy hands on the mirror, then leaned back to examine her work. Only minutes before we had walked on a path in the woods and had been wondering what the birds, and frogs and crickets were saying in their timeless voices. When we spoke of the crickets she answered "I'm here! I'm here!" and told me "That's what they are saying,  Nonna!"

I haven't been able to wash that handprint away. I think it speaks to some higher purpose; knowing that people are here with us. Truly here. 

Promise

 

        I have been driving back and forth between Rochester NY and Pittsburgh PA for some time now ever since both of our children have moved there. The road has become familiar enough that I am finally relaxing into the four and a half hour drive even as my sinews and bones become stiffer with the journey. I now welcome the symbols that encourage me that I have made progress. The odd discarded car cemetery in rural PA, the long marsh before Erie, the large windmill before Buffalo, the Indian welcome on the portion of the road through Seneca Nation. They pull me forward until I have to consciously slow my impatience with the last hour of the drive. I listen to my music and a meditation from Jon Kabat-Zinn reminding me that each moment is new and now. 

        With the frequency of the drive I have also started to notice the gradual change of the seasons before they burst forth. This winter started with an abundance of greys, whites and blues but has now started to shift to it's early spring palette. The snow has all but melted leaving dirty piles where the plows have pushed them. The tree trunks stand out now beige and brown among the grey. The willows have started to show their yellow sprigs and the maples, their red bulges, promising later buds and seeds. Grey green moss against the larger trees and the fallen sentinels promise another use to old wood. I, too, am finding new use for my old wood. 

Winter Gathering

 It seems my creativity always refreshes after a meeting with my tribe the ACH.

 Winter Gathering

Small heads

Familiar Voices

I lean into the screen

Trying to weave

A Prayer Rug

From the threads 

of connection

Flooding the Ether

Birth

My son, Noah,  and his lovely partner, Mariah just had the ultimate life experience and produced a perfectly beautiful little girl last week. I am awestruck by the power of birth yet again and so very grateful to have shared it with them. Time seems to stand still while you hold a peaceful sleeping newborn in your arms. I am amazed at the innate rhythms and flows of motherhood. Mariah is only 24 but she is one of so many woman in an unbroken ancient chain as she holds that little life to her breasts. I can't help but be optimistic for our future as I watch them go forward protecting little Lilah.
We are so very blessed.

Walking and Weeding

There's a whole other world out there... Who knew? Now that I am walking my neighborhood streets to avoid going stir crazy after my job position was abruptly "non-renewed" I have come to discover a totally different way of life. One where people can appreciate the change of seasons - the tang in the air as fall approaches - the different birds migrating through as they head south - the insect calls: the shrill buzz of the cicada and the gentle call and answer of the evening katydids.  And I am finally meeting many of my previously unseen neighbors after living here 23 years. But then, how would I ever have met them before when I raced out at 730 am and didn't return until well after 730 pm most nights?
I've started tackling odd jobs in the house such as cleaning out closets and drawers that have accumulated decades of dirt and debris. It feels a fitting metaphor for what has to happen now in my life. How do we get sucked into that busy life pattern day in and day out. And why (without it) do I feel somehow less valuable to this world? I frequently run into people who awkwardly congratulate me on my new "freedom" but I don't yet feel ready to truly inhabit this new life.
Walking helps - if I can just quiet the chatter in my mind. I've found that if you walk fast enough your breath takes on a rhythm that can actually be quite absorbing in itself. I find myself making up army style cadenzes hoping to burn the words into my being... "I am kind and smart and strong" (I am kind and smart and strong) "I can walk all morning long" (I can walk all morning long). Stand Strong (Stand Strong) 12 (12).....34!
That works for about an hour or so but the day is still interminably long and can be wasted in the blink of a cursor if I get sucked into the internet black hole. It doesn't help that I've stopped my ADD meds too. After all this seems the safest time to see what the heck the meds are (or aren't) really doing for me with no chance of endangering a patient by forgetting to close a loop. The lack of meds has led to some interesting daily routines.  I start in one room fully absorbed in some partially completed cleaning project but within an hour I almost always end up outside weeding.
Weeding. Momentarily satisfying for your immediate visual progress but ultimately another time sink because a week later the weeds are back (how convenient). I find myself filling one or two wheel barrows full of them and admit to leaving them visible when my husband and son come home as if to say "see I really did do something today". I can't tell if I end up weeding to escape being indoors being "productive" on the computer updating my resume and applying for jobs I'm not even sure I want anymore or if I just really miss being out doors having worked such long hours for so long.
It's true.. the job never loves you back. I admit to feeling jaded about committing that kind of time and emotional energy in any job ever again. Don't get me wrong - I loved the patient and family contact at my hospice job, but who cares for the caregivers? I really hope that any place I would work for in the future would protect their resources, their caregivers- not use them up and start over again on a fresh younger batch.
So for now, I clean out my closets, I walk and I weed. And I wait for what tomorrow will bring hoping to stay quite anchored in the present for a change.