love thursday: keeping the circle wide

For our third anniversary last Tuesday, J and I decided to eat at home instead of going out. Since I work downtown and he works way south of the city, going out on weeknights can be a scheduling challenge – plus we’d just spent a weekend on the Cape with lots of eating out. So we planned a special meal of manicotti with tomato sauce and homemade blackberry cobbler (a summertime favorite).

We did have our special dinner (and it was delicious), and we did exchange cards and gifts and spend some time laughing and talking and just being together. But we also had a long, rich, deep Skype conversation with a friend who is spending a life-changing summer interning in New York, and later I talked to my parents and told them all about our Cape weekend.

This connectedness has been a hallmark of our marriage – time alone together interspersed with deep friendships, for both of us individually and as a couple. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Our evening reminded me of a favorite passage from Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet, the first of her four memoir volumes:

It’s all right in the very beginning for you to be the only two people in the world, but after that your ability to love should become greater and greater. If you find that you love lots more people than you ever did before, then I think that you can trust this love. If you find that you need to be exclusive, that you don’t like being around other people, then I think that something may be wrong.

This doesn’t mean that two people who love each other don’t need time alone. Two people in the first glory of new love must have great waves of time in which to discover each other. But there is a kind of exclusiveness in some loves, a kind of inturning, which augurs trouble to come.

Hugh was the wiser of the two of us when we were first married. I would have been perfectly content to go off to a desert isle with him. But he saw to it that our circle was kept wide until it became natural for me, too. There is nothing that makes me happier than sitting around the dinner table and talking until the candles have burned down.

I cherish this idea of keeping the circle wide – because it means we’re keeping our lives big, letting plenty of space and light into our relationship, allowing ourselves room to stretch and grow. There’s a balance to be struck, certainly, and we both cherish our solitude and just-the-two-of-us time. But I love the image of a wide circle, glowing with candlelight, making room for all the people we love and who love us.

How do you keep the circle wide in your life?

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list #27: letting myself off the hook

The June prompt for #Reverb11 asked, “What can you let yourself off the hook for?” Which sounds an awful lot like gentleness, a favorite word lately, and comfort, my word for the year. So this prompt sounds awfully good to me.

I’m letting myself off the hook for…

1. Venting once in a while (because even if I chose something, I don’t always have to like it).
2. Having a style uniform instead of always dressing creatively.
3. Indulging in the occasional chai latte or other little lifesaver.
4. Not always washing the dishes right after dinner.
5. Having a little clutter in the guest room, and sometimes elsewhere.
6. Reading young adult books. A lot of them.
7. Losing my cooking/knitting/crafting/cleaning mojo once in a while. It always comes back.
8. Saying the wrong thing sometimes.
9. Not saying anything sometimes.
10. Getting distracted (sometimes).
11. Making progress slowly instead of quickly.
12. Being imperfect. (Which really sums up all the others.)
13. Ending the prompt sentence with a preposition.

What can you let yourself off the hook for?

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if you chose it, do you always have to like it?

Nearly four years ago now, three months after I got engaged, I hopped a plane to Oxford to spend a year earning my master’s degree (and, obviously, browsing bookshops and strolling gardens and eating my weight in scones and Digestive biscuits and paninis from On the Hoof).

This dream year was not without its opportunity costs, most notably the steady full-time salary I’d been enjoying (hello, student loan debt), and time with Jeremiah, my longtime boyfriend and newly-minted fiance. He stayed in Abilene to pursue his own master’s degree, and while we emailed every day and had weekly Skype dates and visited each other at Christmas and Spring Break, man oh man did I miss him.

Most people were totally understanding about this, as long as I didn’t whine about it all the time. One of my Oxford housemates was in a similar situation (her fiance was in North Wales). But a couple of friends had one standard response to any complaints I made about missing Jeremiah, the exchange rate, the wet English weather or any other difficulties. It consisted of one phrase: “Well, you chose it.”

Translation: Stop whining. You landed yourself in this situation on purpose, so you better suck it up.

Now, I don’t discount the power of an occasional dose of tough love, particularly when someone is engaging in self-destructive behavior, or when they’re doing nothing but complain. But usually, when I was venting my feelings, that wasn’t the case. I didn’t really wish my situation were different. I knew I’d chosen this year in Oxford, and – let’s be clear – I was having the time of my life. Those struggles were part of the deal, and I knew it. But I didn’t always have to like it.

That tough-love phrase has stayed with me since I left Oxford, and I’ve wondered about it in the context of various day jobs (some of which were true choices and some of which were necessities), and especially since our move to Boston. Lately, in the face of wet, dreary summer weather and missing Texas and crowded commuter trains and a case of the general blahs, I’ve wondered: Just because I/we chose Boston, does that mean we always have to like it?

I don’t think so.

Now, I really do believe in making the best of any situation. I believe in blooming where you’re planted and practicing gratitude and all those other platitudes (which can actually do wonders for your spirit). I don’t believe in whining, constant negativity, or refusing to see the good in a person or place or situation. But I believe in being honest about how things are going; I don’t think ignoring the bad stuff will make it go away. We all need to vent sometimes, and responding with that knee-jerk phrase when someone’s asking for empathy can make them pull back in hurt and frustration. (Believe me. I know.)

So I’m trying to be gentle with myself these days, when this still-new Boston life brings with it frustrations or loneliness or other kinds of strain. And I’m trying to be gentle with others who vent about their jobs or their cities or other frustrating things in their lives. Because honesty and a listening ear go a long way toward true friendship and being seen. And that is ultimately what I want to pursue – even if it means listening to – and voicing – a few complaints along the way.

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it’s all about being seen.

The other night, I met the lovely Roxanne for dinner. We sat under the umbrellas at Cafe Pamplona, just off Harvard Square, and sipped iced tea and watched the world go by. And talked, as fast as we could for as long as we could, till she had to head off to her next conference session, and I caught the Red Line home.

Because we’ve been reading each other’s blogs for months, we skipped quite a bit of the surface stuff and delved right into the deep questions. We talked about day jobs and creative work, about love and long-distance relationships, about the amazing creative community we’ve both found on the Internet. And we asked questions – of ourselves and each other. Such as:

Are you happy in your work? Are you fulfilled by it? Do you feel at home where you’re living? If not, what’s missing? What’s next, in your day job and in your creative work? What’s your ideal work situation? And finally, would you like to meet up again next month (when she’s back in town)? The answer to the last one, of course, was absolutely.

We’d never met in person before, but every time she looked at me with those luminous blue eyes, I felt seen in the best kind of way. I felt known, yet not belittled or judged. I felt vulnerable – but I also felt safe. And it struck me: that’s really why I blog, and tweet, and post status updates and occasional photos on Facebook. And why I meet Abi for coffee and exchange long emails with various friends and always try to answer honestly when anyone asks me, “How are you?”

I do all this because I want to be seen. I want people to know me, really know me, to know not just what’s going on in my life but to know the essence of me. And the only way I can do that is to let them see me.

There are limits, of course – some things should be kept private, some things shared only with a small audience, and I certainly don’t advocate living your entire life on the Internet. But I believe in the power of truly seeing and being seen. And so I’ll keep sharing pieces of my life, online and offline, because that’s really what it’s all about, for me.

Who are the people in your life who really see you?

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what is blossoming?

The Reverb10 prompt for this month asked, “What’s blossoming?”

I have answers to that one on several levels.

For one thing, the cherry trees in the Public Garden:

And the trees on Boston Common:

The vase of flowers on my desk, which changes weekly. It’s amazing how spending a few dollars on daffodils or tulips can brighten a Monday:

On quite another level, the answers include: some new friendships with folks we’ve met in Quincy; the springtime, in general; the hope of summer and the anticipation of lots of visitors. And I’m thankful.

What’s blossoming for you?

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love thursday: so honored

This is my Bethany.

We lived together for two years in college, in a little red-brick house on 16th Street in Abilene. We took lots of classes together (after I and several other friends finally convinced her to become an English major). We stayed up late at night talking and laughing and writing papers, and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean and The Emperor’s New Groove and You’ve Got Mail repeatedly (and we still quote them copiously). We also wound up living together the summer after college, in my sister’s little house a few blocks away, while we both job-hunted and worked our student jobs and tried to figure out what the heck we were going to do with our lives. We called that our “borrowed time,” and oh, it was sweet and fun and generally wonderful, if a little stressful at times.

Bethany lives in Nashville now, for the second time, after moving back to Abilene in ’08 and living near the rest of our little crew for a blissful year and a half. (More “borrowed time” – how many people are lucky enough to have their best friends right down the street?) We stopped in and stayed with her on our way to Boston this summer, and we keep up on Facebook and Twitter and by phone, though I do miss her keenly.

A few weeks ago, Bethany (who has been dating Chad seriously for a while now) called both Abi and me on a Sunday night, and when we called her back (because we suspected something was up), she exclaimed over the speakerphone, “I’m engaged!” And there was much squealing and congratulations and bubbly joy from all three of us.

Then, this week, she called me, and we talked for an hour and a half, about Christmas and families and weddings and all sorts of lovely things. And in the middle of it all, she asked me to be her maid of honor when she marries Chad in June.

Of course I said yes.

I am so honored to stand next to this lovely girl who has gone through all sorts of things with me, and who stood up with me at my own wedding, two summers ago. It will be a day to remember. And one more lovely milestone in a friendship that has changed my life.

Happy Love Thursday, all. May you find love wherever you look today.

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