My dad turned 82 on Thursday, and two days prior a woman I knew quite well, although decades ago, died at 55. We don’t get to choose when we die, but we do get to choose how we want to live in the world, how we want to be while we are alive…how much we want to live. This is one of the few things that I know is true…that I am going to die, one of these days, and that I have to do the best I can, “play well with others,” each day until it is THE day.  At yoga the other morning, after we had done all sorts of difficult new poses, our teacher said, as we finished up our practice, that the next pose was restorative, we should “relax and settle in, restore, you know, all the Rs” …made me think, so many “R” words are involved in living a life…Reboot-Rejuvenate-Renew-Revitalize-Relax-Recover-Restore and so on and so on and so on.

Regenerate feels like a powerful “R” word, particularly this time of year when all of the roots below earth are preparing for their come-back & got me thinking about how WE regenerate, how we turn around/rotate time and time after time from conflicts, disappointments, bad breaks, trauma, despair, accidents, illness, loss, hurts, wrongs…we come back…event after event…regeneration, if you think about it, it’s a super power really. How easy it would be to give up…be filled with woe with no hope…How easy it would be to just stop trying at all and, well I guess nothingness, or apathy, or maybe depression…but we don’t just roll over and sigh our last sigh whilst waving the figurative white flag of surrender, no, we take a deep breath and we press on…try try again, this thing called life. WE all keep trying.

Release is a word I adore, it feels “clean“…get it out, let it go, clean it up, sweep out the rubbish…release. I hold a lot in, I have an anger and a sadness that hides under my sunny disposition and someday I hope, to be free of that, to truly be released. BUT for now I release my stresses in my own way with another one of my favorite R words, REDO…I redo closets, cupboards, drawers, shelves, files, spaces…I redo all the time. So much about my own self is filled with regret (not a fan at all of this R word) so when I redo/reorder/reorganize things, I get a release and a bit of a rush really…I suppose the “thrill” I get is not much different from the kind people get who go snow boarding or water skiing or mountain climbing…to me it’s as exhilarating, but I am sure somebody who is one of those TypeA sports people would laugh in my face if I compared snowboarding to reorganizing my pantry, but how different we are really does make life interesting doesn’t it??

Reflect might be my favorite of all the R words. I think I do it an awful lot, too much probably, which can in fact be awful…I try not to dwell so using “reflect” at least sounds better! I think of myself as a ponderer, and I joke that I am a seeker of silver linings, and in order to think about situations and circumstances and find a bright side, one MUST reflect. Not the Narcissus kind of reflecting, to care for nothing else, to be totally self absorbed, no not that kind of reflection, but I think of it more as looking at the whole of the parts, or the big picture. For me personally, and the difficult circumstance in my life, over my life, if I look at the whole thing rather than the bits and the pieces I can handle reality better and it doesn’t bite.

Resolve is one of those words that sounds hard, I mean, really, it is, when you think about it…”to find a solution to something” or to “decide firmly on a course of action” these two definitions of this one word are VERY, very, V E R Y difficult for me and this word is a tough one for me on most days in every measurable way. There are things I want to do and things I want to say and I don’t, all the time because my life is easier if I go with the flow of things rather than to resolve the things that are not flowing…if you get my drift…BUT when I do set my mind to something and when I do make a decision, generally it is with a strong resolve.

At the end of yoga we lie flat into what is called the corpse pose, or Shavasana शवासन it is a pose of relaxing and restoring, which sounds fancy, but really it is just lying on your mat and resting. I don’t relax very well in my life in that I always feel like I have to be busy, so those few minutes five or six days a week do feel very good to me. Another “problem” I have, well, not a problem, but something that I reflect upon often is that I am fine and content when I am by myself and like to be alone, and like to find it’s been hours since I spoke to anyone, but then I think, what if it was like that all day every day for the rest of my life…and then I think of another R word that matters, reconnect. I think, more than anything, I am thinking today about reconnecting; reconnecting to the ones we love, and to our deepest true selves, the RELATIONSHIPS we tend to are ultimately what living life is, aren’t they? That might be the most important R word of them all…

“Here’s to you and your blank canvas” oh…my…can you think of a better way to imagine yourself evolving, or modifying, or erasing from your life that which no longer serves you, or simply improving, even minimally?? It’s not much different than a blank page in a new journal with your new favorite chisel tip pen, or a blank page on your desktop screen, looking right back at you and waiting for words to come from your brain and exit out through your fingers on your Logitech keyboard…it’s an open invitation to possibilities! I mean really, nobody is perfect, we all have room for improvement, no??!!

Vibrant Aliveness…yum! That packs a punch right to the center of my chest & to the deepest well of my soul…what more could a woman want from life and the new year ahead of her than Vibrant Aliveness??!! Admittedly my version of aliveness might be remarkably different than yours; I have a friend who finds it with her camera lens on cold days on the bay getting a glimpse of marsh grass from an odd angle with a sun slowly setting behind it that makes your spirit shiver with its beauty, I have another friend who finds the energy to often go out in the evenings, well past my bedtime, and sing her heart out at open-mic nights, & I have friend a who is learning how to golf despite swearing to the heavens themselves for years that she would never want to play. None of those three things fill me up but the point is finding what fills you up! If I am being honest, which here in my blog is pretty much ONLY how I’m ever being, my most recent vibrant aliveness feelings happened for me over these first two weekends of the new year; firstly the un-decorating of Christmas filled me with so much happiness and joy that I don’t have the right words, but I didn’t just move decor to the attic, I caulked and painted and reorganized & cleaned like my life depended on it. The following weekend I tore apart the bathroom vanity and drawers and linen cupboards, cleaned and organized and tossed, and even made a new playlist, JUST FOR THAT task! Now to you this might seem like dumb “busy-work,” and a waste of two weekends, cleaning and organizing, and to be clear my house is pretty much always clean and always organized anyway, but let me tell you, the level of Vibrant Aliveness that I felt was BIG MAGIC to my spirit. I felt deeply fulfilled and in total control of my happiness, and confident that the life I imagine for myself is in fact my life. While I painted and cleaned and tossed and organized I had all sorts of good conversations in my head. THIS kind of positive self-talk is WAY, way, W A Y better than self-defeating winter stuckness. We are entering our fourth week of a new year and if you are finding yourself grasping at any straw of happiness, I tell you, find something, anything that makes you feel un-stuck and fully engaged and you won’t be sorry!

Here in south Jersey, at the shore where I live, there is a lot of gray this time of year; the sky is colorless and half the trees are empty and the ground is hard and there is not a lot of sun during most of the days…so to say that we have to make our own rainbows is no joke! Finding joy from cleaning and organizing and re-doing things makes me happy. Involving a new uplifting playlist makes the activity even better! I suppose it’s no different than somebody who likes to watch movies on their day off, or play video games after work, or go bowling on Sundays…filling in hours of your week with things that you want to do, and don’t have to do, feels good… IS GOOD. Tossing six bottles of serum that cost me a pretty penny but did not in fact, at all, help the wrinkles in my forehead did not “spark joy” in my bathroom clean-out last week but organizing all the things that went back into that particular drawer, did. It’s really the little things, that all add up. If these last three weeks of the year have you feeling like a prisoner of mediocrity, then start now, tomorrow, just start your new year over…vibrant aliveness is free and sounds so much more interesting than bored or sad. Here you go, Happy New Year!!!

In the dull bitter cold winter I work much less than I do in the summer, and so my vibrant aliveness really bubbles into existence when most of the rest of things are in hibernation mode! In the summer it is not unusual for me to work seven days a week and that is not a complaint it’s just the way things are for me. If a new playlist, and a purge and cleaning of cupboards & shelves can bring me to life in the dead of winter, well then so be it…just like capturing an image with your camera of a perfect shell on a frozen beach, or singing a song that you have loved since you were a teenager and imaging you are Stevie Nicks, or getting a little white ball in a tiny hole that is many feet away from your putter…these are things that make us feel alive and we all have a duty to ourselves to find that which makes us feel FULLY involved with our own aliveness!!! WE are living together on this planet at this time but many of us are just miserable, truly miserable, and I am writing from my heart to tell you to stop, JUST STOP. Find a blank canvas, figurative or literal, and start. S T A R T filling it.

I love to read and I love to crochet. To some people, these might be the worst possible and most boring activities or useless wastes of time a person could do, but I do both willingly and with enthusiasm every chance that I get. When I reorganize a cupboard or a bookshelf I do it with zest and vim and vigor! It’s who I am, silver lining seeker that I try to be…but your enthusiasm could be, and most likely is, totally different than mine…but find it. Find something to make you as enthused as I get from redoing a linen cupboard and reorganizing all the tubes of antibiotic cream and band-aids. Yesterday I did not move very much but I crocheted many rows of two baby blankets and watched two movies I had been wanting to see for weeks. To some people, maybe I wasted my day, but to me I did exactly what I felt like doing. Some days I have the energy of Wonder Woman and have a list as long as my arm of tasks in and around the house and yard that I am excited to tackle and some days I don’t. If there are parts of your day-to-day life or people in your daily circle of existence that make you unhappy, or feeling uninspired or deflated and depleted, and you truly can’t change these circumstances then shouldn’t you, at the very least, change all the things which you can??!! We are born and we live a while and then we die. That’s all folks. THAT IS IT. So why not make any effort you can to make your days of the year deeply meaningful, spectacularly uplifting, vibrantly alive???!!! I’m all in. How about you??

I’m certain, well almost, that I am not alone in this…the space in between my ears is often filled with opposing sides; of details, memories of events, of information, and thoughts about people-places-things, and all of those words in the middle of it all makes me feel positively overwhelmed at times. We are on day SEVEN of the new year and I suspect that many of us have had some deep thoughts this last week about all of that “new year new me” business…or new year ‘change how I handle my work load,’ or new year ‘change how I deal with my co-workers,’ or new year ‘change how often I scroll’…or WHAT EVER…you get my drift. It’s a very universal thing, I think, to think about oneself, and how one functions within the constraints of society, or within a family, or to think about oneself and how we FUNCTION AT ALL as ourselves, who we even are, this time of year. It’s the first Sunday of the new year and we have a whole year ahead of us to think better and do better and be better, if we so choose, or feel a need.

I noticed this last week on my facebook page, in the “memories” feature, that each day, over the last decade of the first week of the year, I shared quotes or poems or passages that made me think about how I want to BE in this life in this new year ahead, and what I found rather curious, or perhaps not, was that all week, when I scrolled through the memories, my only thought after reading the poem or paragraph that had been previously shared was that right now, this new year, I felt exactly the same…It became hard to ignore this week, that, try as I might to change, I am not a person who is changing. I am stuck with who I am it seems. Maybe I just want to be a better version of THIS and not change at all…so many ways to spin it.

I don’t suppose I am alone with this sensation of “if not now, when?” this time of year…if something I do, or someone I know, or thoughts I’m thinking, are just not working for me, not bringing out the best in me, not making me feel “good,” or behaviors are not benefiting me or helping me to feel like the finest version of myself, or circumstances are feeling unfulfilling, well, then what??!! WHAT do we do about it?? ANY of it?? …we change it, whatever the “it” is…OR we accept all of it, the good the bad the ugly. We either take the thoughts or actions and do something about them, or we had best stop worrying & obsessing about them, and just be who we are…acceptance I guess is a change too.

There is a line in a song by Eva Cassidy that hits me, hard, every time I hear it…the song is called “I Can Only Be Me” and the line is  But how many times have you wished you were some other someone than who you are, yet who’s to say that if it all were uncovered you will like what you see This particular line has been on my mind for days, probably it started when I was un-Christmas-ing my house, as I love an empty house with music when I am in the cleaning frenzy zone and I used to have very hard and very heavy playlists for cleaning frenzies, but this year I went with softer and mellower, I went with my playlist that I titled *Sing Ladies* that includes Tori Amos, Cat Power, Eva Cassidy, Joni Mitchell, Mazzy Star, Aimee Mann, Natalie Merchant…it’s 445 songs that is more than 27 hours of music and I just hit shuffle and every song is a good one. This season’s undecorating including an after Christmas caulking and painting job and then of course a total dusting of all books and reorganization of the shelves, and I treated myself, because of a generous bonus from a client, to a new frame and matting for a piece of art that I have had since 1999 that has sat over my fireplace since I moved in here, anyway, my cleaning frenzy was, as always for me, totally joyful and totally cathartic, despite how hard I work and how tired I am at the end of the day, and I laughed this year that I worked harder the last three days of December than I had worked the whole month before, but it was the kind of work that fulfills, me…THAT is another thing that got me thinking this week, about how I have always been this way, since I was a little girl and made my bed every day and always kept my closet organized and my dresser drawers neat…it’s just who I am, THOSE parts that make my whole are not at all things I want to change or wish were different. THOSE parts of me I positively adore. BUT…there is always a but, there are many things about myself that I do wish were different, and choices I make that are not the best to serve my higher self, benefit the greater good if you will… I guess, even if I am slow to change and fight my own self every damn step of the way, at least I recognize there is some need for change? Maybe that counts? Maybe if I did peel back all the layers I wouldn’t like her any better?? It’s a lot of questions for a Sunday morning…

I made a list, it’s short this year, of what I think I need to change and how I think I need to do it. I may check off each item on the list these next months, and I may quite possibly only get to one of them, and I suppose that’s okay, or maybe what I need to write is that I have to be okay with that. Maybe this first blog of the new year is a pep talk of sorts, to myself, and to you, if you need it…I was a cheerleader for all of my childhood and teens you know…cheering for others is what I once did best…and so I guess I shall now offer us all a cheer for the new year…if you feel stuck with yourself, if you feel stuck in some unfulfilling circumstance, if heavy thoughts are plaguing you, “Push ‘Em Back Push ‘Em Back…WAaaaaY back!!!” IF you are moving forward already this new year, and feel powerful, your confidence is soaring and you believe you will achieve that which you wish for, and you feel the changes happening, and it all seems do-able, well, “ALL the way All the way ALL THE WAY GO!!!”

When I say, and when I write, that yoga has changed my life, it’s not a joke or an exaggeration. I have been able to adapt, improvise, and overcome in situations that, in the past would have rendered me quite woeful. I have changed into a stronger person and I suppose that might have been my goal, but I didn’t know it at the time. Shortly after my 50th birthday there was an article in the local free paper, The Sandpaper, that told me a new yoga studio was opening in a town near me and something about this couple, these young people who were going to teach yoga and wanted to “bring something to the community,” well, they looked so happy, and turning 50 made me want to try something new and perhaps have some of “I’ll have what she’s having.”

When I say and when I write that the yoga studios I go to are my church, it’s not a joke or an exaggeration. I feel reborn after every class. If it is the hot power one, which is sometimes my Saturday drug of choice, or the Sunday morning slow flow, or the Thursday before work all levels of breath and movement, or on Tuesdays when we align or Mondays when we start a new week together on our mats in the studio, the classes leave me feeling like a whole new spirit is within me and the “high” lasts for hours and days. It is a community of like minded people who seem to care about what I care about, and think that the same things are important that I think are important, who care about stocking the free food pantry and helping others in need, who understand that a healthy body can’t thrive without a healthy mind, and vice-versa. I have found my fellow “parishioners” and like me, they come back, class after class after class to be filled with the holiest feeling of spirit there is, loving thy-self. You simply can’t feel bad about yourself or about your life when you are moving and breathing and honoring your body and your mind at the same time…don’t believe me?? Be my guest, for real… come to a class, go to a class, watch a class, do it on you tube if you don’t want to be around other people…but I kid you not, it is the most delightful way I have found to say “I love you” to myself.

Today is my last day of 55 and tomorrow I will be fully closer to 60 than fifty, and I can’t think of a much better gift to myself than to love myself more tomorrow than I do today. I don’t know what a lot of the Sanskrit words mean, but I know what a lot of the Sanskrit words make me feel… https://youtu.be/dq9nWHN3y70?si=cb-AdqVJHXrXlxHr if you wish to get a feel for what I am writing about, this link is a song that is a prayer and praise for Lord Ganesha, the Hindu elephant headed god who is the remover of obstacles. I get the deepest sensation of peace when I listen to this chant, I suppose much like a christian person would get in a church singing from a hymnal. AND to be clear, I have had some pretty dreadful obstacles and I sure do wish I had known about all of THIS a long time ago!

Years ago a dear friend bought me a book called Messages from the Mat when I was going through a gruesome situation with a real jerk, and she and her husband did yoga regularly in their home and she told me I would love the movement and the words and that they read from this book every day… and while I did read the book, I did not know what the appeal was, about all of that slow flow and at the time the words did not really resonate with me. At the time of my life when she gifted me the book I was going to kick-boxing classes three nights a week and did not think I would find yoga at all delightful or challenging. What a joy to find out years later that I was totally off the mark and that sometimes, as one of my teachers likes to say, “slower isn’t easier” when we are fully working up a sweat over 75 minutes of bending, twisting, stretching, balancing, and breathing. The Saturday after Thanksgiving will be my 6th anniversary at the yoga studio and I think to myself, after EVERY class, if I had tried this in my twenties, imagine how much stronger and healthier I would be now heading into old age…but regardless, that I tried it at all makes me feel stronger and healthier anyway, so there’s that. The “messages from the mat” would have served me well all those years ago but I always just assume I was not ready to hear them then…I suppose that is really the case with a lot of “wisdom,” that we don’t get it until we are ready to get it…

I have a lovely life and I have a full life but it has at times been very hard and very sad. I try to maintain what I call my “silver lining seeking” abilities, whereas I do strive all the time to try to find the good in bad situations or people, or the plus side of a terrible circumstance, or the ease when things or people make me uneasy, and the peace that I have gotten from my yoga teachers, over these years, has absolutely helped me to do my silver-lining-seeking when I feel weak or sad or angry. Yoga classes have taught me that the ONLY thing I can fully control is my breath and my self, that everything else is out of my control and trying to think otherwise will only bring me sorrow. One of my teachers, in the very first class I ever took with him, said to us, “you have survived 100% of your worst days” and those words have stuck with me ever since. There is no better prayer or praise for your life than that…I did it, I overcame it, I managed it, I survived it…whatever IT is, he is 100% correct and that is to me, one of the best reasons to say “amen” or, as I prefer, A(wo)MEN

I am old fashioned in quite a number of ways, one of which is my love of a paper wall calendar, and few things make me feel as excited, and dare I write “giddy,” as the act of turning the page to a fresh new month…It starts with the first and it leaves me with 28, 30, or 31 possible days of ANYTHING I can imagine!

I have made terrible choices and bad decisions, pretty much for my entire life, and indeed since my very early teens and evidently didn’t learn any (or many) valuable lessons from them as I continued well into my middle-aged years…those bad choices and terrible decisions have followed me, tagged along with me, like a shadow, through all my good experiences and successes, sort of always whispering into my ear from behind me, “hey you, you can’t get away from us.”

BUT a new calendar page, a brand new month, fills me with a bit of bewildering anticipation for “what’s next or new?” and in the very best way. It’s rather likely I will soon agree to another dumb thing, maybe even today, or by the weekend a compromise that I will soon regret, but for now, this morning, before work, with the possibility of all that is fabulous in store for me, looking ahead, I am filled with joy and promise. In a world filled with bad, sad, news that makes me mad, there is one little action that brings light to my spirit, ease to my regrets…here is November, one of my favorite months of the year, and here is a selection of thirty days in which you can, if you think clearly, and choose smartly, move your life in a positive direction of your own doing. Join me gentle reader, and turn the page…

Are you well? You doing well? All is well? …such simple, little questions, but “well” is a really complex, big word. If you read this blog regularly then you know that shortly after I turned 50 I took a yoga class and became hooked on the practice, and part of the practice is indeed moving and flowing, breathing, and stretching your body, but another part of the practice involves being mindful of HOW WELL YOU ARE FEELING…for real. Not just “oh fine thank you” or “everything’s great” kinds of responses like if you bump into an old neighbor at Target, or your old teacher in line at TJMaxx. When you are in a warm room, on your mat on your back, with your eyes closed, listening to soft music, with your feet in the air and you are tasked with the task of being MINDFUL you realize, rather quickly, that the word WELL is loaded with meaning.

I am at an age that I now refer to as “closer to 60 than 50” and I say it with a smile and a laugh, but it does make me pause, every time I say it, to contemplate what this means to me. Here is the truth, and it is not one that I like very much, but as we well know, saying that things are one way, because that is how you want them to be, is not the same as what is true…right now I am not well. I do however wish to get there, quickly and mindfully. Firstly, I have been sad for two years. There I got it out of me. BUT…Let me clarify; I am a very positive-minded person, almost always smiling, almost always with a spring in my step and a cheerful disposition, and enthusiastic about pretty much everything, but below all of that surface joy I am, and have been, terribly sad. I don’t like it and it feels like I am constantly wearing a coat that doesn’t fit. When you go through a difficult situation, or event, there is some suffering that lingers after the situation or event is over, even when you try to “not live in the past” or “don’t dwell just move on.” THIS recognition, to me, is at least a start to make, “I am well, thank you” a true statement again when I say it. This is something that I need to do, for me, to feel well and be well. I am going to work on this.

Secondly, I set a goal a year ago to lose the extra weight that has been weighing me down and I got 1/3 of the way and then stalled and then stopped. You can only say that you have been carrying around extra pounds since you were pregnant when you have a baby, or a pre-schooler at the most…you can’t say it when your baby is a mother of teenagers!! The weight is mine and my fault and something that I don’t want to keep carrying around. I said on my birthday last year that my year was going to be Fit Fierce and Fabulous. The truth of the matter is that I make choices and decisions that are spur of the moment pleasures, and NOT choices and decisions that will make me a better version of myself or WELL. Buying sour gummy worms in line at Walgreens because I went in for shampoo, is not all that different than a person in recovery just going into Camden or Atlantic City…because you know where you might very well end up…sugar addiction is not any different than drug addiction, and I don’t want to be in that same kind of category. I am going to work on this.

Lastly, so as not to be a total debbie-downer, there are MANY, SO MANY great things about me and my life that ARE WELL & WONDERFUL…too many to name or list or count really. THAT is big medicine to my spirit. I am aware that there are people who are sad and not achieving their goals and who don’t have a job they love, don’t live next door to their grandchildren, don’t live in a gorgeous house filled with art, don’t get to go to yoga before work most days, don’t have a loving family or friends, and don’t have any assets or good credit scores…so I get it, I understand that my “sadness” is kind of silly if I look at the WHOLE OF MY WELLNESS when compared to others…my life is really pretty perfect in the big picture, but I don’t want to compare myself to anybody…I want to compare myself to ME, MY GOALS, MY DEPTH OF WELLNESS. I am going to work on this.

I suppose now that my next birthday is looming, six weeks or so away from another goal I will make but maybe not achieve, it’s got me thinking about what I wish for, for me, for my next trip around the sun. If I had to summarize it briefly, and lord knows briefly for me is not ever easy, I would say I want to feel well and be well. In the big picture, the whole of it all, every little thing is alright, really, but when I zoom in on the pixels, the little bits that make up the whole, I see the flaws, and I guess those are the details and parts that I need to focus on improving, making better, bringing to wellness…when I am next in a warm room, on my back on my mat, with my eyes closed, listening to soft music, with my feet in the air contemplating my wellness…oh! Which is in less than an hour!! So I am up and out of my office chair and off onto my day gentle reader, I bid you goodbye, and deeply wish you a well day, a well week, a well life…

December of 1987 I had just turned 20 and my life was a sad and terrible mess, but that is not what today’s write is about… I had made a friend that previous summer, who had worked at the gallery where I did, who was a “normal” girl who went away to college and lived in a dorm, had friends and went to parties, and not like me who was recently divorced with a baby about to turn two, and a full time job and community college at night, and lived in her old bedroom next to her sister’s at home with her parents…and so on and so on and so on…SO…when this friend asked me to come spend a couple days with her in New York and see her college, and then take the train into the city to stay in her dad’s apartment while she took a class at the School of Visual Arts I said okay and yes please and thank you all in one breath…

My parents, my patient and kind and generous and ever loving parents said it would be good for me to go and be around people my own age, see what college life was really like, and good to get away…they are still, just as an aside, EXACTLY as loving to me now at 55, as they were to me then at 20, yes, go, explore, get away from the life that you have, has always been their encouragement to me…AND so it was I got into my ridiculously uncool Ford Tempo four-door “I have a baby car” and drove myself, with black magic marker directions written on white typewriter paper laying on the passenger seat, to Purchase New York to a place called Manhattanville College. I pulled up to a building that looked like a castle and saw people my age wandering around, laughing, talking, walking, BEING 20…and I felt like I was in heaven.

WHEN I walked into the dorms however, I felt like I could die, as there were food cartons on televisions and pizza boxes on beds and clothes on floors and bathrooms with hair dryers and towels all over the sinks…I felt immediately, almost literally within an hour of arrival, like I could not get out of there fast enough…dorm life did not feel like a good fit for me and it was a good thing that we were going to the train station that evening and I was not staying in my friend’s dorm, but I digress…While I was waiting to use the Jack&Jill bathroom that connected her room to another, she handed me an empty cassette box and said “wait til you hear this, she is going to be the next big thing” and on the cover of the cassette was a girl, who looked about my age, with pale skin and a shaved head and when my friend pressed PLAY on her boom-box, my head buzzed…this voice was WOW…this voice was RAW…this voice was ANGER and CELEBRATION…this voice was tender and fierce at the same time…this voice was Shuhada’ Sadaqat, known professionally as Sinéad O’Connor, and my friend had handed me her first album, which had just come out, called The Lion and The Cobra.

NYC was great those next two days…I wandered around by myself the first day, completely clueless as to where I was and if I was on a “good” block or a sketchy one, but I found a paper store where I lingered for more than an hour, that sold note cards and journals and I was so happy, and spent money I did not have to waste on blank books and book marks and cards because I simply love a quality paper store. That night my friend and her friends took me on a many-blocks-walk to a Mexican restaurant, and I had never before that time had Mexican food, so that was special for me too…small town girl gets out of small town is ALWAYS a fun story, no??? Getting out of south Jersey and having a few days off of work was a big deal for me and I had, before that time, only been to the city a couple of times in my entire life, so I loved that excited feeling you get when you are somewhere else, particularly New York City…THEN the visit was over, we took the train back to her college, we went to the sculpture garden at the Pepsi headquarters and then it was time for me to go home, but for my drive to home my friend gave me that cassette, The Lion and The Cobra, and said, take it, she could get another, and so I took it and for those hours on unfamiliar roads through unfamiliar towns, I listened to an unfamiliar voice over and over and over, and by the time I arrived back to my bedroom and my baby and my parents and my sister it was a voice I would love from that week on…

When I first got itunes this was one of the first cds I loaded into my computer. I listened to the album for all of the years of my adult life really, and even, some years ago, when my granddaughter was little, one night at my house, sitting on the bar stool at my breakfast bar, she said “what a dumb song why is she singing about edamame” and I did not know what she was talking about, until I paused to listen to the music with the ears of a little kid “put em on put em on put em on me” is the chorus to a song I Want Your Hands On Me, and to her little ears she did not hear putemonputemonputemonme, she heard edamam edamam edamame…and so that my gentle readers is my favorite Sinéad O’Connor story really…and I felt rather sad when I read yesterday that she had died. Lots of artists and musicians will write about her and what her words meant to them and for me, honestly, my first listen to that album was during one of the most fun few days of my young adult life, and for the rest of my days on earth, as it has been since that night, when I eat it, or read the word “edamame,” I will think of Sinéad O’Connor because of what my little granddaughter’s ears heard (and truth be told, I now can’t recall which granddaughter it was??!!) in the chorus of a song that I first heard when her own mother was just a baby. Give it a listen today I Want Your (hands on me) in fact, listen to the whole album if you have not before, and I promise you will be as captivated as I was, that winter that I had just turned twenty…

When you first have the responsibility of your baby, in most cases, nothing is alright, and nothing is okay, and nothing is fine…and you feel mildly overwhelmed, or dreadfully so, depending on the baby and your surroundings, but it takes a bit to find a flow…to know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it…to know what absolutely does not work and to know what effectively solves a need or a problem…everything is rather like an experiment really, and whether you have a partner, are on your own, have family, or no one, it is still, for the most part YOU & BABY trying to sort out how it’s gonna be…

You don’t know if you will do a good job, you don’t know if this child will be OKAY at all. It is such an overwhelming number of unknowns that you really have no choice but to live in the present and take one day at a time, day after day, for years…All of this is ALSO the case when it is decades later and it is the baby of your baby…you help and assist in every and all ways that you are asked, because now it is not “your first rodeo” and you offer advice as needed and aid when prompted, and succor when the momma is mildly overwhelmed, or dreadfully so, and you help as much as needed until it’s alright, it’s okay, it’s fine…This may not be the case in some families, but in mine, having the good fortune to be able to plunge headfirst into an opportunity to build two houses next-door to each other, and be able to be my daughter’s neighbor and the Nana-Next-Door, it is how it all was and how it still is, even though the first baby became an adult last week…

In a blur of excitement and awe in the last month, the baby who made me a Nana graduated high school, registered for her first semester at the county college, turned 18, and then grabbed her passport and took a trip to Grand Cayman…every ounce of worry I had sort of melted away when I saw her posted photos of driving into the eye-popping engulfing airport which is JFK, then her photos of exquisitely aqua calm water and fluffy white sand, then her vacation chic outfits, and then her Sports Illustrated cover-worthy bikini posts…then my heart tingled the other night when my phone dinged with a late night text message, written to both me and her mother, “our sushi dinner was lucky” and a photo of their receipt for $116, the lucky number in our family; my November 6th to my daughter’s January 16th… and this girl, this woman, sees her receipt at the table of her resort, and probably smiled to herself, and maybe chuckled a little, to see the 116 and then thinks of us, the momma and the Nana, and from one late night text I felt pretty sure that It’s alright, It’s okay, It’s fine, Everything’s fine…

My baby has “babies” who are almost 18 & 16, and yet, when I close my eyes, in my mind’s eye, I still see ME at 17 with my whole life ahead of me…it’s wild. Through a series of not so smart decisions my world as a 17 year-old, with her whole life ahead of her, came to a screeching halt…BUT, but, B U T…when I break down these last decades, into their smallest increments of time and moments, what has been this life these last 38 years but wonderful?? 38 years of memories that are, for the most part, amazing far more than they are awful…it’s wild. When I think of life in the “big picture” view, rather than dissecting it into tiny fragments of times and moments some of which were in fact terrible, in the sum of it all, I have had so much joy and love and laughter, that it sometimes feels and seems rather unfair to those who have had unhappiness and sorrow and angst...it’s wild.

My memories of motherhood are many…I can close my eyes and see very clearly the pink round face of this human in the crook of my left arm where she spent the first few weeks of her life with me on my purple sofa in my cold ugly rental house where the rent was not getting paid and the electric was getting turned off but where I was learning who I was going to be and why…it’s wild. I can still hear her little 3-year old voice every time we drove north on Route 9 as she excitedly would say “oh here comes the Flower Plant” every time we drove by the nuclear power plant. I can still hear her little 6-year old voice when she was old enough to get the mail herself as she would walk into the house and say “your Mazageene is here” when she would hand me my copy of Allure or Mademoiselle. I can still see her smile the first time she saw her own face when her braces were removed after nearly 5 long years of orthodontic care. I can still hear her anger in her voice when she told me she was getting married and I said “over my dead body” and she said, “well I guess you will have to die” …OUCH that was harsh, but she was 18 and finished with school and wanted to get married and move to North Carolina, so that is exactly what she did…it’s wild.

…AND I didn’t die…I sold my house and moved in with a friend while I made some decisions and tried to navigate my own life as a woman who was not even 40 and had finished mothering, motherhood…I have friends who are 40 & 43 and who have toddlers…I had an empty nest at 36…it’s wild.

Motherhood is a different experience for every woman. Women who have partners who they love and with whom they wish to create a family are not the same kind of mothers who decide to mother alone, and are not the same kind of mothers who are forced to mother alone by a series of unfortunate events. There are also women who become mothers who probably, no, absolutely should not have, and then there are women who never get to become mothers who definitely should have...it’s wild.

Like that fantastic scene at the beginning of Forrest Gump, his mother’s words…life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get…Motherhood can be planned or unplanned and you still don’t know what you are going to get or how it’s going to be…you can do all the “right” things and still have complications and not-wished-for results…you can do all of the wrong things and have the easiest pregnancy and birth and the biggest baby in the nursery as I did…I did not even see a doctor until the end of October and my baby was born in January…life happens and unfolds and sometimes is fabulous and sometimes is frightful…it’s wild.

If there was ever an occupation where you are required to do the work, for 18 years at the minimum, and for which you get no pay, and very little recognition for all that you do, it’s motherhood, and nobody in their right mind would apply for a job where you are on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for, well, to be honest, 37 years now in my case, and yet day after day, women make the choice to become mothers. When my adult daughter has called me or texted me in a time of need or emergency, or, in these last 14 years walked over here, I have stopped whatever else I was doing, for her, or for her girls, every time. Never have I ever said, sorry, I’m too busy to help you. To be clear, MY mother too, never has she ever said, sorry, can’t help…never, not once ever…That is a sentence that no good mother ever really utters, ever… it’s wild.