Category Archives: Family

Family, Philosophy

Weeding my thoughts


I spent a fair amount of time weeding the garden yesterday. As often happens when I am engaged in a mindless chore, my thoughts go their own merry way, which is to say, in my case, they get a little negative.

As I worked yesterday, my thoughts became mired in writing an imaginary letter to a specific person I was feeling angry with. I suddenly realized that I had inadvertently pulled up a couple of innocent little seedlings along with the crab grass.

As I slowed down and re-focused on the task at hand, it occurred to me that pulling weeds is a lot like developing a more peaceful attitude. I am far more happy and peaceful when I am not wallowing in negativity. I can’t help the negative thoughts appearing anymore than I can prevent the weeds from sprouting. But I can decide which thoughts get to stay in my mind and which ones are pulled out and tossed in the ash heap.

Family

8 years

Eight years ago today, Dave and I met for the first time. It was a bolt of lightning out of the blue and the ensuing year was the most painful and, ultimately, happy year of my life. I’d been struggling just before we met and the well-intentioned words of friends and family seemed like life preservers thrown just out of my reach. Each day my awareness of what was missing in my life grew keener. I was reading a lot of poetry; I needed music.

I have music now and a wide future stretching out in every direction. It was always there, of course. I still believe you carry everything you need in life inside yourself, but it can be hard getting to the point where you trust yourself and those around you enough to bring it out.

It’s good to remember this now that I’ve been moping around for a while. Yeah, there’s some tough stuff going down, but at rock bottom, I love my life, where I am right now, and who I am with.

Family, Nostalgia, Philosophy, Sadness, Travels

Homesick

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I’ve been so uninspired lately that I have to think it is some kind of depression. It’s a combination of things: the recurring snowstorms, the sinking economy that is making things bad for business, the ongoing estrangement from my stepdaughters, which has become a hopeless status quo.

If I think about just these three things, I want to crawl under a handmade quilt and go to sleep. And the third one is so painful, I wonder that I don’t walk around every day with red-rimmed eyes. Somehow we keep going — each day the sun comes up, one of us makes coffee, and there is music.

We are busy. Dave has some kind of extracurricular activity almost every day. I hold myself back more. I always needed a lot of quiet time and feel hungry for it now.

During my first couple of years in Switzerland, I would occasionally go a whole weekend without exchanging more than a word or two with anyone. I read a lot, visited museums, walked for miles and spent time sitting in cafes. I don’t remember feeling lonely or homesick. Reading “The Stories of John Cheever” during that time, this quote seemed very true to me –

“Homesickness is nothing. Fifty per cent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. When you’re in one place and long to be in another, it isn’t as simple as taking a boat. You don’t really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don’t have, or haven’t been able to find.”

So it’s funny now to realize by this definition, I am a little homesick. I’m longing for something in myself that I just can’t find right now.