Well, this will be a short post because I have once again stayed up way too late. I have finished my last book edits and the manuscript is going into production. I heard from my editor, and she or her assistant will be contacting me about "editorial choices" and "promotion". So that's what they do. . . hmmm. I have never written a whole book before, so I am naiive about the process, though I have published several shorter essays. But those are nuts and bolts details.
When I finished, I had a stream of memories that came rushing up consisting of the life's events that led to stops and starts in getting this done. I must admit that there were many more stops than starts over the past ten to twelve years. I thought I would be dancing in the halls, but I stood quietly in my office crying softly. My boss came in and I asked him if he would mind sharing a moment of reflection with me. He saw me cry for the first time and said, "awwww, c'm here. . . let me give you a hug." You have no idea how much that small expression from someone I respect and laugh with daily meant to me. He GOT it. He knew that I had spent the last nineteen days straight in writing purgatory and three weeks before that doing the same thing, minus weekends. He also knew that the ten years prior to that I had remained committed to finishing while allowing myself to get sidelined at fairly regular intervals. The intensity and focus required makes everything else seem easy. Don't remind me I said that when I have a hard day, please.
I am now moving into a period of tasks and back to back obligations related to the start of school. On Monday, the halls will once again be filled with cute young things in their "trying not to look like they're trying too hard outfits", sporting suntans and eager eyes considering new social lives. I will literally throw the class together that I am teaching because the section was added to the schedule just three days ago. I have until Tuesday to put that together between our all day faculty retreat tomorrow, our new faculty orientation Thursday night and our First Year Student Convocation on Friday afternoon, regalia and all.
These are concerns I am facing now and I want to breathe, exhale, take a walk, ride my bicycle, sit on my favorite rock to hear the lapping water in Lake Michigan, watch the sailboats and to see the beautiful skyline. I am unhappy with myself right now because I took two days off this week to do just that. . . and I have paid bills, grocery-shopped, cleaned the place up and shopped for some flat shoes (because with the current state of my knee, I am still not able to wear the ridiculous number of heels nested in a hanging canvas shoe storage on my closet door). I got a facial, but mainly because my face acne is out of control. That quiet little cry of relief in my office was not enough. I am like a top wrapped tightly holding myself together to get through the next thing. And I know that all it would take to get out of my paralysis would be to take the first step on the sidewalk, pull my Schwinn cruiser out of storage and push the pedals into one full circular motion, even drive out to the Northwestern parking lot that would situate me about fifty yards from "my" flat rock in the sun.
I have a weekend coming. I have a class that is not ready. This is the pull . . . but I will burn out by middle of September if I continue to choose work over balance, sleep over walking and fresh air, holding it all in instead of pushing myself into some kind of relaxation. I need a voice to give me permission to do something good for myself. . . playful, relaxing, happy and mine. I miss summers. I missed summer this year. I want a little bit of summer, still.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
Here is MY voice giving you permission...scratch that...BEGGING you to take time for what is really important. Is there a big book somewhere that has the exact number of days you are allowed in this lifetime? Is the keeper of the book whispering to you "Go ahead, Hannah, keep putting off living a healthy, happy, peaceful life.You have plenty of time left". Too many things have happened recently that got right in my face and reminded me that every moment IS precious and none of us has any guarantee that we will have another summer. No regrets. That is my mantra for today. Love Ya!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Martha. . . you are soooooo right. Head's on board, heart's on board. . . now if I can get this old bod to take directions:) Love, Hannah
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