Apparently, according to the editors at O, I should also have my life figured out by now. I should know exactly who I am and what my work is here on this earth. Those thorny questions about meaning and destiny? “By the time you’re 40 or 42,” said Oprah in last Sunday’s New York Times, “you should have kind of figured that out already.”

Oprah is not happy about the fact that the average age of her reader is 49. Times are tough at the magazine, which has seen a decline in readers and advertisers since her talk show ended eighteen months ago. And it seems I am part of the problem, one of those aging hangers-on who still want to read articles with substance and depth about women’s health, finances, spirituality and personal fulfillment. Enough already!

At 58, Oprah is looking around at the rest of us (late) middle-aged women, the ones who came of age seeking and searching right along with her, and wishing we would quietly go away. She wants, she says, to attract women in “their 30s or perhaps 20s, to be able to reach people when they are looking to fulfill their destiny.”

So, I’ve let my mom know she doesn’t need to renew my Oprah subscription for Christmas this year. I’ve been faithful, a devoted fan of the magazine since its very first issue. (In fact, I wrote a few articles and essays for O in the early years, and have never missed an issue since.) But Oprah’s not one for sentiment, and now she wants to make sure we all get the message: it’s not really a relationship. “Ultimately,” she told the Times, “you have to make money, because you are a business.”

I get that. But still, in an unexpected way, it was painful to learn that my age makes me not only invisible but undesirable. And I’m certainly not going to moon around where I’m no longer wanted or appreciated for who I am: a woman who is still unfinished, still growing and changing, still asking big questions, still seeking and searching and reading.

The thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. My friends and I may not look like a sexy demographic to the powers that be at O, but I think we are quite an interesting bunch. As I consider the women I know, I see a remarkable span of challenges and possibilities, from divorce, illness, and financial crises to new careers, revived passions, and ambitious creative endeavors. From thrilling new romantic relationships to adult children in need of support and elderly parents in need of care. From a new ability to say “no” to unwanted demands to renewed commitments to community service, friendships, and family.

My female friends in their forties and fifties are running companies, writing books, going on pilgrimages, passing the bar exam, recovering from a husband’s sudden death, taking up the cello, selling the family home, taking painting lessons, dealing with chronic illness, volunteering in a community garden, running marathons, taking religious vows. We are also making dinner, experimenting with new wrinkle creams, walking the dog, doing the laundry, going to yoga class, buying groceries and winter coats, reading books.

And what we all have in common is that the changes of midlife have invited or compelled each and every one of us to reinvent ourselves, to ask those “Who am I?” and “What now?” questions all over again, with just as much urgency and wonder as we brought to them in our twenties and thirties.

The difference is that we know now, in a way we couldn’t have possibly understood then, that time isn’t infinite. We’ve watched friends die, seen neatly ordered lives shattered by loss, close-knit families come unraveled, careers upended in a day. Knowing that my own steps are numbered, that whole chapters of my life have ended, that I’ve already lived more days than I have left ahead of me, I sometimes feel as if everything is up for re-examination, as if all my choices matter more. And yet, I still yearn to find my own true path and walk it –if anything, even more thoughtfully and deliberately than before.

Which makes me think maybe Oprah’s right after all. “You’re never going to run out of people who are looking for a more joyful life,” she says. And that is true. But I’ve also learned that life is complex, joy is fleeting, and there are no easy solutions. “Living my best life” these days is as much about being as doing, more about acceptance than pursuit, more about expressing gratitude for what is than about grasping for more. So perhaps I also need to acknowledge that the inspiration I’m looking for now probably isn’t going to be found in the pages of a slick women’s magazine fat with ad pages and geared to thirty-year olds. Maybe, Oprah, I’ve outgrown you, too.

If you’re a regular reader here, you know already that my book MAGICAL JOURNEY will be out in January. Even so, I hope you’ll take a moment to “Like” my Author page on Facebook — which is where I’ll post book news and events as they happen. There’s already an excerpt there, and more to come. (I’ll be posting a new book trailer video next week, which I’m excited to share with you.) And if you’re a new subscriber to my blog, welcome! I’m glad we’ve found each other!

And on Thursday afternoon we will gather round the table at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner with the whole extended family. For well over forty years, with barely a miss, I’ve spent Thanksgiving in that very same kitchen, have eaten my dad’s grilled turkey and homemade ice cream, my mom’s pumpkin pie and peas and mashed potatoes. The cast of characters around the table has changed over time, of course. Various cousins and aunts and uncles and significant others and spouses have made entrances and exits. Dear loved ones have passed on and dear little ones have been born and grown up. And, along the way, each one of us has created our own enduring memories: brisk walks in the woods; skating on the pond (long, long ago, when there was ice in November); a fiance’s first appearance at the table; a grandfather’s final one; a grandmother’s last apple pie; a baby who is suddenly grown-up enough to sit with the adults; a sullen teenager miraculously transformed into a mature and engaging young man; an aunt and uncle determined to make a trip all the way from Florida so as not to miss dinner.

What’s been constant however, through all those decades, through all those comings and goings and births and deaths, is the house that somehow contains us all, the stories that get retold year after year as the plates are passed, and the presence in that house of my parents who, even as they’re rounding the corner toward eighty, still manage to make a Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings look effortless.

Each year, when my mother gets out her old gravy-stained notebook and begins her Thanksgiving countdown (pretty much the same to-do list, whether there are going to be 8 of us at the table or 38, as there occasionally were in the old days), she pulls out the crayoned drawing my cousin Paul made thirty-five years ago, when he was seven, the one that says: “I love going to the Thanksgiving house.” My mom cherishes that faded picture; she always sticks it up on the refrigerator, where she can see it as she cooks. And then, three days before we all show up for dinner, she gets busy, shopping for groceries, making stock, setting the table, brining the bird.

My parents are the keepers of the sugar and creamer set shaped like turkeys (which always sort of grossed out my Uncle Chet, who didn’t like to see his cream pouring out of a ceramic gobbler). They have the ice cream maker, the pie servers, the turkey platter, the covered dishes, the baster and twine, the big cutting board and carving set, plenty of dishes and silverware to go around. The tried-and-true recipes, annotated for crowds. The notes my mom has kept, religiously, about who came to dinner and what was said and who was missed this year.

Even after all this time, my mother and father are happy to put the meal on the table for the rest of us – grown children, spouses, grandchildren, and assorted invited guests. All we have to do is show up and appreciate the gifts they gladly offer — not only the food but, even more important, a spacious day of togetherness. And so it happens that once again this week, my family will come together in the house that has always been home base for all of us. At the same time I can’t help but think: It will not always be so.

At 54 years of age, I have yet to cook a turkey myself. Somehow, thanks to my mom’s dedicated service in the Thanksgiving house decade after decade, it’s a rite of passage I’ve managed to avoid. But the day will arrive when the baster will need to be passed. I think I’m going to take myself out of the running. Henry is going over to his grandmother’s house tomorrow afternoon to give her a hand with the potatoes and the squash. He knows the drill, and I have a feeling he would be honored to inherit my mom’s Thanksgiving notebook when the time comes.

For now, though, I don’t want to contemplate the future, but to fully immerse myself in the present. Two grown sons both at home tomorrow night. A couple of too-short days of togetherness. Time set aside to slow down and take stock of all that is good. For gratitude, as we all know, is not a given but rather a way of being to be cultivated. It doesn’t come packaged like the Stouffer’s stuffing mix nor is it ensured by the name of the holiday. No, real “thanksgiving” requires us to pause long enough to feel the earth beneath our feet, to gaze up into the spaciousness of the sky above, and to stop and take a good, long, loving look at the precious faces sitting across from us at the dinner table.

Life can turn on a dime. Not one of us knows, ever, what fate has in store, or what challenges await just around the bend. But I do know this: nothing lasts. Life is an interplay of light and shadow, blessings and losses, moments to be endured and moments I would give anything to live again. I will never get them back, of course, can never re-do the moments I missed or the ones I still regret, any more than I can recapture the moments I desperately wanted to hold onto forever. I can only remind myself to stay awake, to pay attention, and to say my prayer of thanks for the only thing that really matters: this life, here, now.

I’d love to know: What are you grateful for today, here, now?

Friends: My new book Magical Journey will be in the stores in early January — just weeks away. In the meantime, I’ll post all the news, including where I’ll be and when, on my new Author page on Facebook. I would love it if you’d “LIKE” me there: http://www.facebook.com/kkenisonbooks

And of course pre-orders are ALWAYS appreciated. Order now, and have a book on your doorstep on January 8.

My first task, on my very first day of work at Ticknor & Fields (a small, long-defunct New Haven subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Company) back in January of 1981, was to sit down with an empty scrapbook, a pair of scissors, and a jar of rubber cement. There had been some recent press about Houghton Mifflin’s resistance to a corporate buy-out. (Loyal, long-time authors like Kenneth Galbraith and Louis Auchincloss had made their voices heard, and the powers-that-be had listened. Houghton Mifflin, in 1981, was determined to remain fiercely independent. ) I was given the assignment of sorting through a huge stack of newspapers sent to us by the hired clipping service (talk about quaint!), carefully cutting out the articles, and pasting them neatly into the scrapbook. I worked on a stool in the kitchen, where it was also up to me to keep the coffee pot full and the sherry glasses washed. (Tea was served in the front room at four; sherry on Friday afternoons, or when well-known writers came to call. Calvin Trillin’s visits were occasions for cloth napkins and Chinese take-out.) I was twenty-one years old and in heaven.

In our tiny subsidiary, we all did a bit of everything, which meant, as time went on, that I often had a hand in book publicity as well as editorial work: writing press releases, putting press packets together, and then, of course, pasting all the positive newspaper reviews and feature stories into those precious scrapbooks.

It was a perfect way to familiarize myself with the names and faces in my new company, with the authors I was getting to know and the books I’d eagerly carry home to read over the weekends. Soon, I was also taking dictation and typing letters for my boss (three carbon copies of each for the files, a bottle of Wite-Out close at hand), fact –checking manuscripts in the reference room at Yale’s Sterling Library, packing up pages to be overnight mailed to authors, scribbling phone messages on little pink pads, studying the Chicago Manual of Style, and learning to wield a blue pencil as I began to proofread copy.

What amazed me the most about my thrilling (to me!) new career in publishing was the realization that every single book was really the physical manifestation of countless details, all lovingly and expertly attended to over the course of many months, and in some cases, years. It boggled my mind to watch the process unfold — from an innocuous, unread pile of typewritten pages secured with rubber bands to boxes of finished, pristine, beautiful books, ready to be stacked up on a book store’s front table.

How extraordinary it was to witness this alchemy up close, to become part of it, to understand that every single book I’d ever read had required the faith and expertise of so many different people, from the acquisition editor who said the first determined “yes,” to the copyeditor who carefully considered the placement of every semi-colon, to the production manager who inspected the glue application on the inside binding. Countless decisions to be made, and a nearly infinite number of tiny questions to be answered: fonts, margins, paper, leading, initial caps, space breaks, advertising budgets, print runs — the list went on. Names to be verified, serial commas to be made consistent, every line of every page of proof at every stage of the process to be checked, from sample pages to final pass. Every color in every jacket was examined against its Pantone original, while in the back room, our meticulous designer worked with a ruler and Exacto knife to ensure that every word of type on the front cover was perfectly placed into position – by hand.

Flash forward thirty-plus years, to my current life on the other side of the process and in a very different world. A world that can be summed up in a word: digital. What was once done laboriously and time intensively (searching for the spelling of some obscure actress’s name in an old edition of Who’s Who, for instance) can now be done in an instant, with a click of a key and a Google search. Long gone are the antique tools of the trade as it once was. Including paper.

The first manuscript I ever worked on was a first novel by a young author who appeared at the front door of our office with his 700-page mystery neatly typed and packed into three dark blue Brooks Brothers shirt boxes. A few months ago, I delivered my own manuscript to my publisher — by hitting a SEND button. Weeks later, when the copy-edited manuscript was returned to me, I opened it not as a meticulously hand-edited original typescript sent in an insured and tracked padded manila envelope, but as a Microsoft Word document. And then I set to work learning how to accept or decline the editor’s changes online, in the digital margins of my text, carrying on a virtual color-coded conversation with my copy editor, whose actual voice I will probably never hear. (Even a ringing phone is largely a thing of the past; why call and talk to a stranger, when you could text or email instead?)

As a writer with a new book coming out, I hold out little hope for print reviews; most of the small newspapers that do survive these days have long since shut down their book pages. My print run this time will be half what it was for my last book; that’s how many readers my publisher estimates have shifted to electronic devices.

And even though I have a publicist in New York who is already hard at work arranging my visits to bookstores and sending out bound galleys, the process of spreading the word about a new book has gone largely digital as well. Which means that my job as author no longer ends with writing the final lines and holding forth in a few publication-week interviews, but extends into the equally essential and ongoing industry of ensuring that, in the midst of this busy, distracted on-line world, potential readers actually know that my book exists.

For the first time, my latest book contract included a clause about social media. Maintaining a website and a Facebook presence and a Twitter account is now part of the writer’s job description. (I think I’m supposed to bone up on Pintrest and Tumblr, too.)

Three years ago, when The Gift of an Ordinary Day was published, a friend suggested it might be fun to make a video to go along with it. I invited my book group and some neighbors over, read a few pages out loud in front of the camera, and pulled a bunch of my husband’s family photos out of the albums. It was fun. And the video took on a life of its own, becoming a virtual messenger for the themes of the book.

This time, there was no question: Nowadays, nearly every new book arrives with its own book trailer video. The truth is, all of these new publishing to-dos have been making me anxious. Not only have I felt the pressure of making the book itself all it can be, but also the pressure of fulfilling my authorial obligation to initiate word of mouth about it in every possible venue: updating my website, planning a blog tour, producing a video, setting up events at bookstores. In other words, going public. (If you are someone who chooses to spend much of her life sitting quietly at home alone in a room, the prospect of making self-promotion your new full-time job — even if it is largely on-line — is enough to keep you awake at night. It does me.)

All summer the video project loomed. I had an idea, but no certainty that my vision would actually work. The friendly crew that filmed my first video had moved on. Finally, the deadline was upon me. I had no choice but to put my faith in the process, hire a couple of strangers to come film it, and begin.

And what I found myself thinking this week — as shooting began on my four-minute film, as Steve snapped countless potential author photos, as the book jacket was being finalized, and as plans for recording the audio version were made — is that much as things have changed in this business, it is STILL exacting attention to detail, and the concerted efforts of many passionate people, that make book publishing such a special and uniquely collaborative endeavor.

The scrapbooks of my publishing youth may be gone, my manuscript may exist in pixels instead of on paper, my book may not ever be reviewed in the pages of the Boston Globe or the New York Times, and yet the process remains as exacting and, in its own way, as deeply collegial, as viscerally satisfying, and as detail-oriented as ever.

The other day, three final jacket proofs arrived from the designer, real covers to be spread upon my dining room table, the type in each a slightly different shade of burnt orange. Which to choose? The audio producer sent me the script, printed out in large type, so that I’ll have time to practice reading it aloud before heading to New York next month to record in the studio; careful attention to detail is what will make our four days together go off without a hitch. And for two days, as our house became a film set and as Tom and Melissa of Long Haul Films shot hour upon hour of footage here, I marveled at their ability to maintain enthusiastic concentration as they focused their lenses upon the minutiae of my tactile, ordinary, everyday life and somehow turned it into art. Perhaps it is simply the willingness to pay such close attention, to bring such devotion to the details, that is, in the end, what lifts any process from mundane to meaningful.

It took one whole extra trip from Boston to New Hampshire to nail the shot the film makers wanted of hands around a steaming mug of tea. Six takes of zipping a jacket, tying up shoes. Lots of waiting around for the clouds to break and the sun to shine. Gracie, making tennis ball catch after tennis ball catch for the camera. And during that time, as my family and two dear friends willingly gave up big chunks of their day to assist in this project, and as a slew of last-minute emails arrived from Grand Central, my publisher in New York, I found myself feeling suddenly and immensely grateful for the entire team that fate and circumstance have brought together here, to help guide one modest midlife memoir into the world.

Of course, all this makes me see that what really matters to people who work with books has not changed at all in thirty years: A passion for a well-told story. A profound, ongoing love affair with words. The quiet thrill of holding a new hardcover in your hands, turning the first pages, receiving the urgent, insistent news that is shared between human beings when we summon the courage to reveal ourselves to one another.

In January, this book I’ve been laboring over for the last year and a half will be published. But the Magical Journey, I’m happy to say now, didn’t conclude with the final sentences I wrote last spring. In fact, that brief moment of ending simply marked the beginning of another journey, from the intensely private work of writing to the very public work of sharing. How lucky I am to be accompanied on this new path by such a dedicated group of friends and readers and co-workers, each of whom is as delighted by and as dedicated to the details as I am. Already I feel less alone. And even, dare I say it, excited about the next leg of the trip. Stay tuned!

I want to remember the holy hush just before dawn, the mists rising out of the valley, the sharp, clear sky still pricked by the bright eye of Venus. I want to remember the way light returns slowly to this earth, taking its time. How it arrives at last from behind a curtain of rose and purple clouds. How glad I am to be here.

I want to remember the sudden uprise of Canada geese bursting through the silence, honking and flapping and lifting into to the sky, oblivious to our astonishment. I want to remember their wild call as they jockeyed into a ragged V before shearing off through the clear veil of morning. The way my husband and I smiled at each other, silent, as we watched them go.

I want to remember the cold smell of Gracies’s coat when I bury my face in her neck, her silky hair so dry it fairly crackles. She is twelve. I want to remember everything.

I want to remember the September woods. The rich, smoky, earthy smells of nature concluding a season’s business. I want to remember the great buttery clumps of mushrooms, such fecund, untouchable bounty. And when, exactly, did the pliant maple leaves grow brittle and thin enough to see through? How subtle was the moment when summer’s green palette was exchanged for the golden hues of fall? I want to remember the exquisite turning of this page, as the blue-green hills I’ve gazed upon all summer begin now to glow with color. I want to remember this: Don’t blink. Every hour the scene repaints itself. We are heading toward brilliance, fleeting and irrepressible.

I want to remember the nasturtiums, how they came up everywhere this year, tumbling through the garden like handfuls of jewels, tossed and scattered with wild abandon. I want to remember the shy orange poppies; all summer they held back, only to bloom now at the end of September, long after I’d given up all hope of them. I want to remember the greedy, glorious, rampant pink and violet petunias, spilling out of their pots, cascading over the steps, taking advantage of every barren crack in the walkway. I want to remember the hummingbird that comes each afternoon to drink their depths. I want to remember these days before frost lays claim to every cherished, fragile blossom.

I want to remember the industriousness of bees, the hum in the garden. I want to remember the slow undulation of a Monarch’s wings as it sips from a pink zinnia. I want to remember the robin splashing like a hedonist in the birdbath beneath a stand of exhausted sunflowers, their drooping, heavy heads plucked clean of seed. (I should cut them down, haul those useless stalks to the compost pile.) I want to remember how reluctant I am to see anything come to an end, and how even now I leave the dead flowers standing standing there, patiently waiting for me to summon resolve.

I want to remember the last breakfast on the screened porch, the penultimate bouquets, the hydrangeas drying on their curved stems, the end of peaches, the first Macouns from the trees up the road, the puckery sweetness of a Concord grape splitting on the tongue.

I want to remember Henry’s oatmeal cookies and the rich buttery smells in the kitchen, Diana Krall singing “Love Me or Leave Me” as he washes dishes at the sink. I want to remember how good it is to have a son come home.

I want to remember my favorite sandwiches, made without bread: sliced Brandywine tomatoes and white mozzarella ovals and basil leaves still warm from the sun. I want to remember the briny grit of sea salt, and juice dripping off my elbows, and not minding.

I want to remember dozing in the lawn chair with a book in my lap, as the first yellow leaves spin to earth. I want to remember days with windows wide open, and the way cold seeps through the house as soon as the sun disappears behind the trees. I want to remember Henry practicing Rachmaninoff. I want to remember lighting candles at dinner again, and how it feels to live in one place for five years, to feel one’s own roots sinking into the earth. I want to remember that change is part of being alive. I want to remember to take time to sit in silence, to breathe into the still point, where past and future are gathered. I want to remember some lines by T.S. Eliot:

Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
there would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.

I want to remember that in the week before I turn 54, I am vexed by a private catalog of imponderables. I want to remember that even these most perfect days and nights have been limned with sadness, punctuated by sleepless hours, a host of worries, questions without answers. I want to remember that sometimes I can set my troubles aside, choose instead to see my life as a blessing. I want to remember that surrender is always possible, and that I can be sad and grateful at the same time. Filled up and emptied out, both. Even a heavy heart can overflow with contentment. I want to remember to keep my eyes open, to pay attention. Life is short. I want to remember: this is it. There is only the dance.

Tell me, what do you want to remember?

(I write today inspired by my friend Lindsey’s poignant post on this theme at A Design so Vast. Thank you Lindsey!)

Each year, the last day of school seemed to magically coincide with the beginning of strawberry season. For every two quarts we picked for Dike to sell for fifty cents from his side porch, we were allowed to take one home for ourselves, which seemed to my brother and me like gainful summer employment. Once we’d picked our quota, we were rewarded by the pleasure of returning to the shady swing set in our own back yard, payment in hand: a soggy, juice-stained balsa-wood box tip-top full of warm, sweet berries.

By the time I grew up and had children myself, Dike and his wife had died and his lovingly tended strawberry fields had long since been subdivided into condominiums. It wasn’t until twelve years ago, when I found myself alone in a rented cabin with my own two little boys, that I rediscovered the joy of berry picking.

I had rented the place on a whim, over the phone and sight unseen, envisioning swims in the lake, games of Old Maid on the screened porch, hot dogs cooked on sticks over a fire. I wanted time alone with Henry and Jack, away from the easy comforts of home and the distractions of our suburban neighborhood. Ever since my own parents had rented a small rustic cabin on the shore of Lake Winnepesaukee when I was a little girl, I’d been in love with cottage life. Some of my fondest childhood memories coalesce around that first passion and that unadorned place: the scent of pine, carried on a breeze through an open window; the slap of lake water on my face just moments after waking up in the morning; hours whiled away on a lumpy daybed on a screened porch, reading The Borrowers from cover to cover. I was hoping my sons would love what I had loved as a child, that they too would be enchanted by old books and whole days spent in damp bathing suits.

But this was June in Maine. And my sons were used to a little more structure than I had in mind. The cabin was remote; the lake water, inky black and freezing cold. We read for a while, huddled in blankets by the woodstove. They laid out a game of Strat-o-matic on the kitchen table. There were ants everywhere, and so we came up with ingenious ways to protect our food supply. By the morning of the third day, I was wondering what on earth we would do with ourselves for an entire week.

“Let’s go exploring,” I suggested after breakfast, hustling the kids into the car. “Let’s just go home,” Jack, who was seven, replied.

Strawberries saved us. Driving down the country road toward town, I spotted a sign: U-Pick. We pulled over, and within minutes the three of us were plopped down in the middle of a gloriously abundant row, the sun warm at our backs, the long, empty day salvaged by a new sense of purpose. My children, having come of age eating agribusiness berries, industrially grown and shipped to our grocery store from afar, were amazed. Who knew that a strawberry could taste so good?

We picked three heaping flats that morning and feasted on strawberry shortcake with freshly whipped cream, and hot chocolate, for dinner that night. In my memory, we ate strawberries and chocolate at every meal that week. We slept together in one bed to stay warm and never did go swimming even once, though I nearly drowned us all when a sudden, violent storm swept our tipsy canoe all the way across the lake and I found myself utterly unable to paddle against the wind back to shore. (Later, Henry managed to eke three school essays out of that near disaster, one of which he entitled, “The Worst Moment of my Life.”)

My sons are grown now, our week in that isolated cabin just another bit of childhood nostalgia – though a memory my sons, amazingly enough, seem to cherish just as much as I do my own youthful recollections of endless cabin afternoons and quiet pleasures. In recent years, we created a new berry-picking tradition here in New Hampshire at a nearby farm that opens its fields to the public for as long as the crop lasts. Steve and I could usually coerce our teenaged boys to put in a couple of hours of picking on a Saturday morning, as long as there was a promise of shortcake for dinner. The effort was always worth it, more than worth it, and any initial grumbling would soon give way to the elemental satisfaction of harvesting sweet perfection. Who could possibly be grumpy while picking strawberries on a glorious morning in June?

This year, though, it was just two of us on our knees in the strawberry field. Henry is already gone for the summer, ensconced in his first post-college job, playing piano at a musical theatre on the Cape. Jack, who graduated from high school last week, is sharing an apartment in Cambridge for the summer, working at the studio where he’s been an intern for the last two years. He’ll come and go from home, but his sense of where he belongs now is shifting; slowly, over the last couple of weeks, he’s been moving stuff out of here to there: his guitar, his speakers, a set of dresser drawers.

And so, carrying on our old tradition but in a new way, Steve and I got up early yesterday and headed to the farm. We played Cat Stevens on the car stereo and planned out the rest of the day – a few hours of hulling and slicing, the French Open finals on TV, an afternoon in the garden, omelets for dinner, and, of course, strawberry shortcake for dessert. I thought about how grateful I am to have a partner with whom to share the doings of an ordinary Sunday and, at the same time, I found myself wondering if I’ll ever get used to the reality of our new, down-sized family.

In years past, the four of us could easily pick fifty pounds of strawberries in less than an hour; by late winter, they would all be gone, too. Yesterday, Steve and I agreed: twenty-five pounds would be plenty. There are, after all, only two of us now. And yet, still as always, what a treat it will be, some winter’s night, to thaw out a generous heap of our own strawberries, sprinkle them with sugar, and ladle them over bowls of vanilla ice cream, each bite a redolent reminder of summers past and a promise of summer’s eventual return.

The time has long since vanished when a family’s survival depended on each member pulling his or her weight, hunting and gathering, planting and reaping, so that food would appear on the table at the end of the day. And yet, picking berries with my husband yesterday morning was a gentle reminder to me: our busy, complicated, human lives are still inextricably linked to the earth, and to all things there is a season.

Strawberry season — like childhood, like marriage, like life itself — is fleeting. Fail to pay attention, get too distracted by other things, and you’ll miss it. And so, come June, I watch the weather and, with some sense of urgency, I mark off a Saturday for berries. Our days of family outings to the berry patch may have ended, but there is beauty in this new configuration, too, as I look over at my husband of twenty-five years, head bent to his work, peacefully filling his tray.

Again and again, these days, I find myself brought to this threshold between acceptance of what is and sadness for what’s over. I can mourn the life chapter that has quietly, inevitably, come to a close, or I can choose instead to appreciate the modest, though no less meaningful, gift of what is — right here, right now. And so it is that I gather up my basket full of memories and resolve to carry it with a lighter heart. I want to make sure that I am present to this day and this place, so that I am able to relish this time alone with my husband, to savor the easy ebb and flow of our conversation as we load up our flats and fill our stomachs.

After all, the joy of berry picking is always, in part, the joy of the moment — the caressing breeze of a summer day, the ripe, rich smell of dirt and mulch and luscious fruit; birdsong, blue sky, good company. But it is also the bittersweet joy of acceptance, of knowing that this fine day, too will end, that summer bends inevitably toward fall, that little boys grow into men and leave home, that seasons turn and life changes and nothing lasts forever. I do know that, and I’m okay with it.

But I also know that when I sit down in frigid February to a bowl of fragrant strawberries picked in June, I will pause and marvel, grateful that in the simple act of picking berries and putting them by, we’ve managed to capture not only summer’s lavish bounty, but a few good memories as well.

Peterborough is just half an hour away from where I grew up, but it feels further, thanks in large part to the mountain in between, the harsher climate over here. When I was a child, we rarely came in this direction; “civilization” lay to the south and to the east, toward Boston, not up and over Temple Mountain in the direction of Vermont. Yet our occasional family trips — for summer evening ice cream cones at Silver Ranch, or to prowl antique stores with my mother — made lasting impressions. The town seemed special even then.

On this day, my forty-second birthday, my eye catches a sign propped up on the sidewalk in the middle of town: Tibetan Monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery Create Sand Mandala. Each day this week, 9 –5.
I have no idea what a sand mandala is, but the door of the old brick building, a former Baptist church from the colonial era, is open, and I have an empty afternoon stretching out before me. It seems unlikely that a tiny New England village with a population of four thousand could support a multi-cultural museum, but that is exactly what the Mariposa appears to be: a welcoming community center devoted to bringing world culture to one small town in New Hampshire. I drop a donation in the jar, walk through a gallery stuffed with vibrant artwork, handmade dolls, puppets, and wall hangings, to the stairs leading to the second floor.

Upstairs, the soaring hall has been transformed into a sacred space. At one end of the room, an altar has been created, adorned with apples and oranges, small bowls of rice, flowers, candles, and a statue of the Buddha. On a large blue board on the floor an intricate design is taking shape, made entirely of colored grains of sand. I slip off my shoes, take a seat, and watch the monks silently bending to their work.

There are several monks, dressed in crimson robes, sitting quietly, meditating; two others are down on their knees on the hard wooden floor, hunched over, noses inches from the ground as they “paint” with what look like narrow metal funnels and small sticks. There is no sound but for the rhythmic tapping of metal on metal, as they painstakingly fill in their exquisitely detailed design with grains of colored sand.

Afternoon sun streams through the high windows. People come and go. A young mother arrives to watch with her little boy, who solemnly eats an apple, never taking his eyes from the monks, who look up every now and again, stretch, and smile at us, nodding hello. The mandala increases in complexity, each intricate design element appearing as if by magic from the thin streams of sand. Not a grain falls out of place. The slightest breeze or sneeze or misstep would destroy its geometric perfection. Yet the monks move easily around their creation, barefoot, their robes flowing, seemingly heedless of the danger yet as mindful of each movement as they would be if performing a dance. Unhurried, graceful, light-hearted. Peace pervades the room.

A thought arrives, alights like a bird upon my shoulder: I want to live here.

That night, back at home in Massachusetts, my husband is waiting for me; he and our sons have made a chocolate cake and a birthday dinner. But there is something going on in the back yard. The people who recently bought the house right next to ours have decided to cut down all the trees between our two houses. The chainsaws are still roaring. The landscape has changed; but it suddenly feels as if everything else has changed, too. Where, just yesterday, there were golden leaves shimmering in the sunlight, a thick, leafy canopy of protection and privacy surrounding our home, there is suddenly devastation. Our familiar tree-house view is gone, replaced by a stark, unfiltered view into someone else’s brightly lit tv room. Tears fill my eyes. I say, “I think we need to move.” I am as surprised by the words as Steve is.

Sometimes we recognize the defining moments of our lives as they’re happening. But not always. It was a long time after that emotional October evening before my husband and I finally decided that yes, in fact, we were going to move. And longer still before we finally settled into a house of our own on a hilltop in the town of Peterborough. But looking back now, I know: for me, the journey to the place we now call home began in the presence of a group of exiled Tibetan monks from India, who came to spend a week creating a mandala for peace in a small town in New England.

This week, the monks returned to the Mariposa. They are traveling in the U.S. now at the request of the Dalai Lama, re-creating a new, breathtaking sand mandala designed to inspire world harmony and to honor all beliefs and all religions. Early on Friday morning, Jack and Steve and I sat for a while and watched them put the finishing touches on their week’s work. The monks welcomed us happily, eyes twinkling. The mandala was breathtaking; intricate, finely textured, each minute detail meticulously rendered. A half hour passed; Jack needed to get to school, but none of us could bring ourselves to leave.

According to Buddhist scripture, sand mandalas transmit positive energies to the environment and to all who view them; they are believed to effect purification and healing. On this beautiful April day, there was no doubt at all: we were in the presence of peace, enveloped in love, steeped in goodness. Exactly where we were meant to be.

Funny how ten years go by and, while you’re busy living your life, it is inexorably turning into something else altogether. Funny, too, how destiny is revealed, how it’s only by pausing and looking back that we can truly discern the gifts given us by grace — the moments that have shown us who we are, that have illuminated the dark path, revealing just where it is we are meant to put our feet and the direction in which we are called to go.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about intuition. Was it just a random thought, or some kind of inner knowing, that brushed against my awareness all those years ago, on my forty-second birthday, loosening my grip on things as they were and whispering in my ear that change was already in the wind?

I can’t say, but I’m coming to believe that we are guided all the time, that support and direction are right there for us if we take time to pause and listen to the quiet inner voice that says, “go here,” or “do that.” Perhaps the way forward can only be revealed in those quiet spaces in between moments, when we are sitting still, so still that gentle breezes from another realm can be heard to murmur.

This spring, coming to the end of a time of intense work and reflection, I find myself once again at loose ends, humbled by uncertainty. Our two sons are about to graduate, one from high school and the other from college. Life is full of unknowns. But one thing I have learned is that there are energies at work in all our lives that can be trusted. Our job may simply be to ask the questions, to open ourselves to possibility, without presuming to nail down the answers. Perhaps there is no right answer anyway, other than the rightness of trusting that things will unfold as they are meant to — as long as we’re willing to make room for our many ways of knowing, even the ones that seem beyond reason, the ones that dwell in the realms of soul, instinct, faith, mystery.

On Sunday, I returned for the monks’ closing ceremony. The room I entered for the first time as a stranger over ten years ago was filled now with my neighbors and friends – it seemed that everyone in town had come out on this rainy afternoon to view the completed mandala and to bid it farewell. For, within hours of completing their masterpiece, the monks destroy their creation. In a deep bow to the impermanence of all things, the monks chanted, prayed, and then,using two ordinary paintbrushes from the hardware store, they swept the beautiful offering they had spent the entire week making into a small rainbow-hued pile.

I came home with a little packet of that sacred sand. And later today, when the sun comes out again, I will sprinkle it in the garden outside our kitchen door, in this place that we have come to call home.

NOTES TO YOU:

If you would like to see more photos of the mandala and the monks at work, please visit The Gift of an Ordinary Day on Facebook; I will have them posted there.

SIGNED BOOKS FOR MOTHER’S DAY As always, my wonderful local bookstore is happy to help with a special gift for a special mom in your life (maybe you?). Click here to order signed, personalized copies of Mitten Strings for God and/or The Gift of an Ordinary Day.

We sat around the kitchen table after dinner last night — my son Henry, my husband Steve, and two of our dearest friends in the world, Lisa and Kerby.

I met Lisa eighteen years ago, when Henry visited her kindergarten classroom for the first time as a small, shy four-year-old. He already had an IEP from the public school system and a medical file that was two-inches thick. He’d been diagnosed with asthma at three months, sensory integration dysfunction and low muscle tone at two, and various other physical and developmental delays and concerns ever since. He saw an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, and a physical therapist every week – to learn how to do the things that other children his age could do without being taught, things like moving his tongue from side to side, skipping, or jumping up and down. To say we were worried about him would have been an understatement. We were first-time parents, and it seemed that every expert we talked to pointed out something else that was wrong with our son.

Lisa, quiet and gentle and observant, watched him in her classroom for two mornings. And then she did what no one else had ever done: she told us what was right with him — how carefully he listened, that he was clearly drawn to music, that he was emotionally aware, empathetic beyond his years, and kind.

She became Henry’s teacher and, soon, my friend. Our sensitive son thrived in Lisa’s rose-colored classroom. “I don’t know what you guys are doing,” said the occupational therapist after six months, “but it’s working. Henry doesn’t need to come anymore.” Soon, the others concurred. Meanwhile, Lisa and I clicked. We ran together, hiked, shared books, laughed and talked over countless cups of coffee. Steve and I met her future husband, and the four of us grew as close as two couples can be. In time, Lisa became Jack’s kindergarten teacher as well.

Our families spent time together, her three older boys much admired and emulated by our two younger ones. The memories piled up: New Years Eve feasts, camping out at their New Hampshire cottage, weekends in Maine, ferry rides to Monhegan and hikes around the island, wonderful meals cooked over campfires, long walks, and exhilarating swims. Years of affection and laughter and good times. When I turned forty, we celebrated at the cabin in the woods, watching the October sunset from a high hilltop, and then hiking down in the darkness to light a fire, share champagne and hot soup at the hearth, and then pile on hats and mittens for sleeping in the crisp fall air. It is still my favorite birthday ever.

Ten years ago next month, my friend’s older son was killed, just a few months shy of his college graduation. My own memory of that horrific day is still so fresh it’s hard to believe it’s been a decade. I remember Lisa asking, a few days after the funeral, “How will I live without him?” I remember not knowing how to answer her. I remember wondering, day after day and month after month, how I could help and what I could do. And I remember realizing there was no way to help and nothing anyone could do — except keep showing up.

Ten years ago, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child. I still can’t (although being Lisa’s friend through these wrenching, difficult years has helped me to understand). But ten years ago, I couldn’t imagine a lot of things.

Back then, I couldn’t imagine how my friend would ever heal, or how her family would keep going, or even how the two of us could ever possibly laugh again over nothing, the way we always used to do. I couldn’t imagine my own sons all grown up; how would I ever release them to the world and all its dangers, or bear witness to their loss of innocence?

Maybe a certain lack of imagination is what saves us from being paralyzed with fear for our children as they make their way in the world. Certainly what seemed unimaginable when my own sons were nine and twelve, the year that Morgan died, has slowly, inevitably, become the reality I’ve learned to take in stride as the years rolled by.

Right under my eyes, my children have done the unimaginable: they’ve grown up. They drive cars and stay out late and have friends I don’t know and drink beer and pay bills and make choices both good and bad and hold down jobs and put money in the bank and learn things I can’t begin to understand and have lives that belong wholly to them, lives they live away from me.

I couldn’t imagine any of this, and now I am living it. And, you know what? It’s okay. In fact, it is unimaginably good. In four months, I will be the mother of a college graduate myself. The boy who had to be taught how to send a message from his brain to his tongue is an accomplished pianist, an A student, a young man whose talents far exceed anything I could have imagined on that day when I crossed my fingers and prayed that he could hold his own for a morning of kindergarten. The other day, as we sat during intermission at the Boston Symphony, he patiently explained to me the mathematical theory behind post-tonal music. At this moment, Jack is in Montreal for winter break with thirty friends from his senior class and no adults. Even a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined granting permission for an unchaperoned road trip to a city five hours away where the drinking age is basically moot. And yet, after many conversations and agreements about how often he needed to check in with us, my husband and I found ourselves on the same page about this: ready to say “yes.”

There comes a time when our job is no longer to keep our children protected under our care but to entrust them to themselves. They are going to leave us anyway. But I think perhaps we give them a special gift if we can summon the courage to let them go with our blessings and our faith.

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable,” writes Mary Oliver. This strikes me as profound parenting advice, a reminder that there is so much more to this life than we can possibly see or touch or understand at any given moment. Our children’s paths are revealed slowly and in time, their true gifts perhaps obscured; their destinies not ours to write. We will love them no matter what. But we can’t keep them safe. And somehow, we must make our fragile peace with both of these truths. Keeping some room in my heart for the unimaginable makes it a little easier. For what can any of us do, but work our way toward surrender, surrender to reality in all its beauty and mystery?

A lot happens in ten years. What I’ve learned from sharing my friend’s journey is that grief doesn’t go away, but, like everything, it changes over time. The empty place in your heart is never filled up, but it changes, too. You get a little more used to the hole being there, and you learn to feel your way around it. Your sadness slowly becomes a bit more bearable for being familiar. You begin to realize that the world is full of people with broken hearts, and that what you thought was unique and singular to you is in fact part of being human. You are surprised when, for the very first time, you laugh again. And then you discover that, even in the midst of unimaginable sorrow, there are also moments shot through with grace and, yes, happiness.

Which brings me back to last night, and our dinner table. We lit the candles and ate chili and cornbread. We talked about the ten-year anniversary of Morgan’s death, a few weeks away, and how the girl he had planned to marry is a mother now herself, expecting her second child. She and Lisa stay in touch, bound still by their love for a young man who died too soon. After dinner, Henry gave Kerby a piano lesson, and helped him work through a song while the rest of us did dishes. Then we all sat around the table and played Balderdash. Before we knew it, it was 11:00 and we’d been laughing for hours. Eighteen years ago, when a kindly kindergarten teacher put her hand on my son’s small, vulnerable head and said, “I think he’ll be fine,” I couldn’t have possibly imagined a day when that boy would be a man, sitting at a piano teaching a complicated jazz riff to that teacher’s husband. Ten years ago, as my friend tried to get used to the world without her oldest son in it, I felt as if I’d lost her, too. I couldn’t imagine a future lit by her laughter. But here we are.

Wholeheartedness Playlist

As promised, Henry helped me pull together the Wholeheartedness playlist before heading back to Minnesota this afternoon. Here are the songs that inspire you — us! — to dance as though no one is watching, love as though you’ve never been hurt before, sing as though no one can hear you, and live as though heaven is on earth. Thanks so much for all your great suggestions. I listened to the whole list as I cleaned house yesterday — loved it, and am pretty sure it’s the first time Beethoven, the Muppets, and Louis Armstrong have ever shared a playlist. The list is below, and available for listening on the widget at the left.

Beethoven 7 (2nd movement)
What A Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)
Moments Like These (Selah)
Free to Be Me, I’m Letting Go, This is the Stuff (Francesca Battistelli)
Celebrate Me Home (Kenny Loggins)
Blessed Be The Name of the Lord
Full Force Gale (Van Morrison)
What’s Light (Wilco)
Wind Beneath My Wings (Bette Midler)
Santana Europa (Earth’s Cry/Heaven’s Smile)
How You Live (Point of Grace)
Blackbird (Sarah Vaughan)
Beautiful (Carol King)
Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)
Holy Now (Peter Mayer)
The Prayer (Andrea Bocelli and Celine)
Dance Me To The End of Love (Leonard Cohen)
A Living Prayer (Allison Krauss)
Rainbow Connection (The Muppets)
The Dance (Garth Brooks)
Forever Young (Rod Stewart)
Go Where Love Goes (Andrea Bocelli)
Desperado (The Eagles)
The Most (Lori McKenna)
Joy (George Winston)
Chant (Peter Bradley Adams)
By Thy Grace (Snatam Kaur)
Birds (Emiliana Torrini)
Diamonds (Girish)
Over The Rainbow (Israel Kamakawiwo’ole)
I Hope You Dance (Lee Ann Womack)
Mr. Blue Sky (ELO)
The Slender Thread That Binds Us Here (Kathy Mattea)

Such parenting challenges are behind me, though I well remember the joy of a balmy Halloween night and, on a frosty one, the delicate negotiations required to keep everyone both reasonably warm and acceptably ghoulish.  My job this Halloween involves no face-painting or fright wigs, and it’s been years since I donned my own witch costume and told a scary story to the neighborhood kids before they began their rounds. Back in the day, Jack would laboriously sketch various pumpkin faces on paper before taking knife to flesh; always, the final product was the result of much work and deliberation. This year, he’s not carving a pumpkin, but the stakes for his Halloween labors are as high as ever.

As it happens, I’m sitting in front of my computer doing one final proofreading of my son’s early-decision college application, due tomorrow.  He’s putting the finishing touches on his last essay, and already this morning we have exchanged several phone calls and text messages and emails.  I may not have a clue, anymore, what he’s doing in math or how to look over his French paper, but at least, in this one small realm, I have some chops.  I can provide a pretty decent editorial safety net.  And, given how little help he requires from me these days, I have to admit, it feels good to be needed.  Still, I do miss the days of fangs and fake fingernails, grinning pumpkins and gory masks.

This month, Good Housekeeping magazine reprinted a blog I wrote two years ago, about trying on Halloween masks with my son.  It was his first year away from home, and we were both still adjusting to that new reality – me to the empty nest, him to the structure and challenges of boarding school, a path he’d chosen and his dad and I had supported, but one that was demanding considerable growth and change from all of us.  The details of that day already feel distant, and yet I’m so glad I wrote them down. Jack and I get along really well these days, and the struggles of his sixteenth year feel like ancient history to us both.

Today, I’m glad to share this essay again, as a reminder of how time marches on, how love endures above all else, and how we are shaped and molded by small moments — and by our willingness to notice and cherish and remember:

Every year since my younger son Jack was three or so, we have tried on Halloween masks together.  It was always Jack’s holiday, the plans for some elaborate costume taking shape weeks in advance, the scarier the better.

When he was really young, he was happy to go trick-or-treating in whatever sweet little outfit I dreamed up for him–a tiny vampire, a tiger, a pumpkin.  But the age of innocence didn’t last long.  He wanted to be terrifying.  Whereas Henry was content to paw through a bag of cast off clothes or to grab an old dress out of my closet and stick a witch hat on his head at the last minute, Jack wanted a full-bore, frontal-assault sort of costume.  The kind that could not possibly be homemade, but absolutely had to be store-bought, preferably dripping fake blood.  He wanted a knife or a spear or a hatchet to carry, and would not be caught dead putting a jacket on over his black flowing garments, no matter how chilly Halloween night turned out to be.  The costume ruled.

Yesterday morning, Jack and I set out early with a shopping list he’d made the night before–all the things he’s discovered he can’t live without these days.  Tea bags, boxes of cereal, Clearasil, a hot water heater. . . We were efficiently checking things off the list — until we found ourselves alone in the Halloween section of Walmart. It was hard to resist pausing to critique this year’s batch of outrageous masks. Jack pulled a clown mask over his head, and I slipped on a piece of zombie headgear, complete with creepy little arms dangling from the sides.  Pretty soon, we had tried on every mask on the shelf and contemplated a few mullet wigs as well.

Last year at this time, Jack and I were pretty much at a stand-off with one another.  His sixteenth year hasn’t been easy for any of us, a time of tremendous growth and transformation, challenge and worry. We’ve fought about everything, had many intense heart-to-heart talks, and have worked hard over the last few months, each in our own ways, to find new, healthier ways to relate to one another. In a few weeks, he’ll turn seventeen.  He’s happy, doing well in school, nearly grown up. It is easy, once again, for us to enjoy one another’s company.

Jack didn’t buy a mask for Halloween.  But our detour down the mask aisle brought back lots of good memories for us both.  I realize that what I remember most clearly now is not all the actual Halloween nights of his childhood, but rather our annual trips together in search of the perfect mask.  And how, year after year I, a fully grown woman, willingly tried on ghoul and ghost faces for my son.  How much fun we had together, when I wasn’t in a rush to get the job done, or to get somewhere else, but slowed down to his pace, and took the time to play and ponder.  That’s what we did yesterday.  

It felt, for a few minutes, as if he were just a little kid again.  ”We’ve always done this,” he said, as we left the Halloween aisle and headed off in search of batteries and earbuds. “Wouldn’t miss it,”  I answered.

The dictionary defines it thus: “an unjustifiable absence.” It seemed to me that the golden afternoon was justification enough. Summer was offering an unexpected encore, free to all takers. My husband Steve and our friend Nance met me on the trail and, with the dogs bounding ahead, we climbed up to a quiet clearing with a view of mountains, a place we call “the meditation chairs.” Over many years, visitors to this spot have assembled hundreds of stones large and small into an arrangement of artful cairns and comfortable seats that invite revery and repose and reflection. It was a perfect place to sit for a while, savoring this glorious, unseasonally balmy Monday.

Nance and I looked at each other as we headed back down the trail and we both had the same thought at the same time: would it be crazy to go swimming? We went from the mountain straight to the pond, smooth as glass in the waning afternoon. There was nothing to do but peel off our clothes and plunge. The slap of cold was small price to pay for the exhilaration of slicing through that icy black water, straight out to the middle of the lake, and then turning to look back at hills soaked in color, the empty beach, the resplendent stillness. We swam to shore shivering, exultant, grateful.

When our boys were young, a full moon on a clear night was always a good excuse for sleeping outdoors, but it has been years now since I’ve done it. The truth is, I haven’t been quite ready to return, alone or even with my husband, to some of those cherished traditions that were so much a part of our family life. My greatest joy as a mother was to introduce my children to the world, to lead them gently into wonder, to provide an abundant harvest of experiences that would stir their senses and quicken their imaginations – walks in the woods, nights under the stars, stories told by firelight, hushed sunrises and barefoot walks through dew-soaked grass. Now that they are grown, I miss those times more than I can say. I miss my sons as the little boys they were, much as I love and admire the young men they have become. And I miss the joy of our shared play, the sense of adventure that infused our days and nights, the fun of dragging air mattresses and sleeping bags out into the backyard on a moment’s notice and cuddling up together beneath a vast canopy of stars. I miss seeing the world through a child’s eyes.

I’m also realizing that herein lies one of the great challenges of this new phase of my life as a woman whose child-raising days have ended: to learn all over again to see the world through my own eyes. I want to look and feel deeply now not just for my sons’ sake, but for myself. And to remember that this life, these days, are not just thrilling for young children, but for me, too. To live well on the earth means to inhabit gently its fields and streams and wild places, to praise its magnificent abundance and variety, to protect its treasures, to celebrate its beauty even as we honor our own playful spirits, no matter how old or how young we are.

Now that I have no little boys to take by the hand and lead out into the wonderful morning, it’s easy for me to get so caught up in the doings and details of my “grown-up” life that I miss the soft curve of a day, the gentle approach of evening, the first wink of stars at twilight. I forget to pause long enough to savor the miracles of creation that are right in front of me. But it’s time for me to pay closer attention to this world now for my own soul’s sake; indeed, to partake of its wonders myself just as I once offered them to my children. It is such a simple thing, really, to sit, to look, to see, to cherish. The harvest moon, certainly, is always worthy of celebration and homage, whether one is five or fifty.

And so, I pitched my small tent on the crest of our hill last night and unrolled my sleeping bag. I lit a fire under the stars, listened to the coyotes yipping in the field below, watched the beneficent moon inscribe her graceful arc through the night. When I awoke this morning, my hair damp with dew, the first streaks of crimson were just appearing on the horizon. I lay alone in my tiny tent, silent, serene, looking out across the mountains with a heart full of gratitude — for all that was, and also for all that is. This world. This life. This day.

Thank you, dear friends, for the week full of wonderful birthday wishes and, too, for sharing the precious gifts of your lives with me. I cherish your comments and am in awe of the power of words to bring us close, to weave such marvelous threads of connection through our hearts and minds.

A few days ago Kristen at Motherese wrote about finding flow in her running this summer, and I understand exactly what she means. There is something about the rhythmic exercise of moving through space at your own speed, on your own two strong legs, that is liberating, exhilarating, and immensely satisfying. I love being out in the world before anyone else is up, love running all alone down the very middle of the road, even love the fact that, after four weeks of practice, I’ve shaved a few minutes off my time.

Three weeks from Saturday, I’ll be walking 26. 2 miles in the Dana Farber Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk, raising money in memory of my dear friend Diane, who died of ovarian cancer last October. Knowing that every mile logged and every training hour put in is preparing me for the challenge has given me a great sense of purpose. I’m not just getting up before dawn for myself, I’m doing it for a cause, and that makes a difference, too. I’ve happily run in the rain and in the dark, walked ten miles all alone, pushed myself up hills I’ve never tackled before and, in the process, worn out one good pair of shoes. I’m also a bit more confident that when the day comes, I’ll be able to go the distance.

As summer draws to a close, I find myself, as usual, regretting all the things I didn’t do. I’m sorry that I didn’t read poetry in the hammock or set up the tent in the back yard. I wish we’d had more dinners on the porch, more swims in the pond, more fires on the hilltop, at least one picnic, or campout, or barbeque. Next week both boys will head back to school; already I feel the sense of loss that arrives with every Labor Day, as predictable as the first cool mornings, the spikes of goldenrod alongside the road, the symphonic thrum of crickets. The change of season is definitely bittersweet for me, the shorter days a reminder that this existence of ours is as transient as a summer cloud.

“The spiritual path,” writes Pema Chodron, “has always been learning how to die. That involves not just death at the end of this particular life, but all the falling apart that happens continually.” At fifty-two, I am constantly butting up against the fact that I can never hold on to anything, that nothing good ever lasts quite as long as I want it to, and that no matter how old I get or how “grown up” I should be by now, the letting go doesn’t get a whole lot easier.

Heading out in the morning, watching the sun come up over the mountains, the dawn light illuminating the mist as it drifts up from the valley, I am stopped in my tracks, simply by the sight of the sky. A sky, as my friend Lindsey says, “whose light comes from beyond the reach of our eyes.” How magnificent it all is: the beauty of another day’s beginnings, this cosmic offering that is ours for the taking, 365 days a year. Not a day goes by when I’m not pierced by some awareness of loss and time passing. But I’m learning to linger, too, in this place of gratitude. I think it really is the answer: we can live all curled up in our dark holes of regret, or we can rise up and stretch our limbs out into the beauty that is all around us. We can claim it as our own.

There all sorts of good reasons to wake up early. For me, the best reason is simply the opportunity to be present for a little longer, to welcome the sun coming up over the mountains, to notice how it appears just a bit later each morning, rises ever so slightly further to the south, alters the quality of the light, turns the season almost imperceptibly toward fall. These changes, these small deaths, are part of a vast choreography of impermanence. Gratitude is the awakened heart’s response to this eternal dance of life and death, this whirling dance of change. And so I’m choosing to focus on what is, and to be grateful for all the things I did manage to do this summer. I’ve walked and run for miles. I’ve grown stronger, healthier, faster. I’m nearly half-way to my fund-raising goal and determined to raise nearly three thousand more dollars before September 18. Meanwhile, I’ll keep running. I run for the exercise, for the joy of it, for the cause my friend believed in and, most of all, because I know how lucky I am that I still can.

If you wish to contribute to my Jimmy Fund walk in Diane’s memory, or in honor of a loved one, you may give in one of two ways:
• Visit my fundraising page at the Walk web site and follow the instructions to make a gift online.
• Write a check payable to “Jimmy Fund Walk.” On the memo line, write: “Dana Farber Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.” Send it directly to me at: Katrina Kenison Lewers, 101 Middle Hancock Rd, Peterborough, NH 03458.

Thank you, my friends. I couldn’t do it without you!