When our sons were young we had a tradition of spending a week each summer on Monhegan Island, eleven miles off the coast of Maine. For quite a few years we managed to get there right after school let out. Carrying coolers packed with food and bags full of books and sketchpads and crayons, we’d arrive on the ferry and then find our way on foot to some bare-bones rented cottage, a place I’d secured sight unseen the moment the year’s rental properties were offered, at nine a.m. each New Year’s Day. Sitting at my desk in the midst of…
It wasn’t much of a day for celebrating, this rainy Wednesday. In years past we’ve marked my husband’s June birthday with lobster dinners in Maine, or hiking with our boys and our friends on Monhegan Island. There have been poems written, surprise parties thrown, memorable gatherings around our porch table, cards and presents and cakes and people. But yesterday I could offer none of those things. I’d spent the day before having surgery on my face for a small skin cancer that required excision and some careful reconstruction, and as of yesterday morning I was still loopy from the anesthesia….
It’s a long way — in both miles and mindset — from the silent morning sadhana at Kripalu to my parents’ house in Florida, where my family convenes each March for our sons’ spring break. By the time I arrived last Saturday night, fresh from my month of yoga immersion, Steve and Jack were already here and in full vacation mode — tennis, hot tub, read, swim, more tennis. Henry’s plane landed an hour after mine, and then, for a couple of perfect, too-short days, we were all here, making meals, reading our books, playing Scrabble, hanging out with my…
February 20, 2011 – 2:52 pm
I have had it only a few times, a sudden sense of arriving at my own front door, of being home without even knowing that I’d been away. I felt it twelve years ago, when I first unrolled a yoga mat in the back corner of the Baron Baptiste Power Yoga Studio in Cambridge. Never mind that the room was heated to 102 degrees and I’d dressed, unwittingly, in sweatpants and a heavy, long-sleeved shirt. Never mind that I couldn’t bend over and come any where close to touching my toes, that I had no idea what a downward-dog was,…
January 8, 2011 – 11:28 am
I confess: I haven’t gotten my 2011 calendar set up yet. I’m still straddling my old green desk planner and the spiffy new system that promises to turn me into a better- organized, more productive human being, if I would only take the time to create the to-do lists and break my projects down into next actions and manageable steps. (Maybe tomorrow. . .) But I do have my books organized. Last weekend, I took every single volume off the shelves in my office and began a sorting process — the first step, for me, into new work for the…
