“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” — Deepak Chopra
If I keep my eyes closed and listen, I could be five again. Tucked into the warm nest of early morning darkness, the blanket pulled to my chin, I drift, half awake, lulled by the familiar sounds of my parents in the next room. My father’s hushed voice. My mother’s brief, small cough. A shared laugh, quiet and intimate as a kiss. The clink of a coffee cup on the table. A murmured conversation punctuated by silences and then resuming, like waves rolling softly ashore. The two of them, their togetherness, now and always, for as far back as I’ve been alive. This, I know, is a kind of happiness. And so I give myself over to the sweetness of the moment, trying to take it in fully, to tuck it away for safekeeping so that someday I might gently take it out again, cup it in both hands, and remember.
Here’s a memory from long ago. I’m pretty sure I actually was five on this particular afternoon, which is to say I was old enough to know better and yet young enough, still, to be sent to my room after lunch for a nap, or a “rest” as my grandmother would have said in her kindly way, trying to make this despised solitary confinement a bit more palatable. (It occurs to me that if I was five my grandmother would have been 61, younger than I am now, although, to my child self she seemed very old. Funny, that, since to my own adult self at 64, I still feel young.)
I did not need to be tucked in, which meant there was no one there to see me climb onto the bed without removing my brand new patent leather Mary Janes. I scootched over to the far side and swung my legs up the wall, the better to lie back and admire my shiny new shoes with their thin straps and elegantly rounded toes.
The first black scuff mark, surely, was an accident. Who knew that the heel of a shoe would leave a dark, indelible print on a freshly papered bedroom wall? Not I. But there it was, in fact there they were, a pair of them. Two perfectly shaped half-moons had appeared beneath my feet as if by magic.
I’ve thought of this moment so many times over the course of my life, that hovering instant between innocence and guilt, when I could have called out to my grandmother, confessed my mistake, apologized, and offered to take a damp cloth to those two small marks amid the pale pink flowers on her guestroom wall.
But for some reason I could not fathom then or now, I did not call out. Whatever shock or remorse I might have felt with the first two black marks yielded to a more powerful, primitive impulse. Slowly, quietly, with a kind of mindless determination, I began to scissor my legs back and forth against the wall. When one area was done to my satisfaction, I shimmied myself over to the next clear space and carried on, until the entire expanse of wallpaper along the bed was covered with my terrible handiwork, a shocking constellation of black heel prints and tiny roses.
I don’t remember how I was punished for this act of desecration, although I most surely was. Oddly, I don’t remember anything else about my crime or its aftermath except the sense of having been almost unconscious while committing it, and then the dawning horror as my brain switched back on and I absorbed the full import of what I’d done. My budding conscience had failed me completely.
Perhaps my grandmother was able to wash away the marks, but honestly, nearly sixty years later, I have no idea. What remains indelible is the memory of my own wickedness followed by a tidal wave of embarrassment and regret. I’m pretty certain I decided, then and there, that going forward I would be good. Shame is transforming, and I was most certainly shaped by it that day. There would be no more black marks on walls, nor on my record, of that I was certain. It might have been the first entirely self-aware decision of my life.
When my grandparents died and their house was sold, the small spindle bed in which I spent so many nights of my childhood was one of the few pieces of furniture my mother kept. She had slept in it herself as a child. Rather than send the bed off to Goodwill, she had my dad take it apart and tuck it away in the attic. Maybe, someday, it would be of use again.
And so it is.
I didn’t intend, when I last wrote here in February of 2022, to let a whole quiet year go by. I’m tempted to say life got complicated and I got busy and to leave it at that. But the truth is a bit more nuanced. So many things began to shift and change over the last year that I couldn’t imagine writing about events as they unfolded. For the first time ever, I had no desire to write at all. It was all I could do to show up and live each day with some attempt at presence and grace.
But now, as the winter’s last snow melts and the first green shoots push their way through the damp earth, I find my writerly self tentatively stirring to life, too. Yes, there’s more to say than can possibly be put into a blog post. But my friend Jena’s recent email entitled “What Goes Into a Week” inspired me to make a short list of my own. It’s not everything, not by a long shot, but it feels like a way back onto the page and, I hope, back into our conversation here, which I’ve missed very much
This year brought upheaval, sadness, and loss around my parents’ painful but wise decision to leave their beloved home and move into an apartment in a retirement community. It brought me their beautiful house to care for and manage. It brought grief every time I walked through their door, only to be reminded that my mom was no longer puttering in the kitchen, that my dad wasn’t reading in his chair, that they were no longer there at all. It brought the emotional work of learning to be in their house without wishing to roll back time.
This year brought me a new job, of landlord, and a succession of renters who have become friends. It brought me a sense of my own mortality and many questions about what’s next.
This year brought ripples and repercussions from both of our grown sons’ challenges. It brought struggles with depression, anxiety, hearing loss, and addiction. It brought help, recovery, sobriety, and fresh starts. It brought each of them home for long visits.
This year brought Jack back to live with us for seven months and it brought the unexpected but welcome development of him taking a job in his dad’s business. It brought his dog Carol into all our hearts.
It brought Jack to settle into an apartment nearby and to renewed connections with his grandparents. This year brought Henry a permanent position as a college professor, a newfound resilience, self-confidence, and certainty about his path.
There were hard times. There were sleepless nights and difficult conversations. There was also healing, growth, and a deeper kind of honesty.
This year brought many, many family gatherings. It brought dinners around the fire, dinners on the porch, breakfasts with my dad, long heart-to-hearts with my mom, long walks with everyone, a full house from June through February, and more shopping and cooking than I’ve ever done in my life.
This year brought broken pipes and gutted walls and weeks of mess. It brought drought-damaged lawns and brutal blizzards and too many days without power. It brought the grim task of throwing away every single thing in the refrigerator, followed by the pleasure of starting over again from scratch.
This year brought spectacular sunrises, sunsets, and rainbows, a nest of baby robins, a garden full of hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. The best peonies ever. Home-grown salads from May through November. The driest summer. The loveliest fall. Beauty and destruction, all of which, of course, are part of life.
This year brought a leisurely week with my husband exploring E.B. White country along the coast of Maine. It brought a joy-filled hiking and stitching adventure to England with my soul daughter, a visit to New York City and a long-awaited return to Broadway shows with Henry, a week in a cabin on a lake with my mom, an 87th birthday party for my dad.
What I remember most, looking back, are these moments of togetherness and happiness, all the many reasons we found to pinch ourselves, celebrate, and give thanks.
This year brought Covid. Or, rather, Lauren and I brought Covid back with us from England. Everyone in the house got the virus, and I was sick on my birthday, but at least we were all quarantined under one roof. My parents gamely came over for a chilly outdoor visit and Lauren made me a cake and strung balloons in my bedroom and made sure I felt pampered and cherished and showered with love.
This year brought many reminders that families are defined not by blood so much as by the strength of connections woven over time, by a mutual commitment to truth and kindness, by a sense of kinship and a willingness to show up for each other, come what may. This year brought tensions of all kinds and, in the end, it brought tighter family ties, both chosen and biological.
This year brought some painful reckonings and necessary revisions to a 35-year marriage. It brought renewed commitment and a clearer sense of where to compromise, when to stand firm, how to let go. It brought, on my part, some deep personal work that has both shaken me and strengthened me in ways I continue to explore. It brought me my Enneagram type (Number 9, the Peacemaker). It brought me much needed hope and hard-won clarity. I’ve learned a lot.
This year brought thousands of tiny stitches in cloth. In a world that often seems to be moving too fast, I’ve found respite in slowness, beauty in softness, and delight in using my hands in a simple, practical way. Sitting quietly with my needle and thread has become both a creative outlet and a profoundly satisfying way to connect with my own quiet center.
This year brought the little girl who once wreaked silent havoc at naptime back to sleep in that very same bed, nearly sixty years later. It brought a sense of just how long it takes to become the person one aspires to be. It brought the unanticipated delight of getting to be a guest in my parents’ new apartment, of having them all to myself at dinner, and then hugging them each goodnight and going off to stay in a lovely little room down the hall. It brought me a chocolate on my pillow (thank you, Mom), and coffee delivered by my early-rising dad as soon as he saw my light flick on at 6. It brought the full-circle moment that inspired me to write this essay.
This year brought a deeper awareness of life’s fleetingness. It brought me to my knees and it made my heart soar. And along the way it tested me as a mother, as a daughter, as a wife, as woman. This year brought powerful reminders that to live in this world is to learn how to meet what is painful even as we choose, again and again, to turn toward what is beautiful and good and lasting. And that, of course, is love.
I have not reviewed all the things that have happened in my life this year but it is a good idea to go back and look at all the events that have made your life special. It makes you appreciate your relationships. It makes you stop and think how your journey affects you and those around you. This is a big one for me. IMy daughter is expecting next month which will make me a grandmother before my 70th birthday. My husband retires this year as well. Big changes will occur in my life through no efforts of my own. I look forward to these monuments changes in my life. I am excited. I am thrilled. I look forward to a new and amazing journey to come.
Oh how I’ve missed your words Katrina Kenison. I may never meet you in person, but I consider you my soul friend. Lovely to be with you again.
This is exactly how I feel!
Exactly…
Exactly.
Exactly
Same. So much the same.
As always, your writing brings thoughts into my mind. Sometimes that’s just what I need to remember, to appreciate and to enjoy what life has to offer.
I’ve missed your musings. It’s good to have you back.
The theme for lent at my church is finding beauty in the brokenness which is something you gift to us in your writing. Thank you.
Beautiful. Thank you for writing again
I don’t have to tell YOU (again) how thrilled I am that you decided it was time to write, or how your thoughts always manage to land on the readers’ hearts in ways you might not even know. I loved what Wendy Wyatt wrote on Facebook: “So grateful you found the bond with pen and paper again.” Yes! I’ll never forget your Covid birthday, or how I still found you to be the easiest person to celebrate, even while you were sick. Love you so.
I am so grateful to hear from you and unsurprised by the glorious way you can weave meaning out of life’s challenges and mess. Thank you, thank you, hank you. xoxo
Oh how I love your translated thoughts! So many quotable lines and how it conjures memories of my own transitions from childhoods o adulthood to now! Thank you for your honesty.
Writer Zadie Smith said, “Writing means being overheard.” We hear you, Katrina! And we relate to the challenges and blessings faced in the 6th decade of life – caring for elderly parents, navigating complexities with adult children, and tending to long-term marriage. All in a complex and stressful culture. We are dancing the complicated minuet with you! Thank you for the encouragement towards balance, beauty and love.
P.S. So happy to recognize you on an episode of The Lost Kitchen! 🙂 So glad you were cherished in that special place!
Lucky me! This year brought you to Ojai and to our home. We all loved our long overdue visit with both you and Steve eating locally picked greens and kumquats!
Katrina, I join the chorus of others who are grateful for your return to this space. The gift of your words is always a reminder to notice the sacredness in our “ordinary” lives and the grace of living through these seasons of life with the people we love.
You always bring such a gentle and thoughtful presence to this strange internet space, a space so often marked by clanging drums and butting heads, and I imagine you bring that same gracious spirit into the “real” world as well. You are indeed, as your Ennegram number confirms, a peacemaker.
So perfectly said.
Oh Katrina. I am SO glad to see your post. I thought of you often over this last year really missing reading your wonderful words. Thank you for connecting with us again. I hope it is ok to send hugs.
I’m so happy to see you back on the page, Katrina. Your beautiful and wise words always lift me and encourage me—and all of us—to find the good.
Dear Katrina, It’s such a delight to read your lovely words again and to see you so gracefully honor both the beautiful and the very difficult parts of life. I’m so glad you’re writing again! xoxo Kate
I have missed your beautiful words Katrina! Thank you for writing again and sharing snippets of a monumental year. I too have had a year of many changes including the return of an adult son dealing with mental health issues. I feel it has been a time of healing and growth after much pain, fear and uncertainty. I am glad your family has found healing too.
Glad to hear your voice again…your writing always invites me back into my self.
How lovely! What a surprise, because I just thought, yesterday, how I haven’t seen anything from you in quite a while and then today, here you are!
Beautiful words, as always.
Earlier this week I thought of Katrina and wondered if she had stopped writing. What a delightful surprise to find this in my inbox!
Thank you, Katrina for sharing with us.
We have all missed you. I put aside the recipe I was making when I glanced at my email and saw your name.
Stop everything, go sit, take a breath, slow down and take in all of Katrina’s words. Read again, so as to not miss a thing. A quiet reading meditation and always a joy to find in my email, and just what I needed.
I had Covid a few weeks ago, fully vaccinated, no virus for three years, and then bam, isolation, pain, cough and then recovery. I found peace and comfort in my days of isolation by reading from the start “Moments of Seeing.” They say there is Covid brain fog but your passages were as clear as can be, again, just what I needed. Thank you Katrina.
Janet
Gorgeous piece. Onward, my lady!🙏❤️
I have thought of you often over the past year……missing your words and how they land in smack dab in my heart. It was with childlike
excitement that I opened your email. Thank you so much for your beautiful soul-sharing. It is a gift beyond measure!
I have been checking my emails for awhile now, convinced I must have missed a new entry. So, I started to re-read Magical Journey, just to hear your words again~yes they are that powerful. And today, what a surprise to see your post! Like catching up with an old friend, haha! Thank you.
Same here! A little embarrassed by the number of times I checked your website to see if I missed something. I must say I always welcome your thoughts about things being difficult and challenging even more than the things that are lovely. Challenges for me as well and it’s always nice to have such great company. I am so glad you decided to write, and like someone else said, I read it with the anticipation of a young child. Very much appreciate the photo, I think it looks like some of us.
Love this prompt of This year brought….
I will write on this considering this year was one of a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and miraculous recovery…. and living on well with tremendous gratitude with renewal of my life.
❤️
Thank you, Jana!
Thanks for your communication with all of us again! I’ve always enjoyed your truthful, inciteful writing and it inspired me through being a new mom and now being a mom with 20-somethings! Thanks and keep up all the great work! It is all so worth it and you are loved!
Oh Katrina, thank you so much for taking up your pen again. Know that you are not alone as I too navigated a year of elderly mother, a long marriage, and an alcoholic son. These stressors are not what any of us projected when we got married and planned for that darling baby. As winter fades to spring I find a sense of hope and see glimmers of what could be. I face firmly toward the future while standing on the experiences of the past. These experiences inform but do not direct what is to come. On good days it is hope and love that sustain me. On dark days it is one breath at a time and the support of loved ones that move me forward. Thank you again for sharing.
Hi Katrina,
Lovely to hear from you again on tge Net. Simple, but touching writing as always, that means different things to different people and awakens different memories. Thank you
It’s so lovely to read your writing again, Katrina. As always I feel my breathing grow a little deeper and my heart open a little wider as your way of sharing what’s real and present in your life invites me to consider what is real and present in mine. So much gratitude.
So glad to see you writing again. Your words always comfort me.
Katrina I thought about you often over the last year, wondering how you were and what was going on with you. I figured it had to be something. I’m glad to hear that you have been able to move through the many events and challenges and find the joy within. It was great to hear from you again… thank you so much…blessings to you and all your loved ones.
❤❤❤❤
Missed your words. As usual they touch my soul. Thank you.
I have missed your words. I am so glad to hear from you again. It is amazing what can happen in 12 short months.
I’m so happy you are writing again. I’ve missed your words – but even more I’ve missed the way you embrace and make sense of all the complexity of life. I’m sorry this year has been so difficult – but as always I’m in awe of your ability to make something beautiful of it. My best friend is going through so many of the things you wrote about so the first thing I did was buy her your books.
You used the word “healing” which is such a soothing word that completely belies how brutal and breathless and lonely real healing is. You, my friend, are a true healer. With your actions, with your words, and with your being. Thank you. ❤️
For what it’s worth, I’m also a 9. And it gave me much peace (and maybe healing) for every time someone has criticized me for not being more decisive, for always asking people what they want to do, and for trying to tie a neat bow around something that needs to be exposed as a mess. Which makes me love that you made so many patent show marks in the wallpaper:) You were just a tiny soul who wanted to see what would happen next … which is always how I feel after reading your words. Xoxo
That was simply beautiful. I’m glad you were able to give yourself a break. It’s a difficult thing for women to do.
Wishing you peace and happiness!
Oh Katrina. I have missed your beautiful writing. I found myself smiling and crying all at the same time as I read your words. Thank you
I was so happy to see your email, couldn’t wait to read and it’s like talking to an old friend, every word. Life is a daily blessing and a struggle at times. Family is everything, all connected yet all with their own lives. Our memories shape us, ones that may come to mind in our darkest times while in deep reflection. Your words flow of life so easy and meaningful, and brings to your readers minds the importance of our being, the relationships shared and the time we make to nurture souls…thank you for your beautiful writings. I look forward to more…you are a blessing!
your year echoes so much of so many, as you lift the quotidian, the real, into the sacramental. that’s what i have always loved about your writing, and your soul: you lift up the gossamer threads of life, and we see them shimmering. threads we might otherwise let pass unnoticed. but under your lens, we are moved to scan our own lives with the gentle awareness of how much beauty there is in the light and the shadow. and, yes, there always is shadow. i’m sorry for the heartaches the year brought you, but as with all wise souls you allowed them to become wisdom teachers. bless you. bless your gossamer threads…..
So glad youre writing and sharing your soul again. Your words cast such a lovely harmony on how I’m also feeling about life. Thanks for this. It was a lovely pickup today.
Thank you for your letter and welcome back. It is encouraging to realize we are not alone in the chaos of life. So often it seems everyone else has a perfect life while mine is a mess. So thankful for the ups and downs even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. Happy Spring – looking forward to new beginnings.
So grateful you are writing again. I’ve missed your beautiful words. <3
I feel I’ve found a new (fellow writer) friend, introduced to me by one of my dearest friends of 45 years. It’s clear, by all the comments, you and your words are treasures. Glad you’re offering your words to the world, now from a richer, deeper vein of Love. “For everything there is a season…”
We are all “tested” as whoever and wherever we are, every day in one way or many, Yes, as father, husband, brother, grandfather, in-law, friend and neighbor as well as citizen and animal on planet earth. How we measure up may not be whether we succeed or fail but rather how we seize life’s opportunities to be and do better. Maya Angelou had it right when she said, ““Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Wonderful!! Please keep writing.
As soon as I finished readying this – with a little tear falling – I thought “I could have written this” which was quickly qualified by “but it would have been bullet points“! What I mean is – so much resonates because I relate. So happy to read your words and take a moment to consider how to enter into Spring. ❤️
Thanks for taking the time to write again Katrina, beautiful as always. So many of your words resonated:addicition, challenge, healing, personal growth, and beauty. I find myself only wanting to read and be around people who are real, sharing both the joy and pain of life. Your authentic sharing is a healing and a welcome read.
This cut and pasted from your essay a year ago: “Do you know the famous line from the movie August: Osage County, “Thank God we can’t tell the future, we’d never get out of bed”? We laugh because it’s true, and yet get up we do, every single day, because the world in all its mystery and splendor awaits.” As difficult as it was at times, I am so glad you were able to get out of bed and meet head on the mystery and splendor the world had waiting for you. You have grown and we have grown because you so eloquently share with us. Thank you.
Thank you, as always, for your beautiful and powerful words. I have missed you, and have worried about you. What a gift to find you in my email and to be able to enjoy your writing again.
Aren’t memories an interesting thing? The randomness of what is recalled. You mentioned your shiny black Mary-Jane shoes and instantly Easters when I was young came flooding back to me. How thrilled I was to own those and how grown up I felt wearing them!
It also brought a memory I’d long forgotten of knowingly doing wrong- melting colored crayons on the dining room radiator, which looked so beautiful to me…but not to my fastidious mother when she found it!
Thanks Katrina, for sharing yourself in ways that open us all up deeply to our own selves and long-ago memories – as well as the moments to remember to cherish now…as they quickly pass by. xoxo
Oh Katrina, I needed your words this morning. The periodic resolve to tackle some aspect of life, particularly life with my husband, and to do it with a new level of honesty and stamina rang true. And how your words softened my heart. Thank you, thank you.
Thank you for all you shared, dear Katrina. I always love seeing mail from you and reading your heartfelt thoughts. I’ll sing back to you a song that helps me day by day: “My life flows on in endless song above all lamentation. I hear the near though far off hymn that hails a new creation. No storm can shake my inmost calm while to the rock I’m clinging. If love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?” I’m sure you know this old Shaker tune and the strong love theme.
Blessings on you and all you love – including your beautiful stitching!
Lydia
This has been one of the hardest years of my life, and your post prompts me to review my own year in the same way you have done so beautifully here. Certainly, there is meaning to be extracted from the mess. I’m so happy to see you back writing again.
I saved this post right away in my safari tabs, hoping to read the whole essay soon after it was posted. Just now reading it on Dec 31, and all of this resonates deeply with the past year for me. Hugs and hoping that 2023 has brought you greater peace.
Thanks as always for your beautiful words.