Cindy on May 20th, 2010
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning.” — John O’Donohue
It started off as a horrific week. My Web site was attacked by a malicious virus, requiring several days of tedious repairs (and I’m still not finished with the archives yet). Later that same day, my dermatologist removed five pre-cancerous patches from my skin. It got a little worse than that, but I won’t go there. It’s enough to say that everything seemed to be eating away at me all at once, or was trying to shed itself.
Regardless, I was making plans for my garden this morning when I was struck with an overwhelming sense of grace and peace. Which shouldn’t surprise me.
My worry list always seems less significant when I breathe deeply in a garden. Working the soil, I forget about midlife health issues, household chores, film bookings, aging parents, unfinished projects, and what I should try to publish next. I forget about blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I forget about all those outdated magazines piling up next to the bed, unread. I turn off the endless loop of chatter from the outside world.
Weeding the Zen garden, I am fully engaged in the moment. Clearing space around the stepping stones, I consider summer’s possibilities. I feel the green stirring of something new, though I cannot name it yet. This Celtic blessing says it all. – CL
For a New Beginning
by John O’Donohue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
–Reprinted from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue, Doubleday Religion, 2008. Special thanks to Sharon of One Woman’s Life in Maine for sharing this beautiful poem with me.
Cindy on September 18th, 2009
There’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Somebody once said that high school is “the mouse race that prepares you for the rat race,” and I suppose there’s a glimmer of truth in that. Like a pair of cruel shoes, my high school days were among the most painful in my life.
I attended a public high school in the early 1970s. In those days, especially if you lived in a small Midwestern town, conformity was key. So there I was, a flat-chested drama club nerd and closet poet in a school where accomplished jocks and curvy cheerleaders ruled. Social life typically revolved around Friday night football or basketball games — but I had to fake any interest in sports. Trying to fit in, I tried out for the drill team but was chosen as an alternate, which meant I had to make all the practices and learn the routines, but I didn’t get to perform at the games unless another member was ill.
Come to think of it, I felt like an imposter throughout most of high school.
My real definition of “teamwork” was shopping for props and costumes for the school plays. And I adored the drama teacher. Not surprisingly, a lot of kids snickered behind his back, secretly questioning his sexual orientation. I still credit him and my humanities teacher for making high school bearable and interesting.
But the English teacher took a serious dislike to me. Of course, it didn’t help that I sat with chatty classmates and talked too much in literature class. Regardless, this teacher doubted my budding writing skills, and wrongly accused me of plagiarizing a term paper on the subject of medieval chivalry — a subject I loved and read about voraciously. She nearly flunked me out of senior English, which pulled my GPA down a peg or two. Not to mention my pride.
In other words, in high school I received little encouragement for the things I truly loved and excelled in. To their credit, my parents had tried early on to send me to a private school that specialized in the arts. I had been courted and accepted by the arts school, but chickened out at the last minute.
Before I go on, I need to insert here that I met some of my very best friends in junior high and high school. I also began dating Doug, the sweet guy who’d later become my husband (and still is), in my sophomore year. You’d think I would consider those years The Best Ever. But they were not.
Twenty years after graduation, I remained so embittered by my high school experience that I wrote a downer of an essay for the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine. The essay chronicled the awful time I had at the high school reunion Doug and I attended in 1992. Unfortunately, the reunion took place a mere three weeks after the sudden death of my beloved father, and I was in no mood to party with anyone.
Reading between the lines now, I realize that the Free Press essay (which is reprinted in my book, Writing Home) really wasn’t about the 20-year reunion. Though I wrote about feeling awkward in a roomful of grown-up classmates, my unease had little to do with them — and everything to do with repressed grief and the ghosts of my own insecurities. More than anything, I think I was trying to explain how sorry I felt for the creative girl inside me who had struggled to emerge in high school.
So it might come as a surprise when I tell you that lately I’ve been reconnecting with former schoolmates on Facebook — and genuinely enjoying it.
It all began last year when I found Robert, the free-spirited guy who played opposite my lead in the all-school play in 1971. My favorite memory of Robert is the time he and I staged a protest after one of our dress rehearsals got canceled on short notice; we’d been told to move our entourage elsewhere, since the school auditorium was needed for an athletic event. Enraged, Robert and I led a small march (I think there were four of us) to the local school board, ranting all the way about how sick we were of playing second fiddle to the basketball team. On Facebook, I was thrilled and proud to discover that Robert had moved to Chicago, where he became an award-winning journalist and author with several fine books to his credit.
Of course, once you crack open a few pages on Facebook, it’s hard to stop.
Before long, I started hearing from other schoolmates. Earlier this summer, Colleen contacted me to ask why I had stopped writing my column in the local newspaper. I was flattered to learn she’d been reading it for years. When she “friended” me on Facebook, Colleen said she wondered if I would remember her. As she explained it, she’d been “a rebel” in high school, and we didn’t hang with the same crowd. But I did remember. And even though I was a drama nerd, I’d always secretly admired the “rebels.” Unlike the jocks, who were too frigging cool to dress up in costumes, some of the rebels had the guts to try out for the school plays.
From beauty queens to band nerds, my classmates are a fascinating bunch now, and I’m proud of them. Their profiles and family photos reveal that they’ve crafted rich and interesting lives over the past 37 years. One is a psychotherapist; another is a fitness instructor; several work in education, finance, and medicine. Some even share my political opinions, and it’s been fun airing our views in private messages. Others, having been through their own share of medical crises, are at the ready to help with mine. Last week, when I mentioned in my Facebook status that I was struggling to find a neurologist for my mother, several friends sent recommendations — complete with addresses and phone numbers.
All said and done, midlife is a lot more fun than adolescence. It makes us kinder to each other. It sharpens our perspective and thickens our skin — wrinkles and sags be damned.
Like my classmates on Facebook, I’ve endured several crises and turning points, and these have shaped the woman I am. I’ve given birth to an amazing son, come to terms with the loss of my father, and, more recently, watched my only uncle die a slow death from pancreatic cancer. I’ve survived two hip replacement surgeries and learned to walk again. I’ve driven my elderly mother to emergency rooms, and watched my son graduate from college. I’ve happily celebrated nearly 30 years of a nurturing marriage.
But it’s been years since I’ve cared enough to keep score. Grades, trophies, contests, degrees, salaries, and other so-called measures of achievement or popularity no longer mean much to me. Best of all, I’ve finally made peace with my inner drama queen, who now finds expression through writing and the visual arts. I give her free reign now. – Cindy La Ferle
Painting at top: “The Lady of Shalott,” by John William Waterhouse; The Tate Gallery
Cindy on July 1st, 2009
“No one really knows how you must change. Not even you. Not until you start.” — David Viscott, Risking
Working on our new/old house in St. Joseph last week, I spent a lot of time thinking about change, restoration, and reinvention. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957 — just a few years after I was born — the house (like me) needs a little updating. And so, nearly every week, my husband and I head west on the highway, then roll up our sleeves and go to work on the place. We patch roof leaks, polish cupboards, weed gardens, clean carpets, scrub rust stains from vintage bathtubs….
There’s a wonderful view of the St. Joseph River from the house, too, and I like to admire it when I take breaks from my chores. Watching the parade of boats on their pleasure trips, I thought about how my middle-aged friends and I are all in some phase of transition.
Many are journalists or automotive workers who’ve lost jobs or are facing major career detours. Some of us have just gotten used to the freedom of the empty nest, yet suddenly find ourselves caring for our elderly parents. A few are convinced that the river of change will lead us to new and exciting adventures, while others aren’t quite sure where to steer next.
But this much I know for certain: It’s hard to slow the current when our culture keeps urging us on to the next big thing; when we’re valued more for what we achieve than for who we are.
I’ve also discovered that renovating an old house is a lot easier than reinventing yourself (or your career) midstream. But as the poet Rilke advised, sometimes we need to pull back from our busyness and “live the questions.” And so, as the river tells me, I’ll let myself drift awhile, and simply take in the view.
Cindy La Ferle is author of Writing Home, an essay collection on home and family topics. She blogs weekly at Cindy La Ferle’s Home Office.
– Photo of the St. Joseph River, by Doug La Ferle –
Cindy on March 12th, 2009
The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Four miles long and ½ mile wide, the narrow island of Captiva is where Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote the beloved inspirational classic, Gift from the Sea. Last spring, I finally made my pilgrimage to Captiva. Returning home with the requisite souvinir shells, I wrote a reflective essay on how Lindbergh’s words continue to inspire me in midlife. The essay is reprinted in this week’s Midpoint column in The Oakland Press. I’d love to hear from other women whose lives were validated or changed by the timeless advice in this book. And if you haven’t read it yet, treat yourself to a copy. I promise you won’t be disappointed. –CL
*Previous Midpoint columns are archived with links to The Oakland Press (look under CATEGORIES in the “Browse” panel at right). These columns focus on issues of special interest to women between ages 40 and 65.
It started off as a horrific week. My Web site was attacked by a malicious virus, requiring several days of tedious repairs (and I’m still not finished with the archives yet). Later that same day, my dermatologist removed five pre-cancerous patches from my skin. It got a little worse than that, but I won’t go there. It’s enough to say that everything seemed to be eating away at me all at once, or was trying to shed itself.
