Kindness and Heart

It’s been awhile. I didn’t mean to take a break from these posts. It was actually lovely that people noticed and someone asked me if I was ok.  It’s nice to have people care about you and sometimes I imagine people out there thinking negative things rather than actually looking forward to seeing what’s going on and what I might share.  Well, this is not the turn I was expecting.  Down with negativity!

That’s one of the things I’ve loved about learning to write poetry.  The “turn,” the part where something unexpected happens, that, as the saying goes, “no surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”  So, writing about negativity was an immediate turn, not one that happened after a few pages or towards the end of a poem.

One of the best examples of a “turn” is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130.  He talks about his mistress in all kinds of negative ways like “If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head… And in some perfumes is there more delight/Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks…” and then ends with “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare.”

So, surprises. The thing I like about writing is that at its best, you get to something you didn’t expect.

One thing I certainly didn’t expect was that after having fun writing about walking in my January 2024 post, I would tear my meniscus (cartilage) in my left knee about a week later and be unable to walk for about three months.  Walking consisted, for the first few months, largely of lurching from one piece of furniture to the next.  Lurching is such a great word.

I’m not sure what that all means or if it even makes sense to look for meaning in that, but I realized that walking is my happy place and I’m blessed to have several parks near me and mostly what’s fun is that they’re wild (old growth) and even the not so wild one (Fort Tryon Park where the Cloisters are) has hills and little stone steps that lead to hidden paths where one can just wander.  I know my sister is the same way, walking in New Hampshire and metabolizing whatever is going on and she now delights in walking two golden retriever puppies.  So, you’d think I’d have more time, which I did at first.  Without my afternoon walks the world felt heavy and time dragged, and I thought “what am I supposed to do now?”  I’ve always wanted time to be bored and to not have too much to do but this was different, like a physical ennui of painful inability to get out of my own way.  And the further irony was I’d think “why are you not making Substack posts?”  And I did write a few but I didn’t have the emotional energy to post them.  So perhaps it was a hibernation, a retreat, like Katherine May’s Wintering, where you just need some time.  This is a little garbled because it was also hard to process my feelings when I couldn’t walk, so it was like sitting with a load of crap that wouldn’t move.

So, I guess back to negativity.  And now also thanks to physical therapy and a steroid injection in my knee, I’m able to walk again, hopefully unfettered.  My vision of retirement is of writing and of walking, long endless walks in woods and streets, and just letting myself go wherever my feet take me and exploring, going for long walks in the country with my sister in New Hampshire and some slow walks with my ninety-three-year-old mother, also in New Hampshire, from her room in her now higher level of care in a retirement community to the raised bed garden outside that my sister made her. My mother’s ability to just walk is what keeps her going and that’s been imperiled by a number of physical issues.  She now sits with her walker and watches the plants.  We had to move her to a higher level of care and my sister brilliantly chose a room that overlooks her garden and even bought her binoculars so she can look.  Another turn, I never thought I’d say this and most of us want not to be like or mothers, but I’d love to have the zest to keep on walking and looking at a garden at age 93. 

So, heart, that’s where I’m going next. A friend recently wrote me the most wonderful birthday greeting. She wrote “happy birthday to my brilliant and beautiful friend … but your superpower is kindness!” That made me tear up and was exactly what I needed.

I recently had to give a talk, was honored to be asked to give a talk at work which was a lifetime achievement talk.  It took much of my emotional space for the last month.  It felt like being before an audience of a somewhat dysfunctional family, many layers and years of both beautiful friendships and some very difficult relationships and some people at work had been quite nasty.  Someone was going to be in the audience who’d said of a talk I’d given a few years before “you’re too much of a girl.”  I unfortunately didn’t ask what that meant, so it was left to fester a bit.

I was asked to talk not just about my research but about any wisdom, hardships, things to impart to younger people starting out.

I imagined a hostile audience and ok that says more about me than anything else, and in some cases that was true. But, I remembered what my friend said about kindness and what someone had said about my being all heart, and just kind of relaxed and went with that.  A friend talked to me about gratitude and focusing on that while I was speaking.  So, thanks to a number of people who listened to me practice and thanks to myself for letting myself practice when it was just being born and not yet a coherent story, and for the opportunity before I retire to go back and read papers I wrote thirty years ago and to be able to publicly thank so many people and lead with “this is a love letter to the people I have worked with.”  So, my therapist would call it “transference” to assume negativity on the part of others, and so finally, finally I was able to enjoy and see the positivity and oh, I had a new haircut and learned to put curls in my hair (something an audience member immediately noted and we talked curly products in the front row before my talk) and a great outfit and thanks to several friends, one for endless shopping, another on the west coast for a zoom clothing try on, and my daughter for her excellent clothing consultation.  More on shopping in another post, clearly a topic on its own. And a huge thank-you to my daughter for making the illustration of “write with a feather and a heart.”

Thanks, it’s great to be “back” and I look forward to talking to you more!

It’s fun to communicate with you.

Pam