The Wisdom of Reflection

She Said


Dear Max,

We spoke this morning over breakfast about my new declarations and you suggested we discuss them in our next blog. I was planning on writing about sex, since that is always a hot topic between us and also in general -  next blog entry 


So I wrote these declarations to help me cope with and change my current thinking about myself, some of which does not serve me well.  These are the declarations I wrote after a couple things happened this week. Earlier this week I had my soul-searching conversation with Dwight. You and I talk and process on a daily basis, however sometimes we both gain insight from speaking with those who know us well, yet aren’t in the thick of our daily life.  Dwight is like an older brother to me and has the wisdom of a non-judgmental guru who mirrors back to me what he is hearing. This talk, an hour long, yet simple and heart-felt, was about the events that have been happening the past couple of months in our household and my sense at times that I’m losing my self in the “flurry of activity”,  as Dwight lovingly called it, going on at this point in our lives. 


A couple days later I posted something on facebook regarding a topic not pertaining to this at all and an old friend said I must be crazy. Well this hit me fast and furious and went straight to my heart  - me always wanting to be perceived as knowing what I’m doing. Perhaps I was still processing Dwight’s phone call and that’s why the crazy comment affected me so. After thinking over the call with Dwight and talking more with you here are my four declarations I wrote down and sent to several friends. I kept them simple. 


1. I am not crazy: I am a creative visionary and I embrace myself in that role. 


2. My life is full, yes, however I love everything I am doing because I am doing it all with purpose.


3. I have to let go of the past, and more importantly what the past looked and felt like, to deeply enjoy the present. 


4. Taking the time to sit and reflect each day will help me be more grounded in myself.


The first declaration basically helped me to get over myself and sort of gave me a job title –Visionary (Thank you for the word Max), however, over the past few days #3 declaration has been the one I have been pondering over more than the others which honestly surprised me. Letting go of the past to me has always been letting go of the parts of the past that I didn’t like; the parts that were painful, angry, and sad.  The negative is what I’ve focused on when putting yesterdays to rest. The profound insight that came to me this week is that holding onto the happy memories, and more significantly trying to re-create those happy old days, can be just at detrimental to being happy and satisfied in the NOW.  As Dwight reminded me, “NOW is all we have Denise.”


You and I have had so many sweet and wonderful times together over the past 28 years, and I especially remember our early courtship. By expecting you to always be 18 and mushy-in-love with me, writing love poems on a regular basis hindered me from fully enjoying the awesome man you’ve become. Oh I’d live in the present once in a while – when things were creatively new and then stay in my past loop trying to create that feeling again. 


I was doing the same thing with other areas of my life: mothering, working, cooking, homekeeping, etc, putting unrealistic expectations on myself. For example I’d think - I really wish I had more time to read to Stephen like I did with Maddy and Miranda. I’d like to be able to cook more for fun like I used to. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to be spontaneous and go into the city for a field trip like we did when the kids were young? I used to be able to keep up with the housework. Wouldn’t be it wonderful to have sex all weekend again and during the day? I focused on yesterday’s happiness, not realizing it kept me from seeing and feeling today’s joys. 


My new declarations are all connected, but #3 seems to be the golden key to unlocking a new door to my present and to finding happiness in every moment. Okay I’ll let you talk now :)

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He Said


Denise,

Wow.  Those are very powerful declarations and ones that I think anyone would do well to make and to follow.  They are very wise words and I believe that they present a winning formula for being the fullest possible expression of one’s self.

I am going to just pick out one thread that I see in these declarations and highlight it because I think it is an important item that often gets overlooked.  I believe that practicing non-judgment is a key spiritual practice and one that underlies your four powerful declarations.  While it is sometimes more straightforward to think about practicing non-judgment when we apply it to others, I think it is equally, if not more, important to apply the grace of non-judgment to ourselves.  Not judging others certainly releases unhelpful thoughts and energy, but doing away with the often extremely limiting judgments we make against ourselves can completely reshape our lives in a positive way.

So your making the shift from crazy to creative visionary in your self-speaking is going to make a huge positive shift in your life.  There was a fair amount of self-judgment tied up in your attempting to relive your past.  I know that you said the words “I feel bad” many, many times when talking about not being able to interact with Stephen in the same says that you did with his sisters.  Letting go of this expectation is going to allow new and wonderful interactions to blossom in every area of your life.

Thank you for sharing your revelations with me; I know that I have learned some very valuable things from you today.

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Still Holding Hands...

She Said:


October 10, 2011


Dear Max,

Our long hike yesterday to the Milford Bluffs, which overlook the Delaware, did us a world of good. We started out angry and annoyed at each other. I said to you as you plodded 10 feet ahead of me, “Can you pretend to be happy? And I’ll pretend to be a nice wife.” (Can I play the peri-menopause card?)You said there was always so much on your mind. So much that needs your attention.

I shouldn’t have started chattering first thing in the morning about my inspirational conversation I had with someone the previous day. Inspiring for me. Pushing buttons for you. I should have kept my mouth shut – it was Sunday and you didn’t want to think about life-changing directions.  Oh, but out on our hike the sun shone gloriously as we tried to find the path in the un-cleared meadow and a deer in the distant pranced over the tall grasses, snapping us out of our funk somehow. We enjoyed the quiet and solitude, finally holding hands and walking together after decompressing for a while. We came back to the car feeling like a connected couple, not a disgruntled angry pair.

I don’t think we’ve realized the stress of the past month. I’ve been trying to keep life as normal as possible for our family. Maybe I was wrong. Since Hurricane Irene with its mud and debris clean-up, your mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer, whirling us into a new uncharted storm. Two weeks later it became obvious that my grandfather was dying at close to 101 years old. It all is what it is.  Hard things happen, hard things overlap. I heard great quotes, “Nothing is overwhelming, it just is.”  Taking it one day at a time became our mantra. Looking more than a day ahead wasn’t working in the complexity of our life. There were days we ping-ponged between our emotional mothers, taking deep breaths ourselves to move on to needed to happen next that day.

Granddad died Sept 25^th, the last of our grandparents. I won’t lie that there weren’t moments of frustration and upset the past month. You kept your calm about you. I’m not sure how you do/did  that.  The balance I need. The balance we have created together. I love you as we continue on this journey your mom has to make. We’ll get through to the other side, still holding hands.

Xo-denise

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He Said:

Denise,

It is one of the greatest comforts of having a happy marriage and a functional relationship to have you by my side when we are faced with challenges like the ones that have been coming at us this past month.  I appreciate that you do not let us stay annoyed at each other for very long, even if the in the moment I am resistant and ornery at times…

I guess all these events have been putting the Big Switch to the test for me.  At the core of that shift and revelation was the joy that emanates from our relationship.  Just knowing that you are there for me no matter what and constant and unconditional in your love for me is what gives me the ability to stay steady and calm through the storms.

I am glad that I wrote a line about always holding hands into our wedding vows!

XOXO - Max

Water Street? Uhhh, yup...

He Said

Hurricane Irene brought us a first-time, and hopefully one-time, experience.  We witnessed a flash-flood and watched it come within inches of flooding the first floor of our house.  In the twenty minutes that elapsed between 2:00am and 2:20am on Sunday 8/28 a river magically appeared in front of our house where Water Street used to be.  We certainly have a deeper appreciation for the roots of that street name.

Thankfully, we were not affected too seriously by the flooding.  Our basement was nearly full to the brim so we lost a bunch of items that probably needed to be moved on anyway, a few power tools, a night’s sleep and a long day to doing the bulk of the muddy cleanup work.  Our yard and shed were flooded out a bit so again more items that we did not really need are out on the street for garbage pickup, a couple of Koi fish had an unplanned release into the wild and, worst of all, my motorcycle got muddy :)  Our furnace / hot water burner was submersed so that required a fairly substantial repair bill, but that was about the worst of it.

As with any experience that we approach in the right way, the Water Street Flash-Flood of 2011 had some good lessons to teach us.  So I am going to share a few little moments and messages that came through throughout the 48 hours or so of The Flood.

At around 2:15am, once Denise and I were both fully awake and fully cognizant of the fact that lots of water was rapidly accruing all around our house, and after a call to a friend who we look to for emergency information (sorry Paula and Marty), we started to figure out what to do next.  Marty had advised us to stay put until emergency personnel said otherwise and start moving valuables upstairs.  With aide of adrenaline that was rising along with the flood waters, Denise and I carried our electronic piano upstairs.  I drew on years of relationship experience and offered no argument whatsoever about doing this.  We quietly rushed around getting irreplaceable and electrical items to higher ground.  Although we had already started to consider the possibility of evacuating, as had now been suggested by the fire company, we did not yet want to wake the kids up.  We had enough presence of mind to realize that we still were a bit too panicked to present a calm and united front for Stephen.  Being able to keep each other from going too deep into the panic pit and helping each other to focus on making the right choices for our family despite the frightening circumstances was a practical and powerful affirmation of our love.

Although it was a very difficult decision to make, we did decide to evacuate to higher ground at around 3am.  Once we did this, we woke the kids up and in a matter of minutes everyone was in rain gear and wading through the stream to get our ride to a place to stay for the night.  The lesson here was on making a tough decision based on what was most important to us, the safety of our family, and sticking with it.  There were plenty of moments when we weren’t completely sure we had done the right thing, but we kept reassuring each other that we had.

Once the excitement had passed and we were back in our home, the lessons kept coming.  Denise,  I want to leave you some things to write about so I will just mention a couple.   I stayed home from work on Monday so that we could tackle the fairly daunting task of cleaning up our basement, shed and yard.  With the water gone, a half inch or so of fine silt/mud covered everything that had been flooded.  What impressed me about the cleanup day was seeing how effectively and harmoniously our family worked together to get a Herculean task done very quickly.  Nobody complained (I have to confess that Stephen went to a friend’s house for most of the day thereby removing the person who may well have complained a little bit :) and we all worked tirelessly and kept each other’s spirits up with gratitude and encouragement.

I will close with an allegorical lesson on the accumulation of stuff.  There is something about the threat of losing a good portion of our belongings that made me take stock of what was really important to me.  Seeing miscellaneous stuff in a soggy and muddy state strewn all over our yard, much of it memorabilia that was held on to “just because” gave me a graphic picture of the cost of clinging to stuff.  Contrariwise, the lighter feeling of looking on a mostly empty, mostly cleansed basement was satisfying and freeing.    I think that it is much the same with our minds and what we choose to focus our thought energy on.  When life brings you an expected event that challenges you to think with agility, or rethink things, you really don’t want a basement full of baggage slowing you down.  It can be the difference between sitting mired in a soggy, muddy mess, or spring-boarding from the experience into a better place.

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She Said


Max , the  ease with which we moved and supported each other struck me in each moment we had to make yet another choice. In a way we were living in the now , and despite the fear and worry there were moments of joy and happiness,  and even laughter.  The curses during clean-up we took with stride, not taking ourselves seriously, thinking this is annoying but everything is okay.

The memorabilia we found floating in the basement water,  or stuck in the mud, also added little joys into the process of clean-up, giving me incentive with each find:    photos of your great-grandfather, the pilot, I wiped down and let dry out,  the miniature dollhouse bathroom sink made by the father – lost and surprisingly found - I was thrilled to discover,  an expensive bottle of wine we were saving to try and sell for someone (it’s gone now – consumed! Instead of being called A Rothschild you called it Hurricane Wine), the word “light” on an angel card shining up at me from the dark, an unsinkable picture of Jesus - sending his message of love my way,  and my favorite find– the decorative Norman Rockwell plate called “The Couple’s Commitment.”  I smiled and took that as a sign that this event was one of those for ” better or for worse” times mentioned in wedding our vows.  I hosed off the plate decorated with a picture of a well-dressed young couple sitting perusing  a Sears-like catalog of old and right away went looking for you. A smile came over your unshaven face. You were also pleased with the message we were getting.


All during the process of clean-up we hugged often, made eye-contact reading each other’s thoughts, and realized we can’t take anything or anyone for granted.  Each moment needs to be cherished as best we can.  The flash flood was a time of growing up a little bit more for us, growing into a seasoned couple, and letting go of the old. We are more solid and a bit more grounded, despite the rushing water.

Disconnecting to Re-Connect

She Said

August 9, 2011 – Sippewissett Campground, Falmouth, MA


Disconnecting to re-connect was how I left my Facebook status update before going off to Cape Cod for three weeks.  I’ve been coming to Falmouth and Woods Hole, MA since 2004 with the kids attending the Children’s School of Science for science classes.  My friend Kim started coming here in 1999 with her marine-loving son Joshua, another homeschooled kid. While Maddy and Miranda weren’t particularly so interested in science when we started going to the Cape, they did, and still do love to learn just about anything. Being on Cape Cod with friends while attending classes was a perfect blend of my homeschooling style, and as Kim said to me – Taking the show on the road.

We didn’t participate in science school for the past two years. It does take a considerable amount of effort to get here, a certain amount of cash, and a chunk of time, as class sessions are 3 weeks or 6 weeks. But Miranda aged into the class she’s been so wanting and waiting to take for years (Biological Illustration) so how could I not make it happen this year? Stephen took his first class this year and I am happy to say has been liking the new experience. You never know with him. He has his definite likes and dislikes. So here we are.

One aspect I’ve learned to fully appreciate is that technology ceases to be part of my life for three weeks. I disconnect from my life back home in a lot of ways. Cell phones don’t always work and I have no computer/internet access except in the campground office. (I confess Max brought his laptop with him when he arrived the last week. That’s how I’m writing this.)  I’m still not a fan of tents (getting there though – who knows what crazy wild things I might do next year!) and I stay in a tiny cabin and have electricity, a fridge, and a toilet.

Years ago when I started the Cape Cod adventure I painfully learned to be on my own with the three kids in a new place. I did have some help from friends also staying at the campground, but the bulk of the work of was on me while at the same time  trying to figure out new nitty-gritty things for me like pumping gas where Self-pumping in Massachusetts was the norm. (I always found the one gas station that had Full Service. HA!)  Not having a cell phone to talk with Max, back at home, was a challenge I really didn’t like.  I needed that technology to connect with him to ask him questions about the bike rack, getting the bikes on the rack, the car and its funny noises.  I remember thinking the first year when my cell call once again dropped the call after a mere “hello, it’s me honey”,  that it would be easier to communicate with the dead than try to get through to my husband via cell phone from this dead zone campground!! (Ooh that time at the salt marsh when three-year-old Stephen put a teeny tiny, itty-bitty shell in the ignition so I couldn’t put the key in, almost did me in. Thankfully Joshua was with me, as well as our Swiss Army knife, which had a little plastic tweezer neatly tucked in one of its magic compartments.)

Each year I got better at the whole experience and I would call it Being in Cape Cod Mode. I became stronger and more confident.  The kids got older too and made it easier. This year I knew how wonderful it would be to spend three weeks on Cape Cod at the campground while also doing an incredible amount of biking, swimming, dancing, and learning science in Woods Hole, then coming home to our 10’x 10’ cabin to read library books before bed. I was really looking forward to disconnecting from the internet, email, phone calls and re-connecting to my children. I always re-connect with them on a very basic level while here, being able to fully focus on them and only having to wear my favorite hat – my mama-hat. I was really looking forward to that hat this trip. However what also happened this trip surprised me: I started to re-connect with myself.  I wasn’t expecting that at all.  I immersed myself in sensations I hadn’t felt in years, connecting back to the core of Denise.  Swimming into the deep of the bay, or across the kettle pond, my long hair flowing around me, I started to feel a like a mermaid.  Biking fast on the bike path in the full sun, I felt 11 again. Folk dancing ‘til I was out of breathe and sweating up a storm –that was a new sensation. Wow.

Max has arrived a few days ago. He snuck into bed at midnight. My body short circuited. That’s what it felt like. I didn’t want to put on the Wife-Hat just yet because I was so enjoying wearing the Denise-Hat. I didn’t know to do honestly. I fought acknowledging his being there for quite a while into the night, then realized I need to welcome my husband on his short vacation with his family. I shifted gears as best I could and finally talked to him.  I told him the next morning about my re-connecting with myself and that I still wanted to revel in that. But in talking to him I realized I can still do that on my long swims – I don’t have to take the Denise Hat off at all actually. He understood, as he always does.

I think Max has been re-connecting with himself here too. He so needs a vacation to rest and have fun. We biked the 5 miles from Woods Hole back to the campground in Falmouth with the kids yesterday in a steady rainfall, with thunder far off in the distance (oh that was so incredibly wonderful!) and that evening as Max and I went for a walk to see the marsh in the light of the rising bright moon, he said he had a memory of biking in the rain from when he was younger.  We work too much to remember connecting with our younger inner selves.

Tonight we biked north on the newest part of the bike path with the kids to get ice cream at Eulinda’s just before the sun was setting. As we biked back to the campground in the dark, wearing head lamps, Max’s words of wisdom came back to me, the ones he spoke to me when we started peddling on this ice cream escapade when I was worried because it was dusk and would only get DARKER OUT!    “This is living life dear.”  He was right.

A week later:

I’m home. In retrospect connections were made on many levels by disconnecting with technology and our life back home. I re-connected with my children the first week, joyously being involved in their new experiences. I re-connected with myself the second week, sensing my inner strength and wisdom as I swam across the pond with my friend Barbara. And I re-connected with Max the third week when we rented The Annex in the main house of the campground to have more space than the tiny cabin could give us.  What more can I say? I just didn’t know how much those connections needed to be explored on our science-filled trip to Cape Cod.

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He Said

Very well put, my dear.

It's kind of interesting that I spend my work hours immersed in technology and yet I am not really all that connected to technology in my home life.  By the time I get home, I am pretty much ready to turn off the computer and spend my time doing something non-tech.

However, I certainly did get to disconnect from my tech job and the nagging pressure of being on call all the time while on the Cape which was wonderful.

As you mentioned that day of biking several miles in the rain did reconnect me with some very happy memories from my younger years.  Only by having the space and quietness of mind to find those long-lost feelings and sense memories could they come back to the surface of my consciousness.

So I guess the challenge is finding ways to disconnect to reconnect in our "regular" lives so that we can stay in touch with ourselves, each other and our family and what is truly important to us.

The Big Switch

He Said

Denise recently made the observation that we had found in our relationship what many folks search for all their lives - we arrived at a state of loving and being loved absolutely many years ago. Anything else is just icing on the cake. I think we lost sight of the enormity of this blessing and got sidetracked in looking for happiness in the places that the marketing messages tell us to look, i.e. the wrong places.

This simple but profound observation was the catalyst for a fairly major shift in context that has made my life much happier. I had been looking at my life and situation and saying, "My job is really challenging and taking up too much of my energy and I am not where I want to be with money so life kind of sucks, but at least my marriage and family life are good." But I have flipped this around now and my context is, "I have an amazing marriage and relationships with my wife and kids that are very rare in their harmoniousness and this brings me a huge amount of joy and fulfillment, and my career and finances could be improved on."

This shift has come to be known between Denise and I as The Big Switch. Both because it was kind of like flipping switch to go from a default state of unhappiness and stress to one of happiness and flow (the stress is not completely gone, but we are just giving it less power.) And it is Big because it really has had a profound impact on our day-to-day lives. Just by making a conscious choice moment to moment to look at things from a place of joy and acceptance has made everything much better for me in so many areas – my work no longer feels so onerous and no longer gets me so angered or stressed out, my already joyful interactions with Denise have gone to a new level of richness and, dare I say, giddiness, I am enjoying my time with my kids more, rediscovering old sources of enjoyment, etc…

I wish that I could easily put my finger on why The Big Switch was flipped to the Joy position at this particular time but I think that this will probably remain among the life mysteries to be accepted and embraced as a mystery. I do see a bit of a trajectory leading up to the Switch, though. I think that making a consistent practice of being grateful for what I have helped me to repeatedly remind myself of what is good and working and not constantly wallow in the crappier stuff. And I owe Denise gratitude for helping me to stick to this practice, and I hope that I have done the same for her. Also, Denise and I reached a turning point in terms of our interactions around money. I believe this was the last holdout of truly angry and bitter feelings between us and some sort of surrender / healing / letting go / meeting of minds occurred in the last couple of months. This new concord has dispersed a good deal of negative energy on both of our parts.

And the nice thing about approaching things from a happier place is that I know that I am not going to just be resigned and put up with my job and the things that don't work for me about it, but I am coming from a much more positive place as I look for other options, or ways to transform where I am into something better. And I am using my renewed appreciation for my family and marriage as a springboard to leave behind unhelpful behaviors that have me trying to find happiness in materially-based lifestyle choices that I cannot afford.

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She Said

Yes, it’s been a year since we blogged.
 
The best part of the Big Switch is that Max is a happier man. I’m still having a hard time trusting that it will be a permanent change, but I think once a light goes on in your head, it’s hard to turn it off.  It was important to me that we document this event in our blog to re-read if we ever feel like we need reminding.

An old friend of mine told me recently that a gem of wisdom I told him changed his life once. I don’t often embrace my inner wisdom because it sometimes feels simple and a little Forest Gump-ish, but in this case I can really see what speaking my crazy thoughts did – especially for someone I love so dearly.
 
The Big Switch thought occurred to me one evening as we were driving to get dinner while waiting for the girls in opera rehearsal. I said to Max “What if we’ve been living the life we always dreamed of and weren’t paying attention? What if the ultimate want/desire of everyone, even if they don’t know it, is to be loved? Love being at the height of enlightenment. “  I went on, “What if we found that love way back all those years ago at that incredibly memorable moment at 3am under the stars and we’ve been searching for something else  - always somewhere in the future? If we just had a house. If we just could take a trip to Europe. If we just had a million bucks. “   I then went into a rambling monologue, my favorite kind, about  Homo sapiens and consciousness – becoming aware that we exist.  At some point Mr or Mrs Sapien learned the concepts of future and past (and started forgetting how to live in the present I might add).  Survival became easier. We didn’t have to worry so much about lions, tigers and bears eating us. Food was easier to come by. We made ourselves warmer shelters. We’ve evolved so much that we’re able to shoot ourselves off the planet. BUT love is what everyone is searching for. Love and acceptance. Well….. the ranting was much better in person.   My stories don’t always have the same ring to them when I re-tell.

My simple idea that love is the height of enlightenment seemed to strike a chord with Max and with myself. We sat with that idea for a while. The next day I had a new man on my hands. Holy Cow. Every time he called me he sounded happy. He’s started playing his guitar again, and is even learning new songs.  His job doesn’t seem to bug him as much either. We remembered that moment. We have it. We’ve had IT all these years. Bills, diapers, work, dishes just covered over it.
 
Max – You didn’t include this – it’s funny.  Here’s hoping you find your Big Switch and flip it to the Happy side!