Love at Last

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by judithar321 in aging, inspiration, mid-life transition

Tags

Moroccan Heart

Ours was not a love at first sight. On a bright winter’s day, I trudged through knee-deep snow to greet you. It wasn’t until late spring, however, that I agreed to see you again.

To begin with, you were compact, rather plain, and, to my then young but critical eyes, a bit homely — nothing at all like the ideal I had carried around in my head for so long. But after our second meeting, I let caution go and decided to give you a try. “It doesn’t have to be forever,” I thought to myself.

During our first year together, we faced some serious challenges. More than once you suffered from a lack of energy that caused your lower extremities to fill with water. And I spent more time with doctors and in hospitals than I ever could have imagined. And yet, you were stalwart — always there, patiently waiting for me to come home.

I have since learned to appreciate your modest looks and embrace your efficient and can-do approach to life. As the years passed, I helped you buff up your rough edges, gave you one or two makeovers, and then watched your quiet beauty emerge.

In return, you protected me through more physical and emotional storms than I can count. And you taught me everything I know about patience, persistence, and the value of building on what you have, rather than looking for something new.

You let me make mistakes and I learned important lessons from each one.

Moving in with you, however, was not a mistake. Like two dancers, we developed a feel for each other’s frame and learned how to move together with grace. After 23 years of cohabitation, we both wear the patina of age.

It is only now, as we prepare to part, dear house, that I realize how deeply I love you.

This post is part of a Valentine’s Day series on Women’s Voices for Change.

Having a Senior Moment? Blame Air Pollution

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by judithar321 in aging, environment, health

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aging, air pollution, climate change, MomsCleanAirForce

For weeks now, I’ve been trying to recall the name of a landscape architect I worked with a few years ago. I’ve remembered her first name, but her last name continues to elude me, yet I’m sure it’s there — lurking somewhere within the deepest, tallest stacks of my brain’s library.

An aging brain sometimes takes longer to retrieve certain information than it once did. Like many people over the age of 55, my brain’s agility is often, well…on my mind. So when I saw this recent headline in the New York Times, “Pollution May Age the Brain,” I sat up and took notice.

(Read more ….)

Building a Framework

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by judithar321 in aging, books, discipline, inspiration, writing

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

aging, art, dogs, Gail Caldwell, Kirra Jamison, Sally Mann, Swimming

View out the locker room door, Mission Community Pool, San Francisco.

For the past month or so, I’ve been editing and critiquing a book manuscript for a couple of business consultants. The topic is ‘reinvention,’ as in how we can stay ahead of ongoing change in terms of our jobs and careers. There has been a flurry of articles recently about how technology is replacing human labor and about how the list of today’s top jobs will be transformed over the next decade. For a critique of how this impacts actual human beings, read Barbara Ehrenreich’s New York Times book review.

Reinvention as a more personal matter is also in the wind as my friend and fellow blogger, D.A. Wolfe notes in her Huffington Post piece, “The Age of Regret, The Age of Opportunity,” The theme of transforming regret into something positive is also picked up by writer/photographer, Heather Robinson in her post, “Heat Lightning.” After recently celebrating my 60th birthday, regret, opportunity, and subsequent reinvention are on my mind as well.

While I have enjoyed the editing project, it has also left me a bit restless and frustrated with myself. After all this time, I still do not approach my own writing with the kind of purpose and drive that is present when I a) have a job that pays or b) have a publication deadline.

I am easily distracted and undisciplined, and all too ready to push my own creative work aside in favor of fulfilling other pressing and not-so-pressing tasks and commitments.

Hmmm, which comes first washing the dishes or doing some writing?

That’s the regret.

The opportunity and reinvention reside in my ability to change that. I need to commit to my writing with as much vigor as I have given my exercise regime. No one makes me go to the pool, yet for the past six years, even while commuting to a full-time job, I have been swimming at the local pool three times a week. This past winter, no matter how cold or snowy, unless the roads were impassable, or the gym was closed, I was in the pool every Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 1:30 and 2:15 pm without fail. It’s an addiction. I don’t feel right if I don’t go. If I pursued writing with the same discipline, it would become another healthy addiction.

A friend told me the other day, that with a few rare exceptions, she doesn’t follow people she doesn’t know on Instagram. As a busy person who spends plenty of time working in front of a computer screen, she has good reason for this. The Internet can be a huge distraction and time waster.

In her New York Times op-ed, “How to Find Your Place in the World After Graduation,” Pamela Druckerman, advises that the creative process benefits from a little boredom,

You need to be blank, and even a little bit bored, for your brain to feed you ideas. … A lot of life consists in the dead time in between events. Don’t fill these interstitial moments with pornography and cat videos.

She is right about needing blank time as well as the pornography and cat videos — to which I can plead “Not Guilty!” with a clear conscience. Yet I do follow a lot of people I haven’t met on Instagram and in other places — Robinson and Wolfe among them. In fact, if I wasn’t such a busybody and cheerleader of other people’s work and ideas, I’d never have any subjects for my “Talking Art” column.

And, I would have missed out on this video, about Kirra Jamison, a Melbourne artist. It has reminded me of something I’ve known for a good long time and have heard from several other creative people, but have not done for myself.

As the video follows Jamison through her morning routine, which involves rising at six a.m., walking her dog in a nearby park, and then riding her bike to a yoga class — all before heading into her studio, she notes,

I’ve learned not to wait for inspiration, but to create a framework for it.

She says her routine grounds her for the rest of the day and gets her in the zone to start working, concluding that,

Having a routine and showing up day after day without fail is the most important thing.

Naturally this looks very appealing when done by an attractive 30-something who lives in a gorgeous live/work space and has no one else to negotiate her time with beyond her dog. But still, every writer and artist I’ve known or read about has this kind of discipline.

My close friend, Martha Nichols, who tops the masthead at Talking Writing, for example, has been an early riser for years, grabbing that quiet time to read and write before the family descends for breakfast. Another friend, the novelist Jane Ward is also an early riser for the same reason.

In her heart-wrenching 2010 memoir, Let’s Take the Long Way Home, former Boston Globe book critic Gail Caldwell describes her typical work day, which back then included a certain amount of desk time before a long afternoon dog walk with her (now deceased) friend and writer, Caroline Knapp. The book, by the way, is a beautiful testimonial to friendship and to dogs. I highly recommend it to anyone who cares about either.

In her new book, Hold Still, photographer Sally Mann describes a typical day in her studio, which has a specific sequence and involves long hours that often extend into the night.

Robinson, whose blog, Lost in Arles, has hundreds of loyal followers and garners a couple dozen comments for each post, recently told me in a comment that she pushes herself to post every Tuesday and Friday. Even if an idea isn’t readily available, that framework helps her make it happen.

In addition to a set routine, all of these people are self-driven and committed to their “own” work in a way that I am not. Not yet, anyway. The concept of creating a framework for inspiration has captured my attention as something that I really could do. And now that I’ve entered my seventh decade, feels more important than ever.

Without changing my existing routine one iota, the first step is to set a period of time every day —no matter what else is going on — when both my phone and my Web browser are switched off. Step two is making that time my designated “frame” for letting my mind go blank before thinking, reflecting, and writing.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

What about you? How do you get yourself into the right headspace for creative work?

Signs of Spring

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by judithar321 in aging, environment, health, inspiration, meditation

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

daffodils, narcissus, spring, spring peepers

It is an April evening sometime in the past, and I am standing outside on my back deck. The air is chilly, but it has lost much of winter’s cutting edge. As the light slowly fades, I am suddenly awash in waves of sound. It is the high-pitched trilling of the spring peepers.

Hallelujah, spring is here!

I’m a spring baby. My March 21st birthday falls either on or adjacent to the official first day of spring. But living in New England, I scoff at those who believe in Punxsutawney Phil’s February prediction, or even the date on the calendar. Spring’s arrival is much later and more nuanced than all of that.

In fact, long, hard experience tells me that waking up on my birthday means I’ll be facing another 4-6 weeks of winter. It often isn’t until late April or even early May that I can bear to shed the layers of wool, fleece, and cashmere that protect my neck, hands, and ankles from cold, outdoor air.

When spring finally does arrive, the first buds appear slowly, almost reluctantly, until they gradually gain momentum and then, like the peepers’ loud and insistent declaration, the season asserts itself all at once in a flush of cheery, Easter egg colors.

The earliest signs of spring have gained a more personal meaning over the twenty odd years I’ve lived in my house just west of Boston. Their yearly return has become a reminder of my own resilience.

It begins with the daffodils. When we first moved here, they were far from my favorite flower. Yet I’d dutifully buy several bunches of the straight, yellow-tipped stalks when they arrived at the office each spring during the American Cancer Society’s annual campaign.

I’d plunge them into a vase of water, set them on my desk, and pretty soon the buds would open into daffy yellow schnozzes that reminded me of mole snouts, or some exotic creature from Down Under.

Then, one September I bought some narcissus bulbs — their more restrained colors and less prominent proboscises made them seem more sophisticated than the lowly daffodil. I planted them alongside a patch of day lilies and promptly forgot about them.

That winter, I had a health scare that required an unexpected medical intervention in late March. A few weeks later, I noticed the dark green stalks of narcissus pushing up through the frosty soil. “Welcome to the other side,” they seemed to say. My shoulders relaxed and for the first time in many weeks, I believed that I’d be okay.

Six years later, there was another medical procedure — this time a surgery in early December, scheduled months in advance. Remembering how much the last batch of bulbs had meant to me, I bought an even bigger bag that fall, and planted them under a willow tree in full view of the kitchen window. The act was a promise to myself. I would make it through the tough winter to come and when the plants emerged from the ground, I’d be here to welcome them.

Eight years later, it is April again. A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 60^th birthday, and right now I am standing outside on my back deck. Until just recently, the yard was knee-deep in snow. Today, however, I can see clumps of green shoots around the base of the old willow tree, and I strain my ears, eagerly listening for the opening notes of the peepers’ joyful chorus.

When I hear it, I’ll know. Spring is here.

This post was written in response to An April Invitation at Women’s Voices for Change.

“Talking Art” with Photographer Reuben Radding

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by judithar321 in aging, art, environment, inspiration

≈ 2 Comments

One bright spot in what has been a rather long and isolating winter was interviewing and writing about Reuben Radding — a photographer and musician who I met through my older son.

Reuben and I not only discussed his photographs, he also shared some hard-won wisdom about his goals for making art. He notes that the road to bitterness is paved with expectations that one’s work must follow a specific trajectory, and that failing to develop an audience beyond one’s fellow practitioners is a trap. With that understanding, his goals are clear-cut and simple,

“The core of my ambition is to make good work. To find an audience for it that feels genuine. I don’t care about fitting into a pre-established path.”

After a winter of taking my own “pretty” pictures of snow-laden trees, and looking at visions of human, culinary, and architectural perfection on social media, examining his work took me to a truer, more essential place.

At first, his images ask you to look, and then, they make you look again.

“Controversial Beauty, A Street Photographer Exposes the Urban Wilds,” Talking Writing, Spring 2015: Nature Tech.

Spring into Summer

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, environment, inspiration, mid-life transition, pets, writing

≈ 5 Comments

Scented geranium, aka bowl o’ sunshine.

The summer visitors have arrived. They show up all of a sudden, in an array of styles and colors that practically scream, “summer is here!” One day the landscape comprises a crowd dressed in varying hues of green and the next — well, see for yourself.

Columbine

Peony

False indigo

Clematis

My “Little Miss Kim” lilac shows up in a burst of grapey color and then immediately fades to white, leaving behind a trail of sweet perfume that fills the yard for days.

Little Miss Kim

Here in eastern Massachusetts, the transformation from late spring to early summer is a visually joyous one. In the woods, the air feels both lighter and fresher — a soft caress has replaced the chilly slap of April. I may still need a light jacket for my morning walk, but the knitted cap and gloves remain in the closet.

Rhododendron in the woods

New ferns

Yet underneath all the outward cheer, early summer leaves me feeling a little empty. As the weather warms up an old sadness resurfaces as its mid-June anniversary approaches. And as a young, working mother, the close of the school year, with its many festivities and fond farewells, was always tinged with melancholy. One more year of their childhood torn from the calendar.

My days of year-end band concerts, sewing on name tags, and packing trunks for summer camp are long over, but for me, June will always outrank January as an important marker of passing time.

Summer breeze

The great thing about getting ‘older,’ though, is that I no longer have to concern myself with summer’s superficial branding. While I do pay attention to advice about protecting my skin, I can turn the page when I see headlines like, “4 Weeks to a Bikini Body,” because, really, who cares?

Instead, I’ll look beyond the sunny façade and shake things up. That warmer air and lack of weather-related obstacles frees us all to tackle something different, something hard.

Never finished Middlemarch? Maybe this is the summer to do it. Climb a mountain, learn another language, or try a new form of writing. Test the limits of your brain and your body.

Or—as my husband and I plan to do after decades of full-time work—give yourself a sabbatical. Taking a road trip, living someplace new, and launching a project are all on our agenda.

So yeah, the summer visitors are here, let the season begin.

***

This post also appears today on Women’s Voices for Change.

Spring Changes

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by judithar321 in aging, environment, meditation, uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Late spring/early summer is a glorious time to be out in the woods. Bird song and the tap, tap, tapping of local woodpeckers is so loud, so distinctive, that you’d swear someone had planted speakers in the trees and cranked the volume up as high as it would go. The air feels softer, it smells cleaner, and the colors of the trees and plants reflect that rain-drenched freshness.

My mother died in early summer. It was many years ago, when I was still a teenager. Every spring, as the air begins to warm, that deep feeling of loss resurfaces, and I just want to stay quiet. This year, I’m focusing on the beauty around me.

May is Clean Air Month. I’ll have more about that next week.

Marriage, Dynamic

21 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by judithar321 in aging, friendship, marriage, mid-life transition

≈ 4 Comments

Until last week, Paul and I had never worked with a professional photographer. Our wedding was a low-key affair that resulted in a few snapshots contained in an album. And there’s a rather stiff photo that was taken at a local department store when our boys were young. I suggested, and he agreed, that we document where we are today — after more than 30 years of marriage.

The older I get, the less I like to be photographed. Lately, when someone snaps my picture, the resulting image often seems to catch my worst angle – at least in my eyes. Yet I know that I am perfectly presentable, I just have to put myself in the hands of the right photographer.

I knew that my friend Cheryl Sparks was that photographer. She is not only talented, she knows how to put people at ease. I knew she could get us both to relax. Cheryl put a lot of thought into our session. She said that she wanted to capture the dynamic between the two of us, and she shared a photo shoot of another couple as an example of what she had in mind.

So we had fun. We were silly.

It was quite windy, but I released all worries of crazy-looking hair into the breeze. We both loved the results—more of which can be viewed on Cheryl’s blog.

Oh, and speaking of photography, you can now follow me on Instagram.

That Rose …

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by judithar321 in aging, art, friendship, meditation

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Ivan Massar

It was saucer-sized, its plush, velvety petals curled over the rim of a small vase. It had been plucked from the bush that morning. The color: mauve? brownish pink? The exact shade is hard to remember, let alone describe — a color I’d never seen before.

It was a lover’s rose, placed on our neighbor’s kitchen counter to welcome her home.

“Ivy,” she breathed.

“Ivy,” also known as Ivan Massar, was a photographer, neighbor, and a friend, beloved by all. He passed away over the weekend. He was 89.

I feel lucky to have known him, and regret not knowing him better.

He left many important and beautiful images behind. Please take a look.

http://www.ivanmassar.com/

Our California Dream

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by judithar321 in aging, environment, inspiration, mid-life transition, travel

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

California, elephant seals, Tomales Bay, Tule elk

Yesterday, we returned from a week in Northern California. While real life continued all around us, we were wrapped in a drought-spun cocoon of warm, sunny weather as we traveled through a green, blue and often sere landscape populated by amazing creatures.

We observed these elephant seals from a distance. They moaned and squealed and flipped sand on their backs to stay cool. You could tell who had been sunning the longest by the pile of sand on their back.

We got a bit closer to the Tule elk.. .

… and I was lucky to catch a shot of two youngsters at play.

There were wildflowers and mysteries.

***

Now that we have returned to the reality of the Massachusetts winter, our trip already feels like a long ago dream. But it is also our future dream. Will we live there some day? Only time will tell.

Shifting Gears

Category Archives: aging

Love at Last

Having a Senior Moment? Blame Air Pollution

Building a Framework

Signs of Spring

“Talking Art” with Photographer Reuben Radding

Spring into Summer

Spring Changes

Marriage, Dynamic

That Rose …

Our California Dream