• About Judith A. Ross

Shifting Gears

Shifting Gears

Category Archives: marriage

Forest Bathing

02 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, health, inspiration, marriage, work

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

forest bathing, Marc Maron, President Obama, Slow Love Life, Terry Gross

FBathing2

A friend recently sent me this link to an article about “forest bathing,” which says,

This Japanese concept revolves around a deceptively simple practice: quietly walking and exploring, with a mind deliberately intent on – and all senses keenly open to – every sound, scent, color and “feel” of the forest, in all its buzzing bio-diversity.

Of course, readers of my blog know that I have been doing this for years – but not so much recently. It has become so rare that I clearly remember the last time  I let the forest feed my soul.

Time when I am truly alone and surrounded by silence has become a precious commodity. Not just for me, I suspect, but for many of us. We all need time to just sit with our thoughts and our emotions. Time when we are truly “present.”

How often are our minds and bodies in the same place? For a dreamer like me, not often enough and over the past few weeks I have been especially distracted. Just the other afternoon, my body was sitting on the deck eating lunch with my husband, while my brain was back at my computer, parsing through an editing issue for work. When he interrupted my train of thought with a question, I snapped at him.

Forest bathing, opening ourselves to feel the gentle breezes, and fully take in the smells and sounds around us can also teach us to be more present in other parts of our lives. It’s a habit we all need to cultivate.

still life with flowers

Recently, my son urged us to listen to comedian Marc Maron’s podcast, WTF. In listening to Maron interview people such as NPR’s Terry Gross and President Obama, I noticed how “present” both he and his subjects were throughout the entire conversation. Being that focused enabled both parties to listen, hear what the other person was saying, and then respond thoughtfully—unearthing some never-heard-before information in the process.

Uncovering new information, finding insight where you don’t expect it, those all can result when we are fully present. For example, one of the things that the leader of the free world told Maron struck a chord deep within me — and it wasn’t a comment about foreign policy.

He said that because his father wasn’t around when he was growing up, being a good father to his daughters is one of his top priorities. Parental absence left a big hole in my life—particularly my adult life. When Obama said that, I realized that living with that void is why being the mother of two adult sons has been both wrenching and joyous. It is a relationship that I can never take for granted and, more significantly, one that I don’t have a blueprint for.

This summer I have several projects going on, but as I turn my attention to each I am going to keep the image of “forest bathing” in mind — even when I am not walking in the woods.

It’s time for a reset.

reset

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The Essence of Home

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by judithar321 in marriage, meditation, writing

≈ 3 Comments

essence of home

Thanksgiving is this week. As we enter the 2014 holiday season, thoughts of home — the good, the bad, and the ugly — are inevitable. I hope that all of my readers are able to relax into their own sense of home, whether the feeling comes from reenacting old family traditions, or from creating something new.

Today, I want to share my just-published “Talking Art” column, inspired by the work of writer and urban forager, Marie Viljoen. In it, I explore what it means to create a home, whether it is a physical space or an image that you hold in your mind and heart.

To read it, please click here.

The Mindless Mindfulness of Travel

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by judithar321 in friendship, health, inspiration, marriage, mid-life transition, pets, travel

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Ellen Langer, mindfulness, Portland Oregon

fishbowl

Ever since our January trip to California, we’ve been talking about returning to the west coast for a longer stay. We think we might like to live there. At first, we were talking about the Bay Area. As I’ve said, many times, I want to live in a place where there are cafes, museums, and shops all accessible by foot or on public transportation. How lovely it would be, for example, to walk home, filled with good food, after a meal at our favorite neighborhood restaurant.

But we also want nature to be within reach (I’m not giving up the car just yet) — and it has to be a place we can comfortably afford. For all of those reasons, we set our sites on a mini-sabbatical in Portland, Oregon, with possible side trips to Seattle, British Columbia, and San Francisco. And, we wanted to drive because if we were to gain any sense at all of what daily life would be like in a new place, then we couldn’t leave behind someone who is an integral part of that daily life.

traveler

Karina in travel mode: her bed was wedged on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

After months of talking and planning, things fell into place at the end of July. We had a place to stay in Portland, and after much looking and financial strategizing, we also had a van that would reliably transport us there—and back—and that could serve as Paul’s work vehicle upon our return.

And so, on August 21, we set out, stopping in Michigan that first weekend for a family wedding.

Witness

After we left Michigan, my mind, which had been focused on wedding-related logistics, suddenly sat up and took notice. The clouds overhead and endless sky when we hit Minnesota were an ongoing source of fascination.

Once we’d arrived at our first stop in Portland, just sitting on the front porch was entertaining. There were kids going by on bikes and skateboards, older people walking their dogs, and Karina found the parade of neighborhood cats, who would sun themselves under our car, especially riveting.

Keeping tabs

Our daily walk through the park at the end of the street, toward a dog park that bordered the Willamette River felt special.

Sellwood_Park

theWillamette

There were also dinners out at places right in the neighborhood, and several cups of coffee at cafes with outdoor seating where our four-footed companion was the subject of much admiration. Karina lost some of her shyness on this trip.

But what I love most about traveling—and what I miss now that we have returned—was that I took the time to notice my surroundings and activities. The small, daily routines, like making my morning tea in an unfamiliar kitchen, were more satisfying because of that.

I gave things my full attention in a way I do not when I’m at home. In fact, just the other morning, I found myself dashing from the kitchen to my computer, and then back, first when my tea water boiled, and then again when a timer went off. Now that I am ensconced in familiar surroundings, I seem to have switched over to autopilot as automatically as I switched to full awareness while traveling.

Then last week I heard part of an interview with Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard. The topic was mindfulness, which the announcer defined as “the simple act of noticing new things.” And, according to Langer,

 When you notice new things, you come to notice that you didn’t know what you thought you did, as well as you did. Everything is always changing. By noticing new things about the familiar, it becomes interesting again.

This mind-set, she went on to say, was good for fighting more than just boredom, it can also impact our health** and enable us to view in a new way someone whose behavior troubles us.

In fact, a few years ago, an advisor gave me similar advice, suggesting that I just sit back and “observe” someone who had become a source of distress. As Langer notes in this interview, when I adopted the observer’s mind-set, I realized what was really driving this person, and soon exchanged my upset for empathy.

Learning to “observe” so that you can respond, rather than react, to other people is another whole conversation. To learn more about that, you can listen to the entire interview here.

Right now, I want to tackle the bit about noticing. Before we left for the trip in late August, boredom with our local scenery had taken root. I felt as though I was seeing the same old things over and over again. When we returned in early October, many things did seem new. New England was in the middle of a gorgeous autumn, which no matter how jaded you are, is pretty hard to overlook.

For example, I noticed these coppery leaves while with a friend who was gathering leaves for her son’s after-school project. Adopting a child’s point of view definitely helps adults view their surroundings with fresh eyes.

copperIt’s also hard not to notice the fall colors reflected on a pond we pass on one of our regular morning walks.

water colors

Water-colors.

last swim

Now that it’s getting colder and darker, I will have to work especially hard to cloak myself in the observer’s mind-set I wore so mindlessly during our travels. So far, the extra effort seems to be working.

While the clouds here don’t hang suspended mid-sky as they do out west, they have their own beauty when hovering over a local farmer’s fields.

green fields

And this circle of farm machinery provides a whimsical contrast to the straight-edged fields beyond.

farm equipment

There were many things I sensed and felt during our six weeks away that can’t and won’t be contained in my snapshots. There’s that light-as-air feeling I got when the daily cares and worries of home faded from my consciousness as we racked up the miles; the friendly, welcoming attitude of the people we met in Portland; the rush of memories I felt when I dove into the frigid waters of a lake in British Columbia; and the satisfaction of an intense hunger quenched by a warming bowl of Pho eaten in a Vietnamese restaurant off the beaten track in Iowa on a dreary, windswept day.

These experiences are worth noticing. They are worth holding on to. And they are worth adding to. On a chilly afternoon a few days after we’d returned home, I sat in my kitchen and watched my two fellow travelers carefully take note of our back yard under a darkening sky. There was love in their looking and noticing, just as there was in mine.

backyard1backyard2backyard 2abackyard 3backyard 4

****

**Coincidentally, (or perhaps not) Langer was the focus of an article in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about using a mindful mind-set to offset aging and possibly illness. To read an interesting analysis of that piece, read D.A. Wolf’s take on it in Daily Plate of Crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

close up

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.

 

 

A Recipe for Love from the Men in My Life

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, marriage, meditation

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Daily Plate of Crazy, food, love, Morocco, Pizza, Shakshuka, Valentine's Day

Shakshuka photo

Shakshuka

It has taken me half my life to associate food with love. For many years, especially when I was a young, single, working woman, food was fuel consumed with a large dash of guilt, and I closely monitored my intake.

But recently, I’ve realized that morsels of edible love have been coming my way for a long time—most of them prepared by the men in my life.

It started with my dad, who would cut my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into four precise pieces. “Triangles or squares?” he would ask.

My relationship with my father was a rocky one and I often found him difficult to be around. But whenever I envision those tender triangles of grape jelly and creamy peanut butter layered between two slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread, the negative feelings fade away, and I feel cossetted and adored.

Once I became the mother of two young boys, the “food as love” concept was delivered more forcefully through a traditional Mother’s Day breakfast in bed.  One year, “fortune” muffins were on the menu. A soggy slip of paper baked inside one of them announced in a penciled scrawl that I was “The Best Mother in the World.”

These days, that message of love, folded into a heaping cup of caring, is delivered with more subtlety via elaborate meals cooked by those same boys, now fully launched adults. Shakshuka—a spicy mélange of vegetables, feta cheese, and eggs—and crusty homemade pizza are among their specialties.

They absorbed this technique from my husband, who has also delivered a steady stream of edible love notes throughout our long marriage. There have been more pots of chicken soup to cure a cold than I can count, and for much of our time together — especially after the boys arrived — he has taken on what I once viewed as the daily drudgery of putting a meal on the table.

At first, cooking was a novelty. A rich minestrone soup or homemade brownies were a way to impress boyfriends, and, I naively thought, get them to take me seriously. But once I’d hooked my man via quiche and a curried mushroom soup, the novelty wore off when we became ensconced in family life. It was no longer fun to deal with food through the nausea of pregnancy and later through the film of fatigue and time pressure that came with combining work and kids.

But lately, there’s been a shift. I no longer get defensive if I don’t have an answer when asked, “What’s for dinner?” (What kind of wife/mother was I that I didn’t have a week of menus at the ready?) Now that we both work from home and it’s usually just the two of us, I look forward to the discussion — and even manage to plan a few meals in advance.

Homemade pizza and shakshuka are on regular rotation. They are my favorite meals, because when my husband and I are kneading dough, or chopping herbs and feta, it’s as though our sons are here too. I’m surrounded by my men, cossetted and adored all over again.

The Recipes (Shakshuka and New York Pizza)

The first time I ate shakshuka was in my older son’s Brooklyn apartment. He moved around his compact kitchen with ease, chopping and tossing ingredients into the pan like a pro. Watching him do all the work was incredibly relaxing. It was the best breakfast I’d had in a long time. Later, he sent me the recipe, which came from the New York Times.

Younger son is a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, where all baking takes place over a gas flame inside a blue box. Oven temperature is gauged by eye. Pizza is not readily available there, and he often makes it when other Peace Corps volunteers arrive at his door. Recently, he sent us this recipe for New York Style pizza. The dough is best, he says, when it’s left to rise in the refrigerator for three days.

The Pizza King, photo courtesy of Kitty O'Riordan

The Pizza King, photo courtesy of Kitty O’Riordan

This post is part of a series on Food and Love over at Daily Plate of Crazy.

Grounded Clouds

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by judithar321 in aging, environment, friendship, inspiration, marriage, pets, travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Dominique Browning, Morocco, Slow Love Life, weather

Foggy field

When the weather goes from cold and snowy to warm and rainy, the air becomes thick with moisture as though the clouds have dropped to the ground.

Walking through the mysterious murk, we heard voices before we could see their source. Dogs popped in and out of the grounded clouds.

cloudy walk 1

cloudy walk 2

Last January, I claimed the word “focus” as my New Year’s vow, and some things are sharper today than they were back then. Yet I’m viewing the year ahead through a soft-focus lens. The changes and events to come are as foggy as these woods. I’m okay with that uncertainty.

Broken Branch

Red Berries

If I learned anything from my year of increased focus, it was that the best, most memorable experiences came when I just let them, when I stayed in the moment and swayed with the wind of life rather than fighting it. My trip to Morocco is but one example.

Of all the New Year posts and articles I’ve read these past weeks, it is Dominique Browning’s words that I keep repeating over and over in my mind. She was recounting her year, “It was a big year. But every year is a big year,” she wrote. And then she said,

 Every day is a big day. That is what we realize when we are older. That we are lucky enough—and that is all it is, plain dumb luck—to be here makes it a big day, a big year.

So maybe my “resolution” this year—if you want to call it that—is to celebrate my life and luck every day. I’m going to burnish my love for my family and friends until it is a beacon they will return to over and over again. I’ll make every day a big day.

An Enduring Relationship

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, marriage, mid-life transition

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Daily Plate of Crazy, mother-daughter relationships

YoungMom

The last time I saw my mother was the day I finished my junior year of high school.  It’s been more than 40 years since I basked in the warmth of her smile, or heard her musical laugh. And even longer since we argued, but I still remember the last time she annoyed me.

She had neglected to compliment me on my newly acquired driving skills. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I asked before tossing the car keys towards her. They hit her thin shoulder and fell to the garage floor. She looked at me, startled, her blue eyes filled with hurt.

She was dying and that made me mad. For the rest of that spring, I put my new driver’s license to good use, shuttling back and forth between home and the hospital every day after school.

She’s missed a lot. She wasn’t there for my high school and college graduations… or my wedding. She never met my husband or her two grandsons. And yet, after all this time, our relationship lives on.

Since her death, my mother has been with me many times — especially when I do things that she couldn’t. The first time I traveled to Europe with a friend, she was there too. She had always wanted to go, but because of my travel-phobic father, she never had the chance. On that first trip, I lit candles in churches all over England for my Jewish mother.

She made it clear that I was going to college. Trapped in a difficult marriage, a college degree, more than anything else, symbolized freedom to her. She badly wanted the ability to support herself, and she didn’t want me to be stuck, dependent —like her.

Each time that I checked a new accomplishment off her list —earning that diploma, landing my first “real” job, and renting my own apartment — I could almost hear her cheering in the distance.

Because she made sure that I got the extras, like music lessons and summer camps, my sons got them too, even when the cost seemed onerous. She’d be thrilled to know that one grandson recently performed at the Kennedy Center, and that the other is living and working abroad. She may be gone, but her influence still has legs.

Shortly before my 16th birthday, on a sunny, brisk spring day, she took me to a nearby shopping center to pick out a bracelet. We left the store with a one-inch sterling silver cuff that came in a maroon flannel bag. In my mind’s eye I see us talking and laughing companionably as we stroll from store to store.

I think of us together every time I wear that bracelet. The memory of that ordinary day—so long ago that it now seems extraordinary—reminds me to treasure every small moment I can snatch with my husband and sons.

She and I didn’t have a lot of tough conversations. I was rarely in trouble, but because she was my safe place, my comfort zone, I knew it was important to provide that space for my own children. I think, I hope, they know that they can tell me anything.

Often, I imagine her in the kitchen, cooking a meal with my younger son, who shares more than a passing resemblance to her father in both looks and spirit. Or joking with my older son, who always has a good story to tell, and whose big, blue eyes match hers. When I do those things, she’s there too

If she were still alive, my mother would be 92 this month. Even though she has been absent for most of my life, memories of what she said and did guided me through early adulthood, marriage, and motherhood. I am now seven years older than she was when she died. As I move through middle age and progress toward old age, she can no longer show me the way.

And yet, as long as I am alive, and still straining to remember her voice, and hear her laugh, the relationship goes on.

***

This post is part of a series about mother-daughter relationships published on “Daily Plate of Crazy.” Click here to read other posts in the series. 

A Most Important Relationship

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

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

≈ 9 Comments

Stone sun dial

It has been nearly 32 years since my husband and I met at a neighborhood party. When we first started seeing each other, I had no idea where the relationship would go, but I suspected it would be an important one. I was lucky —we were lucky — to be in the same place at the same time, and in a situation that allowed us to connect.

Two years later, on a cold, rainy, November afternoon, we exchanged wedding vows.

I took the above photo while visiting some old friends whose relationship probably dates back to about the time I was born. I first met them when I was five years old, and they were a young, married couple with two careers, and one small child. Now in their eighties, they are, to all appearances, still good together.

It is impossible to know what goes on inside someone else’s marriage, but I’m guessing that they nurtured a healthy relationship while developing careers and raising five children by bending —sometimes towards each other, sometimes in opposite directions. Whichever way they curled, however, each knew that the other would be there to catch them.

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time at their house. Even with the chaos that comes with a big family, even if there was yelling, there were times when it felt safer than my own home across the street.

Ever since Paul and I have been together, home has been where he is, and there is no place I’d rather be. He is my best friend, my cheerleader, my teacher, my student, and I am all of those things to him. Even though we fill each of those roles differently, and life together isn’t always perfect or pretty, I am sure of our partnership because we discuss it often. 

He can fix almost anything, including a sore heart. He holds my heart in his big, capable hands every day, gently, and with great care. 

We are closer than those two pillars and just as strong. Our bodies may be less supple than they were 30 years ago, but in our life together we’ve become more flexible. Unlike those pillars, we are not made of stone: We can bend.

***

Friendship is also the topic of my guest post this week on Daily Plate of Crazy. Click here to read it.

These Skies Are Meant for Dreaming

09 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by judithar321 in friendship, inspiration, marriage, mid-life transition, travel

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

betterafter50.com, clouds, midlife migration, moving house, photography, summer skies

Now that the weather has settled down a bit, we’ve been spending a lot of time out on our deck. During the last heat wave, I read out there in the evenings. The sky was amazing.

PinkClouds 1 PinkClouds2 PinkClouds3

A few days later, the humidity blew out and we were treated to a series of cartoon clouds.

Cartoon1 cartoon2 Cartoon4We are also cooking and eating some terrific meals on this deck. Paul has become expert at baking food on the grill that would normally go in the oven — the eggs on top of this shakshuka, for example.

Shakshuka

Last June, I posted a piece that was sparked by a meal on this deck. In it, I shared our dreams of moving on to a different kind of life in a new place. I had forgotten about that post until a couple of weeks ago when I was contacted by an editor at betterafter50.com. They have reprinted the post under the title, “Should We Sell the House?” 

I think we should sell the house. And though it feels like our progress toward that end has been glacial, it has been steady, and we both enjoy the conversations about ‘what-if’ and ‘where.’

We’ll get there, I’m sure. It’s going to take a lot of work and careful planning. In the meantime, though, our head-in-the-clouds dreaming is, as one of my dinner guests from the June post would say, “luscious.”

Wallowing

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, books, environment, health, marriage, mid-life transition, music

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

"This Train Is Now", climate change, garden, heat wave, Moms Clean Air Force, Raya Brass Band

cobweb

The past few weeks have brought hot, humid weather to the Northeast. Morning after morning, I hustle Karina along our customary walk, swatting away the multitude of flies and mosquitoes that swarm around us all along the way.

The heat and humidity make it hard to focus, and if I were to have a coherent thought, typing while my fogged-over glasses slide down my sweaty nose (and this is after a shower), is nearly impossible. To top things off, my computer went haywire, the cursor skipping around from sentence to sentence, clicking on ads and other links of its own accord.

I was wallowing. A lot.

It started in early June. A piece that I had put my heart and soul into didn’t get published when promised. It may soon see the light of day, but its timely lead is no longer timely and it is deeply personal.  As more time passes, the more nervous I feel about people reading it.

As June progressed, and the weather got hotter and hotter, I deflated and drooped a little more each day. Pretty soon I was comparing my publishing success to that of others….always a sure road to nowhere.

To be fair, June has a history of being difficult. It is a month of anniversaries that clearly demarcate the all-too-swift passage of time. Forty-one years since I became motherless, and 30 years since I became a mother. Yes, I have a child who is 30 years old. That particular anniversary, more than the other one, hit me hard this year.

Nest

In mid- June I pulled some muscle or other in my thigh. Swimming and walking are fine, but rooting around in the garden isn’t possible, and so, I’m letting it go feral this summer. Like everywhere else, it’s too hot and buggy in there anyway.

As if I weren’t already feeling decrepit enough, my dermatologist implied that my multitude of freckles/moles were solely due to too much sun. Sun? Really? In the Northeast? Haven’t you heard of genetics, Bub? So I wallowed in that for a while… until I noticed a woman at the pool. Deeply tanned, her skin was covered with large dalmatian-like spots.

Sometimes, comparison is helpful.

Then my computer went kablooey, and there were histrionics.

The atmosphere inside our little house got even hotter, and to escape, I started reading a book with an angry woman narrator.  I am so into that book right now (The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud). And I can’t wait to discuss it with the friend who gave it to me — especially the comment my local bookseller made as I was buying it for another friend. He said that he found the opening paragraphs “a little too shrill.”

Female anger is such a bummer, especially for men. My husband can handle it though. As he told me after the histrionics subsided, “… it’s good that it wasn’t directed towards me.”

But today, things are looking up. First off, the temperatures are in the 80’s not the 90’s and I can actually type this post without dripping all over the keyboard.

Yes, my computer has been fixed.

  • New track pad: $90.
  • Having a place to vent: Priceless.

And, I have had some writing published this summer. Climate change, always on my mind, came to the fore and I submitted a couple of posts to Moms Clean Air Force.  One on how Climate Change has hit home, the other on how it is threatening New England seafood. By the way, you don’t have to be a Mom to join, just an engaged citizen, and if you haven’t already, I’d urge you to take action.

Then, a couple of days ago, the brilliant D.A. Wolfe reminded me of how lucky  I am that my sons are independent, that they still want to share their lives with us, and that both are doing work that they and we can be proud of.

Shameless plug: older son’s band is releasing an album on October 8. Freckles or no freckles I’m still cool enough to rate an advanced copy. I’m listening to it now and the music has enough energy to make even the most lethargic among us want to get up and dance.

And you know what else? My garden is doing just fine without me.

garden

In so many ways,  I am a free woman!

We all need work, we all need purpose and I’m glad that those are the things I’ll be obsessing about this summer — rather than who’s publishing where, or who or what is or isn’t to blame for my spotty skin — because the day we stop looking for work and purpose is a day when the wallowing has gone too far.

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