Good Day

I saw Isabel from across the field.  She was wearing a flower-print gingham dress and a blue bonnet that tied under her chin.  It took just a moment to recognize her.  I was sitting on a bench, signaling to the world my preference that I be left alone by reading Quiet, by Susan Cain.  Isabel was in a group of four girls, all dressed similarly anachronistically and they were deep in conversation.

As her group passed my bench she looked up and said “Good Day” and mid-greeting realized I wasn’t just any old tourist—I was her Dad.  And it was good to see, in that moment when the realization hit, that her face lit up in a flash of a smile that lasted just a millisecond before she was back in character.  She allowed herself a surreptitious wave and walked on, not even looking over her shoulder to see if I would follow.

She has been at King’s Landing Provincial Park in New Brunswick, Canada this week.  Erica has been in Ithaca, working.  And I have been lonely.

King’s Landing has a summer camp program they call Visiting Cousins.  In a business model Tom Sawyer would be proud of, boys and girls from all over pay money to come and live the life of children in the 1830s.  They dress and act the part of townspeople as tourists roam the village.  The kids get a fun, unplugged week and the park gets to fill itself with “townspeople.”

That is why Isabel was in gingham and a bonnet—she was a Canadian schoolgirl from the 1830s.   When I saw her it was Friday afternoon and I was there to pick her up and bring her back to New Haven for our final week of life in Connecticut.  I missed her all week while she was gone and I was excited to see her again.  Now that she is twelve I know that there might be some tough times coming for us.  Teenage girls and their fathers don’t always get along so well and I have no reason to think we will be any different.

So, in that moment when Isabel recognized me, I was so relieved to see something flitter across her face that was not annoyance or disappointment or embarrassment or hatred or resignation or anything else that might be there in the coming few years.  If I let myself admit it, what I saw on her face was love.  The one thousand mile round trip to pick her up is a small price to pay for that millisecond.

A Few More Beautiful Things

I have not posted each day, but I have been noticing some beautiful things this week and it really has helped me not get lost in the stress of mortgage applications and searching for a job and writing Progress Reports for my 20 students.

One thing I saw was the sparkle in the eyes of a one-year old friend of ours as she splashed naked in a kiddie pool on a 90 degree day.  Her pool was in the shade, she was naked, the water felt refreshing, and life was good.  All of this and more showed in her eyes.

Another thing was the interplay of sunlight and dark clouds as some fairly severe thunderstorms ripped through on Sunday afternoon.  The clouds were towering cumulonimbus and they were saturated.  The bottoms were turbulent and the tops were boiling higher as I watched--pushed by updrafts to over 30,000 feet.  At one point Isabel and I drove into a wall of rain.  One second it was clear with blue skies directly overhead and the next we could see a white wall of rain coming north up Whitney Avenue.  We drove into the wall and it felt like going through a waterfall.

One other beautiful thing I saw this week was Monday night at the Bodyology workout place I go to sometimes in Hamden.  Their workouts are tough.  They are generally comprised of both strength and cardio components and they demand high reps at high intensity with minimal resting time.  These workouts consistently kick my ass.  Everything is timed, and the big red numbers on the timer are visible from everywhere in the room.  Monday's workout was especially hard and as I neared the end I wasn't sure if I could make it all the way through without hurling or quitting.  But I did.  And this is the beautiful thing I took away from that night:

Chuck It

My dog Ginger loves to chase a particular kind of orange rubber ball.  It has a blue pattern pressed into it, it flies long distances when thrown with a Chuck-it, and it bounces unusually high.  Plus, I imagine it feels good to chew on.  The beautiful thing I saw yesterday was the unbridled joy with which Ginger runs when I throw her orange and blue ball high into the air and well out into a big field.  She looks like an outfielder with a bead on a long fly ball that might or might not make it over the fence.  She does not catch the ball on the fly.  Part of the fun for her seems to be to let the ball bounce and then try to catch it as it comes down from it 12- or even 15-foot high bounce.  When conditions are right, she can do this over and over and over again and not lose interest. 

            Yesterday, conditions were right.  She threw herself into the pursuit of that ball again and again, each time launching her body up as the ball came down from its bounce and snagging it out of the air a good five or six feet off the ground.  Sometimes she had the trajectory just a little bit off and the ball would bounce off her snout and careen away at an unpredictable angle.  When this happened she would lunge after the ball and hunt it down like a baby rabbit.  She was so clearly having fun that it made me feel good, too. 

            Dog owners like to believe they have access to their dogs’ inner lives and emotional states.  Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.  (The whole enterprise leaves quite a lot of room for projection if you ask me.)  But in this case, I think I can tell what Ginger is feeling.  I think I can tell because there are times when I have had the very same feeling.  For me it isn’t an orange and blue bouncy ball.  Instead, it is a 187-gram Frisbee thrown far and high out across a huge grassy field.

            When conditions are right, I can chase these Frisbees down from below and snag them out of thin air at a dead run, stop on a dime, turn, and launch the Frisbee back to the person who threw it.  And then do it again.  And again.  And again.  The world goes away and all there is is the Frisbee and the chase and these two things are all there needs to be for a while.

            Eventually, Ginger tired of the game yesterday.  It was very hot and very humid and she had expended a lot of energy.  But for a little while I got to experience some vicarious joy as she sprinted full out across the grassy fields of Edgerton with her eyes focused upward on that orange and blue ball and the rest of the world disappeared.

Beautiful Things

I have been feeling a bit stressed lately.  We are moving.  I don’t yet have a job.  The job I am leaving was perfect.  I am not sure where my daughter will be going to school next year.  My wife is starting a new job.  Blah, blah, blah.  I know that all of these things will be great two months from now.  We will have survived the whole moving process.  I will have a job I like and feel good about.  Cold Spring School will survive—and even thrive—without me.  Isabel will be happily taken in and swallowed up by a new school with good teachers and good friends.  Erica will be making her new job her own and doing it with style and skill.  Yet…I worry.

One way I deal with the stress is to run.  Today it was close to 90 at noon and I hit the road anyway for a good, hard four-miler partially up East Rock.  While I run my mind goes fairly blank and my body relaxes.  When I am done the endorphins do their job and I feel good for a bit.  It’s a bit like magic, actually.  Within reason, this thing that makes me feel better is also good for me.

While I was running today I decided to help myself in another way, as well.  I am familiar with the research into happiness that has shown that where we focus our attention can have a big effect on our overall mood.  If we brood and stew and focus on all the unknowns and losses (actual and potential), we will be in a bad place.  But consciously making ourselves lookat the upside of things or focus on the things we are grateful for can boost our mood and leave us happier. 

What reminded me of this was a downy woodpecker.  It was on the branch of a shrub I ran by.  It did not see me coming and by the time it knew I was there, I was within five feet of it.  Downies are small woodpeckers—smaller than robins and cardinals.  They have a checked black-and-white appearance and often hang out at feeders with nuthatches and chickadees.  They, along with other species of woodpeckers, have a distinct way of flying.  They flap their wings a few times and then glide a bit.  As they glide, they lose a little altitude.  Then they flap some more and gain that altitude back.  This repeats over and over.  It looks like they are tracing out a somewhat-flattened sine curve through the air. 

The downy I startled today hopped off its branch and into the air directly in front of me at eye-level.  I had never been that close to a woodpecker before and the red spot on its head was brilliant in the sunshine.  I am not a sentimental guy about animals, but this bird was about as cute as it gets.  And then rather than flying left, (into the bushes), or right, (across the street and into the woods), this particular Downy flew immediately in front of me for a good fifty feet—maybe even seventy-five.  It rose and fell, rose and fell, like it was stitching up a rip in the fabric of the air.  It was beautiful to see.

So I took that image with me today and decided that I would write about it as my Beautiful Thing for today.  I also decided that I will write about one beautiful every day for the next month.  By that time, I should be moved into a new house and maybe even starting a new job.  I am considering this an exercise in conscious happiness.  

Simply Alone

Erica has been spending lots of time in other places the past two years.  We live in New Haven, Connecticut and, (for lots of compelling reasons), she has been teaching in Ithaca, New York and San Diego, California.  Our daughter Isabel, our dogs Ginger and Lotti, and I have all gotten pretty good at life without Erica.

In fact, as I left for work Tuesday morning and she left for Bradley Airport and ten days in San Diego, I found it slightly unsettling to realize that in some ways, life is easier without Erica here. 

Before I write another word, I need to say right away that “easier” is not the same as “better.”

Having said that, “easier” IS the same as easier.  When Erica goes away my world shrinks down very quickly to just three things: my work, my daughter, and my dogs.  I don’t have a lot of choices about what to do with my time.  I get up, I feed the dogs, I wake Isabel, we go to school, I sprint home to walk the dogs during work, I take the dogs to the park, I make dinner, I help Isabel with her homework, and then we all go to bed.  In the morning, we do it all again.  The needs of the creatures closest to me dictate my decisions.

Sometimes, I manage to squeeze in a run or a workout.  And if I get real lucky, Isabel has a sleepover at a friend’s house and I get a night to myself.  Other than that, life becomes very simple.

It’s when she comes back that things get complicated.  Once Erica is here my options expand exponentially, and so does my guilt.  When the things I have to do are clear and non-negotiable, I do them.  When choice is introduced, the clarity is lost and I tend to agonize over seemingly insignificant decisions.  I won’t go into the tortured thinking that plagues me when faced with a simple choice while Erica is here, but suffice it to say that I can be guilty of severely overthinking everything.

It is Friday and Erica is still in San Diego.  My world has taken on its Erica-less proportions.  Life is easy. 

And I miss her.