Celebrating Vernal Equinox

Happy spring! Even though it is lightly snowing outside at the moment, last night marked the vernal equinox—the time when light and dark are equal lengths—signifying the start of spring. I attended a celebration and ceremony to honor the day. The beautiful experience with a small group of loving women reminded me of some very important components to living a joyful life. The details vary from person to person, but some of the elements of a fulfilling life are the same for everyone.

Community
Finding a group of people with whom you truly connect is important for most of us. Some people have the need to connect with many others, others are happy with passing connections here and there. I have the need for deep connection with just a few people. When I can get together with like minded folks, I am very joyful. Finding the group or groups that serve your needs isn’t easy. It is not unlike dating when you have to meet lots of people before you find the right one. But it is worth it when you find a community where you feel welcome, at ease and can be yourself. Last night was the perfect community for me.

Play and Crafting Is Needed
As part of the festivities last night, we did a craft project. We got sticky with glue and pieces of yarn and raffia and this and that and made little nests to welcome the nurturing rebirth of spring. What I observed among our small group was how each woman was deeply engaged in creating a unique object. There was a beautiful child-like silliness reflected in everyone’s face. And there was joy and playfulness abounding. Yet engaging in arts and crafts can bring up so many different emotions and past experiences. Perfectionism, messiness, skill, competition, happiness, and sadness might emerge to name a few. I have to say that I was a bit disconnected during the crafting and was overwhelmed with a jumble of emotions. After the fact, I think I know why.

Being With Others While Taking Care of Yourself
I am very disrupted by evening events in general. I have yet to learn how to manage being with others in the evening in a way that takes care of myself at the same time. I almost consider myself a nighttime hermit. So how do I reconcile my night hermit tendencies with the want and desire to connect deeply with people I care about? My inclination is to say, “Skip the evening events.” And I do try to find ways to nurture deep connections during the day. But that isn’t always possible so I go to evening things here and there. If it is the right community for me (as it was last night), the benefits outweigh the downsides. Nonetheless, finding a balance between being with others and taking care of myself is my area for exploration and growth.

I am easily thrown by hunger or cold. Last night I was hungry and cold while we were crafting—though at the time I doubt I would have been able to articulate that was the issue. I hadn’t eaten for more hours than I usually go. I had under-dressed. Had I had enough self-awareness last night to notice my feelings, I would have had a snack and put on more layers. Perhaps I needed to center myself with some quiet time in another room to calm the mishmash of emotions. Whatever the method, taking care of your own needs while you are with others is important. For me it doesn’t stop with the event.

After any evening event, I continue to have to work to take care of myself. Unwinding is a huge deal for me. I have difficulty stopping my mind after an evening of stuff. Whether it is good stuff or bad stuff doesn’t matter. I tend to have difficulty silencing my thoughts after an evening out. I have always preferred to go to bed early and to be in a calm state before I sleep. As a kid, I hated sleepovers and didn’t like staying up late, as everyone else seemed to enjoy. These days I usually read just before bed, but if the material is too engaging even that can impede my sleep. Disengaging with thoughts is a huge part of mindfulness meditation and I skill that I am always practicing. Having been with others last night, I had a particularly difficult time unwinding. Yet it was worth it to be with such a compassionate group.

Compassion For Others
A few weeks ago in one of my meditation groups (another one of my communities) we discussed Wise Intention also known as Right Intention as part of our exploration of The Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism. The eight areas are Wise (or Right) View, Intention, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness and Concentration. What struck me in our study was how consistent this philosophy is with other canons of religion across time. Although there are certainly differences in how one is to think about these concepts (in the Buddhist approach it is not something to take as blind faith but instead is a guideline for self-exploration and discovery), they speak to some of the same underlying principles. Broadly speaking the overall way of The Noble Eightfold Path is through compassion for others and for ourselves. Have the intent to be kind, and think and act in accord with that intention. Not only is that the right/wise/ethical thing to do, but you will also encourage peace with the world, yourself and others.

My realization that there is a connective thread of compassion across religions makes me feel more confident that we beings understand deeply in our core, no matter who we are or when we lived, that how we treat others and ourselves creates our experience of life. Being with other people and sharing loving kindness creates a rich and loving life for yourself and others. So simple and yet so profound.

Last night was a real application of Wise everything! Well most everything. I will continue to explore how to balance my discomfort around evening energy with wanting to be with other magnificent people. Six amazing women gathered to honor the cycle of life, enjoy a delicious plant-based meal and play together was a joyful expression of compassion. How lucky I am!

xoxo Rachel

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Small Town Living: Idyllic Or Just A Fantasy?

I have been reading a ton of books this past month. Small books, big books, light fare and heavy stuff. Much of the lighter books are romance novels and I seem to be drawn to ones that take place in idyllic small towns. I don’t always like the tone of many of these books that rely on getting married and having lots of kids and always a dog (not that that is a bad thing, but to presume that marriage and kids and dogs is required for happiness is a bit narrow for me. Cats get no respect ☺). However, I love that they are set in fantasy small towns where even if everyone gets in each other’s business, they do it out of caring and love for each other and the community. They all have picture-perfect downtowns with a coffee shop and bookstore and cute shops and hold plenty of small-town events.

I grew up in a small town, the wonderful town of Roosevelt, New Jersey. I do feel like my childhood was idyllic, even if we didn’t have a bookstore and coffee shop. In the 60s and 70s, the town was a generous community to grow up in with deep and important connections fostered between the kids and the families. Of course I can wax nostalgic about my childhood because it is easy to gloss over any of the bad stuff when reminiscing. Nonetheless, I loved my childhood, family, friends and community. And I know that there is a lot to be said for small towns and the community and connection that they provide.

Once again I live in a small town: Cold Spring, NY on the Hudson River. My experience now is quite different from my childhood for a number of reasons. Being an adult certainly changes the perspective. Yet there is most definitely a community aspect here that feels good and comforting and welcoming just like my childhood life in Roosevelt. The big difference is that not having grown up here and gone to school, I don’t know all the families like I did in Roosevelt. I just don’t have a long-term history here even though we have had this house for twenty-one years—much of that only for weekends. When you move to a town and don’t have roots there, it can take time to get to know folks. Because we don’t have any kids, we were not introduced to all the families like we would have had we had kids at the public schools. Community is essential and automatic through your kids (that is true in any size community).

So although I don’t have connections through kids, I am building my community in different ways. I am so grateful that I have a group of people who meditate and discuss readings about mindfulness and living fully present lives every week. I am fortunate that there is a lovely small library in my town and also the town next door with darling librarians who bring us together for various events. I love that I know everyone when I go to The Foundry on Saturday mornings for breakfast. I love sharing “oohs and aahs” with friends while watching fireworks at the town Fourth of July event (Roosevelt’s Fourth Of July celebration, however, wins the prize for best small town event ever!)  I am putting down roots both literally in our garden and figuratively through our connections.

Lest you think I am only a small town advocate, I should say that I absolutely loved living in New York City and I did indeed create a community there during the twenty years I lived in Manhattan. It is true that community can be built in large towns and cities. It just has a different quality. I did run into people I knew while I lived in the city yet in a small town the likelihood that you will bump into someone you know is much greater. This is in part because the choices for what to do are more limited and confined to a smaller area. And there are fewer people.

I think a big part of why I love living where I live is the outdoors. I lived just a block from the Hudson River in the city and could escape the city sounds and energy to go to the water’s edge from time to time. Now I have ongoing quiet and peace of the woods that gives me such inspiration and comfort and calm everyday. I guess it is not too surprising given that romance novels are often idealized fantasies, that when I read about those picture perfect small towns I fantasize about what it would be like if I lived in one of those towns. Then I have to pinch myself and remind myself that I do live there! Of course real life is not as idealized as in the books I read, but it is pretty darn close.

What is very funny to me is that I could not wait to get out of Roosevelt while growing up. Of course that is in part because I needed to leap independently into a life of my own creation and staying at home was not the place to do that. But a big part was that I did not want to be in a small town. So I went to Boston and then to Berkeley for college. When I looked for jobs as a professor, most of the positions were in schools in small towns. So I ended up in a small town of Oberlin. Pretty quickly I found that work in a city was drawing me and not academia. When I think back I do remember that there were a lot of great things about the small town of Oberlin—I was creating a nice community. But it was not the right time for me. I was ambitious for fast paced and multitasking in work and life. I wanted the big city and all the energy that went along with it. So Andy and I went to New York for a large part of our adulthood, excelled in our careers and created a great life. And yet we needed a place to go to get away from the city here and there. So we got our place in Cold Spring for weekends.

My friend Nathalie reminded me a few weeks ago when she was visiting from the city that I had told her some years back that I could never imagine leaving the city for Cold Spring full-time. And I do remember feeling that way. We came up to Cold Spring only for weekends and holidays for about fifteen years. And then something shifted. Part of the shift was due to a conscious choice of changing our work lifestyle. Much of it was that the small town life is more appealing now that I am in my fifties and frankly less ambitious. And I think most of all the shift was towards greater inner peace and calm, greater introspection and stillness that I can find more easily in a small town. I am now happily settled in a small town and loving the peaceful energy of this life.

We do have a main street dotted with quaint shops. We used to have a bookstore but unfortunately that closed several years ago (it is hard for small bookstores to compete with the chains). There are a few nice coffee shops, cafes, restaurants and ice cream stands and of course those wonderful libraries. I have that idyllic small town life now even if I don’t have kids or know all the families yet and I have a cat not a dog. I continue to enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city every now and again. In a little over an hour train ride into Grand Central, I can re-engage with the energy of the city that I still respect and love. But for now at least, small town living is idyllic to me and not a fantasy.

XOXO Rachel

The Magic of Mom and Dad Celebrating 60 Years Together!

This year is already turning out to be a positive and joyful year. Last week my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. It is hard to imagine that so many years have passed, but not hard to imagine that my parents are together and in love after all these years. Here is their story. At least here is their story as they told it to me many, many years ago. I could ask them now to repeat it to me, but what’s the fun of that? I prefer the version that I have cultivated over the years in my head. I am sure that I have at least some of it right.

My dad went to MIT as part of the GI bill, having served as a naval communication officer in WWII. His amateur ham operating experience in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri came in handy in the Navy. After getting his electrical engineering degree at MIT, he went to New York City and worked on any number of interesting projects like cathode tubes and other technical stuff.  My dad had been painting (and writing?—I don’t really know when he started writing) since the war and he decided to pursue his art by getting an esthetics degree at NYU. One of his roommates in the city went home on weekends to visit his family in Roosevelt, New Jersey. My dad, then 24 years old, joined his roommate to get out of the city every now and again. And that is where my dad first saw my mom. She was a 13-year-old dark haired petite beauty playing table tennis (ping pong just doesn’t sound right for the 50s) when my dad couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Fortunately not much more happened at that point because she was so young.

My mom finished high school very young (those days skipping grades was not uncommon) and she went to Bard College at age 16. She got her bachelors degree in dance and then went to New York City to dance professionally. She joined the Henry Street Playhouse and studied and performed modern dance under Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis.

My parents continued to see each other and actually lived together for a short time before they were married—if I remember correctly. Then on January 13, 1955, just a month before my mom was of legal age to marry (that would be 21 in those days), they were wedded. With the approval of her legal guardian—her mom—my mom and dad got married at the courthouse in New York City. My parents lived in a couple of places including Greenwich Village and the infamous “cold water flat” in the Lower East Side—way before it was so fashionable to live there. Then they moved to Roosevelt, New Jersey, were it all began, to start our family.

Roosevelt was a wonderful place to grow up in the 60s and 70s. Because it was my mom’s hometown, I had the luxury of having my grandmother and great grandmother living just a street away. And I also had a kind of second grandmother, my great aunt Ellie, who lived just around the corner. I loved to drop by their houses and get fed yummy food. Roosevelt became the spot for all of our extended family to visit for holidays and other events. I have fond memories of my many cousins and aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles and more partying in Aunt Ellie and Uncle Jack’s back yard under the cherry trees. That is the definition of community to me. I really haven’t had anything close to that since I was a kid.

My mom and dad raised us in such a wonderful way and our house was filled with love, books, art, music and the political activism of the 60s. We even went on peace marches in DC. And together, my mom and dad were also puppeteers.  My mom became interested in women’s rights and decided to go back to school to get a bachelors degree in history before she went on to get her law degree, both at Rutgers. She was one of the only woman law students there and she got to study with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also probably the only female professor.

My dad worked at RCA for a number of years as an engineer and inventor (he holds several patents) and then at Bell Labs as a technical writer. Once my mom began practicing as an attorney, my dad became a househusband—again they were trendy before their time. Although these days we would have said he was a stay-at-home-dad. Throughout, he was always working as an artist and writer and always considered the intersection between science and art.  I loved woodworking with him in his basement workshop (see The Wonder Of Woodworking).

My mom worked at The Legal Aid Society and then went out with a partner before she left and worked on her own legal practice. She was an early female entrepreneur, a feminist and worked on the counsel for the Black Panthers. Her work and perspective had a huge impact on me. I read Ms. Magazine from its inception and I have never wavered in calling myself a feminist and seeking equality in the workplace. Looking back I can see that that both my mom and my dad have had a tremendous influence on my whole life journey from education and political views to need for right-brain and left-brain work. I love structure and spontaneity, I am equally comfortable with business and science and arts and writing. I thank them both for that. And I thank them both for showing how to love and stay married for 60 years.

XOXO Rachel