This is one of those holidays where the holiday-life seems so surreal and then, reflecting from that surreal place, my everyday life seems totally surreal too. I am back from a day walking in Australia’s Blue Mountains. I begin this blog in a (heavily discounted) suite on the 3rd floor of an old hotel, built in the 1890s and gracefully refurbished in classic Ye Olde Style dark woods and swooping curves. Looking out the window, I see that the beautiful views have closed in with the rain until I can hardly even see the street below.
It has been a holiday with strands that weave and circle back, that connect into the future and back to the past and hold together different parts of my life. And all of it brings me back to September 2005 when I first came to Australia, on my own and beside myself with joy. I was coming to teach a Subject-Object Interview workshop at the request of two fellas whom I’d met in a café in Washington as they did a tour of the adult developmentalists on the east coast of the US. On their way from Atlanta to Boston they had lunch with me in DC and talked about Keith’s impending dissertation and Paul’s blossoming interests in this field. When they invited me to teach the workshop in Australia, it seemed like a dream; when I went for my first walk in Sydney and came to the Opera House, it seemed like a fantasy.
I wandered around Sydney on my own those two days before I headed to do my various pieces of work. I met Tony Grant, who had been the editor of a book for which I’d recently written a chapter, and his colleague Michael Cavanaugh, together with whom he ran the University of Sydney coaching psychology program. Then it was into the work of the trip with the SOI workshop attended by (among others) Paul and Keith and Michael C. At the end of that trip (at 10 days, the longest I’d ever been away from the kids) I took whirlwind excursion to see a little more of this lovely country with Keith as my tour guide: first to the beach south of Sydney and then to the Blue Mountains to do some walking in the crisp mountain air.
That was the beginning of a series of ongoing friendships and partnerships that have re-centred my life and turned my world upside down. But how was I to know any of that at the time? All I knew is that I was having the time of my life, that I was loving this place and these people and this magical opportunity to be me, only really really far away.
That whole trip, each exquisite thing I did, made me wonder whether I would ever have such an experience again. Would this be the last time I ever saw the Sydney Opera House, would it be the last time I ever saw the Blue Mountains? Would it be the last time I ever saw Paul and Keith and Michael C? Each place or person I said goodbye to I thought was possibly forever.
And here, in the space of just a few days, I’m with all of them—all those people and places of that first trip (except Keith, whom I worked with at my house on the day before I left for Sydney). All of these people have become players in my life with on-going parts rather than the walk-on role I once imagined.
And, in order to emphasise my re-walking of these old footsteps, today I went to the visitor centre in the Blue Mountains to pick out a walk for us to take. I had been on a walk in 2005 with Keith, lovely but mysterious—I was so overwhelmed with the place and the experience that I didn’t take part in planning anything and just followed along the path Keith had picked out. So when I examined the descriptions of the various walks we could take in the Blue Mountains, I was looking for one that sounded familiar. No such luck. Instead of revisiting, I just picked out what looked like the best walk of all, and we set off to the trail head.
As soon as we arrived I knew it was the same walk I had taken nearly four years before. I plunged into the lovely temperate rain forest, this time with Michael and the kids in tow. On that first trip I took heaps of pictures to bring back to Michael (the kids were too small to care much) so that he would get something of the feel of the place. And now, nearly in a blink of time, he was there too—along with our kids who are troopers on these long walks (another piece of the future I’d never have imagined when they were little kids in DC). This time, I took almost no pictures (and you’ll have to wait to see any of them as we’re paying for this internet access by the megabite)—why bother?
The next morning, we woke up and drove to the wildlife park Paul and his family took me to two years ago—where I got to pet my first kangaroo. Like the Blue Mountains walk, it was bringing threads of my life together: my Aussie thread and the rich experiences I have here, and my family, none of whom had ever touched a koala. Dinner with Paul and his family at Michael C’s house, a morning watching Paul teach my kids to surf on a North Sydney beach (yes, that's Paul cheering when Aidan stands on the surfboard for the first time in the other pictures), an afternoon watching my kids feed the kangaroos—all of these are weaving fabric of my life in a more integrated whole.
Somehow as I watch the present and past, my work and family contexts, all blend and connect, I am also wondering about how all of these pieces connect forward through time. I no longer believe that this is the last time I’ll see the Sydney Opera House or that maybe I’ll never see Paul or Tony again. But I wonder what the future holds for me with these people—and the new people I connect with at each workshop I teach. Now that I understand how profoundly unpredictably my life might progress, and I know that I don’t actually know where it’s going next. Will I bring Dad and Jamie here someday? Will Mom and I teach a workshop at the Uni? Will I have clients here? Visit grandchildren here? Which threads get picked up in the ongoing pattern of my life, and which ones get left behind? I’m curious, and I’m also not rushing to find the answers to these questions. Instead, I’d rather watch my kids swim in the sunset, feel the soft fur of a roo under my hand, find myself teaching another intelligent and lovely group of people in a familiar and graceful (if HOT) room. I was here once and I will be here again, and I am trying to hold all of that and also be here now.
PS This trip was planned around the moving of some fantastic cousins to Sydney. I had imagined playing at the beach with their girls, holding their new(ish) baby, talking long into the night. That was the plan which, due to circumstances outside their control, was cancelled at the last minute. Who knows whether we’ll weave them into the fabric of our Southern Hemispheric lives. All I know is that no matter what you think is next, no matter what you plan for, there are surprises all along the journey. U and R, we hope all is happy for you and that this looks, at sometime in the future, like a grand opportunity. We love you.
28 January 2009
26 January 2009
Aussie holiday
We are having heaps of fun in Australia. I'll write about this tomorrow, but here are the most exciting pictures we've taken so far. Look what my friend Paul taught my kids at a North Sydney beach...
16 January 2009
Life, here
Last weekend was the best and worst of life in New Zealand. It began with waking to the sound of the sea and the dozens of shades of grey and silver that a cloudy morning holds. This merged effortlessly into a walk on the beach with Michael, Aidan, and Perry, and then flowed into a fantastic Sunday-morning breakfast with Alli, our glorious American WWOOFer. And then the realisation that this was not just a regular Sunday here, but the corresponding Saturday when I would, in another life, have driven the long hours up the New Jersey Turnpike to have the Garvey Family Christmas.
I called at the appropriate time and heard the roar of the party in the background. I could see every piece of it—the guests blowing in out of the cold, the hugs in the foyer, the laughing and talking that marks one of these parties. And I, for the third year in a row, was a disembodied voice on the phone, a person passed from uncle to uncle to aunt, forcing the talker to cower in a back bedroom or bathroom so that he or she could hear what I was saying on a grey summer morning on the other side of the world.
Then, shaking my head after the disorientation of this winter phone call with so many people I love on the other side of the world, I went into the grey summer afternoon to go for a walk with some friends. This is New Zealand, though, so our walk—just a few minutes from the beach house our friends J and L were borrowing—was up lush, viney woods, lacy with ferns and palm trees. Together with J and L and their three kids, Michael and Aidan and Alli and I (Naomi was away at camp) pushed our bodies up up up a hill. We marvelled at the colours of the green, at the layers of the leaves, at the gentle sound of rain hitting the canopy high above us. After the walk there was lovely dinner at a café and then a sunset walk on the beach north of here, with a whole different view of Kapiti. The boys sat down next to the water and played in the sand while the adults stood nearby and, well, played in the sand.
On the way home Alli quipped that if we really wanted to do well in the WWOOFer book, she needed a rainbow. We had popped into a grocery store on the way home and I glanced out the window at a sudden burst of sun on a cloudy day. I said, Your order has arrived, and out we went into the rain, to see the most amazingly bright rainbow lighting up the sky. We drove home, keeping the rainbow in sight over moderately ugly strip malls and magnificently beautiful hills. At home, we marvelled at the view of the sea, hills, and rainbow from our front porch.
And so that’s the life here. Magical and fantastic, and also on the other side of the world from everyone who shares our DNA. With every joy there is a corresponding sadness that I am so far away from those I love. People will ask, “So does your partner’s family live near by?” Nope. “So what family do you have here?” None. “None?!” People are amazed and horrified about that, and they talk about how they couldn’t do it, etc. And as they say how impressed they are, I think, “Hey, maybe this is the stupidest thing in the world!” And so it goes.
So here we sit, in the middle of summer holiday, wind blowing the sea into a frenzy, kids working each other into a frenzy. Naomi is home from 10 days at camp and reacclimating. I’m trying to get work done and play with my kids and not doing either very well. Sounds like holiday time. This weekend we’ll build a chicken coop (!) and play in the garden. I’ll try to finish a report. We’ll fly a kite in the park. We will enjoy one another and the lovely people who come and stay with us, and we will try to celebrate the life we have even as we mourn the life we don’t. That is perhaps the thing we are all called to do, every day.
I called at the appropriate time and heard the roar of the party in the background. I could see every piece of it—the guests blowing in out of the cold, the hugs in the foyer, the laughing and talking that marks one of these parties. And I, for the third year in a row, was a disembodied voice on the phone, a person passed from uncle to uncle to aunt, forcing the talker to cower in a back bedroom or bathroom so that he or she could hear what I was saying on a grey summer morning on the other side of the world.
Then, shaking my head after the disorientation of this winter phone call with so many people I love on the other side of the world, I went into the grey summer afternoon to go for a walk with some friends. This is New Zealand, though, so our walk—just a few minutes from the beach house our friends J and L were borrowing—was up lush, viney woods, lacy with ferns and palm trees. Together with J and L and their three kids, Michael and Aidan and Alli and I (Naomi was away at camp) pushed our bodies up up up a hill. We marvelled at the colours of the green, at the layers of the leaves, at the gentle sound of rain hitting the canopy high above us. After the walk there was lovely dinner at a café and then a sunset walk on the beach north of here, with a whole different view of Kapiti. The boys sat down next to the water and played in the sand while the adults stood nearby and, well, played in the sand.
On the way home Alli quipped that if we really wanted to do well in the WWOOFer book, she needed a rainbow. We had popped into a grocery store on the way home and I glanced out the window at a sudden burst of sun on a cloudy day. I said, Your order has arrived, and out we went into the rain, to see the most amazingly bright rainbow lighting up the sky. We drove home, keeping the rainbow in sight over moderately ugly strip malls and magnificently beautiful hills. At home, we marvelled at the view of the sea, hills, and rainbow from our front porch.
And so that’s the life here. Magical and fantastic, and also on the other side of the world from everyone who shares our DNA. With every joy there is a corresponding sadness that I am so far away from those I love. People will ask, “So does your partner’s family live near by?” Nope. “So what family do you have here?” None. “None?!” People are amazed and horrified about that, and they talk about how they couldn’t do it, etc. And as they say how impressed they are, I think, “Hey, maybe this is the stupidest thing in the world!” And so it goes.
So here we sit, in the middle of summer holiday, wind blowing the sea into a frenzy, kids working each other into a frenzy. Naomi is home from 10 days at camp and reacclimating. I’m trying to get work done and play with my kids and not doing either very well. Sounds like holiday time. This weekend we’ll build a chicken coop (!) and play in the garden. I’ll try to finish a report. We’ll fly a kite in the park. We will enjoy one another and the lovely people who come and stay with us, and we will try to celebrate the life we have even as we mourn the life we don’t. That is perhaps the thing we are all called to do, every day.
11 January 2009
tying a bow on the weekend
Ok, the actual blog about this will come tomorrow, but here are a couple of pictures of the magical place we live.
03 January 2009
Whatif
The thing about life is that how we just live it without noticing how close we are—at all times—to not living it anymore. Sometimes we are reminded, and mostly those reminders aren’t that fun. On New Year’s Day, we went to yet another party—our third in a week. We drove along the coastal state highway 1—a magnificent stretch of a two-lane highway (one lane in each direction) that juts out from a mountain and nearly laps into the sea. It was a lovely day, bright blue sky and big wind ruffling the sea and sending waves crashing into the sea wall and sea foam sailing through the air. I was chattering with the kids about books they’re reading and with Michael about the colour of the sea when I saw the squished car from the accident in the opposite lane. It hadn’t been a bad wreck; everyone would walk away from it—most would even drive away. Michael’s attention was distracted by that accident, too, and as we rounded the curve, he was startled to see the cars in front of us stopped. He slammed on his breaks and pulled hard onto the shoulder (in one of the only places this tiny stretch of road even has a shoulder). In the split second that I was thinking that it was unnecessary for him to have pulled off the road like that (we could have stopped in time), the car that had been behind us slammed into the car that had been in front of us. There were tires screeching and metal bending and glass breaking all around. The noise was everywhere as cars all around us joined into the pile up.
In some ways, nothing happened on to us on this shining new’ years day. It took only seconds for the screeching to end and the cars around us to come to a halt. Because we were towards the beginning of the pile up, we didn’t even have to suffer through the traffic that the accident would have caused; we wove our way through the damaged cars pulling off the road and were at the party in 10 minutes. This was a typical fender-bender pile up with no one’s car smashed beyond recognition, no one likely to be badly injured.
Yet the what-ifs, which are probably circling invisible all the time around us, become palpable at times like that. The car behind us that hit the car in front of us would surely have hit us much harder with 12 feet less braking time. We’d have been smashed into the car in front of us. We’d probably still have been fine—this is why we drive a Volvo—but what if? And what if we hadn’t gotten the Volvo and were still in the van we’ve had most of our time here? We’d never have gotten off the road so quickly—we’d have spun or tumbled—or have braked so smoothly. What if then? What if it had gone badly and we’d have ended up in a helicopter to a hospital on New Years day instead of a party at a friends’ house. What if our lives had changed in that moment of screeching metal?
Over the course of New Year’s Day, Michael and I found that those questions don’t stop coming. What if we hadn’t moved to New Zealand? What if I had never been asked to come to the Southern Hemisphere at all and we hadn’t fallen in love with it? What if Michael and I hadn’t gotten job at an ice rink together in 1987? The questions spin in circles through every piece of our lives.
We like to believe that we’re in control of our lives, and to some extent we’re right. We decide what to do each day and how to respond to the events life throws toward us. But in making those decisions, we put ourselves at risk for utterly unexpected consequences. When I decided to have lunch with a Kiwi and an Aussie in Washington DC nearly four years ago, it was just about weighing how much time I had on that particular day with how interesting it would be to meet these strangers. I could never have known that that lunch would start things in motion that would have us leave our house and move to the other side of the world. What if we hadn’t had that lunch?
And on and on. We can anticipate only small bits of the outcomes of our actions, and mostly the pieces we anticipate come true. Most car rides end up just the way you think they will; most lunches do not lead to international moves. Perhaps the most startling thing of all is that it’s nearly impossible to anticipate which actions in our lives will turn out, later, to have been the momentous ones. We know that our wedding day will change our lives, and know that the day our kids are born will be memorable forever. But what of the day you wandered into the café and met the future partner? Or the day you met the person who would become your best friend? Or stumbled upon an interesting question that would turn into a powerful piece of your life’s work?
When we engage in relationships or go to parties or wonder about something, all of that is a risk that something might, well, happen to us. And the happening can be terrible (a car crash) or wonderful (a new love), or somewhat indefinite (a new question that arises). And I’m pretty sure that risk of something happening is called life. And then, eventually, one of the somethings that will happen is that we’ll die. There is no escaping either of them, the life or the death, really. There is only how they happen to us, and how much we get out of them.
This blog, when I began it early in the week, was about our Hanukkah party and what it was like to have a big party in a new country. And then it was going to be about having the beautiful and kind Anna, our German WWOOFer, back with us (she came for a week and then left—we all thought for good—and then came back for another week and celebrated her 20th birthday and New Years with us). And then about the New Year’s Eve party. But the squealing of tires made those things less present in my mind. Here at the new year, I am noticing again the gifts of being alive. I’m watching Naomi prepare for summer camp, watching Aidan learn about the world. Part of me wants to hold on to this time—and to these children—with a grasp so tight that this can never get away. I was scared by the crash, scared by how close each of us is to death nearly all the time. And I’m also noticing that part of what makes this time beautiful is that I cannot hold it. Naomi will go to camp and come back different. Aidan and I will walk on the beach and talk about the universe and politics and history, and we’ll have to come home and google everything I didn’t know about to get the answers he requires. The nights are already getting shorter as we make our way through summer to fall, to winter, and around and around. All of this is a cliché except for how much I feel it in my gut. The waves come and go. Cars drive and drive and sometimes crash. And each second of this year is a miracle for happening in just the way it happens—whatever happens next. Happy new year to you all.
In some ways, nothing happened on to us on this shining new’ years day. It took only seconds for the screeching to end and the cars around us to come to a halt. Because we were towards the beginning of the pile up, we didn’t even have to suffer through the traffic that the accident would have caused; we wove our way through the damaged cars pulling off the road and were at the party in 10 minutes. This was a typical fender-bender pile up with no one’s car smashed beyond recognition, no one likely to be badly injured.
Yet the what-ifs, which are probably circling invisible all the time around us, become palpable at times like that. The car behind us that hit the car in front of us would surely have hit us much harder with 12 feet less braking time. We’d have been smashed into the car in front of us. We’d probably still have been fine—this is why we drive a Volvo—but what if? And what if we hadn’t gotten the Volvo and were still in the van we’ve had most of our time here? We’d never have gotten off the road so quickly—we’d have spun or tumbled—or have braked so smoothly. What if then? What if it had gone badly and we’d have ended up in a helicopter to a hospital on New Years day instead of a party at a friends’ house. What if our lives had changed in that moment of screeching metal?
Over the course of New Year’s Day, Michael and I found that those questions don’t stop coming. What if we hadn’t moved to New Zealand? What if I had never been asked to come to the Southern Hemisphere at all and we hadn’t fallen in love with it? What if Michael and I hadn’t gotten job at an ice rink together in 1987? The questions spin in circles through every piece of our lives.
We like to believe that we’re in control of our lives, and to some extent we’re right. We decide what to do each day and how to respond to the events life throws toward us. But in making those decisions, we put ourselves at risk for utterly unexpected consequences. When I decided to have lunch with a Kiwi and an Aussie in Washington DC nearly four years ago, it was just about weighing how much time I had on that particular day with how interesting it would be to meet these strangers. I could never have known that that lunch would start things in motion that would have us leave our house and move to the other side of the world. What if we hadn’t had that lunch?
And on and on. We can anticipate only small bits of the outcomes of our actions, and mostly the pieces we anticipate come true. Most car rides end up just the way you think they will; most lunches do not lead to international moves. Perhaps the most startling thing of all is that it’s nearly impossible to anticipate which actions in our lives will turn out, later, to have been the momentous ones. We know that our wedding day will change our lives, and know that the day our kids are born will be memorable forever. But what of the day you wandered into the café and met the future partner? Or the day you met the person who would become your best friend? Or stumbled upon an interesting question that would turn into a powerful piece of your life’s work?
When we engage in relationships or go to parties or wonder about something, all of that is a risk that something might, well, happen to us. And the happening can be terrible (a car crash) or wonderful (a new love), or somewhat indefinite (a new question that arises). And I’m pretty sure that risk of something happening is called life. And then, eventually, one of the somethings that will happen is that we’ll die. There is no escaping either of them, the life or the death, really. There is only how they happen to us, and how much we get out of them.
This blog, when I began it early in the week, was about our Hanukkah party and what it was like to have a big party in a new country. And then it was going to be about having the beautiful and kind Anna, our German WWOOFer, back with us (she came for a week and then left—we all thought for good—and then came back for another week and celebrated her 20th birthday and New Years with us). And then about the New Year’s Eve party. But the squealing of tires made those things less present in my mind. Here at the new year, I am noticing again the gifts of being alive. I’m watching Naomi prepare for summer camp, watching Aidan learn about the world. Part of me wants to hold on to this time—and to these children—with a grasp so tight that this can never get away. I was scared by the crash, scared by how close each of us is to death nearly all the time. And I’m also noticing that part of what makes this time beautiful is that I cannot hold it. Naomi will go to camp and come back different. Aidan and I will walk on the beach and talk about the universe and politics and history, and we’ll have to come home and google everything I didn’t know about to get the answers he requires. The nights are already getting shorter as we make our way through summer to fall, to winter, and around and around. All of this is a cliché except for how much I feel it in my gut. The waves come and go. Cars drive and drive and sometimes crash. And each second of this year is a miracle for happening in just the way it happens—whatever happens next. Happy new year to you all.
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