Life in Pieces

June 2015.  That was the last time I published a blog post.  6 long months ago.  It was also the last time, I wrote anything more than my daily "To Do" list.  I have been completely constipated--creatively speaking.  

June 2015.  We closed on a new house.  Not a new, new house--relatively old in fact--1989, but new to us.  In the beginning, we were excited.  The "new to us" house sat on Lake Norman and  I imagined myself sitting on the deck for hours sipping wine and writing, writing, writing as the water soothed my central nervous system and sparked my creativity.  I fantasized about boating and kayaking and paddle boarding.  In my minds eye, I could see my newly defined abs from all that paddling!  And most of all, I felt certain that as a family our quality of life together would increase exponentially.  The kids would be so excited to live on a lake, they'd willingly leave behind the digital world they live in and spend time frolicking in the surf.

But almost immediately, as we put our house on the market to sell, anxiety took hold of my heart and began to squeeze the breath right out of me.  The children were not allowed to sit on the furniture for fear of crushing a perfectly puffed pillow.  They were not allowed to eat inside the house.  All snacks and meals were served outside on the deck.  I stopped cooking meals.  Everything was take-out so that counters stayed clean and dishes stayed done.  I've always thought I walked extremely close to the edge of insanity.  But during this time, I jumped right off the fricking cliff.

Panic set in when the old house, which was actually newer than the new house, didn't sell within the first month.  That's right.  We closed on the new house in mid-June with no offer on the old house.  We owned two houses (and two mortgages) and the real pisser was that the kids were not even excited about moving or living on the lake.  In fact, the day the moving truck arrived,  Numero Dos threw himself on the ground.  Flailing and sobbing, he exclaimed, "My whole life is a downgrade!"

A downgrade!

Can you imagine how spoiled my children must be that moving to a house on a lake is a downgrade? Of course the truth is, he wasn't exactly wrong.  From it's brass fixtures, to it's one-piece fiberglass shower inserts, to the popcorn ceilings in the basement--this house was a downgrade, relatively speaking.  But it was still on the freaking water.  That's got to count for something, right!?

Wrong.  We experienced one disappointing set back after another.  The flooring company, which we hired to refinish the hardwood floors, flooded the house before we even moved in resulting in the decimation of the main floor powder room and the basement bedroom.  6 months later, both rooms are still barren wastelands.  The toilets were not a standard 12" on center and now sit two inches away from the walls.  The washer and dryer I purchased were too big for the space resulting in the loss of the closet doors and there was no garbage disposal.  None.  So, take the stress of not selling the first house, add in a slew of installation mishaps, multiply it by the gut-wrenching sound of your child sobbing everyday after school because we left a neighborhood he loved and you've got a recipe for depression, anger, frustration and regret.

And thus I didn't write.  Writing about anything other than my true feelings seemed disingenuous and really who wants to listen to me whine about how much it sucks that we chose to buy a house on a lake?  Does anyone feel sorry for me?  Shit, I don't even feel sorry for me.  And besides, I had the perfect solution.

We needed a boat!  A boat would make everything better.  What good is it to live on a lake if you can't even get out on the water?  And so we bought a boat.  But, you know what?  The boat did not make us feel better.  Not even by a little bit, because not only did we discover that our lack of knowledge around a boat only led to more frustration, but we also discovered that our boat lift didn't work.  Chalk up one more disappointment to the tune of $8500 in favor of the house.

Fast forward to this week--the last week of 2015, I stumbled upon this blog post.  I am going to post it in it's entirety as it is the catalyst for me picking up pen and paper this week...and I just happen to think it's really, really, good!

Big Dreams Are Made Of Little Pieces

by Grant Andrew

COO IE Dawson International

I’ve been thinking about breathing lately. 
How it just seems to happen.
We don’t think about it until it gets labored or we are short of a breath or two.
But under everything in our lives, is breathing.
It is a kind of ground for consciousness.
It is keeping the lights on.
The quality of your day is dependent on ~20,000 breaths a day.
Our world is built of pieces. Like breaths.

The quality of your internet connection reflects how well the packets are moving.
Your nutritional intake is dependent on bites of food.
Big ideas are made of little flashes moving through your brain up to 268 miles per hour. (Sparks move inside you.)(Baby, you’re a fireworkfly)
We are pieces of pieces.
Companies, communities, and causes are made of people.
We see things as monolithic – solid, whole, together, but when you really get inside something, there are always pieces.
Atoms, Lego blocks, letters, and slow-twitch muscle fibers. All pieces.
What we accomplish is made of pieces too. The life you make, the work you do, the relationships you’re a part of…made of pieces.
It is tempting this time of year to teeter between euphoria and despair.
In every life, in every year, there’s always a hope for more. We have almost infinite capacity for hope and longing, so we want more from everything. Standing at the end of such a clear block of time, it’s not difficult to look back and despair for all that wasn’t, didn’t, or won’t be.
Breathe.
Turning our gaze forward, it’s easy to imagine the next year differently. So much that will be. All our hopes/dreams/longings manifested. Big things birthed, big breaks healed, big holes filled. Such a glorious and euphoric view, the future is.
The truth is more pedestrian. The future and the past are all just pieces. The same pieces, actually, that you have right now.
Breathe.  Swallow.  Blink.  Think.
That’s what makes this life beautiful and difficult.
Everything is small, simple, easy. The next right move, the next deep breath, the next right word.
But everything worth doing is difficult because it is a million right moves, a thousand deep breathes, pages and pages and pages of the next right words.
Life is made of pieces. We traffic in pieces. We are made of pieces. We are pieces. All we get is PIECES.
So even now, good traveler, as you stand in this present, this piece, at the moment when the line of NOW and the end of a big block of time happen to align, don’t get lost.
Your task today is easy. Your task for this next year is simple:
Take control of the pieces.
That’s it.
Think of all the big dreams you have. The moments you long for. The ones that will take away all your breaths. Break them down. To pieces. Look at them, so cute and cuddly. The atomic layer of your deepest hopes. Just little pieces. The tiniest manifestation of your dreams.
Look at this next year. 

Don’t see it whole. Don’t see it in quarters or months.
See it in seconds. Minutes. Moments.
Set your intentions high – aim for your Everest – then come back to the present, set your compass true, and a take a step.
Take a breath. Swallow. Blink. Think.
2016 is coming. And 17. And 18. Don’t worry about those.
We are made of pieces, we make pieces, pieces make us.
Please make good pieces. The world is hungry for your hearts. 
Enjoy the journey.

Throughout all the stress, anger, disappointment and regret, rather than lean on my yoga practice for strength, I ran from it.  In fact, I practically hid.  Yoga is quiet and calm.  It requires stillness of the mind and body.  But it takes time to sit in stillness, and I didn't have any time.  I was too busy trying to sell one house and prepare to move into another house.  There was too much cleaning to do.  And then there was too much packing to do, and then unpacking, moving, worrying, and mostly feeling sorry for myself.  Do you know how much energy is required to feel sorry for oneself?  I had nothing left for my yoga practice.  I didn't even have time to sit and breathe.

And then I came across this lovely, poetic blog post and the first line caught my attention:  I've been thinking about breathing lately.  I used to tell any one that would listen, that for me, the magic of yoga was in the breath.  And yet for the past six months, I have been holding my breath, drowning in regret and self-loathing.

"The future and the past are all just pieces. The same pieces, actually, that you have RIGHT NOW.  Life is made of pieces. We traffic in pieces. We are made of pieces. We are pieces. All we get is PIECES.  Our world is built of pieces--Like breaths." 

There is an old zen saying:  "You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you are too busy; then you should sit for an hour."

This year, I plan to breathe more, regret less and break everything down into small, delicious, bite-sized pieces.

There are so many morals to this story.  I know I don't need to type them in black and white.  As a post script, we received an offer on the old house mid-July and closed early August.  One week later, we made our first payment on the the new house, being spared the hardship of making two mortgage payments in the same month.

I am sending up prayers of thanksgiving right this second as I am once again reminded of how everything always works out in the end.

Happy 2016.  

May your year be filled with lots of happy pieces!

Life is what you make it.

Life is what you make it.  

This is a hard concept to understand as a young person.  When you're 10, 12, 14, 16...time moves slow.  Your parents don't know anything, 30 is old, 40 is ancient, and appreciating what you have today because it may not be there tomorrow doesn't exist in the underdeveloped, teenage brain.  It's taken me nearly 45 years to discover this and at times I still regress.

I was recently reminded of this on a trip to Washington DC, when we--the parental units, opted to head North for Spring Break while the rest of the country headed South to the land of all things Mouseketeer.  We opted for historical and educational versus princess tea parties and character parades.  The children would have preferred hats with ears.

We rented a turn of the century row house in the NE quadrant of the city in a neighborhood currently undergoing gentrification.  It sat on a loud, busy corner where sirens screamed throughout the night.  And with the constant hustle and bustle that comes with being planted in the middle of a busy metropolitan area that never sleeps, it could have significantly benefited from blackout shades.  In describing the home, I'm reminded of a Mother Goose rhyme:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a crooked little house.

Yes.  The house was crooked.  Very crooked.  It had crooked floors and crooked walls, but I didn't mind.  With every out of square corner or creak in the floor, I imagined the life this house had lived for the past hundred years, the things that it had witnessed, and I felt alive.  I was now part of it's history. I fed off the energy of the city and relished feeling like I was in the epicenter of something really significant, something newsworthy.   And for one night I was--as I witnessed a barrage of police cars scream through the narrow streets ending a high speed pursuit just blocks away.   It certainly wasn't a four star resort.  It was better.  And thankfully my children didn't complain about the sights or sounds or lack of room service once. The house was equipped with television and wi-fi and all was good in teenage-brain land.

We spent five, over-scheduled days in the city, and as anyone who is familiar with DC knows, that was not enough.  We filled our days with tours, museums, monuments and memorials covering more than thirty miles on foot and canvassing even more distance by train and yet we left with miles and miles still undiscovered. 

Arlington National Cemetery

The majority of children today and even my own Generation X cannot fully comprehend the sacrifices that the generations before us made for our freedoms.  It, however, becomes a little more comprehendible when you stand facing a wall with more than 58,000 names engraved in memoriam or stand before a field of gold stars representing lives lost with the words, "Here We Mark The Price Of Freedom."  A humbleness befalls you as you walk amongst a backdrop of simple white, marble headstones that date back to the Civil War, and stand silently in reverence as a funeral procession passes for service men still being buried today.  The 45 year old me understood how hallowed the ground beneath my feet was.  I'm not sure the 16 year old me would have.  


At times during the week, the teenage brains preferred to sleep as the landscape of America the Beautiful passed by.  At times they needed to be told to put away the electronic devices.  And, at times they needed to be reminded that life does not offer guarantees, take advantage while the opportunity presents itself.   Life is what you make it.  You can spend your hours brooding.  You can spend your hours mindlessly in front of a computer screen.  You can choose to be unhappy, ungrateful and selfish or you can choose the opposite.  It took me a long time to figure that out and without my yoga practice, I'm not sure I would have ever arrived.  Today I choose happiness. Today I choose to be grateful.  

Because life is what I make it.

Shanghai'd Thanksgiving

I originally wrote the following article in 2007 after a disastrous first Thanksgiving spent living abroad.  It was later published in an anthology titled Thanksgiving Tales: True Stories of the Holiday in America.

Three years into our expat assignment, I finally realized Thanksgiving is not about the food being served, it's about the people you spend the day with.   

Today we are back on U.S. soil, but still far from home.  I feel particularly grateful for the community we've cultivated over the past couple of years. In Sanskrit, the word Kula has several meanings: herd, flock, clan, tribe, family, habitat, gang, which when pared down all mean "community". Tomorrow, we will celebrate Thanksgiving with our Kula.  Fortunately for all involved, I am not responsible for cooking the turkey this year! 

SHANGHAI'D THANKSGIVING

It had been just three months since we boarded a plane bound for China, and transitioning to life in Shanghai was going much smoother than anticipated.  It wasn't until confronted with the impending arrival of Thanksgiving, a truly traditional American holiday, I realized just how far from home we were. 

For me, Thanksgiving meant spending the day with family, eating and eating and eating until it became imperative to change into pants with an elastic waistband.  I was determined to re-create that tradition with my own children, but in order to accomplish this, I first needed to find a turkey.  Without a turkey, Thanksgiving might as well be on a Tuesday in July.  It cannot be celebrated without a turkey.  Period.

In November in the United States, turkey is not only plentiful but cheap.  Many stores offer promotions, and if taken advantage of, the turkey is easily the least expensive item on the menu--not so in China.  Turkey, being indigenous to North and South America, are neither wild nor farmed in any part of Asia.  And although there are 19 million people in Shanghai, only a select group of expatriates want to eat them...and only once a year.  Therefore, the average 15-pound gobbler will set you back approximately $100 U.S. dollars.

In addition to the requisite turkey, the menu also included mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, corn, fresh vegetables with dip, and Jell-O.  Despite the simplicity of the ingredients, finding them required scouring five different stores over three days and cost a small fortune.  But I did it!  I found everything I needed, including the myriad of spices to make brine, which was sure to be the one thing that brought the simple bill of fare to five-star restaurant status.



Thanksgiving Day, after consulting with both Betty Crocker and Butterball.com, I determined the bird would take approximately four hours to cook at a temperature of about 350 degrees.  I carefully converted Fahrenheit to Centrigrade and decided to set the oven at 170 degrees.

While the oven was warming, my husband pulled the bird from the brine, which had been soaking up the lovely, savory flavors overnight, only to discover the pan I'd purchased was too small.  It was like trying to squeeze a size ten foot into a strappy, little size seven shoe.  It just wasn't going to work. 

In my shopping excursions that week, I noticed some of the stores stocked with disposable pans.  I crossed my fingers as I ran on foot to the closest little market.  I was in luck.  Covered in dust and tucked away on a back shelf, they had just one.  I snatched it up and ran home.

We were now ready to throw the main course into the gas chamber, but the new pan was too big for the tiny oven.  After performing a little origami fused with some karate chops on the cheap aluminum, the pan fit.

With the turkey safely roasting, I took the kids to the park for the afternoon.  When I returned, I started peeling the potatoes.  By my estimation, the bird would be done in 30 minutes.  I opened the oven door to check its progress. NO FLAME.  At some point during the day, the gas had blown out and while the temperature in the oven dropped, the tension in the kitchen soared. 

We had no idea how long the turkey had not been roasting, and this particular bird had no plastic indicator to let us know when it was time to carve, so we did the next best thing and stuck a thermometer in it.  My husband punctured the breast and watched while the temperature gauge rose.

"According to Betty, the thermometer is supposed to go in the thigh," I informed him after consulting the red and white checkered cookbook.

"Where's the thigh?" he replied.

"I'm not exactly sure," I said, "but I know that's not it."

He left the thermometer in the breast and we watched as it climbed to 130 degrees Fahrenheit.  The kids were starting to moan and groan.  They were "staaaarving."  So I presented them with veggies and dip and we started to snack while we waited another estimated hour for the bird to reach a safe temperature to eat.

When the thermometer started to beep, indicating the turkey had reached temperature, I began to set the table.  While my husband whipped the mashed potatoes into creamy goodness and heated the corn, he snuck a bite of a dinner roll...and then promptly spit it out.  The rolls were filled with sweet cream and raisins.  We'd spent several hours the day before going from one bakery to the next in search of anything that resembled a dinner roll.  The little surprise inside of these was unexpected and unappreciated.

I remembered seeing a French baguette at the store earlier, so I put on my running shoes and sprinted there a second time.  Again, I felt very lucky.  No one else had purchased the single loaf of bread on the shelf.  I paid for it and raced back home.

Finally we were ready to eat.  The table was set, the candles were lit, and we said our prayers of thanksgiving.  Just as we were about to carve the turkey, in the the flicker of the candlelight, I noticed a lot of juice on the platter.  I jumped out of my seat and threw on the lights...BLOOD!  The entire ambiance was ruined as the bird was not even close to being edible.  Frustrated, my husband cut the gobbler wide open and put it back in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  He sliced off a large piece of breast meat, nuked it,  and sat down to eat.  I fed the kids Jell-O while I waited for the turkey to finish roasting.  At 8 p.m., I opened the oven door to check on the bird.  NO FLAME!

After eight hours of failed attempts to roast the perfect turkey, I surrendered.  I put everything away, did the dishes, and bathed the kids.  Once they were safely tucked into bed, I broke out the Pop Tarts.

Happy Thanksgiving to me!

Our third Thanksgiving in China, there was not a turkey in sight, just great friends and lots of laughs.  I was wrong.  While eating turkey is a nice addition to the holiday, it is ultimately who you spend the day with that matters most---not what's on the menu.