He was one of two professors who took a very motley crew of Hunter College students to London, for a course called London in Literature. We would read various things and then go explore the places they described or where the writer had lived. Thus we went to Sissinghurst after reading Virginia Woolf (Orlando, still my favorite of hers). We all piled down the East End after reading Dickens (Oliver Twist, I think). I forget where we ended up after reading The Rape of the Lock and I don’t know why we spent the day in Cambridge, but we did read piles of Andrew Marvell.

Peter had a limp (from the war) but would lead us through stately homes and formal gardens at tremendous speeds, his finger in the air, caroling: Onwards! Ever onwards and sideways! I heard in those words that sometimes the way forward is to slip down a side alley, maybe one you could only see out the corner of your eye.

Peter had gone to Cambridge after World War II, to Pembroke College. He took the whole rag-taggle of us through the grounds, pointing out where he had lived and what he loved about the place. It was small, one of the oldest colleges and so beautiful. More beautiful than anywhere I had ever been.

Pembroke

I was 18 years old that summer and for a native New Yorker, pretty damn innocent. I had had a strange and not particularly happy first year in college and was simply putting one foot in front of the other, doing what I was supposed to do — go to college, get good grades, graduate.

But then I went to England and, for the first time in my entire life, felt at home and felt as if there might be a road I hadn’t seen before, but a road I wanted to take. I fell madly in love, not with a person, but a place and wandered around for almost two months in a gloriously happy daze. After the course was over, I traveled all over the country using a BritRail pass (wonderful thing, like a EuroRail pass only for the UK and it only worked before they broke British Rail up into tiny pieces again). I accidentally ended up in a tiny Cotswold village that would turn out to be where my husband grew up. I staggered through cathedrals, watched Morris dancers, drank beer. And started to grow up.

I came back. I spent a year at Cambridge, at Pembroke, and while there were normal adolescent ups and downs, I remember it as an almost unbearably happy year. I met Ed on the third day I was there and twenty years on, here we are. The friends I made that year are still among the closest I have. I never really made it back to the US, not for long anyway. Not until my English husband took us here to do a PhD.

Because of Peter, I found a place I loved, friends I love, a husband I love truly madly and deeply — and a life I love.

Sometimes the points our lives pivot on aren’t the obvious ones. Sometimes they aren’t clear until later. Sometimes they are never clear. But I do know that Peter Kirwan changed my life, simply by living his. It’s a wonderful and yet somewhat intimidating thought. If I were to be that person in someone else’s life, would I know it? And would I change that life for the better, simply by living mine?

Maybe.

I won a set of ten movie tickets to our local little cinema by dropping my name into the pot at First Friday last week. I like to go anyway and they show good stuff there — this week it’s The Bank Job, then it’s The Band’s Visit, The Counterfeiters and My Brother is an Only Child. Good, eh? I’m pleased. Hooray! I went to pick them up in the little box office, which was quite nice. Of course, then I started talking to – no, wait. If I start ranting about what I want to rant about, I’ll be here all night, so, um, let me see… la la la.

I finished Ed’s sweater. (Will post on knitting blog, oh god, yet I really will, dammit.) I like it very much and more than that, I’m done! Hooray!

I have work again. Hooray for income!

Have been drinking Cuban Side Cars the last few evenings and they’re very good. Eh la! A recipe for you!

1 oz (or 1 part) Jamaican or Cuban rum (the golden stuff, not the spiced, not the dark and not Bacardi — and if you use Jamaican rum, call it a Jamaican Side Car, why not.)

1 oz (or 1 part) triple sec (I use Fishtown gutrot — lovely).

1 oz (or 1 part) lemon juice, though I’ve made it with lime too which is also v. good.

Shake like a maniac with ice. Pour and drink.

It almost makes it possible to put up with… no no no. I’m not ranting

Really. I’m a happy little lark. La la la. Hooray! Pour me another, bartender. Oh that’s me. I’m pouring already.

2 and a third.

Sad. Sad. Sad.

But I am doing better, even if the better is not very deep yet (scratch my psyche with even a small tiny pin and watch me bleed) and I am grateful for every ounce of okay I feel. And I know the okay is getting better because I’m writing again. I’m charging through this play about — oh but I can’t tell you until it’s done because (I’m not sure why) if I tell you, it kills it dead and I don’t need to write it anymore. Tell you what, when I finish it, I’ll ask for readers. I’ll even set me a deadline. Say this time next week, I’ll post and ask three of you to read it and rip it to tiny tiny shreds for me. It’s tentatively called Long/Short. But that’s very tentative.

And I might go to the gym. If I had a membership. Or any inclination to go to the gym. That might be rushing things.

In the past year, a few of those afternoons have made their way into my life again and I have welcomed them with joy. Oh, what I will do, I gloat, with five free hours. Paint three rooms and read the news and write a blog and write a novel and paint a masterpiece and plan a party and write ten emails and finish knitting a sweater and have a shower and do a hundred sit-ups and meditate for an hour and make a ragu and eat tofu for lunch and piece a quilt and clean the basement and wash the floor and call my mother and learn some French and practice the piano and go for a walk and take some photos and drink more coffee and make a friend and brush my hair and do all the laundry and rewire the kitchen light switches. And then I’ll think up more things.

What I actually DO do, however, is laze about. Mostly. I knit a bit and read a hundred blogs and perhaps put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and call my sister and that’s about it.

Because otherwise, it’s not free time. How do you know you’re rich with time if you’re not squandering it like a millionaire?

Murderers could enter wearing tap shoes, gazelles could drop in for coffee, Random House could be banging on the door, demanding that they publish my as-yet-unwritten novels, my children could be whining for a glass of water Mummy, the neighbors could be doing the nasty with bells tied to their heads and I’d only hear Neil Gaiman’s lovely voice as he reads Neverwhere to me. (Yes, to me and me alone, such is the power of these headphones and my love for Neil Gaiman.)

It’s strange and unsettling. We locate ourselves in the world through sound. The heat coming up (or more likely, going off). Ed’s footsteps as he makes tea. The dryer humming. The children breathing. These are the sounds that let me know where and who I am. How our senses locate us in space, in the world, in our lives is increasingly interesting to me — not least because we’ve discovered that Daniel can’t locate where in space sound comes from, which accounts for much of his anxiety. (I’ll let you know more about that as we learn more.) What it has meant for me is that I am suddenly grateful every time I turn my head towards a sound, confident that I know I’m looking the right way. Grateful for the sounds around me.

But I’m thankful for him too. And I’m really trying to accept compliments gracefully instead of folding up my face like one of these dogs and muttering.
It’s honestly easier to be nice to people than to let them be nice to me. Even if I don’t make that face, I feel all sort of wrinkly inside. But I am trying to be thankful, because a little gratitude would not go amiss right now.

I am grateful to all of you who hang out here. I am grateful for your comments, written or not. I am grateful for the opportunity to expand my own circle of connection through this space. I am thankful that recently, despite what I feel is spotty blogging and some less than stellar writing, some of you have offered me the huge lift and compliment of blogging awards. I have been remiss that I have not announced them here. But like that darn post below this one, I feel a wrinkly inside accepting the compliment. But I will:

A long while ago, a wonderful blogger, Nancy Bea, whom I admire very much, not least for the fact that she blogs a combination of beautiful words and beautiful images while parenting with such grace, offered me the Thinking Blogger Award. Nancy, thank you. I try to be a thinking blogger — as well as a thinking and thoughtful person more generally. That this effort comes across to you means much to me.
Then, a little more recently Hope, of Hope Radio, gave me the Be The Blog award, and said some very nice things too. Hope, thank you. I’ve been enjoying getting to know you too:

Then most recently, NYJLM passed on a roar for powerful words, which also means a lot, since she’s a powerful writer in her own right:

Some (all?) of these awards require that I pay them forward, which I will soon, but for today, I wanted to think quietly about being grateful, about being gracious and for saying thank you. (Also, Helena is in the bathtub roaring at me in her own brand of powerful words — I’m camped just outside the bathroom door with the laptop — so perhaps I’d better get this tired girl to bed.)

Thank you, to all of you, and to Stuntfather, for being the strong voices, raised fists and good hugs in my corner. Your support soothes the varicose veins of my soul.

The story.

The children (and their parents and helpers) of our Friends’ meeting go to an old people’s home once a month to lead a service. Today was the first time we’d ever gone and Ed stayed home to sleep off a migraine and to keep on revising the DD (the Damn Dissertation). So the children and I were in uncharted waters and Daniel’s not so great with new things, especially when, as he said, they smell a little funny.

But we get there okay and everyone is nice and we realize that, logically enough, most of the service is going to be singing. So that’s fine. Singing is good. Only the leader of our little band of Friends forgot to remind the piano player of the group to come along. And everyone was clearly feeling a little unhappy about going a cappella.

I’ll do it, I said, wondering if I’d gone mad. And I did. Not well, but I did it. It helped when I knew the song (How Great Thou Art, anyone?) and when I didn’t — well, I kept on faking it.

But boy. It would have been much better if I practiced occasionally. Still. Lovely part of being a grown up? Not caring so much when you’re not that good at something. Who cares? I made music and people sang.

Last year I was musing about my (lack of) social skills.

But then I didn’t. I wrote. Not very much — 500 words or so. But I wrote.

So here’s the thing. Is it failing if you’re only doing okay? Is it failing if you try and don’t make it? Or is that a kind of succeeding? Because trying counts for a lot. In fact, in my world it counts for almost (almost) everything. Trying is the point. If you don’t swing, you can’t hit the ball. Sure it’s nice if you make contact. But you have to swing first. And be willing to miss.

Should I think myself a failure because I’m still lonely, homesick, sad and displaced? Should I be down on myself because my upper lip is violently floppy and because I see last November not as a damn turning point but as a loss? And because I am giving myself time to settle in, rather than rushing onto some artificially constructed equilibrium?

Shouldn’t I just keep trying? Knowing that trying is the point.

I’m not going to “win” NaNoWriMo. But I am going to be thankful (to Krista, first, for planting the thankfulness thought in my head) for any moments of grace I have, for the courage to keep facing how I really feel, even though it isn’t pretty, and for the resilience which allows me to keep trying. And for believing that the only failure is not trying at all.

Last year, I was thinking about Oedipal Fairs and contemplating possible success.

“Except,” I called down the stairs from where I was crouched, sorting through dirty laundry, “except ballet today.”

“Oh,” said Daniel. “Then maybe tomorrow is the best day of the week.”

“Meeting,” grunted Ed.

“So WHAT IS the best day of the week then,” Daniel howled.

He and Helena started dissecting each day, trying to work out which day had the most they liked and the least they didn’t.

“How about,” I said somewhat grumpily, looking for coffee, “how about every day is the best day.”

“Yay!” crowed Helena.

“No way,” said Daniel.

Thing is, I’m somewhere between the two reactions. No, that sounds too balanced. I am both reactions at once. At the same time I believe that every day is the best day — because it is the ONLY day, I also believe that idea is fatuous word-play and that some days are basically better than others.

The inner struggle endures, although consciously I pull more towards the first. There really is no way to live if every day is not the best day. I was on the phone with my sister last night who had had a rare good day with her step-daughter and how wonderful that was. And how she felt bad that so many days in the past had not been good.

But the only way to parent and stay sane is to always move forward from today, I said. And I believe this utterly. To look back at all time times I took the easy way out, the lazy way. At the times I lost my temper with such insane panache that I gave Mommie Dearest a run for her money. At the times I simply couldn’t — or didn’t — offer what is best in me, but only the minimum to get through that moment. That way despair lies.

Every good day is a beacon of hope that such days exist, every bad a chance to do better. We walk forward into new, blank pages of days on which we can write a fresh story. I know no other way to live but to walk forward into each day, because today is the only day. So it’s the best day.

What it is about admitting that you need help that makes the help so much less necessary? The power of surrendering is amazing. Perhaps there is a small miracle in there — that the bit of me that hates to ask for help, that needs to be quite all right, Jack, is in fact the bit that most needs the comfort of knowing that it’s all right to need help.

Things are perking up around here a bit. Not sure why. Haven’t actually managed to organize anything helpful. Just admitted I could probably use some. And there’s some very good ice cream in the freezer.