Rox and Roll

On Finding Neverland

Yesterday, my kids and I snuggled together for a family movie night.  Our selection, Finding Neverland, won a whole bunch of awards and nods half a dozen or so years ago.  Since it was PG and Peter Pan-related, I figured it was child appropriate.  And, to some extent, it was -- a beautiful movie, one that you can't watch with dry eyes.  It's heartfelt and heart-capturing, the tale of J.M. Barrie's writing of Peter Pan and the life story of the family who inspired it.

But. 

[Spoiler alert ahead.  Stop now if you haven't seen this great movie and wish to watch it.]

But the mom dies.  Correction: the mom appears to have chest cold after chest cold, a cough that worsens and worsens and won't go away, a cough so bad that, at times, she can't breathe.  A cough that takes her life.  A cough that was just, as my youngest, Dash, pointed out, like the cough I used to have. 

"But yours went away, Mama," he said.  "She wasn't lucky," he noted, pointing at Kate Winslet.

Lucky.

I did what I had to do in that moment, and I held myself together.  We watched the rest of the movie, all wiped away a few tears -- for, as beautiful as it is, needless to say it does not have a happy ending -- and went upstairs for our bedtime routine: a couple of dozen Shel Silverstein poems, a lullaby or three (I love that they still want me to sing to them), and then I went out on my front porch and just sat on my ski bench.  It's been about a hundred degrees here, so it was surprising how pleasant it was outside.  I sat, looked out at my forest, listened to the bullfrogs croaking in my vernal pool, and took in the last few sounds of the birds on their way to sleep.  I had anticipated a good cry, but, instead, I found myself smiling.

Lucky. 

There's a great Tennessee Williams quote that reads: "Luck is believing that you're lucky."  For a couple of years, there, I had some quite bad luck.  And I do think that a large part of wellness is believing that you can be well.  It took a while for me to find that belief.  Luck may be believing oneself to be lucky.  Life is believing in one's ability to live it.  Before I got sick, I used to get so caught up in the little stuff of life, especially when it came to parenting: making sure I checked the right boxes, doing my best to get it right the first time, trying my damndest not to screw up.  And then, I screwed up, in many ways, because I got sick, and I couldn't check the boxes anymore; I filled myself with even more self-doubt, and, for a while, I even gave up.  I thought about the "last lecture"-type letters that I should write to my kids: one for when they hit 13, one for 16, one for high school graduation... college, graduate school, wedding, baby... thinking about how I should write these missives, make them meaningful, words by which to live.  And the advice I'd impart would have been grand and unexpected, things like "Fly by the seat of your pants every so often."  "Take risks.  If one doesn't pay off, try another."  "Welcome the blind turn." and "Above all, be a good person.  Nothing else matters."  I would've inspired them to think grander, to live bigger, to be better. 

I never wrote the letters.  But I mean the advice.

We all spend so much time caught up in the pursuit of things: the ever-elusive happiness, perfection, in the attainment of goals that will make us bigger, better, more right, more awesome.  We forget the here and now.  We forget that sometimes, we screw up -- we need to screw up -- in order to redirect our course.  We forget that life is as simple as we want it to be. And Neverland?  It's right outside our door, beckoning us to make the time just to be, just to play, forgetting about all of the crap that weighs us down, remembering that we can't please everyone but that we do owe ourselves pleasure.  We can't write an IOU to ourselves when it comes to being happy.  We can choose it, just like we can believe we're lucky.

I close this post from my front porch, deep in the woods of Vermont, likely my last dispatch from this Neverland for quite some time.  I've made a lot of mistakes over the last few years, and I've taken quite a few course-corrections, some forced on me by health and circumstances, some by my own hand.  And where I sit right now, I am healthy, I am strong, and, indeed, I think grander, I live bigger, I am better, and I am much, much happier.  And yes, Dash, I am one more thing:

Lucky.

The day I remembered why I'm here

For the first time this summer, I enjoyed a day to myself, so I took a long, long walk -- even though it was over 90 degrees and overly humid -- and I appreciated what I heard: nothing but nature.  Nary a car passed me as I walked up and down my dirt lane.  A chipmunk stopped to say hello, and I saw fresh deer tracks.  There were birds galore: grey catbirds singing their "mew mew" songs, tree swallows, warblers, and even a couple of red-tailed hawks circling near the tip-top of our mountain.

Because I didn't have to consider anyone else's needs or wants for lunch, I took myself out for some fantastic crabcakes -- food that no one else in my family enjoys.  I shopped.  I strolled.  I read a book on a park bench until I became tired of sitting in the heat.

And then, I came home, filled a jug with water, and just sat on a rock at the end of my long gravel driveway, staring at my little red cottage in the woods.  This place, it conjures up a lot of thoughts.  What once was an affordable indulgence, a five-hour drive away from our former home in New Jersey, is now, at times, an albatross: a six-plus hour flight, plus a couple hour's drive in a rental car that is expensive to return when it's only one-way.  Worse, we can't realistically just come for a weekend; the cost of flights is just way too high.  And while we offset the expense of the place as best as we can through renting it out, we now have a way higher cost of living in California, and this cottage in the woods seems, at time, to be a weight on our shoulders that is a bit too heavy in an economy that isn't forgiving.  It's a bind in which we're lucky to be, on one hand; it's a colossal mistake, on the other.  To me, right now, it's three more weeks on the calendar, and I have to reflect on what to do: what projects, like the many fallen trees from recent storms, probably need attention; whether or not I should try to scrape and paint the flaking ski locker myself instead of the expense of hiring out the work; who to ask to look in on things during the long, cold winter which may be lucky enough to see some tenants -- or may not if the debt talks fail and the economy tanks again. 

But despite the nonsensicalness of it all, as it's a place we should not have in a place we often cannot be, we return, every summer, for as long as we can.  We return, and, when the kids are here, we hear their footsteps crashing through the forest.  We see them build forts out of sticks and rocks, and we hand them fishing nets and a paint bucket in which to catch and store frogs.  They fall asleep, some nights, to the glow of fireflies, caught and stored in a homemade lantern, waiting for parents can set them free again.  We research every bug and beetle that crosses our path.  We learn to identify birds by their song, trees by their leaves, and poison ivy by, unfortunately, walking past it one too many times.  We witness magnificent thunderstorms that shake our physical and metaphysical foundations.  We sleep hard, in the oxygen-rich air donated by the green trees that stretch on domed mountains as far as our eyes can see. 

We do all sorts of things here in Vermont that we do not do in California.

And maybe for that reason, as I sit on my rock and gaze at my house, this place feels more like home, as it lacks the distractions that make life in California seem so much more difficult.  Sadly, I have fewer friends here, blessedly less to do, and, frustratingly, little good produce to eat.  And yet, I could sit on this rock for a spot of time each day for the rest of my days, inviting friends from California to come and sit with me, especially if they come bearing fruit, as I'm feeling scurvyish.  We could take a kayak on the Ottaquechee and marvel at how still the river is and how the biggest, most beautiful weeping willow I've ever seen reflects so perfectly in the glass-like water.  We can watch the fish swim around our boat, and we can listen to the sounds of nothing: no cell phones, no car horns, no airplanes overhead. 

I can't even blog much, or e-mail much, because I can't stand the sound of the typing.

Gloria Swanson once said, "all creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year."  I think she's right.  Because it's not until I'm here, sitting on my rock, surrounded by still, quiet peace, that I realize how full my head gets of the noise of everyday life in Silicon Valley, and how much I need this reset button -- or reset rock, such as it is. 

It's not easy to be here in so many ways, and, yet, it's the easiest thing I do, because I'm more at home here than I am anywhere else. 

And thus, I remember why I'm here: it's to hear the call of "less is more."  There are ways to take this noise out of my very happy, but very loud, life out West.  I can't take a quiet hike right out of my door, but I can ride my bike to where I can.  I can take the family with me and insist that cell phones stay behind.  I can block off the time in the calendar and insist that we retreat to a place absent of distractions.  For it's in those times when we realize -- more existentially -- why we're here: to be together, to love each other richly, and to appreciate the gifts both inside and around us that can't be bought in any store. 

All that ... from sitting on a rock.

What does an American look like?

Today, we're celebrating the 4th like many Americans do: with family, cramming in loads of fun, too much food, and some swimming to burn it off.  And based on a couple of conversations this long weekend, I have a burning question: on this day, when we celebrate what it is to be American, I wonder: what does an American look like?

Does she look like me, your typical WASP?

Do they look like my many friends and cousins in my native West Virginia, also WASPs, working hard in mines and mills and factories making "stuff," like steel, that is the backbone of America?

Does he look like my husband, first-generation American, descended from European immigrants?

Does he look like my friend, W., of Chinese descent, who's running for political office?

Does she look like my friend, S., a Muslim of Pakistani descent?

Or like my friend, B., a gay man who, finally, achieved civil rights in New York and can marry his partner -- yet not have that marriage recognized state-to-state?  (How American is that?)

As I travel this great country of ours, between two homes on coasts both West and East (Left and Right?), I'm struck by several hard truths -- among them, that I don't see a lot of people who make me wonder if, because they're different from me, are they somehow out to get me?  (I, certainly, was raised specifically not to think that way, which may have a big something to do with that.)  How much judgment do people continue to face because they're "different" in America, whether because they're women, gay, of a different ethnicity, from a different place ... And how odd is that, really, for a place in which I, myself, technically descended from illegal immigrants, since, after all, I'm not a Native American?

And what about those people?  The many undocumented people in America, what *are* they?  And what about their children, who were born here?  Aren't they American?  Aren't they the products of parents who, like my (legal and now naturalized) husband's immigrant parents, sought the American dream of a better life for their children?  What about the many people who bear another country's passport but who come here to work; can they claim America as their home?

Otherwise said, to whom do we -- almost all of us immigrants -- pay this debt we owe just by virtue of being here on this great, free soil?  Who gets to decide who gets to say they're American and -- gulp -- who doesn't? 

When I pass people on the street, I know that I'm not wondering who has a right to be here or not.  Especially because I live in places where I hear other languages frequently (in CA, Spanish, and in VT, French), I'm not wondering who's American and who's not because of what they speak.  If I see a hijab, or a turban, I'm not wondering if those people belong here, because I have friends who wear those vestements and who are American.  No matter what their ethnic group, their house of worship, their political leanings -- I'm not inclined to worry if they belong here or not.  Perhaps it's because I consider myself a liberal that I simply don't care.  If they're poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, well, I say, come on in.  Abide by our laws, and live here if you wish.  I do think you should do so legally.  If that's a hurdle for some people, we should help them over that hurdle.  Isn't that the American way, helping our neighbors?

For if there's one thing I know, it's that there is no One America.  One can't assume that one person has a natural *right* to be American, and another doesn't.  This is a huge melting pot, and no one can assume that someone is or can be American, or not, just because of a look, or a zip code, or even a country of birth.  It's why I love it here.  I know people from everywhere.  And isn't that lucky? 

Isn't that the essence of America?