Category: Fun
Monday, Feb 15, 2016 | Adventure, Driving, Family, Fun, Holidays, Swimming, Travel, Winter |
Day One. We wake at 4AM, are on the road before 5AM, and arrive around 10AM at our first stop in Bluffton, Ohio, a town off the I-75 where my family lived during the Carter-Reagan era (in other words, a long time ago). No photos. Lunch with dear old friends. At noon, friends and I walk to the Bluffton Library where I do an hour-long book talk on Girl Runner. Then we are on the road again to Tennessee, a mostly uneventful trip, although I’m pretty sure the kids will never let me forget that red light I run somewhere in Kentucky when we are off the highway looking for a grocery store.
Anyway.
Day one ends successfully with arrival at aunt and uncle’s house (pictured above). It is dark and late, but not too terribly horribly late. We are giddy. Some of us have eaten McDonald’s sundaes.
Day Two. Everyone learns how to drive a golf cart! My aunt takes us to a super-cool “extreme sport” indoor trampolining place (Kevin and I are too tired to participate). After supper, we go to downtown Nashville to watch the Predators lose rather badly to the visiting Philadelphia Flyers, an entertaining outing.
Day Three. More golf cart driving. An international friendly soccer match with cousins. Running around outside. Starting a puzzle. Seeing deer.
And, after supper, packing up and driving south through the night.
Day Four. Drive through Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida (adults taking shifts at the wheel). Stop for breakfast at McDonald’s, with regret. Arrive at Grandma’s place in Fort Myers, Florida just in time for lunch. Nap. Swim. Watch competitive cooking shows on TV. Get fed meals by Grandma. Go to bed early.
Day Five. Super Bowl Sunday. Start 1,000 piece puzzle. Swim (all swimming happens in a big outdoor heated pool that everyone loves). Read. Nap. Jog. Look for alligators. Eat tacos while watching football game.
Day Six. Boat ride with Grandma. Kevin stays on dry land. Lunch out with Grandma and kids. See dolphins and many many birds. Swimming upon return. Finish puzzle. Try on Grandma’s hats in anticipation of beach visit tomorrow.
Day Seven. Family trip to the beach. No amount of photo-manipulation can disguise the fact that it is really windy and pretty darn cold. Beach hats in great danger of flying away. But here we are, at the ocean, really far from home. Lunch at weirdly wonderful sushi/burger joint. Souvenir shopping afterwards. Swimming in the late afternoon.
Day Eight. CJ jogs a mile with me. Kids start another 1,000 piece puzzle. Swimming and more swimming. A hunt for gators is successful! (Well, gators were spotted, though not a shred of photo evidence exists to prove this; same goes for the dolphins.) Puzzle gets completed before suppertime.
And after dessert, we pack up, say goodbye, and start driving north.
Day Nine. Drive through Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Snow and ice are visible by dawn. Arrive at aunt and uncle’s in time for breakfast. Kevin and I nap all morning. In the afternoon, we return with the kids to the trampoline place, but this time we participate! I discover a flair for swinging from ring to ring over a pit of foam blocks. Impressed with my feats of strength, I climb up a rather tall wall only to discover that I’m now at the top, and must somehow get down while simultaneously preserving my dignity (have I mentioned my fear of heights?). We shoot baskets, jump, leap, balance, swing, and fall. It’s fun to play like a kid.
Day Ten. Drive home through Tennessee, Kentucky (under construction), Ohio (under construction), Michigan (giant pile-up on highway requiring detour), and Ontario (white-out conditions, snow storms). Finish listening to a recording of Agatha’s Christie’s Death on the Nile, which is a relief to most of the passengers. We highly recommend the chicken sandwiches at Big Boy (as eaten in Louisville), and sort of recommend the food at Taco Bell (as eaten in Windsor).
Day Eleven. Arrive well after midnight. Dogs happy to see us. That post-holiday malaise. And soccer, soccer, soccer as soon as we wake up.
P.S. I’d do it all again in an instant.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jan 6, 2016 | Adventure, Exercise, Fun, Meditation, Play, Spirit, Writing |
Immersion is the word of the week. On Monday morning, our family switched off holiday-mode and jumped into the deep end. I feel like each day has doors that open into different rooms, sometimes into wildly different rooms, and I open a door, step over the threshold, and adapt to whatever role is required of me; and then it’s on to the next door.
The key is to keep the other doors closed while securely inside any given room. Every once in awhile everything will tumble out into the hallway, where it will need to be sorted, organized, and assigned back its proper place. Or, I find, it’s helpful to leave stuff in the hallway. Forget about it. Don’t sweat it. It will be waiting for me when I’m ready to sort it out, eventually. (The hallway represents email, I think, more than anything.)
On Monday morning, I opened the door to the swimming pool with my eldest daughter, and she taught me how to do a flip turn! What a fabulous and unexpected beginning to this new year. I’ve been terrified of learning, but she gently urged me to try, and try again, and by the end of the lesson, I was able to sprint to the wall, flip turn, and sprint back again — my mind lost in effort, my fears lost, too.
I neither believed I would be able learn this new skill, nor imagined I would ever try to learn. It was such a happy surprise to discover that this new skill was within reach; and I couldn’t have done it if someone else hadn’t believed that I could, even when I didn’t believe it. Is this a metaphor for an approach to the every day? To attempt new things, even slightly unwillingly, even if you can’t quite see the point? To allow yourself to be coached, nudged, gently? To take pride in the smallest of achievements — that too. Because, I thought, if I can learn this, imagine what else I can learn!
The writing adventure has filled quickly. As of this posting, there are two spots remaining, and a few drop-in days, so if you’re mulling but interested, get in touch. I’ve had several people wonder whether the adventure could be for them, as they are not writers, and the answer is, yes: think of this as a creativity workshop, with writing as the medium.
Time to open another door, now. It’s a lovely threshold to step over. All this week, I’ve been meditating and then diving directly into writing (fiction) for several hours, while turning off my phone and email notifications. It’s bliss, but it’s also highly productive.
Wishing you a day of immersion and focus whatever doors you may open.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jan 1, 2016 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Fun, Meditation, Organizing, Play, Poetry, Spirit, Teaching, Writing |
Here we are, day one of a new year. I’ve walked the dogs through gently falling snow flakes. The children slept till 10AM. We have this one last day of our unusually relaxing holiday to do as we please, each of us, before the new year’s schedule clocks in tomorrow morning.
Of course I am thinking about what I’d like to do this year, in addition to what I’m already doing; what would I like to try, what experiment shall I undertake, what challenge, what adventure, what’s calling? And I have a small idea, a possibility I’ve been mulling for awhile that seemed affirmed yesterday by the conflating coincidences of driving across town on an unexpected errand while listening to an interview on the radio with Elizabeth Gilbert, who was talking about the creative impulse. The creative impulse is not benign, she said (and I paraphrase). If it isn’t put to use, if it isn’t acknowledged and fed, if it isn’t set free, it will find its own damaging purpose.
I began thinking about rage, just under the surface.
I was driving along a street I don’t very often take anymore, and it triggered a memory: that I’d stopped for gas, at a gas station that no longer exists, in fact, with two toddlers strapped into car seats in the back of our old red truck. I was enormously pregnant with my third child, and it was hot, a summer’s day, and we’d just gotten a load of groceries. I filled up the truck with gas, and as I was walking around the hood of the truck to climb back in to the driver’s seat, a man approached me. He looked, if not homeless, then close to homeless, and with a rough voice he asked if he could bum a cigarette.
My response shocked even me.
Rage. It was rage that poured out, with no warning, no pre-emptive interlude. “Do I look like I would have a cigarette?” I snapped at him, almost shaking with my fury, indicating my pregnant belly.
“No,” he replied sheepishly.
I got into the truck and slammed the driver’s side door, vibrating with rage.
I didn’t know what had come over me. I didn’t know why I was so very angry. I couldn’t think of a good reason to be feeling what I was feeling in that moment.
But now, I think maybe I understand. Like raging people all over this earth, my wider, deeper emotions were not accessible to me at that time in my life. I was repressing a great deal: disappointment about my career, the sense of boredom and aimlessness as I struggled to be a stay-at-home mom, exhaustion from the drudgery of the day-to-day. There were many things I was not telling myself, or allowing myself to feel, because I couldn’t have borne it. So when tapped or triggered, there was only one emotion on offer: rage. Rage is a defensive emotion. It lashes out so as to prevent us from feeling anything else.
I’ll never know exactly why the man’s question set me off, but I think I was afraid of him, and did not want him near me. I felt vulnerable. I also felt morally righteous. Whatever it was, I was feeling something for which rage was a cover. I was ambushed by my own inexplicable fury.
I think unless we allow ourselves to experience a full range of emotions, including those emotions that indict us for our own failings — jealousy, envy, disappointment, humiliation, fear, uncertainty, grief — we will be at the mercy of that one emotion that is always on tap, always available, a defence against what the world may think of us, and what we may think of ourselves deep inside. Rage rage against the dying of the light. Yes. But rage rage against the accusations that we know to be true, and the terror of being fragile, and the admission of loneliness and failure, and the misery of not knowing everything best.
Rage rage against being human and fallible.
Rage rage against culpability.
Rage rage against knowing thyself, because to know thyself truly is to know some awfully dark truths, is to acknowledge enormous imperfections, and ugly vanities, and moral failings.
Yet I maintain that it is better to know thyself than to remain lodged in clotted rage, railing against the world, and spewing harm and hurt. The hurt your rage will cause to your own self is far greater than any hurt you could bring upon yourself by knowing yourself truly. It is only when we see ourselves as vulnerable and weak and wrong (rather than wronged) that we can see others with compassion, and love too.
And the rage will diminish.
It really will. It will not shock you with its sudden emergence, or hurt those you love most dearly. You will feel its potential, yes, but you will know what it means, and hear what it’s saying: you will feel behind the rage to the emotion that rage is trying to protect you from feeling, and you will be able to name it, and to access it, and to experience it. It is only through experiencing the deeper emotion that you can understand yourself, and get through that emotion.
I am alert now to my own rage. I know it’s trying to tell me something more profound. Why am I so angry? Is this moment deserving of my anger? So rarely it is. Almost never, in truth. And pouring out my rage, pouring it onto to someone else, is unacceptable, always. I believe that. So if it happens, when it happens, I try to name that too. To apologize immediately. Never to let myself off the hook. To reflect. There is always more work to do. Because it is easy to mistake rage for purpose, for fuel. At least it’s better to feel something than nothing, maybe? But the opposite of rage is not emptiness, it’s not nothing, it’s not depression, it’s not powerlessness, it’s not silence. The opposite of rage is connection.
Here is my idea. This coming year, I would like to host writing adventures in my home. It will be an experiment, I confess. The point will be to use the physical act of writing — writing by hand onto the page — to bring us into a meditative state of focus, in which we can access memories, draw them forth. We’ll leap from the intensive imaginative images we’re experiencing in our minds into the adventure of fiction. The exercises will be guided, the space will be safe, and none of us will be able to guess in advance where we might travel to on any given evening. Being or becoming a writer is not the point. The process is the point. Play is the point. Adventure is the point. Discovering and mapping our own inner imaginative space is the point. Anyone can participate. Everyone has a creative impulse. This is just one of a myriad of ways to express it, but it’s the method I can offer, if you’re looking for an opening, if you’re looking for a way in. Or out. Or deep down.
Please send me a message if you’re interested and I’ll keep you in the loop as the idea becomes a plan.
Happy New Year!
xo, Carrie
PS The title of this post is the first line of a poem by Rumi called “The diver’s clothes lying empty.” Look it up if you don’t already know it. Read it out loud. It will tell you everything I’ve written here, and much more.
Tuesday, Dec 29, 2015 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Birthdays, Coaching, Confessions, Exercise, Family, Friends, Fun, Holidays, Play, Spirit |
I love that my birthday falls so close to the end of the year; it’s the perfect time for reflection. Last night I wrote by hand in my journal, as I’ve done for many years now, on the night before my birthday. This is just one of a few simple rituals that make each birthday feel special, squeezed as it is between Christmas and New Year’s. For example, this morning started with a hot yoga class; something I’ve been doing on my birthday since 2009, when I first tried out a hot yoga class. That first yoga class was a treat and an adventure, to try something new, and to steal time for myself. I couldn’t have guessed how it would change me. I was hooked — not necessarily hooked on hot yoga, although that has served me well over the years, but hooked on moving my body, becoming present in my body through physical challenge. I’m now entering my seventh years of serious and regular physical practice: running, walking the dogs, cycling, spin class, weight training, boot camp, kundalini yoga, hot yoga, swimming, soccer, dancing, cross-country skiing.
In 2011, I focused on competition and races.
In 2012, I first learned how to work through injury.
Also in 2012, I joined a women’s soccer team and became a teammate. I hadn’t participated in team sports since I’d last played soccer at age 11. I had a fun season that summer, but we moved to the country and I didn’t play soccer again. Later, I would have said definitively that team sports was not for me; was it trauma and shame from having been, often, picked last in gym class, a lingering sense of not belonging, not knowing how to belong? We moved often when I was a child. I was often the new kid and new kids who are shy are picked last in gym class. But that wasn’t my interpretation at the time; instead, I thought I was bad at team sports. If you’d known me as a teen, you would never have thought, oh yes, Carrie will make a good coach someday. Belonging to a team as an adult changed me, and it has changed my outlook on team sports. Seeing my kids belong to teams, even during times when they’ve struggled, has given me insight into the potential of being part of something bigger than oneself.
Also, it’s just plain fun. Have I mentioned that part?
Today, I turn 41 years old. This is middle age, if you’re honest about average human lifespans. Today, I don’t mind being older. I’m grateful for a body that is able to move and stretch and participate. I do not take it for granted. Much brings me joy in this rich and textured time of life. Connection to my children. Soaking up time together as a family. The adventure of writing. Opportunities to be a mentor, to teach, to coach. Sharing and receiving the ongoing story of our daily lives with friends, with siblings. Getting to hug my mom, and my dad and stepmother. Reading wonderful books. I’m humbled by the luxuries of my life. If there’s one thing I want for the year ahead it is to seek out, look for, and recognize opportunities to serve, to offer what’s mine to give, and also to share. To share a sense of adventure. To have fun. To play. May none of us ever be too old for that.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Dec 9, 2015 | Books, Dogs, Exercise, Fun, Mothering, Music, Play, Running, Soccer, Swimming, Writing, Yoga |
Today, I want to write about the little things. Little things that might seem unimportant because they’re not on any to-do list, they’re not responsibilities. Little things that might seem incidental in a bigger picture, not the heart of any day, but the flavour. Little things that give me a little peace. I’m knee-deep in marking and have to stay on schedule, so this is not what I should be doing, but I’m going to make a list of “little things” to mark this particular moment in time. At other moments, I might put other things on this list. But today, now, here is what’s given me a little peace recently.
Playing the piano. Either my own improvised noodling around, or sight-reading cheesy Christmas songs, or accompanying my ten-year-old during her violin practice.
Crafting. I know, weird, right? Not my usual thing. But I’ve gotten into a latch-hooking project, initiated by my ten-year-old (who loves her crafts). Same child also initiated an ornament-making craft-time this weekend, and everyone in the family got involved. My personal fave are the Trudeau ornaments, crafted by my thirteen-year-old (who has a new haircut, very stylish, if I do say so myself; I gave both my teenagers haircuts recently, which is another kind of craft, in a way, I suppose).
Walking the dogs. I’m running very little right now due to injury, but I’ve found surprising peace in walking the dogs before bedtime, or on an early weekend morning when the neighbourhood is quiet. The pace is gentle. The dogs amuse me.
Swimming. To replace the running. Monday was my first day, and I went with my swim coach, who also happens to by my thirteen-year-old daughter. She should be your swim coach too. Our session was as tough as a boot camp. She’s demanding, encouraging and kind, and smart about correcting technical flaws in my stroke. (She also coaches Kevin and her younger sister on Thursday mornings. So this is a little thing many of us in the family are enjoying right now.)
Coaching. Right now, I’m coaching my fourteen-year-old’s indoor futsal team (similar to soccer), and I’m volunteering with my ten-year-old’s soccer team, too. I love working with both groups of kids — the teenaged boys and the younger girls. I’ve been practicing my deeper coach’s voice around the house, and every practice or game is another opportunity to learn something new, or put some new concept into practice (for me, and for them). It’s the perfect activity for a person with a growth mindset outlook. We can always get better! Hurray!
Writing. I haven’t had a lot of writing time, recently, so I’ve been taking my laptop to basketball and soccer practices at which I’m not involved. Earplugs in. Sweet vanishing into another world.
Stretching. My body needs to stretch, loves to stretch. I’ve been squeezing in a few yoga classes.
Reading. A couple of days ago, I thought I had a few free minutes. Ever have those moments? When you think, how strangely wonderful that I should have nothing to do? So I sat in front of the fire devouring Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name. I was so relaxed, so blissful — so blissfully forgetting that in fact I did have something to do. This strangely wonderful moment had been brought to me by a memory lapse. I’d forgotten to pick up my youngest at school; friends had to help out; and I felt embarrassed and somewhat shamed for my parenting lack as I jogged along the sidewalk, late, late, late. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wish for more of those rare “free” minutes for daytime reading.
All for now. Please comment if you have “little things” that give you a little peace, too.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Oct 28, 2015 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Exercise, Fun, Play, Soccer, Spirit, Word of the Year, Work |
Discernment is something Mennonites are expert at; in fact, Mennonites are so good at discernment that it sometimes seems it’s code for clearly we don’t all agree so let’s keep discerning in perpetuity so as to never make a decision. Given that this is my cultural background, perhaps it makes sense that I enjoy process so much. But I do also like to come around to decisions now and again. That said, discernment is rather brilliant, in my opinion. What it does is allow a decision to unfold slowly, with voice given to many different opinions and angles; it’s a process of listening as much as speaking.
This post is a continuation of my thoughts from yesterday’s confession: that I don’t like being the speaker at the front of the room.
I’ve been trying to discern why.
It isn’t that I don’t like being in a leadership position. In fact, I enjoy taking the lead, to which my younger siblings could attest. But there are different styles and types of leadership, and the leadership I prefer to practice is the kind that asks questions, that operates in relationship, that collaborates with, that is creative and responsive and in the moment. I want to ask questions. I want to hear stories, I want to hear and try to understand other perspectives. I want to see my small ideas opening up small ideas in someone else, and I want to be opened up too; I want to learn too.
It’s the reason I like reading and writing short stories, the kind that end in a questioning, open way that unfolds into the reader and the reader’s experience, rather than telling the reader what the answer is. Resonance. That’s what I’m looking for, in everything I do.
Yesterday evening, off I went with my eldest son to coach his soccer team. I was as tired as I’d been all day. There wasn’t time to eat supper. But when we got onto the field, the hour flew by, my exhaustion vanished. I love coaching soccer. I don’t love it because I’m an expert. I’m not. I love it because it’s a creative undertaking, and because I find myself, in this role, engaged with the kids on the team: trying to figure out what will motivate them as individuals, assessing their levels of interest and skill, and asking them to push themselves in small ways—for each player this will be different. I also love it because it’s fun. We’re meeting up so they can play a game.
I think we all need to play. We should all be doing something every day that feels playful, just for fun, something that lifts us out of the ordinary. Something we don’t have to do for any reason other than it makes us happy.
When teaching is going well, it’s for the same reasons. It’s because we’re engaged in a creative enterprise together. Writing and revision should feel playful. I know this won’t always be the case, and writing is work, no doubt about it, but for me—and what I want to share—is that writing, especially fiction, is play. You get to live inside your imagination like you haven’t had permission to do since you were a child. You get to explore whatever interests you. You get to ask questions and wonder and roam freely around your own mind, making it all up, drawing from the back of your mind “perishable moments you hadn’t even noticed that you noticed.” To paraphrase Lynda Barry.
And that’s about where I’ve gotten in my process of discernment. Expect me to release a mission statement in the next decade or so.
xo, Carrie
P.S. Read this, from the New Yorker (wish I had a subscription!): an inspiring and moving essay by George Saunders about his own creative writing teachers. (Side note: how the heck did Tobias Wolff have time to help parent three children, work full-time leading graduate classes in creative writing, thoroughly read every submission to the program, and write and publish his own books?)
P.S. 2 Here’s how I started this morning. I slept in until 6:45. Then I listened to this song and did kundalini exercises for about half an hour, while the older kids started their day too, but before the younger two got up. It was a good start and I feel much more rested. First discernment decision: I’m limiting my 5AM exercise to no more than three times per week; I’m open to dropping to even less if I’m still really tired. I will reassess in six weeks.
Page 5 of 17« First«...34567...10...»Last » 
