Susan Senator
All happy families are not alike...
All happy families are not alike...
Mostly Mozart
Pardon the cliche, but one of my resolutions, should I actually stick to it, is to try to enjoy my life as it is. I think I do a lot of wishing and fantasizing about what is not yet, or what should be, and I suppose that’s fine because it gives me something to work towards. But it is not fine if it blocks me from feeling good moment-by-moment. Of course one can’t always feel good, but I think I feel bad a lot more than is necessary. The official diagnosis is depression, but I don’t always accept that.
As I said yesterday, it was a good day. I felt strong and capable and creative. Nat came home from school and when asked, said that he had had a good day. I, of course, checked in the notebook because he might have just been saying, “yes” to get me to stop talking to him. Sure enough, it had been a really good day for him. In music they had studied Mozart. I don’t really know what that means, that they “studied” Mozart, but I’m sure it involved a lot of listening to the complicated themes and feeling how wonderfully they resolve in one of his pieces.
I asked him if he wanted to hear some Mozart, and of course he said, “yes,” so I asked him a few more times in all different permutations to be sure he really wanted this and would not just walk away when the stereo went on. And yes, he did mean it. I chose a flute concerto or two and a collection of “Greatest Hits.” He settled on the couch and sat through all of it, listening carefully. I wonder what he thought or felt. I know I think of Mozart as hilly music, that builds up pleasantly, and then glides down, in crisscrossing paths (like the bike path at Provincelands National Park on the Cape), meeting up at last in perfect resolution.
The flute concerti took me right back to childhood, playing in that yellow basement playroom, while Dad listened to Mozart and made candles or something like that. Dad knows how to live in the moment. Back then, he had a candle-making studio down there next to the washer and dryer, with a burner and all kinds of jars of scent and color, and large white blocks of wax. He loved to experiment with molds (half-gallon paper containers from milk, or foil-and-sand) and with stuff inside the melted wax, like ice cubes (the ice cubes would cause holes in the final candle!). Once he even made a candle in a coffee mug. It could not come out, and the mug would have to be broken, so we left it in there.
Another time, he made a candle shaped like a Poodie, which is a creature he created when Laura and I were little, kind of a guy with a round head and stick figure body and big ears and glasses (I suppose it was a cartoon of Dad, come to think of it!). The friend he gave it to set it on a windowsill and it melted in such a funny way, with the head all bent and stretched, along with the goofy smile. Candle Poodie still makes me crack up.
He made us tons of Poodie dolls. They were made of socks, with buttons or rubber bands. Each new grandchild got a special Poodie, too. The infants got Poodies that were only stitched, because of the danger of swallowing stuff. I think the Poodie-de-resistance was a goat Poodie, made because he discovered a goat several blocks away. We had all been wondering what was that weird, “Raaaaa” noise, and finally, on one of his jogs, Dad saw a real goat! In the suburbs of Connecticut!
While Nat and I played Mozart, I was not making candles or Poodies, but I was writing. I had my coffee and my laptop and my ideas. And that was enough. I was nourished enough to make dinner, and even helped Beastie do his homework with a light heart (homework really gets him down, but I think from now on I will make him do it right next to me so that at least I can joke him out of his funk when it comes over him). Kind of the way Wolfgang Amadeus and Precious and candle memories lifted me out of mine.
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I don’t know what a Poodie doll is so some of your blog makes no sence to me.
I do know Mozart (not personally I might add, he has not been around these parts for a long time)
but I know Bach even better, yeah, well I love that scene in Amadeus where Wolfie is held upside down over the clavichord to play in the style of Bach, but that’s just a movie 🙂
For a music technology exam I had to orchestrate a piece of popular music in the style of a classical piece, (using Sibelius software I might add because I hardly read a note) so I did a setting of no woman no cry.
Simple really when you consider it’s just another variant on Pachalbel innit
My mom sent me an email recently. One of those silly pablum emails that only a beloved family member can send. I almost deleted it (heartless) until the final line caught me by surprise. I am sure that it is well known in the pablum, Hallmark set…
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
I love the saying from Andrews Mother. I will jot that one down. Reading those type of things help maintain a course when things are going well. When life is particularly dark however – they do not do as much. When someone is as open and in touch as Susan seems to be the good and the bad can both be amplified. I wrote you last month at how this was a beautiful and painful way to go through life.
Susan – I find everything you write lately to be so relevant. Because I am there – I am here – in a similar stage in life.
I like your comment about not entirely accepting the depression diagnosis. I wonder if there has to be such an on/off switch mentality in the medical world. In our desire to classify everything and define everything is it not actually possible that there is a middle ground between …I don’t know…”fine” and “depressed” ?
For me, a year and a half ago I found the important things in life all the way down to the annoyances, had claws. They could latch on solidly to me and it affected my family. With the normal workload on the weekends I was incredibly unhappy, in a cycle of routine of cleaning and helping, dawn to dusk. I would take offence to things I shouldn’t have and thought others inconsiderate for not fully thinking things through. I forgot how easy it is for a child to have a narrower vision of the world. I was hesitant to see my doctor as I knew where it would lead (as it did) to meds, but went to get fixed for my family. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be on a light dose of (one) anti-depressant. I am not high, I am not giddy, It just helped me act the way I used to. To have some tools to help me dismiss the truly unimportant things and prioritize what I should be thinking of. I have not even told my best friends but enjoy being able to hide behind the anonymous blog.
I think it is an odd situation though as insensitive people seem to get a pass in this area….of well….
Susan – I have made the same resolution as you for the New Year. I am not thinking about lowering the bar, or accepting less, but I think I realize I am a little tired and doing the best I can. Well….I could always do better. We all could, but I am in a sense trying to be less unhappy with the way thing are. For me I find it easier if I have some support at home. You seem to have a much better connection with your spouse than I currently have – it was not always this way but in the last couple of years we are not on the same page. I find when that goes south it affects me the most. Family is my anchor. Although I have not ever seen a Poodie candle I totally understand (or think I do) why you are remembering it. It is easy for me to think I am smart and analyze myself and think what works for me must also (not necessarily) work for you but for me I remember the good things about childhood. You recently reminded me of a passage I wrote. I am no author so don’t expect much of anything but I think it ties in here. I wrote this when my daughter was 5 and I was dropping her off to school as I went to work.
“I watched Katie go in to school this morning, I was busy saying goodbye to the boys as she walked away and I did not have a chance to kiss her goodbye. Instead, I turned around and she was off – running, happily to her friends. I watched her as she talked with them and watched them play. For a few moments it was like I was not there at all, nobody noticing me, but I was close enough to see and hear everything. The entire world got so small. My mind was clear of everything but her, and those close to her. She never turned back to look for me, and oddly enough I took comfort in that. The bell went and she lined up excitedly, running as best she could with a large Barbie backpack, lining up against the fence, talking with a new group of friends, and then keeping to the line, walking in to the school, so proud and confident as most senior kindergarten children are. I stood there for a moment, awash in a comforting feeling that everything was going to be alright. I was overcome with memories of my own childhood, and the many colours, smells and textures that brought me comfort at that age, so many years ago. The bright yellow raincoat with the big hood, the black boots, and the security of my own cubby to place them.
It made me wonder – at what age do we run from the rain? To watch a child walk to school in the rain is to watch the enjoyment of walking slowly, and watch the puddles gather rain. To see drops form on spring buds and to smell wet leaves and earth. (It must be the hood around your head that makes the sounds and sights so focused and clear). To jump in every puddle and sidestep the worms forced out on the pavement. Mostly – at that age it is easy to be so curious about your journey that you forget your destination.
Back then I saw the good in people. I was always happy. So many people look at a child and smile. They give of their time. I had a great teacher who looked out for me and it seemed that everyone was interested. I had the love of my parents and I needed nothing else. I am almost 40 now and have chased so many other things I thought were important. Like everyone, I was in a hurry to grow up, to leave that time in my life. I never realized what a nice time it was. To see an adult walking in the rain is to watch a person exhausted of other choices. An adult will hurry to a place he does not want to go.”
You have every right to be where you are. Anyone in the same situation would be. Personally I am telling myself winter is half over, spring is coming, we will get a beautiful March after Jan and Feb……right?…
Grant, how lovely. I think you should keep writing, perhaps even more about Kate and your own childhood.
Wow. Grant, what you shared is just lovely, and I agree with Sue. Keep writing, keep sharing.
One of the wonderful things this blog does, Sue, is to allow each reader to be connected with others they would never normally meet. You are generous and brave with your own musings, and this supports others and encourages thier sharing. Thank you.
As far as being OK where we are, well that is the very stuff of life I think. It is all about realizing, in glimpses or epiphanies, in raindrop moments or downpours, that the only thing we ever truly have is the moment we are in. The past is gone and has only the power we lend it, the future has not arrived and has only the power we project onto it. And our projections into the future are based on our memories from the past. It’s the hardest thing, and the simplest; be here now, be fully alive in the rain and in the sun equally, knowing that things always change.Be OK with whatever is, simply because it is.
And a postscript to my first post, if I may use the space. This poem, so timely, from Robert Loiuis Stevenson
The best things in life are nearest:
Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes,
flowers at your feet, duties at your hand,
the path of right just before you.
Then do not grasp at the stars, but
do life’s plain, common work as it comes,
certain that daily duties and daily bread
are the sweetest things in life.