Easter baskets are everywhere with those god-awful tweets (who made those??) and chocolate peanut butter excuses to eat from the basket, tie-dyed easter eggs, and that gorgeous shredded plastic green grass.  A full nest.

As my sons fill out forms, empty my bank account to Loyola for the little piece the scholarship forgot, I wish for inertia. Stop. The years I wished for Christmas to hurry up and get here now grind the transmission into reverse. Stop, stop. All vestiges of toddler art, second grade book reports, sculpy gifts from the attic are sorted. Savannah's go in this rectangular tupperware, and Marshall and Parker's go into another.  Thirty-one years of history as a young mother to a crone. Well, at least the attic is cleared.

I am a veteran of the empty nest syndrome. When Savannah left for college 15 years ago, I sat on the same attic steps alone revisiting her childhood. A part of my body was gone. Holding locks of her hair and notes with fat letters to me, I just couldn't move for a while. I never thought it would be easy to do it again. 

This is a light-weight attempt at holding back time and preparing my nest for the extra space. I would say giving birth to my new life is labor without anesthesia. Change is good... not.

Big feelings are uncontrollable chaos, so I sit on my hands until the dust settles. I've sort of quieted my mind. New rituals roll in.

It's Miller Time.

painting by Savannah Bearden 1985

Safekeeping of the unseen.

"Sweeping Your Heart," Gurumayi Chitvilasananda 

This aspect of my content relies heavily on paper and good pens. The unseen part of me begins to speak through ink and notebooks. Oh, there you are. I heard Joan Didion say: "I don't know my thoughts until I write them."

The trifecta of a walk, a quiet bath, then allowing unedited lightbulb moments to hit the page, brings the unseen to the bridge of my nose.

Again, the best intentions may spiral back into eating cookies as I stand at the kitchen sink staring out the window.

Writing a day's comings and goings is a process.

"One of the fatal habits of minds which has become common in our times is to mistake glamour for beauty. Glamour is a highly fickle and commercially driven enterprise that contributes to the humdrum."  John O'Donohue

Safekeeping of my body.

Most of my female experience has been the practice of fitting into tight jeans at any price. Overspending my energy to look -- should I admit this yucky-feeling agenda -- hot. Well, that really changed my life about as much as buying yet another pair of shoes I will never wear. Really...Really. 

Having passed the half-century mark, jeans, botox, facelifts have all been filed under: "just look sort of presentable." A closet filled with all-black clothes with a little stretch has replaced discomfort, anxiety and self-judgment. I've not lost my discernment for personal style. Actually, my personal style is the most authentic it's ever been. 

I am beginning a new habit of taking the stairs everywhere. As I gasp and grasp the stair rail, I realize this is being done for my heart and not my butt. That changes the playing field of my priorities. I am the only person on earth that can feel my heart without a stethoscope. My butt, on the other hand, can be seen by everyone "but" me.

Now, for the sake of transparency, all of this talk of safekeeping of my body has to be tempered with the admission that eating cookies for breakfast or sometimes lunch is not totally defeated at this point in my life.

Safekeeping of my body is a process.

Safekeeping is a lovely verb. 

What am I doing which may be a safekeeping for my thoughts?  This pertains to my body, my money, right livelihood; the life list goes on.

My mental hygiene began before I learned to floss. Fortunately, this is a stewardship which has immediate results... then, uh, setbacks of gossip, OMG, what do "they" think of me, oh well. Mental hygiene can be forgotten about as often as flossing.

When I am embarrassed by my lack of memory, silence, floating in a hot tub, helps clear the aforementioned mud wrestling with my better angels.

Mental hygiene is a process.

Taking control, taking charge, taking care are incredible attributes.  It is a comfort to know someone's got your back; rewarding to give it back.

In a conversation with a hard-headed and very bossy friend this week, we talked over her loss of both parents in one short year.  The rushing of tight schedules from work to home to hospitals to feeding theirs dogs to sorting through a lifetime of precious possessions piled up over the grief.  It worked.  Her bigger feelings were smothered until her father's last breath, and then the silence. No sooner than it happened, she was rushing to solve everyone else's drama.

The momentum and adrenaline were still pumping like sitting in a car with the motor running after a car crash.  The spinning out of control stops.  You are still alive, but everything has changed.

Being in charge can be as addictive as Jack Daniels.  It fills the empty heart with numbing action and uninformed purpose.  In fact, it's such a revered characteristic that our culture enables the condition even when it has become out of balance. "Wow, she is so capable!"

For me the big question needs to be: Are you capable enough to be with your bigger feelings?  After coping with an inherited chemistry which doesn't allow my synapses to fire correctly, I've had to create methods of being with my being.  Sometimes depression or grief is a harsh teacher making you learn long division over and over until you ask for help and compassion because you can't find the answers.

The compassion for the soul has to be facing the blackboard, erasing the long division and writing a new, relevant story of being.  The story of right action does not become driving or fixing or running away.  Right action can become walking a tight rope.  Quiet focus, best effort and balance are key. You'll know there is a net below, but still slow your steps.

The last couple of months I've been wrangling with all things non-poetic.  This may not be a big deal for most, but it's a lack of oxygen for me.  Another form of poetry I have intentionally silenced has been music.  I love to be immersed in music and its altering effect on mood, inspiration, memory. The soundtrack right now to this block of time is reflection. Can I just listen to silence for a while?  This has been quite informative, really.  I can trace soundtracks to every phase of my life and experience a total recreation of that time.  Sometimes I can take it and sometimes it hits me like a ton of bricks.

The mix tape I made for my one-year-old daughter thirty years ago is probably my favorite.  I still hear some of the tracks when I'm grocery shopping at Kroger.  That's a good soundtrack. 

There are so many transitions happening in my life at this time, I have to be present to navigate them.  Sometimes the mix tape has to be my intuition: where do I turn; how do I do this by myself; how do I ignore what is no longer relevant?  

When I walk through the woods lately, I don't feel lonely with my thoughts.  I wonder how I will feel when I replay this soundtrack in a few years.

painting from the book "What's Left" by a participant of the Alzheimer's Art Therapy program

Walking into December,

empty shells crunch

under winter boots.

Wasted fruit returns

to earth.

I grow wiser.

Since I love playing around with words, this phrase is irresistible. During the Victorian Era the Leisure Class would spend time inventing croquet and breeding corgies and employing faintin' couches. The other Class would be the unwashed masses. 

Personally I have always gotten antsy with too much "leisure" time on my hands. I don't find it interesting to participate in any of the above or reality TV involving Wives or Corona beer scenarios. Half an hour with a beer and a breeze and I'm all done. Is it the new hurry up and get it "not done"? 

My nature is to turn everything on its head, so this acrobatic word game is a Romper Room for my thoughts. Let's use the Magic Mirror and proceed. My first question is: What is leisure? I can only answer for me; but I also open the floor to anyone curious enough to ask the same question. The late fashion designer, Alexander McQueen, was asked in an interview how he celebrated after a premiere of his latest creations and McQueen answered: "I go home and watch bad sitcoms."  John Lennon and Yoko Ono would watch the entire Jerry Lewis MS Labor Day Marathon in bed. I had to think about my favorite moments of leisure. The Obi-wan Kinobe of leisure time for me would be back-to-back episodes of the Dog Whisperer, but that is school for me and my dog, so it may not be considered leisure.

Now, what would be considered the "unwashed masses'" leisure time? I'm sure I would fall into that category if my net worth were used as an indicator. The leisure I can afford would be this moment. I know when I've squandered it; I know I'm in the chips when I immerse myself in the moment. I've had enough empty ones to know the difference.

Oh, the bell on my alarm clock tells me this Leisure Class 101 is dismissed. This unwashed mass is creating some time I forgot I owned and dip into a hot bath to create some leisure time.

Last night I walked into my house after another day spent sitting in one spot with my legs tucked under a desk. Need I say more? I was ready for my Mizunos (favorite running shoe) and dog leash clinking for a quick walk before the sunset. As I rushed to beat the dark, I passed my son with his chin propped on his fists, then forehead held by palms. A John Donne poem with scrawl on both margins was the culprit. "I can't decide why he used this metaphor to describe love."

Thinking this would be a snap, I asked: "Would you read it to me?" He did. "Read it again." He did. "One more time." All right. I grabbed a pen light, the poem, the dog and my son. "Let's take a walk and read the poem while we are in motion." By now it was nightfall, so the pen light served as our guide to our walking interpretation. I start a tangent about love and bargaining and leverage. He stopped me: "No, No. We've got to stay within the context of the poem." I'm flummoxed at this point. 

As we return from our walk, this frustration is mounting. We go back to the Donne drawing board. Exasperated I ask: "What does it mean to you?" In a desperate way to end all of this, he said: "Love is competition." I ran for the Roget's. "Contend, battle, contest." He begins to calm, "Contest." 

Then another escalation in his anxiety; "I just wasted an hour!" Hmm. My inner humanity said silently: "Wow, he wasted as hour." Then my inner parent remembered what only a child can bring out of me. "This hour was not wasted. We walked Bugsy, read poetry, talked poetry, and it will never happen exactly like that again." Of course, every time I've said anything of substance as an object lesson to my children, it's been the first time I've "learned the lesson."

Side note: If I ever had to dissect poetry, I would never write it again. I am a Luddite poet. Sorry John Donne.

The time will come 
when, with elation, 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror, 
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
 
You will love again the stranger who was your self. 
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 
all your life, whom you have ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.