May Musings

I haven't posted in a long time. Now that I'm back to "normal life," it's harder to take the time to search out what is unusual, beautiful, elegant, or foreign in a daily routine. I have a "thing" about blogs-- I'm not interested in someone's daily mouth-running about their endlessly banal life. If I'm going to post, I hope to say something that's worth the bandwidth. Worth being beamed into outer space on radio waves for who knows how long and who knows what to hear.

People have been asking me what I've been doing with my time. The list isn't very impressive: reading, walking, gardening, household chores, celebrating my niecelets' graduation and 16th birthday, visiting D in Chicago again. Going to lunch with my friends from work. Dialect coaching a musical with a cast of thousands (half of them children). Last night I went to the Goodman Theater in Chicago for the first time, and saw a HORRENDOUS production of Frank Galati's new play "Oedipus Complex." The conceit is mixing Sophocles' "Oedipus" with Freud's writings, but it was basically a very badly directed production of "Oedipus" with Freud wandering around the stage like a ghostly momma's boy. It was one of those productions that had me hiding my face in embarrassment for the actors that have to produce it night after night. About mid-way through I turned to D and said, "please, blind ME now." At first, the production made me mad ("Oedipus is a perfect play for god's sake-- why dress it up in Edwardian costumes and fill the chorus with men gesturing with "cheerleader hands?") and then finally, when Oedipus is kneeling on the black and white tiled floor (why?) covered in too-red stage blood (natch) intoning in a voice with a five-note range that can't possibly fulfill the emotional needs of the text, I was reduced to giggles. When Oedipus implored Creon to banish him, I wanted to yell "PLEASE! And RIGHT NOW!"

The niecelet graduation and birthday were lovely. I feel as though they are "my girls" as much as my sister's, better for the fact that I didn't have to birth them. They are such beautiful, intelligent, funny people, and I am blessed with their shiny lives. My sister and I remember our father holding the eldest as an infant and saying, tears in his eyes, "I won't live to see her graduate from high school." It was a particularly disappointing that he (although generally healthy) was ill that day and couldn't attend.

Really though, beyond traveling and laying low, I've been mulling the long process of taking stock of my life post-France. I've come to no conclusions, but I'm turning 47 this summer, and am starting to define myself as "almost 50," which puts some perspective on my present, related to my past. Twice this past month in Cleveland I was visited by dear friends whom I have known for over twenty years. It is such a joy to just "be" with them, these people who really know me and have proven through time that their love is real. There's something very profound about these people who have chosen to commit to me (as opposed to family, which is the luck of the draw) and have known me for long enough to understand my flaws and forgive them. I feel an intense sense of belonging with them, a peace that I rarely find in daily life. The fact that they live far away can be difficult, but mostly I feel blessed with their companionship, regardless of the miles.

I remember when some of my lovely young college students met Lech Walesa in a suitably collegiate old mansion, their response to his visit was "sure he saved Poland from Communism in the 1980's, but what has he done lately?" As if one historically significant event in a life lived is not enough. It's a pecularly American idea that the act of living well is not "enough." It is of course the job of the young to move the world forward, hopefully, in a positive direction, but I'm still trying to figure out what the job of us 50-ish types are. I'm not buying into the "More Magazine" 50-is-the-new-30 philosophy. Who wants to be 30 again, except maybe to reclaim your 30-ish body? But somewhere there is a compromose between amibition and being in the moment, and I'm trying to find it.



D and I went to Lake Michigan on Memorial Day, and all we did was sit, read, and look at the water. We wound up on a beach in a toney suburb that didn't allow you to wade in the water or barbecue on the beach unless you paid for a beach pass (won't be going THERE again), but we sat on the sand in the shade of the cottonwood trees, drank crisp white wine from a thermos and picnicked on potato and fruit salads, cheese and bread. I'm not sure I can think of a better way to spend a holiday. Or a life, perhaps.