“I brought you water and coffee,” says my spouse Janyce, standing in the bright light of the sunlamp while placing a glass and a mug beside me on the bedside table. Swirls obviously feels like I do this morning and she doesn’t move, remaining curled up tight in a ball on the down comforter near her own pillow. It’s still dark out at 6:00 am, but I’ve agreed to get moving earlier now that spring is finally here, evidenced by the robins singing outside in the dark. I’m joining her on the morning neighborhood dog walk.
“You have to agree to not talk to me on this walk,” she says, “of course I want you to come, but…”
“Uh huh,” I say.
Just yesterday, she was telling me about her pre-meals mindfulness practice and now apparently there is another one. This silent morning walk with the dog. Normally I would protest about all these rules, but I actually don’t mind it much today. Janyce is the master of the small habits that build toward a goal, the daily routines required to get there over time, the patience to stay the course, and the confidence to not doubt herself and know she is on the right path. I resist all of that as a rule. However, I’m actually not as bad at it as I used to think I was.
“Got it, I’ll be quiet,” I say. “But tonight, when you get back home, I want to talk about something with you.”
It’s Monday morning and we’re back from a milestone celebration weekend at a five star luxury hotel that was full of pampered treats, all French-inspired to my delight: pink champagne and macarons that we enjoyed after a lavender-scented couples massage with the sound of the surf piped in, four million thread count sheets on the bed (I mean, I don’t really know but they were swoon worthy), fresh cream-colored calla lilies in bud vases on all the tables, hot croissants and blueberry jam in the morning. And the view.
I’m still holding on to that relaxed feeling from lingering for hours over two leisurely meals with multiple courses complete with all the visual details that make dining experiences like these so worth the effort and expense. But now it’s over and I follow along behind the two walkers as they keep a brisk pace through the winding neighborhood streets, skies just beginning to brighten.
For months now, all winter, I have been trying to make sense of a frustratingly muffled and blocked time in my life, one I’ve been experiencing on and off for several years. At first, I thought I needed intellectual stimulation and I took some graduate classes last year, but that really didn’t seem to help. In addition to my weight training and nutrition work, I’ve been trying somatic movements and the Feldenkrais method (jury still out on those) and just recently, after actually walking hard into a glass wall, I booked a visit with a traditional Chinese acupuncturist who tells me that my spleen qi is deficient. One visit actually did something tangible though, because I do feel a kind of instant lift to my mood.
I’m trying out a number of things to feel better overall including listening to all of my inspirational podcasts and I’m noticing a persistent theme in all of them lately. It’s this concept of needing awe in your life in order to age well. I think it means witnessing the aurora borealis, or taking a hike through the Grand Canyon but I’m not discounting the smaller awe inspiring moments that can be just as impactful: like biting into an expertly poured crepe, dusted with demerara sugar before it’s fully set and topped with a squeeze of fresh lemon just after it is lifted and folded onto a plate.
Or watching the descending full moon glowing like an orange beach ball at the edge of the leafless treeline on your silent morning dog walk. I catch a glimpse of it just now, lit by the rising morning sun at the exact moment we cross the busy street with our dog and walk the uphill switchback towards the wooded trail.
“OMG can you see that?” I say to Janyce, turning around to face the woods down behind us.
“Wow, that is just beautiful,” says Janyce, allowing herself a few outspoken words of praise.
It doesn’t arrive so much as continue to exist, this blue supermoon exactly who she was just days before. When she’s this bright though, I tell my daughter, and this close, we give her another name, that’s all. I want to add that human kindness is like this: never really changing, never gone. This week, she asked me if it was worth it, growing up in a cruel world— that’s the name she gave it, the name it earned. Cruel. So we sat outside at night to wait for something spectacular to prove itself. We craned our necks like tourists in a cathedral, expecting to see the tidy, timely face of God, and all we got was a persuasion of clouds so thick and cold we had to guess where the moon might be glowing. We had to point where the gloom was thinnest and say there! as if it was only as extraordinary as it was out of sight—for us, for now— but it was happening, it was true, for thousands of years in a row.