honeybees & reveries

I lie awake in bed, with obsessive thoughts scrolling through my head.

It’s been a long two hours of this:

Was I a good mom?

Can we afford the big remodel of the house?

Why didn’t I ever have a career?

When should I have that hip replacement?

Oh my God, when my grandson graduates from college, I’ll be 82.

I wish I had been better about using sunscreen.

Whatever happened to Mike, my boyfriend from high school?

Sleeping pills are a crutch,

maybe,

maybe not.

Does my dog know that I love the cat more than him?

My writing is stupid.

Why don’t I have a yoga practice?

I hate yoga.

How much longer does my dad have?

Will I get to say goodbye to him?

My upper arms look fat.

I should do yoga.

I love yoga.

I think I see a cockroach crawling on the door frame.

Better call pest control tomorrow.

Is it too late to save the planet from global warming?

How can my husband sleep through all of this?

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Anyway, these nattering thoughts unspool, one after the other. And now I need a break, so I get up to get a drink of water.

And after climbing back into bed, the snarled skeins of worry seem to have come loose, and there is space to untangle them.

First off, I can’t undo the sunscreen thing – it’s just too late.

Second, the parenting issue – that’s too late, too.

Also, I may be around to see my grandson graduate, and for that I will be lucky. Let’s hope that happens.

Next, boyfriend Mike definitely broke up with me, so whatever – what a jerk.

And no, I never had a career, it just didn’t happen, get over it. I’m on my path.

And I’ll call my dad tomorrow.

It’s interesting to me that these ghosts periodically haunt me, but usually with the exact same set of grievances. And I can almost hear them coming when they enter the room, they are so familiar.

They come when I feel anxious, or insecure, or overtired.

I’ve tried to meditate them away, but the scripts are baked in. Simply the consequence of an overactive mind.

In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge faces his mortal demons and becomes enlightened by what he encounters.

After grappling with the years he has wasted, he is finally gifted with a conversion.

I kind of want something like that for me, for some kindly Spirit to guide me through my life and make all things clear.

To absolve things I’ve done wrong, to erase my insecurities.

But really, I am certain that the answers will never come from a ghost. The answers reside within me.

And in the end, I look to the words of the same Charles Dickens, who wrote:

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

And so, I’ll take these words, simple and pre-packaged and ready to absorb into my restless being.

These words are the answer to my questions. They are the answer that helps quiet the late night voices.

They are the answer that soothes me – more than yoga, more than sleeping pills, even more than a talk with my sister.

The answer is easy: the answer is love.

Each season, it seems we have a distinctly different relationship with our outdoor Christmas lights.

When we had babies, the lights were a fun way to introduce holiday symbolism. And through their shining eyes, we travelled back in time to our own childhoods. There was a joy in creating a new tradition.

And then, with the school aged kids, we strung the lights together and helped them learn the ins and outs of de-tangling, and showed them how to drape them just so across the branches.

And then there were the high school years when it just felt like a big chore. With the kids busy and our schedules packed, who really cared about the outdoor lights? What a hassle.

And then, after our son and daughter went off to college, it fell to just the two of us, and it almost felt like the lights were more important than ever.

Our way of saying, so much in your lives has changed, but this stays the same.

Then there was the year we returned from living in Switzerland. Coming off of a pared down living situation in Bern, we were dazed by the excess of decorations and light in the U.S.

And driving down the street, coming home from the airport, we marveled at all of the neighborhood decorations, a little sad to think that our empty house would be bare.

But no, our son Lewis had climbed up on the roof (!) and draped thousands of tiny lights outlining the entire house.

A tear came to my eye, it was like we’d been visited by Santa. And it was like the passing of a torch.

And this year, now that we’ve downsized our house, the temptation is to give up on the Christmas lights – to minimize our traditions altogether.

But I think there is a longing at this time of year, a yearning to bring optimism and light into the cold of Winter. I mean, what a year we have been through, and who knows what 2025 will bring.

But when I walk around the neighborhood I see hope. I see light transforming the night. We are saying no to the darkness and yes to joy.

And now, the thing about having a grandchild is that no matter how depressed and cynical you might be over the state of the world, you can’t stay discouraged for very long.

You see his eyes light up and the excitement rubs off on you. The wonder is huge. Young ones see the magic and only the magic.

And so, today, back at home, my husband heads out to the hardware store with an elaborate plan to construct lighted mesh balls to hang in the tree in the front yard.

And it lifts my spirits. I’m excited for our grandson to see them, to look up and point at the branches, and to tell him that his Poppy made them glow just for him.

In the end, I think the Christmas lights are a reminder to connect with a positive spirit, if I can. But if I can’t, then maybe my sadness can earmark something sweet and rare – the fact that I kept going, and I persisted, even at the darkest times.

Parts of this past year were tough. I look back to the Spring, in the long weeks after COVID, and how hard I struggled to stay hopeful, desperate to hang on to some kind of positivity.

How now, how easy it is, to forget the bad times, when I am well. How hard it is to recall exactly how difficult a day, an hour, even a few minutes was. And how that unique pain of depression can chase all optimism away.

So I guess that this is my hope for the holiday season – not for an erasure of negative thoughts, or an ending to all sadness, but for being grateful that I simply made it through the year.

And that I found a bit of ease when things felt hard, that I kept going even when making an effort seemed futile. That I held on when dark depression was pulling me down.

And maybe this season, as I gaze upon the Christmas lights, I can appreciate both the light and the dark in my year. And that, even for just a moment, I might take the opportunity to remember to feel alive, to feel loved and to feel whole.

Happy Holidays

xoxo B

It feels like I’m hungover today on my morning walk through the neighborhood.

The fog has settled in, it hovers and hides what is in the street right in front of me.

The election placards on peoples’ lawns are limp and dripping from the rain. I can’t stand to look at them.

A bicyclist passes me and it makes me think of being 10, flying though the streets of my hometown, without much of a care. Is that when all of this started? When I let my hands off of the handlebars?

When I took for granted that things would go well. That government was good and democracy was forever.

I still want to believe that all of us in this country want similar things – clean water, good schools, enough resources for everyone.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped paying attention. Maybe I hadn’t noticed that the Dream wasn’t really big enough to include everyone.

And how we’ve been more divided than apart.

My generation was the Reagan years, full of the gluttony of consumerism and gross military might. We were selfish and we took too much.

And now what do we have to offer our own kids – no affordable housing, an insecure job market, negligent healthcare.

I paint things simply.

But last night, having dinner with friends, it was like a solemn wake, only one without a body. And what were we mourning? And to whom could we offer our condolences?

And now, this afternoon, my grandson is teaching me to be a bird. At the park, on the swing-set, he wants me to push him higher and higher, like he has wings – soaring to the top of the sky.

And with his chubby arms extended. He says “cheep-cheep”. And he says, “Look how high” and “birdie is so high in the sky”.

Over and over.

He laughs and I want him to feel like this forever.

A bright baby bird, with auburn hair flying – fragile, but brave.

I’m free, he says.

I’m free.

I stoop to retrieve the small pink shell from the frilly edge of the surf. Upon rinsing, I see that it is perfect, without flaws.

Years of being scraped along the ocean floor, tossed upon the waves, it comes to me as a delicate bit of ephemera.

Late afternoon, I walk up to the beach house, dusting the sand from the shell inside my pocket. Such a delicate thing, yet, further away from the beach, it takes on a different weight in my palm.

And days later, at my kitchen sink, I display it. And days after that, the reality of the actual treasure starts to fade from my mind.

Treasured memories of my son sleeping under the umbrella, my husband stretched out with a book. My grandson shrieking in the waves with his mommy.

In some way the shell is more real to me than those remembrances. The shell is like a bone from an animal unknown, dead but substantial.

Last weekend, I placed the little shell inside my cardboard shrine on Dia de Muertos. I arranged it on my simple altar that I set up every year to honor my mom, who died in 2013.

I placed it next to some flowers, a glass of wine, several old photos, and a ring she’d given me. And I drank the glass with her and I gazed at her beautiful face, and I tried to remember.

And I reached to sift through my mind, to find connections among the items. I touched the relics.

I remembered her at the beach, how she hated the water, until we made her go out with us. She would always thank us for “making” her get in.

Her deep brown skin. Her flowered bathing cap.

The gift of freedom she allowed us – never fretting for our safety.

How strange that her body is gone, and that I can’t hold it like an insignificant shell tossed and tumbled across the sea floor.

And today it feels like the sand is shifting through my fingers and nothing seems permanent. But for the glow from the candle that reminds me to hold on, to think of her, and to remember.

Anyway, I want to believe her spirit is resting gently here with me, or somewhere in between, or maybe somewhere else completely.

But no, I want her to be here, I pray that she is here.

And, in my pocket, my fingers probe the slight weight and fragility of the shell – a sandy talisman of the permanence and the impermanence of it all.

Call me sentimental or nostalgic or whatever, but listening to Kamala Harris’s recent speech and how she was talking about women’s power and freedom and agency, it just made me feel so badass. Like back when we were pre-teens in the 1970s.

In those days, my twin sisters and me were still playing with dolls and Barbies, we hadn’t formed our Charley’s Angels Detective Agency just yet. But we had all the makings of a smart, sassy, unbeatable trio.

Because it was clear that 3 was always going to be a tricky number. Three young girls – negotiating consensus, avoiding gossip, rooting out jealousy – even then we knew that those things could undermine sisterhood.

But it wasn’t until five or six years ago, as adults, that we forged an alliance and we made it happen. We became a kick-ass team. And now we check in daily, have each other’s backs, and come to one another’s defense in any situation.

Meet me, Jill (Farrah Fawcett), and my sister Kelly (Jackie Smith) and the youngest, Bree (Kate Jackson). We formed this trio during a tough time in our family’s life, and we’ve been action-packed ever since.

It started with the dolls.

Someone sent them to us recently and we just went crazy with the storylines and the outfits. Inside jokes that were definitely only hysterical to us.

To us the three sisters.

We ordered extra clothes, posed them in various locales – you name it, they went on many adventures. At one point Farrah broke her hip (torn at the upper femur) after a nasty encounter with the dog.

But anyway, over time – no more familial triangulation for us, no gossipy back-biting, and no more not showing up for the gritty emotional stuff.

Now we’re a tough trio, and we pack guns.

Yes, I was a little taken aback by the fact that Kamala Harris owns a gun and even that she would shoot it if her life was in danger.

But we get this.

In fact, we’d love to take her out for a ladies lunch at the firing range – so we can all put bullets in those men’s silhouettes. What a rush. And a mimosa afterwards (no martini, James).

We’re there, call us Madame VP.

But guns aren’t the main thing really, it’s mostly about strategy and timing and physical prowess (gymnastics helps). Kelly can instantly snap a perp’s wrist with a well placed kick to dislodge a gun. And Bree can cold-cock any guy around, or lay them down with a swift, well-placed kick to the cajones.

And another thing, we don’t need or want any Charley or Bosley as a boss, we do just fine without those orders to dress in skimpy evening dresses.

And no more spending all of those hours in the makeup chair. These days we prefer a good moisturizer, and our Hanes 100-per cent cotton briefs. And our Skechers slip-ons actually serve us pretty well.

Make no mistake we are still pure glamour – it’s just all in the attitude.

The natural glow that Kelly gets when she knees a crotch, or when Bree goes undercover as a man – well, the fact of being 60 just disappears. And for me, Jill, there is a certain gravitas in sporting a grey lion’s mane that instantly radiates respect.

And that’s what our dolls give us.

They remind us of why we played with them and how much joy and possibility they gave us. The freedom of choice (lame’ or stretch one-piece) was right there in our grubby hands.

What goes around comes around – and be careful what you joke about (Bree’s hairdo) because the power always rises. The little hand that patiently brushed that hair out, grew to understand that beauty is less in the hairdo and more in the flexibility of the the hip flexors.

Oh, and the accessories.

Jill treasures that skateboard and it saved her ass in Malibu on several occasions. Kelly’s ever changing scarf is simply a revelation on tough spy cases. And while there’s not much you can do with Bree, her smug smirk is a perfect match to those no-fuss stretch jeans.

Seriously, I love my Angels and I highly recommend that you find a Mattel (or whatever brand) character to pretend with, too. It’s a stress buster – and so fun to pose them in precarious cliff-hangers for Instagram.

It’s just a campy nod to the past, it’s retro-restorative, it’s simple girl-power fun.

It’s all of that.

It’s sisterhood.

Just about now, you can almost hear the collective sighs of the residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s kind of a dark joke where my sister lives.

Yes, the mums have come out.

Summer’s on the way out – cue the long Winter of cold and snow.

The bright annuals are perched and ready in the doorways, like a shield of defiance from the cold.

It’s a wistful goodbye to summer with a last bright spot of yellow.

We mark our weather and the seasons like we mark our moods. The routine and flow of this keeps us on track, and reminds us of where we are in nature, and in our bodies.

Being over 60 is a bit like this. I know this next season of my life is here, but I can’t resist a parting shot of color. It is born of pride and a bit of stubborness, maybe.

I still keep trying to run, like always, but it’s been downgraded to running/walking and is now morphing into brisk walking. With a strained hamstring and other ailments, I wonder what this next stage will be like.

Old age.

Today I thought that maybe I’m looking at it wrong. It’s not, Oh no, not another long Winter.

Instead it crossed my mind – how many more times will I buy these flowers?

We seem to think we have infinite time, perennial seasons.

But we don’t.

I do know that I want to be able to get down on the floor and play with my grandson. I’d also like to scamper across the sand at the beach and swing him around.

Okay, maybe that’s a little ambitious.

It’s funny, whenever I sit and read with my grandson, he grabs the saggy skin on my forearm and squishes it and he pinches it throughout the entire story.

The first time he did it, I reflexively started to comment or explain – for being old, I guess. Seriously.

But I didn’t. I treasured the moment.

As Robert Frost wrote, Nothing gold can stay.

So today, I’m trying not to fixate on the state of my body next to the young runners on the trail, or going crazy with free weights in the bedroom.

I’m simply trying to slow the steps down and appreciate the sno-cone like mums, popping up so joyfully, and so briefly, all over the neighborhood porches.

The hottest of afternoons, and just too damn humid to go outside with a toddler.

Wet, sticky hair on the back of my neck. A brain prickling with thoughts about climate change.

The dog pants on a continuous loop, cicadas scream. A young hawk perches limply at the birdbath.

Another hurricane, another election, another crop of young high school athletes running their hearts out on a blistering track.

Still today, bright music streams out from my stereo speakers, and my 18 month-old grandson is poised like a young disco star, ready to dance.

One chubby arm extended above his head, he waits for the beat. Red-faced, he stomps and sways and twirls through the songs.

And when he moves on to his toy train set, I stay and listen to the last song, and I tear up thinking about the wasted planet.

One light, one sun
One sun lighting everyone
One world turning
One world turning everyone

One world, one home /One world home for everyone /One dream, one song/ One song heard by everyone

One love, one heart
One heart warming everyone
One hope, one joy
One love filling everyone

Today, Raffi is what I need.

Old Raffi – from a childhood 30 years ago – the same innocent melodies of hope, the same reassuring voice.

A reminder of how much has changed, and how much is exactly the same.

Last weekend, I was babysitting my grandson, and, as I was sitting on the couch, he laid his little head down on my thigh, and sighed, and said “my Gigi”.

Oh, to be claimed liked that.

It was one of those sweet grandparenting moments. One of those times where you feel special, you are singled out, receiving love that is neither asked for nor expected – it is just a gift.

This whole grandparent trip has been like this. I never expected to love him like this, to delight in his every expression and mood.

Or to have him reciprocate.

He sometimes cries when I have to leave him, and my heart just aches.

I get it, I am just as sad to say goodbye.

Grandchildren are not ours to train up, or spoil, they are here to teach us the lesson of time:

That we only have these brief moments to experience what they have to offer us.

My grandson will only be 18 months old for a short time. And he won’t want to rest his cheek on mine for much longer.

He won’t light up when he spots me across the room.

He will eventually reach an age where I am mostly irrelevent, even an embarassment, and that is how it is.

Our years of striving to be perfect parents are over, now we can rest in the ease of acceptance and know: we are enough.

And for now, I am a hand to hold while navigating the sidewalk curb, a push of the little trike over the grass.

I am the reader of the book with all of the animal sounds, over and over again.

I am a witness to his first sentences, like “high up in the sky” as he points to the airplane above our heads.

And I think to myself, how, like the plane, he too will travel, far away from me, as the years pass.

And my heart breaks a little.

I think of this time in my life like the transition from afternoon to sunset – the gloaming – that tiny, magical moment when the sky casts a shimmery, otherworldly aspect.

I think of this time in my life like the transition from afternoon to sunset – the gloaming – that brief, magical moment when the sky casts a shimmery aspect.

So breathtaking, so transformative, so brief.

And while our daughter and son-in-law are doing the everyday hard stuff, we can glory in the joy of this special view.

And tonight, I think about his little sticky fingers grabbing at my shirt, willing me not to go.

How his tiny grip is surprisingly strong.

And how lucky I am.

I am necessary, I am loved, I am claimed, even for just a moment.

There is the term “third space” that’s been circulating around for awhile.

The definition describes home as the first place and work as the second.

And the third is a place where we find a loose community, or a kind of neutral territory – it could be a coffeeshop, or a library, or a church.

It’s a place where we might come and go as we please, to participate at any level we choose, or a place where we can simply observe.

It is not purpose driven, or too highly structured and it could be intimate or remote.

A third space might be a place to seek out inspiration.

But mostly it houses a feeling of connection and belonging.

Anyway, I kind of see this place, this blog, as a third space, for me.

And you, you are in this third space with me(if you choose).

And when I write, I open myself up in ways I wouldn’t in a workplace.

And in this forum, I try to be honest.

And yes, lately it has been pretty depressing. (Obviously, you don’t have to go there with me – skip it, please).

But these writings have helped pass the time, and helped with the healing.

This has just been a helpful spot where I’ve been working out my mental health.

And it’s been a space to vent.

It’s been the physical process that has allowed me to listen to my brain.

It’s been a creative space.

A place to try not to judge myself.

We writers always want to tackle something new. We want to advance the plot in some way.

But life doesn’t work that way, and the lessons I’ve learned have been re-learned many times over.

But the good thing is, that when I’m scrolling back through my blogs, and I think it’s all been the same old shit, I run across a stunning photograph of say, the Swiss Alps.

And then I remember that day, and my son’s smile after his first run down the mountain.

And I remember just how peaceful I felt. How I watched him grow smaller and smaller as he traversed away from me.

And in that moment, I saw his 5 year-old self magically overlaid on his adult body.

And, up high, with the sun’s bright reflection, and my tears, making me dizzy – it felt like time was inverted that way.

And I just needed to get it down on paper.

Yes, there were the good days – many, many good days.

Still, depression will tell you they don’t exist, that they never existed, but it is a lie.

The truth is that there have been many, many more great moments than bad ones.

So, I’m grateful for this space we inhabit – this spot where the lousy and the picturesque can co-exist.

Sharing it has been such an unexpected joy.

A few years ago, my husband, son and I went to France for a vacation, to the beautiful French Riviera.

And I got lost.

Well and truly lost.

Lost in the way that I just knew I would never be found, and that I might even die.

Hours and hours alone, not knowing how to find my way back home.

Dehydration and irrational thinking and the existential feeling that maybe only those who are near death face.

Well, I thought I was near death anyway.

Basically, my son and husband had taken a day trip to Monaco and I’d stayed back to spend the day at the beach.

And then, late afternoon, I headed back to the villa, and I couldn’t find my bearings.

I had no cell phone, no key, no ID even.

The streets of the village were serpentine and every doorway looked identical to the all the others along the cobblestone street.

So I backtracked and retraced my steps at each turn, over and over – for several hours

By early evening, my irritation grew into apprehension. And then nervousness. And the temperature was slipping fast, I was getting cold.

Does this look right? Is this familiar?

I tried to tamp down the panic. I thought I was sensible; I’d found where our rental car was parked, figuring that the guys would eventually make their way to it.

Or so I reasoned.

Finally, still in my damp bathing suit, I sat with my legs stretched out under the car’s wheel well, to catch the residue of the engine’s warmth.

My teeth were chattering.

This wasn’t looking good.

And then, close to midnight, my son emerged from the dark.

And when I saw him across the road, I starting crying uncontrollably; I was so ashamed.

I felt pitiful: I was a clueless, middle-aged tourist with no sense of direction.

The shame filled my frigid body, down to my frozen feet.

In the end, my body eclipsed all reason. Everything felt disconnected.

It’s been years since that event happened, but occasionally the memory pricks at me.

This past February, I got Covid (finally) and the virus triggered a haze of depression that I am just now coming out of.

I am surfacing from the dark.

I’ve started taking short walks in our new neighborhood, but I feel like an invalid with little endurance. I lift my heavy legs and try to feel my muscles.

I try to connect my body to my brain. Both are sluggish and out of sync.

But I have started to feel stonger.

Even so, when I look down at my shoes, there is the worn, near colorless grey of the sidewalk. It is like the grey that swirls in my mind.

At times I am dull and numb and I can’t remember my sense of humor, or any particularly positive thing about myself.

And lately I’ve thought about being lost, both in France, and at home.

And the memory comes back to me, of shivering on that cold night, how alone I felt.

It occurred to me how disappointed I was that my family couldn’t somehow read my mind to locate me. Like a mental GPS.

But not many people know us well enough to always offer a lifesaving rope when we’re clinging on the precipice.

And no one ever completely understands what we are going through, what is swirling around in our brains.

And that brings me back to today, and the fact that I have struggled to write about the past few months.

I have given up and given in to the idea that none of this is worth writing about.

But then I think about the fact that at the end of the story, it was okay.

So I’m holding out some hope that what I say and how I try to describe myself will resonate with you.

And I hope to keep on writing even in these grey spaces.

It feels dull and boring, but it makes the healing time go faster.

And it makes me feel a little bit better as I go.