January, 2022
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21jan22
I got to yoga late this morning – not so late that I missed the start of class or anything, but late enough that I ended up front & center (literally). I don’t mind front but center always poses a problem. I usually use the wall when I begin tipping over and it absolutely helps me during balancing postures.
Today was Fun Friday Flow and as I said to Sue (our teacher) after class, her definition of fun is wildly different than mine! It was a challenging class partly because I had no idea what was coming and for my MS body, that’s a real challenge. But in its own weird way, practice was fun. Because I was fully present. I couldn’t not be. It was just me and my mat and sweat. For seventy-five minutes. And that was glorious.
Sue began by having us think of an intention, and I didn’t so much have that as I had a thought. Nine years. That’s what I kept thinking when I was wobbling or unsure. When I needed to center myself and come back to the basics. When things felt too hard, or impossible.
As of today, I’ve been diagnosed with MS for nine years, And I can still get on my mat and I can still practice. And some days are better than others but they are all better than those first two years of Lydia(my cane) and losing the ability to write and sliding helplessly down the slope of disability. I can walk and I can think and I can – if I’m disciplined – do more than one thing a day and survive.
I’m healthier than I ever was as an adult without an incurable neurological autoimmune disease. That’s a certainty. I eat better and drink better and sleep better and exercise better and think better than young, ‘healthy’ Gwyneth ever did. I’ve learned a lot in nine years. I’ve felt loss and I’ve felt despair, yes, but I’ve also felt joy and accomplishment.
MS is hard. It’s hard for many reasons, but a big one is that I don’t look like much of anything should be hard. I look like a healthy forty-something. And I am, but I’m also not. It’s weird and uncomfortable living with that juxtaposition.
But I’ve been doing it for nine years. Like I’ve been saying all day – wild.
Xoxo, g
20jan22
Life is wild.
It snowed this morning. It was beautiful.
I also got the awful news that a friend – a dear, beautiful, powerful, funny, sharp, successful, vivacious friend – has breast cancer.
Juxtapositions.
Surgeries and disease and stress and angst. Broken furnaces and agoraphobia.
But also snow and hitting financial goals. Second homes and new trucks. International flights booked to see family.
Life is wild.
Xox, g
19jan22
Last night John + I spent four hours (yes, four) on the phone with American Airlines. Truth be told we spent most of that time on hold – first to get a person and then because that person was on hold with another person. Long story exceptionally long, we hung up just before ten having eaten dinner standing up and most of our time pacing back and forth waiting for someone to come back and talk to us.
The end result is tickets booked to the U.K. And no more tickets to France. I am both happy and sad. I wanted so badly to visit my brother in the Alps. I practically strong-armed it into taking place. To change those plans hurt my soul.
On the flip side, I haven’t been to England since 2015. When my mother was still alive. Most of my aunts and uncles I haven’t seen since before. Covid has been going on for so long … our original flights were booked for September 2020. Nearly two years later and we are finally (hopefully) going. I just want to eat sausages and crumpets and pork pies and walk the walls of Berwick. I want to breath in the salty sea air and remember my mother. I think part of me is hoping she feels closer somehow. Even though my rational brain knows that won’t be the case. My mother was an American and she was proud to be one. England is more for me and my Dad and Dave than it ever will be for her. We are all searching, hoping, missing her.
I hope we go. I hope we are able to board the plane and land in the U.K. I hope I am able to see my aunts and my cousins and talk and laugh and hug and tell stories and show John things he didn’t see last time.
My fingers are crossed. Maybe third times a charm.
Xox, g
18jan22
Sometimes when I’m beyond tired (more tired than normal MS tired… like, can‘t focus, can’t move, have no motivation tired) I wander down memory lane. This is inevitably aided by the socials, and mostly FB, because that’s where I’m connected to all the people I used to know across my life.
Memory lane can be beautiful and nostalgic but it can also be painful. Today I had two polar opposite experiences. I was reminded of the death of a friend – far too young and now, twenty years ago. I remember when it happened. We’d fallen apart as friends because we were young and I’d moved away halfway through high school and boys and girls – in my experience – aren’t that good at keeping in touch when proximity is no longer a factor. He died in a car accident near State College. It was a gut punch. Surreal. Young people dying always is, but a young person that I knew …. Harder to comprehend. And I had no one to talk about it with because our friendship had been in those golden years of middle school. That time before cell phones and hormones and all the complications that came later. When we just played street hockey and had sleepovers and went sledding when it snowed. He was the first person I told about getting tested for MS. I remember that. Anyway. It was another gut punch moment, seeing the old newspaper article from the Daily Collegian re-posted by a mutual friend. My mind wandered and I was back there for a moment, on Heather Hill, trudging through the woods, playing tag. Standing in rollerblades telling him about my tests. Life is crazy and surreal and here I am, twenty years later, married with two houses and a nice car. And he didn’t have the opportunity to do any of that. How is that fair? How is that decided? It shakes the foundations of humanity.
And then later – a simple ‘like’ by an old college roommate. Someone I haven’t seen or spoken to in over a decade …. Memories of college flooding back, smiling at our shared history and how sharply our lives diverged following Penn State. How we are virtual strangers to each other now, our bond that brief period of time we shared at that formative time in life.
Both men I’m glad I knew back then. Such a strange juxtaposition.
Xox, g
17jan22
A day can contain so many things and yet, seem insignificant in the grand scheme of life.
We drove home today. It was flurrying when we left and snowed intermittently along the way. The mountains hazy in the distance – gray and snow filled, black trees against stark white. The gas station that serves as our midway point was only accepting cash (a temporary issue per the papers posted to all the doors) but we luckily had some so we grabbed some food. It was necessary. Moments when small things – like the twenty stuffed in one of our wallets – becomes vital.
The truck glided down the road, moving faster than it felt, humming quietly but not raging. A much different experience than the Jeep Truck (who remained unnamed) and Bucky before him. We giggled as we discovered new ‘secrets’ – the way the wipers worked and the lumbar support built into both the driver and passenger seats. But we didn’t talk much – it was one of those drives. Gray and quiet and steady. Strangely familiar but also new. Comforting.
The joy of our second house is that coming home doesn’t mean massive loads of laundry and hours of unpacking. It usually means taking Lucy for a good walk and unpacking the cooler. Today we eschewed working out for resting – curling up and watching some movies while eating a homemade dinner.
We watched the end of “The Tender Bar” (begun before Ben’s last game but unfinished because after four hours of painful football we just didn’t have the energy to finish it) and “Coda.” Both movies so simple but so powerful. I watched the climactic scene of “Coda” and memories rushed back – of the day I sang in an audition, years and years ago. What I wore, the fact that my mother and I drove through a snow storm to be there… or maybe it was to get home. I can’t remember anymore and it doesn’t really matter. My heart squeezed thinking of those moments – long forgotten but now fresh, of how my mother supported me and my dreams. How she willed most of them to come true. How she was always right about the ones that I shouldn’t have pined for. How she was always right about most things.
It was just a day among other days, filled with small details and routine actions. And it was a testament to the life John and I have built and the people we used to be who grew into the people we are now. That’s how life shapes itself in my mind now. Tiny building blocks growing into new and unexpected things.
Singers who no longer sing. Writers who long to write. People just being people to the best of their ability.
Xox, g
16jan22
There’s snow on the forecast for tonight. We’ve run our errands – and most importantly of all, gotten coffee. And more sparkling water (we realized last night we were down to our last four cans … which for us is danger danger low). So now we’re home, about to take Lucy for a nice long neighborhood walk and get settled in for the snow.
While we were out and about (basically driving around some back roads while we sipped our hot beverages) we got on the subject of Baker. Baker is one of husby’s closest friends and I have known him since almost the beginning of husby and me. Last summer I finally met his wife and she’s amazing. Of course she is, she couldn’t be anything else. I joked for a long time that she didn’t exist because it was over a decade before I met her but she does and she lives up to all the hype. Of course she does. She’s Baker’s other half and he’s just a really great guy.
Anyway. Husby ended up calling and we chatted for a little. Hopefully we will see them soon — the house in Bellefonte is (obviously) much closer to Pittsburgh than Downingtown ever will be and it makes seeing our Pittsburgh friends easier.
It made me think about friendship. Mine, husby’s …. Ours.
I have several amazing female friends but I don’t have many. I used to feel self-conscious about that because shouldn’t I have more? Wasn’t friendship like life — more is clearly better? But the older I get and the more time I notch on my belt in this life, the more I inherently understand that the friendships I have — with my husband first and foremost but also with the women I call sisters — are what make life sweet, worthwhile and full. And I don’t need a million of them, I only need a few really good ones.
Both husband and I are very lucky in our friendships. With our chosen people, the ones we share our time and our thoughts with. They are our family, our people. Our safety net. And we are very lucky.
I’d write more but I have gotten interrupted a million times (Lucy is very persistent) and now I’ve completely lost my train of thought. Ooof.
Xox, g
15jan22
I thought a lot about how we all choose to exist in the world today.
It wasn’t a day filled with adventure or anything specific really – it was more an amorphous day of just existing for a moment – a pause or timeout from the stresses of everyday life. A breath.
We drove aimlessly for far too long, sipping our coffees (tea for me) and just talking. About life. Our lives, our dreams, our pasts, our future. We talked about what being back in State College regularly is for me – how it shapes my days and my thoughts. We talked about the difference between what home means for me and what home means for John. We talked about a lot of things. But we didn’t talk about people. Maybe because it’s not interesting to us, maybe because we don’t interact with people regularly enough to have thoughts … or maybe it’s how we choose to exist in this life.
Which got me thinking about how people choose to be – how they choose to interact with the environment around them, the people they come in contact with – the content they choose to consume.
I’d be naive to think that there is no audience for what I consider absurd content. Hateful content. If there are makers, there are consumers. People do not create readily without a need, a desire, a problem to solve. And if content exists for things I consider worthwhile or useful, then the opposite must also be true. And if both the content exists and the market exists, then I begin to consider the people who deem this form of content beneficial. Who are they? What is their motivation? Do they believe what they produce? Has this served them well in the past?
And if I am wondering about these nameless, faceless people, shouldn’t I also consider my own role and my own choices in the same/similar situations ….
Which brings me back to the choices people make in how they exist in the world.
I can only speak for mine, because those are the only choices that I govern. I know what I believe is worthwhile and useful and I know what I believe is hateful, ignorant and pointless. But my beliefs only govern me … and my beliefs can also be viewed as opinions, which mean they are fallible, mercurial and undefinable. ‘Worthless’ is not a noun, it is an adjective and therefore, infinitely subjective.
I’d get twisted about all of it but I’ve been having this thought circle for what feels like years, and I always end up back in the same place. I can only control myself, I can only decide for myself and I cannot control, influence or mandate any other person’s choices in how they exist in this world.
It would be infuriating if it also wasn’t so finite.
Xox, g
14jan22
Some days play out exactly as you think they will. Others … not so much.
Today was a bit of both for us. We had a plan, we knew the objective … but life wasn’t feeling super cooperative, so things didn’t go exactly as we’d envisioned.
I’m not always very good about being super aware in the moment, but today – for some strange, unknown reason – I took a beat. I realized that in the end, we would arrive at the same conclusion (back home in Bellefonte, new truck). And that the way we got there might not have been what we’d anticipated, but wasn’t that the quirky nature of life?
I even had the crazy forethought to understand — as we climbed in the truck to head home —that I should eat something or risk being a complete bitch for the duration of the drive.
So our day was crazy. And we ended up not even making dinner (French fries and mozzarella sticks will do that). And then, instead of a movie or a show, we watched the Harry Potter reunion.
But it wasn’t bad. It just … was. I guess I’m learning that it’s easier if I let go of the expectations. Everything feels less intense, less dramatic and less dire if I just accept it as it comes.
I’m forty-two and that’s a really tough lesson to learn.
Xox, g
13jan22
I went back and read some of my blog posts from January 2021. I was definitely taking blogging more seriously and I had some pretty interesting things to say (to me, at least!). After last night’s blogging fiasco (well, to be honest, before then but the incident amplified it) I have made a conscious effort to write today before the end of the day and not about blogging or my day or anything painfully mundane.
As I drove to Barnes & Noble this morning my mind was filled with ideas and thoughts. I thought – I can write about anything I want to write about. It’s my blog, it earns no money and has no readers. The post is my oyster. If that makes sense to you. It makes sense to me ….
I could write about how being in State College is haunted for me – haunted by memories and people and choices I made a long, long time ago. I both love and dread being here, love and dread remembering that me. I walk down memory lane over and over again; affectionate towards those old memories but also cringing, knowing what’s coming, knowing how it all turns out.
I could blog about how strange it is to transition from writing on my iPad to writing on my computer. I keep reaching for the screen as though it’s touch screen … it’s not. But the keys are definitely easier and I find that comforting.
I could write about perspective – how driving along Benner Pike, skies blue, air cold and crisp, snow iced across green fields makes me feel, and how that feeling is both the same and vastly different from how the same moment affects my husband. How he looks at fields and thinks about working them in his youth and hunting similar landscapes throughout his life and I look at the these fields and think of paintings and long walks and horses. Both realities a reflection of our lives, our experiences. Both true to us, but simultaneously not true for the other.
I could write about how this Barnes & Noble is my ultimate favorite Barnes & Noble. How I used to come here when Seattle’s Best Coffee was the cafe. How I’d find a big chair and curl up, reading text books and history books and books for pleasure. How I can still remember specific days, watching people walk by, browsing and purchasing books, as I read Pliny and Agatha Christie.
I could write about Starbucks. Oh how I could write about Starbucks! Have I ever done that? I can’t remember. I would assume I have. I have loved Starbucks for as long as I’ve known what Starbucks is. And I have drunk the same drink since my college friend came back to school after summer break and introduced me to the soy chai. He’d worked at the Starbucks in Chestnut Hill (a store I am familiar with … now, but not then) and with his return came a wealth of Starbucks knowledge. I can fall down the slippery slope of all my Starbucks memories throughout my adult life because it has been a constant, a place I’ve always found comfort and respite from the thrashings of the outside world. Happiness in a Cup. That is what my Starbucks Soy Chai is, has always been and will always be.
Mostly what I wanted to do was write. Because tapping out a few paltry (and frankly pathetic) lines after eleven at night isn’t a testament to what this exercise is all about. This exercise is an attempt to teach myself the discipline of writing – the ritual, yes, but also the slogging, when it isn’t easy, when I have nothing to say. When I am not ‘inspired’ to write but do it anyway.
Husband found headphones for me (I forgot my ear pods at home) and I have a song on repeat — something that works for me when I’m writing because it sets a mood, a tempo, a feeling. It helps me keep track of me, and that’s a Herculean task. I have a chai and I have a table. The rest is up to me.
As I sit here, in a Barnes & Noble that was my past and is now my present, as I prepare to head home earlier than anticipated, I marvel at where my life is now. How did that twenty-something girl from her first tour of State College become the woman I am today? How did I connect the dots to become me, to get here?
It’s what’s on my mind. It’s why I’m writing.
xox, g
12jan22
There was absolutely nothing remarkable about today.
We did the things. Work and chores and dinner.
And I was nearly asleep before once again remembering I hadn‘t blogged. So I obviously have nothing to say and am very, very tired.
Life.
Snow on the forecast for this weekend. Significant snow and I hope it happens. I love snow.
Xox, g
D5 Creation