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25jan22
January 25th is Rabbie Burns Day. Well, I mean, sort of.
Who?, you ask.
Robert Burns was the poet laureate of Scotland – I believe the only one ever. And his birthday was January 25th. He’s been dead quite a long time but has left a lasting legacy through his poetry. Before my mother died she began a tradition of doing Burns Night Supper. This involved haggis, neeps and tatties, cranachan, poetry recitation and lots of whiskey. The Scottish kind, so I believe it’s spelled whisky but I’m not completely sure. Maybe I got that backwards? (I don’t have my phone to google and check so I apologize, this is staying as it is).
One of the great things about Burns Supper is the poetry. John and I hosted once, years ago now, when my mother was still alive, and every guest was requested to bring a piece of poetry. As we all ate our Scottish grub, one by one we read our pieces to the group. It was sort of magical because everyone’s selection reflected who they were – original works, Rumi, T.S. Eliot, etc.
John and I began our poetry collection because of Burns Supper. This year I bought him a collection by Amanda Gorman. Last year he bought me Rupi Kaur. There’s something other-worldly about poetry. It makes the mundane seem magic somehow. It is the perfect illustration of the power of language.
This wasn’t what I was going to blog about at all. I was going to talk about how Ally Love re-posted one of my Instagram stories, and how incredible it felt to be ‘seen’ by a woman i admire so greatly. But then I typed the date. And all the memories of Burns Supper came flooding back. And my mother felt closer. And that felt soothing.
Anyway. Happy Burns Night America.
Xox, g
24jan22
I made an unspoken deal with myself this year. I said, ‘Self, let’s try to blog every day again. But let’s not talk incessantly about how tired you are. Let’s just agree that being exhausted is status quo and therefore unnecessary to pontificate on.”
Whether it seems obvious or not, I have actually tried not to blog about headaches and fatigue and all the things that are part of my daily life. I have tried – with varying degrees of success – to blog about my thoughts or other, possibly more interesting, things.
I am tired tonight. The kind of tired that starts with a burn in my shoulder and progresses to bone deep cold and culminates in brain fog and the loss of any sense of balance. I’m just reaching out for something to hold onto to keep me upright.
I meant to blog earlier today (as I often do) but life happened – family drama and bookkeeping and laundry and dinner. You know the things – the things that have to be done but take up time and energy. The latter of which is in very short supply for me.
Anyway. My hope is that I read this blog post tomorrow and it makes some sort of sense. Right now, I’m going to put on pajamas and climb under multiple blankets next to a space heater and hope to stop shivering and fall asleep.
Xox, g
23jan22
I went to a talk today about the gut+brain connection. It was hosted by a friend of mine at our mutual yoga studio (where she also teaches a movement class because she’s amazing and is a dance movement therapist and incredibly well-rounded). I am so glad that I went – on a Sunday afternoon, in January.
The talk ended with the idea of community and how a person’s community affects their microbiome and therefore their gut and their brain health. The entire talk was utterly fascinating but as I talked with my friends and made plans for lunch dates and breakfast dates, the importance of community was driven home.
Five years ago my community of people was very different than my community of people today. Some of that is due to circumstance – I stopped working and commuting into the city. Some of it was on purpose – me understanding my own worth and what I should be looking for in friends.
But it is incredibly interesting how my community has so significantly changed my life. In such a positive way.
Anyway. Surround yourself with the energy that makes you light up from the inside. Find the people who re-charge your battery. And then nurture and take care of those friendships. Because they are life.
Xox, g
22jan22
I’ve always had a love hate relationship with my memory. I can make people uncomfortable with my ability to remember dates or strange, inconsequential details. And other times, it’s as though my brain chose not to remember something at all. Completely gone, as though it never happened at all.
I saw this meme and I saved it as a reminder that my memory, good bad or fickle, is not the gospel. Sometimes it’s better to let it fade. Release all the emotions and move forward.
That’s the only direction time moves, anyway.
Xox, g
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
D5 Creation