Tag: Meditation

2024, Blog Writing

I’ve Always Wanted to Get to 100

Susan Greco

It’s that sweet spot between Christmas and New Year’s and a lazy vibe lingers. Ben and Evan (who my sister has cleverly coined “Bevan” – borrowing the “Bennifer” moniker from Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck) came home and in the first hours they were here, something shifted. It was as if the house were a giant Ziploc bag that in recent years had placed Joe and me in the middle and the corners had deflated and flattened. With the Christmas swirl flying about, the corners now were puffed up, and big breezes flew through nudging awake ideas and movement. The din of noise—my mom’s old Singer sewing machine hummed as Ben mended his brother’s robe, the PlayStation games, loud and until all hours of the night, the chatter, the morning ritual of pouring boiling water into not one but two French presses, and our little cat Samantha darting in closets to hide from it all–has cut through the thick stubborn silence and shifted the bag’s contents. I hope the corners stay inflated. 

After our Christmas Eve dinner, which no one lingered over, the lure of the living room TV took hold and football announcers’ voices filled the room. I stayed in the kitchen because I neither understand nor follow football, probably the reason I don’t like it. Our dishwasher has been broken for months and the dishes aren’t going to clean themselves. I remembered Christmas Eves growing up, which felt quiet and clean and dreamy, and we’d stare at the tree mesmerized, like you do when looking at a fire or the ocean. The football this year readily consumed on this most magical of nights interrupted the promise of sweet silence. Does anyone really want to sit and stare at the tree? My hand is raised. I do. Does anyone want to see who sent us a Christmas card and read what they wrote? Oh, half time is about to end? Ok, then, some other time. <sigh> 

Everyone has now gone. Ben’s back home in New York and Joe and Evan are off on a golf trip, so it’s just me here. The dishwasher still doesn’t work yet I keep right on cooking and finding new ways to balance the ever-growing vertical sculpture of clean dishes drying on a rack. One glass couldn’t take any more of the crowding and there was a stunning explosion that projected flashes of chunks and shards an impressively long way. The party is over and the mantels’ garlands have crisped, but these days gave the Ziploc a good shake and its insides now are stirred. Passing Evan’s room, I can see the energy in the Christmas gifts left on the floor and bed covers strewn about. Something indeed has shifted.

Yesterday was sunny and not too cold. I had every reason to get out into it and feel it, but I’m tired and spent from these last few weeks, and with an empty house, I can hide out and rest without explanation. I did too much gearing up for this holiday.

Mel Robbins suggests we answer six questions to jar loose thoughts for the next year and ones about the one we’re nearly finished. I think I need more sleep before I will begin this thoughtful exercise which I’m excited about. When I am low on sleep, I get sad and lonely and that has happened a good bit. Even the Energizer Bunny needs new batteries sometimes, and I realize I need more quiet times. 

It’s been four years of renovation and since Covid and cancer appeared, and they’re each exhausting on their own, but their combination even more so. Sometimes I feel like an inexperienced child looking for a parent who can answer the question, did all this really happen?

We are on the edge of a kitchen demo and it’s killing me that I don’t know when it’ll happen. Constant back and forth from the General Contractor and cabinet guy. Always the promise that it’ll be summer, or December, and now, after the new year. As if I can effectively brace for the lack of a kitchen? It’s where we all go. Where I go mostly. I can’t picture microwaving in the dining room or figuring out how the air fryer in my new toaster oven is going to simplify mealtime. All the food prep will get reduced to opening the fridge and moving something into a microwave, toaster oven or crock pot. Surely doing dishes in a bathroom sink (the only one we will have) can’t go well. We need Draino at the ready as it is. I imagine it will all feel fast. Will we become airport diners? Leaning against a counter and popping in food quickly in a just get it done approach. Get in, get out. Sustenance complete. Check. This could last three months, or it could go on for six. Either way I know I’ll need to find a cozy nook in this dining room food court I’m about to fashion. That I’ve chosen to worry about this as often as I have tells me I’ve got work to do. Quiet down and let it unfold as it will. 

How lucky to even be renovating a kitchen. And that it will come with a working dishwasher (ours has been out for nearly half the year). And a large working oven will be nice as well (ours breathed its last months ago). A level cooktop is coming and with more burners, too, a step up from our two back burners, the only ones that ignite. The sweet little kitchen has cranked out beautiful foods and moments and soon it will be reduced to a pile of rubble. An Emory writing teacher I had years ago once came here for a visit and her jaw dropped when she went in the kitchen. The wall tile is the same as her grandmother had and seeing it flooded her back to treasured times. I hope to remove several tiles and surprise her all these many years later. I will miss the room. I know its strengths and sounds and weaknesses like a dear old friend’s, and I’ve swept up a confetti of dog hair and catnip and crumbs and carrot shavings from its uneven ugly linoleum floor. I once made eye contact with a sweet mouse in here who peered at me from behind the stove. I’m hoping that the new year brings with it a kitchen, and a forward focus and quieter, calmer me.

My mother always told me, “Susie, you talk just to hear yourself talk.” If only she were alive, I could offer up a smart retort, something to the tune of, “Well, where do you think I got this chattiness? Could it be YOU?” You should have heard her. Always with a clever story, on the phone with friends, or entertaining people at our house, but she is right. I love to talk—to myself, the cats, anyone who will listen. I need it to work through things. Seems my sister gets the brunt of it, the stuff I tell no one else, and she is the smartest, calmest, warmest sounding board I know. I’m not sure she’s exactly pinching herself over her lucky lot, but I am. 

I started this Hindsight blog in 2017. Friends who liked various Facebook posts I’d write often suggested I start a blog, and their support propped me up and nudged me to actually do it. What a boost to write something that speaks to someone, because other than talking to hear myself talk, that really is the point. Connection. To know your take on things is like someone else’s, or that you aren’t the only one wrestling with something difficult or experiencing something particularly awe-inspiring, or that your strain of humor can make a person laugh is everything. It’s addictive, this fuel like no other. With the blog came a few setbacks. Initially someone remarked that my blog was not a real blog, and immediately there was that feeling like no one got my Halloween costume. I was exposed, inexperienced, an imposter. Is this any good, even a blog, what’s the point? It’s a personal blog and it doesn’t fit in a neat little box. It’s all over the place. Like me. But those details! Then there was WordPress to wrestle with, but I found a basic template that worked. Doubts would reappear if my posts went unread and unnoticed, but simply writing them fired me up, and so I kept going. Then cancer struck and the posts practically wrote themselves, stories people particularly wanted to read. The election and travels and house construction, and tales of pets and people, too, found their way into more essays.

During a recent memoir class, after reading one of my cancer blogs, one woman noticed something. While she learned all about the details of chemo and radiation, she said she was left wondering how I felt having gone through it all, and in the middle of a global pandemic no less. She thought I seemed a bit detached, disassociated even, in my writing. More like a reporter than a cancer survivor. I think I preferred telling myself things were fine maybe so I could avoid admitting I feared otherwise. You know, fake it ‘til you make it? There were times I felt alone, separate and hopeless, and for my own protection and reputation, blocked access—my own and yours–to these struggles. There’s a strange shame in fully letting you in. I kept weaving hope into it all because there is always hope, but also because the loose ends needed tying up so I could contain and tamp down the worry that kept coming around. I’m also a big fan of bows, so tying a big one around it all felt like I’d finished another story. The irony is I’ve probably only just begun. 

Going forward, I want to mine deeper for the gold, that stuff that is locked up but that can open if you notice how your insides are responding to what is going on outside. There is down deep a craving for more connection, closeness, and what we have in common. More stillness too. Breathing, letting a single thought appear versus opening the door to the dozens that want to take over–that tangled string of flashing Christmas lights that begs you to unravel them and put them up, but you know now is not the time for that. Now is for you. Not everything is an emergency. Every thought doesn’t need to get expressed. Sit with it all. Maybe something bubbles up or maybe it doesn’t. The real time moments are all you’ve got, and only you can take them in. There are no Cliffs Notes for catching up later. The lessons are coming in and will keep coming, but the gate must be unlocked and stay open.

This essay marks 100. One hundred times I had the wherewithal, the excitement, the courage, and the intention to post a story, and every time I did, my own container, my Ziploc, puffed up and the air blew around. There is more to write about, and I might try a longer form project, but I don’t yet know. I am honored and grateful that you signed up to get these posts and that so many of you read them. I would love hearing if you have a favorite post or topic and why it spoke to you. I’ve loved speaking to you and with you, and this conversation has been the whole point all along. 

The new year is a blank slate, a reset, a clean canvas to fill. As 2023 fades into the background, Hindsight and its 100 stories is taking a seat. This isn’t paint by numbers; there is no path our pencil must follow to see the picture unfold. Just as a blog can be whatever you make it, so can the chapters you create going forward. There is much more ahead to see and to share, and I can’t wait to see you there. Lots of love. 

2023, Inspiration, personal growth

Portals

Susan Greco

It’s Christmastime and all the year’s months have led up to now. Like a long simmering stew, December’s broth is rich and layered. Folded in it are bits, some evolved, broken down and now part of the stock, and others float on the surface bobbing around getting noticed when you think to stir the pot.

Like many that came before it, this year has been full of the usual hamster wheel activities, as my friend Sherron calls them, the endless repetition of house and yard work, self-care and grooming, and all the other details you attend to to effectively maintain a body, a home, and connect with family and friends. There is a reliably comfortable cadence to it all, but this buzzy busyness pulls you away from you–the core you, not the one always in the company of others.

When the dust settles or else when you decide to ignore it, there is a whole other world to explore, but it requires you hop off the hamster wheel even while it’s still turning–because it’s always turning, isn’t it? There are doors you can open that you didn’t realize were even there. Others do it all the time, but like a fringe of bangs you let cover part of your eye, I’ve leaned into a routine that isn’t exactly fostering any growth, and you could argue it’s a place to hide. I’m all for simply staying alive and thank God I am, but adding fertilizer, you can grow new shoots that branch off your trunk and climb every which way to reach the light. 

This fall I joined a meditation study conducted by the University of Arizona nursing school. Participants were breast cancer survivors and their partners who have experienced the anxiety such a diagnosis brings. For eight consecutive Saturdays we hopped on Zoom for two hours and learned a boatload about the fascinating science behind meditation and its proven benefits, particularly for breast cancer patients’ outlook and outcomes. These guided meditations transported me to that yummy dizzy place you find yourself after you get a massage, take a deliciously warm bath, or sleep especially well after a day you’ve exercised your body hard. At first it was weird to stare into a screen at everybody and then shut your eyes and try to settle without peeking, but soon the instructor’s voice became a salve I looked forward to each Saturday, and the other couples we connected with in breakout sessions seemed similarly struck. The guided meditation homework was simple enough, and I found it easy to pause my day and zone for ten minutes. The meetings are now over but over several months we will continue to collect saliva samples at various intervals to test our cortisol. I haven’t stayed consistent with my meditation—I know I am taking the least creative route and blaming the holidays—but I feel like now at least I know how to do it, how good it feels, and how little it takes. It all adds up to something in the positive column, so when you feel like pausing your busyness, it is reliably there and waiting like a good friend I plan to stay in touch with.

I also enrolled in a Zoom memoir writing class with five other writers who each week shared stories after which we’d each thoughtfully respond. Class often would run long, well into the dinner hour, but who cares when you’re doing something that lights you up? No longer locked in a vacuum, my words echoed in the grand volume of my dining room before settling onto the group’s hands, leaving them each with unique thoughtful impressions they shared. I’ve never indulged myself in this way and soaked in so much feedback or been able to formulate real time impressions of others’ work, but I now know I want more. These meetings gave me the best parts of my college English classes—reading interesting material and analyzing it to death—but it offered a far more intimate experience (just 6 of us plus the teacher) and with no grades, the challenge was simply to show up as yourself and share. Think it’s easy? Think again. These people were each brilliant in a million different ways and interpreting each other’s work brought an indispensable perspective. A few of us have since met for coffee and maybe we will keep up here and there. Even if we don’t, just to know these kinds of people exist is enough for me to know there’s more out there if I want it. 

A few weeks ago when describing this writing class to someone, I said it’s been like a portal for me, a way in to something fascinating that dials up a light inside me. I think these portals are everywhere, that is, if you decide to hunt for them, and the resulting light is blinding in the best of ways.

Finally, I discovered a book that’s now new, but new to me. Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening struck chord after chord, so I will leave you with a few bits of his wisdom:

1.  No amount of thinking can stop thinking.

2.  In release, we begin.

3.  The flower doesn’t dream of the bee, it blossoms and the bee comes.

4.  Live your worries through, and your spirit will wake from its fever, and you will want others like soup.

5.  Keep the colors wet.

6.  We are so unused to emotion that we mistake any depth of feeling for sadness, any sense of the unknown for fear, and any sense of peace for boredom.

7. Repetition is not failure.  Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind.

8.  If you try to comprehend air before breathing it, you will die.

9.  The pain was necessary to know the truth, but we don’t have to keep the pain alive to keep the truth alive.

10.  No matter where we dig or climb, we come upon the fire we left untended.

Uncategorized

Toast Points

Susan Greco

This morning, I attended a virtual Creative Mornings event titled Street Wisdom, the idea being a little tune-up we can all give ourselves, this first one guided by David Pearl, author at http://www.streetwisdom.org. We were given three tasks:

The light

1) Look around where you are. What attracts you and what doesn’t? I looked up from my bed from where I was participating–I determined my bedroom’s cream curtains made for a better Zoom background as opposed to the construction plastic draped from the ceiling in the other option for a Zoom call–and settled my eyes on a lamp on my dresser. This lamp and I go way back, 50+ years, actually. It was in my room growing up and always on my dresser, and now it sits on a different dresser wearing a new linen shade. The lamp base is the same, and offers a reliable consistency, like a good friend does, who knew you way back when. How is it that this pretty pink English calico lamp came to mind and into view? It attracts me on so many levels: its beauty, elegance, quietness and femininity, and especially its connection to my childhood and that little girl who walked up to it every day as she rifled through her dresser for something to wear, barely noticing it, really. It has stayed exactly the same while everything around it has changed. These artifacts from my past validate that this other life I had–which seems as if from a fading dream–really existed. The parents I had who left me nearly three decades ago, my mother who likely purchased this lamp. Was it for her living room initially, or was it always bought with her younger daughter in mind? If this lamp could talk, what would it tell my earlier self? It sits there ever so steady and peaceful; I want even a fraction of its unflappable grace. All the moves I’ve made, all the tabletops it’s sat on, the people who’ve touched it, moved it, dusted it, and here it still stands, not terribly tall, but proud and elegant, confident of its place in the room. This is what attracts me. 

The heap

What doesn’t? The pile of clothes heaped on the slipper chair next to the dresser where the lamp sits. They are haphazard, a cacophony of colors and wrinkles and not, some folded from clean laundry brought up days ago, some dress shirts, still unhung and flung over the chair’s back to keep more wrinkles at bay. The two dark pieces of luggage on the floor next to it, one perpendicular to the wall, one parallel. The disarray, the tasks needing doing, the darkness, the bold swaths of colors and shapes sloppily bleeding into one another, the visual stimulation that corner brings is a detraction and is what doesn’t attract me.

2) Our next task in this tune up was to “slow right down.” If I had a clean corner for every time someone told me to slow down, well, I’d have a tidier house and mind than I do now. This exercise involved getting up and moving about, wherever you are inside or out, and slowing down your thoughts, your pace, your breathing as you move. Noticing each step, a changing environment or a cat walking by, took me away from my predictable looping brain reel and into a reality outside my head, which replaced my usual thoughts, if only for a few minutes. It changed my vision from a wide frame taking in all stimuli at once, a busy horizon stretched to its edges, to a narrow aperture seeing single things in a slide show style succession. The external world felt smaller, but each item was bigger and more beautiful, and the overwhelm of tasks was delightfully at bay.

3) The last tune-up task was to see (and sense) the beauty in everything and everyone. The instruction was to see gratitude as a wallpaper in bright colors. Participants had 15 minutes to move about and do this. Many lived in trendy Brooklyn, donned in black with contrasting white AirPods in their ears, and they moved about soaking up those high rpms that are signature New York. During most of this Zoom call, I had wrestled with keeping my camera on and then off, rinse and repeat, distracted and a bit discouraged seeing my pale morning face, glasses and floppy pillows behind me. The jig is up, folks: this girl is wearing the same tank top she slept in, she’s propped up in bed for God’s sake, and hasn’t bothered to turn a light on, so of course her Zoom background is a dull, just woke up shade of grey! After the back and forth of video on/off indecision and background adjustments, I was relieved to simply turn my camera off and go downstairs. If something doesn’t work, unplug it for a while. Passing a laundry basket, I’d moments earlier filled with soaked towels catching rainwater (from poorly tarped renovated spaces, an entire other story, but did you SEE last night’s rain?), hungry, I made my way to the kitchen.

A logo so pretty you can practically smell the bread baking

To kill my fifteen minutes, I chose to do something useful, like moving a load of towels to the dryer and making myself some toast. The bread I’d be toasting was a gorgeous hand-crafted country sourdough loaf I bought yesterday from Evergreen Butcher and Baker. I told them they need to rent the place next door, where they could employ the third member of their holy trinity, the “Candlestick Maker.” The girl in the bakery laughed and told me her roommate had said that, too. The bread has that homemade substance you envision in an artisan loaf, but is light and airy, too. I forced the toast up from the toaster after what I determined was an interminable wait. I had two thin pats of butter ready to go and minced them for easy dispersing over the hot bread. I sprinkled a little salt over the top as I stood there watching the butter slowly melt, and helped it along with a knife, so I could eat it quicker and to uniformly spread the salt. I stood at the counter to deliberately eat the toast, one luscious bite at a time, salt and butter finding its way into the cavernous pockets of this sumptuous slice. I heard the dryer spinning on the other side of the wall and I heard the crunch of warm toast bites in stereo inside my head. I had thought to pop in two slices, but I don’t think a second slice would have compared, and my toast fascination and amazement would have been largely diluted. Sated, I slowly wandered back upstairs, back to the Brooklyn, Sydney, Paris and even a handful of Georgia Creative Mornings Zoomers. The screen slowly woke up and the chats began to flow. We’d each noticed different things, me, the hypnotic quality of towels tumbling in a dryer as slowly melting butter and salt sank into toast air pockets. We each were revived from this quarter of an hour, which offered a fascinating meditative hyper-focus where we could find a simple pocket of stillness and become reacquainted with our wide-open hearts, and minds, and eyes. 

Throughout the session, a few quotes were offered up, and I jotted them down. 

1) Whatever interests you is your future self-seeking to manifest itself in the present.

2) Sometimes you have to turn something off to turn something on.

3) Don’t stick with what we know.

4) Be patient with yourself.

5) Sit with your discomfort.

6) New things can be built up around the things we already have. 

7) How am I moving forward for myself?

8) You know where to go. You can steer.

9) Put what’s inside you outside you so you can see it. 

10) Creativity is that rare phenomenon where teacher and student reside in the same human.

Have yourself a wondrous weekend and maybe some toast.

xo