Letters from a Distant Shore
Like many mothers, during the years my children were growing up I was often lost in the details of everyday life, and focused on
parenting, work, and domestic activities instead of savoring life's simple and most meaningful pleasures. That changed on one ordinary Saturday afternoon, when our thirteen-year old son, Jeremy, collapsed in our kitchen. A major artery deep in his
brain, weakened as a result of an undetected congenital defect, spontaneously exploded, flooding his brain with blood. Within minutes, Jeremy fell into a coma, and then stopped breathing. What followed were months of terror, hospitalization, cascading medical crises, and multiple surgeries. Jeremy survived and surmounted permanent physical and
cognitive disabilities to graduate from high school and college, and live a largely independent life. As I recount in my story of these catastrophic events,
Letters from a Distant Shore, when everything that I once took for granted was taken away, I would have given the world to have those ordinary moments and ordinary days back again. I now strive to live each day with a full sense of how amazing life truly is, right here, right now.
Katrina Kenison and I have much in common, although we came to our realizations by different paths. Katrina is a wife, the mother of two sons, and the former editor of the Best American Short Stories anthology. The story told in her wonderful memoir, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, reveals her search for a quieter life, leading to moving her family from a Boston suburb to a small New England town, buying a dilapidated farmhouse on a remote New Hampshire hillside, and eventually building a new house on the same site. Through the tumult of relocation, her sons' adolescent years, and the challenges of new schools and career changes, she found that she treasured the ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life the most - the very moments she once hardly noticed at all.
I was fortunate to be able to converse with Katrina about our viewpoints on living life well as mothers and women, and responding with grace to the inevitable losses and changes of life.
MARIE: Katrina, although our stories are very different, the ideas that we both express in our writing, even the language we use, are very similar. A theme to which you return repeatedly in your memoir is your own pervasive restlessness as your sons neared adolescence. Your search for a life that fit the person you "thought you might be" involved uprooting your family from a comfortable suburban life and led you to a farmhouse in New Hampshire. I think in general women have a hard time making so-called "selfish" decisions-we, especially mothers, tend to do for our families first and put our own happiness last. How were you able to honor your own desires in such a dramatic way?
KATRINA: There were many forces at work as we contemplated a move to the country. Certainly my own mid-life restlessness was one of them. But if it were only that, I think we would have stayed put. What happened is that we began to ask ourselves some questions about what it really meant to us to live well - Could we give up some of the urban comforts, in exchange for a slower pace? Could we earn less and live less expensively elsewhere? It was clear to us that our older son would do better in a less pressured environment than our local public high school, and he desperately wanted to be in a smaller, more nurturing school. The search for the right fit for him became a search for the right fit for all of us. I had no idea, then, how difficult it would be to uproot and live through all these changes. I've come to believe that what matters in the end is not WHERE you live, but HOW you live. That said, every one of us is now glad that we made the move; it made us all realize that we can survive change, that we create our own good lives where ever we are, that one place is not better than another, but that it's all about the attitude you bring to what life hands you.
MARIE: Shortly after you moved to New Hampshire, you lost your job. You wrote about that, "Loss is an unavoidable part of the much larger natural cycle ... within our lives." These words are nearly identical to what I wrote about coming to terms with my son's brain injury and disabilities. It's a lesson I find I have to re-learn over and over again. Some losses are much harder to bear than others. Have you been able to meet new losses, especially losses involving illness or death, with the same equanimity?
KATRINA: I, too, have said that it's a lesson I have to relearn over and over again. If only we were smart enough to just "get it" once and for all. But each time we must choose a response to loss or hardship, I think we do deepen in faith. We learn to trust in what is. A few months ago, I lost a very close friend to cancer. All through her ordeal, we wrote back and forth, and over and over again she said, "I'm not going to ask 'why me?'" She certainly didn't ask for the role of spiritual teacher, but she became one, just by finding a way to live with the cancer that she knew was going to take her away far too soon. She chose acceptance over anger and self-pity, and in doing so, she eased the way for those who loved her. It was an honor to be with her on that journey, and to find that when equanimity was called for, I could be fully present with her, without fear. Till the moment of her death, the giving, and the love, flowed in both directions.
MARIE: That flow of giving and receiving between mothers and children sometimes becomes blocked in adolescence. I love your description of giving your son Jack the last bath before he banned you from the bathroom for good. There's a remarkable intimacy that comes with bathing and caring for our children's bodies. I felt that especially strongly when bathing our son Jeremy in the hospital, at first when he was in a coma and then when he was paralyzed, and also when I was home, caring for our younger, healthy children. What is it about that experience that is so powerful? Is this unique to parents and their children, or is it a more universal experience?
KATRINA: I can't even imagine what it must be like to bathe a child who is so ill, when every moment is both fraught and incredibly precious. But I do think there is something universal about the tenderness that rises up in us as we care intimately for another's physical body. The trust, and the unconditional love, becomes a sacrament. This is something we humans can do for one another - in childhood, in old age, and in extreme circumstances. Tending to the body so gently, we acknowledge the sanctity of life. This is holy work. If we perform it with full attention and love, we are transformed by it.
The Gift of an Ordinary Day
MARIE: Your book presents a beautiful vision of a life mindfully lived. I'm certain that many readers long to attain that that serenity. But for most of us, the dream of moving to a remote hilltop in New England, building a house, and writing books will not come to pass, much as we might wish it to. Many of your readers' lives are burdened with unfulfilling jobs, financial worries, health issues. What advice can you offer to readers for taking concrete steps to move a little closer to achieving that vision?
KATRINA: I think the vision has to do not so much with place, but with state of mind. And no matter where we live or how challenging everyday life is, we can cultivate a quiet center. We can allow ourselves time to breathe, to notice, to express gratitude, to let those we love know how much we love them. The best concrete advice I can offer is to give the gift of your full attention to whatever it is you are doing in this moment-whether it's paying a bill or having dinner with your family or folding the laundry. We can dream about the life we want, or we can fall in love with the life we already have. The beauty is in the moment that is right here, right now, if we choose to see it.
