Tag: family

Presenting my word for 2022

Julie Fanselow

I was at the Fred Meyer in Warrenton, Oregon, gathering picnic supplies yesterday morning when I realized I’d left my phone at the hostel in Astoria. Did I really want to backtrack to get it? Surely I could live a day without it. But of course, it wasn’t really the phone I wanted. It was the GPS, so I could keep my bearings on an unfamiliar trail I planned to hike. It was the pedometer, so I could record my mileage. It was the camera, so I could capture some images of my day on the coast. It was the music I had downloaded to play on my drive. I went back and got the phone.

For the past several years, in lieu of resolutions and inspired by a practice shared by Tim Atkins, a fellow writer for the Braver/Wiser website, I’ve chosen a word of the year. For 2020, it was learn. In 2021, it was a wonder. This year, I’ve settled on present. As wonder did for me, I hope present will have many lessons I can learn within its myriad meanings as 2022 unfolds.

My main attraction to the word is for its adjective sense, its “be here now” meaning. I want to be present in my life much more than I sometimes seem to be. So even though I went back for my phone, and even though I consulted my trail map and took some pictures en route, I left the gizmo in my pack most of the time because I was on a trail where I really needed and wanted to be present. Mud, roots, and wind made the going tough, but the reward for my focus — a sweeping view at the edge of our continent — was more than worth the effort.

I want to be present for family and friends, to hear and see them and help them feel heard and seen. I want to live and love deeply. I want to continue to prize experiences and people over things.

I want to stay in the present and avoid thinking too much about the past or the future. I want to multitask less — and worry a lot less. I want to be present to the pain that is omnipresent in my neighborhood, my country, and the world without being consumed by it.

And I also want to pay attention to the verb form of present, to tune into opportunities and experiences that present themselves as gifts (or presents, if you like. Isn’t language great?). Of course, some experiences will present themselves as obstacles, unwanted and difficult, but I will learn from them, too.

I would love to know if you have chosen a word for 2022 — what it is and why. Meanwhile, here is a little video from my morning walk today. I’m grateful I was present for this. (I can’t embed it here via my iPad, though I will do so when I get home.) Or to share a Maya Angelou quote a friend reminded me of the other day, “This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.”

Pandemic postcard #56: Better days

Julie Fanselow

Two years ago feels like forever, doesn’t it? Two years ago tonight, I was a few days into a complicated-but-worth-it two-week travel odyssey that saw me fly to Idaho for an early Christmas with my daughter and jet on to Chicago to spend Christmas Eve with one set of cousins and Christmas Day with the other. It was the first time in decades I’d shared Christmas with my extended family, the folks with whom I celebrated nearly every childhood Christmas. One of my cousins is no longer with us and I’m not sure when I’ll see the others again, so I’m glad I made the trip when I did.

After a perfect, unseasonably warm Boxing Day spent wandering around the Garfield Park Conservatory and the Chicago Loop — and a rare night in a downtown hotel — I met a friend for breakfast then I boarded the California Zephyr on December 27 to travel across the Plains and Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, on to San Francisco, where I spent New Year’s Eve with my brother and his husband. Jeff and I joined many others in a traditional Golden Gate Bridge walk on January 1, then on January 2, I finally flew home to Seattle. I packed a lot into that trip, and I’m glad I did, for the two Christmases since then have been strange.

I don’t have much to report as dusk falls on this fourth-shortest day of the year. For the second Christmas Eve in a row, I am awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test. Last year at this time, I had no symptoms but I had received an exposure notification, so I hunkered down for what I’m pretty sure was my first-ever solo Christmas before the negative test result finally came in late on December 25. This year, I’ve had cold symptoms since Tuesday and I’m pretty sure that’s all they are, but out of an abundance of caution, I got a PCR test the other day. I’m starting to feel better, but I’ve sadly decided to pass on the only in-person plans I had: volunteering as an usher at my church’s Christmas Eve service tonight and sharing brunch with my stepdaughter and her mom and stepdad tomorrow. I’m spending a second straight Christmas alone, but at least I had plans, unlike the person I found curled up in my building’s doorway this morning.

It’s been a hard year for many of us, to varying degrees, but I am grateful for what I have and what may lie ahead. Ten years ago today, I was sleeping on the living room couch of my house in Boise, recovering from back surgery. Over the next six months, I’d say goodbye to my dad after his long journey with memory loss and I’d move to the West Coast to start a new life. I’ve lived at seven different addresses since Christmas 2011 and I’ll likely add yet another early in the new year, but that’s another story — one I’ll share in my annual “word of the year” another post sometime soon. For now, suffice it to say that this restless soul hopes to find more lasting shelter in both the physical and emotional realms in 2022.

Meanwhile, I wish shelter for all who seek it, and I want to send along my good wishes to those of you who are still here with me. Thank you for reading Surely Joy this year, even as my posts have become less frequent and more fraught. Here’s a song about forgiveness and possibility that resonated strongly with me this time last year and that is ringing even more true in this strange, protracted season of uncertainty for our world. Stay well, and know that the light is coming back.

Update: My test result came in just before 5 p.m., and thankfully (and as I expected), it was negative. Another blessing, another sign of better days, when a head cold is all we need worry about this time of year.

60

Julie Fanselow

I know I’ve been scarce here on my blog. Rest assured: It’s not for a lack of joy. But since it’s been a month since my last post — and, hey! I turn 60 this week — I am here to share a few thoughts on attaining this milestone. 

First and foremost, I’m feeling nothing but joy at the prospect of being 60. My 50s were my favorite decade of life so far, and I have reasons to believe my 60s will be as good. Or better!

Regular readers know that while I named this blog for a phrase from Henry David Thoreau — “surely joy is the condition of life” — I have come to associate my mission more with the words of Brother David Steindl-Rast of Gratefulness.org, who has said that joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens. The corollary to this is that fear is sometimes — usually? — what keeps us from feeling joy. Fear of aging. Fear of death. Fear of disability or decline or the loss of love. Fear of the other. Fear of the unknown. It’s not that I never feel fear. I know I do. But somehow, my optimistic, hopeful orientation usually overrides whatever fear I have. I believe some of this is innate — a product, perhaps, of being surrendered and subsequently adopted in the first three weeks of life — and some of it is learned. 

Like most people, I was a bundle of anxieties in adolescence and well into adulthood. It takes time to overcome that early uncertainty about worth and purpose. (Dear young reader: Know that you are awesome just as you are, and it gets better.) Giving birth was probably the first indication I had that I could do anything, but that was nearly half a lifetime ago. So I continue to whittle away at my residual anxiety, and I feel less fearful at 60 than I was at 50, for life has shown me again and again that the hardest experiences are among the most rewarding and revelatory. 

As I greet this new decade, I’m ever aware that two of the most important people in my life, my mother and my husband, were gone at 62. As painful as these premature deaths were, they’ve helped me know all too well that our time here is finite. Rather than live fearfully, I really do try to live as though each day could be my last.

At the same time, I know it’s possible (perhaps probable) that as a healthy 60 year old, I have somewhere around a third of my lifespan still ahead of me. What fresh wonders and knowledge are still on my horizon? How will my expectations be upended? Will I feel even more joy when I turn 70? 

I am especially joyful that, after a year of anxiety in 2020 over losing most of my work in the pandemic, work is now the least of my worries. I have just enough, and best of all, it’s flexible work that allows me plenty of time for adventures, for community service, and for living a creative life. 

Over the past month, after three years of flying solo, I’ve had the utterly unexpected and delightful joy of new companionship. The day after tomorrow, I leave for a trip to Alaska — on my own. The day before I return, my friend will be off on a multi-week trek he planned long ago. I’ll be away for nearly two weeks in September. Indeed, it is likely that we’ll be apart for much of the next two months, and so a tiny bit of anxiety bubbles to the surface: Will this sweet, summer-kindled romance wind up a fleeting memory by fall? Will we be able to create time together in two lives that are already full of dear ones, commitments, and plans? 

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that although lifespans are finite, love is not. I am learning anew that although I’ve prized and often prioritized walking my own path, our time here is made richer by connections and relationships. I think he and I will find a way to keep the flame lit, and I feel ever more grateful for all my family and friends, including the ones I haven’t met yet.

Happy birthday, Julie. May the next how-many-ever-years we may have be full of joy and service and surprise and peace and love. All the good stuff. 

Happiness as a choice

Julie Fanselow

“You always seem so happy,” my ballpark colleague says to me. “Are you always so happy?”

I’m a bit thrown by such an existential question, this change-up amid the usual between-innings banter. I agree that this is true, and I mumble something about having a hopeful orientation. Orientation is one way to put it, though perhaps not the most elegant. I wish I’d replied with my favorite quote, “Joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” (Thanks as always, Br. David Steindl-Rast.) Yet there’s little reason to overthink my reply, in the moment or in hindsight.

Am I happy? Why yes, I am. It beats the alternative.

Mixed emotions are human, and June 19 is a day that will forever bring mixed emotions for me. I mostly feel joy for the birth 65 years ago today of a man whom I had the great luck to love over the last five years of his life—though of course that joy remains tinged with regret that he is no longer here. I may have a longer essay (or two) to write someday about Tom’s last few months and the anguish I felt after he was gone.

I can’t say I was happy during those hard months. But looking back three years, I guess I was joyful even amid the depths of that anguish. Scratch that: I know I was joyful, because that’s how we survive the worst things that life and death throw our way. Joy is also how we recognize the glimmers of goodness that are always glinting in our peripheral vision—for example, people who recognize our happiness because they themselves have chosen the gift of seeing life through an optimistic lens.

(As an aside, today is the first official Juneteenth, and that brings more mixed emotions: We should celebrate how far we’ve come as a country that we can now recognize the end of slavery with a federal holiday. No, this doesn’t right all the wrongs that centuries of human bondage have wrought in our country. The work for representation and reparations will continue. But can we make it joyful, generous, perhaps even playful work? Can we curb the tribalism and bickering, escape the confines of our identity silos, and give each other some room to breathe and grow?)

(Putting my soapbox away …)

I’m uncharacteristically rambling here, so I’ll stop, but after two months without a post, I wanted to check in. Life is good: I have just the right amount of work, I’m grateful for my family and friends, I’m enjoying my new-again neighborhood, and I’m plotting all kinds of adventures for this summer and beyond. It’s a beautiful life—and yes, a happy one. I’m joyfully greeting this season of sun and light and a return to the world, and I wish that for you, too. Thanks for reading Surely Joy.

A few words about the music for this post: Last night, I went to my first live music show in about 18 months, at my fave music club. Here’s a 10-year-old radio listener lounge version of a song LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends played last night, “Everything About You.” And a few days ago, I saw the glorious, raucous, sexy “In the Heights” at my favorite movie theater. The first eight minutes are below. Enjoy!

Pandemic postcard #54: Postscripts

Julie Fanselow

When I wrapped up my series of 52 weekly posts a month ago, I said I’d write when I had something to say. Sixteen days ago, I wrote that I’d decided to move–which is mostly what I’ve been doing since then, although I’ve also managed to do a few other things. So here’s an update.

My new place is good. I moved two-and-a-half-miles and I am back in the neighborhood where I first landed in Seattle when I arrived here in 2013. At that point, I chose Lake City for its proximity to Tom and his suburban home a short bus ride away, but also for its affordability and diversity. I quickly grew to love Lake City for its human-scale character, and for the way, a couple of blocks off the gritty main drag, the streets feel nearly rural–perfect for the sort of aimless walks I enjoy each morning. I’m having a good time getting reacquainted with my new-old neighborhood, and I’ll write more about that in my next another post.

Here on the courtyard side of my new complex, I’ve mostly found the quiet I seek–though who knew a brand-new refrigerator could run so loudly, that people sometimes fly drones at the exact treetop level of my balcony, and that dogs (who may outnumber people here) like to bark at all hours. I hear one howling now, though that’s actually a much nicer complement to the birds’ dawn chorus than the staccato yips I hear around midnight. I had a few moving-in hiccups, including a minor water leak that the property manager swiftly addressed. She didn’t know about the drones, though. No place is perfect, but this place will do. I have the same sublime morning light I enjoyed at the last place, and a little more room, and a neighborhood I already know and like.

What else is new? I wrote five weeks ago about my then-uncertain prospects of getting vaccinated anytime soon, as a healthy 59-year-old in a state where there was then no timetable for anyone under 65 getting their shots. By early April, Washington state (spurred by leadership in the other Washington) had finally announced that everyone under 60 would be eligible on April 15, so I’d been prepared to wait a looooong time for my first jab–and likely not be fully vaccinated until well into May. But then, on the very day I gave notice that I’d leave my former apartment, I got an email from the property managers there noting that a mobile clinic would be on site to offer the one-and-done Johnson & Johnson vaccines that Friday. Everyone was welcome. So just like that, I got my shot. Of course, a few days later, the J&J “pause” was announced, but as a post-menopausal woman, the news was a mere stress blip on my moving-focused radar. I am grateful to be vaccinated; I tucked my CDC card into my passport, for it represents the same kind of freedom and sense of possibility. It’ll still be a while before I go abroad again, but it won’t be another full year.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken one more step back into life as I knew it pre-pandemic. Last Wednesday, 13 months to the day since I’d last seen a film in the theater, I returned to my favorite movie house and saw Minari. I was the only person there for the late-afternoon matinee, but I left my mask on anyway. That was weird, but it was delightful to see a movie on the big screen. Four days later, I returned to watch Nomadland, this time with a handful of other folks. (Although I’d already seen it twice on Hulu, I couldn’t pass up a chance to see its gorgeous cinematography of the American West in widescreen splendor.)

Yet more signs of spring: I am going to a ballgame today–I have one of about 9,000 tickets to see the Mariners and Dodgers play from socially distanced seating–and I return to my ballpark ushering job next week. A friend has invited me over for a small dinner gathering of five fully vaccinated friends this weekend, and I was delighted to be able to say, yes, I’ll be there.

Best of all, just a few weeks from now, I will be on a road trip to see my daughter for the first time since last July and to hug her for the first time since December 2019.

It won’t get any better than that.

We haven’t left the pandemic behind yet, but with fans in the stands and newly vaccinated folks reuniting every day, it feels like we’re on the way.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device).

Pandemic postcard #47: True love

Julie Fanselow

“Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are.”—Forrest Church

It was a Sunday morning in September 2018. I had just met a fellow traveler to the Port Townsend Film Festival; I don’t remember her name, but the short conversation I had with her lingers to this day. We had both just been to a screening of a movie in which a man with a terminal illness had decided he wasn’t going to fight it any longer.

Having lost my husband to multiple myeloma less than three months earlier, I was seeing everything through the lens of grief. The woman I’d just met was a cancer survivor who had become a patient advocate in Seattle, a job that was giving her a lot of meaning after what she’d been through. I told her I’d come to believe that I was put on Earth, at least in part, to help Tom through his final journey–but having done that, and done it well, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next.

For much of my life, I thought my highest fulfillment might come through work, and to an extent, it has. I’ve done a lot of good work, and some of it made a real difference. After losing most of my paid work in early 2020 and falling short last summer in the pursuit of new work that might feel truly meaningful, I’m now trying to find satisfaction in simply doing the work I have.

As for romantic love, I have experienced it in its fullest, once-in-a-lifetime-if-you’re-lucky expression. Although Tom and I had just five years together, we “got” each other completely. I don’t expect to find that intense level of connection again, and I’m not sure I’d want to; I quite enjoy living alone. So if I am not eager to experience new levels of fulfillment through work or life partnership, what’s left?

As I near 60, I think service may be my true love for the next decade of my life, and perhaps beyond. I am here to serve, but to do so selectively. When I am selective, when I try to intuit the next right thing, I can serve with all my heart.

Volunteering at the food bank these past 10 months, I’ve often worked beside two people who are role models for this ethic of service. David, who has a ton of vacation time after many years with the same company, spends many of those free hours volunteering, both at the food bank and with victims of domestic abuse. Patti is retired and lives out of two suitcases, a level of minimalism I’ve considered before and may mull again a few years from now. She has been waiting this pandemic year for clearance to travel to Mongolia, where she plans to volunteer with children.

A week ago Wednesday, the co-chair of my church’s leadership committee emailed to say that my name has been coming up as a possible board member. Would I be interested in a conversation about the opportunity? The request came a bit out of the blue and felt a little flattering. I love my church and I love to serve it, but it only took me a few hours to intuit that a three-year term on the board wasn’t part of my plan.

Two days later, I was able to quickly turn down a tight-turnaround, detail-heavy project from a work client. Once again, I simply know at this point in my life what I enjoy and what I’m good at, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time–least of all mine–in trying to be who I am not. Just a few days later, a friend approached me with a project that would take about the same amount of time and pay the same as the work I turned down, but it is a project that I will find much more fulfilling. Things happen for a reason.

What is my grand plan? I no longer think I have one, but I know I want to be free to serve in a big way if (not necessarily when) the right opportunity arises. In the meantime, I have found small but not insubstantial ways to be of use, including the food bank and assisting in an English conversation class two mornings each week. Because I have committed to these activities, I take care to allow room in my schedule for them, even as paid work picks up.

At some point, I may get an offer I can’t refuse: for a paid job that makes my heart sing or a major volunteer opportunity that feels exactly right or even, though less likely, the chance to be a grandparent and meaningfully and helpfully meet another life at its start in the same way I was blessed to help Tom in his final years.

So I leave my options open, much as someone who is looking for true love might. But just as I did when I was young and hungry for a partner and purpose, I always seek to live life fully as it is right now—only now, I know the power of saying no, and of occasionally and wholeheartedly saying yes, and in getting on with things one way or the other.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. If you’d like to get my posts via email, you can sign up elsewhere on this page. The quote at the top of this week’s essay comes from Forrest Church’s book Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow. I’ve long thought it to be a good mantra for life.