Handmade

A thin string of mud clung to my right ankle as I steered my bike not quite far enough to the left of a puddle. It didn't matter. In front of me my husband pedaled through the surprise of a warm, gorgeous first day of December. It was a Monday, and he was playing hooky with me, taking an entire joyful day to experience...what? We didn't know. We took it by the hour. A great long bike ride first: out in the bright sun, heading into Wellesley, cruising down Water Row, past Weston Secret, fields on either side of us, the place where baby turtles cross the road when the time is right and when, coming into winter, the bittersweet winds around doomed tree limbs, deep red dogwood shooting through the late fall tableau. We remembered when it used to be loosestrife, also firmly in the club of Invasive Species I Love (not a biologist's favorite thing to hear, so naturally I said it frequently). We had Japanese lunch and time to conjure, in Waltham, the evening a month earlier when we were in New Orleans and the cleanness of sushi felt so restorative after 48 hours of rich buttery fried Southern food. And then it was time for Interstellar in the theater, smashing together like atoms the feelings brought by love, and faith in love, with the study of quantum mechanics -- a surprisingly good fit for a skeptical, keenly aware biologist and his wife, who a coaching partner recently described as a woodland creature, like an owl, who "sees everything and understands all the workings and rhythms of the forest." (What makes him think that? I'll never know, but I am amazed that he said it.) In other words, to put it mildly, I have faith in love. We both do, I guess. We had to race to pick up children by closing, but we did it, and I laughed biking home in the dark thinking of all the times I was late for work reasons and how much better it felt to be late for....well, these reasons.

I think if I could have anything, I would not return to work at all. Not right now. There's so much to do here and I am barely scratching the surface of attending to what I perceive that I need and what my children need to grow. I think that, of course, and then I reflect on how good it felt to be talking about organizational culture with strangers at start-ups on Thursday night at CIC; yes, wearing my sand Theory blazer bought from a secondhand store in Belmont, feeling sharp; stepping into conversations with skeptical people -- my favorite kind of people, in some strange way, because I am always hopeful that I can learn something, and at least I know that they have respect to give if I can earn it. I remember years ago realizing that I loved to sub fitness classes - 40 people waiting to work out with their favorite instructor and instead they get me? And they are standing there disappointed and a little angry? What a great challenge!! I loved rising to it. Made me better.

So that part of work, yes, it makes me a broader person, and therefore mother, a person who is forced to rise again and again to meet the insistent and unafraid reaction of smart, critical people. But there's something else that eats away at me when I am working. Eats away at my ability to be happy. And I think it's my left brain.

Tonight, still part of the same week when I had my bike ride and my start-up night and even a night mingling with the president of my alma mater Hampshire, I took my kindergartner to see The Nutcracker. I was enthralled, impressed, critical, sometimes bored, sometimes joyful, and yet always happy - just happy to be with my daughter. She had a hard time sitting still; sometimes she stood, sometimes she sat on her knees, fidgeting and measuring herself against the top of my head, which I'd instructed her was her firm height limit not to be exceeded in order to keep peace with the many rows of filled-to-the-brim seating behind us. I think highly of her inability to sit still. On one hand, she must be attentive. But she is. On the other, I've taken her to so many mass gatherings, or classes at Drumlin, in which she is the only one, or sometimes, with her brother, one of two, not to sit passively in a lap or on the floor, gazing at the presenter, almost dead. She has a million questions; she has thoughts, ideas; she remembers the story and wants to ground her art experience in the narrative she just learned on Friday. She notices instantly who is on pointe and who is not. She is fully in her right brain.

I too have been like a child during this sabbatical - in my right hemisphere. And I notice that it's very hard - like, weirdly foggy and a true mental struggle - to make plans. I keep thinking that's logistics; the corporate engine that I've relied on for nine years (as of this past Thursday!) suddenly dropping away and me not knowing what to do; but I think now that it's more than that. I am genuinely in the moment. I am on a bike ride and I love it because I feel the sun and I like how the silver bullet grips wet hills and most of all I like being with my husband; I am in a conversation with my neighbor and his son and it's an eternity, and in a good way; I am cooking something new for dinner, I am making a watercolor of a pineapple, I am jogging, I feel a little sick, I am gazing at our Christmas lights before I back into the driveway and I feel happy, I am petting the cat behind her left ear, I am reading a "recipe mystery" and it makes me so happy, I love this ghost writer, I am teaching another fitness class but this time on a BOSU and all I need to do is come up with new move after new move on the fly with zero planning and no knowledge of the music I am playing and I love it. I love that African-American woman in my second row who looks so composed, she's the only one not sweating, and I break out new moves secretly just to make her work hard enough to really sweat and she never does, but at the end of class she gives me a beautiful wink and I feel nothing but calm.

But suddenly, driving home from the Nutcracker, I remember that my daughter treasures her Christmas presents "from" my son and I have to figure out what he should give her and it's almost like some part of me shuts down. Too much data to sift through for that. And she also needs something "from" Santa and "from" my grandmother and "from" me and her dad - maybe that last one shouldn't be in quotes - and I want to give handmade gifts this year, it feels like the only year of my life that I can do it!

Is it?