Friday Muse: A Birthday Pause & Intentions for the Year
Plus early bird sale on Lyric Essay ends soon!
Yesterday was my birthday, and I spent it by myself— well, with my cat— lolling in bed, looking at books, basking in the nice messages I received from friends and family, and catching up on some emails. Then I went to yoga, picked up some nice things to eat at Whole Foods, and came home to watch television and sit around alone. It was great. (Well, except for the part where I briefly turned on the debate, but we aren’t going to talk about that right now.)
In recent years, I’ve come to love time alone on my birthday. (It helps that I had a birthday dinner with my parents last week, then a small celebration with my kid on Tuesday, and that I’m having another birthday dinner with friends today.) Usually, I get excited for my birthday around mid-June (treating myself! taking it easy!), but June was rough this year. My ex’s mother died, and he traveled to Buffalo to be with her at the end. Then we coordinated about how our son might get up there for the funeral. My mind was crowded with grief, logistics, worry for my son, confusion about my place, and extra childcare. On top of that, the August-like heatwave made everything feel more difficult.
So, after traveling to the mountains to meet up with my parents and get help with occupying my kid on a camp-free week, then driving to the Charlotte airport to put my kid on a flight for their first trip as an unaccompanied minor, and finally meeting my son back in Durham after their first funeral experience and a super-long drive back from Buffalo with their dad, only to usher them off to a new day camp the next day … I didn’t know if I felt very birthday-like. But by Thursday, it was my part of the week “off,” according to the custody schedule, and I decided to go through with my plan to take it easy.
What I found, ironically, is that in allowing myself a pause, my mind came back online. I was able to think more clearly than I had in a couple weeks, catch up with correspondence, and just generally enjoy my mental space. What a profound relief. I realized then that part of what I’ve come to love about my birthday as an adult is that I allow myself to put space around my worries on that day. It may seem kid-like to revel in one’s birthday, but the “birthday girl” feeling is a really nice break from adult anxieties.
The other thing I realized is that I could stand to give myself that kind of space more often. Being a single parent, writer, editor, and writing instructor … it’s a lot. But I can’t do any of it when I’m holding on too tightly to what I “should” be doing. I think so much more clearly when I tell myself I don’t have to figure everything out. (Or anything out, when I can swing it.)
So one of my intentions for this year of my life is to pay attention to this need for psychic space and to build in routines that honor it intentionally, rather than just pushing myself until I’m a bundle of nerves who isn’t getting much done anyway and has no choice but to take a break. My other, related intention is to give my mind space by looking at screens less. (Wish me luck.)
I’m thinking about the Gregory Orr passage I quoted a couple weeks ago (from the anthology Family Resemblance):
As a poet, I feel that to seize beauty, the flow of time must be stopped by some imaginative method …. A pause must be imposed so that the object being contemplated can take on that essential, cryptic quality called “radiance”— that place where human mysteries (wonder, love, loss, being a body in time) shine through some object in the world.
“A pause must be imposed …” Orr is discussing writing here, but it’s true of life, as well. The radiance shines through when we find ways to slow down and allow "human mysteries (wonder, love, loss, being a body in time) [to] shine through some object in the world.”
Here’s your exercise for the week: Take a pause. Step outside for a moment. Or sit on the couch and close your eyes, drop your shoulders, and take a few deep breaths. Read a poem. (Here’s one by Jane Kenyon.) Cut a few dead leaves off a plant. Putter. Dawdle. Let thoughts and memories bubble up from some inner well. Do this every chance you get.