We didn’t need any reminding over the past week that so much going on in the world, and even in our own communities, is out of our control. It’s overwhelming, it’s frustrating, and for so many reasons the future seems uncertain.
When it comes to the course of our own lives, we have more control, although still far from complete mastery. Life becomes a cloth of many colors, some of which we can take pride in, others not so much.
Last night, my husband and I signed one of those school permission forms—in fact, about our last—to allow our son to go on an off-campus trip to, coincidentally, the same camp where our daughter worked for a few summers. The last section of it included a statement about the possibility of dire “events” that the school can’t be held responsible for.
These events include, but are not limited to, social or labor unrest, transportation difficulties, terrorist activities, diseases, local laws, climatic conditions or other abnormal conditions or developments.
Wow—that sentences conjures up in my mind something like the Orozco murals my college library had, depicting ages of human struggle against evil. I have to wonder, though, whether any town’s “local laws” can really be as threatening as “terrorist activities.” Where is that school bus going exactly?
In any case, one area where we do have some control is choosing the projects we will undertake and then trying, with all of our might, to finish them. Unless, that is, we decide to quit in mid-stream, and instead move on to something else.
Some of the people I know best have either been pulling into the station of completion or are about to set off on a new adventure. Here’s a short list:
1) My kids are all runners, and now all three have done marathons. Not sure why, but it’s out of my realm now. Each time it’s the same process: they start the (long) race, after a lot of training of course, and then they finish it.
2) It’s graduation season—for one of my sons, for one niece and a few nephews, and for the senior class at the school where I work. They all are turning big corners in their lives.
3) My husband is soon to embark on “The River of Life” pilgrimage, with canoes as the means of transportation. This, thanks to the flow of the mighty Connecticut, will start up near the Canadian border and finish in Long Island Sound. There’s a whole book of prayers awaiting this journey.
So I figure it’s my turn, too. Except I’m planning to start something that’s really more about resuming something.
Many of you loyal readers know that, before I launched this blog almost five years ago, I had an idea for a book. I spent some months drafting a couple of chapters, without fully knowing what the whole shape of the narrative should be. In retrospect, that sounds kind of weird, but at the time it made enough sense. Anyway, partly out of a lack of nerve and partly out of a real interest in developing whatever distinctive “voice” I had through writing regular, short essays…I have stuck with the blog for quite a while now.
Finally, it’s time to shift gears. OK, that metaphor came to me easily because I just enjoyed a nice evening motorcycle ride with my husband. A more apt metaphor, however, and one that takes me back to my childhood, really would be switching horses: I’ve been riding one trustworthy animal, quite happily, for a long part of the trail; somehow, though, I need to make a lateral move to the back of a different one and see how far we can run together.
Or, instead of horses, I could go way smaller— to the hatching of baby birds under the lights. These are quail, actually..
Before you think I’ve lost my mind entirely, I’ll explain that I have enrolled in something called a “Memoir Incubator” which will take me to Boston one evening a week to work with a group that I have yet to meet.
I’m not starting from scratch (sorry, chicks) entirely; rather, I’m trying to pick up where I left off a half dozen years ago. This feels like the right move. Plenty of creative people, I know, can bring their long-term projects to fruition all on their own; I generally do better buoyed by some kind of community.
So what are you finishing, or starting, or re-starting to finish? I’d love to hear.