Sunday, July 13, 2014

Soul on a Mission

I've had a dreamy day, one where I removed myself from the pressures of everyday life and took time out to "just be".
I don't do it often enough.
I cleaned. I cooked (lunches for the week, dinner, all that good stuff).
I will guiltily admit that I have not, on this beautiful (hot) July day left my loft.
I'm also still wearing pajamas.
I didn't run in the rainy morning air because I actually managed to overdo it this week at bootcamp and my 4 during-the-week runs so my foot was hurting (a fact I was tearfully recounting to my patient acupuncturist yesterday at my appointment).

There.
Now you know everything.

I was reading most of the afternoon, an amazing little book that found me at the library this week.
"The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake", by Aimee Bender, about a girl who can taste emotions in food and how it disrupts, then ultimately influences the course of, her life.
I loved it on many levels even if I didn't completely understand it.
I loved the detailed descriptions of the protagonist, Rose's, family of origin. Her quirky mother, her lawyer-dutiful-provider father, her remote, genius brother.
It belongs to a new genre of books called (I read this at the back of the book, fascinated) psychological fiction. Other books I would put in this genre would be The Time Traveller's Wife and The Age of Miracles, both of which I also loved. Novels where the author creates a situation that is impossible or improbable in reality, but forms part of the situation of the book and we suspend our disbelief and follow along.

I was then communicating with a good friend on the phone and we were discussing being conscious and turning 40 (I'm already there) and I admitted that lately, random mantras have been showing up in my head, like the one that arrived this week, about making the second half of my life more joyful than the first, with continued consciousness, of course, and honesty, and acceptance.

So that was Sunday. Me, on the couch, reading, ignoring the summer sunshine, making spaghetti sauce, absorbing a fictional family that I could relate to on every level, despite living a completely different childhood. The complex father-daughter relationship spoke to me throughout the book and I had a wistful feeling, remembering that there is no phone call I can now make to reach my father, that he exists in another place, somewhere far away, and in my memory, forever.

There was a scene in the book where Rose's father is teaching her to drive and telling her, in his awkward, distant way that so many men must have with their teenage daughters, how much she has to offer the world.

I cried then.
I'm crying now.
It's another 13th day.  Three years, one month. A lifetime ago, but just yesterday.

Enjoy Sunday, with all its nuances and its brief removal from the day-in-the-lifeness of life.
Respite, with all the trimmings.

"Don't carry the world upon your shoulders..." 
Hey Jude, The Beatles