Downshifts and Running Backwards
Not too long ago, we crossed the one-year mark of our family moving back to the United States from Belgium. That fact, along with a handful of other reasons, some quite significant, makes this summer a fitting time to look back, take stock of where we've been, and take a deep breath.
Our summer has been busy with good things -- the kids are all in swim team, doing their best and taking some wonderful new risks with it. We've had some times of good old fashioned boredom, so lots of library visits and quiet reading. Boredom is a marvelous kind of fertilizer, especially for my youngest. When the boredom really sets in, and I don't rescue him from it, it's remarkable how much creativity bubbles out. After a few moments of existential discomfort, in which he may beg for the computer or the TV, and in which I must be patient and refuse to rescue him, there's a good chance he'll pull his bike out from the shed and just tool around outside. He usually winds up talking to himself and speeding along, having a grand time of play. Or he'll start playing with legos, or building something with tape and cardboard boxes. Those moments arrive with a quiet, settling taste of victory, like the glow of lightning bugs when the summer sun goes down. Even in the midst of activities, summer gives us a chance to settle into childlike rhythms, to step out of the noisy mental traffic.
Nature gets more of a hearing and seeing. A wren family is building a nest just under the eaves of our front porch roof, on top of a bay window. It's delightfully good work. Huge neighborhood trees prevent us from doing much serious gardening, we did manage to plant the green bean plant, grown on a school window sill in an old lunchroom milk carton in the last weeks of school. With more room to grow, the bean plant produced a few gorgeous delicate lavender blooms and, in the end, a single slender bean, which has been eaten, savored.
A few does with little white-spotted fawns regularly make their way tentatively in our neighborhood, watchfully stepping out of wooded areas, across the human-built stage, and then back into the wild edges. Much as we marvel at them, I have drawn a boundary line with them, spraying our hosta plants out front with a terrible smelling mist to keep them from munching them down. It's been a real battle but so far, I'm winning it. Most of our family has spotted cottontail rabbits in our neighborhood, although I haven't had the eyes to see them yet. The foxes are common enough for us to marvel at their boldness, marching down the street or up a sidewalk. We who are living -- humans, deer, wrens, foxes, green beans -- just take our existence for granted in some way, living within a framework of trust -- every last one of us. We build, we plant, we consume, we battle, we see and don't see, and hopefully, in the midst of it all, we make room to marvel.
We're also making some efforts at downshifting. Last summer was full of so much work alongside so much boredom. Hotel-living, lots of appointments, registering here and there, filling out forms, waiting around, all the stages of settling a family and a house in a big international move. We were like milk carton plants, roots exposed, trying to settle into the new digs, the new old digs, as very different people, older, wiser, and also, like the deer, a little edgy, a little cautious about who we were here and now. It is good to look back on that, and savor how we've grown, the old and new friendships, and appreciate the gifts of life.
I read a marvelous article in the Washington Post about a local "backwards running" group, which sounded like a very peculiarly DC sport kind of feature. The article linked to a four-year old YouTube video, featuring the holder of world's record for fastest backwards mile. The video is surprisingly meditative -- this runner had been injured from "forwards running," which he had been doing for much of his life. Backwards running allowed him to keep running without serious injury. The change didn't just improve his knees. He found it changed his whole perspective, improved the health of his outlook on life. Looking back helped him to take in where he'd been and enjoy running again. The story really captured me, and I recommend a quick look!
So there is lots of downshifting, but I'm also in a stretch of time where I need to keep writing. I'll be heading to the library more now than I have been recently. My materials are due to my doctoral committee by August 15, and I'll be traveling to Belgium in the first week of September to be orally examined. I'm nervous. I'd welcome your prayers for me. My brain at times feels a bit like that runner and his poor knees. His approach with backwards running offered me a wonderfully creative framework to see things differently, perhaps try a new posture, a physical analogy as I look back this summer on where we've been as a family, where I've been personally through the journey.
One last thing: I have an article out in the most recent edition of Comment journal, on the freedom of friendship. The entire issue is on friendship, and it's a star-studded cast of thoughtful writers. I'm lucky to have been included as the issue's "last word." It's paywalled until early September, so consider subscribing! For the price of a few cups of coffee, you can help sustain a very worthy magazine. Writing the article gave me a chance to look back on a precious friendship to me, and to meditate on friendship itself. Friendship is largely undervalued in our culture precisely because it can be a real source of friction and demand, not just ease and self-gratification. But to have a true friend -- someone who will tell you the truth, who will be with you in sorrow and joy, and above all, in freedom -- is one of life's greatest gifts, and it is good to do things that help us to grow as people capable of friendship.
As always, thanks for reading. If you are a person of prayer, I would be glad to have you remember me in yours.