“How to Be Alone” by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.

Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.

The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and Silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.

If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.

There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

As always, post your own good things in the comments! Good things are exponentially better when we share them.

August 1 – Had a nice nap with Mike before flying to Michigan (I did not actually get to my destination before midnight, sadly).
August 2 – I went to bed really early and slept all night (after having not slept the night before).
August 3 – Good day of workshops and training. And Mike bought a crib!
August 4 – People were super nice to me after I got sick on a bus.
August 5 – I had a fantastic hamburger with some new work friends.
August 6 – My mom picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the beach.
August 7 – Wonderful decompression day at the beach. With shrimp and grits at the end of the day.
August 8 – Shopping with my mom at the outlets.
August 9 – Crab cakes!
August 10 – Driving home and listening to Harry Potter. Also, so wonderful to be home.
August 11 – Got keys to my new job and started figuring out where things are.
August 12 – We found out we are having a boy and he looks healthy.
August 13 – Lunch with Alisa and then a much-needed haircut. And then Emily and her family came over for dinner.
August 14 – Movies with Mike and then some relaxation time with girls from church.
August 15 – Lunch with friends after church.
August 16 – First official day of work. We went on a scavenger hunt that ended at Chuck E. Cheese and I played skee ball. My job is better than yours.
August 17 – Super long day, but Mike made my dinner and we watched The Proposal and ate ice cream afterwards.
August 18 – Had meetings at school, but they were generally useful. Trust me, I do not discount the importance of generally useful meetings.
August 19 – First day of school went smoothly. And then. We went and saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at a local movie theater. I feel sorry for you if you were not there, because it was awesome.
August 20 – Was greeted by a kindergartener as, “Hello, Library Girl!”
August 21 – Lunch with Katey and Hannah and Alisa and Trader Joe’s time with Alisa.
August 22 – Mike and I ran many useful errands for the baby’s room. And I reread The Hunger Games.
August 23 – I reread Catching Fire. And helped Mike at his open house.
August 24 – One word: Mockingjay.
August 25 – Visited with my 2nd grade neighbor after her first day of school. And made a delicious chicken pie.
August 26 – Nice walk with Emily after work.
August 27 – The pizza we made for dinner was, for serious, awesome. Yay for Friday Night Pizza, my favorite tradition during the school year!
August 28 – Read almost an entire book at the pool. Probably for the last time this summer (and for a while, actually).
August 29 – Got lots of house cleaning done and made one of Mike’s favorite dinners.
August 30 – Natalie Merchant concert and Mike let me sleep on the way home.
August 31 – Fantastic dinner: chicken riesling. A nice new way to eat chicken thighs.

I am no brown-skinned sun-worshiper, but I do miss the sun in the winter. My new library has a window, which I hope will assist me in fighting off those winter blues. Despite my love of the sun on my skin, I think the time that I feel most lethargic and uninteresting might actually be right about now. The weather is hot, summer is over, and school is always so incredibly busy at the beginning. Additionally, this is the time of the year when my dad was so sick, and though he is gone, that bleak feeling remains.

We are more used to the rhythm of life without my dad, more used to our holidays and birthdays without his shenanigans. I was prepared for the idea of having a baby without him, but knowing now that our boy will never meet his granddad has not sat extremely well with me. It both helps and makes it harder that Atticus will be carrying my dad’s name. I have thought about my dad a lot since we found out we were having a baby, especially when I was having some problems in the first trimester. One of my aunts always says that she knows that her grandmother (my great-grandmother) is praying for us in heaven. When things with Atticus were not looking so good, I hoped that everyone I know in heaven was putting in a good word for us. I imagine that both Great Grandma and Dad are quite skilled at letting God know how they think things should be for our family.

Because of that, I was interested by a post that came across a library listserv last week, one that was asking what to read to a friend who has pancreatic cancer–the kind of cancer my dad had–and very little time to live. It’s a big question, what I would want someone to read to me if I knew I the end was near. I wouldn’t want to pick a short book, because I’d want to hang on as long as I possibly could, to let the story finish. But cancer is no respecter of people, let alone plot or story, so maybe something shorter would be better. Mike offered Tuck Everlasting as one of his favorite comfort books, one that is about embracing death rather than running from it. He also threw out the idea of Charlotte’s Web, which I like. Charlotte is an old friend, one I remember reading on our old orange patterned couch. It came in the mail from my Great-Aunt Margaret, who lived in New York, which seemed impossibly far away.

I think I might want To Kill a Mockingbird, a book about human dignity in many forms (including as one is dying). Or maybe something from the Harry Potter series, which has a lot to say about not fearing death. And even though I always call foul on people who claim that their favorite book is the Bible, I would probably want someone to read to me from the Bible. I would want to hear those sad and funny stories that teach us what it means to be human and to embrace the divine. Jonah, who tried to run away. David, who made mistakes and wrote all those beautiful psalms. Moses, who never got to enter the land that was promised. Abraham, who would count me as one of his descendants. And Jesus, who came to change the way we think things ought to be.

There are a lot of things in life that don’t live up to the way I think they ought to be. August is a time when those things seem to pile up around me. Sadly, that often means I don’t do as much of the things that make me feel healthy as I should. I have let several books languish unread this summer, getting halfway through before returning them to the library in a big pile. I have not seen as much of my friends as I would like, mostly because of traveling and being generally busy.

Sometimes it seems as if followers of Christ have to force themselves to be happy with the way things are, rather than accepting that they fall short and that those are the places where God can meet us. What I hope to teach Atticus is not to make everything pretty, but to let God in to those places where we see the mess. Sharing stories is the best way that I know to see the truth of what that redemption and courage can look like.

What book would you want read to you if you were dying, or would you choose to read to someone who did not have much longer to live?

What is this old familiar feeling of fatigue? As if I worked out? Possibly ran a marathon? Why am I falling asleep at 8:00 on a Friday night? Oh, that’s right! The first week of school!

I am at a new school this year, so I have been busy learning the ropes. There are new names to learn, new car rider routines, new grades to teach, a new space to decorate and arrange. It’s a lot, but it was a good first week of school.

As I stood in the car rider line on the first day of school, directing kids to safety, I was struck by how the entire staff appears to be focused on going On Beyond Zebra, as I talked about after the first day of school last year. My own personal commitment from last year, to greet students and make them feel welcome, is one of the school’s philosophies as well, and that shared vision has given me the sense of feeling welcome and appreciated. As if I have a place.

I struggle with investing myself outside of my own home and family, but I have tried to pour myself into my new school already, giving the best of what I can do. As I opened those car doors and helped first graders get safely to the front door, I thought about what I wrote last year, about the cycle of learning and changing and returning to the beginning, ready to learn some more. As I return to school, I find that, though it happened gradually, quietly, I have not returned to school unchanged.

The picture is from Mike’s old high school. Kindergarteners don’t have lockers. They have cubbies.

I go back to work today. The summer is over. I have actually been going in to my new space for the past week or so, getting things organized and assessing the situation, but I could leave after a couple of hours or so. Now the real deal starts. This was a different sort of summer than we had last year, more peaceful in a lot of ways, despite all of our traveling. I am in a better place emotionally than I was last year at this time. And, for once, I am looking forward to the start of school. I am not sure that has ever happened in recorded history. I’ve got new clipboards and binders and a label maker, and I am busy organizing to my heart’s content.

This summer, we spent a lot of time putting together the baby’s room. I had a to-do list that I worked my way through relentlessly. I bought a rug and a bookcase and a dresser and made curtains with my mom. And Mike and my intrepid aunt got us the crib. (In case it sounds as if Mike is not pulling his weight, I should point out that he also put together the bookcase during a particularly exciting World Cup game and went and got the dresser with me after I found it on Craigslist.) Things are mostly together, which was what these two schoolteachers were hoping for before school started. Now we just get to work on details. And we should register, which I am hoping does not cause a recurrence of the Great Wedding Registry Incident in Target back in 2000. For the record, we never actually registered at Target for our wedding. We were too ashamed to go back in there.

Everyone (you know, the mysterious everyone) says that a baby’s movements first feel like a butterfly inside of you. Like many of life’s experiences, though, I found it to be more painful than advertised: not the softness of a butterfly’s wings, but more of a twinge. Like a mostly-healed ankle when you step on it in not quite the right way. It was so different than what everyone said that at first I was sure it was something else: my body stretching in some way, a new kind of hunger pains, or dinner disagreeing with me. I suppose that I should have expected growing pains.

Although everyone said it would change, I find that I am still remarkably unsentimental about things like sonograms. I am happy that the baby is doing okay and measuring normally, but it still looks pretty much like an alien to me most of the time. It feels a bit like a scam: “These are the baby’s kidneys!” Sure they are, lady. Sure they are. The sonogram technician offered irrefutable evidence that this baby is a boy. I was certain in my heart that it was a girl, so I was surprised. Not disappointed, not in the least. Just surprised. Which is, obviously, a silly thing to say given that 50/50 shot we had, but it is the truth. Mike and I had agreed easily on a girls’ name a couple of years ago, but our boy name took us longer. It is probably a good thing that we have had all this time to think about it, to solidify the message that we want to send our child with his name.

That has been a big part of our journey to parenthood, the idea of letting our child know who he or she could be, where he or she belongs. Both Mike and I have had experiences that have led us to think very carefully about how we want to communicate to our child (and any possible future children) who he is and who his family is. After a lot of discussion, we settled on the idea of giving our son my maiden name (which I still carry as my middle name) as his last name. Though it is not our last name, it is the name of his grandfather (who would very much have liked to meet him), his grandmother, and his Uncle Joseph. It is both a way to honor my dad by carrying on his name and a way to let our son know that he has a tribe. We also decided to give our son my dad’s first name as his middle name.

We had all of that settled for a while, but the first name took us a little bit longer. There were things we liked that didn’t go with the last name, and things one of us liked and the other didn’t. And then one day Mike turned to me and gave me the name that I knew was the exact right one. I am happy to announce that we are naming our son after the greatest hero in American literature, someone who stood up for what was right even when it seemed hopeless, who was wise and kind and the best shot in Maycomb County. Our son’s name is Atticus. His mom is a librarian and his dad teaches reading. What else could his name be, really?

In case I haven’t communicated it quite enough, this whole thing has been full of surprises for me, especially. I’m glad that we’re only halfway done, that we still have a little more time to get ready for Atticus to move in. Despite my lack of sentimentality, I did start to cry when we finally began to tell people his name. I guess I just feel so incredibly lucky that we can choose to name him after two men (one is fictional, it’s true) we respect and who stood for things we believe in, that we hope Atticus believes in one day, too.

(I’m not posting Atticus’s full name here because I have decided not to make him Google-able in utero. Though you may be able to deduce his last name if you are very very clever.)

When I was in Michigan last week, the company provided us with these buttons that they called flair. You know, flair. It was not ironic flair, but many of the freshly graduated teachers were probably too young to know why it should be ironic anyway. (I spent a whole week feeling pretty old. In the mom role, helping them navigate the airports and the hotel and the restaurants. They were so young.) I didn’t get all the flair, but I decided that it didn’t serve anyone if I refused to play along even a little bit. So I grabbed an “avid reader” button and a “North Carolina” button and I checked every morning to see what else was available. One morning, they had one that said “foodie” and though I am not sure I am cool enough to be a foodie, I happily pinned it on to my lanyard. What Mike and I realized on PEI was that we care a lot about food. I have always liked to eat, but now we care about good food, about the flavors we can taste in locally grown things, about restaurants and friends who take the time to consider their ingredients and come up with something special.

For our first anniversary, back when we still felt a lot of pressure to make our anniversaries big and special, we went to Charleston. Charleston is a lovely place, full of history and food and beautiful places, but I do not recommend visiting it in July. My Long Island-born husband practically melted. He’s been here in the south for over two decades, but I don’t think he will ever adjust to the humidity. Which is okay. My hair was born here, and it still hasn’t adjusted, either.

We were still learning what it meant to be married, to travel together. Our roles have congealed a little bit more now: Mike as the planner, Kari as the navigator. There are so many wonderful restaurants in Charleston that we both needed to use our gifts in order to make the right decisions about where to go. One evening we ended up at a restaurant around the corner from our bed and breakfast: Hominy Grill. This was in 2001, when it had only been written up in the New York Times once. Before it had been written up in Gourmet and featured on the Food Network. You could tell that pretty much everyone there was local. I chose shrimp and grits. Whatever Mike chose has been lost to history, because, well, his was fine, good even, but the shrimp and grits were basically fantastic.

I did not grow up eating shrimp and grits. It’s true. I had had it, and I knew I liked it, but it wasn’t a regular meal for me. I didn’t eat a ton of grits growing up, actually. We just didn’t really eat them at home. We ate a lot of oatmeal. Now that I have my own house, we eat grits more than we eat oatmeal. Because when you are on your own, you get to make that sort of decision. I kind of hope I never have to eat oatmeal again. I don’t know whether to admit this or not, but I had been married to Mike for a year at that point and he turned up his nose when I ordered shrimp and grits. He had never heard of it, never tried it, and wasn’t interested. Somehow, I had failed him. Since that day, though, he has never looked back. And I think of that day as a turning point for us in some ways: I gained confidence in my ability to spot something good on the menu, something I had to have. And Mike got a little bit more adventurous with his palate. It was the first step in a new relationship with food. If it wasn’t for that night, I might not have even considered the “foodie” button. (I still would have taken the “chocoholic” one, though. No question about that.)

We put ourselves on the Hominy Grill mailing list, and that fall they sent us a postcard. With their recipe for shrimp and grits on it. We literally danced in our kitchen when we saw it, and we’ve been making it this way ever since. I noticed that when you Google the recipe, Southern Living has a slightly different variation posted. But this is what they sent, and this is how we make it. Enjoy.

Hominy Grill’s Shrimp and Grits

Cheese grits
3 slices of bacon, chopped
1 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 T. flour
2 T. peanut oil
1 1/4 c. sliced mushrooms
1 large clove of garlic
Tabasco sauce
2 t. fresh lemon juice
1/2 c. thinly sliced green onions

Fry bacon until crisp, remove from pan and reserve. Pour off all but 1 T. of bacon fat. Gently toss shrimp with flour until lightly coated; remove excess flour. Add peanut oil to pan with bacon fat and heat over medium high heat. Add shrimp and sauté until half cooked. Add mushrooms and toss. When they begin to cook, stir in reserved bacon. Add garlic with a press but do not let brown. Quickly stir in lemon juice and Tabasco. Cook until shrimp are pink on both sides and mushrooms are golden brown. Season with salt and add green onions and remove from heat. Spoon over grits.

We usually make our cheese grits using some variation of Lucky 32‘s recipe. Here is a copy of their recipe. You should use grits from the Old Mill if you possibly can. Using milk or cream instead of just water is crucial to good grits.

1 ½ cups cream
3 cups chicken broth
6 tablespoons butter
1/3 teaspoon salt
1/3 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons grits
½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

Bring cream, chicken broth, butter, salt, and pepper to a boil in a medium saucepan. Reduce heat to a simmer and stir in grits. Cook for about 3 minutes stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Continue cooking for another 12 minutes on medium-low heat. Remove from heat and stir in cheddar cheese. Keep grits warm for serving.

Notes: We usually add the green onions a little bit earlier and let them get soft. The grits are also good with some parmesan added. Makes 2 generous portions. (Last week we doubled the recipe and served five people with no leftovers. But be sure you have a big pan to cook the shrimp.)

(The picture at the top is from when we went back to Hominy Grill in 2007. I had the shrimp and grits. Why mess with a good thing?)

Mike was gone the last week of July, helping our youth group as they served people in West Virginia. He came back and then I left the next day, to train for my new job. We were apart for twelve out of those thirteen nights, a record in our relationship. One I hope is never broken.

When he was gone, I cleaned things and bought maternity clothes that I don’t quite need (though I do love the stretchy waistbands) and dined a lot with my friends. I finally got over that mysterious second-trimester nausea I’d been dealing with. I lounged by the pool, read some wonderful books, and tried to enjoy my time alone. Seven nights by myself, though, was more than enough, and five nights the next week sharing a hotel room with a future coworker had me completely worn out by the end. My training was surprisingly good, the hotel was nice, and the food was much better than average, but I ached to be home. It’s possible that I am not the world’s biggest homebody, but I would like to think I’m in the running for that prize. More than my house, I wanted to be with the person who makes me laugh with his terrible jokes, who finishes my sentences, who makes a mean batch of shrimp and grits. Now that I have had a couple of days of decompression in one of my favorite places in the world with Mike and my mom and some new-ish friends, I am feeling a little bit more like myself. As an introvert, I need to be with the people who are my solace and my home. I felt far away for a couple of weeks, but I am finding my way back.

I should confess that I have been having a little bit of an identity crisis. I am sure that a lot of women experience that during pregnancy, the question of who you are and who you are going to be. I am also changing jobs, and you can tell me that my identity shouldn’t be in what I do until you are blue in the face, but the truth is that what I do is important to me, and having a different job affects a few things about the way I see myself. Being away from Mike made me feel some of that even more acutely. It also helped to know that he has been pondering some of the same things.

I am assured, yes, I am assured, yes
I am assured that peace will come to me
A peace that can, yes, surpass the speed, yes
Of my understanding and my need -Josh Ritter

Claire, Kelly, and Sarah have got me thinking about solace this week. Though the views from this porch are incomparable, a true picture of solace will have to wait until I get home, as I find myself without a camera this week.

Linking up to this week’s Wedded Wednesday.

July 1 – Starbucks Hot Chocolate Ice Cream. Thanks to my wonderful husband.
July 2 – Took awesome naps during the World Cup and watched Friday Night Lights.
July 3 – Cookout at the pool with some people we are getting to know.
July 4 – A fun day full of food and friends.
July 5 – Shopping with Mike and dinner with my family for my birthday.
July 6 – Good doctor’s appointment and then everyone was so nice when we posted our news.
July 7 – Made curtains for the new person’s room with my mom.
July 8 – Had cake with Kendra.
July 9 – The internet participated in Mike’s radio show, making it the best radio show he’s ever had. Thanks, y’all.
July 10 – Fun friends over for dinner.
July 11 – I bought a rug for the new person’s room (Do you see how efficient I am about getting this done?)
July 12 – Dinner with Melissa and Emily for my birthday (really spreading it out this year).
July 13 – Hmmm. This was a rotten day of travel, but the Air Canada people were wonderful to us. Unlike US Air. Ahem. And the Old Spice guy was really funny. Can he be my good thing?
July 14 – Had a fantastic dinner at The Landmark Cafe and thoroughly enjoyed The New New Potato-Time Review.
July 15 – Beautiful afternoon on the beach celebrating our tenth anniversary.
July 16 – Fun day of sightseeing and desperately looking for bathrooms after riding on bumpy dirt roads.
July 17 – National Park Day didn’t work out like we’d expected, but we had a beautiful afternoon in Cavendish Grove reading in the shade.
July 18 – French fries for lunch.
July 19 – A gorgeous day on the Island.
July 20 – We got to watch my favorite episode of Glee on the Air Canada flight from Montreal to New York. I love you, Air Canada.
July 21 – Dinner (for my birthday, still) with Andrea and Alisa included tiny food! My favorite.
July 22 – Nice afternoon at the pool with Emily.
July 23 – Super productive day – bought chairs for the sunroom, put down the rug in the new person’s room, hung pictures on the wall (I directed, Mike hung them, AND we did not argue), organized the gift-wrap materials in their new closet location.
July 24 – Hung out with my mom in the afternoon. It was too hot to do anything else.
July 25 – Slept until 10am and then had a productive day that included cleaning and ice cream.
July 26 – Lunch with my aunt and then frozen yogurt with a work friend in the afternoon.
July 27 – Coffee with Melissa in the morning. Impromptu dinner with some work friends turned into an extremely fun evening.
July 28 – I made pizza for dinner and it was very good.
July 29 – Lovely hour at the pool and then goodbye dinner with Andrea.
July 30 – Went to visit my old job at the public library and then had a fantastic afternoon at the pool.
July 31 – Mike came home! I missed him and I was bored without him.

It is hard to narrow it down, but tomatoes might just be my favorite part of summer. I refuse to eat those ugly pale ones that are all you can get in the grocery store in the winter. Tomatoes mean BLTs and canning and fat slices on hamburgers. They taste like heat and sunshine and afternoons at grandma’s house.

When Tanya Davis opened the show we saw on PEI, her first song was focused on the beauty she sees and loves around the Island. The line I quoted in the title of this post stood out to me: You have to stay in a place through all the seasons to appreciate everything that it is. I think PEI is a wonderful place to visit, but she is right: I only know a part of it. On the way back to our B&B, I told Mike, “The way that she feels about PEI is how I feel about North Carolina.” Perhaps it was one reason I loved her songs so much: I recognize myself in those words, in that rootedness. I love all four seasons here, even the things that seem to drive other people crazy. It is where I am from and it is a part of me as much as my family. It took me a long time to realize that everyone doesn’t feel this way.

On Prince Edward Island, I noticed that the tomatoes on our salads were, frankly, not very good. Possibly it is not quite tomato season there yet. Or maybe it doesn’t ever get hot enough for them to have a real tomato season, not like we do. It was disappointing. They had many other delicious foods, but I thought from time to time about all those tomatoes that I was missing back home, the juice running down your arm as you take a bite of your sandwich. I saw my mom on Saturday, and she brought me a bag of tomatoes from my grandma’s garden (and some from my great-uncle as well). I realized how glad I am to be home.

Title quote from “Potatoes” by Tanya Davis. Click here to listen to it.

Thanks to Claire, Kelly, and Sarah for inspiring me to think about home.

It is no secret that I am a half-empty sort of person. The word pessimist doesn’t even begin to cover it. Sometimes it comes across worse than I intended, simply because I prefer to think things through, to consider possible consequences. Sometimes I drown myself in those what-ifs, overwhelmed to the point of being paralyzed.

So I have been surprised lately to realize that I am feeling – it’s hard for me to even say it, for fear that I might jinx it – content. I know, I know, you think it’s because of the baby. But I have some witnesses who could tell you otherwise. The baby is still exciting and terrifying me in equal measures. It’s not just the baby that’s a good thing in our lives, though. There have been several things this summer that have made me realize what a good place we are in, with our beautiful house, our great jobs, and the time we have spent together. I feel – and, again, I don’t want to jinx it – as if I have begun to learn how to choose to be a better version of myself.

It’s frightening to admit to being happy, even to myself. It’s hard to keep from believing that it’s the calm before the next storm or that something terrifying might be coming. And maybe that’s true. That is how it seems to work. That’s my usual mode of operation. Maybe I will look back and laugh at these feelings of contentment.

But maybe not. Maybe some of the things that have happened in recent years have taught me something about growing. Right now I feel as if I am not just growing a baby, but that I am growing into myself.

As I was writing this, I knew that it echoed something I had read many times. I finally realized that it was my old friend Anne Shirley, which was appropriate since we just visited her Island. Even hopelessly optimistic Anne worried about happiness from time to time. I am comfortable being in such good company.

As for Anne herself, she was so happy that she almost felt frightened. The gods, so says the old superstition, do not like to behold too happy mortals. It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not. -Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery