Not Routine

It’s been a month of breaking routine, culminating with a café latte at a new Italian place at 5pm one afternoon, a decidedly small test of my commitment.  Usually it’s a bad time to have caffeine on account of the risk involved of not being able to fall asleep later because of those intrusive thoughts that alarm you.  College kids on road trips demand that sleep stay on track.  The young woman at the counter, however, appeared a bit bored, just wiping off the new shiny frother, without real purpose, as things were already in good order.   Impulsively I ordered it as an act of generosity and because I had specifically decided not to worry about the future.  Walking back to my car with my bag of specialties, including another spontaneous purchase of very expensive pistachio butter, I put my latte in my cup holder and felt the stirrings of liberation, small that they were.

Soon after, one early evening, I found myself on a walk at a time usually reserved for making dinner. Facing the setting sun, a memory drifted into my thoughts—those occasional nights in college when I had chosen to stay home instead of going out.  Alone in my dorm room I’d sometimes decide to head over to the indoor track and run with Suzanne Vega playing on my headphones.  Running, lap after lap, 10 to a mile, in a mostly deserted place but bright with florescent light. Other scattered people would be there, although there was a randomness that felt comforting, as if I wasn’t really alone in my search for something else. I ran miles longer that I ever could in daylight.   Now, on the cold road in early spring, I could almost smell the red cushioned track of my past in the evening air, and it reminded me of possibility.

It all started, these miniscule escapes, when I ended up unexpectedly at my brother’s house for an unplanned week.   My husband made the lunches back home, as I texted instructions about preferences: iceberg lettuce rather than romaine; mayo on one, vinegar on the other; etc.   It was a first for me to leave everyone behind and that week found the kids surprised to find Oreos  (not flax seed tortilla chips) wrapped in tin foil (not un-dyed wax paper) at the bottom of their brown lunch bags.  Meanwhile, my brother and I drove through the tight snow banked streets of Boston looking for parking, while recalling our childhood and dissecting the variables that made us choose our paths.  We walked together to pick up his youngest from school and chatted with the crossing guard, remembering our own Mrs. Lake who waited for us each afternoon on Main Street.  The people of his town all knew his name as we sat in different bars at night while they served the two of us dinner.  At noon, we met at yoga and he showered before returning to work a few steps away.

It had been years since my brother and I drove together, in the car, unfettered by spouses and children.  It was during our very late teens the last time this happened for any significant time---that we’d drive to escape our encapsulated lives.  We’d end up in the city looking for stereo equipment or one time, Minnesota, on a road trip across the country that ended abruptly the moment we realized our sibling limitations.  Staring at the little tent in upstate Canada made us realize that camping might not be the thing that would bond us together. But this week, in the outskirts of Boston, was a touchstone of a certain sort.  It was an intimate glance at both of our lives, a midlife checkpoint of where we were at, and we found we had decidedly different insights to offer one another.  It was as if our childhood heartbreaks had brought us to this moment---where an honest analysis of our past informed our future.  But the bigger issue was that it was just the two of us together, and it was easier to see each other clearly.  It is hard to measure the impact of surrounding demands (work, travel, family, children) on the essential relationships we crave.

There are few people who know us so deeply well.  Few people, in fact, who are witness to the early light of who we are, before experiences and challenges shape us to our current selves, before life gives us the narrative. Many hours and days of obligations deny us easy access to our original intuitions --yet, if we are lucky enough to see ourselves reflected by a long time friend and/or sibling and are able to look honestly, the barriers fall away—and, possibly, we find the courage to return to our elemental selves.

And, finally, the last place I arrive this month is at a meditative retreat—the place where the spotlight shines on the soul.  And though huddled together in a crowd--with my knees touching the person in front of me, while feeling the breath of those next to me, I am actually alone.  Instructed to close our eyes, we are asked to concentrate on something that we want to change, something to let go of, an intention of sorts.  Even though it is a private mission, there feels some public pressure to think of something, anything/ to not be the one who doesn’t have something to find.   So I follow the plan and I close my eyes.

It’s oddly surprising how in a crowded, quiet room, monuments of the mind can actually start to shift.  That practiced ways of living in the world offer themselves up to change.   Suddenly, we are able to entertain the possibility of letting go of the constructs that do not serve us, the boundaries that stop us from feeling.  It’s scary to change the comfortable routines.  But these routines are the true barriers to our senses, our memories and our connection to truly feeling alive.