Happiness for Benjamin

My brother is working in the Netherlands for a couple of months, and he feels lonely there all by himself. Today he asked me to send some happiness his way, so here is my best attempt. Dear Benjamin:

Remember the long summer days when we were little kids? Even though mom could hardly get us out of bed on school days, as soon as school was over, we jumped out of bed at first crack of dawn, and we ran down to the back yard to play. Remember how we used to make soup and magic potions out of the berries that grew on the hedge, and soak in the old metal tub when we got hot? Once when you were just a toddler, your sisters and I dressed you in one of our old bathing suits. It was hot pink and very girlie, but you thought it was the greatest thing in the world to look just like your big sisters. We still have a picture somewhere of you in the pink suit, splashing in the tub with a big grin on your face. Those days were nothing but happiness, and it didn't matter that rust was peeling off the old tub or that our family was poor.

Growing up, of course, robs us of the utterly carefree joys of childhood. But its glimmers are still around you in the simple things - the rays of morning sunshine, the satisfaction of a good meal, a hearty laugh with a friend, the way humans still fall in love despite thousands of years of heartbreak. In a way, your ability to feel dissatisfaction or emptiness is the other side of a coin that has a happy face. Until very recently - and in many parts of the world it hasn't changed to this day - all but a few people have experienced heartache and toil as such obvious aspects of daily life that they know little else. You, my brother, feel the loneliness of this season because you have known many other, sunnier ones. The best way I can send you some happiness in this cold time of year is by stating it loud and clear that this too shall pass - so you might as well get out there and earn yourself a better next season. Remembering this is how I survive in this dreadfully frigid place with six-month winters - and you know just how much I hate the cold. Winter is much easier to live through if it's in the shadow of the coming summer. It's not endless, so I might as well enjoy some sledding or snow fights! So think of the warm summer days in our back yard when it gets cold, and I hope they warm you up on the inside so you can put up a snow fight or two before it's all over.

Couch time

Today marked the beginning of a highly unusual week. In fact, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a week such as this one.

I am not working or going to class, and I don't have any plans for the next seven days.

When I realized this today, it gave me an odd feeling. I couldn't remember the last time this happened! Of course, I remember the last time I was off work for a week: my friend and my sister were visiting, and I was showing them my new home on this side of the Atlantic. The time before that, I took time off to travel to Poland to work at an arts festival. In the last two years, there have been a few week-long research trips or visits with family. But as much as I rack my brain, I can't remember the last time I was home for a week with nothing urgent on my to-do list.

Before I moved to America, week-long periods of rest or mere inactivity seemed a lot more common. It may have had to do with the fact that I lived in the world of academia, but I live in the same kind of world here. It may also have to do with being in a doctoral program now, so perhaps what I say needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Yet when people ask me if there is anything that surprised me about life in this country, the pace of life is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Americans work a lot more and take less time off than people in Poland. While I admire the work ethic I see here, I find that it sometimes goes too far - people seem to take pride in always staying busy, never missing a day of work, or giving back paid vacation days, which creates a whole culture of overwork-ness. What gets lost along the way is time to just be, to sit back and reflect on the purpose of all that frantic activity, be silent enough to pray, to remember friends and think new thoughts.

It is perhaps a mark of my advanced acculturation that the first thing I thought of today was making a to-do list for my week off. There is laundry to be done, my heinously messy closet, shelves I got for Christmas last year still waiting to be hung, heaps of unanswered emails, a Christmas letter that is already late... I didn't make a list though. I sat on this couch for most of the day, at times immersed in a novel about nothing academic whatsoever, and at times mildly uncomfortable in the silence. Tomorrow shall worry about itself - today I had the good sense to leave the worrying to the couch.

Photo courtesy of Becca

A Day in the Life

For one day in November, Billy and I had a chance to participate in an amazing art project made possible by our dear friend Becca. It all started a couple of months ago, when I was looking at our wedding pictures and the thought occurred to me that the photos most of us have in our albums are taken on extraordinary occasions that represent a departure from what life is normally like on a daily basis. There are pictures of weddings, vacations, Christmases, graduations - important days that happen just once. Most of our life, meanwhile, happens between those times, monotonous and undocumented. Yet it's those repetitive days full of repetitive activities that constitute most of our lives, and those things often go undocumented. In five years, will I remember the shape of the leaves on the sidewalk on my way to the bus? Will I be able to picture our first apartment, the look of my bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth every morning, the slant of afternoon light through the kitchen window?

Some time later, I was talking with Becca, who is an amazingly talented artist and the owner of a small business called Liminality Photography. She was telling me about a wedding she had shot, and I shared my recent thoughts with her - how it's a great thing to have a record of the grand days, but I'm sad that we don't capture the mundane ones. That conversation was how the idea of a Day in the Life photo shoot was born. For one day in November, Becca followed us around for an entire day - waking up, walking around our neighborhood, going to work, having late night drinks with friends. It is a record of not just one day, but a unique season of life turned into art. We're so grateful to Becca for creating this, and our hope all along was that these photos would inspire others to document the precious details of our daily lives.





































All photographs copyright of Liminality LLC