Springing Forward☀
Spring forward
The first day of spring arrived in New Jersey this weekend but despite the chirping birds and blue skies, I had to bundle up in my heavy dog-walking parka and ski hat when I headed out on Saturday to the 7 am recovery meeting I like to go to. Just about the only upside to the recent time change is that I am once again greeted by the sunrise on my 12-minute drive and yesterday’s did not disappoint.
It wasn’t super showy like some of the more recent early morning displays I’ve seen on my drive. Saturday’s was all pale pinks and purples, stretching across the horizon. For a while, a few months ago, I’d stop at the top of a bridge, which gives a good view across the Shrewsbury River as it makes its way towards the ocean, and take a picture with my phone.
Despite the cold start, the day warmed up and gave people hope that more mild days were right around the corner. A friend and former neighbor came by in the afternoon and we had a lot of catching up to do at my kitchen table and then we took my dog for a loop through town and talked about high school sports – the last season for us both – and that right now, you could not pay either one of us to go back in time to juggling younger kids and jobs and having to feed everyone every goddamn day.
***
I got to revisit those days exactly one year ago when I found myself once again managing four children under one roof, albeit half of them were older than I was when I started having babies in the first place.
It was a full-time job, despite me having other actual paying jobs to squeeze in between the weekly hauls to Costco and Wegman’s, elaborate grain bowl lunches and Pinterest-worthy dinners. Plus, there was a lot of micromanaging to do and shows to binge and naturally, many many cocktails to wash it all down.
Not long after all the kids came home to ride out the pandemic but before tensions came to a head about a month in, I began my day trying to meditate on my IKEA couch while my oldest son emptied the dishwasher. He’d taken ownership of that task early on and I’d try not to listen to him grumble about the number of dishes we used each day. You could only imagine the amount of glasses, forks and plates required for five people eating three full meals a day – forget about the pots and sheet pans involved.
I had started a meditation series through the Headspace app on “generosity,” and was trying to focus on the lovely Aussie speaking to me through my AirPods and not the clanging coming from the kitchen nearby when I heard the smash of another stemless wineglass hitting the wood floor. With everyone home, it seemed like something was breaking every day. Later, my daughter and I would return home and as she tried to slide a few bags onto the counter, a mug I’d bought a few months earlier in Vermont toppled to the ground and broke into pieces. I quickly ate lunch and took myself to the boardwalk to see if the waves and cold March air would help calm me down.
According to my journal, I went home and took a nap, and then poured myself a drink as I began to make the children dinner. I pulled the harissa out of the frig – a critical ingredient for the harissa chicken on that night’s menu – only to discover that mold had begun to grow along the inside of the jar. Luckily, I have a friend who has things like harissa on hand but when I looked for a kid to run over to pick it up, they were all showering or napping, so I got in the car to get it. I came home and said, “Fuck it,” and went on a zoom happy hour with college friends and left dinner for someone else to figure out, which my daughters eventually did.
I woke up the next morning with a hangover I rated in my journal a DEFCON 4.5, which out of a 5-star rating, and for someone who drank every day, was impressive. I sat on the couch that morning and listened as my son began unloading the dishwasher and heard the crash of another wine glass.
***
It’s just my 23yo daughter home here this weekend and she told me yesterday afternoon she was going to meet her dad after work for a few drinks and to watch the sunset and I immediately began to feel sorry for myself.
Not so long ago, the promise of warmer days would have me pulling the seat cushions out of the box on our patio and running to the liquor store for bottles of rose to sip under the late afternoon sun. Maybe we would have grilled something and then built a fire in our rusty firepit and dragged blankets outside to wrap ourselves in while pouring big glasses of red wine and talking about the future and the past.
Drinking was one of my favorite activities and now in early sobriety, I’m not quite sure what to do with myself now that it's gone. I have plenty of friends but of course, that’s what we would do together, too. For most of my adult life, alcohol has served as the glue of most of my relationships. “I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure,” wrote Sarah Hepola in her memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget*and DAMN, that resonated with me. Open a bottle of wine and who knows what fun would await.
I told my daughter how I was feeling, hurt that she didn’t want to hang out with me after work. “I still like sunsets,” I told her. She said she felt weird drinking in front of me and that it was also weird that an activity I heartily endorsed and encouraged was no longer on the itinerary. She didn’t know what to make of it all.
A sober friend texted and asked if I wanted to go to a 7 pm meeting to hear someone speak about their own road to recovery and we joked on the ride over that apparently this is what we do now on our Saturday nights in early recovery.
My therapist pretty much said the same this week when I told her I wanted to start dating because I was lonely, probably the first time the words have ever come out of my mouth. She told me that was a horrible idea for a newly sober person and that instead I should just sit on my hands and feel all the feelings and keep doing the work, one day at a time. People working the program have an annoying handy saying for everything.
And I will tell you that it absolutely sucks, but so does waking up with any kind of hangover that merits a DEFCON status.
***
The generosity meditation series begins, as it seems many do, by focusing on kindness towards yourself. With your eyes closed, you are asked to imagine a spark in your chest that represents everything you’ve always wanted to give yourself. In my journal on March 25 of last year, I wondered, “What would that look like for me?”
For as much as I grouse about the fucking grain bowls and smashed wine glasses and the thick layer of tension that enveloped the five of us trying to figure out how to live together, the pandemic provided the perfect escape for me. It let me crawl into the role of mommy-to-four and all the duties it required for someone who really wanted to throw herself into it, rather than feel the scariness of the future once the kids all went back to their lives. When eventually, it would be just me here with a couple of dirty plates in the dishwasher each day.
The whole routine kept me from having to answer that question: What would I most want to give to myself?
And of course one year later, the answer is easy. In the early spring of my sobriety, I can see that despite the loneliness and prickly feelings, my life is beginning to have more meaning and focus. I feel better about myself when I wake up each day and the future no longer scares me. It's like those daffodils that are pushing their way out of the ivy on the side of my house, their buds growing bigger every day.
The sky is blue. The birds are chirping. I just need to keep bundling up and getting out there, knowing in my heart that warmer days are ahead.
xoAmy
SUNDAY SHARES: read-watch-cook-buy
Despite the chilly nip in the air, it is time to start thinking about your garden, if you like that type of thing. We didn't get in on the craze until late last spring when my daughter and I bought lumber and these cement blocks that we could slide the planks into and eliminated any real carpentry skills. Ours was just big enough to hold tomatoes, zucchini plants and cucumber vines that grew out of the box and up the stairs to our deck. It was so satisfying that my daughter has already bought more lumber and cement blocks to add to our farm this season.
We also grabbed this self-watering herb planter from Costco a few weeks ago (a lot cheaper than Amazon is selling it for), which seems to have sold out but I would encourage anyone interested to try to find an alternative because even the small herb box we planted last year was nice to have for all that cooking.
Last night I stayed up past 11:00 (shocker) to finish the last episode of Watchmen on HBO Max. Incredibly weird, confusing, and fucked up but I really, really loved it. And Regina King is my Queen.
I did start listening to the very popular selection in the quit lit genre (of which I am a fan). This Naked Mind looks at your relationship with alcohol and offers a "positive solution" based on the psychological and neurological components of booze. The stuff is super addictive, y'all. Just saying.*
Finally, do you live with this kind of monster? I know I do and it makes me CRAZY.
*Includes link to affiliate site who might throw me a few sheckles if you purchase their product.