Author: Jana

  • This life…

    This life…

    It’s funny that as much as I want to get home now (am bone-deep aching to sleep in my own bed again), this life that I’ve built here in Pasadena will not be an easy one to leave.  The solace of wandering the grounds of the Huntington during the early morning hours, the quiet rhythms of working deep in the recesses of its reading rooms, and the network of friends in its environs will be sorely missed.  And while I can’t believe that I’m saying this now, I’ll even miss those long late night (or early morning) drives up the 5 or 57 as I schlepped back and forth between here and Orange County to spend time with my children (oh, Prius, how I love your sing-along-able stereo!)

    Pasadena is now coffee meetups at Busters, morning light on the sunporch with a purry Tigris-kitty, working dinners at the Novel cafe, deep evening conversations on overstuffed white couches, dissertation sprinting until my fingers ache, pumping iron at the Y, flannel robes & snuggly-soft blankets, your poetry, cheeseburgers stuffed with potato chips and extra pickles, sharing favorite vistas at the Huntington, sweet-smelling care packages by snailmail, collegial conversations, the corinthian column of Christmas, wearing cons & jeans nearly everyday, and the sound of rain on rattly-old glass window panes. But perhaps most memorable is meeting people who don’t know of me as John’s wife or as my children’s mother–who know me only as Jana. And who like me just that way.

    My pilgrim soul has found so much delight in these steps of my journey.  Thank you.

  • wrung out…

    christmas 2005
    Navigating the holiday season while going through this divorce hasn’t been easy. It’s been a time of making new traditions rather than remembering the old…

    “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one…wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
    ~C.S. Lewis

    Photo above is from Christmas 2005. Now the kids are as tall as that Christmas tree–no chair necessary! :)

  • A holiday gem

    I was re-living some Christmas memories when I came across this post from December 2007. It’s a clip of GameBoy and his cello teacher playing a Hannukah song:

  • collaboration

    One of the oddest things about our divorce process is that John and I are managing all of it via Google tools.  We’ve got a shared custody gCal, a googledoc spreadsheet for dividing our assets, and a variety of other documents for managing the details of disentangling our lives.  When I login to googledocs I see all of our divorce-related documents next to the docs I use for teaching and for work.  What a strange sensation that is…

    After hearing about our use of google’s collaborative tools for our divorce, a friend jokingly suggested that I should create a  googledoc to crowdsource the qualities that I ought to be looking for in a new partner.

    So….here goes!  Feel free to take a look and add your $.02 by clicking on the link above.  I’d love to hear your input on the kind of person you think I ought to be on the lookout for.  Oh, and if you know anyone with all of these qualities, do let me know  ;-)

  • one month

    one month

    This is probably the last picture of our family, taken about a month ago.  We were picking up some dinner at Taco Mesa before the kids had some school-related activities.  John snapped this pic and posted it to Twitter, while making some comment about how “nothing really happened unless it was photographed and tweeted.”

    At this point I’d already sent John the first volley in the email conversations that would be the catalyst for his decision to leave.  I was awaiting his reply while life carried on rather normally on the surface of things.

    Such photos say so much.  And so very little.

  • and surrender…

    When John told me that he was leaving me, he revealed some pretty ugly things–most of which I won’t write here.  But perhaps out of those the one that surprised me the most, was when he told me that he’d basically checked out of our marriage two years ago when I was ill with that mysterious antibiotic-resistant infection.  He explained that it was just too much for him to endure–caring for me with no certainty that I would ever get well again.

    He was so gracious and kind during that entire illness, I never knew that it had been so terrifically difficult for him.  Indeed, I was quite surprised to learn that that was the breaking point.  Perhaps not coincidentally, I’d been thinking myself recently about how difficult it’s been to care for John during his ongoing degenerative issues with his back and hips.  For about four years John’s been nearly-unable to walk more than a few blocks (sometimes not even that far).  When we’ve traveled, we’ve pushed him in wheelchairs at museums and altered our typical on-foot walkabouts to short jaunts to accommodate John’s limited mobility.  For a long time he was unable to even walk through a grocery store because of the severe pain that it caused him. I’d wondered how I would handle life with a spouse who had such a long-term physical limitation, and was hoping that I could do so with as much aplomb as John had done with my various health problems…but I had concerns about keeping it up–his pain made him short-tempered and frustrated. He was so much more difficult to live with than before. He lost his energetic “bounce” (I missed that part of John’s personality quite a lot).

    So what I wonder is this….at what point do we throw in the towel on our relationships when things don’t turn out as we expected? And when do we hang in there, even at a high cost to our own autonomy?

    Some of my thinking along these lines also has to do with recent encouragement from friends for John and I to reconcile. Part of me wants to fight and hope that we could make our marriage work again (as I have many times before), but I fear that isn’t a choice I even have the liberty to make–John seems quite sure that he’s done with us (and with me). But I wonder, have I given up too easily? Is there something more I could or should do? Or some concession or change that I could make that would make John feel happy again?

    Or is it time to wave that white flag and move on, realizing that I just can’t endure it any longer?

  • Show me a garden that’s bursting into life…

    This song by Snow Patrol came on the radio on a morning that I had a long drive across LA last week. Though I’m not typically one to become enchanted with popular songs, the lyrics of this one just hit me, as I realized how they expressed much of my emotional confusion from the past few weeks. In particular, I thought of the ways friends embraced and supported me while I felt so insecure in the days after John left me.  A huge thank you to all of who have taken time out of your lives (the long talks, the letters, the poems, the soaks in hot tubs, the care packages, the strolls through the garden, the hours spent at my side) and who have simply cared about mine.  You are all so beautiful and generous…

    I need your grace
    To remind me
    To find my own…
    Forget what we’re told
    Before we get too old
    Show me a garden that’s bursting into life

  • Back there again…

    IMG_0937

    A few days ago I slept in for a few hours. It was delicious (and lazy) after days of going going going like the energizer bunny. This month there is just no time built-in for me to slow down. I have such precious few hours to be in the archive to finish my dissertation and I’m carrying on with all of the end-of-the-semester busy-ness at Chapman University, too.

    However after I slept in I took a spin around the Chinese Garden before settling into my research. What pleasure. It reminded me so much of my travels to Suzhuo and Hangzhou. And for awhile I was back there again.

    My one regret from China was that I never found a bookshop with a book of poetry about those regions in translation. I wanted to read the words of the poets who had seen and felt the same things that I had…

  • Sundays

    Sundays are becoming more and more special to me, because they’re the day I’m with the kids.  This Sunday we spent the morning at the beach:
    just the three of us

    And played in the waves:
    IMG_0913

    Then we had a few hours relaxing at our home and went to see an animated 3-D flick:
    IMG_0929

    Leaving the kids this time around was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I wanted desperately for things to go back to the way they were–before we had to take turns and before each time I had with them meant that I would have to say good-bye (again). Knowing that no amount of fun that I have with them during “my time” can compensate for the fact that I can’t have them all the time anymore…

    It must be a normal thing to hit this emotional wall where you just want everything to be as it was. I can remember back when I was going through my cancer treatments when I would close my eyes and try to wish away all of the ways my life had changed. But no amount of denial ever made it so. I understand that. I know this is a “what has to be done” moment just like those health traumas were so many years ago–like that terrible day when I woke up and realized that my leg was gone and it just wasn’t going to grow back again.

    But, by god, knowing all of that doesn’t stop me from wishing, crying, and bone-deep aching right now…as I once again drive away from the home that we used to all share together.

  • even losing you…

    Another wonderful gem from a friend. It made me giggle (which is a good thing, I’d say)…

    path
    One Art

    The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
    so many things seem filled with the intent
    to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

    Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
    of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
    places, and names, and where it was you meant
    to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

    I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
    next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
    some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
    I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

    — Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
    I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
    the art of losing’s not too hard to master
    though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

    ~Elizabeth Bishop

  • on breakage…

    Really desperate for ocean poetry today.  Here’s another one from a friend that’s feeding my soul (oh, and fueling my hunger for some salty sea air), while remembering a night not too long ago, spent on the edge of bitumen cliffs, hearing the ocean call my name…

    IMG_7778

    Breakage

    I go down to the edge of the sea.
    How everything shines in the morning light.
    The cusp of the whelk,
    the broken cupboard of the clam,
    the opened, blue mussels,
    moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred —
    and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
    dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
    moisture gone.
    It’s like a schoolhouse
    of little words.
    First you figure out what each one means by itself,
    the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
    full of moonlight.

    Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

    ~ Mary Oliver ~

  • a toast to a new life

    getting my feet wet, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    From a kind friend…

    Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada mas;
    Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.
    Al andar se hace el camino, y al volver la vista atras
    se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar.
    Caminante, no hay camino sino estelas en la mar.
    ~Antonio Machado

    Translation:
    Pilgrim, the path is your tracks
    And nothing more.
    Pilgrim, there is no path
    The path is made by walking.
    By walking you make a path
    And turning, you look back
    At a way you will never tread again
    Pilgrim, there is no road
    Only wakes in the sea.

    Just what I needed to hear right now….