hi friends — apologies if you are getting this twice (but thank you for being a paid subscriber!!). I meant to send this to all readers, paid and unpaid, but, well, I didn’t. 🤡
On Saturday morning I convened a family meeting with one agenda item: Summer. I asked all of us to commit to making this summer the easiest, most chill, most fun summer we can make it. Proposed: Instead of hearing “brush you teeth,” “pick up your books,” or “turn off your ipad” as acts of hostility and oppression, the girls might pause for a moment and consider that these directives come with good intent and parental knowledge. I will care less about about screen time and sugar consumption. When we have to make choices, we will choose whatever is easier and/or more fun. We’ll spend as much time outside as possible. Popsicles every day. The vote was unanimous.
Ligaya graduated from preschool this past Friday, June 30, which was also Noli’s last day of second grade. Because of the Seattle teachers’ strike last September, the school year went on for a long-ass time. (A friend of mine who lives in Portland has been in Greece with her children for two weeks already — literally can’t even imagine.) The weekend was a good opportunity to shake us out of the seemingly interminable season of scheduled obligations. We rolled straight from Ligaya’s ceremony to Lake Washington for a picnic with friends; we spent the next two afternoons at the same spot. We swam, ate pints of our garden raspberries and bags of dill pickle and sour cream and onion chips. We saw bald eagles each day, including one gripping a fish in its talons while being harassed by crows. Both girls stayed in the water until they were shivering and their lips were just a teeny bit purple.
There is still a way that Ligaya likes to be with me, which is of me, on top of me, part of me, curled into my body. She liquifies, flows like water into every available crevice. Actually, if I’m being honest, it’s a way we are together — I am absolutely an equal and active participant. Occasionally I get weary of her body weighing on and pawing at mine I but am simultaneously happy to let her keep doing it, to have my resistance worn down. I can feel when she is doing the same for me.
In water, both girls are independent movers but they still need lots of physical attention. They swim to and from and to and from us; Noli wants us to see her backstroke, back float, and underwater flips; Ligaya wants us to throw her into the water, help her practice the floating techniques she acquired in swim lessons, to readjust her goggles, to hold onto us like a tree frog. They want to drape us in jewelry made of Eurasian milfoil. Something about all this aquatic intimacy, the way we’re all swimming in each others’ soups — plus the rewarming of their shivering limbs with the direct heat of my body — has me so aware of how this particular, young-kid era of ease and closeness is coming to an end. Ligaya’s graduation from preschool, the same school Noli went to, also marks the end of an era. We’ve been bringing one or both of our children to José Martí nearly every weekday for close to six years, and they’ve both emerged joyful, confident, and ready for kindergarten. Grown.
I don’t have a lot scheduled for this summer, work-wise, and I want spend as much time as I can with my gals, by and in the water, the sun drying our bodies as we lie on our blanket feeding each other berries. I cannot think of any place I’d rather be.
This summer I’m redoubling my efforts to work less. What I mean is: to produce less while making the work better. Work that benefits from a body that feels strong and nourished and rested, a (relatively) uncluttered, peaceful mind, and time — hours weeks months — to be deeply observant and curious about ideas and things, general and specific life stuff, and myself rather than trying to figure everything out and make meaning out of things as they are happening.
Donita Reason is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I had the honor of being in conversation with Ocean Vuong last month at a bookstore here in Seattle, something I was uncharacteristically terrified to do. Here is someone who is both of us and among us. Hearing his poetry and words in person is a rich sensory, physical experience, and he encouraged all of us to leave plenty of time and space in our life for feeling, wandering, wonder, awe, observation — how fundamental attention and reverence is to living…and, yes, writing.
In a few days we are traveling to upstate New York for a speaking engagement I’m doing. The folks that hired me are flying all four of us out and putting us up in a house by a lake and feeding us. I’ll put in a full day’s work and then I’ll chill for the rest of the week. This is my kind of job. (If you live near Chautauqua, New York, come say hi.) A couple of weeks ago I turned in a first draft of my next book proposal to my agent and I’m looking forward to finishing it. That’s my work plan for the summer. I recently sent an email to a colleague declining to participate in an event, explaining that I needed to slow down and soften life for the next couple of months — her response was one of enthusiastic support. In my note, I called this my “Summer of No,” but now even that feels too hard and committed. It’s more of a let the neck roll, lean-back summer of “Naaaaah.”
Nah is taking hold. We invited the Chase Chens over for chicken shawarma night(I am not one for recipes but this is one of my all-time favorite go-to recipes, regrettably by Sam Sifton) on Sunday, but because they had houseguests they ended up hosting us for chicken shawarma night. Last night, because I had already defrosted the chicken thighs, I made chicken shawarma again. Obviously there are many other ways to cook chicken thighs, but I didn’t feel like finding another one. No one seemed to mind.
My other major creative endeavor is learning to play “Sailing” by Christopher Cross on the piano. It’s quite tricky for me. But I’ve started to get a hold on the underlying rhythm — now I need to put bass and treble clef together and work on playing it at tempo, not 1/50th its speed. (BTW, you can find a ton of free piano sheet music here.)
And finally, because a few of you have been asking, I’m happy to share a bit about the proposal and book I’m working on. It’s about female middle age (which includes peri menopause and menopause, but it’s definitely not a book exclusively about them), reframing this time of life as not being defined by the end of fertility and the onset of a certain cultural invisibility, but fecundity and freedom in so many aspects of life. I’m taking inspiration from the photographer Elinor Carucci’s book Midlife, in which she asks, “How can the period of midlife be represented by images, fully visible?” — except, you know, with words.
“I made a list of good things to shoot about midlife,” Carruci writes. “It turned out there are many, and I knew it, but these weren’t all as tangible, visible [as bad things]. The feelings of liberation and acceptance that come with age; Stronger connections to family; The humor of situations, the comedy of life…Happy moments about nothing; Not fighting with my mom as much.”
The book is equally inspired, though I’m not exactly sure how yet (got more sitting and zoning out to do before I understand fully — stay tuned), by this quote from Danyel Smith’s profile of SZA. (Danyel Smith is a master and you should all read her book Shine Bright.)
“In my 50s, I still have in me a bit of the girl on the back of some boy’s Ninja bike, going 80 miles an hour in shorts and sandals. It feels like freedom when falling would not be the worst outcome. And no one can touch you, because they’re too scared to even come close.”
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Summer of Nah (this time for everyone)
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hi friends — apologies if you are getting this twice (but thank you for being a paid subscriber!!). I meant to send this to all readers, paid and unpaid, but, well, I didn’t. 🤡
On Saturday morning I convened a family meeting with one agenda item: Summer. I asked all of us to commit to making this summer the easiest, most chill, most fun summer we can make it. Proposed: Instead of hearing “brush you teeth,” “pick up your books,” or “turn off your ipad” as acts of hostility and oppression, the girls might pause for a moment and consider that these directives come with good intent and parental knowledge. I will care less about about screen time and sugar consumption. When we have to make choices, we will choose whatever is easier and/or more fun. We’ll spend as much time outside as possible. Popsicles every day. The vote was unanimous.
Ligaya graduated from preschool this past Friday, June 30, which was also Noli’s last day of second grade. Because of the Seattle teachers’ strike last September, the school year went on for a long-ass time. (A friend of mine who lives in Portland has been in Greece with her children for two weeks already — literally can’t even imagine.) The weekend was a good opportunity to shake us out of the seemingly interminable season of scheduled obligations. We rolled straight from Ligaya’s ceremony to Lake Washington for a picnic with friends; we spent the next two afternoons at the same spot. We swam, ate pints of our garden raspberries and bags of dill pickle and sour cream and onion chips. We saw bald eagles each day, including one gripping a fish in its talons while being harassed by crows. Both girls stayed in the water until they were shivering and their lips were just a teeny bit purple.
There is still a way that Ligaya likes to be with me, which is of me, on top of me, part of me, curled into my body. She liquifies, flows like water into every available crevice. Actually, if I’m being honest, it’s a way we are together — I am absolutely an equal and active participant. Occasionally I get weary of her body weighing on and pawing at mine I but am simultaneously happy to let her keep doing it, to have my resistance worn down. I can feel when she is doing the same for me.
In water, both girls are independent movers but they still need lots of physical attention. They swim to and from and to and from us; Noli wants us to see her backstroke, back float, and underwater flips; Ligaya wants us to throw her into the water, help her practice the floating techniques she acquired in swim lessons, to readjust her goggles, to hold onto us like a tree frog. They want to drape us in jewelry made of Eurasian milfoil. Something about all this aquatic intimacy, the way we’re all swimming in each others’ soups — plus the rewarming of their shivering limbs with the direct heat of my body — has me so aware of how this particular, young-kid era of ease and closeness is coming to an end. Ligaya’s graduation from preschool, the same school Noli went to, also marks the end of an era. We’ve been bringing one or both of our children to José Martí nearly every weekday for close to six years, and they’ve both emerged joyful, confident, and ready for kindergarten. Grown.
I don’t have a lot scheduled for this summer, work-wise, and I want spend as much time as I can with my gals, by and in the water, the sun drying our bodies as we lie on our blanket feeding each other berries. I cannot think of any place I’d rather be.
This summer I’m redoubling my efforts to work less. What I mean is: to produce less while making the work better. Work that benefits from a body that feels strong and nourished and rested, a (relatively) uncluttered, peaceful mind, and time — hours weeks months — to be deeply observant and curious about ideas and things, general and specific life stuff, and myself rather than trying to figure everything out and make meaning out of things as they are happening.
Donita Reason is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I had the honor of being in conversation with Ocean Vuong last month at a bookstore here in Seattle, something I was uncharacteristically terrified to do. Here is someone who is both of us and among us. Hearing his poetry and words in person is a rich sensory, physical experience, and he encouraged all of us to leave plenty of time and space in our life for feeling, wandering, wonder, awe, observation — how fundamental attention and reverence is to living…and, yes, writing.
In a few days we are traveling to upstate New York for a speaking engagement I’m doing. The folks that hired me are flying all four of us out and putting us up in a house by a lake and feeding us. I’ll put in a full day’s work and then I’ll chill for the rest of the week. This is my kind of job. (If you live near Chautauqua, New York, come say hi.) A couple of weeks ago I turned in a first draft of my next book proposal to my agent and I’m looking forward to finishing it. That’s my work plan for the summer. I recently sent an email to a colleague declining to participate in an event, explaining that I needed to slow down and soften life for the next couple of months — her response was one of enthusiastic support. In my note, I called this my “Summer of No,” but now even that feels too hard and committed. It’s more of a let the neck roll, lean-back summer of “Naaaaah.”
Nah is taking hold. We invited the Chase Chens over for chicken shawarma night(I am not one for recipes but this is one of my all-time favorite go-to recipes, regrettably by Sam Sifton) on Sunday, but because they had houseguests they ended up hosting us for chicken shawarma night. Last night, because I had already defrosted the chicken thighs, I made chicken shawarma again. Obviously there are many other ways to cook chicken thighs, but I didn’t feel like finding another one. No one seemed to mind.
My other major creative endeavor is learning to play “Sailing” by Christopher Cross on the piano. It’s quite tricky for me. But I’ve started to get a hold on the underlying rhythm — now I need to put bass and treble clef together and work on playing it at tempo, not 1/50th its speed. (BTW, you can find a ton of free piano sheet music here.)
And finally, because a few of you have been asking, I’m happy to share a bit about the proposal and book I’m working on. It’s about female middle age (which includes peri menopause and menopause, but it’s definitely not a book exclusively about them), reframing this time of life as not being defined by the end of fertility and the onset of a certain cultural invisibility, but fecundity and freedom in so many aspects of life. I’m taking inspiration from the photographer Elinor Carucci’s book Midlife, in which she asks, “How can the period of midlife be represented by images, fully visible?” — except, you know, with words.
“I made a list of good things to shoot about midlife,” Carruci writes. “It turned out there are many, and I knew it, but these weren’t all as tangible, visible [as bad things]. The feelings of liberation and acceptance that come with age; Stronger connections to family; The humor of situations, the comedy of life…Happy moments about nothing; Not fighting with my mom as much.”
The book is equally inspired, though I’m not exactly sure how yet (got more sitting and zoning out to do before I understand fully — stay tuned), by this quote from Danyel Smith’s profile of SZA. (Danyel Smith is a master and you should all read her book Shine Bright.)
“In my 50s, I still have in me a bit of the girl on the back of some boy’s Ninja bike, going 80 miles an hour in shorts and sandals. It feels like freedom when falling would not be the worst outcome. And no one can touch you, because they’re too scared to even come close.”
I mean, COME ON!!!!!!
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