open to sadness and hilarity - and the words of Reeve Lindbergh

It’s 12.30am and for the past hour and a half I have been trying to go to sleep. I decided I would not watch any television tonight and so settled down with Reeve Lindbergh’s book Forward From Here. I started reading it about a week ago, and soon found myself trying to mark pages which had areas I wanted to record or remember. My problem is that I cannot bring myself to mark a book either with pencil,  ink or a folded over corner and so it wasn’t long before I was scrambling through my bedside drawers for items to place between the various pages I wanted to return to. So far, I have used the fly jacket to fold over and into one section, a birthday card wrapped in cellophane that I have bought for a friend’s birthday in a few days, the cardboard backing to a lavender fragrance oil with rattan sticks that I was given for Christmas, and of course, the trusty old chocolate wrapper.

I read until 10.30 and then decided my concentration was slipping from this beautiful, gentle book and so tried to sleep. I even resorted to listening to one of my meditation cds, but when I got to the part where the voice was telling me to relax my eyebrows and all I could imagine was the monobrow of my youth I knew I was fighting a long lost battle.  When he told me to relax my foot and all I could think about was why my face had begun to itch I decided to give up and come down stairs and clear my mind.

A cup of tea and a large chunk of wurst later and I am no closer to sleep. Perhaps I should just discuss this wonderful book , or as much of it that I have read and marked so far. I have never read anything by Reeve Lindbergh previously. I knew of her Mother’s writing, as a once upon a time bookseller, how could I not. However, I was attracted to this book by its subtitle Leaving Middle Age – and Other Unexpected Adventures.  I  consider myself, at 50, to just be entering middle age, but none the less I felt the pull of this gentle book.

There is a funny old-fashioned phrase, “What a to-do!” meaning “what a fuss!”, or “What a commotion!” I think of it in terms of the way I so often have filled my life to the point of saturation with things I “have to do”. I have to do this and I have to do that, and I really have to do the other thing, whether it’s making a telephone call or folding the laundry or attending a meeting.p38

Lindbergh’s questioning of why she does this to herself resonated with me. It also brought to mind all those sister blogs that I read each day with list upon list of things that had to be, or must be, done that day, week, month, year. Lists of torture and guilt.

To read more about this wonderful book visit http://www.flamingodancerblog.com/