All my life I've believed that if I could just do what I love the money will come. It's a cliché but I've believed it in my heart, knowing that the tough trick is figuring out what it is that I love, what I can't not do, what I'm uncomfortable not doing, what I realize I just did anyway when I lay my head on the pillow at night. It's impossible to look forward and see clearly, and, while it's harder than it ought to be to look back, objectively, it's always a bit easier to define those things we've loved, in maturity than it is in youth, just as it is so much easier to see what matters and what does not and how important it is that we make our own choices and not let others make our choices for us.
One of the blogs more recently linked in my gutter, Brown Trout (who calls himself a writer taking "refuge in [an] MFA program") describes this search much better than I can, and does it with particular art in his recent post Under the Sun. Many of his entries deal with finding his way in maturity, being able to see what's important and what' s not, finding joy in everyday activities and ordinary intimate relationships, with some emphasis on food, wine and lovemaking. In this particular entry he discussed an outing in Tuscany, where he's a part of a university-sponsored writing workshop this summer, and his delightful afternoon-long encounter with a passionate wine-maker and his wine(s), a man doing what he loved.
Now, I suppose as parents we usually face hard choices when choosing whether or not to do what we love or do what will be best for our children, nourish and care for them actually as well as spiritually and emotionally. Their having access to health care and being sheltered and fed and properly educated becomes more important than doing what we love for most of us, at least for that fleeting time that they are in our charge, until the tables turn and we yearn for their company more than they yearn for ours. Yet, to my delight, I find, in that transition, a moment to reflect on what I genuinely love, for me, besides delighting in their very existence to the innermost core of my soul, and I can do so, now, because I am older, with some real data, by looking back and being able to see those things that I can't not do.
I have always needed to write, keeping some kind of journal through most of my life. Early on it was handwritten words on blank pages with black leather covers, and some very bad poetry. During the most overwhelming and confusing years of my long failed marriage, it was spiral notebooks in which grocery lists and patent strategy and meeting notes were combined with pages and pages of painful searches for unattainable answers. Now it is this blog. I have no need to publish, per se, which is the central question asked and answered in Brown Trout's post from Italy. My need is first to sort it out for myself using words, because they help me think more clearly, and then to communicate with others in some way, to feel like I've been seen or heard for what I really am, rather than just what I appear to be.
Then there is my long relationship with clay as a medium, starting with that first day of that first class, fulfilling an elective my senior year in college, with the first of so many fine teachers, when, bored with hand-building, I sat at the wheel and centered perfectly, feeling like I had come home, on my initial attempt, as if I had been born knowing how. Over the years, my skills increased. I worked almost full time at it under some fine teachers during the years I took care of my material needs in the employ of MississippiRiverLand Airlines (not its real name), ferociously protecting my art by avoiding any kind of commercial application. I would stop and have a baby and start again, stop again to have another, then start again, with a series of fine teachers, ultimately becoming not just comfortable but enthusiastic about how easy it was to sell my wares. I learned how to throw dry, how to manipulate porcelainous clays with a consistency of cream cheese into elegant, light, well-formed, beautifully functional vessels. It's been two years since I worked in clay. The last piece I sold was a celadon glazed porcelain teapot with a pulled handle over the top, my contribution to a studio show. I don't know why I was so surprised that it sold. I would love to do this again but it is an endeavor that requires some specialized space and a modest investment to start.
I have also been captured by the internet and online community and relationships. The portfolio of patents that have grown from my husband's initial invention (can it really have been nine years ago that it all began?), are internet related, defined by methods of interactivity, a labor that captivated me wholly for a very long time. It felt important, as if it was what we were meant to do together, imparting meaning to the union, if not, in fact, what I was meant to do. It isn't over. The product and its category are still in their frontier stages and, in retrospect, we had no idea just how many things he did in that first commercial use, that had never been done before, ever, by anyone. He welcomed me into the business full time, for which I will always be grateful, and while we both made many mistakes, I protected that invention like it was one of our children, with continuation applications that are still evolving, finding an aptitude where I did not know one existed, genuinely enjoying the process of defining and patenting and licensing, learning to love words used in this highly specialized world of patent applications (and arguments with the patent office) and, much to my surprise, contracts. Almost as an aside, some of his skills rubbed off on me, and, although my contribution was a supporting one, I seem to have come away from it all with some expertise. Without that time spent working with him, I would know nothing about offline and online media integration, interactive customer relationship management, multi-channel promotional marketing campaigns, or the measurement and analysis thereof.
Finally, there is, among those things I've done out of love, my inexplicable passion for baseball. When I look back, it has marked time for me, this clockless game I've never played, but which has connected me to so many I have loved. My first primary caretaker listened to every Atlanta Crackers game on the radio as she patiently involved me in her afternoon labors, ironing and preparing dinner, knowing that her husband would be there to pick her up thirty minutes after the game's ending. There were afternoons at one lake or another, either skiing and fishing or sailing, with Daddy and the newly relocated Braves on the radio, and the simultaneous years in West Virginia with my step-father, spent following the Big Red Machine, chronicled in an earlier post, Baseball and John. Then years and years of watching my kids play, being a volunteer, a team mom and a scorekeeper as well as ultimately an official, overseeing games in which my children weren't even playing. I am in the last of it, this time of my children playing baseball, savoring every moment. Last night The Youngest attended his first practice of his summer wooden bat team, comprised of many older kids with whom he hadn't played in years, college students, some college players and a handful of friends from his cohort, enjoying a breezy fall-like night outside in the overlap of two seasons. Tonight our spring team will play in the semi-finals, facing a nemesis, a team we've lost to three times this season, all of them contentious. We were the last seed and right now the worst we can do is to come in third. I have to say, though, that it would be considerably more fun to win this game tonight and play in the championship game tomorrow night, assured of a t-shirt. That's right, the coveted trophy for the 1st and 2nd place finishers is a t-shirt for everyone.
While it has certainly not been a labor of love, The Matter About Which I Cannot Speak has been settled, and while I am very certain that I absolutely cannot ever speak about the terms of that settlement, it's not quite as clear whether or not I can speak at any time in the future about the matter itself. It would be fun to do so. I will wait for the final disbursement of funds and do what our attorney tells me to do. In the meantime, I don't know whether or not this settlement will mean I can find or fund a vocation borne of love, especially while I have this last tiny bit of parenting left to put first, but I am thinking about it and writing about it and, for all those who claim that getting old is a terrible thing, I have to say I really, really like the view from here.
Peace, out, ya'll.
Update (Wed. 6/14): We won tonight, actually with some ease. It wasn't quite as exciting of our upset last week of the number 1 seeded team (who had the tying run on 3B with 1 out in the last inning), but it will do quite nicely. Championship game tomorrow against old friends (who knocked us into the losers' bracket in the 3rd round). Everything from here, is gravy. We won 9-1 with three homeruns, one of them hit by The Youngest. Ahhhhhh. 'Night.
Another Update (Thursday 6/15): On the back of the t-shirt is a crossed bat emblem with the program's name. On the front it says: 2006 Spring League Champions. I will wear one to work tomorrow. We went to the Mellow Mushroom for pizza and beverages after the game. We sat on the terrace and the team we beat sat inside. They shared with us their leftover cake. All is right with the world. We were the Marlins.
We won one for Fish.
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