The Purpose of Laundry

My friend, Judith, walked the Camino last summer, and she’s doing it again this summer. One Friday morning, Judith said she had a favor to ask me.

I perked up. Being asked to do a favor is a gift. Suddenly you feel of use, connected, capable. Someone feels secure enough in your friendship to ask something of you and you can DO SOMETHING for them.

“My Camino shirt – the one I wore every day – has a stain. I want to wear it again this time, but I can’t with that stain,” she said.

“I can do this! Laundry, a stain – I am a master launderer! I get out stains! I can rescue your shirt!” I practically leaped over the table in eagerness.

Indescribable joy flooded me. Just that morning, I’d been struggling through my Third Third search for Purpose, my relentless but unsuccessful quest for the Overarching Theme that would leave me feeling satisfied with my contribution to the world.

Now I had a Mission: clean Judith’s shirt!

My mother taught me how to do laundry in a very specific way. When I went off to college and discovered kids who just threw their whole load of laundry into the machine, I was appalled. My mother taught me to separate my load into three batches: whites; coloreds that take cold water because they’re nice; and dark coloreds that take hot water because they’re dirtier and tougher. Whites take bleach plus powdered detergent; coloreds take All plus Wisk on the collars and stains.

Over the years, I have modified somewhat. Last year, Wisk was discontinued. (Thankfully, my mother was no longer aware of this.) I added OxiClean to the stain-removal procedures, as well as Ivory bar soap. (After washing my face once with Ivory soap and having raw skin for weeks, I decided it was tough enough for laundry. It’s also the only thing that gets acrylic paint out of brushes and palettes.)

I rubbed Judith’s stain with Ivory and put it to soak in OxiClean. It looked gone, but I rubbed more Ivory soap on it, rinsed it, congratulated myself, and hung it up to dry. Oh, no! The stain was still there! This would take more work. After repeating all the steps, I used my specially-designated laundry toothbrush for the Ivory soap rubbing. I put my Wisk-replacement on it, and put it in the laundry.

Victory!

Tomorrow I will worry again about my Overarching Theme and Purpose; but today I added a little bit to the world’s happiness quotient and can let satisfaction seep in.

Way more than a drop in the bucket

Let me tell you about Shirley Mae. She sings, she acts, she organizes. She travels, she tells stories, she makes things happen. You would think she doesn’t have time to sit down for a minute, but I’m lucky because she does that with us most Friday mornings.

Shirley’s written a children’s book, produced and acted in a play, is now bringing the Hiland Mountain Lullaby Project to women in prison. She ran an after-school program (and ended up taking the kids on a dream trip to Ghana). She even ran a chocolate company for a while, producing “affirmations in chocolate.” Last week, Shirley held such a great cross-cultural summer camp for kids that now adults want one.

My brain gets tired just running through her list.

A few weeks ago, Shirley turned 70, a reason for her to organize another event with purpose in the world. So she gathered folks together to sew 70 dresses for young girls in Africa. Shirley’s done this before – last time, she sent 78 dresses on. This batch is going to Uganda with the nieces of friends.

Let me tell you about that day: it was a Role Model Day. There were so many good things about it, so many things to emulate, to try to bring into our own lives. I walked into the Cooperative Extension building to a bustle of activity. Over there was the donated fabric, already cut and sized. In the back were the ironing boards. Along the walls were sewing machines. In the middle were cutting tables, mats.

And everywhere were people working, talking, giving directions, laughing, and learning. Who are these people? They are the lucky people who have somehow intersected with Shirley somehow in her life. Some know her from singing in choirs, some know her from travels, some from helping her on writing projects, cross-cultural activities, or music. In 70 years of relentless community-building efforts, she’s met a lot of people. I wasn’t sure how all the champion Kenyan distance runners ended up in the group, but Shirley says they’re helping her organize the Anchorage Cultural Summit for September. (See, she never stops…)

So why was I there? Well, I know how to sew, making a little dress would be a New Thing, it would be social, it would be helpful. I’d just run the Run for Women that morning so I was already feeling virtuous.

Kate and I arrived at the same time so we got instructions together. By folding two varieties of fabric together in an odd little burrito, one seam made a tube. When we pulled the tube inside out, we had a dress with trim along the bottom. It was pretty nifty. Elastic along the top, seam binding along the armholes, and we had a little sleeveless dress with ties.

Well, okay, I cut my armholes in the wrong place so my little bottom trim morphed into a little bodice on top instead. No problem, said the helper women, and they were right.

Soon the finished dresses piled high while the fabric pile dwindled. Sherrie was taking counts; we’d hit 70 with some people finishing more at home. I even took the materials to make another.

Yesterday, I finished that second dress. Since I already knew what I was doing, I whipped it out in 90 minutes. Then I hung it on a hanger and admired it for about an hour. I’ll give it to Shirley Friday.

What’s the moral to this story? This is a “drop-in-the-bucket-story,” a “little acorn” story. Many times I pass on little acorns in my quest for purpose. I think, What does that do really for income inequality? For fighting racism? For peace in the Middle East?

Shirley doesn’t pass on little acorns; she plants them. She made sure there was fabric, elastic cut to size, seam binding cut to size, sewing machines, irons. She didn’t do it herself; she enlisted people who were glad to help. She put out the word. Maybe every one of us only made a dress or two, but 70 dresses are going to Africa. And all those people sewing and talking, laughing and learning, were experiencing each other happily and productively. We learned new skills (one guy learned the serger!), met new people, had a good time.

Next time Shirley calls, we’ll feel even more motivated to say yes.

That’s the point, right?

Post-Vacation Blues

Re-entry is hard.

Really hard.

I got home and saw the mountain of a month of mail – junk, magazines, bills, newsletters. I sagged under the weight of it, both literally and spiritually. The junk is easy; it’s the “do-something-with” pile that overwhelms me. The renew-my-membership or this-is-your-new-PIN or please-switch-to-automatic-deposit or look-through-the-catalog-because-the-30-year-old-sheets-finally-died. Or the simple but overwhelming pile: “read me.”

 And I’m not even talking about doing the taxes.

Then I looked around the house. Tim had cleaned, vacuumed, swept, laundered, put away for the summer, all that. He was great. (It may have all happened the day before I returned; I’ll never know.) But there were still things I needed to do. Chores, maintenance, obligations.

Not to mention confronting the need to GET IN SHAPE for the Chilkoot Trail hike.

There was the thrill of the Defiant Requiem, but then…. My life felt like the mountainous pile of mail: it had to be endured, chipped away at, slogged through.

Someone said the problem with not working is that you never have “time off.” No weekends; no 5:30, it’s over. But in New York City, I had Vacation. Real vacation. From chores, commitments, mail. All I had were interesting things waiting for me to pursue them, enjoy them, plan more of them.

Remember when getting mail was a treat? You’d race to the mailbox to get there first? When I was about ten, I wrote to every airline, asking for their calendar. I got spectacular calendars with glorious pictures from around the world; I lived for the mailman.

Same with the phone. It rang and you were electrified with possibility.

Now? Oh, yuck.

In New York City, I lived with the six shirts I brought, the three pairs of pants. Instead of all my paints and art supplies, I had nine colors, three pencils. Dinner was two bowls, a fork and spoon, one glass. Back home, I have a closet and a dresser of clothes, a kitchen of dishes and equipment, a pantry of supplies. An office of paper, bookshelves of books.

I wanted to fire bomb my house.

I think of myself as a high-functioning depressive. I don’t lie around in bed; I do get moving. But it doesn’t seem to influence my mood. Recognizing that fire bombing the house was a tad extreme, I started Getting Rid of Stuff. I have moved out planters, jars, knick-knacks. I am eying everything with venom: “You are crowding my life: Get Out!”

But that’s not it really.

The “it really” is my life. This Third Third. I still need a theme, an overarching purpose, and I don’t know what that is. New York City proved I could have fun, but when I saw Laura Poitras’ Astro Noise exhibit – just one example – and the life work she’s done on exposing injustice, torture, and surveillance, I think, “That’s valuable, worthwhile, important.”

New York confirmed that I’m a very good “appreciator.” I really, really appreciate all the terrific things other people do.

But right now, the biggest thing crowding my life is me.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to drown you in the Black Hole. But I am still trying to figure all this out, this Third Third business. (Someone once told me he’d never heard the expression “figure it out” so much till he met me….)

Okay, the mood has broken: I’m back.

Go to school for an eye-opening jolt

I am in my Third Third and I had a major eye-opening jolt last week. Right here in Anchorage. Right in an elementary school. I’m still reeling.

I read the newspaper. I have been involved in fighting for school funding. I have lots of teacher friends. I have volunteered a lot in the schools. I know that Anchorage’s school kids speak 93 different languages, that our census tracts are the most diverse in the country.

And then I walked into my friend Dawn’s class to teach writing, and half the class is somewhat monolingual in a language other than English.

Just think about this. Not about how lovely the cultural celebrations might be, how rich the heritage of the kids are. Think about the reality of teaching a classroom of 27 children where half of them don’t speak the language. Think about being the dedicated teacher trying to reach each child where they are so they can grow from that point.

I went from kid to kid, saw that some put two words to the page, some whole paragraphs. Some were into the creativity, some were tortured by the task. They were all trying so hard, but they each needed individual attention. And Dawn is one person.

Dawn is a superlative teacher who used to teach gifted kids. She elected, in her Third Third, to teach in a Title I school. She loves those kids, and she has the personal presence to command their attention, the skills to guide them. She tutors till 5, takes professional development classes on Saturday, makes home visits. And yet, when we got together to talk about this, she still cried because it isn’t enough.

The kids in her classroom speak Lao, Tagalog, Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Yup’ik, Hmong, and Twi (the language of Ghana). Four of them are special ed students. The parents are hard-working immigrants; while there is little generational poverty here, there is hardship. But the parents are pulling for their kids, supporting the school. 25 of 27 came to parent conferences, several families come to parent education classes twice a week at the school.

There is a bilingual tutor and an English Language Learner teacher – for a half-hour a day. The special ed students get two hours a day. There’s a student teacher, a family coordinator for the school, and a staff that Dawn says gives 110% of themselves to the kids. If a kid was lucky enough to get into one of the Title I Preschool spaces, he’s way ahead.

But there are 27 kids in Dawn’s classroom. If she spent ten minutes with each one individually, more than half her school day would be over. The successful third grader is supposed to be able to read 120 words a minute. One in Dawn’s class can read 6.

I’ve gone to language immersion courses in Spanish and Hebrew. Teaching methods have improved where fluency can be picked up pretty quickly, even for adults. Could we do things differently? Could we put kids in some sort of intensive English-language school and then release them to their local school? Or do we just throw them to the Dawns of the district and mandate that “every child will make a year’s growth wherever they are”?

Dawn loves science and social studies. She says that’s where students really engage, but with the emphasis on reading and math, she can barely get to that. “Well,” I asked, “isn’t the new curriculum supposed to focus more on nonfiction so kids can get that?” Well, yes, but the textbooks are so old, they are falling apart. There’s no money for curriculum so the district distributes a “grade level story” every week. They’re supposed to spend a half-hour on it every day.

If you’re like me, by now you’re wracked, too. I wasn’t living in a vacuum. I consider myself well-informed; I teach at the Literacy Program, know the dedication of our immigrants, know how smart they are in their own language. But I never saw the reality of 27 kids with such tremendous educational needs in one classroom.

Dawn is an optimist. She’s one of the happiest people I know. She wants everyone to see the reality of her classroom – school board members, people who vote, potential volunteers. Not like I did at first, when I looked from the outside at this “mini United Nations” and marveled at how engaged the kids seemed.

Come in as a volunteer instead, and work with the kids. (I discovered my friend Barbara there, volunteering to help kids read twice a week.) Dawn wants her classroom flooded with volunteers. That’s the one-on-one chance these kids need. The English learner needs help across his language barrier, but don’t forget: other kids need relief from the slower pace of the classroom, the chance to open up on the highway.

Volunteering is not my usual exhortation for social impact. I’m more about mobilizing, voting, and pounding on legislators for funding, but I am about eye-opening jolts.

No matter where you are, there are kids needing help in a school. And no matter where you are in your Third Third, helping that kid adds Purpose to both your lives.

Profiles in Third Thirds: Cindy

I ran into Cindy at our college reunion while I was harassing everyone with my question, “What are you doing in your Third Third?” Cindy handed me her business card – for her photography. For more than 30 years, she’d been a lawyer.

Now she’s readying things for her first solo exhibition at the UCLA Fowler Museum. One of her photographs was also just selected for the Metro card when the Expo line opens in 2016 in Santa Monica! (My transit-lover side thrills at this!) You can see her incredible photos at www.cindybendat.com.

So I thought, great, I’ll have Cindy tell her story of switching from a legal career to photography. But it’s not like that at all. For one thing, it’s not like Cindy discovered photography in her Third Third. It’s not a New Thing at all.

“One of my most interesting photographs is of Mick Jagger – taken with my trusty Instamatic when I was 12 years old!” *

Cindy took photography classes in high school and college and later joined a local group of photographers, but while she was working as a lawyer, she did most of her photography when she traveled. (Her friends got to see the slide shows.) Digital photography meant learning a whole new, more technical world, so she’s still taking classes.

As Cindy puts it, she and I were “cause people” in college and in our jobs. So she’s still a “cause person” as a photographer. One section of her exhibition is called “Legalize L.A.” It’s “documentary photographs of immigrant rights/amnesty demonstrations in downtown L.A. with what will be a clear pro-legalization message in an election year.”

If she were just a lawyer and then just a photographer, this might be a story about switching careers. But it’s not. When Cindy tells you what else she’s been doing with her life, it’s almost overwhelming. A Santa Monica resident, she served on the Santa Monica Pier Board, and she worked with others to save the palm trees in her neighborhood and to save an anti-war political art sculpture from destruction. Now she’s hoping to shut down the hazardous Santa Monica Airport and convert that public land into a beautiful park.

Being involved in so many other causes not only made her life interesting, it left her standing on many legs. Thinking about it this way, Cindy readied herself for ultimately leaving her job by having so many other things going. One leg could be removed, and the table would still stand.

Despite that, there are still some things that go when the steady job ends. I, too, have had a lot of “gigs” going, but steadiness – and all the things that go with it – disappears when the one bigger job ends. For some, it’s the paycheck or health insurance, sometimes the access to a professional world. Cindy misses the staff camaraderie and her clients.

“I thought that my longstanding interests would sustain me, and to some extent that has been true, but there are times projects have ended, and I’ve needed to figure out what is next in order to find meaning in how I spend my time.”

As she puts it – talking about the Big Three – “While I don’t always have Structure, I do have Purpose and Community.”

Like the rest of us, she also has aging parents, house repair stuff, and errands. But she also loves to travel, and with many years of photographing cultures and festivals around the world, her destinations have become “more and more obscure.” But as she says,

“It is also possible to travel and experience vibrant cultures while at home in L.A. because of the extraordinary diversity of the people who live here. It’s just a matter of choosing to explore.”

“It’s just a matter of choosing to explore.” Yup.

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* Cindy was on a boat to Copenhagen when she spotted Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and got their autographs. Her brother yelled “Mick,” he turned, and she snapped the photo. She was that close! Trust me, that photo would make any Third Third woman sigh….

Best thing since sliced bread

One of the pleasures of being on my own schedule is that I get to volunteer on my own schedule, too. I’d been involved with the Alaska Literacy Program for years, mainly because of the old “teach a person to fish” idea. Giving people the tools to forge their own self-sufficient futures seems to me to be the way to go, and literacy is a natural. But I’d never actually tutored or taught a class.

Until I unemployed myself.

I started as a substitute, teaching writing for a couple of weeks. Then I took on a whole class on Idioms. They gave me a book with lessons and a classroom with students. We did a whole bit on anger: hit the roof, blow my top, go off the deep end, see red.

And then every now and then, there was an idiom on the list that I didn’t get: “take out the garbage.” Why was that an idiom? And then you realize, as you’re working with people whose first language is not English, that “take” usually means you get something and keep it. We take seconds on dessert. But we don’t hold onto our garbage; we dispose of it. So in that case, “take” is different, an idiom.

Oh, I love words!

Sometimes, when I’d give an assignment, I’d tell the class they had to come to class no matter what, no chickening out. “Chickening out?”

This was proving to be a lot of fun. Literacy Program students are committed adults; they are there because they want to learn, to become citizens, to be active members of their families and society. I graduated to teaching a whole writing class, and they taught me things, too. When Vilairat had been out collecting devil’s club, she ended up with lots of spines in her legs. She came into class with banana peels wrapped around her legs. I was skeptical … until the remedy showed up in one of my magazines at home.

Now I’m teaching a great class. I have students from Korea, Laos, Mexico, South Sudan, and China, and our book covers things like renting an apartment or visiting a doctor, reading prescription labels, dealing with emergencies. Yesterday, Sophia (who knows Chinese medicine and is preparing to apply for the test to be qualified to practice) told us that tofu and flour, mashed into a paste, is good for burns.

We have spent a lot of time recently on using the present perfect tense: I have eaten, you have danced. While I might use it because it sounds right to my ear, I have to provide the rules to help my students develop the ear. It reminds me of when I lived in Costa Rica, taking Spanish. After a while, when I finally mastered the subjunctive (I wish I were…), someone told me that made a big difference, that before I’d only spoken Tarzan Spanish: “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” I couldn’t tell. Even now, I wouldn’t feel the jarring it would give to a native speaker’s ear.

This is hard work. Rosario, from Mexico, was reading about elevating a wound. But pronunciation is tricky: this is wound like “woooond,” not like “wound around.” Rosario’s daughter goes to preschool down the hall while Rosario is in class, and she’s adorable.

We look at complex pictures of things going on and try to explain them in English. In the department store, a shopper had fallen asleep in a chair in the furniture department while a man checked the price tag. “No,” said Sophia, “that isn’t a price tag. That’s the controls. It’s a massage chair; that’s why she fell asleep.”

That one really had us laughing. Maybe you had to be there. In fact, you can be there. The Literacy Program is always looking for more teachers, and the staff gives lots of help and support. I am valued as a volunteer, and walking in the door is like walking into an oasis of pleasant, positive, meaningful activity. If one of the Big Three for a Third Third is Purpose, I get that. The fun is just gravy (an idiom).

Save the World ... from goose poop

When I first unemployed myself, I was looking for Save the World kind of endeavors. I thought that I would be valuable as a mature person to do something heroic. Like, if there were still voter registration drives in the South, that’s what I’d do. As it was, all I could think of was lying down in front of bulldozers in the West Bank, protecting olive trees and residences. That idea just didn’t get the needed traction….

So my next Big Idea was to establish a mobile long-term contraception van, like the ones that do mammograms. Sophie had awakened me to the idea of long-term – like 5 years! – contraception, and I thought, Wow, wouldn’t that make a difference in the lives of some women! And if the problem is access to the clinic, then the van could go around where the women are and provide this service.

Way back, I started volunteering with adult literacy, feeling bad for adults who missed out on learning to read. But eventually I felt that it would be best to intervene before they fell so far behind, so I started teaching at the university and volunteering in elementary classrooms. Then I started doing storytimes for preschoolers. But even that wasn’t early enough: I spent the last 5+ years working in early childhood, the formative years from birth to 5.

And you know what? That isn’t soon enough.

So I was hot for this mobile contraception van. When Colorado provided free long-term contraception, the teenage birth rate fell 40% and abortions fell 42%. Is that incredible! Think of the time this gave young women to get themselves on track. Think what better mothers they could be!

I was ready to Make This Happen. I even set up a meeting with people who could be part of something like this. They were into it. And then … I ran out of steam. My disinterest ho-hum paralysis hit. I don’t know if it was the perception that it was too big or if it would mean doing the outreach and project management I wasn’t wanting to do anymore or if I was somehow de-energized. I just drooped. That was the blah period which made me very worried about my Third Third. Would I stay like this forever?!?

Eventually, I got myself motivated. (If nothing changes, nothing changes.) I looked around for a replacement Big Idea and said, “What could I do that needs to be done, is do-able in manageable bites, and that nobody else seems to be fixing?”

That’s when I looked at the vile, filthy cesspool that the geese have turned Cuddy Family Midtown Park into. The geese are eroding the pond banks. They’re disgusting, combative, and constantly pooping. Goose shit covers the paths. And people keep feeding them! I said, “I can start to get this pile of goose shit fixed.”

Fortunately, on just my second fact-finding mission, I met Cherie with the Anchorage Waterways Council. Cherie’s big concern is the water pollution. Did you know that the pond at Cuddy Park has about 400 times the amount of E. coli you’d want in a place where people played around the water?

So slowly but surely, we’re assembling knowledgeable folks who can take a stab at this blight. Some people are wild life people worried about the health of the birds. Others are parks people who worry about the yuck factor and the erosion of the banks. Others are public information people who want to get people to stop feeding the waterfowl. And everyone’s worried about airplanes.

This is one thorny issue. I had no idea the Cuddy Park pond problem began as the solution to the Spenard flooding problem (the Law of Unintended Consequences…) So forget about “do-able in manageable bites.” More like “chew-able in manageable bites.”

Ha, it might have been easier to get a contraception van.

Profiles in Third Thirds: Sherry

Sherry and I have been friends since high school. Last summer, she and her husband quit, retired, sold their house, and moved to their cabin in the Yosemite area. When Sherry read my blog, she sent me a note with phrases like this:

“I learned that I love and need a schedule of activities to help me organize my days.”

“I learned that I need to be around other women and I need to exercise!”

“I also need to be around children and help in a classroom!”

Uh, oh, I can read between the lines: all that learning meant Sherry had figured out life wasn’t so good without those things. Sure enough, she said they’d never really planned any of this to happen, but when the ball started rolling, it went unexpectedly fast, and she found herself without “a job, a schedule of daily events, or close friends to hang out with…. After retiring and moving, there was an abrupt halt after a life of movement. I did visit … friends and we also did some traveling, but when we were home all day, I was lonely. I didn't know exactly what I needed or wanted.”

Sherry had been a much in-demand tutor and had a very full schedule. Now she was asking, “What should I be doing? What is my purpose?”

Oh, she and her husband had spent the last year “getting our lives in order: our cabin, our finances, our cars, our travel, our health insurance, our digital & paper files, our photos, our old clothes, our furniture, our recreation, ad nauseum!”

So cleaning out the detritus of our lives doesn’t count as purpose…. But this is a very happy story because Sherry discovered Silver Sneakers!

Silver Sneakers is a gym class “with a boisterously funny and warmly welcoming group of women our age. Talking to the women in the silver sneakers class taught me a lot about the area, like shopping, hiking, swimming at the high school, local events, and that, in turn made my life richer.”

She’s now working with a personal trainer and filed an application to volunteer in a kindergarten class. “We bought kayaks and go out to explore our lake in the early morning before the boats are allowed to tow skiers, between 7 and 8 am. At the top of one of the tallest trees is a huge eagle’s nest and sometimes we get to see the mother and baby eagles up there.”

What a happy Third Third story! Is there a Silver Sneakers in your life?

When Structure Goes

When I quit my job, I torpedoed structure. Left to my own devices, I’d get involved with something and stay up all night. I’d have commitments, contracts, or meetings, and I’d do them just fine; but the rest of the time, I was a free agent. Nothing was “fixed” and there was no regular schedule. I did something because I felt like it, not because it was routine. In the beginning, this was joyful, glorious freedom.

When my book club read Daily Rituals: How Artists Work; everyone shared the daily rituals of their lives, and I cringed. There was nothing routine about my days. But instead of feeling liberated and free, I was beginning to feel erratic and unstable. My sleep hygiene was a mess, and I tended to drift aimlessly between being and not being in the mood to do this or that. Sometimes I ran in the morning, sometimes in the evening. I always ate breakfast, but sometimes that was at 9 a.m. and sometimes at 2 p.m. While other people might think it was the sign of a free spirit, I knew it was courting craziness.

I told my book club, “I believe the absence of routine in ordering my day is really thinly-veiled absence of self-discipline. So I did something I ‘didn’t feel like’ yesterday … and it was just fine. Then I stayed up till 1 a.m. to give me back the part of the day I’d relinquished.”

I enrolled in an art class that met twice a week and had demanding homework. That helped in many ways – and I’ll write about that more – but doing art with deadlines for projects means you’re still pushing the sleep hygiene envelope. Or maybe that’s just me; everything pushes my sleep hygiene envelope. I’d charge ahead highly motivated, get stuff done, and then walk around spacey and sleepy getting nothing done.

While I was flailing around uselessly, I came across a newspaper article which quoted Ernie Zelinsky, author of The Joy of Not Working. In the article, he said, “There are three big needs jobs provide that people have to put back into their lives in retirement….” I’ll call them the Big Three, and I’ll write about them a lot more:

That’s it! I knew structure was an issue for me. Even back at college, I learned to sign up for the breakfast plan so I “had to” get up at 8 a.m. And when I was finishing my thesis and worked part-time, I worked 8-10 a.m. and then 1-4 p.m. It was my way of imposing structure on my days.

But now, with no external source of structure (job, driving kid to school, etc.), I was rootless. I’d sit in the living room free to read a book on an afternoon, but I couldn’t relax. Somehow, without a Time to Go to Work or a Time to Go to Class, I felt like I didn’t have a Time to Relax either. I don’t think it was feeling that relaxation was undeserved, just that it didn’t have a beginning or end. My friend Sherry called it feeling “untethered.”

Yup, that’s the word.