Breathing Lessons

Friday, August 2, 2013 – Breathing Lessons

Note to self:  Remember to leave time to breathe.  I seem to have forgotten how important this is.  The past week or so has been a frenzy of activity, and I’ve allowed it to send my brain spinning in a vortex that I can’t seem to escape.  Last night, although it was nearly midnight when I went to bed, I couldn’t shut my mind down enough to fall asleep until several hours had passed.   

Here’s a sample of what’s been going on recently: dining out with family and friends; making Restaurant Week reservations for DC; arranging for a New York trip later in the month; practicing with the temple choir (I sing with the tenors!); registering for fall classes at GMU (anthropology and art history); listening to Benjamin Grosvenor play the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap Park; cooking up summer favorites (sweet potato salad with roasted red pepper vinaigrette; French lentil salad with chevre; lemon-blueberry bread pudding) for family visitors; planning an engagement party for Elisa and Christian and learning to send invitations electronically; chanting the Torah portion and the Haftarah at Beth El; reading fiction and non-fiction (of the 5 books I read in July, I’d like to recommend Doc, Sugar in the Blood, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks).  All of these are activities that I enjoyed, but maybe the pace has gotten too intense.  Summer is supposed to be a more relaxed time, isn’t it? 

I’ve tried.  When I wake up, I listen to the birds singing outside my window.  When I go out in the morning, I look up at the clouds drifting slowly across the sky.  On my walks on the nearby path through the woods, I can lose myself in the random riotous beauty of summer at its peak.  I notice the tangled vines of berries sunning themselves, the Queen Anne’s lace caught up like giant snowflakes in a sea of green, the tulip poplar wannabes sprouting on the forest floor.  Then I go back inside, gulp down a glass of water, and get caught up in the dizzying spiral of the day.  I consider it a challenge to get as much done as possible in a 24-hour period.  Instead of being grateful when I see a blank space on my calendar, I panic and try to fill it.  So, now that I’ve identified the problem, how am I going to solve it?  

Picnic at Wolf Trap before the NSO concert