Sandi Kahn Shelton

I’ve been home from paradise for three days now, and I’m still peaceful.

Amazing.

But allow me to explain. A friend of mine turned 50, and instead of just turning to drink and despair as so many of us do at such a milestone, she decided to invite friends of hers to a four-day celebration at a destination spa here in Connecticut.

It was snowing lightly when we set out at the beginning of last week. I was frantic with To Do lists, uncertainties, anxieties and all the rest of that stuff that I carry around most of the time. (I know that good writing demands that I should mention what some of the anxieties are, but to tell you the truth, I can’t much remember them anymore.) I do remember that I barely got out of the house on time to meet the car that pulled up in my driveway to take me there, and that papers and books were flying behind me as I settled in.

But then we drove for an hour and a half through the Connecticut countryside, and then something almost surreal happened. I got there and actually felt an incredible calm come over me.

At first the calm seemed to come from the beauty of the place: huge, welcoming rooms with deep, white chaise longues and soft, knitted afghans. There were floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over snowy fields and a pond lined with evergreen trees draped with snow, and an almost blue, calm sunset shining glowing. There were fresh flowers. Cups of tea, with little triangle silk tea bags and white china cups. Soft music. (I am a sucker for silk tea bags and fresh flowers. And those, combined with a sunset over a snowy field, knock me the hell out…and add to that a chaise with an afghan, and I’m gone, just GONE.)

Everything just felt soft suddenly. As though I’d come to the place where I was meant to be right then.

And then I met the other women, and I realized over the four days that the best part was NOT the perfection of the rooms, the amazing food, or even the wonderful massage treatments and classes in stress relief and hypnotherapy. The best part was the fact that there were 30 women there, all of whom were kind and fascinating and funny and REAL.

Over the four days, we all wore warmup clothing supplied by the spa, and no makeup. And we talked, in both large and small groups, over meals and tucked into corners of the spa and while we swam in the pool or steamed in the warm aromatherapy room. Talked about husbands and kids and jobs and childhood and aging and…well, everything. Real estate. Politics and sex and anxieties. The past. The future. What we’d like to do. We laughed and drank wine and tea and ate amazing food (healthy and delicious, both), and nobody said mean things like, “What did you mean by THAT?” or “Let me tell you why I’m the most important person in the universe.”

Nobody said, “You could really stand to lose a few pounds” or “Why would you ever wear your hair that way?” like sometimes they slip up and say back in real life. 

Everywhere was peace and quiet, an indescribable feeling of having come to the perfect place. It wasn’t like not knowing there weren’t worries; it was the feeling of standing aside from them and knowing they couldn’t swamp you.

The days loped along. I did things I hadn’t done before, drifted in a kind of shelter of myself. And then one day it was time to come home.

I thought coming home would be a shock, but it wasn’t. Maybe I’m just unwilling to give up this feeling. Nothing seems worth giving over this happiness.

Maybe I’m still hypnotized into believing that life can be sweet. Just in case, though, I picked up a little rock I found on the ground outside the place, tucked under the snow. When this blissful feeling starts to wear off, I’m thinking I can hold this little rock and remember some of the feeling.

Or maybe I’ll just go buy some tea in little triangle silk tea bags. That could work, too.   

It is the last day of the year, which is as good a time as any to look at the present moment.

So here it is: a moment.

It’s 1:45 on a Monday afternoon, and I am sitting at my desk in the family room, with my laptop in front of me, and I am listening to a Nellie McKay song called “Gladd.” I just heard an interview with her on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross while I was in the car, and so I came home and downloaded some of her songs on iTunes. (When my New Year’s resolutions kick in tomorrow, I will not be downloading quite so many songs on iTunes.) I’ve just realized that this song is from someone who died–it’s kind of a hymn of comfort, the type of thing a dead person might want to say to those left behind…and since this has been a year in which a lot of people close to me died, it seems particularly fitting to listen to right now. You can listen to it for free on the npr website…here’s the link, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6719830, and then you click on Listen. (I promise you: it’s not a sad song. It’s really beautiful and comforting.)

Anyway, back to the moment. (This is why I can never be a Buddhist; I can’t stay in any one moment.)

It’s now 2:26, and I’m just back from making a pot of white needle tea, which is wonderful–warm, light and delicious. The dog is stretched out asleep next to me, but you can see by his flickering eyelids that he’s not deeply asleep. His feeding time is officially 4 o’clock, but he gets ready by 2, and so any time I shift in my chair, he comes to hopeful attention.

Outside it is sunny although we were supposed to have a snowstorm today, so the sky–which is a delicate egg-shell blue with little white wispy clouds–seems like a particular blessing today. One of my children is snowed in in Boston; another had snow yesterday in Pennsylvania, and the third has gone off to meet New Year’s Eve in New York City. The house still looks like a post-Christmas apocalyptic catastrophe. I managed to get the wrapping paper out of here for the garbage pickup today, but there are still stockings lying around, looking indolent and self-satisfied, and a few stray boxes that should either go up to the attic or politely out with next week’s trash.

If I were to make a list of all the things I should be doing, it would be long indeed.

• I should be interviewing the subject of my next newspaper story, a 16-year old boy who will tell me why he believes exercise saves him. (I did try to call him; he’s not home. No doubt he’s out being saved by exercise right now.)

• I should call Jennifer and Stacy and Alice and Butch and wish them all Happy New Year, because it’s been too long since I’ve checked in with the extended family, and I would actually LOVE hearing what they’re all doing.

• I need to make an appetizer for the New Year’s Eve party we’re going to tonight with friends. While I was upstairs waiting for the tea to brew, I read the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook and thought for a long, hard moment about launching into a huge cooking project, and then decided, “Nah. I’ll go buy some shrimp and make shrimp cocktail. Everybody likes that, and why wreck the moment of being alone in the house listening to music by myself?”

• I could do laundry. I think it’s been weeks.

• Empty the dishwasher–those dishes in there have been clean for a few days, I think.

•  Go the gym and see if exercise saves ME.

• Send out Christmas cards, which now would be called New Year’s cards and may yet have to turn into valentines.

• Make some more New Year’s resolutions, along the same lines as STOP DOWNLOADING ITUNES.

But you know something? This day is just too marvelous the way it is. Just a perfect moment in time–the heater roaring softly, the music, the taste of the tea, the knowledge that soon I’ll have to go out and buy shrimp and cocktail sauce. I will go back to reading my novel and making the last little tweaks, the last Ridding of the Adverbs as I think of it.

Nellie McKay is singing her last line: “It’s been a long time coming, but all the pain has passed and there is peace.”

To all of you who stop by for a visit, Happy New Year…and may 2008 bring you much joy and peace.

Bloglily has asked her readers to send in pictures of where we all do our writing. And people have sent in photos of the most inspiring spots: library carrels, desks at home that are surrounded by bookshelves, lovely neat surfaces and comfy looking chairs.

Here’s my entry. I spent the day today sitting right here in my living room, curled up on the couch, propped against the pillows with that red throw over my shoulders and the laptop warming my lap. Even so, today it was so cold and the window behind me so leaky that there were times when my hair was actually blowing in the breeze. See the beautiful flowers on the table? They’re from Valentine’s Day, and they smell wonderful. I kept stopping to sniff them. And to drink more of the pot of Earl Grey tea I had made.

Many days lately I work at Starbucks, sitting in an armchair by the window, where the sun shines in so brightly that I feel quite comfortable drinking venti black iced tea with extra ice, over and over again. Sometimes the only moving around I do is to go and order a refill. Writing at Starbucks works for me because there is enough background noise to keep me focusing on what I’m doing–and yet there is nothing there that I’m in charge of or that needs cleaning, so I have no excuse for getting up and doing other things.

Still, today it was nice to be at home, just the dog and me. It was too cold for him to want to go in and out, in and out, in and out. We were both happy just to sit under the blanket and think about our work. (My work is a book; his work is tearing up a stuffed snowman that he loves.) At four, I got up and made carrot soup and a loaf of bread, and then came back to work. That pile of papers on the end of the couch is my novel.

I woke up, stark raving awake, at five o’clock this morning, even though I didn’t go to bed until close to 1 a.m. And now it is after 10 p.m., and although I feel a little slowed down–perhaps even patently stupid–that could just be because I have a head cold.

Lately sleep seems to be an overrated thing. I can’t imagine why I used to love it so much. There was a time in my life when I even considered myself something of a championship recreational sleeper–during those endless decades when the children were small. I fantasized about it, craved it, talked about it nonstop, and was often in danger of falling asleep in the bathtub or while the car was stopped at traffic lights.

But now–ehh. It seems frankly like a big waste of time, a whole desert wasteland of time, actually–when there is a book that wants to get written, and other people’s blogs and books that want to be read, and, yes, even a nice alpaca silk scarf that I am knitting in the event that winter shows up.

Turns out that not sleeping is a pretty good idea, according to a a great blog I found, written by BlogLily. She has discovered an early 20th century self-help book, Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, and she gets bits of it emailed to herself each day from a service called Daily Lit, which, as she says, will slice up great books for you (the ones that aren’t under copyright anymore and so can be sliced up) and email them to you in tiny, daily packages.

Bennett, back in 1925, believed that the human race sleeps far too much and would be much improved if it would get itself out of bed earlier and get to work improving itself. But according to his research, most people won’t even try to get up at 5 a.m. because there are no servants around at that hour to make them tea.

I must admit that I did notice this morning that there was a distinct lack of people wanting to make my tea for me, and it was disturbing, although not unusual at my house. I could have slept in until nine, and that situation would have remained the same.

And because most of my tens of readers have confessed to me that they refuse to click on the little blue words that mean there’s something good elsewhere for them to read, I am going to re-create what BlogLily said, when she was quoting from Arnold Bennett, so here goes: 

Surely, my dear sir, in an age when an excellent spirit-lamp (including a saucepan) can be bought for less than a shilling, you are not going to allow your highest welfare to depend upon the precarious immediate co-operation of a fellow creature! Instruct the fellow creature [in my case, I suppose this would be my husband], whoever she may be, at night. Tell her to put a tray in a suitable position over night. On that tray two biscuits, a cup and saucer, a box of matches and a spirit-lamp; on the lamp, the saucepan; on the saucepan, the lid– but turned the wrong way up; on the reversed lid, the small teapot, containing a minute quantity of tea leaves. You will then have to strike a match–that is all.

“In three minutes the water boils, and you pour it into the teapot (which is already warm). In three more minutes the tea is infused. You can begin your day while drinking it. These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the thoughtful they will not seem trivial. The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.”

And now from Blog Lily herself (and you really may want to click on these blue words because it really is a very wonderful site with lots more interesting things to say):

I’d like to repeat this and put it in bold italics because it strikes me as the most important thing I’ve heard yet this year: The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

I am too tired now to offer anything more than a silent, sibilant YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Before my head falls onto the keyboard.