Category: family

change, faith, family, friendship, hope, love

My Year of Hopefulness – Unwitting Angels

Christa Avampato

I believe in guardian angels, divine moments of intervention, and the continuous play between the world we see and the world just beyond our vision. While I do believe that angels walk among us, I also believe that we have the ability, at every moment, to be angels to one another.

In the aftermath of the fire in my apartment building, there is a lot of chaos. I am now dealing with adjusters from my renter’s insurance. (Thank God I have renter’s insurance. If you don’t, please stop reading this post and by it immediately through Liberty Mutual at http://www.libertymutual.com. A $181 annual premium buys you $25,000 worth of coverage with a $500 deductible.) I also have buyer’s protection on my charge card so I need to make an inventory for them so I can be reimbursed for damaged items. I have to find a new place to live. I’ll have to rebuild a stock of personal items.
And you know what? It’s all okay. I am monumentally lucky to be alive and physically unscathed. Much of that is due to the amazing love and support and concern of my friends and family, from people who read my online writing and follow my usually fun antics on Twitter. This is the power of community. This is the power of unwitting angels – people who show up as little rays of light just when we need that light most. It’s always there, it sometimes just takes a different lens of experience to see it.
My friend, Amber, one of my unwitting angels in this situation, has graciously offered me her apartment for the week while she’s out of town. I came to pick up the keys from her, and we got to talking about how incidents like my apartment building fire change our perspective. She thinks I will quickly adopt the policy of “omeletitgo” – I’m just gonna let it all go. From this point forward, all those little frustrations and annoyances that build up in our day to day lives just don’t matter. The physical stuff we accumulate just doesn’t matter. If all goes up in smoke, it doesn’t matter.
All that does matter is kindness. How do we support and love and care for one another in good times and bad? How can we help those in crisis? How can we serve one another to make all of our days a bit easier? How can we all be a part of the global brigade of unwitting angels?
The image above is not my own and can be found here.
family, mother, simplicity

My Year of Hopefulness – My Mother Makes Room

Christa Avampato

“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.” ~ Diana Vreeland

Today my mom began the slow and sometimes painful process of emptying. My mom is an extremely skilled collector, meaning that she never, ever gets rid of anything or anyone. She likes to be surrounded, with things, with people. It gives her comfort and she’s always had in mind that eventually someday she’d get to that magazine, or that book, or that craft project or conversation she was meaning to have. And someday she’ll get to some of them, but truthfully, she won’t ever get through all of it. There is 35 years of stuff in her house and today it was time for a good chunk of that stuff to go.

I’ve been thinking about this process of emptying, wiping the slate clean, and beginning again. It’s a task best done often and thoroughly. It’s amazing what piles up in our homes, lives, and minds. Even in our writing. I’ve tried to approach my own process of emptying with an attitude of elegance. Consider modern design, of anything really. Clean lines, simplicity, removing the unnecessary so the necessary can speak. I’m trying not to think of it as throwing out, but making room to breath and to move.

While on the surface all this emptying sounds like it would be a great relief, as if a huge weight has been lifted from us, I must confess that in some ways it is a bitter sweet relief. My mom had to let go of a lot of memories in order to make that room in her home. She had to recognize that certain parts of her life are gone. It’s a brave thing she did – to let go. There are so many people who never do that, who can never face up to the fact that life is moving by at a very quick pace, and that sometimes there are some things that must be let go of. We can’t possibly hang on to it all.

My mom is an elegant woman – she has handled far more than her fair share of obstacles and disappointments. She’s suffered huge losses of many things and people, losing some after many hard fought struggles, and through it all she worked hard to keep a face of elegance and grace. She got through it by putting her mind in order and saying that right now she just needs to get from A to B, and tomorrow she’ll consider getting to C. We were her first priority always, no matter what, so I guess that made some decisions easier to make. She was never going to do anything that wasn’t good for her kids. She is by every definition an elegant mother.

So now as she enters the autumn of her life with a less full home in every sense, she has the room and space to decide how to place what remains. And though now it may look like there are unnatural holes and pockets, my guess is that she will find a way to make it all fit together. By removing what was no longer needed, she uncovered and rediscovered lost treasures and memories and ideas, things that will enrich her life going forward. It will just take some time to get used to.

childhood, children, family, friendship, love, relationships

My Year of Hopefulness – New Life

Christa Avampato

Today my friends, Alex and Shawn, welcomed a new baby boy into the world. 7 and a half pounds, 19 and a half inches of new, beautiful, perfect, healthy life. Alex and Shawn will be amazing parents. They’re the funniest couple I know. Their love story is one of my favorites. Having met their freshman year of college, they’ve gone through so many life changes, together and apart. After more than a decade together, they remain intensely interested in the other’s interests and they support one another endlessly in all their pursuits. Spending time with them has always made me feel optimistic about the fate of love and marriage.

And now they begin this new piece of their history with a new member of their family. I went to Providence a few weeks ago for the baby shower, and they were both so happy. Though neither of them seemed stressed or worried or afraid. This was just another great event in their lives.

With everything we hear in the news about the difficulty of remaining in love, raising kids, and keeping a marriage strong and healthy, it’s easy to feel like it’s just not possible to have all three. And then I watch Alex and Shawn and realize that marriage and family and love are what you make of them. Too often we imagine that they are entities unto themselves that we have no control over, as if our own feelings of love live outside of us, independent of the rest of our lives. What’s amazing about Alex and Shawn is that their love resides firmly at the center of their lives, while also giving them the confidence and freedom to pursue their own independent ventures, too. It’s really something to behold, especially when you consider how young they were when they first met.

I can say with certainty that their son is one of the luckiest little guys in the world. He has these incredible parents who will provide such a prime example of what love can and should be. I can’t stop smiling when I think about how much happiness he will know in his life. All kids should be so lucky.

The photo above can be found here.

children, education, family, legacy, social work, time

My Year of Hopefulness – Rich in Time

Christa Avampato

“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.” ~Bonnie Friedman

I am obsessed with time. Spending time. Saving time. Wasting time. The perception of time. The concepts of aging and growing and changing over time. And of course, the ultimate time question – how much time do we have left? Time is the only asset we ever truly own because we determine its value and worth.

The aspect of time that intrigues me the most is one I first learned in my college economics classes – leverage. How do I use my time as wisely as possible to do the most good I can? How do I get the maximum impact with the minimum amount time? The odd unintended blessing of losing a parent so young is that I stare my mortality in the face every day. If I want to accomplish everything I want to do, I have to utilize the idea of leverage. Our days pass too quickly, our time is too precious, to start every new idea from scratch.

The point Bonnie Friedman raises in her quote is one that leaves me scratching my head. I am always in a hurry – walking down the street, getting my errands done, eating, writing. I zip through as fast as possible so I can get on to what’s next. Where I struggle is how to enjoy each activity without thinking about what’s next? How can I be in the moment, this moment, every moment, without causing myself unintended stress from hurrying from point A to point B and back again?

My fear is that I’m missing out. I was recently telling my sister, Weez, that I really wanted to do something and her immediate response was, “let’s face it: if you decide you’re really going to do something, you make it happen.” At that point my question to myself was, “at what cost?” The trouble that over-committers like me face is this: how do I say no without feeling guilty? When there are so many people out there who need what we all have to offer, when I see so many ways for me to make things better, how do I decide this thing is important and needs my attention and that one does not?

The education program I’m working on has actually helped me begin to find some answers to these questions. I’ve been kicking around this idea, writing drafts of the white paper, meeting with potential partners, and asking for honest feedback on the idea from friends and colleagues since April. And every time I sit down to work on it, every time the idea even crosses my mind, I get a little jolt of energy and excitement that keeps on growing. The more I work on it, the more alive I feel. I’m so certain I can make a difference in this way, with this curriculum, that there isn’t any way that I can conceive of turning back now. I feel about this project the way that I feel about my writing – it’s becoming a very integral part of who I am.

And maybe that’s the trick. Maybe all our hurrying is caused by our desire to find where we belong. Once we find it, we can enjoy this wealth of unhurried time, as Bonnie Friedman suggests, because there is no ‘next’. We’re here, where we always wanted to be.

My dad was a clinical psychologist and his work was his life. He never felt hurried in his office, at his great mahogany desk surrounded by his books and papers and patients. He loved his studies in that field more than he loved anything. It may have been his only love now that I think of it. In some way, I sort of feel like this education project is helping me understand him, helping me see why his work was so important to him.

His last job before leaving the work force was as a school psychologist in Harlem. I always wondered why he was so eager to hop on a train that took him to the big City to help other kids while my mother was left to work and raise us on her own. Now that I’ve spent some time in public schools in New York, I understand. The problems and challenges are so great, and the opportunity to do something good in that environment is immense. The impact is immediate. Like him, I keep thinking about those tiny faces and those solemn eyes who wanted assurances that I would be back to see them again. He couldn’t let them down. I can’t either.

Though he’s been gone now 17 years, perhaps there is a way for me to still get to know him. Perhaps this drive to do some good in the public schools of New York City is much more than just my way of giving back. And maybe this is some kind of calling that’s coming from afar, some way to continue work, albeit in a different vein, that was begun so many years ago by my dad and the many people who were doing this work long before him. It’s a way to leverage the work of the past to create brighter futures, my own and the kids I hope to help. No hurrying required, and much wealth to gain.

The photo above can be found here.

books, change, family, growth

My Year of Hopefulness – Unaccustomed Earth

Christa Avampato

I’m reading the book Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, a book I’ve been interested for over a year because I was so touched by her last book, The Namesake. Lahiri has a beautiful way of weaving stories between generations and across cultures, identifying and then eloquently writing about her characters thoughts and their often mismatched actions. Her characters are flawed in serious ways, making them so real that after a few pages, we think they are our neighbors, our family members, our friends.

The title “Unaccustomed Earth” intrigues me. Before picking up the book, I thought Lahiri was talking about new and uncharted waters that her characters would take on. This true, with the added twist that the uncharted waters are new challenges taken on by new generations while their hearts, minds, traditions, and families remain firmly rooted in the past. Her main focus in this book is the conflict that arises in a family as the world, physical and emotional, quickly transforms and changes from one generation to the next.

In my home town, people rarely leave. 99% of families are Italian and Catholic, like mine. There are roads named after prominent families in town who have made their homes there for generations. Generations of families live side-by-side, childhood friends remain friends forever, having the same conversations day in and day out. There, time stands still.

My family is a transplant there – neither my mom nor my dad grew up there. My brother is there thought my sister, Weez, and I left as soon as we headed off for college and never looked back. This was an unfamiliar practice – most people who went to college went locally or at least within the state. My sister and I never even considered sticking around. We were off for greener pastures, the same way my mom and dad were when they were young. Maybe finding our own way in the world, away from everything and everyone we knew as kids, is somehow rooted in our genes.

While my mom always wanted us to make our own way, it’s fair to say that she wishes we were all always around, all the time. It must be a hard process to watch someone you brought into the world head out into the unknown to see what they can find. Lahiri’s stories boil down to a common theme: the unknown is frightening, and it’s especially frightening for older generations who watch younger ones take flight in foreign spaces. I imagine it’s the same for my mom – while she wants so much for us to have adventures, she also worries about Weez and I being safe and happy and healthy in a way that she doesn’t worry about my brother.

Lahiri begins her book with a quote that puts her stories in perspective. “Human nature will not flourish…for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil. My children…shall strike their roots in unaccustomed earth. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne.” While the stories mostly talk about conflict between generations, with Hawthorne’s quote she acknowledges that future generations must put down their roots in foreign soil in order for us to move forward, evolve, and lead productive lives. It’s that process of making the unfamiliar familiar that is so critical to our development, and the development of humanity. Adapt and change are the only two things we ever really have to do.

family, gifts, letter, moving, relationships, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – The Things We Keep

Christa Avampato

I’m in the midst of packing up my apartment. I’m amazed at the stuff I’ve got hanging around – old yearbooks, varsity letters from high school, cards, photos, letters, journals, magazine articles I meant to read once upon a time though for the life of me can’t remember why I was interested in reading them in the first place. It’s amazing what we accumulate.

I have two large closets in my front hallway that I have dreaded packing into boxes. I knew it would be a long, arduous process and therefore put it off as long as I could. Finally, I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about packing them up so I just got up out of bed and started the inevitable sorting, tossing, and packing of their contents. Some of the memories they contain are painful, though most of them are happy. And thankfully, the contents are so old that my mind has gleefully erased most of the sadness, loss, frustration, and unhappiness that some of their contents used to trigger, leaving behind only the good memories in their wake.

I got my love for cards and letter writing from my grandmother, Sadie. She sent cards for every occasion from birthdays to Valentine’s Day to Halloween to First Day of School. I found a stack of them in one of the boxes crammed into the top shelf of my closet. I’d know that handwriting anywhere. My grandmother passed away 9 years ago, and still I miss getting those cards in her perfect cursive handwriting.

As I re-read the cards this week, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that I kept them. It’s my own little piece of her that I can always have. I hear her voice through those cards and am reminded of how much she loved me and cherished me. It’s things like these cards that have become my most cherished possessions. They didn’t cost a lot of money and they didn’t take a lot of time to create. Their simplicity and heartfelt emotion are the only gifts I ever really needed.

death, environment, family, home, love, nature

My Year of Hopefulness – Love is all around us

Christa Avampato

Yesterday my friend, Ken, called me with an incredible story that’s too good to keep to myself. Last Fall he lost his mom to a terminal respiratory disease that she had managed for a number of years. Ken was very close to his mom and he’s a rough go of it for the past 6 months. One of his friends gave him a gift certificate to a nearby greenhouse and nursery so he could buy a tree in honor of his mom to plant in his yard.

When Ken was a teenager, Evita had just opened on Broadway and the song “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” was the mot popular song around. Ken’s mom used to crack herself up by changing up the words to “Don’t cry for me Sargent Tina…” She’d sing that all the time, making everyone around her laugh.

Ken was at the nursery yesterday with a friend, choosing a tree to honor his mom. They were specifically looking for a crabapple tree because of their beautiful flowers and found one they really liked. Variety: the Sargent Tina Crabapple. Maybe a coincidence…

Ken and his friend, Linda, get back to Ken’s house and plant the tree in the yard. They place the last shovelful of dirt around the tree and head back inside the house. Just as they get into the house, the song Hold Me Kiss Me Thrill Me was on the radio. That song was the only song Ken’s mother requested for her memorial service when she and Ken were choosing the music while his mom was in hospice. Coincidence, I think not…

Losing people is hard, though experiences like Ken’s remind me that we don’t ever lose the ones we love. They just cross over, and they’ll be there when we cross over, too. We’ll be with them again, and while it’s hard to accept that they don’t exist in the form in which we knew them and loved them, their love is still very much a part of our lives, always. Their love is truly all around us.

The photo above depicts the blossoms of a Sargent Tina Crabapple and is from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2072/3534629428_bef4ba6e37.jpg?v=0.

anthropology, family, history, New York City

My Year of Hopefulness – Liberty and Ellis Islands

Christa Avampato

I went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island today with my friend, Allan. Even though I’ve lived in New York City for so long, I’ve never been to either of these famous landmarks. It’s a visit that was long overdue.

My family came through Ellis Island around the turn of the century. After viewing the many photos and artifacts, I imagined how frightened and alone by ancestors must have felt. They didn’t speak English when they arrived. They got laborer jobs during the day and went to night school to learn English like most immigrants who entered the U.S. at the time. They braved extraordinary conditions and an unknown future so that my future could be brighter. They sacrificed and scraped by so that I might have an opportunity that they would never know.

Walking around the base of the Statue of Liberty, I was struck by how beautiful she is. She must have been stunning when viewed from the crowded boat that carried my ancestors to shore. It is very easy to see how she could fill someone with hope, especially when that someone was in search of something better than the life they left behind.

Most interesting is that the Statue of Liberty is built in two parts. The internal structure was built first, and then the external structure, the structure that everyone sees, wraps around it. It’s what’s inside that allows the structure to stand so high above the New York Harbor, welcoming anyone and everyone who ever wanted a shot at a new life. It’s what’s inside that has sustained Lady Liberty for so long.

I wish my ancestors who passed that way, with their resolve, determination, and ambition, were still with us. I’d like to thank them for their courage because that courage makes my life possible. It’s hard to imagine how I could ever be afraid again knowing the horrendous conditions that they endured with dignity and grace.

While my beginnings were humble, I have had the great luxury of so many advantages that simply were not possible for my relatives. I live the life that they imagined and pursued. Surely, if my ancestors, in their dire state in a foreign land, believed they could attain a brighter future for themselves and their families, then of course I can do the same. Of course, we can all do the same.

As I left the island, I considered the tremendous sense of responsibility that lay at my feet, built upon the backs of my brave ancestors. A sense of pride welled up inside of me as I walked the ground where they walked, all of us one foot in front of the other, racing toward a better, happier life. That life, is mine. And to them I am grateful beyond measure.

The photo above was taken by my friend, Allan. I’m standing inside the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island in front of a mural of photographs depicting the diversity of America.

child, children, family, kids, language, New York City, speech

My Year of Hopefulness – The Gift of Gab

Christa Avampato

My family is loaded with talkers. My mother taught us well. We have strong opinions and we claim them loud, proud and often. I didn’t know there was a developmental advantage to this trait until my friend, Liz, told me that by age 3 it becomes very obvious which children come from families who talk to their children regularly and those who don’t. Children from families who talk to them often have triple the vocabulary when compared to children who come from families that don’t talk to their babies and toddlers.

I wasn’t quite sure what Liz meant at first. What family doesn’t speak to their children? And then I started to observe a little more closely. On the streets of New York and in the subways, I have seen too many adults ignore the children they’re with. They don’t answer their questions and concerns, or when they do it’s with a harsh tone. Too many sit with their children and don’t interact with them. It’s a prevalent, serious issue.

Sometimes I’ll hear people on the subway talking to their children so much, in sing-songy language seemingly about nothing at all, that it actually drives me to move. Little did I know that these adults are doing a wonderful thing – they are advancing their children’s mental capacity for language and understanding. These children are the writers and thinkers of tomorrow. These children are just like me, with adults who love them with their hearts and words, exactly the way my mom did. And this knowledge is making me smile on my subway rides next to little talkative kids. Gab on…

Examiner, family, friendship, relationships, Tim Russert, volunteer, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Tim Russert, revisited

Christa Avampato

This weekend it’s been one year since we lost Tim Russert. It’s only fitting that I’d happen to be in DC this weekend with friends who are celebrating some very big events in their lives – weddings, new jobs, and a general sense of hope despite a tough economy. When Tim passed away one year ago, what stood out to me what the comment that he lived every day as if he had just won the lottery. I wanted to live my life that way, too, so I set about doing that.

I thought about every area of my life and put some ideas into action to improve each. One year later, I’m doing pretty well. It’s not the lottery feeling just yet, though there are many, many things that I am grateful for:

I have certainly expanded my writing: blogging daily with an eye toward publishing a selection of posts at year-end as a free e-book and blogging about entrepreneurship for my Examiner.com column.

With my friends and family, I have put forward a significant amount of effort to spend quality, individual time. I used to run around as much as possible to try to fit time in with everyone all the time. The trouble with that method is that I ended up short-changing each, and short-changing myself. The quality time method is working much better.

In my volunteering, I wanted to extend more effort in areas that really interested me. Along with a colleague at work, I am beginning to put together a social media plan for a theatre company I admire. I took my social media interest and knowledge, my background in theatre, and roll-ed it up to do some pro-bono work that will help me build up a portfolio in this area. Using a little creativity, I created a win-win situation for all.

The work side of my life is always a work in progress. With the economy in tough shape, it’s the area of my life where I’ve had to make some compromises. I am learning a lot every day – about product development, what to do and what not to do (I’ve found the later to be just as important as the former), and I’ve learned what kind of work is best suited for me going forward. I’ve really developed the insight that I am passionate about small business (thanks in large part to my Examiner.com column); whether that means working for a small business or working for a large company that helps small businesses, I’m not sure. At the very least, it feels good to finally have that direction in my career and it keeps me looking forward.

Winning the lottery in life is a process – every day, we have to make choices and renew our commitment to living the best life we can. It takes courage to get up and follow our hearts in each area of our lives. And no matter how much work it is, there is no more worthwhile pursuit. I hope Tim would agree.