Evening Constitutionals

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A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

My Dear Friend,

We’ve started taking evening constitutionals. This began after I read an embarrassing health book, which maybe you want to know about, so I’m putting thoughts about my experiments with body-health content as a footnote; skip if that’s triggering, read if it’s interesting, or do some other thing for some unrelated reason.¹

Apparently, the word “constitutional” is archaic, and my Grammar Check is shaking its head at me, begging me not to use it; but I love it! In case you were born after 1880 and aren’t around people who use this term, it colloquially means “a little walk.” (Literally, it means “something good for your constitution”; which can, yes, include stuff you do in the bathroom, privately.)

Isn’t this a funny old drawing? I made it some years ago (digitally, it would seem) in an effort to draw without looking at a picture or tracing anything. I wanted to see if I could draw a person walking. I don’t love how it turned out, but I like that I made it.

The “we” in this case includes my husband Luke and my two-year-old T, and on Tuesdays, our former ward-roommate-friend Leonard. (Famously, his name isn’t really Leonard.) We finish dinner and, leaving all the plates and spoons dirty on the table, we stroll. We’re slow, because one of us is two, and we don’t talk much, because one of us is two. None of this takes away from the value of the walk, which is large and hard to quantify.

For the most part, we walk to the park one block from our house. This isn’t, therefore, a very long walk, but there are trees along the route, and people leading dogs, and this time of year, flowers that bloom and die as the days move forward. I appreciate getting to experience the brief waking days of the flowers at every phase. Peonies are perhaps most ridiculous: They get tall, and then they ball their fists up, and then one day they’ve exploded and they’re screaming the word “FUSCHIA!” or “PETALS!” or whatever. They party like that for exactly one day, and the next day they begin to burn out, opening too wide, consumed by ants, and they fall over each other, exhausted. “Next year we’ll go even harder,” they sigh. Can you even believe that this is something to which we have the privilege of bearing witness?

Not peonies, but dahlias are sort of similar, except they last longer. Put that on your Tinder profile, dahlias.

We make it to the playground, and there, at least 100 children (the same 100 every evening) run around with an energy inappropriate for 7 p.m., but not in a bad way. T is going through a Slides Phase. There’s a part during the walk where Luke and I sit on a bench and watch her slide. I probably shouldn’t be so attentive. Most of the other parents lounge in the corner of the park chatting, not actively monitoring their children, which is, I think, preferable. But every day, T gets older. It’s still my favorite show: her running around noticing butterflies and sticking her fingers into cool, dark places. So, anyway, we watch her. And on the bench we talk about what’s on the calendar and when we should look at the bees again and other household administrivia.

This is all so easy. It’s nothing, to leave the chores behind, to slowly amble along the street, to let the half hour after dinner be a long one, filled with wide open space. In general, this is what I want most: ease, leisure, regular active rest. Moments every day to be both fully alive and not working too hard at it; to feel gratitude as a bone-sense rather than a conscious thought. A walk after dinner was on the table this whole time, and I’d never picked it up before! Now I feel I’ll never put it down.

Do you do anything like this? What lives in your schedule rent-free (as they say on TikTok)? Also, if you’re not walking after dinner, why not try tonight? If it’s cold, wear a coat and a hat. If it’s hot, bring a popsicle. Your people can come, or not. Please: I invite you to crack open this evening hour, like a coconut, like a geode, like a ramekin of créme brûlée.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• So far, eight people have signed up for this Zoom class with Cleaver Magazine, which means that it’s going to be a small class size and it will be very interactive! If you’re interested in writing humor of any kind (or even just incorporating humor into your serious writing), please consider joining! It’s $60 for a 2-hour class, and I’ll offer personalized instruction, as well as wonderful gentle weirdness. Bring a friend! Here’s the registration link.

• It’s time to do another round of prints! Remember, if you’re signed up for the Get Mail In The Mail tier of this newsletter, the print is automatically mailed to you (with other goodies). All others can order next week! Which of these should we send to print?

  

  

• Thanks to you, my design was one of the winners of the Chicago Bird Alliance’s art contest! You can buy it (and support Chicago birds!) here.

  

Loose Thoughts:

• Birthday month is winding down, and it’s such a relief. It ended strong, with a murder party, which is my ideal party. My sister Alexis visited with her two-month-old daughter, and I think it’s quite brave to travel with an infant, even if it is easier in some ways than traveling with a toddler. The joy of the trip was spending time outside. We went to see birds and to see water, and there were a lot of moments of peaceful silence. (Also a lot of talking. A lot of both.)

• Something I appreciate about Alexis is that she is highly complimentary of my cooking. I realize that this is a kind of love language for me: “Oh my god, this is SO GOOD.” When you’ve lived with someone for a long time, you stop being effusive about their cooking. Making Alexis a basic salad was a gift in and of itself.

• I haven’t quite figured out Birthday Month yet, because it’s still stressful and kind of sad. I realized that it’s a day where I’m reminded of relationships I’ve let lapse, or that have ended. I know who I’m not going to hear from, and I blame myself about it, or maybe I just kind of mourn the loss. I don’t feel like I’m able to give much more of myself these days; parenting takes it all out of you. But some of the people I was closest to ten years ago have slipped through the cracks and I barely know what’s going on with them these days. This is heartbreaking, much more than the aging.

• I guess the aging is bittersweet, but it mostly makes me feel proud.

• This week, T picked out pink mums (big ones, not autumnal ones). Having a bowl of one type of flower lets you appreciate them for all they are.

• It’s time for me to make a salad, and I’ve been lately into big leafy ones with tahini dressing. Do you have a favorite salad? Please tell me about them.

• This (early summer, on the hot days) is my power season. What is yours?

• I mean, I know it’s still spring, but I’m wearing a sundress and lying in the sun splotches and it isn’t too buggy and I’m just in my hotness.

1. Unfortunately (and I’m being quite vulnerable here), I’m a sucker for a Health Plan. I’m always reading books that I don’t want anyone on GoodReads to know I’ve read, about how to optimize one’s health through diet and exercise, etcetera. In March, I tried intermittent fasting after reading a book about insulin. Practically, I loved it: I loved not having to think about what I was going to eat until 4 p.m.; I loved the way my body adapted to breaking fast later in the day, and how it felt to crave a big plate of vegetables and spend the day drinking tea. But, although the guy who wrote the insulin book swore that it was perfectly safe to exercise while fasting, I felt exhausted and lightheaded at the gym, even after eight weeks of practice; and perhaps more critically, my hair fell out. 

After that, I worked with a health coach! The things I learned from her were that I am a lot happier if I don’t weigh myself (so I stopped!), and to focus on getting a lot of protein, even as a vegan / vegetarian. My hair stopped falling out within a week. She was all about strength training that lasted 30 minutes and was hard. I did her workouts for those six weeks and totally hated them throughout. This was also a good thing to learn. Hardcore strength training: not for me. (The coach’s name is Chris Dehollander, and I picked her because she focuses on midlife nutrition and exercise. While I’m on the younger side of midlife, my body feels foreign since giving birth. I grieve this constantly. I wanted to know if it had to do with normal aging, and changes in my hormones. The verdict: maybe! I liked Chris, and enjoyed learning about myself with her.)

After finishing that up, I turned to Jessi Inchauspé (The Glucose Goddess), whom I’d been interested in for a long time. My interest has to do with insulin (see above) and sugar. Every body is different, but I notice that my body reacts badly to sugar (I get cranky and tired after I eat it, and I get yeast infections, which maybe you didn’t want to know, but now you do), and also that I feel actually addicted to it. Like, I feel like I can’t not eat it. I read the Glucose Goddess’s books, and I appreciated that her strategies (which she calls “hacks,” which I hate) were not hard even a little bit. They involved adding more greens before eating a meal, and dressing up carbs with fats or whatever, and timing when you have sugar. And, she says it’s good to move after you eat.