My Thots

2012-02-17T01:09:00.000-06:00

“The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price.”

Vince Lombardi – Football Coach, Green Bay Packers

A friend sent this quote today and it rings true for me.

When I want something badly enough I can make it happen. It may require a bit of creative thinking, or an incredible amount of work, or even a fair amount of pain, but most things are not impossible.

Persistence is part of the recipe. How many times have I quit just before I might have succeeded? I really have to want some things – a lot. I wanted to quit smoking. It took over ten years for me to find a way that made it work, but I finally did it!

And I have to be realistic. I wanted children and after years of thinking that was impossible I became a foster parent and then an adoptive parent. I had children! Just not the way I had expected.

I wanted to be loved and understood for exactly who I was. It took a lifetime, but it happened.

The price of success for me has often been years of trying and failing and then discovering that success isn’t always exactly the way I pictured it, but it is still just as sweet.

Failure usually means I didn't want it badly enough.

Something changed

2012-02-16T03:31:00.000-06:00

Bearnard arrived at my house in a box. He was a stuffed teddy bear. A very beautiful, very cuddly, very fuzzy bear with a big nose and two penetrating little eyes.

In the beginning he simply sat on my bed looking cute. Then one night I had the urge to give him a book to read and I think that was when it all began. Perhaps it was the book, an out of print copy of James Agee’s The Morning Watch, that caused him to change. I kept watching him sitting there with it and realized a little voice in my head was telling me he much preferred Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar.

He looked so cute that I took his picture before changing the books, so perhaps it was the camera. I’ve heard there is magic behind the lens of a camera. Whatever it was, I began noticing that Bearnard is more than a big nosed stuffed bear. He is a very nosy bear!

He gets into everything so I have to keep a close eye on him. That means he often goes with me to one of my volunteer jobs, or to visit friends and I have gotten into the habit of taking his picture during those little visits. After a while I realized that I had so many of those pictures it seemed I ought to do something with them, so I began sending them to my grandchildren, one at a time with a little story about what was going on.

Bearnard gets into everything! Nothing is safe from his big furry nose.

I used to have a dog, Chauncey, but he really didn’t do well in the apartment so he lives with my sister and her dog. I used to talk to Chauncey and sleep with him and ask his opinion about things. He was a very small dog and I used to worry about rolling over on him at night. Often I had the uneasy feeling that he needed more attention than I was giving him.

Lately I have noticed that Bearnard has slipped quietly and easily into his place! I sleep with him in the big bed in my apartment just like I did Chauncey. I talk to him and ask his opinion about things and even get that uneasy feeling that he needs more attention than he’s getting. I don’t, however, ever worry about rolling over on him!

Bearnard seemed to be just a stuffed bear when he first came here, but not anymore. Maybe it was the book, or the camera, or maybe it was because he was a Christmas bear and Christmas is full of magic; but whatever caused it…something changed!

Bearnard is no longer my stuffed bear. He is my pet bear!

Alone

2012-02-15T09:09:00.000-06:00

Alone in my apartment on the one day a year dedicated solely to lovers is not the tragedy I might have thought it was in my youth. Like all words, “lovers” has so many levels. Spanning everything from the surface to the deepest most innermost part of being.

The seed was planted when I was born and imprinted on my parents. Love was needy and intense and extraordinarily self centered.

Growing outwards, love reached for those who were enough like me to give me those things I wanted and needed the most. It was a mutual giving in order to receive.

As a parent, love exploded into giving! Love like this is as close to god-like as a human being ever comes.

As my children grew and my world expanded, the knowledge of that love began to creep out and fill in all the nooks and crannies around me. Until now I find myself a lover…connected so ineffably that I am never alone.

Out of the light

2012-02-14T00:01:00.000-06:00

“And in one moment all my past acts become irrevocable.” This is a line from a poem by Carol L. Goor.

These are powerful words.

They hold within them all the dreams and wants, the regrets and desires that are no longer possible. “Irrevocable” think about that. One moment that changes everything forever more.

What would I change if I could go back? I think I know and yet I really can never know for sure. Dwelling on the past can be like running on a hamster wheel without getting my heartbeat up; just a useless circle of regrets that do no good at all.

Instead I envision myself becoming the best that I can be now. There is comfort in that…and light too.

Ounce by ounce

2012-02-13T10:57:00.000-06:00

I grew up thinking that socializing was eating. Daddy came home for lunch and we all gathered around the dining room table to eat cheese sandwiches, vegetable soup and talk. The same thing happened at dinner with a more elegant setting.

In between my mother was busy cleaning and washing and ironing for a large family that grew up before the days of permanent press and disposable dust mops. If she took a break, it was to have coffee with our neighbor, Aunt Jo, on the patio next door.

Breaks meant eating. Trips to Champagne on weekends to have my brother’s casts changed meant donuts and chocolate milk in the car to pass the time. Holidays were celebrated mostly by feasting and not the scurry to buy things that today has brought along.

And while I am not particularly in favor of the current need to celebrate all of life with retail consumerism, I am learning that it doesn’t have to be accompanied by food all the time either.

Not an easy lesson for someone who is used to picking up something to eat in the car, and while watching television and even reading a book, but the good life is killing me, ounce by ounce and something’s gotta change.

A sqaure peg in a round world

2012-02-12T10:53:00.000-06:00

I have a tendency to think my way is the best. I suppose that is human nature and a good thing for the most part. After all, why would I do something if I didn’t think it was the best way?

Of course I do do things that are not the best all the time. I eat the wrong foods and too much of them. I don’t exercise enough. I have a tendency to stay up too late and then I get up later in the morning. But it is the eight hours of sleep that matter in my opinion. When they happen shouldn’t really make a difference.

I also tend to be better in the short haul. I am meticulous, almost a perfectionist about some things, for a while. Then my attention wanders, my interest lags, and I tire of it. .

People need continuity, but I also need change. My sister is good for the long haul. She’s raising my dog and still a nurse after over forty years. We need people like her, but I can’t be that. Everything about me comes in short bursts of energy. It always has, even my sport of choice, tennis.

Teaching preschool meant organizing my day into twenty-minute segments. Perfect for me. Paying bills comes once a month for a short period of time. Writing this thot once a day takes around 30-60 minutes. Housework is dragged out over the course of a week. Laundry was such a chore I wanted to move rather than spend all that time in a Laundromat. Now I rush in, wash my clothes and take them home to dry. Yes, I’d rather hang things around my room than stay there and watch that dryer spin.

I like to lose myself in the passion of something and then move on to another passion. Sometimes I wish I was different, but I think I am finally coming to terms with me. I used to pretend I wasn’t this way, but I still really was. Now that I am “retired” I seem to be able to give myself permission to like me the way I am.

The world needs all kinds of people, even me.

Stay out of the shadows

2012-02-11T12:38:00.000-06:00

I really didn’t know my paternal grandmother. She moved away before I was seven years old and I only saw her once after that. Even when she lived two blocks away I seldom saw her, and only ate dinner at her house twice that I remember, once by myself.

Yet I think I am more like her than anyone else I know in our family. I remember the beautiful handmade dolls she made for each of us. Intricately detailed clown dolls for my brothers and a Chinese doll for me, complete with black silk embroidered clothes. The story is that when my parents went up to the family vacation house one year there was a closet full of matching dresses waiting for my sister and I. Each one carefully embroidered and smocked.

I discovered that she took my father and his sister to museums and places like Turkey Run, Indiana to explore and hike, all things I did with my children, but that my mother did not do with us. I’ve also heard that this grandmother loved to play Bridge and read. I remember some of the books she sent me, Puss In Boots and Paddle To The Sea, both before I was five. In those rare times we were together she told me about the Anasazi and the Hopi and I’m pretty sure that sparked my interest in the history and folklore of both.

As I look back on my life I realize this woman had an incredible influence on my life for no more than I was allowed to be with her, but that a lot of our similarities must be genetic.

Like her I love to create things and read and explore. Like her I wandered off across the country after a long marriage and divorce. But I think I have found a peacefulness and satisfaction in my life at the end that she never found.

I wonder what it would have been like to spend more time with this person who seems to have had more in common with me than any other woman I’ve ever known, but perhaps we spent just the right amount of time together; just enough for her to light the fires that lay latent in me and not enough for me to become her shadow.

Common Sense

2012-02-10T10:01:00.003-06:00

Doctors are not gods. They do not deserve blind faith. Any intelligent person knows that there are extremes to everything and those extremes serve most of us poorly.

Gone are the days of the country doctor who comes to the house and leaves with a chicken, or a basket of eggs. Today’s doctors are in league with insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the hardships of maintaining their own homes, cars, kid’s schooling, their own schooling, and clubs. Most of them are out there to make money, among other things.

Get past all of that and there is still youth and idealism to deal with. I have years of dealing with my own body. The idea of turning it over to someone else, no questions asked, is beyond comprehension.

The advantages of a clinic are the differing opinions of the doctors there. If anything validates my concerns this does. There are very few real Dr. Gregory Houses. Doctors are people like all the rest of us. They are trained to make decisions, by looking at the symptoms and then they issue diagnoses accordingly, but there is no guarantee he is right. If he is wrong? Well, he tries again.

I, on the other hand, have to live with the unnecessary surgery, wrong diet, and side effects of medicines, which can actually be terminal. It happens even with the best doctors. I KNOW people who have been more messed up by their doctors than by nature.

Ask questions! Listen to the answers. Then evaluate those answers!

This is your life!

2012-02-10T09:55:00.000-06:00

Doctors are not gods. They do not deserve blind faith. Any intelligent person knows that there are extremes to everything and those extremes serve most of us poorly.

Gone are the days of the country doctor who comes to the house and leaves with a chicken, or a basket of eggs. Today’s doctors are in league with insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the hardships of maintaining their own homes, cars, kid’s schooling, their own schooling, and clubs. They are out there to make money.

Get past all of that and there is still youth and idealism to deal with. I have years of dealing with my own body. The idea of turning it over to someone else, no questions asked, is beyond comprehension.

The advantages of a clinic are the differing opinions of the doctors there. If anything validates my concerns this does. There are very few real Dr. Gregory Houses. Doctors are people like all the rest of us. They are trained to make decisions, by looking at the symptoms and then they issue diagnoses accordingly, but there is no guarantee he is right. If he is wrong? Well, he tries again.

I, on the other hand, have to live with the unnecessary surgery, wrong diet, and side effects of medicines, which can actually be terminal. It happens even with the best doctors. I KNOW people who have been more messed up by their doctors than by nature.

Ask questions! Listen to the answers. Then evaluate those answers!

This is your life!

The bestest

2012-02-09T00:26:00.000-06:00

It is so tempting to look for the good stories elsewhere.

I think the ghost stories and the folk tales all come from another place, another time, another person, when all around me the tales weave themselves alive.

The heroes and the villains walk among us everyday and the music that accompanies them is as great as any John Williams theme if only I stop to hear it. I just don’t hear the synthesized version, the one played by French horns and violins. The one whose melody carries the reality is the one Williams heard in his head before it was transferred to those earthly instruments.

I listen for the inspiration. I look for the reality. I reach out and gather it up in arms that want to fling it back like flowers from a bouquet…and sometimes I can and sometimes I cannot.

The truest tales come when we work together. I start a sentence. You finish it. You start one and I finish it. We both are listening and watching and reaching out with every fiber of our being and only then do we find the whole story.

When that happens it becomes a reality and everyone sees and hears and feels what we do.

Love One Another

2012-02-08T11:07:00.000-06:00

Love one another. I’m willing to bet everyone knows where those words come from and even if you don’t most people claim they care deeply about their fellow human beings. What bothers me is that the people who most fervently subscribe to those three words are often the very ones who have a personal addendum that I don’t remember seeing beside the original.

I don’t believe it said love one another unless – and here the list is very eclectic and long depending on the personal agenda of the one making it.

I am always shocked by the people who are intelligent and educated and yet still find a way to justify the way they think when it involves anyone not subscribing to their own narrow perspectives.

The world is not black and white. There are a zillion shades of gray and you don’t have to be a Vulcan to see that even do no harm is not as clear as it seems. But I can absolutely tell you that killing someone, or torturing them for good is an oxymoron. And I can also tell you that there are a lot of ways to kill people besides outright pointing a weapon at them and using it.

Passive aggressive murder is as old as time and it is still being used as the sanctioned way of disposing of anyone who gets in the way, or is different.

People have the right to live and love with dignity, to control their own bodies, receive necessary medical care, an education, and access to jobs they are truly qualified for. I don’t think it is possible to love one another if you don’t believe that.

Everybody's gotta breathe

2012-02-07T06:43:00.000-06:00

As a child I dreamed of the day when I could do what I wanted.

But life has a way of evening things out.

One thing becomes abundant and others become more complicated.

I like the idea that I, like fine wine, only become better with age, but the bottling of this grace isn’t a heavy glass bottle topped with a cork. It is a flesh and bone body that sometimes seems distressingly fragile and ungraceful.

It doesn’t seem fair that I now have the time and the freedom and even perhaps enough money, but my casing is dulling the exaltation.

Still, it is what it is. I have choices. I may not like them, but what’s new about that? The secret always seems to boil down to the same thing no matter what the situation is– and that is to live in the moment.

Like any other time in my life, in this moment I am okay. Breathing in I relax. Breathing out I smile. Thich Nhat Hahn came up with that and it has served me well over the years.

It doesn’t replace planning, or frugality, or common sense, but it goes a long way towards keeping the little men in the white coats away.

A little bit goes a long way

2012-02-06T00:53:00.000-06:00

It is so much easier to give advice than take it...yet it isn’t. Not really.

I feel a terrible responsibility when I give out advice. It is one thing to do something myself and risk whatever might go wrong. Then I am the only the one to blame or at risk. When I offer the same advice to someone else it is a whole different story.

I always err on the side of caution, but there are so many unknowns!

Nature has a way of taking care of some people and not others. I’ve known people who were fat alcoholics eating barbecued food and smoking every day who lived to be very old. I’ve known others who appeared to be in excellent health and dropped dead during their daily jog at a relatively young age.

I don’t know what the defining differences are. Doctors don’t know either. They make guesses and these are good ones: Smoking is probably the number one worst thing you can do to your body over all. After that I think it might be stress and from then on it is anybody’s guess. Probably because each one of us is different.

Doing my best not to give bad advice is about the best advice I have. Often that means not saying all those things I am thinking.

And that is hard!

A new generation

2012-02-05T12:47:00.000-06:00

I went to college at the very end of the sixties. We thought we could change the world. “Make love, not war.” Today most of us have become mainstream citizens. We gave up the headbands, bare feet, and idealistic rebellion of youth for regular jobs and the very life styles we were so against back then.

Or did we? We are not our parent’s generation. We may look like it when we walk down the street, or drive out of our garages, but there are differences. We made mistakes. We failed at achieving many of the things and over did others, but that is always going to be part of change and big changes come slowly.

Ultimately we did achieve a few things that I am proud of. We stood behind Bobby Kennedy and brought civil rights into reality. We gave both men and women the option of working outside their home, or staying in it.

We turned from idealistic protests to petition signing, hard working adults, some of whom have given their lives and many who gave up the quality of their lives to make a difference.

So today, when I find myself totally disillusioned with the politics of the day and the blatant pandering of government to big business I remind myself that there is a new generation out there, joining all those who went before, and many of them are just as determined as we were to change things. And they will, but change comes slowly.

It is a better world, but it will be even better if we all keep nibbling away at the complacency and ignorance and greed that seems to be a natural part of the human race.

Amazement

2012-02-04T05:43:00.000-06:00

I learned many things in elementary school, but the biggest one was how to get my mother to do my homework. Manipulating a woman, who saw grades as the proof that she was doing all the right things and her children were bright and successful, was easy. Even for a six year old!

Of course neither one of us was aware that this was what was happening, but it still set the course for the rest of my life. I was a bright child. I quickly learned that most adults can do elementary school work better than elementary school children. Unfortunately, it also undermined my belief in my own ability.

Eventually I reached the point where my mother was no longer capable of doing my work. Unfortunately I was not really prepared to do it either so there were some real rocky years ahead for me. I learned from all of this and I think I did much better with my own children.

I am, just now, really working WITH someone for the very first time! In the past, the closest I could usually come was a division of labor. You do this. I’ll do that. And if we are lucky it will come together in the end. When my three-year-old students did this, I said they were working side by side. It is the very first stage of playing together.

Watching different perspectives come together, weaving themselves in and out of each other, creating a finished product that is not simply two parts pasted together, has been a revelation for me! I am amazed at how uniquely beautiful such a project can be.

Soul mates or just good friends

2012-02-03T14:51:00.000-06:00

Everyone seems to be looking for their soul mate, but not everyone is looking for the same kind.

My soul mate would probably have that proverbial half of my faults and twice my virtues. Not that I would notice mind you. I’d think we were a perfect match!

If I ever found someone exactly like me I probably wouldn’t be all that attracted to them. There are parts of me I am not particularly fond of.

In fact, there is much to be said for a certain amount of delusion in life. I’m doing the best I can and if I had to look at what some people thought of that I might be so depressed I’d give up on what I have!

So…rather than my soul mate, I think I’m just looking for someone who kind of likes me the way I am and is willing to give me the room to improve as I can.

My friend

2012-02-02T10:51:00.000-06:00

“I get by with a little help from my friends.”

“That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.”

We haven’t really come so far from the bards of old. We still remember things best in song and rhyme and we still revere the songwriters.

And we’re still singing about the same things, so those must be the important ones, right?

Life is about putting one foot in front of another. Some of us seem to do it better than others. Some of us make it look effortless and some of us make it look so hard, it’s amazing we even try.

What seems to make it possible, or at least bearable, are the other people. It doesn’t matter if we are Siamese twins, or disembodied voices, when we are here for each other in the ways that count life is better.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

The think it method

2012-01-31T23:20:00.000-06:00

I used to have so many accidents as a child. I was always the kid who spilled her hot chocolate at the lodge when I was a Brownie, or tripped playing jump rope when it was my turn to run out.

It wasn’t a whole lot better as a teenager. I was terrified I would make some mistake in my solo at concerts and I can’t tell you how many times that happened.

I was pretty much full-grown before I realized that all those things I thought about tended to be the thing that happened. It was almost like I was hexing myself. As soon as that thought occurred to me I decided to try the opposite.

Instead of, “I hope I don’t have an accident on this ice.” I thought, “I am going to drive straight to school and it will be both safe and easy.”

It helped when I had children too. Instead of picturing them lying beside a road somewhere I always tried to picture them driving carefully home.

It’s almost second nature now, but sometimes I still have to work at it. It’s plain old-fashioned positive thinking, but you know what? It really seems to work most of the time.

Method and Madness

2012-01-31T00:58:00.000-06:00

I cannot make other people do what I want.

I can decide what I will do.

In fact, I am responsible for both what I do and what I don’t do. Both of these things are powerful tools when used correctly.

It is having the courage to decide what is right and what is not that is hard. I can’t count on the world backing me up, or feeling good about everything. All I can do is make an educated, intelligent decision and move forward.

Sometimes love makes hard decisions and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but I can tell you one thing: if something is not working you don’t keep doing it!

Everything takes time. Adjusting to new rules, new routines, new apartments, can be difficult for me, so I set a time that I will live with it and then reevaluate it again.

There will be times when something becomes obvious beyond a doubt and I have to change my mind early, but that has only happened once that I can think of.

In the long run life is better not only when there is method, but also perseverance in the madness.

To everything there is a season

2012-01-30T02:04:00.000-06:00

There is a time and a place for everything and until that time comes nothing much else seems to matter.

Deaf ears cannot hear.

Blind eyes cannot see.

Broken hearts grab frantically at any hope.

Until the time is right, too much of anything is not only pointless it is dangerous. It is the trickster trying to prove something is being done that will change things, but the tea table is set with plastic food and empty cups. It feeds a body hope until it dies of starvation.

There is a time to do nothing, a time to wait, a time to simply be there ready to pick up the pieces when all is said and done.

Out of the pieces new lives begin.

Mostly Hearsay

2012-01-29T01:34:00.000-06:00

I find people’s need to label each other disconcerting. It seems to be more of a comfort tactic than anything else I can figure out.

If I can name the monster it is less frightening. If I can name the kid next door he is no longer a stranger.

I don’t find much comfort in labels because I have mostly found them to be pretty inaccurate and dependent on so many variables.

I am an experience you may have if and when we meet.

All the other descriptions are mostly hearsay!

I get high when I help others

2012-01-28T14:58:00.000-06:00

I always want to think the best of the people I love. I want to believe they are telling me the truth and that they are doing the things they say they are doing. I want to support them as they recover and most other people do too.

There is a remarkable camaraderie in banding together to help someone. It’s that old it takes a village to raise a child syndrome. We like the idea that we are one big family, all willing to work together to make things right.

I want to be realistic too. Everyone back slides and everyone deserves a second chance, maybe even a third or fourth, but there comes a point where being realistic requires exactly that. How many times is too many? When is it time to just step away and let the miscreant climb back up by themselves, allow them to get a feel for the rope and the work required to make it on their own?

At what point is the helping more about me than the person I think I am helping? What do I get out of rescuing someone not once, or twice, or even twenty times? Is my addiction rescuing them? Am I the role model they are using to justify their behavior?

There are a million ways to justify poor choices.

The question I need to ask myself is why I am willing to sacrifice not just my own life, but the lives of the innocent children caught in the middle by aiding and abetting someone who has been given every possible chance for nearly twenty years?

It is a situation where everyone loses, again and again and again and again………..

are the luckiest people...

2012-01-27T02:03:00.000-06:00

How anyone can believe, that the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in writing is less whether it is written on paper and stamped and sent from hand to hand, or in an email and sent through the universe untouched by any hands except those who type them and perhaps answer them, is beyond me.

Written words escape time. They are not bound by the frailties of human bodies, or circumstances of almost any sort. Kept to themselves they are possibly the most honest way for two minds to meet without the encumbrances of any social mores.

Like anything else they can be used for good or bad, but to believe they are less than because they are not face-to-face is a gross misunderstanding of what is possible. All that is not possible is physical contact. Everything else has the possibility of being much more intimate and clear.

History is full of letter writers whose most personal thoughts are now saved for the ages. How little we would know of real life and real people had they not written it down. In today’s world of fantasy and film, novels and television sized reality programs, the truth of our world is twisted to entertain. One’s personal emails and letters are not chained to this distortion. They may be the only link to today’s actual reality for future generations.

There is a vast difference between texting that disappears and twittering that is one more form of entertainment and emails between friends, although I suppose there doesn’t have to be.

In the long run, anyone who has someone they can share their most innermost thoughts with and not be afraid of being misunderstood or given up as lost is luckier than most of the people I know.

A moment in time

2012-01-26T13:17:00.000-06:00

Once upon a dreary Thursday…before I pondered eating or thirsting…or stealing Poe’s poetry to write My Thots, I received some other thoughts that fired me up and turned what might have been a rather dull day into a wonderful bright one.

A creative mind is amazingly prone to little black outs. Places where what is used to write entertaining bits of flotsam is totally disconnected from its owner’s life, leaving a sort of black hole. I suppose that is not news, nor is it unusual, but it is always a wonderful moment when I catch myself before slipping into one of those holes.

Today is one of those days!

Young minds

2012-01-25T17:15:00.000-06:00

I love adventures!

I must admit the kinds of adventures I love now are not the same as when I was much younger. Back then I wanted to hike into unknown places and discover strange anomalies.

I still love to venture into unknown places, but instead of forests and mountains, I have turned to buildings and books, or even the computer. The thrill seeking feeling of sliding down a natural waterfall has been replaced with more cerebral things and there is a reason for that. My bones and muscles are not as resilient as they once were. A simple strain takes months even years to heal instead of weeks.

I think human beings love fear, but I also think that works against us. We dramatize everything to make it seem more dark and complicated than it is. Every day there is a new target date for something that just might destroy the world as we know it. Nothing like a disaster to pull people together, except….

Fear mongering scares some people much more than others. In an attempt to sound all knowing and wise beyond comprehension people have talked about the computer like it is big brother’s first step into the house. It might be, but there is no reason it has to be. The computer only has the power you give it.

You can pretty much do what you like on the Internet and as long as you don’t give anyone your charge card numbers, or bank information, financially you are pretty safe. You just don’t get something for nothing. You have to pay for it, so one way to be sure you are safe, if you are worried about that, it to play it safe. Just look. Beyond that you need to be careful, but it is a choice.

It is the same thing when using your own computer. When I got mine the man told me I couldn’t do anything to it that would hurt it and I immediately locked the whole thing completely up. But he was right. He fixed it and it was just like new. After a while I became so confident that I discovered even I could fix a lot of things the same way Grandpa fixed cars and small appliances, by fiddling around and trying different things.

My eighteen-month-old granddaughter looks at a computer the same way she looks at her building blocks. She watches for clues about how to use it, then digs in. She isn’t really allowed to do that yet. Children must be watched because they can connect with unsavory sorts online, but other than that a computer is so easy a child can use it. And they do!

A computer can bring the world to an invalid who might be starving for some kind of intellectual stimulation, or social interaction. It’s a shame when fear gets in the way of that. Everyone should have this window to the world and I think in the future it will be as natural to have a computer as it is to have a telephone.

No one will be forced to sit mindlessly in front of a television, they will have something that responds to what they do and that will keep minds young much longer.

Beware of the human

2012-01-24T12:05:00.000-06:00

All the talk about love, charity and happiness sort of falls short when I look at what people really say and do and appear to want.

It’s a good gig, this loving goodness and kindness, but it appears that it is also just that for a great many people. Otherwise no one would care about most of the stuff I see listed under the guise of news.

A man sings the Star Spangled Banner at a sports event and it is billed as the absolute worst. I listened to it and found it better than many of the mangled, “creative” versions I’ve heard so many times before.

The lives and loves of anyone in the public eye are scrutinized for any possible foible or flaw regardless of whatever else is going on.

It is the person who does the most dastardly deed who is apparently most news worthy.

I’d like to think all of this is because we just take goodness for granted, or assume that good things, or at least, worthy things, people are doing are so well known and understood we don’t want or need to know about them, but I know that isn’t true.

We are the same people who sat in the Coliseums of the past and flocked to hangings, burnings and eviscerations. Frightening little beasts.

The missing link

2012-01-23T13:59:00.000-06:00

I am missing something. I’m not quite sure what it is, but there is a fundamental piece of wisdom that the universe is trying to impart that is not getting through.

I look at my granddaughter. Her first impulse is to hug something or kiss it. Of course you will say she is not quite two so she doesn’t know how dangerous the world is. That is true, but her very nature is to be kind and loving.

Imagine a generation of children who remain that way. They eat and play and take what they need without any thought of hoarding unneeded stuff or finding one up-man-ship a satisfying way of being.

Instead of finding joy in winning, coming in first awakens a need to help the other person reach the same level. Instead of feeling anger when hurt, pain awakens the consciousness to how others are experiencing hurtful things and creates a place to repair whatever caused that hurt.

It’s not the American way. We are hardscrabble folks who get to the top by climbing over every obstacle, even the people. Now the top is starting to crumble, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could open our eyes to the beauty of that valley below where life doesn’t have to be one long moment of clinging to the edge by our fingernails while rocks poke us and people stomp on our fingers?

It’s dangerous to think that way. Our very nature as animals says it is a dog eat dog world and the theory of survival of the fittest is how evolution weeds out the weak, but maybe someday we can rise above our animal instincts and become truly civilized.

The definition of strong has changed some from simply having the strongest muscles to having the strongest mind too. Maybe that means there is hope for us yet.

Ready for transport

2012-01-22T14:38:00.000-06:00

If I were a star ship my dreams would be the transporter room.

What a room that is! It not only takes me to different locations, it transports me forwards and backwards in time and improvises scenarios based on both the past and the future. Sort of a transporter-holodeck all wrapped up into one.

The bad thing is that I don’t get to program what goes on. I have to take potluck and lately the pot has been a bit dark. Last night I couldn’t tell if there were cobwebs hanging from the walls and ceilings or if they were rotted netting that was disintegrating from time and dust. Neither one was particularly wonderful to think about.

A dream like that really holds me back.

I leave the transporter room carrying a sort of smoggy cloud that hangs over me even when I open my computer and gaze out at the rest of the world, making it hard to write happy little thoughts.

I wrote several this morning. In fact there was a virtual buffet of thots added to my computer this morning! But not one was really palatable enough to send out into the world.

I know some people can direct their dreams. I can influence mine, but I don’t seem to have the final power of directory. Assuming they are more than an undigested bit of beef, or histrionics contrived to get my own way, my dreams have decided to go where no one wants to go…

Back into the past to clean out the cobwebs, no matter what they are made of...

What do you think

2012-01-21T12:20:00.002-06:00

I’ve always wondered how people know what is good.

I don’t mean good and evil type good. I mean good movies, good books, good looks.

Obviously some of it is simply preference and some of it is giving over the decision to a person who appears better qualified to make that decision, but there are an awful lot of people who don’t seem to think about it like I do. They appear to “know” right away what is good and what is not.

I am never absolutely sure anything I do will be perceived as good or worthy. In fact I am often at odds with judgments on my own work. What I think is truly good can be dismissed by other people without even a wink in my direction and what I think is good, but not my best can be lauded beyond my understanding.

This is one of the more disturbing parts of creating anything I think, trying to figure out where that line is drawn and how. Sometimes I wish there was a list of absolutes for excellence and there is, but it surely isn’t long enough because, as far as I can figure out, it is mostly technical. The interesting part is never really defined so that I can understand it.

I suppose that is the difference between artists and others. The artist just does what they do no matter what. Emily Dickinson wrote poetry. Musicians play their music even when no one is listening. Van Gogh kept on painting. Writers keep on writing.

Maybe the real gauge is not what other’s think but what I think... but that opens a whole new set of thoughts.

Listen to the children

2012-01-20T01:27:00.002-06:00

So many things to learn and I am still learning from the children. They are the most reliable you know. The things that come through those mouths seldom have hidden meanings.

To be childlike is perhaps the greatest thing there is.

It is not the same thing as ignorance, or being daft. It is a clarity of thought that is as yet unmarked by a need or even knowledge of control.

Children will tell tiny lies to keep out of trouble, but they are usually so blatant they are almost truthful in their saying.

The important things come out with no plotting or planning what so ever.

One on one

2012-01-19T10:07:00.001-06:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep things simple. It is almost a compulsion on my part. Remember that old saying that was popular in the eighties? “The winner is the one who dies with the most (quilting material, dolls, coins, whatever thing it was you collected.)” I am not that person.

I do have and like “things,” but not for the sake of having a bunch of them. One is usually enough. Two feels burdensome to me and three is overwhelming. On the flip side, I may use enough words talking about that one thing or all my “things” that you’d think I have a million.

I do have a lot of books, most of them out in North Carolina, although my bookshelves are gathering stacks again, and I do have a lot of pictures. Those are about the only “things” I collect and even they must be something I love.

For me life is like a canvas and since I am not good at painting lots of things, I need each canvas to really focus on and set apart what is on it. I have a small sort of étagère and each shelf has one object set off by one other. I could sit and gaze at these for hours. Putting fifty things of similar quality and style would only make me avoid the confusion of looking at them.

I feel the same way about people. My favorite way to enjoy people is one at a time. I appreciate a group of like minds occasionally, or find it entertaining to go somewhere with a group, but if I really like you and want to spend time with you, I prefer it to be alone.

There is no competition when there are just two of us. I can give you all my attention. Enjoy all of your little nuances. If I honestly like you, I want to be alone with you, it is an entirely different perspective.

On the flip side there are people I never want to be alone with!

One on one

2012-01-19T10:04:00.000-06:00

On the flip side there are people I never want to be alone with!

Just wanted to let you know....

2012-01-18T14:05:00.002-06:00

Words are important to me. Like using just the right amount of salt and pepper, the right word enhances what I want to convey and the wrong one absolutely destroys the message.

For example: if someone is having a really bad day and I want to comment, how do I say what I am thinking as concisely as possible without losing the oomph behind the words?

The reasons for being concise in today’s social networking world are numerous, but the feelings are just as deep and broad as ever.

My first thoughts are things like: poor baby, or I’m sorry sweet pea, but these are too personal for public consumption.

Next come: that’s awful, or oh no, but these are reruns of other’s words and I am loathe to do that.

Finally come the alliterative ones, but it turns out that there is really nothing alliterative that says what I want to say and goes with Wednesday.

So I scrap concise and refraining from public personal declarations; I stop worrying about repeating what others have already said and even give up on clever things like alliteration or some other kind of tricky combination…

Then I write a whole thot about it and hope the feelings are understood.

Philosophy in a nutty shell

2012-01-17T14:18:00.000-06:00

We human beings seem to love little phrases that simplify life down to a philosophy based on five words or less. No pain, no gain. Go with the flow. Rise to the occasion.

Not bad ways to perk up a bad moment or two, but rather risky in the long run, because we also have a tendency to read more into these little bits of flotsam than is there.

Then things like no pain, no gain, become twisted into suffering is good for the soul, or what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or follow the crowd, or living in the here and now precludes having to plan for anything. Like modern art these things may be intriguing, but I have to ask myself, “Am I really wanting to base a lifetime of living on such simplistic philosophies?”

The answer is pretty clear for me. I do not. It may be enough to just do it when I buy a pair of athletic shoes, but if I am perched on the edge of a precipice and considering making a leap of faith, do I really want to just do it?

Pain doesn’t guarantee gain, suffering sometimes produces twisted souls and following the crowd can be dangerous, boring and counter productive. Even blooming where you are planted is not always the best advice. There are times when you need to get out of Dodge!

If you need to narrow life down to a catchphrase I suppose I would pick, “Think!” But even using that as a springboard for everything is still pretty risky. The way is simply not that simple!

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Home

2012-01-16T21:59:00.000-06:00

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home! There’s really no place like home!

Once I figured out where home really was, I couldn’t believe how good it was.

It’s the place where my bed holds my pillow and my chair is so familiar I would recognize it in the middle of the night with both eyes closed.

Only at home can I let down my hair even when I hardly have any, or enjoy the silence even when I’m lonely.

Home is where I find myself when my heart overflows and the pictures in my head are brighter and bigger and better than anywhere else!

Home is here!

I come to the garden...

2012-01-14T14:17:00.000-06:00

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of being able to be myself!

Imagine being able to tear down all facades, rip off all the masks and know that I am not only acceptable, but wanted!

Places like this are islands in the insanity of living and my chain of islands is slightly larger than it used to be. For that I am so grateful.

Here's hoping that you find these little gardens of serenity in your life also!

an undigested bit of beef....

2012-01-13T11:30:00.000-06:00

Did you ever dream you might be taking life too literally?

Last night I dreamed I was at the zoo with a large tour group made up of all my family and friends and you wouldn’t believe who I believed were some of my friends!

I sneaked away from the group with my friend John who used to be a conductor. He just leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Shall we step outside during the intermission?” And when I nodded, he added. “And not come back?”

We discovered a trap door and climbed up into a huge attic that had a grand piano sitting right in the middle of it. He told me to play and I said I couldn’t. That was par for the course and I played anyway, also par for the course, except that he turned the pages. It was some kind of sheet music and there were problems. First of all the piano was so quiet I could barely hear it, but most of all, when he turned the pages the music turned into real sheets that slipped out and covered up the piano and made playing impossible.

I couldn’t bear it so we stopped just as the tour group passed close by. I joined it and we started seeing cages full of baby bears, all wearing tracking collars. I wondered why bears in a zoo needed those when one of them scrunched down like a mouse and squeezed out from under the glass front of his cage! Now I realized there were bears loose all over the place! I was terrified, but no one else seemed to notice.

One of the bears kept coming towards me and he cut me off from the rest of the group. I realized this was because he was a tracking bear and I scooted down a ramp in what now appeared to a huge building full of different levels, moving escalators and staircases, kind of like an industrial mall, or Alcatraz instead of a zoo.

Lest you think this dream went on forever I found myself in a small room with lots of other parents and Whoopi Goldberg, another one of my “friends!” She told us she could teach us to handle our cubs more effectively and would call each of us when it was our turn. All we had to do was write down our phone number and give it back to her. She passed out wrinkled up baggies and magic markers for this purpose and I spent the rest of the dream trying to remember my telephone number and write it down on a wrinkled piece of plastic with a marker that barely made a mark and when it did, my hand smeared it, or erased it almost immediately. But I kept trying. Not because I had any cubs, but I desperately wanted to talk to Whoopi!

Cozy

2012-01-12T12:16:00.001-06:00

I live in a cozy, and cozy is a euphemism for teeny tiny, apartment. Three people in here are like putting three guinea pigs in a one-hamster cage and due to the impending snowstorm, I had two guests.

Since they are family, each one has their own idiosyncrasies, which makes it more interesting. We found ourselves packed head to tail in the living room trying to eat dinner, watch television, and play Words With Friends on three separate devices, mine being the largest, my computer.

It was like living on an electrical octopus. Cords ran everywhere as each person tried to charge up his or her electronic devices, but the good thing was that I could turn the heat off. I now know that my apartment heats up quite nicely on three human bodies. No furnace required.

Sleeping was interesting. One person couldn’t sleep with any noise or light. Another needed the television on and I escaped to my bedroom leaving them to battle it out. Until….I woke up in the middle of the night. It seems infomercials are twice as loud as regular programming and Carol Burnett’s voice isn’t half as funny when you can’t see her and are trying to sleep.

Both of my guests slept like the dead while I skulked around the dark living room trying to find the remote control for the TV. I thought if I woke no one up – no one would miss the television. The remote was nowhere in sight and I was reluctant to go rummaging through someone else’s clothing and bedding while they were asleep. I went back to bed, but it was useless. I had to get up and go back for a second look.

This time my guest woke up and obligingly turned off the TV before going back to sleep almost instantly. I, on the other hand was now up. I tried to sleep. I read. I played with my teddy bear. I lay there in the dark waiting to see when the snow started outside.

I fell asleep just as they got up. I never heard them leave, but they’re coming back tonight.

Variety is not always the spice of life

2012-01-11T12:24:00.000-06:00

There are people in this world I always look forward to seeing and hearing from and there are others I do not.

I think the difference is in the way we communicate.

Thinking about some people doesn’t affect me one way or another. They are people I interact with on some level that is simply utilitarian, or at least innocuous enough that they elicit no real feelings.

Thinking about others fills me with warmth. These are the people I find interesting and responsive, the ones who are a joy to talk with or be around.

But there are some people who are so evasive and unreliable they can ruin my day with a single sentence. They seldom call unless they want something from me and even if I say they can have it, they may not show up to get it, leaving me waiting and waiting and waiting. If they do show up, they may not be the least bit appreciative or truly open and friendly. I dread these interactions.

Today I am waiting.

Fatal Attractions

2012-01-09T23:44:00.000-06:00

Some people attract bad luck like a magnet does iron filings.

If there are two possibilities, these people always seem to land on the worst one. Hands down, they are guaranteed to have trouble!

I used to think they were just unlucky, but after today I really do believe that there are people who almost prefer the hard way.

Rather than choose to walk uphill for a short time, they live their entire lives in a skid down a rocky slope, proclaiming how much they like it as they tear the skin from their bones and drag their children behind them.

And even when they claim to hate something, they just keep on doing the same things over and over again.

You'd think they would, at least, want to set their children free. Instead they build monuments to the disasters in their lives and bow before them with great sincerity.

Our language is so different that we cannot even communicate. I don't know how to help them. Maybe they don't want help.

Could this be true?

What in the world!

2012-01-09T11:16:00.000-06:00

Living consciously is a great eye opener. I notice things I might have let pass me by before! Strange coincidences occur all the time and whether I choose to believe they are synchronicity or flukes doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that they happen.

They happen with such regularity that I am often embarrassed to tell even my bestest friend in all the world.

George Burns said everyone needs a reason to get out of bed. Well, I need more than a reason, sometimes I need someone to come over and hoist me up! Whatever the reasons for that are, this morning was one of those days when I really needed to be up and going and just couldn’t make myself stir. Suddenly, right at the exact time I had planned on getting up, my cell phone dinged. It was a totally unexpected text from my friend at a time neither one of us would normally have been communicating, just saying, “Have a good day.” Simple. But exactly what I needed when I needed it. I leaped from my bed looking for my glasses so I could read it. I was up!

Last night I was watching a television program when suddenly my thoughts turned to a subject that was totally out of context. It was a strange and compelling thought that made me get up and go do something that made no real sense until later in the evening when I talked to my friend.

This all happened in the last fifteen hours, but it is the story of my life. Who needs fairytales and epic adventures when the real world is like this!

This land is your land…..

2012-01-08T00:15:00.000-06:00

Anyone who might really solve the problems that plague our country will never be popular enough to be elected.

As much as most Americans claim to want a balanced budget, a real solution for world peace and equality for all, when push comes to shove they tend to vote for the things that please them more personally.

Personal agendas sabotage big decisions. That is why we elect people to make those decisions for us. I suspect our system was never perfect, but that it worked a little better in the beginning than it does now.

With all of the electronic media making every promise, smile, taunt and charismatic appeal available to everyone who can vote, we eliminate the small town knowledge that illuminated a man’s footprints back in the earliest days of our country. Most, if not all, of our presidential candidates are politicians, men whose job it is to be liked.

Honestly, the more people who like you, the less likely you are to be standing on solid ground when it comes to unpopular topics.

We’ve dug in so deep now I don’t know what the solution is.

Nothing mechanical about me

2012-01-07T12:58:00.000-06:00

Sometimes life overwhelms me!

Lately, though, it has been a good kind of overwhelming. So many people that when I go to sleep I dream about them, but in that crazy jigsaw way of looking at things that only dreams have.

Imagine a house with three bedrooms in one hallway, one from each of three different homes you have lived in! Or that after writing a paper, I had a friend who is an English Professor read it and he signed a long cash register receipt stating that he had no reason to state it was an “equitable and worthy paper, before I turned it in to my teacher.” Or that my grandson, who was still a baby, couldn’t talk yet but could walk and was going to kindergarten. Or my dog learned to go to the bathroom in a doggie pottie that attached to the wall somehow.

Then came the emotions! I was mad at my sister because she gave me a room where my queen sized bed wouldn’t fit and she was so mad at me she crushed out her cigarette on my table, in my cupcake and right in the middle of my mashed potatoes! In the real world my sister has never even contemplated smoking a cigarette! And the professor who was checking my paper? He invented some kind of pneumatic suction machine to suck the wrong letters out of my writing. It had one for big letters and one for small ones. The big one exploded! I was so terrified I woke up.

I went back to sleep and my dog started teaching me Spanish only I couldn’t understand him so he tried singing it to me and when I couldn’t get that he went to the bathroom on the floor underneath his potty machine.

Nights like this just wear me out. They have just enough familiar faces, both human and canine that I wake up unsure if it was a dream. I looked at my door and wondered where I was! I haven’t been this lost since the old days when our family used to go on vacation.

I need a little knob that turns down my imagination!

Brie and berries

2012-01-05T10:00:00.000-06:00

Having my first dinner party of the year, but it’s really lunch. Either one in my space is going to be close!

I don’t have to worry about seating. There are just enough seats for those coming and barely enough space to set out the food. No worrying about place settings either, they will all be in your lap!

I am having fun playing with the menu. Last night I dipped strawberries in chocolate, but due to lack of space I did them on the computer desk. Well, that and I was playing Words With Friends too. A little chocolate sweetens up the monitor.

This morning I am baking a brie and blackberry appetizer. There is no room for error here. It had better turn out!

Of course in the end it won’t matter as long as we all have fun!

Now

2012-01-04T13:07:00.000-06:00

Life is good!

When I just sit back and enjoy what is, then the now becomes better and better.

No striving to make it perfect.

No need to direct every move.

There is a certain amount of planning, but that is usually part of the fun for me. I like to think I am ready for those surprises that come out of nowhere, no matter what they are.

But if I’m not? Why let let that ruin now?

It’s the now that really counts!

A new year, a new way of being?

2012-01-03T13:07:00.000-06:00

For every new year resolution that comes around to stay I suspect there are ten that gently fade away into the land of good intentions gone. Not gone awry, or gone bad, or even gone crazy – just gone. Lost. Forgotten.

In my experience things change, but they seldom change overnight.

Change that lasts comes slowly. It creeps up and burrows in when I least expect it and often don’t even notice in the beginning.

If I wasn’t an inveterate saver of correspondence and everything else written I might not ever know when some things began or others ended. But I am one of those hoarders of ideas who likes to go back and look at things that seemed irrelevant at the time.

I like pondering why this thing took root and that one didn’t and my stash of all things written is a good place to study that.

I began last year thinking I had given up much and was carefully working my way into the rut where I would spend the rest of my life.

I begin this one knowing there are not gonna be any ruts in my life. I’m just not a rutting person. I may begin them, but in the end I always fly up into the air and float away. It’s not determination on my part, or conscientious attention, or any other grandiose explanation of why I am who I am that defines me.

I really just am what I am and no amount of anything is likely to change it for too long.

That thought used to bother me when it slipped into the edges of my thoughts, but I think the time has come to just accept it, maybe even celebrate it a little. I met another one of my species this year and I think, just maybe, we’re uniquely okay!

I'm a big kid now

2012-01-02T00:52:00.000-06:00

My hope comes through the eyes of children, both big and small.

They see the important things, the details that matter.

Loving, caring, dreaming, being, forgiving, in the eyes of a child anything is possible.

Their magic is still strong and they believe.

A perfectly beautiful moment

2012-01-01T01:26:00.000-06:00

Every so often common sense dictates letting go and starting over

I think people tend to believe this mostly means material things, but I think it needs to go farther than that.

The material things may seem difficult to let go of, but they are things other people can forcibly take away from me, so they were never really mine in the first place.

Letting go of what is only mine is much harder.

Thoughts, fears, habits, prejudices, grudges, all those negative things that can ruin a perfectly beautiful moment from the inside out, are much harder to dispose of.

Even tradition can be a bad thing if it becomes so deeply ingrained that I can’t see over the edges of the rut it leaves me in.

This year I want to concentrate on the beauty of the moment unhampered by past negativity. I know it won’t be as easy as I want it to be so I have a plan. Not a really new plan, but one I intend to focus on more intensely this year.

Each time a negative thought rears its ugly head I hope I am able to recognize it and then blow it away on the next breath as something I no longer need.

Grandma's House

2011-12-31T12:48:00.000-06:00

Another year passes!

I remember thinking how fortunate I was to be born right in the middle of the century, exactly fifty years after my grandma. She went from riding a pony to school to seeing men on the moon and as far as I know she never blinked an eye when it came to change.

My grandma was a thoroughly modern woman. She learned to drive a car, a Pierce Arrow one of her older brothers brought home from California, when she was twelve years old! She put her hair up under a hat, put on a man’s uniform and delivered milk as a young mother who needed a job. Later on in life, when she was widowed, she maintained the family home and finished rearing four children, putting her two youngest sons through college. I never knew her to be less than energetic and eager to learn about what was new.

She always worked and she made hockey puck hamburgers that were so well fried it was a challenge to cut them with a fork, but she used to make me a butterscotch meringue pie from scratch that was to die for! And she made it just for me!

She did laundry on Monday morning before work and let me tail along behind her holding the clothespins while she hung it on the clothesline to dry. And sometimes I was allowed to catch butterflies in her garden while she cut flowers for her vase shaped like a glass basket.

Grandma and I would cuddle up in her big blue chair and she would tell me about the city mouse and the country mouse, one of my favorite stories. I loved the list of things he packed up to take with him.

My earliest years are full of memories from Grandma’s house and today I’m thinking of her.

Grammie

2011-12-30T13:55:00.000-06:00

What’s in a name?

I’ve always sort of been of the opinion that a duck is a duck no matter what you call it. Of course Donald duck is cuter than Igor duck, but that is more a matter of preferences.

Last night I had the chance to spend time with my youngest granddaughter, a real treat since she lives in Denver and I only see her a few times a year. We did all those extraordinary things an eighteen month old likes to do.

We ate cheesy rice and I made over her extraordinary skill with a spoon! We put together puzzles that were real fire engines and ambulances and then raced them down an incline to see them roll and then fall apart so we could reassemble them! We built Picasso like creations with our new Twig blocks and I was so impressed with my little genius! Then we had a tea party and she poured!

In short, I played the part of a grandmother, totally in love and impressed, and she played the adorable grandchild. It was a glorious night that ended with her falling asleep in my arms.

So why did I bring up names? Well, she understands everything I say and communicates mostly in looks, gestures and one word sentences, but she did two things last night that made this Christmas perfect.

She said, “I love you.” And she called me Grammie! I have been named!

Unthinking unconscious

2011-12-29T09:23:00.000-06:00

In this season of love and charity I am often given nightmares by the news. Perhaps because of the violent contrast between the ideal and the real, or perhaps because sensationalized news sells better than other stories.

I am a cynic when it comes to any kind of so-called, “news.” I know much of it is produced to sway unthinking people to a particular viewpoint.

Good, bad, or indifferent, almost everyone has a pet point and they will go to all sorts of unimaginable, except they are imagined, lengths to make their pet the star of the moment.

A certain amount of bad press is obviously better than no press and the best way to counteract ugly truth seems to be to inundate the world with vague promises and lots of hype after some unintentional reveal.

The underlying truth behind it all is what gives me the nightmares. That people are willing to be duped into believing the so-called solutions to today’s perceived problems are even acceptable goes beyond my understanding.

I have no idea how many people, organizations, charities, religions, schools, whatever have an agenda based first on money (and justified because without that they would fold?) and secondly power, or their need to impose their beliefs on as many people as possible (to the exclusion of an unbelievable number of other people.)

Sacrificial lambs fall like rain from the sky so that this can continue and everyone just covers their heads with big smiles as they continue on, nodding and shaking hands.

Around the clock

2011-12-28T14:01:00.000-06:00

Time is so relevant and so sensitive.

The world took forever when I was a child. Nights were infinite, days long and full of adventures. I thought we went to school half the year and had summer the other half!

My world pretty much stayed that way until I had children. Oh, I knew summer wasn’t six months long, but I managed to play tennis from April to October most years so it didn’t matter what it was called.

My daughter was my first child. She was nearly four when she came to live with us and started school the next year. I remember thinking that things would slow down once school started and I could get back into my old routines of ambling through life playing.

I didn’t realize I had just stepped out of the gate and begun the great race! Maybe it was my first tentative step out of childhood into the adult world. I’m not sure about that, because I’m still hanging onto the line that attaches me to my toys. It doesn’t seem to be slowing me down any though.

I am retired! How can that be?

Years slip by faster than the nights when I was three! Decades pass more quickly than my first semester of first grade!

I still dream the same dreams, still love most of the same things, still want many of the same basics and honestly am often as overwhelmed as I ever was by the diversity and magnificence and joy that swirls around me in any given moment.

I’m taller and have a sixty-year head start, but other than that I can relate to the children in this world so easily because we still have a lot in common. It’s just that my battery is running down now, but the clock works in our minds and hearts are closer than you might think.

I am the hurdle

2011-12-27T02:33:00.000-06:00

My need to share my joy often exceeds my ability.

I find that by defining things I limit them, set artificial boundaries that might be misunderstood, or even wrong.

It is habit and up bringing and cultural expectations that create these desires.

I leap into the same river every day, but one day I see the whale and suddenly I am terrified.

The whale has always been there. I often float on the waves his tail creates. It is only my self-consciousness that dredges up the fear.

I am the hurdle I must over come, again and again.

Don't bomb Aunt Mary

2011-12-26T13:51:00.000-06:00

So many people to connect with!

What a blessing that is!

My favorite part of the Christmas season is hearing from everyone. Whether it is by Christmas card, or email, telephone, or in person, this time of the year makes me feel so much closer to the individuals that make up this huge family we call humans!

I have spent a good part of today on the telephone and there is more to come. I can’t imagine what it was like when people set off on sailing ships, or covered wagons and never spoke to their families again, or had long years in between communications.

Our bodies may be scattered around the world, but our hearts and voices, or at least pictures and words, are often only seconds apart.

I almost never meet a real live human being that I don’t relate to in some way, so I have to believe that the closer we all become, the more real we will all seem to each other and that is the secret.

Grandma and Aunt Mary may get on our nerves after a week of visiting in one small house. Uncle George may be so gruff we avoid him like the plague, but we would never think of bombing these people. They are family!

It’s time to extend that family.

The sweetness of now

2011-12-25T01:03:00.000-06:00

I keep pinching myself to see if I am sleeping, but even if I am this is the sweetest dream I could ever imagine.

Everywhere I turn my dreams come true.

I don’t know how, or why, or even it if is only my perspective. I only know that it is breath takingly sweet.

If I could make one wish upon this Christmas, it would be that I would always be able to look through the chaos to see what is so precious in the here and now.

If all the world could do that, there would be peace on earth.

Christmas miracles

2011-12-24T15:02:00.002-06:00

Christmas miracles are wonderful. I can’t imagine anything warming a parent’s heart more than having their child returned from a coma, or from being captured, or kidnapped.

Still, it doesn’t take a miracle to warm my heart.

I look at my life and know that as awesome as a miracle could be, there is not much that could really add to the everyday joy and love that hovers around me in the faces of my family and friends, who are really just part of one huge family.

My miracle is you, that you exist at all, that you touch my life, that at the very root of everything…

We are.

A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck

2011-12-23T05:06:00.000-06:00

What do these things have in common?

Fluttery eyelashes brushing against a soft cheek

Rubbing noses

A smacking peck on the forehead

They are all kisses!

A butterfly kiss, an Eskimo kiss, a duck kiss and now I’ve heard there is a bear kiss!

I wonder how that goes!

Maybe that’s the one where you grab the other person and madly kiss them all over while they giggle with glee!

In a nutshell

2011-12-22T12:11:00.000-06:00

“Bring a torch, Jeanette Isabella” a sixteenth century French Christmas carol and the kind of music I adore more than almost anything else. Just the tune conjures thoughts of gentle warmth and love for me.

It comes to me via the Internet, but it carries images of a young family; their own newborn sleeping quietly in his place nearby. His big sister, only a baby herself, coos and giggles in the background. His mother quietly plays the tune on the piano and his father carries it through on the guitar.

Gifts like this are ineffable and priceless, tiny moments that express the whole meaning of life without straining or striving, but simply by being; this is Christmas.

Hone your powers

2011-12-21T09:48:00.000-06:00

Most of us have no idea the power we wield in this world.

Parents are often much more affected by their young children’s words and views than any toddler could ever imagine. Good teachers put more emphasis on their student’s opinions than you might believe. Co-workers, friends, seeming strangers on the street – all have the power to change the face of our days.

One smile, one slammed door, either one might conceivably alter the history of the world.

We are creatures filled with feelings, but the buttons that trigger these feelings are different for each of us.

Some are pits of emptiness that need to be constantly refilled in order to work properly. Others need little more than the knowledge of their own self worth to do great things. Most of us fall in between somewhere, but it really doesn’t matter where we are on the scale of things. It only matters that someone, somewhere, understand and reach out.

It is amazing how much one phone call can do to a life.

A few words can turn the world upside down, or right it back up in a matter of seconds.

We’re all superheroes with the power to do amazing things. Use that power for good and you will become stronger and stronger!

What kind of superhero are you?

Mamma

2011-12-20T09:35:00.002-06:00

I took my car in to be worked on this morning. I almost took it yesterday, but like I told the man at the desk, if I had it would probably have fallen on someone. Yesterday was one of those days!

My pneumatic desk chair kept inching downward, leaving thirty-one inches of leg curled into an eighteen-inch space. I found myself trapped in the beauty salon between two harpees whose incessant ugly chatter drove me nearly screaming out of the place, in search of another place who would take in a woman who only wanted a slight trim. The next place nearly lost me in its insane need to have some kind of customer care card before snipping the ends off my hair.

The look on that girl’s face when I asked, probably none to kindly, “Are you telling me you can’t just cut my hair?” My breaking with protocol had left her cowering behind the counter like some sort of dazed rabbit. She had to think.

“Well yes, but you wouldn’t get credit for it.”

I didn’t want credit. I only wanted a haircut! In the end I got a fantastic haircut. I’ll go back there! I even apologized for being so short with her, but I could care less about their cards. It was not a good day.

This morning, however, was wonderful and that says a lot from someone who is not a morning person. I showed up at the garage before seven thirty and they had coffee waiting! Good coffee!

My car was put on the rack and the man behind the counter entertained me with stories about his mother. She would kill him if she had even an inkling of what he told me, but he had me in stitches for the next forty-five minutes. I can relate to mama. She’s a woman after my own heart.

Today is gonna be a great day!

Yellow Wallpaper and Tell-Tale Hearts

2011-12-19T01:52:00.000-06:00

It has been nine days since I became ill last Friday. Amazing how one minute I was happy and laughing, talking on the phone with a friend and a few minutes later confined to a rut that ran between my bed and the bathroom. Chained so totally by commode and trashcan that I saw nothing else for the next two days.

Withered and drained by beasts as insidious as any dragon ever could have been, I found myself burned up and charred, a mere husk of myself unwilling to leave the apartment for nearly five days after returning from my sister’s.

It is amazing how my surroundings altered themselves to fit my state. What had been a bright sunny set of rooms became surrounded by cold and rain, fog and chill. Blinds drawn against the invasion of these things only forced the room to begin contracting as if it too wanted to get away. Everything was murky, dim, uncomfortably cold unless I carried the portable heater around with me.

The electric baseboard heaters which made me sick last spring began insinuating themselves back into my lungs shortly after being revived this winter and the portable heater reaches out with its heavy sinuous cord trying to wrap itself around my ankles and trip me!

My knitting needles join the conspiracy, knotting up so that any work is impossible. Today I sneaked out and went to the post office, but when I returned the closet did not want to accept my jacket and I had to hang it on the chair by the keyboard. A few more inches of precious space gone and my heart begins to beat louder as the silence grows!

Tomorrow I am going to get my hair cut and then go to a Christmas party in the evening because I find myself starting to dream of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper!

Time to untip the scales

2011-12-18T13:23:00.000-06:00

Imagine a world….

I am often asking people to imagine. Imagining is easy for me. It is easy for children. It is not always easy for grown-ups.

When do people begin to lose that kind of freedom? What builds the fences that lie between each human being and infinite possibilities?

I suppose it is necessary to have some boundaries. If I don’t know the difference between the edge of the table and the edge of my imagination, I can fall off and break my neck, but maybe the trick is to hang onto a few of those little scouts that discovered the edges.

That way some come back and say, “Uh oh! Table edge! Big boom! Stop!”

While others say, “Cliff ahead! Possible lost valley below! Adventure! Let’s go!”

Experience steps in and fleshes out the experience so that I can go forth and enjoy without maiming myself forever.

I suppose circumstances dictate how many scouts to kill and which ones go first. It probably depends on our caretakers and the safety of the world we live in as children, but once you are old enough to read this, you are old enough to take back some control.

You need to resurrect some of the more fun loving scouts and do away with the zombies; those walking dead scouts whose purpose no longer serves your needs. You know the ones, those guys who think if it doesn’t hurt it isn’t good and others like that.

Remember just because danger can lead to pain doesn’t mean pain leads to safety. It’s all about balance!

Imagine a world based on love, not fear.

Love

2011-12-17T13:31:00.001-06:00

It is important to love people for who they are.

You can like them for what they do. Adore them for how they act. Get a chuckle out of their antics, or shake your head in wonder that they can survive the way they are.

You can even put them up on pedestals as long as you understand that pedestals are man made things and things made by man eventually tumble down.

But love is sacred. It is what flows through us and gives us life. If it was possible to paint love, graven images might have been allowed.

Loving someone does not imply that what they do is okay, or how they do it is right.

Love is one of those things that only exists as a reflection and who it reflects is complicated.

That it does exist is all I know for sure.

Open your mind

2011-12-16T00:23:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time I had a dream.

And then I grew up a little and everyone told me how impossible most of my dreams were!

I lived a lot of my life believing that, except I never really believed it. If I had? I would never have had half the life I’ve had.

But even so, it wasn’t until the last year that I discovered just how impossibly wonderful impossible dreams can be when they do come true!

Once upon a time exists. But I have to be willing to step into the picture and allow it to happen. No one can read the real thing to me from the pages of a dusty storybook. Those stories belong to someone else. I have to write my own.

Or at least recognize them!

Lines of communication

2011-12-15T08:36:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went in search of the lost card!

After going to the post office to buy stamps and leaving my little stack of cards there in the outgoing mail slot, I heard from my sister that she never received a card from me.

First attempt: email my sister-in-law and ask her if she received one, but she didn’t respond quickly enough for me in this day of instant communication so I phoned my son in Colorado. After all I am a brand new grandmother and what better excuse to call and hear how my new grandson and ancient (eighteen month old) granddaughter are doing. I had to leave a message. Next came my brother down in Taylorville, but I only spoke to his answering machine too.

I went back online and left a message for my daughter on Facebook. Yes, our family is large. We communicate in whatever way is necessary! No immediate response. I also called my son in North Carolina. He was the first human being I connected to! Yes, he said, they received a Christmas card from me. We talked for an hour or so with the added bonus of getting to talk to my six-year-old grandson who informed me that he thought J.K. Rowling should rename dementors, death eaters. I told him he should write her a letter and he asked if it should be a letter on paper, or email?

Before I went to bed I also received an email from my sister-in-law, a message from my daughter on Facebook, and a phone call from my brother, my sister, my son, where I also got to speak with my granddaughter, and even texted my friend in Louisiana!

I can’t remember the last time I connected with all of these people on one day! An aside to this is that I received a box of Christmas presents from my friend in California and I sent her an email with a picture of them under my tree almost immediately!

Who could ever have guessed that a glitch in a custom as old as sending Christmas cards could result in so many other connections. One missing card formed a line of communication that touched nearly everyone who is very important to me, in less than ten hours!

The flu flew

2011-12-14T00:49:00.002-06:00

It isn’t often that I can tell you the minute I became ill, but this past Friday was one of those days. I was talking to a friend at 11:15 PM and my stomach began hurting. By midnight I was experiencing dry heaves. Saturday morning brought on the real thing along with other less mentionable symptoms and I spent the next sixty hours as miserable as I have ever been in my entire life.

I ran out of sheets, towels and all my favorite pajamas and to make matters worse I knew they were coming to put in new windows at nine on Monday morning! There was no way I could call them and our apartment office doesn’t open until 9:30. Sunday night I took down all the blinds and drapes, gathered up my dirty laundry and dragged myself out to the car where I drove like a mad woman for my sister’s house, just hoping I got there before anything bad happened.

Once I was there, she took such good care of me. Freezing 7Up and crushing it so I could munch on the chips, making me grilled cheese when I felt better last night and doing all my laundry for me while I lay in her extra bedroom or in her living room watching HGTV! It might have been a world-class vacation if I hadn’t felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck.

I came home tonight and struggled up to my apartment with clean laundry and a heavy bag full of two-liter 7Up bottles. I was dreading it. I thought it was possible they hadn’t even put in the new windows and even if they had I knew I would have to replace the blinds and draperies. I just didn’t have that kind of energy.

The windows did not bode well. There were no new stickers on the glass as I approached the building, but when I stepped inside my apartment! New windows with the shades and draperies replaced and even the grating on the electric radiator replaced! I called to thank the office and they seemed surprised. It seems maintenance came in and did all of this without asking or telling! I am so touched!

I am also relieved, because today I was able to really eat real food for the first time since Friday. There is nothing like feeling bad to make feeling good extra special.

Practically perfect people

2011-12-09T01:10:00.001-06:00

Imagine a cloak made out of years. Seasons of rain, snow, sleet and hail, tempered by days of burning sun and pouring rain, woven together along with the wisdom of experiences met along the way.

Wrapped inside this cloak is the soul of an eight-year-old, innocence intertwined with a basic understanding of love, fear, humor, and even empathy.

Fleshing out that soul is the heart of a lion and the body of a full grown human, enough power to do what it knows is right.

If I were Mary Shelley, this would be my Frankenstein. If I were a wizard working for King Arthur, this would be my coup de grace. If I had a crayon this would be my masterpiece.

All people are man made in some respect.

On Guard

2011-12-08T00:26:00.000-06:00

Our neighbors had an Afghan hound they adopted from a shelter, a gorgeous dog, but it had some big problems. If someone surprised it coming around a corner, the dog threw itself on the ground and screamed! If a man raised his hand or his voice, the dog peed all over itself. It never got over these behaviors. Its people just had to learn to work around them and keep a mop handy.

There ought to be some way of identifying love that is safe. Some kind of scent, like roses, or maybe a secret word. It can’t be smiling. A lot of people smile just like the fox that ate the little gingerbread boy.

Real love is supposed to be organic, but there seem to an awful lot of rules people bring into that mix. And nothing hurts more than tripping over rules when you are trying to be honest and real with someone. If you have to be on guard all the time, eventually you become like that poor Afghan hound, neurotic and panicky.

Trusting that you can just be yourself, warts and all, and be okay is a huge step. It takes a special person to reach out with a rose in one hand and a mop in the other!

The good actors

2011-12-07T01:58:00.000-06:00

The stress of living in difficult situations is bad for children. In fact, studies show that children living in homes where there is constant upheaval and fighting, or abuse, show many of the same symptoms as soldiers coming back from a war.

You can’t always spot these children in the classroom. They’re often good actors. They know how to diffuse situations with an adeptness that would amaze most adults. It’s not being cute. It’s survival.

Not all of these children pull their hair out, or throw temper tantrums. Some of them just go about their lives doing what they might have done anyway, but carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders while they do it. It makes everything harder.

As long as they get good grades and don’t rock the boat, no one pays any attention. Until, one day, the dam breaks and all the defenses are washed away and then it’s too late. And then their siblings blames themselves and their friends blame themselves, and their parents blame themselves and so do their teachers and doctors and everyone else – everyone except the person who caused the problem.

That person hardly ever has any idea that what they do is so destructive, not even if someone tries to tell them. People seem to go on believing that however they grew up was the right way, the okay way, the only real way.

It’s the dark side of the circle of life; one that needs to end.

Hold me

2011-12-06T11:10:00.002-06:00

December skies look leaden behind the sleeping bones of trees. Funny how one kind of plainness can highlight another making the combination appealing to the eye.

Of course there are other strange things that appeal to me: The playground of my elementary school with its scraggly grass and gray metal monkey bars. Big dated kitchens with white enamel sinks and tall cabinets flanking scarred wooden tables. Old cars running rumbly on cold winter mornings with that warm, old-fashioned smell.

I think it is partly the memories of these places that add the coziness it takes to make them desirable, but it is also the strength of them. There is something very appealing about strong, durable, functional objects. They speak of lamplight and hot buttered toast, the staple of all childhoods.

These are the laps I still go back to sit on when I don’t fit anywhere else.

The Macaroni Angel

2011-12-05T12:34:00.002-06:00

Sometimes memories are just wishes that never came true.

After a while they become so vibrant, so rich and full of feelings that it seems they must have happened that way.

I didn’t understand that when I was younger, but I do now.

Yesterday I put up my tree. I only have a few ornaments and they are all in the same place so there is no possibility that I missed any.

The macaroni angel is not there! She is still back in North Carolina with all the other ornaments! I must have dreamed I put her on last year, because when I pulled out the photos, she was not there.

I suppose she is there in my heart and that is all that really matters.

Lucky me

2011-12-04T13:07:00.000-06:00

Why are some people so lucky and others not?

I consider myself to be a very lucky person. For some reason things tend to work out for the best for me. Most of the time.

It’s kind of like playing Scrabble. No matter how many words I know, if the letters aren’t there, I can’t use them.

In my life I have known people who know all the words and have all the right letters, but instead of being happy they manage to ruin the day for everyone around them. I try to avoid those people anymore, but it’s not always possible.

When I run into them it is a two-fold crash! All the old negative feelings rush in, magnified by their long absence and the new ones join them to make it an extra specially bad experience.

I guess I’m just going to have to be a better driver!

Not just the good news, but the best news!

2011-12-03T08:03:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I wrote of beginnings not having the slightest idea that it would be the day my newest grandson was born!

Described as healthy and hairy, he is a much awaited, much wanted and an already long loved member of the family!

And whether he began yesterday, or when he was conceived, or when his parents were conceived, or way before that is really a moot point.

All that really matters is that he is here and healthy and this grandma is ecstatic!

Whence upon a time

2011-12-02T01:15:00.000-06:00

In every beginning is an end, just as every ending once began and sometimes an ending is a beginning!

Separating these things is harder than it sounds.

It’s kind of like an echo. I suppose with the right sort of sound equipment you can pinpoint the end points of something like that, but if you ask human beings, the answers are all over the place.

There is no equipment that can measure the really important things in life like the beginning of a person. Was it when that person was born, or when their great great grandparents first laid eyes on each other?

Same thing goes for the end of a person. Is it simply when they die, or when people forget them?

I like to think of my world as plaid with all sorts of things crisscrossing and running parallel to each other, all connected by that one basic color underneath.

We’re never as far apart as we think.

The hero's tale

2011-12-01T02:28:00.000-06:00

There’s a little bit of truth in everything, but deep down inside of me in a very tiny place, is the absolute truth of me!

It is my essence and it is so small and so compact because I have been squishing it down since I can ever remember!

Why do I do that? Well, you see that part of me is so vulnerable and so honest and so open that it is sensitive beyond anything you can imagine! It isn’t fragile. Not at all. It can’t change, because it is who I am. But it can feel more acutely than other part of me so I have to keep it safe.

A lot of people have had tiny peeks, one some glancing looks, but only one has ever held it between his fingers and his heart and explored every nook and cranny. No one else could possibly do that because you have to be an old old soul in a child’s mind in order to even find my key.

I think we all have a place like that inside of us and the search for the key is really the hero’s tale.

A Word Master

2011-11-30T13:17:00.000-06:00

Writing is one of my favorite things to do. It is a joy; a way to fritter away hours playing with words and the power behind them.

I remember the old school yard saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” I knew that wasn’t true. I saw words crushing people every day and sometimes I saw someone so uplifted they beamed like it was Christmas morning!

Words are real magic, or they can be.

The right words can form treaties between countries, or teach a surgeon how to do a heart transplant. The right words make the feelings inside of us visible to the person we are talking to. The right words can reach out and do the most miraculous things when it comes to helping people.

That’s why it is so important to have as many words as you can. They are the real secret weapons!

In the end it is like everything else in this world. Being a Word Master means more than just having the words. You need to learn how to use them. The more finesse you acquire, the more powerful you’ll be, but having them is the first step.

Life in the real lane

2011-11-29T11:09:00.002-06:00

As we move into the Christmas season with pepper spray and brawling mobs, I am grateful for so many things.

First and foremost are my family and friends who seem to have their heads on straight and their hearts in all the right places.

Without giving up the wanting and wishing that gives this season its piquancy, we seem to understand that without each other it would all be meaningless.

Reality checks lurk in unexpected places, but this is life in the real lane.

Complete with roadblocks, bumps and even soft squishy mud holes, it is possible to keep on going because of each other.

Support

2011-11-28T14:13:00.000-06:00

Support implies holding something up, helping it along until it can stand-alone.

Standing alone is the ultimate goal here. Getting there can be rough.

Sometimes the toughest kind of love is being honest and saying, “No, this is not the answer.

I may not know what the answer is. I am willing to help look for it, but ultimately this is your responsibility."

The Dear Tracker

2011-11-27T01:30:00.000-06:00

"I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love." — Marilyn Monroe

I read the above on a Facebook page of a beautiful young girl and for some reason it just stuck in my mind. On the surface I can understand the optimism it poses for a young girl out in this world on her own for the first time. It says that even a woman the world considered exceedingly beautiful was looking for love and not finding it easy.

The other side that struck me, though, was a little bit sad.

So many girls, and boys too, grow up thinking they have to be or do something to make them lovable. They seem to regard love as something to be attained and when it’s looked at that way it is scary.

It’s like wanting it to rain and wondering if you seeded the clouds the right way; if you sing the right songs, dance the right steps, invoke the proper prayers, will you be worthy of being loved?

Sending our children to look for love outside themselves is a fool’s errand.

After all, the love I feel comes from my own feelings and those are already mine, deep inside of me. The love that comes from outside of me is a beautiful affirmation, but it in no way dims the love that is already me.

Instead of teaching our children to follow the tracks that lead to love, how much better it would be to simply show them what love looks like by holding up a mirror.

Living the dream

2011-11-25T09:48:00.000-06:00

It has already been said an infinite number of times by just as many people that the richness in life cannot be measured in money and things. My yardstick is marked off in the ineffable qualities of family and friends.

And while it often seems that everything was better in the “good old days,” whenever those were for each of us, today is pretty amazing for me.

Thanks to modern technology I can to talk with my brother from one town and my daughter in another. I can eat dinner with one family and my son and his family can join us on Skype. I can spend the evening texting with a dear friend who is spending time with his mother.

It is possible to be surrounded by loved ones all day long and even see them in the same moments.

Yesterday's dreams don't need genies to turn them into today's reality.

Thanks for the memories

2011-11-24T00:10:00.000-06:00

I can be so sentimental. I used to save nearly every paper my children brought home from school. Their baby books became baby boxes and finally big covered crates that wouldn’t even fit under the bed!

I think I have over fifty thick photo albums full of pictures I took so I wouldn’t forget a thing! Pictures of my children when they were smaller and pictures of my mother before she died and my father and all kinds of other photos to keep me from forgetting even one detail of precious moments.

I have a little macaroni angel my son made for our Christmas tree when he was seven. It is my most prized ornament and if it broke I could never hope to replace it.

I have elegant dishes given to me by one person or another to commemorate a special occasion and I know the story behind each one.

I have turtles collected all over the world that remind me of special people and special moments and special places.

There was a time in my life when losing any of these would have broken my heart. It was as if the people themselves were wrapped up in these “things.”

Now the only one I have is the tiny macaroni angel and he is so fragile it wouldn’t take much to break him. Everything else has been left behind somewhere and I know the day may come when that tiny bit of dried and painted pasta may crumble too.

Only now I realize that they are just signs pointing to memories and the memories will always be there no matter what happens to anything else. In fact, the memories are actually much more detailed than the thing I kept to remind me of them.

And they seem to pop up just when I need them no matter where I am.

You and me

2011-11-23T04:03:00.000-06:00

Who is the oak tree to the hummingbird, or the hive to the bee?

Who is the shell to the turtle, the reef to the anemone?

That is who you are to me.

What is a cloud to lightning, or wind to a red tailed hawk?

What is the sun to a turtle, what makes a parrot talk?

That is what you are to me.

Why does the red sun rise in the morning and the pale moon appear in the evening?

Why do butterflies drift down to Mexico, or geese fly north with seasons chilling?

That is why you call to me.

Where do trees find their majesty, or mountains their myths?

Where do volcanoes spew lava, or islands raise mists?

That is where you fit with me.

One petal at a time

2011-11-22T12:26:00.000-06:00

I like to think of childhood as the time when children slowly bloom one petal at a time. Discovering who they are and all the wonderful parts of them hidden deep within.

My real memories of childhood though were more like that of a morning glory, closing up and hiding away as time pressed on and evening approached.

Each step along the way seemed to reveal more and more imperfections.

I wasn’t sure if other people discovered the same thing, or if I was particularly flawed, but I knew I worried about my flaws and I tried even harder to be “perfect.”

Where these feelings came from I will never know. Perhaps they were just the result of an overly sensitive child trying to be the way she perceived the world from her childish viewpoint. Perhaps they were given to her by the world around her.

I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to unfold all those petals, looking under each one to see if there is something worth redeeming.

One big step for...

2011-11-21T01:20:00.000-06:00

There is a learning curve to everything. I understand that. I allow for that in other people.

So why don’t I give myself the same leeway?

Especially where money is concerned, if I have to pay for it, I am so much less likely to try it out.

I have wanted to try out texting and email on my cell phone for years, but this year was the first time I allowed myself to venture into that area.

I started out very conservatively and even then went back and pared it down. I found myself most reluctant to admit to anyone that I was even trying it as if this were some grave and terrible step into a place I didn’t belong.

Slowly, but surely, I discovered the joys of texting and keeping in touch with loved ones without the baggage of waiting on the computer, or the intrusion of a ringing phone that had to be answered. I doubled my texting limit, then eventually went to unlimited texting, terrified that I had made a mistake and my phone bill would be off the charts.

It wasn’t.

So then I added a data package. Just a simple one so I can download pictures off my phone and check on email if I my computer is down and once more I went into paroxysms of fear. Had I overstepped my technical capabilities? Had I over reached my financial one?

So far, so good, I seem to have taken another step into the world of today and no heavy-handed justice has reached out of nowhere to squash me flat or click his or her tongue in disapproval. So what’s the big deal? Why I put myself through so much worry for things other people just take for granted I may never know.

A little pop theory

2011-11-20T11:37:00.000-06:00

Once in a while I will be talking to someone and suddenly I wonder why they are responding the way they are.

Sometimes it is an emotional exchange where I don’t understand what sparked the emotions. Other times it is simply an odd comment that seems to come out of nowhere.

What would happen if it were possible to view the catalyst for this response?

I recently saw a photo of a baby swan whose mother stood behind him in a sort of dreamy looking, blurred way, as if she wasn’t quite real.

Would I be more understanding if I knew the experiences behind the words, or actions; or would it not make any difference to me at all?

I suppose that knowing what lay behind it all, I might be even less tolerant.

Understanding is so much more than knowing. There are layers and layers to delve through, each one with tendrils that connect it to even more factors. Some in my own consciousness and others in the person I am speaking with.

Imagine a white board appearing up above the head of the person with all these links written out in blue marker. Kind of like a moment in Sheldon’s head on The Big Bang Theory!

Maybe I don’t want that after all!

Familiar faces

2011-11-19T02:49:00.002-06:00

What an interesting day this has been. I found my new home. Old time worn and solid on a street lined with trees and with a porch I can chain my bike to at night.

Then I found my old friend. Doing what she’s always done. Mopping floors and writing plays, as though nothing has changed in the last twenty-five years. She and Bradbury must be almost blood brothers by now. They have both put so much blood, sweat and tears into Dandelion Wine.

The Swan! How could I have forgotten The Swan? Star crossed lovers searching for lime vanilla ice cream. Always finding each other, backwards and upside down. Once I wanted it to end “right.” Now I think it always ends right. The trick is to love the now.

Old friends, they pop up in the strangest places: writing by fireflies, eating gummi bears on frozen yogurt, penning plays, mopping floors, writing books, walking dogs and simply listening to the buzz of the grown ups through the lamp lit window.

They don’t always look the same, but they are so familiar.

Whose face this is I think I know...

2011-11-18T04:39:00.001-06:00

Mirror mirror on the wall…

Who’s the happiest one of all?

Who is this person with glowing skin

And sparkling eyes no longer grim?

Why does her imagination soar and her mind race?

She looks so unfamiliar and yet, she has my face!

What secret creams has she applied…

With magic potions deep inside?

What wand has waved around her head

And sent such dreams around her bed?

What lifted all the stress and strife?

You say she’s just in love with life?

It takes a village

2011-11-17T13:06:00.000-06:00

I remember trying to get parents to help out at the elementary school events. The same ones were there at all of them.

We used to laugh and say, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” It’s true. People who are busy seem to have a knack for squeezing in one more thing no matter what.

I’m not all that busy anymore and I have an almost claustrophobic response to people who hem me in trying to get me to do things. The truth is, though, that the more I do, the easier it seems to be to work in that one extra thing.

After all, my time is already spoken for. I’m already up, out and about, why not just make one more stop along the way?

We need people like me! I’m laughing as I say that, but it’s true. Without the people who do the time consuming grunt work behind social events, the hard detailed oriented work behind committees, and those who use their PR skills to smooth the way for all the committees and organizations that touch our lives each day, this world would still run, but it would lack the quality and fun it has now.

The search

2011-11-16T01:00:00.000-06:00

Every once upon a time, life emulates a children’s book. I suppose it could happen twice upon a lifetime, but even once is so amazing no one really expects it.

Imagine waking up in the morning, opening one eye and peeking out from under the covers to see what is happening in the world, only to almost see, out of the corner of that eye, something that disappears into improbability!

All the rest of your life you look for this. In the beginning you look in the closet and behind the door. Sometimes you look in the toy box and it is very curious because it seems to be right there on the tip of your tongue, but even when you look in a mirror, you don’t see a thing!

Later on, when you are big enough to go to school, you look in books. You look in so many books in so many libraries that pretty soon people think you’re kind of a book bug. After years of looking, you know it’s right at the back of your brain, but you just can’t get it out in the open so you can see it!

Life moves on, it always does, and you find yourself in all sorts of serious and grown-up situations. You tell yourself, again and again, this is that thing I was looking for! Only it always turns out that it isn’t!

And finally, one day, when you’ve given up all thought of even looking for it and are out walking in the garden…sniffing the roses and picking violets….there it IS!

Almost brand new and just beginning to climb up the fence is the cutest little sweetpea you’ve ever seen! You come back every single day to sit there and and tell it stories and just watch it grow. You couldn’t have come before because it wasn’t there and you can’t pick it because that would kill it, but never in your whole entire life have you felt so completely happy and satisfied.

Things just happen when they’re supposed to. You can’t make ‘em happen sooner and for some reason I just don’t think you need to worry about missing them either!

A little bit goes a long way

2011-11-15T00:38:00.000-06:00

It is amazing how much attitude has to do with life.

That old story about the little engine who could isn’t so far off most of the time.

Believing in yourself and trusting your instincts goes a long way towards initiating success.

Of course that doesn’t preclude listening to others or being open to changing things.

A willingness to change is not the same thing as expecting failure.

In fact, a willingness to try out new things is often the way out of a losing situation.

A little bit of courage, a little bit of balance, a good mind in a healthy body and the world is yours!

But what, you ask, if I don’t have all these things?

Just get as close as you can and never give up on yourself.

Living the good life

2011-11-14T13:12:00.002-06:00

Why do some people seem to have all the luck?

Others never seem to get a break and while that may be unavoidable, it could be they simply forget to watch out for those little black clouds or carry an umbrella.

I have noticed there are certain habits that shield people from the rain that falls on others’ parades.

One is to open up that umbrella, even when it is inconvenient, or awkward, or downright annoying. Don’t give up when billed wrong, or the glasses aren’t right, or the maintenance people don’t show up. It’s worth hitching up your trousers and standing your ground.

Another is to pay attention to details. Sometimes it is possible to avoid walking under those clouds by taking other steps, but not always. Be a defensive driver. Notice what other people are doing and saying. Check out the alternatives, life is a buffet of choices, take advantage of that.

And last, but certainly not least, don’t count on others to know what you are worth. People often take their cues from others. They think you really know! This is your life and you need to make it a good one.

It's a mystery

2011-11-13T12:11:00.000-06:00

My father-in-law used to love spreading out a newspaper on the card table and watching the ballgame while exploring and fixing the family clock, or toaster, or many other things.

He loved to figure out how things worked.

On the other side of this was a friend who was an English major from U of I who once asked me how I learned things?

I don’t know how most things work, including me!

My body is a mystery, often even to the doctors who are treating it.

And my mind? Oh my gosh, I simply fill it up and things spill out of it.

I used to wish I knew how things worked, but now I am pretty much reconciled to just being glad when they do.

Once upon a morning dreary

2011-11-12T12:21:00.000-06:00

Where does all the dust come from?

Honestly, don’t write and tell me. I probably don’t really want to know. Someone once said it is the dead skin from our bodies in which case, since it can’t possibly be all from me, it means I am sharing this space with all who’ve gone before – and I’m sure there have been many.

Dust filters off the ceiling, magically appears on second shelves sheltered from above and even floats through the air with the greatest of ease.

I vacuum, dust, mop, do whatever it takes to stay ahead of it, but it is a losing battle. The dust is always ahead a hundred or million to one.

I don’t know much about science, but I wonder if I reconstituted all this dust if I could talk with the people whose DNA it might contain?

That might be its only redeeming value.

Imagine. A little dab of water, some magic growth hormones and presto change oh, a blast from the past and there stands the first person who ever lived here! We could spend the evening visiting, or perhaps playing Scrabble, then I could just suck him up in the vacuum cleaner and be done with him!

The next time I might try the dust from the closet, or maybe the north corner of the bedroom! It could be an ever-changing list of disposable companions on dull evenings. I might even be able to market it if some of them turned out especially nice.

For sale: one spoonful of dust just mix with enclosed packet and spend the evening with (a librarian, or classical guitarist, or even an eight year old boy) All you need is water and a vacuum to clean up after yourself.

Scary to think of what boredom might create.

The Hunter

2011-11-11T00:03:00.000-06:00

Two-acre backyard filled with the remains of formal gardens.

Tall ceilinged hallways reverberating with the echoes of days gone by.

Parquet floors, sculptured woodwork, mosaic tiled bathrooms with claw foot tubs.

Elegance from a time long gone.

No central air. No washer and dryer hook-ups. No elevators, or parking garage.

It calls to me. “Welcome hooooooooooooooooooooooooome.”

And as I lie here in my bed contemplating such a move I think I see the grim reaper clad in raggedy black clothes scurrying past my closet. I hear his silent grin and watch as his bony fingers reach out for me…

Is that a welcome, or a warning?

Perhaps I need to just keep on looking!

I slept with the light on for the first time in years last night!

Magic

2011-11-10T02:03:00.000-06:00

Magic is alive and well. Not just pretend magic like magicians do in top hats and capes with little magic wands, but real magic!

That mysterious talent for doing just the right thing at the most unbelievable time is surely magic.

How many times has Fall turned into Winter just in time for sledding and just as that is growing old, Spring comes along and lifts me up so I can smell the rain as it wakes up the flowers?

Who could ever guess that something as elusive as love can materialize into a real live baby with ten little toes and ten little fingers?

What are the odds of two people discovering they are twins born to different parents generations apart?

How often has the world handed me a little ball of misery and somehow it has transmuted into something extraordinarily surprising.

Life is magical. Don't ever doubt it.

It is so much what I make it to be. I have to take what it hands me, but how I take it and what I do with it defines me…

Especially in my own mind.

Coloratura Canary

2011-11-09T00:04:00.000-06:00

I suppose other people feel some sort of stirring when interacting with their pets. That is what pets are for I think. They bring out the best in us in the best of times, acting as child substitutes, companions, best friends and sometimes just good listeners.

I’ve had many pets through the years, including cats, kittens, puppies and dogs. As a child I had monkeys, alligators, parrots, cockatiels and even turtles and canaries.

And yet I have never had a pet like JAC.

I can’t cuddle or pet him. I can’t let him fly loose around the house like I did our cockatiel, or talk with him, or even dress him up. One might actually think he was a pretty sterile pet and in fact he lives in a Sterilite box!

Actually he lives in a cage that is placed in a translucent Sterilite box for two reasons. One, he sheds feathers by the truckload and two, my apartment is too cold and drafty for him otherwise. The top of his cage protrudes from the top so he can sit on his upper perch and look out. He can even really see through the rest of it. I know because I can see him through there too.

They said if I gave him a mirror he would think it was a female canary and stop singing, but if anything it has made his singing more full-throated and richer! I think he believes the bird in the large mirror on the other side of the bars is simply in another cage.

I have never heard any creature sing like JAC does! Of course, like all birds, he sings whenever there is any kind of talking or noise, but he does more. When there is great music on he sings with it!

A full-fledged coloratura soprano with rich trills and runs who sings both pianissimo or forte depending on the music he hears, it is as if he knows the score! Sometimes his songs bring tears to my eyes.

He is extraordinary.

You gotta have heart

2011-11-08T21:18:00.000-06:00

I remember, as a child, hearing, “Money can’t buy everything.”

It used to be considered common sense to believe that, after all money can’t by life, or love, or health and it shouldn’t be able to buy death.

It seems a lot of people began to doubt these things during the last ten years.

There are now people in this world who appear to believe that if they have enough money the rules don’t apply to them.

It is hard to deny that when the rest of us bend over backwards letting them believe it.

We began handing over just about everything they asked for. After all, they’re rich, that means they really know, right?

Know about what? Fair play? Compassion? Equity? How hard the rest of us work to achieve just a modicum of what the rich take for granted?

We are now beginning to reap the benefits of our actions. Certain drugs are no longer available for everyone. Unemployment is rampant despite all our bailouts. Jails are so crowded that white-collar crime may be merely a token stay in a county jail.

The valley between the haves and the have-nots grows daily, dug deeper by the people who can afford the biggest bulldozers, so I am truly heartened by Ohio’s voters. They really rose to the occasion.

In this life

2011-11-07T01:56:00.000-06:00

If I wait long enough and believe earnestly enough, failure is bound to occur!

Anything is likely under those conditions, but why set myself up for that.

Isn’t it better just to plow on ahead thinking all is well?

I mean as long as I’m not planting weeds, something is bound to pop up that will please somebody and you know, in today’s world even the weeds might bring a smile to someone’s face.

Personally I love nothing more than walking into a field and seeing it rampant with dandelions, violets, chickory, goldenrod, queen anne’s lace, all those things people seem to want to get rid of!

There’s nothing particularly great about suffering when you have a choice to do otherwise.

Relevant

2011-11-06T01:55:00.001-05:00

Relevant, an interesting word meaning to be connected, to have some reasonable connection with what is going on. It implies that whatever is happening has some kind of bearing on what is happening right now. It is relevant!

Tonight time is relevant. People all over the country are setting their clocks back an hour.

Imagine having the power to reclaim an hour of your life! If only it wasn’t limited to the last hour! Wouldn’t it be nice if we could choose which hour to reclaim?

That day I stuck my foot in my mouth and nearly choked on what came out! The moment when I leaped before I looked and landed in a really awkward spot! Or maybe the time when I should have leaped, but spent so long thinking about it that it was all over before I jumped in!

Of course, if I could recall an hour now, then in the spring I’d like to double up on one glorious hour from the last year and maybe just revel in it a bit longer.

That kind of relevance is really only in my mind, but there are a million other ways to be more relevant.

Whatever it is that gets me out of bed in the morning is very relevant! The method I use for going to sleep has a relevance unrivaled by any others in my life. The things that make me smile and feel good about myself are more relevant than one might believe.

How relevant can something, or someone be?

More than you might imagine!

Birthdays For Beloveds

2011-11-05T03:23:00.000-05:00

When I think of my birthday I think of candles and cake and maybe balloons. I think of getting older and presents and other things that make me feel childish and old all at the same time.

When I think of your birthday I think of how lucky I am that you were born. I think of all the good things you’ve done in this world and how loved and good you make me feel.

Really your birthday makes me happier than my own because I love thinking about you and what you are in my life.

Just think, all those years ago you were born! You were this little tiny baby squashed in between your parents like some kind of little love sandwich. Everything you did amazed them.

You still amaze me. That’s why I love celebrating your birthday.

I want you to know how important you are to me.