A Word Master

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Quality verses Quantity

 If there is one thing I have learned it is that everyone has some sort of agenda.  Eye doctors think nothing is more important than every little test they can perform and heart doctors feel that without each one of their services a life is at risk.  Dentists are diehard fans of those things each one specializes in and so it goes.

Most of us understand that there is a limit.  Money is usually the first one.  Who can afford to do everything every dentist and doctor wants?  And experience has shown it isn’t even necessary.  Nearly forty years ago two very good dental experts told me emphatically that unless I had surgery on my gums right away my teeth were gone! 

Not only are they still here, they are in pretty good shape by anyone’s standards.

Limit number two is time.  If I went to every appointment and tried to do everything everyone told me; I would have time for very little else.

Limit number three is endurance.  There must be some quality to life and if most of it is spent obsessing over my health what is the point?

Life is a crapshoot.  Common sense and a sense of what is important to me are the guidelines I use.  I want quality over everything else.  Better ten years of this than thirty years of misery.

Only you can make the decisions that affect you, but better for it to be you than someone else.   If there is one place you need to be in charge, it is over your own life.

Close your eyes and look at me!

We love the people we love.

At least most of us do.

That baby may be the homeliest thing John Doe has ever seen, but to us, he is adorable!  He has character!

And that is the way it should be.  Some people are born with very balanced features and most people consider them nicer to look at than the rest of us until you factor in that personality factor, or an even bigger one the love factor.

Every preschooler is familiar with the book, I Love You This Much!  And it isn’t by the pound, or inch, or grade point.  Those are for people with limited perceptions.

It doesn’t take a practiced eye to see real beauty.  It takes an open heart.

Just thinking

Sometimes I wonder if being “crazy” is like living in my dreams.

They come straight from my brain to me and are in full color with sound and feelings.

They don’t always make sense, although I think they do at the time.

I can wake up from a dream illogically angry or in love with someone who wasn’t even present!

In fact, some of my dreams are so real they feel like memories.

A bad dream can make me not want to go back to bed the next night and a good one can tempt me to stay in bed long past when I should get up!

All of this is just my inner world, some kind of synapses firing when I give up control.

Life is so fascinating!  (but it could be scary!)

 

Really extended family

I never realized there were so many ways to connect with people!

Imagine playing a game with someone in California, while chatting online with someone in Illinois and texting with someone in Louisiana and talking on the phone to someone from Maryland (who just happened to be some kind of telemarketer, lest you think I am not paying attention to him, which I really wasn’t.)

The game was Words by Zynga, a Scrabble type game that allows people to play when they are ready and can.  The chat was with my daughter who happened to be on Facebook and was also playing a game that included waiting time.  The texting was about a comment I’d made on a friend’s picture and brief, and the telemarketer was just plain annoying!

I, who am always harping on how I prefer to be one on one with a person, was surprised to find myself involved in all this, but it is also delightful!

Kind of like a large family gathering where everyone is talking at once and you are floating around participating.  (Without all the noise and confusion!)