When the timing changes

Life moves on.  Like time and evolution and all things real, life has a rhythm of its own. 

One thing I have learned during my lifetime is to notice the harbingers of that movement.  There is a sense of timing that is the precursor to change.

In a symphony the conductor knows way ahead that the climax is coming, but it is his job to keep things steady until just the right time.

Life is a symphony of feelings.

When the timing changes, the words are spaced out differently.  Over striving cannot change the inevitable, but the tension is fair warning.

I guess that is why I like the oboe.  Made to play solos, it is strong for such a small instrument, it holds its own when everything around it falls away.  The terror that precedes these solos never goes away, at least not for me.

I don’t want to be the conductor.  I don’t want to instigate the change.  I just want to survive it.

The essence of friendship

A stranger has a name and a shape.  He takes up space when he walks through a door.  I get an impression of him based on his height, weight, even the color of his hair!  If he lingers I may judge him on the way he speaks and the credentials he brings to the platform.  All sorts of things can matter if I am with a stranger.  The clothes he wears, where he went to school, if he went to school!  And in the end, he will walk right on through that door and out of my life, because he is a stranger.

Let someone I love walk through that same door and everything changes.  There is no sense of height or weight, color, or even clothes!  What would have been observations before become feelings now.

I have a sense of warmth, a feeling of gladness.  There is security in the shadow and strength in the presence.  Any anxiety I might have is washed away by the knowledge that all is well because he is here.  He is not a man, or a professor, or a musician.  He is only a loved one with all of the attending feelings.

It’s funny how a stranger is full of details but the beloved is an enveloping fog.  Love makes so many connections that it is impossible to draw an accurate picture.  The best artist in the world could not produce a work of art I would recognize as the beloved.  There could never be enough dimensions to make it worthy.

No memory card has enough room to store all the megabytes necessary to preserve such an amazing creature and do him justice, so I have to rely on my heart.

Written in tears

I am feeling very curmudgeonly this morning.  I kept finding myself fixating on annoying things as I walked and I know why.  I dropped those thoughts like breadcrumbs, but as you might guess, they led me back to the same things again and again.

It is human nature to gravitate towards the familiar.  It is why people do the same things over and over again in spite of knowing they don’t work.  Comfort is comfort and there is comfort in a rut.

It is also human nature to try and justify our actions, no matter how useless or even hurtful they might be.  We claim they are done out of a sense of duty, or love, or even necessity when, in truth, they just make us feel better because we’ve done them all before.

I have seen people enable loved ones until they destroy any chance that person ever has of succeeding in life and then carry it on into the next generation, because it is much easier to fall back on familiar responses and that feel good rush that comes with it rather than step up and do the right thing until it has a chance to work.

But I have also seen immense love emanating from those the world considers limited.  It is possible to love so much that you are willing to give up your child knowing it will have a better life without you.  That is so much more noble than someone who stumbles along wanting recognition for the way they suffer to raise a child badly.

The rules for loving aren’t written in stone.  They are written in tears, tears of joy and frustration and real consequences.  It doesn’t take a high IQ to do the right thing.  It only takes a huge amount of love and that stirs my soul, relieving a bit of this curmudgeonly attitude.

In part by heart

Sometimes I go fishing in a deep dark place that is so secret even I do not know where it is.  And there I find the magic people don’t believe exists.

There the tears all become words and the words become light so no suffering is ever in vain.  And the light births stories one after the other, none of them the same.

I don’t know how to get there, or how the stories get out.  But I think I put my Muse on a hook and lower him into the dark then whatever comes out is partly me and partly him – in part.

And partly you if you know what I mean cause a story is read by the heart.

Graduation Day

Graduation day.  People write songs about it.  They write speeches for it.  It is a day for celebrating and it is also generally a long rather dull exercise filled with speeches by people who feel obligated to be witty and wise while speaking over poor pa systems.

I found myself listening to Pomp and Circumstance and nostalgia washed over me.  I played that for the very first time when I was in eighth grade.  Oboes were in short supply in Springfield, so I played in every graduation from then until my senior year.  Senior year my parents moved to another town where they did not play Pomp and Circumstance!

I watched the graduating high school seniors marching in, two by two and tears filled my eyes.  Today my granddaughter graduated!  Soon she will be eighteen years old and it will have been exactly eighteen years since I picked up that tiny thirteen-inch long baby who weighed less than three pounds and informed her mother she was a girl!  Then I turned to the tiny baby in my hands and welcomed her into the world.

Not many grandmothers have such an amazing experience.  

They displayed each student's senior picture along with one from when they were much younger.  I was touched that the picture she chose was one I took of her sitting at my piano when she was only three.

She has always been kind, fun loving, empathetic and intelligent, but now she will take all these blessings and do something with them.  I don’t know what it will end up being, but I know that whatever it is, I will always be so proud of her.

Listening

Walking in warm weather is turning out to be a challenge for me.  I feel it in every part of my body as if I am swimming through viscous liquid, but so far I have been able to keep it up.

I am not fast and I’m not going for the burn, or trying to work my heartbeat up to maximum levels, but I am moving right along listening to my body as I go.

I remember times when I tried to do all those things the “experts” were telling me.  Many of those things have since been proved to be fodder for the cardiologists and orthopedic surgeons.  I am not a mountain goat, or cheetah, or even a very great ape. 

I am experiment in living and if you watch me you will find out if listening to your own body is a valid form of exercise or not.  I have reclaimed my breath.  My stamina is easily three times what it was and the other measurements the experts can take all seem to be on the positive side.

I did it without drugs, without clubs, without meetings.  It has been an experience in getting to know me and what “I need” regardless of what anyone else thinks or says.  There is nothing wrong with all the rest if you can find something developed to fit who you are.

Living this way has to be a healthy obsession.  Otherwise it is too easy to fall off the wagon and find someone to validate why that is okay.  If I am looking for excuses I will find them, but if I just am true to myself it appears to work.

Feed the children

Human beings crave love and food.  In which particular order though is hard to say. The moment our mothers first pick us up and hold us close to their heart to feed us, eating becomes associated with love. 

Everyone knows that without food we die and it has been proven that without love babies also die, so the connection is a fact.

Most of the people reading this know how to get food and don’t have a real problem with that.  Love isn’t always quite so easy.

Although love is an endless commodity, not diminished by being given away, it is such a pervasive part of being that it is hard to distinguish it from self-esteem, self worth, ego, all those other words that describe who we are.

It is the one need that cannot be bought, stolen, coerced, or taken away from someone else.  It has to be given to us, or given by us in order to be real.  Like poor air, poor love can kill us.

Just like stomachs need to be filled with food, I believe there is a place inside of us that needs to be filled with love.  Life experiences create that place and sometimes it is so vast that it always aches with emptiness. 

Feeling unloved makes us hungry and we feed that hunger with whatever we think will work.  Food is the first choice because it is the one learned first and the one most available. 

And with these thoughts I look at the world around me, at all the children who are already fat and wonder…

 

Turtle power

It was so beautiful this morning that it was almost a little scary.  I seldom find myself so in awe of things when I walk.  I am not a walker!  I love to ride my bicycle, but walking always seems rather slow to me.

When I was younger I belonged to a group of people who talked about things like power animals.  The idea was that each of us has an animal there to teach us something.  I always wanted to believe mine was a tall brown bear that stood behind me.  It was a pretty valid thought since I dreamed of him all the time, but I always dreamed of a huge turtle too.  The turtle came to carry me on his back and show me things.

Most of the people in the group felt that they were like their power animals in some way.  I tried very hard to see myself in either the bear or the turtle, but I am pretty sure I was much more like the rabbit.  Timid, afraid of so many things, I really do freeze when terrified.   Then when I do move, it is with short bursts of energy, which is why I was a pretty good tennis player.  I did dream I was a rabbit once, trapped in a tiny cage in a back yard.

I suspect the bear was there to teach me to stand up for myself and be brave, but the turtle has had a much larger impact on my life.  One day I realized that I had quite a collection of turtle experiences and turtle knick-knacks in my life without ever intending to have either.  Honestly, there wasn’t much about turtles that spoke to me.

Until later on.  Now I realize that I am beginning to embrace turtle being!  It’s that old quiet stick to it way of responding that serves me well.  I’m not good at doing things your way, or their way, or anyone’s way except mine, but if I am allowed to do that, I can do almost anything.

I’ve learned that honey attracts a lot of ants and hopping to it makes me feel frenetic, but to simply keep on going?  That seems to work for me!  And if I keep my home simple, I can always take it with me.

Now if I can just learn to see the beauty each day like I did today, this long slow journey is gonna be awesome.  And if I can’t?  Then I still have lots to learn and that’s kind of awesome too.

The lost words

The only problem with texting

Is that texting is hurriedly done

You text text text then send it along

And hope it goes to the right one!

But if I send it too quickly

Number two is read before one

And one is lost forever

Among words that go unsung!

The only problem with texting

Is that texting is hurriedly done

What would you do...

Imagine meeting a creature from mythology, any mythology! 

There would be no fanfare, no explanations, no expectations at all.  In fact, you would never expect to meet this creature, especially at the time and place that it happened.

Perhaps you would be walking down to the corner in the morning to catch the bus to work or school, or maybe you would be cutting through the park on your way to a friend’s house when there would be a rustling in the bushes.

An almost indiscernible psst, or perhaps a quiet cry would pique your curiosity and you would find yourself drawn, very curious and slightly afraid over into the shadows to see what it was.

There would be something so odd, so amazing, so terrible and awful – yet slightly familiar, looking back at you.  No glowing unicorn from children’s books, or glimmering angel from Sunday School stories, but something much more earthy and old.  Something older than the redwoods out in California, more mysterious than the moon on Halloween night, something real and pressingly powerful!

No longer a make believe creature painted up to please small children, or dreamy eyed dreamers, but the manifestation of what inspired these things; something older than the earth, wiser than wizards, less predictable than weather; something whose existence brings forth possibilities beyond the scope of most of us.

What would you do?

I wonder.

Fighting nature

I am one of those hardheaded people who likes to control things.  I always think if I can find just the right formula and stick to it then the results should be guaranteed.  I mean it makes sense that if you add one and one you should always get two.  Right?  Or perhaps in my case a better analogy would be two take away one always equals one.

I can tell you from experience that this just isn’t so!

Years of living in my body have taught me that even nature is capable of astoundingly cruel adjustments.

As a young person my body looked upon pregnancy as a foreign body and eliminated it time after time after time.  Now I exercise over 75 minutes a day, walking, cycling, lifting weights.  I eat between 800 and 1200 calories a day and often lose no weight at all for several weeks. 

I have started interval training to try and break this incredible rut and the worst part?  If I do over eat one day, I can put back on 1-3 pounds without batting an eye.

It isn’t fair!  It isn’t right!  But neither one of those things matter, because it simply is.

Were I a slim trim little thing I might say that this is my natural weight, but that would only be true if I were a baby elephant, or perhaps a bear.  As a human woman I still need to lose a considerable amount of weight if I want to be healthy and fit into regular clothes.

It seems my body is set on preservation of the species, or at least self preservation.  In times of famine or anything else, it is going to maintain the status quo or die trying!  I only wish it were geared to do this by keeping me thin instead of hoarding every little calorie that passes through my starving lips!

What's it all about?

Retirement is the time of life when it is impossible not to look back and ask, “What was it all about?”

A career touches the lives of many people through the years; each one taking away some small part of us that touched them.

Raising a family may seem pale compared to that.  The hours are long, the salary way below minimum wage, the glory usually relegated to small moments like soccer games and piano recitals with the occasional graduation from one school or another.

These seemingly simple moments spent with our children create the environmental, political and cultural future of the world.  A mother, or father, changes history by being there for the small every day things that carve out people with bedrock integrity and creativity.

No gold watch, or 401K will ever compare with the satisfaction of looking at our own children and grandchildren and their children and knowing we had a hand in making them who they are.

Nurturing, loving, educating, inspiring – that never ends. 

I think that’s what it’s all about.

Amazement

I am always amazed at the things that are possible in this world.  So many more things than most of us ever dream could ever happen to us.

And whether they happen because I dream them or I dream them because they are about to happen or even ARE happening, does not matter.

The sweetness in life always seems to be waiting right in front of me, ready to be picked and enjoyed if I am willing.

And it hasn’t really changed much since I was a child.  Back then what I wanted most was compact connectedness!  I wanted the people I loved close.  Today that is possible no matter where we live.  In a few seconds we can text, or skype, or phone, or email with words and pictures and all sorts of live exchanges. 

Of course it’s not quite the same thing as a real hug, but it is the very next best thing.

And if I believe that spirit, or soul exists, then our closeness supercedes the barriers of time and distance in ways too wonderful to comprehend.

I am surrounded by lovers, those people who understand that goodness and purity, joy and belief are the cornerstones of living.  I don’t understand why I am blessed this way, but I do know that I am so grateful.

And I never cease to be amazed by it.

 

The Way

All my life I have looked for the truth and found it mostly hidden among the fairy tales. 

Some of them point to the way while others only obscure the view.  As a child it seemed so clear, so simple.  I didn’t know anything else.  The fairy tale was as real as breakfast upon the table and I came to that table every morning.

Then people began to name the things before me and tell me all the rules for eating and the light began to dim.  I knew the meat was not just bacon, but I couldn’t tell them what it was and I knew that even if I never came to that table again I would never lose sight of what drew me there.

Truth is such a mystery; any attempt at naming it or defining it only diminishes it.

I can’t tell you what it is, only that it is glancing. It struggles to reach out with love when it would seem no love is warranted.  It perseveres no matter what.

The path will all the street signs blinds me, drives me away.  The one I walk is lit from within and I never doubt for a moment it is there.

Amazing

It is amazing what a body can do if there is a big enough need or desire.

The artificial constraints placed upon us by society that hinge upon sex and age and supposed limitations are proved wrong all the time.

A parent faced with life threatening danger to a child has been known to perform super human feats like lifting a car.  A single parent who has to work manages to get by on almost no sleep for days, weeks, months and still appears to function quite adeptly.  People in their nineties run marathons, or dance in The Nutcracker, or fix their roofs!

Sometimes the impossible is accessible if the reason is powerful enough.  We are amazing creatures!

A map of my own

Sometimes I think life is just another story that I am writing. 

The more creative and innovative I am, the more unique it can be.  The secret seems to be never to write myself into a corner.

The choices I make really do matter.  A lot! 

I try to use common sense, but more than that I look at the people around me.  When I was younger I thought if I did what I’d learned as a child then all would be well.  Now I can see how ineffective and even hurtful a lot of those things were.  Being honest with myself is a big step towards finding happiness.

A reasonably intelligent person can fool a lot of people.  Other people, after all, want to believe the best about me.  Unfortunately fooling other people doesn’t change what really is.  If I overeat I still get fat.  If I don’t get enough sleep I am more likely to get sick and I never really perform at peak level.  If I enable people the good feeling only lasts until they crash again. 

What are those lines from Henley’s poem? “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my ship.” 

They are true you know.  No one can really sail my ship for me no matter who I am.  In the end only I can avoid the rocks or choose which ports I want to land in, because those places don’t always exist on other people’s maps.

Happy Mother's Day

For some reason I am reminded of the line from Madeline, “We love our bread.  We love our butter, but most of all we love each other.”

It was a good Mother’s Day.  I skyped with my youngest granddaughter who told me about a bear who lost his hat (with great gestures and lots of drama) while my youngest grandson looked on peacefully.  It seems this moment defines the two of them so perfectly!  I love skyping.

Then my daughter and I went to walk in Washington Park in Springfield.  The roses were lovely, the day perfect, and the wild life in full form!  We watched twenty five ducks try to mate with one female and, on the softer side, saw some very tiny baby turtles swimming in among several larger ones.  Three kinds of geese were honking among tons of little gray squirrels and lots of human children feeding the fishes!

A wonderful dinner of prime rib, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, baked potato and a scrumptious apple dumpling finished off the day perfectly.

I came home to a message from my other son and napped for an hour until my daughter texted me to say that the final episode of Once Upon A Time was on.  I watched that then capped off the night texting with my best friend and now I’m about ready to turn off the light on this Mother’s Day.

I know I’ll have sweet dreams tonight.

The stuff of life

People are the stuff of life, the incredible differences, the sweet similarities.

Now the weather is warmer the people in my neighborhood are coming out more and we are much more diversified than last year.  Out my bedroom window I hear the churgling laughter of children, Mexican children!  They gather with their families in bright, cheerful groups who sit in lawn chairs or stand around cars.  On the opposite side of my building are the Indian families with big-eyed children playing quietly around their mothers’ knees.  They also gather, but it is around long tables piled with food in the shade of the condos they live in.  Below my window and my apartment are African Americans grilling ribs and playing rap music that reverberates through my bones.  And here and there the odd Caucasian walks through or sits down to visit.

Everyone tends to stay close to their own kind, but we have language barriers here, so that is understandable.  Otherwise the love they have for their families and their children makes them all pretty much the same.  I am offered a hamburger from the grill and it smells so good, but I politely decline.  The other thing we all share is a tight budget. 

No one lives here if they have a lot of money, but it is a sort of village in the middle of a very affluent white-collar city.  There are big trees, walkways that wind around and flow into playgrounds, even a swimming pool in warm weather.

There are things I will miss when I move next month, but there surely are things I won’t too!  I suppose life is always like that.

Heaven

I love simplicity. 

Not that I love plainness.  There is a difference.  I can be a sort of human magpie with my Victorian picture frames and I love deep rich colors no matter whether they are ruby red, forest green or cerulean blue.  But I also love cream and white and rooms that show off each piece like it was art from a famous gallery.

The simplicity comes in as being able to do what needs to be done and having just what I need without too much that is superfluous.

If I can walk, pay the bills, am on good terms with the people in my life, and feel the blessing of a moment in my heart – life is almost perfect.

Too much of anything weighs heavy on me.  Whereas some people love having a basement full of extra clothes, I can’t rest easy knowing they are there.  While some decorate every inch of wall space, I need wide clean spaces.  The exception is my collection of photos out in North Carolina.  Fifty odd three-inch albums never seemed like much at all!

Whatever it is that makes me the way I am carries over into every aspect of life.  I would rather spend three days with one person than one week with three.  I want the intimacy of being able to really communicate at a soul deep level.  To me that is heaven.

The myth of being

I wonder if Achilles ever wished he wasn’t a paragon of strength?  Or if Hercules wished he’d never suckled at Hera’s breast.

A terrible responsibility comes with power and often a price too. 

There is a time when all the labors in the world, no matter how well they turn out in the end, become more than a hero wants to bear.

All too easy to justify ourselves and feel that everything done is in the name of righteousness or goodness, we need to remember that some things are just naturally done because we are human!

There is nothing wrong with being human anymore than there is anything wrong with being lion, or whale, but humans have god-like attributes like opposable thumbs and the ability to walk not just on the ground, but in the water and even the sky.  Our very versatility is so amazing it is easy to forget that we are just another creature in the garden.

The suffering of the smallest creation changes the atmosphere and causes a chain of events that eventually births the hydra, a many-headed beast whose existence reflects who we are as surely as the crystal clear water reflects our beauty.

The mythology of now may never be sung.

Life is more beautiful than a sitcom

It is one thing to watch life on film, and another thing altogether to live it.

The formulaic experience of being entertained by someone else’s life goes, every day experiences, trouble, climax, and solution!

My experience is that most things aren’t quite so neatly accomplished.

I remember watching the clock as a child certain that if I could survive the tension for another few minutes, the show would end on the half hour or hour and all would be well.  And while it is nice to have that kind of certainty, it sort of sets one up to fail at the real thing in some respects.

It takes time to solve most problems and it takes time to refine the work put into the solutions before they are solidly entrenched in present lives.  Believing that life is fixed in thirty, sixty or even a hundred twenty minute segments is misleading.

Most things take months or years depending on what they are.  A learned behavior might even take longer than that to change!  Of course the secret is to take them “one day at a time” or even one minute at a time, but the knowledge that others found it difficult is not necessarily a bad thing. 

When I watch a montage of someone’s weight loss, or recovery from addiction, zipping artistically past me it is kind of hard to really imagine the long nights struggling, or months of patient waiting.  Those things don’t make good entertainment unless portrayed briefly and with the appropriate music.

Today it is possible to supply a sound track for my life, but I still can’t fast forward through the hard parts.   No one wants to hear that it may take as long, or longer, to fix a problem as it took to create it.  But in the long run, honesty is the best solution.

Otherwise it is too easy to believe I have failed and give up before I’ve really had a chance to begin. 

Honestly….it is the journey that counts.  I try to remember that.  The faster it goes, the sooner all of it is over, including the good parts.

 

United we stand -- until we fall

Why is it that people insist on kicking the dog when the dog has nothing to do with the problem?   It’s a trait I might expect from children, but most children would be appalled if someone kicked their beloved pet. 

So I suppose this is a learned behavior, something someone taught the dog kickers.  One might think that intelligent people would never be dog kickers.  Their reason would point out how ineffectual it was for dealing with the real problem.

That’s not the case though.  Our country is filled with people who prefer to pretend dogs create the problems we face and they are willing to enact laws that keep dogs within kicking distance at all times.  It is so much easier than dealing with unemployment, or poor medical care, or unbalanced budgets and people understand dog kicking!  They are comfortable with it!  They have been brought up to believe if we do these things to dogs that have been done unto us all will be right with the world!

Blame it on the dogs! 

If nothing else it is a wonderful cover for those seeking control.  Everyone can stand behind things that don’t have anything at all to do with government and the state of our economy.  The question is only:  How long can we pretend this is the problem before people catch on?

Choices choices everywhere

Life is not linear. 

Everything I do is like dropping a pebble into the water.  There are repercussions following repercussions on and on until who knows what happens.

I cannot imagine not having something to write about because just getting out of bed in the morning opens the possibilities for so many things to happen and every single thing I do after that magnifies these possibilities.  My options are not doubled and tripled and quadrupled.  They are factored!

The hard part is deciding what to concentrate on, what parts do I believe are important enough that I choose them to be what my life is about?

Sometimes it may seem like there are no choices, but there really are.  In a world governed by hard and fast scientific laws like gravity, there are really only so many things that can happen.  Not much brand new ever really occurs, but how I choose to respond to these things may be new to me.

After a while, my way of responding is not so new either.  It becomes who I am, a collection of decisions made and choices plucked from the vast array that surrounds me in every moment.

And if I regret one of my choices, the world will not end.  I simply have to choose differently in the future and there will still be many choices.

Cause life is not linear.

A little help from my friends

I love who my friends are!

There is just nothing neater than going to rehearsal with an actress, or helping a Drum maker make a drumstick.

Let an artist explain his technique, or a professor explain the word trope and I get these warm fuzzy feelings as if the universe suddenly smiled on me!

There is just something so wonderful about a person sharing their special talents that it makes my day.

Gone With The Wind

I am reading Gone With The Wind for the first time.  I saw the movie as a teenager and loved it, but for some reason it never occurred to me to read the book.  I don’t know why.  Usually that is the first thing I do if one is available.

Of course reading this makes me much more aware of everything southern, especially Atlanta, so I was thrilled to see actual photos from 1864 on The Antiques Road Show last night.

I understand this book has never been out of print and as I read it, I begin to understand why.  First of all it is a timeless love story, right up there with all the soap operas and popular potboilers people love today.  Scarlet is a woman most of us can identify with.

Who hasn’t dreamed of being the belle of the ball, the most beautiful, charming, irresistible person around?  Who also hasn’t had thoughts that were less than charitable about events that impact us personally? 

And woven in among all this angst and emotion is the story of our country at war with itself; a story that brings Sherman and Johnston and Hood to life, a book that makes the history books come alive with the way war deprives us of first the delicacies of life and later the essentials, drawing the best from most of us even if it isn’t Sunday school perfect.

I loved the movie, but frankly my dears, the book is better!

Won't be just any night

Prom tonight!

A coming of age ritual when little girls become princesses for a night.  A night when beautiful young women in elegant dresses and handsome young princes dance the night away in celebration of the first real step away from childhood.

Once a pairing off of couples signaling the beginning of long term relationships, it is now often a group dating experience that is actually much more innocent than those of the past.

Our children are learning the value of friendships, the power of hard earned fun, the joy of being present and experiencing the bliss of being themselves.

They have a long road ahead of them: years of schooling, years of learning, mistakes to make, lessons to learn.  Life lived, not on a silver platter, but with both feet on the ground and I think they’re off to a good start.

On this one night, as they step out of the every day plainness into fairy tale elegance, my heart aches with the beauty of them and swells with the pride of all they have become and are becoming.

Back to basics

I wonder if any other species teaches their young in reverse the way humans do?

Instead of simply taking me out back and showing me how to plant a garden, I am told, “Go plant a garden the way Mrs. Smith did.”

Which Mrs. Smith?  Where?  What were her premises?  What kind of environment did she come from?  Live in?  Grow for?  Why make it all so complicated?

So much of what I have learned about life has been this way and when my garden fails, the powers that be jump all over me because I should have known better!  How?  If I can’t trust my parents to show me the best way, who can I trust?

So, I learn by learning what NOT to do first.  What a cumbersome and dangerous thing that is and how unfortunate that I am often off and rearing another generation of children before I have even figured out the basics myself.

I have yet to see a mother dog telling her pups to eat meat while she is devouring a chocolate cake.

Let’s get back to basics.

New

I have always looked upon “life” as the road to death.  I never realized that until this morning when I was walking.  As a three-year-old child I contemplated who would meet me in heaven if I died too soon.  As a young mother I only wanted to make it until my children grew up.  As a divorced wife I figured I’d had a good life.

I was always just getting by until death claimed me.  Looking back that seems like a strange perspective.

In the past year I have slowly found a zest for life, for living, that has altered that.  I realized, while I was walking this morning, that many of the things everyone has always claimed were true….are!

It’s almost like I am being reborn; as if I am a new person at the age when many people are just contemplating retirement.  Everything has changed.  I am tired early, go to sleep quickly, wake up early, find myself able to turn down food that isn’t good for me and even find a sort of yearning for, if not exactly pleasure in, walking.

I wonder if this is temporary, some sort of hearing death knocking at the door, form of denial, or if it is an actual new path? 

Whatever it is, it is new.

Questions

I had to go to a luncheon today.  It was fun and it was a salad luncheon, but it was scary for me since it meant eating outside of my comfort zone.  I am trying to lose weight, keep my blood pressure low, my glucose low, decrease my uric acid and lower my cholesterol.  You wouldn’t believe how many things are verboten within that framework.  The fun has to come from the company so it is good for perspective.

I came home and was going to walk, but just as I pushed back from this desk, the thunder rolled ominously!  I am taking that as a sign.  My ankle keeps giving out and my bones are pinching on my left foot while the gout in my right one feels like it is burning through the skin.  Maybe today really needs to be a rest day.

I hate those though!  Well, honestly I don’t think I hate them as much as fear them.  They mean my metabolism might drop and I might even add a pound in spite of a dangerously low calorie count already.  My doctor is just waiting, lurking in the wings, ready to put me on all sorts of chemicals to control these things artificially. 

My experience with modern medicine is that it is still a guessing game.  No one really knows what happens inside every body.  We are all different.  Case in point: as a young woman I had miscarriages that felt to me like my body was treating the baby as a foreign object.  Everyone thought I was crazy.  Now they know that lupus does exactly that!  My gut feelings were right.

It is really difficult for me to buck the system, to say no to someone with so much power, but I think my mental health demands that I do that to some extent.  The question is how much?

Growing Up Human

Life isn’t easy for anyone.  Learning to cope, let alone thrive, requires skills most of us have to discover and hone on our own.

Physically healthy in my prime, I was still battered around by the emotional ups and downs of living in a world surrounded by other people – all of whom had their own issues.  I have developed a good cushion now.  My life, while not always happy in the extreme, is very very good.

Now I am dealing with my own body, which has found all sorts of ways to betray me.   I suppose it always has, but age has a way of intensifying these things.  What once seemed inconsequential, now feels epic.  Every bite of food that enters my mouth, every step taken, or not taken by my feet becomes part of the quest to live out my days as healthily as possible.

Growing up, no one told me that I had to take responsibility for my own life by choosing wisely.  It was simply do as I say!  That is a child’s call to rebel.  The final step into adult hood is realizing that authority figures can’t make it all better, nor do they have the power to over ride what is ultimately my responsibility.

I can’t fool Mother Nature!  In spite of good or bad genes the quality of my life depends on how I treat myself.