Feelings

The hardest person to be and understand is me. 

Other people seem to make more sense, or I can make allowances for them, or I can even just avoid them, but not me.

I have to live with myself day in and day out, through thick and through thin and believe me there have been plenty of both!

I seem to be made of feelings.  Some of them so mysterious I may never sort them out and others so fleeting I don’t have to time to really even consider them.

The rest never seem to quite line up like those of the people around me, but then it is possible I don’t really know what they are feeling either.

In the end I suppose it doesn’t matter how I got them, they still fill me up and run over on a daily basis.  My job, whether I choose to accept it or not, is to learn to live with them.

Madmen

In my culture people look forward to the next blockbuster movie, or the next episode of a television show.  A few people wait with baited breath for their favorite author to come out with his or her next book.

I understand these things.  I do them too, but this summer I have added something new.  I have been waiting all week to hear the next chapter of my audio book read to me.  Today Hector is killed!  I knew it was coming and the drama has been building.  Hector killed Patroclus the day before yesterday and yesterday the Trojans and Greeks fought over his body like hyenas in the depths of darkness.  Today Achilles will kill Hector and while I know Achilles is considered to be the epitome of a hero, my sympathies tend to lie with Hector who seems to me more compassionate and steadfast.

I didn’t feel that way in the past because I only saw other people’s versions in movies, or heard other people’s thoughts on The Iliad itself.  I have no pity for either side, fighting to steal each other’s women as if they were cattle in the field and letting their egos lead them into clash after clash of bone breaking, blood spilling agony.  Everyone loses.  Some of them just lose less than others.

I find myself thinking of the story itself, a grand action tale full of intrigue, love affairs, and battles.  But I also find myself thinking about Homer and who he was. 

Whether he was one man, or many, a bard or a blind beggar, his story is the kind people listen to for one reason if not another.  The names made it personal.  The gods made it mythical.  It is full of the same intrigue, romance, and back stabbing drama people still crave in soap operas, summer action films and backyard gossip.  It is the journalist’s dream.    Everyone is trying to justify his or her own actions as something worthy of living and dying for. 

Shrouded in the misty unknown parts of history it is another one of those tales “told by a madman, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  (To quote another famous bard.) 

But I am loving it.

Romance

The romance in life comes, not from the drama that rears up and tries to drown me, but from the beautiful consistency of real love.

No krakens in my life could possibly equal the real trials and tribulations of living all these years and surviving in spite of everything.  At seventeen I wanted adventures, drama, explosive scenes like the books and movies.  Now I know most of that is only a symbolic metaphor for life’s real issues.

And there are enough real things to make the deep darkness a real presence in my life, but there is also an ethereal light too, a presence so beautiful and mysterious I will never be able to fully understand why it accompanies me down this way.

I have done nothing to merit such a thing, except possibly eschew the tendency to be a drama queen and try to keep my eyes as wide open as possible, looking both inward and outward as I deal with the minutia of daily living.

Magnificence materializes in the moment when I recognize the gods that dance around me in human form.  They come playing music that stirs my soul.  They speak in ways and actions sometimes much louder than words.  They touch me and heal my heart when I least expect it and most need it.

Real life surpasses anything else that exists.  Romance is a birthright no one can avoid, but whether or not they notice it is another question.  Let me embrace this life of mine as no one else can and enjoy the way it weaves itself in and out of everyone elses.

Just a walk

I walked around the little park up the street from my house this morning, listening to The Iliad while a Vietnam Veteran in his motorized chair with an American flag attached to the back rolled around the inner part.  

Wanting to read a few more chapters while sticking to my plan of walking while listening, I went to the big park across town this afternoon.

There I walked through the shade of gnarled old trees as my CD player spun tales of eagles dropping writhing snakes that turned back and bit their captor and ancient shields made of seven layers of hide and then one of bronze or fewer layers of hide and different nails.  I have made drums out of one layer of hide and so those descriptions mean a little something to me.

Listening to all these stories of different shields and how they were constructed made me realize that war has always been a rich man’s game.  The poor cannot possibly afford the fine weapons and shields that the rich take for granted.  Nor can the poor force men to rise and fight for years, sacrificing their sons and future grandchildren in order to protect the spoils of war that only lead to more war.

In the midst of all this listening and thinking, I came to the Vietnam War memorial in our park and walked through it to the World War II War memorial and on to the Civil War memorial!  So many wars!  So many lives ended and others never begun so rich men can salve their egos and feed their coffers.

And in all these years since Homer wrote The Iliad, I am amazed at the similarities.  We still think of eagles when we think of war.  We still fight for the same things.  We still shout the same words, just not in ancient Greek.   My feet are tired from walking over thirty miles while listening to the tales of this ancient war, but my heart is heavy with the knowledge of how little we have learned.

Chimera

What if I was reading a biography and didn’t know it was about me?

Would I recognize myself?

Am I really who I think I am?

Am I the same collection of dreams and thoughts, inclinations and actions that I appear to be to the world?

Who could write my biography and make it the truest and best one possible?

Would it be the one who sees me the way I do, or someone else?

Is it possible I am just a fleeting expression across the face of something so grand, so magnificent I cannot even conceive of its being?

A Walk In The Park

The beauty of living in my town is the diversity of people surrounding me.

I pass an elderly woman whenever I go to play tennis.  She is stick thin, wearing more make up on her face than meat on her bones, but she walks resolutely down the middle of the street near the park.  Round and round and round she plods, coming from some unknown place with a destination only she can imagine.

Yesterday I passed what looked like a posse of misplaced Texans in the Heartland.  Four people wearing cowboy hats and western jeans walking down the sidewalk in a sort of loose formation, arms swinging, feet planted with great purpose.  Who they were pursuing I’ll never know, but their youthful shirts indicated that it might be some musical group whose tastes were probably dissimilar to mine.

This morning I passed grey hairs like myself.  Old silverbacks trotting around the mall at speeds I never want to attain!  Accompanied by spouses with one of two extreme faces, either unmitigated joy, or abject pain and I thought about how life does that to us.  How we either embrace what is or it swallows us up.

I plodded on, listening to The Iliad, starting in the park and finishing in the mall as rain fell harder and faster, assaulted by canned music trying to drown out my story in the latter.  And while I walked amid the accouterments of modern consumerism I listened to the tales of ancient war, but the stories, the people, the behaviors were really not much different than those I am used to.

For all our striving and all our pretenses, we really are the same people we’ve always been.

Melas oneiros

I dreamed I was running through a large floral warehouse last night and I dropped my cell phone.  Dropping it I accidentally kicked it and it flew down the corridor and was lost!  I hurriedly chased after it and finally found a phone lying off to the side, but it wasn’t mine.  I found several others, too, but never my own.

I thought it curious that others had evidently had the same experience, but that didn’t solve my problem.  Without my phone I had no way of calling anyone.  I didn’t know their phone numbers and in some cases I didn’t even know their whole names!  So I went to the office trying to get help.

The office staff was very busy and not inclined to stop and help anyone, but I finally forced the attention of one of the women and told her what had happened.  She was totally unsympathetic, but finally agreed to call my mother.  When I couldn’t give her the phone number she acted like I was trying to pull one over on her and almost refused to help me.

I eventually convinced her to call State Farm’s directory assistance to get my mother’s phone number.  Then she wanted her name and I discovered I couldn’t remember it! That made me look even more suspicious, but I finally gave her my mother’s name, including her maiden name and the woman made the call.

Mom was even less sympathetic, but she tried to tell me where to go and wait for her to come pick me up.  I got lost trying to leave the building, which was massive and took up blocks and blocks of city space.  I finally exited onto a dilapidated street in a bad part of town, lost and afraid.  Starting out to walk around the building and see if I could find where my mother said she’d pick me up I encountered a big barking dog and hastily retreated back inside the building.

I went back to the office and asked the same woman to call my mother again and she refused telling me if I couldn’t find her I could just walk home.  I tried to explain that it was miles and miles across town and totally undoable.  The picture of the 18 city blocks I had to walk home in seventh grade flashed through my head and I was desolate.  All of this because I lost my phone!

When I finally woke up the leftover feelings from the dream hung over me like some kind of dirty smog.  I tried desperately to figure out what had sparked them.  Being lost in a city is a reoccurring nightmare of mine, one I’ve had since I was very young.  My dependence on my tiny little black cell phone is truly scary since it is such a vulnerable connection to the rest of my world.  I spent several hours last night downloading things off of it so they would not be lost and storing them on my computer and a small flash drive.  Maybe that is what sparked it.

Whatever it was I am just now recovering from that dark place and getting ready to go on my morning walk.  After my dream “The Iliad” will be a welcome relief.

I never walk alone

I have now walked fourteen miles with The Iliad and what was turning into a chore I might have given up on has turned into an hour or so of deep drama and romantic moments.

My father, wise man that he was, once helped me get through physics by showing me the way with an English major’s mind.  Now that lesson from him comes back to keep me on the road to health.

And “with a little help from my friends.”  I walk, but I also lift weights to try and tone up my arms as I shed these pounds and that work is made easier by two things.  One are the five pound weights a dear friend gave to me.  Weights that once toned the arms of a symphony conductor now help me stay on task too.  And while I lift these gifts of love I listen to the music of another friend whose voice and guitar play the sound track of my journey.

It takes a lot to keep me moving along the Way, but it all seems to be here if I reach out for it.

No mission is impossible

"Going on a lion hunt, but I’m not afraid!"

Children love this little song.  They gaze up at their teacher and repeat right after her, “Cause I’ve got my gun and bullets at my waist!”

They copy the words and the cadence and every move she makes.  It’s a powerful lesson into how children learn.

Parents need to keep this in mind.  Everything they say and do, from the merest of expressions fleeting across their face, to the tirades that fall from their lips when they are angry, justifiably or otherwise, teach their child how to be.

It is important to be cognizant of this, but it is also important to be real because children sense the difference.  Two sided faces are both confusing and frightening. 

I have to be what I say I am if I want my child to get the most benefit out of me being their parent.  So I admit, I’m a little afraid of lion hunts.  Lions have sharp claws and big teeth!  But this one is just pretend, we all know that.

School is the real adventure!  New clothes and special crayons are nice, but they will become used and forgotten in no time.  As children cross the bridge between home and school they need to know that both their parents and their teachers are working together to give them the skills they will need for the rest of their life.

Parents can’t assume the school can do the job alone.  A good education is inclusive.  Children should be encouraged to read and do their own homework, because that is how they learn.  Parents need to be available to help guide them in the right direction, but not to do it for them.

A grade on a sheet of paper means nothing if it doesn’t translate into real knowledge.

A parent’s job, should they choose to accept it?  Is to be the guide a child can follow on this great adventure.  They don’t need a gun and bullets at their waist, but they do need to learn cooperation, perseverance and how useful a good education can be.

The Challenge

Nothing is as frustrating as something that does not technically exist. 

All those phrases like, life isn’t fair, or you can’t fight city hall, etc. are things I can deal with, but dealing with a situation that cannot be discussed or even really voiced is impossible.

Like the cold war there are no missiles fired, no big artillery rumbling down the way, and no outward signs of a battle.   Mentioning it sounds like paranoia, or perhaps just small-minded nitpicking.

And yet it exists.

And its existence causes pain.  Not much, just enough to make sure it isn’t forgotten.  Just enough to assure me that life isn’t quite as sweet as I think it is, or want it to be.

Like smog it comes on little dirty cat paws to smudge up my view of life in ways Carl Sandburg never dreamed of.

In the penultimate act of faith I choose to ignore it, to move on as if the light is as bright and clear as ever, because in the end it will be.

The first day

The first day of school!  How many memories does that bring back?

I remember my own very first day of school, right after Thanksgiving in 1954.  I had turned five over the holidays and we had moved to Springfield, Illinois where they had a kindergarten.  I was excited and scared.  As the oldest of four children I was the first to leave home in the morning and go somewhere by myself, but my Daddy had been going to school my whole life and I wanted to do everything he did.

I remember all the first days of my children too.  We always took a picture in their new clothes while they stood in front of the secretary.  Someday I would love to get all those pictures together and watch them grow from tiny little people who could barely reach the doorknob on their first day of preschool to their first day of college!

Last year my youngest granddaughter went to her first day of preschool with her daddy.  She was one!  This week my oldest granddaughter had her first day of college!  I didn’t see either one, or take her picture, but I can see them in my mind’s eye. 

Schools change, the age at which we go changes, but the idea of embarking on a new adventure, that first step into a new odyssey continues to fill me with excitement and anticipation.

Teachers

I spent some time with my teenage granddaughters this weekend.  Both of them have distinct styles and ways of being that I find very attractive.  The older one seems wise beyond her years to me.

She struggles with the same shyness I always have, but she deals with it so openly and intelligently.  Whereas I muddled through my college years she has actively chosen to take one online class because she feels she will be less afraid to share her real point of view if she can write it instead of having to voice it in class.  I find that incredibly brilliant!  As a writer I am much better at expressing myself this way than out loud.

Of course I did have to learn to do the other, but it has always been difficult.  I don’t like confrontations or discord or raising a ruckus of any kind.  Just expressing my opinion can be a trial.  I can do it, but it is an agony for me and one I will live and relive many times after it is over, playing back what happened and what could have happened again and again.

My granddaughter has thought about this too.  She says, “If I don’t express my own thoughts what is the point of being me?” 

She is a baby by my standards, but what a baby!  I’m not sure where this beautiful young woman came from, but she is certainly one of my teachers.

In a perfect world

My brother planted a beautiful blue spruce in his yard way back in the seventies.  Like me he loved the symmetry, the color, the smell of it and in his mind’s eye he saw it growing there in the corner of his front yard, a piece of living art that would give him pleasure for years to come.

And it did.  Then one day he realized its branches were starting to impinge upon his driveway and the electrical wires at the front of his lot and its shade was killing the carefully cultivated flowers in the gardens right next to his house.

He remembered that when he planted that tiny three-foot tree the instructions said blue spruces grow to be fifty to seventy-five feet tall with a ten to twenty foot spread.  Obviously the people who printed that information had no reason to lie.

The tree did what all living things do.  It grew up to be what it was and my brother learned a very difficult lesson.  He ended up having to have his precious tree removed.

Human beings often do things with the best of intentions without really thinking things through.  A chimpanzee who can do everything a five year old child does except speak can be taught to sign and dress in clothes and look very cute, but he will eventually grow up to be a full sized mature chimpanzee not a young man who goes to Harvard.  Most of us don’t really have a problem understanding these things, at least in retrospect.

We understand and are tolerant of all sorts of things in plants and animals.  It only makes sense.  Yet I’ve seen people try to force children into being things they were never meant to be. 

All people need to learn the skills it takes to live in their environment, but just as it is impossible to turn a bird into a fish, or a rose bush into a spruce tree, it is impossible to change a child’s real self into something it is not.

Human kind always looks to some outside source to validate their fears and prejudices because simple common sense and intelligence could never accept the heinous things they do in the name of what is right.

Every living organism has a purpose somewhere in nature and while we may have to control the weeds and poisonous things, most weeds were once considered flowers somewhere and some of the most unlikely plants have turned out to be a cure for something that plagues mankind.

It is possible to twist and bend and destroy all the beautiful possibilities that lie inside a child, but why would any loving person want to do that?  Embrace what is there and make room for it to grow into its full potential and who knows what miraculous things might happen in a perfect world.

Hot air

I’ve only had a few tragedies in my life, but I have had millions of wonderful moments and that made me think.  What is it that differentiates a good moment from one that carries me away?

Where is that line separating the warm glow generating a smile and the heated joy that raises me right up off the ground?

I think the first thing I realize is that the extraordinary moments usually have something to do directly with me.  That being said I have to admit I pretty much consider my children, even as adults, to be a part of me.

Next it usually involves doing something creative and doing what I think is an extraordinary job at it.  Of course things like this are always a matter of personal consideration, but it can range from the carefully explained art of a three year old to the exquisite performance of an adult.

And lastly, but maybe most importantly, is what lies behind it.  The feelings that spark this extraordinary moment are what lights that fire within me, raising me up like a hot air balloon into the feeling that I am the luckiest woman in the world.

Preferences

I don’t like things left up in the air.

When I have to wait until the last minute to figure something out, it is already a little ruined for me. 

I think that is partly because I associate procrastination with a lack of interest and if you are not interested, I don’t really want any part of it.

My insecurities are rampant!  And…they are founded on years of experience that says people put their time and enthusiasm where their real interests are.

I want the passion and the joy of those peak moments when everyone is focused and honed in on sucking the most out of life.

The sun, the moon and all the stars

What makes bullying rewarding?

We approach bullies by trying to get them to empathize with their victims, but I don’t think that seems to work very well.

Nothing is more frightening than seeing our own insecurities manifested.   Our basest impulses are to destroy weakness before it can somehow contaminate or hurt us. 

Perhaps a better way to approach bullying is to teach who and what a bully is instead of what he shouldn’t do.  Rather than glorifying cutting wit and surreptitious actions as the domain of the uber intelligent, it might make more sense to show it for the insecure and limited response that it is.

Bullies are the epitome of narcissists.  Focusing on their victims is like trying to teach milk to shape itself into a glass, hopelessly impossible.  They need to see that their actions define them as something less than stellar individuals. 

Life

Imagine exercising almost two hours a day and eating less than a thousand calories and not losing a pound!  It happens.  I can go almost a week doing this and it is so frustrating!

It’s not like I am even close to my goal.  I’ve been at this for six months now and I need to lose forty more pounds before I am even in the right range for my height!

People tell me how wonderful I look, but I remember how other people told me how bad I looked way before I got to this weight on the way up.  It is either a matter of perception, or they are being nice. 

Of course I need and want the good words.  I am just upset today because I gave in and over ate yesterday.  And, to make matters worse, I didn’t exercise either, although I did go shopping.

And then to add insult to injury I read that Lord Byron, the poet, who had a tendency to be chubby, did all the same things I do.  He ate up compliments, wrote about his weight loss, preened when he felt thinner and got depressed when he gained weight.  If I were also a great poet I might feel I was in good company, but we only share his darker side.

Life.  It is always a challenge.

Squirrels

Tennis requires a certain amount of concentration if the balls are to be kept in the court or anywhere close to a particular place so I don’t do a lot of thinking when I am hitting balls. 

Still I am aware that the world is all around me and yesterday that included a small squirrel who saw my ball drop over the fence and dashed for it as if it were a prized gift, long awaited and ready to be carried off.

Without even thinking I yelled, “Heh, heh, heh, leave that ball alone!”  He glanced up at me and went right back to sniffing and I added, “Everything that falls out of the sky is not a nut!”

My comment surprised me so much I wondered who was being squirrelier, that small furry creature or me talking to him?  I was hooked.  I began thinking that maybe anything that was in the sky might be nuttier than a fruitcake.  I remembered the story of one of the first women to fly.  She only had one accident in her entire career.  She had a passenger in her plane and as she demonstrated her skills and flew her plane upside down, both she and her passenger fell out of the sky into the water below.  She died.  

As I was thinking this, an acorn fell out of a nearby tree and the squirrel eagerly scampered over to it.  I watched him pick it up and dash off.  Now I was off on another tangent.  Was this the squirrel’s first year of hoarding food for the winter?  Did he even know what he was doing, or why, or was it some in-born instinct that drove him to squirrel food away?

Pretty soon I was off on another tangent.  How much of what I do is mere instinct?  How much is something built into me from ancestors who were born hunters and gatherers and then farmers? 

My ball glanced back at me from the backboard and I instinctively darted over to hit it back.

Wondering

Is my mother the woman who gave birth to me,

Or the one who taught me to see what I see?

Is she the one in whose arms, I helplessly lay,

Or the earth who continues to support me today?

I was born in the heartland amid fields of wheat,

Spawned on the earth like the salmon and sheep.

I came from a galaxy far far away

Blasted into being on that big bang day.

My creator’s so immense I really can’t say

Where he lives, where she is, on this very day

I don’t even know if he sleeps in a bed

Or has hands, or a face, or hair on her head.

But I know deep inside, in the center of my heart

You can’t tell where he is or tell us apart.

I’m made in the image of a magnificent mystery

Much greater than math or science or history.

I am who I am but I can tell you all

I’m not the creator I am much too small.

To even begin to explain this all.

Outside looking in

Sometimes when I am doing my morning walking I find myself looking at my thoughts from the outside in.  It is a strangely effective form of self-monitoring.

Left unchecked all the old ways and prejudices and less than savory habits rise up out of the muck.  I am almost shocked that they are still here, but I suppose the foundation of one's beginnings is really set in stone – adobe stone.

Good solid upbringing mixed in with the beliefs of the time and the beliefs my creators brought with them from their time before, are packed tightly against the walls I built to separate myself from them.

I still have a competitiveness that wants whatever I do to be better than everyone else I pass along the way.   I find myself uncharitably thinking the worst about people I don’t even know and who have done absolutely nothing to me!  I am appalled!

Truthfully this is a habit that sneaks out through the cracks and crevices created when I am stressed or feeling pressured.  It is my need to blame something or someone else for whatever is making me uncomfortable.  It is what makes me live alone.

I don’t want any excuses for who I am to stand between me and the light of my understanding.    It is as if I am a stained glass window.  Parts of me are mysteriously dark and muted while other parts are much more clear and translucent, but always in between everything else are the little leaden lines that hold it all together.

What's it all about

It takes a certain amount of effort to get through life no matter how it’s done.  People trying to bilk the system put that effort into scamming and ripping people off.  People resigned to the system put it into time worn ways that have been proven to work.  Both probably work just as hard as the other and most of the time the latter do better, which is one good reason for doing it the “right” way.

That being said, I am discovering that much of the information out there is skewed because it is really not based on scientific data at all.  It is based on the marketing schemes of people promoting some particular thing.

Almost any idea can be presented in words that prove whatever it is you want to prove.  It’s a game for high school debate teams, so imagine how good at it “professionals” are.  I hear intelligent people eagerly believing everything they read or hear as long as someone says a doctor recommended it, or it has been proven to work.  Pyramid scams work -- for the person who starts them. 

So how do I know what really works?  At my age experience goes a long way.  If it works, it is true.  Most things are not life or death decisions.  They have a little leeway so I can try them out and see if they work for me, because the sad truth is that things don’t work the same way for everyone, for a lot of different reasons. 

I keep track of things I have doubts about.  A note on a calendar and a picture with my digital camera tells me if my skin looks better after a certain number of weeks.  The scale tells me if I’m losing weight.  Blood tests tell me if I am eating right, or if my medicine is doing what it is supposed to.  Most things can be measured and if I don’t lie to myself I am my own best source of information.

Common sense helps too.  Read labels, read articles by sources who are not selling something, talk to people.  But beware.  Sally might have luminous skin, but not because she drinks booboo tea.  It’s the arsenic in her sugar that’s doing it – and doing her in.

If it sounds too good to be true, I can almost bet that it is.  On the other hand, I have discovered most things aren’t as hard as they seem before I get started. 

Intelligence is only part of the package.  An awful lot of smart people are total failures just like not so smart people.  It seems that attention to details, patience and perseverance are the real paving stones on the road to success.

This zoo

I live alone, venturing out for my morning walk every day with my first tentative steps into a world filled with thin gray lines.    Like some sort of human zoo creature I look out between these lines knowing full well they are there, but not always understanding why.

Each one is a warning to beware of those things society finds offensive or dangerous, or sometimes just the line of demarcation between peaceful existence and chaotic drama.

Step across one of these and it is like touching an electric fence.  There is a buzz followed by a shock that reminds me who I am and what I am doing. 

Once upon a time I was out to change the world.  Now I mostly want peace.  I’ve met the other creatures who come to this watering hole and they are who they are.  They don’t want to change.  They really aren’t capable of changing and I have lost most of my interest in changing them.

It is enough for me to maintain my own small space letting in the light and creating a retreat where I can simply be me.  Now, if being me isn’t enough – enough of a role model, enough of an arbiter for peace, enough of whatever those other creatures are looking for, I still have a place to go.

Heavy Reading

Some of the reading I do is so heavy!

I love reading paperbacks with their compact size and light weight, but the subjects can be as heavy as they come.  I remember one that I recently read that took me over a month to finish.  It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the words.  I just had trouble grasping the meaning.

Lately I’ve been going to the library.  That generally means hardback books that are larger and heavier, but whose contents are fast paced and the kind I devour in a matter of nights.

Except for now.  I am reading a biography and while I love and relate to this person, the book is not particularly easy reading.  Nor is it small.  There are over 800 heavy pages in a big hardbound book. 

It is slightly oversized and while propping it up on a picnic table in the park, or balancing it on my lap in the living room is entirely possible, reading it in bed is difficult.  I never dreamed that the ten-pound weights I lift to shape up my arms might be a boon for reading in bed!

Maybe as my mind becomes more accustomed to the style, my arms will become strong enough to hoist it up into the puddle of light I like to read in.  But by that time I will have moved on to something different.

Who am I?

Who am I?  That sounds like the beginning of an old joke, or maybe something left over from the sixties, but it is actually kind of an interesting question.

Up until I was seven I was who my mother told me I was.  I had no reason to believe otherwise.  If she said I was that “little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead and when she was good she was very very good and when she was bad she was horrid” then I was!

After that I began to suspect that some of her assessments were simply wishful thinking.

In spite of stories about ancestors who were all glorious and brilliant and brave, I suspected that I might just be a very plain little girl.

I was given music lessons and put in special classes for one thing or another and it became obvious that I might be kind of a gifted little girl, but inside I felt very plain and only wanted to fade into the wallpaper like a human chameleon. 

I wasn’t sure who I was or what I knew, but I knew there was a lot more I didn’t know and that was kind of scary.

Most of my life since then has been pretty much on the same track.  Sometimes people profess to see things in me that I don’t and I suspect they are either projecting or trying to be nice.

But wouldn’t it be nice if that weren’t true!

Simple Gifts

My grandmother had the most beautiful high soprano voice and as a small child I loved to hear her sing, usually old Baptist hymns like, “The Old Rugged Cross.”  My mother was a good musician who played both saxophone and piano, although I really only heard her on the piano by the time I came along.  Her signature piece was “Elmer’s Tune.” 

By twelve I would go out to the convent and Sister Eunice would play guitar and sing folk songs for us.   My second cousin was a mad drummer and DJ on the school PA system.  I was in love with both of them.

I love music.  If you will play for me I am in heaven.  If by some chance you will both play and sing for me I may be reduced to tears. 

While I have played several instruments during my life I have never been comfortable performing.  Even playing my lessons for my teachers was a terrible trial.  I don’t know why this is.  I wasn’t born self-conscious, but it grew in me like a weed and it overshadows my gifts.

So when you simply pick up a guitar and sing?  I am in awe.  I am in heaven.  I am in love!

Grace

Having a perfect book and time to read it.

Finding I can still play my favorite game.

Discovering I can eat the food I love and continue to lose weight.

Having someone to share my most secret thoughts.

Having someone play a guitar and sing to me at bedtime.

Life overflows with blessings.

Xray vision

Once upon a time…..forever more.  We all lead all the lives we read about or watch on TV or see in a movie.  We simply explain ourselves in different terms. 

Once upon a time there was a crisis.  It swept over me like the fair damsels of old, the sweet creatures of the forests, the vulnerable people of a metropolis. My super magical, heroic powers started inside of me and burst forth into the world in the form of knightly honor, dragonly passion, or a burst of super human strength.  I dealt with the ogres and plagues and villains in the best way I knew how.

And happily ever after lasted a few more minutes before another crisis descended upon me and I began the circle all over.

I suppose the difference is not only in the way I think of my life, but also in the way I take it in stride, how aware I am, how much the discord really affects me moment to moment.

Some people, I call them drama queens, fly into red rages at the tiniest little provocation.  Others are so staid and sure that I wonder if they are even aware of what is going on.  Most of us fall somewhere in between.

I would love to read about your trials and tribulations from the inner recesses of your mind.  I think it would be fun to meet the saints and knights, the super heroes and arch villains, the queens and kings, both good and bad who surround me in this work a day world, kind of like having a mirror that reflected, not physical bodies, but coping strategies and personal perceptions. 

The time has come to peel away all the facades and reveal the people below.

The greatest gift

Helping each other is one of the delights of living.  It feels so good there is an urge to do it even when it isn’t necessary or actually hurtful, but there are times when it is necessary.

There are times when the world lays so heavily on someone that only a hug or an ear can lighten the load.  Such simple gestures may seem humble compared to feeding the poor or building great cathedrals, but they rank far above these types of things.

What could be greater than being there to hold someone or listen to them? 

Asking them to do that for you.

Follow the what

Sometimes I wonder if life is just a game of chance.  Other times I think it is a series of lessons.  Most of the time I think it is just important to hang in there and keep going.

No matter what else it is; it is mine.  I may only have a certain grade of clay to work with and I may have a few nuts and bolts missing, but as long as I have awareness I have responsibility - to myself first and then to those who look at me as if I know.

The most difficult thing I had to learn is that most of life is a choice.  Every decision I make has a consequence and the quality of my life hangs on balancing out good and bad consequences.

There is no reward for feeling bad.  It is not noble, or heroic, or even smart. 

That silly phrase, “when life gives you lemons make lemonade” has some real merit.  Only it doesn’t mean going around singing songs like, “Don’t worry, be happy.”  It means to “grab the bull by the horns” and take charge! 

Worrying really is just a way of tricking my body into thinking it is doing something useful when it is not.  Acting in a thoughtful, intelligent and purposeful way is very useful.  I always have options.

If there is a GPS in life it might be my “option locator.”  I am born and bred to follow certain ways, but they are not the only ways.  Sometimes I have to do things differently if I am going to thrive. 

Imagine a cactus growing in a tropical rain forest, or a tropical plant left out in the desert.  They are pretty much at the mercy of the elements, but I have arms, legs, opposable thumbs!  I also have a mind.  I could just stick that opposable thumb out and wait for a rescue, or I could start changing things.

For me the first place to start is by changing something in me, my thoughts, my actions, my direction.  Then I look at what is around me.  How can I change that?  The secret is not to give up or believe there is only one option.

Whatever this life is, it is mine.

Diluvian sojourn

It was there before I ever sat down, but that was the first time I was aware of what it was.  Well I must have sensed something before, because I approached in dread.

What was it?  A hand.  Long, thin, bony, with parchment skin and yellowed nails, reaching out from behind the curtain with slow agonizing precision.

My heart thundered like a ladle hitting a copper pig scalding pot in my chest.  My breath froze in my lungs, refusing either to come out or refresh.

It was quarter till two.  I remember that distinctly.  I saw it glowing ominously through the veil of my sleep.  Three simple numbers in luminous windows flooding the front of that tiny faced chroniker on my bedside table. 

One, four, five, silently chiming a death knell above the ringing in my ears, calling me to rise and go forth before I committed some act so horrific that I would never live it down.

It was only a few steps from there to here, but that is when I must have noticed it, some imperceptible shadow, or movement in the shower that set off this chain of events.

I might have wet my pants, but I did not, because I was no longer in a position to do so.  Instead, I opened my eyes and allowed the last shred of foggy sleep to rise into the bathroom light.

And of course nothing was there except the final shards of my imagination, or perhaps a whiff of the dream that had awakened me before I began that slit-eyed journey.

What does it mean

I wonder what it really means to grow up? 

Everyone and everything gets older.  It’s one of those inescapable facts of existence.  And as age settles down upon us, we change.  That is also an unavoidable truth.

It is how we change that fascinates me.

Experience should make me wiser, but that is not a given.  How I translate the information I absorb into action defines me as a human being.  Sometimes I choose to ignore what I know and sometimes what I know just doesn’t register.  How that can be, I don’t understand. 

Knowing is a strange ability.  It strikes everyone differently!

Once I only wanted to know what it took to please the people around me.  Now I would prefer to know what it is that offers me the best quality life possible and even that changes depending on how I look at it.  I want a balance of health and happiness.

For me that means finding a way to do the necessary things like eating healthy, exercising and paying the bills as well as playing.  Playing is important to me!  Without it I become moody and repressed and that is not healthy.  I think knowing that is growing up!

Learning to cherish all the parts of me has taken a long time.  In fact, it is always a work in progress.   I suspect growing up shifts its balance over the years, but the luckiest among us finally grow so large we dissipate into all being.