Dastardly Whiplash

I remember when we got our first foster child.  I wanted to buy her everything in the world for Christmas.  I wanted to make up for all those years she had nothing.

My father warned me that it might be too much.  She might be totally overwhelmed.  I didn't really understand that.

How can there be too much goodness, too many good things?

Right now I think I am beginning to understand the feelings.  My world is simply overflowing with wonderful things!  I can barely find the time to squeeze them all in anymore and they just keep coming!  I am starting to feel slightly overwhelmed.

I don't understand why all this goodness is flowing my way and I am sort of afraid it is some kind of illusion that will suddenly be ripped out from under me leaving me hanging.  I cannot imagine how that can be, but my mind does try to find these things!

I half expect to see Dastardly Whiplash coming up behind me, ready to tie me to the railroad tracks by the strings of some bad judgement call I've made.  I don't know what it would be, but a little part of my mind just keeps mumbling something I can't quite hear.

Ridiculous anxiety.  I need to find a way to let go of this.

In spite of

I often wonder why some people seem to have more problems than others.

Are some of us just blessed and others damned?  That seems too simplistic for me just like believing that I deserve better for one reason or another seems a bit more self serving than true.

No one deserves cancer or horror in their lives.  Even the worst nightmarish people that have ever existed started out as someone's innocent baby. 

People are always saying to look for the God in others, or look for the love, or other things that are somehow oblique and not necessarily the same for everyone, but we all were babies.  Not one of us hatched out of that egg grown up and mean.

It always bothers me when people make excuses for poor situations by citing the exceptions who made it in spite of.  Sure, there are always a few people who manage to overcome unbelievably bad odds and succeed in spite of poor parents, poor environments, poor schools, but they are rare and they require a lot more fortitude than most of us even dream of having.

Nature is certainly important, but nurture is more important.

Truly intelligent loving and nurturing might just be the magic that turns a sow's ear into a silk purse and silk purses into treasure houses of light and joy.

Understanding

Nothing is what it seems and yet it can't really be much more.

My understanding of everything colors it's meaning to me.  If I see a skeleton and it reminds me of Day of the dead, my feelings are different than if I see it as something from a horror show.

If I think you are going to insult me chances are everything you say will sound sarcastic to me.  Of course if I believe you are all sweetness and light I will perceive you that way too.

So much of the world is what I make it.

And yet there are real things going on out there that cannot be totally discounted.  No wonder it takes baby humans so long to grow up. We can't just mate with some creatures and eat the others. 

We are the deadliest creatures in the forest.  Smart enough to wipe out everything else, including the forest and dumb enough to do it.

Fairy tales do come true....

I found this great little plaque that says, "Once in a while right in the middle of an ordinary life... love comes along and brings you a fairy tale."

That is the story of my life from beginning to end and yes I know what the end will be because I know me.

I need love.  I need it as much as I need to breathe or eat, or sleep.

Without it I cease to exist.  With it I seem to thrive no matter where I am or what is going on, so I look for it.  Like a homing device I find myself drawn to those things that remind me I am love.

People, books, ideas, fairy tales, whatever it takes to keep the love light shining is the way I live.  I love loving and that gives me powers ogres and trolls never have.

Indulgences

I spent all day reading Beloved yesterday.

I can't remember the last time I did something like that.  Maybe when I was in school back in the seventies?  It was decadently lazy and lovely.  Not the book.  It isn't lovely, but it is rich in a way that can take up a whole day and night and leave me feeling fuller because of it.

It may be the perfect book in some respects.  If you want horror, there is certainly that.  If you want love, it is right there in all its forms.  If you like mystery, or thrills, tension and adventure, Toni Morrison mixes it all up and pours out a satisfying read.

She speaks to me about concepts that are universal and timeless.  Frightening because they could be my own in some places.  Thought provoking because they are written about people who would seem to have nothing to do with me and my time.

And yet they do.

Beloved is one of those books that reminds me we are all more alike than we ever dare to dream.

Insider knowledge

I see offers to change me a million times a day.  Worse, I see offers to change everyone a million times a day!  How awful it must be to be a child in today's world and hear that who you are is not okay.

Everything from the kind of hair I was born with, to the way my skin looks, to which music, games, movies and programs I watch are constantly under the scrutiny of people who want to make me better, smarter, more sophisticated.  If I believe all this then it is obvious that I am not okay the way I was born.

If you want to sell me something, or have some kind of power over me, it might be in your best interests to convince me I am lacking.   For me?  Not so much.

Each one of us has something, or maybe lots of somethings, we feel is lacking in our basic makeup.  The most beautiful, smartest people in the world often feel the same way. 

It's not what I was given to work with that makes me okay.  It's what I am able to do with it, how I am able to circumvent the problems it causes, where I find ways to turn it into something useful and good, that counts.

No one knows me better than me.  I don't have to broadcast my shortcomings, or perceived shortcomings.  I just have to find a way of living with them that satisfies me.  The more creative I am, the better off I will be.

Self confidence and self love turn losers into champions.

Pain

I know people often think if something hurts it is doing something.  What I don't understand is why they think that is necessarily good?

Just because the medicine stings doesn't mean it's good for you.  Bees and jelly fish sting.  Of course some people think bee stings help arthritis, but that is because of what they put in the body if it actually works.  Not because it hurts.

When I was a child I wished I was one of those people who had no sense of feeling.  Then I thought it wouldn't hurt when I had to get a shot, or skinned my knee, but what I discovered was that people like that often die because they don't know they're hurt.

Go for the burn, feel the pain, we are weird people.  Nature gave us a sense of pain so we would know what to stay away from.  I know people who have had personal trainers destroy their rotator cuffs in spite of all the pain that preceded that actual injury.

When your knees hurt stop doing whatever it is you are doing.  When your stomach is upset stop doing whatever caused it.  I even discovered that all these years of avoiding my bra because I don't like how tight it feels has probably played into my court.  They used to say you would have sagging breasts.  Now they say it appears just the opposite, that the freedom made those muscles stronger.

There is nothing noble about enduring pain needlessly either.  Pain is an indicator that something must change.  It is negative reinforcement, believing anything else just isn't smart.  I know the puritans don't want me to believe it, but if it hurts it is probably bad for me.  A few things must be endured, but lets not make that a life long goal.

To infinity and beyond!

Infinite!

What a concept!

Imagine going on forever!

In our world there are very few things that don't end somewhere.  We think of ourselves as finite creatures and worry about what will end us or those we care about.

We worry about the things that will run out: money, water, food, breath, love.

But there are things that are truly infinite.  In fact they seem to grow bigger and deeper as I learn more about them and love is at the top of that list.

You absolutely cannot have too many people who really love you or who you really love.  It is like polishing some bright bit of existence, the more you do it, the brighter and more beautiful it becomes.  Of course that is real love, not infatuation, or projection.  Some kinds of love really are finite, because they are more a reflection of what could be than what is.

It isn't easy to leap into infinity, it really is a leap of faith.

Its not easy

I think the hardest person in the world to really love is myself.  If I can honestly do that I am ahead of most people who seem to harbor a sort of secret contempt for who they are.

When I say contempt I mean they have to make up stories for themselves in order to feel worthy. 

Loving myself means knowing what my strengths and weaknesses really are. Then my self worth doesn't depend on your view of me.

Knowing how I feel and how I act upon those feelings gives me a lot of power.  I don't have to be unkind to others in order to feel okay.  I also don't have to kowtow to their need to make me someone I am not.

It isn't easy to admit my shortcomings and vulnerabilities and it's certainly not safe to reveal them to everyone.  In fact, if I can share all of me with only one person I am way ahead of most people.

No one really likes to be around door mats or power mongers because they make us feel uncomfortable.  When life becomes a constant struggle to stand on my own two feet because I am afraid of taking advantage of someone, or in fear of being squashed, self-preservation causes me to step away.

Strength comes in knowing myself well enough that I can stand tall and steadfast, bending in the wind, shading the weakest while keeping myself rooted firmly in what I believe.

But first I have to know what that is and honor it.

Control

How did I get to be the person I am?

I think most of us wonder that at some time in our life, but it has been the subject of endless fascination for me.

I learn a lot about my birth family by looking at my siblings.  They each have magnified an aspect of one part of our parents until that part is bigger than life.  I don't think I did that, but mostly because I made a concerted effort to change aspects of my personality.

I wanted to grow up to be my father.  There was no chance I would grow up to be my mother anyway.  She was a delicate boned redhead with a fiery unpredictable temper.  I may have her temper, but I had a financially easier life which gave me more time to control mine.

Control is my nemesis.  I feel an obligation to be in control most of the time.  I don't think either of my parents had that.  No one seemed to be in control of anything in our house.  We lived on a downhill skid, always appearing to be more than we really were.  Both grandparents were very successful financially.

My parents loved us.  Like you might love kittens when they are cute and cuddly, but with some sort of total disregard for the fact that we would eventually have to go out and make our own way in the world.  Love without real direction is a strange anomaly.

Now that I am retired I look back and marvel at some of the experiences I had, but whether they were from choice or a basic lack of something I may never know.  I guess the real test of time will be watching my own children and seeing how they do.  I have been able to give up acting on my need to control them and I think I have instilled a sense of how to survive in them too.  We'll see.

Blessed be the ties that bind

Some of us never grow up and leave home.  The faces change.  The locations change, even the names change, but the feelings and the thoughts are basically the same.

The children turn into our brothers and sister and we become our parent, whichever one we feel most akin to I suppose.  It can be a sign of great love, but I suspect it is something more and it really isn't fair to the new children.

They get assigned roles they were never born to and it must be confusing to have a parent for a brother or sister.  Children, of course, roll with the punches.  They don't know any better. Their experience is as uniquely theirs as anyone elses.  But being recycled siblings is surreal.

Dreams confuse brothers and sisters with children, parents with spouses, and the houses all blend into one nightmare where its impossible to remember the desk that is yours because it has changed a lot over time along with everything else.

And then one afternoon you have a dream that you are in an empty house waiting for everyone to come home, a strange dog lies asleep at your feet.  His fur is short and prickly.  His body too long for your dog and you realize your father isn't sleeping in the next room anymore and your husband decided to go back without really spending time with you and the people downstairs are not your brothers and sisters, but your children and when you wake up you have broken the ties that bind.

Everyone needs a mom or dad who teaches them how to grow up, how to succeed, how to live in the world.  They need role models and the less confused the role models are, the easier it is for the children.

The ties that bind may be love, or fear, or unfulfilled needs, but each generation needs to forge wiser, healthier ones than the ones that came before and be ready to let their children forge theirs.

Opportunities

I loaned my neighbor my tool box so some boy she knows can put together her bed.  She's been sleeping on the floor (on a mattress) until now and I offered to help her put her frame together.  She preferred to wait for him because she "just didn't know anything about it!"

Actually I could have put it all together for her, but I am of the school that says everything I do for you denies you the chance to learn something and some day it might be important for you to know a few things, even if it is only how to beg I guess.

Like today when I had to jimmy a window open, figure out how to prop it up while I cleaned it and then unscrew my drapery rods so I can put up the summer curtains.  Or when I saved a bundle by putting together some of my own furniture.  I do still have that one extra part for the fireplace, but it works just fine without it!

There was a time when I thought I couldn't use a computer without help, or a cell phone, or assemble my own vacuum, but this year I put together an elliptical machine!

It wasn't easy.  Lots of it wasn't easy.  Many times I have done something two or three times, mashed a few fingers and said a few choice words, but I did it and it feels good in the long run.

Still I understand the desire not to do anything you can get someone else to do for you and I suppose it is okay as long as it is a choice and not a necessity.

He walks in beauty like the night

There are creatures on this earth so fragile, so beautiful, so extraordinary that it is surprising they exist at all.

Sheer goodness, absolute love walking among us making things happen that cannot possibly be happening and yet are.

I don't know how to find them, or recognize them.  In fact, sometimes I can barely believe in them at all, but they are.  That I know.

Perhaps they are the ones who spawn the myths and stories and tall tales of great riches being hidden right in front of our noses without us being aware of them.  We personify them as Leprechauns, or genies, or angels and then in our embarrassment give them mean twists as if to say, nothing is ever as good as it seems.

"If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" is an old saying and generally good advice, but not always true.

There are beings among us so good, so true, that believing in them is risky business, because it means having faith in dreams, knowing they can come true in the most unlikely ways at the most unbelievable times and be extraordinarily good. 

Something can seem too good to be true and actually be better than it seems.

If angels walked among us they would surely know our every thought, our every wish and every desire and they could see that it came true without us doing anything at all to merit it, if they chose.

Think about that.  Imagine it.  What is your dearest wish?  Not some noble wish to impress mankind.  Not some ignoble wish for gold and silver, but something that would fill you with love and contentment so deep, so rich, so fulfilling that everything else becomes simple.

Not Knowing

Far down in South America are a tribe of people who have never seen television or even talked to people from our world.  Should I try to describe New York City to them they would have no idea what I was talking about.  Their world has no glass, or tall stone buildings.  They have never seen a gasoline powered vehicle, or bought bread in a building.

But they are not without intelligence or culture.  They are very familiar with their own world and its stories.  They are adept at providing for themselves and pass all these things on to their children just like we pass ours on to our children.

In our world of Internet and television we feel very sophisticated and well informed.  We think we know or have access to, almost everything that is.  And yet, in our own way, we are as limited as those people in South America.

We only know what we know.

We cannot know those things we have never been introduced to or seen or experienced.  We can imagine, but even our imaginations are limited by a certain degree of not knowing.

Thus the afterlife is only something we have been told about: by churchmen, or scientists, or people with great imaginations.  Honestly we don't know any more about it than those isolated people know of New York.

So I think it will be the last great adventure!  (And maybe not even the last!)

The force be with you

The life force is such a mystery.  Beautiful trees, magnificent flowers, big strong men, vivacious strong women, elephants, whales...you name it and then think about it.  What animates these incredible things?

How can a tiny acorn hold a whole oak tree!  Where does that look come from in twinkling eyes?  A baby appears with a thousand tiny parts all activated and moving!

I have always been aware that life is tenuous, even as a very young child.  But it wasn't until my mother died that I realized how completely incomprehensible life and death are.  How could someone who gave me life, who had been there my whole entire life, not be there anymore?

How can someone be soft and alive and there and without moving be gone a moment later?  Where did they go?  How did they go?  What changed?

When I see whole trees ripped from the earth I am even more aware of how fragile life is.  On the other side of this is a stranger thought. I have a feeling that this part of us that seemingly disappears just moves like a crab changing shells.

Maybe going somewhere else, but more likely just becoming part of everything else, part of me and the earth and the wind, part of all creation and the creator.

All the beliefs aren't as far apart as people seem to believe.

Decisions

Hmmmm, which do I choose?  Going to the zoo with a bunch of kindergartners or a fancy tearoom with friends?

You might think that is a facetious question, but it's not.  I want to do both so badly.

If they were on separate days I would be all set. But... they are not.

So today I am going to La Tea Da Tearoom for lunch.

Amazing when life is so crammed with wonderful things that these decisions have to be made.

Love

Commercially love and sex sell everything from toys to cars.  If you love someone they need to have ....what?  Almost anything an advertiser can slip into the slot.

Novels bristle with steamy descriptions of what love is supposed to be.

Love is mingled with, co-mingled with and confused with sex.

It is the most talked about, written about, over used idea I can think of.

True love is more than making someone happy, or taking care of them.  It is more than feeling good when with them, or thinking about them.  It is more...more about them and their true well being than it is about me.

And yet, if they love me isn't there an obligation to take care of myself as well? 

In the end, love can't be bought or sold.  It can't really be earned or lost.  It isn't a thing.  It is a way, a very beautiful way of being and living.

How close are we?

I remember telling one of my children, "No matter where you are, if you need me and think very hard, I will hear you."  I believed that no matter how ridiculous it sounded and it turned out to be true.

My child was in a terrible place and I heard his voice call me as clearly as if he were downstairs in the house.  I knew I had to go get him and when I arrived he knew I was coming.  Love is an amazing thing.

Science is discovering new frontiers all the time and I believe it has not even scratched the surface when it comes to the capabilities of human beings.  We tend to rise to the occasion.

Knowing this, and believing it, makes me think that I am also closer to every other creature on this planet than I may choose, or want, to believe.

We are not single celled creatures living in vacuums.  We are souls swimming in a huge aquarium!

Tuned in I might be surprised at how close I can be to those I love and cannot help but be affected by some I don't even know!

We are all in this together.

Impressions

I live on first floor of a large old house.  There is an apartment upstairs and a new tenant recently moved in.  I haven't met her yet, or really even seen her.  I did glimpse someone out the front window the other day who may be my new housemate, but also might just be one of the people who helped her move in.

First impressions are strange things sometimes based on the most oblique observations.

Mine:  The new girl moved in upstairs.  She walks lightly and her voice doesn't carry through the floor, which is a blessing.  Poor thing maybe this is the first time she has ever lived inside.  She doesn't seem to know that you can close the doors after you walk through them and she drops her garbage wherever she happens to be when she is finished with it.

Hers:  The old lady downstairs is so quiet.  I wonder if she recently just got out of prison.  She runs around closing doors like she's afraid someone's going to get out and she polices the grounds like she's on patrol, picking up every little bit of litter she can find. 

Sigh....

Happy Mother's Day

Love is a magical mystery.

Reflecting back at me from the faces of those I love,  it lifts me up in ways I never dreamed possible.

Pouring out of me it fills me up better than any magnificent feast I have ever eaten.

Keeping it real and honest and rich is a never-ending lesson.

Understanding it isn't necessary.  It may not even be possible.

But that's okay.

Happy Mother's Day.  Enjoy it!

Pay attention

In today's world it is fashionable to love the underdog.  It is exciting to love the top dog, but most of us fall somewhere in between.

No one's life is as perfect as it appears.  A different tolerance for pain makes it almost impossible for one person to really know how another one feels.

Life is much more controllable than it seems.  Decisions are made in every instant and each one of them changes something.

My ability to learn from my decisions separates me from everyone else.  It is the turning point between misery and relative content.

There are givens.  All the major holidays come every year about the same time.  There is no mystery here.  Plan accordingly.  Most rent, mortgage payments, utilities and food bills come every month with disgusting regularity.  Expect them.  Everything I put in my mouth does something to my body.  What that is, is sometimes the mystery.  Figure that out and health is not so problematic.

As Einstein said, insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  

Part of the joy in living is learning what works and what doesn't.  The happier person pays attention.

Just a little bit

I have been in awe of education since I was three years old.  I'm not sure what impresses me more.  The amazingly infinite and fascinating things there are to learn, the dedicated people who want to teach, or the incredible amount of perseverance and work some people are willing to put into it.

When I was very small my father taught at the U of I.  I went to my children's graduations and today I watched my best friend carry the mace and lead the graduation at his university.

There is something about it all that sends shivers down my spine, like I am getting a peek at the world of wizards and wise men, the Yodas of our world.  Or at least the Yodas-to-be.

I know that isn't necessarily true, but it speaks to the way I feel and it is a little bit true.

The real miracle

I don't like to believe it, but most of my problems stem from too much food.

In a world where people are starving to death and malnourished, I am actually surrounded by tons of people who are grossly overweight, including myself. 

We console ourselves with the fact that our bodies keep us from doing the very things that would make it feel better.  Or we excuse ourselves by saying I can still do everything I ever could I am just a big person, I am happy the way I am.

The truth for me is that I like to eat and once I start it is hard for me to stop.  One yummy thing tastes good, but it doesn't satisfy my yearning so I eat two, or three, or I eat until there is no more on my plate, or in the kitchen, or, sadly, in the store.  I absolutely cannot eat sweet sugary things in reasonable amounts.

I also cannot eat soft white floury things in reasonable amounts.  I always want more.  I will eat until my stomach hurts, until I have acid reflux when I go to sleep, until my joints ache from the extra weight, until my heart pounds and my breath is short after a small walk.

It destroys my self esteem.  I awaken in the morning depressed and that depression deepens during the day.

All it takes is eating sensibly for a day to lift my spirits.  Awakening to jump on the scale and see that I have not gained another pound, or have even maybe lost a pound changes everything.  It gives me hope.  It makes me feel good like I have some control over my life and I do!

And most of all it eventually allows me to shed enough weight so that other things become easier.  I feel younger as if I have taken a dip in the fountain of youth.  I don't feel perfect but I do feel enough better that if I can remember this I don't lose control as often and that is what counts.  I can eat tons less and still not be hungry.

This is the real diet drug, the real miracle and it is the hardest to come.  I can't buy it and no one can give it to me.  It is buried deep inside of me underneath all the learned ways of rewarding or punishing myself.

Although it does help to have an honest and loving friend to talk it over with, no pill or book or organization can do as much for me as cheaply and beautifully as I can for myself.

Well

Minds are treasure boxes filled with thoughts and ideas, pathos and mischief!

When I want to play I dig deep looking for my favorite things.

When I need comfort I snuggle in close looking for those lovees that have always gotten me through.

Mine holds all the excuses I'll ever need and lots of the rules I've written in stone.

But it is also filled with surprises.  Those things I never knew I had, or thought, or wanted, or hated.  Out of the murkiness of the deepest part come hope and anguish.

Around it all is a pervasive sense that all is well, and will be well, and always was well. Others know this too, it is the watch word for those who find content in the moment.

Growth

Survivors learn to adapt.  Thrivers have to adapt and accept.

There are things in this world that cannot be changed and there are things that need time to change.  The hard part is recognizing them and having both the patience and wisdom to allow them to come to term.

The hardest thing in the world is to learn new ways of living and loving.  As a child I only knew mother, father, brothers and sisters, but the world is so much bigger than that.

I am still the child I was, but I am growing.  Every day I grow a bit more and that will continue until I cease to be. 

In the meantime I must nurture myself and find ways that fill me up until one day I outgrow my earthly body.

Innovations

Sometimes a solution is right there staring me in the eyes.

I don't see it because somebody put the wrong tag on it, or I have categorized it in a specific way.

The secret to innovative solutions is to lose the set-in-stone concrete  ideas.

Then a shoe becomes a house for a poor old woman with a passel of kids, or a vase an aquarium.

I went to the store for something to wear, but when I got there I fell in a chair.

I looked in the mirror to see my hair and saw the rack of Maternity wear.

Jeans just my size, long legs and thin, with room for my tummy which doesn't begin

to fit in the ones that my legs fit in!

Freeze tag

I am accustomed to looking for fore shadowing in books, so why not life?  What is it in life that is a sign of things to come? Knowing this would be like looking into a crystal ball, or reading someone's palm.  It's what fortune tellers know that the rest of us don't see.

Mythology is full of people who received subtle warnings they ignored.   Now they are frozen as statues, or pinned to rocks to be picked at forever, not to die, just to suffer.  That's the worst thing of all, the final straw, the last play for power, threatening eternal damnation.

As long as we are moving in this life there is the possibility that things will change, but what happens when we become statues; when rigidity starts to set in and new ways or ideas become unthinkable?

This is the foreshadowing that says the end is coming, at least the end of things as we know them.  The world slowly morphs into a strange, unknowable, unbearable place.  The clothes are different, the music is different, the machines become incomprehensible enemies. People start disappearing. The good old days take on an unnatural rosy glow that never existed.  I suppose it prepares us for preferring to get out rather than dealing with this discomfort forever.

But I also wonder if being able to escape the statue makers will open up new possibilities for longer more fulfilling lives.

Killing time

What is the difference between killing time and doing something worthwhile?

Seems like that should be a simple enough thing to answer, but it really depends on who you are and what you believe.

I know people who base everything on money.  If I am not being paid money to do what I do then it isn't really work and only work is really worthwhile, but of course no one really believes that no matter what they say.

No one pays us to love our own children or do things with them.  Yet it is important work.  It is also very satisfying and often fun work! Volunteer work outside the family is another one of these.  Volunteers often do the same things their paid coworkers do, only they do it for other reasons than money, which hopefully their paid cohorts do too.

Those other reasons help define the difference between killing time and what is worthwhile.

I remember the phrase, "idle hands are the devil's playthings."  I hear it comes from St. Jerome, but I couldn't find any reference for it.  Still it was an oft quoted phrase that kept men whittling and women knitting and crocheting and tatting whenever they were "resting."  It also predates television where people stare vacuously at a flickering screen until they drop off from boredom.

Here are a few of my favorite "idle" quotes:

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
Buddha

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
Samuel Johnson

Food for thought, but for me the biggest difference between doing something worthwhile and being idle is what comes out of it.  Killing time is doing something that drains me.

Idleness can be the birthplace of great ideas, innovative creations and simply renewing my zest for life.  I think those things are worthwhile.

It's not enough

It is not enough to just bring life into the world.

Creating life means taking responsibility for it.  If you can't do that, you're in the wrong job.

A dandelion blows in the wind, sending its little ones out willy nilly to grow or die as luck would have it.

I love dandelions, but I love people more.

I want to see little people come into a world that feeds them, cares quietly for them, teaches them to move through the world in love and peace.

Dandelions blow in the wind.  Children are moved by their breath, but both are born to leave their parents and need the skills to survive.  Who would deny them that?

People do.  Allowing television, or random others to care for children turns life into a crap shoot.  The lucky ones make it -- sorta. 

They deserve so much more.

Every minute spent with a child from the day he opens his eyes for the first time, is an opportunity to tune him to a world that requires him to be discriminating.  Loving books and ideas and learning is as important as learning to eat solid food.

It's not enough to feed just his body. 

Interactions

I walked this morning.  People were out everywhere.  Partly because I walked at just the right time.  Early enough to be cooler at the start and late enough for people to be up and moving.

Two women were moving into a house down the street.  They had the smallest moving truck and two hand trucks.  Interesting that both those things are called trucks, but more interesting to me were the women.  One was an older white woman, short, muscular, hauling that hand truck like she meant business.  The other was a younger tall black woman wearing a cap pulled down over her eyes and looking like some sort of misplaced model.  She was still working hard, hauling in a huge suitcase on wheels, lugging it up the steps.

People don't generally have a lot when they move in and out in my neighborhood.  We are mostly students and older women, people coming from, or going to.  Coming from homes that no longer exist, or where parents are waiting patiently.  Moving forward into new lives full of promises and hopes we hope are not just dreams.

At the park an elderly man sat on a bench watching me as I circled it seven times.  The second to last time he stopped me to ask if I had seen a shopping cart filled with cans and such.  I had!  It was about thirty feet away, just out of his eyesight behind a tree.  He thanked me, said he often forgot where he put it.  I put my earphones back in and took a few steps before he stopped me again.  Did I know what time it was?  Feeling slightly annoyed I stopped, thumbed through my phones different modes and told him it was 10:28.  He nodded smiling and turned around to resume his position.

I walked on feeling a little guilty.  Giving him the time of day was such a simple thing.  He looked like the kind of man who didn't get many things at all.  When I finished my three miles he was still sitting there surrounded by five fat squirrels digging for food.

On the way home a woman in a car called me over to ask if I knew where Roosevelt was.  I didn't, but felt compelled to tell her that if I knew how to use my phone I could have probably found it for her.  She smiled and held up her phone telling me she didn't know how to use it either.

I passed the women moving in again.  We nodded at each other and smiled.  Everyone does that here.  We all nod and smile, sometimes we even wave, but we hardly ever talk.  Maybe because my neighbor next door likes to talk.  She goes door to door telling the rest of us how she takes care of our yards, how she spends all her free time outside mowing and edging and picking up trash.

I wonder if everyone else feels the way I do about her? 

Life is an operetta

Technology is great!

Today I was able to send a May basket of flowers to my youngest grandchildren by text.  It only required having fun drawing a picture with colored markers and taking a picture of it with my phone.  They sent back pictures of them and their snowy May Day!

I received those while walking three miles in perfect weather at a nearby park without breaking stride!  I finished up that walk talking to my best friend way down south in the land of Dixie and I have to say my life sometimes feels like an operetta.

Friends check in both day and night and I am never really alone.  Yet I have the freedom to do the things I love most which is truly quite a blessing.

Now I get to dress up and go to a volunteer luncheon before going to the very thing they are thanking me for.  What a perfect way to spend the day!

Tarry tarry life is merry
How does your life flow?
With smiling faces and happy places
And chirping texts all in a row.

:<)