Living the dream

We often spend the first thirty odd years of our lives living a dream.

We think we know what we want. We think we know what is possible. We think we know who we are. We even think these same things about the people around us.

And then -- at some point we wake up and find out who we really are and sometimes discover we are so different from the people around us that we don't even speak the same language.

It's hard to talk things over, work things out, continue on . . . when the words don't reflect the same feelings . . . the actions no longer mean the same things . . . the dreams can turn into nightmares that have nothing to do with reality . . . and we find ourselves at sea.

Lost for words and dreams and hope, that is the time to move gently apart and reassess who we actually are. It is time to start over.

Starting over does not mean erasing the past, it means incorporating it into the reality of now and once that is done, the real dream starts.

Older, wiser, and more understanding.

Full of myself

I am often intrigued by other people's thoughts and dreams, but last night it is my own that I find fascinating.

I dreamed that I was given a box of very fancy clothing to wear to a formal ball. I dressed in a long blue gown and a full length wool coat, then left with two other women to drive there in a small shiny red car. Our three husbands wore tuxedos and also drove together, but they went in a small gold limo.

Once there we parked, went in, and hung our coats on some hooks right inside the door. Then we began to walk through. It was room after room of rows of chairs set up on both sides of a center aisle. The people were all dressed to the nines. The rooms were very elegant. One room was all women with blue ostrich feathers in their hair singing in a chorus. The people were all very full of themselves and slightly pompous. After a while I wanted to go home, but I couldn't remember what the women I came with looked like, or where we parked the car, or even where my coats was.

And what sparked this dream?

I think having to charge over three thousand dollars on my credit card made me feel rich.

Bionic Woman

When my daughter was little one of her favorite shows was the bionic woman.

I remember thinking what a miraculous idea it was to be able to fix body parts that way, but as I grow older I realize that parts of me are all headed that way.

I am already laying the groundwork, by having bits and pieces removed.

During the last thirty years I have lost my tonsils, adenoids, gall bladder, ovaries, uterus, appendix, fallopian tubes, and parts of two toenails.

I had cataracts removed and fake lenses placed in my eyes about three years ago.

My baby tooth fell out this summer and now I have a fake one in its place! It looks real, feels real, needs care like a real one -- but it's not.

I may be on my way to being a bionic woman -- if I live long enough.

Live, love and laugh

Drama.

Families seem to thrive on it.

People with boring lives appear to look for it.

I don't need it and I don't want it.

My life is interesting without manufacturing any extraneous stuff at all.

I like managing my own life myself. That gives me just about all the challenges I need. By the time I get all my ducks in a row, there is absolutely no reason to go out hunting more.

One of the things I love about most of the women I meet in Women, Wine and Words, is their independence, their strength, their belief in themselves and their lack of desire to meddle.

I think drama is for people who are looking for others floundering like they are.

Brutal

Love can be brutal.

Really loving myself is not all bubble baths and beautiful clothes. It is not all steak dinners and hot fudge sundaes either.

Sometimes true love is eating green beans and avocados. It is eating eggs without salt and not drinking tea. It is giving up ice cream and spending an extra ten minutes picking, brushing and flossing my teeth before gargling with Listerine.

It is even hoofing it around the park ten minutes longer than is fun to get in some more exercise for my heart, because all the love in the world cannot live in a dying body or broken heart.

Loving me means learning to like who I am right now enough to take care of me and changing the things I need to change to keep me feeling good about myself. It can even mean not being with people who make me feel bad about myself.

Love is real. Not some storybook idea of hearts and flowers (although those could be there too!)

Happy Birthday

Having a birthday near, or sometimes even on, Thanksgiving is fun. I almost never had to go to school on my birthday as a child, and I almost always get to have a party with whoever I spend Thanksgiving with now that I am older.

I have a habit of trying to have some kind of plan to make the day special all on my own. It is one of those just in case things from the days when I had to bake my own birthday cake and help the kids make presents for me.

But I don't need those plans anymore. My sister and Bestest go out of their way to make sure it is a special day for me and I heard from so many dear friends in so many different ways that I feel very much loved and appreciated.

The universe seems to be smiling on me and I am so grateful.

The Best Collaborative Thanksgiving Ever

Our family had their Thanksgiving dinner today, on Black Friday, which eliminated the desire, or need, to go trample people and spend money.

Instead, we all met at my sister's house, because it is right in the middle between all of our houses and she was willing to host it.

Everyone brought something to share, pumpkin pies, homemade noodles, elegant dips, ham, turkey, homemade rolls. My sister bought the rest and I made stuffing, a green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and opened the cranberry jelly.

Everyone got there early too, so some people set the table. Others carried out trash. Some poured drinks. It was the best collaborative Thanksgiving ever! And we even celebrated my birthday, which is really tomorrow.

My sister's little house was crammed to the ceiling with people and love.

Other people

Our family is celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, so today I am entertaining myself.

At first I found myself a bit defensive. I was afraid people might think I was lonely, or feel sorry for me because I was Home Alone! I took a walk around the neighborhood just to see what anyone else might be doing.

There was a couple sitting in their camper (in their garage!) having coffee and waving at me. There was a lone car at the park that evidently brought the person swinging on the swings with great gusto! There was a squirrel making his first foray into a large fluffy couch someone had placed by the dumpster. And Annabel was at home playing with the Christmas ornaments I left in the box on the bed.

How lucky we all are to be able to just do what we want today.

It would be a shame to waste that worrying about what other people think.

Up for grabs

When I was a child people created the world around me and I had to live in it.

Sometimes it was magical. Sometimes it was terrifying. Often it was confusing.

When I became an adult I thought that was the way things worked and sometimes it is.

But I discovered that adults have a lot more options than children do, or at least I do.

I have the ability, and the responsibility, to make my world a lot safer, more interesting, more creative and more fun than I did as a child.

There are very few absolutes in my world now. I have to pay my bills and my rent, but the rest is pretty much up for grabs.

And I'm grabbing for the things that make me feel good about life.

Fresh

Once in a while life steps up and says, "Whoops, it's time to change things up."

I think I am in control, but that's never really true.

I read about people who lived their whole lives with two dresses, one pair of earrings, the same house, an attic full of hand me down furniture and I wonder how they did it.

I would look like an ad for Ragbag Sally.

About every five years I lose one of my favorite earrings and about seventy pounds of fat. In 2010 I lost everything I owned that didn't fit in my Honda Accord. I have moved to a new favorite place four times in the last seven years and bought my Haviland china at Goodwill.

The only thing that stays the same are my children and best friends. I even lost my husband after thirty years.

And it's not a bad way to live!

It keeps everything pertinent and fresh.

Elephants and poodles and horses, oh my

My girl friends are all dreaming of horses and poodles. It seems they want to feel themselves as free as the wind flying over fields, or dripping in diamonds and pearls with well coifed pups in their laps.

I am nine years old and I am dreaming of elephants.

Not real elephants, but a huge mechanical one!

I want a full sized elephant that looks and feels real, but is not. He will have two handles over his ears that I can alternately pull to make him go and he will be hollow inside.

My whole family will ride high up on top on a big rug where we are safe from everything in the world. Inside it we will store food and whatever we need to live.

I know as long as we are together and on this elephant it won't matter where we are.

Memories

It is a dark and chilly night, but the inside of our big old 1953 DeSoto is warm and cozy.

I am sitting in the back seat, right behind my Daddy, who is driving. Next to me are my younger brother and sister, leaning against each other and sound asleep. My baby brother is slumped in his car seat between Mommy and Daddy. His head rests on the car seat steering wheel and I wonder if he will hit the horn and wake himself up.

The radio is playing soft jazz and I am wrapped in a haze of Chesterfield smoke. Most of it goes out the vent of Daddy's window, but some of it floats over all of us like incense. Sometimes he throws the butt out the vent and I watch the flash of fire that sweeps down the side of our car, past my window and onto the shoulder of the road. There is something almost magical about it.

I love this feeling of being all together, snug and warm, super secure and safe.

Gratitude right now

Once upon a time I though fifty was pretty much the end of the line and if it wasn't, then surely sixty was. Now I realize how grateful I am for all the people I have met since then.

I don't know if it was something that changed in me, or if I just got lucky, but some of the most wonderful people in my world showed up way past the time when I thought life was pretty much cut, dried, and set.

The quality of my life is so wonderful that if I had any regrets it would mostly be that I took so long to reach this stage.

All those things I thought were wrong with me turned out to be who I really am and that is fine when I hang out with the right people.

My wish for everyone is that they find the joy of being them.

Gratitude II

Life is very comfortable right now in spite of the fact that all my money, and then some, is spoken for for the foreseeable future. Except for money I have everything I need and there is a lot to be grateful for in that.

So . . . to pick the next thing is not easy, but I think it is the adventures I've had over the past sixty odd years.

I ached for adventure as a child. Everything that happened felt like it might be the door to some magical place: that field of kittens where my mother said my cat got her babies, the smell of new wood that signified my Dad was building something new in the basement, the sunny day that just begged to take me somewhere special. And yet my world was so restricted that even getting to explore the tree filled hill in the park was exciting. My mother was afraid of everything hurting us. I didn't get to go to museums until I could take myself and I wasn't even allowed to cross the street, or go around the block without permission until I was ten.

But once I was twelve I had the opportunity to ride my bicycle, or take a bus and explore our city. I spent hours wandering in the old Illinois State Museum and library. For the first time I had as many books as I wanted to read. Life was good. Then we moved to a tiny town and I explored the Tom Sawyer side of myself, turning the old chicken house in the back yard into a club house, hollowing out an old book to hide the copious number of pages I wrote creating adventures of the mind.

I went away to college and began my adventure into far east art and meditation. I got a little daring and ended up spending the night in a car in the middle of an icy country winter. I joined groups of my peers singing and dancing and drinking. I negotiated my own life for the first time ever.

I suffered incredibly painful losses when my parents died and magnificent miracles when each of my three children came into my life.

The middle ages were filled with traveling in the only way I could manage it. Camping. I dragged my children across the country to see all the things I'd read about and tried to do things to broaden both my and their views of the world.

Post divorce I began my flying adventures, learning to get around the Bay area on Bart, or walking. Spending hours exploring San Francisco with my oldest son, or alone. Happening on ponds overflowing with basking turtles in parks, eating in Zen restaurants, meeting teachers in the most unlikely places. The constraints of my childhood were violated in every way. I was free.

Then I met Bestest and learned about the joys of traveling and playing and doing research in university archives. I began to taste the thrill of seeing words I had worked on turned into books that were actually in those libraries I dreamed of as a young child.

I could write books on the adventures in my life and I am grateful for every one of them, both good and bad.

Thanksgiving

The world is either raging or talking about gratitude right now. I understand both. I realize I cannot ignore the reasons people are raging, but I also know the simple act of doing that will not improve my life, or really anyone elses. So, I have decided to write about gratitude.

Trying to think about gratitude at its most basic core is difficult. Maybe gratitude is not supposed to be ranked, or sectioned off, but some things evoke stronger feelings than others and . . . I have to start somewhere.

I think that perhaps the thing I am most grateful for is my past and the fact that I remember so much of it from such an early age.

I believe these are actual memories because of the angle I remember them. Some of them precede my second birthday and move on from there.

My life reminds me of a turtle living without its shell. The joys and pain of situations never felt insulated to me growing up. I picked up on my feelings and my mother's with all of the fervor of a child who began thinking quite early.

I like to think I learn from this gift of remembering and don't just suffer from it. I know that I am not some bacteria in a petri dish being helplessly subjected to living.

I have the ability to direct, if not always control, most things that happen to me and that comes from years of trial and error.

I am grateful I remember all these adventures.

No Internet

Today my Internet was out all day long.

I love to read, but not being able to connect with friends and family online felt terribly confining. I could not send happy birthday pictures and greetings. I could not express my condolences for deaths. I did not get to see the new babies, the birthday parties, the funny comments and photographs of people who have always been a part of my family and friends who I have grown to know over the last nine years.

I could not write this blog, or see my friend's beautiful flowers. I could not participate in the black and white photo fun, or play Words with Friends.

I also could not go work in the school library because my foot was hurting and that meant no shopping, online, or off.

So I spent hours and hours and hours, stuck in a chair reading. No snacking because that is not part of my  lifestyle anymore. No playing with the dollhouse, because that requires standing. No taking a walk.

My phone stopped working for about two hours too and that was almost more than I could bear. I am a thoroughly modern gramma who needs her Internet connection, texting, and phone!

The importance of R

Routines are important to human beings.

We step into them, fall into them, choose them and become addicted to them without ever trying or knowing.

And that's not all bad, because some routines are very good for us and the bad ones can be dealt with by developing better, healthier ones.

Some people are very focused. They will do all the right things at the appropriate times without any kind of help. The rest of us need all the help we can get.

I am not a morning person. Just getting out of bed is the first hurdle of my day no matter how good I'm feeling. I like the warmth and comfort of my bed. Good things happen there. Still, I have to get up at some point and I have developed a routine that gets me through the morning hours as painlessly as possible.

I get up, go to the bathroom, change the litter box, fold my blanket,  make the bed, feed and water Annabel, take my medicine and make a cup of coffee. Then I sit down and enjoy it. It feels like this takes years, but in truth it is all over in less than fifteen minutes. After that I feel like I have already made major accomplishments and now have the whole day before me.

I once got into the routine of eating a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream while watching television every night. It took about a week for me to switch that over to a humongous, delicious salad that took a long time to eat, but ultimately gives me just as much enjoyment.

The secret is to find out what makes you really happy and factor in taste buds, pride, health, ego, and fun. That is how I get the most done in the most satisfying way I know. Somehow the hard things slip in between all the rest and life is a lot less cumbersome.

Searching

Gather round the fire dears
hold your hands quite close
Let me fill your ears dears
with tales that are verbose.
Winter's drawing near dears
nights are growing cold.
It's surely not the years dears
I can't be growing old.

Gather round the fire dears
it's deep within my soul.
Let me soothe your fears dears
my passion is the coal.
I see your spirits rising
to fill the void so bold.
It's surely not the years dears
All souls are really old.

Gather round the fire dears
the time has finally come.
Let me taste your tears dears
and the wisdom they come from.
Salty, sour or bitter
your mark within the fold.
It's surely not the years dear.
Your turn has come.

I'm old.

What do you see?

From November 12, 2008

What Do You See?

I have to ask my sister. "What do you see?"
I need to know.
Not that I doubt my own eyes, my own judgment, but I want to see through her eyes.
I want to feel the image pressed against her retina, smell the odor of it within the confines of her receptors.
I want my hand to reach out and feel what she feels and he feels and they feel and you feel.

Right here, among us, the creator constantly works. Everywhere, mountains of creations, worlds of creations, simple, plain, ornate in a million different ways, surround us. Each one, only the same one, made again and again. The medium never changes. The hands work with the same level of skill and the skill never varies. Not one is any more precious than the other, not one looks different in its creator's eyes, like a cook preparing innumerable meatballs for a great feast they are all the same, only these are Faberge meatballs, their value beyond comprehension.

Each one shaped with love and exquisite care. Each one honed and fired and decorated and then, just before letting it go, a thumb presses slightly into the cradled object. One thumbprint, a small indentation for identification. A shallow shadow of a place left to hold all the differences that can be. Almost invisible, it is the only place visible to many of us and it is a shape shifter, a reflecting pond displaying our own selves, not the one before us.

How odd that we judge ourselves so harshly thinking that it is someone else. How strange the conclusions we draw from such a shallow place. How bizzare the levels of resentments and pain that pile upon us from something so immaterial, so miniscule and fleetingly fragile. How often do we crack the object during our perusal, imagining a tiny little flaw the creator deemed a signature? This ever changing flicker of uniqueness becomes the visage blocking our view and we spend our entire lives seeking what we are.

And so I ask my sister, "What do you see?" Thinking that perhaps I should stir the soup one more time, this time with my eyes closed so that I may immerse myself in us. 

Ruthlessly honest

I think the greatest power we have as individuals is to know who we are.

Not who we want to be.

Not who we'd like to be.

No even who we think we are.

The sometimes brutal truth of who I am and what truly motivates me is frightening. So frightening that I don't want to look it in the eyes.

But that is where my power lies.

When I need to accomplish something very difficult, and it is honestly the most important thing in my life at that moment, I am often capable of doing whatever is necessary to achieve it.

Knowing this can be embarrassing, frustrating, and even demoralizing, because it means failure is every bit as much my fault as success. I will never be able to achieve success one hundred percent of the time, because I am human and mortal and prone to wishful thinking. (And wishful thinking is not even remotely as powerful as total commitment).

Power and accomplishment

It is an unusual feeling for me.

Feeling successful. Powerful. Competent.

It took initiative. Creativity. Desire. Perseverance.

Diagnosed with Type Two Diabetes, high cholesterol, and impaired kidneys, I decided to try and change those things with diet and lifestyle choices.

It wasn't the first time, but it is the first time I have been able to do it on an extended basis and have it documented with tests, both before and after.

Several years ago a nurse practitioner told me this was impossible. Other people had been told by professionals not to do some of the things I did, but it felt right.

It seemed wrong not to try again.

So I tried. My doctor measured, and yesterday she validated, my hard work in a way that really left me feeling powerful and accomplished.

There have been no magic pills. No magic operations. No magic foods. Not even any magic actions. Only simple, steadfast, day after day perseverance toward living a simple healthier life.

It feels really good.

I love food!

Yesterday I received the results of my blood test in my email and I was so disappointed, but today I went to my doctor and she was ecstatic.

Not only have I lost a total of 55 pounds, but my blood sugar is well within normal bounds, my blood pressure is close to what she is looking for, and I am headed in the right direction!

I still have a long way to go, but I am already off the diabetes medicine and one other drug, so all I am taking now is medicine for my blood pressure and some fish oil for cholesterol.

I know I've done this before and failed, but I think I've learned a few things this time. I am not eating frozen or prepared foods and I am not setting a weight I am likely to reach as my goal.

Why? You ask why I would set a goal I can't reach, but that's an easy one. Once I hit my goal I no longer get the little buzz I love when I get on the scale and lose a little more weight. As long as there is a lower goal I think I can continue to eat healthy.

There is no danger of me getting too thin. I love food way too much for that!

The wedding

Family weddings are a good place to look back on your life and where you came from.

Mine is country on my mother's side and this wedding reflected that from beginning to end.

The bride wore an underskirt worn by so many generations of her family that no one can remember how old it is, but I would guess maybe the 1890s. There were bales of hay flanking the altar and the theme was Autumn in all its glory everywhere you looked.

The bride and groom poured sand into one container to symbolize the joining of their families and the bride's mother made a very intricate and beautiful wedding cake that was absolutely delicious! The bottom layer was brownie, the next layer was strawberry and the top they say was white. It looked like a tree complete with bark, boots, leaves and a small sign that said, Mr. and Mrs. Prehn. The toast was made in champagne glasses shaped like cowboy boots and there were tiny boots full of bubbles with tiny preserves jars full of bird seed to throw. The tables were decorated with candles in mason jars sitting on slices of small logs and each jar was covered in a beautiful hand crocheted cover made by the bride's grandma.

There were candles everywhere, even flanking the white runner strewn with leaves and glitter hearts for the bride. Unfortunately no one considered the width of her gown, so she swept them away whenever she walked on it to pin flowers on mothers and make her entrance. Thank goodness most of the candles were battery powered or the wedding would have been truly a flaming success. There was one near mishap at the head table when one of the real candles was knocked over and rolled out onto the table cloth.

It was a festive night with good music and humorous incidents like when the best man skipped back up the aisle with his partner for pictures. It was also the most somber experience I've ever had as the bride called for absolute silence while they played a song for her deceased father and she stood on the stage sobbing.

The toasts were sweet, the food nice, the company great. Everyone was glad to connect with family many hadn't seen in years, so pictures were taken by the hundreds.

All in all it was a grand, but very long day.

Reality bites

Prioritizing is not easy.

It requires me to look hard at those things I want to do, need to do, can do and really shouldn't do.

Honesty with myself can be the hardest part of living with me, but when I realize that I am sacrificing Christmas, birthdays, even simple things like having breakfast with my friends, or going to a local play so that I can spend a few days with friends in the middle of summer, reality hits.

Sometimes I just can't do everything I want to do.

And that's okay.

The question is

I hit a milepost today.

I was happy, but also found myself wary and scared.

What if I can't maintain this way of eating for the rest of my life?

Will I be doomed to continue this awful cycle of losing weight, feeling good about myself, gaining weight, feeling awful and doing it all over again and again?

I feel more hopeful than usual this time, because I am actually eating food I love. That makes it easier.

I am also facing horrible consequences if I fail. Type two diabetes can mean losing toes, feeling sick, dying a long slow horrible death that slowly eats me alive because I can't control my eating. At least if I eat healthier I am doing the best I can.

Tomorrow I have blood tests drawn. Friday I talk to the doctor.

I'm almost holding my breath.

Behavior

You can tell a lot about someone by the way they treat those closest to them.

I never saw Obama treat his wife badly and I never gave it a second thought.

On the other hand, I watch Trump and his wife and get the feeling she has been well coached not to get in his way -- in any way.

People who need to make sure they are always the one and only, the one front and center, the one who gets all the attention are fragile despite the fact that they want others to think they are the biggest, bestest, most important people around.

Think yourself young

Neuroscientists have mapped the brain’s responses to both real and imagined stimuli and the brain responds to both in almost the same way. That means our heart rate, blood flow, digestion, emotional state, all respond to what our brain perceives as a positive or negative circumstance.

And that means that we have a lot more control over our lives than we might think.

Most people know that a sad or angry person often has high blood pressure and is more prone to getting sick, but what if we could also be healthier just because of the way we think?

Turns out we can to some extent.

Using this information for our own advantage only makes sense. Be more positive. Be calmer. Think of yourself the way you want to be -- not the way the world says you are.

It can't hurt and it might make a world of difference.

Feast

Regret is one of those dishes best left back in the ice box.

Cold, old, and not very palatable, it does not belong on today's table.

Let your actions speak out of clarity and purpose. Do the best you can. Then move forward.

Take along any pertinent facts that might help you keep from repeating mistakes of the past, but don't dwell on the ones that failed.

Life is too short to fill up with regrets.

There is a feast before you, don't starve to death by refusing to eat.

A new way

I am reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and in one of the chapters, Effia, an African grandmother who was raised by a mother who hated her, who eventually married a white soldier and moved away from her village, tells her grandson who does not want to spend his life like his parents, fighting with each other: we all come into the world weak and learn how to do things from our mother and father, but if we don't like the person we have learned to be -- maybe it is possible to make a new way.

Most of my closest friends have found themselves in that position at some point. I have too.

My parents did not fight, but I learned other things from my mother, who I suspect learned them from her mother. I knew these things made me very unhappy and I did my best to change. I managed to change some things, but I still did other things I know my children need to unlearn, to make a new way.

That is the way life works. We take the best of what we know and try to make it better. No one is ever perfect, but with a little luck, each generation gets a bit better.