Tradition!

Easter Eve, another holiday approaches and thoughts of holidays past visit me like Dickens's ghosts.

Four of us, in our jammies, sitting under the yellow light at our old kitchen table. My mother mixing up boiling water and vinegar with tablets in old coffee cups. My dad handing out the eggs he boiled earlier in the day and laid out on a white tea towel to dry. Easter baskets full of candy I played with, but never ate.

My own three children up on their knees around our kitchen table. Dunking eggs with oversized soup spoons after trying to write their names on them in white crayon.

My nieces and nephews and my own children gathered around Grammy on her last Easter with them. Coloring eggs, eating jelly beans, taking turns sitting on Grammy's lap.

Our traditional dinners of baked ham with pineapple and cloves and brown sugar glazing. Sweet potatoes, baked macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs; every year as long as I can remember until eight years ago when everyone nearby was grown up and some people didn't eat meat and others didn't eat ham and we all decided to go out to brunch.

That's our new tradition now, but I still boil eggs and lay them out on white tea towels and dye them in little cups and make up Easter baskets full of candy I would never eat myself!

Consistency

Spring time! Easter! New life! Rebirth!

Lots of symbolism at this time of year.

And it seems to rub off on the way I live.

I have been walking more, two miles a day, except for yesterday when I walked four!

I went to a movie with friends tonight and have book club tomorrow.

Sunday we are having a family meal and maybe coloring Easter eggs.

Monday I might be back in Kemp Hall for the first time in years. One of my friends is playing a farewell French Horn recital before she leaves for Belgium.

Eggs, walking, books, music, friends -- some of life's best things and some of the most consistent in my life.

I just need to remember this.

A good life

Some people measure their life with the money they have in the bank. Others by the titles attached to their name.

I measure mine in much smaller increments.

Did I shower today?

Did I brush my teeth properly?

Did I get a reasonable amount of sleep?

Did I eat a reasonable amount of food?

Did I volunteer?

Did I draw a picture for a friend, write a thot, read a book, go for a long walk?

Then it was a good day and enough good days can make a good life.

Enough!

I did the only thing I knew how to do and felt I had no choice.

I thought I was protecting something I loved and I was, but there might have been a better way to do it.

I didn't think so at the time. My mind was filled with the old ideas and older fears.

I was like a mother bear trapped with her back against the wall.

Knowing what I do today I would do things much differently, but hindsight won't change the past.

I can only go forward living the best life I know how.

Hoping that is enough.

Up swing

I've been down in the dumps lately. I don't think I really even realized it at first. After all it is the end of winter, almost time for the Midwest monsoon we call April, and a spring vacation where I had no real plans to do anything special.

But when I began going to bed earlier and getting up later, Bestest noticed and asked a few key questions, as he's wont to do, before asking if I was depressed.

The upsurge of feelings that washed through me and nearly poured from my eyes assured me he was right and being the the best sort of Bestest there is, he immediately gave me a book to edit.

Miracle of miracles, it did the trick!

First of all I read the beautiful acknowledgement of me right at the beginning. Then I spent some time setting up my computer to do the job, after which I took a long walk down the trail, which was accessible, if not sunny and found myself feeling much better.

Now I know I am in full editing swing because I am eating pizza and working away in total absorption.

No longer feeling sad, or useless, or hopeless, or any of those less things, I am eternally grateful for friends whose souls mesh so well with mine.

The most glorious thing of all

People make mistakes.

We want something so badly that we see it where it isn't. Or perhaps we see more of it than is really there.

And finding that bit we looked for, we sink everything into it trying to make it the most glorious thing of all.

But when it isn't, some people blame the thing that wasn't there for not being there and that makes everyone miserable.

Truth. Reality. What is. All of these things stand on their own. They cannot be made, or invented, or embellished beyond what they are.

It is always better to love truth for who it really is.

Then it can grow into its own glorious self.

All or nothing

One of the big problems I have with people are the ideas that something is all one thing or the other.

There can be good and bad in everything.

Ideas. Laws. Money. Electronics.Morals.

Very few things are black or white.

Just because it is new, or old, or different, does not automatically make it good or bad.

There are good people with bad habits, bad people with good traits, mean people who are loving and loving people who are mean.

I am constantly seeing things on social media, posted by well meaning people, who do not have all the facts, or who haven't considered the true implications of what they are saying. Mostly they mean to be cute, or funny, but sometimes it shows a sad amount of ignorance.

What we say, or write, makes a difference. Even when you don't think it will, so think carefully about what you put out into the world.

Compact and simple

I have whittled my closet down to one three foot rod.

Of course this doesn't include a drawer full of underwear and a drawer filled with night wear, or two pairs of jeans in a drawer, but it does include most of my wardrobe.

There are reasons for that.

One is that it just feels good to have a few nice items that fit and that I love. I really like the compactness of it. And the simplicity.

Another is that I kind of hope to lose more weight and don't want to invest a lot of money in clothes I hope to in-grow.

But the last is that it means there are endless possibilities for new and more me type clothing in the future. I have time to be picky.

Having bought just a few things I really love, I know I can buy more when they appear in my universe.

She made it

She struggled all the way through school, but she had great parents, brothers, teachers and tutors.

And she made it.

She struggled to find a job, but she has worked and supported herself since she got out of school.

She made some poor decisions here and there, but she corrected them herself.

And she made it.

She has grown children who are successful and happy, and has had a good job with benefits for the last ten years.

Soon she will be overcoming one more obstacle and moving into an apartment she has dreamed about for the last six years.

She has made it!

Transformation

The sense of well being I have when I have eaten right all day long and managed to walk too, is amazing. The lack of guilt, the lack of worrying that I might be destroying my body with diabetes, the knowledge that maybe this time I am actually changing my eating habits, is really nice.

I have always read that in order to lose weight and keep it off one must eat less, move more and develop healthy habits, but changing habits is really hard.

It can still be hard for me, but after trying for nearly nine months I seem to be starting to feel it.

Maybe there is something magical about nine months, the time it takes to grow a baby. If that is so, I hope the new me is born thin, active and loving lettuce, carrots and avocados.

Or . . . maybe I am turning into the Easter Bunny!

Catalyst

Life is filled with motivators, but occasionally I find something that is actually a catalyst that makes a definite change.

For me the difference between the two depends on the impact it has in my life.

For example: being diagnosed with type two diabetes last summer motivated me to make some life style changes in diet and exercise, but discovering Bestest's podcasts has whipped my walking into double time.

I used to walk one mile once a day. Now I walk two plus miles all at one time so I can listen to these podcasts.  They are a catalyst.

I find myself branching out, walking farther on the Constitution Trail, even leaving the confines of in-town walking for some out along the borderlands between town and country.

It is a new adventure and one I am enjoying immensely.

White

I am a very vivid dreamer. My dream life is almost as real to me as my waking one, but I am not a lucid dreamer. I almost never know I am dreaming, or feel I have any control over it.

I know that my waking life affects my dreams, but most of the time I couldn't tell you exactly how. Right now I am reading Lolita for my book club. I read it just before I go to sleep every night. That is always when I read, and the first dream I had last night was obviously attributed to this.

The later ones, though, were infinitely more interesting.

I lived in a very small, very cramped, white house with my husband and two very young sons. There was clutter everywhere in the narrow crooked hallways and rooms and I was trying to dress the boys for school. I couldn't find the right socks, or matching shoes, or parts of the snowsuits and I finally just picked up the youngest and carried him, in my bare feet, down a snow filled white hallway to the white door of the school and handed him off into a white light. I was a little concerned about being barefoot in that snowy hallway, but not too.

I returned to our door and was suddenly accosted by peasant type military soldiers who took me, a man, another woman and a girl about eleven years old into custody. They strapped us to medical gurneys and wheeled us off down a hospital like hallway with white lights on the ceiling. The next thing I knew I was wearing a long white cotton nightgown and sitting, strapped to a chair that was racing on wheels down a railroad track toward a small western town. I knew the others were experiencing the same thing and I was trying to reassure the girl, but none of us knew what was going on and we were spread out over a great distance. One behind the other.

We ended up in the town, still sitting strapped to our chairs and being greeted by townsfolk who told us we would get used to being there.

That was it. I woke up and the frustrating part is that I will probably never know the rest of the story.

What changed

It's funny how when you love someone, the least little thing they do makes you happy.

Mothers are like that. Let her child simply smile and her day is made.

Fathers are like that. His child waves and he is ecstatic.

Grandmas are really like that.

And so are aunts and kindergarten teachers and the crossing guard at the corner. All you have to do is be and people who love you are happy.

And then things change . . . and somehow nothing you do is good enough.

How does that happen?

Don't close the lid

Of all the people, in all the world, that I have had the opportunity to get to know, few have surprised me as much as myself.

You'd think that someone you'd known your whole life would be the most familiar person around, but that just isn't so.

From the day I was born my head and heart have been dipped and coated, breaded and banded, impregnated and branded with the people and times and mores of my era. And I, a first born girl child of small town conservative parents was born to please.

I doubt if there is a chameleon around who can change faster than me. I can go from bumper bunny to acolyte in double time and stop at the library in between.

Sometimes I've felt like one of those ballerinas in children's jewelry boxes who pivots madly whenever the lid rises and the music plays, but who just lies there in the dark the rest of the time.

Now, when at least two thirds of my life is over, I feel like I'm just getting to know myself, but better late than never.

Healing

It is difficult to help other people because we don't always understand what they want, or need, or are asking from us.

Often times people really want sympathy or commiseration and then all I can do is listen.

Other times they are truly searching for a solution to something and all I can do is tell them what worked for me, or what others have told me worked for them.

We are hunter gatherers. We hunt for information and ideas, gather them all together and try to find the right combination, the magic potion, that will work for us.

There are people who are very good at helping us find these things. We used to call them witches and shamans. Today we tend to think of them as doctors and counselors, but even they can only help us help ourselves.

We are unique thinking feeling reacting creatures as complicated as everything else in the universe. Affected by everything that touches us. Roiling in feelings. Filled with imagination. Packed in superstition. Full of possibilities.

We need each other, but we are still singular creatures who heal from the inside out.

Into the light

My earliest memories of coming home include seeing the yellow light in the windows around me and sometimes the silhouettes of those I loved within them.

I remember the lights. The cool white ones, the neon bright ones, the yellow warm ones. Each one symbolic of a feeling, a memory, a place and time that I sat with my siblings on a plastic covered car seat. Warmed by the presence of my litter mates, inhaling the perfume and cigarette smoke of my parents in front of me. Feeling safe and secure and unbelievably content to be exactly where I was.

On the night my husband left me, the night he told me to get a lawyer and divorce him, I left our house and walked along the streets in the white moonlight, looking into the windows of the houses I passed. That light, which had beckoned so warmly to me as a child now spoke to me of loneliness and isolation.

Tonight, twenty years to the month later, I looked up as I walked home from the store. There, not too far ahead of me, were windows filled with the warm yellow light of my childhood.

And I knew I was home.

Musing

The hardest thing about walking is entertaining myself while I do it. Sometimes I find myself fixating on something and that is usually a sign that I am annoyed, but still I am thinking.

Today I saw a sign that said I (Heart) being a cougar and it occurred to me that there are people who feel the need to tout who they are to the world and that these are often people who spend more time talking about something than doing or being it.

Which made me think about how to go about being something.

You can buy a sign for your car. You can show up at places like church, or at meetings and donate money, or you can go out and actively engage by building houses for humanity, or walking people down hospital corridors, or working in our schools, or a million other activities.

All of these things have value if they make you feel better about yourself, or help others have a better life.

What you cannot do, in my humble opinion, is buy your way to heaven, or God, or any other spiritual place. I believe spirit is accessible to everyone, but from the inside out. Not the other way around.

And that, folks, is what I thought about today as I walked in this bone chilling weather to make myself feel better.

Eat less Move more

Up until three pounds ago I lost weight simply by eating less. I won't say it was easy, but there are lots of perks to that. I feel better. My clothes fit better. I am healthier.

Now I can no longer just eat less and expect to lose weight. I plateaued and seemed doomed to stay at a weight that is still far above my BMI and while I may never reach that weight again at my age, I would feel better if I at least tried.

I have worked up to walking a mile twice a day and doing this allows me to lose weight once more.

The scary part is that eventually this too will not work and then, I guess, I will be at my optimum weight for me at this age.

Grace

The ability to age gracefully seems to have a lot to do with the ability to replace body parts and the sense to know when not to.

Being able to keep a smile whole and dazzling goes a long way towards feeling good about myself. And being able to get those cataracts removed adds more than removing squinty eyes.

It is also tempting, on those days when the mirror reflects not just my wisdom, but the actual ruts in the road to get to it, that I am tempted to have more body work done.

A tummy tuck to erase years of overeating. Bunion surgery. Toe straighteners. A chin lift! A face lift! Why not!

Well, because every operation takes its toll on skin, joints, bones, agility.

Actual vitality and energy become more attractive than a smooth, straight, body after a while. I don't want to be a beautiful mummy in three thousand years. I would prefer to be a vital grammy now.

The test

Tomorrow I'm going to a nice restaurant with some friends for lunch.

I'm really looking forward to it, but I am also dreading it at the same time.

I finally starting to move in the right direction weight wise and over eating tomorrow would be a definite setback.  Not the first one, by a long shot, but I'd like to find a way to make it through tomorrow without regreats later on.

The obvious choice is to only eat half of what I order and bring the rest home for Sunday. Not an easy thing for someone like me to do and also a danger that I could overeat on both days if I do that.

The next obvious choice would be to order food that falls within the realm of my usual diet. That is less risky, but not as exciting since this place has really good food.

So think good thoughts for me today and hope I find a way to deal with a problem I will have the rest of my life if I am to stay slim.

At home

I have been moving all my life and I realize I actually love moving!

I like the adventure of living in a new space in a new neighborhood and am always on the look out for new possibilities, but . . .

I also realize how perfectly suited I am for where I live now.

I live in a huge apartment complex, but I am the only apartment on the first floor facing no other apartment, or parking lot. All I see out my window are trees, grass and the back of a building on the left. Plus I have a north facing window so there is never any harsh sunlight morning or night.

I can walk here any time of the day or night in absolute safety. There are no loose animals, or dangerous people.

I have a good quality bathroom, washer, dryer, dishwasher and the maintenance is prompt and efficient.

I have room for everything I need, but no wasted space to heat or cool.

After nearly four years I have adapted so that my hair dresser, grocery store and even some friends are all within a mile of here.

Guess I need to bite the bullet and stay put. I may never find a more ideal place for me.

Blanket statements

Blanket statements always make me feel angry.

I'm not sure why except that nine times out of ten they come from a place of ignorance.

I don't (ever do this or that) no questions asked. No possibilities explored.

Often the person has not even tried whatever it is they don't ever do. Sometimes they have only tried it once and had one bad experience. But they still eliminate a whole realm of possibilities.

Out of fear I suppose, but how frightening is it to taste something one time?

Then there are those who only eat what they have eaten their entire lives. If they didn't grow up eating tomatoes then tomatoes will never pass their lips.

There are people who eat the same three things when they go out to eat for their entire lives. How limited -- and boring.

Blanket statements should not make me angry. They should just make me sad that someone is missing so many things. But they don't.

Twenty years

I was divorced in 1998. I knew that shook my view of my world to the core, but I don't think I realized quite how much things were going to change. Next month I will have lived in this apartment for four years. That is longer than I've lived in any one place since 1998!

So many things needed to change.

I had never lived on my own by myself in my entire life before then.

I had so much to learn.  If someone left the cap off the toothpaste, or I ran out of money before the next check, there was no one to blame except me.

I had all sorts of romantic ideas about where and how I wanted to live. Ruling them out, one at a time, I discovered I did not want to live in the country. I did not want to live with a love interest. I did not want to live with family. There were all sorts of things I found out I did not want to do.

The quest, then, became finding out what I did want.

I suppose that will always be an ongoing task, but I think I am closer now. A lot of that is thanks to Bestest who helped me discover things about myself I had never understood before.

Looking around my apartment I realize that there are basic things that are still the same. I still like the idea of compact living. I still love amethyst geodes and fine art. I still love to read and play and get together with family and friends for good food and conversation.

I need one person who really hears what I'm saying and who does me the honor of sharing back with me who they are. I need my own simple routines and plenty of time to do what I do.

And maybe I am finally home.

Layers of fat

It is one thing to imagine one's self as fat and losing weight.

It is something altogether different to watch an autopsy of an obese  five foot five inch, 238 pound woman in her fifties and see the damage high blood pressure and abdominal fat do to aortas, kidneys and the liver.

It certainly made my salad seem that much sweeter tonight, although it makes me wonder how much damage is reversible through exercise and eating healthier.

There wasn't really anything new for me to see, except the actual evidence of those things my doctor has warned me about. And . . . after seeing it I now think she was being kindly optimistic.

The rescuers

Sometimes there is a disconnect between what you thought and what was real?

It doesn't take long for children, or people, to know what they are "supposed" to feel. Books, television, other people, all conspire to provide the background they feel is right or appropriate.

This doesn't allow for ignorance, or the characteristics inherent in different people. All witches are bad. All Fairy Godmothers are good. Princes are charming, but elves can be frighteningly misleading.

Keeping things simple and clear means finding the roles you expect to find in the places you expect them to be, but then, when the facts don't quite support the reality, it can be disconcerting.

Mothers are loving caretakers. Fathers are genius money makers. Children are happy, beautiful, well behaved. Grandmothers are rescuers . . .

But wait, rescuers from what?

When the fairy tale gets real, that is when problems occur.

Change

Change is a nebulous characteristic.

Too much changing and people think you are unstable.

No ability to change and people think you are brittle.

Without change life is untenable.

It is the ability to change with the times, to roll with the punches, to adapt when necessary that heralds success.

Change is the precursor to resilience. When things are not going right, a careful examination, followed by a change of plans is often exactly what is needed.

I cannot tell you how often changing something in my life opened doors I had never dreamed existed, but it is the ability to dream that leads to changes and the person who can envision something, then bring it to pass is fortunate indeed.

The Gift

There is no gift greater than that of one's self.

Opening a heart.

Daring to share.

Revealing vulnerabilities and truths.

Must never be given, or taken, lightly.

In a rut

I don't really mind being in a rut as long as it's a good rut.

I mean sailing along, eating veggies, drinking coffee, indulging in cuties and still having my one slice of bread with Irish butter everyday is delightful.

Add in some exercise and at least one useful thing I do for the rest of the world and I feel complete.

Talking to my son, or Bestest is the icing on the cake.

Until someone drops a big pile of goose grease in front of me and suddenly the rut becomes impassable.

Now that poo can be in its original all natural form, or it can be manufactured by words, or bills, or needs I hadn't counted on, but the effect is pretty much the same. My way is blocked by an unwanted, unexpected obstacle and it seems to me that this is the real goal in life.

How do I bypass, or deal with these unexpected bumps without making a mess out of everything else?

Practice, practice, practice!  (If it'll get me to Carnegie Hall, surely it will get me to the end of a month like February.)

I've heard it a million times in my life. I hear it nearly every day in some form. Just keep going. Do it. Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. It's advice as old as advice probably gets.

Just don't quit. A rut is only as good as my ability to stay in it!