Be Epic

If a life is only a succession of ephemeral moments it is still the most perfect one it can be.

It is no sin to love being with yourself. As long as you are content, life is the best it can be. And if you are happy? That is above and beyond what many people ever know.

A brilliant imagination sets the stage for a life of fulfillment, joy and love. 

The trials and tribulations will be there, Never worry about that. They are like potholes in an otherwise perfect tapestry, but letting them become the centerpiece is the fatal flaw. You must create a bridge that supersedes the hard times, creates a way over, under and through, so that you find whatever goodness might exist.

Don't be Cinderella, or Princess Somebody or other. Be yourself. 

You are real. Your friends, even if you only have one very good friend, are real. Allow yourself to define your own existence and make it a beautiful one. There is no prize for being sad, or pathetic. There is no joy in being miserable.

Write your own story, paint your own pictures, create your own life and it will turn out to be an epic like you never believed possible.

Motivations

 

Why do I do what I do?

There are people who really don't care why they do things as long as those things appear to work, prosper, and appear beneficial to their ideas of what life should be. I have found that not questioning usually means I am avoiding something. I am missing a chance to grow.

Life is a journey whether I like that idea, or not, and movement is seldom present without fluctuations. Avoiding questions usually means those fluctuations will ultimately be bigger, because, left unattended, bad things tend to fester until they can no longer be ignored. 

Over the years I have discovered that peace is generally a time when the fluctuations roll like gentle waves. An adjustment here, a tweak there, and these minor uncomfortable times help me to be prepared for the reality of the changes in my life. I am motivated to stay up to date on my learning curve!

I certainly do not know everything and knowing that I don't know helps me navigate all the bumps in the road with less drama. I expect to have to change and realize that for better or worse I will be able to continue changing as life moves on. Not all changes will be the correct ones, but that is okay, because I will be able to make more later on.

The point is trying to be honest and open with myself as well as gentle. I will never be perfect, but I can be authentic and purposeful and even happy.

Grief

I don't believe anyone is ever really prepared for the grief they feel when someone they love dies.

Knowing that we all will die, or that someone has a terminal illness and will die sooner, still does not cushion the intense feelings that burst up around us like an all enveloping burst of steam when the reality of their absence finally hits us. 

Knowing is not the same as experiencing.

Over time the grieving process bounces around from despair, to anger, to disbelief. How can someone who was here beside me and whose body I still see, not be here anymore? Where did they go? How will I survive the black hole inside of me? Grief explodes like Old Faithful over and over again in incomprehensible waves that must simply be endured even when it feels like it is drowning you and taking away everything you held fast to before.

Eventually the pain becomes duller, but that can take months, or years, depending on so many things. You simply have to allow it to run its course and be understanding of those grieving. 

In the end the memories deep inside of us keep the beloved close. I believe a soul is kind of like the energy of a body. It moves into the world around us where both body and soul eventually become part of what they always were and always will be - everything.

This gives me comfort.

What do you want to be?

 

 People are always asking, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

These questions start as soon as a child can talk and then a few years later people begin to influence that decision and impose limitations on it.

When I was growing up there were certain things women really shouldn't be, or married women should not be because they had to be available to raise children and follow their husband wherever his job took him.

Then there was the implication that to be something you must get paid for it with money. Therefore being a writer or painter only counted if someone bought your work. 

People seldom respond, "I want to be happy, or kind." Of course most younger children will lean towards whatever Mom and Dad, are interested in. And it quickly becomes quite clear that to properly be something you must choose something that has a purpose. Teaching, doctoring, painting -- houses, or art, (but only if it sells,) librarian, priest, nun, whatever. Something that has a name and is definable.

After a while it becomes obvious that being is a complicated and dangerous process for those of us who are weighed down by the fear that we will never be enough to be considered successful in the eyes of all the people asking us this question.

I tried to choose one of these sacred cows for years. I considered several things from architect, to mother, to teacher, but eventually I mostly discovered what I did Not want to be.

I don't like getting up early and while I am perfectly capable of doing it, it does not inspire me. I don't find working for money especially rewarding, at least not rewarding enough to do things that seem meaningless, or painful.  

I am willing to give up a lot to do the things I feel are important, including working for room and board, which is sort of what a stay at home mom does. Nothing I ever dreamed of being was even a fraction as important to me as rearing my children was. 

Likewise, I enjoy just looking at my paintings and losing myself in the colors and scenes. I have no need, or desire to sell them. The same with any music I ever made. Of course no one ever offered either!

I have always found writing to be one of my most fulfilling habits even if no one was reading what I wrote. 

So what do I want to be?

Exactly what I am. A mother, a writer, a painter, a designer, a creator of my life in a hundred different ways.

Wants

 

Everyone wants something different and that is a good thing. It is what keeps the world going round and progress occurring.         

However, what I want and what is going to happen, or what is good for me, or what is good for the world, are not always the same things. Wants are not necessarily needs, or healthy, or for everyone.

For example, I want to eat lots of yummy carbs and sugar, but if I do I suffer from type two diabetes. My brother wants to eat bread and cake and rolls, but his celiac's disease prohibits that. My sister wants her daughter to be a normal person, but she is not.

In this world we all have to make adjustments for our own good and the common good. It isn't always a choice and may even be something we really don't want to do, but it may end up being the only choice. Then it happens, because logic says one must face the truth or suffer the consequences.

This is as cold and fast and true as the existence of gravity, or night and day. There are things beyond our control to change, so we have to change ourselves, our way of dealing with things must be altered to fit reality.

Change

 

No one expects a ten year old child to look, or act, or want, the same things that a one year old child does. Yet, so many people seem to think that this all changes once they feel they have reached maturity. In movies, or books, it is easy to make things look like they last forever, but happily ever after depends on change.

Getting older does not necessarily mean becoming less than. We should all be getting better over time. We have more experiences to draw from, more knowledge to use to our advantage. Being a certain age means nothing really. Health matters, common sense counts, and maintaining a willingness to change is a great boon.

Treating ourselves like we would treat much loved children means buying shoes that fit and are comfortable, clothes that make us feel good about ourselves, finding hairstyles that make us smile when we look in the mirror, and continuing to age as gracefully as we did as children. Freezing a life at any age does not work. One isn't ten, twenty isn't thirty, fifty isn't sixty. Each age has its own ups and downs. Learning to roll with the changes makes life more satisfying and pleasant than trying to contort ourselves into some past ideal that is probably not really the way we remember it.

Don't let some younger person define you either. Cliche ideas about age, or grannys, or even women of the past are not stencils that still work. You are unique!

Be everything that you are and maximize your life's joy. Get rid of those baby toys and ideas and grab hold of today's pleasures for all you're worth, because there is really no going back.

Security

 

I don't know if I believe in blessings, at least not in the way many people seem to look upon them, but I do believe in situations and I do believe that sometimes we have the ability to change these situations while other times we do not. Finding ones self in a good situation might be considered a blessing by other people.

I was fortunate as a child to always feel safe in my home with my parents and siblings.  No matter what else was going on in my life, how many dogs I had to fend off on the way to school, or piano lessons, how many new schools I had to get used to, or how much I might have wished to have the brand name shoes and particular clothing that were the fad of the moment, I knew that I could go home and be, not just comfortable and content, but safe.

My mother had a few strange ideas about how to bring up a child, but even though I had some terrifying dreams about her, in real life I knew she was my best defense in a world full of some scary things. I wanted to be around her, especially if I was sick. 

I thought my father knew everything! I had heard him called one of the most brilliant of men by people who knew and I had no doubts. If he had told me winter was warm I would have believed him, because he never lied to me, never exaggerated, and was always kind. In the middle of the night when I had screaming nightmares, he always came in and calmed me down before he went back to bed. If I had a question he couldn't answer he would research it until he found the answers.

My insecurities with my parents mostly came from my desire to please them, but I never had any doubts that they were both there for me and would allow me to be the person I expressed a desire to be. Sometimes this seemed so hands off that I felt a little lost, but it wasn't until recently that I realized how much worse it might have been had I lived with step parents, or other people without these characteristics.

Alternatives

Minus one or two big exceptions, I have always focused my life on the things I enjoy. It wasn't exactly a conscious decision. In fact, it is more or less a character flaw. I just cannot maintain miserable states for too long.

My marriage was one exception. It was not happy past the first five years, but I didn't really understand why. I tried changing myself, then I tried changing the situation. Like a lot of people I thought adding children would bring us closer. I was wrong. They were the beginning of a very long end. Thanks to the children my life was very rich and fulfilled in spite of the relationship I tried to forge with my ex.

Outside of this I loved working with preschoolers, loved volunteering in the school library, loved the dream work I did with friends, and all the things that came with being a mother.

I've never been good at staying with jobs I didn't enjoy. The idea that I could spend forty years getting up and going to work in a place that was soul wrenchingly dreary is too bleak to contemplate for more than a year or two. You couldn't pay me enough money to do this. At the very least I would have to switch to another unfulfilling job occasionally.

So when I talk to people who complain about their jobs, or what they have to do with their friends, I find myself feeling impatient and annoyed. I don't understand why they continue to do these things. What is the pay off for doing what you don't like and how can that be better than the alternative?

Working vs Nonworking

    

I often find myself at odds with some people. I know it is because we do not have the same values and I also know that my standards are pretty high, but there is more to it than that. 

Today I think I figured it out. The person said, "I worked." Implying that I did not work and I answered, "I worked, I just did not get paid." All of these things are true.

The problem is not that this person had to work. They did, but the implication that I just sat around home doing nothing really rankles. I did get paid to work part time teaching, but my main job was my children.

I took child rearing very seriously. They were not just dolls to dress up and show off. I felt responsible for their outlook in life. I wanted them to be well rounded in not just literature, science and math, but also music, sports, and all around interpersonal relations. We had schedules designed to give them regulated sleep, healthy meals, exercise, and education, incorporating fun, and free time and it paid off. All of my children have pretty happy, healthy, productive lives. I was not just their playmate, I was also the coordinator in our family. I made things work and I worked hard at it.

I believe every human being has unique needs and a good parent tries to help them develop in the best way possible. Enabling them only handicaps them. If no one tells you, or shows you, alternative and better ways of doing things then you are more likely to grow up disadvantaged. Children do not necessarily know what is best for them. They do need parents, people who have more experience and are willing to share it.

Our world is complicated. That is why we give people twenty or so years to grow up. After that it is time to step back and let them experience success and failure on their own terms. Learning by doing is valuable too, once you have the basics down. A little help here or there is fine, but it should be judiciously given to encourage them to grow and be independent.

Some day the parents will be gone and the children will be parents themselves. It is important that they have the skills to pass on to their children otherwise it is possible that generations of struggling failures will follow.

And that's the truth

 

I am always hearing that Walmart and Amazon caused the great stores and malls to shut down so we don't have them to shop at anymore.

I'm not sure I agree. People caused those stores and malls to shut down.

People who could not afford to shop there.

People who charged more than was necessary for goods.

People who did not pay their employees a living wage so they could shop where they wanted and not just where their budgets allowed.

Greed makes stores close. Owners who wanted that extra buck so badly they had to milk their customers and under pay their workers.

Catching up

 

My sister is always saying she will retire when she is "all caught up." Then she goes out and spends more money. I remember times when I thought I could catch up, get out of all debt. Have everything I needed and wanted.

It never actually happened, or, on the rare occasions that it did, it never lasted.

There are plateaus in life. They are bigger for some people than others, but for me, as long as I am breathing and moving there is going to be change. I am almost always on the hunt for something. Trying to lower my blood sugar, to lose weight, to find just the right apartment, to build my dream house, become an author, a teacher, a mother. 

Unfortunately once I achieve any of these goals it is anti-climatic, sometimes disappointing, and seldom lasting.

The thing that makes life worth living are the attempts to make it better. It isn't about being unsatisfied. It is about dreaming and creating and trying new things. I like variety and when all else fails, I rearrange the furniture! During the quarantine I had everything I needed. A safe comfortable home, computer access, books to read, groceries dropped at my door, all the entertainment a television could provide and for a while I was more than content. Then I began to gain weight and feel depressed. 

I felt like an animal living in a zoo. All my needs were being met except that I had no goals, nothing to look forward to.

Now, even though I love stability, I really don't want to "catch up." When I die there will be ravelings hanging loose all over the place, but that is okay with me.  A fringed shawl has so many more possibilities than a tight knit sweater.

Attitude

 

I can't tell you how many times people tell me I have such a great outlook on life, or that I am, "so sweet." The truth is I am probably a lot less sweet than you can imagine, but I have been blessed with a relatively good outlook.

It's not that I don't see the bad stuff. I do! And if I am not careful that stuff can ruin my life. There are people, places, things and opinions that I really do not care for at all. Given a bad night I can lie there awake and obsess over them for hours.

But I discovered something a long time ago and that is that there are some things I cannot change. Not consciously and not by dwelling on them. If there is nothing really within my power that will alter these things, I have two choices.

1. Be miserable.

2. Find a way around them.

There are all kinds of ways to deal with a lot of the crap life throws at me besides fixing, or dwelling ot it. Sometimes it is possible to simply ignore it, pretend it isn't there, which if it isn't a fire or a flood, is often possible for a long time. The other is to find a replacement for it in my life. 

A replacement doesn't have to be a concrete item. It can be a feeling, or way of dealing with undesirable occurrences. It is along the idea that if you want life to be great, you have to make it great. Once upon a time I thought this was simply avoidance, but honestly that's okay a lot of times. If it looks okay and feels okay, whose to say that maybe it isn't okay?

I can choose to find the (love, way, sunshine, happiness, whatever it is I am looking for.) Of course I could also choose to find the faults, ugliness and tension in the world, but on the whole I've never found that particularly productive. I don't encourage that.

Surrounded by women

     

My daughter is home visiting from Arizona this week and we have been enjoying a lot of family time. Growing up I spent a great deal of time with my mother, grandmother, great aunts, aunts, cousins and sister. My dad was always working away from home while the women congregated around the family business.

Although I spent much of my time with these women I never really felt a great affinity for women. I wanted to be like my dad. I'm not sure I achieved that in any great form, but it was my desire most of my life. Many of my best friends have been boys or men. They just seem to resonate with the things I like to read, watch, or do.

My daughter is just the opposite. She adores her daughters and never misses a moment she can be with them. She spends a lot of time with me when she is here in town and she spends a lot of time with her boy friend's mother too. They even vacation together in Hawaii or wherever the place is that year. She has great  female coworkers and other good friends, all women.

She is a woman's woman and it has served her well. 

I don't quite understand it, but I love it. I know that wherever she is, she will always be among people who love her and will care for her.

Shortisghted

 

I am reading about doctors reluctant to work in anti-abortion states and my first thought is good for them!

I hope more doctors will refuse this idea of working in states where Big Brother lords it over the rest of us.

But then I realize that the people making these laws really do not care. They have the money and where with all to do whatever they want by flying wherever they can get the medical care they want. 

It is the rest of us who are locked into places where the government tries to play god and lord it over the peons under them. 

Of course this governmental god could care less about living growing babies and parents who lack the food, care and environment to grow healthy and happy people. The just wanna look good to those supposedly godly people who are so shortsighted they don't believe their god will see what they are really doing.

Pass it on,

 

I remember my mother playing with me. Not a lot, I was the oldest of four children in five years. Much of what we did together was imitating adult work, but it was fun for me. I had a real iron so I ironed Daddy's handkerchiefs. I embroidered hankies in cross stitch. I "helped" with my younger siblings, but we still played sometimes and it was often make believe. 

My fourth birthday party was attended by all my dolls and stuffed animals. Mommy and I cleaned each one up getting them ready and then she had each one knock on the door which I answered as they came to the party. Some of them played drop the clothespin in the milk bottle with us. It was a wonderful party!

I passed that on, playing with my children. Only I had more time than my mother did. My daughter was five years older than the boys who were 18 months apart. During their childhoods we built castles in the basement made out of old furniture, boxes and butcher paper on a roll. The turret was a high chair, the swings I hung from the rafters, rocket ships. We went on adventures and did amazing things.

Now my son just sent me a video of him playing with his favorite little person. They were on an adventure in space and the backyard was a universe full of obstacles. I watched the enthusiasm and joy in that little boy's face as he revved up batteries, leaped over monsters and got ready to take off in the swing and I saw how clearly we pass on the love in our lives.

Genuinely happy

I am constantly amazed by my children. I think most mothers are, but mine seem to get involved in things I only thought about when I was young.

I played in school orchestras and bands and my kids did too. Then they branched out to guitars and popular bands. Singing and playing the way I only dreamed of as a young person.

My older son majored in music (and psychology, and German, and ultimately Law) so it is not all that surprising that he writes, performs and plays now that he is an adult.

My younger son did not. In fact when he played trombone in junior high I often thought, "That boy has a tin ear!" This is no longer true. Now that he has matured, his voice is as clear and true as any troubadour. I could sit and listen to him singing and playing away on his guitars and ukes forever more.

All the children, actually our entire family, had fun with community theater when they were growing up, but my youngest son rubs shoulders with some pretty awe inspiring performers now and, unlike me, he is not fazed by coworkers who sing and dance as naturally as cardinals in the trees.

I doubt that any of my children will ever be world famous performers, but they have a love of music and performing that enriches their lives and those around them. 

That makes me indescribably happy.

It could happen to you

 

I love my apartment. It is nice, clean, safe, and in the right part of town for the things I do, but I am becoming one of the lucky few.

Housing prices and rent have soared in the past year. My granddaughter's apartment now costs over a hundred dollars a month more than it did last year and that is with no improvements. I just read about communities in the west where there are not enough affordable homes for firemen, teachers, small business owners and service people.

The upper classes have long had advantages the rest of us do not. They can afford to manipulate their taxes so they pay almost nothing. They live in exorbitant homes and hire people to do everything they don't want to do. If they paid these people a living wage things might be okay, but they also want to charge them usurious rates for renting homes, buying food, or clothing, or any other necessary needs.

I'd like to believe that eventually the poor will simply move away from these areas, leaving the wealthy with a shortage of service workers, but that probably won't happen. Instead the people having to live in third rate motels, garages, campers and cardboard boxes will slowly grow to include people who never believed it could happen to them.

Plots and coups and insurrections

 

I remember having to rewrite the Constitution in our own words when I was in school. I remember learning all the rules for respecting the American flag. I was involved in politics, that I remember, since age six when Eisenhower was president. I saw presidents come and go and even though our family supported some and not others during the elections, I never remember anyone not respecting whoever was in office. No matter which party he belonged to.

Never in my entire life did I expect to see a United States President attempt a petty coup like some South American dictator. It never occurred to me that a president in our country would try to takeover without winning an election.

A man who believed he could buy our country because he had bought everything else he wanted utterly destroyed my sense of security. 

Politicians have gone from people who were always self-serving and self important to outright dangerous clowns. They play with lies and half truths, outlandish stories and craziness the way teenagers play Dungeons and Dragons. Except even teens know what they are doing is a game while many American people think the people they elected are being truthful no matter how bizarre they are.

2016 was the election that made me fear for our country's future.

The Good Deed Fairy

 

I just spent several days with a very special creature.It is helpful, caring and always empathetic, but sometimes it is a little bit disconcerting.

One moment we are sitting, or walking along together and the next moment I am alone.

The Good Deed Fairy is gone!

Where?

The Good Deed Fairy disappears to take pictures for a large family eating with their loved ones. It flits over to tell a man he has left his flashlight on in his pocket and it is shining through the material of his pants. It saves a little boy from a very aggressive goose on a restaurant patio. It returns to find our waitress as we are leaving the restaurant and give her a huge handful of cash because she was so good and is due to give birth at any time.

This is the first time I ever spent time with a super hero!

Craziness

 

The doctor told her to eat small meals throughout the day.

She ate flavored yogurt and honey nut Cheerios for breakfast.

Egg noodles in gravy on mashed potatoes and biscuits for lunch.

A cherry snow cone and a medium hot fudge sundae for snacks.

A cheeseburger and fries for dinner.

I'm pretty sure this isn't what he had in mind, but her weight never fluctuated for years.

On the other hand I ate three jumbo eggs with a slice of cheddar cheese, a vegan sausage, and a slice of sprouted grain bread with lots of real butter for brunch.

And a serving of meatloaf, a tiny serving of mashed potatoes and three servings of broccoli with cheese sauce for dinner.

Two slices of white cheddar cheese for snacks.

That probably wasn't what he had in mind either, but I lost 64 pounds eating it.

Eating is an insanely personal, emotional and physical balancing act.

Full enough

 

What if you discovered that what suits "most people" according to social media, ads, and general rumor, does not necessarily suit you?

We have become so accustomed to authority figures like doctors, nurses, dietitians, and other people who supposedly "really know" that we don't question it.

Over the years nearly everything we eat or drink has been labeled bad, or a super food and then a few years later that is retracted. 

I appear to be healthier right now than I have been for at least forty years and I am embarrassed to tell you what I eat, because of these standards. I have lost well over sixty pounds, lowered my blood pressure, A1C, cholesterol, and managed to rehab an aching back without physical therapy.

By doing what my body wants and tolerates

I know that sounds too easy, but it really isn't. I can't drink soda pop, or eat dessert whenever I want. I can't survive on the breads and rolls I love, but I don't have to eat salad or give up cheese or even meat. I just have to eat them in the amounts my body craves and not feed my taste buds. My tasted buds crave tons of food right after I eat, but if I put them off an hour or so, they give in and allow me to realize I am full enough.

It has taken me years to figure some of these things out. I am not a religious exerciser, but I do need to get up and move twenty to sixty minutes a day. I can eat two big meals a day and still lose a little weight. Not as much as I did in the beginning, but still, a little. 

I had to learn to be nice to me. I like to read and sleep and socialize. I like to watch some movies and I like to be creative. There may be more, but it took me 72 years to get this far.

Give me time!

Balance

 

I have always had a weight problem. Even when I weighed 102 pounds which is nothing for a five foot, seven inch woman. There are lots of reasons for this, including a husband whose ego demanded I be tinier than I am, but it is something I have been trying to get over.

I am an emotional eater. I eat when I'm happy. I eat when I'm sad. I eat when I am disgusted with myself and when I'm in love - with me or anybody else!

The past six months I have tried to address this problem along with losing a significant amount of weight for my own health. Losing weight is not new to me. Keeping it off, is. 

Now I am at the point where I can wear regular size clothing and I am not embarrassed by my size, but I would still like to lose a significant amount of weight.  That is what  I say, but what I am really thinking is don't let me put this lost weight back on!

This past month I started eating out with friends again and managed to lose one pound. That isn't much, but it is so much better than gaining five. Training myself to eat two meals a day and drink water has helped. So much of my eating was rewarding myself by eating and reading, or eating and watching a movie, so both books and television were triggers.

I suspect I will always be on a tightrope, trying to balance food with health, but I am hopeful that this time I am on the right rope.

Band Concert

 

People have gathered under the summer skies to listen to band concerts in parks since time began. It is one of those things I do with my granddaughter that my grandmother did with me. Different bands in different towns, but the music is pretty much the same.

Tonight it was even more so.

Maybe because I am older, but I felt closer to my relatives than usual. My great grandfather fought at the battle of Vicksburg, was wounded and lay under his horse for three days before they found him. Later he was an honor guard on the train that carried Lincoln's body across the country. 

My great uncle was in the army during world war one. My dad was an engineer in the Navy after world war two when the German prisoners were still down in Louisiana. And my ex was in Vietnam in 1969. All those wars, all that death, all that suffering, but the music is still stirring.

I can imagine my great grandmothers and aunts listening to band concerts as they waited for their men to come home. Back then it was waiting that women had to endure. Tonight there was a woman marine who stood with the men when they played the Marine anthem.

Our band plays a song for each of the armed forces and the veterans stand when it is theirs. For some reason that touched me deeply tonight. The little girl who sat with us lost a brother in Iraq. He was 25.

What can I say? The music is beautiful, the stories time honored, but I never want to get used to the death.

Forever

All around the square they ride

dreams and hopes still living

High school football hero

tonight and a reputation

unending.

Crowned in glory, ascending she strides

Her future created in filming

Prom queen beauty

forevermore and her future

never beginning.

A great big truck

maybe a gun

and a house with a view

in the small town sun.

I dreamed of you

 

I dreamed about you last night

we traveled together to your friend's

who took us, in the back seat, in her car.

Stopping off at her house, you offered me your hand

pulling me out into mud up to my waist.

I lost my shoe.

I nearly lost my mind as your friend procrastinated.

Talking on the phone, laughing on the phone, visiting

while I searched for my lost ruined shoes.

My new shoes would never be the same

Unrecognizable in their filth, one lost forever

Until you pointed out that it was still on my right foot.

Your friend sent us on in her car, still in the back seat

Driven by her giggling children

to see a pumpkin factory making dishes out of pumpkins.

I wondered if it was worth it.

Being with you if it meant her.

I thought it was love

 

I am a vivid dreamer. I remember my dreams as if they are actual experiences. Being part of a Jungian dream group for over ten years encouraged this, of course, but it also taught me to look for what could be behind the dream. The setting, the characters, everything in the dream comes through the focus of my being. I am director, producer, star and cast.

Imagine living in the 1840's duplex house my ex-husband grew up in. In this dream it is now an apartment with distinctive white woodwork and comfortable rooms. Downstairs are other apartments, but only in the dream, not in real life, that I can get to by going around the outside of the house and down some steps. I go down there to visit a friend and a woman from the apartment under mine comes out to call to me. She invites me in for a cup of tea in such a friendly, insistent way that I cannot say no.

The house in this dream comes from a time of innocence and gullibility. The idea of a basement in a dream often portrays working through inner feelings, or betrayals of the past. In this dream the woman was incredibly friendly, likable, personable, outgoing, and single minded. She kept me placated by appearing to do what she said she would, make tea, while manipulating me completely.

I was aware of her manipulation, but also so inundated by her words and actions that it was hard to focus on anything else. She showed me extraordinary things, antique bookcases filled with ancient books, elegant antique woodwork and a rounded snowwhite door painted bright red over rough wood. Through that door was a room filled with exotic treasures, including a gilded cage with a hummingbird in it. 

She took the humming bird out and placed it in my hands and I was overwhelmed by awe and joy, quickly followed by confusion and fear as it appeared to morph back and forth from hummingbird to a black frog like creature with red diamonds on its back! I kept asking her why this was happening and she ignored me as if she neither heard me, nor saw it happen. Now I was very uneasy and she deftly maneuvered me out of that room and back into the bedroom where I noticed how much larger her apartment was than mine. How could that be when they were built on top of each other? Again she acted like there was nothing wrong.

Her four year old daughter drifted in and out of the picture and her young boyfriend appeared at the door. They both made the apartment seem much more modern and normal, but by now I was feeling very intimidated and trapped. I wanted out before it was too late! Too late for what I don't know.

I did get out, but once outside I could not find the entrance to my own apartment. Everything had changed. I knew this made no sense and by sheer force of will I found it and went inside only to find the woman sitting on my couch waiting for me. I was terrified and nearly hysterical. I drove her out.

I think this dream is remembering the times in my life when I have been gracefully and brutally manipulated by talented, narcissistic brilliant people who have had a single minded desire to get what they want at any cost. There have been at least two and possible more on a smaller scale. They used the things I admired and loved to pull me in and allowed me to think it was love.

Memories

 

Peering inside someone else's memories is both fascinating and dangerous. There is always the fact that no two people remember everything the same and there is always the possibility of things being misremembered. 

Add to that the choice of remembering,  what is important and how it happened, and you have a recipe for stepping on toes, or hurting someone's feelings.

Once you start writing memories down you also need an editor to look for misspelled words and names. I find the best way to edit is by reading something out loud. It slows the process down enough so that the obvious is not glossed over. This requires someone dedicated to providing the time that will take.

In the end, though, reading someone's thoughts can be a charming experience, especially if they are the thoughts of a loved one.

Father's Day

 

Father's Day somehow seems less celebratory than Mother's Day. The schmaltz abounds for mother's day. All our mothers seem bound for glory as saints they never were simply because we love or loved them. While fathers often just get honorable mentions.

I understand that. In my house the father was a revered person. When he was home we ate in the dining room. He always had an office lined with books and his presence was a time for better manners, more serious conversations, or the ultimate decision. 

And yet I adored my father. I wished he would want to go out and throw the ball with us, or do something fathers on television did, but that wasn't who he was. It might have even been who he wished he could be, but he grew up in a formal household that left him feeling obligated to do everything with great dignity. 

He succeeded at that. No matter what my father did, it felt noble and dignified and it felt like a great honor for me to be part of it. I wanted to grow up to be my father and I was a girl.

Que sera sera

What if? 

That is a question someone asks all the time. Does it matter if I don't love somebody, or somebody does not love me? Does it matter if things do not go the way I planned them? Does it matter if things don't turn out the way I expected, or wanted, or even needed them to be?

It does.

And it does not.

The Way is long and winding and filled with mysteries. Chances are the power I have over it is much less than I believe, but it is entirely possible that I am wrong. Maybe I have absolute power, just not my conscious mind. 

When I am sad, time seems to stand still or drag by. The reverse is true when I am happy. Time is seldom relevant when it comes to endings, because endings are hard to pinpoint. Everything begins somewhere and it seems necessary that this must follow an ending, but maybe those are just times when the scene is being set, the Way cleared, or the ego is set aside to rest and grow.

"Wait and see." Words that I hated as a child. Words that still frustrate me, but the only true path.

I can facilitate what I want to happen and hopefully, if it is good and solid and pure, it will happen,  But there are no promises.

What will be will be. 

Every language has its own way of saying that because it is a universal concept.

Whether I like it or not.

The real picture

 

Old habits are hard to lose.

I have lost over sixty pounds by eating right for months and yet I still find myself feeling guilty about over eating even when I have not.

There is a frame of mind where I will always be overweight and uncomfortable. It causes me to wake up thinking "Why did I eat that?" When I only ate small meals with very few calories. 

I get dressed in the morning and my clothes fit just fine, or are even a bit big, but in the evening I find myself feeling like I've been stuffed into them and longing for my pajamas.

Driving my car , I see other women who are very chunky and I commiserate with them. I still see myself as one of the chubby ones. I really have no sense of what size I am.

I try to reason it out. My sister weighs a certain amount and I think she looks great, so I should look fine too. I know it, but I don't feel it.

I will never weigh 110 pounds again. I really shouldn't even want to be that at my age and height, but my heart wants to be back there again. 

The truth is, I just don't trust my own eyes and perspective. 

Part of that is because I see other women who obviously have no idea how large they really are. I don't want to be one of them. And, on the other hand, I ask myself, "What difference does it make?"