Beautiful hope

 

One of my favorites when life feels difficult. Sometimes we cling to the myth because it's all we have.

Lord of All Hopefulness

Song by Ely Cathedral Choir

Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy,
Whose trust, ever child-like, no cares can destroy,
Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray,
Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, at the break of the day.

Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith,
Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe,
Be there at our labors, and give us, we pray, Your strength in our hearts, Lord, at the noon of the day.

Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace,
Your hands swift to welcome, your arms to embrace,
Be there at our homing, and give us, we pray,
Your love in our hearts, Lord, at the eve of the day.

Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm,
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray,
Your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Jan Struther Text Only

Love at work

 

I have been physically depleted lately and after being diagnosed with Covid yesterday I understand better why that might be.

I do not feel good, but today is Christmas and as I sat here it occurred to me that we all make gestures based on love.

I did not go to my nephew's house, or have my granddaughters over because I did not want to expose them to this virus. I did not allow them to come pick up gifts or drop them off for the same reason. 

I also realized how important this holiday is to my daughter who is facing another Christmas far from home. She was really counting on our video chat today, so I stirred up enough energy to make that possible and in the doing actually felt a little bit better for a while.

The same is true for my other children. Any attempt I made to make things better for them made things much better for me. 

That is the thing about love. Giving it, or receiving it, works about the same way. It is a gift.

Covid!

 

I can't tell you how many holidays I have been sick and missed all the fun, but there have been lots, especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

This year is no exception. I had hives over Thanksgiving and today I have just been diagnosed with Covid.

Typical of me it has not been what I expected at all.. I have not run a temperature over 100 and I have not lost my sense of taste or smell, but I have a terrible horrible no good very bad cough, a stuffy nose, and I ache all over.

Of course my own doctor's office is closed, but after being up nauseous and sick all night long I went to a Prompt Care. 

The hardest part of going to a doctor when I am this sick is the waiting. I got there around 8:30 and left around noon, totally exhausted and dehydrated. Now I am suppose to isolate for 5-10 days, so all the Christmas preparations fall by the wayside.

It is good that I live alone, so no one else is exposed, but it also means caring for myself when I don't feel like doing anything. Not to mention that I will lose a week's pay at work.

I don't know where I caught this or why it choose now to get me. I've lad all the vaccinations and I've even been exposed when Covid first came out. Probably from one of the kids in my class I'm guessing. When they don't feel good they want to sit on my lap a lot more.

Happy Covid Christmas!

Harbingers

 

Sometimes an event changes a life so much that nothing is ever the same again.

This seems to be the year for that.

I know several people, including me, whose lives have been completely altered.

It can be tragic and good all at the same time.

I think the secret is to find that spark of good, or hope, and fan the flames. This is when you really do need to make lemonade out of lemons.

Being useful in any way is one of the best harbingers of what is to come.

Reactors

 

Why is the first feeling many people go to fear, followed by hate?

I think because fear is built into us. It is our way of protecting ourselves from things we may not understand, but once we feel it most things do not require an instant reaction.

A little thought, a little investigation, a little knowledge could end so much pain and sorrow.

Not generalizing is the next step. Just because a green frog scared you does not mean that every frog, or everything green is bad and should be eliminated.

Frogs eat billions of insects and they are a source of food for many animals. The secretions from their skin has led to new painkillers and antibiotics and so much more. 

The same things are true of people from all places, in all colors and all ethnicities.  People from all over the world have contributed to medicine and engineering and agriculture and all those things that make life easier and more worthwhile.

Eliminate greed and the toddler mentality that my god is better than your god, or the idea that any god would want us to destroy each other and this world is a pretty good place.

Surely, as civilized human beings we can evolve into something more than simple reactors.

Games people play

 

My ex-husband and I used to play lots of games. Bridge was one of his favorites and I had the feeling that becoming a Bridge player was something our marriage hinged on. He was a stickler for rules.

On the other hand we played back gammon, double solitaire,  Electronic Detective, Clue, Scrabble and many other games.

Until . . .

I beat him. Once I began winning with any kind of consistency we stopped playing those games.

We were better off playing as partners even though I didn't remember the entire Gorin's Bridge Complete like he did. I was acceptable.

Looking back I suspect part of it was that I could read his face and I knew how he bid better than other people, but there was also the fact that few other people were willing to put up with his lectures on proper  bidding during a game. I've been known  to chug Mylanta while playing Bridge.

I have not really played any games since my divorce except for Upwords. A friend and I played that so much, we wore the faces off the tiles! Now I am playing Suduko, Wordle, Connections and the New York Times mini crossword -- all on my phone and I must admit I do enjoy them.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

 

I have been watching Young Sheldon on Netflix and I really enjoy it.

There are no commercials and no real drama that is concerning.

Unless . . . 

I consider the fact that I can relate to young Sheldon in a big way.

Many of the things he worries about, I worry about, or did as a child. 

Unfortunately I am not a great physicist so I could never get away with most of his behavior.

I have to come up with more plausible reasons for my actions!

Ego

 

The older I become, the easier it becomes to be me. I say this not even sure that I really know who me is, but I am assuming it is when I can be at ease and not have to think before every word and action.

That has happened a few times in the past year and I don't think it is an accident. When I was talking to my scammer I wanted to be sure he knew who I really was. His opinion of me seemed to be better than my own most of the time. Of course now I know that was part of the scam, but it did bring out a more truthful part of me. 

There was a time when I would have been so honored that anyone important wanted to talk to me that I would have gone out of my way to try and impress them. I don't seem to to do that anymore. It's better for me if you know right off the bat that I am who I am.

Of course I still try too hard at work. I want to please our lead teacher, because I need this job. But part of me feels that although I may need to brush up on the current techniques, I still know an awful lot more than some of the people I work with simply because I have thirty years experience. Still, I don't want her job. Day care will always be different than private preschool was in the eighties and nineties.

Being me has its advantages, I'm discovering. My honesty and my experiences catch people off guard now that I am regarded as an older woman. I am not your cookie baking grandma who wears an apron and grows roses in the garden. I can do both those things, but they have never been the focus of my life. 

I've always been a bit adventurous. Sometimes that gets me in trouble, but never anything illegal, just unusual. My ego says I would rather plant a huge sunflower labyrinth in the middle of corn fields, or ride my bike twenty miles out into the country, or make drums, or even meditate to drumming than just sit around and be sweet. Honestly, I'm not all that sweet.

But I am honest and I try to be truthful. My ego requires that much from me. 

Consistency

 

I believe that the most important part of training is consistency.

Whether it is housebreaking a dog, or potty training a child, nothing works better than reinforcing the right action over and over again.

That sounds simple, but many people have trouble being consistent, even people who understand its value and have experience using it.

I find a lack of consistency extremely confusing. 

I had many years experience using it to help my daughter overcome some learning disabilities. 

So it is difficult for me to work with people who are not consistent. I realize it is difficult when there are many children, but I believe the difficulties increase when someone believes they are consistent, but they have become less than hyper-vigilant and because they are the one in charge, no one dares to tell them.

I suppose it is impossible to live intensely hyper-vigilant all the time, but the closer you are to keeping everything the same, the easier it will be for everyone to conform.

Let freedom ring

Imagine suddenly being rudely roused from your bed and hustled off into the night.

You sit in a small cell wondering what is going to become of you.

Later, when you are released, people revile you on the street.

You lose your job, your house, and are denied all contact with your friends and family.

You have not been convicted of any crime, but you have already been charged, tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television.

This is a reality in our country, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the place where gossip mongers seem to enjoy other people's misery and so-called good Christians leap at the chance to be holier than thou.

People don't have to be proven guilty for a community to turn against them, especially if they are not white heterosexuals living carefully within the boundaries of barely civilized bigots.

Those people

 

Stress leads to mistakes.

There is nothing like being afraid to make a mistake that is more likely to cause mistakes.

You can give it names like Attention Deficit, or something else, but is is the fear that really amps up the occurrences.

My ex could forget his coat on a cold day and I never understood that, but now I realize that as a child who would probably be labeled ADD, he had years of expecting to make a mistake. My youngest son was the same, but I never considered myself to be one of those people.

Until now.

People who have this tendency tend to develop ways to avoid it. They become meticulous list makers and people who triple check their work. I guess I was great at coping most of my life. I was always terrified of making mistakes. (For lots of reasons frankly.)

But now that I have been divorced for over 25 years and my children are grown up, I no longer feel quite as much pressure to try to be perfect. I have relaxed a little. Not much, but a little.

So I make more mistakes and I am realizing I do the same things my ex and my son have always done. I was always understanding when it came to my child. Now I wish I had been a bit more understanding of my ex. 

Lifeline

 

The surest way to survive is to have a lifeline.

Whether that is an actual rope with a buoy on the end, or plan for the future,  does not matter all that much. 

In the end it is that the future appears as a possibility with hope.

Hope is something that has wrought miracles.

Miracles not always attached directly to the hope, but often part and parcel of the end result.

So make a plan.

Write down the details.

And hang on to it for all it is worth!

Blips along eternity

 

My life is important to me. It is the only one I have and so, like most people, everything that happens to me seems important.

My best moments and my worst. The glorious and the shameful. The fair and the unfair. To me these events are monumental. I can believe they are the only things that matter in the moment they occur and that they set the tone for the rest of my life.

It is true that within a village, or city, or county, or even a state, these things can seem enormous, but in the course of history most of them will not be remembered. They will not even be a blip on the timeline of the centuries that follow.

Sometimes it is necessary to step back and look at the world from a distance. 

i cannot change the past, but I have much power over the future. My power may stop at the end of my nose, but that is okay. I can choose how I react. I can choose my attitude. I can choose to go forward and make the best out of what is there.

My time on earth, long or short, is all I have, so I need to choose to use it the best way possible. Always starting from this point forward.

Role model

 

Every morning my father got up before the rest of us. He shaved, ran a bath, and then went down to the kitchen to cut up fruit for our mynah bird and monkey. He would fry three pieces of baloney, make toast and coffee and eat breakfast then go up and bathe, shine his shoes and drive thirty miles to work.

Sometimes he would let George, our Cinnamon ring tail monkey, out to run while he did that, which is why I know what was going on. George would run upstairs and jump on my pillow, trying to pull the curlers out of my hair!

I learned so many things from my father. He was a voracious reader and loved both being a student and teaching. He was often working three jobs to make ends meet, but sometimes he would let me skip school and ride with him when he was going to make a speech at some university. That way I got to see them before I had to choose one.

I used to wish he was like other fathers who would go out and throw a ball with their children, or play board games, but mostly he was my idol. I wanted to grow up and be like him and his friends.

Until my mother died and he eventually remarried. Looking back I think he thought he had a lot to offer his new young wife. I think he thought he could put her through college and give her a good life, but that was not the case. She was eventually the end of him. He broke his collar bone and she had him put in a nursing home where he finally died. It was a longer and more complicated story, but it was all sad and I learned one more thing about life.

People teach us by what they do and don't do. Nobody is perfect, but everybody can be a role model in one way or another. 

Not knowing

 

There is nothing worse than not knowing.

Not knowing if someone you love is okay or not okay.

Not knowing why someone has dropped off the radar for over 48 hours.

Not knowing leads to thoughts that conjure terrible things no matter how hard I try to ignore them.

I never want to invent trouble, but remaining positive in the light of rhis rare break in communication has made it difficult not to worry.

Pleasing you

 

How do I write about values?

Once upon a time values meant keeping up appearances for the people around me. Following traditional ideas of who and what makes a person acceptable and good, or admirable.

Now I know I can't please all of the people. Ever! In fact, I probably can't please most of the people completely. Ever! So I need to have some realistic priorities, some idea of who I need to please and that turns out to be me.

Everyone else comes and goes at will. There are no guarantees in this life except that I will be with me till the day I die. I have to come to terms with what is most important to me. What I need to be okay with myself.

I try to be kind, but I need to be real too. There are some things I cannot live with and others that I cannot live without. Those may all change over time too.

In the end I realize that forgiveness is a gift that is often misunderstood and under rated. It is also a very difficult state to reach sometimes, but it is not impossible.

The longer I live, the more likely it is that I will do things I will later regret in some way. That is okay. It is being human, but regret cannot become a great wall that sets the limits for the rest of my life.

It's better if it can become a learning experience that ultimately enriches what is now, because now is where I always have to live.

You cannot deny it

 

The secret to inner peace is not being afraid to be yourself.

Whoever you are. Whatever you are.

You cannot deny it forever.

So give in. Give up. 

Refine it a bit if you can

But be you.

And enjoy it.

Treasured time

 

There is nothing more dangerous than a holiday.

Everyone has their own sense of what is important and what is essential.

Traditions are repeated, replaced and re-thought, making it likely that someone's toes will get stepped on at some point.

People talk about those no longer with them and those who just aren't there. Everyone is fair game at these holiday dinners.

We  stuff the turkey and we stuff ourselves.

Some people stuff their emotions down deep and others let it all hang out.

That's the beauty of family.

You can be who you are.

.

Questioning Humanity

 

Why do people draw lines in the dirt that define the living conditions for thousands of people.

What good is religion if it divides people so drastically that they want to kill each other?

Who benefits from war?

These are not ten year old boys playing with their GI Joe dolls.

These are educated adults who value so many things more than life for other humans.

Year after year, century after century, life after life, we continue to reach for our lowest level, to fight for greed and power instead of quality of life for all.

It is a me/them situation that defines human beings at their worst. 

Looking for differences to validate their insanity.

Angry and alone

 

It is not enough to say you love a child. Your actions need to show the child what it needs to succeed.

A child is born ready to learn, wanting to learn, needing to learn.

A parent who spoils a child ruins its chances for a happy life and the older the child gets the harder life will become.

Even at the tender age of three, there are children whose parents have made life harder for them by not teaching them to listen and follow directions. And more than that, the child needs to know that it is always expected to do some things.

Of course children won't always follow directions or listen, but if they do it the majority of time they will learn that life is much more pleasant when they do.

In a room full of children all but one will use the potty, put on their training pants, or pull ups and then put their outer clothes back on so that they can go outside and play with all the other children. That one child, who has never been taught that there are rules and consequences, might spend all morning screaming and stomping around alone and angry because it refuses to do these simple things.

This is at age three. Imagine what this child will go through as it ages and the rules and consequences become greater and greater! In the end it will become an adult who cannot fit into civilized society. Angry and alone because it was never taught there are some rules everyone is expected to follow and the consequences for not following them will be harsher and harsher as they grow older.

Without Zeus

 

The big moments are always a surprise.

They sneak up on you, disguised as something unexpected and emerge even bigger.

About this time last year I met the love of my life, a demon named Simon but only for the moment.

I lived a whole lifetime in those four months. It was a dream come true, made perfect.

I never wanted to wake up. 

But I did and now I live in a different world.

Everything is different.

I don't do anything the same. It has all changed.

Now I go to work and I go to sleep.

Half in this world and half out. Like Persephone but without the help of Zeus.

Telling the story

 

I just read a book by a really good author that was both fascinating and difficult.

Nothing about this book was familiar to me. Not the language, or the topography. I initially felt a bit lost, like I was reading in another language, which in a sense I was. Australian.

The slang, the names of the wild life, the geography, none of it was easy for an American, raised in America and limited by American education, but it was fascinating.

In the beginning I just kept reading, hoping that simple immersion would fill me in. Later I began looking up some of the words and especially photos of the landscape.

The story was compelling and sometimes horrifying. It is about child abuse at some of its worst and the product of that abuse as a boy enters his mid to late teens on the road to manhood.

The boy takes off, like a child might do after a terrifying incident and runs away, but he runs into a landscape that is totally unforgiving. I found this symbolic of his life up to that point. As he runs he discovers what he probably should have brought along with him and is forced to both make do and succeed by his hard won skill for surviving under the worst circumstances.

Ultimately he meets a scraggly old man living in a shepherd's hut.

The man is as reconciled to his life as the boy is in changing his own and so the two life styles begin to bump into one another.

I never discovered exactly why the old man was out there, marooned and isolated, partly by his own choice I think and partly because he felt it was his only hope of redeeming himself without seeking redemption through traditional ways.

The ending was hard to read and yet when the book was finished I felt intrigued and good. I'm glad I read it. It's given me so much for food for thought.

You might enjoy Tim Winton's, The Shepherd's Hut.

The Angel and The Jeep

 

Once upon a time, a very long time, nearly fifty six years, ago, a beautiful maiden left her college dorm and went on a Laker with a man driving a great smoking beast called, The Jeep. 

The Jeep was a lovely hybrid made out of a 1945 body and 1949 engine and painted a deep flat foresty green. Now this was 1968, so The Jeep was no young thing even then.

But he put forth his best effort and went up hill and down while filled to the brim with college kids going on a Laker, some of them to their first Laker. About three hills in, no matter how hard he thought, he just couldn't make it up one more hill.

Everyone except the driver had to get out of The Jeep.  They huffed and they puffed and they pushed The Jeep up the hill, then chased it down before pushing it up the next hill and chasing it down. They did this until they came to a magical place in the woods. There they spread out their blankets, some of them over the liquor bottles and some of them under the baskets of fresh ripe strawberries.

And the Laker began. 

The Jeep people were not alone. The woods was filled with other people on Lakers of their own, but if you got lost taking care of business in the dark, all you had to do was cry, "Strawberries! Strawberries!" and you could find your way home. Back to your blanket upon which sat all your friends with their glasses and bottles and a thing called the churchkey.

It was upon returning from one of those trips that the maiden saw the churchkey and in great amazement read the name embossed upon it. "You named your churchkey, Angel?" She laughed.

And the man who drove The Jeep said, very offended, "No! I am The Angel." And that was when the maiden learned the name of her first ever blind date on her first ever Laker on her first ride in The Jeep.

She got her second ride the next day when The Angel called and asked her if she wanted to go see what ducks did in the rain! The Angel loved The Jeep, but he could only drive so far before the floor got too hot for him to keep his foot on the pedal, then he had to stop driving and let it cool down, but the love between him and the maiden didn't cool down until many years later.

Milestones

 

We have learned to look at life in segments. Infancy, childhood, adulthood, as if they are each defined by a hard and fast line.

Using years to understand our expectations of people is the way the world has mostly chosen to go, but not necessarily the best.

There is one train of thought that says a child is not ready to go on to first grade until he has lost his baby teeth. I'm not sure I can agree with that. One of my children, who is now a lawyer, lost his first tooth well into his eighth year. He excelled in school, but perhaps his emotional well being might have increased had we held him back.

It is easier for the world to set general standards like people can drive at 16 or vote at 21, or retire at 65 in order for there to be more order, but there is no proof that everyone is ready to do these things at that particular age. We just don't seem to have any other way to determine who is ready in a fair and equitable way.

But we cannot rely entirely on nature either. Children are capable of having children long before they are capable of being parents and taller children can reach many things they are not ready to handle before shorter children who may be entirely ready.

Human beings love to celebrate and anniversaries give them many reasons. It is indeed a coup to keep a child alive year after year, but it is a bigger one to fulfill that child's actual potential at the same time. 

The trick is to balance physical and emotional well being so those accomplishments provide happiness or contentment within the human being. That is harder to measure.

Some children learn to smile, not because they are particularly happy, but because it soothes the people around them. 

Being resourceful is a very useful skill.

The reality of me

 

Everybody is looking for themselves.

But nobody wants to see what's really there.

We choose to look for what we want, or need instead.

Too many books. Too many movies. Too much television.

Real vision finds imperfections. That's the real perfection.

Dealing with crazy imperfect selves.

All like me and nobody like me.

That's life.

Engaged

 

I go to work, usually 3-4 hours and I come home.

Sometimes my work is boring. 

Sometimes it is fulfilling.

Sometimes it is crazy making.

At home I do household chores on a need to routine and everything gets done eventually.

I am exhausted most of the time I am not at work, but I've only been working about ten weeks.

I go to bed early. 

I get up early to drink my coffee and play the New York Times Games. 

In between working and sleeping I read a little and write a little.

For a woman who has lived three quarters of a century this is not a bad life.

I am still engaged.

People die

 

Babies are born and grow up until they die.

We spend a good portion of our lives pretending this isn't true, because the pain of losing someone, anyone, can be unbearable.

We make up stories about what happens after death and pretend we know. That helps some people.

We mourn those who we feel die too young, or too painfully. We agonize over those who we feel die needlessly. We even seek revenge for those we think died because of someone else's actions.

But in the end.

We die.

It is part of life.

When, how, why?

That is the subject of every story, book, play, movie and life that exists.

Such a simple, complex thing, those years between birth and death.

Growing up free

 

What happens at daycare gets shared at home!

My children start in our group about 35 months old. They are learning to use the potty and dress themselves, so patience is a big part of my job.

Meal times are both social and learning times. We just put the food on the plate. Eating it is up to each child. He doesn't have to eat anything, but he has to taste things to get seconds. It is amazing to watch these babies use their forks to shovel in broccoli and green beans as often as they do peaches and pears.

And the glasses are just the right size. If they tip over no one panics. The tipper just goes and gets a paper napkin to mop it up.

Our classroom is kid-sized. There is a trampoline for those with Tigger tendencies. They can bounce and bounce and bounce! Our science center has light tables, flashlights, sorting toys, measuring toys, and rocks covered in letters. There is even an experiment in a big huge jar to keep tabs on.

Our tiny engineers have Legos, and big wooden blocks, tracks, and magnetic wooden blocks to create their colossal inventions. 

Our libraries are scattered around the room in baskets and on shelves anywhere a person might need something to read.

We have a quiet corner where you can go to read or rest, or sometimes just let your emotions flow and we have a playground surrounded by a pond filled with swans and geese. There are tricycles and slides and climbing places mixed in with swings and places to play ball. And if the spirit moves you, there are places to run and run and run.

This is a place to grow up curious and free with big people as diplomats and teachers.

Dress me up

 

I get paid to play!

Of course I do some sweeping up after meals and some wiping down of tables, but mostly my job is to play with the children and I love it.

We swing on a big blue swing and pretend it is our rocket ship, or submarine and the adventures we have are epic! One of our guys is an expert asteroid destroyer and another fights sharks and octopuses, depending on where we are, of course.

They dress me up, comb my hair, paint my face with pretend make-up while wearing beautiful ball gowns and big green rubber boots. The fashion in our class is very eclectic.

We build tracks and trains and play with our sensory boxes filled with dough for hours. 

In between I get to read books. Sometimes on the comfy couch, sometimes right in the middle of the room. The informality of our group gives us the freedom to be who we are, whether it is doing puzzles, or playing with markers and glue. 

I kiss boo boos, teach people how to apologize for accidentally hurting each other, hold them in my lap, or let them lead me by the hand into the land of three year olds.

I am a surrogate mama and I take my job very seriously. Sometimes there are as many as seven of us with eleven children. Each one of us totally dedicated to the proposition that we are raising the next generation and we want to them to be prepared.

If your mama leaves you with someone while she goes to work, I hope you are with people like us.

Taste

 

My first birthday, that I remember, I turned two!

My great Aunt Lela made me a beautiful lamb cake in a three dimensional cast iron pan and covered it with coconut. It was amazing. Except I discovered I didn't like that flaky dried coconut. 

Honestly, I don't really like cake much unless it is very moist and has lots of icing. I don't care for dried out things. 

Taste is a strange thing. I suppose we can develop a taste for some things, but our preferences seem to be born with us.

I like butterscotch, caramel, fudge. I am not a fan of fudge made with marshmallow, that dilutes it. I like intensely sweet brown sugar things mixed with butter.

You can leave out the cinnamon and other spices. I also like my flavors intensely untouched by underlying tastes.

My taste in people is very similar. I like intensely passionate people without pretensions. I'm not impressed by window dressings, or empty headedness. A little mystery, a lot of reticence, a ton of thought goes a long way.

I like to think about things, so the things I love need lots of room to be thought about!

Most people never know more than the top twenty percent of me. They are happy with that and I have no need to share more with them, although I come across as caring and sharing, which I am. (With that 20%.)

It is so easy to be kind, but good boundaries keep kindness real.