Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘choice’

Go With All Your Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2013| 2 Comments »

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. (Confucius)

Kate sits on my bed with my guitar between her knees as I tell her the names for the strings: E, A, D, G, B, and E. Some of the strings are as much as a full step sharp. They need considerable adjustment. Pain has curtailed my playing for longer than I’d like to admit.

“One of the first things you are going to need is an electronic tuner,” I tell my granddaughter. On the bed isn’t the best place to play, but we aren’t going to get as far as a real song. Not yet. We’ll just see where the open chords are, and how they sound.

I hold my Big Baby Taylor for the first time in a long while. The weight feels precious in my lap and I realize I’ve missed her even if she hasn’t missed me. “This is what a minor chord sounds like and this is how a major chord sounds. They each have a different feel.”

Kate listens carefully and I realize that one chord is not enough to show a mood, just as a single word is never sufficient to give an adequate view of anything. I should have played at least a phrase or two. A first impression isn’t always accurate either. When one of my water exercise classes became aqua zumba, I thought, I dance like a cardboard cutout. I’ll never learn it. The class has ended now and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“Taylor,” Kate says looking at my case. She’s a Taylor Swift fan and loves the song, “White Horse.” I hold my breath, unsure how much my nine-year-old granddaughter understands about romantic relationships. The love inherent in everyday giving seems sufficient for a girl who still treasures her American Girl dolls.

“Your turn.” I give her the guitar back. “This is an expensive instrument. But I trust you.”

Kate’s E-minor sounds amazingly crisp for a first-time try. She and I both smile. She talks about all the instruments she wants to play. And I encourage her.

“Not going to be easy,” I say hoping my smile hasn’t faded. “But it will be worth it.”

Kate may not be old enough to be in double-digits yet, but she’s seen the ups and downs of life already. One of her school mates died of cancer this summer. Another friend was disabled by a freak accident when she was three-years-old. Kate has volunteered at the Free Store. She knows designer clothes are not her natural right.

She has no idea how beautiful she really is.

“You play,” she says.

There isn’t much time before Daddy will be here so I show her a few chords: C, G, E, and F, using a variety of strums and picking patterns.

“That sounds pretty,” she says.

“You can do it, too. And more.”

Her long legs are tucked under her and I suspect her thoughts reach into possibilities. No, I can’t see her thoughts, only her expression and glistening eyes. I suspect she sees some day, far away. I see now, a fourth-grade-girl with the world ahead of her.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart, Kate. Go with all your heart.

secret of genius child Optimism Revolution

Read Full Post »

Backward, Forward, and Lumbar Stenosis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2013| 2 Comments »

Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. (Nido Qubein)

 At 4:00 in the morning I watch the clock move to 4:01 with the help of my vanity mirror. It reads backward, of course. But backward seems to fit how I feel. I am awake because my knees throb. However, there is nothing wrong with them. My legs are reasonably strong for a person with such short levers.

My back is creating the chaos. Sure, I’ve known since at least middle age that this no-need-to-duck-for-low-hanging-branches frame is slightly off balance. My right shoulder is closer to my right ear than the left shoulder is to the left. I guess the back got tired of the disharmony and said I’ve had enough. Then it forced my knees and lower legs to pick up the slack. In less flippant terms, x-rays show that I have lumbar stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal in the lumbar spine. I make a tent under the blanket with my legs and relax. That eases the pain—somewhat.

I am in no way unique. Many people experience this back condition. All an individual needs to do is live to middle age and beyond. My physical therapist said I am fortunate that I don’t have excessive fat around my middle. That adds additional pressure on the back.

I gave her one of those embarrassed, no-teeth-showing smiles. I can definitely pinch-an-inch, if not more where a belt would be if I had a fashion-model figure.

Unfortunately, due to a blood-clotting disorder I can’t take the standard non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. I’d give my kingdom for some ibuprofen—if I had a kingdom.

If-only leads nowhere, however.

As the numbers on the clock move into 5:00 I think about all the survivors I know: folk who have beat cancer, stroke, and unbelievable abuse issues. They are blessings. The trick is to focus on the inspiration, and not compare struggles. Who accomplished more? Does it matter?

I do a few core-strength exercises in bed: the old tried-and-true pelvic tilt, a slow and easy sway of both bent knees from side to side while pressing my lower back into the mattress. All moves focus on the upper and lower abdomen. A stronger core takes the pressure off of the narrowed area of the spine.

The clock tells me it is after 5:30, which looks like a 0, followed by a backward 3 and a 2. It isn’t too early to get up now and begin the day. And somehow, miraculously, I’m okay to do just that.

Not every message in life makes sense—seen directly or mirrored through the wisdom of someone else. Sometimes I just have to do what I can, with the information available and a positive outlook.

Peace to all wherever you may be along your journeys.

 beauty of the broken

Read Full Post »

Bye Bye, Plane

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2013| 2 Comments »

Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans. (John Lennon)

Canceling our vacation plans seemed so strange I didn’t unpack for at least twenty-four hours. We expected to travel to the west coast. However, a family emergency demanded that we stay here, one of those no-brainer situations. Anyone who can spell the word emergency—and many who can’t—understand how that happens. It’s called reality. Insert any situation here. Little imagination required. Our emergency looks like it will be resolved, possibly even erased. Don’t know. That answer is left to the unknown future.

After the shock lifted, time appeared, hours of it. Sure I expected to make friends with a sequoia. That may happen eventually. Instead I tackled a manuscript that had felt like stirring congealed concrete. I finished a major edit.

Next I faced a physical issue I’ve been avoiding. I love parks and the outdoors. A three-to-five mile walk in a nature preserve equals love. I can think like a poet, examine the lines of trees, and follow the flight of a bird from a branch into the clouds. Within the past few months that experience has meant a big pain in the knees. Arthritis? Probably. That Art-form has visited many, many folk. And he doesn’t leave after a casual hint or two. He fights until bone rubs against bone. I have one finger in that condition. The rest of my body isn’t that far gone. It isn’t ready to plod through mountains, hills, and glens either. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up, however. Mr. Arthritis absorbs the couch potato.

My doctor referred me to a specialist. This ten-day space, the time to think, led me to accept vulnerability. I decided to live in the as-it-is present. Of course visions of the past show up as I recognize my awkward, uneven, old-lady gait. I recall my mother as she grasped the handrail and ascended the stairs one at a time.

She didn’t complain about how much each step hurt. Now, I appreciate the difficulty of those movements. She had knee replacements during earlier days of the surgery. She didn’t waste time complaining about her lot in life. Not much point to it. I pray that I can follow her example.

In the meantime beauty exists everywhere: in a sunburst, laughter, a recent uplifting conversation with my brother, Bill, and sister-in-law, Lisa. It appears in words and songs, in encouragement, and in the gift of simply being.

Jay and I will probably make plans for another vacation—some other time. Chances are we’ll actually make it through security and all the way to our destination. I create chaos without at least a little structure. But, for now, my husband and I have been repeating John Lennon’s words frequently. Yep, life is happening all around us, and I feel blessed to be in the midst of it.

enjoying scenery on a detour

Read Full Post »

I Love My Brother, The Toddler Version

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 24, 2013| 2 Comments »

The world is like that—incomprehensible and full of surprises. (Jorge Amado)

This photo of me and my brother is over sixty years old. It needs a caption: You mean this is my sister and I’m stuck with her? Or, that wasn’t a kiss, it was so slobbery I thought you were a Great Dane. I can’t use the informal word, pic, for any of the photos I found hidden in our attic. They belong to the time of rotary phones and black-and-white television. Folk wore suits and dresses, even to sporting events.

I can be found among my brothers easily in the collection. I’m wearing the frills. And yet the expressions on the faces of my family remain universal: Enthusiasm. Joy. Excitement. Wonder. Change the hairstyles and put jeans and sweatshirts on the people in the scenes and they couldn’t be distinguished from one taken in a modern family fifteen minutes ago. Although I’m not sure how to describe my brother in this picture: surprised maybe, definitely cute.

Little people remain little people in any age, in any culture. For me life didn’t exist beyond that floral stuffed chair and my back yard, Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa and my brother, Bill. The future extended no further than alphabet soup for lunch or a picnic with Aunt Bette and Uncle Harold. Childhood seemed eternal.  Even at the advanced age of five, the fact that I would one day become a grandparent would have sounded as outlandish as Jack climbing the beanstalk and facing a giant. Actually, the giant appeared more believable. After all, I had scarcely reached the height of an adult’s naval by that time, probably not that high. I was a runt from the day I was born at four pounds and seven ounces.

Children believe life is what they live, wherever it is. In peace or in war. In the city or country. In a healthy home or one where love is only a word.

The multiple scenes of a baby girl in a silly floppy hat give me the notion that my family was excited to begin a new generation. Not everyone has had that experience. People tend to expand their own experience into another person’s thinking. One of my favorite quotes comes from Anais Nin, “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

Perhaps that is why I find it so important to tell my grandchildren how innately good they are, every time I see them. At least once. And to encourage them when they show compassion for others. Nine-year-old Kate talks about setting up a benefit for a friend in need. No, I have no idea how she would do it. But that won’t stop me from encouraging her. The world is filled with surprises, and even if those surprises aren’t wonderful, if children learn they have power deep inside, they will be okay. At least eventually. That is my prayer.

Bill and me 08192013_0000

Read Full Post »

The Clubhouse in the Attic

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.  (Nelson Mandela)

Service we needed done in our house takes up a large portion of the afternoon: drilling, decisions, and comforting a five-year-old who doesn’t like noise. No time left to go to the Y for a swim. I expect Kate and Rebe to express serious disappointment. They handle the situation well.

Rebe gets custody of PBS Kids on my iPad while nine-year-old Kate and I do artwork in the second-floor storage area of our house. There is no air-conditioning here since we have no place for duct work, but this has been declared girl territory, a clubhouse arena of sorts. The heat isn’t as horrid as August usually offers. I’m holding out. Rebe manages for a while, and then returns downstairs to the cooler air and Grandpa.

“You can have this page,” Kate says, tearing it out of her brand-new book of designs to create and color. “You can make cards for the family, and then copy them on the computer.” Kate is always planning. She wants to turn our storage area into a play room. That will take not only time but ingenuity. With Kate’s enthusiasm, however, I can see it happening.

She watches as I show her how to blend colored pencil, rounding strokes inside a circle, adding depth by easing orange around the edges of yellow. “See how it looks if you leave a tiny bit of white in a block of turquoise—on purpose.”

We share, heart to heart. I feel free to tell her that someday Grandma and Grandma may need to sell this house and move to a condo, when Grandpa gets too old to mow the grass. Not now. Someday.

“I hope that never happens,” she says. “There are too many memories in this house.”

I am impressed by the depth of a child who hasn’t reached double digits yet. She adds that she is not disappointed that she didn’t get to swim today. She got to spend time with me.

I look around at the haphazard space around us: old blankets, photos, a box with my old published materials, the dolls I bought for my mother—nothing of outstanding value. No one from Better Homes and Gardens has ever approached us with an offer to do an article. Nor do I expect any in the future. Yet, I am blessed.

Finally Rebe returns upstairs, her demeanor comments on the heat as she looks at us working in the corner. “Whatever are you thinking?” she asks.

Kate and I laugh. One more memory has been added to the rest.

learning from children morning coach

Read Full Post »

Perfect is Only an Adjective

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2013| 1 Comment »

There’s something ugly about the flawless. (Dennis Lehane)

As a child I thought perfection was attainable. Expected. On multiple levels.

On an achievement test my sixth-grade teacher emphasized how important it was to erase completely. Pencil residue could be picked up and two filled-in boxes would mean an automatic wrong answer. I sat in the back corner of the room and sighed. That day had been particularly difficult, although I don’t recall why.

Not far into the test I needed to erase. The process became gruesome to this literal student. I moved so slowly through the pages that I eventually gave up. The next year the psychologically ignorant teacher positioned us in rows according to the grade we got on that test. There wasn’t enough room for the last two rows of desks—they were shoved together. I sat in the dummy section. After all, if we cheated the answers were bound to be wrong.

I must admit that seventh grade turned out to be fun. I sat next to the class clown. However, the image that teacher had of me stuck and showed up in my grades. Once again, why bother?

Then, that winter we were given an assignment to write a one-act play based on a book by a Catholic author. Mine was taken from “Fabiola” by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, first published in 1854, a, thick book from my parents’ book shelves. It spoke of persecution in the lives of early Christians in the catacombs during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian. My teacher did not believe I had read the book much less written the play. My parents needed to verify the fact that I had chosen each word with the required fountain pen at the kitchen table. I had to bring the book to class so that both the principal and teacher could see that I had not plagiarized my assignment. Strangely, I was not frightened. I knew the work I had done was honest.

I won first prize in the Greater Cincinnati area from that one-act play. My grades improved drastically. Yet I was the same child, in the same row. By then I wouldn’t have chosen to sit anywhere else.

Those students I sat next to weren’t dummies either. Perhaps their skills didn’t include diagramming sentences and answering multiplication tables within a given number of seconds. I have no doubt that those conjoined rows housed kids who eventually owned their own businesses or who became beloved parents and grandparents, exemplary citizens, military heroes. They became folk who could find that glitch in a car’s engine no one else could find. Many probably graduated from college and earned degrees because they had learned to work for what they wanted.

They created common miracles no one ever chronicled. We are all important—in different ways.

(pic from Positive Words to Love By)

dogs and differences Positive WoRds

Read Full Post »

“Things,” Wisdom, and Love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2013| 2 Comments »

Every human being’s essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature. (Lao-Tzu, philosopher 6th century BCE) 

A fellow writer and very successful blogger avoids the word, thing, as if it belonged in the bottom of the pit of grammatical horrors. He’s right; ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time another word gives a better description. That doesn’t stop me from saying, “I’m not that interested in “things.” Most people understand what I mean. My second-hand furniture and ’97 Toyota with enough dents to belong in a demolition derby, are adequate for my needs. I don’t require designer clothing to feel okay inside.

Interior satisfaction costs far more than any expensive object. It means tearing up the me-schedule. It means listening instead of talking. Waiting instead of hurrying. It means abdicating the center of the universe position.

Interior peace comes with patience, with recognizing beauty in places that aren’t obvious. A good friend tells the story of her daughter when she was in kindergarten. “Mommy, my teacher is so beautiful!” But when the friend met the teacher she saw a woman with incredibly plain features. Not until the woman spoke and her eyes sparkled with love and enthusiasm, did my friend see what her daughter had experienced—true and deep beauty.

I feel that brilliance in the person of my three-year-old granddaughter, Ella. She has physical attractiveness, almost white hair, saucer-sized blue eyes. But Down syndrome has delayed her development. She sounds out words phonetically, gets excited about the magnetic letters on our refrigerator, yet has never said more than two words together. And those moments have been rare. Yet, she understands and responds with a love few adults have mastered.

I learn from her more than she learns from me. I would have to give up a lot of pride to even consider touching her level of acceptance, her innate wisdom.

Perhaps that is part of the reason why I renounce “things” in such a general way. No one noun covers the entire experience. The world isn’t clear enough to me yet, everything that I need, everything I don’t.

I require further lessons from less complicated folk.

having what you want, wanting it

Read Full Post »

The Inside of a Ping Pong Ball, The Outside of an Egg

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2013| 1 Comment »

Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken. (M. F. K. Fisher)

I wanted to get in trouble when I was in sixth grade so that I would be given a unique punishment: Write 500 words on the interior of a ping pong ball. However, I was sure that the punishment would be changed, suddenly, inexplicably, the second I chose to play the role of rebel. Besides, for me out-of-line felt as uncomfortable as drowning.

Actually, I have no idea what I would have written, probably something based on fantasy. Too many decades have passed to know for certain. I know the real me hadn’t emerged yet. It was inside that ping pong ball—or probably a better metaphor—my egg hadn’t hatched yet. While many people yearn to be young again, give me over-sixty and retired any day. Sure, it brings plenty of problems. I didn’t have arthritis then, and I didn’t need to get up at night to relieve a complaining bladder. Yet, in those days I wasn’t aware that the world held almost infinite possibilities. A zit on my chin signaled disaster. And no amount of logic could have convinced me otherwise.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why I love to get eye-to-eye with my grandchildren, let them know they are not second-class citizens because they are under age eighteen. I can’t spare them crises as they grow older, but I hope to ward off as many unnecessary traumas as possible.

“You are a natural swimmer,” I tell Rebe. Then I ask Kate to make up one more song, on the spot about a topic I give her: rainbows, sports, sunshine. The subject doesn’t matter. And most of the time my poor hearing doesn’t catch her lyrics. Doesn’t matter. My girls need to know they can do whatever they choose to do. They have potential that can break open and grow at any time. They are not the nothing inside a ping pong ball—like I thought I was.

No one is.

cracked-egg

Read Full Post »

Rubber Band Memory

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Some stories are true that never happened. (Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate) 

I open a desk drawer to get the fingernail clippers and get distracted by a huge bag of rubber bands. When did I buy them? And why? The answer isn’t what matters—it’s the story, locked somewhere in the past.

Who remember events that happened every summer of childhood? Well, there was that scout trip in the sixth grade. Or was it the seventh? Memory, it’s as solid as quicksand or as good a substitute for a tennis ball as a raw egg.

My husband and I were in the same room as someone told us a story; we didn’t hear the same version. I suspect that happens often. Anais Nin: “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

Nevertheless, emotions draw from a different kind of truth. I look into the eyes of my grandchildren. Even though their perceptions may come from fantasy or a limited world view, the girls speak with fresh honesty.

Therefore, I want to be careful about the moments I leave in time. Some of the facts may be adjusted along the way, so I want to recognize the good in bad news, the beautiful in a broken glass, or the sweet possibilities in a lemon.

The bag of rubber bands has a gaping hole in its side. Many of the bands had to have been used. Perhaps a few have broken. Maybe some have bound important papers, while others found their way to the trash, or another state. Don’t know.

Truth lives in a deeper realm, a place poets touch yet never embrace. It passes through too many hearts.

heart cloud

Read Full Post »

Talking Freckles

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 11, 2013| 1 Comment »

If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud. (Emile Zola)

On land I could never run with a lanky nine-year-old girl on my back. In the water, however, I pretend to be a horse. So does my husband—with five-year-old Rebe on his back. Jay moves much faster. In or out of the water. I’m more pony height.

When Grandma horse and Grandpa horse trade riders, Rebe gives me a name. At first it is Sleigh-ride. Then she changes it to Head-chopper. Kate turns Grandpa into a dolphin, more appropriate for the water. Imagination “reigns.”

Then Kate chooses another game. What if things spoke? What would an object say if it could? She calls out a word and my job is to give it a voice in two to three sentences. Most of my responses wouldn’t be worth editing. Fine for grandparent-grandchild play, but way too silly for a public forum. Moreover, I can’t remember all of the inanimate objects she suggests.

“Freckle,” Kate says.

A good friend calls them angel kisses. Summer has made Kate’s darker and larger, a random pattern like wildflowers scattered in a field. I see part tomboy and part let’s-pretend feminine. I see blossoming kindness, innate to her being.

But I don’t alter the game with metaphors, even if they do compliment my young granddaughter. I say something about how the fresh dark freckle chatters away to a face, and that face ignores it. Somehow, Kate finds the scenario hilarious.

Objects don’t communicate, except in fantasy. And people aren’t always that good at it either. I know I can assume. Sure, I hear what another person says. Sort of. Not on every level. That takes time.

Perhaps I’m not always clear either. It helps if I can learn to live as out loud as my grandchildren. Celebrate life as it comes. Learn. Be. Grow. No matter what. Celebrate color as if it had the power of breath, and recognize the power of dreams.

I dream in color

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »