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Posts Tagged ‘self-awareness’

Dust, Flaws, and Possibilities

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. (George Orwell)

Last week while Jay and I vacationed in Colorado, a housekeeping crew caught the dust before it settled on anything. In my home dust moves much faster than I do. But it doesn’t need to be my enemy, even if it is listed among the many allergens that make me sneeze or wheeze.

Actually, the only reasons I bother cleaning are to breathe and to live without complete chaos. No innate satisfaction involved. So, to keep my mind from feeling like a soiled rag I need to think deeper than spilled soup on the stove. What lies above and below the stains? What is important? What isn’t?  What should change in my life now, and what can only happen slowly? Not always as obvious as the question sounds. It’s so easy to wipe off the surface of a problem and leave resentment behind.

When someone admits a flaw I can relate. The trick seems to be in finding a balance since I tend to be easier on others than I am on myself.

Sometimes, to clarify perspective I try to see through the eyes of someone with simpler vision. On Wednesday our five-year-old granddaughter spent the day with us. She loves spending time with Grandma. As she pretended to give birth to twins, two soft dolls stuffed under her shirt, she said, “Look, they are wearing caps.”

Impossible in the real world? Well, yes. But she is centered in childhood’s innocence. The fact that her grandparents slept until five minutes before she arrived, didn’t faze her. She needed an unmade bed for her thirty-second spontaneous doll delivery, and a too-neat bedspread would have been in the way.

Grandma plays with her. Maybe I don’t have the same spontaneity as a kindergartener. I’m a bit stiff when it comes to switching roles mid-play, and I get distracted when the pretend world creates too much clutter in the world the grown-up Grandma will need to repair later. However, there are many levels in this existence, all happening at once. Dust and grime, imagination, beauty, and infinite possibility—all coexisting. I don’t want my blackened dust cloth to distract me from the whole.

pic from Positive Inspirational Quotes

different perspective PIQ

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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

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Memory Soup

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the
foresight to know where you’re going, and the insight to know
when you’re going too far. (Irish Blessing)

 I like to create meals, not throw a piece of baked chicken and microwaved potato on a paper plate and call it dinner. Nothing wrong with that. Sustenance is sustenance. However, in everyday life I prefer adding the attitude of gifting to my daily preparation: a color, a spice, or a hidden nutrient.

On those rare instances when my husband is out of town or has other plans for the evening, my spark fizzles. I have no interest in planning a surprise party for myself, no one else invited.

Sure I could “should” all over myself about how eating well is not pampering. But, it’s like going to the movies alone—no one to share the story with after the show.

In time either Jay or I will be alone; it’s inevitable since invincible isn’t part of the human condition. I’m meeting with a friend this week who knows that experience. Living alone. Grief. Cooking for one. Recalling the past. Walking into the future one baby step at a time.

So, I decided to share—soup, for me, for my friend. Besides, a pot holds as much liquid as I am willing to give it. And, I can save a portion for my granddaughter Ella.  She loves my homemade chicken soup. She absorbs it: through her pores, into her hair, over her shirt, spilled onto the floor. Soup Ella-style is more than a meal. It is an experience.

For this pot I will add all the usual ingredients: water, Amish bouillon, garlic, onion, pepper, and simmer it in the Crockpot for hours. I will also add prayer and good wishes, a willingness to accept the present as it is, leave the past to itself, and embrace the future. I have regrets. Don’t we all? But living there doesn’t change anything.

Each batch of soup tastes slightly different. I don’t use a recipe. But then life doesn’t follow rules in any exact order either.

For all, may this day bring unexpected blessings, and blend them with both the rare and precious.

for you

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Being and Seeing the Beautiful

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2013| 1 Comment »

 A diamond doesn’t know how valuable it is to others. (Mark Tyrrell)

Five-year-old Rebe churns the water as she reaches the halfway point in the swim test lane. Anyone watching would have known I was her grandmother, even if I wasn’t screaming. My grin takes over my face.

Early last year she played in the shallow end—safe, preferring to stay in the pretend world. Within months she jumped off the side and let Grandpa catch her. Oh, she still loves the imaginative. But, this expansion of her spirit warms me. The next step, to tread water for a short period of time, should be easy for her, as soon as she gains the confidence. I have no doubt that she could have traveled the length of the pool, back and forth, as easily as she could have walked poolside.

You are a diamond, little girl. Your surfaces haven’t been polished yet, but, somehow, that gives the innate you even more possibility.

Of course I don’t talk to a five-year-old child in metaphors. “Good job, Rebe,” suffices.

I want my granddaughter to see her potential, her beauty. However, as I think about some grownup friends, I realize it’s not necessarily that easy to reflect the goodness I see. When someone suffers deep sadness, pain takes over.

I tell one of my friends what I see in her. She can’t look me in the eye. She isn’t ready to accept anything more than grief. And, somehow, I suspect I would not fare any better if I walked her path.

Perhaps it isn’t easy for any diamond to be shaped and formed, not easy for any person to develop either—at any age.

 In the meantime, an almost kindergartener passed her first swim test at the Y. And a yellow wrist band sparkles, in its own way.

(pic from Positive Inspirational Quotes)

becoming PIQ

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One Gentle, Annoying Infinite-Loop Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. (Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher, 1828-1910)

A song I wrote recently runs through my head as I hunt for something I lost—the steroid inhaler I use to prevent asthma attacks. It was on my dresser. Now it disappeared, melted as if it were some kind of metallic ice, and then evaporated. The repeating song has an uplifting tone; my spirit doesn’t want to go there. Is this just a walk along a city street or is this a way of seeing? The words explore attitude. Do I notice soot-stained curbs or bird-filled trees? All a matter of attitude.

My attitude wants to sink, throw something rather than systematically search. No, I am not facing immediate danger. Discomfort? Yes. And I am missing my writing time by organizing areas where I could have accidentally placed it while doing a bad job of multitasking. This wasn’t in the day’s plan. Moreover, my effort delivers nothing. Yet.

The song continues to play through my skull like the hold music that comes after, “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. There are 615 callers in line ahead of yours.”

Okay, I hear you, song. I’ll try to find the good in the moment. Ah, what is this, hidden on the side of my dresser? Something that I was absolutely certain I put somewhere else—and I need it in three hours. Hmmn, yeah, well, I guess that could be called good news. And I finished organizing an area or two that’s needed it for months.

You can stop that incessant singing at any time now, Terry, I tell myself. I got the message! Oh well, I guess it’s better than the old camp favorite, “A thousand bottles of beer on the wall,” especially since I don’t drink anything stronger than orange juice.

Ear plugs don’t help in this situation; one step at a time does, maybe with a little rhythm added.

pic from Positive Inspirational Quotes

stumble part of dance PIQ

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One More Time, From the Top

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2013| 4 Comments »

My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn. (Louis Adamic)

I feel ridiculous. Sure I know how to tune my guitar. Strings get out of tune—all the time. I did this last night in forty seconds. Too much warmth and the wood swells; the sound becomes sharp. When the temperature drops the wood contracts. The E string goes flat and the others drop out, too. But, I’m using a different kind of tuner. The Snark works even in a noisy room. The room is filled with conversation, shouting, laughter. I’m the one distracted, not the electronic device.

Fortunately, a few deep breaths and minor adjustments remind me of the obvious. Externally, I appear calm. All I have to do is tell my internal self to do the same. I have at least thirty minutes of music prepared. Won’t need anywhere near that much for the few minutes I have at the YMCA senior luncheon, before and after the speaker. Today’s topic: “The Wise Way to a Healthier Brain.”

My part of the preparation feels like studying for an important exam: sixty hours of an intense mental workout for an hour’s worth of questions and answers. But then music is different. It is something the soul gives itself, for its own sake. The music lover doesn’t count practice hours. Actually, I have no idea how many hours I have spent getting ready.

Several years ago I stopped playing for months, many months. During that time my hands succumbed to arthritis. When I came back to my Big Baby Taylor, my fingers didn’t want to do what they once could handle easily. So, I did what anyone else who is foolish would do, I scheduled a gig, and forced those digits to cooperate. They did. Somewhat. However, since this girl didn’t pluck a string until she was in her mid-fifties, she can hardly be called a professional. Stubborn? Well, that is another matter. I have sat on my bed and played, paused, and then thrust my hand into a warm wrap to recover before continuing.

Come on, you can do it, I think. The arthritis pain is low right now. My middle finger on my right hand suffers most. But, my friend, Antoinette, did healing touch on it yesterday, and showed me how to send warmth to the swollen site. Here is one of the suggested techniques: http://www.spirithospital.com/Article–Healing-Mudras.html So far it is working. Positive thinking, more than a concept.

“The sound is ready. Go ahead,” I’m told.

Well, the sound could be better. I do what I can and give my best anyway.

Oh, very little in life is perfect, but several folk ask for the words to my original work. That is a plus. Seniors don’t applaud unless they mean it, and they clap with enthusiasm. My three-year-old granddaughter waves to me from the back, but doesn’t try to run from Grandpa and leap on stage. Perhaps the size of the group is too intimidating for that move. There are at least 150 people at the luncheon, not that I would stop to count.

I started awfully late in life to become a great musician, but if all I wanted was perfection I would miss out on a lot of joy, a lot of opportunity, and find regret instead.

Smiling, I pack my supplies after the event ends.

“We’ll have a better sound system for you the next time,” the set-up person says.

Okay. I guess there is going to be a next time. A few inflamed joints can’t win yet!

pic from The Optimism Revolution

music feelings The Optimism Revolution

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Scrubbing the Stove, Freeing the Mind

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2013| 4 Comments »

There is a road

that runs straight through your heart.

Walk on it.

(Macrina Wiederkehr, “Seasons of Your Heart”)

The top of my stove needs a good scrubbing. It wears the residue of dinner, at least the splattering from it. I’m amazed at how much it wants to remain adhered to the surface, like a memory: a trauma perhaps, or a life changing event.

Instead of staying with these thoughts I think about the joy I’ve had preparing special foods on this surface. I have created my own recipes, many that worked. I have also followed the directions in a cookbook, then dumped the result into the garbage, like the time I added baking soda instead of corn starch to a cherry pie filling. That caused one bubbling mess before I realized what I had done wrong. The clue came when I saw an unopened box of cornstarch on my counter. It helps to smile at my own foibles. After all, no one, except the cook, suffered from that experience.

The word suffered brings me back to my original concerns. Some folk I love are hurting. And I can’t scrub out their problems with elbow grease and a steel wool pad. I can diffuse the energy that binds me by cleaning—praying all the way. Somehow, that helps. Don’t know how, but it does.

You can’t change anyone but yourself. Not a new concept. But haven’t most of us tried, in one way or another? “Shoulding” all over someone leads to frustration. Distant silence translates into I-don’t-care. How, just how, do you find a way of letting people find answers? I listen. Yes, but it feels so helpless sometimes.

Eventually, as I scrub, I look outside and see the trees covered with snow. It’s the end of March. That isn’t out-like-a lamb, the way spring is expected to appear. Mother Nature doesn’t need permission from the calendar. The branches create an incredible, random pattern of white, one that won’t remain forever. Spring will arrive. At least it always has. The snow on the street has already melted.

The passageway out has opened. Now that the stove shines again, I look for the road that runs through my heart. It considers the possibility of miracles. They could happen. Maybe not. In the meantime, I release all choices that are not mine, and whisper love without judgment for someone special to me. The gray lifts as the sun peeks through, just a little. Hope. No promises.

I accept that as enough, for now, and take a stroll through the road that passes directly into my heart.

walking in the light

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True and False Memories and a Ten-Cent Parking Meter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 20, 2013| 1 Comment »

The future is there…looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. (William Gibson)

I have just picked up Kate from school on the Friday of Kate’s ninth birthday party. We are on our way to get her little sister, Rebe, at her baby sitter’s house.

“Remember when I was in pre-school, Grandma?” Kate remarks. “You used to pick me up every day.”

My brain has an overflow valve. When it gets full, memories leak out. But this scenario is most unlikely. When Kate was four-years-old I worked in a hospital pharmacy. Sure, on Fridays, my day off, Kate and I went to the library for story-time, but that was not a daily event. I tell her so.

“Uh uh, I remember it.”

Apparently that time at the library expanded in her short-life’s memory data base. Books, a delightful children’s librarian, and Grandma must have been important to her. Somehow I don’t feel compelled to argue about facts, details. Her emotions surrounding that Friday event remain solid, valid, despite exaggeration. Some other day we will explore reality.

Recently my husband, Jay, and I traveled with another couple to Grantsville, West Virginia, where he and his friend since high school visited in the late 1960s. They stayed at a hotel owned by a navy friend of Jay’s. Our traveling team had no expectation of reliving those days; the hotel closed and the owner died several years ago. However, Jay’s friend had wanted to return to the area. The trip was a pilgrimage of sorts.

The charm of Grantsville  has remained, population listed on the 2010 census as 562. It went up to 563 in 2011. Grantsville is located in the heart of West Virginia, the quintessential small town. I knew where we were going to stop for lunch when I saw the sign on the local restaurant: Come in as strangers. Leave as friends.

The first person we met, at a small local museum, had an eerie resemblance to the hotel owner when he was younger. However, he said he is not related to the owner in any way. The hotel is set for demolition. I’d hate to think we went back into time—via Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone series that aired from 1959 to 1964.

Since we left intact, I’m pretty sure we didn’t journey into another dimension. The parking meters, however, did belong to another time, a pleasant surprise. Jay pulled a quarter from his pocket. There was no slot for it, only for nickels and dimes.

Therefore, I had to have a photo of that meter. Someday we can say, “Remember in 2013 when we stopped in that town and got 1 ½ hours’ worth of parking for 15 cents?”

Actually, I’d much rather recall snuggling with my grandchildren on the day of Kate’s birthday party—and maybe even exaggerate the heck out of how long that time had been. A little equal time in the false-memory game is fair play.

parking meter Grantsville WV March 2013

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Music In the Key of A for Arthritis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 20, 2013| 1 Comment »

Aging is not “lost youth” but a new stage of opportunity and strength. (Betty Friedan)

The knuckle on my middle finger on my right hand looks like it belongs on a gnarled tree branch, the kind that has led a part of the tree in a peculiar unexpected direction.  Oh, my skin, bones, eyes and ears have aged, too. In fact my five-year-old granddaughter asked who the bride was in the forty-one-year-old photo on her grandfather’s dresser. I laughed at that one. But it’s that finger that troubles me now. It gets in the way of smooth finger-picking on the guitar. And I have three gigs lined up these next two months.

I am not the only person who needs to overcome difficulties to get to a goal. Pictures fill the Internet of runners on  prosthetic legs. I revel in stories of  persons who have survived stage-four cancer or the young person with Down syndrome who earns a college degree. My challenge isn’t that great—all I ask is to entertain a few seniors at the YMCA and nursing home and make them smile, perhaps sing a few more years and let new words and chord patterns blend into a fresh song.

The going has been rough, especially in southwest Ohio where temperatures tend to be bipolar. Middle finger says uh-uh and nicks the wrong string or rebels entirely.

“Oh no you don’t,” I tell it as if it were a belligerent child. Then try again.

Funny, that hasn’t eased the pain one bit. Help came from another source—a call from the Activities Center at the nursing home where I played last month. “Can you come back on March 21 when we celebrate birthdays?” The voice on the other end sounds sunny. Apparently I got good reviews from the residents, despite middle finger’s balking. I mean, ouch isn’t in any of the lyrics. By the end of my last performance I had to single strum a few times before beginning again.

The arthritic rebellion quieted after that phone call. I managed the Travis pick without swollen, painful interruption. Apparently, yes you can are powerful words. I have decided to use them even more often as I speak to other people—maybe even give myself reinforcement instead of reprimand. Who knows what can happen?

from the Optimism Revolution

expect miracles Optimism Revolution

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Ageless Enthusiasm

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

We are always the same age inside. (Gertrude Stein)

My maternal grandmother was a consummate seamstress. If she could imagine it, she could sew it. When she was a young woman she took a notebook to store windows, made crude sketches, and then went home and recreated what she saw—tailored to size for select customers.

Once she made a dress with a spider-webbed skirt. I never saw it since she had constructed it long before I was born. It remains part of the legend of Grandma. No one ever mentioned how much she earned; I got the clear impression her work was severely under-priced.

I decided to become a fashion designer when I was in middle grade school, probably because of the stories I heard about Grandma. I loved to draw. I made detailed descriptions of the front and back of dresses. Since I wasn’t keen on cleaning up after myself, I left my work and crayons lying around for Grandma to pick up.

Instead of complaining, Grandma made one of my imagined designs for me: a teal sleeveless dress with V-neck and V-back with a long fabric bow that reached almost to the hem line, a cinched waist, and billowing skirt. My grandmother always made clothes for me that were a tad too big, a result of Depression-era thinking. Clothing needed to last—for as long as possible. Hard times could appear again, by her way of thinking. She knew what it was like to have no food in the house. She remembered an occasion when her cupboard had been bare until her brother stopped by with a bushel of green beans. So, my custom-made dress was mad to last a loooong time.

Perhaps that fear that those few dollars she spent on cloth may never be replaced made her gift even more precious. Nevertheless, I recall how excited I was when I saw her creation, the shine in Grandma’s blue eyes—her payment, a granddaughter’s enthusiastic thank-you. I felt an appreciation of my ability to be creative, too. I could put down an idea on paper, then watch it develop, step into real life.

Enthusiasm comes naturally to a child who knows she is loved. That love doesn’t have to be perfect, just available, from some steady source. Grandma’s quiet presence and steady needle were always there.

I may never know what gifts I leave to my grandchildren. I can only guess. When I picked up Rebecca from pre-school last week she told me she had a surprise and couldn’t wait to show me: a picture of mittens, one colored yellow and the other blue. The text read: “If my grandma made me mittens . . .” I gathered that she was stating that whatever I give my girls, it wouldn’t be traditional. So far they each have a song and  a poem. Rebe envisions mittens in mismatched colors.

As long as joy is included in some form, it doesn’t matter how it arrives, colored in yellow, blue, plaid or indigo.

“What should we play now?” I asked her, eye to eye. After all, we were the same age at that moment, both children in spirit, eager to share our enthusiasm for one another.

“House,” she answered. Always the same answer, never the same game.

growing old optional

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