Rhonda
Yesterday ended the first official week of my retirement from the cleaning industry. It also marked my first official week of entry into the estate service industry. I am still not entirely sure how I feel about both of those facts. I had entered the cleaning industry full time over twelve years ago with the intention of being there forever, contributing and consulting, making money and spreading happiness and joy in people’s homes and businesses simply by giving them a clean place to “do life”. I envisioned my company large, even maybe franchising it, and I set about tooling systems and procedures and policies to support that big vision. And you know…I was successful at it, or so I thought, for a good deal of that twelve years. What began as a way to make a living became a life, and I had convinced myself that this life was what I wanted. But while I was enabling another person or family to live a good clean, simple happy life through my services and efforts, I was slowly but surely exchanging my own life and true happiness for big time worry in the process.
About three years ago, my cleaning company was at the peak of productivity and I had finally brought it to the brink of scaling to the next level. Discussions with a few people about franchising or at the very least opening another location in one of the nearby cities had taken place. There were 12 cleaning techs on staff, an operations manager, route manager, supply manager, and I had even added a personal assistant to aid in some HR issues and also schedule my company events and handle many of my personal needs to free up my own time. I was living it all in high cotton, or so I thought.
Then the page turned.
Over the next three years, my company experienced extreme crashing and burning in regards to the staffing which coincided with the same type crashing and burning in my customer base. This was very unexpected and hit me broadside. We were servicing almost 200 regular residential accounts a month (many of those getting cleaned multiple times in a month), 10 commercial accounts, scads of move in/move out and other add-on cleanings, and I was nearing an amount of revenue I had only dreamed about when I opened the doors. We were listed among the top two cleaning companies in the Tri-State area and it had become almost a formality to go out and bid the jobs because we had a closing rate of near 100% of anything we bid due to our reputation in the area. People were on a waiting list to get serviced. But….my staff was feeling like workhorses rather than thoroughbreds. At the same time the big economy crash came along and stressed our customers to the point of cutting back services. And still I plowed on not seeing that the reduction of customers was affecting my staff and they were growing restless in their daily work because they were feeling personal strain and insecurity in a company that seemed to be losing its market share. I proceeded with the idea that we just needed to add back in more customers, market and advertise more, take on the work that we would have refused in the past because it hadn’t fit our criterion of cleaning, and just move forward with my big vision. My mantra became “Trust me, I know what’s best for you.” Funny thing is, when the staff began quitting, and the customers starting cancelling services altogether, they were saying the same thing to me by their actions. I realize that now….and I also realize they were right, they did know best.
In my motivation to make it all work, to BE what I had created, I began to lose the essence of why I was there in the first place…to make life simple and better for a person and a family. And ultimately I was the one suffering the most in those areas. I had forgotten two very essential ingredients of success….caring for others begins with self-love, and self-love cannot be rushed.
How many of us work the plan only to find out we didn’t include our passions and dreams at all in that plan? How many times, in our attempt to do for another, do we throw our own needs and wants to the curb and think we will find self-fulfillment in something or someone else? We work to eat, buy things, gain fame or recognition, but we are building a life that is not sustainable really because it isn’t nourishing those real loves of our own life. We gauge our success on a bank account or how many people are working for us, titles we affix to those people or whether we have to check the bank account daily to make sure we have money for the house note. Or we base our contentment and our value on what we see reflected in another person when we are in a relationship, be it friendship or more. Then those things start falling away and not working, but we don’t see it right away. Our internal voice begins to shout to get our attention but we cannot hear it over our own voice screaming at others “Trust me, I know what’s best for you.” Rather than walk at a steady pace, we begin to trot a little and over time we pick up our gait because we finally feel something is not working and it must be because I am not running fast enough or not doing “something”. When we walk through life, we can see everything….the leaves on the trees, the flowers by the road, ants and spiders…but when we run, all we can see is a blur of these things. We know they are there, but we cannot experience them. And if there is danger or anything that needs to be changed or maybe even dismissed from our life, we miss it because we are running so hard. It’s difficult and nigh on to impossible to change your path or adjust course quickly if you are running rather than walking. And even worse, we cannot see the ruts and holes and we end up flinging ourselves headlong into a place we were never meant to be. We lie there, the dust settles and we think “What just happened?”
Life just did you a favor, my friend.
At this point, we either lie face down in the dirt or we get up and start walking again. In my case, I still had worry inside and unfortunately I wasn’t ready to get up right away. I laid there, cried and ranted, beat the ground with my fists, shouted out for help…but there seemed to be no one there to hear me. Epiphanies happen when you are lying there, if you let them happen. And I thank God mine did.
I realized I was running and fighting for something I really didn’t even want anymore. I wasn’t being nourished, my creativity had been relegated to the side of the road and I passed it every so often, but had not given in to stopping and pursuing that creativity in years. Happiness had been replaced by the worries of the day, and I dreaded getting up in the morning rather than looking at each day as a clean palette. I laid there in the dirt and remembered…I love to paint, to shop in thrift stores, make wreathes and beautiful things from nature, decorate my home, spend time with my family…where had all that gone?
Today I am at the beginning of the path once again, but this path is leading toward the things I love and starting at the right place…me. It sure is a lot better being “poor” in the bank account, not knowing whether the bills are going to get paid by a business you love, rather than for sure paid by a business you have grown cold in. And I am like a cold pig in warm slop…I love finding vintage items for my home and it is starting to look lived in again. I have started decorating and painting and even singing again and playing music while I work. I am gaining customers that have a love and common interest in the old and discarded, rusty and crusty junk that I do…and they see the same value in it. This is making all the difference to me. I have found my peeps! But more importantly, I have found me again.
Bob Marley was known for much, but his songs always spoke of the freedom and ease of life for someone who lives the moments and doesn’t worry too much about the days. I really don’t know if the type business I am enjoying now is going to “make it” or not…but I plan to gather the joy in this moment while I can, and just worry about those “do I stay or do I go” decisions when the time comes. But the day for my pursuit of happiness is now….and that is one thing I am not just not worried about anymore.
Once again, it is the season I look forward to each year at this time…my sabbatical journey to the most wonderful place on earth, the sugary sand beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama. Normally this is a trip I take alone, a time to regroup and refresh, make plans for business and personal life and in general just get away from it all. But this year, my mom is along for the ride and we are 4 days into the trip and having a great time doing a lot of nothing. And each of us is pretty darned happy with that aspect. It has been a difficult year for both of us. My normally very healthy Dad was stricken with a mysterious condition in April of 2012, and the ensuing year was full of doctors’ visits, medications, bouts with a body that is not functioning as it should, and no real answers about much of anything. My Dad is a strapping 6 foot tall big guy, and although he has lost a lot of weight through this, he still is a lot to handle for my petite 5 ft 2 Mom. But she has managed, they have grown a lot through the experience, and he is better although still not diagnosed to our liking.
I, on the other hand, have had a very interesting and involved year as well. This time last year I drove to the beach fresh from a divorce, and was also pretty unsure of some business decisions that were pending. I had started a new business in addition to my cleaning company, and the estate business was overtaking the cleaning company profits almost daily, but not to the level yet of paying all the bills, so I was still struggling with some decisions of where to go from that point professionally. It was a time of uncertainty, remorse in some ways, and just a general feeling of helplessness in many areas. But like Mom, I girded my loins, dug in and decided that my life could either turn down a sad path and one filled with anxiety or trepidation each day, or I could accept the unknowns as part of the journey and just move forward with as much strength as I could muster. This plan has worked pretty well and with mostly success for both of us. I also think we have both come to somewhat the same conclusion in at least one area. Neither of us needs what we thought we did this time last year, and our wants have changed to fit our circumstances and current lifestyles as well. And I think we are both the better because of it.
I wonder if there are multitudes of others like me…those wanting and needing so many things that ultimately we don’t have any use for and probably wouldn’t be happy attaining. I mull over what I may have thought I needed and wanted this time last year, and what I am willing to accept as best for me now and I marvel. The simple events and conversations at today’s sales kind of put me in that mindset, and as I sit writing I am reminded again of the complications of life that are usually brought on by the refusal of the simple things.
We headed out bright and early this morning and were eager to see how many new treasure troves we could find in this new stomping ground of thrift stores. We began with a few yard sales, an estate sale, and one interesting moving sale. The host couple were very beatnik, hippy-ish, but engaging and friendly as we pawed through their belongings. “Everything in the house is pretty much for sale, we are letting it all go and moving” said the young man. He stood there in flip flops, a tie-dyed shirt and jeans, and his pretty wife was attired in a flowing maxi skirt, tank top and barefoot, showing us this trinket or that bauble, informing about their online vintage goods store they had, their current job at LuLu’s the local hangout for beach goers, and the side detail that her hubby has a pilot’s license. The chit chat was light and fun, they were mild-mannered but smiling, but something told me there was a story here. I knew I was right when he volunteered to take our things to the car and the conversation continued on the way down the stairs and around the corner. “Yeah, we are selling it all and moving” he said once again and so I felt he was wanting me to ask “ And where are you moving?” so I obliged. He pointed out in the yard and said “There.” I turned and saw an old, not quite ancient RV sitting in the sand near the house. “Really? ” I said smiling, and he proceeded to tell Mom and me that they were simplifying things, moving into the RV and travelling and working wherever they ended up. The sale was to gain some travel money, lighten their load, and only involved them taking the most essential items…if they had a want along the way they would work for it and get it for the moment, anything they needed would be gained the same way. They were going to live a life of doing the next best thing, and just taking the next right step.
“What made you decide to do this, if you don’t mind me asking?” he hesitated only a second and said, with a bit of pride, “Well we realized we really didn’t need as much as others thought we did, or even we thought we did. We wanted to have an easier, quiet life. I told her all we really need is somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and a bit of company.” I realized then that this young man was describing what I have spent the last 53 years trying to gain, and have gone about it in mostly the wrong ways.
What do we really need when it comes right down to it? Not much I am thinking. We let TV, friends, family and that voice inside tell us we have to have the newest this and the brightest that to be happy. We have to have a great job, we have to know where our next sale is going to be made, or if the bills are going to be paid next week because we worked our rears off the right way this week. We want to know that our spouse is going to always be there for us, that our health is not going to tank and bring us down with some cruel and unrelenting disease. Our wants get so out of hand and blown out of proportion that we begin to confuse them with needs. And that’s where the trouble begins.
There are many times I go to a sale or thrift store and I come across a piece of furniture that looks ok enough but there is something not quite right about it. I can’t immediately put my finger on the maker or the era, and it is confusing to me to identify because there are so many indicators either missing from it or there are pieces and points that are there but shouldn’t be on that particular type piece. After careful inspection I see that the original patina is gone, the original paint is covered over with many years worth of finishes and latexes and it is nothing like it started out when the woodworker carved and joined the pieces lovingly in his shop many moons before.
It is the same with people. There comes a time when we must strip down the layers of lies in our own lives. If we do not, we become like that old piece of furniture that has so many loads of unnecessary paint from over the years on the surface that the piece itself has even changed shape and started to become unrecognizable. I don’t want to wake up and not recognize my own life. And to make sure that doesn’t happen, it is time to strip away the old wants and come face to face with my real needs, then begin rebuilding and refinishing that life into what it was meant to be in the first place.
Later as I sat on the balcony of my condo in the quietness of approaching evening, I watched a little boy playing and jumping from each abandoned slatted beach chair to the ground wielding an imaginary sword in his hand. He was solo, and he seemed pretty happy and content all alone in his world of make-believe. All around him the beach crawled with Labor Day visitors, other much louder, boisterous youngsters playing with some sophisticated boogie boards and beach paraphernalia. From the 12th floor, I could hear radios playing, and winced at the loud raucous laughter of beachgoers with a few too many umbrella drinks under their belts, and could view all kinds of frenetic activity all around this boy…and he still played his game, all alone, and smiling. And I suddenly wanted to be him. Or maybe I wanted to be in the RV with the young couple forging their new life. Either way, it was enticing and a “moment” for me.
I sat and thought a lot on the balcony this day and spent some time quietly reflecting back on all the transitions I have gone through in my life, and I realized that the things I learned today are the real secret to a truly happy life. Wants and needs can pretty much look the same on the surface and I will get dramatically confused if I pile on too much of either in life. It’s best to keep it simple, don’t worry HOW it is going to happen, or WHEN it will all make a turn…just find a place to sleep, something to eat, and a bit of company and my guess is I will be as happy as the little beach boy.
At the end of my musing, a small plane flew by over all the loud noisy beachgoers. Trailing out behind it was a billboard banner claiming “Best fried shrimp in the civilized world”. I looked down and saw the boy stop his jumping, look up at the plane and wave, while all around him others went right on with their noisy behavior. I waved too…and thought maybe I would like to try that shrimp, and maybe talk Mom into going too…it was, after all, high time for us both to get something to eat…
I was out with my grown daughter the other day and while I was driving I asked her to make a call for me. She scrolled through my contact list looking for a particular number and ran across the entry for herself in my phone. “Why does it say I.C.E. on the listing for my number?” she asked. I was kind of surprised she had not heard about this and explained that if anything happened to someone while they were out, the emergency personnel would take the person’s phone, scan through the numbers and try and locate a specific person to contact if there was an accident or other catastrophe. So often families don’t share the same last name these days, so they wouldn’t really know who to call unless they ran across an entry that said “Mom” or “Daddy”, or maybe ” My sweetheart”, or “Soul Mate” or some other cutsey name for a significant other. But they are trained to look for the letters I.C.E. which stands for in case of emergency. “You are my person” I told her.
Less than a week after that day, I was watching one of a billion reruns of Grey’s Anatomy.In the series, Meredith is always just short of a true love relationship with Dr. McDreamy because she suffers from abandonment issues due to an overbearing mother and alcoholic father who left when she was 5. Christina on the other hand is a robotic Oriental surgeon, excellent at her craft but not so great at warmth and emotion which constantly wreaked havoc on her relationship with her gentler, more mushy boyfriend. The scene opens with Meredith sitting forlornly at the bar and Christina walks in after making an appointment at a clinic to have a secret abortion. Her gentle boyfriend had not been able to take her distance and ended the relationship just as she had found she was pregnant. They were very new friends, and Christina had uncharacteristically shared this very intimate part of her life with Meredith the day before. Meredith really didn’t know why she had shared, but she had listened, giving no advice and asking no questions.
“The clinic has a policy”, Christina began, “They wouldn’t let me confirm my appointment unless I designated an emergency contact person…someone to be there just in case, and…to help me home…you know…after.” As Meredith turns to her, Christina briskly says “Anyway, I put your name down. That’s why I told you I’m pregnant. You’re my person.” Meredith looked at her intensely and said “I am?” “Yeah…you are.” And with that Meredith leaned over, placed her head on her shoulder and stayed there for a minute. ” You know this constitutes hugging, right?” the sterile, unemotional Christina muttered. ” Shut up, I am your person.” Meredith said, as the scene came to a close.
I have come to realize different phases in life each require a different person. It most often isn’t a spouse, or a family member. This is the one person you can talk to about anything, even the spouse and family member, and they will be right there loading the gun for your firing squad when you want to slay those who have crossed or upset you. They don’t always agree with you, but they do always support and encourage you in your own choices and decisions.
When I was in grade school, my person was A., a golden-haired shy little girl, very petite, neat and clean. We played at school, had the occasional sleepover, always sat next to each other at lunch. As time went on, we gathered other friends around us, but we always had this “thing”. Then one day, she came into school and told me she was moving when school let out the next week. I was devastated.
Over the next few years, I had other friends, some closer than others, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have that “person”. I even got to a point where I thought I didn’t need a “person”. I really didn’t want to begin all over training another friend in how to deal with my idiosyncracies and issues. I wanted A. back, or at least I thought I did. A. was safe. She was quiet. She knew me.
One day my next “person” came along. I was friends with a girl I had been in school with in grade school, but because A. was there too I had never really bonded with her in a close way. K. became my middle school “person”. We were in and out of each others’ houses, played games, sang and danced to Donnie Osmond records and tried real make up for the first time in the bathroom at school, unknown to both our mothers, or so we thought. We went to a lot of movies during this time and I remember going to see “Ode to Billy Joe”. K. had a thing for Robbie Benson at the time, so I begged my parents to go see the PG rated movie with her and they relented. Looking back, K. was either more worldly than me, or I was naive in spite of the world marching around me, but when the movie ended I had no idea what had happened in “the scene” that caused the bridge jump. My “person” had to explain it to me…boy, talk about embarrassing, but nonetheless bonding.
When we entered high school, K. and I remained friends but we drifted for whatever reason. We each got our own groups of friends, she graduated early, and I had met my next “person”, D. She was a beautiful, brown-eyed movie queen type, and all the boys flocked to her. Because I was her friend, and she was my “person” they flocked a bit to me too, by default anyway. We had another mutual friend, A., with big bosoms, long dark hair and pancake makeup. You never saw one of us without the other and soon we were dubbed “Charlie’s Angels”. Although I spent just as much time with A. as I did with D. overall, we never had the deep heart to heart talks, or shared the quiet silences of just being together. She called me Smitty, I called her DD, and we were a team. I knew difficulties she went through at home, she knew my failings, and we still were there for each other. She was my “person”. She stood up for me in my first marriage, and was there when my baby was born. But my heart was so broken when she got married and I wasn’t asked to be in her wedding. I found out later that it was because I had gained so much weight with my baby she didn’t want me in her wedding and had told a couple of mutual friends so it would get back to me. Funny, I had only gained 18 pounds with my pregnancy…but I lost around 125 when D. stopped being my “person”.
For so many years I didn’t have a “person”. I was wrapped up in child-rearing, homeschooling, trying to be a good wife and making a home. When the marriage soured, and we finally divorced after 22 years, I realized how much having a “person” was vital to survival for me and how much I missed that contact. I met K. through a ladies’ group on the internet. We both had relationships that were pretty textbook awful. But as soon as we met in real life the first time, we knew we were each others’ “person”. It is 13 years later, and although we live many miles apart we can pick up the phone and talk anytime about anything, or nothing at all. I have a “person” at the other end of the phone standing by like Captain Kangaroo’s sidekick Mr Moose….ready to drop ping pong balls on the insufferable moron who had rained on my day or made me sad.
Lately I have been feeling maybe I need another “person”. Not instead of long distance K., but in addition to…someone in town, close by to go shopping with, or talk to face to face. Someone ready to go see a movie or concert, or sit on the back deck and sip a glass of wine with me while the sun sets. There are days when you just need somebody to be with you, put their head on your shoulder and say “I am your person”, someone flesh and bones, someone flawed and imperfect, someone fun and crazy…or someone in case of “emergency”.
But I am not in a hurry, my “person” always appears at just the right time, in just the right way, for wherever I happen to be in my meandering through life. Until then, I am happy just being my own “person”, going through life carefully and diligently….and planning no emergencies anytime soon.
My grandchildren are growing up so fast…way too fast for this GiGi. Even though I live close and am able to see them several times a week as I drop off things to their mom or she comes by to visit, I am astounded by their changes. Max and Isaac, the twins, are now a little over a year old and have started standing, with Isaac taking a few tentative steps here and there. Max is more quiet, watching the world, and steamroller Isaac, move around him. He looks like he is always contemplating something or someone, and seems to be the “thinker” of the two. Although he is the first born of the twins, he is more sedate, content to watch the world…and his brother…go by. Isaac on the other hand is a rip and tear kind of kid. He is busy, moving, inquisitive, and very dexterous. He is the one who finds the bugs on the floor, the strings on the furniture, that piece of paper that missed the trash can. Nothing gets by him at all. He does have his moments of sitting and playing quietly, but they usually don’t last very long as he loses interest quickly.
Lorelai is still the reigning princess of the home, the big sister and mother substitute. She is always watching, taking care of her brothers, reading to them, giving them toys, calling Mommy if Isaac tries to chew up a foreign object or Max falls over behind the desk chair trying to get to the computer cords. Then there are those days when she reverts a tiny bit, will crawl into your lap and ask to be rocked. I’ve seen a lot more of this in my visits over the last few weeks. As her brothers are getting more mobile, they are requiring more from the adults in the family, including GiGi. I imagine she is making her silent statement now that SHE was the first grandchild and SHE is still here.
I have found through my own life experiences and outcomes, as in my grandchildren, many can be raised in the same household and same environment with the same opportunities and educational avenues, and still be so diverse in the way they respond to life in general. We choose to live our life out in one of three places…a cage, a coop or a cradle.
There are those who choose to live their lives confined. Much of the time, they live imprisoned by how they were raised or by whom. If they are told they are stupid or fat or unworthy when they are a kid, often they grow up thinking that is their true self. They never achieve, never break free of the chain someone placed on them and never allow themselves to say “ I am a decent and good person, and I have a great life that is worthy of being surrounded by other great people and things.” When someone comes along that is wonderful, they will shut the other person out right from the beginning because they think they are not good enough for them. This person only allows others in their lives that uphold the truth they believe about themselves and that is usually the old words of “you are no good.” This person lives their entire life in a cage, not so much to keep themselves in, but to keep others out. They never go beyond the words of their past to find that they have something good to offer others, and they are in reality a person that can be respected and acknowledged and affirmed. Those who reside in cages end up living alone with the one person they respect and love the least, and that is themselves.
Then there are those who are living in a kind of partial prison. They may have been told the same thing as the caged person, and raised much the same way and experienced many of the same things, but they know they can leave their confinement any time and often do. They listen to enough good things about themselves to realize they have something to give in this life, and the giving starts with themselves. They involve themselves in projects and big dreams, events and epiphanies their whole life through. But these are also the ones who end up as addicts of all kinds and people pleasers. They will spend time, money, relationships and most of their life hopping in and out of that little box they have placed themselves in. Every day is a new day…today I am succumbing to my voice of the past, and I will live a “no good” life, I don’t deserve grace, or mercy, or love or any other good thing offered to me. Just close my door and leave me alone, I will sleep, and drink, and eat, and squander my life in this pit I have created for myself because I don’t have what it takes to change it, or me. Then this same person reads a good book, or hears a great sermon, or has a wonderful person enter their life, and they let the door open just a crack, walk out gingerly into the expanse of their life and realize it can be different and wonderful. But alas, because they are a person who is conflicted inside, and listening to both voices saying opposite things about who they are, they will get frightened or uncomfortable and turn and crawl back into that partial prison because it is safe and familiar. These are the coop dwellers…those who want to live outside in the freedom, but cannot get past the comfort of their chains.
Then there are the cradle folks. One of the definitions of the word cradle is “small low bed for an infant.” It is the one we most often see and hear about, but there are others. A cradle is the term for the support underneath a ship that is being repaired. It is also the word used for a place of origin like “cradle of civilization”. An apparatus called a cradle protects an injured limb. A boxlike item that is used by gold diggers to wash away dirt and leave the gold is also called a cradle.
It is interesting…all these things are the starting point of something, someone, or some great work, but not expected to be the end result. It is simply how it began and a place to begin nurture, growth, and stabilization. There are moments in each life where we come to a crossroads of decision, and we have to choose which way to turn with the rest of our life. We choose an adult path of nurturing, growth or stabilization for ourselves, or we choose the opposite child’s path. The crossroads come for all of us, and it is the time to leave the cradle and be a big boy or girl…and this choice decides how the rest of life is supposed to be played out.
When life gets hard or changes come and we am not prepared for them, it is easy to be a Max and just sit and watch it all happen, and never really participate outside of the little “cage” we have drawn around us. Or we might respond like an Isaac and bounce from one thing to another, in and out, all about, and try and find what it is out there that will make us happy and content, but never staying in one place very long.
But I have decided to live my life as a cradle person and self-nurture, grow and stabilize without the aid of anyone or any outside extra source…just me and God. Just like Lorelai crawls back in my lap, I need to go to a safe, comforting place, and crawl into it when I am having a bad day or need a little extra nurturing. That’s when instead of choosing to go back to a cage or coop of old heartaches, addictions, and unhappiness, I can cradle my needs with a good book, a quiet devotional time, a trip to the beach, a cup of coffee with a friend, or a walk on a star-dusted evening. And the best part is when someone or something comes along that enhances those wonderful things already in me, it will just be a friendly and comforting hand rocking my cradle, not the cradle itself.
Today is my 53rd birthday. I remember thinking not so many years ago when I was a young kid that anything over 40 was old, and anything over 50 was pretty near dead. I have since changed my perception.
Looking forward to growing up, it seems life passes at a snail’s pace. From birth to about 4, you are learning about yourself and investigating the tiny environment of your own parent-controlled world. Dad is many times that shadowy figure that goes to work, whatever the heck that is, and comes home to grumpily read the paper before dinner, eat and retire to the recliner for a night of viewing TV you can’t participate in. Mom’s lap is soft and safe, and any boo-boo gets fixed by simply climbing up and cuddling as she wipes tears, coos, and pats your cheek. Siblings start out ok, but somehow they turn into those grabbing little annoyances you wished would run off and join the Foreign Legion.
Then you are 5. Still prone to temper tantrums, crying jags over being sent to bed earlier than you want, and avoidance of baths are somewhat of a mainstay of your everyday life. You have begun to learn the world doesn’t revolve around you, sharing is not an option, and other kids are first a friend, then can get kind of stinky if something goes awry during playtime at their house. You turn 6, 8, 10 and begin to huddle up with gossipy friends and they enlighten you to the reality that one day you get to be the decision maker for your own life, and suddenly you can hardly wait to “get out of this house and away from THOSE people”. Teenage years and rebellion, even to a small degree, are indicative of raging hormones mixed with individualism that raises its monstrous head and flings all your decent upbringing to the curb. Some kids sneak out at night, others form bad habits that stay with them a lifetime, then a golden few seem to escape this stretch of black holes and go through those years unscathed and are deemed the “good kids”.
High school rolls by, acne starts out as your biggest concern, then gets trumped by wearing the wrong kind of make up or dress and finding yourself an outcast with no invite to prom or months without a date because you are not thought popular. Somehow you limp through and the day you walk the graduation aisle, you become, at least chronologically, an adult and capable of making your own decisions for your own life. You are at that place you dreamed of. You have left home, you no longer have school to attend, the friends that abandoned you or made you feel creepy have gone off to college, and it is you…just you…in charge of your next step. And you start thinking you want your mama’s lap back…
Each age and phase of life comes with its own adjectives, adverbs, twists and turns but they all have one thing in common…they are marks of the passage of time.
Passing time…what does that really mean? Today I have thought about several moments and segments of my life and there are frankly many I wish I could forget. I made poor choices, hurt people, left myself open to devaluation of personal principles and became some kind of two-headed monster for a while. It’s a wonder I didn’t lose the total respect of my family during that period of time. I lost so much respect for myself. Consequences of those poor choices caused me a lot of anguish and heartbreak and the passage of time to move through that and toward a clean and free life was slow and unyielding for many years. I wanted to break away from those situations and those people, but I was stuck in that time of my life and unable to claw my way out until one day I stepped back from my own life and took a look at the time passing. I realized it wasn’t my choice IF it would pass; that was inevitable. But it was my choice HOW it would pass.
Two steps forward, one back was the dance for several years after this revelation, but eventually I started making progress. I began to look for places and people, like mama’s lap, that were safe and protecting. Either something or someone was nurturing me or it/they were not…plain and simple. I decided to pass the time, and pass my life, in a manner that would build me up and inspire those around me.
I am not always perfect, not do I have pipe dreams that I will be perfect this side of heaven. My body aches and my eyes are growing dim. I don’t hear as well as I used to and gaps in memory are becoming more frequent. But I ain’t dead yet.
In this autumn part of my journey, rather than standing idly by watching the passage of time, I want to time my passage. This day, this moment… I choose to go to a wide field full of dandelions in my mind. I reach down, pluck one from the center, squeeze my eyes tightly shut and make a hundred wishes…one for every seed attached to the dandelion’s bloom. I blow gently and watch as those seeds of promise take flight and carry with them all the dark moments of the past and faltering steps of the present. Funny thing is, there are a hundred wishes, but each one is the same…don’t waste my time, by letting it waste me.
Today is a very special day. My twin grandbabies, Max and Isaac celebrated their first birthday yesterday and today we are having a luau party with all the trimmings! I can hardly believe it’s been a year since their birth…
In the fall of 2011 my daughter, Samantha, was working for my cleaning company as Operations Manager. She had held several positions since starting the company with me in 2002 but this latest position was in hopes of me retiring and she and her husband, Tracy, taking over the company. Several conversations, much praying and many months of consideration had brought us all to the same choice of direction. I was excited to think God had blessed my company financially and I could leave that “legacy” to someone who had the same vision in many ways that I did and would carry on a family business with respect and integrity. Lorelai had started preschool, which we had not originally wanted to do, but she seemed to be enjoying it and adjusting very well. The original plan was for Samantha to stay home with her and home school as I had done with her, but the talk about taking over the family business had trumped that by the end of summer .
Then one day, Samantha came to work and knowing my daughter, I could see something was on her mind. We worked through the morning hours, and then I went into her office across the hall. “You seem to have something on your mind…wanna talk about it?” My daughter with a hesitant grin said “Wellll…I think I may be pregnant.” For a moment, my excitement overcame reality of what this meant to my future and theirs. I was going to be a GiGi again, and was overwhelmed with gratefulness. My kids had experienced a miscarriage earlier in the spring, before the business talks had even started, so this was an answer to prayer in so many ways. As Samantha talked on, I had a feeling begin to creep over me that I couldn’t quite put a name to. I was excited, but at the same time so disappointed and kind of like the wind had been knocked out of me. My company had just weathered the storm of a tremendous turnover of both customers and staffing and this move to retire and let my kids take over was a glimmer of hope in the midst of the turmoil’s aftermath. In the blink of an eye, on the heels of a few words, my whole future was changing in almost every area.
My daughter went to the doctor soon after and I accompanied her. Medicine is so advanced these days. When I went to find out whether I was carrying a baby over 30 years ago, it was just becoming vogue to know the gender. Nowadays you can find out a lot sooner, you have an ultrasound immediately, and you know so much more than whether you are pregnant or not. That day is vivid in my memory…
We sat and waited on the ultrasound tech to come in. A perky little girl entered the room and quickly she scooted the wand around Samantha’s tummy for several minutes as my daughter and I watched the screen. I was looking at it and saying to myself “Something doesn’t look right here.” Samantha never indicated she saw anything out of the ordinary, but I was seeing two big black spots. Now it had been a while since we had viewed Lorelai’s ultrasound like this but I didn’t remember hers looking this way. The tech said “Well, are you ready for an answer?” This whipped my attention back to the reason we were there and that was to find out if I was indeed going to be a grandmother again! Samantha nodded and we watched as the tech circled the black hole to the left and said “ This… is Baby A”, and circling the hole to the right she remarked “ And this…is Baby B”. Sam laughed a little, looked at me and back to the tech and said, pretty calmly I thought, “Really?” The tech nodded then said she’d be right back, she needed to get more supplies for the second ultrasound. When the door closed, Samantha and I both jerked our heads around to look at each other with big “O” shaped mouths. I cannot describe the giddiness and goofy giggling that went on between us for several minutes before the tech returned. Suddenly, my retirement, selling the company to my kids, the questions of when would I lose my operations manager and what was I going to do now seemed to fade into the background. Nothing mattered but the reality that I was going to be a grandmother again, Lorelai was going to be a big sister, Samantha and Tracy were going to be parents again, and God had blessed us with not one, but two babies to soothe the heartbreak and loss we had all experienced in the spring.
And now we are almost two years from that moment and I cannot imagine my life any differently than it is today. The babies are growing up well and strong and happy. Lorelai stayed in preschool through the birth last May and finished out her pre-K year but is now home and working the original plan of homeschooling. She is the ultimate Big Sister teaching the babies all the important things like how to pirouette, the proper way to wear a tiara and wings, and making them grin when she dances through their scattered toys all over the living room. Tracy has a great job that is allowing Samantha to stay home which is a blessing because child care would be so high for three children, especially since two are babies.
And me, well…I am doing pretty alright myself. I pushed through some hardships personally and professionally and am working in an estate business I not only make a living from, as was the case with the cleaning company, but I am also exploring new things and living a passion, something few people do in their lifetime.
More every day I realize that I often choose the Thing One in my life. I pick the easy thing, the thing causing the least issues, the thing that makes me money for the house note, or lets me buy shoes for the feet and food for the table. Because all the basics are pretty much taken care of, I never even think about pursuing the Thing Two in my life. I don’t think I am very different than most folks out there either. Most of the time we don’t even know Thing Two exists until Thing One starts to look a little shaky or not quite right. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Life Path Ultrasound? You could lie on a table, swirl a wand around and around and then the read out would show you the possibilities in your future…the Thing One and Thing Two. How many of us would choose a different thing if we only knew there was one?
I can say only in my own circumstances, I am fortunate enough to know there is more than one “thing” I can or should do. I can keep or sell my cleaning company, I can pursue the estate business full time, I can open a store or not, sell online or just hold estate sales for others. I have journalism and coaching experience so I can use one or the other or BOTH to forge my future. I can work for the dollar, or I can pursue my passions and make money doing it. I have choices, I can go left or right, up or down, stand still or start running with an idea…it is all up to me when and how. I don’t look at the ultrasound picture as just two black holes of uncertainty. I know both those holes hold LIFE, it’s just a matter of which I want…or better yet…maybe I will choose Thing One and Thing Two. I love my life, I love that I have choices…and I can tell you, through all of the past troubles and bumps in the road I’ve decided for sure at this stage of my journey, I don’t wanna miss a Thing.
In the old prairie days, prior to modern day electronics, people worked an honest day, plowed the field, put in crops, fed children, slept on beds made of ropes and ate bread they formed and baked themselves. Life was simple and although not always kind, it was easily decided. And consequently, each day was much like the one before…you rose, you worked, you ate, you laughed and loved, you slept, and you arose to do it all over again. Any tragic circumstance, baby born, marriage, death or other life point was often told farm to farm, house to house, mouth to mouth, person to person, until it would reach those living on the outskirts. News didn’t travel like lightning, it came slow and easy and many times much after the fact. The news, while still life changing, was accepted more readily and quickly because the hearer knew it was a done deal. There was no ” I gotta get over there and fix that” or “Man, if I go talk to her she will not marry that bum”. Nope, it was all about hearing the news, then accepting it, even if it was not news you wanted to hear. You listened, you considered, then you moved forward in the life you were living before you heard the news.
But these days, news travel is much different. All we have to do is click on the TV to see all kinds of devastation and tumult in real time.We see hostage situations work out over hours and days right before our eyes. We see train wrecks recorded and replayed again and again. Storm chasers’ cameras allow us up close and personal, a bare mile from the churning winds and tail of a tornado. Thousands of miles might separate us from the other side of the world, but we stare as floods swallow up homes, and cities, and residents. In prairie days, we were forced to accept what we didn’t see, only what was told to us. But now, we are forced to accept what we see happening at the moment it is happening. I cannot help but think that this is much more damaging to our own psyche because we know it is playing out now behind a huge piece of glass…and there is not a darn thing we can do about it but watch horrified. And the most unnerving part is we watch it over and over and over until we cannot watch it anymore, or until the next televised tragedy begins to unfold and it drags our attention to a new scene of hurt and turmoil.
There have been so many moments in my own life like that. I have stood idly by and watched it in real time as a non-participant, a spectator. Poor choices played themselves out as if I had been watching another person’s life like an approaching earthquake. I see a tremor here, swaying tree there, falling debris and crumbling, and I find myself shouting out in my mind “Stop! Don’t you see what’s happening, look behind you, it is gaining on you. You are going to get overtaken…hurry, hurry…”. Then, watching still, I see the life quake split the foundation of earth underneath, it opens up, and with a huge groan swallows the running soul, and closes in over her head. And as fast as it came, it was gone, and as I try to take in the scene I have just witnessed, I suddenly remember the running soul is me. But in all reality, if I had realized the danger ahead of time and the ultimate results of my decisions, would I have changed anything just because I knew the end result? Would I have gone a different direction, or done a different thing? Or would I have seen the signs, known the probable result, then assigned myself the job of savior of my own destiny? I think most of us would say we would start looking for a shovel to furiously fill in the cracks as we saw them appear in the ground where we were standing rather than taking a different path, away from the quake center.
When was the last time you felt like everything in your life was quaking? We have all been there, probably numerous times if we have lived a very long life. During childhood we felt little tremors when someone didn’t share their toy because we thought they weren’t our friend anymore. Our insides shook when we experienced our parents’ wrath over a lie we told or the inevitable talking back that took place in our teenage years. Growing into an adult, there were other life life quakes. Sometimes a child is wayward, a husband leaves his responsibilities at home for a new single life, a wife takes prescription drugs to “get by”. Jobs are lost, health is compromised, we grow old and can’t do what we once could, companies fail and we have to find a new vocation at mid-life…and on and on.
Over the last several years, I have experienced a lion’s share of life quakes. Some I saw coming and participated in willingly. In other circumstances, I grabbed a shovel and tried to fill in the cracks I saw appearing. Both those types quakes were nothing but harbors of grief because I didn’t see the wisdom of stepping away from the quake area. I tried to fix the splits, the bumps, I overlooked the growing damage, and I pretty much thought I was superhuman and could do whatever it took to make the quake just disappear. Looking back, I can see the best choice would have been to move away from the quake, just let it happen, and not be affected by it at all. I would have been like the prairie folks, just knowing about it, sad to hear, but moving on with my own life.
Today, I am in a bit of a life quake. My cleaning company is on the wane and has been for a while through a series of life events. Some are attributed to the economy, some are my letting the company scale down to a manageable point for a small staff. My second company dealing with estates and buying and reselling vintage items is moving forward slowly, but not at the point yet of doing it full time, although this is my real desire. If I had not gone through a few life quakes in the past, I would have grabbed that shovel and started throwing dirt in the hole, and believed I could “save” my cleaning company. And this is kind of how that estate thing started. I was buying and reselling items to help pay the bills for the cleaning company because the work just wasn’t there. But something happened that made me start leaving the quake area.
I have a book by Beth Moore that my daughter gave me. It is filled with daily devotions, each one page long, and I had started reading it this time last year. It is dated so I turned to the page on May 2nd and read “By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8). I had been praying that morning, pleading with the Lord to let me know what to do. I was seeing a company I had sweated and toiled over reduced by 2/3rds in 18 months due to the economy and some former employees poaching customers, I was going through a divorce and would be solely responsible for my own household income, my physical situation was not great due to arthritis, and I was about to turn 52 which is not the ideal age to look for a job in the work place, especially since I have no skills “on paper” to speak of. I had had a few small sales and sold some things I pulled off the road that were toss-aways, some things I had cleaned out of my own home, some items that I could live without although I really didn’t want to have to sell them. I had earned a bit of money, loved meeting people and holding the sales were easy for me to organize.
Later that same day, I was reading a blog posting that I frequented and the author had written “What you have is enough. Don’t waste your haves, concentrating on your wants.” I knew God was speaking to me directly. I had been trying to fill in the cracks of a company that God wanted to move me out of. He had plans for me, I may not know what they were, where I was going, or what I would be doing, but that didn’t change the fact that there was a plan. And for months, I had been inhibiting that plan and wearing myself out shoveling in the holes rather than taking my resources, my time, my mental peace and applying it toward what I felt I was supposed to do with my future.
It is a year later, and yesterday I was reading the same devotion book and came across the same verse. I smiled when I read it and am glad I had this life quake when I did, and the wisdom to put the shovel down. I still have questions about my forward path today. I don’t know if I should look to open a store, sell online only, do shows or events or a combo of all of it. Over the last year, I didn’t always know what to do next…should I hire only one or two folks or a slew of staffing to aid me, or just do whatever I need to do myself? Should I put a sign on the cleaning company and walk away? Should I try and sell it to someone who could take the ball and run with it? But each time the opportunity has risen for me to make a choice, the answer has always been there, even if I feel a little shifting going on under my feet. Another estate sale possibility for me to host comes along. I find a perfect item for someone and a sale is made. Shoot, I even had a storm take down a tree and my fence in the fall last year and I got a whole new roof out of it when I was looking at replacing my 20 year roof this spring with money I knew I may not have. I am moving, ever so slowly, away from the quake area and learning to put my shovel down.
The next big area of possible quakes is right around the corner. It always is, and I hope and pray each day I will see it and avoid what I need to as I continue on a good journey to a new vocation. Yes, that has been decided…the how and when maybe not so decided. The last several months I have known what I want to do, what I feel called to do, but just like all human beings I wonder how I will pay the bills, will I get enough business and at the right time, will my health hold out to do the physical part of the work, will I have good folks to work with me in building something for my future, and hopefully for the future of my kids and grandchildren? If I sell or walk away from the very thing that is paying at least most of the bills, how will I make it? Will I make it?
After I read my devotion yesterday, I pulled out my Bible and did what I often do when I am struggling with a decision of which way to go. It was 5/2, so I chose Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible and chapter two. The caption was “The Desert Years”, and I had to grin to myself a little. I started to read of the Israelites, God’s chosen people, walking around the mountain for days and days but getting nowhere. Then I read ” The Lord spoke to me, saying ‘You have skirted this mountain long enough, turn northward. For the Lord has blessed you in all the work of your hand. He knows your trudging through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord has been with you, you have lacked nothing.’ ”
Um, I think I just heard a shovel fall…
The last few weeks have been very busy for me. The estate side of my company has had three huge events since the middle of February. And although I really need to have the next estate event “in the pipeline” right now, frankly I am in need of a little break. My main helper, Kay, and I have busily tagged, bagged and sold so many items over the last few months I haven’t been able to get out and do much buying myself for my own inventory. And a true junker has to have that fix…we need to get out and visit with our friends we see at all the yard sales, pop into our favorite haunts and honey holes and put down some change for those little treasures and trinkets that turn up in the most unexpected places. The real junker lives for the journey, not the purchase itself….the art of finding junk is the very best part of what we do. Selling junk we find, for the thrift business owner, is just a stepping stone, not the whole path.
This last weekend I didn’t have any family events, no estate sales to conduct, nothing to keep me from my “fix”. I mapped out my list and headed to two subdivision sales and several small individual sales about 7 a.m. The whole back end of the Montero was full to the gills when I returned home, and I felt like I finally breathed for the first time in several weeks. New inventory was just a small part of the lift in my spirits…it was about getting bits and pieces of things I could sell or recycle into new projects. I felt a purpose in my future….I could already see where I was going with everything that was in my car. It gave me my next stepping stones in the thrift business and a much-needed refreshing in my being.
For me, the whole idea of thrifting is multifaceted. It is about recycling, living a “green” life, preserving the pieces and whispers of the past, along with a myriad of other wonderful things. Sometimes items I purchase are made into new items to sell. Many times I add a little of this, slap on a dab of that, and I have a new eclectic piece of wall art, or a table made from a portion of old farm equipment. It’s exciting and just a bit awesome to end up with an old thing made into something totally new with just a little time and effort.
As a Christian, the thrift mentality takes on whole new meaning. It’s my calling to be resourceful and a good steward of the finances and material possessions God has given me. When I was in my early twenties, I had virtually no money to spend on anything but the cast offs and yard sale finds when starting my home and ultimately beginning a family. But I took those cast off finds, and I molded and made them into something “new”…and my friends and family thought it was amazing when they saw my child looking like Saks Fifth Avenue and my home decorated with stunning items that were purchased at garage sales and flea markets. And I began to shift in my mindset…no longer was I sad that I was unable to purchase new items like all my friends. I was able to purchase BETTER items than my friends, for less money, and the “thrift” lifestyle became BETTER than the old life of purchasing too little for too much.
I recently read something that said exactly how I see thrifting in my own life. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the author’s name on this piece, but it is very humbling for the Christian to read:
“There’s something about the idea of recycling that speaks to me as a Christian. That’s the underlying theme of the whole strip. It’s not just about recycling clothes, it’s about giving people a second chance, too. The thrift store takes cast-off goods that are about to be thrown onto the trash heap. They’re rescued, cleaned up and made useful again. And that’s what being a Christian is all about, how a person can be redeemed, made new again, through God.”
Along with the estate company I currently own, I have been the proud owner of a cleaning company for the last 11 years. I have learned much about people, idiosyncracies, wants, desires, and needs while getting them cleaned up. But in the last two years, I have felt a move toward a different calling and through a chain of events opened the estate side of the company. Although I do make only part of my income in this section of the company, as time goes on, this is where I feel the most reward and the most comfort personally. Slowly, I have been coming to the realization that maybe this is my next stepping stone in the path the Lord has for me. In looking at the path the Lord takes each Christian down in his life walk with Him, it’s an interesting parallel. He finds the sinner, He saves him, He cleans him up, He makes him useful again, and the sinner saved by grace becomes a part of something “new”. Maybe it is time, in my own life, for something “new”…
As a cleaning company owner, I have been “cleaning them up” for years, but this has only been one stepping stone for me in my own path. Maybe, just maybe, it is time for the next step, my “second chance”…maybe it’s time to rescue, recycle, and make something brand new out of my own life. I learned a long time ago, when you see a path appear, take it…it might lead to something BETTER.
One doesn’t have to hang with me for very long these days until they know I am a junkin’ junkie. Yep, I am the crazy lady that rubbernecks when she sees a lime green sign on the corner of an intersection, slams on brakes at the sight of a pile of hastily thrown together boxes and oddities waiting by the road for the garbage men, or wakes the rooster up before dawn gathering change and a few dollar bills from the recesses of the stoneware cookie jar of “mad money”. I admit it, I am addicted, and I do love it.
I don’t really know when that persistent little bug bit me. But I do know I have loved hunting vintage items since I was very young, and eclectic decorating pieces, dusty reading materials and absorbing collections of these items have comforted me the better part of my 50 plus years. My collections have been varied and interesting over the years, and they have also matured in content as I matured. But my most cherished collections began when I was but a young child.
I was growing up in Whitehaven, a suburb of Memphis, Tn, and we had a McCrory’s 5 and 10 that was within biking distance of my home. In those days kids could actually ride their bikes to the little shopping strip and walk from store to store in safety and without parental guidance. Our allowance of 50 cents a week was saved up for two or maybe three weeks at most, then my sister and I would either hitch a ride with Mom on a Saturday or we would be allowed to ride our bikes to the shopping center after we got a bit older. What fantastic independence we felt! Money in our pocket, our own wheels, and no adults…come to think of it, maybe those things were the real allure. The McCrory’s was by far our favorite store and the place we laid down the most pocket change each week. But we always saved it for the very last stop.
I had a pattern when I shopped. There was a whole lot of walking, peering into windows, watching people, and going from one end of the plaza to the other before spending the first penny. We’d start out at the Mannie and Karls’, the most boring store to kids since it was all ladies and men’s apparel and shoes, hats and gloves…not really much appeal there. At the other end was a Baskin Robbins and boy, that was one amazing place. Imagine, 31 flavors of ice cream. When it first opened, my friends and I all discussed the impossibility of there truly being that many flavors of the soft creamy stuff, but we also pledged to try them all just to be sure. In between the boring and the amazing was a myriad of shops and so much to see, and every visit it seemed new and different to me. There was a bowling alley smelling of popcorn and sweaty feet, and the loud crash of the balls could be heard streetside on a clear day. The Fred’s Dollar Store, Dreifus Jewelers and many odd shops I can’t quite recall were sandwiched between the barber shop and the Buster Brown shoe store. One of the stops on our itinerary was to gawk at mystical fortune-telling gypsy machine with the red-glowing eyes. I had dreams about that thing from time to time and would even waken crying from fear. But it was so mysterious and unearthly my eyes remained glued as it swallowed my quarter, groaning and jerking as it leaned downward over a chipped crystal ball and told you what your life would be, well at least till the next visit and your subsequent quarter was dropped. Then of course there was the goose that laid the eggs, not a real goose mind you, nor real eggs, but a mechanical goose much like the fortune teller only less unnerving. We all hoped to get the golden egg…and for the life of me now, I cannot remember why. We just, well, all wanted a golden egg, so I guess that was enough to keep us trying.
Around the corner past the ice cream place was a wig and dress shop. I loved to look in the wood paned windows and study the mannequins. We’d spend inordinate amounts of time trying to stand very still just outside the front door of the shop and see if we could fool the strolling people into believing we were mannequins too. I can’t remember thinking we were ever wildly successful, but it was still fun to try.
When all the places were visited, and all the first round of oohs and aahs were over, it was time to hit McCrory’s. Armed with the piggy bank money my sister, Lori, and I would go and meander in the store for hours. We lingered in the candy aisle, and gently touched the faces of all the dolls and fingered their delicate clothing. There were cap guns and hula hoops, jacks, slinkies and wheelie toys. My mom and dad were not fond of the trip when Lori introduced our household to the klicker klacker balls. Held together with thick cords were two brightly colored iridescent hard plastic balls. While you pumped your arm up and down the balls would strike each other with a loud “KLICK” then down with an equally ferocious “KLACK” ……repeatedly. Yeah, they didn’t last too long. She went outside her usual buying zone that day. Most of the time sis ended up with a fistful of candy that was long gone by the time we reached our front porch again. But not me, even when I was that young, I wanted something more stable, more valuable, more lasting and even something that would grow in meaning to me. And that one store in the tiny strip plaza is where my true collecting began.
McCrory’s was where I started my first collections of dolls and Trixie Belden books. Each time I went in I would go back and forth and up and down the case with all the dolls and finally settle on the one who deserved to go home with me. Some had beautiful hair and printed dresses, some were Barbies or Cassie Dolls. But the one doll I remember for some reason had no real identification or name. She was a beautiful little blue-eyed doll with porcelain-like skin, long platinum blonde hair tied into pigtails with pink ribbons, and she wore a bright pink raincoat set that ended at the top of snow white boots. I had that doll for most of my growing up. Maybe it was was my favorite because she was so opposite me and my own looks. I was just shy of chubby and for sure freckled, with long auburn hair and big brown eyes. I thought that doll was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen when I first laid eyes on her.
Trixie Belden was an escape for me. I was a voracious reader and so the independent little curly top was fascinating to me as a pre-teen. Solving mysteries, cooking her own food while her mom was at a bridge game and her dad was working, and the fact of her having a BOYFRIEND…well, she was who I wanted to be when I grew up. I just knew I would own a private eye agency one day with a swimming pool out back and my pick of young men trying to win my hand.
And to think, all those things that struck my fancy and turned my head then are the same things I gravitate toward today. When I go on my picking trips, I do buy some things that are good sellers that I know I can turn over for a profit quickly. I have enough business sense to know I can’t buy just the junk I like, I have to buy the junk other folks like, too or I won’t be in business very long. But the pieces I am wooed by time and time again remind me of those good times as a child. I find myself wanting to go back there, and there is almost a voice I hear in the recesses of my mind saying “If you choose me, you will remember what it was like then.” Funny how when I really take a deeper look at it, those things were just a prop in my childhood. There were some hard moments growing up…we all have them and some are more difficult to get through than others…but I can see where I chose certain things to embrace so the loud voices of the hardship would melt away. I would replace the uneasy moments with peace when I would hold a blue-eyed little doll, or immerse myself in a new adventure with my favorite character. Those things became substitutes that gave me belonging, and many times provided something to share or talk about with my friends or even my family. But sadly, I can see where I knew more about the props than I did about my own story that was being written at the same time.
In the junk business, I have a variety of items that I have sold or rented to local playhouses for their theatrical productions here and there over the last year or so. This makeshift “prop shop” was kind of an offshoot of me just buying things I loved, then people coming to my sales that were involved with the local theater and they purchased those items that fit their particular script. Using them would move their story line along because the props gave the story strength visually. Recently, a young friend took a position as a performing arts teacher. She had been following my junking business and approached me about providing some props for her productions in the future. In the talking, she sent me a site that lists the props that are suggested in a variety of plays and it was so interesting to me. As I flipped through page after page of the site, many items that were on the lists of oft performed plays were either already in my stockpile waiting to be sold or rented out, or were items I had gravitated toward in the past and were already sold and out of my inventory. If I had not sold anything in the last year, I would have had enough of the “right” items to open my own full prop shop with the exception of a handful of things that I had not run across in my experience junking as yet. All those years of looking much, buying little but purchasing the “right” things had trained me to know what would become vintage and useful to me later.
Our lives are really just a big production on this earth. We are here for a few acts, some of us more than others…then the curtain will fall, the audience reaction will come, and it will be time to leave the theater. When it comes right down to it, the believability of any story, any play, or any musical lies with the actors, yes. But the support of that story is found in the type of props they can rely on to get their story across to their audience.
I wonder if we took a steady, quiet look at our own lives, would they be so cluttered with props that we can’t see the actual story? How many things would we find that are not even really a part of the production of our life, in other words useless, ineffective props? The props we do need for our story …are they in good repair, clean and make us look good and usher us easily into the character we are meant to be ? Or are they tattered and worn, pulling us down and making a shabby mess of life?
Props are necessary in the telling of any story, but they are not the story itself. Time to buckle down, take a good long look at the list of props that are and are not part of the play I have been cast in, then spend a little time getting my prop shop back into order. It just wouldn’t do for the King of Siam to wear a cowboy hat, or Dorothy to be seen easing on down the yellow brick road on a unicycle, now would it?
All over the world today, people celebrated an annual event. Some call it Fat Tuesday, others by a name indicative to their own culture or language, but many aspects are the same in all lands. It is the day before the launch of the Lenten season and full of joy, merriment, and in many cases a bit of untethered self-indulgence. My 4 year old granddaughter, Lorelai, had arrived yesterday to spend the night, so this morning we had our breakfast at IHOP, one of her favorite places. That was just one piece of a day of coincidences, I realized, as I tucked her in tonight and she closed her eyes in peaceful sleep.
When Lorelai woke up this morning, she did as always and took off her pj’s and slipped into some dress up clothes. She is at the age where, although she is very confident of who she is, it is always a bonus to her visit if she can dress up like Cinderella or Belle, which is usually her choice. But not today…when she came out of her room, she was wearing a hat I had placed in the clothes bin a few visits back that she had looked at but never played with as yet. It is tall and fluffy and pink, and just a little grand for every day attire. She asked me to zip her dress, and I also realized she had on one she had never worn…again, very odd. Then she ran back into her room and returned with a mardis gras mask on. I laughed at her and said she could wear it to breakfast when she pleaded with the look that GiGi’s cannot resist. So off we went…
It was lunch time and our food order was taken quickly so we had time to just hang out together and she colored while I checked messages on my phone. One of my emails came through with a “Happy Fat Tuesday” message, and only then did I realize what day it was. I looked up and sitting across from me was a brightly masked child that had no idea she had dressed up for a celebration day. But there she was, outfitted to the nines and ready for the holiday I had not even been aware was happening.
While I was musing over this coincidence, the waitress brought back our meal. Lorelai, as usual, had ordered the create-a-face pancake. I almost invariably would look at the menu, then order a favored patty melt, but for some reason I decided to order pancakes as well today. The face of her pancake was made out of fruit and yogurt and she pretty much decorates it the same way every time. But today she decorated it, then kind of looked sad. “What’s wrong, don’t you like your pancake?” I asked. “Yes, I like it, but I REALLY wanted to have a mask for my pancake too so it could be a party and I don’t have anything to make a mask.” So we took blueberry and strawberry syrup, made a “mask” and I was struck again by another coincidence when I picked up my phone to finish the earlier email. A traditional meal on Fat Tuesday is…you guessed it…pancakes.
Interestingly enough, there was no one who commented on their own initiative to my grandchild about her feathery mask, or bright, colorful clothing, or made mention of the holiday. No one…not the waitress, the hostess, others in the restaurant as we passed by as we were shown to our booth, those we sat around, or the nice young man who brought us our food…no one made a single mention of the out-of-the-ordinary costume or the tiny tot wearing it. But Lorelai did something that brought attention to herself in a quiet way.
There were several people sitting all around us, many were women. As we were eating, she tugged on my sleeve after a few minutes and whispered in my ear ” GiGi, that lady is beautiful”. I looked over and I saw a rather plain, hard-faced woman in muted clothing sitting across from us. There was nothing drawing in her appearance, no smile or features unusual enough to catch anyone’s attention, in particular a child. “Can I tell her she is beautiful?” The woman was with a male companion, so of course I didn’t want to disturb them. Besides, it would maybe seem a little odd to someone so I said ” Well we may in a minute, go ahead and eat ok?” I was hoping to distract her, and started talking to her about what we were going to do the rest of the day and where we would go. She listened and ate, but I would catch her watching the couple closely. When it appeared they were finishing up, had paid their waitress and were gathering their things to leave, Lorelai looked at me almost in distress “GiGi, they are going home, I need to tell her she is beautiful, she needs to know I want to say that.” I could see tears brimming up in her big eyes, so rather than cause a scene one way, I decided a small scene another way was much preferred. The man stepped past our table, then the woman came along and I said “Excuse me, ma’am, she wants to tell you something.” The woman looked up, confused, and then glanced in the direction of her companion and back at us and said ” Yes?” Lorelai, in her pink hat and feathery fluff looked up and smiled brightly and said “You are beautiful!” Instantly, the woman’s face softened, and she looked down at the child and said “Oh” clasping her hand to her heart. “Oh, you are beautiful too, you sweet little thing.” She flashed a sparsely toothed-smile back at us and I saw tears in her eyes when she turned to me and said “That just made my whole day!” A few more pleasantries were exchanged, then I looked back at Lorelai. A self-satisfied grin was on her face, and her whole countenance was beaming as she said “I told you GiGi, she is beautiful!”
After our meal, as we wound through the restaurant, we went past a withered old woman eating alone, Lorelai said ” Hey, you are beautiful!” The lady reared back her head, let out a laugh that rat-a-tatted like a machine gun, and patted the child’s shoulder as she went by, saying raspily “Sweetheart you are fancy as a peacock and beautiful too!” Every chance she got, on her way to the door, she told someone they were beautiful, or she liked their shoes, or your hair is pretty…it was so comical considering her get-up but so much a magical moment suspended in time, and a life lesson I would never forget.
Fat Tuesday is traditionally the day of rich food, uninhibited behavior, bead showered parades, fun times and frolic. Fat Tuesday is followed by Ash Wednesday, a day of giving up something that you participated in, perhaps the day before. But what if the best parts of those two days were somehow blended together in our every day lives?
We go through our typical days…we work, we eat, we drink, and sleep…we do whatever we think it our mission of the moment and a piece in the puzzle we call LIFE. How many times are we in the very midst of an opportunity to celebrate that life and fail to do so because we are either afraid we will make a spectacle of ourselves, or someone will call the white coats on us, or maybe even worse we think we have no special life to really celebrate and embrace? All live the life they choose, no matter what it is. Some choose to live their life in a way that is meager and poor, that leaves them wanting more and never quite having the contentment and fullness and beauty they are promised by their Creator. They may even give up their own life’s potentially glorious future by giving into the demands of others, rather than setting a good course of peace and joy and living their own life instead of letting another’s life live them. They have a daily photograph that looks much like the woman Lorelai felt compelled to lift up…plain, joyless, hard and crushed underneath some intangible hand of fate or failed expectations. I say let’s live a combo Fat Tuesday and Lenten life…give up the nonsense, judgment, and martyrdom and instead live rich, full of celebration and merriment, spread lots of love and, well…. just put away the plain and be downright “beautiful”.
