Inspirational
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”.
For the past several years, I have been fortunate enough to get a little R and R at the beach in the fall. It is my favorite place to let my hair down, kick back and reflect, and I always come away refreshed and revived for the upcoming year. A huge stack of books used to accompany me, but since receiving a gift of a Kindle, I am able to take thousands of books I have loaded onto the device with me and drop it into my beach bag along with the sunscreen and towel. Ah, the miracles of technology!
After Labor Day last year, the time had come to pack it all up and head for the coast. I was so excited! I love everything about the beach and the lure and love was always a constant. I have been fortunate enough to go each fall for the last several years, in fact to the same Gulf Shores condo and always knew what to expect. There would come a certain place in the road down south where I would begin to see the palm trees waving hello to me. I would pass the boiled peanut vendor, then a favorite little stop for gas and refreshment. I had so many things that I had come to depend upon. I knew how the brisk tang of the salt air would fill my nostrils one I got to a certain point in the highway. I knew where all the great thrift stores were….I could already feel the shifting sand under my feet as I made my way to the blinding white shore for the first time after arrival. I knew when the warm sun would finally be over the outdoor pool long enough to take the first dip of the day without freezing. I even often saw the same people from year to year that vacationed during my same 10 days and we were able to have a “family reunion” of sorts. It was all exactly as it was the year before and I loved it.
A couple of days after arriving at the coast I received a call from my son-in-law. He was cutting my yard for me while I was gone and when he had gone around back to mow, he noticed a large rotting tree that had fallen on the back fence during the storm the night before. After a call and visit to the neighbors, he assured them that the tree and fence would be fixed upon my return to town. But it is now January, and through a series of false starts and setbacks with insurance and contractors, the fence is still down and hasn’t been repaired.
My home is situated at the back of a nice neighborhood. My back yard overlooks the east side of a home on 4 acres. Over the course of the last 18 years I have lived here, I have seen several changes in both owners and lay of the land. The original owners had a small T-ball field built in the middle of their meadow and on Saturdays I could sit high on my deck and watch the little ones tumble and play. It was an every day occurrence to see all manner of wildlife in the field on any misty morning. Opossums, deer, and the occasional bobcat were all matter of course. We even caught sight of a small panther once! When I first moved into my home, there was a barbed wire fence stretched across the back and the view was uninhibited. The land beyond the home behind me had a pond and that family raised peacocks and peahens. It was not unusual for the occasional rebel to meander across both patches of land, come through the barbed wire and blast us a wake up scream at all hours of the day.
But over the years, owners and situations changed, outbuildings were built by one home owner along with a wooden fence, and I could no longer view the entire meadow behind me anymore. It was kind of melancholy, but the fence afforded some privacy to both myself and the neighbors, so it was deemed appropriate at the time.
But, I noticed something as the years went by…
As time went on, I noticed less and less wildlife walking through the meadow, and the squirrels, birds, and deer seemed to be more scarce since the building of the fence. I had thought it was due to the fact that the woods behind me were getting cleared out and some building had taken place there several years back and so the wildlife had probably migrated to another area that was less populated. I never gave it much thought till this last week. Several times I had walked to the window, or out onto the deck and see a different kind of bird that were on my feeders, or the squirrels eating the corn I had put out for them on the spinning tree feeder. I always try to keep those full, but when I am gone a lot, as I am, I don’t always see the actual animals, just the evidence that they were there from time to time.
Last week, other than a bit of computer work and eating soup, I pretty much was in bed sick. I am rarely sick, almost never, so this is not a place that is comfortable for me. I like being busy, and many of my days see me going out for first one thing then another for both my businesses, working on the computer in my home office at the front of the house, filing, etc. Whatever this crud was, it pretty much grounded me all week and I slept away most of the first part of the week, and ventured out onto the deck for fresh air only after four days. On Thursday, I was thinking back to two weeks before when I was standing by the kitchen window after opening the blinds and caught sight of a deer in the middle of the meadow behind me. I was so surprised…it had been well over a year since I had seen one, and I stood and watched it till it was gone from view. What had been common many years ago had become a rare sighting over time, so any moment I was lucky enough to catch one I just stopped everything and watched it as it walked around, ate, and finally moved into the woods again.
Suddenly during my daydreaming, I caught some movement by my fence at the corner and saw a tiny fawn step out and begin to walk timidly along the fence line…or what should have been the fence line…at the back of my yard. It walked all along, stopping to eat, to lift its ears and listen, then walk some more, always keeping to the same path. After a few minutes, it disappeared back into the woods, and I threw on a jacket and went to the back of the lot to see if I could see it again. Peering over the fallen fence, I never did catch another glimpse. But I did see something…I saw a well worn path in the grass and places where the green was worn down to the dirt. It went all along the old fence line, then off into the woods…
I wondered how many times the deer had been there all along, walking the fence line and I couldn’t see it because the fence was in the way? Did I see something just now that had been there all along only because I was home…and aware…and the fence was no longer blocking my view? How much beauty and quietness of nature had I missed over the years thinking it was no longer available to me?
So many parallels to my own professional and personal life are found in the story of my deer. I am at a crossroads in my life path and in the center of decisions that will affect the last part of my life. I want the decisions to be good and wholesome, something that will care for me but also allow me to care for others in ways that mean something.
Should I sell my cleaning business and start another vocation? Should I seek out a position in another company and help someone along their own professional path rather than be “the man” anymore? Do I go into estate and resales full time, re-purposing furniture and spending my days with paint under my fingernails creating treasures for others? Or do I sell my home where I know all my neighbors and all the idiosyncracies of the wood and stone, opting to occupy a home with my kids and grandbabies and just be GiGi to them the rest of my natural life? Are there things I have built into my own life over the years that started out as a good fence, but became a block to my own great future? Can I no longer see the deer?
Fences can be good things. They protect, they set boundaries, they guard, they embrace. But I am of the belief every fence should have at least one peephole in it. Otherwise you may miss those golden little opportunities for change and happiness as they stroll by….and wouldn’t it be sad if they had been there all along, just waiting for your fence to come down?
Today marks the first blog post of 2013. The year 2012 was filled with grandbabies’ births, highs and lows in my personal life and circumstances, and shifting trends in my company and… well…frankly, I am over-ready to start a brand new year. With all the rush of the holidays over and fuss and muss all but packed away and put in the attic, it is time to start thinking about what I want to accomplish and BE in the upcoming months. Opportunity to begin again happens to all of us, if we let it. But many times we cha-cha with the same old issues, the same old unrealistic dreams, and the same old people and problems going into a new year as we did in the old one. Many times the “same old” phrase refers more to ourselves and our view of life than to someone else…
It was last Friday, techs were out on their jobs for the day, and my operations manager called and had an issue arise at the office. No one likes to be terminated from a position, and even more so, no one likes to be the one terminating another person, especially at holiday time and with our country on the brink of a financial disaster dubbed “the fiscal cliff”. Months of inadequacy and complacency on an employee’s part had forced the company’s hand and a staff member was going to be terminated that day. Tension is always at a high level, but for the most part the person leaving employ is reasonable and sees the handwriting on the wall before the time comes for the “talk”, but this employee was unusual. She denied throughout all performance reviews that any issues were legitimate when she received complaints from our customers or during a quality check from the managers. She gave excuses for her behavior, she didn’t ask for help getting back to company standards, but instead tried to make those around her believe that THEY were wrong in their standards and assessment of her work. She faulted her training, she faulted her teammates, she faulted the stringency of the company procedures, she faulted everyone and anyone but herself. She was charming and would have been convincing in her quiet, disarming way if I had not had experience with others in my own life like this employee. Many are the times I have encountered a “dedicated convincer”. They have an issue or issues that are usually long term…so long term they have become a part of their personality to the point they no longer see them as issues. They have a way of soft-speaking about sad situations, relationships or moments that arose out of giving into their own issues. It makes you feel sorry for them at onset of your relationship with them, they convince you their issues are due to some (usually imagined or exaggerated) past injustice or ill treatment by another in their life prior to you finding them, and you are encouraged to become their “savior”. Invariably you do find yourself becoming harsh or too judgmental in your assessment of a situation and their participation in it if the issues come to light or start to affect you and your own life and good choices. Then you find you are “convinced” you are the bad guy or the problem is really not theirs, but yours. You begin to second guess yourself in your decisions and ultimately in the conversations or interaction with this person or group of people. You become your own bad guy as you take up the mantle of victim and someone’s perception becomes your own reality.
Friday was the job position crossroads with the employee and she had not liked the conversation she had had with the manager about her work and the terms of her termination. The employee had also chosen to bring her boyfriend with her to the meeting in an effort to have someone as her support person. The boyfriend was not allowed into the meeting which miffed him. He then found out when the employee refused to sign termination papers she would not receive a check that day, and he boldly stepped in as her support back up. After much yelling and making a spectacle outside the office window, finally the manager called me, and I headed to the office myself instructing her to call the police to meet me there to take care of and diffuse the situation.
On the 4 minute drive from my home to the office I was fuming. I had been working from home and was neck high in paperwork and so forth and this was taking me away from my own schedule. It also was wasting salaried time my manager should have been using for her own job, and instead everyone’s day was being eaten up by the ridiculous. Both the manager and I knew what the situation was and it was an exercise in futility for the employee to try and convince us that we were wrong, and even more a kangaroo court to think someone not involved with the company could shed any light on our ignorance. Her foolish choice of a support person cost her having to deal with police officers, she still had to comply with company policy to receive her paycheck, and it created unneeded stress and tension in her relationship with the boyfriend.
When I relayed a bit of the story on my Facebook page later, I told how the police came, we were calm and explained what went on, we didn’t challenge the accusers before, during or after the police were there and we got all our paperwork signed and the employee exited as we needed without incident. One of my cousins commented on how often the police encounter erratic and irrational behavior not only out of the employee in this type situation, but that the employer becomes emboldened with the police’s arrival and gets into the fray verbally and just makes the whole thing a bigger mess than it ever needed to be, rather than giving what my cousin called “wise support”.
I have thought of this term so many times since last Friday, and I have come to some pretty interesting and a bit painful conclusions about myself, my own life path to this point and the object of my “blame game” I play in my own relationships, whether at work, play or with my own family and friends. Do I blame the twists and turns of my own road in life, and the choices and consequences that perhaps I am still recovering from today, on those who did me some perceived great injustice? But…I have to be the way I am, or think the way I do, don’t I? They caused it, they trained me this way, they tried to change me, gave up on me, were hard on me, expected too much from me, abused me, abandoned me…the list goes on…you get it, right? Had I become my own “dedicated convincer”?
There is an old saying “They say is often proved a great liar”. Why is that so easy to state, but so hard to live when we have voices in our past whispering “You are not good enough”…”You will never live up to”….”You can’t quit, you are weak”…”You can’t start a new life, the old life is too strong”…”You are stupid”…”You are fat”….”You won’t succeed”…”You will never amount to anything”. Is it because we choose to be an instrument of validation now for the harm or insensitivity we have suffered then?
I am not one to make resolutions, but this year I am breaking tradition and making one and only one resolution. I am crucifying the old voices of the past, and I am laying down my position of “dedicated convincer” in my own life. I am simply choosing from this day forward to tell myself the truth about me. I have choices…I may not have had some good options given to me in the past by another “dedicated convincer” in my life, and sometimes I made some poor decisions based on faulty or insufficient training, but they were still MY choices. And difficult as it is to utter, in every instance I made my own poorest choices with some measure of stupidity and rash judgment that I tethered to one belief…someone else was to blame for my foolishness, issues and inability to change my own life path. I followed the convincer, rather than choosing to make a break with soft-speaking voices of untruth about me. Even when there was truth and it was unlovely, I allowed it to grow and gain strength, become a part of my personality and many times morph into an issue or event that became my undoing for years after it should have been forgotten or stood against. Instead, I choose to archive 1960 through 2012 as “the past”, and I refuse to go back there other than to gather a lesson here and there. I also refuse to take anything into my life here forward except those ideals, people and things that will pave a good path for me. This part of my life…2013 forward… will be different than the former part of my life. This time I will not walk it alone….I choose to walk it in the truthful company of my own “wise support”.
Today is Tuesday, four days after our country witnessed a terrifying and history-altering event. It should have been a day like any other day, and in many ways it was. Parents woke to the manic sounds of their alarm clocks, they went in and roused their kids. They pleaded and prodded the little ones out of pj’s and into school clothes as the pint-sized people stopped to play with a special toy, or antagonize their sibling. Boys slicked down and combed their hair, girls scrubbed their faces and donned big pink or blue hairbows…they all gathered backpacks and lunch pails and notes for their teachers, and they left home and rode off to school with a parent or in a yellow schoolbus full of other wiggling little children. Just like any other day…
Then the news came…and the nation stood still… just as we did on the day the Challenger exploded, or foreign planes crashed into the Twin Towers, or John Kennedy was shot. We stood still not believing what we were hearing, not grasping or accepting the images we were seeing as our eyes, glued to the TV, began to blink back the tears until we could hold them back no longer. A 20 year old camo-adorned madman armed with guns and bullets went on a rampage, then killed himself taking with him 6 teachers and 20 innocent children, and a part of our country’s bright future.
Many of the children and teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary were warned before the gunman could enter their classrooms. News reports say someone, maybe the principal who was one of the victims, or perhaps another office person, flipped the switch on the intercom so the entire school could hear the commotion, the ringing and scattering gunshots, the sounds of the victims as they experienced their own terror, and they might escape the same fate by running and hiding until they could be saved. It’s frightening to think about what that sounded like to those listening…but the harsh sounds of those who fell became the sounds of salvation for those who survived.
I didn’t hear the news that day until I returned home from a long day of errands and grocery shopping. I was hosting a company Christmas party the following Monday and so I headed out early…just like any other day…to run a few places, enjoy the bustle of the holiday crowds, then return to a nice warm home and maybe take in a movie on TV or read by the fire till bedtime. I had happened on a yard sale that morning and had gotten a few nice things to resell in my estate business. Among these things was a small divided box, about the size of my palm. It was buried in a box of the old jewelry from the yard sale vendor’s mom. When I took a closer look at the box I was delighted to see it held a tiny nativity set! Each piece was smaller than a dime, and there were 15 compartments for the pieces. One of the compartments was empty, and I was a bit disappointed, but I had to have it when I found out it was only $1.00. I could see the three figures of the main manger scene were all there and I knew that was the most important element. I pushed it down into my other bags, went on to my other errands and arrived home a bit after dark.
My plans for a peaceful evening changed when I saw the news. I sat watching the events unfold and although I was crying and heavy-hearted most of the night, I couldn’t tear myself away from the reporting until sometime very early the next morning. Each child’s face, each mention of a name brought to mind my own grandchildren. I could not imagine how it would feel to wait at the firehouse…wait, and wait…hoping to see your grandchild in the next group, and the next, and the next… and know she was safe because she had been hidden…but then be told that your own small one had not made it into hiding, and she would not be coming home again. I fell into bed exhausted and had a fitful night’s sleep.
The next morning I woke up and started my day with eyes that were still red-rimmed, but I knew I had many things on the list to do. I started with the purchases of the day before and began to put them away and my eyes fell on the tiny nativity set. I decided to set it up in a special place…and as I emptied the compartments of the figures…Joseph and Mary, wise men and donkey…I finally lifted the last piece out. It was the shepherd, and I was so surprised when I saw a teeny little sheep hiding behind the shepherd there. I had not seen this before…the nativity was complete, nothing missing at all!
My granddaughter, Lorelai, is beautiful…she smiles and sunshine emanates from every part of her heart-shaped face. She is smart and quick and we talk about how easily she memorizes and learns and how she will “be somebody” someday. Max and Isaac, the twin boys, are just now developing their own distinct little personalities. But we can already see the way Max investigates and peers at everything as if he is sizing it all up with the intensity of an engineer. Isaac is a squinty-eyed little rascal that captures your heart with one look, and he is very dextrous for his age and will likely be a hands-on worker of some sort.
I was reminded when I looked at the baby sheep in my hand, even with all their possibilities and talents and abilities that may come along as they grow and mature, the only thing that really matters to me is that my grandchildren are all protected and safe. They are in a world of wolves and those who seek to harm and destroy, and just like a tiny sheep, they are vulnerable to physical or spiritual danger. I want to be someone who “flips a switch” in their lives…warning them of the things that are cruel, letting them hear the truth, even when it will be frightening and maybe even harsh at times. Because I know that their only chance of salvation is in hearing and understanding this truth. And just like the tiny little sheep…they too must be found hiding behind the Shepherd.
I have always been a detail-oriented person. Even as a child, I often arranged, then rearranged my room, toys, clothes or what have you until everything was just right. In a freaky kind of way ordering my possessions became a comfort to me. Even now, I can pretty much walk into any area of my home and put my hand right on something I am looking for…as long as I have followed my most natural instinct which is use it, clean it up, store it in its “home” for next time.
Being a detailed person I am always on a schedule, but have prided myself on seeing things people don’t usually see and noticing things that often pass others by in their rush from one place to another, one activity to another. It’s what has made me a great cleaning company owner since I can see dirt that even a customer doesn’t observe in her own home. Beyond this I can also “see” a future need she may have by perceiving the condition of her home on the day of the walk through when we meet for the first time and I view the home. One of the most difficult tasks has been to train my techs and managers to have “eyes to see”. Challenging…but there are those rare times when I have a cleaning tech who meets or even surpasses my own skills in detection. Those are the techs who have garnered a skill for a lifetime…the ability to see the invisible, and they had learned it from my detailed training. So rewarding…
Today was a day of hectic running from place to place. I had several errands and stops to make, but with a list in hand, had made very good progress on a nippy but totally beautiful day. Inside, I was feeling so good about my accomplishment. List was whittling down, the Christmas and food shopping was nearing an end, and I was ready to head to my warm and welcoming bungalow after one more quick stop at a local grocery store. Walking across the parking lot, I was overwhelmed by the loveliness of the day, and deeply breathed in the crisp air making me feel even more alert and aware of everything around me. As I drew near the store’s entrance I glimpsed one of my favorite seasonal sights…the bell-ringing Salvation Army bucket guy. Many of these men and women have fallen on hard times, some are recovering addicts, some once homeless were given a helping hand by this organization, and manning the bucket was a payback of sorts. Taking a regrettable life or circumstance and helping someone turn it into a recovered and reconciled life…what a great ministry to the lost souls and wandering outcasts.
I dug into my pocket and found a dollar to drop in, and then I realized he wasn’t ringing a bell…he was playing the guitar instead. “How cool is that” I thought. My husband, Dwight, had filled our home many times with the sweet strains of an old hymn or long ago ballad, and the sound of an acoustic guitar brings many fond memories to surface when I hear it. How lucky I was to have caught an impromptu Christmas concert today!
The money was shoved into the top of the bucket, followed by the man’s softly uttered “Merry Christmas”. I answered back a return greeting over my shoulder as the automatic doors opened, grabbed a basket and headed to find the items I needed. The one place I didn’t want to be was a busy store as the noon hour approached. As I checked out, I found myself hoping the man was still playing when I left the store so I could maybe catch a little more of the guitar sounds that would put me in a cheery mood.. As I went out of the doors, I glanced over and saw him putting his coat on. He had laid the guitar down and picked up the bell and was walking over to the bucket. I wasn’t going to stop since there was no guitar…that was what I really wanted to hear and see…but as I pushed the basket by I said ” The guitar is different and a nice touch instead of the bell.” “Yes, it is,” he said quietly.” I hadn’t intended to really stop and converse. But something in his voice stopped me and just to be polite for a moment, I held onto the basket and nodded down at the guitar ” Have you been playing long?”. He hesitated, then told me he had played for years and really loved being able to share the guitar with others, ending with ” I love the guitar.” I answered that I do too, told him in a sentence or two that my husband was a player and had a 12 string ovation…then ended the statement with ” We love guitars because they love us back and don’t demand anything from us” as I started to push past him and go to the car. He agreed and as I began to say Merry Christmas once more and head to the car I finally looked up at the man’s face for the first time….and I was quickly moved to tears but fought them back. He had turned away to speak to the next person that came up with money and I realized…I recognized this young man…but I had not noticed that till the very moment I looked into his face. As I drove home, a sadness surrounded me…I recognized him, yes…but I didn’t know him…
How many times have I rushed by someone and not “noticed”? How many times has pride made me think I have it all together, I am a shining example, my life is one to be emulated and admired…when all the time the important things and people and their needs have been overshadowed by my agenda and pitiful and paltry needs? Did I give only to look good to others, for adulation…or was my giving only offered to those who demanded nothing and gave me only adoration and love in return for any bit of attention and time I may bestow on them that “fit the schedule”? What ministry opportunities did I miss when I rigidly stuck to my plan, my schedule and my itinerary rather than taking the time to see the true details of life, and notice the unnoticeable?
Life’s quilt is made of many fabrics…snippets of time, milliseconds of conversations, and enduring patterns of moments whose pieces are sewn together with delicate, and many times self-sacrificing, threads. I think more often than not, we become the delicate threads that are placed in others’ lives to sew them back together, stitching them into the real and truly blessed life they are meant to lead, even when they may have chosen a bargain basement life for themselves instead. But just as sewing in poor light can make you blind, and sloppy stitches make a quilt that will fall apart quickly, it is important to take care of our spiritual eyes and train ourselves to really see. It is just as vital to take the time to make tiny well-placed stitches in the lives of others by the seemingly insignificant gestures we may make because we took the time to see the details in another’s life. The cry for a kindly spoken word, a handshake and quick smile, or other small gesture that will turn a life around will only be seen by those willing to give notice to the unnoticeable.
Thanksgiving season has swiftly rushed past and we are now in the throes of Christmas shopping, decorating and baking. This time of year is reserved for reflection on days past, warm memories of those people and places of long ago, and a building of hope that the next calendar will turn over and see a bright New Year. We hear ring-a-linging bells on every corner as the Salvation Army Santa greets us, we watch as first one home then another in our neighborhoods throws light on the season with their various reindeer and sleighs, snowflakes and elves dancing along the fronts of glistening abodes and slippery sidewalks. Ah, Christmas…the time we should sit back and rest and really enjoy.
But do we? Many are working more hours now than ever before as the crush of the current economy has forced more people to find second and even third jobs. Masses of layoffs, closings and cutbacks have depressed the checkbooks along with the spirits of the working class. While embracing the real reason for the season, unfortunately love and contentment is buried in an avalanche of anxiety.
As much as we would like to see this way of life change, it seemingly is with us. Once a tide has turned it is so difficult to turn it back to simpler times, simpler truths and beliefs…not impossible…just more difficult.
As I was working from home today, I thought about how fortunate I am to do so when so many have to gird their loins and go out into the cruel world each day. I noticed too, and have been keenly aware of how “rushed” I will be and have been making a concerted effort for several months to slooooow doooowwwwwn. Not easy for this type A firstborn…but nothing worth doing is easy, right?
Many years ago I taught on this very subject in a women’s Bible Study I was leading at the time. I was encouraging us all in my teaching to take the time to enjoy the life the Lord has given us by eliminating some things from our lives that were a hindrance to true contentment and enjoyment. Several of the ladies were sharing how they didn’t “have time” to go to lunch or dinner with a friend anymore, or read a book, watch a favorite TV show, or sit on their back porch and eat an apple and listen to the birds sing and watch the squirrels run up and down the trees. Some were working more than one job, had small toddlers at home, an ailing parent or any of a number of various demands on their time. I took the opportunity to teach on “minute vacations”. So many times we are such perfectionists in our lives. We don’t do something until we can do it perfectly, and it ultimately never gets done. We don’t start a fun project because we can’t carve out an entire day to work on it, and we throw up our hands and say ” I will get to it, and my own time of enjoyment later”…and later never comes. Years pass, interest lags…and we never have anything to show for our lives but work, bed, eat, sleep a little and start over again.
How would your life change if you took more “minute vacations”? Drink a cup of hot cocoa and sit on the back porch…read 1 chapter, and only 1 chapter of your book each day…write one stanza of a poem or song…read the funny papers…feed the birds…take a walk around the block…practice the art of Simpli-F-Y.
Simpli-F-Y is anything you do Simply For You.
I recently returned from my annual trip to the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The weather was beautiful the full ten days, and rest and relaxation was the storyline. Good times with friends, much time for reflection alone, reading on my Kindle…all made for a perfect trip. Plans to go on this trip were made far ahead of time, deposits paid, my directives for staff in readiness and I was so looking forward to this trip. Then the news of an impending hurricane…Isaac…threatened to thwart all my wonderful plans.
The week before my departure, it was looking more and more like I may have to cancel my trip. I was watching a friend’s Facebook page. He lived right in the area where I was to stay, and the pictures he was posting looked fierce. When I expressed my concerns about cancelling my trip he assured me “Don’t worry, by the time you come next week you won’t even know the storm has blown through here.”
So after thinking about it for a few days, I decided to take my chances and not cancel my trip. I was hoping for the situation to change exactly as he said it would. And it was the right decision. The storm hooked, moved past the area, the bit of messiness was cleaned up in record time and I arrived to find a beautiful white sandy beach and all things in their rightful, safe places as I always had in the past.
On a particular day during my visit I was sitting quietly watching the children play and the pelicans swoop down for fish. I thought back to the wisdom of my friend’s advice and how it relates to life in general. I also thought how the beach is a beautiful example of the ever-changing life we are called to lead. I also thought back a bit further…
In high school,as an aspiring Journalist, it was quite natural that I would choose Creative Writing as one of my electives in my senior year. That year our class self-published a book full of some of the best of the literary works written by its students. The following work was chosen to grace the cover of the book. As I sat on the beach that day, I thought back to the words of this poem:
The secrets of the earth are written in the sand.
Each grain a different story, for those who understand.
The author is the ocean who left her book on shore.
Her waters hold the copyright, and now…just as before
The sea keeps on writing and her waves keep on churning,
And even now as we speak, another page is turning…
I pondered the meaning here and the words of my friend from the week before and how it related to my life at that very moment. So many of us are given a book of life, so to speak. It is full of pages of memories and moments…some laughter, some tears, some good times and some not so good, but they are all a vital part of our own book. Sometimes we have a book that others convincingly perceive as so perfect, that even we begin to think it is perfect and indestructible. Then a storm brews, the clouds lay low in the sky, the wind picks up and before we know it the tempest has become a full-fledged hurricane leaving debris and wreckage in its wake, and perhaps taking away buildings, a pier, the white purity of the sand and replacing it with seaweed and blackened piles of wood and mess. It is as if the book of our own life that was so beautiful one moment had pages ripped from it, and the remains were tossed on shore like flotsam, and forgotten.
We may deal with many things in our own book of life….the loss of a job, death of spouse, divorce, cancer or other illness, betrayal of a friend. We may feel as if our perfect life at that moment had an unrelenting storm blow through, crushing us, ripping a page from our life…and we find ourselves wondering if our book of life will ever be normal and whole again. Many end up turning to outer means to salve the inside heartbrokeness. They look for the missing pieces in another person, frenetic activity, a bottle of pills, or a martini glass. And they realize no matter how many things come into our life on the outside to cover over the sadness, the page will still be missing…but… it’s ok to have a missing page. It doesn’t mean you no longer have a book…
How many times do you keep going back to that same spot in your own book, looking for the missing page, and ignoring all your other beautiful and joyful pages in the process? How many of the other pages appear pristine and look as if no one has ever visited them? Shouldn’t they be lovingly dogeared, thin from where you have handled them, reading and re-reading the wonderful parts of your life, and remembering? Isn’t your life to be like the sea…getting written over and over each day with new stories, new experiences, new opportunities to cover up and
wash away the harshness that is the missing page?
Perhaps the secret…is in the sand…
I am one of the unfortunate sufferers of arthritis and osteoporosis. The effects of both these conditions have pretty much been a part of my life in one way or other since my late teens, early 20’s. At first, my parents thought it was traditional “growing pains”, so we pretty much ignored it as such and went on. But as I left my teens and entered my 20’s I started having some really odd pains…most mornings it was hard to get out of bed.
I found I couldn’t do the common things of a 20 year old…it was an effort to pick up my baby, my hands would “give out”, or my upper arms some mornings had virtually no strength in them, seemingly overnight. My feet had what I called heel spurs, but looking back I can see it was where the osteoporosis had set in. Not the normal physical life of a 20 year old. I plodded through it and played more with my daughter on the more mobile days, and cut back activity on others when we sat and read a lot or watched the tube, due to my aching joints and bones. But once I entered the 30’s, the pain had become debilitating more days than not, so off I trotted to the doctor, and thus the diagnosis all those years ago.
Several different medicines have been tried, but not being much for synthetic answers, I pretty much have just “adjusted” to the pain and difficulty in my body as the years have rolled on. Now at the age of “over 50”, there is pain every day, all day, in more than one spot of my body and that is my norm. Frankly most of the time I push through it and don’t even really notice it until it gets outside the pain level I have grown accustomed to all these years.
This week, I decided to change my daily routine. I had begun working at home the last couple of months pretty much exclusively and although I am a very organized person, I kept finding myself kind of drifting from one activity to another during the day and not getting as much accomplished as I desired and knew I could complete. I also seemed to be running out of time to just be myself and do some personal things I love such as read the Kindle on the back deck. So I sat down with pencil and paper, jotted down a tentative scheduling of my time and necessary daily activities, and placed those in general slots of time during the day. I wanted to create a new “normal” schedule for myself since the “normal” I have had for many years was no longer existent when I came back home to work, rather than going to an office every day.
All week, I have been on schedule and now that it is Friday it is actually starting to kind of feel “normal”. I marvel over the things I am accomplishing. I am marveling more over being able to stop at a certain time of the day, just like in an office setting, and fix my dinner, watch TV, read, rest or whatever I want to do for a slot of hours in my evening, rather than working till bedtime because I took 5 minutes here and 15 there during the day and “got behind” on things I really needed to complete for the day trying to grab moments of personal time of reflection and rest. I am more focused, I am more energized, and even my body is responding by getting more physical rest in longer segments, which could do nothing but aid in my health issues, right?
What I have found most interesting is this…
I have spent years working in my business. Many hours were willingly put in and very much enjoyed because the business was growing and so was I. I was meeting new people, being recognized in my community and among my peers, becoming a spokesperson for my industry. My new “normal” was getting up, working till bed with a few moments sprinkled through the day here and there of personal or family time, and doing it all over the next day. Prior to this working career, I had been a stay-at-home mom that worked at home, was in my yard and gardens for about 30 hours a week ( my passion), worked in my church, cooked every day, made bread, and did all those things that I adored doing for my family. A sad divorce forced me into the work world, and I adapted to it quickly and loved it, too…but the things that were once “normal” for me became the “abnormal”, and stayed that way for many years.
When I got up this morning at 6, I started thinking about my life now, and what my “normal” is now…and more what my “normal” today should be. As I took my morning walk, I thought about how my joint pain over the years had grown to a point that what was once thought of as terribly paralyzing “growing pains”, were tiny compared to the pain I now feel in my body as the norm each day. It truly does paralyze me in many ways and make me incapable of living a “normal” life for my age. I had let pain and difficulty physically become my “normal”. Nowadays, some pretty severe pain has to come along to slap me and say “hey you, you have some real physical issues here that need to be addressed. This isn’t just something you have to go through…a “growing pain”…it is out of the NORMAL…do something about it”.
How many of us, I wonder, have let sad situations, people who are jerks that consistently disrespect us by their words or behavior, or personal hardship and fear become our “normal” because it was looked upon as a “growing pain”…just something you have to go through, everyone does… it is “normal”…
Maybe it’s time for each of us to take a good long look at the life we lead, who we allow into it, what activities and priorities are part of the DNA of our today. Have we allowed people, emotions, beliefs or any number of “abnormal” things become our “normal” through disregard of the pain they may be causing us, and have caused us over the years? Is it time for us to change our perception? Or, even more… is it time to take a look at our pain head on, decide what has taken the value of our life and turned it into a devaluing thing…and then make a shift back to our kind of “normal”?
It might be that going back to our “normal” is the real growing pain we need to experience today.
This blog post comes at the end of a perfect day. I usually go to yard sales a.k.a. junkin’ as my Granddaughter calls it, but not today. I decided to stay home and work around my house instead. So much was accomplished…the piles of things that had accumulated over the last week from estate clean outs and purchasing trips was put away, housework was done, organizing in my home office was marked off the list and I was ready to retire for the night. Then I remembered that I had read there was a meteor shower, more visible after midnight, and I quickly looked at my watch and decided to head outdoors. The air was really cool for this time of year, unseasonably so. I had a glass of strawberry zinfandel and my lawn chair as silent companions, and I waited, peering up at the night sky. Perseid comes through each August. It is the time of year that the Earth goes through the shattered remains of a comet that actually began disintegrating around the time of the Civil War. Amazing, we are still feeling the effects every year at the same time, just like clockwork.
As I sat waiting for the light show I was certain would be spectacular, I began to grow restless when no shooting “stars” were visible immediately. After maybe 6 or 7 minutes I saw something fly across my peripheral vision…and then it was gone…so fast I thought “Did I really see what I thought I saw?” So I waited for another…and waited. More time passed and I was about to convince myself I had seen a random firefly rather than a meteor when right in front of me swoosh…one flew past…and went out as suddenly as it had appeared. Now that was thrilling! I couldn’t wait to see the next, and the next…the time in between was pretty much the same…every 6 minutes or so, but once I had seen a sure meteor, I KNEW I would see another one, so the wait felt shorter each time one flew past my line of vision. I never doubted again that I would see exactly what I had come out to see…a life event.
As I gathered my things and came indoors I realized I had witnessed a life lesson for myself. So many times we ask, we pray, we plead for opportunities to change our life, our job, our home. We wait on those opportunities…and we wait. We think there will be a “sign in the sky” or some type of out of the ordinary event that will give us the assurance that THIS is what we need to do, or THAT is where we need to go with our path. Many times the chance to make a real life change comes by so quickly, we aren’t even sure we really saw, or heard, what we thought we did. So we continue to wait for change to happen on its own. Time passes and we think we really didn’t see the opportunity clearly and maybe we were wrong to even think that…oh, there goes another opportunity whizzing by…much brighter than the first! This is when we may get excited…maybe, just maybe, I am on the right path this time…maybe this is where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to do. And maybe…when we were so heartsick, lonely ,afraid or feeling as if we were in a huge rut we didn’t see the opportunities coming, just like clockwork, every year, every month, or day to give us the permission to accept them and pursue our own contentment.
In the same way the comet exploded into tiny fragments, with millions of pieces flying through the air and our planet barreling through those fragments for the last 150 plus years…maybe we are guilty of spinning through opportunity after opportunity, rather than seeing them right in front of us because we were looking for that one big “something” rather than the tiny little pieces that would make the spectacular life we have always wanted become a reality.
In the Bible, 2nd Corinthians says our troubles are “light and momentary” but achieving a far greater thing in eternal ways. Perhaps all the light and momentary opportunities, just like the meteors that went flying past and were gone, are just the pre-show to the really wonderful life that is to come…if only we reach out and take hold of them before they are gone. I only know, I don’t want to be sitting in a lawn chair watching my opportunities…and my real life path…go flying past anymore. It’s time to gather the light and momentary and turn it into something lasting and true .