life
Today was a rare day of working from home. I say rare because it is not often that I can be at home all day, the entire day, whether working or not. And well…this one started out great…and rare…but it ended up being an ordinary day after all, and not so rare. A grandmother assignment knocked on my door and I was called out to active duty.
I was sitting in my jammies and it was almost noon. The morning had consisted of plowing through mounds of work, answering emails, talking to folks on the phone, setting up appointments, housework and anything and everything that was on the “to do” list. Yes, it is an actual list. I keep a physical list…written on a yellow lined legal pad…updated daily, sometimes hourly…and yes, I do get a lot accomplished and marked off that list each day. But the one thing that always bugs me is this: there is ALWAYS a list. I never get done, it is never empty, and I never find myself saying “Holy cow, what will I do now?” I was about halfway down the list when a voxer message came through from my daughter (look it up if you don’t know what that is, that is subject for another blog), about nothing earth-shattering or intense, but I could tell in the conversation that it was an edgy day for her. She wasn’t feeling too spunky, the boy kids were being rascals and the girl kid was occupied and peaceful for the moment but that is a volcano ready to blow anytime…she’s six. Enough said.
After a few messages back and forth I could see Samantha was not really feeling like getting out later to take my granddaughter to her square dancing lesson. It is an event taking the boys, busy little beavers that they are. They really are quite good, but by the time she gets them up from naps, fed, snacks ready for dancing because it runs late, everyone piled into the car, driven there, un-piled from the car and inside to watch young Sassy Sue do her stuff, then home and doing it all backwards to get them into bed for the night before they turn into pumpkins, it is pretty exhausting and leaves one wondering if it is really worth the effort at all.
I could see this wasn’t working for them and their family, but I also knew my granddaughter was loving every minute of it. She is a free-spirit and anything that she does in the creative field is like putting wind under gossamer wings for her…you can just see her lift higher in her confidence, her belief in herself, her talents and her pure joy in living. Her words to me after her very first lesson were pretty telling. “So, did you like this Lorelai, did you like square dancing?” to which she answered “I LOVE this, it is my THANG!” I snicker now to think of how sincere she was, and really how true it seems. So today when it began to look like she might have to stop doing something this important and nurturing to her, well, GiGi stepped in without a thought. I did take one tiny look at the piles of papers still on the desk and I winced. I knew my schedule was already crowded this week with an upcoming estate this next weekend, followed by meetings with vendors to get the home cleared and cleaned out next week and Thanksgiving holiday shoved into the middle of all that. Every moment this week and next was booked and planned and…on the list.
I told Samantha I would come get Lorelai and take her to class tonight, and I would designate myself her chaperone each Monday and make sure she got there for her classes. As I put down the phone, I did what I often do when Divine Intervention comes to visit…I make a little sighing sound, take pen in hand, mark out the non-essentials on the list leaving only the most urgent, and move the non-essentials to other days and hope for the best they will get done, too. This time I did a write in of ” GiGi pick up Lorelai at 6:30″ on all my Monday nights for the next several weeks, and perhaps months, because this had become an unexpected priority for me.
Unexpected priorities come in all shapes and sizes. They come in people who have a need for money when you just happened to get a little windfall in your mailbox this week. They come in the sudden extended illness or injury of a co-worker that places an additional workload on you when you are already a bit overburdened with your own job requirements. It comes in the little girl who loves to dance, the boys who need to run free on the playground even though there are dirty dishes waiting in the sink, the kitty cat who needs to sit in your lap, cuddle and purr and make both of you feel better and cared for. They may even come as strangers who teach you that you will either evaluate the substance of your days, or the substance of your days will one day evaluate you.
I had gone to lunch with a friend a few weeks ago. It was spontaneous and unexpected and I had that “list” going for the day. But I quickly decided to go to lunch, enjoy the food and conversation, and cross off a few things on the list so I could do just that. As we sat and talked I noticed a couple, about our same age, at the table across from us. The conversation between them was more one-sided than mine and my companion’s chatting, although it appeared the other couple was related, but maybe not married. She rattled on in a light manner, talking about family, about church and so forth. The man was hyper-focused on his food, and after a bit I could see he was struggling with his utensils and seemed to have every bit of effort being used to just eat his meal. The woman didn’t let that keep her from carrying on cheery talk. The man, after a few moments, got up from the table and headed to the restroom. My dinner companion was already away from the table. The woman leaned in after a few minutes and asked “Will you tell the waitress to bring our check if I have to leave the table?” nodding in the direction of the restroom. I said I would, but the waitress returned and I watched the lady pay, chat with a smile to the young girl, and continue to wait on the man, who I had found out in more small talk was her husband. “He is on heavy medication, but I try to let him do things on his own if I can. He has been ill a long time but only this ill a short while.” I could tell she wanted to talk to someone, so I said I was sorry to hear that and she teared up a bit and said they were celebrating their anniversary today. I wished them a happy one, but I was surprised when she said their real anniversary was not till January, and this was November. She then told me he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer the week before, and had been told he had only 3-4 weeks to live, and they decided to celebrate today. He was three weeks away…a bit more, a bit less…from completing “the list”.
I have thought about them often since that day. It is very possible he is still here, still working the list, still being her husband as best as he can. But chances are, if the doctors were right, he is no longer making choices about how he spends his time, who he spends it with, what he puts on the list, and what he takes off. Those choices have been made for him now, and also for those he loves. The wife had been taking care of him for almost five years and now that would no longer be on her list. All the errands, appointments, picking up prescriptions, crying in the darkness, wondering what she was going to do when she did lose him…was gone, too. An unexpected priority had presented itself in the care of a suddenly ill husband. A different priority was a now terminally ill husband’s care. Priorities had changed again and it was time to take care of herself, alone. I wonder if he would have made different choices in his moments, the things he placed on his to do list for his days if he had known this was how it would all end. More importantly I wonder if she would have chosen differently if she had known she wouldn’t have all the time in the world with him as one part of “them”?
Three weeks is such a short time when you are living the last of something…and seems like such a long time when you are living the first of something. We don’t have all the time in the world to get this thing right, we can’t always make it up later. Later isn’t always there for us or for those we love and have in our care. I think maybe it’s time to sharpen my pencil, get out the rubber eraser, and start eliminating some things that maybe were on the priority list but have moved on down or off the whole legal pad. It may just be time to pencil in a little more dancing and a little less “do it”. Dancing through my days…well, it may just be my “thang” very soon. You too?
One of my great joys in life is reading. I have always been an avid reader, even as a very young child. The school librarian was my best friend by the age of 7 and I was introduced to many a dusty little volume of the adventures of Dick and Jane, Laura Ingalls Wilder or Curious George. Biographies, field study books, poems or prose…it really didn’t matter. I read them all and could often be found with my nose in a book while the other children did cartwheels on the playground at recess or hurried to the local bike trail for races after school. I loved books because they were filled with windows of opportunity. I could be anyone and do anything, and happiness and contentment were found simply in the whispering turn of a page.
My favorite book as a child, and actually still to this day, is Harold and The Purple Crayon. I remember seeing this book for the first time on Captain Kangaroo. The story held instant fascination for me. Here was a boy, even younger than I, who drew his world exactly as he wished it to be. The book began with Harold as it’s sole character. Harold wanted to go for a walk in the moonlight, but there was no moon, so he draws one. He has nowhere to walk, so he draws a path. The book is full of many adventures and twists and turns. At some point in the story, Harold is looking for his room, and ultimately he draws his own house and bed and goes off to blissful sleep.
Most recently, I stumbled across another “purple crayon” book by Tim Ferriss, an American author, entrepreneur, angel investor and public speaker. He is most notably recognized for his book titled ” The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”. It is a book that focuses on “lifestyle design” rather than the traditional “deferred” life plan we all know and blindly engage in, which has you work grueling hours and taking few vacations for decades and save money in order to relax after retirement. Frustrated by overwork and lack of free time, Ferriss took a 3-week sabbatical to Europe. While continuing travels throughout Europe, Asia and South America, he developed a streamlined system of checking email once per day and outsourced pretty much his whole life to virtual assistants. The genesis of the book came when he made his personal escape from a workaholic lifestyle and started living the life most of us only dream about….and doing it all within the confines of 4 hours per week. When I finished that book, I realized he was a modern day Harold….drawing his life the way HE wanted it, not the way everyone else thought it should be. And I started taking stock of my own box of crayons and found it to have become pretty bare. Lots of broken pieces, some colors even missing, no purple to be found. It gave me a moment of great pause in the knowing. How could I draw my own life the way I needed, with whom, for what if I didn’t even have a purple crayon in my box? So I have set about on the journey to find my own purple crayons…lots of them.
Ferriss had the goal of upsizing his life by downsizing his work. Admirable, but certainly not the goal I gravitated toward, at least initially. My purple crayon pursuit was more a social adjustment than socioeconomic, and personal more than paycheck driven. For most of my life, I have been pretty much allowed myself and my pursuits to be dictated by the rules of society and the basic mores of our culture. You get up early, you work till exhausted, you eat a little and sleep even less, you fit in family and familial activities while you can and if there is enough time left over at the end of the day then you can have 30 minutes or so of personal development, but certainly do not count on it. Vacations only come once a year, if that. Meals are meat, taters, one green veggie and an occasional dessert. You work until retirement, if you are a lucky one and have the wherewithal to retire some day, and then you sit on the porch and rock the rest of life away. You do it this way because THEY say so….whoever THEY is. But I one day realized THEY do not have a purple crayon in their box. It was high time I went on my own purple crayon search.
Today I choose to draw into my life only what I want drawn, not what society thinks needs to be there. I spend time with those who enhance my current and established life, not seek to rule or change it. If I want to hop in the car and speed down to the coast to take in the Shrimp Festival and enjoy a Jimmy Buffett Concert, I simply throw a few things in the car and go and decide on the way down when I will return and I don’t ask someone’s permission first, I just do it. I meander into Baskin Robbins, when I indulge in the creamy treat on occasion, and I pick one of the 31 I haven’t ever tasted rather than go to my “favorites”. You can’t know about something unless you try it at some point, right? If I want to wear esoteric Ed Hardy tennis shoes with distinctly tailored clothing to a meeting, I do and I don’t stop to worry if I look alright or will be accepted by those I come into contact with. When I go out to eat with a friend, I take his suggestions on what to order, even if it is out of my norm or even a bit past my palate’s comfort zone. If and when I have the financial ability, I plan to travel to every spot on the planet, given the opportunity, and experience everything possible in the way of new cultures, foods, friends and customs. I want to learn to paint, really paint, to play the guitar even perhaps badly, and write books that people will fall in love with while reading and weep when they are over. And I have made it my mission to befriend and spend my time only with those who have those same purple crayon ideals.
Life is short…we have heard that phrase so many times it has become a bit cliche’, but the truth of it remains. This is it, here on this planet anyway, and I don’t want to look back at my own life and regret not having gathered the fascinating people, unparalleled experiences, and deeply passionate love I want for my own just because I was too afraid or too timid to buck the system a little and live my moments outside the normal little box that becomes the road map for most folks. It is not my dying wish that my last words be “Welcome to Walmart” because I haven’t allowed myself early retirement from the presets on this life machine and gone off to new journeys and adventures even if it takes a bit of drawing it all in as I go. A truly awesome life is not for the weak-hearted or frail….it is for those bold enough to not only read about it, but step into it, with a fistful of purple crayons in hand. I see the sun is coming up and my breakfast awaits…time to draw in a Waffle House…maybe this time in Madrid…
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…