Usually when someone asks me if I want to get together, I say yes because I love my friends. Then, when I am by myself, in the silence of my own head, the fear creeps in. I am, as only some of you know, mildly agoraphobic. Places outside my comfort zone and/or too many people make me nervous. Do I want to leave the house? Ahhh!
But in the last two years I have been slowly confronting this phobia. I have been challenging myself to accept invitations when I have the time and trying to reach out into my pool of friends and engage my relationships in a greater variety of ways.
The odd bit in all this is that I usually have a great time once I'm with those I love and enjoy. This week we were invited to spend an afternoon at the swimming pool of one of the kids' friends. Many others were invited and I was frantically trying to think of a reason to not go. Alas, I could not find one, so I accepted the invitation and prepared myself for the fear, which didn't really kick in like it used to. The afternoon by the pool was terrific fun. I loved spending time with all of kids' friends and their moms (and a couple of dads.) We talked and swam and appreciated the long awaited summer.
There's a water metaphor in there somewhere. You know, a pool of friends who provide sustenance for and refreshment of the soul; the pool of water doing the same thing for the body. Hmm. Anyway...
I feel a bit triumphant. Not as much fear, loads of enjoyment, and the genuine desire to do it again. Not bad. Let the summer of fun begin.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Old Friends
In a recent post I mentioned an old friend of mine that I had been thinking about and how we find ourselves sometimes by exploring and manifesting that which we are not in our youth. I decided to go looking for that friend and guess what? I found him. He's an attorney. (I recently heard that Americans have 5-7 careers over of the course of their lives. I'm way above that.) I emailed him, but I haven't heard back. Who knows why. I hope he does eventually contact me though.
This year has been a year for getting in touch. Beginning about this time last year I felt driven to contact friends and colleagues from my past. Largely this has been rewarding. There has been revelation, healing, nostalgia and the realization that people can and do change. I hope the trend toward reconnection continues.
This year has been a year for getting in touch. Beginning about this time last year I felt driven to contact friends and colleagues from my past. Largely this has been rewarding. There has been revelation, healing, nostalgia and the realization that people can and do change. I hope the trend toward reconnection continues.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Miracles Little and Large
Today I was the proud witness of two miracles. Marshmallows and Mckenzie. Of course marshmallows don't seem like much of a miracle, but today they really brought me out of my everyday perspective and landed me in a less common one. Today, you see, I made homemade marshmallows. Someone told me they tasted better. I think it was Laura. Despite my efforts, I couldn't find a recipe that didn't include gelatin, but I found a highly rated recipe that worked as it said it would. What I find miraculous in all of this nonsense about marshmallows is that someone came up with the idea of marshmallows in the first place. They don't taste very good, and now that I've made them I know why. They are all sugar. Boring! But still, someone heated up sugar and water and corn syrup until it boiled at just the right temperature and then they whipped it up with gelatin for a very long time until it turned into a stiff fluff. Am I the only one who finds that odd? Even if there wee a logical explanation as to how and why they were first made, you would think they would have tasted it and said, "no, not so much" and called it day. Now these largely tasteless bits of puffed sugar are mass produced and sold commercially except they seem to think Blue Lake #40 is an important addition to the mix. Mine looked fine without it. I don't know. I still just think the whole deal is a miracle.
The bigger better miracle though was watching a video of Mckenzie take her first post-op walk. Mckenzie had one of her hind legs surgically removed after Craig found a tumor growing there. The journey has been a rough one for them both, but the video is inspiring to me. No words can convey the joy of witnessing such triumph. If you need a something to lift you out of self-pity and inspire you to press on through adversity, just click the link to Craig's blog on my Cool Links List and see a big miracle for yourself.
The bigger better miracle though was watching a video of Mckenzie take her first post-op walk. Mckenzie had one of her hind legs surgically removed after Craig found a tumor growing there. The journey has been a rough one for them both, but the video is inspiring to me. No words can convey the joy of witnessing such triumph. If you need a something to lift you out of self-pity and inspire you to press on through adversity, just click the link to Craig's blog on my Cool Links List and see a big miracle for yourself.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Exploring the Negative Space
I got to thinking earlier this evening about an old friend of mine. We met at work and were fast admirers of each other. We talked often and occasionally got together with friends outside of work. My friend came from money. To top it off, he had a brilliant mind which had once been put to use by oil companies looking for new places to drill. Still, somehow, my geophysicist friend ended up working in a tiny audio rental company and mixing music on the side. His attention to music wasn’t just a passing whim either. He pursued it for as long as I knew him and kept track of his career. What can explain the new course?
I believe that our life circumstances build us up around a certain model, an expectation. Our families, friends, our choices and their consequences mold us and bend us and teach us how and who to be. And yet, there can come a time when we find within ourselves this empty spot that cries out to be explored. A negative space wholly unexpected and charged. It wells up in the form of desire and longing, expands us with the heat of life and age, and we begin to know something about ourselves that wasn’t real until we noticed that all the while we were wrapped around it.
Looking back now that I am just a little older than he was then, I realize the massive change that has taken place in the trajectory of my life since my early twenties. I have felt at times like a clay jar that has been shattered. I can feel the places where my walls once stood, but I can also feel the edges where those walls touched nothingness. I feel the shape of that nothingness that longs to be acknowledged and fully known.
I smile at the thought of all of this and at how taking chances on the unknown voice inside me brought me the best friend I’ve ever had and the two greatest joys of creation that I could never have imagined. I sink into contentment, for just an instant.
I believe that our life circumstances build us up around a certain model, an expectation. Our families, friends, our choices and their consequences mold us and bend us and teach us how and who to be. And yet, there can come a time when we find within ourselves this empty spot that cries out to be explored. A negative space wholly unexpected and charged. It wells up in the form of desire and longing, expands us with the heat of life and age, and we begin to know something about ourselves that wasn’t real until we noticed that all the while we were wrapped around it.
Looking back now that I am just a little older than he was then, I realize the massive change that has taken place in the trajectory of my life since my early twenties. I have felt at times like a clay jar that has been shattered. I can feel the places where my walls once stood, but I can also feel the edges where those walls touched nothingness. I feel the shape of that nothingness that longs to be acknowledged and fully known.
I smile at the thought of all of this and at how taking chances on the unknown voice inside me brought me the best friend I’ve ever had and the two greatest joys of creation that I could never have imagined. I sink into contentment, for just an instant.
Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home
I have been reading this book about dogs and other animals that have a 6th sense of some kind. I have had many experiences with my oldest that would give me some evidence that this is true. I am awed by his ability to know when my husband's plane is taking off to come home, when his plane arrives or when he is gathering his things at work to come home regardless of the time of day. I love the way he can tell if someone has good or bad intentions even though he can't see them. He's always been a sensitive dog. He even gets mopey before my husband has a trip, hours before a suitcase has been brought out. Its cool to think that some animals are telepathic.
Recently, in our local paper, a cat was profiled that lives in a retirement facility. That cat seems to know when people are going to die. (Bit spooky) It lays on the bed of the person who is going to die about 2 hours before the passing. It happens enough that these incidents can not be just a coincidence. There is a knowing involved. What kind? I'm not sure, but its interesting. Worth looking into. Worth acknowledging when you meet a furry critter on the street or in someone's home.
Do you have any cool stories about an intuitive pet?
Recently, in our local paper, a cat was profiled that lives in a retirement facility. That cat seems to know when people are going to die. (Bit spooky) It lays on the bed of the person who is going to die about 2 hours before the passing. It happens enough that these incidents can not be just a coincidence. There is a knowing involved. What kind? I'm not sure, but its interesting. Worth looking into. Worth acknowledging when you meet a furry critter on the street or in someone's home.
Do you have any cool stories about an intuitive pet?
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Space Between
My friend Brian called a few months ago to say that he is getting married. (The wedding is scheduled for later this month.) Before I had hung up the phone, I had begun composing a short bit on my best marriage advice to give the newlyweds. I finally checked my punctuation and added a poem that I wrote for my own husband.
The Space Between
I have been to a lot of weddings and a common theme among many of them is “two become one.” At first glance, I have to admit, its quite a romantic notion. Who doesn’t want to feel that after their long wandering in the desert of life alone that they will be solaced with a wholeness found in marriage to a soulmate?
Now, after two marriages and a little life experience, I’m guessing that it had to be someone who was never married that came up with that one. No matter how hard we try to throw two whole human beings into some sacred Hermaphroditus, it just doesn’t hold up over time. Why? I think the answer lies in the question, “Who will support you when you can not stand, if you are one?”
And yet so many of us begin marriage with the idea in our heads that we are one with our partners. It hurts to move apart especially when you feel that such a contract has been broken. To change in different ways, when no space has been left between you, when indeed you were to be one, is frightening. And yet it is inevitable. Sooner or later, we all hear the deep call of the self asking to have its needs met. Is it not better then to leave the space between you from the start?
Our bodies are mostly made up of the space between. Swirling clouds of electrons make momentary appearances and leave so much of their globe-like orbits uninhabited. And then there is the space between those orbits and between them and the nucleus. But what occurs in this space between is miraculous. This is where attraction exists, electricity, the powerful bonds of agreement that make this world seem solid and real.
When two lovers first meet, their first enjoyment is not in falling into each other’s embrace. Their first enjoyment, the one that makes the meaningful embrace possible, derives from the space between them. It is in the attraction, the chemistry that pulls them closer and, with agreement, creates a bond over time. If two become one, where can this electricity between two souls reside? Where is commitment to find a home and to be strengthened?
In maintaining the space between, you leave room for the holy to enter into your relationship, as a guide and a comforter. You also allow each other the opportunity to attend to individual spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs. In turn this personal growth is brought back and shared providing the relationship with vigor and the partner with renewed interest.
Instead of oneness of being, let your oneness be of purpose. Let your call to one another be, “Come be with me the first two pillars of this home we will call our family.” Move together like the two wings of a dove. Each wing must possess the strength to press against the current and each must take its turn to steer; but ultimately they share the common goal, to keep the bird aloft. As Kahlil Gibran says, “Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone/ Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.”
The Space Between, a poem for my husband:
There is a gentle buoyant rift between your pulse and mine,
A canyon of beating drums and celebration,
Where you are yourself and I am myself, together.
The space between lays over loss
Holds the place of mourning for the mourner.
Through this gateway God enters
And then leaves us to our love.
What will we do with it when the Nameless One is gone?
The space between—
Will we empty it out
Or fill it with the ten thousand things?
Or could we dance there
In the space between
Where you are yourself and I am myself together.
The Space Between
I have been to a lot of weddings and a common theme among many of them is “two become one.” At first glance, I have to admit, its quite a romantic notion. Who doesn’t want to feel that after their long wandering in the desert of life alone that they will be solaced with a wholeness found in marriage to a soulmate?
Now, after two marriages and a little life experience, I’m guessing that it had to be someone who was never married that came up with that one. No matter how hard we try to throw two whole human beings into some sacred Hermaphroditus, it just doesn’t hold up over time. Why? I think the answer lies in the question, “Who will support you when you can not stand, if you are one?”
And yet so many of us begin marriage with the idea in our heads that we are one with our partners. It hurts to move apart especially when you feel that such a contract has been broken. To change in different ways, when no space has been left between you, when indeed you were to be one, is frightening. And yet it is inevitable. Sooner or later, we all hear the deep call of the self asking to have its needs met. Is it not better then to leave the space between you from the start?
Our bodies are mostly made up of the space between. Swirling clouds of electrons make momentary appearances and leave so much of their globe-like orbits uninhabited. And then there is the space between those orbits and between them and the nucleus. But what occurs in this space between is miraculous. This is where attraction exists, electricity, the powerful bonds of agreement that make this world seem solid and real.
When two lovers first meet, their first enjoyment is not in falling into each other’s embrace. Their first enjoyment, the one that makes the meaningful embrace possible, derives from the space between them. It is in the attraction, the chemistry that pulls them closer and, with agreement, creates a bond over time. If two become one, where can this electricity between two souls reside? Where is commitment to find a home and to be strengthened?
In maintaining the space between, you leave room for the holy to enter into your relationship, as a guide and a comforter. You also allow each other the opportunity to attend to individual spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs. In turn this personal growth is brought back and shared providing the relationship with vigor and the partner with renewed interest.
Instead of oneness of being, let your oneness be of purpose. Let your call to one another be, “Come be with me the first two pillars of this home we will call our family.” Move together like the two wings of a dove. Each wing must possess the strength to press against the current and each must take its turn to steer; but ultimately they share the common goal, to keep the bird aloft. As Kahlil Gibran says, “Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone/ Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.”
The Space Between, a poem for my husband:
There is a gentle buoyant rift between your pulse and mine,
A canyon of beating drums and celebration,
Where you are yourself and I am myself, together.
The space between lays over loss
Holds the place of mourning for the mourner.
Through this gateway God enters
And then leaves us to our love.
What will we do with it when the Nameless One is gone?
The space between—
Will we empty it out
Or fill it with the ten thousand things?
Or could we dance there
In the space between
Where you are yourself and I am myself together.
Gluten Free does not = Health Food
Oh my dear sweet friends! Gluten free food is not always healthy. It just doesn't contain wheat, rye, barley or gluten containing oats. In fact, much in the way of gluten free baked goods contain more fat and sugar than those made with wheat. I eat gluten free because I am gluten intolerant. Eating this way keeps me from getting sick. If anything, a gluten free diet keeps me healthier because I eat less refined carbohydrates, partly because my access to them is limited.
Lays plain potato chips are gluten free as are Fritos, Cheetos and Staxx. Do you see what I'm getting at? Comfort food, GF or not, is usually not healthy for the body, but it some cases it can work wonders on the soul.
Lays plain potato chips are gluten free as are Fritos, Cheetos and Staxx. Do you see what I'm getting at? Comfort food, GF or not, is usually not healthy for the body, but it some cases it can work wonders on the soul.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
The Summer of...Fun?
Okay, here I am admitting to all of you that as the school year is coming to a close I am already anticipating the beginning of the next one. "Why?" you might ask. Well, remember how, about 10 months ago, I was crying over leaving my kids at school and feeling so empty? News flash: I love my time to myself. Though the hours aren't many, my "free" time has been absolutely sensational. This past week, the end of all of that came frighteningly into view. I don't want to give it up. To make matters worse, all the camps I was hoping to put the kids into are either full or not really as ideal as they seemed.
This woman needs some help/advice. I will, without a doubt, be registering the kids for camps early next year, maybe as early as January. But this summer is a big blank slate. What should I do with my kids this summer and how do I get some free time? Words of wisdom are being sought from all corners. What do you do? What does your neighbor/best friend/sister/mother/uncle/cousin do with their kids over the summer? Help!
This woman needs some help/advice. I will, without a doubt, be registering the kids for camps early next year, maybe as early as January. But this summer is a big blank slate. What should I do with my kids this summer and how do I get some free time? Words of wisdom are being sought from all corners. What do you do? What does your neighbor/best friend/sister/mother/uncle/cousin do with their kids over the summer? Help!
Friday, June 6, 2008
Parenthood on Grocery Day
Every other Friday I do a mega shopping spree for two weeks worth of groceries. I used to go to 5 stores in one day, which my dear friend Craig has been subjected to, God bless him. Now, with my sanity in mind, I do the two little stores on Wed and the "big 3" on Friday. That I do this baffles many, including Craig who seems to think you can find everything worth having in one store. (He's in the majority.) But the truth is, I'm a food snob. In order to eat the way I want to eat, i.e. fresh, local, organic (and affordable,) I have to shop at more than one store. So every other Friday I head out in the early morning to Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Then I pick up the kids and we go to the Market of Choice.
Today, however, the routine got buggered up because of a school inservice day. When I woke to the sound of rain (again) and the swooshing of wind through the trees, my heart sank. This was not the bright start I was hoping for. I tried on 3 different outfits, all to go grocery shopping mind you, and then I fussed with my hair. I said to myself in the mirror, "This is NOT going to be one of THOSE days!" Maybe you know what I mean. That day when everything you put on makes you seem fat or sallow or jaundiced. That day when your hair, no matter how much "product" you put in it or how many types of irons you shape it with, would still only attract a Yeti--at least to your way of thinking. Well that was this day for me.
This type of day can be remedied in only one way that I know of--staying home in my jammies, reading a book, writing something, drinking tea and eating salty snacks. Any other approach will just make it worse and, most definitely, going to 3 grocery stores with my two kids will make it miserable.
"Can I have..." "Can I have..." "I'm hungry, can I have..." "Please, can I just have..." "Are we almost done?" "I don't want to..." Interspersed with "Don't touch that." "Please stop taking things off the shelves." "That's glass. Put it down." "No you can't taste that. Its not gluten free." "Please, for the love of God and all that's holy, stop crawling on the floor, stop grabbing things and NO you may NOT push the cart!"
Patience was coming at a premium by store 3 and soon I stopped responding at all when they asked for something. Not my shining moment as a parent, I grant you, but this was self-preservation. When I wrangled all the bags and kids into the car, I pumped up the volume on Cannonball (Damien Rice--see below) and made conversation impossible. Then I remembered that I forgot to pick up the fish. Of course the phone rang twice and that about sent me through the roof. But you know what? I still answered it! Can you believe that? Pavlov's dog reincarnated. One of the calls came from someone telling me that they had some free sheep's milk yogurt if the kids and I wanted to try it. (Sheep's milk yogurt is not easy to come by, not to mention the $.) I mentally scheduled stop number 5 right after the fish market.
On the final leg home, when the kids had all but given up trying to communicate with me, something happened. Silence happened. All the sounds of the world were there, my focus remained on driving, but there was silence of some glorious, heavenly type that is rare for the parent. And in that silence, I remembered to take care of myself, which I hadn't been doing. I realized how long it has been since I wrote something. So, I made a plan. Get home, unload the groceries, go to my room and write this blog while drinking a hot cup of decaf and eating blue corn tortilla chips (forgot the Lay's potato chips at the store) and delicious gluten free, dairy free, egg free oreo-style cookies that were miraculously made from pea flour. (Kinnikinick sp? for all you GFs) They've been popping in now and again, mostly to make sure that I am still here, that I still love them. I am and I do. I am starting to find my smile now and I might just be ready to face being a mom again in time to make some dinner.
Before you become a parent, you can't possibly know what you are going to give up to be one, a good one anyway. You can't know until you're there, in the thick of it, and by then it is too late. If you are any kind of mensch, you keep on giving what you've got and find a means of savoring the sweetness and vivacity that only children can supply. You let wonder fill you up; you let love change you. And if you are smart, you go sit in your room, on your bed, under your snuggly covers, with a bowl full of chips and cookies, reading or writing every once in awhile.
Today, however, the routine got buggered up because of a school inservice day. When I woke to the sound of rain (again) and the swooshing of wind through the trees, my heart sank. This was not the bright start I was hoping for. I tried on 3 different outfits, all to go grocery shopping mind you, and then I fussed with my hair. I said to myself in the mirror, "This is NOT going to be one of THOSE days!" Maybe you know what I mean. That day when everything you put on makes you seem fat or sallow or jaundiced. That day when your hair, no matter how much "product" you put in it or how many types of irons you shape it with, would still only attract a Yeti--at least to your way of thinking. Well that was this day for me.
This type of day can be remedied in only one way that I know of--staying home in my jammies, reading a book, writing something, drinking tea and eating salty snacks. Any other approach will just make it worse and, most definitely, going to 3 grocery stores with my two kids will make it miserable.
"Can I have..." "Can I have..." "I'm hungry, can I have..." "Please, can I just have..." "Are we almost done?" "I don't want to..." Interspersed with "Don't touch that." "Please stop taking things off the shelves." "That's glass. Put it down." "No you can't taste that. Its not gluten free." "Please, for the love of God and all that's holy, stop crawling on the floor, stop grabbing things and NO you may NOT push the cart!"
Patience was coming at a premium by store 3 and soon I stopped responding at all when they asked for something. Not my shining moment as a parent, I grant you, but this was self-preservation. When I wrangled all the bags and kids into the car, I pumped up the volume on Cannonball (Damien Rice--see below) and made conversation impossible. Then I remembered that I forgot to pick up the fish. Of course the phone rang twice and that about sent me through the roof. But you know what? I still answered it! Can you believe that? Pavlov's dog reincarnated. One of the calls came from someone telling me that they had some free sheep's milk yogurt if the kids and I wanted to try it. (Sheep's milk yogurt is not easy to come by, not to mention the $.) I mentally scheduled stop number 5 right after the fish market.
On the final leg home, when the kids had all but given up trying to communicate with me, something happened. Silence happened. All the sounds of the world were there, my focus remained on driving, but there was silence of some glorious, heavenly type that is rare for the parent. And in that silence, I remembered to take care of myself, which I hadn't been doing. I realized how long it has been since I wrote something. So, I made a plan. Get home, unload the groceries, go to my room and write this blog while drinking a hot cup of decaf and eating blue corn tortilla chips (forgot the Lay's potato chips at the store) and delicious gluten free, dairy free, egg free oreo-style cookies that were miraculously made from pea flour. (Kinnikinick sp? for all you GFs) They've been popping in now and again, mostly to make sure that I am still here, that I still love them. I am and I do. I am starting to find my smile now and I might just be ready to face being a mom again in time to make some dinner.
Before you become a parent, you can't possibly know what you are going to give up to be one, a good one anyway. You can't know until you're there, in the thick of it, and by then it is too late. If you are any kind of mensch, you keep on giving what you've got and find a means of savoring the sweetness and vivacity that only children can supply. You let wonder fill you up; you let love change you. And if you are smart, you go sit in your room, on your bed, under your snuggly covers, with a bowl full of chips and cookies, reading or writing every once in awhile.
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