Sunday Scribblings- Mantra

She  tells herself over and over that it doesn’t matter, it’s perfectly normal, that no one cares nearly as much as she about the state they’ve come to.  But no matter how often she repeats the words, her heart refuses to believe them.  They fall like hard stones against the silence of her spirit.

Because she still remembers what it was like before, in the days when their eyes shone with eager anticipation, when their  lips met with fierce hunger, their bodies entwined with unquenchable desire.   She remembers when a moment apart was a slice of hell, and the hours together were all of heaven one could ask.

It is unreasonable, she knows, to expect emotion to remain at such a fever pitch, especially after decades  – and decades and decades gone by.  So she tells herself over and over that what matters is their strong devotion, their true committment, their shared history encompassing children, grandchildren, parents, friends, and all the experiences of their life together.

She watches him sleep, slack-jawed and snoring, the television blaring ceaselessly into the ignominy of the room.  And she knows she will need this mantra for many years to come.

~for this week’s Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings -Fluent

When  my son was small, we played a creative sort of game in which he (the artist) would draw pictures for a story which I (the writer) would write.  I would lay on his bed with sheets of plain white paper beside me and start out…”One bright, shiny morning,” I wrote  on such a page, “Peter and Benjamin decided to go into town.”  Then I would hand the sheet to Brian, who waited expectantly beside me at his drawing table, a box of 132 Berol Prismacolor pencils at the ready.   His little hands fairly flew across the page, creating the magical cartoon figures of Bear Town that were like members of our family in those days, creating an illustration to accompany my words.

 We developed quite a rhythm, and I learned to write quickly so as to keep up with his lightning imagination.  If I faltered for a moment, or stopped to think too long, he would urge me on impatiently.  “What next?”  he would say, literally bouncing up and down, practially grabbing the  sheet out of my hand before I was finished putting the words on it.  When the story ended, we’d create a construction paper cover and add it to our growing collection, volumes of stories for every occasion a small boy might wish to write or think about. 

We were good partners in those days, and honestly, I’ve never since experienced such a fluent collarboration.   We were almost like two halves of the same mind.  But children can demonstrate creative fluency in a way that we as adults sometimes forget.  They aren’t encumbered by rules or fears, the woulda shoulda coulda’s that adults concern themselves with when undertaking creative endeavors.   As Brian’s art teacher once said, it was as if his pencil were connected directly to his brain.  There was no critical middleman to stop his creative flow.

That’s what makes true fluency possible, being able to connect directly and without fear to the soul of an idea, and allow it free expression.  My life doesn’t often allow me to do that nowdays, but thanks to those afternoons spent with a small boy, I have a marvelous memory of how glorious it can be.

Sunday Scribblings – Big Dreams

I’ve been going around the house whistling and humming all evening – mostly tunes from South Pacific, because I’ll be playing keyboards for the show when it goes up at Franklin High School later on this month.  The songs from this show are all familiar, and catchy – the kind that lodge in your inner ear and keep repeating in your mind like a computer on endless loop.

But Rodgers and Hammerstein’s composing skills aren’t the main reason I’ve been singing around the house tonight. 

Mostly, it’s because I’m happy. 

I’m happy because I got to spend some time pursuing my dream this afternoon.  Well, one of them, anyway.  They one that let’s me play the piano and make music with other people.

Its not really a big dream, at least not anymore.  Oh, I suppose I might once have harbored fairy tale like visions of walking onto the world’s famous stages and pounding away at Beethoven’s Emperor concerto on a nine foot Bosendörfer grand.  Nowadays, I’m satisfied to sit down for a few hours at my own beloved Kimball and play away.  I’m even happier if I have something to work toward – like a choral competition to accompany, or a musical performance.  This month I have both, an embarrassment of riches for someone who has curtailed her musical ‘”gigs” in favor of more hours behind the other keyboard (the computer!) in her office.  The one that actually earns real money.

I’ve come to the conclusion that dreams don’t necessarily need to be huge to be satisfying.   If you become fixated on some magnificent big dream, you might miss out on the opportunity to savor a very rewarding portion of it in real life.  Chances are, I’ll never play a nine foot Bosendorfer on the stage at Carnegie Hall.  But  I can still sink my ten fingers into the sweet resistance of 88 ivories, still hear the melody and harmony that issues forth, still race up and down the keyboard with reckless abandon.

So I’m living the dream after all.

How about you? Are you living any of your dreams, in a big or small way?

 ~ for Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings-Yes!

Yes indeed.

This word slips off my tongue far too easily.

Yes, I’ll be sure and get all those reports finished by Tuesday (even though it’s Monday night).

Yes, I’ll be happy to pledge to your disaster relief/homeless shelter/mission trip/fund for wayward pandas.

Yes, I can come to extra rehearsals on Sunday afternoons (even though that’s my only free day all week).

Oh, yes.

Some years ago, a friend of mine gave me a promotional pen he’d received in the mail.  It was from a local anti-drug coalition, and it had the words “Just Say NO!” imprinted on it in big red letters.  “Keep this by your phone,” he told me, “and when someone calls and asks you for something, read this to them!”

You know, it actually helped.  This was back in the days when telemarketers were calling all the time, and I was a huge wimp about saying “no.”  Anybody with a programmed sob story could get money out of me.  But I started gripping that pen tightly in my hand and screwing up my courage.  After the first few times of saying “sorry, I can’t donate right now,” it got easier and easier.  Pretty soon, I was grabbing the phone and saying “I’m sorry, we aren’t making any donations on the telephone” before firmly hanging up the receiver.

 The yes word still gives me trouble, though, especially when authority figures are involved.  “You’ve got to start telling her no,” my husband told me the other day, referring to my boss.  “She has to learn that you’re not going to accomodate her unreasonableness.”

Well, easy for him to say.

However…the other day she made a rather unreasonable request, and I don’t think my response was exactly what she’s come to expect from me.

“We can make that a goal,” I responded in reference to the new deadlines she was requesting.  “But I think it’s going to be very difficult most weeks to actually make it happen.”  I had several solid reasons to back me up, and she (grudgingly) allowed that we should “just do the best you can” toward achieving it.

Being a people pleaser is just part and parcel of my personality, and it’s the thing that makes saying “yes” so easy.  It’s not even so much that I want people to like me, it’s that I want to feel important and approved of.  I genuinely want to help people, I want to be seen as the kind of person who gets things done.  When I complete some of these tasks, even though they may have cost me time or money or considerable effort (or all of the above at once!), I feel good about myself. 

It means I really can do it all.  Mission accomplished. 

But, at some point I’d like my mission in life to become more about saying yes to the desires of my own heart.  After all, charity begins at home.

Yes, I’ll take two weeks off at Christmas time so I can spend more time with my family.

Yes, I’ll stop bringing work home so I can spend Sunday nights reading or meeting friends for dinner.

Yes, I’ll ask my husband to do the grocery shopping even if I’m not working so I can get my hair done or have a pedicure.

But will I be able to stand firm amidst the continuing onslaught of  demands for my time and effort?

Yes, indeed.

Hell, Yes!

for Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings: Toys

In a Twitter conversation with my son last weekend,  I learned he had taken some time off from a horrendously busy and frustrating work week to drive to the mall and buy himself a new toy – an iPhone 3g.   His actions recalled similar jaunts to Toys R Us, back in the day when he was a fidgety toddler, and would become whiny and restless about 4:oo in the afternoon.  Some days, when I simply couldn’t bear to read the Scruffy the Tugboat one more time, or play another round of Candyland, we’d pile into the car and go shopping for a new toy.   Often, something as simple as a new Hot Wheels car would do the trick, and provide him with the impetus to come home and play happily on his own until dinner.

Of course, the older he got, the more sophisticated  expensive the toys became.  But thinking about the kinds of toys which drew his interest, even as far back as infancy, I can see the linear development of his later interests in life.  For as long as I can remember, he loved anything electronic, from the tv remote to the VCR (which he could program perfectly at age 2), or anything with wheels.  So it really came as no surprise that his lifelong passions are computers and automobiles. 

Reading Anne’s lovely meditation for this week’s Scribbleset me thinking about the toys I most loved, and the way they reflect my current interests.  Certainly one of my earliest favorites would not surprise anyone who knows me…a tiny toy piano, which I could sit and bang away at for hours. It was that little piano (which remains in my mother’s basement to this day) that convinced my parents I might really be serious about learning to play someday, and led them to invest in a Wurlizter console for my 6th birthday.  

I never cared much for dolls, particularly baby dolls, and I admit that infancy is not my favorite stage of child rearing. But I had the largest collection of stuffed animals among any of my friends.  I relished buying fashionable outfits for my many Barbie dolls (and I continue to like clothes shopping for myself as well), and spent hours making up complex family dramas for Barbie, Ken, Skipper, Midge…a real potboiler of a novelist at work there.

Easily the most disappointing toy I ever owned was the Easy Bake Oven my aunt purchased for me one Christmas.  I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions about my culinary proclivities.

As a child, my husband loved building models and taking things apart  to see how they worked (he’s an engineer).

My friend P. often talks about her son’s passion for building things with Lego’s and Lincoln Logs (he’s now Vice President of a huge construction company).   Her daughter, on the other hand, was prone to playing dress up and was known for her emotional and dramatic outbursts (she’s an actress). 

“The Child is father of the Man,” wrote William Wordsworth, and so our childhood toys may be more than simple playthings, but the precursors of lifelong interests and passions.

How about you?  What did you play with as a child?  What vestiges of your favorite toys are part of your life today?

for more Sunday Scribblings, go here

Sunday Scribblings (on Monday): Scary

“When I look out there it kind of seems like I’m in the suburbs,” my uncle said, peering out the front door of the home he’s lived in since 1953.   “Really, though, I don’t know where this is…”

He turned and shuffled back to his bedroom, crawling into the bed where he spends most of the days.  He rarely gets dressed now, a man who once shopped only at Brooks Brothers, buying three or four suits at a time to wear to work, and countless pinstriped shirts and khaki’s for “everyday” around the house.  My aunt, who once complained that he felt the need to use a clean towel for each of the two or three showers he often took per day, now nags him somewhat relentlessly until she manages to get him into the shower once or twice a week.

When my mother in law died last September, another victim of Alzheimer’s Disease, I had watched her decline for about eight years.  And now, I’m watching my uncle follow the exact same pattern.  

Can I say how much I despise this disease?  How angry it makes me that a person’s entire life is erased from their memory, that they can no longer recall their children, their home, their favorite color or song, can’t crave the taste of chocolate or coffee, can’t sing a tune or swing a golf club, write a check or a grocery list.  I want to stomp on Alzheimer’s Disease, I want to tear it into shreds and toss it into the ocean.  I want it eradicated from the face of the earth.

Most of all, I want it to leave my family the hell alone.

Am I scared of this disease? You bet, I’m scared.  Terrified would be more like it.  I have to remind myself not to get too smug, that just because no one in my direct blood line has it – not my parents or grandparents, nor any of their brothers or sisters – that doesn’t mean I’m immune.  It could strike me randomly, like a wayward bomb from some crazy fighter pilot in the sky.

And I’m petrified for my husband, who has developed every other health condition his mother had, right down to benign cysts on their right kidneys and identical parathyroid tumors on the same gland (which they both had surgically removed on the same day back in 2004).   Add to that the plethora of other risk factors he has – a long history of high blood pressure and high cholesterol,  recently diagnosed pre-diabetes, poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle – and I feel as if I might as well put him on the waiting list at Chestnut Village.  Does he listen to my warnings, or those of the myriad health professionals out there?

What do you think?  If he inherited anything at all  from his father, it was stubbornness.

But lately I’m feeling just as angry as I am fearful.  Where did this scourge of a disease come from, anyway?  Why all of a sudden are so many millions of people living their last years of life being stripped of their memory and intellect?  Is is something in the water? In food? In microwaves or cell phones? 

Somebody just tell me, so I can do something about it.

For of course, there’s the biggest fear of all.  This horrible disease causes it’s victims to lose complete control over their lives.  And for a control freak like me, what could be more fearsome?  A fate worse than death, indeed.

So yes, I’m scared.  But I’m also “stomp my foot” mad, and I don’t want to take this anymore. 

Let’s get to work on stem cell research.  Let’s support the efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association, and other organizations who are looking for cures.

Let’s insure that our children and grandchildren can forget all about Alzheimer’s Disease, and needn’t be afraid of it at all.

for Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings – Art

“It does no good to wire the world if you short circuit the spirit…”

Voices raised in song…rays of sunlight beaming through stained glass windows…the gentle undulations of a silk scarf draped round a woman’s shoulder…art in many forms surrounded me this afternoon as I sat in a corner pew soaking up the unbelievable sounds of a college choir. 

Music feeds my soul –  especially choral music, because it combines the two art forms I love most dearly, it juxtaposes music and language together in a complete artistic thought.  Today’s young musicians, The St. Olaf College Choir, exemplified the epitome of choral singing, their purity of tone and expression oozing directly from their souls.  The great Anton Armstrong, their conductor, spoke of music being an expression of their connection to God and a “dynamic means of grace.”

Art is grace, isn’t it?  For those who make it and those who partake of its essence.  Yes, the world depends on science and technology, depends on wires and engines.  But the soul depends on art- on the beauty of sound and melody, of colors of paint on a canvas, the perfect sentence in black and white on the page.   Art is what connects us to the spirit, to a mystical place of wonder where pain and suffering are mitigated, where we connect with our own deeper humanity.   

What good is all the wizardry of the modern world if the  soul is dark and bare? If only everyone could find an artistic spark with which to ignite their spirit,  then what a difference in the wiring of our whole world!

for Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings-Vision

“I can see clearly now, the rain has gone,

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

Gonna be a bright, sunshiny day.”

 

Funny how sometimes a tune will pop into your mind, and, once there, refuse to leave.  When I read this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt, these lyrics immediately came to mind, and now I wish I had an escape key for the microprocessor in my brain.

Nevertheless, they’re appropriate for the topic.  After all, “I can see clearly now…”seems the perfect seque to a reflection on the word “vision.” 

Unfortunately, it’s the second line of the song that seems to dominate my thoughts. 

“I can see all obstacles in my way.”  I wish I were more of a visionary, but after 50 plus years on the planet, I seem stuck in my overly pragmatic (bordering on pessimistic) outlook.  Everywhere I look these days, in the wide world and in my own little backyard , I see obstacles – monetary, political, environmental, medical. Many of my own dreams are on hold because of the faltering economy and shaky socio political status.  Health concerns loom in my family right now, from the oldest members on down to the youngest.   All of life’s obstacles are clearly visible, and they’ve gathered overhead in the shape of some pretty formidable clouds.

At first it seems that phrase is a little out of place in the general “sunshininess” of that song, doesn’t it?  I mean, if you can see all the obstacles in your way, how the heck can it be a bright sunshiny day?

Our minister’s sermon this morning was quite appropriate to my thoughts today.  Entitled “Weeds in the Garden” he talked about the pervasive nature of “weeds” in our lives – those obstacles that spring up totally unbidden, flourish despite our efforts, and threaten to destroy the vision we have for our lives.  How do you fight these invaders? he wonders. 

Three things…a vision, a plan, and committment.  Have a clear picture in your mind of what you want your garden to be, make a plan to achieve it, and committ yourself to whatever it takes to keep the weeds out.  Of course, if you have a spiritual life, then God (or your higher power) becomes the guiding principle in your life’s plan, as well as in the means of bringing it to fruition.

Having a vision seems to be the key.  If you can dream it, you can do it, as the saying goes.  I struggle with that  – not the dream part, because I have those in abundance.  But in finding a means to make them come true.  And a big part of that is not allowing those inevitable obstacles to blind you to the brightness of your vision, and in allowing the universe to do its part in making the dreams come true.

So, I continue to work toward “openess to possibility,” toward looking for silver linings of opportunity peeking out from beneath those obstacles of clouds.  In the midst of economoic turmoil, I’m grateful everyone in my family has good jobs; amidst concerns about health, I’m reassured that hopeful solutions exist; despite a loss of focus among our current leaders, I have faith that new leaders will emerge to provide inspiration for change.

And so, maybe it will be a “bright, sunshiny day.”

  

 

Sunday Scribblings-Telephone

She was on the phone when it happened.  I was playing on the floor in the living room, so I could see her standing in the archway between the dining room and kitchen, the dark corner where the telephone sat on its narrow wooden table. 

I wasn’t listening to her conversation, being wholly absorbed in lining up a series of Matchbox cars on the ramp of my Fisher Price service station.  I can still hear the skittery sound their tiny wheels made on the hard plastic ramp, like dry leaves blowing across the pavement on a fall day.  The pleasant tone of her voice droned in my ear, probably an ordinary conversation with one of my aunts, whom she talked with daily. From the corner of my eye the hem of her pale blue house dress was visible, its wide circle skirt hanging in gentle folds just above her ankles.

It was the skirt that first caught my attention, for it puddled across the hardwood floor when she fell creating a pale lake on the dark wood.  I turned my head just in time to see my mother’s body crumple to the floor, a dull thud the only sound she made.  The heavy black telephone receiver fell from her hand as she went down, taking the rest of the telephone clattering to the ground behind it.

Within seconds my grandmother came tearing through the kitchen door – I”m sure she was screaming, because she screamed at everything anyway, and the sight of her only daughter lying unconscious on the floor would certainly have set off paroxysms of alarm.  But I didn’t hear her – I was frozen, transfixed by the sight of my mother so still and motionless on the floor, one arm awkwardly folded beneath her back, the other outstretched, reaching toward me.  The next sound I remember was the relentless cry of ambulance sirens, racing toward our house.  Huddled behind the brown sofa, I stared wide-eyed as paramedics burst through the front door, quickly buckled my mother’s still form onto the stretcher, and rushed her into the ambulance.  As they sped down the road, sirens screaming away into the distance, I became aware of the telephone, ominously droning one long penetrating tone into the empty room.

In medicine we talk about sequela, a pathological condition resulting from an injury, disease, or attack.  Not surprisingly, there were a number of sequela resulting from my mother’s allergic reaction to penicillin, back on that spring day in 1959.   For her, it spawned a life long fear of taking medicine – even though she had been taking penicillin all her life,  that one dose nearly killed her.   For me, a frightened three year old who watched her mother collapse instantly in front of her eyes, and then be rushed to the hospital where she would remain for nearly two weeks, it triggered an obssessive need to be close to her every moment, so great was my fear that something would happen to her.

Oh, and one more sequela from this event – I despise telephones. 

for more telephone tales, go here

Sunday Scribblings-Fearless

Fear. Less.

Disconnecting the word is the only way I can make sense of this week’s prompt.  Because I must admit to you that I’m consumed with fear these days.  And writing/reading all the platitudes about conquering your fears and taking risks and diving in with both feet will fall on deaf ears here at the Byline.

Rough words from me, I know.  Writing is usually the way I work myself out of fears, my method of rising above the things that frighten me.  But I’ve sunken into a fear-full pit lately, and not even words (my weapon of choice for all life’s dilemmas) can offer me the leg up I need to pull out.

“At the risk of sounding like an old fogey,” my mother (who just turned 81 but prides herself on “thinking young”) said the other day as we were driving to the market, “I do believe the world has gotten itself into the worst mess I’ve ever seen.”

Well, I do believe she’s right.  Countless businesses closing every day, homes and companies being lost to foreclosure right and left, while prices for necessary consumer goods continue to rise exponentially.  Health care costs soaring, making even basic medical treatment unaffordable.  People living longer and longer, but with deteriorating quality of life, spending their life savings to be warehoused in institutions.  And war, dragging on forever, costing young men and women their lives, and costing this country trillions of dollars.

It’s a mess.

And it makes me fear full.

So, on this second Sunday in April when winter seems to have returned once again, snow flurries falling from leaden grey skies, I would dearly love to fear less.  I want to stop being afraid about the falling equity in my home(s), the rising prices at the gas pump, grocery, and drug store.  I want to stop being afraid about growing older, about dementia and cancer and bone disease.  I want to stop being afraid this war will not only continue, but will escalate into additional conflict.

I want find a way to fear less. 

How about you?

 

for Sunday Scribblings