To Begin Again

I watched a video recently by a motivational speaker.  His topic was happiness, and he challenged the idea that being successful will make us happy, contending instead that being happy will make us successful.  At the end he listed four simple things we can do to promote our own happiness, and one of them stood out to me as the answer to a prayer:  keep a journal, and write about one positive thing that happens to you every day. 

I used to be a journal-keeping fool.  As a teenager becoming a young-adult, it was how I worked through things, and often how I got to enjoy the best of those things again and again.  Somewhere along my way, I began to over-think my writing, and I lost the ability to just write.  Since I began Scenes from a Snow Globe, I’ve been looking for ways to give it boundaries, because it seems the most successful bloggers have a theme, and because I went to college and in my writing classes I slowly accepted the idea that you must “narrow your topic!” 

I know I want to capture the everyday, ordinary-extraordinary moments of small town life, but still I struggle to let my thoughts flow;  I tend to want to assign too much meaning to the entries, to over-stuff them with emotion instead of letting them speak for themselves.  What I realized when the speaker suggested his journal idea, was that the moments I really want to remember are the ones that make me slow down and smile.  If there are moments of pain or anger or melancholy, I want to balance them, surround them, wrap them up in beauty.  It’s exactly those happy things floating around, lingering in the air, that can make my world a snow globe in the first place.  So today I begin again, Scenes from a Snowglobe…

February 26, 2012

I love people!  I’m a people-watcher, a kind-spirited eaves-dropper.  People amuse me, amaze me, make me think.  In my mind, I give out high-fives and hugs to strangers all the time.  But what I don’t do is actually talk to or touch people.  My husband is my hero in that regard.  He’s a talker-toucher.  He holds doors, makes jokes, gives out compliments.  While I hear and see more little details about the people all around me than he does, he interacts with the people right in front of him far better than I.  So I’m trying to learn from him, and today my efforts paid off by giving me my “one positive thing” to journal.

In line in front of me at the grocery store today was an elderly man all alone.  I shop in a big warehouse style store where you bag your own groceries.  He was getting out money to pay the cashier in that slow and careful way the elderly do things, with a patient determination to do the things that they’ve done with ease for many years, but which now present a challenge for them.  Everything from his baseball cap to his worn and tidy wallet reminded me of the years when taking my grandpa shopping was a regular part of my life.  I could imagine him changing from denim overalls to his “waist pants,” like my grandpa used to do when we “went to town.”

Normally that would be all there was to it.  I would notice those little details and I would get a nice memory and a smile out of them.  But today, while he was slowly paying, I quickly bagged his groceries, which meant I was going to have to explain myself to him in a real, live interaction.  So when he looked up, I placed his bags in his cart and said, in what I hoped was a bright and cheerful voice, “I got them for you.”

“Well, I’ll give you a hug for that!” he glowed, as he proceeded to do just that.  For one quick, warm moment in the grocery store, I got so much more than just a smile, I got my grandpa back.

There Was This Catholic Priest and This Orothodox Jew...

I seem to be experiencing a  L   O   N  G  stretch of time where the only writing I feel inspired enough to complete is a status update on facebook.  I wanted to add something to my blog, so I borrowed this from the blog on my dusty myspace, dated May 31, 2009

 There Was This Catholic Priest and This Orthodox Jew...

I attended Mass at a different parish than usual today, rather on impulse, and I heard a homily I found quite worthy of sharing. My home parish has a very traditional priest, an intelligent man and a gifted speaker, but not someone too many of us feel like we could just hang out with. On the other hand, this parish has Father Len.  I think I could drink beer in a lawn chair with Father Len. 

Father Len told us today about a Starbuck’s he used to frequent, in Beverly Hills where he spent a short portion of his priesthood. One day, crazy as it sounds, he bought his coffee and followed an irresistible urge to take it to the table of an Orthodox Jew, complete with twisted curls, and ask to join him. He said he knew without a doubt that he was meant to be friends with this man. And the closest of friends they became and remain to this day.

He made us laugh with his honest description of two people who disagree about everything; politics, religion, and everything in between. He made me cry with his unshakeable belief that God’s spirit moves people, and that we are meant to embrace one another despite our differences, and thus God can make a difference for others through us.

You see, his Jewish friend had been wrestling with an emotional personal question in his life for quite some time. And one day, out of respect and friendship, he attended Mass. Not something an Orthodox Jew does. To put it mildly, they do not appreciate Catholics. However, in the second reading at that Sunday’s Mass, he found the answer to his question. Out of this most unlikely of friendships, one Father Len initiated because he allowed the Spirit to move him, came a life-changing moment for his friend.

They remain a Catholic priest and an Orthodox Jew. Father Len says that at least once a year the Pope does something to “piss off” his friend and he gets an earful over the phone. Why does their friendship survive? Father Len says Pentecost is why. The Jewish Pentecost celebrates God speaking to the people to give them the Ten Commandments. In the Jewish tradition, there was complete silence on the Earth, not even a bird chirping, as God spoke to the people.

The Christian Pentecost marks the moment when God began to speak not to the people, but through them. In the Christian tradition, tongues of fire from the sky rested upon the Disciples, God’s Spirit entered them, and they could speak so that they were understood in the many different languages of the people gathered around them. The Spirit of Love, wherever we may believe it comes from, lives within us, giving us the ability to understand one another beyond our differences if we only let it move us.  I think my desire to attend mass with Father Len today was more than just an impulse, it was a reminder that when the Spirit is trying to move you, you should go ahead and move!

Most Likely to Succeed

     Under my photo in the high school yearbook is the caption “Most Likely to Succeed.”  With a title like that to live up to, you may expect I would be a bit anxious about my 25 year reunion.  Given the dictionary definition of the word success, “the prosperous termination of endeavors; the attainment of wealth or position,” I’m well aware that I’m not successful.  And I’m not going to pretty up the definition by interpreting it to mean I’m prosperous in the emotional rewards of my career or wealthy in the love of my family, both of which are true but cheating;  We all know the yearbook meant success just like the dictionary states it.
     So why wasn’t I compelled to polish up my life for show-and-tell?  It didn’t occur to me because I love those people.  I mean my classmates, I just love them!  I enjoyed every moment (well, okay there was one moment…but I’ll get to that) of our reunion.  And the best part was that I didn’t merely get to step back in time for the usual remember-whens, but I also had a here-and-now opportunity to learn three important lessons.
     First, the strands that weave your life together with your classmates’ lives, through the hours and the days, the work and the play, the laughter and the tears of that growing and learning time we call school can, believe it or not, be stretched over 25 years without breaking.  One of my classmates recalled lying on a bench sobbing after our graduation ceremony, not for fear of what was ahead but for loss of the blanket of friendship we had knit, which couldn’t wrap us together anymore.  She remembers another classmate hugging her, telling her “Don’t cry, we’ll always be close.” 
     He was wrong, and he was so right. We went in different directions because we had grown-up life to do.  But we all headed out to do it from the same starting point, with shared experiences standing strong behind us.  When we came back to the starting point together it felt like a comfortable place to talk about the world for a safe little while with people we belong to.  And so Reunion Lesson Number One:  If we take a moment to tighten the strands of the connections we are given throughout life, they make good places to rest along the way.
     Reunion Lesson Number Two involved the above mentioned moment I didn’t enjoy.  I do love my classmates, all 16 of them.  I’m able to love them because love has so many degrees of depth and meaning.  Some of them I love because I know them and they’re among the very best people I know, and some of them I love for things I see they’ve become, that I would like to know more about. Some of them I simply love nostalgically, because of our shared memories. 
     I share a lot of memories with the classmate others would say was my best friend, but if she and I each told you the same memory, it would sound like two different stories.  We never did see things the same way.  The others would say we didn’t disagree often, and that would be because I wasn’t good at expressing my opinion, while she did it quite loudly and well. If it was an issue I was emotional about, I would eventually have a heated and inarticulate outburst followed by tears, then we would be distant for a couple days at the most, and things would drift back to normal.  I still wouldn’t agree, definitely wouldn’t understand, but I wanted peace.
     Near the end of our reunion the conversation drifted to a topic about which she and I have made opposite choices.  Since it seems some things never change, she was able to express her opinion boldly and clearly, with everyone around us knowing full well that I, sitting next to her, was miles away from agreeing.  Her certainty made it sound as though I had made an uninformed and incomprehensible decision.  She turned to me and said “no offense,” and because some things never change, I was completely silent, which just punctuated her statements. 
     On the way home I cried, saying aloud to the empty dark truck all the things I might have said to her.   Then through my anger it occurred to me I was forgetting something I strive for in my adult life, open-mindedness and empathy.  I made the right choice for my family; But given the circumstances and people involved, she probably made the right decision for her family as well.  And so lesson two:  Some things never change.  Unless you change them; To be true friends with someone you don’t repress opinions and ignore differences, you share opinions and respect difference.
     The third lesson was more like a gift.  After a pre-reunion dinner with close friends, we talked quietly into the evening about our lives.  “If I could change it,” said one with clear-eyed certainty, “I wouldn’t.”  He blessed me with this statement shortly after a very bad day during which I questioned everything that led me to where I was.  I was feeling sorry for myself, disappointed in myself, discontent with my life.  The beauty of his words lies in the fact that he hasn’t had a charmed life either. Each of us made decisions that caused us to struggled and soar, feel panic and calm, grieve and rejoice to degrees much higher than we could have imagined in school.  And not a moment of it can we go back and change, and yet we ask the question, “What would I have done differently?”  If you know without a doubt that the answer is “Nothing,” what a great relief that is! 
     That’s not to say we should just stop trying for improvement.  My wise friend works with juveniles and is raising a new baby, and using what he’s lived rather than wishing he could change it.  I said I wasn’t successful.  To rectify that, I need the “prosperous termination” of an “endeavor,” and I don’t think I knew before what exactly to try for. I do now, it’s Reunion Lesson Number Three:  Endeavor to be content with your life to this point, knowing each experience has given you something to make use of in shaping the future.  
     It made me feel good, all those years ago, to have a vote of my classmates endow me with the Most Likely to Succeed title.  What I didn’t realize was that in order to succeed, I needed them.  I needed the time we spent learning together, I needed the time apart, and most of all I needed a reunion.

The Treasure Hunt Experience

On a Spring Break daycare day, I was busy doing things appropriate to my title as Grown-Up-In-Charge. Some of them, I’m sure, were necessary and useful. Some of them were just an annoying compulsion caused by the chronic condition known as Adulthood—things like sweeping the entryway even though continual comings and goings ensure that the same task will need repeated again in ten minutes. In any case, I was definitely busy, when I was pressed into service by the Small People.

“Here. Just hold this and stand by the door,” the Leader panted breathlessly, pressing a piece of carefully folded paper into my hand as he slid out the door followed by the Big Kids, one, two, three.

Right behind them came the Littler Kids. One of them stopped directly in front of me, blinked up at me, big brown eyes behind round glasses, and said brightly “Hi!”

“Hi,” I answered uncertainly.

“Hi!” chimed the others, one, two.

I just stood there, blinking back down at them in confusion. “You’re supposed to give us the paper now.” This from Brown Eyes in a whisper. Apparently “Hi” was the password. He was convincing, so I handed it over.

Huddled together, the Littlers unfolded the message printed at a slant in green marker, “Turn on the fan,” read Smart Girl. A discussion followed in which they identified the ceiling fan as the only fan in the area, but were unable to figure out how to reach it in order to turn it on. I have a soft spot for the Littlers (and besides, by this point I was thoroughly curious) so I pointed out the switch on the wall. They bounced over, flipped on the switch and began to “Oooo, Aaaah” as another folded paper drifted down to their outstretched fingers.

Now, I do indeed suffer from Adulthood. But it seems floating folded paper has healthy benefits, because I forgot for a moment to worry about what potentially dangerous methods allowed the Big Kids to place the paper up on the ceiling fan. “Cool!” I said, in enchanted agreement with the Littlers. For just a moment, by virtue of my knowledge about the working of ceiling fans, I was a member of the team. But then they were gone, following the written message out to “where the wagons are parked,” leaving me alone with my broom.

Alone, but smiling. All afternoon they darted around me in a delighted and determined search for The Treasure, taking turns being the team to devise difficult hiding spots and devious messages. Each time the treasure was found, there was much exclaiming over the clever clues, and noisy congratulations to those who cracked the case. And then the re-hiding began.

I put aside the broom to watch, finding myself slightly in awe of these lively creatures in my care. It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, which is why my job is a blessing. How many of us afflicted by chronic Adulthood have the pureness of mind to put out such effort and actually enjoy it? Instead, we over-think it. Why do I need to do this? Does it take too long? Is the end result worth the effort? Is it cost effective? Should I be doing something more important? If so, then what??

At the end of the day, in the quiet entryway with my broom back in my hand, I asked myself, as the Grown-Up-In-Charge, did I do the right thing letting them run around like that all afternoon? Could I have involved them in some “learning activities,” or pulled off a “refrigerator art” project? As I pondered, it occurred to me that I never found out what The Treasure actually was. And there was my answer! They weren’t running around all afternoon on a pointless treasure hunt; They were thinking, laughing, writing, running, cooperating. Experiencing. The treasure didn’t matter at all, it was the joy of the search that inspired them. The Small People do indeed set an example to aspire to. The next time I am faced with a questionable task, or an uncertain opportunity, rather than over-think it, I believe I’ll just do it. If it’s approached with joy, treasure will lie in the Experience.

Creating Childhood

This morning I attended the funeral of a child, a 10 year old boy who died in a tragic accident. I am shaken, my own heart hurting in a way that leaves me entirely unable to fathom the pain of his mother. All day I’ve been reaching for something I can grasp that could possibly be a comfort to her. It was a Christian service, filled with the assurance that this child is in Heaven, that his life is eternal, that we will see him again. I believe, and I know his mother does too. But the graveside portion of the service was private and as I imagine her there I know in my heart, the heart of a mother, that her faith is frozen by the agony of her loss. I keep asking myself what could ever possibly warm her.


When I close my eyes though, what plays through my mind are images from the slide show at the service and I realize she may already have what she needs, if only she can see it shining through her tears. What she has is childhood. As adults, childhood is a collection of pictures in the mind, blurry around the edges, certain ones shimmering in full color, with scents and sounds woven around them. Sometimes one comes into focus and floods us with pure joy. This mother created childhood for her son, and it’s his forever gift right back to her.

Seashells and cowboy hats, Santa’s lap and Sunday clothes. School pictures, family portraits, snapshots of vacations and celebrations. Childhood created with infinite love and captured click by click was displayed for us today, and it was perfect in the way that only childhood can be. Each photo of an adventure, a milestone, an ordinary moment, a vibrant grin, was part of the complete picture, and the complete picture was Love. God gave this boy a mother, and with His love she crafted the picture piece by piece. In the midst of the messy, doubt-inducing, exhausting job of mothering, she couldn’t help but have felt the potent, life-affirming magic of the childhood she was giving to her son.

Childhood is life’s most forgiving time, when the mischief that tries a mother’s patience transforms in moments to the story that makes us laugh; when grass-stained knees and report card C’s are made all better by clean pajamas and a carefully printed “I love you Mommy;” when our home and our arms are the center of the world. It doesn’t last forever. I have a grown daughter and a teenage son quickly traveling towards independence. My youngest son just turned 12, that in-between age where childhood tugs as the teenage years beckon. Gone is my time to create childhood. As each new stage in the lives of my children unfolds, it becomes more difficult to call clearly to mind the stage before. The precious moments of their childhood mingle with memories of my own, sweet but elusive.

As this mother mourns for her son, with the heartbreaking knowledge that she will never see him grow up, what I see waiting to be polished into a glow that warms her is the gift of childhood. This dear child was her baby, the youngest of five sons. I trust the others will lead full lives, taking her on journeys she hasn’t yet imagined. She will become a trusted advisor, a proud supporter, a safe harbor, and each new experience will take center stage, placing the memories of their younger days in the wings. But her baby has given her eternal childhood, those memories not eclipsed. He is captured there in that perfect place she and God created for him, big blue eyes, silly endearing smile, warm little arms wrapped around her heart. If she can look at these gathered moments and feel his arms there, know the joy she gave him, I pray her faith will burn bright.

Fifteen Crickets

Fifteen crickets , five pairs of little eyes. Turning to me, blinking big behind magnifying glasses and then bending to gaze into the temporary world, watching crickets scittering around in the grass, nibbling sunny carrot shavings.


In Brazil, I tell them, a green cricket is cause for hope. In China a cricket, given respect and a home in his own little cage, will bring you luck. Generations of children know Jiminy’s wisdom never fails.

Five pairs of eyes, fifteen crickets. Delighting us with their freedom, hopping joyfully into the tiny garden outside my bedroom door, becoming hope, luck, wisdom. Long late hours after the children have gone home, they compose the music of my dreams.

Swing

  Kiss me down by the broken tree house

Swing me upon it's hanging tire

Bring, bring, bring your flowered hat

We'll take the trail marked on your father's map

Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight

Lead me out on the moonlit floor

Lift your open hand

Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance

Silver moon's sparkling

So kiss me

From the song Kiss Me, by Sixpence None-the-Richer

That summer we were midway down a playground slide, slipping toward the bottom, where homelessness was waiting in the sand. I was exhausted and euphoric after the most difficult of my pregnancies. I wanted only to rest, and to endlessly hold our new baby boy.

Like most young couples, when we first got married we spent a few delighted months playing house, and then a few years learning that we were engaged in the most challenging of all games. Weeds grow and neighbors don’t like it, hot water heaters run cold when you most need them hot; children arrive and take up your abundant space. Life is not always a playground. And now our home of twelve years was in danger of foreclosure.

Ironically, it seemed we had finally gained our balance as homeowners. Weeds were conquered, the bathroom was sponge-painted in pale ocean colors and had seashell shower curtain rings, the garage was converted to an office with crown molding and a deep magenta ceiling. But our balance in other areas was tipped and as the sliding began, we held tight by turning the backyard, inside its safe cedar fence, into our haven.

That summer.  Kiss Me played on the radio; Holly flounced around in a bubble of pre-teen chatter, usually wearing a swimming suit and blond tumbling curls; Three-year -old Devin wore an over-sized helmet and zipped around the backyard in his battery-powered jeep. Tom was building a pond with a waterfall and a tiny gurgling stream. I planted lush grass beside it and urged purple alyssum and silver-green lamb’s ear to spread between the stones along its edge. In the cool hours, so sweet after a hot summer day, a cheerful fire in our new fire pit forced panic to remain outside the circle of it’s light.

That summer I had a tired smile. Maybe that’s why Tom built the swing. Warming a 2:00 am bottle, I would see him working, moving in and out of the glowing patch made by a light on a long yellow extension cord snaking through the night-damp grass. Night after night until one night it was finished and he invited me outside and pushed me high in the moonlight.

Tall and strong, stretching to the stars like a real one in a schoolyard, with shiny fittings and a chunky chain carefully covered with hose so it wouldn’t hurt my hands. He’d painted it royal blue. It was easily the best gift I’d ever been given.

That summer. Soaring high, peeking into the backyards around me. Leaning back to see our yard a swirl of green and brown hurtling toward me, my hair skimming the grass. Laughing freely into the breeze. In the midst of fatigue and confusion, fear-held-at-bay and desperate hope, I’d been given uncomplicated joy.

Summer ended. I had to place the baby in the arms of our sitter, loved and trusted, but mostly envied because she held him when I couldn’t. Before another summer had come and gone, we lost the house, found our possessions and our family in a pile locked forever outside that cedar fence.

The swing was disassembled, and it waited. We struggled, and we loved and we hoped and we prayed. And we set the swing up in a new yard, with a tire swing hanging from it for the baby, now turned four, but it never really fit like it did that summer. So just a few days ago we gifted the swing to some friends of ours, grandparents to three little boys who will swing high in the shade of a large country yard.

It remains among the best gifts I’ve ever been given. It was made under the moonlight with nervous, uncertain energy, and given with love. It was grasped like a lifeline. It taught me a lesson. Life is not always a playground, but sometimes, even in the midst of chaos and pain, it is. And when it is, you should play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PewVqV5QV0E