A new season

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The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Just when you think Winter has broken your heart, Spring asserts herself and repairs it with sunshine and warmth. Thank goodness! Spring completely turned my head yesterday and sent me spinning. My spirit was soaring all day. I wanted to hug the whole world and sing with the birds. I couldn’t bear to be inside, so I went for a long walk. The sidewalks have been icy the past few weeks, so I haven’t been out on my route for a while. I encountered several neigbors on the way and we were all just smiling, even while we were talking about the latest outrageous actions of our local government. The transformation has begun and I’m telling you: I’m smitten. We all are.

It`s only March though, and this is Michigan, so I had to remind myself not to lose my head completely, and though I was tempted, I didn’t put the snow shovel away just yet. We’ll most likely have at least one more major snow storm; last year we got two feet in April. Winter doesn’t give up easily here. We have a long way to go, but we’re headed in the right direction and that makes me giddy.

Friday I saw a robin building a nest in the juniper bush along the driveway and yesterday the buds on the magnolia tree down the street were standing proud on the branches. A local farm posted on Facebook this week that they have started sap collection, and soon they’ll be making luscious maple syrup for sale in the local shops. When I was a kid there were buckets on all the maple trees around town, and my friends and I could reach in and break off a hunk of the sweet ice inside and eat it like a popsicle.

The ice cream/burger stand opened for the season Friday and people stood in their parkas and boots and waited in line for their first delicious shake or cone since it closed last September. When I was out filling the bird feeders I saw skunk scat on the patio, and while Pepe Le Pew and his ilk are not my favorite neighbors, knowing that they’re out of hibernation makes my heart lighter. The flowers in the picture above came from the grocery store, but their cousins will be poking their green heads through the soil in my flowerbeds in 6 weeks or so.

I expect to see Clover, the bunny who lives under the big cedar in the backyard any day, and soon I might get a glimpse of this year’s babies. The lilac bushes in the backyard are sporting ever so tiny green leaf buds. The promise of new life is everywhere.

It’s back! Life. Color. Sound. I can’t get enough of it. It’s intoxicating! 

Many times in my life I’ve felt left out. I’ve lived a somewhat unconventional life, and I often have felt out of step with the current culture, even with my friends sometimes.

But I have always belonged with nature; with the wild things.

I fit in with the animals, who only want attention and love and don’t care who I am or what I have to offer other than a scratch under the neck or a nice long pet on their silky soft heads.

I fit in at the river, with the herons and the turtles. I fit in at the lake, on the sand and in the clean blue water, looking for shells and watching the sunset. I fit in anywhere there are trees. Or flowers. Or thunder. When I put seed in the feeders the chickadees say hello and thank you! They don’t need to know anything about me. They don’t care how I’ve lived my life. They take what I have to offer and it’s enough.

I love people – I have good friends and I enjoy their company. I need people – I wouldn’t make it as a hermit. Life with humans sometimes requires too much of me, though, so I take some time away and go to the lake, or the river, or the forest. I walk and breathe and hear the birds and see a bunny or a young deer, and my battered psyche and tender heart are instantly rejuvenated, restored. I smell the green leaves and the freshness of the wind off the lake and I’m renewed.

Winter, to me, is starvation. Six to seven months of drudgery and death. No color. No life. It’s prison. Deprivation. My soul is on life-support by March every year without the wild things to sustain me.

And then comes rebirth! It’s starting and it’ll be complete in a couple of months. I’m so grateful I could cry. But I’ll sing instead: a lively tune about life and color and renewal.

Welcome Spring. You got here just in time.

 

Writing. Tibet. Zombies.

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Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

I like blogs. One of the things I do when I’m bored and taking a little break at work is look for new and interesting blogs to read. WordPress helps me out in this endeavor by providing a Search function. Just in case you’re stumped for topics to search on, I guess, WP offers a few suggestions below the Search box. I get the biggest kick out of these suggestions, sometimes I go to the Search page just to see what comes up:

Sharks. Fitness. Photography.
Happiness. Red Sox. Poetry.
Rugby. Spring. Beautiful.
Poetry. Flying. Government.
Philosophy. Art. Groovy.
Happy Place. Food. Sunday Brunch.
Astrology. Recipe. Beauty.

Sort of like WP’s version of haiku. Cracks me up. I’m sure it’s an algorithm or some other clever little piece of code, but what if a person gets to come up with those suggestions? I want that job!

I’m finding it hard to concentrate this morning at work cuz it’s Staff Meeting Day. Two things are tugging at my attention:

  1. The table full of goodies in the hall adjacent to my office. I really, really want a chocolate chip cookie, but settled for an orange earlier. The cookies are CALLING. MY. NAME. though. I can hear them whispering sweet nothings right through the door.
  2.  The 90 or so women who are in the meeting room next to my office. They are quietly listening to presentations for the most part, but every hour or so in between presenters they TALK. Loudly! Happily! What fun it is to catch up with friends you haven’t seen in a while at work! The door to the meeting room is open into the hall, and the volume is deafening on those breaks.

At least I can’t hear the cookies…

What are you doing today? What’s tugging at your attention?

Lumping along

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Love is - Williamson

I’m just slogging through, trying not to do any damage today. My plan for the day is sloth and subterfuge. Yesterday was a long, mind-numbing adventure fraught with stress and emotion and today I’m still recovering and processing. I’m not the least bit interested in any of the tasks on my to-do list at work, so I’m just sort of a lump in a chair staring at a screen.

I feel snarly and slightly bruised so I think avoiding people is the best plan. I don’t want to piss anyone off and I don’t want to be pissed off, which is a very likely possibility in any human interaction today. I’m fortunate in that my office is pretty far-removed from my 80 co-workers, so with the exception of my officemate and the conversation we had this morning when he came in it’s fairly easy for me to go the whole day without speaking, at least at work.

I’ve perfected the art of dealing with my mother while experiencing any kind of mood, so the hour that I’m home making our lunch should be fairly straight-forward and then this afternoon, when my officemate is gone (part-timer) I can crank the tunes and continue my lumpish day. I think going to the gym after work will inject some vim into my brain and body, so that at least then maybe I’ll be a more animated lump.

There’s always hope. LOL!

Last night, after a very long day which had sort of already brought me to my knees, I had the opportunity to witness myself in action 25 years ago, made possible by a younger woman in my book group. She dominated the conversation cuz she was passionate about the subject and was rude without meaning to be to everyone who tried to challenge her position. She was judgmental and felt justified in being rude to people because they were wrong. She was sooooooo condescending it set my teeth on edge. It struck me half-way through the meeting that I was exactly like that when I was younger, and I was always stumped as to why I alienated so many people.

I felt such a deep level of compassion for her as she waded in deeper and deeper, oblivious to the effect she was having on the group. I know she didn’t mean to come across the way she did, and that it stemmed from her own harsh judgment of herself more than anything else. She’s still convinced utterly that there is RIGHT and WRONG and that all things and all people, including herself, fall within those boundaries. Her very survival depends on being RIGHT.

It made me really sad. She sets herself apart and doesn’t understand why she feels so alone. I wanted to kidnap her for the evening and shower her with my hard-fought wisdom, but I knew that was inappropriate and that really, there was nothing I could do for her. She’ll have to come into her own wisdom in time. She would never believe that I understand how much she hurts.

It was startling though, to see my own behavior and pain in her so clearly. I am grateful that I feel and act so much differently now, but my heart aches for her and all that she has gone through, and will continue to go through in the coming years until finally she surrenders the need to be RIGHT and gives in to the reality of simply being human; until she can feel compassion for herself, and in doing so, feel compassion for others.

It’s really something, this life, isn’t it? We are all challenged everyday to open our hearts and minds, to live life in its fullest measure, and to fulfill the potential of the human spirit.

And it’s just so, so, hard.

Trust in me

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Adapt

Thanks to Karen at YSM|ink, I’ve been thinking about trust.

Such a big thing, trust. Such high stakes. Get it wrong, and depending on who you’re dealing with, it could cost you your life. For me, with the expectation of one person, the stakes have not been that high, but the risk of being hurt is present with every single person I encounter, and most people I know have turned out not to be worthy of my trust. I don’t think that’s unusual. Humans are unreliable. What we do best is adapt, so nothing for any of us is the same all the time, including our willingness to betray someone else’s trust if it suits us to do so.

In this life, the only two things that are always true are:

  1. Nothing stays the same. This too shall pass.
  2. Everything and everyone ends sooner or later.

Other than that, it’s all up for grabs. What I finally came up with this morning, laying in bed opening to my heart’s reaction to the idea, is that trust is just another expectation, really, and so not something I invest emotional capital in anymore, and that’s okay cuz I was never very good at it to begin with.

Not that surprising, I don’t think, for someone whose first experience of life was loss. Being taken from my mother seconds after birth did not set me up for a lifetime of trust. I have no idea how my baby brain and heart processed those first few weeks of life, but I’m sure trust in anything or anyone was not in the mix. It never got much better, really.

I was trying to think this morning of a single person in my life who had not betrayed my trust and I couldn’t come up with anyone until I thought of my grandmother – my Nana – who I really don’t believe ever let me down. That’s it, though, she’s the only one. Family members…friends…co-workers…nope…not a single person in the parade of folks passing through my 57 years of life has proven worthy of my trust.

Some have been flaming, banner in the sky, heart-deadening betrayals, others much smaller, but all have done damage. Some years ago, one quite recently. Some of the people I counted on the most. Some surprised me, others didn’t. They all hurt, though, and changed me in some way.

So trust is not useful to me. Trust is an expectation that someone won’t hurt me and that’s just setting myself up for disappointment, like all other expectations, because it’s unlikely to ever be true. That’s just not the way human beings are. We think of ourselves first, and ultimately, if it comes down to me or you, I’m going to choose me. That’s simply human nature and to expect something different, to trust that someone is not going to hurt you at some point just isn’t realistic.

I don’t ever feel safe with people. With the exception of my Nana, I don’t think I ever have. Not completely. I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop my whole life. But here’s the surprising thing I realized this morning:

I think that’s a good thing.

Does that surprise you? It surprised me this morning as that was not at all what I thought I was thinking or feeling. Hmm…

I have allowed people to hurt me and that’s too bad. I was naive and just so desperate for human connection and validation that I left myself open to abuse. I put my heart in other people’s hands and trusted them not to break it as if it were their own, rather than learning to trust myself and to take care of myself; to stand on my own. It took me a long time to figure out that was a bad idea, and that’s too bad, but I forgive myself for my naivete. I didn’t know better.

Now I do.

The trick is to keep my heart open to connection with other people without expectation that they won’t hurt me. I don’t want to seal myself off from the world because it’s scary and I don’t feel safe. I’ve never felt safe, and yet here I am. I’ve survived being hurt – repeatedly – and lived to tell the tale.

And I will continue to. People will continue to hurt me and I’ll continue to be okay in spite of it. I trust myself. I trust my ability to survive. I trust my ability to adapt and keep going no matter what happens. I don’t like pain, and I’m not looking for people to hurt me, any more than I’m expecting them not to hurt me. I like people and I will continue to be the best friend I can, the best daughter I can, the best me I can be.

Beyond that, no expectations other than life – and people – will be as they should be. We are each here to walk our own way, to learn and to grow. Throw karma into the mix and everything’s on shifting ground. I can be scared and afraid to move, or I can be scared and just keep going, trusting in my ability to adapt. There is no such thing as safety. There is only this life, and taking the risk to live it as fully as possible.

It’s the only way.

The law won

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I love you

I was astonished to hear about the college admissions scam, in the way I’m always slightly surprised when I remember that some people who seemingly have everything are willing to risk it all to have more. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I’ve thought about it a lot in the past 2 days since the story broke, and what I really can’t wrap my head around is why the parents, especially the celebrities, didn’t think they’d get caught? Why would you risk going to prison for something that could have been accomplished in other ways? Spend money on a tutor to help your kid bring his grades up, for example. Spend your money on a better prep school. Instill in your child the idea that school is important and that you have to study to get into a good college. Teach them that money can’t buy everything and that some things are worth working hard for.

What it all really comes down to is privileged people thinking they’re entitled to something the rest of us aren’t. Not a new concept in the US, certainly, especially considering the person who currently holds the highest office in our government, but as Americans, that’s just not the way we’re supposed to do things. We’re all equal, right?

Right?

Ask your black neighbor if they’re surprised by this turn of events. Ask a poor child or any person of color, in fact, if they’re surprised by the assumptions of wealthy white people that they matter more then the rest of us.

I doubt it.

I’m not surprised by the attitude – I’ve encountered it personally many times living in a resort community most of my life – but as I said above, I am surprised at the level of risk involved for what seems to me to be a small reward. One day you’re a fairly wealthy actress/celebrity living the dream life, and the next the FBI is at your door. Prison awaits you, and you know that, but you risk it all and go ahead and break the law to get your kid into a particular college?

Wait a minute…what?

Exactly. You had it made and you blew it. Accept that your kid was too lazy, or not a good enough student to get the grades to get in. Accept that you’re like everybody else. Accept that life happens to you in the same way it happens to every other human being on the planet – there are consequences to your actions, and not everything is going to go your way. Life will humble you sooner or later. There will be a reckoning.

I guess maybe you don’t understand that if life has, indeed, gone mostly your way cuz your parents or you paid your way through the hard stuff. But just because karma hasn’t caught up with you yet, doesn’t mean it’s not going to. Sooner or later it’s going to have its way with you and you’ll find out that it’s true for everybody. Karma is an equal opportunity experience. It doesn’t discriminate. It is though, I believe, especially tough on people who don’t quit while they’re ahead.

I have compassion for all involved, cuz they’re going to pay a big price for their cluelessness, and their kids are going to pay an even larger price in some ways. The humiliation is epic. This is an opportunity for self-examination and growth, though, so if they recognize that they will ultimately benefit, but it’s going to be tough sledding until they get to that point. It’ll be painful and that’s too bad, because it really didn’t have to happen, but I suppose most crime is that way.

But I also have to say that it gives me hope to know that laws still matter in this country, even for the wealthy and celebrated, and that karma works. It does my heart good to know that there is order in the universe, after all. Not always, but sometimes, and for me right now, that’s enough. Cuz for 2 years I’ve been watching someone in power run roughshod over our democracy and our laws and it’s made me quite sad and feeling hopeless about the future of this country.

But this week, our laws worked, and someone who thought they were above the law was proven wrong. That makes me happy and hopeful that we might just survive as Americans and as humans going forward.

This week the law confirmed that we are all equal in this country still, and that is as it should be. Thank goodness.