My Prepositional Phase

This morning, around 6 a.m., I took a little white pill, the first of eighteen hundred and twenty five that I will ingest in the next five years.   In the past few months, I'd heard all kinds of adjectives about this pill's effects.  How it'd make me mean.  Hairy.  Hot.  Fat.  Achy.  Dry.   Not exactly rave reviews.

On Thursday, I talked to my doctor about these words, and my concerns about them.  I also told him about the three-month journey I'd taken since the last time I'd seen him.  How I'd gotten such great care from my medical team, such love from friends and family.  How my mother had died just a week and a half after my surgery.

I talked with him about the intense, microscopic perspective I'd adopted--out of necessity, really--since early August.  How I had spent three months looking closely at things, my own health as well as my mother's demise.  And how odd this past month has been--post surgery, post death, post radiation--a quiet, untethered time in which I wasn't being asked to do anything but heal.

And then he told me that I didn't have to take the pills, even though he thought I should.  That my odds, without them, were pretty darned good. He also disentangled myth from truth, concerning the pills, telling me what might happen to me, but also letting me know what they can do for me.  It was an important shift in prepositions and I paid close attention.

Really, I had never considered skipping this third chapter of my recovery.  But those words--those tough, unpleasant words--did dampen my enthusiasm to begin this phase.  For awhile, I couldn't get over the notion of Jane-plus-25.  But the one word that has haunted me most is the one I spoke most adamantly about when I sat in the doctor's office.  Mean.  I don't want to be mean.    Not for five years, more or less for a day or two.

Still.  

And as we talked through it all, there was a moment when I felt a swell of emotion, when, with a little nudge, I could imagine a flood of tears burbling up.

"Well, I made a promise to my children that I would be a good patient.  That I would do everything I could so that I would not get cancer again."

It was a great appointment.  I really like this doctor, trust his long view and appreciate his quirky humor.  And I felt good about my decision.  Which, really, was a non-decision after all.  I just needed a new preposition.

Two hours into this five-year journey and I haven't grown a beard.  My jeans fit the same and I've been really nice to Finn.

So far, so good.

This Accordian Life

 I used to have a thing with accordions.  And not a good thing.  Our relationship soured in elementary school, when I was taking catechism classes at St. Teresa's.  One day, for some reason, one of my catechism classmates--an odd, leggy, pale boy--brought his accordion and played it for us.  His gangly arms worked feverishly while the instrument wheezed and belched through some unrecognizable tune.  The incident (and, honestly, I really did view it as an incident) kind of scarred me.

I wouldn't look favorably upon accordions until college, when bands like Brave Combo and They Might Be Giants made them suddenly cool to me.  And now?  Now, both Mark and I are suckers for the way the instrument can capture a feeling and break our hearts so well.

I'd be hard pressed to find a musical instrument that does a better job of summing up this squeezebox life of mine.  As a 54-year-old accordion, I regularly vacillate between compressed focus and expansive views, sometimes more than once in a single day.  Facing breast cancer, there were times this fall when I felt like I had no more air left in my lungs.  But always--always--something or someone came along and nudged my shoulders back and filled me up again.  This magical in-and-out quality of my accordion life is why--despite my health, despite the loss of my mother, despite the divisiveness of the election--I still hear music every day.  It is why I have such confidence in the future, even if today feels a bit heavy or scary.

So, I suppose I still have a thing with accordions.  A very good thing.  And I should probably admit that my catechism classmate was way ahead of his time.  Goofy looking as he was, he knew then what it took me another 40 years to finally understand--that there is beauty and awe and music in a thing that is capable of both hugging me and letting me go.

Just Do It

I had a good conversation with a friend Friday about a person who was facing a challenge.  My friend wondered what she should do for that person.  She'd actually answered her own question with one of the words inside of it--do.

It matters not a whit what she decides to do.

The point is, as Nike reminded us, to Just Do It.

"Do" can be a meal.
"Do" can be a hug.
"Do" can be a note.
"Do" can be a phone call.
"Do" can be a look.
"Do" can be a word.
"Do" can be a walk.
"Do" can be shared silence.
"Do" can be a story about herself.
"Do" can be a corny pun.
"Do" can be listening.
"Do" can be a pair of socks.
Heck.  "Do" can even be a Venus Fly Trap terrarium. Maybe most of all.

In this age of Pintrest, when clever crafters publish eye-popping pictures of personalized pap, we middling folk can feel nearly paralyzed by paroxysms of paranoia.  How on earth, we think, can I make something like that?  Better to do nothing at all than to face comparisons. . . . 

Wrong!

(Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. . . . )

If I have learned anything in the past two years, it is to lean in.  To try, especially when I doubt.  And to trust that my own imperfect version of doing is good enough.

Diving In

I loved this painting the first time I laid eyes on it.  Hanging on a kitchen wall in my mom's last house, it reminded me of the endless, joyful hours I spent at East Hills swimming pool, jumping off of its diving board.  This morning, while listening to researcher Brene Brown talk about vulnerability with radio host Krista Tippett, I found myself looking at this painting in a new way.

Arms and legs stretched wide, his body spilling outside of the frame, this young boy suddenly seemed to me to be the perfect model of what it means to be vulnerable, to trust that something will be there to catch him.

Looking back over these past 2 months, I realize I, too, have been a model for vulnerability.  Not a perfect model, to be sure, but I have had so many moments since August 1st when it was clear that I was not in charge, that I would have to lean into trust more than rely upon my own wiles.

Brown's research also looked at courage and she found a surprisingly consistent thread that ran through those moments when courage emerged.  To a person, in everyone that she interviewed, their courage was born of vulnerability.  I don't know how courageous it was of me to buy my first sports bra last week (doctor's orders) or how brave I was, there in the Kohl's dressing room, trying to figure out how to get out of a spandex-laced tank top (another doctor's orders), but I do know that I have been asked to do things in the past two months for which I have had no training.

I also know that my family and I had to find courage last weekend, when the most private of emotions--grief--was played out in the most public of places--a funeral home. And I know that I was scared for a time earlier this week, laying on a table with machinery and technicians hovering over me, people marking me up, machines taking photos of my body, invisible light pouring into it.  There, on that table, staring up into a camera that was staring back down at me, I imagined my mom--in some new place or form that I cannot name--looking down at her daughter who has cancer.  I certainly felt vulnerable at that moment.

But through all of this--from my mom's last weeks leading up to her death to my own health issues--I have also felt something else.  I've felt--with utmost certainty--that I would be okay.  No matter what.  I have felt loved, cared for, looked after, prayed over.   I have felt my oneness with this world, this beautiful place brimming with wonder, these awesome beings shimmering with strength.  I have, in these myriad moments of vulnerability, felt my feet firmly upon this earth and been at peace with it.

. . . more times than I can count, I have felt like I was jumping off the diving board at East Hills pool, arms flailing, laughter burbling from my lips, certain the water would hold me.

100 Facts About My Mom

I was sitting with my mom the other evening, while she was doing the hard work of transitioning.  To pass the time, I began compiling a list of 100 facts about Sally Raglin Marshall, in no particular order.  It turned out to  be a nice activity for us to share, although she laid there silently while I spoke them to her.  My mom died last night, at the age of 89.  Below, is the list we shared.

100 Things About My Mom, in No Particular Order

1.  You have nice ears.  I hadn't realized that before.  They are big, but nice.

2.  Is it possible you have no grey hair?  I still don't know.

3.  You have nice teeth.

4.  Your smile is wonderful.

5.  So's your laugh.

6.  You love jazz, which means your kids love jazz.

7.  You did the crossword puzzles, when I thought it was dad who did.  You corrected me, finally, telling me he would simply swoop in at the end and write down an answer or two. In pen, for God's sake!

8.  You are a bad driver.  But you never killed anyone.  So maybe you aren't the worst.

9. You are statuesque.

10. You were a disinterested Catholic.

11. You weren't a great cook but you could stretch a meal admirably.

12. . . . I didn't have to feed 7 people, so maybe I should shut up.

13. You took us swimming, and stayed.

14. You picked me up when I got caught shoplifting and didn't yell at me.

15. You and dad were a really handsome couple.

16. So were you and Dick.

17. You have nice bone structure.

18. You became adorable to me this year.

19. You love a good joke.

20. You can tell good jokes, too.

21. You appreciate puns.

22. Apparently, you were a secret smoker.  I once saw you smoke at the Joliff's on the 4th of July and could not believe my eyes.

23. Your hair reminds me of Doris Day.

24. You know your jazz artists, inside and out.

25. You have a great younger brother, Burley.

26. Your sister, Weedie, was a spirited rascal who you ended up loving very much.

27. You made good kids.

28. You were proud of your grandchildren.

29. You had a daughter who died shortly after birth.

30.  . . . maybe her death made room for me, your youngest.  I do not take that lightly.

31. Your feet aren't your best feature but I never minded rubbing them.

32. You have incredible strength.

33. You once mentioned in passing that you'd had a heart attack the week before.

34. You seldom complained.

35. You had tinitus.

36. You had neuropathy.

37. You had breast cancer when I was a young kid.  I remember Dad pulling up in the station wagon and all of us waving to you from the car when you were in the hospital then.

38. You planned some great vacations and often made us learn some history before we went.

39. Jack once threw a firecracker in your direction.  It blew up underneath your skirt.

40. You hid Russell Stover candy on Easter, even when we were adults.

41. You were smart enough to hire a cleaning lady.

42. You're a great artist.

43. You've sketched our children's portraits.

44. You've sketched many other people's children, as well.  And some of the staff at Tabitha, too.

45. You sketched two men on trial for murder, including Starkweather.

46. You let us eat really awful sugar cereal.

47. You could eat half a package of Ruth's Oatmeal Cookies between the store and our house.

48. You once left your groceries at the grocery store.

49. You once forgot me at the grocery store. I had to jump in the back of the station wagon as you were passing. 

50. You were a docent at the Sheldon Art Gallery.

51. You let dad have loud, smoky poker parties at our house.  

52. You have great taste in jewelry.

53. You didn't get mad at me when I threw up in your bed that one time.

54. You let Steve get a pet skunk.

55. You would sometimes appear in my brothers' films. Your cameo in "Creature from Planet Zero" was Oscar-worthy.

56. You bought me an electric guitar.

57. You and dad served dinner to my friends and me, in my bedroom, on my 16th birthday.

58. You--perhaps foolishly--got me a room at the Holiday Inn for my 18th birthday.

59. You made Ann's wedding dress.  Which became my wedding dress.

60. You made all my bridesmaids' dresses, too.  For only $25 each!

61. You helped design our house.

62. You let me put Wacky Pack stickers all over my closet doors.

63. More than once, you tucked your skirt into your hose

64. You and Mark painted Dr. Seuss characters all over our bathroom walls.

65. When I announced that I was pregnant, you asked "Would anyone like more coffee?"

66. You grabbed my shirt when I opened the car door on the highway, heading to Colorado. I had to know if a locked car door kept people in.  It doesn't.  Thank you for grabbing me.

67. You aren't particularly sentimental.

68. You got out of the way so that we could find ourselves and make our own paths.

69. You once told me to eat with a little more "casual indifference."

70. Allison wears your clothes--she loves telling people they are her grandmother's.

71. Your hairstyle was classic.  It never changed and it always looked good.

72. You once washed my hair with mayo and made me put a baggie over it for an hour.  Something about swimmer's hair. .  .

73. You often played Boggle and Scrabble with me.

74. You are poised.

75. You shrunk this year so that I might, just once, be taller than you.

76. A pet toad once died in one of your shoes in your closet. It took me a long time to find it.

77. You were always nice to my friends, and called them by name.

78. You were a little obsessed with Publisher's Clearinghouse for awhile.  Okay, a lot obsessed.

79. You made good party signs.

80. You made mix tapes, a passion you shared with your children.

81. You were tolerant of my taste in clothes, mostly.

82. You once made Mark and me change before taking us to the Sheldon.

83. You let us sit on the roof to watch the fireworks at Holmes Lake.

84. You came to my parties!

85. You and Dick backed into Jennifer's van after one of my parties and just drove away. Molly saw it all happen.

86. You and dad always cleaned the kitchen after a party so it would look tidy in the morning.

87. You are aloof, but in a good, artistic way.

88. You aren't high drama.

89. You occasionally picked up Ann from the bars, even though she wasn't of age yet.

90. You once said "Damn it!" in front of Eric and Allison, after hitting another car in the McDonald's drive-through (see no. 8).  They couldn't quit talking about it.

91. My friends all liked you.

92. You once gave Mark a Happy 50th card, even though he wasn't 50.  You might have called him "Wayne" in it, too.

93. You have very nice friends who have always been nice to your kids.

94. You and dad liked to dance.

95. You and dad were in the dance group called "Gay Nighters."  They changed their name in the 2000s.

96. You illustrated a book that Dale wrote for Eric, called Eric's Little Alligator.

97. You are a sugar fiend. Pretty sure it's genetic.

98. You were cool headed.

99. You ran a red light a few years ago (48th and O!) in front of a cop, who let you go.

100. You were a swell mom, for a thousand different reasons.  

My Antebellum Cerebellum

The bulk of the human brain--the cerebrum--is divided into two hemispheres and four lobes, putting it somewhere between "tiny house" and "50s ranch."  My brain, though, is more stately, like a McMansion with a dozen and a half rooms and growing.

I'm not bragging.  I'm simply stating a fact.  

In the past year and a half, I've become quite handy with dry wall and putty knife, slapping together new brain rooms with ease, if not with an eye for detail.  The more dire the circumstances, the more walls I put up.  Sick friend?  Wall.  Another sick friend?  Another wall.  Dying step father, heart palpitations, hospice?  Wall, wall, wall!

But I don't discriminate.  I've also constructed rooms for good things--for work, for home, for family, for the out-of-doors (walling in nature--really!?).

From afar, all that slap-dash construction probably seems a bit unhealthy.  Yet, I would argue that those walls and rooms have kept me from losing myself this past year.  Indeed, they have grounded me when the ground beneath me has felt like it was slipping away.  Build a room for joy, after all, and I have. . . a room filled with joy. Which is why, despite all the loss of last school year, I also ended that year with a deep well of happiness.

So I started a new room last month, just after dinner on August 16.  By far the most expensive room I've ever built, and the one with the least-interesting name,  this has been a challenging room for me.  The experts call this room "invasive ductal carcinoma."  Better known by the name "breast cancer," the room--like a museum--is filled with priceless furnishings, not one of which is comfortable to sit on.

Here, in this room, I have been x-rayed and scanned, probed and prodded.  I haven't been in the room alone, though.  Here, too, are experts clothed in competence and compassion, loving friends who have known similar rooms, many good folks sitting on the bench, cheering me on.   On Sept. 9, I had surgery in this room.  And on Sept. 13, I got a call while I was resting in this place.  The call was a good one.  Very good, in fact.  The experts would tell you that my lymph nodes and my margins are clear.  I'd tell you that my journey from this point on is about prevention, and nothing more.

Turns out, I might be building my first window in this brain house of mine, a view to some place that is not here.  In fact, as I was driving to school this morning, awash in tears and gratitude, I started to re-think my brain house and all of its hodge-podgy rooms.  Maybe it's time to change things up.  Time to tear down the walls that have kept me safe and sane this past year, and let life--warts and all--come rushing in again.

This tiny house that is my life, it turns out, is as full and beautiful and as messy and mine as I could ever want it to be.  Walls be damned, I plan on living it.

Of Caterpillars and Chrysalises

Two weeks into the school year and I find myself surrounded by teenaged souls in various stages of formation.  Already, I've worked with more than 20 classes of these kids, and, while it has at times felt like running downhill, I've really enjoyed the hubbub. Yesterday, as the big hand of the clock inched towards 3, I turned to Helen and said "The library feels really happy this year, doesn't it?"  She agreed.

East is as full as it has been in many, many years, with 1,900 young caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies slogging,  sitting and flying through this space each weekday.  We adults in the building--ourselves in various stages of transformation--are expected to meet the kids where they are.  As I've said many times before, working in a school is not for sissies.

Earlier this week, an English class was sitting before me, in the library to choose personal-reading books.  I shared my recipe for finding a good book, pointed them to our collections, and wandered with them as they decided which ones to choose.    One girl, lovely and olive-skinned, quietly asked if we had any books about Syria.  When I pulled out the one fiction book set in Syria that we had, she teared up and said 'That's Arabic on the cover."  Nodding, I was feeling pretty good about myself, until she followed up with "I don't want anyone to know that I speak Arabic."

Sometimes, caterpillars feed on hatred.

Helen and I quickly conferred in my office, deciding to tear the cover off the book.  I handed her a plain, red book and she left.  And then, we got to work looking for other fiction books we could buy that were set in a country so far away from my own.

The next afternoon, the girl returned.  I had no idea what to expect.  She smiled shyly, held up the book and said "I love it!  I have been to many of these places!"

Sometimes, butterflies emerge from desolation.

Wednesday morning, this same student came into the library before school.  She printed a poem she'd written and handed me a copy.  There, in those sparse words, was her own arc, a timeline filled with bullets and fear, hope and heaps of courage.

Sometimes, young butterflies inspire 54-year-old caterpillars to be transformed once again.

Four Little Words By My Doorstep

Beloved.
Be loved.
Be. 
Love.

Those words--just four in all--landed on my shoulders during my walk the other morning.  I found myself playing with them for the rest of that walk, chewing on them, moving the emphasis from one syllable to another,  applying them to what I was seeing and feeling.

I don't know why this meditation found me, but I'm mighty glad that it did.

Turns out that those four unique words--ingredients, if you will--are just about everything I need to live well in this world.  They are the perfect recipe for a grateful, grounded life.

Beloved.
A lifelong lover of lists, I'm glad that this was the first word to alight on my shoulders.  It is a word that pulls me out of myself and shines a warm light on everything and everyone else.  Beloved dog. Beloved neighbor.  Beloved tree.  Beloved sky.

Be loved.
I am taken aback when I realize just how many people have my back.  And when I open myself up to their love, I am a better version of me.

Be.
Of all the crazy summers in life, this one has felt like the wildest.  Unbearable heat, ridiculous news, heartbreaking violence, dwindling lives.  The what ifs too often nudged out the moment.  Be reminds me that being present is a sacred duty that can help us manage or put aside all those what ifs.

Love.
Boy, this one is the silver lining, the ultimate transformative ingredient.  A verb that requires repeating.  As Lin-Manuel Miranda uttered at the Grammys, "Love is love is love is love is love."

For someone who is a lousy pray-er and whose memory bottoms out more and more these days, these four little words that landed on my doorstep seem like a tonic. A mantra.  A meditation for me and a mediation for living in this world.  And I will do my best to lean into them each day and see what it is that they have to show me.

Pretty in Pink

Last night before bed, I told Mark that I was going to sleep until 9. I have never in my life slept until 9, but because I made the claim with some forcefulness, I was a little disappointed when the clock read 5:34 this morning.  My disappointment evaporated 45 minutes later, though, when the eastern sky oozed pink.

I'm not a runner, but Finn and I nearly ran out the door when I saw that sky, bolting to Woods Park for a clearer view of a beautiful start to a new day.  --Isn't that what we all crave--a clearer view of a beautiful start to a new day?

As we entered Woods Park, just in front of the cowboy statue, we were given a bonus--half a rainbow arcing its way downward to meet us.  I don't use the word blessed very often, but that's how I felt.  Blessed and grateful that I didn't sleep until 9, because, as any sky-gawking Nebraskan knows, rainbows and pink clouds and perfect lighting are all so fleeting.

We wended our way through the park twice this morning, filling up on everything, imagining that the churr of crickets was actually the sound of satellites whizzing through the universe above our heads.  Or at least that's what I was imagining.  Finn was probably thinking about bunnies lurking in the uncut grass along the perimeter.    And by the time we found ourselves at the cowboy statue again, I realized that the half rainbow had grown into two rainbows,  giddy cousins trying to show each other up.

My morning walks feel like air to me--utterly necessary to my continuation upon this earth.  They center and calm and fill and energize me.  These walks jolt stories and concerns, joy and to-do lists out of me and remind me that--despite all the hard news of this life--there is always a softness to this world, a gentleness and rhythm that are immensely comforting.

I feel bad for all those folks still slumbering this morning.  Already, they have missed so much--the call of the great-horned owl that woke me, the pretty-in-pink sky, the rainbows, the sprinkles that were like gold flecks falling through the morning light.

All that goodness, and it's only 7:21.

Two Truths and At Least One Lie

No one has ever asked me what it's like to be white.  Or a woman.  Like anyone would expect me to speak for someone else.

True, several people have asked me how it is I can be 54 and yet have never carried a purse. But I think their curiosity rests more in where I put things rather than in what I am.

Believe me when I say that, in the past couple of weeks, I've had to practically sit on my hands to resist the urge to ask a black person to guide or inform me, even though I know the absurdity of asking someone to somehow be a larger group.  Thank God I've got a place for those fidgety hands of mine.

These are choppy waters we find ourselves in these days.  But I am encouraged that so many of us are still wading in them.  There are, I think, all kinds of people right now who really want to know how to do things differently.  Sure, many of us, like first-time surfers, will lose our footing, fall into the waves and make fools of ourselves, over and over and over again.  This learning process--or un-learning process, as it may be--is a messy business.  But we need to keep getting back on the boards, because the waves are not going away.

Maybe I should have been carrying a purse all these years.  Now, when I really need to open up and see what it is I have been lugging along with me,  I don't have the convenience of rifling through my Kate Spade to get to the truth of things.  Instead, I have to hunt down scraps of paper, tarnished mementos and handfuls of loose change, each tucked away in various pockets or atop my desk or in the console of my car, and lay them out like pieces of a treasure map, and try to make sense of it all.

I know I've used too many metaphors in this post, moving from purses to surfboards with seemingly no regard for good taste or readability.  It's probably just another delay tactic, offering up a few more distractions to keep me from starting to do the hard work of learning and unlearning.  Or maybe they represent something more substantive,  like clunky signs of my dis-ease.

For today, at least, they'll have to do.  And I'll have to trust that by putting them down here, by writing them out for others to see, I will be held accountable.  I will be asked to share what I know and what I've learned about what it means to be a human living on this earth right now.

As the World Turns

1,040 miles per hour.  That's how fast the earth is spinning right now.  And you wondered why you're feeling a little dizzy these days.  I think it's worth reminding ourselves that the earth has always been spinning at an astounding clip, yet, thanks to gravity, we've seldom taken notice.    

So why is it that we feel like our feet have left the ground these days?  Certainly, there's no shortage of gravitas.  And maybe--ironically--that's part of the reason we feel imbalanced.  Shootings. Politics.  Oppressive heat.  So much heavy stuff to take in. No wonder we are disoriented.

On Christmas Eve in 1968, I was poking at gifts under the tree, unable to contain my seven-year-old enthusiasm for the what ifs that lay under wraps.  At that same time, the Apollo 8 astronauts were getting their first look (actually, anyone's first look) at Earth from the surface of the Moon.   Pilot Jim Lovell, upon taking it all in, said this about the sight: "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."

Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about the transmission of that first image of earth as being the very moment when the environmental movement was born.  Taken aback by the beauty of their planet, humans were overwhelmed by a deep desire to tend to that lovely home.

And so, I stare at the image above.  Look at it long and hard.  And my heart softens again, its pace slowing down.  I stare at that image and let my head fill with wonder, amazed that so many beautiful things--people and plants and animals and micro-organisms and, yes, I realize I'm starting to sound like a song by that cheesy 70s band, America--are held together upon its surface by equal and equally invisible forces of gravity and love and hope and desire.

The more I stare at this image, the more ground I feel below my feet.  I notice a sloughing of both fear and its unwelcomed cousin, hopelessness. Hidden in this image, I start to realize, is a powerful antidote to a summer filled with so many hard and furious things.  I stare at my home, this single thing holding a trillion other things in its wide and capable arms, whispering to us that our feet are, in fact, on the ground, and we are, in fact, still together, holding fast against the odds.

And I realize, once again, "just what I have back here on Earth."And that it's most certainly worth fighting for.

A Societal Case of Teen Angst

For large swaths of my life, the camera has not been kind to me.  Then again, it could have something to do with my fashion "sense."  Consider the photo on the left.  I'm the boyish one in the middle, all denim and swag.  Really, my only saving grace was that I was a teen and didn't know any better.

. . . kind of like our country right now.

Countries, like dogs, age differently than humans.  If I double the typical dog-to-human equation, then it takes 15 years of being a country to equal one year of human life.  That means the United States is knee deep in adolescence.  Heck, using that equation, we've only been able to drive for a little over a year and we still can't vote.

Hyped up on testosterone, its brain not fully formed, the United States is the wild-eyed teen driving too fast, staying up too late,  eating too poorly, blindly fighting itself and others for reasons both real and imagined.  Acned and ill-proportioned, our country's youth looks strange on us.

Like many teens, the United States is angsty and adrift, hungry to find its identity and certain that it's older than it really is.  Our elders--China, Japan, Ethiopia and Egypt, as well as much of Europe--have every right to roll their eyes at us.  They, who have known foreign wars on their own soil, they who have lurched and belched and stretched and grieved through millennia, must think us fools at times.

Not all is lost in this adolescence, though.  It is there, in those youthful days, after all, where wild, hope-filled dreams take root and our eyes and minds begin to imagine a tomorrow that is somehow different.  Something that is not. . . this.  

Fortunately, we are all experts at this, having survived our own adolescence.  Surely, then, we can figure out a way to work together and nudge our country through these rough years, remembering always that what we feed is what will grow.

Below the too-loud music is a deep river, a thrum that suggests real change. We would do well to heed its call.

The Breakup Letter

Dear Fourth,
We're done.

Yeah, I know.  It's lame of me to write you a letter, but, frankly, after the way you behaved last night, I just didn't have it in me to do this over coffee.  That and the fact that I don't drink coffee.

Oh, it's true--I loved you for a long time.  It's true you used to make my eyes light up and my heart go pitter patter.  Not to mention what you could do to my old Barbies and army men.  But those halcyon days of dancing butterflies and silver fountains are faint memories now.  Just like my neighbor's plastic garbage can.

As for last night?  My God, you were so full of yourself.  All red, white and BOOM!  And the more the girls screamed, the more you went off.  It was like I was reading a Viagra warning, and all I could think was "eight more hours of this?!"

So, this is it.  You are no longer da bomb. My love for you has fizzled.  Now that I have seen you for what you really are--a crazy cracker--I will no longer be your lady finger.

Sincerely,
Jane

Loving the List

People who know me well know that I don't like to be too busy. And by "too busy" I mean "having more than two things to do in the foreseeable future."  (I never said that my definition was a reasonable one . . . )

Enter the list.

I love a good list. Preferably one written with a decent pen--actually, two pens, each a different color, for emphasis.  My lists vary, depending upon season and need.  Knee deep in summer, I still find the need to put things down on paper, even if I don't feel the need to change my clothes or brush my hair.  The list to the left is one I put together earlier this week.  It's not my finest work.  You'll notice my penmanship is a bit sloppy and the space between lines is not ideal.  But it'll do, pig.  It'll do.

Not all of my lists end up on paper.  In fact, some of the most important listings I compile happen strictly in my head.  And it is there, amidst the ever-greying matter, where the list's true powers become most evident.  Be warned, though.  Lists, like just about everything else in life, can be used for good or evil.  We've all fallen into the monkey-mind trap of reviewing only the crap, the darkness, the bad stuff, even though it does not one whit of good for us or for the world.

So I've been trying like heck these days to compile only those mental lists that Glenda the Good Witch would approve of.

Here's a portion of this morning's life-saving list that I uttered to myself, mid-walk:

•Awesome family

•Cicadas (song and empty shells)

•Bird song

•Porch parties

•Bare feet

•Hammocks

•Upcoming vacations

•Scrabble, maybe Snatch It

•Funny friends 

•Moran's Tap Room

Nice list, but life-saving? Really?

Yeah, pretty much.  

Creating and rehearsing a mental list of good things provides a powerful antidote to all that hard stuff out there.  A list of good things can admirably duke it out with just about every ugly above-the-fold headline out there.   In the midst of everything that feels so hard and hopeless in life these days, there are these shining little gewgaws--moments and mementos--that can fill us with fresh air.

So, go make yourself a good list and start feeling better.  And don't be too judgy.  Just compile it, in true "brainstorm" fashion.  Then, rinse and repeat.  And, for a few minutes, be that crazy person who's talking to herself, letting the happy things tumble quietly out of your mouth, all the little moments, the names of awesome people, the perfect tomato you ate yesterday, the way the morning light paints the treetops.  

Frankly, the world could use your joyful exhalations,  your little life-giving lists tickling the leaves and alighting upon the wings of a passing cardinal.   We could all benefit from something good going viral.

Summer Lovin'

Unkempt but happy.

As much as summer is a season of watermelon and corn, cicadas and swimming pools, for me, it also seems to be a time of accumulated wounds--scabbed-over cuts,  achy muscles and purpled bruises that, if viewed from a certain perspective, aren't so much a sign of clumsiness as they are evidence of a life lived right there in the midst of things.

. . . at least that's what I'm telling myself.

As I type this, I count at least 11 scratches from a midweek encounter with a pesky buckthorn.  If you aren't familiar with buckthorn, imagine Christ's crown of thorns and go from there.  This invasive species (which Brexited from Europe in the 1800s)  has 3-inch-long, needle-like thorns and is a popular choice for hedges between neighboring properties, which might explain why Jeremy and Jody have pretty much quit stopping over to borrow a cup of sugar, which is too bad because we really like Jeremy and Jody.

I've also got a nice bruise--now waning--that stretches across my left shin, and a strange scrape across my nostril, neither of which I can tie to a particular incident.  Like I said, I've been living in the midst of things. . . .

I have tried to take steps towards a better me, though.  For instance, I've been on a two-bath-a-day schedule lately, something for which I'm pretty sure others are grateful.  As a 54-year-old pudgy woman in the midst of a pretty significant heat wave, both inside and out, it just isn't possible to get by with one bath a day.   That said, other areas of hygiene have gone a bit neglected.

Many mornings before heading out for my walk, I don't bother to change out of the ratty t-shirt I'd slept in (the one with a faded message and a handful of moth holes near the waist).  And my unbrushed hair--think "matted dog"--pretty much finishes the look.  That might explain why people I encounter on these walks often hold out a handful of change and a granola bar as I pass.

Thing is, I don't really care.  I don't care about the scratches or the moth-eaten tees, the rumpled 'do or the slow drip of sweat wending its way downward.  Well, maybe the sweat.  For me, one of summer's most endearing qualities is its ability to impose itself upon me.  Like some months-long sweat-lodge ceremony, summer inundates me with its heat and its promise, its fever dreams and strange views.

And, at least through July, I'm game for it.  Because, soon enough, I'll be expected to be an adult again, a respectably-groomed, reasonably professional person who rushes from one air-conditioned environment into another, eschewing Mother Nature's views while I earn a decent paycheck, one that--eventually--will buy me another two-month pass, come next June.

Of Shwarma and Fireflies

Cattails and sunset at Sheridan Lutheran Church.

Last night, I swam in a field of fireflies.  Twice, actually.  Once, behind Sheridan Lutheran Church, in a lovely swath of land that this church has set aside to. . . let it be.  How is that for an act of faith? Trusting that the land and all of its creatures have something to offer, something that is deep and moving, and maybe even holy?  For a moment, I thought about transferring my church membership, so that I could just keep walking along the path, running my fingers across the cattails and counting fireflies in the woods.

I was there with my friend Mary Anne and a couple dozen strangers of all ages, firefly-counting volunteers.  Don't tell Mary Anne,  but as I was driving home, I wasn't always quite sure of where I was.  Things looked different, unrecognizable, kind of disorienting, but not in a disturbing way.  At one point, I couldn't believe I was on Normal Boulevard, certain it was A Street or somewhere else altogether.  It could have been because I was actually awake after 9, and driving at night.  Or maybe it was the bioluminescent, lingering effects of the hours before, the residue of an evening spent in loveliness.

Later, in my sleep, I again was surrounded by the flickering, gentle glow of fireflies.  In my dream,  I felt light and swift, like a satellite humming through tiny, twinkling galaxies.

My fullness had started earlier in the day, though, when Allison came home and joined Mark and me on our bed, where we'd been eating up our books between catnaps.  Like my dream self, Allison seemed light and happy.  She stretched out between us, recounting her day at work and then slipping into a bit of a comedy routine, exchanging word play with Mark, her favorite sidekick in these situations.  I lay there, a happy audience of one.

She'd come home to have dinner with the family--a feast at Sultan's Kite that was, as always, delicious and fun.  Amid platefuls of shwarma and tziki, rice and hummus, this family I love so deeply chatted and laughed and smiled its way through our meal together.

I think I was up past 10:30 last night not to prove a point (that I CAN stay up past the sun!) but because my heart needed that much time to find space for all of the good things that filled it up. Atop my cool sheets, I'm pretty sure I was glowing a bit, like my firefly brethren, sending out happy signals to this universe that I was here and happy to be counted.

Repair Cafe Now Open for Business

As much as it pains me to say nice things about him, I have to offer my thanks to my friend Dennis Buckley, editor of the Neighborhood Extra, that little slice of days-gone-by journalism tucked into our Saturday papers.  On page N 4 of yesterday's insert was the headline that is now happily stuck in my craw:  Repair Cafe open Sunday.

In the midst of so many dire things happening to us--cancer and terror and alligators and and and and and--it is good to remember the Repair Cafe, that magical place out back where people and things come together to patch up the holes, grease up the chains, replace the missing spokes of our lives.

Lately, I'd forgotten about the Repair Cafe, in part, because I'd developed a mild case of Prepositional Disorder.   The language of suffering, it turns out, leans heavily on the preposition "to."  As in, unbearable things happening to this country, to my mother, to my friends and family.  If you want to feel hopeless, go with to.  That tiny preposition packs a terrific punch in its ability to elicit both finger pointing and paralysis.  What can we possibly do, after all, when everything is happening to us?

Enter the Repair Cafe, the perfect yin to all these messy yangs.

Peeking into the window of someone's Repair Cafe yesterday, I was reminded of the under-reported acts of courage and kindness that people display in the face of tremendous challenges.  Brushing aside the cobwebs, I saw kindness quietly applied to a friend's ache, an undistracted ear lent to another, a handful of nuts and bolts offered freely.  And an awful lot of grit.  Through that window, I saw people reconfiguring and repairing their lives, tapping hope and strength where despair could so easily have been.

Even late last night, when heat and thirst awoke me,  I noticed a warm light coming from the small building, and I smiled, knowing someone inside was hard at work on her life, determined to write it for herself instead of having it written for her.

I fell asleep hard, then, my head filled with wild dreams of riding my bike into the wind, a chorus of birds cheering me on.


The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

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.

This Time Warp Called "Living"

More and more, there are moments in my days in which I am certain I am living in two different time zones.  Not "Pacific" and "Central",  but "Yesterday" and "Today."  It's disorienting, to say the least.  And yet, I'm pretty sure this strange fence-walking sensation is just another indicator of being alive.

Take yesterday, mid afternoon.  Thanks to my occasional inability to read for details, I'd misinterpreted a text from my sister and concluded that a 30-ish year-old woman from my mom's place had died.  In the past several weeks, I've grown rather fond of Katie, who is pushy and enthusiastic in a refreshing kind of way.  The photo above is of her crashing my mom's recent birthday party--silly party hat and all--and I would have had it no other way.

So I spent the past 15 hours thinking this funny young woman who loves cartoon characters and pink things and ukeleles (you can see the pink neck of hers in the photo) had pulled away from the shores.  This morning, post walk, I finally read my sister's follow-up email clarifying that Katie is, in fact, still alive and kicking.

I do not regret the Katie-centered prayers I released on this morning's walk around the park.  Whatever her condition, she could use them. As could everyone, including my mom.

How many times in the last few months have I missed the mom that I am sitting right next to?  The classy, slightly aloof one who is resilient and smart, funny and observant?  The one who has a lifelong habit of not complaining, who once called me a few days after having a heart attack to mention it in passing.

"How are you, Jane?  Yes, we had a great time on the boat, but I am glad to be back home from the hospital.  Oh, I'd forgotten to tell you?"

This flood of flashbacks that comes with walking alongside someone who is working on her last chapter?  It is a strange and wonderful, confusing and discombobulating thing.

Always the middling fence walker, these days I'm trying to find the right mix of remembering and being present.  Of loving this very moment right in front of me while also missing the one from a family dinner in 1978 or fearing the ones that are yet to come.

You'll forgive me, then, if I keep pulling out the pocket calendar, trying to locate myself on this timeline that stretches both before and in front of me.  You'll forgive me if I keep thumbing through old photos, looking for how it is I got here, and who it is that has walked alongside me.

Dear NRA, I'm Hoping You Can Help. No, Seriously.

Humor me.

Let's say that there's an organization out there that really, really wants to protect people's rights to own guns.  And let's say that, in its fervor to protect those rights, this organization continually turns to a common storyline, one that says sick people--not guns--are the problem.

The argument--people who maliciously kill other people are, indeed, unwell--no doubt makes sense even to those people who deplore guns.  So, what would happen if we held this organization to its line of thinking?

It seems to me that we'd then have a starting point towards real change, regardless of our stance on guns.

If everyone could agree that, often, mental illness is a significant factor present in people doing horrific, violent things, then it follows that we could at least ask the gun industry to be willing to put some money into advocating for better mental health.  After all, if we can "fix" the people who might do these things, then guns could lose at least some of their bad rap.

Address mental illness.  Witness fewer gun deaths.  Win, win.

Hey, it's a place to start.  I mean, why wouldn't  the organization be more than willing to put some dollars behind the claim?  And not just a few dollars, but a whole bunch of them. Because, after all, they've got a whole bunch.  According to CNN, these folks pulled in over $350 million in membership  fees and contributions in 2013. Besides, their members and leaders must be tired of making the same old "bad people kill people" claim over and over and over again.  Wouldn't it be nice if they could focus on other things?  Spend more of their money elsewhere?

So--and, again, humor me--what if each of us--the gun lovers and the peaceniks and everyone in between--wrote to this organization and asked it to help improve the gun's reputation by addressing the sick people who are sullying that reputation?  Suggest that it create a foundation to improve the mental health of the citizens of this country using, say,  5 percent of its annual intake (that'd be about $17.5 million, using 2013 figures)? And to keep putting that money into the cause every year thereafter.

You'd think a Constitution-loving, God-Bless-Americans kind of group would be happy to help make Americans happier, especially if it meant that this object of their affection wouldn't have to take so much heat.

Seems like a good place to start, if you ask me. . . .

Wayne LaPierre / The National Rifle Association
11250 Waples Mill Rd.
Fairfax, VA
22030

Mourning Has Broken

Fifty people.  Beloved sons and daughters.  Beloved children of God.

Can we at least agree that something is broken?  That we are not well?

Because, if we can't come together today on this point, then we most certainly won't come together tomorrow in finding meaningful ways to fix things.  First, we grieve.  It is there where we find each other.

For today, then, let's put aside the punditry, the politics, the positing.   For today, let's look for no explanations, no solutions.  Let's just look for each other and then hold on, tight.  Because life is precious and wild, fleeting and hard.

And we are a broken people, missing our brothers and sisters.

Poetry Unplugged

Yesterday, I read a whole book of Mary Oliver poems in one sitting.  Which, given the potency of poetry, is the literary equivalent of, say, going through the Valentino's buffet line three or four times. Bad idea. Where on earth was I expected to tuck away all those jewels, each a rich slice of dessert resting neatly atop the other?

When it was all done, when I lay down the book, spent and dizzy, my brain distended from too much too much, I went back through it, immediately, to find the beautiful lines that already were leaving me.

"Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight. . . "

There was a time in my life when I dismissed poetry as some obscure, froo-froo silliness produced by pinched people sitting lonely and alone in their dens, as raindrops lick the windows in front of them.

There was also a time in my life when I thought Space Food Sticks were delicious.

At 54, I've come to realize that poetry is like nuclear energy--its components too small to see and yet mysterious and powerful beyond comprehension.  Like a chicken stock that has been cooked down to almost nothing and now holds all the flavors of everything that has ever passed through it, poems don't require length to make their point.  Their strength is evidence of the poet's selectivity.

". . . as one who knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing. . . "

The not knowing?  That is my favorite part.  I just hadn't been old enough to realize it.

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down into the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields

which I have been doing all day.

Tell me what else should I have done?

Doesn't every thing die at last and too soon?

Tell me what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life."

   

 excerpted from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Good for Nothing

Sullied woman on virgin prairie.

Several years ago, it seems every church in town was offering workshops based on Rick Warren's book "The Purpose-Driven Life."  I don't hear much about the book anymore, although it's pretty obvious that lots of folks are living purpose-driven lives.

Those folks just don't happen to include me.

That photo of me on the left?  I'm laying on virgin prairie in central Nebraska, doing pretty much nothing but enjoying myself.  The photo sums up my typical summer motto: Be good for nothing.  I am thinking of offering workshops at area churches, in which I'd teach people how to be a little more purposeless, how to do a little more nothing.

No, really.

 I think there is something to be said for doing something--or nothing--just because you want to do something, or nothing.  To be honest,  I'm a little leery of people whose every move seems purpose-driven.  The thing about requiring purpose before action is that it infuses every action with an ulterior motive, which feels a little manipulative to me.  And all that purpose power can take away the magic of a moment.  I doubt Warren's book has a chapter called "The Joy of Serendipity."

Mmmm!  Cold beer!

This photo is of the inside of the old Coke machine that we keep in the basement.  Once a year, I fill it with good beer and invite East High staff to come over and have a cold one.  I even provide the dimes!  So much for any ulterior motive of making back my money!  From a purpose-driven perspective, I suppose you could say I offer the free beer as a way of making friends or showing off that I found this machine for only a hundred bucks.  But, really, I just offer the bubbles so that we can get together and have a little fun.  Because it's really intense, working in a school.

Today is the first official day of my summer. and I just got back from my third walk.  Finn's happy about me being in "summer" mode.  That's because he lives a purpose-driven life and has ulterior motives, like extra walks and maybe a bonus treat or two.  But I still love him, despite his goal-laden personality.  I try to see beyond his Type A tendencies, recognizing that he also is a good companion when I am lollygagging on the hammock, or exploring a new trail, or bending down to figure out what all the hubbub is with the ants on our sidewalk.

I think--deep down--Finn knows that a good-for-nothing, goal-free life can be a magical thing, like seeing a deer run across the neighbor's lawn in the middle of the morning.  Had we had our noses to the proverbial grindstone, concerned about nothing more than getting in our steps or increasing our heart rates, we might have missed that strange, wonderful moment when the deer leapt the cemetery fence, joining the Catholic dead and then just disappearing.

I'm not above seeing the irony in this blog entry.  On a certain level, this entry may in fact be purpose-driven.  By writing it, I could hope to cast a positive light on my do-nothing life.   Think what you will.  I can't be bothered with mind reading.  I feel a nap coming on. . . .

No More Business as Usual. . .

Allison, Nick, Jake and Mason--Ideal friends.

Stupid pepitas.  (And who calls pumpkin seeds pepitas anyway?)

If it hadn't been for those blasted seeds, I'd have been at Ideal, like usual.  Chatting it up with Rob the butcher.  Thanking him for fixing Allison's car the other day.  Or asking Rick for a half pound of smoked turkey, thin sliced.  Or joshing with Jake about his weekend plans.

If it hadn't been for those stupid pepitas, the grocery list I'd written would have matched the aisles (--yeah, I'm one of those people). Instead, I found myself aimlessly roaming HyVee, a cacophonous excuse for a grocery store, where I knew I'd find a soulless self-serve container of pumpkin seeds, along with about ten million other items.  By the time I'd wheeled my too-big grocery cart into the too-full line at the register, I felt agitated and slightly paranoid.

"No, I don't have a stupid Fuel Saver card and use paper bags, please."

Several years ago, my friend Annie schooled me on the idea of the third place, a term for those sacred spaces beyond home and work where we seek out the comfort of others and strengthen our sense of community.   Ideal Grocery Store was a textbook third place.

My mom shopped there when I was a kid.  In fact, my parents were good pals with the owners, the Moores, who were funny and easy and welcoming, and who even let the Raglin clan play at their Fremont-lakes cabin from time to time.  And, when I got married and was looking for ways to practice being a contented adult, I turned to Ideal.  It was small and friendly and the people seemed to like working there, which is so important to me.

Through the years, Ideal and its staff confirmed over and over again the rightness of my decision to become a customer of theirs.  I will never forget Tall Bob knocking on my door just after I'd given birth to Eric, plant and Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch in hand.  Or the Ellenwood twins talking movies and musicals with me, and--every so often--calling me "Sally" instead of Jane, which, if you know my mom, is just about the highest compliment a girl can get.

I tried my first (and only) Parisian barbecue sauce at Ideal, after a customer had requested it and Tall Bob had to buy a case to fulfill the request.  Got some swanky tonic water there, as well. And incredible sharp cheddar cheese, and a glorious slice of very fancy ham.  All free of charge, simply because I'd shown an interest.

One morning, I left with a handful of Phish CDs, after a previous conversation about music with Brad.  And more than once, Nick--who was still friendly even after being assigned management of the toiletries aisle--sent me home with new outdoor adventures and locales to whet my nature-nerd appetite.

Ah, but this thing I had with Ideal wasn't just about what I got out of it.  Both of my kids spent a half dozen years working at Ideal.  Learning about excellent customer service, even when faced with that one crabby woman who always came to the store five minutes before closing and wanted her lone apple wrapped separately.  There, my kids learned how to manage money, how to bag groceries really well, how to cut produce expertly, how to work through exhaustion and frustration.  And they made friends there, as well.  Friends they've creeked and camped and longboarded with.  Friends who've shown up at graduation parties and musical performances.

Both Mark and I were awakened by the wailing sirens the other night.  We had no idea, of course, that they were going to Ideal.  When I got word early the next morning that it was gone?  Well, I can't quite bring myself to believe it.  Can't drive by and face that particular truth.  All these good people, scattered to the winds.  And I wonder if I'll see them again. . . .

Damned pepitas.

Dead Men--and Women--Talking

Yesterday, my friend Biking Bob dropped off an article written about my dad shortly after his death.  The newspaper was tucked carefully between two pieces of cardboard, its contents identified by Bob's loopy, unmistakable handwriting as something we might like to have.

I read through the article this morning,  and learned a thing or two about my dad that I'd either forgotten or had never known in the first place.  First--and most surprising--was his age when he died.  I thought he was 67, but the article said he was 68.  Had I shortchanged him a year or was it a typo?  I'm not really sure.  And I didn't realize he'd taught journalism in Ohio, as well as to prisoners in Nebraska.  Joe R. Seacrest, his former boss at the Lincoln Journal, was quoted in the article as saying how funny my dad was, and what an advocate he was for the First Amendment.  These things, of course, I already knew.

I didn't know Allen McCutcheon, the 66-year-old former UNL professor who died in a swimming pool the other morning.  But I read the story about him this morning, and was moved by accounts of how much he had lived and loved in this life of his.  A workmate described him as someone who connected well with others.  His daughter spoke of a man who loved traveling, cooking, life.  A master swimmer, people were taken aback that he'd died in water.

I imagine the water as warm and calm and quiet. Womb-like.  And I hope that's what it was like for him. Full circle, in gentle, ever-widening arcs.

Ghosts, it seems, have been a theme for me this morning.  Mary Kay's met me halfway up the block, as I eyed the chalk marks in the middle of the street, appalled that young kids had laid down and drawn outlines of themselves in a space reserved for traffic.  We had a good laugh over that one.

Then Andrea's whispery fingerprints showed up all over my library office this morning.  Two crocodiles stared at me, while the weird-looking bookworm--another gift from her--curled up at the edge of my desk.  And, for some reason, my hand was drawn to the middle drawer, where I ran my fingers across a package of Sharpies bequeathed to me by Andrea in her final days.

I am surrounded by the ephemera of lives lived and loved and not quite lost just yet.  By the comforting swirl of warm waters and the surprise of cackling laughter.  By the sight of a familiar gait in a stranger and old stories finding new light once again.

Life is messy and beautiful, complicated and simple.  Usually, all at once.  It is the opposite of linear, a fistful of stars scattered wildly into the night sky.  And I must look like a fool sometimes, with my eyes wide open and my mouth agape, gulping it in as fast as I can. Quenching this thirst to remember.


 

My "Adverb" Problem

Twenty seven years of abusing adverbs, and still we are married!

Like most weekend mornings, I got a call from Duncan Aviation around 7 a.m. today.  When I answered, I was treated to the dulcet tones of a handsome cabinet maker, uttering sweet nothings into my receiver. Emphasis on "nothings."

"What are you wearing?"  is a common, tiresome and, frankly, utterly inappropriate question, considering that "An old t-shirt, Hanes tummy-control briefs and a pair of men's shorts" is hardly a titillating answer.   Fortunately, because Mark doesn't know how to use the speaker phone, I never hear anyone else giggling in the background.

Sometimes, it's the little victories. . . .

This morning's inane conversation eventually turned substantive, focusing on an upcoming event that will require Mark to leave work an hour or two early.  As per my instructions delivered during dinner last night, he said he'd take off a few hours that day.  And that's when my little adverb problem emerged.  Yet again.  (Is "yet" an adverb?  I mean, it kind of tells you when . . . It's all so confusing, isn't it?!)

I had told him the event was next Friday, and somehow, he interpreted that as meaning the Friday that is happening in five days.   As though that could ever be next Friday!

Pshaw!  

Mark tells me that I do this on a regular basis, using next when I mean the week after next. Or next when I mean this.  In a rare conciliatory mood, I mumbled my agreement that I may, in fact, have an adverb problem.   How many social events, after all, have we missed because I've chosen the wrong adverb?  Okay, maybe three, tops, but, still, it is a problem.  . . . and a shameful one, to boot.  Because I pride myself in my command of precise, crisp language.

The fact that a freaking adverb--the bastard stepchild of the grammar family--has proven to be my conversational downfall is more than I can stand.  Like admitting that you don't know the difference between jam and jelly, or rap and hip hop.

 I'm ashamed to admit that, in my weak moments, I often lash out at the Associated Press, whose style rules dictate that a Friday arriving within six days of the current day shall be referred to as "this Friday."  At least that's what I think it says.

Perhaps what hurts most in these post-intervention moments is the realization that I'm going to have to rely on numbers to address the problem.  Numbers!  "May 6th" simply doesn't have the quaint ring of "next Friday."

But I'm not above changing.  Especially if it means I'm better able to communicate with the honey-voiced man on the other end of the phone, the guy who's really good looking.

"Lolly, Lolly, Lolly," Grammar Rock's lamest video EVER!--thanks for nothing!

The Good Kind of Peeps

Some mornings, after eating a salt-bomb dinner the night before, I wake a bit swollen and thirsty.  Other mornings, like this one, I wake swollen with something other than sodium--namely, love, gratitude, joy, disbelief.

After an evening that started with friends at Tico's and ended in a church balcony with those same friends, where we were entertained and moved by the words and images of Joel Sartore, it's no wonder I woke feeling happily full.

But I would be remiss to give all the credit to chile rellanos and old friends (yes, Susan, some of you are older than me!).

Like the dandelions that have suddenly fallen deeply and prolifically in love with my yard, my week has been sprinkled with vivid reminders that joy sprouts in surprising places and times.

Bottom line?  I am surrounded by so many good folks--family and friends alike--that it's surprising I haven't developed some form of gratitude-induced asthma.  And I'm pretty sure that this happy state of mind isn't mine exclusively.  I just needed to be reminded to look up and out a bit, that's all.

My wakeup calls--some written in actual ink on real paper!--came as love notes sent from dear childhood neighbors Jim and Jeanne, from library pal Paula, from cousins Paige and Jill. Collectively, their notes acted like a bracing slap of Hai Karate!, bringing the lighter version of my self to the surface again. From there, I began noticing and recalling all kinds of happy people and things that surround and fill me.  Let me generate an annotated, albeit incomplete, biography of folks who fill me, these days especially:

•Eric and Allison Holt--by far my best contributions to this world--two people who aren't so full of themselves that they can't be silly at times and who regularly (and quietly) bust their buns to get things done;

•The old Young Life gang who still has "silly skit" mode coursing through their veins, thank God;

•Scrabble friends Kristie and Jill, who keep showing up, in every sense of the word (even though that is more than one word);

•The Andrea bunch, who laugh and love their time together and keep inviting me to join them, despite my spotty attendance;

•Brenda and Helen--the better half of the East library--who laugh and listen and love their way through the days;

•My lunch pals, who endure my stupid stories and make me laugh;

•Spartan Nation.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a better bunch of people;

•My neighbors, who love this place and these people as much as I do;

•My siblings, who are rock stars in my mind--digging down and getting it done, with creativity, unity and love;

•My students, old and new, who are funny and talented and who, most days, give me great hope for the future;

•My "hiking" pals, Molly and Shannon and their canine companions, who keep inviting me on outdoor adventures, even after they watched me set up a tent last summer;

•My mom, who is adorable and fragile and funny and surprising;

•My larger library family, who have proved to be the kind of mid-life friends and colleagues I am lucky to have found;

•Finn and Hobbes and Rasta and Zack and--yes--even Ginger, the persnickety poodle, who have been steady companions through thick and thin, loving me in times of joy and gaseous outbursts;

 •My Master Naturalist pals, who share my deep love of the outdoors and know a heck of a lot more about it than I do, but don't wag that fact over me;

•My childhood friends, who--amazingly--are still in my life, despite the zip codes that separate us.

•My church friends, who make God and life more awesome than I ever could have imagined;

•New friends--what a thing to make a new friend at 54!--many of whom I've "met" on Facebook;

•Mark Dale Holt, who is the supreme partner in my life, immensely supportive of anything I want or need to do, including buying too many stupid socks.

Like I said, some mornings I wake up kind of swollen. . . .

Bread for Life

It all started with a wayward package of Thomas English Muffins.  As it toppled on me this morning, no longer safely perched atop the fridge, I turned to Mark with acrid accusations on my tongue.

"My God, man!  Are you trying to kill me?  What would the Muffin Man have to say about this?!"

"I was the Muffin Man," he sputtered, vitriol and bravado dripping from his lips.  Or maybe it was butter and jelly, but anyway. . . .

What could I do but stop in my tracks?  Mark?  The Muffin Man?  And so, his story--as old as the hills, or at least as old as the half-opened peach yogurt tucked behind the Velveeta (quit judging)--was brought to light.

A crackly-voiced 16 year old hungry for gas money, Mark Holt had turned to local restaurateur Mr. Steak for income, if not actual respect.  Now, I know there's probably no actual person called Mr. Steak, but having never eaten in the place before, I can be forgiven for personifying the joint. Apparently, one of the ways this Mr. Steak distinguished himself--aside from reusing hardly-touched pats of butter and reheating scallops that showed up on former patrons' plates--was by employing a Muffin Man.

No, seriously. . . .

And so, a strapping, blond-haired, teenaged version of  Mark Holt, not yet a grown man himself, walked the soiled carpeted floors of Mr. Steak, tray in hand, offering patrons his delicious wares.

"Good evening.  Would you care for a fresh peach muffin?"  Over and over and over again.  Delighting elders and youngsters alike with his endless platters of flaky goodness and his witty repartee.

Thirty years I've known him, only to find out I didn't know him at all.

Why, yes.  Turns out I do know the Muffin Man.