Having a Not-So-Fresh Thyme

Maybe it's because Lent ended a week ago--not that I did anything sacrificial for those forty days, unless you count limiting chocolate to two meals a day--but I felt a little on edge at Fresh Thyme this morning.

First, there was the super hip couple in their faux fur (his) and funky Vans jacket (hers), who seemed to be camping out in front of the sprouted breads.  I practically had to stomp on their Birkenstocks to get them to move.  Then, this pudgy, feral child kept bumping into me as he stared, gape jawed, through the window of the meat counter, oohing and aahing at salmon filets in ways that did not seem natural for a 7-year-old boy.

At one point, I stood by the bok choy, transfixed, as that little organic fart fiddled with the spout of a large urn.  When he finally got it open,  golden honey poured out, pooling at the soles of his light-up natural-colored canvas tennis shoes.  And then--suddenly!--there were two of him, some non-GMO experiment gone awry, and his twin started grabbing maniacally at a now-opened package of honey straws. 

By the time I made it to the yogurts, my progress was stymied by a bearded, dazed man who might have been having a medical event or maybe he was recently transported by the tiny sample of fresh-squeezed acai juice, empty cup in hand.

Moments later, I abandoned my shopping list and headed to the checkout counter, where I watched an older woman in a "She Persisted" t-shirt carefully wrap each piece of her organic produce in a separate plastic bag. 

I might need to start meditating or something. . .

I could not drive to HyVee fast enough (yes, I drove there--so what?!), where I was reunited with my people, most of them a bit frumpy and clad in Husker wear.  Newly relaxed, I felt myself drawn to processed foods, for some reason. And donuts.  And liquor, but I resisted, since there was an East student working the checkout line I was in.  Plus, it wasn't quite 10 a.m., and I didn't want to be that person.

I want to eat well.  I really do.  I want to get giddy about collagen and cauliflower, grass-fed buffalo and beets, but, sometimes, I'm just not up for the circus that comes with all those things.

My Body Politic

Climbing the stairs the other night, I had the distinct feeling that I'd somehow gotten a sliver in my cheek. Yeah, that cheek.  In fact, I can still feel the sting, three days later, as I'm typing this, although I've yet to find the culprit.

How, praytell, does a person get a sliver on her butt cheek while walking up the steps?  It's not as though I was crawling up them, blindly lurching towards the second level.  Not yet, at least.

And it's not like my jeans are made out of bamboo, although I understand they are making all kinds of things out of bamboo, whoever they are.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure my mom jeans are made out of rubber bands or some other kind of weird, denim-colored stretchy stuff.  I don't really like to think about it.

So, when I got to the bedroom, left bun a-stinging, I backed up to the closet mirror and took a gander.  I had no idea how tricky it is to get a decent glance at one's backside.   I'm just grateful Mark didn't walk into the room while I was hunched over, peering through my legs at my sobering reflection.

It's possible I cried myself to sleep that night--a snuffling, tiny cry, thank God.

Three months into my 56th year, I seem to be collecting these kinds of humiliating moments, each one hurling me closer to an eventual existential crisis, hilariously played out on an episode of "America's Funniest Home Videos."   And these moments all have one thing in common--my body.

More than once this week, midway through a coughing attack, I peed myself just a bit.

And just this morning, I caught a glimpse of my elbow, with deep, evenly spaced lines stretched across it, like some kind of latitudinal markings on a sea-farer's map, only more depressing.  I was stunned by the sight and wondered how many years it'd been since I'd last looked at my elbows and how long they'd had these horizontal crinkles on them.  And then I wondered how many of those years I'd spent in short sleeves, horrifying those around me who could not avert their eyes in time.

Most mornings now, I spend the last five minutes before heading to work in the bathroom with a flashlight, inspecting my chin hairs, tweezers frantically pruning my own secret garden.  And, with a cynical snort,  I find myself recalling how none of my teenaged brothers could ever grown much of a decent beard, although Steve and Jack did have pretty good mustaches once, and isn't it ironic that their baby sister may end up winning that particular race?

And I almost forgot to mention Mondays--nose-hair trimming day!

Truth be told, the real reason I'm going to retire in a year is because I love the East High library too much to watch it all go to crap, simply because my body has become some sort of State Fair sideshow act and people can't bring themselves to keep watching it.

It's the right thing to do.

Plus, at this rate of decline, I'm not sure I would be able to get to school on time.

Going Through a Prepositional Phase . . .

It's not like I think about the parts of speech all the time, even though I seem to find myself returning to certain nouns and verbs an awful lot.  But I am a nerd of the word, so it makes sense that, on occasion, I let loose my nerdy little brain and ponder the parts a bit.

What's odd is the part of speech I've been considering of late.  Nothing impressive like a proper noun, or scandalous like an irregular verb.  No, my mind has been on prepositions, without which I couldn't have written this sentence.

The tiniest slice of grammatical life, never one to draw attention to itself, the unpresuming preposition, nonetheless, kills in the soft-skills arena.  That's because a preposition is all about relationships.  Its sole job is to inform us of how things interact.  Or don't.  As my friend Julie Schonewise once told me when I was trying to figure out how the heck to teach them to my Freshman English class, it's prepositions that determine what we might do with that garbage can in the middle of the room.

Considering their relational importance, then, I'd argue that our choice of prepositions deserves as much forethought as the adjectives and adverbs we use, even if they are less fun to say.  And, to the observant bystander, we need to realize that the prepositions we choose can say quite a bit about who and what we are in this world.

Are you just passing through or do you plan on staying over for a bit?

If you see a stranger struggling, are you apt to walk by or walk to him?

Do you judge a book by its cover or by what you find between the covers?

Just adding a preposition to a sentence can change everything, as well.  Consider Finn and our daily outings.  When I walk Finn, I'm fulfilling a duty.  When I walk with Finn, though, I'm much more open to my surroundings.  That tiny preposition pre positions me to have a richer experience, to be more present.

Pre-positioning.  Maybe that's the way we should think about prepositions.  Where is it we want to be in the world--what part do we want to play with the people and things we encounter each day?  If we seek to know more of the world, then we should choose prepositions that allow us to interact with it more.  And if something seems particularly poisonous to us, we can use our prepositions to put some space between the two of us.

Small but mighty, it's the prepositions in our lives that often determine how rich those lives will be.

I Am Stuck on Bandaids, . . .

My school-desk drawer.

Back in my journalism days, you could easily determine my state of mind by how many bandaids were on my fingers.  During weeks when both Yearbook and Newspaper had deadlines, invariably, both thumbs were swaddled in beige Johnson & Johnson blankets.  I'm not a thumb sucker so much as I am a thumb fiddler, and deadlines equal stress equal fiddling.

But it's been 2 1/2 years since my last journalism deadline.  Surely, I've broken up with Bandaids by now.

. . . . .yeah, no.  

The past month, especially, has been hard on my thumbs, but I'm too ashamed to cover both at the same time anymore. Instead, I'm more likely to tuck one of the wounded into a pant pocket or behind a book and hope that no one notices.

Boy, would I love to be able to not notice some things right now.

But how does a public-school employee block out yet another school shooting followed by inane suggestions that, in addition to packing my lunch each day, I should also start packing a gun?  How do I ignore legislative bills that underfund public schools while pampering tiny, private ones, and legislators who propose to politicize school boards? And what is there to say about a dunderheaded governor who invites the NRA to convene in our state, just days after 17 people died from a gun in the hands of a broken, white boy?

I feel like Peter, Paul, AND Mary, but:  Where have all the sane people gone?  

Leave it to science and nature to soothe my savage soul. . . .

A faint radio signal reached the earth recently.  Turns out, a cosmic FM station was playing an oldie that all the scientists had been hungry to hear.  And by "oldie" I mean 13.6 billion years old. 

I don't even begin to claim to understand the idea that some things can be heard as a way of being seen, but, still, I am blown away that scientists have just heard the first whisperings of the very first stars.

Equally mind boggling is the realization that, after the Big Bang, it took millions and millions of years for those first stars to form.  There are times when I am certain that a million years have passed since Trump became president, but this latest astronomical news reminds me I am wrong.  And that I have no patience whatsoever.

If millions of years really did pass between the Big Bang and the formation of the first stars, the educator in me asks what there is to learn in this lesson.

I think the most important lesson is that, cosmologically, at least, this past year has been but a speck, if even that.  So I should be willing to hunker down, do the hard work of living, and trust that my work will pay off.  Eventually.

And still I wonder.  In the midst of all this large time, is it strange to say that I am comforted by my insignificance, relieved that my time is but a tiny wisp in the grand scheme of things?

Over and over and over again, I find my balance by turning to the larger world.  This time, though,  my healing comes from a salve that is much older than this very earth that I walk upon.  Its source lives in a whisper that waited millions of years to find its voice.

I say enough with the Bandaids.  Instead, I will hold my mucked-up hands skyward, trusting that, in time, the healing will come.

The Messy Middle

From managing the side effects of being 56 (chin hairs and waist line and stiffness--oh, my!) to trying to find the right tone for voicing my concerns, you could say that I’m living life in the messy middle right now.  I’m not complaining.  It’s the place I generally prefer to be, even though--as the name suggests--it can be a bit of a wreck.

When it comes to finding the right balance for my voice, that messy middle can also be a lonely place.  Especially these days, when the bellicose bookends tend to get all the attention.  

With so much discourse now framed against a “with us or against us” backdrop (as though we can only be one or the other), we are overdue for a societal shift back to that messy middle, despite its current unpopularity.  It is there, I believe, where we will find the best (the most human, most honest) versions of ourselves and each other.  

But it ain’t no picnic.

In her new book “Braving the Wilderness,” Brene’ Brown explores the importance of that messy middle (what she calls ‘the wilderness’), as well as our need to be connected to each other.  She acknowledges, though, that there can be great discomfort when we meet each other in that wilderness, especially when we vehemently disagree with each other.

My favorite chapter is “Speak Truth to Bullshit.  Be Civil.”  The first is a challenge that requires some courage.  But the second?  Speaking civilly to the bullshitter?  Well, now you’re just talking crazy.

Herein is the scary darkness of the wilderness.  But herein also is the path that will get us through it.

In the past year, I’ve felt anger more often than I’d felt it in all 55 years before it. So much indignity, so many offenses, such cavalier dismissal of truth . . . at times, I’ve been disheartened and exhausted. What’s gotten me through is my willingness to spend some time in the messy middle, looking for threads--however tenuous--that connect me to them.  And you know what?  I can always find a thread.  

Always.

And what do I do with these threads when I find them?  I weave them into a letter to a congressman, into a phone call to the governor's office,  I walk them up with me as I stand before a legislative committee to discuss something that concerns me.  Without these threads, without that common ground and some civility, I'm certain my words would fall on deaf ears.  And I am looking for ears and eyes wide open.

If we’re going to meet in the middle, then we're both going to have to move a bit.  No doubt, it’ll be messy at times, but I’m counting on those threads to make it a little less scary.  

Yes, Indeed, I'm Walkin'

It was during the summer of 1984 when I first realized that I could just . . . walk somewhere, if I wanted to get there.  I was living in a bit of a hovel on S. 13th Street, and one morning, I woke with a hankering to visit my mom, who lived across town, maybe 5 or 6 miles away.  Because I had the time, and the legs, and the curiosity about what it would be like, I walked to her house that day.

It was wonderful.

A succession of dogs--coupled with a few decades of summers off--have made sure that I would keep up that tradition.

Lucky, lucky me.

Yesterday, I relished two terrific--and very different--walks.  The first, at Holmes Lake, was a quiet and welcomed return to snowless paths and warmer temperatures, two conditions that Finn's Portuguese paws required.

We headed up the dam, Finn sniffing the grasses for skittering voles, and me scanning the leeward side, hoping to see a fox or a coyote.  Halfway across the dam, my monkey mind now silent, I started to find my groove. That's when I noticed a lone ice fisherman inching across the lake, pulling a sled behind him.  And I began to think about the ice and walking on the water and things both biblical and scientific.

My thoughts were interrupted by the mournful call of a solitary goose, the sight of seed-speckled scat, the smell of cold, clean air.  They were exactly what the doctor had ordered, especially following a student-and-stimulus-heavy Friday at school.  I was hungry for something that did not involve humans and I found it, in spades.

By 2:30, though--revived and relaxed--I was ready for my peeps.  And I found them, in droves, just north of the Student Union.  Not a goose or a vole in sight, my afternoon walk was filled with passionate people who spanned a beautiful spectrum of age and culture and identity.  We walked and laughed and chanted together, eventually making our way to the steps of our stunningly beautiful capitol building, where, we hoped, equality really is before the law.

---------

I have lots of friends who run and every one of them tells me how awesome it is, pumping legs and blood and air in equal measure.    I hate to think of them as liars, and I suppose it is possible (though not probable) that something pleasurable comes from all that work.  But, every time I put feet to ground and saunter along a path, I am certain that walking is the ultimate way to see and experience this wonderful world, my heart rate low and easy, my senses happily working overtime.

Twelve Reasons Why

I admit it. I was more than a bit befuddled, come Dec. 31.  I mean, it's not like 2017 was the year I got cancer or the year my mom died.  So how on earth could the end of 2017 feel worse to me than the end of the previous year?  Why did the end of it feel so . . . exhausting? 

. . . yeah, you don't need to be a genius to figure it out.

So let's go a different route instead.  Below are 12 photos that represent 12 awesome moments for me in 2017.  Because, I need to focus on the wins.  They are the things that'll feed me for years to come.

JANUARY: THE WOMEN'S MARCH

Millions of women from hundreds of countries speaking in dozens of tongues stood up and said "Enough"  Thank God my friend Mary Anne nudged me to join her that afternoon.  It was, it turned out, a crossroads moment for me.  I would go on to attend 4 or 5 other marches this year, each time, my voice growing stronger.



FEBRUARY: A FROZEN LANDSCAPE

Let's hear it for Cuddleduds and goose feathers!  One frigid Saturday in February--thanks to Doug Wells and the Nebraska Master Naturalists--I was at Platte River State Park, getting schooled in its cultural, economic and natural history.  We meandered to the far corners of that land and, while the cold was intense, the experience was amazingly warming.

MARCH: PILEATED WOODPECKER
My March moment was a hard one to choose, thanks to a great visit with family in Indiana.  The journalist in me is disappointed I didn't count my sighting of a Gutenberg Bible as the highlight--so many people liberated by that danged device of his!  But the bird nerd in me had waited 55 years to see my first Pileated Woodpecker, so perhaps I could be granted some kind of forgiveness for losing my cool on a dirt road just outside of Bloomington, while a  nearby tree was getting the bejeezus pounded out of it!

APRIL: NEIGHBORHOOD SHENANIGANS
How lucky am I to live on this short street in the middle of Lincoln?  Filled with kind and funny people who keep me on my toes, this is a good place to live.  And the fact that Randy owns a garbage-collection business and keeps his eyes out for jewels to plant in everyone's yards?  Yeah, pinch me!

MAY:  STAR POWER
Granted, I literally housed Allison Holt for nine months in '95, but I'd like to think that I'm an unbiased observer of someone who clearly possesses grit and creativity, in equal measure.  So, when she won Best Director and a butt load of other awards for her film "Up River" (click the link!), I was delighted that she'd gotten a nod from other, less-chromosomally connected individuals than I.

JUNE:  HAWAII SIX-O!
Perennial cheapskates, Mark and I came out of 2016 with a willingness to live large, if only once!  So we invited our kids, along with Kate and Zach, to join us for 7 magical days in Kauai, where we said 'no' to almost nothing.  It was an unbelievable experience.

JULY:  BUGMASTER NATION
Two full days on East Campus, learning about bugs both beloved (think bees) and despised (think ticks and bedbugs) was just what I needed this July!  And my time with the bees was especially impactful, given that I went home and built the first thing I'd made since I put together a CD rack in 1992.  Bee Hotel chez Holt is open for business!

AUGUST: SWOONING AT THE SKY!
This was a top-ten day for me, despite the fact that, in my absence, I was on tenuous grounds with my employer!  My childhood friend Julie came from Boston to join the gang in Cortland, just to stare at the place in the sky where the sun was supposed to be.  That millions of people all across the continent stared up into the sky, gape-jawed, renewed my faith in our species.

SEPTEMBER:  PAINTED LADIES!
Nature is a master teacher.  I know this because, before this fall, I couldn't have cared less about Painted Lady butterflies.  Bo-ring!  But, when they showed up by the hundreds in our humble garden?  And when Denver radar actually picked them up on its satellites?  Well, yeah.  I'm not stupid!  I know a beautiful thing when I see it!  How many days in September did I rush home from school and head directly to our garden, to count our lovely visitors?  Fingers crossed they remember us, come Fall 2018.

OCTOBER:  LITTLE FREE LIBRARY FUN
One night in October, 30 East High Spartans spent the evening playing with and handing out candy to hundreds of Everett Elementary students and their parents.  I think that, when I retire in a year and a half, I will count the East High Little Free Library project as a highlight of my 30+ years in education.  So many people, young and old, coming together because reading rocks. . . What's not to love about that?

NOVEMBER:  FOXY FUN!
One day before my favorite holiday (Thanksgiving--duh!), two wonderful things happened.  I saw a fox in our backyard and I found out that an Everett neighbor was willing to have a Little Free Library in their front yard.  By midmorning, I was simply beside myself, in love with this wonderful world of ours.

DECEMBER:  HUSKER VOLLEYBALL!
Between being a mom and a public educator, it's no wonder that I fell in love with the Husker Volleyball team this year.  A rag-tag collection of women who, through love and grit and crazy plays at the net, took home the gold.  As though they hadn't already won the gold . . . .