Having a Heart to Heart

To the casual observer, it must look like I've got it out for my heart.  In addition to asking it to beat 30 million times a year, I've all but guaranteed that it'll be decimated, come May 24.

That's the risk you take when you love something.  Or, in this instance, two somethings (a job and a place) and all the someones therein.

In this photo, I'm with my pal, Jeffrey, who has been a part of my shenanigans for nearly 30 years.  If it looks like I'm in love, well, I suppose I am.  Lunch with Jeff and the gang is not for the faint of heart.  But, my God, do we laugh!   And, boy oh boy, am I excited about our April Fools Day plans . . . .

Jeff is but one of the people who fill my days with love and contentment.  For me, East High is a repository of quality folks and it's tempting to want to just plop down and refuse to go.

It was my idea to leave my job while I'm loving it, and I still stand by that decision, even though it is such a comfortable place for me to be.

Check that.

Maybe because it's such a comfortable place to be.

I'm 57.  Hardly old by today's first-world white-person standards.  But my oldest brother died at 46.  My dad was gone at 67.  And I've had a go with cancer, to boot.

For all these reasons, then--from love to lifelines--I'm choosing to leave my comfort behind me and walk into the mystery a bit. And, while I'm not a big mystery reader, I do get jazzed by an intriguing bend in the road.  So I figure I ought to bend while I can.  God knows it'll be difficult one day.

The weekend before school started this year, I was in the Sandhills, alongside the Niobrara.  There, I found peace and mystery, and I shared it with a handful of folks who loved the outdoors as much as I do.  It was the perfect place for me to be, before heading into my final school year.

I get the feeling that I'll be back there, maybe sooner than I'd imagined.  It would be a fine place to spend a little time while my heart heals from all that love and lacking. 

The Sacred Space Between Things

The morning I was lucky enough to be in this photo was the same morning that my sister, who was in a different boat,  claimed to have smelled the breath of a whale.  Proximity is a funny thing, especially if a 300,000-pound creature is the object of your attention.

Earlier this week, Nature Conservancy land manager Chris Helzer--whose mom, Sue, taught me to listen to every bird--was in Lincoln to talk about a year-long experiment he'd conducted with a single square meter of prairie.  More accustomed to the sweeping view of someone who works in the grasslands, Helzer committed to watching closely the life within that square meter of wild space.  The 110 plants and creatures he encountered in that sliver of land profoundly affected him.

In the past few weeks, I've been pondering the space between things, specifically in terms of journalism.

The daughter of a newspaperman, I grew up in a three-paper family--nibbling on the Lincoln Star and the Omaha World-Herald for breakfast and snacking on the Lincoln Journal just before dinner.  Even then, there was talk of what was missed in an a.m. or p.m. publication.  Which one had the leg up on the other?  And yet, each, with that built-in pause required from a printing press, had the benefit of the space between things.  In turn, journalists could reflect on the news before they packaged it into 600-word stories.

Our current 24/7 news cycle robs us of the space between things, that important place where discernment comes alive.  Where wireless and 4G networks take the place of clunky machinery, journalists lose touch with the gatekeeper days of old, and end up spending their days regurgitating rather than reflecting. 

. . . which is why, if we aren't careful, following the news can feel like trying to read a book while going down a waterslide.  I suspect the journalists writing that news often feel the same way.

And yet, like that morning when the whale broke the waters with its tail, I see signs of hope on the horizon.  A recent lunch with two former students was punctuated with talk of their favorite news sources--the New York Times and The New Yorker--and how disappointing it is when they come to the end of a riveting 3,000-word essay.  Hardly the stuff of empty-minded, easily-distracted Generation Whatever They Are.

Then, there's CNN, which no longer offers live reporting of White House briefings.  That act seems defiant now, but it was once the norm, building in a pause between what was said and what is reported, so that accuracy and facts frame the reported story.

In a time when it seems that all we are breathing in is the whale's breath--our perspectives warped and worn--we should seek out and encourage those sacred spaces, where discernment lives and our eyesight again grows strong.

Open Wide and say "Aaaaahhh"

I love that snow precipitates not loudly but in quiet whispers.  If it weren't for the occasional overnight wind batting flakes against the window, there'd be nothing to tell my sleeping self that, just outside, the world is being transformed. Beautifully so.

Already, a Sunday morning is my favorite part of the week, filled with not much at all, except Finn and a fat newspaper, crosswords and a nice walk, with a little NPR as background music.  Add the surprise of snow and I wonder if a heart can burst from contentment.

By 6:30, Finn's sideward glances have had their desired effect and I begin lacing up my boots, even though I know his near-naked paws too soon will call "uncle" against the backdrop of unshoveled sidewalks.  Sure enough, five houses from ours, he looks up at me, ashamed that he cannot walk any further.  I bend down, swoop him into my arms and cradle his icy front paws as I turn back towards home.

My paws, however, are still toasty.  And so, I drop Finn at home and head back outside, drawn by the quiet tabula rasa of untouched paths.  I walk for quite awhile, into the neighborhood and through the park,  warmed by the peace of it all.

This, this is what I see in my future--my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds, unfettered by deadlines or meetings.  A hundred Sunday mornings laid out in front of me,  my boots wet and scuffed and my heart filled to bursting.

Second and six

This photo, which I took on the last official morning of my last official summer, speaks to me today.  I love the softness of the fog, the sun-and-cloud sky, the unpaved road fading into the trees.  It was a happy morning for me, tucked between rolling Sandhills and the wild Niobrara. The deep peace of that weekend put me in a good place as I headed into the meeting-heavy start of this, my last school year.

Today, three months later, this photo acts as a telescope for me, a peek into the beyond that might be.    Its promise settles me, especially when I find myself wondering about my decision to retire. 

I am convinced that it's good to leave while my love is intact, but it is that very love that makes the leaving more difficult.  Especially when I'm nuts about so many Spartans.

. . . so, basically, I'm setting myself up to be heartbroken, come late May.

Most of the time, though, this impending heartache is tinged with something else--the strange pull of "what ifs" and "why nots"--and I am left slightly giddy, wondering how I will write this next chapter.

It is, I believe, a chapter that has been waiting for me.  I started to feel its as-yet-unnamed tug two years ago, when death and illness and Donald Trump came onto the scene.  Thinking back, I've come to believe that it's possible that a month of radiation literally left me filled with light.  How else to explain this transformation that fills me molecularly, intellectually, emotionally?

I am a different person today than I was two years ago.  Physically softer, yet stronger, too.  Less tolerant of BS.  More likely to question authority 

But I also am more willing to love ridiculously, with great joy and abandon, even if it means my heart will ultimately break into a million different pieces. 

These are my prism years, after all, everything beautiful and complicated refracting the light that fills me, and I can't quit staring at the wonder of it all.

Once Upon a One-House-For-All

Once upon a time, there was a big, bricky house filled with all kinds of characters.  Over 2,200 of them, in fact.  Tall ones.  Short ones.  Some loud, others quiet.  They were good to look at from a distance, a lovely mix of blacks and browns, white sand and sunshine.

The variety did not stop there. Rich, poor.  Christian, Jew.  Trans and straight. Even Democrat and Republican could be seen, bumped up together in orderly rows.  Some were whip smart while others took their time figuring things out.  Which was just fine, thankyouverymuch.

On any given day, this motley crew was funny and sad and complicated--often, all at once.  They worked hard and often failed, but, sometimes everything lined up just right, which felt pretty great.  And--my God!--in those bright moments, they were something to see!

For the most part, they got along.

Sure, there were the crude cat calls, the microbursts of violence exploding in a flurry of fists.  And, on just about any day, you'd find one or two of them huddled in a bathroom stall, tears rolling down a cheek.  But always--always--there'd be someone else reaching out, building a bridge, waiting behind as the laggard caught up.  Just to be sure.

In this once-upon-an-every-single-school-day place, people knew that they may not always agree with each other, but they also were certain that they would find a way to work together, when needed.  Sure, it was messy and even a little scary to reach out to the "other," but that seldom stopped them from standing up when it was the right thing to do and extending a hand when one was needed.

And, because this is a fable, I dare say that even the adults found a way to get past their differences.  Woven into the rich fabric of this house's lore are fanciful tales of MAGA fans, Bernie supporters, NRA members and Sierra Club volunteers drinking beer together! Perhaps it was the hops that bound them.  More likely, though, it was their commitment to the young ones that helped them look beyond yard signs and tweets.

Whilst I know that it needs no saying, I shall say it anyway:  This was no place for a Cyclopian politician, who drew lines not in the sand but, rather, with a knobby stick dragged furiously through wet cement.  Although even he would occasionally be invited in, to blow hot air into the auditorium, his fetid breath clinging to the backs of bored teens, whose heads slumped into their laps, where tiny devices blinked and glowed furiously back at them.  Even he might find himself changed staring into a crowd of all those others.

No, this was no place for partisan tomfoolery, though parts and wholes were discussed daily in science and math classes.  Here, within the  rough-hewn walls that rebuffed the relentless, endlessly changing winds,  folks got down to the real business of life--learning how to live it, shoulder to shoulder, arms linked and eyes wide open.

A River Runs Through It

Isn't this photo amazing?  I saw some version of it on Facebook recently and couldn't get it out of my mind.  Captioned as the place where the Atlantic and Pacific meet, I brought the concept to the lunch table, where all things frivolous and fantastic are discussed.  There, its legitimacy was confirmed, and so I believed it.

. . . until this morning, when I did a bit more research on Snopes.

While the photo is legitimate, Snopes identified the accompanying text as misleading.  Turns out, this image is of sediment-heavy glacial-river water being carried by ocean currents near the Gulf of Alaska.  One of the first photographers of this phenomenon, ocean sciences professor Ken Bruland, also debunked the idea that this delineation is impermeable.

"They do eventually mix, but you come across these really strong gradients at these specific moments in time."

When I read his quote, I had to remind myself that he was talking about water, not our country.  And yet, his explanation easily could be applied to the United States at this specific moment in time, don't you think?

Consider my original source of confirmation--the lunch-table crowd, which is made up of a smart bunch of folks.  When they told me it was true, I assumed that it was.

But it wasn't.  Not exactly.   It's a good reminder that I need to leave my tribe sometimes and venture out for additional sources. 


His quote packed another punch for me, as well.  A hopeful one.

"They do eventually mix, . . . "

In a time when politicians and news agencies seem only to focus on the bookends--the weirdos on both sides--it's good to be reminded that, in many ways, we are still mixing it up with each other in that messy middle, where most of us reside.

Bruland also offered hope when explaining the line between things.  "Such borders are never static, as they move around and disappear altogether, depending on the level of the sediment and the whims of the water."

Regardless of what we are told each day, we are less either/or than we are both/and.  Maybe it's time to clear the sediment and resist the whims a bit.

Buckle Up, Boys

Move over, Katniss Everdeen!  There's a pudgy, "middle"-aged white woman from the heartland who's had enough, and she's not gonna to take it anymore.

Granted, I can't shoot a bow without some bruising, and I prefer protests that wrap up by late afternoon,  so that I can get back home in time to make dinner.

But, still.

Still, I've given birth--twice!  And had cancer, to boot.  Plus, there's a limited-edition badass beer with my face on the label.

Oh, and I also have developed a super power in the past few years--invisibility. Which means you don't even see me anymore.  And, while that can kind of suck at times, there are advantages to your limited vision of me.

So, yeah.   Ignore me at your peril.

Actually, ignore us at your peril, you puffy, privileged white boys in Washington.   You have seen nothing like the patience of a pissed off woman.

And, by the way,  there are five million more of us than there are of you.   Not to mention all of the good guys out there who stand with us, because they know a good thing when they see one.

Some folks have wondered why I'm retiring when I still love my job.  In part, it's so that I can join the fight without fear of consequences.  And I'm thinking there will be consequences . . . .

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." --Isaac Newton