Category Archives: emotion

I really did have a senior’s moment

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I was working on an itinerary for an upcoming bus tour this fall and flashed back to a bus tour we had last fall.

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Was I guilty of ageism?  Perhaps.  But when the senior’s euchre tournament bus tour arrived at the lodge on that fateful Sunday, I was genuinely dreading the three days that would follow.  I made an egregious error in judgement.

Admittedly, the tour had not begun well for the 42 participants but the fault was not ours.  A slight hiccup in their agenda had caused them to arrive an hour and a half early and we were thoroughly unprepared for the sudden onset of walkers, luggage and upset elders.  We did our best to scramble and be as accommodating as possible.   I made a witty speech welcoming them on behalf of the owners and staff and my words were met with sullen stares and moderate contempt.  It was a bumpy start.

Once we regained control, our momentum increased and we began to get everyone settled into their rooms. I had entered first and once Betty and Rose reached those three stairs Betty took the lead.  Once she was at the top, Rose began to follow.  Betty reached for the door frame and found nothing but a handful of air.  As I turned to look behind me, Betty, doing her best impression of a tree being felled in the forest, fell straight backwards and took Rose out, using her as a cushion for the fall.  The two ladies I had escorted to their room had just fallen and couldn’t get up.   Thankfully we got them into an upright and relatively stable position and, after many unqualified examinations, we deemed they were medically stable.

The group’s first dinner was an interesting event.  Still unsure of their surroundings, many uttered complaints that hung in the air like angry cartoon balloons.  There were threats of husbands being called to retrieve them the following morning and the night was punctuated by another woman being hit in the head by a heartily kicked-open kitchen door.  In the span of six hours, we had potentially concussed three women.

But then something changed.  Over the course of the following 60 hours, attitude and understanding rapidly evolved on both sides.  We understood the nature of their initial frustration and they understood the nature of our good will and hospitality.  By the end of their three night stay, I was calling them all by their first name and I was truly sad to see them climb the stairs to get back on the bus.  There were many hugs and talks of seeing them again next year.  I will admit that I was close to tears saying goodbye to these lovely souls.

Perhaps it was the sideways glances I got from Rose that reminded me so much of my mom.  Maybe it was that bond of parenthood I have been missing since my mom and dad passed.  Whatever the reason, I will be ready and willing to welcome that next bus tour with open arms and use this enlightening experience as a lesson for the future.

You breathe in while I exhale

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You breathe in while I exhale.

Every molecule of our existence

is suspended in a moment of time.

Energy,  moving in an undulating wave,

 is passing between us. 

Intensity burns.

Your breath invades every part of my being.

The air is charged with electricity

and my breath is caught for a moment.

Your eyes reflect mine,

and you see the piece of the puzzle

that has been missing.

you breathein

Our eyes close,

but we see each other more clearly

than we ever have before.

Your touch only confirms what I believe.

Our love existed before we met,

in a time long ago, destined to happen again.

We knew we would meet once more,

we didn’t know when,

but our souls will meet over and over.

You breathe in while I exhale,

because this breath will always belong to us.

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In youth we learn, with age we comprehend

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I did a lot of things as a child – some are noteworthy and deserve mention and some I’m not so proud of, so I won’t expound on those moments.  I did make amends for those things that were not becoming of a young lady and I’m sure I learned from my mistakes because they were never repeated.

As much as I think I learned from those errs in judgement, I did not truly understand the consequences of those fateful actions until I was much older and reflecting on my youthful days.  The mirror has become a time portal and, as I gaze at my reflection, I see a much younger version of myself.   The translation was naive, a girl who thought she got it, but she was so far from “it” that she could never comprehend that distance.  It’s like the old adage “if I knew then what I know now”.  But if that were the case I probably never would have made the mistakes in the first place to teach me the lessons that I would come to comprehend so much later in my older and much wiser years.

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Time is a fickle mistress.  She has a way of seeping into our conscious realm when we least expect her.  She inadvertently brings up memories from our long-buried past to insinuate a lesson that we may have overlooked.  I can say from personal experience that there are many things I may have “learned” as a child, even as a young adult, but the learning portion was a mere drop in the bucket compared to what I truly gained from the comprehension of the true meaning of that lesson as I got older.

There certainly are things I would tell the younger version of myself if I could go back in time but, for the most part, I would live my life again because it shaped the person I am today, flaws and all.  Those misgivings I had as a child, the uncertainty of who I was, led me to make mistakes.  There was a fine line between being good and being bad and for a while I hung on the precipice, unsure of which force was stronger and which power would pull me in.

Looking back at those moments, now that I am beyond that cataclysmic time in my pubescent life, I can truly understand how those stages of life burrowed their way into my brain.  They were stored until the moment I could truly appreciate the lesson that was entrusted to the vault in my memory and now I really do get it.  What I may have learned in those formidable years I can truly understand now and appreciate the message.

What lesson do you appreciate most, now that you are old enough to understand its true message?

 

Peeling back the layers of the onion

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It is rare to find people who you can talk to about anything.  Words seem to just flow and nothing you say is awkward or judged.  There is no pause in the natural ebb of the conversation and there is no deflection to inane topics like the weather.   The connection exists on so many levels that no topic is off-limits.

Those people are hard to come by and each time you find yourself encapsulated in their presence, the synergy grows.  The things you anticipated would generate a look of surprise become predicted and that person peels back the skin of your onion, exposing another layer and getting closer to the core of your existence.  Sometimes that onion will cause some tears along the way but the true essence of its flavor will far outweigh the arbitrary drops of saline along the way.

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Words can be weapons but words can also be gateways into a meaningful relationship that is based on a true appreciation of what the other person represents in our lives.  Whether it is pre-destined chemistry or the slow development a true affection, the words uttered truly matter.  They are not said to fill a block of time.  They are communicated because of a shared interest in what is being said.  They are expressed in moments of affinity.

When conversation flows, it flows because of an unspoken bond.  It flows because two people feel a level of comfort that is achieved by honesty and a genuine interest in what the other person has to say.  It flows because they care about the words being said.  Minutes turn into moments and those moments linger through time.  Those moments repeat themselves and the conversation flows so freely that becomes etched in our memory and our lives are changed forever.

Making sure the next step is the right step

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I have had a small epiphany today.  I call it small because to most it would be a normal occurrence but to me it was evidence of the changing of a tide within myself.

When it comes to life-changing events I have always faced them head on.  I react without much thought, relying only on intuition.  I don’t allow myself to wallow in the horrible circumstance, instead I am always looking for the next logical step.  I give myself pause to reflect after the dust has settled but, during the crisis, I am continually thinking ahead and moving forward, never giving a second thought to the cause but always striving for the solution.

But when it comes to the finer, more minute details of life I tend to fester and over-think the little things.   I replay the scene in my head over and over and, after a multitude of scenarios have been beaten into submission in my over-active imagination, I am eventually able to put the proverbial pencil to paper and draw the logical conclusion.

Until that moment of clarity, my mind is a churning mess.  I analyse, over-analyse, recreate the scene in a way it never happened.  I create dialogues in my head that never occurred and have myself convinced that this miniscule event has become epic in proportion to actual reality.

Personal growth is a journey taken one step at a time and today I took another step.  It was a small thing in the grand scheme of my life but one that I normally would have allowed to gnaw on my subconscious until my brain hurt.  Instead of allowing the situation to spiral out of control in my alternate reality, I diffused the ticking time bomb before the digital clock even began counting down the seconds. The drama was over before it began and I understood what it meant to take the high road.

High-road

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Perhaps wisdom does really come with age.  Or perhaps I am just tired of spending so much time creating scenarios in my head that never existed in the first place.  Regardless of the reason, I am glad I was able to teeter on the precipice of discomfort and take a step forward that was foreign to me.  That one small step in my day was a giant step on the path of my life.

The truest definition of me

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The Earth enveloped the roots,

held them close in its embrace,

and nourished the growth of new life.

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 We placed our memories,

written in black ink,

and surrounded those roots with our love,

our cherished memories

and our hope for, one day, reuniting with those we have lost.

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 Each new leaf,

green with the promise of perpetuation,

reminds us that life goes on

and that we must find the joy and not the sadness

in the days in which we live.

***

We finally had the chance to place the rocks around my mom’s memorial tree yesterday.  After a lovely, and filling, brunch my family and I gathered around the tree I planted in my mom’s memory and we placed the river rocks etched with words that represented what friends and family remembered about her.  The best part of this moment is that is was not a somber occasion but a time filled with meaningful memories of a wonderful woman.  It was a brief juncture in our day where we could remember the happy times and not be plagued with the sadness and the sense of loss.

I cannot think of a better tribute for Mother’s Day.  My mom would be happy to know that we are able to embrace the multitude of wonderful moments we had in our lives and not focus on the fact that she was not able to be here to help us celebrate.  The power of what she was in lives is more than enough to compensate for the reality that she not physically here.

Her memory and the many lessons she taught will continue to exist within us.   Her love grows with each hug we give our family and our friends and we do her justice by continuing to live each day as if she were still here and covertly guiding our every move.

She would want us to be happy.  She would urge us to sacrifice ourselves for the things we believe in, the things we truly want, and she would tell us to never give up.  I can hear her voice in my head saying “if it’s worth having, it’s worth fighting for”.

I would move the Earth and the Sun to have her here for one more day but I will live each day contented by the fact that she resides in my heart.  Her voice is strong in my ears and her determination flows in my veins.

I am my mother’s daughter and I celebrate the fact that there is no stronger definition of me.

Shrinking bladder, hidden youth

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Gracefully getting older has its down side.  I used to enjoy interruption-free nights of unadulterated sleep but all of that has changed.  I have tried to reset my internal alarm clock but I still find myself waking, usually around 3:30 each morning, and playing the familiar game of find the bathroom in the dark.  If I have to be awake at that insane hour, I’m not going to assault my senses by turning the lights on.

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And it doesn’t matter if I have made the preemptive strike and visited the loo just before I crawl into bed for the night, the gentle reminder that I am no longer in my 20’s drags me from my slumber.  I generally lie in bed hoping the call of  nature will stop but there is no answering machine and that call just keeps ringing incessantly until I answer it.  When I finally return to bed I become a victim of my brain while my bladder falls back into its own deep sleep.

I have yet to find the switch that activates every functioning neuron in my head as soon as I wake up.  Those neurons jump into hyper-drive and begin to organize my thoughts into categories.  The first is usually work.  I go through what I expect to accomplish the next day at my job.  Those thoughts become more creative and morph into ideas for blog posts.  Thankfully I have a voice recorder on my phone so I can trap those ideas before they dissipate into the still air that I should be inhaling gently as I sleep!

I’m not sure when it happened.  I didn’t get the memo that my body was ready to start playing tricks on me.  I wasn’t prepared and had no way to defend myself from the attack.

I am going to construct a heart-felt letter to my bladder in the hope that it will rethink its nightly call and read it out loud tomorrow morning at 3:30 when I am lying in bed, wide awake, with nothing better to do!

 

 

Rekindling your first love

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There are not enough hours in a day to do all of the things I love to do.  I have always had a talent for artistic things and have dabbled in many different genres of craft since my early days.  I have painted, sketched, enjoyed calligraphy, I have carved wooden signs, done needlepoint, sewn clothing, holiday gifts and teddy bears, decorated birthday and wedding cakes.  I have even reinvented some pieces of furniture.

This world of creativity is my happy place.  It allows me to play by my rules and recreate the world I see in my head.  Sometimes that world is edible and sometimes it merely hangs on a wall but that portal of imagination opens and allows me the freedom to choose how I portray my vision and the medium transforms as time goes on.  But the one outlet I seem to consistently rekindle a relationship with is writing.

I may cycle through my repertoire of inventiveness and hastily spend my time with one art form or another but I always come back to the written word.  It has been my staple.  It has been my constant.  And it has been my comfort zone because it was my first real love.

hugged by words

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I know words will always be there for me.  I learned at a very early age that I could freely express myself through my writing.  I could vent frustrations, express buried emotion and free the feelings that yearned to be expelled from my head and my heart through composition or poetry.  Words permeated my brain.  Words soothed me.  Words helped me escape.  Words encouraged me to love more deeply than I ever imagined I could.  And even if those words did not come from my brain, words still connected me to a world beyond the world I live in every day.

There will always be moments I cheat on my true love with other avenues of creativity but I will always come back to the truest art that knows me better than any brush stroke or any jagged seam.   Words reassure me and always have the ability to welcome me back into their world.   Words will always be the embrace in which I find the most comfort.  Words will always be my first love.

 

Screw it, Ray Bradbury….something GOOD this way comes

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For the first time in my life, I feel like I am in the right place at the right time.  Something good is about to happen.  It may not be news-worthy to the world but it will affect me immensely.  I feel it.  I feel it like the Earth feels the tidal pull.  I feel it like the horizon feels the sun rise being birthed from its shores.  I feel it like the night sky feels the first star burning its light into the blackness.  It’s there…..and I can almost reach out and touch it.  I just don’t know what it is.

Many things have happened to me throughout my lifetime.  Some of those things have been wonderful and some have been stored in the vault of memories titled ‘lessons’.  The culmination of all of those events has brought me to where I am now.  Because of those situations, I have gained confidence where I used to wallow in self-doubt.  I have achieved a level of comfort in who I am as a person.  And I have grasped the definition of what I want in my life.  It took me 46 years to get here but the journey was worth it.  I have finally allowed myself to be the person who was hiding in my own shadow.

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Sure, there are moments I fall back into the secluded darkness of that shadow but those moments are fleeting.  Those junctures of time only serve to remind me of who I once was and who I have since become.  I feed on the strength I have gained.  I thrive on being the person I was meant to be and I hold fast to the lessons that each of those bumps has etched into the road that is my life.

There will always be moments that I shall forget the tenacity that has brought me to my now.   There will forever be junctures in my life that I may lose sight of the higher roads that I have taken.  But I can only take comfort in the fact that the skin I am cloaked in now fits me as it should.  I can take solace in the conviction that I have learned from each lesson I was taught.  And I can count on the feeling that I am where I need to be and that something good IS going to happen…..and it’s going to happen to me.