Category Archives: enjoying life

Alas, another year has gone by

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The year 2014 has almost tucked itself under the covers, waiting for the sun to rise and shine its light on 2015.   I have never been a big fan of the loud, drunken New Years party.   I have attended my share of dinner parties with friends and enjoyed the company of those I love but I had stealthily left the party as the decibel level and the uncomfortable amount of alcohol consumption increased.  When it comes to the later hours of the last evening of the year, I prefer the solitude of my home, a robust bottle of red wine and a quiet reflection of the year that has passed.

Although some of my evening is spent looking back on the events that shaped my year, most of my time is spent looking ahead without making promises that may be broken.  My New Years Eve is not about making resolutions.

2014 took the best of me when my mom passed away in March but the many months following her death, although emotionally exhausting, were filled with wonderful memories and the yearning to succeed in the things that I was doing that gave her such pride.

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My writing and my desire to become a published author are tiny flames glowing in the distance of the new calendar year.  Each moment I sit at my keyboard and weave ideas into paragraphs, that flame will burn brighter.  With dedication, and help from my muse, hopefully that flame will grow into a raging inferno and my mom and dad will be able to enjoy the warmth of the fire I created with my imagination.

And now that January 1st is lurking just around the corner, I want to wish all of you a very Happy New Year.  May 2015 bring you peace and joy.  May the changing of the calendar year ease the burdens of the past year and bring you prosperity and deep and honest love in all aspects of your life.  To quote Henry David Thoreau ~ “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”.

It’s time to  start writing our new chapter.

 

 

 

The fat lady began singing last night

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The holidays are always an emotional time of year.  This year was no exception for me.  But something else happens every year, always between Christmas and New Years, that leaves me heavy-hearted and very melancholy.  Last night, the regular season of the NFL ceased to exist for 2014 – time of death 11:32 pm.

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I am a self-professed NFL junkie and I have been since I was a kid.  For seventeen glorious weeks, I am content to sit on my couch for 10 hours on Sunday and watch the pigskin travel across the gridiron.   That is my happy place.

About ten years ago, I took charge of an existing football pool and grew it from approximately fifteen participants to the seventy-one we had this year.  With a fairly substantial buy-in, this pool has been a great success over the years and has given me the much-loved moniker “The Commish”.   Running the football pool has not only been a great challenge to perfect the spreadsheets but it has introduced me to many new friends.

There is an overwhelming sadness in me today.  Although the playoffs begin this weekend, I will miss the sixteen game roster every Thursday to Monday.  Knowing the culmination of the entire season will arrive in five short weeks makes me want to stop time and rewind it back to the beginning of September….or change lyrics to songs from old musicals…..

Raindrops on grass fields and whiskers on backers,

Cheering the Chargers or watching the Packers,

Receivers that run like their feet sprouted wings,

these are a few of my favorite things.

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*Sigh – they should make a pill for this!

My world smiles at me

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There is a story told of two dogs. Both, at separate times, walk into the same room. One comes out wagging his tail while the other comes out growling. A women watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so sad. To her surprise, she finds a room filled with mirrors. The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him.

What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are. ~ Author Unknown

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Boys will be boys, and then they make you cry

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I knew this Christmas season would be difficult for me.  I’ve done my best to write my feelings into submission but they are stealthily lying just below the surface, waiting to bubble up when I least expect them.

Last night I celebrated Christmas with my brother and his family.  Nagging work schedules bumped the holiday up by a couple of days but any change in the old routine is a welcome change.  I arrived at the house with my food contributions, my secret Santa gift and the scrapbook I made of pictures of my mom so she could be with us in spirit.  What I wasn’t expecting was this:

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My nephew had taken one of the candles I made for my mom’s memorial service in May, created a beautiful Christmas display and placed it in the middle of the room so she was with us during our celebration.  I now know how the Grinch felt when his heart grew three sizes.  I was so moved and my heart swelled so much that I thought it would burst out of my chest.  It was all I could do not to hug him until he turned blue.

That gift, that display made by a 14-year-old boy to honor the memory of his Nana, is, by far, the best gift of 2014.  I could not bring myself to show too much emotion for fear that the tears would come and never stop.  Instead, we high-fived and continued on with the merriment.  Gifts were opened, food was consumed and a great amount of laughter was shared.  I learned to never again go in a swimming pool with my brother (future blog post) and I learned that the spirit of Christmas was not tarnished by the absence of my mother, but lives on in the way we keep her spirit alive.

The tears finally came shortly after I got home.  They did not come slowly or poetically but exploded out of my body to make room for my swollen heart.  I can only hope that both of my nephews learned a few things about Christmas.  It isn’t about the material things wrapped in bags or boxes.  Christmas is about the people who are wrapped in your heart and doing everything you can to make sure they stay there.

Merry Christmas to all of you and may you enjoy the true spirit of the holidays.

Good grief, it’s almost Christmas

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  “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?  Aaaaahhhhhh.” ~ Charlie Brown

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 This photo may be a crude interpretation of a ping-pong table, but this is my creation for my mom’s memorial Charlie Brown Christmas tree this year.  As part of our new traditions, my brother, his family and I agreed to either make or buy an ornament that reminds us of a funny story of my mom.  Because this is the first Christmas without her, we will keep those funny memories alive by telling the story behind the ornament as we hang it on the tree.  I’m sure Charlie Brown would be proud.

Charlie Brown was determined to find the true meaning of Christmas and, after being dismayed by all the commercialism surrounding the holiday, he discovered that it is not about the presents.  Christmas isn’t a gift that you can unwrap, it’s a feeling that embraces you and warms you.   Christmas is sharing your heart with others and remembering those who cannot be with you.

This year, this is one of the many ways we will remember my mom.  This ornament reminds me of some of the best parts of my mother – her carefree attitude, her sense of humor and her zest for life, along with her quest to take ping-pong to a whole new level.  Although my heart may feel empty now, I know as we share some love and laughter during the holidays, my heart will once again be filled with joy and the spirit of the holiday.

My wish for all of you this holiday season is to find the same joy and happiness that I know I will find being with family and friends.  Christmas is about presence, not presents.  The spirit of the holiday is about spending time with the ones you love and allowing yourself to be cloaked in their hugs and saturated by their laughter.

The best of the holiday to all of you.

Holding on to the light

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It is the eve,

not of the approaching holiday,

but of the shortest day of the year.

Darkness will swallow this landscape tomorrow,

giving us the fewest number of hours

to enjoy this beautiful sky

and create a seemingly everlasting night.

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 But through that darkness,

the light will grow strong once again.

The days will battle the nights

and the warmth will conquer the cold.

The blue of the sky will be deep

and the setting sun will linger,

allowing us to once again hold onto the light.

The perception of time

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“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” ~ John Lennon

Time is a less of a constant than it is an illusion.  Although it seems linear, it can deviate from its path if  you are not keeping track of it at every turn.  Time can occasionally seem like it is a figment of your imagination.

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Yesterday, I experienced time on a whole new level.  My hour-long drive seemed to take a week and the four hours I spent catching up with an old friend was gone in the blink of an eye.  And although twenty-five years have passed since we last saw each other, the ease of the conversation made that twenty-five years feel like only one year.

Time has a unique way of showing us what really matters.  The faster those seconds tick by, the more you want to make that clock stop and hang onto those moments.  Because time really is measured by those moments and not by a clock.  You will never remember the counting of those seconds, but you will remember the company you shared and the laughs you had as those seconds unknowingly ticked by.

I can only hope that the time that passes between now and our next visit doesn’t feel like another twenty-five years.

 

Oprah has a name for this…….

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Not everyone has the opportunity to experience a full-circle moment in their lifetime – that epic twist of fate when something you had spent so much time dwelling on in your past creeps up on you in your present. I had one of those moments today.

I am a product of the 80’s. I was never a slave to the hair and poorly-chosen fashion (most days) but the movies of the 80’s live on in my current reality. I can recite those movies verbatim and I recognize a bit of myself in each one of those iconic movie roles that I watched as an impressionable teenager. And though there were fleeting moments of seeing similarities between the starring roles and my teenage psyche, I always felt a deeper connection with the weirdos, the poets, the dreamers.

It was this truth that bonded me to Andrew McCarthy’s character, Kevin, in St. Elmo’s Fire in 1985. Though his role was meant to be a bit of an outcast, Kevin was the definition of how I saw myself in those days. He was a creative soul, misunderstood on many occasions but he held true to himself. Unlike me at the time, Kevin knew who he was and, although he struggled, in the end he wasn’t afraid to be that person. He wanted to describe what he saw in a myriad number of ways. He wanted to describe life by every little detail and not just watch it go by. He wanted to write. And he was going to see his way to his future on his battered Underwood typewriter.

That line stuck with me. It haunted me, actually, and I have seen that written line in a loop in my head for many years. Like a headlining banner at a movie theatre, the words “battered Underwood typewriter” scrolled incessantly around my brain. The image of that machine, the clacking of the keys, kept me bonded to that dream of writing. And now that image has become a reality.

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In a moment of complete serendipity, I have been gifted an Underwood typewriter. I have been given a battered, plunking, beautiful, historic typewriter that could write chapters of its own given the chance. Its stories are burned into the keys. Its ribbon holds a wealth of ideas and the rest is not history, but my story. It is up to me to cajole the remainder of the tales from this relic. This battered Underwood typewriter could be the one thing that reminds me that I can write and, just maybe, will help me get to the next stage of my writing success.

 

Finding the colors

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When sadness overwhelms us,

Mother Nature is there

to help us find beauty,

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to make us stop and absorb the moment,

to find peace in memories.

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to find the lining of colors

in an emotionally gray day,

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and to make us see the spirits,

free in the sky,

 to feel their presence and find our smile.

Redefining traditions and stocking up on tissues

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With Christmas rapidly approaching, my resolve to not spend the entire holiday season in tears is very strong.  It is going to be tough this holiday season without my mom but we have been doing our best to redefine some of the traditions we have known for so long and create some new ones.  I had carefully delineated a plan of not leaving the house, but that seems to be going off the rails so I’ll have to do my best to keep a brave face.  I’m sure a few tears will leak from the corners of my eyes and stain my cheeks but that is to be expected and will certainly be understood by all who see those tears fall.

Holidays are about tradition – whether adhering to old ones or beginning new ones.  This year will be a bit of both.  My mom’s famous Grasshopper Pie will surreptitiously make its way to the table after our feast of turkey and our best attempt at her stuffing.  But because of work schedules, our Christmas food bonanza and subsequent turkey coma will be on the 23rd so that will be the first of the changes for this year.

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My brother and his family will attend the church service on Christmas Eve (I don’t think I can get through that step this year) and we will meet afterwards to show the newly purchased or creatively engineered ornaments to adorn the Charlie Brown Christmas tree my mom loved so much.  We will tell stories of why the ornament reminds us of her and take turns sharing our memories.  I may even sneak into town and hide in a quiet driveway somewhere to watch Santa Claus go by on the fire truck.  I don’t think I can let that tradition go and I know a few tears will find themselves frozen to my face before the truck has passed.

The most important thing to focus on, especially this year, is that Christmas is about family.  My brother, sister-in-law, my nephews and the family and friends scattered around the globe will always be the presence and the only presents I want during the holidays.  And somewhere during the festivities, I know that my mom and dad’s eyes will be looking at us through those twinkling lights and sharing those moments with us.  That is a tradition that will never end.