Category Archives: truth

Balls to the wall

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It lay dormant, nestled in the corner of the family dining room at the cottage.  It listened to every one of our crazy conversations and eventually became the topic of many of those conversations instead of just blending into the background.

Its birth was accidental.  It came to be through a simple act of property maintenance.  The family cottage was built in the early 1900’s and had begun to show its age so, without regard for its final appearance, a spray foam was used to seal a few cracks in the old building.  What resulted in the upper corner of that dining room was eventually named and heralded as a true piece of our family history.

Perhaps this innocuous object was made more grotesque by my family’s depraved sense of humor.  It is even reasonable to say that other families may never look at this simple mass and see what we all saw.  But from the first time it was noticed at a family dinner, it was affectionately dubbed the “shiny ball sack’.

Over the years, this harmless protrusion witnessed our highs and our lows.  It feasted on the sounds of our laughter and it absorbed the collection of our tears.  Somehow that inanimate object became a large part of the traditions of our family meals and I was devastated to find out it was going to be amputated from its place in those family traditions.

I haven’t been able to visit the cottage yet this summer so I was unaware that the surgical removal had taken place – until today.  I came home from work to find a lovely gift bag on my front door step and when I saw what was inside, my heart swelled.  There, gently preserved in a shadow box, was the shiny ball sack that has been a part of our family dinners for decades.  My aunt had painstakingly saved this piece of history and presented it in a way that would allow me to keep this little gem of our family history safe and sound.

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My mom and I used to laugh endlessly about this mutation of foam and it will now find its place beside a picture of my mother in my living room.  It is a fitting ending to this chapter knowing that two of the things that brought me so much joy will be together again.

 

 

In sickness and in stealth

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It happens at the end of every summer season.  Between the concentrated efforts we all put in for the 9 weeks of our summer season, the short hours of sleep and the continual decrease in the staff roster, sickness strikes.  It is stealthy at the onset, seeming to only target one person, but the snowball of affliction slowly picks up speed as it plunges down the slope, accumulating the remaining staff members like helpless snowflakes.  Yesterday, I became one of those snowflakes.  

I didn’t feel unwell when I woke up yesterday morning but, when I greeted my dog, my usual alto voice was expressed as a baritone.  It came as a shock to us both.  I tried to get through the rest of our morning routine, essentially in silence, and made my way into work.

The three cups of coffee did nothing to negate my feeling of infirmity and, although I gave it my best effort, I eventually conceded the loss to my state of ill-health and came home.  What should have been a restful sleep, thanks to some nighttime medication, became a series of small naps interrupted by superfluous coughing spasms.

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Being sick in the summer is a truly undesirable ordeal.  I struggled through my work day again today but now find myself wrapped in a blanket on my couch on a balmy summer day.  I’m giving this cough medicine one more chance.  If it doesn’t work – it’s Hot Toddies for me tomorrow!

 

 

 

When skin gets thin

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I cannot change the moods or the behavior of others.  I can only control how I let those moods and behaviors affect me.   Today, however, was a glowing example of how that ideal can radically fail.

If I were superstitious, today would have been my Friday the 13th.  My black cat was the neighbors dog, who, first thing this morning, managed to soil, not one but, two pairs of my shorts on my way to work.  The ladder I walked under was the exit door from my house.  And the broken mirror was the negativity that continued to rain throughout the day like the shards of glass falling from that broken mirror.

I am usually very thick-skinned.   Most of the time I can deflect negativity and remain blissfully unaware of the antagonism that tends to eddy in the normally calm waters of my life.  But the vortex of that disapproval became too much.  I, without my life-preserver, was pulled under and was out of breath.

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A little positive reinforcement can go a long way.  As an adult with a great deal of life experience under my belt, I know life is unfair and the wheels can fall off the bus at any given second.   But to focus solely on the loose lug nut that made the wheel come off is negating the safe driving before that wheel fell off and the work that the bus driver had to do after its liberation to safely get that bus to the shoulder of the road.

Thick skin can actually be quite tenuous and a little praise goes a long way.   If criticism is deserved, than criticism should be administered.  But if praise is deserved, it should be just as easily passed from the lips of the people who need to say it to the ears of the people who need to hear it.

The Devil finds work for idle hands

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The Devil may have toyed slightly with my resolve as I lay in bed yesterday morning, reluctant to put my feet on the cold floor, but I slipped out of his grasp as I began my day and didn’t give myself a moment for a second thought.

I have never been an idle person.  Sure, I went through moments of lethargy and reluctance as a teenager, but who didn’t?  Yesterday was a glaring reminder of that part of myself, that stubborn fragment of my psyche, that doesn’t allow me a full day to just be passive and enjoy watching life go by.

If I were being honest, I would have to admit that I enjoy being busy.  And thankfully I have many hobbies that I can choose from that can occupy a significant part of my day as well as the daily and weekly chores that come with living on my own.

Among the housekeeping and maintenance duties that come with being a home owner, today I finally finished a project that helped me feel like I fully restored the identity I had before I was married.  My new sign at the end of my driveway, painted by me, proudly displays the family name I was born with and am proud to reclaim once again.

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Yesterday the Devil realized his time is better spent elsewhere.  The house is clean, the floors are mopped, the shopping is done, the dump run was completed, two new soups were made, the dog was walked twice, the sign was painted and hung and I even had a few spare moments to watch some golf.  I don’t think I have to worry about my hands ever being idle.

 

A Simple Reminder

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All friendships have an energy, a momentum that carries with it an implied understanding.  The bonds of those friendships can be stretched taut like an elastic band but, when the tension is finally released, that friendship continues to maintain its original integrity and strength.

I am fortunate that I have several of those friendships in my life.  As circumstances have occasionally dictated, some of the parameters of those friendships have been forced to change but the feelings contained within that framework have always remained the same.

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When you find a pearl in a sea of oysters, you grab it and you never let it go. I don’t need to have a lot of friends in my life but I do need to have real friends, friends who know that my silence speaks louder than my voice, friends who laugh with me because they share my humor and friends who know that they will never have to search for my heart because they will always find it on my sleeve.

Friendships don’t happen by accident.  We are drawn to people who are meant to be in our lives because they teach us things about ourselves. I will never underestimate the power of a true friendship.  And, though I try to tell my friends as often as possible that I love them, a simple reminder never hurts.

Yes, I can see it. No, I’m not neurotic.

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I’m a cloud watcher.  I can only sunbathe for so long before I feel like I will spontaneously combust (thank you blood pressure medication) so I move my overheated body under the canopy of my deck umbrella and watch the clouds go by.  They never cease to amaze me.  Whether it is the pattern in their wisps or the shapes I see in their billowy contours, I can cloud gaze for hours.

I have not been able to watch the clouds lately,  however, because the sky has been a solid, monochromatic grey.  Perhaps because I am so accustomed to looking beyond what I really see, recently I have been seeing faces in the strangest locations.

This morning I rolled over, still shaking off the remnants of my slumber, and faced my closet.  A shirt that was at the top of the laundry basket was piled in such a way that the aged face of a man stared back at me from the shirt’s folded elbow.  For some reason, I couldn’t avert his keen focus on me and I stared back with the same intensity.

He seemed familiar to me.  And this is not the first time I have discovered a genial visage in a random place.  It happens more frequently than I should probably admit.

I have since discovered that this phenomenon has a name – Pareidolia.  There are many people, like me, who have the ability to see faces or animals in a benign object.  An extreme example is the woman who sold a 10-year old grilled cheese on eBay for $28,000.00 because it supposedly had the image of the Virgin Mary on it.  Some people see a cinnamon bun below, others see Mother Teresa.

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Whatever the reasoning behind this strangely named anomaly, the writer in me enjoys the visits from these odd characters.  I’m sure one day they will insert themselves into a story line somewhere along my writing journey and I will be grateful for their intrusion into my reality.

Time for audience participation – cinnamon bun or Mother Teresa?

A healthy debate to interpretate

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Spelling mistake aside (because it is an inside joke), the subject line of this post refers, in both parts, to a lively conversation I was a part of at the dinner table last night.  The age-old debate of whether men and women can really be friends circled around the table and the argument became quite animated.  There was a noticeable divide between those who thought men and women could be friends and those who thought the dynamic of sexual, or chemical, energy disrupted any potential of a platonic relationship.

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Since I have many cohorts of the male persuasion (sans benefits), I was vehemently arguing the fact that men and women can, indeed, be friends.  And now, as I sit in my darkened living room writing this post, it is difficult to have a Star Trek movie in the background talking about “Nebular penetration” as I argue for the chastity of an idealistic friendship. However, it is a fitting continuation of my earlier conversation.

Perhaps I am slightly obtuse when it comes to reading signals, but I am relatively confident that I am able to decipher whether or not a man has intentions beyond a nonphysical affiliation.  I have always had male friends and I have never had the slightest doubt that those male friends see me as just that, a friend.  But some of my litigious dinner companions made every effort to dissuade me.

Our conversation became heated at times but we continued to volley the notion of platonic friendships back and forth until the strings on our metaphorical racquets unraveled.  We eventually had to concede the match and nobody was declared the winner.

I came home with the same point of view I had during our impassioned debate.  I truly believe that men and women can be friends – no strings, no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas.  Convincing the others involved in that discussion may be a no-win situation but I will continue to maintain my opinion and defend it with all the intensity I can muster.

So now, I have to ask…..where do you stand on this debate?  Can men and women just be friends?

 

 

It’s all over

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My dad was a staunch believer in always giving 100 percent effort.  His mantra played over and over in my head every time I wrote a test in school and every time I had to put any form of exertion into a task.

Somewhere along my journey through this life, that chant of success began to increase in volume and unwittingly seeped into every other aspect of my life.  Sometimes it felt good and other times it felt more like punishment.

I began to take most things to a new level.  And going overboard on simple achievements was just the beginning.  Realizing I couldn’t attain perfection led me into a pattern of over-eating.

When the over-eating became much more noticeable, I began to over-analyze and over-think everything about the problem instead of just recognizing it for what it was and dealing with it head on.

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Of all the things I do with the utmost intensity, over-thinking is the worst of them.  I cannot seem to let what will be just be.  My brain configures numerous scenarios, all with different outcomes, and will not stop when it should be satisfied.  There is always another possibility.  This is a fantastic gift to have when I am writing fiction but, when it comes to creating plot lines based on my reality, it is a detriment to normal productivity.

I expend a great effort each day to quell those thoughts.  I could take an issue so benign and have it twisted into something so distorted from its original form that it becomes a gnarled version of what it once was and something so far removed from what it ever should be.  If I could ever transfer these thoughts to pages of a novel, it would be quite the story.

For now, I will wait out the current situation that has me over-thinking.  I will listen to those little voices as they churn out ending after ending but when I reach the point that I eventually find out what will really happen, the wait will be over.

 

 

 

 

One voice above the crowd

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I was in a funk, a genuine textbook-defined funk, and I had given myself permission to wallow in it.  I disregarded my routinely sage advice to take it one breath at a time.  I blatantly ignored my history of dealing with things head on and I became a turtle, pulling my head into my shell and hoping the scenery would somehow look different the next time my face emerged from that shell.

But each time I gave myself the slightest courage to see if the landscape of my reality had changed, my eyes blurred and my vision became marred by a new set of tears. I promptly pulled myself back in to my shell.

Friends and family picked up on the noticeable difference in the cadence of my voice.  I became lost in a miserable state of unhappiness and my writing began to reflect my mood.  Fellow bloggers also left encouraging messages in the comments of my blogs but, although I knew I was being irrational, I couldn’t stop crying.

Life has a funny way of interjecting when it needs to bring something to your attention.  My funk may have been based on something that could be defined as trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it really affected me to the point of becoming consumed with pessimistic thoughts that I can usually push aside with ease.

I knew I couldn’t change the cards I had been dealt, but one particular comment from a fellow blogger really made me rethink how my hand could play out.  I read it a few times until I was able to fully process the message and understand its true significance.

In my melancholy, I had forgotten to give equal value to the potential of a positive outcome as opposed to focusing solely on the negative.  I had all but conceded to the loss without allowing myself a chance for a win.

One comment, from someone I have never met in person, changed my outlook.  I am no longer dwelling on what could be an unfavorable outcome but giving every hope that something fantastic may be just around the corner.  Since I cannot predict the future, I can only wait to see what the outcome will be but at least, now, I wait with much more hope than I had before.

 

The good, the bad and the truth

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How quickly we lose our tenuous grasp on the things that used to seem so simple.  How fleetly we relinquish our grip.  How easily we let go of the reins only to watch those reins get wrapped up in the wheels of the coach we struggle to maintain control of as we steer ourselves into our future.

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In those rare moments in our lives, in the moments when we think we can marginally and genuinely separate the good from the bad, the truth will always do its best to expedite that process.  We are fools to think that we can fool ourselves.  And although good and bad are formidable opponents, the truth will always come out the victor.

Knowing our truth may sometimes feel like nothing more than a burden.  We may carry it with us, hidden under a shroud of secrecy, hoping that it remains hidden.  But eventually that truth becomes transparent, if not to others at least, to ourselves.  And in that moment, in that split second when we realize we can no longer pull the wool over our own eyes, the pressure of that burden no longer holds any weight.

Suddenly the reins are back in our hands.  That feeling of losing control is replaced by a new calm and the knowledge that everything that seemed to be bad can be good again.  The truth did, indeed, give us a sense of freedom and the moment we began believing in that truth, our change was inevitable.

Dealing with the good and the bad in ourselves is human nature.  That concept evolved long before we began our journey through this lifetime.  But being able to recognize the truth, to embrace the strength and the weakness that brought us to our truth, is the genuine definition of our character.

True strength is not measured by physical endurance alone.  True strength does sweat, it does bleed.  But it also cries, accepts, forgives and heals.  True strength inspires us to be better and, somewhere along that rugged path, our truth can inspire others as well.  #mjs