Sign Posts of Gratitude

When in possession of an unwanted benign brain tumor, and the havoc that causes, the feelings of gratitude may be a little more challenging for me to touch daily, but they don’t go away. In fact, recognizing what I am honestly grateful for picks me up when I’m down. Feeling gracious and thankful when life is giving me big reasons to shrug and be sunk into self-pity is not natural, perhaps. Perhaps, I have to scrape away a layer of gunk to put my mind where I want it to be, but the work is necessary in order to have perspective and meet the opportunities of the day with open arms. I’m not going to lie about it and say, it is oh so easy I just have to sing a little song and I’m right back where I belong. No. It is a conscious effort that I choose to make not only for myself but for everyone around me.

I’m not lying about how hard it is to find the attitude of gratitude, and I’m not lying about things I'm actually grateful for today. To prance around as if this brain tumor is nothing; though, maybe in fits of denial I will go there sometimes; is a dishonor to myself and everyone who has reached out to support me through this rather tight, dark passage. So, while I spend hours in bed staring at the ceiling as it spins around above me, I am grateful to have voices sending prayers out into the ethers for me. It brings me to tears to think of it, and,with that support, I know I cannot fail to emerge from the other side of this tunnel somehow braver and stronger than when I went in.

I’m grateful for the messages of support, suggestions and curiosity that I receive, even if I cannot answer them very quickly. And, when I am tired of talking, writing, chatting about the situation, I am grateful that there is a power off, and a shutdown button on all communications. I’m grateful that I’m learning how to use those buttons. Blush. I’m grateful that the support I receive respects my boundaries and many limitations right now.

My gratitude to my husband for keeping down the drama is a bottomless well. He is my touchstone, the go-to person when I feel it is all too much. He seems to love me even with all the trouble I cause, and I really do cause a raucus, and he proclaims me beautiful when my face is swollen from allergic reactions. He remembers to keep the laundry cycling through, and he’s even learning to cook. He is rising to the challenge of this time in our lives. What woman would not be grateful for that kind of love?

I have children who cleaned our home on their Saturday, without complaint. (Yes. There are children like that in this world.) They read to me when I was in bed, feverish and in pain, and combed my hair and held my hand.  If this isn’t touching to you, I don’t know what to tell you. Of course, they are children and they have their wants and needs, but it does occur to them to set those aside now and then and look at what is actually going on around them, and for this I’m grateful.

I have parents who would like to lean in and fuss over me, and yet they know that I’m not that kind of gal. They respect my space and let me ask them for assistance when I need it. My mom is giving up her beautiful Santa Fe for a week to come and drive me around (since I can’t take medication for anti-convulsion, I can’t drive, in case, just in case…) and sort my laundry. And, tomorrow is her 70-something birthday and she’s willing to hang out with a space cadet who may or may not muster making a cake for her. My step-mom sends up little snacks, takes my kids out of this sick space for afternoons and sleepovers. My dad actually left his lazy-boy and has driven (which he does not like to do ) up to my home several times to check in, and let me tell you it is a surprise always, and he’s smart enough to stay only 15 minutes even though the drive takes him an hour.

I am grateful for my writing because, though I haven't accomplished much with it in the world out there, it has been my most faithful friend, listened to me without judgment and allowed me to work out on the page what to do in every situation of my life. I could not ask for anything better from it, as there are definitely times that I've droned on and on about the same thing and yet finally a breakthrough happens that changes the course of my life. I am deeply grateful to be able to share a fraction of my writing with anyone who has the patience to read it.

So, these are my true gratitude attitudes for this Thanksgiving weekend. They are not grand in the scheme of all possibility, but they are sweet and poignant and meaningful at a time in my life when I need quiet more than parades.  I look forward to getting through this and looking back grateful that I knew my gifts well enough to put sign posts on them. I’m very blessed. May you take a moment to find what matters to you, that which gives your lives a little more ease and mark them with your own kind of sign post.

Of Trees and Idleness

"Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good."  - Soren Kierkegaard


It seems this blog increasingly is a defense of idleness, not that idleness needs for me to defend it. At any rate, this time of the year, in particular -- the holidays, the holy days, the black days, the dark days, the feast days, the days of light and delight -- it seems that there is a force behind us with a whip that demands busy, over-commitment. Already, with Thanksgiving behind us now, we might be in full gear to drive our lives to collapse. This is something that I am increasingly rejecting, year-by-year, because it gets in the way of my observing nature's show, the changes in my children or really being able to listen to the silent night.


It used to be that I loved the holidays because they allowed me to really be a show-off. I was one of those people who gets the cards out, who decorates the house to the nines, who throws parties, wraps every present with fancy bows, does secret Santa, decorates cookies, makes new ornaments every year, and fills advent calendars with little gifts every day and a scavenger hunt on Christmas Eve, goes to every Christmas concert, ballet and school fundraiser. I was higher than a kite on the sparkle. The holidays were a full-time job from November 1st through New Years, and then I was sick for the month of January. I determined about 15 years ago that part of the problem was that I was allergic to the mold that grows on cut Christmas trees and so I invested in a beautiful fake Douglas Fir that fooled even old timers in Oregon. It lasted for 12 years before losing enough of it's fancy needles that it needed to be replaced. But, this fake tree only allowed me to start the holiday madness sooner, and then I was still sick for the month of January due to pure exhaustion.


My children remember "that me" well enough that they're a little stung that I threw away the advent calendar last year and replaced it with cards that could be opened to pictures...it was not the same. So I found out what mattered to them. They wonder where are the parties for organized caroling? There must be a free Handel's Messiah Sing-Along that we can go to this year. The last four years have been the great reduction, and enough so that I wonder at my own former insanity. I no longer send many Christmas cards - maybe only a dozen -- if I can get to them. I don't even send personalized emails - though that was a transitional mode that loosened me from the tradition. I apologize and post a big "happy..." on the day and that is good enough. 


The residual guilt pile is melting as the years go by. It is not at all that I'm a Scrooge or a Grinch. I am not a Bah-Humbug. I love this time of year still, and I praise every one's well-being. I still love all of my friends and family, too. It's just that I love myself a little better than I used to love myself. I see that love doesn't require me to always be "The Giving Tree".


Initially, the let go began because I was, frankly, broke, and I'm still too broke to do all that I used to try to do even if I spread it out the entire year. I simply don't have much extra to give still. I try to make up for lack of cash with giving my time, either by making gifts or spending time with others, but have discovered that there actually isn't enough extra time to make up for the lack of wrapped gifts no matter the strategy. So, I have come to accept that doing my best is good enough, and that doing my best means not letting go of my personal strivings even through the holidays. This allows me to occasionally experience honest good cheer and peace on earth.


This year I will spend time reading to my kids, even though my daughter will argue that she's too old to be read to, and then I'll ask them to read to me. We'll feed the wintering Canadian geese at our little lake. We'll play board games and cards by candlelight, and share memories of those insane times and laugh. We'll have donuts for Hanukah, and gingerbread for Christmas. There will be some traditions that will come back -- the advent calendar of felt I was so happy to find is already hanging waiting to be filled with little things that surprise them. We'll cook a special meal together, and bake cookies when we have a chance. School projects will be priorities, and congratulations for a job well done may include a special treat. Christmas morning will be de-emphasized for gifts and emphasized for time with family to relax and be together with nothing looming over our heads that has to be done. And, I will continue to write first, and celebrate after. 


I look to the trees, those who hibernate, naked in the cold winds, those who are evergreen, distant palms waving over warm seas, and even those imitations made of paper and plastic and electric lights, and see their beauty is absolute stillness. I think of the thousands of Madonna's curled around their babies in paintings and frescoes and see their peace in focused attention. I remember the oil lamps of my ancestors lighting their windows as a sign of faith that goodness always underlies experience. All of these symbols are quiet and gentle, and I choose to emulate them and turn my back against the raging winds around me. Bundled up, I look up to the stars each night, earlier and earlier, and wish for love to be my guide.

Chapter Four - Part One - Mud

Now, I feel pretty good about that higher perspective of this field I have found myself working in. I can see it for what it is so much better when I am standing up, instead of sitting amongst the clods of resistance and weeds of distraction. I still see them. They haven't vanished like a cartoon garden, but they aren't EVERYTHING. I've got my clod-busting hoe, and my rake with teeth to get them cleared out. I feel like taking a survey of the field, a walk to get a real feel for its potential.

Then guess what happens? It starts to rain. The smell of the wet soil is intoxicating, overwhelming in every way. I imagine myself wearing Wellies to deal with the mud because I'm fast sinking into -- what is this -- emotional distress. My heart hurts like a huge car-washing sponge being squeezed out over a bucket. Why, just when I start feeling like there is hope, would I be overcome by a storm of emotions?

For the past year, even as my life has steadily improved on so many levels -- my kids are thriving, I am very much in love with my husband (approaching our first anniversary), have been stable financially at least, have cleared out so many distractions -- I have been mourning very deeply the loss of so many fantasies and dreams that I had been fully vested in. All of the choices that I made that I thought were so smart, that led me to here, this empty field of mud and weeds. I feel wrong. I feel embarrassed. I don't feel like faking it anymore, and so I've moped around a lot in a drizzly way. And, while I can't tell you how thankful I am for my kids and my lover man, and so many other gifts, I have felt like I SHOULD BE MORE than I am and that has created a field of mud.

You really can't plant in mud. It's a big sticky mess. You walk along in it, and get up to your knees in no time. Believe me, I've tried. I've started several screenplays this year, a book about screenwriting, and well, you can see the blogs. Not a thing can grow in this morass. I must have some sober drying out. I must have some sunny days at some point.

I've concluded that you can't really force the sun to shine. Sure you could do a bunch of artificial stuff to move emotions to some new expression. You can affirm your contentment until the cows come home, but if you don't believe it then it doesn't stick. The drizzle returns and pretty soon there's more mud. Right now, it is raining outside, and I'm thinking about what I would do to stop it...nothing...there's a time for rain. There is a time to mourn, when it is safe to feel one's grief even if we'd prefer not to, and to feel it is as nourishing as a good rain is to a field. I'm really sad about a lot of things that have passed that I never grieved for at the time because it wasn't safe to be so raw. I'm safe now, and that's a good thing even if it means mud.

Episode Fourteen

Today I create a new life, with new rules that totally support me. Since this is the new phase of my life, I am creating it. I'm no longer simply accepting the haphazard lot I ended up with and grinding on with the rules I was handed. What I found out was that that haphazard lot, was a HAZARD, and the rules were not about me at all. The new life is likely to be odd at first because I'm so used to living through a rear-view mirror. Always looking backwards has led to a lot of crashes, you know? The rules were a strange combination of cultural taboos, superstition, magical thinking and propaganda. At least let me establish that at the moment I feel like I'm looking in the right direction, and have simplified enough to be able to sort through a few rules that I actually value.

I've been listing many of those rules in this series. What I can add is that the rule that is most important to me is knowing that LIFE LOVES ME. With this simple rule, I can walk the talk believing that it is worthwhile to life itself if not to anyone in particular. There is no need to seek approval because I am already approved of just by the fact that I am still alive. Though I may make daily, moment-to-moment mistakes, I know that life's love of me means that I cannot err on the golden pathway.