Best Friends - Part 2:

[Judging from the private responses to the previous post on friendship, I've apparently struck a nerve.  Here are more thoughts on friendship between adult women .... thoughts still not fully formed, still conclusion-less.  Would love to hear your feedback on this topic, especially if you have a different - or more fully developed - perspective!]

Turtle in a Social Whirl'd :

Once upon a time, a bright, curious, engaging little girl grew up to be a middle-aged woman who went to a retreat advertised as, well, a retreat: a time to get away, to be refreshed, to be quiet, to "let go of the need to have it all together". It was billed as being different from those other retreats, which were, well, actually conferences.

This middle-aged woman, mother of four, was looking forward to quiet. Refreshment. Letting go of perfection (or the striving for...). To being with like-minded women.

The venue was peaceful. The guest speaker was kind, and welcoming. The other women were genuine. And gregarious. And eager to hear each other's life stories. And exchange contact information. And refer to each other as “dear friend” on social media only hours after meeting for the first time ......

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I came to the retreat to actually retreat. I thought others had, too. I thought (silly me) that was the point.

I was wrong.

I didn't attend all the offered meetings, and workshops, and sing-around-the-campfires, and early-morning-yogas, and late-night-snacks. I wanted to. I just needed retreat more than I needed fifteen new best friends.

And so …. even though a few of the lovely women I met friended me immediately on social media, I soon noticed, after I went home (refreshed, I might add, despite feeling like a disappointment socially), that the “dear friend-ing” continued – nay, escalated – in earnest. Was there a prize? I began to wonder, for attaching yourself to the most new people? Did you get a discount at the next annual event if you got the most new followers? The most comments from previous attendees?

I still don't know. I slowly unfollowed most of my new “friends” as my feeling of fraudulence increased, since I wasn't actually in friendships with any of them.  There was no one-on-one, heart-to-heart, back-and-forth, outside of reading and occasionally commenting on social media posts. I prematurely decided that it was probably all just a facade, for all parties involved.

And then I saw a photo of several of them together. Together. In person! (One of them had been my roommate!!). The first thing I thought was not (God help me) “How lovely that they could all get together!”

Nope. The first thing I thought was - “I'm not there. I'm not with them. No one invited me. I'm not wanted.”

There it is. All the bright, curious, engaging little-girlness gives way to the ancient fear of not being wanted, lived out decades later, on a regular basis.

I confess that as I approach my fifth decade in life, I still occasionally wonder “How is this friendship stuff supposed to work, exactly?” What is it supposed to look like? Does everyone else have that One Person who texts them (or if they're really loved, calls!) whenever something good or bad happens, and who reciprocates in turn? Does everyone else have a friendship playbook except me? Did I miss a memo (or a facebook meme) somewhere?

In middle school, my physical coordination was rather behind the other kids', which, coupled with the fact that I'd been pushed ahead a grade in school, putting me even more behind coordination-wise, meant that I was usually chosen last for team sports.

Middle age felt just like that, today, when I saw that photo of the happy-without-me group of retreat women.

What's wrong with me now, I wondered? Being able to hit or kick the ball at the right time in the right way doesn't matter anymore, and I actually thought I was a pretty good friend. (More than one friend has told me just that, as it happens, so surely it's not arrogance to believe them?) 

 Maybe I'm just not that sort of friend, the kind you invite on a girls' road trip, or have over with your other friends, or pick up your phone to tell about the thing that just happened, or call to check up on when you haven't heard anything for awhile?

I don't know. I am in the dark. Playbook-less.

I have good friends (I thought) who tell me sometimes in the middle of our deep, intense, meaningful conversations that they can't talk to anyone else like this, about these kinds of things. So I apparently have some value as a friend. Sometimes. When it comes to being real about what really matters. But these friends do not tag me on their “best friend” posts. We don't take selfies together and commemorate our friendship in the public eye.

Maybe I'm not fun (or photogenic!) enough for those kind of friendships. (But just the other day I was with two friends laughing till we couldn't breathe or – a more immediate crisis – swallow the coffee in our mouths! Okay, granted, that would not have been photogenic!)

Or maybe I'm too quirky to want to hang out with too frequently, or too embarrassing to combine with other friends. Maybe I'm not a good mixer.

For whatever reason, I was not chosen, at that retreat, for anyone to get to know* in real life, beyond the artificially-structured time. In that small, intimate crowd of 30+ women, despite the fact that I enormously enjoyed getting to know some of them, sharing stories, talking about things that matter, somehow none of them “stuck” in a way that translated into friendship once the retreat had ended.

So I am left mystified.

Maybe if I gaze at that photo long enough, I'll find a clue ….
.
.
.
*[It occurs to me as I type that phrase - “not chosen … for anyone to get to know” - that I also did not choose to get to know anyone at length once the retreat ended, either. I didn't attach myself to any of the apparently pre-formed groups there; I didn't pursue post-retreat closeness with anyone whose story I'd heard. So in a way, I participated in the not-choosing … by also not choosing. This is something for me to chew on. Something different, granted, from the left-out feeling that I'm not doing friendship “right” in general, in life, but still …. Perhaps there is more initiating that is my responsibility than I have previously acknowledged. And perhaps – there is just simply the fact that I prefer a slower pace than many today seem to …. and so I am literally left behind. I don't know. Do you?]

Best Friends

 Tomorrow is National Best Friends Day. I know this because a few times a year I hear about a cool “National” day (usually a day or two after the fact) and decide that I want to keep up on what the National Days are so that when something cool like “National Eat-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies-in-Bed-Day” comes up, then I'll know in advance so we can celebrate it as a family, earning me those all-important Fun-Mom points that I'm always so short on ….

As an aside, there IS no “National Eat-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies-in-Bed-Day” because at the time that I submitted the idea they were no longer accepting nominations for National Days. I was nominating it to be on my birthday, I think, along with a nomination for “National Random Acts of Kindness Day” to be held on Mother Teresa's birthday. Both were turned down, so at least I had no good reason to take that rejection personally.

Which is as good a segue as any, I suppose, for the topic of this post, which is related both to National Best Friends Day, and to rejection, and taking things personally.

As much as I abhor writing about (or reading about, for that matter) pain, and personal pain especially, and rejection, and anything that sounds even remotely self-pitying (because we all know that victimhood is practically the worst modern sin there is in the current era of self-sufficiency) …. every time I pick up, well, my laptop, to write anything in the past year or three, it always ends up a puddly pool of self-pity. Or at least it sounds that way to me. It's possible that I'm oversensitive to that particular nuance; I don't know.

But since that's apparently what's in me to come out, I've decided I might as well just run with it. Own it. Face up to the fact that evidently I am a self-pitying victim-y sort of person, at least right now. (And really – there is an awful lot to be self-pitying about in your 40s, I'm just saying*....)

The thing is – National Best Friends Day:   I don't have a Best Friend. Not the kind with capital letters. Not the kind you can confidently tag #BFF on a facebook post without worrying that she'll be surprised, or worse yet, in her head (or to her REAL BFF) be like “Wait, what?! She thinks we're Best Friends?!!! Oh NOOOO!!!”

This – not having a Best Friend – worries me a little. Or at least it makes me wonder if it should worry me. And maybe some days it worries me more than a little. (Please tell me I'm not the only one that has those “I'm probably the only one who [doesn't] ______!!” days....) I mean, in some ways I thought grown-ups were beyond Best Friends. That feels a little like grade school to me, and yet if I spend too much time on social media I'll inevitably run across posts (by adult friends – always, strangely, female) proclaiming just that: that So-and-So is their Best Friend. So maybe we haven't outgrown that?

Which brings me back to the question: Am I the only one without a Best Friend? How common IS this “Best Friend” phenomenon among adults?

I do have wonderful friends. I have friends who have known me since high school (and before!) and friends who I just met in the last couple of years, friends with whom I can talk theology and grammar and current events and literature and psychology and personal growth and child-rearing and gardening and cooking and pretty much everything under the sun. I have friends that I've cried with and friends that I've laughed-till-I've-cried with. Friends who walk with me, shop with me, drink coffee with me, eat with me, give me – or ask me for – advice. Friends who swap recipes with me, recommend books and CDs (and even loan them), send links to that awesome shirt she just got from Amazon or links to good movies or links to cool DIY projects or links to free therapy. Friends that I give to and friends that I receive from. Friends that in some seasons I feel very close to, and in other seasons we seem to drift apart. I've had friends that we could spend years without contact and pick up right where we left off, and friendships which ended painfully, and still bring pain today.

But when I think of a Best Friend (and this is, of course, always in capital letters), I think of having one friend who it would always be them that I'd call with good news or bad news or a stupid question about how to clean a dryer vent, and who would always call me for those things.

And I don't have one of those. Do you? Are we supposed to? Does not having one make me less of a woman? Is it proof that I'm not a good friend, or am undesirable Best Friend material somehow?

I'm not being facetious. I really want to know.

Someone fill me in? (But whatever you do, please, I beg of you, do NOT show this to your own Best Friend and laugh at me behind my back. Because that would really usher in the self-pity, and goodness knows we wouldn't want that!)

*and YES I know about gratitude and how important it is and how healing and magical it is.  Yes.  I know.  And guess what?  I am just complex enough to be a gratitude-freak AND a self-pitying victim-y sort of person.  Not that I'm angling for a trophy in complexity.  Just saying.

a beautiful mess

Life is messy.

This morning, in anticipation of a visit from a friend and her children, we (that is, I and the children under my command) scurried about making ready.

Sweep the floor.  Wash and cut vegetables for lunch.  Clean the sink.  Sweep the porch.  Take out trash.  Tidy up.  Shut the laundry room door!  Get out new chalk for the driveway, and bubbles.  Change Lil' Snip's shorts when he spilled bubbles on them, and wash off his legs.

Is it time yet?

Nice, who is just learning to tell time, informed me regularly of the clock's progress.  She was the one who noticed when the minute hand drifted significantly past the twelve.  (She was also the one - surprise, surprise - who invited Lil' Snip into the wading pool without my or anyone else's knowledge, as a result of which he fell down in the water and needed yet another pair of clean shorts, and a shirt to boot.)

They were late.  Hmmm, I tried to remember, does she often run a bit behind?  We only see them about once a year, so I gave her another fifteen minutes before I called.

"Hi!" she answered cheerily, "How are you?"

Somehow we had each chosen a different Monday to write down this reunion.  She felt badly:  she had been on the receiving end of just such a scheduling snafu the previous week, so she knew how disappointed we were.

Deflated, we put away our expectations for the morning.  I was, frankly, at a loss.  It seemed best to redeem the time by going ahead with the abandoned schoolwork, but I didn't have the heart.  The children wandered about aimlessly while I pondered our wasted efforts:  clean house, lunch prepared in advance, and no one to share it with!

"When life gives you lemons ....."

I called a good friend, who I didn't think would mind being plan B, and who just might be willing to toss out her own plans for the day to make room for an impromptu play date.

She didn't, she was, and over they came.  We had a ball:  they shared our lunch, and the clean house was soon full of toys again.  The mommies talked and the children played, and we'll see our other friends next week, after all.

The lemonade was sweet.  I'm so glad I knew the recipe.

glimmers of hope

Sometimes, when you're too weak to stand, when you're too weak even to ask for help, friends will come and put your arms around their shoulders and lift you up.


Those are God's shoulders.


Sometimes, when you're too tired to keep back the tears, and they fall to your shame, friends will see, and wipe them for you, with their own hands.


Those are God's hands.


Sometimes, when your own heart is too weary to know the way, friends will beg God on your behalf, pouring their hearts into their prayers.


That is God's heart.

"For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.  As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.  

"I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy.  I will shepherd the flock with justice.  I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of savage beasts so that they may live in the wilderness and sleep in the forests in safety.  

"I will make them and the places surrounding my hill a blessing.  I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing."  (from Ezekiel 34)

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

(Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice)

For [God] says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,  and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”  It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.               (Romans 9:15-16)

[words from an old hymn I remember my mother singing in church]

There shall be showers of blessing:  

This is the promise of love.

There shall be seasons refreshing,

Sent from the Savior above.

There shall be showers of blessing;

Send them upon us, O Lord.

Grant to us now a refreshing;

Come and now honor Your Word.

There shall be showers of blessing; 

O that today they might fall,

Now as to God we're confessing,

Now as on Jesus we call!

Showers of blessing,

Showers of blessing we need.

Mercydrops round us are falling,

But for the showers we plead.

(Daniel W. Whittle)

"Mercydrops 'round us are falling, but for the showers we plead ..."

"deactivated"

Well, I did it:  I deactivated my facebook account.

And then I snuck back in on my Farmer's account to see if it worked.  It did.  I am really gone.  As in, even comments that I made yesterday on other people's statuses are just vanished into thin air.  As if I never really did exist.

I feel like a "disappeared" character from George Orwell's 1984 (which I keep saying I want to re-read; now that I'm deactivated maybe I'll have the time to do it).  I kind of expect to hear that someone's read my obituary in a very small newspaper somewhere.

Already I miss the interaction.  Pathetic, I know.  I thought, in the meantime, that I'd keep a record of things that I'm doing during time I might otherwise have spent on facebook, sort of by way of rationalizing my absence (or keeping myself from going back ASAP).

Today, so far, I have weeded flowerbeds, cleared the driveway of sticks with my children, with my son watched a tractor aerate the field, taken a nap, and rearranged my blog layout (moved "what's for supper" down a smidge and got rid of the "one thousand gifts" ongoing list at the bottom since I got to # 999 and quit recording).  And it's not even 3pm yet.....

See, it's good.  I can do this ....


..... right?

uneasy alliance

(or, "an unintended ode to facebook")


Technology and me, we go way back.

I remember my first radio:  a wooden and mustard-yellow plastic Fisher-Price.  You turned a ridged plastic  knob, and music poured forth, accompanied by a picture reel featuring Jack and Jill fetching their pail and, lo! tumbling down a hill.  My favorite part?  The little window in the back where you could see the works turning, precisely-placed metal bumps brushing lyrically against tiny metal fingers.

So why did I pledge today to close out my facebook account?


I like the banter that is possible on facebook, the quick, quirky, back-and-forth between friends (or, say, little sisters).  I like the opportunity to tell the "world" in condensed form what my day is looking like just then, ask for supper ideas, or exclaim about the sunset.  Somehow it helps, if the baby is fussy, to post it on facebook.  Not just for the sympathy, although that's very nice, but just to tell someone about it.

I like the encouragement that people offer - sometimes not who you'd expect!  I like reading about other people's triumphs and struggles..... and voila!

It hits me, just now, exactly why I like facebook so much.

"We read,"  C.S. Lewis is credited as saying, "to know we're not alone."  Facebook accomplishes that in a way that (*gasp* I can't believe I'm about to say this) no book ever quite can. You can read Tolstoy's War and Peace and be thrilled at his apt descriptions of people and relationships:  yes, we're like that!  I am like that!!

But guess what?  Tolstoy, for all his sympathetic understanding of humanity, has been dead for over 100 years.  If he was the only one who really gets it, it's too late in this life to have a heart to heart with him about things.

So you find a contemporary author - take your pick; I like Brennan Manning, or for fiction, Alexander McCall Smith - but what are the chances that their understanding connects you with them in any tangible way?  Slim.

But on facebook, you read, you write, and you see not only that you are not alone, but that other people that you actually know are experiencing some of the same discipline problems with their children, the same joys over jobs finally finished, the same occasional exhilerating days, the same glorying in truth and beauty.

We're us.

And on facebook, away from the hairstyle and wardrobe worries (will I ever look cool enough?), away from the potentially awkward social settings (will I always stick my foot in my mouth?!), just you and me and all our friends out amongst the words, we can see that we're mostly the same.  Just people, who cry and laugh and rage and sleep and worry and love.

But.  This wasn't supposed to be an ode to facebook.  I am still planning to delete my account tomorrow morning (although now I hope I'll be able to open it again someday).

Facebook, for all its delightful qualities, has a dark side.

When I'm on facebook, I'm not on the phone with a friend.  I'm not reading to my children.  I'm not sitting in the hammock (okay, I know I could be, with a laptop....).  When I'm on facebook, I'm not napping.  I'm not catching up with my husband's day.  I'm not reading a good book.  I'm not planning school projects.  I'm not sewing or throwing pots.  I'm not working in my flowerbeds.

In short, when I'm on facebook, I'm not really in my life.

Sooo .... once again, I am taking a break.  And since I am so undisciplined that I have been known to "just check" facebook while I am taking a break from it, I am actually going to delete my account.  And since I just listed all the things that I love about facebook, I am hoping that I will be able to reopen it someday, rather sooner than later.


It's an uneasy alliance we have, me and technology.

photo credit for both to bonanza.com

people riches

I feel rich, today.  People rich.

(family)  This morning while Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice painted plaster dogs and cats from Christmas, their cousins dropped in on their way out to Pittsburgh to give final hugs and good-byes.

(community)   As I ran errands later in the morning, I stopped by a nursery/farm stand where the Amish owner knows my husband.  I wanted some sauerkraut for that New Year's Day meal of mysterious origin (anyone?), and we were low on honey, too.  I asked how their homemade soaps work in crazyhard water - and he gave me one to try, gratis, along with his personal testimony to how nice it feels!  (I'll have to let you know).

Next stop was an organic farm where we had bought raw milk for over a year before we discovered a more convenient source.  Despite my lack of loyalty, I was greeted warmly and asked about my Christmas holiday.

At the grocery store I got smiles returned from cashiers, baggers, a worker in the produce dept, and the butcher, all of whom recognize me after more than 10 years of shopping there.

It is nice to be known, nice to do business with folks who know how many children you have.

(friends)  Today, it was a friend of my Farmer's who I'd heard much of but never met.  He came over to help work on a home improvement project, and brought his two daughters, the same ages as Sugar and Spice.  After awkward parent-facilitated name exchanges, the four girls disappeared outside to be seen running to and fro in companionable little pairs (and threesomes, once Nice joined them).  By suppertime they were exchanging confidences and using nicknames.

There is a wealth in personal interchange - eye contact, laughter, a live-spoken comment and response, a relaxed pose or an active stride - for which there is no technological substitute.

My day was full of people whose lives touched mine, and I am richer for it.

In the end, facebook is only a partial disclosure of who I am.  Blogging is only an electronic journal to be indulged in as time allows.  Even the telephone lacks the dimension of sight - posture, eye contact.  Communication can only ever be complete in person.  Anything less cheats us of being known, and knowing.

(and on a lighter note, maybe you can communicate to me - technologically or otherwise - why we eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day.  Is that a local custom?  Who started it?)

fire and ice

Four and a half hours after leaving my house, I turned into the half-mile lane we came to first eight years ago.  Three friends and I unloaded bags and boxes, ducking under the pine boughs to reach the porchlit door. I knocked.

“Come in!” she called, and in we came to warmth and cozy lamplight, rooms full of whimsy and books, steeped in love. We were home, again.

Hugs and shortquick studies of each other and we burdened the kitchen island with our treats, sustenance for a weekend away: lemon bars, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Chex mix, almonds, dried apricots, guava paste and Maria cookies. We pulled up chairs around the gas flames and warmed our souls.

I gathered up the gifts those two long full days we spent away, arms full, and squirreled them away like nuts to lunch on through the winter of ordinary home-demands. All the long drive home, I handled them like strings of pearls, to keep their luster bright in my mind:

# 329 – hot air balloons on a grey day

# 330 – Rose's miracle armchair

# 331 – welcoming warmth of a home

# 332 – those warm wooden walls again

# 333 – sound of rain on tin, a nighttime lullaby

# 334 – heavy white flakes, so slowly descending

# 335 – brisk walk in a white bracing wind

# 336 – pulling the needle in and out, to make a bear

# 337 – our eight-year tradition

# 338 – coziness of lamplight, rocking chairs, gas fireplace

# 339 – beautiful music and the sound of turning pages

# 340 – all the house quiet in afternoon sleep

# 341 – a word fitly spoken

# 342 – the smell of soup, prepared by another's hand

# 343 – sunshine on snow: gold on white, fire on ice

# 344 – brilliant drops of liquid light on ends of twigs

# 345 – lungfuls of outdoors

# 346 – a horizon, for the health of my eyes

# 347 – keeping some thoughts to myself

# 348 – scarlet sugar maple against October sky

# 349 – clumps of snow clinging high to leaves

# 350 – morning nap in sunshine

# 351 – liquid drumbeat: melting snow meets roof

# 352 – patterns, everywhere (potential pots!)

# 353 – inspiration for a bowl

# 354 – lead-seamed glass lampshades like exotic flowers

# 355 – miles of thoughtful silence along winding creek, in flickering light, by spacious river

# 356 – flaming pink sun melting into mountain

So many gifts, pearls stringing out to the horizon ... 

5 minutes on friends

  

[parameters:  every Friday, the gypsy mama supplies a topic and we write unedited for five minutes and then publish.  voila!  today's topic:  friends]

They come in all shapes and sizes, my friends.  All personality types and all types of interests, values, and economic status.  They vary in fashion sense and common sense, intelligence and humor.  

This is good.  They fill my gaps, strengthen my weaknesses, challenge my assumptions, need my encouragement.  We're co-dependent, you might say, in the healthy community sense of the word.  

It sours sometimes.  I envy her and she judges me and we get tangled up in who we're not instead of who we're meant to be.  But iron sharpens iron and if we don't lose our temper under pressure we'll be sharpened by the grinding, strengthened by the differences.

My friends, my sisters .....

[time's up]

empty spaces

Except for 15-month-old Lil' Snip chirping happily in his crib (his hours of waking and sleeping defy all hope of comprehension), the house is quiet. It is naptime, and even 9-year-old Sugar is sleeping. It was a late night, and my children do not sleep in.

Some late nights are worth it, though, and last night was one. Friends from Kansas visited – an almost-dropping-in visit – and while the mommies and daddies caught up, the children, who barely remember our last time together six years ago, became like brothers and sisters for the evening.

The wind raced unceasingly all evening, and the children raced to match it. Down the yard to eat supper under the heartnut tree whose nut-laden branches arch down to form a leafy room, just right for children's picnics. Up to the implement shed to “cook” in their “kitchens.” Back down to the Concord vine to feast on grapes. Up in the treehouse, crowded but happy. Down in the hammock for a “rowdy ride” (a sturdy hammock can double as a boat, should one be needed). Up on the zipline and down to the chicken yard. Up to the greenhouse, down, and down, just to run, to feel the wind.

When we finally waved them down the road, it was dark; an exquisite novelty for Sugar, Spice, & Nice, who are used to looking longingly out their bedroom windows at the perfectly good summer daylight a-wasting outside as we tuck them in.  Last night they went to bed tired, but joyful:  they had been out in the night!

Today the wind races on an empty yard. The children sleep, dreaming, probably, of their one-night siblings. The flute they made from a hollow pawlonia stick rests on the windowsill....

borrowed words, Part Five

Love these various thoughts on the creative process, reflection, and our interwoven-ness with each other.  That last reminds me of Deitrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, which I need to re-read.  

I remember being impressed by his assertion that when the Bible refers to the Church as a body, united, it is not making reference to a goal, or an ideal, but to a present reality.  We affect one another, like it or not.  When you are injured, I bleed, for we are one, deny it though we may.  Our fight for independence from each other reminds me of the truism about unforgiveness:  it is like drinking poison and waiting for the other guy to die.  

I need you.  You need me.  There is no way around it.

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence.  ~Slyman Bryson

The days are just packed. ~Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

Please God, I will live my years with my face to the light, meeting the blows of fate with a joke, the contempt of men with a smile, the plague and mystery of the Unknown in my own heart and in the universe with cheerful faith, and death the best I can when I come to it.   ~Dr. Frank Crane

No artist has any other aim than to show his soul by his work.   ~Dr. Frank Crane

For the use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices and follies, and also our fears. ~Joseph Conrad, Victory, 1914

The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost. It is not the clearsighted who lead the world. ~Joseph Conrad, Victory, 1914

I feel a most keen sense of self-laudation in that I am doing something the world is willing to pay for. ~Dr. Frank Crane

I wonder if it is written just which souls, of all the millions, shall touch ours? And each one whose personality impinges upon ours, even in the least, leaves some particles of flavor of himself upon us, and we upon him. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The Lord certainly shows His low opinion of money by the kind of folks He gives it to.   ~Dr. Frank Crane

Pessimism is the fine name for cowardice, vulgarity, self-pity, and failure. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The author lays his compelling mind upon the lives of thousands when he has written by the light of his own soul-burning. ~Dr. Frank Crane

It is sweet to mingle tears with tears; griefs, where they wound in solitude, wound more deeply. ~Seneca

was it a morning like this? (irony)

Recipe for a bad morning:

Wake up several times during the night, preferably to the sound of your youngest child crying.  Sleep through your husband's alarm clock so that you can be disoriented when you hear your own.  Answer your husband's “good morning” with a sleepy (ok, growly) mumble.  Think dark thoughts in the shower.  Read James during your quiet time and feel inadequate and burdened.  Fight with your husband over whether or not he should wear an ill-fitting birthday present.  Make coffee without replacing the carafe completely, so that the coffee accumulates in the basket with the grounds and spills out into the carafe, the counter, and the coffeemaker's water reservoir.  Allow your children to come to you with problems they should be able to solve on their own.  Remember to check when those homeschool affidavits and educational objectives are due and discover that it was two weeks ago.

Recipe for recovering the rest of the day:

Remember that the world will not end over this, and that if it did, that would be a good thing!  Spend a couple of hours with a friend and her children (after first printing out generic objectives and affidavits and filling in all blanks preparatory to zipping in to the notary in the afternoon).  Get the crying out of the way first, then laugh as much as possible while solving the more complex of the world's problems.  Have a random lunch, just for comic relief.  Nap.  Plan frozen pizza for supper, even though it's not Friday.  Try not to think about those late affidavits........

lost art

Someone dropped in tonight.  Pulled into our driveway, unannounced, got out and knocked on our door.

Our "free kittens" sign has been down for a couple of days, so it couldn't be someone looking for a pet.  I don't have anything out for freecycling at the moment.  Who could it be?!  Oh, the excitement of the unlooked-for vehicle!  (and the disappointment if it's just someone using the driveway to turn around).

It was my husband's aunt, stopping to wish him a happy birthday!  We chatted a bit, talked about the weather and the family, church and crops.  Ten minutes, tops.  It was the highlight of our evening.

"Dropping in" is a lost art, one worth cultivating again.  I know, I know, life gets busy.  We had friends who, b.c. (before children), used to drop in all the time.  We loved it!  It's like the bell ringing just as it's your turn to give your report - whatever you were doing, you're off the hook till later!  You get a break!

Having someone drop in is a practical and most pleasant reminder that it is people, after all, that are really important.  Things, tasks, can wait.  Relationships are the essential thing.

It does expose your vulnerabilities, if you don't happen to be perfect (although perfection itself is perhaps the most assailable vulnerability).  Without notice from your drop-in guest, you can't tidy up your life at all.  You're just all you, doing whatever you do when you're at home, dressed in whatever you wear for your family, listening to whatever music gets you through your day.

No chance to pretend you're anyone but who you are.

Some people worry about being dropped in on ("oh no!  they'll see me!").  Others find it a relief ("there!  now they know who I really am!").

Having given up on acting in real life, I am solidly in the second camp, and will convert who I can from the first.  It's worth the exposure to find out that you are loved, the real you - with sometimes messy floors and unwashed dishes, makeup-less and in old clothes, weary of your everyday burdens and frustrated with daily challenges.

So drop on in.  I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

(and yes, K, I wrote this for you.  Brace yourself - I will be dropping in!)

the lady I met at the park today

I love people.  So varied, with so many stories to tell.  Especially, I suppose it goes without saying, older people (more years, hence, more stories to tell).

Today, my mom drove down to my house to watch my children while I ran some errands and took some much-needed time off my job (but you other mommies know all about that).  In the morning I took Nice, my youngest daughter, to a great bulk-foods store that's out of our usual path, so that I haven't gone but once since Lil' Snip's birth a year ago.  We had a lovely time, the highlight for Nice being the dried pineapple ring she got to eat on the way home, I think.

In the afternoon, I free-styled.

First I went to the discount grocery in search of dark chocolate (success!  Newman's Own organic espresso dark chocolate!!) and then hit the library to pick up the books they regularly import from other libraries for insatiable, grateful me.

[plug:  I LOVE the library!!  all the books a person could want, free for the borrowing, nice people with whom to chat and swap book recommendations, and air conditioned comfort for temporarily escaping the responsibilities of home life.]


Then I was off in search of a restful place to read and daydream (people-watching optional).

The park was loaded with large children on the loose for the summer and rather lacked the serenity I sought.  I drove on.

I remembered a smaller park a friend had showed me, hidden in the center of a residential area, and began threading my way up and down streets and alleys till I found it.  There were two other parties there - a mom with two young daughters in matching dresses, and an anonymous driver napping in an SUV.

I parked and found a bench in partial shade.  When my legs fell asleep, I moved to the grassy hillside, and read till it was almost time to go home.  On my way out, I noticed an older lady weeding one of the flowerbeds and stopped to express my appreciation of the park's well-kept appearance.

As we chatted, she wondered if she had heard me laugh over my book, and what I was reading.  We traded favorite authors-of-the-moment (Alexander McCall Smith and Richard Paul Evans), and talked about the best spots to plant hydrangea (partial shade, wettish soil) and why our rosebushes' blooms looked "crippled" this year (too much rain?).

She recommended the parks' summer concerts to me and took me to her house across the way to give me her program.  I admired the green glass bottles on the windowsill (I collect blue).  We chatted our way back to the park and she said she'd look for me at the next concert.

It is so easy to find new friends.  It takes so little effort - a smile and a compliment - and yields such satisfying results.  Behind every unknown face is a story waiting to be told, similarities waiting to be unearthed.

I want to remember to ask, more often.