THINKING ABOUT FRIENDSHIP

 

This afternoon I took a walk at the bird refuge, and as I walked in the icy wind, I thought about friendship. I wondered if one can ever be the friend another needs, or if we can only be the friend we ourselves need. Is the filter of the ego so strong that it cannot allow the possibility that the friendship I need is not that which my friend needs?

I began by wondering if friendship is just friendship, and it’s all the same, and I arrived at the thought that although the underlying energy of friendship is love, and love is love, pure and simple, the expression of it isn’t at all simple. Nor is it “the same.” I think we filter that which we receive and give by our own experiences and our own needs that have arisen from them. For example, I sometimes want a friend to whom I can speak honestly, who will hear me and respond. I don’t need to be told what to do. I just need to know I have been heard and understood.  At other times, just being in the presence of a kindred spirit is enough, no talk needed.

But someone else, who has lived their own life and had their own experiences, may not want to share much at all, just spending time with the energy of a person who appreciates them is enough. Another person might want to tell their stories to another, know they’ve been heard and commented upon and not really respond too much to any one else’s stories. Perhaps their need is to go deeper than current or past experiences, to a place where the current runs strong, with little conversation. My question is, am I able to recognize another person’s need?

This reminds me of a friend from over forty years ago. We were young women together, before children or marriages. She was so dear to me, and even attended the birth of my first child. I saw no end in sight for the friendship, until it abruptly ended. She told me that she would never deny what we had, but it was over.  She had just joined Scientology when this happened, and remains with them today, so that may explain the ending of the friendship. The point is that it didn’t occur to me at the time that sometimes a friendship has its season and can retreat without any event precipitating its end and without any hard feelings. I saw this woman about five years ago and we had a lovely reunion. I don’t expect to ever see her again, and that’s okay. She was right. We had the time we had and that was enough.

As I’ve grown older, I think my friendships have deepened. I need to speak my truth, and I think my friends feel the same.  I try to speak with clarity, honesty, and love. Sometimes the clarity gets in the way a little bit, but really, who has time for dodging around? As long as you speak from a point of neutrality, grounded in love, not judgement, I think it ought to be just fine. But maybe I just think that because it’s what I think. Maybe, I am not being the friend another needs because I can only imagine friendship from my own point of being. This is beginning to seem like a spiraling rabbit hole, so I’ll stop. But I’ll continue to think about it, and wonder about it. Maybe even write about it again.

Have a love-ly week.

 

On Retreat

Today I’m remembering my retreat in Taos, New Mexico that ended a couple of weeks ago. For the second time I went to a retreat with Jen Louden and 24 other women. For several years I read about this annual event and thought about going, but it always seemed too much. I think in part, because I only knew Jen from her online presence, it was hard to imagine the spirit and power that this event involves. I couldn’t give myself permission to spend the time and the money to be there. There was always something else to do or pay for. Last year was my first time, and this year I understand it even better. While this is billed as a writing retreat, it is actually a writing and spirit summer camp for grownup women. Jen creates a ‘container of safety’ that enables and encourages us to listen to ourselves, to give ourselves what we need and helps us find ways of taking it with us when we go. For me, now, this is such sacred time.

Taos is a place of great beauty and great spiritual power. The air is a little thinner than I, a flatlander, am used to, so I move a little more deliberately, a little more carefully. Sometimes I have to stop and breathe. My asthmatic lungs demand it from time to time, so I listen and I sit down and breathe, slowly and fully. We stay in a historic facility where people like D.H.Lawrence wrote. He also painted the bathroom windows because he was embarrassed by their uncurtained openness. The buildings are old and simple, and you can’t help but tap into the energy of all those others who have come before us.

The windows that D.H. Lawrence painted

In the early mornings I dance. We all do. We gather in the meeting room and dance to the day’s loud and booming playlist, for about 45 minutes. Today’s playlist included MaMuse’s “Hallelujah,” and it took me home. Jen encourages us to pay attention to “what wants to be danced today.” When I know the music it becomes my way of singing into the day, which is so uplifting and soul settling. It’s a lovely way of paying attention to my own needs, and setting my intentions for the day.

The path to my place.

Sometimes we spend the morning hours in silence, just writing or honoring whatever else our hearts desire for a few hours. It might be writing, meditation, doing art or napping. But we do it alone, in silence. After lunch, we might attend a class about voice or our inner critic or writing memoir. Craft classes. They are optional but always worthwhile. Then yoga if we so desire, and dinner. The chefs are attuned to those with special needs and I was able to eat gluten and dairy free at nearly every meal. The days are packed with possibilities, and we are always, always encouraged to listen to what we truly want and then decide what to participate in.

My writing spot, looking out at Taos Mountain.

After two complete sessions I realize that, yes, this is a writing retreat, and we do a great deal of writing in a week’s time. But it is also a time of connection. With ourselves and with others. This is a time of listening to what my heart desires and giving permission to honor it. A time of renewal and restarting my life, and I can’t imagine not being there. The friendships that I have forged at this retreat are deep and spiritual, and we are able to say so much without saying much of anything at all. Our laughter is real and deep and the honesty and acceptance are so rich.

Ever since last year, when I sat outside and meditated in a rustic wooden chair, I have wanted such a chair for my home. On the next to the last day there, I found it and that night I figured out how to fit it into the back of my car for the long drive back to California. As I told the group, I would fit the chair first and everything else around it. If I had to leave my suitcase there, so be it. The chair represents so much to me that is solid and grounded. I look forward to sitting in it in my garden, and breathing in the smells of the cedars and all the plants that surround my yard. And yes, I know it is just a thing and I could do the same without it. I get that. But it’s delicious, all the same.

My meditation chair, that fit perfetly in the back of the Prius.

I have made a list for myself of how I will incorporate a sense of meditation and ritual into my daily routine, in a way that I can actually do. I understand that it won’t be the same as it in the rarified atmosphere of Taos, but it will be my way of of extending this peaceful and spiritual time and keeping it in my life.

The time for going home is past now. The final morning we had our parting ceremony, we took a group photo and then we all went our separate ways. But we will always have and treasure the connections we have made here. And we’ll be back next year for an update!

It’s always so hard to say goodbye to this place. That sky, the mountain…

On Disappointment

Here we are again. Yesterday I wrote about writer’s angst, and today I have angst about another thing: the new string lights we put up on the patio yesterday. I’ve wanted outside lights for the longest time. I have a wonderful back yard and patio, and at night when we have guests and we’re eating outside, once it gets dark it’s just dark out there. I’ve longed for nice lighting for evening soirees ever since we moved in. (No I don’t have soirees. I don’t even know what one is.  It just sounds good. I rarely even have anyone over for dinner.) This spring, Costco got those heavy duty string lights in again, and I jumped on them. I bought two boxes, or 96 feet of lights. They’re expensive but so cool. They have a really thick cord, and the bulbs kind of hang down from their own little cords. I’ve been putting off hanging them for a while now while I gathered the materials I’d need.

I watched a You Tube video by Build.com about how to hang them. Their method was so professional looking, something my dad would have done.  It involves eye bolts, quick click clamps and a homemade but professional looking cable, sort of like a bike cable that I’d have to  make to order so it’d fit round the tree. Coated with rubber stuff so it won’t hurt the tree. I got all the stuff, and yesterday was the day. Alex worked on it with me – he was up and down the ladder a million times, drilling pilot holes, putting in the eye bolts, all that. We finally began to actually hang the lights and discovered the clamp things were too big. So back to Lowe’s for smaller ones. Once again we began hanging the lights. This necessitated decisions about how much to let them swag. Do we hang them tight and straight, or let them swoop down a little? I had in mind the look of the Italian family dinners in an orchard, where the lights gently swoop down, swinging from the trees. Never mind that I have no such big family, and no orchard either. I have a patio. It’s not the same as an orchard.

Never mind that. Our lights were hung with a swoop. They go all along the patio cover, but starting not at the corner, which is hard for me to accept, around the side of the house, across the garage wall, up to a cedar tree and back to the patio cover. Where there is a two foot overlap. Think electrical wires in Bangkok.

Okay , it’s not this bad, but in my mind it might as well be. It’s like this:

 

This is really hard for me to be okay with, as corner-centric as I am.  But I swallow hard, and decide to accept it. We wait for it to be dark and finally I flip the switch, and the patio is flooded with light. I could read out there, no problem. It looks kind of stark, like now I need some exterior design like some potted trees or something. My daughter says it’s beautiful. Alex is thrilled. He just can’t get over it.   I’m proud of how carefully we hung these things, how cleanly they are installed.I love the tree swoop. It’s graceful, and has that orchard ambience. 

But I’m bugged by how big they are, the overlap at the end, the fact that they don’t start at the corner of the patio cover, and how (“overly?) bright they are. And it’s niggling at me. I wanted more perfection. No overlap, the whole patio cover strung. I’m not sure I like the swoop. I think maybe it looks hokey rather than just swoopy. I am conflicted. Are they too big? Too messy? Too noticeable for being there all the time? They might be okay at night, but they’re so noticeable in the daytime. I want to rehang them. I want to exchange them for smaller ones. I want to take out the swoop. I am conflicted.

I struggle so with change. I want a certain look and then am anxious when it turns out different than my image, and I judge myself. Not just the lights or whatever the project is, I judge myself.  I feel inadequate. I can’t quite measure up to my ideal, the result isn’t quite what I expected so I must be inadequate. Does this sound familiar? Sheesh. Get a life, you’re probably saying! Or get a bunch of friends and invite them over a lot so you can attach some happy memories to those lights.

Yeah, yeah. I get it. In the meantime, while I’m figuring out who to invite over and when and what to cook and on and on and don’t actually do it, the lights are niggling at me. Tempting me to take them down, return them and start over with some smaller ones. Some more manageable ones. Trouble is, chances are that I wouldn’t like them either. Hm. I did have a good time in Bangkok, so there’s that.

Incomparable

Sometimes I get stuck when I sit down to write. I think about the funny profundity of Anne Lamott, or the simple honesty of my friend Sarah Fragoso or the exquisitely, pointedly profound thoughts of Jen Louden and I am stopped in my tracks. I think about things that are deeply interesting and profound to me, and then I write about what I did in the month of April. What is in my garden and how my dog interacts with the neighbor. The deep thoughts just stay in there, unmentioned.  In my estimation I come up short every time. Or almost every time. I want to write profound things, naked and unashamed of my position on almost anything, yet that’s not what comes out. And I judge myself as deficient. What happens then? I don’t write. Anything.

You don’t have to say it. I KNOW this is in no way productive or useful or anything else. All I’m doing is not writing. I get it. I’m just saying it’s what happens when I compare myself with someone I admire. I think this process can be expanded to other areas of our lives. My life. If I compare my body size or shape with that of someone I think is beautiful or who is very fit and strong, I will come up short, every time. If I compare my home or my (filthy) car or anything at all, if I am comparing I will come up short. So why don’t I compare myself to someone fatter or who has a less cute house or a dirtier car? Because what is the point? I don’t want to be that. I want to be my best self, and so I compare myself to those that I look up to. As an example, or a path to excellence, maybe. Or maybe just a way to remind myself that I’m still not good enough.

As a child someone in my family joked that I was fat, as ‘big as a barn.’ This was probably said one time, during a moment of levity and no one thought anything else about it. Except me. That one phrase, “big as a barn” haunted me from then on, even through adulthood. And I wasn’t fat. Not at all, not until I was maybe in my fifties. I’m not really sure when the fat happened because I always believed I was. So I spent a lifetime comparing myself to others. Looking at people who were larger than I, and feeling relief. Looking at people who were smaller than I and feeling ashamed. And feeling immobilized the whole time, because where does one start to change a lifetime issue? Mostly one doesn’t. One just thinks about it. All the time, like I did. Like I still do, but not so much since I started doing something about it last August.

So back to the writing of non-profound things, I get that that’s okay. That once in a while a gem tumbles out onto the screen. I understand that I don’t have to apologize for what I write, that those who want to read it will and the rest won’t. No big deal. But the issue here is that I don’t want my self-deprecation to get in the way of me writing, because I need to write, and I grow clearer and fuller as a result of doing so.

I am pretty sure I’m not the only person who does this comparing thing. I think we have created a culture of comparison. If we didn’t find ourselves less than someone else, why would we buy the next latest (unnecessary but oh, so cool and expensive) thing? A bigger TV or faster computer or bigger house? If we are satisfied with ourselves, if we love ourselves as we are, accepting our faults as just part of who we are, as not even faults, we might not spend the money needed to keep our culture moving. So our insecurity is fostered, capitalized on and we keep spending, hoping always that the next thing we buy will be just the thing to make us feel okay about ourselves.

I think this is true. And I fall for it. Not buying stuff so much, but I compare myself with others and come up short. So I go watch TV rather than making art, or read a book rather than writing one. Or I eat something that is guaranteed to keep me falling short in the cute body comparisons. And life just ticks along.  I’d like to say I’m going to change this today, because obviously it’s not serving me, but it’s also been part of me for a long time. I can be aware of it and maybe change little pieces of it until maybe someday I notice that a shift has happened. I hope that happens, anyway, but in the meantime, I just have to own it and accept it. Love it as I learn to love the rest of myself.

Debriefing April

It’s the first of May. A memorable date for me, but I won’t address that quite yet. First, a debrief of the last month. During the month of March, I posted in this blog every single day. I loved doing it, the urgency of getting it done or fail the challenge.  l loved seeing what I’d find to write about each day and I loved knowing that people were reading and responding to what I’d written. That eased off this month. I did some journal work using Natalie Goldberg’s memoir book, but I only wrote a few posts. I plan to rectify that in May.

Exercise This month my exercise routine completely fell apart. I got sick in the second week of the month and a little cold rapidly became pneumonia. It has taken an inordinately long time to recover my strength. So, I will go back to the gym on Tuesday next. I feel like I’m beginning again from scratch, but I hope I’ll be surprised by how quickly I gain my strength back. So there’s that.

Garden My garden is beautiful now. The potted plants we positioned around in the beds were a stroke of genius. They are colorful and already established so don’t need a whole lot of water. They give a beautifu balance to the yard that I didn’t expect when they were all clustered together on the patio. I’m planning to do some more container gardening, as it’s an interesting challenge to me. The other day I saw a fig tree planted in a pot, so I’m thinking about doing that next. I’m also trying to figure out where to plant some Concord grapes.

My dog isn’t looking avidly at the plants. She’s waiting for a sound from behind the fence, where she has her own little “Home Improvement” friendship going on.

Books I managed to read several books this month, for some reason. I kind of lost interest in listerning to books on Audible because they tend to take my life over completely. So this month I read paper books. I read several YA books, including “A Time of Angels,” by Karen Hesse, “Along For the Ride,” by Sarah Dessen, “Fat Angie,” by E.E. Charlton-Trujillo. I think there may have been more, but I’ve forgotten what they were. I enjoyed them all a lot. There is something about a good YA book that really appeals to me. I’m thinking that the novel in progress that lies gasping for air on my laptop might best become a YA book. Because I think it already is and I just didn’t realize it.

School Or should I say “Testing.” For the past week we have been taking the Smarter Balanced tests in my classroom. We’re using the iPads which is a mixed pleasure. While they mostly work fine, and the plug-in keyboards are adequate, they are also problematic. They freeze, or don’t recognize the test codes sometimes. I’m sure I could troubleshoot it but in the heat of the moment I just trade out for another iPad and hope it’ll workThere’s a funny thing that happens at the onset of each testing session. The kids begin noisy, just talking. Then, as we get into the process by collecting phones, passing out ID numbers and logging in, the talk turns to a kind of desperation.” Ms. Jacobs, it doesn’t recognize the test session!” “Ms. Jacobs, approve me, PLEASE!”. In a few minutes someone will raise their hand to tell me “This thing froze! Look, (tap,tap,tap) Nothing!!” And a minute later, “Ms. Jacobs, what does this even mean???” I look forward to this being over and going back to  the usual routine. As for the test, I don’t want to risk censure by saying anything about it. But. It’s not designed for my students, is all I’ll say. On another note, the beginning English learners were practicing verbs this week. We all made rolly kids to put in their vocabulary notebooks. I get way more enjoyment from this project then they seem to, for some reason. Here are some of my rolly kids:

This is an idea I found on Pinterest, and I just love it. I think the original was done with emotions, not actions and I adapted it. Don’t you just love the little swim fins?

 
Fun What’s fun? I haven’t seen so much of that lately.  I just am too tired when I get home. Having said that, I’ll contradict myself.  Yesterday we had our Spring Festival and Open House at school. It was a command performance for us, three hours of it. Although I was a little ruffled at having to work such a long day, the event was really fun. We raise money for the Art Club  and the Parents club with this event. We had a variety of amazing food, games and student performances. I had the opportunity to hang out with some students I had many years ago, which is aways really fun for me. And then we went home, tired, but content.

Last weekend I attended a  “Wine and Paint” event which was given by a favorite artist of mine, Caitlin Schwerin. I went alone and made new friends there, which was fun. We all made approximately the same painting, and I just loved it. It really made me yearn to know how to paint. For reals. Here is my painting:

It’s all a work in progress. Every time!

Here I am with my little painting. Notice the empty wine glass? Surprise! I don’t even drink but I did have a lovely glass of wine while I indulged my painterly bent.

 
So, It’s May First, the 23rd anniversary of the shooting at Lindhurst, my intro to teaching. This year, for the first time, I have been able to recognize it and say a prayer for all those involved, and go on with my day. My immersion in the rut of painful recollection has subsided. I thank Lisa Guerke Weikel for the spirit work that helped pull me past that place.

This weekend I’m going to a garden tour (which no one wants to attend with me because they all think it sounds boring.) and on Sunday I’m taking my oldest grandchild on a shopping trip that she has planned. She loves to research, and according to her mother, she has it planned down to what stores we’ll visit, and in what order. Game on! I’m not a good shopper so help like this is a good thing, in my opinion.

Okay, then. That pretty much sums up April. I hope that May has dawned in a delicious way for you. Do you have anything you’re especially looking forward to this month? I’d love to hear about it!

Choose Happiness

Last weekend I spied this little vignette on the fence of the nursery, and it hit me like a revelation. “Choose Happiness?” Of course! Just make the choice, it’s all within my power. I just have to choose.  I was all about putting something like this on my fence, because if I”m reminded, I’ll probably always make the right choice. Or mostly, anyway.

But then this morning I started off really grouchy. I was mad at my son because he came home too late, or didn’t come home too late but didn’t come inside because his key didn’t work in the lock which I thought was bullshit, except I tried it and it really didn’t work. I was pretty annoyingly grouchy about that. Then I got an email from the furniture store that ordered all new cushions for my expensive new couch that looked terrible almost immediately after I got it, saying that the cushions had been in for a week but they’d been too busy to tell me. And now I have to pick them up on a weekday at the shipping place, before 4:30 P.M. and I don’t get to town before 5:00, so they might just as well be in Cincinnati for as much good as that’ll do me.

And then I thought, “Choose Happiness.” Right. Like just twist your heart and mind around that idea, and become happy. That wasn’t happening. Nope. I was too justified in my grouchiness, in the grievous wrongs that had (not really) been done to me. So I took a figurative step back and thought that maybe I have to do something other than just choose. Maybe I have to create an environment or do an action in which I can choose happiness. So I went out for a walk, and here’s what I found:

The bridge over the channel, all wet with puddles from the rain that has fallen in the last two days.

A big house that’s way too orange for its own good.

The path of the greenway that I didn’t realize existed in my neighborhood.

Some very odd and interesting plants that I’d never looked at up close.

After I walked for half an hour or so, I decided that even more persuasion was necessary, so I got in my car and went to meet some friends for early morning coffee.

I found this bit of deliciousness to further my search for happiness.

On my way home I stopped and bought donuts for my son and left them on the counter with a note of apology for my grumpy outburst. Even if his actions weren’t perfect, I didn’t have to be such a grouch about it. Like who did that help? Right, nobody. Then while I was out for coffee, the furniture store lady emailed me back and offered to have the sofa cushions picked up for me during the week, so I can get them next Saturday. That’ll work just fine. No problem there, either.  It all works out. It does.

So, in the end, I think I did choose happiness, just by choosing the actions that I know will lead me to that feeling. Walking, taking some photos, meeting friends are all happiness catalysts for me.  I’m so glad to recognize them so I can employ them at will. Because there will definitely come a time that I need to choose again, and this time I’ll know what that choosing entails.  What about you? Do you have happiness catalysts? What are they?

Lockdown Drill (solsc2015) 25/31

Mt.Shasta, our closest ‘sacred mountain.’ Because sometimes we need a little of that power.

Today we had a lockdown drill at our school. We knew it was coming, but not when. The last two have begun during morning break, when everyone was out on the playground. The students know just what to do. They run as fast as they can for whatever room is closest. They get on the floor, away from doors and windows and be very quiet until they are told otherwise. In the past years, these drills have been a source of a great deal of stress for me, but this time, apart from making sure to do everything right, I was without emotion through the whole thing.

Backtrack to May 1, 1992. I was a student teacher in our local high school when we had a school shooting, in the building in which I taught. I was trapped inside with my class of 25 students for seven hours. What happened that day carved a deep rut in my spirit, one which for many years held residues of fear that were easily excavated by seemingly insignificant happenings. When the sheriff came to talk to the staff about what had happened that day and he got it wrong because he was barely a kid then and he was just telling what he’d heard, I got up and left the room. One year I had to leave school early on May first because I couldn’t bear to be at school at the time it’d started. Lockdown drills left me trembling even twenty years later. Heaven help any student who dared joke about any aspect of it.

Today it was different, and I know why. Last summer I met a shaman, Lisa, a fellow writer at the retreat I attended.  We talked and as we became acquainted, she asked if I’d been in an accident or something, as she sensed something was amiss with me. I told her, “No, nothing I can think of.” And then, “Well, yeah, actually…” and I told her about the event at the high school. She immediately offered to help me do some work to clear that out of my system. She could tell that it was still affecting my life in some important ways. The work we did was profound. At the end of it she said that she thought things would be different for me, especially in regard to this detritus from the shooting.

And she was right. Today I very calmly and without any particular emotion, did what I had to during the drill, and later,  when the students asked, because another teacher told them I was there, I told them the story of that day. I had only told it a very few times in the past 23 years, but today I found I could do it.

I learned so much from Lisa that night.  Although I still don’t know how to understand some aspects of it, I think about the things she told me every day, still working through them. I’m so thankful to have this part of myself back. So. Thankful.