Cardinals and Snow

As I gazed at my Starbuck’s latte and pondered what I would say in the Christmas letter this year, I noticed a phrase printed on the side of the cup: “We invite you to LISTEN to your DESIRES and to RENEW your HOPE. To see the world not as it is, but as it COULD be. Go ahead. WISH. It’s what makes the holidays the HOLIDAYS.”

This contrasts with the Buddhist philosophy to neither hope nor fear, to let go of longings and be mindful of the joys available in the present moment. Can one let go properly (the lesson I keep working to learn over and over again) and yet retain hope and optimism? It seems that in order to renew hope one must begin by paying attention to the present moment and being mindful of all there is to be grateful for, here and now. And there is an optimism perhaps in Max Ehrmann’s phrase from Desiderata: “no doubt life is unfolding as it should.”

If a therapist were consulted, she might say that the first part of the Starbuck’s exhortation, the part about listening to one’s desires, is a very good plan, especially for those who have a tendency to try to make sure everybody else has the oxygen mask in place during the plane emergency and end up almost passing out from oxygen deprivation themselves.

A meditation on one’s own desires seems selfish and not in keeping with the holiday season—unless perhaps you have lost hope and you need to find a way back to the vision in the shining child’s eyes, seeing a Christmas morning where all wishes come true. For the Christmas book this year, my book club chose “A Redbird Christmas” by Fanny Flagg (also the author of “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café”). This is an unabashed fairy tale in which good people and a young child hope when it seems that all hope is lost, and end up with a Christmas miracle beyond their wildest imaginings involving redbirds and snow in the Deep South.

I have always associated red cardinals against a snowy background with Christmastime. I remember when I was around seven my mother wrapped a package especially for me and taped a red cardinal to it, carefully cut out from an old Christmas card. I don’t remember what was in the package, but I remember the love and thoughtfulness represented by the cardinal decoration. I also remember watching all the birds, including the cardinals, flock to feast on the sunflower seeds my Dad placed out on the upper deck bird feeder during the coldest, snowiest days of winter at our Sugar Lane house back in Southern Indiana. Those birds had reason to hope each year and also seized any opportunities in the present as well. So I will have my cake and eat it too, combining hope with mindfulness of the present. No doubt events are unfolding as they should.

So I wish that everybody who reads this has a great holiday. May all of you take a deep breath, be present, and renew your hope in the coming New Year.

Persimmon Pudding

When I was a little girl back in Indiana we always went to Grandmother’s old brick house on Dunn Street in Bloomington for Thanksgiving Dinner. The table would be set beautifully, with polished silver candlesticks and flatware, and a real lace tablecloth. We feasted on roast turkey, rich dark brown gravy, dressing, mashed and sweet potatoes, green beans simmered with bacon, and Grandmother’s special, tart, not-for-everybody cranberry and orange relish. For at least one dessert we would always have persimmon pudding with whipped cream on top. The persimmons were gathered from beneath persimmon trees on a nearby property my grandparents called “the farm.” I knew nothing of how such a dinner was orchestrated and set upon the table with exactly the right timing—Grandmother made it look very easy. I might be asked to bring some of the dishes to the table or fill the water glasses.

After Grandmother was gone, my mother made the Thanksgiving dinner each year at our house on Sugar Lane. I helped a lot more at this point so I could start to see how bringing such a feast to the dinner table was like an air traffic controller managing the simultaneous landing of several Boeing 777’s at the same airport—a calm demeanor and careful planning were both essential. My Mom also made it look easy but I began to understand what it took, and helped as much as possible with the relish plate containing the olives, celery and carrot sticks, and the traditional green beans simmered with bacon. But my father was always the one to make the persimmon pudding. He had planted persimmon trees many years before up in his vast garden, using seeds obtained from the farm—and each year he would harvest the persimmons that had fallen to the ground and were starting to soften, peel them and mash them into a rich orange pulp. With the precise care and intense breathing he applied to most important tasks he would mix and bake the persimmon pudding. I began to see that this was homage to his mother perhaps, although we never talked about it.

Later, I moved far away to Colorado and began to have Thanksgiving dinners of my own, learning to overcome the momentary panic when confronting a large turkey ready to be stuffed, calling my mother for advice where necessary.

Me on the phone: Mom—there are icicles inside the turkey!!
Mom: Yeah, there always are—just knock ‘em aside and stuff the old bird.

My father would painstakingly ship me enough frozen persimmon pulp for one batch of persimmon pudding, which due to his master skills at packaging and shipping would arrive in perfect time and condition for me to make the dessert for my Colorado Thanksgivings.

Dad is gone now, but persimmons can be found around this time of year in the produce department of most grocery stores.  And so this holiday I give thanks for these memories and I pay homage to those who came before me as I slowly and lovingly mix the ingredients for today’s persimmon pudding we will have with our family feast to come in a few hours. M is in charge of most of the cooking, since he is the master cook in the family, but I do the pudding, and the traditional green beans simmered with bacon.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. May each person reading this make and hold dear all the beautiful memories of your own families.

Seasons

M and I walk north from Pearl on 13th and make our way to the North Boulder Community Gardens where piles of mulch and bales of straw announce the approach of winter. I notice for the first time a red stone bench with two trees planted in the half-circle. Someone has placed a few wicker chairs with comfortable backs in the half-circle as well, and the little park looks south over the gardens toward the Flatirons. The chair back feels warm from the sun as I settle into it and gaze at the view; I’m grateful for a momentary sense of inner peace. The stone bench has five separate sections with inscriptions. It is a dedication to Thomas Clark, “A Man for All Seasons,” it says. In the center section is carved:

Thomas Clark - A Man for All Seasons
Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven.”

I think that Thomas Clark contributed much to the Community Gardens and has been remembered in this way; I could do worse than to be remembered as a "woman for all seasons."  Two sections on either side of this are carved with phrases representing each season, and so we find:

Spring – Joyful Renewal
Summer – Generous Abundance
Fall – Passionate Celebration
Winter – Peaceful Reflection

M and I agree that on this November day we would seem to be somewhere between celebration and reflection. It is a beautiful spot, and I tell him if I go first, he should meet me here in spirit, and I would do the same for him. He agrees to this with mild amusement, but later comments with typical irreverence that it is more likely his spirit would come back in a Terre Haute whorehouse.  Despite getting a pretty good night’s sleep, he is tired today he tells me, but has been able to write again just a little this week.

Knowing as I do how much seasons can affect moods, it's comforting to have these positive phrases set in stone to describe Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter--almost like a meditational theme for each. I’ve always loved climates with clearly defined seasons; they can be relied upon to change just when you’re most ready for a new perspective.

Wild Things

So I know you’re all asking yourselves, “Should I take my grownup to see ‘Where the Wild Things Are’?” I know you’re thinking, “My grownup enjoyed the book—we read it together often enough—but will the film version of the Maurice Sendak classic really be suitable for grownups?”

Spike Jonze’s back story on Max’s wildness got to me. Max is a lonely kid with a good but distracted mother, an older sister who breaks Max’s heart to be with her friends, and a father who’s left the family behind. This is a kid with overwhelming energy and emotions, but also a kid with great heart and a need for love and boundaries. After a particularly beastly scene with this mother, Max in his wolf suit sails off to a distant land where the wild things are and discovers several huge monsters, each with an oddly civilized name like Carroll, Douglas, Ira and Judy. Each wild thing plays out an emotion (feelings of anger, abandonment, alienation, shyness, regret, resentment, love, aggression) and they interact in all the ways a family does—meaning that they have great power to work together, help each other, and of course hurt and destroy each other as well.

Max convinces the wild things that he has special powers that make him uniquely suited to be their king, and they build a fantastic fort together.  The wild things are all parts of Max himself, as well as Max’s family, in a kind of Jungian fantasy. Where the wild things are, a mother’s love can literally swallow a boy whole to protect him and only reluctantly regurgitate him up again when the danger is past and he complains that he’s having trouble breathing.

The wild rumpus is great fun, but over time things become complicated as they will when various personalities and needs interact. It is harder to be king than Max had first imagined (after all, every prior king has eventually been eaten up by the wild things), aggressive war games end up causing pain, and in the end he realizes what he really needs and sails back home to have a late supper with his mother, who’s very glad to see him.

Ultimately this is a movie about almost everything that matters, so I do recommend it for discerning grownups. Would I say it is too dark or scary for kids? Maurice Sendak explains how he would answer this question in typically wild fashion: "I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate ... If they can't handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it's not a question that can be answered."

All righty then.

Clouds

One of the latest trends in high tech is “Cloud computing”—the idea that software, hardware and services are all available from a ubiquitous Internet "cloud" and companies or individuals can use them as they would utilities like electricity or water, paying only for what they need. All this without having to worry about buying the hardware and software, maintaining it, applying patches, worrying about whether it will continue to have the needed capacity, and so on. Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing (Amazon EC2) is one example.

Of course, all your data is also up there in the cloud somewhere, so security is a top priority, and there’s always the worry that somehow another cloud user or somebody outside the cloud will be able to get access to your valuable information--hackers don’t go away.

But this particular development looks like it might end up changing the whole landscape for software and hardware companies in the same way the Internet has done and as such it has lots of people in the industry pondering it with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Like any world-changing technology it has its pros and cons. Joni Mitchell had some wise words to say about clouds in a song she wrote back in 1969 and as I study the complexities of Cloud architectures, I hear her words:

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feathered canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way…

Oh yes, no worries, a thing of beauty, everything taken care of by the ice cream castle, I mean cloud provider, and you pay for only what you need and use. You can truly access your data anywhere, anytime, from any device.

But now they only block the sun.

They rain and snow on everyone.

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way…

It’s a game changer for companies, IT departments, end users – all trying to figure out how to manage their huge quantities of data and provide it anywhereanyhow – but keep it safe and secure at the same time. Like any game changer it can make you a little queasy--what will it all mean and how will it all unfold? Get out your crystal ball and think fast.

On this whirling planet change is constant, and there are always ups and downs. The new new thing can be a wave you ride or one that sucks you under.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It’s cloud illusions I recall

I really don’t know clouds at all.

As usual I'm faking it til I make it--swimming as fast as I can to understand both sides—NOW

Let It Be

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me.
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.                  Paul McCartney

Last Sunday morning at 10:20 I found myself standing very alone on the corner of Pearl and 13th, filled with despair and grief about the illness of someone close to me. And I remembered seeing that there was a 10:30 am service at the First United Methodist Church a block away. I made it there with time to spare. The silver-haired gentleman greeting people at the door said, not unkindly, “Are you coming in?” “Yes, I am,” said I, and I took the program he handed me and walked on in with my backpack, jeans and tennis shoes, telling myself that God wouldn’t care, that God would be happy to see me in a Methodist church again for the first time in 42 years.

I found an empty pew near the front and sat in the middle right behind the familiar wooden rack holding the Methodist hymnal and a Bible. The program stated that all were welcome here regardless of gender, race, class, age, ability, religious affiliation or sexual orientation. One whole wall to the left emitted light through multicolored glass squares, and the church seemed very spacious and open.

Just as the service started a man of perhaps 33 slipped quietly into the same pew on my left, but at a respectful distance. He was also wearing jeans I noticed with mild relief, and wore a silver ring in his right ear. The service proceeded much as a remembered from long ago, the affirmations, the choir leading obscure hymns (I wanted to call out “Rock of Ages!” “Just a Closer Walk with Thee!” but I didn’t think they were taking requests), the prayers for those in the hospital or suffering a loss. The sermon was on the topic of seeing clearly, as blind men did after Jesus healed them, and truly recognizing that all we possess is really God’s, not ours (and despite these difficult times have you considered increasing your tithe lately).

As I murmured The Lord’s Prayer near the end along with the congregation, a tear rolled down my cheek and clung with some tenacity to my jaw until I finally brushed it away.

Toward the end of the service after a brief explanation that especially in this flu season it was okay not to shake hands, the “Pass the Peace” ritual occurred in which people turned to greet their neighbors. The man with the ring in his ear gazed at me with warm brown eyes, told me he was a regular attendee and had grown up in Boulder, that the ministers were great and the church was accepting of all who came and that he hoped I would find what I was seeking there.

When I was young my Dad and I went to the old limestone Methodist Church on First Street in Ellettsville some Sundays, the morning light streaming in through the old fashioned stained glass windows. For awhile I sang in the church choir. I never really considered myself a believer nor did he—but we sat together in the dark old pews sharing a hymnal, and I can still hear his deep voice singing the bass harmonies next to me.

At the end of the service everyone turned around in their seats and gazed up at a balcony where a bell choir played another hymn, the children from Sunday school standing by. And as I left the church that morning I felt a little closer to God and just a little more hopeful that no doubt events were unfolding as they should.

Letter to Falcon

Dear Falcon (what a cool name),

For some reason I had the rare urge at work on Thursday morning to check the 9news.com website, and so I caught the breaking story about a 6-year-old boy on board an experimental aircraft drifting higher and higher into the air and away from his family’s Fort Collins home, with news and military helicopters in hot pursuit.

I kept an eye on the story throughout the next several hours, hoping desperately that you were okay and safe, and fearing the worst when I heard the news that the craft had landed, with no sign of you inside or nearby. Later in the day we all learned that you were alive and well and had been hiding in the garage attic of your house for the previous five hours, fearing your father’s anger about the escape of the untethered silver balloon.

Now we have what we call a media frenzy and you’re getting your “fifteen minutes of fame.” Some people are very angry with you and your family.

And Falcon, let me tell you right now that despite whatever crazy complications may end up being revealed about you and your family (and all families are complicated, by the way), my main response on hearing the truth continues to be great happiness and relief that you are safe and sound.

Questions are being raised—was this whole thing a hoax? Did your Mom and Dad talk you into it? I heard your father’s voice when he said, “he scared the heck out of us,” and I don’t think so. I think you were scared and you hid.

The whole thing made me remember a story from my own childhood when I was about your age. My Dad was well known in our small Indiana town for his eccentric hobbies, one of which was kite making. He handmade beautiful multi-colored box kites from tissue paper and balsa wood, and entered them in contests. Sometimes he also made gigantic kites, taller than he was. When he flew these very large kites they had quite a strong pull, and even a grown man had trouble hanging onto them sometimes. Dad would fly the kites for many days at a time and sometimes he even attached a small light before sending one up, and the kite would emit a mysterious, UFO-like glow after dark.

One windy day some neighborhood kids and I were curious, playing around the way kids do, testing the cord strength of the latest large kite which had been up in the air a record number of days. We were pulling on the line just a little and then letting it go to hear a certain very satisfactory twanging sound. But then, right before my horrified eyes, the nylon tether broke, and the kite fluttered loosely to the earth.

I knew my Dad would be very angry when he found out—so I climbed a ladder in the garage and hid up in the attic for a few hours. Unlike your own experience, no one really noticed my absence at all (back then kids were a lot less supervised than they are nowadays). Later, when my Dad came home and I got hungry for dinner I had to climb back down the ladder, get yelled at and face the music. And it’s hard to get yelled at by your Dad—anger and disappointment can be scary. Even when he was yelling, though, I pretty much knew my Dad loved me very much, and I’m hoping that’s true in your case too. Somehow, like the son of a guy from mythology called Icarus, you flew a little too close to the hot sun, the waxed wings your Dad made for you melted, and you fell to the earth—all from your dark little hiding place in the attic.

But this too shall pass, Falcon. Hang in there.

I Dwell In Possibility

I stood in my backyard this morning and soaked up the Colorado sunshine, seeking a remedy for my continuing melancholy. Focusing on the present is a cure, as is Emily Dickinson’s suggestion: “Dwell in Possibility” per the black magnet with white script posted on the side of our refrigerator. Is the idea of dwelling in possibility in conflict with the idea of focusing on the present? Some say that the phrase reflects Emily’s reclusiveness and isolation; she lived her life isolated in her imagination, and had little contact with real people and situations. But I’ve always preferred to interpret it ultimately as an expression of the same kind of hopefulness and optimism expressed by Helen Keller: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

The world always offers new possibilities for love, life, learning – we have to be open-minded enough to seize them.

On our walk this morning M shared the shocking news that “carpe diem” does not mean “seize the day” at all in strict Latin translation, but instead means “pluck the day,” as in plucking a flower.  Who knew? But now that I know the truth, it seems that “pluck,” as in “enjoy, make use of,” is perhaps better than “seize,” which has a rather militaristic, possessive, muscling-others-out-of-the-way ring to it.

Today I feel a weariness and lingering sense of lost purpose after a week-long business trip to the Emerald City in the Valley of Silicon looking for heart, brains, courage and a path homeward. My next magical trick is to focus on the present, and pluck the day.

Little Old Lady Ninja

The blues come on little rat feet…apologies to Carl Sandburg. I have been pondering new ways to avoid the Sunday night blues after a particularly bad bout with the Sunday night blues last weekend.

The other night I was vegetating on the couch with my feet up reading junk fiction after a long day fighting dragons and tilting against windmills at work.  I was wearing my black satin pajamas, and as I rose smoothly (hah!) to get myself a cup of tea my husband remarked that I looked like a “little old lady ninja” in those black pjs.

Okay, I’ll take that. My goal as I get older is to remain strong in body and spirit, at the ready to fight the demons and dragons found mainly in my own imaginings. Better this than a feeble old lady in a flannel nightgown.

The Sunday night blues is one of my demons. Every Monday morning at work when I ask people how their weekends went they say “Great—but too short.” (I am excepting of course those who have worked all weekend).

I’m pretty sure many people of all stripes fight the Sunday night blues. There are many blogs and articles with tips on how to beat them, from distracting oneself with non-stop activity, to planning some special treat for Monday morning, to meditation, to sunshine and exercise. As a matter of fact, it’s a gorgeous, sunny, September Sunday here in Boulder. Revel in it, I say! The ultimate trick I have is pure determination—to just be hell bent on wringing every last drop of joy out of each moment, Sunday or no. So - fight back against the Sunday blues like a little old lady ninja—and if it helps, imagine me: black-clad, feet planted, hands raised, staring down the demon blues in mock ferocity.

Synecdoche

I saw Charlie Kaufman’s film “Synecdoche, New York” last night – a complex, image-rich movie about a playwright in a severe mid-life crisis, trying to find truth in his work and relationships. The term “synecdoche” is interesting: it is a type of metaphor in which either part of something is used to refer to the whole thing, or a general class of thing is used to refer to a part or a sub-class of the whole. One example of synecdoche is the usage of a single characteristic to distinguish a fictional character—e.g. calling a character “Bright Eyes” or “Brown Shoes” – usually done when the observer doesn’t know or care what the name of the other character is. Other examples might be “suit” for a businessman, or worse “empty suit” for an incompetent businessman, or “gray hair” for an older person. I remember once at work recently talking to a large financial customer about their mainframe applications and requirements and asking who in their company could tell me more about their current needs. “You mean the gray hairs?” responded the brash young New Yorker. Ah well.

Another example is Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

Anyhow, as I apply this to the film, the main character Caden Cotard (played by the gifted Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a playwright who has had some level of success in regional theater in Schenectady, NY (get it? Schenectady/Synecdoche). He is suffering from a mid-life crisis in which everything seems to be falling apart including his own body and his relationships with his wife and daughter. By the way, Cotard’s Syndrome is a mental illness in which a person has the delusion that he is already dead. Although his wife takes their daughter and leaves him, Caden ends up winning a monetary award that lets him work on his masterpiece play. As the film progresses there are more and more dream-like sequences—he hires actors for his new play, but then seems to be hiring actors to play the roles of important people in his real life. Eventually he finds an actor to play his own role, and with greater insight than he himself seems to have.

The love of Caden’s life is Hazel, who lives in a house that is always smoke-filled and burning. Even when we see her purchase the house she thinks aloud with the realtor about whether she will end up dying in the fire—strolling contemplatively from room to room as flames flicker through a window or in a corner.

Caden’s four-year-old daughter Olive, who he loves dearly, remains four in his mind long after his wife and her lesbian lover have spirited her off to Germany and she has grown up to be a tattooed erotic dancer whose flower tattoos are dying as she does and who has, inexplicably, a German accent. In the end, each character including Caden himself is defined by a particular characteristic (here’s one of many cases where synecdoches seem to come in) but at the same time we see how limiting and artificial those definitions are, and that in reality each character has layers and depths that we can only begin to understand. A few words in shorthand from the director to tell the actors who they are or how to be seem more and more inadequate.

I think Caden in his mid-life crisis feels trapped by these limitations he has applied to himself and others around him. In the end of the movie when he’s much older as is Hazel, there is a beautiful, golden scene in which they are briefly able to move beyond these limitations and their love shines through. But of course life is short and there is a price to pay for choosing to live in a smoke-filled house afire, or loving someone who does. They only grasp what is truly important and real at the last possible moment.

Eventually, Caden takes on the role of his ex-wife’s cleaning lady Ellen, and the actress who was playing this role becomes the director, guiding his actions through a small earpiece he’s been provided. The last instruction he gets is simply, “Die.”

Let me make it clear that these observations only touch the surface of what is going on in this very complex film – it is definitely worth seeing and will generate some good conversation.

Smoking

“Mad Men,” a TV show about a male-dominated Madison Avenue advertising firm in the early 60’s, is true to the era with many of the characters perpetually smoking—in the office, in bed after sex, in restaurants. In modern day this pervasiveness of cigarettes is jarring. But back then it was totally acceptable to smoke pretty much anywhere: in the car, in elevators, in small conference rooms or offices at work, after dinner with your children, on airplanes, even in hospital waiting rooms.

As kids we used to suffer riding in the smoky family station wagon in winter with the windows cracked just a little to “let out the smoke.” Sparks would fly out the front side windows and into the back side windows and our eyes.  My sisters both ended up in the hospital more than once with pneumonia, heart ailments and other complications that were surely exacerbated by secondhand smoke. My parents and practically every other adult we knew in the 50’s and 60’s didn’t know any better. They smoked all their lives. During World War II my Dad, in his early 20’s, smoked to help calm his nerves and garner some measure of comfort in a place where one of his jobs was defusing landmines. After dinner each evening my parents sat out back smoking and talking while the kids did the dishes, the orange glow of their cigarettes all you saw in the darkness on the back porch. It was so much a part of them that today with both of them gone now for many years, the smell of cigarette smoke, while onerous, also makes me remember and miss them.

But I also remember my mother often saying that smoking was “a nasty habit,” one she wished she had never started; she was talked into trying it by her best friend Nell when they were in their early teens, and it hooked her immediately. Right after her retirement Mom found out she had emphysema and quit smoking; the next 7 years before her death she suffered a great deal, struggling more and more for each breath she took, puffing medications from a machine to help clear her bronchial tubes, volunteering her time to educate others on how to quit smoking and why they should. She did not complain, and attributed all her suffering to the terrible mistake of taking that first puff.

My father never did give it up—the addiction was too strong—even though the doctor told him repeatedly it was killing him and that smoking around my mother, whom he loved dearly, was also killing her. He once told me after a failed attempt to quit that resulted in a serious depression that quitting was like losing his best friend.

In February 2001, as Dad sat outside in a wheelchair on the hospital loading dock while we waited for the ambulance to come and take him to the nursing home where he died a few days later, he had a single request: would I give him a smoke. Awkwardly (since I never in my life even touched a cigarette, my mother having taught me well), I pulled a Camel out of the pack, managed to light it, and handed it over so he could take a few puffs. His look of pure relief and gratitude made me feel like we were sharing a moment’s respite in some cold Belgian foxhole in the winter of ‘45, and perhaps in one part of his mind we were.

If All Else Fails, At Least I Can Serve As a Horrible Example

My father worked at the RCA plant in Bloomington, Indiana for many years where they built television sets for a grateful nation. I am still not quite sure what my Dad did there, but it had something to do with parts inventory and quality control. When I was in my early teens he would sit at our dining room table poring over computer printouts listing part numbers, cross-checking them against other lists he had neatly hand-printed on separate sheets of paper. I would sometimes help him with this cross-checking task, and he taught me how to read out the part numbers in just the right way to make his part of the job easier. After a hard night’s work we would turn to Scrabble to take our minds off anxieties about the day to come.

Although he rarely showed it directly, he was frustrated by his work, and often felt that managers above him were not listening, or not intelligent enough to understand his ideas about how to proactively prevent one of the most catastrophic things that can happen on a moving electronics assembly line—unexpectedly running out of a part. Although computers were clearly used in this operation, it seems somehow that they weren’t used effectively, and parts shortages or shipments of poor quality unusable parts happened frequently enough to cause a good degree of heartburn. It was only later when over a couple of summers I actually worked the assembly lines to earn money for college that I got a fuller sense of the direct impact of parts outages on operations (as well as a clear object lesson in why a college education was essential if I didn't want to continue in a similar line of work). Imagine Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory when the line goes out of control and substitute circuit boards and silvery hot solder baths.

I think my Dad suffered from the same curse I suffer from at work today, likely an inherited trait—strong fear of inadequacy and failure. One of his coping techniques was to utter the following ironic mantra: “If all else fails, at least I can serve as a horrible example.” He actually spoke these words sardonically to his management at times--using the horrible example phrase when all other methods of selling his ideas had failed. In so doing he revealed himself as far more of a rebel than I ever had the guts to be. The searing need to bring high value to your work every day can overwhelm to the point where no accomplishment is ever good enough. Like any other overpowering need, it can be crippling. Demanding perfection from yourself can set you up for constant failure in your own mind.

But hell—at the end of the day if all else fails, at least I can serve as a horrible example.

Pretty Little Feet

Each summer when we were young, my Mom’s mother would fly out from California for a few weeks to visit. We got to go to the airport (which had a very exciting ride called an “escalator”) to pick her up. To make room in the tiny Ellettsville house, my brother would move out of his room into the garage to sleep, the garage door rolled open to the summer air. I slept out there also to keep him company, and my mother made things cozy with an old oval rag rug, reading lamps, and late night snacks.

Granny, whose first name was the very old fashioned Hazel, would arrive with her small suitcase--a sturdy woman with silver-gray hair who without fail enjoyed a daily solitary morning walk through the neighborhood in her sensible size 9 shoes. She was a widow; my Grandpa had died when I was only two. Granny never raised her voice to us, and yet somehow even an expression of mild disappoint from her would bring us to despair, so we were always on our best behavior for her visits. If we behaved particularly well, we could expect to be treated to a Chinese restaurant dinner in Bloomington with fortune cookies and sherbert for dessert.

Once when I was sitting next to Granny on the couch with my bare feet propped up on a chair in front of me, she glanced down and said, “You have such pretty little feet,” a compliment that made me inexplicably happy. And despite the fact that I cannot claim any credit for the feet I was born with and the more prominent fact that my feet are less than extraordinary, I have never forgotten this positive comment. Forty-six years later as I look down at my enameled toes and lightly tanned feet each summer her words come back to me and give me a small measure of happiness—a great lesson in how much influence a single kindness can have on a child throughout his or her life.

Firefighter

In the Indiana summer of 1963, I’m almost ten and my brother Paul is eight. The babysitter Gloria watches TV in the living room as usual, and in the backyard the neighborhood boys find creative new ways to kill the giant spotted gray slugs that emerge on the back porch after each summer rain. Everybody knows that pouring salt on them makes them melt like the Wicked Witch after Dorothy tosses water on her; but what about the Witch’s Scarecrow tactic—fire? The bigger boys have matches, and there’s plenty of lawnmower gasoline.

The next thing we know my brother is rolling around on the ground, one denim pant leg on fire, screaming. I have wished many times I knew all the tricks I know now about treating burns, but back then we had only Gloria, a frightened thirteen year old who won’t call our parents because she doesn’t want to piss them off, and who thinks maybe butter will help. My brother lies on the couch in agony, with giant blisters three and four inches long rising on his leg. Eventually, my parents arrive home and take him to the hospital.

My brother was a frequent flyer in the ER. He had more energy than other kids. He could never sit still in school, could never do what he was told, mercilessly teased my younger sisters with taunts, hands wiggling in their faces, and more. He had a lot of trouble sleeping. He liked to play with knives and fire. My father said he “only learned things the hard way.”
He was bipolar—and in 1963 nobody in our circles knew much about that, or about therapy or lithium. So there were many trips to the ER, and when he got older there were trips of another kind, as he sampled every drug he could get his hands on, perhaps unconsciously seeking some relief or control for his wild energy.

He never teased me. My fate instead was to be the responsible firstborn, trying and failing to keep the younger sisters safe from him, trying to keep him safe from himself, flushing the acid he got in high school down the toilet, talking him down, picking him up, helping him out, loving him nevertheless, appreciating the good things—his wit, his music. I fought the fires the best I could, and there was a lot I didn’t know then that I know now.

Suicide attempts, pharmacy scams to get prescription drugs, prison assault, drama, insanity followed over the years—fires galore. There came a day when I began to truly understand that some fires burn so fiercely that the best firefighter is powerless to contain them. A few months later, shortly after he turned fifty, my brother moved into a lonely little apartment he was provided when his name came up on the waiting list after various agencies finally acknowledged he was too sick to support himself. He adopted a stray cat. He had many visitors, but few friends. One Saturday night he sat down in a blue armchair he had found for himself that was a lot like the blue chair I used to have in my living room years ago—and he shot up enough methadone to stop his heart forever.

It was only then that his pain and my firefighting on his behalf ceased.

Four

As I sit in the coffee shop a large, multi-generational and multi-ethnic family arrives and chaotically settles itself onto the outside patio. The family is mostly white but there is an Asian girl of about 10 with long black hair and thick glasses, and a beautiful Afro-American girl of about four with warm brown skin and bright eyes. She and her white sister about the same age hold hands as they find their seats; they are utterly adorable. I admire this family for giving these children a home and being open to diversity; they seem like a family worth knowing. All the children seem to get lots of hugs and attention.

The four year old is picked up by the older sister and held briefly, and I’m reminded of my sister Nell, seven years younger than I am. When she was that age, whenever she was asked any question she always responded by holding up four fingers and saying, “Four,” her age. So for quite awhile we all called her “Four.” She was the youngest of four children in the family, very cute with a pixie haircut and big brown eyes. She loved to ride piggy back and I would often carry her long distances on my back.

Four is a magical age. When Nell was four and I was eleven we were still living on Dewey Drive in Ellettsville and hadn’t yet moved to Sugar Lane. The three girls in the family shared a single bedroom, and there was only one bathroom in the little house.

In summer bands of kids freely roamed the little town with less to fear from strangers back then. We spent a large part of one summer digging deep holes under the gigantic sycamore in the back yard, and even dug recesses into their walls for little fireplaces, wisps of smoke rising from their separate earthen chimneys. Summer rains were bathwater warm. The water mixed with soil to form a rich brown soup that a child could convince herself was chocolate. Mud pies and thick concoctions of chocolate pudding and cake batter were poured from one container into another and baked in the sun.

The men in the neighborhood pooled their money and built a simple cement block swimming pool a few blocks away called the Turtleback Swim Club, and on many a hot summer evening my father could be persuaded to take us night swimming, the underwater pool lights shining mysteriously from the water’s depths. On cooler nights we would cling to the edge in the water near the lights for the small amount of heat they emitted. Back then, sometimes the chemicals weren’t right in the pool, but we swam in it anyway despite coffee colored water that turned our blonde hair a slightly green tinge. A four-year old could ride on her father’s shoulders and be tossed high into the air—could also pretend to be terrified at the bullet form of the father swimming swiftly underwater, grabbing her to toss her again high into the air or side with her in a splashing battle with the big boys.

Those summers, the creek nearby hosted minnows and crawdads which to their misfortune were sometimes captured and made into pets for awhile. A four year old was sometimes sent out with iced tea for the gardening father and rewarded with a taste of a lightly salted, sun-warmed tomato or green pepper.

Those were some of the good parts of being four. But don’t be fooled; there were terrors as well—a menacing older brother of ten who could spin out of control and other big boys rumored to kill baby birds and commit other acts of cruelty. The truth was, even then the world could be a complicated and scary place and nothing was quite what it seemed.

M

Each year the entry on my calendar says simply “M.” This morning I go to the hospital and change into one of the thin pink (they are always pink) gowns, place my clothes in the locker (I always try to get #7 but it is never free) and wear the key on its stretch band around my wrist. I sit in the waiting room filling out a form on a clipboard. Next to me this year is a very old lady with a lovely, well-lined face and snowy white hair, in a pink gown much like mine. We commiserate on the meager two-snap closing in the front of the gown, and then she blinks in dismay through thick glasses at her own clipboard.

“They want me to fill this out and I can’t see,” says she. “My daughter usually helps me, but she left for Alaska this morning.”

I don’t want to presume, but I want to help if I can. “I could help you if you like,” I say.

“Would you?” She seems genuinely relieved, so I scoot over to the chair next to hers and we work together on the form. I learn that her name is Marilyn. She was born in 1918 and is 91 years old.

She has had two different kinds of cancer and two different operations for it, one for each breast. “What bad luck,” I say, “But you sure are a survivor!” She smiles gamely.

She tells me she is very glad her daughter lives nearby and can’t imagine how it would be to not have family close at hand. She is wonderful, and positive, and still quite spry. I feel a surge of grief for my own mother, gone for 11 years now.

“See you later, and good luck,” I say when they call me in for the strange imaging process that involves mashing my breasts into various painful configurations.

I ask the technician how this test is done for women who have had double mastectomies and remark on how positive the woman waiting outside seems to be. “Oh, she probably had lumpectomies and we can still do tests in those cases. Yes, it sounds like she hasn’t allowed breast cancer to define her. For some women, it ends up defining them forever. For others, it defines them for a short while of course, but then they live through the experience with grace and strength. Seeing that happen is one of the best parts of my job.”

So far each year, despite a few false alarms, the news has been positive. Whatever comes, I hope for grace and strength.

Art Fair on 29th Street

We stroll through another Art Fair at 29th Street, this one with an unusual number of creative, lively, colorful sculptures. And yet you wonder where you would actually place these creations in your small Martin Acres home: Joan of Art's large bronze Humpty Dumpties in various moods and disguises, designed to sit on some designated ledge. Humpty’s various personalities on display. One dyspeptic Humpty with unhappy bags under his eyes smokes a bronze cigarette and holds a bronze martini glass. Another smiling Humpty shrug with palms turned upwards in French c’est la vie fashion. A bronze Buddhist Humpty meditates cross-legged. Even the tiniest bronze Humpties are $90 it turns out, much to Mark’s disgust.

“How much would you pay then, for a small clever bronze Humpty?” I query.

“Nothing,” says he, although he has previously admired them.

“Not much of a supporter of fine art, apparently,” say I.

“Fine art?” he replies darkly.

Jin Powell's booth displays metallic sculptures of lithe figures dancing forward into a strong headwind, wearing colorful strips and drapes of clothing that flow gracefully behind them. Many are female; their uplifted breasts proudly lead the way as they plunge gamely through gale-force air currents, thin wisps of blue/green/purple orange fabric flowing gracefully behind them. Beautiful. Inspiring even, to me anyway. But where to place such art? On the back of the white porcelain toilet allowing tasteful reflection in the bathroom mirror? On the mantel next to the dyspeptic Humpty and the potted plant? Perched on the edge of the outdoor spa to keep us company as we soak?

And what of the hug delicate glass bowls in randomly fluted shapes and shades of orange, purple and blue, matching bowls nested inside them, shining like rainbows in the sunlight? Getting that same shaft of sunlight to shine just so on them in our house would be a challenge.

“We need a larger house,” says he, not really meaning it in the grand scheme of things but offering it as the reason for passing up such beauty. That’s where these pieces will find a home one hopes, in houses where whole rooms, with skylights admitting shafts of purest light are devoted to beautiful art. In a Martin Acres house we look at pictures on the Internet.

At the Community Garden

Yesterday Mark and I walked from Vic’s Espresso Shop north up 13th to the North Boulder Community Garden. As we approached it we both breathed in the wonderful garden fragrances: green vegetation, tomato plants, freshly turned earth, compost, manure. The delicious odor of garlic drying on racks and hanging from the ceiling of a chicken wire enclosure wafted through the warm air. We strolled on narrow paths past many small plots, each reflecting the individuality of the gardener. Some were neatly planted and maintained in careful rows. Others were a riot of vegetables and flowers. One showed mastery of the skill of growing corn as high as an elephant’s eye by July in Colorado, another with cornstalks only up to my knee did not. In one space a tiny Japanese-style paved path wound through elegantly manicured flowers. In another plot, protective purple nylon net was tented over lettuce to shield it from hungry bugs. A smiling scarecrow guarded one plot, and a stuffed parrot guarded another. An arched rainbow sign graced the entrance to the separate children’s garden.

Further north were the long community rows of arugula, garlic, onion and lettuce grown by the Youth Project with instructions on a white board nearby itemizing the next work items: “Arugula needs a haircut to 2 inches—NO WEEDS!”

As is often the case with gardens, my father came to mind, how he would have loved to walk through these gardens and strike up conversations with the people there about what they were growing, what kind of luck they were having this season dealing with the weather and the bugs. He paid us kids a nickel for each of the fat, green, horned, more-than-alarming tomato worms we collected off the plants and brought to him for ultimate disposition.

The daughter and granddaughter of botanists, I somehow never learned to garden and as I have said before, I’m death on houseplants. Nevertheless I have faithfully cared for the small bonsai tree I bought in late May, diligently soaking and spraying it every other day, as a small tribute to the memory of a master gardener. So far it is thriving.

B

Mark and I were talking yesterday about the tattered condition of Shannon’s passport, his only form of id since he lost his driver’s license years ago. Mark said the passport is “like B,” which made me laugh uproariously. B was Shannon’s baby blanket, a gift to him as a newborn. It started out snowy white, with pale green satin edging. But it became baby Shannon’s most reliable solace, accompanying him everywhere, held next to his cheek as he fell asleep each night. Leaving B behind was not done, ever. Triple checks were made to ensure B was securely on board when we took road trips or flew to Indiana to visit Granny and Grandpa. Over time, B became gray and tattered, losing its satin edging. And B dwindled in size, shrinking to the size of a handkerchief, then smaller still to the size of a passport (hah!) and finally to the size of a postage stamp, at which point we convinced Shannon to part with B so we could put it away in a treasure box for safekeeping since it could so easily end up lost. Letting go of B was like Shannon’s passport to eventual independence.

Famous Blue Rocker

Twenty-three years ago I was large with my first child in the middle of a hot, dry Colorado summer. I lay on the couch in our toasty little Martian Acres home and tried not to moan too loudly; friends stopped by with white chocolate ice cream and words of comfort. The baby had stopped doing somersaults in my womb a few days ago and was now just writing his name on the wall every now and then – it was becoming increasingly apparent that, improbable as it might seem, he would be expecting to emerge soon through a very small aperture somewhere down below and currently out of my direct line of view.

My Mom had flown in from Indiana to lend moral support, and on the official due date of July 4 she, my husband and I drove up to Brainard Lake to allow me to gaze at the cool Arapahoe Peaks and lumber slowly along a path by the water, hoping the baby would be shaken and stirred into action. But the due date seemed destined to come and go with no trip to the hospital. That evening my brother came over to have dinner with all of us and later that night set off some very loud fireworks in the backyard. The sounds startled me into a hopping little tiptoe dance a lot like the dance of the hippos in Fantasia – and this is finally what did it. Later that night my water broke.

I sat quietly in the big blue rocker, waking no one yet, and timing the contractions. When they were 5 minutes apart, I woke up my husband, who blearily drove my Mom and me to the hospital along the previously agreed upon backstreet route, not that there was any traffic at 3 in the morning. In the hospital parking lot my husband and mother got out of the car and strode purposefully toward the ER, belatedly realizing I was moving kind of slow at the junction and hurrying back to hold my elbows and help me inside.


The legendary and fabulous OB-GYN nurses at Boulder Community sized me up, and then gave me a stern talking to – to get to 10 centimeters dilation I would have to walk. And up and down the halls I hobbled to keep the contractions going and get myself to the point where I was ready to deliver the baby. The doctor didn’t come until right before delivery time – but there were lots of jokes about this particular physician and his preference for the “little brown stool” he sat on during delivery. With my husband’s coaching and my mother’s quietly reassuring presence, I did the Lamaze breathing and was able to refuse the drugs. Many long hours later, around noon, our beautiful son was born, his alert little eyes looking right up at us in amazement we surely shared.

I only learned later that my husband had nearly gone into full crisis mode during the delivery. The doctor, ensconced on his little brown stool, had determined that the baby was head down as desired, but facing the wrong way, and had used a suction cup device to help pull our baby through the birth canal. When he pulled the suction cup off my son’s head after delivery, the red goo used to affix it looked like blood and my husband thought the top of the baby’s head had come off. In a few seconds he realized that everybody else in the delivery room was still calm and happy; luckily we had been blessed with a healthy and hungry baby boy.

The next day my son and I returned home tired but triumphant, and I found great comfort in taking our first few naps together in the famous blue rocker. Happy birthday, Shannon!

The Existential Garage Sale Manifesto, Part 2

If you can resist the urge to acquire stuff you had no desire for before you woke up this morning, garage sales (existential and otherwise) can be a good way to simplify; you can unload unnecessary stuff or obtain necessary stuff without feeling you’ve directly contributed to the stuff crisis. In fact, lots of little daily actions give me a small measure of well being in the face of the stuff avalanche: filling the small green biobags with egg shells, vegetable nubbins and coffee grounds and leaving them out in the compost bin for pickup; religiously recycling paper, plastic and glass each week; observing the ever-decreasing amount of actual trash we discard from our house each week as more of it goes into recycling and compost; using the library or buying used books rather than new ones where possible; resisting purchase of plastic crap, or stuff over packaged in plastic crap; reveling in the clean, peaceful look of a room with a few beautiful things in it and no clutter; walking and riding buses instead of driving, and retaining the job with the 7-minute commute.

But of course the guilt trip is alive and well: for two people we use way more electricity than seems humanly possible—no doubt too many devices are on all the time despite their stand-by modes; lights are left on to lend some psychological security at night; juice flows to keep the icebox cold and the hot tub hot (not luxury, but medical necessity to deal with neck and back pain after sitting too long in front of the electricity sucking computers). Always the tradeoffs.

The Existential Garage Sale Manifesto

I walk through Sobo (South Boulder as the cognoscenti call it) this Independence Day morning. On Ash I encounter a small garage sale with a difference. A brown cardboard sign is posted with the Gothic lettered title: Existential Garage Sale

In very small black hand-lettering beneath is a lengthy diatribe on how we all have way too much stuff, how we have multiples of stuff we don’t even need singles of, how we’ll all feel a lot better if we unload some of our stuff and find ways to reuse the stuff we have. How stores like Target are filled with unnecessary stuff like many brands of toilet paper when it would be better to have one superior brand of toilet paper and be done with it.

Two thoughts immediately occur to me: 1) Despite the fact that I already have too much stuff, I really must find something to buy at this garage sale to reward the creator for this unusual and timely sign and 2) one man’s superior toilet paper is another woman’s bathroom crisis; I remember an old friend’s trip to Poland several few years ago when she was told to take toilet paper with her because of tp shortages. Shortages of Toilet Paper! That’s deprivation.

In any case, I found a dog-eared and annotated $1 copy of Eudora Welty’s “The Optimist’s Daughter” to buy, and had a short conversation with the existentialist, a relatively young man. I complimented him on the sign, and he told me he had sold it to a guy for $100 and would be handing it over once he moved away. I gave him another $1 in tribute to the sign.

He said he was “trying to be a good socialist through capitalism.”

“Easier said than done,” I remarked in return, and we smiled at each other. Another fine day in Sobo.

Wearing Slacks in Ellettsville

I attended high school in the small southern Indiana town of Ellettsville. (You remember Ellettsville—I wrote a song about it). Back then, girls were not allowed to wear slacks in high school; it was Against the Rules. Don’t even ask about jeans—that would have really been pushing the envelope.

My 16-year-old heart was outraged at this injustice, especially in the dead of winter as I shivered waiting at the bus stop in my pantyhose and skirt uniform. One icy February morning I defied the rule, and wore a very nice pair of sea green tweed wool slacks to school. My father was called at work and had to come get me and bring me home to change. My mother, a teacher in the school system, was called on the carpet. Needless to say, my parents were not thrilled with my rebellion.

I also wrote a letter to the editor of the Herald-Telephone suggesting that in enforcing this rule the all-male school board was driven more by prurient interest than the best interests of female students, since they benefited from clear views of young girls’ legs in the bleachers at the gym during basketball games. The authorities remained unamused, and unswayed.

Oddly enough I never wrote a letter to the editor about another matter at the time. Abortion in even the first trimester was illegal and a girl that wanted one had to take a shady trip to Indianapolis and pay cash for a dangerous procedure rumored to involve coat hangers.

Now I watch events unfold in Iran. Courageous women and men face injury and death to stand up for their human rights. The Internet obligingly carries full coverage, and a young woman named Neda (whose name means “Voice” in Farsi) dies before our eyes. You have only to peruse a book like “Reading Lolita in Tehran” to see how much has been denied the woman in Iran since 1979—the right to wear what they wish, look as they wish, read and study what they wish, speak their minds, have their votes count, be who they really are. Mixed anger and admiration surge in my 56-year-old heart as I see their amazing bravery in the new Iranian revolution.

I just saw the absolutely marvelous new Pixar film, "Up." It has an elderly widower in it with black-framed glasses who reminds me greatly of my father in his last years. The theme of the movie, that every closed door results in another new one that opens--that the adventure is never over if you can let go of what you have lost--is uplifting. The animation and colors are marvelous. The love story at the beginning is very moving. See this movie!

The Slackline of Life

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

"Sisters of Mercy" - Leonard Cohen

In any relationship, there can be such a precarious, hovering balance between feeling trapped and feeling abandoned. Walking life’s slackline and holding onto love for a lifetime, one must somehow be independent of the person who is loved, and yet remain connected. And the idea that you can control what happens to you is an illusion—all you can control is how you respond. So it boils down to a series of choices between love and fear—fear that the one I love will turn away from me or trap me; abandon me or take away my freedom.

You can only choose love over fear if you can find it in yourself to believe in love, and love can seem so ephemeral (“if you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned”). I remember once many years ago a co-worker and friend of mine tried to talk to me about the “L” word--the central importance of love in all our lives. It was as if she spoke another language—I wasn’t ready to hear those ideas yet.

Fear and love aren’t opposites, but I think of them together; one is the answer to the other. Stuffing fear doesn’t work, it just creates a smoldering volcano of feelings. I do know that when I’m feeling emotional pain and I stop to focus on the present moment, accepting whatever I find in that moment, I am immediately more peaceful.

An interesting twist is that sometimes strong feelings of love generate fear in me—fear of losing what makes me most happy. My life partner creates beautiful flower gardens, and I’m torn between enjoying the beauty he’s created, and fearing a day when he may no longer be able to do it. In fact, when he was not well for awhile last year and the flowers went unplanted and untended, that was one of my greatest sorrows and my fear was reinforced.

When I struggle against the truth that nothing lasts forever and all things must pass, I feel fear and a terrible grief; I lose the present and the chance to enjoy what I do have. Remembering to be right here, right now and love the moment helps – “nothing that is real can be destroyed”—do I understand that idea finally?

For myself, the fear of abandonment is the greatest—I mould myself to fit the desires of the person I’m with “because it is easier,” I tell myself, but really because I am secretly afraid they’ll turn away from me given half a chance. In truth, even strong (and quite uncharacteristic) outbursts of rage on my part have resulted in shockingly few changes in other people. People change only when they are ready, not as a result of anything I do.

Love does have indirect influence—the presence of love, asking nothing in return, can bring peace and comfort to those around you—I remember this from parenting challenges with teenagers a few years ago. I have a feeling the biggest influence was my love for them, keeping the lines of communication open so that whatever else happened they knew I loved them.

The lessons all seem to weave together to make the pattern. The path is much more spacious each time I choose love, not fear.

The Greening of Boulder

Rain has been more plentiful than usual this May in Boulder and I’m reveling in the sight of unusually lush green foothills and trails.

We walk from South Boulder up to Chautauqua, down to Pearl Street for a writing session at Bookend Cafe, then home in the pouring rain, and we’re happy. Our walk is in a parallel universe with the massive 10K Bolder Boulder footrace also occurring in town today but we walk alongside many of those who've completed the race as we make our way home in the downpour.

It was also May when we first arrived in Boulder in 1977, with every belonging we had packed in a tan square back VW (two guitars, a tent and cook stove, our clothes, and a remarkable number of books). For the first few nights we pitched out tent along the creek at the Wagon Wheel Campground in Four Mile Canyon outside town.

That year the weather was mild and very dry. Colorado’s arid climate and the muted sage green and gray of the Flatirons were a radical change from the emerald green forests of maple, sycamore and oak in southern Indiana. We were luckier than we knew, since May in Boulder can be quite rainy; some years, late season snowstorms cruelly weigh down and break the flowering fruit tree branches. It is only after many years here, some during severe drought, that we fully appreciate the precious rain when it comes. So it’s been raining all Memorial Day weekend in Boulder and I’ve been falling into grateful sleep each night to the steady, gentle patter on our roof.

Up in Chautauqua the sage was abundant--we each picked and crushed a leaf; the delicious scent filled me with peace and joy. When it’s been raining this long it seems as though all the green plants come out of hibernation and suddenly it looks a lot like Ireland without quite so many pubs.

Also in Chautauqua Park is a small circular flower garden with four pebbly paths leading up to an oblong sign that proclaims, in multiple languages: May Peace Prevail on Earth. As I’m reading the sign and saying my own little prayer, a woman drives by, leans out the window with a smile and calls out “Peace for all the world!” I do feel peace in my souI right here, right now in Boulder.

Mother's Day 2009

I was well and truly pampered on Mother's Day with homemade quiche, biscuits with "Bonne Maman" French strawberry preserves, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Not to mention two homemade Mother's Day cards and a pedicure after brunch. So tonight I write about what it's meant to me to have the privilege to be a mom.

From the minute they're born, children are a revelation, opening your eyes to the real magnitude of what your own parents did for you, as well as what you yourself are capable of accomplishing. Parenting is exhausting, exhilarating, glorious, frustrating, terrifying and joyous. It demands constant judgment calls large and small, with no way to fully prepare for it ahead of time--it's the ultimate in on-the-job training. Here are the top 10 things I've learned as a mom, and I'm still learning:

10. If you really want children--if the bio clock is ticking and you're in a reasonably good place--try and find a way to have them. So many times I've been so very glad I did.
9. Expect the unexpected. No matter how many books you read, this universal experience ends up being highly unique, and is full of surprises.
8. Read to your young children every day, and make sure you find time to simply be with them and play.
7. Especially when they're teens, keep the lines of communication open. Don't sweat the small stuff--save your energy for the big battles that truly affect their health and well being.
6. Listen carefully--have real, two-way conversations with your kids. You'll learn a lot.
5. Set limits and stand by those limits; it is a terrible lie to lead your children to believe that the world will give them everything they demand.
4. Give them much more time and love than things and money.
3. Showing them how to live works better than telling them how to live. They can see a phony a mile away.
2. Believe in them, so that they can believe in themselves and fly on their own.
1. And the number one thing I've learned: Let go. From the moment they are born, you're loving them fiercely and yet letting them go a little at a time--leaving them with the babysitter who is hardly beyond childhood herself, sending them to kindergarten, handing them the car keys, moving them into the college dorm and crying on the way home. Let them go; let them live their own lives and make their own mistakes. As young adults they don't need your unsolicited advice--mind your own business and one day you might find they consider you their friends.

There is no more important decision or life's work than to bring children into the world--and no decision in my life I've been more positive was right. I'm grateful every single day for my kids. Happy Mother's Day.

To Boldly Go

We walk over to CU’s East Campus Research Park along Innovation Drive, noticing the inspirational quotations embedded in the sidewalk. For the first time I see that one of these is a quote I hadn’t spotted before:

“To boldly go where no man has gone before…” – James T. Kirk

Many questions arise, not the least of which is “will future generations realize that James T. Kirk is a fictional character (he is, right?) played by an actor named William Shatner? Who later in life ended up as a cocky senior partner in a Boston law firm ironically continuing to boldly go where no man has gone before?"

And another question: how do we know these are places no man has gone before? It can only be because women, having already been to these places and confirmed that there were indeed no men there nor had there ever been, have obligingly shared that information with the men. But we always knew women were good communicators. What the heck do you think Uhura’s job was on the starship Enterprise? She was the beautiful black communications officer; the men on board were at a loss to communicate with all those non-human sentient life forms without her help, as she flipped switches on some giant switchboard-like panel and fiddled with that pre-Bluetooth device in her ear that always seemed to be screeching painfully. It was Uhura who kept saying to Captain Kirk, “Yes, captain, I can confirm that this is yet another place where men have yet to boldly go! But you go now, boy.”

Speaking of communication, I still long for those wonderful devices from Star Trek that translated language automatically. If I could have one tool at work that I don’t currently have that would be it, since there are days, my friend (and I assure you that you are my friend of you are still reading this) when there’s a world of confusion and wasted time around miscommunication, misunderstandings, impedance mismatches and confused priorities that would be aided by such a device.