Another memorable egg hunt

The glee was stacked as high as the pancakes and syrup they poked in around my table that morning before the hunt began. Goals were shared about egg collection, theories on where to look cooked up like the crispy pieces of bacon that followed the forks full of pancake down the hatch.

Syrup dripped off plates, sticky napkins were everywhere, and half-empty glasses of apple juice sat cloudy with flecks of food floating within.

At the call to the hunt, little people had their coats and boots on without squabble and guaranteed on faster than the ordinary “put on your coat” school day when a mother’s moustache grows an inch and her patience shrinks waiting for her kids to get dressed before the school bus drives away.

And like the sprinter at the crack of the starter pistol or the break shot after the eight ball, six little peppers tore from the start line in a burst of sonic energy and out in all directions for the annual Easter Egg hunt in Granny’s big yard. 

More than 80 colorful plastic eggs filled with chocolates had been placed carefully or tossed haphazardly (depending on who hid them, as I had a three year old helper) earlier that day in all manner of hiding places around here.

Charlie, my little farm hand, hid his share of the eggs in chipmunk burrows, under the woodpile, and in tree seedlings and then by the afternoon forgot where, when it was time to find them again. Priceless.

My little hurricane tribe wasted no time terrorizing the outdoors, squealing with delight as they hauled their egg pails to where I was standing smiling, as the life around me flowered that April day.

I think I saw my old red barn stretch taller when fresh young minds poured through the door looking for eggs in there, too.

And then it was time to go inside and eat the chocolate prizes. And yes, I would be sending the kids home with their moms at that crucial juncture when the sugar-highs and “choco-caffeine” adrenaline turned them all into Tasmanian devils.

Afterwards, the two older boys went back outside to do “boy” stuff like dig in the anthill and look for mouse skeletons.

No more than five minutes passed when I spotted the younger one, who is six, running across the yard from the barn carrying pieces of  siding. Suddenly I imagined an outer wall of the barn I couldn’t see peeled to the core like an old birch tree.

“Where are you going with those?” I shouted, stopping him dead in his tracks, as his head drooped in being caught and the boards dropped from his arms to the ground.

I had to laugh. It was so funny to see his gestures mimic the defeat of a best-laid plan. I don’t know where he was going with his loot and I haven’t yet gone out to see where that little Tasmanian pepper lifted the boards from.

I’m smiling but I’m afraid to look.

First, break all the rules

American novelist James Paterson took the road less travelled when he began to write books in the mid-70’s. 

After reading “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,” Paterson decided to break all the rules about how he crafted the books he wrote. He embraced “full-throttle freedom,” learned to trust the right side of his brain and “just let go.”

Apparently it has worked rather well for him over the years.

I’ve never read one of Paterson’s novels. However, his reasoning about full-throttle freedom appeals to me because I love to write my way and because his motto is what I wish for in my life, too.

Letting go and freedom. To. Just. Be. Me.

I am a 53-year old woman who still is a girl at heart, a “Little Miss” who trusts the Universal Plan, dreams big dreams for herself, thinks too much about the small stuff sometimes and too little about the big stuff much of the time. I fall down, get up, and try again. I believe that my intuition always is right and yet I don’t always listen to it the first time or the third time. Sometimes years go by and still I don’t listen. Then I learn the hard way.

I am afraid of change and yet I believe in it with all my heart. I wasn’t meant to be alone in this world and I don’t like how many times I’ve had to be there. I’ve learned great lessons when things didn’t turn out the way I had planned. I’ve learned great lessons when they did. I’d like more of the latter, please.

A few days ago I wore spring like a favorite old good luck t-shirt. I wore it like an old softened faded pair of jeans that fit just right. I wore it like a reunion with a best friend after a long while of being apart. I wore it well.

No more downcast face grunting discontent to a snow bank. 

I put away my high-top winter boots, folded up the ski pants and wooly scarves and stuffed them “where the sun don’t shine.” I wore duck boots outside and dodged puddles and skipped over muddy soft spots in the driveway. I smelled thawing dog poop and yes, I liked it. 

I watched with glee the steady trickle of ice-cold water pouring out of the eaves trough spout from the roof. I saw signs of green grass, revealed at the receding snow around my septic tank and was thankful for the human condition.

I drove around town on a sunny day with my car window down and went soaring down the highway with my left arm stuck out the driver’s window like a one-winged airplane.

I made two big decisions last week. I don’t like making big decisions by myself anymore. Still, I do it anyway. I bought six new windows for my house. I picked “Country Lane Red” siding too. 

She’s been an old-looking farmhouse for so long. I guess she’s going to get a second chance.

Second chances are really nice gifts to give ourselves. Believe me, I know. 

First, you have to break the rules and just let go.

This is how I see it

Every day I have choice to make. Happy. Not happy. The happiness balance is tedious, constant work. Sometimes I do it well, sometimes I do appallingly.

Today was one of those “not do it so well” days. My Monday got turned round like the weather and I found myself in the linger of thoughts of all the things I haven’t done with my life, should already have done with my life, and all the in-between mud and sling scenarios.

When that happens and I don’t let it go, like I’ve been taught so many times in the books I read on recovery, I’m raw for the game and it pushes me under like the kid in the swimming pool did when I was nine. 

That little bully, who was a stranger in a pool on a camping trip I took with my parents, pushed me under where I gulped panic water and thought I was going to drown. It happened in the deep end and I couldn’t touch bottom.

“Should’ a could’ a” thoughts don’t nail me to terror like that kid did, yet the nasty duo sure can set me back in my pursuit of an even keeled attitude to the day—and these days, as the temperature leaps from a gorgeously deliriously warm Sunday to the bowels of a blizzard by this Monday night—an even keeled attitude is, to say the least, a paramount check mark on my optimistic albeit warped sense of reality and what I pray is the beginnings of a bloomy and green fourth month of 2014.

Last week I wrote about my impending house renovation and how it’s drying out my eye sockets pouring over the meat and potatoes of the matter.

It’s still keeping me up at night, or at least keeping me from drifting off as I usually do upon laying my head on the pillow. Instead of slipping into unconsciousness I do math tables and measurements and draw up lists of the pros and cons of entering the gates of this project. Then I fall asleep and find myself inside the gates and I can’t get out!

Yes, yes. Leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill.

But here’s the thing. This is how I see it. I figured out where it comes from—all this apprehension, second-guessing, failure to launch bog of thinking that I inevitably find myself mired in.

I haven’t made any big decisions like this in my life for more than two years. I stayed far away from that on purpose—protected myself from having to so that I could keep the outcomes close, and control of them closer. Letting go is hard.

But here’s the thing. When I was nine, suddenly I was in the deep end and I couldn’t touch bottom, and yet upon sinking I fought against my fear and swam for the side. 

The mind can be just as big a bully to progress as a human being can be to his fellow man.

Swim on; like a fish.