Remembering the woman who was Florence

A few nights ago, in writer’s block, I pulled two books from the bookcase on “things to write about.” I opened a section and read the first thing I saw.

“You’ve long suspected that your best friend is a CIA operative. Now your child is in danger overseas, and you need help.”  Not touching that one.  

“Your cat (or dog) has a Twitter feed. What are its first three tweets? Flat stare. Try again.

“One of your grandparents teaches you something important.” Bingo.

Then I stumbled on a handwritten note dated July 7, 2006, that I’d penned after tending to my grandmother’s farmhouse a few months after she had died, and in preparation for the new owner---me.  

She was 91. The house was virtually untouched; dressers full, cupboards tipping with dishes, clothing in closets  . . .

“I had decided when I got there that I didn’t want any music playing because I wanted to ‘feel’ the house. I didn’t want to be interrupted in my ‘feeling’ by a song, a commercial, or the news.

Cleaning out a kitchen drawer I found a thin, white triangle of flour sack similar to one I’d seen in an old picture of Grandma standing between two horses at age 18, with her head wrapped in this white thing. I went into the bedroom and stood in front of her dresser mirror and wrapped the white sack around my head, tied it and tucked in the pointy part at the back . . . and then I started sorting . . .

I think I knew my grandmother pretty well but I learned some things I didn’t know about her that day. It’s a different thing when someone passes away and you have to clean stuff out.  You learn in a way that you wouldn’t have known sitting around the kitchen table sharing coffee or tea or lunch. You learn what was really important to them by the things they kept.

God was really important to Grandma. We all knew that. But cleaning out her dresser, the depth of devotion was crystal clear. It was amazing in the long, handwritten verses she’d penned from the bible, to religious poetry, to pages of prayers.

There was a little shoe box stuffed with old photographs, letters, certificates from 1924, having had perfect attendance at Sunday School, and first place ribbons from the World Fair in 1932, and a trunk with every greeting card I think she’d ever received.

I found enough knitting needles to start a small army on the road to knitting a nation.

We all have these truths that we live by. Our word, our manner, our beliefs, but I don’t know that I will ever be able to explain how the important parts of my grandma’s life fit into a little box and the simplicity she lived by. No rough edges, no cracks.

Whatever the life challenges she had, she never strayed out of those beliefs. Never swayed in her faith. Never used life’s difficulties as an excuse for sloughing off on anything. The rules she set for herself were life long. 

I think of the times when I’m having struggles in my life and I am searching. I know where I can go now and won’t ever have to leave. Any answers I seek will be right here at home.”

The incredible journey that is learning

I had just finished a 30-minute job-related mish-mash questionnaire of 50 hypothetical scenarios—the results of which were supposed to magically reveal what kind of a person I “reeeeally” was.

I answered honestly and felt pretty good about that. Then someone, who had never met me before, came in and pulled the questionnaire and left the room. The door was ajar. 

People should be more careful about what they say when someone is listening. A few minutes later I overheard voices in the next room comment that I was “strong-willed”—based on which multiple-choice circle I ‘d penciled in.

I didn’t get the job. 

I’ve never forgotten that interview and how it made me feel about myself. Someone made assumptions instead of getting to know who I really was.

Some of us also would do well to handle texting words with care and—after using angry thumbs to paint sentences of harsh, vindictive, rather hateful comments compiled when one’s heart is sore, take a moment before hitting “Send.” I wish that someone would have taken a walk first, maybe a deep breath or three.

Isn’t it odd, how some of us can text such beautiful phrases one minute and then spit out words born on razor blades the next?

Sadly, once that four-letter word “Send” is triggered, the writer cannot ever take it back. It taints the color of every little good thing that was.

Life can be difficult to get right. 

Some of us, me for one, me for sure, didn’t get dealt the relationship cards I had hoped for and I have learned over time, and time again, that the greatest lesson of my bumpy little love lane is that there are two paths from which to choose: the one I "should" take and the one I want to take. 

Because of the two paths, I’ve pretty much seen it all.

I have been belittled and punched by a man, long since gone from my sight once I learned to stand up. I have weathered the hindsight after a man I loved a very long time, left for work overseas and willingly chose never to come back.

And I know what life looked like in the face of my most beloved—the one I deserved—whose suicide imploded everything.

I have learned through yet another what giving unconditional love feels like, even when it was a dead end—still know what it feels like—and it will never change.

I also know through another what might have been and what was, sadly, are two very different things.

I’m nowhere near perfect—and I don’t want to be. I make mistakes all the time, but I am considerate and I try to be respectful of other people’s attitudes in the wake of my own, very tough decisions on what I need to do for me.

I spend a lot of time learning and relearning what it means to let go of control over someone else’s choices and to listen to my intuition. It always is right.

Sometimes I’m just naïve. Sometimes I try too hard to keep the bridges behind me passable and sometimes I get my eyes pried open. 

Again, I say, there are two paths from which to choose: the one you "should" take and the one you want to take. 

Do not doubt me. Take the second. Always take the second.

   

I see what I see and that's all

There is an old story about a writer who goes to his teacher and says, “Teacher, all the stories have already been told. There is no need for me to write. Everything that needs to be said has already been written.”

“It's true that there are no new stories,” the teacher said. “The universal lessons have been taking place for a long, long time and the same themes have influenced humanity since time began. But no one sees that story through your eyes and no one else in the world will tell that story exactly the way you will. Now return to your desk pick up your pen and tell the world what you see.”

• I see a whole lot more leaves on the ground than I wish were there.

• I see geese flocking by the hundreds in the fields on my way to work and I should stop and admire the beauty in their numbers. Soon they will be in the southern U.S. basking in the sun while I wipe the frost off my eyelashes as I make my way to my snow blower.

• I see I forgot to take the recycle bin to the curb again, for the fourth time in a row.

• I see a pile of bills stacked on my office desk. The one on top says “2nd notice” and the postmark is July 30^th. Oops.

• I see I am out of toilet paper at the moment I need it. The spare roll is in the trunk of my car for when I travel.  Nice.

• I see I have 763 unread emails on my laptop. Guess I’m spending too much time outside the box.

• I see the Christmas catalogue is now available and I have yet to read the “Spring and Summer” version.

• I see, after I stepped in it, the cat barf.

• I see, after I stepped in it, the dog poo in the grass near my sailboat, which also made it into the cockpit.

• I see I forgot to throw those leftovers out, now a green fuzzy thing. What was it again?

• I see that there are consequences in every decision I make and I sometimes I wish someone else would decide.

• I see that I make mistakes.

• I see change coming. I never know if it’s good or not but it’s coming anyway.

• I see I was right.

• I see I was not right.

• I see I can’t do as many things on my own as I thought I could.

• I see life change in an instant.

• I see the signature of my favorite Miller boy, late Jim Miller, in permanent black marker on a saw blade in my barn from the Drennan Reunion in July. Thank God you were here with us.

• I see random acts of kindness not enough.

• I see stories worthy of writing every day and I don’t write them.

• I see I still have much to learn about the two paths in life. Mine and yours.

• I don’t see if they join up yet. I hope they do.

Proud to be an "Outsider"

The last sunset of August hovered on the horizon as I wrote this. 

If you really want to know how fast time flies, watch the sun set. 

In the time it takes to realize how beautiful the purple-hued light is, reach for the camera, and turn back to the beauty, the magic of the light has changed.

I fully understand that the unequivocal speed in the dimming of the day sums up perfectly what time there is NOT to waste hesitating, fearing, and second-guessing in this world.

“The days pass so quickly here,” is a true statement in this world, too,  “Dorothy of Oz.”

My grandchildren, the oldest now nearly 10 years of age, were all here for Granny’s traditional barbecued hot dogs and potato chip extravaganza on Sunday and as they darted about the farm yard chasing Frisbees, sprinted squealing through the water sprinkler, climbed the old tree, and ran around the barn in an energy burst—all I wanted to do was stop time and freeze frame all of my little peppers in the afternoon sun—forever in their youth, innocence, and zest.

With each successive day where temperatures hover in the zone between being too humid and the season of the falling leaf, more and more memories of my childhood come to the surface.

Oh, the days of black rubbers with the red stripe, used in robust playing fields called puddles. My mother called them “pig boots”—a term my grandkids think is hilariously funny.

I remember using all my superpowers while wearing my pig boots as I jumped up and down to empty a puddle of water in the yard. In those days, I wanted to be a hundred things when I grew up—a pilot, an actress, a psychologist—and a biologist. I investigated everything to do with nature.

I’d venture out along the creek bed plunking along in my pig boots picking up fascinating tidbits of bird feathers, clamshells, and pinchers from crayfish.

The pinchers stood out in deep green or fire red, small, fat, and long, sharp ones that, to a kid like me, were a collector’s item. I stored all these marvels together in an old shoebox under my bed but, like most children with a short attention span, forgot about the box for a month or two. 

When I opened it after that, everybody in the house knew it—could smell it—in a New York minute. 

I would sit for hours in the canoe in the middle of the reeds in the creek scooping up water spiders and investigating the world of insects. Still today, when I see a water spider, I think about those days of quiet, simple times I enjoyed so much.  

I had fun shoving old broken hockey sticks down mud holes in gravel roads, walking the fields with a brown paper bag lunch and spending the day exploring the same fence lines I had traveled down the weekend before and the one before that.

I was an “Outsider.” To this day, I remain.