Listening to my inner voice is a sweet challenge

“When you don't know what to do, get still. Get very still until you do know what to do.” 

Oprah Winfrey offered this advice to graduates at Stanford University in California during her commencement address there in 2008.

And she was right. If you are quiet long enough to listen, this advice works.

I know it works because before I got still, I had been pulling out my hair for two hours writing and erasing what I’d written while growing increasingly frustrated by my lack of creative integrity for this column space. I’d about given up for a second straight week on my submission.

What I know for sure is that anyone who know me well, also knows I don’t mince words about what I believe in and what I don’t.

I believe in a magic of sorts; a realm of otherworldly wonders labeled as gut feelings, conscience, and intuition.

I believe these three musketeers don’t lie. Trust your instincts. I believe some things are true whether you believe them or not.

I think these soul bodyguards are everywhere and at work in all our lives in magical countless ways even if we don’t believe in fairy dust and the man in the cape who pulls a rabbit from his top hat.

But you have to get still.

Yet I, as much as the next person, still have much to learn about trusting my gut, my conscience, my intuition, and listening to these messages when they whisper to me in subtle and not so subtle ways in my life.

They are, in my belief, part of the Universal plan and these three musketeers are very patient sages. If I don’t follow their lead, they just hang around in the corners of my circus until the next best opportunity arises in which to flag me.

Of late, my intuition has been tugging at my thought process using chocolate as a motivator. Yes, chocolate.

Thanks to a friend who gets extra brownie points for paying attention to and being interested in the things I love, I now have a book that touts chocolate principles as metaphors for life.

(As a brief aside, I must confess that most mornings I eat a small square of milk chocolate with my coffee, before breakfast. I am passionate about my chocolate.)

“What if you could devour life with the same commitment and passion?” queries the book.

“What do you want? How can you make the right choices if you don’t know what you want or where you are heading?”

I’ve been so busy lately running with the “going with the flow” herd, that I think I might be headed in the wrong direction.

“Never assume that the herd knows where it is going; it usually doesn’t.”

Quite frankly, in my life, I don’t know what my answers are to any of these questions I’m being asked by my musketeers—but I’m taking stock.

How about you? What’s your chocolate?

Here's to the first day of spring

First of all I think “Old Man Winter” should read the book, “The Language of Letting Go.” I think the crusty cold curmudgeon has some serious issues.

Secondly, if he doesn’t let go soon, I will put on my “Gandalf” hat, slam my wooden scepter into an axe-handle deep snow bank, utter loudly “You Shall Not Pass!” and send winter into an abyss.

And thirdly—in the words of Forrest Gump—“That’s all I have to say about that.”

Besides, it’s March 20^th and no matter what else is going on outside, nothing can override the fact that this is the first day of spring!!

It’s due time to bang the drum for what I believe is to be an astronomically welcomed season. 

Emily Dickinson wrote some wonderful words of wisdom in her poems.  “I dwell in possibility . . .” is a favorite “Sage Emily” line.

“I dwell in possibility” sums up how I feel about what’s coming. Smell those rain showers, listen to that thunderstorm, see those daffodils peeking out of the flowerbed, and give me a rake!!  

Dickinson also wrote a fine little poem about hope.

Stand at the window and look outside at all the snow and repeat after me;

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

My friend and I enjoy good conversation and of late, all the talk is centered around the harbingers of spring—those sights, sounds and olfactory markers that herald the long-awaited greener pastures, ice-out, and sailing waters.

There we are, sitting at the kitchen table swapping exciting stories about seeing clusters of newly awakened flies buzzing in the porch window and the odd ladybug or two that suddenly has appeared crawling up the wall while she spits green gunk from her bottom end. Signs of spring. Yes. We are overjoyed at these futuristic indicators.

I think most grown ups would agree that the coming of spring has been a celebratory part of life since childhood. Who doesn’t remember their own rubber boots in April puddles at ages five, eight, and 10? Or that twig stick used to make little river beds in the gravel that would drain the water puddles of melting snow and gush them flowing out of the yard.

What did you float and race in those streams?

For my friend it was half of a clothespin that called itself a boat. For me it was half of a matchbox or a little piece of cardboard. These were the heralds that spoke to us of spring.

Soon the palette of color that the sunrise bakes across the horizon of a melting Rainy Lake will fill us up. My mother’s geranium and moonflower seedlings already are germinated and soon the pepper plants will find their way through the potting soil and into the sunlight.

Today, I see the raven. This harbinger of spring sits on a fence post on the country road not far from the nest in the tree. He and his mate begin this guarding ritual in late February each year. Seeing them is a most welcome sight as they greet and brave the cold, holding on to the inevitable promise of warmer days and the laying of eggs.

Baby chicks, pussy willows, leaf buds on trees, green grass around the septic tank, and thawing smelly dog poop—yes—even that recycled harbinger of spring will soon have its moment in the spotlight.

I would even venture to say that seeing a spider in the house would be a welcome omen . . . but that was before I found one crawling on the inside arch of my foot while I was in the shower last night.

I thought it was sock fuzz until, when I tried to flick it off; it got stuck to my index finger. I had an immediate freak out in the bathtub as I tried to boil it off with the showerhead before it fell down the drain. Then I imagined it clinging to the drain hole until the middle of the night, when it would crawl up and out and be waiting for me on the toilet seat in the morning. Oh my.

Nevertheless, as Dickinson writes, “Spring Comes on the World.”

I sight the Aprils too, Miss Emily, and I dwell in the possibility of it all.  

Looking forward to a winter goodbye

I threw myself into deep snow on Saturday and lay there for 20 minutes in the silence of my neck of the woods. I had just finished snow blowing and I was tired and once again drained of any enthusiasm for winter.

In fact I’d had a run in with my snow blower, known in these parts as “Little John” when he knocked me down while I had the machine in reverse. Thank heaven for automatic shut off when I let go of the handles or I’d have been a real mess.

The knock down got me really crabby for a few minutes. I hated the world and the world hated me. Some choice expletives flew out of my mouth to nobody listening.

I’d also filled my brainless quota that morning when I forgot to put down the garage door and not paying attention walked by with “Little John” full out and blew half of the yard’s snow into the garage.

I had a “Yosemite Sam” fit and then decided to seek sanctuary in a snow bank and be grateful for some good stuff. I rarely get outright angry anymore and I didn’t like the feeling and needed a karmic rescue.

I was flung out like a discarded puppet in the snow, perfectly still and uttering many a “thank you” out loud to the Universe, when I saw a pair of ravens flying overhead. 

One of the black birds spotted my carcass and veered off its path, gliding in slow circles down, down, down, to get a better view of what it thought might be a tasty morsel.

I actually expected it might land nearby and I was ready as rain to jump up and scare the feathers off the winged beast if it tried to peck my eyes out like a scene from “The Birds.” 

Lucky for Mr. Raven, it decided to join its buddy that already had flown across the field and disappeared.

I laid there a few more minutes until the cold seeped into my ski pants and dropped my core body temperature enough to stir me to rise up and head for the house and a nice cup of tea, all the while searching the immediate grounds for any sign or suggestion that spring was in the forecast.

As I drew closer to the house I heard Bonnie Raitt’s sultry voice flow out of the stereo and through my mind, and I hailed her song to the harbingers of spring “I Got You On My Mind,” hoping the magic of my words would hurry Mother Nature along.

Old frozen dog poop unmasked and shredded by “Little John” lay about the yard like an old smelly friend as if to say, “just wait, I’ll let you know when spring as arrived.”

Touché “Dot.”

All I know for sure is that March 20^th fast approaches and at that dawn, even if it is snowing like the dickens, I am going to stand up and cheer, “Spring is here!”

Baby boomers have the floor

Van Morrison is singing “School of Hard Knocks” as I stare at my laptop screen dumbfounded at the blank page that is idea-deprived.

I do have material to call upon for inspiration including “Better than Sex – Chocolate Principles to Live By,” followed by the tried and true Mark Nepo and Melody Beattie editions. No light bulb moments here.

Now Van Morrison is singing “Enlightenment” and belts out, “Don’t know what it is.”

Hmmm.  Is he trying to tell me something?

A copy of “TurboTax” for my yet unfinished income tax doldrums day stares at me from across the desk. I groan when I think of the inevitability of calculating a “balance owing” number on line 483.

A report on women of the baby boomer generation—that would be me—is at my fingertips.

It says that baby boomer women have freedom, hectic schedules, resources, and a taste for quality.

Hmmm. I ponder that foursome for a while.

I am puzzled about resources. If we are talking about books and chocolate, I’m set up like a pyramid in Egypt.

Come to think about I have a lot of resources I can count on, although none of them include multiple polymer images of Sir Robert Borden or W.L. Mackenzie King. It’s a pity.

Freedom? Now there’s fodder for a 500-word essay—maybe 700 if I’m on a roll. But I’m still trying to figure out what freedom means to me, so that’s another story.

The report also states that boomer women grew up in an age of rebellion. Really? I can’t relate to that life stage—unless we’re talking about my uprising against ironing clothes.

That chore accounted for three-quarters of my weekly allowance when I was a kid, and I swore to myself that when I left for college I would invent wrinkle-free everything, including “Caldwell” towels.

Sadly someone else already had taken that brand name and ran with it all the way to the bank.

Hectic schedules? They are a constant and unrelenting thorn in my baby boomer underwear.

But I won’t complain too much. After all I am the first to agree that life is what we make of it.

However the fact that my current calendar is a combination of a Tasmanian devil in a sandstorm and two cougars in a gunny sack fighting over a piece of meat means it’s cruising for change. 

The report says boomer women aren’t afraid to take chances. Some things are true whether we believe them or not.

I take chances.

Boomer women are said to have a taste for quality. Hmmm. Quality can mean many things.

Quality time is a big one for me, followed closely by quality kisses and good dark chocolate. I like quality friends, too, who aren’t afraid to look me in the eye and tell me what’s on their mind. I like a quality connection.

And last but certainly not least—as Van Morrison’s song “Enlightenment” comes back ‘round again—I am reminded of an email sent by a new friend of mine who lives with his wife in a little town in southern Minnesota. He had commented kindly upon reading my column last week when I wrote about intuition.

“Will Rogers, a well-known American humorist back in the 20’s-30’s once said that some of us learn by reading, some of us learn by observation, the rest of us just gotta touch the electric fence for ourselves.”

Ah yes, Don. How true.

I am a woman of the baby boomer generation. I have freedom, hectic schedules, resources, and a taste for quality.

And sometimes I also have to touch the electric fence for enlightenment.

Woohoo!

Listen to the whisper that speaks the truth

If I would have been asked one week ago how I was feeling, I’d have used up an entire Kleenex box explaining my failure to launch what I thought was a simple plan. I was in “woe is me-ville” because I had to admit to myself and to others that I’d made the wrong decision.

There are two thought-provoking forces at work inside this human casing I walk around in every day. Both of these forces are important to my survival and my sanity and yet often they don’t see eye-to-eye, second guess each other, and stab each other in the toe to get what they want.

In fact, a great deal of the time these forces clash like Titans and Olympians in a joust of what each believes is in the other’s best interest.

The heart and the head.

Mine were dragging each other by the collar and my poor intuition got her knuckles scraped along the pavement until she backed off. I could have saved myself a whole lot of heartache if I’d have just wised up to her.

The funny thing is that, as I was driving down the highway two weekends ago to meet the source of my simple plan, my intuition was sitting in the passenger seat counting on both hands all the reasons why my plan wouldn’t work. But I played the ignore game and just kept my eyes on the road.

I find it incredibly interesting how, even though I advocate the importance of listening to one’s intuition, I look the other way when mine speaks to me.  I’ve preached the heeding of intuition to my children time and again through out their lives. I believe my intuition is always right. That whisper that begs to be heard and stands out from reason and logic. 

Some things are true whether we believe them or not. Intuition is one of those things.

And yet, I fully admit I can be notorious for ignoring intuition at times when I shouldn’t.

All I had wanted was a puppy—a little doggie to love and nurture and watch grow up and be that snowshoe and water dog I missed so very much.

How difficult could it be? And yet, nothing had changed in the busyness of my life since last fall, when after much debate I’d given “Cash” a chance at a better life by giving him up because I worked too much.

And yet there I was falling in love with that little puppy the moment I saw her and all the while my intuition was trying to make a case for delayed gratification. 

But I brought the puppy home anyway, loved her up, and in trying to meld her needs with my tightrope work schedule, almost immediately found myself trying to swim up a waterfall.

I really thought it was a simple plan, but I was wrong. Raising a puppy is not a road of responsibility to take lightly and as I now know, I am not ready for that road. Graciously, my adoption host understood my sincerity and my circumstances and has found that little puppy a forever home.

For a long while I wasn’t sure what my lesson was in this. What? from the awry of such a simple plan.

It turns out the lesson was not to second-guess the truth. 

Thanks to a little puppy named “Tula” for teaching me what I needed to hear.

Once upon a time in the West

I’m reading a very good book called “Into the Wild,” by Jon Kraukauer. It’s the chronicle of Chris McCandless, an adventurer who sought a simple life of solitude that did not end well in the Alaskan wilderness. 

The novel has been good reading on a winter’s day snuggled up in my living room chair with a cup of tea, especially when outside eight inches of snow crash lands, followed quickly by 50 km/h winds and a wind chill warning.

A quote by novelist Wallace Stegner appears in the book and stood out for me, as did McCandless’ obvious independent drive to “find himself,” even though he died trying to do that. 

“It should not be denied . . . that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west.”

When I was growing up my parents took my brother and I on regular summer vacations. The ones I remember best were spent in the American West visiting historical places that included North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. 

I was only 12 or 13 years old and while much of that time of my life escapes my memory, I vividly remember our visit to Deadwood City, South Dakota where some famous figures of the Wild West lived and died. I stepped inside the saloon where “Wild Bill Hickok” was shot and also visited his gravesite and that of “Calamity Jane.” 

 

I grew up in an era of American West story telling. Getting the chance to see that at least some of it was true has fueled my imagination for it to this day. 

I’ve always loved to read and among the books of my youth was “The Last Canadian,” by William C. Heine. It was more science fiction than adventure and yet it sparked in me a strong desire to throw a packsack and sleeping bag over my shoulder and walk into the wilderness and live off the land.

In fact what I really wanted to do as a young girl was walk the train tracks into the backcountry and just keep going.

I have been drawn to the wilderness all my life. There were acres of it at my backdoor growing up as a country kid and I was knee deep in it every chance I could get.

I had my hunting license at 15 and hunting was more important to me than having a driver’s license, which in fact I didn’t get until I was 22 years old. 

When I was 17 I spent 10 days on a canoe trip in Quetico Provincial Park. We had to carry our own gear, and portage our canoes and learn how to survive in the outdoors with little amenities from the civilized world. It was one of the best experiences of my life, marred only at the journey’s end when on pick up day my parents told me that while I was on the canoe trip, Elvis Presley had died.

I lived in British Columbia for a year in a small village smack dab in the between the Caribou and Rocky Mountains with a million dollar view of the mighty Fraser winding through the Robson Valley. I thought I’d been given the key to heaven.

There were wilderness trails everywhere around McBride and I was walking the unbeaten paths every chance I could. I’d venture off on my own with my walking stick and my packsack and my young pup, “Dot,” never once worried about talk of big black bears, the occasional grizzly or cougar. 

I’m so thankful I didn’t let anything stop me from living out at least part of the experience I’d always dreamt about.

I suppose one might wonder where I’m headed with this fragmented chicken scratch mosaic of reminiscence and as the matter of fact, I’m not really sure.

But then again, perhaps I do.

Everyone has a story to tell. What’s yours? 

"Little Miss" you'll go far, on snowshoes

 I fell in love with snowshoeing in 1972 when I was 12 years old. I loved the sport most because it was something we always did together as a family.

The wooden “Beavertail” snowshoes with leather belted bindings were too big and my winter boots often got stuck in the toe hole because I didn’t push my foot far enough to the bar. My snowshoes were too long for my height and I couldn’t do the 180-degree turn around like my dad could. And when I tried, I invariably ended up in a contorted heap in the snow, like a long-legged newborn giraffe, unable to untangle myself and get up.

I still loved the whole experience.

Those long winter walks over the frozen creek bed, across the field and into the thick forest behind my childhood home remain crystal clear recalls for me, as if they happened yesterday. We had the same destination every time in that forest. 

My parents and my brother and I negotiated up and over the snow-covered rocks and the barbed wire fence, before arriving in the big pines where we’d build a little fire from sticks and pieces of wood lying around.

The canvas pack sack my dad carried on his back would come off and be opened to the eagerness of my brother and I, as the hot dogs went on roasting sticks and the buns, ketchup, and a thermos of hot chocolate made the picnic around the warm fire.

The family dog always came along, and I imagine the hot dog or two it would be passed from the outstretched hand of a child were more than enough reward for the work it took the dog to get there with us through the deep snow.

In all the years since those good old days my love for snowshoeing has never waivered.

Today I fit the Beavertail snowshoes. I fondly have nicknamed them my “Salcherts” and I dream about the Snowshoe Olympics.

I think I could be a contender for a medal. I’m not suggesting I’d strike gold, but I sure feel like a winner when I’m out there piling through all that white stuff that Mother Nature left behind. I love it so much I just want to start snowshoe jogging and never stop.

I tried that on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. when on a field mission to the “Ranch” for buckwheat pancakes and scrambled eggs. The snow was untouched and as deep as the Grand Canyon and I was off on my solo quest, chest puffed out, my Olympic-sized ego in tow, headed for the gathering table and stories about cowboy poets.

Suddenly I had a strong urge to veer right and head for the bush line far across the creek, but then realized I had no pack sack, no food or matches, and no note left behind to tell loved ones where to come looking for me should I go missing.

Back on track and despite the fact that I thought I was going to have a heart attack and keel over into a snowy hole only to be discovered in the month of May, I lapped up the distance in record time.

However I did look back over my shoulder a few times hoping my favorite outdoorsman would suddenly appear on a white snowmobile and offered me a ride. Unfortunately that’s not what happened.

It’s times like these, during strenuous hauls of my Greek Goddess frame, when I am reminded that my piano legs are a mighty tool.

Many years ago someone saw a picture of me wearing shorts and bluntly said, “Your legs could hold up a piano.”

I wasn’t quite sure if that meant my legs looked enormous or strong. I’ve never been model-material but I know for sure that against the odds, my piano legs could beat the pants off the best of them hiking a mountain path or hauling trail on snowshoes. 

The only thing that continues to be missed on a snowshoe hike are those canine capers that used to follow close behind me, refusing to blaze their own trail for fear that I would eat the dog treats they could smell in my coat pocket. In fact, so close did they follow, that they often stepped on my snowshoes, hurling me face first into a snowdrift.

I recall a past snowshoe day when the dogs bolted off down the creek bed with their noses to the ground fast on the scent of creatures unseen and disappeared around the bend.

I was standing there listening to the sound of my heart pounding when the dogs came roaring back in my direction, followed closely by what I thought was a wolf—and they were leading it straight to me in the wake of their own terror. 

My first thought was to release myself from my snowshoes and use them as shields but I didn’t think I could get them off fast enough.

My heart was in need of a defibrillator by the time I realized it was not a wolf, but a much larger neighborhood dog.

All three canines arrived at my feet with tails wagging for those treats I still had in my pocket.

Ah, for one more of those good old snowshoeing dog days. 

A little of this, a little of that

“Drive south until the butter melts.”  I heard that saying last week for the first time and I dare say I was charmed by the enticing “get in your car and go” imagery it evoked.

I could use a warm little holiday like that right about now.

Heaven knows if I were to put the butter dish in the front seat of my car, even with the heat on, it wouldn’t melt anytime soon.

In my neck of the woods, the butter dish—just sitting in its little spot in the kitchen cupboard—is as good a weather gauge as the thermometer is that’s in the unheated porch.

It is all I can do to break off a decent piece of butter for my toast slice in the morning and by the time I’m done raking the brittle chunk back and forth with a knife, my poor piece of bread looks like it did battle with the cheese grater.

Everything is cold these days and thus I find myself in frequent abandon of my “don’t touch the thermostat” rule in the house. My showers are lobster-hot and I am compelled to heat up my bath towel and my pajamas in the dryer before they come into contact with my skin.

And I am driven to chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

Given my instinct to “feed my furnace” during the winter must mean I come from caveman stock. Why else would I voluntarily eat a full course meal followed by two chocolate bars?

Mitochondrial DNA. That’s the magic gene stuff that only females carry and what is used to track family lineages through time. I’m quite certain that if genealogical researcher John Ashdown-Hill (whose scientific know-it-all helped peg the recent identification of the 500-year old bones found buried under a parking lot in England as those of King Richard III) were to culture my spit DNA in a petrie dish it would grow a Neanderthal look-a-like with a flare for cocoa beans.

Balance. Sometimes I do it well. Sometimes I do it appallingly.

Sometimes I can balance my life like a horse jockey perched to win ‘round a racetrack. Sometimes, and especially where my winter calorie intake is concerned, I am as unbalanced as I would be if two Great Danes dragged me down the street.

Yet, at the best of times I am a wonderful mess, or at least I was a couple of days ago when sitting in my car during my lunch break attempting to reconstruct my eating habits by munching on raw carrots, when suddenly I sneezed.

I opened my eyes a microsecond later to ground up orange debris spread right across my dashboard and the inside of the windshield. What a mess. I laughed so hard I lost all my mascara. I’m still laughing about it three days later.

What are some of the best decisions you’ve ever made? Sometimes you know right away when you make a decision like that and sometimes it takes a bit of hindsight to see that you did.

In my case, I’m just glad I didn’t decide to eat the “Lindt” dark chocolate bar first. Good heavens, what a waste of good food that would have been.

The cold reality of my January escapades

So here we are in the deep freeze dungeon of mid-January where exposed skin can freeze in five minutes. The cold bears down upon us like a giant lead blanket and it will not be moved.

Cars left too long outside in this abominable deep freeze either don’t start at all, or if plugged in do begrudgingly turn over and then bump along on frozen square tires reminiscent of a “Looney Tunes” cartoon or a Hillbilly movie.

Mad dashes from the nice warm house to the garage while holding one’s breath are common.Wiping my dripping nose blob with my mitt less hand and then reaching for the metal garage door handle, which also is at -44C, well, that’s just stupid.

Standing there immobilized and wondering if CAA covers my predicament also is brainless, as is thinking warm spit will help remove my welded fingers.

Forcibly peeling said fingers from cold metal reminded me of how painful it was the first and only time I ripped wax strips off my upper lip.

My moustache, now otherwise invisible to the viewing public thanks to facial hair bleach, suddenly reappears in this hellish cold as a frosted hairy mass during the mad dash from where I park the car at work and remains until all the men in the building have passed me in the hallway at the coffee room. Nice.

The deep-freeze dungeon of January calls to mind the (kick my butt now) question, “why didn’t I book that holiday to Cuba when I had the chance?”

In another monumental lapse of judgment in this lead blanket cold, as I think up ways to burn off the five pounds I’ve gained over the Christmas holidays, I decide to go for a run in my snowshoes down the creek bed.

My face wrapped in scarves with a slit for eyes, I broke into a solid rhythmic jog, lifting one snowshoe above the other. 

Just around the bend I tripped over the twigs sticking out of the ice at a beaver house and did a face plant landing in a contorted mess at the base of the hut. Smarting and ranting, I hoped the heavy “thwack” heard by my nemesis inside the twig tent, as my poundage landed there, would spook them into pulling up stakes. Somehow I doubt it.

By the time I untangled my snowshoes and realigned my spine, the wolves had started to close in for a mid-day snack. However, when I stood up to reveal my steam-frozen headpiece complete with icicles from all the heavy breathing I’d been doing in an effort to untangle myself, the carnivores turned and ran like whelping puppies.

The only thing I can think of that feels better because of this forsaken deep freezing cold is the blistering hot shower taken after my cold-air escapades.

Standing there in the tub as my skin turned fire engine red from toe to crown was heavenly, until it was time to get out and I realized I’d forgotten to replace my bath towel. 

I opened the bathroom door and sprinted buck naked and sopping wet to the towel shelf.

To cop a sentence from Kerry Lynn Dell’s blog “Montana For Real”—“Have you ever stepped onto an icy sidewalk felt both feet fly up in the air and crashed onto the back of your head?”  

That holiday on a Cuban beach looked quite ideal from my prone position on the kitchen floor.

All that I am is measured by the year

“Not what you have, but what you use. Not what you see, but what you choose. Not what seems fair, but what is true. Not what you dream, but what you do. Not what you take, but what you give. Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless the sum of human happiness.”  

I discovered this beautiful composition in the book, “How to Love,” by Gordon Livingston. Sometimes words just jump off the page and into my soul and these ones certainly did. I printed and framed the piece for my bedroom wall. It smacks of that old familiar tune “To Thine Own Self Be True.”

This week I’m all about “Day 365” and as much as I’d thought beginning a new year at midnight December 31^st would mean a fresh new start, I cannot deny that until I make it past Saturday, January 19^th I won’t truly feel that my new year has begun.

I’ve come to believe that making it to the anniversary date of the first year after any major event in life is an occurrence of legendary proportions and each of us comes to it in different ways. I also have come to believe it is a sacred journey to its crest, no matter how it’s walked.

I’m not sure yet what I’m going to be doing on Saturday, but the closer I get to it, the more I hope I am going to get up at sunrise and live the day as fully as I can. I would be a fool to think that the events of what happened here in my neck of the woods that day one year ago won’t be on my mind. That’s okay. It’s all okay.

I continue to believe that each day I am where I am supposed to be. This conviction carries me. It has carried me through the last 12 months. It carries me in this moment, and this moment is all that I truly know I have in this life.

My friend Patty gave me a bereavement gift last January that I can say without a shred of doubt remains the best gift I have ever received in bad times and in good. It’s a fridge magnet that says “One Day at A Time.”

I’ve tried to live by that code ever since. It takes a lot of the pressure off of projecting myself into tomorrow’s dilemmas and next week’s problems and keeps me grounded right here.

I’ve also been reading the daybook, “The Language of Letting Go,” by Melody Beattie. She’s my nightingale of freedom. There’s not a morning that goes by when she doesn’t impress upon me a valuable lesson about giving up control and the letting in of life as it unfolds before me. These are good things and the good I need will find me when the time is right.

Since January 19, 2012 I have written over 45 columns for this space and I’ve dug deep many times on what it means for me as a survivor left behind by the suicide of a loved one. I wanted to pay forward the German proverb that says, “To bury grief, plant a seed.” I’ve done the best I could.

On Saturday I’m going to think about the road I’ve walked and I’m going to continue to do my best to honor my life, as good as it is, and it is very good. Very good indeed.

In fact, I think I’ll go snowshoeing across one of my snowy fields with my beavertail snowshoes that my dad gave me just before Christmas. The snowshoes once belonged to a fantastic family friend and well- known district auctioneer, the late Rod Salchert.

And as I’m walking along in the cold winter air with the spirits of all the good people I’ve had in my life, I’m going to remember what Melody Beattie said about letting go, and then I’m going to spend my evening sitting by the fire with someone I care about very much.

"I think of letting go as being like throwing a baseball. The problem is I just don't want to let go of the ball. Hanging on to the ball is a temptation. We've got it in our hands. Why not keep it there? At least if we are dwelling on the problem, it feels like we are doing something. But we're not. We're just holding onto the ball, and chances are we are holding up the game.”

A fast draw averts "cat"strophe

“Millie” the cat has been living here for about 13 months and we are joined at the hip. It’s been a rewardingly mutual friendship thus far and her life in this neck of the woods has been luxurious to say the least.

This much I know is true. If I vacuum the floor near where Millie is curled up on her couch pillow, she trusts me enough to know that the loud whir of the machine is not a threat, and she can stay right where she is. Any other cat would be clawing at the door to escape, but not Millie. Millie trusts me.

But just try and get her into a pet carrier and it’s a whole different story.

Monday was my favorite feline’s check up day at the animal clinic. When I woke up that morning at 5 a.m. to her kneading paws on the side of my head and the incessant meowing that smacked of being let out to the ”kitty loo” I smugly and flippantly sparred words with the squinty-eyed annoyance and told her payback would be mine that afternoon when it came time for vaccinations at the vet’s office. 

She blinked back a flat stare, jumped down and rubbed herself along the white skirt ruffle at the bottom of my bed, leaving a sheath of black hair stuck to it before leading me out of the room and to the porch door like a border collie sheep herder.

I followed dutifully, picking a cat hair out of my nostril.

I like to think of myself as a planner organizer. And while I’m okay with uncharted waters and someone else making the decisions that involve me, to a degree I like to have a handle on the ins and outs of my daily life. Who doesn’t?

Planning a smooth trip to the animal clinic is among the things I want to go my way. But we’re talking cats here.

A few days prior I had had a brilliant thought. Straightaway I went to the garage and found the pet carrier. I set it out in the porch with the door propped open, hoping Millie would wander by and investigate, perhaps taking up shop in the thing during siesta time. She’d get used to the cat cove and everything would run smoothly come clinic day.

She took the bait—sort of.

When I walked by on my way to laundry the next day, indeed Millie was sitting inside the cage but was heaving up a hairball and the chunky barf soup of her morning cat chow. I should have known right then it was her way of hinting that the pet carrier scheme wasn’t going to fly. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I shrugged it off and cleaned up the mess.

Monday afternoon I scooped her up in my arms, cooed softly to my furry little friend, carried her to the porch and tried to put her headfirst into the carrier.

Lynn M. Osband penned, “The mathematical probability of a cat doing exactly what it wants, is the one scientific absolute in the world.”

Indeed. She must have tried to put her cat in one of these contraptions too.

Suddenly all four cat legs jettisoned outward as if I’d just pulled the cord on a parachute and her claws shot forth like sharp knives on Freddy Krueger’s glove.

Suddenly I was holding a writhing devil cat with a possessed soul straight out of “The Exorcist” movie as all four legs began spinning backwards against the inevitable opening of the dreaded confinement capsule.

Millie’s head spun around and I caught a glimpse of those bulging wild eyes and a flash of carnivorous molars amidst the moaning sound coming from inside of her.

I held her straight out in front of me and with a skill torn right out of an old western gunslinger film, I pulled the “Plan B” towel from over my shoulder and quick-wrapped the cat and had her in the cage with the door closed before she knew what had happened.

Just call me Nicole Franks.