Life is a Fiesta

 I own a brand new car and I made that dream come true all on my own.

I wrote the above sentence with some reluctance because I didn’t want to toot my own horn.

But what the heck.

I deserved 110%, the shiny new wheels filled with nitrogen, the new car smell, the voice recognition software, and the lickety split zoom zoom!

Heaven knows I’ve had my share of things in life that I don’t think I deserved. Something tells me I’ll be working on accepting acceptance of those crummy things for a long time to come.

But let’s get back to the car. That little gem is my self-gifting reward for working hard and keeping my accounts payable paid.

I will admit, though, that I played dodge ball umpteen times with the dream-stealing side of my conscious about buying a new vehicle.

That inner dream stealer has been known to shame me into denying myself some of life’s greatest pleasures—most of them much simpler and more affordable than a new car.

I think the dream stealing shadow is up for counseling alongside accepting acceptance of crummy things.

But let’s back to the car. I have affectionately and—yes—somewhat geeky, named her “Lola,” and she is the epitome of what I always imagined my personal entertainment chauffeur would be. I talk; “Lola” listens, and I get hands-free technology. Voila. 

After I bought “Lola” and showed her to my parents, my mother said, “I think that car was made for someone like you.” Yes Mother it was.

I clearly remember as a kid wishing my future would include music that could be triggered by voice commands.

In fact, I’m quite sure I invented the idea long before techno-genius and American business magnate Bill Gates got into the computer business, but I can’t prove it—sort of like that big fish I caught in 1979 that no one saw but me.

   

But let’s get back to the car. “Lola” came into the picture on the heels of a really great gal called “Old Buick,” whose time was limited by crusty rust and body parts that were starting to fall off.

“Old Buick” had had a motor replacement last fall and although she still ran the highway like a charmer, the choking and hesitant cough of her daily turn over was a sure predictor of a functional seizing stroke on an imminently cold and bitter January day.

I was driving “Old Buick” home after I’d given the nod to the car dealer to draw up papers to buy “Lola,” and I was clouded over by a true and genuine sadness at the thought of passing “Old Buick” on to an unknown future as part of my trade-in. I was going to miss the old girl.

“Old Buick” had carried my limping soul through those really crummy times of my life. She had been the “go to” when I just needed to drive and cry. She had seen me through those times and got me safely home again.  

I also was driving “Old Buick” when new visions of better times started to peak through. “Old Buick” drove me down the road to new chapters and a new beginning. 

I felt really sad about letting her go.

It’s a funny thing to get so attached to an inanimate object like that. The wherefore and the why of it is a long case study in what makes me who I am. That education class is never ending.

No word of a lie, before I turned her in at the dealer I told “Old Buick” out loud what she had meant to me and how much influence she had had on me and I thanked her for carrying me through. And then I let her go.

And when I drove “Lola” off the car lot that day, all I could think about was how much possibility lie ahead of me—and then I said out loud—“Play Bruce Springsteen.”

Glory days indeed.

I am Beth the Brave

“Yes is for young people, Yes is for young people,” I chanted reassuringly to myself in the bathroom mirror as the hair dye oozed through my plastic-gloved fingertips.

A lumpy trail of Vaseline jelly was layered across my forehead at the hairline and down around my ears to save my skin from turning the color of cinnamon sticks.

My hair looked like a science experiment. I prayed no one came knocking at the door.

“There is no choice you've ever made, nor any you will ever make, that will limit you as much as you may fear,” I said to the me who wasn’t so sure this “at home” follicle re-pigmentation project was a good idea.

The instructions said to leave the goop in for 10 minutes. Did that include the 10 minutes it took me to work the stuff into my extra thick long hair? And what about the intolerable wiry grey I wanted to get rid of?

I read the instructions again.

“For resistant grey hair, you may need to leave colour on for an additional 5 minutes, or longer than a total of 15 minutes.”

Little did I know at that moment that I misread the instructions and had just invited remorse into the room.

 “for no longer than a total of 15 minutes,” was a crucial part of the recipe.

It was a misread, misinterpreted, misjudged, mistakened, missed by a long shot, BIG MISTAKE!!

After 25 minutes I peeled the plastic bag off my head, leaned over the tub and rinsed out the leftover dye with the shower hose.

The warm water felt so good on my tender scalp rudely marinated in wordy ingredients I could hardly pronounce—‘Methylresorcinol’, ‘Soytrimonium’ and ‘Ethoxydiglycol’ to name three of the some 20 chemicals listed on the box.

“And what are ‘Oleth 2’ and ‘Oleth 5’? Movie sequels?” I queried out loud.

I should have kept my eyes shut as I washed the dye from my hair, but I didn’t.

I opened my eyes--and then opened them wider--as I watched the rinse water flow off my head in a fiery red color and promptly stain the bottom of my tub before swirling down the drain.

It felt like a lifetime passed before the water ran clear. As I waited I chanted to myself the score of positive thinking I’d preached from last week’s column.

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.”

I wrapped my long head of hair in a towel and squeezed. I prayed. I closed my eyes and fumbled my way over to the bathroom mirror; stood there and said, “Go forward. Finish what you start. Don’t look back.”

I took the towel off my hair and peaked out of one squinty eyeball. At first glance it was like one of my old Scottish ancestors was staring back at me.

I thank my lucky stars, the spirits of King Fergus and Queen Elinor, and the clan of Caldwell that my captain was away on an ocean sailing adventure for three whole weeks.

Oh Lordy. I was the spitting image of “Merida” from the Disney movie, ‘Brave.’ All I needed was a long bow and a green velvet dress.

In the meantime I had to figure out how to get in and out of the hair dye aisle for a “browner shade of something” without being recognized and swarmed for autographs.

But that’s another story. 

Healing thoughts never lose their way

I ended last week’s column with “I am the luckiest girl I know,” and yet when I saw that in writing after the newspaper was printed I thought, no, I’m not lucky. Luck is for lottery ticket winners.

I believe I deserve to have a happy life and I live for that goal and I am rewarded in my hard work to get it.

I practice acceptance. I practice reassurance. I practice believing that I have more than once chance in this world to get things right and when I doubt my timing—and I do doubt my timing a lot—I always come back to believing I am right where I’m supposed to be. I believe everybody else is too.

I’m writing today’s column at 5 a.m., before the sun shines and the day takes on its “have to do” hue.

This is my favorite time of day. I can enjoy the virgin-like atmosphere of a day on the leading edge of its history not yet touched by anything but the rising sun.

I have a ritual every morning where I stand outside on my porch facing east as the sun peaks over the horizon and I slowly bow three times and say out loud, “Thank you for this day.”

I try never to miss the opportunity to practice this ritual and to be thankful not only for being alive to see the sun rise, but also to be accepting of whatever the day has in store for me before it happens.

I’m sticking to my guns about believing I am where I’m supposed to be all the time.

I started this bowing ritual at the beginning of the summer. It has changed my attitude and my gratitude level, and keeps me grounded in present-moment living.

I haven’t written a column at 5 a.m. in a very long time. It is my “me” time and not traditionally my “creative” time. 

However, if anybody can change his or her thoughts on a thing, it’s me.

The following is a smattering of the stuff I read about every morning—a fraction of the stash of healing thoughts that I dwell on as I edge nearer to the cusp of the old “9-5” routine and beyond. I didn’t write any of it. Thanks to the geniuses who did.

“Go forward. Finish what you start. Don’t look back.”

"There is magic in what we believe. Our beliefs tell our future better than any crystal ball or psychic can. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,’ says one holy book. Be mindful of your thoughts and beliefs. What you think and believe today, whether it's ‘I can't’ or ‘I can,’ is what you will manifest tomorrow.

Do you have any beliefs right now that are holding you back? What are your ‘I can’s’ and ‘I can'ts’. Take a moment. Look into your heart. Examine what you believe to be true. Is there an area in your life that could be benefited by thinking and believing something else? If you are going to use the power of your mind, use it to form a positive belief.”

"Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you... remember that the lives of others are not your business... They are God's business... Leave it to God... Unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy..."

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.”

“Practice self-care. Pay attention to the one you care about. Listen when they speak. Respond with kindness and understanding. Hug every day. Kiss often, and repeat.”

“There is no choice you've ever made, nor any you will ever make, that will limit you as much as you may fear.”

“Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. ‘Yes’ is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say Yes.”

Yes.

Summer hiatus worth more than gold

“This is life, not a funeral service,” Melody Beattie writes. That’s the truth.

Beginning in July I heeded a wise friend’s advice. I put down my pen, closed the lid on my laptop and took a break from writing my column.

Save the one column that showed up for the Irish clan who came a’ calling, I managed to give myself permission to lay low from writing for about seven weeks. Wow.

And lo and behold I turned around once in my summer swirl and “looky looky”—September is just over there.

However it was becoming easier and easier to let one more week go without writing. I think I could have been lost indefinitely had not Frances Einarson and Louella Kellar—to name just two candles in the window—guided me back to my lighthouse.

Without question though, my word vacation has been liberating and dare I say, deserved? I squeezed the orange juice out of my orange this summer, and no matter her short season I am thankful for every day of it.

I remain in mysterious awe of how life can pour me a glass of good times with a sprig of happiness if I make a conscious choice to loosen up a bit, be spontaneous, participate, and have some fun.

And even when she wipes my garden clean of its fruit and changes the plans I had for tomorrow, that’s okay too.

Where do I begin?

It all started on a sunny day in early July (after re-planting my garden) when visions of raccoons living in the hayloft—dancing around up there and pooping out parasites all over my would-be dance hall floor did indeed come to fruition.

I was working in the barn, readying it for my fellow reunionites when I looked up to see a big mother—a really big mother—raccoon staring at me from her prone perch in a cubby at the top of the wall.

The sighting of my nemesis occurred a few days after I had waved my golf club in the hayloft and shouted in a threatening voice for any and all rodents to “be very afraid.”  Obviously she didn’t get that memo.

Come to think of it, the raccoon date was July 4^th and Independence Day for my American friends.

I admit it felt a bit like Independence Day in my neck of the woods, too, after I showed that bandit who wore the pants around here. My barn. My rules.

Yet I still do not rule my grasslands. The geese have it covered.

There now are 18 such feathered friends, most of which are this years’ goslings, and regular daily attenders to the lawn in front of the barn. They move about in long waddling lines, leaving behind their trademark green poo and enough goose down to start a pillow factory—all the while shaking their long necks in scold of me when I try to get to “my” barn or to “my” garden. 

Nevertheless, I have watched the goslings grow from little golden fluff into tall, lanky creatures of flight and despite the chaos, I’m grateful they grew up here on the banks of Frog Creek.

All foe and fowl aside, the best of my summer holidays was set simply against the beautiful scenery of Rainy Lake from aboard a sailboat in the company of the man who remains my captain. 

And against the bluest of skies I swam countless times in the lake and floated freely on my back, listening to my heartbeat under water. It was the only sound  . . . .

The world falls away during these times and releases me into a wonderful place of freedom that no amount of money in the world could replace.

I am the luckiest girl I know.

The faces of my Irish family come a'callin

My brother Jay and I grew up a country field away and yet “here” was a constant destination, where my grandparents Florence and Joe Drennan lived on the farm.

We slept here at their house most Friday nights, waking up early Saturday mornings to help Grandpa with farm chores. My grandma, meanwhile, cooked and baked the best of everything and not for lack of trying have I duplicated any of those recipes in my kitchen.

My grandfather stood every morning at the kitchen sink, looking into a small mirror sitting on the window ledge where he’d comb what hair he had left with a oval-shaped, soft-bristled brush and then adjust the silver arm bands on his work shirt before he headed outside to the chores in the barn. He took such pride in the preparation before a day’s work.

Grandpa Drennan had a mighty soul stocked with discipline and work ethics that measured hands above any draft horse of his day.

And when I walk with intent today across the yard from the farmhouse to the barn, I remember watching Grandpa do the same thing, as if on a mission.

Yep, we are definitely related.

Family mattered at all turns and we were a part of everything—planting potatoes in the spring or walking on the cattle drive, harvesting hay bales in late summer, and cleaning cow poop out of the gutters in the barn. Thank Heaven for all of it.

Grandpa and Grandma Drennan died in 1996 and 2006 respectively and this old farm has changed a lot in the seven years since I purchased it. There are more trees planted and less farm machinery parts lying around and the barn, old and shoddy as it is on the outside, has had its face lifted on the inside. 

I wonder what Grandpa would have done if he’d have walked into the barn last week before the family reunion and caught me dusting and vacuuming the place as foot stomping tunes belted out of two big stereo speakers hanging from the ceiling.

I think he’d smile at my disciplined nature and nod in understanding of the passion and pride that was bouncing around in there. I miss you.

I worked hard on a summer’s mission to ready this old homestead for the “Drennan Reunion” and for the spirited bunch of more than 80 relatives who hadn’t partied here together in two years and who would move in with their camper trailers and tents to take up the cause.

They came, they partied, they made memories.

“We put our glass to the sky and lift up

And live tonight 'cause you can't take it with ‘ya

So raise a pint for the people that aren't with us

And live tonight 'cause you can't take it with ‘ya.” 

I stood in a sea of Drennan descendants in my neck of the woods on Saturday afternoon during a scavenger hunt and soaked up laughter and camaraderie that funneled through all of us.

I thought to myself, “We’re all here where we belong.”

When it got dark on Saturday night, we lit and released 20 flying lanterns that pierced the sky above Frog Creek. There was a moment of silence that spoke volumes as we all watched the lights rise into the heavens.

Joe,

James, Jack, and Harry, Margaret, Pat, Janet, and Tillie we remember you.

We belong. We are Drennan.

“May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the suns shine warm upon your face, and the rain fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

The wild things in life make a story

It’s late Sunday morning and a gentle rain is falling. I am on the edge of lamenting such precipitation because I could be outside cutting the grass instead of sitting here typing. But then again, as I see it, all things happen for a reason.

At least the rain gives me a break from hauling my watering can uphill from the creek to the garden and flowerbeds. Every new summer I mutter about the muscle work and swear the next time around I will have a water pump. That would-be oath has been on my lips each year since I moved here seven summers ago. I guess the pump hasn’t yet reached the top of list.

However, raccoons or some such varmint have made it.

 

“Little Miss” spent many hours of back and biceps ache digging an extended garden this spring.

I went to the local nursery and purchased vegetable plants including broccoli and green peppers, and luscious strawberries. I could taste the fruits of my labor already.

I think my future bounty was in the ground two days, maybe three, when something promptly ate all the leaves off everything, leaving behind “Charlie Brown” bare twigs of pathetic nothings.

I, the master of the word, was speechless. Yes, I should have known better. I should have wired the garden to the fuse panel.

After all I live in the country where the deer and raccoon play—and  they play more now that I don’t have a dog posse roaming the grounds for intruders.

Sadly my two cats are not replacements. The best they give me is a long, flat stare when I ask them to fetch the mouse that just ran by me in the porch.

Strangely there was little evidence of hoof or paw marks in the dirt of the garden. Either it was a very tall deer with a long neck or a raccoon tied to a tether that zip-lined from the barn roof and nibbled off the tops of my precious plants.

Being the imaginative woman that I am, I suspected the latter—a notion that grew rapidly when I spotted a big, fat, masked thief sauntering along the edge of the garden at dusk earlier this week.

I grabbed a golf club and marched over there to show the rodent what a hole in one looked like but he got wind of me and made like a bandit. 

Suddenly I had visions of raccoons living in the hayloft, dancing around up there, and pooping out parasites all over my would-be dance hall floor.

I hailed for reinforcements from Daughter #3 and headed to the barn to turn on the stereo and smoke the little buggers out as “Bat Out of Hell” by Meatloaf vibrated the framework.  

We must have looked like downright hillbillies marching up the staircase to the hayloft bearing pitchforks and steel rakes and strutting our stuff as the song, “Sharp Dressed Man” by ZZ Top barreled out of the speakers that afternoon. All we found was pigeon and sparrow doo-doo.

“Be afraid! Be very afraid!” I shouted anyway—and then I went out and replanted my garden.

I reckon I’m going to have a bumper crop. It’s always a possibility.

Raised in hope, the best gift of all

Writing from the heart is tricky business. 

I found that out in a sheepish—albeit comical way—when, once upon a column, I put it all “out there” and wrote about issues with my Greek figure (and included in my column how much I weighed) and my subsequent choices to begin to lead a healthier lifestyle.

An avid reader of said “baring” then found me sitting at a local hamburger joint stuffing in a cheeseburger and called me on it right there in the restaurant from across the room.

I wanted to throw down one of those black magic circles from the “Looney Tunes” cartoons, jump in and disappear to some faraway city as one of the anonymous populace. 

I’ve been writing my column since 2004 and I think I’ve covered just about every personal topic known to “readerkind.” Yet, I still find that the delicate river that runs through us all, and its muddy layers of our thick-skinned ways, never really reaches an end in discussion.

“There’s always something,” as my late grandmother Florence Drennan used to say (although she usually was talking about the one more thing to do around the farm that she hadn’t planned on.)

This writing space is good medicine and I am very lucky to have it, especially when I use the opportunity to write from my heart and today is just another perfect opportunity to take to the river once more.

Best selling author Neil Gaiman penned good advice. 

“Write. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”

I love and adore my father, Bruce. He is 87 years old and when I get to thinking about the depth of human being he is, I can only hope to be as good and kind and wise in all my days as he is in his.

He remains the cornerstone of his daughter’s life.

He raised me in hope and, in fact, both of my parents did.

It was my father’s most common reply to my childhood questions that instilled in me an optimistic self-power that to this day defends me in difficult circumstances and fuels my goals for purposeful happiness.

“It’s always a possibility,” my dad used to say—and still does if you ask him the right question.

My dad is my mentor and my friend, my ranch helper and my favorite historian with an encyclopedia of knowledge and stories about his career and his life that one day will fill the pages of a book.

It’s an incredible gift to have him here in this life with me.

“Fathers and daughters have a romance that goes on for the rest of their lives, destined to ripen and age as they dance through the days of their husbands and wives. Up near the surface their love is distinct,

like a garden surveyed in the sun, in which seed time and full bloom are credibly linked by a consciousness shared and hard won. 

Deep down below, where the world is a dream, and the dream is a world of its own, all manner of memories the moments redeem in a place where one's never alone.” – Nicholas Gordon

Right from my heart I write to you, my dad. I love you. Happy Father’s Day.

The progressive expansion of happiness

It’s nearly 9:30 p.m. and I’m looking out my front window at the still and quiet of the evening and the closing off of daylight as the orange sun slides beneath the horizon.

Once again, and this time through very sad events in the lives of others I am reminded that Joan Didion continues to be right. “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.”

I also am reminded through these very sad events in the lives of others, that I can easily be sideswiped by my own past shadows that (to paraphrase Mark Nepo) apparently still wait in behind and are quite willing to be background to my joy.

I guess it means I’m still ever edging outwards in healing from my own storm damage, when life as I knew it ended and a different one began.

Of late I’ve been wandering into territory that fellow freelancer Wendi Stewart wrote about a few weeks in her column, “Wendi with an ‘eye.’”

She said, “that’s what writers do; we write about that which puzzles us in the hopes some understanding will surface and we can get our minds around the subject that is poking at us from the inside.”

I am puzzled by many things, some worth piecing together and some, not so much. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I think about, strange as that may sound.

I’d like to think I’d make a good life coach; someone who through her experiences in leading an imperfectly perfect life could help another human being to grow into their own light. A “perspective changer.” Time will tell.

I had a question recently posed to me. “What’s the purpose of your life, Beth?”

And much to my surprise I couldn’t answer it promptly and that bugged me—a lot.

For the rest of that day I felt stymied in some internal way, as if the fact that I couldn’t answer the question meant I didn’t know what I wanted or what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

I put great expectations on myself to come up something. A few days passed before it dawned on me that I had known all along what my purpose was. I had written about it many times in one way or another and yet had lost my way somewhere from there to here.

Purpose is sacred to each of us—this I know for sure—and I respect yours, whatever it may be.

But before I shine a refresher on mine, I want to go back to the beginning of this column and the shadows that linger as the background to joy.

Nepo writes “That we insist on keeping old wounds alive, is our curse.” He’s right. It’s what we focus on that manifests itself.

“When I focus on the rake of experience and how its fingers dug into me and the many feet that have walked over me, there is no end to the life of my pain. But when I focus on the soil of heart and how it has been turned over, there is no end to the mix of feelings that defy my want to name them. Tragedy stays alive by feeling what’s been done to us. Peace comes alive by living with the result.”

What is the purpose of my life? My purpose is to be happy. I deserve to be happy. We all do.

Somehow, for a little while, I forgot about that.

The happiness balance is tedious, constant work. Sometimes I do it well, sometimes I do appallingly, but I believe in my choice and I dwell in its possibilities.