THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

[As May fades away into June, I want to celebrate some beautiful things in my area of the planet. This essay first appeared three years ago, and it's word-for-word what I see and feel now. Please enjoy.]

Yesterday I drove through the countryside from my home to another small town to meet friends for lunch. Our meeting place is about halfway between our two houses.

And I saw many lovely things, Nature's offerings for our enjoyment:

• more flowering trees than I remembered from other years--pink ones, white ones, tall ones, short ones.
• yellow "flowers" along the roadside--at 50 mph I couldn't quite figure them out; then after a while I recognized a few of the yellow heads had gone to seed and then it was obvious--dandelions! I even love to see the ones with fluffy heads, though not in my yard.
• also yellow somethings in the unplowed fields, which I seemed to recall were a flowering mustard plant; not, apparently, the mustard bush of Biblical times, because these never get get more than six inches or so above the ground.
• in town, trees are outdoing each other to see who has the most leaves with the most green--or red, in some cases (Japanese maples, some of them).

Back home, I discovered birds of many feathers had discovered our recently filled feeders. There'll be another filling session this weekend no doubt. One suet cake is already down to crumbs. But then, this is the breeding season, and birds need more protein during this time.

On my front porch hangs a new flowering basket of fuchsia, a Mother's Day gift from my Ohio daughter. Elsewhere in the yard peonies, resurrection lily, narcissi, hostas, and some things I don't remember the names of are all not only up, they're straining skyward. Others won't bloom until fall, but foliage is already gung-ho. The rhubarb looks like a pie in the making.

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A lot of little things make me happy. Those flowers and trees and blooming weeds don't need to be appreciated. But their exuberant color adds joy to my days. We've had plenty of cloudy, rainy, stormy days already, and there'll be more. What I see in Nature reminds me that clouds and rain and storms aren't all there is to life. And thanks be for that.

Other things that make me happy--lunch with friends; the little phone bag my friend made and gave me when we had lunch yesterday; air conditioning to help us sleep on these suddenly hot nights; summer clothes that still fit this year; new books to read; library services (I'm in love with Evergreen, who keeps providing me with DVDs of a series no longer being streamed on the channels I get).

The worst part of spring--oho! you didn't think I'd say anything bad about spring, did you?--well, there is a part I don't appreciate: Allergies. Fortunately they don't last forever (it just seems like it). And I wouldn't be without the flowers that provide the pollen that drives my sinuses and eyes and nose crazy. What a drab world that would be.

Better to celebrate the things that make me happy, because then I can pass along some of my joy in Nature and her bounty to other folks who may have lost their zest for spring and flowers and leafing-out trees.

Wishing you happy days in your life!

Til next time,

Blessings from Thursday's Child

   MEMORIAL DAY

MEMORIAL DAY

It is easily forgotten, year to

year, exactly where the plot is,

though the place is entirely familiar—

a willow tree by a curving roadway

sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

 

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,

canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies

circling in draped black crepe family stones,

fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored

nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

 

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down

on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair

brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,

birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,

a stream opening at its foot.

 

We know the stories that are told,

by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy

regarding the precise enactments of their own

gesturing. And among the women there will be

a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

 

The morning may be brilliant; the season

is one of brilliances—sunlight through

the fountained willow behind us, its splayed

shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,

irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

 

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,

moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,

bluebells and zebragrass toward that place

between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way

is lost, that we have no practiced step there,

and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

-----

Michael Anania was born in Omaha, NE in 1939.

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It was called Decoration Day when I was a little girl. We gathered wild iris and tiger lilies from the ditches that bordered the fields where corn was just beginning to thrust its green shoots through the black Illinois soil. We carried the flowers in quart jars of water to the cemetery where we decorated two small graves of my brothers. I didn't know what it was all about. But I felt the atmosphere of loss and mourning.

Now I know it as a day of remembering the ones who have left us--the Episcopal burial service says it beautifully: "Father of all, we pray to you . . . for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May . . . the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

 

HOW DO YOU SPELL SUCCESS?

Here’s a question for you:

How many failures = success?

Try these on for size:

• Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.  Thomas A. Edison
• Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is.  Bob Feller
• Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.  C. S. Lewis
• Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.  Dale Carnegie
• Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.  Swami Sivananda
• You don't learn from successes; you don't learn from awards; you don't learn from celebrity; you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that's the truth.  Jane Fonda
• Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.  George Edward Woodberry

And my favorite:

• If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.  Mason Cooley

From these thoughts, garnered from folks in all kinds of endeavors, it’s pretty clear that one way to spell success is failure.

Think of them as both sides of the same coin, a common metaphor used to describe opposites that actually work in tandem. As with a coin, you can’t have one without the other. (Have you ever seen a one-sided coin? Not in this 3-dimensional world.)

In my experience, failures mean that we’ve tried; we’ve been thinking, working, tinkering—with ideas, numbers and equations, pieces of wood or scraps of fabric or foods; we’ve devoted time, energy, and the whole of ourselves to something not necessarily related to keeping ourselves alive.

In other words, we’ve set ourselves up to be willing to fail—in the expectation that we will succeed.

When I taught freshman composition classes for Purdue University, I loved the word essay. It comes from the French verb, essayer, which means to try, to aim, to attempt, to give it a whirl, to have a go.

One of my goals in teaching comp was to instill in the students that what they wrote first were trials, approaches to a final draft.

And, as is the way with life, my attempt to get them to see that possibility did not always succeed. In some cases it was a clear, unmitigated, and downright mind-boggling failure. But I kept on, for reasons beyond the understanding of mankind, showing the reasons for drafts, pre-writing (note-making, brainstorming), and rewriting.

Talk about uphill work! Sisyphus had nothing on me!

What I learned was perseverance, trying to find new ways to teach the same lessons, looking for a student's experiences that might be built on. As I taught, I kept on learning. Most teachers will say the same.

Probably the most difficult person to reach is the one who says, “Failure is not in my vocabulary!”

Oh, really? You were born walking, talking, tying your shoes, eating with a fork, reading, doing math . . . ?

The sub-text here is this: “I don’t dwell on failure; I don’t let it rule my life; I don’t call myself a failure.” I hope that’s what the person means who disclaims failure as a part of life.

This post started out asking us to consider success. Here are three questions we can consider:

1.       Whose definition of success am I using?

2.       Is that definition a valid yardstick—does it fit me?

3.       What is my ultimate goal?

While knowing the goal is important, I’ve found that it’s equally important to allow for discoveries along the way; they’re side roads that may become the main path--or enhance it in ways I hadn't visualized in my original way of thinking. Much more positive than thinking of them as failures.

If you take away nothing else, try this: The final definition of success is up to you. You have to live with it. If you choose to live with someone else’s idea of success, you may regret it, because you may never reach their goal. Your own is more important—to you.

 

 THE END . . . OR, IS IT?

"In my end is my beginning."

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Some of you know that I had a heart valve replacement back in February. It was a fairly simple operation, done without cracking open my chest (thanks be!), and I was home after a one-night stay in the hospital. In less than a month, I was a patient at cardiac rehabilitation in a nearby hospital. Three days ago, I "graduated" from rehab! 

So that was the end of my adventure. Sort of. Rehab allowed me to strengthen my muscles--arms, legs, core--and each little bit of strength increased the energy my body could use for further movement. But the next step is what I do on my own, now that rehab is ended. So I refer you back to the T. S. Eliot quotation: "In my end is my beginning." That's right, I'm just beginning.

Picture, if you can, an 80-something woman whose activity level has declined over the previous decade (or longer) because she didn't always have the strength or the stamina she needed to pursue simple exercise--walking on the indoor track at the Y, spending a half-hour in a chain store examining all the goodies for sale, staying with a project (like writing or painting) more than a few minutes, or visiting with friends.

That was me, during the past five or so years. When my heart valve reached a new low, and was eligible for replacement, I said a firm "yes" and today's post is the result of that acceptance.

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The New Beginning

Even though I've written thousands--maybe millions--of words in my life, I'm almost at a loss to explain the way it feels to have a body that responds as I recall it did from 20 or more years ago. No, I am not faster than a speeding bullet, I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound (nor any bounds!). But I can say I'm a great deal stronger than I was (not quite up to locomotive strength, however). And I not only celebrate that joy, I am more grateful than I've been for anything I can recall.

All right--what am I going to do with that, you ask.

First, I'm going to get used to having more energy--physical, of course, but also mental and emotional and spiritual. Gifts like this must be used, not ignored or hidden away or kept to oneself.

Next, I'm going to take a long, deep, look at my life--what I know I can do, what I like to do, what I can do that will help other people in some way. I have no ambitious plans--because I've learned that even small amounts of caring go far to a person who is hurting. And--who knows what good surprises might be coming? (This from a woman who hates being surprised. Go figure.)

Also, I'll continue to exercise so my physical body will stay as strong as it can for years of further use. Those of you who know me well, will recognize the struggle I'm entering into. I've never been an athlete, and I've never enjoyed having to exercise. My greatest challenge will be finding ways to keep a firm resolve in the face of my weaker self whispering, "Oh, you can let it go just this once." Uh-huh, right.

I suspect most of you have experienced the ending/beginning thing in your life. This time of year I think of graduation ceremonies--leaving a known environment for the unknown; weddings--exchanging single status for a different kind of face you present to the world; new babies who will change your life forever.

There are also sad endings--death of someone who has made your life more joyful; closing down of businesses you've relied on for years; even losing a well-loved tree that has given you shade for many years.

The most precious gift I've been given with the endings in my life is a new beginning. One era of my life ended. A new era has begun. (And I salute T. S. Eliot whose words live in my heart.) May you find the blessing in the endings in your life.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

 A MOM BY ANY OTHER NAME...

As we near the annual Mother's Day celebration, I've been thinking about women who have been "mom" to me throughout my life.

There's first, naturally, my biological mom, whose name was Doris. I was her third child, but the only one who survived beyond a few months. From her I learned several important lessons:
   --put yourself in the other person's place
   --be friendly
   --don't hurt another person's feelings
   --share what you have
   --take care of your belongings

Life for my mom was not easy; she was divorced in a time when such action was frowned upon. She had to work to help support herself and me. We often had to make-do with whatever we had because we couldn't afford another whatever-it-was. I didn't know any of this when it was going on. Much of it became clear when I had children and experienced first hand what it meant to do without or make-do. My mom died when I was 15.

My next mom was my mother-in-law, Vira. She and I just clicked. Her house was where we often met on Friday or Saturday night for pizza--she and I made it while the guys talked in the other room. We were on the same wavelength, Vira and I. If she needed a utensil for use at the stove, I was handing it to her as she turned to ask. She was creative with fabric, liked to read, collected recipes, all of which I related to; and she played bridge with her lady friends, which never appealed to me. (Mainly because I couldn't get my head around the rules and nuances of bridge. Still can't.) She died when I was 27.

Years later I met Treva, one of the pillars of the small country church my family attended. She had one daughter, but apparently longed for a larger family. So she "adopted" all the 30-somethings in that church--boys and girls--as her own. No matter how downhearted we felt during the week, a Sunday morning of Treva's love and acceptance put things right again. Treva lived long enough to see me into my 50s.

By that time, I'd reconciled myself to being the mom, and not having one of my own in the flesh. Then I reconnected with Aunt Virginia, my mom's youngest sister, and the last of the 10 Jenkins children. 


Aunt Virginia had two little boys--who naturally became grown-up men--but she never had little girls of her own. All my female cousins and I were happy to help her out. For several years my oldest daughter and I made an annual trip to Illinois for a weekend with Virginia and "her girls." We visited cemeteries where our great-greats were buried; we shopped at Walmart; we ate one meal out so we could visit with some cousins who couldn't come to the house; we admired Virginia's garden, and ate whatever produce was ripe and ready. Virginia lived a long life, and I was in my 60s when she died.

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What is it that defines a "mom"?

Think of the people you know who've adopted children--are they any less a mom (or dad) because they aren't the biological parent?

Think of the women (since we're talking about moms today) who never married, but who spent their lives in service to children, young people, and adults: teachers, nurses and doctors, social workers, day-care people. . . .

Here's a partial list of characteristics I associate with moms:

--they care
--they want the best for you
--they laugh or cry with you
--they think of you often (you know this because they tell
   you they do)
--they have wisdom, in spades, from years of living longer
   than you have
--they share: ideas, advice, money, material goods, their physical help
--they let you make your own mistakes (they made theirs, and 
   learned from them)
--they let you go when they'd rather keep you safely with them, and 
   they keep you when you've no place to go

Make yourself a list. It will be based on how you've come to know the woman or women you call "mom."

Then take some time each day to give thanks for "mom." 

Blessings,

Thursday's Child