Melmantra

Always leave while you're still having fun.

That's it. Honestly, that's the mantra. So simple. And yet, so hard for some people to do.

I guess it began in the "early summer" of my lifespan, when I was venturing out at night with friends, winking at occasions and locations that skirted the edge of "trouble," and partaking of legal libations in said situations. I began to see that sticking around, late at night, usually resulted in my wishing I'd departed earlier. I had some friends, too, who never quite absorbed the truth of this realization—those people who never knew when to quit. Eventually, our different philosophies caused some tension at times... And then, we simply got older, and/or parted ways due to unrelated circumstances... and over-staying night-life events became a non-issue.

But I still fall back on that mantra. It's my own, it has served me well—and it's still true today. Although nowadays, we're not talking about clubs or parties. Now, it applies to family life: vacation, Kennywood, school events, picnics, canoe excursions. Leave while you're still having fun. Leave so that the good memories prevail, instead of being erased by memories of tempers flaring, or crowds surging, or sunburn and bug bites overtaking all else. Leave while you're still wide awake to drive home, before you overeat, or injure yourself pretending you're still youthful. Leave the park before you become nauseous from one more ride; depart the lovely beach before you have sufficient time to grow weary of sand in your undergarments. Be decisive, be disciplined, be a leader, and declare a finish time. Then, stick to it within reason.

Since I am the ruiner of fun in my home, this forthright task usually falls on me. Most of the unsavory tasks do. I'm at home more; it's inevitable. But I resignedly don my bleak crown.

Does this mantra work in all things? No, of course not. You can't apply it to marriage; there would be very few marriages remaining! You can't apply it to jobs, at least not on a daily basis. (However, I do believe that for those of us with choices, you can apply the mantra in a bigger way when you see an emerging pattern of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, or poor management in a workplace). You can't apply my fab mantra to family, either. You're sort of stuck there. I've learned the hard way, too, that you shouldn't apply it to church life within short spans. Some folks do, skipping from place to place each time they are bored or offended... only to find that other churches are full of flawed people, too. All of them.

I have found, though, that the melmantra makes sense for excursions of all kinds, and for hobbies and pastimes. My family grows weary of hearing it. I tire of repeating it. Yet, I think back on times when I did not apply it... And I press on.

Less is best

I think I'm finally feeling almost normal today. Christmas holiday, New Year's, extended vacations for my son and my husband, then a ridiculous cold front that caused more unplanned time off—all that mayhem has meant no time for me to enjoy the silence and build up my introvert reserves. Even today was tarnished by yet another school delay. I love my son, but when we can't even step outside for fear of frostbite...? Enough.

At this moment, at last, I am flourishing in stillness. The swish of the washing machine in the basement is the only sound to accompany my tapping on the keyboard. Blissful. Soon, the symphony of rushing heat from the vent will start again, offering a variety in my minimal auditory stimulation. Perhaps I'll turn on some music in a little while, but not yet. Not yet.

I visited Macy's recently (an item to return, an unused gift card—these are the things that are required to get me into the mall). I stood in that vast space dedicated to consumer culture, and I gaped at the innumerable items around me. Modern, classic, work-out, work-wear, young and hip, old and proven. And that was just the petite section of women's clothing. Are you kidding me? How's a person supposed to choose from such a plethora of options? I don't have the energy to narrow down the categories. At least, I don't want to expend my precious energy doing something so pointless for very long. I know I've written about this before, the ludicrously large number of choices we have when purchasing anything, and I'm still wound up about it. More and more, I love thrift stores. Now I can add this reason to the list: fewer choices to have to make. Limited options simplify my life; too much of anything is not pleasing.

I can carry that argument back into the Christmas season, which finally limped out the door while I kicked it and hollered with glee. I love Jesus, yet I despise a lot of Christmas. And you know why? Because there is too much of everything. Think about it. Too many parties, too many dinners, too many cookies, too many responsibilities and gifts to buy and people to remember and time off and even too much red wine. Excessive revelry, even excessive fellowship, makes me antsy and short of breath, eager only to retreat.

So, I grasp with new depth why I steer clear of Macy's and places like it, and why I sing joyfully to myself as I take down the Christmas decorations. It's not just a new year, or even a new start that lightens my heart.

It's the promise of LESS.

At last, a new painting

Finally I've finished another painting. (Painting in July and August is just plain difficult. Unless I have time on my hands and, in this current monsoon summer, a covered patio under which to pitch an easel... which I do not.)

My source for this one was a lovely photo taken by the fine folks at North Woods Ranch. It features one of their fuzzy beasts, eying the camera (with suspicion?) on a foggy and somewhat mysterious morning. Every time I look at it, I think of the song "Misty Morning Hop" by Led Zeppelin. Not that the cow looks ready to hop around—especially not to that thumping tune. But the mist, people. The mist.

So. It's for sale in my Etsy shop.

Not much else is happening here. We are sadly marking the days until school begins. We camped out in the yard last night, and let me tell you, there are plenty of creatures stirring around 2:30am. Including me, with a small hill and at least two tree roots under my spine...

Enjoy the weekend; I hope you are able to squeeze in at least one activity that delights you.

Purr, purr

I finished this painting of our dear kitty just before the holidays hit hard. She's so darned picturesque, you know? Most cats are, come to think of it. And on days like we had today, a cat is a fine example of how to behave if at all possible. Find a comfortable spot with some filtered light, or make a spot if nothing measures up. Get cozy. Nap. Wake, and nap again. Look out any nearby window, be thankful you don't have to be "out there," and then drift off once more.

Perhaps you're reading this from a warm, sunny place where you prefer being outside. That's great, but it's not that kind of day here. When I ventured outdoors earlier, I was pelted with tiny ice balls. They piled up, but not like fluffy snow—this stuff accumulated like the fake snow at ski lodges, all sharp and unnatural. I couldn't make a snowball out of this substance if I had to. And why, I ask, would I want to spend time surrounded by such an unwelcoming, unyielding surface? I wouldn't. Hence the cat example.

I only wish I could have napped. With a 7-year-old who'd already been on the sled, no cable TV, dirty laundry from holidays spent running, dishes in the sink from people home on vacation, and toys strewn across every flat surface, there was no napping here.

But that's okay. I'll leave it to the cat. Napping screws up my sleep at night, anyway. And I didn't have to drive on hazardous roads to a job today, so I'll count my blessings. I hope this post finds you safe in the place you most want to be.

Oceanic thoughts

My son has eyes the color of the sea—
Sometimes a blue-grey, other times grey-green.
The twinkle of the sun upon his gaze?
The sweetest sight my own brown eyes have seen.

We visited the shore last weekend. Cape May, NJ is one of my favorite places. To walk through that town is akin to stepping back in time. Families go biking together, huge farm horses clip-clop along, pulling rubber-necking tourists in buggies, and everywhere you look are grand, elegant Victorian homes decked out in luscious colors and fine details. Not to mention the salty air and the crash of waves upon sand.

There is no other realm like the seashore. It's one of the few places where I can honestly say that my mind is a blank page. In the real world, my brain is in overdrive, poring over plans and thoughts, fighting through moments of confusion or anxiety, trying to extricate facts and memories. But on the sand, watching the waves roll, feeling the power of those countless gallons? Nada. Empty brain.

Majestic, land-locked sights can transport me, too, but they have to be pretty darned huge and impressive to actually clear my mind of thoughts. Rocky Mountains, canyons, waterfalls, yes—but even those beauties do not have the power to erase that the ocean has.

Now we're home, and school has begun. That cleansing salty air is nowhere near. It's up to me to seek that same mental place, here amid the crowded green hills of western PA.

Wish me luck; it ain't gonna be easy.

Feel-good stuff

We've been doing plenty of reading here at our home. Summer is great for that, you know. Not to mention, since a lengthy to-do list for our newly purchased house cannot peaceably coexist with a cushy vacation budget, reading allows us little escapes via the back yard and our imagination...

So my son and I were reading together (taking turns, but mostly me) and one of the mystery stories we read featured a slightly silly story about a scientist mom and her inquisitive daughter, studying penguins during an oil spill. In the story, the daughter explained to a friend that the oil-soaked penguins try to preen their feathers, and even if they've been bathed, they still find and ingest enough oil to sicken and often kill them. In addition, the spilled oil, the baths and the extra preening strip away the necessary, binding oils on their skin and feathers—the very stuff that seals their coats and keeps the penguins warm in freezing water.

Oil-soaked, oil-poisoned, too-cold penguins. That's bad. And the solution? The scientist mom designed a pattern for penguin sweaters. The kids publicized the situation and the pattern. Knitters all over the world responded, and sent the tiny sweaters... and it worked! Penguins were saved!

Nice story, I thought. Whatever. Couldn't happen.

But it could! It did. My son kept reading and found sections in the back detailing true stories that inspired the fictionalized ones we'd read. You can see for yourself! penguins

And then, our searching on YouTube (which was carefully filtered by me, of course) brought forth another gem: swimming

You have to watch almost all the way through, to see the little creature be lifted out. Make certain you have your sound turned up, because its utterance is the best part.

Watch them both, and I dare you to not say "Awwwwwww" at least once while viewing.

And yet more about expectations

I've been thinking about expectations, and how they shape our perception of—well, of everything.

(I touched on expectations here once before. Here I go again.)

We spent a long weekend in Cape May, NJ, and arrived home this past Sunday evening. It was nice to get away, the town was as beautiful as always, we climbed lighthouse steps and rode in a horse-drawn carriage and visited a Civil War village and ate far too much food that someone else had prepared and consequently cleaned up. It was fun.

But the weather mostly stunk. We knew, thanks to internet weather reports, that an unseasonable cold snap was expected, both here and there. We packed jackets, and rain coats, and umbrellas. And we didn't use them the whole time, but we did use them a significant portion of the time. We squeezed in some beach fun, but we also spent time looking longingly, through mist and raindrops and wind, at the nearly inhospitable shore. I fumed a bit on the drive home, felt sorry for myself, composed various blog posts with silly titles such as 'Scuse Me while I Curse the Sky... (I kid you not.)

Yet, the weekend was nice, and relaxing, and trouble-free. Even the rides there and back weren't bad. The newly purchased used car ran like a champ, we saw mountains, and Amish buggies, and rolling hills with barns tucked neatly within. We neatly avoided Philly at rush hour. Whew.

So what was lacking? Not much. Some sunshine, some warmer temperatures, I guess—I was expecting air temps to match the water temps (upper 70s) as they normally do in mid-September. (The water was great; the air, not so.) And there's the problem word: expecting. I was anticipating a certain type of visit, and we didn't have it. So now I feel disenchanted, disappointed, cheated of what should have been a warm, balmy weekend. But why? We're all humans living on this changeable orb. We know, by now, that weather is not a sure thing in any direction. We know that it isn't always sunny at the beach. Yet still, there's this pervasive feeling of discontentment in my gut.

Expectations can get us into trouble emotionally. If I'm learning any lesson consistently and repeatedly, it's that I need to expect less from life. I need to stop expecting good weather, uncomplicated days, and excellent health. I need to stop expecting people to be good, and thoughtful, and unselfish. I need to remember which world I'm currently inhabiting, and start living with more appreciation for the many times when things actually do go well and I ride the wave of relative ease of living. Truly, for most of us these days, life is pretty easy. We have so many gadgets, countless conveniences, comforts, and abundance, that it seems we've lost sight of the harsh reality that there's still so much we can't control.

Like the weather at the beach.

So, I need to turn my foolish little expectations on their heads. Let's see what that looks like:

I'm so glad that a hurricane didn't hit land while we were there! I'm so thankful that our tire didn't fall off en route and roll down a mountainside. I'm so happy that the horse pulling our Cape May carriage was obedient and stopped at the light instead of rolling through the busy intersection or charging a pedestrian. I'm really delighted that Marcus's slight cold didn't turn into a full-fledged illness with fever and chills. I'm very relieved that no one mugged me because this was one of the few times each year when I actually had cash in my purse. I'm thankful that I was blessed enough to have my own great little family to accompany me on this drizzly escapade.

There. That wasn't so hard, was it? No. It wasn't. We aren't perfect. Life isn't perfect. It's good, but not perfect. And that's okay. I can hope for better weather next time, but I need to steer clear of "why, why, woe unto us."

It was fun. And the last positive spin? All that cold wetness made it much easier to depart on the final day. Here's to realistic expectations, and nurturing a grateful heart.

Mid-summer doldrums...

It's been a good summer so far, yet I've been feeling a tad deflated of late.

I couldn't quite pin down the reason why. Maybe it was the incredible heat. Maybe it was the fact that the rat is still living in our garden, and in our attempts to kill the thing we mistakenly murdered a chipmunk instead. Maybe it's because I'm the only person I know who gains weight instead of losing it during the hottest months of the year. Maybe it's because we were thinking about trying to move to the country, but then, with Todd starting a new job and then being out of town for a week, we've missed the search-and-sell window of time that we'd need to change schools before the new year. Maybe it's because I'm yet again disappointed in the way my church handled a sticky personnel change. It could be any of those reasons...

But then I figured it out. The real reason for my slump is that late July is the mid-life crisis of summer. It's the point when you look back at what has transpired thus far, and ahead to what remains. Late July is when you begin to realize you may have squandered much of June, what with alternately thinking "we have all summer" and running around too much instead of truly appreciating the fresh green world around you. Late July is the reality check, when you start to actually number the remaining weekends in the season. It's the time of summer when you begin to understand that you won't fit in all the fun experiences and events you'd hoped to, simply because there's not enough time, or money, or both. It's when you glimpse the first back-to-school sales ads, and remember all the educational activities you planned to tackle each week with your kid... and didn't.

But it's okay. For all those things I'm reluctantly crossing off the list, the things I'm planning to put on next year's summer list, I'm also examining the list of fun things we have managed to fit in: picking berries, visiting museums and downtown, running through fountains, swimming, taking hikes, playing with friends, visiting with family, cooking out, sitting on the porch, reading and telling great stories, eating ice cream—lots of ice cream (hence the weight gain)... We haven't squandered too much, now that I think about it. We've had a pretty good balance. I even got the kid to paint with me this morning, "plein air." I lasted much longer than he did, but he made sand souffle in his sandbox until I was ready to break for lunch, and a light breeze was blowing, and the sun shone beautifully but not directly on us, and all was unbelievably well.

Coming to the 40-something point of summer is a lot like living to that point of your life: there are regrets, and there is also rejoicing. There is ever-increasing thankfulness, and an effort to strive for joy, with the growing understanding that it is a choice.

I suppose I was just feeling the mortality of summer pressing down on me a bit. Happily, we still have a few weeks left. And if I'm looking through the long lens, we hopefully have next summer, and maybe even the next after that. Life is like that; you can't dwell on the haven'ts. You have to acknowledge them, but only so you can work them into the next list. I'll try to spend much more time reveling in the Have Done category than grumbling through the Haven't Yet list. I strongly encourage you to do the same.

That said, however, don't sleep too late, or get stuck in front of the stupid TV. Those guys are summer thieves for sure.

Was it only last Monday?

A week ago today, I stood in sand,

My feet all buried in the gritty stuff.

I gazed upon horizon, flat and straight,

And listened to the ceaseless, surging surf.

(The sea has no desire to converse—
She's happy only when she has the floor.)
I took a therapeutic, salty breath,
Then filled lungs to capacity once more.

Last week, the days lay open and unplanned;
My schedule was determined by the sun.
Today? I'm driving to the dentist's chair.
My foremost thought? "Could I have dreamed such fun?"

Snapshots

Hey, I should've told you all by now that we survived the getaway. No worries. Long trip there, shorter trip back, beautiful weather, and a lovely little inn where we were comfortably housed. Spacious front porches with plenty of rocking chairs, bikes and horse-drawn carriages, sand and surf as far as the eye could see, and a little boy consistently sporting the broadest smile of his life.

One particular small memory will stay with me for some time: I'm sitting under our beach umbrella, comfortable in my low-slung chair, reading a most appropriate title (Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh). The waves are alternately lapping and crashing, other families are set up all around me, gulls are screeching and searching for every available snack, and Todd and my son are out playing in the water. Minutes pass, and I'm half-paying attention, reading a few lines, then gazing out at the water, when I realize that I hear my sweet little boy humming to himself, a tuneless little ditty that he repeats again and again. They must have come in to play in the sand and I didn't even see them, I think to myself.

I look around me, trying to locate my husband and child, following the sound of the innocent little-boy voice as it expresses absolute contentment through music. And then I find the source—and it's not my little guy at all! It's another small boy, not quite as young as mine, and he is sitting near my right side, filling buckets with sand and then dumping them methodically, all the while humming humming humming. His song mingles with the breeze, the gulls, the waves, the melded human voices murmuring and giggling and calling out all around me.

In that moment, I feel so connected to my fellow man. One small boy's song could be another's, one sun-streaked head blends into the rest, our voices form one collective tune as we gather here on the edge of the land to be washed clean and free and unblemished. We're speaking different languages, some are thin while others are fat, we are many different colors and ages and styles. But we've all come essentially for the same reason, seeking respite and renewal. We all are humbled at least somewhat when we stand and surmise the enormous pond before us.

They don't all feel like family—but they sort of are, aren't they?