It seems to me there is a trade-off for most every change we make. We hopefully trade up, as in we gain more than we release. A change in jobs, or a different career, a new home, a marriage, having the surgery, a new car, ending a relationship, the bargain lawn mower, getting a puppy, or putting in a garden. Sometimes, as we all know, the trade up does not go quite as we’d hoped.
Maybe even raising our kids is a trade-off. The years of wonder, stress, and joy of raising them the best we could. Then when they are grown, they go off and do their own thing. Sometimes far away from us. The success is that we gave them all we could, they are independent and autonomous people. Yet they are hundreds of miles away, perhaps even on a different continent! When one of my neighbors said he didn’t care that his kids moved away, it meant he would have a smaller house to take care of, I was taken aback. Okay then, different strokes for different folks.
A few evenings ago, there was a golden sunset filling the horizon. I watched a large seagull swoop and loop over my neighborhood for nearly ten minutes. I did not see him flap his wings once. Such elegant lifts and turns and circles. Was he simply doing it for the joy of it? Swoop and sail for the sheer delight? A seagull enjoying being alive? How wonderful to see.
So, this champagne mango I bought. I justified the high price as it was Mother’s Day and I deserved a treat. The trade-off? Not so much, I have to smile. The skin was tough to cut through, the pit inside was huge (gutli is its actual name) and getting the fruit off of it was a nuisance. Just so you know, being called champagne did not make it a genuine treat.
And now I have foxgloves as tall as I am. Yay-hoo! I can hardly wait until they bloom.
Yes, the book is coming along, I’m excited. Publication planned for June 12. You’ll be hearing about that! Thank you for reading~
I’m back. What? You didn’t notice I was gone? Sure you did.
Where was I? Overwhelmed and discouraged when the spammers found my webpage and infested it. Details and drama will be skipped over – I’m back and just watched a large seagull swoop past my window. All is good. What have I discovered in the last few months? For one, that dandelions are smarter than I am. Yes, spring is here and I am back to mowing my lawn after four months of not doing so. I mow over the dandelions with their sunburst flowers on long stems. Within 48 hours, the blossoms are back and right next to the ground, too low for my mower to reach them. Who knew dandelions had such survival instincts?
For another, raccoons sit in the fir trees and watch what’s going on around them. Why does this matter? Because when I take my boisterous, curious Siberian husky/ German shepherd pup outside for his morning business, the raccoons seem to think he can climb the tree after them. They scurry down and take off running. So does my pup. Completely unheeding my commands to come back to me. So I am off chasing him up the street. Sometimes in my jammies.
Some of my foxgloves. Photo by MDessein
Oh yeah, and that having a boisterous, curious pup determines about twenty hours of my day. Is he a good soul, smart, affectionate, and non-aggressive? Absolutely, yet he being my first dog, I had no idea what I was getting into. What a teacher he has been. I’ve learned to rein myself in, practice patience, and be consistent. Things I thought I already knew.
I was also reminded I am a strong, tenacious soul. A computer tech person told me that dealing with spammers is a fact of life nowadays. Okay, I will prevail. Note to you wondrous subscribers, please stay subscribed. If you are in the ‘notify of comments’ list, if you unsubscribe from that and get on the regular subscribers list, you will not get the spammer comments.
My book will be published on Amazon in June! Yay-hoo! More on that soon. It will be a collection of my amazing blogs and essays. I will be contacting everyone I can to support me with my book. I am excited.
Sunset at Admirals Cove. Photo by MDessein
What else have I learned? That people do what they do, based on their own experiences and choices. That I can mostly manage myself, nobody else (even my dog!). That deer don’t eat foxgloves or lupine. That as a parent of adult children, it is usually best to wait to be asked for my opinion. That bald eagles make the most amazing squawk. That I am grateful for every day. And you.
Rejection. Who needs it? Mary Buckham says we do. In an interview I did with the accomplished writer and successful writing teacher, she spoke about dealing with rejection and managing the uncertainty of a writer’s life. She shared an encouraging reality: those challenges prove you’re in the game. You are truly in the business of writing. You have engaged the clutch, the car can move forward.
When she told of losing one of her sons to SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and how she had to follow her dream of writing not only to fulfill herself, but for her son and what his dreams might have been, tears welled in my eyes. And a dormant bulb ticked on in my mental chandelier.
Of course, pursuing her dream also included her five other children, as they were there for the sacrifices, balances, compromises, collaborations, late dinners, and undone laundry that is part of having two artists for parents. Yet, ardently, rigorously structuring her life in order to write was directly related to honoring her son.
Am I respecting Rosie by living my dream? We were sisters yet I don’t even know what her dream was. She checked out at the age of forty-nine years and four days, over16 years ago. She had worked on Alaskan fishing boats, in a busy studio as a photographer, and was in optician school when she died. She had drifted, looking, never seeming to find an answer. What did she give up on? And why? Do I honor her by staying the course, no matter how difficult? The African folktale, “The Cowtail Switch,” says a person is not really dead as long as they are remembered. Does that go for dreams too?
My father died relatively young, a bit shy of age sixty-six, the decades of smoking had done irreparable damage by the time he quit in his early sixties. He resented quitting, actually, but his emphysema gave him no choice by then. What about his dreams? He gave up on a dream of professional golfing in order to take care of his wife and three children. At one time, he was a ‘scratch’ golfer, meaning he had a zero handicap, meaning he was really good. I shake my head remembering one occasion he tried to teach me a ‘natural’ swing when I was around thirteen. After a series of golf balls hit our Great Dane/Labrador dog, knocked over a couple tall droopy sunflowers, and ended up lost in the blackberry bushes, Dad gave up and went in the house. Do his and Rosie’s dreams live on in me when I pursue mine even though I can only guess at what theirs were?
Crystal sunset March, 2021
My Mom was ninety-one when she died. She, and my dad, told me I could do anything, being President was just one option. She wanted to be a social worker. One of her teachers strongly encouraged Mom to go to college. Yes college was a nice idea – yet regular people got jobs and got married. Will I carry her dreams with me now that she has passed on by living mine fully, as she would want me to? Have I already done so without making the conscious connection, as I worked many years in social services and graduated from college in my forties.
By living my dreams, pursuing heart-driven goals, and delving into what I feel passionate about, do those other peoples’ wishes find a path as well? Am I the vessel for more than just me?
Storyteller and sublime harpist, Patrick Ball, tells about going to college in pursuit of a law degree. Then when his father died suddenly, he walked away from that legal career as he realized that law was his father’s dream; Patrick went looking for his own, and found it in music. Yet by doing so, did he carry his father’s even further?
Grandpa Alfred, my Mom’s father, died at age thirty-nine of tuberculosis. In 1937, all that could be done then was put TB patients in a sanitarium and wait. Like Doc Holliday fifty years before him, there was no cure for TB. In fact, Doc was about the same age as Alfred. What a mysterious scourge TB was: Doc’s mother had also died of it.
Dreams. Alfred married a French girl he met in eastern France where he was stationed in World War I. Big dreams when he brought her back to the U.S. four years later and started a family, as well as a furrier business in downtown Seattle. Then died when his children were thirteen, nine, and four. Dreams. My mother tells of the family moving to Cle Elum to be near the sanitarium; Mom, being the eldest, usually fixed dinner as her mother was over at the hospital every night till dusk. Then one evening, her mother came home, sat down on the porch step and remained there. Mom watched her mother through the screen door, then after a few minutes, she came out of the cabin. It took a moment or two before ma Grandmere’ quietly said, “He’s gone,” as she looked over across the field on the other side of the road. Wondering where the dream had gone?
Dreams in the laboratory, dreams in the courtroom, dreams in the typewriter, dreams over in the next valley, dreams on the stage, dreams taking off on a journey, dreams unspoken in the secret place in one’s heart.
Where do dreams go that are released, abandoned, forsaken, or denied? Are they inherited? Do they collect in a big pool somewhere? A gigantic cosmic canning jar?
Can others’ dreams live on in me even if my dreams are different than theirs? Yet, maybe all dreams are much the same: what makes us feel alive, what gives us hope, what compels us to tell the stories about them, what pulls our eyes to the horizon? What makes us aspire to better? What keeps us in the game? Dreams.
I had not seen a deer on the beach before. And she was alone. The deer in my and my neighbors’ yards were usually in groups of three, sometimes as many as six.
My pup and I were sitting on a log about forty feet from her when she saw us. I had Lyric sit at my feet, so as not to scare her. She looked at us for a minute or so, then stepped elegantly in to the gentle waves of the incoming tide. She walked out into deeper water, up to her belly.
Was she washing something off? She walked out further, and appeared to be swimming. Was something wrong? She moved her head back and forth.This looked and felt wrong.
Lyric tried to run down to the edge of the water where she was.
“Come Lyric. Let’s let her be, she won’t come in if we stand here.” I knew I was talking to myself at that point. Lyric returned to the spot on the shore closest to her a couple more times.
We walked about 10 more minutes in the southeast direction of the beach. The wind was getting colder, I turned around and Lyric galloped to catch up with me.
When we got near to where the doe had gone in the water, I saw a dark shape floating about fifty feet or so out. It was her body. Lyric knew something was wrong. He ran down to the edge of the water and looked out at her.
Why would a doe drown herself? I was numbed. I called to Lyric as I walked back the way we’d come. He came to me, then ran back to where the doe was floating. He came when I called him and we kept walking.
What could I have done?
Perhaps I did it: witness. An act of nature, a peaceful ending. What were the chances I would be a mile down the beach from the entry point, at 1:15 in the afternoon on this particular day?
A couple days later was my birthday. A marvelous day, one of the most memorable of my life. My cherished friend, Terra Lea, came over, got us a delicious lunch of fish tacos which we ate at Fort Casey State Park, walked our pups on the seemingly endless beach, chased our pups, and talked. A witness and celebrant of my special day.
To be present for someone else. Perhaps no action is required except your presence. I bet you can list a myriad of occasions when you have witnessed for someone else, perhaps not even aware of it at the time.
Really? Sometimes the actual instance is more accurately described as “What was I thinking?” “If I had known this, I wouldn’t have ____.” “What? No one told me that.” “If only I had _____ first.”
My son was telling his beloved partner about his mom’s adventures – listing how I had lived in Italy, walked on the Great Wall in China, gone to Chichen Itza, graduated from college at age 46, performed at scads of open mics, done a weekly radio show for years, and worked with incarcerated teens.
Adventures? I hadn’t thought of it that way, yet he was right.
When my remarkable daughter, super son-in-law, and I were celebrating my daughter’s successful surgery at a Mexican restaurant, I ordered the cactus salad as I had never heard of such a thing. I didn’t like it.
“Mom, you always do that – try new things and half the time you don’t like them.”
I started to dispute that, then realized she was right. I had not seen that about myself. I realized I like to try new things, yet then saw I don’t want to miss out on anything.
As you can see, I am getting to the synopsis of my life: nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Wonder pup, Lyric
I have a five month old puppy asleep at my feet, his name is Lyric. Hopefully, he will sleep for a while longer. I had NO idea the constant vigilance, consistency, and patience required with a puppy. At this point, you can imagine I have revisited the first paragraph questions several times in the last 3 weeks since Lyric came to live with me. He is a sweet, smart and patient soul. Thank goodness.
Ten months ago, I had enough of where I was living, so I did a ton of work, spent so much more money than I anticipated, sold my condo, and moved to where my heart called me: near the ocean. Yee gods and little fishes. Courage? Yup. Risk? Oh yeah.
I didn’t think about it in those terms until I found these rocks. My dear and wondrous harp teacher, Harper Tasche, had a bowl of engraved rocks at his wedding some years back, inviting all attendees to take one or two, which I did. I had long since put them away and found them as I was packing and sorting in the prep for my huge move.
The many challenges of this move have been intimidating. The unexpected issues have been overwhelming. The list of expenses has grown. The extent of needed repairs and unmaintained items seems endless. Yet, I followed my pursuant heart. As I have done so often in my life, even without having the words for it. (Did I mention sleeping on the floor of the Luxembourg airport one night in November while waiting for a flight, and the next night being locked outside and huddling up on the cold pavement until the airport reopened in the morning?)
All righty then, Lyric and I just got back from a walk on the beach, he ran zoomies in and out of the waves, I picked up a couple agates, and listened to the waves as they foamed up on the sand.
