Hope is an echo

When I come across a word seldom used in daily conversation three times in a 24 hour period, I pay attention. I wonder. I equate it to those serendipitous times when you are humming a song and turn on the radio only to have that song playing. Such was my experience this week with the word echo.

My first encounter was when I tuned into WMFT on the way home from work. The announcer read a blurb written by conductor Gerald Schwarz from a CD titled Echoes, Classic Works Transformed. He had hired current composers to write a short piece based on something written by a master like Bach, Beethoven or Brahms. So, the premise is that updating a theme or being inspired by a well-known phrase becomes an echo. The track that was played was wonderful. I made a mental note to investigate the CD.

That night I was doing a crossword puzzle and 37 Down was 'reheard cry.' Ah, I thought as I saw it was 4 letters starting with e, another echo. Then, the following morning, part of my meditative reading included, "Hope is an echo, it ties itself yonder, yonder. The spring grass showing itself where least expected." It's a line from a Carl Sandburg poem.

As I started putting this together I remembered a song we used to sing in Brownies. "Little Sir Echo, how do you do? Hello! (Hello!). Little Sir Echo will answer you. Hello! (Hello!)." I thought of walking through the tunnel from the parking lot to the entrance of Brookfield Zoo, a place where children run ahead of their parents and yell back so they can hear the noise resound. I thought of bird cries in a fjord in New Zealand, of reading about sounds bouncing off the moon. I thought of the vacant look in my father's eyes as he became an echo of the vital man he once was.

Today is the 28th anniversary of my father's death. Each memory I have of him is now an echo, as, I suppose in a different kind of way, am I and his grandchildren and their children, who are now reflecting his life lessons coast to coast. On this All Hallows’ Eve, I'm sure there are people who are echoes in your life as well. Whether you lost them last week so the pain may overshadow the echo, or last decade, we who remain get to choose the echoes we pay attention to. We can let some echoes fade away and we can keep alive those that make us smile, warm our hearts and make us certain that our hope for spring green grass will indeed appear where least expected but perhaps most needed.

Marilyn

The best meal I ever ate

Going out to eat was a treat when I was growing up. Except for the Friday night fish fry at either a local tavern or the VFW Hall, and pizza at Jacobi's or a sub at John and Mary's after a school event, going out also meant you got dressed up. Even for lunch at the Woolworth counter when you went shopping downtown. A couple of times a year my family went out for Chinese food or met friends at The Syracuse, our favorite restaurant. My mother was a great cook so there were always good meals at home, but any meal eaten out was special.

Hamburger joints were just emerging when I left for college, where I discovered a whole different world of dining out. My boyfriend was interested in the food service industry and the head of the dining service took him under his wing. One night he took us on a field trip to Chicago's famous The Bakery, with Chef Louis Szathmary. While I don't remember what we ate, I do remember the feeling of being a tourist in a new land. I still have the 6 oz. dark green bottle that contained my first fizzy water. My friend's boss also got him a job at Henrici’s, a popular restaurant in the Oakbrook shopping center, about 20 minutes from campus. There he worked in the kitchen and waited tables, offering diners gravy boats with toppings like bacon bits, chives and sour cream for their baked potatoes. Henrici's cherries jubilee was superb, as was their ice cream Brandy Alexanders. I sometimes went along and studied at a table by myself or occasionally at the bar, something Wheaton College could probably have expelled me for at the time. I have a blue water glass from that restaurant and fond memories of nibbling samples while I read and watched.

By the time I entered the workforce, going out to eat was much more common, and I gladly embraced that norm with coworkers for lunch or on a date or with friends on the weekend. A fish sandwich and vanilla shake at McDonald's was a once a week lunch out of the office. Supper clubs, like The Clubhouse Inn on North Ave. gave good value. They had a cart of appetizers like corn relish, beets and cottage cheese and interesting specialties like frog legs. Mr. Steak offered a great surf and turf for $4.99 but when there was a little more discretionary money for occasional splurging, friends and I enjoyed places like The Barn of Barrington where I remember ordering pheasant consommé. A challenge, and a big step, was my first meal out by myself. It was a Saturday breakfast at a familiar restaurant. As a primer on the single life suggested, I took along a book to help me look sophisticated and comfortable, not nervous, which is what I was. It was a good beginning for all the meals I've eaten alone in traveling for business or pleasure.

In the 1980s, Chicago was booming with 'in' places of various sorts and an 'in' thing was ordering a Caesar salad that was made table side. I enjoyed Gordon's off the Magnificent Mile, The Walnut Room at Marshall Field's, and Ceil Blue high atop some building by the lake. My housemates and I went out to dinner once a month and took turns picking. We went to little hole in the wall places in local neighborhoods and top rated spots, but once a week we went to Moody's Pub for a hamburger. I've still got an ashtray from the Ambassador Room and try to get to Moody's at least one a year.

By the 1990's, it wasn't so much the place as it was the type of food. Let's try Ethiopian or Afghani or Argentinian was the new challenge. Up until then, Thai was probably the most exotic food I'd had except for the reindeer sausage I enjoyed while working up in Alaska, where we also discovered this restaurant about a half hour out of Anchorage that served a mouthwatering steak covered with peppercorns. In New Zealand we learned we had to pay extra for a basket of bread but enjoyed lamb fresh from the farm where we were staying.

As take out or dine in grew as an industry catering to families and casual became the norm, I mostly settled into routines and today stick with favorites. Friends and I have dinner once a week at a Panera. Costco's hot dog is a real bargain and I allow myself one a month. If I want ribs, there are two places I suggest, another for Italian and so on. It's New England Seafood for a lobster roll or Demera for Ethiopian, both clients of Accion, where I work.

I guess this topic came to mind because my diet after surgery is very soft. I'm hankering for a salad, but need to wait another month. To get back to the title of this piece...the best meal I ever ate? While all the food mentioned here has been wonderful, it's taken a lifetime to learn that it's not the ambiance, the chef or what's on the plate that matters. It's sharing the meal with people I love.

Marilyn

Getting back up

We’ve all fallen and been knocked down. Sometimes literally, but more often figuratively. Lots of times. In all areas of our lives. It starts when we are taking our first steps toward independence and exploration. Until we get our balance, we often end up on our bottom, stunned, with a ‘hey, what just happened?’ expression on our face. The adults around us chuckle and encourage us to not cry but to get up and try again. It continues when a sibling or playmate or school chum pushes us and we fall. That’s when we begin learning to both stand up and to stand up for ourselves.

Then we learn that we need to get back up after a disappointment, a failure, a loss, a series of bad luck events. Whether a broken heart, a poor grade, not getting the job or a promotion, we know we have to get back on the horse. Over time we learn our individual coping mechanism that helps us get back up and take the next step, and, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we learn what takes us to the end of our tether. It doesn’t matter that you endure something that breaks me or that I only bend when the same thing shatters another. Our reactions don’t mean than one person is stronger or weaker than another. It simply means we are at different points on a continuum or have different triggers.

What really is lamentable, however, is that over the decades we forget that with our first steps we are holding on. Usually to a hand. And, as much as we need to take those steps toward standing on our own on all levels, the flip side of that lesson is thinking that we always need to get back up all on our own. We forget those first times when we accepted, even needed, a hand to help us up, when we leaned on someone or something.

This year, life has reminded me how important it can be to accept that helping hand when offered, and to ask for it to be there like a safety net when needed. Perhaps it is a gift of age along with necessity that has enabled me to stop being so self-reliant. But it is a lesson learned that I would like to keep in play moving forward. After all, continuing to move forward in one’s life is why we get back up. I challenge you to think about an area in your life where you need to get back up but need a little help. Reach out. I believe you’ll find it’s not as hard as you thought and that a needed resource will appear.

Marilyn

'and then' times

We've all experienced 'and then' times. Our 'and then' times are either long periods where each day can be condensed into 'and then' activities, summarizing what kept us busy, or periods of good or bad disruptions to the routine. Just yesterday one friend had a blip that included "and then I was rear-ended and probably need a new car," this after recently losing her job, while another's 'and then' was a twisted ankle on the last day of vacation in Hong Kong. A third friend recently celebrated a milestone 'and then' when she told her employer she was retiring even as she prepares to move from a house she's lived in for a couple of decades.

For me, 2016 has been an 'and then' year. It started in January when I walked into the glass wall through the fact that a week ago I was in the hospital with a morphine epidural post-surgery. You may have given some thought to your ‘and then’ times, but here's what I've learned about mine:

• When there are no traumas or joyous interruptions, the days blend together and, if I am not careful, I keep busy doing but not necessarily living or moving my life forward. I fill the minutes but not necessarily my life.
• I come from a comparing people. How do I compare to you? When I experience a series of challenges, hurts or disruptions, it is easy to fall into the 'poor me' mode until I encounter someone in more dire straits. Comparisons provide some perspective to jostle me out of those 'poor me/and then' times.
• Comparisons can also make me bitter, envious or jealous when I see a series of 'and then' good things happen to others, even to those close to me. Maturity and love now allows me to recognize the envy while still celebrating the other's good fortune.
• When I experience my own 'and then' blessings I downplay them, don't share the news with some people and usually don't take the time to bask in the brightness and joy.  I have a smidgen of fear that the good is undeserved and the knowledge that good times don't last.
• I have used my 'and then' challenges to either isolate myself or embrace everyone around me who loves me and wants to lend support.  I can affirm that allowing others to walk the difficult path with me is much better. It has made my year richer and the 'and then' trials not as hard.

So, I challenge you. The next ‘and then’ that comes your way, good or bad, share it in a different way than you normally would. See what happens.

Marilyn

Punctuation marks

For those of a certain age, we remember Victor Borge's comedy sketch about punctuation. Whether you were a fan of his or not, that piece really is a classic. If you haven't seen it, I'm sure it's on You Tube. The premise was that verbal communication might be easier if each punctation mark had a sound. For example, people would know you were at the end of a sentence by a cluck of the tongue. 

This topic came to mind because a couple of clever people have told me that now, post surgery, I am a semi-colon. After I chuckled, I realized that, come to think of it, there are punctuation mark stages of our lives. We all start off as a dash - that straight line that better defines the phrase that came before. Children somersault or curl up as a period. When we stand up straight, we are an exclamation point. Raising our arms in celebration, we are quote marks that can signal a beginning and an end to the event. People raise one arm in a salute, thereby using one quote mark to name whatever they are a part of. When we hug we are parentheses and when we sleep we may be commas. As we age and are bent over, we become a question mark, which can indicate that because we have decades of experience of living, we may have the answers to some of life's mysteries. In our coffin, we return to the dash or an exclamation mark at rest.

Over the course of my writing life some punctuation rules have changed. We no longer put two spaces in between sentences or a comma before the and in a series. For example, it used to be apples, oranges, and grapes but now the standard is people, animals and trees. As my colleagues and I worked on writing our annual reports, we edited carefully for consistency throughout, and mumbled at corporate brands that go against the rule of a comma before Inc. or the like. 

The faithful companion of writing is reading, and while I worry about grammar and punctuation, as long as people are communicating I guess we'll see what evolves. While it seems that more people are writing thanks to email and social media, many elements of writing are changing. We LOL and use emojis to reflect feelings. I wonder what Victor Borge would have done with those! 

Marilyn

PS: Sorry for the change in type size. Written and puslished from the hospital and having trouble with technology.