Truth in the construction zone

A marquee on the shoulder of the road I take to the office has two messages spelled in orange capital letters. The phrases shift back and forth. It doesn’t matter which one I see first on any given morning. I know the other one will follow, just as the reality of their words do in life outside the construction zone. 

Work in progress. Expect delays.

Expect delays. Work in progress.

We are all works in progress and often need to give ourselves the grace to honor delays when they happen, no matter how they happen. I’ve found it rather healthy to be reminded of that at the beginning of every day. If you’ve got orange cones, signs and detours also popping up all around you, see what correlation you can find between the message and your life. It’s an interesting experiment.

Marilyn

Drop off

There is a day care center in our office building, so when I arrive at work, there are usually a couple of cars in the drop off zone right in front. I have dropped off a meal for those who are grieving, homebound, or exhausted from the birth of a child they soon may be delivering to day care. I’ve taken advantage of the drop off service at the laundromat. People, ideas, projects can drop off my radar for a while and then resurface. At the end of a long day, I hope to drop off to sleep quickly. 

The phrase took on a different meaning when I stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon last September. There was an element of risk; I experienced twinges of anxiety. I was surprised that instead of becoming accustomed to the fear, my apprehension actually increased during our trip. By the end, when we went to Bryce Canyon, I hugged the land side of any path and only went close to the edge when there was a railing.

I guess there is an element of risk in all of the routine drop offs also. Viruses get passed from one child to the rest. A red sock can bleed into the white towels. When I drop off a friend in front of their home, I wait until they are inside and assume they are then safe. I’ll bet that’s what the parents of the young men at Syracuse University thought last fall when they dropped them off. They didn’t expect to see their sons on the national news for doing something stupid in the hope of acceptance and inclusion. From Sandy Hook to Las Vegas and Barcelona to Brussels, parents, friends, cab and bus drivers dropped off children, families, or their fares for the routine or the special occasion, not knowing that particular day would be extraordinary. Yet, for every drop off we do, we really want to trust there will be an equally simple pick up. May local, national and world leaders work harder to make it so.

Marilyn

Road closed

My normal route home from work is blocked. A barricade with the words Road Closed plus workers and trucks make the reason apparent. It is rare that we know the reason when other roads are closed to us. To know why we received a no at that point in our lives for that thing. From marriage proposals to job interviews to a bid on a house, we get rejected, a road is closed, and we must speculate why, for the generic trite phrases often used don’t tell us what we want to know.

When I decided to take a break from college, I needed to get a job. Although I’m a fast and accurate typist, I flunked the typing test at the Mayflower Moving Co. I’d never had to line up forms in a typewriter, let alone do that while pretending to talk to a customer on the phone. That’s the only time I knew why I wasn’t selected. Probably like you, I received my share of thanks-but-no-thanks replies to jobs, to a potential new friend, to an idea, a dream. I have a stack of rejection letters from publishers for my ideas for children’s stories and poems. Some indicated they didn’t want to hear from me again. Even those that said I was encouraged to submit other proposals were still a no for something I thought I wanted very much.

I take my hat off to actors, who need to have very thick skin to keep going to scores of auditions annually. To artists of all kinds. To the unemployed who keep networking. The disappointments and the hurt can pile up so that we stop trying to find a path that might welcome us. Other areas of life can take over. I stopped drafting notes on ideas for children’s stories when my career took a different turn. When I lost that job a decade later, I started writing these weekly musings, and within a year I had a book. It doesn’t always turn out that way, but in retrospect, I’ve learned that something else always does open up. Sometimes on its own, then or later, or because I tried another door. That’s why I’m not following the detour signs posted to direct me home, but have found my own alternatives.

Marilyn

Oldie but a goodie

Because it’s been a crazy week, I’m doing something new...asking you to enjoy a previous musing. This one is from July 2013.

Top 5 Inventions

Last fall, it was my job to come up with some mealtime conversation starters for the participants of a weeklong retreat. The one that generated the most buzz was “What are the top 5 inventions from your lifetime that changed society or impacted your life?” The ending of the question meant the discussion could be personal or generic depending on how much people wanted to share.

The microchip and technology was number one and cut across all categories such as medicine, business, and even the arts. There was agreement that some medical advances that helped individuals, such as birth control or little blue pills, also affected societal norms and values. Some diners wanted to debate whether the impact was positive or negative. It was hard to draw the line between invention and what we called ‘the next.’ None of us were around for the first airplane (the invention), but did experience going from propeller to jets (the ‘next’).

Think about any room in your home or the different things you do each day. It is interesting, and sometimes difficult, to realize all of the initial inventions and all the ‘nexts’ it took to get our lives to what they are. I have a picture of my folks standing by their Model T and one of my nephew by a race car. If today’s generation made this list it would not include indoor plumbing, the transistor, rabbit ears, the refrigerator, or inoculations but might contain something from the latest episode of Shark Tank.

Whether it’s an improved garlic press or going from the printing press to personal printers, our lives have adapted to the new and/or improved and we anticipate many more ‘nexts.’ If you are waiting for me to share the results of that dinner time discussion, you’ll be disappointed, for I did not keep them. My job was, and still is, just to get the conversation or thought process started. Let me know where today’s question takes you.

Marilyn

Connecting some dots

In a world where it seems more things are dividing us than bringing us together, I wanted to see if I could track through my life how I became aware of differences that shouldn’t, but too often seem to matter. Following are a few highlights of my journey. My experiences don’t make me any more inclusive than the average person, just reflect someone who has tried to understand and bridge gaps between the we/they parts of society from a young age.

It made no sense to me that when I was six and was a flower girl at my brother’s wedding, our relatives who were Catholic (they) couldn’t attend the Presbyterian ceremony (we).

I didn’t know I was from a blue collar family (we) until third grade when a new girl arrived. Her father was an executive and her conversation included words like dishwasher, cleaning lady, swimming pool, and flying to California (they).

While I marched against the war in Vietnam and segregation, I knew no soldiers and my world was lily white protestant (we). I was 25 before I spent any time with people of color (they) and a few years later, folks from the LGBT community (they).

Through college and my first fulltime job, I didn’t know I could aspire to a career other than what post WWI females did, until I met a businesswoman in upper management (we). But, even then, with a new target, I didn’t realize that I automatically accepted limitations on my goals until the term glass ceiling (they) entered our consciousness.

This was an interesting exercise that you might also try. What I see in retrospect is that with each encounter and subsequent learning that: a) I was surprised; b) my vision of the world was pretty restricted; c) I appreciated that my world expanded, even when it wasn’t easy; d) it is better to be for something than simply against; and e) it took a one-on-one, a relationship to make the issue more than a theory.

Marilyn