Perfect Attendance

My generation has awards for showing up. Our early report cards had a place for a gold or silver star depending on the number recorded in the Attendance box. Mr. Timby, our Sunday school superintendent, proudly wore a pin with many small bars hanging down, each representing a year with no absences from church. At the end of June he handed out similar prizes to children and adults who had been in class every Sunday since September. In college we were told the number of allowable misses for classes and chapel, but the norm was that they while permitted, absences were not acceptable. From Day One at my time at Illinois Bell and AT&T we were told to be at our desks, regardless of the bugs we freely shared with co-workers. The monthly corporate newsletter listed all those with a year’s perfect attendance and there were special gifts should you manage the five or ten year mark.


I never had perfect attendance at school.  I did try, but had to give in to mumps, measles, tonsillitis, and other childhood maladies. There were a couple of years when I didn’t miss a day of work, but occasionally things like the flu or pink eye kept me home.
 

Attendance was just one area where I tried and failed at perfection. You see, the problem is that somehow early on I equated perfection, whether in attendance or anything else, to love and acceptance. Failure was guaranteed, which sure complicates life. This played out particularly in two major areas: the mother-daughter relationship and the God the Father-child connection. Try though I might to be the perfect daughter, I wasn’t, and therefore never felt truly loved or accepted. I’ll describe it this way: I might find the perfect present for my mother, but her look told me I had wrapped it in the wrong paper. The sad thing is that she wasn’t satisfied with our relationship either, but no big bridges got built while she was alive, though I think we both made attempts. In terms of being a child of God, well, Miss Goody Two-Shoes failed there miserably as well. In both arenas, my offering – from attendance to a present to living a godly life – was never perfect.

Things are very different these days. At work my colleagues successfully argued that sick and vacation days do not belong in the same accrual bucket as that encourages people to come to work sick, leaving more days for vacation. There are many more things to attract our attention on a Sunday morning, and while I don’t know about school attendance, I somehow think that the gold and silver stars have lost their impact.

I’ve also learned that, despite what I thought in my youth, no one had the perfect parental relationship. Whether son or daughter, mother or father, few of us were the parent or child that the other needed even most of the time, but each of us has muddled along into imperfect human beings who can find love and acceptance with one another. And once I replaced the concept of religion with spirituality and the white-bearded iconic Santa Claus with Creator, I realized that as long as we show up in some way even with all of our imperfections, the connection is there, ours for the taking. My main lesson? Sometimes good enough is much better than perfect.

Marilyn

The Fifth Season

Is there something you wait for all year that when it comes it feels like it is its own season? Car enthusiasts know when new models are revealed and sports fans wait for the weather that’s ideal for baseball or football season. People anticipate the holidays. We’re in the midst of awards season for entertainers and entering summer months of reruns. Kids, parents, and teachers can long for school to begin – or end. Folks sanitize jars in preparation for canning time.

I was at a luncheon last week for Save the Children where the phrase ‘Hunger Season’ was introduced. While farmers that you and I may think of know planting, harvesting, and lambing times, there are farming communities worldwide who routinely have a Hunger Season. It’s the time of year when the crops are gone and the larders are bare.  There is no black market of food because there is no money with which to purchase anything imported.

Hunger Season is their norm, from generation to generation. Hunger Season comes every year and even knowing that, there is not much they can do about it. It comes routinely, either as part of the cycle of nature or because the militia has come through and burned the land. Whether the farmer is the mother or the father, when Hunger Season arrives ,they feel that have they failed in their profession and they believe they are failures at providing for and protecting their families. Hunger Season means the whole community is united in physical deprivation and psychological pain.

As someone whose relationship with food is as friend and consoler and who has never missed a meal, even when what was on the table was sparse, hearing of this fifth season had a profound impact on me. There we were, eating our upscale chicken dish with strawberries and raspberries in a parfait, while Hunger Season stories were being shared.

You know how you can hear or read something many times but suddenly the reality of what you are seeing or listening to finally sinks in? Like you, I’ve seen pictures of starvation in foreign places and have responded to a particularly eloquent appeal. I know that a high percentage of children here in the U.S. go to sleep hungry so I regularly take food to our local pantry. But, Hunger Season? I’m still mulling on that. Perhaps, now, you will too.

Marilyn

What Dashboards Don't Tell Us

Businesses have developed diagnostic tools based on the model of a car’s dashboard. Like all the gauges and icons that assist a driver, a business’s dashboard is designed to present an ‘at a glance’ picture of the health of the organization. Similar to a driver’s ability to keep their vehicle moving forward, executives are able to react to what the graphs and charts on their dashboards tell them.

As someone who drove a lime green bug named Sherbie for a decade, I believe that a car can have a personality; however, its dashboard, even with a flower in a vase, does not. It cannot tell you that there is an ambulance coming up behind you or that a soccer ball just bounced in the street 30 feet ahead.  A dashboard misses the squeaky windshield wipers even as it flashes that a tire pressure is low. A company’s dashboard can reflect trends but doesn’t document what years of experience can tell the manager about those trends. It cannot indicate whether people enjoy coming to work or what the buzz is around the water cooler.


Doing research on my organization’s dashboard got me thinking about what I would include on a personal one. What types of graphs would I use? Would I create a pie chart of my bank account or figure out how to diagram joie de vivre? Do I care about whether I meditate or is it more important to know that when I do, it helps my well-being? Where and how would relationships fit in a box and would each be color coded? Knowing me, I would get caught up in thinking there is a right way to do this rather than just living well as I take periodic inventory of key elements. But, dashboards can be helpful, so, after some contemplation, I reduced my original list of eight daily questions down to these three and will track the Yes/No answers this week to Did I:  

• Experience some private or shared joy?
• Do something helpful outside of myself?
• Do something healthy for my body and soul?

A different exercise would have me mapping the details, but for now, this will be enough. Will you join me in some similar simple dashboard that will record your week? Maybe we can meet over coffee and compare.

Marilyn

Favorite frocks are more than fashion

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse. Sir Francis Bacon

Do you have fond memories or stories to tell about some favorite clothes? Perhaps the item itself felt good or made you feel good when you wore it. Maybe the outfit was a gift or the very first thing you bought on your own or what you were wearing when you met a certain someone.

In kindergarten I had a dress with a maroon velveteen bodice. I stood up at show-and-tell to show my dress, but Mrs. Engle told me to sit down because everyone had seen it.  When I was eight there was a plaid taffeta dress with sparkly buttons for a cousin’s wedding, and at 13, I was a junior bridesmaid for a close family friend. I wore a peacock green satin sheath with a removable skirt, that is, a separate piece that was like a cape but fit around the waist. From my high school years I remember: a purple pleated skirt and an emerald green jumper, a moss green cable sweater I knit and a teal blue one my aunt sent from England, a grey culottes skirt and a Madras shirt, and finally the brown corduroy jacket that I bought with my babysitting money. As a professional I fondly remember a couple of ‘power’ suits, including a navy blue striped pantsuit and a designer skirt and jacket from an outlet mall in New Jersey.

Now, here is a different question about favorite attire.  Do you have one or more pieces that you have faithfully packed away or moved from apartment to apartment?  These are items that for whatever reason you cannot discard – yet. In that category for me was a pink wool suit and a brown velvet formal from the1960s and a long floral hippie-type dress that I last wore to my parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary party in 1978. I think it was packing for my move from the City to Oak Park in 1992 when I took them all to Goodwill, finally admitting I would never fit into them again.

But my very favorite outfit from my early years was a yellow summer dress.  Here is my brother

home on leave and me in that dress, so I think it’s the association with those carefree days and a special connection that made me love that dress. The next summer when I tried to put it on, it did not fit and he did not come.  I took my little scissors to that dress and cut it up. Well, as much as a four or five year old can cut cotton. Today I can look at this picture and fondly remember the warmth of this moment and the anger that came later. I think that’s actually pretty good value for a yard of material.

What clothing stories do you recall and will you tell?

Marilyn

Charge!

Listening to Charlie Rose interview Arianna Huffington about her new book, Thrive, I was impressed with the conversation about her family’s recent digital detox. Huffington explained that our electronic devices tell us how they are, and upon knowing their status, we react.  An alert on our computer says it is disconnected from the network. We plug in our cellphone and learn it is ‘charging 45%.’  Then Huffington said, “We need to figure out how to listen to ourselves in a similar way.”

Now, I haven’t read Huffington’s book yet, but considering the cleverness of the dialogue between her and Rose, I will. I imagine that she points out that what we mostly do is keep charging ahead instead of taking the time to recharge.  I’ll bet there’s a mention of how often certain things in life are charging toward us and we either join the throng or get out of the way, both requiring a great deal of energy. It wouldn’t surprise me if she used words like ‘adapt’ and ‘compatible,’ reflecting electronic adapters and compatible devices, and phrases with ‘universal’ and ‘charger’ in them.

Parents learn to adapt when they see a child’s trigger move them toward temper or sleep. One of the best things a parent can do is help a child pay attention to and understand their own triggers. Several Christmases ago, when my great niece was nearly two years old, she opened one box and then pulled her blankie over her head. Everyone thought it was cute, but they coaxed her out to open more. In retrospect they learned that even as a toddler she was telling them that she was overstimulated and overwhelmed and needed quiet and solitude. Helping a child understand that they are tired or full or in need of a hug are critical lessons that will help them adjust to their reality and teach them how to maneuver in this complicated thing called life. It will also give them a sense of control, which, if they are wise, they will learn is only sometimes true.

When writing my to-do list for this weekend, I sighed. Recognizing I needed time to refresh, I rescheduled many items to next week or some undetermined date and wrote down ‘rest.’ Can you name your own signals that tell you it is time to recharge?

We just marked Passover and Easter, times of reflection, remembering, celebration, and hope. I trust that the holiday helped you feel rejuvenated for what lies ahead. I’ll close by asking – at what charged percentage are you starting this week?  If it’s not 100% or close to it, when and how can you plug in – or unplug – to renew your energy and your spirit?

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up. Pearl S. Buck

Marilyn

We Don't Have to Get Old

My dad enjoyed serving as an usher at church. That meant that he welcomed parishioners and guests, handed them that day’s bulletin, showed them to seats, and helped pass the collection plate. One Sunday he got very confused during the collection. Others stepped in to help and the service continued, but that day marked a turning point in my parent’s lives. My mother was embarrassed. This event made public her evolving reality and somehow having others witness it made it more real. Dad had Parkinson’s and dementia. He had been a very active 70 year-old, but on that difficult day he was a very old 75. While they continued to attend church, Dad never served as an usher again.

When my mother called to tell me of the incident she told me she yelled at dad when they got home. He had no recollection and didn’t understand their conversation or her anger. Neither did I, really. It took me a long time to realize that her anger and embarrassment covered up her fears and her grief. I’m not sure that I fully understood it – or forgave her – while she was alive. Such wisdom comes with our own aging.

I am blessed to have friends in their twenties and a cherished one who is 96 and mostly going strong.  Those to whom I am closest are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. We are aging, and without lots of personal role models like my elderly neighbor. Some of those friends and I have an agreement that we will confront one another when we see alarming things in the other person. I hope that we will do that, hard though it will be. And, I stress, I am not writing about this because I see tendencies in anyone. Yet. Unfortunately, the time will come. For a loved one to talk to me.  For me to talk to someone. It will take courage on all parts. I pray we will have the grace for those conversations when they are needed.

Meanwhile, today, let’s celebrate aging. Whether you are young, middling, or considered a senior, until our essence fades away, remember what George Burns said, “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”

Marilyn

Coloring between the Lines

There are coloring books of all sorts for adults. I know several people who spend joyous hours creating this type of art with colored pencils and crayons. It seemed like perhaps a fun thing I would like to do while watching television, because, heaven knows, I can’t do just one thing at a time. At AT&T we were trained how to overlap, which today is called multitasking. 

Well, turns out that for me they weren’t fun. They were frustrating.  It took a while to figure out why.

I no longer want to color in between the lines.  Or if I do manage to stay inside the lines, I want them to go away when I’ve finished the picture and just be left with what I put on the page.

As someone who never thought of herself as creative until age 45 I’ve learned to thrive outside the lines.  Early in my life I would have described myself as expressive and able to interpret other people’s art.  After all I was a pianist, singer, a secret writer, and performer. At the piano I was concerned more with sound and interpretation than with technique and precision. Luckily technique came easily and I was always close enough on the precision to get by.

It wasn’t until I took a workshop on creativity (a daring move in itself) and heard part of the facilitator’s definition was ‘the ability to connect one thing to another’ that I started thinking that perhaps I could be called creative after all. Now I want to be creative all over the place and have been blessed with the ability to do so even at work.  I’ve taken classes in colored pencil, nature printing, acrylics, making paper, mosaics, and just last month, Chinese brush painting. Often my projects are ‘interesting’ and get packed away in the closet.  I’ve even been known to toss out a few while some hang on my walls.  A couple of art forms have become a passion. All have made me see nature in particular in a new way. All have expanded my world.

Until these darn coloring books.  I even turned off the TV to concentrate on the picture on the page.  Didn’t work.

I’ve decided that maybe I should tear out a page and use tracing paper to lightly transfer the pieces of the picture that I want onto a different sheet. The traced lines can be erased and I’ll be free to interpret, be expressive, and as creative as I want to be.

This thinking also made me wonder what lines are in other areas of my life and where they might be fencing me in rather than fostering creativity and growth. Now that I’ve ranted about coloring books and art, I think I’ll do a little musing about these other boundaries and encourage you to do the same.

Marilyn