Don’t know about you, but...

Our house only had a bathtub and we took baths on Saturday night and maybe once during the week. The showers at summer camp were a novelty. My dorm at college had showers on each floor and one bathtub that we had to sign up to use. Sometime over the last few decades the norm requires daily showers in fancy spaces. With seats. Of marble.

Growing in Buffalo we called tap water Lake Erie. On our vacations up in northern Canada there was a water pump. As a kid, I thought it was so cool to pump and drink from the aluminum cup that hung there. Lunch boxes came with a thermos which was used mostly for soup. Sometime over the last few decades the norm requires bottled water of all sorts. Plain or flavored. In plastic. Easy to carry. Easy to discard.

I’m probably a typical recycler, trying to remember to put my empty bottle in the right bin. Trying to remember to not run the water the whole time while I’m brushing my teeth. “We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery will continue,” wrote poet Wendell Berry. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a refreshing daily shower. There’s nothing wrong with bottled water. Perhaps there is something wrong with our norms. I read somewhere that the next world war will be over water rights. Before it comes to that, there are probably some things we each could change. Don’t know about you, but I intend to give those norms some more thought and reevaluate my expectations and needs.

Marilyn

Out of balance

Ceiling fans were a great invention and, in my opinion, are a necessity. They are a practical alternative or boost to air conditioning on a warm, breezeless summer evening. They provide some psychological comfort that the air actually is moving. But, to work best, to do the job they were intended for at any speed, they need to be balanced. When they are not, they shake and are noisy. Not the hum of the refrigerator background kind of noisy, but more the rattle in the car engine kind of irritating sound. The kind of rhythmic thumping that is like a brain worm that keeps one from being able to relax, let alone fall asleep. 

When something is rhythmically thumping in one area of our lives, it can be very hard to feel that there is any type of balance. We spend so much time and focus so much energy on that one thing that everything feels out of whack. Now, some of that is normal. Think of major events. New parents. A sudden death. Changing addresses. With all of those, we ultimately find a new balance. At least, that is the hope. But when we suddenly realize that we’re feeling sluggish, blah, stressed, cranky, snarky, anxious, or a litany of other states, most likely things are out of balance.

I’ve lived in a couple of places where my ceiling fan was fine, but the one in the apartment below me wasn’t, and that was even more troublesome because it was out of my control. My floor and bed trembled and the annoying machine ka-flunk was audible and it was necessary for me to ask others to deal with their own imbalanced fan. Similarly, when we notice things are amiss in the lives of those around us, we have to gently invite them to reflect on what’s out of balance. We don’t have to be engineers or mechanics or electricians to fix our own or another’s imbalance. We just need to be aware, open to some self examination and exploration, and willing to act. Thomas Merton said, “Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, rhythm and harmony.” May your week ahead be balanced.

Marilyn

4:44 a.m.

It’s funny how we remember certain small things. Years ago I had invited a couple of friends over for dinner and, at the last minute, included a woman we’d just met. She had recently married a widower we knew and he was out of town. She mentioned her routine of getting up at 4:44 a.m. for some quiet time before her workout on the treadmill. Shortly after that meal, they moved away so we never spent time with her again. I don’t even know if she is still alive, but as an early riser myself, if the clock reads 4:44 a.m., I think of Peg. There are other people who have moved on and we’ve lost touch, yet, every year on their birthday or some other occasion, I think of them, again, without knowing where they are or if they are in this world. That would be okay if they were all folks I want to remember, but there are a couple whom I’d prefer had moved on all together, not to be thought of again.

There are also small instances, like times I screwed up, reacted poorly, downright lied, was bruised or hurt that periodically reappear. Even if the wounds are healed, forgiveness asked for and given, an echo remains, a shadow lingers, and I am again in that emotional spot for a split second. 

These small moments aren’t festering or continually running like ticker tape across my brain. It’s that they occasionally flash, shedding a spotlight on them once again, like an unconscious nudge. If it was something I said or did - or didn’t say or do - then it’s a gentle reminder that, while still a flawed human being, I hope I learned from the experience and have grown. It’s surprising that it is not the heartbreak or major disappointments that haunt. Maybe some morning at 4:44 a.m. I’ll try to discern why it’s the little ones that pop up. If I get an answer, I’ll let you know.

Marilyn

Growing up different

As much as we want to be true to ourselves, to be a strong individual, we also want to fit in. We want to be the we in the we vs. they, part of the in crowd, or if not part of, at least tolerated or ignored by them. Age doesn’t matter. It could be our first day of preschool or of a professional conference. We stand on the threshold and quickly look for the familiar, the similar, assessing how we will be received. Imagine what it’s like if you know and understand that mostly you won’t fit in.

The recent 50th anniversary of the Special Olympics served as a reminder of how little we once knew about the challenges of the different. Back then, most with mental or physical disabilities had been kept out of sight which also meant, out of mind. Since then, we’ve accepted mainstreaming as a norm. We drop words like autism or Tourette’s and conditions like OCD into conversations. Most likely we use them incorrectly even as we try to show awareness and empathy, and, most likely our actions come across as condescension or tolerance.

We all feel different at times, but it is different to know that you are so. Outsiders have no idea what life is like for a family who has a truly different member. Now that it is more the norm for a child with a disability to remain at home, outsiders do not, cannot, comprehend what it takes to provide a safe and constant environment for their different member. To nurture and help that individual become the best that they can be. I recently had a glimpse into that world and saw the exhausting stress, the painstaking patience and realized how little I really and truly knew or understood. 

Throughout history, the different have been demonized, ostracized or forced to conform. Think of all the left handed children made to change what came naturally to them. Think of the closets full of generations of those with differing sexual orientations. Think of the taunts to those with cleft palettes or crossed-eyes, the uncoordinated, or the dark skinned in the world of the blondes. I’ve mentioned here what are just a few issues on the spectrum of differences and don’t mean to compare one with the other. What I’m musing on here is the commonness of wanting to belong and the absolute imperative to remember that longing to belong is something we all share.

Marilyn

The driver didn’t know

Last Wednesday morning I was driving on a four-lane highway headed back to the Columbus airport when I smelled burning rubber. If you are like me when renting a car, you check out all the basics but may not know what’s going to appear on the dashboard screen when there is trouble; however, no icons were flashing at me as the smell grew worse. Then bits of rubber from a shredding tire on the truck in front of me started hitting the windshield. Luckily there was no damage, and before I could do anything to alert the driver, he turned at the stoplight and seemed to keep going. He didn’t know.

How many times do we leave things in our wake that we don’t know about? That we cut someone off in traffic without realizing it. How what we said was taken wrong and there are stunned or confused expressions on colleagues’ faces as we walked away. When we interrupted something important to those involved with something we considered more important. I’ve seen it happen when there is a sense of entitlement. Maybe it comes with age or with authority, but I’ve noticed a tendency in myself to not be aware of or honor what I’m interrupting. And, worse, to not be concerned with the fact that there may be consequences to my actions.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping focused on what’s ahead. It can be important though, to periodically check on what we’ve left behind. 

Marilyn

Head, shoulders, knees, and toes

When something comes to mind as I consider topics for these weekly musings, I tend to go with it and see where it takes me. So, when the glimmer of a childhood song teased my brain, I did what anyone in search of a piece of information would do, and googled the phrase and found the cutest video of cartoon children exercising. It wasn’t quite the tune I remembered, but close enough. My recollection wasn’t that parents or teachers in my day used the song to get us moving, except maybe for coordination and rhythm, but the modern version combined exercise with the song which seemed like a good thing.

Perhaps I was reminded of the song because I’m in that phase of life more focused on icing or replacing those body parts than identifying them. Well, except the head. There is no head transplant when Alzheimer’s disease is the diagnosis. There is no corrective surgery for how we have deteriorated into so far left and so far right (not necessarily portions of the brain). It was painful to watch my dad’s head slip into the world of dementia. I fear a similar fate, but don’t know whether the fear is that I’ll know it’s happening or that I won’t know. I fear the fate of our world where the rhetoric needs to be iced down and we all need some type of therapy.

“He’s got a good head on his shoulders” is a nice complement, as is “she’s head and shoulders above the rest.” Here in Chicago we are the city of the big shoulders. As a culture and a country we once had broader shoulders. All of those hint at a morality that is not mentioned in the song. Maybe we need a second verse that is ‘head, shoulders, heart and soul.’

Marilyn

When the time is right

When the time is right, I will... You’ve thought it. I’ve said it. We’ve probably even drafted some plans around that fill-in-the-blank part. It may be something that we really need to do, should do, or would like to do. It can range from making a will to leaving an abusive relationship to quitting a job to starting a diet. We are waiting for the time to be right, meaning that the planets are aligned, we’ve saved a million dollars, or hell has frozen over. Mostly we are waiting for the kick in the butt or for something to shift internally so that the time feels right.

If you are like me, you’ve learned that the time is rarely ever right. Not until we make it right. On Saturday I had breakfast with a woman who is waiting for the time to be right to make a decision about a major move. The I’m-moving-to-be-close-to-family-because-it’s-that-time-of-my-life type of move. A wonderful friend is settling in to her new life thousands of miles away because the time came to be right for her to make that hard decision. Yesterday I was at the memorial service of a dear colleague. I had the privilege of accompanying her somewhat on her journey she refused to let be defined by cancer. We cried when she shared that the time was right to tell her fourteen and ten year old sons that she was dying and when she asked me to find time on our boss’s calendar so she could tell him it was time for her to retire immediately. 

You know, as I know, that for most things, the ducks will never be in a row. Don’t get me wrong. Animals in the wild have millennia of learnings on when to migrate; farmers on when to sow or reap. There are better times, not just always that perfect time to get us off our keisters to do what usually turns out to not be as difficult as all our worry and procrastination thought it would be. So, what are you waiting for the time to be right for and what can you do instead of waiting?

Marilyn