Like a Rolling Stone

Omniscient They say rolling stones gather no moss. And I guess that is true (though they may pick up a good bit of mud as they roll on). So does it follow that a stone at rest, growing moss, becomes stuck; trapped in its opaque moss casing? It is also true that one must slow down in order to notice that the constantly moving stone is gathering no plant matter.

Because we humans have well-honed selective--dare I say faulty--memory, we must record and compare to be sure of whether or not one something is different this year from last. I am a recorder, if not much else. Last year in a mid-January blog post, I included a picture of the first bloom on the winter jasmine. The photo above is this year's mid-January winter jasmine.

I started this blog in May 2010, thinking I would record a year in the garden, and after that there would be nothing new to write about and I would stop. But I just keep on rolling. And neither I nor the garden gather moss. I am different. The garden is different. The blog has become my journal of a life--all that's fit to print (which means a lot is left out). I no longer keep a journal in my own hand, which is a little sad to me, but there is a lot less verbal diarrhea and a lot more intentionality. When I did keep the journal, though, I often looked back at the same time in a previous year. And I often thought, "Good God, nothing has changed." I wondered how I could get unstuck. But the truth is, everything changes; it's just so tiny and slow that it doesn't always seem like it. The days whip by, the seasons cycle through at lightening speed, and our lives roll on inch by excruciating inch. That doesn't mean there is no change.

A year ago this month I tore my meniscus. In May I had surgery. My record of healing comes in the form of yoga. In fact, noticing change throughout my body is recorded in Julie's yoga classes at the YMCA. My very least favorite pose when I began yoga--when? three years ago, four? I must look back in my journals--was the dreadful pigeon (Eka Pada Kapotasana--I don't think I have heard Julie use the sanskrit name for that one). I don't know why it came to be my favorite over time. Perhaps because it is one that initially I Could Not Do At All. And then I could. It is a major victory. But after the injury and even more after knee surgery, I couldn't do it again on the right side. I suppose I did notice that each time we did it, I could bend it a little more and for a tiny bit longer, but I had given up thinking I would ever again do it completely. And, frankly, all I really cared about was the end goal. But this week I did it, a full year after the injury. (I still can't do a straight-legged forward fold with my palms on the floor. I think Never is a safe word with that one.)

That caring only about the end goal gives me pause. That's why we don't notice change. We tend to overlook the miniscule. We look too far ahead. And too far ahead looks too far to ever reach. And so we imagine that we are stuck--no longer a rolling stone. When we get stuck, stuff sticks to us, and that keeps us more stuck. There is a mathematical principle that I read in some novel several months back. It got my attention, so I wrote it down in my electronic file of Things I Might Want to Explore in a Blog Post. "Never start with the unknown variable." Even though we might think we know what's down the road, we really don't. It is an unknown variable. So we start with what we know. I think the same thing might be true when I begin the time in my life that what's ahead is most certain to be decline. The variable might be worse or better than what I imagine; but what I have is what I can notice and fall in love with today. My mother has started calling me, or sending me a note or even an email! about things she is falling in love with in that moment--like the fog in the valley. She often tells me what she has not been able to do; I love when she tells me what brings her joy. 

Shake off the moss. Shake off the mud. You are not stuck. Notice that pigeon is easier this month than it was last month. Start noticing the tiny buds on the hydrangea. One day they will have extravagant orbs of tiny flowers, or there might be a blight or an insect infestation or a hydrangea-loving deer. But right now the leaves are budding and beginning their slow rolling journey toward fullness. Rejoice in today's tiny bud. And eat your muffin one delicious bite at a time.

Liking Christmas

I walk out of The Fresh Market on a lunch break this week, with my wee cup of coffee and my two weekend blueberry scones that they now save for me on Thursdays because they don't put enough for me and anyone else in the Very Small Scone Basket. Sleigh Bells is playing on the  shopping center outside musak, and I am actually wearing a light jacket and a scarf. And it hits me: "I'm going to like Christmas this year!" It's not that I generally choose not to like the holidays, just that for a long time--more years than not, in the last couple decades--I haven't. For one reason or another, which I don't need to go into detail about, it's been a dreaded time of year--the rejoicing coming when it's over. 

You become what you think about. (Earl Nightingale)

I was set to continue that saggy default tradition this year. I will not see a single family member this December for what might be the first time in my life. That seems like a sad thing. In truth, I suppose, it is seeing them and it not matching my Very Big Fantasy About How Things Should Be that has been hard. So this year I will be grateful for my chosen family and look for opportunities to spend time with them. But if that doesn’t happen (they do, after all, have families of the other flavor), it will be okay. I will enjoy a few days off and find peaceful things to do. 

You become what you think about.

I know what I'm gifting half of my family--and they are purchased or created. As for the other half, I am in convenient denial that it needs to get done and shipped across the country and I have no ideas. Elizabeth posted on FaceBook this week, after Cyber Monday and Black Friday (apparently those days are supposed to catapult one into the Christmas Spirit), that she is getting extremely annoyed by television ads and talk show guests suggesting "last minute" gift ideas. "Has the 'first minute' even happened?" she rants. It is convenient, I suppose, to have the first and last minute wrapped up in one weekend. Maybe if I did that I could concentrate on other meaningful Christmas activities: making my home festive, baking, giving attention to my life and those who inhabit it with me, attending to Advent and the coming of the Bearer of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

After another difficult week, the weekend finds me looking for color in the garden. The leaves are gone from the trees and the predominant shades of the earth are brown and dull green. There are a few red leaves clinging to a low branch of the dogwood and one lonely bunch of red berries on the pyracantha that I recently reshaped. The Mexican heather and the roses that keep blooming. The cheerful winter jasmine at the end of the driveway is covered with buds of hope and the first bright yellow blossoms are open. There is a single yellow leaf on the gardenia bush, along with the red splash of a single old bloom. A new Christmas display is birthing down the street with a choir of angels, wise people that apparently arrived at the stable in a train, and shepherds with their sheep keeping watch. The titmouses and chickadees have nibbled the suet in the holder stuck on the window into a perfect heart shape.  

Love.

Gift giving is great fun, if you are a child or have a child that you get to watch beam with delight on Christmas morning. But I find it hard to gift adults. I can't bestow upon them anything they really need, like a Large Infusion of Cash. Yet, if we don’t give and receive something at Christmas we feel cheated at both ends. I don't need any stuff. It's Clementines that make me happy. Like Honey Crisp apples in the fall, I am glad that Clementines are seasonal. I mourn them when they stop being available at the market, but when the Honey Crisp apple season ends, there are the Clementines. When I unwrap the the first little treasure and the bite-sized section explodes its sweet tang in my mouth, I remember that I have missed it. Same thing with the Honey Crisp that I watch and wait for during the long months after the price of Clementines goes up and the quality goes down. Like an out-of-area lover, their return is all the more poignant for their unavailability most of the time. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that.

Joy.

The return of both the Honey Crisps and the Clementines in their own season, like the predictability of the garden, gives me something to look forward to. And the unexpectedness of finding out-of-season buds already on the hydrangeas, and jonquils that are a foot tall already, are both promise and surprise. Both bring me optimism for what is around the corner: that which is known, and that which is not.

Hope.

I am leaning heavily today on the sentence I ran across yesterday, "You become what you think about." Think negative thoughts, like not liking Christmas, and you become Scrooge. I do not find it easy, though, to give heartache and disappointment and anger and fear the boot when they really, really want to control my head. But I am going to try to make room in there for hope, peace, joy, and love. And just maybe they will win the battle.

Peace.

Shopping for Excuses: Conversations with Myself

On Thursday a brochure for a week-long summer writers' workshop at a college in the beautiful mountains of southwestern Virginia showed up in the mail at work under the church name, and whoever distributed the mail put it in my box. I start to put it in the recycling right then, but decide it won't hurt to look at it, and carry it to my office. When I get a minute, I read the workshop option descriptions--and avoid looking at the price. It's not like I'm going to go. I can't decide which of two of the courses I would choose, they both sound perfect. Moving on to the faculty, I choose based on the instructor bios; okay, their photos--definitely the woman over the bearded man. What the hey, might as well look at the price. I quickly add up the workshop, room, and board prices. Then I drop the brochure in the trash and return to the bank reconciliation. Numbers swim in my head for the next two hours. I knew this reconciliation was going to be problematic due to a bank error last month. It gives me a headache. I take the brochure out of the recycling box and add it to the pile on my desk.

The next morning, going through the pile, I look at the workshop list again. I really don't know how to choose between the two. And besides, it's a whole week. I don't have enough vacation time for all the things I want to do--a two-week trip to visit my family, staycation, camping in the mountains, time left for a day off here and there. And I'm not really a writer, anyway. I would be terrified to do such a thing. It is expensive, and even if I had the money it would be irresponsible to spend that much money on, on, on what? On myself. Work calls; I drop it back in the trash.

It's not the only random event of the week. When I arrive home Friday night from an evening with friends, there is a shopping cart parked at the curb in front of my house. It is late, I go to bed thinking maybe I didn't really see that. In the morning I leave the house for the coffee shop and errands, hoping that when I get home it will be gone. If I ignore it, perhaps it will go away and I won't have to make a decision. That is usually my first line of defense when faced with something that is hard, or that I don't want to do, or that might lead to disappointment--bad feelings; conversations that could clear the air, or could fill it with permanent smog (that has never happened, but I keep it on the list of excuses for not bringing up hard stuff); asking for what I want; giving myself permission to act on what I want. I wish I had never seen that brochure. As I enjoy my coffee, I read a couple more chapters in Creative is a Verb. "Passion should overwhelm reason time and time again. " (Alvaro Castagnet) I drive by my office to retrieve the brochure. I need to decide which workshop I would choose--if I were going to go. The trash has been emptied; the brochure is gone. It must be a sign. I feel a mixture of disappointment and relief. Mostly relief.

At noon, the cart is still at the curb. I consider my options. I quickly reject pushing it the mile to the Food Lion. After briefly considering relocating it to a neighbor's curb, I muse on walking it to the wannabe corner grocery in an empty shopping plaza a block away. Sort of the "if there is a buggy, can the store be far behind" train of thought. I would be doing my neighborhood good deed. I am annoyed at having to deal with this. I go back to ignoring the cart and continue surfing the net for instructions on building a small round patio in the backyard and how to calculate the area of a circle and where I might get building materials cheap and the merits of buying in bulk and paying the delivery fees and having to shovel gravel and sand and cart it to the backyard verses the more manageable but expensive bags at Lowes and how many cubic yards I would need and how many bags that would be at half a cubic foot per bag. Now that is a more responsible use of my money--a patio is an investment in the resale value of my home and garden and something I can enjoy every day for as long as I live in the house. A writing workshop only lasts a week and then it's over. My mom gave me money, but I am hoarding it for my house, it would be irresponsible to spend it on myself. God, it's good to have a clear justification for spending money. (Sometimes my thinking is so twisted it annoys even me.)

I tire of the internet, and I am discouraged with the patio project anyway. It's time to get outside, rake some leaves, stop this ridiculous dreaming of doing something that is too big for me, and way too much math. It makes my head hurt. I turn around to the window. The cart is gone. It worked! I ignored it, and I don't have to make a decision. Life is good. I start raking the crispy leaf bits off the weed lawn and around the chairs where I want to build the patio. Of course, the workshop brochure is on the web, I don't have to have the hard copy. As I rake, an activity I don't enjoy, but that I recognize as a task that clears the head as it clears the yard, I recall the question, "What would you do if nothing were standing in your way?" What would I do if I ran out of excuses? As a lifelong voracious reader, years ago I answered that question, "I would be a writer." As I pile leaves on the sheet, I see my mountain of excuses. As I pull the sheet to the back of the yard, I feel its weight. What if I considered myself as worthy of investment as I do my house? Could I work a couple of Saturdays so I wouldn't have to use as many vacation days? Would I consider giving up some of the things I have done before with my time off to do something new? How about acknowledging that writing never makes my head hurt? Maybe I could fill the shopping car with possibility instead of excuses. As I dump the leaves on the compost, the sheet becomes light again. The mountain is not insurmountable.

It snowed again this week. Just a dusting. The winter jasmine is in full bloom now. The bulbs I discovered had sprouted last week are taller. And the sedum has emerged from the ground. The snow does not deter them. It is their time, and there are no excuses. One of the friends I spent time with on Friday evening, a friend whose family includes a child in college and another close behind--income inhalers--went to Cuba last year with a group from church. Friday night she said, she couldn't really afford the trip, and the timing work-wise could not have been worse. But deep inside herself, she knew it was her time to go.

What is it my time to do? I have run out of the practical excuses. All that is left is fear. "I am not a writer. What if I can't do it? What if everyone else is better than I am?" I pull up the website and reread the brochure. It doesn't say a thing about "must be published," or "must have a degree in literature," or must be a "poet laureate." The only prerequisite is a love of writing. I read the course descriptions. The one the woman is teaching says it's for intermediate and advanced writers. The one with the bearded man states for all levels--and the description sounds a bit more like what I do. I open the registration form and choose them as my second and first choices respectively, add my contact information and credit card number. It does not ask for a writing resume or a writing sample or a 250 word essay on why they should let me in. I click send. I am the 80th person to register for the eight 15-person-limit workshops. Maybe I will get in, and maybe I won't. I will be disappointed, not relieved, if I don't. But I have done my part.

I go back outside. Three thoughts dawn on me. I could have put the shopping cart in my car and driven it to Food Lion. I put the brochure in the recycling box, that's why it wasn't in the wastebasket. And the income tax refund I am expecting is exactly the cost of the adventure I just signed up for.