Duck Disaster ( sorry, not Duck Dynasty ! )

Yesterday was one of those deliciously beautiful days. Hubby took me out to breakfast and then I cleaned the house to surround sound Classic Motown, my fave! I went and picked up our 5-year-old granddaughter and the day became even sunnier as she splattered it with laughter, joy, silliness, and innocence. Splattered, not sprinkled, because she is quite an emphatically, dramatically, loud little girl, nothing like either of her parents!
We packed a picnic lunch of yogurt, peanuts, and water and planned to head to the neighborhood playground, following a first stop at the pond with a half a loaf of bread for the ducks. She donned her helmet and scooter and we were off. At least 30 feet before we even reached the pond, two of our über domesticated neighborhood ducks headed us off at the pass and started begging, to Emma’s delight! “Bread , Mimi! Get out the bread, ” she exclaimed.
Faster than the average grandparent, I produced said bread for darling granddaughter and the feast began. We fed the sentries and as the news spread, the others approached as bread was flying everywhere. Eager to satisfy them all, granddaughter crept closer and closer to the water’s edge. No problem if you were wearing old sneakers, water shoes, or even flip-flops! But not our granddaughter. No, she’s a 5 year old ” Sex In The City” Carrie Bradshaw, wanting only the girliest shoes available, (picture in point). One step too close to the water’s edge and one of her pretty little leopard flats was stuck in the muck! She pulled it out laughing and I had to chuckle too. I’ve raised two kids and know better than to expect anyone under the age of 18 to go near the water without getting wet!
We apologized to the duck family and headed back on our comedic trek to the house. She on her scooter, one shoe off and one shoe on, with Mimi carrying the mucky muck shoe!

I truly have no musical talent, but I’ve always appreciated the power of music and have always sung with my children. Therefore, a song was born about Emma and Mimi going to the park and having a “duck disaster”. The two of us took turns adding verses and literally doubling over laughing as we made our way back home. We deposited the mucky shoes on the doorstep, rung the doorbell and hid, in order to play one of our tricks on Papa, then headed to the tub to wash off those mucky little toes. We secured a pair of flip-flops for her and started our trek again, her steps skippy and spritley, (mine ever so slightly less than spritely this second time around) both of us singing all the way, about our duck disaster.

Fast forward through playground fun, a picnic on the top of the playground castle, a song filled walk back home, comedic bathtime and bedtime recanting, and Sunday morning steel cage match shoe shopping, followed by a song filled drive returning her back to her home. As we walked to the door she squeezed my hand and said , “Mimi, I’ll never forget yesterday!” I squeezed her little hand in return as my heart swelled.
What happened to her was nowhere near a disaster, but it certainly could have been viewed as such by both of us. She could have cried a river over her favorite shoes being ruined and I could have lacked the funds to buy her new shoes or had one of those seriously lacking in patience moments and been less than the best Mimi in the world. But she didn’t, and I didn’t and this blog was born. Of course it sounds cliché, but we both simply made the best of the situation at hand. As adults, you and I both know it’s not always that easy to do. Life is beautiful and tragic. It can be all Natasha Beddingfield “Walkin on Sunshine” sunny one moment and heart wrenchingly, painfully, NBC – Dateline dark the next.

We must always, always find the humor in the situation, that ray of sunshine, that light at the end of the tunnel, that tiny morsel of goodness and hope, that gives us the strength to move on. Children are naturally adept at that. When in doubt, (as Maria Montessori so astutely proclaimed) follow the child. Wise woman.
I wavered back and forth about titling this blog “A Tale of Four Feet”- Emma’s innocent, leopard flat clad, large for her age pair, and my sometimes jaded, way too tired and sensible for stilettos (except for very short periods in closed quarters) pair, because after all, I am the said pedestrian that’s blogging about her life. I ended up simply liking Duck Disaster better. Plus the silly song is still cycling in my head!

Whatever path you’re on fellow pedestrians, whatever might be in your mirror or eye’s view, you’ve always got to choose. You’ve got to consciously choose to fight, to draw back the heavy curtains, to push to the front of the crowd, to raise up on your tippee toes, or let someone boost you up on their shoulders, so you can see the real show, the one filled with love, light, and hope. It’s there, for us all. You don’t have to pay to see it. Just follow the penniless child and they’ll take you right to it…

Peace and Love

Blogger Heal Thyself

A presenter at a professional conference I attended yesterday asked the audience how many of us had arrived at our workplace or in our own driveways lately and had no idea how we got there.  I saw quite a few hands raised and was initially confused.  My first reaction was, “What a strange question!”  My second thought was, “What is wrong with all of those people?”  Was he talking about having amnesia or the early onset of Alzheimer’s?  Thankfully, clarification came quickly as he suggested that we so often carry out  the routines of our life unconsciously.  We’re not fully present on that road we’ve driven a thousand times.  We’re in that infuriating meeting that ran over.  We’re checking off our to- do list in our mind, trying to talk ourselves out of skipping exercise today, and wondering if that off the cuff comment offended our teammate at work.  If we happen to be parents, we’re simultaneously wondering if we’ll have time to get dinner in their stomachs and make it to practice on time, while wearing our referee cap and officiating the sibling rivalry in the back seat, to the beat of whatever channel we prefer on the Sirius XM radio, because thank God the kids have their own tunes, courtesy of the i pods/touchs/phones  they’re each plugged in to.  Of course we’re paying attention to the other drivers on the road, obeying road signs and keeping it between the lines!   No officer, unfortunately I didn’t  realize I was going 15 miles over the speed limit.  Truthfully, I barely realize that I’m on this road at all because of all the other places my mind is right now. Throw in some talking on the phone or God forbid, texting, and no, I must admit I have no earthly idea how I arrived home.

Living consciously.  Type that into the Bing search window and you’ll get 3,950,000 entries.  If I had to define it on my own, ( which I’m doing now), I’d say it was being fully aware of your experience at any given moment, being fully present in your thoughts in that moment, appreciating the sensations and nuances the moment brings, and at the same time fully comprehending that each word emanating from your mouth, and every action you take in that moment is making a ripple that affects some form of life outside of your self.  That’s pretty heavy dude, as we were fond of saying in the 70s.  Well, yes it is!

The workshop presenter suggested that our love affair with today’s new and improved, obsolete in another few months, there’s an app for that technological smorgasboard of a world is creating, yes, he actually said creating, a generation/society of  human beings whose brains are being rewired to operate unconsciously!  WOW!  If we stop doing the 4 other things we’re currently multitasking, give that thought our full attention and consider the full ramifications, we’ll most likely be slightly terrified.   If we actually had the time in our chaotic lives to venture into some current brain research, the radicals among us might just choose to follow the advice of the level-headed topless dancer in the John Prine song Spanish Pipedream.   She told him, “Blow up your T.V., throw away your papers, go to the country, build you a home, plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try and find Jesus on your own.”

So much can happen when we’re not paying attention.  Ask any mother of young children what occurred the last time she was on the telephone!  Essential to living consciously is slowing down and realizing that the one moment we reside in presently is the only one that exists.  It wasn’t just a second ago and it’ll be gone in another.  When I’m around people who seem to effortlessly exude that life philosophy from their very pores, I’m envious and tend to make promises to myself about adopting a lifestyle change or habit that has the shelf life of shellfish.  So here I am, once again, trying to work my own personal program, by writing about that very thing I struggle with.

Essential to living consciously is listening.  And that happens best when there is silence.  It’s can’t be a simple coincidence that listen and silent  share the same letters.  In our silence we respect and revere the other who is speaking.  It’s also in our silence that we become acquainted with our own soul’s desires.  Whether we just unplug ourselves from everything and everyone, close our eyes, and breathe deeply for 10 minutes a day or make a serious committment to guided meditation, there are a myriad of well documented health and wellness benefits.  It’s in the silence that peace, inspiration and clarity can be heard knocking ever so quietly on our doors.

Being silent in today’s world is a novel idea and experience to many.  I personally treasure the silence I’m  capable of experiencing during 2 key points in my day.   My solitary 10 minute morning drive to work is just enough time to for me to focus my intention for the day, express gratitude for all that I’m thankful for in my life, and pray for guidance in areas that are troubling me at the time.  Later, after spending a full day with ninety 6th grade students, I cherish my noiseless ride back home.  But I wouldn’t be writing this if I couldn’t still be found eating, playing Words With Friends, flipping through a magazine, checking Facebook, pinning on Pinterest AND watching/listening to the TV all at the same time on far too many an occasion.  And I know that doesn’t look anything like living consciously.

So there you have it.  My confession and admonition to myself and you dear reader.  Let’s all make a committment, minute by minute to do our very best to live more conscious lives.  And help our kids do it too!  It WILL make a difference that we’ll each be able to see, taste, feel, hear, and experience in our own lives and in the world we all share.   Like the poster I had on my bedroom wall in 1968 said about war; living unconsciously is not healthy for children or other living things.   And we can miss so much when we’re not paying attention.

Peace and Love

Niches

I went somewhere I’d rather not have gone today, to a funeral for the father of one of my students.  As a result of that unwelcome trip, I learned a new word, “innichement”.  Unable to find the definition through all the major online dictionaries, I eventually discovered innichement is a trade word which funeral homes define as the placement of cremations into a niche within a columbarium, (which is a structure of vaults lined with recesses for cinerary urns).

Those marble niches designed to provide a resting place for the carbon remains of our earthly existence led me to not only reflect on the niches we each occupy in our lives, but the niches we each have in our hearts, where loved ones reside eternally, despite physical death.

Being the introverted little girl who often used dictionary reading to appease boredom,  I reached out to my childhood friend Merriam-Webster, who informed me that the Consice Encyclopedia defines “niche” as the smallest unit of a habitat that is occupied by an organism.  A habitat niche is the physical space occupied by the organism; an ecological niche is the role the organism plays in the community of organisms found in the habitat.

Today as I looked around at the folks who turned out to express their love for the deceased and his family, I was reminded of our connectedness as a community and how you and I and everyone who calls this planet home have a niche, a role, and place in this habitat we occupy.  After our physical body ceases to function, someone else may be able to settle into that actual space at the dinner table, that role in the family, or position at the office that was once occupied by us, but I believe no one can ever fill it completly.  As unique as each of us is, with the exception of identical twins, there’s no one like us,  no one able to perfectly fill our niche.

Luckily our hearts haves niches too, warm enveloping places where the memories of the love that we have felt for others through the years is able to settle in comfortably, eventually becoming a vital part of the organ system that at first simply allows us to continue to put one foot in front of the other as grief slaps us in the face and creeps into our dreams, but somewhere down the path, will begin to facilitate a smile that grows, a laugh that erupts, a feeling of blessedness that flows.

Tonight, my student’s father lives on in the heart niches of a multitude of friends and family who were blessed to have known him.  Cemetaries, columbariums, and urns may be final internment/innichement places for the carbon we leave behind, but our hearts are the hosts which provide the niches that lovingly hold those dear to us for eternity.

Peace and Love

What The World Needs Now

It’s been such a long time since I’ve written! But I’m writing now and that’s all that really matters. Like everyone, around the end of one year and beginning of the next, I’m reading and hearing a lot about making resolutions. How many should you make? Should you make them at all? What percentage of people actually keep them and for how long? I’m not going to attempt to answer any of those questions, but I am going to share my one goal for the new year. Yes, only one, because I invariably make far too many and keep none of them! It’s simply to spread kindness, one tiny act at a time.  Wherever I can, whenever I can.  Sadly, not one of us alone has the power to change our world from a place where horrendous acts of violence have become all too familiar to our ears to a utopia where we all live in peace, love, and harmony, but each of us on our own CAN make a little ripple in the atmosphere, that like the butterfly’s wings will have far-reaching effects.
Maybe you heard about the recent 228 cars long pay-it- forward domino occurrence at a Tim Horton drive thru in Canada.  Here’s the link just in case you didn’t :
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/12/23/mb-tim-hortons-kindness.html.   Anyway, that just illustrates perfectly how one person’s simple act of kindness towards an absolute stranger affected so many others!  That 228 car story gives me renewed hope and makes me want to be a part of a world-wide movement of quiet, undercover do-gooders who not only dream of a better world for their children and grandchildren, but do something to try to create it.  It doesn’t always have to cost money either.  We can simply be extra kind to the cashier who seems like the world has been beating her up today.  We can let the mom with the screaming kid go ahead of us in the check-out line.  We can just remember to say thank you and have a good day to those who serve us.  When we act with kindness, we act in love, and that really is what the world needs now, more than ever before.  We could still resolve to lose weight, quit smoking, exercise, and eat healthier etc., but let’s also do something else that’s frankly far more easy and far-reaching!  Let’s resolve to act with love, by being a little kinder this year whenever and wherever we can!

Peace and Love

You’re Not Special – Everyone Is!

Yesterday my MSN home page headline heralded a Wellesley, Massachusetts English teacher speaking at a commencement ceremony and telling the graduating seniors,  “You’re not special.”  For shame, for shame, you say!  We must admit that teachers do make for sensational headlines though, along with Catholic priests, politicians, and really, all public servants.   Even if we do play second fiddle to the Hollywood elite, the aforementioned teacher video went viral in an Internet minute.  I’ll set my hobnobbing with the “who’s who” group aside and let you know there’s also a poll that you can voice your opinion on as well.  The MSN folks ask:

Do you think his speech was appropriate?  You may vote:

                  Yes.  Kids today are coddled and need a dose of reality.

No. Commencement is a time for optimism.

Maybe he’s right, but it’s still mean-spirited.

********************************************************************************

I took the time to listen to the entire recorded speech.  Hopefully, everyone did and became informed before they voted and either applauded or bad mouthed David McCullough Jr.

He made references to a “what do I get for it?”  generation, as well as the common American late 20th and 21st century practice of  everyone getting a trophy just for showing up.  He quoted statistics on how many of “them” were sitting in chairs like theirs around the world, as valedictorian, class presidents, and swaggering jocks.  He also encouraged them to get up, get out, and follow their dreams, to not wait to find out what they are passionate about, but to seek it out.  He advised that they not waste time on anything that was just “good enough” for them, something they didn’t absolutely love.

And yes, he did say, “You’re not special.”  But he added , “Everyone is! ”  In the purest linguistic interpretation, the intimation is that if everyone is special, then no one is, but I really don’t think that’s the already judged mean-spirited message he intended.  I believe he was encouraging the graduates to go forth with humility and respect, acknowledging that every single one of us on this planet may have spent the first 18 years of our lives being the center of a small personal universe,  but as we reach adulthood and venture out of that realm of safety and security and into the great big worlds of others, we must acknowledge that there are billions of individuals out there, just like us, each special in their own way, each with gifts and talents to be discovered and appreciated.  So yes, he was advising the students to    ”get over themselves”  but Mr. McCullough’s words were a wise reminder for all of us, that we belong to a set of very special individuals, each of whom is special in our own distinctive ways.

So, even for us older folks, who are sometimes made blatantly and painfully aware that the world doesn’t revolve around us, Mr. McCullough’s words are like gems to be treasured, but not burrowed away.  We should polish them each day and go forth to do the work we’re passionate about.  

Ww should work hard, be nice, and remember that every single one of us is special!

Peace and Love

What’s Your Life Metaphor?

The idea for this blog came from a friend’s Facebook post of the following Emerson quote.  (Thank you JB!)

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I read that quote, it rang crystal clear true.  The way we see the world tells the world about us.  As a 6th grade Reading/Language Arts teacher I covered metaphors as I reviewed figurative language each year.  You probably remember that metaphors compare two unlike things, suggesting they have something in common.  We don’t often consciously recognize the fact that we have a life metaphor, but we all do, and it does indeed define our character.  Some of the more commonly stated metaphors for life are as follows:

• Life is good.
• Life is a beach.
• Life is a bed of roses.
• Life is a roller coaster.
• Life is a battleground.
• Life is a dance.
• Life is a highway.
• Life is a game.
• Life is a class.
• Life is a marathon.
• Life is maze.
• Life is a mystery.
• Life is an adventure.
• Life is a journey.
• Life is full of surprises.
• Life is a bitch and then you die.
• Life is what you make it.

Humans are social beings.  In general, and excluding most toddlers, we like to share and talk about our lives, seeking community with others.  Social media sites like Facebook, and the very act I’m carrying out now - blogging, have made it so much easier to share our lives with those near and far away.  We relate stories of life happenings and comment on the tales of others.  With the pictures we post and the likes that we click on, we declare our interests and proclaim our opinions, and at the same time we advertise our philosophies.  At the end of the day, we’re confessing our character and proclaiming our life metaphor. 

I don’t know where the saying originated, but it has been said that our days will likely proceed precisely in the direction of the corners of our mouths.  The way we greet each dawn and perceive each event that occurs in our life, shapes our philosophy of life, our life metaphor.  Expect a battle and life will give you one most of the time.  Enter a tense situation with a disarming smile and soft open heart and life just may surprise you.  If we let respect precede our interactions and follow the golden rule by honoring each other as we would want to be honored, the melodies of our day-to-day lives will more often than not, tend to be pleasing music to our ears and not a cacophony of dissonance that sends us screaming, running, and seeking solace at any cost.  

No, every day is not always good, but there is absolutely something good in each day.  Yes, awful, tragic, heinous things do happen, every day, even to positive, shining-happy people .  But we always have a choice.  We can let what happens define us, destroy us, or strengthen us.  Each of us has the ability to choose our life metaphor, the way we see the world, which in turn shapes our responses to all that we experience in life. By choosing, we claim the creative license that was ours all the time, because I do believe, when it’s “ashes- to- ashes, dust- to- dust” time, our life will have been, what we made it! 

Peace and Love

  

Sunday Serum

 

Dolphins diving, dancing, declaring a day to be enjoyed.

Ghost crabs stealthily scurrying across the scorching sand.

A massive school of bait fish vaulting in the air, create a symphonic saltwater ballet.

The gulls siren, “Drink in this day.  Soak up the serum of beauty, joy, and love that surrounds you,

the life that calls- be here now, be one.  And in this one moment, feel the peace.”

 

 

Peace and Love

6-3-12