Sunday, November 25, 2012

Welcome, changes....

That doesn't even sound like me, does it? I have had a thoughtful five days to contemplate, create, muse, and even nap.  I have, traditionally never liked change.  I learned as a teen the name for this kind of thinking was reactionary.  Yes, how could I not see the connection?  Reactionary is a perfect, perfect name for the ones of us who do not enjoy altering our futures for any reason.  We do not create.  We react.  Life brims with change...  One thing follows another in a procession of shifts and dynamics.  Th daily round rarely ends just at the beginning.  In fact, life more or less spirals, each day hinging on the last, but never wavering too much, drifting either toward the top or the deplorable plunge...

Reactionaries dread the changes in life because we do not cause them.  Our changes usually ARE sad because they are the changes caused by breaking, death, illness, catastrophe, and loss.  Those who enjoy change do not mourn the old ways because they intentionally, yes, on purpose, turned away from that path and chose another.  This is the pathway to peace as we grow up...  I can think of multitudes of changes that should have been good.  Yet, in my typical, fearing demeanor I have refused the joy because I chose to hang on to that past.  In my driveway at home a red Thunderbird, a scarlet Camaro,and a silver Intrepid slowly rust to the ground.  Why?  They ceased to function.  We purchased other cars to transport us, but we couldn't bring ourselves to make that cut, junk those memories with the chassis of yesterday....  And so they sit, blocking our vista with reminders and impeding the future as weeds mingle with their wheels...

New shoes go in the closet while absolutely reproachable ones sit handily by the door...  Mom's old stove slipped to the back porch to soften her heartbreak of giving up the stove she and Daddy bought together to begin their lifetime of happy meals, marriage, and events. The new gradually works itself in, but without a change and a parting, it will just sit atop the rubbish, precariously balanced on the past...

Can a person choose to change this most integral facet of her own character?  If I don't, I see my future as a series of scramblings toward survival.  No choices, just defensive maneuvers to survive;  life becomes a game of chess played from the viewpoint of protecting the king without risking the attack that might win the game...  We prolong the play, but we cannot be the victor if we never, ever march toward the offensive and map strategy to alter our futures with positive direction.

And to live with a dear, dear, fearful-of-the-future mother....  To be followed generationally by a son who mandates things remain exactly the same...  Even to the point of not moving the tools my dad left sitting by the barn door...

The end of The Great Gatsby says, "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into our past.."  Hopeful, yet pessimistic.

So here I am.  School is bringing on the pressure. Life beings me burdens in the form of health issues, money problems, and so on...  Mom is from a different, stronger generation.  She knows she is right.  My son knows he is right.  I am that silly, willy, nilly peacemaker generation who tries to negotiate the river without any wake, without any steam, without a paddle or a rudder...  I'm drifting.  Some of my friends are the same.  Others have seen the light and are casting ballast overboard to make a different lifestyle.

On this sunny November morning, I am setting up to make my own changes.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

A New Era...

For 62 years my mother has cherished a gas stove very much like the one above.  My dad once worked it over and ordered parts from a far away company in order to make it safe and working for another fifteen or so years.  However, this past week, the stove did some very uncomfortable things.  After a visit from a local repairman who Ahem! made a part for the oven from a gutter  outside the house....  I tried to bake my dear sister/cousin an ooey gooey butter cake.  The whole endeavor took about two hours, and the cake was barely done.  Then Sunday after I lit the oven with my trusty match, we both smelled gas.

Then came the foolhardy part....  kind of like riding with an alcoholic who has only had a "few"...  Mom wanted the stove to be okay so much we tried lighting it several times.  Once my breath was enough to ignite the fumes in the oven's coils...  That feels like magic!  But is a bit disconcerting if one's face is right there...  Later, even the burners atop the stove performed similar pyrotechnics as they poofed up about six inches from a low blue flame, make a huge "pop" and went out...  Mom called the time of death about eleven a.m.

I have ordered us a new gas stove to be delivered on Friday morning.  My son and I wheedled my mother into keeping her beauty and not sending her to the ditches.  I plan to wheel her into the extra room/pantry/laundry room off the kitchen...  If anyone could see the disarray in there, they might wonder how that Thanksgiving Miracle is to take place...  I dunno..  I just plan.

Our meal is to be on Friday, and again my cousin/sister is saving the day by bringing an electric roaster for Mr. Turkey who is sitting politely in his pan in the  refrigerator.  We are using electric oven, microwave, and crock pot to create our Thanksgiving meal.  The new stove maybe will be here in time to finish the trimmings, and maybe not...  and maybe just in time to really cause a delay.  Luckily our only guests are my son and my dear friend...  both will understand.

While I am thrilled to have a new stove to enjoy, I am equally happy not to have to say goodbye to our queen of the kitchen....  I am so nostalgic...


Monday, November 12, 2012

Happy Veteran's Day!


A salute to all veterans everywhere!  Our school is really having a celebration.  We have invited veterans to a thank-you breakfast.  Then we will have an assembly.  The veterans march in and sit in a place of honor. We have a speaker and we'll finish with music and a flag-raising ceremony that features a flag flown over Washington, D.C.  Lots of fun, and it is always nice to see the appreciation by the veterans.  If you are lucky enough to have the day off, ENJOY!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

A Rearrangement of Clouds

Each moment is a joy-filled gift!  Even the clouds become something utterly spectacular in the light of autumn's magic.  I love to watch the clouds and find the darkest ones juxtaposed against the most riotous blue skies.  It is a love affair with the sky.  My cousin shares this love, and we always see each other's Facebook posts dotted with little snippets of our "skies."

What a surprise this week brought!  I had been discussing plans to rearrange my little room at Mom's.  I came home from school on Tuesday, and my son was safely stashed upstairs, his truck hidden in back.  He had been there all afternoon and had somehow moved all my furniture...  Big beds, cabinets, tables.  He had put everything where we discussed as a huge and miraculous surprise for me...  I was enchanted.  and so happy!  Now comes my part:  cleaning and organizing and yes, pitching...  I did not feel well again, so I had to stay home yesterday and recuperate.  The new arrangement of the room soothes me and looks more like a room than a stuffed showcase.  I have always been the type of cleaner who doesn't enjoy a good housecleaning if I don't move stuff around.

My poor Mama came tiptoeing down the stairs, uttered a little, feeble, "Oh, my!" and turned around and found herself a little chair.  It IS overwhelming.  That's part of the fun.
Yesterday I made a special Spanish soup from the blog of dear Cielo at House in the Roses.  It was a Garbanzo Soup, and I was hesitant because I wasn't sure about all those little garbanzos.  It was magnificent and just what the doctor ordered to help us both feel better.  I ordered little blue sheers for my windows at Mom's.  They are so different.  It picks up the little blue flecks of flowers in her wallpaper.  Blue is such a soothing color to me...

Two weeks from today is Thanksgiving?  It cannot be true?  I am sooo  lost in time warps throughout my year.  It seems time moves from something in the spring to suddenly almost Christmas.  I come up for a look around from time to time throughout the year, but the majority of days are simply blurs on the calendar.  I don't much like that. I want to live more mindfully--- Every day, a gift.  Every sunrise and definitely every sunset...  I love the days, and I love the long and blustery nights when the wind rattles my windows and ruffles my new curtains...  Rearranging, in my case, is good for the soul.

Friday, November 2, 2012

November Gold at heart

What we are, ----all that we are-- is, in fact, heart.  I know, many arguments may be made we are physicality; we are sinew, we are water, we are blood.  But in the end, all that remains on the face of this earth after we have left it..  is the portion of heart we have been able to tuck inside the beating hearts of those who live on beyond us.  Ancient Egyptians did not remove the heart along with the internal organs.  They believed mankind thought with its heart.  How beautiful.  How beautiful is that image, a group of humankind...  thinking and acting with heart instead of logic and calculated risk/physical knee-jerk response.

I see All Saint's weekend as a new beginning, the truer New Year of the soul.  All of us here have only a few short days to remember just what it is that creates our love's journey.

I am ready for the weekend.  No huge plans, just ready to metaphorically dance in the sunshine or shadow of the winter-warnings of early frost and the lingering melody of late warmth...  These days are brief and beautiful, November Gold at heart.