Reflection…

I have been working a lot of overtime lately (a LOT of overtime), and I’m physically exhausted. More than that, though, I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted.  

My job isn’t physical, it’s not about moving or lifting, bending or carrying. It’s all about using my brain, deciphering puzzles, finding mistakes and correcting them. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work, even on the days when I’m bored out of my mind, but it takes its toll on my creativity, my ability to do anything but sit and stare lifelessly at Netflix in the evenings until I fall into bed at some ridiculously early hour only to start it all over again a 0-dark-30 the next day. 

I normally work Sunday through Wednesday, 10 hour days, and have a three-day weekend every week.  For the past three months, it’s rare that I have even one day off a week, but I have bills to pay – for broken windows, well pumps that decide to throw bits of their impellers up 300 feet to clog the filters and reduce the water pressure to a trickle, and heat pumps that decide that it’s time to start breaking down with its own midlife crisis.  I can relate – it works hours and hours every day, year round, heating and cooling, and it gets tired, too. 

And I am. I get up in the morning and I start to work and I feel this overwhelming sadness that has nothing to do with SADD and everything to do with just wanting nothing more than to stay curled up under the warm quilts with my cat and let the day slide into morning and afternoon and catch up on some sleep. 

Next week, I can’t do overtime, because you can’t do overtime on a week with a holiday. So I will (theoretically) rest and enjoy Christmas with my sons. Nothing fancy, just a big pot of some delicious soup, some bread, and a spice cake for dessert, but it will be quiet, and it will be family, and I won’t be working, all of which will make it a very special day aside from the simple fact that it is Christmas, the day when we celebrate the birth of our Lord.

This year, for me, it’s not about the gifts, or the big fancy meal.  It’s simply about quiet time to reflect and relax and be surrounded by the people I love and who love me without conditions or reservations. They are the reason I work, the reason I put forth the effort, and it’s days like that that make it all worthwhile. 

Wishing you all the happiest of holidays, the peace of the season, and health and comfort in the coming year.

Simple Pleasures…

There is a huge skylight in my kitchen ceiling. 

I can look up at night and see the stars and the moon, the kitchen lit up when the moon is full as if there were a light shining down from the sky, or dark enough to require shuffling to avoid tripping over a cat when the sky is cloudy or the moon is new. 

I can look up and see the rain falling down, or the snow, or the hail, and know the frustration when the latter hides the view. 

I can look up and see the blue sky on a foggy day, high above the fog that blankets the hillside as viewed through my living room or bedroom windows. 

In the summer, when it’s hot, we sometimes hang a bright beach towel across the opening to keep out the heat, but in the winter, it’s open to the sky. In the daylight, we don’t need to turn on the lights because that window gives us all the illumination we need. 

I like to stand, the edge of the kitchen sink pressing into the small of my back, my head tipped back to look out the skylight and watch the sky, day or night, mesmerized by the play of seasons and weather painted across its clear surface. 

It’s the simple things, after all, that make day-to-day life worthwhile and make me smile.

A Lost Art?

I find myself thinking rather a lot lately about manners as they pertain specifically to the lost art of the thank you note or simply saying thank you.  I’m just as guilty on occasion of this lack myself as the next person (mostly because I often forget what I’m doing from one moment to the next), but I wonder how and why that singular lack of manners became the norm rather than the exception. When I was young, and when my children were young, the thank you note was a given for any gift given from a distance, in particular. Saying thank you by phone was better than nothing, but that short note of thanks and the implied thought behind it were important. 

I’m not trying to say bring back the paper-wasting, postage-needing handwritten note (though I do think, on some occasions, they are still necessary – and it would definitely be a boost to the floundering US Postal Service).  What I am saying is that in this time when we all have text messaging on our cell phones, email and Facebook to reach out and touch another person with words of thanks, the whole process should have become that much easier and, hence, less likely to be forgotten or ignored. 

Alas, that’s not the case. 

In all honesty, it brings out my Grinch side, my “Bah, Humbug!” side in my feelings about giving gifts, and frankly, it’s not a feeling I like.  Being me, I’ll get over it (in a week, or a few weeks, or a month) and go right back to my normal giving nature, because in the end for me it’s the joy of giving and how that makes me feel that’s important, not the expectation of gratitude on another person’s part.

Today, however, I’m disgruntled about this trend, and somehow doubt I’m the only one.

Be Strong…

Be strong.

Sometimes, that’s the most difficult thing in the world to do.  Life gets in the way, out of control, moves too fast, or moves too slow; it really doesn’t matter what, only that it’s slipping through your fingers and it’s out of your control and you just want it all to stop.  Just for a moment.  Just be still and quiet and all be the way it’s supposed to be, even though it most definitely is not.  You want to be patient, you want to believe, and just wait for it to all work itself out.  But then there is this little voice in the back of your head that starts whispering, nudging, pushing, tearing at your resolve. 

Some days, it’s easy.  Others, so very difficult. 

But in the end, you really have no choice, do you?  You can’t give up, give in, lie down and let everything crumble and fall apart.  No matter how easy it seems, or how enticing, or how simple.  You get up in the morning and you start it all over again, put it all together, and forge ahead.

Be strong.

Hang in there.

Just be patient.

Riiiight….

My Grandmother’s Rocking Chair

Some of my earliest memories are of being held in my grandmother’s arms, the softness of her breasts, the warmth of her arms around me, the soft scent of Yardley lavender soap that always clung to her skin, and the slow, gentle rock of her rocking chair. My grandfather gave it to her on their first wedding anniversary, and that chair embodies her and so many memories for me.

Today, that chair takes its place in my home. As I watch my cats explore it, sniffing at nearly a half century of scent memories, the people who have sat in it, touched it, my grandmother’s dog and cat, all those memories come flooding back to me.

It’s been a difficult week for me, a roller coaster of emotions that has left me drained and the tears come all too easily to my eyes, but these tears are bittersweet and sweeter still as the memories fill me and the remembered warmth and love I equate with that chair chase away the pain.

I sit in the chair and while it’s too low for my knees to not complain, once seated it fits my body like an old remembered embrace. Like my grandmother, my heart mother, wrapping her arms around me again and holding me like she did when I was four years old and so many other times, until the tears fade and the calmness returns.

Some things happen at the perfect time, and this chair, this day, is just that.

Perfect.

Popeye…

You don’t know me.

You might think you do, but unless you are inside my head, you cannot know my feelings, my emotions, my reactions. They belong to me and me alone, and no matter what words I use to try to explain them, you can never truly understand.

You haven’t experienced the things I have, from my point of view.  We could stand next to one another, watch the same event, and yet your experience would be different from mine, because my perception, my reactions, the experiences that have shaped my life come from a different place.

You think you know who I am, but you don’t. No more than I know who you are.  There are no total truths or complete knowledge.  There are always pieces of me you cannot understand, will not recognize, those parts of me that I don’t even know and would never be able to explain to you, no matter how much I might want to try.

If that makes me a bad person in your eyes, or my reactions make me bad, or my truths are your lies, or my lies your truths, it doesn’t change what is. I can apologize, I can try to explain, but in the end, there is still what was, what is, and what will be, and while I can do my best to change, I cannot promise to never react in a certain way because we cannot plan our reactions, cannot say we will do this, or that, until we are faced with the moment. And even then, the way we react may be different on one particular day, based on so many factors, than they might be the next.

What hurts one day may make us laugh the next; it’s the nature of emotion, of life, and living.

All there can be is the attempt to understand, the willingness to accept that I will never be what you would wish I could be, from your perceptions, but only who I actually am, in my soul, good or bad.  Because it is who I am, how I am, and how I should be in your perception doesn’t change the reality of what is.

If I hurt you, I am sorry, because that knowledge hurts me even more.

Pumpkin Pie

I love pumpkin pie.

More than anything else, that is what makes me think “holidays.” Pumpkin pie and mince pie, though I’m not nearly as fond of the mince.  My father wasn’t what you’d call a great cook. He made a mean pot of beans, could fry up hamburger, and make pancakes from a mix, but I honestly don’t remember much else.  I imagine my brother does, but since I only spent my weekends with my father and my brother and the rest of my week living with my grandparents, maybe I only got his weekend meals? 

 Every Christmas, he’d get a canned ham from the 76 Station where he worked, and every Thanksgiving and Christmas we’d go out to eat at a Chinese restaurant called Kim’s. Kim’s is closed now, but the building is still there, bringing back memories every time I happen to drive by.  My father would also buy frozen pies, pumpkin and mince, but there was no real holiday meal tradition during those early years.

When I went to live with my mother in my early preteen years and teen years, we did make holiday meals, where I learned to hate stuffing because my mother always made it with oysters, but we cooked the turkey, or the ham, and made the pies and cookies, and got together with as many of us kids who happened to be around at the time.

When I grew up, got married, had children of my own, I felt very strong about needing a family tradition and threw myself wholeheartedly into the whole holiday feast thing. I learned that stuffing was actually pretty good, if you left out the oysters, and that a rice and apricot stuffing wasn’t nearly as good as an old-fashioned cornbread one.

And I baked.  Oh, did I bake.  Cookies, candies, pies, cakes, caramel corn – you name it, I would make it, and we’d traditionally stuff ourselves and eat leftovers for weeks.

Eventually, life changed. Divorce happened, I became a single working parent, time was a lot more scarce, and I stopped making such a big deal about the holiday meals. I still cooked them, just not so extensively.

But I’m digressing, aren’t I? 

Back to the pumpkin pie.

About 10 or 11 years ago, the new man in my life spent the holiday with us. I spent a Thanksgiving with him up in Alaska, and the following year, he spent Christmas in Oregon with my sons and me. And I went all out – Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, home-made rolls, the works. And I baked pies. His favorite was pumpkin, so of course I made that, too.

The dinner was terrific, everyone had a great time, and later, once things had settled, we gathered around the table again for dessert.  Out came the pumpkin pie, all golden orange and shiny perfection. I served it up, handed it around, and then busied myself putting things away while they all began to eat. I joined them minutes later, sliding into my chair and picking up my fork to take a big bite of that holiday perfection.

And spit it out.

I looked from one face to another – my sons, the man I loved – and they all looked back at me like nothing was wrong.

There are times in your life when you realize just how much you are loved, and that was one of them.  The three most important people in my life, eating that beautiful pumpkin pie as if it was the best thing they ever tasted, not one of them pointing out that I’d forgotten to add the sugar.

Someday, I may make another pumpkin pie, but whenever I mention it, I get reminded of that last time, so these days, I have a new recipe for pumpkin pie:  Walk into Costco, go to the back, pick up that giant golden orange piece of perfection, and bring it home to the holiday table.