It's a beautiful day in central North Carolina, one of those sweet, late August days when bright skies and a cool breeze are harbingers of Autumn. It's a good day to work outdoors. I was just reading a piece from the New York Times that dovetails what I was already thinking.(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/im-thinking-please-be-quiet.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&smid=fb-share)
Before I gathered up my coffee and computer to move to the deck, I was reflecting on how peaceful it was in the house. The TV is not turned on, there is no music playing. Jill is in her studio drawing, the dogs are napping on the couch. The kitties are curled in their favorite chairs. Even the parakeet seems to be enjoying the peace of Sunday morning, without chirping his opinion.
I moved outside because I wanted to increase my sensual engagement with the day. Out here, I can smell the earth, the grass, the clover. The wind is brisk and the wind chimes are dancing, belting out an orchestral arrangement for the day. As I listened more deeply, I realized that there is a mower running somewhere, a faint car alarm in the distance, cicadas buzzing, traffic running by. The neighbor's makeshift plastic greenhouse fills and collapses with the wind, like a choir of plastic grocery bags in full voice. Leaves rustle, breeze whistles, birds chirp, chitter, and audibly flap their wings as they pass through the yard. I thought it was quiet out here, but I was wrong.
The part of this article that caught my attention was the physiological response to sound, and especially its effect on sleep. Of course you can become accustomed to sleeping through familiar noises, even trains or planes. We have striking clocks in our house. Depending on how diligent I've been at keeping them wound, anywhere from 2 to 4 antique clocks strike out the hour and half-hour, 24 hours a day. One hangs on the wall a few feet from the head of the bed. I rarely am aware of either the hollow tick-tock of the pendulum or the periodic chimes. Do they rouse my resting nervous system all night long, shortening both my attention span and my life? I find them comforting, reassuring when I wake in the dark and listen for the regular tick, as if for my own heartbeat.
In utero, they tell us, the fetus is awash in sound ---- the internal, organic noises produced by mother's bodily functions, as well as the environmental noise of engines, voices, footsteps, work. I remember, years ago, taking my three-month-old son to a bluegrass bar in Nashville. We sat down front in the small venue, and placed his baby carrier beside the stage, where he slept soundly through the entire set. Shhhhh . . . the baby is sleeping?
I find I need varying levels and types of sound when I write. Like many authors, I frequently listen to music while writing, but I carefully choose what kind. It has to either match the time period and personality of the piece, or it has to be my go-to writing music, the all-purpose album whose first notes set off a Pavlovian writing response in my brain. Headphones allow me to co-exist with my better half while the muse is in gear; Jill can watch a movie or listen to music without distracting me or drawing me in.
On my bucket list, is participation in a silent retreat. I've never done that, but I will. I seek silence, crave cessation of ambient noise, even though it's actually impossible. I walk on the greenways and bring my consciousness into the present moment as nearly as I can. I sit upstairs in my reading nook, as far away from the household as possible, so I can concentrate. I read in bed with my head wrapped in my favorite feather pillow to block out distracting noises. Quiet time is as necessary to me as any other basic need.
It took me a long time to acknowledge this, and honor it. My life is richer for the time I spend in silence.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
What I did Right
I defer to no one when it comes to self-criticism. Not satisfied merely with my own negative judgments, I have assembled a formidable Committee in my brain that pursues me like the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse in the effort to shred any amount of satisfaction I might gain. And so it has been, for as long as I can remember.
The key to carrying out that level of self-immolation in public is a sense of humor. I know intellectually that it is all nonsense. With some acerbic wit and irony, I can convey that to others without actually believing it myself. So you might think I have it together, and even have a high level of insight, but the truth is, the Committee has the upper hand.
The rightest thing I've done is raise two children who know their own minds and follow their own light. When I look at them now, both in their thirties (though one is perilously close to forty), I see two adults who are able to love their spouses without delusional fairy tales. They function in society, but are not bowed down trying to meet the demands and expectations of others. How in the world did that happen?
Even though I've had a streak of rebellion running through me all along, most of the time it expressed itself in self-destructive ways. That balance between doing what I was "supposed" to do and following my own inclinations was always treacherous. It still can bite me on the ass.
I came out of the closet, loud and proud, when I was 27, after one marriage and one baby. Scared myself silly in the process, though I don't remember encountering pushback from anybody I cared about. I just couldn't imagine being able to live my life the way I wanted to, so I scurried back in with all the shoes, hats, and dusty old coats, but left the door cracked just a titch.
Getting sober at 30 was something I did right. I had a lot of flesh-and-blood folks to counter the Committee and bolster me up. I think it's interesting that I never went back to my old ways after that. I'm sure it's because of all the outside support. But I did have to take another hostage and up the ante to two kids, witnesses to the highs and lows of dishonest living.
It took me 20 years to come out again, and do it right. But I didn't have the same level of help as with staying sober. I had convinced myself over the years that I was destined for a life of longing, without realizing that I was the one who created that story. I told myself I was supposed to be married for life, and didn't deserve to be happy since I had been so very, very naughty in the past.
It wasn't until I was in my fifties that I allowed for the possibility that love was something that included me --- I could not only experience it, but I deserved it. I always blew up relationships before that. POW! BAM! Then I met Jill, slowed down, didn't sabotage it, and found out that people weren't lying after all. There really is such a thing as being happy with someone else, and I could do it, too.
My birthday is coming up in a few days. I tend to get reflective in August, not only because I get to mark off another year, but it feels like the time when changes occur. I'm fortunate that the Committee is probably getting old and tired ---- sixty years of saying the same things over and over will do that. It doesn't seem to be as loud and relentless anymore, which is not to say they've folded up the tent and moved on. I'm just a little more likely to interrupt the harrangue before I fall into the pit of despair. And occasionally I can prevent it in the first place.
Are happiness and fulfillment a choice? Probably so, to some degree. I tell the women I mentor that the good news is that thoughts are your own, and that means you can change them. You might not be able to do anything about circumstances (I think of my friend Joanna, in jail) but you do have the power to change how you think about your situation. I say that so frequently because it's exactly what I need to hear. And every time it works for someone else, I know it can work for me.
The key to carrying out that level of self-immolation in public is a sense of humor. I know intellectually that it is all nonsense. With some acerbic wit and irony, I can convey that to others without actually believing it myself. So you might think I have it together, and even have a high level of insight, but the truth is, the Committee has the upper hand.
The rightest thing I've done is raise two children who know their own minds and follow their own light. When I look at them now, both in their thirties (though one is perilously close to forty), I see two adults who are able to love their spouses without delusional fairy tales. They function in society, but are not bowed down trying to meet the demands and expectations of others. How in the world did that happen?
Even though I've had a streak of rebellion running through me all along, most of the time it expressed itself in self-destructive ways. That balance between doing what I was "supposed" to do and following my own inclinations was always treacherous. It still can bite me on the ass.
I came out of the closet, loud and proud, when I was 27, after one marriage and one baby. Scared myself silly in the process, though I don't remember encountering pushback from anybody I cared about. I just couldn't imagine being able to live my life the way I wanted to, so I scurried back in with all the shoes, hats, and dusty old coats, but left the door cracked just a titch.
Getting sober at 30 was something I did right. I had a lot of flesh-and-blood folks to counter the Committee and bolster me up. I think it's interesting that I never went back to my old ways after that. I'm sure it's because of all the outside support. But I did have to take another hostage and up the ante to two kids, witnesses to the highs and lows of dishonest living.
It took me 20 years to come out again, and do it right. But I didn't have the same level of help as with staying sober. I had convinced myself over the years that I was destined for a life of longing, without realizing that I was the one who created that story. I told myself I was supposed to be married for life, and didn't deserve to be happy since I had been so very, very naughty in the past.
It wasn't until I was in my fifties that I allowed for the possibility that love was something that included me --- I could not only experience it, but I deserved it. I always blew up relationships before that. POW! BAM! Then I met Jill, slowed down, didn't sabotage it, and found out that people weren't lying after all. There really is such a thing as being happy with someone else, and I could do it, too.
My birthday is coming up in a few days. I tend to get reflective in August, not only because I get to mark off another year, but it feels like the time when changes occur. I'm fortunate that the Committee is probably getting old and tired ---- sixty years of saying the same things over and over will do that. It doesn't seem to be as loud and relentless anymore, which is not to say they've folded up the tent and moved on. I'm just a little more likely to interrupt the harrangue before I fall into the pit of despair. And occasionally I can prevent it in the first place.
Are happiness and fulfillment a choice? Probably so, to some degree. I tell the women I mentor that the good news is that thoughts are your own, and that means you can change them. You might not be able to do anything about circumstances (I think of my friend Joanna, in jail) but you do have the power to change how you think about your situation. I say that so frequently because it's exactly what I need to hear. And every time it works for someone else, I know it can work for me.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
A Mouse by any other name...
I used to think about the changes my grandparents had seen over their lifetimes. They were born in 1901 and 1903, always lived in the same town and lived into ripe old age (89 and 98) so they spanned the twentieth century.
I knew my great-grandparents also, who were born in the 1870s and 80s and were alive until I was an adult. There are some long livers in my maternal family ---- why some of them are THIS long! Never mind. Old joke.
But here's the thing. My own experience with being about a week shy of 63 years old ---- which would have been old age, statistically, when my grandparents were born ----- is that it's difficult to acknowledge the changes that have occurred since August of 1950. Of course, it took a few years for me to wake up to the world at large. I wasn't that precocious. But objectively, I know from looking at photographs and watching movies from that era, that the world looked different in 1950 than it does in 2013. Material culture has changed a lot. Cars, clothing, tools, farm equipment, electronics ---- just the stuff of everyday life is very different.
Expectations are different, too. The way that people interact has changed significantly. Measures of acceptable behavior and appearance ---- just think, T-shirts then were always white and were underwear. That alone is a revolution.
I've been considering going back to work, at least part time. I've done a lot of jobs in my life, but education is the consistent theme. I don't want to return to the madness of public school teaching, but maybe pre-school would work. Yesterday I was listening to an NPR program about "screen time" for kids, and how addictive it can be, and how it tends to crowd out other activities, including human interaction. I thought about recent conversations with current teachers in the system, and the amount of technology that is involved, both with the kids and for paperwork, and it made me realize that I've dinosaured out of that world.
When I went back into the classroom for the final stint in 2002, I was issued a laptop, I had four bulky computers for the students, and for the most part, it was all optional. I was scared of the laptop ---- I figured I would break it or lose it ---- so I left it in the case all year. There were "paperwork" tasks I had to do on the computer, everything from taking attendance to recording grades, but most of my recordkeeping was still confined to a loose leaf notebook liberally sprinkled with sticky notes. The children had about three places they could go on the computer, learning games, no internet, and were allotted 20 minute slots twice a week.
By the time I left teaching in 2011 the technology was an important part of student learning, all of my recordkeeping was electronic, and we were on the cusp of an explosion of even more involvement for both students and teachers. Would I even be able to keep up if I were still in the classroom? If I had to. Would it add to the already overburdening and stressful environment? Undoubtedly.
So what effect is all this having on child development? Do the brains of children who are given Mom's ipad to play with at 12 months get wired differently than mine was? The most oft-told story of my infancy was how I killed a mouse with a beer bottle in our apartment when I was 9 months old. No electronic killing on the screen for me --- I had the real thing!
The narrator on the NPR program lamented that children don't play outside like they once did. They don't engage in deep pretend games much anymore. In many homes, one screen or another (or many at once) are operating during all activities, including mealtimes, car rides and bedtimes. I can hear the sigh of relief from overstressed parents who love the DVD in the back seat instead of listening to "Mo - om, he touched me!" But I do wonder. If they don't fight in the back seat, when do they practice problem solving?
I do not want to sound curmudgeonly --- "Well, in MY day. . . " because I think that every generation is born into one world, develops in another, and grows old in another. Hasn't it always been so? And yet, it seems that change happens so quickly, too quickly I'm afraid, for me to keep up. Whether I want to or not, I find myself not just sidelined, but actually perplexed by things that must be quite ordinary for people a generation or more behind me. And the most perplexing thing of all is that inside I still feel so young, so with-it, so ME!
I knew my great-grandparents also, who were born in the 1870s and 80s and were alive until I was an adult. There are some long livers in my maternal family ---- why some of them are THIS long! Never mind. Old joke.
But here's the thing. My own experience with being about a week shy of 63 years old ---- which would have been old age, statistically, when my grandparents were born ----- is that it's difficult to acknowledge the changes that have occurred since August of 1950. Of course, it took a few years for me to wake up to the world at large. I wasn't that precocious. But objectively, I know from looking at photographs and watching movies from that era, that the world looked different in 1950 than it does in 2013. Material culture has changed a lot. Cars, clothing, tools, farm equipment, electronics ---- just the stuff of everyday life is very different.
Expectations are different, too. The way that people interact has changed significantly. Measures of acceptable behavior and appearance ---- just think, T-shirts then were always white and were underwear. That alone is a revolution.
I've been considering going back to work, at least part time. I've done a lot of jobs in my life, but education is the consistent theme. I don't want to return to the madness of public school teaching, but maybe pre-school would work. Yesterday I was listening to an NPR program about "screen time" for kids, and how addictive it can be, and how it tends to crowd out other activities, including human interaction. I thought about recent conversations with current teachers in the system, and the amount of technology that is involved, both with the kids and for paperwork, and it made me realize that I've dinosaured out of that world.
When I went back into the classroom for the final stint in 2002, I was issued a laptop, I had four bulky computers for the students, and for the most part, it was all optional. I was scared of the laptop ---- I figured I would break it or lose it ---- so I left it in the case all year. There were "paperwork" tasks I had to do on the computer, everything from taking attendance to recording grades, but most of my recordkeeping was still confined to a loose leaf notebook liberally sprinkled with sticky notes. The children had about three places they could go on the computer, learning games, no internet, and were allotted 20 minute slots twice a week.
By the time I left teaching in 2011 the technology was an important part of student learning, all of my recordkeeping was electronic, and we were on the cusp of an explosion of even more involvement for both students and teachers. Would I even be able to keep up if I were still in the classroom? If I had to. Would it add to the already overburdening and stressful environment? Undoubtedly.
So what effect is all this having on child development? Do the brains of children who are given Mom's ipad to play with at 12 months get wired differently than mine was? The most oft-told story of my infancy was how I killed a mouse with a beer bottle in our apartment when I was 9 months old. No electronic killing on the screen for me --- I had the real thing!
The narrator on the NPR program lamented that children don't play outside like they once did. They don't engage in deep pretend games much anymore. In many homes, one screen or another (or many at once) are operating during all activities, including mealtimes, car rides and bedtimes. I can hear the sigh of relief from overstressed parents who love the DVD in the back seat instead of listening to "Mo - om, he touched me!" But I do wonder. If they don't fight in the back seat, when do they practice problem solving?
I do not want to sound curmudgeonly --- "Well, in MY day. . . " because I think that every generation is born into one world, develops in another, and grows old in another. Hasn't it always been so? And yet, it seems that change happens so quickly, too quickly I'm afraid, for me to keep up. Whether I want to or not, I find myself not just sidelined, but actually perplexed by things that must be quite ordinary for people a generation or more behind me. And the most perplexing thing of all is that inside I still feel so young, so with-it, so ME!
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Happy New Year!!
I've got the itch. It happens every year about this time. I've lived on an academic calendar for most of my life, so I'm sure it's inevitable. When the mornings start to be cool and store aisles bloom with "Back to School", I've got to have it ----- School Supplies!
A brand new box of 64 crayons, soldier straight, points perfect, an array of alluring colors.
Elmers Glue with a clean, smooth twisting orange cap, no drips down the side, just a full, heavy bottle of snow white goo.
Yellow, #2 pencils with flexible erasers that will rub out mistakes without leaving a mark.
Colored pencils, sharpened to perfection, ready to draw pictures, maps, graphs and charts.
A brand new ruler, no nicks to leave a dent in the line, no old ink marks that measure out forgotten projects.
Notebook paper, yes, the old-fashioned, three hole punch paper ready to find its place in a clean three ring binder, preferably with pockets front and back.
Those are the essentials. Add in some multi-colored pens and highlighters, a protractor, markers and sharpies in varying colors, a jar of rubber cement with the little brush and strong smell, sharp pointed scissors, and a rainbow of paperclips, and life is good.
Setting up the classroom was one of my favorite parts of teaching. All summer long, I made random notes in a journal as ideas occurred to me --- teaching units, new book titles, art projects. I haunted the teacher store for ideas and some purchases, hit the yard sales for containers and interesting miniatures. I begged, borrowed and bartered for materials from friends and colleagues, storing them all away on shelves and in cupboards, certain that I would find just the right reason to use them.
This time of year breathes anticipation. What will the new year bring? Much more than January 1, the start of a new school year brings excitement and expectation, anxiety and new confidence. This year will be different ----- new ----- the best one yet!
I'm not returning to school this fall, though I confess that I've perused the job openings more than once. I don't really want to go back to the reality of teaching, not as I experienced it before and not as I hear it is today. I like what I do now, taking care of the family and the house, writing, reading, thinking, growing. These are all the things that were compromised when I was deep in the whirlwind of work. There was no time for anything I wanted to do ---- and not enough time for the things I had to do.
Perhaps that's why this is the best time --- the breath before diving in. Even as a kid, starting a new grade, I appreciated this pause when everything seemed possible and nothing was certain. New clothes, new pencils, and the promise that by the end of the year I would be a new me, in many crucial ways. That is what the end of summer still portends for me.
All that and an August birthday, too. Good choice, Mom.
A brand new box of 64 crayons, soldier straight, points perfect, an array of alluring colors.
Elmers Glue with a clean, smooth twisting orange cap, no drips down the side, just a full, heavy bottle of snow white goo.
Yellow, #2 pencils with flexible erasers that will rub out mistakes without leaving a mark.
Colored pencils, sharpened to perfection, ready to draw pictures, maps, graphs and charts.
A brand new ruler, no nicks to leave a dent in the line, no old ink marks that measure out forgotten projects.
Notebook paper, yes, the old-fashioned, three hole punch paper ready to find its place in a clean three ring binder, preferably with pockets front and back.
Those are the essentials. Add in some multi-colored pens and highlighters, a protractor, markers and sharpies in varying colors, a jar of rubber cement with the little brush and strong smell, sharp pointed scissors, and a rainbow of paperclips, and life is good.
Setting up the classroom was one of my favorite parts of teaching. All summer long, I made random notes in a journal as ideas occurred to me --- teaching units, new book titles, art projects. I haunted the teacher store for ideas and some purchases, hit the yard sales for containers and interesting miniatures. I begged, borrowed and bartered for materials from friends and colleagues, storing them all away on shelves and in cupboards, certain that I would find just the right reason to use them.
This time of year breathes anticipation. What will the new year bring? Much more than January 1, the start of a new school year brings excitement and expectation, anxiety and new confidence. This year will be different ----- new ----- the best one yet!
I'm not returning to school this fall, though I confess that I've perused the job openings more than once. I don't really want to go back to the reality of teaching, not as I experienced it before and not as I hear it is today. I like what I do now, taking care of the family and the house, writing, reading, thinking, growing. These are all the things that were compromised when I was deep in the whirlwind of work. There was no time for anything I wanted to do ---- and not enough time for the things I had to do.
Perhaps that's why this is the best time --- the breath before diving in. Even as a kid, starting a new grade, I appreciated this pause when everything seemed possible and nothing was certain. New clothes, new pencils, and the promise that by the end of the year I would be a new me, in many crucial ways. That is what the end of summer still portends for me.
All that and an August birthday, too. Good choice, Mom.
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