mulberryshoots

As some of you readers know, I’m fond of maidenhair fern plants and have had them around for decades, their well-being reflecting my own, it seems. Like me, they are high maintenance, requiring constant tending (watering, misting, etc.) On the other hand, hopefully also like me, they are worth it!

The last days of summer hadn’t been that great for me and the maidenhair fern reflected that reality–it was crammed into a corner, brown bits and hazy yellowing parts all over it. I even thought a couple of times about getting rid of it, not having to tend it, nor having this kind of barometer of myself around anymore. But today, on a cool and sunny Fall day, with the full moon ready to shine forth tonight, I moved the bedraggled thing and put it on a marble pedestal stand in the middle of the room. I brought along a brown paper bag, a pair of scissors and sat in a chair cutting out all the frayed parts.

I was surprised to see that it wasn’t as bad as I thought, once I removed all the dried up parts and the yellowed leaves, I gently lifted up the fronds, untangling them as I went along until none were weighted down by any others that might have been overlapping them. This action seemed to give the plant a huge sigh of relief, now free to stretch its limbs with a huge yawn. I laughed out loud at this image as I moved the Meyer lemon tree into the window where the fern had been. The orchid plants were also trimmed and cleaned up on the shelf in back of the fern. I shifted the stand a little to the left after opening up the windows to the fresh air. Everyone felt better, I thought–or everything, that is.

It always amuses me when these simple acts seem to mirror my self. There’s more space in my head as well as in our schedule, now that the Fall season has begun. Most of all, I think it’s being aware of using that space when I think about things I think I have to do, but don’t really need to. Nor, to have things a certain way, just because. More breathing room allows one to take deeper breaths. More oxygen.

That’s a good thing for plants, and for women too!

I was thinking about this old adage the other day. Because of all the cleaning out and simplifying that has gone on this summer and into the fall, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to come across how much I have wasted because of how much I have wanted in the past. I guess it happens to all of us at one time or another. I have looked at things in my hand and wondered what could have possessed me to want to buy it in the first place!

Fortunately, I have outlets for these objects: consignment shop, auction gallery, goodwill, trash pick-up. It’s getting there. At the same time, I’ve learned how to pay more attention to cooking less because we are eating less. And to using things up in the fridge before buying more. These sound like simple rules of frugality. But I haven’t been as careful as I am now. And it’s not because I have to be, either. It’s because it feels good to do it. For George and me to share an order of a bowl of homemade clam chowder from our local restaurant up here rather than buying two orders. We don’t really need more than that, especially when we’re sharing a sandwich to go with it.

So, I’m on a binge to waste not, and more importantly, to want not. What has happened is that I am savoring more than ever what we already have. And for that, I am thankful.

I had to chuckle over the weekend when I showed someone a project I was doing, one I was pretty proud of. From her queries, it became clear to me that what I had thought was what I wanted to do, clearly didn’t turn out that way when a third person had a look at it! I was very grumpy about it, driving home. Later, I started switching things around.

Voila, the project came alive to what my original heart’s desire had been. I marvel at how we obfuscate what we are doing merely by the act of trying to please others. The first version was set up to appeal to a bunch of potential readers. I find that’s the biggest trap for me as a writer. To have an imaginary handful of readers in my mind’s eye, and to write something that I would want to read if I were in their place.

That’s the joke on me, though. When I am being myself, I am not able to be in their place because they’re them and I’m me. Duh!

So, the only person I can be sure to please when I write or create things is. . . myself. I suspect there might also be something Asian about this kind of deferral from myself. That is, trying to make sure that everyone else is pleased before I figure out what it is that would please me. Or, maybe it’s just being female. Or being a mother. GAG–is there no way out of this trap?

I’m pretty clear about what I want most of the time. At least I used to think so. Now, I’m not so sure but I’m not that upset about it either. This was a very good lesson. Please myself first with what I create. And don’t worry so much about others.

Finis.

P.S. I’m going to join Nanowrimo too–national novel writing month–because I think it will be a lot of fun and also funny to write 50,000 words in the month of November along with a bunch of strangers who keep track of one another’s progress online. Why take it so seriously? Just learn something and keep on doing things, willya?

You know how sometimes you’re just going along, listening to what you think others are telling you, relating in a way that’s just like always? But, something doesn’t sound right. Or, it echoes something you thought was taken care of. Or a situation within the family dynamics has shifted quietly but rather dramatically. Like when you’re playing the card game called Hearts and you pass three cards to the right. And your new hand reveals that you aren’t in a position to “shoot the moon” because the Queen of Spades is in someone else’s hand.

Yep, that’s the way it feels today. Something has shifted but it isn’t me, it’s been there all the time: it’s just that I didn’t notice it as much before. But, that’s the way life is sometimes. I look at someone like Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper’s mother–who appears in his new daytime show with the most glorious haircut, serene and collected. After all the strife and tragedy in her life, it hasn’t embittered her. In fact, she’s open to the next good thing around the corner, and she’s eighty-seven years old. How remarkable!

Now, SHE is a role model to look up to. A little correction like the one I am describing wouldn’t phase her a bit. Neither should it bother me for long. Once I get used to it.

I had a good day yesterday after a long string of bad ones. I sometimes get an idea in my head that I’m intensely engaged in but the next steps seem out of reach. I try different things to reach that end. I explore taking lessons, for example. It doesn’t feel right, or it’s too costly, or I can’t justify it to myself. There are lots of reasons why it’s not working. This kind of process can go on for weeks, sometimes months. I have learned that these periods of stagnation serve a purpose and that they too shall pass someday. Even knowing that times change, though, doesn’t help when you’re enmired in this kind of trough.

Yesterday, things shifted. Solely by listening to my intuition, answers emerged. Not just on one front or idea but on multiple fronts on the same day. I was in a flower shop and felt a strong urge to walk into a secondhand book shop down the street in a town far from where I live. I had a feeling that there was something waiting for me there. It was still raining after a sudden cloudburst had dumped torrential water from the sky. The air conditioning in the bookshop was still turned up and it felt chilly on my damp clothes. I didn’t know what it was that I was looking for (which is the case most of the time) and I picked up one book after another, paging through them.

Then, I knew I had found it. A paperback collection of short stories written by a minimalist writer. FINALLY! someone who wrote in a way that I had been searching for without knowing it. I had plowed through a list of writers whose work I was supposed to revere. But I didn’t get what they were trying to do; and I was puzzled by what all the fuss has been about. I had begun thinking I was so out of it in my understanding and taste that I’d never be a good writer. Or even a good reader. So many trips to the library with hopeful books only to be put off and returned unread. I paid for the book and slipped it into my bag.

The other thing that came together yesterday was somewhat different. I like figuring out how to reposition things that I already own so that they are not wasted. I think they call this “repurposing.” Weeks ago, I had seen something that looked beautiful on my hand but was so outrageously expensive that I dismissed it from the front of my mind. Yesterday, it resurfaced when an idea I had in the morning mushroomed during my drive into town. I had proposed the first idea to an artisan whose shop is nearby. We were on bartering terms now, turkey pie and farmstand corn on the cob for supper in exchange for some small repairs that he would not let me pay for the last couple of times. When I visited him the second time, his quick grasp of what I envisioned (and coveted) out of pieces that were languishing in my drawer felt like a trifecta of satisfaction: a) waste not; b)fulfill a dream; c)manifested by a magician/helper who is also a friend. It’s as if pieces of wishes and thoughts floating in the air suddenly clicked together once their magnetic fields got close enough to each other. This has happened before: alchemy that turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

I feel lucky today. More importantly, I have been reminded by the Universe that the magic is still working. I’m so grateful knowing I don’t have to do everything myself. And that help is usually on the way.

I’ve had an interesting recognition today. As I reflect and write about women my generation being hidden from themselves due to the culture we grew up in (see my other blog, www.uncommonhours.org); or due to the amount of time we spend raising a family, it hasn’t occurred to me as intensely as today that one of the ways that children, or progeny, grow up and become individuals is to leave home. What I mean by that is that they are so attached to you and your protection that one of the only ways they can grow up is to rebel completely and denounce your parenting forever. Sometimes “home” means you as a mother, once and for all. This primordial separation occurs sometimes benignly but often with harsh finality as well. That’s how much you mean to them, the good, the bad and the ugly, as they say.

This is a story that has been around forever. Parents who love too much, over-protecting and wanting their kids to be free of hurt and to help them whenever it’s needed. Kids who depend on that help, support and nurturing and resent it at the same time, knowingly or unknowingly. People sometimes think the biggest hurdle in life is to get your kids into college and out of college, educated and ready for life. Anyone who has been through it knows that this idea is sadly mistaken: that the hardest years of all are those from the mid-twenties to, let’s say, forty-five or fifty. THAT’s when we look for our place in life; looking for work that is meaningful and remunerative; finding the right partner, perhaps more than one or two before the right one comes along, or not at all; raising children which becomes all-consuming while trying to do the other things already listed. It’s the hardest part, at least it was for me, because you think you know what you need to know. But that comes later. In fact, it comes so much later that it’s laughable, once you get there, around the age of fifty. That’s when you really know how little you know, relax and begin to enjoy life a little bit. That’s how long it takes for some of us.

Anyhow, the internecine struggle to become yourself and to behave in a way that reflects that truly takes a long time. Lots of railing and fretting and trying new things on, like new looks in the way you wear jewelry or dress. How you decide you really want to eat: part-vegan mostly, for example or how your hair looks. You do things to be like your mother and you do things not to be at all like your mother. It comes and goes in waves. People say that sometimes you are not free to live your own life until your mother, or your parents have died. I hope it doesn’t take my daughters that long because I’m in my own way living more like myself than ever before. And it’s awhile since I was fifty.

Realizing that this large cycle is the stuff of human nature, life immemorial, and that fate didn’t pick on us to perpetrate these kinds of life cycles helps when we feel we, as individuals, have failed in some gross way. If we have been sincere and tried to do the right thing most of the time, it’s time to sit back and watch the panorama of life and family unfold. It’s kind of a relief in a way not to be at the heart of things anymore.

There seem to be two kinds of approaches to life that I’ve observed in people around me: those who take responsibility for their actions and those who can’t. I’m part of the first group in that I tend to feel over-responsible for lots of things, a tendency to blame myself first. I tend to worry about the effects of my behavior or my thoughts as I go along. Sometimes to my own detriment. Sometimes to others too, I think.

On the other hand, there are some who see themselves as “victims” first and ask questions later. That is, they never do anything wrong. Or at least, not on purpose, they tell themselves, as a way to excuse bad things that happen around them. Along with feeling like a victim, nothing is ever their fault. There’s always someone else to blame. Or something that couldn’t be helped. Or worse yet, there’s nothing wrong to do anything about. For example, when things are bad and you want to talk about them, their attitude is, “yes, but think of all the people who are worse off than we are: end of a non-discussion.” I don’t like to label things when I’m not schooled in the jargon, but maybe this is a kind of avoidance. Insecurity even deeper than my own.

The I-Ching notes that there’s nothing that stirs people’s ire more deeply than feeling they have done something wrong. Their enmity is re-directed back to the object they have wounded, compounding situations into a hardened mess no one can go near, much less try to repair. The more they justify themselves in order to feel better, the more slippery the slope becomes.

These days, it feels a lot like we are all looking over the edge into a bottomless chasm. We could avoid it before but the negativity and apprehension in the ether in which we breathe is so pervasive these days that I wake up feeling ominously like the other shoe is going to drop any minute now. Maybe it’s because tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the attack on 9/11.

That being said, I guess it’s also possible to pick ourselves up and look at the upside of things. We are really not going to hell in a handbasket. At least, not today. We are able to put food on the table. Our family is healthy for the most part. We have work to do. We haven’t lost our marbles either. The sun comes out after lots of rain. The year and the calendar moves forward, day by day. Just as it always has. We are little ants on our own little anthill. We can say “yes” to living our fullest, including taking ownership over the good and bad in our lives. Or we can hide in our anthill and say “no” to anything we feel uncomfortable with. I don’t know if there’s an equilibrium between too much yes or too much no. But, at least, it’s something worth thinking about.

September is a good time for a fresh start. For many of us, the beginning of the school every year and the cooler, dry air signals a time that we remember well with excitement, optimism, fresh notebooks and pens. What we learned when we were young has gotten us this far. Now, I’m thinking it might be time to go deeper, to listen and learn from others and to find the kind of learning that works for me personally.

Because we all learn differently, it can take quite awhile to find the right fit. I’ve signed up for so many classes (tai-chi, ink-painting) that I tire of after a few classes and the resistance to get into the car to go somewhere is stronger than my desire to get my money’s worth. Voila! after exploring a few more “outside” classes that were vaguely attractive today, I’ve come upon something that works with my resistance-style: online classes with podcasts, class chat follow-up and short assignments with seasoned writers. I can attend class in the comfort of my own chair, have water or tea by my side; go to the bathroom if I need to. Schedule where I want to be to attend the class–here or at our other place on the North Shore. After listening to a sample podcast that lasted an hour and a half, I was very impressed by the quality of the observations and the dialogue. Very smart of these folks to provide such a long sampling for prospective listeners so that we can decide whether to sign-up or not.

I’m stubborn about learning. Or to put it another way, I’m picky about the way that I learn. I don’t like to just be “told” things. Like most people, I think I like to be “shown” so that I can integrate it in my own way. I also squirm when teachers dumb down a topic which to me, represents a lack of respect for the topic as well as for the students. Maybe they think it’s a way to make people feel comfortable–not to take things so seriously. But in this day and age with money being so spare, why do anything at all if you don’t take it seriously?

So my new direction is to go deeper, to take more time to understand and to increase understanding so that what has already been meaningful to me, will now take on greater meaning. I think it takes a certain degree of giving-up to sign-up for this. Because one admits one’s limitations. And that’s probably a good thing too.