when October goes

So, I’m sitting here looking out the window at another cloudy Friday with rain forecast for Saturday. The breeze picks up and another shower of leaves falls. The poplar tree in my neighbor’s back yard is a little more golden today than it was yesterday.

Another October.

And when October goes
The snow begins to fly
Above the smokey roofs
I watch the planes go by

The children running home
Beneath a twilight sky
Oh, for the fun of them
When I was one of them

And when October goes
The same old dream appears
And you are in my arms
To share the happy years

I turn my head away
To hide the helpless tears
Oh how I hate to see October go

I should be over it now I know
It doesn’t matter much
How old I grow
I hate to see October go

For the unenlightened, that’s a Barry Manilow song. Barry’s corny, true, but that song…not so much. I rediscovered it after Daddy died. November, 2004.

The past three weeks have been a reminder of just how fragile life is. I finally got around to watching Defiance. What a great movie. After watching it I did a little research into Jewish tradition, which I really should know more about. I was interested in the blessings: “Blessed art Thou oh God, King of the Universe, who…” When we were watching the movie, hubby asked me why they break the wine glass at the end of the wedding ceremony, and I didn’t know. So when I was reading about the blessings, there was the answer.

To remind the couple that life is fragile.

Two weeks ago there was a shooting just down the road from our house. Two police officers were shot as they tried to apprehend a suspect who was threatening to kill his estranged wife, who was at work at the time. She was the manager of a local fast food restaurant. The suspect was killed. One of the officers also died a week later from his injuries. The community was devastated by the incident.

Life is fragile.

Last week we learned of the sudden death of a friend back home in Virginia. We’d known him for thirty years. He died of a massive heart attack. He was 58 years old.

Life is fragile.

Next week it will be November. It will have been five years since my dad died. Five years since my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, and my father all died, one right after another.

Life is fragile.

In Cielo, little Brenda had heart surgery last week. She is doing well. I don’t know how things are with Rosa, but hope to hear soon. I’m not going to be able to see her in January. I don’t like it, but it’s how things are.

Another breeze. Another shower of leaves.

Another October goes.

 

Words Required

If you were ever a programmer or analyst on a Unisys large mainframe (yep, I’m that old), then you know what this phrase means:

Words Required

In Unisys world a “word” refers to a 6-byte unit of storage; in IBM world it’s 8 bytes, but in my years of working in IBM world I never had much to do with “words”. Perhaps because Unisys operating systems are more word-focused. Or not.

Anyway, whenever a Unisys mainframe tells you that it requires words, it’s really saying, “I’m trying to do too much at one time and I don’t have enough brain capacity to do any of it.” Some program or other would stop, go into the wait queue and display the dreaded “words required”. An operator would get on the phone and start calling programmers and telling them to delete whatever big files they could find that were expendable. A frenzy of scanning, examining results and deleting would then ensue and, when enough space was recovered, the program would take a deep breath and start running again. Sometimes, even after we deleted files, there still wasn’t enough available space, so the operator would start the Unisys equivalent of a defrag: a squash.

Indeed, a Unisys A-series computer could be very chatty. For instance, if program A initiates program B, and program B failed for whatever reason, program A would go into mourning: “Death in Family”, or “child killed” or something along those lines. I forget. The folks who wrote operating systems for these computers had a sense of humor; it was warped at times, but it was also funny to see a computer committing infanticide or making funeral arrangements.

For the past 4 months I’ve been studying chemistry,  which means I’ve been very mathematically focused. Calculations? No problem. Lab reports? Words required, not so easy. The labs were easy, it’s just the writing that became difficult. I used to be very adept at operating with both sides of my brain all at once, switching from logical to creative on the fly and keeping up.  Not so much anymore.

(I had to go verify this before I posted it, so I took a “what side of the brain are you” quiz. Here’s the result:

You are 50% right-brained and 50% left-brained.
The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.
Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.
If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.
Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.

The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.
Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.
If you’re right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.
Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Yep, that’s me.)

What was I saying? Oh yeah, chemistry and stuff.

I guess it’s a sign of aging, but for the duration of my class I’ve been totally handicapped at writing. Or maybe it’s more like being single-threaded. Whatever.

Back to words. Mainframes got into “words required” trouble when they were trying to do too much stuff with not enough resources.

Hello.

In the past 4 months we have:

• moved our son back home and gotten him enrolled in community college.
• moved from one house to another
• tried to sort through two houses containing 20+ years of stuff
• met and begun relationships with a new step-family.

I know I’ve forgotten something, besides the chemistry class. I’ve also had a couple of new health-related thingies, diverticulitis and 2 weeks of back pain that landed me in an emergency room, the likely culprit being a kidney stone.

Trying to do too much stuff with not enough resources.

With the mainframe there was a support system in place to help: the programmers and the operators. With me, not so much. It’s not that there’s no help out there, it’s more like I hate to ask for it because it implies (to me, anyway) that I am incapable, inadequate, not good enough, whatever. The same old tape starts playing in my head.

So what? Beats me.

Words Required.

 

can I have this dance

I got dance lessons for Christmas.

Last night we had our first one. Fun stuff.

A month from now we will be celebrating 25 years of marriage. Add the 6 years of dating we had before that, plus the year of being “just good friends” before that, and it adds up to, well, almost forever. The dance instructor wanted to know why we wanted to learn to dance. I said, “So if we go to New York to a fancy restaurant that has dancing, they won’t know we’re North Carolina hicks.”

I’m thinking they could probably tell that anyway, not that it matters all that much.

Every little girl, at some point or another, wants to be the beautiful princess, Cinderella at the ball. If you know your Rodgers and Hammerstein, you know that the title of this blog came from Cinderella. Whatever.

If I do the math, it works out that I’ve been with Hubby for 66.6% of my life. I still don’t know everything about him and never will. That’s part of the fun, finding out new things every day. Like, never in a million years did I expect to get dance lessons for Christmas.

We’ve been reconnecting with high school friends on Facebook recently. With a couple of exceptions, most of our friends married, then divorced. I think one of the reasons why marriages fail is because people go into it thinking it’s going to be Cinderella at the ball. But eventually the clock strikes midnight, the dress turns back into rags, the horses to mice and the carriage…a punkin. (That’s Suthrun’ for “pumpkin”.)

The real magic to the Cinderella story isn’t apparent. If I could rewrite the story, I’d write it such that, when the prince places the slipper on her foot, she does become beautiful. In his eyes, definitely. But to everyone else, maybe not.

Because the magic happens between just the two of them. No matter what, they would always see each other as they are in that moment.

Even 32 years later, when the hair’s turning gray, or turning loose. When the laugh lines start getting deeper. When there’s month left at the end of the money, and the cat barfs in the middle of the bed, and the house is swarming with teenagers that aren’t ours, like right now. It is Saturday, after all.

When I look in the mirror and wonder, how could anyone love this person?

And Hubby says, “Can I have this dance?”

Yes.

(About that 66.6%: it’s really 66.6 repeating to infinity. I like that.)

 

More than a number

http://www.legacy.com/roanoke/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=124289351

http://www.legacy.com/washingtonpost/DeathNotices.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=124286857

See those 2 web addresses up there? If you look at them closely, you’ll notice that they are from two different newspapers: The Washington Post and the Roanoke (VA) Times.

Look closer and you’ll see this:

Lifestory&PersonID=124289351 / Lifestory&PersonID= 124286857

I remember enough from my programming days to recognize that PersonID is a key to a record in some database somewhere. In this case, it’s a database of death notices, and those both reference death notices for Eric. Two different PersonID numbers….suggests redundancy, duplicate data stored in multiple data sets, maybe?

But look even closer. See anything else??

Me neither.

Where are the friends and family who are hurting now because he’s no longer with them? Where is the list of accomplishments he gathered in his short time here? What were the things he loved to do, where did he go when he needed to get away somewhere and just, BE? What were his favorite foods? Was he a cat person, a dog person, or maybe a horse person? Who was this person? Who IS this person?

Everyone we come into contact with, every day, is so much more than a Lifestory&PersonID.

I’m going to try harder to remember that. To find out these things about the people I love, the people I’ve known for my whole life, and the people I’m just now getting to now. And I hope they would do the same for me.

Because we are all more than a number, more than a PersonID.

And when I leave this earth, I would like to know that my life made a difference. That people will remember me for who I was, what I did, and not just that I was a PersonID.

If you had to sum up your entire life into one sentence, what would it be?

 

remember

As Garrison Kieler would say, “It’s been a tough week in Lake Woebegon.” Everything about this week has been difficult. Not all bad, just difficult.

The election: Will the next president actually bring about wealth-redistribution? I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have any! Maybe I’ll get some. My nephew found this somewhere on YouTube and posted it on Facebook:

The Redistribution of Wealth Isn’t Appreciated For What It Is Until It’s Practiced!

“Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read “Vote Obama, I need the money.” I laughed.

Once in the restaurant my server had on a “Obama 08″ tie, again, I laughed–just imagine the coincidence…

….When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need–the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful….

…At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application…..”

As Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I’m gonna say about that.”

Facebook: Dang, but I’m becoming an addict. I’m keeping up w/ family, the kids I hang out with at church, friends, including Alecto and a friend I made back in ‘77 at the Virginia Governor’s School at Mary Washington College. It was amazing how much we remembered about our month-long stay in Fredericksburg, and how similar we are in interests, philosophy, etc after all these years.

I’m also learning new names and new faces that belong to my new soon-to-be step-siblings, and their children, and their children’s children. Lots of new names to remember.

The movers are coming Saturday to pick up the furniture from mom’s that’s going to her new digs. I remember when I met movers who brought furniture from mom and dad’s house to here. Seems like only yesterday.

It’s officially November 7. My dad died on November 7, 2004, at around daybreak. His stroke occurred on November 3, Wednesday after Election day. I remember so many tiny details about that week, and at the same time there are hours that have totally escaped the confines of my mind. Probably a good thing.

The past month has been one of the worst fibro flares I’ve had in ages. And then there are the allergies. I need to find some local honey. It’s supposed to help with allergies. Anyway, we have funky weather here in North Carolina. it’s supposed to be 76 degrees tomorrow, 46 degrees on Saturday. I don’t do drastic weather changes.

So, here I am at 12:56 am on Friday, November 7, 2008, wondering if I’ll get any sleep tonight or if the memories are gonna keep rattling around in my head, making noises and begging for attention, thus keeping me awake.

On a lighter note, the tale of the pink hippopotamus is about to enter a new phase as she gets acquainted with the other hippopotamusses and they all gather to cross the grassland in search of a new home. Pinkie has lots of hippo-siblings to meet, as I operate a stuffed hippo refuge wherever I go.

Sometimes I think hubby wishes I would forget about the hippo comment. I’ve been love-struck for hippos since way back when he teased me by making reference to the similarities between a hippo’s backside and, well, you get the idea. That one little comment was enough to launch me on a career of searching and collecting all things hippopotami.

And ya know, the holidays are fast approaching so of course it’s time for me to start singing my favorite holiday ditty:

I wanna hippopotamus for Christmas, only a hippopotamus will do,

Don’t wanna doll, no dinky tinker-toys, I wanna hippopotamus to play with and enjoy….

 

Feel free to sing along if you know the words.

Of course, I remember every one of them.

 

’til death did they part

Way back in the 80’s when I first moved here, before Borders or Barnes and Noble ever sprang from the fertile ground surrounding the mall, there was a bookstore, Hinkle’s. It was a family business with a store downtown and another one at a strip mall just west of downtown. They sold books, of course, and office supplies, and gifts, cards, stationary etc. They did custom printing. When I was getting used to living and working here in the ‘city’, I used to walk to the bookstore during my lunch hour and browse. Over the years as the ‘burbs took over and businesses started leaving downtown, the downtown Hinkle’s closed. Not too many years later the strip mall store closed as well.

A Borders opened in the strip mall. The building downtown has been torn down and replaced with a shiny new office building, now in search of tenants. I sort of forgot about Hinkle’s until I was looking for a graduation gift for someone, I don’t even remember who, and I went to the strip mall with the intention of going to Hinkle’s, only to find that the store was gone. A couple of years ago a grandson in the family died tragically. He was friends with some of our students at church, and they took his death hard.

More time passed, until a couple of weeks ago when……

My neighbor went on a trip and I picked up her mail and newspapers while she was away. I was scanning the paper one morning and noticed an obituary for an elderly lady named Hinkle. She was in her 80’s and had lived a very full life. She was described as “not having a mean bone in her body, but she did have a disdain for crumbs.” All in all, a very sweet tribute to a life well-lived.

Then I noticed another obituary, for an elderly gentleman named Hinkle, printed immediately after hers. So I read it and found this:

On Aug. 8, 1941, he married Mildred, and never spent another day without her, maintaining his unwavering devotion to Mildred for 67 years; Mildred also passed on Sept. 16, giving new meaning to “‘ till death do us part.”

So I went back and read the first obituary more closely. Yes, it was Mildred. The obit said that she had been “persistently courted by a young office supplies salesman”. Then, this:

On August 8, 1941, Mildred married Pete, and the two spent every day for the next 67 years together as devoted husband and wife. Pete also passed on Sept. 16, giving new meaning to “‘ till death do us part.”

She had passed away early in the morning at a retirement community. He died later that day, at Hospice.

And I cried for these people I didn’t even know. Not tears of sadness, but what? Their story touched my heart in a deeply introspective way that I was not prepared for. I was crying out of respect for a love story I didn’t really know. There was sadness in that my parents had to be separated by death way too early, and honor in knowing that my parents had also lived a love story, ending in “til death did they part.”

This is what marriage is supposed to be. I pray that hubby and I will be so fortunate.

 

I used to be a geek, but I got better

Technology is a wonderful, and scary thing. I love this quote by Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In my programming days, one of the systems I cut my teeth on was named MAGIC. I don’t remember what the acronym stood for anymore, but the system was an allocation calculation system for 401k plans. The company I worked for hated it, but it made money. Go figure.

I came late into the iPod revolution. My pod is old and I bought it used. Sort of proud of myself for that, but now that I have one I can definitely understand the little gadget’s charm. Actually, I think the darned thing is psychic. Really. Every time I put it on ’shuffle songs’ it instinctively knows EXACTLY what to play, based on what time of day it is, what mood I’m in, what the weather is outside, who’s in the car or wherever. I’m serious! I couldn’t get to sleep one night so I slapped on the headphones and turned on the pod. And it played all the quiet, classical stuff, and the ballads, and Secret Garden, all randomly…oh, and Music of the Night.

And today, I had a doctor’s appointment this morning and it was raining buckets, wind howling. I was in a melancholy sort of mood. Plugged in the pod. It plays Kathy Mattea, Knee Deep in a River Dying of Thirst. I thought, that’s weird, the pod’s doing it again. Wish it would play Seeds, also Kathy Mattea. So it did. Then it played Fade Away by Day of Fire, which perfectly matched my mood (I’m surprised it didn’t play their Rain Song, which is awesome.) It tried to cheer me up with some acoustic Decemberadio, the up-and-coming Christian rock band that my cousin Brian plays lead guitar in. Then another Decemberadio song, Are You Alright My Friend. Isn’t that sweet? The pod cares. Back to Kathy Mattea, I Am Ready for the Storm, as the storm drops more buckets of rain on me. (If I was still a techno geek I’d figure out how to make the song titles into links to somewhere so you could hear them. Oh well.)

I’m seriously thinking about how the people at Apple have programmed this thing. Yes, it has a calendar so it knows what time of day it is. It could have a database of basic day/night words. It could check the time, check it’s little database, check the song titles loaded into it, match ‘em up, pick ‘em out and play ‘em. I’ve programmed harder stuff trying to read driver’s accident records, motor vehicle records and match up accident information with the appropriate drivers on insurance policies based on named insured, other insureds, driver’s name on the accident report, which may or may not be a driver on the actual policy…forget it, it’s complicated.

But I haven’t met a computer yet that could read my emotions, until this stupid, old iPod. It’s freaking me out.

Then I get to the doctor’s office and guess what? He has a new computer system. He comes in carrying his little wireless laptop, updates my insurance and pharmacy information, my drug allergies, yak yak. We discuss what nasty things fibromyalgia is doing to me right now, and we discuss the possible reasons why it might be doing those things. Doc pulls up my medical record, inputs some stuff, hits the update button, then says “Oh my God, I updated the wrong patient. What do I do? We only had 4 hours of training on this system.”

I’m glad to see not much has changed in the industry since I left it 4 years ago.

I go into programmer mode. Is there an option to delete the transaction just completed anywhere on the screen? Nope. He tries several different things. Nothing works, so he decides to finish with me. Then he’ll figure out how to correct the other patient’s record. He suggests we change a prescription. We discuss options and decide on a course of action. He taps the screen a few times and says “Done! Just stop by the pharmacy on your way home and pick it up.”

Like I said, technology is a wonderful, and scary, thing.

He decides to check my Vitamin D level, so I trot to the lab, back to check out and make a follow-up appointment and pay my co-pay. As I’m leaving he says, “Hey, I figured out how to fix that screw up I made. I had to go to a completely different part of the system.” To which I said, “What did you expect? You wanted to fix it at the same place where you messed it up? How silly of you!”

I used to get in trouble at work because of comments like that. “You mean, you wanted something to be in a logical place? You wanted it make SENSE?”

I’m getting sort of tense. I think I’ll go get the pod, put it on shuffle, and see what it plays.

 

the absence of words

Everyone I’ve talked to recently who has been to the Grand Canyon says the same thing: “I can’t find the words to describe it.” Well, neither can I, so for now I’m not going to try. With the exception of business travel to Philadelphia, Charlotte and New York, my travel experience is limited to mission trips to the Dominican Republic and to the Gulf coast following hurricane Katrina. Vacation has always meant “beach” or “mountains”, both of which are abundant here in North Carolina. The first time I went to Santo Domingo I knew, immediately, that I would be coming back. I’d like to say that I know I’ll be going back to Arizona. I can say that my brain is already busy thinking about different ways to accomplish a return trip.

But, my brain is busier thinking about something else. Before we left I was journaling one morning and I noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to put words together. I think it started in earnest during the spring when I was involved in the Walking in this World class. Call it whatever: writer’s block, pressure, performance anxiety…or probably something more like just plain old apathy. Doesn’t matter; the end result is that I can’t find words.

I lied just now. I can find them just fine. What I can’t do is express them. A very strange thing happened when I was a working girl in the early 90’s. March was the traditional month for performance reviews and merit increases based on job performance for the previous year. I happened to go out on maternity leave in early January one year and returned in early March, just in time for my performance review for the previous year, which had been a doozy. We were redesigning an entire system and during that previous year I had learned new system, new programming languages, new techniques, you name it. One of those new languages was learned on the fly when the author of a big chunck of code went out on, you guessed it, maternity leave, earlier than anticipated. We were in system test. I walked into work on a Monday morning to find a hard copy of her program (all 200,000 lines of it) and a pile of system test error reports, and a note that said something like “Have fun!” And I did. Learned Algol on the fly, corrected the errors, made changes, kept my own programs up to date, yak yak yak, survived the holidays and then had a baby.

Then March came, I went back to work and immediately had a performance review that went something like this: “You did a great job last year, but your salary raise will be delayed for 8 weeks.” Funny thing, I was just out on maternity for 8 weeks. The review continued: “I know it looks like we’re delaying your raise because you were out on maternity the first two months of this year, but we aren’t.” I had to ask. “So, why are you delaying it?” The answer was: “Well, it’s NOT because you were out on maternity. And it’s NOT because of any problem with your performance during the past year, because you did a great job.” Huh? “So what you’re saying is that my raise is being delayed because I did a great job and the delay has nothing to do w/ my maternity leave which just happens to have been the same duration as the delay in my raise, right?” Right.

Kinda hard to argue with that logic. There aren’t words. Here’s another, much less complicated example. Suppose someone hits your thumb with a hammer. Hard. And then that someone says to you, “I know you think that your thumb hurts because I hit it with a hammer, but it doesn’t. Not only does it not hurt because I hit it, in reality it actually doesn’t hurt you at all. You just think it does.” Could have fooled me. Oh, and that bruise looks pretty darned real to me too, but that’s just an optical illusion created by sunlight reflecting on the swamp gas hovering above my hand.

Did I even have a point to this?

Emotions. Feelings. They are what they are. Sometimes they hurt and sometimes they feel pretty darned good. Sometimes the logic behind them doesn’t make any sense. But to say that someone isn’t feeling a particular emotion when it’s obvious that they are is a lie. Don’t tell me that I’m not feeling what I’m feeling, even if what I’m feeling makes no logical sense to you or to me. I may understand in my head that what I’m feeling doesn’t make any sense. And I can take steps to adjust my emotional reactions to whatever so that they are more in tune with the logic of the situation.

But for the moment, if something hurts, please don’t tell me that it really doesn’t. I know it probably won’t hurt as much tomorrow, or next week. But it hurts today.

There’s a list of things going on right now. Some are good, some are not so good. Some are scary, some are exciting. I’ve used writing, journaling, in the past to work through a lot of stuff and I need to do it now. But I can’t find the words. I think I have them and then when I read them back to myself I hear other voices saying things like “you can’t feel that way” or “you shouldn’t feel that way” or “you know your whole reaction to that is wrong” or my personal favorite: “Nobody would ever feel that way about what you’re experiencing so there must be something wrong with you.” I love that one.

I’m still not sure I had a point. Or maybe I did. There’s so much that needs to be said, about the trip, about getting the kids ready for college and high school and the added responsibilites that both of them are facing, about facing mid-life and mapping out the next path in life, about my personal successes or (probably more noteworthy) failures in dealing with any of this stuff. I think I have a handle on something, have some words wrapped around it that make sense. But then I hear myself thinking that my words might be misunderstood or might make someone angry or confused or whatever and it becomes so much more about making sure I don’t cross anyone else’s boundaries, real or perceived.

The end result is that I file the words away and say nothing.

No, it really doesn’t hurt.

Remember Yosemite Sam, when he inherited a million dollars and Bugs Bunny came to see if he was worty of receiving it? All Sam had to do was hold his temper in check because, if he lost his temper, he lost some of his inheritance. It took Bugs doing varous painful things to Sam through the entire cartoon, but finally Sam got his temper under control and, no matter what crappy thing happened to him, he just laughed and said “I like it!” Unfortunately it cost him the entire inheritance to get to that point. The things Bugs did to Sam were painful, but Sam wasn’t allowed to say “ouch!” or fight back. So he clammed up, smiled and said “hurt me again, it’s ok.”

Kind of like that.

 

to Wubby

 You captured our hearts the moment we met, and have held them hostage every day since. It’s hard to believe that something so small, so helpless, so innocent could wield such power.

Before you came into our lives we couldn’t imagine the radical changes that your presence would cause. We looked at you–and you looked back at us–and we all knew, instinctively, positively, that something beautiful, powerful and terrifying had happened to each one of us.

You came into the world, blinking your eyes as they adjusted to the harsh new light. Any small noise startled you, causing you to reach out for fear of falling. But we were there to catch you, safeguard you, reassure you that this new bright world was as safe a place as the dark, enclosing world you came from.

We had questions.

Are we ready to be parents? No.

Do we know what we’re doing? No.

How many ways can we mess this up? Quadrillions.

How do we raise a child? Carefully, with love, patience and prayers.

You were demanding, refusing to let the normal routines of our daily life interfere with your needs. We fed your hunger, kept you comfortable and safe, reassured you when you were afraid, laughed with you in play, watched you grow and celebrated each new milestone in your young life with encouragement and applause.

And grow you did. From crawling, to standing, to stumbling with each new step, to walking in the world on your own, to running at top speed from one new experience to another. From crying, laughing, squealing with delight over each new discovery. From babbling baby sounds, to “Pick up me!”

For six years we were there, holding on as you learned to push away, asserting your independence. Until the day we had to let you go, on your own, into the big world. You laughed the first day you climbed the steps into the big yellow bus; we cried as we watched you leave.

There were other leave-takings: your first trip with grandparents, the first time you spent the night at a friend’s, overnight field trips and church retreats. Leaving elementary school for middle school, leaving middle school for high school. With each step you entered a larger world as we pried our fingers away and let you go.

More questions:

What have we forgotten to teach you? Lots.

Have we prepared you for the next step? As much as we could.

Are you ready to go? You bet.

Are we ready to let you go? Are you kidding–NEVER!

And now, here you are. Speeding into adulthood while we wish you would apply the brakes, slow down, stay a little while longer. We’re not ready to let you go, Just as we weren’t ready when you arrived. We’ve done what was essential for your protection and well-being up to now; we will continue as you enter a larger world. Only now we can’t protect you from the potential dangers.

How do we let you go?

Carefully, with love, patience and prayers.

You laugh in celebration as you pack up the car and head out on your own to college.

We laugh–and cry–with you, as we watch you leave.

 

Coming of Age

I started writing this post around January 7th. Then I got sidetracked by, well, January. I think I mentioned somewhere down there that I don’t really like January.

Anyway, I met with a friend of mine this week who happens to be the music and arts minister at our church. If the term “arts minister” doesn’t register, that’s ok. Suffice it to say that he finds tangible ways to make worship more meaningful for those of us who are moved by music, visual and fine art, the spoken word, etc. I shared these next words with him: 

“If I can’t be the best <insert noun here> then I won’t <insert associated verb here> at all.”

I hear these words every week from twenty different kids between the ages of 13 and 18.

When I was 12 years old I decided that I was going to college and get a degree in music. There were people who tried to talk me out of it, even bribed me by saying they’d pay for my college education if I majored in anything other than music. But my mind was made up and there was no changing it. I auditioned at Brevard College in NC and received a small scholarship, but decided against going there because, back then, it was a 2-year program and I would have had to transfer somewhere else eventually. I also auditioned at James Madison University, was accepted into their program, and headed to Harrisonburg in August of 1979.

Turns out I didn’t like Harrisonburg all that much, and my piano professor was just plain weird. My boyfriend (husband now) was at Virginia Tech, so I went to Blacksburg and auditioned there, fell in love with the campus and the piano professor who heard me play (and questioned some of the techniques and interpretations my JMU professor espoused) so I headed to Blacksburg the following January.

I got that degree a little more than two years later, finishing college in just under 3 years, and starting teaching piano. Make that babysitting piano students. I had about 2 students, and about 20 kids who were dumped at the studio for an hour every week. Decided that I didn’t want to babysit, got a job at an AT&T assembly plant–factory, that is–, got married, took COBOL programming classes that were way easy, got a programming job, and began a life of working in corporate America. The pay was very good, and programming was fun. Maybe if I’d been allowed to just design, build, test, debug, etc. I could have remained happy. But that didn’t happen. Work became all about making this week’s boss look good and last week’s boss look bad, about training my managers to manage, about training fresh-out-of-college boys who were paid more than me to do my job, whatever it was this week. And on it goes.

All during those years the piano remained in the periphery of my life. I played a wedding, played for the choir at church occasionally, played keyboards when we went “contemporary” a decade or so back. If you’re into classical liturgical music you might be familiar with the Brahms Requiem. He wrote two versions of it: one for choir and orchestra, in German, and another for choir and two pianos, in English. I played one of the pianos once. It was good.

So what?? Well, way back in 1984 the hometown newspaper printed an article entitled “Giving up the Dream: Some musicians are happier when the music stops.” This article hit me where I lived then. It said that many serious musicians are happier when they come to grips with the fact that they will never go to Juliard, never play a concerto, never ‘make it’ in the music industry. “If I can’t be the best <insert noun here> then I won’t <insert associated verb here> at all.”

Here’s the thing: 20 years later, I still have this newspaper article in my Daytimer. I still read it on occasion. And it don’t believe it. I wasn’t happier when the music stopped, or slowed down, or whatever it did.

Back in college there was an Education professor who had been a piano major at the Cincinnati Conservatory. He went on to receive a Master’s degree in Education and never played the piano again. Ever. I couldn’t understand how he did that.

Twenty years later I realized that I had, for the most part, done the same thing. I did understand how, but not why.

So here I am, sliding into mid-life, back where I was at 12, coming of age. I want to play the piano, and sing, and dance and write and whatever. I’m not going to Juliard or Carnegie Hall. I’m not going to win a Pulitzer or make the NYT best-seller list. But I am going to do something that gives me pleasure.

Back to those kids, the ones that are saying “If I can’t be the best <insert noun here> then I won’t <insert associated verb here> at all.”

Listen up: it doesn’t matter if you aren’t the best whatever. If you love it, keep doing it!

And for those of us that aren’t exactly kids anymore, who may have bought into the “Giving up the Dream” philosophy: if that philosophy works for you, Great! But if it doesn’t, scrap it. Dust of the piano, break out the paintbrush, dance like no one is watching.

Come of age.