Life | BAReed Writing, Business Writing

Tag Archives: Life

The Passage of Time, Accumulation of Dates

Random thoughts September 12, 2014 Comments: 2

Weeks ago I called my eye doctor’s office for an appointment. I wanted the first morning appointment, which was more important than the day. I was given Thursday the 11^th and I accepted. The date gave me pause as I wrote it in my calendar. I participate in a group that meets on the 2^nd and 4^th Thursdays of the month so we met last night and as I prepared the agenda prior to last night’s meeting, and wrote the date, I paused again.

We accumulate dates that have personal meaning and broader social meaning. Some are good – births and weddings – some less so – deaths and other endings. It is hard to live a life and not accumulate dates, whether you acknowledge them or not. A few can make a generation shudder, close their eyes and review the sights of the original moment when the date became etched. Dates rarely carry meaning past a generation or two except as something obscure to memorize for a history test.

I’ve been to Gettysburg twice in my life so far. The first time as a child whose father studied the Civil War era and passed on his interest in history. The second I was there alone, as a stop on a trip to see family in Philadelphia. I happened to come in to town on the same route that the Confederate soldiers had taken on a hot July day in 1863. I was there on a hot August day almost 150 years later but the area retained an aura of the momentous occurrences of those 3 days in July that shaped our country.

I felt the need to try to express to those who never moved on from those quiet fields that we had learned something from their sacrifice.

Gettysburg Division monuments, photo credit Wikipedia

This past summer we have been reminded that the hundredth anniversary of several significant moments of WWI have occurred. This series of events that gave shape to a fair portion of our modern world, but is fusty and musty to most. My thoughts turn to what we have learned from those events.

And the date that resonates for this generation, 9/11. Although I overheard a father saying yesterday, with dismay, that his child was born in 2005 and had such different points of reference. I didn’t personally know anyone who died that day. If I know anyone who was somehow directly affected by those events on that blue sky, no cloud Tuesday, they haven’t mentioned it. But it is a date that gives us all pause.

I ask my usual question, what have I learned? How do you pause?

Now Resume Our Regular Life, Already in Progress

Random thoughts September 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Do broadcast networks still say that? It used to be when they had breaking news that they would cut into regular broadcasting to inform their viewership of that news and then tell us that they ‘now resume our regular programming, already in progress’. I heard it often enough that the phrase echoes for me sometimes.

Last week I apparently tempted Fate when I wrote this piece. (Although Fate may want to take a refresher course in reading comprehension – I was empathizing with people dealing with anything outside the norm of their regular lives.) Fate is nothing if not capricious and possessing a strong sense of the absurd. Not that anything truly awful happened to me, not last week anyway, but plenty of little and middle sized things were piling up to keep me just off balance from routine. Mostly things at work.

Friday afternoon we looked out the windows of the office and noticed it was ominous, like deep twilight, and then the rain came along. This has been such a regular occurrence in recent time that we got back to work. This time my son called to ask me if it had rained heavily and I said it had. He hadn’t experienced heavy rain where he had been, but was surprised to find trees and branches down all around our neighborhood and our power out.

I could see that the storm had been more intense as I drove north toward home after work. More leaf and branch litter in the roads, and then I started to come across traffic lights without power. (FYI treat them like a 4-way stop, please.) And roads blocked by police cars. Oh, my. Now I could see big branches down and large wounds on trees.

I have 2 large cottonwoods in the front yard and 3 large maples in the back along with some smaller trees (plus 2 done-for ash trees). I love my trees, but at moments like this, I cringe a bit. But my son hadn’t mentioned any significant damage to our house and yard.

these will become firewood (taken through the screen because the mosquitoes are viscous)

Our power was still out when I arrived, which is somewhat unusual. We have been pretty lucky that it is rarely out more than an hour or two. Thankfully I have a gas water heater and a gas stove… That has electronic ignition. We can light the burners for the stove top, but no oven. Don’t open the refrigerator too often and wait it out. We did go out to eat, partly out of curiosity to see the damage. And felt pangs of jealousy for all those who had power.

We played some Yahtzee by the light of lanterns and talked, then went to bed early as earlier generations often did before electricity. Hoping that the power would be back over night.

The power wasn’t restored until around 5 am on Sunday. Saturday became a struggle to maintain modern life. My son’s phone had died, he needed to print something before work that evening, we could no longer access our internet because the back-up battery had died, the computer’s battery was running low and most ominous of all the fridge was warming up.

Have I mentioned before that my father was a professional Boy Scout for 33 years? We figured out short term solutions to each problem, and it started to look like we were camping out in our own home. My sister, bless her, has a generator that we got set up by Saturday evening and started the process to cool the fridge back down. My son’s various finds like work lights and extension cords came in handy.

When the power came back on I had been in a deep sleep in a pitch black room. Suddenly the small red glow from my bedside clock seemed like klieg lights and I had to chuckle at myself a bit how quickly I went from grateful to grumbly.

Electricity flows into our houses and we pay the monthly bills without thinking about how much more comfortable our lives are because of it. My son kept trying to turn on light switches. I kept forgetting to grab the lantern when I moved from room to room. Thankfully it was a beautiful day in the high 70s, but when we got warm we wanted a fan…

I really needed a restful weekend so I could hit the reset button for this week at work. At least I got a fairly normal Sunday. I’ve had plenty of personal lessons in resilience, this was just the latest. ‘Normal’ life resumed, for now.

(Disclaimer to Fate: I’m just telling a story here, I read an article on electricity in India, where it is not yet widespread or terribly reliable. I get it, there is always someone doing better and always someone doing worse.)

Season’s Change

Random thoughts September 5, 2014 Comments: 2

Summer is over if you count the season as lasting between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Or we still have a handful of days left if you take into account these days before the first day of autumn. The leaves on the trees are still green, but clearly worn. Some are tinged with other colors after hanging onto branches for quite a few months.

Walking at the back of the nearby park with the dog recently, I got a strong whiff of the sharp smell of fall. A bit of pungent decay, once growing things ready to enrich the soil for something future to grow.

I’ve written a couple of times over the past few months about summer, this season that most causes us to think of leisure. One that we are more likely to feel concern about wasting than the other three. (Assuming that we live in a place that has seasons, which I do.)

How did I do in my effort to enjoy moments of summer? I mentioned choosing the patio option as often as possible in my early summer post. I’m afraid that I didn’t meet up with family and friends all that often, but I can say that I logged a bit of time on decks and patios. Nor did I manage to get to more than one outdoor concert.

I took stock again early last month in my effort not to let summer pass unnoticed. I can add the taste of our own tomatoes to the list I made in that post. They have a heady flavor, but unfortunately thick skins. And I experienced mosquito bites too, darn it.

This summer wasn’t hot enough for a lot of people, but it was just about right to my thinking. (I’m sure they at least appreciate the more reasonable utility bills from the moderate summer heat.)

Now plenty of people are already bemoaning the coming of winter. But, please, let’s give fall its due first. The weather will continue to be pleasant for weeks to come and then turn crisp. While the plants all settle into a dormant state.

I’ve lived most of my life in regions that experience all four seasons. I most enjoy spring and fall, I see benefit in summer, and I endure and accept winter for the sake of the other seasons.

While I think about how I met my own summer expectations and where I fell short, I have to remind myself that I shouldn’t just lament but decide what I might do better. How about you, did your summer turn out how you expected?

The Strangeness of Ordinary

Random thoughts September 2, 2014 Comments: 3

The litany of ills and travails – big and small, natural, geo-political, economic – seems to be unusually long around the globe right now. Many people in many parts of the world are steeped in or trying to fend off chaos, their ordinary life set aside for the time being. But plenty of other segments and corners of the populated world go about their ordinary business day after day and only encounter the chaos when they access the news.

Does that seem a bit strange to you? While the main part of my mind is keeping track of my appointments, facilitating tasks at work, planning and cleaning and ticking through my days another part is contrasting my regular schedule against the topsy-turvy days of all the people affected by these various storms (manmade and natural). And wondering how these people that I don’t know are coping.

It is back to school season and I see the effect at the school across the street as I leave for work. My company supplies products to schools which means that we are quite hectic these days. But aside from some people having flooded basements thanks to all the rain, or difficulty getting in to the office for the same reason we are all going through actions that we have done for ages, routine.

I do know someone whose son was evacuated from Liberia due the Ebola outbreak but that is as close as I personally come to most of the turmoil. How about you? Do you have relatives in Ukraine or Israel or Syria or Ferguson, MS or…

August 2013 Political Map, credit Wikipedia

The world is a big place and it has always been true that there will be turmoil here and there and normal life will occur everywhere else. Routine is annoying, but also comfort. A seismic shift – either literal or not – that removes a person, a group, or a whole region from the ordinary usually seems to happen elsewhere. Until it doesn’t. Most of the time ordinary is just that, but every once in a while there is such a spike of chaotic activity, or the chaos hits too close to home, that ordinary seems rather strange.

I remember my first jolt of the strangeness of ordinary. We were all called together because my grandmother was not doing well, but when I woke up the next morning at my uncle’s house and heard laughter downstairs I believed that she must have made it through the night. Until my dad came up to tell us that she hadn’t. How could they have been laughing?

I used the phrase ‘seismic shift’ earlier in this post because I have experienced real earthquakes, including a major one, and it is quite disorienting to have the ground beneath your feet move violently. To see the damage that an earthquake can wreak up close. The mind can’t quite take it in.

Knowing that disquiet I can’t decide if it is right to carry on normally or that there is great strangeness in the ordinary.

Things I did Instead

Random thoughts, Writing August 26, 2014 Comments: 2

I have a post that I have been working on for the past couple of days, but it isn’t ready to show yet. I have other half done posts that aren’t even that close and time says it is up, post time is at hand. Crap.

How many others have sat down to write today’s blog post and noodled on one thing until it petered out, and then fiddled with another until it seemed garbled? How often have you stared at the screen for a little bit and thought about how you got farther today than yesterday when you didn’t even bother to open up a new post and stare at the screen?

public domain image

When writing isn’t happening, eventually I stand up and wander about the house and:

Clean the tracks on the shower stall and the tracks on the sliding door
Water the indoor plants
Take inventory of the kitchen and bathroom for a grocery list
Pull out the lambswool tool and get rid of cobwebs
Go for a walk (and I’m even nice enough to bring my son’s dog along)
Collect quotes cut out from various magazines that have appealed to me and put them in the book that I keep for that purpose
Go through the pile of mail, flyers and papers that breed on the table
Ponder what to make to use up the 2 overripe bananas on the counter
Watch Sneakers or other dated, but still entertaining movies
Thought about going out to get plants for my 2 hanging baskets but then realized that wouldn’t appear to be writing in the slightest

And this is the post that you get today. What do you get done when you are ‘writing’?

There is Joy to be Found

Random thoughts August 19, 2014 Leave a comment

It doesn’t seem possible for a person to get to my stage in life without experiencing dark, lonely and painful moments. Perhaps it is possible for a small group of people with certain constitutions. But then there are the rest of us, and for another small subset dark moments are entirely too common. They can become dark days, weeks, months and even years.

Like the majority of the population, my heart contracted when I heard the news about Robin Williams last week. But I didn’t have to ask why, I knew that in that moment he just couldn’t find his way past the pain and the dark. And I wished that I could have reached out and helped him to refocus, just enough to get through that worst moment, on some small bit of joy. Or even just the knowledge that joy does exist and has power too.

There is always joy even though the cruelest aspect of dark moments is the way they work to rob a person of joy. A pensive Robin Williams would appreciate the irony in the fact that someone who represented joy to so many wasn’t able to summon it for himself at a crucial moment.

I learned this lesson well the year that my father died suddenly and my husband left me the following month. The dark loneliness was crushing. But spring still came and brought delicate new leaves and tiny hardy flowers. My children still laughed with their friends in the next room and the sound was a balm.

I have kept this lesson close in these following years as I have grappled with more trials, more dark and painful moments. I have learned many things about this dark, this melancholy, this depression as it has been a companion for most of my life.

Mary Schmich, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote a thoughtful piece in which she said “Suicide is a mental health issue, not a moral failure”. She also introduced her readers to a lovely poem called “Wait” by Galway Kinnell, which says in part:

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.

…

Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands.

…

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

He understands the dark. And he found his own methods to find joy. And he knows that sometimes when the dark and pain are working hardest to block out joy, the best method is just to wait and trust that the joy is strong too and will find a way to seep in and make things interesting again. Given time.

Pain and dark do have power. They are heavy to carry around and exhaust a person. Joy is light and therefore seems inconsequential but it has power too. Joy’s might is everywhere. We have to be able to receive it.

Waiting Patiently, Part 2

Random thoughts August 12, 2014 Leave a comment

Patience – endurance, fortitude, perseverance, persistence, forbearance, resignation… Do any of us have enough of this trait in any given moment of our days? I like this definition: ‘an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay’. Ah, a willingness to suppress – this implies that, if I want to, I can nurture this trait in myself.

Curiosity doesn’t have much patience with obstacles – it wants to know, and it wants to know right now. Or wants to be or have or feel or experience… Right now.

Having children requires a person to cultivate patience, Herculean patience in the face of unexplainable infant fury. Empathy for their misery led me finally to patience. It was my job to use my curiosity to understanding their needs and meet them if I could. And soothe if I couldn’t. Soothing requires patience. Which comes in handy when the endless questions come, then the pushing of boundaries…

Gardening requires patience. Plants grow even more slowly than children, but thankfully don’t have hours-long crying jags or want to know why. I have one houseplant that I bought back in 1986 that is still going. (My former mother-in-law even revived it from the mild frost-bite it got on a cross country trip.) What will thrive, or make-do, or perish? Why? Patience is necessary to get these answers.

In our vegetable gardening this year, we are watching the tomatoes form and we are full of questions. Impatient questions – how will they taste, when will they be ready? Patient questions will get us there – how much sun, how much water?

Diligence is part of the definition of patience. This one I understood from childhood on – because of its importance to structure and process and ritual. Curiosity can’t really be sated without some understanding and application of methodology. Where would I fit the new information if I didn’t have a means to categorize it in with the information that I already possess? Diligence comes in handy to retain the information or experience that curiosity prompted.

Timing is an important component. We bought the tomato plants in May, already a couple of inches tall, knowing that tomatoes wouldn’t actually be ready until sometime in August. Now that it is August, the patience is wearing a little thin. The ability and willingness to suppress our restlessness for our homegrown tomatoes is getting harder to apply. But more crucial to a successful outcome.

There are so many places and instances where I can apply this patience I have learned, am learning. At work, while driving, in line, when I’m out of sorts…

How Much ‘Summer’ in Summer?

Random thoughts August 8, 2014 Comments: 3

August is upon us and the back-to-school ads have started to appear. Gardens are about to produce tomatoes and cucumbers galore. Leaves on trees are looking a bit tired and worn here and there after shining in their green spectrum from early pale to later deep green. We still have a couple more months to go before the plants all go dormant for the cooler months.

I haven’t taken a vacation, or even devoted a whole day to summer activities, but I have vicariously enjoyed those of friends and family on Facebook and in-person telling. And I have thought about what constitutes a summer moment so that I don’t miss them when they occur. In early June, I wrote this piece about summer and the importance of noting this season.

Summer isn’t just a season, it is an idea – a representation of things to strive for like relaxation and laughter with friends and family. It is nostalgia in a different form than what the holiday season brings forth. The sound of children laughing in early evening brings me back to those moments in long ago yards playing tag or chasing fireflies with a group of other kids. The joy of still being up and out in the dark when we would normally have been tucked into bed.

Enjoying the idea of summer in adulthood takes effort, a deliberateness that wasn’t necessary in childhood. First we have to be conscious that this effort is even required. Summer was spontaneous in our younger years and we might expect this to continue, we might feel discontent when it does not.

For several years in the transition from child to adult, I didn’t think about summer much at all. Perhaps because I was busy figuring out what being an adult meant for me. Perhaps because I was doing this figuring out in California, where the seasons are subtle and mostly all have the feel of summer. It wasn’t until my children were old enough to have a summer break in school, and summers had the same rhythm they had in my childhood that I started to think about what makes summer.

Then I was divorced with two boys and a full time job and I had to make sure they had a summer while basically foregoing one for myself. Or so I thought because I thought of summer as long stretches of unscheduled time to explore and enjoy.

Now summer comes in moments, sips, or bursts. And I enjoy them.

Time on a patio with family or friends
The hummingbird that visits the Rose of Sharon in the corner of my yard
Watching the tomato plants grow and tomatoes form
The firefly that hovered in front of the dog and I on a late evening walk
The dragonfly that reluctantly posed for this picture
The little boy gleefully whizzing by on his bike
The sound of lawn mowers while I still laze in bed on a weekend
Thunderstorms clearing the humidity from the air

How much summer is in your summer so far?

Waiting Patiently, Part 1

Random thoughts August 5, 2014 Leave a comment

We decided to try our hands at a bit of vegetable and herb gardening again this year after a several year hiatus. We just got a few things and put them in pots because I still haven’t settled on a ‘landscape design’ for the back yard. (There is the one in my dreams that includes a 3 season room/conservatory, a patio, a beautiful new fence and award winning plantings…) The last time I tried to raise a tomato plant I put it on the west side of the house and it got burnt and spindly and we managed to reap a single tomato from the poor thing before it became compost.

I think that I’ve learned a bit since then. We’ll see if I have learned enough. Now our tomato plants live on the south side of the house and are currently full of promise – about 18 tomatoes are developing between the two plants. We also have peppers, mint and oregano. We had basil, but a random wind burst blew a chair onto it and now it is in the process of dying.

We are already realizing that the herb books we possess have gaps – like when and how to harvest. Perhaps the writer assumes we know this part… In which case he or she is wrong.

I am enamored of the idea of gardening – decorative and produce. I have a stack of gardening books that I look at and reference periodically, some practical and some fanciful. Reading about our founding father’s deep interest in gardening, as gentlemen gardeners I realized that is around my level. I want to talk about it, think about it, enjoy it and just occasionally do the heavy parts. Plant something here, pull a weed there, rely upon thick layers of mulch to prevent weeds and help retain moisture. Unfortunately I don’t have the financial resources to pull off this sort of gardening.

Watering is a Zen activity that falls happily in my version of gardening. Some days the plants have to wait patiently while I participate in other activities and interests, though.

Gardening is perfectly suited to the acquisition of knowledge – it is forgiving of novice mistakes if you start slowly and allow for changes in plans. Gardening is helping me to practice the patience that I have mostly lacked in other parts and earlier stages of my life.

You’ll have to excuse me now, I feel the need to go take a tour through the yard.

There Will Be Exasperation

Random thoughts August 1, 2014 Leave a comment

I’ve just sat down and gotten comfortable, so of course the dog now wants to go out. This is exasperating.

Picking up one too many things to put back in their proper place, so everything slides and clangs and rolls away on the floor. This is exasperating.

Dropping one of my earrings as I walk out of my room and put them on at the same time because I am already pressed for time. This is exasperating.

Going just a little too long between meals, trying to do that one more thing when tired, being unable to stretch just that tiny touch more to grab something needed when constrained – these are exasperating.

Being unable to retrieve the word that I want, or remember the association that would fit well into a conversation, or find that mosquito that buzzes in my ear when the lights are off and I am just about asleep. Exasperating.

Having someone bring in dirty dishes just as I finish up in the kitchen. Grrr. Having the phone ring a couple of minutes before the end of the work day. REALLY??

Vexing, infuriating, aggravating, inflammatory things happen every day, plenty of times per day to rankle each and every one of us.

Thankfully there is also laughter and beauty and kindness. The dog wags her tail and smiles at me when I grumblingly go over to let her out and shortly thereafter let her back in.

I don’t have any interest in spending my hours feeling indignant much of the time. I can remind myself to eat in a timely manner to stave off those blood sugar dips that result in a foul mood.

It’s a mind game that I can play better some days than others. How about you?