An Athlete of the Nautical Persuasion

I could have married that beanbag.  

If I had to guess, I’d estimate that I spent a third of my 6th grade school year nestled into the yellow beanbag chair in the back of our classroom.  I’d pull the hood of my cotton sweatshirt over my head, and settle in for however long Mrs. Bascom, the short-haired 5th and 6th grade teacher, would permit.  She was pretty generous.  

Apart from acquiring some shockingly bright Lisa Frank stickers, my 6th grade year left a lot to be desired.  It was smack in the middle of my sweat pant-wearing, Goosebump-reading, moody and melancholy experience of junior high.  I was still donning rastafari Tweety Bird t-shirts and playing with stuffed animals, all while my peers were reading Jane Eyre, crushing on boys and singing along with Gavin Rosdale on their Walkmen.  I felt incredibly uncool, and were it not for a couple of merciful friends, might have burrowed so far into that beanbag that I would have needed bottled oxygen.  

Psychedelic Baby Seal Trapper Keeper.  This will take ocean swimming off of your bucket list.

Then along came Mrs. Bascom.  She only taught at our school for that single year, and I have a few lingering memories hinting that she wasn’t well liked by the students.  I’m not sure that I even liked her all of the time.  Somehow, though, she found a way into my dreary, preshrunk cotton world.  Aside from allowing me to learn from my cushy perch at the back of the room, she also introduced me to creative writing (fabulously dramatic poetry) and even at one point, told me she thought I could have a future in synchronized swimming.  

Me.  

Synchronized.  

If I were anyone else, this would have been my Aha Moment.  The punch line.  The fleece pulled out from over my eyes.

But I’m not anyone else.  And it wasn’t.  

Strapping on my swimsuit like a coat of arms, I cannonballed into the pool with her high school aged daughter, who was, in fact, a real-life synchronized swimmer.  I feathered my hands through the water.  I flutter-kicked my legs.  I did my best to hold my arms straight up in the air, from the soft skin of my biceps to my pale, unpolished fingernails.  I may have even worn nose plugs for the first time, though I can’t say for sure.  

It felt like a dream.  A dream that stank of chemicals and sweat and pure awesomeness.

I don’t remember at all what transpired after this visit to the pool, but I know that my budding career never materialized the way that I’d thought it might.  I imagine that I busied myself with my typical concerns: wondering how I could adjust my afternoon plans to incorporate the Lion King theme song, consuming a whole bag of plain potato chips, magnetic earrings, and going by the name Heather, which was my favorite (followed closely by Maxi, followed closely by Heather again).  

What I take away from my brief calling as a luminary of the chlorinated world was the fact that a middle-aged woman took a glum sixth grader and gave her hope.  Hope for a future, perhaps as a National Poet Laureate, or perhaps as an athlete of the nautical persuasion, but fundamentally as a person worthy of interest.  Did I have talents that were undiscovered?  Was I compelling?  Would anyone listen if I had words to say?  “Yes”, she said.  

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

My parents had been affirming me for years, as had, I’m sure, other teachers and adults in my life, but when your emotions feel so heavy and your persona feels more like a suit to wear than your real self, it gets difficult to carry on with a smile.  When you have perceived so many discouraging messages (and what preteen hasn't), the truth seems like a voice not meant for you to hear.   

My life didn’t change overnight.  It took a few years before I really began to feel at home in my body and mind, but this was the beginning.  For as many of us who have felt the transformative power of someone’s belief, there are even more who haven’t.  While I may have been the only girl my age tucking in her Pound Puppy at night, I know that I wasn’t the only kid who worried that she would never find her place.  

Mrs. Bascom let me wallow in the beanbag, but she didn’t leave me there.  Her encouragement didn’t lead me to pursue a lifetime of impressive athletic feats, but rather demonstrated to me that I was a person of value, and that I should dream, because I was capable and interesting and had undiscovered talent.  And to this day, when I write of hopeful things, such as this, I look back and think of my sixth grade teacher.  

With this said, I have to ask myself whether I realize that I am equipped to do exactly what Mrs. Bascom did.  Do I believe that I have the ability to speak the future into someone’s life?  Do you?  With less work than you or I might imagine, we can shoot up flares of confidence over hundreds of uncertain horizons.  Just like a changed track will divert a train down a new path, whatever encouragement we can give to the lives we intersect with has the potential to permanently alter their trajectory.  Let me say that again:  something as simple as our encouragement can permanently alter someone’s trajectory.  And perhaps, hopefully, that affected life will someday repeat the process.  

So, let us be kind and be present.

Let us listen well and perceive what is beyond the words we hear.

Let us utter words of hope.  Inspire confidence.  Instill value. 

Just as Mrs. Bascom helped me see that I had something to contribute to this world, you and I have been given the opportunity to take someone’s hand and lift that person out of their proverbial beanbag chair.  Are we doing it?  

When you are worried that you aren’t good enough to help someone else, or that you don’t have it all together, relax.  

Please, relax.  I am worried too.

But none of us are perfect, and yet we are perfectly fit for this job.  

So let us be brave, and you and I can shoot up a flare of confidence over a hundred horizons.  Perhaps together we can light up the sky.

So Leave Some Wiggle Room

My hands smell like basil.

In fact, they are so basil-y that they wreak of anise root ground with black peppercorns that have been drizzled in licorice.  If you are under the impression that basil is a gentle herb to sprinkle over your fetuccini or that it adds an aromatic sweetness to manhattan clam chowder, you only know half of the story.  Large amounts of the fresh stuff could wake an 8th grade lab student from a dissection-induced unconsciousness.  It's that powerful.  And so for the remainder of today, my hands will smell like I've spent the morning digging around in a drum of bear bait.

You see, I've been nursing three robust basil plants along since the spring.  Someone should have told me how resilient they are, because I didn't plan on them getting so big - no, wait - so unruly.  And because I simply cannot use a full cup of fresh basil leaves each day, it's come time for me to prune off the leaves, dry them out for future use in cioppinos (do yourself a favor and always double the white wine) and trash two of the plants.  It breaks my heart to cut down anything so full of life, especially when the snow drifts outside are starting to make our pond look like the Sahara, and we're beginning to see negative numbers on the outdoor thermometer.  I'm pretty sure that the basils loathe my decision, for good reason: "At least wait until after February.  By then, something bright and green could keep you from digging a hole in the ice and throwing yourself in.  You won't survive without us.  You'll see."

But alas, I am as heartless as a Jersey mobster, and today the plants must die.

There comes a time for things to pass on.  We say goodbye to one so that we can welcome another.  In fact, you can read about Bob Goff, a [very important and fairly unconventional] guy who, every Thursday of every week of every month, quits something.  Folks, that's a lot of quits.  But because of those slots that he has made empty, Bob has room to invite new things and people into his life, and is enabled to fill holes in the lives of others.  He is transforming.  He is letting some structured things go so that he has room to wiggle in unstructuredness.

I'm not necessarily advising you to stop going to the gym, to quit calling your mother, or to kiss brushing your teeth goodbye (seriously, please keep doing this), but am challenging myself to think hard about life and what it means to live well, which is, I suppose, a question for the ages.

Logic tells us that because we say yes to some things, we cannot say yes to everything.  So why don't we stop trying to say yes to it all, because if we keep that up, not only will we be tuckering ourselves out attempting the impossible, but we will have no room for anything new.  New things that are good things.  Wiggle things.  Un-committed things.   Spontaneous things like conversations with strangers, an afternoon writing letters, wrestling with your kids, or simply a walk through the neighborhood  the woods.

It's New Year's Day.  I'm not going to beat the old dead horse/drum/dirty rug, but today is a good opportunity to reflect on where we've each been and where we'd like to go.  And regardless of where you and I have been, I believe that there is something in the road ahead that is waiting for us to run it over.  With gusto.

Right now, you might be in the midst of something terrible.  It could be an illness in your life or the life of someone you love.  It could be a broken relationship - gosh, it could be an entire army of broken relationships, for that matter.   Or a looming transition.  Or a lingering offense.  Or a mountain you're afraid to climb.  It could be a gaping sense of loneliness or doubt.  It could crap the bed.  In fact, it probably does.

Friend, there are good things ahead.

You might have had a year unlike any other, more exciting and adventurous than you could have ever imagined.  Full of laughter and hope and joy.  Defined by accomplishment and victories and a lot of crispy bacon.  You may have been surrounded by friends and family.  You may look back and feel a sense of gratitude and warmth and awe at a year of incredible fullness.

Still, there are good things ahead.

Notice that I didn't employ the word easy or nice or perfect to describe what lies before us.  Good things are not always easy things.  They are not always nice things.  And - can I get an Amen - they are not always perfect things.  In fact, they are seldom so.  Good things are sometimes found in the midst of trials, at the end of a depression, or at the base of a steep and difficult ascent.  You often have to actively search for them - you know, turn over rocks and dig in the sand and scramble into trees.  After all, there are hard things ahead as well.

We may have to get a little dirty to discover that we can always see the sunset.

One simply needs to climb high enough.

By this point, my basil leaves have dried in the oven and are ready to pour into a mason jar and be tucked away for some day in February when I need to unscrew the top and take a long sniff of something fragrant and inspiring.  These are the same leaves that frantically overgrew their pots after a matter of weeks in the house and crowded the light out of our windows in September.  They barely survived the summer, but have pressed into the winter with surprising courage.

Today, they are transformed.  They are made new.

Dead, but not useless, they will flavor future cioppinos with sweet aromatics.  They will likely rescue me from a self-inflicted polar plunge that is bound to come knocking one day soon.  When I sprinkle these leaves into a pot or onto bread dough, they will remind me of something that died so that I could live more brightly.  So that I could find something new.  Something good.

So may we scramble high into trees this year.  May we see that there is a sunset above the clouds that is always worth the climb.

And may we work to make room for the adventure.

And Hope Comes In The Morning... But Will There Be Coffee?

The ground has again been draped in a dusty white veil.

You thought we were past this winter thing?  Me too.

Despite the fact that I long to sip my morning coffee in the clean, crisp June air (April is winter, May is a more reasonable winter, June is merely crisp), I will take what I was given this morning: snow.  

I'll soldier on, because I have hope that it won't always be snowing.  We're not quite in Canada, after all.

This is Holy Week, as I'm sure you're aware.  It's a peculiar time of year, during which we have the opportunity to be reminded that things are made new.  We, this giant, milling brood of messy humans, can be reminded of the meaning found in expectation, in mystery, in goodness. We can set our minds on something buoyant and bright.

As I approach the dogma diving board, allow me to pose what are surely some of your thoughts:

"M, I'm not religious.  I'm spiritual", or...
"My path doesn't include Resurrection Sunday or Holy Week", or...
"I hate religion", or...
"We're going to talk about religion?  To be honest, M, I only come here to sneer at your most recent physical trauma or social embarrassment.  Don't get the impression that I read this to think".

Well, 1) Then we have something in common.  2) Sorry - mine does, and it's my blog (today is not your day... yet).  3) Of course you do - religion practically begs to be hated. 4) Touche (or, as C says, "Toosh").

This post isn't really about religion.  It's about hope.  The connection between one and the other is yours to tie together and likewise, yours to slip apart.  For now though, let's talk sunshine.

As I sat on my couch this morning to write, the sun had risen up behind me.  It lifted beyond the eastern rim of this little dip-in-the-land that we call home.  Over the white, opaque ice of the pond.  Over thousands of pines.  Over hills in the distance, and perhaps even over the meandering Appalachian Trail, which runs just southeast of here.  The warm heat on my shoulders made me feel like this winter might... not... last forever.  It gave me hope.

What is so striking about Holy Week is the music of it.  Go to your nearest Barnes & Noble, hop on Spotify, or paw through your scratched CD collection (oh wait, that's mine) in search of Adagio for Strings, Op. 11a, composed by Samuel Barber.  Feel the despair in the music, the need.  If you listen well, you'll almost sense a physical tug on your soul as the music ebbs and flows from high to low, and back again.  Holy week is like this.  If you don't know the story, here's a gravely simplified, throw-me-in-the-stocks version: First, there' a HUGE welcome party, full of celebrity attention and staring, I'm sure.  Then there's betrayal by a inner-circle kind of buddy, followed by the kinds of torture and death that thankfully most nations don't practice anymore.  Then, somehow, in the wake of these nasty, depressing, terrible things, there's life.  It ebbs, it flows, and it swells, until it finally reaches a crescendo.  It is an account of hope.

Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, as it's also called, is an occasion to float.  It arrives at the end of a horrible weekend, following a current of betrayal, sadness and loss.  It is a reminder to hope in the midst of things, because - just wait - there is a roaring crescendo in the story that is just around the bend, and you are almost there.  Hold on.

As you work your way through this week, regardless of your spiritual path, be encouraged.  I always kid that I'd become an atheist, except that I'm not sure how I could do that and still manage to think about tomorrow.  There's more to it than this, but I know that in order for me, personally, to live well, I need a hope.  In fact, I don't know how you could go without one.  Can you?

So, in a different way, that's also why the sunrise drew me in this morning, why it lifted me.  It is a reminder that there is hope in the sorrow.  There is hope in the ebb and in the flow.  There is hope when it snows in April.

Yes, even then.