Book group

Last night I was a guest at my sister’s book group. They read The Given Self. “They” were her friends from high school. I had memories of each one of them and, of the six gathered – Mary Pat, Char, Chris, Barb, Maureen and Janie – five of them had siblings who were friends of mine: a brother who’d car pooled to the U of M with me, a sister who was my first friend (they lived two-doors up), a brother who was in the same school from 5th through 10th grade, a sister who was a best friend for a year or two, and another who I hung out with in the 7th-8th grade years. The one who knew me least (not having a sibling who gave us a little more knowledge of each other), asked for a little of my history and that of the books I speak so much about within The Given Self.

Because of who they were, I began this history from when I was a teen, talking about how much things changed between when they were teens and when I was. I spoke of the difference in the spacing of our family. My two older brothers are ten and twelve years older than me, my sister Susan five years older, and my younger brother eight years younger. I told of how I admired my hippie brother who was graduating from college in the pivotal 1968 while I was graduating from grade school, and how I watched my sister go to a dozen proms, thinking I’d have the same fairytale-like experience. And then how I didn’t have either.

I do think it made a difference. Seeing the whole changing of the culture play out in my brother’s life and my sister sort of missing it and living the version of the teenage years you see on TV. I felt my draws to both but didn’t really want to admit that things like proms held any attraction. I openly coveted my brother’s experience and secretly could have gone in for a little more of my sister’s.

As far as I know, they were all “good girls.” My sister was up for homecoming queen and Janie won the title. You get my drift.

So there I am, the little sister sitting in on the gathering of the big sisters, separated by five years, but feeling pretty comfortable. In a certain sense, having your story “out there” gives you the freedom of not trying to hide anything.

So I spoke of how, by the time I was a teen, dating wasn’t much in style. The free love of the sixties had caught on but the meaning factor separated my brother and his generation from mine, and the innocence factor my sister and me. I spoke of being a rebel in the sense of always wanting to escape expectations and being somewhat adamant about not wanting to fit in.

Later in the evening my sister said, “I don’t know if this book was written for us.”

One of her friends lightly told me, “This is the way we talk,” as they discussed ailments, jobs, lawn-cutting, pets, parents, children and grandchildren. I believe I made a few disparaging remarks about this sort of conversation in the book, but I asked after my old friends and was interested in the details. It was sincere and pleasant conversation and some of the best of it came before we sat down to “discuss the book” as always seems to happen.

One of the women said, “Everything happens for a reason,” and later in the evening I brought that up and said, “Sometimes I feel as if my rebellious nature is my nature for a reason.”

Another of the women said she thought my husband and me were brave to live an alternative kind of life. One nodded her head at certain sentiments as if she shared them. You get a sense sometimes that more could be said but that the “more” is held in check by the group.

Maureen actually told a hilarious story about sitting on an airplane where the most horrid noise was scaring all those in her section and how none of them said anything. “I was thinking,” she said, “that if the plane went down, I was going to be sorry.” She’s a nurse, and went on to speak of the training they get – so often someone, she said, is uneasy or fears a mistake is being made and doesn’t say anything. I knew she “got” the underlying theme (of sorts), the one that’s about stopping with the reticence we have about saying what we really want to say (and living the way we want to live). Giving ourselves that freedom.

When I left, I felt as if the others might be happy to get back to the comfortable conversation.

This was all okay. I didn’t fret over any of it for a minute – not before or after.

The friendship among them was evident. They’ll be there for each other. And the book wasn’t written for them as far as I know. But you never really know, do you?

Walked out to the cabin in the dark tonight. Haven’t been out nearly as much in the evening dark as the morning dark and tonight it was really really dark. Last night, or maybe two nights ago there was full moon and it’s still out there. I can see it from the cabin window. The trees canopy the path pretty good though and the tree tops shield the moon.

With my new video craze I was out taking pictures of the moon the other night – about half to capture the moon and half to record the sound of the crickets. They almost overtake the noise of the freeway. I had to walk out into the thick undergrowth to find a break in the trees where I could find the moon with the camera’s lens. Then, as I was recording, clouds went over the moon and swirled like mist and blurred the round edges and covered her over and then moved on so that she popped back out again. I was so excited – thought I’d really caught something magnificent, but then, being the amateur that I am – I couldn’t focus in on the moon and it looked like a golf ball sitting on a black tarp.

Despite the moon tonight, there’s a different quality to the darkness. I know the path out here like I know Henry’s got his mother’s neck, the neck that used to make me almost weep when she was a little girl – this skinny little neck so fine and fragile. Still, there was a shape at my feet that I paused over as I walked around it…just a dark shape. There wasn’t enough illumination to define the edges of anything. It was a swampy mess of darkness.

There was the place where the tree branches hang low and I walked automatically around that, but still it was odd. Odd when the place you know so well feels suddenly unknown.

I could use the yard light, but I don’t.

What are you afraid of?

I posted two new videos today.

The first is short and different (and different for more reasons than being short!). It's of the "shadow" pictures I've been writing of taking lately. I swear, when I'm feeling rattled, I've been opening this file of "shadows" and doing a slide show. There's something so quieting about them. So that's basically what this is: a slide show called "Light and Shadow."


A new "Hello from the Cabin" (number 8 believe it or not) caused me to want to write a note about the strange segue at the end. I go from talking about taking a year off from “outside help” to talking about reading Melody Beattie on codependency. There was a reason that Melody followed on the “year off” idea that I didn’t say! In talking of care giving, she said that if you’ve been a caregiver for a while you might want to take a year off from giving. That idea felt really good to me and that’s the connection that I didn’t make as I ended the video.

It’s a connection I’m finding hard to make in life too!

Honestly, you could say my whole problem in my family boils down to an inability to say no.

People ask me, “What are you afraid of?” I don’t feel that I’m afraid of anything. Then I might say I don’t want to disappoint the person asking, so I guess you could say I’m afraid of disappointing. I’ve been a mother since I was 18 and meted out a lot of disappointment in those years. I never liked it. It always seemed like life was disappointing enough. Your kid waits all year for the field trip to Valley Fair and then it rains. Or they don’t get invited to the birthday party. Or they’re not as pretty or smart as they’d like to be. Whatever!

But it's more than that because sometimes I really want to say no, and I don't care if my "no" disappoints anyone, and I still don't say it. I guess it’s become such a habit to say “yes” that I’m challenged to break it. You think such things should be easy and can really get to worrying over your psychological health when they aren't.

But a few days ago I told Mia I’d rather not host the party and she invited me to the bar with her and her girlfriends, so I’m getting somewhere slowly, and even giving my adult "kids" a little more room to be understanding. Whew! That feels good.

I can do it

Henry is into do-it-yourself projects.

I bought him a ball of twine at a garage sale. It was .10. I have not seen a ball of twine anywhere else – not that I’ve looked (and where would they be? – a hardware or craft store?) and have no idea what they might cost (1.95? 2.95)? I only knew as I bought it that he’s been into rope since his grandpa let him bring in a rope from the garage and would likely enjoy the twine.

Henry immediately set about to throw the ball as a way of unraveling it, so I see that a little instruction is necessary and start by holding the ball while he walks with it, then “Can you walk to the tree?”

Once he got to the tree it was a done deal. He can’t tie yet, but he knows if he wraps the twine around the tree enough times it will stay. Then coming back, I had to suggest the cabin doorknob for a second tying place. From there we were off and running, making things open and close. When grandpa got home he quickly threw more twine over a tree branch to make a pulley and left again. Donny and I both thought Henry would play contentedly with the pulley for hours. But Henry says, “I can do that Umma,” and spends the next hour not playing with the pulley, but trying to do what he’d seen grandpa do – throw the twine over high tree limbs.

Then he asks, “Umma, can I get the rope out of the tool drawer in your desk?” I’m surprised he knows I have one and don’t remember him exploring it or a rope being inside. I go look. It’s a synch – one of those rubbery tools with heavy ends that hook, the kind you use to hold down the trunk of your car when you’re carrying something that doesn’t fit. With instruction in how to use it, he takes off by himself, leaving the woods and climbing the swing set to work on the little tree-house-like portion that sits atop the slide, throwing the “rope” over something more manageable than high tree limbs.

I’m worried about him hitting himself in the head so I intervene once again and we end up synching onto the top piece of lumber and using the line to climb the slide and then to repel. By the time the rest of the family is home and he proudly wants to show off this new feat, he’s too excited (or maybe tired) to do it the way he’d already done it a dozen times, but he’s still proud of himself.

He’s in Montessori school and the motto on the door says to never do something for a child that he thinks he is capable of doing himself. Within the limits of preventing injury, you encourage the “I can do it.”

It got me wondering about myself and the things I run away from. The feeling of “I can’t do it,” or “I can’t say that.” Henry does it too. He gets frustrated with one thing and moves on to the next. He’ll return to the one he got frustrated with when his skill set (or his size) is a little bigger. He can do more when he’s fresh than when he’s tired. I don’t judge it. He doesn’t judge it.

Being off

Can you tell…any of you who’ve been reading this blog a while, that I’m a little “off”? I don’t even know what I mean by that. Maybe it’s the video. Moving into a new way of expression.

What makes you do that kind of thing?

I had a friend try something new and then tell me she felt foolish after and I thought, “It must be universal.” There’s a glow from it at first…from whatever the initial creative impulse was, and then that fades, and then you feel foolish. The nice thing about hearing something like that from a friend, is you quit feeling like it’s a big deal. You remember, “Oh yeah, this is the way it is. This is the way it is when you take a risk.”

There always seems to be that element of risk taking in “putting yourself out there.” It’s the kind of thing you feel when you have a conversation and wonder afterwards if you “said too much.”

When you put something “out there” over time, like you do with a blog, you get more used to it, but then, every once in a while, you realize that, over time, you’re telling a story and you wonder what it’s about, what it says about you. And you wonder if people can tell when you’re “off.” Or maybe they just get bored.

But I’ve realized that if I thought about it as I was doing it, I’d likely never do anything, and if I did, I’d never say anything real. I’d censor too much. I’d always be thinking, “I can’t say that!”

And I realize that when I tie myself to a schedule I get something like writer’s block. I know that no one else cares about my self-imposed schedule. It’s one of those things that become a figment of your own imagination. So “my plan” to do video on Sunday’s is now defunct. I feel better already.

On our own two feet

On my way to the cabin

As I was walking out to the cabin this morning, the coffee pot in one hand, my coffee cup in the other, and my camera bag slug over my arm, I thought, ‘The reason women need purses is that we’ve always got two hands full.’ It seems sometimes as if men travel lighter through life, but then again it just cracks me up that I’ve got to make two trips most days, just to sit for an hour or so. Last night I left my laptop here, so today I didn’t have to make two trips. But then, as soon as I got here, I had to go to the bathroom.

I’ve just started bringing the coffee pot and have been thinking about getting a coffee maker. But then I’d have to bring water. I could get a dorm-sized refrigerator, but I’ve less need for cold drinks. I’d like a more comfortable place to sit, but then, with any of those things, I feel as if I’d lose the charm or the simplicity. Walking back to the house isn’t a big deal, it’s just that, other than for in the early morning, I know I can get stuck there. If Henry wants to see me, if a meal is being made, if I notice something that needs doing…I feel that conflict between coming back out and staying inside.

I had another one of those mornings when I woke up early, about 4:30, and thought how lovely it would be to get up and have a little more time out here in the dark. But I stayed until I realized my cell phone wasn’t on the table next to my bed. I didn’t get up long before its alarm would go off, or get out here much sooner.

The cabin door creaks like one of those in a scary movie and Simeon just came in and creaked it as he came.

The sky is white and the ground dark back here at nearly 6:30, but when I look out toward the yard the day is evident, the stucco of the house visible, the tall yellow galardia a spot of color in the green.

I’m slowly realizing people won’t change until they’re ready. You’ve got to feel the pain of being disorganized enough times before you’ll get organized. You’ve got to feel the pain of the sedentary life before you get moving.

I’ll walk today. It’s Saturday. I take Henry (and Sam) on an adventure early on Saturday mornings. We go to the neighborhood park and walk the trails. So far Henry’s not keen on the mud but he knows mornings are wet and that the ground will dry. I ask him how it will dry and he says “From the sun.” That thrills me. He wants me to carry him over the muddy places and I tell him that explorers have to stand on their own two feet. When his grandpa came with us one morning he whined about being carried practically the whole time…when it’s just him and me he doesn’t keep that up.

Donny feels like he is here to meet the needs of his family. That’s been a pretty tough job and he’s getting worn out. Men have their burdens too.

But we’re all on an adventure and have to stand on our own two feet. That’s what I’m discovering anyway.

Fluttering movement

The sun coming in my window

Now this morning, it’s truly beautiful. It’s been so hot that it stinks outside like things rotting. I can hardly sit out here for the heat and humidity. I’ve had the fan going for a week or so, and sat here anyway…sweating. But in the mornings it’s still lovely and today the sun has been slowly rising, climbing the rectangle of my window, casting her lovely shadows. I take pictures and feel better. Like I feel better as soon as I walk out the door.

I wrote a whole thing last night on expectations – the expectations I feel are made of me in certain relationships – all of them of the type that I’m supposed to accept things no one else in their right mind would accept…because I’m a mother, daughter, sister, or wife. It’s one of those things when you look at it that is so ridiculous that you want to either laugh or cry – or both really.

Yet there’s some movement. Yes, there’s movement going on and I’m grateful for it. Awareness brings movement. I don’t know where it’s taking me but I feel a sense of being guided in how to be with it, to move with it, to find my contentment with what I have and to be grateful. And to accept some changes too, damn it!

The shadows are alive with movement. All is a flutter.

Friends of Dan Odegard

I attended the “Friends of Dan Odegard” event last night. The thing Dan said that I took away was that he liked helping people do what they’re good at. Isn’t that a great thing to be able to say? Isn’t that a tremendous recognition?

And he’s been reading memoirs about cancer and says how each one of them says the cancer was a blessing. He feels the same way.

Everything else melts away in such times…and I don’t only mean times of life threatening illness…. I mean any of those times in which you surrender and find grace.

Small Change

Trees hung with last night's rain

It’s Sunday morning and now that I’ve got a little library of videos, I’ll likely settle in to doing them on my Sunday mornings. I have no idea if this is a good idea or not, but I kind of wanted to get the big “video announcement” off of here, and so thought maybe on Sunday’s, I’d just share something that relates to the day’s video.

I think I look and sound kind of tired in the one I did today. It made me wonder if it was good enough to post, (no – it made me wonder – did I want to post it!) and then I thought, heck, we all look and sound tired once in a while. I’m not going to try to get into looking good! If I did that I’d be sunk. But sounding tired is probably worse than looking tired. You might get bored. The words to go with thoughts weren’t exactly coming at the speed of light.

Today’s video is about ideas and inspiration (oddly enough), but it’s also about process. I have to consider where I’ve got time to sit and do a video and Sunday mornings are the most consistent. So what happens when I come out on a Sunday morning and I’m uninspired?

Here's where you can find it on You Tube

Today I looked out the window at the rain from last night that still hung on the leafs outside, and that lead to one thing and another and pretty soon I knew what I wanted to talk about.

I used to have this Zen saying on my wall. It came from a calendar Mary gave me. It said, “When you know one thing through and through you know everything.” You get those kind of catchy things that come from an idea like that once in a while. There’s the one about “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten” and there’s one about “everything I need to know I learned from my cat.” They’re usually pretty good too. I’ve felt at times that I’ve learned “everything I need to know from A Course of Love,” and lately I’ve been feeling as if I could discover everything I need to know from my cabin.

Getting this new camera and taking pictures has been a big part of it. I’ve got a whole series now of light and shade. Doing video, I’m more aware experientially of how things change, especially that light…but also my own mood. One day it was so hot. I still have the fan out here, and I’ve never in any summer for the last five years needed a fan. And I was in a mood. I got to imagining doing a video about moods and then the next day the heat broke and the whole thing lost its impetus.

I’ve been so aware, for so long, of big change and, I’ve become aware lately, of small change.

Charmed

The St. Paul Pioneer Press prints “Weatherguide facts” every day. They’re provided by the Freshwater Society. Today’s sounded so beautiful to my ears that I wanted to share it with my friend living in Vietnam. When I think I know heat and humidity I often think of him and the appreciation he feels every time I write of what’s growing in the garden or the coolness of the woods. I don’t try to describe it very often because I can’t. I can’t find the words for the feel of the cool air on my skin or the musty wood-smoke smell. I often don’t know the names for what grows around me. I used to save the calendar the Freshwater Society puts out to aide me in my descriptions of the times of year in Minnesota. Maybe you’ll see why. Maybe you’ll find this about as boring as reading a box-top.

“In southern Minnesota, much of the field corn is being pollinated, small grains are ripe or ripening and the harvest of sweet corn is underway.

Gladiolus is blooming in gardens across the Twin Cities. Up north, evening primrose and pearly everlasting are blooming along roadsides.”

In my yard, the fruit trees are hung with plums, pears and apples.

The heat wave has broken for a two day let-up. The dew point has fallen. Here’s a statistic for you: We have had 108 hours of dew points at 70 or more this summer compared to only 17 hours all of last year.

So we’ve been out in the yard again. Henry wondered the other day where the morning glories went and now is fascinated that they open and close.

Life feels charmed on such days.

Cabin Videos

I talk kind of wistfully in the first "cabin video" about the loss of my grapevines to Donny's fruit trees. So I thought it only fair to put up a picture of his apples.


I’ve been working on these cabin videos. I’ve done three. So far I’ve only been able to get one to post to The Given Self website: http://www.thegivenself.com. That’s what I’ve been doing rather than writing. They’re almost like video blogs but they’re too big to post here. I can’t write short, and I guess I can’t talk short either. I start out feeling as if I’ve got nothing much to say and then this whole stream pours out of me once I get going.

There’s a woodpecker tapping on the side of the cabin. Henry calls them peckerwoods.

This break from the usual to work on video has been a strangely happy time. Doing something new is so engrossing. When I did the first two last weekend, I was so focused, in a creative way, that there was stillness everywhere else. Then when I finished them and saw myself looking relaxed and happy, I felt as if I’d accidentally captured “me” – I mean the real me, the person who I feel myself to be. It was so weird. It was so…inspiring!

Maybe that sounds narcissistic or something but I mean really…when do you ever “see yourself”? How many “family entertainment” videos have you been in that make you cringe and vow to run each time a camera ever gets turned on you? You never again want to be put through watching yourself scowling as you give a feeble wave when someone tells you to say hello into the camera, or even worse to see yourself eating or even standing around looking bored.

After I got that excited, happy, “Holy cow how did that happen” feeling of “seeing myself”… I felt as if I could never do it again. It was just a happy accident that I got what I did. And yet it suddenly felt like a standard. The whole zone of that experimental feeling of doing something new left me as soon as I got to thinking about how I could do more videos that were like the first two.

I find that really profound and confounding – how in doing something “new” there is this pure creative energy, and how trying to “do it again” causes that same energy to fly the coop. It’s one of those things you know happens, and yet when you experience it happening it always surprises you.

I had to wait for that energy to wing back before I could go for a third. But it did. It came and lighted softly. I’m truly amazed. If I’ve used that word (amazed) sixteen times, I apologize, but there it is. I am amazed.

Here’s the deal with what I set out to do. There was a little bit of that “should” feeling in it.

“What’s the next step?” Oh. Video.

Then I had this weekend open up in which I had time. I wondered if I could “do it myself” and just wanted to see if I could. I’m not very technical but I figured if I needed to wait for someone to help me I’d not ever do much of anything with it. I never expected it to be fun, but it was a gas.

All I’ve got up so far is the one introductory video. I tried doing a short one for posting here but I kept running over by about 30 seconds. Then after I’d done it five times trying to shorten it, it lost some of its spontaneity and appeal. So that’s the state of affairs at the moment.

Each video somehow turned out more like Course of Love videos than I intended – or I guess I should say I really didn’t intend anything. I just had this thought of doing “cabin videos” and the natural starting point seemed to be telling the story of how I got the cabin, and that…and then it seemed everything else I had to say…did relate to A Course of Love in one way or another.

That’s just the way it is and I’m not going to fight it. I’ll probably end up posting them to the Course of Love site once I get it all figured out. For now, this is simply the way it happened.

In a certain light

Shadows on the infamous freeway fence.



I had some friends from Colorado out here a month or so ago. I’d never taken pictures of people who visited me in the cabin and I thought, “It’s time.” But it was 1:00 in the afternoon. I don’t know if that’s the reason – but the pictures felt like they could have been taken in a hotel room. In those photos, the cabin didn’t have a touch of the wonder you can feel when there’s shadows, or that kind of light you can’t create or fabricate.

In a certain light, even the freeway fence looks beautiful.