One Hour

One Hour

I am on mental tiptoes reaching high up top into the attic of my memory. When did I first understand the concept of an hour? For a child, that 60 seconds morphing into one minute and the 60 minutes pushing the hands clockwise takes a frustratingly long, long time. I've plucked the correct memory. My first understanding of one hour as a measurement of time was the nursery school nap.

The nursery school teacher had a large mole just above her lip and a few of those post menopausal stray hairs sprouting from her chin. Her tightly wound salt and pepper curls smelled like a chemical perm. I remember her soft soled shoes squeaking against linoleum floor tiles, her wide girth and the sound of nylon stockings rubbing together as she walked past rows of small children. "Close your eyes. Close your eyes." I hated nap time, hated having to keep my eyes closed and hated waiting for that hour to end.

Fast forward fifty years and the hours race by like horses at Santa Anita, their hooves kicking up dusty memories, never finished to do lists and pounding reminders that the time between milestones and holidays grows shorter and shorter. Nine days out from Christmas and that means it will be here tomorrow. And just moments beyond that a new year starts.

A new year and time to stop counting hours and start to make the hours count.

In one hour I can smile at the cranky butcher at the European deli in our neighboring town and when he brings back my two filets, precisely cut at one and half inch thickness, he will smile back. I can walk down our little main street and grab the door for the mom with the baby girl in a stroller, bags of purchases and an unruly blonde boy intent on going in the exact opposite direction of his exhausted parent. I can see the thank you in her eyes.

I can wait in a checkout line and when the shopper in front of me has picked the only sweater in the entire store without a price tag and then opts to pay with a check rather than a debit card I can wave off the checker's apology and say "No problem. I'm in no hurry." I can see her relief that I don't complain.

I can sit on one of the benches that line our street and watch the parade of neighbors as they stroll and rush from home to wherever and I can give thanks for the peaceful diversity of my neighborhood.

That's one hour spent making a conscious effort to, quite simply, do good. That's one hour in my microscopic corner of this big world. The hours will not slow down. They will pass faster and faster and faster the older we get and it's up to us to grab them and make them count.

For some, the hours will end abruptly.

Last week our country was rocked by another tragedy. Innocents killed and innocence stolen. Heroes slaughtered. Parents unaware that their last hour with their children was really their last. Millions of hours spent tweeting, Facebooking, social networking, arguing and commiserating about gun laws, mental health, the whys, the hows and the what ifs and it's not doing anyone a bit of good.

Emilie Parker was just 6 years old when she was killed last week. Her father does not want the Connecticut massacre to "be something that defines us, but something that makes us all better." His clarity while submerged in his grief should make it clear to all of us that no matter what is going on in our own lives we have the ability to do good things.

The hours are flying by. Spend one in total awareness of your actions. Leave the nasty comments left unsaid. Stop the heavy sighs when annoyed. Smile at a child and smile at a stressed out parent. Spend an hour at a homeless shelter or volunteering for any cause you hold close to your heart. Committing to that one hour will feel so good you will crave more. Keep smiling at the neighbor who never smiles back. Extend your hand and don't pull back. This is simple stuff that has the power to make a stranger's difficult day better. This is pure good. And it has the power to make our own lives better. Do it in memory of the children in Connecticut who have no hours left.







 

 Blush Red

 I wore cherry red flats and a sleeveless dress with flowers, a scoop neck and a long zipper down the back. A very long zipper. I sewed that dress in Home Economics because in the 1970s girls were caught between two ideas; we could conquer the world and we better know how to sew, cook and clean a home like all good wives and moms. It took me three classes to sew in that damn zipper. I haven't sewn a zipper since. The shoes were shiny patent leather bought at Palais Royal, a Houston department store that's long gone. I really liked the dress and I loved the red shoes. My confidence was high.

 The school bus that took me home was filled with neighborhood middle schoolers and most of us had been sitting in class rooms together since kindergarten. On the day I wore my home made dress and red shoes, in the last row of the bus, was Craig, the new boy in the neighborhood. He had leap frogged from new kid to popular kid in the 2 weeks since school had started. I had a huge heart skipping crush on him.

 On that humid September afternoon, after the bus had dropped us off, our neighborhood gang stood at the end of the street kicking the pile of gravel that always ended up smack dab in the middle of the intersection. The all day procession of neighbors coming and going, turning left and turning right made little rocks fly out from under the white wall tires and those little rocks always ended up right back in the middle of our Queensbury Lane and the tree lined cross street that I think was named Reidel. The letters on the street sign aren't really important but spending a moment to try and remember the name is my way of procrastinating and avoiding the soul crushing sentence that I will type next...Craig, in front of everyone, told me my shoes looked like "mom shoes." The group of neighborhood kids, my allies, the same group that I raced bikes with and played a summer long game of baseball with, all agreed.

 My 12 year old cheeks were as scarlet as my cherry red flats.  How comedic and cruel that as we get older we have a hard time remembering where we left anything 20 minutes ago but in a split second we can name any one of hundreds of childhood incidents that made us feel taunted or unworthy. I imagine the back lit x ray of our hearts with patches, band aids and jagged scars.

 We remember the whens and hows of each and every mark. I know that having a boy publicly ridicule your patent leather flats isn't the end of the world. But, when you're 12 and the self conscious kind of girl who leaves the house every morning with eyeglasses on and then stuffs them in her purse before the first class of the day and then puts them back on right before her parents get home from work...well, you get the idea. No wonder my eyes never got any better. But my heart did. Only to be gashed and smashed countless more times over thoughtless remarks and acts that young girls and boys don't deal with very well. There was the same brutish but popular girl that had been my emotional nemesis from kindergarten until the final rehearsal for high school graduation, there were the times I did ridiculously stupid things that stemmed from insecurity, and there were even times that middle school and high school teachers behaved as badly as the students they disciplined.

 And then I had my own children. And I wanted to save them from the bad little seeds in preschool, the bullies in elementary school, the shovers and the hitters in middle school, and the word snipers in high school. I can hear your thoughts. "It's not possible." And you're half right.

 Insensitive people aren't going away. I knew I couldn't protect my children from every mean kid but I could give them a tough, impenetrable shell. I could remind them, day after day, that they are unique, they are worthy and they are loved. I could prepare them for the inevitable cruel barb, the jokes at their expense, and the certainty that zippers will be left unzipped, pants will rip, and they will trip not just up stairs and down and on uneven sidewalks but trip up and over life. It required being present in their lives. Very present. It required having conversations that, quite frankly, wore me out on some days and filled me with pride on others. It required face to face conversation and, for the times that I was thousands of miles away, daily phone time.

 My children are now 20 and 22. My daughter has always followed her heart in fashion and life and she thinks the people who have been less than kind must be dealing with their own problems. My son has never been a follower and has never cared much for what others think of him. Still waters run deep? That's him. They have issues and problems and the occasional crisis but they refrain from taking their problems out on other people. (Family is sometimes excluded and that's perfectly normal.)  Most of all, they are kind people. They have huge hopes and dreams but, as their mom, if all they ended up being was kind to others and happy with their life, I would be immensely proud.

 "The red shoes dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day." 
- The Red Shoes 1948

 Life is too short not to wear red shoes.  Oh, if I had known then all that I know now...well,  I wouldn't be the person I am today. Unfortunate incidents, good people and bad who have wandered into and out of my life, and a long list of my own mistakes have led me to this grateful moment.


 

 

Jump!

Writing words on paper. It sounds easy enough and I have a dozen or more first paragraphs floating through my brain. Today, I'm testing the waters. I'm putting my big toe in and checking the temperature. It seems okay. I'm not going to work on a technically perfect dive. I'm going to do this the easy way and just cannonball it. No more dry spells. Immersed. Buoyant. Back in the pool. Here I go.

All those first paragraphs I don't know what to do with? Here they are, in one rambling post. As I look back over my writing stops and starts that I don't know what to do with I often find a common thread. The latest thread is this: I've spent the last few years consciously working on becoming a better person. Just like life itself there's backsliding and progress but for the most part I can look back and see how far I've come.

Staying Positive
I steer clear of negativity and negative people. I know it's not entirely avoidable and my husband is probably reading this and sarcastically saying "Oh, really?"  I just came off of a weepy, sniffy and snot running weekend no thanks to a new medication that is toying with my emotions in a crueler fashion than any high school boyfriend. That's not the norm for me. Yes, I was that annoying young person who loved drama. I dog paddled through a sea of self imposed angst and I liked it. I guess I pictured myself as some suburban Plath or Hemingway but those days are long over and drama is overrated and highly annoying to others. For me, the repetition of positive thoughts produces more positive thoughts. Counting blessings is more productive than counting problems. How Pollyanna of me, right? It's nearly impossible to tell a negative person that concentrating on the positives really will make life better. It's not easy. It's especially not easy when you're drowning in turmoil. It requires discipline and daily and hourly reminders to pick yourself up and stop wallowing. And you know what? The more you work at it the easier it is. Sometimes it takes a good psychiatrist and medication and it always takes your own willingness to change. It took quite a while for me to see the benefits of living in gratitude and keeping  the past in the past where it belongs. I'm getting there.

Negative Space is a Positive Thing
The things we take away pull the things we keep into sharper focus. In my college design and layout classes I learned that it's the negative space that makes the subject matter pop. I try to apply that to the crazy design and layout of my own life.

I spend quite a bit of time in dead people's homes. That's not as strange a segue as you would think. At estate sales and auctions, where I find many of the retro and vintage items I resell,  I learn about people I  never met. I sift and sort through drawers and linen closets, pantries and garages and frayed velvet jewelry boxes.  This town is full of high class hoarders with collections of dusty figurines, old and brittle 78 rpm records, half full bottles of Chanel #5 and lingerie that proves that they did indeed love the nightlife way back when. So many memories living in their walls and hidden away in attics and cabinets. I find it fascinating but I couldn't live surrounded by so much stuff.

The clothes that spill out of our closets. The memory makers, trinkets and dust catchers that sit atop coffee tables and dressers. The furniture that anchors rooms. The people in our lives. They fill every space, nook and cranny in our physical and emotional world and we are so filled to the brim with things and thoughts that we often feel stuffed and clogged and sapped of energy. All this "stuff" takes the focus off of the relatively short list of things that are truly important. And as I get older I find that the list of important stuff grows shorter and shorter and the list of things I have discarded grows longer and longer. God, family, true friends and a box of memories are all I need.

Letting Go
Off my daughter went. No tears from me. Just a tiny bit of anxiety and a whole lot of happiness for her. She's 20 years old and flew across the country to film a movie for the third time in as many years but the difference this time is me. I'm not always this calm and I'm finally believing that the years of training myself to let go and let my children live their own lives is taking root.

I handle all of this much better than four years ago when my just turned 18 year old son flew from Los Angeles to Tennessee for a long weekend of music and mayhem known as the Bonnaroo Music Festival. His first trip to Bonnaroo meant 3 days of no sleep for me. I had the festival's live feed bookmarked and I crazily cleared my schedule to watch swaying and stoned patrons surge and surround stages. A tiny part of me wished I was 18 again. My brain has apparently filtered out the stench of  port-a-potties and sweaty stoners. An anxious and fearful part of me was scared to death that he would make a bad choice that would result in arrest or death. Yes, I make things much bigger in my own head than they are in real life and that's the flaw that needs addressing next.

I survived the weekend and so did he. And he went back the next year and I never once checked the live feed.

Restraint
Restraint is a good thing. As in less is more. Not restraint as in a Fifty Shades of Grey way. (C'mon ladies. I know you were thinking it.) I'm talking about restraining from excessive babble. Restraining from cruel comments. Restraining from inane chit chat and talking just to hear yourself talk. I often wish I had the quiet presence of some of my Midwest friends and not the Southern tendency to celebrate the gift of gab. I've tried to find a happy medium and I think I'm almost there but catch me on one of my more manic days and I'll chat up the customer next to me in line, post more than necessary on Facebook, offer advice to people who never asked and deliver an insensitive comment to someone I love. I've begun to ask myself, before speaking, if my words will help or heal, build up or tear down. It requires being present and living in the moment when I would much rather not expend the energy but the rewards have been too great to revert back to my old ways.

Staying True
I feel sorry for John Travolta and the "alleged" predicament that has caught him in a snare. The rumors about his overzealous behavior in spas and bath houses have persisted for years. If he is a gay man then I am so sorry that he has never been able to proudly proclaim his true self to the world. I am sorry he was sucked into a cult that dictates how he must live. I will heed my own advice in the paragraph above and restrain from spouting off about crazy Scientology.

In the Tao Te Ching, written in the 6th Century BC,  it says "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."  Staying true to yourself is apparently an age old problem. I'm sorry we live in a world that judges and demeans. When we deny our true self all kinds of problem rise to the surface and many of us are not unlike Mr. Travolta. The things we deny may not be our sexuality but they are just as important.

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You know when you're a kid and you stand at the end of the diving board for 5 minutes before jumping? The swimmers in line are yelling at you to hurry up. You think "What if I've forgotten how to swim?" When you finally hit the water, touch the bottom of the pool and push back up towards the sunlight it feels so good. And it reminds me of when my son was 4 or 5 and he was the one standing at the end of the diving board. He finally jumped...and he really had forgotten how to swim. He sputtered, arms flailed, his little head bobbed to the surface one or twice but he clearly remembered nothing about the mechanics of swimming. His dad and lifeguards were all there to fish him out and show him how to swim again. Here's hoping that all of us have people to teach us how to swim when we forget how.