The Fourth House...

I love my job.  There are aspects that I could do without, of course; and even the best of jobs has the worst of days.  Sometimes it is frustrating, often it is stressful, it is almost never completed, and it is always tiring.  All in all, however, I truly enjoy teaching classes, connecting with students, and generally trying to make the world a better place in my own small corner of it.  I may not like starting my day when it is dark and ending when it is dark, but the exhilaration – or ‘teacher’s high’ – after that last class is undeniable.

This is not a blog about my job, though.

Some time ago, I made the choice to live in the moment as much as I could.  I’ve refined it to live in the day.  By this I mean that if there is something undesirable coming towards me, I will simply enjoy all the desirable moments in between.  By not letting these dreaded moments rule my life, I’ve come to enjoy the intervening moments all that much more and the interruption of undesired necessity is that much easier to endure.  This means that every evening spent at home I am really, truly, at home.  I’m not thinking about the dentist or that visit from the realtor, or the nine thousand errands I have to run.  I may be grading or thinking about the next school day, but only in terms of preparation.

But this is not a blog about changing my daily perspective.

I only want it understood that the following is not about finally getting free of a job that I don’t like or simply the relief that comes from leaving a necessary, but unwelcome, place.  It’s not about letting go of dread or not taking the moments of my life for granted.  I have a very good life and my workplace is filled with some of the funniest, kindest, and supportive people I know.  No, this blog is not about letting go of worry or about getting away from something, but rather it is very much about returning to something.

One of the best parts of my day is the moment I get close enough to my driveway to see that my husband’s car is already there (and not because it is a nice car, though he’d tell you that it is if you asked him).  That car sitting there means that there are lights on inside, there’s a hug waiting for me, and there’s someone to talk to.  Sometimes it even means that dinner will already be cooking.  It’s walking in the door and instantly feeling that I’m home.

Home is where I am a side of me that I only touch on at work.  It’s when I relax and can be silly, I can wear my frumpiest clothes and feel like the most beautiful woman on the planet.  I can make immature jokes and act like an idiot and it will be met in kind and with laughter.  I spend most of my evenings being reminded that I can be silly and that life is too short to be too serious for too long and too full of love to be wallowing in fear or worry about the wider world.  That part of me is always there, but there’s something about him that makes it that much more likely to thrive.  Our lives are not complicated or enriched by children – though we have three cats and a dog that keep us on our toes in various ways.  For a large part of our existence these days, it is just him and I.

Him and I.

We’ve had some upheavals of late and though they don’t really belong here, it is enough to say that we’ve both made colossal mistakes, we’ve both found our worlds suddenly a little smaller, and we both rediscovered what it means to be in love.  My world is both bigger and smaller, both deeper and lighter, both sillier and more emotional.  I have new dreams and plans to get there.  Not worrying about the future has gotten so much easier because my present feels content and reinforced.  This is where I want to be.

Here.  With him.

He is the light to my darkness – laughing when I try so hard to be serious.  He is the dark to my lightness – keeping my idealism closer to earth with a healthy dose of realism.  He is the confidence to my insecurities.  His height gives him a perspective that I don’t have and yet he doesn’t look over me or overlook me.  We work together well and though we have our troubles, like all couples, we are suddenly becoming much more adept at working through them together.

Together.

A thousand clichés talk about marrying one’s best friend and the importance communication, and a thousand clichés can’t be wholly wrong.  I am more content now than I have been in a long time, though I see the world around us and worry that the End Times are upon us.  I am content because my immediate world is beautiful in all its oddity.  

One of the greatest feelings in the world is my hand in his.  Or the warmth of him next to me as I lie awake at night and slowly will my aching back to ease up enough for sleep.  There is something comforting about the warm weight of a loved one nearby – be it cat or dog or human.  My house is one full of love and it’s a love that extends to the houses of my parents and my siblings.  The world spins around us, and yet I have so much love in my life to support me as I try not to let the emotions and the craziness crush me.   I’m not afraid or ashamed to talk about the love I have for my parents, my siblings, my sibling’s spouses and children.  I am proud and humbled that there are three houses I can go to that are filled with love and where I am accepted for who I am – for all my quirks and mistakes, my talents and abilities.  I am loved for who I am.  And, at the end of the day, the fourth house is the one I call home.  It is my home and my heart, my soul and my life because he is there.

Him and I.

Home.

Together.

Us.

Christmas Shoes...

Yesterday afternoon, when my long day of conferences had ended itself satisfactorily, I headed to the mall to run an errand or two. I wanted to exchange a shirt J had gotten for his birthday (he is just “& Tall” without the “Big” part and that can make sizing interesting) and I wanted to get the gifts for the Angel I took off the Angel Tree at school. It’s not often I get to shop for a little girl and it seemed like a nice soothing way to spend an hour or two. Down time.


I wandered around looking at all sorts of things and ended up picking two pants and jacket sets that were made of the same kind of fuzzy material as my favorite blankets. I also found a stuffed Clarice from Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer – complete with the little bow on her ear. When I took my items up to the cash register, I struck up a conversation with the young lady who was ringing up my purchases. It was the sort of throw-away conversation we often have in such situations. She commented on how one of the fuzzy outfits was adorable and I agreed, adding that it also looked warm and cozy. I said that if the little girl was poor, she could probably use some warm clothes. And I explained who I was buying for and why. She nodded and made sympathetic noises. Up until that point, it was just the sort of casual conversation you have with the people who briefly pass into your life as you briefly pass into theirs.


Except then it wasn’t anymore.


She mentioned that a school had asked if she would like to be ON their tree and she declined. She said that they were on Food Stamps, but they weren’t poor, they just needed a little help. She wanted to save the space on the Tree for the people who really needed it. Then she smiled a little and said “I’ve got three boys, see.” All the while, her hands were moving, folding little clothes and ringing up my sale. That casual moment of small-talk politeness turned into a heart-felt conversation about the necessity of helping those who are less fortunate that we are and, then, in a moment or two, I was walking away, her attention already diverted to a woman who kept saying “boys slippers?” in the middle of our transaction. I was still thinking about her words as I made my way out into the chill air and on to a hot meal and a warm house. I just kept thinking about how she didn’t want to take more than she needed, and all she needed was a little help.


So many of us could learn from this woman’s quiet wisdom. She seemed to think nothing of discussing with a stranger that she is careful to not take more than she needs, even as she is clearly working hard to make life better for her three boys. Her simple statement of appreciation for what she has is something that I wish everyone would stop and realize about their own lives. We should all look at life this way – acknowledging blessings, being thankful, taking only what we need, helping those who have it worse. We should all strive to create a world where this conversation wouldn’t be so remarkable. We can do this – we can start with our own hearts, start by being generous, being kind, being helpful, being humble, being joyful, and being thankful. We can make the world a better place.


We just need a little help. 

Thankful...

Every day I struggle to accept the darkness of the world and to somehow make sense of the cruelties and craziness. It is a struggle to stay optimistic sometimes, in the light of such things.

But on some days – like this day – I am surrounded by family and friends, by good food and memories in the making. On days like this, it is easier to forget the sadness of the world – for I am face to face with the things which fill my life with joy and happiness. My family and my dear ones are what keep the madness at bay and I ‘m forever thankful that the only tears I shed today will be born from laughter and from the lingering sadness of missing my grandparents, my aunt. I can feel them with us at every turn, though.



And so…for you, and them, and me, and all, I write this:



The world is dark and dangerous,

The days are long and bleak,

And so my eyes stay close to home

For the Thursday of this week.



A day of thanks for all I have

Though I feel it every day

The rays of color in my life

That keep back shades of grey.



Friend and family lines are blurred

As we lay the table fair

And in these bustling moments,

I lay my soul to bare.



I love you if you’re reading this,

My life you’ve wreathed in light

May you find all that you’re looking for,

Be it here or gone from sight.



May each memory you have not made

And those of days now past,

Bring you peace and joy unbound

And love to everlast.

Serendipity and Ghosts...

Sometimes I see things that aren’t there.

It's true.  Out of the corner of my eye, I sometimes see shadows large or small – just a shape, a movement, a sense that there’s something there that’s just out of reach of my senses. When I turn to look, I see, of course, nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about this – perhaps because all too recently, we watched my husband’s grandmother slip into the clutches of dementia. She saw people the rest of us could not see and quietly rewrote history by some unknown guidelines that none of us knew. We couldn’t truly understand it, and it was frightening.  We ache as we watch and wonder what it is like to lose control of our faculties and be rendered to a point where we cannot tell what is real and what is the product of a damaged mind. And we wonder if, in the end, we’ll even care.

But, my own experiences with things that others cannot see is much different.  It's also been happening more often lately and while I know it could be cause for concern in another context, I honestly don’t think it is in mine.  If pressed, I think most would admit to having experienced something similar at some point, though it may not have registered. I also suspect, from a rational point of view, that because I’m looking for anomalies, I am finding them. Or it’s the heat or a stray hair or countless other things that are less resistant to reason.  I'm sure, also, that because I’m more aware of it, I’m noticing it more. I do not think it is ghosts or spirits or anything supernatural.

Or maybe I do.

Maybe I don’t know what they are and don’t really care. It doesn’t feel like I’m losing my rational mind – I never see something out of the corner of my eye and think it’s a real person. And when I turn to find nothing looking back at me, I don’t look around in a panic, wondering where whomever it was went. I just sort of shrug and move on. Nothing feels amiss in my brain or in my reality. Nothing feels menacing within my mind or without – it’s just the idea that there’s something there, but when I look at it, it leaves my perception.

I’m not sure if this blog is braver than the one about same-sex marriage, but it is certainly up there. There are those of you out there who will nod and smile at this – having experienced similar sightings before and feeling no fear at your grip on reality. There are those who will think I’m crazy – but you already do, so I’m not sure it’s dangerous for me to share. I believe all of this is harmless.

Most of you know that I am not religious in any conventional way – there is no name for what I believe in. Someday I will write about that – but for now, I will say that I believe that no matter how one might categorize it, there are things in this world that we cannot understand. There are things that don’t fit neatly into what we know and accept as real. There are forces in the world that will make you find the exact book you are looking for in a crowded bookstore just by reaching out your hand. Or something that lands a financial opportunity at your feet on the very day you were discussing money with a loved one. Or believing you saw the shape of your grandmother – gone for two years – disappear in a crowd as you leave from a visit with your grandfather in the hospital. Or something that makes you stay up way too late on the one night that a near-stranger desperately needs someone to talk to.

Coincidence. Random occurrence. Tricks of the mind. Perhaps these – but what if they are not? What if those are words and phrases for the forces of the world that we cannot explain? Do we render ourselves too vulnerable if we admit that things happen that cannot be explained through science as we know it? There is an awful lot of ugliness in the world, and it does my spirit good to believe that there is some sort of force out there that, through my own will or another’s, makes things go right sometimes. So, maybe that shadow is just a trick of the light or a tired mind – or maybe it’s something else. Either way, I will see its presence – for just a brief moment – with eyes of wonder and curiosity.

It is these moments that we praise the lucky coincidence, being in the right place at the right time, opportunity knocking, or even saying that fortune favors the blind.

Give me that which I cannot understand...blur my dreams with my reality...let me have my formless shapes...they harm no one and perhaps if we all slowed own and looked to the shadows that dance just out of our line of sight, we would find more beauty and wonder in the world...

“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical” – Albert Einstein

“There are no coincidences... only the illusion of coincidence.” – V in V for Vendetta

An Open Christmas Letter...

This is an open letter to all of those for whom Christmas has been tainted by the overwhelming social pressure to conform to forced generosity that seems to darken the act of giving with the rot of obligation.

It is to those for whom Christmas is borne from a religion that does not speak to the heart, though the story is a beautiful one of shining deeds of love and wisdom in a bygone time.

It is to those for whom days become irritatingly counted and shortened by the joyous displays that come to us when the days are still warm and the leaves are still dancing on late summer breezes.

It is for those who find the season the most painful time of the year for these reasons and for countless others.  My message is simple, but it comes from a heart that has learned to look past all of this to find the small joys and the deep warmth that can be all around us despite the cold days, the cold commercialism, the cold rush for the latest purchase, the cold bustle of days growing shorter even as the list of stresses grows longer.

Brush these disconnects aside and what is left...

Christmas is love; it is a time for family and warmth, for friends and laughter, for good cheer and good wishes.  I will forever believe that the holiday spirit can sink into even the bluest of hearts and so this is my Christmas message to those who need greater words of warmth, of happiness, of comfort, and of good wishes…

You have the power to touch lives; I know this because you have touched mine.  Each day I spend in this world is made brighter because you are a part of it.  The sun shines brighter, the snow is more beautiful, and the smiles come more willingly.  Friendship in all its myriad forms is one of the most powerful gifts we can both give and receive, and I am honored to call you one, even in passing, and I know I am not alone.  The love between you and your dearest friends is an amazing thing – two people who can be across the world, across the street, or across the room and share so much using whatever means are available and making them come alive.

Those who love you are never alone…for even when you are lost in a busy store or a thousand tasks, you are always in their hearts.  You are in thoughts and, for some, the arbitrary lines between family and friend are forever blurred.  Your friendship brings smiles to faces even though you may never see them.  The thought of you warms a heart, cheers a dark evening, brightens a snowy day.  Christmas, then, is 'just another reason' to remember all of those who have touched our lives and celebrate them.

In light of these thoughts, I will share my good wishes for you...

May the blue in your heart find red and green and the silver of a shining star. May your days be full of sunshine and blue skies…and should it snow, may a snowflake stay on the tip of your nose until you cannot help but smile.  May you feel the Christmas spirit you so richly deserve.  May you know that you are loved, that you have touched lives, and that each day you draw breath is cause for celebration.  Each day you spend on this earth is a day that brings someone – numerous someones – joy.  May this thought be what cuts through the darkness and may you know, now and always, that the darkness need never overwhelm your heart because you are, to me and countless others, a blessing.  You are the greatest gift.

Merry Christmas.

Bright out of Dark...

I almost stopped being a writer a few years back.

Through a series of accidents and incidents, I lost a great deal of what I'd written due to, of all things, hardware failure and a healthy dose of human error.  It's the story I tell my students about why they should back up everything.  I should have known better, of course, but what it really boiled down to is a heartbreaking incident that nearly made me set aside my metaphorical pen for good.  The very thought of trying to refill the annals of my work (whether or not it was good work is largely beside the point) made my heart ache.  A keen sense of loss that is hard to explain.  But, this is not the story of that heartache...just the unintended positives that I never would have expected.

I'll use an incident or two to explain....

My dissertation was one of the things that was lost -- not that I don't have numerous hard copies, but the very thought of trying to turn that back into digital format made my fingers hurt.  Over 200 pages.  I felt exultation when I completed it and defended it, but that did not mean I wanted to have to recreate the whole thing so I could archive it digitally.  I would never be  able to transcribe my 30-year-old writing without my 37-year-old self editing and changing it.  So, I had to make do with the drafts and cobbled together chapters that I had saved, for some reason, somewhere else.  Fast forward a few years to a September afternoon of helping my brother move and I happened to mention that I wished I knew what had happened to the mini-disks I had with my dissertation on them (those, too, had vanished).  Imagine my joy when my brother casually mentioned that he had one of them.  There it was...a tiny silver disk with the culmination of 12 and a half years of college and countless late nights and desperate moments in neat, compact, preservable form.  It was like trying on a favorite sweater and finding it still fit.  Or pulling up the couch cushions and seeing that missing earring.  Joy.

More recently, over dinner, I was telling my parents about the "Bones in the Dirt" story I posted a few blogs ago and how my sister-in-law told me I needed to write more of it because she was hooked.  As I was talking about how I wasn't sure where I was going with the story next, my husband said something that reawakened the pangs of loss again.  He reminded me of a story that I have never truly forgotten since when I wrote it and then read to him early on in our relationship.  It was a good story, which is not something I am often comfortable saying (I dislike most of what I write most of the time).  Though, at this point, I'm honestly not sure if I think what I wrote is good (I remember little of it) or I simply like where the story came from.  It was inspired by a barn over in Pittsford.  Every time they put a "For Sale" sign on it, someone would spray paint 'Leave it Alone' on it.  My imagination took that and ran with it -- loving the mystery of it all.  Eventually it did sell and was put on the register of historic places and thus, I'm sure, the vandal was appeased.  The story I wrote started with the sale and the vandal and went from there.  Like "Bones in the Dirt," however, it was unfinished.

When I read it to my husband years ago, I seem to recall him actually getting frustrated because the story was incomplete and he wanted to know what happened.  He reiterated this at dinner the other night and I found myself amazed that he had remembered it and harbored that frustration over so many years.  I began wondering if, somehow, I still had the story somewhere.  I dared hope.  That level of emotional investment from an outside was worth exploring, I thought.  So, the next evening we looked and looked, but to no avail -- this was before Gmail, before the cloud, before I backed things up.  As far as I could tell, the story was gone. 

And I missed it.  I wasn't sure if I could recreate it.

Then, on a whim, I emailed a friend to whom I had been in the habit of sending things I had written.  His first reply was disheartening.  It doesn't sound familiar.  My heart sank and I sighed that deep sigh of resignation.  It was that moment when the heart knows that all hope is gone.  I wondered if I could recreate it.  I wondered....and then I got a second email....

"It wasn't a building that had aged well, standing stately and tall as the years wrapped it in coats of age.  It was merely a barn with barely the strength to stand and it looked out over one of the busiest roads in Glenville..."

That was the first line.  He found the hard copy and typed in just that first line.  At this moment I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail.  My old friend.  That line of email was like getting a phone call from someone whom I thought had died.  It is such a powerful feeling and one that has been repeated from time to time over the years as things I had stowed away somewhere made their presence known again.  As the lost was found.  I may never find it all, but I love those moments when something is rediscovered.  If I could go back and save it all, I would in a heartbeat, but since I cannot, I will take these moments of joy with gratitude and joy.  And, perhaps more importantly, I will keep picking up that metaphorical pen and welcoming the Muse when she comes.

This writer has more to say, and will not let the lost words silence those not yet spoken...

-T