Fairy Tales

O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.” 
― Leo Rosten

     Once again, I present the reader with words that make me feel alive.  I don't really know what it is about this quote from Leo Rosten that resonates so much in me.  I've read it over at least 20 times in the past few days and every time I read it, I get chills.  Perhaps it is because I know now how true it is.  I know that, as an adult, I am preoccupied with responsibility.  I have work to do and little time for play.  Those uncomfortable disguises become like skin and become who I am.

    And, once in a while (especially in the summertime), the child breaks the adult disguise and shows herself.  She really needs very little.  She is a happy kid who needs only healthy food, a place to run and play, sunshine, naps, and connections with people who love her.  How simple is that?

   And fairy tales?  Fairy tales tend to include fantasy characters and often involve enchantment or magic.  They can end with unusual happiness (as in:  "The story had a fairy tale ending" ).  Fairy tales are not only stories that aren't true; they are stories that can't be true.  The child lives in a world that can't be true as she will find out when the uncomfortable disguises of adulthood become her uniform.

    So perhaps the attraction to the words has to do with a longing to hold the child, to spend more time with her.  But that sparks of a fairy tale, a story that can't be true.  The days to be a child were then.  Now?  You can visit those days but you can't go back there.  Spending my work days with big kids does allow me to visit those days and, for that, I am fortunate.  But how about those little tiny kid days? That is when the child is fully alive, fully living in the moment.  Meet two of my favorite little kids here.
Never mind that they are now all grown up......

2012 Update

     Back on January 1, I wrote this post about the new year and the fifty things I was going to do in 2012.  In mid- March I checked in here with my progress.  I didn't go through each item but I selected three that I had been faithful to and three that I could refocus my energies on.   Considering that it is now June, it seems as if it is time for another update.

     The three things that I seemed to be on track with in March were continuing to get daily exercise (via new running shoes purchased in January), writing on a more consistent basis, and learning to say no when someone else's plan for me didn't match my own plan.  I am still hanging in there with those three.  The three things that could deserve more attention?  A daily meditation habit, a trip to Alaska in June, and more frequent afternoon walks for Ellie.  Hmmmmm - all three of those are sitting where they were in March.  Meditation is a should (and in direct conflict with say no to stuff you don't want to do).  Alaska?  That's a no go although I am eager and up for some kind of adventure over the next two months.  Walking Ellie?  She gets lots of morning walks but I am up for some late afternoon walks as summer settles in.

  Okay, so let's see where I am with six other goals.

   #9.  Remember that life is short and then you die.  Yup.  Got that one covered.  Maybe too well.

Qualify as quirky?

   #33.  Take more photographs.  Yup.  Got that one covered too.  These days I carry the iphone and often the little Canon camera on walks and here and there.  My eyes are open to beauty and curiosity everywhere.  I enjoy adding photos and graphics to my blog and my preference is that I take them from my own library.  I am jazzed to expand that library this summer.  I have a million flowers and beach photos.  Looking for quirky, urban and faces now.

   #41.  Repot the house plants.  Yup.  I actually did  that about a month ago.  One sunny Saturday set me in motion on that project and they are thriving.  Checked off for at least another year.

  #1.  Go out to the beach at least once a month.  Nope.  So not on track with that one.  But I am not giving up.  WIth more free time over the next two months, I will make up for some lost time earlier in the year.  I hope to reconnect in a way that I won't lose this in the fall.

Current read

   #46.  Read at some other time than right before I go to sleep at night.  I am getting better at this one and now we are coming into the reading season.  Summer is all about reading.  Reading in the afternoon, reading early in the morning, reading novels and gripping stories.  I read less non fiction and more fiction in the summer.  I can be captivated by stories.  Whoo hoo!

   #48.  Write more love letters.  Ahhhh, I like that one!  I want to refocus on what I love in life and then tell it that I love it.  Fun!  Look for more in the second half of the year than you saw in the first.

     Okay, there it is for all the world to see.  My list of fifty for 2012 is still in my awareness.  Hello, summer!  I will cherish every moment that is you.  Guaranteed.

Be Daring

      This is a photograph of a poster which lives in my office at work.  I can't remember where I got the poster but I can tell you it snags my attention on a daily basis.  What is it that is so attractive about this poster?  Yes, the dog is cool, for sure, and he (yes, he is a he) is irresistible.  But it is the words that mesmerize me and wrap me around their sounds.  I can't even really tell you what they mean.  They simply evoke familiarity and yearning:

       "Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."    Cecil Beaton


    In all honesty, I think I am a play-it-safer.  I live a conventional life in a nondescript small  town.  There is nothing exceptional about me or my family.  I want to be daring but I am not brave enough to be daring.  I want to be different, but what's the point of that?  Be different for the sake of different?  I don't think so.  Rarely am I impractical.  I grew up knowing frugality and hard work.  Doesn't blend so well with impracticality.

   Why do the words capture me so much?  What do you think?

Last Day

      Today is the last student day of the 2011/2012 school year.  In the wee hours of the morning here, I can reflect briefly on the significance of this fact.  My school underwent remarkable change this year, transitioning from a 6-8 campus to a K - 8 campus and doubling our population in the process.  We also started the year with a new office manager, a new principal and 8 new (to us) teachers. We had 220 new kids (and sets of parents) to embrace.  Needless to say, the year was jam packed with tension and novelty.  In fact, I can't even remember the individual days.  They are crowded behind the challenges and demands, peeking out from behind the headaches and pleasures of being a guidance counselor.

      Yes, it is the last student day.  Another year of my life spent in education wraps up today.  I have lived all my life on the academic calendar - as a student and then as an educator/counselor.  I know many people think those of us who work the academic calendar are wimps because, oh my gosh! we get three months off every summer! To be sure, if you work the academic calendar, you do have more time off than many others in the work world.  My office will be closed for six weeks this summer, and yes, the office is closed for two weeks in December and another week in the spring.  That's a total of nine weeks along with a handful of Federal holidays.  Not quite the three months in the summer that much of the world thinks I have, heh?

     So, yes, I have about ten weeks off in a year.  Do I have to remind you that my salary reflects that?  I am not whining about poorly paid educators.  I am only reminding you that I pay for that time off.  I started teaching in 1978 and have a Masters degree and two teaching credentials.  I am at the top of the salary schedule and make a  little over $60,000 / year.  My 27 year old son has a Masters degree in environmental planning.  His starting salary for full time work is in the $60,000 range.  Hmmmmmm.....

      So cheers to another school year and another year of my life.  Although I will still be in the office for a couple  more weeks, the pace will be more manageable and I will be breathing more frequently.  I hope to be posting more frequently as well.

     Goodbye, school year!
     Hello, summertime!

   

I Can Hear

Silence.
Silence is safety
If you don't say anything, no one can get you on anything.
They can think all they want, but they got nothing.
You can hide.  You can be as invisible as you need to be.

I have been silent in this warm world of bloggers.
It is nothing about any of my strong and supportive blogger friends.
It is me, digging deep and coming up short.
It is me, lost and preferring to stay lost.
When you are lost, you are in survival mode
and I am lost.
I am in survival mode.

It's not about work, although work can suffocate me.
I don't know what it is about but I am hoping summer will reveal secrets.
I crave safety right now.
Not the physical safety.  That has never been my issue.
I crave what? emotional safety?
What the hell is that?
And how do you find it?

Sounds so trite.
Sounds so weak.
Nope.  Not me.

I just want you all to know that I am still here.  I am practicing silence and listening to the fish
so that I can hear.
I want to hear what it means to be the salt of the earth.
I want to hear what is ordinary.
I want to hear about predictability and safeness and
what does it sound like to take risks.
Does courage have a voice?
If yes, I want to hear that voice.

I want to hear what it feels like to be alive.

Do The Fish See?

Pools deep and dark
smooth steel with an edge
of broken glass

Sand drifting
covering voices and bodies
soft shadow hides

Stillness and silence
close to the ground
with eyes on the sky

Do the fish see?
Shimmering screams
What do they want?

Again

Big blue sky, warm breeze,
and May
flutter my job.
I can do this.

Long day's end
discouragement takes up
residence.
I am buried.

I can't do this.
I can't be this.
I don't care.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake

     I have enjoyed several of author Anna Quindlen's novels.  She wrote  One True Thing which is  one of my all time favorite books.  She also wrote another very compelling novel entitled Black and Blue.  She was a columnist for the NY Times and has written several collections of essays, all of which I have read.  I was delighted to discover that she was coming out with a memoir and was on the pre-order list for Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake.

      My copy arrived last Wednesday and I dove right into it.  In some ways it resonated with me.  This is a woman about my age with whom I share a cultural history.  We came of age when the second feminist movement was being born and we have lived with the confusions of that time.  As she so nicely put it, "We were the heiresses to a woman's movement that had broken the world wide open.  But we were completely making it up as we went along, at work, at home, in our own minds, trying to be both our mothers and our fathers simultaneously.  That wasn't easy."  From where I sit now in life, I know that struggle.  I am happy, however,  to have had the benefit of a changing culture and it all seems so normal now.

     The book is really a collection of essays, each of which could stand on its own, about what it means to be in the second half of life.  Quindlen tackles many of the expected issues:  marriage, girlfriends, acquisition of stuff, bodies, parenting, changing perspectives, and more.  Although I admire her writing style, I found the book somewhat disappointing.  For one thing, it seemed repetitious.  It dragged at places and it seemed as if she was putting words on the page just to add to the page number.  The second criticism is my own bias but Quindlen is a woman of privilege.  She was raised in a wealthy family and she is a woman of personal wealth now.  I have a tough time relating to her life of relative ease.  Additionally, Quindlen is a reporter and her book reads like a newspaper article.  It lacks humanity and warmth and that actually surprised me.  So, I got this just released book on Wednesday, finished it by today, and sold it back on Amazon already.  Off in the mail it goes tomorrow.  It will be leaving me with a few things about which to think and write but without much misgiving.

One word review:  Meh

Clothing as Art

      In a recent post I wrote the worn out rag on why why why the big deal about appearance for women - why is there such a focus on what a woman looks like on the outside, on how she shapes up (as it were), particularly in comparison to others?  The finger keeps getting pointed at the media and the desire to sell products.  Fair enough

    The comments made on that post were thought provoking for me.  It occurred to me that I actually like clothing.  I see getting dressed most mornings as an artistic endeavor.  My sweet daughter has been instrumental in helping me develop an eye for clothing and now I like putting stuff together.  I will never wear anything in which I do not feel comfortable.  I won't wear shoes that hurt, or underwear that won't allow me to breathe, or a top that is more revealing than I care to be.  I do, however, like to dress in a way that suggests that I can have fun, that I still like to flirt and play, that I care about how I look.  I don't have a lot of time or money so I make do with what I do have.  My Sissy Girl goes through my closet with me periodically and helps me see different combinations.  She will go shopping with me once every four or five months.  She is especially good at helping me find shoes that I like, that are eye-catching,  and that fit well.  She is amazing.

      And this is all good.  I do get my hair cut about every six weeks and play with the color about every three months.  I have very little gray (thank you, Papa) but my natural color is now kind of a mousey brown so I enjoy sparking it up with some darker shades and some dark red - or something.  Whatever the stylist wants to go do.  It;s fun to experiment and it's just hair - it grows and fast.  I like my skin.  It surely shows my age and I am okay with that.  I still like to apply some foundation, little powder, a brushing of mascara, and a little lip color.  Voila! Less than five minutes and I don't look at it for the rest of the day.

      It's funny.  I work at a middle school.  I am always surprised at how much the kids are watching the adults.  Just about every day, a student (girl or boy) will comment on something that I am wearing - anything from shoes (my recently acquired Carpe Diem Toms are quite popular as are my leopard flats), my earrings (the more sparkly the better), my shift in hair color (I have many of them convinced that the salon will not do blue streaks if you over 30..... my way of avoiding that one), my skirts , or just about anything I wear.  I do notice what they wear and comment often to kids (just another way to let them know I see them).  I guess what I am saying is that clothing can be fun.  Clothing is personal expression. It is art in the world.  It can connect people and it can define people.  My boots and a cool jackiet can take a gray day and turn it into something more fun.  It's the little things, you know?

Time, Money, and Energy. For What?

      Melanie  over at Is This The Middle  wrote a reflective post the other day in which she considered her  "Ashley Judd Moment".  She included a request that people make an effort not to reconsider how they talk about women.  Her point was that "pervasive negativity about women and their looks has got to stop".  I thought that the blog piece was insightful and honest.  The comments were too, especially this one  from by blogger friend  Word Nerd:

       "As a young mom, I was overly-critical of my "I've had babies" belly. Pretty much all of the women I knew at that time saw themselves in much that same way. Focused on the flaws...... We need to cut other women a break. We need to cut ourselves a break. And we need to stop believing somewhere deep inside that how we look matters in any real way."


    This observation is not news to any thinking woman out there but it stopped me dead in my tracks.  What is it about the whole appearance thing that makes so many women put so much time, money, and energy into how they look?  I care enough about myself to always want to appear (in public anyway) in presentable clothing with my hair at least brushed.  I am not necessarily dressed in up to date and put together in fashionable style but you won't find me at the store in my flannel pj pants and a too large tee shirt.  


      The issue, for me, is why is appearance so important?  What are we going for here?  Woman spend millions of dollars on "makeup solutions" and designer clothes.  They spend hours at beauty salons and nail centers.  They spend countless amounts of personal energy worrying about weight gain and wrinkles.  Imagine what positive changes could be wrought world wide if that money, time, and personal energy were put in the service some cause that is important to that woman: animal cruelty, environmental issues, social justice issues, whatever.


       I look back on photos of me in my late teens and wow! What a gorgeous smile and beautiful young woman.  But, I can assure you, I NEVER saw that young woman then.  I only saw a flawed female - and I am embarrassed now to say that.  And, the even sadder truth is that, until just a few years ago, I always found myself physically flawed - too this, not enough that.   Why is it different now?  I don't know.  I just dont' think about it much anymore.  I still want to look presentable but, for the most part, I spend my time, money, and energy on more valuable pursuits. Maybe it's because I am growing into the truly invisible years - the years when it is almost impossible to be seen. 


        This post is wandering all over the place.  Too many themes going on here but it is all jumbled in my head.

So think about answering any of these questions:


Why do women focus on appearance?  Do you?
I love what Word Nerd says about how is it that we believe that how we look matters in any real way?  What do you think?
The thing that attracts me the most in other people is the sparkle in their eyes and their smile.  How about you?  What do you notice in other people?


       I would love to hear your thoughts.