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March 5th, 2012 Today was one of those lovely spring Cape Cod afternoons by the sea. I spent it exploring Falmouth, a cape town I’d never been to. I met an author friend of mine for lunch. We ate at Molly’s Tea Room on Main St. It’s cozy decor and wonderful smells coming from the kitchen welcomed us. I had the cutest cup of soup – chicken pot pie soup. It was a delicious chicken soup with a tiny dumpling pastry floating on top. We shared a pot of Autumn African tea that was out of this world.
After our meal we walked down the street to Eight Cousins Book Store. This was where I was very proud and inspired by my author friend. Right on the front counter was her first children’s book that came out just a few weeks ago. It’s called Cape Cod Memory Makers – Explore the Town of Falmouth. I promptly bought a copy and had her sign it. This is a delightfully fun book where two children create a travel journal by visiting interesting places in Falmouth. In between each place visited there are two lined pages where children can record their own memories while visiting Falmouth. Children visiting the cape this summer could really have fun making their own memory book, while enhancing their writing skills. This was an excellent idea for a children’s book and more are planned for different cape towns.
Cape Cod Memory Makers by my friend Joan Walsh, illustrated by Anne Sessions Barber, is available at Eight Cousins Book Store in Falmouth for those of you visiting the cape with children this summer.
Many of you know I am writing my own children’s picture story book and have walked the journey with me so far. Starting down an unknown road is daunting and, at times, overwhelming when you find out just how much you don’t know. Writers like my friend Joan, who had a dream and saw it through to fruition, inspire me to keep going no matter how high the mountain gets. As my email signature says:
“You can’t give up on the things you love, not ever…”
Charlotte ~ Private Practice
Walking in that store today and seeing my friend’s book on the shelf just proves that. Pursue your dream. Never give up.
Thanks Joan, for your friendship, inspiration, and help, (and the fun day today)
And so, as another day goes by, I give gratitude for the wonderful friends I have here on the cape that enrich my life and help me keep my dreams alive, and…I have written.
March 4th, 2012 My mother-in-law did. I lived with my mother-in-law for five years. She was staunch Italian and believed in ghosts and Jesus. No one, and my daughters will second this, ever brought the spirit world closer to us than my mother-in-law.
For five years, whenever she lost something, I watched her pray to St. Anthony and remain calm for weeks and months, confident she’d find it. One time, she lost a gold bracelet my father-in-law had given her. He passed away and this made her really sad. It was the dead of winter when she lost it. She prayed to St. Anthony like she always did, then let it go. Do you believe five months later my sister found it in her driveway when the snow melted? And that wasn’t the only time. Getting up there in years, she lost a lot of things around the house. She’d say her prayer and pretty soon she’d find the lost object. One time it was $300, so I figured I’d better pay attention – she had something here.
About a month ago my husband lost a ring that he had made with diamonds and rubies that she had given him before she died. He was beside himself. Now, normally when my husband is upset about something, I am too. This time I was strangely peaceful. I did what Mom B always did. I prayed to St. Anthony. I didn’t get upset over the loss. I just knew he’d find that ring.
Weeks were going by. He figured out that he lost it at a gas station while getting gas. He went back there to inquire about it. The owner was wonderful and promised to look for it as the snow melted. My husband had given up all hope after going back to the station to ask again two or three times. He would always tell me it’s gone forever. I did feel sorry for him, but I remained strangely peaceful.
Ten minutes ago he texted me with a picture of the ring. It fell off in his iPad bag and he found it while cleaning. What can I say?
And so, as another day goes by, there’s definitely power in things unseen, and I have written.
March 3rd, 2012 OPI, JPEG, GIF, Tiff, bit map….once again, the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.
Today our Cape Cod Writers Center held a full day workshop on e-publishing and marketing. It was wonderful – the presenters really knew their stuff and presented it in a clear, factual manner. It was in depth and a lot of ground was covered, but after marching through the foreign land of EPUB and MOBIT, (at least I think that’s what it was) I headed for the nearest Dunkin Donuts to clear my head.
Writing, and eventually publishing and marketing a book, both in hardcover and e format, has taught me more than any other life process I’ve ever been through. The first thing it taught me was to proceed slowly. I have the rest of my life. Take small steps in this foreign land. Peer around corners. Listen carefully. Process slowly. Ask questions. Ask for help. Don’t be afraid. Don’t get upset when I feel stuck. Sit tight and wait for God to show the next step. Realize that my beach walks are time spent on my writing, not time wasted aimlessly wandering. (This was a hard lesson – to realize creativity has to be nurtured by “alone time” and “artist dates” with myself.) As important as the alone time is, the writer’s life cannot be a solitary one. I had to get out there and make friends and go outside and play with them. Find mentors and be a mentor to new people who are where I was two years ago. Learn to use and play on social media. Blog. Learn from this blogging everyday. Discover my voice. Learn what and how I write. Learn how hard or how easy it is for me to write. Write for others. Write for me.
Write from the heart. Be honest. Always give my readers the best of me.
If you ever want to know who you really are, pick up a pen or a keyboard (or in my case a smart phone), and just let whatever’s in your head fall out on the page. Free yourself by knowing no one ever has to see it – you don’t even have to ever go back and read it. Spend ten minutes doing this everyday and you will be amazed at who you discover lives inside you. Writing truly is a journey to the heart.
And so, as another day goes by, though it’s the hardest road I’ve ever walked, I wouldn’t trade this journey for anything, and I have written.
March 2nd, 2012 I just can’t move off of II Tim 1:7. (Regular readers probably have memorized this verse along with me.)
“God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but one of power, love, and self-discipline.”
I get love and self-discipline, but I waffle on power. Today I came upon a thought provoking statement about power.
“Originally, the word power meant “able to be”. In time, it was contracted to mean “to be able”. We suffer the difference.” ~ Nepo
I suffer the difference. When considering “able to be”, I take it as whatever I have inside of me that I can use to be the best I can be, to help however and wherever I can. I used to wear a goddess necklace that was engraved on the back with:
“Live your life and forget your age.” Norman Vincent Peale
That little quote, with the necklace jingling around my neck to remind me of it, gave me inner power to not succumb to the “aging” thing. That was over two years ago. Recently I came across it and put a new piece of black cord on it and slipped it over my head. Once again I’m infused with the energy to try new things at almost 60 and keep moving. Ten of the fourteen pounds I set out to tackle in the fall are gone. My book is in the rewriting stage. Yoga is five days a week. A forty minute exercise program in the late afternoon is in place. I’m doing pencil drawing and water color. I belong to a blog group, a book club, and Cape Cod Writers. I’d say over two years I got a lot of mileage out of this little goddess.
That inner power is all well and good, but what did I learn about the worldly power? The “to be able” one that controls people and things? Well, at the end of the passage Nepo always presents a few meditative questions and today I sat and answered them. Thinking back on every time in my life I felt I needed to resort to this type of power, change the places and names, but the answers were always the same.
1. Sit quietly and recall a situation in which you exerted control.
– I thought of many…..
2. What did having a sense of control do for you?
– It gave me security from loss
3. What did having a sense of control require of you?
– It required me to run around in circles and become obsessed with maintaining it.
4. How much of your control was necessary?
– None. I had all I ever wanted without even trying – just relaxing being myself would have been enough, but I never saw it until it was too late.
5. What would have happened if you had let others join you on your hill of control?
– The need to control would’ve disappeared and security would’ve prevailed with peace, and the outer power would’ve been converted to inner power by sharing and connecting.
I have one more question to add:
6. What happened when you tried to do it all yourself?
– I lost the things I was trying so hard to hold onto. (Ironically, a Dr. Philism)
Obviously I learned worldly control is never a good thing. This outer control, the power “to be able”, is the control God wants us to surrender to Him. Let Him sit on the hill with us. Let Him provide the security. Let Him stop our crazy running around to try to hold onto that which we are afraid of losing.
Surrendering the worldly power “to be able” to God, leaves us open for Him to infuse us with inner power so we are “able to be” the best we can be for whatever He has planned for our lives in this world.
And so, as another day goes by, the goddess is resurrected, inner power is the focus, and ….I have written.
March 1st, 2012 Sitting down is something, before I retired, I rarely did. Anyone who has a home, children, and works full time needs no explanation of that. After those things were removed from my life, though I continued to be active and healthy, there suddenly was time to sit down. You would think after 35 years of a running life, I’d now appreciate there is time for a sitting life. No. Not me.
Everyday my sitting time occurs between 12 and 2 pm. I didn’t decide this, it just happened as a normal rhythm that my day settled into. News, newspaper, lunch, some daytime tv, time to read, and write this blog just fell into the time after a rigorous morning of yoga. Driving home from class, I found myself really looking forward to these next few hours. For a long time, though I love this part of my day, I just couldn’t settle into fully enjoying it. After years of running, sitting anytime before 8 pm at night just didn’t feel natural. I spent a lot of time convincing myself that it’s okay and I should really stop and appreciate these hours each day. No. Still hard. Until today. Today I came across the best little story by Sallirae Henderson:
“When I found out I no longer had the stamina to work long hours clearing the limbs in the woods around my house, I began to bring a lawn chair and a thermos with me. I still work in the woods, but stop frequently to sit and have a cup of tea. I’ve identified birds I didn’t know lived here and evidence that a bobcat shares the property. Since I’ve slowed down some I see things I never saw before and found that quiet solitude is not lonely, but nurturing, allowing my heart to open to signs and lessons of nature that surround me.”
Another ah..ha moment. These hours between 12 and 2 allow me to enter a world I never got to spend much time in most of my life. I never had time to actually sit and follow a half hour of news. I never had time to read a newspaper beyond a quick 5 minute headline scan. I never had time to pay attention to the local writers on the opinion pages and give due diligence to what they had to say. I never had time to sit and contemplate my own thoughts and reactions to the world and be able to write them down. Just as Sallirae learned more about the world in her own backyard simply by sitting, I’m constantly learning more about the world I spend my time in. I finally feel this is a good thing. A gift. In fact, I’m going to see to it that I enjoy every minute of my “chair time”. Slowing down and sitting a bit is new opportunity to see everyday things in a new light.
I wish I had somehow made some sitting time when I was living my running life, because now I wonder what the view was like from the other chairs I could’ve sat in during those years. Whether living a running life or a sitting life, take time to really see the world from a chair. It makes you sit up and take notice.
And so, as another day goes by, putting my feet up with a good book on a rainy afternoon, life, today, is good, and…I have written.
February 29th, 2012 “You get credit for what you finish, not what you start.” ~ unknown
Whether it be a diet, a novel, a race, or a project at work, you never hear of anyone getting credit for starting it. Starting something usually happens with a burst of energy – like when the gun goes off to start the marathon. It’s ten miles into it when the cramping starts and the breath is short, that thoughts of quitting start occurring.
Writing a book, especially one that’s less than a thousand words, is a lot tougher than I thought it would be, even though I already had the story in my head. You would think putting down thirty two pages with about twenty words on each page would be easy. After all, I read thousands of picture books to my students over the years and had a pretty good idea of how they should look, feel, and sound. I quickly found out that writing a picture story book is a lot like remodeling an old house – another thing I spent thousands of hours doing over the years.
It’s starts out by simply wanting to change and update the toilet. You remove the old one and find the floor is wet and rotted under the vinyl. You begin cutting away the vinyl and before you know it you’re into a new tile floor. If you’re going to change the floor you need to change the vanity and sink because they will sit on top of the floor. This tears up the wall and now you’re going to have to paint the room. Well you can’t be left with a new toilet and sink and a 1970 gold bathtub, so the $100 toilet just turned into a whole bath remodel.
Writing this book is much the same way. First I sat down and just wrote the story. Then I found out you can’t have anything to do with the illustrations for a picture book. If you illustrate it yourself (which I was hell bent on doing because, of course, only I could picture the “right” illustrations) the editors will not even look at it. Then next thing is picture books are 32 pages long, in groups of eight pages. The writing has to maintain a certain rhythm throughout. Then you have to examine each page for “talking heads”. The illustrator needs strong verbs to visualize the action. Then comes the story arc …..and I think you get the idea. I’m into a total remodel job.
The more I read about writing children’s books, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more changes I have to make. The more changes I make, the messier my kitchen gets. The messier my kitchen gets, the more I embrace it and out of the back of my mind comes something the yoga instructors have said over and over: trust the process. I relax. I smile. Now I get it.
Writing a book, dieting, preparing for a marathon, doing a project at work – it’s all a process that must be trusted to eventually bring you to your end. Through it all you grow and change and wonderful things get added to your life as a result of pushing through each struggle. I spent 18 months tweaking the same 26 poses everyday – just when I think I master one, a problem pops up in another. Where did I ever get the idea that writing a picture book would be any different? Not in the yoga studio.
And so, as another day goes by, I learn to relax and trust the process one more time, and….I have written.
February 28th, 2012 Yesterday morning the national news reported that wealthy people are more apt to lie, cheat, and steal than those of us that are not wealthy. Why? Why is that? Don’t they already have it all? This thought crossed my mind, but I let go.
Later in the afternoon I was reading with the tv on in the background. Dr. Phil was on with the mother-in-law from hell. He had her son and his wife on his left and her on his right. This woman was amazing. She’d call them ten or more times a day. Leave countless voice mails. She badgered them until they moved far away, got engaged and married without ever telling her. She lost them and couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. I caught bits and pieces of their story, but what I mostly heard was Dr. Phil’s frustration with not being able to reason with her. I was reading along in my “how to edit your own work” book when I heard Dr. Phil exclaim pretty loud, “You have to get your fear under control or you’re going to lose them for good.” Then, in a more gentle voice, with impact unique to Dr. Phil, he said, “You are behaving in this obsessive way because of your fear of losing them.” At the mention of the word fear my head snapped up. Fear is the cause of a lot of our behaviors that make messes out of certain areas of our lives.
The wealthy people? Why are they more apt to lie, cheat, and steal? Simple. They fear losing all they have. When you fear losing anything that means anything to you, you resort to extreme behaviors, usually outside of you character.
Over this past year I have not only experienced this, but recognized it before it was too late and fought my way out of it. I feel for the mother-in-law and the wealthy people. Fear incites the “king of the hill” syndrome and life suddenly becomes a fight to stay there. When we sit back and look at people who are rich and successful we tend to say “How lucky!” and “Maybe I’ll win the lottery”. Not me. Fear and the urgency to hang onto things stopped me in my tracks and spun me around in the other direction. I now make it a goal to shed what I don’t need and only keep what is necessary. I’ve learned to do it with prudence as opposed to keeping EVERYTHING out of fear of loss and using panic to do it.
I’m reading a wonderful book by Max Lucado called Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear. Lucado is one of my spiritual gurus of choice. A line from the book that impacted me was:
“Courage emerges not from increased police security, but from enhanced spiritual maturity.”
For me, that holds very true. Instead of succumbing to the fear that had me by the neck, squeezing the very life out of me, I chose to research it. In the mind of an educator, having information gives you the power to overcome. That’s one of the reasons teaching a child to read was so important to me. Having the skill of discovering information, gives a child the power to save oneself for the rest of their life.
If fear has you in it’s grip to the point where it’s crippling your daily life, stand up to it. Find out about it. Find out how it infiltrates your person without you even knowing that’s what it is. Whether it’s fear or anything else attacking your peace of mind and corrupting your joy, research it. Once you come to understand something, you take back the power it has over you. You become well-equipped to finding a way of overcoming it, rather than succumbing to it. Just the power you regain in not feeling helpless is a huge step toward recovering, repairing the damage, and saving yourself.
In this verse I’ve mentioned before:
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but one of power, love, and self-discipline.” II Timothy 1:7
I’m thinking reading, researching, and acquiring information is part of that spirit of power God has given us. We probably should use it more.
And so, as another day goes by, sometimes God looks like Dr. Phil, and..I have written.
February 27th, 2012 Late afternoon on Sunday my husband and I took a walk to the beach. The wind was a little brisk, especially when we were near the water and the waves were huge and crashing. At the end of our walk we turned to walk up the beach path to go home. We both stopped and looked at the angle of the sand. “Hey, isn’t this path a lot steeper and higher than it was last summer?” I said.
He said, “I’ll say. Standing at the top of the path we’re taller than that cottage. We were never that high above that roof.” I agreed. Then we ambled on toward home.
Last fall, before the storms of winter hit, I thought I was negotiating this same path quite well. I didn’t take the winter storms into account. Just as I was feeling I could put my feet in other peoples’ footsteps and practically sprint up that path, in came the January storms changing the path and the shoreline. The jetty is completely buried and you can’t even tell there were rocks taller than me there in September. Part of the beach is gouged out, forming tidal pools 1-2 feet deep, decidedly different than it looked just 6 months ago.
When the unplanned storms of life wreak havoc, I turn around and stare up at that beach path thinking, how did that happen? My husband and I just look at each other in much the same way did on that walk, and say, “Well, we have two choices. We can just stand down here on the bottom of the path and complain how much steeper it is this year, or, we can join hands and climb the hill together.”
The song, “Let Us Climb the Hill Together” by Paul Clark was our wedding song. I still carry it on my iPod. It brings me to tears when it takes me by surprise in a playlist. Through the years we have always leaned on it when the path got steep. After sitting and discussing our child, financial, and work woes, one of us always says “We’re still climbing that hill together.” Then we laugh.
It takes quite a song to bring a relationship across thirty six years and still enable us to sit back and laugh in the face of difficulty. This song resonates in the strength of a relationship that doesn’t care how high the beach path gets. I remember this song conveying the seriousness of our commitment that day to each other and God. The most beautifully written line of the song occurs just before the end:
“In times of trial when things are hard to see, will you stand by me?
With love, it can heal the pain so let it rain…on the roof of my soul…there is no hole…that love can’t fill…so let us climb the hill together…”
I love the words “let it rain on the roof of my soul””. I always picture us huddled under a tarp on the beach in a storm, protected. In “times of trial, when things are hard to see” it’s helpful to have a visual.
Life, like the beach path will always be exposed to storms that change the terrain. I learned a long time ago it will never be flat and settled and easy to navigate. I learned to anticipate a little steeper path each time we go to climb it. The time spent resting at the top is brief. The view is amazing, especially when I look back and see how far we’ve climbed. But we can’t stay on top of the beach path. We have to walk back home.
And so, as another day goes by, once again the beach path speaks, and…I have written.
February 26th, 2012 Once again I forgot to set the sleep timer and was awakened by voices in the distance at 6am. This time it was Alan Jackson singing “Remember When”. When that song was popular, years ago, on the country music charts, it was also popular with my husband and me. Laying there, reluctant to put my foot on the cold hardwood floor, I was brought back to a time when our children were still young and at home and Saturdays and Sundays were for getting everything done before Monday came. We mowed grass, cleaned house, took turns chasing the girls and had wonderful barbecues at the end of very long and busy days. We’d sit on out deck while the girls played with the dog and their food and look at our groomed yard, clean pool, and just smile at each other. Words weren’t necessary – you couldn’t get them in anyway between the girls fighting and the dog trying to escape off the deck. During that era of our lives, the first time we saw Alan Jackson’s video of that song, our girls were older. We told them we wanted that song played at our 50th wedding anniversary because it described us accurately in our past, present, and in the future we were looking forward to.
This morning, when I woke up to the old ballad, I suddenly realized I was in “my future”. I missed those busy days of chasing kids, mowing lawn, and teaching full time. I saw myself with my “big hair”, blonde and held with what was then called, a “banana clip”. Alan Jackson and Reba McEntire rocked my world and kept me sane.
Getting out of bed, turning off the tv, I thought about how in those days, I wanted these days. Now here I am in these days, wanting those days. “Oh, well, such is life,” I said to myself, making my way down the stairs. When my foot left the last stair and I made the familiar turn for the kitchen, the sight of the beach and the cottages out my front window stopped me, as it does every morning for a brief second, when I say “Thanks, Lord” that I can wake up here.
While brewing my tea, it dawned on me that I wasted a lot of time back in those early years wishing these later years would hurry up and get here. I now wish I slowed down a bit more back then (in my mind, that is – anyone with a house and young children knows your physical pace is set for you) and bathed myself in the thoughts of the then present, rather than having spent so much time wishing for this now future.
Lately I’ve been squandering my time in this lovely place wrangling with the same fears and troubles that we all have in this uncertain world. Today, taking a lesson from my past, I need to stop and bathe my thoughts in appreciating and enjoying the here and now so I, along with Alan Jackson, won’t be singing the same song five years from now.
Now. That is the key word. We all know “now” becomes yesterday way too soon, but every “now and then” we need to just stop, acknowledge that truth, and give a little extra appreciation and respect for the moment at hand. Those nice moments back in the eighties on the deck were not without fears and troubles, but those fears and troubles sifted away from the memories and what I remember is the smell of fresh cut grass.
Maybe today I can do that with the here and now. Let the fears and troubles sift away and pay attention to smelling the ocean in front of me. The song lingers as I set out for the beach…”We won’t be sad, we’ll be glad…”. That time is here. I’ll be glad.
And so, as another day goes by, lessons from the sleep timer (or lack of it) once again kick off my day, and…I have written.
February 25th, 2012 I’m having a good time with my pencil drawing class. So far in the first class I’ve learned there are 5 pencils, each with different degrees of hardness. I’m also learning how to develop my own personal stroke. The second class occupied me by teaching me to shade patches for each pencil from darkest, to lightest, to fading away. I learned that the span of this graduation for each pencil was its value.
The third lesson began showing me how to apply the total value of each pencil. There is a good rule to this 5 pencil method. You never exhaust your values, especially of the 4B pencil, the softest and darkest of all of them. If you exhaust your value of this pencil you can back yourself into a corner and never be able to go darker should your picture call for it.
Hmmm….I think as I move through my days it’s a good idea to never go to extremes and exhaust my values. It’s best to breathe and stay away from that place where feelings scourge through me and cause that out of control searing anger or fear. I learned from long hours of practicing these graduated patches with the pencil that there’s plenty of space in between to hover and figure things out, without exhausting the value. I remember being in that place where all the values are exhausted and I was backed into a corner, helpless. Not a place I want to revisit anytime soon. I’m learning to enjoy the control gained by practicing patches. Starting with not quite the darkest stroke, and moving out to the fade. Slow, controlled, and knowing there’s plenty of room to move around. This takes practice, both on and off the paper.
As a former kindergarten teacher, I firmly believe we need a physical medium to help us reach the abstract concepts. Now, in retirement, I find this sensory learning is not confined to young children. When life gives you a bit of a challenge, try doing something with your hands or body. You will see immediate changes take place within yourself. Even as a writer I sometimes have to admit there’s some things all the words in world cannot teach as well as pencil, or yoga, or a dance or an exercise class can.
And so, as another day goes by, once again, the physical transfers over to the mind and spirit, I learn from muscle movement and control, and …I have written.
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