Comeuppance Came And Went

 I spent some time as a volunteer today trying to use a shovel to improve trails in my favorite hiking spot. I felt fortunate to do something, anything actually, to give back to the place where I feel peace and revel in the view. The weather was spectacular and many people showed up to help.

 As in life, there were the obvious know-it-alls that seem to come with life. I chose the smaller crew and just listened and walked slowly at times to enjoy the sounds of birds, wind in the trees and all that emerald green. It was such a lovely get away from my place of confusion. I am grateful to LandPaths for all that they do to allow the public onto open space lands so that we can breath and walk without having to be anyone special.

 Unfortunately, I found out, at day's end, that Mr. Big II, the holy man from Israel that I worked with, had been given the "Employee Of The Month" award at my former job. My blood began to boil with that news. This man, so trite in his holiness, offered harassment and continuous negative comments about my work every day. I tried a variety of ways to deal with his derision including rigorous honesty and tolerance. I tried and I tried.

Needless to say, I miss the residents, the campus and the sense of belonging that my job brought. I do not miss the tension in my body every day that I felt in danger.

It is important to note that I had no less than two meetings with the Supervisor who gave out this award, stating my ongoing feelings of harassment, isolation and criticism that were unwarranted. Although he seemed to understand, he did nothing.  Eventually, I chose to leave and save my own hide. Today, that seems like the absolute right thing to do in every way.

Comeuppance may have come and gone with "Employee Of The Month" but not my truth.

The Wheel Of Fortune

Yesterday afternoon as I was jetting down Hwy 12 westbound, I almost bought my lunch as two cars collided and spun off into the median.  I was, fortunately, in the right hand lane because another car had just been tailgating the hell out of me and I moved over to let that freaking bully get off my butt.  Now, I feel lucky to  have had the chance to get angry and do something about it that may have saved my life.

One just doesn't know what is coming and that is the mystery and the potential cause of fear in life.  We can go both ways every time we take an action.  For me, if I had been in the left hand lane, I may have hit one of those spinning cars head-on or just ended up in the mess.  That quickly, my physicality here on this earth would have been tested and perhaps, ended.  I feel grateful this morning, to have another chance to become complacent.

I am still a work in progress and so as I arrived at my afternoon volunteer gig, I was still there on the freeway watching a split second decision spin before me. Thankfully, the food bank moves fast and so I had many opportunities to move the eggs, fill zip-lock bags with pasta, help a client to her car with her groceries, pet a dog, smell some rosemary growing near the door, joke with another volunteer and ask the young St. Brigid about her last semester of high school.

I also met the new Food Drive Coordinator and congratulated her.  Truthfully, I wanted to apply for the job as the food bank is one of my favorite places.  I did not have the qualifications and yet when I met her very, very young self, there was that stab of understanding that I often have.  I am old now or at least, on paper.  The great jobs often go to younger job seekers.  It is as much an understanding of how that feels unfair as an understanding of the fact that I am getting way too old to be a job seeker.  I dyed my hair for the last job interview and yet I cannot hide the furrows emerging on my Celtic face. 

I am unsure if our new Food Drive Coordinator realized what a coup she just pulled off by becoming an employee at a food bank where clients are not just served, they are loved.  In fact, you can be anyone you are, client or volunteer, and you are loved.  It is an amazingly bright place that offers food to the 650 men, women and children in Sonoma County living with HIV.  It is also amazing because with a small hand full of paid staff, the food bank runs on the energy of volunteers who make the place hum. 

Today, on this golden morning in Northern California, where the chickadees, the resident blue jay and a pair of mourning doves all came to eat seed, I give thanks to the many people in live whom I love and wish them a glorious Sunday in March.  May we all travel in the slow lane this week and appreciate another day of life.

Two Different Fathers

I have been living with the changes inside my mind about changes in my life this week.  I have paced a bit and worried, of course, and come back around to feeling the freedom beneath my tennies bouncing back up at me.  The cycle of letting go, grieving with sadness, denial or blame and then calm.  Trusting the process isn't one of my strong points and I can get there.

I am running more, reading more, drinking more tea, discerning stress tucked in job announcements and just trying to use the magnifier that comes with hard knocks.  I am open to new ideas and a few have come to visit.  Today as I was looking for work on the Internet I turned my head to look out the window and an Acorn woodpecker was walking up the trunk of the Maple outside my window.  Just then, a gift.

I listened to an NPR program that was so riveting that I had to sit in the car to finish it.  Fresh Air had an interview with Frank Calabrese Jr. about his book Operation Family Secrets.  I listened to the choices that Frank Jr. made about the life he was drawn into by his mobster father and wondered where that kind of courage comes from inside.  A frightening almost surreal account of murder and revenge is enough to make us wonder what kind of father would jeopardize a son.  Yet Frank Jr.'s father enjoyed killing people and using his sons to achieve those end results were part of the plan.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147725615/frank-calabrese-jr-on-opening-his-family-secrets

The second part of my afternoon was spent with a man who took us for a hike on Taylor Mtn. nearby on a very sunny and warm afternoon here.  He is a man who hikes there often and showed us ways to hike across the emerald green hillsides above the Santa Rosa plain.  I found out as we hiked that our friend was raised by Mormon parents though he is a very loving and compassionate Quaker now in life.

He told us the story of his own father who helped him to find his way after High School.  His father told our friend that "his job was to get an education" and not to go off on a Morman mission as most young men of their faith do. This strategic choice for our friend changed his life dramatically.  Loving, real and courageous, our friend moved on to psychiatry and a different faith altogether.  Many times, our friend has offered me words of support and he continues to offer just that to the co-workers whom I left behind now feeling under seige from what I call "The Unholy Trinity."

I am stunned by the character of both sons in these two stories as being so similar and yet with very different fathers. Where does that depth of character come from and how does it steer us toward certain choices?  I was left with more questions than answers today and that is just fine with me. 

Asking the question doesn't neccessarily beg the answer these days and I am fortunate to see the magic in the space in-between.

Walking The Way We Talk

I have little to say lately that I am sure of and that, for a writer, might just be writer's block.  Today though is a bright, blue, cold morning in Northern California that holds the promise of a Sunday adventure in the Mini and that always opens up the horizon in front of me. 

Last night we had dinner with some former co-workers and residents from the wonderful campus where I worked for five months as a gardener.  I miss them so much.  I miss my place there and the beauty and their stories.  Such kind, real and strong older folks.  My role models to be sure. I came home light and full of contentment which has been challenging lately as I find some distance from the difficulties of the near past. Especially distance from Mr. Big I and II, a strange shaming interraction with a Chiropractor and a Grocery Store manager. 

 I am doing well, considering where I have been, finding new volunteer opportunities, finishing up an online class that I have been taking and doing some home projects.  I am getting bored though.  Boredom is a sticky wicket for me as the "shame machine" starts to cough and sputter. That piece of machinery can be the source of pain if I let the gears begin to whine at a high rate of speed.  My mind will sort out the most negative messages from the "shame machine" and twist the past into some kind of blame game that is far from the truth.  Other people will try to do that with us and we don't need to shovel the coal that fuels that monster.

There is different way.

 "...If I feel ashamed, I need a reality check because my thinking is probably distorted. Even though it may take great courage, if I share about it with a (friend), I will interrupt the self-destructive thoughts and make room for a more loving and nurturing point of view.  With a little help, I may discover that even my most embarrassing moments can bless my life by teaching me to turn in a more positive direction..." -Courage To Change, One Day At A Time In Al-Anon II

This is not an easy project and yet it can be the most loving way to create nueropathways that open up into bright, sunlit mornings on our lifetime of challenges.  This is my journey and I want to be a part of the solution for myself instead of part of the source of darkness.  That is a tune I can whistle all day long.

"Live And See What Happens"

Life is often a big mystery to me and yet I try so hard to know myself better and better in time.  I do not always understand my reactions nor give them the attention that they deserve.  With that, I can say that I have chosen and was reminded of a famous saying that Kay Flynn often claimed.

Kay Flynn was a co-worker nurse friend of my mother's and she came to stay in one of our "guest" rooms for a time.  Flynn had a very healthy drinking problem and yet she often had such right on comments about life like "Live And See What Happens." Maybe she just knew or maybe she had lived through many hard times and allowed for the hardships and the joy to ebb and flow along with her favorite alcoholic beverage.  Just the same, her saying today is spot on as they say and it may just become the moniker of my second half of 2012.

Live and see what happens.

Who Put The 'Ape' In Apricot?

I have been cleaning out the garage and throwing away junk as I recover from my cold and have a few days off before I start yet another new job.  Maybe this is the way life is going to be?  Maybe it will get weirder and weirder as the years move along.  It has been warm enough this week to feel like spring though it can hardly be that mid February here.  There has been just enough quiet to feel afraid and then talk myself out of it.  There has been just enough relief to miss my family in Texas and wish I could live next door and come by for coffee.

Some of us are still a little P.T.S.D. from our childhood's and we do the best we can with the adult package that must make decisions, consider consequences, say yes and say no and move on to what is next.  Some of the people that I know carry quite a bit of "core wounding" as therapists like to call it.  Some of us can feel it come up in our bodies before we realize what it is that is jerking our chain.  I am still, a work in progress.

I am fortunate and very much so, to know that I have much love to give and sometimes it doesn't get through those filters.  I do what I can and sometimes there is just way too much to take in and too much to consider that could become a regret if I do not pause and consider the outcome.  I believe that one has fear and faith in tandem or rather, I do.  I believe in myself and I am cautious. 

I started thinking about that cowardly lion again and how his sweetness was transparent and his fear palpable.  His quaking is humorous and I know how that can be as I begin another adventure in employment.  I do wonder about courage and where does that come from?  I wonder about the space between niggling fears and the commencement of courage and conviction.  It is just a pause, a hesitation, a space on the page or a gaze towards the horizon before one turns, breathes in and saunters into the next frame.  That is the 'ape' in apricot.

"Who Is The Slayer, Who Is The Victim, Speak."

I was amazed at the hustle and bustle of a Monday in our not-so-wee city today as I tried to accomplish some errands with the dying embers of my second cold in four months.  Drivers were not nice and one woman tailgating me off the freeway was yelling at me for being in front of her.  Or so I guessed.  I saw so much ugliness out there that I could not wait to come home and watch a movie with the dogs slumbering nearby.

Having a cold has its own cadence and today I felt better than I have in a week. However, the anger of people driving and customers in stores where I went, treating one another with a callousness that might otherwise seem standard was enough for me to think I needed a helmet to be out amongst them.   Thankfully I could just come home.

For me, at this juncture in life, I try to breathe in the difficulty of loss and pain and breathe out love, compassion and a greater understanding how we could try much harder with one another.  I remembered a quote my mother had cut out from a wonderful book of photography called The Family Of Man which asked, "Who Is The Slayer, Who Is The Victim, Speak?"

In less poetic language, we are all family and kindness toward our fellow travelers may be all that separates our life experiences.