guilt stare….
Happy Birthday to “My Carol”
Don’t remember why I started referring to her with such ownership, but that’s how she is listed in all my address books….for 45 years or so now.
Here’s how we met.
My 3 and 1/2 year old son, his father and I moved into my dream home; a rustic, elderly farm-ish house, complete with fenced pasture, a barn, a mini fruit orchard, and a mostly unfinished “grandma’s house” type basement.
Having barely escaped crowded Southern California only a few years before, the best part of finding this house in the eastern part of Bellevue (the 4th biggest city in Washington state) was that it still had a bit of the spacious country feel I was craving. I mean room it had for HORSES!!! There was still a trail along the side of our closest main arterial labeled “For Horses”.
A bunch of my dreams came true in buying this place.
Then, about 3 weeks later, my son’s father left, moving in with his receptionist….
I had no job, had not finished school and had expected to be a stay-at-home Mom for a bit longer. I kicked myself into high gear, scrambling to figure out how to keep my funky old dream house.
I figured that if I could rent out some of the extra space in the house, maybe to students at the community college right down the street, I could cover my expenses. So within a couple of months, I had built a two bedroom apartment in the basement, finished the basement “living room” space and updated (a bit) the roughed in vintage bathroom. I also created a make-shift “kitchenette” with mostly found and recycled stuff, including a 1930’s metal kitchen sink/counter I spotted while driving past an old apartment building being torn down. (I asked. They gave it to me.)
Now this may sound like it’s all about me, and so far it is, but what came next was one of the best things that’s ever happened in my whole life.
Enter; “My Carol”.
She was one of the first people who answered my desperate ad for housemates. Also a single mother, with her young, precious, blond, curly-headed daughter in tow. Newly returned to the area after a divorce, Carol had no job, and no prospects, and my better judgment screamed at me “NO! You need financial reliability!!”
Carol, in what I now know as her impeccably truthful way, stated quite firmly that she could pay the rent. I believed her.
I’m so glad I ignored that mistaken internal scream and listened to what my gut and heart were calmly stating. “She is the perfect renter!”
To shorten what has been a wonderful story of over 40 years of friendship and “family”, I’ll simply list the phrases that capture the events and details of one of my most important relationships, ever.
Shared single motherhood duties, watching that sweet tow-headed darling daughter, Lacey, grow. Carol meeting her beloved second husband Stephen while she lived here. Then her sister moving in when Carol was ready to move on, which started a chain reaction of Carol’s family members (sisters, brother-in-law, nieces, daughter, granddaughter…I’ve lost count now) each moving in, each needing a stretch of time in my basement (almost a right of passage), culminating in the full-circle joy of having Carol’s grown up sweetheart daughter Lacey, moving back in with HER own beautiful blond preschooler, Alexis.
Add to that, many shared life events; weddings, attending the birth of Carol’s son, countless family visits and holiday dinners, the deaths of our respective parents, numerous other heart-breaking and joyous times. And all these years, each of us in amazing parallel professions, from which, many, many times, she referred clients to my therapy practice.
In more recent years, as happens, our lives have become full enough of all that other stuff, that I don’t get to see her nearly as much as I’d like to.
But on this day every year, I remember how very glad I am that My Carol was born, and that I trusted my heart all those years ago, and said “YES”!
Happy Birthday Carol. I Love You, big, BIG time!
WordlessWednesday 3/10/21 (almost)
Trying to pretty up the most rustic part of the homestead…
Two days later….”ICE ART”!!
Spirit Lifter–Day 363 of being “grounded” 3/4/21
My best friend craves the desert. My son does also. My partner comes alive in the mountains. My two other best friends have to be in the center of a huge city, surrounded by history and art.
Me? Well, I don’t know where the phrase “Happy as a clam” originated, but I must be part clam, because I am never happier than when I am on a long, flat beach, staring out into the ocean…
It’s really the way I have survived this year of lockdown and isolation.
I picture the ocean, the beaches I have loved, and the amazing lifestyle I had the pleasure of growing up in…
So when my only friends left living in my childhood stomping (well, SURFING) grounds sent me this article, I was delighted! I could FEEL this experience, with all my senses.
I hope you have a place in your mind you have been able to go to during this last tumultuous and devastating year.
Wishing you safety, health, and peace.
With Love,
ChosenPerspectives
WordlessWednesday 2/24/2021 (almost a year of being “grounded”)
WordlessWednesday 2/17/21
Wordless (mostly) Wednesday Spirit Lifters–day 341 of being “grounded”
Don’t we all think OUR cat has to be the most beautiful one….
Hmmm, I really must wash this window…
Spirit Lifters–Day 338 of being “grounded”
I guess if I had to claim my very best inherited talent, or maybe it’s learned…it’s that no matter how awful things are, if I make up my mind to, I can find something beautiful to enjoy, if only for just a minute.
I had a long, packed, painful week, and by late in the day yesterday, I was ready to crawl, defeated, into bed for the entire weekend. Oh wait, I thought. I can’t do that anymore because too many hours of proneness causes unbearable back pain.
Well, dang.
So I went for a walk…in cold, blustery, sideways rain. BUT, I had my brand new umbrella to try out…one of those clear, bell shaped ones you can see through, and that are resistant to a gust of wind sproinging it upward into a giant bowl to catch the rain, leaving you completely unprotected. (yes, I know “sproing” is not a word…but say it a couple of times, out loud. Doesn’t that sort of capture that thing that happens with a naughty umbrella??)
I hadn’t been walking for 5 minutes when something very strange and wonderful happened.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Something strange and wonderful is always happening…if I stay alert, open, and look for it.
On my walk, it was exceptionally dark out, even for the dead-of-winter, late in the afternoon, in the Northwest. It felt like nightfall.
But before I could make it back home, the light started to change, kind of rapidly, hard to ignore.
I don’t know…sometimes photos don’t do it justice when you are given a Light Show from Mother Nature.
Maybe you had to be there…
But keep your eyes and heart open. These days, the Spirit Lifters play Hide and Seek a bit, but they are there. I promise!
WordlessWednesday 2/3/21
grrrrrr.
Spirit Lifters–Day 330 being “Grounded” 1/30/21
I am running out of things to binge-watch on Hulu and Netflix….
I’m not talking about “couch potato” binge-watching. Honest.
It’s mostly for the cat. Honest.
I recently read the perfect explanation (justification?) for my binge watching on my dear friend’s brand new blog (Lisa Chandler Jewelry)
https://lisachandler.com/blog/prismflash-studio-construction-zone/
She wrote: “…as a jewelry artist of 20+ years, I’ve never had a studio space. I’ve always created jewelry ad hoc on my lap since 1999 when I began. I like having the TV or an audiobook going in the background while I create (tell me a good story!).”
My binge watching is really binge listening. It’s background comfort and distraction noise while I am doing other things…like my covid-craft projects, or paperwork, or culling through a life-time of “stuff” in an effort to use this time wisely. Like continuing my age-appropriate down-sizing.
I sound like a hoarder…and truthfully, I guess I actually am. I save even the most unlikely scraps of memorabilia…you know, just in case. Every photograph, letter, trinket, ticket stub and card, represents something meaningful, an important memory in my life.
I blame my Grandmother. She saved everything too. Like many in her generation, who survived the (first) “Depression”, she had more rubber bands, and scraps of used tin foil than god.
When I was a child, and basically had no one else who cared about me, I would spend hours at Gramma’s feet while she did pretty much what I am doing now. And every unlikely saved item she touched had a story. Each time she threw something away, she first thoughtfully caressed it, then reverently told me why she saved it.
And the things she kept, she would carefully wrap or fold before putting in her grandmother’s beautiful, carved wooden “hope chest”. Those things elicited a less emotional and much more fact-filled explanation, her justification really for keeping them.
“This was your Great Grandmother’s bonnet. She wore this in the covered wagon trip from Missouri to Salt Lake City. This has great historical value.”
I learned from both categories of her “things”, the trash and the treasures. I learned about our family, our history, our legacy…and, these downsizing events with my grandmother helped me finally understand my Mom.
This whole preventative isolation thing has me thinking about some monumental things; like mortality, aging, and use of my remaining time here…some of it, quite frightening and very painful. I know I am not alone in this…
Thus, the needed relief of instant, focus-shifting, binge-watching in the background.
When I started this Spirit Lifters series, using the word “grounded” in my titles was because that’s what my doctor told me. She said, in her straightforward way, “you are in all the highest risk categories, not just for contracting this virus, but dying from it so if you want to survive, you are grounded for the duration”, as in “Go to your ROOM. You are GROUNDED!” (She barely meant in a humorous way.)
Anyway, I woke up this morning with the profound realization that just as Mother Nature is “culling” our species, maybe even for the planet’s survival, all of this binge-watching, and crafting, and sorting, has provided us all with the perfect background for culling through our own lives….a meaningful distraction from the existential crisis we are all facing.
So being grounded by my Doc is exactly what has worked for me to stay “grounded” and centered through easily the most terrifying time in my life…
It was during one of these paper-sorting, binge-watching times I heard this song in the background. It was on, of all things, Bones. (I told you I am running out of things to watch…) At first, I thought it was Bono singing, but it’s Starsailor, a group I barely remember from the early 2000’s. It’s a beautiful, slightly haunting piece. The melody, by association, now grounds me when I hear it…..I hope you enjoy it.
Songwriters: Barry Westhead / Benjamin Byrne / James Stelfox / James Walsh
Some of Us lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc
There you have it. I hope, if you have actually read all of this, you will respond with a comment. Tell me what your favorite distraction has been during our year of pandemic.
A plea from a wall-climbing, screaming extrovert, with no one to talk to!!!
🤣