"What I've learned from Mitty"

"Cats have it all - admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it". 

- Rod McKuen

     Every morning, our sweet, adorable, snick-snack loving cat, Mitty walks into our bedroom, climbs up her carpet lined stairs at the foot of our bed and walks over to "The King" and strategically walks on his groin.  As I hear the sudden "Ummmph, Mitty, really?" I roll over and get try not to burst out laughing. But it doesn't end there.  Mitty walks up to King's chest and head butts him, first on the left side and then the right.  She then walks between us and I give her a scratch.  King gets up and makes coffee. Life is as it should be in that one daily routine.  We get summoned and we get up.

     Mitty recently turned twenty years old.  Twenty years of service.  When I first met King, Mitty wasn't exactly convinced that I was necessarily worthy.  She would sniff me out, rub against me and when I would get the urge to grab her she would run. I would clearly have to earn her trust. This was new for me because I never met a pussy cat that didn't like me right away.  In fact, I couldn't identify with Mitty at all.  I had opened my checkbook to everyone.  If they wanted in, I let them in because I wanted to be be liked so badly that it never occurred to me that there would be any hurt in my future.  Mitty knew better.  Through the years, I began to understand that Mitty respected her boundaries.  Boundaries for Mitty were a way of regulating who earned her trust and who didn't.  I had to wait and wait I did.  

     It wasn't all that long ago when Mitty finally decided to "own me."  We were downstairs in the family room, watching a movie.  Mitty came downstairs and jumped onto the couch.  This time, I grabbed her. I mean, she let me grab her and I held her close on my lap. I held her so gently and held her close to my heart so she could hear it.  I rubbed her ears and under her chin.  I had learned  where her favorite places. She started to purr and extend her paws, her eyes half closed.  We must have stayed that way for almost an hour.  No one wanted to get up. Mitty and I moved to a new level in our relationship.

     Mitty's bursts of energy come after she's been scratched and kissed and an ample amount of snick-snacks have been given.  I've seen her gallop down the hallway.  I've seen her lament at the bird feeders.  I watch King with her.  She has such an amazing way of getting him to do whatever she needs him to do.  There is no mistaking a true woman.  She gets what she wants because expects it and will eventually give back in spades if she knows there's gratitude.  No gratitude, she'll avoid you like the Plague.  That's a woman.  I was immediately under Mitty's tutelage.  Everything a woman needs to learn about being a woman in this day and age, can be learned by watching Mitty.  She gets doors opened for her.  If she doesn't get to eat at a certain time, there is hell to pay.  A clean litter box is a happy litter box.  Pet her in the right places and her tail goes up immediately...her paw twitches too. She appreciates comfort.and quiet moments.  She enjoys simply "being."

     Mitty has been therapist, nurse, confidante, sometimes coy, sometimes protective, particularly if King and I start kissing.  She has to be a part of whatever is happening...just to be sure.  She is observant, patient and well, not so patient because she knows no other way to be. Frustrate a woman and you're "mouse-meat."   She's "Mity."  She is comfortable in her own fur.  She doesn't worry about much.  She sleeps when she feels like it and where she feels like it. You will pay if sleep is interrupted and rightly so.  She has her own mind and demands respect for her efforts.  A true "Fem Cat-Al." Mitty's loyalty to King and I is unyielding and ours to her.  She runs the show and why shouldn't she? She has earned her right as most women do when have years and years of work behind them.

     At night, like the morning, King and I are grateful for "Mittens King."   She makes us grateful for each other too.  Animals make us better people, because they know better.  Mitty certainly does.

Why 2016 is so important...

"Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay."  - Robert Frost

     I am at my laptop, nursing a cold, watching the snow cover our pond and what I lovingly call "King's Mountain."  The snow gives me peace which is why I find myself asking why so many are wishing that the year 2016 would just "end already."  I've caught myself asking the same thing but then I stop myself.  I have a personal mission NOT to wish any of my time away.  Whether we admit it or not, to wish our time away seems to go against the very mantra that most of us would tell anyone else, including our elderly, our young, our friends, our lovers.  When we lose someone we love, we always wish for more time, no matter what the circumstances.  When time stops, so do we.  We stop enjoying the world that's right in front of us.  We stop enjoying the people that are right in front of us too.

     At the beginning of every school year, the faculty at my school have to get our picture taken and when I first started teaching, I dreaded "picture day."  Now, I look at each photograph, which are worn as our badge of honor and think, "This is what evolution looks like."  Good, bad or ugly, evolution has taken place and it is for this reason, I will not wish my time away.   As I sat with my family at different intervals this season, I saw all of them differently.  We have all evolved and as the wine flowed, so did our admiration.  Why would I want 2016 to end having realized that?

     I will not wish to be younger.  I will not wish to be older.  I simply have no more wishes.  It's the present that matters to me.  When I "waste time," I do it consciously, on purpose so that I slow myself down and breathe.  I will not wish for things to be different.  I embrace what I have and if change needs to happen, hard as change can be, I deal with the pain and the discomfort.  You cannot stop the hands of time, you can only live in it.  Like most of us, I find myself wrapped up in the routines that define our private world.  We can either get bored with our lives or embrace that we have one to live.  I have made my choice.  This is what it means to be human.

     This doesn't mean that I have become complacent or like every single thing in my life's experience...far from it.  I will never be complacent about injustice.  I will never be complacent where cruelty is concerned.  There is a price to be paid for cruel behavior.  We tend to hurt those who we love the most but it's funny that when we chose love over hurt, we end up getting so much more than we could have ever imagined. 

     2017 is right around the corner.  2016 brought more challenges than most of us would have anticipated but if you are reading this, you are still here.  You still have choice and you are still capable. Whatever the world brings, whatever politics brings  If you love, and are loved; if you feel empathy and surround yourself with people who can do the same, then 2016, as 2017 will be full and no one will want their time to be taken away.  If your world needs more love, more intimacy and more mindfulness, you have today.  You are today.  "Nothing gold can stay..."  You are today...

Tis my season

"I just like to smile.  Smiling's my favorite."  -  Elf, The Movie

     When I was about nine years old and it was Christmas Eve day. I was so excited and over-whelmed for Christmas to come.  I believe I drove my mother crazy about wanting to open all of the gifts that were under the tree.  I was in fact relentless.  As I sat in my father's chair trying to calm myself down, Mom walked into the living room with one small gift that was neatly wrapped and handed it to me.  "Here Claude, this should tide you over until tomorrow morning."  I wiped a few left over tears from my eyes and opened up the gift.  It was my first journal/diary with a hot pink vinyl cover.  It had a lock on it too.  I was in heaven. Elated.  I immediately grabbed a pen and spent the entire rest of the afternoon writing.

     I learned at an early age the importance of writing.  I was or least my family thought I was, very good at it.  I would write silly stories and my sisters would take them to school and show their friends.  Writing was my release of anxiety.  Writing was my proclamation of my hopes for a great love in my life and happiness.  I don't exactly remember what I wrote that day and sadly the hot pink journal is forever gone but what I do know is that writing made me happy.  Writing created a safety zone for all of the angst and pain of growing up and as I grow older, it's provided me a way to appreciate what I have been given and to lament and plan what I needed to change.

     Christmas always makes me smile and I think it's because, when I was a kid I always got presents that seemed tailored to my personality.  Mom always said I was born a chatterbox so one year I got a talking monkey by Mattel called "Chester-O Chimp."  God I loved him. He went everywhere with me.  From him came another talking toy "Baby Secret."  I learned I could talk and talk and talk and well, try to keep a secret or two.  At least I tried.  Then one year, I was given my very own tape-recorder.  I used that tape-recorder a lot.  At times much to my family's chagrin.  

     When I got to college, and entered journalism school, I was given my very own Smith-Corona typewriter and a Canon AE-1 camera.  My tools.  My my sanity.  I remember feeling as though that each time I turned that typewriter on, my life had meaning. I learned to appreciate other people's writing.  I learned to love theater. I learned to love musicals, and other playwrights.  I loved Shakespeare.

    I have been on the receiving end of many gifts through the years.  One, I wear on my left hand.  It's a gift that requires me to give of myself and has taught me patience and has toughened me. It reminds me that sometimes when we want to give up and take the easy way out, we need to breath.  When we don't, we lose. 

   Christmas has gotten quieter over the years but it still makes me smile to think of all of the Christmas "firsts."  This year I am reminded that the best presents can be wrapped and handed us but the even better ones are the ones we give to ourselves in terms of our own health and wellness.  Those are the gifts that keep on giving.  This year, my gifts are the quiet, peaceful moments of thought that I am taking for myself and some time to cover the grays in my hair.  To look in the mirror and appreciate the history...

     So smile.  It's Christmas time!  What lies ahead is not in our control but let love be our driving force.    I smile and I well up in tears this time of year.  

     

"Blocked"

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
—Allen Ginsberg

I've always had this undying goal to be heard so imagine my surprise when I started to write over that past couple of weeks and well, nothing, NOTHING evolved.  I've given in to the frustration.  It all seemed either predictable, trite, and incredibly boring. 

Perhaps the other reason I have had so much trouble is because there is too much to write about these days.  It's making my head spin.

I could write about politics and well, I will, but not now.  I'm still digesting this past year's debacle.  I'm not sure whether to be totally in denial or scared half to death that most of the American public needs so much, works so hard, and sees nothing for their efforts. Or last they feel that way.  What I hope is that the result is more compassion and not a revolt of ignorance.  Ignorance is my biggest fear. Having said that, it's a good thing I am not ready to write about public education.  I will, but not now.  

I could write about relationships, familial, marital, friendships.  I will, but not now.  Lately, I have come to realize just how important all the relationships I have are so vitally important to me that I could break into tears knowing that each and everyone of the people in my life have changed me, kicking and screaming, into to a middle-aged, more patient, more humble, more resolute person...hopefully.  I don't rush to judgement any longer.  I don't pass judgement either. I am less sensitive but more empathetic if that makes any sense.  I have been graced with getting in touch with so many people from my past lately and all of the laughter and pain of my youth has come rushing through me like a tsunami. I have learned that it wasn't all bad. I wasn't all that bad...well, I tried to be bad but I wasn't all that successful. In fact, I was told in college that "I was just too good a person to date." We move on and we move away from the past. I am grateful to be in love with my husband, in love with my family too.  What's different is me. I'm older and less eager to please everyone.  I have realized that I can love with all my heart without feeling like it's not enough.

Sometimes I dream to have more knowledge and become more curious so that my writing sounds more relevant.  You cannot have an ego as a writer.  I tell my students that the best way to feel more comfortable with writing is simply sit down and do it.  If it doesn't evolve, then walk away and let the frustration disappear.  Writing is a powerful tool that breaks down our emotional walls, and let's us release the emotions that we dare not admit or speak.  The release is enough.  Once it's on paper, or on Microsoft Word, it's not part of our worries.  It's there for reflection and part of our history.  Words have a legacy.  

      

“The house that Ed built... The home that “Mickey” made...

      “Home is where one starts from.” – T.S. Eliot

I was about four years old when I ran into the kitchen and said to my mother, “I don’t want to play in my room.  I hate it here.  I am going to run away!”  As I went for a tiny suitcase, Mom said, “You can run away, just don’t leave the yard.”  That’s when I learned about home and that’s when I realized that my parents were a lot smarter than I would ever give them credit for until now.

Our family home was sold this week.  My father built the house piece by piece, section by section while Mom raised my two sisters, thirteen months apart.  I was the surprise eight years later.  In the 50’s and 60’s, our home was as normal and at times not so normal as anyone else’s.  I can remember my mother cooking and baking each, and I do mean EACH and every day.  I will always remember the couch in the living room where she taught each of us how to knit, crochet and of course there were always books and magazines to read on the coffee table.  My mother would also sit in her rocking chair and quilt.  Every stitch was carefully done.  I learned patience and perseverance watching her.  To this day, I still cannot figure out how she had the patience to finish every single project.  I still have the quilt she made me before I left for college.  I was instructed to wrap myself with it whenever I got lonely.  I did.

Before the closing, as we were cleaning out the house, the kitchen table, still with the marks of homework done each and every night.  My grandmother taught Mom how to make strudel so in the fall, if we were lucky, Mom would be stretching out strudel dough, across that table, and a true authentic Austrian strudel was born. My mom spreading the apples, butter, sugar and cinnamon, carefully rolling up the strudel for the pan was a tradition and a treat.  The smells of those strudels are forever ingrained in me, along with homemade bread.  We never went hungry.  The kitchen was Mom’s sphere of influence.  She taught us all to cook at an early age and her legacy continues.  We’re all very competent cooks.  That table was where I was encouraged to write.  It was where my sister painfully tried to help me with Algebra. 

My father would come home from work, wash his hands, crack open a beer and take a Pall Mall cigarette out and sit at the head of the table while Mom took a roast out, and proudly placed it on that table. He would here our stories without judgment.  That table...so many memories.  All the problems of our family and the world were hashed out at that table.  Some of them were solved.  Some definitely were not.  We played cards and my father would secretly hide cards on us, laughing with a huge, glorious grin on his face.  He wanted to see who was paying attention. 

Our home is where I learned to take risks.  My mother watched in horror as I tried to lasso the horse belonging to the farmer that bordered the property by standing on the rock wall tempting him with a carrot.  I wanted to horseback ride like my sisters.  Again, I was four. I learned how to be afraid.  Afraid of disappointing both my parents, I did what was asked...most of the time.  In our home, no one was perfect.  No one ever would be.  

Our home was where I learned to say “Goodbye” when I watched my sisters leave for college and then marry.  I eventually would said, Goodbye” too.  Mom and Dad with their hard earned money sent each of us to college. I hated those first weeks of college and came home and told my father so. He sat on the couch with me and said, “This house, is always open to you Claude.  But I really think you should give college more of a try.”   I finally left the yard.  I would come back but I finally left the yard.

The new owners of our family home will change it.  Reinvent it.  They will make it their home.  Before the closing, I drove over to the house and dropped off the garage door opener.  I took one more look around the house.  The bedroom where Mom would read to me still gave me comfort.  She read to me every night.  When my grandmother came to live with us, this was where she stayed.  Where she stayed until, she passed.  My parents’ bedroom...where I would crawl into bed, afraid of the dark...where they fought...where they planned. ..where Ma would sleep alone after Dad passed.  Try as I might, I will never manage my home as well as they did.  They had the skills that a country’s Great Depression and two world wars create. 

Change is never easy.  In fact it can be terribly painful and then...then there is peace.  Peace that we have done the right things by our loved ones, our parents.  My father would have been proud of what we’ve done with the house and how we have taken care of Mom.  Mom has said, “I did my job.”  She did so and then some.  My father did his job by his family too.  We have the memories to prove it.  Good, bad and ugly...they are our memories and they are ours forever.  How lucky we were and are.

"This above all: to thine own self be true"...William Shakespeare

"To be or not to be: that is the question..."  William Shakespeare

     I didn't watch the Republican convention this week and I doubt I will watch the Democratic convention either.  Give me authenticity. There in lies the question I have, "What is my politics?" Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in in 1776. He also wrote the Rights of Man, stating, “Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”  I suppose that in my search for political self-discovery, Paine's words mean more to me at this stage in my life than ever.

     My politics are most closely associated with whatever seems fair and just and well, just plain "common!"  I want security.  I want to keep the majority of my hard-earned money but I also understand that I need to pay for the benefits and necessities that historically keep us healthy and safe. I want to see compassion and common sense be a precedent over anger and emotional reactions.  I want to see our leaders speak honestly and truthfully and be well-educated.  I want politics to support education and recognize the importance of the rights of all sexual orientation.  I don't believe I am asking for much.  

     I want stability not just here in the United States but world-wide.  What we turn our backs to will ultimately come right to the front of us.  This has been proven,sadly, in a time when we are supposedly more evolved, more educated and more tolerant.  The recent politics have shown us otherwise. The anger, the lack of focus, the irrational behavior is reticent of our lack of education and our lack of compassion. The more educated we become, the more capable we are of making decisions that reflect common sense and to "do good."

     When I was younger, I didn't pay much attention to politics.  My parents did though and they voted with their conscience.  I didn't agree with them many times but we could debate and we could argue and still feel confident that we were all right with each other.  Love above anything else mattered.  So I wonder...where did lose our ability to reason?  

     Politicians say anything and do anything to get elected.  We know this.  However, we should be able to discern whether their communication is honest and said with some education and experience.  Then there is the heart.  What they say to us matters.  It's what is said from their heart that we buy into and ultimately want to lead us.  But we must remember that elected officials work for US.  They lead us based on what we believe to be the appropriate direction.  This is where the danger is too.  Our beliefs can be dangerous if not made from a place of common sense and again, education.  We need to protect and look out for each other and we do that by voting with as much  reliable information as possible.  

     So the rest of the year should be quite compelling.  I am going to watch carefully.  I am going to do my homework.  Conventions won't sway my vote.  Ultimately, common sense and reliable information will.  When I make up my mind, I hope that I've voted with a sense of responsibility that reflects the best for all of us.  Education is our best ally in the wake of politics. A lack of education is what some politicians are banking on from the public.  Sadly. 

      My vote will matter this year.  It will matter to me as it should for any American who has watched the events of the past year.  We have been exposed to too much tragedy for this presidential election to be "just another election."  Who will win, depends on their true message, not rhetoric.  Leave the "show" for Broadway.  

    

"There can be no healing if there is no change."

"At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love."  -  Martin Luther King, Jr.

     The news of the country has been compelling of late.  Tragedy after tragedy after tragedy has created a whirlpool of opinion and strong emotion.  What I haven't heard from our politicians, presidential "wannabees" and from so many others is the strength that love builds so that we become a nation not built on violence but on the principals of common sense.

   History shows us time and again, that periods of violence brings us to another set of rules for which we try to adhere.  Then we fail.  Why do we fail? We fail because of greed, jealousy and a lack of love. We use people. We turn our backs and ignore the ignorance simply because it's easier. It's 2016, I thought we were better than that.  I thought we had grown up.

    At the heart of this is gun legislation and why we are so stubborn about regulating the very thing that has killed so many Americans in such a short time.  The other piece of the puzzle is the fear and horror witnessed across the world.  Where is the peace?  Where is the relevance of love?  The "Haves" and the "Have Nots" are continuing their battle when the solution is easy.  There is plenty of everything to go around.  Where is the fairness?  Human beings by nature can be swayed and influenced by not only what's true but by what's not true because it is sometimes easier to be angry than to be fair.

     As the news of the country develops, as the world continues to be faced with violence, less violence doesn't seem to make sense but it does.  Why?  Because those who are the most angry and the most violent will grow tired.  Those who love, will grow stronger.  We fail at this when we fail to believe this to be true.

   This week, my husband and I will celebrate eight years of marriage.  It's interesting because in the those years together, I now fully understand that when we look to love, we problem solve.  When we love, we figure out how to overcome our obstacles. No one says this is easy but the outcomes are much more profound and much more satisfying. The reason why most marriages fail is because both parties stop talking.  They feel that either party is no longer listening or caring.  Then the anger perpetuates.  The relationships that last are the ones where the two parties grow old, not tired.  And, if there is love, and there is separation, the love supersedes the past hurts.  It is possible to disagree and do it fairly and justly.  

    In the world today, we are all married.  Relationships matter.  What happens in the world affect us all and it's about time we fully understood that and used the strength of our humanity to stop the violence There has to be discussion and compromise and honesty.  I look at the world and I look at the politics behind recent events and know that had they there been the presence of these things we would have gun control that makes sense.  No one would be hungry or angry or resentful.  We would work towards helping those who suffer from mental illness and despair so that they would not feel compelled to become noticed through their violent acts.  We would not be hurting each other for the sake of our own ills or gains.  

     To put a stop to all violence is altruistic.  Just like the first weeks of marriage, where we promise to "never, ever fight."  Human nature dictates otherwise. The mindful will however, understand the limitations of humanity and embrace it regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation or otherwise.  Be mindful.  It's time.