4-29-11 4:49 pm Weeds, Bicycles, and Love

Weeding: a metaphor for having say in my life. The plants for which I leave room in my garden result from my own selection. Instead of dandelions, I see tulips. Instead of crab grass, I see an open space where we'll someday put a patio. The design stems from intention, regardless of the seeds wind plants on our property.

And I can weed that for which I wish to leave less room, out of my life with relative success. When I pack up and leave at the end of my contract day, it affords more time to spend with Anne. When I tell someone I need to set up a time to meet with them rather than attending to each professional the moment they seek me out, it leaves room for me to prioritize. Intentional decisions about how to spend time affords needed time for important things. It lets me plan. It lets me thoughtfully approach and attend to projects and tasks. The act of decision-making is a renewable resource, whose only charge is the degree of courage it may take to set boundaries. And like weeding, I can do it any time.

Intentionality. It's conscious planning. And it's a huge resource. Yesterday Harold took us out for a spin on our new bikes. He later told me that the idea occurred on his drive home, inspired by the weather and available daylight.

"I wanted to see you on that new bike again. You looked so happy on your first ride home with it the other day, and the weather's been bad. It's been too long, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity." -(or something very close to that.)

He wanted to see me as happy again on my new bike as the first day we brought it home. And his intentional planning paid off. I felt on top of the world, simply riding around a few blocks in our neighborhood. The ride felt smooth and comfortable. My body felt safe and relaxed, whereas on the mountain bike I felt neither. We gazed around at the spring lawns and the homes to which they belonged. And I offered him the comment "I'm having at least as much fun as skiing. Maybe more." After all, our neighborhood roll was lift-ticket free, required no transport of equipment before use, and without commute. We simply hopped on and went. Delightful.

Even sweeter was Harold's wish for my happiness, intentionally materialized into fruition, and truly savoured. I felt love. His caring act of thought, intention, and action, into such a simple pleasure held it's own beauty, quite apart from the love I felt from him. Huge deposit into the "love-account".

When we first married, we may both have projected that an enduring union involved escalating degrees of tolerance. Quick to add, we were, that our overwhelming love for one another would easily make up for it. Not so, at least I've found. We're both fairly insistent about getting our needs met, and tolerate a fairly small margin of inconvenience from one another to that end. It may be less about virtue, and more about fear.

"How can you leave dirty dishes the sink, when you know I need to make my lunch before leaving for work in the morning?" It's more about "don't you care about me?" and less about "the straw that broke the camel's back". So our marriage's longevity so far seems to benefit from looking at what needs caring for more than what can be tolerated.

Harold hates it when I leave the garage open. We have valuable stuff in there, and our garage has been robbed before. He has a valid point about closing, and even locking the door. I, on the other hand, have to heave that beast with all my might in order to slide it open. "Inconvenient" barely touches describing it, for me. So, I agree to keep it closed, and he agrees to open it for me. And we do a fair amount of simply leaving the cars in the driveway.

That sort of recognition and honoring one another's needs makes up part of the maintenance. Another piece more represents theory behind "love languages". When we can identify what brings happiness to one another, and then show a desire to create those situations, we're saying with actions (speaking, of course, louder than words), "I love you. I want you to be happy, and I know this brings you joy, so I'm doing what I can to bring that circumstance into your life."

So, when Harold took me out on our bikes yesterday evening, I felt really on top of the world. The feel of my new Cruiser very closely resembles how my childhood bike felt. I gave myself permission about when and where to go. Someone who truly loves me took the time to come with me. And he let me decide on the route. Maybe we were gone 15 minutes. The relative cost was free. Yet I've spent many hundreds of dollars with the intent to enjoy myself, and failed miserably. Yesterday love brought me great joy. Even the memory fills my cup to over-flowing. This, truly, is the life!

4-24-11 1:57 pm Windfalls, Visions, and Beauty

We got a little windfall in the mail. It's nice to know that the unexpected still happens. Out of the many needs demanding our financial resources, we went with cruiser bicycles.

Think gas savings. Carless transportation. Lower fossil fuel consumption. Physical fitness. We got Anne a new bike for Christmas. That felt easy, since she's growing all the time. In fact, she was well over-due.

For Harold and me it seemed different. Although our mountain bikes feel like medieval torture devices, they were and still are a hot item. We picked them out, and rode them faithfully for years.

We've got plenty of get-up-and-go about us, and yet, we're now mature enough to fess up. We hate those things. It's time for something more comfortable. Harold seems to love his new bike.

He rode down the street wearing a huge grin. "It feels like my old Stingray!" he exclaimed on dismounting. His joy made my heart leap. It's fun to see a grown man giddy.

As for my cruiser, it's robin's egg blue with white accents. It has beautiful lines and curves. The seat feels like a seat instead of a wedge. It needs a white bike lock.

To quote Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the Place's [I'll] go!" My hope is that this new purchase will still look good on me when I'm gray. I hope it will take me to many of the locations that meetings and tight schedules have required a car to complete. And between trips, I'll just look at it. It's beautiful.

4-11-11 8:35 pm Make Them Eat...Their Own Cooking!

It's a popular topic, "why we should eat dinner together". Although I'd have to locate research to support it empirically, my hunch is that even rushed, instant, and restaurant meals provide families time enough to sit across the table from one another, sharing conversation, time, and stories from the day. Eating together seems like a wholesome idea regardless of circumstance. Of course it's wholesome, and yet distractions compete with this institution of well-intended time together. The television blares a sports game, attractive wait persons offer another re-fill to the water-glasses, and this week's spelling list needs reviewing. The relative quality of shared time directly connects to various degrees of the hellatiousness it entails. If disagreements regularly surface, questions about unpaid bills, or how the job search fared today, family members might begin to avoid the dinner table. The institution of an evening meal, when everyone rejoins at a common table, requires intentionality and care. And in today's world of instantly-available food, it's especially important to ferret out what it is about dinner together that we most enjoy. Tonight I'm reminded of one thing I most enjoy: when everyone cooks. My mother, even my grandmother, might be saying to themselves as they read these words (based on a recent conversation) "What is she talking about? I only cook with certain people in the kitchen - everyone is not necessarily welcome." I think this is why my maternal betters might be doubting me: Some activities require the kind of attention that lets all worries, all distractors fall away. Playing a musical instrument, driving a motorcycle, and rock climbing all come to mind. Cooking, like science experiments, requires deliberation, and the kind of attention that demands a similar focus to those undistractable activities. Even if you avoid measuring tools, chances are you use taste to guide adding ingredients. And coordination plays a key role. Hot foods, in order to remain hot when platted, must cook at just the right rate (time and temperature). Creating a meal requires the full attention of its cooks. Cooks cooking together, well, it's a little like performing with spontaneous choreography. It requires faith and commitment. Kitchens can feel small. Multiple cooks might interrupt or get in one another's way. It ain't pretty. And the same is true for real life. It's messy, rife with injustice, and full of accidents. And when we stick together through it all, the journey brings us closer together. It seems worth the investment. It's just that you have to look carefully and practice a great deal of patience for the returns. They are sometimes disguised as huge pains in the butt. Tonight Anne made our salad. She took too long to slice up the apples. Way too much spinach sat in the top half of the salad bowl. The entire task took her, (I may be exaggerating here) 20 minutes! The lettuce was pre-washed and everything. While she whittled away at the salad, Harold managed to perfectly steam two salmon fillets, and I concocted a lovely salad dressing, made the rice, re-heated left-over homemade tomato soup and garnished it with fresh slices of avocado. Obviously, an apparent time and effort discrepancy rears its ugly head, yet who has the most experience? I do. It's natural I'd get more done, so I can replace "equal effort" with "equitable effort" as one of my goals for our co-cooking. In fact, I remember intentionally assigning Anne a task at which she could take as much time as she wanted, that was completely independent of our other cooking projects. Autonomy gave her freedom from nagging adults who otherwise might have needed her to complete one step in a dish so that we could then move in with our parts. In the end, her memory of the task was hopefully a revisitable enough one so that she'll do it again tomorrow night. She also seems sensitive to respect, so when I asked her to make us a salad, it sounded more like, "Oh, Anne, you have such good taste in salads, would you make ours tonight?" than "Anne, make the salad." An added bonus: she seems to eat more of her salad serving when she makes it. Go figure. Harold. He trusts me with meats, especially when it comes to cooking fish. It was hard-earned trust, and since I have it now we're fairly efficient. He asks me what to do, I tell him, and he does it. "Put the fillets in this pan, fill it with just enough water to almost cover the fillets, and heat it on high in the microwave for ten minutes." That done, he sat at the table and passed out vitamins while the rest of us finished our tasks. He's tired after a long day of delivering mail. Besides, he had to touch raw meat, and I didn't. Yay. Let's hear it for equity! My soup project was ready well before the rest of the meal. And the natives were restless. So, instead serving everything en semble, we ate in courses. I hear they do that at all the fancy restaurants. And at the end of our time together at the table, everyone felt good and tired. We all cleared the table because it was too big a job for just one person. In between the cooking and the clearing came conversation. We talked about our days, up-coming visits from relatives, manners, we joked, and we laughed. The act of cooking forced our worries of the day into the periphery of our minds, in order to make room for feeding ourselves. On really fun nights we blast a little Jimmy Buffett, "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and dance around the kitchen. To me, this is quality family time. It's ultimately about enjoyment. When meal preparation becomes unpleasant, it's about something else. When we work to make this task a coordinated effort, it brings us closer. One person cooking the meal is a little like a solo vacation. You might get exactly what you're after, but in the end, with whom do you have to share it? So, eating out, I think, is OK. And instant mac'n cheese holds a permanent place of honor in my book of life's necessities. Yet, when a seemingly menial daily task presents an opportunity for getting to know one another better, for making a little history, and it's fun, it demands attention. Kids, I think, are more likely to eat their own cooking. They'll certainly learn something useful in the process. Reading. Measuring. Equivalency. Team work. Love. Tonight Anne accumulated a memory that filled her heart and her mind. Affording her that opportunity helped make me feel like a better parent. And my hard-working husband got fed. So many layers of resource accumulation demands my deliberate attention and continued effort. If you want to get closer with someone, try cooking. It's essentially free, and we all need to eat!

4-6-11 7:04 pm Snow Storm

Because of my neighbors' generosity of space, we can all look forward to homegrown asparagus. A gift that will continue to give. Because of my husband's sensitivity, generosity of time and effort, and excellent memory, I have had perfect coffee, flowers, and culinary delights of all kinds today. We have more deposits into the veritable bank account of our relationship. Because of my daughter's intellect, sensitivity, and heightening awareness, I experience the most pleasurable journey of parenthood imaginable. She keeps getting smarter and more sensitive. Because of thoughtful co-workers, I enjoyed several very fun rounds of bowling today. My job may not be there next year, yet the memory remains. Because my friends and colleagues at work trust me to do my job, I get repeated opportunities to hone my craft. Honing these skills helps me help others, the greatest gift. Because of gratitude, I continually relive the most pleasurable memories of my life. They will be mine, forever, to share with anyone who might like to listen to them.