blessings...

We don’t get to choose the shape or timing of the blessings that we receive in this life. They come to us like the weather, and we merely choose our clothing accordingly and get on with our day and our lives. Or we don’t, and we end up soaking wet or freezing because we believed so surely in the forecast that we refused to be prepared for any alternative.




This concept is hard for me. I like to try to shape the world around me as if it’s Play-Doh. It doesn’t work. I know this. I’ve learned this lesson over and over in my life, but I still try. Which I suppose means that I haven’t really learned this lesson yet, or that there is still more there for me to understand.



I’m not saying that there aren’t choices to be made or that those choices don’t have an impact, because at times, they do. We are beings that can choose. We can get up and do the next right thing. We can use kind words or hurtful ones. We can take care of our bodies or harm them. In daily moments, there is always a choice.



Even big moments, we can choose. We can pick up and move away, or stay put and ride it out. We can attempt to leave important people or moments behind us. But in my experience, the important stuff chases us from within anyway, refusing to let go or become party to failed relations.



For the big stuff, I often feel like life is just a speeding train. And when we think that we are shaping the outcome, we're merely riding inside, touching the window with our own unique fingerprints. We're trying to change things, but in reality, all we’re doing is smudging up the glass, and obscuring our own view.



So I’m setting the Play-Doh down, and only listening to the forecast that I see and feel outside my window. I’ll set some comfort items aside for contingencies. I will sit down inside the train and keep my very own unique fingerprints to myself on my lap. I will look out the window as this one life of mine flies by, and I will try to see the world around me for what it is, and not what I wanted it to be.



I will be thankful for the blessings, exactly as they come.

A Part of the Whole...

There are a million tiny stepping stones across the river of my life, and if I hadn’t chosen or been placed on this path, this exact one, I would be somewhere else entirely. I would be a whole other version of myself.

I can think of moments when I did choose. Moments that I stood at a clear crossroad and made a choice that impacted my life in some monumental way. I moved out west to Colorado. I didn’t move to California. I moved back to Wisconsin. I chose to return to school. Those moments had an obvious and instant impact.



But so many of the moments were not so clearly defined. They were merely me living my life, and little by little the choices that I made each day changed the shape of the outcome as a whole. I’m sure these smaller moments had just as much impact, but I didn’t notice them. I didn’t pine or stress or worry over them. I simply lived my life, and the changes came, like how the seasons turn. One day I just noticed the difference.

So often we hear the analogy that life is a highway that we travel. We talk about the things and places and people that we’ve left behind, as if that’s even possible. As if the important events and circumstances of our lives are merely temporary, and that they can be cast off and then forgotten. As if once we’re finished with them, these things and people and emotions are no longer with us.

But I don’t think that life is a highway. I tend to think that life is more akin to how a tree grows. And that every storm, every season of sunshine, every drought and spring freeze and warm summer night becomes a part of us. A part of the whole. The storms of our lives leave their mark, sometimes they even make parts of us come crashing to the ground. Sometimes we can pick up the pieces and sometimes we just have to clean up the whole wet, ugly mess and do something with it. But inevitably the warm windy days of summer, gentle spring rains and hot humid days come, so startlingly fruitful that we can watch leaves grow by the minute.

Regardless, it all resides within us, like rings within the tree. These moments, whether painstakingly awful or unbelievably beautiful, grow within us, in every branch, through every limb. They don’t leave us, because they are a part of who we are.

Still finding my way...

What did you think of last night before falling asleep? What was the first thing to cross your mind this morning when you woke up? Now that I’ve asked, do you wish you could re-think it? (I did. I wished those thoughts hadn’t been so mundane and functional, that they had been about what really matters.)

Because for me, what I care most about in this crazy life is love. People, of course, and places, experiences, animals and adventures. Flower gardens and hand-sewn quilts, canoes, sunsets and weeping willow trees. I am ultimately infatuated and curious about the human condition, especially when it comes to love. Whatever it is that you wrap your heart around, that is what I’m most interested in. Who still makes your heart beat so fast after so many years? Who kissed you first? Who makes you blush? What did you feel the first time you saw your child? This is what matters to me. And though it’s not at all the sort of things that you can just go up and ask people, it seems to be what I think about.



I can’t explain it, but I care way more who and what elicits your broadest smiles than I do about what you do for a living. I wonder where you lay your heart when you’re sad. Who gets the most terrified or elated parts of you? Where is your safest place? Who knows you by heart? To me, these things supersede everything else a thousand times over, and say so much more about your character.

I’m thinking about all of this because I’ve been waffling a bit when it comes to writing here. I didn’t really know this, not until I noticed a trend of mostly writing about my pets. Which is fine, they make for excellent characters, but that really isn’t the point. I think the point is that I’m unsure what I’m willing to lay out, what I’m willing to answer to. I don’t know what to let out into the light and what to leave as merely mine. It’s also been brought to my attention by a few people that the things I don’t write are present anyway, as if they are conveyed somehow by the tone of my voice. This makes me wonder if I should just start introducing the elephants in the room. If maybe I’m supposed to.

So what do you, wonderful person who actually comes to this site to hear me ramble on about my life, what do you want to hear about? You take time out of your busy day to read my words, and I wonder what it is that you think about…

I’m not making any promises, but I do wonder. And I’d love to hear your thoughts, your stories, and your answers to any of the questions that I’ve posed…

Edgewater Park

I don’t know what it is about that park, the long, thin plot of land that hugs the shore of Beaver Dam Lake just north of town. It’s beautiful there, for sure. The sunsets are phenomenal, the views quiet and peaceful most of the year.

But there’s something else, some quality, something that feels like power. I’ve had places like that before. Quiet beautiful spots to sit and think and walk and just be. But there is some magical quality that I find at Edgewater Park that draws me back, like I belong there. Like there is something for me to learn, if I can listen closely enough, if I can be wise enough to hear it.


Beaver Dam Lake is long, shallow, and always windswept. But the section of the lake at Edgewater Park seems to have its own climate. There are days that town, just two miles to the south, is cold, windy and bitter, and the lake at Edgewater is tranquil as a mill pond. There are days that town is perfect, sunny and warm, and this marshy park is icy and raw. As if it didn’t hear the forecast.


My friend Rhino introduced me to the park when I got my dog last December. Sometimes he'd bring his yellow lab, Molly, to play with Somewhere, the yin and yang labs sliding through the snow, darting in and out of brush and prairie grass as we walked. I had forgotten how much I liked walking around outside investigating, even in the winter. I started coming to the park almost everyday, and the whole world would slip away for a little while. I felt warm and safe, despite the cold and snow.

I went to the park the evening of Obama’s inauguration. I was happy, mostly because I was so proud of how far we’ve come as a country, as human beings, to stop looking at skin color and be able to look at the person within. I forgot my camera, so I had to use the one on my phone, which totally didn’t do it justice. The sky looked like it was glowing. The whole sky. I’m sure that I’ve never seen anything like it.

There was an ice storm in March, a rainy black night that froze everything in its path. The morning sun melted most of it, making driving safe again. I didn’t think of what the park would look like, I just took the dog for a walk. The entire park, every weeping willow and cattail, was covered in thick, melting ice. It sounded like a waterfall. Every branch and twig was coated in a layer of ice, and the whole place looked as though it had been set in glass.

There was a storm in April, just as the first twenty yards of ice melted around the shore. It was just a spring thunderstorm, some wind, a little thunder, a lot of rain. The next day I took Somewhere to the park for a run and found mounds of ice stacked along the shoreline. From a distance they looked like large piles of snow left by a plow, but once I got closer I realized they were ice formations, pushed up onto shore from the storm. Gigantic piles of glittering delicate ice that looked and sounded exactly like breaking glass. I couldn’t imagine the violence created by forcing this ice onto shore. I was mesmerized, and took about 300 pictures, in different lights, for two days.

I went to the park to fish with my cousins a few times this summer, but mostly I avoided it. It was full of people grilling, and there was an ebb and flow of motorized watercrafts coming from the boat launch that inevitably made my stomach hurt. Once they invaded, I retreated. I’d sometimes grab a quick look at a sunset, shoot a couple pictures, but the park itself felt distant. And at least for the time being, no longer mine.

When I went there with my cousin Joey just after Labor Day, we sat on the far pier, goofed around talking in funny accents while he fished. I was feeling confused and sad and beat up by life. Joey and I didn’t really talk about the stuff I had going on, mostly he was just there, making me laugh. When he shone his light into the water, we took a double take. The lake itself along the shore was thick and green; Joey’s bobber resisted the heavy liquid. I wasn’t surprised. It made perfect sense to me that the lake would be pea soup at that particular moment. Also not surprising was that it stuck around for weeks.

I went out there last week, on a whim. I had spent the cold, rainy morning watching movies (which I rarely do and should really do more often) and just decided to check out Edgewater Park. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was completely vacant. I drove up by the boat launch and realized that the lake was dead calm, despite the lingering wind and rain in town, across the whole state.

I’ve been going there for nearly a year now. I know it by heart, but it always surprises me. I never tire of its views, its sunsets and storms. And maybe this is what I’m supposed to learn, or be shown. That there can be violent storms, beautiful sunsets and safety all in one place. That this is life, at its best and its worst. That not everything that’s scary or painful has to do with me, it’s just a part of the whole. And if you don’t like it, wait it out a little. There are bound to be more surprises, and you’ll never guess what comes next.

Sparky

I realize that I need to stop blogging about my pets. I will, really. After this.

Sparky, the Big Gray Asshole, is not the world’s nicest cat. He’s not the world’s meanest cat, but he isn’t exactly cuddly. And we like cuddly. We’re spoiled by Football and his 3am wake up calls for a quick snuggle. Sparky gives warning paws with claws extended to anyone who pets him for too long. Affection is not Sparky’s best quality. Sparky’s best quality is actually alerting the world of famine because the bottom of his food dish is visible.

At this point, Sparky kind of does his own thing. He hides out under beds and chairs. At out last house, he just hung out in the bathroom, since that’s where the food and the litter box lived. Not like he couldn’t get around, he just didn’t want to, so we set up a little bed in there. We’d say hello when we were in the bathroom, but given the inconsistency to his acceptance of it, (and his glowing eyes) our affection towards him is limited. Plus, he doesn’t come out that much. I found him lying on my bed the other day and I was so surprised that I snapped a startled “What the hell do you want?” at him.


Sparky steals sleeping spots and sitting spots, and then gets pissed when someone wants them back. He’s been dragging poor Football off my bed by the scruff of the neck for years, for the sole purpose of filching the warm spot. This infuriates me, mostly because Football is the last guy in the world to deserve it. And can you imagine being jolted out of sleep by someone dragging you off a bed by your neck?

He has yet to mess with Somewhere’s sleeping spot, because that’s her kennel. And her nasty pond scum-grass clipping-fall leaves-blanket is in there. So Sparky just steered clear of it, until yesterday.

I don’t know when he got in there, I just notice that he’s in there, sleeping. All stretched out, belly up, happy as can freaking be…

“What are you doing?” I ask him. He just stretches, doesn’t even look at me. Somewhere comes over, hockey checks my leg and starts to pace. She looks like Lassie trying to tell Timmy there’s another kid in the well. I tell her its fine. I figure they’ll work it out, he can’t live in there.

He stays in that kennel for five hours. Yep, five. I drag him out of there, triggering a low growl from the Gray Assole, but I have to put the dog in the kennel, because she was on my bed and I want to go to sleep. This new arrangement isn’t working for me. And of course Sparky started it.

I was talking about this to my daughter Holly as we fed Sparky one day, saying that we sort of tolerate him because he’s our cat and part of the family. He isn’t the nicest cat, but it just is what it is.

“Huh,” she says, pondering this. “I wonder if that’s how he feels about us.”

We both turn to look at wide eyed Sparky, waiting at our feet to be fed, howling because his food dish is almost half empty.

“Sparky would sell us up the river for scrap metal, for sure. Still, he’s family.”