positive impressions

 

At some point I saw an article talking about how a better way to respond to terrible events brought to us daily by the media was to focus on the good news, on our positive things. 

I believe it said, "on the helpers."

Oh yes, it was Mr. Rogers, thank you Norma for that link.

 "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."

To some extent I've been mulling on that at the end of this year, the helpers, perhaps as we are told we are falling off a cliff or that the world is ending, or the serious issues of gun violence haunts you, it might be a good time to just get very real about who you love and to think of them and to hold onto that. I feel a responsibility to write a list of those positives in my year, and yet my year was pretty much a time where I was focused on my failing personal health, very internal, on some very serious worries, my mother and father aging, and things that hummed in my small spaces. When your children all leave home it's so odd really. 

I like that quote about working in my own garden.

St. Francis of Assisi was hoeing his garden when someone asked what he would do if he were suddenly to learn that he would die before sunset that very day. "I would finish hoeing my garden," he replied.

Saint Francis of Assisi (c. 1181 - 1226)

Still I am thinking about how to talk positively about the year.

So I will share about some of the year through that lens.

My Son

He graduated high school and I got to attend his graduation. That meant a lot. My mom fell in the parking lot, that was serious and she was bleeding, thank goodness for bandaids. It was way too sunny for her. But she saw all the children graduate. And enjoyed our lunch after.  He did something very interesting. He had me teach him how to drive. I taught him to drive and he got his license. I didn't know I could but it was a calm and very good thing to experience.

My mother

I've lived with my mother for almost every year of my life. I'm very glad that this year we were together even though I haven't handled this year with her too well. I know she understands that. Her mind is going through serious things, so during the year I've been home with her when she can't remember if she ate, or what word she was trying to find, or if she put her key here or there. She left a pot on the stove months ago, and I came home early just by intuition finding her in terrible smoke that was hard on her-it damaged her lungs, for weeks and scared me. I got home just at that moment before bad went to nightmare, my son was watching her and fell asleep upstairs and I think it might have killed him. I thank God for my timing. Mom had a stroke a couple years ago, and she's fought this aging with anger and bitterness at times, but she also holds her own counsel. And at times I cannot believe how she doesn't just say how hard it is. I know something much worse is going on now. As I look back on the year I know we had good food for her, safety, our family, routines. It isn't easy to admit to my failings in having patience or in making it perfect for her. But I feel like we have lived a life where I could put my mother at least sometimes ahead of my own selfishness. She loved her Christmas presents- although she tried to give them back to me. If I reverse my guilt and pain (over her being so frail, aging, my fear over losing her) and think about it in a different light, we have shared my children, we have understood one another, it's pretty comfortable, familiar for her-a home. We valued being together.

In all of everything I still can fundamentally ask her opinion on something serious and hear her advise. She ate two huge plates of spagetti tonight.

We kind of smiled at that.

She's very brave.

My Daughter

All her life Sophia worked ten times harder in a sister's shadow. 

She graduated early, did an internship, demonstrated again that she casts quite a beautiful image herself. I'm so proud of her accomplishments. I was caught in a mess at work, and like when my son was born and this workplace produced an acting out Principal threatening my job-who later lost his-I lost something valuable with my child. The focus. The positive here is that my child is struggling so hard to give me the opportunity to fix this. To connect. To just hold up how thrilled I am. She's gotten her degree! She's home for a bit, but I think what I see is her deep desire for a relationship with a mother -oneI think she feels in some ways let her down. 

When you see someone love you this way it's hard not to think about that.

The deep care she extended even over this holiday-I don't miss that love.

 Fewer regrets and Losses

I thought about how the internet allowed me to connect to many friends from my early life, different folks that shaped me. It's amazing, even one of my earliest friends with a daughter with my name! 

These things helped me to think about my years here in this life.

This year I started losing my eyesight. I don't know- something was really wrong in March through May it was so difficult. I'm told it's iritis and a viscous seperation but it seems like the blinking and the flashing lights and the whiteness might mean something else is in play. I'll try to go to LA over it for 2nd opinions. Anyway it scared me for sure. It seemed related to stress.

It was really in large part due to a friendship that was always so incredibly stressing.

I made some basic decisions.

I'm not exactly proud of them but I feel I put my needs out there and tried to make some fundamental decisions and changes to help the stress. I thought long and hard about people that drain your happiness. I thought about patterns of behavior that made me feel worse.

I changed things, admittedly awkwardly, but I did do that.

These are good things.

Simple things.

I dealt with a great deal of pain, loss this year, kept focused on my students, kept spiritually questing and held at the front of my mind just being myself, one day at a time.

That was good too.

I certainly saw others giving, trying, working, helping, learning, messing up, doing what humans do but I tried to limit my scope to what I am doing.

 It doesn't make for fascinating reading.

I got a book about Poetry for Christmas called "Writing the Life Poetic"

It has been interesting reading, it suggests lots of exercises around poetry. I'm trying some, thinking of how to use it, thinking about the enormous joy in writing.

If this year were an image, this one might be a Turner.

Just an impression.

 

This is all I have to give.