All it takes is to jump

Action. When it comes to aspirations, it's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. What's your next step?

My brother sent me an email the other day proposing a Christmas present for my parents. A tandem jump from Triangle Skydiving.. under $150. George Bush (41) had done it... well, not with Bar. For a moment I imagined my mother's gray curls waving in the wind, my father's grimace as he faced the ground. My grandmother never rode a bicycle, so given all the change in the world since then, why not this for a couple of 82-year-olds?

No. I want them both to live a lot longer.

I remember jumping. Way back when I was 23, I had an idea. Stuck in a mediocre (and poorly-paid) newspaper job at a very bad newspaper, I imagined myself as a "real writer," at a big city newspaper somewhere, anywhere, outside the town 30 miles from my parents and a relationship that really wasn't going anywhere. I pulled out my trusty Olivetti and typed up a bunch of letters to newspapers around. And actually mailed them at the P.O. The N&O, the Atlanta Journal, The Charlotte Observer, among others, telling them how much I wanted to work for their newspaper  —I had never even seen the Atlanta paper or been to Atlanta, and had only read the Charlotte paper in college — attaching copies of my poorly-edited clips with the typos I have now become famous for. I don't recall hearing from any of them... maybe a form letter from the N&O.  

Desperate for change, I called the j-school alumni office, asking them if they had a job, ANY job, I might apply to. Yes, they said, in Augusta, Ga., a feature writing job in the "Family" department. And guess what? Someone in my class was already there. And she loved it. All I knew about Augusta was that it was no place to be, but so was where I was.

So, that letter went out, with the aforementioned clips, and whattayaknow? I got a phone call. Come down, the editor said. So I did.

That visit would change my life. I got the job, found an exceptional editor who with some tough love made me the real writer I had imagined myself being. And I met the man that very day who right now is walking the dog in a very bad looking Russian hat. (wish I had my camera at home) I knew he would be more than important to my life when he was opening the passenger door of my editor's car, for me to slip inside.

Six years later, we left the Land of Adventure with our two kids and a dog, heading back to N.C. and yet another adventure. I began to write again after four years of not, discovered my voice, helped my children discover theirs.

Blink.

Today, it feels like I am on the cusp again, desperate for change. Not out of a bad relationship  or a dead-end job, but from myself. I hover, wading through my days but envisioning the sky jump I can't quite sign up for. I have two novels I haven't finished. A life that needs uncluttering. I have the ideas, but making them happen? I have a big ol' boulder on my chest weighing me down.

Today I have been thinking about that 23-year-old and what motivated her to step out of her safe but unsettled life and do something. JUMP! She had ideas, and somehow being stuck gave her the courage to  step off the firm ground that held her, hoping somehow she would land on her feet. She knew not one soul in Augusta, Ga., but it proved just the place to land, to be.

And so, as this year closes, I have a few ideas. I want to find that voice that says you have the parachute, now jump! The place where I can put one word in front of (or behind) another, to finish what I started. To imagine one more time to jump, to see where I am headed and to land on my feet.

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11 Things, Mind Body & Soul

12/11 Reverb10: What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)


1) 11 pounds (at least) 
2) failure to launch
3) clutter: mind AND matter
4) dreams about not making it to class
5) dreams about making it to class but w/o my homework
6) one more thingamagig that comes with an online user guide
7) two few completed sentences
8) my muffin top
9) a beachless summer
10) a day without exercise
11) being late


How will I go about ridding my life of these things? 
eat less, move more, rise early, set out, read more, write more, clear out, slow down, catch up, clean up, breathe in (and out), twist/shout, smell the sea, kick the sand, let go, let God. And pray He catches me, when I attempt that launch.


12/ 12 – Body Integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? (Author: Patrick Reynolds)


Cohesive me? Now THAT'S funny. Maybe every time I enjoyed that first catchup-dipped fry from Cloos'? You have got to be kidding, right? Maybe next year I'll take a shot at it though. I probably just misunderstood the question.  Oh, and by the way, shouldn't it be "a moment when?" (a place where) — or was I just late to class that day and didn't do my homework? 
sbr

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Do You Hear What I Hear?

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

My mother lost her hearing in an accident about 15 years ago. Falling on the back of her head on a curb, she cracked the inner-ear bones in both her ears. She was headed with my dad, a physician mind you, to visit my sister in Iowa. I wanted her to cancel the trip, but they would have nothing of it. I reluctantly put them on the plane, calling my sister to say best of luck. It would be an interesting visit. Diagnosed while there, she came home. (Can you imagine flying with broken bones in both ears?) And when my husband picked her up at the airport, she told him the radio was dragging like an old 8-track tape.

It was not that bad with me. I didn't break anything, just in the last few years, my hearing apparently has faded somewhat, like my vision, but unlike my vision, I didn't know what I wasn't hearing. My children mumbled, and well, don't all twenty-somethings mumble? I had to turn the tv up loud, but well, doesn't everybody, except for the commercials?

Last Christmas, when our family gathered, the stories flew, as usual. My sister admitted that she had had a hearing test, and that hear aids were recommended, to which my husband and children said: Susan can't hear anything. I will admit I was having trouble understanding the low talkers during staff meetings, the people who whispered to me, all the time. But I was not deaf, not by a long shot.

As part of my self-improvement plan for 2010, I went to the doctor with a series of complaints, including bunions and by the way, I have trouble hearing. He did a test, and I didn't believe he was actually pressing the little button that buzzed, because I could not hear it at all. On to the ENT, and to the audiologist. My mother admitted she was losing her hearing before she lost it completely.

And so, I got hearing aids. At Costco. COSTCO! I love Costco. But I wasn't sure I wanted to get my hearing aids there. But my husband, who is frugal, suggested it. And so I reluctantly visited their hearing center, taking my test, which showed I had lost much of the high pitched sound and some of the low. Women's voices, birds (though I swear I can hear them fine in the morning,) voice recognition, which explains why my children were mumbling (I stand by my statement above, however.)

They retested me, and the results were the same. Then they turned on a hearing aid with my prescription. Oh my, the world is much, much louder than I thought. The first time I put my own hearing aids in my ears (weeks later), I was upset. One more sign that I am getting older. And when I walked out, I could hear the clap of my shoes against the cement, the jingle of my keys in my hand, the traffic, and when my little friend Cheyney whispered to me, I could finally hear what she was saying. One wise decision indeed.

So now I hear, and though I am a few thousand dollars poorer, I am richer in hearing the world again, not having to tell people to speak up, to listen to the whispers I was missing. How can you listen, when you can't hear?

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Put On Your (Pity) Party Pants (I promise, I did write this yesterday)

Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

Ok, so I've read some of the Reverb10 posts and realize I am supposed to BREAK THE RULES with these questions, and not write them uncomfortably straight, like yesterday's post. But uncomfortably truthful.
I would be a little late on the uptake. Like I am with just about everything this year, especially Christmas. No tree, no decorations, hardly any gifts. (Who has time with all this writing I'm doing? I just can't multitask like I could in my 30s and 40s, I'm just saying.)

Though the weddings I attended were FAB, Anna and Ardeth, that's not what I will remember here.

It happened just last night. It was lovely. I went to my first ever book club meeting at a friend’s house. As I write these words, I think how can it be that I have, at 53, been invited to join my first book club? All my friends are in book clubs, some of them in more than one. I've been invited to read at book clubs, but never to join. (Ok, might this be pity party # 2?)  A wise friend told me recently that I might intimidate people because I'm a "writer," well, do they know that this writer reads her fair share of trash, has actually bought a copy of the National Inquirer (once), that the high brow books I read I often don't understand? Not to mention that it is embarrassing the number of books I haven't read on that list of BBC books that most people have only read six of floating around on FB. (For the record, I have read WAY more than six. But Madame Bovary? My mother would never have allowed me to read that. I had to get special permission to see Romeo and Juliet at the Dixie Theatre because Leonard Whiting was bare bottomed. Not to mention Olivia Hussey's bosom, but I had seen at least two of those by then.)

Anyway, back to the Party. I love my friend. We've been friends for 20 years, and I have admired her all those years. She's a great mother. She is intentional in her actions. 

She is beautiful, has a beautiful house and everything looks like pottery barn and her husband is a cabinet maker (as a hobby), he built some of the cabinets in their living room. He is also a husband who can fix anything at all, and one thing he fixed (that I covet) are these beautiful cabinets over her kitchen computer station that are back light (not with florescent lights, mind you) but soft lights that reflect on the artisan pitchers and plates she has on display. They have a mountain house (that I have been invited to twice) and they cut their Christmas tree down from the mountains and it is 10 feet tall), and she made us Christmas cookies and everything was CLEAN, even with a dog in the house and the lights are all perfectly low and the children's Christmas handprint wreath pictures are all framed and over the fireplace, (somewhere in my boxes yet to unpack, my children's handprint wreaths are curled on dowels.) And she had carefully preserved other special Christmas artwork — the adorable burlap pillow cross-stitched with a Christmas tree comes to mind —I have the same one somewhere, if the dog didn't chew it up a couple of Christmases ago. And she had ordered special huggers for our wine glasses with the name of the book club on them, and there were lights everywhere and she has stenciled the wall with a special Christmas saying about singing loudly that she created, that apparently just scrapes off without leaving a scar on the wall when Christmas is over, (if I did it, it would indeed scar), and, well, can you tell that when I die I want to come back as her? 

As I moved around her house, admiring every corner of it, I couldn't help but wonder, what do I have to offer my friends, really? 

I came home to kitchen counters filled with lists and bills and nary a twinkling light glowing, save my husband's computer screen, and the florescent one over the kitchen sink, and I guess if I tried real hard I could imagine its light emanating from the Star of Wonder all those years ago in Bethlehem. And I had two missed messages from my husband saying he couldn't, then could, figure out the DVR so I wouldn't miss Sing-off while I was gone. And I just looked around at all the dust and scratched up floors where the dog has played catch me if you can and I had myself a good ol' fashioned pity party, with nobody but myself in attendance, remembering a time when you could practically eat off my floors my house was that clean. What happened to that girl?

And while I pitied, I watched Sing-off (aren't those guys from Committed amazing?) marveling in fact God gives some people the ability to sing better than a bird, and though I have always wanted to, He didn't give that to me, and in the midst of the pity, I realized what I did get, right in front of my eyes in this beautiful home but I had failed to see. 

My friend Pam. I have known her, too, for 20 years, and being a Yank, she is a stitch. She has made me laugh ever since we coached our daughters' OM team together, way back when they were in fifth grade. And she told me how she went to the airport to greet the WWII veterans who took the Flight of Honor a couple of weeks ago. Her father, a WWII vet is no longer around to take that flight. One of the giants in my church did though.

And Martha was there. I have known her since Miss Lottie Smith Welch's kindergarten. I have been waiting to see her for a couple of weeks, to talk about her son Ryan, in Afghanistan, and to share news that I have connected with one of our long-lost classmates, whom she will want to see. We hugged, (twice) knowing there is no friend like the ones who have known you when you were just you, and have loved you anyway.

And Grace was there. We walk our dogs every day at 6:30, a.m., have for I don't know how many years. Two dogs ago for me I think. It's been so cold this week we have stayed snuggled under the covers instead, and I have missed her company. When we went around the room to share our favorite Christmas traditions, she said church on Christmas Eve. It's the same for me. We have the same dishes, the same colors in our houses.We joke sometimes that when we get old, we'll move around the corner to the retirement home and combine our things. They would easily coordinate.  We were suite-mates in college. I have known her that long.

Two of my neighbors who have children getting married next year were there. I don't see them often at all, even though they live just through the trees. Both are funny, characters in their own right, and I love seeing them, listening to Karen talk about her favorite residents in the retirement home she runs, and Margaret about her extended family, all of whom live in the neighborhood, or nearby.

And there were a couple of women I don't know well, but whom I know will, over discussions about books, will give me great food for thought.

Why do I do this to myself, needle until I find the ways I fall short, instead of celebrating the fact that my friend opened her home and invited me in? That she drew together a group of women who are important to me, and gave me the chance to reconnect?

And so, just a bit ago, I pulled out the candles to put in the windows, and since it is me, a few of the bulbs were burned out, and when I went to the store to get them, I forgot to get them. So there you go. But when I drove back in the driveway, the candles lit the windows like stars. 

Christmas is coming. And even if I can't get the scratches off my floor, the presents bought, the greenery hung by the time it arrives, there will be much to celebrate.


sbr

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