Nesting

Spring cleaning was a huge ritual around my house when I was growing up.  Mind you, I was never involved very much.  My grandparents lived with us for most of my childhood, and my grandmother was the queen of clean. I recall coming home from school on late spring afternoons to a flurry of cleaning, painting and redecorating inside and out.  My mother would tie a scarf around her hair and actually wear jeans (something ladies in the 60's hardely deigned be seen in).  My grandmother would cover her oldest housedress with a faded apron, and they would tie in.  In fact, I think this went on for most of the summer.   And if they weren't cleaning they were cooking, the two of them in our cool basement kitchen turning out homemade bread, fried chicken, and fresh fruit pies.  But I was always shooed out the door, never asked or even allowed to take part in these domestic dramas.  Whether they didn't trust me to perform up to their standards, or were simply spoiling me by allowing me to play all day, I have no idea.  Consequently, I'm not much of a domestic diva.  When I got married and moved into my own house, I literally didn't know how to change a roll of toilet paper.  Really.

After 34 years of housekeeping, I guess I've managed to learn most everything I need. And once in a while - usually in spring and fall - I get the urge to spruce and shine up the place. 

So that's what I've been doing today.  Red impatiens went into the front border beds, along with solar lights.  The bathroom walls got washed with Murphy's Oil Soap (just like my grandma used) and an old wicker shelf was taken down from the wall and tossed into the trash, replaced with some framed prints from our own collection of photographs.  New rugs and linens are up in the kitchen, a cool moss green color and design. 

For dinner, there's salmon marinating in my favorite sauce, to be grilled and served with asparagus and wild rice.  Because I'm feeling so domestic, I'll even share the recipe with you.

Becca's Favorite Asian Grilled Salon

2 T Dijon mustard

3 T good soy sauce

6 T olive oil

1/2 t minced garlic

Whisk all ingredients together.  Marinate salmon fillet in 1/2 the mixture for 30 minutes, and grill.  Pour the other half of the marinade over hot, cooked salmon.

 Obviously, even The Byline was not exempt from my nesting frenzy today.  I like this clean new look,  particularly the notepad design which is in keeping with my love of notebooks and paper. 

How about you?  How are you nesting these days?

Blossoms

Suddenly it's summer, and everything's blooming.  I continue to have this feeling that it's later than it really is - you know the sensation, I'm sure, when Monday feels like Tuesday, or Thursday feels like Friday.  But I certainly don't want to hurry time, for time passes much too quickly already.  Do you remember when you first noticed time flying?  For me, it was my 16th birthday.  That was young, wasn't it, to realize that concept of time on the wing? ?  I recall looking at my birthday cake with all the candles, and wondering how I had gotten so old so fast.

How funny, 38 years later. 

So we're heading into summer now, and I'm thinking back to last year at this time, when I was busy planting a new perennial garden in the back yard, looking forward to the long hours of daylight ahead.  In just a couple of weeks, we'll be at the first anniversary of my uncle's death, an event that seemed to spark a series of  life changing events which turned the summmer of 2009 into what felt lika an ambush by life.  

After last summer,  I look at the calendar with some trepidation.  We meander along, minding our own business, until suddenly fate reins us in with a sharp, painful tug.   All those empty squares on the calendar when anything could happen.

But all the blossoms remind me that the "anything" need not be sadness - it could be something beautiful and new.  There is rebirth and regrowth every summer, on ever day of the calendar.

Pencil me in for that.

How about you?  What's blossoming  in your life and your garden right now?

Calling Home

Had dinner with a good friend and former colleague the other night, and we spent the better part of four hours(!) on a rainy evening talking about all sorts of things.  We're each "only children," who have adult sons (also only children), we've cared for aging relatives, we run in the same musical circles and share several years of working in the same small office together.  So there's always plenty of things to discuss, and a couple of glasses of wine make the conversation all the more interesting.  That night we got on the topic of home, and how the concept has changed over the last three generations.  It came up 

 because my son is on the verge of moving from Florida to Texas, and my friend's son was contemplating a move from Vermont to Maine.  My friend and her husband, much like Jim and I, have lived in the same suburban home for the past 30 years.  

"I have no desire to move into some big mansion," S. says, or even to one of the "paradise retirement communities.  I'm not a house person," she admitted.  "Don't care if it's fancy or big, as long as it's comfortable and safe and mine." 

I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing, something I might not have done four or five years ago, when I was going through a period of wanting out of my old house in my old neighborhood and  yearning for something new and different.  Who in the world stays in the same place their entire life, I remember thinking then.  And why would you want to? 

Interestingly enough, now I know exactly why.  There is an unprecedented sense of history in where we live,  and although it isn't momentous in any way, it's unusual enough in the modern world to suddenly feel very special.  To live on a piece of land your father purchased in 1942, to live in a house he helped design and build, to walk the same hallways, sleep in the same room, look out on the same expanse of lawn that you have done for your entire life - that hardly ever happens anymore.   Heck, my son has already lived in more places than his dad or I ever have, and he's about to increase that total by one more...and he's only just turned 30. 

So we were talking about home last night, and S. mentioned that when her husband was planning his 50th high school reunion , he did a survey of his former classmates which posed the question, "Where do you consider home?"  Remarkably, many of these 60-somethings named the small town in upper Michigan where they all grew up, even though most of them had been gone from this place for decades.  I recalled that my mother in law, who was born  and raised in Fort Collins, Colorado, always referred to that city as "home," even though she spent 55 years in Michigan.  

I suppose what feels like home is different for everyone.  For me, home is tied up in the three houses here in Redford where I've lived since I was six.  They've sort of morphed into one place that's home, where my history is.  My schools, my childhood friends, my music teacher's house, the library, the park where I took my son sledding in the winter, the stores where I've shopped.  This aging suburb contains every bit of my life, every relationship that's important to me, all of it started here.  

Of course, we have our house in Florida, which is lovely and is a nice respite (especially during the winter months).  But is that, or could that ever be, home?  I don't feel as if I fit there in Naples, and don't suspect I ever would, with all the rich retirees and the golfers and the ladies who lunch.   And home to me is about fitting, like a piece that clicks  perfectly into whatever odd shape the puzzle requires. 

Not that there's anything wrong with moving around, with living in different parts of the country or even the world for that matter.  I'm sure you gain great social perspective, develop all kinds of insight, and learn to be adaptable, all necessary skills which scientifically ensure the survival of the species.   

But I guess I'm just a home-body, and though I may be part of a dying breed I'm beginning to think you'll have to drag me kicking and screaming out of this house and into whatever the next place I'll try to call home will be.   Because  I may very well live in some other place, but  it won't be home for real.  I think that definition has already been set. 

So, how about you?  Where do you call home?

Write Here and Now

I was busy packing my gig bag yesterday morning, tossing everything I thought might come in handy during a day of accompanying.   Music notebook - check.  Water bottle - check.  Novel to read during breaks between classes -check.   At the last minute I decided to toss in a blank notebook to update my things-to-do lists for the days ahead.  I remembered seeing one lying on our old desk in the basement, and grabbed it up when I went down to get clean socks out of the dryer. After my first class, I grabbed coffee and a cinnamon raisin bagel at a nearby Einstein Brothers, and sat at one of the sunny outside tables to enjoy the spring breeze.  I flipped open the cover of the notebook, my thoughts already turning to the myriad items on my mind.  Groceries, garden supplies from Home Depot, a baby gift for my cousin's little girl who arrived yesterday morning. 

To my surprise, the notebook was already half filled.  Glancing through the notations, I remembered this was one of the writing notebooks I kept a few summers ago.  There were ideas for blog posts, snippets of poems, quotes from essays on writing.   It reminded me of notebooks kept when I was a teenager, brimming over with passionate dreams and plans.

How sad, I thought - this notebook, once the repository of creative musings and ideas was being relegated to grocery and to-do lists.  When did that happen?

My "writing life," such as it is (or ever was) has definitely taken a back burner to my "real life."  I still write, here, and at Bookstack, but sometimes my writing seems without purpose, lackluster.  I don't yearn for the page like I once did, and though I still have ideas aplenty, the words with which to impart them seem harder to come by.  Like any passion, the one I have for writing has cooled a bit and requires more tender loving care to fan its flame. 

But something inside eggs me on, refuses to consider giving up this space, the place to order my thoughts and play with words.  I still need it, I think, as a way to make sense of a crazy world fraught with change, a way to record my impression of life in general and my own in particular. 

A place to write - here and now, and in the days to come.

Empathetic Eyes

You can sense the emotions of those around you.  You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own.  People feel comfortable telling you their innermost thoughts and feelings.  You do not necessarily agree with each person's perspective or condone the choices they make, but you do understand.  You yearn to be thought of affectionately by most people.  You search for ways to fill their lives with joy.  You might embody the proverb  "still waters run deep" - that is, quiet people are profound thinkers. 

Empathy was the second strength identified by the StrengthsFinder assessment I completed a while back.  Again, it's eerily correct.  Ever since second grade when little Cathy A., the class outcast, attached herself to me, until the present day when someone at my workplace (who shall remain nameless) so regularly bends my ear about all kinds of personal problems that I've been tempted to hang up my shingle announcing "Psychiatrist 5 cents" , I've been a magnet for anyone who needs some empathetic understanding. 

Sometimes, like the legendary sin-eaters, I feel satiated to the point of bursting with other peoples angst.  Nevertheless, I can't seem to control my heart which continues going out to anyone and everyone around me.   I've been advised to grow a thicker skin, to turn a deafer ear, but somehow I can't seem to put this  advice into practice.

So how does this characteristic help/hinder me in terms of my professional life?  It allows me to be aware of  others perspectives, gives me a clearer idea of how they will react  in a given situation.  It also enables me to intuit what may happen before it becomes common knowledge.  I've seen this played out at work with boring regularity recently, pertaining to some issues with personnel that have resulted in more than a few shake ups lately.   But since I can see what's about to happen in these situations, I also get worried and anxious  waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And because I care about the people involved, my empathetic nature fires up and sets my heartstrings fluttering.  

I can also use empathy to help defuse potentially volatile situations and to assess people's moods to ascertain how they might react.  I think empathy helps me be a better judge of character, too, and allows me to envision how people fit into the workplace environment or don't fit in, as the case may be.

While the StrengthsFinder assessments seem focused on workplace use, it's interesting to think about one's strengths in terms of family an romantic relationships, too.   My husband probably appreciates my need to maintain harmony in our lives, and hopefully my empathetic eyes enhance my value in terms of our partnership.  I'll remind him of that the next time he turns all Analytical on me.  Because even though he's not taken the assessment, I'd be willing to bet that's his top strength.  And since I'm so perceptive about people, I'm probably right.