On Compassion

In the city block where my grandparents lived, shabbily dressed men often walked the streets delivering advertising circulars for local grocery and department stores.  My grandmother called them “the bargain paper men.” They were often older men, thin and gray haired; they might walk with a limp, their hand might tremble as they fastened the rolled up advertisement to the door handle with a green rubber band. A shy, fearful child, I would often crouch behind the door out of sight when I spied them coming down the street. I felt a strange combination of fear and sadness toward these men. Sometimes, if my grandfather were around, I would run and crawl into his lap, thinking I could protect him - also a quiet, slender, gray-haired man - from the fate of becoming a bargain paper man, as if he could suddenly fall victim to whatever dire circumstance had led them to this place.

My heart ached for those men and all the things I worried they didn’t have - a warm home, a good job, meals to eat, people to love them. I couldn’t name it then, but those feelings were the first stirrings of compassion, the kind of concern for another’s suffering that seems to be in short supply in today’s world.

In the news right now are refugee children, thousands of them, seeking a better life on our shores; families in the middle east torn apart by political violence that has its roots in grievances thousands of years in the making; the innocent dead littered across a prairie after their aircraft was shot from the sky by an angry government.

There is so much compassion needed. Where do we find it amidst our quickness to anger and our rush to judgement? Even though every religion in the world espouses compassion and kindness as key values, we often turn deaf ears and hardened hearts to the needs of others. We’re protective of our own needs, snarly about giving away too much time or money. Or we think we can’t do enough, so we do nothing.

I  worry about people and animals who don’t have enough - enough love, enough shelter, enough to eat or drink. I want to help them in a big way, but I don’t know how. I give bits of time and money and effort to big organizations dedicated to compassionate care, but that seems like pitiable recompense.

I can’t begin to solve all the world’s problems. None of us can, no matter how much we pontificate or splutter on Facebook, no matter how many checks we write or mission trips we participate in.  But I believe every act of compassion builds upon itself: every time we smile at a stranger, or do a favor for a neighbor, or foster a homeless pet, we put a small piece of positive energy into the world, energy that multiplies and spreads.

My grandparents house also had an alley behind it, and sometimes in the mornings men would appear at the back gate asking for food. Perhaps these were the same “bargain paper men” I would see later in the day. Perhaps they were other homeless men. Yes, they could have been drinkers or drug addicts down on their luck. Nevertheless, my grandmother often handed them a sack of something to eat. “I always feed them,” she told me once. “You never know, one of them might be Jesus come back to earth."

How amazing if we could see divinity in every person we meet, whether they are rich or poor, black, white, refugee, or warrior. Difficult to do, I admit. I fail at it on a regular basis.

But imagine - if every person on the planet did one small kind thing for someone else every day, what a wonderful world that would be.

The only way to get there is to start small.

Start with one person, one act of kindness. With me. With you.

But start today.

On The Quiet Life

There are 15 people in my musical group. We are trying to find a time this summer when we all can meet to have a new group photograph taken. But between now and two months from now, there does not appear to be one day when our collective schedules will allow this to happen. My friend, who is 73 years old, and “retired” after 30 years of teaching school is still out of her house from morning until night most days, caught up in a round of volunteer projects, seeing movies, lunching with friends, counseling former students, driving cross town to cheer on grandchildren in soccer, hockey, baseball, dancing.

When can you meet, they will say to me. When can you come for the photograph, the lunch, the rehearsal? What is the best time for you?

My days are open, I say. I am free any time.

I think they raise their eyebrows at me when I say this. I think they are wondering - “What is wrong with her that she has nothing on her calendar? Why is she not busy?"

For a moment then, I wonder too. Should I be busier? Should I be booking my days full of activities and plans and meetings and appointments? Should I be at the art fairs, the exhibitions, the shopping centers, buying more things I “need”? Should I be doing more?

But then I recall the fullness of MY days, with walks to take, birds to feed, plants to water. There are books to read, books to write, music to play, sky and clouds to contemplate, wind to rush through my hair. My bicycle awaits. The new yoga classes at the studio on the corner are enticing. Thursdays I can wander through the farmer’s market, have lunch at the bookstore/cafe in town. I can spend the afternoon with my mother, sitting on her patio drinking iced tea and chatting about this or that.

I feel like I have waited a long time for days such as these. Perhaps they won’t always seem so full, so satisfying in their quietness as they do right now. After many years spent on that treadmill of places to go, people to see, things to do, these empty days feel like the penultimate reward.

I still sometimes take on too much, say “yes” too often. When I do this, the price to pay is dear: it is anxiety, impatience, unhappiness. So I am learning. When I say “yes” I do so with a reason that makes sense to me. Maybe it’s to help a friend. Or to learn something new or get better at something old. But I notice if any particular “yes” truly hardens my spirit, I hope I will remember to say “no” the next time.

For those who question my lack of ambition, maybe it’s true. I am not a striver.  I don’t yearn for success or fame or glory. I’m not ever searching for or desirous of the Next Big Thing. I have the Big Things: Health, Safety, People To Love. Give me some quiet days with long stretches of time to enjoy them, and I am golden.

Is this a privileged position in which to be? Yes. Oh how I know that.

Will it last forever? That I don’t know, can’t know. Five years from now, I could be flipping burgers in order to pay the mortgage. I hope not, but life is unpredictable.

While I have these golden days, I mean to make the most of them.

My days are open. I am free most anytime.

TLC Book Tours: Last Night at the Blue Angel

“My mother’s feelings are the curb I walk, trying to keep my balance, and I get tired of it, being careful, and mad at her at the same time. But then she takes my hand and smiles at me. You’re my favorite, she says. And suddenly I’m on solid footing again, struck smooth, the moment perfect, our life perfect, and me, perfectly loved.” from Last Night at the Blue Angel, by Rebecca Rotert This debut novel is an intensely moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship, told largely from the point of view of a precocious 10 year old named Sophia, who has grown up standing in the wings of various nightclubs listening to her mother Naomi perform the jazz music she loves so much. Sophia’s voice is so endearing: she is at once needy and strong, smart and innocent, haunted and fearless. She is desperately seeking stability, love, and family, but is also afraid of it, keeping herself in the shadows of it like a feral cat.

Naomi lives for her music, for the possibility of fame, which she thinks will “solve everything.” When faced with true love, she throws it away every time, yearning for a normal life, but also afraid of it, afraid she will disappear, become powerless, dependent on a man.

This character driven novel really drew me in from the first page. Rotert’s writing is evocative and reaches the readers deepest emotions. Naomi and Sophia both "depend on the kindness of strangers,” and the supporting cast of characters (which includes a nun and a transvestite) are engaging and well drawn.

This is a novel to savor, and one that shows great promise. I look forward to reading more from this author in years to come.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this novel.

Connect with the author here: Twitter.

Buy the book here:  Amazon, IndieBound, and Barnes & Noble.

Life Goes On

“Each of us walks along a path with no sign of where’ve we been and no knowledge of where we’ll end up. The earth rises to meet the soles of our feet and out of nowhere comes a gift to support and sustain our awareness, which is our life. Some days the gift is a bite, and some days it’s a banquet. Either way, it’s enough.” from Paradise in Plain Sight, by Karen Maezen Miller I’ve not been sleeping very well lately, and there are some practical reasons for this. One of my little dogs has allergies and she wakes periodically in the night with a stuffy, sneezy nose. When she wakes, often about 3:00 a.m., I wake. And then I am restless and fitful until morning, my mind buzzing with thoughts, ideas, and always a running loop of my To-Do list.

Sometimes I leave my bed and go across the hall to the room that serves as my writing room during the day. There is a queen sized bed in this room, a bed covered with a quilt my aunt made me for a wedding present. The quilt top is cross stitched in an intricate floral pattern. She stitched every stitch herself, by hand,  then stretched the quilt top on the frame in her basement and quilted every tiny quilting stitch herself by hand. A labor of love, and one that seems miraculous to me, as I have neither the patience nor the talent for sewing. When I take my restless body and crawl under this quilt, I feel instantly comforted. It is the perfect heft to be warm yet not suffocating. It’s like being held close to someone you love, someone who knows just how to calm a racing heart.

Every time I pick up my copy of Karen Maezen Miller’s book, Paradise in Plain Sight, it falls open to the page that contains the passage quoted above. This small, elegant book is very much about finding meaning in the here and now, so I think there must be a reason these words appear before me so often. What are they trying to teach me?

On these bright and beautiful summer days, I am spending so much time immersed in the lessons of my past. This is not a bad thing.  While collecting and curating my writing for this book I am piecing together, this book that is like a patchwork quilt of the past eight years, I am beginning to see myself not just in part but as whole, see the path I’ve walked along for not just the past decade, but get a glimpse of what led me to it in the first place. One foot in front of the other, sometimes through soft mossy meadows, other times through thickets full of briars, the path of my Life in General has led me here: to this place where Life Goes On.

“Out of nowhere comes a gift to support or sustain our awareness, which is our life,” Maezen writes. “Some days the gift is a bite, and some days it’s a banquet.”

Life feels like a banquet to me these days. I try not to be smug about that. Or complacent. After all, I know about the dark side. I remember those few years ago when losses stacked up like dominoes and then began to tumble incessantly. But I’m beginning to see those moon-shrouded days as part of the path I had to walk to get myself to this place, a place where I feel as if I’m right where I need to be to take the next steps wherever they might lead.

The gifts that come to me are usually small - the sight of a hummingbird at the feeder, my little dog asleep with her head on my pillow, the gentle harmony of wind chimes in the breeze, morning coffee in my favorite chair. My husband’s fingers intwined in mine. My son’s voice on the phone.

A gourmet feast.

Your banquet will be different from mine. But if you look at your world with new eyes, perhaps you will find more than just a bite to support you on your own path. Maybe you will find the incentive to walk briskly rather than just putting one weary foot in front of the other. It won’t happen all at once, it won’t happen every day. One sweet morsel at a time. One sprightly step in front of the other.

This is how life goes on.

Another reason I’m having trouble sleeping is because I’m in the process of developing something deep down, a sort of spiritual growth spurt that happens only when the body quiets down and the busyness of life is stilled.  I think these nights under my quilt are part of what I’m learning, like everything on my path these days. They remind me of the love that surrounds me, the care and labor that goes into everything beautiful.

The way a hundred thousand tiny crossed-shaped stitches can- when you stand back and survey them whole- become a wildly spreading garden of flowers.

Pieces From the Past: I Remember Nothing

I’ve been spending a lot of time sifting through eight years of blog posts and essays to include in my book, Life in General. Since many of my Facebook friends indulge in something called “Throwback Thursday”, posting photos of themselves from the past, I thought it might be fun to do something similar here, posting some of my favorite “ Pieces of the Past.”  Here’s one from 2011: We were online the other evening, purchasing airline tickets our upcoming trip to Florida.  When it came time to enter the credit card number, my husband turned to me and said, “Okay, let’s have it.”  I rattled off the 16 digit number, complete with expiration date and security code.

“Amazing,” he said, shaking his head as he always does when I come up with arcane bits of information out of my head.  ”How do you remember that?”

Time was, I would smile with smug satisfaction, proud of the mind that was like a steel trap, keeping track of everything from passwords to birthdays, drug classifications to recipes.  In recent months, however, my smug smile has faded.  Clearly, the days of my ability to reliably classify and organize information in my head are coming to an end.  In spite of recalling that credit card number upon request, I have been forgetting more and more things.  In fact, sometimes it feels as if I  remember nothing.

I know that women of a certain age have fuzzy memories.  Apparently, the gradual loss of estrogen from a woman’s body directly coincides with losses in her memory bank as well.  I try not to panic when I can’t remember where I’ve left my cell phone, my watch, my purse…it’s common at your age, I tell myself reassuringly as I dash madly from room to room.

It’s harder to remain unconcerned when my fuzzy thinking has more dire consequences.  Last weekend, I was filling my husband’s weekly pill container.  He has a new medication, a tiny pink pill, which is fine except for the fact that two of his other medications are (practically identical) tiny pink pills.  He takes two of one of these pills, one of the other, and one-half of the third.  Well, I got them all mixed up and placed two of the one he was only supposed to take one-half of!  Frantic, I tried to reach him on his cell phone before he took the medication, already  imagining the headline -”Menopausal Woman Kills Husband in Medication Misdemeanor.”  The text I got in reply was less than comforting -
“Too late on those pills.  Already took them.”

Don’t worry, I’m not a widow.  In fact, he didn’t seem any the worse for wear other than some extra neuropathy pain because I shortchanged him on the pain medication.

But these are the kinds of muddle headed snafus to which I’ve become more and more prone.

In addition to age, I blame some of my frazzled thinking on the internet.  I know I spend too much time on the internet, or texting on my phone.  The constant barrage of information makes my brain feel as if the synapses are overloaded.  Sometimes I can almost feel the sparks flying around up there, as my heart literally palpitates in agitation, flipping from Facebook to blogs to Twitter and back.  So much to read, so much to think about, so much to say!

Oh my.

But mostly this increasing loss of memory makes me feel less capable, and that’s a feeling I’m not familiar with.  I’ve always prided myself on having a good grip on life in general.  Paying bills on time, keeping up with appointments and errands, maintaining a regular schedule.  Orderly and neat, everything taken care of the way its supposed to be  -that’s how I like to operate.  Lately,  I’ve begun to worry about what I may be missing, what I might have forgotten to do, what addle brained mistake is out there waiting to snag my progress through the world.

The world is definitely more complicated than it was in our parent’s generation.  It seems my life is continually crowded with things that must be done, all vying for my attention with varying degrees of intensity.  And sometimes I wonder if all the things that have been invented during the past 50 years ostensibly designed to make life easier don’t in fact make it more complicated.   My yearning for a simple life is rooted in a need to have less to process, less minutiae to worry about.

Less to remember.

Because I’m definitely remembering less and less.