Monthly Archives: September 2015

Thinking Outside the Box

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Truck rusting in your yard?

Make a flower garden out of it.

Some people just know how to delight. Take the owners of these trucks on Sauvie Island just outside of Portland, OR. These clever folks planted flowers in different flower boxes. Bravo! That’s thinking outside the old box, isn’t it?

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Got a problem? There just may be more than one viable option when it comes to making decisions and solving your problem.

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My husband is a great one for realizing there is no box to begin with. Right away his mind goes in 50 different directions and he comes up with an idea. However, he is quick to warn you that there is a lot of thinking left to do. Don’t get too fond of that solution, because he’ll come up with another one in a few minutes, hours, or days. His problem-solving is a long process. He builds on each idea until he is satisfied with the result before he takes action. He amazes me with his brilliance.

I tried to teach critical thinking to my students, and it was not the most exciting thing for them. Try as I might to make it fun, it was more of a slog than anything. Except when we had Socratic Circles to ask each other questions about a novel we were reading. Make that: Some of them were reading for their homework. Some of them were texting, watching reality shows on TV, talking on their cells, taking drugs, (oh, there’s a good topic for Socratic Circle), and some were just growing hair on their heads and not much else. But I digress.

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I wish we, as citizens of the globe, would do more critical thinking about how to make this a better world. Some people do just that, but it doesn’t seem like it if you watch the news. I don’t have a TV, so now I don’t have to watch the news. I get my fill of internet news via my husband. I get to hear his rants about the craziness that goes on. Some of it is MIND BLOWING. I wouldn’t be able to make that stuff up. But don’t get me started.

Now all I’m thinking about in this moment is what to fix for dinner. Actually, I have to use some of the steps for critical and divergent thinking to do this. Civeche might be a good idea. I’ll think about this.

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What are you thinking about?

Einstein's desk

Einstein’s desk photographed two days after his death.

Cheap Thrills

 

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“Fly! Fly higher!” Kathy yells to me. We are six and four; cute little girls, both of us with blond hair and blue eyes.

 

The water meter on the side of my house stood only about 20 inches off the ground, but to us it was so high that we were certain we could launch from it, flap our arm-wings and soar. After an hour, we tired of this game, and moved on to more excitement as we bragged to each other of our long and harrowing flights.

It is when thinking of my childhood in the days of bumble bees and watermelon that I am reminded of a time when water did not seem such a precious resource.

Sprinklers meant to water lawns would often go unattended while water spilled onto the street. This runoff became a swift, running river to us kids. Kathy and I would carefully choose blades of grass to serve as boats for a race.

 

[UNSET]

 

As luck would have it, we had only a short walk up to the top of our street. Not much of an incline really, but good enough. “On your mark, get set, go!” We tossed our little blades of grass into the street’s river and watched as our boats maneuvered between the debris dotting the channels of water. When our little boats got stuck, the rule was to wait to the count of three before dislodging them, thus allowing the race to continue to our designated finish line. I don’t think we were extremely competitive, but I remember the taste of victory as being especially sweet. These childhood games were the stuff of our cheap thrills.

 

What happened to childhood innocence once we grew into mean, junior high school girls whose main concern was the latest gossip? The competition was hot and heavy in those days and the games were as different as the rules.

 

 

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Whatever were we thinking when my girlfriend and I agreed to meet after school and play strip poker with three boys we barely knew? Were their any brain cells popping? Probably not.

Filled with fear and hard-driving adrenaline, mixed with very little poker skill, one item of clothing after another fell to the floor. Knowing that I would become the fodder for gossip scared me almost more than exposing my teeny, tiny breasts. More like bumps with nipples really. But for some reason I had difficulty rallying the courage to call an end to the game. What was I doing there?

My shoes came off. Next my socks, my skirt, my half-slip. My reputation would be next. My heart was trying to escape my chest. Enough. I just can’t do this. Game over.

 

Thank God those boys were not of a violent nature. They did not harass us girls to stay in the game. We retrieved our discarded clothing, wrapping them haphazardly so as to cover ourselves, and escaped to the bathroom to dress.

 

Calling an end to the game meant we avoided a danger as real as if we had fallen and narrowly escaped from a pit of alligators.

 

Truth be known, I think the boys were as relieved as we were to be finished with our game of strip poker, before it stripped us all of what little intelligence and common sense we could have possibly possessed as adolescents.

 

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Oxymoron—a figure of speech in which one uses contradictory terms to express oneself

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cruising through the traffic jams of our lives

 

 

not cohesive in our togetherness

we are accepted outsiders

using illiterate knowledge for an unorganized plan

where stationary travel leads to ecstatic lethargy

in this delicate crude world

of our unreliable steadfastness

is that a deepness rising in your heart?

an unpromised pledge of yesterday’s future?

i steadily fall into an awkward grace

like a sadness of pleasure in my satiated hunger

and oh! what oblique straightforwardness

is this playful work we do

me with my basket brimful of nothing

where I carry my separate belonging

and ever so slowly we speed to discover

a calm excitement—hidden in our perfect flaws

unrevealed we materialize—familiar strangers

cruising through the traffic jams of our lives

Fair Warning

 

 

At 84, when my father-in-law, Jay, got his cancer diagnosis, they told him he had 6 months to a year to live. With treatments he might get another 3 months, but those treatments don’t equate to 3 months of quality of life.

 

After his doctor told him, I don’t know exactly what went on in his heart of hearts, but what he demonstrated was grace and appreciation. He publicly remarked that he was grateful that he had lived a good life—been all the places he wanted to go and done many things of which he was proud. In the last eleven years he readily expressed how he had found happiness with his (3rd) wife, Valerie. She had brought him joy and given him unconditional love.

 

Merry Christmas 2007 Jay & Valerie

Merry Christmas 2007 Jay & Valerie

 

Disclaimer: Well, except she did make him eat healthier. That’s what a good wife does, right?

 

Jay had fair warning that death was coming soon. Did he change his way of living? Not at all. There was no rushing around to see more of the world or buying toys or much of anything different for him, even though he felt pretty good for the first 6 months after his diagnosis.

 

He told me he liked to sit in his recliner chair and read and watch old westerns on TV. He wanted Valerie in her chair right next to him. That’s what made him happiest. Instead of broadening his world, he honed in on it, making it smaller. He was at peace with a simple life. I would go as far as saying he was happy. He never complained. Not once.

 

And in the last months, Valerie was all about making it what he wanted. When it got to be too much for her to do alone, she asked me to come. I will be forever grateful for that phone call and the time I got to spend with them in the last couple months of his life.

 

Witnessing the stages when someone is actively dying can be hard on the ones who are there to hold down the fort. But it can be magical too, and precious. A few occasions brought us belly laughs, like the time the three of us were watching a Paul Newman movie and the camera panned to a couple playing poker. We were not expecting to see a naked woman at the poker table, but there she was with her perky, big boobs staring at us. Dad quickly drew in an audible surprise breath and said joyfully, “You thought I was asleep, didn’t you?”

 

One time I offered to clean his glasses and he was reluctant to let me for some reason. But I was anxious to please and after dousing them with soap and water, I proceeded to dry and polish them. As he put them back on I asked him if they were better. With a twinkle in his eye he told me, “That’s okay for a first try, I guess.” Oh, he could be sarcastic, but that was one of the things I loved about him.

 

His hospice care was a finely tuned machine. There may have been a few hiccups, but those small instances were overpowered by superb care. Appropriate medicine and equipment was delivered right to the door. The people involved in giving the care are unsung heroes. They anticipate needs of the patient and perform their duties with (dare I say?) what can only be described as love. Mostly things went without a hitch. The family caregivers (Val and I) were supported by hospice as well. They educated us about the stages of dying, so we knew what to expect, and they gave us much needed TLC. Hospice was a beautiful thing.

 

Between the care given by hospice and Valerie and me, we made Dad comfortable as he participated in his walk with cancer. It’s not all pretty; much of it is messy, and some of it is just plain heartbreaking. But as caregivers our only goals were to allow him dignity and provide him comfort, as he went on with this final journey. Dad died on July 17, 2015. He wanted, and got, a military service. Bless his heart.

 

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If you ever get a chance to help someone die, I recommend you do. It will be tough. Maybe the hardest thing you ever do. But it is the greatest gift you can give—to love someone so much—to help him make a smooth transition from life to death. Rest in peace, Dad. We hold on to our love.

 

At a Window

BY CARL SANDBURG

Give me hunger,

O you gods that sit and give

The world its orders.

Give me hunger, pain and want,

Shut me out with shame and failure

From your doors of gold and fame,

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,

A voice to speak to me in the day end,

A hand to touch me in the dark room

Breaking the long loneliness.

In the dusk of day-shapes

Blurring the sunset,

One little wandering, western star

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait and know the coming

Of a little love.

 

I Took a Hiatus

Sometimes life interrupts life.

Many experiences took away my energy for writing, but now I have a lot to write about and  I’m back. This summer my journey took me to places I’ve never been, and to places I used to be. It wasn’t all good. It wasn’t all bad. The woman I continue to become found unknown strength, but she disappointed herself sometimes too.

 

Somehow I have come to believe that the bottom line can never truly be the bottom line.

Conversely, the heights to which we aspire must never be reached, else we stop reaching.

 

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Hula Girl on our trip home.

I’m glad to be home.

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I’m glad to be writing again. Come back and join me?