ThinkLady

Bare trees

Dear December 2011  --

I’m just coming off a week-long staycation and the peace it brought to my life is yet another reminder of the joy found in simple rest. I’m thankful for the opportunity you brought to dawdle a bit with family and friends, to ponder endings and beginnings.

With ThinkMan on staycation too, our little family made art, read books, lounged, watched movies, talked, went out to eat, took a day trip to the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, a wildly beautiful place, and in general did what we wanted when we wanted. Callie and I stayed up late every night and slept late every day and got our days and nights completely turned around. It was heavenly.

Now, it’s back to reality, a reality that after our tranquil pause seems to have fewer edges, a reality that turns my mind to the meaning of work, a reality that finds me thinking on being 55, closing in on 56 and the years to come.

It’s 2012 now; in 2016 I will be 60; in 2018, 62 and eligible for early retirement, unless that too changes in this constantly shifting world. I remember thinking when I was in my 20s how any year after 2000 sounded so far away, so futuristic, so beyond imagining, and here I am, my oh my, living the future, contemplating what retirement might be like.

Post-50 life evolves differently mentally, physically, spiritually, and in our society it is not a particularly easy process. We are forced to compete for a living with energetic, lively, saavy 20- and 30-somethings at the start of their careers. They are beautiful in their enthusiasm and zest, and in some work environments, the integration of generations is smooth and gracious. In others, well, let’s just say the situation is one that does no generation any favors.

If the experience and wisdom that comes with working for 30+ years were indeed valued or honored in our society, the paradigm for the less-than-ideal situations might be different, but increasingly such is not the case. Well-documented deleterious effects of ageism are sadly alive and well in the job marketplace, leaving many in the 50+ crowd scrambling for jobs or out of work, and vast swaths of younger adults reinventing the wheel, sailing into storms without the benefit of sage guidance. Profit, celebrity and image reign as monarchs, experience and wisdom are deemed unfashionable, dowdy, and too expensive – and indeed the overall message is post-50, you best get out of the way. 

The question then becomes, get out of the way where? For unless one is a white-middle-aged or older male CEO, in which case your worth is hundreds of times that of the common person – the job prospects and the pay for those post-50 is on the decrease, at times astronomically. I’ve seen it happen over and over with family and friends and I’ve experienced it first-hand. It’s an achingly brutal and cruel process for a so-called civilized society, but then there are dark niches and corners aplenty in these modern times that are not gracious.

All the more reason, December, why I am grateful for you – you bring a flow and pattern to our lives, a language I understand more clearly with each passing year, a ceremonial and metaphorical housecleaning in a world we have not one iota of control over. You break down the reality of things – it’s like seeing the forest bold and tall, tree trunks darkly outlined against the sky, all their leaves gone. You bring serenity and clarity, the wisdom to know what might still be changed, and what must be accepted, and just as the trees let go of their leaves year after year, I’ve come to realize, during your visits, this is part of what I too will do the rest of my life – let go.

Time marches faster and faster, often whizzing by at a dizzying pace. I realize there are some things on my bucket list that I will probably never do. I realize I cannot save the world. I realize I am insignificant, not in a demeaning way, but in a natural way that always has been and always will be.

In making peace with this, and with my aging body and mind, I gasp from time to time. This is not an easy process, and yet I realize it is the same process every animal, human and non-human, faces in one way or another.

Can I do it gracefully, with meaning, with graciousness? I ask myself this often; I am sure I am not always successful at it. I prioritize the things that are most important: Family and friends; laughter and joy; days spent in the garden feeling the essence of life in the dark earth crumbling between my fingers, days in the sun, rain, snow; and days of listening to the world around me. I say goodbye to those things (or try to) that are not important, that are not necessary or that do not fulfill.

Success looks and feels different. It is often tiny, magical, intimate, anonymous. It is doing meaningful things with whatever time I have left -- or doing nothing at all but enjoying a winter’s day -- the thousands of hues of browns, maroons and greys in a landscape, the thin pale blue of sky, the slight yellow of sun filtering through bare trees warming my skin.

When someone laughs, I know in the deepest marrow of my bones that these fragments of joy are what life is all about – that the modern world we live in is not black or white or good or bad -- it just is – a distraction -- and it too, with all of its luxuries, amenities, and cruel indignities - shall pass. When it does, whatever humanity lives on may yet learn again what life is all about – may return to that ancient way of knowing -- of just being.

December, you are always welcome at my hearth. I’m looking forward to being with you again in a few months. I know you’ll be here before we know it.

With gratitude --

ThinkLady

Technorati Tags: change,ageism,time,life,family,friends,resilience

Laughing all the way

Sometimes you’re going along in life -- traveling at that furiously hectic pace we often decry but seem helpless to moderate -- when something brings the craziness to a crashing halt and changes the very fabric of reality. These larger-than-life events are landmarks on the map of life, plot points of no return, moments that mark the end of one way of being in the world and the beginning of another. For my family and me such a moment happened last weekend with the unexpected death of my aunt, Judi Crowder.

Aunt Judi was an amazing woman, one of the most compassionate and generous people ever to walk on this earth, a humanitarian in the truest sense of the word, and a devoted mother, wife, sister, grandmother, aunt, friend and most dedicated special education teacher. Take a look at the Judi Crowder Memorial page on Facebook, and you get a sense of what she meant to so many.

What you will read time and time again boils down to selflessness. Even while telling people loudly and with great fanfare that it’s “all about me,” she lived a life that was so very often exactly the opposite. She chose a career path few take, working with profoundly impaired and handicapped children, rarely passed up an opportunity to offer an encouraging word to the discouraged, and frequently reached out to those in need to meet their needs, often anonymously, with no ceremony or fanfare. She counseled, she listened, she advised often, even when it was inconvenient to do so, when the easier thing to do would have been to just walk away, not answer, respond or return the call.

She loved so many unsung souls deeply and passionately, regardless of color, race, creed, orientation, doctrine, or state of cleanliness -- the stinky, the dirty, the tired, the poor, the different, those who most often are ignored in our society. To those hopelessly lost in webs of darkness, she made no distinction about whether the dark morass they were engulfed in was what some might characterize a “moral choice;” she just embraced them as only she could in a great big Judi hug that reduced the suffering of life to a crazy, funny, silly-assed dance filled with laughter.

Oh, how Aunt Judi knew and understood the healing and freedom that comes when people are given the space to be silly and laugh! In another life she might have been a stand-up comedienne – that’s how funny she was. She could transform anything we were doing into side-splitting, wet-your-pants, doubled-over, laugh-until-your-stomach-hurt hilarity. And the thing is, she made having fun so effortless and easy, you didn’t even know she was running the show until she left the room, and then you realized the magic left the room too, and you couldn’t wait for her to come back.

Aunt Judi was of course very human – and she made no bones about her flaws – but she’d come to terms with who she was, made peace with it. She was comfortable in her skin in a way few are, and that gave her the clarity to be tougher than nine-inch nails when needed, unflinchingly examine her shadow side, and acknowledge moments of despair. She often creatively cursed the unfairness of a world mad with power, celebrity, greed and selfishness. 

Aunt Judi had absolutely no use for pretentiousness or egoistic fools, and could see through bullshit faster than anyone I know. If a lucky soul ran into Judi in the midst of an episode of narcissism, you could count on her to cure them of their illusions of self-importance. She whittled people down size in such a way that they never really knew what happened – they just went away with a better of understanding of how to be in the world. Conversely, those engaged in actively helping others, she lifted up, encouraged, rallied to their side, often slipping them a check to help their work.

And speaking of ego, people often say they don’t care what people think of them, but then if you just listen and watch awhile, it’s pretty clear they don’t really mean it. Aunt Judi was one of those very rare people who really and truly didn’t care what you thought of her, or whether you liked her. That made her a force of nature that couldn’t be manipulated. She used that power for one purpose – to help the kids she worked with – and God help you if you got in her way.

Aunt Judi was an advocate like no other. I have no doubt that every principal she ever worked with paradoxically admired, respected and avoided her. In her quest to ease the way for her kids and their families, she was simply undeniable. Resistance to Judi was like trying to resist the Borg of Star Trek fame – futile – and telling her “no” wasn’t the end of a battle, it was the start of a war, guaranteed to end in metaphorical death-by-Judi -- a deeply painful and drawn-out process where you might, not-so-quietly, be hassled and reduced to a quivering mass. Better to say yes -- the inevitable outcome anyway -- and be done with it.

Aunt Judi did all this without any illusions as to the general shittiness of life or thinking her efforts would somehow change things. She “got” the Universe, its randomness, human insignificance, our capacity for violence and cruelty, our general lack of consciousness about our planet and the lives of all species on it. She knew all that and I think consciously decided to just try and live the change she wanted to see.

At an instinctual level she knew that suffering punctuated with joy was the reality of life, that joy can be found in the smallest of things, in music, color, art, nature, animal friends, laughter, dancing. She saw light in the most unexpected of places and in the darkest of times. And she knew that if we have the will, wisdom and courage to stop and see that joy, to grab and hold it close in our hearts, those flashes of frivolity and bliss would carry us through the suffering.

“Listen honey,” she would say, “Life is shitty, so we might as well drink wine, dance and laugh every moment we can.” And this is how our Aunt Judi lived.

I see her limping from the ankle she broke that never healed quite right, appearing at my door for a visit carrying a “cheap” bottle of wine in one hand – rosé was her favorite, and cheap because with characteristic self-deprecation she would tell you up front she didn’t know a damn thing about wine and didn’t care to. She chose her wines based on the price or because the label appealed to her. She was practical and honest that way. In her other hand she’d have a bag of goodies for the kids, some small and always fun gift that she’d later spend time exploring with the kids, making them feel as though they were the center of the world, because at that moment, in Judi’s world, they were the center.

And that too was another of her gifts – she knew how to make you the center of her world, to make anyone feel special. On every visit, she’d come through my door, her arms open wide, ready to hug and be hugged. She’d fold me in her arms, kiss me multiple times, tell me how good it was to see me, how much she loved me, and then -- eyes bright and full of mischief -- she’d hand over the bottle of wine and suggest we have a glass now because, “Life is short and it’s never too early for wine.”

Life is indeed short. Aunt Judi’s life was too short.

Today I cannot comprehend a world where Aunt Judi does not limp into my living room with cheap rosé, or imagine how the next family gathering will function without her boisterous hilarity, her legendary chicken and dumplings, her affinity for the down-and-out, sad and lonely, her ability to talk about anything and everything, the radical way she had of making lemonade out of lemons, of making every single, dreary thing fun – and of making all of it seem like the most natural thing to do in the world.

So today and all the days hereafter, to keep her close in my heart, I’m going to strive to live life as Aunt Judi did – generously, selflessly doing the dance of life. Somehow I just know if I do, she’ll be there, limping along right beside me, helping me find the funny side of everything and laughing all along the way.

Judith Ann Crowder 1944 – 2011

* * *

When you’re down and troubled,

And you need a helping hand,

And nothing, nothing is going right.

Close your eyes and think of me,

And soon I will be there,

To brighten up even your darkest nights.

You just call out my name,

And you know wherever I am,

I'll come running,

To see you again.

Winter, spring, summer or fall,

All you have to do is call,

And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah,

You've got a friend.

~ Carole King

Technorati Tags: family,hope,joy,life,love,compassion

Loving our Mother, loving our kids

Happy, happy Earth Day. Love your Mother Earth today and always. She’s the only Mother Earth we have.

Sometimes I think we ought to consider merging Mothers Day and Earth Day and celebrating them on the same day. It just seems as though the two are really one and the same.

And I like to imagine what would happen if we cared for Mother Earth in the same way we do our own mothers – hopefully, gently, lovingly, and with great kindness and compassion.

Speaking of imagination, one of my favorite books for helping us consider a different way of being in the world is “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.” And one of my favorite quotes from the book, shown below, touches my heart every time I read it.

“How can we support and perpetuate the rights of all living things to share in a world of abundance? How can we love the children of all species -- not just our own -- for all time? Imagine what a world of prosperity and health in the future would look like, and begin designing for it right now.”

– William McDonough & Michael Braungart, “Cradle to Cradle”

Imagine.

Technorati Tags: Family,love,hope,species,Earth Day,Equity

Seven things I learned from going bald

A few years ago I went bald. I didn't go bald because I was undergoing cancer treatment or because I had some strange hair-loss condition. I was fortunate. It was totally my choice. I had my head shaved to raise money for childhood cancer research via a unique fundraiser known as St. Baldrick's, and in going bald that year, joined the ranks of more than 8,600 women who over the last 10 years have chosen to prove bald is beautiful.

In the U.S., more children die of childhood cancer than any other disease. Every three and a half minutes a child is diagnosed with cancer. One in five children diagnosed with cancer will not survive. Every four hours a child loses their life to cancer. Yet despite these grim statistics, cancer research is almost daily positively changing the outcome for so many and that's where St. Baldrick's plays such a critical role. St. Baldrick's funds are granted to some of the most brilliant childhood cancer research experts to find cures, and improve the quality of life for patients and survivors and the foundation funds more childhood cancer research grants than any organization except the U.S. government.

The year I went bald I did so in memory of my brother, Maury Douglas Lawyer, who died of leukemia when he was only five years old. Dougie as we called him was my older brother and I was two when he died. I do have a few cherished memory snippets of him, but more vividly, I remember watching the shoulders of my handsome six-foot-two father heave with sobs at my brother's grave site. Year after year I've seen my mother's eyes well with tears on Dougie's birthday as she recounts stories from his all too brief childhood, notes how old he would be, and ponders what he might be like or how our lives would be different if he was here. My younger sisters and I, longing to connect to the brother we never really knew, treasure any photo, any remembrance by family and friends. It's a yearning and loss in my family that even with the passage of time can never be erased. In light of this, shaving my head to raise money so that perhaps one day families won't have to experience this kind of suffering seemed not the only right thing to do, but was a cathartic personal pilgrimage that brought many more blessings than the hair I left on the parking lot of VZD's ever did.

I also went bald to honor my friend, Fletcher Christian Vines, who was battling Ewing's sarcoma at the time. Sadly Fletcher died in 2006, but his mother Gail Vines, also a dear friend, with the help of many neighbors and community volunteers, organizes a St. Baldrick's event each year to help keep the momentum going for childhood cancer research and as a way of honoring Fletcher's memory.

St. Baldrick's is happening again in Oklahoma City this year at VZD's on Sun., March 28, 2 p.m. The concept is simple and loads of fun. St. Baldrick's creates a festive, party like atmosphere with music, fun, games, food and drink all part of experience. Shavees volunteer to have their heads shaved while friends and family watch and cheer them onward. Prior to, during and after the event, shavees raise money for childhood cancer research by asking friends, family and the community to donate in support of the shavee in their solidarity with kids fighting cancer. In the U.S. St. Baldricks raised $16,647,783 in 2009, and to date in 2010 the total is $13,664,684. With more events are taking place this year there's a good chance the 2009 total will yet be beat.

Now if the thought of going bald just isn't your thing, no worries. The good news is you can still be a part of this amazing experience. All it takes is coming to VZD's on Sunday, donating, watching 80 or so folks go bald, joining in the fun. Or if you can't make it to the actual event, donate online.

My friends, family and neighbors were amazingly generous when I was a shavee and I ended up raising more than $5,000. This was indeed gratifying, but far beyond the dollar amount, in the process of going bald, I was reminded yet again of the power of community, love, compassion and camaraderie. And along the way I learned a few other things as well:

1. Helping others always brings illumination. In this case the Universe's lessons were many. Despite the skewed perception of our society that celebrities should be treated differently, better than everyone else, what I learned in this event is that life really isn't about any of us as individuals. Countless acts of courage by those living with cancer, their families and friends will never see the light of a television camera, printed page, or 15 minutes of fame. Yet those quiet lives are no less significant, worthy or full of meaning than those deemed "celebrities." In the end, life really is all about community, reaching out to each other, sharing in the joy and suffering, highs, lows and everything in between.
2. Shaving my head to raise money was a bold adventure -- and believe it or not -- it was also one of the most energizing and liberating things I've ever done. Illusion fell to the wayside and life suddenly became starkly real, clarified, with colors that were more vibrant, and emotions dancing like delicate strands of music, connecting me to something indescribable. The evening after I had my head shaved, I went home and took a long hot shower, dried off with the biggest, thirstiest towel I could find, donned a soft knit cap and sat wrapped in a blanket, warm and at peace -- perfect peace.
3. Going bald saved me money and time. Forget all those expensive hair products! And, by not having to mess with my hair for a few weeks -- I got so much more done.
4. I was coloring my hair before the "big shave" and afterwards decided to continue the liberation. I stopped all the messy, expensive, chemicals AND didn't have to go through that awkward, icky, funky, root-showing phase. Shave it baby, shave it.
5. Being bald is cold. Yes, your hair really does keeps you warm, so I quickly become well-acquainted with the joys of soft, snuggly knit caps and beautiful scarves while waiting for my hair to grow back. 
6. Despite the fact it keeps us warm, in the grander scheme of things, hair is irrelevant. Going bald is a humbling experience, but I learned very quickly that my hair isn't who I am at all. And getting over myself, how I look and worrying about what other people think -- well that was and is indeed a priceless gift.
7. Empathy. Going bald in solidarity with kids fighting cancer I was rewarded with a tiny smattering of insight into how cancer patients who lose their hair during treatment must feel -- topsy turvy, upended, discombobulated, scared.

Albert Einstein once noted:

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Sometimes in this crazy world you're given a chance to be free of the prison of self, to connect to something bigger than all of us. That's what St. Baldrick's is all about -- stepping out of the prison.

Can we be like water?

Fog wreathes the view outside our window, street lamps are still on, and our neighborhood looks a little like the set of a Harry Potter movie. A fine mist is falling, glazing everything with the gift of life -- water -- renewing the world without effort. What would happen if we could be like water? Here's the Tao te Ching's answer.

8

The supreme good is like water,

which nourishes all things without trying to.

It is content with the low places that people disdain,

Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground,

In thinking, keep to the simple,

In conflict, be fair and generous,

In governing, don't try to control,

In work, do what you enjoy,

In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself

and don't compare or compete

everybody will respect you.