Granddaughter's Life Lessons

My granddaughter did not put this text into her own blog, so I am taking the liberty of publishing it in mine. Though she is still a youngster, she is an old soul, and I find it is easy and comforting to relate to her words. She always writes quite a thought-provoking essay. Enjoy and be enriched and blessed!


"This e-mail originally started as an e-mail to the infamous Ms. Sarah Julian (aka Phoebe) who, time and time again, is always the inspiration for something more than I was planning. Phoebes: I have to give you complete and total credit for this one. I don't know how you do it, but you bring the best out of me. Thank you.

Secondly, it was just supposed to be a list to Ms. Phoebe about accomplishments of this year, but it evolved into the truth about what's going on with me and my personal growth.

This Accomplishment List must start literally the first day of 2010, January 1, at 12 o'clock a.m., in Des Moines, Iowa, the Greyhound Bus Station. My New Year's Eve was sadly spent at the bus station, though they were polite enough to have complimentary cots so we could convalesce in our distrustful paranoia. This was the beginning of my 2010 year. No party, no friends. Just alone. But what does it mean? I am often alone in many of my endeavors, but because this moment specifically is supposed to be spent with others, then and only then is the loneliness of one's life apparent or noticeable. It is the time I am most inherently American or personally concerned with the affairs of humans, when there is something national, something universal almost, to share and be with others on one specific day. I would be lying if I said that being alone on New Year's Eve didn't affect me. I can't even remember if I created a New Year's resolution. I think I was too paranoid to think about anything but my safety and personal possessions. I would look up every 3 minutes or so to make sure my craftily placed luggage was still undisturbed. So, REM isn't exactly the state I was reaching.

I did not get to indulge in the bubbly sweet taste of champagne. I didn't have to hear the din of the plastic China-made toys in full brouhaha. I didn't see any white spherical globes slowly making their descent to Father Time's door, metaphorically symbolizing an end and a beginning.

Though this night is not part of my accomplishment list, I feel it is important to know the ominous beginnings of my year, for it seems, thus far, this year has truly been about realizing how much I relish being in people's company and sharing my experiences. I am often one to be proud of my "hermithood" but subconsciously feel it was and is a mask of levity toward my loneliness, which many who know me would balk and say that I have all the love in the world from my friends and certainly my family. This is true, but I spend a considerable amount of time away from those I know. I am quite the traveler of late and enjoy the freedom of wings instead of roots. Though in the seasonal world there is great social potential, that potential tends to be measurably finite. The relationships one constructs or builds must eventually be left vacant. Their longevity is very fragile, and few are willing to put in the energy that keeps them kindling. This syndrome is inherently known to any seasonal employee. It literally seems to boil down to a 50/50, and never does the old phrase 'it takes two to tango' make more sense. I have friends that I have made and would have loved to stay in contact with, but they didn't stay in contact with me. I have done this to others as well. There is almost a play of destiny and fate in a relationship that was formed from a seasonal position. It is the luck of two people being genuine in their wanting to stay in touch and then the most crucial aspect: doing it. This is unspoken. It happens like magic. And I consider it magic.

I am fascinated and driven by the relationships that I have made through my seasonal excursions, and I love (LOVE!) when there is one that has potential to last past the initial construction. Those people (and let me tell you, there are literally few who have made it to that point) tend to be the ones who inspire me to do more, be more, and create more. Because they tell me! How could I know them and hence myself if they never conveyed their story? And not only do they get to feel the confluence in expelling their triumphs and struggles, they get to hear mine as well. We feed off each other. We found each other in a flighty state; hence we resound with connection when we communicate our ventures of flight. We truly inspire each other just by doing what was innate to us, but it brings those around us to that place: the place where not just because we are young but because we have WILL, we can do ANYTHING, and HERE is the proof! Listen to Our Story.

I thought this would be a simple list of personal accomplishments, but as I write and ponder, I feel something stronger and deeper that must be told. Yes, I have slightly mastered a chainsaw (oxymoron noted). I have pushed my physical limits, again. I have sweated literally buckets of myself. I have found the courage to be on my own. I have learned and evolved from my mistakes. I am starting to learn how to fix vehicles and be more mechanical in general. I am very comfortable on an UTV. I have improved my trailer skills even more. I have kept up my pull-up number (very important to me). I have found beauty in a shit hole. I taught myself how to crochet. I grew my first garden of nothing but basil. Yes, yes, every little thing I have accomplished I am proud of, certainly.

But there is one thing, one nagging accomplishment that wants all the attention and I feel rightly deserves it. For it explodes in exponential amazement and dulls every other success in my life. It is the center. It breathes life into all my creation, hence all my accomplishments to begin with. I have felt it all my life. It would come and go but would hardly be consistent. Somehow I have found the secret to my life. I have unknowingly unlocked the flood gates, and what flows out? Certainly by now, you must innately know. Something of a higher dimension. Something more than human description can afford.

I will try, but it is a roller coaster of blissful emotions. Even in moments of fear or sadness, there is immediate knowing, immediate counseling from the greater part of myself who eases me and brings me to a rational state. I think the repetition in belief of miracles and wonder and magic and bliss and impossibility has finally been practiced to the point where the unfathomable is seen all around me and knowingly accepted. I have never known such happiness for unambiguous reasons. Simply for being. Nothing else but the joy of knowing I know thunders a storm of blissful quakes through every cell of my being. I quake with self-love. Sometimes I can feel the charge of love permeating the essence of the void around me, almost sending a shock way through the dimension in which we conceive.

I am so thankful to be me, and I often tell myself thank you for being you. I often ask why? Why do I get to feel this joy and others not? How did I get to this point where everything's OK and makes sense, and I have nothing to fear? Even now, I feel pompous and snooty about the place I am at. Like I am rubbing my happiness in people's faces, but that is not the goal of this essay. The goal is to share. I hope you would feel my energy about my epiphanies and delight in the splendor of them with me. And, like the paragraph above states, inspire through story. To simply share and let you know I have come to this place in my life. I have accomplished something great this year. Far greater than any other thing I have ever accomplished. I get to relish in my own light of self-love, inspiration, and creation, that I know. You see it is those two words that come the closest. I know. I know! I KNOW. In them is my peace, my splendor, my contentedness, and my freedom.

I still have much to learn in this vast new world. I am simply taking one step toward Mt. Everest on this ancient and transcendental path we all, in one way or another, walk. Perhaps the metaphor to be taken is that I noticed the mountain and decided not to conquer it but be with it and learn from each step I take on it.

One thing I have noticed is that it is easy to be in the know when I am alone, but I seem to forget when around others. I hate to put it this way, but they bring me down by reminding me of this illusion in which I partake and influence. I forget this world when I'm in it. But it is hard to be in it when you're with others. People are great distractions. They bring out all the earthly emotions which you thought you had mastered. Let's just say I have mastered myself and my internal conflict. I don't strive to master anything outside of that. Simply because seeking only hides, while forgetting always surprises.

So perhaps with a little luck and belief you can feel the resonance of joy that I send you. The joy that we are here, and that I get to share with you lucky few my stories. And how lucky I am to hear yours as well. Though, I have often been told there is no such thing as luck. So praise to our own creation because we have will, and we can do anything."

You have a father?

There is an old joke about two boys sittin' around one Saturday afternoon trying to outdo one another in describing the deprivations and hardships of their respective lives. It goes something like this:

First boy: I have to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning just to be the last one in line for my breakfast.
Second boy: Well, I don't even get no breakfast until supper time.
First boy: My clothes are all hand-me-downs, and I never get nothin' new.
Second boy: All my clothes are hand-me-downs from my stupid sister.
First boy: My father lost his job, and we are gonna be homeless by next Tuesday.
Second boy: You have a father?

I'm just making an observation and not actually feeling sorry for myself.

I often wonder what it would have been like for me to grow up with a father and grandparents. I did have two sets of GINO (grandparents in name only), but I didn't know them, and they certainly didn't know me. My maternal grandfather, allegedly a musically talented and intelligent man, was victimized by a stroke at a fairly early age. I only knew him as a wheelchair-bound, aphasic male entity with a lopsided, paralyzed face, a weird eye that roamed and scared me as a child, and a breathing organism that did not communicate except to drool and mumble. As a child, I did not understand any of that. I just knew that when my parents and I visited, he was always seated in a large wooden wheelchair beside a kitchen window, and he was scary because he didn't "look right" to me. I don't think he knew who I was. If he did, he couldn't indicate that he cared. My grandmother, his wife, was so busy cooking, baking, cleaning, and taking care of her husband that she didn't have time to "see" me. She and grampa lived on their homesteaded farm along with her youngest son, his wife (my aunt and uncle), and their seemingly dozens of children. Those children were well known to my gramma, and she always seemed like a friendly, heavy-set, kindly gramma, but she never said my name or held me or acknowledged me as a child. I blended in with the wallpaper. I ate her food and played in her yard, but there was never any individual attention. It made me wish back then that I had grandparents, so it was a lonely thing to see my gramma but not to be able to interact with her.

My paternal grandparents lived in North Dakota and I in Minnesota. I only saw my paternal grandmother once, and I was very young, and it didn't mean anything to me. I saw my paternal grandfather twice, but he was a standoffish, stern, and somewhat mean-spirited man who came to check up on my father on our farm. I had the sense that my father was afraid of his father. As it turned out, it was for good reason. When I looked at pictures of my paternal grandparents, it was an emotionally vacant experience. I didn't know them. They didn't know me.

My father and mother lived on a 160-acre farm in central Minnesota that my paternal grandfather had homesteaded. They had 3 living children long before I was born and one infant son who apparently died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or "crib death" as it was known then) at one month of age. I came along almost 10 years after my nearest sister. I have no idea what my father was like when the 3 older siblings were at home. By the time I arrived, he was largely uncommunicative. I don't believe he and I exchanged more than 2,000 words in the 17 years I lived at home on the farm. He was there but not there. There was no positive interaction that I can remember. He took no interest in my school work or music activities other than to make me worry about how I would get to band practice in the summer when there was no school bus running. We lived 6 miles from the town where I went to school, and I often had to ask neighbors if I could catch a ride with them. My mother talked to my dad, but there wasn't much of a response. He kept things down to as few words as possible. Asking him for money or the car keys, which he always kept in his pocket, was torture because you never knew if it was going to be yes or no or an "I don't know" or "maybe" that could keep you in anxious suspense for hours and even days at a time. It was a feeling of utter powerlessness and a good deal of humiliation and embarrassment. My mother did the best she could by me, but her life was one of constant worry and anxiety for these and other reasons. Essentially, I was raised by a single parent, my mother, even though we were a "traditional" two-parent, church-going household.

There is much more to the story, but the point is that I now often wonder what it would have been like for me to grow up with a fully functioning set of parents and at least one set of supportive grandparents. I think I would have felt more loved, more confident, less fearful, less anxious, and less self-conscious. I know I have the chance now to re-parent myself, but I frankly don't know how, and it is a little late in the game. This isn't about self-pity. It's just a yearning to dream about what might have been.

A Friend's Rant

Below is a commentary submitted to me by a good friend. In my life, I have never seen a political atmosphere such as the one we are experiencing today. Never before have I seen intelligent people, trying to live an ordinary life, spend so much time and energy on being upset with our politicians and fellow citizens. This is just a sample of the frustration that exists in this political climate. It can't be good for our immune systems, but I also think these feelings need to be expressed. And I am happy to provide a forum for this expression.

"It is a sad thing and very disturbing on every level that there are so many people in this country who want to blame President Barack Obama for everything that goes wrong in the country and the world. There's plenty of blame to go around, but where was that rage when, from 2001 to 2008, government spending climbed higher than any other time in our country's history and not just due to funding two wars? What makes it even more difficult is that everything is so complex and interrelated. Even a professional researcher has difficulty exploring and documenting every bill, topic, senator, representative, judge, cabinet member, intern, legislator, state official, clerk, spokesperson, floor sweeper, and lobbyist to get the correct facts. Even if one would choose a single topic to research, such as healthcare, there are so many subcategories of subcategories (and on and on) to follow and document, it would be a 24/7 task for all eternity. No wonder some folks would just as soon take someone else's word for the facts and not bother to look anything up. What is even sadder is that things have gotten so out of control, there is no one individual, political party, or other group with the foggiest idea of the question, let alone the answer, because THERE IS NO ONE ANSWER! I tired myself out on this rant. Next, Obamacare!"