Iced Tea Chat: Hellos and Goodbyes

 

Come in, come in.  I'll offer you a variety of icy beverages today: peach tea, pink lemonade, soda if you like.  Or I could make you an Orange Julius which I assure you is very refreshing and quite a treat.

I've been so busy and on such a writing streak of late that I barely have time or room to offer up a chatty post any longer.  I'm not complaining about the blessing of being inspired.  It's just that at the moment, I have a month of posts already written and scheduled to go out except for the weekly planning and daily diary.  Unless I actively plan in a chatty post, it won't happen.  I'm trying to make sure to plan at least one for every month this summer.  

I've been highly motivated to work with the warm/hot weather upon us.  I'm waking earlier which makes it easier to head outdoors first and get busy there and then, because I know I have work to do indoors, I'll time myself so that I am not outdoors so long that nothing indoors could possibly get done.  I spend all afternoon writing or researching posts I'm about to write.  I suppose this is what happens when you've kept a baby off and on for most of two years, when you are again free to do as you please, you make hay while the sun shines and boy has the sun been shining.

On the rare mornings when I am too tired to even consider outdoor work, I've sat on the porch with my morning coffee if it's in the least bit pleasant outdoors and that has led to some wonderful quiet times.  I refuse to take my phone out with me.  It's a distraction I don't need.  I'd much rather spend my time in prayer, in listening, and looking about me at the natural beauty.  That is of so much more value than anything I can name.

I haven't given up Instagram, just not having it when I'm on the porch.  Instagram can be a lovely place if you are sure to follow only those who share beauty and wonder or who motivate you.   There's plenty of time for Instagram at another point in the day, say when I'm needing a well-earned break to cool off and rest between tasks.

But I was talking about being outdoors, not about Instagram.  One morning, as I sat on the porch, I felt gratitude swelling up inside until tears trickled down my face as I sat there.  My list of things for which I was grateful was long, longer than I'd realized and I went on and on whispering my list for a good forty minutes and that was just right off the top of my head, nothing I had to think hard about.

Another morning, I found myself saying goodbye.  It was so cathartic.  Who, or what, did I say goodbye to?  People who once had a place in my life but no longer do, mostly old loves, those that you find yourself wondering now and then, "What ever happened to...?", not because you long to see them but because you once held them dear.  I was ready to let them slip into the deep past, the part that is no longer remembered.  I have no regrets where they are concerned but no need either to hang upon their memories.  I've read more than once that every woman should have one man she regrets losing, but I say now from this perspective in life, perhaps when she's older, she ought to be able to see the value in NOT having shared any more of her life with him than she did and have the wisdom to let him go completely.  Cut the rope, however frayed it might be, set him adrift and let him go.  Thank him for helping to make you who you have become if you must, but wave goodbye.

I also said goodbye to a lot of emotional pain. I want, if I possibly can, to drop the burden of remembered pain, sorrow, grief and heartache. I want to fill those places, where those things have left, with something richer and sweeter, to feel joy at what life has to offer now and not take up space with hurtful things from the past.   Goodbyes are just a mental decluttering of things that are no longer useful to your life as it is today.

What I found happening that day, after that little session of goodbyes on the back porch, was a lightening of spirit, a willingness to look fully ahead, a desire to be full of joy.

Joy has been such an elusive thing in life for me.  I want to feel joy, but instead I have felt everything but joy.  I couldn't seem to stop stumbling over little roots of bitterness or regret (which is just another form of bitterness, I think) that brought me crashing down.  But I'm truly ready for joy now.  

Which led me to wonder what is joy?  Is it a giddy feeling?  Is it being all giggly and inane over sundry things?  Is it contentment?  Is joy the same as happiness?   I've looked up the word in dictionaries, I've read articles about joy, secular and non-secular, and it seems that no one can truly define it very well, either spiritually or physically.  

What do I know about joy?  It doesn't mean that you never experience another hardship because those are going to come along naturally, just as night comes along after day.  Those hard places in life grow us.  They shape us and break us when necessary, so that we can grow aright.  It's possible to feel joy despite our circumstances, however difficult they might be at the moment.  Joy is lasting unless we willfully choose to lose it.  And because of that knowledge, I know that joy is something we must choose to have.  I think you can find joy in many places, but you most certainly find it in gratitude because being grateful is also a choice we have to make.

When Josh had his birthday last month, Bess's aunt had brought along her summer journal to share with me.  We barely had time to speak but we spoke on the phone later that evening and she shared how she'd set up her journal.  " Years upon years ago when we first moved here to this house, funds were very tight and family and personal tragedies were rank, I started keeping a gratitude journal, as Sarah ban Breathnach suggested in her best-selling book in the 1990's.  I told Wendy that night, "You know, I think I'd like to keep a journal of Joy."

It's not a traditional journal.  Not as I typically keep online (Diary of a Homemaker's Week and these chatty posts), nor as I keep for writing out tough periods of life or to document some particularly happy occurrence.  It's simply a journal of discovery, what joy means to me, what others have to say about joy that impact me, pictures of things that make me feel joy.  I'm allowing myself to be really creative with it.  I'm new to it but I hope to be able to share some of what I've discovered in the near future.  In the meantime, I'm learning what joy looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, and yes even tastes like.  I can't tell you yet what it tastes like, but doesn't the psalmist say, "Taste and see that the Lord is good,"? 

I took a regular black and white bound composition book (the cheap sort) and made it my own.  I recovered the front and back and used washi tape on the spine.  This did not hold well, so I pulled out laminating sheets and covered the freshly covered boards and spine with that.

Wendy had mentioned she'd used washi tape to bind two pages together to use as dividers between sections.  She'd used decal edged scissors to cut a decorative edging on those pages.  My own thought was that doubling pages up made a lot of sense. I love to write with gel pens and wanted to be able to use markers, but they tend to bleed through the page, and you end up with a mess that can barely be legible.  I used double stick tape and doubled up all but the last 20 pages.  Those I left as single sheets.  those I don't plan to illustrate or use markers upon and if I find it necessary, I'll just skip a page.  Both those sections are meant for proper journaling.

I have my table of contents to help me know where each section is located, and I used sticky page tabs that I had in my stash of things that mark where each section of the book is.  

I have had the most fun with this form of journaling.   Wendy had set hers up for Summer.  I realized this sort of illustrated journal can be used for just about any subject you'd like to explore.  

Working on this journal prompted me to get back to clipping photos from the few magazines I have on hand here and dreaming of making more pretty greeting cards.  It also helped me remember I have a stack of adult coloring books and so I pulled out one of those and am working on coloring in another mandala.  Little creative things like this and not just the big ones like decorating or planting container gardens are helping to keep my creativity revved up.  I'm taking time each day to 'play' just as much as I'm taking time these days to working hard.

I had a lovely morning visit with my son a couple of weeks ago.  I'll tell you a little about him.  He's VERY adult.  He's been adult since he was about 15.  He had a troubled past in his juvenile years but one day he determined he'd change his life and he made a huge reversal all at once and became Mr. Responsible.  He was something of a second daddy to Katie, despite our assuring him we could handle her, since we'd brought him and two others up rather successfully.  Mind you, some of things he 'allowed' when she visited with him weren't things we would have, but he was first to clamp down on her when he felt she was out of line.    

He had his share of teenage/early twenties things going on, but all in all, he's been grown-up far longer than he should have been.   He waited until he was 30 before, he found Bess and they were expecting their first child and he became even more deeply entrenched in his 'daddy mode'. 

Why is all this important?  Because my ultra-mature, duty bound, responsible son had a little crisis of self, brought on by his birthday.   And he reached out to me to talk about it.  He told me later that he needed to let me be his mama and him forget he was a parent for a bit.  We had a heart-to-heart talk that did much for us both.  I needed to be allowed to be the wise one and he needed to be a man child seeking guidance.  When he questioned why he was going thru this I smiled and told him it's an age thing and, in the future, he'll have another one or two occur for another birthday along the way.  He looked terribly relieved to hear it was just a natural part of growing.  

You know what?  It felt nice to get to be 'a real' Mama once more to this child of mine and have him be just a boy who needed a Mama hug and reassurance.  I'm so grateful I got to have that time with him.  Who knows how many years it might be before he ever needs me in that capacity once again?  

I won't let it go to my head.  I know my children and while they love me, they truly don't really see themselves in need of being parented.  And if I look honestly backwards, I didn't need it at their age either.  But then again, I was more or less forced to wean myself off needing any motherly advice.  It's Granny that I have missed, though I accept that she is gone and move on.  But there are days...

In the past year, 11 years after her death, I've started dreaming of Granny.  She seldom speaks in my dreams, but her presence is reassuring, or comforting, or critical.  Her criticism was never strident nor accusatory.  Oddly it was just a sense of feeling that I'd not been the woman she supposed I was, and somehow that sense of her disappointment was  both more condemning and more forgiving and the exact motivation needed to change.  But that was a long ago goodbye.  Long before she died, we had already said Goodbye. That's the curse of dementia.

You know what else?  I'm still adjusting to John's being retired.  Two years and I find some parts of life as a married retired couple difficult to navigate.  

John has a certain way of saying things that might be serious or might be teasing and I'm not sure sometimes how to take it. So finally, I braved up and told him how I felt and asked if I might have a bit of grace and when I'm uncertain ask, 'What do you mean?'  He didn't understand how I could not read him more clearly.   The best I could explain it was rough and eventually ended in tears and upsets for us both but eventually we worked it out.  

Here we are with 18 hours a day of waking time spent together and only a few hours apart in weeks of time...I've adjusted.  I have, but not completely and totally.  I'd learned in my life to let that solitary time be healing time.  I often used that quiet time as a time of self-analysis.  I don't have long moments to do that anymore.  

So little moments of insecurity, self-doubt and lack of confidence build up.  It helps a lot that John is one who will talk things out with me.  He may be confused or puzzled at times by my thinking, but he is willing to help me work to clarify why I feel what I do and determine how I should approach issues that arise, sometimes with his help and sometimes on my own.   You might say this has been a long hello, lol.

We lost our Maddie late last month.  Not the first pet I've loved over the years to whom I've said goodbye and no doubt won't be the last.  There have been many cats and dogs over the years.  Some were acquaintances who allowed me to care for them for a season, but some were dear souls.  Maddie was John's dog and while her care fell to me, she never was all in for me.  Trudy was mine to love fully and fully loved me.  And Rufus, for all that he spreads his love around, loves me. I see it in his eyes and his engaging doggy grin.  For Maddie I was accepted but not where her heart found its center.  Still, it's been a goodbye that, even while I knew it would be coming eventually, I hadn't fully prepared myself for.

Life is just a series of hellos and goodbyes really.  Seasons, ages, eras, people, places, pets, things.  Coming and going, moving in and out and we are the ones who grieve and rejoice depending upon how attached we were to that particular space of time.  But as someone I was once saying goodbye to said to me at that time.  "Don't be upset I'm leaving.  You'll always have me in memory."  And isn't it funny how right he was.  I can't remember what he looked like, nor even what his name was, but I do recall the sense of rightness I had when we talked, of sharing something deeper than the moments dictated we share at the time.  And maybe that's all I was meant to have of him, that portion of wisdom he imparted on his leaving.   Goodbyes nor hellos are permanent things.

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