Minute Vacations

Read a line or two in an inspiring book

SLOW ME DOWN, PLEASE

No time for a beach trip? How about taking minute vacations?

Wilferd Arlan Peterson writes:

Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace.

Teach me the art of taking “minute vacations”…slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to read a few lines from a good book.

Give me, amidst the day’s confusion, the calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of singing streams that lie in my memory.

Help me to know the magical, restoring power of sleep.

 

Remind me that there is more to life than measuring its speed.

Slow me down, please.

But I hate my Biology teacher

It's a frog eat frog world out there

She was the bane of my existence, my nemesis, my arch enemy. I hated her with a passion heretofore untapped. She fully returned the disdain.

After living in our hometown for 13 years, my parents moved the family, including me, to a new city.  I lobbied hard to get left behind at my best girlfriend’s house. After all, Kathy had all the perks of only-child-dom. A canopy bed and a pink turntable to play her large stack of 45 rpm records. Heck, she even had her very own bedroom. Her parents let her play her Beatles records because they didn’t know John had proclaimed a greater popularity than God. She had access to a huge tin of Charles Chips potato chips that was mostly un-inhaled by other family members.

It would have been perfect: I would have been the second child they always wanted…the obedient, faithful companion to their first daughter. I think they were seriously close to giving it a go. Incredibly, my parents insisted that they wanted me to live with them and my two “real” sisters, even though the weak  reason they gave me was, but we would miss you.

So off we went, far away to the oh-so-tacky new house  and a new school filled with three types of kids. Greasers, who wore leather jackets and slicked their hair back with what looked like either Vaseline or motor oil. Jocks, who were unbelievably hunky (read: cute) yet also a bit snobby.  Smart kids, instantly recognizable by their pale skin and the awkward  pile of books they lugged from class to class.

All the 8th graders had to take Biology, where we were exposed to the yellow slime guts of earthworms  and expected to locate frog kidneys the size of BB’s. I figured this class was an opportunity to make a name for myself as a wild child, or at least a smart-aleck.  This was a golden opportunity to reinvent  myself. At the very least I figured I’d get noticed.

Mrs. Philyaw. How easily her name pops to mind all these decades later. As I said, she must have been quite frustrated with me . She made me sit in the hall for talking. I talked more. I made faces and mocked her behind my notebook. Parents were called in. Grounding happened. Pouting ensued.

My mother encouraged me mightily to give Mrs. P. a gift and apologize for disrupting her class. Every cell in my adolescent body screamed NO!!! On a hot Spring day, I reluctantly trudged into our yard and picked a fistful of tiny pink roses. I think my hands shook the next morning as I handed her the bouquet tied with a satin ribbon. Even though there were thorns on the roses, a truce was declared.

It’s funny, I don’t remember one thing she was trying to teach me. Yet, in spite of myself,  I learned a lesson about the power of a wordless apology.

Have you been on either side of a wordless apology? Did it make a difference?

White space…a day to follow your nose

 

You turn the page or click over to the coming week and there it is. A big white rectangle.

Nothing scheduled on that day. Nada. With a sharp inhale, you thumb through your mind searching for the appointment you’ve surely forgotten to write in. Dentist, lunch date, sports practice, report due, haircut? Ack…this can’t be right!

You begin to feel a tickle of anticipation. Can it be true? On that day there’s nothing you must do…nowhere you have to be.

An entire day to follow your nose. A day to do what YOU like. A day to pull the covers up over your head and snuggle in for a long snooze. Just you with yourself, enjoying a nice, peaceful day together.

Send the guilt trip packin’ while you linger over coffee, get lost in that new book you’ve been saving and nap on the couch. Eat cheese and crackers and a pickle for lunch. Doodle on a note pad. Take a bubble bath in the middle of the day. Order out for dinner.

Every now and then it’s good to bask in a  no-goals-for-me-thanks day.  Go ahead. You deserve it.

C’mon baby, light my fire

Cabbage-head Bunnies Rock

Dashing through the produce section yesterday, I had the funny feeling I was being watched. Kind of eerie, till I realized there were cabbage-heads in dark glasses perched on the counter top at eye level. Who had dressed them in bunny ears and shades?

The fruit-salad-makers behind the counter claimed it wasn’t their doing. Under persistent questioning, one of them declared “It must’ve been Denise”. Turns out, Denise works in the flower department. Two days earlier, after she had fluffed all the flowers into attractive arrangements, she had prowled the grocery store searching for fun. When she spied the cabbage bin, she knew they were crying out for some celebrity time. A few bunny headbands, cotton balls, googly eyes and Foster Grants and…Voila! the cabbage-heads were ready to take center stage.

Can we take a page from Denise’s playbook? How much time do we spend doing what we love? How many of us are known in our little corner of the world for our special gift?

Do you have a signature…a special way of showing up in the world that brings delight?

Hummm

Garden’s humming. Round wrinkled sugar peas, tiny as a baby’s fingernail, sprout new leaves and tendrils daily.  Two weeks ago I pushed 14 seeds, each into its own tiny hole, thinking “They will do all the work of growing. My job is to make sure the dirt will hold the just-right amount of water – not too much, not too little.”

Just maybe, in every aspect of my life, the seeds of new growth are already here. It’s possible I don’t have to worry about these seeds either, by reading stacks of self-help books… anxiously scanning to find the next fix for what feels broken. My job is to be. Relaxed, alert, expectant. Simply to nurture the soil in which new thoughts can take root.

What new beginning or sign of growth are you noticing as Spring arrives?

Name that bird

A friend of mine just called and told me this story.

She walked out her front door and was stopped in her tracks by the wild screech of a hawk. She loves hawks. She looked up, down, and sideways to catch a glimpse of the bird. She was determined to find that hawk. No hawk could she find.

She tilted her head slightly and spied, perched high on a telephone wire, a small mockingbird. Pretending with his full-throated chutzpah to be…a hawk. Who knows? Maybe in that moment he felt himself to BE  a hawk.

Three minutes before, my friend had been absolutely certain. If I know one thing, I know what a hawk sounds like. The mockingbird, just for show, cocked his head and looked at her as if to say Gotcha.

Young ones seem to approach life with what Zen teachers call ‘beginner’s mind’. Assuming they don’t know everything already. Their viewfinder is wide — allowing in more light, more possibilities. What discoveries could be waiting for us older ones, just beyond the hawk’s cry?

Child’s play

Folly Beach, South Carolina

Albert Einstein said, “The pursuit of truth and beauty is an activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” How long has it been since you put on your rubber boots, jumped into tide pools and chased shadows…or squished the wet sand between your toes?

First thing in the morning…last thing at night

To say “thank you” as my first response.

I’ve decided I want to practice this new behavior until it becomes a habit.  Especially if the situation didn’t go my way. Didn’t go the way I thought it should go.

What difference would it make to my life if my first response were “thank you”? When my husband is “supposed” to pick me up and he’s late, so I have to wait 15 minutes? What difference would it make if, instead of blasting him (where WERE you?!), my first words are “thank you”. And what if, even before he pulled up at the curb, I was thinking “thank you”…

“thank you” that I have someone who is willing to walk to the car and come back to get me

“thank you” that I am free from pain right now

“thank you” that I have time to sit still and notice the people walking by

Water dance

 

Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.”  ~Rabindranath Tagore

My husband and I spent the week after Christmas hiking in the nature preserve at Chandler Mountain in north Alabama.

Meteor flash?

Seen from Kohl's parking lot right before sunset

If I’d been digging in my purse for my car keys, I’d have missed it.  What did Mary Oliver say in one of her poems…her “instructions for living a life”?

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.