Seeping and Trickling

I got to put on my first sweater of the season. And not just the cardigan I wore while I was out this morning. When I came home and changed clothes I gladly put on grey slacks and a light black V-neck sweater with sleeves long enough that I could pull my hands inside them to pick up a hot bowl of beef barley soup. Then I drank a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon.

I love fall.

Even though I know winter follows it, I still love fall.

Then instead of all the things I should have been doing while my men were off watching football, I sat down and enjoyed one of my favorite movies of all time: Mr. Holland's Opus.

I think one reason I watch movies more than once (unlike my dh who refuses--it's a waste of time because he knows how it ends) is that each experience is different because I'm a different person. I see something different. It's not about the product, it's about the process that brings me to the product.

The first time I saw this movie I loved it. It resonated. I think it captures that crossroads between plot and character expertly. I was caught up in the story, it made sense, and it made me cry because I felt good at the end, and I love that kind of movie. It's a movie with substance.

The next time I saw the movie, I loved finding all the subtle details that are woven in from start to finish--the foreshadowing. I miss those details when I'm focused on the story. They mean more when you know the end before you start.

Today, the movie meant more still because I've learned ASL and could follow not only the signs, but the feelings. Studying Deaf culture has made a big difference in my viewpoint. The Deaf world is a culture in and of itself, with a language and customs, and understandings that sometimes leave hearing people in the dark. The cultures clash out of ignorance. But when that ignorance is bridged, well...a little give and take from both sides goes a long, long way.

And the theme of the film fits even better because I understand more clearly the way life seeps away in minutes. It's like that drip of water from a faucet that by itself is nothing. But if it's collected over time it's something. Only our time, our lives that seep into the past don't collect in a bucket. They aren't contained. They trickle away and touch other lives, nourishing them the same way that water does when it's free to flow. In the end, we do make a difference. Not if we vote for a candidate, not if we start or support a revolution, not if we do something famously noble or profound. Just if we live our lives responsibly and with heart. It's important. It's important in the lives that will continue to seep and nourish others. A life is only wasted when it's spent utterly and entirely on self. Contained in one bucket.

I see this in my life. It's like I woke up one day and everyone working at the grocery stores is younger than me. There are doctors and attorneys out there that graduated high school after I did. Where did all those minutes go? And how did they go so fast? They went into friends and family, a husband, children, learning, growing, sharing, caring. They went fast because I was busy. And yes--some of those moments may not have been spent as wisely as they could have been, but overall--this life has been good. It will be good. When we know better, we do better.

A few years from now, I'll hit an autumn day when I'm in the mood to revisit Mr. Holland's Opus. Why? Because I'll be curious what it will have to say to me then.

Message for me: Lighten up!

Well, the prompts are up. The mail is checked. The blogs are read. It's overcast and I want to have vanilla caramel tea (Bigelow makes it. It's fantastic!) and English muffin toaster bread toasted with a thin layer of butter and red plum jelly. Then I'll read the paper or maybe even sleep some more. Some days are just meant for enjoying. Why not start October out right? Need to find a good book.....

I'm learning that things will bother you only if you let them. Example: a woman called from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon around 4 saying that we might qualify for some state aid with my ds' snakebite bill, but that she had gotten the paperwork late and I had to get my part of the application in to DHS by Thursday at 3:00.

Well, I have felt none too whoopy since early Tuesday afternoon. Achy, tired, generally blech. :) I managed workshop Wednesday on cold pills and thought I'd wait till Thursday to trudge on down and sit around at DHS till someone told me we make too much in rental income to qualify (I know, I'm such an optimist). Plus on Wednesday I didn't have all of the information I needed anyway--like my dh's new employer and salary, etc., etc. (I did find the application online to download.) Thursday would be better.

Well, Thursday I felt 10 times worse. Let ds drive himself to school and planned to go after he got home. Got down to the stop sign at the end of our street coughing like a maniac and feeling decidedly light-headed and not at all like I should be driving across town. And there at the stop sign I thought, What am I doing? Why am I killing myself because the hospital didn't have their ducks in a row to give me some notice earlier than two days before a deadline? At which point I went home, ate some soup that didn't stay down (was I ever glad I hadn't kept going!) and I was sick a good part of the night.

When the little gal from the hospital calls today to see if I did what I was told , I'm going to tell her, "I tried. And you know--lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." If the hospital really wants another agency to cough up the money--and don't think I wouldn't love that!!!--then they're just going to have to explain how they messed up and beg for someone to take that into consideration. If not then we'll be paying on the bill a little bit a month until I'm eighty, and that's life....

I'm not going anywhere till Monday at the earliest.

Once I came to that decision I slept like a baby. Which is why, I think, I'm feeling so much better today.

Sometimes we put loads on ourselves that don't really belong there. I hope I can remember my new motto:

Look for ways to lighten up!

When do I get over this driving thing?

Yesterday was a first. My ds got his dad's permission (first shock) to take the car and meet his buddies at the mall. Ds has been so patient. He's had the license a week today and so far the closest he's come to driving himself anywhere was having me in the back seat and his brother in the front instead of vice versa.

My heart was in my throat when he pulled away. In daylight. Low traffic. But still. I couldn't help but wonder if it was this hard on my mother. I can't imagine it was. I mean we lived in Glencoe USA where even if I rode down the wrong side of the road I was more likely to hit a cow than another car. Just kidding. But I didn't deal with the kind of traffic A has to. Didn't till I was married and in CT. So, I made myself "be reasonable" and found something to do to keep my mind occupied.

When I let him take the car to school today--he only has class for an hour and 15 minutes on Thursdays and it was nice to not have to go anywhere!--that same thread of fear had to be fought. It's worse than Spiderman thread. :)

I spent the day catching up--blogs, e-mail, etc. It was nice. Here's to hoping the evening is nice. My feet actually got cold when I shot out to the freezer in the garage today. It's been spitting rain off and on and it's supposed to get downright nippy over the weekend. I was surprised to notice how many leaves have already fallen. I think we will get an early fall this year. There have been years here when the leaves didn't really get going till November. We'll see.

So that's it for today, I'm afraid. I'm working on prompts and pages to get up tomorrow, so check out the home page! Sometime after 7 AM central probably. :)

Workshop Write

Prompt:

Person: An scientist
Object: A glass
Place: Kitchen
Theme: Yearning

His brand new masters degree was propped up on the mantle. Someone in the course of the night had framed it and cleared off all the other stuff that had been up there. It was a centerpiece at the moment. Paul Hooper stared at the way the gold on it shimmered in the dimmed lighting trained on it still. It was quiet, finally, with the remnants of cigarettes and stale drinks littered on just about every flat surface. They'd celebrated until three in the morning, and now that the sun would be up in a few short hours he thought he'd be able to sleep. Wrong.

All he could do was sit in the dark and listen to those other lessons that churned through his mind. Those lessons that hadn't come with the degree. "Not all that glitters is gold." "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." "When a person focused too intently on one thing it was easy to lose sight of things that were equally, if not more, important."

Maybe some milk would do the trick.

He made his way to the kitchen and dug in the cabinet until he found the glass that his mother had always used when she was trying to help him get to sleep with warm milk. It was thick and heavy with a lip that at one time had accommodated a top that screwed on. Back years ago when it had been a jelly jar. The weight of it was satisfying in his hand. The light in the refrigerator nearly blinded him, and he found the cold of it jarring. All his senses seemed to be on hypersensitivity at this point. That's how he knew he was tired beyond reason. He couldn't even stand to look for the chocolate syrup.

The milk had to be heated. There was no way cold milk would do any good. So he added a couple teaspoons of sugar and some vanilla and set it to spin in the microwave for a bit. Vanilla milk was something Sandra had taught him.

Paul padded to the table and sat down to find himself in the midst of the items that had been on the mantle over the fireplace. His first instinct was to go back to the living room instead, but he was too tired to get up again. The tiny laces on the pair of shoes begged to be fingered and tugged. Then there was the doily all in a heap. It needed to be flattened out, and his mother would have been starching it first thing in the morning, but Paul had no idea whatsoever how to go about doing that. He contented himself with the flattening part.

Two lavender tapers stood tall in crystal candlesticks. Sandra loved anything lavender--the color, the scent, even the taste of it. He had expressly forbidden its use in anything she fed him, thinking it was a foolish obsession, but now he wondered if she'd been here to massage his neck with that lavender oil she loved so much if he'd be sleeping instead of nursing a glass mug of vanilla milk all alone in his house.

He'd had company all evening, but it wasn't really company. Not the kind that fed the soul and kept you talking till sunup just because you didn't want to miss a minute together. That's the kind of celebration that would have made this day complete.

Why couldn't he have remembered that in the middle of this struggle so that the end could have been satisfying for everyone.

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Yuck. I really don't like this one. It's so flat.....

Prompt Work

Cassie Stewart set off for town shaking her head and clicking her tongue as if her daughter were in the seat beside her and able to feel the full extent of her disapproval. It was at times like this that she wished there was some truth to that ESP nonsense that had once been so popular. The girl deserved a tongue lashing.

She'd taught her better. She knew it was rude to drop in unannouced. She knew it was wrong to invite oneself over to someone else's home. The upstart had the nerve to argue that she was simply coming home. Bull. Home was what she moved away to. Noise, cars, fumes, city life and the morals of a cat. That was her home now. The farm was not her home anymore.

Cassie clicked her wedding ring against the hard steering wheel of her Falcon. Lordy, she wasn't ready. Wasn't ready to be bullied about the dangers of living at her age alone out there on the farm. About getting a reliable car. This "clunker" as it was fondly referred to ran like a dream except when it didn't, and then Leroy Smith loved to see her come. He loved getting his hands on a motor that was a motor and not some conglomeration of newfangled computerized nonsense. And so what if she died all alone on the kitchen floor from a stroke or something. It was a whole lot better prospect that dying from inside shut up in some high-rise "assisted living center" which was really a fancified name for a good old nursing home, and came with a high rise price tag too. No way Henry's hard earned money was going to be dumped in someone CEO's lap just so her daughter could rest easy at night after she'd had the nerve to move too far away.

She gave the wheel a solid thunk with the palm of her hand while she waiting at the next traffic light. She was missing The Price Is Right! And for what? To buy lasagna that her grandchildren would end up feeding the floor with. There would be noise and teasing the cat and sitcoms that turned her stomach and those side-wise glares she got when she'd crossed some unseen boundary with advice or discipline. Well, it was her house, she'd remind the missy. If she didn't like it she didn't have to stay.

Her wheels hit the curb with a satisfying jolt in front of Turner's Grocery. Thomas stood in the doorway, chatting with someone she didn't know. There had been a day in time what that wouldn't have been possible. Cassie gathered her handbag and sighed. If she could be given one wish it would be to turn back the hands of time and render them permanent. Which time she would have to think hard about before she did it. But this aging nonsense was for the birds.

"Hi, Mrs. Stewart," he said with a smile after she slammed her car door heartily. "Kids coming for a visit again?"

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The prompt for this was from a random generator that I closed before I copied. Something about a pessimistic old lady. :)

Talk About Prophetic!

I had to laugh when I opened today's prompt:

What was the last thing that you learned about for the first time--it could be anything from negotiating an insurance claim to details about a chronic illness. What did you learn? Where did you learn it? What advice might you give to someone else looking for similar information?

This is one that I'll have to work on next month, because by then I hope I have some good information to offer on how to get an outrageous hospital bill reduced.

I started on September's prompts around the 15th of August. Had no idea what was coming into our lives around the beginning of September. Maybe I'd better be more careful about my prompt choices. I could make some really nice prophesies that I wouldn't mind having to write about!

I'm working on workshop notes for this week and I'm all tuckered out writing-wise. Just thought I'd let you know I was checking in and that you might look for an article based on this prompt in the future. :)

Where Did September Go?

I just glanced at a calendar this morning and was surprised that we're at the end of the month already. I write dates on my checks but seldom think visually about where we are in the course of the month. I'm strange.

Anyway, before you know it October will be gone, and we'll be turning those clocks back and I'll be drowning in darkness. Sure don't care for the shorter days. Sure don't care for the fact that I've not accomplished nearly what I wanted this year writing-wise.

Now, here's one for all you amateur (and professional--should I be that lucky to have one read this) psychologists: What makes a person fear success and how do you overcome it?

I have been talking about this with friends, especially as regards my writing. After I published my first piece in ByLine magazine, it was a year before I wrote much of anything, much less tried to sell it. This year, I was going great guns till I got all the good news from the OWFI contest and sold an article to The Writer's Room magazine, and then every bit of my energy dried up and blew away. Then I had all that excitement with Barefoot Books, and I really think that the entire reason the book wasn't presented for publication was because the editor I was working with ended up leaving for some mysterious reason. I even submitted that for OWFI and got an honorable mention on the MS there--but I'm just having an awful time getting it back out there for others to look at and maybe love too. (Others who can send me money!!! LOL!) I've started a copywriting course, and I "get it." I know I have a lot of skills to practice and polish yet, but I could do this. I have my first assignment pretty much written and ready to send off, but every time I look at it there is something else that I need to do to make it better and then I find myself thinking that if I hold on to it one more day I'll find something else that I can tweak. I a nut case. I really am.

But anyway, I took a survey over on Tickle when it was e-Mode on "What's Your Deepest Fear" and sure enough--it came up Fear of Success, and then fed me a trickle (that should be the name of the site!) of information and wanted me to buy more. Maybe I should have. But I stuck it in a paper pile and forgot about it till I read it yesterday. Now I'm intrigued because I've recognized the problem. I'd just like to know what causes it and what the solution(s) are.

Looks like I have research to do. There's an article in this somewhere isn't there? :)