Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Temporary Ripple
There has been a stressful ripple in the fabric of normalcy for our family recently. Out of respect for the privacy of all involved, I am choosing to be purposely vague, but I would like to provide some context that was otherwise missing from my narrations of late.
There is good news in that, other than some residual post traumatic stress that will take time to process, everyone involved is okay, and everyone impacted is on a path of recovery from a powerful dose of hyper-concern.
Yesterday morning, with Cyndie home from Florida, our children gathered at our house for much-needed hugs and a large dose of comfort-food for a brunch.
Trauma has absolutely no respect for time and place, and it does a person no good to live in a state of constant alert for potential threats, so the sudden unexpected rise of calamity is, well… traumatizing. Compounded in this case because the incident grew out of a well-intentioned effort to offer support for a friend in need.
I guess this falls under the adage of no good deed going unpunished.
One thing that our recent experience has reminded me of is this: We can’t always know, in fact, usually don’t know, what people around us have lived through. That person next to you on the plane may have just been to the emergency room before boarding. Or a police station. Or both.
Last week, on my way to work, I approached a sudden slowing of traffic and soon discovered a crash had just occurred. As my mind processed the visual while rolling past, it struck me that the final location and resulting damage to the van indicated it likely rolled before landing back on its wheels. There were still people inside, looking to be in shock.
I was traumatized remotely. One of my first reactions, upon arriving at work, was to tell someone about what I had seen. Talking helps to process the intense emotions of trauma.
At the same time, telling strangers of our personal traumas is not a reasonable practice. Therefore, it stands to reason that we shouldn’t expect that others are freely telling us of theirs.
We can all hope that everyone around us is always having a safe and healthy day, but don’t take for granted the possibility that things might be otherwise. Someone you find yourself interacting with may be using precious effort to maintain a veneer of normal, despite riding an unspoken residual wave of some uninvited drama.
Hope for the best, but be prepared for the alternatives. Always give people space to have unseen reasons for the way they behave.
Sending love in advance to others around us is a pretty safe balm for what might ail a person.
Thank you to all who have offered your love and support to contain this temporary ripple for our family. It is helping to guide us all back to our preferred calm tranquility.
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Love Needed
Sending love to those who could use an extra dose today. If you are of a mind to do the same, conjure up some love of your own and send it out into the world. May health and healing blossom from our seeds of love cast far and wide.
It feels like this week has been all about Delilah or chicken eggs. What’s not to love there?
.My days have been filled with plenty of both. All eight of our birds made a contribution yesterday.
I think everyone here is ready for Cyndie’s return this weekend. We’re hoping she will bring back some of that warm Florida sunshine in her suitcase.
Wouldn’t that be lovely?
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Unparalleled Escapades
Indeed, there is an element of sadness today, with the moving of our horses back to their previous home, but we are making equal effort to frame their transfer in a positive light. Think of it as a graduation ceremony. Like children who are sent off to school for a period of years, these horses came to live with us for five and a half years. I think they taught us a lot more than we taught them in that time.
Now they have completed this phase of life with us and are going back home. We will use the memories and lessons of our unparalleled escapades together as the foundation for whatever comes next.
Thank you to all of you who are thinking of us today, and sending love and support! We are soaking it up as a healing balm for the inherent sorrow of parting from these beloved creatures, while also using it to bolster our spirits to properly honor the equine wisdom bestowed upon us over the years.
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Last Sunday
Yesterday was our last Sunday with the horses. We spent most of the day with them. It was time well spent. We were blessed with very comfortable weather that allowed us to linger for a while with no agenda except to just be with them.
Eventually, Cyndie hooked up each horse for some individual quality grooming time, head to tail to toe.
You may notice that a couple of weeks has dramatically changed the look of our paddocks. Snow? What snow?
It’s turning to water and flowing over our silt fence.
As the day progressed, the clouds thinned and the gorgeous sunshine lulled the horses into a nap.
Cyndie asked me if I thought we had made the right decision about rehoming the horses.
I answered her with a question. “Are you having second thoughts?”
She said no, but then, why ask about the decision?
There is no right or wrong in life’s adventures when you don’t know what each new day will bring. We didn’t really know what we would accomplish when we moved here. We don’t yet know what we will do after the horses are gone.
We just listen to our hearts, pay attention to our instincts, and strive to integrate them with our minds. Then we send love to the universe and see where it leads.
Travel day is currently scheduled to occur on Thursday this week.
Yesterday, we took full advantage of being home all day with Cayenne, Hunter, and Dezirea for one last Sunday.
I gotta admit, it did feel right.
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Different Sense
I suppose this is related to the concept of “opposites attracting,” but living with someone who perceives the world differently from you has a way of complicating otherwise straightforward coexistence. Several times in the last week, Cyndie’s and my dramatically different abilities to sense smells has been made vividly obvious.
She brought a horse blanket into the house to be mended the other day. When I stepped inside after a day of work, I immediately commented, “It smells like a barn in here!”
She didn’t notice it.
Friday night, she put a pork roast in the slow cooker before going to bed, to let it simmer while we slept. The longer it cooked, the more intense was the appetite-triggering aroma that filled our home. When my slumber was interrupted by a full bladder in the wee hours of the morning, getting back to sleep amid that incredible smell, was like trying to go to sleep while someone continuously knocks on your door.
I couldn’t do it. Cyndie barely sensed the aroma.
There are other differences –or opposites– that tend to have greater significance. The way we process grief, and the intensity with which we experience it, is a particularly hefty one of late. The horses aren’t even gone yet, but the mental anguish over rehoming them started way back when the idea of doing so was first brought up.
The torment over their departure is deeper than just coming to grips with them no longer being here, it delves into the original vision that brought us to this land in the first place.
The difference in the way Cyndie and I perceive this whole development, and the varying degrees of processing our personal grief over it, can make for a difficult… life together.
It would be great for me if I could just deal with all of this my way, but then I would miss out on life lessons that are the gift of living in relationship with another person.
Cyndie and I got to where we are today, together. We intend to get to where we are going next, the very same way.
We’ll discover it together, even though she doesn’t smell half the things I do.
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A Discovery
Portrait of the author after hand-shoveling around the barn doors this morning.
We received a walloping amount of snow overnight (between 10-11 inches) and strong winds are creating epic drifts. It will be a monumental day of digging out. Luckily, I wrote most of today’s post yesterday afternoon. I’ll give a more complete report on the details of our winter storm recovery tomorrow…
Meanwhile:
After waking up too early yesterday, I resorted to random searching Google while awaiting the return of sleepiness. I simply typed the word, “love,” and happened upon an article from 2014 about living happily ever after in a long-term relationship.
In lieu of the Wikipedia definition of love, I clicked on the headline, “The Secret to Love is Just Kindness.”
That title included two things that I value the most: love and kindness, together with the enticing word, ‘secret.’ How could I resist?
Eventually, I drifted back into a dream-filled sleep, but not until after I had gained great insight, and felt totally convicted, about moments of my behavior. After breakfast, I read the article to Cyndie. She had the same reaction as me.
We have been married for 37-years, and somewhere in the middle of that span of time, dedicated a few years to marriage-saving couples therapy. Basically, our sessions went like this: we entered the hour looking to have our therapist “fix” the other partner, and left each time having learned more about ourselves than we sometimes wanted to know.
The years since have been better than I ever dreamed possible between us. How could this ever be improved upon?
Now I know. Despite all the work I have done toward seeking optimal health, specifically, not taking on any of the several deplorable traits of my father, I am very clearly a product of my parents. (Luckily, I did inherit plenty of Dad’s finer qualities!) In the midst of any project I undertake, I will find myself doing the “air-whistle” my mother often “phoo-whewed.” I am also all too adept at seamlessly replicating Ralph’s ability to be a sourpuss.
Cyndie is sweet enough to tolerate the random –and I’m hoping, mostly subtle– air-whistling (song-breathing?) habit, but she never deserved the boorish behaviors she has endured in our marriage.
In my depressive years (multiple dubious skills of which I no doubt picked up from my father), I could totally relate to the line in John Prine’s song, “Angel from Montgomery:”
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.
I knew exactly how that is done. Ralph did that to my mother so many times it became normal and accepted. It was no wonder that I could recognize when he’d imbibed to inebriation. He was suddenly chatty as could be with Mom.
From the article in The Atlantic, I now understand how divisive it is when Cyndie’s bids for connection are met with my lack of engagement. The kind thing to do when someone seeks connection, is to turn toward them, not away. For some reason, I have an uncanny skill of treating the one person closest to me at home, with a cold shoulder, something I would hard-pressed do to a person in public.
“There’s a bright red cardinal out the window!” Cyndie might report.
If not silence, I might offer an uninterested, “Okay.”
She hadn’t asked a question, so did it require an answer?
The healthy thing to do for a relationship –one that I want to thrive for a lifetime, not just survive– is to meet all of her bids for connection with kind attention, even when I don’t necessarily feel like it.
Even if it is limited to telling her that I just don’t feel like being kind right now, that would be a connection.
Actively being kind to our partner’s bids for connection, especially the trivial (ultimately, not-so-trivial) ones, seems the healthy way to nurture a thriving life-long relationship.
That isn’t a mind-blowing insight, but it was an eye-opening self-discovery for me that resulted in a quest for greater love.
Onward, on my quest toward optimal health…
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Crosstrek Love
Have I mentioned how much I love my Subaru Crosstrek? It virtually drove itself home yesterday in the heavy snowfall we received. I just pressed the pedals every once in a while. The car plowed through the deep snow easily, holding the lane even when I had no idea where the lane was.
My only complaint was the icing on the wiper blades, but I wasn’t alone. Everyone was having the same problem I was on the last leg, reaching out their window to attempt “thwacking” the blade as it swung near, and pulling off wherever possible to get out and knock off ice.
This was my view toward the end:
There was nowhere to pull over, as each spot I came to was already filled by two or three cars, creating a scary hazard of potential collisions.
When I reached my driveway, I paused to clean my windshield so I could see to stay as close to the center of the pavement as possible. There was no guarantee that I would make it all the way up to the house.
After I parked in the garage, I noticed the back of my car was so coated by snow that my brake lights were hardly noticeable. I had been running with my 4-way flashers on during the craziest portion between River Falls and home, but they probably weren’t making a big difference in visibility.
After dinner, I went out to plow and poked a yardstick into the snow up by the house to check the depth. It was a little deeper down toward the shop garage, but this reading was a solid 8.5 inches.
That melty snow of last weekend is a thing of the past now. We have a fresh dose of the real McCoy. According to the forecast, this batch of flakes was just the warm up. Tonight and tomorrow, we are supposed to receive even more than what fell yesterday.
I’m not sure where I will put it all when plowing and shoveling. The piles are already impressively tall.
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Relative Something 
Still Flying
with 2 comments
Before I start with today’s post, I want to give a shout out of thanks to Jennifer Alexander for sharing her wonderful collection of student responses to my “Guess What” post from last week. Fearing most readers might not notice a new comment added to a previous post, I am specifically highlighting a fresh link to it here:
Another Guess – March 19, 2019
Check out the comment Jennifer added. I think she and her students have enhanced my photo-guessing game immensely!
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Ten years ago today I posted “Time Flies,” which is an impression that continues to feel valid to this day. In fact, I get the sense it is flying faster all the time.
Words on Images
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But, let’s not stop there. In my research of March 26 in the archives of “Previous Somethings,” I found the following post from 2017 too irresistible to exclude from today’s review:
Empowering Love
Editorial cartoon by James T. Pendergrast for Rolling Stone, June 2002
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Imagine replacing the negative with the opposite:
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Let fearlessness enhance enlightenment to fill our crucibles with love!
Let’s carefully teach everyone, before it’s too late, to love all the people, “all our relations” on this planet, fearlessly.
Happy March 26th, 2019. Send love. The world deserves more love.
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Written by johnwhays
March 26, 2019 at 6:00 am
Posted in Creative Writing, Images Captured
Tagged with archives, blogging, comments, empowering love, images, Love, old posts, poem, poetry, previous somethings, remembering, ten years, time flies, words on images