Saying Less

Princess and Sassypants have been sick the last couple of days so between restless nights and constant daytime complaints that “my nothse isth sthtuffy!” I’m a little low in the energy department. Therefore, tonight’s post will lack the depth and length of previous endeavors (while, hopefully, maintaining their style and interest).

In fact, I wasn’t even sure what to write about until I saw WordPress’ suggested “Daily Prompt”. As it pertains to words and brevity (the former something I am kind of a geek about and the latter a concept I have trouble implementing (or even understanding), especially in the communication arena), I thought I’d give it a try. Please know, for the record, that I neither know who Khalil Gibran is (i’m not proud of my ignorance, but I’m not going to hide it either) nor have given much thought to whether or not I agree with the thought he has postulated (or, let’s be honest, really paused to consider what it actually means). But the idea is fascinating, and good ideas are worth pursuing, regardless of the circumstances in which they are birthed. Here’s the prompt:

Khalil Gibran once said that people will never understand one another unless language is reduced to seven words. What would your seven words be?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us SEVEN.

So. After a moderate amount of both hemming AND hawing (and several short-to-medium length Facebook breaks), I came up with the following summary of my daily language:

1. love
2. wise
3. consequence
4. adventure
5. beautiful
6. no
7. tea

That was even more difficult than I first assumed it would be. First of all, the idea of limiting myself to such a restrictive vocabulary makes my extraordinarily extroverted self shudder. Secondly, picking 7 words that will apply to any given situation for the remainder of your life is basically an insurmountable task. So I settled on words I couldn’t handle never saying again (thus #s 1, 4, and 5), words that were multi-purpose or would simply apply in a great number of situations (accounting for #s 2 and 3), and a word that I use multiple times a day and therefore can’t dispense with (#7). #6 is just a necessary and healthy word/concept for all of us to keep in our vocabularies.

So there are my words. I could probably come up with variations on this list from here to eternity.

What would your 7 word vocabulary be?

Brown Betties and Battle Scars

Anyone who’s known me for any length of time (or has, perhaps, just seen me in public at any venue which contains hot water and any kind of drinking receptacle- or to which that combination can be carried, thanks to the invention of travel mugs) knows how I love tea. In the beginning it was just flavored black teas- vanilla, black currant, the occasional earl grey. Then my similarly inclined best friend introduced me to the world of “superfruit” green teas by Lipton and I suddenly had another fledgling addiction to nurse (which I have done faithfully since). That left only the final territory to be conquered- herbal teas. Reports from the front lines indicate that this battle has almost run its course and victory is expected to be imminent and complete.

The thing about tea is you start out just drinking this lovely hot (or iced ,as the case may be- I drink both with equal readiness) beverage. Innocent, delicious, refreshing. Then you become aware that there are options as to how this beverage can be bought, stored, and brewed. Bagged. Loose leaf. Glass infusers. Metal tea balls. Blooming tea. Mugs. Tea pots. Suddenly everything about the ritual has its beauty. The feel of a tea tin, the sight of steam rising over the rim of your favorite mug, the song of the tea kettle announcing with a piercing whistle that the water is ready. When you find yourself researching historical tea pots online, you know you’re hooked.

It was during one of these forays into the online world of all things tea that I discovered the Brown Betty. Made from British red clay, they were reputed to make the best tea. Every family who could have one did and only the family’s signature tea was brewed in it. Apparently this allowed the clay to soak in the tea’s characteristic flavor and, therefore, give each subsequent brew a fuller, more complex taste. It is now a goal of my life to own one of these tea pots (not to mention to have a “signature tea” to brew in it) but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that as this pot was used for its daily purpose, it became more and more seasoned to accomplish that very job. Every use made it more suited to the next use.  I love the idea of applying that metaphor to my life. That every good and bad thing  I experience prepares me to live my life in a better fashion. That each day teaches me in some way to make the most of the next day. That events aren’t just randomly scattered throughout the fabric of my life but build on each other to become the complex, full, sweet and savory brew that is my unique slice of the overall human experience.

I’ve always loved scars (convenient, because being somewhat gracefully challenged has bequeathed me with a fair array of them). I like the idea that they represent a story (usually a funny one, in my case, or at least a marginally unbelievable one), a visual reminder of the history of my life. And they, too, represent the idea that the things we go though shape us, hopefully making us wiser and stronger individuals in the process (and perhaps slightly more aware of the placement of broken glass and hot cookie sheets).  It turns out that life is the best teacher on how to live.

I’ll drink to that. 🙂

What do I Stand For?

I’m not a cat person. 

I’ve been saying this for most of my life- just a fact about myself I’d never had much reason to question. Except once, when we had the opportunity to inherit a cat from an acquaintance via a friend (believe it or not the full story is even more complicated than that short statement would lead you to believe). My first reaction was, “I don’t like cats. I’m a dog person”. But when I thought about it further I realized I had never actually owned a cat (though we had owned 3 dogs and several batches of fish throughout the course of my childhood). I grew up in a cat-free home because my mom is allergic and doesn’t like them. And since Bigfoot loves cats and I had no objections other than lack of exposure due to parental dislike (of cats, not me), I figured- why not? 

Well. It was a disaster. For some inexplicable reason the only member of our family the cat (whose name i am prevented, in the interest of decency, from sharing on this forum) really liked was Princess (who had a habit of picking said nameless cat up by her tail while she helplessly mewed and growled til I heard the din and rescued her). The only interactions she and I ever had consisted of me assuring her that it was still against the rules to go in Princess’ room even if I did happen to open the door for some reason and her nightly litter box excavations (it turns out that scraping litter is the single loudest sound in the free world at 3 am). As she was a long-hair, I was also privileged to clean up the slightly-more-than-occasional hair ball.

Eventually I came to realize that either the cat or I had to go. And since I was a more useful presence in the day-to-day life of the family, out she went. I was admittedly surprised by the results of this domestic experiment. Though I had considered myself a lifelong “not a cat person”, I typically get along very well with the feline members of my friends and family members’ households. But it turned out that having them in my own house and under my care was an altogether different story.

And so the lesson I learned was that I really don’t like to own cats. And the other day I realized why. It’s because, as compared to dogs, a cat is a pet you put a lot of work and effort into without getting much in return. A dog will greet you every time you come home from work; if you’re lucky a cat will open one lazy eye (or, if it’s your birthday, possibly raise its whole head) and glare at you from its perch on your favorite chair while plotting your death for interrupting afternoon nap time. Dogs are people animals, cats are….cat animals. They like to make it clear that they don’t need you but when they want your attention you will, if you know what’s good for your wooden chair legs, make yourself available for as long as they choose to engage with you (until they get bored, at which point they will probably bite and/or scratch you and walk away). So I guess it comes down to this: I don’t like spending my love in places where it doesn’t buy a lot. I like to get paid back. I like to be in situations with equal give and take. 

Now I can’t help but wonder what this says about me as a person. Am I lazy in my love? Am I selfish? Do I really only like to give where there’s some promise of a return?  Since this pet preference related revelation hit me around a week ago, I’ve been spending some time observing my relational interactions. The research is continuing and I haven’t reached any definite conclusion about what this may or may not say about the way I love (or don’t). 

It’s possible I just really hate cleaning up hairballs and litter boxes. 

POV and Humility

I’ve been noticing something lately about the way I see things. It turns out living in a 3-D world means there’s more than one way to look at practically everything (and, bonus, we don’t have to wear those extraordinarily flattering movie sunglasses all the time). The old joke about 3 blind men describing which part of an elephant they were coming into contact with (and subsequently each thinking the thing in front of them was either a tree, a snake, or a wall) is applicable but so often stated we’ll leave it at that. Point being while we often only notice one aspect of a situation, there are rarely less than 3 (or 1700, if you’re dealing with some of the less tangible aspects of nature) facets to be seen. And we often seem to choose a side based solely on proximity to our own situation or viewpoint, not on a weighed consideration of the facts at hand. And by “we”, I mean “I”. But I like shows of solidarity, especially when they make me seem more normal.

There seem to have been many contributing factors to the shift in my mindset on this matter. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s the number of times we’ve moved houses or lost cars in our 6 year marriage. Maybe I’ve just been blessed to have had people in my life who lovingly and wisely showed me the other angles to be seen. But whatever else has made an impact, it seems like having children has been my single greatest educational experience on the practice of seeing from all sides. I used to see a mom in a restaurant with her food-covered children and sympathize for her having to clean up such a large mess when they left. Now I see that woman and messy child and realize how excited she is that her child can FINALLY feed himself so she can actually take a bite or two of her own food during the prescribed time for dinner and not 2 hours later.

And, I admit it- I used to be just a little bit judgmental of the woman who walked through the store with a screaming child, thinking “that kid just needs a nap or some discipline”. And now I walk through the store with my screaming child (who, in fairness, sometimes does just need a nap or some discipline) and am so relieved when I instead encounter the face of someone who seems to be saying nothing other than “I remember that. It gets better”.

If motherhood teaches you anything (other than how to measure flour for brownies and call poison control at the same time), it is that the chasm between the ideal and the real is often wider than someone carrying a diaper bag and wearing a week-old stained shirt is apt to have the energy to traverse. And sometimes it takes staring, bleary-eyed and exhausted, into that chasm to realize it. So maybe the real lesson here is learning to give yourself- and everyone around you, dealing with their own life problems from their own unique perspective- a certain amount of grace.

And that sometimes, what seems like a wall is really just an elephant. Or maybe it’s a tree.

Going Away

Life (presumably) returning back to normal (if that even has a definition), my goal for the time being is to write once a week. Today needs to be something lighthearted. To begin with, I’ve finally chosen my family members’ blog code names (because, from what I gather, no truly savvy blogger throws their family’s actual and non-creative names around willy nilly. And, naturally, I am (or wish to be) nothing less than the savviest of bloggers with the wittiest of aliases assigned to every last member of my immediate family (including any and all future family pets ). Not to mention the practical safety considerations of introducing my children by name to the world at large). So after some time and thought, I am ready to introduce my family:

My husband, Bigfoot. So named not because he has rather large feet (he doesn’t), but because of his more-than-passing and somewhat intense interest in cryptozoology. Not to say he’s a nerd. I mean, he is; not any more than I am though. Loves music, history, and the study of personality types (and, as previous statements might lead you to believe, is also known to look for signs of sasquatch when we’re driving through a wooded area).

Our children:
Daughter #1, Princess. Loves everything pink and glittery and has enough imagination for 5 of her peers. She seems to be well on the way to becoming a book nerd (which she comes by honestly, having inherited it from at least the three previous generations) and, as an introvert, really appreciates her alone time.

Daughter #2, Sassypants. Incapable of doing anything without some measure of attitude. She doesn’t (often) mean to be difficult or “naughty” (a word i put in quotations because I hate it and try to avoid using it when possible); she’s just very….emphatic in the not-so-mundane details of her day to day life. Her main interest at present appears to be whatever her sister is currently doing but she does show a penchant for interior design (which usually demonstrates itself when she gets bored with the coloring book in front of her) and thoroughly enjoys- and often wins- a mean game of hungry hungry hippos. 

We went away for our anniversary this weekend and the girls stayed at Chez Nana et Pops. It was their first night away from Bigfoot and I and I don’t think any of us knew what to expect. Princess was fairly nervous about it the previous night but it turns out the combo of s’mores and a good flick (The Emporer’s New Groove, in case you wanted to know) is enough to make you forget you ever had loving parents. It may have been harder on us, in that we spent a good chunk of our anniversary celebration talking about how weird it was to be out without the girls. But we had some good connection and one-on-one conversation time and I got to go places without dragging along a bag stuffed with snacks, water, shirts, skirts, and 15 pairs of extra underwear for Sassypants. Not to mention the luxury of restaurant eating sans children.  And the girls got to find out that someone other than mom and dad can know what to do in the middle of the night. An all around success. 

And that, friends, has been your weekly post. Join us next time.