My Accidental Maxim

I was journaling the other day and meant to write “I am the happiest I’ve been in my life.” But I caught myself writing “I am the happiness.” As I hastened to cross it out, I stopped and realized, no, that’s actually what I mean, isn’t it?

It explains, at least a little bit, why haven’t been contributing to my blog since September. I’ve been so busy being “the happiness” that I didn’t have time to write.

Or perhaps this is the cause. At the beginning of the school year, my principal gave each member of her faculty The Journal of Awesome. It was created buy a guy named Neil Pasricha. A few years back and Neil, like many of us, had hit some bumps in the road of life. Broken marriage, death of a close friend, ensuing depression… you know the drill.

So Neil decided to crawl his way out of the dark hole of despair by writing one awesome thing every day.

(Go ahead. Twist your skeptical mouth or roll your eyes at the hokiness. I certainly did. Just another take on Norman Vincent Peale’s old “power of positive thinking.”)

It was working so well for Neil that he started a website called “1,000 Awesome Things." (Enter superior eye roll here.) His blog turned into the bestsellers The Book of Awesome and then later The Book of (Even More) Awesome, translated into dozens of languages around the world.

I know my dear principal, whom I genuinely like and respect, intended the journal to be a much needed morale-booster. So I sighed to myself and committed to my pretty turquoise colored awesome journal.

As I focused on finding my awesome each day, it got easier. It became this daily, if old school pen-and-paper way to reflect on my Sunny Side of Life. I’d been writing all year on the positive side of aging and being single, but now I was noticing the abundance of awesome things in this world, extraordinary in their simplicity.

My blog went by the wayside as the observations went into The Journal of Awesome. As 2013 winds down, I’d like to list, for the sake of closure, just a few of my awesomes captured over the last four months.

• The crossing guard saying, "Hey girl!" and flashing me the peace sign every time I ride my motorcycle to work
• The taste of a Peppermint Patty I didn't have to pay for
• When I come back from lunch and my students have hidden under my desk to jump out to surprise me
• The way the coffee smells at Drip on Mind Gravy poetry nights
• Being texted by a man I like "ur the one with bright eyes"
• The way frost sparkles on the brown grass when the sun hits it on a 24-degree morning
• Waking up on Saturday thinking it's Sunday but it's really truly Saturday!
• Patient acceptance of things being the way they are
• When a 3rd grader, on a particularly humid morning, says to me, "Miz McQueen, why you hair look like a hot mess?"

And last, but certainly not least, my accidental maxim. I am the happiness.

Deal With It

Why do people in their twenties seem to think that people in their thirties are just a spoonful of Metamucil away from ordering off the senior menu at Denny’s? They talk about their impending “Big 3 – 0” like it’s a long-range missile trained on their personal GPS coordinates. When that weapon strikes, the 29-year-old will apparently have the instant and overwhelming compulsion to buy a packet of Tums, a pair of powder blue polyester stretch pants and some $4.99 reading glasses at the Walmart. Oh, no, my first gray hair! Life might as well be over!

Young People – and by that I mean – well – you know who you are – I’m here to offer my services. In my educational DVD entitled “Suck it up and deal – how to start a new decade without the whining” you can glimpse what could be in store for you upon finally reaching your- gasp! – next birthday with a zero at the end of it! In this sixty-minute program, I’ll reveal some basic techniques which hinge upon the principles that (1) life is precious and worth living to its fullest and (2) to go on living means ya gotta age.

You need to bite the gray-headed bullet and bite down hard. Once I teach you how, you can ingest all of that power you’ve been giving to the idea of aging badly and turn it into something I like to call self-esteem. Not that know-it-all, blustery bravado you’ve pretended was self-esteem, either, but the bonafide, genuine, real deal.

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Born to Die

The guy at the shop –

The one who looks like

An extra from Sons of Anarchy –

All long hair and ratty beard –

Enlarged ear lobes

And perplexing tattoos –

The only legible one reading

“Born to Die” on his forearm –

Asks as he rings up my helmet

So – do you – uh – ride – or drive?

I think it’s a trick question –

I’d been led to believe

By people who look like him

Only a kook says he drives a motorcycle –

And in the long moment

I pause to consider how to respond

He clarifies sheepishly –

Well – I mean –

Are you like – the passenger?

Me?

I straddle my Vulcan

Like rich white ladies ride horses –

Swap their smells of hay

Wool saddle blankets and mink oil

For leather and gasoline –

For the smoke which oozes

from an Impala in the next lane –

A gold-ringed hand dangling

Out the open window –

Camel Light loosely gripped

between an index and middle finger –

I take all of that in

In the steamy hot

Cicada singing south

Before I head out of my city –

Urban smells giving way

To the land of Oz

Where Poppy chomps at the bit

Like Secretariat at Churchill Downs

I call her Poppy

Because she’s the color

Of the California state flower

Where I’m from

And because

We hit 80 together

And it’s better than opium –

Poppy’s my opiate of choice –

All five senses engaged

At warp speed on a 2-lane –

We’re intimate with

A canopy of Virginia oaks –

Green tangled kudzu –

Breathing the unnamed scents

Along with the wisteria and lavender –

The wet earthy river stones –

Hear the rumble beneath –

Feel the roar of the odd semi –

The way its aftermath

of heat and speed buffets around –

Sucks us in and rattles our bones

 

This is what life tastes like

But I don’t say that to the guy

Who was born to die –

I tell him – I ride –

But I’m no passenger –

Evolutionary Telephonics

The best telephone I ever had was the Snoopy phone my parents gave me for Christmas when I was a kid. I long had a thing for Snoopy, Charlie Brown's imaginative, intelligent pet. I collected Snoopy stuffed animals. I had a Snoopy lunchbox. I owned Snoopy folders and posters and stickers and stationery and the only thing missing until that blissful, perfect Christmas was a Snoopy telephone.

I recently tried to count how many telephones I've had since, but it was impossible. I moved around a lot. I lived in something like 33 different places by the time I turned 33, got married, and moved onto a sailboat. Most of those temporary residences came with Princess phones belonging to roommates who'd arrived before me (and stayed on after I left). A mobile phone didn't enter my atmosphere until 2005. I'd barely switched from a wall phone with a tangled cord to the wireless remote contraption that gave one the surprising freedom of walking around the house - even sometimes as far as the porch! (Those years on the sailboat, during which our only oral communication was through a Ham radio or VHF, delayed my telephonic evolution considerably.)

In fact, I still owned - and more astonishingly, was still using - the Snoopy telephone in 1999. It may be hard to picture a 30-something woman talking on a toy, but there you have it. I only sold it at a garage sale because I was moving onto the marital boat. I almost burst into tears when I took the limp five dollar bill from the early bird shopper who scooped Snoop away from me. I still sometimes wonder why I didn't put that old relic in a box to store in my parents' attic, to cling to that piece of my childhood with the same ardor I now associate only with hoarders. But where would I put it today? And furthermore - where is the telephone jack in my house?

Much like the rest of the world, I now have a cellular phone that slips into a pants pocket or purse or slides carelessly down the crack between the car seat and console. It's my fourth since 2005 and my "everything" phone. It's embarrassing to pull out. It seemed so hip and modern when I got it, but it's already obsolete. It's not Smart. It's not 3G. Its camera is pitiful, there's no swipey feature, you can't talk to it and create a text. I try never to pull it out in the company of iPhone users. I doubt I'd be openly ridiculed, but I fear they'd think less of me.

I wonder what Snoopy would think of all this. His cartoon represented something to me, sitting on top of his little red dog house banging away on a manual typewriter. "It was a dark and stormy night..." He was an author whose walls were lined with rejection letters, like me. Snoopy lived in a dream world of his own invention, the same way I do whenever I can get away with it. He didn't even know he was a dog. He was Joe Cool in sunglasses and the Flying Ace in goggles; he was a shortstop, an attorney, a grocer, an Olympic figure skater... the sky was the limit for that little dog.

Sigh. I miss my Snoopy phone. But I'm becoming someone who only looks forward, not back. Eventually, I'll get a Smartphone. Perhaps, in quiet tribute, I'll find a cover for it that bears Snoopy's image, for old time's sake.

Three Wishes

Mt. Helgafell

In western Iceland, near the village of Stykkisholmur, there's a small mountain called Helgafell. Icelanders of the Viking Age worshipped at its altar, believing the god Thor resided inside.

Helgafell features prominently in an Icelandic saga - one of the many historic tales that vividly describe the challenges early settlers faced. This one is the only saga believed to have been written by a woman. It's the kind of murder and vengeance story Shakespeare would have written - had he been Icelandic and lived in the 11th century.

A woman named Gudrun Osvifrsdottir is declared the most beautiful in all of Iceland. She keeps getting married, and the marriages keep ending badly. When Gudrun's on her third husband, Bolli, she persuades him to kill Kjartan, the guy she really wanted. Then she gets Bolli killed by Kjartan's vengeful brothers.  Finally, she marries Porkell, and he drowns.

Somewhere in there, Icelanders convert to Christianity, and the Viking altar turns into a church. Gudrun converts, too, and immediately acquires enough guilt to admit, "To him I was worst whom I loved most." Then she becomes the first nun in Iceland, a recluse when she dies. This, despite all previous mayhem, makes Gudrun a heroine, and they bury her at the foot of Helgafell.

That's 1008 - as in, the year 1008.

Like almost anywhere you go in Iceland, Helgafell is a mystical, magical place. Here, you have the opportunity to stand at Gudrun Osvifrsdottir's grave with a pure heart.  Then you climb Helgafell (which is easy - it's only 73 meters high), but you can't talk, look back, or even turn your gaze side to side. (Think: Orpheus getting the hell out of Hades.) At the top, stand inside the ruins of the Viking altar/Christian church, face east, and make three wishes. After that, talk as much as you want, dance around, turn cartwheels, whatever strikes your fancy. Just don't tell anyone what you wished.

If I'd known Gudrun made what amounted to a deathbed conversion, that that was what made her a heroine, I doubt I would have bothered with the ritual. As it was, blissfully ignorant on my last day in Iceland with my friend Wendy, I urged her to participate with me on our way to the airport. And I thought hard about my wishes as we looked for the grave. I knew exactly what I would've wished when I was 27: May I be a wildly successful author with a bestseller. May I live in Santa Barbara with an ocean view. May I marry Tom Cruise before he converts to Scientology.

Wendy made her wishes outside the altar -
will they still come true?

As I began to climb, I laughed at the younger me, her grandiose and selfish desires. What would I wish for today? I couldn't think of anything I particularly wanted, other than to actually hike for ten minutes without speaking or looking back. I'm infamously voluble and I dwell in the past, so arriving at the ruins both silent and looking forward felt like aspirations already achieved.

Of course, I can't talk about what I actually wished, but I can give three hints. I don't want for anything at this point in my life. I like where I live. And L. Ron Hubbard can have Tom Cruise.

Road Trip Back

Should you ever desire to feel like a kid again, you don't need to have a midlife crisis and bungie jump or skydive or climb all the 14,000 foot mountains in Colorado. You just need to take an 1,800 mile road trip with your parents.

I was 4 days into my 6-day journey across the nation with Mom and Dad before it occurred to me that I wasn't cursing. If you know me, you know I have a potty mouth. I swear like a sailor. I have tried many strategies to break this filthy habit - or at least, cut back to half a pack a day - to no avail. The best I could do was not swear in front of my students, their parents, or the principal at my school.  It's disturbing how significant an accomplishment this is.

My parents are not prudes. They cuss sometimes, they do. I just don't think I've heard either one of them say sh%# or f*+k or a#%*=le. My top three, if the truth be told.

One thousand miles and I hadn't said the f-word in four days. Even when I was behind the wheel. Not only that, my speech was peppered with words like dangit and shoot. I was no longer a crusty old foul-mouthed codger! I was sweet and prim and - dare I say - girlish in my manner!

This is how she looks at me.

Then my mom insisted on paying for everything. It didn't matter that, of the three of us, I'm the only one gainfully employed. "I don't want you to spend your hard-earned money," my sweet mother said every time I whipped out my credit card. I'm pretty sure her money was hard-earned, too. Still. I'll never not be her little girl.

Finally, there's this: I'm pretty sure it's not just my folks who believe, no matter how many years their child has been driving, said child just left the DMV with her learner's permit.  Mine appear to have forgotten that I lived in San Francisco for seven years, where I became an expert parallel parker. Passengers actually admire my work, like an art form.

Never have I felt more vigorously youthful than on Beale Street in Memphis, where I spotted a slightly cozy space in which to squeeze my parents' new Kia Sorento. They both advised me -

I'm the 47-year-old teenager on the right.

simultaneously - how to get into the spot. Since I was unresponsive to their harmonizing (because it took all the will power I had to refrain from cursing), my dad got out of the car to direct me with complicated hand signals.

Thirty-two years shaved off, just that easily. I felt 15 again. Right back where the troublesome fledgling adulthood began. Hmmmm... Does anyone know where I can buy a pack of clove cigarettes and get my hair dyed pink and green? Because I am ready to bust out the curse words and

PAR-Tay!

The Hate and the Love of Swimming

The summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I joined a neighborhood league swim team with my friend Laurie. The coach was evil. We had to compete in all the events, regardless of our, say, slow, incompetent, ziggy zaggy backstroke. I hated our coach as much as I hated my Algebra II teacher. Why couldn't I just specialize in the Australian crawl, an elegant, four-stroke-breathe, four-stroke-breathe I'd learned from my Mamaw?

Swimming in a sea of rock and roll.

I remember three things about being on this team. I remember the chlorine-stinky-green tint to my then very blonde hair. I remember being the dork who lost my team's impressive lead in a relay when I swam my clumsy, awkward butterfly. And I remember failing to show up for the NBA Playoffs of Summer Swim League because Laurie and I had tickets to a Day on the Green music festival. Journey! Eddie Money! Bryan Adams! NIGHT RANGER! A teenage girl has priorities, you see.

I loved Steve Perry. I mean LOVED.

After that, I avoided swimming pools for 30 years, making my forays into water the lake, river, and ocean variety. I developed a preference for boats and skis and boards, fins and tanks and snorkels, over actually swimming.

And then, last fall, in chronic pain from my neck to my feet, I visited an arthritis specialist for a thorough exam. Diagnosis: osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. Reduce the high impact exercises I was doing five times a week down to once. Medication was offered. Me: "I don't want to go that route." Doctor: "I respect that. You'll find relief from regular massages, eating lots of leafy green vegetables, and soaking in Epsom salts. For exercise, try some gentle yoga. Oh. You've got to keep up your cardio. How about swimming?"

Swimming? Are you kidding me? Sure, I'll do yoga and stretch out on a massage table listening to new age ocean sounds. I'll sit in the bathtub sipping a kale smoothie. But I'll call myself an arthritic, fibromyalgic wussy girl and quit cardio altogether before I'll get in a chlorine-stinking swimming pool again.

When a smart friend suggested that I quit identifying myself as my syndromes, and I remembered that I'm an insane lunatic stressed out freakazoid if I don't get regular cardio, I joined a gym and reluctantly took up swimming. At first, I could manage six heart-thumping lengths, gasping for breath at the end of each one like I'd just run up the side of Kilimanjaro. Wait - haven't I been doing aerobic exercise vigilantly for the last five years? It sure didn't feel like it.

Sanctuary.

Now I swim 24 to 30 (and even, one time, 50) lengths with gusto. My hair, the white blonde having evolved into that odd array of 17 shades, hides the green. I enjoy the chlorine smell left on my skin for hours afterwards - it reminds me of how I feel when I'm swimming. Graceful. Elegant. Swimming is a meditation. There's the counting and the quiet, no sound except the drumbeat rhythm of my kicking feet, the bubbling of my exhalations, the welcome intake of breath.

I am not arthritic and fibromyalgic. I am a swimmer. I am an athlete. I am glad Coach made us learn all the strokes 30 years ago. While there will never be a butterfly in my routine, I do swim all the others. I can even backstroke in a straight line by staying present, in tune with my surroundings.