Back in 1990, my son’s teacher sent him home with a yellow ribbon pinned to his shirt – presumably my 5-year-old son was doing so to proclaim his support of the troops in the Gulf War. Never mind that when I asked him about the ribbon his explanation centered on the fact that the teacher gave it to him and all the kids were wearing them.
I had a melt down.
Now there ain’t nobody on this planet that is more supportive of troops than I am. I believe in a strong military. I just wish we’d quit putting them in situations that endanger them for stupid reasons – morally bankrupt reasons.
So. Small child. Yellow ribbon. School.
I sent him back to school the next day with his ribbon. The ribbon was attached to his shirt with a button emblazoned with “What if Kuwait’s No. 1 Export Was Broccoli?”
I’ve taken my typewriter to the hospital with me for kidney infections. I have taken it on camping trips, and the sand has gotten in the keys. It is just like the most fierce habit you can imagine. It is there, and it stares at you like a conscience.
Erma Bombeck
And I take my computer but unlike a typewriter, it needs a power source. So, not camping. But then I haven’t been camping. I haven’t been anywhere the computer can’t go. In fact, I have a computer dedicated solely to travel. If if gets lost, stolen, or damaged, it.’s no big deal. It’s old and it’s cantankerous but this is, as Bombeck says, a fierce habit. You do what you have to do.
I write daily. Sometimes several times daily.
On the rare days when I must miss my 7 am writing group, I am at loose ends and discombobulated. I am not myself and there’s nothing for it, but to write.
I am not writing important treatises or compelling prose. No heart rending poetry. I am just babbling in my own little way. Bombeck turned her unique writing into a multimillion dollar enterprise.
I have no illusions. I am no Erma Bombeck, but she is my heroine and I use the feminine because she started her career when women were housewives.. She wrote about her little Dayton Ohio life and family and made a career of it0. I can, at the very least, make a habit of it. And I have.
I average 800 word a day. Stephen King does 2000. I am no Stephen King. Plus I have a full time job that is not writing.
It is the most fierce habit. I am in a really bad place when I can’t or don’t write.
I write essays, I write slice-of-life, anecdotes, snippets of short stories, character descriptions, rants, prayers. Promises.
I write a little bit of everything and while I am not successful, I am happy.
I will continue to carry my travel computer around.
Oh, we’ve all heard it so many times it’s become trite. But one day you’re a snot nosed kid who knows nothing about anything and then one day you are a teenager and you know everything.
By 14, I knew it all and my mother was an insufferable fool. We were oil and water always and our differences were really apparent when I was 14 and she was 33. She was coming to grips with what was then middle aged and the “don’t trust anyone over 30” mindset. I simply knew it all. I did listen to my father. He was an exceptionally intelligent man and a much better communicator than my mom. Plus, I was a daddy’s girl. I still had some respect for his opinions.
I had an opinion about simply everything. Some of them were things I had heard elsewhere and simply parroted without any real consideration on my part. For example, I was certain my father was correct in his stated opinion that only Communists drank sweetened tea.
We were living in North Carolina, a couple of heartbeats from the South Carolina border and finding unsweetened tea, which is what our family had always drunk being the damn Yankees that we were, was an impossible feat. And given how hot things were from about April through October, we drank astounding amounts of iced tea.
Now I rebelled against everything my family stood for, and thus adopting our tea position was an aberration in my behavior. But I swallowed the sweet tea drinking communist thing in its entirety. I may have even taken it literally.
With my friends, I pontificated at length about the weakness of character sweetening one’s tea revealed. They, also teenagers, quickly formulated opinions that were in direct opposition to my own. I recall a knock down drag out fight with my best friend about it that morphed into an attack on my character because I listened to my dad’s cassette of Patsy Cline any chance I had.
Nancy, a hard-core rock ‘n roller, her brother went to Woodstock after all, was not having Patsy Cline.
We didn’t speak for a week.
But a funny thing happened on my way to middle age. I re-enrolled in college at 38 and began working on the degree I abandoned at 19 because I knew everything already and discovered I didn’t know shit. Suddenly all of my convictions were being examined and tested in the glaring light of the hard sciences and the social sciences. I was appalled at what I found in the crevasses of my mind.
It was probably the greatest growth period of my life — those nearly 10 years it took me to complete my degree. But I began questioning everything. I examined my beliefs and the way I was raised.
Hoo boy.
When the dust settled, I had a new set of convictions – much smaller than before – and an overriding, and perhaps overbearing, penchant for “Now, well it depends” welling up when asked a simple question. A degree in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and Appalachian studies while working in a teaching social work program will do that to you. In fact, it’s hard for me to develop a hardline conviction about much of anything these days.
Am I hiding in a cave? Perhaps. But I like it here. I’ve made it cozy and the few principles I do have, I will defend but I won’t insist that you share them. I am not that interested in convincing you that I am right, and you are wrong because:1) I’m not sure what’s right for me is right for you and 2) I’ve learned over the years that convictions are not usually well thought out. They tend to be knee jerk reactions to our experiences. If our experiences change, as mine did, we find ourselves shedding them like outgrown snakeskin.
I’m sometimes criticized as wishy-washy. I have no desire to defend myself against that label. But I will say this: I still find sweetened tea to be an undrinkable libation and am surprised at its longevity. I’m also still a Patsy Cline fan.
And for the record, I don’t want lemon in my tea either. In my water, yes. In my tea, no As they used to say in the wild west of the early days of the internet, your mileage may vary.
The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you are 100% healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride. —
Pema Chodron.
Well. Damn.
Pema Chodron says that finally getting it together is death. So, why am I juggling 10,000 things and killing myself to keep them from falling? I don’t want to die.
She also says that the essence of life is that’s it’s challenging. Ah. I have a very lively life then. She closes with, “There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.”
Hmmmm. I think I deserve a smooth ride. I don’t think the human condition should be one of struggles and challenges. I don’t think having one’s ducks in a row is death. Respectfully, Miss Pema, I disagree.
The essence of life is the quiet moments. The big ones – holding your newborn for the first time or looking into your partner’s eyes when you say I love you. The small ones – those all-too-brief moments on the zafu with the Tibetan prayer beads in hand where you can watch your thoughts like giant soap bubbles pop and dissipate or while sitting on the seashore admiring the enormity of all creation. The essence of life is the cup of coffee on the deck at sunrise in summertime. Sandaled feet, but sweatered arms – to keep the morning dew from chilling.
Sometimes life is sweet. And sometimes it is bitter. Further, sometimes it is Nirvana, and sometimes it is Hades. I don’t think The Creator breathed life into us to be constantly nauseated on a roller coaster of sweet and bitter. Afraid.
No, we are told again and again by all the great sages, Pema aside, Be ye not afraid.
The bitter will be there, yes that’s true. It’s our job to rise above it and smooth it out. To minimize the discord, to work against injustice, to celebrate peace, birthdays, and small fresh-sprouted seedlings. Life is a teeming of beginnings. Yes, and endings. But the endings too should be quiet and expansive — an ushering into the next.
When the body tenses, we lose our equanimity and forget our purpose by thrusting ourselves into fight or flight. When we relax, open up, we gain connection with the human condition and aren’t fighting against it, but working to maximize potential.
Smooth out those imperfections. Work for peace. Drink heavily from the chalice of life. We are here now and that is a great miracle and a tantalizing mystery. Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think. Assert yourself. You are a reborn star.
W. Va. Fur and Root 