Friday, December 5, 2008

Light of Hope

Some moments are just dark. One can be happy. One can think positive. One can become a card carrying member of the “Extreme Optimists for a Better World Society.” Some moments are just dark.

Tuesday morning began remarkably dark. I’d hardly slept, part idle piddling and part anxiety-induced insomnia. Nonetheless, when the alarm signaled the start of my day, I was already awake. These days Seth and Kira rarely need more than a witness as they prepare for school. While I watched, I debated...should I drive to Franklin to turn in the application in person or go back to bed and mail it?

Still unsure, I opted to make us some hot chocolate. If I mail it today, they will probably get it tomorrow, and certainly there aren’t 100 people in Williamson County so desperate to become a Master Gardener that I would miss out because my application arrived the second day of open registration. Maybe I will just go back to bed.

The water boiled. I poured and stirred the cocoa and topped their mugs  each with a handful of marshmallows (I still thrive on being a crowd pleaser)...but, these classes only happen once a year. The form said they only take 100 people on a first come, first serve basis. And it’s not like things in the professional world have been overwhelmingly going my way lately. Maybe I should just go.

Seth strolled back into the kitchen and I offered up his bright yellow smiley face mug. He rewarded me with a surprised smile and long, drawn out “Niiiice.” Usually that little token would leave me feeling the O-Mom high for several hours, but not that day; it was just too dark...I am going back to bed. I will just mail it. It will have to be fine.

I felt amused as they conspired, teaming up to convince me that since I made it so incredibly well, the cocoa can’t possibly be enjoyed properly in the short time before the bus comes for them. They didn’t want to tarnish their mugs of steaming perfection with my offer of ice, earnestly suggesting the only real solution was for me to drive them to school myself...So, they save me from myself again. Yes, I will drive them and since I’m out I will spend the hour to drop off the registration. That will put me there about 45 minutes after registration opens.

Cocoa cooled, we sipped and I silently begged for something to give... Anything would do, it feels like a thousand things are held up in those gloomy clouds. If just one, any one of them could break free from the darkness it would make my world a much easier place to breathe. Please, I beg,  please let loose of the words I need to finish the business plan or the approval of the worker’s comp appeal, or even the last $1300 dollars of my contract that ended six months ago. Please, just let loose of one simple job with a decent wage so I can provide for my family.

It wasn’t just dark, but also bitter cold I realized as we piled in the car. The reprieve from bus transportation pleased them and I thought it best to drop them off before I opened the sunroof. Nature, I’d rediscovered, along with meditation, are the only defenses I have against spells of anxiety. Even as cold as it’s been, l open the sunroof every time I’m in the car. It helps me feel connected and calm. 

So, I drove. It was still dark. Thirty minute drive, and it was still dark. Consulting my directions I turned left, left again, then right into the parking lot of the facility. As I crossed the parking lot, a remarkable shift occurred, the sun began to pour down all around me. I don’t mean peek through the heavy, thick, black clouds. I’m saying the sky opened up, the clouds literally parted, and the sun consumed the space I was driving into. As I came to a stop, and the sun poured in the sunroof of my wonderful little Jetta, it felt like months since the sun had warmed my face. 

For a moment I just sat there, music from the Day Twelve Soundtrack pulsing in my body, the sun cleansing my soul of all things dark - the fear turned to dust and I offered it back to the earth to nourish the soil, making it ripe and ready for the seeds I will bring in the Spring.

Inside, the friendly woman congratulated me: I was the first to register. It thrilled me. It felt unbelievably  good to think forward, to invest in tomorrow, to welcome the next big things that are coming my way. 

My drive home felt more like a flight, not my speed but the lightness... like a feather. This is how things work for me: when I take a step in the right direction, I receive strong and clear messages that I’m right on track. Yes, Christy, keep going this way. 

On this day, my sign looked like light and felt like hope.


Thursday, November 20, 2008

A New Perspective

I fancy myself a big picture thinker and for the most part have chosen to surrounded myself with a lovely collection of  equally high-quality, big picture thinkers. Well, I’ve met my match in Kristin Mary Johnson, in fact, we all have. 

I used to think there two kinds of thinkers, those who see the trees and those who see the forest. I believe most of us began life as “Tree Thinkers”. Youth is noted for its short-sighted, know-it-all, live-in-the-moment existence. For many, age brings a charming level of maturity and reckless abandon is replaced by... oh, what shall I call it? Balance?

Several years ago, I introduced this concept of balance to my children with the “Silly brain, Smart brain” analogy. I explained to them that our brains have two parts. The Silly Brain in charge of new ideas, creativity, and play. The Smart Brain in charge of rules, logic, and consequences. These are both terribly important parts of our brain. For without the Silly Brain, we would function like robots, simply doing what we are told and what’s been done before. We agreed our world would not be very exciting with only a Smart Brain. A world with only Silly Brains would be as a five-year-old Seth perfectly labeled, “crazy and out of control!” 

So, at our house we nurture and celebrate the Silly Brain in each of us. We only ask that the Silly Brain check in with the Smart Brain before its colorful and exciting ideas are executed. This keeps those of us with impulsive tendencies out of a great deal of trouble.

Back to the Tree Thinkers, who I believe have one of two problems with their Smart Brain. First, there are those whose Smart Brains simply don’t look as far into the future, or consider consequences as thoroughly as we as a society had hoped. These people are actually few and far between; most Tree Thinkers actually have perfectly functioning Smart Brains and they just don’t care to use them. I don’t have a ton of mercy for those who opt out of using the resources they naturally possess.

The Forest Thinkers enjoy more balance. They are admittedly more at risk for forgetting to use their Silly Brains, but that is a subject for another day or one of my books, perhaps. These Forest Thinkers are available in a variety of concentrations, some engaging more Silly and others more Smart Brain. Perhaps it was my arrogance, or perhaps blatant ignorance, but I believed that was it. Some people see trees and some see the forest...and then I met Kristin.

She is smart, and I mean beyond my normal standards and expectations for smart. She understands human behavior on a level I’ve only seen one or two other times in my life. She knows about things I’ve never heard of. It took me well over a year to beat her in Scrabble, and sadly she was on really strong pain medication from her foot surgery then. One of Seth’s favorite games is to try to stump Kristin with random trivia he picks up in the world and to date he has NEVER stumped her. Even eight-year-old Kira, or as I prefer to call her “The Mighty Independent One”, has even begun to occasionally allow wee nuggets of Kristin’s wisdom slip past the iron gates.

There were hints that despite many similarities, some huge differences existed in the way our brains functioned. Where I see a responsibility to raise children who are educated, emotionally intact, and ready to make a difference in the world; Kristin sees a responsibility to do the same for the millions of parent-less children in the world. Where I ponder the current state of race relations, Kristin sees the poor decisions that were made in the past that paved the road to here. I’m the kind of thinker that would convert cars to run on corn thinking it’s progress. Kristin is the kind of thinker that would ask, where the hell we’re going to get all the corn? Who is going to have to starve for us to decrease our dependance on foreign oil?

It was sort of maddening for me. It felt like she disagreed, but she insisted she understood my points. It felt like she must perceive me as short sighted, but she insisted she didn’t. I went sort of crazy talking about this bigger picture she was “stuck on” (I don’t sound so open minded now as I type it) when every stitch of my being is consumed with dealing with the reality as it exists RIGHT NOW!

Then it hit me, there is another way of “seeing” the forest. Kristin is what I’m now calling a Satellite Thinker. Where a Tree Thinker stands right in front of the issue looking for a solution and the Forest Thinker steps back from the issue to contemplate the “big picture” looking for a solution, the Satellite Thinker gears up and heads for the sky to get “the biggest picture” of all to find a solution.

At first I didn’t understand it, and it created some confusing challenges for us...okay that’s not true. It created challenges for me, she wasn’t confused at all. Much like the way I can see the thought process of the Tree Thinker, Kristin can see with delightful clarity my Forest Thinker perspective. She just won’t settle for stopping there when there is a bigger, more effective perspective available. In hindsight, I realize I’ve known one or two other Satellite Thinkers but they are a rare and precious find.

First thing this morning in my email I read an amazing letter Kristin wrote and sent to our elected politicians about the American automakers plea for bailout money. I have said for months that I want to drop her in on these meetings where our political leaders are making critical decisions about our nation’s future. She could just sit there and listen to the plans silently, then just before anyone signs anything she could pipe up and say, “Okay, what about...?” 

Kristin, let me be the first to say that you’ve got my vote.

Friday, September 12, 2008

The Girl Child's Abundance

Kira loves all things little and in 9.25 short years she's hoarded quite an impressive collection. Yesterday, she comes to me with a glimmer of proud brilliance in her eyes and her right hand wrapped tightly around some anonymous wee treasure. She stops six inches in front of me and looks up into my eyes, that whole looking UP into my eyes thing is short lived for the children here grow like weeds, and says, "I have something for you." 


Bracing myself against the counter I take the bait, "What do you have for me?" Slowly her fingers open to reveal a vaguely familiar and ever so teeny, gold bag. She explains, "This was my souvenir from the metal museum we visited in Memphis and it was supposed to bring me abundance. Ever since I got it, I've had lots of money… I thought if I gave it to you things might get a little easier."


For a variety of reasons things have been fiscally challenging at our house this summer. Okay, it would be more honest to say my family is ready to pull out of what seemed like the perfect storm of financial incidents. Or perhaps it's even more accurate to say we have been inadvertently launching all our energetic, karmic, material and other unidentified resources into blocking our abundance…or so it appears. Even accounting for my near delusional commitment to optimism and proper sheltering of the children from the harsh realities of the Bush economy and ill timed work related injuries, the children understand the situation is…hard?


I kissed her golden brown, silk framed, perfect, little forehead, squeezed the breath right out of her, thanked her, and declared her the most wonderful daughter a woman could ever want for. She carefully set her wee treasure in my hand and closed my fingers around it. I felt with complete certainty, like the richest woman in the world.