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Three Mountain Passes and a Graduation

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She rose before dawn- which comes pretty early the end of May; washed her face, popped in her contacts, took a hot mineral soaking bath and pulled away from the curb by 6:20 am, feeling confident. She loaded the car the night before. All she had to do was grab her purse and electronics bag. Already she was wearing her black column dress with the sandals. She had allowed a full extra 45 minutes travel time just to be safe. What a glorious morning! Hardly anyone else was on the city streets – or the highway for that matter. Her route would take her over the notorious Red Mountain Pass. Precipitation was expected – but also temperatures of 50 degrees at key points of reference. Rain was lovely-and much needed. As she began the ascent to the first of three Rocky Mountain passes she would traverse in the space of 70 miles, the absolute gob-smacking beauty of peaks and pine trees, valleys and budding quaking aspens snatched her breath away. She let out a loud and involuntary “woo hoo! Hallelujah!” right there in the car by herself. The experience was transcendental and she wasn’t even meditating with her eyes closed, free of all distraction. Far from it. She kept her eyes and her attention on the road, yet took in the wonder of beauty all around, savored the gentle rain that began to fall, teardrops of joy from the sky lingering like diamonds on the glass and then running in tiny rivulets down the silver side of the car and falling on pavement; millions and millions of tiny diamonds that without warning became pearls of snow. The pearls collected, slowed her progress, caused her to exercise ever more caution. Snow. Four or five inches of it on Coal Bank Pass. Spring snow. Not snowpack – the weather is too warm. Spring snow, slushy, crunchy snow cone snow over non-frozen pavement. She continued without incident up the pass, breaking new trail. How many other vehicles had she seen? One to this point. What a blessing, no string of traffic pushing her to go faster!

A few vehicles approached from the opposite direction, trucks all of them. An F250. A utility work truck. Rugged autos. Halfway up Molas Pass she met a snowplow, descending as she was ascending. Molas Pass was sporting a six or seven inch accumulation of the white stuff – still slushy and crunchy and slippery. 

She tried to talk to the car that passed her. She said things like, “Hello? I see by your license plate that you are not from these parts, welcome to Colorado! Did you notice that I bear a Colorado plate? This is not my first Rocky Mountain rodeo. Did you consider there might be a reason I am traveling slower than you want to travel? Lincoln Town Car is it? Great! You may have – no probably not – noticed the model of my vehicle. In very big letters it proclaims RAV4. That 4 means something important here in the mountains. That 4 might also be assumed to be “A.” In these parts “A” stands for all-wheel-drive. The vehicle I drive and my speed are both intentional choices.” Talking aloud gets the irritation out of her system. There are more vehicles on the road now. She is untroubled when a couple pickups pass. They drive as though this is a daily commute and they know what they are doing. She doesn’t talk to them. They can go on ahead, break the trail, if they like.

The valleys between passes are rainy and wet, but not snowy. She contemplates the option of laying over in Silverton and thus missing her grandson’s graduation.  Red Mountain Pass lies ahead. But no, the approach to Red Mountain looks fine and she is definitely not turning back – that would be ludicrous with two passes behind her and only one ahead. Again, the ascent looks fine, but the rain quickly turns to snow and accumulates fast. Just ahead she sees the Lincoln Town car dead in the water, straddling the center line at an awkward diagonal angle. There is nothing, absolutely nothing she can do for them by stopping except to add to the traffic jam. There might be room to pass on the right – just barely – and clear the precipice that yawns – but the road is slick. There are also tire tracks to the left and she opts for those as she can see no oncoming traffic for a mile up the incline. By the time she reaches the summit, the snow accumulation is 8 inches. A highway patrol car sits off to the left with lights flashing. She pulls off the road to the right behind an F150 and rolls down her window calling to the driver as he exits, “Are they closing the road?” “I don’t know,” he answers. “The officer is checking on a semi stopped just over the hill. I’m going to go talk to him. Hey, was that white car still in the middle of the road when you came through?” Affirmative.

She reached into the back seat for her winter hiking boots and wool socks and pulled them on. She retrieved her down jacket from storage in the hatch and pulled it on. She got out and walked to a better vantage point. The F150 driver came back. “The officer and semi are waiting for the snowplow coming from the other direction, I’m going to give it a try.”

She watched the driver disappear over the hill. She waited. He did not back up. Soon the snowplow came around the parked semi. She started her engine and moved forward, passed the semi. There were no other obstacles in sight. She proceeded to Ouray where she found a phone signal and texted ahead to warn family members of her delayed arrival. Two hours later Coal Bank Pass closed. Two hours later when she was already safely seated at the Avalon watching her grandson move his tassel from one side the mortar board to the other.

Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life

Seven Graduations

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I hiked to The Lion’s Den today, a four-mile roundtrip journey I like to take a couple times per month or maybe once a week. The trail leads across the top of a rim that is also the outer boundary to Ft. Lewis College. As I crossed the apex of a seasonal ski slope, now covered in spring green, I heard the public address system and the cheers of graduation and I turned toward the athletic field to see the dispersed crowd and the colorful balloons; the sounds and sights of celebration.

 We’re at the end of a pandemic, so the college will host seven – yes seven – graduations in order to make sure everybody and every family is awarded and honored. Everyone gets to attend-and socially distance. There are seven other graduations in my memory some great and some not so good – but not all on the same day. 

One of the best was when my daughter graduated from college and didn’t get to walk in the entry procession. Why? Sprained ankle? Broken foot? Knee surgery? No. She had a clarinet – and a minor in music – and she was playing Pomp and Circumstance with the college symphonic band as the solemn pairs of candidates made their way to alphabetically arranged seating.

I vaguely remember my own high school graduation. At the time, I thought I had bigger fish to fry. I was getting married in six weeks. But, I do remember being troubled that the gowns were gold (for the young women) and black (for the young men). In my mind, this was a grave error. The school colors were orange and black. I also remember that I successfully did NOT trip over the microphone cords.

I remember little of my younger brother’s high school graduation-except to confirm that the graduates actually had orange and black gowns. I was too busy keeping my toddler out of mischief. But I do remember my brother crossing the stage, head held high as the speaker announced not only my brother’s name but his list of achievements and awards – an embarrassingly long list that went on and on, causing him to blush and duck as he received his diploma and then exited – his minutes on the stage over – but not the list of honors. 

I was not there for my brother’s graduation with Master’s degree or PhD – nor was my brother. Good thing he received so much adulation in high school, for the university graduating classes and departments are so large at Medical College of Virginia one doesn’t even cross the stage – or have to attend.

My children all had outdoor high school graduations in local stadiums. Not one of them tripped over the microphone cord.

The next memorable graduation was a ceremony I was not able to attend, but I will forever remember the front page newspaper photo and story of my daughter-in-law graduating from Colorado Mesa University on Mother’s Day, 2003 – crossing the stage with her newborn in a sling. 

And finally I, belatedly, completed my college degree and crossed the stage at the age of 51; my three children in attendance, my brother and SIL and parents in the seats – a milestone indeed; and one of my proudest moments. As my name was read, with my major in organizational management and my minor in music, the young musicians who were gathered on stage to play the Battle Hymn of the Republic broke the rules. They cheered – just for me. And I beamed. I was part of the cast in their musical a few months earlier. It is a nice feeling to belong.

I’ll attend another graduation soon. Another first. My first grandchild to graduate. But then, he’s an old hand at this. He  crossed the stage with his mom 18 years ago.

Seven graduations. And do you know what? None of us tripped over the microphone cord. Sometimes the things you worry about just don’t ever come to pass. Then again, the things you thought you wouldn’t live to see? You just might get to celebrate them.

Character, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Relationships

Delayed Reaction

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When it comes to preparedness, I’m your boy scout.

I read a verse in Proverbs when I was about 13 – the verse that says, “she is not afraid of the winter, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” I like red, it’s my favorite color – second only to black. I like sale shopping. So, yes, consider my household clothed for the winter. I like to shop ahead, make sure my / our needs are covered so there is no frantic last-minute push. We are prepared for any emergency. At any given time, there are three little black dresses in my closet. A hiking pack, extra water, PFD and swimsuit stay in the car. My purse holds an emergency sewing kit, measuring tape, wallet knife, and dimes for the potty and payphone. Dimes for the potty? Now there’s a historic artifact.

Anyway, I try to be prepared. But that can also make me overconfident. Yesterday I took my kayak out on the river for the first time this year. I’ve had it on the roof of the car just waiting since April. My kayaking bag is in the hatch. All I really had to do was switch to my swim shorts and drive away from the house and 22 blocks to the put in. A ten-minute drive. Thirteen minutes untying and unloading the kayak and I was in the water blissfully paddling upstream, against the current as usual. Three quarters of the way to my turn around point I realized something: No sunscreen. Blue sky. Sunshine. Swollen river. 80 degree weather. Immediately I was thankful for a sit-in craft – at least the tops of my feet won’t get burned. I took a few more powerful strokes and remembered something else. I usually put moleskin on the thenar webspace between my thumbs and forefingers. Do I feel blisters coming on? Both moleskin and sunscreen are in my daypack – back at the car. So much for my preparedness image.

In much the same way COVID-19 did not catch me unprepared. I was not out of toilet paper. I had food for a couple weeks already in-house. I even had a collection of bandanas to use as masks. Who cares about social distance? I was new in town so there was no one to miss. No reason to repine and whine. I was used to hiking alone and living alone and I’m an introvert. 

But the delayed reaction now, fourteen months later is about to do me in. During the long months of quarantine I practiced piano, I practiced guitar, I learned to play bass, I took some classes by Zoom, but I am woefully out of practice at this social thing. I’m fully vaccinated as are most of those in my would-be peer group, but there is no place to go, no one to see, nothing to do. 14 months later it is time to scramble and catch up with all the things I meant to do when I was new in town. Otherwise I, even I – the loner – will become lonely and blue. Intentional friend-making and job-hunting, inserting myself into the lives and worlds of others has never come easy for me. But delayed loneliness is no laughing matter, folks.

Books and other Soul Food, Character, Emotional Health, Fiction is Truth

Coming of age – again

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I know three people from our graduating class who are authors, she wrote via email. You, Barbara Jones, and Harry Brown. Do you know of any others?  The class of ’72 – what’s left of 399 of us – are beginning to coalesce, starting to get reacquainted, communicating more as we gear up for our 50th (gasp), 50th class reunion. I’ve ordered your latest book, she continued, and I had the privilege of reading one of Harry’s before it went to print.

Classmates. We have in common a high school graduation year; 1972. We have memories of three years spent in the same building, 180 days per year; choirs, teams, bands, academic awards, achievements.  Some of us share in common the writing habit. One of Barbara Tyner’s books is on my nightstand waiting to be read. Another is on my computer-top, delivered electronically. After responding to Helen’s email, I clicked around the internet for several minutes, finally discovering Harry Brown’s The Magic Club. I pressed the instant download button and money was withdrawn, the plot delivered.

Aptly classified, a coming of age novel. I read with dogged attention, though I found the chapters and sections disjoined and hard to follow. These are the landscapes and people of my childhood, never mind that some of the names have been changed. I know these places – the canal bank, the Three Sisters, Monument Road. I know these characters. I, too, was part of the Class of 72, although I don’t believe I ever shared a class or a conversation with Mr. Brown. There were 399 of us. We were baby boomers. I laughed out loud at the religious girl with the outdated cat-eye glasses who makes a couple cameo appearances in the book. Could there have been two of us? I was not alone after all! Wonder of wonders, there must have been another classmate as suppressed and repressed as I! She wore her cat-eyes from first through 12th grade. I only got mine in 6thgrade. Oh, and in the book (The Magic Club, 2012 Harry Clifford Brown), she graduated valedictorian-something I could only dream of. As an author, I was absolutely fascinated by Harry Brown’s fictional rendering and remembering of the chaotic and tender age of 17-going on 21. Nice to get a glimpse of 1972 from the other side – the male perspective – the jocks – the achievers – the leaders. I honestly didn’t know it was as hard (and heartbreaking) for them as it was for me!

Health and Long Life, Music and Theatre, Musical resolutions, The Rules, Uncategorized

Free Music

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Yesterday, I did it. It’s taken me 14 months, but I finally played an original, complete, coherent, eight bar melody on the public chimes at the top of the sky steps at Ft Lewis College. You may well ask why it has taken me so long. After all, college music theory III required a complete Sonata of three movements plus coda in less than a semester’s time -half of which time was spent learning the rules governing a sonata. My sonata, named something prosaic like Praxis Sonata, critically acclaimed by the entire class, garnered me only a B on my final report card. A B!  In music! Even then, I knew my instructor was generous. Why? Because he knew something my classmates did not know. I had failed to analyze the piece – to mark in the jots and tittles right on the music. And though I worked frantically with my pencil on the bound and presentable copy whilst other students performed ahead of me, I had not completed the analysis before the final bell. 

Give me seven giant, floor-mounted windchimes at the top of a trail and two attached mallets, what could possibly be difficult? I’ll tell you what: They never gave me the rules. I have spent a year trying to figure out the theory of the thing. Not diatonic. Not arranged in ascending or descending chronological order. One of them is even out of tune with the other. Seven. Not six like guitar strings. Not a major scale. Not a mode. Nada. Not an Aeolian harp. I discovered the chimes early in March 2020 and played them at each passing so my ear could make out the pattern. No pattern developed. By Labor Day I could play two bars of the French Marseillaise, but after that, the available tones gave out. I pondered what I knew of world music and puttered about making incidental riffs whenever I hiked in that neighborhood. Most of the hikers and stair step masters ignore the presence of the chimes. They wear motivational earbuds so what do they care? Once, and one time only in the entire 14 months, I saw a child walking away from the chimes. Otherwise, the chimes are my oyster and mine alone, I guess. I’ve heard oysters need irritation to compose pearls. I was plenty perplexed.

With March 2021 came the advent of distanced outdoor concerts downtown every Friday. On the walk home, it seemed only natural to take in the art gallery in my path. And there I saw them; miniature, hand-held tone bars in sets of five. What were they? Freetone bells. Freetone bells made by the same artist responsible for several outdoor musical installations around the community including parks, pre-schools and Ft. Lewis College. Not one of the five tone sets is just like any other. They are all free. Each sounds its own unique pitch without regard for harmony or the chime hanging next in line. 

Do you know what that means? No rules. You are free to strike any chime you like in no particular order. But me? I’m still bound to the definition of music as organized sound. I’ve spent a good deal of time and research trying to get to know these chimes. So far, I’ve got them organized into 8 bars of passable melody. I’ve still got to figure out how to work one outstanding chime into the mix, but six out of seven isn’t bad – it’s kind of like my life. Here’s to the future; with or without rules!

Character, Emotional Health, Family, Health and Long Life, Travel

Presumed Introvert

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He was the one who went straight to the car after Sunday evening church service, often taking one of the children – whichever was most sleepy or squirmy – with him while her mother chatted with friends, attended to choir business or emergency young peoples or women’s board meetings. Oh, she had heard him be noisy, coaching from the sidelines without benefit of in-ear amplification; training basketball players who were running gym laps, calling instructions from the bench as needed. But for as long as she had known him – and that was all her life – she had presumed him a quiet introvert who favored being alone.

When she planned for a long road trip to visit family, she opted for out -of- the- way solitude, quiet airbnbs that suited her need to be away from the crowd. It was near the end of COVID-19. Old people had been vaccinated. Hope was beginning to dawn. But still, out of caution and scrupulous attention to rules and suggestions, she pursued contactless check in, single family lodging, places where families could cook their own food, avoid crowded diners, stay in their own bubble and not brush shoulders with strangers.

But Dad didn’t see it that way. On a preliminary trip to Capitol Reef, just before the second wave of COVID, while bnbs were barely making a comeback, but doing it with contactless check-in, it worried him that he never saw the hosts. Once the long road trip commenced, he inquired at every stay for the names of the hosts, worried at their absence, began to suggest stops for meals at this roadside café or that diner. A high point for him was exiting the interstate somewhere in Idaho and breakfasting at a restaurant with an intriguing name and a chatty server. Violia was of late middle-age and knew how to joke in the old-fashioned way trading cliches and rolling with whatever eccentricities came from the lips of an 88-year-old man with half his hearing intact. He remembered this as one of the highlights of the trip.

On the other hand, highlights of the trip for his 66-year-old daughter and millennial granddaughter included staying at isolated mountain cabins, lighting wood stove fires, and hiking alone to rainforest beaches. He was gleeful about having met a host accidently on a gravel walkway whilst taking out the trash. He loved to see people. He loved to see faces – even if they wore masks – but especially if they didn’t. He reveled in talking with strangers though he saw and heard only half of what they did and said. 

In reflecting on the trip, she realized that for many of the miles and days, she and her dad had unwittingly been at cross-purposes. While she had been industriously planning social distance and solitude, he had been deeply longing for close contact and society – not just with the family members they were carefully trying to visit, but with people, strangers, hosts, waitpersons, the vast outside world that had too long been withheld from him – most lately by a pandemic, but cruelly for the preceding years while he and his invalid wife became increasingly shut-in.

This was so clearly brought home to the daughter – she who craved solitude and independence – on the return trip. In Leavenworth Washington, in lieu of the desired secluded single-family cabin with kitchen, she booked an old motel turned Airbnb, complete with – well, it wasn’t complete at all-it boasted only a microwave and dishes were washed in the bathroom sink. Her dad inquired as to the name of the host. Jessica. She reminded him this was a contactless check-in and they would not see the host.

Whereupon Dad replied philosophically, “Well, miracles do happen.” 

Character, Emotional Health, Family, Health and Long Life, Spiritual Well Being

It Helps To Have Been a Mother

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The rooster began before dawn at 5:19. She had not yet fallen back to sleep after the second trip to the bathhouse was completed at 4:29 am, but it didn’t really matter. Seven hours of restorative sleep had already fortified her. She was only lying awake to contemplate her blessings. Lodging in a tiny house, 288 square feet of authentic repurposed 100 -year -old farm furnishings, every square inch meticulously decorated with cotton doilies, linens and hand-sewn quilts. No sign that says, “do not touch.” Every indication that she is to wrap up in the quilt, pull out the exposed springs on the crib-sized trundle daybed and luxuriate for as long as she likes in her 650 down sleeping bag purchased for her birthday last year and brought along on this road trip for such a necessity. 

Any moment now her daughter will pop in from the farmhand bunk and make use of the hand-crank coffee grinder and organic coffee beans. Once the coffee is perking, they will gather eggs from the hens and have a fine omelette. Rain gently taps on the roof intermittently. Dad still snores softly from the quilted queen-sized bed nestled under an eastern stained glass quatrefoil window and concealed by an antique secretary bookcase now commissioned as china hutch. The bookcase is identical to a pair from her father’s childhood home, one of which graces her brother’s well – appointed professorial study while the other has use at the home of a cousin. It is 7:14 am and still Dad sleeps – an amazing feat for a man used to rising early on a farm, used to getting up before dawn to feed the horses and break the ice in the watering trough. But then, he has been up twice in the night for trips to the bathhouse. Trips on which she accompanied him because the path is unfamiliar and very uneven. Trips on which she, at the age of 66 and allegedly in her prime, reaches out to him and steadies him like she would a toddling child. When your parents age, it helps to have been a mother. The bathhouse has every luxury from clawfoot tub to heated toilet seat. The only thing resembling the old farm outhouse is the aged barnwood paneling the walls and floor. It takes time to enjoy these amenities when you are 88. It also takes time to wash your hands and get back into your coat. While he washes his hands and gets back into his coat, she slips behind the partition and makes use of the heated toilet seat for herself. A wise woman goes at every opportunity. She, too, might want to sleep until the sun is up!

Last night when Silvergirl pulled into the driveway about 7:00 pm the three travelers were greeted by a cacophony of bleating goats, honking white geese and clucking hens. By the time she and her daughter enjoyed a pit campfire and headed for bed the hens were cozily perched in their custom aviary and the frogs and toads in the pond were loudly singing an evening serenade. The amphibians were at it again briefly this morning once the rooster alarmed them. 

What a beautiful morning! Such is the life in Christopher Robin’s  Writer’s Cabin, next to the 100-acre-wood, on Whidbey Island, on a working farm – when she is not the one working!

Character, Family, Health and Long Life, Hiking and outdoor beauty, Metaphor, River, The Cabin, Travel

Dad For The Touchdown!

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He was a guard on the varsity basketball team, one of five starters on the first ever Warrior, the first senior class, the first Central High School – at that time housed in the WPA building on 29 Road. At 5’6” he weighed 125 pounds. He was sharp and attentive and rightfully earned the nickname “Live Wire.” They were a scrappy team, they exercised sportsmanship. That was 71 years ago.

He was the coach at Olathe Junior High and then Clifton and later Bookcliff Junior High He was well-loved. He coached a winning church basketball team. That was in the decade known as the 60s. As a player or as a coach of multiple sports he understood two important principles: Keep your eye on the ball. Tuck that football into you so you don’t fumble.

We’re taking a stupendous road trip, this 88-year-old erstwhile athlete and I. We’re enjoying the vast farmland and calculating the worth of cattle herds and mammoth irrigation systems in Wyoming and Idaho and Montana and eastern Washington. When I was young, and yes, this is a trip of memories, we always counted the cattle on a thousand hills and claimed them for Dad’s ranch. After all, he was raised on farms and ranches and he understands the value of each haystack and each cow. 

When we reach Montana, I am smitten by the mountains and conifers and lakes and rivers. Though I like to think of myself as finally in my prime and I also pride myself on averaging three miles of hiking or walking each day, we are not traveling alone. My 88-year-old father and I are accompanied by our own private wilderness guide and martial arts devotee in the person of my 32-year-old daughter. She drives, and does our cooking for us, and is there to pick us up if we fall. I am the planner and navigator – a baton I have inherited from my father – although he still figures the gas mileage and total cost and suggests routes.

Night three of our road trip, we stayed in a beautiful alpine-like cabin. I packed and unpacked. Andrea chopped wood, lit the fireplace, and cooked. Dad sat in the recliner and did the books and composed an email to my brother on his laptop. Yes, we are all internet savvy and each hauled along our essential Macbook Pro for various uses.

Next morning I readied myself for a morning exploration of the exquisite mountain property; the pond, the spring, the evergreen trees, the creek-sized river running through the lower regions. Dad announced that he would go out and walk around the cabin while I was out. The ground and steps from car to cabin were uneven and slick with an overnight skiff of snow. Dad has limited vision with his coke-bottle glasses and macular degeneration. I pondered for one quick moment and determined to accompany him on a walk first and then return him to the safety of the recliner before I meandered further. 

We walked down the decline. He wanted to do it himself. Without help. He didn’t want to take my hand lest he fall and pull me down. I showed him how to use his walking stick with one hand and place his other hand on my shoulder. We walked down to the pond with ease and stood contemplating on the tuffets of grass at the bank. The grass was the color of golden wheat, not yet greening for the spring; the buds on the weeping willow trees and cottonwoods so chartreuse they look neon yellow against the pine trees; the bare stems of the infant willow switches a brilliant red. The day was chilly and frosty like an old-fashioned root beer mug placed in the freezer overnight.

We turned and headed our laborious trudge back up the hill, always moving forward – sometimes at an imperceptible pace. Scattered about our feet were ostrich egg sized pinecones – newly fallen and still red brown. I spied a perfect one. Stooping, I picked it up for closer examination but fumbled it off my cold fingers. Dad snatched it out of the air, cradling it securely to him like a mini football.

“Well look there,” he said proudly with delight. Once again, it’s Dad for the win!

Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Spiritual Well Being

Happy Quarantinaversary to me!

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Today is March 16, 2021. Happy Quarantinaversary to me!  On this day in 2020, I rose before dawn as is my habit, wrote a little, ate my oatmeal, showered, dressed, made my bed and prepared to sally forth and land a job in music, art, or history – just a little something fun to supplement my retirement, make new friends and get me involved in a new community. First stop on my list was the library where I would print off résumés and network. Before going out the door, I googled the library to confirm hours of operation and found the library; CLOSED. Shut down. The library, for heaven sakes. The sanctuary of writers, researchers, the homeless and the itinerate. I have not been in a library for over a year now. I turned instead to electronics and music, solitary hikes and writing.

In the 17 days immediately preceding March 16, I had completed my move to Durango, settled in a Victorian apartment new to me, made two trips to Grand Junction to visit my parents, purchase a vehicle and coordinate details with my daughter. As of March 16, all commerce came to a halt. I dug out my wardrobe of bandanas – currently known as face masks. I commenced making chalk marks on my front porch; eleven days, twenty-one days, thirty-days. And then the lawn sprinklers washed away my record of confinement. The streets of bustling, resort town Durango were deserted and quiet, fit for walking and window-shopping.  My only retail therapy was food. I found the grocery stores more crowded during senior hours than at other times. We are, after all, the baby-boomers. I shopped only when absolutely necessary.

I chose to receive the quarantine as a gift and a blessing. I savored the solitude, the uninterrupted time to write and sing and play music. True, I re-read every paperback book in the house – and all the books I had been purchasing and storing on my phone. I re-watched old DVDs. More importantly, I attended to my physical health by hiking every trail I could find.

I did what I had always wanted to do but never had time. I finished and published two books- rereleased a children’s book long gathering dust. I learned to play the electric bass. I sang with a virtual choir. I built a website for my online bookstore. I did more than survive. I am content more days than not.

Though it has been a year in which I lost my job and my mother – neither to COVID – I have found a new normal; a more stress-free way of being. I want to keep it that way. Nevertheless, today, on this anniversary of my quarantine, I have an appointment for a vaccination. Do I think the vaccination is some kind of magic potion that will fix everything? I hang my hope no more on receiving a vaccination than on wearing of a face mask, yet I participate willingly in both – because they are a comfort and encouragement for those around me; a symbol of hope to all who long for freedom; that we are doing our best. Tomorrow, may we do even better. I will live – and live well – as long as I am supposed to. And then, may I die in a beautiful place!

Character, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Musical resolutions, Write

Fear of Embarrassment

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She has a problem. It is a subset of fear and it is fueled by fear of rejection. It is fear of embarrassment. She knows where it came from. It is inherent in her personality type, her enneagram model; and it was actively and intentionally worked on by those closest to her as a child. Don’t embarrass your family. Let me help you be perfect so you will never have to feel embarrassed.

Fear of embarrassment is not a very good choice of fears for a writer – or a performer. When you write you bare your soul. When you perform, you put your entire heart into it. When you are a singer / songwriter, God help you. Every breath you take, every song you sing, every tone you articulate is one more embarrassment waiting to happen. 

I cringe, you cringe, we all cringe, when we hear a less than stellar music performance such as The Star Spangled Banner in 5 keys – in the space of two minutes or less. Yes, she is embarrassed for them. And she is embarrassed for herself. She wants to do unto others as she would be done to.

As a writer, she doesn’t want to write anything that will embarrass herself when she reads it later – or embarrass others. On the other hand, she loves to make people laugh. How would this fear of embarrassing herself or others fly if she was, say, a stand up comedian? Apply that thought to writing and you see what a predicament she finds herself in. 

How can you call out wrongs, injustice, false beliefs, unfair actions, as a writer if you fear embarrassment, rejection?

I published a book – and promptly withdrew, almost became flat on my back with anxiety for five days. I quaked with the knowledge there were scenes in that book where I exposed myself – even though it was fiction. There were chapters wherein I said some things with which my closest friends and family might disagree philosophically. My motivation for writing was not to call out or accuse people, but to find my voice – to speak for others who might yet be tongue-tied. Yet I quail and continue to cower at the embarrassment and potential backlash.

I went to an outdoor concert the other night. A secondary singer experienced some pitch challenges. I cringed. But worse than that, I fell back into my protective cloak of judge not lest you be judged. So, I pretended that I didn’t notice. Why? Because that could have been me. I so hope no one is looking or listening when I mess up. Let me ask you this, how is that working for you? How can you ever market your product or your song if no one is listening or looking? How can you correct your mistakes and get better if everyone pretends you don’t make any mistakes?

The singer at the outdoor concert did something very helpful – he sang with confidence, without flinching. And that is exactly what she must do; plunge in with eyes closed tightly; make a big splash whether it is a flawless dive or a belly flop. Some years her word for the year is courage, other years confidence. One year it was a motto: Onward through the fog! A year like 2021 may require a complete sentence:

There is no time like the present to teach an old dog new tricks.

Putting One Foot in Front of the Other, Hiking for Life!