The view was hampered by a minor yet persistently nagging annoyance. I could get the gist of it alright, so that the beauty was not lost, it’s just that there always seemed to be that fuzzy dark blotch, moving along with my every attempt to reposition for a view unobstructed. Even with all my effort the blotch remained. If the blotch had a tongue it would be sticking out at me wagging na-na-na-na-naaa-na.

As far back as I can remember there has been that blotch, moving, morphing, distorting, a distraction and at times even a hindrance. There have been days, weeks and even months of an almost entirely blurred vision so that all I could make out was a minuscule pinpoint of clarity through a thick fog. Nothing had ever been more difficult than to try to keep focus on that one minute invitation to press forward toward light, toward hope. Was it merely a tease? A lure to keep me moving until I came to stand on the red X where a secret hatch-door would open for the abyss to swallow me whole?

No, it never was. The blotch remained but so did the hope. Most of the time the blotch was just there, in the way, like being a short person behind a tall person only a few rows from the stage zigging to counter their zag. Or like what a TV program does to obscure the identity of an interviewee desiring anonymity, you know, the collection of bouncing pixelated squares in place of a face. 

Frankly the blotch often even went unnoticed, so accustomed was I to it, having learned to pay it no attention at all. With fortitude and resolve I determined not to let its power over me wreck my hope. I wrestled it, restrained it, straight jacket, double pad-locked iron chains, thrown overboard wearing concrete shoes, squelched it. 

There on the bottom though, with time, every time, salt eroded iron chains and disintegrated fabric. Sand beds abraised once snug-fitting concrete shoes and the blotch was freed to slither out, resurfacing large and ominous, I its magnet. 

The reunion could be one of subtlety like the slow yellowing of a picture. It could come on with a hard fast clank to my steeled resolve until my own hands raised to cover my wearied eyes, in attempt to block the despairing view.

The thing is not the blotch, that it is there, or even if it really exists at all. The thing is how much if any of me I allow it to command. I choose where to focus, on the nasty blotch that would steal my joy, peace and happiness, or on the portion of the view that is blotch-free. Even if there is only a pinpoint of clarity, if only a clear view the size of a peephole, look there. See the hope. With my eye tight to the peephole the blotch disappears. Stay close like that with my focus on the peephole view, recognizing that everything within my sight-lines, regardless of where I focus, is there for me to process into living. It can’t in and of itself control me, and I don’t need to try to control it, any of it really. The blotch simply is, and powerless over all hope. I empower it, or not. 

I can, again, render it harmless.

Dark secrets churn below the surface
boiling up behind the invisible lid
to a cauldron of noxious deceit stew
Nostrils scald at its putrid stench
Ingestion bleeds, rots gut, decays soul,
While dining alone.
Seasoned liar!
Salt would disinfect,
light would absolve the death,
If desired
P.J.

Bathing with a dinosaur

Praying for a daughter

In the middle of a Thursday afternoon

Since the cloudy morning

Beckoned hot sweaty yard work

Necessitating evening’s bath too soon

Well, anytime in my book

Is a good time for a bath

But never mind the bath at this odd hour

There’s a foreign object

On the edge of my tub

A pink bodied blue-eyed dinosaur!

He’s there as evidence

That just last night

He kept a bathing tiny person company

So thoughts of gratitude

For the tiny little dude

Who left the dinosaur there to bathe with me!

Then my thoughts turn to prayers

And my prayers turn to pleas

For daughter who is taking a test

Lord grant her recall

Clarity and confidence

Please Lord help her do her best

While the dinosaur stares

Past the silly grin he wears

As I in my tub offer prayers

I am grateful for this

Thursday afternoon in June

And my simple list of bath-time cares

P.J.

Dare I even pen the words

To describe my thoughts

Of more questions than answers

Overshadowed with doubts?

Tainted by disappointment

Surely facts are veiled

Not seeing the whole picture

Some elements withheld

I can’t help but troubled be,

Working hard for good,

When again, my best effort

Doesn’t gain the end it should

I pray may it be so

But again He answers, no

Another rejection saps my will

To give it one more go

I really want to give up

Move on, get it over with

When emotions and feelings

Prod me to just quit

But like the devil’s on my left

An angel’s on my right

Prompting me to see it through

And not give up this fight

Though I almost now expect

I’ll have to settle for plan B

I still wish, I still pray,

God’s will be done in me

I’m wearied of the struggle

While this life unravels plans

Left here with a tangled thread nest

Filling up my hands

I want to change my world, I do!

So positive I’ll be

While I keep on trusting

For reward eventually

P.J.

Harsh the long run when short run’s

rows are tough to hoe

but reapers gone before attest

to struggles of the sow

with burdens real I can’t but feel

it’s not as it should be

time to break out, as walls inside

fast close in on me

head past where the green grass grows

on any by-way east

drive ‘till I run out of road

destination: beach

to stretch out on a couch of sand

for sun to warm me through

then dip and sway in salty waters

as they wash and soothe

yes, anytime I find I need

a check-up from the neck up

beach therapy proves to be

quite often just enough

P.J.

Walking along, it became increasingly evident that darkness crept nearer, just ahead, to the sides, and even behind. It was enveloping, like a northern winters night to be braced against. As light further faded, dark’s sounds were haunting. A shiver reminded that chill comes when light goes. The sky hid its stars behind a canopy of pitch clouds. 
What was most startling though was not so much the penetrating darkness, as the power of this one small flame to dissipate it. The dark’s vastness far greater than the small flame, yet the light radiating from the small flame source wholly negated the dark. 
Fascinating!

Luckily for me I have never had any desire to go to the moon. Add to that, rowboat across the Atlantic Ocean, climb Mount Everest, and track Tibetan tigers. I don’t want to be president or an algebra professor. What I do want seems much less lofty and yet almost equally unachievable, which really has me stumped. Why won’t things just work out as I wish? Are mine just pipe-dreams? 

Definition of pipe-dream: a hope, a wish, or dream, that is impossible to achieve, or not practical. 

Hmmm, I know these that I have are not impossible. For me to get to the moon, that is pretty impossible, but my wishes absolutely are not! So, are they not practical? In some ways, not, I am alone in the journey, the dream that would take me miles and miles from here without so much as a dog for a companion. And what about expenses, and my old car. It’s enough to be alone but alone and left stranded by an old car I cannot repair myself, in the middle of nowhere, well, that is intimidating. Then there are my responsibilities and the people who count on me, my sweet grand-kids. I would miss this critical time with them, time that never offers a hold. I stop me for their sake. 

It is July. Already June has passed and the rest of summer nips at the heels of autumn. If not now the opportunity will again be gone. That thought makes me sad. Too many thoughts lately have made me sad. Here in the midst of so many wonderful positives, how dare I feel sadness? 

I am in an ever so much better position in life than many many others, in countless ways, yet discouragement over what I can’t, didn’t or won’t, weight heavy on me. Doubt whether I really do have any skills or talents, and frustration over why after all these years of practice they have not yet earned me a position to meet reasonable minimums. These negatives are common to man. I do not describe anything that every single person has not themselves questioned or wrestled with. 

Thoughts such as these can be a marvelous catalyst to positive change. To work through steps needed to reach goals. Dream big but in small enough bites as to not be overwhelmed and frozen, unable to figure out where to start and see progress. Procrastination stagnation sees nothing at all happen except the passing of time. 

What I have told myself, what I continue to tell myself, what others have told me and what others continue to tell me, shapes me. I am either motivated forward toward my best, inspired to work it out, or leaned on hard pressed in this place, making it scarier and unnecessarily difficult to do anything but remain, stay put. Shrivel up and die really. That hardly seems acceptable!

I think the struggle never ends. One replaces another, some never resolve, simply fizzle. Some sprout, bud and bloom in glorious satisfying accomplishment. 

I wonder if my sprout has shriveled on the vine. I hope it is just in a dormant season in wait for that infusion that will burst it into full life.

 to end a lighter note:

Call the “wha-mbulance” for the whiners!

and on a positive note:

We need to be both comforted and comfortable being dwarfed by God, who is immeasurably greater than us. Like going to the beach or mountains where we are dwarfed, and refreshed. (Jackie Kendall)

  

 

Grandma's World

I looked in the mirror, and didn't do a thing about it.

This is a fairly typical occurrence daily, minus the time to look in the mirror part. Monday through Friday From morning through afternoon I repeatedly tell myself I need to...here is where any number of taken for granted hygiene or personal necessities and activities would be inserted.

Interestingly, it is not unless I leave the house that this grandma phenom becomes a concern, embarrassingly so. At some point in those instances, it usually suddenly occurs to me that I neglected to apply deodorant, or while interacting or speaking with someone, I imagine them thinking something like, when is the last time she plucked those eyebrows?, or a little makeup would go a long way, or does she not own a comb?, and what's that stuff on her shirt?

When day-caring for a pre-schooler and his baby brother, things have the potential to be on the best of days, at least mildly askew. Weather in fact they are or not is mostly inconsequential, since I likely have not looked in the mirror at all, or have looked and done nothing about it. Either way, I feel quite self conscious that I am rumpled in some conspicuous way.

How have I come to this, again, I ask myself. Was there not supposed to be a completion date for my mothering duties? Wasn't I at this point in my life supposed to be off pursuing those dreams put on hold for the sake of the first batch of children? No one told me anything at all about the second batch being work. On the contrary, I was under the apparent misunderstanding that the second batch of kids was where at my whim, I would hop them up on sugar, buy them whistles and drums, keep them up too late and then send them home with their parents until the next time I chose to fill my schedule with them.

The second batch was supposed to allow for me to enjoy a squeaky clean fingerprint-free home. All the lovely fragile heirlooms were to be displayed for my viewing pleasure, even low. I was to have a cool drink in a tall glass, all my own. I could stay up late because mornings would not begin until I decided they would. And all this my reward after many years of paying my dues, doing the hard thing. It was to be Grandma's world. I find instead that it is still Elmo's world. Maybe the two worlds are not so dissimilar, both unrealistic.

The mirror is not an ally unless there is time to linger before it to examine, assess, and then implement a plan for damage control. Without time to manage the findings there in the glass, the mirror's only purpose is to mock the image it reflects. From that point of view it is better not to know what the mirror would hold against me. My own imagination, kinder.

I wonder, if it is true that I have lived under this delusion for all these years, am I also kidding myself about the days yet ahead? Here's what I know; At the end of these days, when the children's parents have picked them up and I am exhausted, I miss them. When the children are here for eight or nine hours of five days a week, I miss me. There is much to be missed in life, it can't all be fit in.

For the time being, I think it is preferable to see my reflection in the smiling eyes of my grandbabies than in any old mirror. In one there is no condemnation, while the other judges harshly. One reflects a Grandma, in a neat tidy world, and the other sees this grandma fit in nicely with a red scraggly haired puppet who lives in a house of crayon drawn furnishings, that I might add, are colored outside the lines and in every which direction.

If you happen to see me out and about and I look, well lets face it, a mess, wonder no more. You are probably correct to think these are yesterdays clothes, I have not combed my hair, plucked my eyebrows in weeks, and I cannot say for sure what is on my shirt. You would be right to think I have not looked in a mirror, or perhaps I actually did and did not do anything about it. You should know it is largely because those whose needs matter most right now, are more attracted to Elmo types.

P.J.