The Dash Between the Bling-Bling

Okay, since we've been talking about textures lately, how's this for going over the top!  BUT I do have a point, so get over it for a minute and think about what happens between Christmas and New Years....

It's just one week!  One week between two of our biggest Bling-Bling holidays of the entire year, perhaps winding us down and then up again more than any other week of the year.  Maybe?

I'm guessing all of us who have or have had kids off from school remember this week as vacation time.  It was a no-brainer, if we worked, to make sure we, too, were on vacation, if allowed.  Most of the time we'd take the kids back to Michigan to be with my family at the cottage.  It was family time and full of wonderful memories.  If we were lucky, we got snow, something we didn't get in California or Georgia.  And at one point during the week, usually on the New Year's end, we'd share a family Christmas of sorts with a big feast.  Then we'd fly back home, usually just before the ball dropped on the new year.

I didn't grow up going to New Year's Eve parties.  In fact, more often than not I was sound asleep in bed before the clock struck midnight on the last day of the year.  I had already said nighty-night to one year and fully expected the new year to be there when I awoke.  No fanfare.  No hoopla.  No bling.

However, I know I'm the exception to the rule...until this past New Years when the seniors here in our retirement community helped me make up for lost time.  And it'll happen again this year when we'll all bring in the New Year together long past midnight.   I look at some of these 70 and 80-year-olds and can just imagine what kind of life they once lived.  They know how to live and are teaching me.

But I digress.  This week in-between!  It usually means a week of rest and sleep, right?  A time to just relax and let things go.  No need to clean things up after the Christmas festivities.   The mess is okay, for once, especially if the kids are home.  We're willing to let things go for a change, to wind down and not be so Type A.  Maybe we even get to play with our special Christmas present we hoped Santa would bring...and did.

Now, back to the image and textures.  I know it looks totally depressing, which is not how I envision the dash between the bling-bling.  Rather, I was thinking instead of the gray days of winter, when the snow is no longer there/fresh/white and things seem kinda, well, blah.  Not blah in a negative, depths-of-despair way, but just blah.  The kind of blah that happens when after all the hubbub you don't know what else to do but take a nap.  A nap sounds good, right?

So in case you need permission to just be blah and veg out a bit, live in the dash between the bling-bling and let yourself go.  We probably should do it more often but my personal feeling is this is the one week of the year gifted to us to simply wind down, expect nothing, and coast into the New Year.  After all we did last week/year, don't you think we deserve it...we women of a certain age?! 

My Heart, My Castle, My Home

A month ago Astrid and I had the good fortune to drive across Holland's eastern border into Germany's Münsterland, region of over 100 castles.  This one happens to be Burg Hülshoff, one of the finest and where we spent most of our time.

That got me thinking about castles and how we say "my home is my castle."  What exactly does that mean?  Typically a castle is a fortified residence for a powerful or affluent person.  It's usually private, not public, and is used to protect the owner. In some cases the castle is fortified, designed to defend a city or town, often in the middle of it.

Hold that thought.

A few days later, with visions of castles still in my head, I came to the day before the American Thanksgiving holiday and suddenly felt woefully depressed.  It was like a bombshell.  No other day in my first year in Holland had hit me that hard.  I wanted to be home with my family.  It was going to be my first Thanksgiving ever, in 65 years, away from family.  And especially because Holland doesn't celebrate the holiday, I felt so lost.

Then I remembered the psychiatric hospital where I worked in 1969 the year Bill and I got married.  I was the desk clerk on the ward for short-termers, average stay of 26 days.  I soon discovered that the highest influx of new patients was always at this time of the year midst the hectic holiday season. When one lady in particular arrived, crazier than a loon, skipping through the halls in her stocking feet, giggling and having a good ol' time, the nurses laughed and said, "Oh, that's Professor So-and-So's wife.  She comes here every year at this time until the holidays are over."

And that was 40 years ago!

Truth be told, I'm guessing many of us have or remember such frantic, depressive moments when the pressures of the season become more than we can handle.  Most people see me as a very strong, stable, immovable, stalwart queen in my castle, my home.  But in fact, that day I was nothing of the sort.  Astrid was the only one who saw my depression before Thanksgiving and who, in the listening, eased my private pain.  Within minutes, I was as good as new...and when Thanksgiving arrived the next day, I was as happy a camper as ever, not for one minute second-guessing where I was for the holidays.

Maybe that's the point of a castle.  It's meant to shield us from the outside AND inside stresses of raging, emotional wars.  It's meant to be the private place where we can unearth the weaknesses of our unarmored souls.  It's meant to be a safe haven for everything we hold dear and important.  It's meant to be our home where we can open our hearts wide and not fear the consequence.

Regrettably, not all homes are castles.  That's the truth of it.  But my wish for all of us this season is that we can find or start to build the castles around our homes to protect, fortify and defend all we hold sacrosanct.  Maybe we can even help someone else build theirs?  Our homes are worth it.  So are our hearts.

Blowing In the Wind

So, let's talk about the weather!

I have always liked gadgets like barometers, even if I never knew how to read them.  They're just cool and make nice wall decorations...even if dating themselves.  But suddenly, now that I'm in Holland, this particular gadget in our front entryway means everything.  You don't even need to know Dutch.  Storm is storm.  That's what it was, stormy, but look how much better it is now.  After I took the picture, I moved the gold arrow to on top of the black...to see what the difference would be the next day, if any.

The thing about us Gemini (you Librans and Aquarians, too) is that because we're Air signs, we need the wind.  Air circulating.  My sister Susan is also a Gemini and makes it very clear if/whenever she needs more circulation in the car or house.  It doesn't have to be cool/cold air...just circulating.  I agree.

Lucky for me, I've landed in a country that lives and moves by the direction of the wind.  Astrid checks the weather on the TV channel every night and often tells me the wind is coming from the east/Russia.  In the summer, that means hot; in the winter it means cold.  Or the wind is coming from the SW off the Atlantic Ocean, meaning a storm/rain is coming.  Have you seen rain that pours horizontally instead of vertically?  It gives a whole new meaning to umbrellas...specifically inverted ones!

When I was 8, I spent an overnight with a girlfriend in her family's farmhouse out in the Michigan countryside.   I don't remember much except that before bedtime a huge midwestern, bombastic thunderstorm unleashed itself.  I was beside myself with fear.  My friend's older sister observed what was happening to me (away from my parents) and motioned me over to the tall farmhouse window where she stood.  She turned me in front of her to look out the window at the storm, with her hands placed firmly on my shoulders.  Not a word.  Just her hands on my shoulders.  I still remember the calmness that slowly seeped into me for what seemed like hours, midst the storm.  It is that eternalized moment to which I point for my love of thunderstorms to this very day.

My children and grandson know this.  Whenever we're together and a storm erupts, they all look at me and wait for me to scrunch myself up and say "Cozy, cozy!"  Then we all smile and share a certain camaraderie without words.  Peace hands on the shoulders.

While I totally understand why most photographers prefer sunny days, I happen to be one who never cares if Mr. Sun is in bed for the day.  For one thing, I'm a fair-skinned redhead who comes from a history of skin cancer.  So as long as it's not raining when I'm out-n-about, I thrive on the moody, with-an-attitude skies.  For me, they make some of my best pictures.  If you know anything about the Dutch weather in this regard, you can see why I was made for this country:  more cold than hot, more windy than calm, more rainy than dry.  Don't get me wrong:  I love the sunny days, too.  But I don't have to have them.

So, when was the last time you talked about the weather and you really were talking about the weather?!  Did someone say SNOW? We got our first dusting this past Saturday and even drove in it early before it melted later in the day.  I kept whispering to myself, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!" 

On Sense and Sensibility

Every once in awhile Astrid will say to me, "Just hit me over the head with a baseball bat!  Knock some sense into me."

This time she helped me hit my own head because...I needed to quit school but felt too guilty to do it.  Finally, I just did it.  There, I've said it.

What is it about us women, mothers especially, maybe, that keeps us going and going before we finally just say, "Enough already!"  We've made a commitment and nothing will make us quit.  Even if it kills us.

In essence, we believe sticking to our guns, our promises, or our commitments is more important than our quality of life .  We're true to our word and will never be faulted on that.  We may be miserable, but at least we're doing what we said we would do, come hell or high water.  Who cares if the 'story' changed along the way.  We're the consummate martyrs.

But in the end, everyone loses.  That's the thing:  If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!

It's longer than this but...after a good, foundational first half of learning Dutch at school, I started getting restless with the second half as it led me into a direction I didn't need/want to go.  I'm 65 and retired.  I do not need to learn about job interviewing or how the Dutch workplace flows.  It might be nice, maybe, to learn about the Dutch political system, how to make a police report for a robbery, or get a newborn baby registered at city hall.  But seriously, I'm not interested.  Nor do I want to take an exam about it at the end.

Did I tell you that once you turn 65, you are not required (like 'most everyone else) to take the inburgerings (integration) exam within your first 3 years in The Netherlands.  Actually, also if you're from the U.S.  But I was so enthusiastic about learning Dutch, they let me into the course and paid tons of money to subsidize me.

My advisor agreed the direction of the second half was not for me but there wasn't another option to replace it, so it was my choice to stay or quit.  However, if I stopped, Social Services wouldn't get their money back.  Talk about a guilt trip!

Enter the baseball bat.  DUH!  If the course doesn't meet the needs of a 65-year-old retired lady who isn't required to take the exam in the first place, why think twice about it!  But I did.  I'm not a quitter.  I wanted to learn Dutch.  I just didn't want to spend needless time on all the other stuff I had no clue would be part of the course.  WAR inside my head.

I finally made the decision a week ago.  Astrid says the stress has fallen off my face.  I'm a new person again, breathing.  The beauty of the whole thing is that here where we live in our senior community are many daily activities and people just dying to help me learn conversational Dutch, now that I've had the foundational start.  It'll be a much more user-friendly 'classroom' with no exam at the end, one letting me work with my own ebb and flow.

Whew!  I still don't like that I quit.  That will never change.  However, my life just got a whole lot better...and a lot more sensible.  You know how they say "If the shoe fits...just wear it."   Anyone out there who needs a good whack with a baseball bat? 

Gathering Wisdom

We're back from the Meeting the Parents trip...and, as is bound to happen, I'm in that place of reflection, pondering things in my heart.

When I'm in this place, the above "Gathering Wisdom" bronze by Mark Hopkins speaks to my soul.  She was the one I brought with me from the States to my new home here in The Netherlands.  [She actually was one of three Mark Hopkins bronzes I had to choose from and you can see here why I chose to keep her.]  She reminds me of what's important...and the work I must do to put the pieces of my puzzle together.

Speaking of which, my daughter's eyes were bigger than her stomach when she took a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle to the cabin with us for the long weekend.  We all LOVE puzzles but with everything else we did, we were lucky to get all the border pieces found and put together.  But that's a start and a lesson in life:  Go find the edge pieces and set a frame/boundary around the image you're trying to create.  The rest will follow.

Which reminds me of what Clarissa Pinkola Estés says in Women Who Run With the Wolves.  We are the Wild Women, the strong, healthy Wolves, who know instintively and intuitively how to go out into the desert to collect our lost bones...to recover and resurrect them, breathe life into them, and sing over them.  This "old woman" in each of us is The One Who Knows how to change and transform us, to keep our souls and tell our truths:

That's why we do all the things we do.  It is the work of gathering all the bones together.  Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn.  And the truths we tell will make the song.

When we took grandson Nicholas (age 10) to the same Fair he's attended every year since age 2, I pondered how he still knows what rides he can and cannot ride.  "No, G'ma.  That one's still too scary."  And I thought to myself, when did I lose that ability to say NO with such certainty to something I knew instinctively was not good for me!

This Wild Woman, by the way, also knows what needs to die and what needs to live inside of us.  I'm noticing this with my children.  I'm getting better about what to keep and what to let go.  What to cry about and when to laugh.  How to sing my own song, letting it resonate throughout me.  MY song, not theirs.  I ask myself, Where is my own voice?  Is it out in the desert still buried or have I finally found it and breathed life into it?  And if I have a song to sing, what is that song and does it make me alive once again?

Yes, I say.  I do have a song to sing that comes from out of the depths of my wilderness journey.  It resurrects me and makes me whole.  I howl at the moon and see a way prepared before me.

If a woman holds on to this gift of being old while she is young and young while she is old, she will always know what comes next.