Four Gifts You’ll Never Want

Imagine you are gifted four boxes. In each one is a present just for you.

Excited?

Well, trust me, you won’t be for long. These are not bestowals you’d want; in fact, you will wish to give every one of them back.

The bad news is, you can only give one back.

Just one.

You will have to deal with the other three as best you can.

So, in a moment – after you take a peek – think carefully about which is the worst of the four for you. The one that elicits the most visceral, punched-in-the-gut feeling is probably the box you need to get rid of.

Are you ready to examine your gifts?

Okay, then:

Box 1 is full of Rejections and Hassles

Box 2? Brimming with Criticism and Ridicule

Box 3 is stuffed with Meaninglessness and Unimportance

Box 4? Laden with Stress and Pain

They are all pretty bad, right?

But, which one is absolutely intolerable?

Please make your rejection decision now.

Your choice of which box to ditch communicates a great deal about what motivates you. It is a valuable glimpse at the preferences and aversions that inform your behavior every day.

Think again about the box you conspire to be rid of.

If you are returning Box 1, Rejections and Hassles are what you prefer to avoid above all. Being accepted and cared for is of prime importance to you. You are represented by a chameleon.

If Box 2 repels you, then Criticism and Ridicule are likely your biggest aversions. Having control and respect are your prime motivators. You are represented by an eagle.

If Box 3 is your poison, Meaninglessness and Unimportance are verboten to you. Appreciation and recognition are what you value most. You are represented by a lion.

If you reject Box 4, avoiding Stress and Pain are your biggest displeasures. Ease and comfort are your primary goals. You are represented by a turtle.

Hmmmmm……

Interesting.

Our faculty and staff recently participated in this TOP CARD activity (designed and complied by Lynn Lott, M.A., M.F.T.) at a school-wide meeting, recognizing that understanding what motivates each other is helpful in building a positive community.

In other words, it is useful to know what animal I am, and what critters surround me.

Of course, these labels are generalizations; we are all composites to varying degrees. And – accurate or not – this exercise illuminates perspectives and orientations that we may be unaware of:

“I say ho-hum to hassles, but whatever you do, please don’t criticize me!”

“Oh, I can handle criticism, but do not diminish my importance!”

“I don’t mind being overlooked in the least, but I cannot tolerate stress!”

I can handle stress – no problem, but please don’t leave me out!”

Behind each of these statements is an individual with a set of hierarchies informing a pattern of behavior.

So, the next time you are confounded or confused by someone’s actions or attitude – be it student, colleague, family, or friend – remind yourself that your pleasure might be their poison, and their toxin might be your elixir.

Knowing that might make all the difference.

Chameleon, turtle, lion, or eagle –

Who are you?

Maybe Find Comfort in This

I think that comfort has very little to do with what one might think.

It doesn’t need softness,

or a big space,

or quiet.

Sometimes it goes hand in hand with familiarity, but

that is not always necessarily so.

Even if it’s a first –

you can find comfort there, if it’s the right thing.

Oh sure, it may be about repetition, but not always.

A smell, a sound, a rhythm, a task.

Pulling a paddle through water,

the zip of your sleeping bag in a tiny tent,

the click of needles coaxing yarn,

the stretch of your calves in downward dog,

the strike of your stride hitting the path,

the flick of the wrist as you peel potatoes –

there is comfort there.

The carve of the skis,

the push of the pedals,

the turn of the key,

the strum of the chord,

the roar of the surf –

it is there, too.

The arc of the seven-iron,

the ache in garden knees,

the creak of the stairs,

the cradle of your hands around a mug…

Extravagance is not there,

nor is opulence.

Comfort is merely an exhale

of the essence of you.

It is

healing.

It is

who you are –

confirmed.

You Gotta Love It

This first weekend of spring stirred a buoyant sense of urgency. My husband dashed off for one more weekend on the slopes – melting snow an impending threat to his favorite season.

My son and I chased sun and surf, bee-lining it to the beach, welcoming the raucous chiding of gulls and returning the embrace of warm sea air with upturned faces.

Strolling through shore towns on the boardwalk, we rejoiced in the diversity that central Jersey offers for such revelry. Thirty miles from home, we watched the surf roll in, white sand underfoot, blue sky sandwiching us in between – a perfect spring beach day.

Meanwhile, in the opposite direction – forty miles north of home – my husband was skiing his heart out, white snow beneath his sticks, azure sky atop – a perfect spring ski day.

We thought about that – him on the slopes and us on the beach, and our good fortune to be in easy reach of both options.

The ephemeral nature of seasons on the east coast amplifies their value, giving reason to covet the intervals we love best. When set in your favored one, it never seems quite long enough.

But, that’s part of the appeal.

And when it comes around again –

You gotta love it.

Owling

I can’t do it.

No matter how I try to get through it, my breath catches, my voice cracks, my eyes well up. I pause, taking a silent inhale to collect my bearings. Clearing my throat I continue – bereft of composure until the whole darn thing is over.

I am reading Owl Moon by Jane Yolen to my class.

Being the cohort that they are, most of them are blissfully unaware of my stifled trauma, but there’s a chance the more attentive notice. Thankfully, they just wonder and wait until their teacher pulls her act together. At that age, you don’t question too much – adults are kind of weirdly random as a rule, anyway.

My original Owl Moon has my maiden name written inside the cover; it must be at least 30 years old. I don’t remember how I first came upon the story, but it was long before it became a mentor text for our second grade reading curriculum. I imagine that it was the illustration on the front cover that drew me in, and I was surely smitten with the turn of every page. By the end of the first read, I was probably a soggy mess.

It was published in 1987, just one year after leaving my Grade 1/2 position at a three-room schoolhouse in rural Vermont for a teaching job elsewhere.

Everything about that story resonates, echoing that time. The winter farmland scenery, the blanketed quiteness, the reverance for nature, and of course – owling.

One cold starlit night, a native Vermonter – a good friend of mine – took me owling.

We didn’t see an owl, but we heard one.

He and a Barred Owl conversed back and forth for quite some time.

Who who who whoooooo – Who who who whoooooaaaahhhh….. He called into the blackness.

(Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?)

The call of a Barred Owl weaved its way through the dark forest back to us.

Who who who whooooo – Who who who whooooooaaaahhhh……

He called again, and again it answered.

Who who who whooooo – Who who who whooooooaaaahhhh……

Magical, mezmerizing, magnificent.

As I said, we never saw the owl, but we didn’t need to.

To be in conversation with an owl talking about…

“…supper,

or about the woods

or about the moon

or the cold,”

was a moment in time, and a perfect memory.

I was there for that one owl, that one night, and I am there in that scene again, every time I read Owl Moon.

It takes my breath away.

And as humbling as it is, I don’t ever want it to change.

Rooted in Smiles

Teeth are a really big deal in second grade.

They are a regular topic of conversation at morning meeting – who lost one, who is currently losing one, who is getting a new one. They wiggle, they wobble, they amuse some and gross out others.

They are also the most reliable source of income if you are seven.

Sure, sure, you get cash for your birthday and First Communion money from the relatives, but the money you get from a tooth?

Well, that’s money you have earned, my friend.

You have given up a part of yourself (albeit willingly) in exchange for something else.

In my neck of the woods, a tooth under the pillow goes for about five dollars these days, I am happy to know that the value of this commodity is keeping up with the rate of inflation. With twenty teeth in each mouth, that adds up to a hefty one hundred dollars over the course of a childhood. Not a bad gig.

Unfortunately for us, we were forced into the five dollar tooth bracket way ahead of its time. One of our kids lost a tooth on a family camping trip out west, miles away from any hope of cashing in a larger bill for singles. After furtive and frantic late night rummages through our wallets, we resigned ourselves to giving up the smallest bill we had – a fiver – for the single tooth, thereby inflating the going rate by five hundred percent in one fell swoop. It wouldn’t have been that bad, but we knew right then and there we would have to match that price for the rest of our kids and the rest of their teeth.

(It might be appropriate here to note that the Tooth Fairy does not enjoy making deliveries to small pup tents full of sleeping children.)

You can tell a lot about a kid from how they talk about their teeth. There is the “I just yanked it RIGHT OUT!” type – they are generally your thrill seekers. Then there are the meek and tenuous, tentatively probing with fingertip or tongue, not wanting to fuss with it, opting to wait patiently until it drops out uneventfully. A few are anxious even thinking about the loss, thus the actual event itself is quite traumatic, and the possibility of accompanying blood makes it that much worse. Usually, the time-honored trip to the nurse’s office for a tooth treasure box sets things right in quick order. Lucky kids.

So, if you ever find yourself at a loss for what to say to a seven or eight year old, just ask them about their teeth. They’ll go on for hours, and even treat you to a close up, open-mouthed look – especially if they’re in online class with a camera front and center.

They’ll tell you how many teeth they have lost, and how many teeth they are still holding on to. And if you happen to find yourself in the senior plus years of life, you might find this tooth topic strangely parallel to your own musings, and conclude – with surprise – that you have more in common than you knew.

It’s Still Us

We hit the ground running – forward focused – not keeping track of where each other was going, spraying out in all directions for colleges, careers – somewhere, anywhere, – determined to not look back.

In hindsight, we were probably all hoping to find friendships pretty much like the ones we were leaving behind.

Years smoothed into decades, and here we are – not too far away from half a century later. Not all of us keep in touch, but a meaningful some of us still do.

Curiously enough, the virus has enabled us, or compelled us – to talk even more. Maybe we have new time on our hands, and certainly the kids getting older has afforded us extra hours to fill, and wouldn’t it be nice if we have grown a little wiser to realize that this is a thing worth holding onto – this friendship.

We hop on a Zoom meeting once a month or so, and in that space there is quick comfort and familiarity.

Her giggle is still the same, her sound effects are still hilarious, her wiseness remains the calm voice of reason.

We laugh and and joke and reminisce.

We see each other now, but woven into that view is how we knew each other then; it’s all melded into an admirable notion of who we are to each other. Not many have the privilege to receive or bestow a perspective that is layered with time like that.

We tell each other how we were back then.

“What? I did that? Are you sure? I don’t remember that!”

“Well, you did and you were!”

We fill in the gaps and laugh some more.

It never gets old – even though we are kind of getting that way.

We make bridges to guide each other over the years we were apart, having gone separate ways for decades, pusuing careers, meeting spouses, discovering ourselves. How fortunate we are to be navigating a circle that still embraces each other as it comes around again.

We catch up about jobs, retirement, family, kids. Who’s moving out, who’s coming back, and how they are doing. We muse aloud about when to step in, and when to step back and let them figure it out – those kids. It’s a grand comfort to learn that my thoughts are often their thoughts, and my challenges are lighter carried on the shoulders they offer me, rather than just my own.

The time we shared back then was an investment we didn’t even know we were making.

It was a frenzied collision of fun, spontaniety, and drama. It opened up a space that – over time and through living – has become a treasured cache of who we are as individuals, and who we are to each other. Not many know us as well as we know each other.

This fellowship is irreplaceable by virtue of the sheer amount of time it has remained intact, substantive, and life-giving. And in spite of the years and because of those years

it is delightful to find

it’s still us.

Last Supper

Yesterday we were forced to accept the resignation of our in-house chef, thereby making dinner a last supper of sorts.

Our burgeoning culinarian assumed his informal post a year ago (366 days to be exact), and in that time has treated us to such delights as:

Pork Katsu

Braised Barbacoa

Coconut Risotto

Korean Fried Gochujan Wings

Mushroom Fried Rice

Wednesday night pizzas of delectable varieties

Pork and Cabbage Dumplings

Potato Pancakes with Carmelized Onions and Sour Cream

Peach Cobbler

Banana and Whiskey Bread Pudding, and

Tropical Fruit Sorbet

to name a few.

He is – in fact – not a hired chef at all, but our oldest child who has been teaching high school English from home since last spring.

In addition to teaching, he loves to cook.

He cooks to affirm, cooks to delight, and cooks to relieve stress. He is happiest chopping, dicing, and julienning during midday preps, and sauteing, simmering, and searing after dismissal.

And although we hate to lose him – it is for good reason.

For the first time this school year, his job will take him out of the home and thirty miles away to campus where he will begin in-person teaching for the final quarter. We will miss his care and creativity in the kitchen, but it is appropriate to say a grateful good-bye. His talents of another sort are needed in a community elsewhere, for more pressing reasons.

Today, this teacher and his students will convene for their inaugural meeting. It is a moment that has been frustratingly delayed for seven months. They will experience each other in the flesh from head to toe, not as voices behind little black rectangles on a screen.

How cool is that?

That’s worth giving up a good meal for.

Beautiful Bison

Huge hulk

two tons

wizened warrior

unphased ungulate

underneath

shag hair –

crusted brambles adorning

winter weather layers

atop.

Roaming sages

grazing greenery just so

for new life,

hollowing behemoth puddle prints –

concave craters

of pressed earth

that offer an

inadvertent

bird bath

for feathered friends

and a drinking hole for others.

Boulder-built

light-footed

blipping over

herculean heights

with ease,

outrunning

all adversaries

save one.

Bereft of allies with influence,

terrorized and

helpless

against

ignorance and arrogance

you were

expunged.

Yet,

an enduring notion of

silent grit

and

profound patience

is your gift

in return.

You are

all that

and more.

You

are

beautiful bison.

Don’t Pour Ketchup on My Story

Have you been to an Irish restaurant?

Neither have I.

Case in point.

Were not really about food as much as – say, your average Italian, for instance.

Trust me, I know. This living dichotomy is part of our happy home. Oh, we’re used to it by now, but we have had our tussles over it, believe me. Our first big row was over a jar of Ragu. I kid you not.

Over an accumulation of years in our Irish/Italian marriage, I have arrived at the politically dubious, sweeping generalization that food is to Italians as stories are to the Irish.

Or, to properly honor this day, let me reverse that and say stories are to the Irish as food is to Italians.

I am not sure if this is true for the entirety of these two populations, but under our roof, it’s certain.

My husband is Italian, and food is a big deal to him. Planning our wedding reception was the first of my many adventures into this hierarchy of priorities. Throughout the pre-nuptial preparations, his critical concern was curiously over the food:

Would it be excellent? (Apparently, it had to be.)

Would there be enough? (There must certainly be more than enough.)

Will they keep it coming all night? (They absolutely have to keep it coming all night.)

“Stop worrying!” I chided. “No one cares about the food – everybody will be on the dance floor! I guarantee you most of us will miss the entire meal and not even notice!”

My priority was the music (stories) – they were an absolute deal breaker for me.

Would the tunes be excellent? (Naturally, it had to be.)

Would it be live? (Live, and a fiddler was mandatory.)

Would they keep it going all night?(They simply had to play all night.)

Of course it all ended up perfectly fine. Those who love a good feast bellied up to the table and swooned, and those who revelled in stories, took a few bites, bypassed the rest, and danced all night to ballads put to music, choosing their best place as well.

Little did I realize that these predilections were affinities deeply rooted in our cultures, and as much a part of each of us as his curly hair and my green eyes. We now understand that a telling a good story for me is like a preparing good meal for him.

The problems arise when I ruin his meal and he ruins my story.

How does that go? You might ask.

Here is how the-I-ruin-the-meal part of it goes. He makes plans to invite a few friends over for a casual dinner (pre-virus, of course). “Don’t worry, Hon, it will be simple,” he assures me as he outlines the menu. “We’ll start with this, then I thought I’d par boil this, then butterfly it, sear it, then finish it off on the grill. Oh – by the way – do we have any twine? I’m going to need twine. Then we’ll shuck two dozen oysters and have those… (Oh, that reminds me, I have to run out to get some oyster knives), and after the oysters we’ll have this wrapped in that, and then so-and-so is going to bring this, and then I thought I’d try making this upside-down souffle du jour from scratch for dessert.”

OMG.

In my mind this translates to hours of shopping, mounds of prep, manuevering, cooking, rearranging, clearing, making room, followed by extensive clean up well into the wee hours of the morning in our very tiny kitchen.

For one meal.

For a repast that is good, but…

I would have been happy with cheese and crackers. One charcuterie plate would have sufficed.

“I don’t suppose we could just order pizza?” I say.

“NO! WE ARE NOT ORDERING PIZZA!”

And right there, I have done it – I have rained on his parade, pre-emptively ruining his meal before it even began.

And his meal is my story.

Here is how the he-ruins-my-story part of it goes.

I’ll be knee deep, totally invested in a great yarn, a riveting account of some outrageous – and usually pretty hilarious – event, building momentum, leading to the apex of the tale, and suddenly,

“Hon – you have got to be kidding me! There is no way on earth a dog that size weighs that much! That is totally incorrect! That dog did not weigh eighty pounds. A basset hound doesn’t even weigh that much. It was more like fifty pounds – tops.”

And just like that – like a slow, noisy leak in a balloon, my wonderful tale – void of it’s lift – fluffers to the ground, deflated, limp, and lifeless.

Tripped up momentum, marred credibility, thwarted timing.

WAA…….. WAA…… WAA……

So, through the years we muddled along with this chaffing difference in our deeply rooted orientation of what is most important when socializing: the chow, or the banter. Most times things went smoothly, but every so often, we’d trammel each other, get mad, cool down, forgive, let time pass, and then repeat the whole darn thing all over again. I’d complain about the complexity of the menu because “It’s my family and we don’t care about the food!” and he correct me about some teeny-weeny minor point while I was mid-stride in a great recitation.

Then one day,mor

I hit upon the perfect analogy to help us both understand what we were doing to each other.

When I complain about his elaborate dishes, I am almost literally dumping an entire bottle of ketchup over the lovingly braised veal shanks that he has thoughtfully prepared.

And, when he interrupts my poetically licensed anecdote with a completely irrelevant correction, he is ketchup-drenching my story, too.

From that day forward it was better, and we seemed to understand.

So today of all days, let the Irish sing their songs and spin their yarns with gleeful abandon; I trust that you’ll find yourself having a rollicking good time right along with us.

Stories may not seem like much to some, but to us, they’re golden.

They are as good as a great meal – maybe even better,

and you never pour ketchup on a good meal.