Chicago Pics

Coming into Chicago from Midway airport, on the train!  Way convenient!

TALL buildings!!

view from my friend's apartment on Lake Michigan!  Corner apartment, lots of windows.  Yea!

 

Tree colors on my walk around the neighborhood....

 

This, I was standing in front of, and almost missed!  It blends right into the neighborhood!

           You having a bad day?  Can’t seem to shake it?  Here’s a thought to consider:  There are a LOT of people who would LOVE to have your bad day! 

            If that’s not enough to shake you free from the blues, the funk, the woe-is-me syndrome, try…….

            Going outside.  Nature works wonders.

            Doing something different than you usually do when you get in a funk.  If you usually eat, do some jumping jacks.  If you usually run, sit in silence and draw.  If you call the same person to unload your misery, write your junk down on paper.  Then burn it.

            Writing a love letter to someone who has supported you. 

            Making some sandwiches and taking them to someone on the street.

            Picking a flower to give to your neighbor.

            Going to Meetup.com to find a group you may want to be a part of.

            Stomping and screaming… lay on the floor and pound your hands and feet.  Throw a temper tantrum!

            Holding your own hands.  Or your face.  Or your feet.  Feel the comfort that you have to offer yourself.

            Making a list of ten things you could do to feel even one degree better.  

            Doing one of those.

            Writing a poem. 

            Singing a song.

            Changing your shirt.

            Finding a picture of something that makes you feel good and pin it up.

If you try any or all of these and none seems to do the trick, consider that you may just get pleasure from having a bad day.  And enjoy that. 

            Just please consider that, before you unload your crisis, turmoil, burdens, and heartache on someone else without their invitation, they are possibly having some troubles of their own.  Ask them about THEM.  And listen.  It’s a great distraction from your own ‘stuff.’

            “The best exercise for your heart?  Bend down and lift someone up.”

Party of Four

          “I was just wondering….my wife and I need to go to a luncheon and we need someone to watch the kids.  You interested?”

            “Am I interested??  How much will I owe you?”

            I love their kids – three of them, ages nine, seven, and six.  They are precious and I haven’t seen much of them all summer.  We all live in an ‘eightplex’ by the beach and they are my downstairs neighbors.  During the school year, when weather was nice and I kept my door open, they were up at my place most afternoons, if only to say hi and get some snacks.  (Little Ezra told me recently, “Yeah, Miss Maria, that’s why we love to come to your house!  ‘Cause you have the BEST apples!”  Which is so cute, because their mom knows this and has told me, “We HAVE apples.”  I’m touched.  Have I mentioned that I love those kids?)

            They would be with me for two hours and I was kind of wondering what we would do for that time, on a rainy morning. Thinking that seemed like a long time, I had a list of possible activities (none of which we needed after all).  Up they came at 10:00, library books and sweatshirts in hand.  First item on the agenda was snacks – apples, of course, and a banana.  “Little One” (Eva) wanted to sit on the back porch to eat, so out we all filed to munch and visit.  For two minutes, that is, until they were down the stairs, over to the palm trees to check out the orange fruit on the ground (rain had died down to a slight drizzle).  EVERYthing is a game and a toy, intriguing and fun to them.  The fruit became ammunition from a slingshot, baseballs for a palm frond bat, and things to be squashed underfoot.  Climbing the tree, knocking off the fruit, finding bugs in the trunk, pulling off dead parts of the tree…it’s all in a day’s play for them.  No missed opportunity for discovery or destruction!

            “Should we show her our secret hut?”

            “YES!  Come and see our hut!”

            In what can loosely be called our backyard, is a cluster of a few palms and bushes that are, well, ‘natural’  (aka neglected and unkempt) - a perfect place for a secret hideout.  Into the umbrella of the palms we went, hunkered down and watching our steps.  Lots of tenacious, thorny vines love to grow around the trees and are vicious and prevalent.  So while they swept the ‘living room’ floor with a dried out palm frond, I headed inside for my pruning shears and gloves.  Little One ran over to her yard to get a bucket for the refuse, and soon, dive into cleaning the hut, we did.  Pulling and tugging, clipping and raking, we cleared out a lot of the vines and suddenly, the hut was beginning to look like home!  A wooden plank became the kitchen table for water and apples, dead branches and palm leaves became walls, and a couple of towels were our furniture.  It was lovely!  We even found a way to combat the gnats and mosquitos that were in on the action, too.  Alcohol, cold rages, and peppermint lotion.  Yea!

            Work done and weather cleared, we were hungry and decided it was time to eat – Waffle House, which is just down the street on the island, and a favorite of theirs.  We gathered up what needed gathering and drove off, ready for a Grand Slam – waffles, toast, and milk.  Waiting for our food was just one more opportunity to play – forks and a napkins became a sailboat, spoon and a napkin, a bride, and straw and wrapper, a bb gun. Way too fun!  Our food was just what we all wanted and within seconds of finishing, they were up and ready to go, play, move, now that they were newly fueled.  So it was out to the beach (a block away) to feed the seagulls our leftover toast.  What a trip THAT is!!  Once a gull sees food in the air or on the ground, all alerts are out and every gull from a hundred yards comes swooping in.  Well behaved, for the most part, they take turns grabbing the pieces thrown in the air.  On the ground, it’s another story.  Man!  What squawking and yelling!  Every bird for himself at that point.

            Tide was low so we got to walk out to a shallow sandbar and cool down.  Without swimsuits, full immersion had to wait.  Off to the library first, then home for suits and towels for a return engagement (or so we thought).

            Once in the library, we headed back to the kids section.  It is so much fun!  There are tables of puzzles, a dollhouse, computer games, and stuffed animals.  We were there for a good hour, and time just flew.  Ezra announced that he was ready to go; he was tired and needed a nap.  (By this time, I did, too!)  We checked out and headed off with books and DVD’s on Star Wars, Caterpillars, Brer Rabbit and Veggie Tales, homeward bound for a rest and some snacks.  At home, their mom and dad reminded them of a 3:00 birthday party they were going to (it was already 2:00 by the time we got home!), so they had to ready for that and our beach plans were tabled until next time.  Sad for our time together to be ending but well ready for a rest, I hugged them bye and headed directly for bed.  A day well spent, a nap well deserved! 

Solitary Together

In the interim of joy and sorrow, I witness intense purification.

There is aliveness and glory in everything.

I am witnessing just who is within and the intensity with which she lives and yearns –

to be seen, to be free, to be, well, me.

I witness the purity of love and wishing goodness for all.

I witness the knowing and the wonder of life that is constant.

And bubbling up always…bubbling to move, to include, to subdue, and to enrich.

I witness my own personality as that of a conglomeration of past and some beyond past.

Something too deep and long ago for my brain to understand,

but pure enough that my soul is completely aware and loving of who I am, always.

The purity of self is always here.

The purity of love is who I am.

I am you, and you, too, are pure love.

You speak different words than I speak.

You walk a different pace and different path than I walk.

Your dreams differ, your desires differ, your dance differs,

and yet, we are all dancing, desiring and dreaming the same stuff –

Love.

How does it go so quickly, this life? 

How does it just evaporate and then we are one

with tree roots and sunbeams?

We are those now.

We always have been.

We are nourished by, in tune with, all of Nature –

Bees, butterflies, clouds, earthquakes, downpours and moon glow.

Who is our enemy but our teacher?

Who is our tormentor but our protector?

And who am I within, hiding, but the expression of pure love wanting to be free?

I am free.

You are free.

Breathe in.

Be you.

Be life.

Sun, rain, trees, angels and all that you cannot see

is all there for you, with you.

It is all you.

Streams of consciousness now open you

to your truth, your power, your unity with self,

and love of all that is.

You are love.

You are light.

You are tenderness, desire, and giving.

You shine your light when you sleep, when you walk.

You shine your light in places that have sought your presence.

The alignment that is grace lines you up with me,

lines up me with Nature,

lines up Nature with all that is.

Divinity speaks.

Are we listening?

Cracking

I claw, I clutch, and hold on to the past

while I try to release it as well.

I holler and cry and hope it won't last.

How do I DO this?

It's so hard to tell!

 

So I stop for a second,

take a breath, find my place...

hold my hands with each other,

rub my arms, touch my face.

 

I'm never as far from the truth as I fear,

like now, when my mind's out to sea

and at once, when I stop and remember what's dear,

it's suddenly all clear to me...

 

It's just about choosing,

not about right or wrong,

and it's easy to make peace with me

when love is my choice

and love is my goal,

and Love is the master, not me.

 

Then I find that the past doesn't matter at all,

that love is what made it to now.

So I sit in the present, so grateful, aware

that I always find balance, somehow.

Ivan in the Garden

            “When I was lying there and started to feel the rain coming down on my face, I just felt like Mother Nature was taking me.”  Pause.  “It was wonderful.”

              As has happened before, when he told me this story, he was right back there in that moment, reliving it.  The surrender and peace of his recollection registered clearly on his face.

            Ivan loves to be outdoors in the summer heat, loves to be active and productive, and loves to tinker with his rider mower (“the tractor”).  Last Friday was no different.  He had been “cooped up inside all day” and had noticed that the cover on his tractor had blown off in yesterday’s winds.  He decided that his project du jour was to replace it on the tractor and enjoy the semi-cloudy weather.  Having come off of his walker and seated on the edge of the planter in front of the mower, he leaned down to free up a corner of the cover that was trapped under a tire.  A sturdy tug didn’t release the cover, but sent him reeling backward into the planter.  Large enough to cushion his body from the waist up, the planter allowed Ivan to fall into soil and avoid cracking his head or any bones on the surrounding blocks.  At first, he didn’t panic - just gained his composure and began the (futile) effort to sit up and regain his balance.  But after squirming around and trying to right himself, he lay back down, frustrated that there was nothing he could get a hold of to help pull himself up.  His legs are the weakest part of his body, and were what he needed to roll over and/or to move himself back to the edge of the planter to sit up.  He struggled, then stopped.  Struggled some more, stopped again.  Finally, in utter exhaustion, he lay back and just decided to stop and think about what to do next, to see what happened, or to “let nature take its course.”  Then he felt a raindrop.  And another.  Then the deluge began.  The rain was pelting his face and arms and his body was getting colder by the second.  It was just all more than he could believe. 

            It was at this time that he knew that it was ‘his time’ to return back to Nature, and so just lay there and surrendered to that.  “It was wonderful.”

            He felt someone touching his shoulder and rousing him from his trance.  How long he had been there, he wasn’t sure, but in retrospect, figured about twenty or thirty minutes. 

            “It took me a bit to realize what was happening and were I was.  It was the mailman trying to help me sit up, but it was too much for him by himself.  He couldn’t do it.  So he called an ambulance and we waited.”

            The ambulance arrived, then a fire truck, and the crews instantly pulled Ivan into his storeroom, the closest enclosure they could find, to begin drying him off and to check his vital signs.  By then, he was alert (as usual), and answered as many questions as he could. 

            “When they asked me my age and I told them ninety six, you should’ve seen them jump!  They snapped to attention and went to working on me in earnest like you wouldn’t believe!”

            He repeated this part of the story more in the next couple of days in recounting the event that any other.  I think it let him realize that not only is he in really good shape for his age, but that once again, he beat the odds in a situation that would’ve taken out someone younger than himself.  This time, though, I wondered if he wished, maybe, that he hadn’t. 

...and a few pictures of people included in the story...........

Carol and Dad

Mary Jane, loves to laugh!

Mike, in a pensive moment....

The four sistuhs...Trudi, myself, Frannie, Mary Jane

My cousins Max and Vince Sternjacob, on my mother's side - stopped in ABQ on their way through!

Betty and her daughter