Tuesday Slice: That untravelled world

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

We left at noon, the parents and the high school senior, for roads and states unknown. Leaving work and school commitments behind, we headed north.  At first the highway sights and sounds were familiar; we had just driven through Fort Worth on our way to Keller last month, to purchase a French horn for our band player.  

Past Keller, though, everything was new to us.  We were surprised we crossed the border into Oklahoma so quickly; travelling to Ohio via Arkansas took much longer.  But this weekend's destination wasn't my husband's hometown of Cleveland--it was Mount Vernon, Iowa, the site of one of our son's two college choices.

We watched the miles increase and the temperatures decrease. First Oklahoma, then Kansas--we spent the night in Wichita, arriving just after ten.  We collapsed in our beds.  I did manage to get up earlier than the rest and take advantage of the hotel's fitness room, knowing I'd be sitting the rest of the day.

Back on the road, I was in awe of the wide open spaces, the dull colors of winter in this breadbasket part of the country.  Gray barns and silos jutted out of yellow-beige fields gone fallow, silhouetted against pale blue skies. Cows dotted the hills sometimes, like black holes punched through manila paper.

We had packed for snow, and I was afraid we would be disappointed.  The small unmelted mounds left on the edges of the sidewalks at the Iowa border looked old and dirty.  A few more miles, and there it was--a confectioner's sugar-dusting of far-reaching fields, looking both cold and comforting at the same time. We had no drifts to walk through, but our boots and heavy jackets kept us warm in the wind-chilled teens of temperatures.

A night in Cedar Rapids led to an early alarm to get to Cornell College in time for our son's interview and campus tour. The modern student center sat among nineteenth-century buildings.  Students much more accustomed to the cold wandered in for breakfast wearing pajama bottoms and puffy down coats.  Snow started falling as we toured the campus, getting inside views of the dorms, the art building that used to be a gym, the geology building that was once a Carnegie library.

After the tour, we drove around Mount Vernon, stopping and shopping in an old high school-turned retail center.  One last stop for gas, and we were back on the road.  

Pale blue Iowa skies were turning winter gray as we left the state. The night skies were full of stars in the blackness that surrounded the Kansas Turnpike as my husband pushed to reach Wichita again. One more night in hotel beds, one more breakfast buffet, and we returned to Texas in the evening, just four days after we left.

As we hurriedly unloaded the car, I noticed the air didn't feel as chilled as I would have thought a few days ago. Leaving suitcases half unpacked, we all fell asleep quickly, knowing school and work were just a few short hours away.    

Tuesday Slice: And so I marched

My heart has been heavy since November

My brow furrowed with every regressive soundbite

My head filled with worry

And so I marched.

I have seen the spectrum of public education

Working in its halls, the drab and the shiny

Witnessing the challenges and the triumphs

And so I marched.

I have seen the news reports

Of earthquakes begotten of fracking

Glaciers melting, treasured national parks up for sale

And so I marched.

I have seen the intrusion of government

Come between my doctor and my body

Politicians who think they know better than me and my caregivers

And so I marched.

I have listened to friends and family in love

Worried about their legal attachments

Their right to share lives and homes and children

And so I marched.

I have paid the pink tax

Worked longer and earned less

Had to subject my name to my husband's on a bank account

And so I marched.

I have been subjected to uninvited sexual comments

And listened as colleagues put up with the same
Walked to my car with my keys jutting between my fingers

And so I marched.

I have heard my friends' stories

Of abuse, assault, rape

Scars that years of therapy can't erase

And so I marched.

Surrounded by fifty thousand beacons of hope,

 love, change, resistance

My heart lighter, my eyes brighter

Because I marched.

Text and photos copyright 2017 by Christine Margocs

Tuesday Slice: Hermit hoarder

I sit at the computer, perusing the piles of paper before me.  Or rather, one large pile, as once discrete stacks are now half-shuffled together.  Receipts, recipes, catalogs, sticky notes, medical papers, correspondence, begging  for attention.

File me!
Shred me!
Throw me away!

There are piles of books on the coffee table, in bags, on my bedroom floor, on my nightstand.  They are hiding in the pile on my desk, on the craft table. 

Read me!
Finish me!
Give me away!

Old clothes, ill-fitting new clothes, clothes I've bought but don't really need, clothes with memories of other places, activities, slimmer hips.

Wear me!
Consign me!
Donate me!

Other collections lack proper storage--cookbooks, cookware, owl items, crystal, music CDs.  Inherited decor, treasures of family history.  But what's valuable?  What's not?

Use me!
Appraise me!
Put me on display, or give me away!

Unfinished crochet projects, remnants of crafty pursuits: half-done scrapbooks with paper and stickers to fill twenty more, sewing patterns and fabric, needles of all kinds, frames unfilled, wood unfinished.  Dusty silk floral arrangements, home and holiday decor that is too hard to reach to actually use.

Create with me!
Decorate with me!
Give me away!

This hermit's cave has become too cluttered to be a refuge, too full of shouting from the stuff that accumulated as years have passed.  But where to start?  My heart is heavy with sentimentality, my head tired at the end of a workday filled with decision-making to deal with even more. Heaven help the hermit hoarder--please.

Tuesday Slice: Thankful themes

I pulled out my 2016 gratitude journal this weekend, and perused the contents, looking for commonalities among my daily entries.  I thought that I could hone in on what I truly value by sifting through what I was grateful for--a metacognitive way to look at my values through gratitude, from the heart instead of my head.  

Here are the common threads in my journal:

• Time spent with my family
• Shelter, clothing, and food
• Fulfilling work, with a paycheck
• Finding fun in little things, like glittery nail polish
• Connecting with wonderful people
• A sense of accomplishment that comes with completing tasks
• Health, and readily available, affordable healthcare
• A good night's sleep
• Good books to read
• Quiet time alone to rest, think, decompress
• Time spent outdoors.

Nothing on this list surprised me; rereading this list makes me feel content and happy.  Several of my goals for the New Year align with these values--going to bed earlier, taking care of my health, planning retreats, spending more time in nature. 

I've found my focus for 2017, thanks to the old year's gratitude journal.

Tuesday Slice: A different kind of Christmas

Our transition to empty nesting began this holiday season.  With our eldest graduated and working in Japan, we knew there would be an empty seat at our Thanksgiving table, one less urgent voice waking us up on Christmas morning.

Or so we thought.  Cue the wonders of technology.

Tokyo time was 845p, but our clocks read 545a when our teenage son rushed into our bedroom, smartphone set on speaker as the loud voices of both of our children excitedly announced, "Merry Christmas!  Wake up!  We want to open presents!".  They had been on the phone for a half hour already, biding their time to let mom and dad sleep in a little.

The night before, my husband had tested out the webcam as I made sure we could do a Google Hangout with our daughter.  Laptop was set on the ottoman, webcam nestled in the entertainment center to get a broad view of the living room.  Our son videochatted with our daughter as he walked down the hall to see what Santa had brought, with my husband at his usual station with our video camera to capture the surprised looks and sounds.

As we settled in to open gifts, our daughter's face and voice beamed through the laptop screen in real time.  She had graciously waited all day to open the packages we mailed two weeks prior.  There were the usual oohs and ahhs all around as our holiday presents were revealed.

The real treasures, of course, were sitting in living rooms six thousand five hundred miles apart, and the technology that connected us that day, captured for posterity in our holiday video files.

Tuesday Slice: Restless

I am aching a bit for change.  Maybe it's the Gemini Full Moon arriving tomorrow, or Winter Solstice in a week, or the pretty new 2017 planner and goal setting workbook that's waiting to be filled in that's prompting me to think long and hard about the state of my life, my home, my relationships.

As I approach my fifty-first birthday, I don't feel like I'm at the top of the hill, about to roll down; I'm only halfway up the mountain I've been climbing for the last fifty years.  When I reach the top, I want to be free of anything weighing me down.  I want to fly off that peak. 

It's got to begin with the physical clutter.  I've always been a start-at-the-bottom kind of person when it comes to housekeeping.  Clean the floor when it gets sticky, clean the desk when I don't have room to navigate the computer mouse, clean the table when I don't have a place for my plate.  It's been my unending, unmet goal each year to purge and clean and simplify.  But now I'm looking at the mess from the perspective of legacy--and this is not what I want to leave my children.

Bad habits must be replaced to be eradicated, so I'm making a list of ways to limit physical clutter.  Purchases of things will be replaced with purchasing experiences. I'm cutting subscriptions to emails touting the next big sale.  Catalogs are being tossed in the recycle bin the same day they arrive in the mail. Book purchases will be put on hold (gasp) while I tackle the mountain of unread books on the coffee table.

By this time next year, I'll be able to see the top of my desk again, the top of the coffee table, navigate the living room and bedroom without stubbing a toe.  I'll feel more connected with people, not things.  I'll make space for what's really important.   

Tuesday Slice: Thinking about inking

I got my first tattoo nine months after my mother's death.

I had planned to get it sooner, but for one reason or another, didn't commit to the idea until just before my 31st birthday.  

I remember the details of that day.  These were the times before internet access, and I had prepared by calling tattoo parlors to check on their weekday hours.  My husband worked evenings and I worked weekends, so I needed to get in before our daughter finished mothers' day out at one-thirty p.m.  There was only one tattoo parlor in the area that opened before noon--our only choice.

My plan was to get a claddagh symbol in honor of my deceased Irish-American mother, but the artist said it would have to be at least four inches in diameter to maintain clarity over the years--and that was far bigger than what I had in mind.  My husband asked if I wanted to leave and come back, but I was bound and determined to walk out of that parlor with a tattoo.  I chose a four-leaf clover from the images pinned to the wall, and within thirty minutes, it was done.

Our daughter had told her preschool teacher what mommy was doing that morning, and several of the teachers wanted a peek at my new ink.  They liked it; my daughter, not so much.  She kept asking if I could wash it off!

******

Eight years later, I decided I needed another tattoo for my 39th birthday, since threes figure heavily in my history.  This time, I took one of my best friends, and she sat by my side in the back room of a repurposed 40's house near campus while I sat with my leg in another tattoo artist's lap.  This time, the Celtic symbol was a bit more sophisticated--a triquetra knot, with a circle entwined in the loops.  The shape has many interpretations:  the Holy Trinity, maiden-mother-crone, even as a symbol for Pisces, my birth sign.  It's my favorite so far.

******

Tonight, I visited yet another tattoo parlor, to begin the process of getting my third, and last, inking.  I've asked for the design to incorporate an owl, a book, and the number fifty-one--the age I'll attain next March, the age of my mother at her passing.  

I want it placed in a location that I can glance at easily, a daily reminder of that invisible line drawn in the sands of my life's hourglass; a circle that lasts but a moment on the day of my fifty-first birthday, erased as the grains of sand continue to fall, expanding my experience past that arbitrary boundary.

Horizon 51.