Songs On the Radio

You must forgive me for not writing more, but I have been mourning the loss of someone very dear to me.  So close were we that once, when asked about the relationship between us, I flippantly said we were Siamese twins, separated at birth.  Never once did I consider what it would mean to be separated by death. 

At first, I felt so deeply and intensely lost that for days no other thoughts entered my mind.  Two days after his death, I dreamt I was standing inside his house and even though I was aware that he was gone, I felt great peace even in the moments just after awakening.  Then once again I found myself struggling with his death as though it were some kind of ancient dragon I had to fight and defeat before I could begin to feel better again and, even as I struggled with his death, I tried to deny it, unable to form a simple sentence that would contain both his name and the word 'died' in it.

Then, when the memories started coming back I thought of all of the places we had been to together.  For weeks I began to visit those places, driving around compulsively until I realized I was looking, not for more memories, but for him. 
   

Finally one day I heard a song on the radio about a guy who wanted to be taken to a place where it's “Sunny and 75” and I remembered all the hours I had spent with this man in a room where the blinds were always halfway up and how, whenever I was with him, it was always sunny and seventy-five for me.  On another day while listening to the song “I’m Already There,” I felt his presence beside me. But oh, how I longed to return to normal even as I forgot what normal was. 

Then came the day when I misplaced my wallet and locked myself outside my car and, as funny as it sounds, I knew that normal was returning.  And now when I long to return to the place that was always sunny and seventy-five, I remember that he is already here.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

A Quick Decision

Now that my manuscript, Rude Awakening, has gone from editing to cover design, I am getting excited about seeing the final product.  Of course, I knew this day would arrive and wondered how I was going to feel - I feel as though I can breathe again.  “Are you going to write another book?” someone asked me after the book made its way to production.  “No,” I replied. Then thought about it. “Hell no,” I said with emphasis.

Once the book left my hands I was able to do what I have been dreaming of doing for years – sit quietly in a corner reading someone else’s work. So that’s what I did until I realized I was in a rut. Or that’s what my best friend from childhood would say if she knew I had just read three books in a row by the same author.  But I can’t help it.  I’m addicted and oh, what a delightful addiction it has been.  I don’t doubt you would feel exactly the same way if you too, were reading the books of Matthew Quick.

First I watched the movie, Silver Linings Playbook, then I read the book.  I loved it so much I went looking for more.  What I found was Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock and even though it was listed as a book for teens, it turned out to be a delightful read. As soon as I finished, I went out to buy the ingredients for banana chocolate chip pancakes.  (If you read the book, you understand and if you haven’t read it, you have a treat or two waiting for you.)

Finally, I sat down to read his latest book, The Good Luck of Right Now. When I finished that book with its delightful references to Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, I felt an overwhelming urge to hug the next person I saw, even if that person turned out to be a stranger – especially if that person turned out to be a stranger.  And now that I’ve read three of Quick’s books, I am looking for one more.  But since the Good Luck book came out only a few weeks ago, I doubt that he has had time to write another.  So that settles it.   If I want to read another book as delightful and full of life as Quick’s books are, I’ll just have to start writing one myself. If I begin right now, I should be done in about three years!!!

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

Those Lazy, Crazy Days of Winter

Today is one of those lazy, crazy days in the Philadelphia area when having more than a foot of snow lying on the ground outside managed to zap away any trace of motivation I may otherwise have had.  Here it is Wednesday already and thanks to the snow and to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr, I have worked only four hours so far this week.   But the hours I did work were spent on the roads driving a school bus and, for the first time in my life, they made me feel like a superhero. 

It’s funny how beautiful the snow looked as I watched it late yesterday afternoon through the big picture window in my daughter’s living room.  Not so lovely watching it from behind the windshield of a school bus.  By the time I picked up my students for their 11:00 a.m. early dismissal, there were several inches of snow on the ground - and several more fell during the two hours it took to get them to their homes in Cheltenham, a neighborhood just outside of Philadelphia, a drive that normally takes only twenty minutes.

But last night after dinner, I got into bed to watch a movie – Silver Linings Playbook – more scenes from Philadelphia's streets - Philly is the city I grew up in.   The movie was so light and sweet that by the time I fell asleep all the weight (not to mention the awesome responsibility) of driving children through snow,  lifted and I felt as free as a single snowflake drifting through the sky, and as graceful and relaxed as Bradley and Jennifer looked floating across the dance floor.  

But tomorrow is another day and tomorrow it's back to driving over icy roads and snow-covered side streets.  But then, maybe even nimbostratus have silver linings. I'll just have to wait and see.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

Yesterday, when my alarm clock went off just before 5:00 a.m., I found myself wanting just a few more minutes of sleep before I got out of bed.  Okay, I said to myself, you can have two more minutes.  Any longer and I knew I’d fall back to sleep and wind up being late for work.  

In what seemed like just moments, I was at the bottom of the driveway that leads to the garage where I work.  For those of you who don’t already know, I drive a school bus and the driveway I’m talking about is so narrow that only one bus can enter or exit at a time.
 
When I started working there back in September, I was told the driveway was going to be widened, but not until next year.  So when I arrived yesterday, I was surprised to see that the driveway was blocked and that two crews were already removing the trees that lined it.

Surprised or not, I parked my car in the lot that had not been there before the holidays and started walking up the hill. I waved to the first crew, who waved back and kept walking. I waved to the second crew, but they didn't see me. I kept walking until I suddenly realized all of the dirt the second crew had removed from the earth was headed in my direction.  I screamed and tried to outrun it, but instead, I tripped and fell to my knees. The dirt continued to descend, coming over my head like a tidal wave. I knew I was about to be buried alive when I woke up.

Awake, I got out of bed, but I was shaking from head to toe. The dream had been so vivid, so real that I felt I was about to suffocate.  Out of bed now, I turned on the television to distract myself and started getting ready for work until I stopped suddenly in my tracks, realizing what the dream meant. I had not, as I thought, been falling under the dirt, but had been falling back to sleep. I had been so afraid of being late for work that my subconscious mind had concocted that entire dream sequence in order to frighten me into wakefulness.

Wow, I thought, what an amazing mechanism the mind is. And then my next thought was: How come my mind is not that amazing and creative when I'm awake?  How come when I'm awake it just travels around in circles like a broken record, playing the same old thoughts again and again inside my head?

But wait.  Maybe knowing what the dream meant is, if not creative, at least insightful.  Except that right now I don’t know if knowing what the dream meant means anything at all.  Opps!  There goes that monkey mind of mine again going around in circles like a broken record, record, record.
My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

The Place Poem

When I was given an assignment to write a “place poem” in November, I thought it would be an easy poem to write.  It turned out to be the most difficult.  I thought about all the places I’ve visited: Rome, Berlin, Paris (sort of – which is yet another story). 

I thought too, of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont and of one of my very favorite places on earth – the Blue Ridge Mountains from where I looked down through the clouds at the breathtakingly beautiful Shenandoah Valley.  But no place seemed quite right for this assignment until I thought of the place I return to year after year.  Close to home, it is somewhere along the

Jersey Shore 

 

I’ve come here every summer

since I was a child

to take  in a breath of salty air
at the base of the Ninth Street bridge.

I’ve come here every summer

to salute the Ferris wheels
that stand like sentinels
against the rising tide of my life. 

I’ve come to remember the hootenannies
I sang to in ‘63, the boy I met
and might have married,
the Frisbees I tossed but never caught.

I come to soak up the sun,
to walk the boards,
eat lunch at Chatterbox
and for yet another ornament to decorate my tree.

I come here as often as possible
to gaze upon the sea
until, at last, it diminishes me 
and all the things I’ve come here to forget.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

A Little Bit of Christmas Cheer

Lately, my moods have been like a yo-yo at the end of a string.

Two weeks ago, I was miserable. I was bah humbugging everything. As I parked my school bus after my morning run, I realized nothing felt right. The story I was writing wasn’t working. The last one I wrote felt wrong. I was miserable about everything – even Christmas. Especially Christmas. 

A thought about Christmas shopping entered my mind but was stomped on immediately - my checking account balance too low, my credit card balance too high. I tried listening to Christmas music, but every song I heard sounded either too silly or too depressing. About an hour later, I reached for the book I was reading and realized I’d left it home. Perfect, I thought. Books have always been my salvation – my salvation and my escape and without one, I was desolate. By the time I got home that evening, all I wanted to do was skip dinner, fall into bed and hide under the covers.

Then the next day dawned and everything was perfect. That day I remembered I have never known a Christmas that wasn’t thrilling – no matter how much or how little I had in my bank account or, as a child, how much or how little I received from Santa.  That day I remembered I have never known a Christmas that didn’t come with its own magic, its own miracles.

That day as I drove my bus down Cheltenham Avenue, I was content. Behind me, four young students were talking about experiences they have had in fast food restaurants, comparing notes and disagreeing over which has the best food, which has the worst. 

Outside two birds flew alongside my bus before perching themselves on top of a street sign. A woman was walking her dog. A man was raking leaves. My book was safely tucked inside my handbag. “Mary Did You Know” was playing on the radio and I was singing along softly. And at that moment I knew that all was right with the world and everything in it was exactly the way it was supposed to be.    

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

It Happened One Morning

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been taking a course in Mindfulness.  The course, based on the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn, is being taught at the Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania.  The building we meet in is called the Orangery, which is located next door to the sixty-room Tyler mansion whose formal gardens lie between the two buildings.   

On the first day of class, one of our teachers instructed us to find an object outside as she guided us in meditation.  I had never before done a meditation with my eyes open and I doubted that this would work for me. 

It was a brisk but sunny autumn day with a breeze that was gently shaking the leaves from their trees.  A statue of a naked woman stood on the other side of the largest window in the room.  The woman was holding a jar on her shoulder through which a stream of water moved steadily. 

                                                           

There was a short footpath at the base of the statue and, at the end of the path, was a solitary leaf sitting on the ground.  At first, I expected the leaf to blow away, but it never did.

The leaf was brown and brittle, about the size of my hand and it looked like the letter “C.”  For some reason, it held my interest as the instructor lead us, her voice so low she seemed to be whispering.  I continued staring at that leaf for a full ten minutes or for however long the meditation lasted until suddenly it seemed to become a part of me – a part of my consciousness. 

Hours later, when I was no longer anywhere near that leaf, I could still see it, not only with my eyes closed but also with my eyes open.  It was an experience I had only heard about before.  The spiritual teacher, Deepak Chopra, calls it unity.  The Catholic Church calls it communion.  I call it beautiful.

Later, I realized I had experienced a feeling very similar to this one and that it had happened during a moment I write about in my memoir, Rude Awakening, when I fell into a love, which although it has swayed, dipped, spun around curves, evolved and transformed itself, has never ended.      

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE