failure

Yesterday I spent the day at a flea market. I did not go into it thinking the purpose was to survive a social experiment. I thought the point was to rent a table and fill it with handmade cards in a venue where hundreds of people walk by. I thought it would be a relatively painless maybe even fun way to showcase my stuff and see what might happen. Hopefully I’d earn back the rent on the table, and maybe even make a little gas money. If I did really well, it would cover my art supplies. Humble aspirations. I admit, at one point I allowed myself a secret fantasy: I would sell it all. Every last piece. Evenings for the past few months have been filled with card-making. I was armed with a healthy inventory.

It took me exactly two trips to unload my baskets and things. Stepping carefully around the queue of 16 passenger vans stuffed to the ceiling, I was set up and ready for my first customer in less than 10 minutes. I had thoughtfully selected attractive coverings for the 7 x 3 table and borrowed one of those cool spinning display pieces to complement the wooden bowls and baskets that were filled with cards. I walked around the table, stepped back and checked out my work.  It looked good. Simple, clean, professional. I had been to the bank the day before to change out some 20s for singles so I could make change. My pocket bulged with a fat roll of $1 bills. I was ready.

Across from me was Moe. Every inch of his table was filled. He had plastic toy motorcycles, knives, lunch boxes, an M&M dispenser, plastic swords, cameras, kitchenware, and mountains of boxes under his table that hadn’t been unpacked yet. Hundreds of other “Moe”s were unpacking their stuff and preparing their tables. The room reeked of musty basement thrift shop yard sale. Cast iron parts to wood stoves. Equine hardware. Baskets. Tea cups. Leopard printed tops. Baseball cards. Neon nylon handmade bracelets. Framed pictures. Posters of Tom Cruise. Cheap replica not quite retro action figures. Trolls.

I was definitely getting that we’re not in Kansas anymore feeling. I undoubtedly had too much coffee on an empty stomach and could feel my heart beginning to race. What the hell was I doing here? What made me think I could be trapped inside a building, smiling and making pleasantries with several hundred people all day long? It was getting more and more difficult to take a deep breath. I did not have any Rescue Remedy with me — my go-to (perhaps placebo but who cares because it works) solution to an impending panic attack. I had to fight this one off with sheer will. I was about 15 steps from an exit. I knew I could abandon ship and just walk out and get some deep breaths of fresh air if I had to.  The doors opened and the already full room became sardine can packed within a matter of minutes. Somehow I powered through.

People ambled by, mostly not looking at me or my table. I got a few nice compliments, but no sales. One guy furrowed his brow and asked me what this stuff was. I told him cards. He stared blankly at me for a moment, and asked what’s it for? I told him for writing notes and sending to people. He shook his head and grunted. I watched a dozen people glance at my stuff, then quickly turn their attention to Moe’s table. He sold an entire box of plastic trolls to a family who barely even wanted to buy one troll in the first place. Moe knew what he was doing. I watched his folded over wad of cash grow and grow. I was in trouble. No way could my sweet little hand-made cards compete with the plastic Tasmanian Devil lunchbox. People had NO. IDEA. what to make of me or my art. It was going to be a long day.

Standing there with a weird fake smile pasted on my face, I listened to the endless back and forth going on in my head: This is so embarrassing. What am I doing here. No one wants my stuff. What the hell was I thinking. I am a loser. No you’re not! You’re putting yourself out there! You took a risk! Your stuff is cool! You got this! My inner cheerleader is annoying, but you’ve got to hand it to her — she really hangs in there.

Three hours and ten minutes later, my first — and as it would turn out, my only — buyer approached my table. She passed by the $1 and $2 items and went straight for the $4 cards. She picked through the basket, spun the spinny thing, picked out two cards, gave me her $8 and was gone in less than a minute having said exactly no words. What the hell had just happened? I did a small victory dance in my head and my fake smile became a little more real.

At the end of the day, one could make a strong case for the outing having been a complete and utter disastrous failure. It was a colossal waste of time. I stood around inside on a gorgeous sunny day, getting nothing done. I spent more money than I made, by a long shot. Got zero exercise. And yet, surprisingly, as I was packing up and heading home I was actually feeling pretty good. You know that feeling when you’re walking down the street and you’re having a good day, feeling some confidence, maybe just a hint of swagger in your step? I had that. I had fought off a panic attack. I got rejected all day long. I talked to strangers — a lot of them. I tried a thing and it did not really go very well and I survived it. The day was actually not a full face plant. My inner cheerleader is giving herself a big old high-five now.

forgiveness

Without throwing him too far under the bus or betraying marital privacy, I will tell you that I found out recently that my husband did something quite stupid. Not on purpose of course — no one sets out to be a moron. He just made an unfortunate decision which ended up hurting me. My response? Quiet rage. Well, not so quiet at first, actually. Initially I hurled some biting words and angry questions his way. Then, wounded, I retreated to silently seethe. I was really stinking mad for most of the morning. He handled it in stride, promptly confessing to being an ass, asking what he could do to fix things. It was all very adult. I spent a few hours stewing, distantly and soundlessly chewing on my anger, processing what happened, assessing the damage, wondering about my next move. Occasionally I would say something or ask a question. He would calmly answer. He demonstrated appropriate remorse. I vacillated wildly. The voice on one shoulder told me I was absolutely right to be utterly and supremely pissed. The other voice told me I was being dramatic and to get over it.

I asked him if he wanted to join me on my morning run. It may have been an olive branch of sorts. Even when I’m mad at him I still want his company. Or, perhaps more likely, I just didn’t want to run alone and I knew he wouldn’t say no, especially given his current station in some moderately deep shit. We headed out into the frigid winter morning and hit the icy trails. He stayed quiet, maintaining a safe distance behind me. I spent a lot of energy working out my emotions and being mad. For me it was a productive and healthy way to deal, but it definitely sucked the fun out of the run. What a lot of effort I was expending being pissed off and not noticing the light in the sky and the clouds and trees and animal tracks. About 50 minutes in, a thought occurred to me: what if I decide to just not be mad anymore? How about if I decide it’s not a big deal. What if I decide not to be wounded by his idiocy and that no real harm was done and instead to notice the sky and the air and the bark on the trees.  

I think this is what forgiveness looks like. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens bit by bit. You don’t just decide to forgive someone and then it’s done. You exhale the tiniest bit. You ever so slightly relax the stubborn grip of anger. And then something happens: an impossibly small space opens up through which the tiniest particle of absolution can pass. Bit by bit, grain by grain. This is how we forgive. It reminded me of something: yes, there are a great many things in life that happen and that impact us over which we have no control. But, we do get to decide how we answer. What’s that saying about life? It’s 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond.

Later, back at the house and warming up in front of the wood stove I turned to him and told him that I wasn’t sure how it would go, but I wanted to try an experiment. He raised his eyebrows and braced for what might come next. I said I want to try just being done with it and deciding not to care about the stupid thing. I don’t want to expend any more energy being angry. It’s over. Let’s just get on with things. His expression showed mild surprise but he didn’t utter a word. I  reserve the right to revisit this if the experiment fails, but for now, I think we are both more than a little relieved.

hope (ish)

Fifteen years ago we made a trip to the local humane society and there we met Hope. She was a petite, trembling blonde sharing a cage with an enormous furry black-haired standard issue Heinz 57 shelter dog. Heinz was much more our style — mammoth enough to usurp more than 50% of the couch and hairy enough to keep our dust bunny population thriving. Alas, it was Hope who chose us. We brought her home and promptly changed her name to Pepper. Hope was a name for some other dog — her personality was spicy as hell and she needed a name to match. For more than a decade Pepper charged around the woods with us, leading the other dogs on myriad adventures in pursuit of poor innocent wildlife. She turned our other two dogs into poorly behaved minions as she bent the will of her pack to accommodate her every whim. Stop here and dig until you find the chipmunk! Not that way, this way! Follow me! Let's go! The other two did just that, often straight into harm’s way. They brought home snouts full of porcupine quills more than once, and found many disgusting things to roll in over the years. All misadventures had Pepper at the helm. Years later, one by one, in heartbreaking fashion, the other two pups met with their final destinies and Pepper found herself as ruler of a kingdom inhabited by only two legged uprights.

She was still in charge. Mostly. Until Owen came along. This small two legged presence was confusing. The very first thing he did was give Pepper another new name. She was now Depper. (D's are easier than P's when you are just learning to talk, I suppose.) She learned patience and tolerance as all dogs who live in homes with small children must learn. Pudgy, sticky hands found her eye sockets and ears and pulled her tail and sat too close and upended her food dish. In these moments, Depper revealed the sweet counterbalance to the ass-kicking spicy that had been the dominant quality of her personality for the past decade. “Depper” lasted about 6 months, until Owen began calling her Tepper. She remained Tepper for the rest of her days.

Even into her teen years Tepper was game for winter hikes up Mt. Abe and long trail runs in the spring, summer, and fall, likely covering twice our distance with her off-trail forays. She only just began to slow down a few months before her 17th birthday. Long runs were not fun for her anymore, so we only brought her on the 2-3 miles ones, and even then she stuck right with us, no longer venturing more than a few feet from our heels. She was just about completely deaf and her vision wasn’t too great. She began to experience “sundowners” on a daily basis — the generalized anxiety which manifested in pacing and panting as the day transitions to night.

This week I came home on a Wednesday and Tepper was listing to one side, walking crooked, and then, in circles. By Thursday morning she could no longer get up or stand up on her own. I carried her outside and, using a towel as a sling, held her up so she could pee. I fed her small bits of chicken, and gave her water from a syringe. By Friday afternoon we reluctantly, tearfully, came to our resolve: it was time to let her go. Her suffering was not overtly apparent, but she was not a happy creature. This ass-kicking dog was not leading an ass-kicking life anymore. This was not Tepper.

So we did that thing that we all know we’re potentially signing up for when we become pet owners: we took her to the vet to kindly, gently, deliberately end her life. Curled up in blankets in my arms, she had little fight left and was gone in a matter of seconds. We brought her home and drank and remembered her and cried.

The next day was a damp, foggy January day. We suited up for a trek up into the mountains with Tepper. Wrapped up carefully in the backpack, she traveled with us into the woods one last time. We hiked mostly silently, focusing on where to place our feet, noticing the clever way that ice crystals formed on the undersides of tree branches. The wind blew and water dripped down the backs of our necks. We pulled our hoods up tight. On top of the snowpack, bunny footprints were everywhere — Tepper would have loved that. A woodpecker considered us from a nearby branch. We climbed.

It took us awhile to find the just right spot for Tepper’s final resting place. We decided that while we weren’t sure if we got it 100% right, we felt okay enough about it. I think it’s just hard to feel good about such a thing. We left her there on the mountain facing east and thinking about how the morning sunlight would look from that spot.

Being a shelter dog, we don’t know much of anything about the first couple of years of her life. But I think it’s safe to say Hope /Pepper /Depper /Tepper had 15 excellent years with us. 15 great years and 3 rough days — not a bad ratio.

why cards

Why do I make cards? My friend Mia brought back around to me the art and love of note-writing. I’m of a generation that grew up writing thank you notes to relatives for Christmas and birthday presents. When I was 9 my family moved across the country and I wrote letters to my best friend, Jenny, whom I had left behind. Letter writing was a thing you did to keep in touch with people. Along came computers and email and the internet, and letter writing began to slowly fade from regular practice. Like any good parent, I forced my kids to write thank you notes after Christmas for a few years, but pretty soon they answered with “I already sent Grammy an email” and I found unstable ground beneath my previously stubborn feet. Thanks to social media, our kids were communicating with their grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins with far more regularity than I ever did. It wasn’t immediately clear to me why I was arguing the value of sending a hand-written letter over an email. It would take ten times as long to write and a million times longer to travel around the country. It took time and resources. I began to let go of the slow cumbersome practice of letter writing myself. Email was immediate. I could share thoughts instantly and know that they would be received at like speed. If not for a few hold-out relatives who have not yet embraced the electronic world, I would have forgotten about letter writing entirely.  

Enter Mia. When our daughters were babies, my friendship with Mia began. We swapped childcare and we and our daughters instantly bonded. As our girls grew up we had more time for adventures in the woods together. We share a love for the outdoors and exercise, and so we have logged a lot of time together on the trails around our mountain town. I noticed that early in our friendship, I would find the occasional wee envelope in the mail from Mia. Inside would be a sweet card with a brief note expressing her gratitude for the fun adventure we had just shared. I’d likely see her the next day or the day after, so the note was not a necessary means for staying in touch. But what a treat to pull it out of the mailbox. To slice open the paper envelope. To hold the little card in my hands, savor the enticing sketch or watercolor on the front, and to read her reflections. The thought and time Mia took to do this small but thoughtful thing brought immeasurable depth to our relationship. I felt valued. And inspired. I began to increase my practice of note writing, too. I noticed that people were delighted and surprised to get a message in the mail. It had become such an unexpected thing.

Awhile back, Mia and I made a date with our now adult daughters. We sat around the woodstove and chatted and had dinner and shared wine. Mia and I are both caring for aging parents, and both engaged in the process of going through their things as they downsize to smaller spaces. We made promises to our daughters that we would spare them the horrid process of someday having to go through so much of our stuff. We also discovered that we had both been rewarded in this cumbersome task of going through decades of acquired belongings: the unexpected stack of cherished and beautiful letters written by, and to, our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Ink on paper, in careful cursive, revealing that day’s or that week’s challenges and delights. A summons to contest was put forth around the woodstove and emptying wine glasses that evening: the four of us put our names in a hat, and then drew one out. We were to write a letter, by hand, to the person whose name we drew. Our girls, busy with college courses and adult life, rolled their eyes at us a little, but they agreed. By coincidence, Mia and I both secretly decided we’d write letters to not just the person whose name we picked, but the folks whose names we didn’t pick as well, knowing that in a few days or weeks, mailbox surprises would be revealed.

It’s the charm and aesthetic of hand-written ink on paper. The quiet thrill of pulling that envelope out of the mailbox. The way it slows everything down as you stand there with your letter while the rest of the world swirls at break-neck pace around you. A short-lived thing, perhaps, as these days a card or hand-written letter will most likely end up in the woodstove or recycling bin. But there is also a chance that it could survive long enough to become a found treasure by some future, as yet unborn, three generations out, relative sharing an evening with her friends and daughters. This is why we write letters. This is why I make cards.

you've been hacked

A week or so ago, my family gently shoved me out of my comfort zone (having grown weary perhaps of listening to me talk about this for a couple of years) and just like that, I jump. I go ahead and start working on the website I have been wanting to create. A place to make public the artsy things which until now have been private and carefully shared in small, controlled settings. For a social reluctant like myself, this is kind of a big deal. It’s out there now. I’m open to whatever fill in the blank feedback that might come this way (including being ignored). But I'm not really sure how to blast out to my people that the site is live. Self-promotion is not my thing. I prefer self-deprecating humor and sarcasm. But I know I have to do something, so I email all the contacts I think might care. The email is, in retrospect, a bit cryptic. I don’t mean for it to be. I'm not going for coy. I realize now I should have just said hey I made a website, here it is, check it out, or don’t, whatever. But as I reflect on what I'm doing and words begin to find their way into the message to my people, I find myself growing sentimental.  This message, after all, is going out to people who have, for years, been wonderfully supportive and positive forces in my life. People whose belief in me is unwavering. People who have been encouraging me to do more than just make cards for my friends and co-workers. Telling me to follow my heart and put my stuff out there. These are my people! They're in my corner and I'm so lucky to have them in my life. Unfortunately I get it dead wrong. The email I send out uses words like dreams and manifestation and gratitude... blah blah blah. Some of my people who are more acquainted with the spicy and cynical side of me do not recognize the smarmy emotional flavor of my missive. It sounds like spam. The very first response I get says, uh, dude, I think you’ve been hacked, but don’t worry I didn’t click on the link, just thought you should know. I get curious and go back to re-read the email I originally sent. She’s right. It sounds terrible and exactly like spam. This, right here? This is exactly what it looks like when the introverted dork steps into the open and says, “ta-da!” and then trips. Woops.

to-do lists

On weekends or non-work days the whole day stretches out in front of me, wide open. I crave this kind of freedom all week. But now, standing at the kitchen window with my coffee, I realize the openness of unstructured time gives me a certain amount of anxiety. I'm not so good with down time. Let's not dwell on the pathos of that particular reality. Moving on. To quell the mounting angst (which to be fair is really mostly stemming from the fact that I've had two cups of coffee and haven't gone for a run yet) I find a scrap of paper and create a tidy little to-do list, items bulleted with small perfect squares to their left: Run. Dishwasher. Garbage. Recycling. Vacuum. Art. Thank you note to [fill in the blank]. All at once the day has structure and I can relax. As I attack the list, I get to make a satisfying little check mark in the box next to the item. Some tasks take just a minute or two, others take longer. Distractions along the way sometimes cause me to stray from the list. But if it's a productive day, I notice I also completed a whole bunch of things that weren't even on the list. Confession: when this happens, I go back and add the things I already did that weren't on the original list so I can check them off too. Someone told me recently that she does this too — she creates the after-the-fact to-do list just for the satisfaction of putting a line through the already completed items. Here I was keeping this guilty pleasure a secret all this time. If you are reading this and shaking your head at us, well, I get it — it's a bit off beat. But if you see yourself in this odd little rant and are thinking, "I thought I was the only one," then think again. You are not alone.

letter to my dad on his 80th birthday

Dear Dad,                            

I wonder what it is like to be turning 80 years old. I know what it’s like to be a bit more than half that age, and to be filled, still, with wonder. Embedded in who I am in the world is a series of questions you have been asking me my whole adult life. Questions I now ask myself every day and questions I now ask my daughter, too. The questions are: When you wake up in the morning what are you most looking forward to in the day that lies stretched out in front of you? When you look out your window, what do you want to see? What do you want to spend your time doing? If money were no object, where would you be living and what would you be doing? And there have been a lot of other questions too. Sitting with our toes in the sand on the west coast of Florida, riding the chairlift up the Continental Divide in Colorado, sitting across from each other at a little table in a street cafe in Alexandria Bay, riding a ferry across Lake Champlain on a cold January night, or during commercial breaks while watching the Stanley Cup. Always the questions. What are you doing? What do you want to be doing? What’s important to you? What’s stopping you from doing what’s important to you? And then the really big questions: Why are we here? Where exactly is here? What are we in the universe, what is the universe, why is the universe, how did it start, and if it has a beginning, what was it before?

The thing is, it’s not like we sit and talk and figure out the answers. It’s the sitting and talking and asking the questions that has created this way of being in the world for me. The asking has centered me so that each day I figure out how to do the things that are important to me. And in case this sounds overly egocentric, the other thing I think about regularly is the table blessing we grew up hearing during those occasions when we all sat down for dinner together. Especially the last part: keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. So it’s not all about us and what we want. But isn’t it cool that the more we follow our passions and remember to think about the needs of others, the happier it makes us? And the less egocentric we become as we shape our lives into these creative enterprises that are driven by what makes us happy.

I imagine that at 80 years of age you might be asking yourself what your life has meant. Even if you weren’t someone who has been asking it every day for the 46 years I’ve known you. You’ll be glad to know that the confluence of forever asking these centering questions and the glass is half full outlook on the world that I’m convinced I learned from you has flowed into a very full and happy life for me. My hands in the dirt, or holding a book, or working a paintbrush. My mind wrestling with questions. My legs propelling me over mossy rocks and leaf strewn trails. My gardens full of beautiful green things to eat and colorful flowers. Fresh eggs every day. Hiking and skiing right out the door. Enough time in my day to notice that there have been more hummingbirds this year. Enough busy-ness to keep me honest and to pay the bills. Enough intention and awareness in my life to notice that I am much more about putting down roots and making every inch of the land around me special, productive, healthy, beautiful. Time to spend with my daughter and to build a positive and fulfilling relationship with her. And a sense of humor that keeps it all in check.

These are the things that are important. And I want you to know that I know this because you taught me. Because you were relentless in your efforts to teach me. Because instead of letting me sleep, you bothered to wake me up in the middle of the night to walk down to the beach and watch the moon set over the ocean. Because you bothered to drive all that way and take me to Alexandria Bay for the day. Because you bothered to penetrate the silence and ask me things when we sat next to each other on the chairlift, knowing the conversation could only go as far as the chairlift ride. But I remember it, don’t I? And it has shaped me, and my life is happy, and you are a part of that. So thank you. And I love you.