When I was about ten, and far too old for the Easter Bunny legend, my parents still went through the whole Easter egg hunt thing for my younger brother and I. My mother would boil and color the eggs - I remember once she dipped them in such a way that they were plaid - and Daddy got the job of Easter bunny.
To this day, I can't bring myself to cut the grass before Easter Sunday. You have to have longish grass to hide the eggs in. And, of course, the tiny new spring flowers, the violets and the jack-in-the-pulpits and the little white and gold flowers have to be left, just for pretty.
There is this magical moment when you are little and rush out onto dewy grass, basket in hand, and gasp as you see the first egg, just barely visible in a tuft of grass. You scoop it up and scan the yard for the next one, run toward it stumbling with glee. There is finally a moment when you just can't find any more. Someone has to come and gently lead you back to the house, distracting you from the fever of the hunt with the promise of chocolate.
Like Christmas, even the secular part of Easter is still about love - love that parents have for their children, when they create those magical moments. And the spiritual side of Easter is about the greatest love imaginable.
I learned about a Father's love the Easter I was ten and awoke that Sunday morning, looked out into the back yard from my bedroom. I saw my Dad in his bathrobe and bare feet, loaded basket hung over his arm, gingerly making his way from tuft to tree root, carefully placing each egg in its hiding place. Hiding treasures for us to find, if we searched hard enough.
My earthly father is gone now. I have carried on his tradition with my own children, and soon will share it with grandchildren.
My Heavenly Father is, I believe, still hiding treasures for me to find, if I just look carefully enough.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
"Disabled" Dreams
I collect stories of people who refuse to stay as small as other people's definitions of them. Of people who dream bigger than they "should". Who defy the odds, refuse to stay defined by a disability. I'd like to do a book about them. Not just the spectacular ones who go surfing with no arms, but the quiet ones who become ministers despite severe dyslexia, who start their own business because others would not hire them, who battle depression daily, yet soldier on. My heroes are the people who get out of bed each day, lift their chins and say, "What can I do today?" Not, "Who has to help me?" or, "I can't do anything, I have_______."
They come up with creative solutions to get around their disabilities. They refuse to be victims, don't need pity, and usually can be found uplifting someone else.
If anyone has a story I can use for my book, please contact me at:
junebugnbulldog@yahoo.com
These folks need to be celebrated.
They come up with creative solutions to get around their disabilities. They refuse to be victims, don't need pity, and usually can be found uplifting someone else.
If anyone has a story I can use for my book, please contact me at:
junebugnbulldog@yahoo.com
These folks need to be celebrated.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Love Dreams
I have been married for over thirty-six years. I've been in love with him for forty-one. Maybe it's Valentine's Day that started me thinking about love.
Little girls dream of finding that one true love, aided by books, movies. Often unrealistic dreams are encouraged by the "happily-ever-after" stuff of fairy tales. So that when a perfectly good man comes along, we sometimes don't see him. Or if we marry him, we expect perfectly loving days and nights of glorious passion.
Here's a news flash, girls - it's not like that. It's much less, and much more. It's real life, and real love.
One of my favorite songs id from "The King and I", called "Something Wonderful". The king's head wife sings of the reality of loving a real human man:
"He will not always say
What you would have him say,
But now and then he'll say
Something wonderful.
The thoughtless things he'll do
Will hurt and worry you,
Then all at once he'll do
Something wonderful.
He has a thousand dreams that won't come true.
You know that he believes in them, and that's enough for you.
You'll always go along,
Defend him when he's wrong,
And tell him when he's strong
He is wonderful.
He'll always need your love,
And so he'll get your love.
A man who needs your love
Can be wonderful."
It sounds so old-fashioned in this day of lack of commitment, quickie relationships, divorce and do your own thing. But Robert Heinlein said, "Love is that state in which another person's happiness is essential to your own."
Really? Not, "He doesn't make me happy" or "She doesn't want sex with me often enough"?
We should be trying to make them happy? How odd.
But, as many odd things do - it works. When we try to make the other happy, we get back what we want, usually more abundantly than we would if we stood around yammering about our needs and wants not being fulfilled.
I love my husband. He is honest, hard-working, kind to strangers, loving to our sons and me, not to mention our three dogs and grandson. I plan to live the rest of my life with him, unless he goes first.
We met when I was fifteen and he seventeen, and bonded like swans, for life. I told my father I was going to marry him someday, and he said, "Oh, you're too young to know that. You'll fall in and out of love a dozen times before you marry."
I said, "Oh, no! I can only do this once!" It was too big and all encompassing, this love, this absolute pit-of-the-stomach certainty that he was The One. I have no idea how I knew. I married him five years later, when I was twenty. We eloped and later my father wrote me a sweet letter wishing us well.
There have been many trials through the years, many times when either one of us was tempted to chuck it all and be single. But there remained the bonding, the certainty that we were supposed to stick. So we have apologized, looked the other way at each other's foibles, fought loudly and passionately when we couldn't look the other way, and ultimately fallen asleep in each other's arms, cuddling like puppies.
This is real love, I'm afraid. I think we are stuck with each other. And as I watch him sleep, I think I love to be stuck loving him.
Little girls dream of finding that one true love, aided by books, movies. Often unrealistic dreams are encouraged by the "happily-ever-after" stuff of fairy tales. So that when a perfectly good man comes along, we sometimes don't see him. Or if we marry him, we expect perfectly loving days and nights of glorious passion.
Here's a news flash, girls - it's not like that. It's much less, and much more. It's real life, and real love.
One of my favorite songs id from "The King and I", called "Something Wonderful". The king's head wife sings of the reality of loving a real human man:
"He will not always say
What you would have him say,
But now and then he'll say
Something wonderful.
The thoughtless things he'll do
Will hurt and worry you,
Then all at once he'll do
Something wonderful.
He has a thousand dreams that won't come true.
You know that he believes in them, and that's enough for you.
You'll always go along,
Defend him when he's wrong,
And tell him when he's strong
He is wonderful.
He'll always need your love,
And so he'll get your love.
A man who needs your love
Can be wonderful."
It sounds so old-fashioned in this day of lack of commitment, quickie relationships, divorce and do your own thing. But Robert Heinlein said, "Love is that state in which another person's happiness is essential to your own."
Really? Not, "He doesn't make me happy" or "She doesn't want sex with me often enough"?
We should be trying to make them happy? How odd.
But, as many odd things do - it works. When we try to make the other happy, we get back what we want, usually more abundantly than we would if we stood around yammering about our needs and wants not being fulfilled.
I love my husband. He is honest, hard-working, kind to strangers, loving to our sons and me, not to mention our three dogs and grandson. I plan to live the rest of my life with him, unless he goes first.
We met when I was fifteen and he seventeen, and bonded like swans, for life. I told my father I was going to marry him someday, and he said, "Oh, you're too young to know that. You'll fall in and out of love a dozen times before you marry."
I said, "Oh, no! I can only do this once!" It was too big and all encompassing, this love, this absolute pit-of-the-stomach certainty that he was The One. I have no idea how I knew. I married him five years later, when I was twenty. We eloped and later my father wrote me a sweet letter wishing us well.
There have been many trials through the years, many times when either one of us was tempted to chuck it all and be single. But there remained the bonding, the certainty that we were supposed to stick. So we have apologized, looked the other way at each other's foibles, fought loudly and passionately when we couldn't look the other way, and ultimately fallen asleep in each other's arms, cuddling like puppies.
This is real love, I'm afraid. I think we are stuck with each other. And as I watch him sleep, I think I love to be stuck loving him.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Daydreaming and A.D.D.
You don't hear a kid labeled a daydreamer anymore. Now they are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and medicated. I wonder at this.
When I was a child, kids were left to their own devices to understand the school rules and fit in with them. If they didn't, they were called lazy, daydreamer, troublemaker, bully. Now there are scientific names and medications. Are we more sophisticated or are we wrong? Everyone understood back then that not all kids were headed to college. Now we try to make them all alike with meds. More on this later. I have Sleep Deficit Disorder and I am going to treat it with.....sleep, of course!
When I was a child, kids were left to their own devices to understand the school rules and fit in with them. If they didn't, they were called lazy, daydreamer, troublemaker, bully. Now there are scientific names and medications. Are we more sophisticated or are we wrong? Everyone understood back then that not all kids were headed to college. Now we try to make them all alike with meds. More on this later. I have Sleep Deficit Disorder and I am going to treat it with.....sleep, of course!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Daydreams and Reality
We have a new President. I wish him well.
That said, I want to talk about dreams and dreamers, politics and Presidents, and the problem with putting forth dreams that people so desperately want to believe in, and then dashing those dreams or simply letting them dribble away.
Emotions are running very high now with the inauguration of President Obama. People of color dare to hope that things will be better for them. People who work hard but for low wages hope to see their pay rise to a living wage. People dream of a better life for themselves and their children.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I have a dream." He dreamed of the day when people were judged by "the content of their character, not the color of their skin." What a lovely dream.
Have we achieved this dream, now that Obama is President? Who would have dreamed that a black man would be elected President? The thought nags still - was he elected for the content of his character, or the color of his skin? I think both were in play. His stirring words, his charisma, his ability to inspire confidence and hope, contributed greatly. Did also the color of his skin, so different from the same old white guy candidate, contribute to his election?
We shall see. I wish him the best. I hope he has not been so elevated in the minds of the populace that they will hang him for being human. Rock stars are only as popular as their last hit song. Obama can't afford to be a rock star President. He can't afford to dash the dreams of those who put him there.
That said, I want to talk about dreams and dreamers, politics and Presidents, and the problem with putting forth dreams that people so desperately want to believe in, and then dashing those dreams or simply letting them dribble away.
Emotions are running very high now with the inauguration of President Obama. People of color dare to hope that things will be better for them. People who work hard but for low wages hope to see their pay rise to a living wage. People dream of a better life for themselves and their children.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I have a dream." He dreamed of the day when people were judged by "the content of their character, not the color of their skin." What a lovely dream.
Have we achieved this dream, now that Obama is President? Who would have dreamed that a black man would be elected President? The thought nags still - was he elected for the content of his character, or the color of his skin? I think both were in play. His stirring words, his charisma, his ability to inspire confidence and hope, contributed greatly. Did also the color of his skin, so different from the same old white guy candidate, contribute to his election?
We shall see. I wish him the best. I hope he has not been so elevated in the minds of the populace that they will hang him for being human. Rock stars are only as popular as their last hit song. Obama can't afford to be a rock star President. He can't afford to dash the dreams of those who put him there.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
How to tell if you are a daydreamer
If you think you may be one - you probably are. But just for fun, I'll post a list so you can check off and see whether or not you might qualify as a daydreamer. Unlike many such checklists, it is a good thing if you score high. Unless you are one of those people who prizes conformity and convention. But you probably wouldn't be reading this blog if you were. Here's the checklist:
In school, have you:
1. Ever forgotten about the math problems because you were trying to copy the drawing of a clown on the worksheet?
2. Lost the class discussion because you were reading something more interesting?
3. Looked at all the blank pages in your textbooks and wished you could fill them up?
4. Watched the birds out the classroom window and wished you could join them in flying away?
5. Written your own poem instead of reading the one the class was studying?
At work, do you:
6. Avoid boring jobs you would have to sit in a cubicle to do?
7. Choose work you can do with your hands that leaves a large part of your mind free to think your own thoughts?
8. Doodle all over your desk blotter?
9. Create fantastic scenes in your mind during a boring meeting?
10. Get fired because you were staring off into space or talking too much?
If you've checked more than a few of these, you are probably one of us.
The trick is to recognize who you are and have always been - a daydreamer - and then find ways to be who you are that won't get you fired or thrown out of school. Try to find creative ways to get school credits, for example, by taking tests instead of having to sit through the classes. That's assuming you have studied on your own. Choose jobs that have you doing what you would choose to do if no one were making you do anything. If you haven't had training in writing, art, music, or whatever your passion is, get some. Try to become a real professional daydreamer and get paid for your writing, art, music. Don't try to be what someone else thinks you should be if it sounds like screaming boredom. You won't be good at it and eventually you will get fired or quit. If you can't get a job in your chosen field, choose something like cooking or driving or painting houses that allows the creative side of your brain to operate while the practical side is doing the work.
Daydreamers jealously guard their thoughts, and really hate it when they are interrupted. Better to be a skilled craftsman and work alone than be in an office where anyone can hold your brain hostage at a moment's notice.
Look at who you have been all your life. Then be that person, unashamedly. Daydreamers seldom hurt anyone else. Just watch out that others do not squash you.
Have a great, creative, dreamy New Year!
In school, have you:
1. Ever forgotten about the math problems because you were trying to copy the drawing of a clown on the worksheet?
2. Lost the class discussion because you were reading something more interesting?
3. Looked at all the blank pages in your textbooks and wished you could fill them up?
4. Watched the birds out the classroom window and wished you could join them in flying away?
5. Written your own poem instead of reading the one the class was studying?
At work, do you:
6. Avoid boring jobs you would have to sit in a cubicle to do?
7. Choose work you can do with your hands that leaves a large part of your mind free to think your own thoughts?
8. Doodle all over your desk blotter?
9. Create fantastic scenes in your mind during a boring meeting?
10. Get fired because you were staring off into space or talking too much?
If you've checked more than a few of these, you are probably one of us.
The trick is to recognize who you are and have always been - a daydreamer - and then find ways to be who you are that won't get you fired or thrown out of school. Try to find creative ways to get school credits, for example, by taking tests instead of having to sit through the classes. That's assuming you have studied on your own. Choose jobs that have you doing what you would choose to do if no one were making you do anything. If you haven't had training in writing, art, music, or whatever your passion is, get some. Try to become a real professional daydreamer and get paid for your writing, art, music. Don't try to be what someone else thinks you should be if it sounds like screaming boredom. You won't be good at it and eventually you will get fired or quit. If you can't get a job in your chosen field, choose something like cooking or driving or painting houses that allows the creative side of your brain to operate while the practical side is doing the work.
Daydreamers jealously guard their thoughts, and really hate it when they are interrupted. Better to be a skilled craftsman and work alone than be in an office where anyone can hold your brain hostage at a moment's notice.
Look at who you have been all your life. Then be that person, unashamedly. Daydreamers seldom hurt anyone else. Just watch out that others do not squash you.
Have a great, creative, dreamy New Year!
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Christmas Dreams
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas. It's late evening of the Christmas of 2008, and I, full of cookies and kidnoise, am taking a minute to write.
I am at my niece's house, and have watched my three grandnephews and one grandniece tear open presents and make a cheerful mess. Everyone should have kids around on Christmas morning. If you haven't any or yours are grown, go borrow some.
The word "glee" seems to best describe their faces as they tear into the pile of presents. Their parents stand by grinning, as well they should, for they are making memories, magic.
My parents knew how to make the magic. They loved playing Santa, and I think were disappointed when we were finally too old to believe. Our stockings were flannel, homemade and filled with hard candy (which always stuck to the cloth and was slightly fuzzy), fruit ("Santa Claus" apples were the big red ones) and nuts in their shells. The stockings drooped on a chair, for we had no fireplace to hang them on. The rest of the armchair held all the presents that Santa had left. I remember specific presents, the ones that stood out. One year a Chatty Cathy doll, once a doll dressed in the same flannel pajamas my mother had made for me ( a collaboration between her and Mrs. Claus, no doubt), once a jewelry box with music and a tiny twirling ballerina, once a beautiful three speed bike, always books and some clothes. My brother and I had to line up behind the closed hall door, dancing with anticipation, before being allowed to run into the living room and find our stuff. Each year, the proof Santa had been there was obvious; there on the coffee table was the half full cup of coffee and the one remaining half cookie with his very teeth marks.
Christmas Eve had its own ritual - the reading of the Nativity story in Luke, followed by 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, then the singing of Christmas hymns. I still love those hymns and sing them in the car the whole month of December.
I will always love my parents for the Christmas dreams they encouraged and fulfilled. They had very little money, but they made our happy morning the best they could. When I finally asked the question about Santa, my mother explained gently that, well, no, there wasn't actually a jolly old elf, but that he represented love on Christmas. That parents played Santa for their children because of that love. Somehow I was not disappointed, but understood and loved them for it.
I loved playing Santa for our sons.
Love begets love. If one is loved, one learns to love. I hope you've loved a child this year.
I am at my niece's house, and have watched my three grandnephews and one grandniece tear open presents and make a cheerful mess. Everyone should have kids around on Christmas morning. If you haven't any or yours are grown, go borrow some.
The word "glee" seems to best describe their faces as they tear into the pile of presents. Their parents stand by grinning, as well they should, for they are making memories, magic.
My parents knew how to make the magic. They loved playing Santa, and I think were disappointed when we were finally too old to believe. Our stockings were flannel, homemade and filled with hard candy (which always stuck to the cloth and was slightly fuzzy), fruit ("Santa Claus" apples were the big red ones) and nuts in their shells. The stockings drooped on a chair, for we had no fireplace to hang them on. The rest of the armchair held all the presents that Santa had left. I remember specific presents, the ones that stood out. One year a Chatty Cathy doll, once a doll dressed in the same flannel pajamas my mother had made for me ( a collaboration between her and Mrs. Claus, no doubt), once a jewelry box with music and a tiny twirling ballerina, once a beautiful three speed bike, always books and some clothes. My brother and I had to line up behind the closed hall door, dancing with anticipation, before being allowed to run into the living room and find our stuff. Each year, the proof Santa had been there was obvious; there on the coffee table was the half full cup of coffee and the one remaining half cookie with his very teeth marks.
Christmas Eve had its own ritual - the reading of the Nativity story in Luke, followed by 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, then the singing of Christmas hymns. I still love those hymns and sing them in the car the whole month of December.
I will always love my parents for the Christmas dreams they encouraged and fulfilled. They had very little money, but they made our happy morning the best they could. When I finally asked the question about Santa, my mother explained gently that, well, no, there wasn't actually a jolly old elf, but that he represented love on Christmas. That parents played Santa for their children because of that love. Somehow I was not disappointed, but understood and loved them for it.
I loved playing Santa for our sons.
Love begets love. If one is loved, one learns to love. I hope you've loved a child this year.
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