I go back to the summer of 1984…

It started quite by accident. The movie Footloose is on Netflix, and since I had never seen it, I decided to watch. It took me back to the time when nearly every song on the soundtrack was a big hit, there was no internet or compact discs in our world. Boomboxes with cassettes were prominent in the movie.

Then June 4 came, and I heard it was the anniversary of the release of the album Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen. That was all it took. 1984 had a hold on me!

It was my first summer living with Jim at his house in Macedonia, Ohio, halfway between Cleveland and Akron. The home had three quarters of an acre of land and an above ground swimming pool. It was a great place for entertaining.

The Springsteen album was our standard background music. The house was a split level, and we could put the stereo speakers in the windows and blast it outside. I know there was plenty of other music we played, but this album is the one I remember best. 

This essay isn’t about the album so much as remembering the people and a couple of events the summer I was turning 29. I dug out a few pictures I have that represent summer weekends at our home, and a couple other related items.

First, check out my office at Freeman Manufacturing where I was the credit and collections manager. The picture was rather dark and taken with a crappy camera, so I adjusted as best I could. I got a real kick out of the seeing the computer. What a lunky box!

I had a couple of friends at work —Jeannie and Arlene—and one Saturday they came and hung out at the pool.

On the 4th of July we had a pool party for friends. It was mostly people from our work places with others sprinkled in. The weather wasn’t super, but the pool volleyball happened anyway.

On my 29th birthday, my friends from work took me to a bar/restaurant called Pickle Bills which was on the Cuyahoga River in the Flats, an up and coming entertainment area. At the time, singing telegrams were popular, and my friends paid to have some Tarzan guy come and sing to me and tell jokes. It was crazy fun, although frankly, he was a tad creepy. (Jim and I had celebrated over the weekend because he played golf on Mondays.)

To finish off this little walk down memory lane, I’m including a video of the Springsteen song from the 1984 album that has stood the test of time with me. I won’t say the summer days of 1984 were exactly “glory days,” but they did represent a certain time in my life where I was enjoying the results of decisions I had made a couple years earlier. Everything felt new and exciting, and so in that aspect, there was a touch of glory!

Turtle

It’s a New Moon, and I have pulled the Turtle card. I feel the message here is appropriate for where I am right now, and so I am documenting here for reference. Overall it’s about right use of energy, connecting with nature, and staying grounded and grateful.

Maybe some of this will speak to my readers.

Turtle is the personification of Goddess energy

Turtle teaches how to use protection

Honor the creative source in you, be grounded, observe with compassion

Use earth and water energies to flow harmoniously with your situation and place your feet firmly on the ground

In learning to ground, you are placing focus on your thoughts and actions and slowing to a pace that assures completion

Don’t “push the river”

Develop your ideas before bringing to light

Connect to the power of Mother Earth

Use her energy to aid you, and you will be healed enough to share this energy with others

You are not a victim, and you are not helpless, in your present situation

From a grateful heart, look for the abundance of alternatives that Mother Earth gives

Wolf Revisited

About a month ago I wrote about Wolf Medicine. I applied it as well as I could to my last few weeks of school. As a reminder, here were the suggestions:

Expand your limited view of the present situation

Look and new ideas—delete old ideas

In the discovery and rediscovery of every inch of ground comes the knowledge that nothing remains the same

Wolf is urging you to seek teachers and pathfinders that will show the way to new life experiences

The teacher can be a small still voice inside, a person, a leaf, a cloud, a stone, a tree, a book, or the Great Spirit

Take up the sense of adventure

After Monday’s shock to my system, I knew I had to correct my thinking. I have started reading Think Again by Adam Grant and it is helping me see I’ve caused my own distress by being married to certain ideas. Things are changing and I can dig in or I can discover new ways of being.

Coming back to Wolf, I see I have to delete old ideas and welcome in new ones. I do have a limited view on what makes me a satisfied and productive teacher —a view that already has been altered by my forced absences this past semester. (I’ve always thought I need to be there…but the kids thrived anyway, I had to find new ways to make that happen.)

Of course, I’d like my final year to be perfect…but it was never going to be that way. Now it presents challenges that will force me to rethink how I do my job, how I run my classes. 

This is not a bad thing.

Tomorrow is the New Moon, and I will enter a new medicine phase. Meanwhile, I thank Wolf for pointing the way and helping me see that clinging to old ideas is never healthy or helpful.

On to a new adventure!

Believe

 Finalizing cleaning up my desk yesterday, I found this little card:

I had several of these I gave to students, but somehow this one never made its way to anyone. These cards pop open with a message. Staring at it there on my desk, I decided I’d open to see what it had to tell me. After all, there must be a reason this was still sitting there, right.

I knew right away I needed this message. And sure enough, at 11:00 I went to a meeting about what life will be like getting ready to move into portables and how the campus will be set up and how I’ll have someone in my room teaching during my planning and other depressing news. I came home sad, frustrated, and wondering why I just didn’t plan on retiring this year. 

As usual, my overdrive brain wanted to fix the situation into a frame I could digest. But it was too soon, and I just felt exhausted by the effort.

The best decision right now is no decision. I will relax and spend time with Jim and pray for direction. 

Oh yes…and BELIEVE in this message. The focus always has to be listening for direction. I will know what to do and when to do it. 

It’s the Little Things

A few months back, I discovered a band out of Oregon called Kristin Grainger and True North. They are contemporary folk, and I enjoy their music. It's wonderful for my coffee and journaling time.

A song that catches my attention each time is one written by one of the guys in the band. "It's the Little Things" is a sweet tune, and always brings me back to what is most important to remember about life every single day.

The end of the school year snuck up on me quickly, and even though I thought about it, I never put a year end survey in front of my kids. I like doing that because it gives me feedback on how they saw the class and felt about their learning. I usually get some good feedback about my teaching as well.

And here is where the "little things" started showing up, unbidden. A girl came to me with a little piece of art.

Another handed me a butterfly sticker that said “Teach Love Inspire." One did a coloring page and wrote Thank You, Ms. Sadler and gave it to me. I received some handwritten cards. I had kids walking by me on the last day calling out goodbyes, stopping for hugs, and saying things like, "I loved the class" and "best teacher ever."

These comments, planned or spontaneous, made me feel good. They are small things, but they matter.

As it says in the song below: Little things stay around / While the big things wear down

The school year may be over, but these moments live on.

Take a few minutes and listen to this live version of "It's the Little Things."

Begin Again (journal entry)

 

Now that school is ending, I find myself drifting into fearful thoughts. I know it, yet it keeps happening.

I fear the loss of my husband.

I fear the loss of my career.

I fear a future uncertain -- even as early as August.

Just saying this makes my chest tighten up.

Today I read in Parker Palmer's book his essay called "Begin Again." Within his reflection on "beginner's mind," he included a poem written by Wendell Berry for another poet named Hayden Carruth. This part near the end really hit me:

I greet you at the beginning, for we are

either beginning or we are dead. And let us have

no careers, lest one day we be found dead in them.

I greet you at the beginning that you have made

authentically in your art, again and again.

 

 

BEGIN AGAIN to live ARTFULLY.

I have to stop thinking about THE END. That is where my fear lies.

In my best days, I'm aware there is a life ahead of me I cannot even imagine.

I have to keep reminding myself, because I get caught up short. Like the other day driving home from work. I had heard wonderful stories of people 20-30 years younger than I am making career moves and changes. It caused feelings of sadness for myself that those kinds of days are over for me. 

But again -- in my best days I know there can always be a surprise waiting, something I cannot see now from where I stand.

I have to believe.

And my chest loosens up at these words.

***

I don't keep a good walking schedule, so today I decided to begin again. I took a walk around the neighborhood on a relatively cool morning. I went with the intention of looking for signs of new beginnings. Nowhere was it more prominent than in the palm trees. Everywhere I looked, the trees had new shoots rising from the top, a sure sign that life goes on for the tree. New beginnings. New attitudes. Growth, possibility, and life.

Nature never fails to support us, does it?

Just Write

 

You know what? Just write. 

Show up every day and write something. 

And keep writing. Even when you think you

don't have something to say, just do it. And 

wonderful things will happen. -- Paul McCartney

I saw this and knew I had to take a moment on this blog to celebrate that I have come this far and have been writing every day. Today I am closing in on five full months of writing every day.

Paul's advice isn't new by any means -- I've heard it from every writer I admire: Anne Lamott, Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, and more. But it never gets old. And when I see how it has worked for me this year of all years, how I've been able to keep it going without fail...well, wonderful things have happened. I keep in touch with myself and my friends can keep in touch with me. I find I have to stretch at times, but that is as it should be. 

When Jim got ill, I was worried at first -- could I keep up? I'm glad to report it has not been a problem. 

Writing every day reinforces to me once again that this is my vocation. Putting words on the page has been a huge part of my life as far back as I can remember. It is my expression, my pathway, my savior. 

I say this coming off a year where I didn't write much beyond in my journal, and it was a bit of a hole in my life. I committed to this year because of my lack of motion last year. I've come to realize that hole was needed to give me something to fill this year. 

I’m facing a different kind of summer, and this project will be something to keep me afloat. I can’t wait to see where it takes me 🩵🩷💚