Tag: Writing a Book

The Universe

Funny isn’t it, how concepts creep into our parlance?

“Gifts from the Universe,” is one.

I get the theory of energetic interconnectivity between all living things.

I get the theory that our planet is just one heaving, breathing, undulating organism trying to stay in balance like the rest of us who are temporarily parked here.

Vague platitudes – if that is what they are – are comforting. Or can be. Sort of.

“Everything happens for a reason.” “Nature leans towards balance and harmony.” “That was an unexpected gift from the Universe.” “We can do hard things.”

I have had more gifts from the Universe in my life than I can count. For that, I am grateful. And I feel so undeserving. Ergo, the gratitude.

With this post today, I am exactly one week away from the one year anniversary of starting this blog. That’s significant to me. A goal achieved. A target hit. Barring any unfortunate developments over the next seven days.

I have been wondering internally and on these pages, what’s next? I have committed to hanging up my computer keyboard for a while and taking a break. Airing out the brain cells, Maybe seeking out some new inspiration.

So when an email invitation arrived last night, I was as bemused as I was surprised. Peter Murphy, founder of the Murphy School of writing at Stockton University in New Jersey, was writing with a proposition.

“Would you consider coming to the annual weeklong Florida “Get Away to Write” workshop that starts on March 19th?” he wrote. There are still places available and he added a financial sweetener.

It was at the Get Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida on March 14, 2023 that I started this blog writing exercise.

I like the implication of coming full circle by attending this year. It is almost as if I had been assigned a yearlong research project. Now I can attend again this year and report on what I learned from that exercise.

This time I will be able to take part in the memoir session. It was fully subscribed last year and I attended the retreat as an independent writer. Whether the memoir I set out to write when I signed up last year, or another memoir emerges, only time will tell.

If nothing else, the writing flame within me continues to be fanned. Which is how creativity works in my experience. Slow and steady regular effort prevails over intermittent flashes of brilliance and insight. Much like life.

There are good writing days and there are bad writing days.

So yes, I’ll go to this writing workshop if the stars align. Not sure what that means or what it would take. Surmounting entropy likely.

But my calendar that week is clear. Hubby says he’ll come with. As an end of blogging for one full year celebration, five days in a setting with other creative people at an arts retreat center set in a jungle in a charming Southern oceanside town may be just what the doctor ordered.

Or the Universe.

Immutable Truths

If I’ve learned one thing from writing this blog for almost a year now, is that there is a lot of life wisdom and guidance to be found in the world.

I hope I have imparted some of the wisdom I’ve picked up along the way. I hope I have internalized some of it.

Today’s social conceit of our entitled right and access to “almost everything” – if we but follow the program on offer or buy into this person’s philosophy – is essentially a crock. Ultimately, we have to figure out what works for us, the direction of mentors and charlatans notwithstanding.

Most simply put, there are immutable truths about life. We can ignore them but they won’t ignore us. Change your gender. Lie about your birth date. Concoct a fabulous and false story about your origins and lineage. See how far that gets you.

Because, in the end, it all comes down to getting right with ourselves. That’s a lifetime commitment for most folk right there.

We see and read so much about “ensuring the rights of” – name it. The gender confused. The victims of domestic violence. Blacks. Asians. The mentally ill. The homeless. Republicans.

The description of fighting for those rights always provides lively copy. Speaks to the great interest and inherent sense of light-seeking that I believe all humans wish for: justice, fairness, equity, truth.

What isn’t so common is the follow up. We rarely hear what oppressed person or group learn from their “liberation.” Who do they credit for their eventual success? When do they settle into a sense of peace with that they have achieved?

In the end, I believe any joint victory is felt as a personal victory. We are part of many groups and all carry our own inherent prejudices and biases. When a group we feel part of is victorious, we feel victorious.

That’s the reason I believe it is absolutely essential to get right with yourself and whatever you conceive god to be. No matter how solid and comforting and supporting all those groups have been in your life, at the end, we are all completely on our own.

It is not selfishness to focus on and sort out what really matters to us in this life. It is wisdom. Only from that vantage point can you share yourself with others in any meaningful way.

Pity the parrots who never completely come to understand who they are and why they believe what they believe. Those who never learn to think for themselves.

So, once again, I found wise words that spoke to me. I acknowledge wise words for their consistency and relevance over time.

There is no shortage of them. Our task – the biggest – is to sort through them and apply the wisest lessons to our own lives. In my case, it is an ongoing work in progress.

As is much great wisdom, the list of life lessons below is simple. Not easy to follow. But simple.

And as much life wisdom does, this list comes from our First Nations. They had centuries to figure out solid life lessons before “progress” irreversibly altered their way of life and brought us into the great age of “modernity.”

15 REMINDERS FROM THE ELDERS:

1. Get up with the sun to pray. Pray alone.

2. Be tolerant of those who have lost their way. Ignorance, presumption, anger, jealousy and greed come from a lost soul. Pray for them to find guidance.

3. Find yourself, by your own means. Do not let others make your path for you. It is your path, and only yours. Others may walk with you, but no one can make your way (or walk your path) for you.

4. Treat guests in your home with great consideration. Serve them the best food, give them the best bed and treat them with respect and honor.

5. Do not take what is not yours, whether from a person, a community, from the jungle or from a culture. It was not given or won. It is not yours.

6. Respect all the things that are on this earth, be they people, plants and animals.

7. Honor the thoughts, desires and words of all people. Never break them in, or make fun of them, or imitate them rudely. It gives each person the right to their personal expression.

8. Never talk about others in a bad way. The negative energy you put into the universe will multiply when it returns to you.

9. All people make mistakes. And all the mistakes can be forgiven.

10. Bad thoughts cause illness to the mind, body and spirit. Practice optimism.

11. Nature is not FOR us. It is PART of us. She’s part of your family in the world.

12. Children are the seeds of our future. Sow love in your hearts and water them with wisdom and life lessons. When they grow up, just give them space to grow up.

13. Avoid hurting the hearts of others. The poison of their suffering will return to you.

14. Be true (transparent ) all the time. Honesty is the test of one’s will in this universe.

15. Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental person, your Spiritual person, your Emotional person, and your Physical person: they all have the need to be strong, pure and healthy.

Evelyn D Springfield  ·   · 

Pinky Blinders

Today’s writing prompt: “You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?“

Mine is:

“For me, the Fifties will forever be symbolized by Jayne Mansfield and her pink, heart-shaped pool.”

That is an image I have long carried of the Fifties. Beautiful, buxom, platinum haired Jayne Mansfield hoisted in the arms of her weightlifter husband Mickey Hargitay at the edge of her Beverly Hills swimming pool.

What is it about that image that sticks with me? For me, it was everything that was wrong with the Fifties. The garish and overt sexualization of women’s bodies. The plasticity and pretentiousness of the bottle bleached blonde. The artifice. The illusion of endless summer.

As a child you don’t know what is real and what isn’t. You learn what the accepted reality is from the adults around you and what – according to them – is supposed to matter.

Children have no choice but to accept and mirror this version of reality and it becomes their own. Until it doesn’t. The choice of opting in or out that comes with adulthood.

Even as a child, I remember being appalled by the behavior of a lot of the adults around me. Especially at our frequent house parties. The adults drank too much. Many smoked – a stupid, filthy habit I eventually adopted for many years and then finally discarded.

They laughed too loud. There was a constant low level of tension and forced frisson at these parties. Adults trying really, really hard to have a good time.

The disconnect between what many of these people said and what they did was evident to me. Way too much flirting and laughter in corners between men and women who were married to other people in the room.

I have come to understand how traumatized that entire post World war Two generation must have been. Sure, the Allies had been victorious over the evil forces of Nazism. Sufficiently to declare victory, disband the active war effort and move everyone back into a semblance of normal living.

Turns out that was easier said than done. Women used to making their own money and living independently were forced back into the domestic arena to make room in the workforce for the returning menfolk.

Possibly worse as an expectation, these displaced women were supposed to be happy about it. Doing their bit for the boys and country and all that.

Little wonder that the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield became popular. They were part of the post-war myth that life was not only better after the war, but bigger and better than it had ever been. These women and all the pretenders were symbols of all the freedom and glory the war effort won them.

It was bound to buckle. No society can live disconnected from the dictates of reality indefinitely. Enter the Sixties and what soon seemed to be constant social upheaval on every front: civil rights, the anti-Vietnam War protests, the rise of feminism, Baby Boomers starting to come of age. New rulebooks being written.

I see myself and my life goals as having been marinated in the stew of the Fifties. As an adult, I still tote around my little bag of values from the influences of that early upbringing.

The Protestant work ethic. The focus on external symbols of success. An expectation of affluence. A certain generational narcissism about our “uniqueness” that came with being part of the largest cohort of babies born in one period in the history of the world.

Today Boomers are vilified by many. Our focus on accumulating wealth and security worked well for us as a generation. To the point it seems that we have unintentionally scanted the generations coming behind us.

How in the name of heaven did a simple single family dwelling get to be so ridiculously expensive? Everywhere. I’ve yet to find a logical economic explanation.

While my autobiography would open with a description of that superplastic vision of hyper-happy and beautiful young and rich people like Jayne and Mickey, it was evident that fantastical image and lifestyle was bound to be time-limited.

It was a pablum period. No grit in the corn meal. No starch in the shorts. Just fun and glitz and partying and happy. Always happy. Perpetual adolescence.

The generation that lived it up in the Fifties eventually came back to a place of reckoning in the decades that followed. More settled and mature. Yet some of the Fifties core values are worth hanging on to.

A fierce sense of justice and atonement emerged from the detritus of war. An inherent world-wide sense of the fragility of peace and human life. The focus on stability to ensure the healthy growth of the upcoming generation. Medical and technological advances galore.

For those of us shaped within the confines of that decade, many of the images endure and maybe some of the values, too. Our crowd is leaving the planet and will have left its mark on the world as every generation inevitably does.

I recently read there are now more millennials in Canada than there are “baby boomers.” The great cull has begun. Soon, the pluses and minuses scored by our generation will be consigned to the history books.

And when it is, I have a strong suggestion for the image that best represents us for the cover.

The Paradox

Every day, I seem to live the paradox poet Sarah Kay writes about.

Her insightful poem speaks to the fragmentation of attention and focus.

Let’s face it. There is never not a time when there is something else we could be doing.

I suffer regularly from this paradox. It can be attributed, in part, to unclear priorities. If you know exactly where you are heading and what you want to be doing, the paradox may not be as frequent or troubling.

But who among us has such clarity and certainty of purpose at every age and stage of their lives?

I think the paradox referenced here troubles everyone at some level and at some point. I’m not enamored thinking the only resolution might be on our deathbed, though that makes sense.

I’d like to find – and often enjoy – more periods of peace well before then. Those periods of peace seem to happen most reliably when I manage to get out of my head.

The Paradox

When I am inside writing,
all I can think about is how I should be outside living.

When I am outside living,
all I can do is notice all there is to write about.

When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.
When I love, I think I need to read more.

I am stumbling in pursuit of grace,
I hunt patience with a vengeance.

On the mornings when my brother’s tired muscles
held to the pillow, my father used to tell him,

For every moment you aren’t playing basketball,
someone else is on the court practicing.

I spend most of my time wondering
if I should be somewhere else.

So I have learned to shape the words thank you
with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful
for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.

All those places I made it to,
all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

And even if it is just for one moment,
I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.

Sarah Kay, https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/paradox-15406

Blinders Off

Stock taking begins.

I am not the great writer I hoped, and secretly believed, that I am.

It turns out that years of personal upheaval, creative subterfuge, dismissal and avoidance did take their toll.

I had plenty of “deep thoughts” about a lot of things to share when I was young. The childish arrogance is sweet, but laughable. But it came to a point I didn’t dare express them anyway.

I didn’t have the tools or necessary distance to start dissecting and unpacking the multi and various lapses of my childhood until I was well into adulthood.

I think a great writer – and I’m thinking of the great novelists here – can invite and bring you into their world. Any world they devise. Seemingly effortlessly. You are led around by the author as a steady companion might be.

They tell you their stories which tells you something about who they are. You overhear something from one particular conversation that stays with you. You meet people. And people got stories.

When I think of the great protagonists in novels I’ve enjoyed, I liked that the author helped me get to know their character’s character. Warts and all. Right off the bat.

There is something particularly compelling about a character being vulnerable that can advance a story dramatically.

The 24/7 superhero character can become an uninteresting drag. So even the best of them usually have some trauma or tragedy that has shaped their path and who they are.

For a time, I entertained the delusional notion that I might present myself to the world as that broken but not beaten female superhero. The one who could help others make sense out of an unstable and abusive childhood. I would show them how they could do it.

I can be downright amusing. I have carried this conceit of my writing prowess for years to offset the real life gravity that pulled my biggest desires and goals wildly off course. There was always going to be a “some day.” Until one day, there isn’t.

I am going to work on acceptance of my own limitations and the inevitable deflation of ego that propelled this little adventure over the past year. I do dearly wish that the place of peace and healthy self-confidence I have now, I would have had when I needed them most.

But I read few stories that read that way or actually go that way. Challenge and growth seem to be the mandatory edicts laid down for human beings in order to move forward in life.

Will a book suddenly come rushing out of me one day with all the words and stories I have been holding back for decades? I’m doubtful. Over thirty years, I’ve actively pursued therapy to talk out my issues and by writing endless journals to explore every aspect and screwup of my life. To date.

The same urgency is no longer there. Words padded and protected me most when I needed them to. They have been my tools, my playmates, my confidantes, and my critics for as long as I can remember.

Maybe one day I’ll get honest enough to throw off my tidy 3 minute writing restriction (a broadcasting hangover). Or shuck the internalized discipline of a professional writing career and tell you unedited what I really think and feel. But I actually do that already. But there’s always more.

Like how much I have come to resent my dead mother and her chronic overwhelm. How sorry and sad I feel for our fractured and flailing family. How much rage I carry over the “preventable tragedies” I watched unfold around me. And within my own life.

So that’s where I am at for now. I had no intention when I started out to monetize this blog. Still don’t. I could try some of the WordPress “marketing” tricks to reach a wider audience. In truth, I don’t know how many of you found me in the first place. Tags, maybe?

At the moment I am treading water. I’m trying to decide whether to swim out to deeper waters in the hope of finding a luxurious desert island to hang out on. Or whether I will be heading dutifully – and sensibly – back to shore.

Guess we’ll see.

Two. Weeks. Today.

March 13, 2024. The one year anniversary of starting this daily blog is just ahead. This is blog post Number 355.

Today I believe this is what I am going to do the day after I celebrate that anniversary.

I am going to take a rest and not post anything for a while. At the minute, I have no idea how long “awhile” might be.

I follow other bloggers who post only occasionally. No set schedule. Just when they feel like it or have something they really want to say. I enjoy reading what they write when their blog posts pop up in my email.

Maybe I will be doing my faithful readers a favor. “Not her again!” someone might have been saying every day for the past 350 days. But I know some of you faithfully read what I’ve written because you’ve showed me.

Sometimes you are even kind enough to say something about what I’ve written and leave a comment. I must be a great diplomat. So far, I have attracted no haters. As far as I know, my views have been personal and even enough not to start any divisive or hostile threads.

I am not thrilled with where the world is at this time in history. Humans are unfailingly odd. I grew up in the backwash of the Second World War. Peace, harmony and cooperation were overriding social goals.

That generation knew how badly everything could go wrong if evil prevailed. They had a keen sense of what needed to be done to maintain peace. As human beings generally, we are good at enduring, whether we want to or not.

We seem to have lost that shared understanding of fragile peace. It has been traded for a slavish devotion to materialism and tribalism.

Cheap and easy ways to seek satisfaction abound and ways to buy our way into a sense of belonging. “I’m a Gucci girl!” As if that means anything in the grand scheme of things.

Men and women spend an inordinate amount of time on their external appearance while letting their internal life wither and shrink away. It is as if the way to stay relevant these days is to don the persona of a perpetual adolescent.

A fantastical place where pain doesn’t exist (unless it is in the aid of “beauty”). Where money and resources are in unlimited supply. Where no-one’s needs or feelings matter but your own, because, dammit, I am a Queen.

We can’t blame people. That’s the sales pitch. It is very attractive and looks easy. You can’t be surprised that people buy into it. Until, of course, they don’t.

That happens when reality trumps fantasy and pain becomes very real. And then, the pain when you turn inwards to seek relief and comfort, there is nothing inside you to support and guide you.

Seems the very definition of dystopian to me.

So we’ll see what is ahead. I have learned what works and doesn’t work for me. I have learned that growth is possible at any age if the spirit is willing. I have learned that the world is nuts, was nuts and likely always will be nuts. I just don’t have to engage.

I headed into this exercise with one resonant message. I write for me. If it resonates for you, that’s a bonus. Maybe we could have a discussion about those points of resonance one day. Maybe we could even become friends or colleagues.

I have a better handle today on who I am and what I believe than I did around this time last year. That’s made this writing exercise worthwhile.

A famous maxim on the sign at the Oracle of Delphi says: “Know thyself.” The principal meaning of the phrase in its original application was “know your limits” – either in the sense of knowing the extent of one’s abilities, knowing one’s place in the social scale, or knowing oneself to be mortal.

In the 4th century BC, however, the maxim was drastically re-interpreted by Plato, who understood it to mean, broadly speaking, “know your soul.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself

I’d be happy to share a cup of tea with you and swap some of our soul secrets any time. Just say the word.

Reading Right

I didn’t write this piece on reading. But I could have.

Why do I read?

I just can’t help myself.

I read to learn and to grow, to laugh

and to be motivated.

I read to understand things I’ve never

been exposed to.

I read when I’m crabby, when I’ve just

said monumentally dumb things to the

people I love.

I read for strength to help me when I

feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.

I read when I’m angry at the whole

world.

I read when everything is going right.

I read to find hope.

I read because I’m made up not just of

skin and bones, of sights, feelings,

and a deep need for chocolate, but I’m

also made up of words.

Words describe my thoughts and what’s

hidden in my heart.

Words are alive–when I’ve found a

story that I love, I read it again and

again, like playing a favorite song

over and over.

Reading isn’t passive–I enter the

story with the characters, breathe

their air, feel their frustrations,

scream at them to stop when they’re

about to do something stupid, cry with

them, laugh with them.

Reading for me, is spending time with a

friend.

A book is a friend.

You can never have too many.

Gary Paulsen

(Book: Shelf Life: Stories by the Book [ad] https://amzn.to/3uLtUAC)

Dear Death

Death is on my mind lately.

No particular reason. I occasionally flirt with thoughts of death and dying.

It’s a form of interim stock-taking. Thinking about what’s gone before. What may be ahead. Like routine maintenance. What do I have to tweak or do better to make my inevitable end more calm and peaceful?

One good thing about having a total mid-life meltdown is that it can initiate a major reframing of your life goal and priorities. I used to think it was important for me to be someone important.

I came to learn that making others feel important is more important than being important yourself. Depending on your hopes and dreams.

It comes down to whether you choose to lead your life with your head or your heart. A combination is optimum.

We spend an inordinate amount of time running from the reality of death as our last pit stop. If I manage to avoid a violent and messy end, I expect death will be just one long night’s sleep at the end of the day. If I’m lucky.

I fear the disintegration of physical strength and skill more than I fear death itself. I have often considered what I would do with a terminal cancer diagnosis. Pack up and go home, I think. At that actual moment, my feelings may change.

I like running my own ship. I don’t like to rely on others. Though I do.

So the following quotes helped me reframe my recent thoughts about death and woke me up a little.

I expect dying folks are about the wisest folks there is on the planet.

Whether they are happy about dying or not is a whole other discussion.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

(Book: The Fire Next Time [ad] https://amzn.to/3TcCyl5)

James Baldwin

Mark Twain may have put death in the best perspective of all.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” 

Mark Twain

I expect he’s right.

Lazy, Late and Long

The Universe helps out even when I don’t really deserve it.

I found this wandering around the Internet. Well, it was actually me wandering around the Internet and this post was just sitting there. Minding its own business.

As a literary piece worth cribbing, it hit all my benchmarks. Useful. Informative. Interesting. Weird.

See if you don’t learn something from it, too.

And forgive the lazy scribe who posted it in lieu of some pithy product of her own devising.

Though to be fair, I did find it myself.

THESE ARE TRUE. DO YOU KNOW WHY WE USE SOME OF THE SAYING WE USE???

People used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery…….if you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”.

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot……they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” & were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell … brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it … hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs with thick straw piled high, with no solid roof. The cats and other small animals including mice, bugs lived in the roof to get warm. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes they would slip and fall off the roof … hence the saying “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was also nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and droppings could mess up their nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how our luxurious “canopy beds” came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a “thresh hold”.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire … every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and didn’t get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered “poisonous”.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust”.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a “wake”.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive … so they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the “graveyard shift”) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell” or was considered a “dead ringer”.

14 Sayings USED TODAY THAT KIDS WON’T UNDERSTAND

1) BROKEN RECORD

Few kids today will understand the annoying sound a broken record makes, skipping on repeat. But, most kids know the phrase means someone who sounds repetitive.

2) ROLL THE WINDOW DOWN

Before power-everything, we rolled down the windows of a car with a crank that rolled. Well, ok, so maybe the kids of classic car collectors will understand this one.

3) HANG UP THE PHONE

Back then you actually had to hang up the phone on the receiver in order to end the call. Kids who’ve only ever used cell phones or cordless phones won’t have a clue how we used to talk on the phone.

4) REWIND

Ok, due to the resurgence in cassette tapes, some kids may know what this one means. Remember rewinding machines for VHS tapes? Blast from the past!

5) CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR

Once upon a time, cigars were among the prizes given out at carnivals. When you inevitably did not win, this phrase was the only consolation prize.

6) BEEN THROUGH THE WRINGER

Back when washing day was an all-day affair, the clothes would need to be wrung out. Even folks who had a washing machine often did not have a dryer. Most kids today wouldn’t even know what a wringer is!

7) ON THE FLIP SIDE

The other side of the record is something kids won’t experience. They still use this term, many without understanding where it comes from.

 8) BLOWING OFF STEAM

Back when trains were the main form of long-distance transport for people and for cargo, the steam engines had to occasionally release steam in order to stabilize the whole mechanism. It was so much fun to ride the train back then! Kids today are really missing out.

9) DITTO

Ditto is a popular term these days, but most kids have no idea that it refers to an early form of copy machine. Used from the 1920s to the 1980s, the small machine produced mimeograph-like copies on the cheap.

10) DROP A DIME

Way back when people used public pay phones, you would drop a dime into the coin slot in order to make a call. It’s hard to believe sometimes that a call used to be that cheap!

11) JOHNNY LAW

The hero of the day, Johnny Law, will fight for justice! The DC comic book character of Johnny Law made such an impression on us that we still use this phrase to mean police officers. In the Golden Age of comics, from the 1930s into the 1950s, Johnny Law was a role model for kids across America.

12) CLEAN SLATE

Chalkboards used to be used in every single classroom. Back in the old days, they were made with slate. Thus, a clean slate is the fresh start of a new day, when the mistakes of yesterday have been erased. Kids today are used to dry erase boards and computers.

13) RING UP A PURCHASE

Oh so many years ago, a cash register was manual and had an actual physical bell inside of it that rang when the lever was pulled for the bill total. Remember hearing that familiar sound?

14) STAY TUNED

Back when TV and radio stations had to be tuned to the right frequency to get good reception and enjoy your program, before a commercial the announcer would tell everyone to “stay tuned” for the rest of the show. How long has it been since you used a tuning dial?!

It’s funny how our technology changes, yet our vocabulary still reflects a time long gone. We remember a time when records and train travel were common. Even though kids won’t know what these sayings really refer to, they’ll still be used years from now!

Lessons Learned Late

New parents rapidly and inevitably learn that children – much less babies – do not come with instruction manuals.

New parents try to sort out daily childrearing based on a phantasmagoric blend of memory, history, personal experience, advice from anywhere, parenting books, doctors, their own parents.

Their own common sense.

New parents’ instincts are informed by a years long steeped soup of knowledge gathered since childhood that they bring to the task.

Depending on the novice parents’ own degree of personal healing and maturity, the baby benefits. Or it doesn’t.

After the birth of my first child, the initial shock settled in that the irresponsible hospital professionals were actually going to release this vulnerable infant into our care.

The initial shocks and semi-settling in with baby hardly foreshadowed the barrage of oncoming shocks and changes that would erupt in our lives.

That vulnerable infant and his sister who followed shape med and my parenting in ways large and small. They still do.

I was only half-healed when my son arrived. Maybe not even that. My son’s arrival ushered in a whole raft of new traumas and attendant insights connected to my upbringing that were utterly unanticipated. I was living with one foot in the present and the other one firmly planted in the past.

For most of my children’s early years, I tried too hard. I was up against dynamic opposing forces. I wanted to do everything right. I had no idea how. I wanted to teach them survival skills and show them the whole world and give them the learning and knowledge they needed to protect and raise them up.

I led with my head, which I trusted more, and less with my heart. I was wrong to have done so. Yet to be fair to me, the heart wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

Someone had been putting beach sand in my carburetor. I was only just coming to realize that.

I need not have done anything more for my precious babies than to let them be who they were and who they were going to become. I simply needed to love them. I didn’t know that then like I know it now.

Once the necessaries of hygiene and hunger and sufficient sleep and shelter had been tended to, the rest of figuring out how to navigate life was pretty much up to them. What kind of life they would choose to build and who they choose to build it with and how would be their work. It still is.

With all of this background, the bit of writing below spoke to me. As a hyper-vigilant and insecure parent, I know exactly why and how I tried too hard. Can’t change the past. Only beg for forgiveness and understanding and try to make up for it in the here and now.

One day, much later and when they were much bigger humans, I relaxed and let go. I realized all they needed from me – and all they ever need from me that they can’t get anywhere else – was my love and support.

Would that every parent knew that in the depths of their bones and blood.

Your own sense of self may be shaky but to your children, you are who they love and all they know.

Children develop their sense of self and security in relation to you and the family who love them. However imperfectly.

I learned that lesson late but I learned it. I hope they pass that lesson on to theirs when the time comes.

At least it keeps it all interesting, doesn’t it?

“Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.”

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

William Martin