Month: July 2020

Time for a Break?

by pearlsofpauline, posted in Camping, Coronavirus pandemic, Friends, Marriage, Travel

CHANGES OF SCENE ARE A GOOD THING, and SO ARE FRIENDS

Gene and I just celebrated our 19th anniversary. Ironically, after 19 weeks of social distancing, I think we’re ready to socially distance from each other. (Don’t worry; that’s a joke.)

Like most of us, in all these months, we’ve seen very few of our friends “live and in person.” And we miss them! The last time we entertained was on May 6th. Our neighbors Lynne and Bob came over at 7:30 a.m. for coffee and Bloody Marys on the patio. (We needed to be outside to socially-distance, and since we live in Phoenix, early morning seemed like the best time.)

In fact, since the disappearance of life as we know it, our social life has been almost non-existent. We’ve been to our friend Gail’s house for the best take-out dinner ever, seated at opposite ends of her dining table, and we joined Tempe friends Pat and Steve here in San Diego for seafood and a long walk on the beach. That’s it.

We’ve been able to rendezvous with family in various parts of northern Arizona, and in their yards and ours. Those visits have been our saving grace. But still, we miss our friends.

Since March, we’ve camped in Page Springs, Cottonwood, Camp Verde, Payson, Show Low, and Greer.

Added to the social isolation has been the pressure of being in our trailer for weeks at a time. We feel lucky to have our little house on wheels because it has allowed us a change of scene. But we’re talking 120 square feet! Have you ever tried to remove roasted vegetables from an oven in a space about three feet wide? Or taken a shower in a bathroom where getting undressed requires the dexterity of a contortionist?

This month, thank God, we’ve been in a little bungalow in San Diego with our kitties. It feels spacious, compared to the trailer. But being in another town for a month, even one with the most heavenly weather possible, poses problems, too.

I have plenty to do: reading, writing, talking on the phone with my kids and sisters, emailing and texting friends, cleaning, laundry, Facebook, Words with Friends. We cook, go for walks, fish, picnic at the beach, talk, and talk some more. Gene reads, goes to the driving range and fishes alone occasionally. But there are no projects here, no “Honey Do’s.” And this is “Mr. Fix-it.” The poor guy is bored.

So, we’re starting to drive each other nuts. He’s noticing every annoying habit I have, and I’m noticing that he has a few himself. The differences between us are more obvious because we’re together so much.

It turns out I have gotten particular. About a lot of things.  I used to think when Gene asked me to go with him to the store, he just wanted help. It turns out he wants me there to be sure he doesn’t bring home the wrong items, e.g., salted butter instead of unsalted, plain olive oil instead of Extra Virgin First Cold Pressed, thin pork chops instead of thick ones, red delicious apples instead of honey crisp. Not only are my grocery lists missing detail; they’re impossible to read! So now I know.

I can fix the grocery list. But a tougher challenge is the way we make decisions. Have you ever taken the color test for personality traits? Well, I’m a blue; Gene’s a green. I’m quick and spontaneous, the “let’s get it done” type. Gene is slow and deliberate, the “let’s get it done right” type, He wants to gather every bit of information he can find before making a decision, and I’m talking small (to me) decisions like which beach today or which wine with dinner. I welcome his style if, to me, it’s a decision worthy of his level of scrutiny.  But sometimes, I just need to move in a direction, any direction, even the wrong direction. In my head I’m shouting, PLEASE, LET’S JUST MOVE!

So, we’re trying to find things to do alone, like more reading and fishing. And it’s no wonder he wants to go fishing at Blacks Beach, where clothing is optional. He can fish and watch pretty girls go by “optionally” clothed. Time is not of the essence. (The stickler is that it’s 1,000 steps from the top of the trail down to the beach, a truly death-defying walk for a guy in his 70s, even one in good shape. And he’s got to carry a rod, a tackle box, towel, phone, snacks, water, a colander to catch sand crabs, and an empty water bottle to keep them in. I’m not concerned that this will become a habit.)

And while he’s fishing, I’ll think about all the reasons I’m glad we’re married, and welcome him home with a big kiss.

Telling Secrets

by pearlsofpauline, posted in Secrets, Vulnerability

DID YOU EVER NOTICE WHEN YOU SHARE A SECRET, OTHERS OPEN UP TO YOU?

Last year I reconnected through Facebook with a woman I haven’t seen in over 50 years. We recently found ourselves in the same town on vacation and got together for an outside lunch, where we could be socially distant. Lunch turned into a five-hour catch-up session.

She asked me all kinds of questions, based on my Facebook posts and blogs, and I tried to be truthful and open.

Then I asked her to take me through her life. It was riveting. Listening to her felt like being on a runaway roller coaster, and I thought I might throw up at one point. As she ended her story, I was teary, imagining how hard it must have been to endure her many disappointments. She said, “You know, I’ve shared all this with only two other people because you’re the only ones who’ve asked me.” And I now feel so close to this woman, even though we’re very different.

That was an aha moment for me. It helped me realize that a lot of people want to share their secrets, but no one asks them to. We don’t bother to pick up the phone or make a date to talk alone with people who are not comfortable sharing their secrets in a group setting. And why is it important to share secrets and listen to secrets? Because it helps us understand and develop compassion for others. And with that compassion comes an increased ability to love others, people of all kinds.

Facebook is a place where we highlight the fun times. It’s not necessarily that we’re hiding who we really are; perhaps we just don’t want to be depressing. Or maybe we’re very private. I have noticed, though, when people do share bad or disappointing news on Facebook, there is usually an outpouring of love and support.

But not everyone wants to take that chance, to be vulnerable. Sometimes we need to give them that chance.

I’ve found that sharing secrets is a bonding agent. I’m in a book club that was formed over 20 years ago. Every once in a while someone in the group shares a secret. The empathy in the room is palpable! And the group is tighter than ever.

My friend Catherine Penn Williams, a Jungian therapist, has introduced me to some marvelous people through quotes on her Facebook pages. One of these people is Frederick Buechner. In his 1991 memoir, Telling Secrets, Buechner, who is now 94 years old, says, “What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own…”

I want to be the real thing. I don’t want to lose track of who I “truly and fully’ am. And if that means sharing secrets and making myself vulnerable, I’ll take the risk.

Mother Nature — Who Is She, Really?

by pearlsofpauline, posted in Coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, Death, God, Mother Nature, Nature

I HAVE SPENT A LOT OF TIME THINKING ABOUT MOTHER NATURE

I have spent a lot of time thinking about Mother Nature, especially lately, and wondering about the relationship between God and Nature. I’ve never blamed God for bad things, even when I had breast cancer. In fact, when I attended a support group and found out it was called Why Me? I thought, “Why not me?”

This COVID-19 pandemic gives one pause and makes me want to understand how the world works when one believes in a caring God.

Coronavirus Resource Center - Harvard Health
coronavirus

In his May 19th Opinion piece in The New York Times, Tom Friedman describes Mother Nature as “just chemistry, biology and physics… Mother Nature is not only all powerful, she’s also unfeeling. Unlike that merciful God that most humans worship, Mother Nature doesn’t keep score. She can inflict her virus on your grandmother on Monday and blow down your house with a tornado on Wednesday and come back on Friday and flood your basement. She can hit you in the spring, give you a warm hug in summer and hammer you in the fall.“As such, telling her that you’re fed up with being locked down — that it’s enough already! — doesn’t actually register with her.”

I recently listened to a sermon by an Episcopal priest in which the priest, in discussing the Trinity, compared God the Father to Mother Nature. Well, I can’t buy that. No, I believe in a God who created us and Mother Nature. I believe God cares, that telling God you’re fed up does register, and that helps me accept the current situation and turn to God for solace, even as the world is running amok.

C.S. Lewis, the British writer and lay theologian, in his 1948 essay entitled “On Living in an Atomic Age,” put it this way: “What, then, is Nature, and how do we come to be imprisoned in a system so alien to us? Oddly enough, the question becomes much less sinister the moment one realizes that Nature is not all. Mistaken for our mother, she is terrifying and even abominable. But if she is only our sister – if she and we have a common Creator – if she is our sparring partner – then the situation is quite tolerable.”

Of course, Lewis is talking hypothetically about the atomic bomb; we are living with a virus that is actually killing people all over the world by the thousands. So the situation is not “quite tolerable” for the many who are suffering and those who love them.

But still, if we listen to Lewis’s words and substitute COVID-19 for the atomic bomb, our situation can be seen in a new light: “Do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb (COVID-19) was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways… It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

“This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb (COVID-19), let that bomb (coronavirus) when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children… not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs (viruses). They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

C.S. Lewis on Pornography and Masturbation
C.S. Lewis

I am convinced that fear lowers your resistance. I’m also convinced that thinking and talking about bad things gives them power and contributes to that fear. I’m taking COVID-19 seriously. I’m wearing a face mask when it’s appropriate and I’m practicing social distancing. But I’m not going to let it dominate my mind. I’m going to continue to do “sensible and human things.”

And I hope and pray that you will, too.