Off to the Oregon coast

A quiet moment and a big sigh

I am sitting at my desk at work, listening to the hum of the air conditioner battling the 90 plus temperatures outside.  Summer is coming on in full force, and I am grateful for the amazing long lovely spring here in the MotherLode.  A gift. 

It is afternoon on a Friday.  My whole self, consciousness, my whole being has been focused on getting through the annual progress review.  Always challenging, always exhausting, and yet fulfilling as all my concepts are solidified, and I back up my models with data, maps, documentation.  It all works.  In spite of the weekends and long hours, in the end it is worth it because I can answer the questions.  I can go to whatever folder, paper or electronic, I can pull up the maps, and show exactly how this huge puzzle of a landscape works, how it is put together.  The best part of my job.  Juggling all those puzzle pieces into place. 

It's now over.  Whew.  and whew again.  I don't know why I get so wound up over it all.  Some sort of silly idea that everything will be perfect?  How dumb is that!  It's the natural world, for pete's sake, and I am trying to make some kind of sense and order out of it.  dumb. 

So now I will breathe, I will get over all the stupid stress that I lay on myself at these reviews, and I will especially savor the thought that it is my last one.  No more reviews.  Ever.  Maybe an exit review a couple of weeks before I retire, but that is a different thing entirely.  I do not have to do the stressful, brain busting, lay-it-all-on-the-table-and-justify-it kind of review ever again. 

weird thought.

This afternoon I will pack.  Tomorrow I will leave before dawn and drive 8 hours through the valley back home to the Oregon forests and beaches.  I will spend some days at the coast, feeling chilly, at the lake, in Klamath at the small town celebration of the 4th with my daughter.  A week away.  A week without worry about anything at all.

But right now, just for this moment, I am savoring the deep breath, the big sigh, quietly looking out the office window to the asphalt parking lot, watching the blue oaks laugh at the heat, watching the grass wither as I speak.  Just savoring.  I don't have to do one single blessed thing in this moment.

Friend thoughts

I have an online group of "friends", sometimes we write with a lot of energy, other times there isn't a post for weeks. One of those friends just posted that she finished her dissertation, and just received a contract for a book about friendships between women. Her discussion gave me the opportunity to put down in words what has been rolling around in my mind a lot lately.

My kids have become my best friends, even my son now in his 40's. I don't understand him much, he is a redneck boy from Missouri, but we talk on the phone at least every week and sometimes more. My daughters are the friends who don't leave. Maybe we get angry, or frustrated, or busy, but we don't leave. I find that now with them in their 40's my role as protector is lessened, but the role of listener never ceases.

In relationships, I have found "The One" several times. It seems there is definitely more than one "One" for some of us, depending on where we are in our life, our personal growth, our needs and desires at a particular stage of life. and the question, "are you settling?" most often seems to come from those who are really dissatisfied in their own lives and relationships, and yes, I too get frustrated at that question. I love "settling". I love the settled feeling that comes with friendship and companionship and love (small case). I love not having to fight or cry or fear or be depressed any more. Well, I get depressed with too much heat or too much darkness, but not with my everyday life. Depression to me is the key, if I am depressed then I know that I am either stuck, or angry, or am not listening to my inner self. I have been hugely depressed in my lifetime when I was with someone that I thought was "The One".

Friendships, I guess, must be like that. They flow through life like waves in the ocean, coming and going, and some, like those big solid heavy stones on the beach, just stay there no matter what. I can count them on my one hand. My grandmother used to say that, and I pooh poohed her, in my days of women's group, and online groups, and really close girlfriends. But with time and distance, those friends came and went for me as well.

A decade ago I had a completely different view of friendship. I had friends then I thought would be part of my life forever. One is dead, one is probably a bit crazier than really knew, but I still count her on that lifetime list, one and only one is still my lifetime friend, and another one refuses to remain my friend, even after many many promises of lifetime friendship. The women's group friends are all faded, due to distance and time, I guess, but I never thought that would happen. Online friends I have never met, another whole story, as close as the computer screen, and as ephemeral as electrons floating in the universe.

Funny this question should come to me right now because it has been something that I have been thinking on a lot lately. Especially as I pack and go through all my old stuff and photos, clearing, deciding what to keep, what to let go of. Parts of me are going in boxes, and parts of me are going to goodwill, and parts of me are going into the trash pile. It's a big sifting process that has to do where I am in my life right now.

I guess my thoughts and feelings about friendship are just one of the things I am sorting and sifting.

Saturday thoughts while packing...again...

Once again, I am packing. Once again I am required to look consciously at the things that make me, “me”. My art supplies. I was an artist at one time. In the 60’s I painted with oils, I bought oil paints, I painted with watercolors, I bought watercolor paints. I tried it again sometime during the 80’s while I was married to Lance, then again in the late 90’s alone at Hauser, I bought pastels. The oils are gone, worn out. My mother’s oil paints I think I once had, thrown out long ago in some cleaning, clearing frenzy, much like the one I am going through now. The water colors have gone the same route. Gone. The pastels are still here, waiting, waiting for that part of me that wants to paint, to draw, to be an artist. The part of me that loves color. Books, Drawing the Light From Within, Drawing with Pastels, Madalas of Light, all books now packed into boxes, waiting in a storage room somewhere, waiting for the me that is buried so deep down under the surface I can hardly find her. Mo has a water color painting that I did once in a frame, something that Deanna found somewhere. All parts and pieces of me, that once were important, and now I wonder where they went, wonder who I am, really. Where is the motivation to do that kind of thing, all thoughts going through my mind as I pack up the pastels and pencils into a box called “sue’s art supplies”.



Sometime today I will dip into the drawers in the guest room, will dip into the belly dancing costumes, the jewelry, the yards of amazing fabric. All for another me, the one that wanted to be a dancer, but was never agile enough, or flexible enough, or strong enough. So that me did African dance and Tribal belly dance, that me played the djembe. Parts of me again buried, with the djembe in the corner, the belly dance skirts packed up into another box somewhere in storage, and the jewelry soon to be packed up into another box for my daughter, for melody, the one that still wants to dance and costume and still has the energy for art.

Where am I in all this? It’s a question I keep asking as I do this process of clearing and cleaning and packing. It’s a repeated refrain, boring in its repetition, boring so I try not to talk about it out loud. So far, the only true part of me that is alive is this same part that wants to write about it, that wants to write to find it, to write to find “me”. So I go pack up some more, look some more at the things I have kept, and remember the things that I haven’t, and in the process, work it down to the essence, the essence of “me”. It still eludes me, but I believe it is coming. Aging, moving, retiring, shifting, all of it is a process designed to pare it all down to essence. “I am because I am” kind of essence. “I am because I think” and “I am because I write”. “I am because I talk on the phone?” to my kids, to the few friends that are still around, to the very few people in my life who have boiled down to the last essence of me, who are still here to care.