Learning the art of napping

The learning curve for this wordpress blog is steep, but not so with my lessons in napping. I have never been much of a napper, even as a toddler. My pregnant mother would put my 2 year old self down for an afternoon nap, only to wake up from her nap and realize I’d been up playing as soon as she fell asleep. Putting our heads on our desks for an afternoon snooze in elementary school? BOR-ing!

But lately? I’m realizing it is an art, an acquired skill, and like many skills, takes practice. I’m self-taught and sometimes it’s hard but I am trying. And when I am successful, it is a delight to arise refreshed and ready for some new moves. A successful nap for me means rest and a return with no guilt. Nature rests, my dog naps throughout the day, the Spanish have their siestas, great uncles have naps on their recliners, hammocks, basement sofas and beach blankets. It’s about time I pay attention and learn from their examples.

Sunshine

Another day of glorious sunshine, my mom is resting in the back room; her respirator hums and puffs. I am enjoying a quiet patch of morning sunlight, my dog in the picture window, my cup of chai on the table next to me. Blessed mornings, how I love them.

This blog will not become a Sarah Heartburn blog, but occasionally I must share my difficulties here.

Can I talk to you tonight?

Our tear ducts are our soul’s pressure valves. A friend told me that years ago. I’m not one prone to tears because my dad always told me when I was little that big girls don’t cry. But I’ve cried streams this month, April, the month of showers. I’ve tried to save my mother all of my life, but I can’t. I know it. I just have to try to save her stories. And no, she’s not gone yet. But it has been so hard to watch her decline over the years. I’m tired and she seems tired too.

Gather

Gather. Prayers, family, friends, flowers, memories, sorrow. Gather.
Children, moments, days, love, hope. Gather.
Sunshine, seasons, a cure, the moon. Gather.
Together. Remembering. Grieving. Ourselves. Gather.

Earth, ashes, dust. Scatter.

Work

A while back I wrote that I’d thought my word of the year was HOME, yet I found it evolving into WORK. Because home is work.
And the home we will eventually move into is a TON of work. Besides renovation though, we also have the work that pays our bills, and then the work that feeds our souls and inhabits our dreams. My special work this year is finishing the survival aka field guide to this peninsula I pretty much grew up on in between our dad’s military transfers.

I’m a decent writer and my work has been admired by my private reading circle, BUT sometimes I’m not sure I really love writing. Not sure I have the drive for it. It is damn HARD WORK. And I thought if it’s doing something you love, it’s not supposed to feel like work. Time becomes suspended. You lose track of it, yourself, and surroundings and everything sort of merges. So, I have my writing project spread on the table here with me, some guides to guide me, and a blog post by a local yogi that has given me pause to consider my relationship to my work. I want to explore the character, the persona that is my work. What’s your relationship to your work? What is her persona?

My Sister’s Soap

My youngest sister Betsy used to make the best soap not so very long ago. Now she’s teaching yoga. She already has a good number of regular students so I imagine her yoga classes are as good as her soap was.

I miss that soap though and some of the other body luxuries she created, but luckily I still have a small stash of her soap that might last me another six months to a year if I’m lucky. Once you are spoiled with handmade soap, there’s no going back to Ivory.

Former Etsy Narrative for my Archives

[Here in my etsy shop, I share with you reclaimed paperbacks, many of them favorite books I’ve read myself, including pulp fiction, pop lit, bestsellers, and classics I haven’t.]

I have always loved books. It was my excuse to get a degree in English and the humanities (the one major that fed my reading addiction). Besides going to the library every Saturday with my sisters and dad as a child, I ended up working in libraries for years starting in high school and through college. Before he took off for Vietnam, after he’d moved us North in case he didn’t come back, my dad took us to the local library to meet the children’s librarian, Mrs. Nickerson. He did come back and we continued our weekly library jaunts to libraries wherever we were living at the time from Steubenville, Ohio, to Oceanside, California, back to Cape Cod and more. When I had my own children, the library was an outing at least once a week, usually more. We’d spend hours there in the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont. Libraries always felt like home to me. Even on vacations, we always went to the local library.
A library job is what brought me from Vermont back to the Cape, and while the job didn’t work out (people change) and I miss Vermont terribly, my love of books remains constant and saves me from total despair at times.

[While some of these books are well worn, they are not in tatters and still highly readable. Some are even written in so you can share another reader’s journey as you take your own. With a book, you can escape to all over the world. You can inhabit the life of someone else when you need to escape from your own. You’re never alone with a book. And along with a book, goes a good cup of tea. I am a tea connoisseur as well as a bibliophile and will include in each package some hand-stuffed and tied bags of some of my favorite teas. Enjoy!]

Hope

There’s that expression, “false hope,” but do you believe it? I don’t think there’s any such thing. Unless you know for sure that all is lost (life basically), then how can you believe there is anything but HOPE? Like Yogi said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

Twirling Spaghetti

It used to be called spaghetti, rigatoni, macaroni, lasagna or whatever noodle it happened to be. I don’t remember calling it pasta. Tonight while I was preparing it, I had a food memory from childhood. It’s a twirling spaghetti technique I don’t see my parents do any more. But, they used to. With a fork, they would spear a clump of pas-ghetti and using a large tablespoon, twirl the spaghetti in the bowl of the spoon, using their fork as a sort of baton, before eating it. It was so grown-up to me and something I didn’t think I could ever master then. I tried it tonight and smiled at the memory.

Writing

I am writing today and have all my notes scattered on my table. It’s hard work, but I’m lucky to have a virtual mentor in Camille DeAngelis, and a real world mentor in Diane Hanna.

Camille has some great video tutorials on her site about the writing process and these have helped me tremendously. Her teaching style is conversational, calm, grounded and practical. Simple tools to help me map out my story and process. I keep returning to what is the story I am trying to tell? What is my focus? Paying attention to those two questions brings me back when I feel overwhelmed with too much information. I began writing a survival guide a few years ago. It’s also developing into a field guide and in the end I believe it will ultimately again be a survival guide. To surviving changes, good and bad and learning to find the best amongst the changes.