The January Overhaul

Tucked in the corner of my bedroom, I’m writing at a little table remote from the kitchen and living room, which are the hub of the house.  I’m hearing planes, cars, and wind.  Not my relevant noise, so I can ignore it. 

I’m thinking back to a musing about essays, Essay Styles, that I wrote while at a two-week long writing workshop in 2018.  After rereading it, I feel a “mosaic” essay coming on: Sentences melded together to create paragraphs.  But the paragraphs need a thick application of grout to bind them together.

I need glasses for distance but a different lens for reading.  I take my glasses off when I’m at my computer.  This morning, I upped my font size from 14 to 18.  I am no longer squinting as I write, and I’ve eliminated the rounded-shoulder posture that pointed my nose closer to the screen.  Much like the size of clothing, the number doesn’t matter so much as long as that it’s comfortable.

I took pork tenderloins out of the freezer yesterday to thaw for supper tonight.  This morning I found recipes for Italian herb crusted pork tenderloin, Italian roasted cauliflower, and fig and arugula salad.  We’ve had a bit of a repetitive meal theme of meat, rice, and salad—grilled, plain, and vinaigrette, respectively, so these recipes feel exotic.  However, I will keep my homemade vinaigrette on the shelf for backup in case my younger son Liam doesn’t want to venture forth into the fig and arugula arena.

At lunch time, I usually grab a crossword from the stack that Bill builds for me on the shelf of the coffee table.  They are from Monday through Wednesday newspapers.  These are the easiest crosswords of the week; I don’t want to struggle; I want to complete a puzzle in those twenty minutes.  The second time through the puzzle, I readily check the answers and fill in blank pop culture references.  While dutifully completing the crossword, I check out the Pluggers cartoon for a laugh, or a groan, with my husband Bill.  It was either there or a meme somewhere that I saw a dig at people who are still using two spaces after a period.  That simply will happen in my writing, for double tapping the space bar after a period is as ingrained in my fingers as inhaling and exhaling is in my lungs.

My alarm goes off every evening at 9:15 p.m. with the reminder “Get ready for bed and read.” I’m taking a book to bed every evening, and if I can’t get into it in the half hour before lights out, I’m not going to read it.  Ruthless, but that’s the only way I’ll get to the page turners.  Reading for relaxing should not need to feel like plowing something heavy.

Between Christmas and New Year, my family decided to watch the Harry Potter movies.  Everyone knew the story to varying degrees and no one had watched all of the movies.  My jump-scare reaction intensified through the last three movies; it gave my sons and my husband comic relief.  The first three books are my favorites; the next four grow darker; the last book wouldn’t have made it past the half hour rule I’ve just implemented.  However, the movies helped make sense of the ending—together with my older son Will’s background information that filled in the gaps.  I want to reread the last couple of books now that I know the general sequence of the story.  Rereading: another idea for the year.  Why else keep so many already-read books in the house?

In the wee hours of the morning, say four to six, I’m still plugging in twinkle lights on my “tree of light” and lighting candles on the mantle.  I love this time of day: the quiet before the rise.  For many months, I filled this time with news or social media, but for the last few weeks, I’ve been tuning into myself rather than the world around me.  Breathing for 20 minutes.  It has proven a good base to leap off from when the 7 o’clock bell chimes announcing the rise of the day. 

While breathing in the morning, I’ve found the quietest spot is just after breathing in and before breathing out.  A silent accent. A stillness. A lull. So small it goes unnoticed at any other time of the day, and yet it is always there, steadfast, with every single breath.

To the Familiar Stranger

I see you.  Often.

Day after day last spring, we were on the same street at the same time.  I was driving my teenage son to school, and you were walking on the sidewalk, pushing your son in his stroller while holding your dog’s leash. 

I thought you were your son’s father at first.  You had a man’s haircut, but that impression lasted for a split second.  Until I saw you didn’t have eyebrows.  On another cool spring day, your head was covered with an unmistakable chemo scarf.

We passed each other on that same stretch of road for many weeks; each of us on our own morning journey.  Though we never made eye contact or waved, I sent some sort of well wishes to you whenever I saw you.  I can’t say I prayed; I don’t think I did.  I hope I was a quiet tether in the way that so many women were mine nearly twelve years ago.

I remember seeing you in the early summer.  You had very short hair that looked like a sassy cut.  Only it was sassy growth.  It made me smile.  I thought you were well on your way, and that made me so happy.  I let the tether loosen a bit.

Then this winter, after the first snowstorm of the season, I was driving down the same street where I often saw you walking.  In a front lawn to my right, a grown-up figure stood smiling over a little figure that was rolling around in the snow.  It was you and your son.  I didn’t know you actually lived on this street, and I was surprised to see you here rather on the sidewalk.  Your smile was wide looking down at your little boy.  Then, you turned your head and looked into the wind.

Your hair, a bit longer, lifted on the side of your head when you turned.  Your smile was so true; it was nearly audible.  I remember it myself: that first moment when new hair is long enough to lift in the wind.  The giddy sensation of each hair follicle moving in a new direction for the first time.  The tiniest, most unusual upward lift and tug.  So seemingly insignificant yet intense on your scalp.  I remember it.  A tickling delight that toddlers must feel when they first experience the sensation. 

Seeing you that day reminded me to be grateful when the wind lifts my hair.

 ***

From Power and Prayer, written November 10, 2009

“Fortunately, every person I reached out to who had experienced cancer has grasped a hold of me. Each has cast a rope around my waist, destined not to let me sink. They are pillars standing on the shore of a rocky sea they’ve already sailed. From family members to women who were mere acquaintances or absolute strangers, I have strong and formidable women who hold the ropes that are stabilizing me.”

Tweaking Technology

Five days into the New Year, whether in caps or lower case, I’m leading off texts and emails with “Happy New Year!”  Or, if on my iPhone, the rough draft of my message reads “Hairy New Year!” 

My phone gives me the option of pecking at the letters or swiping between letters to form words.  I’m a swiper mostly because I thought it was cool technology to vaguely swipe a word and see it appear on the screen.  However, this is an imperfect science. 

I edit for grammar more on that tiny screen than I do essays on my laptop, where all my fingers know there job and most of my typos are made in words that sound the same but are spelled differently.  The “there” in the previous sentence proves my point.  It appeared inadvertently in that form.  I see now that it should be the possessive “their.”

After I’ve corrected “hairy” to “happy” twenty-five times, this little computer in my hand should learn that I never ever want to say “Hairy New Year!”  Apollo went to the moon on a smidgeon of computing power compared to this smart little bundle in my hand; surely, someone can take a stab at improving correction recognition to create a more pleasing user experience.

I have the same issue with “would,” only it’s a bigger annoyance because I use this word so often.  I’m not a conversationalist in my texts.  The application is one of functionality for me: “World you like me to grab anything from the grocery store?”  “World you like to have lunch Thursday?”  Would.  I want W-O to mean “would.”  Not “world.”

While propaganda might make us think that technology aids in communication, in certain instances, these advances feel like an evil backward slide.  Without seeing the nod of your head, I know I’m telling you nothing new.

One of the more comical text swipes with my friends happens when I’m confirming what time I’ll be somewhere.  “Running late, I’ll be there stoned 5:00.”  To which one friend replied, “That would be hilarious—you arriving stoned!”  The frequency with which this happens does point out my grammatical problem of word over-usage: I use, or try to use, the word “around” too often.  This goof provides comic relief when I tell someone I’ll be arriving stoned.  Still—it’s funny until it isn’t. 

I don’t normally verbalize New Year’s resolutions to the world, but for me, the New Year is a good time to take stock of life’s logistics.  Today, I’m paying special attention to my communication swirling in technology.  A few years ago, one of Will’s friends, Miles, helped me hard code my phone.  The swipe reader was convinced that his name was “Mike,” not “Miles.”   I dreaded typing his name; it immediately led to an edit situation.  This was hellish torture.  Miles showed me how to force “Miles” upon my entry of M-I.  I resolve to research that hack and fix the issue of hairy, stoned world messages.

Technology has blasted off to infinity.  Telepathy has not.  I can read texts and emails on my phone wherever I am.  This fact has led me into a toilet vortex.  Really, I don’t need immediate knowledge of most messages; however, I’m of the mind that communicators of the world expect information to be immediately conveyed, chewed upon, and responded to.  This assertion is an enigma: Am I putting this on myself or are there true expectations of instantaneous knowledge transference and consequent action assumptions? 

Either way, I’m putting more space between me and the outer world.  Wait, that’s not true.  I’m going old school and setting aside time to communicate, for as I pointed out earlier, my telepathy hasn’t kept up with the advancement of technology.  For instance, that reality unfurls when I read an email in my van, say while waiting for my son Liam to finish track practice.   I nod in appreciation of the information or formulate a question in response to it or conjure up a personal note in reply.  Rarely do I reply to the communication there and then. 

I don’t reply for two reasons, both related to swiping.  Word recognition issue is part of the problem, but my true hindrance is that I think best and convey words and thoughts most completely on my laptop.  The open geography of the letters laid out on a memorized physical slanted grid is where I first learned how to communicate in writing, beginning in Ms. Roths’ high school typing classes.  Talking with my fingers started on manual typewriters; I’ve since emigrated to the computer keyboard. However, I have a disconnect between reading an email on the go then remembering to sit down at my computer and reply.  Effectively, I have already conveyed my thoughts, yet telepathy hasn’t advanced to the point where the other person realizes that. 

Since the era of desktop-only computers evaporated, now I can fold up my laptop and take it or leave it anywhere.  In this New Year, I’m setting up a home base for communication on the unused dining room table.  I pray that the days of looking for my main communication device within my house are gone.  Organizers and minimalists are ardent believers in that everything should have its place.  If I buy into this with respect to my laptop, I should save a lot of time wandering and looking for the flat machine that disappears so easily under folded clothes in my bedroom, a pile of bills in the office, the to-do list in the corner of my kitchen.  I’m testing the dining room home base.

If this plan works, I will not even consider responding to emails on the go.  Rather, I’ll sit down, think, and write.