Driven

My thoughts turned to my grandparents again today.  I wasn't close to either one of my grandfathers.  Both very different men.  My mom's dad was named simply "R" by his mother.  He signed most things "R.B."  for "R.  Boliver".  When he joined the army as a cook, he was forced to take a name, as they couldn't accept an initial on his paperwork, so he began to refer to himself as "Roy".  He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad.  He was a math wizard who would dupe his coworkers out of money with bets on whether or not they could solve specific equations.  He was a musician.  He was mean and depressed but never this way around me.  He smoked and cussed and drank and worked and worked and worked his entire life, including his childhood.  You might say his demons drove him.

My father's father was a different sort of man.  He was highly intelligent and smooth-talking. One of my earliest memories of him was going out to his ranch with my father and looking across a pasture.  A line of Fotomat booths sat out in that pasture, because he had bought a Fotomat franchise.  I remember cattle everywhere.  A miniature horse named Little Bit.  A dairy that he owned.  In his seventies he got his real estate license and stuck his fingers in the property pie.  He traveled.  I can count on one hand the number of memorable interactions I had with him, but I do know this...he could never sit still.  He was also a very driven person, and I think that when he finally passed away, it was very grudgingly.

I think about these two men that I'm related to and maybe I can understand the circumstances in my life at this point from what they went through.  I live a very stressful life.  Raising children is, in and of itself, challenging.  When you throw autism in the mix, it gets that much more dynamic.  You really do have to become used to a new normal.  And then there are other things that add to it...your interactions with other people, for example, can become supercharged, and some people can have a profound effect on your life.  This summer I found myself growing more and more restive and depressed.  My husband thought it was because I was tired of taking care of kids around the clock...but that wasn't really it.  It was true that they were getting bored and that I needed them to go back to school and be busy just as much as they needed it, but that wasn't really what was nagging at me.  What was bothering me, what was turning my restlessness into full blown depression, was the fact that I wasn't doing anything.

Increasingly over the last year I have found that staying as busy as possible works wonders for me.  The more stuff I can pile on myself, the more ambitions and goals I can make, the more I can focus and manage my life. In spite of this, I made a conscious decision this year to tone it down a little.  I decided to focus on my children, and on trying not to kill myself with overwork.  And I feel strangely lighter.  Still busy, and still very obligated to succeed...but not overworked to the point where I might want to rent a rubber room.

Who Taught You How to do That?

                           



Earlier today, I finished cutting squares to make a simple quilt.  I've never made a quilt before. After I cut all the squares, I got out my machine so I could sew them together into a quilt top, but bad news...The machine was broken.  Due to the frustration I always experience when dealing with this particular machine, and also because of my stubborn nature, I said to myself, Fine.  It will be completely hand-stitched.  It may take a while, but I'll just enjoy the journey.

I reconciled myself to the fact that this process was going to take some time, and accepted the fact that many afternoons would be spent putting this piece of art together.  (Quilting is an art.  Don't believe me?  Google "Gee's Bend" or "The Art Quilt Gallery, New York" and you'll see.)

As I pulled the needle through the fabric and tied the thread off, a thought occurred to me:  How do I know how to do this?  Who taught me how to do this?

And you know, I'm really not sure!

Both of my grandmothers grew up on farms.  They were from a different, slower time.  They knew the importance of taking care of what they had and making it last, and they understood that self-sufficiency wasn't a luxury to be indulged in as some sort of social experiment; it was a necessity.  Both of them knew how to sew really well and could make anything from a tablecloth to a pair of pants.  In particular, my maternal grandmother, Eleanor Boliver, was an excellent seamstress.  I once gave her a few yards of cloth to hem into a curtain.  She returned it bearing the most tight, even stitches you could imagine...and she did it all by hand.  My paternal grandmother, Rose Hatcher, had a full sized quilt frame at one time.  I can remember that when she set it up, it took up half of her very large dining room.  As a child I could hide under it and pretend it was a tent, but the rest of it was a mystery to me.  Yet, because I spent hours in their company, I observed a lot.  How to tie a thread to keep it from pulling through the cloth.  How to shuck corn.  How to boil water, store onions, grill a hot dog, whip potatoes, snap beans.  How to enjoy the pleasures of basic life itself.  Do I remember who taught me how to thread a needle or keep it from slipping straight through the cloth?  No, but it was someone who loved me enough to show me how.  And those same someones also taught me a much bigger lesson:  worthwhile things take time, and patience, and the enjoyment is sometimes just as much in the creation of it as in the end result itself.

The Value of Waiting

As summer drags its weary ass out the door, I've had time to sit here and contemplate a lot of things. Namely, the following:

This is true.  I'm not a patient person.  I hate waiting in lines, pumping gas, and repeating myself, unless I'm repeating myself by virtue of teaching a new or interesting concept.  I dislike complaining and I don't like being around people who complain excessively. But I've had to learn the value of patience.

When I was in college for the first time, I was distracted by all of the different courses available.  Did I want to take this music class?  What about archaeology?  How about Russian?  Did it fit with my degree plan?  Who cares?  It sounds good!

Of course what happened is I wasted a LOT of time and didn't succeed my first time around.  I wasn't focused.  I didn't understand what was important, and I messed around and didn't invest my time in the thing that truly mattered...and that was the degree I was aiming for.

Now that I've decided to go back, I meet with an advisor on a regular basis and I make sure that I follow my plan to the letter.  I don't allow myself to become distracted by other things, no matter how good or tempting they may look.  It doesn't help that I find a LOT of things interesting, but if I continually "explore" and "nibble" at all of these interesting things, then I won't get to where I need to be.  I won't succeed.

So what is worth our patience, and our personal investment?  Obviously, I'm going to include the pursuit of knowledge in my answer.  It's the only thing you can take with you when you die.  What else?  How about the personal relationships in your life?  Who is important to you?  Is it your family and friends?  How do you treat them?  What about yourself?  Do you take care of yourself?  Are you as patient with yourself as you expect other people to be?  What about your personal success?  Where do you want to be in ten years?  In twenty?  I know, that seems so far away, it's hardly worth the bother of planning for.  But really, it is.  It's worth every minute.  It's worth it because time moves so much faster than you can imagine, and life changes all the time.  If you're not doing what you need to do now to get to where you want to be later,then you might want to take a good, hard look at what you're doing and change a few things.

I can tell you that the biggest motivating factor for change in my life has been my children.  When you become responsible for someone else, or a group of someone elses, then that is a real game-changer, especially if one of those someones might live with you for the rest of his life. You suddenly look at your life and decide that certain things aren't so important anymore, but being able to live long enough to take care of this kid, and live in relative comfort, is.

I still have years left before I finish school.  Sometimes, when things seem far away or impossible, its easy to get discouraged and give up.  Waiting doesn't come easy to a lot of people. But I promise, if you do, it will be worth it.

I Really Can't Say

I just finished the rough draft of a novel I've been working on since last year.  I write a lot.  It's a huge outlet for me, and usually my catharsis takes the form of poems or short stories.  I've had several good ideas for a novel-length work, but none of them ever came to fruition, mostly because I got busy or lost interest.  One of writing's biggest rules is if it can't hold your own attention, as the author, then it's not likely to appeal to your readers, either.

This novel, however, was different.  I actually enjoyed the creative process and the character development.  Now that the rough draft is finished, I'm looking forward to delving back into it, reading through it, and making the necessary changes it needs to be a great read.

What's it about?  People ask me this.  To be honest, I really can't say.  Or won't say.  This has been my experience in the past:  I've come up with a great idea, and in the excitement of discovery, I blabbed.  I blabbed to family, I blabbed to friends, and something got lost.  In the excitement of telling, I sent the story out into the world before it was ready to walk, so to speak, and after that my excitement dwindled.  I had other experiences where I actually shared details of the story, and the person I shared it with didn't respect it for what it was...a truly creative work that came from the deepest part of myself.  They either didn't understand how much it meant to me, or they offered "helpful" criticism until there was nothing left.

So I learned an important lesson.  When you bare your soul, be careful who you bare it to.  Be careful when and how you do it.  This is a challenge for someone who is a generous person by nature.  We want to let everyone in our world.  We want to show them this wonderful thing we found.  We want to know them and let them know us.  Yet there is something to be said for reticence. Sometimes it's best to proceed with caution and get to know someone really well before opening all your doors.  When the time is right, then you can tell your story, and at that point, your audience, whether it's the general public, friend, family member, or coworker, will be ready.