that's mrs. mediocrity to you

And so, pickles.

Lots of pickles have been made, 74 jars total, bread and butter last Saturday, dill yesterday. Jars and jars of pickles that aren’t even pickles yet, because you have to wait for pickles to pickle.

With pickles, you learn patience. I like things that teach me patience, I don’t come by it naturally.

Gardening taught me a lot about patience. The cycle of life, the growth and the bloom and the setting of seeds, prepraring for the next generation. This is the life of a flower.

My friend Katie, who is really more than a friend, will be 84 in just a couple of weeks. My mom calls Katie “Blossom.”

84 years is a long time. Long enough to learn about patience. Long enough to come to terms with the cycle of life. Long enough to have lived through the worst thing that can happen, and survive. Long enough to do more than just survive, long enough to relearn how to live. To giggle and to carry on, through endless years of pain, both physical and emotional. To find joy once again.

Katie was born with both hips dislocated, 84 years ago, before they knew how to fix such things. Her son, who is just shy of fifty, was born the same way. But by that time, his time, doctors knew to pop his hips back into place just after he was born. Problem solved.

And that son, the one just shy of fifty, was Katie’s second son. Her first son, if he were alive, would have been 58 this year. She mentioned this while we made pickles. But her first son is not alive, he died when he was six, in the kind of freak accident that could happen to anyone, at anytime, these things just happen.

Only it happened to Katie, who had already, at that point in her life, gone through dozens and dozens of painful surgeries, spent her whole childhood having surgery, her whole life in casts and crutches and wheelchairs. After one of these surgeries, when she was quite young, she was left in a room under lights to dry the cast she was enclosed in from the waist down. But as it turned out, the lights were too hot and the cast started on fire.

Katie, at all of four feet, nine inches tall, has the spirit of a giant.

Many years ago, when I was sixteen, I dated her son, briefly. That didn’t work out, but my friendship with Katie remained. And then it expanded to include my whole family, until essentially, we adopted her as a grandmother. My parents and Katie and her husband spent a lot of time together years ago, before her husband died. Since then, my parents have taken care of Katie in a million small ways. They are like that. Good people. Her son lives out of state now, my parents and myself are her emergency contacts.

But this wasn’t supposed to be a story about Katie, it was supposed to be a story about making pickles. It is hard to tell one without the other. But okay, pickles. My mom and I went to Katie’s and we sliced and we sliced and we sliced some more. Cucumbers, onions, peppers. We put the cucumbers on ice and then we waited three hours for them to crisp. And then later, we simmered but never boiled, and we filled 22 jars, hot jars, hot lids, we wiped their mouths and we tightened down the tops and then, pickles.

During those three hours of waiting, we talked and we laughed and we listened and we admired Katie’s latest doily, which is amazing. She sits there while she watches baseball (Yankees) and crochets these intricate doilies or she knits mittens, dozens of sets each year, just to give them away.

And my mom talked, about her mom and her father, how they used have a huge garden, how they would can everything, even venison. How the smell of the pickles was taking her back to her childhood, which wasn’t the best of times for her, either.

And there we were, three women, 84, 68, 47. Almost two hundred years of living between us. But compared to these two women, my life has been simple, easy, a blessing.

Through all of this slicing and waiting and simmering and chatting, we giggled.

And then I vacuumed Katie’s house and emptied her garbage while she made us egg salad sandwiches for lunch and we ate and talked a little more. The house is getting too hard for her to handle, alone. She is in pain, constant pain, her hip and her spine are literally crumbling. My parent’s house is getting hard for them to navigate, so many stairs. My mom is worried about my dad, her sister, life.

And even through all of that, still, we giggled. Katie, who has a million reasons not to giggle, ever, giggles quite a lot. And it makes me smile and laugh, and at the very same time, it breaks my heart, just a little.

In the end, when we had finished, there were 22 jars of bread and butter pickles sitting on Katie’s counter.

Jars filled with spices, cucumbers, onions and peppers,

love and tears and memories and friendship,

and one whole day’s worth of giggles.

The best pickle recipe, ever.

::  ::

p.s. I will tell you about the 52 jars of dill pickles another day. And if you want the bread and butter pickle recipe, I have posted it here.

Yesterday I had lunch with one of my best friends. We talked for two hours straight, about life and change and patterns and life. I gave advice and got advice and on the way home, I thought about that, about how wonderful it is to have friends to share what we’ve experienced along our path. And then I thought, but what have I learned?  Do I have any insight to offer?

Because the more I learn, the less I know.

I feel like that in itself is just the right amount of wisdom. To understand that there is so much I don’t know, can’t know, will never know.

I am totally okay with the not knowing. Actually I am more than okay with it, I love that I have figured this out, relatively early in my life. It feels a little zen, that phrase, and is one of my mantras, along with this one: the only person whose behavior I can control is my own.

It all sounds so simple, until you think about it, apply it, live it.
I guess that is the whole concept behind a zen phrase, right?

And perhaps I am just really stupid and should have figured both things out a long time ago. But I didn’t, I only just figured them out in the last five years. But these two phrases have, in so many ways, changed my life. For the better, and better late than never.

Why doesn’t life come with a manual? They don’t teach you this stuff in school, they teach you math and science and grammar (well, they used to teach you grammar) and maybe even how to make a pizza, or build a bird house. But they don’t teach you how much you don’t know about life. They don’t even hint at it, they just send you out in the world to be blindsided. No one tells you how many times, in how many ways, your heart will be broken. How many moments of joy you will witness. How many people will mark your days. No one teaches you to appreciate the beauty that is life.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have listened, back then. When you are young, you think you already know everything. I wonder what happens when you are old, really, really old? Do you understand at the end, that you know nothing? And is that a relief? I feel like it would be.
I feel like that is where I want to end up.

I chose this path, and I like the direction I am headed in.

I know that much.

And just now, that is enough.

today

today is your moment

you should take it

you should embrace it

you should shine

It is hot, so hot, way too hot for May, I want to go out and play,
in the sun, in my garden, and work up a really good sweat.

I want the sun to be sauna, cleanse my body, my soul, I want
to bake til I’m done to perfection.

I want to outlast the flowers that wilt in this heat, stand up tall, stretch my arms, drink the light.

I want to fill an old jar with cold lemonade, tip my head, let it run down my chin.

I want to veer off a path filled with trillium and fronds, find a spot that is dappled with shade.

I want to stand in the middle of life’s endless road and watch heat shimmer up from the pavement.

I want to pull up a chair when dusk comes to call and listen to birds say goodnight.

I want to feel the cool grass beneath my bare feet and watch as the fireflies frolic.

I want to count the planets, say their names one by one, and call them home like children.

I want to howl at the moon just because it is there and and seems to be begging for silence.

I want to lay down my head, sleep the sleep of the dead, when my body just aches with exhaustion.

I want to wake in the morning with sun in my eyes, all shadow removed from the room.

It is hot, so hot, way too hot for May,

I want to walk to the edge of the ocean.

If I take my contact lenses out, or my glasses off, this is how the world looks to me.

My vision is bad, really bad. I started wearing glasses when I was in fourth grade. And each year, they got stronger and stronger and stronger. For I while, I worried that it would just keep getting worse, and I would end up being declared legally blind. Finally, when I was a sixteen, things leveled off.

But even before that, my mom used to say that I saw the world through rose-colored glasses. And while I liked the sound of that, I had no idea what she meant. When I turned thirteen, she gave me a tiny little pair of antique spectacles that had red lenses. She gave them to me and she cried… saying that she hoped I would never stop seeing the world that way.

Through rose-colored glasses.

It is fairly easy to pull this off when you are young, easy to be optimistic, open-minded, innocent. Easy to look at the world with wonder. And I know what she meant, now. At thirteen, I was dreamy, a romantic, trusting. I was naive, in the way that it is okay to be, when you are young.

There was a period of time, right around then, when I started getting up really early just to watch the sunrise. I think this was also right around the time I started writing poetry. And I am not a get up early kind of girl, but I did, for most of the summer that year.
Just because. I still remember those mornings, the way they looked. The way I felt.

But as we get older, cynicism starts slowly moving in, one book, one sweater, one box at a time. It takes up residence in our hearts, in our minds, and it can be hard to kick back out. We stop doing things we love, just for the sake of doing them. Time gets in the way, the lack of it. Life gets in the way, things go wrong. Our way of looking at the world changes.

I still have those glasses. I’ve held on to them all these years. I pull them out every once in awhile, and peek at the world through rose-colored glasses once again. Just to remind myself to be optimistic, open-minded, to look at the world with wonder.

I can’t feign innocence, those years are gone. I can’t pretend that everything is always coming up roses, especially on days that are filled with weeds. But I can refuse to replace that naiveté with bitterness. I can refuse to be jaded.

When I grow old, I want to be the old laughing lady. The one with the rose-colored glasses, sitting in her rocking chair on the porch each day at sunrise. I want to greet each day with wonder. I want to end each night with hope.

My vision hasn’t changed all that much since I was a teenager.

My view of the world is still blurred around the edges.

But the light looks really pretty, doesn’t it?

Tuesdays Unwrapped

How did that old song go? We learn the truth at seventeen…
I loved that song, then, but I realize now that there is so much you haven’t learned at seventeen, so many truths the world still has to show you.

My niece is seventeen today. And for her gift, she requested a post about her, humble girl that she is. So, I thought I would share a few of the things it took me longer than seventeen years to learn…not that I’m finished, yet.

Don’t give up too much of yourself for love. Ever.

Your heart will be broken, more than once. But you will survive. You will do more than survive, you will grow, each time.

The world is a tough and crazy place. It is also wonderful. It will,
at times, knock you down. But you will always get back up.

Be confident. And when you are not, fake it. It almost always
turns into the real thing.

Be sure to laugh, every day. I mean it. There is always something to laugh at, even if it is yourself. (Just call if you are ever short on possibilities, you can laugh at me.)

Stand tall. You are already tall, so don’t slouch. Stand up straight. Tower over life.

Don’t give in when you know you are right. Not right as in correct, right as in righteous. And understand the difference.

Learn how to compromise. It is a valuable tool that makes life easier. For everyone.

Learn how to forgive. It is a valuable tool that makes life easier.
For you.

Dance. Sing. Be happy. Without caring what anyone else thinks. Whenever and as often as you can.

Live with grace. Say please, and thank you, and always hold the door open for the next person.

Never stop learning. Keep asking questions. The more you learn,
the less you know.

Make waves. Especially when standing still is worse than the problem.

Go out into the world. Explore. Expand your horizon.

And most importantly, eat lots and lots of pickles.

Happy Birthday, Goofball.