Our Bucket Lists

The sweetest story I’ve ever told is the one when Dad died the Wednesday night before Easter in 1995.   

He had been diagnosed with lung cancer 6 weeks before, a non-smoker preacher.  The nurse said it was in his genes.  I drove to Michigan from Georgia with my children 4 weeks later to say our good-byes.  But when the nurse called us all back within 2 weeks, I wanted to go again, alone.

He was lying in a make-shift bedroom on a hospice bed in the formal dining room of their home.  7 of us 8 children surrounded his bed (Bennett, the one who himself died a year later, had been with him earlier in the day).  We chatted and laughed nervously. 

Then Mom walked in from the kitchen.  In her early stages of Alzheimer’s, with hands on her hips in utter exasperation, she said, “WHEN is the funeral!?!?”

I, sitting at the foot of the bed massaging Dad’s feet, said with a giggle, “We won’t know, Mom, until Dad kicks the bucket!”

HAHAHA!  Even Dad started laughing…and then began:  “That reminds me of the grandpa whose little grandson was visiting him in his study, playing with the old waste bucket.  The grandson,   tossing his toys in and out of the bucket, asked if he could have it…..”  And without finishing the story, Dad trailed off into a 6-hour coma before dying.

We laughed because he hadn’t finished the story, which woke him up with a giggle to start the same story all over again from the beginning.  Each time he got close to the punch line, he’d trail off again, we’d laugh, he’d wake up with a giggle, and start all over again.  This happened 4 or 5 times.  He never finished the story with grandpa’s answer (which we already knew from his sermons):  “One day, yes, but not until I kick the bucket,” to which the grandson replied “Grandpa, could you kick it now?!”

That was Dad’s last conversation with us before he kicked his bucket.

Now, to connect the dots.

We all know that our Bucket Lists come from that kick-the-bucket idiom.  That is, we list what we really want to do before we die!

What I’ve always wanted to do for eons is a European river cruise.  Don’t ask me why, though I’m guessing it’s the castles.  Now that I live in Europe, you’d think it’d be as easy as pie, right?  Wrong, if you have a Dutch wife who doesn’t get it!

Flash back 1 ½ years to when we had American guests visiting us a week before their week’s river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel.  When we drove them to their boat and stepped onboard for all of 10 minutes, said wife immediately whispered, “Oh, I think I could do this!”

Long story to say that this Saturday we leave on a 15-day river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest, the earliest cruise of the season in the cheapest room on board at two-for-the-price-of-one tickets.  Do we care that it will be cold?  Are you kidding?

Some more dots.  Though the above natal chart renders me naked, see that 9^th House of long-distance travel?  One of those 2 planets is Jupiter in his natural home, giving me “Good Luck” and expansion in travel.  In fact, our added 4 days in Budapest over Easter is when I expect Dad will be smiling down on us. 

As Astrid jokingly says, if we're gonna die anytime soon, please let it be AFTER our vacation! 

So…do you know what YOU want to do before YOU kick the bucket?!

Seeing Is Believing

How many times have you said you wouldn’t believe something unless you saw it with you own eyes…especially in this day and age of photo manipulation!

And how many times have you unwittingly documented something with your camera that got someone else out of a fix…because they were able to see it though your eyes?!

Here’s how it happened:

Last April, almost a year ago, demolition began on the two-story apartment buildings on two sides of our senior complex here in the Netherlands.  By December it was all knocked down, leveled, kaput…with nothing left but the dirt to walk on.

First, bricks were knocked out to release the bats.  Then the hazmat suits arrived, clearing out any traces of asbestos lurking inside the 50-year-old structures.  [We who watched just feet away wondered if we, too, should have been insulated?]

When the salvage crews arrived to tear off the roof tiles, everything broke down to a science.  What to keep and what to toss became a methodical, poetic flow.  Leave it to the Dutch, I always say.  They know what they’re doing.

As I nosed around with the camera, I eventually met Hoomer, the foreman.  After introductions, he kindly asked if I’d send him my photos, which I did through my blog posts.  And that started a long camaraderie throughout the next months as each phase of the demolition ended. 

Hoomer operated the steam shovel that picked up building pieces like toothpicks.  It was a game to him, leaving no brick unturned.  If he could rescue a window in its frame or an entire staircase, he’d treat it with kid gloves, placing it gently in the salvage truck.

Once nothing remained but rubble, the rock crusher came in to grind cement into gravel.  It would become the foundation of roadways here in the Netherlands, Hoomer said.  Nothing would go to waste.

By then it was December.  The project was finally over and done with…I thought. 

Wrong! 

Now was the time to shore up the land, so to speak…which had been the problem to begin with.  The buildings had been torn down [way too young at 50 years!] because the land below sea level was collecting too much water, messing up the sewer and drainage systems.  [Chalk it up to global warming, I say, because we know the Dutch weren’t dumb 50 years ago.  They know how to pump out water!]

Which is where the unwitting part comes in. 

Truckload after truckload of dirt started arriving.  4234 cubic meters of dirt, to be exact.  At 16 cubic meters per truckload, do the math:  265 truckloads!

So out came the camera again to document the real last phase of the work.  Now, PAY ATTENTION. 

First, worteldoek (root-control tarps) were spread out on the ground before the dirt was dumped on top.  Until new apartments could be rebuilt (once the economy righted itself), grass would grow…without weeds or roots popping through.

However, when we bumped into Hoomer during last-minute sidewalk repair and cleanup in January, he asked if by chance I had taken any pictures of the root tarps being laid.  The city’s environmental agency had received his bill but wasn’t convinced he had done it, wanting proof by digging through the dirt to see it with their own eyes.

Ironically, those were the only images of the entire project I had not yet processed/posted.  Once I sent them to him, he wrote back to say I had saved his ass day! 

You know what they say:  the camera never lies.  And some things cannot be manipulated!  Seeing is believing, even if it’s 2 or 3 persons removed.

On Coloring Outside the Lines

I’ve started coloring again! 

All those books I collected 10 years ago…12 of them, with Celtic designs, knots and mazes (some as stained glass on translucent paper); Native American mandalas; op art and prismatic designs; Viking art…all of them I brought over The Big Pond 3 years ago to my new Dutch home. 

Along with my 100-felt-tipped-pen set.

However.  I do NOT like coloring outside the lines!  In fact, whenever I do it accidentally, it bothers the heck out of me.  And that’s putting it mildly. 

[It also bothers the heck out of me that the above scan has many color gaps/separations within the lines that are not in the original.  I'm such a darn perfectionist.  But this post isn't about that.  It's about what's outside the lines.] 

Which is to say I’ve never liked that metaphor:  coloring outside the lines.  After having it drummed into me since birth that I must stay INSIDE the lines, or else, why would I ever want to break the rules.  Especially since I’m a people pleaser!  It’s stuck deep within my psyche.  And it’s made me a very uncurious, safe person.

Somewhere along the line it starts seeping in:  Wear purple when you’re old.  Eat dessert first.  Dance as though no one’s looking.  Quit your job if you don’t like it.  Get more for less.  Ignore the curfew.  Skinny dip.  Sneak out.  Live like you’ll die tomorrow.  Stop conforming.  Rebel against the system.  Do something stupid.  Belly laugh.  Embarrass your kids.  Pick up pennies.  Bend the bullet.  Break the rules. 

Speaking of breaking the rules, we're supposed to do that as photographers…and writers…as though it’s expected of us, right?  Learn the rules first…all those stops and whistles…and then try to manipulate them into something different, better, more artistic, more…you.  Textures.  Poetry.  Anything that makes you more than ordinary.  Outstanding in your field.

Then sometimes it surprises us, when we give ourselves permission, to find we really like when that happens!  We trust ourselves to inch closer to the edge because change needs to happen.  Some of us even jump and just go for it.  We cross the line.

Many women before us made decisions that changed their world…or the world: 

Joan of Arc.  Sojourner Truth.   Jane Austen.  Simone de Beauvoir.  Catherine the Great.  Shirley Temple Black.  Cleopatra.  Pearl Buck.  Marie Curie.  Annie Leibovitz.  Amelia Earhart.  Anne Frank.  Indira Ghandi.  Helen Keller.  Frida Kahlo.  Billie Jean King.  Meryl Streep.  Mother Theresa.  Georgia O’Keeffe.  Rosa Parks.  Pocohontas.  Eleanor Roosevelt.  Margaret Thatcher....

They all colored outside the lines.

Lots of heroes to trust, if we can’t yet trust ourselves…while we find out what makes us tick, giving ourselves the leeway to follow beats of other drummers, without caring a hoot what anyone else thinks.

Is it risky?  Is it scary?  Is it against the status quo?  Yes, Yes, and Yes.  But the alternative is downright…BORING.  Marianne Williamson sums it up: 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be? 

One of my over-used felt-tipped pens gave up the ghost the other day.  It was one of my favorite colors that I milked dry over 10 years.  Maybe it’s a sign I’m supposed to start using new colors? 

And just maybe that's one way for me to start…coloring outside the lines?

The Answer is Within You

From Medicine Woman Tarot, created by Carol Bridges

But how exactly do you find it!

For several weeks at the end of the old year I was plagued by jumbled thoughts and overly-sensitive emotions about an issue.  I tried to put my finger on it.  Things weren’t quite right.  No sense of camaraderie.  The familiar was gone and nothing left felt cozy or comforting. 

I couldn’t enter the New Year with this detritus.  It would destroy me.  I needed clarity but knew it would take work to find it.  I’d have to go back to the desert to dig up dry bones and connect them.  Breathe life into them.  Find an answer.

Where did this come from?  Why was it affecting me like this?  How could I fix it?  Did I even want to!

So, I breathed in and out.  In and out.  Deeply.  Slowly.  Deliberately.

As I cradled the deck of cards in my hands, I knew the answer was within me.  I shuffled the cards, slowly.  I breathed over them.  Held them lovingly.  They’d pick up the warmth of my psychic energy and would not disappoint.  I believed in them.  They believed in me.  The answer was within me.

I chose a 3-card spread:  what’s been holding me (past), how does it sit with me today (present), and how can it take me to a higher level (future)?

I stopped shuffling and broke the deck, laying out the top 3 cards in order, left to right:

1.  PAST:  2 of Arrows/Swords
vacillation, defensiveness, repressed emotions, blindness to truth, doubt, paralysis, in the dark.

A choice needs to be made.  Unable to make decision.  Stuck.  Fear of consequences.  Disagreement or conflict with someone.  Overwhelmed. 

Interpretation:  Must be honest with self, clear the air and move on.  Take responsibility for my own desires and limitations.

2.  PRESENT:  4 of Bowls/Cups
loneliness, introspection, apathy, inertia, self-absorption, self-pity, despair.

Resentment/disappointment because expectations haven’t been fulfilled.  Let down.  Feelings of isolation.  Deeply hurt.  Dissatisfaction.  Strong desire for change.

  

Interpretation:  Reevaluate present circumstances.  Take responsibility for impasse.  Adopt new approach.  Restore myself.  Move past worries/fears to love myself and accept love from others.

3.  FUTURE:  17 Grandfathers/Star
spiritual vision, birth, independence, calmness, free-flowing love, trust, tranquility, peace of mind, serenity, generosity, hope.

Faith in better future.  Renewed trust in life.  Light at the end of the tunnel.  Wish-fulfillment.  Joy.  Help is on its way.  Happy outcome expected.  Spiritual prosperity.  Clarity.

Interpretation:  Release doubts and fears.  Act in accordance with my true nature for tranquility and inner peace.  Serve and give with gratitude.  Stay calm and relaxed for efforts to come to fruition.

Within 2 days of the New Year, I found my answer.  I had clarity and the weight of the world fell off my shoulders.

I grew up on daily meditations, using the Bible and/or devotional books for what we called Quiet Time.  After my divorce in 1990, ostracized by the organized church for being a gay woman, I delved into the world of my maternal grandfather, one of America’s astrology forefathers back in the ‘20s.

Shortly thereafter I discovered Tarot meditation and found hundreds of decks from which to choose.  Someone said to choose a deck that spoke to me!  When I found Medicine Woman Tarot, with deference to Mother Earth and Native American healing, I immediately chose it.  Or perhaps She chose me, to guide my new journey.

And thus began the travel into my inner, psychic self.  I really do believe the answers are within us and can be found, regardless of what tools we use. 

So many questions answers; so little time.  Let’s go find them in 2013!