The Time of Our Lives

Don't ask me how we'll ever top this one, but for our first wedding anniversary on the recent 5 February weekend, Astrid reserved a floor of this windmill B&B.  See that middle window just under the platflorm?  That was our Bed part of the B&B, a full-fledged apartment.  With gale-force 'Level 8' winds swirling around us all night, 39-46 mph, we slept like babies.   See the window below us on the ground floor?  That was the Breakfast part of the B&B the next morning.

When Astrid first Googled, she discovered The Netherlands has only two such B&B windmills.  She picked this one in Onderdendam, in the NE of the country, 125 miles from home.  It can't be compared to anything else we've done thus far.  We had the time of our lives!

That got me thinking about the phrase, 'the time of our lives.'  In the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing, one of my favorites of all time, it was "I've never felt this way before."  That's the first thing I think of.  A FEELING.  Sure, it's a feeling often based on what you're doing but I'm guessing some have stayed in that same B&B and didn't have the time of their lives.  Not like we did.  So why did WE?  What makes something be the time of our lives?

I have a feeling it's more than what we check off our Bucket List or the Create-a-Wish thing we choose if there's only one wish left to be granted us.  It may not be something grandiose or hugely spectacular or at some exotic location.  It may be something as simple as playing golf on the pro-circuit course of Atlanta, as wished by an elderly lady when I worked in assisted-living years ago.  She got her wish and had the time of her life.  Why?  Because she used to play golf a lot as a young woman and just hankered to play again, even if only putting around on the warm-up green alongside the course.

Some things are just deep inside the chambers of our souls.  Where they came from and how they got there we may never know.  Windmills, for instance.  It's like I lived inside one in a past life.  How else do you explain it?  And when did I know they were there?  How was it that I 'recognized' them when I first came to this country of windmills, as though I always had known them?

When I Googled the phrase ('time of our lives'), I read about our internal, biological clocks...always ticking.  Always knowing.  About how we gain reconciliation with time like a valuable commodity. About the perspective we live it...in the past, the present, or the future.  About how we spend our days doing, feeling, hoping, and what controls our time.  How do we juggle our work and leisure, for instance?  How do we feel time?  How do we age?

Now throw this in:  staying in the windmill was a special experience for Astrid but she said it was planning the joy for me and seeing it on my face that gave her the time of her life.  She knows what's in the deep chambers of my soul and she recognized it when she saw it on my face!  Of course, it wouldn't have been the same for me without her.

And that raises the question:  can we have the time of our life alone, without someone else?  I would guess, so, yes...like the golfer.  But how can you beat sharing it with someone else.  Especially when the wind is blowing! 

The Dash Between the Bling-Bling

Okay, since we've been talking about textures lately, how's this for going over the top!  BUT I do have a point, so get over it for a minute and think about what happens between Christmas and New Years....

It's just one week!  One week between two of our biggest Bling-Bling holidays of the entire year, perhaps winding us down and then up again more than any other week of the year.  Maybe?

I'm guessing all of us who have or have had kids off from school remember this week as vacation time.  It was a no-brainer, if we worked, to make sure we, too, were on vacation, if allowed.  Most of the time we'd take the kids back to Michigan to be with my family at the cottage.  It was family time and full of wonderful memories.  If we were lucky, we got snow, something we didn't get in California or Georgia.  And at one point during the week, usually on the New Year's end, we'd share a family Christmas of sorts with a big feast.  Then we'd fly back home, usually just before the ball dropped on the new year.

I didn't grow up going to New Year's Eve parties.  In fact, more often than not I was sound asleep in bed before the clock struck midnight on the last day of the year.  I had already said nighty-night to one year and fully expected the new year to be there when I awoke.  No fanfare.  No hoopla.  No bling.

However, I know I'm the exception to the rule...until this past New Years when the seniors here in our retirement community helped me make up for lost time.  And it'll happen again this year when we'll all bring in the New Year together long past midnight.   I look at some of these 70 and 80-year-olds and can just imagine what kind of life they once lived.  They know how to live and are teaching me.

But I digress.  This week in-between!  It usually means a week of rest and sleep, right?  A time to just relax and let things go.  No need to clean things up after the Christmas festivities.   The mess is okay, for once, especially if the kids are home.  We're willing to let things go for a change, to wind down and not be so Type A.  Maybe we even get to play with our special Christmas present we hoped Santa would bring...and did.

Now, back to the image and textures.  I know it looks totally depressing, which is not how I envision the dash between the bling-bling.  Rather, I was thinking instead of the gray days of winter, when the snow is no longer there/fresh/white and things seem kinda, well, blah.  Not blah in a negative, depths-of-despair way, but just blah.  The kind of blah that happens when after all the hubbub you don't know what else to do but take a nap.  A nap sounds good, right?

So in case you need permission to just be blah and veg out a bit, live in the dash between the bling-bling and let yourself go.  We probably should do it more often but my personal feeling is this is the one week of the year gifted to us to simply wind down, expect nothing, and coast into the New Year.  After all we did last week/year, don't you think we deserve it...we women of a certain age?! 

On Pleasing All the People All the Time

It can't be done, of course, but why does it take some of us so dang long to figure out!

Repetition aside, I was born into a preacher's home, #3 of 8 kids, where everything we did was under scrutiny of Dad's congregation and community (or so he thought).  There were many things we were not allowed to do because  we were preacher's kids.  What would people think!  Add to that the #3 positioning and I became what John Bradshaw calls a Golden Child in my family.  I did everything right.  I was a people pleaser.  [I wasn't dumb!]

First, I studied hard and was Salutatorian of my high school class.  I graduated from the well-respected Univerity of Michigan.  Then I became a missionary-linguist to a tribal group in Peru whose language had not yet been written.  After coming back home to marry Bill, we worked in a ministry to college students for 16 years.  It was all like clockwork.  Doing what everyone expected from me.  High up on a pedestal.  Beaming people all around.

Then I fell from grace.  Kaboom.  After 21 years of a good marriage, Bill and I divorced because my being gay just wasn't going away, no matter how hard I tried.  So we did the right and fair thing for each other...but in the process, the Golden Child became Humpty-Dumpty who fell off the wall and couldn't be put back together again, at least not in the same way.

When Preacher Dad found out, sister Nancy told me he nearly had a heart attack.  Immediately, and without giving it a second's thought, I exclaimed to her, "Shame on him!"  Instinctively I knew in that moment that if anyone in the world should have been there for me, it would have been my preacher dad who supposedly knew about the love and grace of Almighty God!  But I shocked myself.  Did I say that?  Suddenly I knew I was figuring it out.  You cannot please all the people all the time, not even the ones you love the most.

So the Journey began.  The Journey of being me, myself and I, no matter what people thought.  I was 45.

Now fast forward.  When I first started posting my images on Shutterchance 4 years ago, I had no clue what I was doing.  I had never taken a photography course and barely knew how to use my camera other than to point and shoot and upload my pictures.  Within the first two weeks I received a couple comments that "criticised" what I had done.  I was so devasted I almost quit.  Thankfully, I DIDN'T but swallowed hard and paid attention to what was being critiqued.

What I have discovered, however, good critisms and critiques notwithstanding, is that photography, like life, is something where you simply CANNOT please all the people all the time.  "It's too dark.  I don't like how you cropped it.  You shouldn't have cut off the top.  It would look better in color.  I don't like your texture."  Etc., etc.

I am learning to curb my tongue, graciously accepting the "opinions" of others, even if I don't agree with them.  I don't say "shame on you," nor do I even wince that much anymore.  I do better if the criticism isn't harsh, but the older I get, the more I pay attention to what daughter Amy told me when I started:  "Mom, it's YOUR blog and you can do whatever you want!"

Having said that, I still die for at least some of you appreciating my images!  [I'm not dumb!]  How's that for climbing back up on the pedestal wall!  :)