Don’t make excuses.
Category: DEATH
Enough
I Wish You Enough
I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.
I wish you enough pain so even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.
*
I think we need to talk about “enough” today. I feel like our society does not ever have enough. We don’t have enough money. Time. Love. Youth. “Soul.” Well, that’s simply not true, is it? We have all we need. We can choose to have enough of all of those. We may not know it when our bills don’t get paid. Or we are out of time to do the things we want. We may feel unloved today. Or we may feel old. We may not have “soul” as we approach the written page or the musical paper or the dance floor. “I got nuthin’.” Or “I don’t have enough of what it takes,” we say to ourselves.
That may be true today. But tomorrow, we may have that glimmer. That spark. That patience. Or we may have a way to save or make money. Find time to do what we want. Or we stop to feel a little extra sliver of appreciation for the few things we have. Even an old beat up pair of shoes is actually pretty sweet if we stop to be grateful, and not compare ourselves to someone down the block or around the corner. We may choose to be glad to have any shoes at all. Or feet.
That’s it. We can do so much if we stop, take stock, and appreciate who we are and how lucky we are. Our attitude determines our life view. And of course, everything is relative. We didn’t know we had enough until we wake up one morning and we’re out of whatever “that” was. Food. Money. Time. Because if you don’t wake up, for instance, you are definitely out of time. But for today . . .
. . . you have enough.
The poem above is published in my collection, Giving My Self to the Wind.
Add A Brick
I stood up in front of the small crowd of people last night. Naked.
Kidding. I might as well have been. Two other authors and I were reading from our work, and I was the least accomplished of the trio by far. So, I can choose to engage in self-flagellation . . . or I can view it as a brave opportunity to add a brick to the building I’m constructing. The building of me.
Notice… the building at left has fire escapes! That’s me, too. I’m a building with what I hope are little escapes to help me exit the building when I need to save myself. OR they can equally be ladders or steps for when my wonderful friends and family come up to the floor I’m on that day and chat. Solve problems. Hang out. Are you ready for a climb?
If I’m not building (or being a building), I’m backsliding. I’ve stopped growing. Stopped trying. Stopped embarrassing my self — when that by itself is a lovely (albeit painful) way to get better. Immersion. Hanging it out. Hearing and seeing other people do it differently.
I was not horrible, no. But I am not “there” yet either. Which is silly. We’re never going to get there until we’re dead. OR until we stop trying.
So add a brick today. Or as Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
*
Here’s the event, by the way. If you want to come by, we love audiences… even if it scares us! And here’s a photo of me at the event. With clothes on.
Mrs. B
Mrs. B didn’t own a computer. She had a cell phone for three months but never used it. She told her daughter to take it back. She had time to take long walks at the park, read, do crafts, and go to lunch with friends. She attended live lectures, went to the library, enjoyed museums, picnics, and face-to-face conversations with squirmy children who weren’t used to ‘talking’ without a keyboard, a cell phone or a computer— even the little ones. She could see the kids’ expressions, and help them understand social interplay the old-fashioned way. Sometimes she wore a clown nose. I want to be her.
Mrs. B doesn’t need a computer and doesn’t use email or instant messages. She writes notes to people, does her banking inside the bank, visits friends, and has the bridge club at her house once a month. The book club is on the third Thursday of the month, bridge club on the second Tuesday, and baby quilters on the fourth Friday. Mrs. B. volunteers at the local hospital stuffing envelopes and helping the cooks put little white cups on the trays for the patients. She wears a hairnet, gloves, and an apron for this job. The apron comes down to the floor, and the extra small gloves hang off her tiny hands like a four-year-old dressing up in her mom’s clothes. The hairnet is covered by a big blue surgical hat of which the hospital purchased tens of thousands at a huge discount, making Mrs. B look like a cross between a blue mushroom and a midget chef. Her died red hair pokes out from under the blue hat, clown style. I still want to be her.
She laughs easily. She has a razor-sharp mind and an expanding heart, especially for children. Her favorite volunteer work is reading to kids in hospitals, schools, churches, and libraries. It is becoming a lost art, and she cried when the safety laws required that she wear a badge, get fingerprinted, TB tested, and background checked all so she could be a chaperoned “aide” in the room while she read to the kids.
“All I want to do is entertain and teach the children,” she said. The laws have changed, the world has changed, the people have changed. It became too much of a hassle for her and eventually, she had to cut way back because they couldn’t find a chaperone. It was a loss for the kids and left a huge void in Mrs. B’s wonderfully abundant heart.
One day, all the cell phones on the earth stopped working, (Let’s pretend. Okay?) and the Internet coughed and blinked out for a 24-hour period. Mrs. B’s life did not change at all, except that the people in the retirement home where she lived came down to the central meeting room for a change. At first, it was a trickle. Then walkers and wheelchairs arrived in a steady (if slow-moving) stream. Finally, they flooded the room. The area was awash in blue hairs, and the chattering and laughing brought life back into the home that usually served as the Grim Reaper’s waiting area.
New acquaintances became friends. The next day, cell phone service was restored along with the Internet. The newly connected oldsters brought homemade, wobbly-lettered placards to the dining area. “INTERNET GO HOME!”
The real Mrs.B is gone now, but I’d still like to be Mrs. B some day. Maybe I can. Just turn off the phone. Turn off my computer. And step into the world where ferns and rocks and leaves wait patiently for me to saunter by. My phone? What phone. Nope, it is Mrs. B now. You may call me Mrs. B if you’d like.
Temporary
We just dropped off our twenty-year-old son at the airport. He is so, well, twenty. After raising two boys to manhood, I know that Kahlil Gibran was probably right: Our children are only on loan to us.
I had heard it, but I didn’t have a clue of what that meant. When they were little, I fooled myself into thinking they were mine. But now I’m not so sure they ever were. Yes, they pretty much did what they were told—most of the time— because they didn’t know any better. However, those times didn’t last. And the boys often made their own decisions and mistakes, because that’s how they grew up. Childhood is temporary, as are many other things. The speed of our children’s progression to adulthood from the womb makes my head spin. Why is this?
If our children are on loan and temporary, then so are marriage (‘til death or divorce do us part), our age, our highs, and lows. The seasons come and go. Winter fades to spring, which yields to summer and on to fall. There is no constancy in life except the fluidity of movement of one moment to the next. There is never a time when everything comes to a screeching halt. Never. The idea of it is so unfathomable to humankind, that most religions have an afterlife. Good or bad, heaven or hell, it’s a continuation of now into the future. We are almost never here and now, because now is like a freight train with “then” before it and “someday” after it, and “here” lasts only until that freight train leaves the station.
That means that there is no real past when you’re in the present. We cannot retrieve our children as they once were. We cannot ever again feel them inside our bodies, in our arms, or on our backs. That was temporary—a phase that is no more. I am convinced of the temporary nature of the past. Why, then, can I not see that the future is a fleeting, unattainable bundle? How insane am I that I do not see this? We project forward as if there were a way to control the future. There is none. We prepare for the future, we save, we worry; we think we can control outcomes, but alas, the future has no bearing on the present. It will be what it will be. That does not mean we don’t try to achieve our goals. No, rather, it means we try to plan our lives so that we must live only in the present knowing that any other form of living must negate the thing of life itself. It is so rudimentary but almost impossible: many people spend more time outside of now than in, and it is no wonder that the passage of time blurs on its way through life’s train station.
If there is no “present thread” (maybe because it is invisible) holding this day together, then it pulls apart, like a sweater unraveling, and the fabric we think we’re wearing is naught but a tangle of yarn on our mind’s floor.
Because life is temporary, my kids are on loan, my mom, brother, and spouse are fleeting, and everything is but a smearing of consciousness. I must stop. I should grab the hands on the life’s clock, hold onto them like the devil, and slow them way down as if my life depended on it. Why? Because it does. It just does.
Kathryn Atkins 2006
FINISH IT!
You: “Who me? Are you talking to me?”
Your conscience: “YES. You. You have started a lot of things. Let’s finish one.”
You: “How?”
Your conscience: “I am SO glad you asked. Take a moment and write down all the reasons you can’t finish. If you need help, I have a short source for you to check out”:
You: “Wait. That’s not me in the photo!”
Your conscience: “It could be. It’s time to finish your thing — whatever it is before, well, you know.”
You: “That’s not fair! I’m busy.”
Your conscience: “Look through this PDF. We think you will find a few pages that can help you see what you’re afraid of, and how to fix it!”
Published!
This published book, Giving My Self to the Wind, is a way to say ‘I was here.’ I stole that idea from Thomas Kail, the director of Hamilton. I hope he doesn’t mind if I borrow it because it’s true. A headstone doesn’t do it, and I cannot hold my kids responsible for substantiating my existence.
My 298-page (!) book opens with a quote by Gustave Flaubert that also explains why I wrote and published Giving My Self to the Wind (GMSTTW): “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” Isn’t that why most people write?
The collection’s title comes from the penultimate line of a poem I wrote in my teens. My adoptive mother embroidered the poem word for word in a sampler: a photo of it is inside the book. The sampler became a source of inspiration, and a reason to write.
This anthology represents stories, essays, poems, character sketches, and a few articles. I cover many topics, themes, and sins. For that reason, I included an index! Without being over-the-top dense, the index saves the readers’ time. What’s in it? Thong underwear. Aging. Adoption. Coming of age. Unmarried and pregnant. Snoring. Caffeine. A fort! A convertible. Pain. Showing up. Meditation. Pajamas. Writing naked. Hookers. Dancers. Cell phones. Letters to my bio mom and dad are in there. I never met either one of them, I don’t think.
Writing a book is the height of courage if you don’t mind the depths of fear and deep plunge into the “sin” of pride. So, every artist of every kind faces the same angst, and I’m willing to hang it out because, in fact, it does say ‘I was here” in a way that not even my kids, or a photo, or a memory can do. Or a headstone.
Deadlines
Deadlines are the lines drawn in the sand, the air, and on calendars. They are imaginary lines past which one should not go, or you’ll die. Die of what? Failure? Disappointment? Losing a job? Not answering a need? Shame?
Deadlines are a form of communication. “I need this by noon so we can move forward on the project.”
There should be no room for negotiation in a deadline. There is no room for negotiation in death, is there? So why do people push up against deadlines by crushing the work to be done up against the wall of the deadline? To see if it will move? Will it give in like a loose door, or an unsure mother or father? Kids know this instinctively. Will the rules change if we keep ignoring them? Will Mom and Dad change their minds? Will my manager forget? Will the rule/deadline go away in the rush of life?
Some of us use faraway deadlines like beacons for purposeful activity, plotting steps from A to B in the final goal to arrive at Point Z. Others of us assume that there’s still plenty of time and that there’s no use getting all excited — nothing can be gained by starting too early, they say. It wastes time to start too soon, they say. Besides, working under the pressure of a close deadline works in in their favor, they think, as in, “I work better because I’m more focused if time is short.”
Oh? What if your computer breaks? What if the electricity goes out? What if you get sick? What if?
I like deadlines. I like setting up a meeting… it gives me a deadline. I like to be early, to have room and time to make one last pass, one final reading, a once over to see if I left a sponge in the abdomen of my patient before they wake up. (I wanted to see if you were paying attention!)
There’s the Leonard Bernstein quote to throw in here, too. “To achieve great things two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” I think that’s the reason deadlines are SO important. Somewhere along the creative lines of life, the concept of not quite enough time leads us to finality. If we didn’t have deadlines, we would continue to fix, trim, and self-edit until nothing ever, ever was produced. “Perfect is the enemy of good,” as they say. Someone has to say those three wonderful words, “It is done!” (“Not I love you,” which are another three wonderful words.)
I like the pressure and excitement of a looming deadline, but sometimes, just sometimes, I procrastinate… to feel that teeny rush. Shucks. My cover is blown.
I write about the things that I would like to do better. Largely because I’m not perfect. Until I am, then, I’ll remain ever faithful to setting deadlines, and hopefully keeping them, unless the other deadline… the big one, like in a database somewhere with my name on a date… keeps me from my deadline here in this plane.
Death in the Garden of Eden
Death sat curled up in a large swinging wicker chair in the long shuttered Garden of Eden. The warm breeze smelled of plumeria. A colorful macaw bobbed on a branch of that famous tree. The snake near the tree knew who the beautiful woman was, and recoiled from her, even though she really had no jurisdiction over the animal kingdom. Still the snake stayed his distance.
A bright green frog peeked up from under a leaf. The rest of nature’s creatures crowded around in a careless exhalation of extraordinary beauty. Death went there sometimes to think things through. She loved the natural habitat and the irony: the Garden of Eden had actually been the beginning of the end: the birthplace of man’s mortality. Had those two humans (symbolic or not) never been “human” by succumbing to temptation, they would not have known death or Death, either one. The latter smiled at the irony.
Did Adam and Eve not know these words at the time: “… and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”? Death decided they didn’t know or chose not to heed the words because they were lead into, and they were not delivered from. The forbidden fruit was the temptation on that fateful day. Today, the Deathlist is the forbidden fruit. It’s man’s quest to know all there is to know. And this knowledge, this Deathlist, has been as nasty and unforgiving as the sin in the Garden of Eden. And as before, they’re paying for it.
“But perhaps we can still fix it,” Death said to those creatures around her. “The Deathlist that is. Adam and Eve’s little slip is way too far gone. But the Deathlist… maybe yes.”
Death arose from her chair, nodded to the pretty frog and raised an eyebrow in the snake’s direction. He flinched. Death chuckled, pleased with herself, and left.
© Kathryn Atkins 2016
E Is for Eternity
Eternity — it was the last thing I thought about when I died. I was supposedly going someplace (as they say) for a long time. In fact, they say the place you go will be the place you stay for the rest of time. I cannot fathom this any more than many people can fathom living with the same person for all one’s lifetime. But the fathomability of all things varies with each person’s fathom factor, which may change as one ages, or may be one of those things stapled onto your DNA as much as your eye color or your baldness factor. I would like to think we have seasons of fathomability.
Spring sees growth in everything. Change is the order of the day; newness rules: buds, leaves grass, trees, chick, puppies, bunnies, all that stuff. Everything is new and feels good; anticipation sprays the air with an aroma of future, excitement, lust and baseball, for those that like the sport, which I don’t. But I do know spring. I like spring. It hits me in different ways all the time. I crave that edge, that indefinable “What’s next?” that pushes me to know it’s time to energize my creativity and push forward to the next thing. God will steer me as he has always done. Spring rocks.
Summer pushes a hold button — a lazy sit in the sun and read button that carries suntans and waterskiing and vacations in its bag of tricks. It’s the end of school days for some, a marked change of pace regardless of schools just because it’s hot. Swimming pools fill, beaches overload, air conditioners do, too. I can only hope the summer of my eternity isn’t the same heat as the rest of my eternity, or I’ve really goofed, unless lazy is the button I push and I have a lazy eternity — which I can’t like very much, unless that’s what I’m supposed to learn in my eternity, because I haven’t learned it here.
Fall is my second favorite season. It’s transitional. It’s beautiful. While preparing for the cold winter eternity, it begins with a cooling of the evenings even if days stay hot through October here. And then, the colors burst in a crescendo — only to fall like my ability to be clever at the end of a long day of pushing against that heavy door hoping to find something, anything on the other side. Sometimes we’re lucky. Those are the good days. Sometimes we have to keep pushing. I am able to fathom an eternity of fall. It’s a beautifully crisp, stout and sure season that lets in passion. Yes. That works.
Finally, the winter does come, covering me in negativity: a dirty snow. It’s not the white fluffy snowflake snow, but the coal-gray, smoky, slushy, shoe-wrecking snow of the city. So, I cannot fathom this eternity because spending the rest of my time in a dirty-snow city would suck. My fathom factor for an eternity of winter is exactly zero. Maybe minus something.
It could be important to question where we’ll spend eternity. I don’t know. Maybe instead, we should ask in what season we are spending our lives. For we don’t really know there is an eternity. In fact, eternity might be right here. Right now. Who’s to know, really?