Good Sunday, everyone.

A few days ago, I arrived home and was greeted by my screaming son, who wanted to know if I saw the praying mantis outside. I told him that I did not, and just as quickly as he told me all about the green-brown bug standing sentry by the front door. he vanished and resumed playing with his sister.

It wasn’t until we were ready to head out for dinner when he remembered about the bug by the door. He eagerly awaited the chance to run outside and check to see if he was still there. To my surprise, he was.

The praying mantis is such a good subject to photograph because they are amazingly still (much like the great blue heron I shot in yesterday’s post). I did not enlarge this photo at all. He was positioned and poised beautifully, and I felt like I had all the time in the world to get this shot (and a few others, which I will post at another time).

But that’s it, right? Positioned and poised beautifully. Stillness. Taking the time to savor even a few of the many moments in our hectic lives.

On this Sunday, may we all make the time to position ourselves with beautiful poise. The rest of the day may very well be filled with moments enriched with greater love.

photo: http://alittlecrafty.com

I’ve always been fascinated with Chinese characters, and the symbol for Tranquility is one that means a great deal to me.

Quite literally, the symbol depicts male dominance in the Chinese tradition, where the smaller symbol of a man’s “roof” hovers over the symbol for “woman.”

I like the explanation provided in The Spirit of the Chinese Character, by Barbara Aria. She writes, “…[the symbol] has a richer meaning, reflecting the parallel between microcosm and macrocosm. Just as a harmonious relationship between man and woman brings tranquility to the heart, peace comes when universal energies are in harmony—the forceful, creative energy of heaven above, and the gentle, receptive energy of the earth below.”

Growing up in the Chesapeake Bay region, I have lived my life surrounded by the more natural forces of tranquility, as land and water constantly battle for domination among the brackish tributaries of Chesapeake. I know. That sounds so contradictory, doesn’t it? Talking about forces and battles and domination when it comes to tranquility just seems so…unnatural.

Tranquility, though, is rooted in discipline and respect; it is the reward for the efforts put forth to achieve such a balance.

The hard part, of course, is reminding ourselves that the battle to find that balance is well worth the tranquility that follows.

My wife is gifted in the kitchen; she has the patience and natural talent to take somebody’s culinary creation and make it her own. It doesn’t come without a great deal of labor, though. She might spend hours contemplating the right spices—and their exact amounts—to compliment the main ingredient and make the meal just exactly perfect.

After all the hard work is over and we finally sit down at the table to enjoy the meal, we savor the labor and the sweat used to reach such perfection. Tranquility achieved.

Tranquility does not come without that hard work. We all yearn to find that peaceful view atop that faraway mountain or shore when the sun descends into the horizon, leaving us breathless; we forget the labor it took to take the long walk to get there in the first place.

As writers, we face that battle all the time, struggling through drafts and revisions to reach that moment of order where our writing might be considered even marginally close to providing a sense of tranquility for our readers. There’s nothing more comforting than finishing a good story and appreciating that order, that balance. We forget about the struggles the writer went through to achieve such balance.

As individuals, though, we don’t get the opportunity to display our “final drafts” of who we are on a daily basis. We live our lives in draft mode, battling that balance in full view to find those rare moments of tranquility as a result of our hard work to find that balance. Understanding that we are all in “draft mode” striving for that balance, that tranquility, might make us all a little more aware that our friends and loved ones (and even those we struggle with) are not too different from who we are.

We’re all just trying to get it right. We’re all looking for that moment that takes our breath away.

Let’s help each other breathe, so that we may enjoy the tranquility of being breathless.

Thank God for stop lights.

If you are like me, it’s not hard to get caught up in the whirlwind of life, sweeping you off your feet as you try desperately to keep up with family, work, and various social networks—real and virtual—that matter a great deal to you. In fact, we often get swept off our feet without even realizing it—sometimes for months or even years at a time. Our lives seem out of control, a pinball being smacked from bumper to bumper, rolling at unimaginable speeds toward the next event. Sadly, we don’t even know that we need to slow down.

But stop lights. They remind us the importance of seizing 30 seconds of silence to reclaim a fraction of what is most important in our lives. And, perhaps even more important, to take an inventory of the signals we’re sending out to others.

That is, if we choose to slow down.

Yesterday, with a car filled with family, I pulled up to a red light and felt myself wondering autonomously how to use that half-minute. Instinctively, I checked my Blackberry for incoming messages (with my Twitter feeds, there’s always something to read), took a sip of Coke Zero, skipped over a few songs on my iPod playlist, and half-heartedly nodded to something my wife was saying.

Really—I had no idea what she was talking about. I was too busy pushing buttons and making the most of my red-light pit-stop.

Or was I?

My daughter was saying something in the back seat, too. I glanced up into the mirror to give her a reassuring glance and nod, and started to return to my stare at the red light and begin the countdown: five…four….three…

But as I turned to look ahead, I caught a glimpse of my eyes in the rearview mirror. They were insanely intense, creased with crow’s feet with a heavy brow jutting forward in some Neanderthal-like manner.

I didn’t even recognize myself. Worse, I was shocked that I was sharing this face with those whom I loved the most.

Maybe we were all going through the motions a little—they, hopeful that someone would care; me, participating in the physical aspects of conversation; all of us, moving at the speed of light in our own little worlds, ignorant of the other life-pulses around us, just inches away.

I barely had a second to exhale and relax the muscles in my face before the light turned green, and I had to go forward once again. But that time between lights, I thought about the signals I’m sharing with the world when I let the whirlwind sweep me up.

I know this might sound crazy, but the only thing that I regret about the way I behaved during my mother’s funeral two years ago was the signal I was sending out to others at the service as I walked to and from the altar to deliver the eulogy. My face was tense; I remember thinking to myself that the message I was telling others was one of pain, sorrow, intensity.

I wanted to tell them peace, patience, gratitude, love.

At the next stop light, I put my hands in my lap and looked into my wife’s eyes while she talked about paint colors for our bedroom as well as for our daughters’—tea green for ours, a lighter, melon green for theirs. Suddenly, but without her realizing it, I think, her face relaxed a little, and she shared more about painting this weekend despite a hectic schedule.

The tweets could wait, the song was just fine, and my face relaxed.

And this time, when the light turned green, we were all going forward together, despite the whirlwind that nagged and tugged all around us. We can live our busy lives, align with the latest technology, and communicate instantaneously with the virtual masses that wait on the other side of our Blackberries and laptops. But we must also live our lives sharing peace, patience, gratitude, and love every chance we get.

Take the 30-second life check as often as you can, and offer the world the love so desperately sought. You may very well be the red light someone needs to make a change in his or her own wonderful world—a change that will last long after that light turns green.

My day ended on Friday with a few of my students performing an impromptu and largely unintentional intervention. They gathered around my desk–again, unintentionally–and randomly offered some stern advice that I needed to take a breather, that Spring Break couldn’t come soon enough. They even offered that my tension had worn off on a few others, including themselves, and that just wasn’t good at all.

I agreed with them. How could I argue? It had been a stressful week: club photo shoots, senior superlative voting, teaching at Towson U on Tuesday/Thursday, the end of the quarter approaching, two book projects nearing completion, Lines of Love soaring (such a wondrous thing, that), and my own writing emerging from some inner depth that couldn’t wait a moment more for some light in my daybook.

Throw in a few lacrosse practices, gymnastics sessions, Brownies, birthday parties, and Love and Fishes (all good, mind you–every part of it for my girls)…Yeah, you can see how it all came together in some kind of critical mass situation.

They were right. I was beat, and I needed some kind of retreat, a return to innocence, in the words of Enigma. The weekend seemed quite busy, though, with gymnastics practice Friday evening, and then a long drive to Ocean City for the OC Twisters Beach Party Invitational gymnastics meet. This would be Holland’s last meet before States in mid-April, so it was a big deal.

Trips to Ocean City have always been refreshing for me, a sort of rebooting of the soul in my return to my piscean roots: the water. But I saw little respite with this trip; the meet was Saturday night in a small gym about 20 minutes outside of Ocean City, and we would have little time to enjoy the beach. I just felt like the entire experience would be the antithesis of what I needed. Instead of providing some much-needed R&R like my kids told me I needed, I feared that it would just tease me, being so close to the water with no time to enjoy, especially in the solitude that I crave whenever near the shoreline.

We packed the Jeep and were on the road by 9:45 Saturday morning. A few stops for gas, food, and of course the bathroom breaks for my kids, put us at the Francis Scott Key Family Resort a little after 1 p.m. Check-in wasn’t until 3 p.m., though, and suddenly we found a few hours of free time to head into Ocean City.

We were all so hungry, so we stopped at the Bayside Skillet for a breakfast-for-lunch meal that topped out at $75 (welcome to Ocean City–who says it has to be summertime to blow a lot of cash in mere minutes?). We still had plenty of time to relax before we checked in (and the open-gym time for Holland wasn’t until 6:30), so we headed for the beach. We pulled over on 77th Street right by the dunes, and headed straight for the water.

And there it was, waiting for me as always. True, dependable, devoted, loving, ever-faithful.

The sounds of the waves pushing and pulling the sand along the early spring shore found me first as I made my way along the sandy path, with each side roped off to discourage further erosion of the natural barrier of grasses and sand bars. My heart fell in rhythm with the ebb and the flow of the water’s pulse, and I could not fight it; I could not resist the luring toward the waves as my eyes met the beauty of the outgoing tide. With it went my stress, my tension, all of my worries from a week that suddenly seemed too distant to recall, too distant to worry over.

I stood before the waves, lapping at my feet, sinking in the sand as I succumbed fully to this return to innocence. And it was in those moments of cleansing, of absolute clarity, that I allowed the memories to fill me.

I smiled as the pulse of the ocean was the soundtrack to my experiences along these shores. I remembered vividly the early morning walks before sunrise, the late-night runs with friends, shoes in hand. The solitary moments with guitar, listening to the rhythm of the waves and building a jam around their lead. The many-hundred walks along the cliffs fossiling. The photos, the sketches, the solace.

Just like that–in seconds, all of these experiences returned to me, a collection of memories with the underlying theme of love running through them all. Some of them were from decades ago when I was much younger; others were from our last visit just a year ago October. All of them, though, were pegs in my memories of what has mattered most in my life, all captured through the wonderful and terribly simple art of creating experiences.

These grains of sand that swirled around my feet, as the roar of the ebb-and-flow played on and on, nibbled on my toes like little reminders of the things that give us hope: love, of course, but through the relationships we build with others, or even through greater spirits that guide us along the way. “Plugging in” to the ocean’s life force this weekend recharged me with the energy and focus I need to carry on in this final week before Spring Break, where new and refreshing charges await.

We left the ocean and returned to our motel room, and then proceeded to the Invitational, where Holland placed first All-Around for the second consecutive meet. Then today, before leaving for home, we spent a few hours at Ocean City and then at Assateague, where I somehow transcended the experiences from the previous day. We combed the beach, looking for shells and other sea relics, as an early-afternoon mist enveloped us in its warm, humid cocoon. We felt protected, shielded from the less-than-natural elements that awaited us back home.

These were not experiences to leave on the beach. They joined the other memories within us, and I have no doubt that, on our trip back in a few months, they will resurface and bring us a much-needed warmth and energy to carry us beyond the stresses of day-to-day living.

Before we left the sand and the shells and the pulse of the water’s ebb and flow, I turned to face the waves just once more, close my eyes, and offer thanks for the faith in such memories, as well as for the love of good friends.

When you put the two together, it’s a powerful surge of belief that tomorrow always holds promise–for you, for me, for all of us. <3

My friend Michelle blogged about a young girl who lost her battle with cystic fibrosis last week, and I was drawn to her caringbridge site for so many different reasons. As a teacher, I’ve lost too many kids to tragedies–some in their control (drugs, car accidents) and some not (murder, cancer, cystic fibrosis). So when I see a courageous child fighting a horrible illness like cystic fibrosis and rallying an ever-expanding community of friends and family to believe in love and life and all that is good, I can’t help but join that community, join that rally, and pray for that child and her family.Haley Palmer is that young girl who died last week, but her community continues to celebrate her life and the lessons she taught all of us. Her memorial service was yesterday, and the Oklahoma city of Owasso was painted in pink–Haley’s favorite color–as a show of support in all that she believed in. A news report that aired last night featured Haley’s two younger sisters, who talked about her favorite quote:”Footsteps in history aren’t made sitting down.”

I did not know this young, courageous girl, but here in Baltimore, as I get ready for a busy but fun-filled day with my children, I take strength from Haley’s favorite quote.

Today, at 7:59 p.m. EST, marks the beginning of summer solstice, which literally translates to Standing-Still-Sun. It is the longest day of the year and the shortest night. Beginning tomorrow, the days will begin to get shorter and shorter until we reach winter solstice, on December 21, where the sun stands still once again.This is the earliest that summer solstice has occurred in 112 years–or since 1896. In my opinion, it’s the perfect occasion to mark the significance of Haley’s words.In mourning, we pause to reflect, to remember, to celebrate the life of a friend or loved one who has passed away. Our worlds stop, or stand-still, during this time, and we shift our priorities to embrace what we believe to be most important in life.

Thousands of years ago, individuals used to do the same thing during the solstice, where they would stop and take stock of the things they may have taken for granted or neglected. This is especially true during winter solstice, when in BCE times, individuals believed that the Gods were so angry with them that they decided to take away their sun. It wasn’t until a few days after winter solstice (around the 25th of December) that they realized that light was returning (the days were getting noticeably longer), and the celebration began that, once again, the Gods forgave them for all that they had neglected and taken for granted.

So maybe today–tonight especially–is the right time for us to take Haley’s words to heart. As the sun-stands-still at 7:59 p.m., maybe we can make those personal resolutions to get up and resume making our footsteps in history.

It doesn’t matter how you do it. A call to a nephew, a visit with Dad, even a return to a memoir piece you started years ago. Whatever it is, get up. Don’t let the sun go down on you. Take some steps. Make some history.

LIVE. LOVE. GROW.

(picture taken at Loch Raven Reservoir, 6/19/08, as my children fed bread to the Canadian geese)

I feel like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, though I just got all my hair chopped off today and I can’t do that mad laugh that he does so, so well.

All else, though, applies. Me -n- my Mac, we’re Puttin’ on the Ritz.

Here’s the background: I bought my G4 Titanium Powerbook at the end of the first week in October of 2001. It was a brisk autumn afternoon, and I remember leaving with my new Powerbook, clutching it as if it were the baby that would be born to us just two weeks later.

Madelyn just turned six, and as she now dances ever-so freely and innocently in this early evening, this eve before we finally turn our clocks back an hour, I write this entry on my Powerbook, a loved and worn friend resembling the Velveteen Rabbit more than anything else. The sound doesn’t work, the cd drive is cracked but usable, the firewire port is no longer on fire, and the battery has long since overheated and sports black singed marks where it just couldn’t give anymore.

It includes a 10-gig hard drive (stop that snickering!). Yet, I have successfully resuscitated it with a gig and a half to spare. I’ve got my essential software loaded, and a core 37 songs on iTunes that, when I twist the earbuds just right, I can hear Dylan, Zep, and Jerry G reminding me that the music never stops, and every little thing’s gonna be all right.

I just ordered the brand new battery pack, the one that I should have received for free when the recalls went out years ago. I saved nearly $50 on eBay (reliable seller; otherwise, I would have never taken the chance), and it should be here by Wednesday.

I’ve priced portable external hard drives, and i can get a fine 120-gig Iomega portable drive for $129, which I’ll get in the next week or so. It’s got a USB drive, so I don’t have to worry about the fire-less firewire…

This, I hope, will last until Madelyn begins 1st grade next August, when I’ll have the money to get my new Powerbook.

But that will be a bittersweet moment for me. It will be nice to have all the new technology, the DVD-R drive, the 17-inch laptop screen, and all the speed and space I’ll ever need to write and design. What I will mourn, though, is the passing of this old laptop, my friend, my brother-at-my-side since before my daughter was born. We have been through over 75 original pieces of writing that have found their way in print, and countless other ideas that continue to develop on and off this screen. We have spent marathon writing sessions in myriad coffee houses and cafes, learned of breaking news–both good and horrific–as it developed online, and of course, shared my life as it unfolded as well with all of you in this blog.

I hope my laptop, my friend, holds up until next August. He is as a part of my muse as my daybook, and I look forward to this Swan Song Run for the next 10 months as I work on another book, share my life with you, and celebrate life as I’ve never celebrated it before.

Blueberries for Sal….Do you remember reading this book when you were younger?

I have wonderful memories of my mother reading this book to me before I had learned to read. I remember asking her to read it over and over again so I could memorize the text that went along with the pictures. I wish I still had my copy of this book. I am sure that it was nothing more than a book-of-the-month knock off (it was originally published in 1948), but that wouldn’t matter to me. Just having that copy that my mother and I shared every night would be one of those silly priceless things I’d keep on my bookshelf.

We decided to take a ride up to Shaw Orchard just over the Maryland/Pennsylvania border. It’s nearing the end of blueberry picking season, and we wanted to get in our annual harvest before it was too late.

The weather could not have been better. It had just rained, and the temperature was a cool 71 degrees. The wind waved across the endless fields of corn and soy beans as we picked nearly 9 pounds of blueberries.

As we were in the fields, though, there was plenty of time to reflect about the stories my mom used to read to me, the times we would spend picking all kinds of fruits and vegetables at similar farms throughout the state, and the quiet times we would share at our cabin in River Hills, PA.

Tonight, we ate fresh corn and string beans (marinated in olive oil, garlic, and a pinch of salt), jasmine rice with a fresh homemade roasted tomato spread, and of course, blueberries. We finished the meal with a homemade peach cobbler pie. Everything but the rice came from Shaw Orchard…we could not have had a better fresh meal on a cool summer’s night.

But still, the memories linger of time spent with Mom. I miss her greatly.

This day, with each of its moments slowing to the length of no less than an hour, punctuated by the reverberating beat of my heart, a pulsed give-and-receive of life running through me and back again. And again. And again still one. more. time.

This day, where I began stuck in melancholy, missing my mother taken by cancer just 18 days ago, or 432 hours, or 25,920 beats of my heart, that give-and-receive sorrow that doesn’t know how to stop me from picking up the phone to just say hi.

I heard the rain hitting the spring Oaks and Maples, and Mom, all I could think about was you and me, sitting right there on the porch with tape recorder in hand, listening to the sounds of the spring storm bring its thunder and its rain to us as we talked quietly and away from the microphones.

This day, where another friend went into the hospital for a double mastectomy to try and beat that cancer, beat it all away, beat it back and off and into the no-mores of her life and the lives of her husband and small children.

It was back on June 14, 2006 that my sister received her first drops of chemo, just after 1 a.m., and she and her husband held hands and acknowledged the tough road ahead of them. The chemo would be tough–tougher than anything she experienced 16 years ago when all this started. My brother-in-law started sending out email updates to the whole family, and we waited eagerly for the next one to come along.

Since then, she has battled hard, died twice and then revived, fought the odds, no matter how bad they looked.

Since then, Mom lost her battle, our friend begins hers, and I shame myself for not making better choices in my life and still being afforded a happy lifestyle and relatively good health.

So tonight, amidst these feelings of I Don’t Know What running through my head, my heart, my me, I get two emails just minutes apart from each other.

The first is from my brother-in-law, with the unbelievable news that my sister just took her last drip of chemo, and she is done. Finally done with the treatments, the surgeries, the life-threatening side effects, the nausea, the quarantines, the everything else we as healthy beings can never begin to understand, to appreciate what it means to go through that and still come out on the other side loving life more than we have ever known possible.
On the heels of reading this, my sister calls, and I am reduced to moments of silence as I try to not lose it over the phone. She is free of treatment! She is alive, is grateful, is full of life and of resolve. I tell her I love her, hang up the phone, and open my second email.

It is much like my Brother-in-law’s first note or two that he sent out nearly a year ago. It is heavy with hope, laced with exhaustion and fear. They are at the beginning of their long road, where somewhere in that forest of fear and courage and all that is unknown lies the secret to embracing the genuine meaning of life.

The cycle continues. As my sister’s IV dries, another one begins its drips, and all we can do is continue to pray. to offer strength. to throw out love. to believe that celebration is not about what may someday be but what is at this moment, this hour-long beat of time that we were never meant to squander or let pass by without even a glimpse of thanks, of hope, of belief.

We are here this moment, this beat. For each of us, may we find the way to treasure the quarter notes within, the eighths, the sixteenths, and recognize the wonderful energy each holds, no matter where we are along the journey.

Greetings, all:

First, let me thank all of you for your kind words, your emails, your cards, your everything. I am honored to know all of you, whether it be in person or online. All of you have made this passing much easier to bear, and I am very grateful.

With each day that has passed since the funeral, I have felt the rush of emotions coming and going with no rhyme, no reason, no warning. But today, I immersed myself in myriad projects that made me feel good. I constructed the trampoline for my kids. We bought various yard ornaments and bird feeders to bring some new life to this once-tired yard.

In other words, I began my return to living fully with my family, to writing genuinely for me, to working on the final production needs for my book.

I’m emerging from the sorrow and am living my life a little more simply, a little more purposefully, a little more beautifully.

It’s a good feeling.

I’m taking a step back, though, and taking inventory of a few things. My health, my career in education, my general workload, what brings me energy and what takes it away….I’m taking a step back and thinking about how all of these things work together–or don’t.

I don’t know. It’s a good time to do this, though. It’s not like when I was 24 and my father died and I went charging through this life barbarically yawping Carpe Diem up and down the east coast. Times are different now. I’ve got a family, and I’m 42. When Dad died I could have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Today, I struggle to make it around the block without feeling some kind of pain in my back or my legs due to my excessive weight.

So, times have changed, and they continue to change. But, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late to make a shift in my thinking and in my actions to bring about a better life for me and for those around me. I’d like to think that I still have a lot of living left to do, and taking care of myself is the first step in making it easier for me to do everything else.

So, I’m back. Back to the blog, back to the daybook, back to the classroom. I’m back to living, and I’m back to loving. I’m resurfacing with a new look on life, and with a greater appreciation for this time we have here on earth.

Let’s all enjoy it together as peacefully and as fully as we may be able to do in the coming days, months, and years, God willing.

Love to all,

Rus

My children do a wonderful job of informing me after the fact when it is “opposite” day. You can imagine what it’s like, being asked a bunch of loaded questions, answering in the negative on every occasion, and then being told that it’s opposite day, and I’ve just given them the right to eat a gallon of ice cream, stay up until midnight, and install a surround-sound dvd stereo system in their room.

Of course, none of these things actually happen as they might wish, and they know they won’t. They just like to offer a good “Gotcha!” whenever they can. It’s in that moment, though, when the possibility exists for them, and the suspended belief occurs for me, that is priceless. That transition of thought, that split-second of Just Maybe.

This is the way I feel on Thanksgiving day. Every year, I enter this four-day break feeling like I’m in that transition. Possibility exists for so much to happen. Reality as I have known it is suspended indefinitely, and myriad thoughts of a simpler life rush through my mind.

This must be the same experience a turkey feels when it flies from one feeding place to another. A good turkey flight can top speeds of 50 miles per hour, but they are not built for the long run; endurance is not their thing. Flying is a matter of survival for them, or at the very least, a quick bus that carries them from lunch to dinner.

Today, I am flying. There are three more days ahead of me, and a good lot of hours remaining in this first day. In mid-air, I imagine the possible ways to simplify my life, to be with my kids more, to lose the weight I absolutely must, must lose.

I imagine the life I always dreamed I might someday have.

And in that flight, in these days that will pass, all things may seem more possible than ever before. Every ounce of me will believe this. I will believe this flight to be forever. The endurance flight, if you will. Destination: Eternity.

But in a few days my kids will come up to me and pull a “Gotcha!” They’ll tell me the ride’s over, it was really opposite vacation after all, and there are no real ways to simplify right now. There are no possible ways to lose weight, despite the myriad meaningful reasons to lose a good 100 pounds.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll be the turkey that doesn’t stop for dinner and goes a little farther into the night, facing daybreak head on.

Maybe these four days are the beginning of that enduring journey.

All I can do is hope, keep flapping my wings, and stay in the air…

May all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Love to all,

Rus