The Most Beautiful Thing I've Never Written

There is a book I’m obsessed with titled, I Wrote This For You. It is a collection of photographs, with complementary messages. I read it over a year ago, and I still visit the website often to see what’s new.

Today’s post is:

It’s easy.You just wake up and say, "Today I will write the most beautiful thing I’ve ever written."Then you fail and go to bed.Then you wake up and say it again.

There is so much about this book I love, but one of my favorite things, is that the images aren’t what I’d choose. Which means they aren’t immediately obvious in conjunction with what is written. It doesn’t match, but it isn't a juxtaposition either. So . . . perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Here is the link, if you want to see more:

http://www.iwrotethisforyou.me

Balance

It isn’t until you’re feeling better that you realize how sick you actually were. The end of last week is nothing but a blur for me. I know I taught a class, I know I went to meetings, but otherwise . . . I can’t quite figure out how I did any of it. Feeling better today is as though I came out a fog. It felt great to be me again. 

Getting my life back into some kind of balance will be a challenge, and as soon as I’ve mastered it, the school year will end, and everything will change. Once I’ve adapted to that change, the next school year will begin, and I’ll start the process of trying to achieve balance all over again.

In the next couple of weeks, the optional classes I teach at the academy will start up again as well. I love all of the classes I teach. And if you were to ask me my very favorite, as with wine, it would be the last class (glass) I taught (drank). What I love most about the optional classes is that the cadets are relaxed and are there because they want to be. I get to interact with them on a completely different level. 

Not knowing whether these classes would ever take place again, not knowing if I would teach them if they did, feels the same as the analogy about not realizing how sick you were until you feel better. I didn’t realize how much I missed these classes, this type of interaction, until I started doing it again. 

If you had asked me at any point of my life if I wanted to be a teacher, I would’ve said no. It isn’t something I could imagine myself doing, until someone specifically asked me to. Now it seems like the most natural thing in the world. I love it. I cannot imagine anything—other than writing—being more fulfilling. 

And I suppose that is the key to finding balance in your life. If you are fortunate enough to be able to do the things you love, either with regularity, or . . . if you’re really, really fortunate . . . for a living, there is an inherent balance. Rather than feeling like work, the  hours spent that are defined as such, don’t feel as such. My days fly by, there may be a modicum of anxiety in the hour before a class starts, but once it does, I get lost in it completely. And afterwards, I’m not sure I can find the right word to say how I feel . . . complete, satisfied, fulfilled, validated, inspired, motivated . . . ready to take on the next thing with renewed energy and excitement. 

I personally know a handful of cadets at the academy at this point. Most that I knew have graduated. In the three classes I have taught to firsties, three of the four I know have been in them. It has been completely serendipitous that they have been. But that too, has felt so good. It has been great to see them, connect with them, talk with them. And as with the other examples I gave, I didn’t have any idea how much I missed them until I saw them again. 

I don’t know how long I’ll get to do this thing I love so much, but I’ll take every day as a gift. And rather than working at finding balance, maybe I’ll just let it happen.

Ostrander Road

Just about every Sunday, I watch CBS Sunday Morning. I don’t watch much television, and even though I PVR this program every week, if I don’t watch it at some point on Sunday, I end up deleting it unwatched. There’s something wrong, for me, about watching it on Tuesday night.

This week’s program was as outstanding as they usually are, with pieces on the Preservation Hall Band in New Orleans and Elaine Stritch. My mother and I saw her in LA when she was on her At Liberty tour. It was a raw, funny, unusual show, if you could call it that. It felt more as though she was sitting in her living room, and we had the rare opportunity to listen to her talk about her life, honestly. I laughed and cried and cheered that night. It was over ten years ago, and I still remember much of it in detail. Particularly her heartbreak.

Back to the Preservation Hall Band. It made me yearn to go to New Orleans again, and take Frank. As much as we love seeing music together, it seems natural that we would take that trip someday soon.

This week's episode ended somewhere in Pennsylvania, with a montage of cardinals and woodpeckers. And this was the piece that moved me the most.

If I close my eyes and block out everything going on around me, I can take myself back to a summer day, waking up in my bedroom on Ostrander Road. My room was on the second story of the house, and in the summer, I often slept with the windows open. A typical teenager, I stayed up until two or three in the morning, and then slept until almost noon. Then there were other days, that I would be up before dawn, wanting to be out on the road when the sun rose, taking the walk that led me along Buffalo Creek, over to Porterville and back up Hemstreet Road. 

What I remembered most this morning, was the sound of birdsong on those mornings. When my grandfather built the house, he did so on the eastern most border of his property. The dining room, with windows on two sides, looked out onto several bird feeders, a rock garden, big trees and the hill. The dining room table sat right up against the windows and on the windowsill sat bird books and binoculars.

I learned so much about birds at the table. I learned that the males were much prettier than the females. I learned about the changes in our environment, as through the years, certain species, once abundant, we no longer saw as often. The sighting of certain types of birds brought excited whispers of "Heather, quick, come look . . ."

I suppose most of us remember parts of our childhood as being idyllic. For me, the years I spent on Ostrander Road, and at our camp on Canada Lake, are as perfect memories as there could be. 

I realized this morning how much I love birds, how interested I am in seeing different species, yet not enough to ever consider becoming a birdwatcher. I wonder if it is something I will develop more interest in when I am older. I would probably only be happy doing it if I was sitting in that same dining room, looking out that same window, on Ostrander Road.

Where Do I Start?

Where do I start? The last few days, the last three or four weeks, have been a roller coaster of not knowing what to expect or when to expect it. 

I finished book three in the Crested Butte series, And Then You Kiss, and it has gone out to beta readers, many of whom I’ve heard back from. There are some storyline edits I’ll be making based on their suggestions, all of which are really good improvements to the book overall. One nice thing is that these readers have read all three books in the series, have a good understanding of the characters, both old and new, and talk about the collective group of characters as though they are friends or family. Having someone say something about so-and-so would do this or that, or not do this or that, as though they know them, is crazy and wonderful. Attempting to finish this book while on hiatus from the Air Force contract started out as a distraction, but ended up being serendipitous in its timing!

I have much to do and learn in terms of navigating the system with the new contract. What I teach and the other things I do are second nature. I’ve either taught or done most of them before. It’s the other stuff that gets tricky, like scheduling classes within the cadets’ academic schedule, figuring how who, what, when, where and why with everything else. It isn’t impossible, and quite honestly, that I’ve worked within this system before makes my learning curve minimal.

In April Doug will head to Florida to help his parents with a move. As soon as I know his official travel schedule, I’ll sit down with our boys and we’ll map out our plan for the time Dad is away, figure out which days and nights we’ll need help with, and move forward on that front as well.

Life is good—even with, or especially because of—its challenges. They say if you need something done, give it to a busy person!