Ups and Downs

What a beautiful morning sunrise! It lifted my spirit and besides, the end of January has arrived and for me, that means we are over the winter hump. It’s time to buy garden seeds, time to plan the garden, time to start looking for beginning shoots of crocus and daffodils. Time to think green. Each storm that comes is a bit warmer. Snow is slushier and likely to melt quickly. Hoorah, for the coming spring. I do love spring.

I have always kept mementos from life’s experiences. As I wrote a few blogs ago, ephemeral keepsakes connect me to past experiences. It’s as though letters, papers, ticket stubs carry in them all the senses and details I need to remember. Like most writers, I’m obsessive about saving my work, but as a teenager, I wasn’t so compulsive.

Yet, I always placed the piece of cardboard that backed the package of notebook paper in my binder for doodling on. (I doodled on everything—theme books, napkins, textbooks. As my mother can attest—ironing boards.??? ) I’ve kept most of the cardboard backings. What a perfect micro-picture of the times. Names of my latest crush, song lyrics, drawings of flowers and eyes, drawings of hairstyles, slang, class schedules, Beatles song lyrics. I love it. Just looking at it carries me back to that time and those feelings. And here on the one I keep with my high school poetry I’ve written: Spring has sprung, the grass is rise…I haven’t changed.

On my junior high and high school poems, I filled two 110-page theme books both pages with poetry. Classmates wrote a small portion of the poems. It made me smile to read these tiny ghosts of teenage angst. What made me search them out, in the first place? To write this blog. And the very emotions in these poems are the exact emotions I needed for the short story I’m working on. I never once thought about looking these up as I struggled to get the story right. And then, bit of information I really needed (and didn’t know it) to bead into the story was a trivia question on the morning news.

I’m amazed how often this happens. This serendipitous 'help.' I know if you’re looking for it, often you find it. I know the mind works on these problems even when we don’t realize it but every time this happens, it just fills me with such joy, awe, and certainty I’m on the right track. (The last piece of detail I need, I need to get by going to the Battle of the Bands 2010 held Feb. 26th. Part of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. This year I’m well enough to go. Now, am I brave enough to go into all that teenage energy?)

After the last two frustrating weeks, even a small snag with the gas fireplace didn’t keep me from my writing. I think my latest read is helping more than I could have hoped. (The Writer’s Portable Therapist; 25 sessions to a creativity cure by Rachael Ballon, Ph.D., “Doc Hollywood”) I replaced the batteries in the thermostat and bundled up. Blessed are foot-warmers.

And then as I read the morning paper, sad news. My first boss, dead, too soon. He was a good guy. Just a regular, all around nice guy who taught me much more about working and business that he ever imagined. That was many years ago, before equality was the norm and I was the first ‘girl” he’d hired or worked with. He wasn’t sure I was suited for work in the pet shop, but he gave me a chance, most likely because of my love of animals. As it turned out, I was much better at handling the large dogs than he was. And he acknowledged that.) It was, often, dirty, stinky, even sad, work. I had to prove myself, but he let me without throwing obstacles in my way or lowering expectations.

Needless to say, as memories scroll through my mind my heart hurts, but there is also thankfulness of knowing him, remembering those times. This too, will settle, erode, polish and show up in my work.