Party Season

Winter can be a long, long season and cabin fever can set in with few symptoms to warn us that it's coming on.  I'm thankful that in our small community there are so many great events scheduled throughout the winter months, from concerts and fundraisers to lectures and parties.  All of these gatherings stimulate our minds, connect us with others and warm our hearts, despite winter's cold.  My husband Larry and I take in as many of those great activities as possible, for they bring us such joy.  In summer, we all tend to go our separate ways to outdoor activities and vacations, but in winter, we gather again and again because it's party season!

In God's Time

I really need more patience and I need it right now.  Whoops -- I guess that's not exercising patience very well.  It seems that everywhere I read lately, there are reminders to exercise patience, the latest of which was featured in our church bulletin:  "Everything happens in God's time, not ours."  As a child, I was always living in a state of self-imposed urgency.  Everything was important and it was important right now.  As I've gotten older, age and a few bumps in life's road have given me a tad more wisdom and even patience.  But, this year, I am working to heed the words of our church bulletin even more. I'm striving to remember always that I may have wishes, desires and plans, but there are times when I need to let go, be patient and allow plans to unfold, perhaps in much more desirable ways than I could have imagined for myself.  Whenever I feel impatient these days, I recall those three powerful words:  "In God's Time."

A Little Time Alone

I read a quote recently attributed to James Russell Loveall:  "Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character."  How I agree with Mr. Loveall.  When taking a Myers Briggs Personality Indicator Test one time, I found that I was nearly equal parts introvert and extrovert.  While I derive great energy from being with others and crave those experiences every day, I need time to myself, too.  That quiet time alone, without the stimulation of television, radio or internet, is when I do my best and most creative thinking.  In moments of solitude, my breathing levels off, my body slows down and my mind clears so that each thought is a complete picture, not interrupted by the static of disruptions.  As our lives get busier and busier and media messages are all around us, even held in our hands these days, we need some time to just be alone and unplugged, time to think, time to be.  That is a gift that only I can give myself and it is one I plan to enjoy unwrapping more often this year.

SNL

While waiting for my husband Larry to get home late one recent and very windy evening, I attempted to stay awake in the chair.  Despite my best efforts, I kept falling asleep, regardless of what was on TV or which of the five books by my chair I tried to read through heavy eyelids.  I knew that I'd doze, but I couldn't go to bed and fall into deep sleep until I knew Larry had blown home safely amid the gusts.  I had to laugh.  Although I've never been a mom, I felt like one that evening, desperately trying to stay awake until my loved one had arrived home.  My mom used to do the same thing when I was a college-age teen.  That's how Mom discovered Saturday Night Live.  The show was new at the time and it was truly a departure from anything my parents had seen before on TV.  Mom got hooked on SNL, enjoying the crazy skits and fake commercials, while watching the clock to make sure I blew home safely.

Sneaking in a Snake Story

Two of my good friends have been urging me to write about my growing-up years and the unique and often unusual experiences I had with a father whose occupation involved educating others about the value and virtues of reptiles and amphibians.  So, here's a story for you.  When I was eight years old, my father was lecturing about reptiles in schools in the panhandle states, with most of his time spent in Texas.  My mother and I continued to live in Wisconsin so I could have a stable elementary education.  Whenever there was a school break, however, we would join up with my father wherever he was lecturing in the U.S.  That particular Thanksgiving, Mom and I flew to San Antonio, Texas.  Lyndon Johnson was our President at that time, so we took in the usual tourist sites, including President Johnson's boyhood home.  We saw The Alamo.  We lollygagged poolside at our motel.  We visited a Methodist church where Mom and I attended a Sunday School class. We also spent a day hunting diamond-back rattlesnakes on the ranch of a teacher whom my dad had met while lecturing in a school.  To me, this was a common type of childhood experience.  It was always a mixture of "normal" and "extraordinary." Our home was always filled with college students studying various levels of biology degrees, television and newspaper reporters, learned people in the field of herpetology, all wishing to talk with and learn from my dad.  Our "vacations" were spent thinking, talking and looking for snakes.  It was all so matter of fact that it never seemed strange to me at all.  It was just what we did and the sweet memories make me wish those days had stretched out even longer.  Do you wish to hear more snake stories?  Just let me know!

Undreamed-of Gadgets

Some 65 years ago, the author Gladys Taber was writing about gadgets and her concern about the effects of innovations and inventions yet to be dreamed of.  She saw our human frailty in that once we have one wonderful gadget, we tend to crave even more, always wanting the next wonderful thing.  We pad our nests with luxuries, thinking that they will somehow buy us happiness.  When Gladys Taber wrote that happiness isn't found in the push of a button, she couldn't have imagined that some 50 years later, the world would be at our fingertips, perhaps not at the push of a button, but at least with the swipe of our fingertip on a small, hand-held screen.  I'm not against our amazing technology, for I benefit from it, but it is disturbing to me that the minute you buy a piece of technology, it's outmoded and the advertising engines rev up with even more ferocity to convince you that the next latest thing is what you really need to have, not the thing you just purchased.  How do we find a happy medium in an increasingly consumptive and changing society?

Superbly Lit

We're now into February and I can't see any Christmas lights anymore.  Some happy souls in our community kept up their Christmas trees and outdoor Christmas lights through most of January.  I'd drive by those homes just to make me smile.  At our hospital where I work, I'm in charge of the healing garden, which is brightly lit for Christmas from early December all the way through January.  With the change to a new month, we've turned off the fairyland blue and white light display.  As in previous years, some of my hospital colleagues lamented the return to a dark garden, for the lights provided a cheery welcome and farewell to employees working their shifts around the clock.  But, now that February is here, we're looking beyond the short month to the return of Mother Nature's light and the promise of spring.