balloons and beauty

We spent Labor Day weekend with our kids and grand-kids in Boise. They have a tradition of going to the balloon festival on Saturday morning. We have tried to go with them before, but the weather didn't cooperate, so the balloons couldn't go up. We wondered about their insistence that we go: we had to get up really early (on a Saturday morning!) to leave the house by 6AM. We stopped and got donuts and milk along the way, but we were at the park just as the sun was coming up. Clouds came and went, but the day was pretty nice (even if a little cool). I have to say, now that I've seen it, I can see why they make the effort. It was amazing. The announcer gives the clearance to inflate, and, suddenly all around us these giant balloons start filling and then rising. We were up close to see them go. And they flew right over our heads, many of them waving, some of them tossing candy from just above us.

Last week I wrote about the glow worm caves. They were something to see! And when I was at the balloon festival, I found myself thinking how beautiful it was--all those varied colors and shapes floating by against the clouds and sky. This time, though, the beauty was man-made, not nature-made. Still, it was breath-taking, and I was reminded that beauty comes in many forms. Now that the leaves are turning, maybe it's time for a trip to the mountains and try nature-made beauty again?

beautiful world

Last week I was in New Zealand. I loved the tour of the Hobbit village--all those colorful round doors! But I can't stop thinking about a tour of Waitomo Caves.

For one thing, they are beautiful caverns. Pink stalactites and stalagmites in graceful swirls in every glance. I kept thinking that it was real. Real. It took millions of years to form. But we could see something like this that Disney had made. It could look exactly the same. But this was real. This was created by the beautiful processes at work in nature, not fabricated by man.

The breathtaking aspect of these caves, though, were the glow worms. Glow worms--yes, like the nursery song--are real! They don't exist in very many places. Lots of caves in New Zealand and Australia, a few in the British Isles, one place each in the US (Alabama), India, Pakistan, and Morocco. Rare!

All glow worms are insects, but they are not all the same. The reason for the glow and the part of the body that makes the glow differs among the different kinds of worms. The ones we saw use the lights to attract bugs to eat. It seems kind of gross, in some ways. And when they showed us the webs that string among the worms, that seemed a little creepy. But when the guide took us in a boat, in a slow river, in the dark, without lights, the view was amazing. Magical. Like something I have never seen before. A night sky filled with millions of stars, so close they feel like they hang in your hair. Something beautiful and odd and wonderful and secret. Lovely.

technology

I caught my grand-daughter with watching a movie on her mom's phone:

I don't know why she decided to watch her movie in such a position, draped up the stairs. It must not have been too uncomfortable, though, because I think she watched two episodes of Bubble Guppies.

I am amazed at little children's attachment to, interest in, and facility with technology. This grand-daughter is 2 years old. But she can use the correct remote to turn on the TV and switch viewing to Netflix or Amazon, depending on what she wants to watch. If she plays with my phone, I have no idea what the settings will be the next time I use it. She found the remote to the digital frame we have; the next thing I knew my son in Boise was calling asking me why I was sending two pictures a minute to his email account. I wasn't doing it. Somehow Tatum had figured out that she could email the photos from the digital frame. Since she doesn't read in the traditional sense, I know she didn't know the email recipient, but still. . . she was doing it.

So, when I think how attached I am to my phone and all it does, and when I think of how fast technology changes, and when I think of all these 2-4 year-olds who use any kind of technology like they were born to do it, I do wonder about the future. If I, who came late to technology, still find it difficult to live without it, what will they do? At least I have meals where I leave the phone somewhere else and look at/talk to the person I am eating with. I see couples at restaurants who never talk because they are both on their phones. I see my own grandchildren texting each other when they are in the same room. Is this our path? Technology has so many benefits. I love it. But I can also see its challenges. I hope little people like Tatum are up to it.

Perspectives

We drove to Idaho this past weekend to visit with one of our sons and his family. The road was fine, but we went through several patches of thick fog. For long stretches of time, it was hard to tell the sky from the ground.

Even when the fog lifted at brief moments, the world beyond the fog was all white and gray. In the fog, my eyes strained to see very far ahead of me, but I had to wear sunglasses because the glare was so intense. It was bleak and it was beautiful.

I am reminded that the way we look at things can often make them become what we want to see or expect to see. The angle I look from, the lens I use. . . all of these make a difference in my seeing. I try to keep positive, to look from a position of goodness, but sometimes life events make that difficult. I hope the hours of driving, of striving to see well, will be a good reminder to look well, to see good no matter what.

Reflecting

I had to give a keynote address a few months ago. The theme of the conference was "Students as Explorers, Teachers as Guides." I developed the center of the talk to teachers by comparing different kinds of guides I've had experience with through the years with different kinds of teachers.

When I went to develop the part about students as explorers, I tried to consider all kinds of explorers. I was giving the address at a conference in Yosemite, so, naturally, I did some research on explorers in that area. That was very interesting. But I also considered explorers in my own life. As I did so, I recalled that both sets of my grandparents had moved to Alaska when my parents were still in high school, before it was a state. I know what the state was like when I was growing up: primitive in so many ways compared to the way we live here and now. I think about how long it would have taken them to get there and how seldom they would have been able to see the family members left behind in Oregon and Idaho. Leaving like that--moving to somewhere far away and without the communication conveniences of today--would have been a difficult choice to make. But both sets of grandparents did it.

What an example of exploration, of the risk-taking and adventuring explorers through the ages have needed. I have that in my heritage, and I shouldn't forget it. I am proud of people I came from.

ice and snow

I am not a fan of winter: ice, snow, cold, and more cold. Yes, I was born and raised in Alaska and lived there the majority of my life. People think that means I must like winter or at least be used to it. I'm sorry. Extended time in dark winter does not make a person like it. It could be just the opposite. My father-in-law and I used to dread the signs of impending winter in Alaska: when the fireweed blooms at the top of the stock, when termination dust shows up on the mountain tops. We'd call each other, naming the signs, dreading the oncoming winter together.

And, after two years ago this week when I slipped on ice and ended up with a smashed wrist and (ultimately) three surgeries over 4 months to resolve the issue, I'm even more negative about winter. I walk very carefully and drive carefully and dread going when it's slick. Our house is on a hill, on the very spot where cars seem to spin out (going up) or start the slide (going down), so I know the sounds of slick before I even look out the window. I dread the big piles of dirty snow that get plowed up along the sidewalks and then turn to ice as the days warm and cool. It's all yuck to me.

But then there are moments of beauty in winter that make me pause and consider the other side, too. The shimmering icicles. The moon on the fresh snow. The loveliness of snow falling softly through the glow of streetlamps.

And so I try to remember that there is beauty around me, even during the winter. And there is beauty in people I might not normally like. . . and in so many other aspects of life. I can find beauty if I look for it.

This I Believe

I believe we can do hard things. I'm reading my students' postings about how hard the end of the semester is and notice one student's comment: we always survive. I believe we can survive hard things.

When I was working on my Master's degree, I participated in an experimental program the university only offered twice. The price was good--the cost was great. We went to classes full time two summers. In between, during the school year, I would attend classes every other weekend:  10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday. I was teaching junior high at the time, so I would teach five days, go to classes for two days, teach five days, and then have two days off. I had six children at home at the time. My family agreed that I should do it, so they were great in picking up some of the home pieces (my husband even tried to cook a turkey for one Sunday dinner--disaster!). The load was tremendous. In fact, it got so bad that I had tremors from typing and writing so much (on my students' papers and writing my own). My mother was convinced I had a tumor. I didn't. I had stress. I had a constant tension headache, which I ignored. I had other ailments. When my back went into muscle spasms just bending over to pick up a piece of paper, I went to the doctor. Turns out our bodies give us signals. When we are under stress, if we ignore one signal, it will give us another. . . and another. . . and another: until we pay attention. I survived.

A few years later I started a doctoral program. The schedule was more spread out. Still full time classes in summers, but not on weekends. Night classes, two a week. I was teaching high school now. I would drive from school into Seattle twice a week for classes that lasted from 4:30-7:30 or 5:30-8:30. Then I would drive across Lake Washington to my home: to kids and homework and prep for tomorrow's teaching and anything else a mother/wife/teacher/daughter/church member has to do. In some ways, it was easier. I had weekends back. But the workload intellectually was much more intense. I thought I was handling it. I was a person who handled things, even if I did get physical symptoms. Until one day in the University of Washington library.

I was doing research and went to the copy machine to make copies of some articles to study in more depth at home. Standing at the copy machine, repetitively turning pages and pushing buttons, I lost my breath. I couldn't breathe! I started gasping and weeping. I didn't know what the matter was, but I knew something was wrong. The weird thing is that no one stopped me as I made my gasping, weeping way out of the library to my car. I made a lot of noise trying to gulp in air as I drove across the bridge--and to a friend's house. Why not my own? I don't know. But when she opened the door, she knew immediately what to do: she pushed me into a chair, pushed my head down, and brought me a paper bag to breathe into. A panic attack. That's what I'd had. I'd heard of them, but had never had one. My friend's daughters had, so she knew. How could a person panic copying articles at a copy machine? What was there to panic about? What I learned is that we all have limits. I was older, but I had never learned my limits. I know now more about myself and about others. I don't judge like I used to. We all have limits--and they are not all the same.

I finished my doctorate degree. I can do hard things. I learned how to take better care of myself. I learned that I don't have to make hard things harder. I learned I could let some things go: I didn't have to keep every ball in the air. I could take a detour now and then. I made choices about what was a priority in my life and in my family's life. My house wasn't as clean. We ate soup from cans or scrambled eggs and toast a lot more. I learned little signs that it was time to let something go, time to take care of myself. I learned that I could still push myself, I could do hard things, but I could also be okay with not being my best all the time. I learned to be okay with "this is the best I can do right now--and I'm okay with that." And even more, I learned to accept that in others: someone is unkind or doesn't do what I expect? Maybe that's just the best they can be right now.

So, I believe we can do hard things. We can also make them harder than they need to be. But we can also accept ourselves for doing our best, even if that best isn't quite what we hoped it would be in our minds. That, too, is a hard thing.