Once upon a recently, my family held our every three-yearly get together. The designated location this year was Denver, home of my oldest sister, and within hootin’ distance of a few other relatives. I used to travel a lot, especially to the UK, but in recent years… not so much. I am in pet jail, for one thing, and finding a good pet sitter is hard. I am BUSY, for another, still very much working when most of my siblings are retired.

But they are my family. They have known me longer than anybody else has, and I love them, and what the heck, Colorado is just a not-very-long plane ride away, so off I went, muttering about my rudbeckia will die for lack of watering, and I REALLY should be working on my Christmas novella (though I am in truth feeling a little stuck regarding the plot), and they will all ask me, “about the writing,” and then their eyes will glaze over when I tell them “about the writing…”

I am scared to fly, can you tell?

I arrived safely to Colorado, and though I have been in this part of the country before, high summer shows it off to wonderful advantage. Such scenery! Such skies! And immediately upon exiting the airport, I felt a sense of lightness because No Oppressive Humidity. Take a shower and your hair actually dries the same day. I ate well and often, I chatted up dozens of relatives, I played with Legos (youngest niece is five), and felt the lovely intense sun at 9000 feet above sea level.

My novella had to take a pause, though I am a firm believer that if you want your mind to be creative, to think new thoughts, you have to present it with new information. New experiences, like making small talk in the interminable Budget car rental line, new words (never heard the term “side quest” before. I think it means procrastination or maybe frolic and detour?), new places (like the Butterfly Pavilion). Get your brain out of predictive text mode… it’s a theory.

So I had a wonderful time and did not write one word. The best part though, is when I got home, I walked out of the airport and thought, “Oh, thank heavens. Humidity, sea level! I can breathe!”  My rudbeckia was only a little thirsty, my cats were delighted to see me (and I, them), and I have some ideas for where the novella (working title A Gentleman in Winter) needs to go next.

Has travel ever given you a positive reset? Helped you appreciate home a little more or see home a little differently?

One of my dad’s graduates students, an Irishman, noticed immediately upon arriving in the United States that Americans don’t have a third place. Everybody back in Dublin had a preferred pub (their “local,”) or a football/cricket/rugby/shinny/bowls club, that wasn’t home and wasn’t work. It was a purely social space, often offering food and drink or some activity, where the other regulars knew by looking at you whether you’d had a bad day or had nailed that big presentation.

“You Americans don’t have that, which is why you’re so lonely.” Michael reached that conclusion in the 1970s, but maybe he was prophetic because the data seems to be, we are, indeed, lonely. Adolescents are especially lonely, and for them it’s bad and getting worse. Of course, in Ireland, if you move from your home town on the east coast over to the west coast for a better job, you are still less than 200 miles from the fam. Americans move an average of 11 times, and my situation is probably not unique. I live in Maryland.

Daughter and grands in Oregon (see photo left). Sister in Colorado. Sister in San Diego. Brother in Oregon (four hours from daughter). Brother in New Mexico. Brother in San Fransisco. Brother in Utah.

So maybe we have big distances in the US and we tend to be peripatetic. We are also sucked into our screens, and many of us are working two jobs just pay the bills. If we had a third place to hang out, we might not invest the time to go there just to hear about Harold’s bad day or Glenda’s latest crush.

But we probably should. One of the proven benefits of volunteering is that it puts us in company with people with whom we automatically have something in common. You might not see eye to eye with your fellow literacy volunteer on much, but you both agree that being able to read matters. That’s a place to start, a shared value, and the strongest relationships rest on shared values.

This business of being socially linked with others is on my mind as it relates to political strife. I’m pretty sure that loneliness increases in parallel with polarization, in a diabolic chicken-and-egg dance. Emotional strength and resilience, though, are enhanced when we have strong social networks (so is our immune system). But how and where do you form those networks, when every restaurant is polluted with big screens, the public libraries are having to cut hours and services, and a short night at the bowling alley will cost–at least-$100 per player?

I go to the horse barn, and am mighty glad to so do. Where do you go to hang out, interact with people who share your values, and challenge yourself to be a little forthcoming toward and accepting of your fellow humans?

PS: The Amazon print version of An Heir of Possibilities now available. Look for an Advanced Reader Copy blast in a week or so.

I was waiting for a meeting to start when the lady next to me asked how my summer was going. “It’s going… too quickly. I am busy, but I don’t seem to be getting much done. It’s August, and I still haven’t scrubbed, sanded, and repainted the porch. I’m running all the errands, tending to all the chores, using all the hours, with little to show for it.”

She nodded. “Work that has no end. Not a project you accomplish and can admire, just the stuff that just fills up the day and has to be done.” She absolutely nailed it.

That, I says to myself, is a blog post. (I hope to say this to myself at least weekly). My friend’s comment put me in mind of the 1975 Icelandic Women’s Day Off. Women were making on average at the time about 60% of what men earned for the same work, and the ladies were fed up. They organized, they strategized, they publicized, and for one day, 90% of the women did no work inside or outside the home. Women’s Day OFF.

Within a year, the government had legislated equal rights and equal pay. I think the “no work inside the home” element of that strike was crucial. (They could not call it a strike because some women could be fired for striking, but not for a day of leave). Of course, guys have tedious, repetitious tasks in their lives (most notably, and in some cases singularly, taking out the trash). But the bulk of the grind, be it logistical, emotional, parental, or practical, falls to women, at least in my generation.

I believe this gender imbalance has the benefit of making women less dependent on external validation. You scrub the potty because it needs scrubbing and the alternative after a very short time is untenable. Nobody says thanks, nobody admires the sparkling clean potty, but you know you made a difference. I also think having to just turn the crank–on the groceries, the routine pet care, the elder care, the house work–means that if a woman retires from a day job, it’s much less of an adjustment.

We never did invest our entire ego in that old job, and we are inured to finding meaning in contributions that never get an annual review, much less a raise. We appreciate the value in tending to a to-do list that is largely “to do again and again” even if that’s contrary to the whole myth of “work hard and get ahead.” Work hard and rest up for the next round, because that laundry will never do itself. Work hard and enjoy the relationships in your life, because those are the people who appreciate you regardless of the state of your porch paint.

Those are the people who might even help you get that porch project done, in fact.

That said,  I am enough in thrall to visible accomplishments that whole days of quiet maintenance work don’t entirely satisfy me. Most days, I need to write a scene, teach a solid riding lesson, draft a grant proposal, do something that moves toward new ground rather than stewarding a livable status quo. I am well aware though, that new ground needs that solid foundation of a livable status quo, so this is me, making the grocery run and sweeping the kitchen floor.

Where do you get your sense of accomplishment? Who tells you that you did a great job?

PS: I got together the pre-ordering links for A Gentleman of Very Few Words. Print version will come along closer to the publication date.

My mom was a walker. She prayed and walked, socialized and walked, got space from my dad through walking, and probably brightened a lot of other people’s days with her generally friendly demeanor. She walked a LOT, several miles a day, well into her eighties.

Then came the day when she developed plantar fasciitis, and in a small way, her world came to an end. All the other regulars on the sidewalk circuit would, for an indefinite time and possibly forever, no longer be part of her meet-and-greet day. The mental health benefits of movement, the physical benefits of movement and sunshine (she walked right by the ocean most days), the space from Dad (and the space she created for him to be free of her)… A major mechanism for enhancing her quality of life was just gone, and the only comfort medical science could offer was: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, and NSAIDs.

She coped, and when the symptoms subsided, she resumed a more modest regimen, but it took a long time, and forever afterward, she was limited by any hint that symptoms were returning.

Fast forward to a conversation I’m having with another riding instructor about one of his students who can walk only slowly and with custom crutches. I am worried about this guy. Yes, he’s been riding for long time, and has great common sense, and no cognitive impairment (far from it), and he’s on an exceedingly sensible horse, but if the horse spooked on the trail and this rider got dumped, he could not walk back to the barn.

I advocated–full closing argument advocated–for this guy to ride with a spotter, somebody who just walks along beside the horse “in case.” If disaster should strike, the spotter could at least stay with the downed rider while the instructor managed the horse and got help (we always take walkie talkies with us out on the trail, and are never more than 1/2 a mile from the barn).

The other instructor, who himself has mobility issues that aren’t going to progress in a good direction, disagreed with me. “My rider knows the risks and has accepted them, and his independence has been earned with years in the saddle. He has made a fully informed, adult choice about how much and what kind of assistance and support he needs for his lessons, and I respect and agree with his decisions.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

Welp, we agreed to disagree, though I knew mine was the more prudent position, and if that had been my rider, blah, blah, blah, on and on for the entire forty mile drive home from the barn. By the time I pulled into the driveway, the ghosts of F. Lee Bailey and Learned Hand were bowing down before my rhetorical brilliance.

Until I woke up the next morning with a larruping case of plantar fasciitis.

What went through my mind then was: If I can’t do my steps, I’m going to get fat again! I can’t volunteer at the barn! No foot, no instructor! I will become a recluse and shorten my life expectancy for lack of socialization. I’ll have to use a scooter in the grocery store and it will never be charged when I need it. Woe and wurra wurra!

I glimpsed, however briefly, the abyss of disability in a society that has bound moral worth to monetization. The view is ugly, scary, and lonely. My mom had the courage to sit out her brushes with immobility (she had several, two of them serious).

Me? I hope my courage is never tested, but I did go back to the barn and apologize to the other instructor for my narrow, corporate, able-ist point of view. A spotter to me was a sensible safety measure, but to the person in the saddle, whose life is circumscribed by “assistive devices,” who has coped with one limitation after another, and who has to acknowledge a horizon of diminishing independence, that spotter might well be the edge of an abyss.

Time for me to mind my own business, rest my sore hoof, and choke down some humble pie.

Have you ever had to sink your figurative fork into humble pie? What or who knocked you free of your brilliant convictions?

PS: I did get the pre-order links up for A Gentleman of Very Few Words!

When schooling a horse, the rider is responsible for setting the horse up to succeed. Don’t ask him for hard things when he’s tired, confused, or upset. Give him generous warm up and cool down time. End on a positive note. When schooling new moves, accept and praise progress rather than insisting on perfection. Listen to him. Give him physical and mental breaks. Reward a good faith try, correct gently, and be patient.

This is just common sense horsemanship. Pester a tired horse for more than he can give or ignore his signals, and he might object dangerously. Expect progress to come too quickly and you could well end up with not only a lack of progress, but also setbacks. Safety and efficiency aside, a patient, considerate, growth mindset is also just what any healthy long-term relationship needs to thrive.

And that objective–a healthy long-term relationship–is more important than any one movement or sequence of jumps.

As I headed into camp week at the barn this year–I made a royal hash out of camp week at my last barn–I tried to treat myself like a horse. What did I need to be set up for success? Well, the obvious thing–rest–was something I could somewhat control. I stuck to a pretty early bedtime, because reveille was at 5:45 am. I did as many morning chores the night before as possible, and I just gave the whole housework thingie a week-long pass (such a sacrifice!). Writing got a pass too, albeit reluctantly (Lord Julian shakes his handsome head and sighs).

I laid in a good store of lunch-able, snackable protein, because the last thing I needed was hypoglycemia making a long, hot day worse. I brought at least a quart of icy watered down ginger ale with me and drank cold water in addition. Heat stress is cumulative. Ask any experienced horse show manager. If the show is three days long, the third day is when all those bullet-proof athletes keel over.

Several times a day, I made myself do the breathe in fast, breathe out slow routine that brings down blood pressure and kicks in the “rest and digest” parasympathetic nervous system. When another volunteer offered to trade my somewhat antsy horse for her steady-Eddy, I accepted the help. I did not want to be the old lady with the torn rotator cuff because, “No, that’s fine. I can handle it.” I’d been handling it for three days at that point.

I gave myself permission to keep to the side of the room during group activities, to take time outs for five minutes’ peace (nods to Mrs. Large).

So I’m the old lady who for once got strategic about an obstacle course, and managed five pretty demanding days without crying, cursing (out loud), offending my team, or letting down a horse who should have been able to depend on me. I am a little proud of myself, because a year ago, I did not manage a comparable set of challenges well at all, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could, um, get back on the horse.

Have you ever gotten back on the horse? Made yourself go back and get it right, or at least not as wrong the next time? Or have you wisely thrown in the towel when everybody was telling you to try, try again?

PS: Rough draft of the cover for A Gentleman of Very Few Words. Wheee!

About a year ago, I had a terrible, horrible, awful very bad morning, at the end of a week that included successive days of excessive heat, being physically assaulted by a program participant, crossing swords with several people in quick succession… and at the end of that week, it’s fair to say, I lost my filter. (I posted about it here.)

My pre-frontal cortex went off-line. I ranted, I demanded, I insisted, and I generally went on a verbal rampage that the people on the receiving end of my bazooka blasts did not enjoy. Neither did I, though it must be said that at no point did I raise my voice or indulge in profanity.

I know what caused my lapse of self-restraint–too many stressors piling up at once without enough time to decompress between them. The term trigger-stacking applied. Then I saw and heard a person in authority insulting another volunteer, and… thar she blows!

I can’t recall another occasion when I have expressed an upset so verbally, but there are other situations where I lose a filter of sorts. Turn me loose in a well organized garden shop, and I become Brunhilda the Huntress, tossing zinnias into my cart beside impatiens, and what the heck marigolds are heat tolerant, but then, an occasional sunflower adds a nice vertical element, and–trellis for the morning glories! Hanging baskets! ALL YOUR BLOOM-FLOWER ARE MINE!

By the time I get home, sanity returns and the rules come back on line: No more flower shopping until every single plant is in the ground and thoroughly watered, you hear me, Grace Ann?

I also grow a little heedless when I’m finishing the day with a good book. Yes, I must get up in the morning, and nobody will steal the book if I put it down and get a good night’s sleep. I nevertheless read on, confident that the Disposer of All Events made alarm clocks for people like me, and what’s one more nother-nother scene? I can read the whole book tonight I want to.

In the garden shop, the abundance of floral cheer trips some breaker in my otherwise orderly acquisition plans. I don’t go overboard at grocery stores or buying clothes or even in candy shops, but those lovely, bright, magical flowers… I want them all  forever.

And with the book, the allure is relief from my sometimes overwhelming reality, the chance to hold back the tide of responsibilities and disappointments for just a few more pages. I become enthralled with a well written yarn, and I want to stay in that enchanted place.

What makes you break or bend the rules of common sense or expected civilities? If you always, always color inside the lines, how do you do that?

You know it’s hot when…

The spring session at the therapeutic riding barn ended this week with a couple of very hot days. When that happens, we offer unmounted lessons, but many participants simply choose to stay home. The barn is not air conditioned, and neither people nor animals are acclimated to the heat yet.

I had some barn-related errands to run, so I decided to make the trip even though I wasn’t strictly needed on premises yesterday. Got in the car, cranked up the AC, tooled on over the mountain and across the valley. Such a pretty day, despite the heat.

And that attitude is not normal for me. Usually, when I drive that route, I am aware that it’s pretty countryside, but I’m also a little tense, fretting over the clock, over what I’ll teach, over the exertion of trudging around a hot (or cold) indoor arena for miles. I’m trying to make every excursion count, but days at the barn are long and tacking to-dos and errands on top of the outing can get to be too much.

I was stunned by what a different drive it was when I had nothing of any significance on my agenda. Just pretty country roads, the corn coming along (“knee high by the Fourth of July”), the winter wheat ready to come off, the alfalfa looking good… la-la-la-la…

Which led me to realize that my schedule this year has had no designated Sabbath. I don’t mean a dress up and go to church day (though that has value for many people, I know), I mean a day that reliably isn’t volunteering, authoring, house-wrangling, or to-doing. A day to sleep in, wear my play clothes, schedule nothing and nobody.

I know better. I know the writing improves for being regularly paused. That ideas need time to marinate, and that I’ve never done first rate work on a tight deadline. The notion that volunteering is a break from writing, and writing is nice quiet counterbalance to volunteering doesn’t hold as much water I’d anticipated.

A change is not as good as a rest. Hmm.

Without breaks, I get to hamster-wheeling, walking in the door and seeing all the chores I skipped to put in a long day in the riding arena. My commutes are full of blurb polishing, dramatic arc plotting, and lesson plan reviews. My writing is not the all absorbing joy I know it can be.

So this is me, cutting back at the barn to two days a week at least for summer. That was hard–they need the help, I am competent to provide it, it’s just for a couple months! But I did it, and somehow, the barn is still standing. I will again put the blog on hiatus for July (have great vacays, everybody!) This is also me, spending a day up at Deep Creek Lake with an old friend. We will just hang out and eat and drink slightly irresponsibly.

And I am trying on Take a Breather Tuesdays. Might have to shift that around some, but the reality is, if I don’t choose and indulge in a flaps down day, then I end up with days that “get away from me,” scenes I have to chuck or heavily re-write, and a commute spent fretting instead of appreciating nature’s glory.

Phooey on that. I’m going to impersonate me some lilies of the field. When and how do you Sabbath?

There is much I don’t like about summer, most notably bugs and heat. I don’t like that traffic sounds are louder because I generally have all the doors and windows to my house open. Summer is when every Yahoo in their monster pick-up has their music booming so loudly it’s bothersome even when your windows are up and so are theirs.

Summer is wildfire season, it’s drought season (more drought), it’s the-power-goes-out-because-another-tree-fell-on-the-power-lines season. Summer is lawn mowers, closely followed by weed whackers and blowers. Lordy, how did civilization lurch forward without mowers, weed whackers, and blowers? A mystery for the ages.

And yet… summer is also when the robins sing. They start around 5 am now, when it’s just getting light, and that sound, of birdsong at dawn, is sweeter to my ears than nearly anything save the laughter of children. Summer is when I can hear the cows across the lane munching grass through the long, mild nights. They are beef cows, so the babies stay with their mamas for months, and this occasions some bovine conversation from time to time, and I like that too.

I hear crickets in summer, chirping away, because for them cold weather won’t come around for at least half an eternity. Summer is when I hear the pitter-pitter-thump of kittens playing with each other out on the porch. I hear the skunks who live under the porch arguing with each other, and that is sometimes followed the pungent aroma of a skunk making an emphatic point. I kinda like the smell of skunk, if it’s upwind some.

I love the scent of honeysuckle on the evening breeze, the smell of freshly tedded grass hay, and the flavor of wild raspberries picked at peak ripeness. This too, is summer, and I suspect it all feels more precious now–the crickets and robins and moo cows–because my senses are not as sharp as they used to be. I know the day might come when I can’t hear much of anything, can’t taste much, and have little olfactory perception.

The day might come sooner than I think when my bad back or wobbly balance precludes yanking weeds, much less planting flowers all over the property. Plant ye geraniums, while ye may, Grace Ann.

If that winter should befall me, the memories of what I love about summer are going to matter much more than all the reasons I can think of to grumble about warm weather.  I will need to recall the flowers and forget the weeds, recall the birdies and forget the monster trucks.

What do you love about summer, despite the heat, bugs, and wildfires?

So there I am, tooling past fields of gorgeous first cutting hay, over the creek, around the hedgerow on the way to the therapeutic riding barn. Beautiful day. Warm, sunny, low humidity, great to be alive.

Up yonder I spot a box turtle crossing the road. Shell length is about six or seven inches, so maybe a young adult off on young adult business, but making predictably labored progress across the perilous asphalt. I am slowing my old Prius down, thinking to offer an assist to this worthy wayfarer, when the driver in the opposite lane beats me to it. He stops his white van, hops out, helps our terrapin friend to the culvert they were aiming for, and speeds along his way.

I am happy all the way to the barn (another thirty miles) because of that gesture of good will from one travel to another. The whole incident lasted maybe twenty seconds, but an hour later, I am still full of the goodness of human nature, the magic of life on earth, and a bunch of other fairy dust. I put the Guy In the White Van on my list of gratitudes that night because he did my heart such good.

And then a thought intrudes: So why didn’t you let him know that, Grace Ann? Why not a beep-beep of thanks? A thumbs up out the window? Anything to convey good wishes? Why hoard the fairy dust?

Upon reflection, even writing down gratitudes can be a little hoard-ish. That exercise ensures I end my day on a positive note, with a little inventory of hope and abundance. All to myself. Hmm.

The next day when I went to the barn, I was more on the alert for opportunities to say the words. “Thank you,” to the other volunteers, to the horses, to the lovely grass growing in the pastures, and to the rose bushes which have survived an assault of kudzu and grape vines that would have felled lesser flowers. I challenged myself to speak other words of fairy dust: “That was a big help!” or, “You do that so well.”

My thoughts are often congenial, but I don’t verbalize the warm-heartedness. What am I saving it for? My gratitude list? The first of the month? My death bed? I know some of my reticence is because I feel self-conscientious when people compliment me. I don’t know how to respond. I don’t want to brush off good wishes, but nobody owes me a pat on the back for anything, ever.

Baggage like that aside, I have also simply not made a habit of sharing a happy thought. When I’m teaching in the riding arena, I am trained to spot and affirm what’s going right. Take me out of that milieu, though, and the speak-your-joy mechanism goes silent. Going forward, I hope that, with all my biggity-pants vocabulary, I can make better use of, “Thank you!” “Much appreciated!” or simply, “What you did is wonderful.”

What do you have trouble saying?

PS For the two remaining individuals who might not know it, A Gentleman of Modest Ambitions has published in the web store, in print, and on all the retail sites!

I came across a recent article in the Washington Post about the benefits of talking to strangers (paywalled) that cited Nicholas Epley’s book, A Little More Social. When we make small talk at the bus stop or lament the lack of cambozola cheese with a fellow shopper in the dairy aisle, we end up feeling more connected to our community, safer, less stressed, more confident, and better able to tolerate uncertainty.

Even exchanging smiles or merely making eye contact can carry many of the same benefits.

My next thought was about all the ways I used to encounter strangers that are no longer part of my life: checking out books at the library, buying books, buying clothing, going out to watch a movie, banking, attending writers’ conferences, sitting in the courthouse hallway between cases… Some of the changes have to do with shifts in my life, but most are attributable to the internet.

I bank, shop for clothes, buy books, watch movies (albeit very rarely), manage continuing professional education, and check books out of the library online. This raises the possibility that it’s not just staring at screens per se that makes them problematic, and it’s not entirely the addictive and toxic design behind a lot of screen environments that causes harm, but rather, the whole issue is compounded by the sheer isolation we’ve traded for all this online “convenience.” (And doom scrolling on social is sold to us as “connection,” of course.)

I could and have shopped the rummage stores for the items on my Lord Julian covers, or I can cruise Etsy. I could go to the local library branch and browse the physical volumes, or I can just pull up Libby. I still do go to the bank to deposit checks, because I refuse to put a banking app on my phone (“Apps are spyware,” she mutters, glancing furtively to the right and left.) I avoid self-check out like it’s eight hours of elbow-grease housework, and I always chat up my checker.

The biggest way that I’ve put strangers in my life, though, is by volunteering. The cast at the therapeutic riding barn changes daily, and I might see some of the other volunteers once a month or even less frequently. They are “safe strangers,” like the checker at the grocery store, the librarian, and the bank teller. In each case, and especially at the barn, I have a place to start.

The grocery store looks busy, the bank has new flowers out front, the oldest pony in the barn has a birthday coming up. If all else fails there’s the weather. Maybe living alone has made me particularly aware of whether I’m interacting with a human or a keypad, but I think it’s pretty important for me to keep the casual, fleeting, exchanges in my life as long as I’m able to.

Do you talk to strangers? Does the lady at the coffee kiosk sometimes hear your troubles? Do you nod to the other regulars on your walking circuit? Where are the strangers in your life?