Category Archives: Musings

Addendum…

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I realized that last post made it a little too much about Matt. Healing, love, acceptance comes from many sources.  I don’t want to give the impression that Matt is the only friend who adds value to my life or that has helped me out because that is absolutely not true.  I have many friends that, without which, I could not be the person I am.  I believe we all need to take the time to be authentic with the people in our lives, to share ourselves and the let others know how much we value them. My friends are exactly those kinds of people.

I can’t thank all of the people in my life enough.  Pat & Heather, Jessica & Ethan Shurick (just to clarify for those that know the former therapist Ethan, different person), Tony & Ken, Maurea, Matt & Amanda, Len & Ella, Marvin, Matt L., John, Greg, Mike, Eric, Melinda, Deloa, Sue, Larry, Shaun & Rachelle, Pat, Peggy, Michelle, Jason, Jeff, and all the wonderful people in the Lounge that I haven’t mentioned by name, …the list is just goes on and on.  If I didn’t mention you, it isn’t because I don’t love you. You are all very important to me.

I am the woman I am today, embracing 50 with gusto because each of you adds so much joy to my life. Each of you has a special gift and I value each one of you tremendously. Thank you.  You are the greatest gift I ever have received or will receive.

The Gift

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On Monday, I will be 50 years old. It is one of those milestone birthdays that, until yesterday, was bothering me a bit. Yesterday, I got it all sorted out in my mind. Everyone keeps asking me lots of questions like where am I staying, what am I going to do now, what I want for a present for my birthday, and what I want to do on my birthday. I hope this post will answer those questions.

Sometimes, life is pretty incredible. When I got home from Whistler, I sent a message to my friend Matt‘s girlfriend Amanda about needing my car. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew that the car is all I have left. I was going to get in it and just start driving. That isn’t what I wanted to do, I just didn’t know anything else to do. Since Matt was in South America indefinitely, I didn’t expect to see him. Then Amanda said the most amazing thing. She said, “I am picking Matt up a the airport at 10 pm tonight, I know he has been thinking about you and wants to see you”. I lost it and just started crying. I hadn’t realized until that moment that what I needed more than anything else in the world was the support of my friend. It just happened that I was back at the same time that he came home for a week before he leaves again for Asia.

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Sunrise from the deck

Here is the amazing part. He picked me up when I got off my bus and we went and talked. He should have been spending time with his family, but instead he is letting me cry all over him. He had already checked with his roommates and they offered me a place to stay in this gorgeous house, with a fabulous gourmet kitchen and a great view of Seattle. They offered me comfort, compassion, and safety. They are certainly some of the most chill people I have met in Seattle. They made me feel immediately welcomed and at home. How did I get so fortunate? I have to be the most blessed person on the planet. Seriously.  I spent Wednesday reconnecting with my friends Maurea, Melinda, Deloa and Larry. They took time out of their schedules to make me feel valued and loved.

Yesterday, Matt and I went hiking up Tiger Mountain. He was going to paraglide down, I just hiked down. After a lovely hike up with time to talk to my friend, on the way down I got some solo time to think about everything. I decided to take sabbatical in very small steps. I want to finish a paper and a grant I am working on so I need two weeks in one place to work. So I am staying in Seattle until October 1 (thanks Jeff and Elle for letting me crash at your house). Then I just need a short adventure. So I am going back to the original plan and taking off for a month in Spain, cycling Mallorca getting back in time for Thanksgiving with my children. I am not planning on any other activities, just getting up every day and cycling and then enjoying the Spanish culture in the evenings. I need some time on my bike. After that, I don’t know yet and I am not going to plan anything.

On the way home from the mountain, Matt (who is still just 25 years old) was being his usual silly self. I was laughing, the sun was shining, we were just being goofy, I felt like I was kid. At that moment it hit me what a true healing gift his friendship has been to me. I have had a lot of trauma in my life. From the time I was 10 years old, I didn’t have a normal childhood. I grew up very fast and took on lots of responsibility. There was never any of that carefree playtime. Steadfastly, over the last 6 years of our friendship, through the trauma of divorce, the exploitation of my former therapist, the betrayal of a false friend, through a mountain of debt, tenure & promotion, deaths, births, marriages…all of it, Matt has loved me unconditionally. I am 25 years his senior, a female, not that athletic, and still he has dragged me on more adventures, taken the time to get to know and understand me on a level that no one else ever did. He doesn’t judge or belittle, but just truly accepts me as I am and encourages me to be my best. He teaches me how to be spontaneous, to take risks, and to just play knowing that I have the security of his love and caring as a safety net. For the first time in my whole life since I was 10 years old, yesterday, I felt healed and whole. So for my birthday, I have already received my gift.

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Sunset overlooking the Olympic Mountains and Queen Anne

I don’t need physical gifts, I don’t even have a house. The gift I get from all the people in my life is the gift of their love and acceptance. What more do I need? I have so many amazing friends that I am rich beyond measure and that can never be measured in physical things. Life is short and sweet. I am entering the sunset of my life, the last 30 years. I believe our lives and the legacy we leave behind will be known by the love we have shared during our time on this planet.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou

P.S. This seems like a good post for a Stevie Nicks song.  

A country with a soul

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Today was one of those perfect Northern African days.  It has been the rainy season here so it has rained every day. Not just Seattle drizzle rain, but a true soaking deluge kind of rain.  Every…single…day.  It makes the poorly built and incomplete roads into quagmires of mud, potholes, and huge puddles.  The rainy season is coming to an end and the weather should begin to be perfect like it was today, mid 70 F and sunny with no humidity.IMG_1529

IMG_1527I was going to post earlier, but each time got my post finished, the power went out so I gave up and went for a walk in the village near my apartment with my friend Jen.  What I love most about this place are the Ethiopian people.  They show amazing resiliency, courage, and an absolute undefeatable spirit.  This spirit is what helped them rout every attempt by Europeans to colonize them.  They are a proud people and they love their country.

IMG_1583Every morning, I go running.  Ethiopian runners are a source of national pride.   The route I run takes me on a road where many people run each morning.  Today I actually saw a group exercising in the median of the road.  While I am running, the Ethiopians will cheer me on. They call out “good job”, like I am doing something great, when all I am doing is jogging for exercise.  There is one part of my run that takes me parallel to a government housing project.  Each day a little boy, maybe 10 years old, comes out and jogs with me down the road, grinning from ear to ear. He is adorable.  He says good morning to me and then says “sport”.  When he leaves me he said Ciao and I know I will see him tomorrow.  You can tell he is proud of Ethiopia’s tradition of running.

IMG_1555Even on our walk to the village, the people smile and say hello or salam.  The kids gather and walk with us, wanting us to take their picture.  Women invite us for coffee. What I have realized from spending time with Ethiopians of all ages is that it is their culture to care about human beings. They take their time, they listen to you. They FEEL, they truly feel compassion with their hearts, and it isn’t just superficial bull.  Ethiopia is a country with a soul.

PS.  Between writing and posting, Ethiopia just won a soccer match against Central African Republic and for the first time, qualified for the World Cup.  It is partying and chaos on the street.  What a wonderful celebration of national pride.

These aren’t filtered yet, I haven’t had time to go through them, but they are the ones I took today http://sdrv.ms/19u2kms

The Mundane

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Part of the field that they cut

I keep getting lots of questions about day to day life and I want to take a post to tell you what my life is like now.  To give you an idea, while I was working on lesson plans in my apartment while the deluge of rain, thunder, and lightening was happening, I watched three Ethiopian men cut an entire field of grass around one of the buildings on campus with a sickle. It took several days.  It is a big enough area that I would have wanted a riding lawn mower or tractor and it could have been done in an hour.  The concept of time is just a different thing here than it is in the U.S.

Dryer controls

Dryer controls

I live in a two bedroom apartment (see pictures below) that I share with an Ethiopian teacher, Dawit.  It is pretty minimal by U.S. standards, but it is comparable to an apartment I had when I was in college.  There are challenges here in construction standards.  There are no OSHA regulations.  You will see workers hundreds of feet up in the air on construction projects with scaffolding made from eucalyptus branches.  They aren’t wearing harnesses or taking any safety measures. It is very dangerous.  The building standards are also nonexistent.  I have open wiring in my bathroom near the shower. And I had to laugh in the kitchen when, although there is space for the refrigerator, they neglected to put a power source so the refrigerator is in the living room where there is a plug.  The kitchen has a cooktop and I have a convection microwave for baking but the directions for it are in Dutch so I stick with microwaving when I need to heat something up.  The communal washer/dryer for the complex is also in Dutch so I just randomly push some buttons until it works and hope for the best.

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Breakfast foods

When I get up in the morning, Dawit and I might go for a run or I might do some yoga.  Running three miles at 8300 ft altitude is definitely good for my body and my lungs.   After my workout, I stretch and then have some breakfast which usually consists of a hunk of bread with honey or peanut butter and a piece of fruit.  When I need a pick-me-up, I switch to the Ethiopian version of Nutella in place of the honey or peanut butter.  Lunch is noodles or rice with some vegetables.  Dinner is whatever someone cooks which may be Ethiopian food or western food or we might go out to eat.  We eat a lot of pasta.  My favorite thing so far has been the shiro.  The local beer and wine isn’t too bad either.

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Abandoned horses

I have pretty much become a vegetarian.  When you see the meat hanging in the shops, just out in the air with no refrigeration or sanitation, it is really hard to think about eating it.  I see goat herders corralling goats for slaughter and I saw a group of pigs today rooting through the trash when I was out on my run.   I think one of the things I am having the most difficulty with is the way animals are treated.  When a farm animal has served its usefulness, they are abandoned on a street to starve.  I have watched these horses that were left on a street just obediently stay there day after day and get skinnier each day.  I know that one day, I will go by and one will be laying there dead. The worst part is that there are hundreds of abandoned animals such as that.  I have seen them kill a rat at the produce stand where I was shopping and that same day, we walked by a dead human body on the side of the road.  Ethiopia is 173rd out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index.  There are lots of challenges here.

Dawit’s way of looking at life and his understanding of Ethiopian culture is helping me adjust.  He reminds me a lot of Matt.  Dawit is the chemistry and biology teacher and we work on lesson plans together.  He was born in Ethiopia, then migrated to Ghana before being educated in the states but has now come back to Ethiopia to work.  School starts next week.  Dawit gave me the best compliment I have received in Ethiopia.  When I offered him a rain jacket to wear, he told me I was very open with sharing my resources.  I told him that it was just “stuff” and wasn’t important and that he was welcome to use anything of mine he needed.  He told me I had an “African soul”.   I thought that was pretty cool and I am getting a pulse on what that really means to be able to write a blog post about it someday.

I typed this out on my computer in my apartment so that I could go to the internet café and post it because our internet line was cut in one of the construction projects and the government hasn’t fixed it yet (it has been several weeks).  Of course, I had to wait for the deluge of rain to stop before making the dash down the road.  They keep telling me that the rainy season will end in 3 weeks… I don’t believe them.

Cheers to everyone and know that I am well.   Following are my apartment pictures.

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Apartment from outside. I live in a unit on the bottom floor

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A Sense of Community

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There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community. ~ M. Scott Peck

Village house

Village house

Ethiopia is not what I expected.  The truth is, I am not sure that anyone could ever imagine what it is like until you experience it with your own senses. The sounds, the smells, the absolute essence of stepping back in time to the birthplace of humanity, none of that can be understood until you experience it. It is truly an amazing place.

The street near my school

The street near my school

Ethiopia is a contrasts in opposites. New, modern houses are built next to shanties.  Horses, donkeys, goats, etc share the road with cars.  Farmers growing teff to make injera and using wooden plows next to a modern university of stone and glass. Barefoot beggars share the street with men in Armani suits.  People precariously cross the highway, dodging between buses, taxis and livestock. Beautiful new buildings are constructed with scaffolding made from eucalyptus branches. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to any of it.  Some would call it chaos.  I call it humanity.

Church on the hill

Church on the hill

The sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of Ethiopia are like seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting time itself.  It is the oldest culture in the world.  Time is started at daylight, when the sun comes up, so dawn is 1 o’clock…a new day.   Every morning at dawn, the monks from a nearby church greet the day with chanting and drums.  I lay in bed and listen to the sounds as well as the oxen lowing in a nearby field. The smells of sewage are offset by the smell of freshly cut grass.  The sour taste of injera, spicy wot, and the most amazing coffee I have ever had in my life make all my taste buds come alive.

Eucalyptus scaffolding

Eucalyptus scaffolding

Having always traveled as a tourist, I am realizing that visiting in a foreign country is very different from living in one.  It is strange and foreign land after spending my life in the sterile environment of the U.S., a place where everything seems so orderly by comparison.  In the US, I turn on a faucet and have clean drinking water.  I flick a switch and have dependable electricity.  I pay a bill and have reliable internet access. I want groceries and supplies for my home, I can get it all at one store. Life is easy in the U.S.

Shanties

Shanties

In Ethiopia, life is harder. The internet hasn’t worked in 3 weeks at my school (I came to am American hotel and had to pay $15 for a day of wifi), the power goes out on a daily basis, shopping requires several stops to different stores and paying the ferengi [foreigner] price, and then there are the daily difficulties of acquiring clean water.  For me it is difficult but still easier than it is for most Ethiopians, because I have money and resources.  For the average Ethiopian, it is much harder. To offset the hardships, people here depend on each other.

Modern housing

Modern housing

There is a sense of community, history, and belonging that I rarely see in the U.S. where we don’t need each other for basic survival.  But in our isolation from each other, Americans also lose a sense of emotional connection that many (including myself) continually search for.  Connection and community are two things go hand in hand.  But to be connected, we have to be vulnerable to people.  We have to open up and show others what we need and we have to meet those needs in other people in our community. For many of us, this kind of vulnerability is hard.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Charlotte

Charlotte

So I begin this year of renewal and transformation.  I am not convinced yet that I can do it, either the job I am being asked to do or just staying so long outside the U.S.  I am already missing my family terribly.  Spending the last week with Charlotte and Brooklyn has made me long for more time with them.   I long for a sense of community of my own.

NOTE: I had a lot of trouble with pictures today.  I forgot the cord to the camera that I had the majority of my photo on back at my apartment. So here is link to the ones I already uploaded to my drive. I will try to put the rest up later when I get back to an internet connection.  http://sdrv.ms/1dxhsFh

Next stop…Africa

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I was out running errands on Monday, planning on spending my last evening with my wonderful family, when I decided to check my flight times for the next day and lo and behold…I had the wrong day. Fortunately, I didn’t miss my flight but it sure got my adrenaline pumping to be leaving in 3 hours when I thought I still had 27 hours.  Unfortunately, it made my goodbyes to my family much shorter.  But maybe that was for the best.  I tend to let things drag on otherwise.

I have no great words of wisdom this morning.  Today is the day.  When I wake up tomorrow morning, I will be in Africa.  Although I am scared, my fear doesn’t own me.  I know that anything that I have forgotten can be taken care of once I get there.  I don’t know what to expect, I am probably the most unprepared traveler on the planet.  For someone who has always been a planner, that should be freaking me out.  But for whatever reason, it isn’t.

I will have some pictures of my new home on my next post.  I am not sure when that will be, but I promise it will have pictures. Let the journey begin…

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. ~John Steinbeck

A Birth, A Death, and a Wedding

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Yesterday was a day of a lot of shifting emotions, not for me, but for my son.  One of his best friends became a new father, another best friend died unexpectedly, and his wife’s best friend got married…all of which happened in the same day.  I have empathy for him and my daughter-in-law. They are dealing with the up and down emotions of balancing two joyous events with a tragic one and trying to be happy for their friends while mourning the death of the other.  Life doesn’t happen when it is convenient. Yesterday for my son, daughter-in-law and all their friends, life was divided by zero.

I sit here and listen to my son and his wife process their grief by telling stories of their friend and sharing pictures with their social group.  I am reminded that our lives consist of our stories.  They don’t consist of how much money we have, what things we own, or even what our jobs are.  Our lives are about our experiences.  At the end, the people who we have touched will tell our stories and share our photos. It is our legacy and reminds me to always treat people well. Life is about caring about other human beings. The most important gift we can give another person is the gift of our time.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is all about perspective…

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One morning when I was newly single and still very emotionally fragile, I was walking in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in search of breakfast early on a sunny Sunday morning.  It was one of those rare mornings after a bad breakup that I was optimistic about being able to move on and carve a new life out for myself. A smile on my face, feeling confident, healthy and beautiful, curly red hair all askew, strolling down the street and all of a sudden, a man gave me the best spontaneous complement I have ever had.  He said  “top of the morning to you.  Wow, the redder the hair, the hotter the woman.”  It was unfortunate that he happened to be jumping out of a dumpster at the time and wearing a woman’s skirt and a pair of black pantyhose with a run in them, but hey, at that point in my life I was going to be thankful for a complement wherever I could get it. It is really just a matter of perspective.

I was reminded again this week that all my “realities” of life are a matter of perspective.  The lens I am looking through, colored by my experiences, beliefs and emotion, distorts reality as I see it.  Every single human being on the planet has a distorted view of their reality. It is only through communication that we can understand how others are seeing the same situation and realize the fallacies in our own perception of events. That is why communication is imperative in misunderstandings.  If we refuse to communicate, we can never understand any but our own distorted reality of things.

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Pure joy

My reality was distorted enough that I was having a pity party earlier this week.  I am staying with my son and his wife, enjoying their company and the pure joy that radiates from my two beautiful granddaughters.  Given that scenario, the true reality is, there is absolutely no reason I should have been feeling sorry for myself, but I was.  My reality was colored by the fact that my son lives in my former home and every time I visit it brings back memories of my marriage.  Added to the emotion of that was an unexpected visit from my ex, who is happily ensconced in a new relationship and I was just flooded with the “all that could have been, all that isn’t now” perspective instead of seeing the reality that is before me.  After a virtual slap from my friend Jonathan, I decided enough was enough of that.  I needed a big perspective shift to remind myself that my life is my own.  I am not in competition with my ex.  I am happy that he is doing well. That was the end of that whole line of thought.  That was perspective shift #1.

My reality has also been distorted by not having a place to call my own or any personal space.  It makes me cranky.  Although I am an extroverted person, I need time to myself to recharge. This summer, even though I have had great friends to rely on that have taken me into their homes, having no space that is my own has played havoc with my whole emotional system. By emotional system, I am referring to more than just feelings.  I am speaking of the hard-wired physiological, psychological and social mechanisms that human beings have evolved as a matter of survival within a family unit. Our emotional system includes the internal and external interactions and reactions associated with our basic human needs for food, water, sleep, shelter, territory, protection from harm, mating, and nurturing of young.

Living on the road and off the charity of others after a lifetime of having a home of my own, when I was always the person who others turned to for help, has definitely been a challenge for me. There have been many times that I didn’t think I was going to make it, that I was ready to go back to Seattle and start looking for an apartment. But with each challenge I have faced and overcome, I have grown emotionally stronger.  I am learning to rely on people and to listen to my body’s needs and to convey those needs to others.

One of the hardest things I have ever done is to tell my children that I was going to get a hotel room this week.  It has nothing to do with them and certainly nothing to do with my beautiful granddaughters. I would spend every possible minute with them.  But I have realized that I have to take care of myself too or I won’t be any good to anyone.  What I need right now, on this last week before I head to Africa, is some time to myself where I can go through my things once again and do a last packing. I need to have a place to spread out all my stuff and pack up the few things that I have with me that are staying in the States while organizing and purchasing enough supplies for my classroom and my personal life (shampoo, mosquito net, etc) that will last me until I get back to the States during the holidays.  Unfortunately, I can’t do that with my beautiful children and grandchildren around because I love them so much I just want to focus on them when I am with them.  I need a few days to focus on myself to get all those last minute things done.

So I have been stressing all week until I came clean and admitted to my children what I need.  As I would expect from them, they are wonderful and they understand.  Why did I ever think they wouldn’t? I really have the most amazing children ever. Telling them gave me the perspective shift that I don’t always have to fix everything for them, that I can rely on them to help me also. It made me realize that I can tell them about being scared and unsure of myself as I embark on this journey.  I can tell them how much I am going to miss them and how worried I am to be leaving them.

The truth is I wonder if I have made the right choice and whether I have what it takes to do the job I am being asked to do. Do I have what it takes to live in a place that is so different from everything I have ever known?  Am I a good enough teacher to teach math in a place where many of my students don’t speak English while I speak no Amharic? Will I have the courage to explore this new country I am going to or will I stay in the safety of the school area I will teach in?

My perspective right now is being colored by my fears and insecurities about where my life is heading in the next year.  I need my family and friends to help me with that perspective shift, this week more than any other. The closer the time comes for leaving the more excited I get and at the same time, the more insecure I get.  I think that is probably a very normal and human reaction.  I just have to breathe, stay present, and be aware and remember to keep communicating to keep a good grasp on true reality not just the reality colored by my experiences and emotions. It really is a matter of perspective.

First Class

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I fly often enough to be in premier class. That means that I get upgraded from coach to first class whenever there is an open seat but I only pay coach fares.  Out of the last 20 legs of trips I have taken, I have been upgraded 15 times. I like boarding early, comfy seats, and larger overhead bins, but the rest of the first class experience feels odd to me.   One thing that always surprises me is how quickly the crew is there to meet your needs. That level of service is one huge difference between first class and coach.  One of my friends calls first class “princess class”.  I guess I am not used to a level of service that makes me feel like a princess.

I also have first class friends. Through their words, time, and care, they make me believe I have value to them.  They consistently demonstrate that they believe I am worthy of love and belonging even with all my imperfections.  They go on vacation with me, support me emotionally when I have difficult issues to deal with, come to my rescue when I have done something foolish, and believe that I can accomplish great things.  But the real key is that they are simply there for me.  I am convinced that is what it takes to be a first class friend, just being there for people.

I was thinking that everyone should feel treated like they are first class by someone.  Everyone should have someone who is there for them, who meets their needs on some level.  But as I allowed myself to think through it, I realized that what I need (and maybe everyone does) is rather than focus on how others treat me, I have to treat myself like I am first class and be that person who is there for  me. I should meet my own needs first before I expend all my energy on others.

When I was newly single and trying to redefine my life, I instituted “Friday night date night for one”. I would come home from work, get something special to make for dinner (including dessert) and a nice bottle of wine.  I would put some music on, light candles, have a lovely meal and then dance around the living room by myself.  I would treat myself like first class all the way on Friday nights.  But it was always something “extra”.

Unfortunately, the first class treatment never transferred beyond Friday night.   I am not sure why.  I guess I got busy with life, trying to be a first class mother, grandmother, colleague, friend, and there just wasn’t any time to treat myself the same way. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved the same treatment I gave everyone else.  Whatever the reason, I think that is something I need to change.  The next time I am cutting corners on self-care and not striving to meet my own needs before the needs of others, I need to remind myself to upgrade to first class.   I need to be first to recognize my value and to demonstrate that I am worthy of love and belonging.  I am worthy of being treated as first class.

Today as I sit in my third airport on the way home to visit my kids and granddaughters, when I have only had 2 hours sleep, I realize I am exhausted and without patience.  It might be time to practice some of that first class treatment right now.