January is full of promise

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, end of the year, fear, friendship, goals, helping others, Hurricane Sandy, inspire, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, January, joy, relationship, teacher, writing

At last it is January! This is one of my favorite times of the year. The expectations of the holidays are over making it a time to focus on my own goals, the plans I am making that I am personally excited about. Because I actively try to shape myself the new year holds great promise.

This year I hope to give to others more regularly. And I say this selfishly because I know from experience that it feels good to get my hands dirty helping others. I am anxious to spend the day next week assisting folks whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Sandy, down in Atlantic City, with a group of like-minded people. It’s a chance to surround myself with others who feel strongly about putting in effort towards the improvement of us all. Being around those kinds of folks, and working together as a team, I know will send me home tired and satisfied, temporarily, that I have contributed. It is easier to accept help from others when I know I have offered my abilities already. When my sister and mother and father were dying, and my home had flooded at the same time, I had to accept the help of so many people. I owe back to the world at large many times over for this, and tearing out moldy drywall and flooring for someone else is a way to do it. This is one of the things I am looking forward to, genuinely, this year.

This year I hope to figure out how to share the story I have written about my childhood, You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen, and how I learned to create a new life to live today instead of continuing with the one I started out with. Recognizing that you can change who you are and how you live your life has been a profound revelation for me, and I am committing time daily to finding ways to share that idea.

This year I hope to build new friendships in the writing community locally and to participate in those more, being committed to following my strong inclination to write and be heard. I hope to be strong and fearless in that even though it is tricky taking steps down a lonely path, following my intuition just because I trust it.

So January is full of excitement for me because these are things I care about. There is enough new here to fill my time along with my husband and children, teaching introductory piano students, teaching high school students to write papers, running a beach property and speaking out about ideas I care about. January is just the start of all these days I can’t wait to live.

Stationary bike rides to dream locations

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being yourself, control, express feelings, friends, friendship, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, listening, physical therapy, psychotherapy, self-neglect

The best part of my day today was stopping in to see the fellow who was my physical therapist all year and from whose care I have now graduated. He cocked his head and looked a little embarrassed, incredulous maybe, when I told him on Day One that I was seeing a psychotherapist to help me identify the ways I have of neglecting my foot, so effective were they, that they were the reason I needed surgery instead of just physical therapy. I suppose few people admit to deliberately seeking professional help to understand themselves, but I am too something to hide the truth of who I am anymore. In the long run he barely batted an eye. I’d had plenty of practice neglecting myself, I told him, and having it end with this yearlong stint of twice a week foot massages with him, although possibly sounding wonderful, was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of fun over the course of the year because of all the joking around with everyone from tiny old ladies who’d hurt themselves falling down stairs to the tatooed policemen injured while actually fighting crime. Silliness is the norm there with plenty of jokes about the exercises he had me doing that looked like sobriety tests, and my stationary bike rides to dream locations. Who knows what he was actually thinking when I stopped in bearing cookies today, but the look on his face told me that even after a year of listening to all my foot confusion and lack of body awareness, allegedly the result of a childhood full of denial now being teased apart through psychotherapy, we’d become friends. Seems like addressing my emotional issues head on in front of this guy was worth the risk of revealing myself, because I felt what seemed like a genuine acceptance and appreciation of Jane that I truly wish I was cultivating more often.

My own back yard

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calling a foreign country, change, dreams coming true, friendship, inspire, mother, other side of the tracks, toys for Christmas

I felt as if I’d called into a foreign country where on the other end of the line the yelling, and the crying of children in the background, could have been happy or sad but I didn’t have the context to know which it was. I could only imagine the scene in the house on West Chestnut Street there, because I’d been to a few such houses in that part of town to try to help make them safer and warmer, on Saturdays for a few hours, now and then in the past. I called the other side of the tracks on behalf of my committee at church that aims to match poverty with wealth for one day of the year. The woman I was speaking with wanted clothes and toys for her children and I was taking notes to pass on to those who might be able to help. Her four children are all four years old and under including a set of one-year old twins, so more than anything, for Christmas she’d like a ready supply of diapers to keep everyone happy and dry. She told me she didn’t need anything herself but her kids kept growing out of everything she put them in, so they could use pajamas and clothes, basics like dolls and balls and toy cars, too.

Even though I did call the other side of the world, the people there speak an international language of care and concern for their children and I welcome the chance to do what I can.

Christmas Eve parade

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being yourself, Christmas Eve, friends, friendship, joy, listening, mentors, parents, play, relationship

When my husband and I were first married and were so young and impressionable, we went to his aunt Maureen’s and his uncle, Meathead’s, every year on Christmas Eve. They lived on Fulton Street in Buffalo, and it was a modest gathering with modest food in a modest house, and I loved it. I loved it because the one thing it had that was not modest at all were the connections between the people who came and went. Folks arrived at the door, both unannounced and expected, and were welcomed like kings. They were offered a drink, some food, a seat, and all the time in the world. I learned from Maureen and Meathead what it is to have relationships. A parade of them passed through the kitchen on Fulton Street before my eyes. There were inside jokes and stories galore, like I never saw. They could go all night laughing about some crazy thing somebody did. It was foreign to me and I was spellbound. These folks cared for each other and you could tell!

Novelty that it was then, I see now it is how it should be for all of us. It is what we should deliver to our children as best we can, this understanding that we are all in this together and sharing time and concern with one another is the way to be.

I kissed my dog and I liked it

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being yourself, dogs, express feelings, friends, friendship, I kiss a girl and I liked it, joy, love, parents, relationship, security, starting college, trust, words

My dog and I were snuggled together this evening on the couch, and it was all her idea, too. She jumped up and insinuated herself into my space acting like it was perfectly reasonable to put twenty-three pounds of dog in the open three-inch square of sofa in front of me. She even had her paw draped around me in a hug. The whole thing had me feeling rather important and quite loved, fueled no doubt by the others present who seemed a little jealous of the whole thing.

I can’t even imagine what kind of relationship we’d have if my dog could talk. The fact that she never ever says a word makes it easy to imagine the best even when she might be thinking the worst. For all I know she’s a real bitch and has a snide thought at everything I say. After all I smother her with love and caresses and silliness so often she’s got to be sick of it by now. But I never hear about it, and in fact, as a result I am never deterred from slathering her with even more of my exaggerated love.

When I was little we always had a dog in the house. Anytime I wanted I could get the dog alone with me and tell her my secrets, and she never once told a soul. That’s why I love every dog I’ve ever had. They can be a lot of work but not when you compare that to the emotional security they provide to kids in their unspoken ways.

When I left home and stepped out into the world to start college my parting kiss was not with my parents, they weren’t into that kind of thing, but instead it was with my dog. Thank you, pup.

Today at the Quaker Meeting

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being yourself, express feelings, friendship, inspire, joy, mother, parents, Quaker Meeting

I occasionally say something at the Quaker Meeting when I go, but rarely. Today I felt like standing up and offering my thoughts.

I was very emotional when I said these words and I had to stop a few times to compose myself and to steady my voice because what I said felt hard to admit. It’s nothing new, I say this stuff all the time, but in the setting of the meeting house where there is great respect for sharing honest thoughts from the heart I felt a reverence for the truth in my words, and I cared about the fact that everyone hears that when you speak.

I want to tell you what’s on my mind this morning so I hope you’ll bear with me while I try to tell it. I was one of the people who came in late to Meeting this morning, so I just want to say thank you to everyone for being here, but especially to those who came in late because I appreciate that you decided to come at all. I got up this morning and felt strongly compelled to be here today and I think that is because of a phone call I got last night. It was my mother’s dear friend, a lifelong friend really, who wants to stay in touch with me even though my parents are long gone. She appreciates our family and staying in touch with me helps her keep a connection with my parents whom she loved. I don’t have family anymore because my mother died six years ago and my father four, and my sisters and brothers are gone because our parents fostered a distrust amongst us so we are all on our own now. My mom was an orphan so a whole side of the family is missing, and my dad had two sisters, but one is gone and the other ran away. I really don’t have much family at this point, besides my husband’s family (who are wonderful). So it matters to me a lot that Shay, my mother’s friends called last night. It reminded me of the strength of the bonds that are formed in our spiritual communities since she is a friend made through the church that I attended growing up. I went to my other church this morning as well, the Presbyterian church, where we’ve had a big ugly fight and half the congregation left to make their own church elsewhere. Things are much better now. When I went there, and in coming here, I look around and see the faces of people I have known and who have known me for many years. Since I don’t have the extended family it matters to me that there are people from my past still with me. I look to my spiritual communities for this kind of connection. So I appreciate all the people that are here today because you are the witness to what I want to say, and because you bothered to be here for me. I wrote a book about my life, about the path I’ve been on so far, which is my way of telling people what is on my mind. That’s what I’m doing this morning as well, just saying what’s on my mind.

The message that followed mine was about what it means to be silent in meeting and how we support one another through the simple act of our presence, and another was about offering hugs as a means of support. Lots of people gave me hugs after meeting for worship today.

Kids are the same everywhere

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being yourself, change, exchange student, express feelings, friends, friendship, inspire, relationship, security, South America

My boy in Ecuador posted his first real disappointment of his exchange trip recently and our hearts go out to him. One of the other exchange students, a boy from Norway, and Andrew’s friend already, left the program and went back home. It was clear from the pictures posted and the activities that they shared that they had become fast friends. Andrew had already even told us he wanted to go to Norway next summer rather than come home in order to visit this friend and work on the family’s fishing boat! But the young man left due to a family emergency back in Norway leaving our guy very sorry to see him go. He said in his post that after going to the house to say goodbye he returned to his own family and just went to his room and cried.

I know because I did it when I was fourteen, that it is hard to suddenly be out of your element and in someone elses world, adrift. Our boy is doing great at making friends and going to school and adjusting to the cultural changes, but a large part of his success is in having comrades, that is other kids going through precisely the same kind of separation from family, and the immersion in the new culture. It is hard so they encourage each other through it. We see that with the Taiwanese girl staying with us, that she is so animated and happy after spending a day with the other inbound exchange students. They lift each other up. The absence of Andrew’s friend is a real loss for him and we wish him a new friend soon.

When kids are scared

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change, exchange student, express feelings, fear, friendship, inspire, listening, parents, play, relationship, repaving the street, security, teacher, trust, words

When kids tell us their fears they are also telling us they’d like some help reinterpreting them, reframing them so they are not so scary. That’s what kids expect from adults, for us to be leaders, and people that show the way to something better. So when I hear my neighbor friend, who is eight, say that she is afraid the trucks repaving our street will wake her up in the morning (since they start their work before dawn), I see an opportunity to show her how to manage such daily interruptions in our otherwise secure world.

For me, the trucks repaving the street are fascinating. They are the people who know what to do with hot tar and rollers, as well as the people in cars who might be in the way, so it is all quite interesting to me. Maybe that’s a way to reframe the scare. To share our own experience. But that may not be enough since grown-ups see the world so differently than children.

I might also be inclined to agree with my friend that the trucks are big and noisy, but that they are happily doing their job of improving our neighborhood while we are safely in our homes doing our jobs. I might tell her that one of her big jobs as a child is to learn, so being woken up by the trucks might be their way of letting her know it is time to learn about them, and the repaving of the street. If I were her mom I’d tell her, “If the trucks wake you up, come get me and we can look out the window and learn together.”

Mother’s love is universal

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exchange student, express feelings, fear, friendship, inspire, love, mother, parents

I am suddenly in charge of someone else’s child, whom I’ve never even met, from half-way across the world. She got off the plane last night, after flying by herself 18 hours from Taiwan as a Rotary exchange student. We recognized her from her photos, so as soon as we saw her I put my arms around her, for her mother back home who surely would have done the same, to let her know we congratulate her for making it here and for being so brave. I cannot imagine what it is like to go so far from home, alone, and not really speak the language at the other end.

Her parents are brave too to send her off to unknown Americans to let her learn about our world, without a word directly to us, a giant leap of faith I am not sure I could do. We spoke by Skype to the family hosting our son, Andrew, in Ecuador, but we have not had words or pictures exchanged with Nana’s parents. They do not need to tell us that we will watch her as our own and care for her carefully as we hope the people in Ecuador will do for our son, too.

In sorrow and in gladness

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, friendship, homemade muffins, husband, listening, love, marriage, mother-in-law, relationship, sad news, take for granted, trust

I woke up last Friday knowing my mother-in-law was likely to die that day, wishing I could go back under the covers and sleep through it all. My first inclination was to try to be the best wife I could be, at least for one day. A friend called and encouraged me in the perfect kind of way, then, I made my guy a special breakfast of homemade muffins, bacon and fruit. It took all morning to accomplish since my foot’s not really up for all that, but in the end I was so glad I’d made the effort. It set the tone for a day of me showing my love for him any way I could. The phone rang just after we finished eating and while we were making plans to catch a flight up to Buffalo to be with family at his mom’s bedside, one last time.

That’s when I renewed my resolve to be there for my husband since now we’d be home with the sad news of her passing, unsure what the future held. Being the best wife I can be has a lot to do with listening and waiting for my husband to tell me what is on his mind. He’s not one to just shout that out. It is not about me asking him how he is, or telling him what I think, or expressing my own emotions or ideas. It is about me being available to him for whatever he needs at a time when, I know from experience, it is hard to get your bearings. I am a talker and a thinker and a doer. Quietly waiting for my attention to be required is challenging for me.

I am not sure how I did by him but at the end of the day I was proud of myself. Making extra space for him, someone I dare to take for granted at times, felt good, and right, and helpful, and loving, and all the things I want for him to be able to count on in me. And for my part, it has been a reminder of what I might strive to be more often.