gina@lohmanhills.com

Keeping it Simple

During the summer of 2012, the world conspired against me.

I suffered from Facebook doldrums. A glance at my news feed told me everyone else was going on a great vacation. But we were staying home because a lunatic client was making our work life hellish. Stupid stinky client! Sucking all the joy out of summer like soda up a straw at the county fair.

It was the middle of summer, hot, humid, and my life was well….my life. I could see the spill in the kitchen that needed wiping up, and the floor that needed vacuuming. In comparison,

So I sat on my couch feeling sorry for myself (yes, it was pitiful), and then our cat Buttercup went tearing through the house chasing a dust mote or whatever it is that catches the eye of a six month old kitten. She failed to account for the changing terrain (area rug to hardwoods) and the sudden loss of traction was a problem. There she went! Sliding into the wall. Then she got up and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

The whole thing made me laugh because, hey, I’m nothing if not the kind of person who likes to laugh at dogs and cats doing stupid stuff.

I looked down at the Facebook status bar and typed:

August 1: Simple Pleasure: Watching the cat run through the house and try to turn a quick corner on hardwood floors.

Such a mundane moment. The sort of thing that might happen any day of the week at our house, but suddenly this little bit of ordinary seemed anything but,… and if I’d been on vacation, I’d have missed it.

A thought occurred to me. What if I looked for something like that tomorrow, too? Another Simple Pleasure. Would there be one? What would it look like? Could there be a little moment like that every day??

The next day the Facebook vacation pictures were still there (and I was still at home) …so I looked around and noticed the flowers in the garden.

August 2: Simple Pleasure: Watching the zinnias & cosmos in the flower garden bob their heads in the breeze.

I decided I’d look for something lovely every single day for a while. Maybe a week.

August 3: Simple Pleasure: Homemade, fresh-from-the-oven baking powder biscuits – all golden brown – with homemade raspberry jam melting over the top.

August 4: Simple Pleasure: Knowing there are fresh, crisp sheets waiting for you when you slip into bed tonight.

August 5: Simple Pleasure: The sound of 8-year-old boy giggles.

August 6: Simple Pleasure: Sumatra blend coffee first thing on a Monday morning.

August 7: Simple Pleasure: Waking up in the middle of the night with “hot pillow,” then flipping it over. Aaaahhh. Cool pillow!

After a week of looking for good things, I realized I saw more good things because I made a conscious effort to seek them out.

That was 2012.

Can there be a moment like that every single day? Yes, but only if you’re looking for it.

And so I did and there’s been something every day since then.

Along the way I changed to a shorter hashtag, #SimpleJoy, but the message is the same. If you’d like one #SimpleJoy every day…stop by Facebook and give it a like and a follow.

Like a Rock…

I don’t know what it is about the fall. The back to school season comes and goes, and I generally try to have a plan that doesn’t involve our family descending into total chaos and lunacy.

It all starts out so innocently. It’s Labor Day, the end of summer, a chance to reflect on everything that happened during the summer and gear up for the coming school year.

I tell myself, “It’s getting to be fall. Pretty soon there won’t be any grass to mow!” Group skating lessons start for my son… see, it’s no big deal, just a couple of afternoons a week. (well….3).

Then our local homeschool group starts its fall term, where I teach two in-person classes there (always one Shakespeare class and another literature class).

Add in one thing and another, and time rolls along like a rock down a steep hill. Before I even know what’s happened, here I am standing in the aisles of Target surrounded by Halloween costumes and candy, and I’m starting to squirrel away chocolate like it’s a magic stress reliever.

Oh who am I kidding? It is a magic stress reliever!! These days, long before lunch, I start thinking about that hunk of chocolate I’ve hidden in the top draw of my dresser, and during the afternoon circadian trough I promise myself that if I just make it to 5pm that glass of wine or bottle of beer will be M.I.N.E.

I don’t know what it is that makes time speeds up. Maybe it’s all the disruption in sleep when we leave Daylight Savings Time and return to Standard Time in a few weeks? But it’s bam, bam, bam — Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year’s to a school year that’s more than half over!

In the movie The Incredibles there’s the wonderful line where Helen Parr (Elastigirl) says, “Everyone is special, Dash.” To which Dash replies, “That’s just another way of saying no one is.”

I think the same thing is true with time management. If every thing is important, then nothing is. Not every thing can be a priority! The secret of making time for our priorities are sort out all the things that aren’t. And honestly, when I look at my schedule, I see that most things aren’t really priorities.

In Dante’s Inferno, one of my favorite scenes occurs in the Canto XXIV when Dante encounters the Thieves. The thieves are sentenced to spend eternity stealing one another’s bodies, bursting into flames, and reforming. Dante’s placed them way down in the seventh bolgia of the eighth circle, far lower in Hell than the Violent Against Their Neighbors (murderers) who reside in the first ring of the seventh circle.

Why?

The reason for that is simple. Those who steal steal our very lives. The time we spent working a job to earning the money to buy something is time that is gone forever. When people steal the fruits of our labor (anything from a candy bar to a car), that time — that part of our lives — has been well and truly taken, and it cannot be returned. Also, thievery isn’t accidental…it’s always done deliberately. (“Oh, I’m sorry sir, I just walked into your house by accident and your television set threw itself into my arms as I walked out the door, so I decided to put it in the back of my truck.”)

The real kicker is our lives are finite; our time here is the ultimate limited commodity. I don’t get extra hours in the day or extra days in the week, and neither does anyone else. And I don’t get to add extra years onto my life to make up for all the stupid, wasted time in my youth.

So when there are loads of things that steal time away from my biggest values, I try to make a conscious effort to not steal time from myself. Each fall I remind myself that I need to make time only for those things that are really important. Work is important, my immediate family is important, and certain activities are important, but most everything else isn’t really that important…..except toilet paper. Making time to stop by the grocery to pick some up because we’re on our last roll…that’s important.

Great Expectations….

One of the things I appreciate most about teaching in my local homeschool co-op, is it gives me everything I loved most about teaching (reading and discussing great literature) — and none of what I hated (tests, grading papers, and arguing about grades on those papers).

Each year — fall and spring — for the past several years, it’s been my good fortune to dive into literature with a bunch of homeschooled high school kids. And, because it’s not my first time at this rodeo, I’ve got a fairly good eye for picking out the kids who are in class because they want to be there (God bless their little cotton socks) and the ones who don’t.Those are the ones who tend to look at me on the first day of class with eyes that say, “I’m only here because my mother signed up for this stupid class.”

Because there are usually some of each in the class, I keep my goals are modest. Can they leave class at the end of 10 weeks thinking, “Wow, I didn’t expect to like this, but it was okay.” If we can reach that threshold as a class…it’s a success.

Seriously.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I give it my best shot to keep them engaged, interested, and having fun, but there’s no way 12-15 kids ranging from grades 9-12 are all going to think Polonius is as big a hoot as I do.

When I begin a semester expecting everyone to go all misty-eyed over the Odyssey or thrill to the placement of sinners in Dante’s Inferno, it’s a recipe for disappointment. Keep those expectations firmly in check and everyone is happier at the end of the semester.

That’s why I remember so clearly one of the best compliments I ever received. I was teaching at a small liberal arts college at the time, and as a student walked out of class after turning in his final exam, he said:

“I really thought this class was going to suck, but it didn’t. It didn’t suck nearly as much as as I thought it would.”

My friends, that goes down as a W.

When I think about life outside the classroom, I follow the same policy. Oh, I’m not a pessimist by any stretch of the imagination, but when I allow myself to fall into the trap of great expectations, then I’m apt to fall short — and feel like a failure.

When I keep my expectations firmly tied to reality and the realm of possibility, there’s a good chance that I’ll meet those goals and feel terrific about the situation and my part in it.

Mid-Year New Year

I love back to school time of year. There’s just something about a the fresh boxes of pens, pencils, and paper, the big bins filled with folders decorated with cute kittens and puppies, stacks of spiral notes, and brand new erasers in all sorts of fun shapes.

But it’s more than just “new stuff” that makes me happy, it’s what it represents. A fresh start, unlimited potential, new opportunities for growth and learning.

It’s like the whole year is that spiral notebook. It’s totally empty, and we can create whatever kind of fresh, exciting story we want to fill its pages.

It might be a science story with new discoveries about circuits, transistors, and capacitors. It might be a business plan where the seeds of a new venture are written out for the first time. It might be a story about history (our own or someone else’s) where battles, regardless how small or large, were fought and lessons were learned. It might be a story about creativity itself — a short story…the very first short story you’ve ever written.

It’s all out there.

There have been no tears because the story problem problem just won’t work out right. There have been no arguments about which priority is the most pressing. There have been no kitchen disasters that began as glittering Pinterest dreams that transformed into stinky, charred remains with the smoke alarm announcing the failure in earshot.

So I’m taking a few moments to inhale the smell of just sharpened pencils and touch their pointy tips. I’m shopping during the week…when everyone else is at work and the aisles at Staples and Target aren’t full.I’m not fretting about what lies ahead.

I’m content to show myself a little grace and mercy, enjoying the mid-year new year.

My Tony Campolo Moment

When I was working at Presbyterian College, speakers regularly visited the campus on Tuesday morning, talking about this that or the other thing.

During one of those Tuesday morning sessions, the sociologist and evangelist Tony Campolo was the speaker de jour. At one point in his presentation, Campolo told a story about a prostitute and people who “didn’t give a shit” about her situation.

Then he waited the requisite beat before continuing to say what really bothered him was people who were more concerned with the fact he’d just said “shit” than the actual problem he’d been talking about.

I often come back to that idea when I’m teaching literature.

A few years ago I taught To Kill a Mockingbird, and the mother of one of my students was really upset and called to talk to me about the book.

I anticipated her being concerned with the use of the “n” word and the racial issues depicted in the book. Or, maybe she was concerned with the age-appropriateness of sexual issues the book presents.

No. And, uh, no.

She was upset because, during the trial Tom Robinson testifies to what Bob Ewell said to Mayella Ewell, his daughter: “You goddamn whore, I’ll kill you.”

THAT was the issue — the use of the words “goddamn” and “whore.”

My Tony Campolo moment.

Never mind the situation Mayella is in. Never mind Tom Robinson is accused of something he did not do. No. Those weren’t the issues, but these were?

Did I really need to repeat that kind of language in class? (Well, yes, considering that’s exactly what Harper Lee wrote.)

Was it appropriate? (Well, no, it’s never appropriate for a father to look at his daughter and call her a goddamn whore.)

Had I ever considered using WhiteOut over that section and the other swear words in the book. (No. And just for the record, I’ve never considered taking a big old bucket of paint and putting clothes on the figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, either.)

When I teach To Kill a Mockingbird I honor what Harper Lee wrote by reading her words. I do the same when I teach Merchant of Venice or Huckleberry Finn. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable…and I think that’s the point.