Enough

I believe I was in the middle of eating a meatball when he grabbed my hand.

It was over 30 years ago, in what now seems like someone else’s life. I was at my former sister-in-law’s home at a traditional Italian family dinner when her tenant from the upstairs apartment barged in urgently as if escaping a fire.

He grabbed my hand and looked at it intently. “You’ll never be rich, but you’ll always have enough.”

He was likely younger than he looked, prematurely wrinkled, thin and balding. His features were all a bit crooked. He stared at me strangely, as if he knew secrets about me I didn’t even know I had. I was told he was a vagabond and had worked in the circus for most of his life as a psychic. But before you assume my reading was just vague enough that it could apply to anyone, there’s more to the story.

“Read me!” my ex asked.

“Broken window,” the odd character said with a thin grin, just before we heard the loud crash of a brick being thrown through our car window. At which point he closed my ex’s hand and pushed it back towards him as if to say, ‘you asked for it’.

The whole exchange happened in about the time it took you to read about it, but it has stuck with me my entire life. Fueled by the creepy confirmation of the ‘broken window’ event, I often reflect on the mean of having ‘enough’ in my life.

There is something strangely beautiful about the word when used as a describer.

Enough love.
Enough friends.
Enough money.
Enough time.

It has a Goldilocks and the Three Bears ring to it. Not too little, not too much, just enough.

It assumes contentment. A lack of greediness. An abundance of thankfulness.

It also carries the undertone of knowing that while things could be better, they could also be much worse.

Enough heartache to know true love. Enough sadness to appreciate joy. Enough illness to be thankful for good health. Enough difficulty to balance my blessings.

In May of this year, I made the decision to end my newspaper career after 35 years in print media.

In short, I had had enough.

Enough time wasted sitting in traffic. Enough 12-hour days. Enough stressing about budgets. Enough Sunday nights spent dreading Monday mornings. Enough leaving in the dark, and coming home in the dark.

It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in my life, but in the end, it came down to this.

I don’t need a corporate life.
I don’t need a big income.
I don’t need a big title.

Because along with those things comes a big price tag.

What I really need is, quite simply, enough.

Amen.

Time, it just goes

And the time, it just goes.

While we wait for something to change, something to happen, something to start, something to end.

It goes as we prepare for the day. THE day. Any day.

It goes in traffic lights and traffic jams. Hours of cars crawling to and from the place where the time just goes during wasteful meetings and wishful dreaming of being someplace else. Anyplace else.

It goes in footsteps, footfalls, walking, running. Putting distance between the time we start and time we end.  The time in between just gone.

It goes in the ticks of a clock during the sleepless nights spent worrying.
Worrying about the time, and where it goes.

It disappears in errands and chores, in grocery stores. Clean up needed for time waster in aisle three.

Wasting time wanting, wishing, needing.

It goes as we try to plan a better way to spend it. As we try to find a better way. As we try to feel better.

It goes in the baby I just held, now married with babies.
It goes in the people who held me as a baby, who I now hold up as they teeter totter and wonder where their time went.

As I silently try to explain.

It just goes.

It's Game Time

There are a lot of Christmas traditions. These are mine.

Week 1 tree goes up. Week 2 window lights on. Week 3 cards get mailed. Week 4 post the Rudolph story. 

That’s about all the spirit I can muster as part of a tiny, aging family whose biggest gift is that they survived to see one more Christmas. There is no gift shopping, no turkey in the oven, no kids working themselves into a frenzy, no dog wandering around with a bow stuck to its head.

As Bill Belichick would say; it is what it is.

So I continue working through my festive ‘to do’ list until I hit task number four, which should be the easiest. Just say a few hopeful words, cut and paste the Rudolph story, and everyone will ‘like’ it on Facebook and wish us a happy holiday.

But that’s where things become derailed and the skis fall off the sled, because the hopeful words are hard to muster up on this 15^th anniversary of Stephen’s death.  For the past week I’ve gotten up each morning and stared at my blank computer page, telling myself to just jot down a few merry words and not give the gift of depression this year.

But like a season-weary, injured NFL player, I’m a game time decision. I’ve had a little red X next to my name for the past week, and although I’m trying hard to rally I’m just not sure if I can dig deep enough to find any Merry in this Christmas.

Well, it’s Christmas Eve, and it’s game time.

I can almost hear the Fantasy Festivus players cheer as I put my headset on and line up to the computer. I make a few key plays, score high points for extra-long sentences and get hit with a few penalties for ‘non-excessive celebration’ as I type these words onto the screen.

These imperfect, heartful words that will be sent out into the Universe, just in case there is someone out there who feels like me and needs a cheerleader on the sidelines. Someone to say “I know it’s hard, but you can do this. Don’t think too far ahead, just think one day at a time, and on this one day, you can do this.”

For me, that cheerleader is my brother Stephen. And Rudolph.

Read it and rally my friends, it’s game time.

The Night We Saw Rudolph.

Twas the night before Christmas on Webb Street in Salem. Stephen is five years old and trying desperately to fall asleep amidst the holiday excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning.

I tell him that if Santa comes and he is still awake, he will fly right by and not bring him any toys. Just then, someone drove into the driveway of the liquor store that use to be our neighbor and put their brake lights on, causing the bedroom to glow in a bright, red light.

His eyes grew as big as saucers as he looked at the window, then at me, and muttered “Rudolph…!” just before falling asleep.

From that year forth, every Christmas Eve Stephen would turn to me and say, “Remember the night we saw Rudolph?” and we’d laugh at the memory. But as we grew to adults, I began to respond, “That wasn’t Rudolph, it was….” and before I could finish the statement he would give a little smirk and say, “SShhhh, it was Rudolph” and we’d just smile.

My brother has been gone 15 Christmases now, but I still tell this story to anyone who will listen.

Because looking back, Stephen was right.

It was indeed Rudolph.

10 Memorable Books

It was supposed to be a quick Facebook scan: who did what, who ate what and who went where. But instead, I was tagged with a challenge that has weighed heavy on my mind: list 10 books that made a difference in my life.

Books and I go way back.

Almost all of my childhood memories include me reading. Me, with my white pleather bible full of colorful photos, crying because people were mean to Jesus; Me, in my cardboard fort with a flashlight, glued to Ten Little Indians; Me, carrying home huge stacks of books from the Salem Public Library with just my pixie haircut and Ked’s sneakers sticking out from behind the pile; Me, convinced flying saucers really were spotted over the Salem Power Plant after being brainwashed by Chariots of the Gods; Me, writing a suspense novel in high school as a way to make friends, an effort that ended up in a bonfire after a particularly hurtful bullying incident.

So choosing the top 10 books in my life is a big task. It is not a list that anyone is going to want to run out and read, but it is my life through books.

1) The Bible
Would it surprise anyone that I wanted to be a nun when I grew up? Up until the time my father was killed in a car accident, I was deeply religious in a home where that really wasn’t. I’m not sure if it was faith or fear that guided me in those early years, but I would hit my knees faithfully every night, and keep a growing list of things I needed to repent for in preparation for my weekly confession. If you’ve read my blogs, you’ve heard mention of my infamous white pleather Bible, origin unknown, which was so well worn and read that I had to wrap it up with my rosary beads to hold it together. I won’t go into details of the changes in my life that challenged my faith, but let’s just say I’m back, and I wish I still had that Bible.

2) Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss
What’s not to love about Dr. Seuss? I would read this book out loud to no one in particular so I could preserve it to memory like a beautiful poem (I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-Am). The rhythm of the words were melodic and soothing in a life that was anything but that, and it still makes me smile to think of the oasis his words offered to my younger self.

3) Our Bodies, Ourselves
Don’t go rushing out to buy this at the same time please! Growing up in a home that didn't talk much about anything deep or particularly important, this book gave me some much needed information and education about stuff young girls need to know. If you grew up in the same era as me, and you were a girl, I know you read it too.

4) Ten Little Indians (And then there were None), Agatha Christie
This was my first grown-up type of book, and it introduced me to the all night, flashlight under the bed, page turning experience that would become an almost nightly occurrence throughout much of my young adulthood.

5) Chariots of the Gods, Erich von Daniken
Come on, you know you read this too. Didn’t you? This was a cult books that was all the buzz when it first came out. I was obsessed with the thought of aliens visiting earth and sucked into the whole conspiracy theory thingee.  I am almost tempted to read it again, but I’m afraid it would be like watching the frightening episode from Lost in Space with the big white alien gorilla when I was a kid, only to discover when I re-watched it as an adult that it had an obvious zipper on it and you could almost see the guy’s real shoes sticking out.

6) The Shining, Stephen King
Wow… LOVE Stephen King. This daunting book was very fat and had very tiny type, but it scared the heck out of me in a very big way. I know the movie got a lot of buzz, but some of the scariest stuff in the book could only exist in your head, so if you liked the movie, and like being scared, invest some time and read the book!

7) The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
I can hear you now, yawn. I think if I re-read it again I may yawn too. But it gave me a lot of peace in a time of sadness after my brother Stephen was killed. It helped me clear out a space in my head that wasn’t full of grief, if only for a moment. I spent many solo hours in the Starbucks café in Swampscott nursing a Gingerbread Latte in a comfortable chair, trying to stay part of the world at the same time I was trying to stay in my right mind. Every book has its moment of importance that can’t always be replicated, and this was the right book at a bad time.

8) 26 Miles to Boston, Michael Connolly
When I decided to start running in memory of Stephen, I decided to start big. My first goal was the Boston Marathon and I worked backwards to figure out how I would get to that finish line. Part of that experience included pouring over this awesome book that details the entire course, offering memories from each mile. I recommend it highly to anyone running Boston that hasn’t read it yet.

9) Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
This voracious reader went through a very long dry spell when life obligations consumed every last molecule of space like the old science experiment when you fill a glass with rocks (is it full?), then sand (is it full now?) then water (now is it full?), leaving years devoid of reading anything more than a newspaper or magazine. This book reminded me of the page turner mysteries I used to love, and the days I would keep the book and flashlight next to my bed so I could cram in a page or two each time I woke up in the middle of the night. It was another ‘right book at the right time’ that reminded me of the deep comfort I get from a really great read. It brought me back to reading regularly, which I am grateful for.

10) The Book I Will Write One Day, by Me
Less reading and more action is required to make this happen, but I believe that someday it will happen. And who knows, maybe long after I’m gone it will be on someone’s top 10 books list.

You never know.

Stuff I Miss

Here is a list of some things I miss:

Waking up and having absolutely nothing to do all summer.
Old-fashioned drugstores with ice cream soda bars.
Asking if I could go to the bathroom at a restaurant just so I could crawl under the table to get out.
The Lost 45’s radio program on Sunday nights.
The ‘popcorn man’ on the Salem Common.
The tilt-a-whirl at the Salem Willows.
Wearing old sneakers with my bathing suit so I wouldn’t cut my feet on clam shells.
The dill pickle jar on the counter at Lena’s sub shop on Bridge Street.
The Spiegel catalog arriving in the mail.
“Sobi’s” meat market on Webb Street in Salem.
Weylus’ in Salem- free bowl of soup with your lunch plate.
The “V-bar” for awesome grilled burgers.
My white pleather kid’s bible and glow-in-the-dark rosary beads.
The creature-double feature.
A brand-new Colorforms set.
The sandy, salty feeling of a day at the beach.
Showering with a hose.
Buying a whole new back to school wardrobe, from the shoes up.
The lunch-counter at Almy’s and their super-salty string French fries.
The “Salem station” on the radio.
My grandmother’s polish cooking- everything started with a chunk of pork fat.
Using a clothes pin and a card to create annoying sounds with my bicycle.
Eating pretty much anything and not knowing or caring about the calories.
The Salem News, when it really was just Salem.
Playing my new 45 record over and over and over until it was memorized.
A bottle of coke-syrup in the frig.
Fishing for flounder in Salem Harbor.
Digging for clams at low tide at Collins Cove Beach.
Russell’s Ice Cream’s ‘sweet cream’ hot fudge sundae with real whipped cream.
Hobby shops full of jigsaw puzzles, paint sets and models (not the fashion kind).
Making stuff out of gimp with the Salem Common park instructor.
Watching ZOOM and talking in ubbi-dubbi.
Checking out stacks of hard cover books from the Salem Library.
Watching Disney’s Wonderful World on Sunday nights.
My body dotted with calamine lotion, zinc and mercurochrome from too-much summer fun.
Back when being a kid and ‘having fun’ was our job.

The best job I ever had.

This Morning in Salem

These are just a few of the things I observed early this morning in Salem, not necessarily in this order.

Me running.
Empty nip bottles.
Lost signs for a kitty.
Dogs walking owners.
A Brazil flag flying at half-mast.
A Red Sox flag flying at half-mast.
Seagulls emptying out full trash cans.
The sun rising a little later than the day before.
Dueling exercise groups on the Salem Common.
A zig-zaggedy squirrel taking forever to cross the street.
Clusters of leaves and branches, evidence of this week’s wild storms.
Customized license plates revealing the personalities of mystery owners.
Commuters funneling out of side streets around town into the train station.
The Salem Public Library, making me nostalgic for the many years I visited daily.
Bittersweet so aggressive I feared moving too slow or it would ensnare me.
A beautiful peachy purple sunrise that made it worth getting up this early.
The soft, rhythmic sound of kayak oars cutting through the still water.
Like minded fitness folks running around this great little City.
My nana’s house on Collins Cove Beach, still unchanged.
Preparations for the Seafood Festival down the Willows.
Two cardinals diving, dipping and dancing in the air.
A rooster walking up someone’s front stairs (?).
Lots of spitting (oops, sorry, that was me).
One random sneaker, in good condition.
People watering flowers.
Freshly paved streets.
Secret cemeteries.
Good Morning.
Good Run.

Hey, Thanks!

Here are just a couple of people I’ve been meaning to say thanks to. Sorry it took me so long.

The moving company manager, who surprised me with a refund check saying they overcharged me when I wouldn’t have known the difference.

The ‘trash man’, who placed my emptied barrel on side of house, put the cover on and gave it a little pat before he moved on. I saw you, thanks!

Friends who pick up where we left off, even if there happened to be a 20 year break in the middle.

The people who tend to the sponsored traffic island gardens around the city- nice job!

Coffee Time, for making delicious golden birthday cakes with buttercream frosting. So delicious, I sometimes get a small one just for me, when it’s not even my birthday. Wait, did I just say that out loud?

The car repair guy, who waited for me to get to the shop to replace my broken wipers on a rainy night, even though it was long after closing hours. And he didn’t even seem to mind.

Little kids who take a liking to me and let me know what it feels like to be a mom, if just for a moment.

Philanthropic companies. Times are tough for all of us, but you still give what you can. You rock.

The person in the grocery store who randomly handed me a $1 off coupon for something I just put in my carriage. Nice!

The state trooper who was at the scene of my brother’s death in a car accident, who randomly checked in with me for years after my brother had been killed, just to see how my family was doing. Above and beyond.

Everyone over the years who has said “you can do it!” when I wasn’t sure I could. Sometimes I still couldn’t do ‘it’, but it was still nice that you had faith in me.

My long-time primary care doctor, who truly and deeply cares about my well-being inside and out. She's sick! (in the way that we now say something is 'sick' if it is really, really good).

My notoriously tough college English professor, who gave me an A+ on an original screenplay and added a note that my writing was indicative of a “beautiful soul”, words I never forgot and still aspire to live up to.

My wonderfully wild memories of the crazy hyjinks we use to pull in the workplace at the Salem Evening News, back in the days when it really was just the SALEM Evening News, and you could balance work and fun without getting into trouble.

The scruffy guy at the coffee shop who overheard me talking about a fundraiser I was working on, and handed me a $250 check from the construction company he owned. You never know!

The nice lady who gave me a hug and wiped my away my tears after I crashed my bike, back when you could show that kind of affection to other people’s kids without worry.

The penny candy guy on the corner who would occasionally let me pick a free bonus piece- score!

My co-workers, who send me encouraging notes thanking me for helping them balance their work and personal life, reminding me that we can sometimes make a big difference in very small ways.

The little girl who was washing her hands in the bathroom at Fantasy Island, and spontaneously said to her mother as I walked in: “Mama, she’s beautiful!” (NOTE: I was only about 10 myself at the time).

My running friend who said she missed my blog, reminding me I missed writing it too.

What Time Is It? NOW!

As I spend yet another early morning killing valuable time waiting for the sun to rise so I can get back to work to continuing doing stuff I have been dreading all night, it is with great irony that I find an unfinished blog dated January 2013 called The Time Is Now.

Apparently it was a message to myself, as the time is usually ‘not yet’, ‘almost’, ‘pretty soon’ or ‘someday’.

They are the answers to big questions such as “When will you start doing what you love?”,  “when will you stop doing what you don’t love?” and “when will you finally become who you were meant to be?”

Answers to small things are so much easier.

Hot fudge sundae? Yes please!

When would you like a fabulous dress that is on sale and fits you perfectly. Now please!

I have no relatives and I’m giving away my fortune to strangers- would you like some? Sure!

It’s the truly life changing questions that require us to get out of our comfort zone and put some effort into our dreams that are easily put off. How ironic they are the same dreams that can transform our lives from just trying to get from the start of the day to the end of the day without losing it, to finally feeling alive and wondering why it took us so long to wake up and start living.

I’m not going to edit my blog draft, because the point is abundantly clear, even in its raw form. The trick is living it instead of just reading it.

The Time is Now

If I told you that NOW is the time

The time to move

The time to learn

The time to grow

The time to love

The time is NOW

What would you say?

In a minute, after the laundry, maybe tomorrow?

If you believed you only had a short time left on this earth,

Who would you made amends with? Call them.

Who would you thank? Thank them.

Where would you go? Go.

What stress would you remove from your life? Get rid of it.

The time is now to do what you must do, what you want to do, what you’ve dreamed of doing.

Don’t worry, the “have to dos” will still be there, tugging on your sleeve, trying to keep you from rising above it all like a balloon trying to break free of its tethers. But what about the "want to dos"?

Now is the time for “I wish I could one day… some day”.

Living in the shadow of the memories of loved ones whose one days were taken away.

When it’s warm.

When I feel better.

When I get a new job.

When I have no more obligations.

When I retire.

When?

Lose weight?

Start exercising?

Go to Hawaii?

Soon. Eventually. Maybe next year.

But here’s the thing: It is next year.

And have we started yet?

Stop the Presses- It's the End of an Era

Stop the presses! 

I just got this newsflash: a local newspaper is discontinuing their ‘junior’ paper carrier jobs… for good.

Back in the day, we were paperboys, regardless if we were a boy or girl. We walked the streets after school (when we could wait until the afternoon for our news), dragging around bags heavier than ourselves, nearly tipping over until we delivered the first few to make the weight more manageable. 

Now, a car slowly creeps by in the wee hours of the morning, whipping papers out the window into snowbanks or bushes or - in the case of my older delivery person- carefully placing each one on the doorstep, leading me to believe he learned the importance of good paper placement back when he was a paperboy. Back when it was a job to be proud of.

Yes, it was a job- probably our first job.  We learned to earn our own money to buy our own stuff. And we learned that if the stuff we bought was penny candy our money wouldn’t last more than a swallow. But if we bought something like a scribble pad and colored pencils, or splurged on a model from the craft store, we could enjoy that investment for weeks.

If you were a budding entrepreneur, you’d act as a general contractor, sub leasing your route to friends for a piece of the action on the days you weren’t in the mood.

I remember when carrying papers was often secondary to checking up on an elderly neighbor whose only visitor of that day, week or even life was the paperboy .

When my brother Stephen was a paperboy, he not only knew the names of his customers, but also the names of their kids, grand kids and pets, not to mention what each house would offer him for a snack.  In some cases, he knew more about his older clients then their own families did, coming home with information about their health or living conditions, even helping one of his diabetic clients tend to her ulcerated foot when he realized she could not do it herself. He was a paper carrier, companion, dog walker and personal assistant who left each house with more than he dropped off- usually an envelope with money and a list of grocery items he delivered the next day.  He was so important in their lives I wonder if they read the newspaper at all, or they just paid to have a daily visitor who cared.

Paper boys knew who they were delivering to, and the tips were personal with a sincere thank you, sometimes along with a cookie or a date nut bar home baked by the customer which we would eat on the route, delivering the next paper with the added bonus of a chocolate fingerprint.  

We were even little debt collectors, given a list of the ‘deadbeats’ whose papers would be shut off if they didn’t pay up.  Our service was so personal that we often knew why that bill was unpaid, as some of our older clients clearly lived below poverty levels, and when asked to bring in their mail along with the paper we'd carry in a hefty load of ‘final notice’ bills back when they tried to embarrass us to pay by printing that on the outside of the envelope. We knew their circumstances so well, that we’d sometimes go into our own tip drawer to mark the account ‘paid in full’.

The image of kids delivering their afternoon papers reminds me of the innocence and simplicity of times gone by; when our local news was truly local. When the newspaper was still made only of paper, and when everyone seemed to know someone who wrote, printed, sold or delivered it to us. It was a chain of humanity, and the paperboy was an important part of that chain- the face of the newspaper.

Delivering the paper helped us to learn about news personally impacts lives, as our customer would retrieve the paper and immediately read the headline aloud - sometimes followed by a gasp or sigh. They would go to the death notice page and tell you a story about friends and neighbors listed there as their eyes glistened. Or they would ask if we wanted a laugh and read their favorite cartoon to us. 

Yes, we knew how the news affected its readers, up close and personal. We knew more than anyone ever gave us credit for. But no one asked us what we thought.  

We were just paperboys.

And now we are gone.

Don't Bum Me Out

Does anyone say ‘bummer’ anymore, and who made up that word anyhow?  If you don’t know what it means, it refers to anything that really stinks, which may just be the origin of the word.

Here are a few things that bum me out:

A long day at work. A long commute home. A long, boring speech. Being the one who gave the long, boring speech. Boring meetings about nothing. Having nothing to do when I’m antsy. Have something to do when I’m exhausted.

Sour milk. A sour attitude, mine or anyone else’. Fruit rotting too fast. Fruit Flies. Time flying too fast by when you are having fun. Bad days that never end. Wondering if there really is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Being trapped in the tunnel.

A construction crew setting up outside the front door on a planned quiet day off.  An overnight snowstorm on a work day. Wearing crappy snow boots to work and forgetting my shoes. Wearing shoes to the gym and forgetting my sneakers. Going into a full blown panic attack looking for my wallet that I forgot was hanging off my wrist.

Going from free parking to paid parking at work. Dings and scratches on car from expensive parking lot. No change for the meter. Store right next to the meter with a sign WE DO NOT GIVE CHANGE FOR METER. Change for the sake of change. Crappy ‘groundhog day’ stuff that never seems to change.

Spilling coffee on a white shirt at the start of a work day. Ending up with an even bigger spot on my chest that looks like a bull’s eye or something worse caused from the expired stain cleaner. Finding out too late I had a suspicious brown stain on the bum of my white pants after sitting on a piece of chocolate in the morning. Realizing I walked around all day like that. Realizing what everyone thought was so funny that day.

Burning the roof of my mouth on hot pizza.  Choking after food goes down ‘the wrong pipe’. Choking when I need to excel. Popping out a swear word at an inappropriate time. An eyelash hair in my contact lens. Getting the hairy eyeball.

Strange sounds from my car engine at the start of a long road trip. Strange sounds from my stomach at the start of a long run. Water level comes up instead of going down when I flush. Strange computer messages that suggest my life is about to be erased, and for just a moment thinking that sounds like a great idea. Too many ideas at 3 a.m. Not enough ideas in the middle of the work day.

A dry cough at night that keeps everyone in the house up. A productive cough in the middle of a meeting. Not having a tissue when I seriously need one.

Staring at a blank page not knowing where to start. Starting something I can’t finish. Looking at a full page and throwing it away because it stinks. Having the person on treadmill next to me sniff loudly, look in my direction and move.

Awkward endings to a column.