Month: February 2020

Paying For My Sins

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

istock_photo_of_bakery_showcase

I spent most of January recovering from the parade of birthdays, anniversaries and holidays that actually began with my husband Mike’s birthday way back in September. For whatever reason our family has very little to do for most of the year and then we go into overdrive in the fall. The temptations that come from celebratory occasions overtook us during the last few months, making our sensible diets only a memory and pulling us from our exercise program with a vengeance. The result has been terrible backsliding and an increased girth around our midsections. Never to be undone by anything or anyone I have found myself working hard for the past several weeks to recuperate from my sins of indulgence.

I teeter between guilt for my inability to look the other way when temptations of cookies, wines and other delights continually passed my lips during the many weeks of revelry and the thought that life is short and I should grab every second of enjoyment while I am able. Still, I do feel better when I am kinder to my body and it always seems worthwhile to have a bit of control over my impulses. Surely there is a nice compromise between total abstinence in the face of goodies and a bit of imbibing in the name of having a good time. Sadly walking that very thin line is not as easy as it may seem and while I expended a great deal of effort doing so, I found myself failing to maintain control time and again when faced with cornucopias of delight .

There’s a commercial for something or another in which a woman is preparing for a dinner party. She is cooking a multitude of dishes to accommodate the dietary preferences of her expected guests. There’s this one on Keto, that one on Paleo, and so forth. I’ve lately experienced the same frustration in putting together a meal so I know the feeling of attempting to make everyone happy. It results in having mountains of different kinds of food at the ready just in case. Being a hostess is becoming ever more complex which is why I try not to foist my own food preferences on others whenever I am invited to gatherings.

As a child I was taught to be satisfied with whatever was offered. My mother suggested that if I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to eat some item I should either take none of it or just choose a small dab of it until I was certain that I would actually be able to eat all of it. Never was I to make comments about what I preferred or disliked. I’ve remembered my manners well over the years and self police myself when out and about rather than regaling others with long descriptions of my current eating needs or preferences. I always find something that works for me or I eat small portions so that nobody is aware that I am on a different sort of diet.

I appreciate that there are many different reasons why some people need certain types of food. My father-in-law is diabetic so I always prepare items that work for him. I have a nephew who has food allergies and his mom, a pediatrician, brings goodies that he can eat so that the rest of the children can have their cakes and cookies while he enjoys his own. I’ve begun to cook with mostly spices rather than salt due to my husband’s heart disease so I always keep a shaker of salt on the table for those accustomed to a bit more punch. I have started to include more roasted vegetables in my menu but I have many fans of my macaroni and cheese as well whom I never deny. In other words I try to create a variety of foods that will take almost every person’s preferences into account.

I love the traditions of our family celebrations but because there are so many one after another I am piling on the calories in a regular succession from September all the way through the first week of January. Each year I have to spend the next many months trying to recoup the progress that I had made with diet and exercise. Like the sinusoidal graphs of trigonometry I go up and down in a regular pattern each and every year. Some call it the yo-yo effect and I am subject to it’s unhealthy effects. I go down and then I go up, down and up, over and over again from year to year. My only small defense of my actions is that I always get myself back in shape. Nonetheless, I often dream of having so much self control that I breeze through the holidays with my healthy intentions thoroughly intact.

I’m like a monk these days, eating mostly vegetables and fruit, avoiding salty, sugary, fatty foods. I’ve closed the rings on my Apple watch for many days now. I make walks and trips to the gym a top priority. My progress is slow but steady and perhaps by next September I will have recuperated from my self inflicted overindulgence. I make resolutions to have more self control when the season of joy rolls around again, but I do love my brother’s pecan pie and my own pumpkin variety. Surely it won’t matter much if I yield a little here and there as long as I don’t overdo. Perhaps if I’m a bit better at measuring just how much turkey and dressing to put on my plate I will be okay, but it’s just so yummy that I want to go back for seconds.

I have made a vow that if I show signs of living as long as my one hundred eight year old grandfather did I will follow his example. When he turned ninety he threw all caution to the wind. He did and ate exactly what pleased him laughing at the idea that something was most surely going to take him out of this world so he might as well enjoy the final ride. He eked out eighteen more years while feeling no guilt when he ate cake and donuts. I like his thinking.

For now I am recuperating from my sins and I have to admit I am also feeling good. I’ll continue my self imposed restrictions and think about how to deal with future temptations tomorrow. Maybe this is the year when I finally learn how to be good and stick with my resolve. 

Alarms

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

clock

For most of my life I was ruled by alarms. I literally began each week day with a ring of some kind rudely awakening me from slumbers. Each morning I would struggle to drag myself out of the warmth and comfort of my bed and I felt sluggish and churlish for hours as I prepared for my duties either as a student, an employee, or a mom. I dreamed of a time when I would no longer be ruled by an ever demanding clock. I fantasized about mornings stretched out past nine or ten in a state of blissful sleep.

Ironically now that I rarely have an early morning appointment or deadline I find myself waking up well before the sun has even risen without the aid of any bells or whistles or buzzers. My body clock is all that I need and it happily pushes me from my bed with a kind of eagerness that I never experienced when outside forces were demanding that I leave my home before the sun had even arisen each day. It now only takes a few sips of my morning tea for my brain to begin working in tiptop form. I have created a new routine for the start of the day that is blissful because it is of my own design. My first few hours are packed with rather quiet activities that strengthen my soul, my mind and my body. Retirement now allows me the time to heal myself and ponder more on others. I have no need of an alarm to notify me that it is time to leave the comfort of my bed because I am excited about the quiet possibilities that lie ahead of each day.

I am an inveterate introvert. I gain strength from quiet contemplation, time to meditate on worries and concerns and determine solutions for them. I suppose that my big city lifestyle of rushing here and there each morning before I gained my present independence worked against my need for time for myself. Somehow I made it work but there was an underlying anxiety lurking inside my soul that made me chronically tired. I suppose that I wanted to stay in my bed each morning as a kind of refuge, an excuse for contemplation, a reason for not having to enter the rat race before my mind felt strong and uncluttered. Now, like Thoreau, I have my own Walden Pond in the comfort of my home. I have simplified, simplified, simplified the demands that used to keep me running on a kind of endless treadmill from one responsibility to another. It is so lovely to be able to finally be the master of my calendar and the captain of the structure of each day.

There is indeed a time and season for all of life and most of us spend so much of it in a rush from here to there, attempting to meet the demands of caring for family, work, community. We like what we have to do, but there is just so much of it that we rarely stop the cycle completing one task after another. Our calendars and day planners are filled with appointments that barely allow us to linger over a thought or a meal or to even notice a sunrise. We use alarms and warning messages to keep us on track. Even one deviation from our plans can throw us into a dizzying tizzy. We grow tired and out of sorts, out of shape. Something has to give if we are to be all things to all people and so we often choose to neglect ourselves rather than disappointing everyone else in our lives. We need those alarms to keep moving and we resent their nagging sounds.

Now that my alarm is my own voice I do not resent it. I allow myself the time to consider my own place in the universe. I have belatedly realized that I must care for myself first if I am to be of help to others. I have learned to slow my pace by saying the tiny word, “No!” whenever I begin to once again feel overwhelmed. It is a glorious luxury that I can now afford thanks to retirement but I wonder why I did not allow myself the time that I needed during all those previous years. I see young people managing to have it all simply by taking command of their lives and carefully parceling their time to include self care. They have already learned what it took me decades to discern.

I suppose that if I were to create the perfect alarm it would not be one pushing me from my personal refuge, but rather one reminding me of my duties to allow moments for myself. It would prompt me to mediate or pray. It would urge me to keep a balance between work life and home. It would sound whenever I was taking on more than I should try to handle at once. It would gently provide me with support for the things that I need to do to thrive as my best self.

I see young people rushing and pushing themselves just as I once did. They express frustrations over not being able to do all that they need to do. They shove their own needs farther back into promises of a future that never seems to come. They grow more and more out of shape physically, mentally and spiritually. The alarms bark at them as they wearily wander through routines that sap their strength. They want to just run away or hibernate or scream. They feel guilt and anger and a host of negative emotions that they cover with brave smiles and a veneer of false strength. They know that one last thing may make them break but they do not know how to make those bells and whistles stop.

I would tell them to consider what they really want or need and then begin to make the changes that will leave them excited about the dawn of each new day. The first step is to define themselves on their own terms, not on what others believe they should be. Then they can begin to declutter their daily schedules, leaving space for the unexpected and allowing for personal care as surely as they do for the care of others. To do this they must learn to set alarms to warn them whenever they need to pause or ask for help or just snooze a bit longer.

Life is short and unbearably uncertain. Our goal should be to make the most of each moment. Our alarm clock needs to go off anytime that we are in danger of neglecting what is most important beginning with ourselves.

Do I Dare?

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

child_survivors_of_auschwitz

The seventy fifth anniversary of the liberation of the people imprisoned in Auschwitz touched my heart. Somehow I realized for the first time that the horror of that place only ended four years before my own birth. What had always seemed like a far away event was actually something that happened shortly before the beginning of my lifetime. It hit me hard to think of the people who had endured the horrors of that place and I found myself wondering as I have often done how I might have acted if I had been caught up in the maelstrom of evil that overtook so much of Europe in those years.

I had always believed that I would have been safe from any of the repercussions of the Nazi terror, but a DNA test proved me wrong. I indeed have a small percentage of genetic compatibility with those who are descended from Eastern European Jews. Would I have been classified as someone who needed to be erased from society? Would the fact of my grandmother’s and mother’s mental illnesses have further increased my likelihood of being sent to a concentration camp? Who knows? I shudder to even consider such a consequence just for being born, and yet that was the fate of millions who had done nothing more than bear the mark of traits that Adolf Hitler and his crazed followers deemed unworthy of human respect.

More important to me than the possibility of being among the numbers herded onto trains and sent to an unthinkable hell is the question of whether or not I would have had the courage to do something to help those whose human rights were being abused in the most savage ways. I’ve always wanted to think that I might have helped them in some way either by speaking out or taking part in some sort of underground movement intent on providing aide. It’s easy to imagine such a thing in theory but actually being brave enough to risk everything would have been daunting. I’m honestly not certain that I would have mustered the courage to to the right thing.

For that reason I was incredibly inspired when I learned the story of Stanislawa Leszczyńska, a midwife who resided in Poland during the Nazi occupation. Stanislawa and her family were quite active in helping the Jews who had were living in abysmal conditions in the overcrowded ghetto where they had been separated from the rest of the population. For a time their work went unnoticed but eventually they were discovered and Stanislawa ended up a prisoner of Auschwitz.

While she was there she offered her services as a midwife, doing her best to improve the unsanitary conditions that lead to many childbirth deaths. The routine way of doing things was to kill the babies as soon as they were born and to force the women to watch their newborns being drowned in a bucket. Stanislawa refused to participate in such murder and it is believed that she managed to save at least a thousand babies who might otherwise have been killed. Many women who gave birth in the camp credit Stanislawa with keeping both them and their children alive. 

I cannot even imagine the kind of fearlessness that it took for Stanislawa to threaten the safety of her life and that of her family in an effort to do what was morally right. She might easily have turned away her gaze and pretended that she was unaware of the monstrosity of what was happening to the people in her town. She and her family would never have seen the inside of Auschwitz had they simply protected themselves through inaction. When she was caught and sent to a camp she might have chosen to quietly follow the rules in order to insure her own survival but once again she challenged authorities and ignored commands that she knew were immoral. How she got away with her brazen actions is a kind of miracle.

There are amazing people in the world who refuse to worry about negative consequences in the crusade for justice. They literally risk their own lives in the pursuit of right over wrong. It is never an easy thing to do and while I want to believe that given the same circumstances I would be willing to surrender my own freedom to help those being wrongfully abused, I wonder if I would instead quietly accept the status quo out of fear. Being a Thomas Moore, a Martin Luther King, Jr., or an Oskar Schindler is risky and often deadly business. It’s so much easier to just look away and pretend that nothing is happening.

The world is riddled with problems even today. Dare I talk of them or do something constructive to correct them? I have friends willing to speak their minds while I often shudder with the fear of being misunderstood or ostracized if I were to openly do or say what I believe to be right. Stansilawa Leszcynska inspires me. Do I dare be like her?

Loss

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Man-on-Suitcase

“Loss” is a four letter word not meant to be a pejorative like the infamous ones that sometimes get us into trouble, but with a meaning so profound that it has the power to leave us unable to function in any normal way. Like the layers of an onion loss takes on deeper and deeper significance as we get closer to its core, and like that same onion it sometimes makes us cry. For me, loss is the ultimate trigger for stress whether it is directly affecting me or someone that I love.

Loss can appear to be superficial as in the inability to find something important, a receipt, a jacket, a favorite book, a prized heirloom. I grow anxious whenever I can’t find something that I treasure.

Somewhere in the move from my house of over thirty years to the one where I now reside I lost a gold charm bracelet that my husband had given me when we were dating. A heart dangled from the forged links and engraved on it were the numbers signifying our first date with the words “Now and Forever” reminding me of our infinite bond of love. My stressors went into high gear when I ultimately accepted the fact that it was gone and I grieved that I would never see it again, but it was in the final analysis only the loss of an object, a symbol of something far deeper than the thing itself. Still, I know that when we lose something special it saddens us and justifiably so.

When the walls and ceilings of my rooms were flooded by the sudden rush of hot liquid from my hot water heater I became a messy gooey ball of stress. My imagination became a fertile ground for turning this inconvenient bit of loss into a major event. I worried that mold would grow in the nooks and crannies of my walls rendering my house unlivable and unsaleable. I could not rest until I had ripped carpet and sheetrock from the the wettest areas. My impatience in finding someone who would quickly repair the damage grew into full blown anger. The situation consumed the thoughts of my days and nights. I had to remind myself that it was only a temporary loss, one that would eventually be set right. I calmed the beast roaring inside my mind with the truth that I had only lost things, replaceable stuff.

The greatest loss is the death of loved ones. Nothing ever really fixes that. Time superficially heals but the pain but grief lives inside the heart. Such tragic loss is the most difficult aspect of our human experience, even when we actually believe in a more glorious afterlife. We soldier on without the people who have gone before us but we never really forget them and in moments that come and go we remember how much it hurts to accept that we will never see them again. Such is loss that produces more than just stress. It tears at our very souls.

Loss is all around us. Even when it happens to someone else we feel the pain and stress that comes with it. We know that it engenders powerful emotions whether it is the loss of something seemingly insignificant or of a living being. We instinctively empathize with the person who is undergoing distress over loss because we too have felt such emotions and we understand.

Loss is such a small word and yet it stalks us like a powerful monster. We lose hope, confidence, reputation, control. We struggle with fears of loss. Like the nightmare that it sometimes is, loss creates anxieties and worries. It is a trigger that has the power to temporarily or permanently undo us, but our nature is to fight against its inclinations. We do our best to deal with it until the next time that it returns.

January presented itself with loss. I was unable to find the mate to a set of earrings. That was annoying but not the worst situation. When both a beloved aunt and a magical cousin died within days of one another I felt the weight of true loss. I grieved for myself but mostly for those closest to these incredible women, their immediate families who are struggling with the enormity of their losses. I felt the horror of those who lost their homes in a freak explosion that occurred early one morning. I saw a long road of repair and possibly even momentous change ahead for them. I awoke to the terrible news that two of my most wonderful friends had lost the use of their own bodies when they had strokes. I cried with the nation over the untimely death of Kobe Bryant and the eight souls who perished with him.

I suppose that loss is perhaps the greatest trigger for stress in our lives. When it piles on us we lose our sense of direction. We find it difficult to find the way out and yet we also know from experience that we need not be defeated. It may take time and great patience but we can find escape the darkness that has descended upon us. The loss may be forever but the way that we react to it can and does become more bearable.

Winter came in January, a time when some among us endured losses both great and small. We take a deep breath. We embrace one another. We find ways to soothe our souls. The cycle continues and we continue down the road of life knowing that we will eventually find the peace and tranquility that will set us in the right direction once again.  Loss challenges but we need not allow it to defeat.

Travel Trinkets

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

travel-ornaments-set-of-3-c

I pick up souvenirs whenever I travel. They are generally small things that remind me of the places I have been. Often they are rocks, shells, leaves, pinecones. I like to decorate my home with framed prints of locales I have seen so that I might be reminded of the joy of my vacations for years to come. I have a thing for books that fill the shelves of my bookcases with colorful and informational volumes about the sights that I have been fortunate enough to have seen. When I find special pottery or glass I am almost always tempted to purchase a piece to join the collections that grace my rooms. I almost never buy kitsch unless it somehow seems to signify a very special moment from my trip, like the gigantic chigger from Arkansas that made me laugh instead of cry when I became infected with bites from those pesky insects, Mostly, though, I’m inclined to bring back Christmas ornaments from each of the sites that I have visited. I have so many now that I copied my daughter and purchased a special travel tree to exhibit my finds each December.

It’s amazing how my collection of ornaments from around the world has grown. Their eclectic nature makes for a whimsical display that includes everything from bears to fine crystal. I have a stained glass reproduction of the rose window from Westminster Abbey and a yellow cab from New York City. One of my loveliest items is a set of old fashioned handmade straw snowflakes from Salzburg, Austria. They add a wonderful finishing touch to the design of the tree. I have glass pinecones, gold dipped aspen leaves, and a number of replicas of Spanish missions. There is a ceramic reproduction of Cafe du Monde and another of a little grocery store in Maine where I ate the best lobster sandwich I have ever had. Perhaps one of my favorites is a set of Revolutionary War soldiers from Boston.

I try to find a representative ornament from each place that I go. Then when I set up my Christmas decorations each year I relive the joy of visiting each place. The little trinkets that I hang on the branches never fail to bring back a flood of wonderful memories. Vacations are wonderful for the way that they seem to soothe any anxieties that I might have and they allow me to set aside my type A driven personality in favor of living totally in the moment. They are a panacea that I don’t take for granted because I know all too well how privileged I am to be able to spend money on trips to wonderful places rather than having only enough to live from day to day.

The vast majority of people in the history of the world have not had the luxury of travel for the sake of enjoyment. My grandparents went from one place to another in search of work. Their parents essentially were born, lived and died in the same place without ever leaving. Such is true of most of the world’s people even today. Those of us who ride down highways in our comfortable cars or fly through the skies to distant lands are fortunate indeed. The frivolousness of vacationing was once only the domain of the wealthy few. Today those of us in the middle class enjoy it in ways that our ancestors would never have known.

I appreciate the freedom that allows me to go see the wonders of the world and those in my backyard as well. My father had been determined to see as much as possible in his lifetime and he was on his way to becoming acquainted with most of the United States when his life was cut short. I imagine that he would have ultimately seen it all and added to his journeys with trips across the ocean. Back before he died I already knew that my family was somewhat unusual in the grandeur of our trips. I got to see Disneyland in the first year it opened and I remember sitting with my father on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago while he fished when I was only six.

After my father died our only family trips were to visit my grandparents in Arkansas. We would arise before dawn so that my mother could drive as far as possible before it grew dark. We only stopped for gasoline and to spend one night in a motel before reaching my grandparents’ farm. Only one other time did we take a vacation to San Antonio and Austin. It was a grand adventure that included visits to the Alamo and the state capitol. I vividly recall how fun it was to splurge by going to see The Sound of Music in a lovely indoor theater unlike our usual viewings at the drive in on nights when an entire car of people got in for a greatly reduced price.

Now I am planning a possible jaunt to Colorado in the spring and a gala trip to Scotland at the beginning of summer. I’m still in awe of the good luck that has allowed me to do such things. The worrywart in me sometimes thinks that the time may one day come when it may no longer be possible to go on such extravagant excursions. The world may change in ways that preclude a continuation of the way we have grown accustomed to doing things. My own health may fail as I continue to age in ways that make it difficult for me to travel too far away from home. It’s important that I do my best to see as much as I may for now and while I’m wherever the winds take me I’ll surely be adding to my collection of Christmas ornaments. 

There is little that I would rather do these days than go to new places and revisit my favorite old ones. I never take my good fortune for granted. I have seen gloriously wondrous things that only a few ever get to glimpse. My souvenirs are like a tangible record of my memories. They are wonderful beyond words,