Daily Courage

On my father’s side of the family, my brother and I are the youngest grandchildren and cousins. When we were growing up, the Cannon cousins seemed so much older than we were. Time took care of what seemed to be a gap and we are reconnecting as adults. Thankfully, my father is the common thread that has kept us woven together over the years. This summer marked front number change birthdays for my father (80) and my brother (50). A birthday celebration led to being reunited with some of the cousins and planning follow-up visits.

Last week, my daughter and I dropped in on two of them. My cousin Tom is a retired English professor with a doctorate in Chaucer. There are no dummies in that branch o

f the family tree! Tom lives on a wonderful spread of farmland in Virginia that has been in his wife, Julie’s, family for many generations. The house is a Quaker balloon frame house built in the 1800’s, which is a far cry from our home in Southern California. It was a rare treat for us to climb the stairs and walk the halls.

At the time the house was built it was state-of-the-art efficiency. It still is. Carefully situated to make the best  use of light and breeze, it is engineered to function with nature. 

Miles away in the small hamlet of Sloatsburg, New York, my cousin Pat Cannon and her husband Dave Spielvogel aka “Dave Keyes”  live in bucolic solitude in a home that has its footprint in the 1700’s. The photo is a little deceiving. This is a real true-to-life vintage farmhouse with a beautiful red barn and rolling fields. 

We were blessed to spend two days there recharging our batteries. As we pulled out of the drive and made our way down the tree-shaded lane back into the busy world, I thought to myself, “I am so happy that rural runs in the family,”  and that I had a chance to enjoy its calming and restful ways.”

One of the realities of life is that we never know what is around the bend. Sometimes it takes great courage to deal face what we are handed. Like many women, I bought into a lot of the myths of motherhood. If I did things the “right way”, I would be fine and my children would be healthy and happy. Twenty-one years ago today, I gave birth to my first child, a boy named Brendan Patrick. Fairytales seemed to lie ahead with this little angel baby in my arms.

The one gift I wanted him to receive from me was self-confidence and a love of himself. What I didn’t know was that just because I did all the things a “good mother” does, there were no guarantees. I won’t go into the details because my cross is no heavier that anyone else’s. It’s how I dealt with it that is the point of this post. But it had to do with family health battles, and a rotten disease – Crohns.

I let worry and angst take me over. Without realizing it, I stopped nurturing myself and my own soul. I depleted any emotional reserves I had in the bank and fell hard and fast into an emotional breakdown prefaced by a panic attack. I nearly took my family down with me when I went.

I have built a career on talking to other women about the importance of nurturing themselves, taking time to creatively express themselves and inspiring them with articles and books. But, I myself had lost the balance and instead focussed on many things I could not control. Because I didn’t honor the signs my heart, soul and body were trying to give me. Because I didn’t stop to listen to, the deciding was done for me. I was knocked flat out, physically and emotionally. 

It was time to enter into a period of deep introspection, circle the family wagons, and make some changes. I developed a Wellness Plan. A component of it is to nurture my creative side, and get back to walking my talk. That has put me back in my craft studio. And back to writing. I was writing for everyone else, but not for me.

I think that is why I particularly enjoyed the Blogging for Bliss blog tour party that launched yesterday. I got to look into the creative souls of many wonderful women. Some of whom I am sure have had similar experiences to mine. (And then there are those better-balanced women who know that you don’t let up on the things that nurture you when the going gets rough.)

Happily, the Birthday Boy is doing very well after a wonderful wilderness therapy program. Our daughter is serving as a junior counselor at a camp for young people with Crohn’s Disease, where she is sharing her story that while you may walk in the valley at times, the illness is manageable and life moves on. And so do I. Wiser than before, back at the keyboard and putting in time  with my jumbled array of ribbons, papers, buttons, baubles and other craft supplies.

Time to crank out a few new crowns and perhaps some new jewelry designs from the watch parts I found at the Alameda Flea Market on an outing with dear friend Judy Watkins.

Whatever you do, don’t stop creating!

It’s been a summer of traveling and of great introspection. Lot’s of quiet time alone contemplating what’s next and what I want the future to hold. There are have been many bumps in the road the past few years. And the path is leading to a need for many transitions. So time on the road has been good. It has provided a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with cousins and to revisit places from my past. Beautiful, friendly places.

A dear cousin lives in the small hamlet of Sloatsburg, NY, about 45 minutes outside of New York City. While its close to the beehive of Manhattan it is a whole world away. Just five minutes up the road from her home is a delightful lake. Being accustomed to most things in California being crowded, I drank in the solitude. Pat and I did something I have not done in years. We jumped in the lake, tredded water at our leisure and visited. But the best part was laying back in the fresh lake water and floating on our backs. The quiet muffled sounds through the water against our ears, the sun on our faces and the secure feeling of being cradled by nature was a warm hug I will long remember. My soul was at peace. And because of those moments floating in the lake, I think we’ll be better equipped to face what lies ahead. Sometimes to build courage you have to pause and float in the lake.

When I was a young girl, my family moved from Iowa to Old Saybrook, CT where my parents rented a seaside cottage while building a house in Guilford, CT. This week my father, mother-in-love (that’s what I call his wife Marge because calling her “my Dad’s wife” sounds distant), my brother, his wife and six children, along with my husband and daughter spent a week along the Connecticut shoreline. We have all been settled in California for many years. The occasion was a celebration trip of my father’s 80th and brother’s 50th birthdays.  The idea was to unplug, revisit happy haunts and memories, and to enjoy each other’s company. We rented a rambling colonial seated in the woods in Old Lyme, and accomplished exactly what we set out to do.  While my computer came along, I resisted to temptation to pack knitting, sewing and craft projects, and opted to commit to staying in the present and enjoying my nieces and nephew. But that didn’t mean that the creativity monitor slowed down. In fact, it probably woke up.  We stopped for lunch in the small marina in Old Saybrook, and this is what was out the window. The casual happenstance of a salty green piling next to one of faded whitewash with a red top, struck me as a wonderfully creative mix in an unexpected spot.