What we take and what we leave ...

 

              I don’t remember the day or the year, but I remember the moment.

              It was a moment I have thought of often because it was the moment I decided to change from being a shell collector to being a shell leaver.

              OK, so “leaver” is not maybe a proper word. But it fits because it describes a person who might put something back where it was found (even if it is loved) or maybe even not disturb it at all in the first place.

              I was walking on a beach in northern Oregon that doesn’t often offer up shells and when it does, they are most likely to be imperfect.

              Broken shells are OK for me. It was even more years ago that I discovered that broken shells are just as beautiful as perfect ones. They still had color and form; they’d just had a rougher life. They deserved to be loved and so I loved them.

              The collections of shells you will see around my house are just as likely to hold imperfect shells as perfect ones.

              But at this one moment I am remembering now, I came upon a perfect shell. It was a surprise. A gift.

I picked it up and put it in my pocket and walked with it for a bit.

              And then I remembered the other shells I have at home.

And then I heard a little family walking behind me.

              And then I surreptitiously put the shell back on the sand and kept walking, only glancing back much later to ensure that the little family had found the little shell.

              They did.

              I’m old now. Old enough to be done collecting and be more interested in seeing the joy others have when they do.

              Not that every aspect of my life is free of collections. I still find myself in the adding-one-more-treasure mode far too often.

              And not that I have any problem at all with people collecting shells. They are a perfect beach souvenir and a happy reminder of days on the sand -- all the better when they are found in your path – so please, please collect shells. Until you have enough.

              I have enough. I want someone else to have enough. So while I might snap a photo, the shells no longer make it to my pocket. 

              Though I’ve been tempted.

              It was after a storm that I was walking on a beach in Southern California and saw the biggest shells I’d ever seen outside a gift shop.

              I was the only one walking this time, but I stuck with my vow.

              Maybe someone else would find and love them. Maybe they’ll get washed back to sea.

My collection is complete.

              There was something else I noticed along that beach in that cute little beach town after that storm.

              And it wasn’t cute.

It was garbage. Ropes, lids, gloves, bottle-tops. So I came back the next day with gloves and a bag and picked up as much as I had the stomach for.

              It wasn’t a collection I kept, but a collection that still felt meaningful.

              Beautiful shells and abandoned bottle-caps are teeny tiny in the scope of the world.

Can taking or leaving them make a difference?

              Do any of our teeny tiny actions matter at all?

              Yes and yes, I like to think.

              What we do, what we say, what we take, what we leave, what we write, matter.

              It might be teeny tiny.

              But for those walking behind you, those starting out their collections, those walking on a debris-strewn beach after a storm, it matters.

              Let’s do what matters.

Getting and giving

 

              She waved me down with such enthusiasm that I had to stop.

I had been driving through a cute little oceanside town, wandering the streets, exploring the parks and now, trying to find a spot to park to access the beach.

It was after I turned down a little side street toward the coast that the woman’s wave stopped me.

“Would you like these daffodils?” she said with a generous smile, holding out a full bouquet of the spring flowers. “We are leaving today and I can’t take them with me.”

“I would love them,” I answered. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but I’ll love them all day and then find someone to enjoy them tomorrow.”

“Wonderful,” she said, handing them through the window and rushing off. “Enjoy them today!”

And her smile became mine.

I tucked the bundle, which she had wrapped in wet paper towels and plastic wrap, into the cup-holder of the car and every time I got in or out of the car that day, I smiled again.

And then I took them home, where I kept smiling.

Because more than the beauty of the flowers, which are so amazingly colorful and so strikingly delicate, and more than the goodness of the woman, who took the time to wrap the flowers and walk them down the street until she found someone to share them with, there was the thought that maybe my random driving and wandering and turning wasn’t so random after all. Maybe someone helped me get to that spot at that time.

Which made my spirit smile.

It’s just not every day you end up in the right place with the right people to get a meaningful gift from a stranger. In fact, that may be my only day ever.

Except for last week when I was standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change and a young woman in a car driving by yelled out the window at me – “You are beautiful.”

That was a meaningful gift.

Not that I believed her. I believed she maybe was just driving around saying that to everyone, but it was a gift just the same.

Strangers can make a difference. Kind words, kind actions – you don’t have to know the person to brighten their days. Or the reverse.

We all know the dark mood that descends when someone honks at us. Or someone criticizes something we hold dear. Or invades our space or hurts our feelings however unintentionally.

Even when we don’t know them and won’t see them ever again, we can be affected by the way they react to us.

So it was all the more sweet to be looking at that bunch of daffodils and thinking about the kindness of the woman I don’t -- and won’t – know, and the random actions that brought us together.

And then the next day, when it was time to head out to catch my flight, I wrapped the stems in a wet paper towel and tucked them inside a plastic bag and drove around until I could find someone who might accept a bunch of still-beautiful flowers.

And as sweet as it is to get flowers, it is sweet to give them.

The smile returned.

 

Following the rules - all 13 pages

 

              It was clear they’d seen it all.

              For 13 pages, they told us what to do and what not to do, leaving no doubt that those who’d done it or not done it before had really annoyed them.

              Don’t come late. Don’t ask anyone but us about the weather. Don’t park behind the pizza shop. Don’t carry a bag. Don’t walk too slowly. Don’t expect to find a bathroom at the destination. Don’t think that we’re going to have a car seat for your child. Don’t bring a tripod. Don’t bring a selfie-stick.

              Some rules over the 13 pages were in caps. Some in bold. Some in large fonts.

              It wasn’t so much that they wanted to help us as it was that they didn’t want us to irritate them.

              We showed up anyway. It was a place we wanted to see and besides, I was just a little bit curious about what kind of people wrote a 13-page treatise scolding potential clients for something someone else (or maybe everyone else) had done.

              I had seen things from their angle before. During my summers in college, I worked in national parks, where it was certainly true that every tourist asked the same questions and as often as not, made the same mistakes.

              I’ve also been the annoying visitor who is so lost and confused that I’ve just done the very thing that the hosts knew I was going to do – that was wrong.

              So I could understand. But still …

There’s providing guidance and then there’s airing grievances.

And their grievances made us feel we were guilty before we even showed up.

              Just as expected, as we headed out on the tour, we were rushed, prodded, reprimanded and treated like we were more than a bit ignorant.

              “This is so stressful,” said one in our group.

              Yet all would agree it was worth it.

              Sometimes you’ve just got to play the game. We parked in the right place, we didn’t take the wrong equipment, we didn’t walk too slowly.

              And we smiled the whole time.

              So their 13 pages worked.

              Maybe we should all write 13 pages when we’re hosting, starting with: Don’t think we’ll have dinner ready if we don’t know what time you’re arriving.

              Or maybe it would have been nice to get 13 pages of instruction/warning when we got married, starting with: Don’t think you’ll always get to choose which movie to watch because two different people are going to like two different kinds of movies.

              Or maybe it would have been nice to get 13 pages when we started out in life, beginning with: Don’t think you can get everything you want as soon as you want it. And moving to: Don’t think so much about the things you want that you forget about what other people need. In caps. And bold.

              Or maybe it’s just as good to bungle along and figure things out as we go. Yes, everyone has done their own bungling along, and maybe their bungling is kind of the same as your bungling, but maybe what you learn from doing your very own bungling is what you always needed to know and finding it out for yourself means it’s yours.

              Guidance is good. I’ll take guidance any way I can get it, though I usually prefer it as it usually comes: with a bit of patience and maybe even a touch of humor.

              And therein comes the solution no matter what side of the equation you’re on: patience and humor.

              And then just smile the whole time. It will be worth it.

             

When you listen

 

              I guess they’d started to wonder what was taking me so long.

              It was late afternoon in Silverton, Colorado and I still hadn’t returned from a little shopping excursion.

              “Little” because it was off-season in the high mountain town and there were only maybe four stores still open, so my husband and daughter didn’t expect it would take me hours to walk the few blocks to the main part of town and find a souvenir.

              But I wasn’t just shopping. I was listening.

              It started innocently enough. In most cases, the shopkeeper would get the ball rolling with something basic like, “Where are you from?” That was enough to tell me that they were interested and that they had some time. And when I answered, they had a connection or a question or a story of their own related to the place.

              Off-season is pretty quiet in Silverton, and I was often the only one in the store at the time, or maybe the only one they’d see for the day, so it wasn’t a problem to chat while I was paying for my polished geode or my hand-made leaf-shaped earrings.

              And once the conversation started, it didn’t often stop. For quite some time.

              Maybe it’s the old reporter in me, but I find it irresistible when someone is willing to tell me the story of their life or their hobby or their town. And with just a few stories of my own thrown in here and there to keep the conversation going, I often find out more about local people and history and controversies than I would any other way.

              Sometimes it’s easier to share things with people you know you’ll never see again – and they you. It’s safer somehow. And still a release.

These conversations are a highlight of any trip, and the top reason to not be in a hurry when you’re souvenir shopping. Or just even when you’re around other people in general.

              Our trip to Maui last month was no exception. But the conversations took on a whole new weight as the people we spoke with shared their experiences with the tragic fire in Lahaina last fall.

              Everybody had a story and many were anxious to share it.

              “Can I show you a photo of what’s left of my house?” asked one young father we met in the parking lot of the condo tower that was to us a vacation stop, but to him, a place to stay until he could figure out how to rebuild his life and his family home.

              “It helps me process this to show it,” he said, and as we looked at the cluttered moonscape of ground dotted with blackened sticks that once were 60-foot-tall trees, he told us about trying to escape with his family in his truck but having to abandon it and run for their lives. They made it. Many of their neighbors did not.

              “Thank you for being here,” he said, calming our fears that the trip we had planned long before the fire would hurt rather than help. “We need you to be here,” he said. “My friends need to pay their mortgages.”

              Like many we spoke with, the woman in the art gallery had lost her job when the fire burned the store where she’d worked. She had only just gotten this new job and was grateful.

              The man selling shirts at the outdoor market had a friend who’d gone back toward the fire to help others trapped in a building. He didn’t return.

              The woman at the canoe rental said she’d just been allowed in to see where her house had been. It was the first time in five months they could have access, but her husband didn’t want to go. She’d hoped to be able to find something in the ashes, but the ashes were 10 inches deep.

              Not everyone can talk about their losses. Not everyone wants to share.

              But when they do, our only job is to listen.

There are few things as rewarding or as interesting or as meaningful as listening.

Because when you listen, you learn and maybe you start to understand.

And maybe even you feel.

Thinking about what you're thinking about

              They are two simple questions, but they can make a surprisingly big difference.

              Even better, they are questions that can be asked entirely in your mind, making it possible to benefit from the answers without anyone ever knowing what happened.

              For me, the first one usually comes after I realize I’m fretting about something.

It is this: What am I thinking and feeling?

Asking that question gives me a chance to put a name to the emotions that are having an impact on my attitudes and maybe even actions.

I read somewhere some time ago, that humans are the only creatures that think about their thoughts.

This is, I think, a sign of intelligence. But also, a source of angst.

Sometimes our thoughts are a boon to our lives, sometimes they are not.

Take, for example, this summer’s family reunion.

After securing the location, I was coordinating the schedule, the meals, the activities.

And I was stressed.

Here is an example of the thoughts and feelings that were going through my head: Will everyone arrive safely? Will everyone get along? Will everyone have enough time for what they want to do? Will everyone be perturbed when I take too many pictures? Will anyone break their leg? Will we all get COVID? Will the room assignments offend? Will everyone be wearing the right colors for the group photo? Will the grandkids pull faces all through the photo shoot? Will the games I have planned bomb? Will the weather work with our plans? Should I plan more activities? Should I plan less. Am I packing the right clothes?

And if you’ve ever been in charge of a reunion, you know this is only a fraction of the thoughts and feelings that were swirling.

So I asked myself the second question, which is this: What do I want to be thinking and feeling?

The answers came just as quickly: I should be grateful to be getting my family together. I should be happy they could manage schedules and make us a priority. I should be comfortable knowing that because of our shared history and love, we can make it all work. I should be looking forward to sharing the love I have for them with them.

Something happens when you start to think about what you should be feeling instead of what your mind, with all its natural ability to creatively worry and fret, is more likely to be thinking.

You get calm. And happy. And maybe you even smile inside.

It works with getting up in the morning. It works when sitting through a meeting. It works when dealing with a difficult personality.

What am I thinking and feeling?

What do I want to be thinking and feeling?

And you might go from worried to excited, from bored to fascinated, from perturbed to grateful.

If we’re going to be thinking about what we’re thinking about, we might as well do it right.

And then we can be grateful for the peace of mind – and maybe even joy -- that follows.

Oh, and, P.S., we had the reunion. Nobody broke their leg.

 

 

 

 

What you learn when you keep trying

One of these days it might be necessary to admit to myself that it is becoming ever more likely that I will never be entirely fluent in French.

Despite the workshops, the workbooks, the CDs, the story books, the tapes, the emails, the classes and the trips I've dabbled in here and there over the years, I might not ever make it to conversant.

In my defense, this is not because I'm totally inept, though I may have lost a few connections in the brain - synapses or something - that younger language learners still have.

This is not because I haven't been motivated, though I'm equally motivated in about five other areas and spend equal dabbles of time on perhaps too large an array of projects.

This is simply because there are just too many French words and too many ways to string them together, some of which require too many ways of conjugating. And that's not even to mention that every noun is either male of female (car is feminine, taxi is masculine) and every adjective must be either male or female to match.

 

It may also be time to admit to myself that all those books in my basement that I printed thinking people would want to read them, may remain in my basement.

This is not because I haven't tried to find people to love them through bookstores and galleries and websites.

This is because ... I don't know why this is because. Or I don't want to admit I know why.

But not learning French and not selling books is not failing.

And that is because of all I've seen and done, all I've learned and felt, everyone I've met and every way I've grown in the process of trying.

I loved meeting the French people (all six of them), whose English was worse than my French so they listened long enough to try and figure out what I was saying.

I've loved opening my mind to a second language and developing a greater appreciation for another culture.

I'm glad I could learn more about my own language by studying another.

It's good to have a greater understanding of what others go through as they try to learn English (which not only has more words but has more exceptions to rules).

And just maybe I'm keeping a few more synapses in the brain functioning by continued studying and memorizing.

As for publishing a book, I loved when someone wrote to tell me the thoughts in my book had meaning to them or inspired them to do something or helped them recognize something meaningful they would otherwise have missed in their own lives.

And reading again the words penned in a different phase of life has kept the memories of that phase, and all its richness and all its challenges, alive.

Sometimes trying has its own reward.

Admitting that my dreams may be a bit out of reach, sometimes because of my own limits and sometimes because of things over which I have no control, will not make me quit trying.

I'm made of sterner, stubborner, more irrational stuff.

Not making it to the end of a journey doesn't make the sights you pass along the way any less worthwhile.

There is still a chance and only quitting would take that chance away.

No matter if it's likely or a stretch, I'm going for that chance.

First published in the Davis Clipper on March 14, 2013

Making it work with another try

By Louise R. Shaw           

                I’d been there with my family some years earlier and was anxious to share it with my new husband, even if it meant spending part of the day on a long drive up a winding road when we could be sitting on a beach.

                There are just some things worth driving long distances for and the overlook of the Na Pali Coast on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is one of them.

The Kalalau Lookout is 4,000-feet above sea level and the view into the ridges and peaks and valley below is nothing short of spectacular. The drive along Waimea Canyon, what has become known as “the Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” is also pretty breathtakingly amazing.

                We ascended, stopping at all lookouts, as is my want, and noticing as we did that more and more clouds were filling the sky.

                Four-thousand feet is pretty high up there. Even clouds are comfortable at 4,000 feet and sure enough, as we drove the last few hundred feet to the very end of the drive, we were enveloped in a cloud.

                And in that particular cloud, there were no views past the end of our arms, much less along the rugged cliffs of the Na Pali and down the Kalalau Valley to the ocean and beyond.

                It was a disappointment, but at least it wasn’t snowing like the time a few days earlier when we’d gotten up in the wee hours of the morning and driven up 10,000 feet to see the sunrise over Haleakala crater on Maui, just like everybody said you should.

Turns out you only should if you check the weather report first.

Sometimes you’re better off just sleeping in. And then sitting on a beach.

But we sighed and shrugged and tried not to be angry or disappointed and our nine-month-old marriage survived. And later we laughed and told the story and others laughed with us.

And now we are approaching our 42^nd year together and there have been all kinds of sighs and shrugs and trying not to be angry or disappointed and laughing and sharing and learning along the way.

Sometimes the views have been clouded in. Sometimes they have been spectacular.

We kept at it.

It was a full 35 years later when we next attempted the 18-mile drive from sea level on the south shore of Kauai to the overlook on the north.

This time we knew better. This time we checked the weather report (easier now with internet) and got up early and drove straight to the top, where the views were … true to expectation … spectacular.

And we hiked around in warm sunshine and I took pictures from every possible angle – twice. Or maybe four times.

As we finished our hike the clouds started to fill in, at first dancing around the trees and cliffs, then filling them all in.

On the way back to our car, we passed a young couple who’d just pulled in.

By now, there was nothing but cloud to see.

We greeted them but said nothing at all about the conditions.

Until they asked.

Was it clear this morning? she said.

Yes, we answered, watching them smile and shrug and try not to be disappointed.

We were you 35 years ago, we said.

We missed the view then too, but we came back.

I hope they will too.

Because after that first time you know better when to come. You know to wait for the right conditions. To start early. Not to be distracted.

And it works.

And when it doesn’t work the first time, it’s even better the second.

Just don’t give up.