The Things that Make Us Who We Are

When we put our 10-year-old home on the market close to a year ago, I boxed up all of our family photos, favorite pictures of barns and hearts and all of the little things that made our house a home of our own. At the time I thought our house, which I dearly love and always have, would sell quickly. I am a fastidious house cleaner and my contemporary home was built with my preferences for a long life lived right here, forever.

Things are not supposed to be what make us happy, but now that I have been living without my things, decorating my walls, occupying my counters and lined up along the windows that are open to the woods beyond our backyard for many months, I am thinking differently.

Who doesn’t make judgements based upon the way a person’s house looks the minute they step foot in their (used to be) adorned front door? In my house, family photos (used to) line the wall going up the stairs that lead to my two boys’ bedrooms.  From newborn babies to graduating men in caps and gowns to artwork whimsically colored in a third-grader’s hand, my life (used to be) laid out in neatly measured rows of varied sized frames that ascended the wall to the second floor. Now bare.

Barns made of stone-colored dove gray with a hint of blue cast against a clear sky and framed in maple wood (used to be) lined along my walls in the entry and down the hall to the back door. Now bare.

The green walls and Corian counters to match that people (used to) say we were brave to decorate our house with, but that I meticulously coordinated from kitchen towels to place mats to dishes and throws and pillows and rugs were torn out months ago and replaced with a double kitchen sink that is “practical” and quartz countertops that are neutral.

Well-worn wooden floors that (used to) hold the scratches from my last three German shepherds, all gone way too soon, are now smoothed over and covered with rugs to protect them and pulled up in a hurry when showings are scheduled.

My bedroom is blue, my bathroom is gray and my towels are boring. My books are boxed up and my encouragement printed on scrap paper and stuck to my mirror and attached with magnets on strips in the kitchen are now inside drawers or tossed into the trash.

Most days I struggle enough to figure out who I am and where I’m going. With nothing around to remind me of the person I was (mom to babies and boys, wife, baker, lover of hearts and owner of German shepherds named Koryo, Nitro, Echo and Otto) and am (mom to men, and dogs Zoey and Cisco, and still a wife and a baker and a lover of hearts), it is extra hard sometimes to feel comfortable in this place I’m at presently.

Blessedly, I am in the midst of watching all of it take shape somewhere new, where soon I will hang our family photos on newly-painted walls; and freshly-laid floors await sharp doggy nails; brand new double ovens, the crumbs of hand-mixed cookies; and finally, new memories, that will help me to remember that really, it is all tucked inside, safe and sound.

I have once again embarked upon the humbling hobby of training a German shepherd dog. Specifically, my new six-month-old named Zoey.

Zoey is not the problem, in fact rarely is it the dog that is the problem, it is her human who just plain old sucks at dog training. I understand it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. I am not seeking expert status, I just want to be a little bit good at it.

I certainly invested hundreds of hours training my last shepherd, Otto, and together we achieved what lots of people don’t by earning a BH (some wacky German word for having an obedient dog) and a Schutzhund I – a real title in the Schutzhund dog world. All of this means that I know I can do it again, but not without the patient help of an expert dog trainer who spends an hour a week with me repeating instructions that, through no fault of her own, leave me feeling graceless and clueless in front of my two favorite puppy eyes (and any other human eyes that should happen to be present).

Dog training is not the only activity at which I persist that I am obviously not good at. During week 10 of my indoor cycling class I still could not figure out how to get my bike locked onto the trainer. Week after week I would say to the person next to me, “Sorry, I know it’s week 3, 4, 5, 10, but I still cannot figure out how to get my bike on here.” I felt stupid, but not so stupid that I wouldn’t ask for help.

And don’t even ask my boys about the extent of my computer skills. The year I learned that I couldn’t put a document in “word” was a real awakening.

Me: “Where is that thing I was working on?”

Son: “Where did you put the thing you were working on?”

Me: “I put it in ‘word,’ I put everything in ‘word.’

Son: “That’s why you can never find anything. That would be like you asking me where I put the car keys and me saying, ‘they’re where the car keys are.’”

That to me actually made perfect sense, thus the obviousness of my incompetence.

Why do I persist at things I am not good at? Why does anyone?

I persist because I want something bad enough that I am willing to look bad doing it.

Fortunately only the person trying, attempting, persevering and ultimately succeeding or not can make the decision about how important their persistence is.

I once had a counselor ask me how long I was going to bang my head against a stone wall.

“Umm…..what is the stone made of?

You can always find a helmet or a hockey stick or better yet, a community of people who will stand beside you and help you succeed.

It is during my times of persistence where I have most often found a place to belong, fit it, join in and ultimately, succeed.

Aristotle said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you make it a habit to join others in helping them persist at something they may not be good at, you both become better.

“Truth be told, being terrible at something is the first step to being truly great at it. Struggle is the evidence of progress. The more time you spend there, the faster you learn. It’s better to spend an extremely high quality ten minutes growing, than it is to spend a mediocre hour running in place. You want to practice at the point where you are on the edge of your ability, stretching yourself over and over again, making mistakes, stumbling, learning from those mistakes and stretching yourself even farther. The rewards of becoming great in the long run far outweigh the short-term discomfort that’s felt in the process of earning your stripes.” Marc and Angel Chernoff www.marcandangel.com.

Amen to that!

This year, 2016, my word for the year is “Do.” Do the hard thing, do the right thing, do a new thing, do what I don’t think I can do.

I hope you will follow me on My Passage of Time as write about dogs, depression and doing….

How This Christmas will Look

Walking from my bedroom to the kitchen the other day I noticed a strange emotion bubbling forth. It was joy. Christmas songs playing, my oven warm from baking and suddenly I began to cry.

It has been well over 20 years since the Christmas season has elicited joy in my heart. Poisoned darts of sugar plums and smiling Santas ripe with tainted children’s tears. I have filled our stockings and wrapped our gifts followed by defeated puffs of contempt and misery. Yep, that is what over 20 years of Christmases have looked like at our house.

It is a sad reality that parents only realize the damage they have done to their children once it has already been done and the only thing left to wrap up with shiny new paper and glittering bows are apologies. Rubbed off the edge with the side of an old penny found at the bottom of my washing machine, I believe I discovered an expiration date from a decade too far gone to remember on that last “I’m sorry” from last year’s cards I threw away.

My go-to excuse has been my chronic, life-long depression. It’s true, I do have chronic depression and it does wreak havoc and does cause anger and sadness and words that should never be said. But we are all born with the same ability to make decisions and choose a path and take a breath and put a clean piece of gauze on a gaping, bleeding wound.

But this year, in the midst of my havoc and anger I have found a new outlook in the unlikeliest of places – cycling class.

The first week of class I thought I would die. But then something happened. A.J., on my right, started saying “no quit, no quit.” Soon Jenny, on my left, was following suit and quietly under my breath I said it too.

On my way home that night, sweat-soaked and red-faced I developed a love-hate relationship with this class on the second floor of a bicycle shop off College Ave. And I went back the next night, because Jenny was expecting me and said I would and I don’t like to be a quitter. And it cost money.

Soon one week moved into the next. Mike teaching one class and then Craig or Pete and finally Mary and Conor two nights a week. At first I liked one class over another but by week three every class was the same small community of regular cyclers. And they encouraged me. And they repeated words that kept my legs moving and they counted down the time left in the red zone and they cheered me on and before I could let my negativity flood the plain of this last month of the year I learned something… because we are always learning something and even when we think we know it all and it will never change, it does.

This year I am reminded, once again, that it is a community of people that keep me going. Oftentimes it ends up being people that have no obligation to do so. But they do. Because that’s what people do.

 There are many different versions of the definition of “community” but they all involve people who share a common goal and in doing so each person becomes better. I have become better this year because I stayed in the red zone longer than I ever thought possible and now I am in better shape.

But the most important thing I learned is that if I repeat the words I need the most, when I need them most, I have the real ability to overcome, and change my brain, and change my focus.

For some people those words are a prayer to God in heaven and sometimes they are simply “keep moving, keep moving.”  I know it works because this year I tried it. And now not only have I kept moving, I am moving forward.