Graduation Gifts that Keep Giving

Photo by CarbonNYC

Caps, gowns, and sitting in bleachers until one special person walks across the stage is a popular activity at this time of year.

I have several graduation announcements all begging for perfect gifts.  But what are they?

• A friend says she gives a small, black velvet bag with golden one-dollar coins inside.
• Another swears by the good ol’ Cross Pen set
• Probably the most logical advice I’ve received was:  “Give ‘em money. Everybody loves money.”

But I would like something more enduring. Something that would inspire hope in a dark period of life, because when you’re first starting out on the adult trail, you can expect that around one of the bends is a shadowy passage.

It made me think about what I received for graduation a million years ago.  I could have really used luggage, but I didn’t get any. I did get pens and money.  And I remember a thin, golden book called Apples of Gold. It was full of quotes and words of wisdom.

I didn’t read it until I was in graduate school. I probably didn’t think I needed it until I hit one of those dark nights of adult life.

Lisa of Tao of Webfoot says she still remembers a version of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If,” that had been adapted and given to her.

So maybe when we’re in grade school “Sticks and Stones may break our bones….

But when graduating into life…..

The gift of words have the power to inspire, heal, and give hope for a very long time.

What do you remember about your graduation gifts?

Eureaka! It Works.

Photo by Thomas Hawk

Sorry, I didn’t wear strappy heels to the Salsa experiment. I’m not sure they would have helped my appearance. There was a mirror across one side of the room. I was thinking Penelope Cruz, but I looked like Tom Cruise jumping around.

I’m not sure how the instructor was able to disconnect her spine from her lower body and move her hips like one of those wooden, jointed snakes you win at a carnival booth.

It was great fun, and like a square dance, I had to listen to the instructor’s calls and try to respond with the right moves. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a lot of exercise.

So, this week I discovered that stepping outside of my routine made a small but significant change in my brain. I experienced new sensory abilities which have become part of my brain’s vocabulary.

This experiment was started to alleviate brain drain in the hopes of sleeping better. Perhaps, if the brain isn’t bored during the day, it doesn’t try to entertain itself at night. I have been sleeping better,but my dreams are still strange…maybe even weirder (probably all those new synapses firing.)

I’ll continue to try to add new routines and different motor skill each day  because I have empirical evidence that it gives results.

How?

I remembered to tote my reusable bags into the store  today.

No Hope in Reusable Grocery Bags

I know some of you come here for your zen moment. And I apologize in advance that it’s not going to happen with this posting.  If you need a positive moment, maybe you should go over to Laid Off Now What? Les is the most upbeat guy I know in the face of unemployment, but even the subject of reusable bags might knock him down.

Now I admit,  reusable bags save a lot of plastic trees and real trees too. I have 7 fiber bags and one nice plastic-coated one that I won at a “Sustainable Environment” show at the convention center.  I won it by knowing how much compost a pound of worms  could process in a day.  (Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to tell you, because I forgot. It was multiple choice and I happened to guess correctly.)  But the point is….I’m interested in doing my environmental share in case you were thinking  that I’m a complete eco-slob.

The problem with those dratted reusable bags is that they make my blood pressure spike.  My shopping trips begin as pleasant strolls through the aisles matching coupons to things that I need. Then I reach the check out and wait in line, and just when it’s MY turn. I remember those STOOOPID bags are still in the car.

“Paper or plastic?” the checker asks. Oooooh the guilt. Then then the irritation. What is this….the 50th time I’ve forgotten those bags?

“Just throw it all back in the cart. I’ll bag it standing at my trunk,” I reply.

Well, that was a lousy idea. Besides standing in the rain, getting wet, most of the people in the parking lot thought that I’d probably stolen a basket of groceries and wheeled it directly to my car.

I used to lament loudly over my bag-dementia. Folks with me  in the check-out line had lots of suggestions. Like a frantic victim looking for a cure. I’ve tried most of them:

• put them in your purse. (They’re huge. This only works if I’m carrying a gym bag as a purse.)
• put them in the front seat with you. (Nope. They blend in with all my other front seat essentials: Kleenex, Chapstick, mints, notebook, pens)
• set them on your dashboard. (I’m not a race car driver, but not even a hula doll with a suction cup will stay on my dashboard.)
• “I sit on them,” one overly eco-confident shopper bragged to me. (Well sitting on those scratchy little buggers would tick me off even more. I’m already kicking the pens, notebooks and sliding hula doll back into the car so I can close the door, now  I have to  fight with bags, too?

No way. Those bags have more evasive moves than Chuck Norris. They know when to collapse and go limp so you can’t stuff anything in them. They know when to take a dive and roll their contents under seats. They lure you with their roominess and then laugh when you can’t tote them with 18 pounds of kittly litter in them. Those bags are clever adversaries.

So I resolved there’s no hope for this situation—until last week. Last Tuesday,  I ambled across the parking lot and a sign over one of the cart “corrals” read: DID YOU REMEMBER YOUR BAGS?

Hot dog! Now that’s what I call a public service announcement.  I grabbed a bag out of the front-seat rubble and shopped with the smugness that sustainability experts  must experience—until I arrived at the check stand.

Somewhere in my aisle meanderings, I’d laid my bag down.

Who knows where?

I hate those bags.

Signs of Hope on the Road to Confusion

Which Way to Go

Before morning breaks into the thin hours of this night, I came to the conclusion that Hope is different than confidence.

Good ol’ confidence is born of success. I remember the first hook I baited all by myself. Then I spit on it for luck and cast it in the pond. I sacrificed several worms before I learned to yank the line after the bobber completely submerged in order to haul a catfish onto the bank.  I became a confident fisher woman, until I took up trout fishing (that’s another story).

Confidence comes in handy when you get behind the wheel of a car after you’ve had a wreck that’s laid you up for several weeks. You ignore the sweaty palms and tell yourself that you can drive because you’ve done it before. And you can do it again.

Confidence comes when you suddenly have to introduce a person, or open your locker at the gym that you haven’t been to  since waaaaay before the holidays. You relax, knowing that the name or combination will come to you. It’s in your brain closet somewhere and you know that if you take a deep breath, it’ll probably roll out on its own.

Hope on the other hand doesn’t need prior experience or success stories.  There are no boundaries or prerequisites.  A girl can hope that the school’s quarterback will ask her out, even if he’s never spoken to her before.  Every writer who sends out a query embeds a piece of their hope in it. Even if they’ve never been published before, they HOPE this is the one that will be accepted. And, I always try to fix my computer by pushing some buttons and then hoping it will work perfectly when I reboot it.

You can see that hope is based on pretty thin stuff.

I think that’s why we look for signs. Little things to grab onto to keep hope alive.  You might study the stock market each day, looking for signs of recovery to support your hope.

When I make a pitch, I look for light bulbs and glowing adoration to shine in an agent’s eyes. (Okay, really, I  just look for a sign that they’re interested.)

When my mother came out of her non-responsive, bed-ridden fog last week, I grabbed onto it as a sign and hoped that she was getting better.

You’re probably a step ahead of me here. Looking for signs is as subjective as trying to figure out if it’s your gut telling you to buy a lottery ticket or divine intervention.

I’m embarassed to admit that it’s taken me a while to see I was basing my hope on the wrong thing. Oh, I receive lots of signs, but they come from faith…not hope.

Faith is the rope that hope hangs onto. You know how they tell you to keep “hangin’ in there.” Well it’s faith that you’re sticking your claws into and holding on as life whips you around.

Faith in God’s ability to care for you. I don’t always see that God cares. I spend a lot of time spiraling off in worst case scenarios before I can get my engine stopped.

That’s where the little signs come in. Out of the blue—a friend calls.  A stranger does a kindness. A sunrise tells me—I’m not alone. Small (or sometimes large) pats on the back, remind me that there is a God who loves me as I am and will take care of me.

It restores my faith. And that give me hope.