Category: perspective (Page 5 of 10)

Balloon Heart

July 26, 2015 / Michele Minehart

The past two nights I’ve retired to bed with my heart singing with joy. We enjoyed days at the lake with our friends who used to live down the street from us. We played on the boat and went to the beach and enjoyed delicious meals and swam and played cards and drank beer and laughed and told stories. Our biggest worry was if the toddler was too close to the water or if one of the girls had taken the other’s preferred life jacket. Life was easy and good.

Perhaps it’s age, or perhaps it’s my yoga practice, but I remained fully present to this joy the entire time we were together. I noticed in my mind I would say, “this is an amazing weekend” and “I think this will go down on my list of top favorite lake trips.” I was aware of the joy expanding my heart.

And then the dreaded time comes, as it does any time we go to the lake, that we all must go home. I could barely stand the goodbyes. I watched them hug my children and we made promises to see one another soon (and confirmed the date). But as they pulled away it felt like someone had taken my heart and stomped on it, leaving it completely deflated. The sadness I feel is even much greater than when we pulled away in the moving truck.

This probably has a lot to do with our friends being completely fantastic, for sure. And it also is likely related to missing the comforts of our old life amid the transition into a new community. And, it’s Sunday and I get weepy on Sunday.

I’m inclined to believe, however, that it has much more to do with the elasticity of the human heart. Only when it expands does it know how it feels to be empty. And, as it does when pumping blood throughout the body, as it does this more often and with more power, it actually grows stronger. Perhaps we get better at loving people by loving people. The more we do it, the better we get.

The downside to an ever-expanding heart is the process of deflation – the missing people, the sadness, the ache. By not filling your heart, you never realize the weight of its emptiness. Like a real balloon, our hearts become lighter as they expand.

In many ways it would be easier to deal with the rest of this day – the tired toddlers, the cleaning, the return home – if that dull ache of loving people could subside. I can be so much more operational when I’m not feeling all of the feels. But today I have a bit of gratitude for my current deflated state. I’m taking it as a sign that I’m loving well. I’m going to choose not to numb the sad because I want to be able to experience the sense of joy that precedes it.

May we love well. May we feel the sad as and indicator of the joy that led the way.

Every 7 Years

July 20, 2015 / Michele Minehart

When I was pregnant for the youngest and miserably waiting to go into labor and life was hard and my facebook friends were tired of hearing how I STILL had not gone into labor, one of the hardest days was the one in which I dropped a bowl on my big toe. At that point, I plead with God to induce me, fully believing that I would never feel the first pang of labor because my toe hurt so badly. (This never happened. Although it did for a cousin, which I found to be a phenomenal story.)

Months later, I noticed the gash of black and blue left by the bowl had crept all the way up my toenail. That dead spot, complete with unique curvature, didn’t stay put. Then, it was gone. My toe recovered. If you look at the nail now, you would have no idea I had ever cursed a bowl. This was both exciting (no gimpy toe) and also, sad. As if a part of my physical self that had been present for my final birth story was now gone, forever.

I’ve read/heard from multiple sources recently that your physical body is a different one from seven years ago. Our personal collection of flesh and bone contains a rhythmic dying and rebirthing cycle in individual cells, tissues and thus organs. It’s not like your entire spleen died off at once and got a newer, younger version – only that none of the cells that were functioning there seven years ago are still alive and working today. It’s the same, but completely different.

At the cellular level, we are different people than we were 7 years ago. In full truth, we’re different people than we were yesterday, as some of that life/death rhythm happened in the past 24 hours. But in totality, we’re different bodies. I can tell you, as a mother, it’s quite obvious that my body is different from 7 years ago when I started the birthing process. But it’s not about my midsection. I find this bit of information quite freeing, to know that my body matches my mind and my heart and all the rest of me in being different than it/I was 7 years ago.

If you start looking through the world with eyes for the 7 years, you see it everywhere. The Waldorf philosophy (of education) takes this 7-year cycle of change within the same human being pretty seriously. My MIL’s pastor says that we must recreate ourselves professionally about every 7 years. Marriage gurus speak of the “7 year itch” which makes sense – we’re sharing space and days with someone who is, quite literally, a different person than you married. But the same person. What do you do with these changes in the midst of the consistencies?

The 7 year switch becomes the queen of spades when returning to the town where I emerged into adulthood. We left 7 years ago, barely pregnant with the firstborn, with different jobs, beliefs, tastes in books and ways in which we spent our time, energy and money (all of which – we had no idea – we had so much, in comparison to the present). We were different people. And everyone who remained in the 419, to whom we now return and look forward to spending time with – they’re entirely new people, too. The same. But different.

The same, yet different. Now, I wonder what happens next, when we all give space to one another to be the same, yet different. It’s not just that I don’t eat the same foods or that a friend doesn’t live in the same house or have the same job. Those realities simply mark time in the continual process of becoming different, yet the same. Others might call that growing up, but that comes with a connotation that 7 years ago I wasn’t quite there. Not yet enough. Only a part of the whole – and that’s simply not true.

I was fully myself 7 years ago, when I lived in this town the first time. And I am fully myself today. The brown parts of my eyes look the same but the tiniest pieces that make them up are new and different. My heart does the same work of pumping blood to the rest of my body, but the tissues that come together to do this work weren’t around when I drove a silver Accord. The minivan scene is all they’ve known. Yet my Odyssey is something that no one in my new/old town ever knew of me.

Perhaps, then, the greatest work we can do is be present to our realities of today. The past 7 years have formed us, but it is not our make up. That will change in the next 7. We can take comfort in the fact it’s supposed to be that way. To try to remain something we once were becomes a futile effort, filled with expensive beauty treatments and riddled with disappointment. We cannot – nay, I say, should not – be what we were. We should be what we are, and give everyone around us the gift of that freedom.

The memory making machine

July 9, 2015 / Michele Minehart

Of growing up at home, I remember:

Playing dolls in the living room while my mother worked (the shop was basically the front porch at that time). I set my doll on top of the kerosene heater and it went up in flames. She put out the fire. The doll went into the trash.
Hours spent playing outside, just my sister and I. We climbed the huge farm gas tanks behind the barn. The little one was there first, a silver tank. We pretended it was a horse and named it Silver. Then this HUGE one arrived (I believe for diesel). It was also silver, but that name was taken, so the the mammoth “horse” was named Goldie. These two horses lived just yonder of Kitty Peak, a small pile of dirt where one of our barn cats birthed her kittens.
Convincing our friend Katie that Gummie Bears lived in our front tree.
Spending entire weekends on the couch, reading.

Of family vacations, I remember:

The long drives and finishing my homework for a week in the car on the way down.
The time my mom forgot her purse under the bench at the bus stop in Pigeon Forge and my dad sprinted back to the hotel to find it.
Spending lunchtime each day in Puerta Vallarta watching the time share salesman attempt another deal. We said it was better than our usual The Young & The Restless lunchtime show.
Every time we left the country, someone thought my sister and I were twins. Even despite the hair color, height, eye color and general face dissimilarities…. twins?
Learning to ski in Cumberland. Don said I couldn’t get back in the boat until I got up on skis. I got up the next time. (I subsequently got bored of the boat pulling me around and spent the follow up trips to Cumberland curled up in the front of the boat with a book. That’s my idea of vacation.)

Of time with my grandparents, I remember:

Grandma letting us pick out 3 kinds of cereal for our 3 day stay.
Riding to the lake and fighting about who got to ride “on the hump” while we listened to the Oldsmobile song on repeat. (Which was in a tape player, so it was the old rewind, stop, listen, rewind some more, stop, listen, rewind, stop, To Far!, Fast Forward, Oh Just Stop Here, method.)
When Rebecca put on some of grandma’s make-up and it was burning her face and we had to go to the neighbor, Jenny’s house to find grandma so she could tell us to wash it off with Pond’s.
Playing Hide the Thimble.
Grandma Cella’s homemade waffles. (I’m noticing a trend around the breakfast food theme of my memories here…)
Going camping and playing on the playground. I fell through the huge hole in the middle where you climb up and down and it knocked the wind out of me. I cried. A lot. I think this is why I hate camping.

These are a sampling of my memories, what comes to mind first. There are more, of course, but I don’t want to bore you with the non-poignant parts of my 35 years on this earth. For some reason, (we can probably blame Inside Out, though this has been brewing for some time) I’ve been pondering the ways in which memories are made. It’s probably because the past month has been spent doing one of two things: moving or vacationing.

I appreciate our culture’s sentiment at wanting to value the time with people we love over material things. A quick scan of Pinterest will give you all the wall hangings (our generation’s version of the cross-stitched pillow) with sayings about making memories, not money. I say to this, Cheers! I’m in wholehearted agreement.

Yet something about the approach is amiss. These memories we wish to make seem a bit contrived. Forced. Our culture’s general approach at Making Memories Not Money is to spend money as an attempt to buy a few memories. We go on this trip. We try that excursion. We bring home the t-shirt, the stuffed doll and the photo of us making the 9000 foot drop. And we ask the children their favorite part and it’s doing the monkey bars in the play area that looks exactly like our smallest city park.

Ask my small group, I’m all about “creating space” for the magic to happen. Slowing down, providing opportunity, the pause in the middle. If we don’t prioritize time with family and friends, these memories will probably never exist.

Creating space and buying the all-inclusive package,* however, are two different things. The problem with going into an event with the hope of Making Memories is that you’re ultimately buying a product. You fork out the $72.95 and spend the time, and now you want the memories. Remember when? And how we?

Memories aren’t made with purchases. They aren’t even created in the Big Events. They’re not created in the rushing through of the outing, making sure to have “family day” and “date night” and hashtagging the Instagrams appropriately.**

Actual memories are formed when we’re fully present to the moment, not by the moment encompassing all attributes of perfection. The lighting doesn’t have to be right. We rarely catch it on camera. And if we ask our kids, chances are the memories will rarely involve what we think.

The only thing I remember about Disney World was my complete disappointment with Cinderella’s castle (a hallway? seriously?!) and the fact that my sister did not want to ride Space Mountain and it was a long line, so we didn’t. That’s what I took away from the Most Magical Place on Earth.

But the rest of the trip to Florida? I remember riding my grandparents’ 3-wheeled bicycles around and around the park they lived. I remember shuffle board. I remember sitting on their make-shift porch with strings of bright lights around the canopy. I remember watching Hee-Haw and Green Acres with complete confusion.

I’m not sure how do this memory-making thing right. I know my kids will make their own memories of our time, no matter what we provide. I simply hope that I don’t live under the guise that because we went to All of the Places and Did All of the Things and Bought All of the T-shirts (<- that will never happen, I’m too cheap), that their memories will be Big and Amazing and Wow.

Perhaps that’s the goal? Remembering what memories are and what they do. It’s not a competition. At the end of our life, we won’t be sitting around comparing vacation stories and passport stamps. We won’t recall itineraries of our vacations, the things planned and lived. We’ll remember the people we spent them with and how they made us feel.

*I just went on an all-inclusive vacation. It was delightful. This is not a statement of all expensive things are bad.
**I have done all of these things. Don’t read it as a statement of blame. They are not bad things.

Category: perspective (Page 5 of 10)

Balloon Heart

Every 7 Years

The memory making machine

Subscribe By Email

Recent Posts

Read more, in your inbox

Tell your friends!