You make a living by what you get.
You make a life by what you give.
[Winston Churchill]

Instead of making a list of New Year’s resolutions this year, I thought I’d meditate on growth-producing concepts—a different one each month. January was forgiveness, February was thriving, March was gratitude. Generosity has come to my mind so often recently that I thought it would be a good topic for April.

The thought struck me when I read the quote above that “You make a life…” is a phrase that makes a point in addition to generosity. How many people make their lives pro-actively, and how many people allow their life to be made for them passively? I’ve been reading life is a verb by Patti Digh. It is all about living intentionally. This is exercise for my brain, kind of like my trips to Curves.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.
[Maya Angelou]

In 1961, there were very few undergraduates over the age of 30. Frances was 47. We met in freshman anatomy class and studied together at the student union, memorizing the names of bones and the origins and insertions of muscles. We grew to be friends. She lived off campus for all except our junior year when we had private rooms in the nurse’s dorm to accommodate our 24-hour work schedule. Her room was next to mine.

When President Kennedy was shot, I remember I was sitting on Frances’ single bed, sorting three-by-five research cards and listening to the radio. She was at her desk writing more cards. Her life’s history was peppered with similar cataclysmic events. She recounted each one to me in great detail. Most recently, she’d been the wife of a university professor who died in a freek wreck the year before she started back to college. I recalled the news account about the slab of preformed concrete that slid off of a flat-bed truck onto her husband’s car. My heart hurt for her.

To me, everything about Frances was elegant and glamorous. I admired her greatly. She was nearly Mama’s age, but Mama was Mama and Frances was elegant. Elegant and unhappy. Mama may not have seemed elegant, but Mama was usually happy. I spent a lot of time trying to make Frances happy like Mama. I fixed her tea in her favorite cup so she could relax. I fixed her knitting mistakes so she wouldn’t get frustrated. I asked for her as my lab partner so she wouldn’t feel left out and I tried to keep her encouraged. So many sad things had populated her life that I assumed the memories killed her happiness. I didn’t have a clue.

We kept in touch for years after graduation. She moved to New Orleans. “Good,” I thought. “Maybe she’ll find happiness there–or someone who could make her happy.” She wasn’t happy there, nor in the places she lived after that. Frances died at the age of 83–still elegant but unhappy. Mama lived to be 95. I spent her last two years caring for her and finally saw what I’d really known all along. She was usually happy, not because she found happiness by chance or because someone made her so. She was happy because she consciously decided to pursue happiness not only for her own wellbeing, but also to create a positive environment for those who shared her life. Even on days filled with pain and trouble, she noticed the lovely things and dwelt on happy memories.

I remember a particularly challenging time in my life when I was driving down my North Carolina Smoky Mountain on my way to work. A brook tumbled over rocks next to the road and something red in a bed of ferns on the bank caught my eye so I pulled over and went to look. It was a trillium. I hunkered down for a closer look. The cool mist from the stream washed my face and the bubbling sound of water blended with the rustling leaves to fill my mind. The tiny flower was perfect. The beauty of the moment wrapped its arms around me. As I pulled the heels of my dress pumps out of the soft soil to head back to the car, I realized that I could do nothing at that very moment to change any circumstance that was pushing in on my life. Why let the big picture ruin a moment of communion with a trillium?

That is when I learned that happiness can coexist with turmoil and challenges. The paradox taught me mama’s lesson of happiness. I could choose to dwell on the sadness or I could focus on the trillium. I think of how Mama thrived elegantly and I follow her lead.

Image: U.S. Forest Service web site—Celebrating Wildflowers

Organizing is what you do
before you do something,
so that when you do it,
it is not all mixed up.
[A. A. Milne]

My office has bookcases on each of three walls. A row of post-it notes line up along the middle shelf of the case opposite my chair. Today there are seven notes—one for each of my major projects. Each note has bullet points. I delight in crossing off items, and celebrate when I finish a note altogether.

I think list making might be genetic—I inherited the trait from my mama. When I was a child, I dreaded her lists of chores but, as an adult, I grew to appreciate the specificity of knowing what she needed me to do for her. When she died at age ninety five, I found her to-do list next to her bed. It was comforting in my grief to be able to finish her list for her.

Lists serve several purposes for me. They assuage my fear of dropping the ball on something I promised to do. They keep me focused and help me concentrate on the tasks at hand. They help me set priorities for using my work time. And when there are so many that I need to start using another shelf, I remind myself not to take on more than I can reasonably accomplish. My foibles lurk under these purposes. Without lists, I tend to dither my time away and forget what I set out to accomplish.

So it is with writing. If I am composing something brief, my list is in my head. If I am composing something long, complex or multifaceted, I write an outline that looks like an organizational chart. This is especially helpful if I am working with another person, or when I am writing something that will take several months to complete. Breaking a project into small tasks makes it less daunting. I often overcome writer’s block by making a list.

The best career advice given to the young is:
“Find out what you like doing best and
get someone to pay you for doing it.”
[Katherine Whitehorn]

I composed the following mini-essay on careers for my writing group and wanted to share it here:

Daddy went to the General Electric apprentice school in 1927 and worked for them as a tool maker until 1970. His work era spanned the depression during which he was laid off several times; World War Two during which he worked so much overtime that he paid off the mortgage on our home; and my young adulthood during which he sent me to college and saw me earn a higher wage than his when I was a new graduate. That was an era when many people thought that responsibility meant finding good jobs, keeping their jobs until retirement, and then living on their pensions.

When I graduated from college, I went to work as a Navy nurse for several years, then taught at a nursing school as a civilian. That was an era during which people talked about career tracks. Many people thought responsibility meant only changing employers to advance in a career. Frequent lateral job changes didn’t look good on a resume.

After a decade of homemaking while my children were young, I needed to go back to work. If I went back to nursing, I’d need a lot of refresher training then I’d start back at an entry level which meant night duty, weekends and an ever-changing schedule. I didn’t want to balance that with my children’s adolescence so I thought about changing careers. At that time, my father was starting his decline into altzheimers and confessed to me that he’d worked at GE to meet his responsibilities, but he’d really always wanted to be a cowboy. That motivated me to ask myself what I’d always wanted to be. I went back to college and studied graphic design along with students who were half my age. I have now been an independent (self-employed) graphic designer for over twenty years. My definitions of “career,” “jobs,” “retirement,” and what is responsible changed drastically over the years.

Before the end of this year, I will turn sixty-five, go on MediCare, and be eligible for reduced rates on airlines and other such services. I received a letter from Social Security asking me when I planned to retire. I answered, “when I die.” What is magic about the number sixty-five? Why should I quit doing what I love to do? I now believe that responsibility, in terms of an occupation, is earning enough to keep a roof overhead and food on the table — in addition to that, a person needs to be working at something that feeds her soul.

This became a credo of mine.
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
[Bette Davis]

When I was in school, one of my English teachers did me the favor of ruthlessly criticizing each of my compositions. I’ve been working at improving my writing ever since. Five years ago, I joined an internet chapter of The Story Circle Network to continue my quest. I entered a very short story in an SCN writing contest in June. The topic was “beginnings.” Yesterday, I received an email saying the I’d won second place. I’m not very competitive by nature, but I have to tell you, I was so encourage that I wanted to share my story with you folks:

The Fern

This is his. This is mine. This is ours. I was sorting—sorting and weeping and re-boxing twenty years of collected stuff. I’d been at that chore for days so my eyes were puffed to slits, and I had to make myself get out of bed each morning. My husband had announced that he’d decided to move away and start a new life. Our three children were devastated, and I was desperately trying to hold together what was left of our world. Family life as we’d known it was over.

“Mama, Mama.” I heard the deck door slide shut and footsteps mount the stairs. My ten-year old daughter, Rachel, popped her head around the railing. Her eyes brimmed with terror. “There’s a fire up the mountain. Valerie and I were playing in the woods and we found it. We tried to stomp it out at the edges, but it was too hot.”

I phoned the ranger. Within a few minutes, firemen were climbing our lane—a path too steep and narrow for their engines. “Lady, start hosing down your cedar shakes so the house won’t catch. We’re bringing in the convicts to fight the fire,” the ranger called out as he climbed the slope behind the house.

The crew raked and shoveled the rest of that hot summer day. Updrafts sent the flames racing over the mountain top while I watered down my house. By evening, the fire was contained and the weary crew was trucked back to the prison farm. When I finally fell into bed, all that was left of the fire was the smell of charred vegetation drifting through my window screen, and a pulsating glow of embers on the ground that rose behind my house. The ranger had assured me that the danger was past. Everything had burned that would burn. I was amazed that the trees stood as green and untouched as they had been that morning. Only the thick underbrush had burned so that, from a distance, a person couldn’t tell there had been a fire. The ranger said it had been a good thing. With the undergrowth gone, another fire wasn’t likely to start on our mountain for many years.

That night I dreamed. In my dream, I’d driven my children to the safety of the valley away from the fire. Then I made my way back up the mountain to evacuate other people to safety. As I drove, the houses beside the road were places from my childhood—Grandma’s home in Kansas, my childhood home in Indiana, homes of other friends and kinfolk, most of whom had long since died. I stopped at each house and offered a ride, but everyone said they would stay in their places. My anxiety built the further up the mountain I drove. Nobody would come with me to safety.

The kitchen door at the last cabin was ajar. I stepped in and saw an old lady standing with her back to me watching the fire through the window above her sink.

“Do come with me down the mountain to safety. Nobody else will come. I don’t know what to do.” By then I was in tears.

“You can only offer, but you have to accept what other people decide for themselves. You can only control the course of your own life,” she said as she turned to face me. “I will go with you.”

I was stunned. She was me—a very old version of me. Then I woke up.

A Smoky Mountain mist rose from the creek and obscured the valley that morning. As I worked at my sorting in my home above the clouds, I shed not a tear. My spirit was quiet and my actions were so methodical that I finished my chore by evening. My dream had been like a birthing experience, and I knew I needed to learn how to live in my new world.

After supper dishes were done and my children were occupied with a game, I went to walk the mountain side. The mist turned into a gentle rain, and the ashes on the ground turned from grey powder to black sludge around my shoes. I had to look up to see anything that was alive and green, and when I did, the rain soothed my face like a cool compress. I kept climbing, trying not to think about how I could raise from what seemed to be the ashes of my life.

Then I spied a spot of green in the middle of a glen. I hunkered down and curled over to see it, trying not to fall into the black ash muck. The wee tendril of a fern had pushed through the charred leaf bed. Its end was tightly curled into a spiral, but it was opening into a frond. Life was already returning to the forest floor. As I uncurled from my crouch, I knew I’d thrive again soon.

Photograph by James E. Miller