Daybook for 21 June 2021

Outside my window: there is a hazy blue sky that cannot decide if it is presiding over an uncomfortably hot day or a strangely cool one.

I am thinking about: my job. I work in development and communications for a charter school network, and the summer is always a time of reflection and planning. What did I and my team do well last year? Where can we improve? Remember the beginning of each new school year, when you had sharp pencils, fresh binders, and big plans to "be better" this year? Working for a school system means that I still have that experience. The big plans part starts early...that's what's on my mind these days.

I am thankful for: the beautiful game. We had an epically long, hot weekend of soccer with our youngest child, a weekend like we haven't had since before the pandemic.  Between Thursday night and Sunday night, we traveled many miles, ate lots of takeout, watched 320 minutes of girls pounding up and down the pitch, took one dip in a hotel pool, used many bags of ice to soothe sore muscles and to battle the 100-degree heat, talked soccer, watched soccer, thought about soccer, planned for soccer,...you get the idea.  On Sunday night, finally home and drifting off to sleep, when I closed my eyes I saw shadowy figures zig-zagging back and forth in my vision.  And all three of us -- myself, my husband and my badass 14-year-old soccer player -- enjoyed every angled minute.  We keep talking about how much fun it was. We are grateful for this thing that has pretty much taken over our lives, so I guess that makes us very fortunate indeed.  

From the kitchen: sadly, nothing special. I am trying to plan for a better kitchen week.

I am wearing: black yoga pants and a dark purple and black striped shirt.  And really clean shoes, because my husband oxy-cleaned my favorite tennis shoes for me after they had been on one too many hikes.

I am creating: epic to-do lists for my week.  My to-do lists are divided into four categories: (1) work stuff, (2) household and family tasks, (3) stuff for me, that makes me feel good, and (4) cooking and grocery shopping. Lists pretty much keep the whole AIRY-5 enterprise careening through the universe.

I am going: to pick up my daughter from her first day of high school summer school. Hoping we get along better on the way home than we did on the way there.

I am reading: too much Twitter, not enough actual books.

I am hoping: that my daughter gets the Trader Joe's job that she interviewed for!

I am hearing: an Amtrak train as it blows its whistle and barrels through West Oakland.

Around the house: sooooo many messes.  Too much dog hair on the floor; too much laundry to fold, too many projects left unfinished by too many people.  Must muster the strength to get them all to help me.

One of my favorite things: I'm going to repeat myself with this one and say soccer.  We really did have a great weekend, and I can't wait for more.

A few plans for the rest of the week: I plan to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary with my favorite person in the world!  Good thing that person is also my spouse. 

And a picture:

Sunflowers next to one of our
soccer fields this weekend.

I invite you to join me by posting your own daybook!

An Unlikely Pair, Linked Forever

A strange combo, to be sure.  Read on.

When I was thirteen years old, I got my first job working at a deli market.  Two doors down from Sonoma's historic plaza, the deli was a popular lunch destination for all kinds of people: shop workers, construction guys, tourists, and laborers. Jim, the owner who hired me, was a great boss.  He was the picture of decorum during business hours, until the older employees went home and the teenagers were left to close up. Then, he would swear like a sailor–always in jest–to horrify and entertain us. We loved him.

The "older employees" consisted of three or four women who became like a whole fleet of grandmothers to me. They were good country folk, hard-working, no-nonsense women who taught me how to make egg salad, prepare all the sandwich fixins, and slice deli meat on the giant electric slicer. They teased each other, but not me: they were strong, plain, kind, and funny.

Shone's Deli is also where I met Ann, the best friend a soon-to-be high schooler could possibly find, and we quickly knew we would be by each other's side for life.  Landing the deli job was a hugely positive development in my young life.

My first day of work, however, was not an auspicious beginning.  At first, everything went fine: I was soaking up all the training, figuring out how to make a roast beef sandwich just like the customer ordered, and ringing up orders at the ancient cash register, all while managing not to freak out when cute boys came in. But then, on my first solo voyage with the meat slicer, disaster struck. The tip of my left index finger got in the way of the spinning blade, giving the roast beef a little something extra as my A negative plasma spurted all over the slicer's gleaming chrome.

I did not react well to the sight of my own blood; the wooziness began immediately. Thankfully, the grandmothers jumped right in. One of them, Helen, whisked me away to the back room, magically producing a glass of ice water to calm me down. A couple more cleaned everything up lickety-split: no customers were the wiser. Helen bandaged me up like the experienced farm hand/mom/grandmother she was, and sent me home a wee bit early from my shift – and slightly lighter than when I'd arrived, now missing the tip of my finger.

I always felt kind of stupid about that injury.  I had wanted to do well at my new job. I didn't want to cause any problems or draw too much attention to myself. Bloodying up the workspace was not exactly the kind of value I wanted to add as a new employee.

But rather than making a big deal out of my mishap or lecturing me too much, Jim and the grandmothers just welcomed me back the next day. They were as matter of fact as you'd expect good country folk to be, and we all just got to work, smiling at customers and taking orders. The slicer and I got along fine after that and I never had another work place injury.  I went on to work there for four more years, until I graduated from high school and went to college.  It was a great, easy job, with fun people, and it put spending money in my teenage pockets.  All that's left now of that first day is a hardened, crescent-shaped scar on the tip of my left index finger.

I have developed an absent-minded habit over the years of circling the crescent with my thumb, almost surprised every time I feel how calloused and un-skin-like it has become. Every so often, I recall the day I got that scar.  I can hear the whirr of the electric blade and feel the sharp pain and the rising wooziness.  I also remember feeling stupid and silly, embarrassed about causing a ruckus on day one. Tiny as it is, it has always been a quiet rebuke to me over the years.

But then. Then something happened that might make me believe, for the first time in my life, that Everything Actually Does Happen for a Reason: I took up the fiddle. Two years ago, I started taking fiddle lessons after years and years of wanting to. Learning to play those beautiful strings has been one of the greatest joys of my adult life; it has also been extremely challenging. Those lovely sounds that professionals make? Those are the culmination of an incredible about of practice, coordination, skill, and technique. There's so much more to it than I ever anticipated, and I find my brain, body, and creativity stretched in multiple ways. My new hobby is a lot of damn work.

Happily, it turns out that having a pre-installed callous on one's left index finger is quite beneficial to the whole endeavor. One of the first things you have to accomplish when learning a fiddle is building up the necessary callouses on the second, third, and fourth fingers of your left hand. Thanks to Shone's Deli, I came to this party ahead of the game.  Yes, I still needed to build callouses, but my index finger was already a seasoned pro. Pressing hard with that finger produced no pain at all, and the little scar's moment to shine had arrived. Now, when my left thumb circles the hardened crescent on finger #4, I don't think about shaving off the tip of that finger with a meat slicer. I think instead about how that scar helps me play the D note in a A major scale. I think, with pleasure, about how my whole hand knows how to deftly move its fingers in order to play St. Anne's Reel and Angeline the Baker and many other traditional bluegrass and celtic tunes. I freakin' love that scar now.

Who knew that something that happened when I was 13, something I had only ever seen as residue from an episode I'd rather forget, would play such a central role in one of the most positive developments of my middle-aged life? Not I, said the duck, but I'm endlessly grateful to have experienced this happy convergence of events.

It makes me wonder what else in my life might be acting in this mysterious way. What strange scars and bumps have morphed into something beautiful and beneficial? Which ones will do so in my future? What gratitude am I missing?  How have the experiences of my life layered one on top of the other to get me where I am today, mother of five, wife of (still just the) one, fiddler, writer, pray-er, friend? It's a lot to ponder. All I know is that I find great comfort in discovering that something painful has become something joyful. There is so much hope in that discovery.

A tiny scar. A life-changing new practice. Linked forever, and beautifully.

***

Daybook for 14 June 2021

Outside my window: A perfect June morning is wrapping my neighborhood in its fragrant, warm arms, and all the birds are singing their appreciation. 

I am thinking: that I need a new attitude about my job. My current attitude has me unmotivated and unexcited about the tasks and projects on my work to do list. This happens to me every now and then, and could be related to the end of the school year.

I am thankful for: birria tacos. Specifically, the ones I got from this taco truck last night at this taproom.

From the kitchen: literally nothing. I made a very thorough meal plan and shopping list on Friday, but it turns out that the essential step is actually going grocery shopping which I did not do. There were too many other fun things to do this weekend.

I am wearing: black yoga pants and a cute linen, flowered top that I got at a thrift store. Actually, I also got the pants at a thrift store. Thrift stores are my jam.

I am creating: this post.

I am going: to the Outlaw Music Festival in October! Really looking forward to it.

I am reading: My Grandmother's Hands. A beautiful book. Why I am reading it is the subject of another post. I should plan to write that. 

I am hoping: that my daughter gets a job for the summer. Quickly.

I am hearing: the birds chirping in the perfect June morning.

Around the house: all of my daughter's stuff that she brought home from college. We haven't figure out where to store it all yet, and I think she is coming home with approximately three times the amount of stuff we moved her into the dorms with back in February.

One of my favorite things: Music. Listening to it, playing it, singing along to it, watching it live...all of the music things are my favorite.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Lots of soccer! No summer off for this soccer family.

And a picture:

This is what I saw when I looked up from where
I was sitting at last Saturday's soccer game.

I invite you to join me by posting your own daybook with these categories (or any others you choose).