Julie Unplugged

My Love Affair with the Artfulness of Shopping Carts: From the Beginning....

Last Spring, my son Samuel waited patiently while I snapped a series of photos similar to this one: that was when my shopping cart love affair began in earnest.

I can’t remember exactly when I noticed it, but sometime last Spring I noticed an empty lot on the road to my daughter’s high school – which was adjacent to an old, rundown neighborhood and the county hospital. This empty lot faced a carneceria and.. a "tobacco and discount store. The second store was a bright green color, almost matching one of the visiting shopping carts.

Maybe that is what opened my eyes to this particular subject and art form.

This is a Dollar General Shopping Cart. I like how it looks near this particular tobacco and discount store.

Not many people would think of it as an art form, but I saw it both as beautiful and a study in community cohesion and also perhaps a game someone who appreciates order was playing while the other neighbors saw the utilitarian nature of the enterprise.

I started calling the vacant lot “The Shopping Cart Lending Library” because some days it would have more shopping carts than other days. The first day I went there I got close up to the carts, noticed the trash in them, the broken mirror on the ground one of the carts rested atop.

One day I noticed all the carts were organized by color.

I had a rule, in these photos I would not rearrange the carts, I would only rearrange myself as I clicked my camera to get different perspectives.

I drove by the corner again today - my daughter transfered to a different school - and the lot was empty except for the expected trash. There were no shopping carts in sight.

After I found the shopping cart library last Spring, I started noticing abandoned shopping carts.

I started to hear their story.

A rare sight: an abandoned shopping cart in the northwest. In a vacant lot, naturally and oh, so Bakersfield to be from The Tractor Supply Store.

Here in Bakersfield I found them downtown and on the East side of town, perhaps because this is where I spent the most time. I also noticed they did not appear in the Northwest, which my son calls “Casper-land because it is so white!” and more uniformly affluent.

I realized many people in my town didn’t know about the shopping cart lending library or its cousins, the shopping cart collections at highly frequented bus stops that neighborhoods shared as they got off and on the bus.

I saw abandoned shopping carts as a sign of cooperation or a sign of apathy or perhaps a little of both.

Until the night before last, I only photographed my shopping carts incognito, but when I stopped downtown Tuesday night, I couldn’t help but notice the most eccentric shopping cart yet. I was almost angry when the owner showed up, I thought the photo op was gone but it was simply too good to pass up.

“Hey,” I said to the glasses wearing man with the ‘CAT’ short for the agricultural caterpillar tractor, “I love your set up!”

This is John, the Sculptor and my new friend with his work of art.

He smiled wider than I could have imagined, showing his lack of teeth. I smiled back when he said, “Why thank you! I was on the news the other night, did you see it?” I explained this was the first time for me and he immediately pulled the greatest attraction – a mannequin head and a teddy bear– off the rolling sculpture and posed with it.

“Can you put it back?” I asked “That was what attracted me the most at first.”

He told me his name was John and he was quite congenial. He posed for me in several shots and laughed and we talked and I snapped a few more photos and he confessed, “I’m not even homeless! I live at the Decatur!” He showed me his room key.

“That’s great – you stay there at the Decatur! It’s an ok place!” I reassured him. It is a welfare hotel but it does provide him warmth, protection and a consistent shower.

He told me he took odd jobs sometimes and basically was one of the happiest people I have seen all week.

I suppose artists usually are the most happy and sometimes the most miserable people I encounter.

I had no money to pay John for the photo, but I forgot about it as we both just lived the moment fully.

I have thought of taking photos of people with their shopping carts, but I wanted to bring along payment in food and small bills. John and my friend, Kimberly taught me there are many kinds of currency. A conversation and a smiling face is one kind of currency that is never emptied from my pockets.

Like the shopping carts scattered around less affluent neighborhoods which I have taken to documenting, people like John are usually the ones people ignore or turn their heads when they are seen walking down the street.  

I have committed to not ignoring the shopping carts or the people who use shopping carts as a different form of recreational vehicle. When we choose to see beauty, these metal contraptions become beautiful and the people who use them for shelter and as a larger and more grounded back pack may even become our friends.

This is one of the shots I took this morning. See the laundry, hanging on the fence in the background? The white house has a very neatly kept yard. We can not make generalizations. Just because someone hangs laundry to dry on a fence doesn't mean anything except for what we make it mean.

I certainly didn’t expect to meet John-the-Sculptor with a great personality. I expected an angry perhaps drunk man who wouldn’t let me take a photo without giving him money. I was surprised and I would bet John would be surprised, too.

What public art have you seen or appreciated lately?

Perhaps it is time to look again and see beauty where perhaps you used to see shame or humiliation.

Remember John and his sculpture, unique and profoundly perfect, instead.

>> -----<<

You may still join Art Every Day Month - Leah Piken Kolidas has been inspiring many of us for years! Check it out -

 

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot     

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 © 2013 - Julie Jordan Scott - all rights reserved.

 

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Sunrise through Lace: Another Perfect Day

The First & Another First & Yes, Another First - Emma Goes to College Day 3

Bloggy Moms Blog Dare prompt is…. “The first time....”

Here is what I wrote:

Last Thursday I sat back in this very same chair completely relieved the school year was over. “Hooray! Time for a break!” or something similar was the thought most present in my mind. I took the requisite last day of

That's Emma in the fancy shades on the right with two of her friends.

school photos, happy high fived my kids and mentally did the back stroke as I saw a horizon of lazy hazy days of Summer in front of me.

You would think after more than twenty years of Mommying I would know better than that but sometimes even veterans like me flounder.

This week, my fifteen-year-old just finishing her sophomore year in high school started taking Summer Biology course at our local college. She aced the prep tests, showing she was ready for transfer level courses and off the went on Monday to her new adventure.

She did great, seriously – much better than I could hope both academically and socially as well.

The only issue was this: both of us have been a bundle of nerves about it and apparently neither of us is talking about it for fear of upsetting the other.

We opted to have her go to one of the satellite campuses for several reasons: she could get into the required course without having to have the insecurity of being on a waiting list and our dear friend, Cameron, teaches on the same campus.  This made me feel more secure because if Emma needed anything, he would be close by so she could get help.

I don’t know what might happen in a college class that might require she need help, but for whatever reason, it made me feel better. She rode with him on her first day, I drove her there the second day because she had a doctor’s appointment and on this, the third day, she decided to take the public bus for the first time.

We walked toward the bus stop and she said, “I am just a nervous wreck.”

I responded in as chipper a voice I could muster, “Well, honey, you’ve been through a lot of firsts this week. We just keep stacking one first after another. This is today’s first. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

We stood by the bus stop, waiting, and Emma didn’t look so sure about this activity she volunteered to do rather than go in early and ride with Cameron. There were quite a few people, most of whom were older or younger or not speaking English. Normally this makes for a fun adventure but today, when Emma was feeling woozy to begin with and I added a handful of change for the three-dollar bus fare and I should have recognized this might now be as easy as I originally thought.

This wasn’t an ordinary city bus which she has taken in the past, this was an “out in the hinterlands” bus which goes to the outlying, primarily farm communities in our southern central valley. She was in the minority in every way as she stepped onto that bus with her backpack, bling-touched sunglasses and lacey top.

She seemed to be taking it all in stride until her older sister caught this tweet:

 So not only was this one first experience, it was two. Her first bus ride to college and her first throwing up episode on a bus.

Looking back in her twitterfeed, before this she also tweeted:

 The next barrier was to be sure she and Cameron found each other once her bus arrived in Delano AND get her to campus on time. The timing looked like it couldn’t be sweeter but somehow, even that was rocky.

The good news is, they did connect – after phone calls between both Katherine and Emma and Mommy and Emma and Mommy and Cameron and Cameron and Emma. I texted her with a hint of fear thirty minutes to class. “Did you make it ok?”

She texted back within moments: “Yep, and I was only five minutes late!”

With that, I took some time to take a restful shower and prepare for my first, blissfully stress free moment of the da and another first - and I spent it,  here with you: my writing date! Thanks for being here with me.

Oh, by the way, you look especially lovely!

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© 2013

 

Lessons from the Theatre: Past, Present & Future - Being with What Is Now

Lessons from the Theatre: Being with What Is Now

I can immerse myself in it still, as if it was happening in the here and now rather in the then and there.

 My friend, Kevan, strutting across the stage in a cameo appearance in a late night show I was appeared in was it nearly five or six years ago? The show was called True Tales 2. He was wearing chaps and only chaps. It was October. He died the following Spring but on that late evening in October, we didn’t know he was sick.

I laughed as he came through, but I never looked at him. Call it my puritanical roots, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lift my head to watch him. He always left right after his brief appearance so we never got to giggle about it in the moment, it was just a “here and gone” thing.

Last Summer it was my melanoma diagnosis, surgery and scarring that kept me from the stage. I just wasn’t comfortable anymore and worse than the scar on my face, perhaps, was the scar on my heart. Like anything else, theatre had lost its luster for me. I didn’t think it was possible, but I had tired of it. I grieved this loss like any other: I got angry, I got sad, I got resigned, I gave up.

The last thing I was expecting while I was traveling in the Berkshires recently was a text message asking if I would be interested in taking a role someone else had left. I didn’t think about it, really, I just said yes. The day before I had

My "Family" from The Nerd: Two Tims and Me = The Walgrave Family

thought  to myself, “I miss theatre. I can’t believe it, I miss theatre!”

 

Three weeks later I was on stage again, three weeks later, I am off stage again.

I wouldn’t call myself sad per se, but I am not sure how exactly to describe what I am feeling.

Perhaps it is the bubbling up of gratitude: the awareness I wanted this, I did this, I enjoyed this, I tried my best at this.

Perhaps it is satisfaction of a job well done: applause and laughter from the audience, kudos from the creative team, pure delight at becoming another kooky character.

I have often given lip service to one of my favorite thoughts, “You never know when it will be the last time at your stage,” perhaps remembering Kevan’s nightly prance I never truly saw. I didn’t actually know this feeling personally, though.

Now I do know it.

After Strike: The Stage Goes Back to Neutral, Waiting for the Next Production

Every time I am out there I know it and remember it.

 

It isn’t a melancholy experience, it is more the grateful, satisfied, courageous experience of doing something purely for the love and letting myself go, fully, knowing this very well may be the final bow.

This reality the gift of melanoma gave me will undoubtedly be a bell whose ring I hear over and over again.

I’m surprised to say I am beginning to enjoy its tone.

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© 2013

Dear Mom: Compelling is Written All Over Her -

The backlight from the sun blocks the view of this enormous homeless city. I'll go back next week and photograph it when the light is better.

Dear Mom,

 

I wasn’t expecting to find you when I was focused on my search for a hiking trail recommended by my friend, Michelle. All I wanted to do was catch a good shot of the sunset. When I scrambled up the hill to what I thought was the path, I caught my breath. A virtual tent city, a shanty town – an enormous complex of people’s homes underneath this bridge I cross daily.

Other people might run away.  I hesitated but I stayed. The lighting wasn’t good under there or I would have taken photos.

This sight had “compelling” written all over it and might wake some people up who are completely unaware of the homelessness right in their neighborhoods, hidden away.

You were waving your arms at me, to get my attention.

I saw you and could recognize the ravages of methamphetamine. “Can you take me to 19^th and M street please? They took all my things, all I have is here… they took all my clothes, everything,” you told me.

You had a suitcase.

You had a trashbag filled with recyclables.

You had no shame, no embarrassment at asking me: owner of a new car, an expensive smart phone and much more than I bet you remembered ever having.

I asked what was at 19^th and M. “My Uncle,” you told me. You mentioned your son, and your daughter, and your other children. I had no idea where they were, no idea how old they were because my guess is you were probably much younger than you looked with your hair neatly combed albeit in a very offbeat style.

“I built this place and they wrecked it!” you said, seeming to not want to stop talking for fear I might vaporize.

You do see things that aren’t real, you told me. You do hear things you don’t think are here.

We put your broken suitcase empty of clothes and your collection of cans and plastic in the back of my car.

We drove two miles to where you needed to go. I asked your name. You told me. I told you my name.

You said you recognized me. Perhaps you do. Or perhaps I am another of those things you have seen that aren’t real. It doesn’t matter to me. You had enough sense to not smoke your cigarette in my car and before we had gone a mile you started calling me your fairy godmother.

I took you where you asked to go and you surprised me when you pulled out a cell phone. I wondered if your children had called you today on this Mother’s Day. Maybe you weren't aware it was Mother’s day.

I took the suitcase out and carried it to the side of the building as you asked me.

I told you to take care. We hugged, a real heart-to-heart hug. “I guess I do believe in fairy godmothers,” you said.

I smiled and went about the rest of my business of the day.

You, dear Mom, will forever be a part of my lexicon now.

You are in my prayers as are your children.

Finding you and helping you, another mother, was so much more important than finding the perfect sunset shot – even though I managed to get a pretty cool image there as well.

Perhaps we were each others’ Fairy Godmother.

* * * * *

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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott

Today - Binge in a Healthy Way - for the Love of Words

I woke this morning at precisely 3:57 a.m.

I was wide awake before my eyes read the time on my cell phone and I knew there was no getting sleep back.

It is strange to be homesick for a place you’ve never lived. I am back here, though, back at this place I have called home for more than two decades. I have been reminded repeatedly to pay attention and listen. I can take that absolutely literally and be astonished by the crow having a love fest of sound behind me. I can also say I am noticing I let my coffee get cold again before I could fully enjoy it. Or the motorcycle, I am guessing from the sound of Japanese origin: I just heard that.

I can also tell myself to pay attention to what is in front of me now in my day rather than continue to lean into what was there for me last week.

I seriously drenched myself in physical literary loveliness.

It was like a binge on word-love. It was a healthy, hearty binge yet it was a binge nonetheless.

I texted a friend in Bakersfield, “This is ridiculous. I am driving past small town after small town of wonderfulness.”

This comment was from someone who loves the urban lifestyle and has adapted to the Bakersfield way of life as well. Small towns – village or hamlet style – are not my usual favorite.

What can be said by just happening by the birthplace of WEB Du Bois, Susan B. Anthony, and Edith Wharton’s summer home all in an afternoon? For reference – we are talking about the founder of the NAACP, a legendary suffragette and a Pulitzer Prize writer who was at the forefront of the literary scene during the gilded age of America.

I return to Bakersfield and as I drove my daughter to school this morning, came upon this bouquet of shopping carts. I looked out the window of my car and said, “Look, look at all the colors! Oh, this is a photo that wants to be taken!” The early morning light drenched the gossiping shopping carts with showers of new beginnings.

I see it as a different sort of literary loveliness.

Who am I to judge the value of The Mount or a tidy Victorian home on Great Barrington, Massachusetts with a shanty town of shopping carts, surrounding a cracked mirror and overgrown grasses?

Both and all are poetry, simply different flavors and available to be seen only by the eyes who are ready to see them.

Frankly, I found Edith Wharton’s Mount to be pretentious and boorish. The pet cemetery was charming but oh, the social good that could be done with such abundance – given the right administrator, perhaps. I enjoyed the more modest home of WEB DuBois as well as another home I visited last week, one which belonged to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I mean to leave you with one noticing, however, rather than a listing of places I have been recently.

There is poetry in all of it.

There is poetry in the arrangement of trash, in the remains from today’s poverty, homelessness and drug addiction.

There is poetry in conspicuous consumption.

There is poetry on wide open country lanes and crowded, multilingual neighborhoods.

Our eyes and our ears and our observations – and the opinions we bring to the page that make the difference.

What poetry are you experiencing today?

If nothing comes to your awareness, look differently.

Poetry may be in the glasses beside the keyboard, the coffee mug, the barking dog, the lace curtains.

There is poetry in all of it.

This post is Number 13 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I fell behind due to my travels and am hoping hoping hoping to catch up. Please give me some extra TLC via commenting, etc - as I will need it as I write write write for the next week or so!

Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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How a Simple Question from an Unexpected World Changer Transformed Me

This post came from a prompt from the folks at the Scintilla Project. I opened my email, read the prompt and started writing. I didn't move, I didn't refill my coffee cup, I didn't think. I just wrote. I knew this story needed to be told more than anything else right now, except silent gratitude to the birds singing out my window and the incredible privilege it is to share our stories with each other.

It was like many other nights before it as I drove through the line at McDonald’s, getting an iced tea for Emma and fries for Samuel. Over my shoulder I heard a voice say, “Excuse me, Ma’am?” and over his next phrase I layered, “Sorry, I don’t have anything extra right now,” so I couldn’t even hear his request.

Something different happened though: I looked up and into the eyes of this person asking for spare change. He was a kid. Just a kid. He shook his head and said, “Ok,

This photo is not my friend, but similar in age and clothing. Photo via Creative Commons Licence courtesy of Elvert Barnes

sorry to bother you, Ma’am” and turned, taking his Kennedy-family-esque blue eyes and fair skin with him.

 

My eyes burned with salty tears forming a curtain across them. My face burned with shame about my for too long unconscious automatic response, “Sorry, I don’t have anything extra right now” may be true and yet, just because I’m paying with a card doesn’t mean I couldn’t buy an extra burger or something for this young man who looked like the boys who graduated high school with my daughter several years ago.

I got my children’s snacks and parked my car instead of rolling it away like I normally would have done, quickly wiping my consciousness of homeless people which have gotten to be like regulars in my mind. There’s the guy who sits by that church with his dog. There’s the woman who smokes while she panhandles. There’s the “skater” homeless guy.

I waved the blue-eyed boy over. I pressed a dollar fifty in his hand. “Where is your mother?” I asked him.

“She’s in Isabella,” he responded, which I knew to be a town about 40 miles away on the other side of the Kern Canyon. It is a small, somewhat isolated city who calls itself, “California’s Best Kept Secret.”

I paused and said, “Does she know where you are?” He put his head down and nodded. I went on to ask about siblings and discovered his sister was still at home and his brother was with him, in Bakersfield, which I took to mean they were homeless together. He also told me quite freely where they lived now.

My incredulity overcame my usual polite behavior when I asked “What happened?” I heard a story that is probably not all that uncommon. The stepfather beats the Mom. The sons attempt to come to her rescue and get into it with the stepfather. I imagine the local authorities know the family. The Stepdad gives his battered wife an ultimatum, “It’s them or me.”

The mother chose her abuser and sent her sons away. They had been living here for eight months now, he said. “How old are you?” I finally got the courage to ask.

“Twenty.”

Again, my politeness had evaporated and I heard a gasp escape from me. Twenty. My daughter turned twenty-one on Christmas Day.

I told him I wished I could give him more, but he understood and was grateful for the dollar and change I offered.

In that instant, my mind changed not only for my friend and his brother, but for the other homeless people had been slowly and surely turning invisible in my mind.

A few days later I saw the skater homeless guy. He was standing at the same spot with a can of tuna in his hand. “Excuse me, Ma’am, do you have a can opener I could use?” I said no, and asked him his name. Sure enough, he was the brother of my new young friend.

Again, I drove past and came back around, this time with a five dollar bill so he could go to a nearby store and buy a can opener.

Maybe the five dollars would end up elsewhere, but I wanted this kid – who is the same age as my daughter Marlena would be if she had lived – to know I was listening. Someone out here in the world had heard his request and honored it as best as she could.

I carry bags with food with me now. I offer them freely to people as I am out and about. I look them in the eye, smile and say, “I wish I had more for you” and for the first time, I truly mean it.

I have also continued to get to know these two brothers. I have discovered one is mentally ill, which doesn’t surprise me, and the other one has a primary purpose of watching out for him, to serve him, as a protector. It reminds me of my childhood protector status with my own brother who had Down’s Syndrome.

I have chosen to be a listener, a giver and a receiver to the homeless in my area who are not, for whatever reason, currently served by the homeless shelters or other agencies. This never wouldn’t have happened if for I hadn’t taken the extra moment to glance up. It was then I looked into the boys eyes and saw  the reflection of both my own eyes and the entire world’s eyes in his.

I have always believed real world change doesn't happen because of government programs, it happens in the hearts of people communicating with each other. My new friendship is a contribution to world change on the smallest level.

What would happen if we all chose to be more aware and looked beyond helping at the level of institutions - if we are comfortable with that - or helping in agencies and looking at these folks in the eye and hearing what they say and who they are and sharing yourself back with them.

Be on the lookout for your micro-world-change assignment today. It's almost as if this simple blog post is a doorbell on your heart, ringing.

This post was inspired by the folks at Scintilla13 - Here's what they have to tell us:

We believe that who we are is informed by our stories. Here, we want to offer you a space to introduce yourself, and a guide to share your history and make some connections along the way. We’ll be offering daily prompts for two weeks beginning on March 13th.

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Writing with Emily: for the Most Creative of You Creative Folks

I bet the very creative among you will recognize yourselves in my words today.

I can’t even tell you how often this happens to me:  the car behind me honks to startle me awake from solving all the world’s problems or writing my shopping list or deciphering last night’s dream.  Does this ever happen to you? Sometimes I am thinking about how to help my children lead their best lives or what I will cook for dinner or trying to remember the details of a story from long ago.

My mind leaps from thought to thought to thought and all of a sudden  the car behind me honks, frustrated because I didn’t leap to go through the intersection because the light just barely turned green.

Actually, in these cases I have no idea how long the light has been green because I am too lost in reverie about whatever is happily holding my thoughts so attentively.

Last night on the way home from an event at the Art and Spirituality Center where I created from a whole new-to-me version of Hansel and Gretl, I wondered how Emily Dickinson might write a poem about a particular intersection here in Bakersfield.

I sat in my car, looking at a street light. I thought, “How would Emily Dickinson see this seedy neighborhood with this high powered street lamp?”

I was having so much fun I almost didn’t see the traffic light turn green.

Are you ready to experience the darkness on a Bakersfield street corner with Emily Dickinson and me?

Street Light, Corner of 21^st and Union

Electric orb

Sharing luminousness with the

Members of the pearly ancient profession

And the shaking, tittering loose toothed

Hungry for the next, next, next….

As well as the cars who have lost

Their way and landed

Underneath you

# # #

Think about one of your favorite characters: fictional, historical, literary, and consider what might happen how they might experience your life through you. Then write as that you-Emily Dickinson character or You-Cat character or You-Green Lantern character.

Whatever it is, whichever or whoever combines with you – have fun and write it.

Just beware of when the light turns green. The car behind you might honk to startle you awake from your poetic word play.

Here I am, writing on the Lawn at Emily Dickinson's House in Amherst, Massachusetts

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

Thankvember Day 14: Today I am Grateful to Live so Close to Bakersfield's Bluffs

I am grateful to live so close to the Bluffs here in Bakersfield. Three blocks from my house the road ends and opens up into them. They seem like they wait for me and applaud whenever I arrive.

Yes, Bakersfield gets a bad rap. Some of it is accurate, I will admit. There are days when I want to kick myself for still calling this place home, but this morning as I sat on the wet grass on the bluffs taking photos for Art Every Day month, I was reminded how much I love this part of Bakersfield.

My neighborhood actually has hills.

It isn’t entirely flat.

The bluffs tower above all that Black Gold that runs underground here in Bakersfield so the view is sort of… well, it isn’t the ocean or the view from the top of a mountain in neighboring Sequoia, but at night you can enjoy looking at the lights on the oil rigs blink and it is quite pretty.

The bluffs have a walking path and a second, more rugged path I usually take.

It’s a great place to meet people for walking or talking or taking in the sunset.

About ten years they took this plain Jane park and decided to get fancy schmantzy with landscaping and much of that has been reclaimed by wild growth, but some aspects of it remain.

I have many fun memories with my dogs, my kids and myself – I have been known to go their when I’m sad or need some quiet, contemplative time or when I have no idea what I want. Sitting at the far west side of the bluffs tends to calm my spirit. I have even met coaching clients there as we worked through whatever they needed to work through.

I am grateful to live so close to the bluffs here in Bakersfield.

What are you grateful for today?

 

 

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Do you have a lot of stuff to get done but can never seem to find the motivation? We have a solution - Get stuff done while having lots of fun at Passion Activator Friday - November 16, 2012 Check it out! 

This post is a part of the Thankvember Blog Hop Hosted by the Vagabons Studio. Click here or at the box --> to get involved.

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

 

Just a Glimpse of How My Friends Show What It Takes to Be Exceptional Friends

Today’s Autumn Blog Challenge Prompt – Perfect! Sept 26-How to be a good friend

I saw this prompt and a quiet smile crossed my face.

This week has been so abundant in good friends. Love personified crossed my path over and over and over again and now, I have a heart shaped scar to prove it. One of my friends saw my scar last night and said, “Who else would get a scar shaped like a heart but you? It is absolutely perfect!”

I was diagnosed with melanoma two weeks ago.

Last week, it was carefully removed from my face in the very able hands of a surgeon.

With my friends I formed “Team Nora” (the name I gave my melanoma) with each member of the team contributing to both my care but also the care and feeding of my children.

Here is a list of some of the ways they were not only good friends, but exactly what I needed… in no particular order.

1. They did my MomSchlep for me. They swooped in to pick up both Emma and Samuel and sometimes provided them after school love-and-care both during my surgery but also after my surgery when I was recovering.  Without complaint. This is my least favorite Mom duty and I was so grateful to be able to let it go.
2. They fed me. Late on Thursday night, I was cooked a feast of scrambled eggs and brussel sprouts. It was the most delectable meal I had eaten in the past decade. Well, at least in that moment. The primary ingredient? Love. I had homemade soup and challah bread delivered to me. Food Love says so much to an aching body.
3. They read me poetry because it was what I wanted.
4. They sat with me, quietly, while I slept.
5. They read my aftercare instructions and nagged me to stick with them.
6. They helped me with wound care.
7. They thought of me before anything or anyone else.
8. They took me on rides and understood when just driving around town wore me out, much more than I ever imagined.
9. Instead of saying “Let me know what I can do for you,” they offered suggestions. When I am sick or having a hard time, half the time I have no idea what I want.
10. They sat and waited while I had surgery and talked to the doctor on my behalf. Can you imagine? PLUS they attended and will attend follow up appointments so that I don’t miss anything. Sometimes when you are the patient it is hard to “get” everything. I am usually the advocate. It is beyond words wonderful to have people stand by me in advocacy.
11. Distant friends prayed. And added me to prayer lists. They sent good vibes, healing energy and one friend did distance Reiki for me and even though I don’t exactly know what that means, I am grateful to the generous outpouring.
12. Love overflowed. Bountifully. And continues to flow. I am blessed by people who are being SUCH good friends! 

Have you been looking for a poetry writing challenge created within a community of poets whose goal is to encourage, inspire and share thoughts with one another? Join me at  OctPoWriMo Now - only days before we begin... and a bunch of tips are on the website now to get you started!

For the Writers Among Up...A Quick Visit to the Archives:

Summer Blog Challenge: --Share a post you've written in the past that you like.I rediscovered this blog post by going back 14 pages of lists of posts and happening upon these words.

Still so relevant and at the front of my mind all the time, a blog post about Sara Teasdale, listening to your wisdom, and how to continue moving when you just don't feel like it!

 

Home: a Woman's Sphere Post Still highly relevant today.