What A Fool Believes

April 1 will be here on Wednesday. I have a distinct Love/Hate relationship with April Fools Day. I love it because I am a practical jokester and save my best stuff to unleash on April Fools Day. I dislike it because falling for the joke always reminds me of what it feels like to, in fact, be a fool. To feel a fool.

I am not the sort of person who fools easily. I am quite intuitive and generally can see a liar and a cheat from miles away. I can spot a poseur and don't suffer them kindly. It's not the liar and cheat I refer to here. I can deal with them with relative ease. The one that has the ability to fool me comes wrapped in decency and kindness. Presented to me in humbleness and affection. Fools me for what I believe them to be. Not because they've lied or misrepresented....but because of what I saw, what I believed.

Kenny Loggins and Michael MacDonald wrote a song called, What A Fool Believes. In it lies the truth of why some of us allow ourselves to be....the fool. One phrase lingers in my memory...

But what a fool believes he sees

No wise man has the power to reason away

What seems to be

We have all been made a fool. We have all been fooled. It hurts like nothing else in life.....at least that's what I think. My first experience as a complete fool changed me forever. It changed how I looked at life and at people. It made me better and it did not ruin me. In fact it made me smarter and more equipped to deal with life, helped me to make good assessments. Still, it happens to the best of us. We are fools because we believe. It's that simple.

Despite this ... and in order to have anything at all in life ... we have to risk being that fool. We have to let go and say... let it come to me and I'll believe. We have to stand still and wait for it with our eyes open. Stand tall and see what happens.

What a fool believes is what they see. What they see is often what they want to see, what they wish for, what they wish it to be. Sometimes it's necessary to be that fool, necessary to not reason away what we see or what we believe. Sometimes we have to be willing to be that fool in order to have what we see. Sometimes what we see....is exactly what is there.

Sometimes it's exactly what seems to be.

Indeed.

I'm Detaching!

During last week's episode of Big Love, the hit HBO original series, a main character blurted those words during a rather contentious family discussion. Apparently she became so exasperated with the way the conversation was going that she essentially threw up her hands in frustration and said, "I'm detaching!" and she got up and left. All during the remainder of the show my mind kept going back to that one exclamation. I'm detaching.

The word detach, as a verb, means to unfasten and separate; disengage; disunite. The definition doesn't sound very promising. A detached retina is bad news. To become detached from society a problem, a tragedy to be perfectly honest. Yet as I watched that scene and let those two words sink in...I saw nothing negative about them. In fact I liked how the character said them, I liked her tone and I liked the fact that she said them and got up and left.

I saw her detaching as a sort of triumph over drama. She had enough and was not going to let the drama control her. She refused to give in and become part of it. I think I liked that more than anything else. I see myself detach that way...I just never put those words to my actions.

I find myself, often, not wanting to get caught and dragged down by negativity. I will walk away from a group at work who are in a full blown gossip fest. I detach. I will ignore a less than kind comment my husband might make in favor of a peaceful dinnertime. I detach. I bite my lip, my tongue and the inside of my check and stay perfectly quiet when my mother is mid-rant about something she read in the newspaper. I detach.

I detach, it seems, in order to preserve my mood, keep my composure, maintain and even strain. It is a skill I think, one I wish some others around me would adopt.

Unfasten, disconnect, disengage? Not in my mind. I'd like to add diffuse, disarm and dismiss to my personal definition of detach.

Dismiss!

Indeed.

Release

Please release me let me go
For I don't love you anymore
To waste our lives would be a sin
Release me and let me love again

I have a memory from childhood. One of my mother, sitting in our parlor, in the dark, listening to a song play over and over on the stereo. The song was Please Release Me and it was written by Dub Williams, Eddie Miller, Robert Yount. Many artists have recorded the song but the album she was playing that day was one by Jim Reeves. Every time I hear that song my mind goes right to that memory.

I can still see her now, sitting there in the dark, on a club chair with her legs tucked underneath her. The only light in the room the glowing tip of her burning cigarette. I can still hear the sound she made as she inhaled, paused, and then slowly exhaled the smoke through her lips. I am standing in the front hall, having just come down the stairs. I know she can't see me so I remain there, watching, for a very long time.

Please release me let me go
For I don't love you anymore
To waste a life would be a sin
So release me and let me love again

This memory has been with me for nearly forty years. An image of my mother in what was, I'd imagine, a very private and painful moment. It was a rare glimpse for me, into the life of an extremely private woman. One I find myself more like as each year passes.

My mother is an attractive and interesting woman. She never seemed to be like my friend's mothers. She had a simple style, she was quiet and very private. She never called attention to herself yet one couldn't help but notice her. She made the other mothers seem pale in comparison. At least to me they did. To this day so much about her is a mystery to me, a mystery I am recognizing in myself.

I wondered then what she was doing sitting there like that. I couldn't possibly conceive of what might have been on her mind. Not at that age, but I can now. I can wonder now...was she at a crossroads? Was she struggling with her marriage, her life? Who did she need release from? My father? Another man? A past love? Someone she may have wanted a relationship with but couldn't have? Clearly she was working through something, having a moment within herself. A very private moment. I'll never know what she was thinking that day. I'll never know if she found her release. I do know that I hope for her sake that she did. I dearly hope she did.

Please release me can't you see
You'd be a fool to cling to me
To live a lie would bring us pain
So release me and let me love again

I understand that sitting in the dark, having done it myself. I understand struggling, understand a need for self examination and a search for direction. I understand private thoughts, a private life. I understand beyond her mystery, I understand my own mystery.

I understand.

Indeed

A Little Seasoning....

A good friend of mine sent me one of those lovely Power Point presentations this week. The message, conveyed with breathtakingly beautiful photography, was a simple one. It was a message of seasons, each one separate and distinct, each one flowing into the next, each one to be seen as part of a whole and not in and of itself. The message stressed the importance of not isolating one single season. By itself one season can be a disappointment, so seasons must be looked at in their context to the others, the sum of all the parts if you will. The whole.

I made what I thought was a witty comment remarking that, "If you think about it...the seasons also "season" us." How true that statement is, they do season us. How very seasoned are those who have lived through and experienced many trials and triumphs over the course of their lives. I know I am seasoned, certainly.

We all go through difficult times. We face difficult situations, encounter difficult people. Thus making me think about another set of seasons entirely. Seasons we taste. We taste both the bitter and sweet of each season, the bitter and sweet life has to offer. We savor and relish the sweet times, the pleasant and idyllic ones. The bitter, pungent, hurtful ones are quite another matter. We hasten to cleanse our palate of such bitter taste, look to wash the remnants from our consciousness lest it linger and become a heavy aftertaste. We look for something sweet and light to take its place. Something soothing and gratifying to replace the sourness. We don't forget what was unappetizing and distasteful as it become part of us. We do focus on the pleasant, the savory and enjoyable tastes of life we find, but never do we forget the others less appreciated.

That's the season, the seasoning best remembered. The sum of all tastes, the delightful and sweetly satisfying ones along with the salty ones. While all our lives are a contrast of taste, a palate of balance and diversity, in the scheme of things it is the combined taste of all the seasons and all the tastes that I want. I want it all, not just one morsel, one mouthful. I want all the varied tastes of my life combined to make the whole picture.

My friend had a comment worth remembering I think. It was, "Our experiences should make us better and not bitter".

Better to have tasted all of life, tasted all the tastes, and not found it just bitter. Found it better.

Better indeed.

Dandelions and Wishes

I was talking with a friend the other day and sharing a nice childhood memory. I was reminiscing about laying, flat on my back, in the back yard eyes closed, feeling the sun wash over my skin. I swear I can close my eyes now and take myself right back to that yard, that grass and that feeling. I can still see the effect the sun made turning the inside of my eyelids "red" as I kept my eyes tightly shut. I can still feel the picky grass beneath me, still feel warm breeze rustle my dress, still feel that lovely, safe place. That lovely, safe time.

I can also recall picking the dandelions from the yard and making "bouquets". I would pretend I was a bride, and march down the little stone path in my yard, listening to the music in my head as I floated down an imaginary aisle. I loved those dandelions, sunny and yellow, bright and cheery. I would pick them and my mother would give me a juice glass to use for a vase and I would set them on my nightstand.

Sometimes the blooms would dry and become wispy white creations. I would pluck them from the grass, make a wish, and blow the puffy white seeds into the air... sending my wish along with it. My mother told me that if the seed travelled far enough the wish would come true. I would puff and puff ,at flower after flower, watching the seeds float away and imagining that they travelled on and on and on. Imagining that my wish would come true. Someday.

Nobody ever told me they were weeds.

Nobody ever told me that one day I would own a house, with a lovely yard, and that I would pay someone to come over and make sure I never had any dandelions in my grass. Nobody ever told me that my life would be so full that I would never take the time to lay in the grass, flat on my back, and feel the sun warm my grown up skin.

Nobody told me that all of the wishes I made on wispy, floating dandelion seeds would be all for naught.

Then again....maybe they weren't all for naught. Just maybe one, single wisp of a seed traveled someplace nobody even knew about. Maybe one lone seed did make it and grew to a bloom that is now a wish come true.

It's best to leave the dandelions be. You never know.

Indeed.