Iddy biddy fish in an iddy biddy pool

For the past year I have been writing the weekly column Enough Said for the Shoreline Times in Connecticut. I have enjoyed this writing-gig and as the year went on and I started to build a small but loyal fan base I began billing myself as a minnow in a mud puddle.  I like the idea of being a little fish in a little pond, I’m comfortable here, it feels right.

Well, this minnow has wriggled her way up stream to a bigger body of water. It’s not a lake...yet, but it is one of those deep clear pools with overhanging ledges and dark water.  It’s scary in this pool because I haven’t had a chance to splash around yet. In three weeks I will.

My ‘Enough Said’ column will be appearing in eight newspapers reaching 100,000 households. A hundred grand may not seem like many to some but to minnow-me it’s like snorkeling in a great lake. I’ll post a link when the first column breaks.

How big is your pond and how deep is your water?

A 'one-and-only'

Captain Patrick Ferguson

On September 11^th, Scotsman Captain Patrick Ferguson, a marksman clad in green and considered the finest shot in the British army aimed his rifle at an enemy officer.  Aware of the marksmen the officer turned his horse and cantered away with only one backwards glance. Because the enemy officer had taken an unoffending posture and was leaving the scene the Scotsman chose not to fire. Captain Ferguson could have killed the officer but for whatever reason, the distaste of shooting a man in the back or the non-confrontational manner of the encounter, he let the man ride. It was 1777, and the officer riding into history was General George Washington.

Because my husband loves anything to do with the revolutionary war we were watching the history channel recently and the incident I just outlined was a thirty-second enlightenment regarding the profound actions of one soldier letting another soldier live. What blew me away was how the action, or better said, how the inaction of Ferguson, certainly changed the history of the world. (That it was on 9/11 does not escape me either.)

I won’t even go into the ‘Sliding-Door’ ramifications of the incident, suffice to say we would be living in a very different world if Washington had died in 1777. It got me to thinking of the ‘one-and-onlys’ who have altered our humble civilization. I’m not thinking of the divine ‘one and onlys’ like Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed or the rest, I’m thinking of the you and me ‘one-and-onlys’ chosen by  providence to make a difference. Right now the only other I can think of besides the fictional George Bailey is the very real Rosa Parks. Ponder beyond the bus ride, expand your thinking to the entire civil rights movement, its impact on our country spilling over to other nations, the fall of apartheid, a global quest for individual freedom, the wall coming down, the fall of the USSR then you get what I mean. Did Rosa do all that, of course not and oh hell yes she did.

Don’t tell me your existence does not influence the world, don’t tell me you are not a ‘one-and-only’ because if 12 year old Amalia’s parents had not forbidden her to receive letters from her young friend Jorge there would be no Pope Francis today.

How have you, or will you, change the world?

To bounce or not to bounce?

Do I really want to spend the rest of my life chasing a ball I may never catch, playing a game I may never win? I’m thinking that accepting limitations and being happy with my current achievements should be enough. If I truly consider what time I may, or may not have left, and how best I want to spend it, it certainly is not by excessing over something that may never happen.

Does turning my back on that which always seems to bounce out of reach mean giving up the ‘dream’? I’m thinking that dreams are for napping children and sleepless old men.

 When I lived alone and longed for someone with which to share my life, it was during a moment of ‘not-looking’ a moment of ‘not-longing’ which presented itself as my heart's salvation. Might that also be the case with this never ending race toward a seemingly unattainable goal? And is it unattainable because I think it is so? You can’t win if you don’t play...right?

The emptiness of the unrealized, seems too dense a cloud of late. Letting it shade time shames the gift of moments.

Each morning I ask myself, is this the day?

Each night I pray and promise, please make tomorrow ‘the day’.

So I ask...the day of what?

A ball, a job, a partner, a child, a dream, what are you chasing?

An-ti-ci-pay-yay-tion is makin’ me wait

 

Anticipation in an interesting word, it explains the time between buying a lottery ticket and the drawing. It’s the long and sometimes futile wait between "I’ll call" and the time it takes for you to call him. Anticipation is eagerness to either experience that which you yearn for or what you fear most. It’s the mind’s foreplay when imagining an outcome.

I am anticipating good news and expecting silence. Though mutually exclusive, perhaps they are brothers and silence is good news.

I love the thoughts which swim in my mind when I’ve sent something out and wait for a reply. Denying that no reply means no I wait, and think, and wait, and think, like a sea captain's wife hanging out up on the roof in the widow’s walk; he’ll come back, heartbreak, he’ll come back, heartbreak.

What are you anticipating?

My anticipation? The time between this post and a reply.