Doing the Impossible

If it is not obvious to all who have been with us for any amount of time, things are not exactly sailing along smoothly for The Heron Clan.  Somedays, I think we are better than we were -- and then something happens to remind me how very far we have yet to go to reach anything that would qualify as good.  So, consider that to be the disclaimer ... or whatever you want to call it.

Every now and then, when I get clear about how many people have turned aside, quit reading us, run out of patience with our stumbles and our battles and our messiness, I really have to work to quell the urge to point out that "while we fell on our faces pretty spectacularly back there, we were (after all) trying to do some pretty challenging stuff in relationship terms.  I could talk and talk and talk about that, trying to explain or excuse our failings, and when it was all done, no one would care anyway.  I know all of that, but the urge remains...  Hence, the Faulkner quote added to our header today...

Astronaut Neil Armstrong, as he toured around the country giving motivational talks, would talk about all the many times that NASA engineers came up against seemingly insurmountable problems:

He said that in the years of research, innovation, and testing that led up to his first footstep on the moon, there were many times that NASA engineers and scientists would reach an impossible roadblock. During these times they would say, "We will have to halt the mission. There is no scientific solution to this problem." Or, "We have tried everything imaginable to solve this problem and we can't solve it."He went on to say that every time NASA's best thinkers and scientists reached an impossible roadblock, they were told, "We are going to the moon." And every time they would look at each other and say, "Okay...got it," and then they would try again and again. Soon, they would have a solution that worked. He said this happened many times, and each time the impossible turned out to be possible once they were reminded of the impossible mission they were on.

So, I have added Faulkner's words to our blog header, and I want to leave this post here to remind me, and maybe even, remind us, that while we have been far from perfect, we have struggled mightily to do what very few others have even tried.  We have forged bonds of love and family when the society around us insisted that it was impossible and wrong to even try it.  We have made our homes a place of comfort; a retreat from the daily strains of living as exiles in the world that is ours.  We have been true to our vision, even when we were flat on our faces in the mud.  We have held to our dreams while acknowledging that the dreams we dreamed might be too big for us to bring into reality.  We have protected and sheltered the framework of our life together, knowing that we cannot fully live it just now, and still dedicated to the potential that it might yet rise up and live in us and for us.

If we did not manage to do the impossible, then by my lights, we were splendid in out failing.  And I will insist that if we were capable of being splendid at that, then we may yet be splendid in achieving the impossible.  I will honor the impossible life we are trying to live, and so I will keep on trying, hoping and believing in the possibilities I cannot yet quite figure out.

swan

Spiritual ABC's -- Letter H (part 2)

H
HOSPITALITY
Practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the “other” is shunned. Welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.

I keep coming back here and looking at this root of another post -- and I cannot seem to do this one.

I tried to find a way to work from the rule of hospitality that St. Benedict put in place for monastics in about 500 A.D.  I remember a story I was told once, about a monk at a monastery who's assignment was to open the gate to visitors.  Because the rule in Benedictine monasteries is to welcome all who come "as if it were Christ, himself," the monk answered the bell for the gate one night, after dinner, and welcomed in a stranger. Taking the man in, the gatekeeper prepared the traveler a simple meal, and made him comfortable in an available room.  Returning to his evening activities, preparing for sleep, the monk was again called by the bell at the gate, and again, he welcomed in the stranger, preparing a cup of tea, and showing them to their quarters for the night.  Finally, asleep in his own bed, the monk was awakened in the quiet dark hours by the ringing of the bell from the gate.  Tumbling from his warm bed, and staggering out to open for the midnight visitor, one could hear (if one were awake) the monk muttering to himself, "Jesus Christ!  Is it you again?"

I like that story,  but it doesn't really enlighten me when it comes to the practice of "hospitality."  

I found lots of sermons about hospitality, extolling the virtues of taking others where they are, welcoming the stranger, taking the risk...  I can sit, and read, and nod to myself, but there is nothing there that moves me.

The fact is, I'm not that comfortable with the whole business of welcoming strangers.  I like my place, my privacy, my settled ways.  I can welcome people who have been invited in, for whom I am prepared.  I enjoy entertaining in that mode.  Let me tidy the house and light the candles and choose some good music and prepare a pleasant meal -- and I'll be glad to spend an evening with friends who will, of course, have the good sense to leave at a civilized hour.  But strnagers?  Not so much.  

I've got a whole list of things that I know I should be better at.  This one is right there.  Blech!

swan

Another New School Year

These are not my actual kids... but they surely could be.

The new school year is in full swing, and I am immersed in learning how to reach a whole new group of youngsters; how to help them; how to discipline them; how to give them the very best shot at success.

I'm in a new teaching assignment.  Where I have taught only 6th grade for the last 6 years, I now have classes with 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.  My usual angst about letting my 6th graders go at the end of each school year will be allayed as I get to keep them for three whole years.  Now, I will only have to live through the annual launching of our "finished" 8th graders into the wider world of high school.

My new courses are keeping me busy, figuring it all out and finding ways to make it lively and interesting.  My new charges are a bunch of interesting personalities, and we are slowly learning to know and trust one another.  They are in that early phase where they begin to believe that they may have fallen into the hands of a crazy person -- and then wonder if that is a bad thing.

I am tired each night, excited each morning, and tremendously relieved every single weekend.

Another new year is well started.

swan

Spiritual ABC's -- Letter H

H
HOPE
Let this positive and potent emotion fuel your dreams and support your service of others. Through your attitudes and actions, encourage others never to lose hope.
Spiritual Literacy -- Reading the Spiritual in Everyday Life, by Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat.

OK.  Back to this alphabet series...

There is so much that gets written about "hope," and in this highly charged political season, it is difficult to not get tipped over into the sloganeering that seems to have grabbed the word and hijacked it for sixty second advertising copy.  There must be more to say.  I feel, very strongly, that somehow I survived on hope during the last two years; that our whole family survived on hope.  That is pretty powerful stuff, not just some sort of fluffy, feel-good cliche.

Shel Silverstein wrote:
“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” 

I really think that the important kernel of understanding about this "potent and powerful" emotion is there.  Hope is the conviction, against all reason, and in contravention of everything we are told, that anything at all can come to pass in our lives.  Hope happens because there is something in us that will not give up, will not quit, will insist on looking forward rather than backward.   

That is what fuels our dreams.  Backward, into the darkness of days gone by; into our personal histories, there is nothing to dream of.  Going back is not an option for any of us.  Time moves us forward relentlessly. Hope turns us around and points us in the direction of the light of new days and new potentials.  

We hope for better opportunities, more successes, happier circumstances.  We hope to find love, or to perfect loves, or to go on forever wrapped up in a love that seems perfect in the present.  We hope to avoid unpleasantness.  We hope to mold and shape our lives to our liking.  Hoping for what is not, and being convinced that it could yet come to be, we hold on, we persevere, we wait, we become patient.  

Hope removes from us the sense of demand that characterizes the impatient child.  Instead, with hope, we can sit quietly through the storms and vagaries of our days and years, believing that if we can imagine it, it can yet come into fullness in our lives -- and no one will ever convince us otherwise.  WE HOPE!

swan

Then and Now

A year ago, we were still in the very early days of the physical therapy protocol aimed at the rehabilitation of His right shoulder replacement.  After weeks and weeks of total immobilization, the PT was excruciatingly slow and gentle, allowing that prosthesis to stabilize...  For what seemed like forever, the exercises looked like this:

Today, as we were hauling bags and bags and bags of groceries into the house, He just reached right up and grabbed the hatch on the car and pulled it down and closed it.  I remarked on the change, saying, "You just reach right up and pull that down and never even think a thing about it.  Your shoulder doesn't bother you even a little bit."

 He agreed that it was true, and said, "My replacement shoulder feels better and stronger than my other shoulder."  And then He said, "I think it is better than ever, and I think it is stronger because of spanking you."

Smile.

swan

P. S. - I did suggest that, if spanking was good, then surely flogging would be even better...

What Does a Girl Have to Do?

Have I mentioned, or have you noticed?

• I am crazy in love with Himself...
• I am masochistic to my toes...
• I get off on a good spanking...
• I try, really hard, to behave myself...
• Sometimes, I'm not entirely sure what "behaving myself" might really look like...
• I don't want to be a nuisance, a pest, a bother, a nag, or a chore...
• I tend to over think things...

Yup.  All true.  Add to all of that a bit of relational tentativeness; a bit of uncertainty, and things get, ummmmmmm... complicated.

We've been caught in a complicated backwash for the last few weeks.  He is through the first, acute phase of recovery from His knee replacement surgery.  The first three months are an intense period of physical therapy, and slowly decreasing dependence on pain medication.  There are good days and bad days, but no really "normal" days in the first three months.  The prosthetic is still foreign, strange, not "at home," and it takes time to learn how to rely on it comfortably.  And then, about 12 weeks out from the surgery, things start to settle and feel more normal.  It is easier to get through daily activities, and life begins to spin back into a reasonable routine again.

Remember that last summer He had a total reverse shoulder replacement.  We knew that He needed to have a fully functioning shoulder to be able to negotiate the mobility issues of the knee replacement -- using a walker and a cane for weeks and weeks...  That was the RIGHT shoulder -- his spanking arm.  The medical professionals were careful to tell us that it takes a full year to gain full use of the arm after a replacement.  As the shoulder rehabbed, there were stages regarding His ability to spank:

1. No right hand spanking at all -- left handed only
2. Some very limited spanking with His right hand, but nothing heavy, and not for very long before the shoulder would start to ache
3. Longer and longer periods of spanking with the right arm, but unable to "swing" anything like a flogger or a strap
4. Slowly, over weeks and months, regaining strength, flexibility, and range of motion

We had really just gotten back into some kind of revived and renewed spanking play when it was time for the knee replacement, and a summer dedicated to rehab and recovery.

There has been what you might call a spanking hiatus in our house -- a really, really, really looooooong spanking hiatus.

I'm a grown up, and I get that, in life, things have their place, and the sexy, fun, exciting stuff must sometimes be put away for a season, or two, or three...  A spanking "hunger" does not, after all, lead to starvation.

Now, though, we are through the first months of healing.  He is a week or two away from the end of physical therapy.  He is back to riding His bike and back to walking some.  He is feeling better and better, and I have been anticipating the resumption of THAT part of our lives together.

Oh, but, it isn't that simple.  From my perspective, it was way easier when He wanted to spank ALL of the time.  I never worried that, by asking for a spanking, I was imposing on Him; never felt that it was some kind of obligation or chore that I was laying on Him.  If anything, in those days, I most often worried about how to string together enough "non-spanking" days to heal up between sessions.  Here, lately though, I've wondered how to make it clear that I am ready and willing without creating a demand. Under those circumstances, my brain begins to play games with me.  The pretty steady internal question has been, "What does a girl have to do to get a spanking around here?"  I have begun to compile a mental list of behaviors that might lead to the spanking that I so desperately crave -- without tipping over into some hideous and awful "punishment" thing. Sigh.

Finally, this week, in an IM during the day, I just told Him that.  Exactly that:  That I'd been wondering what I needed to do to get spanked, and that I had a growing list of behaviors that I thought might work the trick. I can't remember exactly what His response was in the moment, but I do know this -- we've had a spanking weekend.  Good sessions both days, and I have a very, very ouchy backside to show for it.  Ain't love grand?

swan

Moonbeam Update

Bringing home a stray kitten, as we did on August 1, is one of those things that is almost guaranteed to make you question your sanity at some point.  We've had our share of moments when we wondered what we were thinking, and I suspect that T remains convinced that the two of us took leave of our senses that night...

All in all, though, our little Moobie (short for Moonbeam which seems so very formal for such a little mite) has settled in quite nicely.  She is an unfailingly sunny personality, always ready to romp and play.  She will, if she is tired or sleepy, snuggle under my chin and sleep quite contentedly.  She comes when she is called, and she greets us at the door whenever we come home after being out.  She sometimes seems like a very sweet little puppy :-)

Callie, our old lady cat is still not thrilled with having her in the house.  She growls and hisses whenever Moobie gets too close, and cannot seem to comprehend what the little one might want --"what is this thing called PLAY?  Grrrrrrrrr!"

My house is strewn from one end to the other with every kind of cat toy imaginable.  And, when the toys lose their luster, then just about anything that is not nailed down becomes fair game in the mind of the kitten.  She is a continual lesson about living in the moment and enjoying each and every second of everyday.

swan