A Monkst Women

I wanted to be a monk when I was growing up.  I didn’t think I’d like the lifestyle of a nun.  I was tyrannized by nuns for a good part of my childhood and adolescence and had no desire to perpetrate that upon anyone else. 

There were some exceptions to the scary nuns.  When I was very young my sister and I used to “help” the nuns with their grocery shopping.  One of my favorite memories of these excursions was unpacking all the groceries from the brown paper bags and then having a race to see who could fold the bags the quickest.  I’m very sorry that I can’t remember the nun’s name, but she would always win.  The three of us would be hysterically laughing playing this game, but I always secretly thought she “won” only because she was a nun and I couldn’t call her out for having folded her bags the worst.  My sister and I had been trained at home by our most meticulous and perfectionist mother on a wide variety of inconsequential details, one of which was how to fold brown paper bags.  We never could teach Sr. Whatshername, but she was so delightful to be with, we let her slide.

The one nun’s name whose I do recall, and who rates as my all-time favorite nun was Sr. Madeline John.  She was my teacher for 6^th grade.   She was a new member to our parish convent and I always thought she stirred things up there a bit.  I remember walking home from school with my sister after the first day of school, clutching my books to my chest and telling her all about the new nun.  My exact words were: “She’s dreamy.”  There was much eye-rolling on my sister’s part, but I did not let that faze me.  In retrospect, she was a dream – someone who was sent to me for a brief and shining moment in my life when I most needed to know that someone understood me.  I cheered the day I found out she left the convent.

I never knew a monk personally, but pictures of them seemed to portray a much more serene presence.  Who couldn’t love St. Francis of Assisi? He was, however, a friar, not a monk, but he looked to me like he wore the same outfit.  And friars are basically monks that live in the real world.  That was the catch though – I liked the idea of solitude and living in a monastery.  I desperately wanted to live in a castle-like home (I envisioned all monasteries to look like medieval castles) and more than anything I wanted my own room. I loved crusty bread.  I thought I could learn to like cheese enough to be satisfied.

And I craved what I know now to be serenity, but what I mistook it for then, to be solitude.  I had this epiphany while running.  I am a running monk.  I don’t like running in a pack.  I don’t like running socially.  I don’t like competitive running.  I like running alone.  It is when I am alone and running that I often make my connection with that which exists outside of me.  When I am alone and running I can get past the physical insult and let go of my body.  With that out of the way, I become more aware of my surroundings.  I run in the forest – away from roads and traffic and people.  All five of my senses seem to retreat and the unexplained and unexplainable becomes heightened.  I run towards the peace, the solitude, the serenity.

The trees indeed love You without knowing You. The tiger lilies and corn flowers are there proclaiming that they love You, without being aware of Your presence. The beautiful dark clouds ride slowly across the sky musing on You like children who do not know what they are dreaming of, as they play.

But in the midst of them all, I know You, and I know of Your presence.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.

Who Am I?

Have you ever noticed how you can go along with your life for 50 years or so and think you have a real handle on yourself?  You know who you are.  You know you can sometimes be acutely aware, or blissfully unaware, and even sometimes in chronic despair over the way you live out your story.  But you’re you and no one knows you better than you know you. 

Have you ever had that veil lifted and had a glimpse of seeing yourself the way someone else might see you?  Have you ever felt those static brain cells get deleted as everything you understood about yourself started re-arranging itself and left you gulping -- sending oxygen to your brain as you groped for better words than, “Uuuhh, oh dear, aahhh, it’s…” to explain this new vision of yourself to you?

Well, for me it wasn’t just one big ‘Ah Ha’ moment.  I’ve been having these brain synapses since I started working with R in his (now ours) appliance repair business the last couple of months.  R has been working this business by himself for nigh on 28 years.  I have been recently sprung from the 8-5 life and the habits those 30 years of that routine that were unsuspectingly imprinted upon my numbed being are getting the jostling of their lives.

This was me in my head:  I’m organized.  I’m detailed orientated.  I’m spontaneous.  I go with the flow.  I’m low maintenance. 

This is what I’m coming to realize: 2 out of 5?  Really? That’s all?

R and I both knew I’m organized and detail orientated.  These were the qualities so lacking in R’s business life.  Business was getting out of control and if I hadn’t left the University when I did, business may have actually floundered and we both would have taken up depending on the spontaneous charity of strangers along the rim of the Grand Canyon for our survival.  But we knew we were a great team and that we could make this work for both of us. 

It’s taken me several weeks and untold amounts of patience on R’s part to bring me to peek into these heretofore hidden [from me] aspects of my personality.  Maybe I can explain it concisely enough and you can draw your own conclusions.  Alright, alright, alright.  You wanna talk about me being concise?  That raises my total to 2 out of 6.

It begins each day. We first of all have to figure out what we are doing for the day.  Get the coffee going, call the clients, schedule the appointments, print the work orders, order the parts, and eat breakfast.  Are we going to the gym to get our workout? Pack the gym bags.  We don’t have time to come home for lunch. Pack the lunch. Get the tools. Pack Lil’ Mo. (Lil’ Mo is the code name for our Mobile Office.)  Lil’ Mo must have the laptop in it.  The laptop must have all our updated files for the day on it.  It must also have my Kindle in it.  I hate twiddling my thumbs waiting for R to do the things only R can do throughout the day.  My thumbs have no problem twiddling on the forward and back buttons on the Kindle, though.

I’m generally pretty well worn out by the time we get out to the garage to get into the truck.  Getting into the truck completely wears me out.  It’s winter and it’s freezing cold in the morning.  We have hats, gloves and our big jackets on.  We each have our gym bags.  My gym bag weighs in well over 25 pounds.  I have every toiletry item necessary to attend to any personal situation that may arise.  We each have work shoes and gym shoes.  We have lunch.  Lunch is a thermos for each with soup.  There are sandwiches, carrot sticks, snap peas, pretzels, apples, oranges and bananas, sometimes there are graham crackers.  I’m a grazer and I never know when I’ll get fainty and HAVE to eat something NOW. (Lunch does not fit in a sandwich size brown paper bag.)  I like a hot cup of tea mid-day.  We have a 2-quart thermos filled with scalding water.  I like milk and honey in my tea.  We have another insulated cooler for the milk.  We have our to-go cups. Mine has my honey in it and I fret until I have my tea that the honey will spill. 

The way we found it to work best is for me to get into the truck first.  R can then start piling everything in in order of importance.  Naturally he thinks the tools take precedence.  Then the gym bags. Then my personal bag with wallet and cases for my eye glasses.  Then the gym shoe bags.  Now stuff is starting to pile on top of me.  I get the bag with the thermoses, water bottles and the to-go cups crammed up under my arms, and then Lil’ Mo is tucked under my knees.  Excess parts for the day’s repairs and miscellaneous snacks are stacked on my lap.  R makes sure I have just enough room surrounding my face for adequate ventilation.  And out of the driveway we dash – pretty sure we’re going to be late for our first appointment of the day at 11am!

As I nodded off the other morning as R headed us out to work I wondered how I got myself into this – literally.  Did my day really require all of this?  What happened to me being the essence of spontaneity and not requiring much?  R’s been complaining that the truck’s not getting the gas mileage it used to get.  Could I be the culprit with me and my extra 300lbs of luggage?

Ya know what?  So what!!!  It sure beats my old desk job!

Schultz Snow Shoe Soiree

I’m still working out all the kinks of having been institutionalized, behind a desk, with the computer screen an ergonomic distance away as my sole line of vision, for 30 years.  It’s an adjustment and unexpected transition learning to live on the ‘outside.’  And outside is where my heart is. 

Recently had a heavy wet snow fall after a dry spell of 7 weeks.  I decided to go snow shoeing up to Schultz Pass Road.  The day was crisp, a good smattering of high wispy white clouds against the indigo blue sky.  This was one of my favorite walks – it is close to home; it’s short enough but steep enough to get a good heart rate going.  It’s not well traveled by foot or vehicle – quite suitable for me to enjoy the solitariness.  It was forested enough to keep me aware of wildlife.  It was a perfect walk.

My perfect walk changed drastically last summer when approximately 1/3 of the forest on the San Francisco Peaks burned.   The area where I left the car and strapped on my snow shoes is pristine forest land.  But I still find it hard to accept “being in the moment” of where I am in the forest and not think about what it will look like in the next ¼ mile or the next ½ mile.  The beauty that is still there is unmistakable and I don’t like dismissing the splendor that is there, all the while knowing about what lies ahead.  But it happened for me– I did get lost in the effort of the climb, the purity of the air, the whiteness of the snow and the peace.

The freshly fallen foot of diamond dust glittered so brilliantly that I could still see the reverse images sparkle against my eye lids when I closed my eyes.  Fledgling snowballs were being released from their nests of needles and bark.  Each carat realizing -- as it joined the others on their plummet through the fast-track course of gravity -- that it was not theirs to ever fly.

The remains of the trees looked as though they had been laid on their sides, doused with royal icing, and then stood back up.  It was much colder those few hundred feet higher up, and the “frosting” had frozen onto the trees.  As the sun warmed the air, the ice started to break up and fall.  Listening to it with my eyes closed it sounded eerily enough like kindling wood beginning to catch the flame.  As the larger chunks fell on the needle-less limbs, a hollow echoing sound was broadcast to those who could hear.

And there were plenty who could hear up there.  Me.  And what I first suspected were deer and elk from the many number of trails in evidence. On my subsequent ascent the next day I found I needed to modify the list of who was listening.  A pack of howling coyotes were tuning up and were dubbing over the sound of the melting.  On neither day did I want to modify the list to include mountain lions or bears.  This was easily accomplished by not inspecting the tracks up close, and so I can say none were to be seen and I was to be seen by none.  Thus, the peace was maintained.

Success!!

I did it!


I have been making bread for about 30 years.  The last 15 years or so I have resorted to bread machines for this endeavor.  I have other things in life I want to do you see.  But once I started making bread, we simply could not eat any other bread.  And for that matter, we could not stop eating the home made bread.


I persevered for years measuring and kneading and hanging around to punch down and knead some more and then hang around to punch and knead again and then hang around to bake.  And oh dear lord, the cleaning up.


I had to get a bread machine.  It changed my life.  My life was coming back to me in increments.  My husband got in on the collection.  We discovered Good Will is a veritable farmland of bread machines - in working condition!  We had amassed three machines by now and yet, my heart still felt empty (and his belly was a teensy bit empty - 3 loaves a week was not quite enough).  I still didn't own a Zojirushi - the alpha and the omega of bread machines.


Meself: I just have to have it. 


Himself:  You already have three!!


Meself:  It is the best bread maker in the world. 


Himself:  You haven't thrown any bread away that you have ever made.


Meself:  It will never fail. 


Himself:  Lest you forget, I am in the appliance business.  Try harder.


Meself:  We will have healthy amazing tasty bread the rest of our lives. 


Himself:  We already have that.  Do I have to mention it is absurdly expensive??  We can go to Good Will for the next 30 years for the price of that one machine.


My arguments fell on fallow ears -- until Craig's List!!!  A hardly used Zojirushi for a 1/3 of the price of a new one. 


Yes, we drove 60 miles to get it.  And OK, I had to send it back to the company for repairs right away.  (Zojirushi is amazing!! They fixed it free!)


But, oh, my despair.  I could not bake a successful loaf.  It's been years.  Sure, we eat it.  It's always the last loaf of the week to get eaten. We don't talk about it.  It's just always there - every week.  A dry, tough, mostly crust, not fit for company, evil loaf of bread.


And then, in conversation the other day, someone said how great Zojirushi's are because they are programmable. 


Bombs burst in my head! I knew what it felt like to be punched down! I could actually change the settings!! I knew what was wrong.  I had read the manual an embarrassing number of times.  I just never put 2 and 2 together. 


Himself:  And that's news to you?


Behold - a Zojirushi whole wheat loaf of bread.