Norman Rockwells' "Second Thoughts" & Writing Assignment #9

What is it about this moment?  I am encountering it so often!

The bleakest part of my day since Dale died is that moment, late at night when I finally build up enough courage to crawl out to the end of the allegorical diving board and head to bed. It seems like I literally inch down the diving board as I turn down the covers of the bed,  take off my robe; kick off my slippers; slide between the white sheets and nestle onto the pillow, which I then punch a few times to make it more comfortable. Then I reach for my book and read a bit, turn on Pandora and listen to some relaxing music for a bit, turn it off, click off the reading light on my nightstand, turn it back on to check the time, click of it off again, and then on again and then off again suddenly fascinated by the shadows it makes on the ceiling, turn onto my side and then…there’s that dreaded moment, as painted so precisely by Norman Rockwell.  I’m at the end of the board.  It’s quiet and dark, so I’m left with nothing but my thoughts and the pictures swirling in my head that remind me that “I am alone” and I wait for sleep to overtake me….wait wait wait.  It seems my mind just won’t allow me to take the plunge into blissful, restful sleep.  And so I lay there, not at peace like it is supposed to be at bedtime (and as it used to be when Dale was at my side) but rather I feel apprehensive, fearful, nervous, sad…..until I succumb and  get up or miraculously doze into a fitful slumber.

I feel myself at this pivotal “edge of the diving board” moment in other instances as well. I refer to them as my “Norman Rockwell Moments”…

People often say, “Just jump right in” “Dive right in” “Take the Plunge” Oh if it were just that easy! Regardless of how prepared you are it’s that last moment, that Norman Rockwell moment, that moment between getting yourself there and then actually making that leap that is so hard.

I encountered it last week as I determined what was holding me firmly at the precipice of writing again, oh the dreaded writer’s block. And I’m encountering it now as I am holding on and trying to overcome an artist’s block. 

I have the stage set, everything is there waiting for me in my studio. Waiting or taunting, I’m not sure which…I’m holding on tight to the edge, can I do it??  Second thoughts are holding me back. I’m stuck.

And then, out of the blue I hear a bling on my phone with a text from my son 2500 miles away. He says that he felt that Dad wanted him to give me the message “Creativity is Key”.  I chew on that 3 word piece of advice for a full ten minutes before I realize that I have been focusing on the wrong thing.

Let me explain it this way…

Each August, when I was about 8 or 9, my sister and I would venture to our little town’s public swimming pool.  It had two diving boards, the standard one and a 20 foot high dive.  I would sit on my towel at the edge of the shallow end of the pool and watch the brave souls who would climb the ladder, walk to the end and jump in!  Wow!!  The long summer weeks wore on and the hot summer sun and the trips to the pool and the smell of chlorine became the norm as did my desire to be brave enough to take the plunge.  (I already knew how to swim quite well, I had learned at the lake when I was 3 or 4, well I was good enough in fact that one day my sister and I were able to swim under the dock and tie together the lines of the fisherman’s poles that were hanging straight down from the dock with little worms wiggling on the hooks and then we pulled, and as the dozing fisherman all thought they caught a fish at the same time they jumped for their poles and reeled each other in…oh they were mad!) But I digress, one day at the swimming pool, I stood up, clenched my little fists and walked the full length of the pool and grabbed onto the ladder of the high dive.  I climbed each rung feeling less and less sure of myself as I reached higher and higher into what? Bravery or foolery?  I pulled myself up on the final rung and looked at the view of the park, its green trees, the little stream running around the edge and oh look at all of the teeny tiny people around the pool.  What???  Gulp.  But the big kids behind me were yelling, “Come on! Get Going!”

I walked down the length of the board being careful not to slip. There was a bit of carpeting at the very end, wet from the feet of former divers and I stood on it. OK, I could turn around, walk back down the long diving board and climb back down the ladder past each laughing boy or, I could jump.  I realized in that moment that the decision was mine and mine alone.  So I jumped!  Feet first, my life didn’t flash before my eyes, that was a good sign, but I held my hands out like putting on the brakes I guess and whap, I hit the water and then it was silent.  That other worldly underwater silence enveloped me as I careened down to the bottom of the pool, pushed off the coarse texture of the floor with my feet and rose to the top. I’d done it!  My hands were stinging and red for a full 2 minutes though.  Hmmm.  Note to self…”Don’t put out your hands when you jump off the high dive!”

It didn’t take as much “courage building” to go the second time.  This time I had a different mission, it wasn’t to have enough courage to jump this time but to do it with my hands pinned down to my sides.  I forgot to notice how the rungs of the ladder were hard on my bare feet, I forgot to notice how far up I was when I reached the top, I forgot to notice how long the walk to the end of the diving board was, I even forgot to notice if anyone behind me was cheering or jeering.  I just put my hands tightly at my sides, took a breath and jumped.  Down I went, that fluttery butterfly feeling in my stomach wasn’t from fear this time it was from the determination of it. My hands didn’t slap the water; I went straight to the bottom. I bent my knees and thrust myself back up to the top for a glorious deep gulp of oxygen.  I swam to the edge of the pool, climbed out and sat back down on my towel.  Satisfied and happy.  The new goal, or the focus on it, instead of thinking about each step and the potential pitfalls made all of the difference.   I immediately began to formulate in my mind that perhaps the next time I would put my hands together up over my head, like an arrow diving in but feet first. 

So, once again, as we so often do, I am reaching back to my youth for the inspiration and motivation I need today. If I could do it then, I can do it now.  Thank goodness it’s just picking up a charcoal pencil not diving off a high dive. But… alas, here I am….

If Dale says Creativity is the Key.  Then that will be my focus instead of my fear...

I’m going in…feet first.  Here I go.......

Say a little prayer for me!

WRITING ASSIGNMENT #9 -  FAVORITE ANCESTOR STORIES

Chances are, throughout your life, you have been inspired by stories of your ancestors. Retell at least two of your favorite stories this week.

We will have a future assignment about your Grandparents, so you might want to chose Ancestors other than your 4 Grandparents.  If you don't have any stories, it would be a good time to ask a relative if they have any to share with you!

Remember to give the full names and birth dates and birth locations of your ancestors in the stories and exactly how you are related to that person.

Have fun with this one and include photos if you have any!  You're on a roll now!!

Row Row Row Your Boat - And Writing Assignment #8

I sat silently at the shore today, alone on a bench with a book lying unopened beside me.  The leaves on the trees overhead were brilliant in the afternoon sunlight. Gold and orange, crimson and yellow and brown, all of the comforting colors of autumn. Across the water on the opposite shore, pine trees were interspersed with yellow aspens. I tried to breathe it all in. The color, the coolness, the sound of the Canadian Geese calling to each other as they joined their autumn party noisily skidding onto the water.  A tiny breeze fluttered the pages of the book I had been ignoring. It was a book about “self-doubt” that I had purchased in an art gallery earlier today.

I had been hit with a massive case of creative self-doubt the first week of August.  The first week after I retired from work.  Suddenly, I couldn’t write Emails, I couldn’t write a letter, I couldn’t write a blog.  I wasn’t lazy, I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t discouraged, no,  I was swaddled tightly in a blanket of self-doubt; I doubted that I could write, doubted that I could paint or draw.  Doubted that I ever could or should again. I tried but it was figuratively and literally painful, no words would come to my mind and I couldn’t make myself even pick up a watercolor brush.  I had finally arrived at a time when I actually have time to concentrate on the things I’ve always wanted to do….and…nothing.  A blank, white page on my computer screen with a blinking cursor that seemed to be saying “You Can’t” “You Can’t” “You Can’t”.  Such a mystery!

I reached over and picked up the book and then laid it down again as my eye caught site of a man methodically and self-assuredly rowing his boat through the water. He knew what he was doing; he knew where he was going.  And it was as if I had suddenly pushed “play” on a video memory from ages past in my mind.  I was five.  I was in a rowboat in the middle of the lake with my 8 year old sister. I had one oar, she had the other.  Frantically we pushed and we pulled and we went around and around and around in circles. First one direction, then the other, never advancing even an inch closer to shore.  How did this happen? How did I get in this sad state of affairs?  I hadn’t asked for it?  Our little arms were aching from rowing and our feet were sore as our toes were forced to the ends of our keds from supporting our backs as we rowed and rowed and rowed.  My cheeks and the tip of my nose were burning from the sun when a ski boat suddenly pulled up in front of us.  Dad reached from the back of the sleek white boat and looped a rope through a grommet on the front of our wooden boat with the outboard motor and the curious name of Su-Dee-Bob hand painted on the bow and pulled us to the dock.  Yes, he put us there, but he was watching and even though we couldn’t see or hear him, he was rooting us on and aware of our every move and struggle and ready to help when we needed it most.

As we were being towed toward the shore, I was not relieved that we had been saved, I was not upset about being tired or stranded, I wasn’t even angry at my sister whom I found out later had been hounding and hounding Dad to let us go out in the boat until he relented and she climbed in the boat, determined and satisfied with her little arms folded and her chin held high.  I had been blissfully fishing on the dock hoping I wouldn’t catch anything today so that I wouldn’t have to clean the poor little thing but I was suddenly being strapped into a life jacket and unceremoniously plopped into the boat and we were shoved off to follow the current to the center of the lake. No, I wasn’t angry at my sister and I wasn’t even feeling embarrassed for our failed attempt.  I wasn’t feeling any of those emotions, I was just MAD.  Madder than a bee in a bonnet as my Grandmother used to say.  Simply and powerfully and honestly mad, mad because no one had ever taught me how to row a boat.  One shouldn’t be in the middle of a lake in a row boat not knowing how to row!  

Here’s a photo of us being rescued.  I’m the blonde with the angry grimace.

I read recently that Mysteries without solutions are Miseries.  But at 5 I had already determined that the mystery of how to row a boat would not ever be a misery to me again and you know what?….I learned how to row.

When Dale died.  I didn’t know how to be a widow.  I didn’t know how to be alone.  There were so many things I didn’t know, so many mysteries and unanswered questions.  I have been on this journey for 1 and ¾ year now.  It has been hard.  It was as if I had once again, through no desire of my own, been unceremoniously plopped into a row boat that I didn’t know how to paddle. But like then, I have oars, (my hope and my belief),  I have my sister with her compassionate and unconditional love and I have a loving Father in Heaven who comes to my rescue on nearly a daily basis.  I’ve learned that losing Dale, although it was the most painful, difficult thing I have ever experienced has given me understandings and challenges that I would never have had any other way.  Without these mysteries I am facing, I wouldn’t be learning that I can do much more than I knew I could do and that I know much less than I thought I knew.

I now know more about life, more about love, more about friendship and family, more about myself and more about the Savior and our loving Heavenly Father who gives us trials - some we hound Him for, other’s He gives us so that we can learn and not to just learn to survive but to thrive. To be better than we thought we could be, to be stronger than we thought we could be and to know more than we thought we needed to know.

The setting sun hit my eyes and I realized that the man rowing the boat was nearly out of site now. I focused my mind on the memory of this old photo, I’ve seen it enough times that I didn’t need it in front of me to be able to look deep into my own 5 year old’s eyes and I seemed to hear my young self-tell my old self; “We’ve solved mysteries before, we can do it again and with Heavenly Father’s help, everything is possible”. I picked up the book, put it into my purse and walked home enjoying the crunch of the leaves under my footsteps not unlike the way a child would.

I stopped only long enough to drop my purse and keys on the kitchen counter before I flipped on the light by my desk and sat down to my computer and there it was the blank white page and that accursed blinking cursor. My hands paused over the keys and….I decided I needed to have dinner….so I did, then I decided I needed to dust so I did…then I looked for and found the rowing photo and I connected once again to that brave and angry little girl and now my fingers are typing and the words are spilling onto the page.  It may be a feeble attempt but I am back.  I’ve taken the first step in the solution of this particular mystery and I’ll keep working at it.  Perhaps tomorrow I can draw?

I apologize for the lapse in getting the autobiography assignments out.  Here’s the next one.  Please don’t stop.  No one can tell your story the way you can tell it!  And if you do get stuck, look deep into yourself, you may actually have the solutions to your mystery and when you also realize that God, our loving Father in Heaven has your rowboat safely in tow, everything is possible.  Let’s do this!

Writing Assignment #8

A Childhood Experience that Helped to Define Me

For good or bad the experiences we had in our early youth continue to play a huge role in who we are today.

Give a detailed description in first person story form of a childhood experience (before you were 10 years old) that helped define who you are today. This can be anything, good or bad and it really doesn't have to be ONE defining thing, it is your Story so write about more than one if you feel like it.  If you had to come to terms with this experience in your later years (or still as a child) share that wisdom.  It will help someone down the road!

Write it up, print it out, put it in a binder labeled "My Story".