The Power of Play

 I’ve been searching the Internet to learn how to build a horseshoe pit. Hell, there must be dozens of YouTube videos that will show me, step by step. We’ve got the acreage. Plenty of room for Piper and a horseshoe pit. I’ll need pressure-treated lumber, drill bits, a drill with a Phillips driver, sand, and a few other items.  Time to get out my virginal pink toolkit!

Maybe the tree can be the backstop.

Yes, it’s been interesting to see where 23 months of not working has taken me. The tomatoes and cucumbers are doing fine, thank you very much. The bell peppers, on the other hand, are scorched and shriveled. The weeds – no worries . They are thriving.

Lately, the lack of work – spring semester over, lighter client workload, oh, and not a major election year – and the summer weather has sparked my sense of play, like tossing 2½ pound horseshoes at a stake in the ground or lofting corn-feed-filled bags to a distant hole.

I love games, but I’m not ready for bingo and mahjong, the stereotypical retirement-home games. I don’t like to be seated and indoors that long. After 40 years of work, and with the ability to still toss shoes, balls, and beanbags, I enjoy the sheer fun of playing games, both real ones and made-up ones. My favorite made-up game:  Hiding Spike the dragon.

Yet, I do remain stationary for those addicting Smart-Phone games, notably Words With Friends and Word Streak With Friends, produced by Zynga, which says its mission is “to connect the world through games.” Thank you, Zynga, for keeping me connected with distant friends in Florida, Maryland, and Virginia, and with my daughter when she may be only steps away.

Play is more than fun. There are benefits. Parents are encouraged to let their children play. Child play can foster creativity and learning, promote language development, release energy, help build social relationships, and so much more. Play is also good for adults. It can relieve stress, lighten the mood, get you moving, foster relationships, and also make you smile.

Look at the benefits of smiling. I remember being especially miserable at work and a fellow unhappy colleague telling me that smiling creates positive feelings. She’d come by my gloom-filled office and we’d smile forced smiles at each other. Then,

we’d check the Magic 8 Ball to see if new jobs were on the horizon. We’d part, smiles fixed in place.

There’s science to back up those fixed-in-place smiles. I like how blogger Sarah Stevenson explains it:  “Each time you smile you throw a little feel-good party in your brain.”

Every time I play – oh, and of course, it’s even better when this competitive gal wins – it’s a feel-good party in my brain.

I still like to work, and to contribute, but play is good fun. 

After all, shouldn’t retirement be a feel-good party?

While We Were Sleeping

Not long after I posted a blog entry on Dec. 5, 2014, saying I was taking a sabbatical from blogging, but would return if I had something to say, all of sudden I felt overwhelmed with potential blog topics.

For one, a week after the Dec. 5 post, I flew to Texas to help younger daughter pack, clean, and move on from her life and studies at the University of North Texas. That same trip I stayed with and had what I fully expected to be the final farewell with my beloved aunt. (And, it was.) Eager to put miles and memories of Texas behind her, my liberal daughter couldn’t drive east fast enough.

Some 1,076 miles later, my daughter and I got home in time for Christmas and a California family crisis. A bomb, of sorts, had exploded. This turn of events – medical crises, hastily arranged visits, roiling emotions, amongst an abundance of dysfunction, was simply too intense, too personal, too much to blog about.  Someday, maybe I can transform the characters and events of that time into something, perhaps a dark story or bleak play. Now, I could barely craft a Tweet on the topic.

The good news:  my mother is alive and well. And, my “nuclear” family rallied. I am gratified by the stoic support of my husband and daughters. Even Piper pitched in with unwavering canine support.

This is what unwavering canine support looks like.

Teaching and driving to App State in Boone over the spring semester was a welcome distraction, except for the day a hurried pickup truck driver slammed into my daughter’s car. In a sweet change of roles, she was driving me to school. Fortunately, we were uninjured, but we said goodbye to a trusted means of transport.  I loved that car, originally mine, but blogging about a car. Okay, it could have been about loss, fragility, the unfairness of fate.

April brought another possible blog topic:  my brand-spanking-new Medicare card. I turned 65 and getting that card seemed a big demarcation point. You are young, or at least not old, and you don’t have Medicare.

Then, suddenly, there’s a Medicare card in your wallet and you are old. Okay, I’ve been hearing from AARP for years, but this is different: 65 means senior citizen. As an official senior citizen, I am grateful for my health and for the Medicare benefits that will help me maintain it and my quality of life. Oh, I’m checking into those senior discounts. Oooh, thank you, Delta Air Lines.

It’s mid-May, my sabbatical over. I’m restless and feel as if I should be working.  I don’t feel retired. This phase of life remains unsettling and uncharted.

I think I’ll go pull some weeds.

Six Words and a $10 Tomato

 It’s done. Well, it’s mostly done. The Wink and Glo Memorial Tomato Garden (WAGMTG) is planted. The soil was prepped (oh, my, the weeds), the plants put in the ground the best I know how, and, since this photo was taken, cages assembled to support their growing branches.

The soil and sun here is so phenomenal it should offset my shortcomings as a budding gardener.

Glo is Gloria, my late aunt. She died May 1 and in the last weeks of her life when I’d tell her my struggle to garden without hurting some body part, she’d tell me how Wink, her late husband, would joke about the $10 tomato – for all the expense and effort to grow one.

Now, these two – Wink and Glo – merit more than a memorial tomato garden, but it’s a start. Growing up, I loved telling friends, heck, telling anyone, I had an uncle named Wink and an aunt named Glo.  Nicknames are big in my mother’s family. My mom is Honey and Molo. Her aunts, well, I could never keep them straight – Polls, Lolly, Pills, oh, I give up.

When I was little, Wink and Glo were fun names and fun people. They hosted many a family gathering and watched my brother and me when we were little. It’s only when I reconnected with them years later that I realized how apt their names. Wink always had a joke or story. Sometimes it was a new joke, often an old story.

And, Glo, well, she glowed with love and laughter and life. In reading up on how to write an obituary I found some guidance. It said find six words that capture a person. Words for Glo: devoted, loving, fun, solid, loyal, and fair. She was so loyal, if she felt I’d been wronged, she’d say, “Do you want me to write and tell them?”

           

I’d say no, but appreciate the offer, the loyalty, and the love.

I miss you, Glo. See you in the garden.

Of Turtles and Teachers

It’s the tail end of Teacher Appreciation Week. I remember those weeks when our daughters were in elementary school. I’d put together a goody bag for their teachers and they’d dutifully tote them to school. One teacher was known for turtles. Pod C, possibly an Eastern Box Turtle, was the classroom mascot.

Later, I became friends with this teacher. My first time at her home stunned me. She had an entire étagère devoted to turtle display – stone, china, crystal, you name it.  Reptiles delivered over the years in goody bags.

Yes, she was a great teacher, and greatly appreciated.

I gained much more appreciation for teachers and teaching these past few months. A first-time adjunct instructor, I taught speechwriting to college students. I’d taught years before – BC, or before children – at a continuing education program. As I recall, it was three-hour evening sessions in a professional public relations certification program. My fear, then, was filling three evening hours.  Now, my fear with a night class would be sustaining my energy, oh, and staying awake.

This time, my biggest fear since these are college students taking the course for credit was being the “real deal” – actually transmitting knowledge and improving their skills so they could write for the ear, not the page. At least, they’d signed up for the class; that must mean they were interested in learning the craft.

Oops. On quizzing students on the first day, I found that most were in the class because they couldn’t get into the one they wanted (yeah, probably a class on writing for social media, thought the old fart standing in front of the room).  But, I did have one student who explained why he was taking the class, “I would like to effectively craft speeches with emotional teeth without being sappy or clichéd.”

Good. I like a challenge.

And, it was a challenge – coming up with a logical way to approach the topic, effective assignments, the best speeches to read and watch, grade papers constructively, and most of all build and sustain interest and energy.

About three weeks in, I realized that teaching is mostly performance.  You have a bunch of young people who’d rather be outside, or sleeping, or anywhere else, and the instructor must capture and hold their attention and interest. Otherwise, why be there – just have an online course. I came to this realization at the photocopying machine and remarked to a much younger colleague, “I just realized that teaching is all about performance.” He replied, “It took me three years to realize that.”

Okay, sometimes wisdom does come with age.

My neighbor, also an adjunct instructor, is a great teaching coach.  I adopted her trick of muttering “Showtime!” to myself on my way to room 102.  It works.

Each session, as I struggled to inject energy, to connect, to recognize, to praise, and to get all 18 involved, I gained even greater respect for educators who can control a classroom, command attention, and impart knowledge.

Could I get the slackers to show up (explaining the attendance policy was a big help), the shy ones to speak up (duh, call on them), and the capable ones to push their boundaries and abilities (ah, many are self starters)?

I learned a lot on the fly. Biggest lesson:  It helps to know what you’re talking about. It’s not like being a flack (public relations practitioner) where you’re always telling a reporter, “I’ll get back to you.” There is getting back – I did that a few times at the next class session –but it helps to answer questions in the moment.

The evaluation forms aren’t in yet. But, the final speeches:  Wow. There’s more to millennials than I realized, or as one student explained in her speech. “Millennials are creative team players who are ambitious in life and in the workplace.”

And, in the classroom. What a privilege to share that time and place with these students. I don’t have any turtles to show for it, but I got some complimentary emails and hugs and invited back next year.

Sweet.