Tag: friendship

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It’s National Banana Day! Don’t Let It Slip By

It’s a fine time to celebrate the world’s third most popular fruit! In case you’re wondering, apples and tomatoes beat it out. Tomatoes, not surprisingly, are the most popular. Given how much they’re used in foods around the world, I’m guessing they far surpass even apples. But I digress. Have a banana or two today!

Shoe to slip on banana peel and have an accidentThis brings back what should be a painful memory, but the situation actually never bothered me. In seventh grade (when everything embarrasses you), I slipped on a banana heading in to class after the lunch break. I thought it was funny. My fellow students just stared at me. I’m not sure where my confidence came from that day, but there it was.

I already knew my peers thought I was strange. I don’t think I was. I was smarter than most and maybe that alienated others, I don’t know. I had a dry sense of humor that most probably didn’t get. Whatever it was, little by little, over time, the sneers and comments from others beat me down.

Nowhere was it worse than in gym class. I was the least athletic student in my class, couldn’t throw a ball, couldn’t catch a ball, couldn’t shoot a basket. As a freshman in high school, we had a schedule of sports we were to participate in. Imagine my horror when we found out the freshmen had to share the softball field with the seniors. By share, I mean play together. I cried every night.

Softball in a softball field in California mountainsUntil two senior girls befriended me and told me it was okay to strike out. It didn’t matter if I dropped the ball. I was still okay and worthy of support and caring. It changed my life.

Don’t get me wrong, the massive insecurities continued to swirl around my mind and my parent’s divorce threw me into a tailspin, but at my core I re-found the confidence I had that day I slipped on a banana.

Thank you, Ginny. Thank you, Sue.

Image credits: Bananas © Nataliia; About to Slip © Africa Studio; Softball © Peieq, all, stock.adobe.com

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The Simple Things

Life’s simple pleasures are the best, the ditty goes, and this is a time when I agree. I’ve been following the Facebook posts of a college friend — who lives 2,000 miles from me but is close in my heart — about her husband’s battle with ALS.

First let me say, Sue is just about the nicest person you could ever meet. I loved her spirit and humor in college, and she was a loyal friend. When she met her husband, he was a widower with a small son. She ultimately adopted that little boy and they have a healthy, supportive relationship today as he seeks the answers we all sought in our 20s.

It hurts that a friend has to watch her husband deteriorate, knowing the worst is to come. Sue has been very honest about her feelings, and one post tugged at my heart. In it she told us the hardest part was the little things, like holding hands when they take a walk. Jerry has to work so hard to walk that that simple show of affection is now lost to him.

So I say, think about the simple pleasures in your life and treasure them, for they may be lost to you tomorrow. Appreciate all that you have without fearing losing it, just  recognizing that we can take nothing for granted.

Because simple pleasures are the best.

Image Credit: ©kieferpix – stock.adobe.com

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Misunderstood

For several months now I’ve been avoiding a man I used to work with.

These days he’s the manager of the grocery store I frequent, and I refuse to drive an additional five miles to the next store just to keep from seeing him. Why have I been so reluctant to so much as say “hi”?

Because I assumed I knew why he was avoiding me.

The reasons for this awkwardness aren’t important, except to say, it has nothing to do with a failed romance (or any matter of the heart). We got along well when we worked together, but events transpired and each of us made an uncomfortable departure from that company.

Finally, I decided yesterday, enough is enough. The opportunity was right, so I started the conversation.

Turns out, he had no idea what had happened in my life. He thought I didn’t remember him, or worse. His discomfort had more to do with what he believed I thought of him than vice versa.

I’d seen him once shopping with his son, who’s adopted, and interracial. I asked if that was his son I’d seen him with, and he said yes, his eyes lighting up.

“He’s tall, like you,” I said.

He agreed, and smiled. Then I remembered what a friend had told me years ago: adoptive parents like hearing about nothing more than connections with their children, no matter how small.

Later I sent a text message to a friend who also had worked at the same company. “I completely misread his reaction,” I wrote.

My assumptions about what he was thinking were logical and consistent with what had happened with others, yet, they were completely wrong. How often do we assume we know what’s going on, even go so far as to say, “what else could it be?”

We don’t even have all the puzzle pieces of our own life, let alone others.

It could be plenty of other things.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

Image Credit: © Dashk — stock.adobe.com

 

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Finding Home

The other day I was getting my hair cut, and I commented on the casual Friday attire of the stylists.

In the past, they always wore black, and the color was more important than style. There’s a new owner now, and she believes given the nature of the salon — creating an image — the individuals responsible for the changes for their clients should be able to express their own style.

I have to agree, and I liked the change.

The new owner is a long-time employee of the salon, who started out as a receptionist, and worked long, hard hours to get to where she is today. She can be abrupt, but you get used to that, because she cares about both her employees and her clients.

She’s been cutting my hair for the last seven years, and does a damn good job. She also colors it (too much grey for my comfort) and — lucky for me — charges me a small portion of the typical cost for color. That’s not something she does for too many people, and I’m not sure what motivated her to do it for me. I don’t question it.

The longer you live somewhere, the more roots you establish, the more small benefits accrue. You know the back routes to beat traffic, you’ve discovered the quiet groups of people who share your interests. You’re in on the local secrets.

I’ve lived in my current location for 14 years, which is nearly as long as I’ve lived anywhere in my life. Granted, I haven’t been in the same home the whole time, but most of it’s been spent in the same city.

I like it here.

I’ve lived in cities where, despite all my efforts, I never felt at home. I’ve lived in places I once loved, but now find to be uncomfortable. The pace here suits me.

There are things I don’t like. The job opportunities in my field are exceptionally limited. The political and justice systems are somewhat backwoods. Yet despite those issues, I’ve found a community of supportive people of like mind.

Including my stylist. Okay, her political views are diametrically opposed to mine, so we don’t discuss the current state of affairs in our government. But we share many of the same values.

When she leaned in and whispered how much it cost the parents of one 17-year-old to have extensions put in her hair, I was shocked. This girl had gone to a cut-rate salon that had fried her hair with bad color and an equally pathetic cut. Her long, beautiful blonde tresses had to be trimmed to a short bob. After one weekend, her parents gave in to her sobs, and shelled out the $4,000 it cost to have extensions.

You read that right. Four. Thousand. Dollars. That’s before the tip.

I told my stylist my parents would never have done that, even if they could have afforded it. Your hair will grow out, they would have said. She agreed, and she has four children, so she knows the pressures.

It takes awhile for even the most verbose of reputable stylists to tell that kind of story to a client. I like being one of the favored, someone whose responses she can predict, someone she can trust.

I like being a long-time client, long-time patient, long-time resident. I’m not moving any time soon.

 

Images © Graphic Stock

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sibling revelry

Today I called my brother with some upsetting news. Once again, factors beyond my control were thwarting my plans to move forward.

He was the only one who would fully understand how challenging it would be for me, because he’d been with me from the start of the events that led to the distress of today.

My brother was there for me before I even knew I needed him.

belinda-thom-1962

Growing up, we weren’t close. It was my brother and sister who were allies, often, it felt, against me. Certainly I was on the outside.

Yet we share a history, sometimes a laughable yet now bonding one. Once, he asked if I remembered the cookie-eating bear from the Andy Williams Show, a popular variety program in our childhood.

I didn’t, and he was legitimately shocked, because I have a tremendous memory. He calls it memory for useless trivia, which is a little hurtful, because my memory includes much more than that.

Some months later there was a two-hour A&E biography about Andy Williams that I watched start to finish, just to see if this cookie-eating bear would be mentioned. He was, almost as an afterthought, in the last 30 seconds.

I sat through two hours of a biography I didn’t give a rip about just for my brother. I’d do an incomparable amount more if I could.

At the end of my phone call today, I gulped out a thank you for listening to me. He said, with a bit of surprise, “of course!” He’d said the same thing several years ago when I thanked him for flying out, at great expense, to be by my side at a time I can’t conceive of surviving alone.

He took over when I was absolutely lost, and later let go when I’d regained my strength, focus and independence. I’d never known what it was like to have someone value me that much before.

He’s two years younger than me, an age difference that become irrelevant sometime around high school. We started to connect more then.

I remember a sweet, red-haired girl who had, to say the least, a huge crush on him. We had a class together, and she talked about him endlessly to me. I really wanted him to reciprocate her feelings, but I knew full well he did not.

I was, however, proud of the way he treated her. Although he was clear he wasn’t equally interested, he let her know he thought her interest was a high compliment. Of course that just intensified her feelings for a time, but it was the right way to handle it.

me & Thom 1994
circa 1994

Now he has a daughter, sixteen years old, who no doubt brings all the frustrations a girl that age can carry. I hold my breath, then relax, as I watch him value her in the same concrete ways he values me and valued that cute girl in our high school years.

He’s proven there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me. In a lifetime we may or may not be lucky enough to fully show our love for those who mean the most to us.

I’ve been blessed to be on the receiving end of that love and sacrifice from my brother, a humbling and heartening experience for me. It has changed the core of me, my essential self.

A special thank you to those of you who have been following my blog long enough to remember this post!