Can You Hear Me Now

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

Rumi

Warning: This is a bit of a convoluted, shaggy-dog article. It’s my hope that if you hang in long enough, it will eventually make sense. That is assuming any of my articles ever make sense.

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Despite not being related, I called my parents’ best friends Uncle Steve and Aunt Jeanette. I am a little unclear as to how they came into our lives, but I believe that Dad met Steve while they were both attending Arizona State College in the late 1940s.

Fun fact. Labeling it a College is not a mistake. Despite being around since 1886, Arizona State College didn’t become Arizona State University until 1958 — which happens to be the year I was born. It’s where I earned my Computer Science degree in 1982. Go Sun Devils!

I adored Uncle Steve. He was funny, gregarious, smart, and kind. I could tell you about the time he handed 13-year-old me the keys to his motorcycle and told me to go out and have some fun, but that’s a blog for another day.

Exactly what Uncle Steve saw in my dad will always remain a mystery, but whatever it was, I am thankful to have known him. He was more of an uncle to me than any of my blood relatives.

Aunt Jeanette was a different story. While I can’t say I disliked her, her aloofness kept her as more of an aunt in name than in attitude. As they said back in the day, she was prim and proper and those were not qualities I found attractive.

Her personality played itself out in many ways, but was most apparent in how she ran her house. Unlike my family’s rag-tag furniture and overall just-clean-enough state of being, Aunt Jeannette’s house was filled with fancy chairs, high-end couches, and stylish artwork. Most of all, everything was immaculate. You could have eaten off her floors and felt comfortable asking for seconds.

None of that was a big issue for me. What I found disturbing was that she covered those fancy chairs and couches in stiff, clear plastic. Not only was it uncomfortable, her furniture crunched every time you sat down, stood up, or simply moved your butt.

Beyond the noise, that plastic was very unwelcoming and I doubt unwelcomed was how she wanted people to feel when they came to her house — unwelcomed and self conscious about every little move.

In addition, it didn’t make any sense. Steve and Jennette were empty nesters who didn’t own pets. There was nothing in the house that justified those uncomfortable covers.

Passing Gas

If you, like me, grew up in Arizona in the 1950s and 1960s, you may remember Blakely gas stations. The first station opened in 1948 and they grew to about 100 before being purchased by Gulf Oil. I have fond memories of both the Blakely Rocket and 25 cents a gallon gasoline.

In addition to cheap gas, customers received a frosted, iced tea glass every time they filled up their tank. Each glass was beautifully decorated with a Sonoran desert cactus and for many years, they were what Mom used as her “fancy, company glasses.” Of course, with six very active kids in the house, breakage was inevitable, but I am happy to say that more than a few managed to hang on.

While on a trip back to Arizona several years ago, I asked Mom if I could have the glasses and was overjoyed when she said, “Yes.” I wrapped them in newspaper, carefully packed them into my suitcase, and flew them back to my Minnesota home. Thankfully, my younger siblings didn’t have the same emotional connection I had to the glasses. There was no family squabbling and since we can fight about nearly anything, that was a big win for me.

What happened next is not a win. After returning home, I unpacked the glasses, put them into one of the lower buffet cabinets, and for the past decade or more, they have been sitting in total darkness. Rather than celebrating this childhood joy on a daily basis, I set them aside and pretty much forgot they were even there.

I Had a Dream

Last week, all that changed when I had a dream about the glasses. I cannot claim to recall much about the dream, but I do remember asking myself why the glasses are not being used. Why go through all the effort of preserving such important memories only to forget about them?

So, upon waking, I pulled the glasses out of the buffet cabinet, thoroughly washed and dried each one, cleared a kitchen cabinet shelf of little-used mugs, and made a space for my beautiful Blakely glasses.

No longer are they like Aunt Jeanette’s plastic covered furniture — I bet you were wondering if I would ever get back to that. They are now easily accessible and have become a part of my daily life. I can now enjoy the memories in a very practical and highly tactile manner. They have gone from museum pieces to their original welcoming purpose of quenching peoples’ thirst.

Yes, there is a good chance some of the glasses will break, but I am willing to accept that. I can’t speak for the glasses, but I would like to think that they are happier in the hands of humans and not hidden away in a dark cabinet. It’s like the Isle of Misfit Toys. It’s more important for a toy (or Blakely glass) to be loved by a child (or a 68-year-old adult) than it is to be kept in pristine condition far from human touch. Those toys and glasses need to be needed.

Beyond Glass

This is not the first time I have stumbled my way to awareness. I can think of quite a few emotions and expressions of love I kept locked away until I came to the hard realization that they needed to come out and play. While I wasn’t exactly a block of stone, I held back on too much and didn’t know what I was missing until I finally let go. Since then, I have discovered that pushing back my artificial, self-imposed boundaries has become easier. Each victory leads to yet another and who doesn’t like winning?

As Rumi said at the beginning of this meditation, life is a balance of holding on and letting go and I continually find that every opening-up allows me to rebalance the scale in a way that feels much more agreeable. Nothing is fixed as long as I am willing to be flexible and open to change.

Whether it’s stripping the plastic off furniture (or the heart) or bringing 60-year-old Blakely glasses back into the fold, life is best experienced when we aren’t afraid to get messy and occasionally break something. Thank you Mom for a lesson it took me far to long to learn.

I suppose I should also thank Aunt Jeanette for helping me tear off my own plastic, but I’m not quite ready to do that.

Here is your homework. Take something long-unused out of one of your cabinets and use it. Let it be what it was meant to be. Now, do the same with something locked away in your brain. Whether it’s a fancy plate or an emotion, everything needs to be needed. Everything needs to find its place in the great balance of life.

Thank you for reading.

In motion or at rest
two hands draw closer
until they touch
intertwine
until their beginnings become the end
and the end loses all meaning

Hands across time
hands across distance and space
the magnetic pull that brings two together
the unbreakable weave that keeps them as one