Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 14

A hopeful moon

My head is cluttered with stuff I wish weren’t there. I continue to forge forward because I’m not going to let anything get me down. Yet there is a sadness of a number of recent deaths of people important to me, the continued changes in our world, reaching a new decade in my life and all this change at the same time…the list goes on.

I pray often that I stay in my lane (a track term) and worry about myself, not about what others are doing or the way they have treated me. And I pray for the hope to find my forward even when it feels like so much is stacked against me– some aspects of the world I counted on are not there now nor are some of the people who I enjoyed sharing conversations and experiences with.

This morning I went out to run the dogs and saw the moon bright in the sky. But it was at the pool where I truly saw the moon (it’s much easier to look up in the pool than when I’m running and might possibly run into something or someone). Swimming back and forth,I could see it had a light layer of cloud cover, like a gauzy fabric, but it was close enough and bright enough that I felt as if it were lighting up my travels across the water and back to the other side.

Hopeful moon.

It was there that I was reminded that despite all the sadness, the changes, the things I’m not sure how to weather, that there is always hope somewhere. Often, we just need to be reminded to get out of our heads. Nature is perfect for that.

Persistence

I am on a low, slow road to where I want to be.

I’m well aware of this although I admit some days I get frustrated that things aren’t moving as speedily along as I might like. However, I also know that you keep throwing things out to the world and you keep working at it, chiseling away because one day, well, it has to move forward.

There are days where I don’t feel like I’m moving forward, other days where I feel like I’ve made a huge leap forward, and yet other days where I wonder how I ended up going backward.

I can see now the many lessons life has taught me- often with the help of people along the way– to keep moving, to keep working, to keep chiseling.

In reflection, the biggest lessons came from running cross country and track. As a seventh grader, it was where I learned the art of accomplishing goals without really understanding what I was doing, more it was about learning to run a mile without walking (mailbox to tree to mailbox to the stop sign to the next intersection). That led to learning to run faster, to running a mile in a shorter time.

Those were the lessons I parlayed into the rest of my life and everything I have accomplished. All these years later, I still call on them when I feel like things have plateaued and I’m not getting enough movement forward. I remind myself it’s about not giving up.

After all, we never know where we’ll end up if we keep walking forward.

Where Stories Are Told

I remember standing in the counselors’ offices at my high school just a few days after my sister died, a place they had opened up (there was no school that day because of parent-teacher conferences) if anyone wanted to go talk. I was there because Denise and I had shared the same counselor and I believe she had asked me to stop by.

There were no students there and through a discussion I don’t remember with the other counselors who were there, I remember one saying, “That’s what no one talks about after someone dies- the little things that are important in everyday life.”

She was referring to the fact that I had just said I wasn’t sure who would cut my hair as Denise had been doing it (and giving me perms but that’s another story).

I have always thought about this– we forget how much of life occurs in the routine of everyday life. Someone I know also once said, as the Catholic church ventured into Ordinary Time after Advent one year, how extraordinary things happen during Ordinary Time.

We often believe that the greatest events in our lives happen in the biggest events, but if we take a step back, we see that our stories are told in the routine of our daily lives. This was the case of how I wrote my book, Route 66 Dreams. While, yes, the Danielson family is on vacation, the story is really about those quiet moments on the trip of the changing landscape, lounging by the pool, and going to the laundromat.

I received an email some months ago from a man I don’t know. He said he was a 72-year-old grandfather and had picked up my book to read and thought he would hate it. He said, “You made what could have been a very mundane story very interesting and touching.”

Our stories are being told as we travel through each day because the opportunities, the moments, everything is right there with us. The question is, are we aware of what’s around us to know the story we could tell when we get far enough down the road to look back in the rearview mirror and see it, feel it, sense it?

As a little side note to this, someone else believes I’ve accomplished this, too, as Route 66 Dreams was named a finalist in the New Mexico historical fiction category in the New Mexico book awards contest. Please keep your fingers crossed that the book wins so that in the routine of an ordinary day in the next two weeks, I experience that moment that tells the story of finding out that I won the contest.

The Words to Continue Forward

"In the midst of our rapidly changing and frequently troubled world, her calm and dignified presence has given us confidence to face the future as she did with courage and hope" – Dean of Windsor at Queen Elizabeth II's committal service.

It would be easy to get caught up in the many distractions we face in our world, especially given how challenging it feels most recent days. My glass is usually half full, but there are days I find it’s extra work to keep my focus and combat the distractions around me. The world is changing so much– some were bound to happen, others I didn’t see coming.

Yet we need to continue to forge forward, to find our place in it, and to find our peace. What that looks like for each of us will be different, but it’s there. Somewhere.

Queen Elizabeth II was a steady presence and lived a long life, enduring much we will never understand. The words of the Dean of Windsor echoed through me and her funeral was a celebration of her life and what she leaves behind.

We go on and we do it looking forward just as she did.

National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

Where the Past Meets the Future

It would be easy to look at what I create with Chelle Summer and to think it’s not much more (if you know my age) than a reflection of the colors and prints of my childhood.

But it’s much more than that.

While my sister Denise died by suicide nearly 30 years ago and I have spent a large chunk of the time since then writing and speaking about suicide and suicide grief, the road has taken a turn into another sort of motivation.

Chelle summer is an outgrowth of our childhood together. The photo above was inspired by the Coppertone suntan lotion (as we called it then) bottles. That color combination with the stripes brings back the smell (how ever that’s possible!) in my mind. We loved our time in Holiday Inn and other motel swimming pools; my fibrella lounge chairs take me back to those motels, too.

But it also was about home and Mom who not only shopped carefully for the items to brighten up the house. There wasn’t much money but she made sure we had colors that weren’t dead (her word as in, “The colors in that store were dead.”). My childhood was filled with lots of yellow and green, my Barbies had an ample supply of colors with bright patterns and colors. And this means that Denise had all those things, too.

I surround myself with those colors and prints, plus the versions that stay in my head, ready to be recreated. And having Chelle Summer as a place to put them has brought much joy to my life. It keeps me connected to my parents and my sister in a way I know I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Reflection

My forays to estate sales have reminded me of something– how little time we spend in reflection now because we’re too caught up in our phones and other devices. This probably has something also to do with my having reached a certain age where I’m more aware of the past than I used to be, or maybe because life really has changed that much.

There are two aspects of houses (where people have lived a long time) that remind me how these changes- needlepoints and garage organization.

In the past, men spent a whole more time in their garages– working on their cars, fixing lawn mowers (rather than buying new ones) or fixing a variety of other kitchen appliances (again, rather than buying new ones). They also rewound hoses just right and kept things organized using various leftover kitchen jars (Miracle Whip, baby food, and sometimes even orange juice concentrate containers). The radio might be playing a baseball or football game, but mostly this was all done with the sounds of other lawn mowers running in the background.

Step inside and you might find walls with filled with some sort of needlework or pillows accenting a couch with that same needlework. Bedroom closets might have more kits, some never opened, but with good intentions.

I used to do a lot of cross stitch especially while I watched television. There wasn’t a phone to scroll and seeing these unfinished kits (and buying them!) has made me realize how little time we spend in our thoughts. We’re too busy looking for what’s next on the phone or the internet rather than thinking about a variety of things. And while rumination can be a bad thing, there is a balance of reflection without letting it fester or get the best of us.

One of my goals, especially as the evenings cool and there is less outdoor time, is to scroll less (and I don’t scroll a whole lot as it is) and create more, finish more of these kits, and read more.

I never thought the internet or phone were a bad thing; more that we need to bring them into balance in our lives rather than letting them take over.

Change, change, and more change

Life is about change. I get it. I might not always like it, but I’ve always tried to embrace it because it’s about learning to close doors and open new ones. Each season we travel through offers us likes and dislikes, just as the weather seasons might bring us some things we like and other things we don’t like.

I noticed late afternoon yesterday as I was swimming how the light is beginning to change. The sun feels more golden, the days a bit shorter (how quickly we lose that hour of light we had gained by the start of summer), and the air just a little cooler in the mornings.

While I embrace a bit cooler, I’m already dreading how quickly fall might really come because we never know year to year when it will arrive. It’s like waiting for someone who is driving to visit- you don’t quite know how fast they drive, how much traffic they encountered, or if they had to travel through any construction.

And there has been so much other change in our big collective world that has dripped down into our own worlds. I find myself wondering if there has been that much change or if I’m just old enough to see my younger days as a little big more nostalgic. I really do miss the landline among other things. The simplicity that my parents always talked about, the simplicity of their youth that they didn’t see in what look like our much more complicated lives as I grew up, now feels simple compared to what I see today.

There are good things– there are always good things, things I’m grateful have changed. And yet I still find myself feeling sad for things that have been lost and wondering what I do with the memories that I don’t want to lose.

I always say we have opportunities no matter what’s happening to us and this is no exception. The hard part is being open to those opportunities that might not make sense, at least when they come to us. And finding comfort in the discomfort of change we don’t want to see.

Yet change has always come, at least four times a year as we spin around on our axis. We’ve always been prepared for it. Now we need to use those lessons we’ve been taught our entire lives.

The Inspiration Runs Deep

My parents had a walk-in closet and when you entered it, my mom’s things were on the left. The first items hanging that I remember were a macramé plant holder (I’m not sure what happened– somehow she never had a spot to hang it in the house nor did we have many house plants although the gardens outside were expansive).

But on that same hanger was a bucket bag– Mom’s pool/beach bag. It had offi-white trim and was blue with sort of an ocean print on it. I remember things like anchors in the print. That bag is what inspired the bucket bags that started Chelle Summer.

I don’t know what happened to Mom’s bucket bag, I’m sure at some point she either threw it away because it was torn or she donated it. But I do know that it has remained in the back of my mind for many years and that, because I’ve never seen anything like it, I knew that I had to recreate something similar to fulfill that memory.

It took me a while to figure out how to get the measurements right on the bags and then I made other changes (like figuring out a base I was happy with) and finally moving to vinyl for the base and top trim. The bags now resemble, as much as possible, Mom’s pool bag.

In the same vein, the floral print on the bucket bag in the photo reminds me of my Grandma Zurawski. I can feel the red heavy carpet under my feet and the sound the floors made as you walked down the hall. I can smell the linen closet on the left and that floral terrycloth fabric reminds me of the towels she had. I have another bag I made to sell and women always stop and say it reminds me then of their grandmas.

“In a good way,” one said.

We don’t often realize what inspires us is somehow rooted in our past, in our memories. As I talked about last week, about the motels keeping me connected to my family members who had died, so do the objects I remember and those that I find to repurpose. The inspiration was born from living life, from the things around me.

They are what inspire me to make new items to be used and enjoyed. And tell new stories.

The Motel Connection

My sister Karen and I have lamented many times how we regret that there are no photos of at least us kids standing by one of the old Holiday Inn signs. Those remain my happiest family memories– notably when we’d be in the family station wagon and watching the billboards for the motel location that Dad had selected that night. From there, it became who could spot the sign first. We often put in so many miles in a day that it wasn’t unusual if the sign was already lit up when we arrived at the motel.

But in those 1970s days, one didn’t have a phone to take photos and there was usually only one camera within a family. For us, it was Mom’s little Kodak and Dad’s Super 8 film camera where he filmed a lot of scenery, something I now understand given how much landscapes have changed.

We were taught to have an appreciation for the motel. I remember one time we showed up at a Holiday Inn to find out it was something like eight stories high– Dad only booked ones that were two stories– and he canceled the reservation. It was in one of the Carolinas and we landed at a one-story motel that made Mom very happy, especially given it had a claw-foot bathtub in the bathroom. I was disappointed it didn’t at least have a swimming pool.

Because Mom, Dad, and my younger sister Denise have all died, I have come to realize how much I connect with them through these memories and the motels. It’s why Greg will tell you that I’m happiest if you plant me at a motel with a swimming pool in a parking lot.

The motel in the photo is in Paso Robles, California. I just checked the photos online and it’s undergone a significant upgrade since we stayed there in 2015 (it’s never a bad thing when the carpet is replaced by some sort of wood laminate) but the pool remains the same– in the parking lot, under the sign. As it should be.

The motel, of the retro sort, fascination has been with me most of my life although it wasn’t something I talked about much. Before social media, you shared with the people in your immediate circle of life and, for me, I added these pieces to the stories I have told, many in the form of unfinished novels.

But now as I continue to trek forward, to build Chelle Summer, to write more, to share these aspects of my life and turn them into something either within my writing or Chelle Summer, I see they are also a way to continue to be connected to the family members who are no longer with me.

Or, perhaps, they are guiding me, they being the ones to make this connection happen, knowing how well I will keep the connection with them this way. And keep my hope alive.