Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 4

Surfing Lessons

While it’s now the end of September, each August I find a slew of surfing photos that come through my Facebook memories feed. I took my first surfing lesson August 2011 and the photo here was shot as I took the board out into the water at Rye, New Hampshire, for the first time, having no idea I’d actually get up on the board that day and it would open a new world to me.

A year later, I bought a surfboard, one custom made for me and my world continued to change. I had been divorced not long after that first surfing lesson and life moved me back to my hometown outside Chicago. But I found myself surfing in Hawaii and Australia that year. And when I bought the board, storing it in the garage of my friends Sam and Lois in LA, I also began to take more trips to LA. After Greg and I got together, we began to drive to LA from Albuquerque where I had returned to.

I learned so much from surfing, especially about taking on new challenges at age 40 and during the end of a relationship. I wasn’t ever good at surfing, but the times I caught waves and felt the board skim the top of the water all the way to the beach, can’t be matched.

However, somewhere in this time, I also had a shoulder injury (we aren’t sure if it was the day I was pulled down by my dog Gidget, yes, the irony of that one!, or the day my board whacked me in the shoulder at Manhattan Beach after a wave twisted me around in the surf). My shoulder began to pop out and when it happened one day as I was paddling to get in sync with a wave, I knew my surfing days were probably over.

The board came home to Albuquerque after Sam and Lois moved to assisted living and it’s now part of my living room decor. We use it occasionally in photos and I’m still hoping for the day that it will ride back to LA in the car and I’ll have a near waveless day in September where I can at least paddle out to the backside of those flat waves at RAT Beach in Palos Verdes and listen to the sound of the water as it hits the board.

I’m a better person because I took the chance on surfing. I read somewhere (and I can’t remember his name at the moment), but surfing person said, “Surfing recreates your life.”

It definitely did mine.

Change

Why are we so resistant to change?

A few weeks ago, during mass, Fr. Stephen in his homily talked about how we as humans are supposed to change. He discussed how we aren’t meant to stay in one place, how we are constantly called to do challenges.

I believe this. It’s hard sometimes because it’s easier to stay still, to stay where we are. And yet I hear so many people say they aren’t happy with their lives or certain aspects of their lives. Yet they won’t make those changes, take those steps to go forward and do something about it.

I used to say that I was constantly forced out of my box, to do things new or building on the steps of what I had already learned. I have made this choice in my life. I won’t say that it’s easy because there are times where I don’t necessarily feel like I “fit” into my life, the people in my life, or whatever it is I’m doing. It’s like I make the changes, I try to heed the call of what I’m being asked to do to go forward, but then suddenly the box doesn’t feel right. And that’s because I have changed.

Sometimes I post how I feel things are moving forward, after feeing stagnant for some time, and yet during that time I also sense that around me my surroundings aren’t matching up to the changes. It’s a push and pull as I go forward, as I shut doors to open new ones, as I seek to find where I really want to be, who I want to be.

It comes with challenges and it’s supposed to. Making change doesn’t mean it’s easy. After all, if it weren’t, most people would make changes rather than staying right where they are. What I do know is that it’s worth the journey when you look back and see how far you’ve come.

Living the Words

As I post this, today is World Suicide Prevention Day.

Each year I have tried to put out a message somehow related to it, usually where I see the state of prevention, having had a long string of time spent working in the field as well as, obviously, the loss of my own younger sister to suicide now 31 years ago.

But this year, the message has changed because my work has changed.

While I purposely stepped away from the field some years ago, seeing my life had changed, that I felt I had done all I could do, at some points since then I have tried to resurrect aspects of the work I’ve done. And gone nowhere.

At the end of last year, I saw things finally starting to move forward with Chelle Summer. There had been a lot of start, stop, start. While there is still that to some extent, the movement forward is going much faster and I see where I’m having to shut some doors where nothing is happening, where it’s not worth the effort to keep trying to throw things out there.

On Friday, this happened as I closed a door related to something else and (I’m not kidding!) 20 minutes later, another door opened. I had been struggled in my head, deciding whether or not to close the door, but something kept telling me to do it. So, I did and I knew when another door opened that I had done the right thing.

I also was thinking about this being September and how I wasn’t feeling the need to try to make things happen, that Chelle Summer and my writing, along with a few other activities are what make me happy. There is not an endless amount of time in life and we must choose where we best feel we are appreciated, can make a difference, whatever is important to us.

As I was contemplating this, I thought of something our Archbishop John Wester some years ago had told me. I was at an event of people who were involved in the church to meet him when he was new here. I’d been invited by friends and I explained to him that I’d run a divorced women’s group, but was no long doing it as I had gotten married and felt it was time to move on. I was feeling a bit bad about not being involved, however, he said something that has resonated with me since then.

“You’re living the it.”

And that’s exactly what Chelle Summer, my writing, and everything else I do is about. It’s about living moving forward after loss, after divorce, after a whole lot of other things that could have easily kept me down, kept me on the couch, kept me where I was in that moment. My inspiration comes from the childhood I shared with Denise, the inspiration from Mom to be creative and use color. The best I can offer this world is to continue that, to be a role model in the way I live my life and share that.

I walked outside while I was still in the midst of these thoughts and a monarch butterfly flew right in front of me, the only one I’ve seen this year.

Message heard and confirmed. Loud and clear.

Fall Beginnngs

August and September have always felt like a time of new beginnings to me. I believe it’s because the start of school always brought new clothes, maybe new friends, a new cross country running season. I would always believe that somehow there was growth of sorts over summer break and I’d see what the reward would look like as a new school year began.

Even after many years of school, I still have felt this in the fall and as I look back on this photo from late August 2013, I can reflect on the significance of that particular time.

At the time, this wouldn’t have been obvious to me. It had been a painful few years after a divorce and two moves across the country. However, when this photo was taken, I was back in Albuquerque and I had no idea that within the next week, I would meet Greg. Then a year later around the same time, we would get engaged.

But there is something else in this photo that I didn’t realize until I found it the other day- what I’m wearing. That’s a Trina Turk coverup. I don’t remember the original price of it, but it was something I couldn’t justify buying at the time. I searched and searched online and then waited for the price to drop. The web site where I bought it, a name I don’t remember but it was owned by Gap, no longer exists.

This was the true beginning of Chelle Summer. I just didn’t know it yet.

I saw something I loved, something I wanted to be a part of. But also something I wanted to start creating of my own. I had no idea how to go about it, especially finding the fabric prints, but the seed was planted when I bought this coverup.

I still have it– it’s in the drawer with all the swimwear I have made– because it’s a part of where I am today. And the photo is a reminder of how much more it means.

Easing a Grief Journey

We all experience grief and loss, none of it the same because we are unique people, we have unique relationships with people in our lives.

But we all experience pain in loss, pain and loss that can feel unbearable at times.

When I was divorced in 2011, there was a different kind of intensity to the loss than when my father died or my younger sister before that. I was older and more aware. And my life changed in ways that the deaths had not altered my life– moving, having to form new relationships…the list goes on.

Feeling exasperated, I finally asked God what I was supposed to learn during this experience. I wanted to move forward’ I wanted out of the pain I was tired of feeling. I wanted life to open to brighter sunshine again.

One of the messages I felt I received during that time was that it’s an opportunity to draw closer to God. For many of us, feeling closer to God brings a sense of peace that so many other aspects of life don’t. It’s as if a piece of a puzzle has been placed so that we can see much of the picture the puzzle creates. Or maybe we reach a scenic view on a trip.

I don’t wish loss of any kind on anyone. But I know the reality is that we all will experience it (or have experienced it). We can’t turn back the the clock to change anything, however, we can make sure we go forward and use it as an opportunity to grow. And using it as an opportunity to grow closer to God is also one way that will bring us much peace and hope.

It’s always worth the effort.

The Faith of Seeking the Path

On this day (at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater), the path was there. It wasn’t so hard to find.

But not all days are like that. I often think it’s like answered prayers– when it happens (again, not always, or at least in the way we expect!), we are so grateful because we know it’s almost a rarity. Keeping the faith for the journey, the path, or whatever we seek often feels the same to me.

I know exactly what I would like to accomplish, however, I’m just not always such how I’ll get there. First, we have to start taking steps. We know the hardest part of anything are those first steps, right? The steps can be small. We often won’t know where we are stepping or which way we’re going. But we trust (there’s the faith part!) that we’ll figure it out as we go.

And we might not make the right decision at times. Maybe it was the right decision in that moment, but we see later we should have gone another way or maybe stopped for a longer rest. The journey often is like a board game– start, stop, go back, go forward. It’s mixed up and there’s not a straight path forward.

But we keep moving forward. The key is that even when we can’t see where we’re going, where it looks dark and unknown, we don’t turn back. We know that somewhere ahead we’ll reach the place where light will splash on it and tell us, “You made it!”

Revisiting the Places of My Past

I was very lucky that we took a family vacation every year when I was growing up. While one year we went away at spring break, usually my dad took off the first two weeks of August and that’s when we traveled (school was still starting after Labor Day until I hit high school). There were six of us so it was always a road trip in the family station wagon.

I didn’t know it at the time- and probably didn’t care– but these were really planned out trips. My mom would later say her regret is that we were always running off to a new place and rarely spent two nights in one Holiday Inn but starting early and getting all those miles in meant we saw more places. One vacation was centered around Civil War Battlefields. My dad was a project engineer and when possible we toured factories and saw things made like cigarettes (he smoked Belairs and I remember the tour guide handing him a stack at the end of the tour and Kellogg’s (there were got to pick a box of cereals and that was my introduction to Product 19).

There also were historical houses which is what led us to Campobello Island in June on our road trip. I had been there the summer after eighth grade with my parents and my younger sister Denise. Campobello is off the coast of Maine and actually in Canada although it is jointly run by the Canadian and US governments. Still, you have to go through a border crossing each way.

What’s significant is that it was the summer home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While it’s not where he contracted polio, it’s where he fell ill with it. Sadly, after leaving the island very ill, he never returned although his family did and the house is now open for tours. It’s known for its red paint and green trim.

I have wanted to go back for a long time and when I knew we were going to be in Boston for a wedding, I decided this was the time we’d trek north and make it happen. Sometimes places we visited in our childhoods no longer exist, but I’m grateful when a place exists and remains pretty much as it was then.

The following day, which happened to be our ninth wedding anniversary, we stopped at the American side of Niagara Falls. I had done the Canadian side with my family several times– and with Greg– but due to time and a customs restraint (we had a car full of Chelle summer inventory which caused a bit of a problem at the Canadian border of Campobello), we decided to stay on the American side.

While it wasn’t the same as the Canadian side, I’m still glad we stopped. There’s something special about Niagara and it’s yet another happy memory, especially given that both my parents and my younger sister have died. I can’t relieve these memories with them but by going back to these places I can relive the memories in new form and share them with Greg.

Where Hope Resides

I sometimes feel like I need to revisit this concept– where hope resides– for several reasons. One is that sometimes I find myself thinking about it and the different ways and places I find hope in my life. And other times things happen, things that affect all of us in some way, and it’s so easy to lose hope.

This time it’s a combination of reasons that led me to write this today. I had already been thinking about it while I was swimming the other day and then it was like the phrase “where hope resides” kept coming back to me.

I find hope in many places. I can see that I learned early how important it was to somewhere in my mind have ideas of where I find hope because life can easily drag us down. I don’t believe life does this intentionally (unless we make intentional decisions that lead to events that will do that), but, to me, part of life feels like a board game. We move forward, we move back, we are stalled. How are we not just going to survive but thrive in that?

Right now I’m finding hope in summer. I realize that might sound obvious given my lifestyle brand is named Chelle Summer, but there’s something inspiring about the sun’s warmth, everything in full bloom, and the color we see around us. Hope resides in swimming laps in that warm sunshine, cooling off from the intense heat in the pool. Hope resides from seeing my three dogs sitting in the shade around the pool watching me, happy to be with me. And hope resides in having those moments to let my mind wander, to think about the day that has past, and what’s ahead,

Hope resides somewhere for all of us and not in just one place. It’s up to us to find it, but I believe it’s there. Take a step back if you’re not feeling it today or any day it feels far away. Think about where you’ve found hope before. And if you don’t find hope there now, look for another place. It’s there, maybe burning faintly, but it’s definitely there.

The Wannabe Innkeeper

I don’t know how it started, but I still have this dream that a rundown motel (must have a swimming pool in the parking lot or I’m not interested!) will land in my lap and I’ll renovate it and turn it into something like the Chelliday Motel.

It’s not that I have this vision of actually running the motel myself– I haven’t found a way to multiple the time available to me in my life- but to head up a project like that has always intrigued me. I know I saw this as far back as high school, a dream that sat in the back of my mind. And now as I watch so many of these motels disappear, I find my dream disappearing, too.

I’m grateful for the people who take old motels and turn them into boutique motels, but often these have too much “new” in them. There are things that need to be changed and updated, yet the soul of the motel could still exist in a newer form. That doesn’t always happen in the boutique motels we see today. The vision is too far out from where the motel started.

I think back in high school the dream was more about building my own chain, even as these motels were turning into express boxes with interior entrances and table-top sized swimming pools. When Kemmons Wilson created Holiday Inn, it was about giving people a similar experience each night. And yet in that sameness, there was still a swimming pool, ash trays and glasses with the Holiday Inn great sign printed on them. And stationery. Many of these things disappeared in the name of giving people less, telling them it was too expensive to have these things if they wanted to pay less.

And yet without all these details, the motels lost their soul. And few could hang on until interested people could come along and revive them.

For now, the dream continues to be just that. Maybe something will happen one day, a turn of events. But for now, I’ll keep telling the stories of those in my mind, of those whose footprints I walk, dreaming of another time.

The Demise of the Route 66 Motel

One of my goals for our trip this past month was to stay in as many small motels as possible. Greg will tell you that there’s nothing that makes me happier than a swimming pool in the middle of a parking lot. But when I set out to find these places to stay, I was disappointed in how many have disappeared, especially in recent years.

I don’t need lots of frills, usually just a clean, quiet place to sleep. The swimming pool is a huge bonus. And I don’t mind making a phone call to secure a reservation.

As I began my search, at first I would find places that were viable. Then I’d find out they were closed. Many had fallen into such disrepair they were torn down, a few as recently as the past year. I already had seen these changes in the Canadian side of Niagara Falls when we visited nine years ago. Those little mom and pop motels we stayed at as a family- my dad driving up the road deciding which one we’d stay at– are long gone. Greg and I did find one on that trip (the Blue Moon) where we stayed– and is still in business today.

These little motels have been swallowed up by box chains that now cast a shadow over the Big Texan in Amarillo. When we stopped in Gallup several months ago at the Desert Skies to take photos with the sign, we learned the motel has closed. And is being torn down. The owner was there and said he would be building a new one. A chain.

If you’ve read my book, Route 66 Dreams, you know that part of the story is about staying in little motels, about a father’s goal to take his family on a trip via Route 66 as he remembered it. That trip was in 1986, 20-some years after his prior trip, and there had already been major changes. On the last night of the vacation, he relents and makes a reservation for a chain hotel to give his wife the same soap and room she might find in another motel, the conformity that many people crave on the road instead of the uniqueness a mom and pop motel provides.

While I might not always like the aesthetic changes of some of the boutique motels, repurposed from the old motels, but I’m grateful someone has tried to take a property and give it new life. I know that things have to change. And yet I remain sad that we continue to let so much disappear, as if those stories don’t matter.