Poetry & Pushpins

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Tag Archives: learning patience

An Old Orchard and a New Year

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Gardening, Pushpins (Daily Life), Romantic Botany, The Creative Life

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botany, grief, human nature, learning patience, Midwest, New Year, resiliency, running

My nose is cold, but every other part of my body is hot and sweaty. Morning runs in the winter-touched, Midwestern countryside will do that to you. With hands on my hips, I turn around and look back at my grandmother’s property. An apple orchard stands at attention on my right and on my left, creating a passageway of arching limbs. These trees were the guardians of my childhood. I played among them, hide behind them, and once, in a fit of teenage romanticism, longed to get married under them. They were already old when I was young, planted by turn of the century hands. Their roots have had a hundred years to expand and grow and thrive, embraced by the rich Ohio soil. And steadily anchored, their limbs, weathered and withered, reach out to one another and to the sky, touched by a century’s worth of wind and rain and sun. Sometimes, the touch was hash, and the grass between the two rows became a no man’s land of branches and bark.

In spite of such losses, they still stand, their branches stretching out before them, towards each other and to the sky. Receptive of whatever the elements will give them next. Yes, they lost branches and bark, and will most likely lose them again. But, they have roots, made strong by the years and the soil that nourishes them.

Twenty-nine is young, at least, that is what my older friends tell me. Yet twenty-nine doesn’t feel young to me. I’ve lived enough of life to know loss—the loss of a parent, of a self, of a significant other, of a much coveted career, of a best friend. And like a harsh wind tearing away a tree branch, the loss strips you, exposing you to the elements in new, unforeseen ways. There is pain and fear in that experience, but there is also power. For the exposed place becomes a surface of possibility. If your roots are deep and the soil you place yourself in is rich, new bark will grow, and your branches will once more reach out to others and to the world.

I do not feel old because I have suffered loss, I feel old because I have seen the other side of loss. That in its wake, come new possibilities and new chances to love. Loss levels, but after all is stripped away, you have the choice to create again. Perhaps that is my hope for you and for me in the New Year: that we become more like these trees, quietly standing to my left and to my right. Rooted in who we are so that we can be open to what we will become.

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Video Games (and Attempting to Play Them)

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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learning patience, making mistakes, technology

Gosh, I’ve been busy these past two weeks. And that business has everything to do with the start of another school year here in New Haven. Days have wildly tripped by, full of meeting new students, seeing old friends, and going to lots and lots of opening receptions. All glorious and exciting and new—but, slightly taxing to my introverted side. Which is why I made sure to skulk about my apartment last Saturday night and play video games.

Well, I guess I should say play a video game. Because there is only one I ever play with a certain amount of frequency and that is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an action role-playing game that transports you to the digital continent of Tamriel, where, because of open game play, you can fight badies, steal stuff, read books, and run about the breathtaking countryside collecting mushrooms to your heart’s content. To me, Oblivion is the digital equivalent to one of George Eliot’s fine Victorian novels. All of the quests, both main and side, are fine pieces of storytelling that examine morality, human psychology, and religion. And your character’s choices (good, evil, neutral) change their personalities and your gaming experience (so George Eliot!).

So, with a cup of tea by my side, I turned on my PS3, created a new character (I’m really into Dunmers at the moment), started to play…and immediately died before reaching the first real “save point” in the dungeon quest tutorial.

I have played this game before.

I have played this game before. Many, many times.

I always get out of the dungeon without dying.

Apparently not this time.

Feeling like a right regular noob, I went back into the kitchen, fixed myself another cup of tea, and tried the level again. This time, I made it out of the dungeon and onto the next level of gameplay with ease.

Though I’m grateful that no one was in the apartment to see my first epic fail, complete with rabidly enthusiastic dog-sized rats and dark-ass dungeon tunnels, this series of events from sucktastic noobery to competent gamerness reminded me of why, on a meta level, I enjoy playing video games like Oblivion: they teach me to be patient with my learning process while encouraging me to make mistakes.

I started playing video games as a teenager because of my brother (he had to have some way to get me back for all the Jane Austen I made him read). I was horrible at them. Hand eye coordination is not a natural gift of mine. And just like the mean girls at school, who made fun of me for reading Shakespeare and wearing glasses, video games made me, a 4.0 student and a perfectionist, feel stupid and inadequate.

But, no matter how stupid and inadequate I felt playing video games with my brother, I could always go back to the main menu, and try the level I bombed again. And the second, third, or even the tenth play through would become much easier. The grace that came in the form of the save button was powerful. It gave me space in my perfectionist world to do something crazy, to take risks. It reminded me that learning something is sometimes a process that matures you through your failures, and what you do after your failures, rather than through your exquisitely executed successes.

And if that thought doesn’t give you hope in a dark-ass dungeon while large rats attempt to gnaw your character’s face off, I don’t know what will.

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Warm Cats and Restless Laps

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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empathy, learning patience, Midwest, New England

When I was five, my family made the acquaintance of Peppermint, a seven-pound, black-haired, green-eyed cat. One early fall day, Peppermint jumped onto my father’s knee as he worked in our backyard. The tiny cat wouldn’t get off, and so, my father brought him into the house and Peppermint became our family pet.

Peppermint and I rarely lived in harmony when I was younger. Quiet and slow, he preferred the calm, languid sunbeams that warmed the front room’s bay window to my fidgety, kindergarten self. Despite our differences and my total lack of empathy for his disposition, I wanted him to be my friend—but, I always went about it the wrong way. Trying to pet him as he dozed in the sunbeams got me far more scratches than approving purrs.

Sometimes, and this was always a rare occasion, Peppermint would jump down from the bay window and up into my lap. As he curled into a tight ball, his small body would start to feel like seven tons rather than seven pounds. Seven tons of hot, furry mass pinning me down, keeping me from doing the important things kindergarteners do:  playing in the woods, artistically arranging dolls around my bedroom, dancing to cassette tapes of the Beatles. I resented Peppermint’s presence when he sat in my lap. I resented the time he made me wait for that presence. And most importantly, I resented his inability to be my loving pet when I wanted him to be.

Trying to pet him as he dozed in the sunbeams got me far more scratches than approving purrs.

Twenty-three years have passed since Peppermint first sat in my lap. Now, I’m no longer a squirming kindergartener (though I still spend time in the woods and dance to the Beatles). As I type this post to you, two happily purring cats sit on my outstretched, blanketed legs. They are my neighbors’ cats. I often look after them when my neighbors go out of town. In the beginning, both felines were suspicious of the strange person who chose to occupy their usual humans’ couch. Yet, with the blessing of time and cold weather, the cats finally decided that my lap was an okay place to be.

This time around, I didn’t mind the process. For I know something at twenty-eight that I didn’t know at five: As long as I am patient and understanding and without presumption, even the slowest of cat hearts will eventually open up and take comfort in my lap.

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