The Glass Half Full

My mother is the optimist of all optimists. Whenever she faces a tough time, or when one of us faces an obstacle she reminds us "Well, I always choose to see the glass half full....and....", then she will continue making an observation about the situation that finds that positive point of view. For instance: when I was crying about my marriage ending and how I didn't have any choice or control in the situation she said "Well I always choose to see the glass half full, and you and Bud are lucky that you are such good friends."

You can see how I tend to be an optimist myself, I was trained well. I am so grateful for my Mom's point of view. It has always been helpful to look for the silver lining in any cloud. It helps me be resilient. I think of myself like a basketball...usually in the air, in the middle of a fun game. Once in a while I hit the ground but bounce up rather quickly to be passed on to another situation and maybe even score a few. But, there have been times in my life that I have been dribbled pretty close to the ground and had a harder time finding the resilience to bounce back up and into the game. However, I always do because I have been trained to look for the bright spots, the open spaces, and have learned that it's a lot more fun to be in the game high, than close to the ground.

That being said, I have objected to my mom's theory that it's best to look at the glass half full...be an optimist. At one point when she was reminding me of her optimistic view I pointed out that I would never be a pessimist. I can't even imagine not trying to find the "sunny side" of any cloudy day. My question is how do we appreciate the glass 1/2 full and still want it to be completely full? That requires a step beyond optimism in my view, it requires a blend of realism with the optimism. Thomas Edison would never have invented the light bulb if he had been content to see the glass 1/2 full. I believe Tom was an optimist. I believe he saw the world through pretty rosy glasses, but he wasn't content to say "I see the glass half full, or "Aren't I lucky that I have a fire to study by?", or "Gee this candle is sure a bright one tonight." No, he took a look at how lucky he was to see the world as a pretty optimistic place, but how can I make it better? He had to push beyond the "Pollyanna" vision and the rose colored glasses to make life EVEN better.

I have a friend who raised way more than her share of kids. What an amazing person she was. Always optimistic and funny as heck. She wrote me a poem once thanking me for seeing her as she was...through the clown surface. "I've always been the village clown. Always up and never down..." She would help us mothers get through our grey days by cracking us up with her kids antics. She was an artist too so she had tempra paint around the house. Tempra paint is powdered and then mixed with water for the desired consistency and color. Her kids got her paint and made it "snow" in their bedroom. Can you just imagine that picture of them jumping up and down while making it snow. Well they were good kids and recognized they better clean up the mess so they put a hose through the window to wash down the "snow". Can you imagine Mom's surprise to enter to the room and see rivers of "green" tempra paint all over the room? If only I could tell the story with the antimation she did appreciating her kids ingenuity. I admired her because she could see the humor in this devastating circumstance. What I saw later in life is that she chose to see the "bright" side of situations with her children when they were older that weren't so bright, really. She helped me see that we can't always see the glass as half full because it isn't. I recognized that rose colored glasses can sometimes turn into blinders. We have to be able to see things for what they are or we won't be able to resolve them.

So in summary, I believe it is absolutely awesome to be raised in a household where we looked on the "sunny side of the street". It is good to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. But sometimes you have to recognize that the better plan is to be grateful for whatever is filling your glass, but wonder how you can fill it up to overflowing. Take off the blinders, take off the rose color glasses so you can see the world in all it's beautiful colors and for what it really is. Life. Life, full of clouds so we recognize the rainbows, full of sticky thorns on beautiful roses, dribbling the ball down on the floor to get the resilience to bounce up for a pass and a basket.

I'm alright!

I love music. As a matter of fact I claim that to be one of my talents, loving music....lyrics and melodies, from the simple to the sublime, from hip hop to classical. I wish, I really wish that I was capable of putting my thoughts to music, but I then again I find that it isn't necessary for me to do so because other people do. Isn't it amazing that people all over have exactly the same or similar experiences and feelings to life that I do, and they can write it to fit my emotions to a T?

Throughout my life I found that most of those lyrics that met my emotional fit, were the ones involving love, family, and happy times. In recent years they have involved heartbreak, unrequited love, and memories of happier times. Still more recently the songs that I relate to involve reconciling with all those emotions, acceptance, survival, hope, and yes, even joy.

There have been so many times I have considered writing a blog on different songs that simply describe what my feeling is at that particular moment. So here is the first of many.

And I guess I'm feeling alright!

On my playlist to the right you will be listening to Jodee Messina singing
"I'm Alright" written and also recorded by Phil Vassar.

I'm all I'm all I'm alright
It's a beautiful day not a cloud in sight so I guess I'm doin' alright
O-oh o-oh, I'm alright
I got a good old friend here with me tonight and I guess I'm doin' alright
Said I guess I'm doin' alright
Oh I'm all I'm all I'm alright
It's a beautiful day not a cloud in sight so I guess I'm doin' alright
O-oh o-oh, I'm ma ma ma alright
I got a good old friend here with me tonight and I guess I'm doin' alright
Well I'm doin' alright
Well I'm doin' alright

Can you imagine...

I got a card from my Mom yesterday. She was talking about her "beautiful, bouncing, baby girl" having a birthday.

Being a rather ordinary person, it is amazing to note that I did bounce into the world in a rather extraordinary way. I loved the story when I was young, and when I got older I thought that it had been "added upon" for the "telling" value, but found that it was pretty much as presented. One of the newspaper articles said "this little lady will have quite a story to tell when she is older, with plenty of newspaper articles to show because Denver newspapers gave quite a play to this happy event". My baby books are replete with lots of newspaper articles.

My dad worked for Ford Motor Company and it was in the company newspaper something like this "Ford employee, William Bliss, helped deliver his little baby girl, Leslie Dianne, in his 1946 Ford Coupe." Wasn't that irony? To me the most ironic thing is that my Dad who was raised in Denver his whole life got lost getting my Mom to the hospital. How is that possible? Okay, maybe there was a terrible snow blizzard and he couldn't see a thing. Perhaps it was pure panic at the thought of becoming a father, or the fact that I wasn't expected for five to six weeks. Maybe he had too much coffee in him because he had to sit at the counter drinking coffee waiting for the Dr. to call because they had no phone at their apartment. My Mom must have been freezing in the car, in labor, no less watching him through the window just drinking more coffee. Of course to hear my mom tell the story she wasn't even sure she was in labor until her water broke. I don't know why my dad got lost but he did.

This was the era that was just transitioning from binding women so they couldn't give birth until the proper time. My Dad had just read a LIFE magazine article discussing the detrimental effects this practice would have on babies and their mothers. He suggested my mom remove her panties so it wouldn't bind and when she did I was born. Now this is the part I thought was magnified. "You were born and before you hit the floor Daddy grabbed you, and I grabbed the steering wheel." "WHAT???" Did they really mean I was born as they were moving in this blizzard condition while they were lost? Come on! How incredible is that? Well it was true apparently. Sometimes it is this quick birth that is used to explain, or try to explain, my short height; "You hit the floorboard and it stunted your growth." My craziness; "The reason you are so NUTS is because you hit the floorboard when you were born."

This wasn't the end of this amazing story. After I was born my Mom wrapped me in her coat. You know I never asked, but I do assume that at some point they did stop the car and re-adjust. But, eventually they headed on their little hunt for the hospital. Just ahead there is a light in the distance, yes, yes, it IS a hospital.

Can you imagine the nurses trying to put together the rantings of my 26 year old father exclaiming "My wife just had a baby in the car. My baby is in the car." Finally they placated him by scurrying to the car...I'm sure they didn't want to, remember there was a blizzard! When they got there the nurse said "There IS a baby, there IS a baby!" She sent my Dad back into the hospital for the gauze and scissors. My mom said she had gauze for many years to come because they just kept stuffing it into his pockets. The nurse cut the cord and declared "You can't bring them in here. This is a tuberculosis hospital." She sent them on their way to Beth Israel hospital.

After they finally arrived at the correct hospital they went to get a gurney, or was it a wheelchair, for my mom and me. My mom being the farm girl she was, was ready to get up and walk into the hospital. It was all just too easy for her, but she was so naive, she hadn't had the afterbirth removed yet. Can you imagine her walking in with the cord swinging back and forth between her legs?? Yuck and LOL...hard to get over that vision.

So finally we made it. I was declared born at 5:20 am (I don't know if that was the birth time, or the arrival at the hospital time) on October 14, 1947. My Dad was William James Bliss 26 years old, and my Mom was Veora Rose Johnson Bliss 22 years old. I was a baby boomer. There was no room for my mom at the inn, and her hospital bed was in the hallway. I wasn't the only baby born that day, but I know I had the biggest adventure getting there.

I am 62 years old today so that day was long ago. I've had a very good and fulfilling life, but I don't think there has ever been a day I have been so unexpected and so extraordinary. Maybe it's time I start living up to my grand entrance! LOL