Precocious

I'm sure it was third grade. We were 8 years old. We were precocious. We weren't supposed to know yet that we were all different.

We had figured it out.

What did we do with that information? We didn't know. We were only 8 years old after all.

My friend, Patty, moved to another city. I asked my mom, "if we moved, could we move there?" She said, "Yes, but it's unlikely because I've put so much blood, sweat, and tears into where we live now."

I didn't know what she meant. I only wondered whether if in a new place I had a chance of starting over . . . I already knew the answer was "no." It was a "no" on both counts.

That's the problem with being precocious.

You know your destiny, only then you think it's what you were stuck with -- not who you are.

We were all precocious. They said we were the most rebellious class to ever go through the school.

Why wouldn't we be rebellious, if we knew already?

Precocious. Knowing before you understand what to do.

I'm a grown up, and I still know that precocious feeling now.

Lucky for me, it's familiar.

-- me liz strauss, letting me be

Please Don't Stop

When I write on paper, I write differently. I watch my thoughts as they leave my brain, moving down my arm to my hand and come out through the pencil's end. The words come more slowly and I look closely at them.

Something happens when I write on the Internet. Perhaps it's the fact that know other people are writing on other screens words that I'll read. It simply be that I'm looking up as if another person is sitting across from me. I am more aware that I'm talking with my keys -- that my words are a doorway to relationships.

Bit by bit, word by word, I've come to realize that the writing I do here is more than recording ideas and thoughts. People stop. People read. People answer what I say.

Their words meet my words. We communicate.

My heart and mind meets others here.

I hope that she tells them too.

"Please don't stop."

--me "liz" strauss, letting me be

She said, "Please don't stop."

I'm a writer. I'm not sure that I could.

Heart and Mind Online

We hadn’t seen each other for six years. It was a pleasure being in her company again. Such a feeling of being home when I was thousands of miles from my address. She cooked us a marvelous dinner with homemade coffee-flavored ice cream in my honor.

Then as my dear friend, her husband, left us to talk together. She caught me up on her life and her grandkids. She showed me their youngest daughter’s wedding album. We talked long about the jewelry she had made since the last time I saw her.

Then she said to me, “Do you have a journal?”

“Well, yes, actually. That would be my blog.”

I froze. I thought, Oh my god! Did I actually call my blog a journal?

For nearly two years, I’ve been saying to folks, “I’m going to write a book . . . to set the record straight.” The American title was going to be

If You Think my Blog Is a Journal, I Think Your Swimsuit Came from High School.

I had just called my blog a journal.

What’s happened to me?
I’m the one who, even at the age of 9, could not write in a diary. I didn’t want anyone ever to read what I thought. Not even after I was dead. I’m the one, who at 22, graded my personal poetry. I didn’t want someone to think I thought the bad ones were good.

Yet here I am now heart and mind standing naked online. I’m leaving words forever in a place that has no eraser. . . . and I’m even known for doing it.

I took out my iPhone and showed her around a few things I wrote. All she said was, “Don’t stop, please.”

I didn't.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Had to Be Fairies

Finally after a winter of adjectives that all mean gray, I felt the warm air off the lake on my face. I was looking out the 12th story window -- the one that doesn't open. Still it was not my imagination. Call it memory, if you must. Either way, my face and the lake air had connected again.

I grabbed my spring jacket, laced my shoes, and left the building. It was a good seven minutes that I just stood in the sun. I was thinking of the old Ray Bradbury story, "All Summer in a Day." My thoughts were clear on the idea that, if this were the only one, I'd take a day like this to hold in my being for a long, long time.

No direction. I went walking. I suspect I was smiling. Every detail of the new spring was a new life to me. The old lady in the brown winter coat looked so uncomfortable. The man walking the golden retriever looked like he had just been let out of jail. Personally, I felt like a puppy.

Wandering aimlessly. How long since I've done that? How long since I've just let my feet choose the way?

They directed me to a tree-lined side street. I found myself standing before a red brick stately home with a Chinese garden beside it. I watched the water in the stream under the bridge, as I looked through the wrought iron fence.

When I turned to go, my eyes feel on a little patch by a tree near the street. Someone had tossed theblooms from impatiens that had fallen off the potten plant on the porch. Who knows what that person was thinking?

I only know I stood imagining the fairies who brought them there. Had to be fairies, they were too beautiful. I walked home, glad to know that fairies still hang around.

Later that night I discovered a message from a long lost friend.

Sure am glad those fairies are still around.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

PJs and Possibilities!

When I took the Myers-Briggs, folks I worked with expected me to come out a "J," someone who likes closure, everything tied up neatly in a bow. Sometimes I so wish that were true about me. It sure seems that parts of life would be easier if I had just a little more of the "J" qualities.

The situation was such that I had to manage against my natural Myers-Briggs "P" preference to keep my options open. Publishing schedules and deadlines required that for success in my job. When I work against who I am naturally, I often exaggerate the quality I'm going for, so I ended up looking like a total "J." Things got done efficiently, but sometimes without the playful options that I usually bring to make the work fun.

Now, I publish for me. I'm thinking a little "J" might be a good thing. I'm out a schedule and a planner and building some confidence in my ability to make things happen again.

Think of the possibilities -- a whole horizon -- of what I'll get done.

It's whole new option for working in my PJs.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

A Cliff of Decision Making

I'm fairly sure I was born with a fear of heights.

Yet my uncle the photographer, the one with all of the expensive equipment would find every opportunity to take pictures that involved my cousins and I standing near dramatic scenery. How was it that I was always the one who ended up on the cliff side? It was always hard to find my way to a smile.

Even now, I can't walk up to the edge of a cliff without thinking that the sandy stone will give way. My imagination has me tumbling, down, down, down . . . even though, I'm fairly certain that's not meant to be a scene in my life.

I don't have the same experience when I reach a cliff of decision making.

Maybe it's the awe inspiring beauty of the world that sets me on my heels.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Cold Gold Night

Now that the sun is back on the lake, I can think about cold, gold nights alone along the shore. The silence, the solitude that bring me to the reflections inside and on the water. I'm realizing I'm the one who imagines them there.

That's a good feeling, knowing who.

When I was kid, I lived each moment never wondering who I was, how the world was turning or turning out. Now with taxes and rent payments, I seem to spend time thinking of issues that will mean nothing on my dying day.

But a golden reflection alone along the shore of my true calling. Makes me feel warm and not alone at all.

--me strauss, Letting me be

Knowing Everything

Once I was desparate to know everything. Information was all that I had to feel safe, to understand, to make sense of how things worked.

Once I came to know myself, the need to know everything dissovled. I am safe. I understand. Everything makes sense and the universe works.

--me liz strauss, Letting me be

Clever, Not Really

I used to be clever.

If I wanted attention, all I had to do was show how clever I truly was.

Books were something I never had to read. I read them, devoured them, but I found them uninspiring. Rare was the book that offered me a thought that I'd never seen.

To be fair, I was quite clever. New thoughts were quite rare. I discovered the Pythagorean theorum before a book showed it to me. I connect dots most people couldn't see. I figured out things about people before writers wrote them in places I read them. I deciphered the mathematics of poetry and the poetry of mathematics, musically.

I was clever. It sure got me attention rapidly.

Deep inside, it felt like a magic trick, a gymnastics routine. "Look at me! I'm clever. Watch me do this! $10,000 if I'm not alive!"

Circus girl clever.

I didn't realize that wasn't the attention I needed. It didn't bring anyone closer to me.

Clever was clever, but I wasn't nice or reasonable.

Clever wasn't so clever, not really.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Heartfelt

She said, "What color is the place where you keep your feelings?"

"Black and indigo like a moonlit night," I answered. "Close and safe, like a womb." And I felt myself, as I spoke, inside my feelings, as if I were inside a living cave.

"Where is this place?" she asked.

I formed my hands like two sides of a circle 10 inches across and positioned them in the air to the side of my left hip.

"What would happen if you moved them inside you?"

With that question, I was transported back in time softly, instantly. Looking out the window on a moonlit night in my past, I was realizing how I had pushed away, pushed out, set aside my feelings. From that past to that present, I had carried my heart alongside where no one could find it. It was close and attached, yet separate and alone.

I moved my hands to put my feelings back inside me.

In that moment, I knew the meaning of heartfelt.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

The Road or the Railing?

When I got to the bridge, the sun was in the mid-morning place, where it's warm but not overhead. It's never quite so golden and hopeful as it is just then.

I'd been in the forest, wandering from tree to tree. I didn't know I'd been lost. I'd called it exploring. Yet every detail had distracted me. Every birdsong had stolen bits of morning. Had I been exploring I would have enjoyed it. I would have wandered with lust for the tiniest bits of color. But curiosity hadn't been who pushed me forward. It was a need to move without the corresponding direction to be going.

Then, I decided.

I simply decided.

It was a moment of standing in quiet reflection -- no mirror, except my own opinion. The answer was time to leave there, time to go be a person, this person. It was time to forward to my future.

And turned toward the sunlight I saw the bridge with the perfectly raked dirt road and the exquisite iron railing. It was bathed in the golden sun of mid-morning and it offered a luscious decision.

Take the road or take a moment at the railing.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Wishing in the Dead of Winter

Ever really look at a grape hyacinth? It's a wish. It's a wonder. It's a full-color happening.

After a cold, cold, gray, gray winter, a few breaths past the first crocus, you might see one -- tiny thing. I used to wish them larger. I'd think of them as almost tiny trees. I wanted to stand under a grape hyacinth and look up into it the way I did other trees.

Such tiny things, I walk past without noticing their splendor. Where else do I see such vibrant blue, lush and full with life? When else does such a lovely gift come at such a perfect time?

So lacy and delicate. So full like the grapes their named after. So like an umbrella that became a delight. So blue that they overtake my imagination.

How could I possibly walk right by?

I'm wishing in the dead of winter for grape hyacinths.

I might never be able to look up from under one.

This spring I might give it a try anyway.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Golden

When I close my eyes, when I look inside, I look for the hole in my thinking.

It's not the hole of what's missing. It's the whole of the vision. It's the view to what I'm feeling.

I have to wait. Relax. Reflect. Look. Listen. Look again. Then I see all of the moving things inside my eyelids begin moving.

They move apart. They separate. A tiny hole they make. I look through that hole and see a whole vision.

It's the way to my feelings, my future. It's golden.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Gone there

The best part is I don't need an airplane. I just lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and I go there.

It's a perfect blue day with a perfect blue sky. Time's as open and wide as the ocean.

It might take a while in the night behind my eyelids to find the hole through to the light and the long sandy beach. But soon enough I feel the ground giving back. It's sand under the sneakers on my feet.

I follow the footprints, little three-part Vs that make curves and swirls on the shore where the birds have been. I hold my journal in my hand, wondering what it's for as I empty my mind into the expanse.

Then I sit and stare, letting thoughts pass by on the breeze that the ocean brings. I don't catch one. They don't stick or stay one. I know what it means to be free.

And the best part is that I don't need an airplane to go there.

There is me.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Time and a Word

There's a time
and the time is right for me
It's right for me
and the time is now.

There's a word

and the word is love

and it's right for me.

It's right for me

and the word is love.
--YES, Time and a Word

When I had time, finding the word that was right for me, right for me, took such a time. What I could find were the words that belonged all around me, the words that confounded me, the words that weren't mine.

Then when I found the word, I lost place again. I lost my sense of when and who I was. I wandered and looked, wondered and still came back to the same word, but I was again fighting time.

Then finally I stood to say "This is my time, my turn."

There's a time and a word that are right for me, they're right for me.

Time and a word.
--me liz strauss, letting me be

Waiting for Visions of Sugar Plums

Ah, Christmas Eve.
Anticipation. I remember living the waiting feelings long before I knew what the word anticipation meant.

On the night before Christmas, we would wait until darkness. At darkness, we would wait until we ate dinner. Then it was, wait until we cleaned up the kitchen and the dishes were all clean and put away.

No longer waiting for worldly things, we waited then for Dad to come home from work. Gosh, he was unpredictable to a child who wasn't talented at waiting.

hmmmm. I'm still not talented at waiting yet.

I seem to remember my younger, older brother making up games that set me walking around and around the dining room table. I sort of remember tasks that my mother devised for me that involved preparing and organizing for my dad's arrival.

When my dad came, finally!!, we would gather around the Christmas tree. The tradition would be that we opened one present from our parents and the presents from us, the children, to each other. The one from our parents was carefully chosen, especially mine. The criteria for choosing was what would keep me busy for the rest of the night.

hmmm. I wonder whether my mother actually bought something with that in mind. Knowing my mom, she did just that.

The rest of the night would be blurry . . . midnight Mass at the church, breakfast after at my cousins's house, home to bed at nearly 3 a.m. on Christmas morning. The dark house was romantic. Ah, what a memory! On tiptoe through the silence, as my mom started the turkey, I would get myself into bed.

Then the waiting began again. I would wait for the time when I could get up again. I would wait for sleep to come, wondering why it always took so long on Christmas Eve. I would wait for visions of sugar plums to dance on my head . . . but only see boring ornaments hanging from a boring tree.

I would fall asleep still waiting for sugar plums to dance on my head, still wondering what I would do if they did.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Hidden in the Sky

Hidden in the sky, I see an answer. It's not written in the stars that twinkle nearby. Good thing, too, because few stars are out tonight.

It's written in the shades of blue, in the lights that play on the atmospheric canvas. It's echoing in chambers of my heart when I think of where I might do, what I might go.

In the curve of subtle color, I see the path of my life, all of the ups and downs, graphically smoothed. I see the way that time turns small misfortunes and unimportant frustrations into memories filled with laughter. I see the value that distance and perspective add to the view.

In the dark places, the stark places, I see negative spaces. So I put my fears and monsters there , watching them dissolve into so much black, black air. I imagine them as happy to be free of me as I am to be rid of them. I smile to think it's so easy to let them go.

There, over there, in the night sky is the hope of a new morning. It's the crocus that invites me into each day. I stop to savor it. I drink in it slowly like a luxurious dark chocolate cold, cold milk shake. My cells can feel the shades of blue change.

Hidden in the sky, I can see the future.
I can see the future because I can hear my soul.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Out the Winter Window

In the winter, when a tired soul looks out the window, the lack of color can wear like a shroud.

When I was a child trees were for climbing. They were big, black, and huggable. Trees were as mighty and majestic God and as gentle as the creator who holds the world in his hands.

Sitting in the branches of a trees, I could be part of the scenery. Without thinking, I could look out knowing that life had a plan and a beauty. I reflect on that as a talent that comes naturally to a child.

Now I'm older, looking out a winter window at a gray day, a faraway day wishing for the sun and green leaves of summer. But I'm blessed and gifted with a childhood memory I can recall. It brings me back to the branches of trees that I hugged that hugged me.

Out the winter window, I see the colors of life and they fill my heart full.

On that last freezing wind, I sent every huggable memory to you.

--me liz strauss, lettingmebe

Waiting for the Words

I was lost in my head, confused about who I might be, what I might be thinking.

In time, I found my way into a suitcase and onto a plane. I was my way to anywhere and I'd be landing in a place I once said, "I think I want to live everywhere." He had agreed.

That memory so stayed with me. Lately it had been haunting me, following me in a good way. Somehow my heart, my head needed another conversation. I longed to hear what the "me of then" said when we talked again this "years later" time now.

So I went and I listened in as best I could.

I imagined. I practiced. I put forth chapter and verse. I did all with a steady to what I might hear myself reveal in the spaces between the words. And the quiet came, when we sat, as friends do, in each others silent company, waiting without wondering. Thoughts coming when they came.

Then he said something that I remember this way, "It's the words. You. So much of you is about the words. What you do is the words. Wordsmith. It would be a loss to see you separate from the words."

And in a gray car on a gray rainy day, inside what he said I heard yellows and blues.

The words.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are every sunset, every cell of my fingers. The words are every hair on a baby's head. They are a summer shower. The words are the love of my father, the smile of my son. The words are this moment. They're the past and future. They touch. They triumph. They tremble. They tread and take my breath away. They are the petals on a most special sunflower. They are the rainbow that overshadows the sun.

The words are the salty tear that gently finds its way to my cheek as I write this.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are about to come.

When they arrive, my soul will shout what I was born to say.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

More Pollyanna Than Pollyanna

"See the prism! See how it breaks the light into a rainbow?!!! Raindrops do the same."

It's such a Pollyanna world view.

When my mind offers me thousands of nuances, why would I choose any but the most beautiful? It seems that the times I do are times that I'm off-balance, off-center internally. It seems at those times, I'm not thinking really about the world, but instead that I'm thinking about my place in it.

She was a child -- Pollyanna -- a character in a story. She's become a stereotype of "what's too good to be true and too sweet to take seriously." Yet, supposing a person had her world view, lifting up, looking up, without unconditions or expectations that the world would respond in a negative way. Could just the believing and being make it true?

Seeing a rainbow inside a raindrop is more than "Pollyanna," it's a choice for hope and beauty. It's a choice for a better future and chance for human understanding. Even the real-life Ben Franklin knew that where we focus is a predictor of who and what we will be.

So, I'll hang my heart on the story of little girl with relentless positivity. I'll value my resiliance and not worry about being naive.

I don't suppose I'll ever be more Pollyanna than Pollyanna, but I sure can aspire to be.

--me liz strauss, Letting me be