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The nail salon seems to have replaced the beauty shop as the neighborhood hotbed of news & gossip. Have you noticed this?

I’ve been going every two weeks for about the past year to American Nails – every other Saturday – for manicures and sometimes a pedicure or brow wax to break up the monotony. About five weeks ago, American Nails was so packed that I decided, in a stupid fit of impatience, to go elsewhere, where I got the worst manicure ever. The following Saturday found me back where I belonged to have a do-over, and that’s when I realized something.

Not a familiar face among the clientele. I had jumped over, time-warped into the off-Saturday schedule, where I now reside.

Same beautiful workers, but a different crowd. I kind of like them! These, in Lost vernacular, are the “Others”, but they’re good Others. Now, the first and third Saturday folks are the Others.

There is enough reporter in me to keep my mouth shut and ears wide open when I’m in the nail salon. This morning, the women discussed the differences between our town and the next one over (Carmel, for those unfamiliar with my area). Which led to speculation about what our town leaders have in mind for our downtown area and whether it would be as spectacular – and pricey – as Carmel. And that led to a life-long resident of Fishers to talk about the olden days, before the building boom of the 90s and 2000s caused the population to increase by tens of thousands.

She told us her mom was one of only two post office employees (her mom was the nice old lady, versus Evelyn, the mean old lady) in the tiny town Fishers used to be, and that she had worked for the Town when it was in an old bungalow, across the street from the massive government complex where Town Hall now reigns.

I have worked for the Town for almost 12 years now, but I didn’t volunteer that information. Telling strangers you work for the government rarely leads to any good, especially since any conversation that starts that way usually ends with “…well I pay YOUR salary”. At which point I want to flip them a quarter and tell them “Here’s your refund”.

But, I digress. All this is to say that my 26 Saturday mornings per year spent in the nail salon have been time well spent, and not only because my Fred Flintstone feet look as great as they’ll ever look. I look forward to my time in the salon, learning more about the people who work there (Suzy’s wedding is coming up soon!), but witness strangers become acquaintances and then friends. Because I can hear opinions about the state of our schools, our children, the best place to shop for a good brisket, and what the old days looked like in our booming burg.

And it kind of makes me feel like maybe our world isn’t so big and impersonal after all.

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Weird how we get into a routine, or a slump, or a rut, or…..you fill in your bleak word for the doldrums. Doesn’t it seem winter really plows us over with dreary days and early sunsets, practically forcing us into hibernation?

But, to tell you the truth, I kind of like our lame life of work-dinner-dvr, with the occasional weekend activity to spice things up. Yeah, my conversations revolve around walkers and the Detroit Mafia in Harlan County and what home-spun advice Dr. Phil doled out that day, but so what?

So, contrary to our usual daily routines, we did some short trips this week, seeing sites, seeing friends, seeing family, and seeing the back roads of Indiana. We returned home last night, but my brain is pretty excited to have had all these different experiences, and it wants more!

So today, I ventured to my self-imposed geographical cut-off point of Indy – Washington Street – for breakfast with the hubs, our girl and hub’s aunt. And later today, we head back to Washington Street for dinner with friends.

We’re jumping out of our routine, especially on the heels of 4 days of going, doing and spending. Traditional day-after-vacation means sticking close to home, keeping the washing machine busy, and placating the dogs we left behind. But, it’s April, and it’s been a long and cold winter, so we are living on the edge.

Whoohooo, breakfast AND dinner out, on or near Washington Street, all in one day! Look out!

We’ll catch up on the DVR and laundry tomorrow.

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I came across this article on WikiHow that I thought would be helpful to those who live with, work with, know or love someone with chronic pain:

http://www.wikihow.com/Understand-Someone-With-Chronic-Pain

I reposted it to Facebook, thinking how helpful it might be to people in my life who are either sick of my ailments, sick of someone else’s ailments, or just sick of complainers in general.

What I didn’t expect was how helpful it would be for me, a chronic sufferer.

In my mind, I try to separate myself from the forces causing me pain. I do this in the belief that if I don’t, I become the ailment, the injury, the agent of pain. That by being Jenny Plus Pain, instead of Jenny In Pain, I’m making a statement to myself and the world that I am impervious to any real impact that pain can inflict.

But when I read this article, I cried. I realized I damaged my own spirit by denying what was happening to me. In my effort to be strong, I did not embrace the gift of weakness. I disrespected the message.

Your body speaks to you constantly, sending you signals, big and small, reporting to the CEO what all the minions are working on, challenges they face, issues that need to be addressed and fixed.

Ok, that makes sense. You wouldn’t want the CEO to ignore what management is reporting about the corporation unless it’s A+ super-great news, right? You want them to know the full story, the good and the bad, so that the problems can be fixed, or at the very least, minimized.

Humans receive data about the corporal operations, and if you deny the problem, the challenge, the weakness, you deny yourself the opportunity to change, grow, become better.

Which is why, maybe, I was touched to the core by this article. Number five on the list of ways to help the chronic pain sufferer is “Understand and respect the chronic pain sufferer’s physical limitations”. As I read that, I realized that I do not respect my own limitations. I viewed physical limitations, my limitations, as something to ignore. I pushed past the pain, ignored the pain, until I was literally unable to take another step.

I realized that I had trained those around me to also disregard my own pain, because I did.

This shift in my thought process has been gradual, but it’s happening. Rather than become immersed in drama, as I had feared, I find myself with bigger feelings of hope than I had before. However, the flip side is the acknowledgement of how really sucky it is when the body falls apart.

I was waking up the other morning, reviewing the doctor’s appointments I had in the past 2 weeks and the upcoming appointments and tests, all for different issues, and was sickened by the betrayal of my middle-aged body. I laid there and thought to myself, why bother? What’s the point? This is too hard, and maybe I’m just done.

It was a momentary slip into the dark thoughts of death, but a slip nonetheless. And almost immediately, I thought about how getting results, even bad ones, means answers, and answers lead to brain-storming, and brain-storming leads to resolution.

I doubt anyone escapes this life pain-free. The weakness is not in experiencing and acknowledging the pain. It’s in the denial.

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Yesterday morning, I was thinking about the upcoming year, and decided to dub it “Lucky ’13″. In a previous New Year’s post, I spoke about how silly it is to attribute anything to a year, a number, as life does not stop and begin again at midnight at the end of a year. I still believe that. However, I wonder now if I need to believe that this does indeed happen in order to see hope and possibility in the future.

Is that how it works? Do we need arbitrary demarcations in order to start fresh? To adjust our attitudes, or expectations, or abilities? Maybe we do. Maybe that’s how we are programmed. We expect a conclusion to books we read, movies we watch. Why not in our own lives?

And so, I’m now looking forward to Lucky ’13. I’ve decided that naming the feelings of hope that I have for an easier, peaceful year may help my quest to achieve one. 

I nearly said “happier” instead of “peaceful”. A slip of the mind, thinking that easy and peaceful equates happiness, when I know better. I’ve learned that being happy is not dependent upon circumstances, but by something internal that allows one to be satisfied with self. I’ve known people who suffer physically or emotionally but can still find the good in life. Likewise, I know people who can only see the negative, the down side, who expect nothing but trouble and hassle and heartbreak in every situation, even when their lives are smooth sailing.

How does one find this, that inner peace that allows one to weather the rocky waves, the tsunamis and the calm waters that come with life? To see potential in every day, instead of danger? Is it something we’re born with, or is it cultivated by experience? Or do our parents instill the attitude by which we live our lives?

Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above. But I think, even then, it must be a conscious choice to be happy. Otherwise, how do you explain siblings who have divergent attitudes about life? The sister who lives by can’t/won’t/shouldn’t, while the brother can/will/shall, all the while being raised by the same parents, sharing the same genetic background. 

Is this too simplistic? I’m sure psychiatrists would say yes, pointing to study after study, diagnoses and outcomes, that suggest or prove that a delicate balance of chemistry, psychology and environment determine one’s perspective. But when I look at a friend’s photos of a mission trip to Africa and see the dozens of smiling faces amid squalor and despair, I wonder. We all know people who’ve gone through terrible ordeals – loss of a child, or a terminal illness – and see them continue to get up and face the world with hope, well, that’s happiness. They have rights to bitterness and negativity, but instead turn to the future.

I look inside and know that I am happy. Happiness that transcends the pain and challenges that dog me and threaten to drag me off track. So I look to Easy and Peace to be Happiness’s companions this year. Peace seems to go hand-in-hand with Happiness, and I feel confident I can achieve it.  Can Easy be a state of mind, rather than a set of circumstances? Or is it determined by skill or luck?

That remains to be seen. I hope so. I’ll be challenged, no doubt; what fun is life without challenges? Rather, I mean Easy, as in solvable, or doable, fixable or relenting. My life has been a series of unrelenting medical issues, and it’s exhausting. I spent nearly as much time at the doctor, in the hospital or in physical therapy as I did at work. My husband lost a brother and his mother this year. He also lost his job. Easy? Not by a long shot. Peaceful? Meh. Happy?

Yes. I am happy. I was broken, physically and emotionally, yet happiness was my ever-present roommate. I laugh, appreciate, love and hope. And now, my sights are set on Peace and Ease. I’ll probably have to chase after them both, rather than wait for them to find me, and so be it.

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Kindness: a word thrown about to describe events like someone letting you go ahead of them in the grocery line or a co-worker bringing you a can of Dr Pepper from the vending machine at work. It also describes when others take care of you, in big and small ways, during a crisis in your life. It seems there should be a stronger word for the latter.

My father died April 10, 2011. He had cancer for many years; stopped chemotherapy the summer of 2009, and for nearly two years he made the best of his time remaining on Earth. He held his own against the growing pain from the cancer that was ravaging his bones as long as he could, until one night, he decided he’d had enough.

Within a week, he was gone. The week leading up to his death threw my family into new territory, and we were continually amazed and touched by the kindness of others, as well as the tenderness and love each of us, his wife, children and grandchildren, showed my dad.

Which is why “kindness” doesn’t even begin to describe what I witnessed the last 6 days of his life and the 52 days since his death. In the days before God mercifully took him home, my 23-year-old son became a man cut from the same cloth as his grandfather. He made the open-ended trip with me, as he was in between jobs. He sat by his grandfather’s side, he moved him in his bed, cleaned him, rearranged him, held his hand, and was a companion to my grieving mother and me.

My other two sons were able to take time off work to travel to see their grandfather, and my daughter-in-law was there, caring for her husband as he said goodbye to a man who truly believed his grandchildren to be the very best people to ever come into this world. My youngest son, 21, is most like his grandfather in his interests and tastes – when he was a little boy, he once declared that he was a “gadget boy, just like Grandpa”. My husband and daughter came that weekend; they traveled back home just a few hours before Dad died.They all helped to physically and spiritually care for their grandparents, me and my siblings.

My youngest brother lives in Florida – he arrived a few days before my dad’s death. My sister and another brother live near my parents, and the past two years they’ve taken turns with doctor’s appointments and caring for my parents. Even during that last week, they somehow continued on with their regular schedules, yet seemed to be always there with us. My sister even had knee surgery that week, but spent most of her time at our parent’s house.

I’ve always believed my family to be close; closer, maybe, than most families, as we all seem to share the same outlook on life. However, we’ve never been given the gift to show one another our deep capacity to truly love, to step up to the plate and hit a home run every time, to be the people my father believed us to be.

My dad had stories to tell about all four of us, the good, bad, funny, touching, and each story brought with it an insight into who we are and who he believed us to be. I think because my dad expected us to make the right choices, we did. Not that we didn’t make mistakes along the way, like going to parties with beer available, or minor vandalizing of the football players’ homes during high school homecoming activities, or deciding to drag race down U.S. 20 in a potential hot-rod. But our version of getting in trouble was to be expected during that era and that place. We all were smart, well-liked, and had promising futures ahead of us.

As we married, our spouses became my parents’ children as well. Each grandchild was loved and cherished equally. Three step-children came into our family as a result of two of the marriages, but they’ve never been referred to, or thought of, as anything other than our children. Even my ex-husband was still a son to my father, and he arrived at my dad’s bedside minutes after he died.

My husband and I took turns the night before my dad died, sitting with him, dozing, talking and praying. I told my husband the next morning that at one point in the night I was overcome with fury at this corporal body that would not allow his spirit to go to where he wanted to be. I kissed my dad, told his body to let him go, and assured him that his work here was done, and he would be welcomed into heaven with open arms. Matt confessed that he had said the same words as well during one of his visits that night.

My sister-in-law cared for my dad quite a bit; as an RN, she was invaluable because of her knowledge of how to physically handle a person in his condition. As the woman that she is, she was invaluable because of her love for my parents, and how she tenderly cared for them both.

My husband is relatively new to our family – we’ve been married just over four years. His grief was as great as any of ours, as his own parents have been gone for many years, and mine so completely took him into the fold. His sense of being robbed of another father is palpable, and I sometimes wonder if this has been harder on him than it has on me. I had my dad for 47 years; Matt had him for five.

My youngest brother’s wife and sons were unable to arrive until the day before the funeral. Living in Florida, it was harder for them to come up during the uncertainty of that final week. Once they arrived, our family felt complete…even though my dad was gone. There are eight grandsons and two granddaughters, and in each of these fine people I can see elements of their grandfather. My oldest nephew plans to be a police officer; he will be given my dad’s badge. All 10 of the grandkids – ages 11 to 27 – have unique personalities and interests; yet all have one thing in common: a deep, true kindness.

Agape is the word I’m looking for. Definitions usually include words such as divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active and thoughtful love. Active and thoughtful love. That’s what I witnessed, and felt, and gave during that sacred time of my dad’s final days in this life. He never feared death; he spoke openly about those who had gone before him, how much he missed them, how valuable those lives were. We grew up hearing about his first dog, Rusty, and just last year, my cousin found Rusty’s city tags, stored away with everything my grandmother had kept from her sons over the years.

Four days before my dad died, I was sitting with him. He sat up, looked into the distance, and snapped his fingers several times. It was the same gesture I use when I call my dogs to me. My heart is comforted to think that he saw Rusty waiting for him, and that in his final days with one foot on Earth and one already in Heaven, he knew there was a crowd eagerly awaiting his arrival, even as a crowd sadly let him go.