Flair in the Terrible Storm

I practiced one of the oldest ways of storm forecasting today:  I watched the leaves.  As families hurried into church under a darkening sky this morning,  my children clung to either side of me as I welcomed newcomers. 

I looked out at that smolder of sky and clouds.  Everything in sight seemed dark and braced for the worst.

Everything, that is, except the leaves.  My daughter pointed outside and said, "Mama, the leaves are dancing."  I smiled at the verb choice. 

It was beautiful to watch.  Dry leaves on the ground swirled up in this ballet of movement.  And in the distance, every tree turned its leaves up, anticipating the storm.  My friend who reads botany told me that the undersides of leaves contain stomata, or little pores, that help soak in moisture.  When they turn up like that, they position themselves to receive nourishment from the sky.

"Can they turn themselves up?"  I wondered aloud.  I imagined little leaf arms that flexed tiny muscles to turn those leaves over.  That would be so cool!  So flair!

It turns out that the leaves don't do any of this themselves.  The coming storm creates changes in pressure that actually move up from the ground and turn the leaves upside down.  The atmosphere conspires, it seems, to force these leaves to receive from the heavens.

I looked again at those leaves, enabled like that with no effort on their part, to receive.  As I turned to enter the sanctuary, I considered what it takes to stir those fallen leaves to dance and those branch leaves to receive.  I know God brings the storm, the pressure system, to invite my undersides to be exposed, to turn me to the right position.  From that place in the storm, I'm in the best place to receive what heaven pours down.   Only from there can I dance in that particular storm's wind. 

What I Learned About Skin Today

Victory!  I figured something out:  My daughter loves to swing.  More than any other activity, she loves to swing.  Everyday, she asks if I can push her on the swing (she's not good at pumping yet).  And ever since I started writing the flair blog, I've been asking her why she loves it so much.  Living with flair is figuring out what we all love--getting to the core of it--and attaching it to a deeper truth.

My daughters think I'm over-analyzing.  I'm not phased by this.  I'm used to college students rolling their eyes and telling me we are "over-analyzing" that poem or that Shakespeare play.  They hate it when I ask them to tell me why they love something.

"Can't we just love it?  Do we have to know why?" 

Well, yes.  Yes, you do.

It will help you live great lives.

So this morning, I'm dusting my little one's room.  Both daughters are spinning around me, doing their little girl attempts at cleaning.  And I ask once again:

"Why do you love it so much?  Why do you love swinging for hours?"

"Mom, I already told you.  I...don't...know."

"It's not because it's high up or fast or something?"

"No."

"It's not because it feels like you're flying?"

"No.  I just like it.  That's all. OK?"  She's a college student telling me I'm over-analyzing.  She wants to love the poem but not care why. 

But I'm not finished yet. I call the older one, the wiser one who is more prone to accept challenges.

"Why does she love the swing so much?"

"Easy, Mom.  She loves it because it cools her down.  It's the wind she loves."

"But she loves to swing all winter--when she's already cold."

"Well, then, it's because she can feel the wind on her whole entire body.  That's what she loves.  The wind on her skin!"

We pause for a minute and I'm told by my children that the skin is the largest organ and that it feels things for us.

"Right."  My little one pops up and nods rapidly.  "That's it, Mom!  That's it!  I love it because it's my whole body feeling it on my skin."

And the older one says:  "That's why kids like to get dirty.  It gets the whole body into it, on the skin, you know."

I'm thinking that computer games and television don't engage their bodies.  I'm thinking that I want to go get on a swing with them, dive back into the pool (and yes, I did do the diving board yesterday--a liberating front dive to the applause of other moms!), bury them in sand at the beach, run in the rain with them, or roll down a grassy hill to get my whole body feeling something.

I'm probably dying a little bit inside for lack of diverse activities that get every piece of my skin involved.  Living with flair is getting my whole body into something.  And it's getting down deep into my experience to figure out what and why I love it.


(Photo from School of Prosperity)

When You're All Out of Flair

"I'm all out of flair," I said somberly to my sister this morning.  I woke up tired, cranky, and very, very uninspired.  Not even more coffee helped.  But I clung to one little hope, flickering like some nearly expired candle.

My sister said, "There's hope of flair.  Just remember that."

And I did have hope that the day could be great.  After all, I would do the one thing that always makes me feel good in the summer.

I would put on my bathing suit and go swimming.

The summers between ages 10 and 15, I lived at the pool.  I'd walk the mile and a half (in my jelly shoes), with my towel around my neck, show up when it opened, and then close the place down.  Once you passed a swim test, the lifeguards let you come without your parents.  So that's what I did, every day, for the three months of summer.  That little public pool was my whole world those summers. 

I still remember claiming my lounge chair, spreading my towel, and running--with that lifeguard blowing his whistle and booming out the WALK command--and jumping in that pool.  I'd stay until dinner, surviving on snack food from a vending machine, race home to eat a meal, and then return until the sun went down.  Sometimes I had friends with me, sometimes not.  It didn't matter.  I belonged to everybody, and there were goals to accomplish:  a front flip on the diving board, a full pool length of holding my breath, a championship in random Marco-Polo or Sharks and Minnows games, or a successful backstroke.  

No homework, no chores, no mean girls.  Actually, there was a mean girl, and she quickly left me alone when she saw my front flip and my mad skills in the deep end.  I was happy, free, and completely myself, floating on my back with the water holding me up and the sun shining down.

Now, I'm older.  I have kids of my own who race down to the pool.  Our pool has been opened since Saturday, and we've been everyday but yesterday because a storm threatened.

I read that afternoon that Rue McClanahan died.  Summer nights, I watched "The Golden Girls."  In 1985, Ms. McClanahan told The New York Times that the writers of that show knew how to showcase the many layers of an older woman.  She said, “They don’t turn into other creatures. The truth is, we all still have our child, our adolescent and our young woman living in us.”

I thought about that quote this morning as I got our pool towels and bathing suits ready.  I'm happy at the pool, even as a woman, because that little girl on the diving board is still alive in me.  She's in there, sometimes buried deep, and sometimes so quiet I can't remember her.  But when I'm in the pool, she's back.  Living with flair means accessing the child in us (and even the teenager) who loved to be alive--coloring, biking, dancing, jump roping, reading or swimming.  Happiness has something to do with remembering what we loved and doing those things no matter how old we are.

So even though my bathing suit is the kind with the skirt to hide my stretch marks and cellulite, I'm going to try the diving board today.  Who's with me?