Laugh until your heart overflows

This is the quote on the inside of a Dove chocolate wrapper that is wedged under a ribbon on a message board that hangs over my computer, where I see it every day. It’s not the kind of sentiment that I usually hang on to. Normally I would think it’s kind of a cheesy platitude, like “Have a nice day!” or “Live, Laugh, Love.” But this quote, or more precisely, this wrapper, reminds me of two chocolate-loving buddies I used to work with.

It was an unlikely relationship. Not between Marilyn and myself necessarily. She is ten years older than I am, almost to the day. My birthday is two days before hers, so I kid her that I am two days older than she is. And I feel we are the same age. Twins separated at birth. Two very different lives, but we think alike. We bonded very quickly. I started out working with her and eventually moved on to other jobs within the same company, but my desk was always across a narrow aisle from hers. At one point the guy who ended up being my boss suggested he move me downstairs to sit with other people in our group. I told him I would chain myself to her desk if he tried. Nothing more was said about it.

Lue started working with us three months after I started working for the company. She was a college student working part time while she finished her degree. Marilyn and I were... well, we hadn’t been college students for quite some time. But the three of us clicked right off the bat, and I give a lot of the credit to Lue. She may have been 21, but she had wisdom well beyond her age and did not flinch at befriending two women old enough to be her mothers. Lue was an immigrant from Kosovo. Her family won the lottery at their refugee camp after the Kosovo War ended in 1999 and landed in Fort Dix, NJ, courtesy of Bill Clinton and NATO. (Despite the bad press, Lue was always Bill Clinton’s biggest fan. Her country reveres him for his efforts to end the genocide in her country.) She arrived at the age of 17, not speaking a word of English, but she picked up the language much faster than her parents or older brother, thanks to an ESOL program at the Hartford, CT, high school she attended. She rapidly became the grown-up in the family, having to handle everything from employment applications to insurance issues because of her ability to communicate. None of this phased her. She is one of the strongest people I know.

Lue, Marilyn, and I had many good months working together. We worked steadily, and we worked hard. We shared a strong work ethic and a love of laughter. Lue shared stories about Kosovo, her boyfriend (now husband) whom she met in the refugee camp and was still over there, her struggles to learn to live abroad, and her triumph at becoming an American citizen.

Three women, unlikely friends thrown together by a work relationship and strengthened by laughter. It’s been nine years since we worked together. I miss them.

Laugh until your heart overflows.

The California

Growing up in the 60’s, I thought California was the center of the universe. I didn’t live there. I had only visited once or twice, but one of those visits was to Disneyland. Back in the days when it was the only Disney Land. California was a magical place to me; the entire state was Fantasyland. 

As I came of age, some of the best music from the rock era came out of California: The Mamas and the Papas, The Beach Boys, Crosby Stills and Nash,  Linda Ronstadt, America, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, to name a few. Even the singer-songwriters who did not hail from California congregated at The Troubadour nightclub in LA: James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Van Morrison, Dusty Springfield. 

Didn’t almost every TV show I watched as a kid take place in California? The Streets of San Francisco, Kojak, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Julia, The Big Valley, The Rockford Files, Barretta, CHiPs, Emergency 9-1-1, Columbo, McMillan and Wife, Sanford and Son?

So unique and quirky and diverse and living on the edge of the San Andreas fault, California is where everything happens first. I came to think of it as "the California." Not THE California, as if it were the original in a slew of wannabe states claiming the same name, but a name that requires a definite article in front of it, like the Mona Lisa or the David. Everyone knows it; it defines itself. The California.

I recently spent a week in the California. Just driving from Reno, Nevada, to Monterey I saw towns on the road map whose names I knew: Livermore, Petaluma, Mill Valley, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur. How do I know these names? They were featured in countless news stories, homes of research centers, universities, computer manufacturers, celebrities, and surfer dudes. This is where it was all happening while I was growing up, and still is.

Did you know that if the California were its own country, it would have the fifth largest economy in the world? (Okay, Wikipedia says eighth, but fifth is the ranking I’ve heard being tossed around.) In the world!!! That alone requires a definite article. Salinas Valley produces 80% of the lettuce eaten in the United States. The California has an ocean, several mountain ranges and deserts (it is home to both the highest and lowest elevations in the lower 48 states), volcanoes, and some very big-ass trees. It is an amazing state. I am a fan. Would I want to live there? Not really, they also have one of the highest costs of living in the United States. I couldn’t afford to buy a house there - or, more likely, I wouldn’t want to live in the kind of house I could afford there.

If you have any doubt that this is an awe-inspiring state, make the drive from Monterey to Big Sur sometime on the Pacific Coast Highway. But be prepared to stop every few minutes to take photos. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never seen coastline like that.

Soundtrack to my life

I had a life's soundtrack moment yesterday boating and snorkeling on the intracoastal waterway when the Foo Fighters' "Ain't It the Life" came on.

Reason #4: Viva la difference!

When I lived in New England, I didn’t mind the winters. The longer the cold, gray months of winter dragged on, the more resplendent the spring, summer, and fall. I think I was the only New Englander who loved snow. (I had to be careful who I confided that bit of information to; my mental health was often held in question after that confession.)

Summer is Florida’s winter, and I mentally prepared myself upon moving here two years ago to spend the summers indoors just as I would spend the winters indoors in New England. Only I had two aging dogs to walk two years ago. In the middle of the day. Approximately five times in the middle of the day. In the heat and humidity. So much for staying indoors.

The first summer was brutal. I know I wasn’t acclimated to this climate yet, but I still contend that the summer of 2010 was an exceptionally hot one. I get a lot of blank looks from the natives when I say that. Delineating hot, hotter, and hottest has no meaning to a Florida native.

Last summer we had the great benefit of spending the summer in Reno, Nevada. Like jumping from the frying pan into the fire? Not exactly. It’s a dry heat. Even the dog (we were down to one by then) noticed the difference. Life on the desert provides some deliciously cool nights and early mornings. We slept with the windows open.

This summer I had to reconcile myself to a second summer in Florida. Small consolation that we don’t have any dogs to walk this summer. When my sister-in-law asked if we wanted to meet her and her family in the mountains of Colorado for a week in July, I jumped at the chance. Dry air, highs around 70°, lows in the 50’s; perfect respite! I packed sweaters, sweatshirts, jackets, jeans, closed-toe shoes - things I hadn’t worn in two years. We hiked without sweating (much). And when I blew my hair dry, it actually stayed the way I styled it! But by the end of the week, the cool temps had penetrated to the bone. The house didn’t have an opportunity to warm up to my satisfaction during the day before the evening temps started to cool it down again. I would go outside to warm up, and even then I was moving from patch to patch of sunlight to stay warm. I was beginning to long for the deep Florida heat. I wanted to be warm again. Go figure!

Declaration of Independency

I thought retiring would be like falling off a log. I mean, how hard can it be to stop working? You stay up watching movies later than you have in decades, smile smugly at the alarm clock when you finally turn out the light, and wake up whenever you feel like it. In fact, you do everything when you feel like it. For the rest of your life.

I discovered, but only after a year and a half, that just moving through your retirement days is shortchanging yourself in many ways. Some downtime is needed at the onset to unwind from the stress of working; the more stressful the work, the more downtime required. But when the days begin to melt together to the point when you don’t know which day of the week it is, you might be ready for a little more structure in your life. 

Firstly, let’s get rid of the word “retirement.” It is way too sedentary. I prefer to think of it as “independency.” No longer are my husband and I dependent on a paycheck to get through life. We have reached the point in our lives where hard work and careful investments over the years have allowed us to come and go as we please, with the emphasis on “come and go.” Independency requires activity. I will retire when I am no longer active.

So a year and a half in, I came out of my independency daze long enough to remember the bucket list. Actually my sister was the one who administered the smelling salts by bringing up the children’s story I had written and never published. She discovered through her genealogy research that we are related (by marriage) to the family at the center of my historical fiction. Did I think this new angle could help me get the book published, she wondered. Published? I’d written the thing ages ago, just before I’d gone back to work full time, but I vowed then that when I retired and had more time to myself I would go back to it - or, at the very least, to writing in some form or another. As the fog cleared, I recalled the other items on my independency bucket list.

How is it that I am so busy in my independency that I don’t have time to accomplish anything on my bucket list? Well, perhaps it is the hours I spend writing long, detailed emails to my friends and family. Or paying bills as they are received. Or filling in at my volunteer job whenever they need someone. I was being reactive, not proactive, and the lack of some kind of structure was eating up my time.

Structure? In independency? The two concepts seem contradictory. I balked at the idea of scheduling my hobbies into my week, but at the same time I knew that I would never find the time to accomplish them if I didn’t make the time. So on my weekly calendar I wrote in all the things I wanted to accomplish, along with all the things, like doctor and dentist appointments, that I had to accomplish. 

It’s working like a dream. No longer do I feel like I should be sorting through insurance paperwork when I’m out on the boat, or scrubbing toilets when I’m reading. Unpaid bills go into a folder until Monday. Thursday is dedicated to boating. (And if Thursday’s weather is not conducive to boating, I can be flexible in my independency and switch things around.) Cleaning is done on Fridays. Reading is my reward after bills are paid on Mondays and I’ve checked off the at least three items on my never-ending To-do list on Wednesdays. And if I want to go to lunch with a friend, well maybe I don’t scrapbook that week. Some might think it obsessive, but I’ve never been more productive or satisfied. Or less stressed about fitting everything in. Everything in its own time.

Reason #3: Slow spin in the pool

Doing a slow spin in the pool on my (neighbor's - thank you, David) most excellent raft while I listen to Chris Botti play "Time to Say Goodbye."

Living well is the best revenge

Living well is the best revenge (George Herbert)

I grew up in a game-playing family, and one of our favorites was a game called “Mille Bornes” (pronounced Meel Born). It is a unique card game that mimics a road race. Each player or team tries to be the first to accomplish 1000 miles or, in French, mille bornes. Accumulating mileage cards up to 1000 points would quickly grow monotonous if not for the extra excitement in the way of hazards a player can throw at one’s competition to slow them down, such as a red light, a speed limit, an empty gas tank, a flat tire, or a traffic accident. Corresponding safety cards are also included, only four per deck: Right-of-Way (which makes you impermeable to red lights and speed limits), Extra Tank (which ensures you never run out of gas), Puncture-proof Tire (enough said), and Driving Ace (the ultimate in defensive driving). Then, and here’s where it gets really exciting, they (those crafty game designers) added the coup fourré (pronounced coo foo-ray). 

The words alone are magic. (As an eight-year-old, I was throwing this phrase around like I spoke French fluently.) When a player draws one of these superhuman safety cards, she has the option of not playing it on the table right away. It can be played immediately to prevent ever having to deal with such a hazard in the future or, more strategically, retained in the hand until an opponent unwittingly throws the corresponding hazard on you. Not only does the owner of the safety card get to shout “Coup fourré!” and disrupt the normal flow of the game by playing out of turn, but also play the card horizontally (as opposed to the non-coup fourré way of playing it vertically), remove the offending hazard while rendering herself forever impermeable to it, AND take an extra turn. The coup fourré is the highlight of the game, and adds beaucoup de points to your score  when tallied at the end.

Originally coup fourré was a fencing term used to describe a fencer fending off an opponent’s attack AND counter-thrusting in the same maneuver - a twofer. I’m not sure if it’s a phrase commonly used in the French language today to describe any act of recovering from a blow by bestowing a bigger (or at least more satisfying) blow on your adversary, but that’s what it came to mean in Mille Bornes. Right back at ya, buddy!

My husband and I were making the thousand-mile journey (coincidence? I think not) from Connecticut, where we had just closed out one chapter of our lives, to Florida, where the next one was to begin. On the three-day journey we had lots of time to reflect on the happenings of the past year. My husband’s job had been eliminated, we chose to adjust to our new financial situation by selling our house and boat in Connecticut and moving to Florida to eliminate a mortgage and unnecessarily high property taxes, and my boss had arranged for me to move my job to Florida. I would be working out of our home. I was feeling pretty good about the turn our lives had taken, and I told my husband as much. He gave me a fist bump and said, “Good for you!” only I misunderstood him and thought he said, “Coup fourré!”, a term I hadn’t heard in years. The return of this nostalgic phrase with all its delightful connotations was as serendipitous as our new life. 

Our move to Florida was the coup fourré of a lifetime. Sometimes what seems like just an attempt to keep your head above water can be the perfect counter-thrust. Right back at ya, buddy!