Posts Tagged ‘leisure’
Cindy on March 5th, 2009
“It is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.” — D.W. Winnicott
Mattel’s Barbie turns 50 this month, and her devoted fans are throwing birthday parties right and left. Even her biggest critics are giving the iconic doll extra points for longevity. Barbie was a huge part of my life back in the 1960s, and I’ve written a tribute to her in this week’s MIDPOINT column in The Oakland Press.* I’d love to hear from readers who want to share some happy (OR not-so-happy) memories of Barbie or other toys that populated your world when you were small. — CL
*Previous Midpoint columns are archived with links to The Oakland Press (look under CATEGORIES in the “Browse” panel at right). These columns focus on issues of special interest to women between ages 40 and 65.
Cindy on February 17th, 2009
There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (Letters)
Lately I’ve noticed a lot of magazine articles touting the medicinal wonders of tea, but I don’t need to be persuaded. While I still rely on strong black coffee for my morning jump-start, I’m primed for the pleasures of tea by the time my workday winds down.
Unlike coffee (tea’s rich but nerve-racking cousin), tea is a soul-soother. Whether you prefer the delicate jasmine aroma of Earl Grey, or the spicy citrus bouquet of Constant Comment, one cup is enough to transform the dismal hour between four and five o’clock into an uplifting occasion.
I can’t pour a teapot without remembering my paternal grandmother, Robina Scott, who grew up in rural Scotland, then immigrated to this country in the 1920s. A lifelong tea drinker, Grandma Ruby taught me the grown-up custom of “taking tea” when I was a child.
To a five-year-old whose parents drank coffee, tea rituals seemed wonderfully prim and sometimes a little exotic. According to Ruby’s native Orkney Island folklore, reading tea leaves was a reliable way to forecast a person’s future. Following old-country custom, she would interpret the various shapes of leaves left in a cup, then predict weather conditions, the health of an ailing relative, the sex of an unborn child, or even the arrival of a love letter.
But my grandmother never took fortune-telling seriously, nor was she a British purist who insisted on using loose tea in a metal infuser or strainer. At my urging, in fact, she’d generously stock her kitchen canister with Red Rose tea bags after I had pilfered all the collectible dinosaur cards from the box. As surely as I can spell brontosaurus, I can still picture the floral-print housedresses Ruby would wear when she “put the kettle to boil” and rolled great masses of dough for her perfect apple pies. During my weekend visits, I was always allowed to make my own cinnamon-sugar strips from her leftover pie dough.
“Use a bit less o’ the sugar, dearie,” Ruby would scold. “And don’t eat the dough before it’s done!”
While the pies baked, Ruby and I sat at her kitchen table, dipping and steeping our tea bags until the water in our steaming cups turned amber. Sometimes we talked between sips; mostly we stared quietly out the kitchen window and watched the sparrows, our silver spoons breaking the reverie as they chimed against cup and saucer.
As my grandmother liked to remind me, tea had Oriental origins but was a British import to the early American colonies. As most of us recall from our grade-school history classes, it was heavily taxed by the monarchy and eventually incited the boisterous Boston Tea Party of 1773. Since then, our country has harbored a stubborn preference for coffee.
A mug of coffee is quick, feisty, and all-American — easy to consume on the run in disposable cups.
Tea, on the other hand, requires that we sit down long enough to assemble its various accoutrements. Drinking tea entails a fussy battery of saucers, spoons, bags, lemon wedges, and pots with lids, not to mention the optional milk, honey, or sugar. Which is why most waiters don’t cater to tea drinkers; they think we’re a high-maintenance bunch and would rather not be bothered with our hot-water refills.
But there’s another revolution brewing here. Researchers claim that tea, especially green tea, is naturally laden with antioxidant properties that promote good health. A survey conducted by The Tea Council in Great Britain reported that drinking four or five cups of tea per day “may have a beneficial effect on high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure,” and may reduce the incidence of certain cancers.
If Ruby were alive today, I doubt these new-age health claims would have impressed her. The real merits of tea, as we both discovered years ago, are tied to its soothing, soul-filling rituals. — Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on February 4th, 2009
“The imagination needs moodling — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering.” — Brenda Ueland
Right now, the landscape outside my office window looks more like the moon than southeast Michigan. Even when the sun shines, my seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is always at its worst in February. Meanwhile, several of my friends are heading to Florida this week. And I’m not.
When SAD strikes, I find it hard to concentrate or to get motivated. I get crabby and impatient and fed-up with people I’m usually fond of. But after years of battling it, I’ve learned that the best antidote — barring a trip to Bermuda — is a long afternoon of guilt-free puttering.
Cheaper than air fare or psychotherapy, puttering lets your mind wander while your body hangs out around the house. And unlike fall housecleaning, which involves physical energy and high-powered appliances, puttering puts you in a Zen-like state of bliss. Not to be confused with slacking, fidgeting, fiddling, or piddling, puttering is good for mental health. In fact, Brenda Ueland, author of the classic If You Want to Write, insisted that long periods of “moodling” (her word for puttering) are essential to the creative process.
Sadly, ours is a goal-directed, work-till-you-drop culture. And since most of us like to boast about how terribly busy we are, puttering is never easy to pull off.
For those who practice on the sly, like I do, puttering styles are varied and highly personal.
Puttering can be the act of sorting through a box of college textbooks in the basement; tinkering under the hood of an old Chevy; or rearranging things on a shelf while you listen to jazz on the stereo. In other words, puttering is a way of clarifying life’s myriad details, especially when it’s done with reverence for the objects at hand. It’s an opportunity to reconsider what we most enjoy in our homes, and to make a mental list of what we’d like to edit later.
Feeling sluggish and blue last week, I decided to putter in the kitchen. Taking inventory of my good china, I lost myself in happy memories of the two grandmothers who had actually used all the serving pieces for holiday dinners. I marveled, too, at how both sets of dishes have survived several moves and kitchen renovations â and somehow outlived their original owners.
If puttering still sounds like a chore you’ve postponed, it’s only because you haven’t found a method that cheers or relaxes you. One man’s notion of drudgery, after all, can be another’s idea of soul craft.
“I can’t explain it, but I enjoy doing dishes,” writes Thomas Moore, a former Catholic monk and author of Care of the Soul. “I’ve had an automatic dishwasher in my home for over a year, and I have never used it. What appeals to me, I think, is the reverie induced by going through the ritual of washing, rinsing, and drying.” Thomas Moore can come over to my house and wash dishes any time he visits Detroit (especially if his visit coincides with another power failure). Meanwhile, I’ll keep loading my dishwasher.
Still, there’s merit in savoring the ordinary tasks of daily living.
A lot of us spend our lives reaching for lofty goals, or at least trying to look productive 24/7. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if so many of us weren’t scratching our heads and wondering what’s missing even after we’ve won all the trophies. (Consider all those baby-boomer executives who can’t wait to retire.)
âMy life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?â observed Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Charlie Brown, after all, was pretty good at puttering. — Cindy La Ferle
– Parts of this essay are excerpted from Writing Home –
Cindy on December 27th, 2008
“If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as work.” — William Shakespeare.
I love the small breathing space between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. As much as I enjoy shopping and cooking for family and dear friends, I also appreciate the chance to steal some quiet time to reflect on the past year. I’ll be back to share some thoughts for the new year in a couple of days.
P.S. A big thank you to everyone who purchased Writing Home as a holiday gift this year! Earlier this week, the book was sold out again on Amazon. From the proceeds I wrote a check to the Welcome Inn warming shelter hosted at the Unity church here in Royal Oak, and another to the Salvation Army. –CL
Cindy on August 25th, 2008
My favorite comedy routine is the one in which Steve Martin blanks out in the middle of a monologue, then beams a vacant smile and informs his audience that he’s momentarily “visiting the Bahamas.” Martin redefined the ultimate dream vacation — which seems to be the only type of vacation most women can schedule these days.
Back when I was editor of a travel magazine, I studied the psychological benefits of taking real vacations. At a seminar for innkeepers and hotel managers, I was excited to learn that scads of scientific research had been done to determine what made female guests happy, and what inspired them to return for future holidays. Was it a room with a gorgeous view? Complimentary chocolate truffles? Bellhops who looked like Brad Pitt?
As it turned out, most women listed crisply laundered sheets, spanking-clean bathrooms, and attentive room service as top amenities on the hotel surveys. Or, as a mother of three explained recently, the best part of her family vacation to Disney World was simply returning every night to the hotel suite and discovering that the cleaning fairies had made all the beds.
So, lately I’ve been thinking: If women love to be pampered, why is it that so few of us book personal vacations when we need them? Why is it so hard for us to hit âpauseâ? Despite all the labor-saving devices that modern living affords, we still can’t shake our Puritan work ethic. Whether we’re buying groceries for a family of five or sprinting to the next marketing meeting, our lives are fractioned like the to-lists in our day planners. There’s never enough time.
Worse yet, the media have brainwashed us into thinking that free time isn’t for leisure anymore. If we’re not designing our own line of furniture or auditioning for the symphony on our lunch breaks, we feel like slackers. It’s tough to justify a fifteen-minute soak at home in a Crabtree & Evelyn bubble bath, let alone a week at a spa.
Years ago, when I was a younger mom with an office job and a preschooler, an editor with whom I worked was kind enough to share her well-thumbed copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s inspirational classic, Gift from the Sea. First published in 1955, this little book of reflections was written during the famous author’s solitary retreats to an isolated beach house.
Using seashells to represent the various stages of a woman’s life, Lindbergh wrote with amazing clarity about issues that still baffle us today — how to find spiritual serenity in suburban chaos; how to manage work and family; how to jazz up a droopy marriage.
Just as Virginia Woolf reminded us that we need a room of our own in which to dream and create, Lindbergh gave busy wives and mothers permission to schedule precious time alone. I desperately needed that permission â and am forever indebted to the editor who loaned me Lindbergh’s book.
“The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence,â Lindbergh wrote. âIt is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life.â A deserted beach is the ideal place to hear one’s inner voice, she emphasized. Wandering the shore minus goals, deadlines, or diaper bags, a woman can replenish her depleted soul and reclaim her sanity.
Revisiting Gift from the Sea 20 years later, I realize I still need âa central core to my lifeâ that will enable me to carry out my midlife obligations â caring for my aging mother; being a supportive wife; cheering my son’s independence; putting wings on my own dreams.
I don’t doubt that a solo flight to a cabana in the tropics would help me find that central core. A pina colada with a cute paper umbrella would help, too.
But right now, there’s a list of chores and deadlines competing for my attention, including a backyard garden that needs a good weeding. For now I’ll have to settle for a quick mental escape to a fantasy island. Once I get there, maybe I’ll run into Steve Martin. — Cindy La Ferle
– This essay originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Strut for Women magazine –
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