Posts Tagged ‘recreation’
Cindy on May 28th, 2010
The windows of my soul I throw wide open to the sun.” — John Greenleaf Whittier
Dear Friends,
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I spend less time hanging out here in the Home Office when it’s warm outside. The laptop stays indoors and I don’t.
In summer, I try to limit my time online to less than an hour daily, mainly to check e-mail for work-related issues. (I still work on other writing projects year ’round.) This officially qualifies me as a fair-weather blogger, I know. Not only does summer coax me out to my garden and the bike trails, it also brings more opportunities to work as a background extra in films. (So far, I have four bookings for shoots in June and July.)
But I won’t disappear completely. While I’m cutting back to three posts per month this summer, I still want to share some things with you. For starters, I have permission to share an excerpt of my new garden essay that ran exclusively in Victoria magazine. And since a couple of my essays are included in some brand-new story collections, I’ll plug the books when they’re available. Come Father’s Day, I’ll run a favorite Daily Tribune column about my dad and a special photo taken on Father’s Day before he died in 1992. And later, I’ll post a photo essay featuring one of my crazier passions — garden junk!
Meanwhile, if you enjoy the short essays I typically feature here, I hope you’ll track down a copy of Writing Home in bookstores or on Amazon. I’ll miss you, and would love it if you’d stop by to say hello. But I’ll understand if you can’t. I hope you’ll be outside in the sunshine, too, taking a break to read a novel in your lawn chair, or pausing to admire what’s growing in your own garden. Warmest wishes for a happy summer, Cindy
P.S. Look for my monthly “Somewhere in the Middle” column at Michigan Women’s Forum — and watch for a special giveaway at the end of May.
– Photos (copyright 2010 by Cindy La Ferle) were taken last year in my garden. –
Cindy on April 22nd, 2010
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” — Plato
It wasn’t the designer showcase model for tree houses — but something about it appealed to my inner child and made her envious. Painted park-bench green, the simple plywood structure was perched high under the branches of a lofty evergreen in a neighbor’s wooded backyard. A red ladder leaned invitingly against its narrow front door.
Square footage-wise, the building was barely large enough to hold four small kids sitting cross-legged on the floor. Still, it wouldn’t take much imagination for its lucky owners to use it as the center of operations for secret agents, or maybe a hideout for mutinous aliens from Jupiter. Best of all, the crafty neighbor who’d built the new tree house had placed it at the farthest edge of the yard, making it the perfect retreat for plotting, napping or daydreaming.
Driving with my son, who was barely a teenager then, I cruised by it slowly for a better look.
“Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a tree house?” I asked, nodding toward our neighbor’s yard. My kid looked at me as though I’d just asked him to wear his bathing suit to church.
“You’re way too old for a tree house, Mom,” he said, dropping his voice another octave.
Too old for a treehouse? Says who?
Not Diane Ackerman, author of Deep Play (Vintage). “Deep play is a refuge from ordinary life, a sanctuary of the mind, where one is exempt from life’s customs,” she explains. Ackerman points out that many creatures, including dolphins and human beings, are wired to learn important lessons from playing — long after they’ve matured. Ackerman claims that our need to play — whether we opt to ride the merry-go-round at a carnival or craft model airplanes at home — is as natural as our need for sunshine. We can lay aside our sense of self, ignore pain, or just sit quietly, watching the world’s ordinary miracles, she writes.
Most grown-ups are conflicted about play. In our workaholic culture, the word “play” carries mixed messages. To play with someone’s heart is cruel; to play at something suggests laziness or lack of purpose. And how many of us advise our kids to stop playing around and get down to business? For most Americans, time off remains a guilty pleasure — a stolen afternoon on a golf course or in a deck chair when we should be toiling at the office. We’re praised and rewarded when we look busy or competitive or productive.
Riding my bicycle around the neighborhood yesterday, I was stopped by a neighbor on her way to work.
“Well, it must be nice to have time for a bike ride,” she shouted from her car window. I knew she was only teasing me — yet I felt compelled to justify my break from a deadline.
“I have to get back to my desk by noon,” I hollered back, trying to sound urgent and important. Why couldn’t I just admit that I’d come out to play? Even though I knew better, I peddled home feeling as if I’d been caught playing hooky.
“Our daily routines are stacked with chores, commitments, and too many requirements,” Ackerman reminds us. Sometimes we need to shed our obligations to feel fully alive. Time off will ultimately make us healthier, happier, and more productive people. And that’s why every grown-up needs a bicycle — or a treehouse — and a bright yellow permission slip for recess.
When was the last time you played a board game, hit the golf course, rode a carousel, put together a puzzle, or spent time with your favorite toys? — Cindy La Ferle
–A slightly different version of this piece was first published in The Daily Tribune of Royal Oak. –
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 27th, 2009
“Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.” — Mike Myers
Who knew? Who knew that in the midst of a grim recession, someone would dream up a bizarre blanket with arms and other people would actually buy it? Yeah, I’m talking about the Snuggie. Everyone in my family has a wonderfully warped sense of humor. For weeks my son and I have had fun mocking the Snuggie infomercial, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when he mailed his dad and me a mystery package containing two sage green Snuggies.
On my Facebook profile, several friends goaded me into posting a photo of myself in my new Snuggie. But since I have no pride whatsoever, I’ve decided to share it here with everyone. My only regret? I don’t have the red Snuggie, which would surely make me look like a member of the Emperor’s Royal Guard in Stars Wars. Maybe I’ll order one, and while I’m at it, I’ll get myself a Shuffles Shoe Mop. — CL
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 –
Meanwhile, if you enjoy the short essays I typically feature here, I hope you’ll track down a copy of Writing Home in bookstores or on Amazon. I’ll miss you, and would love it if you’d stop by to say hello. But I’ll understand if you can’t. I hope you’ll be outside in the sunshine, too, taking a break to read a novel in your lawn chair, or pausing to admire what’s growing in your own garden. Warmest wishes for a happy summer, Cindy
