Jun25
Posted on Jun 25 by Ruth Davis
Ah summer. The days are long, stretched out in light and heat and possibilities. Especially when you are a kid. For most of us, summer was the best part of the year–no school, playing all day, maybe even going on a family trip. Even if we didn’t have the ideal childhood, summer offered us a kind of escape. We could disappear into a book or the swimming pool or a favorite hiding place and just be with our own imagination for a while. Often, remembering those childhood summers can trigger a forgotten dream or remind us of something we’ve always loved. I grew up on Long Island, the fish shaped peninsula east of New York City that juts into the Atlantic Ocean. My neighborhood was pure suburbia with green lawns and good schools and a mix of Jewish and Catholic families. Summer meant weekly visits to the library, hours lying on the grassy incline in our front yard, imagining shapes in the clouds, and playing kickball with the neighbor kids in the school playground...
Jun18
Posted on Jun 18 by Ruth Davis
The summer I was six, my father taught me how to fish. We’d leave my mom home and drive out to Robert Moses State Park on the south shore of Long Island, past the swimming beaches to the fishing piers. We’d walk up and down one pier and then the other, watching the fishing people cast their clear lines over the rail and into the water. I loved the sound of us walking on the wooden boards of the pier, clomp clomp clomping past the men and boys leaning against the wooden rails or sitting in webbed folding chairs, surrounded by buckets and fishing poles and tackle boxes. My father and I would stop to look in their buckets and ask them what they had. Often we saw flounders and sometimes there was a gray blowfish, still filled with air, lying in the bottom of the bucket. Always there were screeching seagulls perched on the rails and circling overhead. While my father talked to the men I would lean through the rails and watch the colored balls...
Jun10
Posted on Jun 10 by Ruth Davis
On Friday evening, after I took my meds, I tossed the Frisbee into the pool for Mabel. She’s such a water dog, navigating around the snaking cleaner hose, onto the loveseat and out of the pool. I threw it four or five times and then I was hot enough to go in too. This is that time of year when the water is cooler than the outside air and I have to ease in, one step at a time. My mind says to go slow but my body pushes forward into the water, the coolness sharp against my bare torso, and then I am in, all the way up to my neck. It only takes a few moments of moving in the water to acclimate to the temperature and feel one with the water. In the past I would start with laps and stretching and splashing in the water. But I know I need to move slowly, with awareness, and not overdo it. So I dog paddled into the deep end and pretended I was a buoy, my...
May28
Posted on May 28 by Ruth Davis
It’s been TWO YEARS since I left my life in Arizona and moved to the beach. For those of you who don’t know the story, it’s a page turner. And it’s full of lessons for me about faith and letting go and giving up control. Now, two years later, I am learning the same things, on a deeper level. And re-reading about how I did it inspires me as I begin to manifest my new next dream. I hope it inspires you somehow, too. If you like it, please let me know. This is the book I am writing…. “Change comes when your deepest WHY is bolstered with courage, faith and the love and support of friends and family.” I have been dreaming of living at the beach for more than 15 years. In September, 2010, while working with a high level business coach, I set the intention and began a two year plan to make it happen. I made big changes in my Mac training business so that I could offer virtual training products and services to Mac lovers all...
May21
Posted on May 21 by Ruth Davis
This letting go business is tough. When we let go of something, how do we know something better will come? What happens if it’s gone forever? Whenever I start to doubt, I turn to Nature for assurance. Nature seems to be a wonderful reflection for us humans. In Carlsbad, California there is a place called The Flower Fields where they grow acres and acres of ranunculus. From March through May, the fields are full with every color of flower: red, orange, yellow, white, pink, even purple, as far as you can see. But after the season, the farm workers harvest the seeds from the remaining crop and plow the fields down. They fumigate all the beds to be sure to kill everything. And they let the soil rest. Through the winter the fields are empty, colorless, waiting. In early spring, new seeds are planted by hand, row after row, the workers trusting that the coming year’s crop will bloom as colorful and beautiful as the year before. While previous harvests strongly support the possibility, there is no guarantee. But...
May14
Posted on May 14 by Ruth Davis
In honor of Mother’s Day last Sunday, and what would have been my mom’s 84rd birthday on May 17, I’m re-sharing this post I wrote about my mom shortly after she died in 2010. It inspired so many people to think of their own mothers and what they knew and didn’t know about them. Several friends wondered how much their own kids knew about them. Maybe it will inspire you to spend some time today thinking of your own mom. My Mother Never Wore Makeup My mother never wore makeup. No eye shadow or mascara, no foundation or blush. A tube of pink coral lipstick could last a whole year in the bottom of her pocketbook, only rolled up out of its gold tube on special occasions, like weddings and PTA meetings. In her wedding picture, my mother looks like Elinor Donahue, the daughter in Father Knows Best. Her short black hair has a slight wave below the ears, framing her twenty-nine year old face. My mother never rode a bike, could barely swim. She said she didn’t know...
