Mar12
Posted on Mar 12 by Ruth Davis
It is springtime in the Arizona desert and, as I drive the streets that line the bases of the mountains, it is as if the whole earth is lit up with the yellows of poppies and brittle bush and marigolds. Bursts of orange African daisies and purple lupine and verbena appear on the roadsides between stretches of sidewalk and graveled hiking trails. I tell you this because the last time I spent the spring in Phoenix, I couldn’t tell you what was in bloom, or dormant, or what colors appeared anywhere. I wasn’t really present. I was merely here counting the days until I’d be back at the beach. This time is different. Completely. I am present. Open to what happens each day. And I haven’t even thought about when I’m heading back to the beach. Because life happens where we are, in the present moment. It is in the NOW that we hug our friends and feel the love. It’s being here in the moment where we notice the colors popping and feel the intensity of the...
Mar05
Posted on Mar 5 by Ruth Davis
I was listening to one of my coaching clients share some of her weekly successes. She had cleaned out an entire closet, paid her bills early and had scheduled a long-overdue manicure for herself. She was moving so quickly through the list that there was no pause for honoring her accomplishments. And when she did pause, it was to counter the success with a “but I didn’t….” I had to stop her. I gave her a big shout out for each of the successes. And I asked her to join me in a big WOOHOO! YAY! I DID THAT! celebration. And then she said, “Wow, I didn’t even realize how much I’d done.” Often we are so focused on plowing through our to-do lists that we don’t honor the work we’re doing. We don’t take the time to celebrate our successes. We don’t breathe in how good it feels to accomplish something. No wonder we still feel overwhelmed with what ELSE we have to do. And when we counter what we HAVE done with a BUT, (yes, I did...
Feb26
Posted on Feb 26 by Ruth Davis
Several weeks ago I found out that my very first childhood friend had suddenly died. Though we hadn’t seen each other since we were thirteen, we’d recently connected on Facebook and the loss struck me deep and hard. She was one of the last friends who knew me as a child, before my brother died. I met Ellen in nursery school. She had a playhouse fort in her backyard and she liked to play TV tag. We were inseparable. We both had older brothers. We both had basements. We both had black cleaning ladies who sometimes stayed overnight in their own rooms. Her mom, Jackie, had a wide, full, white-teeth smile and thick black hair with what seemed like natural curls, but I’d seen her with pink foam rollers in her hair on the morning after a sleepover. Jackie let me call her by her first name. She never got mad at us. She always answered the phone “yell-o?” She’d hold the receiver in the crook of her neck while she stirred the pot of Spaghettios on the...
Feb19
Posted on Feb 19 by Ruth Davis
In Chinese tradition, this is the Year of the Horse, a year of galloping forward, of fast victories, unexpected adventure, and surprising romance. No wonder my new friend is a horse. He lives on the hill right next to Paradise Park. I watched him all last year from afar, and then he was gone. But a few days ago, on my way to the beach, I saw him and I swear, I squealed, out loud, “The horse is back!” That night, a little before sunset, he was standing about 30 feet away, on the other side of the old, rusted, falling down, barbed wire fence. I held up a carrot and he trotted over. And I realized that he was actually a she. She ate the carrot and then kept licking my hand. I closed my fingers into a ball and she started to nibble me with her gums. I talked to her, out loud and silently, and we looked each other in the eyes. When I walked away, she followed along the fence until she couldn’t see me...
Feb12
Posted on Feb 12 by Ruth Davis
There was a fun game going around on Facebook a while back. A friend chose the age for you and you had to reflect back and answer the questions as they related to you at that age, and then also at your current age. Like most quizzes, the important thing was not to spend too much time thinking of perfect or clever answers, but to simply respond with whatever came up in the moment. A friend gave me the age of 26: I was: 26 I lived in: a semi-furnished one bedroom apartment over a garage in Tempe, AZ I was married to: being single, independent, the best I drove: a Plymouth Horizon I feared: nothing I worked at: Computer Pro, preferring to demo the Apple IIGS and Macs than IBMs and Compaqs I wanted to be: top salesperson every month and I was Then, when it came to my current age, I wrote: I am: 54 I live in: my RV across the street from the ocean in Cayucos, CA I am married to: my technology I drive:...
Feb05
Posted on Feb 5 by Ruth Davis
The last time Marika and I went whale watching, we both got seasick. But it was more than twenty years ago. And we both wanted to try. And this time we would take some pharmacist-recommended bonine pills before we went out. She took two pills with her tortillas and cheese breakfast. I decided I didn’t want to feel spacey, so I put my no-more-nausea- seasickness bands on the pressure-points on my wrists and we headed out. It was a clear, crisp, blue-sky morning. I bundled up in layers: an under-camisole, brown turtleneck shirt, mid-weight fern green sweatshirt. My top layer, my over-sized blue Morro Bay hoodie that I bought in 1995 was on the seat next to me. I had my knitted hat on and I regretted not bringing gloves. The boat was a catamaran, like an oversized pontoon, but with two tubular hulls to float the boat instead of one. And it had a motor. The sides of the boat were about four feet high and the deck was open to the sky with five rows of...
