Your Core Values

Read a post recently from "Vanilla Bean" that really struck me.

When we started having kids, I decided that it was absolute foolishness to raise a kid for 18 years under what set of parenting styles and then expect that **poof** they'd become an adult and all of a sudden be different. Thus, we did an extensive analysis of all our friends and what it was that we found wonderful about them. We quickly realized there was a huge diversity of personalities, talents, and styles. It took longer to figure out that there were however two significant character traits that every single person we admired had ... they were kind to others and they were self-disciplined (i.e., dependable, responsible, stable). And those became the two traits that we used as the 'standard' when it came to making all sorts of decisions about our kids behavior ~ was it kind? was it self-disciplined? Our plumb lines as it were.

All of our kids are ssooo different - their school / work journeys, their personalities, the way they look, what they like ... you'd never even guess any of them were related. But all of them are kind and all of them are self-disciplined -- and as a result they are all have great friends and great lives and are a joy to be around.

This is all a long way to say, I really do think a lot of what you get in life is what you value and what you choose.

Dan & I were discussing this over dinner. What are our "core values?" What do all our friends have in common? And, which are the absolute non-negotiables, that without those traits, I couldn't count people in my inner circle? I think the two traits that VB listed are right on target ... and then I realized I had, like, 4 or 5 that became my litmus test. (at least for A-list friends). Those 2 to start, but also, no drama. Or, as my friend Beth puts it, "Understanding the difference between an inconvenience and a tragedy." Self-knowledge; a realistic sense of your own strengths and weaknesses (neither an egomaniac nor a narcissist, nor false modesty). An awareness of the impact of your actions on others - first I thought this was the same thing as kindness, then I decided it was more nuanced - I have one neighbor who would be kind in the "feed stray cats" sense, but be totally oblivious to the inconvenience or tripping hazard to her neighbors if she leaves a dock cart just behind her boat (on the narrow, dark, rickety dock) so it would be there for her to take stuff ashore for an early morning departure. (Kind of a crappy example, I know)

The exercise got even harder when I started trying to articulate the stuff that we totally take for granted (how does a fish describe water?) Intelligence? Honesty? Tolerance?

"Simplicity is the Greatest Luxury"

I've been reading these insane newspaper stories about people spending all of Thanxgiving Day ... not with friends and family, but waiting in line, in a parking lot, so they can be first to get bargains when stores open on Black Friday. Yeah, camped out overnight for 22 hours, cold sandwiches for dinner (I wonder if they had sliced turkey & cheese?)...just to get a crockpot on sale or a new laptop???

I'm thinking of the many reasons I'm thankful to live on a boat. I used to think the greatest gift was how much the physical closeness has helped Dan & me get even better attuned to each others' moods. Now I think an equally valuable gift is the way the tiny space is a natural deterrent to the desire to accumulate material goods. Can't buy 'em if you have no where to put 'em when you get them home, after all!

*Not* Black Friday

The real highlight of the weekend for me was the day after T-day. No, we didn't get up at 4 AM to go shopping for bargains. We met a woman (Heather) for lunch who I'd met online through her blog. She had grown up just 10 minutes away from Karen & Howard's house, so when I'd posted that I was going to be in Philly for the holiday, she suggested a meeting.

She's the one who inspired me to write Life Afloat, long before she even met me (or rather e-met me); I'd been following her story for years. What attracted me is that writes about an ordinary life, being a grad student, looking for a boyfriend and worrying about her grades, but it didn't make for banal reading about on the level of "today I walked the dog and went to the mall." She's an excellent writer, but mostly what made her blog work was that she doesn't just record what happened, she's reflective and humorous about her events. So I figured if she could make an ordinary life into interesting reading, surely I could make our eccentric life on a boat interesting ... and the newspaper bought the idea instantly.

Meeting her in person was wild! Because her blog is so personal, and mine so public, I knew more about her than she did of me, so there was an asymmetry. But she was as articulate and thoughtful in person as she was on paper, so we quickly got into some great conversational topics and began to even out the balance of knowing each other. (Some of those topics are food for thought for future posts for me!)

After the meeting, she went on to visit some relatives and Dan & I to check out an Indian grocery store that we'd heard about. Wow! Basmati rice in 10- or 20-lb bags, an entire aisle devoted to chutneys, odd spiny green vegetables I'd never seen before and had no idea what to do with, rows (!) of curry blends and spices. We restrained ourselves since we knew we wouldn't have time to use much before leaving for Aruba at the beginning of January, but still walked out with 5 bags of exotic ingredients and plans to make ourselves a curry feast tomorrow. So okay, we *did* go shopping on Black Friday ;)

T-day

T-day dinner was tasty, and the guests were a crazy combination that would make a great cast for a short story or play. The diversity could have made the result a comedy or a tragedy. We had our hosts Karen and Howard and their 2 adult sons; Karen's cousin & husband; cousin's elderly father and his medical aide, a soft-spoken woman from Ghana; Howard's brother's ex and her openly gay daughter (the brother himself was spending the day with Mom); and us. Somehow we managed to keep the conversation away from religion, politics, or sports, and covered instead such wide-ranging topics as racehorse breeding, cooking in bulk, one of the boys' road trip to Denver, advertising, and theater.

Thanksgiving Memories

Blog challenge from Heather: post some T-day memories, good, bad, or whatever.

My best memory is from 1983, 27 years ago, Dan proposed on the Weds night before T-day. Our upstairs neighbor came by about a half hour later, excited to tell us that she'd (finally!) landed the job she'd been hoping for; I'm afraid our news eclipsed hers, but there was a lot of happiness on Norwood Ave that day! That was also the year we got hepatitis from the cranberry sauce and couldn't drink alcohol for 6 weeks, including Xmas, New Year's Eve, our WEDDING!

My worst memory is 1994, my kid brother had been found dead just days before. Our family cancelled Thanksgiving celebration that year.

Last year, we spent the holiday with about 150 of our closest friends, a cruisers potluck in Vero Beach, Florida. It was sunny and hot, laden tables and a random assemblage of boaters on their way south, live music and conversation, as those who had done the trip before gave advice to the newbies (of which we were 2).

This year, we're at the home of my college roommate & her family. Its a bit like living in a glossy magazine, setting the table with the good china and silver; sitting in the kitchen giggling and peeling chestnuts; looking at photos from our college days.

Communing With Our Possessions

(Okay, so I failed at NaBloPoMo ... here's an update anyway)

We're just north of Philly, at the home of my college roommate and her family. They're the "friends who are like family" even though we have biological family in the Washington DC area. About 12 years ago they bought this house, and almost immediately made plans to finish the basement. So Dan made a deal - he'd do the labor, and in return, one area whose ceiling was too low to be made into living space, would be our storage room for the things we didn't want to take with us on the boat. Some special pieces of furniture, grandma's quilt, my grandparents' wedding album. Things we'd want if we moved back ashore; things we acquired when we cleaned out my Dad's house after he died.

Now that I no longer have an office and a professional life, those things also needed to go into storage, certificates and textbooks and the art that cheered me every day at the desk. So we had to get rid of some stuff in our already-full storage to make room. We revisited what we owned and discovered, after 8 years of living on a boat, a large number of things that we discovered we no longer need. Some are parted with with sadness, like our cross-country skis that age and injury has made unlikely we'll be able to use again. Some are things that have been left behind as time (and technology) marches on, like old VHS videotaped movies. Some just has passed its expiration date, like old tax records. There's some "what was I thinking?" stuff, and some that I looked at wistfully and remembered an earlier life. We're doing a great deal of reevaluating and assessing our relationship with things...and a great deal of carrying stuff upstairs to be thrown away or donated. More and more I'm understanding the simple efficiency of this quote from designer William Morris:"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

eBooks!!

Bought Dan a Nook (e-book-reader from Barnes & Noble) on Monday. Makes so much sense, on a boat, to store your novels digitally. All the books we want, take up no space at all. And, they're the books WE want to read, not whatever moldy random leftovers are on the marina bookswap shelves. So, I haven't seen his face for 3 days, he's had his nose in a Nook. Went back to B&N today and bought one for me! You can buy new books for about 1/2 the price of a hardcover ... or ... there are loads of free books online. Most of these are classics, things out of copyright - so much the better. My high school English teacher would be so proud of me <*wink*> but at the same time, there's a reason these old books survived, and I'm looking forward to reading them all.

We'll still keep our reference books in hardcopy. Sometimes you want them when the power's out, or take them out to the engine room in the dirt and water. But novels? eBook, we're there!