#inspire – Page 2 – Be in Balance

Two’s Company, Three’s a Tri-umph!

As I supped with two friends this afternoon, the phrase Two’s company, three’s a crowd kept popping in my head like a Jiffy Pop pan being removed and returned to the stovetop over and over. The thought that was paired with it was, “Really? This threesome is rockin’ this high tea joint.”

I kept thinking, three friends together seems like a perfect combo. But doesn’t a combo refer to a twosome? Like the pretzel snack Combos – pretzel and cheese? No it does not! According to Merriam-Webster, a combo is a small musical group or a combination of different things – referring to a number of people or items. But then again, I saw a question on algebra.com that read, “If I have 5 pants and 3 shirts, how many combinations do I have?” Isn’t that pairs, or twosomes? Hm…

I went back to Merriam-Webster, to find the definition of ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd. It is an idiom used when two people want to be alone together and a third person is not welcome. Now I see…it’s a matter of choice, and why the phrase didn’t combine with my siesta.

Sitting with one friend for a chat…I wonder am I talking too much? Did I listen carefully? Will I remember this information? It’s a two-way conversation, pure and simple. The conversation is a teeter-totter, flowing back and forth, back and forth….smooth and easy until one kid thinks it’s funny to sit on the end of the seat landing on the earth holding the other youth, legs dangling, hanging on for dear life. Who wants to endure being a conversational hostage?

My curiosity not satisfied, I kept searching like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues. Quora.com presented me with this tidbit – One of the earliest versions of ‘“two is company, three is a crowd” was recorded in 1678 by John Ray, in his collection English Proverbs English Proverbs, p.471 One’s too few, three too many.’

I totally disagree, Mr. Ray. I find three the perfect combination. Fairytales almost always include the number three – Goldilocks and The Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs, Rumpelstiltskin gives the queen three guesses, etc. The power of the number three – body, mind, soul – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – solid, liquid, gas – Newton’s three laws of motion – even School House Rock sings ‘Three is a magic number!” I could go on and on.

My interest appeased, I confidently sit, knowing this idiom does not depict today’s quaint afternoon trigonal tea. Our three-way conversation flowed like molasses, sweetening our time together. We ladies chatted through the three course meal, like three hens in a hen house. We saw no evil, spoke no evil and heard no evil. Our trinity continued to solidify like the strongest geometric shape, the triangle. Before leaving, we performed Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who would be in charge of our next outing.

Two’s company…. three was a triumph!

In a Blink of an Eye

I am honored to be a woman. I am blessed to have been able to have a child. If you are a woman who has been given these unbelievable gifts, I can imagine you empathize greatly.

In a blink of an eye we were given the news that we were pregnant. In another blink, our children were born. A few more blinks…our babies became toddlers… preschoolers… kindergarteners. We blink back tears of joy as we watch them grow before our very eyes – those ever-blinking eyes. They are like flashing yellow lights on a nonstop highway starting at Birth, USA to Anywhere. As we travel as onlooking passengers, we force our eyelids to stay open, trying to stop the forward motion, the motion of time. Our eyelids are like blinds rolled up all the way, as tears pour like rain hitting windowpanes. Straining not to blink, we hope to savor each day, each joyous moment, but the force of our biological makeup, that which we were blessed to give birth with, pulls the shades closed. A blink of an eye passes by once again and we find ourselves further down the highway.

Our eyes seem to blink faster and faster. Blink… childhood. Blink… adolescence. Blink… young adulthood. This is where my eyes focus now, trying to catch each moment, making it last, trying to elongate the timespan between each blink.

Looking back on these twenty-plus years, pictures run through my mind, like an old picture movie reel, flickering with each blink. I fast forward to today, grateful that the motion picture is still running. The movie has not come to an end. I am trying to relish each glimpse, each grin, every detail, as my child reaches her own age of womanhood.

Today, I am especially thankful to be blessed that things continue to change in the blink of an eye. For those mothers whose eyes can only view the movie reel by dropping their blinds and watching their child through their mind’s motion picture theater, I hold you in my heart. I send you love and peace.

I am Inspired by a Former Student Reaching Out

When I am down in the dumps, really down…I reach farther down, usually down into the bottom of a pint of ice cream, or two. I’ve admitted this recently to some friends….It’s been especially rough weeks recently…unique and unexpected happenings – and these incidents did not bring my usual workplace smile to my face!

Even today, I felt like I was kicked while I was down. Or maybe it was a punch – a sucker punch. I was not expecting it at all and am pretty sure a boxing referee would easily have determined it a TKO – a technical knock out. I didn’t fall, out cold on the floor, like Bluto after being slugged by Popeye…but it was a mental KO for sure… and strike three in three weeks.

**Jodi as Bluto**
(twayneking.blogspot.com)

Anyway, after I spent some time cooling down and dreaming of driving to Cumby’s, our neighborhood convenience store, for a container of some frozen milky deliciousness, a former student popped into my mind.

I don’t need to take this one occurence in my day and carry it into my afternoon-evening-night-morning-next day! I could reach out to someone, just as she does when she needs a lift!

She has reached out to me various times over the past five years. As we know (or have experienced), all manner of events occur in a young person’s life and not all adolecents have direct access to a constant, dependable person. When these times arise, she doesn’t go down the rabbit hole, even if she wants to jump in feet first…

**Student as Bugs…but no!**
(en.wikipedia.org)

Instead, she makes the leap, back through time, back to a place that is familiar and constant. So I look in the mirror and think, really, Jodi? I pick up my phone and ring a friend.

I am inspired but this young lady, spanning the years to seek out the support she needs. Her strength and determination inspires me to look up for help, move past the bumps in the road, learn from tripping over them and leave them behind.

Image result for two triumphant female cartoon characters — **My Inspiration – My Former Student**
(cgmeetup.net)

Moving past Fear

I am. I am moving. I am moving past fear.

Fear – fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of ridicule, all of the fears I have had throughout my life. I am finally read to move past these fears. Although my heart beats like the Little Drummer Boy on a train pulling into a station as the snow falls at times, my will and determination steadies those drumsticks and I persevere onward.

Fear – one of the two fundamental emotions all of us experience. The other you ask? Love. There is only Fear and Love. That’s it! All other emotions are built on the foundation of these two emotions. I see my feelings of not being good enough, not deserving, not achieving the goals I’ve made for myself, and not moving past my past failures (all fear-based) have stopped me in my tracks.

When my brain flies down the rails at locomotion speed, I have screeched to a halt throughout my travels for various reasons. Some of these are external – a long pause by a peer after sharing an idea, advice given to me to keep the status quo, or warnings of low wages for doing something different to name a few. The true reason I have pulled the emergency brake in mid-effort stem from the underlying sentiment of not being worthy.

Unworthiness is based on the feeling of fear. Am I worthy of doing something I enjoy that doesn’t feel like “work”? Am I worthy of helping others if I cannot help myself? Am I worthy of trying something I’ve longed to do my entire life? The answer is YES! I am worthy of all of these things because I no longer come from the place of fear, but of love, love for myself and love for others. I do not have to be “perfect” in human form to help others. I also trust – an emotion based on love. I trust that all will be as it should and if another person is helped in any way through this writing, then even better. What I do know, is it is helping me.

I am moving past fear and replacing it with love – love for myself, love for writing, and the love to inspire or serve others. The JodiReedDame Express is heading down the railway, full speed ahead! Toot! Toot!

Shift-tilt Lens Photography of Train Track

I am a teacher.

I greet teenagers each morning with sleep in their eyes.

With hope, encouraging words and accomplishments, their faces rise.

I listen to questions, concerns and thoughts that cross each mind.

They look ahead, forward, onward and upward to seek and to find.

Watching the adults carefully for moments to ask their whys,

I answer questions after showing compassion and not with sighs.

They seek to find the answers that seem to fit,

Their hopes, dreams, and aspirations that never quit.

I hear and see their perseverance through all their tries,

As they look for acceptance which never dies.

I am a teacher.

I am inspired by my daughter. – She walks across the graduation stage today.

I awoke this morning after sleeping in a hotel bed…after a flight down the east coast…after a 3 hour delay and sitting in the New England airport for five and a half hours…after rushing around at work to ensure my grade 8 team and my students were supported because of my absence today…thinking I’d wake up exhausted. Instead, I lie here in bed, after eating breakfast delivered by my adoring husband and magnificent step-father, with the covers up to my waist, with butterflies of excitement wrestling with the digestive juices in my belly.

My baby is walking across the graduation stage of the University of Central Florida in just a few short hours! Just that thought brings tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat. My heart is pounding with love, admiration and pride of this beautiful young woman!

I want to lose myself in this day, focus on her, her wisdom, all I’ve learned from her throughout her life and especially through these last years as she fought the prejudism inflicted upon her from her senior year of high school. People gave unsolicited advice at such a vulnerable time in her life, leaving her second guessing all the plans she had made. She persevered throught it all with strength and grace. She forged her own path, as I delighted in watching her take step after step into womanhood. She is an amazing young lady!

She is going to help heal the world! Before she does that though, I have today. I have her, my beautiful daughter, the part of me I love so much I can’t even put the feeling into words, my life-long friend, my inspiration to be the best person I can be.

Perhaps I’ll grow up to be like her one day!

I am inspired by my daughter.

I am inspired by a parent.

I am inspired by a parent. As a teacher of elementary and middle school students for 30 years, I have seen the drastic decline in parent support of teachers. Teachers seem to be under a warped magnifying glass by the general public. What does this magnifying glass see? The truth? Or the distorted sense of the word?

This skewed view is seen on the television news and in newspapers, depicting teachers as lazy, over-paid bon-bon eating babysitters that hang out in the teachers’ lounges with summers off to frolick without a care in the world. Most recently this lens is depicted via a town community page of ‘concerned parents’ which is full of misinformed people shouting out their disgust at the schools and the teachers they entrust their very own children to for seven hours each day – longer than many of them spend with their own children on a daily basis. I’m not interested in defending my profession, nor am I an advocate of watching the “news” chosen to be reported on the popular networks, or reading gossip columns that trash talk under the guise of being concerned, but I am interested in sharing how I am inspired by one parent.

One parent, on this day, this 5352nd school day working with a group of the overall 6000+ students that I’ve worked with over the years, stood out in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time. This parent’s voice would have echoed the voices of hundreds of parents years ago, but not today. Today this parent stood strong, stood behind a teacher, stood up for a teacher, supported that teacher’s work, prior work and faith in her future work. This parent voiced her belief in the dedicated intention of this teacher, of her past work with one of her own children and the confidence that all of the positivity seen over and over again portrayed by this teacher occurs each day and will continue. She stood up, as an advocate for a teacher, at a time when teachers seem to have such small voices in our communities today.

Those few words held so much power and remind me of how a small effort of one parent can show teachers that they are supported. Although teachers may often feel defeated in this age of testing scores and staff cuts, I smile at the thought that this magnifying glass was polished. A clear picture of what is truly happening in schools by this teacher and thousands just like her – daily focused time and effort, supporting and teaching each and every student with enthusiasm and dedication. What a gift was given today!

I am inspired by a parent.

I am searching for Freedom.

I am wondering where Freedom lies and how to entice it to become my daily companion. Is Freedom your soulmate? How did you meet? Did you pursue it or did it court you? Who fell in love first?

What is the music that allows you to dance together, each beautiful step an ongoing performance of joy, as you live each day, you and Freedom? I long for this partner, I eagerly search for its music, tilting my head in this direction and that as I walk through each day. Where is my Freedom? My soulmate? What music can I play, sing, write to entrance my life partner out of hiding? I long for my Freedom, my partner, the one who I wake up to each morning with heartfelt love and put to rest each night as my body replenishes itself for a another invigorating day together.

I love Freedom! I can yell it from the mountain tops, yodelling with the best of the those who have Freedom by their side. I fantasize about Freedom …I dream about Freedom….Freedom is so exhilerating, so dreamlike, so all encompassing! What is is about Freedom that the just hearing the word inside my head as I type makes my mouth salivate as my lips curl into a slight smile? Freedom feels sooooo good, just thinking about it.

Freedom, where for art thou? Are you near? I can feel you; sometimes you feel like my partner, my lover, my one and only. Then you are gone, like a mysterious twinkle that blends into the darkened sky. Or are you really so close that I can smell, taste and hear you, but Knowledge quickly consumes you as my days fill up my mind?

Knowledge, what a troublesome fellow he is. He is constantly by my side, holding on so tightly that at times I can hardly breathe. There’s a reason why Knowledge and Nuisance begin with the same sound – they are kissing cousins. I need you to step aside, Knowledge, allow some room for Freedom to spend time with me, to show me the world, to allow me to feel the world.

I know. I know. I know. But I want to feel. I want to feel Freedom.

I am inspired by my student.

Last week one of my students was having difficulty with an academic task. He was working through the stress of the work and his self-confidence in his ability to complete it in the time allotted. As this student’s stress was escalating, becoming apparent to students surrounding him, an angel reached his wing out to comfort the student.

This angel was another student sitting at the same table. In the most gentle, soothing voice and without looking up, he touched the anxious student. With his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he softly spoke to him saying, “You’ve got this. You are the most determined person I know. You can do it. You’ve got this.”

“You’ve got this.” From one adolescent to another, from an eighth grade classroom of angst, anxiety, fear of being different and bullied. From the heart of one student who, like all the others, experiences the ups and downs of this difficult age where minute to minute can be a struggle between independence and dependence, invincibility and vulnerability, triumph and disappointment. An act of solace from one young man who stopped his work to help another in pain. That call to reach out to a peer was deeper than the academic work at hand; it was a powerful yearning to connect, to alleviate the pain in another, to encourage, to motivate, to support.

This angel gracefully removed his wingtips from his peer’s shoulder and silently resumed his own work. The touch of those fingertips was felt on the shoulder, and his words felt in the troubled student’s heart. Anxiety abated, he too silently resumed his task at hand. “You’ve got this” echoed on as I watched them work.

I am inspired by my student.