It’s a good thing.
My mother used to use the phrase, “It’s a good thing…” a lot. She didn’t use it as Martha Stewart does, as a value judgment on some clever idea or useful project. To my mama it was usually a veiled warning or sarcastic letting-me-off-the-hook statement: “It’s a good thing I wasn’t planning on using [insert whatever food, toiletries, etc., that I'd just used up].” or “It’s a good thing your mother loves you or I’d [insert some form of mayhem or dire punishment I narrowly escaped].
Mama often did refer to herself as my mother in the third person that way. I think she drew a distinction between herself as a person and herself as a parent. Perhaps it is in rebellion against her that I refuse to do that. I am myself with my children as much as with anyone, which is to say, completely, absolutely. My offspring get no special dispensations by virtue of sharing my DNA.
But I digress…. The point I intended to make there is that I learned from my mother that handy little family meme, “It’s a good thing….” Whereas she used it to make little digs at me in the guise of consolation, I tend to find it coming to mind more as self-consolation, usually with an ironic or sarcastic twist.
Very rarely I will speak aloud something to the effect that it’s a good thing I’m a generally non-violent or unvengeful person, when I get a little miffed at someone in the family and find myself feeling some destructive urge. Telling the guys I’d like to bang their heads together keeps me from having to do it.
More often, I find myself thinking to myself that it is a good thing I have one virtue or another: the courage to plow through whatever thing might have otherwise defeated me, the perception to see through a lie that might have otherwise deceived me, or the ego strength and self-esteem to cope with whatever it is I find myself coping with at the time, to name a few examples.
Life has been throwing a lot of those good things at me lately. Earlier today one came to me as I worked to get my breathing back to normal following the harrowing recall of a traumatic time a decade ago, which had been precipitated by Greyfox’s narcissitic personality disorder. (He blogged about it HERE, and I wrote in July about our decision to do this therapy thing THERE.) I said silently to myself, “It’s a good thing I know how to let things go.”
Indeed, I am glad that I have that skill, of letting myself remember past pain without denying it or repressing the memories, feeling it and then letting it go. It’s hard enough living with this crippled body, without complicating everything with the mind-crippling effects of indulging in denial or clinging to resentments.
It is also a good thing I tend to respond swiftly to insults and affronts, blow off steam and let that shit go. While I’m counting such blessings, I might as well add that it is a doubly good thing that my son Doug learned to deal with the bumps in his road that way instead of bottling them up, letting them ferment until they grow out of proportion and explode out of control. In my case, I was about thirty years old before I learned that skill in therapy. Doug, the child of my old age, got it as he grew up, without having first to unlearn the repression my mother taught me.
I sorta think it’s a good thing I noticed myself thinking “It’s a good thing…” and pursued the thought. It was that word, “good” that caught my attention. If you’ve followed my blogs much, you may recall that I’m engaged in transcending dualistic moralism. I question myself every time I catch myself using absolute dualistic terms such as “good” and “bad.”
After some thought, I have decided there’s nothing wrong with [OOooogah!! dualism alert: there's another of those words, half of the pair right/wrong.] that little family meme; it’s a good thing. I’d probably be trying to root it out of my lexicon if it came accompanied by, “It’s a bad thing…”, but the closest thing I can find in my mind to such a conversity is the implied mayhem, loss or misfortune that might result if such “good things” were not how things are.
It’s a good thing I can laugh at myself, isn’t it?
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It’s a seasonal thing. Hard-shelled, long-keeping winter squash show up in the stores a week or so before the supermarkets get their first shipment of pumpkins. I willingly eat summer squash. I even grow zucchini because it is so rewarding, with high yields and enormous fruits in our climate. But the flavor and texture of summer squash is bland and uninteresting compared to the winter varieties. My consumption of the sweet creamy winter squashes goes beyond willing into eager and avid. Yum! 
That first evening when I bought the five different colorful varieties, the clerk had asked me if they were for display, and I assured her that they were primarily just good food. That does not preclude their making an attractive display. When Greyfox and I got home yesterday afternoon, I moved the fruit basket and rearranged the rock collection on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and “displayed” the squash simply because there was no other place to put them. This place has been rather crowded and cluttered ever since we started moving in, and it has taken a quantum clutter jump now that Greyfox and his stuff are back.
If you’re wondering about the rainbow and sunset shots, they came about in this way: yesterday I’d been changing sheets on my bed (against the windows in the background of the “living room” shot above) and went out to the car to bring in Greyfox’s favorite pillow. As soon as I saw the light, I came back and unplugged the little Kodak from where it was still attached to the computer from the last time we saved its pics.
Next, I headed toward the front of the house to get the light on the treetops across the road (#4 above and the shot at left here). It was not until I had cleared the edge of the grove of trees across the road in front of our house that I saw the rainbow and took that shot just above this one and below the one of Doug in Couch Potato Heaven.
I turned back down the road then, headed for my path through the grove of trees. I wanted to get out on the muskeg beyond those trees for an unobstructed view of the rainbow (second shot from top, above). By that time, I’d had to wipe rainwater from the lens a couple of times, my suede boots were soaked, and I’d had a vagrant thought that it might have been wise to put on a jacket. It was not until I got past the trees and out onto the muskeg that I noticed the second rainbow outside the more distinct inner bow. It’s faintly visible in the shot at left that I took from the road before taking the path through the trees, but didn’t really show up until I’d altered the brightness and contrast of the pic. The line of gold on the horizon is the setting sun lighting up the trees beyond the muskeg. It’s one of the perennial attractive features of sunsets this time of year here.
It was really a good thing I didn’t pause to put on a jacket last night. By the time I turned back toward the house the sky had gone from golden through orange to a deepening coral pink. I brought the camera back in, hung my suede boots on the boot dryer behind the wood stove, put on dry shoes and went back out to fulfill my original mission of getting Greyfox’s pillow from my car. By then, the sun was gone and the sky had gone to a uniform dark blue-gray.
When the squash was almost done, I opened a can of refried beans and popped them in the microwave as soon as the squash came out, along with some butter to melt for the popcorn. I always pop my corn in olive oil, for the essential fatty acids which help us digest and utilize the butterfat that gives us healthy cholesterol to keep our brains and nervous systems working. Low-fat diets and fat-free carbohydrate laden foods are making this country’s people fat and stupid. Wise up, folks. It is carbos, not dietary fats, that are converted to body fat.
). he put it in his pocket and hung onto the box with the charger and instruction book for dear life. I dropped him off at his place and came home.
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