Harbor Pilots

Hello. Hello. From northwestern Pennsylvania, just a hop and a skip from Lake Erie in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania. I am your harbor pilot, and I'm here on Caregiver Thursday under the name Speak Wonder, to speak to you about wonderful things truly in the midst, in the muck and mire, in the joys and the low times of being caregivers. We are a unique tribe and we need each other for validation, for emotional support, for inspiration, for conversation. I found a lovely poem I want to share with you today.

Before I read it, I want to kind of remind all of us about caregiving in realm that I'm in, which of course, I understand not everybody is on this end of the age spectrum, but I'm caregiving. My mom, who's going to be 94 years old next month, her name is June, and she has. I don't know how measurable this is, but our family's been told that mom has mild dementia, so. So we see little bits here and there of decline, but then she's back full steam ahead. Matter of fact, last weekend I sat with mom and we were working a crossword puzzle, which is a favorite thing that we like to do together, and she was getting all the answers.

Now, there are times in the recent past where mom has fallen asleep while we're working crossword or simply is disengaged. But on this day, and in this moment of magic, she was connected and she was getting the answers and reminding me how to spell them and pretty much running the game. So morning, Jocelyn and Jules Tremaine Pickering. Thank you all for joining. And I'm sorry if I'm not saying your name correctly. Love that you're part of the conversation. If you could tell me where you're chiming in from.

I know a lot of us are Midwest. I'm in the down east, back East. The poem or the poet I'm featuring is from Oregon. In fact, this writer is a poet laureate of the state of Oregon. So, yeah, if you could let me know where you're from. It's just kind of neat for all of us to see what parts of the map where we shine. So again with the elderly. One of the things about dementia and Alzheimer's is that it takes longer to process information and stimuli than it used to. For instance, when someone in the throes of Alzheimer's receives a hug, by the time the feeling, the texture of the embrace reaches them, the person's released the embrace.

So I learned at a workshop for the aging and for caregivers of the aging that when we embrace, if we're, you know, if, if we are the hugging kind, not all families are. I feel blessed that mine is. But when we reach for an embrace, we should hold it a little bit longer than we're used to because it takes our loved one several seconds longer to experience the hug. And that's a win win. I get to hold her for longer. She gets to process what she's experiencing and be warmed and nurtured by it. By the same token, on the other end of the age spectrum, the little ones, as they're learning languages in my languages and dialect and learning to read, my grandchildren know the texture of my voice.

And again, repetition comes into play. Think about the ABCs. Children learn the Alphabet through repetition. Think about Julie Andrews in her role in Sound of Music as Maria teaching the von Trapp children do re, mi. And it took a lot of repetition, a lot of combinations of those syllables to make music, repetition being the key. Jocelyn from Las Vegas. Yes. Good morning from. Oh, thank you. Mel from New York, Massachusetts. Rick, Hello. I love that I get to see my grandchildren a little bit later on today.

We're going to have lunch and then go to a playground. Finally, in northwest Pennsylvania, in the little town of Erie, we are having a day that's going to reach towards 60 degrees and that's playground weather. And we're getting closer. We're not quite into flip flops. We're still in light jackets. However, spring seems to be emerging with a little more of a convincing flow to it. We had snow two days ago and I've heard it's in the forecast, so we'll just take what we can get. I think the months of March and April are kind of a teaser weather wise, Minnesota.

Hi, Jules. Yes. So my mom, June needs repetition in order to process things. My grandkids, your kids and grandkids and the people you love. Whatever age, we often need repetition for nurture, to learn and to experience. So as I think about this beautiful poem by Aneese Moigani, I'm going to read it. I'm going to let you process it for a few seconds and I'm going to repeat it's that lovely. And you're gonna love it. In the Harbor Pilots template, I am your harbor pilot coming alongside you and helping you make safe passage to the harbor through the gift of words.

Anees Moigani was featured on the radio recently, Poet laureate of Oregon, as I said. And he read his own poem and it's titled Things I Love, Things I Love by Anise Moyjani the blues a night sky makes, the bowls it holds for the stars to shine inside of the sound of a fire moving its tongue against the wood, riding bicycles with friends, learning of the lives of others, getting to know our best and worst birthdays. I love a holy sunset which feels as if the sky is praying to me, to us, asking us to look at it and know the fierce colors which lay in its clouds.

And even the sky needs but the right hour, the right person looking at it, knowing what beauty it holds just inside, waiting to pour forth. I love the crows and mass they're crossing inside that prayer, bunched together in their loudness at day's end, their flight looking like the sky breaking apart to spread itself further. I love spreading further in order to come closer, to see what we might arrive at or while wandering with intent. I love not making plans and making plans, scheming schemes, building the idea of an ark like it was a boat becoming bigger upon being greeted by the water it asks to touch it.

I love how the ocean wants to hold us but doesn't know how, love that even the ocean does not know things, that even the ocean struggles to move against its nature and in this way maybe becomes more I love colors, how they lay on us and hold us when they make an object but a plane of their shade, the way they lay solid and smooth and spill and wash pale are so deep. I love colors so much. How do I love a thing so much that has no form, nothing to touch simply is though is this not, I suppose, what all love is?

Even an object holding our love is but a placeholder so that we can actually try to touch the intangible in our palms, hold the body, how the body too is like this. I love writing love poems more so the living of them, love writing in ink a scrap of a note even as my desk becomes flooded by scraps of notes, whether they say fuzzy rhythmic vocals or a sunflower taught me a poem or the emptiness of missing or simple measurements of my sleeves. I love when the sun lands on one spot, love eating fruit off a bush on a street or pulled from a tree or fallen from a branch like a gift, hugging friends goodbye even though I hate goodbyes when full houses become empty but for me, when an empty house becomes learning something new, the thought of sewing a quilt with a friend and their mother taking February to begin piano lessons.

The piano. How I love the piano. I love when someone plays the piano when you didn't know they could play the piano, when they don't feel they know how to play the piano A but there they are in the soft quiet that kisses the two of you playing it and my heart and this soft quiet is going from bud to bloom to petals on a floor in one breath. I love that people want to share things with each other, even when sometimes we do not know how to do this. I love this. Is this not too what love itself is you sharing, you and me sharing, me and us sharing and being shared with each other back and forth for whatever length always may be.

You've seen it on the shampoo bottle. Lather, rinse, repeat. Well, that was her first lather. Now we're going to rinse in silence. And this is for boaten on live to actually have silence because our immediate thought is that something technically went wrong. We're going to hold a space for several seconds of silence so the poem can process over your beautiful soul. Lather, rinse, repeat. I'm going to read the poem again, perhaps a tad more slowly. The fact that I've heard the author read his own poetry gives me a little license to put emphasis in the same places he does.

He reads it with that enthusiasm, as he should Things I Love by Anise Moijani the Blues a night sky makes the bowls it holds for the stars to shine inside of the sound of a fire moving its tongue against the wood, riding bicycles with friends, learning of the lives of others, getting to know our best and worst birthdays. I love a holy sunset which feels as if the sky is praying to me, to us, asking us to look at it and know the fierce colors which lay in its clouds. And even the sky needs but the right hour and the right person looking at it, knowing what beauty it holds just inside, waiting to pour forth.

I love the crows on mass, their crossing inside that prayer bunched together in their loudness at day's end, their flight looking like the sky breaking apart to spread itself further. I love a spreading further in order to come closer, to see what we might arrive at while wandering with intent. I love not making plans and making plans, scheming schemes, building the idea of an ark like it was a boat becoming bigger upon being greeted by the water it asks to touch it. I love how the ocean wants to hold us but doesn't know how, love that even the ocean does not know things, that even the ocean struggles to move against its nature and in this way maybe becomes more I love colors, how they lay on us and hold us when they make an object but a plane of their shade, the way they lay solid and smooth and spill and wash pale are so deep.

I love colors so much. How do I love a thing so much that has no form, nothing to touch? Simply is though, is this not, I suppose, what all love is? Even an object holding our love is but a placeholder so that we can actually try to touch the intangible in our palms. How the body too is like this. I love writing poems, more so the living of them. Love writing in ink a scrap of a note even as my desk becomes flooded by scraps of notes, whether they say fuzzy rhythmic vocals or a sunflower taught me a poem, or the emptiness of missing or simple measurements of my sleeves.

I love when the sun lands on one spot, love eating fruit off a bush on a street or pulled from a tree or or fallen from a branch like a gift, hugging friends goodbye, even though I hate goodbyes when full houses become empty. But for me, when an empty house becomes full, learning something new. The thought of sewing a quilt with a friend and their mother taking February to begin piano lessons. The piano. How I love the piano. I love when someone plays the piano, when you didn't know they could play the piano, when they don't feel they know how to play the piano, but there they are in the soft quiet that kisses the two of you playing it and my heart and this soft quiet is going from bud to bloom to petals on a floor in one breath.

I love that people want to share things with each other, even when sometimes we do not know how to do this. I love this. Is this not too what love itself is you sharing, you and me sharing me and us sharing and being shared with each other back and forth for whatever length always may be. Thank you, Poet Laureate of Oregon, Anise Moijani, for the poem Things I Love. One of the lines that I have as a takeaway is the one about doing something with intention, with intent. I might pull that out and put it in the community feed.

Here it is arriving at we might arriving where we might arrive while wandering with intent. Let's do that today. Let's be pilgrims on a pilgrimage, wandering through this broken, unsteady road called caregiving, which has seams of healing and surprising turns and lovely nurturing highways so that we might get through it all together. Wandering with intent. Let's do that today. Thank you for the intention of your joining my live I'm speak wonder. I come on every Thursday with a chat about being harbor pilots and helping each other make it safely into port.

I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you for chiming in today. And you can always catch me on the replay. Lather, rinse, repeat. Wander with intent and when you hug someone, hang on a little bit longer. Bye for now.