Whoopee

Driving through rural Georgia, radio airwaves offered a honky-tonk country music station.  In one song, a smooth-singing, southern accented crooner related the glories of being a county man, something about tractors and strong arms and other virtues I cannot recall.  What I do remember is that when the song was over I wanted to  holler a “yeehaaw” or a “whoopee” to celebrate the juke-jamming, boot-tapping rhythm and mood of the music.  The look my kids gave me as the sound left my mouth revealed that perhaps they had not heard me whoop before.  I told them each to try it.  Their first attempts arose as the pathetic, self- conscious sounds of little city kids trying to satisfy their potentially crazy mom.  But after a few more tries and some encouragement to bring it to the sky we really had a good time hooting a call that filled our car with revelry.  Whoopee. 

Dictionary.com offered an entry for my unusual word today, whoopee.
1.  (interjection) used as a shout of exuberant joy.

Some music can move you:  different kinds of music, different kinds of inspiration.  I’m not certain if we have a local station that plays the hoe down style we found parading through the pines of pastoral Interstate 20, but for that moment it was perfect.  We were bored.  The road was still long ahead of us.  The music was fun and gave us a reason to make some noise in an otherwise muted space.

 

We simply do not encounter many socially appropriate opportunities to let the lungs loose and shout with exuberant joy.  Unless you count sports games, which might be close but much of that shouting is meant to make athletes motivated for improved performance - different from whoopee just because a song made you want to bellow.  Or the sky was so perfectly blue and spread out over the day’s start you wanted to celebrate.  You got the job you wanted.  The person who just ran a red light did not hit you.  A friend woke up from surgery. A neighbor helped jump start your dead car battery.  Or you have the needed number of bread slices for lunch sandwiches.  A place landed safely. 

 

Joy is jumping out of cracks and crevices in life and I propose bringing the energy of the place up with the sounds of our voices celebrating more often, especially if we are in the space of our car or house where no one can wonder what we’re doing.  If in public, perhaps the voice is one of the heart where we are free to shout “whoopee” anytime.

Holler

lips and lungs getting garrulous, hilarious

what if publicly expelled, downright yelled

by some crazy lucky lady who took a swig

of metaphorical caramel latte, high energy

tongue jig of joy lapping karma juke box

sure shooting true she hooted whoopee

hooray for me and a life swill that fills full

now, maybe moments sound celebrating

 

 

 

Empty

My brood has lived an exhilarating, exhausting flurry of hot, school-is-out activity for the last three months.  We wrapped our arms around summer and squeezed every drop we could out of it.  So much that today - the first day of the school year - arrived with very little energy for fanfare.  We attended open house events to find classrooms.  We packed our new book bags with supplies.  But today dawned much like those before, albeit with a wake up in the dark, and presented itself as new but subtle.  In its wake I find myself in a house that is empty. 

Following are the first four entries offered at Dictionary.com to define empty.   
1.  containing nothing; having none of the usual or appropriate contents
2.  vacant, unoccupied
3.  without cargo or load
4.  destitute of people or human activity

The house is unoccupied by humans except me sitting in a foreign quiet surrounded by motionless marks of cohabitants, various belongings not of my choosing.  It feels so long since a morning with just me in it stretched out its hours like hands, strong and soft, as if asking to come along on a slow walk.   

I know from recent conversations and FB postings that there are many levels of empty being felt by folks wishing their kids off to school.  How do we approach empty?  The quiet makes us listen perhaps in ways we have not had time or energy or desire to do in some time. 

Empty can be like a piece of paper on a spiral bound tablet.  The previous page flipped over was full of things we checked off a list – accomplishments that took a day, like clearing a closet of outgrown clothes, or maybe the better part of a year, like completing a 200 hour yoga teacher certification class, or maybe a week, like a trip to the ocean, or maybe eighteen years, like raising a baby to become a college student.  We listed, prioritized and reprioritized, we deleted, we added, we made the page fit as much as we could.  Now on a new page we may have none of the usual contents.  Instead a canvas on which to paint, new work opportunities to embrace, new friends to make, old friends to cherish,  a blank space to sit with empty as long as feels right.

I like the feeling of empty to make room for the “What’s Next.”  But empty is also wonderful as “What Is” right now.  Empty may be the just right thing for this moment which, like all the others, offers itself to us as the present.

Bare

empty of thoughts, noise not

no boo hooing barely knowing

what we dare doing, taking

bites and chewing, spewing

eschewing while brewing, see

solitude moments arrive

strive to swallow, exhale

expound sound of breath

breadth of gone, a new day

Adolescence

I recall the difficulty in understanding and accepting oneself during the years of adolescence.  The constant flow of body changes, navigating which social spaces to occupy, constantly comparing among other kids and feeling oneself coming up short on wardrobe, body appearance, financial status, family rules, whatever – all this could set off a stream of simultaneous self-doubt, sadness, glee and fury.  I feel finding oneself a difficult companion in puberty may be foreshadowing of trying to understand one’s offspring during these developmental years!  Adolescence is on my mind as I traverse it once again as a parent.

Dictionary.com defines the noun adolescence.
1.  the transitional period between puberty and adulthood in human development, extending mainly over the teen years and terminating legally when the age of majority of reached; youth
2.  the process or state of growing to maturity
3.  a period or stage of development, as of a society, preceding maturity

In many ways it feels the same.  I see a child changing into an un-kid, more a grown up looking person than a baby.  Parent and offspring now physically see eye to eye but it is merely a height issue as most other things are not so “eye to eye” at all.  I find myself wanting to go to my own room to be alone with my feelings.  Once there I stew.  Have I done something wrong to make my family member act this way?  Did I say something stupid?  Can’t everybody just try harder to get along?  It is so unfair that my time cannot be to do whatever I want with nobody telling me I have to be responsible!  I just want to yell at everybody.  I need to talk to a friend.  And let’s not forget how I long to avoid coming up short on anything – seriously, I am doing my best. 

Sound flash-back familiar? 

I see that the questions I’m sequestering myself to ask are much like my queries of twenty years ago and likely the wonderings just yesterday for my kid.  Perhaps this is a part of a continuing process or state of growing.  The definition of adolescence offers the word maturity quite a few times.  That may be what I need to ponder while I wish all this growing stuff could just be easier.

 

Adult Essence

taller skin, longer limbs, stretched to the edge of a ledge of emotion

spewing livid language lava, a new land to explore later after cooling

old school moves or new school sneakers knowing what to wear out

whimsical whiff of grown up wonderings wound with kid size dreams

friendship bracelets plait to exchange sometimes becoming too tight

slight tingle tells love sweet expansion of self-worth, daughter dating

dance moving music of maturity’s beguiling promises prior to growth

change an individual guarantee given freely of endocrine secretions

seguing transition time telling tootle-ooo to youth preparing to leave