This time as I was thinking about the end of August, what I think of still as the end of summer after my 18 years as a teacher. I was struck by a dichotomy in my own thinking: I hate the calendar, but I love the changing of seasons. Why do I resist one and embrace the other? They both are reminders of the same thing: life keeps moving on.

The calendar has its literal boxes compartmentalizing one day of the month under a column labeled with the days of the week. Numbered 1-30 or 1-31 or 1-28 or every 4 years, 1-29. After we’ve counted up to the appropriate number of days for the month (determined by our knuckles - ha ha), then we flip the page and start counting again. Repeat twelve times, then start over. Some of those boxes we give titles to - Christmas, Labor Day, Thanksgiving. *Note: I’m just referring to the calendars of the United States here.

Nature certainly has its rhythms, too. Sunrise/sunset. Full moon/new moon. Equinox/solstice. Spring/summer/fall/winter. But can we put a title on the exact date the crocus will push through the snow? When will they open their purple and white petals? Do we know the day when the tomato will ripen on the vine to the perfect sweetness? When will the trees begin to dump their chlorophyll and their leaves show their true colors? Each flower, each fruit, each tree does these things at different times than the next. There is something about the way that nature marks time that leaves room for variety, nuance, and wonder. Yes, the daffodils will bloom in the spring and the watermelons will ripen in late summer, but the exact timing is not predictable.

Maybe my preference for natural cycles vs the calendrical marking of time has to do with what feels more authentic. As I’m coming to know myself better without the outside pressures of concepts like “should” and “normal”, I am learning that I feel most at home in my body when I allow things to flow; when I accept what is.

I can count the 8 days until Labor Day and know that it always occurs on the first Monday of September. I can squeal with joy when I see the first bit of green push its way up from the soil. I can savor the sweet and tart juice of the apple after the first frosty night. I can joyfully greet the first hummingbird after winter and rush to put out my feeder.

One brings arbitrary, rigid certainty. One brings wonder, surprise, and delight.

One feels like a cage. One feels like freedom.

One thing that has helped me learn to look forward to my runs is the switch from road running to trail running. I always worried about traffic and cars and getting hit. Now I just have to worry about the roots and rocks when I don’t pick my feet up high enough. I’ll take that over a car any day!

Out on the trail I can really lose myself in the environment, focusing on where to put my feet and how fast I need to go to keep my heart rate down. It’s meditative.

Today was especially magical. A low-pressure system moved in overnight bringing low hanging clouds, a little drizzle, and some thunder too. Sections of the trail that went through older stands of trees were as dark as dusk.

I ran with my hands out to my side, collecting the water on the ferns and then washing my face with it. I spotted huggable-sized trees and wrapped my arms around their trunks. I patted the mighty cedar trunks and thanked them for their protection. Do people see me being weird (I prefer whimsical)? Yep! I get caught all the time. I like to think that I’ll never seen them again or that they’re envious and they’ll give it a try next time they think they’re alone.

Maybe it’s not running that I love, but the time spent in the forest. Running gives me the excuse to spend hours each week in the woods. I don’t know. I’ll have plenty of time to ponder on my next long run.

Quickly I spotted them, a squirrel. I watched them dart out a limb, stop to quickly assess, then leap across to a limb from another tree. To my delight, they were working their way toward the house where I could see more clearly.

In less than a minute they were on the vine maple closest to the house. They would scurry out as far as they dared, the limb dipping low and making the way steeper and steeper for the squirrel. Then they would stop, lift the maple leaf, grab the helicopter seed pod and nibble, nibble, nibble. They would grab one or two from a limb, then scramble across to another limb.

At one point, they found themselves back on an alder limb, much sturdier than the vine maple. Again, they bravely scrambled out the limb toward the yummy seeds, this time the seeds were in a neat little corncob-like catkin. Once finished though, there was no other tree to jump to. They had hit a dead end. They stopped now, for the first time since I had started watching, and sat up, looking this way and that for options. Then instead of moving on to the next new thing, they turned and headed back up the limb to the trunk.

I have no idea how long I stood and watched this squirrel. I do know that it was long enough that when they eventually ran deep enough into obscurity of the forest, I knew was going to be late to work.

I like clouds. I like the interest, the contrast and the drama.

Maybe it’s a wispy cirrus stretched across the blue canvas.

Or a puffy cumulus stacking upon itself higher and higher above the mountains on a hot summer day.

Perhaps it’s a cotton ball sky with cute little poofs of cloud.

Clouds bring the dynamic layers to a sunset, the clouds reflecting yellows, oranges, purples, and reds.

Or a sunrise with it’s cooler varieties of color.

Blue skies are boring. I’m looking at one right now, and I’m asking for some clouds. Pretty please?

PCs: Me :)

I have a goal to find more time to be creative. I’m honestly falling flat on my face in this goal, not just catching my toe on the hurdle, but smashing right into it and knocking the whole thing clean over!

I have been wondering if the problem is in my definition of “creative”. I brought this up to my son. Brett is an ultra-marathoner and spends hours out on the trail. He shared that he considers running as creative.

Honestly, this blew my mind.

So, what does it mean to be creative?

Question: I’m craving pasta salad. I open my recipe book, boil the pasta, chop the red onion, steam some broccoli and zucchini, add some cherry tomatoes and olives, and mix ingredients to make a dressing. Put it all in a bowl and voila, I have created a pasta salad.

Uh oh, I followed a recipe. Is it no longer creative?

What if I skip the recipe and just wing it? Now is it creative?

Question: I am currently writing. I press locations on my phone screen with certain markings that represent sounds that when put together in certain patterns conveys meaning to others. I’m just using patterns that people already understand and someone else created.

What if I make up a new word? Graspiarty. Now is it creative?

Am I overthinking this? Indubitably so!

I’m guilty of taking the creativity out of being creative by limiting my definition of “to create” as

something unique

something new

something colorful

something others will want to see

something lasting

something meaningful

and on and on.

Maybe it’s a simple as this - when my mind is active, I’m being creative.

I leave you with no answers, just questions.

Like maybe, “has Tami lost her mind?”

My driveway looks like fall, except for the fact that the leaves haven’t changed color.

Trees are cool!

One of my plants I had to say good-bye to was a beautiful purple clematis that had been growing up a trellis on the side of our mobile for many years. She bloomed faithfully every year and often throughout the summer. She was a treasure. She was also on the corner of the house on my way to the front door, so I got to talk to her daily. The old house was demolished, so there was no hope for her.

Imagine my surprise this spring when, right on the edge of the remaining concrete slab buried under a lot of rock, up she popped. I decided that if she had that much will to live, I’d give her a chance. She needed a new location though and something to climb. I scraped away several layers of rock, and carefully dug around where I thought her roots would be. Her roots naturally divided into 3 separate plants. Great, I thought, now she’s got triple the chances of survival.

I’ve watered her far less faithfully than she deserves, and yet today, here she is, proving herself once again and showing off in all her purple loveliness.

The hike in to the lakes was a strenuous one, but one I anticipated because I’ve dayhiked the trail twice before…..except for the section down to the lake. This was a surprise, and not the fun kind! For approximately a ½ mile, we stepped off of steep rocks and roots, some of which my legs wouldn’t reach unless I sat on my butt and scooched to the edge so I could drop down. Then, we had to find our way down a short boulder field with hunks of granite taller than me that steeply sloped into the log-filled outlet stream. With my legs already exhausted by 5 miles of steep up and a ½ mile of ladder climbing down with the extra weight of a backpack, I felt like I wasn’t going to make the last 100 yards to our campsite. I pulled myself up onto the last big boulder, and stood at the top, legs shaking like a leaf. I wanted to cry. Brett stood beside me, waiting for me to go and I said, “I’m scared”.

I’ve been in similar situations before having grown up backpacking nearly every summer with as much off-trail adventuring as possible. I don’t think I was ever brave enough, though, to admit when I was scared.

This is what I’m learning: expressing my feelings takes some of the weight of them away. Telling someone that I’m sad makes me feel less sad. Telling my family that I’m anxious about making our flight makes me feel less anxious. Telling Brett that I was scared made me feel less scared. I still have the same feelings, but they aren’t looming over me, pushing me down. They just are a real part of me in the current moment.

My legs still shook as I scooted down the whole 8 feet of rock on my butt, and as I held my breath walking over the 3 logs to cross the creek. It was still scary, but admitting it out loud thawed my frozen state, and helped me see that this task before me could be done. I also got to celebrate myself for doing something that scared me.

I miss my brother. He should be here. He would be 68 this year. In this World Cup year, I want to tell him that Germany got eliminated in the first knock-out round, I want to tell him that the USMNT made it through and are looking pretty good, I want to laugh with him about the hilarious memes making their way around the internet. He would have so many opinions, and my heart yearns to hear them.

I have a house now where I can put up a feeder where my cat can’t get to the birds.

I waited for that first bird so impatiently. Now I get to talk to them whenever I want.

Currently there are 3 who visit daily. Possibly more, but I recognize 3. They don’t like to share. They each take turns at chasing and scolding the other hummingbirds away, even though there are 4 perches and plenty of food.

I remind them to stop being so mean. I remind them to share.

They don’t listen.

I’m going to combine my September and October theme word posts into one. I didn’t really connect with September anyway. I do love October, so I am excited to share. In late August, I left like I had run out of “scopic” words to fit my theme for the year. I decided that I should make up a type of scope that would fit my needs.

September

For September I felt like I needed to focus on identifying my emotions. I find that busy-ness clouds my ability to be in touch with what I’m feeling and be able to identify my emotions. I also know that when I’m feeling uncomfortable emotions, busy-ness is how I tend to cope and “escape” those emotions. It’s a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” type situation. Either way, I had been feeling pretty numb in August and felt that I needed to focus on my emotions. Thus the invention of the emoto-scope.

I spent time each morning as part of my journaling identifying how I was feeling. I also used an app called “How We Feel” to dig into it. I understand, intellectually, that I need to learn to listen to the prompts of my emotions, but decades of shutting them is very hard unlearn.

Theme: Emoto-scope

Mantra: Its time to open the doors and peer into yourself. How are you feeling? Can you name it? Can you let yourself feel it? Can you let it be?

Song: “Way of the World” by Noah Cyrus & Ella Langley

October

With my idea that I can invent a scope for my monthly focus, I looked forward to October’s theme. I had read a quote by Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live: You can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” I really loved this perspective, this lens on how to see the world. I invented the magi-scope and have spent my month finding the magic in every day. I’ve seen it in people; I’ve seen it in nature. I’ve seen it in the expansive; I’ve seen it in the minutia. The magic is everywhere, even in the middle of what feels like devastation. This way of viewing things feels more authentic to me than a gratitude practice or trying to find a silver-lining. I am able to accept the harsh realities of life while at the same time finding magic in the everyday.

Theme: Magi-scope

Mantra: Craft your delight with magic. Protect it like a guttering candle. Rise for the moon, and for you.

Song: “Do You Believe in Magic” by Bien

I will finish out my year of “Scopic” monthly mantras, but I want to get back to writing more from my heart and my current thoughts in 2026. So, I’m curious, what do you want to read about? What topics interest you and would entice you to read? I’d love to hear from you!

I am posting it here, raw and unedited (despite my itch to “fix it up”). It’s interesting to me to read it after I have now experienced more loss and different types of losses. The image of the small, frail body lying lifeless in bed isn’t imaginary anymore, as that is my last memory of my dad. In some ways I read this and tell that former self, “oh honey, you have no idea what’s coming”. In some ways I read this and think, “all of this loss has changed me, profoundly”.

Ultimately, I just wanted to share my thoughts from when my Grandma died a simultaneously long and short 20 years ago.

I always said I would write her story. At times I even tried short interviews trying to see her past through her own eyes. I never dreamed her passing would be so painful. She was 98 after all, how long could we expect her to live. Each visit found her more hunched over, more tired, and less lucid. She told me she hunched so much because of the walker she had to use - I knew it was from osteoporosis and that she had shrunk inches in her old age. How can something so expected still send that knife-edged shock straight through your heart? I should have been preparing myself. Even two years earlier I raced down to see her because she had taken a turn for the worse. But, she wasn’t ready to go then. She gave us several more scares, falling in her bathroom, not remembering my aunt who called or visited every day. So with at least two years’ warning, I still wasn’t prepared. Knowing that on Monday she had gone into a comatose state - I still wasn’t prepared. When Mom called Friday, I knew why she was calling, I steeled myself. Despite all of that prep time, when I heard the words “Your grandmother died about 2:30 this morning” I fell apart. I cried. I cried and cried. My heart dropped down to my feet and I was devastated. Come on! Devastated? Yep. Devastated. Somehow, until the final breath is taken, the final grief cannot take place. You cannot prepare yourself for that profound loss. Even though you know it’s coming, the loss doesn’t actually occur until that final breath. It isn’t as though her passing was tragic. Her life was a full one - 98 years full, 4 children full, 15 grandchildren full, 28 great-grandchildren full, 2 great-great-grandchildren full. Amazing! She outlived Grandpa by 13 years, something she had no desire to do after his passing. She lost a son, cut down by cancer in the prime of his life leaving behind two small children. She lost a grown grandchild, missing for over a year, at last found dead off the side of the road. No, her death was not tragic by any means. Yet, can any death not be tragic? For some it comes as a relief from intolerable pain. Relief? Yes, I know that is what she wanted at the end of her 98 years. Relief doesn’t remedy the tragedy. When I thought of writing, tears came readily. Now that I am writing, I am more in control. The things that get me going are the small things. Like when the image of her frail, little body huddled in her bed, lifeless pops into my mind. Especially when it comes uninvited.