Abe Lincoln and the middle biscuit

Abe Lincoln and the middle biscuit

by Kelly T. Haysley

February 12, 2015

The U.S. calendar says it is February 12 - Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. He is a former President who led our country with wisdom and foresight, through one of the darkest periods in our history. Obviously February 12 is a day on which great men are born. It is also my father’s birthday. Had he not left this Earth two years ago, my dad would be 83 years old today. We all miss his wisdom, patience and kindness, not to mention his ability to fix or build anything. I could go on and on about my father. He was too many good things to fit onto one page.

This evening as we were preparing dinner, I purposefully placed biscuits on a baking pan side-by-side so they would touch as they bake. When you pull apart the finished biscuits, it leaves soft, chewy sides rather than golden, crispy edges. My dad always preferred those with the soft edges. We would often make sure to save him the middle biscuit. At times it was something to tease him about.

I shared this little factoid with my husband, and he noted it was something, that after 23 years, he had never heard about my dad. We all know that it is often these sudden memories which  make us miss someone. But in a fun way, they also lead to more reminiscing about the other little things we remember – or had almost forgotten – about someone we have lost. Thinking about the middle biscuit opened the gates to so many random recollections.

Dinner time often sparks memories of my father. My husband I frequently talk about how much my dad loved his hot peppers with his meals. He enjoyed growing them in a garden, and eating them raw until his nose ran, eyes watered and he’d get the hiccups.  He enjoyed cooking home-style dishes and made the best Salisbury steak on the planet. His patience made him a great cook. He took the time to get it done right, and pay attention to details (just like he did as a contractor, and as a railroad engineer).  Dad was the one who taught me anything I know about jelly making, pickling, and pinching the suckers off of tomato plants.  Always teaching.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, “Tell me and I will forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.”  My dad knew this innately, and he lived it every day.  I was always involved in whatever he was doing around the house or in the yard, at his desk or in the kitchen. I was always welcomed in his world and he was ever so patient in answering thousands of questions or letting me try to “do it myself” even when I was certainly slowing down his productivity.

Too many times, I interrupted him as he sat at his desk, paying the bills, doing the taxes or preparing his Sunday school lesson (another way he taught).  He never made me feel bothersome or in his way – which I was. He always included me. I remember helping him underline text in his Sunday school lesson book (he never highlighted, just underlined), and I was always allowed to lick the envelopes and stamps for the pile of bills he had just paid.

Dad always made time to sit at the table and help me with homework, and found inventive ways to assist me if needed. In first grade he taught me a helpful hint – to visualize numbers with dots on them, to represent the value of each number. It helped me “see” the value and therefore made it easier for a visual person like me, to add and subtract.

Almost thirty years later, when I enrolled my son in a school for special needs children, they were using TouchMath curriculum to assist special learners.  It closely resembled the system my dad had come up with for me in 1980, and is the system I use to teach my special son. Dad was ahead of his time and never knew it.

When I began making wedding cakes professionally in 1997, my father was my first assistant, helping me transport and set-up those monstrosities. His engineering mind often helped me trouble-shoot my designs. He enjoyed watching and learning from me, and was just as willing to follow my lead, as I had always been for him.

Although he spent his career with the railroad, he said he had always wanted to be a teacher. I never knew him as anything but. He was my dad, and he was my best teacher.  He was wise, thoughtful, introspective, and ahead of his time – much like Abe Lincoln.  And he was always warm, soft and comforting – yes, just like the middle biscuit.   

One of my favorite “Dad dishes”

Larry’s Pea Salad

2 cans tiny peas (drained)

2 cans white whole kernel, shoe peg corn

1 green pepper, finely diced

1 cup celery, finely diced

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 large jar pimentos

1 cup sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

¾ cup white vinegar

Blend all in a bowl, chill.  Ready to serve.

                                                       Somewhere in West Virginia, c.1983

Copyright 2015 Kelly T.Haysley

LiftWithYourSoul.blogspot.com

Liberation from comparison - like just waking up

Liberation from comparison - like just waking up

by Kelly T. Haysley

Author and Founder of Lift With Your Soul

Copyright 2015

Physician and author, Deepak Chopra wrote:

                “When we wake up in the morning there is a second of pure awareness before the old conditioning automatically falls into place; at that moment you are just yourself, not happy or sad, not important or humble, not old or young ….. All other reference points are bound by change, decay, and loss; every other sense of “me” is identified with pain or pleasure, poverty or wealth, happiness or sadness, youth or old age – every time-bound condition that the relative world imposes.”

Wow. Just think about this for a moment. It is very true. We are not born loving or hating ourselves. We are not born approving or disapproving of others.  Basically, every emotion we feel, opinion we form, interpretation of events and judgment of ourselves or others has been learned by the conditioning of just living among other people; mostly through comparisons.  Not much that happens in our minds is  from just pure self-awareness but rather from our awareness of how we compare to others or how they compare to us. 

If you can, close your eyes and imagine you live on this planet alone.  You’ve always been alone, without any other person to look at or to look back at you.  Would you worry about being rich or poor, tall or short, over-weight or thin, brown skinned or beige skinned, olive skinned, or pale skinned?  Would you worry about which religion you practice?  No.  None of it would matter because there is no one there to form an opinion on it – any of it – and there has never been anyone to share their opinions with you – to teach and influence you. 

We covet all the things we want whether they be attributes, talents, relationships or material things, mostly for the purpose of satisfying others or what others have taught us to be important. This influence is perhaps the strongest, coming from our close groups and family.   You can argue that you live based on your own free will, and you are not influenced by others. You may be telling the truth to yourself in some instances, but admit it, it’s not 100% the truth.  You have been influenced by the world around you in your ideas of what “it” is that you need, therefore desire, or what “it” is that is correct or incorrect in others and their lives.   

Negative thinking stems from all of this.  We are always comparing ourselves to others and others to ourselves.  We either approve or disapprove, based on numerous categories, then we either accept or decline them as a person we’d like to engage with.  It always starts with how we view ourselves – what we view to be correct, incorrect or what needs improvement.

Theodore Roosevelt is credited with saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy”.   We humans are the culprit of our own dissatisfaction and anger towards ourselves and others.  We become discontented with ourselves, when we begin to compare ourselves to others, whether it be their physique, their relationships, their family, their home, their income, their job or their lifestyle.  Is he in better shape than me?  Does she make more money than me?   I wish I could travel like he does.  They seem to have a perfect relationship.   Why can’t I be happy like that?  Why did he get promoted and not me? 

We become hateful at heart when we begin to compare others to ourselves – how are the like us or how are they not like us. Do we think they dress properly?  Are they practicing the correct religion?  Do they work hard enough?  Are they lazy?  Should he or she put down that burger and go to the gym?  Have they know each other long enough to be getting married?  Is he just an educated yuppie who doesn’t know what it means to struggle in life?   These examples could go on for pages.  You get the point.  EVERYTHING we observe or hear about another person is put under our socialized microscope for examination – then placed before the judge in our mind.

Comparison is not only the thief of joy but the mother of discontent and the father of judgement.  It is the catalyst for anxiety and depression. Would you feel like a failure if there was no one to compare yourself to? 

I think of those first moments that Dr.Chopra described, when we awake each day as the moment of “pure awareness”, to be when our minds are most likely to resemble that of a child. Before we are fully awake, still drifting from sleep into alertness, we are not thinking of responsibilities, schedules, politics, religion, income, bills, weight loss, fashion,  the haves or the have-nots, we are just us – you are just you – and that’s all you know in that brief moment – before the expectations of the world reboot in your mind.

Remember, we are not born knowing how to compare ourselves to others or how to measure others by our own ideals.  We are taught to see others as either like us or not like us, and therefore they are right or wrong.   Much of the time – we are all wrong.   We are wrong in our harsh judgment of ourselves, and our quick judgments of others.  We judge because we are judged; we’ve learned it without even trying to learn it.  We often try to head off judgment from others by beating them to the gavel.  It does no good for anyone.

The insecurity we have that drives us to impress others, is the same condemnatory attitude we use to look at others.  We hate it and feed on it all at once.  Quite a waste of good mental energy, don’t you think? We should, live life to be content for ourselves and our families – not for  “fitting the mold” of what we think others expect.

Look at others with this same expectation: allow them to be them, whatever that is, and not what you think they should be.  Break that habit of judging yourself by others and others to yourself.  It is a habit; a learned, nasty habit. It can be broken with daily work and by being mindful, forgiving, and tolerant -all  starting with accepting yourself – in your purest form, like when you just wake up.   

Lift With Your Soul

Copyright 2015, by Kelly T.Haysley

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Reference:

Chopra, Deepak. Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. New York: Harmony Books, 1993. Print.