INNOCENCE

A series of essays....

YOUTHFUL INNOCENCE: A CHILD OF THE 1950’S

....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Innocence

...is another word for freedom; the freedom of guilt from sin and moral wrong, with an acute lack of knowledge of corruption or impurity. Innocence is associated with the very young, as well as the guiltlessness of those who are naive and gullible. We visualize youth as being untainted by life’s negativity, navigating each day encompassed within a thin shell of timelessness and bliss. It is a state of mind that carries a certain freshness that rewards the truly innocent with inquisitive hearts and curious minds. Like cool mountain breezes that gently kiss the skin or while unreservedly savoring the aroma of freshly baked bread cooling on the countertop as Mom hums a simple tune in the kitchen, innocence is captured and it makes one feel alert and alive. With this freshness comes possibilities. With this innocence, dare we dream to hope?

The world today, penetrated by a silent and invisible virus that eludes a ‘quick fix’ by modern science and research, leaves the heart aching for the loss of so many lives; the great loss of global innocence. Tears well in the eyes of the perceptive individuals who mourn these deaths and see them for what they are: the unnecessary theft of pure innocence and freedom. Sadly, we were aware of such consequences years before yet failed to act upon the scientific knowledge and our basic instincts due to individual greed and uncontrolled politics. Feeling ashamed of mankind, we are made conscious of the fact that we have failed to evolve. We have ignored our gift of intelligence and placed our greed upon the altar to be idolized and worshipped. We have placed all life at risk. The most grievous sin is that many of us will not own our guilt; a blanket of ignorance will never be good enough to cover up for the lack of simple common sense.

"Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others," wrote La Rochefoucauld, a French writer and moralist, in the late seventeenth century. Many of us continue to conduct our lives believing in the good of mankind, downplaying the roles of guilt-laden souls filled with skillful deceit, guile and senseless hate for other human beings. Most of us are incapable of 'great crimes.' We, too, are the Innocents. We often hear the phrase that 'no one is perfect' and understand it epitomizes the essential characteristics of people we love and admire the most; people with kindness in their hearts, but can never claim the essence of perfection within their own lives. They learn and grow because of their mistakes and imperfections. They love life and fill the lives of others with joy. "If we had no faults of our own,” La Rochefoucauld wrote, “we would not be able to notice those of others." 

Is man kind? Are we good? I believe we are looking forward to reopening hearts and homes if only to rediscover the innocence of mankind and rejoice in a happier, more grateful place in which to resume living. Soon, we may be able to look through their windows to understand their views. Sit at their tables in order to share their tastes. Sleep in their beds so that we my share their dreams. In this way, we will be able to find out just how kind the he’s and she’s of this mankind are. Let us reintroduce ourselves to others with love and understanding, always remembering that the future rests upon our shoulders.


Stay healthy. Be kind. Bless all of our healthcare providers and essential workers for being the angels in our lives.

Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

DAZED AND CONFUSED - 2020 VERSION

A series of essays....

CUT-OUTS IN A CHILD’S GAME OF MAGNETIC PAPER DOLLS

           Courtesy of Agirlandagluegun.com



....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Looking out at, virtually, identical scenery each day is playing tricks with my mind. Indeed, the tall trees that separate our property from the golf course have sprouted green headdresses that dance in the breeze while their toes are being tickled by the spring flowers in shades of yellow, white, purple, and pink. But, within the ‘time lapse’ of isolation, it plays out like dressing-up my stationary outside world with cut-outs as in a child’s game of magnetic paper dolls.

Communication with the outside world plays out in a similar manner. With the snow finally taking a bow and exiting stage left, neighborhood joggers, dog walkers, and kids have stripped themselves of winter related paraphernalia preferring lightweight jackets, pure white running shoes, and short sleeved tops and shorts. The world is baring itself of the heaviness of the colder months and rejoicing in the warmth and vibrancy of a late spring.

OUR NEW KITCHEN ADDITION:
A ROOM WITH A VIEW

Also, under the guise of communication, we tune-in to our devices (tablets, iPads, Smartphones) even before our eyes are accustomed to the bathroom light. Bam!...the entire world is at our fingertips. And, by the time we make it into the kitchen to brew our morning coffee, we already know what Uncle John has been working on in his wood shop, who is celebrating their birthday that day, and what’s on the calendar for the week. Actually, I haven’t had to fill in the days of my calendar for quite..some..time! Oops! There goes another cut-out piece up on the old magnetic board.

I try desperately to keep some form of regimen alive and thriving by getting out of bed around the same time each morning, brushing my teeth, combing my unusually long hair, all before snuggling in for a morning of writing down my thoughts and ideas. I have been so proud of being a morning person, when all thoughts are fresh, new, and exciting to record. The world weighs heavy on me by the afternoon when thinking becomes sluggish, almost tedious to the point of distraction.

Sadly, I am losing it. I feel it in my bones. Quoting a friend, Matthew, who has summed up my deepest feelings quite succinctly when he wrote, ”... I’m not thinking suicidal thoughts. I’m frustrated, exhausted. I am over, so over the person who occupies the White House in D.C. I’m ready, willing, and able to hit the streets in support of a general strike; a revolution; whatever.” I feel it, too, brother. We all do.

Lately, my mornings have become less and less productive and the fine line between my A.M. mindset is blurring with my P.M. mindset often to the point of complete frustration. I have to chuckle about it, though, because I am constantly reminded of the 1993 teenage cult movie, Dazed and Confused, with its smoke-filled marijuana scenes and misunderstood hormonal highs and lows. Isolation is clouding my mind and turning me into a stranger in a strange land.

                                               Courtesy of Wallpaperflare.com

If someone is dazed, they are confused and most definitely unable to think clearly. It may be due to shock, a blow to the head, or by just being exhausted and drained of one’s mental resources due to highly unusual and abnormal circumstances. If I could, I would grab myself by the shoulders and give myself a hardy shake every now and then in an attempt to escape these isolation blues and be productive once again. 

Everything is telling me that this shocked, stunned, and confusing state of mind is disrupting the daily lives of many of us. Family and friends have claimed similar feelings while going about their quarantined routines even though we know we are doing it for all of the right reasons, trying to hang tough, and looking ahead to the future instead of remaining in the past.

I have sat and tried to figure out where raw, personal power comes from; at what depths inside my heart and soul I must dig down to before coming up for my next breath of air. Two words always come to mind as they are expressed in my poem entitled, Deep Within.

Deep Within

Each day

I listen for the sound

Of calmness, 

Words of wisdom,

Voice of reason.

And all I want to do

Is feel safe and secure

again, not wallow in self pity 

Or avoid the insect’s bite.

I appreciate that 

Its sting makes me feel alive

Reminding me of

The power I possess within

And how I must never

Underestimate my strengths

Even when the world 

Stops being kind and I 

Am made to solicit 

The reassuring beat

Of my own heart.

We all possess the power we need and gather it from deep inside of us. We don’t always tap into it when and as often as we should. It may take the ‘insect’s bite’ to snap us out of wallowing in self-pity and react to the miscarriages of justice, the misunderstanding of what should be the practice of basic common sense, and thinking that life owes us something instead of contributing to a better life for those around us through kindness, love, and the simple belief in the welfare of all mankind. 

The next time I stumble into the kitchen on a dreary, damp morning and peer out at the ancient trees, headpieces made of tender, new leaves, the effulgence of early morning burning off the fogginess and creating the luster of a new day, I will look at the world that surrounds me day after day with hope and personal expectations. I will consider myself the luckiest person in the world and, my inner strength will generously shroud my dazed and confused outlook and enhance my personal productivity throughout this period of self-isolation. Fingers crossed.

Stay healthy and happy. Don’t allow anyone or anything to bring you down. I keep learning something new each day, about myself, as well as about others. Love.

Words of wisdom:

“When times get tough, we don’t give up. We get up.” — Barack Obama

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

                                                    Courtesy of:  Chesnot—Getty Images

Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

THE REBOOTING OF SOCIETY

A series of essays....

YOU ARE RESTOCKING YOUR PANTRY, TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH...
ISN’T IT ABOUT TIME TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR DATA...REBOOT YOUR LIFE?

....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

One of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is to cook for them.

I love to cook. I love to cook and bake for family, friends, special occasions, or a dinner for two. I’ve felt it has always been my way of showing love and affection towards others. 

Considering that we eat to live rather than live to eat, what better way to say, “I love you,” than to prepare meals for others to let them know that it’s nice to have them by our side and we want them to be there for as long as possible. The strong ties between an Italian Madre and her children, especially her sons, has been uniquely based upon the abundance of good food placed before the family at mealtimes. She consistently brings them all together at the family table to share her love for them while they return it by partaking in her grand feasts.

The recipes used are universal and yet fairly simple consisting of mounds of sustenance, filled with pinches of fresh flavors, a time rendered homage to ancestry and culture, swirls of affection, and an ultimate presentation and plating that is guaranteed to humble even the most stubborn child in all of us.

My Ukrainian Grandmother’s heart and soul survived through the knowledge that she always had enough food at any given time to treat even a stranger with her wholesome hospitality. If you were to bring a friend to visit, Grandma would have suggested it was a national holiday, created a spread of deliciousness on the long kitchen table, enough to feed the royal family, and you would ultimately leave the house with handwritten recipes stuffed into your jacket pocket.

These genuine and generous acts of pure love have served mankind well since the beginning of time. Since isolation has prompted the return of choosing our meal ingredients wisely and affectively feeding one or two people, up to families of four, six, and more, while having the time allotted to enjoy the process and art form of cooking, we are all becoming chefs in our own right. Baking delicious crusty bread, fruit pies with homemade crust, or apple cake from scratch has become a much appreciated luxury based on newly found energy and time.

Hidden talents have emerged out of sheer necessity as many of us have become family barbers and beauticians. And, doing a fantastic job of it, too, I might add! Suddenly, the retiree gardener we longed to become while daydreaming at our 9 to 5 job has become a reality. Having the time has allowed some of us to go full speed ahead and create hydroponic vegetable gardens on our back decks and multi-tiered herb gardens clinging to the exterior walls of the house all while observing the growth of peony, hydrangea, and lavender patches along the periphery of the backyard. 

We’re becoming obsessive yet productive and valuable human beings, contributing to the basic welfare of those we love, as well as our own personal wellbeing. If I had to venture a guess, I actually believe we’ve begun to care once again. Having more time for ourselves and those around us is opening up a whole new world for so many; a world designed upon the basic acts of love and kindness shared by our ancestors, pioneers of a brand new world, who knew a thing or two about survival. 

IT SEEMS WE’VE ACTUALLY
BEGUN TO ‘CARE’ ONCE AGAIN

If we put it in more modern terms and references, I would say we are ‘rebooting’ ourselves; giving fresh impetus to lifestyles that had grown seemingly robotic or stagnant. The onslaught of COVID-19 and having to isolate ourselves has been like bringing back an early black and white movie but studding it with a new cast and an updated script. 

We’ve been afforded an opportunity of incorporating a fresh, new, more stimulating and active, loving and giving lifestyle into our daily existence simply by turning-off the computer system inside of us for an indefinite (hopefully short) period of time and then turning it back on again. We’ve been given a restart and a new chance at becoming a better, updated, and more generous person. Having time to rethink our raison d’être by asking ourselves what it is that makes us happy and whole, finding new answers to old problems with new questions, and flavoring our changing world with an array of colorful spices, our unexpected reboot could just be the ‘Golden Ticket’ we’ve been searching for.

The rebooting of society, especially under the uncertain terms and rules of being governed by a virus that has no set boundaries and has been a very deadly pill to swallow, I believe, is meant to help us change our ways, rethink our old lives based on improvement, and guide us into a brighter, intelligent, and less selfish tomorrow. 

It’s about time and long overdue.

One day soon, I would like nothing more than to receive a very good explanation for what many of us have had to endure these past three and a half years, soon to be four, with this particular person in office. Unlike the endearing ways of our Italian Madre and my dear, sweet Grandmother, we have not had enough good food to feed our hungry appetites and fill us with the humble and wholesome hospitality uniquely offered by this great nation to her citizens and welcomed immigrants in the past. 

It’s time once again and long overdue.

DAN’S FIRST ATTEMPT AT HOMEMADE
FRENCH BAGUETTES 

We must continue baking that crusty bread and feeding our soul and spirit with the moral equivalence of health, love, and wellbeing. Our reboot shall be considered a blessing to all of us and an ultimate sacrifice made by many of us as new cases of coronavirus emerge and the death toll rises. Because we are not normally a nation of one-on-one, soon we will be blending back into the broader spectrum of society and activities. And, in the meantime, we are rebooting our own lives, under our own control, conditioning ourselves for the new life ahead of us. 

Let’s enjoy what our new discoveries have to offer. It’s time to take control and bless the idea of being given a new beginning and a fresh start. 

Embrace mindfulness. Stay healthy and safe. Always be kind to and understanding of others. The entire population of this planet is in this together!

Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

IDENTIFYING THE YELLOW TROUT LILLY

A series of essays....

THE YELLOW TROUT LILLY

....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

Around the time your disillusioned heart was sending messages to the brain declaring total failure, and you recognized a breakdown of all that is good, wholesome, and kind in this world, you were certain that life was beyond hope with nowhere to turn...you happen across the Yellow Trout Lilly. 

She was not only beautiful, but you had absolutely no clue as to how she happened to be there. How long had she been commingling with the lofty periwinkle that thickly blanketed the ground beneath two, large burning bushes? Like two loyal, green soldiers, these bushes have flanked the red brick chimney at the shady, west facing facade of the house for years! You had spent time trying to understand why anyone would plant burning bushes along the deep shadows of your little cottage when it’s understood that the green burning bush requires plenty of sunlight in order to ‘blush’ during the crisp and colorful days of autumn.

So, with the help of your husband, it was decided to rectify the situation and rearrange landscaping that you both had not a single clue as to when or by whom it was planted in the first place. Besides, wouldn’t the physical labor alone be invigorating and ease your mind, momentarily, of the spinning world we live in? Anything can become possible within an incredibly impossible situation. You just have to believe.

Pulling, pushing, digging, and struggling to loosen the main ‘earth root’ of the bush, he, eventually, extracts it from its well-established home only to relocate it to a brighter area along the fence line. Change. Will it survive the move? Only time will tell. And, even if it does, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will decide to ‘blush’ later in the year. But, what have any of you got to lose by trying?

BURNING BUSHES HOPING TO SOAK UP THE PRECIOUS SUNLIGHT

That’s when you first saw her.

As you begin to fill the gaping hole left by the root structure of the burning bush, you see underlying, elongated leaves interspersed with the glossy, green periwinkle kind. Suddenly, you discover the ground is covered in what resembles the markings of military camouflage poking out of the landscape like a school of brown trout weaving their way through an imaginary pond of sparkling green waves that has suddenly appeared along the foundation of the house due to the absence of the bushes. Among the mixed greenery, she stands tall and proud at about six inches above the freshly turned soil.

Invasive. Invasive. Invasive. “Tending to spread widely in a habitat or ecosystem. Tending to intrude or encroach. Of or relating to a disease or condition that has a tendency to spread, especially into healthy tissue,” as explained in the American Heritage Dictionary often used for quick definitions and explanations. Is having an invasive plant such a bad thing? Unless, they are meant to be excluded from a healthy garden of perennial plants that would surely be choked by their existence. 

For you, the Yellow Trout Lilly is meant to be wild and free where she can spread her spotted brown leaves along the ground with wild abandon and produce her shapely yellow flower in early spring; destined to mark the multitude of trails that generously cut pathways throughout the state of Michigan for all to walk along and enjoy. But, it was not expected that she be a part of this landscape. She had not been seen here before now, dwarfed as she was by the green-leafed branches of the burning bushes.

We humans were not meant to live safely among this highly contagious virus that has bounded its way into our unprepared world, invading our lives with its kiss of death as it spreads wildly throughout the land. Like the periwinkle vines or even the burning bushes themselves, the mind can’t help but wander into the invasive world of the Coronavirus that keeps us isolated within our own small, pocket of the universe. Statistics have proven that our isolation is curbing the spread of the virus and working well. Relaxing social distancing behaviors now would be a huge mistake. 

Between your own isolation and the frothed messages created by a disillusioned heart, the mind is foggy, you might say, weakened by the truth. Looking death in the face will haunt your sleep and every waking hour for the rest of your life; even after it’s liquid threat becomes less apparent, your only hope is that enough people do the right thing in a timely manner. 

ONE, TWO, THREE!
SHOWING THREE STAGES OF GROWTH.

YELLOW TROUT LILLY,
HAPPY TO BE SET FREE!

Funny how a deadly virus can invade and change lives so swiftly and yet a petite yellow flower, also categorized as invasive, albeit gradually intrusive, thrive among us without right or permission. How different you both are as you enter our lives for the first time; one to insight panic and fear while the other showers its beauty along the earth like a tiny, living jewel.

Her memorable name becomes your current mantra for all that is good, strong, hopeful, and possible during these long days of isolation and general confusion. Identifying the Yellow Trout Lilly has helped to make life bearable. How fortunate you are to have discovered the power she has to help you coexist with your fears. Nature is a beautiful thing.

Be strong and vigilant. We will get through this...together.

Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved