The Kaleidoscope ~ Join Us Today!

As women, we are the birthers of nations and the mothers of mankind. We are at the heart of every village, parish, hamlet, town, city and nation of the world.

We carry within ourselves the ability to change the course of life - our own and those with whom we live.

Butterflies are indigenous to every continent, come in many colors and sizes; all have achieved the metamorphosis from the caterpillar. Where they gather is called a Kaleidoscope!

The Kaleidoscope is where women, from far and near, are living in their love, their truth, and their light!

Although we are a closed Facebook group, we invite you to connect with us today!

The Rules:

• We are all on our own flight path. Be encouraging, uplifting, and supportive of one another. You never know what storms a butterfly has weathered.

• Be willing to stretch your wings.

• Be kind.

We hope to see you there!

Reading by Example

Goodnight room. Goodnight Moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. ~ Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon.

It is the good old summertime in the upper-plains states. It is the time for packing up the car and heading to the lakes, or other destinations for summer fun after the long winter. But, the vacation from school should not mean that it is a vacation from reading.

The primary reason teachers spend the first few weeks of school in review is because children lose some of what they learned the year before over the summer. This is one of the best times to make time for your children, especially small children who cannot yet read for themselves. Plan to spend one hour a day just reading and discussing a book with your child. 

Here’s some benefits to this:

Children spend hours every day in front of a screen – tablet, smartphone, TV, video game system, etc. Through reading your child a story before bed, you help them shutdown the effects of screen time from the day. It relaxes your child’s mind, so they can sleep better, and longer.

Reading to your child creates bonding and common ground between you and your child. This is a great time to choose stories that reflect your own values and beliefs, and where you stand on issues that affect your child: Bullying, tolerance, diversity, religious beliefs, nutrition, morality, civility and so on. This is the time your child is listening 100%. You will be grateful for it in their tween and teen years, because you have set the foundation.

When you pack for the annual summer camping trip or vacation to anywhere, make sure your older children take at least one book with them. I know, I know. The struggle is real with tweens and teens. You might be surprised when boredom strikes, as it always does, and you find them reading said book – just for something to do.

Don’t forget to pack a book for yourself, maybe two. Reading by example teaches children who you are, what your likes and dislikes are, and where your interests are. Did you know that most kids today do not know their parents? You might live in the same house, but do your kids really know you, or do they know of you? There’s a difference.

Reading teaches empathy – which is severely lacking in today’s society. It teaches imagination, innovation, and sparks the dream factor. Kids who do not read have less of an imagination than those who do. There is no more bankrupt a child than the child who cannot read. Parents play an important role in this. Children who cannot read, cannot do math, because they do not comprehend the problem – especially story problems. If your child is struggling in math, you might want to check how they are doing in reading.

More children, all across the world, are suffering from illiteracy. Children are struggling with the core subjects in school, simply because they cannot read. In the United States we have a secret plague that exists in the hallowed halls of our schools and even in our places of business, the functionally illiterate. People who can read well enough to get by, but not well enough to succeed. Don't let your child grow up this way, read to them and often. 

Through literature we learn to live, to love and to conquer.

Never Stop Believing in the Magic of Love

“There comes a point in many people's lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play.” ~ Brian Moore, Author of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

Fifty-three percent (53%) of adult American women are single today. That’s rather shocking compared to the turn of the last century when that number was less than 20%. It used to be that most women were married by the time they were 20 to 22 years old; not anymore. Today, many women are putting off getting married until at least age 27.

As I was doing some research on this post, I started to think about all the information that I was obtaining about the benefits of being single – all of them are tangible reasons to be single, except the part of being free to do whatever we want, whenever we want.

One of the saddest books I have ever read is The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Why would a book have that sort of effect on the reader? I think that it has a lot to do with the aging process. When we are young and free to be whomever we choose, having someone to come home to at night or not isn’t really all that big of a deal. However, when we become women of a certain age, the play has changed and we actresses aren’t necessarily choosing our own roles anymore.

The apartment or house seems a bit bigger and emptier as the years pass. All the beautiful things that fill the home appear to be a bit less shiny than they once were. They seem to be of less importance than we once thought that they were or would be. We pass by the mantel, or perhaps trek up the stairs where the eyes peering out of the photos on the walls haunt our memories with thoughts of better days. Perhaps they are the eyes of our children, the husband long departed in a years-ago divorce.

I am most certain that every single woman in today’s world has known love or at least infatuation at one time or another. In The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Judith never had the opportunity to fall in love with anyone, while caring for her ailing aunt until the old woman died, leaving Judith with nothing. Judith was a 40-something year old spinster. Judith didn’t really have a choice in the matter; however, today women choose it. We are choosing spinsterhood over marriage at a rapid rate.

Several times every year, I am asked, why didn’t I get married. I suppose I have my reasons that are probably just as different or the same as any other who chose not to. Does that mean I will never get married? No, not at all, like Judith Hearne, I want someone who meets my intellectual needs just as much as other needs.  I learned something from my elders, particularly my grandparents who were married 63 years, once you reach a certain age, you have to enjoy each other’s company or you really don’t have anything.

I watched the documentary Revelations on Netflix, and I couldn’t agree more with the men who were interviewed. Marriage is about the relationship first, and about love second. Love is a by-product of marriage or civil union, or whatever suits your fancy in this regard. However, no matter how far you get into your spinsterhood, don’t ever stop believing in the magic of love.

You just never know. One day you might be at the laundromat or the grocery store, where a simple conversation leads to dinner, and then movies, or football games or whatever is in the spark that feeds the relationship and whispers…my dear, there is more, so much more.

Through literature, we learn to live, to love, and to conquer!

Railing Against the Machine

They say there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that has been will be again, no matter the weary dreams of men. The thoughts and theories of a Utopic society where all is fair and right in the world are lost in the common threads of the web of life.

In Episode Two of James Joyce’s historic novel, Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus proclaims, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake!” There are many theories as to the meaning of Joyce’s choice of words within the context of the novel, one of them being Stephan Dedalus’ desire to overcome his own less than stellar childhood. Not so ironically, after reading the biography of James Joyce, himself, it is glaringly apparent that Ulysses is a veiled biography of Joyce’s own emotional world, since boyhood.

Joyce didn’t grow up in your average household. His father was nowhere near father of the year, and his mother, well in Joyce’s eyes his mother was weak and in need of protection, as well as an overwhelming amount of love and adoration. Thus, throughout the iconic Ulysses, Joyce smatters the contents with attributes of amor matris.

The entire work of Ulysses is a diatribe of Joyce’s view of the world in which he lived as a child, and the one in which he lived as an adult; in some cases nothing more than an exercise in stream of consciousness. In my humble opinion, it is Joyce making sense of the world in the only way he knew how – through the art of writing – giving order to the chaos.

Which brings all things full circle. There are none of us who have had the ideal childhood. By way of misfortune, or by way of fortune, all of our pasts are flawed, marred, and scarred. Whether we grew up in lavish homes or in mud huts, we all began this journey in the same conglomeration of star dust as human beings – impractical and imperfect.

We go about our lives, growing into the expectations of the environment in which we are immersed. Most people never question, or at least outwardly question, the outcome of their lives. You grow up in poverty, you die in poverty. You grow up wealthy, you die wealthy. And in either case the world keeps turning.

And then, there are those who rail against the machine; like James Joyce. Of all the things in the world he did not want to be the most was to be like his own father. He knew, since the time he was about ten years old, that the likelihood of that happening was pretty high. His father was cynical, and critical at best, when it came to Joyce’s obsession with writing, and learning. In those days, you rose no higher in society than your father’s position. If you did, you fought like hell to get there, with no regrets and no apologies.

Joyce was, by no means, a heralded author in his day. In fact, he was more popular in Great Britain and Europe than he ever was in his home country of the United States. American society was, to his chagrin, much like the man he knew as his father – cynical and critical, but Joyce never gave up, he didn’t quit. He kept on writing and traveling abroad, because that was where he found the meager bits of joy that existed in his life.

Sometimes we have to go deeper than the story that we are reading, and delve into the life of the author in order to understand the true depths of the premise. Sometimes, first impressions are not the ones intended, and we cannot judge a person by the chapter of their life we walked in on. We aren’t perfect, not a single one of us.

Ulysses was written in eighteen separate, yet connected, episodes, covering the entire life of a man we simply knew as James Joyce. He was, at times, impractical in his methods, improbable in his theories, and imperfect in his life. But at the same time, James Joyce was iconic in writing one of the most remembered works of modernist literature. James Joyce a.k.a. Stephan Dedalus overcame his childhood by simply being who he was – with no regrets and no apologies.

In literature we learn to live, to love, and to conquer.

Live On, and Live Well

The sun would shine down on the backyard, infusing the air with its hot breath. The only refuge was the shade of the towering evergreen tree on the other side of the fence in the neighbor’s yard.

Dust mixed with the sweat of my brow encrusted itself into brushed streaks as my hand swiped away the beaded perspiration. The intensity of the moment causes time to stand still as the inspection of the flutter of wings takes on all the importance of the discovery of the ages.

All those years ago, the life of a child was simple. It was the long summer nights filled with friends playing in the neighborhood, or sipping on lemonade as the elders shared their stories. It was watching the northern lights dance on a brisk fall evening, cheering on the home team, and meeting up with friends on the first day of school.

As time moves forward, life becomes more complicated and the world a much smaller place. The world becomes noisy, clingy, and needful. The days of loitering in front of the Tastee Freeze™, watching people come and go, long gone. There is always some place to be and so many more places to go.

There is nothing more precious in the world than the gift of life where every moment matters. Being fulfilled requires a bit of childlike behavior. Note, I said childlike, not childish. There is a difference. Be kind to one another. Be generous with your time, talent, and treasure. Be wild and free in your dreams, and never let them die for the sake of someone else. Fill every moment of every day with the things that create happiness in your life.

Fill each moment with that precious breath called life. Live on, and live well.