Going to Meeting

I'm on my way to a staff meeting.

Meetings are the Devil to me.  I fidget, I look at the clock, and I have to monitor my facial expressions as people state the obvious over and over again.  I have to bite my tongue sometimes to keep from screaming something like, "Stop asking questions! You're just prolonging this pointless gathering."  Or, "Do you realize I am living on borrowed time here?  Stop wasting it!"

Nevertheless, to meeting I will go and I will not roll my eyes or sigh loudly in exasperation.  I will smile and be polite and pretend to take notes.  I will not speak unless I am directly spoken to, and I will make my hasty exit as soon as the word "dismissed" is uttered.

Of course, I'll wave goodbye and smile cheerfully as I leave.  I'll tell everyone to have a nice day, and I'll make sure I've checked my mailbox before I leave the building.

Then I'll race to pick up my kid on time, mumbling under my breath the whole way about how all of what I just went through could have been handled in one short memo.

But meetings make people feel important and I'm all about making other people feel better.  Here I go!

Spare The Paddle, Educate The Child

I saw this meme on Facebook this morning and it made me cringe.  I had something similar to a PTSD-like flashback of standing in the hallway, bending over to touch my toes as Miss Fort, another teacher standing by as witness, raised her paddle to whack my behind.  I remembered the feeling of wind from the wooden plank blowing my skirt above my rear as the paddle approached. Then I remembered the sound, the sting, the intense determination it took for me to not cry.  It makes my heart race just to remember.  That was third grade, and that was the year that math became my mortal enemy.


The memory of third grade is one of my worst nightmares.  My two daughters seemed to make their way through it unscathed, but I did not. This year my son is in third grade and I find that old familiar anxiety creeping up on me. I experienced such humiliation and educational neglect during that one year of my life that I was profoundly changed by it.

Let me explain.

When I was a child, ADHD wasn't a thing.  We were referred to as "lazy" kids.  Our teachers tended to be exasperated with us to the point of not even wanting to bother with helping us over the hurdles that third grade posed, and were even less inclined to learn how to deal with the problems we ourselves created for them as "different" learners.

My parents both had 5th grade educations.  They could read and write and do simple math.  Education was not high on their list of priorities for us.  My sisters and I were well aware of their expectation that we would grow up, marry and have babies.  Why would we need an education to do that?

I struggled with multiplication.  I fell short with homework because no one at home ever said to  me, "It's time to do your homework." Or "Do you have homework today?"  When I would, on my own, get out my math work book and try to do the problems I would get easily frustrated, then distracted, and before I knew it I would have sat for an hour staring at the page with nothing done.  I was overwhelmed and there was no one to help me.

My teacher called my mother frequently.  They discussed my laziness as I listened in.  I became convinced that I was stupid and lazy and that I'd never be able to learn, so I stopped trying.

Then one evening during one of those calls from my third grade teacher, I heard my mother give Miss Fort the go-ahead to "spank my butt" the next time I showed up without my homework.  The next day, I got called out in the hallway after lunch and received my paddling.  It stung, but I forced back the tears and walked back into my classroom. I could feel the judgmental eyes of my classmates burning through me as I walked through the room to my desk. The room was so quiet my own footsteps sounded like the beating of a drum and my desk seemed to get farther away the more I walked.  I was humiliated.  I sat at my desk with my head held high and bit the inside of my lip to keep from crying.  My face burned with embarrassment.  I began to hate school and hate my teacher.

I missed recess every afternoon in third grade.  Every day at lunch time I would start feeling sick. Literally sick, because I knew that math came after lunch and there would be that awful timed multiplication test that I would fail and then all of my friends would make fun of me.  Or there would be some workbook page that I didn't understand and if I raised my hand for help, my teacher would roll her eyes at me and refuse to get up from her seat to explain the problem to me again.

I was seen as a difficult child.  No one ever told me I was smart.  No one ever told me I could learn and no one ever offered to help me learn.

Day after day I got called into the hallway and paddled.  Day after day I took the humiliating walk back to my desk and spent recess staring at math problems I still couldn't figure out.  I missed out on class parties at the end of the day because my math wasn't done.  No one, not one person offered to help me.  They just kept punishing me for something I didn't understand and could not grasp.  It was bigger than my third-grade self, and the people who were bigger than me, well they just made me feel smaller and smaller.

I'm positive my third grade teacher passed me on to fourth grade just to get rid of me.  I still didn't grasp the basics of multiplication and I struggled with it for years thereafter, never, in any grade being offered help.  My sixth grade math teacher loved the paddle as well, and so in fifth grade I lived through a repeat of my third grade nightmare.  I became an underachiever by the time seventh grade rolled around because I figured I was just too stupid to learn.

I have struggled my whole life with ADHD, but it wasn't until recently that I began to understand all the ways it has colored my world, my relationships, my failures and yes, even some of my successes. It is when life gets stressful that I find myself staring off into space like that overwhelmed third grade girl who couldn't cope with math.

Now my son's third grade teacher is saying those letters to me, "A-D-H-D" and I have to admit I see it in him too.  He is oh so smart and well behaved most of the time.  However, frustration boils beneath his surface and bubbles to the top in an angry explosion now and then.  Because he is so intelligent, he is easily frustrated if he doesn't understand something on the first try.  I plan to take him for an evaluation, even though the thought of medicating my child is unsettling to me.

I wen through this same process with my daughter, starting in first grade.  Her teacher insisted she needed medication, so reluctantly, we took her to her pediatrician and got some Ritalin.  It made her quiet and sad.  She lost weight, couldn't sleep at night and went around with big dark circles under her eyes.  She was more focused in school, but she still never got the attention she needed from her teachers to pull her grades up.  We did homework together every night--a struggle by the time her medication had worn off, and I tried my best to fill in the gaps.  By fourth grade she had changed schools, changed medications three different times, and still was struggling in one of the best schools in our county.  Her teachers seemed to abhor having her in their classes because she brought down their testing scores in math.  Once, I was even asked to keep her home on test day.  I'm fairly sure that was illegal.  Her fifth grade teacher told her that she was "going to end up being a bum on the street." rather than trying to help her understand the subject matter and show some patience with her.
She is a beautiful and smart young woman, but she lacks confidence and suffers from social anxiety due to the treatment of her teachers, and the bullying of her fellow students who probably felt she was fair game for bullying, since they had even witnessed her teachers use words to rip at her spirit.

A paddle never touched her rump, but the words that were hurled at her, the attitudes projected onto her still affected her deeply, and still do to this day.

I am not anti-teacher.  In fact, my children have had some amazing teachers over the years.  In high school my ADHD daughter finally had a Resource teacher that was a God-send.  She fed my daughter's spirit and encouraged her, took time with her and helped her understand more about each subject.  She called me monthly and we talked about my daughter's progress, which was astounding.  All it took was a teacher who wanted to make a difference for each student, and that's what she did for my daughter.

Now we have a label for kids like I was.  No longer are we referred to as "Lazy" we are now "ADHD" kids.  My boy is certainly intelligent.  I know that he struggles with impulse control, with frustration that leads to anger. I know that certain subjects bore him, and that he has a hard time staying focused if there's the slightest noise or movement in his peripheral. I know how crippling it can be to have so much going on in your mind at one time that you can't decide which thing deserves your focus.

 I want my son to succeed. I want him to learn self-control, to be more patient with himself, to grow up knowing he's smart and able to do or be whatever he decides.  I am willing to try medication with him to see if it makes a difference, but I have learned valuable lessons from my paddlings and the verbally/mentally abusive treatment of my daughter.  I will not let my kid become "that" kid who gets humiliated and singled out.  I will not let him grow up being shamed in front of his peers or being the thorn in his teacher's side.

Maybe if there had been medication, appropriate intervention by my teacher, and one parent who cared enough to see that I was struggling in third grade, my whole life could have been less of an uphill battle.  Who knows?  The truth remains that my life was changed because of that paddle.  It made me believe the worst of myself. It made me think I wasn't good enough for anyone's approval.   It destroyed my self-esteem. It made me believe I was dumb, worthless, brainless and incapable for a huge part of my life.  Now I know that paddle was a liar.

And I also know that if your childhood memories of school have anything to do with a paddle and being humiliated in front of your peers, you didn't turn out to be a better person because of it.  You likely wrangled with yourself, just as I have, to find your self worth. I have discovered that mine was there all along, even though it seems they tried to beat it out of me. If you were made better at the wrong end of a paddle, you became better in spite of it, not because of it.

I am Pro-Woman...

And I am pro-man.

I am pro-child, pro-elderly, pro-disabled.

I am pro-human.

But right now I am thinking of all my sisters out there who are floundering around in a world that seems impossible to understand.  I'm thinking of my sisters who see one another as threats, who feel the need to show themselves "better than HER", even if that means putting aside their own values and beliefs, in order to attract and keep a man.

I see so many of you, my dear sisters, sabotaging yourselves and women all around you by buying into the popular belief that being "feminist" is something akin to being a Nazi, a man hater or a lesbian.

You only have to read a few Facebook memes posted by women to see how the thinking of some men in our society has brainwashed us into fighting against one another, instead of creating a united front that demands respect and equality for all of us.

Are all of us created equally?  Really?  I believe we are.  We are all equally capable of impacting the world in positive ways, varied, intricate and sometimes simple ways, but we all have what it takes,no matter what our gender.

You can be pro-woman.  You can be pro-woman without hanging a "feminist" tag around your neck or raging in the streets about the injustices of unequal wages, or absent fathers or abusive men.  You can take pride in the wonderful creation you are and your God given abilities to nurture, give life, and sustain life.  Your very body is a miraculous creation that should be awed and respected for all it can do.  You give life!  You sustain life!  You, by your very nature are able to tune in to what lies deep beneath the surface of a person's outward shell and see inside the hearts of those you love, and you are BRAVE enough to feel your way through life!

You are smart enough to listen to your inner voice, intelligent enough to solve some of the world's toughest problems, strong enough to take on the most daunting challenges life throws at you.

Many of you are doing it all by yourselves.  You are raising children with  no help from their fathers. You have surrendered your social life for the social life and activities of your hildren.  On a Saturday night when you know your friends (and your ex) are all out partying, you sit at home with your kid, watching movies on the couch, cuddled up in a blanket, reminding that little boy or that little girl that you will always be the constant in their world.  You are strong, even on your own.

You would cringe if you heard someone call a child a "retard" but you don't flinch when someone routinely refers to all women as Bitches or Hoes.  You even do it sometimes yourself.  You get angry at the other woman when your man cheats, but really, isn't he cheating you AND the other woman.  Both should be angry with him, instead we take our wrath out on each other and the man remains unscathed.

We are taught to give numerous chances.  We hear things like "boys will be boys" when a man strays.  But when a woman strays, we are referred to as whores, skanks, bitches or worse.  The worst part of that?  Other women say these things about each other.

You don't know another woman's story or what your man told her to convince her to sleep with him.  You don't know what she has been through, and she doesn't know your pain because she has her own to deal with.  Unite with your sisters, don't tear them down because you both got involved with a man who is unfaithful.

And to those men out there who do love and respect us, I say thank you.  I ask you to make your presence known.  It is your responsibility to teach other men how to treat us like fellow, worthy, intelligent and valuable human beings.  That's all we want to be, and we want you to be the same.  We do not need to feel superior.  We just want to feel we have the same worth in your eyes as any other man would have.  We don't need you to be underrated.  We just need you to be real, caring, unabashedly proud of who we are so we can be unabashedly proud of having you in our lives.

I have no qualms about being a feminist.  I don't care what arrows get flung at me or what insults get hurled my way by thoughtless, ignorant people.  I am proud and honored to be a woman.  I love being a woman.  I know I am an amazing creation of my Holy Father, and I know that to Him, I am worth everything.

If we seek to love as God loves, there will be no line of demarcation where one person becomes of more value than another.  Men, you are important and endowed with God given traits that make you special.  So are women.  It is time we all learn to honor who we are in the grand scheme of society and lift one another up.

So my sisters, please don't tear one another down.  Be kind to one another, forgive, encourage, edify and love.  Give one another strength, because we might not ever get those things from men unless we show them we are worth it.

The Long Kiss Goodbye

Every great kiss begins in the eyes.

It starts in that quick glimmer, that almost imperceptible look you see in his eyes that lasts just a millisecond, but betrays his thoughts better than a thousand words could do.

As soon as that flicker of something, maybe it's passion, maybe desire, maybe just curiosity-- whatever it is, as soon as you see it you start to anticipate the warmth of his soft lips against yours, his breath on your skin, the bristle of five o'clock-shadow on your cheek..  You know from the minute your eyes catch his and he sees that singular thought in yours, that this kiss is going to be a long one.

It starts out gentle and timid.  A little peck, then a lingering one.  Before you know it you're engulfed by the intimacy of it, his lips on yours, his hands in your hair, you reaching for him, letting him support you as the high of passion makes you levitate off the ground.

And you stay there, floating above reality for a while, letting him take your breath away so that even when your feet touch the ground again, your head is still in the clouds.

Your head stays in the clouds, even when he steps back and lets you go.  Your mind is lost in the pleasure of his embrace, the tenderness of that kiss, the surreal transcendence of, for just a moment, having been assimilated into one being.  His step backwards sends you reeling through space, grasping for that moment of bliss once again.  You get so blinded, so confused that you keep on reaching for him.  Even as he twists your arm behind your back and makes you cry out in pain he reaches for you, and he kisses you, and you kiss him back.  You let him kiss you and twist you into knots even when you know the "look" is gone, when you hear him say you're stupid, not good enough, that you're not even worthy of him

He keeps reaching for you you, and you keep reaching back even though you start to realize that first kiss wasn't at all what you thought it would be.

He reaches for  you because you're there. Because he's afraid of when you won't be there. Because of the desire that resides inside him that must be channeled elsewhere; but without you, where will it go? Who will he control?

And you.  You with your constant hoping.  Hoping for that rush you had at the beginning when his lips first brushed against yours, when his kisses traveled lightly down your neck, his arms around your waist. You hope for the safety you once felt in his embrace.  You quiet the voice that speaks from your soul that tells you, you are not safe anymore.  You hope and hope for that moment to return when all that existed was the perfection of that kiss, the ecstasy of knowing you were wanted, craved, about to be ravished by him. You long for that time when he protected you.

You never once thought that from the very first glimmer in his eye, before your lips ever did that intimate dance together, the kiss was nothing more than a very long goodbye.

It was a goodbye with warm pretty days by the riverside tucked inside it. It was a goodbye with lazy nights on the couch watching movies, grilling on the back porch, and driving to the middle of nowhere for days of adventure,  all perfectly blended into the illusion.

It was goodbye with harsh words and hurtful behavior thrown in here and there, peppered all around the sweet happy moments. It was goodbye with confusion and anger and a lingering voice in your head that might never go away, telling you you'll never be good enough. It will sound like your own voice after a time, but it will always be his.

You never would have imagined that from moment on the doorstep when he picked you up for your first date you were saying goodbye.

It felt so much like an amazing hello, didn't it?

But then things got confusing, because one of you knew about the goodbye and one of you didn't.
And then both of you knew about it, but tried to pretend it wasn't so.
Then you, with all your hoping and praying and trying to understand, picked  everything apart and laid it out.  You started to untangle the moments, like Christmas lights to see if somewhere along the way you had really messed things up." Maybe" you thought, "this goes HERE, and THAT goes there, and maybe THIS, well this shouldn't be here at all."

And with all those unspoken fears and insecurities now laid out like a grandma's quilt, patched together with nothing more than confusion and pain, the only thing you could see that was out of place was you.

You examined it too closely.  You  spent too much time trying to understand it. You made one kiss into something much larger and more meaningful than it ever should have been.

For it should have been just a  kiss.  A thing of joy.  A euphoric moment in time, when nothing else matters except the four lips that are entwined, the two feet that levitate off the ground, the eyes that light for a millisecond, upon each other with the sensation that something big is about to happen that can likely never be adequately explained.

The moment he hurt you the very first time, well that was him telling you goodbye.

You couldn't hear the goodbye because his kisses were still passionate and you couldn't let go no matter how hard it hurt.  You couldn't leave him, because maybe he was counting on you to be there. Maybe he needed witness your pain as proof  of your love; as payment for the kiss.  Even after your feet were planted firmly back on the ground and your head started to descend from the clouds, you couldn't pull away from that long, long goodbye kiss, because something in your head kept telling you it was still hello. It was just complicated.  Love hurts sometimes. He needs you to help him.  He loves you in his own way He's just angry. He's mentally ill. He's been mistreated and you won't be added to the long list of people who have hurt him. You love him. Really, you love who you thought he was.

But he keeps twisting you up. Tying you in knots. Keeping you confused, lonely, afraid.  He bends you until you finally break. Then you, finally aware of the pain enough to pull away, start to realize that all along, this was never anything but Goodbye.

It was a Goodbye of summers and winters. Of trips across country, lazy days at home. It was a long long kiss of hoping against hope.  It was a long, passionate kiss, filled with dreams of all that could have been if only...If only.  It was a long goodbye even while you were  sleeping side by side, talking about your dreams, making plans together. Imagining life without him felt scary and uncertain, even though life with him was becoming hell.

You held on even though you realized at some point that the passion in your kiss, the lingering hope in your every hug, the last thought on your mind as you fell asleep wrapped tightly in his arms was goodbye.

A sad, long goodbye kiss was all you shared.

Goodbye was all there could have ever been from the first moment when he kissed you on your couch, to the last moment when he kissed you in his bed.  He was never able to give you any more than the simplicity of a kiss.  There was nothing deeper inside him to share.  In that one kiss, you plunged into the very depth of his being, and in that one kiss you found out all you needed to know.  Only, you didn't know that yet.

You held onto hope even when you were moving your things out of the house. You hoped he would change even up until  the last day when he turned his back to you and walked away, closing the door behind him, finally revealing the shallowness of his kiss and all the time it engulfed.

 "Goodbye." He said, as he walked away as if he might return.  But you knew, deep down that even if he did knock again, the door would be forever locked to him.

You finally heard the only word you ever waited around to hear him say. You knew a long time ago that the long kiss goodbye was going to be a difficult one to end, and you knew all the same, that end it, you must.

The greatest kisses always start in the eyes. If only there were some way to tell which kisses were the hello kind and the goodbye kind. If only there were a way to know which passion to allow to lift your feet off the ground, and which one meant you should keep them firmly planted.  Which kiss should we run to and which one should we run from?

We merely take the moments as they come, and make them ours in whatever way we can. Until and at last, we discover whether we have said hello, or spent a very long time telling someone whose very soul we think we know, an excruciating, heart broken Goodbye.

My Old Pal Maybe

I am undisciplined.  I am a procrastinator. I am an over-thinker. These are the qualities that often trap me inside my own head.  These are the three things about me that make the words "I can't" creep into my vocabulary with increasing regularity. They are all true of me.  I do lack discipline.  I have a story rattling around in my head that I started writing months ago.  Bits and pieces of it sit here and there on my computer but I do not make myself sit down and finish the tale.  Instead I put it off for another day.  I tell myself, "I'll work on it when it's raining and I can't get out of the house."  But then we have two weekends' worth rain and I tell myself, "I'll save it for a day when I can take the computer outside and work in the sunshine."

As I procrastinate and refuse to force myself to sit down at this computer, I am thinking.  My brain never shuts up, even when I want it to.  It is constantly examining every little shard of my life, past, present and future.  I scrutinize myself.  I put other people under that same microscope.  Eventually I think myself into a slump.  I start to believe the flawed logic of unkind words that have been flung at me far too many times.  I sometimes find that I have absorbed those words too deeply, so deeply that they have indeed become a part of who I am.  I start to believe there are no more people in the world who are good, honest or kind.  I talk myself into feeling hopeless.

Maybe I am lazy.  Maybe I am unintelligent.  Maybe I'm insignificant, inferior.  Maybe.

That is where I was a few weeks ago.  I was in that "maybe" place, where nothing was absolute and everything was for certain; and certainly,  nothing was good.  Those were the things my mind settled on, and there my mind stayed for a spell.  Maybe trapped me on my couch for a couple of Saturdays in a row.  Maybe is not good company  Maybe whispers old words into my ears and tells me I'm not good enough, because if I were, my life would be different.  Maybe says I've only gotten what I deserved.  Maybe never speaks to me about what good might exist in the world for me and inside of me.

Fortunately there is definitely more in my world than Maybe.

Maybe's talk of my shortcomings got drowned out for a while, by the kind words of loving friends who reminded me that I am more than my imperfections.  I am more than a procrastinator, more than a mom who is always running late, more than even my own thoughts will let me believe at times.

Then one day I sat across the table from my friend, an 82 year old Korean War veteran, a father who raised two daughters on his own, a former salesman for American Tobacco who never smoked a day in his life. He is a widower who took care of his second wife through dementia and health woes that would have sent a lesser man running.  His love left this world in January of this year and I met him in February when I started my new job.  We ate our chicken in relative quiet, only interrupting the silence with a word here and there.  Then in one sincere moment, this man, this sweet, treasured friend shattered Maybe all to bits.  I took a sip of tea and looked up at him to grin when I noticed the slightest glisten of tears filling his eyes.  Before I could say a word he spoke.  "I'm really glad I met you." He said.  "I needed a friend, and you have helped me so much.  It's nice to know someone cares about me."

Maybe?  Definitely, I care.  I am definitely more than that girl who was torn apart by words.  I am more than the woman who walked away from the people who tried to tear her to shreds by ripping at her spirit with their talk of how inadequate she was.  I am so certainly worthy of more than the kind of treatment I received from them.

I am kind.  I am understanding. I am accepting.  These are the things I try so hard to be that I sometimes become careless with myself.  These are the things about me that keep Maybe floating around in my head.  Maybe will never let me be, because I wanted so badly to believe the best of you.  I wanted to give kindness and feel the joy of giving it, expecting nothing in return.  I wanted to understand your motives, your fears, your insecurities.  I wanted it all to make sense so I thought, "Maybe I should give it some more time."  And then I thought, "Maybe I'm crazy." And finally, "Maybe I should leave."

Definitely.  I had to go.  I'm glad I did.  It was definitely the right thing to do, to save myself from the savagery that is you.

Maybe still fills my head with doubts.  It still eats at me sometimes, using your words.  It tells me all that is wrong with me, it tells me nothing is right.  Maybe sent me to see my therapist one day, just to ask her, "What disorder do I have?"

When she looked at me in disbelief and replied, "I don't think you are disordered at all." I thought she was full of crap.  I told her so.

"You," She said, "are a wonderful person."  She could see in my eyes that I didn't believe her.  How could I be wonderful if I am all the things you said I was?

"But what about this?" I asked as I, with my own words painted the picture for her, of my life.  I laid out my mistakes and misgivings, my faults and fears as if I were setting a table for a feast.  I fully expected her to dine upon my spirit the way you always did.  But instead, she smiled and shook her head at me as if to say, "no, you've got it all wrong."

A few seconds of silence fell heavily upon us in that tiny room as I fought back tears and she searched for something to say that would send my Maybe packing.

"In the short time I have known you, you have experienced more adversity than any other client I have ever had.  You have overcome it all, and you are still overcoming.  If you were 'disordered' you wouldn't even have the insight to wonder whether something was 'wrong' with you.  You'd just assume everyone else was to blame.  You are strong," she said.  "You are a good person."

I let the tears, just two of them, loose, and felt them run down my cheeks, drip off my chin.

"I am broken." I said.

"And you are strong enough to rebuild." She answered.

"Maybe." I said.  "Maybe I am."

I'm so profoundly grateful for all the Definitelys in my life.  Those people who are Definitely there for me. The ones I know I can depend on to lift me up when I am fallen.  I would be lost without them. They are the weights that keep me balanced, the life-force that gives me strength, the truth that gives me power.  They make me MORE of what I want to be, and care less about who I am not.  I'm so glad there is an opposite of Maybe, and that it is all of the people in my world who love me into my own transformation.

I will survive this bout of Maybe, because Definitely, I am blessed with the fullness of  Grace and Understanding that only a loving God could provide for me.  He sends it wrapped in packages of all different sizes and shapes, different colors and shades.  He sends his grace most definitely in these small moments, when someone sees some good in me and takes the time to show me I am more than my Maybes would ever have me believe.

"I'm Just Saying...."

You've likely been on the other side of the phrase before.  You're in a conversation with someone, usually about one of those "touchy" subjects, when the person before you makes a bold, inappropriate, or controversial statement and then ends their exclamation with "I'm just saying."

Obviously, they're "just saying" because they just said it.

It's a phrase that really gets under my skin for some reason.  Perhaps because the phrase is always left dangling there in the air with no further explanation of exactly what the person meant by what they "just said."

Here's a recent example from my own life that I overheard in a conversation between two clients regarding race.  I'll use fake names:

Louise: "I think we aught to love everyone and treat everyone the same no matter what color they are.  I believe God created us all and he loves us all and has commanded us to love one another.  Why does our church send missionaries to other countries to bring the Gospel to people of other races?  They'll be in Heaven with us, so why don't we treat them like part of God's family here on Earth?"

Bubba: "That's true. That's true, you're right. But they don't always treat us very well.  I don't have a problem with blacks really; long as they stay in their place.  Now I believe God loves em and all, I'm just saying...."

Louise: Drops the conversation realizing she's talking to a racist with whom she'd rather not engage in a debate at a party in a room full of people.


In my own head, whenever I hear this phrase, I tend to finish it for the other person.

"...Now I believe God loves em and all, I'm just saying I'm a racist and I'm letting you know that loud and clear."

Truth is, whenever you use that phrase, and in whatever context you use it, the person to whom you're speaking probably finishes the phrase for you in his/her head.

Usually I hear this phrase tagged onto the end of a sentence that was either racist, judgmental, or just downright unkind towards another person or persons.  So in the interest of helping those folks who "just say" all the time, I thought I'd help clarify some of their most commonly "just said" comments.

"She's got a pretty face, but she could stand to lose a few pounds...I'm just saying I don't like myself very much so I need to put other people down in order to feel better about my own weight problems."

"She's a hard worker, but she doesn't always follow through on things very well.  I think if she spent as much time on her job as she spent on her hair and makeup she would do better at work. I'm just saying that I'm insecure about my own job performance and my appearance and I need to draw attention to myself by minimizing the work performance and appearance of others in order to elevate myself in the eyes of my boss."

"If that were my kid I'd give him a good spanking and show him who is boss!" I'm just saying that my own kids sometimes misbehave as well and I have no patience or no clue how to handle their behavior other than to whop them upside the head.  I think if everyone else did things my way children would never misbehave.

"I can't believe she had an iphone and was paying for her food with a food stamp card!  And did you see the crap she was buying?  Donuts, and cereal and soda!  I understand that people sometimes need help buying food but they shouldn't be allowed to have a better phone (house, car, clothes, etc) than me when I'm paying my hard earned money for my groceries! I'm just saying that people who are poor (or even having temporary financial hardships) do not deserve to have nice things.  If they were more like ME they wouldn't be in that situation to begin with.  Poor people should live without any type of luxury, or enjoyment in life and their children don't even deserve to have sweet treats now and then.  Don't they realize they're poor and poor people are supposed to be miserable???

Look, I could go on and on with examples, but I don't need to.  If you are one of "those" people who uses this phrase on a regular basis, you should know that when you add that "I'm just saying" to the end of a sentence, you're telling more about yourself than about the subject at hand; and what you're telling about yourself isn't nearly as good as you think it is.

Maybe you think you're just speaking the truth?  Maybe you think you're saying something that no one else has the balls to say out loud.  Or maybe, just maybe you're a jerk.

Stay tuned for my next rant about people who refer to themselves as being "Brutally Honest."

I'm just saying...

When The World Needs To Stop

A few weeks ago I attended the funeral of a beloved uncle.  He was one of the last of my dad's brothers, and it pained us all to watch my father and his other brother sit and wipe away tears as they said their final goodbyes to the man who was once a boy along side them.  To a man who took a whipping along with them for throwing rocks at the windows of an abandoned house (a whipping they didn't deserve, since they weren't the gang of boys who threw the rocks).  I watched his wife mourn, hugged my cousins and said "I'm sorry for your loss."  I sat through the funeral service remembering the times my uncles and my dad and my aunt would all sit together and play their guitars, sing old hymns, connecting through music in a way that not many families are able to do.

But my tears didn't flow until, in my car on the way to his burial site, I noticed every car in the oncoming lane stopping in reverence for our family's loss; in honor of a life lived well and finally taken away by disease and age.  As we drove past a construction site, the workers there stopped their digging, got down from their machines and stood with their hard hats over their hearts until we passed.  It touched me so deeply that the world around us, in this small little town would take the time to acknowledge our grief, to stop for a minute with us to honor our experience and the life that was no more.

When someone you love dies, you really do feel like time stops for a while; at least it does for you.  The rest of the world?  It just keeps on going.  People keep driving to their appointments, going to work, making dinner, laughing, talking, singing; while inside, you feel as though the void left inside you has created a huge precipice over which you have to find your way around, or over, or through, and until you get the courage to start the process of figuring how to get to the other side, you want so badly for time to just slow down, or stop and wait for you to catch up.

Today I learned of a tragedy.  My dear friend lost her son.  The son who was born about 9 months after my daughter.  We always joked that he was conceived on the day she came to visit me in the hospital after I had my daughter because she was so bitten by the baby bug.  The sweet little round-faced, curly headed boy who sat in the back seat of the car with my daughter as an infant and pulled out her hair bows, the boy who said things to my daughter like, "I wouldn't marry you when I grow up because you're too much girl for me." (he was about six years old then) The boy who told silly jokes and got embarrassed to hug me when he got to be a teenager, the boy who loved sports (Greenbay Packers) and adored his mother and father, the boy who was a "little banker" as a kid, always looking for loose change and keeping it hidden away in his room.  That boy, who grew up to be a young man with his own wife whom he adored and his own son whom he loved with all his heart was wiped from this Earth in one senseless act of violence that could never have been predicted.

I called his mother an spoke to her for a few minutes this evening.  I could hear in her voice, the pause of time.  A pause she needs to take for herself, a pause that will ultimately bring her healing, and a pause that everyone around her needs to honor and respect.  Some say the first stage of grief is denial, and maybe this stopping of time has something to do with the need for our hearts to catch up with the knowledge of our minds; whatever it is, it is a necessary part of grief that often gets overlooked as we rush the bereaved to make arrangements, make decisions, plan a funeral, act as bereft as we think they should.

In honor of the great pause, I turned off my TV tonight.  I sat in silence for a while and said a prayer for my dear friend, for his little sisters, his wife and son, and for my own daughters who thought of him like a part of our family.  I told my friend she could call me any time she wanted to talk--told her I would call and check on her later in the week.  But for tonight, I want to honor his life and her grief by just stopping for a while.  My regular routine seems less important.  My own heart needs to pause for a while, let the tragedy sink in, I feel such a responsibility to just pause, to remember, to honor, respect, and be thankful for the life that was, even though it was cut tragically short.

You may not think it much of a gesture to stop your car when you encounter a funeral procession, but let me tell you from experience, when you take that few moments to pause with those who are in that place where the world has seemingly stopped turning, you comfort them by acknowledging the loss they've suffered.  You give validation to the importance of the life that was lost.  You show them that you understand the pause inside their hearts and minds, and that you care enough to honor it.   I know in bigger towns you rarely see this happen anymore, but I, for one, will make it a point from now on to stop and wait, no matter how annoyed the driver behind me gets, no mater how late I'm running.

And I hope we can all strive to understand why the world needs to stop with us, if even for just a few seconds, when we lose someone we love.   Stop doing and start being.  Be the friend who listens.  Be the friend who hugs, who sits in silence, who holds a hand or takes care of the every day minutia while the grieving person takes a pause from the race.  Learn to let them be; be sad, be lonely, be angry, be afraid, be lost, be whatever they are in the moment.  Just stop with them.  Just be.

Remind me, Oh Universe, of Whom I Have Failed to Be Grateful

Last week was my birthday.  A birthday I was not excited about in the least.  A milestone birthday that signals, even to the most self-assured, talented and strong headed woman, the precarious state she is now in as she fights against the onslaught of age.  The birthday that reminds us all that time is marching on, and that we are becoming "the old bitch" we used to snarl our noses at in line at movie theaters as we made comments about their hair, their clothes, and ewww, how she was soooo Wriiieeeeennnkkkled!  In our minds, as 45 comes into sight just over the hill, we put on our full young girl gear and ready ourselves to fight to the death to prove we aren't our mother's kind of 45. We are then new 35.  We are the trendsetters, the ones who sweat because we've been working out, not because we're perimenopausal.  We have supple skin, we manage our fine lines and wrinkles with potions and creams and exfoliating scrubs that make us look, for a day or two, as if we've had a horrible biking accident where we scraped the pavement face first for a good 20 feet or so.  We are the new generation of Middle Age.  We are the YOUNG middle age.

And we are incredibly focused on things that in the grand scheme of things do not even matter.

Yep.  I use my three skin care products religiously.  I have one routine for night and one for morning and even sometimes, one for midday.  I try to watch my weight. Try to dress in a way that says, "she's ageless" instead of "She's someone's freaking mom."....but I don't always succeed.

The point is, I made it to another birthday, and that is a big, big deal.  I made it to another birthday after losing my health and my home, losing my mother, losing another home before I was financially prepared to go, losing someone that I loved and then finding out many things about him that made me realize I had loved someone that never existed in the first place.  I mean, I basically spent a few years of my life with an imaginary friend who wasn't very kind to me.  You better believe all that crap messes with your head in a huge kind of ,"Maybe I'm crazy and need to be institutionalized" kind of way.

But then in one year, I came out on the other side of that situation too, and my imaginary friend, well, who knows what ever happened to him?

It seems like in all the changing and moving and months of endless introspection, I've been sort of out the loop, communication wise with a lot of folks.  I think there was something, possibly a leftover voice from that imaginary friend, that kept telling me I didn't fit in.  That I wasn't really wanted, I was just pitied, or my real "friends" just wanted to use me, have something to talk about, have someone to put down behind her back.  Their concern for me, he told me, wasn't real concern, it was viciousness. I regretfully sort of believed Mr. Imaginary for a while.

But This weekend, Memorial day Weekend, I decided to not listen to my "imaginary friend" anymore.  I packed my backpack, I packed my boy's back pack.  I lugged my heavy dialysis machine down the stairs and into the car.  I loaded the box of heavy fluid and the tubing sets to the car. I bought eggs and bacon and grits, I packed a deck of cards, I wore my hiking boots.  I drove to Nebo NC to a cute little cabin in the woods and I spent some hours laughing with those real friends who love me the very best.  I painted a wine glass, I swam in the river, I trekked through the woods, and I watched a dog leap into the air over and over again trying to catch the droplets of Charlie's splashes in her mouth.  I got hugged.  Wow. I got hugged so many times and told that I was loved so many times and every time, I was able to take it in, accept it, believe it and make their love part of who I am.

Then today,Charlie and I were invited to a friend's house for Memorial Day dinner.  After our few minutes at the pool we loaded our little contribution to the party into the car and set out for Duncan to find Charlie's best friends, and one of the best girls I've ever had the pleasure of working in hell with, twice.   We laughed, we ate, we told jokes, we listened as the bald guy at the table described in fascinating detail how he shaves his whole head every day without ever even a nick of the razor.  The food was fabulous, the company, amazing.  My boy got to play with his two best buds, and we left with enough food for lunch tomorrow.  As we were leaving, Elizabeth followed me to my car and hugged me, reminded me that I am so loved by her, and she reminded me too, that I have so many people in my life for whom I feel grateful

Ever since my birthday last week, they've all been showing up, refusing to let me believe they've forgotten me.  All the members at Senior action who had cards and little gifts for me, who sang "Happy Birthday" to me, who hugged me and told me they love me.  I am thankful for every single one of you.  All my friends up at the cabin in Nebo, I am thankful for your kind hugs, the birthday cards and presents, the jokes, the laughs, and the hugs, oh the hugs!   I'm so thankful I was able to cook breakfast for you and that all of you lived after you ate it and none of you even got sick!  I'm so grateful that you wanted me there, that you planned just for me, so I'd have the proper place to sleep with my machine, and that you cared so much about me that you carried it up and down the stairs for me.  I'm thankful for all our quiet moments, our moments of laughter and our moments of adventure together, and that in that quiet, unspoiled place, I felt so in tune with the hearts of those around me.

I am so grateful for the bigness of this world, and for he diversity of the personalities in it.

So thank you, dearest Universe, for helping me have gas in my car, hiking boots on my feet, and plenty of understanding, loving, non-pretentious friends to meet me at the end of every one of my weekend journeys.

For Universe, you have given me wealth in giving me these friends who are better than gold, more dependable than rain in April, more more real than Christmas, and more fun to be around than a litter of puppies.  And by the way, they all  LOVE puppies, and that makes them even better people. So to you, Universe, I am grateful

I am grateful for the laughter of my son, smiling pictures of my grandchild,   Tuesday dinners with my daughter, and weekend trips to see how my little girl has become a mommy in her own right.  I'm grateful for times when I can listen to my dad's old stories, remind him of some I remember.  I'm grateful that even at the end of a long, long road, I am not standing here alone.

So thank you Universe, for reminding me I am loved, even when I feel the least loveable. Even when I know that loving someone like me would make no sense for someone else, they find some reason to love me anyway.  That is a truly amazing thing.  It is grace in human form and I am in awe of it.

I am grateful.

Down By The River Side.

Yesterday I laid down my troubles.  I decided I was tired of carrying them while on a tromp through a thick forest full off overgrown underbrush and fallen trees.  Brushing spiderwebs off my glasses, and running my fingers through my hair to check for spiders, I forged my own path towards the sound of a rushing river that I couldn't see.  With all the determination of someone who knows she's about to win a race, I plodded onward, scratching my cheek on a limb that seemed to reach out and grab me as I made my way to a clearing I could faintly make out just ahead.

It seemed, as I walked, that every problem, every seemingly insurmountable obstacle that for the last few months became my obsessional focus started to settle into perspective.  With every crush of limbs and crackle of sticks under my heavy hiking boot-step, I began to feel lighter.

Finally I came to a driveway cut through the middle of the woods, a small cottage around the bend at the far end.  At first, I considered turning back, but I could hear the crashing sound of the river, ever louder before me, and I decided to press onward.  My backpack was heavy.  I was sweating, my hair sticking to the back of my neck.  I stopped for a second, took off my backpack and shed the long-sleeved shirt I had worn to protect my arms from scratches.  Examining the forest ahead, no discernable trail in sight, I knew I still risked exposure to brambles and branches, but the thought of freedom from the oppressive heat of that shirt outweighed my fear of getting hurt.  I shed it, crammed it into my backpack and set back on my trek to find the water.

I was right, my arms got scratched, I found a couple of ticks crawling on my shoulder.  My backpack got hung in the twisting limbs of a Mountain Laurel bush and yanked me backwards.  It took a minute or two to get myself untangled.  But I persevered and in a few more minutes I could see the rocky banks of the river up ahead.

I made my way down the steep rocky bank, wobbly rocks threatening to upset my equilibrium, and thanked myself for investing in good hiking boots, for once.  There I was, facing the white-capped rapids, taking n the kind of cool breeze one only gets to experience when standing by a river.  The smell of dark river-mud, distant honeysuckle and my own sweat brought me back to another day, a day when I was younger, lighter and less consumed by things over which I had no power to change.

I found a nice flat rock and sat down, took off my boots, my socks.  I rolled up my pant legs and stuck my toes in the cold water.  At first, it seemed like enough, but the longer I sat there staring at the rocks beneath the crystal clear water, thinking how refreshing it felt rushing over my feet, the more I wanted to immerse my whole body in it.  In my rush to pack for the trip, I had forgotten my swimsuit.  I worried about some microbial infection from the water getting into the exit site for my dialysis catheter.  I tried to talk myself out of what I was considering, but I was in no mood to listen to reason--especially my own, which seemed so flawed and untrustworthy anyway.

I spent a few minutes looking around nervously, the thought I was entertaining seeming to risky but too tempting to pass up.

A few minutes later, there I was, up to my neck in the chilly mountain stream, head tilted back, looking up at the clouds with the slippery river-stones beneath my feet.  I felt alive.  I felt my cares, the ones I have carried for so long, like that heavy backpack weighing me down, slip away.  I imagined them floating down the river without me, I let them go, if only for that brief moment, without even trying to reach for them.

Standing there with the water rushing around my body,my mind drifted back to the time my dad and I fished for two days in the Broad River.  We tied our string of catfish on a stringer and secured them to the side of our green canoe.  In a moment of inattention, the stringer somehow came untied and we stood there and watched as the rapids swept them away.  I remembered how my dad shook his head as we watched our supper tumble through the rocks and out of sight.  He didn't try to chase after them, didn't get angry that they escaped.  He just baited another hook and told me to keep casting my line. We kept fishing until we caught another supper.

We never forgot about those fish that got away.  We still talk about it all the time, but we didn't go hungry either, because our determination paid off.  We landed our canoe on the riverside that night so long ago, and I watched my daddy clean fish into the twilight hours, watched him fry them up on our camp-stove, and we filled our bellies until we were satisfied before we stretched out beneath the stars and let the sound of crickets lull us off to sleep.

And there I stood, imagining my troubles tied to a string like a bunch of caught-fish, tumbling down the rocky river, knowing that this time, I was the one making a great escape.

I slept in a cabin last night, the faint sound of frogs and crickets outside my window, a light snore in my right ear.  The evening breeze caressed my shoulders as I snuggled down beneath the covers and a smile I haven't known for some time stretched across my lips.  I know now what it's like, to truly lay down my troubles.

Down by the riverside.

Bleeding Heart

Twenty-four years old, pregnant, homeless, standing at the corner of Poinsett Highway and 291 with a flimsy cardboard sign that read "Homeless, Hungry, Please Help", I made eye contact with her while I waited at the light.  I didn't know she was twenty-four yet, but I did notice the little bump under the big baggy shirt she wore and I wondered how long it had been since her mother had seen her.  The car behind me waved her over and gave her some pocket change, which she accepted gratefully and stuffed into the big pocket of what appeared to be her boyfriend's shorts that she was wearing.

I had gone without lunch.  I hadn't eaten all day as a matter of fact, so I was on my way to Wendy's to grab dinner.  I picked up a burger and a big cup of water for her, then drove to the parking lot of the dry cleaner's to wave her over to my car.  I rolled down the window and gave her the food, then spent a minute talking to her.  Twenty-four.  The same age I was when I had my youngest daughter.  The same age my oldest daughter is now.  I noticed her decayed teeth, the sores on her skin.  I noticed she was underweight, especially for a pregnant woman.  She told me she was five months pregnant and had only seen a doctor a hand full of times.  She slept in a shed in someone's back yard last night, I suppose during thunderstorms and torrential rain.

I wanted to think of something to tell her, something that would help, but I realized in that moment that my knowledge of resources for people in her situation in my town are so limited.  I only knew of a soup kitchen to tell her about, and it is miles away from the corner where she stood.

I felt angry with myself for not knowing a number to call for her, a place to tell her that could help her out, give her care, help her get off the drugs that had landed her on that corner.  As I pulled away I was choked with tears at the thought of one of my children, one of my girls, who but for the grace of God could have been standing there holding that sign.  I could only pray that some kind stranger would come along and have the right words to say that would break the spell, free her from the bondage of poverty and addiction.  But there are no magic words.

Back at home I couldn't shake the sadness of her plight.  I shook myself, scolded myself, "Pick a cause, Rebecca! You can't be a bleeding heart for every single underdog."

I thought about the idea of God, and why, if he's loving and benevolent, he would allow one of his children to suffer, to pass on their suffering to their unborn children.  Why are there so many wounded adults walking around in the world, inflicting their own pain on their children, their loved ones?  I really don't get it.

But the reality is, struggle exists.  Hurts exist.  They are part of the human condition.  My moment of clarity came as I waited for my dog to make his daily lap around the yard, yipping and yapping at squirrels and other dogs.  I stood there alone, the afternoon breeze blowing my skirt around my ankles, and silently thanked God for that breeze.  I thanked him that there was a breeze blowing, not just in my yard, but on that hot, sun-baked street corner where that young girl was likely still standing, with a blank expression, her pale skin and weary eyes betraying her very human struggle to survive.  That's when it dawned on me, that maybe the struggle persists to give us opportunity.

Opportunity, not in the pursuit of selfish gain, but the chance to really know what love is.  The struggle goes on to remind us to love, to reach out to our fellow man, to be God's hands and feet.  We struggle so others can reach out to us, so we can know how to give and how to take.

Pick a cause, any cause.  Pick all of them.  It doesn't matter what your heart bleeds for, as long as it bleeds for something, for someone.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day. For as long as I can remember, this day has been a source of anxiety for me.  I struggled, for years, with the idea of coming up with some way to honor my mother on this day without betraying how I really felt.  I did love her, but I suppose I never really felt that sense of closeness, the bond that most people seem to have with their mothers.  My childhood memories of her are fraught with times of conflict, her harsh words, the dissatisfaction she showed with every gift that was ever given to her for Christmas or Mother's day or her birthday.

A few years ago I decided to go the non-traditional route and stop giving her trinkets and gifts and instead tried to go with things I made her, or little sentimental tokens that actually conjured good memories for me.  One year I found a card with a cardinal on the front and wrote inside about my fond memories of having her hold me up at the kitchen window to watch the redbirds in the back yard.  She didn't get it.  There was no doo-dad or trinket attached, no gift card or twenty-dollar bill inside. In her mind it wasn't a gift at all.   I'm sure it ended up in the trash because I never saw it again after that day.  I'm really not sure she even read it.  Another year I brought my guitar over and played it for her, sang her a song even. That's something I hadn't done in years before that day, and I haven't done it again since.  For anyone.  Again, she didn't understand that it was for her, from my heart, and I heard from other family members that she was upset that I didn't bring her anything for Mother's Day.

So I finally gave up on trying to make that connection with her through my positive memories, and instead went back to giving her a basket of flowers or some little figurine to add to her collection.  She understood the language of giving things, genuine fondness and affection were so foreign to her that she couldn't appreciate them.  Maybe it was because she grew up with so little and that the gift of some little thing was a big deal because most people couldn't afford to give in that way.  Maybe, in her mind, a gift that cost money required more sacrifice and selflessness than giving something from the heart.

There are so many things about my mother I will never understand.  With her recent passing, I have come to accept that the only way I can make peace with her is to learn to accept her as she was.  She was troubled, often angry.  She was fearful, depressed, thought so little of herself and of others that she lost her zeal for life long before she died.  I know that my mother embraced her death, that in reality, she had probably been longing for it for far longer than any of us knew.

From this Mother's Day forward, I can begin to think of her and honor her in my own way, without worrying about whether she gets it, or appreciates the way I choose to remember her.  I have to admit that it comes as a relief today, that I don't have to go pick out some insincere-feeling gift to give her.  I can keep the fond memories of her close to my heart and let all the rest of it go.  The anxiety of obligation is a thing of the past now. I find myself at ease with the thought of my missing mother.  At ease because I know she is finally at rest, and because I am finally free of the need to find a way to speak to her in a language she could understand.  In a way, we were always from different worlds, but I find comfort in knowing that now she's at peace in hers, and that now I can express my love for her in a way that makes sense to me.

What Love IS

I am sitting on my couch on a Wednesday evening.  My son is playing superhero vs. villain in the middle of the living room floor.  Apparently he's the villain this time, because his giant plastic Spiderman toy that he got for his birthday last year is really taking a beating.  If I look up at him while he plays, he gets embarrassed and tells me not to watch him play.  He wants me to be absorbed in something else, knowing he's there, but not really noticing him. He is comforted by my presence, and although the kicking and thumping drives me to distraction, I continue to sit here and type because I want him to feel comforted.  I want to experience the joy of sneaking a peek of these fleeting moments of childhood that seem to be gone in a flash--to disappear when I'm not paying attention.

It is easy for me to forget that I am loved sometimes.  I get caught up in the busyness of life. My daily routine, the stress of paying bills and keeping up with laundry, checking in on my dad, making sure I've done everything I was supposed to do at work, it all overwhelms me.  It isolates me from the people I care about and it alienates me from the comfort of their presence in my life.  I often start to feel invisible underneath it all--forgotten even.

But amidst the frenzy of life, the heaviness of my own mind and my absolute certainty that I am unloved and unloveable, the people who care about me the most  tend to show up.  They call me to see how I'm doing.  They offer to help me with something.  They send me and my boy tickets to Marvel Live or the circus.  One of them takes it upon herself to gather up enough money to help send my boy to summer camp.  They don't ask for anything in return, they don't even tell me they've chipped in, they just do these things because they are beautiful, kind people and they love me. I have no idea why.

I feel I have so little to offer them, yet they shower me with their kindness.

I am in awe of them and feel so unworthy of the love they extend to me.  My heart is full.  I am abundantly blessed to have such love shown to me, especially when I feel I am so unworthy of it.

Love is grace, extended not just from the hand of God, but to all of us from our fellow man.  It cannot be won or lost, cannot be earned.  Love is that thing which lifts us out of our own darkness, reminds us that we have a purpose and showers us with grace when we feel we deserve it the least.

What is love, after all, if it is only given when it's earned?

Disgusted

I own the most disgusting dog in the world.

He weighs 7 pounds and has the smell of a million gallons of shit, vomit and wet-dog.  Seriously, it's as if someone has distilled those three scents and at some point when I'm not around, he runs into the bathroom and uses an atomizer to douse himself in the breathtakingly offensive odor.

It doesn't matter that I bathe him weekly.  He stinks to high heaven immediately after having been bathed.

As if the smell alone weren't a bad enough, he has some grotesque behaviors as well.

If he is around another dog while that dog is peeing, he will try his best to get his nose (if not the whole of his body) into its urine stream.  He loves being peed on.  

Also, he rolls in shit every time he gets a chance and I live in an apartment complex where there are tons of dogs, so walking outside with him is like walking through a turd land mine where he attempts to throw himself on top of every shit bomb he can find.

He tries to eat garbage. Not unusual, you might think.  I didn't think so either until that time that I caught him running under the bed with a used maxi pad in his mouth as if it were a T-bone steak that he had to hide to eat.

He drinks water to excess.  A common problem with some dogs as I understand, although no one, including his vet, really understands WHY he does this.  The water consumption itself isn't such a big deal, its the white, foamy, bile-filled vomit that kicks the nastiness level over the top.

Also his pee stinks worse than that of any dog I have ever owned.  If he pees in the house it takes weeks to get rid of the smell, even after shampooing the carpet and using pet odor enzymes, baking soda and borax.  

Even if I wash his butt daily, he ends up with a little poop stuck to his butt-hair.  He prances around with it hanging there as if it something to be proud of.  Recently I've tried shaving his hair closer around his butt, however, he is very squirmy.  When he gets nervous he lets off an even more offensive odor that literally makes me gag.  Did I mention that he's nervous much of the time?

He whines constantly.  He whines to go out, but then when I take him out he whines to come back in. He whines to go ride in the car with us in the mornings or afternoons, but then he whines the whole time we are in the car.  He whines to go in his basket at night (he sleeps under an upside down laundry basket) but then when he whines once I let him in it.  He whines to sit in my lap, but then when I put him on my lap he frantically licks me and whines to get down.

I don't normally mind a dog licking my hands once in a while, but this dog has an exceptionally wet tongue.  It is tiny and fast and oh, so gross, considering the fact that he loudly, proudly and compulsively licks his private parts and eats ANYTHING that doesn't attempt to eat him first.

Also his breath stinks BAD.  There aren't enough Denta-bones in the world.

He humps EVERY other dog he can get close to.

He barks ferociously at the neighbors and some people are even scared of him.  Seriously.

He takes FOREVER to find the right spot to poop in.  I have to plan an extra 20 minutes into my morning routine in order to give him enough time to circle several different spots numerous times before he finally decides on a place and squats.  Sometimes he needs to go twice, but doesn't tell me, so we come in, I feed him and put him in his basket for the day (while I'm at work) and he poops in the basket.  Did I mention that under the overturned basket, I put a nice comfy towel for him to lie on. When he poops in there, he paws the towel back and makes sure his poop lands on the carpet instead of the towel.

Today he pooped on his squeaky toy.

I used to put him in the bathroom with a pee pad on the floor during the day.  He would pee on the pee pad and the shred it all over the bathroom, leaving a huge mess for me to clean up when I got home.

He also chewed the cabinet door.

Is it any wonder that I am having trouble feeling attached to his animal?  

I know it isn't his fault.  He raised himself on the streets.  He comes from the school of doggy hard knocks.  Before my sister found him wandering around under her porch, he was an orphan-dog.  He hitched himself up with whatever bigger dog he could find (for protection, of course) and foraged to stay alive. 

Going for a whine in the car last summer

I know it's just his survival instinct that makes him so disgusting, but it seems like after having been a house-dog for almost 2 years, he would have learned some doggy etiquette by now.  

The vet says he's not stupid, just too old to learn new tricks and will only adapt his behavior when it suits him to do so.

All I'm doing here is trying to take care of him and give him a safe, loving place in the world and he spites me by being so sickening and disagreeable.

Reminds me of some people I know.

I was talking to another dog-loving friend of mine the other day about the trouble I'm having feeling affection for this dog.  His words to me were sage.  "Why do you think he ended up being a stray? You're probably not the first person to take him in and then be repulsed by him."

Now my question is, does this mean I'm stuck with him for good?  I've only just started to learn to free myself from human entanglements that bring me no joy and rob me of the things I want in life.  How do I handle such a situation with a dog who is dependent on me?  Humans are one thing--they can figure things out for themselves and no one is going to think I'm horrible for changing my mind about wanting one who makes a habit of taking a dump on my spirit.  Drop a dog off at the shelter and your name is mud.  Forever.

This little guy should really have an outside life, for the most part.  I'd be happy to bring him inside to sleep at night and shield him from harsh weather, but apartment life doesn't seem to suit him very well.  I think he is sad and lonely and longing for those freedom-filled days of rolling in all the shit piles he can find, taking urine showers whenever he can weasel his way into a good stream, and eating whatever garbage he can forage from the neighbor's trash.  I think it's probably what he dreams of during those naps when he's whimpering and twitching over in the corner by the couch.

I am going to keep trying to love this little guy.  He is awfully cute, which is fortunate for him. I have a feeling a lesser attractive dog with his annoying personality wouldn't have survived this long.  I guess we all have our positive qualities, even if they are only skin-deep.

ADHD and Me

I had my appointment for monthly lab-work yesterday afternoon.  When they checked my blood pressure it was dangerously high, despite my blood pressure medication.  It was also very high the last 2 months at my doctor appointments and has been teetering on being scary-high when I check it at home. My freaked-out nurses checked my BP about 4 times before they let me leave and brainstormed with me about what could possibly be making my blood pressure shoot up.

One of my nurses suggested that perhaps my ADHD was part of the culprit. "You are just high strung" she said.

High strung?  What does that even mean and how does it apply to me?

Anyway, she suggested that at my appointment next week, I bring this up with my doctor and ask him if he would be willing to prescribe some sort of medication for ADHD to see if it helps.  I confess, that I have always suspected I had ADHD, but there is precious little information out there about the disorder, especially in adults and even more especially in women and girls.

I do remember struggling through elementary school, my mind often a million miles away any time a subject with which I struggled came up.  Math was a HUGE problem for me, starting in about third grade.  Instead of offering more help and finding ways to help me adapt an learn, my teacher (and my school's} philosophy seemed to be to paddle the crap out of me until I complied and learned the same way all the other kids did. It was a traumatic experience, to say the least.

Over the years, without any kind of treatment or medication, I have learned a lot of adaptive skills on my own, but I am still often forgetful and disorganized with a bad tendency to procrastinate when a task feels overwhelming to me.  I have frequently internalized all these things and felt as though they were actual character flaws in myself.

This evening I actually found, for the first time ever, an online inventory based on the DSM for ADHD in adults and guess what?  I scored a 6 out of 10.  I think if I had been tested as a child, before I had to spend so many years learning to adapt and overcome on my own without any kind of interventions, I would have probably scored a 10 our of 10.  It's kind of a relief to know that there are ways I can continue to adapt and learn how to better manage my life without medication, but at this point in my life, I admit I am curious to know how medication could help me.

If I had to describe most of my life in one word that word would be "overwhelmed".  As far back as I can remember, I have felt overwhelmed with things that seem so easily managed by other people.  I know that I have a way of getting on people's nerves with my ever-shifting interests and frequent inability to follow through after the toughest part of a task has been accomplished.  It seems like once I've gotten through the hardest part of a chore, I lose interest in it.  If it isn't challenging and completely absorbing my attention, I can't pay attention to it at all.

For example, it seems like a small thing, but I often do laundry, fold it, put it in a basket and then never put it away.  Seems like not such a big deal until you have six baskets of clothes to dig through every morning when you're trying to get ready for work.  So then, I run late because I get sidetracked looking for my grey tights or my black bra or a certain pair of socks.  I know that if I'd just put them away in the same place every time my life would be much simpler, but once they're washed and folded, I am on to other things and I forget about putting them away.  I have gotten much better about this over the last several months and at this moment I only have one very tiny basket of folded laundry sitting in my bedroom.  I am concentrating on putting everything away as soon as I bring it back from the laundry room.  This will last for a while, but as soon as other things start to catch up with me and I start feeling overwhelmed with keeping up with it all, the basket piles are likely to appear again.  I hate this about myself.

I do the same thing with piles of mail.  It's maddening. I can get it all organized and keep it that way for a while, but again, when the other pressures of life start bearing down on me, this is one of the things that overwhelms me to the point of avoidance and anxiety.  It seems like a lot of people have piles of papers and mail here and there, but when you have ADHD, those piles of paper often contain really important things that need to be dealt with.  The problem comes when you lose important things and then have to go through the hassle of replacing them or digging through piles and piles of mail to find them.  I know this is self-defeating, but if you could see inside my mind when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'm almost sure you'd find piles of thoughts and baskets of anxiety all over the place.  My cluttered life is an outward representation of my cluttered mind and I am really tired of it.

My nurse suggested that my life-long insomnia might also stem from my ADHD racing thoughts and inability to be still long enough to fall asleep.  I have trouble just sitting back and relaxing without DOING something.  I can't just watch TV.  I have to watch TV and write or read or talk to someone.  I can't JUST listen to music, I have to listen to music and shower or clean or be driving at the same time.  I used to have trouble staying in one room long enough to clean it up, but I learned years ago to set a timer and make myself stay in one room cleaning until time was up.  Adaptations like this have brought me pretty far from the ADHD mess I used to be, but I realize I still have a ways to go.

This became even more clear to me today at work when I was counting up a small stack of one dollar bills for a bank deposit.  With music going, people talking, volunteers getting lunch set up and a stack of various forms, calendars and schedules on my desk, I ended up counting the money about seven times before I was able to fill out the deposit slip.  I eventually got up and closed my office door, which I am sure seemed rather rude and anti-social, but if I hadn't I would have never gotten that 58 bucks counted up correctly.  That's another problem with having ADHD as an adult--the need to shut people out so you can concentrate on what's in front of you can make you seem rather rude at times.  Socially, it also becomes a huge stumbling block when someone is talking to you and you are looking them square in the eye but have no idea what they're saying to you because your thoughts are racing a million miles a minute about all the things you need to get done next.  It isn't impossible for me to focus my attention on who is speaking to me most of the time, but when I'm feeling overwhelmed it is monumentally difficult to be attentive when someone launches into a long, complicated story.  I realized this about myself today twice, when in conversations with two different people, I found them looking back at me puzzled and confused at my inappropriate responses.

As far as my BP goes, I think it has improved today with my doctor's insistence that I increase my medication dosage.  I suppose I could just leave things as they are and keep scrambling for ways to adapt and overcome the way I have all my life, but I'm thinking maybe it wouldn't hurt to try something different and just see how it works.  Maybe there's a little pill out there somewhere that will be life-transforming for me, or maybe not, but I'll never know unless I give it a try.

Of all the things I have always suspected were wrong with me, this one has probably been the one I've paid the least attention to.  The more I learn about it though, the more I'm able to recognize the many ways it affects my life.  I guess I'm going to follow my nurse's advice and talk to my doc about ADHD next week.  We'll see what he says and go from there.

In the meantime I'm going to do some reading online with three browser windows open while I watch TV and talk to my kid.  I guess the ability to multi-task isn't such a bad thing, so maybe there's a blessing somewhere even in having ADHD as an adult.

Worlds Apart

I have my Grandma Curtis's forehead wrinkles and bad eyesight.  I know this because I have seen a close-up photo of her from sometime in the late 60's.  I know it's the late 60's because the picture is in color and because she died in 1970, when my mother was pregnant with me.  My Grandpa Curtis is in the photo too, and he died in October of 1969.  Even though I never knew them, I grew up with them all around me.  We lived in their house with the flowers my grandmother planted still popping up, every year, all over the yard.

I knew from the time I was a small girl that my grandmother loved flowers.  They were everywhere.  Pink and white striped flowers lined the concrete walkway up to the steps, daffodils popped up here and there every spring.  There were rose bushes and Forsythia bushes and other smelly, flowering bushes that no one ever learned the names of.  They were little parts of her colorful spirit that lingered all around us long after she was gone.

All my life I've felt a kind of kinship with this woman I never knew.  I was told stories of her love of the outdoors; how, if the weather was warm, she preferred working outside in the flowers to doing housework. I know she was a creative soul.  She had a room of the house set aside just for quilting. My mother told me about it many times when she would remember my grandmother's death and the way she and my aunts had to go in and clean up all the quilting materials that were strewn everywhere in that room.  For a while when I was growing up, that room became mine.  Now it is a front porch.

My grandmother played the accordion.  I've always tried to imagine her lively and with great enthusiasm pumping out a tune or two, but I really don't know what kind of music she played.  I like to think that it was her love of music that encouraged my dad and his brothers to learn to play guitar. In that way, she gave me memories of music with my family that I'll always treasure.

I know she was a good cook.  In fact, my mother used to say that if Grandma Curtis hadn't been around she wouldn't have learned to cook at all. "I couldn't boil water when we first got married," my mother would say. "So your Grandma Curtis had to teach me everything."  In fact, Grandma knew my mother couldn't cook and it worried her.

My dad's memory is fading.  Tonight I told him a story that my mother told me a dozen times, about how when my parents first got married and got their own little house, my grandma sent my uncles over while they were gone and had them move all my parents' things out and into her own house.  She was afraid my mother wouldn't be able to take care of my dad.  He didn't remember this happening at all but he didn't question it.  A big smile came over his face, his cheeks turning red the way they do every time he laughs.  "I don't remember that, but it sure sounds like something my Mama would have done. She didn't want any of her boys leaving home!"

Obstinate.  Determined.  Pig-headed even.  That's what she was, and here I've been, all my life measuring myself against her memory.  I look at the picture of her in her cat-eye glasses, the same swirl of wrinkles on her forehead that I see more and  more every day in my own.  I study her smile, her hairline, the fullness of her lips and the shape of her eyes and I see some of me in there.  I see a lot of me, actually.  I see a lot of me in all the little things, both good and questionable, that I know about this woman I've never known.

In a way, the familiar comfort I've always felt with her gives me some peace.  It reminds me that long after my life is over, little bits and pieces of what I have put into the world will continue on.  It is the mystery and hopefulness of family, of legacy and legend that seems to keep the wheels of life turning.  I just hope that I can leave more good in the world than bad.  I hope I am planting seeds that will continue to bloom and grow into beautiful things someday, even once I'm too far removed from this world to enjoy them anymore.  I hope my children will know, even when they are 81, how fiercely I have loved them.  I hope someone will have a song stuck in his head because I passed the love of music down the line.  I hope someone out there will be creating lovely things, making messes, choosing to play outside instead of working inside, cooking big tasty meals out of cheap home-grown food and stubbornly refusing to ever give up on what she wants because I lived that kind of life before her.

I was always told that my grandma died of a broken heart. Everyone told me she grieved herself to death after the sudden death of my grandpa.  They died only a few months apart, him in the fall, and her the following February.  There is another picture somewhere that was taken at her graveside.  In it, my sister is about five years old.  She is sitting in the foreground looking sad and uncertain with a couple of my cousins beside her. In the background, the profiles of two pregnant women stand behind them. I think one of those women is my aunt Lib.  The other is my mother.

I don't know what it would be like to love a man so much that my own spirit would perish if I lost him. I know what it is like to love and I know what it is like to lose.  I even know what it is like to lose myself in someone else, but I don't think I'll ever know the kind of love that transcends time and space. I don't think I will ever be lucky enough to make that kind of connection with another human being who doesn't share my DNA.  It seems so foreign to me.  This concept, this reality that was my grandmothers will never be mine.  In all my searching for where she and I reach our divide, this most unfortunate place is where I find it.  The chasm that puts me worlds away from the wholeness of who she was lies vast and wide between us, the echo of my own voice calling back to me across time, wondering if I've taken that obstinate, pig-headedness of hers a step too far this time.

A Dozen Random Thoughts for A Snowy Winter's Evening

1. Have you ever noticed how one bad actor in a scene makes every other actor in the scene seem like a bad actor?

2. It really bothers me how women in our society seem to carry around such a huge load of guilt because they assume responsibility for the behavior of other people. Who taught us to do that and why aren't we changing it?

3. I hate how my TV gets so blaring loud when something exciting is happening but when there is dialogue you can't hear a darned thing.

4. I also hate when my toes are so cold they seem like they'll never be warm again.  

5. I didn't make my bed today and now I dread getting into it later.  I know I could go make it now, but it's already dark so it's just not the same.  Is this some kind of bed-making OCD?  Should I be worried?

6. I can't figure out why my dog will not chew on a chew toy but seems to love chewing on everything else.  Also, why does he pee on the black and white rug?

7. It is very uncomfortable when a senior client gets all flirty and weird and I don't quite know how to respond in a way that discourages such behavior without seeming rude and unkind.  I need to work on setting that boundary without coming across as hostile 'cause it really does annoy me and I'm afraid my annoyance is too obvious to everyone except the guy who is being inappropriate.

8. I really wish I could pull off the geeky-borderline goth girl with glasses look, but I think I'm too old.  That really sucks.

9. I think James Spader plays the same character in every movie/show he's in.

10. I roll my eyes a lot without realizing it.  Bad habit.  It makes me seem condescending and inconsiderate.  Okay, so sometimes I am condescending and inconsiderate...but I shouldn't be so obvious about it.

11.  If it keeps snowing I am going to weigh 400 pounds before Spring.

12. There are way too many people in this world who are so screwed up in the head that they damage other people just by being who they are. I will never be able to understand how God lets this happen to anyone.  It frustrates and depresses me so I never think about it for any longer than it took me to write it down.

Annoyed by Old People?

Do you think old ladies are disgusting?  Do you cringe when you get behind an elderly man at the cash register who doesn't know how to swipe his debit card?  Think old people smell bad?  Hate the way they complain about "kids these days"?  Do you despise their ignorance regarding technology, their flip phones and their confusion about email and Facebook?

Well here's some discouraging news for you.  Unless you die first, you will be one of those people someday and some young douchebag is going to be standing in line behind you at the supermarket cursing under his breath because you don't understand this whole implant under your wrist thing that has to be scanned when you pay for your Metamucil.  

That's right, you will someday have chronic constipation unless you drink your fiber every day.  Then YOU will poop your pants because the Metamucil kicked in at the wrong time and you walk so slow (due to all those years of abusing your knees climbing mountains, doing yard work and jogging) that you cant make it to the bathroom on time.  Also, you will likely piss in your pants and need to wear diapers.

And if you are an elder-hater,now, you deserve every elderly ailment known to man.  In fact, you deserve to age prematurely just so you can get a clue.

I work with the elderly.  A long time ago I wrote a blog post that was not at all intended to be serious. It was probably mildly irreverent, but I let some of my elder friends read it and they all agreed it was accurate and pretty funny.  It was not written out of disrespect or a lack of regard for their life experiences, but from the point of view of someone who works with them every day and hears their woes on a regular basis.  That blog post has gotten more hits than anything else I've ever posted and the search term that always gets it to pop is always phrased something like, "Why are old people so annoying?" "I hate old people" "Annoying things old people do" yadda yadda...

So I put in a similar search term tonight and I was appalled at the intolerance and hate speech directed at the elderly that I found.  Some of these same people who go on and on about how the elderly should just go ahead and die also go into long rants about how the elderly of today are the same generation who fought against Civil Rights, hate gays and encouraged religious oppression.  I am amazed at the lack of insight it would take for a person to be able to discriminate in such a way against a population (a large part of the population) on the basis of their age alone and in the next breath condemn other people for being intolerant.

Do you think the elderly are clueless about their shortcomings?  I assure you, they are not.  They know they are slow.  They acknowledge that they're intimidated by technology.  They understand far more about life than you do and they know that when they were your age, they were just as stupid as you are now.  That's why it's so difficult for them to just sit back and watch you be an asshole without saying something about it.  Did you ever consider that their voiced opinions might have some merit based on the idea that they've already lived the years that you haven't even imagined making it through yet?

Do you think old ladies enjoy peeing their pants every time they sneeze?  Of course they don't, but they don't really complain about it all that much because they know the reason they can't control their bladders is because they carried and gave birth to your mother or your father or your uncle Fred.  So you aught to be thankful for the fact that your wrinkly grandma wears Depends and tries not to laugh too hard in public; if she didn't have to worry about those things, it would probably mean you didn't exist.

You think it's easy for your grandpa to hand over his driver's license?  It isn't.  Imagine how you'll feel one day when your grown children have to sit you down and tell you that you are scary behind the wheel and they're taking your keys away.  Yeah, grandpa would love to be able to go out for a beer and holla at some bitches.  He's still a man, you know--and probably more of a man than you'll ever be, despite the fact that he respects women enough to not refer to them all as "bitches", is too embarrassed to ask his doctor for Viagra and falls asleep every time he takes a few sips of a beer.  Guess what?  Someday your man-stick isn't going to work either.  You're going to have trouble peeing because your prostate is enlarged and one of them "bitches" you be hollin' at now is going to be wiping your ass for you.  

That's reality, man.

Old age is coming for you.

And that's something the elderly secretly feel pretty good about when you're being an asshole to them.  They might not know much about iPhones, but they do know your fate, even if you're too much of a tool to realize where you're headed.  And by the way, it will all happen a lot quicker than you think.

So go ahead and be a hater.  Time will get its revenge on you.