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?