Things That Are Lovely

Sometimes I think I could drown inside my own head.  On days like today I wake up with a swirling, dizzying overload of thinking crowding my brain until there's barely room in there for reason.  I lay in bed too long after the alarm, talking myself into getting up.  My limbs felt heavy.  My room, still bathed in early morning twilight wrapped around me, too much like a cocoon.  I knew that outside the covers the chilly air would shock me out of my complacency and I wanted too badly to cling to it.  So I kept lying there, even after the second and third alarms.

My life is quite perfunctory of late.  I do what is required of me and little more. Still with my obligations met, so many things that should matter more seem to get lost in the clutter of my brain.  It's as if I forgot how to discern the important from the nonsensical.  Lost in the limbo of neither succeeding or failing, I feel on the verge of just rolling up in my blankets and going back to sleep.

Last night I heard a talk about storytelling.  The guy said there are three important components to every story. The audience, the characters, and a sense of wonder.  I thought how like real life a story can be.  After all, life at its essence is nothing more than a story with a beginning, middle and end.  Hopefully there's some wonder sprinkled in here and there, and whether we like it or not, we always have an audience.  I am struck by the realization that I have lived my whole life in front of an audience of critics who make it their business to judge, reject, applaud, approve or disapprove of the way I am living my story.  The speaker says we writers must always be conscious of our audience, we write for them, after all.  If they don't like your story, you failed at telling it in a compelling way. I think about all the ways I fail at living out a story of which anyone would approve.

With that on my mind, I fell asleep last night to blissful nothingness.  Dreams did not intrude upon my already used-up mind.  I drifted along on the blackness of night and the silence of stillness until my alarm jarred me awake.  The sound assaulted me so fully that within a matter of seconds, my mind was all aswirl with thoughts of how I fail so often at life.  I refuse to dwell in the past, so today became my muse.  I woke up knowing already exactly how my day would play out.  The story, told before it began.  Maybe I felt as though actually getting out of bed might passive aggressively give the finger to Monday.

Eventually though, I did swing my feet over the side of the bed, flung the covers back and let the cold chill of morning take over my senses.  A few minutes later, I could barely remember my cocoon that now sat wrecked, not unlike a chrysalis after the butterfly finally escapes.

I'm not going to even say I showed up for this day with beauty and grace.  I plodded along.  I grouched and griped and shook my head a million times at all the wrongness around me.  I made my way to work, where a conversation about politics nearly sent me scurrying back out the door, but instead I changed the subject then watched as the arguers shook their heads and griped and groaned.  One left--offended perhaps, but I was in no mood to care.

It's funny to me how everyone is entitled to an opinion as long as they agree with the opinions of those around them.  It's even funnier to me that people with their full cognitive capabilities still intact can lash out angrily at someone who is functioning as best they can, with basically no short-term memory at all.  This is not a demonstration of kindness or graciousness.  It isn't "Christian" at all.  But dare I say what I'm thinking?  No way.  I keep my silence close, almost use it as a shield to protect myself from the verbal onslaught of ignorance that waits to assail me concerning things of which it knows nothing.

It's my job, in a way, to just put up with it.

I'm not so fond of my job today.

When I got home this afternoon I caught a glimpse of my little weedy flowerbed in the front yard.  Tiny purple Crocus are popping up everywhere.  I found the teeny bulbs last summer, buried under one of those pieces of fabric that's supposed to keep the weeds out of your flowerbeds.  I pulled up all the fabric, softened the dirt and left the bulbs there, not knowing if they'd come up in the Spring.  My boy and I got out of the car and walked over to examine them.  It's as if 30 more have popped through the soil overnight, a reminder to me that nature stops for nothing once it's set free.  I wonder then, what is keeping me from blooming?

Perhaps my own thoughts sabotage me; I cannot stop the flood of negative thinking once the gates pop open.  I let the current drag me down.  I get covered up like those Crocus bulbs--blocked from the light and rain and even the mounds of snow that make wintertime the perfect time to hide.

There is a time for everything, and for me, times are changing.  So now, instead of dwelling on all the ways I fall so short in life, I will think of something lovely: My pretty purple flowers, beset by weeds but blooming all the same.


"...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."  Philippians 4:8

Love Shows Up

The day of their wedding, my mother readied herself at home.  My dad told me a few years ago that throughout that day, her father antagonized her.  "Charles is not coming to get you." He told her.  "He ain't gon' marry you."  Over and over, as she got herself dressed, her hair styled, her lipstick on, she listened to her father's cynicism until she started to believe him.  But my dad, true to his honest and faithful nature, showed up on her doorstep that evening wearing a suit that was a little too big,  a smile plastered on his face, ready to take her to Preacher Newton's house.  They were married on the back porch with my mother's sister and my dad's brother as witnesses.  It wasn't until after my mother passed away that I finally saw a single photo of them on their wedding day.  Taken at my Grandma and Grandpa Curtis' house, they are sitting on a swing, the wind blowing my mother's dress up just a little, my dad looking contentedly happy with his arm around her.  She isn't smiling exactly.  She looks a little anxious, or maybe stunned that her man showed up and swept her away to a new life.

Parental romance never seems appealing to us until we reach an age that allows us to appreciate the serendipity that must happen in order for love to bloom and grow.  Indeed, not only bloom and grow, in the case of my parents, but to also endure.  

Neither of my folks even had a high school diploma.  My mom grew up looking after other people and their children.  She quit school at a young age to babysit her uncle's kids so his wife could go to work.  She talked often of her father's alcoholism and the way she worried about her mother.  She wanted to protect and take care of her mother even, from the time she was a small child.  She remembered instances of violence, her mother ducking just in time to miss a bloody nose, her father's fist instead, going through a window.  She had siblings then, two sisters, one older, one younger.  They remember things differently, but my mother always stuck to her version of history and I believe it left a lasting impression on the very fabric of her being.  

My dad quit school young to help his father farm. Life was hard for an uneducated man, and my father met the challenge better than anyone else I've ever known.   He started working at the Singer plant in 1970, the year I was born.  He retired when I was 26.  By then the factory had changed hands and he knew how to run every machine in the place.  I don't remember that he ever missed work because he was sick, except of course when he landed in the hospital with kidney stones once.  He showed up at that factory every night, with gouty feet, with fevers, with tired and aching bones from tilling a garden in the hot summer sun.   He rested on Sundays, but not until after he drove a church van to pick up elderly folks and children, then had dinner with us.  Even then, his respite was brief; a nap or two would settle on him during Sunday afternoon football as he sat in his recliner.  Sunday evening he piled us all back in that van and we all showed up at church again for evening service.  Then, back at home after church we ate supper together in front of the TV, watching "The Jeffersons" before I was sent off to bed and he started getting ready for work.  Third shift began at midnight, so his Monday commenced long before we even opened our eyes to get ready for school.

Likewise my mother's work was never done.  She woke up early every morning and got us off to school, but not before she cooked a Southern breakfast fit for a king.  My dad came in the door around seven o'clock every morning to homemade biscuits, bacon, eggs, grits, the whole spread.  Of course, we ate too, but I think we all knew for whom that big breakfast was made.  He slept during the day while we were gone and met us, awake and busy as we got off the bus in the afternoon.  With 3 of us girls still at home and a grandchild next door, my mother didn't get much down time.  She showed up to cook two full meals every single day, cleaned up after them,  then prepared for the next feast.  She kept up with laundry for all of us.  I remember it waving on a very long clothesline that stretched the width of our yard and then some.  I remember my sisters complaining about bringing the laundry in, or about hanging it out for her.  I remember myself, whining about washing dishes.  I think about me in comparison to her--I lack the motivation to put my clothes in the dryer sometimes.  How did she do it all and never give up?

Motivation.  All of us need to find it somewhere.  We need inspiration, something in our lives that makes us keep putting one foot in front of the other, something we know is worth our effort--makes us want to show up.   My parents kept inspiration somewhere in the space between them where they reached not only for one another, but for the family they created together.  It strung us all together like clothes on a line.  It gave us room to breathe, but kept us close, made us secure; it ultimately gave us all a sense of purpose.

The perfect romance never existed.  It never will.  Love, though, is impervious to the whims of romance.  It persists through years of financial drought and illness and the trials of raising children.  It clings tenaciously to whatever dregs of hope it finds and somehow keeps on growing.  Love is, as I learned after my mother's passing, stronger than death.  Against all the illnesses, struggles, misunderstandings and even annoyances that come with living with someone for decades, Love prevails.  Real Love withstands whatever tries to tear it apart.  I believe that even on their worst days, my parents knew real Love.  Their love for each other ultimately nurtured us.  It fed us, clothed us, sent us to school in clean clothes.  It taught us about disappointment and made us resilient.  It grew in us our own insecurities, vulnerabilities and strengths.  It made us girls all seek out that same kind of love for ourselves.  Some of us found it, some never will; so scarce it is.

I can appreciate the bond my parents shared so much more now that the years have smoothed the rough edges of memory and life-experience has taught me how hard-won even the simplest things in life often are.  My parents possessed a rare gem.   They never knew wealth, but knew something that few people find and fewer still are able to keep.  It lives on far beyond who Bonnie and Charles were that December day on the preacher's back porch.  It lives,  scattered across the Earth in the hearts and minds of five girls, eleven grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren.  It will continue divide itself across time and space and it will live on even after I am dust. 

The inspiration?  It lives on as well, tethered to the Universe by a single moment in time when Love showed up in the form of my father on the doorstep of the Lee household, ready to take his bride.

Making Them All Matter

Lately my attitude stinks, especially about my job.

"What???" you say. "But you love your job, Rebecca!"

And to that I say, yes.  Normally I do; but in every job a little dissatisfaction must sometimes come along to muck up the works.  Kinks in the process, if you will.

Years ago I took a job as an Activity Director at an Assisted Living Facility (ALF for short).  My excitement uncontrollable, I sat down at the computer and made out my first month's activities the day I got my job offer.  Hired as Activity Director, one of my other duties involved managing the bus driver and all transportation scheduling, including transportation to doctor appointments as well as trips "just for fun."  My first week there the driver called in sick.  I got pulled from my job to drive 4 seniors to doctor appointments all over Greenville county.  Four people, doesn't sound so bad, huh?  Well, it doesn't until you consider that the appointment times are spread out, so you can't make Mrs. Smith hop on the bus at 8:00 when her appointment is at 10:00, and you can't get two people to 9:00 appointments at the same time when their appointments are 20 miles apart.  Then there's the matter of going back to get Mrs. Smith who isn't ready to go, then getting her dropped off while the doctor's office of the guy you dropped off at 8:00 has started calling you every 15 minutes since 9:00 that he's ready to go...So you see, it was a bait and switch situation.  I thought I got an opportunity to do what I loved, and ended up with a job I hated.  In the two years I worked there, I probably was the bus driver at least 1/2 of the time.  At times I accepted it.  If they wanted to pay me a AD salary for driving a bus, what's it to me?  But then corporate came in and wanted to know why no one was doing activities.  They were not pleased when I answered that I had not yet figured out how to be in two places at once; but if they could figure that out for me I'd be glad to oblige their whims.

I quit that job.

Fast forward to now.  About a month ago I witnessed a sub driver for our site driving erratically and reported him.  My punishment for trying to do the right thing?  I got the dubious assignment of being the van driver and director.  Now while this van driving job is much easier than the ALF one, it's not what I signed up for.  I'm supposed to be part time--but with my 4 hours at the center, 4 hours driving and a couple of hours doing work from home every day, I'm exceeding a 40 hour work week.  I don't talk about it much, but my poor body can only handle so much before I am physically burned out.

With that physical burn out comes a whole load of other unpleasant baggage.  Frustration, my word of the day lately, keeps my adrenaline unhealthily high.  Then there's the anger that this who situation might not have happened the way it did if management had not dawdled months ago when they knew a change was imminent.  I too often find myself feeling like an overpaid van driver, janitor, key holder and coffee barista.  In a nut shell, I feel like nothing I'm doing makes a hell of a lot of difference in the world.

Sometimes though, it takes waking up to a surprising text on my phone to ground me again and remind me why what I do is important.

Sunday morning a family member sent me a message that said, "I regret to inform you that Mary Kay died this morning at 4:30 a.m."

What can I say about Mary Kay?  She came to us back in the spring, quiet and a little insecure at first, it took a little while for the group to warm up to her.  Some teased her about her name, asked her if she had a pink Cadillac parked outside--alluding to the makeup goddess.  Mary Kay took the jokes in stride, understanding the humor in them.  I regret to say I don't know much about her early life.  She came to us at 63, intellectually disabled, but eager to find a sense of community.  Slowly, each member in our group established their own kinds of relationships with her.  Some were her silent meal partners, some sat around the table and listen to her stories about the Sioux City community center where she played BINGO and Uno before she move here with her cousin.  We learned all about her dog Buddy, who died years ago, but who remained close to her heart.  She impressed us with her knowledge of music; we often play old tunes during the day, and without even looking at the TV screen, she'd say, "That's Dean Martin" Or that's "Bing Crosby."  Music, movies and great stories of the adventures of others fascinated her.

On December 13 we took her with the group to The Biltmore House for Christmas.  I held her hand and helped her tour as much of the house as she could, but even then she struggled to breathe.  A sinking feeling started to grow in my gut that day, that she could be very sick.

The next week we had another Christmas outing to the Hyatt in Downtown Greenville to view the pretty trees and have lunch.  Our driver, Eric, took Mary Kay by the hand and walked around the big building with her slowly, giving her time to rest when she grew weary.  She enjoyed the attention he gave her, enjoyed her lunch although she ate very little, and enjoyed the company of her friends, most of all.

The very next day she showed up at our SA Chrsitmas party with her $5.00 gift in hand--proudly ready to give it away.  We played the Left-Right game, and I don't even remember what gift she ended up getting, but I'm sure she was satisfied with it--her biggest concern?  Was the person who got HER gift that she brought, happy with theirs.

After the party I drove her home--for the first time ever, I had to drive up into her driveway as close to the door as possible.  She used to walk the big hill up that driveway with a little skip in her step, but the skip was gone that day.  I walked her to the front of the house, slowly, laboriously.  When we got to the steps, she sat on the first one, her Christmas goodies scattered all around her.  I rang the doorbell to let her cousin Lynne know that she needed help getting inside.

That day, that image of her sitting on the bottom step, two jackets on, her visor a little askew, Christmas bags and her big purse scattered around her is my last mental image of Mary Kay.

Waking up to that message Sunday morning bummed me out.  The frustration already weighing me down felt even heavier.  I sent messages our members, telling them the news.  One of them said back to me, "I think we did our best to make her life a little better."

That one simple phrase snapped me back into the reality on which I need to focus.  Yes, a lot of days get complicated.  Yes, I hate feeling like an overpaid van driver, or janitor.  I hate that I can't seem to appeal to the masses, even though the masses of which I speak are from several different generations.  My oldest member is 100.  My youngest was 64--Mary Kay.  I never find the task of making everyone happy all the time, doable.

However, I believe that together, I and our members at Senior Action gave Mary Kay a wonderful last Christmas here on Earth.  We included her--she made many of the ornaments that went on our tree.  She got to do new things--Like visit Biltmore and the Hyatt.   On one of her last days at Senior Action we had a sing along group, a children's choir and Santa and his helpers drop by.  She participated in all the singing and dancing and merry-making of the season.  We had no idea at the time, but the seemingly ordinary things we were doing, were exponentially improving her quality of life.  On her last day with us she ate a plate full of sweets, drank soda and played fun Christmas games.  She was able to give of herself, and able to accept the kindness of others.  I figure if nothing I did in the month of December mattered to anyone else, it mattered to her, and that makes it all worth it for me.

Mary Kay, a lady who probably lived far longer than her family expected, said goodbye to her parents, her dog, Buddy, her old friends in Iowa and came here to live with her cousin.  Senior Action became her anchoring place. There she found friends who showed her patience and understanding, who made her laugh, who challenged her to learn new things, and who most of all accepted her for who she was.  We could all stand to learn from the way she lived.

She showed kindness to everyone always.  She made a point to remember names, to find out personal things about each member and to frequently ask, "How's your puppy doing?" or with me particularly, "How are your grand babies and Charlie doing?"  She talked about her friends back in Iowa, to whom she still faithfully wrote letters.  She spoke of her Cousin Lynne and of other family members with great fondness.  She was proud to do her part every day, whether that meant bringing in plastic bags or helping hand out the milk or fruit before lunch.  There were days in the recent weeks when I'd ask, "Mary Kay, do you feel bad?"  Her color ashen, she seemed less like her spunky self, but she would always answer, "No, I don't feel bad. I feel fine."  I never heard her complain.

Still, that day I dropped her off in the cold December afternoon, I never imagined that would be the last time I would speak to her.

"Merry Christmas Mary Kay!" I told her.  "Get some rest so you will feel better.  I'll see you next year," I joked.  She said Merry Christmas to me, then I watched as her cousin helped her inside.

Now there are two ways you could look at this situation.  You could say I waste a lot of my time on people who might not be long for this world anyway--that maybe my efforts would be better spent supporting the young and struggling.  But I tell you this, the elder who has struggled all her life needs a place in the world where she matters too.  She needs friendship and fun and a sense of belonging just like anyone else.  That last day that Mary Kay spent at Senior Action was just as important as some four-year old's first day at preschool.  Sure, one was an end and the other a beginning--but both made a difference like ripples through time and spirit and the flow of life in general.

This is why I do what I do--not for money or accolades or even to be understood by people who can never grasp the simple need of a senior, a person with a disability, to find a sense of love and belonging in the world.  If I can help create that place for just a handful of people, I know I will have made a difference in the world--if only one simple life at a time.

Here's to Mary Kay--to living an uncomplicated life where loss is accepted, where every person is a potential new friend, and where love and family matter more than anything else in the world.  May we all learn to live with the values she cultivated throughout her life.

Small Town Christmas PTA

We live in a small town.  Well, if you can even call this a town.  Let me start over.

We live in a small community made up of other, smaller communities.  Unless you are from a similar place in the Universe, you probably couldn't appreciate all the little nuances that make life here so interesting.

My son's school, for instance, is not named for one town or even one community. It's a hyphenated name for the two communities that make up this quaint little zone in the Northwest corner of Greenville County.

Created in days-gone-by, a different era when manufacturing was the life and breath of a town, Slater-Marietta still sits, a strange sense of pride imbued in every empty storefront building or run down tire shop.  Only the businesses that are essential to every day life remain.  A small grocery, a gas station or two, Slater Drug store where you can still get a milk shake or a float any day of the week as long as you don't mind waiting for Bea, the older lady behind the counter, to methodically mix it up for you.  There's a barbershop, a tiny post office that only opens after 12:00 every day, and the aforementioned elementary school.

Most people in this community work outside this community.  There is a dearth of jobs where once this place stood as a bustling, booming part of the Southern economy.  The old mill, which still operates but requires far less manpower than in the distant past, puts out the smell of burned carpet once in a while, and atop the big hill above it, from Slater Hall, you can look down upon its roof, flat and expansive, almost like a piece of ground.  Beyond it lies Beachwood Farms--it goes back as far in my mind as I can remember.  In the summer Beachwood employs a large population of migrant workers and a few locals.  In the winter, it sits brown and barren, lonely with its market locked up tight until spring.

This place possesses a history so rich one could talk about it for days. So many amazing stories exist, locked away in the minds of the elders who grew up here, worked in the mill or owned shops in the small downtown area where now we boast two traffic lights.  The richness of the land around me is breathtaking on a winter morning when you can see clear to Ceasar's Head from the crooked highway I traverse each day.  In the Summer, fields planted with tomatoes or corn, sunflowers or okra glimmer in the morning sunlight as the plants stretch themselves toward the sky.  Deer frequently cross our paths, so much so that we drive more cautiously around these steep sharp curves than we used to.

We see our share of the odd and unbelievable too. One morning a summer or two ago, I met a big blue-headed peacock prancing up the yellow line in the road as if he owned it.  He dragged his big long tail feathers behind him, and stopped to stare at me as I stopped my car to stare at him. A standoff, of sorts, we looked one another up and down before we both decided to continue on in the directions we had started.  No one knows how he got there or from whence he came.  We never figured out if he got rescued or barbequed we just noticed his absence in the middle of our road on the way back home later that day.

Odd and unbelievable describes many things about living in a small community/town/hyphenated area.  The people most of all.

Tonight my son had his first Christmas Chorus performance at Slater-Marietta Elementary School.  His school is small, with about 500 students total, and the number of parents who join PTA is embarrassingly scant.  In fact, they trick parents into coming to PTA meetings by having their children "perform" so mom and/or dad will feel like a heel if they miss it.  Many grandparents raise their grandchildren here--young grandparents with elementary-aged grandchildren; a lot of these folks started making families young.  Like any other place, there is variety, but like most areas of the small hometown-persuasion, you get a lot more of what can only be considered sameness.

Many people around here grew up Baptist and still proudly attend their churches.  Church gives them that sense of belonging that everyone craves, but most of all it makes them feel better;  better than the immigrants in the trailer park behind the school, better than the one "homeless" guy who walks up and down the street on occasion with a sign strapped to his back. There are two types of Baptists; the type which truly believes in the loving kindness of a heavenly Father, and the kind who seems to want everyone except themselves to go straight to hell.  I rarely meet one which fits neatly in the middle.

I'm  not knocking the churches.  In this area they do a great deal of work helping the poor and needy.  One runs a food pantry, another tries to bring in young folks who struggle to get by.  I learned as a little girl, that in times when you can barely afford to eat, Faith is the most precious thing you have.  It's often all you can afford, so at once you both possess nothing and everything.  This, I believe, is the goal of our small-town houses of worship. With denomination though, comes indoctrination.  Rules to follow get meted out to everyone, regardless of each person's own beliefs.  You could very well find yourself ruined in this town if your spiritual/religious beliefs don't line up with the popular theology of the day.  You can try to avoid religious conversation and talk of politics, but sooner or later you're going to get cornered, so you better keep a mental note of what to say in such instances to keep from giving yourself away.  Unless, of course, you hail from this small corner of the Earth, in which case your beliefs probably align quite well with those of the natives.

I often attend school functions alone.  I won't lie, I feel awkward walking in behind a couple there to watch their kid sing Christmas songs in her most beautiful Christmas dress.  I throw the seating off wherever I sit because of the chairs, arranged in even numbers in rows.  Tonight I walked in behind one such couple and apparently spied the same row of seats at about the same moment.  It probably seemed to them that I followed them to their seat.  They went a few chairs in and sat down.  That meant I had the two seats at the end of the row from which to choose.  I didn't want to leave a seat between me and the lady I walked in behind, in case someone needed the other chair I wasn't using so I sat down next to the lady and exchanged pleasantries with her, feeling the need to explain why I took the seat directly beside her.

As time went on more and more parents poured in.  The front row, already filled up when I arrived, seated an array of colorful characters.  Directly in front of me a lady who sounded like a man played with her cell phone camera and talked to her male friend, (husband?) about someone's "butt a showin' " and about mundane living sorts of things.  One lady sat alone like me, but with a giant Santa hat perched on her head.  She didn't move a muscle the whole time, not even to crack a smile.  At one point I wanted to poke her but alas, I sat too far away and couldn't reach her.

Not long after I sat down next to the lady who walked in ahead of me, I noticed her flowery perfume.  Not a bad smell, just a wee bit strong.  I listened to her husband telling her what the gym looked like when this was his school, listened as he reminisced about old times at SME.  As the crowd grew a couple I never actually saw slid in behind me.  I immediately was overwhelmed by the smell of Polo cologne.  I hadn't whiffed that scent since high school, when my super crush of a lifetime boy wore it all the time. They say smells can conjure up memories more potently than anything.  I get that feeling of nostalgia every year when we bring in our Christmas tree.  The smell of Polo, however, did not evoke such warm feelings or memories, especially since it was most likely applied to the guy's skin via fire-truck hose.  The smell attacked my senses, made my eyes water and my stomach lurch.

Turns out the guy wearing the Polo behaved as obnoxiously as his cologne smelled.  He kept talking so loudly no one around him could hear the play.  He felt the need to announce when a kindergarten girl scratched her rear during a song.  I listened to him critique the weight and apparel of every teacher, complain about the principal, make fun of one kid's teeth.  He was a real winner.

Just as I started to get acclimated to the blending scents around me a young mother came rushing in and asked if the seat next to me was taken.  Feeling a sort of kinship with her, I happily offered her the seat and engaged in a bit of small talk with her before she pulled out her phone and got lost in it.  As she sat down I noticed another strange smell wafting over me, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Suddenly, and from out of nowhere, the young mom said, "I smell like fried potatoes and onions."

I just looked at her and smiled sympathetically.  That was it---Potatoes and onions.

"Yeah," she went on, "Right before we came over here I was cooking potatoes and curling my daughter's hair and chasing my one year old around."

"Mom life." I commiserated with her.

"Yeah, my husband picked the wrong day to work overtime.  I really couldda used him tonight!"

"Yeah, that's how it seems to go." I said, realizing our kinship had limits.

The principal walked by swiftly and approached the stage where my boy and his choir-mates were hiding out until performance time.  Principal stuck his head between the curtains and said something, then turned around and walked back through the crowd, red faced.  He looked down at the young mom beside me and said, "Y'all couldn't hear what I just said could you?"

"No," She answered. "We didn't hear a thing."

She looked at me side-wise and I said, "Must have been something really bad he said, or his face wouldn't be so red!"

"Yeah," she agreed..  "Like, 'Are y'all not fuckin' ready yet?'"

"Uh, yeah...right." I mumbled back.  Only in Marietta, I thought to myself.

When her little girl came out, a first grader, round cheeked and curly haired, the young mom beamed with pride.  "That's my little girl right there, second from the right," she told me, expecting me to look and comment.

"She's adorable." I said earnestly. "I love her pretty Christmas dress."

"Thanks," said the little girl's mother.  And that ended our few moments of motherly kinship.

As I sat through  the Kindergarteners, then First Graders renditions of Christmas classics, I noticed my eyes burning, nose running, stomach churning more and more.  Added to the smells of cologne, perfume and fried potatoes, the smell of stale cigarettes suddenly came over me.  It wafted my direction from I know not where, but I found myself imagining my own embarrassment should I end up fleeing my seat near the front for the ladies room, trying to hold in a mouth-full of vomit until I reached the toilet.  Because you know that never works.  You just can't hold vomit in like that.  Falling back on my healthcare days, I forced myself to mouth-breathe for the next 25 minutes.  It helped, unless I momentarily lapsed and forgot to keep my mouth open.  If even one nostril caught a whiff of the offensive olfactory onslaught, I knew I'd be doomed.

Somehow though, I made it through to the end.  I got to see my kid trying to hide behind another kid while he sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "Fa la la la la" and some other songs about Santa and an elf named Elfis.  It dawned on me as I sat through each grade level's performances that these kinds of things bore the hell out of me; but I wouldn't miss them for the world.  Let's face it, we don't show up at these events to see everyone's kids sing together.  We show up to watch OUR kids get on stage and perform.  We internally critique them, analyze their behaviors because we KNOW them. Do you think for a minute Charlie hiding behind another kid surprised me?  No way.  It's classic Charlie, which is also why watching him do it became the highlight of my evening.

Once the performance was over, Principal asked us all for another round of applause.  In any other school, those kids might have gotten a standing ovation.  When my girls went to bigger city schools where rich parents loaded the PTA fund with money for Fall Festivals and special Christmas treats, standing ovations at every PTA performance were standard.  Not in Slater-Marietta.  Parents in Slater-Marietta know that life isn't easy.  They aren't the kind to award a trophy to every child, and they aren't going to stand up to clap for a bunch of younguns flubbing their way through "Jingle Bells" or "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."  You want a standing ovation around here, you better do something outstanding--like join the military at a mere 10 years old or bag your first deer before your 12th birthday.  Extra points if you're a girl and you do those things.

Principal set us free to go retrieve our children from their respective teachers.  I found my boy on the stage with his peers, wearing elf hats and laughing at jokes only fifth graders would find funny.  I spoke to his teacher--thanked her for her hard work, and went back to find my kid. I found him talking to a friend and could barely drag him away despite his growling tummy and my overwhelming fatigue.

On the way to our car I overheard at least three different parents cursing at their kids.  "Git in the damn car." One said.

"Where's your damn jacket?" said the other.

"Let's go," one dad said at regular dad volume. "I can't take anymore of this bullshit tonight. Git in the damn car and don't forget your damn coat this time."

From young nose-pierced moms who show up smelling like potatoes and use words like "fuck" in everyday conversation with strangers to moms who come dressed like they're going to Sunday meeting, doused with enough perfume to cause anaphylaxis , dads who don't know when to shut up, and uncles who dive into a tub of Polo before coming to the PTA meeting, we all shared something in common.

None of us really wanted to be there.  Parents are tired people.  We see our kids daily, we hear their silly jokes and stores about their days.  We feed them and bathe them, clothe them and make sure the homework gets done.  If we get lucky, we might find a few hours a week to just enjoy them.  We show up to watch our kids pick their noses and scratch their butts in front of all our friends and neighbors because it's the right thing to do.  We show up because we love our young ones, and want them to see the pride in our faces when they look out and find us in the audience.  "That's my kid right there," we say,  as if we think some other parent will like our kid better than they like their own.

I don't judge them.  Or at least, not the lady who smelled of potatoes.  She was just trying to do life, y'all.  The people who showered in smelly stuff that came from a bottle--them I judge--because I don't care who you are or what hyphenated community you live in, there ain't no sense in smelling up a place like that.  Your kid doesn't care if you smell like au du gardenia, and the person sitting next to you would probably prefer you not smell like anything at all.  Heck, sweat would be better.

Next PTA meeting when they ask everyone to shut off their cell phones I'm going to stand up.  I'm going to stand up and say, "If you are sitting beside someone who is wearing too much perfume or cologne, please take this opportunity to change your seat."

It might just save some poor parent from an embarrassing puke moment in front of the whole PTA.


I guess I'll end this little story with the only phrase that pops into my head  at the moment:

Try not to have a Smelly Christmas.

Wishing you a perfume-free New Year!

She is Twenty Seven

1997.  

On a warm July morning I woke early, my two little girls still lay fast asleep in their bunk-beds tangled in their blankets while the air conditioning hummed away chasing off the humid air of Summer.  I peeked in at them as I walked past their bedroom door and wished for a fleeting moment, that I could harness the lazy carefree days of childhood summers and make them mine again.

Before I swung my feet to the floor and grabbed my journal that morning I lay in bed watching the shadow of a locust branch fluttering outside my window in the early breeze, beckoning me outdoors. My journal, or rather, Hannah's journal awaited me.  I neglected it already too long, and time never slowed down.  I knew too many days had passed since I sat and wrote to her, or to the future her that in those years I could not even imagine.

I never knew exactly what to say to her, but I tried to write often.  I wrote about the little girl with a scruffy voice who sang Jesus Loves Me in the back seat of the car.  I wrote about her angry tirades about homework, and how unfair it was that six-year-old children weren't allowed to drive.  I wrote to her about my own life, my struggles and faltering faith.  That morning I felt heavy, heavy like a dark Summer thundercloud, ready for my wringing-out, only no one else existed on whom I could rain down my darkness, my confusion or grief.

I wrote to her about who I was then and who I thought I wanted to become.  At twenty-seven I stood on the threshold of something I couldn't understand until I lived it.  I felt my transformation coming.  I feared it and yearned for it all the same.  I believed Motherhood gave me all the purpose I needed, but I knew life had more to offer than Sunday School and choir practice, Christmas plays and PTA.  

A few years ago I told a friend, "I think I decided at 27 who I wanted to be."  I didn't know it though, at 27.   I just thought I was losing my mind, putting everything I loved at risk just to see what lay past the lines drawn around me by my religion, disguised as faith.

Sometimes people ask me if I would change anything about my life.  If I could go back to that morning, sitting in the sun by my back porch while my babies slept inside and start life all over again from that moment, I doubt if I'd change a thing.  I took my hard knocks much later in life than most people do.  They sent me reeling a few times, wondering if I could even make it over the next hump.  I doubted myself as a mother, as a woman, as a human.  I searched for things I was never meant to find or keep.  I lived with defeat as a companion, but somehow always kept victory in my heart.  Days came and went, when I just gave up, surrendered to whatever ill came my way.  Somehow another dawn would renew me and give me strength to just keep putting one foot in front of another.

That dawn always shone out from the faces of my girls.  No matter what hard life-lessons got thrown my way, they kept me upright.  They made me, me.

That little six-year old girl I sat and wrote to in my journal all those years ago just celebrated her twenty seventh birthday.  I think about who she is now, gentle, kind, courageous, determined.  I think about all the years in between that July morning and today, all the things she learned, all the dreams she chased, all the love she got and gave and even lost between then and now, those things served her well.  They built a beautiful woman, ready to take on the world.  

She is a mother, a friend, a scholar, a dreamer still.  I doubt if she knows it, but she's standing on the threshold of an amazing life. She's on her way to becoming who she wants to be.

She's nothing less than miraculous, considering the flawed and childish mother to whom she was born.  I grew up with her in many ways, she taught me more than I could ever dream of teaching her.  

She created me, or at least the me I eventually became.  My first girl, my world, carried along with me through time, two lives so intertwined yet so different.  

Twenty-seven.  Who knew I would still be here to see the day.

I'm so grateful for it and for her.  

`

Gliding Along

People say time marches on but it doesn't.   

Watch an old documentary of soldiers marching in rhythm and you'll see; the passage of time is nothing like a march.  It never moves in rhythm with anything like we wish it would and it seems no mater who marches beside you, some terrain is just to difficult to traverse on foot.  No, time does not march.  It is much to graceful for that.

Time glides like a small boat over a calm lake, leaving ripples in its wake that reverberate into eternity.  No shoreline sits to break the pattern.  They roll on endlessly, days becoming weeks as the ripples turn to waves--years all rolled up together, searching for some place to rest.  And that is life, no matter what anyone says.  All your moments and memories, good years and bad, losses and gains they make ripples through time while you, in your own little boat glide over a glassy lake in search of your destination.

I know it feels more like a troubled sea sometimes, even more so while you're trying to command your tiny ship.  A crew would sure be nice, but most of us to some extent prefer to float in our own vessel; alongside another is the best any of us can really do.

Stillness never comes easy. Lately I observe more than I act.  I see solitary souls so uneasy with their own company they rarely spend an entire day at home.  I remember a time when I felt so restless--that stillness might swallow me up, make my heart race, cause me to linger on unlovely thoughts.  I thought stillness threatened my peace of mind and happiness so I ran from it by staying busy.  

I watch as ladies who cannot keep their seats find things to sweep up or wipe away.  I watch them search for plants to water or bins of craft supplies to tidy.  There is simply no place for sitting down with a cup of coffee for a leisurely chat with a friend.  I watch as men fiddle with their phones and listen as they talk about all the important things they need to do.  I see them scrambling to make plans with someone--anyone, so they can rest assured their time is filled with the presence of another.

One talks to me of misery.  Saturday greets him with an empty living room, no one to make his breakfast or give him an agenda for the day.  He putters around, searching for purpose in an old shed filled with the clutter of a lifetime spent with someone who no longer shares his world.  He hopes to find her there I think, in bits and pieces of the things she kept and treasured and probably forgot about.  Some of those things, he gives away saying, "Now if you don't need this you can just donate it somewhere."  Other stuff gets tossed out.  A few things, like the tiny blown-glass angel she loved, get a special place in his world.  He tries to hold onto her and to erase her at once; a battle that seems to feed his only sense of reason.  She died three years ago this January.  Time glides on.

I don't know for sure, but I've been told in this way or another that one could drown in the wake of time.  They say my grandmother got smothered by it after the death of my grandfather.  He died in the Fall, she died the following Spring.  "She grieved herself to death." I heard people say all my life.  Whether it was true I'll never know, but I grew up orphaned of grandparents because time took them before my tiny vessel ever got set afloat.  

My parents created unique patterns on the surface of time as their lives came together and then drifted apart again.  Over six decades of shared trials, joy and tears, frustration and triumph.  They clashed at times, sustained one another at others.  The bond between them grew stronger with every ripple, every wave, every day spent gliding along together.  My dad perhaps got swallowed up in my mother's wake when she finally got too tired of rowing against the current and pulled her vessel out of the water.  Without her beside him, the waves grew too high, the grief too deep, the loss so profound that nothing could reach him anymore.  

I visited him at Christmas time and put up the tree.  I knew my Mama would have wanted it so, but my Dad, he didn't care.  

"See how pretty it is?" I asked him after I plugged in the lights. "Granny would want you to have the tree up." I reminded him.

"I'd rather have my wife back." He answered dryly, not taking his eyes off the TV.

I wanted to make it easier for him but I felt so powerless.  No one, nothing could take away the sting of loss for him.  It withered him from inside out until on his own deathbed, he sat with a picture of my mother in his hand, staring down at it as if trying to burn her face into his mind.  Who knows what memories he lingered upon in those last few days?  I doubt if he held onto bickering and disagreements.  Big tears rolled down his cheeks sometimes, I never could tell if from joy or sorrow but I suspect a little of both.

That's the thing, you see.  No matter what you're doing right now, no matter what your struggles or losses or gains, time hasn't stopped.  You continue to glide along, losing track of where you are and why until someday you sit looking at a photograph from years ago, wondering where all the days and years went.  You won't sit bothered about the money you owe or that car that never ran very well.  At some point it just can't matter anymore how many times you forgot to buy bread on the way home, or lost your keys or ate a too-large piece of cake.  

It all makes me think that the real meaning of this life never comes clearly into focus until we start to near the end of it.  Youth believes it will never grow old and age envies not having savored more of their time.  Time never leaves us behind, it carries us along from one moment to the next, transporting us so smoothly that we often can't tell we're moving at all.  It takes you along with it whether you're ready or not and offers no mercy to those who yearn to always look back, rather than preparing themselves for what lies ahead.  It brings the future swirling at us from far away, threatening, foreboding, we get our eyes set too far ahead, the fear of being sucked into some vortex of catastrophe overwhelming us in the here and now, so every moment between you and tomorrow gets tossed overboard; worthless, extra weight is how we see it, but really it's the only thing of worth we have.

I'm not old just yet and I may never make it there.  This coming year in July I will celebrate 5 years on dialysis.  Five years ago doctors were telling me, "This should work well for you for at least 5 years."  Sometimes I compare myself to other people my age.  I am flummoxed when I watch them handle life so deftly.  The daily chores, homework, picking up the kids from school, taking them to practices.  Cooking actual healthy food, finding clothes to wear every day that fit comfortably and make them feel good.  I'm amazed that people go out to dinner on Tuesday nights and still get up for work on Wednesday.  I know my body restricts me but I fight it hard.  

I fight to keep my little boat afloat, armed with a little machine and countless boxes of fluids and endless trips to get blood work drawn.  I row my damn little boat over to the clinic once a month where I get graded on how I'm living my life.  I leave there, usually feeling as though I'm failing, but I'm still alive, so that's something, right?  Ever since July 2013 I started working hard to keep my mind and spirit securely planted in the moment.  Sure, sudden shakeups happen and I let my mind race too far ahead or let myself reach to far back int he past; to waves that continue to roll somewhere out there in the vast continuum of time perhaps changing someone else's world, or perhaps just losing momentum as they search for a distant shore.

Thing is, none of us can afford to nap at the helm because whether or not we pay attention, current still drags us along.  It will not let us row backwards to fix the past or skip some unpleasant swampy, scary place to get to a brighter future.  It's a ride that's meant to be savored;; enjoyed for all the ups and downs and twists and curves it brings us around.

We are meant to enjoy the ride--no matter how hard it sometimes gets in that tiny vessel all alone; because right beside you there is someone floating along the same placid lake, afraid that at any moment, their boat will capsize and everything they love will just float away.  Fear makes us do some stupid things--like standing up in a moving canoe.  Trust me, it's better to just sit still and paddle if you must, but never attempt to jump ship.

Eventually we all reach our destinations.  I pray you and I reach ours while there's still time left to glide along into the sunset of that calm, welcoming horizon where the sun dips down into the lake and warmth waits to wrap us in a forever Today, where worries and cares of yesterday and tomorrow can never again plague us or divert us from our path.

Good night my friends, and happy floating, both in your dreams and in your days ahead.

Choked

I stood by the stove with my back turned and listened to the creak of the lock as his key turned in it.  Six o'clock, time for him to stomp into the house and in his silent, brooding way, sit down on the sofa by the door to unlace his boots.  I didn't turn to speak or even say a "hello" over my shoulder.  I knew that to do so would only annoy him and frustrate me.  He needed thirty minutes, he told me, after he got home from work, to just not speak to anyone.  I did my best to honor his request, although it felt odd to ignore him for a half-hour every day after he came in the door.

I heard him grunt as he bent over to untie his laces, heard the dog excitedly panting, pawing at his knees, begging to go outside.  I ignored that too, focusing instead on the hot pan in front of me, sauteed onions and peppers for the sauce.  The aroma surrounded me and I tired to only let that aroma fill my brain; not the stench of the man who sat a few feet behind me in the next room, talking to his dog instead of me.

Things went downhill fast after I moved in.  Instead of basking in the newness of cohabitation we began a war of wills.  He gave me so many rules to follow I couldn't keep up with them all.  I felt as though I invaded someone's private space against their will, even though I came to live there by invitation.  I kept my things tucked away in drawers and closets, out of sight because I felt afraid of making myself too comfortable in his space.  We shared a bed, a shower, a living room, but so much of what one would expect to share in such an arrangement remained absent from the equation.

As I worked on dinner and waited for the thirty minute clock to run down I contemplated how I would tell him my news.  Excitement welled up inside me as I thought of my new apartment.  I already knew what color I wanted to paint the walls, already knew what furniture I wanted.  I paid my deposit that morning and planned to start moving the following weekend.  Even though I knew he wanted his cave back all to himself, I feared telling him I was about to leave.  Something in me just knew he wouldn't take it well.

He didn't.

"What are you cooking?" He finally asked about twenty minutes after walking in the door.

"Spaghetti." I answered.

"You aren't putting meat in it are you?"

"Of course not.  Veggies only." I said, not looking up.

He went in the bedroom to retrieve clean underwear, stopped to pat my butt on the way back through to the shower.

"Should be done by the time you're out of the shower." He always needed a heads up about when dinner would be served.

He gave no response, just went on his way and out of sight for a good twenty more minutes.  I felt grateful for the reprieve and stood there in the kitchen fantasizing about cooking dinner in my apartment for just me and my boy; no one there to give me orders or remind me of rules I must follow.

As I prepared to strain the pasta I heard the bathroom door fling open and before I knew it, he stood behind me, his arms around my waist.  His wet skin soaked the back of my shirt.  I used to love his affection, but that night it made my skin crawl.

"Hot pot of water!" I warned, and he backed away.

"What's up with you lately anyway?" He wanted to know.  "You don't even want me to touch you anymore."

"Nothing's up." I lied.  "Just didn't want to burn you."

He looked sidelong at me as he leaned against the kitchen sink watching me work.

He never asked about my day, but usually found something over which to pick a fight every evening.

"So why didn't you speak to me when I got home?" He asked.

"You told me not to bother you for thirty minutes after you got home.  I was respecting your wishes." I answered.

"You never seem happy to see me," he accused.

"Am I supposed to pant and wag my tail like the dog?" I shot back.

"Yeah," he said with a giggle.  "'cause you're my bitch."

Silence.  I kept at my work as I felt him staring me down.

"I'm just kidding." He plead.  "Don't take things so personally."

I sighed heavily and sat the pot of spaghetti down.  "I have some good news." I announced trying hard to smile and seem upbeat.

"You do?" He looked puzzled.

"Yeah," I said.  "I found an apartment.  I'm planning to move this weekend.  Would you like to help me move or should I hire a mover?"

"You're moving out?" He asked, shocked.  "Did I say you could move out?"  He was trying to sound like he was joking, but I knew he felt threatened by my assertiveness.

"I didn't ask you." I said.  "I think it's best for both of us if I go. We are not happy together.  I make you miserable and you make me sad."

He took that as an insult.  "I make you sad, huh? How do I make you sad?"

"Look," I said.  "I'm not having this conversation with you.  Let's eat dinner and have a pleasant evening.  The good news is I'll be out of your hair soon and you'll have your house all to yourself again." I smiled up at him as I picked up a spoon to stir the sauce.

He looked at me with that seething anger burning in his eyes I'd seen  a thousand times before.  He stepped closer, pinning me between him and the stove.  His skin felt hot through the thin cotton t-shirt he'd slipped on while we talked.  As he leaned in my face I could see the pores on his cheeks, feel his breath on my skin.

"Girl, you better appreciate all I have done for you."

"What have you done for me?" I asked, not backing down.

"I let you live here for one thing, so you could save money."

"You let me move here so you could take financial advantage of me and use me as a maid." I replied firmly.

He moved closer still.  I didn't try to pull away.  I wanted to show him I was not intimidated. I hoped my racing heart wasn't so loud he could hear it.

His big hand was wrapped around my neck as he leaned right in my face.  "All I have to do is squeeze." He said with a grin.

"Then squeeze." I dared him.  "Go ahead."

He stood there, staring me down, his eyes glazed over with the haze of weed. In that moment I realized he could kill me if he wanted to, with one hand.  He was strong, bigger than me, trained by the military to kill in ways I probably couldn't imagine.  Still, I didn't waver.  I didn't want him to think he could intimidate me.

"I'm not scared of you." I said.

"You should be." He threatened.

"Squeeze, then." I tempted him again.

"Girl, you don't know who you are messing with." He told me as he let go and walked away.

"Oh yeah I do," I said under my breath as I turned back to the spaghetti, now turning sticky in the pot.

It was two weeks later before I finally got moved.  He insisted he wanted to help me so I wouldn't have to pay a mover; however, he kept stalling until finally on a Tuesday morning, I decided for myself that I would move my things without him.

Angry that I took control of the situation, he took the day off work and moved all of my stuff at once.  He piled it all in the middle of my apartment living room and disappeared out the door.  It was one of the last times I ever saw him.

My life started getting better by the next day.  Over time I saw more and more that I lived in a prison of sorts throughout that relationship, even when we didn't live together.  I lived in a prison of anxiety and fear without ever acknowledging that he held the keys to my cell.  Only after I escaped, did I finally see clearly the oppression of life with that man in it.  He might as well have kept his big hand around my neck for the entire four years with me playing the fool, thinking I was courageous when really I was just too scared to make a move away from him.

Fear can rule us in many ways.  Fear keeps us too long in the grip of toxic people, jobs that rob us of our joy, lives that give us nothing worthwhile to strive for.

I thought this morning as I got ready for work, that life is just a series of seasons rotating around us year after year.  We are cogs in a clock, winding ourselves up again every January so we can cycle through another year of seasons.  We live the same lives over and over again, year after year, everything so the same that we often forget the smallest details that differentiate one year from another....Sameness and nothingness, life in it's predictable loop lulls us like a ticking clock in an empty room.

Children grow up, things break down, people die.  Every year we welcome babies and say goodbye to our elders.  Every year we say, "This year will be different."

We live in blindness; we cannot know every outcome.  Our blindness instills such deep anxiety. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of dying, fear of living--we are consumed by it.  Restlessness  nestles deep in the pit of our stomachs telling us we need to change, but change is scary.  The devil you know...

I speak from experience when I say, the Devil you know may very well kill you.  Maybe he'll put his big hand around your neck and squeeze, whether or not you act brave and dare him to do it.  Maybe he'll stifle your spirit or drain your bank account.  He might stomp your very soul into the ground, not with fists or heavy shoes, but with words that choke the life out of you.The Devil might be your partner or your boss, your mom or dad.  He might be your next door neighbor or your sibling.

Maybe the Devil you know is slowly dragging you away from who you were meant to be.

Sooner or later, you have to break free.
There is no shame in running away from the Devil in work boots, lurking behind you.

Once you're free, the calendar will ride you along it's pages again, through Summer and Fall and back again through Winter.  You don't have to live them all the same, with fear guiding you day after day.

You can create your own season.  You just have to leave fear back there in another year--a year spent, gone by, lessons learned.  You can create your best tomorrow, head held high, no Devil lurking
behind you.  Why wait for his approval?  You can walk away today and never look back.

The Spirit Remembers

I never used the month of November for anything special.  While I possess some degree of sentimentality, I usually forego things like listing things I'm thankful for every day in November.  I also never saw the appeal in things like "No Shave November."  Going to bed with stubbly legs, even when I'm sleeping alone, just doesn't feel right to me.  I got kind of drawn in, several years in a row, by the daily Facebook posts of my friends and family though, giving thanks for even the smallest of life's blessings; so this year when literally none of them participated in the daily thanksgiving posts, I missed them.

Monday I walked around like someone with a fifty pound sack of potatoes tied to her back.  My feet felt heavy, a knot of anxiety lodged itself deep in my gut, I wanted so badly to just go back to bed all day.  It might make sense for a girl to walk around feeling so weighed down and anxious if things weren't going so well for her.  Truthfully though, my life feels pretty great right now.  If I compare this year with last year, my life looks freaking awesome!  My car is running (well no this minute, but you know what I mean) all of my household appliances are humming along just fine.  No one ever showed up at my door this year with papers telling me the hospital system wants to sue me for money I don't owe them.  I feel well most days.  I love my job.  My children and grandchildren are healthy and happy.  I tried to dwell on all the positive things in my life all day but the gnawing feeling of doom still hovered over me all day long.

I woke up with it again on Tuesday, my day off.   I battled with my will from the moment I woke up.  I made myself get up and take Charlie to school and when I got back home, I yearned to lie on my couch with the remote in my hand and let the TV serve as my company for the day.  Fortunately the night before I sent out a call to my friends asking for a lunch date and got a taker.  Grateful for a reason to get dressed and head out, I met a dear friend and spent two hours just talking to him.  For that little space in time I felt normal.  I got to just let go of all pretense and just be me.  It made me realize how seldom I get the liberty to do that.  It felt amazing!  By the time I made it to school to pick up Charlie that nagging feeling started bubbling in my gut again.  Almost like a whisper, it kept warning me that things might change for the worse again.

I do not tend to dwell on the past.  My theory, that perseveration only serves to torture, keeps me from staying too long in that thought-place of "if only" or "could have" or "should have."  Even so, it seems as the seasons come and go, the spirit hangs onto things from the past.  An old friend whose father took his own life years ago once told me that the date of his death would sometimes come and go without her consciously even remembering it, but all the same she would fall into a state of melancholy for a few days.  She said that more than once, after days of feeling down, she suddenly realized the time of year and made the connection to the traumatic memory from her teenage years when she lost her father so tragically.  I think maybe my spirit remembers things that I choose not to recall sometimes too. 

 I can't complain.  This year graced me with so many good things, especially if you count the absence of bad things.   In stark comparison to years past, I find myself in a better position than ever.  Although I forbid myself from dwelling on the sadness of the past, my spirit seems to remember.  It continues to nag me with a wordless, unforgiving ache.

I refuse to let it win.  Too much good surrounds me right now, for me to allow unconscious fears to spoil my spirit.  I know by now that in every life good and bad must exist.  Sometimes they dance together through your whole world.  I think of times when their dance made me dizzy, unsure of where to look or how to feel.  For now though, good is reigning supreme in my world and I plan to revel in it for as long as I can.  Sure, the struggles still exist.  Who can truly live without struggle?  But I will take these struggles gladly, and let them feed my spirit with strength and joy--things I hope my soul hangs onto as tightly as it seems to cling to the disappointment and sadness of the past. 

I can feel nothing but gratefulness today, not just for all the goodness that fills my life, but for the absence of so many struggles with which I remained so familiar for so long.  I'll take this joy, even mingled with the sadness of missing my parents and traditions of years gone-by and hold it close, thankful for the memories, the strength and the reward of making it out of the darkness into the light of this beautiful Thanksgiving Day. 

For whatever troubles plague you today, I wish you strength; and for all the joys life holds for you tomorrow, I wish you the perseverance to make it there. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Immigration Day

I'm not mom of the year.  Let's go ahead and get that out of the way.  It's likely I'll never BE mom of the year and I'm on my third kid. I've got plenty of experience with the parenting thing but I still screw up a lot.  For instance, I can't seem to keep up with the various school events taking place all the time.  Yesterday I waited in the car line to pick Charlie up and got completely annoyed that he didn't come to the car  when they called his number only to find out after he finally got in the car that he was in Chorus practice.  I should have picked him up at 4:00-- not 2:30.  I sent him back to practice and went to waste some time since by then, 4:00 was only an hour away.

This morning when I dropped Charlie off, I realized I forgot something else: Immigration Day.

With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, teachers everywhere are dispensing lessons about how we all came to America.  Charlie studied the story of the first Thanksgiving last week and we talked about the finer points at home.  He blew me away at one point when he said something about the tolerance and kindness the Native Americans and Pilgrims showed one another, and that somehow it seems Americans want to forget that part of the story.

About two weeks ago we got a note in that dreaded Wednesday Folder asking parents to dress their kids up as Immigrants for school today.  The suggested outfits were long dresses for girls, long pants, vests and hats for boys.  I immediately wondered if this attire actually represented the majority of immigrants who came to our country?  I think they were trying to represent a certain time-period in history, turn of the century-type styles perhaps; but it seems like they left a huge gap in there--a gap that took race or country of origin into consideration.  Charlie wondered too, if all immigrants who came through New York City in the late 1800's and early 1900's were all dressed in the "uniform" of the day.

I seriously doubt it.  A stark reminder of that thought hit me like a brick when I dropped my boy off this morning in his regular school clothes and saw an African American kid standing on the sidewalk wearing shorts and a sweatshirt with some sports team logo on the front.  Ugh, I felt bad for that kid, because today while all the hoopla about immigrants is going on and all the little white boys are dressed like Jockeys getting ready to sprint across the finish line on horses named things like "Lucky Penny" and "Uncle Jimmy's Gambling Problem," he's going to be thinking, "That's not how my people came to America."

This dude was a Greek Soldier

A German Immigrant 

In fact, many people from countries all over the world did not show up here instantly Americanized.  Most people came here with whatever they owned on their backs, and that meant the clothes that were the  cultural norm for that time period in their countries of origin.  Out of curiosity I did some Google research.  I found this awesome link with actual photos of real immigrants from that era.  None of them were dressed like Jockeys, by the way.

An Algerian Man

How I wished I had spoken up two weeks ago with a gentle reminder that not everyone who came to America in those days looked the same.  A reminder that one of the things that has always made our country so amazing is the blending of cultures and customs from all over the world.  There was a time when differences were celebrated, when people were curious and fascinated by not only the attire of their fellow Americans, but wanted to learn more about their religions, their beliefs about life and death and family.  They wanted to taste the rich array of foods from around the world and they respected the differences between themselves and others.

My son's school has turned this event into a white-washed look-alike parade today.  It's really a shame they aren't getting a chance to learn about the real way people came here.

Perhaps worst of all is the complete omission, after months of studying the Civil War, of how many African Americans ended up in our country.  They didn't arrive on our shores with high hopes and lofty dreams.  They came here bewildered and terrified, against their will.  They were torn apart from their families, treated as less than human, used as whipping posts for the white elite as they were used like objects--tools for the use of making the rich man richer.  By the time these immigrants were coming through Ellis Island at the turn of the century, slaves were free but life for the African American was anything but easy.  While we welcomed people with white skin into our country with open arms and afforded them all the privileges of whiteness, people of color still languished, treated as sub-human, unworthy to even share the same restroom or water fountain with white people.

I'm glad I forgot about Immigration Day. I wouldn't have dressed my kid up like a tiny Americanized version of an Irishman anyway.  I would have probably dug through his family roots to find that tattooed, shirtless German guy and made him look more like the real deal.  I'm sure his school would appreciate a shirtless tattooed Charlie showing up for class today--well they should appreciate it anyway.

We have glossed over the ugly parts of our history long enough.  It's sad to me that an elementary school would treat the amazingly diverse arrival of millions of Americans from all over the world by dressing them all up to look the same.  I wish instead, they had taken the pains to portray our immigrants in a realistic way.  We really missed a chance here, to teach our children about the value of diversity and acceptance.  We missed the chance to describe the ugly, heart wrenching, life-altering struggles of the actual people who made America what it is--or was, or still needs to keep working toward.

Nope.  I'm not Mom Of The Year.  I never will be; but, I wish that just this once, I had remembered an event and dressed my kid accordingly.


The above photos were borrowed from The Washington Post.  You can see more photos and read their article on how Immigrants looked when they showed up on Ellis Island by clicking the above link or clicking this one: Washington Post

The Granny Life

And here, I thought my partying days were over...

At 47, I'm tired.  Too tired to go out partying on Friday night, long over the hangover experience, far past the eating breakfast before going to bed days.  No.  That's not me anymore.  I'm a grandma.

I'm of the age that I start dozing on the couch at 8:00 pm. watching CSI (my generation's version of "Murder She Wrote") covered in blankets with only a solitary lamp lighting the room.  Darn it.  I try so hard to live the granny life, but I'm not pulling it off very well. 

I reckon most grannies aren't still raising their own kiddos; still getting up to drive a kid to school every day, still re-learning how to divide fractions (for the fourth time in my life) and signing up to chaperone field trips. 

But the biggest surprise for me, in my granny-hood years, is how late I stay up with these children.  Why do grandchildren not have bedtimes?  Athena and I stayed up and stayed up, and stayed up some more last night.  We started with The Wizard of Oz and popcorn and snuggles with Uncle Charlie.  Then Uncle Charlie disappeared back into his room and we watched Brave and Beauty and The Beast and Mickey Mouse Christmas.  We ate sweets and drank chocolate milk and had to take at least 10 bathroom breaks.  I'm telling you, it was almost as crazy as a night on the town with my pal DeLane.  You know those nights when you end up at a friend's house, everyone asleep on the couches and chairs, people snoring on the floor?  That was my night.  Athena fell asleep laying spread eagle on her back, smack on top of me on the love-seat.  I found Charlie rolled up like a burrito in a blanket on his bed, the XBox controller still gripped in his right hand. 

After I put the little party animal to bed (in my bed) and put pillows around her to make sure she wouldn't fall off, I finally crawled under the covers to sleep.  She immediately turned herself sideways in the bed and put her feet right in my stomach.  This was the sleep-dance we did all night.  Feet in my stomach, feet in my face, elbow to my nose once or twice...All the while she snored like a passed out 22 year old who stayed out too late with the wrong crowd.

At 6:30 this morning when I felt her sitting up in bed beside me, I became aware of the throbbing in my head.  I looked up at her.  She was smiling down at me, her hair all askance.  "Hi Momo!" She said. 

The bartender should have cut her off hours ago.

"Hi Athena." I said back, in my brightest granny voice.  "Let's go get waffles."

So we all got dressed and hit up the Waffle House dressed like we just got up and pulled clothes out of the hamper without the lights on.  The food was good, the kids were hilariously fun, but  I couldn't wait to get back home and go back to sleep.

Of course, I didn't go back to sleep when I got home.  I started loads of laundry and picked up toys and made beds.  Then I put in a lasagna for lunch, all the while telling myself, "I'm taking a nap today."

Here I am though, still sitting awake.  Not even CSI can put me to sleep right now.

I'm just telling y'all, don't think that life is going to slow down and give you a break once you're a grandma.  You're still going to be up all night on Saturdays, eating breakfast too early on Sundays, walking around like a zombie on Mondays.  The party never ends, it just changes into something different.  Instead of tequila shots, you'll be slamming chocolate milk until 3:00 a.m. and let me tell you, there is such a thing as a chocolate milk hangover.  It's only cured by a super sweet breakfast and lots of water and that's only if you're NOT lactose intolerant. 

I'm going to just go try to recuperate for the remainder of the day.  I gotta work tomorrow and I can't have the boss seeing me dragging in like I spent the whole weekend partying.

Enjoy your youth while you can, girls.  If you think staying out all night at 27 is rough, wait until you're home all night with a 2 year old at 47!