The Long Kiss Goodbye

Every great kiss begins in the eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sad, long goodbye kiss was all you shared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Old Pal Maybe

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

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

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

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

Fortunately there is definitely more in my world than Maybe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am broken." I said.

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

"Maybe." I said.  "Maybe I am."

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

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

"I'm Just Saying...."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm just saying...

When The World Needs To Stop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am grateful.

Down By The River Side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Down by the riverside.

Bleeding Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother's Day

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

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

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

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

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

What Love IS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disgusted

I own the most disgusting dog in the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He humps EVERY other dog he can get close to.

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

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

Today he pooped on his squeaky toy.

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

He also chewed the cabinet door.

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

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

Going for a whine in the car last summer

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

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

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

Reminds me of some people I know.

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

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

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

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