What a Difference a Year Makes

I've been beating myself up a bit lately.  Stress has a way of making you focus on your shortcomings I suppose, and stress is something I've had plenty of lately. In December I started the process of moving out of my apartment and into my new house.  A friend loaned me his pickup truck and slowly, over the course of weeks I started moving my things by myself with only the help of my 9 year old son.  On Thanksgiving day, my family was scattered here and there, so Charlie and I decided to move our kitchen table, and our Turkey day dishes over to our new place.  He helped me load up the table and chairs onto the truck, we bought a small turkey and all the fixings, and the two of us sat down at our table in our new home and with thankful hearts, shared a prayer of thanksgiving for all our blessings.

It took us until about a week ago to get everything moved out of the apartment and into our new place, with a little help here and there from some family members, but here we are, all settled in and happy with our little house in the country.  Only I keep getting this nagging feeling that I'm not doing enough. I work every day, I take care of my kid, I help my other children as much as I can, I try to socialize with my friends as much as time allows--but something still seems amiss.

With all the chaos of moving and working and change in general, I have not taken time to write anything at all in a long time.  As I sit here writing this it feels unnatural, forced and awkward.  Words do not flow naturally lately as they used to, my focus seems lost.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a friend a while back.  I told her that all I want is to get back to the person I used to be--confident, assured of my abilities, outgoing and energetic.  I want to be that girl who cares enough to spend an hour doing my hair every morning, the girl who dresses to impress, the girl who makes everyone laugh and flirts with men just to make them nervous.  I'm just not that person anymore and my friend told me quite frankly and lovingly  that I will probably never be that person again.  Life has changed me. It has transformed me into someone more serious, less superficial, more introspective and much more judgmental of myself.  I'm trying my best to hang onto the good changes and let the not-so healthy ones go.  I know I need to give myself credit for all I've overcome, but I have a hard time being kind to myself lately.

So today after we came in from the snow and warmed up by the fireplace, I decided to look back over some pictures from the last year--pictures of my apartment the day I moved in, with all my Earthly belongings dumped in the middle of my living room, not a soul around to help me put my life back in order.  I looked at pictures of me at work, the new people who have entered my world and shown me love--made me feel like somebody again.  I thought about all the friends who have stuck by me through all my ups and downs--the bad decisions that left me in bad places, and the consequences that were out of my control.  Throughout them all, my true friends have given me words of encouragement, they've embraced me with their love and unconditional acceptance and I feel so unworthy of them.  They are Grace at work in my life, and they are truly amazing.

A year ago I sat on my couch on a Saturday morning, feeling alone in the world.  I was angry and hurt.  I was on the brink of giving up on life altogether. Now I sit here in my pretty living room, watching blue sky break through the dark snow clouds from the picture window  that looks out on the mountains.   I'm admiring the long icicles sparkling along the eaves of the house, marveling at how they just hang there and continue to grow,  and I'm realizing that to persevere through the coldest, darkest days,  is to live.  Each person perseveres in her own way, and somehow I found mine.  I have all the sketch pads filled with drawings and doodles and hand-written phrases I wrote to myself on days when I needed a kind word but had no one else to give me one.  I have painted furniture and hand-crafted creations that kept my fingers busy while my mind turned its gears and helped me cope with the chaos that was going on inside my soul.  I have a beautiful little red-headed granddaughter who looks an awful lot like my own baby picture, and whose big smiles and sweet giggles fill my life with a whole new kind of joy--a joy I thought I'd never get to experience.

There is a dirty dish in my kitchen sink and I don't feel like I'm a bad person because its there.  In fact, I purposefully left it there this morning just because I could.  Sometimes I take naps on the weekend and I don't feel guilty or lazy or worthless.  I don't always cook dinner--sometimes we eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in front of the TV.  I hang clothes on my clothesline when I feel like it and sometimes I don't bring them in right way when they're dry. I step over baby toys on the living room floor and I'm okay with that. I'm living my life again without frivolous rules and regulations imposed on me by someone else.  I know that my inner compass will always point me in the right direction when it comes to the important things in life.

Dishes be damned--let me always be able to love unconditionally, preserve my own soul by shielding myself from those who would do me harm, and let me, to my dying day, remain committed to my transformation even from this life into the next.  

Going to Meeting

I'm on my way to a staff meeting.

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

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

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

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

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

Spare The Paddle, Educate The Child

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


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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am Pro-Woman...

And I am pro-man.

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

I am pro-human.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Long Kiss Goodbye

Every great kiss begins in the eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sad, long goodbye kiss was all you shared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Old Pal Maybe

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

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

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

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

Fortunately there is definitely more in my world than Maybe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am broken." I said.

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

"Maybe." I said.  "Maybe I am."

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

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

"I'm Just Saying...."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm just saying...

When The World Needs To Stop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am grateful.

Down By The River Side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Down by the riverside.