Scattered Far And Wide

I've been busy. Writing? Yes, mostly correspondence, though an occasional essay or two. In the interest of posting something here, I'm offering a link to the latest two, published on the IOCC blog--both of a spiritual nature:

Following the Signs

Meditation on Being

Comments and constructive criticism welcome.

Till later...

Two Days Off...

This is an odd sort of April Day. Yesterday began cold and rainy, giving way later to warm air and sunshine. Today began in that way, and by the time I tossed on some clothes to head to the post office, it was already 74F. At 10:30am. Warm, sunshiny, nice breeze. Tomorrow is expected to be more of the same.

The trip to the post office capped my academic work for the semester, overnighting a paper to one of my professors in lieu of traveling back to campus to get the job done. I still have to return on Monday, pick up my students' portfolios to grade, but by Wednesday at the latest, I'm free and clear for four whole months. It's nice being back in the country, not feeling rushed to do anything or go anywhere. I wore a pair of plaid pajama pants belonging to one of the boys out in public this morning--Mary or Tiffany had accidentally sorted them into my clothes, and I had no plans to give them back until I had a chance to wear them at least once--and my toilet consisted of no more than brushing my teeth, tying my hair into a quick ponytail, and finding my sunglasses. A younger woman could get away with this sort of thing in the city, but I'm too old now. Only in the country do I feel that I can be at home wherever I go.

The original plan would have had me in the city early in the week to write, to pick up my students' work, to turn in my own paper, then to wait for Christopher to take his last final so that I could load him up and bring him home, too, for the summer. My husband has taken over that task, so Chris will make it home as planned tomorrow. Me? "Life on life's terms" intervened. Monday evening, after dinner, while I sat, much like I am now, except upstairs in bed rather than on my front porch, laptop open, intent on my favorite mah jong game, my legs began to ache more than normal, my lower back tightened, keeping on, on, on up until...I sighed. George coated me down with Capzacin, I crawled into bed and prayed for relief by morning.

No go. From Tuesday until Thursday evening, the pain was acute, settling in on that right hip, the one I pulled the first time when Sage was three weeks old which left me, for weeks afterward, caring for an infant while my sciatic nerve shot pain the full length of my leg; the one I later pulled again two? three? days after Sage learned to ride a bike for the first time, the day he crashed, driving his eyetooth through the corner of his upper lip--though of course it wasn't his accident that destroyed my hip that day. I'd felt it pop out of the socket while I dragged the washtub full of clay from the side of the bank, dragging it rather than heaving shovels full of it because clay is heavy, and I am strong--I was strong. I needed a trench to transplant what I then thought were prairie roses and now am not so sure. They were so beautiful, pink, single blooms, with delicate thorns, found in the clearing in the woods on top of Hoover Hill. I couldn't lift the entire tub, so I grabbed one of its handles and gave a good, hard yank, feeling my pelvis move independent of my right leg, and *pop!* There it went.

So it was only moments after I'd replaced the brown bottle of muscle relaxers, of which I'd taken three? four? (memories muddy like the clay), swallowed down with a cold Rolling Rock, back on the shelf that Denny came in and said, in his trade-mark sarcastic way, "Whelp, I don't think he lost any teeth, but he'll probably need a stitch or two." And of course, Denny, being three or four Rolling Rock's ahead of me on such a beautiful summer's day, wasn't going to risk his driver's license to take Sage to the emergency room. That would be his response, had I the mind to tell him what I'd just done. Not, "I can't drive him. I'm intoxicated," but, "Don't think I'm going to get pulled over for DUI."

Sage was about eight seconds (nine? twelve? twenty?) behind Denny's entrance, one hand in Aaron's, one covering his mouth, blood seeping through his fingers, wailing at the top of his three-year-old lungs.

Sage had asked me, while I was digging, if he could go jump ramps with the other kids. "Mom, I'll wear my helmet. I'll be careful. I'm a good bike rider, huh? Right? I'll be careful, honest, I will." Sage, Little Man, Midget Magumba. He was the darling of the neighborhood. He spoke better than many kids years older than him, always asked funny questions, rarely ever threw tantrums. The boys had built little dirt mounds in the back yards behind the apartments. What could happen? He'd fall off the bike into the soft grass?

But it wasn't those little ramps he wanted to jump. The landscapers had dumped several loads of dirt near the entrance to the complex to build up the back yards nearest the creek. The "ramps" were taller than a good-sized man. When I realized he had come from the wrong direction, my first instinct was to check his arms, his legs for broken bones. Denny stopped me. "He didn't make it any further than the first speed bump."

Determining that Sage would not need anything larger than a dish towel to catch the blood (a tissue would likely have worked at this point--the blood had nearly stopped), I scooped him up in one arm, grabbed my purse and keys with the other, and tossed him into the front seat of the Caravan. I was no longer thinking about my hip. There's one chemical that is more effective than any pain killer known to humankind, and that is a mother's adrenaline. I didn't remember my hip until we were about four miles from the apartment, still three miles from the hospital. That's when the muscle relaxers, chased with cold beer, kicked in.

Just as a mother's adrenaline will kill pain in a heart beat, a mother's fear that she may do harm to her child causes a converse response. Whereas before, I'd sprung to action, now, all I wanted to do was slam my feet down on the breaks, not move another inch, lest I might, now high as a kite, hit another vehicle head on, side-swipe a mailbox (of course, on the passenger's side, where Sage sat), ram the tailgate of the truck in front of me. My foot off the gas but only hovering over the brake pedal, I inhaled deeply, tried to coral my thoughts into one place long enough to calculate the distance, the ease of travel, and the probability that I could make it the next three miles without killing us both--though I might think I deserved to die for such an idiotic move.

We made it there just fine, and though Sage required two stitches, his tooth was in good shape. The doctor praised the mandatory helmet laws and impressed upon me how much worse Sage's injuries could have been. Sage had given up the tears by the time we reached the hospital, and though I was oblivious to it, his inspection of them in the hand-held mirror the doctor offered began his fascination with having himself put back together. The years would hold many more such adventures. I was oblivious because it's difficult paying attention to doctor's instructions, mother's guilt, and a curiously quiet three-year-old all at the same time.

The doctor slowed, then stopped his speech to ask, "Ma'am, are you alright?" I could feel my lower lip quiver. As fuzzy as some of the details are of the day, as fuzzy as my head was at the time, I remember that quite clearly. It wasn't a good sign. My eyes filled, then overflowed, and the sobs began. While old doc was attempting to calm me, thinking, of course, that I was concerned for my son's safety, I threw my hand up, grabbing his shoulder, and cried, "I'm STONED."

Maybe it's not all that unusual for zonked parents to bring injured children to the ER. Doc called for a nurse, asked her to walk us both to the waiting room and to fetch me some black coffee, and there we sat. I know it was a couple of hours before I felt sober enough to drive. Sage, with his new stitches and a stack of story books, didn't seem to mind.

His birthday is in three weeks. He'll be nineteen. He lives about twenty minutes from here, and doesn't, at this time, have a working car or even a bicycle to come visit. We haven't seen Denny in quite some time, though the last time I spoke to him on the telephone, he's as sarcastic as ever.

I'm here, thirty-five miles from those apartments and six and a half years from any concerns over my mental ability to drive. Physically? That's another story. The seven mile round-trip to the post office nagged at my hip quite a bit, and the gardening I'd like to begin will have to wait. I've got two days off, to spend any way I like. I found an Anne Rice book on the shelves that I never got around to reading--Servant of the Bones--and it seems like a good guilt-free read about now. My house should fill up over the coming days and weeks with children home from adventures, people over for barbecues, music piped out onto the porch--life.

Till later...

Finding Your Way Home

Seek and ye shall find.


I’ve been looking for ways and means to expand my spiritual life for awhile now, knowing that my daily reprieve and daily bread depend upon regular spiritual renewal. Along comes a book that amazes me with its simplicity and knocks my socks off with its depth of Love. That book is Finding Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart by the Women of Magdalene.

“Magdalene is a two-year residential and support community for women coming out of correctional facilities or off the street who have survived lives of abuse, prostitution, and drug addiction” (111).

Magdalene was founded in 1996 by Reverend Becca Stevens, an Episcopal minister in Nashville, Tennessee who had the simple goal to “create a safe place for the women, a home where they could find love as well as space, and time to work seriously on recovery” (112). Magdalene is guided by twenty-four spiritual principles which are, Stevens says, “practical ways we can love one another without prejudice or judgment” (10). The ministry has grown from one house with room for five women to five houses—several of which have been donated by the community, outright or through fundraising events.

One of the principles, Proclaim Original Grace, states, “Our journeys all start and end with God, and everything we do is a step toward our return to wholeness. Because grace is our beginning, we are worthy of all good things” (19). Each of the twenty-four principles are described in several ways, facet-like, and then followed by the written testament of the residents, staff and volunteers of Magdalene.

The ministry is supported in part by Thistle Farms, a non-profit business producing and marketing bath products. It is operated by the Women of Magdalene, teaching them job skills, responsibility and a sense of unity and cooperation. Found on the website, thistlefarms.org, is this explanation to the question, “Why the Thistle?”

Considered a weed, thistles grow on the streets and alleys where the women of Magdalene walked. But, thistles have a deep tap root that can shoot through thick concrete and survive drought. And in spite of their prickly appearance, their royal and soft purple center makes the thistle a mysterious and gorgeous flower.


And now, three years in the making, they also have a book to help support their community, a book written by the women of Magdalene. The book is small in size—it could probably be read in one sitting—but don’t let that fool you. Like good literature, it inspires one to action. The principles that guide and heal the women of Magdalene are ones that can be used to guide and heal any life. As a person who already does her best to follow a spiritual program for living, Find Your Way Home is a wonderful resource for daily spiritual renewal.

To promote the release of their book, the women of Magdalene and Thistle Farms are launching a blog this week, The Voices of Thistle Farms. Please visit & visit often!

Birthday Wishes

Today is my mother’s 83^rd birthday. I made her dinner this evening: turkey breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, buttered corn, and my husband made a fruit salad (amazingly tasty for this time of the year).

I picked Sage up, and we went shopping. I finally got to see where he has been living—his first real residence away from home—and it wasn’t nearly as nasty as I’d made it out to be in my imagination. It wasn’t clean by the most generous standards, but I didn’t have to wade through the living area, and I could actually see the floor in his room.

We went to Lowe’s to get a few things on my list, then to K-Mart because it was right next door. Jade had her warm sweats stolen during indoor track season, and now that outdoor has begun, K-Mart was as good a place as any to find replacements. Joe Boxer’s were on clearance. What we didn’t find was a gift appropriate for an 83-year-old woman who doesn’t need anything else. I considered and rejected several books. She already has a “devotions” library. An abuse memoir would depress her. Anything that might have a sex scene for some reason I can’t fathom embarrasses her.

When we were near the end of our errands, at Martin’s to pick up a cake, we finally chose several plants for her garden. Green chrysanthemums. White tulips. Purple hyacinths. The ghost of the hyacinths still lingered in my car when I took Sage home many hours later.

Lately, I’ve been regretting not asking my mother more about her life. She has dementia, precursor to the Alzheimer’s that reduced both my grandmother and my aunt to children late in their lives. Ma’s memory is affected, and she’s losing her words, but she hasn’t yet lost her faces. Sometimes she’ll refer to my brother as my uncle, or my children as my siblings, but most of the time, she’ll merely lose our names, or forget who did what for her.

Last weekend, when I took her shopping, I had to admit that it hurt when she could only recall (and recount, over and over) what my brother and his wife have done for her, and then today—she seemed to have no recollection that it was me who took her to pick out and buy her new bed. It hurts, even though the truth of the matter is that I slip in and out, doing only what I need to do, whether it be taking her shopping, arranging her financial matters (usually without her direct involvement, so how can I expect her to acknowledge that?), or, like tonight, busy myself in the kitchen while she tries to engage one of my children in a discussion about the wonders of Depends.

Then I heard her tell me about my brother’s role in the purchase of her new porch furniture. She said something. She said, “I didn’t ask him. He just brought me what he thought I should have.” Then she told me that his wife picked the cushions for the chairs. And I wondered—when did she ever get what she wanted? When I took her to buy the new bed, who made the decision? I led her to the best mattress and box springs set in the store. I directed her to lay down on it. I chose the headboard, based, of course, on where the bed would have to be placed, assuring that the window would not be blocked. If I took a seat and let her roam the store, would the outcome have been different? I suspect we would have left empty-handed.

It seems it’s always been this way. My father named me. My mother wanted to call me Susan, but my father felt differently. Somewhere, she has notes that he’d leave for her before going to work with suggestions. What he wanted. Of all the notes she put in his dinner bucket, there aren’t any that say more than “I love you.” He made the decisions. My uncle and aunt named my brothers. I strain to think of one decision (other than demanding she not go to an “assisted living” home) that my mother has made for herself.

I want to ask her questions about this, but her eyes are shallow. They twinkle only when her birthday cake is placed in front of her, one solitary candle lit in the middle, and we remind her, “Make a wish!” She hesitates. She begins to say, “I wish I’m alive another…” Then her voice trails off, and she begins to blow. It takes three tries before she gets it right and the candle is extinguished. Another what, Ma? Another how many years? Does she get her wish? Just this one?

George asked me if I enjoyed the evening, and I said yes. I don’t know if it's the truth.

Till later...

Pen Pals

So, I've been thinking about cyber relationships. Over the years, I've developed quite a few close friendships with people I've never met. I'm not talking about MySpace random adds from folks who occasionally "hit" my page with comments. Most of the time, I've met folks through special interest groups, or by (as they say in sales) "making a cold call" on someone's blog. Some of these folks I've met face-to-face. I went to a beautiful wedding a year and a half ago for a couple I met through a message board. Even my husband, the supreme pooh-pooher of internet culture, had a great time, loved these folks who've become my close friends.

And in thinking about it, of course I'm writing about it, too, trying to get at the roots of what attracts me to it. Then I find the prison letters.

It seems that between September 1983-January 1985, I was quite the prolific letter writer--mostly to men in prison, but to some military men as well. I say "seems" because the whole period is rather foggy. I do remember that my sister gave me the picture of one of the guys (rather, his mug shot--no idea how she got that) and asked me to write to him when her new husband expressed jealousy. She would never tell me why he was in Pennsylvania's roughest state prison. He told me it was for simple assault, the first time he'd ever had trouble with the law. Personal experience ten years later taught me that you don't get four years for that. I later found out he was a rapist.

And another, one I knew from the neighborhood. Last summer, he was arrested for raping a four-year-old girl. I wrote to him for over a year, and other than being overly obsessed with Ozzy Osbourne and being a horrible speller, he was just like any of the other guys.

There are two names on the envelopes of letters I have yet to read that I don't even recognize. I put them all in chronological order and have been reading through them off and on all day. Those should be interesting. Maybe I have an honest-to-goodness murderer in there?

Most of the folks I correspond with today are doing what they can to make their lives better. The guys (always guys) I wrote to when I was fifteen, sixteen years old (and why, I wonder, did my mother allow it??), at least the first two, never seemed to do anything with their lives. The first one--I googled his name and found an article from last year. He'd been arrested after leading the cops on a high-speed chase. Back in prison again. Wow.

I'm just thinking about this. I have a lot of friends today, but outside of my immediate family (husband, grown or nearly grown children), I can't say I have a "best" friend. Not a face-to-face friend. I'm wondering, then and now, if I've used these epistolary relationships to fill some sort of lack. Hmm...

Till later...

The Winter That Never Ends

So, I'm researching time. It's for an assignment: pick your most favorite line from anything you've written this semester, then choose one word from that line and research it. You must find facts about this word that you did not know when you wrote the line--three facts from science, three from history and three from literature.

My word is "time." I feel like like it's cheating a bit. After all, time is scientific, time is historical (all the hubbub of time in relation to the birth of Christ), and literature, oh, literature!--always obsessed with capturing time, the ultimate act of ego.

And as I do my research, I look out my window, see the snow not falling but blowing sideways, trying to plan my trek back to the city, trying to nail down my schedule for the optimum driving conditions. Do I go tonight in the dark when it will be colder, but less windy? Do I drive back in the morning, when the weather forecast predicts a higher chance of precipitation, adding the pressure of arriving on time, regardless of the potential for hazardous driving?

Ah, hubris. What does it matter? If that line I chose holds any truth at all, I'm only fooling myself. The winter never really ends, and every moment is the only moment.

Till later...

My Odd Life

I can't say I have a topic to write about, though I'm feeling pressured (by myself) to update, let any casual reader know that turning 40 did not push me over the edge. I've been referred to as a "middle-aged woman" several times in recent days--in a matter-of-fact sort of way by one of my younger friends, and it felt okay. No, really, it did.

I've slipped into a level of acceptance about my age that feels almost like my old Harley boots--molded to my particular quirks, though still with an odd bump here and there. Comfortable, but not something I want to wear for days on end--which is okay, because I keep the ten-year-old me around to inject me with a good dose of silliness and novelty. My Ace brings her out in me with little trouble. The years roll off of me at the end of the week when I go home to him.

Which brings me to the odd part of my life. It hit me when I was wandering around this quiet apartment today. I'm a married woman, a mother, and yet I spend all this time alone, and when I'm not alone, I'm with folks that none of the most important people in my life have even met except through my anecdotes. I imagined this life a long time ago. I visualized, even, this life, but it was before children, before cleaving to a man I adore. We're all okay with it (I believe), even though it wasn't really part of the plan. It's just... weird.

Life sure is full of surprises.

Till later...

On Turning Forty

I don't want to grow old gracefully
I don't want to go 'til it's too late
I'll be some old [wo]man in the road somewhere
Kneeling down in the dust by the side of the interstate
~Warren Zevon, Renegade

The clock is ticking. I’ve heard it, growing louder each day. I remind myself that time is a human invention, but the lines I see when I look in the mirror, growing deeper, transforming my face from who I think I am into who I have become, tell me otherwise.

Perhaps wrinkles are a human invention, too.

Till later...

All over the macaroni salad? Naw...

So, I'm sitting here, wishing that the wind would stop blowing my cigarette ashes all over, the dog would stop nosing up on my chair and ruining the coat of polish I just put on my nails, and my stomach would stop growling because I'm too stubborn to go inside and make myself something else for lunch. I wanted the macaroni salad I made yesterday, but Mary threw it away when she cleaned out the 'fridge. Christopher told her he thought it was old - Christopher, who hasn't been home for dinner in a number of days and wouldn't know what was new and what was old in the 'fridge if it jumped out and bit him. The only thing that's old is down in the basement, in G.K.'s subterranean cave, and I have no doubt that some of those unrecognizable dishes are at the biting stage by now. I've only been nagging him to clean for a month.

I've got a million and one pet peeves that I try not to let ruin my day. When they come up, I've trained myself to ask, "How important is it, really?" (Well, the situation in G.K.'s bedroom is border-line important - he may have grown the cure for the common cold down there by now, or a deadly biological weapon) But, today, after going 'round with Mary umpteen times and asking her to please not clean the 'fridge when I'm not here, it ticked me off. George was the one who told me, in his best Grapes of Wrath meets the Beverly Hillbillies voice - "Please, Ma, don't be turrible mean when I give ya this gawd-awful news that's a-weighing heavy on m'heart!" I laughed and laughed, then got more and more impatient for him to get to the point. He wanted to play. I just wanted to know what the hell was going on.

My macaroni salad, that tasted so good when I made it yesterday and that was on my mind the whole drive back from my Ma's, forty miles over the mountain, is now, I hope, in a covered garbage can, or my cats will have what I could only think about today. Grrr!

It's not that, though - not really. Sure, there was a good buck's worth of mayonnaise in it and the last of the Vidalia onions. But it wasn't enough to set me off. Neither was the five separate instances of road construction on a forty-mile (one-way) trip. I managed through that just fine. I just turned American Beauty up loud and sang along with Jerry and the boys - at least on the way over.

It's been awhile since my hometown has had this profound an effect on me. Maybe it's because an old friend is back in town. She related to me last week that she had to move in with her mother because she found herself homeless. Here I am, dressed well for a routine trip to take my mother to for some tests, driving my almost-new Toyota mini-van, have almost a full tank of gas at today's prices, and I see her. I'm reminded that most of the folks I grew up with - poor, white trash like me - are not doing so well. I see the buildings and landmarks of my youth in rubble, razed to make room for a parking lot - or nothing at all. Even the lot where the house I grew up in and my mother lived until a few years ago is covered in weeds and road trash.

When we dropped my mother off last Friday evening after the boys' graduation, my husband asked, "What month is this?" when we drove through the downtown, all lit up. Each lampost sported a shooting star in red, white and blue. Some sort of downtown pride campaign. But it's almost all gone, and nothing new seems to be taking the place of what once was. Back in the seventies, my hometown won some sort of small-town America title. Today, there are new facades on a street with vacant buildings, the interiors falling into decay.

And my mother is falling into decay with the rest of the town. Most of her friends are gone, but she still manages to find someone in the waiting room to talk to. I listen to her talking, realizing that she's not hearing anything that's said to her. All she's doing is waiting for an opportunity to recount one more physical ailment, no matter how personal. And she'll interrupt if the subject of hemorrhoids or amputated breasts comes up.

We ran into that old friend of mine at the hospital. She came in as we were leaving. Said, "I saw you drive by. If I knew you were coming here, I would have asked for a ride." Her old mother was driving her. Standing in the hall between radiology and the E.R., she showed me why she was there. She lifted her shirt and exposed a pregnant-looking abdomen. "I have to have a CT scan. Some kind of growth." She flashed a smile full of decaying teeth. I felt something unnameable then.

But I think I know what it was: shame. I'm ashamed of where I came from, and I feel, somehow, I shrugged my responsiblity, denied them my loyalty - refused to rot with all the rest. Like my macaroni salad (Damn it, Mary) will now.

Till later...

A meme by any other name...

Meme: A meme consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another (Wikipedia).

Found this on Exile on Mainstreet, who’s author found it somewhere else.

The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users.
Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. (I used pink for bold - bold doesn't show well, and I'm not changing my template for one post! I also underlined and bolded those I read first, then read for a class.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses (not once, not twice, but three times)
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion is this
There is Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Wow. I’ve abandoned a lot of things, haven’t I?

Graduation - An Ending, a Beginning

With the reputation I've developed over the last four years, the cynic in me questioned why "they" didn't rig it so that someone else gave the baccalaureate address. I've embraced the idea that the personal is the political, and I've missed no opportunity to put in a word for peace, or a call for the end of domestic violence, or to raise awareness that drug addicts and alcoholics are sick people, not bad people. But yesterday, when the podium was mine for three to five minutes, the concept of unity seemed to me more important than any other I might talk about.

I told a friend I would blog my speech, and I'll try to do it in such a way that the reception as well as the delivery is present. Let's see how I do:

(The Director of Academic Affairs calls me up as recipient of the Baccalaureate Academic Achievement Award - something given in lieu of valedictory status when graduate, four-year and two-year degrees are conferred at the same time.)

Thank you, Dr. Mino. And thank you, my family - my husband, my incredible four teenage children, my mother, and the dear, dear friends who are with me here and in spirit today. And thank you, Class of 2008. You are my family, too.

We have come to this common place today in many different ways.

Some of you have come in the traditional way, straight from high school, from families where it was assumed that you would get an education that would form the foundation of your career.

Some of you have come because your children are growing or grown, or you seek an education so that you might be better able to provide for your family, or you’ve maybe wanted to enrich your own lives and expand your experience. Even when you’ve known that you’ve had your family’s best interest at heart, you may have felt selfish about the time you have had to devote to your studies.

Some of you have come because you’ve been downsized out of a job, or, like me, have disabilities which makes it hard to do the jobs you were trained to do. You may have felt frustration at having to take algebra all over again, or to write an essay for freshman comp.

(Exclamation: "Yeah!")

If you’re a non-traditional student, you may have felt uncomfortable and out of place around so many young people. If you’re a younger student, you may have felt at times that you were sitting next to your mothers and fathers in class.

(Titters of laughter)

Sooner or later, hopefully, we’ve all discovered that we are peers, regardless of our differences. We share a commonality, and today, we all wear the same caps and gowns, and we’ve all taken classes together and learned a new language that includes such terms as “gen eds” and “OPRs” and “drop credits.”

(A guffaw or two!)

We’ve had opportunities to study together, to join clubs and organizations together, to play laser tag together, and to sit and talk about our lives outside these halls together. We have participated, and it is my hope that we will continue to participate, to become part of in our jobs, our communities, and in our families. What we’ve learned from books and in lectures is only a portion of our education. That we are part of a larger world, and that we have a place and a purpose in that world is something I hope we will never forget.

Though our majors might be in the helping professions, in business or in wildlife, in information technology or a mixture of these and others, we have all shared the experience of being part of a small, intimate college campus where we are privileged to be more than just a name on the rolls. We are truly blessed to be leaving not a college today, but a family.

(This is the point, I believe, where I’m supposed to offer some encouraging words for our futures!)

I encourage us to think of the days and weeks and semesters culminating in this day as a starting point for our education, not as the end result.

I encourage us to think about our experiences and remember that the people who teach us are at least as important as the things they have to teach us.

I encourage us to remain teachable, even though we may be breathing a sigh of relief that this time is now behind us.

I encourage us to look at this very brief period of time as something that has shown us just how much more we have to learn.

Lastly, I encourage you all, as Henry David Thoreau would have, to “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” The best way I have found to do that, the only way I have found to do that, is to put one foot in front of the other, and to keep on keepin’ on!

Congratulations, Class of 2008. Thank you for being part of my family!

(My apologies for not properly citing Dylan in the above!)

Till later...

Letter to my friend

Morning, Jackie,

I'm a little stir crazy not having anything to do. Oh, I have plenty of places to go - and "stuff" to take care of - but, well, maybe you know what I mean. The classes are all finished, the papers turned in, the grades have been recorded. I even have my speech written for Saturday. I hope you're not too disappointed. I used a Thoreau quote. I considered writing a feminist manifesto, but I found it difficult to draw together 80 other people in 3-5 minutes.

As soon as my last bio of aging assignment was finished Friday afternoon, I started digging around the Pitt site and found the library. They have a lot of the same database accesses that we do, and I downloaded and printed 3 articles on pedagogy. I'm mid-way through the second, and the third (saving the best for last), "'Feminist' Teaching/Teaching "Feminism"', is one you might like. I found it through Project Muse, but I can go back & save a PDF copy & e-mail it to you if you like.

I checked my degree audit, and my minor hasn't yet shown up on it. You told me that it would, so I'm not worried about it - just an F.Y.I.

I've only cried a few times, and I have managed not to sink into a deep depression. I know all sorts of good things are ahead, but - maybe you've felt this - it all went so fast, I feel like I didn't have an opportunity to savor any of it. I'd just like it to slow down a little.

My baby boy is 18 and is off visiting friends on his own in the evenings, playing music and doing car repairs. My baby girl is asking questions about politics and religion and trying to make up her mind in regards to what she believes, not adopting what we believe as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I'm watching my oldest re-join the family, camping out in the t.v. room doing math and contemplating his future, comparing it to his peers and struggling to figure out where he belongs in the world. The next one in line - the roller coaster kid - he's psyched that he's got an honor cord, even though he's been kicked out of the National Honors Society (did I tell you about that? over a bottle of Sprite?), and he's weighing the short-term worth of traveling as a starving musician against the long-term worth of a college education. My husband sits back, watches it all and smiles.

I don't know that I'm ready to be where I am, Jackie, but ready or not, here I come. Thanks for listening this morning. May the clouds part and the sun shine on you today.

Peace & Love,
Jody

“I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.”
~Frances Hodgson Burnett

Some stuff...

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Calling Together

Tonight is a very special night for me, and I hope for others, and though I’m sure that my little corner of cyberspace is obscure enough that no one I’ll mention, by name or by virtues, will stumble across it, in the interest of keeping the surprise, I will file this away once complete. By the time I retrieve my saved draft, the information will be yesterday’s news.

Tonight is the campus Honors Convocation. This year, as chair of the honors society, I have a fairly large role. In the past, I’ve been mindful to remain humble as I was handed award after award. Great, but this year, I get to do something even greater. I get to welcome everyone and then, in the course of the ceremony, present three awards.

I stayed home today, though there were things I could have done on campus. There is another event I feel is important, for which I could have volunteered time, but I chose to stay home. I have my speeches prepared, my clothes chosen, and in looking back at four years of campus and community service, I felt I could hold back, not dip my greedy little fingers into another pie, stay at home to reflect and maybe even paint my nails.

Nails finished after a sloppy fashion, toes dry enough, I pulled out my old, dog-chewed sandals to take a trip around the back yard – my first of the springtime so far. It’s been plenty warm enough to make that trip sooner, but life and the job of living it have kept me from it.

I used my new walking stick, carved by the brother of a friend. I told myself that part of the reason I turned back so soon was that it will take some getting used to, carrying a big stick like that. I told myself that I needed to build up to it, take short jaunts, and soon I will be traveling the back five acres with ease as I did last summer.

Then I considered other reasons. That maybe I’m a year older, and though still young by most estimates, a little slower, a little softer. That maybe the progression of certain conditions that began last fall, not long after porch sitting was done for the year, are taking more of a toll on me than I’d like to admit. I did feel popping and grinding in my knees and ankles out there. I did have trouble maintaining a grip on the long length of – Ash? Maple? Something heavy.

And it got me back to thinking about why I didn’t go in, put in a few volunteer hours at the event on campus – “Eyes Wide Open: The Cost of War to Pennsylvania.” It’s a worthy event, one I’d be proud to help with. But I didn’t go. Am I losing steam?

I realize I’ve spent four years building a resume of accomplishments that will give me credibility when speaking out on those things that matter to me. I may not have realized that when I first started, but as much as I abhor politics, politics are hard to avoid if one wants to make any impact. I admittedly have trouble working behind the scenes, keeping the faith that my small contributions, when combined with others, make an impact. It’s an ego thing, perhaps. I know that I have a big mouth, and I lean towards big gestures, and in accepting who I am and how I can best serve, I try to gear my efforts in that direction.

There is a woman I’ll be helping to honor this evening who is not like me. She’s been content, in all the time that I have known her, to be the now-proverbial wind beneath the wings of others. All total, she’s receiving three honors, including having one award renamed in her honor. I have written the speeches, and I’m having a little trouble getting through them in my practice without crying. Maybe that’s just the way it’s supposed to be, and I should give up the practice and just let it all hang out. I think that’s what she might advise me to do, if I could ask her without spoiling the surprise.

I also have to wonder, in relation to my short, lone journey to the backyard, if it is possible that, in the contemplation of this woman, in her compassion and humility in her dealings with others, I have learned more than I thought I had. This weekend, if I choose to tear myself away from that last paper and go for a walk, I can ask one or more of my multitude of children, or my husband, to accompany me. When I visited Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago, I tramped all over creation, but I didn’t notice the distance because I was in good company, talking all the while. Had I been a loner there, which is my bent, I’m sure I would have viewed those same distances as torturous. Maybe, in the spirit of the Burns Award, a mentorship award I received last year and one I will be presenting to my dear friend, Susanne tonight, I should be focusing on others more—rather than the resume-building, trail-blazing path I’ve been on for quite some time now.

I’ll have students of my own this fall. I just ordered two books on teaching composition. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from those books, as well as from the promised week of intense training before classes begin. I do hope that I take the lesson learned from Susanne, that “the individual time one spends with students will in the end matter more than any particular piece of knowledge I could impart in a classroom lecture.”

I now think it’s perfectly acceptable, prudent and wise to change directions once in awhile, especially when one is presented with a superior path to walk.

Till later….

Outbursts

I'm trying to get at what's beneath the outburst. My last post was part whine-fest, part tantrum, and, the larger part, an exercise in ego. Kind of like taping an affirmation on the bathroom mirror and repeating it over and over, believing, but being afraid to believe. It feels silly and uncomfortable and still, kind of good at the same time.

I spent an interesting afternoon yesterday with a couple of other women from campus. We were meeting to choose from nominees for a mentorship award. I won the award last year, an unusual accomplishment for a student. On the off-chance that I alert the wrong person before April 18th, when I will stand at the podium and honor this woman, I won't say who we picked. Geeze - that means I can't even allude to our choice in any significant way! Well, part of some forms of creative writing is finding a way to say what one needs to say inside a certain structure, or under certain limitations. So, I'll give it a shot.

These two women sitting with me - both staff, one from the IT department, the other, director of admissions, were sharing their stories with me. Both are working mothers, as is our recipient (See? That doesn't drastically narrow it. There are lots of working moms - both students, faculty, staff on campus.). Both have affected me by the way they carry themselves, as has our recipient. And both admitted to me certain difficulties in their jobs that they believe are woman-specific. Strangely enough, those difficulties have arisen from dealing with other women, or one woman in particular, who demands of them that they show no emotion that might point to a weakness. In other words, no emotion that's thought of as "feminine."

I think that's why this certain, hyper-critical woman seems to like me -- most of the time. She likes me because she knows a bit of my history, and she knows I minimize pain and other challenges. I don't think that she likes that I express my opinions and never flinch. And though I tend to respond rather evenly to criticism and have a pragmatic, solution-oriented approach to others who bring a problem to me, I'd like to reserve my right to express myself in any way that I see fit.

I suppose the conversation yesterday combined with my discomfort at being the center of attention on campus lately has me thinking, and in large measure, I was expressing ego that I feel is inappropriate or impolite and not in line with the view I wish others to have of me. And therein lies the rub. I am trying to spin a situation that requires no spin. Saying thank you is a very appropriate response. Answering questions honestly is not so hard. What's honest? I'm just putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to create too much friction in the Universe, just follow where it leads me.

It's led me to a place that I love. I love my life, with all its challenges. Maybe because of all of its challenges. It's a lot easier to live in a state of gratitude knowing that faith and hard work pay off, that people are essentially good and supportive of each other and will help you when you need it, that you can make time to help another person along the way, and it doesn't take from you but rather adds to you.

I just don't get why I feel the need to whine in order to say it. Perhaps I'm saying, "Yes, I have ego, but I have something else, too, something that makes me appreciate even the smallest things, like the chickadees that empty my feeder at a rate that defies their small size, and I'd like others to know that." Or appreciate a woman taking me by the hand and showing empathy, excitement, sharing joy and sorrow, and saying to hell with how someone else expects her to act.

I need to have an outburst every once in awhile. I reserve that right.

Till later...

Okay, so I'm somewhere else...

I read something about denial earlier.

"If God was tapping on your shoulder, trying to get your undivided attention, what would she want you to see? What situation or feeling are you not willing to acknowledge? Is there an area of your life where you're not succeeding? If so, you're probably in denial."

I'm not succeeding at embracing my own success. Here's how it goes: I see someone coming towards me wearing that certain smile. You know the one. They've heard some news about you, and now they want to comment on it, make small talk, offer (if appropriate) congratulations.

On a campus of about eight hundred, with at least a good three hundred of those attending satellite programs in local high schools and community centers, and another chunk taking only night classes, which I don't take, it's not hard to get to know most everyone. I graduated high school in a class of 310, and I knew plenty kids in the lower grades. I've worked places that had hundreds on the payroll and knew most if not all of them. I'm also in my last year of undergrad studies, so I know all the faculty, all the staff. And, I've been prominent in several different campus organizations. So, I've seen the look, the smile, a lot in the past week.

"Congratulations! I heard your news! That's wonderful. Oh, you have worked so hard, and you deserve it!!" Immediately, the hitch inside gets me. I start lining up all the reasons why they're not my accomplishments, but those of my environment. I self-deprecate. I can't say a simple thank you, but must go on & on about how I could never have done anything alone. I make it sound like I have support to brush my teeth in the morning. It's embarrassing, and I'm sure, after having repeated it so many times, it sounds like false humility.

I do believe that I've been given certain opportunities, and I also believe that if others hadn't seen it in me, they wouldn't have been made available to me. Or, I'd have quit and decided it was too much work.

Who takes every single English course with honors when, really, there's no perk other than getting a better education and a certificate once a year to prove that I've done it? No Schreyer Honors College. No designation on my diploma. Just writing a lot of annotated bibliographies, doing extra research, giving presentations, and learning how to write decent appendices. Who studies hard even those subjects that are required, but not especially interesting or applicable to future career goals?

Who raises four kids, nurtures a new marriage, works with a bunch of recovering women on & off campus, chairs the honors society, raises awareness in regards to woman-specific issues, protests war, finds time to meditate rather than medicate, does physical therapy, writes a 900 page book on the art of internet communication, works as a tutor, speaks at community events and rallies, finds time to raise and preserve her own vegetables and sauces, and learns to identify most Western Pennsylvania backyard bird species (which is a damned good thing, because it was that essay, about the birds, that got me acceptances into three, possibly four MFA programs, as well as that extra fellowship award). Not many people.

Okay, there's my boast for the day, my self-centered musing on all my good works. I didn't even play the 82 yr old mother card, or the not-long-dead father card.

I believe I've hit on the real reason, though, that I can't take credit for all I know that I do, all I know I can do. I want others to think of me as an intelligent, capable woman, a good writer and a caring human being, and at the same time, I fear so much that others will consider me an egomaniac. Will saying thank you, without giving an speech appropriate for an Academy Award winner make me less humble in the eyes of others?

On this side, I am a middle-aged, disabled (I no longer think crippled) woman with multiple conditions and mobility issues, alcoholic/drug addict in recovery, with a poor and abusive upbringing.

On that side, I'm a writer; sometime-poet; avid blogger; gardener; mother of four teenagers; beloved of a most loving, intelligent, funny man; community servant; honors student, dean's list every semester; tutor/mentor; have a 3 1/2 page CV with very modest publishing credits, but incredible awards, scholastic honors, and presentation experience; and last, but not least, I'm liked and respected by most people I have come to know.

Why can't I own it all, even if it's joint ownership? It's mine, isn't it?

Till later...

Why not?

Well, maybe it's the pain in my body today. I could have gone out, could have gone to class, could have gone to work, could have gone in for a meeting tonight. But I didn't. I weighed the costs & benefits and made the decision to stay home.

But it has me concerned. If not for the induction ceremony tomorrow, the last I will preside over, I probably would have practiced pushing my limits today. I've done a lot of that in the last five years, and, though more painful than I'd like for it to be at times, it's been worth it. I can do things now that I wouldn't have dreamed possible five years ago.

My son brought me pizza. He even removed the pepperoni from it, and he'll check in on me in awhile. I'm resting up. I want to get out of here tomorrow, and to do that and not screw it up, I have to rest today. I'm surrounded by love and support.

Will it be that way this time next year? How will George react if he hears the pain in my voice when we wish each other goodnight on the phone, knowing I am alone with my transient misery? Because I know it doesn't last long, and I know I can push through it. Today, I just choose not to. I know that I can do it, because I've done it over and over, each time I allowed new growth to break through to the surface. It's been almost three months since my last "bad spell." That's not too shabby, considering every day was more of the same "bad spell" for a very long time.

I will be living in the city of Pittsburgh this time next year, living there during the week, and traveling home, to my real home, on the weekends. I will be alone. If I live close enough to the campus, Christopher can stop by, and I'm sure, be there if I need him to be. But he'll have his own life, and I don't want to be overly intrusive. I also don't want to become dependent. I am, after all, the parent. I do depend on them now, don't I? We'll see.

I just signed my letter of intent today, and it's now in the mail, along with Christopher's tuition deposit. Next step: appointment with my favorite therapist.

Till later...

Right on Time

First came the letter from Chatham. I need to call them, as I was so excited that someone, somewhere, wanted me, I immediately put down the letter, picked up my checkbook, filled in the amount for the tuition deposit, and had my daughter take it out to the mailbox. Stamp? Check. Sealed? Check. Send that puppy off! They should offer my spot to someone else.

Then came the call from Carlow. It was unofficial, I was told, but with a little pressure, I got a yes. An unofficial yes, but a yes. That was two weeks ago, and the official letter arrived Saturday.

Neither program offered money. That's a problem, as I'm already in debt to the point that I can only sign checks in red ink. It's not insurmountable, but it's a problem.

Every day, I've been sorting through the mail, slowly, and while praying, because the last two schools are ones who do have a bit of money to spread around. Today, there was a letter from Pitt. Five of the six of us were milling about, and I held the envelope in my hand, thinking--I really should send the kids out of the room. This is a windowed envelope. They wouldn't send an acceptance in a windowed envelope, would they? So, perhaps its a letter saying that decisions were coming soon. Or possibly an alert telling me that part of my application was missing. Or a rejection.

I looked across the table at my husband. He smiled. I said, "Don't." I didn't want him smiling when I started to cry. Sage walked behind my chair, and I hoped that he would keep on going. One less for George to shoo up the stairs when I fell apart. One less to try to console me.

I stuck my finger in the corner of the envelope. I opened it just enough to see the salutation. Anything else was under the fold, and I'd have to attempt reading it upside down or take it out of the envelope. There was a reply envelope. That didn't register. I didn't think, "This means a response is required." And there was more than just the one sheet. There was something besides the letter. That didn't register, either.

"It is a pleasure to inform you..." I got that far, then squealed. No, no--I don't think the first sound was a squeal. More like a hoot. Christopher said later that he was sure I was having a heart attack. A few minutes of guttural noise and yelping, and Sage started to dig around in the cupboard for a paper bag so that I wouldn't hyperventilate. The kids started to hug me in turn. Chris first, because he's going to Pitt, too, and he was hoping for my acceptance so that we could help each other some with rides. Sage next. Then Jade. George sat across from me smiling. Still smiling. I heard him say, for the first but not the last time of the evening, "I told you so!" Finally, I found my legs again, got up and rounded the table to hug him. Tight.

Oh, the second sheet. I couldn't read it. I had to hand it across the table to George so that he could tell me that not only did I get a tuition waiver, but a TAship as well. A TAship. They want me to teach. They're going to let me teach. Teach!

Wow.

My mentor's response--well, that's for another post, perhaps. Let's just say that he, too, yelled, hooted, something, in my ear, while I sat there, barely able to get the words out, repeating something to him, though in this moment, I could not tell you what. I know I said thank you. Many times.

There's one app left out there. I'm not so much worried about that now. As a matter of fact, if I get a letter in the mail, I might not want to open that one. I told my husband, "I'm starting to feel like I live a charmed life. It's a little scary." And it is. I have to remember to balance that with an equal portion of gratitude, and I think that should take care of the humility issue.

One last thing: I keep thinking that I'm coming to the game late, but when I think about the writing sample that was the basis of all this, I know I came just when I was supposed to, probably not a moment too soon.

Till later...

Links

I have two folks in my life right now, my oldest (step)son and a very good friend, and though on the surface, it might look as though they have nothing in common, I have found a thread between them that makes my heart so very heavy, my eyes burn in trying to delve into them, speak from my soul to theirs silent words their ears will not hear.

They have so much potential, but they don't believe in it. Both of them.

I have found another, too. They have both lost a mother in a senseless way, and I'm all they have to stand in that place, to be there for them in the flesh and blood. They have their respective fathers, true. But I, of all people, know the importance of being mothered, no matter how adult one might be. My own "mother" is still breathing, still eating and shitting and sharing her woes with the world, but mothering me? I am a motherless child.

These two souls, my own tossed into the mix. How could I ever doubt the existence of a god, of the Great Spirit, of the Universal Creator, when I am always -- it never fails -- right where I am supposed to be, right where I might meet my co-adventurers.

So, what's my job now, Great Spirit? Are we to mother each other in absence of any better substitute? Will we flounder? Will we prevail? I've no doubt that we will learn.

Till later...

Creativity Can Be Messy

My New Year cleaning binge came to an end soon after it started. Five days of purging papers and old shoe boxes and dried up pens and pencils with no erasers has left no discernible mark on my surroundings. Things are as messy, if not messier, than they were before. The stack of folders with multiple copies of submitted MFA applications and fellowship hopes and yearnings still sits on the floor beside my bed. I'm sure I could reduce that six-inch stack to a couple of thin manila files that I could slip into the file cabinet.

I've often thought about writing fiction instead of non-fiction. I think it's a much more lucrative proposition, if one is in it for the lucre. The only time I really think about having a financially fulfilling career is in those times I start contemplating my messiness, and my fancy takes over, tells me life would be so much easier with a personal assistant.

I had a "what would you do if you hit the lottery" discussion with a friend not long ago. She had what sounded like a well thought-out list of all the vacations she'd take, the palace she'd buy, the sports car she'd drive. Me? I wouldn't move. I like our house and its location. I can take a vacation anytime I want. In the summer, I do so every morning when I pour my coffee and walk out onto the porch. I'd probably buy a lot more books, maybe even try to find a first edition Walden. I think we'd probably like to have another truck, since last summer I saw what hauling potting soil did to the carpet in the back of the van. Clothes? I have enough clothes. But if I'm flipping channels on the t.v. and hit on one of those organizing shows where a team comes in and completely reorganizes your house -- that, yes, definitely that, would be something I'd spend money on.

I'm already fortunate to have a part-time housekeeper, but she does heavy cleaning. She wouldn't know where to start with the messes I make. I would love to interview folks who are like-minded, find the perfect person who would set up the perfect filing system, clear out all my cob-web clutter and make those hard decisions, find the perfect places for all my muse-pleasing artifacts (like my broken monkey who's cymbals no longer crash together, who's lips no longer peel back to reveal creepy monkey teeth -- why my dad thought that nightmare-inducing toy was appropriate for a little girl who needed nothing extra to induce nightmares, I don't know) ... I've dreamed of her (or his) services long before I needed them so desperately. Full-time. Not just a breeze through and go.

I want to create, but I don't want to tie up the loose ends. I hate to edit, and I hate to organize. I like to cook, but I hate to do dishes. I love to garden, but drag my tools back to the shed? Maybe that's why I like Monk so much. I'd take all his idiosyncrasies if they came equipped with a personal assistant.

Till later...

Everybody wants to be loved...

Don't they? It seems like a universal truth to me. Maybe there are some who can take it or leave it, and there are those odd-ball in-your-face shock jock commentators who seem to live to piss other people off, but in general, don't people want to be loved? Or at least liked?

I do.

Thing is--and I'm sure my perception is a bit skewed here--I'm a tough cookie to chew. Sometimes even beyond the dunking stage. In the last week, I've been told that I have Utopian dreams and communistic ideals. I thought I was being complemented at first, but then I got the drift.

I was pretty much okay with things until I learned in this personality psychology course that we rarely have an accurate view of ourselves. I should have known that instinctively, I guess. I'm not stupid. But this presents some issues for me. I'm a writer. I write non-fiction, much of it from the first-person point of view. The issue for me is this: which is the real me? The one other people see or the person I know myself to be?

And more importantly, I ask another question in this particular moment. If others love me, do they love the me I am or the me they see? If they don't love me (or like me), would that change if I could invite them inside?

I don't know.

Till later...

What's Next?

It took me ten minutes to choose a mood on MySpace. I mean, what is a mood but how we feel about something. There are just too many somethings to choose one mood. I eventually settled for "indescribable," as there were no more adequate choices.

Life is so busy right now. I feel like the Martin Sheen character in West Wing, shifting gears so fast, you'd think I had a pack of state troopers behind me. And this situation I must attend to is so very different from that one waiting in the wings, I don't have time to develop a "mood" around it.

I'd love to keep whining for another paragraph or so, but it's time now for something else.

Till later...

Remembering Sue

I’ve had some old memories come back to visit today, and as for that sort of thing, one seems to give birth to another.

Some of the most vivid things I remember are times when I knew I was encountering some sophisticated act—something foreign to my hillbilly upbringing. Some I learned from Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt—such as what to do with your knife after you’ve ickied it all up cutting something or spreading something and you don’t want to put it down on a white tablecloth (not that I saw many white tablecloths). Other things, I learned from my friends.

Here’s one: Sue sitting in the bathtub while I tried on her mother’s make-up, telling me the order in which body parts should be washed, “or you’ll spread germs.” I didn’t get that. Why would it matter if I used the washcloth on my thighs after I swooshed it between my legs? But that’s what her mother taught her, and her mother was a sophisticate, a divorcee, head cashier at the local Riverside Market. It was 1978, maybe ’79, and Sue was still in Catholic school, damned to wear those green plaid uniforms but secretly envied by the rest of us girls. Sue had a weird nose but good cheekbones, and though she tried a little too hard to fit in with the rest of us public school kids, her bleach blonde mother (still wearing it in a beehive that late in the decade) was exotic, and we all wanted to hang in her immaculate fourteen by eighty.

Though we got away with a lot at her house when her mother was at work, we didn’t hang around much when she was home. She was incredibly strict, and, we learned, not afraid to use a backhand to enforce her rules. Sue still did her best to fit in with the lawless crowd, though. We all got an education the night she opened her mother’s secret cabinet. It didn’t take long for us to bait in the young, cute guys and feed them Pepsi with a few drops of Spanish Fly. A promise of unlimited Atari play did the trick, but Ms. PacMan was getting more action than we were—and besides, what would we have done with them had the aphrodisiac worked?

One of the last times I saw Sue was at Amy’s wedding. I didn’t recognize her. She was always slim, like her mother—whom we learned restricted her diet, as obesity was a sign of sloth. Standing outside the church, babe in arms, she had to have been two hundred pounds, maybe more. Her eyes were sunken in her the fat of her face, and even her quirky nose had lost it’s sharp upturn in the extra padding. I tried not to look shocked and I’m sure I failed miserably. We made small talk, avoiding the subject of the elephant she’d become. But, I saw her again late that summer—or was it the following year?—and she was back to her fighting weight. There was a mention of her mother’s nagging, how many sit-ups she started with and how many she still did every day and the stress of motherhood and the roll that she just could not get rid of, no matter how hard she tried. Sage hadn’t come along yet, so I listened, haughty and superior, knowing I was still bikini material. Though I’m not a pound over my weight at graduation, maybe even a pound or two lighter, I have come to know the ravages of motherhood. But that day, I just looked at her as though she were old. She was twenty-one.

Sue died twelve years later. I heard about it a few months after the fact, while I was firmly in my own state of inertia. Cancer. I don’t know what kind, or if she suffered, or what happened to her husband, her two children or her mother. So far as I was concerned, she was just plucked from the face of the Earth, and all I have of her are memories of our fist fights, her mother’s sex toys and a sense that she never quite fit in—which made a maladjusted girl like me feel a little better about myself.

Till later...

More of the Same

Still very firmly February.

Several snow squalls have moved over the mountain today, most of which I've watched with my feet quite comfortably propped atop pillows on my bed. I spend a lot of time in my bed in the winter.

At one point, we were under heavy cloud cover, so much that I had to turn the table lamp on in the late morning. The sun must have muscled its way through because it became so bright, so quickly that my husband remarked on it, from his post at the desk, at the same time I snapped my head around to the window. The snow was still coming down steadily, but it was as if someone turned bright overhead lights on, hundred watters, and lots of them. Wow doesn't easily slip from his tongue; he is not one to be impressed by mere gentle shifts in circumstance.

Then later, my daughter came to visit to use my computer, though I don't know why. She has a new one, not three months old. No matter, I was glad for the company, even if it was the wordless kind. Clack-clack-clack from the keys. Then the clack-clack stopped, and she was standing at the foot of my bed. "What is that?" I looked outside, or tried to. There could have been crisp, white sheets on all the windows. The wind had picked up, and the snow had continued, and all we could see was white. Not even swirling white, though I'm sure that it was. Just solid walls of white: no grass line, no outlines of trees, no horizon. White.

For all the snow, the wind has taken most of it from the fields opposite my current perspective. I'm back in the sitting room with yet another roast in the oven (this time, beef, not pork, and I'm doing my best with it, even though I won't let a smidge past my lips). A moment ago, the air could have been laced with gold, but now, another gust has blown through, and with it came more clouds, like old gray leather.

I desperately want, need springtime. Everything around me, even my roast, is in the waiting place. I am in the waiting place. I'm very weary.

Till later...

The dreaded "Where I'm at today" post

It's raining, coming straight down outside my windows. In February. That reminds me that I have yet to begin my global warming paper. Each thought or observation seems to lead me back to something else I'm neglecting. Things that make me feel responsible when I give them their due.

It is raining, and it is February, and I am home today, sick and miserable. I could use the time to plod through those many things I know I need to do in coming days and weeks, or I could sit here, lumpish, half watch cop shows and cruise my internet haunts, all the while feeling off kilter and less than serene. I could point to friends in crisis and my powerlessness to give them any real help, or the fact that my bones have been registering aches well above the acceptable level for weeks now, probably longer, and that my ego's taken an illogical hit since I have come down with the cold that the other five members of my family have mostly gotten over, same cold I thought I had slyly evaded (big joke on me) and tell myself -- no wonder you feel like crap today.

Or I could go deeper and say, "Well, Sug, you're one more day closer to forty and you still haven't had that talk with yourself you've been promising," or "You do know that your future is no more uncertain now than it's ever been, but you're sure making it out to be a big deal." I could dive deep into contemplation, and about the time I feel like I'm getting somewhere, feeling the pressure pushing things into place, it'll be time to put a roast in the oven for dinner, and it's just not worth a case of the bends to have to surface that quickly.

I think I need a vacation.

Till later...

Our National Drug - A Rant

"Our national drug is alcohol.
We tend to regard the use any other drug with special horror. "
William S. Burrows

(Thanks, SoberMusicians for the quote of the day)

I'm speaking at another town hall meeting in April. I fell asleep thinking about it, if only because it was the thing least likely to cause stress or cause me to jump up out of bed, full of inspiration begging to be captured. No, I just turned things over in my head, thought back to the last two town hall meetings, and tried to approach it from a different angle. I think I'll actually use notes this year.

The topic, by the way, is underage drinking. It's always the topic. This is rural Pennsylvania. One graduates very quickly from Pin the Tail on the Donkey (do kids still play that?) to Find the Keg in the Woods. Or, as I hear these days, Find the Right Road to Camp. With all we know about underage drinking, parents are still offering "safe places" to drink as an alternative to their kids so that maybe they'll avoid a serious drug problem in said kids.

The local police logs are full of reports detailing minors charged with "disorderly conduct." I understand, as one of my colleagues informed me, that this is code for underage drinking. Charging a drunken teenager with disorderly conduct serves two purposes: 1) it let's the cop play good guy (or girl, as the case may be), as a disorderly conduct charge does not bring with it loss of driving privileges, and 2) fines from disorderly conduct remain in the municipality, while underage drinking fines are dispersed between county and municipality, or something like that. I understand the concept, so I didn't take notes.

As a sober alcoholic whose past "special treatment" helped me to avoid some unpleasant consequences that, by virtue of their absence, damned near killed me, I'm opposed to anything that allows someone consuming the drug alcohol from avoiding those consequences. Were my kids to be caught drinking, I would expect that they be charged, even if that means money out of my pocket. I have ways of getting it back.

But! you say, Kids will be kids! And alcoholism is a disease! Of course, and what better teaching aid than discomfort? And no alcoholic I have ever met has sought help without the aid of pain to convince that alcoholic that help was necessary.

In an ideal world, there wouldn't be such things that can be substituted for the experience of authentic existence. I'm pretty radical on that point, and I'll reign it in for the moment and just say that -- if we are not at the point where we are ready to educate our society, aid the enlightenment of our society, if we must have these substances available for the pseudo-sophisticates who claim consumption as their right, then let's not forget that alcohol is every bit the drug that heroin or cocaine is. We wouldn't scold a house full of I.V. drug users and send them home to mom and dad. Kegger or a crack pipe, there's no difference.

Till later...

For Rebecca...

...because she was so kind to leave a comment and well-wishes. And also because my head and my heart seem to be in two different places right now, and I'd very much like to see a synthesis between the two.

I should be ecstatic, and I'll admit to ecstatic moments, but as Emerson lamented, they don't last. Mentally, I know that I'm headed in a positive, forward direction, and emotionally, I'm scared to death. My inner child is convinced that the play-date can't last, that some grumpy old grownup is going to come along and take away all the toys, scold, and end all the fun.

I've heard from Chatham, but I haven't heard from any other schools, and I haven't received any offers of funding. The money thing scares me. I'm having trouble working up any sort of optimism for the many fellowships applications I put in the mail. As an undergrad, I've been a star, ol' big fish in a small pond. Now, out in the ocean -- I'm imagining I'm nothing more than a minnow, and a minnow with warts on my fins--not good enough for bait let alone the foundation of a gourmet meal.

But then, the moments of ecstasy return. All fears aside, I'm doing it. I'm presenting at another conference, speaking at another town hall meeting, slowly filling the spring schedule so that I won't have time for excessive belly button gazing. Besides, it's NOT all about me!! My two seniors are at the precipice of their future as well. Christopher received his letter of acceptance to Pitt, which I had no doubt about (but he seemed to), and Sage is more than likely going to end up at PSU. I can understand women who devote their lives to motherhood without a lot of outside involvement. In thinking about their future, I can only go so far before I try to start planning it for them. I need something to return to when that realization comes home that this is their lives, and my part is growing smaller and smaller. So, right now, having my own thing to obsess about keeps me from falling to pieces, and having them to support and encourage keeps me from overly obsessing. It works out. The scales are in balance.

I'm grateful for the decision to take a few demanding classes my final undergrad semester. That, too, helps divert the fear and obsession. I can always pick up a book to read for a term paper, or study the endocrine system or work on that tricky introduction for my as-yet-in-pieces manuscript.

I'm in the waiting place, knowing one way or another I have a place to go, but still not knowing if I have choices. I suppose it doesn't much matter, so long as I don't have to make a choice today, right? So, I'll plug along, watch the rain and sleet coming down outside my window, pray that my husband makes it home safely since my efforts to get him to reschedule his day came to naught, and enjoy this day spent in my flannel nightgown, as I've a feeling my life this time next year will little resemble what it does today.

Till later...

Turning Points

I came home today, cold and miserable. It didn't make it to twenty today, and the sparse flakes of the morning and early afternoon must have supped early. They were considerably fatter as I pulled into the driveway. All I could think about was stripping out of my many layers of clothes, pulling on some sweats and propping my puppies up on a pillow. I spent a carefree hour hour cruising my e-mail and favorite message boards, and as my husband was starting dinner, reading the remainder of Nature by Emerson was the most pressing demand upon my mind and time.

Then I wandered downstairs for a cup of coffee, and I noticed that someone had brought the mail in. There were two letters for me: One from the vet with Cassidy's rabies tags enclosed, and another from Chatham University. I tossed the first aside, as Cassidy's outgrowing her puppy collar and I have yet to buy her a new one. It could wait. I picked up the letter from Chatham and looked at it. My name and address was printed on a clear label and affixed to the front. I held the letter up to the light and could see a reply envelope enclosed. I looked at my husband sitting at the dining room table with his crossword puzzle book open in front of him. He had put his pen down. He was grinning.

"No, it's too soon."

"Alright. If you say so."

"Can't be. Not yet." He raised his eyebrows at me. "I mean, I've been getting stuff from them since last fall." I already had my finger in the corner of the envelope and was starting to tear, not too quickly. Just in case.

"Congratulations!" The first word. That didn't sound like a sales pitch.

"I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to Chatham University's Master of Fine Arts in Writing program beginning in the Fall Semester of 2008."

I do believe I am now bona fide.

Till later...