BREATHING UNDER WATER

Smudging for the New Year. #365 #dailyepiphanie

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There's song by Metric that I really like. The lyrics go "Is this my life? Ahhhh. Or am I breathing underwater?" I'm not really sure of how this song is interpreted or what Metric's intentions for the song' meaning are, but I hear it and I think of the disillusion of growing older. Those lines in the song always bring to mind the daily grind of life, all those things we need to do on a daily basis like work and school and how that endless loop of things lulls us into this zoned robotic state of mind. That's the breathing underwater part. Everything slows down underwater sure, but lack of gravity makes everything more challenging. So challenging in fact that sometimes all you can do is focus on trying to breath. The idea of weightlessness seems pretty nice until you have to force your limbs to move. When Emily Haines belts out "is this my life?", I hear a hint of disappointment. It's a question of what am I doing here? Am I living this life? Or am I just existing in this life?

I've just been existing lately. It's easier for me to do during the colder months around here. I am a sunshine weather girl. Except now that I think about it and look back on those sunshine weather moments, I'm not so sure I really took advantage of them. I've stalled out and fallen victim to my own attachment to routine. I'm left sitting here asking myself "is this my life?" in the way a high school football coach yells at his team "do you wanna win?" Yes! This is my life Yes! I wanna win! Fight! Fight! Fight! The inner coach is yelling back at me "Then get your ass up and live it! Now get out there and win!" And I know I've done entries this past year where I've talked about being in the rut of routine. 2014, the year of the rut and I mean the not fun definition of the word rut. 

I've never been big on making New Year resolutions. Sure I want a lot of things for this year, but it's OK if some of that rolls right on over into the next year and the year after that and so on. I don't want to be healthy just for this year. Getting "in shape" is not something you do once. It's more like brushing your teeth. Which should be done every day. Weekends are an exception. So for me to make a resolution that I will fill in the blank for 2015 just limits me to this year. But I will make a resolution not just for 2015, but the years to come that I will do less passive living and more active living. That's going to take some practice. Passive living has gotten kind of comfortable. I've gotten used to the raspy Darth Vader sound of breathing underwater. But even I know that those tanks of oxygen don't last forever. I can come up for air or drown. 

CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Babar

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Last night, after work, I went to one of the neighborhood grocery stores to finally drop off my box of canned goods. They'd been riding around in the back of my car for over a week. I parked my car in an upper level parking lot because this particular grocery store has a crazy parking lot that is a mess all the time but particularly hazardously messy at rush hour. It just seemed easier to carry my heavy box of canned goods down a flight of metal stairs in a cold drizzle than to find a spot in the main lower level lot. I walked in the front door and was greeted by a young man arranging the shopping carts. He kindly took my donation box and carried it over to the Harvester bins for me. From the grocery store, I headed down the block and up the street to the The Dime Store. Yes. We have a Dime Store. I am not speaking from the past. 

I was looking for one last thing to go in Michael's stocking and I thought maybe the Dime Store would have it. It wasn't really too cold outside. It felt more like Fall than winter, but it did start to sprinkle as I got to the corner of 63rd and Main. I dashed across 63rd and when the light chained, I sprinted across Main reaching the row of store front awnings just as the rain picked up to a bit more than a sprinkle. I opened the door to The Dime Store and there stood Santa. I said "hello Santa!" and he replied "Merry Christmas!" I wished him well and continued on with my hunt for that last stocking gift. I won't say if they did or didn't have what I was looking for, but as I left the shop I smiled at Santa and smiled back with wink. That's when I knew. I had just encountered the real Santa, right down to the white beard and twinkly eye.

I smiled to myself as I made my way back across Main and over to 63rd and all the way back to my car. The magic of Christmas gets tarnished as we grow older. There's not too many surprises under the tree and the myth of Santa has been busted. That's OK because most of that magic is replaced with love and the understanding that being able to be with those we love is more important than pretty wrapped packages or a man in a red suit with a white beard. Michael, the Cabbage and I will spend the evening with his moms tonight. Then, the three of us will celebrate Christmas Eve together on Wednesday. And then Michael and I will travel to Oklahoma on Christmas Day for time with family and friends. So with that my friends, I think I'm going take some time off from this place this week. I've got some healing to do and as therapeutic as it may be at times to write it all out here, it's also a crutch. So I'm going to go wrap a wool blanket around my heart and come back to you guys next week with tales of laughter and love. 

Have a safe and wonderful holiday! Merry Christmas and Happy Hanuka and all the rest!

IT SEES YOU WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING

I'm dressed like a third grade ballet teacher.

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I know Thursday posts are usually devoted to love, but I didn't really have anything for today. It's snowing here and there was/is a soft white layer of powder coating everything when I got out of bed this morning. Which made me want to crawl back in bed and pull the covers up over my head. Except I couldn't because my new fancy bracelet kept buzzing on my wrist. Way back in November, I mentioned to Michael that maybe we should get each other some sort of FitBit like thing for each other for Christmas. It was during one of those particularly bad moments where I'd eaten a whole pizza by myself (this is not true, but it felt like I'd eaten a whole pizza and looked like it too). Both of us have plans to get healthy and lose some weigh in 2015. I thought maybe getting some sort of activity tracker would be good motivation. 

The more research we started putting into what tracker device we would want, the more enthusiastic Michael got. Meanwhile, I was starting to have some regrets. I tend to obsess over things (I know right?). When I found out plastic causes cancer, I threw out all of our plastic. I have  broken down in tears in a convenient store because I couldn't find a healthy organic snack. I used to wear a watch, but after one too many panic attacks about the possibility of being late, I took it off. I was starting to suspect that if I could see the number of steps I hadn't walked flashing on my wrist, I'd probably start stressing about those lost steps. Because I wouldn't see that number on my wrist as an achievement of steps taken that day, I'd see disappointment that the number wasn't larger. Here's what happens to my body when I stress about losing weight. It holds on to every pound and refuses to let go. 

That's why I picked the Jawbone Up24. It just looks like a bracelet. There's no read out for me to obsess over and it nudges me when I've been sitting too long at my desk. This is what I really needed. A nudge. It showed up in the mail yesterday and Michael had it out of the box and charging at my computer before I could blink. When it was done charging, I put it on and downloaded the phone app. I enabled all of the things. When I got to the part where I had to enter my weight, I moaned something about not knowing. Michael made me get up and step on the scale. Before I did, I made a guess and said "174." If we'd been at the fair I would have won a Cupie doll. I know this weight well. This is what I assumed was my "normal" weight for years. I had been that weight for so long, I just thought that was what I was supposed to weigh and maybe it is, but after Chris died, I lost ten pounds. I was pretty happy with being 164. Forget the camera lens. Men and relationships make me ten pounds heavier. 

The Jawbone tracks other things like food and water and sleep as well as how many steps you've walked. I put it on last night and set the sleep setting just before I went to bed. I thought it would be nice to start off my health stats with something I know I excel at. I went to bed thinking "I'll show you NudgyBones (that's my bracelet's name). I am so good at sleeping, I will blow your mind." And then I didn't sleep. My stomach gurgled from eating too much saag paneer at lunch. I was hot. I was cold. I felt a pea under the mattress. This side of the bed was weird. The middle of the bed was wrong. I had to get up and use the bathroom. I needed a drink of water. Eventually I did go to sleep, but when the alarm started chiming at 5:50 am, I squinted at it and whimpered. When I looked at the numbers that NudgyBones collected over the night, my shoulders slumped. NudgyBones says that I slept about three hours last night with four hours of restless sleep, meaning I was tossing and turning. I'm not as good at sleeping as I thought. 

Now I know why there's a "power nap" timer on NudgyBones. 

IS IT SPRING YET?

A couple of weeks ago, my Baker Creek seed catalog showed up in the mail box. As Michael reached to pull the mail out of the mailbox, he looked at me and said "You know, you really shouldn't get your porn in the mail." I squealed, hugged the catalog tight to my chest, shut myself in my room and plopped down on my bed to flip through it. The scene was very much like a tween flipping through her latest Bop magazine, laying on my belly, propped up on my elbows, feet kicking in the air. It didn't last long, because the Cabbage came in and started talking (had she ever stopped talking? I can't remember) and I had to set the catalog aside for some special quiet time. Since then I have made brief flip throughs, but I have plans to circle items and dog-ear some pages before we head to Oklahoma for Christmas. I'll take the catalog with me so Mom, Janell and Katrina can also circle the items they want and we'll just put in one giant seed order. Then we trade seeds. It's great fun. I'm considering Amaranth for next year. 

There was so much talk of buying a new house and moving that I didn't really give a flip about the garden. I took what remaining seeds I had and tossed them out into the not so well turned beds. I ate a lot of lettuce. We all did. Then there were collard greens. Lots and lots of collard greens. I have yet to figure out that balance of growing the right amounts of things that we actually eat. That's OK because we're adding two more boxes to the garden. You heard me! We're giving a flip about the garden next year. And then some. Michael says he's building us a chicken coop over his Spring break. My job has been to decide what kind of coop I want so he can start planning. There's a lot of planning going on right at this moment. Baker Creek has a Spring Planting Festival in May that we're planning on going to. I've been planning what breeds of chickens to get. Now I'm planning what seeds to buy. 

While Spring and Fall may be planting seasons, winter is the season for planning. It makes sense that the season of hibernation is also the season for dreaming. This is the time of year we all sit down and reflect for the things we want in the new year. I feel like my wants for 2015 are huge. I want a lot. Not a lot of things. Actually I want less things. I want a lot to happen, a lot of expectations for myself. When I start thinking about it now, it all starts to roll away from me like a snowball rolling down the hill, the further down the hill, the bigger and faster the snowball. One want leads into another want. I want 2015 to be full. At the end of next year I want to be exhausted. Not from grief. Not from being worn down from set back after set back. I want to be exhausted from spending a year doing and being. I want to be so worn out from pairing down all of my things. I want my arms to be heavy from too much kayaking. I want a full belly from just things we've grown in the garden and at the end of the day I want to nap with the chickens and maybe a new dog. I want to feel that weighted exhaustion you get after lifting heavy weights except mine will come from doing all of the things. By this time next year I don't want my couch to even recognize my ass. 

I will bide my time for now just planning. I'll take what is left of 2014 to be a list maker, to organize those wants. I don't even care about needs. My whole life I've been conscious of wants versus needs. I'm making 2015 the year of not necessarily want, but of getting what I want. And eating my cake too. 

I HARDLY EVER DREAM OF ZOMBIES

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.

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Early last night, not long after I'd gone to bed and drifted off to sleep, I had the worst stress dream I've ever had. OK. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I do have welt lines on the insides of my cheeks this morning from chewing my face from the inside out. Michael and I were at the airport trying to get our boarding passes. We went up to the desk clerk and he put in all our information, but when he went to print the passes, his printer started eating the paper and completely jammed up. The clerk said not to worry, that he'd send the information over to the next clerk who could print it out for us. At this moment, Michael realized that he didn't have a coat and that he really needed a coat. So he left me in line to deal with boarding passes to go find himself a coat. I'm standing at the counter for some time before I finally see the second clerk print our tickets and then stick them in a paper bag. I stepped forward to get our passes, but thats when the supervisor stepped up and shouted at me "What do you think you're doing?" "You have to go back and wait in line." I told him that I had been waiting in line and that my boarding passes were ready. I explained about the printer malfunction and passing the tickets to the next clerk, but he just kept yelling at me and he made me so angry. Finally I just reached up and grabbed my paper bag containing our passes. I looked at the ticket supervisor and said "I will be filing a very large complaint about you and I will make sure that you are fired from this job."

I turned and walked away from the counter, pulled our passes from the bag and noticed that our flight would be leaving in ten minutes and we still had to go through security. Also, I had no idea where Michael was. I started running down the moving sidewalk that would take us to our boarding gate. I was about half way down the corridor when I saw Michael running on the moving sidewalk that was going in the opposite direction. I yelled his name, but he didn't hear me. I started running backwards on my moving sidewalk (like going up the down escalator, but way harder). I reached the end and there stood Michael wearing the most ridiculous coat I had ever seen. He replied before I could say anything "it's the only thing they had that would fit me." The coat was huge, gray and furry. To top it all off there was a giant lion skin running down the back of it with the front paws draped over the shoulders and the head of the lion acting as the hood of the coat. Now, let me just say, before there's outrage over me dreaming about Michael wearing a lion skin, the lion was not a real lion. It was a knitted lion. I looked at him and said that we had to hurry, but then I couldn't stop laughing. Every time I looked at him in that ridiculous coat, I'd just crack up. We're running through the airport, laughing and trying to find gate B. For the LOVE OF GOD WHERE IS GATE B!!!!????? That's the last thing I remember before I woke up. 

I reached over for my clock to see that it wasn't even midnight. I rolled back over, trying to go back to sleep, but I couldn't get my brain to stop racing. I thought about how Mom and I had to run through Heathrow to catch our flight to Chicago. We were going through security when we heard them announce final boarding for our flight. I was that person hopping into her shoes while grabbing all of my things and sprinting to our gate. Mom followed behind, shoeless, yelling at me to "Go Cindy! Go! I'll catch up!" I came to a halt at our gate where people were lined up to board the flight and no one was on the plane yet. Final boarding in London does not mean what I think it should mean. That dream left me feeling like I'd just raced through Heathrow again and I couldn't stop thinking about it or Michael's coat. I finally got up and crawled into his bed. He wasn't asleep yet, but his lights were off and I startled him. He pulled me in close so that my ear was pressed to his chest. I have had dreams that have woken me with gasps of terror. I have woken from a dream nearly drowning in my own tears. I very nearly never run to his bed when this happens. Instead, it's the dream that stresses me out the most. It's the one where I end up running the wrong way on a moving sidewalk (that shit is HARD) that sends me to his bed. 

I just had to tell him about the dream. I had to tell him about the rude awful ticket supervisor. I had to tell him how frantic I was. I really needed to tell him about that coat. When I finished telling him all of those things, I laid there a few minutes more until both of our heart beats slowed down to normal and I was finally ready to give sleep another try. I ended up back in my bed where I slept without dreaming for the rest of the night. 

TRIMMING

I got all crafty and made us a new wreath.

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I've had an ear worm playing in my brain since November twenty eighth. It's that "Trim Up the Tree" song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I may just be in the mood to trim up a tree with bingle balls. The problem is we lack the space for my vintage sparkly aluminum Christmas tree and I'm nervous about getting out some of my Christmas ornaments. Michael and the Cabbage are not the type that go gently through the night. I am still at times amazed that someone so small can walk so loudly. I just have a vision of some of those ornaments smashed into millions of pieces from wayward limbs and shaking floors. There's a few that are irreplaceable and then I remember that time we went to retrieve our Christmas ornaments from our old house and found all of our ornaments smashed to smithereens. My beautiful Babar ornament was nothing but shiny dust. I've rebuilt my ornament collection since then, even finding the same Babar ornament, but I'm scared of a repeat disaster. Yet I still want to hang some pantookas. 

Last weekend I made us a new wreath for the door. A few days ago, I designed and ordered our Christmas cards. I have yet to hang up our stockings or figure out the tree situation. I'm moving in slow motion mostly because I am indecisive. We can't do live trees if you want me to live through Christmas without suffocating from swollen sinuses and scratching my skin off because of hives. Do I go with the super tiny tree we used last year? Or do I talk myself into a new medium sized tree that would tuck away into a corner a bit easier than the aluminum tree I have now? What about that pre-lit tree Chris and I used one time in the house on Mallard? Does this mean I need more Christmas lights and ribbon? Those Whos have it easy. All of their Christmas shit is strung together so that they just have to toss it up in the air and it lands Christmas side up. If only it were really that easy. 

After looking at trees at Target, I decided that I didn't want to spend fifty bucks on a new tree. This meant that I had to dig in the basement for that pre-lit tree that I knew that I had somewhere because I was raised by Southern women and Southern women always have back-up trees for their back-up trees. I opened the storage box to see that a container of silver glitter had managed to bust open and fill the corners of the box with glitter so when I pulled out the tree and let the limbs flop down, glitter spilled out onto the floor. We have glitter every where. Festive. Once I got the tree together, Michael and I agreed that it was too short and needed to sit on something. So we found a small table (a box) and covered it with a sheet. I plugged in the lights and Viola! Only the bottom half of the tree was lit. I don't know if any of you have a pre-lit Christmas tree or have seen how they kind of work. There's like twenty plugs (really four) and they all plug into each other is some daisy chain (dirty) fashion and all of the plugs are located near the center of the tree. You have to fight your way through plastic limbs to get to everything and I think it's very much like disarming a bomb. One bloody knuckle and a band-aid later I decided that this tree looked fine with just the two strings of LED lights I ended up stringing around the tree.

But the tree is up! We each did several test stomps through the dining room to the kitchen to make sure that the tree would actually stay up and well...it looks like we have a Christmas tree. The Cabbage helped me hang ornaments and she set my Abominable Snowman at the base of the tree. I hung up Babar near the top of the tree and plugged my Christmas trailer into a blue light (blue light special). The Christmas gods have smiled upon us and behold! We have a Christmas tree! Literally decorated with blood and sweat. It's enough to shut up all those Whos because they've stopped singing their holly jolly decorating tune.

Babar

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Even though I still haven't hung the stockings. 

VERDICT

It's still Fall.

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I was listening to an interview on NPR this morning with a girl who was among the peaceful protesters in Ferguson last night. She said that she was in college at the moment, studying law enforcement. Last night's verdict has made her rethink her law enforcement career. She said that she didn't see the point because there's no justice. I will not talk about what I think of the grand jury's verdict to not charge Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown. It doesn't matter what I think because this story, these events, are not about me. No one cares what I think about this verdict. It's just another verdict in a long list of un-just verdicts. I won't go into all of that. This message is for that girl in the interview.

You see, these events like the Michael Brown case is a regular event. Time and time this happens and all the children see are people of authority abusing their power. As an adult we know it's a little bit more complex that this. But if you look at this situation through the eyes of a kid in this neighborhood, it looks like cops kill black men and in particularly, unarmed black men. This is what they grow up believing. And because there's never any accountability, these kids grow up thinking that anyone in authority, most often the white guy, is the bad guy. What reason have we given them to think otherwise? How often do you think these kids have seen a police officer accost or gun down a white man? If you look at the news, it's the crazy white guy that opens fire on you while you're watching a movie at the theater or hanging out in the library, but it's never the one being gunned down by the police officer. Yes there is bias in the media and often the news is interchangeable with the word tabloid. But remember, we're talking about a child's mind, they things they see and what they learn from the things they are seeing. 

So here is what I want to say to that girl thinking of a career in law enforcement. DON'T QUIT! A fire only needs a spark to turn into a blaze. You are that spark. You can make a difference. You can create change. You can be the voice of justice. You can. I know you can. You can be that person of authority that those kids can look up to and no longer fear because they know that you are there to truly protect and serve. Please do not give up on your dream. Without you and dreamers like you, we will just be creating an endless loop of repeating history. Stop the loop. Show these kids that there is fairness and justice. And while your at it, recruit. Tell your friends how great it makes you feel to be in law enforcement and making a difference. Just, whatever you do, please, don't give up. 

MY HEART

It is not as early as it seems when I wake to the sound of rain hitting the window, but the house is still dark. I check the clock. Eight thirty. I sneak out of my bed and into his. I burrow myself into his right side with my head tucked into his shoulder. My hand rests on his heart. I press my palm in and feel the layers, the prickly curly hair on his chest, the warmth of skin below, and finally the thump thump of his heart. I think for a moment. "This heart belongs to me." The thought is not one of arrogance or ownership as much as it is one of responsibility. I lay there a moment feeling the weight of this and then a memory flashes through my frontal lobe. I am sitting on Misti's couch, a coffee mug nestled in my hands while tears stream down my face. And the sadness washes over me. I feel the tears dripping and sliding down onto his shoulder. I let it happen. I take the moment to remember things lost and be grateful for things gained. 

The moment passes quickly. There's a shift and I get up and blow my nose. I make us breakfast and we watch CBS Sunday Morning. We divide and concur the chore list. I take apart the stove and shove it over to clean under it. He comes in to remove the dead mouse I find under the stove. He vacuums. I mop. Between the two of us, we get the house clean and ready for Thanksgiving. I start thinking about when I'm going to bake some pies. He runs through the list of things on our menu, checking to be sure we have all the ingredients. Of course we're missing a couple of things. He goes to the store while I finish up laundry. We eat Planet Subs for lunch. We have sex. We make grown-up Mac-n-Cheese for dinner. We watch TV. That moment from the morning completely passes by as if it didn't even happen. In a way it didn't. Michael was sleeping. He didn't know I was crying into his shoulder. It was such a small insignificant moment, memory. But then I remember. "This heart belongs to me." 

I am hesitant at times. I can shove and push things away with might. No one knows this better than he does. Once, after a particularly bad day, Michael told me that it didn't matter how miserable I was , he wouldn't give up without a fight. He was joking about the miserable part. Or maybe he was joking. He's tenacious. I'll give him that. He wedges in here. Throws his foot in the door there. I've agreed to have Thanksgiving here. The last time Thanksgiving was hosted in this house, Chris and I were new  homeowners and then in a few short months Chris was dead. So yeah...I push and shove. I am hesitant. Timid.

There are two ways to get into a cold pool on a warm summer day. You can jump in and take in the coldness all at once or you can ease in one toe at a time. I'm in about chest deep here. My heart is used to this temperature now.

"This heart belongs to me."

MOTH

No fear

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I remember there was a time when Chris wanted to do a This American Life Story. I was always on board for this idea. The problem was that neither one of us could ever come up with a story that seemed to fit. We were always brainstorming things to research to build a story. Maybe that's why the Moth Radio Hour has become my new thing. It's just people telling stories. Sort of like TAL but less investigative and more personal. It's more Listen To Your Mother without the mother. That's not really true either. I'm sure there's some stories that include a mother or mention of being a mother. More inclusive may be a better way to describe it. I was listening to the show and thinking that I should do that some day. I should tell a story on the Moth. 

But then I wonder what story it would be that I would tell. I think of all my collections of memories. We came across so much stuff while cleaning out the old house. Mom had a hard time parting with a lot of things. They held memories and value to her. I've never really felt that way about things. The memory and value of the memory is here, in my head. My dad died from complications of Alzheimer's. Near the end he forgot to eat. He forgot how to chew. He forgot how to swallow food. He forgot how to live. This disease is possibly hereditary. I may very well be walking around with the gene carrying a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and disintegrate things remembered. I've always been aware of the temporariness of things. Those tangible objects that we collect and hold so dear can be broken and smashed. Pictures can be torn and burned. Some objects lose memories and meaning completely. There have been times I've looked at one of the many elephants in my collection and could honestly say that I had no idea where that elephant came from. Others, I can remember whole stories behind the gift of receiving them like the elephant Pez Chris gave me that Christmas he surprised me with the pearl earrings. 

I think about my yoga teacher Karen. They used to live in an apartment in NY near the towers. On 9/11 they had to flee that apartment with a diaper bag, a baby under one arm and a cat under the other. They had already packed up their because they were making a life change, moving to a new city for a new job. Their apartment was full of their packed up things. They were told that they would never see those things again and that their building was a total loss. When Karen tells this story she talks about how they mourned their things. She says "we let them go, but we mourned our things." I always thought this was such a good description of emotions over lost stuff. I remember when Chris and I were robbed and how at the end of the day we were just glad it was our things they'd taken. No one was hurt. Later on one of us would reach for something that was no longer there and let out and "aw man! they took the..." We mourned our lost things once we realized it was missing. 

Karen follows up the story by saying that they did actually get all of the their things back. Everything had been boxed up for movers and was so well packed that everything survived. They mourned their lost things, bought new things to replace the old things, and then got their old things back. They shoved all of the boxes up into the attic to be sorted through at their leisure. She said when they finally got around to opening the boxes, every thing inside had a smell, like it had been in a fire, but worse. They ended up getting rid of it all any way. But we tend to hold on to things because they contain the stories. They are a tangible memory of that time you visited the Grand Canyon or ate a 72 oz steak. Except those tangible things get old, break down, take on funky smells, turn into garbage. The thing is not important, but pulling the memory free from the thing is. 

The paradox comes in where to store that memory. All things are fleeting. Maybe it's enough to hold onto the memory long enough to tell the story of it. Tell it just once. Remember that time we... Write it down someplace. Some people scoff at bloggers and their navel gazing. We all navel gaze. Bloggers make their's public. So what. I think of it as cleaning out. Memories are like things. They accumulate. Clutter tends to make me feel like I do in large crowds. I have no qualms in tossing it all out. Sometimes, my brain feels the same way. It gets so cluttered with these memories and they just swirl and swirl around in my head. It gets so overwhelming with them all swishing around there that the only relief is to pull them free and put them someplace.

The Moth Radio Hour is a someplace. Something to think about. 

SABATICAL

Exit plan

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There's really something to be said for powering down electronic devices on weekends. Over the weekend, I used my to phone occasionally to take a picture and upload to Instagram so that I could post it to my Tumbler (I just rolled my eyes at that sentence), but I ignored email and facebook and twitter. Some of that was because I needed the break and some of that was enforced by the fact that I really didn't have signal where we were. I did not find this as annoying as some of the younger wine tourists. We made it to one of the wineries just as a party bus was dropping off two groups of bachelor and bachelorette parties. We stood in line for about ten minutes to get to the tasting room. I heard "I can't get a signal!" in whiney Valley Girl from at least seven different voices. We opted out of that line before making it to the tasting room. The hills of rural MO are not conducive to cell signal. 

Actually I think this was the moment when I felt really at peace with ignoring the internet. There was one time I answered a text from Katrina. It just felt really important to answer "no" to Katrina's request to purchasing a pooping doll for the Cabbage. When I showed the picture of the doll to Michael, he also replied with a "no". Actually, I believe he said "fuck no". Katrina is responsible for the Dog Walker Barbie with the dog that poops. There were little plastic poop pellets scattered around the living room. I think the vacuum has them now. This doll in particular "magically poops charms." There's nothing magical about pooping unless you haven't done it two weeks. This entry has digressed.

Peace! That's what I was talking about. Every time I heard someone say "I can't get a signal" it was said in a voice of panic. I didn't once feel this way over the weekend. I didn't panic when a photo failed to post. I didn't get frustrated whenever I looked at my phone and saw only one dot of signal. In fact, I really didn't care. It was almost a relief to not check email or check in on facebook. Freeing. I used my phone to take pictures and even then I didn't use it all that much. Those two days of down time has made it really difficult to get back into the world of the interwebs.

I've been doing a 365 Days of Happiness project for the last two years. Each day I find something that makes me happy, I take a picture and post it to my Tumblr. For a few weeks now, I've felt like this project has stalled. It's not that I'm not happy or there aren't things out there making me happy. I'm happy. I can say that I haven't felt this emotionally well since before Dad passed away. I just have days where the happy can't be photographed or I don't feel like making the effort. Instead, out of desperation to post anything to my 365 day project, I just choose whatever picture is in my Instagram feed. Sometimes I even roam around the house just taking a picture of whatever even if doesn't make all that particularly happy. Isn't silly when we get stuck in our own ruts of good intentions?

This weekend taught me that it's OK to let this project go for a bit. Give it a rest. Just until the new year. I'm thinking of changing it up some, more of a happiness/gratitude project and one that may not happen every single day. I have plans for the new year. It includes loads of happy without the pressure of proving it on a daily basis. 

I SHOULD WRITE SOMETHING

Spooky doodle

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I don't want to neglect this space during this whole NaNoWriMo thing, but I'm having a hard time partitioning my brain. We had a pretty nice weekend. We took the Cabbage trick-or-treating, we ran errands on Saturday, and I spent some time at Terry's decorating sugar skulls with Heather and the boys. Michael let the Cabbage stay up as long as she wanted to Saturday night in celebration of the time change. I came home from Terry's and the Cabbage was in bed, but still talking. That was around 11:30. I did my final relaxation voodoo on her and there was no more talking. 

Speaking of final relaxation voodoo, ask me how many times I've been on my yoga mat in the last week. Zero times. My mat is under my desk at work, in it's carrying bag and has not seen the light of day in over a week. I feel my ass molding to this chair as I type, growing exponentially with my inactivity. Even treadmill time was sketchy last week. It's recommended that you take at least 10,000 steps a day. I think I'm averaging something like 4,000 steps a day and even that feels like I'm exaggerating in my favor. Here's the biggest confession of all. I ate meat.

A couple of weeks ago, Michael bought some beef jerky from a fancy butcher shop that looked very much like Mike's beef jerky. All Oklahoma people will know this beef jerky. It's cured with crac. When he got it, I said something about Mike's beef jerky being something I would eat now just to taste it because it was so good and so Michael tore off a tiny piece of jerky and handed it to me. I ate it. It was delicious. I'm not going to lie. It was just that tiny little piece for taste. But then yesterday, my hot-n-sour soup at the Chinese place had bits of pork in it. I didn't notice until I had finished half the bowl. I shrugged and ate the rest. My stomach started hurting as we pulled into the IKEA parking garage. I may not have cared too much about the pork in my soup, but my stomach sure did.  

In fact my stomach is noticing EVERYTHING now. We're unhappy with each other and I need to try a little harder to mend things between us. Like no more meat. If I'm going to commit to writing every day, I need to commit to 10,000 or more steps every day. Five thousand words equals an hour on the yoga mat. If I make an effort now, at the beginning of the holiday season that should be called Gluttony, maybe making a fresh start in the new year won't be so difficult. I've set my timer to go off every twenty minutes, signalling me to get up and move around. If I could fix a cattle prod to timer, I'd probably do that. Anything to get my growing gut and butt up and moving.

Timer just went off....gotta walk.  

TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE

I'm sitting here looking at the calendar and it kind of makes me want to throw up. This is the last week of October. The very last week of October. I didn't even carve those pumpkins we put on the porch for Fall decorations. Wait...since I never carved scary faces on them, that means I can leave them out there as Thanksgiving decorations right? Harvest theme? I like to think Martha Stewart would be applauding my decorating ingenuity right now. She may even overlook that one small pot of mums where all the flowers are missing their petals because something ate them. Needless to say that I've let the bathroom remodel consume my month of October. So much so that I didn't realize that November was right around the corner. November should come with a concierge or social secretary because as I look at the calendar, I start to hyperventilate. 

November is also National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I knew it was coming up and the idea of it has been tickling the back of my brain, but I haven't said any thing about it. A couple of days ago, Michael said "hey, are you going to do your novel writing thing next month?" and I kind of just stood there gaping at him. First of all, I repeat, I have not said a word about NaNoWriMo since this time last year. Secondly, I didn't even know he was paying attention. Actually, I'm kind of impressed. I honestly thought the only thing on his radar right now was baseball. After I got past the shock of the question, I managed to mumble out something like "I don't know." Because, I really don't know.

I'm kind of in a mood of letting everything fall to shit and just starting over in the New Year. I feel fat and lumpy. Things around the house seem kind of dirty. The garden is an over grown mess. I mowed over tomatoes last week. I know I shouldn't eat the cookies that someone brought into work. I know that there's going to be a bucket of candy sitting in this house Friday night and that I shouldn't sit on the couch and shove miniature candy bars into my face all evening. But I really feel like throwing my hands in the air saying "next year, I'm going to lose 10 lbs! But for now I'm going to be a lazy slob!" That mindset is sort of applying itself to every aspect of my life. Next year, I'm going to work harder on being a better photographer. Next year, I'm going to do better on having activities planned for Cabbage weekends. Next year, I will write more. Next year I will be a better version of myself or the self I am right now.

So...getting myself involved in NaNoWriMo this year doesn't really fall in line with my whole fat lazy slob plan. In fact it's just the opposite of that. It will require me to make time between chores and The Walking Dead for writing and finishing up that stupid memoir I started forever and a day ago. Michael even said that I could just pick up where I left off and I can think of a million excuses for why I can't just pick up where I left off. I am more prepared to get out of doing NaNoWriMo than I am prepared to participate. I am all set and ready to not do this. Except Michael followed up his with questions with "I really think you should." For some strange reason he believes in my writing. He thinks I can write something longer than a blog entry. Part of me wants to laugh at this belief and part of me wants to actually believe he's right.

I guess that means I'm doing this. Maybe I'm doing this because someone else believes in me.  Maybe I'm doing this to pull me out of a slump. Maybe I'm doing this as a last ditch effort to salvage the year. Sending out 2014 with an accomplishment. Something other than gaining ten pounds. 

AT WAR WITH MY OVARIES

Oh good lord this face

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Remember when I said that everyone was pregnant? Well, we've reached the point were those babies are actually being born. Charlotte came months ago and she's this lovely drooly round squishy goodness of a baby. She makes the most wonderful faces and she's going to be so mad at us when she turns into a teenager for some of those faces we captured on (digital) film. Too bad Charlotte. You've been born into a framily of jokers and hilarity and dang if you don't make the perfect faces for meming. You can thank us all now for helping you develop the greatest sense of humor. After Charlotte, one of my coworkers had her baby. We had a month to ooh and awe over the picture she emailed to everyone before it was finally Jeff and his wife's turn. I was standing in line at IKEA Saturday when Jeff sent me a text with a picture of their newest member of the family, a perfect little girl born at 11:03 that morning. I promptly burst into tears.

And then my ovaries and my brain had the big baby debate. My ovaries would say that women my age have babies all the time. It's true. The CDC has a report on pregnancy rates for 2009 showing a decrease in pregnancies for woman under thirty while pregnancies increased significantly for women thirty and over. All the report is saying is that women are waiting until later in life to have kids. This isn't news. Women and their partners are just making a decision to wait a little bit on the whole kid thing until the woman is established comfortably in her career and they are financially stable enough to support another human being. Except my brain knows that even though pregnancies are up for this age group, fertility is down. The ideal age for pregnancy is really in the late teens, early twenties. Your eggs have the least possible genetic mutations and chromosome realign correctly during cell division. Your body can carry and deliver a baby easier at this age too. Your joints are more elastic for expanding and you have a faster recovery time. Except most women I know usually don't hear their biological clock ticking until they're at least thirty. Our bodies are a Catch 22. 

My ovaries can at times violently tell my brain that yes we can totally do this at our age. "At our age". (Like I'm really all that old. I am not old in the grand scheme of life.) Those ovaries will say "Hey! you eat your leafy greens and do yoga. Your body can totally do this without blinking an eye." Thank God my brain is so much smarter than this because my brain knows that my body has to make it through more than the act of carrying a baby inside me and delivering that baby. This body then has to care for that baby. There's five years or more of picking up, carting around, opening doors with feet, being used as a personal jungle gym, being used as a personal trampoline, chasing after (which requires running) and you get the idea. Maybe the load gets a little lighter after the five years, but then comes the carpool lanes and the running to soccer games and the rushing to scouts and the trotting to dance classes. Things might slow down once the kid is driving, but that only brings along the damage of stress caused by worrying about that kid driving and being where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there.

So yeah, my ovaries may kick me heard enough to make me cry at times, but my brain is wise enough to brush those tears away and move forward in that check out line. 

I'M AN IKEA NINJA

Night stands!

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OK...maybe that's an exaggeration. I know a lot of you think I'm all over the moon about IKEA especially how we used to make special trips to the one in Dallas all the time. Chris and I did spend a wedding anniversary there once. Having an IKEA store four hours away is so much different than having one twenty minutes from the house. Four hours away IKEA is like a vacation or a get-away. It is a tourist destination. IKEA twenty minutes from the house loses that tourist novelty real fast. Except it's still a tourist destination. If you go into IKEA with a clear mission to get one or two specific items, you must contend with the IKEA tourist and IKEA does their best to make sure that you have to contend with the IKEA tourist. Here's how they do that.

It's really a very brilliant sales tactic. There is a specific path and layout to an IKEA store. Ideally, the people at IKEA would have you start on the top level. You follow the path through various displays starting with couches, chairs and what you can do with 550 square feet of space. The path twists it's way into wall units and media display, followed by kitchens and appliances. Then you have home office things like desks and chairs. Next comes all things bedroom before landing in all things for a kid's room. By the time you've completed the tour of the top floor, you'll probably be a little hungry. No problem. IKEA has placed a cafeteria right there as you exit the kid's section. Swedish meatballs for everyone! 

From here, you travel downstairs to the market place section of the store. This is were you can actually pick up and buy the things you saw on display upstairs. The store continues with their path starting with all things kitchen (dishes, utensils, pots and pans), travelling into textiles and bedding, turning a corner into bathroom stuff and then into all things storage and organizing. Then you follow the path into lighting, on into home decor (picture frames, candles) and house plants before the path spits you out into the warehouse section. The warehouse section is where you pick up the larger things that you have to assemble (there's an Alan wrench in every box! We now have five of them!). Then there's check out and by now you're probably feeling a bit peckish. That's OK too because after checkout is a snack bar and a Swedish grocery area. The snack bar is where you can buy the cinnamon rolls which you can smell throughout the store. It's how they keep everyone so calm. Ah, the soothing smell of fresh baked cinnamon rolls.

Now, I'm not a big rule breaking type of girl, but when it comes to IKEA I will look at their path designed to herd and say "no thank you." Don't get me wrong. The path is great for the tourist. It blows monkey balls for someone on a direct mission. I mean I get what IKEA is doing. They want me to go through kitchen utensils to get to storage boxes. While walking through the kitchen utensils, I may suddenly decide that I desperately need yet another UPPHETTA and if I had gone straight to the other thing on my list I would have missed getting that. Again, I say "no thank you, IKEA." Here's what you need to know about staying on course in IKEA. First of all, never trust the online inventory list. It is a liar. There have been three trips made to IKEA in the past three weeks with the sole intention of picking up two FORHOJA wall cabinets. Every time inventory has shown that yes, indeed there are at least seven FORHOJA wall cabinets in stock and yet every time we've trekked down isle thirteen to bin fifteen, we've been left staring at an empty shelf and cursing. Now since this has happened to us one too many times, we've learned to skip the market place path and go straight to the warehouse. This is exactly what we did on Saturday and low and behold they DID have the FORHOJA wall cabinet (Michael was prepared to chew someone's ass. We are all very grateful that this didn't have to happen). Always go straight to the exact item you are going into the store for first. If they don't have it, turn around and storm out. Just do it. You'll stew over the missing item all through the store, end up buying the three pack of TROJKA and stabbing someone with them.

That means, you may be going through the store backwards. This is totally possible if you follow a few courtesies. This plan works well if you are getting something reasonable like the wall cabinets. It will not work if you are buying something that requires that flat bed cart to get out of the store. I repeat. Don't do this if you're buy a bed. You will wreck and kill someone. The key is to do this with things you can carry. If, once inside the marketplace you realize you need a cart, do not panic. Look up and around you. There is always a hidden section marked by a giant shopping cart. There are rows of shopping carts tucked behind that wall. Speaking of hidden sections of shopping carts. The market place section has several hidden cut through options. They have them upstairs too, but you will appreciate them more in the market place. These short cuts allow you to cut through kitchen supplies straight over to textiles. There's one at lighting too that goes to the storage stuff. The key is to be alert and look along the outside walls. If you're going backwards, avoid the main herding path. You will basically be going the wrong way in a one way if you try taking that path. You will make everyone angry, including yourself if you try taking the path backwards. Again stick to the outside walls (furthest from the center of the path). This will also give you easy access to all cut throughs. Always yield to oncoming traffic, be polite and say "excuse me" and you will have very little trouble sticking to your mission of getting only the things on your list.

Saturday was by far the easiest IKEA trip we've ever made. They were taking the "we are full" sign down at  Smaland right as we walked up with the Cabbage (who was taking her shoes off as we approached the door, because she was READY!). We dropped the Cabbage off for an hour of supervised play and headed straight over to the warehouse. We picked up all of the items on the list and even had time to run through the grocery section before one of us had to go retrieve the Cabbage from Smaland. All items were in stock. No one got stabbed with scissors and we all high-fived as we loaded the car. 

I am now thinking of hiring myself out as an IKEA personal shopper. Yes, I am totally patting myself on the back right this very minute.

I'M PROBABLY GOING TO BREAK SOMETHING

Detour

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Fall has exploded here. Sure a lot of the trees are still sporting green leaves, but there's enough red and golds splattered in now to make you think of Jackson Pollock. Every time we're in the car, I spend the drive pointing out trees. This weekend as I pointed at the 100th tree with "OHMYGOSH! Look at that tree!", Michael said "oh now I remember Fall". I guess he was thinking that last year was a fluke. Meanwhile, I'm a bit flabbergasted that he's not as excited about all the lovely tree colors as I am. I just don't know how anyone can remain indifferent . The other day we passed a tree that hurt my eyes, it was so unbelievably beautiful. The shade of red increased in intensity as your eyes followed up to the top of the tree. It was like that tree was on fire. And I want to stop and freeze it all for just a moment.

I know Oklahoma has some nice Fall foliage. The whole Northeastern corner of the state is full of big trees that change colors in the Fall, but I've lived in the plains ever since graduating high school and there's just not the abundance of trees on the prairie. Drought is a common thing in Oklahoma. The lack of rain tends to wreck havoc on the trees and instead of the leaves changing to a brilliant red, they most likely turn a dull brown. Fall is also shorter, lasting a few weeks versus a few months. I will be pointing and exclaiming over tree colors late into November here. 

Michael said he guessed he'd been taking all the changing leaves for granted. This is what Fall has looked like every year, his entire life. Part of me wonders if I have also taken Fall for granted. Were the Fall colors in Oklahoma really as dull and lack luster as I remember them to be? It's true that I never noticed the color changes as fiercely as I do now or when we first moved here, but part of me suspects there other reasons for this. Years back during the serious 365 Day projects, I was constantly looking. I began to see things differently. I learned to look at the ordinary at a different angle and see something not so ordinary any more. The move to Kansas City came right at the peak of all of this. Everything we came across was new and amazing. Bright and shiny. This move was all about a fresh start and so maybe the seasons even looked knew. I don't know. Really, I'm more concerned about falling back into the old habit of not really seeing anything spectacular about a tree with red or gold leaves. 

So I am determined every Fall season to point out the red leaves on that tree and the yellow gold leaves on this tree. I will continue to exclaim and gush at the beauty. And yes there will even be times where I will jab my finger into the window to point out the loveliest. Fall is my reminder to keep my eyes open and to continue to see things differently. Yoga teacher will say that if you practice yoga enough, eventually you will see your practice come off the mat and creep into your every day life. You'll find yourself standing in Tadasana while waiting in line at the bank or making the lion's face while sitting in traffic. The same can be said for being behind a camera. Eventually the practice of seeing things through the lens transitions over to seeing things in life. 

THE GAME OF RISK

Mornings are mine

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Yesterday morning, I checked my weather app on my phone. There was a 20% chance of rain dropping to 0% after eight AM. I didn't look outside or stick my head out the door. I took it on blind faith that the weather report on my phone was accurate. I rolled the scooter out of the garage and looked up at an ominous sky. There was a moment of hesitation as I wrapped my scarf around my neck and zipped up my jacket. The weather app may have said 20%, but the sky was saying "It's probably going to rain on you". I took a deep breath, looked warily at the clouds and decided to risk it. 

Fearless is a word that has been used plenty of times to describe me. Sure, I can play the part of fearless or pretend well enough to make it look legit. But risky? Am I a risk taker? Does being fearless make you a risk taker? I've taken risks. One time Stephanie and I skipped school. There was absolutely no reason I had to actually skip. I was a straight A student who never ever got in trouble. If there was a day I didn't feel like going to school, Mom usually said "OK". For some reason that day Steph and I said screw it and decided to not go back after lunch (we still had off campus lunch). Of course we got caught. It was the one time we did something against the rules. We both served six days of detention which all the teachers thought was hilarious because neither one of us had ever EVER been on a detention list. I can't really tell you why we did it or why I didn't just call mom and have her get me out of it. We didn't do anything outrageous. We watched a movie on cable TV. A regular movie. Not porn. But we skipped school and took the risk of getting caught and then we handled the consequences of getting caught. No big deal. 

Every time I went on a first date, I was taking a risk. Then there was that one time I went on that one date which was probably not the smartest date to go on. Michael has heard the story of this date. He still, out of no where some times, will look at me say "what the Hell where you thinking?!?!". I just shrug. What he doesn't realize is that I was taking a risk with any of the dates I went on. I took a risk by going on a date with him. I continued to take risks where our relationship is concerned. I gave him a second try. I moved him into my house. All of that was risky. To take a risk is to accept the consequences of failure. We are not afraid of risk. We are afraid of failure. Sir Ken Robinson tells this story in his Ted talk, How Schools Kill Creativity. It's my favorite story about a little girl drawing a picture of God. When the teacher tells her that no one knows what God looks like, the little girl replies "they will in a minute". Brilliant. Ken (if I can call him Ken or maybe Sir) goes on to talk about how children take risks all the time because they don't know that they can fail. At some point we are taught that we can fail and we can fail miserably . 

So we stop taking risks in life, in creativity, in love. We stop taking risks for happiness, for joy. Because what if? What if no one likes my art? What if things don't work out with this person? What if no one wants to read my words? What if the sky opens up and pours buckets on me while I'm riding my scooter to work? I can remember a time I allowed all of those what ifs to root me to the ground and not in a grounded centered yoga way, but in a trapped paralyzed kind of way. Oh the things I missed out on, even the failures, because sometimes even totally amazing things come from failing.

So, I hopped on my scooter and zipped to work. Not a drop of rain fell on me and by the end of the day, the skies had cleared. I rode home that evening under a crystal clear blue sky. Completely worth the risk.  

I AM AN AESOP FABLE

Red leaves. #lookforthelight

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As the story goes, Siddhartha left his palace at age 29 and wandered into the woods seeking enlightenment.  OK, it was maybe more complicated than simply wandering into the woods. He noticed people suffering which is something he had always been sheltered from. But basically Siddhartha sat in the forest not eating anything but a nut or a leaf a day until he fell into a river and nearly drowned. After this Siddhartha sought out a different path to enlightenment which would lead him to a path of moderation from the extremes of self indulgences and self mortification. After many hours of meditation, he would become enlightened and known to us all as the Buddha. The take away thing here is the part about wandering into the woods to seek out enlightenment.

The whole wandering in the wilderness in search of enlightenment has been a thing since homo sapiens have been huddling together in caves. Even cavemen needed some alone time and internal contemplation. The Native Americans called it vision questing. They'd purify themselves in a sweat lodge before heading out into a remote area in the woods where they'd fast and forgo sleep for a few days. They'd return to the village for another round in the sweat lodge and to have their visions interpreted by the Medicine Person. Sometimes drugs were involved. Sometimes it was just enough to be starving. Sometimes the weather was super hot like in the desert or it was freezing. I always imagine that they had visions of food along with the whole enlightened stuff. Like a hot dog telling you some important sage advice. But I have issues about being hungry. One day Buddha may very well speak to me through a cube of fried tofu. Or a chicken leg.

These are things that I think about when I am driving alone in the car during long distance car rides. There are sections of highway that can induce a serious meditative state such as the Flint Hills section of I-35. The highway looks so tiny as it is snakes its way through miles and miles of rolling prairie hills. As the eyes look out into the vast nothing the brain actually falls into that vast nothing and it is there where you have your moment of a vision or enlightenment. It may just be a simple word that comes to you or a note. A tone heard only in one ear (except when this happens to me, I tend to stick my finger in my ear and wiggle it around until the sound stops). This trip across the hills it dawned on me that I wasn't exactly broken. Or at least the term "broken" doesn't really describe things. It's more like I have a festering splinter. 

When my brain conjured up the whole festering splinter thing it was like an "ah-ha!" moment that sounded more like Nelson pointing and laughing than an actual choir singing but it did give me some hope. Broken is broken and you can't really fix broke. Even if you glue it back together, you can still see the cracks. But a festering splinter?!? Well, as long as Gangrene hasn't set in, you can totally fix that. First you have to remove the splinter. I have never been good at getting splinters out. I just have flashbacks from all the time a parent came at me with a needle and tweezers. Removing a splinter is never as easy as that dang mouse who pulls the one from the lion's paw makes it look. This should be of no surprise. Feelings, words, slivers of wood are all things on the list of things that I burrow away under my skin and let fester. I am a festerer. 

Yesterday I bought a new notebook to put those thoughts, words and feelings into. And a new pen. A purple one. The pen is the needle and the notebook is (are?) the tweezers. Get it? 

I hope I do. 

THE GENETICS OF HANDWRITING

As I filled a garbage bag of leftover bits and pieces in the attic, I came across a bin of papers. From the top it looked like trash. Mice had eaten away at things and most of the papers were so old they crumbled when touched. But I stopped and took a moment to go through the box. I pulled out a crumbling photo album, Janell's very first baby picture and few other things. I realized then that it was time to take a break and go through this container with a little more care. I carried it downstairs so we could all go through it at the dinning room table. 

Mixed in with the garbage and the pictures, I pulled out a few letters. One of the letters was the very last letter that Memaw sent to Mom. It arrived after Memaw had passed away. My mother has never read the letter. She said it was just something she couldn't ever bring herself to do, so I took it. It was opened and had been read by someone at some time. The first thing I noticed about the letter was the handwriting. It's the same handwriting as Mom's. If I didn't know better, if all I had was the letter and not the envelope it came in with Effie McCool in the top left corner, I would think this was a letter from Mom. Except it's not. 

It's a letter from a woman I never knew telling a simple tale of daily life and the current happenings of Louisville MS in November of 1977. They'd all had colds, but were better now. A new Wal-Mart store and a new Piggly Wiggly had just opened. Memaw and Pepaw had spent a day cleaning up the Tucker family grave sites at Mars Hill Church. So and so had a new baby boy and some couple had separated. Memaw wanted to know if we were planning on visiting at Thanksgiving, but then wrote something about having already mostly finished this letter after talking on the phone with Mom about that very thing. At the end she tells my Mom "be good and hugs to all. We love you, Mother". I love that she's still telling my thirty something year old mom to "be good". 

I never knew Memaw. I was one (going on two) when this letter was written and she passed away. I've heard all of the stories from cousins and my brother and even Mom about how wonderful she was. They speak of her as if she were Mother Teresa. She was the grandma that you baked cookies with. She probably was the type that could have brushed my hair without me throwing a fit. I'm sure I would have sat for hours in her lap. Instead I got her wedding rings, her china and now her letter. I inherited her ability to make the perfect pie crust. And, if I take my time and don't rush the words, I notice that I have also inherited her handwriting. 

SOMETIMES THERE IS NOTHING

The last time this floor was clear, I was little and we skated around in our socks like ice skaters.

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I traveled to Oklahoma over the weekend so I could help with the clean up, throw out, and move on from the old house. Mom is in her new house and will close on the old one sometime next week maybe. My siblings and sibling-in-laws have done most of the heavy lifting, but over forty years of layers of stuff is hard to deal with. I felt a little guilty that they'd had to carry most of the load. Being practically two states away makes things difficult. So I went this weekend, set up an air mattress in the downstairs bedroom because the house is practically empty. Randy and Katrina ended up on a mattress in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was like a slumber party or squatting. 

When I got there Friday night, Randy and Katrina where still at the Oologah football game. They had left their two chihuahuas in pet carriers in the den. When I unlocked the door to the house, all I could hear were these cages rattling and feral dog sounds. It was slightly disturbing until I realized it was just Buttercup and Wendy. For a while that evening, I was alone in the old house, just me and the two dogs. It was odd being in the house with the rooms mostly empty, nothing left but the ghosts of memories. You could hear them echoing from room to room. We all have mixed feelings over this house. Of the three of us, I was the one that lived in it the longest. It holds all of the memories for me. 

I can remember an afternoon where Mom had polished the hardwood floors in the living room. All the furniture was pushed out of the way and rug rolled up. Janell and I skated around the living room in wool socks. We did our best impressions of Dorothy Hamill, twirling around and around. We were speed skaters, racing back and forth. We crashed a lot. We laughed a lot. We begged Mom not to put the furniture and rug back. "Just one more day!" we cried. But eventually everything would go back where it belonged. This room also held the piano and there was practicing to be done. No more time for skating. We traded our socks for roller skates and cleaned out the garage to be used as our roller rink. This would last until the weather would change and Mom would insist on putting her car in the garage. Then we'd trade the roller skates for sleeping bags to use as sleds and race down the stairs landing in crumpled giggling heaps at the bottom of the stairs. 

As a kid, I remember only one time where Christmas was not at that house. We went to Mississippi that year and I had a panic attack about Santa finding me and how he was going to get into my Grandmother's mobile home without a chimney. Other then that time, Christmas would be an endless loop of sneaking down the stairs at two o'clock in the morning to see what Santa had left for us and the hours of waiting for everyone to get out of bed or for Randy and Katrina and J to show up. Then there was the year that Santa left Odie and I had to sneak him back up the stairs with me so he'd stop whimpering. He was my life dog, the sweetest, most loyal puppy, the beagle version of My Dog Skip. There's a stain on the dinning room floor from where he left a very messy and stinky present. This and chewing up the rungs of the dinning room table would get him banished from the house. He'd spend the rest of his life on a runner in the backyard or on a leash with me. A shame really because he was so good at just laying in your lap. He had the softest ears. 

I painted my bedroom pink and decorated the walls with Beatles posters I bought from Hobby Lobby. Mom still had those posters rolled up in a cardboard tube. I gave them to Thomas (J's youngest). He's all into the Beatles these days, listening to Sargent Pepper's Lonely Heart Band while minding the bonfire we started in the old swimming pool. J's boys are no longer boys, but young men. Just like this house is no longer my home. It is a place I lived once a very long time ago. It's the house were I lived through the years of never wanting to leave and the years of only wanting to leave. It witnessed every broken arm, that Fall break when I had my tonsils taken out, and that time I swallowed a marble. I stood at the front door so Mom could take my picture when I was all dressed up for prom. Stephanie and I built so many floor pallets on the brick floor in the den, staying up watching movies rented from the movie rental place in town. We'd race to that house for lunch before they closed the campus our Senior year, making salami, cheese and mustard sandwiches. It feels like a lifetime ago.

A lifetime ago this house was full. A house that was once full is now empty. 

FEAR BUT NOT LOATHING

Memorials

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Earlier this week one of the local news stations posed this question to viewers: "Do you feel safe since 9/11?". They asked you to tweet or text your replies. I heard their question as I drove to work and thought that there's no way a tweet could hold my answer. Partially, I feel like it's a very silly question. I remember clearly watching the events of 9/11 while sitting in what was then Galileo's, horrified at what I was seeing, but I never felt unsafe. I live in the Midwest. I was in Chickasha when Timothy McVay bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I'm more afraid of terrorist attacks from disgruntled American citizens than I am from outside this country. If I where to realistically look at the dangers surrounding me, I am most likely to be hit by a car or disease. So, I suppose my answer to the question would be that the events of 9/11 didn't have any affects on how I feel about my safety.

But when people say that 9/11 changed everything, they are correct. It made many of us fearful of people who have slightly darker skin tones and middle eastern accents. It made many of us a bit more racist. It made us feel a little vulnerable, because it shattered the idea that we were invincible. We realized that things like car bombings that happen every day in some other countries, were things that could happen here. We thought we were above that. 9/11 was an attack on our ego, but it was also a test for humanity. We saw great acts of kindness, support and love go out to the victims and family of victims. We took care of each other. Young people were inspired to stand up and enlist to protect this country. This is where the terrorists would hit the rest of us. They would take away our sons and daughters, our brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews. The fear should not be for our safety, but for those of our loved ones. 

I cannot say that J would still be alive today if it were not for 9/11. He was a natural hero and already heading into a law enforcement type of career. If not this, than that. Maybe we would have had him with us longer. I don't know. I do know that 9/11 was a horrific and tragic moment in American history and it will be decades before it becomes a date that we just give a slight head nod too. It was the front moving in at the horizon that brought the sad cloud that settled over my family. We will be feeling the aftershock of the fall of those two buildings for a very long time. So instead of focusing on my personal safety or lack there of or whatever, I'd rather spend today remembering loved ones lost, sending out loving kindness to family victims, and having a moment of gratitude for the good things we have in our lives.