Where it's at. And embarassing facts about me.

Sometimes my daughter gets crazy mad at me.  And it's usually because she's talking to me and my mind is somewhere else.  

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the feeling that I'm missing out on something.  That there's something going on that I've not been invited to and that by missing out on all the fun, people are forgetting I exist.

That's a real truth about me. And it's weird and it's sort of embarassing.  Because, as my therapist likes to remind me, everything isn't all about me.

When two people get together and don't invite me, it actually has NOTHING. TO DO. With me.

Can you believe that? There are times when people aren't thinking about me at all!  Does that mean I'm forgotten? That I'm not important? That I don't exist?

No!

So, when I'm so caught up in worrying about that, the truth is, I'm not present in my own life, with the people who happen to be right in front of me. Like my daughter. Trying to tell me a story and I am just floating away, wondering what might be happening somewhere else that I am missing out on.

Good gravy.

Sometimes I can feel it...me floating above myself wondering what else there is...  me glazing over... not present.  And then I realize it and it's almost as if I can feel my spirit sucked back into my body and there I am, right behind my own eyes.

And it's glorious. 

There's green grass and new porch chairs and growing things and the beautiful brown eyes of my daughter...there with me at that moment telling me a story.  THAT is my moment. THAT is my right now.  I need to get back to that far more often.  Don't we all?

Sometimes at night, I put my book down and start mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. Fucking Facebook.  Just there to remind you of things that you aren't doing.  Pictures you're not in.  Experiences you aren't currently having.  Things that look all shiny and great and amazing, without the gritty stuff.  The real stuff.  Facebook, while useful for staying in contact with people far away, with being in the know about upcoming events and now....things you can buy (what?), is just packaged, shelf-ready, buffed and shined up life.  Real, but not.  And anyway, it certainly isn't where you are right now, is it? 

So right now I'm going to post this so people can read it.  To Facebook of course.  And then later I'll check to see if anyone did.  But in between, I'm going to try and suck my spirit back into my body, take a walk and really see what's in front of me and be where I am.

Presence.

It's where it's at.

So why is it so hard to be in it sometimes?

Sometimes you just have to shake it up.

So this fall, I'm leaving the job I've been at for the past twelve years.  I'm leaving this job and the salary and security that goes along with it and going back to school.
Why?
Sometimes you just have to shake it up, is how I figure.

I have shaken it up in my life two times in a big way and both of them led me to amazing places, people and experiences.  I think always know it's time to shake it up when I get too comfortable. 

Well.

This time I got so comfortable being comfortable that I forgot to shake it up until two things happened.
1. Tad reminded me that it's time.
2. I got uncomfortable.

So. I think I've known for a long time that it was time to shake it up again...so here we go.

The first time I shook it up was when I left home, at the tender(ish) age of 18 to go to college.  I walked around whitewater with a long hippy skirt and a ministry t-shirt and knock-off birkenstocks and smoked cigarettes.  I pretended I was cool until I realized it was a lot cooler just to be me.  I studied hard and found out that I was actually pretty good at school, contrary to what my high school experience told me.  I didn't call home for a month just to prove to myself that I didn't need to.  That shake up left me stronger, braver and smarter than I was before it started.

The second time was when I left for the Peace Corps.  I was having such a good time in my easy job, my house full of parties and drinking and all-hours fun.  And I realized.  This isn't doing anything for my growth. I better get out of here and get uncomfortable.  So I moved to Estonia for two years. And I made friends and had experiences that changed my life entirely.  I grew inside like a wild crawling vine.

Now.

Here's shake up number three.  I feel pretty ready.

I love to imagine future me, remembering this limbo period, before I started... knowing what I will know then.

 

Circa shake up #1, 1993

Shake up #2, 2000

AND shake up #3, 20

Mamo-mamo-mamogram!

Yesterday I had my first mammogram.  Being excited about female-based rights of passage (getting your first period, buying your first bra, your first mammogram, your first time not apologizing to someone at a picnic that it's raining...) I felt a little celebratory.

All in all, it was really not a big-deal experience (she says blissfully unknowing, whilst the people at the breast center get ready to pick up the phone to call her back and tell her to come in for more tests or a biopsy or something!)

So the mammogram technician was really nice. She thought it was cute that I was going out to dinner with some friends right afterwards to celebrate.  I approached the giant machine, my eyebrow raised.  How am I going to.. I was thinking until she said "It lowers down."  Which I was thankful about, worried I was going to have to haul my endowments onto the table a good half foot out of my reach!

After she took the third picture, she goes, "Okay, let's do that one over.  You had a big chunk of arm fat stuck in that one."

WHAT?!

Big chunk of arm fat?

I mean, who says that to someone?

I laughed, throwing back my head like Julie Andrews.  A little arm fat never bothered me!  I'm SO beyond arm fat.

Seriously though.  Can't she have come up with some euphemistic way to say it?

Like: Let's do that one again. I had your positioned wrong.  OR....  Oh let me take this picture over. You're so beautiful, it confused the machine!

I mean for real. What if I were totally sensitive about my arm fat? I could have been sent into a downward spiral of poor body image!  But lucky for her...and me...I'm not.

The other day when I was trying on swimsuits, my sweet daughter, watching me change, her eyes meeting mine in the mirror, said, "Mom. Why am I so skinny?"

Whatever people.

Ah, but the first mammogram is done and out of the way. I walked out with a smile on my face and me and my arm fat met some friends for tacos!

This is what I'm dealing with.

 Here is a note I wrote to my children one morning when I left for work before they woke. 

I was letting Coen know that he had his math homework to do--a computer program called ALEKS.  Sometimes he does it right when he gets home, to get it over with. Sometimes he likes to wait and do it in the kitchen amid the smells of my cooking, talking to me between problems. 

He doesn't love doing it, but he takes responsibility for it.  Sometimes I think he does it just to please me....

Now, when he was in first grade, he had math worksheets he had to bring home and do occasionally.  I would sit with him and often he would cry in frustration and I would do my best to help, counting on my fingers beneath the table.

Once, on a particularly frustrating night of homework doing, Tad took Coen out behind the garage with his worksheets and a pack of matches and together they burned it. I imagine Coen smiling with glee like a maniac and Tad giving him a conspirator's smile, his eyes sparkling.  The homework going up in smoke, ember and flame in the dark alleyway.  A father/son act of defiance.

Coen was bursting to tell me when he came in. 

"You BURNED it?!" I asked incredulously.  Then to Tad, "How is this HELPING?"

So here, next to my note is the one Tad wrote. Another act of defiance. 

So there we are. Me, helping Coen with homework, making sure he does it.  Tad telling Coen it isn't necessary.  And somehow we make it work.  I hope he's learning to work with his community and question authority all at once. 

But you see..this is what I'm dealing with...a note next to mine, poking fun of the system I'm trying to figure how to help my kid into...  nighttime sky and secret fractions into ashes, sparking into the night. 

Ah well...what an interesting world my children are growing up in....

Ms. Cool.

Oh to be super cool and composed.  To not allow my emotions to betray me.  

Alas.

I am a person who's every emotion shows on her face.  I do not have a poker face. In a game of poker, I have a full house face and a flush face, and a face for whatever it's called when your cards are no good.  Yesterday one of my friends was talking about how hard it is to be vulnerable and I said, "Unless you're me.  Then you just fly your blimp over the city with today's specials and a big sign that says LOVE ME!"

Yesterday, I was frustrated with Tad.  As you might know if you've read this blog before... Tad and I are on quite different ends of the introvert/extrovert spectrum...

And so I am constantly happy to be surrounded by him (and anyone else that haps by), whilst occasionally, he simply needs some time to be inward, alone and quiet.  So I find myself in the position of being in the same house with someone who isn't totally available to me.  When this happens, I think to myself: I got this. I can do my own thing. Leave him alone. No problem.  Picture me here wearing sunglasses and a beret, walking around snapping my fingers totally nonchalantly. It's cool. It's casual.  Whatevs.  

And yet.

He walks past me and I want to scream: PAY ATTENTION TO ME! Yeah, I'm just an open faced sandwich and that's all there is too it.  Look at me... a melty, gooey mess of cheese and pickles and a grand desire to be loved that I can't really hide.  

So, I went to pick the kids up from school and I saw Tad out of the corner of my eye on the playground.  And I thought, I'm just going to ignore him.  So I walked past and didn't look his way. Though I could see him approaching out the corner of my eye.

"Hey Ms. Cool." He said.

Dammit.

He hugged me and he acknowledged, in the words only Tad can, that he's been a bit absent.  So I hugged him back, went out to the car with the kids and quickly pulled the two page note I'd written him off his car seat.  We'd talk about all that later.

Yeah. I'm not cool. But that's okay.  I think I'd rather be a blimp-flying-open-faced sandwich and ME than try to be something I'm not.

This is me, trying to take a selfie with Poseidon. Decidedly uncool.

What we believe...

I know we all believe in different things, beings, spirits.

But maybe if you look closer, we all believe in the same things.

I don't have a religion, but I have faith. I don't have a church but I have spirituality.  I believe in a higher power some call God, some call Gods and Goddesses, some call self, some call the Universe, Divine Creation, all those names, all those things.

I believe in kindness.

I believe in love.

I believe in the existence of an energy all around us that is far more than what we can see and touch with our hands and our mouths, more than what we can taste and smell and even see with our eyes in our heads or our brains' sensations of the world around.

Sometimes I ask for things, as I used to ask God when I was a catholic girl on my knees, my red bedroom carpet, burning under my skin.  Sometimes I don't ask but somehow ask anyway through frustration or anger or plain old joyfulness.  Sometimes I see someone passing by and I think I know what they need and try to give it.   The Universe seems to hear me and give me what I need. Even if it's something I don't want.

I guess all I'm saying is that I can sort of feel the world turning right now. And for those of you that believe in this sort of thing, Mercury is about to change directions and really zip us around the other way.  But that's okay.  I'm trying to be ready for it, meditating... I picture myself floating in space, running on Mercury like a log rolling contest. And when it changes directions, I'll be on top and just go with it...not get rolled over.

I'm ready.

I believe in me.

The world is coming alive again and I am feeling the buzz of it around me. The presence of all that we can't see.

I believe in so much I can't put words to...and I think...so do you.  So do you.

Empatharama

I was driving down Hawley Road the other day and I passed the Spring Hill Cemetery.  There was a man, standing at a grave site, grieving.   I was at the red light and I felt him before I saw him. I turned my head and there he was. I swear, I could feel his grief flow off him in a wave and hit me square in the chest, leaving me speechless.  I turned off the radio and let it in.

Oh, man, there is just something about grief.  It's hard and it's difficult, no doubt.... but it's also so soul filling.  Grief, whether I'm feeling my own or someone else's, it makes me feel really really alive.  Grief means that there was something that you loved...and even though you lost it...you loved it enough to grieve for it. That's powerful.

And now spring is coming and it's warm outside.  I have gone for a walk during my lunch break both yesterday and today and oh, the feeling emanating off the people in the street--the joy in the sun and the warmth--it is all around!  And that same wave of feeling hit me again yesterday from a man on the corner. He fist bumped the guy on Brady Street playing his guitar and I didn't just see the smile on his face, I felt it.

Whether it is as heart breaking as grief or as heart leaping as joy.... It is a wonderful thing to FEEL.

When I was living away from home, I remember the extremes of the pendulum swing of my emotions from aching homesickness to elation so strong I was moved to squeal.... it was a time in my life I'll always most the feeling of being alive.

In the daily routine of work and being a parent and running a house and driving a car, refilling water bottles and packing lunches....  sometimes those extremes get dulled.  But if you open your heart and eyes and mind and let the world around you move you a little; put on your headphones and listen to a song that makes you orbit; really look at someone you love while they tell you something...  it can fill you up, make you feel.

Alive.

Late winter sunset on 55th Street