Visceral Musings

Time to Check in, Not Out

2012-01-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

Each week I receive a report from a free site that follows the number of folks who land on my blogs. I can see which provider each visitor uses for internet access, what country, city and state they reside in, how much time they spent on my blog and how many pages they scrolled through.

I can also see which urls said visitors began at before clicking onto my blog. Some of those are weird. The Facebook links make sense, as do the ones that move directly from my website. But the "travel blogs" are odd. I can't even figure them out well enough to explain what I mean by "travel blogs," but there seems to be some random connection.

In my roundabout way I am admitting that I know that some folks check my blog fairly regularly to see if I have posted something new. A few wonderful folks check as often as a couple of times each week. I understand this because I am that kind of person myself; I will check for updates on certain sites often (i.e. several times each day) if that place offers something I find interesting. What is of interest to me can be as simple as the happenings in the life of a friend.

So, in order to honor the folks who are diligent about looking for new information, here is an update:

The new semester is upon me. I am teaching four classes. In the Fall I was teaching five. That last one did me in. I am hoping that taking the stress down a notch will enable me to write more often. This posting is a toe in the water.

I have still heard nothing from my sister. I do have the choice of dropping by the apartment where her mother-in-law lives, and I may pursue that. For now I refuse to commit; I am waiting for a sign. It feels closer than it has. We shall see.

Now that I can see beyond student papers, I am able to make some observations about the world around me. I'll try to keep those interesting.

I am still waiting to hear from the lit journal that agreed to publish one of my essays. In theory I should have a hard copy in my mailbox by the end of the month. (fingers crossed)

I will be applying to three schools this semester for full-time teaching work that will begin next fall. I'll let you know how that goes.

My toe feels fine. I'll make every effort to check back in soon.

Thanks for reading.

xoxoxo
Ginny

And Then...

2011-11-06T12:08:00.000-08:00

My last posting ended in an embrace with my long-lost sister. I haven't been able to bring myself to write about those next few days until now. My reluctance isn't because the few hours spent with her were traumatic or painful or unpleasant in any way, but because that was all they were: a few hours.

I'll try to share what I can:

The embrace ended only because my sister wanted to introduce me to her boyfriend. We walked into the apartment number I had been looking for and found him stretched out on the couch next to the fan. It had been an incredibly warm few days and heat had become trapped in the little apartment.

The living room and the kitchen formed an L, and the bedroom door opened to the living room. I noticed furniture that was all fairly modern. The television and DVD player sat on an entertainment unit next to a small table that held a cordless telephone. Some of the furnishings looked like things I would own, or had at one time. I assumed that the mild clutter belonged to the couple and was pleasantly surprised that some of it was newer. I found out later that my sister and boyfriend were sharing the apartment with his mother and his son. Five people were crammed into the small, but charming, space.

She was excited to show me off to her boyfriend. "Look, it's my sister!" To say he was stunned would be an understatement. He had encouraged to her to find me, and here I was. Once we had met and chatted a bit he left us alone for awhile, then proceeded to tell everyone they knew in the apartment complex that I was there. For a short time I was a celebrity. My name was repeated over and over again in a reverent tone.

She and I settled on the couch and spent some time in silence holding hands. Her hands were rough. Mine would be as well if I didn't put lotion on them several times a day. Her skin was clear and was missing the caked-on foundation that she used to wear as a teen. On closer inspection she looked a great deal like her father. We were two sisters who knew very little about each other. What do you say to a sibling you don't really know?

She asked if I liked movies, which I do, and we compared notes about genres.

I asked if she likes to read, and she does. The best revelation of all: She used to write poetry. My sister is a writer!!!! That was perhaps the best moment of all, knowing that she enjoyed writing, especially as she writes in a genre that I can't/don't.

We spent some time talking about where her life had gone and how she came to be in this little apartment and where she wanted to go. We talked about her kids, and she spoke many times about owning her own problems and choices. She was very clear that of the three of us siblings, she had fallen the farthest down some sort of awful hole. My fears that she would exhibit our mother's tendency to blame others were unfounded. It was very clear to me that she planned on staying outside of and away from the hole she had finally managed to climb out of.

When it was time for me to leave, she walked me to my car, and we kissed and hugged.

Two days later we had coffee. I think maybe the timing of our coffee date is why she has disappeared from my life again. I can only speculate because I don't know why she stopped returning my calls.

I wanted to see her regularly, weekly if possible. I wanted to spend a few hours a week or so slowly getting to know each other. I wanted to give her love and support. I suppose that what I wanted was not what she needed. We managed to connect with one quick phone call the following week, but she was doing laundry and promised to call me back outside of the laundromat. She didn't. I called the apartment a few times, but she was never there.

I didn't go looking for her again. She may or may not still be living in the apartment. Her need to pull away was a defense mechanism that I can understand, and I want to honor her needs.

My sister and I are both abandoned kids and survivors of childhood traumas of varying kinds. I have spent several years of my life in therapy working through my issues so that I can be comfortable enough in my own skin to function in a way that I want to. She freely admitted that therapy would likely do her some good. I understand that when confronted with old feelings and memories, retreating is often the safest thing to do. My sudden presence in her life brought up many old and painful feelings for her. She admitted as much while we sat on the couch holding hands.

I know that even as a healthy adult, there are times when I can't continue to move forward with a relationship. It can be a personal or business relationship, but if I feel put off or overwhelmed emotionally, I will pull way, way back and metaphorically disappear. I am aware of my emotional limitations enough to work through them, such as when I was abandoned by a graduate school mentor. Instead climbing into myself and quitting the program, I complained loudly enough that the school assigned me another mentor, and I was able to move forward and complete the program. Another time I was working for a friend and found that the friend was not a great boss, to the point that I felt emotionally abused; after repeated attempts on my part of rectify communication problems, I quit the job.

My theory is that my sister needed to pull back from a relationship with me for her own emotional health. I sent her another message through Facebook, this time telling her that I love her, and that I am here when she is ready to have a relationship.

My fears were unfounded, but so, it would seem, were my dreams.

Part 3: A Premonition and A Push

2011-08-17T14:40:00.001-07:00

I don't claim to be truly psychic--cause I'm not--but I do on occasion experience a form of premonition. It doesn't happen often, but I have learned to share the occasional odd thought out loud as a kind of fact-checking. If I say it out loud and it happens, I feel safer calling it a premonition.

That being said, in January the following occurred:
I often share familial stories with my community college students. I use them as a way of modeling how our lives do actually have connections to the literature, and to each other. At the beginning of the Spring 2011 semester I was teaching a class at the Santa Rosa campus of the junior college on Mondays and Wednesdays. I was about to share some story about my strange family configuration and where I am in the sibling line-up (see Storyscape Journal archives for the whole story) when it suddenly occurred to me that if either my brother or sister were on campus taking classes, they might hear a bastardized version of a story that isn't terribly flattering when told first hand. I jokingly asked the class if they knew any of my family; they laughed and shook their heads. It nagged at me for a bit and I even told the hubby about it. I wondered if either sibling would ever take college classes. Then I wondered if I would recognize either of them if I saw them on campus. When I saw my mother for the last time in May of 2004, she gave me a picture of my grown brother. At that time I hadn't seen him since he was 17 years old. In the picture he was in his mid-thirties. I cried because I would not have known him had I seen him on the street. I don't even have the benefit of a recent picture of my sister.

Six months later:
I am trying to decide what to do about contact with my sister. I have experienced a pretty wide range of emotions. I responded to her invitation to call her by asking when was a good time to call. She didn't answer.

I asked for advice on Facebook and the overwhelming response was to do a background check. So I paid the $19.99 to an online company (there are a ton) and got back very little information: A couple of phone numbers (one of which matched the one I had), three different addresses (all in Santa Rosa), one hit from criminal background (with very little information). I was about to give up the idea and not call her when I decided to take one more look at her FB page.

She had 9 friends listed so I checked out their profiles. None of them seemed particularly scary or off-putting. A couple seemed interesting, some even seemed like people who might be in recovery. This was a hopeful sign.

Then it occurred to me that if my sister had a Facebook page, then she also had some access to computers and that could be a very good sign. It has been my experience that as ubiquitous as computers and the internet are, not everyone is online. Many of my students struggle with the technology available to them. A surprising number can't quite get the hang of email. Many use their cell phones for only texting and phone calls, not for Facebook or Twitter or email.

So I made some calls and did some web crawling and found a page of information that said my sister had been a student at Santa Rosa Junior College. IN JANUARY!! She had had classes on campus when I was teaching. One of her instructors was my friend Anne Marie whose class was on the same floor and building and at the same time I had been on campus. I called Anne Marie, but realized that my sis had dropped the class after the first two weeks of classes. My friend had no memory of her. But the fact remained that my sister and I had been on campus at the same time I was wondering about her.

This was a very good sign and all the push I needed. Suddenly all of the reservations and fears that I had about seeing or talking with my sister fell away. I was compelled to see her.

Immediately.

The feeling was so strong, in fact, that I did a new online search to find her most recent address, confirm that the phone number she had given me was a land-line and was off the couch changing my clothes and getting ready to head out the door before my poor hubby had any idea what was going on. I took a few minutes to retrieve her earrings.

Haven't I mentioned the earrings?

My sister was a flower girl in both of my first two weddings. For the second I bought her a pair of faux gold and diamond earrings. After the ceremony was over I offered to hold onto them for safekeeping. The guilt at keeping her earrings from her was kind enough to stay within the confines of the jewelry box most of the time, only coming out when I came across them or the handful of times I wore them myself. It's as if all of the remaining guilt I had carried with me as a child had clung to the earrings. I cleaned them and found a tiny decorative oval metal box to put them in. If I was going to see my sister, I was going to return her earrings. All the while I was getting ready, I felt a really strong sense of urgency as if I had a finite amount of time to accomplish my mission.

The earrings and box went into my front pocket with my phone, my wallet was locked in the glovebox, and I was on my way. I left the house alone and drove the 18 miles to Santa Rosa. I tried to imagine what she would look like. She is ten years younger than me. She was always slender, her hair was a dirty blonde when we were growing up. She loved sweets and I wondered if that had changed her metabolism. Had she inherited the body type from Gram's side of the family (who I favor physically) or retained the slenderness from youth? After giving birth to three babies, anything was possible.

The closer I got, the more I envisioned a reunion from a movie. I imagined parking outside a tiny rental house with young children playing outside. A woman would happen to walk out of the door to check on the children and would look up at me, a seeming stranger on their quiet street. We would lock eyes. I would say "Bambe?" and she would say "Ginger?" and we would run into each other's arms. The fantasy didn't go beyond the hug but it did repeat itself over and over in my head as I inched closer to her street. It was occasionally interrupted by the voice in my head that would point out that the simplicity of that reunion was highly unlikely. Impossible in fact. I needed to stop that nonsense and focus on finding the street and the address.

Just as I reached the street she lived on, my phone rang. I jumped about a mile and answered my phone as I pulled over. It was my son who was quite intrigued when I told him that I was stalking my sister. My siblings are a bit of an abstract concept to my children. They are aware they have an aunt and uncle, but apart from a few pictures, a few mentions in my writing, and the very few stories I tell about my childhood years, they have only fuzzy pictures of the reality of these two people. The phone call required me to pull around the corner and ultimately drive around the block to return to the house numbers where I thought she lived. Once off the phone I found a parking space closest to the spot I believed I would find her house.

As I pulled up to the curb, and a woman walked out from between two buildings toward the street. I noticed then that the two buildings faced each other creating a kind of long courtyard between them, all doors face toward that yard. The address I had for my sister could easily be marked on one of those doors. I looked back at the woman and saw how slender she was; her face was very thin which was highlighted by the long pair pulled sharply back into a ponytail/bun. At first I only saw a brief profile and her back. She had on short black shorts and a tank top. Her arms were lightly tanned beneath various tattoos that were scattered on her arms, back and neck. She disappeared momentarily behind the backside of the building farthest from me and reappeared to speak to someone in a small pickup truck who pulled up after I parked. I wondered if I was witnessing a drug deal when the door opened and it looked like something passed between the woman and someone in the cab. I looked away.

I took a breath and decided to find the address. I stepped out of my car and walked behind it to the sidewalk. I looked back at the woman who had moved back again toward the far building and was holding a cigarette. Ah, no drug deal; she had simply bummed a smoke. Logically it would make more sense to ask where I could find the address than to wander into people’s yards.

The woman was watching me so I walked toward her. I wondered if it was Bambe and searched her features for something familiar. It was in that moment that I noticed the haunted look pass over her face. Her eyes were wide and only mildly frightened, as if the ghost in front of her was a welcome sight. And I suppose that I was.

I carry many of our mother’s features on my face; there are only a small number of people alive who react to me in the way she did at that moment. But I wasn’t sure yet if she was my sister, so I walked toward her and said, “Can you help me?” Her reaction was too close to the fantasy that had run through my mind on the drive.

“What are you looking for?” was the reply I heard. She may have asked who I was looking for.

“I’m looking for 492.”

That was when we knew.

“Ginger?”

“Bambe?”

She dropped her cigarette and ran to me at full speed. I moved toward her as quickly as I could. The impact our bodies made is not the sound you typically hear in the movie scene. It was very clearly the sound two bodies make when they hit; less noisy than the impact on a football field, more so than two lovers meeting in a field of daisies.

We held each other through that impact. Tight. Hard. We stood there with our arms wrapped around each other. And stood there. Neither wanted to loosen her hold or let go.

“How are you?” She said as if making regular conversation with someone she had seen the day before. Neither of us let go.

“Good. How are you?” I answered.

Part II: Reluctance

2011-08-10T03:07:00.000-07:00

According to two converging pieces of family lore, after my mother left me with at my grandparents’ house (I was somewhere around three years old), my grandmother tried to take me to the doctor to get my immunizations updated. The doctor kindly informed Gram that because she had no legal rights, that they could not give me any medical attention no matter how well intentioned she was.

So a lawyer was contacted and temporary custody papers were drawn up. Gram drove to a house in Sonoma or Boyes Hot Springs where my mother was staying. My father was also in the house, although they were long since separated and the divorce was in full swing. The house was apparently full of people they both knew. He was willing to sign the papers and felt that is was important that my mother sign them also. She refused. My father told her that he would beat every person in the house until she signed the papers. Yes, he threatened her and coerced her into signing away temporary custody of me. There were no contradictions years later in their separate accounts of the details of that day. He felt strongly it was for the best. She disagreed but ultimately acquiesced. She insisted for the rest of her life that she did not agree to completely give up custody of me. She only agreed to a temporary custody situation.

My mother’s version of this story was told over and over while my siblings were growing up. They heard it far more often than I did, but we all understood the moral of the story. The implication was clear: signing even a temporary order will guarantee loss of custody. You will be cheated out of what is yours. I suppose on some level my mother felt both complicit and cheated. For her there was an underlying truth that she could be cheated out of her own child simply by signing one piece of paper.

From my perspective, that piece of paper had little or nothing to do with the where I grew up. I lived with Gram and Grandpa because my mother left me. A piece of the custody story that my mother perhaps didn’t tell my siblings is that she dropped me off at my grandparent’s house for another long weekend of babysitting. My grandfather told her not to bother coming back for me: the implication of course was that he wouldn’t let me go. My mother protested and a verbal argument ensued. But, and this is an important piece, she left me there. Instead of walking back into the house and taking me with her, she left me. Instead of going directly to the police department and telling them her father refused to hand her daughter over, she left me. Instead of contacting a lawyer, she left me. Presumably she left on her weekend away and followed Grandpa’s advice not to return for me.

Fast forward a generation. My sister has given birth to her third child. When the baby is born my sister is an inmate at a women’s prison. My mother and her husband are there and take the baby home with them. My sister refuses to sign any papers allowing my mother any legal rights of guardianship. The state did have some authority and gave my mother temporary custody of the baby anyway. Later, in argument between mother and daughter, my sister told my mother that there would be no signing of any papers and that my mother had better not take the baby away from her mother, although my sister did not claim her daughter once released from prison. Sometime before she died, my mother obtained legal custody of her granddaughter. Upon her death my brother became the baby's legal guardian. So the cycle, punctuated by great irony, continued.

These stories and many more began circling through my brain as I attempted to decide how exactly I wanted to proceed with contacting my sister, or if I really wanted to proceed at all. I had learned very different lessons from the stories of custody papers and signatures than my siblings had. I believe that they had learned how easy it was to become a victim and that perpetuating that sense of victimhood somehow gave them a sense of justification for their actions.

Over the years I had several arguments with my mother about her life choices. There always seemed to be something else she needed in her life in order to make it better or to be happy. She needed a new place to live, or a new husband, or a new boyfriend. She spent her life wandering from situation to situation led in large part by her addiction to alcohol. Because both women gave up custody of all three of their children, it seemed logical to me that they would have the same attitude about those choices.

My first impulse was to call my sister. My second came so quickly on the heals of the first that there was no time for impulsive actions. And I was driving, I had no headset and a bad signal, so I only had time to wonder what she was like. That took me to a very uncomfortable place. I attempted to reconcile the little girl I had known who desperately wanted love and was terrified that people were angry with her with the woman who had ended up in prison. The conversations I conjured didn’t go well from the onset. It was easy to imagine the stories about how she had been wronged by the system, or her son’s grandparents, or her oldest daughter’s father, or our mother and brother.

I live my life so vastly differently from the way my siblings live theirs. I live in a nice house and drive a fairly nice car in a town less than an hour’s drive from San Francisco. My brother lives in a double-wide in Lake County. I have been pretty happily married for more than 20 years. Neither of my siblings has married. I can go to the grocery store and buy steak whenever I want. My siblings grew up on food stamps, and so far as I know their incomes haven’t improved much in adulthood. Most importantly, I raised my own children.

When I was a kid, I carried a fairly heavy burden around: I felt guilty that I lived with Gram and Grandpa and had a better life than my siblings. I believed it was better because we didn’t move often; we had nice things; my grandparents didn’t drink to excess; my clothes were often new and didn’t have stains or cigarette burn holes in them. Our house wasn’t furnished with remnants from the garbage truck my step-dad worked on. In my school pictures my hair was always combed and I looked clean and well dressed. I somehow felt responsible for what my siblings lacked because I was the one who ended up living with Gram and Grandpa.

I eventually came to realize that I had no control over the situation and was able to shed the coat of guilt I had made for myself. But shedding the fear that they resented me was much more difficult. This is really the crux of what made me balk at calling my sister right away. That and the fear that she was as immersed in her own victimhood as our mother had been.

Part I: First Contact

2011-07-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

I began my day bewildered. Roughly two weeks before my birthday, which historically is about the time that a black cloud begins its yearly formation above my head, I found the back of my office chair resting on the top of my head. The fattiest part of my bottom suddenly ached and it was several moments before I realized that I was sitting on the floor, my legs straight out in front of me, the seat of the chair at my back.

I belatedly remembered hearing the crash as the chair tumbled. It came back to me like an echo. I felt disoriented and confused. Disorientation is an interesting word. It amply describes the feeling of not knowing which way is up or down, yet it is so subdued a word as to be inadequate as a descriptor. In a way I knew where I was, the familiarity of the place and the space had altered enough that for a moment I questioned my understanding of my little world, and for a briefer instant I questioned my sanity.

Not the best way to begin any day at work. Certainly for me not a great place to find myself in the middle of June. Sitting under the umbrella of my chair suddenly, I wondered if this was an omen of things to come.

I had been stretching my legs out in an attempt to soothe some back muscles while sitting in front of my work computer. The desk is much too large and deep to comfortably use while typing on a keyboard that won't move more than a few inches away from the monitor located at the back of the desk. The result is that in order to type or use the mouse it is necessary to hunch forward in the office chiar. Apparently the stretch went too far and the wheels of the chair rolled out from under the seat’s bottom as well as my own.

A few hours later the feelings of disorientation returned.

My drive home from the community college I am working at this summer is actually quite a beautiful way to spend an hour. The stretch of pure freeway is only about ¼ of the drive; the rest is over or beside water or rolling hills or a road whose eucalyptus sentinels hold their leaves protectively over the road.

Like many people who live in this age of technology, my email, twitter and facebook updates arrive on my cellphone accompanied by a small icon. So at stoplights I usually glance at my phone for a very brief update. I wasn’t surprised to see a Facebook message. I was, however, stunned that it was from my sister. A sister I have not seen or spoken to in twenty years.

This particular sister is not family by choice; she is family by birth. We share the same mother and the same abandonment issues. I was a toddler when my mother left me with my grandparents. My sister was eight when Mom left her. We also share a brother; he is the middle child of the three of us and so was equally abandoned.

The three of us were fairly close when we were young; as close as kids can be who aren’t raised in the same house and who see each other irregularly. I already had my two children when her son was born a few months after her eighteenth birthday. She came by our house to borrow money several months later. That was twenty years ago.

I know a bit about her life, although not a lot. Her son ended up with his paternal grandmother. She had two other daughters. One lives with the father. The other lives with our brother.

The FB message was in response to one I had sent her three weeks before. I have been searching for information about her on the internet for several years. I occasionally find a tidbit of information on sites such as MyLife or Spokeo. I don’t trust most of the information (such as one site listing her as male) so I don’t bother to follow up. The last time I did a FB search, I came across a number of women with her name. For some reason I fixated on one person who had no picture posted and less than a dozen friends and sent a message that said, “I'm looking for my sister who is originally from Sonoma, CA. (or Boyes Hot Springs, CA). Could that be you?” It is easy to become conditioned to nearly instant responses when communicating online, so when I heard nothing in the first few days, the attempt at contact floated quickly and easily to back of my mind.

The response was clearly sent that afternoon, “yes its me call me its me bambe your sister.” It was accompanied by a phone number. I have a strict personal policy that happens to align with law enforcement: I don’t text or email while driving. My head set was lost so I couldn't call as I drove. So I had to put my phone down as soon as the light turned green. My first impulse was to cry, which I managed to stuff down. My second was to pull over and call her immediately. This was stuffed down as well.

Instead I drove home while a very large and growing cloud of thoughts and feelings swirled around me; it surrounded me and wrapped me in a blanket of emotion. Old pains and memories filled my head and my heart as I tried to imagine who the little girl I once knew had become. I ended my day much like I began it, disoriented, bewildered and not a little lost in my own body.

I have a story to tell

2011-07-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

I experienced, and am still experiencing, a fairly major life event. It began in mid-June, and I suppose it hasn't ended yet.

I am writing about it. My plan is to blog about it. Every time I sit down to work on the posting, I find that the story is too simple, too short and way to complicated to be told in just one posting. So I am working on a series of posts that will tell the entire story.

I'm not trying to be difficult or too mysterious. Rest assured that I am healthy and everyone in my life that is important to me is healthy as well. There are no worries about impending catastrophes or that kind of thing. This is important to my personal life, and I think interesting, but not life threatening. I don't think.

But I want to write this. This teaser post is a way to making a public commitment to writing the story.

I'll be write back.

-Ginny

Good News & Bad News

2011-04-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

When given the choice, I always want to hear bad news first. It softens the ultimate blow, and even after hearing something I don't like, I know that I have something to look forward to.

So the Bad News:
The last 6 months have been heavily focused on finding a full-time tenure track teaching position at the community college level. Of all the applications packets I completed and sent off, none resulted in either an interview or a job offer. (I heard from the final one last week.) I sent a total of 6 out. That means six separate applications, supplemental questions, copies of my CV, letters of recommendation and transcripts. The average paper count was roughly 23 pages for each. As of now I do not have a full-time benefited job for fall.

Of the six schools, two rescinded their job openings. So in full there were only four true rejections. In all honesty the first three didn't bother me at all. After each I could easily see all the reasons why I didn't really want to work at that particular school or that particular district. It was very easy to look optimistically forward for the next potential school and interview.

The consequence of pushing disappointment aside for the first three rejections was that this last one really hurt. I pretty quickly fell into a metaphorical pit of despair (with no six-fingered man to watch over my suffering). Really old, old, icky feelings of worthlessness bubbled to the surface. My confidence level feel dramatically. I was embarrassed that my application packet could be so bad that no one wanted to meet me. Other feelings that I couldn't identify felt a lot like grief. I suppose in a way I was grieving the loss of the life I had imagined for myself at each one of these schools.

My wonderful husband consoled me with flowers dinner out. I couldn't bring myself to post my usual Facebook Job Hunt Update, so I waited. Then I discovered the good news.

The Good News
Now that the uncertainty of scheduling interviews and knowing which school to become an overnight expert about are no longer percolating under the surface of my thoughts every day, I feel revitalized.

I don't have to worry about a new commute, getting up to speed at a new campus, finding the primo parking spots or where the most reliable copiers reside. I don't have to learn a whole new set of course outlines, revamp my syllabi and struggle to make the books I like to teach fit into another curriculum.

I am really excited about teaching summer school at a college that I know and love. I am still employed part-time at two community colleges, so I do have work--work that I am very, very grateful to have. All the while I was putting together application packets I was also laying the ground work to make sure I have classes in the Fall at these schools. Although I only have two confirmed classes (when three or even four would be optimal) I can pretty clearly see more on the horizon. I have chosen a few new books for my classes, begun my reader for summer school and am well on my way to being very organized for the Fall.

And best of all I am excited about returning to my book project.

And yes, I realize that my initial reaction was really about old buttons and old issues. Logically I know that this is a lousy time to be looking for full-time teaching work. I was up against (literally) hundreds and hundreds of other applicants and that some of those colleges really wanted to hire from their adjunct pools.

So although I was initially disappointed, now I am quite relieved.

Renewal

2011-04-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Here we are in late April and Spring is finally upon us. The plants in my yard that survived the record freezes and deluges of rain are blooming or offering new leaves for me to gaze upon. Our renegade peach tree looks as though it might have a fruit or two slowly developing in the growing warmth.

I have no idea what the weather outside was like a year ago. I could easily check, but I choose not to. I do know that the inside of the house had been plagued by a long-term chill. It had been growing steadily colder over the course of at least three years, my husband would argue that it took longer, and had finally become unbearable. A sudden heated discussion shattered the ice that had grown between myself and my life partner and we were left to wonder if there was anything left to salvage or if we wanted to make the effort to rebuild our life together.

I would never have characterized my marriage as unhappy. Even in the midst of misery I most ofter prefer my husband's company to anyone else except my children. But suddenly we realized that the life we had built together was potentially not what he wanted. He had long standing issues within his own heart and his own head that he had worked around for so many years. He didn't like himself very much. He didn't believe he was talented. I don't think that he believed that he deserved to be happy. There were some deep, dark secrets that he was keeping, not just from me, but from himself. He had pulled inside of himself so deeply that he wasn't sure if he wanted to come out and participate in our life, or start a new one without me.

A year ago I was working on a book project. A memoir and research book that was meant to look outside my own experience at the historical and factual realities that surrounded my story. Unlike many of my writing colleagues, I can't write my way through my problems. I don't feel compelled to take notes or journal during crisis. I shut down for the most part and focus so mightily on surviving that I simply don't have enough energy left over for creativity. So when things fell apart at home, the book project stalled. As time went on it became clear that my story wasn't ready to be told in part because my husband's was still unfolding as well.

So when the ice was shattered, he had to decide. and he had to do it without me. So he went away. We had no contact except a few text message conversations. He said he would be gone overnight, but the next day he wasn't ready to come home. This went on for what seemed like weeks and weeks of waiting and wondering. I began planning my life without him. I was forced to look seriously and honestly at how my life would look and how I would move forward. I felt quite ill most of the four days he was gone. Those were the longest four days of my life.

This past Saturday was one year since he chose to come home to me and our life. The past year has been filled with a lot of work and a lot of pain and a lot of tears. He has worked very hard in therapy and with me. He is certainly not done with his work, but his growth has been tremendous.

To celebrate the journey behind and the road ahead, we renewed our vows on the anniversary of his coming home. It wasn't until after we chose the date that we realized it was the actual anniversary. We went public and invited our closest family and friends to witness the exchange of new rings (that he made), a restating of our original vows (and a few new ones). Then we had a party.

I've always enjoyed Winter in large part because I like cocooning in my house, wrapped in the warmth and listening to the storms rage outside while I am safely inside. More than ever I appreciate the necessity of the work that is done indoors when the weather outside is inclement.

This year I am reveling in the welcoming weather of Spring. As it brings a renewal of life, I feel blessed and thankful. The flowers look especially beautiful this year. The new leaves are brighter and the vibrancy of the days surprises me. I feel like writing again. It is suddenly clear to me that my book project needs to move forward, but with a different structure and focus.

Most importantly I am moving forward in my personal and creative life with the man that I love and he is, at last, comfortable enough in his own skin to go with me.

An Affair with Controlled Chaos

2011-02-18T10:27:00.000-08:00

As I type this my dogs are playing. At this very moment they are downstairs; only a moment ago they were at my feet. Remarkably I didn't have to ask them to leave; they simply moved the action along to another spot as their play dictated.

At one point Max (the younger of the two) was running back and forth between my bedroom and my office. I am sitting in my office and so was mere inches from his fast braking, quick turning and launching back across the carpet to the hallway and the bedroom beyond. It is a manic movement because he goes back and forth and back and forth, his butt pushed up into the air as his hind legs wind up for the launch each new step requires. He runs the same way when he is outside. At the dog park he takes off and runs at full tilt until he is exhausted. Surprisingly that takes only about 10 minutes. When he runs full tilt indoors it is reminiscent of a cartoon dog winding up his hind legs, the whirly of his feet a blur just before he launches towards his sister (Molly the slightly older dog).

I really love being close to this manic display. I love the feeling of energy crackling off the two dogs as they run and wrestle. I enjoy the repetition of movement back and forth and back and forth between rooms. Even as they wrestle, taking turns dominating each other, there is a rhythm to their movements, their panting. I suppose it is a form of music that my body responds to.

They do no damage to property or each other. Occasionally someone mis-bites and a quick full-tilt snarl and bite fest ensues. It rarely lasts more than a few seconds, and I usually allow them to finish it themselves. If they don't, I yell once and they stop. In less than a minute they forgot what they were fighting about and resume playing.

As chaotic as the play is, it has a very consistent feel to it. I know they will play, maybe even tussle, how they will run and that eventually, as they are now, they will lie near my on the floor, panting and resting. I crave consistency; I always have. My life in the last several years has seemed like anything but consistent. It seems there is always a change in progress, a big change. One year it was several deaths, then my attempt at finding regular work meant accepting temporary positions one semester after another. Then a graduation, a wedding, a baby, a couple of surgeries, a revamping of my expectations of my marriage. I'm a grown-up and coping just fine overall, but I'd like a little more boredom.

The chaos of the life that surrounds me is so often beyond my control. Perhaps that is why the play of the dogs is comforting. It certainly brings to mind the chaos of children in the house. I miss having my kids around. The dogs help that a bit I suppose. Their controlled chaos offers me a predictable and comforting balance to my days. It doesn't hurt that they are darn cute and fun to watch.

Easing into Nana

2011-01-16T20:28:00.001-08:00

It's only been eight months, but I think that I am finally getting a handle on being a grandparent.

As I have mentioned over and over again to any ears that will listen, I've been having difficulty grasping what my role as a grandparent is. In my own life a grandparent was a parent, swooping in and doing parent things: cooking, cleaning, playing, changing, feeding, losing sleep, etc. But my kids are really wonderful people and they take very good care of Memphis, so my expertise is rarely needed.

Although I do find that I have a knack for getting the baby to sleep. I think it is because I have been through babyhood already with my own kids, and know for a fact that a baby will eventually sleep. That knowledge is very powerful, once you believe it, and so I know that a few minutes walking around the house rocking him in my arms and whispering the occasional song in his ear will ultimately put him to sleep. Whether or not he stays that way is hardly my problem. That is one of the advantages of being a grandparent. I can put the baby to sleep, but I won't be there in the night when he wakes up.

When Memphis first came home I tried to give my kids some space. I wanted to see the baby, sure, and hold him and coo to him, but I didn't want to intrude on the cocooning that their new family needed to do. Then my son mentioned to me about six weeks later that they felt that I was giving them too much space, that I wasn't coming by enough. That of course kick started the old parent guilt (that apparently never goes away; I suppose it goes hand-in-hand with the ability to get a crying baby to sleep). But I am working more now than when my kids were growing up, and let's face it, there are reasons why I stopped working full-time as a young mother. I simply didn't/don't have the capacity to balance small children and a career. Back in the day I had to make a choice. Today it is not my choice to make. Today I work because my focus is different. And I have to remind myself that I am Memphis' grandparent. Not his parent. If I only see him once a week, I am damned lucky that I live close enough to see him that often. Although I do feel guilty that I am letting my kids down; that I am not helping them as much as they need. So I go back to square one, wondering what my role is.

Then this last week it occurred to me that being a grandparent has very little to do with my kids. They are adults after all, and have the verbal and mental capacity to ask for help. And they do ask. We babysit fairly often. I go to doctor's visits when invited. I feed them or give them money or rides. I have not disappeared; I'm just no longer available to be on-call for everything 24/7. And there are many other wonderful family members around that love and help take care of Memphis and his parents.

I think that my role as Nana has everything to do with my relationship with my grandbaby. My relationship with my kids has not changed, and I supposed that it shouldn't. I think what is important is that I let go of my guilt and embrace my special relationship with my very special grandson.

That I can do.

So I'm thinking that Memphis and I need to go on some adventures together. I think we should run errands and go to the park, and go to my work and show each other off. I think we should go shopping, and enjoy long walks together in the sunshine. I think that we will find special toys and books that we like to play with together, just the two of us.

Yeah, I am finally beginning to ease into being Nana to Memphis. And it is a wonderful feeling.

Burning in the New Year

2010-12-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

(originally posted on my blog at Redroom.com)

I don’t make New Years Resolutions. It’s not that I don’t believe in them; I think that making a list of goals for change is a great tool and a healthy way to plan a new beginning that coincides with a new calendar. I simply don’t list all the things I want to do differently once January 1 comes around and post it on my refrigerator as a daily reminder. To me, this seems like a great way to fail as the meaning of the list can too easily change from hope to guilt. Like rules, resolutions seem to be made to be broken.
I do appreciate goal setting. I am a goal oriented person and so can see the value of knowing there is a deadline on its way. Yet, it is not a tradition I have bought into easily over the years, although I have tried. Like most people I knew in my twenties, I swore I would start a new diet or exercise regime after that last glass of champagne had finally worn off. Also like most people I knew in my twenties, I didn’t really need to lose weight. A bit more exercise would have helped, but I never did join a gym back then and so didn’t learn the value of that form of exercise until later in life.

The problem between myself and resolutions is that once I decide I want to change something, it needs to begin immediately. I am not one for delayed gratification when it comes to feeling better. I want it now; I want to begin whatever new routine will get me to my goal as soon as possible instead of waiting weeks or months. About five years ago I finally decided it was time to try a gym membership; I signed up almost immediately instead of waiting the two months for the calendar change. When it was time to find a more challenging atmosphere seven months later, I cancelled my membership the same week I completed the tour of the new gym. When that gym’s closed doors nearly two years later, the hubby and I had chosen one and signed up before I lost more than a few days of exercise.

I have been tweaking my eating habits since the birth of my second child and have had some real success. In fact when I decided to give up gluten products six months ago, it wasn’t difficult at all. I had become so dependent on other forms of nutrition, like fruits and vegetables, that giving up the bread was easy to do.

I realize that making dietary changes is really the cliché resolution, and that the important things that have to do with work habits and career changes and relationship issues are more often the focus for many folks.

So while I don’t really believe in making New Years Resolutions, I do believe in an end of year cleansing. My friend Celia told me that each year she writes on a piece of paper the things she wants to do differently on one side, and the things that she wants to continue to do on the other. She then burns the paper. My hubby and I have taken that concept a few steps further. We gather round a fire pit in our backyard and write the things to let go of and the things to hold onto on blocks of wood before throwing them into the fire. The fire grows as it consumes the good and the bad, releasing all into the open air of possibility.
We began this ritual the year everyone died. We lost four family members in the span of four months and so were delighted that the year of death was ending. We said goodbye to loved ones on that wood. We planned for a happier future. We attempted to let go of negatives and make promises for positive. We wrote our hopes and dreams and desires on piece after piece of wood. We invited friends and family over to do the same. It was a lovely ritual complete with tears and laughter and silence. And the warmth of the fire growing stronger symbolized our survival of a difficult year and the need to look forward to a brighter one.
Some of what we wrote looked far beyond one calendar year. Some was meant for the short term yet took more than a year to begin to manifest. Some of the pain loosened its grip a bit and allowed us to take in a few cleansing breaths. Some of the pain actually dissipated and flew away with the smoke.

I believe that New Years Resolutions are meant to be a kind of cleansing, of planning for the future. I do these things each year, but not with promises to myself made in the form of a list stuck to the refrigerator that has the great capacity to make me feel guilty. Instead the attempt is to reach beyond today and allow the new to grow into something more permanent and the old to fade away.

I don’t resolve; I burn.

Ghosts of Christmas Past (or passed)

2010-12-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

On one hand I believe in ghosts. On the other hand, I don't believe that most people see them. I suppose part of the contradiction in my beliefs is the uncertainty as to origins, lore, and explanations of any ghostly presence.

There are numerous movies about ghosts or spirits or somehow corrupted beings that have either come back to earth from another place (that is generally unpleasant) or never left and are really pissed off, or suffused with evil, or some such thing.

I think that the reality of lingering or visiting spirits is simpler, and lighter.

A week before Christmas my daughter-in-law heard and saw some things in her house that frightened her. She heard footsteps in a room where there were no people, and saw a shadow cross the front door. When I lived in the house she is in, I never sensed any presence of any kind, and I consider myself pretty open to that kind of thing. People had died in that house long before I lived there. And since.

The interesting thing here is the date of my girl's experience. It was one day shy of the eighteenth anniversary of my grandmother's death. And Gram died IN that house. I do believe that if my girl really heard and saw something, then it was Gram.

This morning my dogs were looking out the sliding glass door and whining and growling at the fence top. When I got up and looked I saw a black cat sitting on the fence in one corner. A cat on the fence is not a common sight in our yard, but not unheard of. The slightly freaky thing is that the cat was the spitting image of our Sammy who died a year and six days ago, and who is buried in the back yard below the spot where the cat was sitting. When I brought my husband over to the door to see the cat, it was gone. Now, I'm not saying that I crossed the room to fetch him and when we both came back the cat was gone. I was standing looking at the cat, I motioned him over while I could see the cat. I moved out of the way so he could stand where I was, and when he looked the cat was gone.

Yes, the cat could very well have simply jumped off the fence in the moment it took for us to change places. And that may very well be exactly what happened. The dogs saw the cat before I did. And then it was gone. And it looked just like Sammy who we still miss.

The idea of loved ones coming back to visit is comforting. The concept that they loved us so strongly in life that they still feel connected to us in death makes the abandoned little girl in me feel special in a way my own parents never could.

Or this could all be a reaction to the brandy I put into my coffee this morning.

Who Am I, Really?

2010-10-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

According to various pieces of misinformation floating around the Internet, my first name is Geraldine and I am 65-years-old. While I won't admit my correct age to cyber-space, I will say that if my mother was still alive, she would be 68 as of last week.

On another site my first name is James and I live in Somerville. Where exactly is Somerville?

Somewhere else my daughter is listed as 44-years-old. (If you are confused about the math, see the age of her deceased grandmother above.)

We live in the age of information. A tremendous amount of our personal lives is written in one large electronic open book. It only takes a couple of clicks to track down just about anyone. But do they really live there? Or of all the locations listed, which is the current one? I can find "proof" online that my grandfather, who died in 2004, is still alive and living in his house. I can also order a copy of his death certificate, also online.

I once paid the bucks to run an online check on my father, only to get all the information together in one place that I had already found by myself for free. And it still amounted to very little. There simply was not enough accurate information to find where he lived. He died less than a month after I paid for this report. I didn't see him before he died.

So what does it mean that so much of what we can find is wrong? If my students are reading this (and they managed to make it to class the day we talked about evaluating internet sources) they remember that some sources are more trustworthy than others, and that there are several ways to determine what websites should or should not be trusted. But even with that knowledge it takes a good deal of digging to unearth the false and toss it out of the knowledge equation.

A very nice (local) bank salesperson showed up at my door several months ago. (Yes, they do exist.) She asked if I was Mrs. Buccelli. The poor thing looked so confused. She was looking for me, but she was under the impression I was born in the late 1940s and planned to try and sell me bank products for seniors.

Clearly she hadn't simply done an Internet search; she had been given information from a credible financial source. The explanation if logical: when my grandfather died I was required by law to take distribution from the remainder of his retirement account. The calculations for splitting it up into equal payments was rather complicated, and somewhere in the system an age was attached to my file that does not reflect reality, only what the computer system needed to know in order to cut some checks.

I explained this and she was very gracious. She then attempted to tell me about products the bank offered for parents of young children. Oops. My kids are grown. She had a difficult time believing that I was old enough to have grown kids. This woman made my day, even with erroneous information.

The invitations to AARP, the urgent messages to choose my medicare prescription health plan immediately, the long-term health care insurance policies, and the funeral home surveys don't have the same effect. I'm not against any of these item, but I don't qualify for a one.

I suppose that to an extent misinformation shields my privacy. I do have an online presence that I maintain, and so have some control over what is out there. If you don't really know if I am Geraldine or James or Ginny, then I am just that much safer. But for those folks who really want to know me, they aren't going to do it solely online. It takes time and care, like any good relationship. I'm not inviting stalkers, cyber or otherwise. Consider it more of a warning. Do you know who I am? Really? And are you sure you want to?

And They Call Themselves Watch Dogs

2010-08-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

I have two wonderful dogs who fancy themselves defenders of the home. Often in the middle of the night one or both will wake me with a growl or a few barks as they respond to noises outside the house they believe could be menacing to us. All too often they respond to a door knock that isn't, storming the front door and windows like they are intent on ripping apart anyone they don't know who dares step foot onto the front porch. There is rarely anyone at the door when this occurs. Sometimes when a visitor walks through the door without a knock they don't even react.

Early this morning, well early every morning, the neighbors' rooster started crowing. It usually starts about 5:00 am. I believe that the chicken pen is located in the apartment"complex" two yards south of me. Yes, we are well within city limits. We are located in the center of town, between the West & East sides.

The rooster is a bit of a controversy on my block. I have heard one or two neighbors complain about the early morning crowing. The all-day-long Tourette's-like crowing is not terribly pleasant either. One day I came home to a "letter" in my mailbox asking that if I had a rooster I get rid of it or the anonymous neighbors would call the police and animal control. That was weeks ago and until this morning the rooster was still living nearby.

I am likely the only neighbor it does not really bother. Our windows are situated so that most of the noise from that side of the house is of low-key annoyance (except the really loud polka music). I also have very fond memories of a pet rooster when I was a kid.

His name was Maestro and he was very smart. He only crowed later in the morning and not often at all during the day. He would take his hens (of which there were two) for daily walks and would come home when called. All three would eat grain from our hands. I loved hearing him crow. Yes, we also lived in town, it is Petaluma after all: The Egg Basket of the World, the Chicken Capital of the World. It was generally tolerated. We did have to get rid of Maestro because our next door neighbor had a rooster that crowed far more and was mistaken for being ours. Shortly after Maestro left and the rogue rooster continued his daily ruckus, the neighbors and cops realized their mistake and then there were no more roosters. Sadly, Maestro was not allowed to return home.

All this to say that when I hear a crowing rooster is makes me smile. And my dogs ignore it.

But it doesn't have the same effect on everyone and this morning someone snapped.

I was awakened by yelling at about 6:40 am. It wasn't loud enough to wake Joe, nor my dogs apparently. There wasn't even a throaty growl to acknowledge that there slumber was being disturbed. Out the bathroom window I could see a man I didn't know yelling and throwing things at the building near the unseen chicken pen. He was screaming "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" punctuated by several obscenities. I heard him yell at the rooster, "Hey rooster. Why don't you crow?! Huh, COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!" And so on.

Still my dogs were silent.

The next time I looked out the window, the angry man was chasing the rooster, chair menacingly in hand, into the yard next to us. By now Joe was awake and getting dressed; Molly was still curled up on the bed and Max Bear (nicknamed Jethro for moments like this) was sitting up but leaning against my side of the bed.

We went downstairs and the rooster was standing atop our pergola, and then the angry man was walking away from our house in our driveway. Joe dialed the police department and while listening to the menu looked outside again to find that the rooster had disappeared. He had been ready to report the angry man who had not only awakened us in a manner FAR worse than a couple of ignorable crows, but was trespassing and moving fowl into our yard.

During all this the dogs were still upstairs in our bedroom on or next to the bed. Neither has barked nor growled once.

The rooster and the angry man disappeared before the Petaluma Police answered the phone, so Joe hung up. We waited for more ruckus. Nothing. The neighbors next door slowly came out of their apartments to survey the damage. We rehashed the incident a bit, theorizing that if we had been able to nab the rooster we could have called the police and animal control to take it away, solving several problems at once.

But when Joe said that we could have let the dogs out back to deal with the rooster I laughed. The dogs had waited until the coast was clear before slowly making their way downstairs hoping to follow their normal morning routine of potty and breakfast.

And they call themselves watchdogs!

A Blast from the Past

2010-08-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

As long as I have had home Internet access I have spent some portion of my time attempting to track down old friends. I have had some success, which is cool. I spent roughly 10 years looking one long lost friend and reconnecting was not a disappointment; in fact I can safely say it has enriched my life.

When my bio-dad died three years ago, my step-sister fed me names to track down so that she could let them know that Dad was gone. In fact I used the Internet to almost reconnect with said bio-dad just before he died. In attempting to track down his other daughter I discovered that she had passed away several years before. With the Internet I can keep track of my estranged father-in-law, keep an eye out for my other long-lost sister, and continue to track down people I would like to see or talk to again. The last year or so Facebook has made my hobby quite a bit easier.

Then someone tracked me down. Turn-about is fair play I suppose.

It was a good thing, though, and a pleasant surprise to see a name in my in-box that I had only seen on envelopes back when we wrote the occasional letter. Jessie used to live next to my grandparents. Their neighbor had a little apartment in the back of her property; Gram and Grandpa had a habit of befriending the inhabitants. Jessie is the sole reason why I passed Algebra in my sophomore year. She was a single mom with a young son. I have no clear recollection of his age at the time, except that he was younger than me and he was fun to hang out with.

Jessie's note was simple and sweet; in a few short lines she reminded me of some genuinely wonderful memories of my grandparents that had been buried far below the anger I still sometimes feel towards my grandfather six years after his death. It was flattering that someone would be interested enough in my life to do a Google search and contact me.

So Jessie, when you read this, thank you. And write soon.

It's Just a Jump to the Left (or it should be)

2010-08-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my hubby, daughter and I met a fairly large group of friends for a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in Menlo Park, CA.

I must say I was mightily disappointed.

I was disappointed by the need of the cast to re-invent the envelope and then push on through: the need to add flesh where there previously was none; the need to badly pantomime the entire movie while the movie was playing. Well over a dozen years ago (which was the last time I saw Rocky in the theater) some cast felt that adding a stripper during the opening credits would make the movie sexier. I beg to differ.

Now before you label me a prude, there are a few things you should know: I have seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show on the big screen over 150 times. I cut my adolescent teeth on fishnet stockings, homemade and refurbished corsets and running up and down the aisles in my 4" come-fuck-me-pumps.

I know my Rocky Horror.

Which is why the current incarnation of casts drives me nuts. From what I have gathered there are several in the state that go from one theater to the other putting on their own show before and during the movie. They have their own pretty authentic make-up, costumes and props. Some of the actors are pretty amazing. The rest simply suck.

When I was a regular midnight madness inhabitant I didn't own copy of the movie. (Admittedly this was before it was available on either VHS or DVD.) We had to learn the movie BY WATCHING AND MEMORIZING IT. The casts I have seen thus far look over their shoulder at the screen far too often, and even more often blow lines, lyrics and movement. In my mind there is no excuse. Buy the damn movie, study the moves at home and be able to produce a completely replicated live show during the movie.

I can point out a redeeming quality or two: During the Time Warp/Sweet Transvestite, three live Transylvanians stood in front of the screen with flashlights and performed some original choreography for the audience. This was a wonderful little tidbit amongst a whole lot of crap. The idea that a cast could elevate their work beyond the screen in a creative and non-icky way is terrific. The fact that each of the players looked bored brought the production value down a bit. I have to say, though, that the young man playing Brad was absolutely awesome. He was in character from the time he was spotted outside the theater and all the way through.

I applaud the concept of a cast when showing the movie. I do. I just wish the cast acted like the professionals they profess to being. Website after website touts these wanna-be actors as hard-workers who are trying to make a living, or partial living, on the weekends. In my mind they have the power to elevate the entire genre to something more, but instead they get caught up in their own excitement and arrogance and lessen the experience. The "barker" for our showing had great promise. But by the end of the movie his insistence on shouting lines at the screen, sometime repeatedly because he was drowned out by the chaos of voices he had encouraged, nearly brought on an audience fed lynch mob and beating.

The last time I saw the movie on the big screen was about a dozen years ago. I'm not sure I'll be going back again quite as quickly.

My Weird Daughter and I

2010-07-14T13:10:00.001-07:00

(originally posted on my blog at RedRoom.com)

When my daughter was six-years old she often spent her afternoons with her best friend Brianna. Brianna’s grandmother was a nice enough lady who often carted the girls around on errands after school. One day during a particularly lively play date Brianna’s grandma said to my daughter, “Melia, you are weird!”

My first reaction was to belt the woman. Who did this cleaning lady think she was to say something potentially hurtful to my lively, funny, beautiful daughter? The violent reaction, thankfully, faded very quickly. In its place was the reality I had long ago learned to embrace: weirdness doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

I had felt like a social outcaste in my two-parent, multiple-child, no-divorce neighborhood all through elementary school. My parents were not only divorced, but they left me to be raised, alone, by my grandparents. I felt as though I spent my entire childhood trying to apologize for my weirdness by doing whatever I could think of to fit in. Very little of it worked, and I probably seemed even weirder and I know I was uncomfortable in my own skin.

By the time I arrived at Junior High and met many, many other weird kids, I began to finally see that not everyone was normal. In fact that was the same year that the divorces began in my neighborhood and within a few years there were new families blending on every street.

By the eighth grade I was almost completely comfortable in my own skin, or at least I knew how to fake it very well. My best friend and I even wore leprechaun costumes to school for St. Patrick’s Day, complete with giant, green homemade top hats. We were very well received as most kids were in awe of our willingness to appear silly in public. In high school I discovered the drama department and the Rocky Horror Picture show and my comfort level with my own weirdness was nearly complete.

When it came time to raise my own daughter, I wanted her to feel comfortable with herself from the onset. I hoped to surround her self-esteem with the kind of mental cement that would keep her safe and secure even when she traveled outside of home So when she told us the story of being called weird, I told her that the next time someone called her that to thank them. After all, weird was a good thing, a compliment really. It meant she was an individual, not the same as everyone else, but in a good way.

It worked. Many people since have hurled the weird comment her way. Each time she accepts and embraces it, it deflates them and empowers her.

She has been called weird many times since and thanked every single person. By copping to and embracing her differences willingly, she doesn’t waste time apologizing for being herself or wallowing in the worry that people won’t like her for who she is. Despite the normal adolescent bumps, she is pretty comfortable in her own skin and the mental cement is intact.

My daughter and I are both weird, thank you very much.

To Sing or Not to Sing, That is the question

2010-07-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

My first singing lesson, that was supposed to take place last week, was rescheduled for this week.

Strangely enough I think that I knew it would be canceled as I was driving to the lesson last week, unnaturally calm. I say unnaturally because I expected to be fighting the panic back, to be talking myself down out of my metaphorical anxiety tree. I arrived earlier than was required and managed to walk in to the building breathing normally.

The actual first lesson day was another story. I didn't make it out of the house because I needed to use all of my energy and focus to fend off the expected panic attack.

As the anxiety rises within the body, the mental capabilities are tipped off balance. The mental steps that I think we all walk down as we attempt to follow our logic begin to spiral back up on themselves, covering the same ground over and over again. Isn't that the classic cliche definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of finding a different outcome.

Getting out of that head space means switching metaphors from a staircase to a tight rope. It is very important to walk that tight rope carefully and deliberately in order to make sure to keep the thought processes linear, in line and straight so as not to veer off and go back to the circular motion and returning to the same outcomes over and over again. Sometimes it takes a voice from the outside to get off the stairs and onto the line.

It is my signal to myself that I am fighting to stay sane when I know that the thoughts that concern me are becoming great fears and the solutions in turn become less and less flexible. I can't give a logical explanation as to why I was feeling panicked. Lord knows that I tried to put my finger on a scenario that I could attach to. The hope was that if I had been able to attach to a scenario I would have been better equipped to find a definable solution earlier.

I tried to remember the explanation I had been practicing for more than a week as to why I wanted to take voice lessons: I used to be a decent back-up singer. I used to be able to carry a tune. I want to learn the discipline it takes to return to those skills. (What I really want is to have the ability to sing strongly enough for a vibrato and solos, but I'm not sure I would have felt comfortable admitting to that in the first session.)

However, as the time neared (I was about 1.5-2 hours out at this point) I couldn't remember my logical reasons, or couldn't hold the thoughts long enough to get all the way through my own speech in my head. What kept coming back was the other truth, that I wanted to conquer an issue that was a direct result of the childhood sexual abuse by my guitar teacher. I suppose that even in the safety of my own, safe home, I was unwilling and as yet unable to face head-on this facet of my own recovery.

I tried telling myself that if I didn't go he would win. That concept gave me a full 5 minutes of relief and strength. It fell away quickly, though, when the unnamed panic began to creep back in.

An attempt at strategizing my way out of the lesson didn't get me very far. I imagined calling and canceling, knowing that canceling meant forfeiting the gift certificate that the Husband had given me for my birthday a year before. He spent money on this gift, had given me a gift I had asked for out loud. The idea of throwing away his gift added a layer of guilt to my panic. So I went from the idea of canceling to the guilt of wasting a gift and putting off recovery and quickly moved back to not feeling strong enough to attend the lesson to wanting to cancel to guilt. You can see the downward spiral.

Then I thought about the book project I have been working on. The book project, mind you, that I have not been able to do any real work on for more than a month, despite the fact that I have the time. I had hoped to blog about the singing lessons as a form of drafting for the book. Not long ago, it seems, I had been feeling very strong and confident about the book project and the personal resources that would allow me to research and write the thing. The last several weeks have been spent primarily in a dark place where I worked very hard at avoiding creativity, specifically the book project.

So add that step onto the spiral staircase, and we have another piece to repeat over and over again. As you can imagine, the panic only grew.

As I realized that my thought processes were out of balance with reality, I considered turning to pharmaceuticals. Specifically taking a Valium. That would require I have someone else drive me to the lesson. A surprisingly calm request moved from my lips to my husband's ears. He didn't consent immediately, but agreed in silence to change his mind about how he had planned to spend the time I was singing. He asked me if I was nervous, I calmly looked him in the eye and simply said, "Yes."

Another hour passed by (without drugs) and the Husband suggested that I talk about my feelings. Even out loud I couldn't give a logical story frame to my feelings. I could repeat that I felt ill and panicked, that I didn't want to go, but that I didn't want to waste his gift to me. Then he said the magic words that let me off the hook when I forfeited by gift certificate.

"Whatever. It'll be a donation." That concept was my ticket to finding the fine line of logic and stepping off the spiral.

Gotta love the simplicity of the out he gave me and the permission to call and cancel the appointment as gracefully as a panicked person can. It allowed me the room to cry for awhile and follow the Husband's next piece of wisdom, "If you're not ready, you're not ready."

Apparently I'm not ready. I can be okay with that for now.

Birthday Blues

2010-06-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. Usually on the day of my birthday I am having a difficult time emotionally, but this year the tough stuff has already (mostly) passed.

I don't dislike my birthday because I am getting old (cause I'm not) but because I have always believed that a birthday should be something special, but life hasn't always supported that belief. That includes a bunch of old crap about my parents and a couple of nasty incidents in childhood that occurred if not on the day, then relatively close to it.

This year I felt the familiar down-turn of mood almost two weeks out and have since worked through, or lived through, the bulk of the icky feelings.

This morning I had an early breakfast with my hubby and as I write my dog is cuddled up next to me on the couch ready to dole out as much unconditional love as I need (and then some). I look forward to a special lunch with my sister-in-law and a trip to the City to celebrate the SheWrites.com one year anniversary. A larger extended family potluck is being planned by my daughter for this weekend or next. I have already received a ton of birthday wishes via Facebook.

So far, a good day. Not a blue one.

Happy Birthday to Me!

To Sing or Not to Sing?

2010-06-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

I've scheduled my first singing lesson for this afternoon. Last year for my birthday my husband gave me one hour of singing lessons. My birthday is tomorrow, so you can see it took me some time to get up the nerve to make the call to set up the initial time. The plan is to stretch out one hour to 2 half-hour lessons this week and next. If all goes well, I will add in more over the course of the summer.

The desire for the lessons stems from my work around the book I am writing about being sexually abused as a kid. As a little, little girl, I loved to sing. I often sang to myself made up songs. I imagined interviews many years in the future when I would tell the story to some interested reporter how I used to sing to my own reflection in the window of Gram's white car. I would explain how I had always loved to sing and what an important part of my life music had always been. When I was actively taking guitar lessons I wrote and sang a number of my own songs.

So, life didn't happen exactly the way I had envisioned. I don't sing in public, certainly not solo. I love to sing along with the radio, but you won't hear me warbling in the shower. I lost my voice when I lost my music, back when I was taking guitar lessons from a pedophile.

These lessons are another in a long line of attempts to regain what I lost all those years ago.

So what makes me think I can sing to begin with? Not much, actually. I know from work in high school productions that I can be a competent back-up singer, but probably not a soloist. But what if I can sing well? Strong, out loud, carry a tune and find a vibrato? I can, or could at one time, at least carry a tune. I'd like to recapture that part of myself at the very least. Anything more would be simply wonderful.

Irony or Coincidence?

2010-06-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night I was teaching my summer freshman composition course. We were discussing Virginia Woolf's "Death of The Moth" essay, reading aloud and discussing the passage about the moth flying to and fro across the window pane as if he were trying to get out to the world and the activity, energy and life represented in the open fields.

We heard a noise at one of our very large classroom windows (we are on the second floor of the building). What looked like a giant bug with a wide rectangular face, it's open mouth brimming with tiny sharp teeth, was flitting to and fro across the window as if it were trying to get into our world and the activity and life we represented. Unlike the moth, our over-sized bug was attached to a very long neck and a wet substance was spewing from the center of its mouth.

It was a scrub brush attached to a very long pole and a hose. In reality we knew this immediately, but the timing was pretty interesting. It stayed on that window until we were nearly done discussing the essay, and spent less time on the second window. By the time we were ready to move on, so had the scrub brush.

Irony or coincidence? You decide.

What Dreams May Come

2010-06-12T08:17:00.001-07:00

I have had several, shall we say, interesting dreams this last few mornings.

In order of appearance:
1) My daughter and her boyfriend had a baby. They only took care of the baby part-time, so I kept having to step in and care for the infant. I also had to fight them over their inconsistent parenting behavior.

2) I was 2-months pregnant with a baby of my own.

3) I was in China and diagnosed with Cancer. I had only a few weeks to live. Two chemotherapy treatments were to be taken before I boarded the plane home, the third once I was back on US soil.

4) A nuclear bomb went off. Several of us who survived were attempting to figure out what resources were left.

Apparently, according to online dream dictionaries, I am dealing subconsciously with some anxiety and changes.

Ya think!!

I hate to complan, but...

2010-06-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm having a rough weekend.

Reasons:
Burnout--I just finished the Spring semester and am slowly working on the plans for Summer school. Then I will have to work on Fall. I am currently scheduled to teach 3 classes at two different schools this fall (one is new for me) and may be adding a 4th on in as well. I'm not complaining necessarily, but am not feeling the excitement I prefer to feel. I'd like more down-time, but don't have the luxury.

Pain--My back went out on me. What does that mean, you ask? It means that my lower back hurts a great deal, especially when I am upright and walking. This is annoying and depressing on several levels. It means I can't paint my ceilings (yes a real project I was really looking forward to) that will precede repainting my dining room and entryway with a color I don't despise. It means I can't go shopping, run errands, clean or walk my dogs. My back actually feels swollen in places. I'll be calling the chiropractor tomorrow. In the meantime I am trying to stretch and build muscles for support.

Worry--My grandson's heart is working very, very hard to keep him going. A bit too hard, it seems. Instead of waiting until he is 3 or 6 months old to do surgery, they may have to do it fairly soon. Let me be clear, I have complete faith that this young man will pull through just fine. I do. He is strong. But I as I write this he may still be in the ER with his parents and neither of them is responding to my text messages. Their not responding doesn't necessarily mean bad news, more likely it means no news. The cliche says that no news is good news. But waiting is really a bitch.

Missed Trip--Because of my back I couldn't make the trip to Las Vegas where my adopted sister is about to have her first baby.

Other stuff--that I'd rather not share on the Internet is also percolating away under the surface and likely adding to my IBS and back pain. Nothing life-threatening or horribly bad, just internal work.

The up-side: I am writing by updating this blog. Not the most fun, entertaining or exciting post I've ever written, but at least I am writing. And the drugs are helping with the back pain.

Mmmmm drugs.

:-)

Those Old Visceral Reactions

2010-06-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

I have recently swallowed too many of my own (not terribly good or fun) feelings, and found that I had reawakened my good old buddy, IBS.

I really prefer referring to him by his initials, because initials sound more relevant and important. When I say Irritable Bowel Syndrome it sounds like a cop-out, like nothing terribly serious let alone painful. I mean, come on, irritation is just that, irritating. Not painful or hurtful or really very serious. When my mood is irritable I rarely do any real physical harm to anyone. But when my you-know-what is irritable, some heavy duty pain is the result.

When I was 11-years-old (before the local docs had discovered the term Irritable Bowel Syndrome) some fairly acute abdominal pain led me to the hospital and surgery. When I say acute, I'm talking writhing around on a the bed, floor and backseart of my grandmother's car moaning and crying, clutching the area just below center of my body with all my might, hoping that the outside pressure would relieve some of what was going on inside.

When the surgeon didn't find what he had expected, he yanked out my perfectly healthy appendix so as not to have wasted a trip. Over the years, each time I returned to a doctor with similar complaints, they ran tests and determined that there was nothing physically wrong.

Of course there was something physically wrong, it just wasn't caused by something physical. It was caused my something emotional: When I was eleven I was swallowing words and worries that surrounded the sexual abuse I experienced. As a teen, well, as a teen there is plenty of angst anyway, and I always managed to get myself into difficult emotional situations. As an adult it was several years before I understood the connection between emotional pain and physical pain.

Thankfully in recent years I have understood (and accepted) what causes the pain, that severe feelings can be directly tied into severe physical pain. After all, before medical science put an nondescript medical term to it, there were plenty of terms to describe when emotions have a physical effect.

Think about it, someone is a pain in the neck. She makes me sick to my stomach. He is a pain in the ass. There is bad blood between us. I've had a change of heart. The cat has his tongue. I'm waiting with bated breath. I'm in a blue funk. Blue funk?

Okay, so I'd rather be in a blue funk than feel the IBS symptoms. So I'm back on the emotional wagon. I'm working on vocalizing my feelings instead of keeping them inside.

For those of you who know me fairly well, it may be hard for you to believe that I EVER keep feelings to myself. I assure you that I do, and you might want to feel a little bit grateful about that. ;-)

What a big boy!

2010-05-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Memphis has his own site:

http://memphisborelli.com/

Walking with Memphis

2010-05-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

My grandson (I know, I am entirely too young to be a grandmother) was born this weekend!!!

I haven't had a chance to hold him yet, he is currently in the NICU at UCSF. I can't wait to get my mitts on him, though. Shortly after he was born his parents serenaded him with "Close to You." This new phase of life promises to hold plenty of new challenges.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure how to be a grandparent. My role models, my own maternal grandparents, played the role of my parents. My maternal great-grandmother wasn't the nicest lady, and I didn't know my paternal grandparents. I don't have a lot of information to draw on, good or bad. I suppose that babies are babies, and I can feel my devotion to him growing even from a distance. I already find myself longing to be closer to him, to touch him and to hold him.

Something Fun to Read

2010-05-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

http://storyscapejournal.com/

My essay "One Simple List" is there!!!

No, really. It's okay.

2010-04-08T13:15:00.001-07:00

I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Okay, take your hands away from your ears and stop humming because while you may be uncomfortable hearing my truth, most people know someone who has been hurt in the same way that I have.

Few want to discuss it at all, let alone admit it out loud, but statistically well over half of the population of the US alone is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

One of the many problems with sexual abuse being a taboo subject is that empathy and understanding are rarely discussed out in the open. And too often when the subject comes up, the very few people who have falsely accused someone of sexual abuse are the most common topic of discussion.

I'd like to see that changed. Not that I want to be a crusader for sexual abuse as casual discourse or party chit-chat. I do want to see some stigma removed so that the people who need to talk (most of us) can do so safely.

Wow, I just published that without meaning to. Must be something subconscious. Oh well.

I won't be on this soap-box much, so don't run away. Just try to keep an open mind. Really, it'll be okay.

TV Dad

2010-02-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

The last time I saw my bio-dad was actually on a TV screen several days after he died. The hubby and I paid a visit to my step-mother to...to do what? To share grief? Ask questions? I suppose to do whatever we do when a relative dies. I hadn't spoken to my Dad in something like 15 years, yet this wasn't a visit meant to soothe my guilt (of which I had none). I had actually spent some time the month before attempting to track the man down (again) and so wanted some sort of contact and understanding of his death. He had died as a result of severe burns from a house fire.

In part, I had came to look at the cottage he had been living in and where the fire took place. I also came to see the chair that his family claimed was the cause of the fire. I was hoping for some answers, some idea if a cigarette or an electrical shortage had caused the sparks that ultimately gave birth to enough heat to melt a good deal of his flesh.

Sharon, his wife, now his widow, was happy to see me; there is a commonality that grief offers. I truly don't remember much of what we talked about, and I haven't peeked at the journaling I did then. What I remember most was watching the VHS tape whirring in the VCR and the events of his 60th birthday party. (Was it 60? or 50 or 55?) We listened to Sharon's narration, and her daughter Susan's interjections, as many people passed by the screen. There were only a few names and faces that were familiar to me; I had spent so little real time in my bio-dad's world.

When Dad finally did some into view, he was carrying around a little dog. I'm not sure carrying is the right description. The dog was really tucked between Dad's arm and body, content in its roll as companion. There was clearly a great deal of affection between him and his dog. Sharon and Susan both made comments about the bond between the man and the beast. What I could see was a patience that I would not otherwise have attributed to this man. There appeared to be a place of infinite patience and parental love that the dog had managed to tap into. I'm not sure what is says that a dog could get into a place neither of his daughters nor any of his step-kids could. I could be jealous of that dog, but I'm not. I have a sense of gratitude that the man could finally find a conduit to feelings he had wanted so desperately to feel but had been incapable of accessing.

Dad knew he was being filmed, but would not pose or act for the camera. In fact he often gave the camera a look that said: you are only here by my good graces, but don't expect me to interact, and don't get in my way. He and the dog went on and off screen, sometimes glaring from afar. He refused to act the part of guest-of-honor.

That man had such a streak of manliness. That sounds odd, I know. But he did. He had this no-nonsense air about him sometimes that verged on frightening. He knew that the party, complete with live music and food and drink all night, was in his honor, so he played along. He ate, he drank, he sat and listened to music. He looked very much like the man I had known for the 10 years or so of my life when we weren't estranged.

I can't honestly say whether seeing that image of him helped or hurt my need to know...what? Who he was when he died? How he looked before he died? I had already learned that before the fire he was disabled and used either a wheelchair or a walker to get around. He was an undiagnosed diabetic who only began to receive regular insulin once he was in the burn unit. There may have been some high blood-pressure or heart issues at play as well. He wasn't supposed to smoke, yet the newspaper report said he fell asleep in his electric easy chair with a burning cigarette.

The chair was made to lift him up to a near standing position when he wanted to move out of it, or recline when he wanted to relax or sleep. According to the family, he wasn't even in the chair when it caught fire.

I'm finally ordering a copy of the fire report. I tried over 2 years ago, but the two voice-mail messages I left for the local fire department weren't returned. This time I spoke with a real person.

In a way I feel fortunate that the most recent pictures in my head of my bio-dad are the same as the ones before we stopped speaking. I can live with a picture from the TV screen.

Snake on a Plane

2010-02-07T12:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I wasn't actually on an airplane with a snake, but I once sat next to a very, very cranky woman during a three hour flight from Boulder, CO to SFO.

I can certainly understand feeling frustrated or even angered by the experience of traveling, especially post-9/11. But this woman sustained her anger through the pre-boarding, the flight and disembarking.

I was the unlucky person wedged between her and another person about whom any personl details, including gender, have long since left my memory. I had managed to book a flight that had neither a window nor aisle seat available anywhere on the plane. That lucky person next to the window studeously ignored my presence during the flight as well as I ignored his/hers. It's rather astonishing, really, that people who are seated, or should I say crowded, so closely to each other for an extended period of time can have so little interaction. We push ourselves into our seats and studiously avoid touching even our elbows on the arm rests. Between the window seater and I there was at least a courteous nod and half-smile. Nothing rude, simply the acknowledgment that we were two strangers forced into close proximity of each other who had little to no intention of interacting beyond the obligatory nods and clear attempts to avoid touching or interacting. But between myself and the angry lady on the aisle was another story.

She glared at me when she first arrived at the three seats. Like most people on the aisle, I suppose, she was disappointed that there was someone between her and the window; who wouldn't want the luxury of an empty seat next to them on a over-full flight? Even understanding this, I was borderline offended when she continued to stare angrily at me, even after I nodded and offered a half-smile. My existence was clearly the second to last straw on her wide camel back. She dropped her carry-on luggage on to the floor next to me and kicked it rather viciously under the seat in front of her before landing hard on the seat herself.

The pulling and tugging of the seatbelt was like a silent tantrum; I could almost hear the internal dialogue and a myriad of swear words that each jerk and pull of the belts was fueled by. I wondered if she hurt herself when she locked the two belt ends into place and then pulled hard to tighten into place. Once seated, she would not look at me, nor at the stewardess during the pre-flight instructions; she only stared straight ahead at the seat back in front of her. I wonder if that seat became hot from her gaze. The person in front of her did seem to squirm quite a bit at the onset of the flight.

Shortly after take-off, I spent some time utilizing my naturally sharp peripheral vision to study this very angry creature. She had long dark hair, glasses, and wore loose fitting, dark clothes over a plump body. She reminded me of women I used to see in the crowds at science fiction conventions; if there is such as thing as a cookie cutter version of a female con-geek, she was one. Her jewelry was all silver, there was some sort of dark blue or purple gem worked into the pendant around her neck. Her hair followed no style; it simply hung long.

Eventually, she pulled out a paperback novel by David Baldacci. Not exactly the reading material I expected, but the cover did look dark and menacing. Regardless, she was reading, and for a few moments my opinion of her rose a bit. I have high regard for books, and in general for people who read them. Sustained reading is a sign of some intelligence, some ability to think at an elevated level, maybe a bit higher than a non-reader. It wasn't a romance novel, so she wasn't losing herself in a river of romantic notions the way I had done in my very early years.

I sat with this for a short time until she brutally tore a page out of the back of the book. I am not exaggerating when I say brutally. Yes, I love books and you could even say that I revere them, but when she ripped the page from the book, it was clear her anger had no limits, she was even pissed off at the book. I was actually so surprised by this that I flinched, thinking that a hunk of my hair was next. She used the page, now garbage, to spit a used chunk of chewing gum out of her mouth. The gum and paper were crunched up together in her hand and then pushed into the seat pocket in front of her.

We build walls around us when in crowded conditions like this. If Jung was still around I suspect he would identify it as a part of a collective consciousness; the walls don't really exist, but we all have them. It was time to fortify my wall if I was going to survive the remainder of the flight. I cut off my peripheral vision, pulled my arm as close to my body as possible, closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else, anywhere else. In other words I psychically removed myself form the situation as best as I could. I even made a point to breath as shallowly as possible.

This intent was thwarted somewhat by the flight attendant and the drink dispensing. There was simply no way around reaching in front of my angry companion to retrieve my orange juice. She steadfastly refused any and all attempts by the flight crew at being taken care of. She wanted no refreshments, no snacks, no contact, nothing. She wanted to remain left alone in her anger.

When we reached San Francisco, and it was finally time to disembark, I continued to sit quietly in my seat even as people were beginning to mill about and fill the aisle. I mentioned to the window person that if he/she didn't mind, I wasn't in a hurry to stand up: we would be able to get off the plane eventually, no hurry. He/She agreed and we waited until the aisle was mostly clear before we began collecting our belongings and disembarking.

The angry lady stood as soon as was allowed, yanked her carry-on out from under the seat and used similar movements to remove a bag from the overheard bin. She nearly hit someone with her bag, but was still clearly irritated with the presence of other's and their belongings. I could see her anger, that had not so much cooled as leveled out during the flight, rise back up as she mentally broadcast her disgust and frustration with the human race that surrounded her.

By the time I was off the plane, she was nowhere to be found. It was at that point that I chose to never allow crowds or security rules or delays to get under my skin when traveling. I never want to be that woman. I never want to exude those kinds of negative vibes to the innocents around me. Hell, I never want to feel that level of anger for any sustained amount of time. So as unpleasant a woman, and a situation, as that was, I did learn something valuable. It's simply not necessary to be a bitch in the air, nor a snake on a plane.

Wrapped in Music

2010-01-31T11:10:00.001-08:00

Imagine sitting in a room made for music. Imagine closing your eyes and breathing in the simple eloquence of a lone instrument and accompanying musician. Eyes closed, I could feel the notes surround the small crowd in the newly finished concert hall, weaving in and around each of us. No microphones were needed, no curtains, no barrier between the music and the listeners. As Mary Rogers put it, we were wrapped in a blanket of music.

I spent last evening at the Green Music Center on the campus of Sonoma State University. A retirement party was the inaugural event for the Hospitality Center. It was strictly invitation only, a semi-private affair that I lucked into because I am fortunate to be related to one of the retirees. My uncle, Sonny, was one of the two men honored last evening for his many, many years working at SSU. He, along with a team of equally incredible people, is responsible for the at times controversial but irrefutably incredible music center.

I have a complicated relationship with music, but last evening my issues were non-existent. What was on the forefront was family pride and awe. Sonny stepped onto the campus fresh out of high school, and until 2009, never left. All told he spent 45 years of his life dedicated to his academic and professional career at SSU. His mother, my beloved grandmother, died long before the Center was an clear idea. But his father, born a simple farmer from Arkansas, watched Sonny work tirelessly to oversee that the design and building of what is now a world class music center. Sonny and I both missed his parents last night, but I could feel them there. I could feel the pride they felt for him. I could feel their love wrap around our shoulders as surely as the music did.

There wasn't a spot in the hall that wasn't enveloped in the notes that emanated from the piano. Even nearly empty, the hall was so clearly full of the music that will be. The small crowd were merely representatives of the hundreds of thousands of listeners of all ages and all walks of life who will enjoy the variations of the musical blanket that will now, and maybe forever, fill that hall to the rafters.

Rainy Reflections

2010-01-18T16:12:00.000-08:00

Most people I talk to are taken aback, and some are even appalled, that I enjoy a dark, cold rainy day. I get it, many people suffer from seasonal depression, so the rain only adds to their already depleted stores of the all important Vitamin-D whose presence can be restore with some sun-shine. They not only enjoy the sunshine, but they like the heat that accompanies it and can spend hours outside soaking in the heart. Not me. The rain re-energizes me as much as it soothes me.

I deal with depression plenty, but it isn't seasonal. Very little makes me happier than being bundled up with good company of some sort–a book, my dog, my honey, a favorite move–and the sound of rain drops outside the window. I enjoy pausing and watching the wind whip the leaves into a frenzy, the heaviness of the water pulling down on branches, or puddling up on outdoor furniture.

I like to drive in the rain, even when I should be safely home behind solid walls, to watch the water build up in the gutters and become small ponds in the street. Like a horror movie or scary story, I am drawn to watching flood waters (from a safe distance) rise above sand bags, or the river creep over its banks. I don't like to watch actual destruction, but the promise or threat of it. It feels a bit like flirting with a bad boy from afar, or playing with a burning candle. I want to get close to the danger, feel its power and threat, absorb the energy that waft off the tiny waves created when the wind coaxes the water beyond its natural boundaries.

When the sun and temperature are high, I prefer to hide inside in the dark. It feels as though I actually wilt in the heat. I feel limp and lifeless, as if the sun absorbed my energy. Isn't that supposed to be the other way around, or am I just thinking of Superman? The sun is supposed to give life, but it feels like it is stealing mine one degree at a time. I never feel daintier or weaker than when the sky is cloudless, the sun is high and bright, and the ground heats up.

El Nino is coming. That's what I have been hearing for months. Today is supposed to be the beginning of weeks and weeks of heavy rain and wind. My memory of an El Nino winter was one that lasted well into June. This is only January; the area is limping into winter after three years of drought. If the rain comes down hard enough, the natural stream systems won't be able to get the water into the depleted reservoirs fast enough and while the major river(s) likely won't flood, the smaller streams might. And the streams is what caused problems a few years ago.

So far today there is plenty of rain, but not enough to convince me that the little boy is back. Regardless, I am reveling in the fact that I don't have anywhere to be until afternoon tomorrow. Until them I'm praying for rain; not because our eco-system needs it, but because I do.

Procrastination and the New Year

2010-01-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

If I actually sat down and made a list of all the things I am not doing right now, the "shoulds" of family, house and employment responsibilities, I wonder if I would feel better or worse.

I quietly gave up on resolutions years ago, long before it was fashionable to flaunt my non-conformity, or lack of desire to choose the worst possible time of year to make grandiose pledges to better myself. Two New Years ago we began a new tradition of throwing a presto-log into the fire pit and tossing in bits of wood covered in the our desires for the new year. The desires could be about letting go of old habits, about moving forward, or words of encouragement to the cosmos to bring brighter happier things into our lives. It is another way of making lists, listing out the things we are willing to give up and lists of things we are willing to accept. This year we have already have several "Spare the Air" days and frankly I don't want to acquire any bad Karma for purely selfish reasons. Maybe once this week's rains die down we can safely perform what is quickly becoming a favorite ritual.

But for the moment I will admit to putting off the following:
Writing a letter of recommendation for a dear friend
Updating syllabi
Creating lesson plans and schedules
Putting the last of Saturday's party stuff away
Returning the party stuff that I borrowed
Attacking the piles of laundry in my bedroom
Making my bed
Cleaning out my car
Cleaning my office
Organizing my office
Making plans as to what I am going to move into my new office space
Writing about my upcoming grandchild & my ensuing anxieties
Writing creatively (besides the blog update)
Updating my other blog
Eating
Getting dressed
Drying my hair

One thing that I should do is to meet my dear friend Linelle for coffee. She is a bright shining light in my life. Consider one thing done!

(P.S. This posting sounds much more depressed than I feel.)

Practice or Review

2009-11-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

I sit and write this with a kitten tucked between my arm and the keyboard of my laptop. She came home with us on Halloween–not because she was black or scary (she is decidedly neither)–but because when I pinned her down, her back against my legs, and rubbed her ears she relaxed into the affection I was forcing onto her, and I saw a glimpse of something in that moment of kitten bliss (hers and mine). It simply made sense to bring her home and watch her meld into the familial fold.

Her penchant for cuddling, for curling up on a lap, a chest, a shoulder, or a bodily nook serves to pin us down for indeterminate amounts of time while we revel in the love she brings to us in her purr and her napping posture. There is an informal (but often enforced) rule in our home that a sleeping or cuddling cat on human is an instant excuse for avoiding a chore. If the water is boiling on the stove, the phone is ringing, the dinner plates need to be cleared and/or washed, and a cat has suddenly appeared on a lap, that lap is free to remain immobile until the cuddly body is gone. Someone else will take care of the chore.

A cuddly kitten body not only helps avoid chores, but most other movement as well. It is all too familiar a feeling; many kittens have come before her. From the first night she crept in between Joe and I in bed and plopped down for the night we knew that she was the puzzle piece we hadn't known was missing. Now we spend our downtime held in our chairs unable and unwilling to move lest we disturb this lovely cherub.

These feelings are familiar, not just because we have lived through and loved kittenhood before, but because it is so reminiscent of babyhood. One of my earliest and favorite memories of my son is the first night we spent in the hospital. I was holding him, chest to chest as he slept. The place where our bodies touched warmed and expanded until it engulfed us both. I had felt connected to him from the first moment that I felt him move inside me, but this outside, physical connection was stronger and deeper than I could have imagined. It was intoxicating, a feeling I didn't want to end–which also meant that I didn't want to move. Once we took him home, I spent as many hours of those first days as I could sitting comfortably on a rocking chair, holding him as he slept, occasionally allowing a visitor or family member a few moments of baby bliss.

On days when my baby and I visited my grandparents, my grandfather would insist on staying home to babysit while Gram and I went out to lunch. We would leave him sitting in the rocking chair cradling the sleeping infant head in the crook of his arm. Hours later we would find him in the same position still happily rocking while baby Vincent slept; Grandpa often nodded off himself, all the while gently rocking them both.

Now my son is expecting a baby of his own. I wonder if this kitten (who came from my son's house) was meant to be with us so that we could be reminded of that all consuming love of a baby, that visceral need to stay in one spot while something warm and cuddly sleeps and we revel in the warmth and intoxication. Are we practicing the immobility of being pinned down by a sleepy, needy baby, or are we simply reviewing our favorite positions.

Tourism

2009-09-26T12:35:00.001-07:00

An outing to Carmel-by-the-Bay that immediately followed a visit to the Monterey Outlet Mall was very eye-opening.

Carmel was packed! Nearly every two-hour parking space on the streets was filled. The sidewalks were brimming with people. Some restaurants had lines of people waiting to be seated. And this was at 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

We stepped briefly into a shop that sold pens and paper. The hope was that in addition to finding a cool journal (which we did find, but did not purchase) we could check in with the salesperson about a finding a local bookstore. We left shortly after we overhearing a woman choosing the $295 pen to add to her collection. Notice the missing decimal point. Yes, this was a nearly $300.00 pen! And I saw several on display, including a jewel-encrusted one, for over $1000!

In all the shops that we visited, nothing sold for less than $50. Nothing. Of the shops we visited, the average price for any item was $300. And the place was packed! There was no shortage of money in that little town on the last Friday of September.

In contrast, the Monterey Outlet Mall where we began our day was pretty quiet. Well over half of the store fronts were empty, 2/3 if I wanted to be realistic. We saw only a handful of people while we looked (mostly in vain) for some great clothing deals. The candy store was the happening place, the few visitors all seemed to gravitate towards the recession proof goods.

So it would seem that in the midst of a recession, the people who have always had money still do, and the people who could use a bargain can't find one. Interesting.

Love, Gratitude and Writing

2009-07-05T15:59:00.001-07:00

I am feeling particularly blessed these days. I am working; I have a job with regular income; actually I have two teaching jobs (as of tomorrow). In this economy I feel blessed several times over. I am, however, grappling with the fact that although I am making more money than I have in my life, the cost of living here is more than ever and so I don't have any money. In fact this week I am waiting with baited breath for a paycheck so that I can pay my bills much later than I like to. But, hey, at least I WILL be able to pay them. Again, feeling blessed.

I am also feeling a tremendous amount of gratitude that my creativity level is so high. I am researching and writing a book that is the story of being sexually abused as a child. Yeah, I know, sounds dark. And it kind of is. But it is also very, very enlightening. The man who molested me is quickly moving from the deepest darkest shadows of my memories into the light where he looks more pathetic than menacing. You see I am researching my own story, the accuracy of my own memory, and the timeline of my life versus his. It is really fascinating how we humans deal with trauma, and much like that pathetic and ugly man, the more I examine my trauma the less of a grip it has on me.

I also joined a reading and writing group on Facebook, along with several alumni from my graduate program. It is such a joy to discuss books and craft with my contemporaries again. As much as I love teaching and watching students make connections with the required readings and their writing, it is really lovely to have discussions on a higher plain.

I am feeling loved on all fronts. My kids are healthy and happy. My marriage is good and we are quickly approaching our 20th wedding anniversary. I have the best friends a woman could ever hope for, and I seem to have learned how to accept their love.

Yep. Life is good.

Educational Nightmares

2009-06-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

I think that most everyone has bad dreams about school, even long after we are done attending classes. My dreams often include an embarrassing state of undress, a corridor full of people and the inability to find a classroom or locker or paper to hand in.

Or realizing that I have an exam in a class I forgot to attend all year.

Or looking at homework that should be easy to do, but requires skills I have suddenly forgotten.

In my waking life I have a graduate degree, but in my sleeping life I might have forgotten to finish a class in high school which, if not rectified, could result in my losing all my degrees. There always seems to be one more classes to return to, one more paper to write, one more test to take. I understand that these kinds of dreams are the sub-conscious mind's way of processing unfinished business, but I sometimes wonder if I will ever finish processing the student life.

Then last night I dreamt that I was on my way to give a final exam for a class (finally I was the teacher) but I couldn't remember teaching them anything. It was a short-course (only 5 weeks or so) in a culinary class. I was fully dressed, but much like waking life I was carrying around mounds of papers. I couldn't remember teaching food or knife safety, recipes, or anything for the class. Keep in mind that I am generally a writing teacher, so I must have accepted the job to teach the course as a favor at the last minute. In a futile attempt to decide what I was going to test the students on, I visited them in a study group and invited their input which I wrote on a white board. None of them were asking questions about the subject matter of the class; they were asking questions about sentence structure and finding my errors as we went!

Then I visited a jail and spoke with some fascinating people, including a Native American who had wonderful stories to share–none of them were about the culinary arts. I was on my way to the classroom determined to ask the students to write short essays describing what they had learned in class when I woke up.

Apparently I have graduated (pun intended) from nightmares about being a student to nightmares about being a teacher. Lovely. The lesson here could very well be that no matter whether I am a teacher or a student the paperwork feels endless, the tension is ongoing and the deadlines don't stop.

Wonderful.

Empty Nest??

2009-06-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Technically I am almost an empty nester.

My daughter graduated from high school. She is my youngest, so that means many things. It means no more permission slips or phone calls to the attendance office when she is sick (or simply not in the mood to go to school). It means no more baking cookies or brownies to sell at drama or choir productions. It means no more coordinating parent volunteers (although to be honest I gave that up almost two years ago). It means no more phone calls for permission to give her Tylenol if she doesn’t feel well (even though she was already 18 and technically could make that decision on her own) or say yes, she can drive herself home even if she feels like throwing up.

My worth as a human being, and gauge of my identity as a mother, no longer relies on how often I take tickets or count money or drive a carload of kids to Marine World. My social life won’t rely solely on chats on the playground or hanging out in front of the school waiting for the bell to ring. My identity will always be wrapped up in my role as Vince or Melia’s mom. I’m okay with that, much I am is Joe’s wife. I am fortunate in that my kids and their friends think that I am a cool mom. I still get to be cool. That, thankfully, doesn’t change just because the kids are done with compulsory education.

The last several transitions have carried with them a heavy sense of loss. Even though death means gifts, and I do believe that even when we lose people we love they leave behind many gifts that stick around for a long time, any transition is a loss. But I’m okay with losing the burden of permission. Constant permission. I will no longer have frustrating conversations with school counselors or administrators. I no longer have to justify my reasons why I don’t want my daughter to take part in standardized testing that raises her anxiety to unsafe levels and labels her a student in need of remediation even though she maintains a B+ average. I no longer have to fight to remove my kids from the classroom of a tyrant who claims that communication is imperative, yet gives out an erroneous email address at Back-to-School night.

I can happily live the rest of my life without another automated phone call from the high school reminding us about an upcoming event that holds no interest at all whatsoever. I don’t care that the wrestling team is having a spaghetti feed, or that the athletic boosters is recruiting new members. The guilt of not attending PTA meetings or joining the music boosters is gone. I am not required by conscience to attend another Open House to ooh and aaah over construction paper art projects. Back-to-School nights and the 10 minutes the teacher has to explain a full year of curriculum at top speed are over.

There are no more team meetings to attend where we and administrators all pretend to be on the same side, the side of my child, when I know full well they are only there because the law requires that they respond to my concerns.

I won’t miss the girl whose solos make my ears bleed, or the boy who flipped me off when I broke up a fight between him and my son. I won’t miss the snooty parents who act like I don’t exist when I quit the parent group they belong to and am no longer a benefit as a friend. And I certainly won’t miss the tension that comes from misplaced permission slips, information packets, blank forms and (what seems like) arbitrary deadlines.

For now I won’t miss my kids. Well, not much because one still lives at home and the other is less than 2 miles away. The genuine friends that I made while the kids were in school will remain my friends. The skills that I amassed in all the years of volunteering serve me well. I get to walk away, leaving the worst behind and the best in my back pocket.

The phrase empty nest implies a simpler life, a sadder, more lonely life. With children gone, a parent's life has lost its center. The universe shifts, its contents moved onto another, larger, more independent space. In cliche land I could simply be waiting for grandchildren and retirement. Not this mom!

I waited a long time to go back to work and focus on my intellectual stimulation, my ambitions and my future. I still have a long way to go in order to reach my career goals. And I am really jazzed about the new possibilities it brings with it. I'm just getting started and it feels great!

There is room, now, to fill my nest with new interests, new people. A whole new life.
In reality my nest and my life are far from empty, in fact I may need more closet space soon.

All The Worlds a Stage

2009-04-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

We spent time at the local university on Friday evening because the daughter's high school chamber choir took part in a choir competition.

In addition to our own kids, about 45 parents and other family members watched four groups representing various schools from about a 50 mile radius. Every group had their strengths, and we enjoyed them all.

After our kids were done with their time in front of the judges, they were ushered into another performance space to do "Clinics." While the parents and friends who had witnessed the competition watched, an instructor (not sure where from) worked with the kids and helped them with various technical aspects the songs that they had performed. I simply don't speak music, so I can't explain exactly what they learned, but most of them seemed to get a lot out of the experience.

All but one young lady, that is.

I will refer to her as "J." J was clearly less than thrilled at the clinic portion of the evening. Her boredom was evident and would not have been an issue had she been standing in the back behind the group where the likelihood of the audience seeing her would have been low. Instead she was on the right hand side of the stage, just far enough away from the group to be essentially a big distraction for several audience members, myself included.

She spent the first ten minutes or so picking at something on her face. It must have been a doozy because she contorted her face into several unflattering poses–open mouth, elongated mouth, tongue sticking out of the side of the mouth–and picked and rubbed and grimmaced. She stopped occasionally to mouth the words that the rest of the choir was singing. When she wasn't picking at her face or mouthing words, she was rummaging through her purse. At one point she pulled her cell phone and place it into her bra. Once she was satisfied that she had relieved her face of whatever blemish had been worrying her, she pulled a tube of cover-up out of her purse, removed the lid and rubbed some off onto her finger. After dabbing the picking spot, it was immediately apparent that she had accrued too much coverup on her finger and, to my utter horror, she wiped it off on a seatback in front of her.

It took everything I had not to yell something like, "Hey, pay attention! Don't you know that we can all see you?" But it occured to me that I didn't want to disrupt what the rest of the choir was learning, and that she really didn't realize we could see her–her little world was so clearly only as big as the personal space that surrounded her. She took less notice of the audience than she did of the instructor.

This was a teen moment at its most sterotypical. It was an active portrayal of the ability to only see just beyond one's own nose, to live in complete oblivion of the rest of the world. Actors onstage pertend that there is a fourth wall, that the audience doesn't exist. J didn't need to pretend.

Once beyond the teen years of naval gazing, many of us grow out of the belief that the world is only as big as we choose to see it, and J was clearly the center of her own universe. Sadly, I have known her long enough to strongly suspect that she will be one of the folks whose perception won't ever grow outside of her personal space. She will likely continue to live her life in her bubble and only see life as it affects her. Even when she is in plain sight of the rest of the world, her vantage point won't allow her to see how she is percieved, only what she is focusing on at that moment. Her own stage will remain tiny, as will her life. It is sad, but fairly predictable.

Then again, how much good does it do me to have the capablity to look beyond my own personal space, my own tiny world stage, and see the J's of the world as they move about in complete righteous oblivion? That night I was angry; I spent an hour angry and resentful at this young woman who, in my opinion, showed a complete and utter lack of respect for a fabulous opportunity. The choir program is on the chopping block as the recession deepens. J will likely graduate and not look back or feel pity for the students who follow her who won't have an opportunity to spend a Friday evening at a university competing or learning new music from a master. I wonder if she will ever look back at that small stage fondly and wish she could go back and relive a youthful moment.

And then I wonder why it made me so angry. Maybe because I stand in front of a classroom full of young adults 3 times a week offering up respect and support. The thought that a student would act so carelessly in the face of opportunity drives me nuts. I feel very fortunate that the J's of this world don't stay long in my classroom; there simply is not enough room for their oblivion on my world stage.

Blooming Broccoli

2009-03-20T12:15:00.001-07:00

Sitting on a table in my living room is a paper plate that holds a stalk of broccoli wrapped in a bright red bow. It was joke gift to my daughter for her 18th birthday. It still sits there weeks after the party ended the decorations put away and the final leftovers eaten or thrown away.

I have left it there on the round accent table, where it sits under the leaves of a house plant on the tier above, waiting patiently for my now "grown" daughter to take responsibility for her gifts. But there it still sits even after all the thank you notes have been sent. It's not as if she had any intention of eating the broccoli. It was the impetus for a good hearty laugh amongst her and a few friends, and perhaps a good story later. But now it sits alone as the deep green slowly fades.

My only experience with broccoli that has remained in my home beyond its prime has been in the refrigerator. Too often the once yummy vegetable has sat in the back of the vegetable drawer inside a plastic bag that slowly fills with condensation. Then very light brown spots begin to appear and I imagine that the texture of the stalk develops a slimy texture. I don't bother to reach inside the plastic bag to test my slime theory. When it is time to clear out inedible foods, I take a hold of the corner of the bag and toss it into the trash.

Outside of its normal storage habitat, a stalk of broccoli reacts very differently as it begins its descent from healthy food to compost ready material. It first begins to fade something like tanned skin fading as the sunlight becomes scarce in winter. The fade brings out the yellow. There is no withdrawal of anything much beyond the color; nothing seems to be shriveling the way I would expect. There is a little shrinkage but nothing dramatic. It is aging gracefully. There is no foul smell. In fact I only notice its slow decline when I cross the room on my way into the kitchen, not because the air is fouled by the slow rot I would expect.

The real surprise has been the small and vital yellow flowers that are blooming from within the head. The head of the broccoli is often referred to as the flower, but it would appear that there are more traditional flowers trapped within the topmost portion of the stalk. The chlorophyll seems to have withdrawn inside itself to serve as food for these new flowers, with their tiny paper-fine petals and their white centers.

The red ribbon tied to the stalk has taken on the look of an accent for a bouquet of flowers. The silly gift has transformed itself into something more; it has reinvented itself, almost as if it is attempting to match its surroundings, to become a member of the various home accents.

I'm sure that an internet search or flip through the pages of my plant book would offer a simple and logical explanation for this phenomenon. I don't bother, however. I am enjoying my place as an observer in this happening. I don't feel a need to understand the death of the broccoli. I'm willing to accept that the process is predictable and there is no need to arm myself with knowledge; I can simply allow it to continue undisturbed and enjoy the tiny gifts that it shares before it exhausts it resources.

Anger

2009-03-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

For lots of reason, including genetic and childhood exposure, I have a temper. In years past it was something I had great difficulty controlling. In general conversation my kids conveniently gloss over the fact that I had a pretty mean mouth on me when they were younger. I worked very, very, very hard to control my tongue and avoid saying anything I might regret. I did this in large part because I didn't want my kids to think that it was okay for anyone to talk to them in any way that was less that respectful. They are great kids; why should I allow my baggage to hurt them.

There are times even now, however, when I get pretty doggone pissed. Usually I can keep the irrational part of myself in control. I take a certain amount of pride in being able to argue a position or make a point while keeping calm on the outside and attacking the situation diplomatically, however much that may sound like an oxymoron. I am very fortunate to have a supervisor at job #1 who is really, really good about talking me out of a tree when I begin to react negatively towards a situation that has annoyed or angered me at work. I do vent my anger when in a safe location, with trusted friends or family. I have a pretty sharp tongue, and try to direct it away from loved ones. The thing I really don't like about being angry is the loss of control, of myself or what is happening to me.

Then there is the anger at things outside of myself that I have no control of whatsoever.

Take the automatic appeal of convicted killer, Richard Allen Davis, as an example. In the fall of 1993 this man brazenly kidnapped a young girl, Polly Klaas, from her home. He tied up her friends, threatened to kill her mother and sister if she protested, and whisked her off into the night. Within a span of a few hours he sexually assaulted her, strangled her and left her body to rot under a piece of plywood on a spot less than two hours from her home.

In 1996 Davis was convicted of murder with special circumstances and sentenced to die by lethal injection in San Quentin prison. (From research I have done separately, death row inmates are given a choice between lethal injection and the still functional electric chair in San Quentin. Since the re-instatment of the death penalty in California in 1974, all have chosen lethal injection.) He was imprisoned immediately and sat in solitary confinement while his lawyers planned his appeal. That "automatic" appeal process was twelve years in the making.
They pleaded his case before the California Supreme Court of Appeals on Tuesday, March 3, 2009.

His request carried a couple of options. One was removing the death penalty. Another was throwing out the conviction altogether. This is a man with a laundry list of arrests and convictions. He is the reason for the "3 strikes" law. At the end of a trial that was moved to Santa Clara County in response to the tremendous public outcry, When Davis heard the jury's verdict, his reaction was to turn to the cameras and flip a double bird. When he read a statement to the judge just before sentencing, he claimed that just prior to strangling Polly she asked, "Just don’t do me like my dad."

Before this case, I sat firmly on the fence about the death penalty. The compassion I could fell for both the victims and the convicted made a clear, well-informed and well-formed position impossible. Even for someone who has no personal involvement in this crime, it is nearly impossible to feel neutral about the case. And I can't claim to have to no personal involvement. I met Polly once. She was the best friend of the woman I consider my adopted sister. Polly's house was less than 8 blocks from my own. My son was terrified and worried about Polly up until we learned she was dead.

I am pissed. I angry. I am frustrated. And I know that nothing I can do or say will make me feel better. I don't believe that someone is inherently evil; I don't believe that human-kind is destined for sin and evil deeds. I do believe that there are occasional individuals who make choices in their lives, who consciously take on the mantle of victim and use it as a badge of honor to justify their actions. Those people are evil. Richard Allen Davis is an evil man. This is not a glib statement. I don't write it without cringing. But I do believe it.

The anger is directed not only at the man, but at the system that the man has gleefully manipulated since he was young. Back in 1952 in Santa Rosa, California, a prominent businessman murdered his wife while 5 of his 6 children were watching. He was sitting in the electric chair in 1954 just over two years after his conviction. I'm not saying that we need to return to old west justice and the complete disregard of basic human rights. I do believe that prison reform is imperative. I don't believe that a confessed and convicted killer should be set free on a technicality.

This is the kind of anger that feels hopeless and full of sadness. The complete opposite of empowering.

What do I do with this kind of anger? For now there isn't much I can do except post a comment on another writer's blog or vent my anger here. I set up an email update with the California Supreme Court website. I'm a firm believer in positive thoughts, and in the power of negative thinking. Do what you will with that.

A New Year, A New Administration, A New School

2009-01-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

I find it hard to believe that I allowed myself to avoid writing and posting on this blog since November. In my own defense, it wasn't like I had tons of time on my hands. I was working 60 or so hours per week, and I'm normally a 30 per week kind'a gal.

I'll be honest, I'm not the kind of writer who writes every single day. Maybe I should be, so far I'm not. I have done some revising of existing pieces, accepted a few rejections and sent a couple more out. (for more about this subject, check my other blog My Literary Niche.

So we have a New Year. It didn't begin very well, another lost grandchild and we are left with very unhappy and unsettled kids. I don't put much stock in the idea that the first day of the year represents what is coming. It just just doesn't happen that way in my life. Resolutions are the kind of thing that I strive for throughout the year, not simply when the calendar changes.

Tomorrow a new president will be sworn into office. Tivo is set to record the inauguration; if only we could figure out a way to tape it onto something more portable so I could take it to school and play it in the Writing Center. Alas, our electronics have been slowly dying off, so we have few workable choices. A new administration is certainly something to look forward to, especially given the world financial and relational situation. War sucks no matter where it is.

Wednesday I begin teaching at a new school, Contra Costa College. So far the staff has been great, very friendlty if not a bit scattered. The school is doing well financially, so I may even have classes to teach next fall. I am already mostly ready, even without the textbooks for one class (again).

I suppose if I want to bring some more new things into my life, one to include would be the commitment to my writing. Let's see how that goes.

Exhausted Appreciation

2008-11-27T14:30:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving.

This is the first year for as long as I remember that I haven't done any cooking for the big feast. I made a few breakfast items this morning but have mostly spent the day hanging out. It almost doesn't feel like Thanksgiving because I am not standing in the kitchen, my back aching, my head hurting and my feet screaming. I also won't be seeing my son today; he is working until 6pm and then going to his fiance's house for dinner. Joe and Melia and I are going to the home of our friends Mike and Celia where Mike is preparing a fabulous meal.

Realistically speaking, even if I wanted to, I couldn't possibly host or serve a traditional feast. I have been working so much that my body is protesting loudly in a variety of uncomfortable ways. I don't have the energy to cook and clean and tend to anyone's needs. Heck, I'm having a difficult time tending to my own needs. I'm not eating right or exercising enough. I feel overwhelmed daily.

But my mood is good.

I like my jobs. I love teaching. I still like running the Writing Center, but it is burning me out. I can see the wall slowly making its way toward me. I am destined to hit it and when that happens I will be forced to move on. I'm hoping that when that happens I can move onto teaching and writing full-time. I have an interview next week with another community college. So in addition to the class prep and grading I planned to do this weekend for my classes, and the formatting job I need to finish, and the family finances I have to address, and a Thanksgiving to participate in, I'm prepping for the interview.

Still, not really complaining. But I am looking forward to the end of the semester. I'm very likely going to move into a new office space. It is really long past time for me to move my freelance and creative work out of my house. I think I have decided on a location, but am still dealing with details. I'd like to be mostly moved in before Christmas, which is a week after the semester ends. Yes, I know, even when I have a break scheduled I still manage to overload myself.

One of the many things that I have learned this last few months is that I can do more work than I had thought I could. I have also been reminded just how important taking care of my body is. I physically feel pretty crappy a good portion of the time, but I know how to feel better and once I have the time I will be changing my eating and exercise habits back to what they were only a few months ago. It also reminds me that there were several years when I felt like this ALL the time. I have also been reminded that I have the power to change that, and for that knowledge I am very grateful.

I am grateful that I have trusted my own instincts and am moving forward in my chosen career(s). I am grateful that months ago Joe and I had a talk about the changes that are now taking place and we are managing to stay connected and happy together. I am grateful that my kids are great. I am grateful for my friends and extended family (even if I don't have the time or energy to spend much quality time with them).

Yep, lots to be grateful for. And lost of exhaustion that I will be grateful to be rid of in a few short weeks.

A New Castle in the Sky

2008-11-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

I'm normally a fence sitter when it comes to politics.

I don't mean to say that I don't have an opinion, but my deep respect for the equally deep feelings of others requires me to keep my attitudes in check lest I fall into an all out confrontation that will serve no purpose save to piss me off, piss my friend/neighbor/fellow party goer off, and end what may likely be a relaxed social gathering. I don't believe that I can sway anyone's strong opinions with my anger or righteousness. I do believe, however, that by keeping an open mind and understanding as to why a stance is different from my own, I have an increased opportunity to share my views in an intellectual way, in a more subtle get under-your-skin kind of way. That sublty and respect for other's opinions is my personal tool for bringing about change in my little world. And yes, it has at time worked.

But goddamn if I didn't bawl my eyes out when it became clear that Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States of America. And frankly I don't much care who knows how I feel. I'm not attacking anyone's choices. I'm not dancing the I-told-you-so dance. I am simply enjoying the feeling of imminent change. The feeling of hope for the future of our country on levels that I can barely begin to express. I cried on election night because I am so proud of my country. I am proud that my fellow citizens were willing to take a chance on change. That sounds like such a simple concept, but really it isn't.

Change for most of us is a terrifying experience. A change in job, a change in location, or a change in relationship, all offer new hope and new ideas that mask that black abyss that is the unknown. No matter how sure we are that change is the best thing, it still holds within it things we cannot readily see. And we remain blind to so much for so long, to so much unpredictability, sometimes too much, that even within hope and happiness our terror lurks. This terror could so easily have been too overwhelming for so many people across the nation. It could have tied their hands and their minds down, tethering them, and the rest of us, to a known quantity–the status quo–no matter how much of the real terror was sitting squarely in the light of our everyday lives. Like the abused spouse who remains because the outside world is unknown and unreliable in its actions with no guarantees that change will be better, too often they remain, staying in a place that is safe if only in its familiarity.

I have a copy of the front page of the local newspaper that is entirely filled with the profile of President-Elect Obama. There is another displayed from another newspaper on the office door of a colleague . Both cause me to pause, to hold my hand to my chest over my heart and feel a sense of wonder and pride and hope. He looks eerily familiar: A young man with a young family ready to take on the mantle of one of the most powerful countries in the world. He is wearing a dark suit and white shirt with a solid color tie. He is slender and smiling. I look at it and wonder, does my generation finally have the chance for the kind of hope that hasn't been seen since before I was born? Are we, forty years later, finally ready to give a new future another chance? Has cynicism taken a long enouh vacation for us to try something new that is such a strong echo of the past?

That is certainly my hope.

I pray that it does. I also pray that the hope continues farther than the last. I pray that the new stars that are rising in politics rise far beyond their predecessors and live well into the next generation. I pray that the new castle in the sky we are building in our hearts binds with the foundation of our nation and sustains new hope and change for many, many years.

Gratitude & Sorrow

2008-10-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

It's been one year since we lost our first grand-baby.

He lived inside his mother for almost 5 months before higher powers decided that it was time for him to move on. His mother and father were both devastated. Before they knew that he existed they had chosen to be apart, to move away from a relationship that had become increasingly dysfunctional. They didn't have to recommit to each other once they knew that they were pregnant; they could have lived apart and parented separately the way many parents do. My son refused to live away from his child. His girlfriend refused to live away from her child. So together they chose to repair a relationship that they had already walked away from. They chose to move back in together. They chose to work hard in couples therapy so that when their baby was born he would not be born into chaos, anger and fighting.

In their therapy session, a whole new world opened up for them: a world of honest, open and clear communication. They worked hard every week for months, and the work was evident to those of us who watched from the outside as they grew and matured.

When they lost their baby, they named him Rowan and layed a special brick for him to commemorate his existence.

And they stayed together. And they grieved together. The loss of Rowan helped them, as if even in death, even after he had moved onto another place and another existence, he continued to impact their lives for the better.

Last weekend these two young people who came so close to being apart, and becoming parents too young made a new promise to each other. Vince proposed, Alexis accepted and they are now planning their life together. They are talking about where they want to live, where they want to raise the children they will have sometime in the future. They are planning for their marriage. It is clear that the wedding is secondary, and that the life is the priority. All because of Rowan.

Vince gave Alexis my grandmother's ring. The ring had been stripped of its diamonds many years ago; so Vince and I found a jeweler who could repair the damage and rebuild the ring for a new generation. We filled the holes with heirloom diamonds. It is now more beautiful than it ever was.

The jeweler liked the ring that I was wearing, the one that my husband had sculpted for me. She wanted to see more of his work. We brought her photos of his jewelry and sculpture, and one wire tree. She ordered six rings and 5 wire trees. So now my talented husband the artist is creating art. He was destined to do this, but because we walked into that particular jewelry store on that particular day, his destiny has become manifest.

He would not be sculpting if we hadn't walked into the jewelry store. We wouldn't have walked into the jewelry store if Vince didn't want to marry Alexis. Vince wouldn't be marrying Alexis if they hadn't work so hard to make their relationship work. They wouldn't have worked so hard to make their relationship work if they hadn't gotten pregnant.

Our lives have been impacted in incredible ways all because of the mere existence of our first grand-baby. His life was so important and so profound that he didn't need to live for a full five months inside of his mother in order to create a ripple affect that continues on. I am so grateful that we had him in our lives, even for the all too short time he was here. I am so sad that I never had a chance to hold him in my arms.

I am so grateful that I can hold him in my heart and see the gifts that he left us.

Carol Burnett & Friends & Gram

2008-09-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

I have great difficulty accessing memories of my grandmother. I don't mean to say that I can't remember her, that isn't exactly it. Every hour, every minute, every second of every day of my life I can think of her and access a memory to share. I tell a lot of stories to my kids and friends that involve Gram. I haven't forgotten her; I can't. The problem is that when I want to write about her I suddenly freeze up and forget how we were when we bantered, how she made me laugh, how she made everyone around her laugh. How she made me feel safe wrapped in her arms. I can only get so far, and then the memories seem to drop out of sight as if they are hiding.

My standard excuse is that she is so much a part of who I am that I find it impossible to tease her out of my memories so they can stand alone in my writing. I don't now for sure if that is true or not, but it will work for now.

But if in any given moment watching TV, of all things, I catch a glimpse of Carol Burnett, the Saturday evenings of my life come flooding back. The memories are so strong that I can't seem to sit through a 30 second clip on the Emmy Awards without beginning to bawl.

Every Saturday night at 10:00 we would sit our respective seats, me on the couch Gram in her chair under her lamp, her cigarette smoke curling up into the lamp as it made its way toward to ceiling to hover above us. We watched with anticipation as Ms. Burnett walked out onto the stage in her designer dress for her opening monologue. At some point in her monologue, if memory serves, she would tell the audience who designed her dress. I have forgotten every single designer save for Bob Mackie. We got to know his designs so well that we could spot them on the Red Carpet at the Emmy and Oscar Awards. (The most outrageous outfits that Cher wore were almost always a Mackie design.)

We loved the skits that Carol, her regulars and her guest stars would act out for us. We loved the end of the show when she would sing her signature song:
I'm so glad we had this time together
Just to have a laugh or sing a song
Seems we just got started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say, 'So long.'
Then she would tug at her ear lobe and wave and walk off stage.

At some point she explained the ear tugging. She was raised primarily by her grandmother. At the end of every show, the tug as a "secret" signal to that beloved grandmother. My goodness, I can't read or write about it without stifling the sobs that jettison up my throat. My eyes tear up and I want to sit and cry and cry because I miss Gram. I have to stop writing because–well because I can't see the damn keyboard.

*sniff*

So, do I have a point? Yes I do, in an abstract sort of way. My point is that I want to honor someone who was, and is, so important to me. I want to honor her in my writing, but I am still struggling to find a way to do that, to find a way to access the memories without accessing the tears. She touched a lot of people, so maybe the way to retrieve those memories locked inside of me is to ask some of those other folks to share what they remember about her.

Maybe.

Now the Work Really Begins

2008-08-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yes. I'm in.

The signature came through (not without a few hassles of course). I will be teaching not one, but two college courses beginning next week. Suddenly I have to put two syllabi together, plan 15 weeks of class meetings for both classes, fill out a stack of paperwork for HR*, get my fingerprints taken and a TB test done and buy a parking permit. All before Tuesday. Today is Friday.

This is an emergency hire situation. I believe that everyone involved understands that some things won't be done before Tuesday. The four books for one class are ordered and three of them are already in the bookstore. The three books for the second class are ordered and will be in the bookstore next week. Oh, I forgot to mention that one class is on the Santa Rosa campus where I currently run the writing center. The other is in the evening in Petaluma where I live. Yeah, I'll be a very busy little bee until mid-December. I am not complaining. But for a couple of days I wasn't sleeping well at all. My brain would not turn off.

I am very excited. This week I was able to sit down and work with a few students in the writing center, which is simply my favorite part of the job. It felt so good to interact with them and their writing. Staying where I am feels like the right place to be. That may change. When or if it does the change will be okay and I'll move on.

For now, it is so very nice to feel good about being where I am.

*The stack of HR paperwork says that it must all be completed and returned no later than 5 days before I begin work. The paperwork came to me yesterday, so according to the directions I should have had it back to them yesterday afternoon. Yeah right.

Anticipation

2008-08-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

Waiting.

I feel like I have spent a great deal of my life waiting.

I'm not talking about waiting in line, I don't often have the patience for that, I'm talking about waiting for things in life to happen.

I spent way too many years waiting for my parents to come get me. And chunks of time waiting for boys to call. And years waiting for my hubby to stop napping and help take care of things around the house.

There are sometimes when waiting is easy because I turn off my brain and space out. This skill is reminiscent of childhood and sleeping during long car rides to make the time go by faster. I go into a self imposed waking sleep mode when waiting for doctor's appointments or for time in a day to pass before a special date.

I feel like I've been waiting for my professional life to start since I finished graduate school. Initially there were very legitimate obstacles in my way, like dying parents and grief. And in all honesty, things have been moving, albeit very slowly, in the right direction.

This weekend I am waiting for one more signature on one piece of paper that will allow my department to hire me so that I can teach a college course. In theory, the signature is a formality, almost certainly to happen with little or no struggle. Nice theory, but I have been through disappointment at this job and know better than to assume all will work out as planned. I tried very hard not to get high on excitement, I know better. But it's hard and my brain simply won't stop planning classroom assignments and activities. It is impossible to space out or go into a waking sleep mode because I have other things to do. Consequently I can't turn my brain off.

In the meantime, the anticipation is killing me. And it's exhausting. Will I know on Monday? Tuesday? Good God, I hope so.

That's The Thing About Vacation

2008-08-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

It's re-energizing.

I wish now that we had planned our vacation earlier in the summer. Last year, for so many reasons, we ran–sprinted–out of town in mid-August to escape the death and destruction that was plaguing us. This year we very civily looked at the calendar and chose dates according to what seemed to work around the rest of our life.

My goals for this summer break (I am not scheduled to work from the end of May thru til about mid-August) were to write creatively and work on marketing myself as a freelancer. In hindsight I realize that I didn't really schedule time to relax or feel. This was a foolish plan because I knew intellectually that I wasn't able to deal with all of my emotions and grief from last summer's losses last summer and would likely have a difficult summer emotionally. (I just can't seem to give myself a break!)

I was off work over spring break and accomplished a lot, and it felt really good. I assumed, erroneously it turns out, that with more time off over the summer I would accomplish that much more. But I felt un-inspired, un-productive, unhappy. Everything felt a bit heavier. Thoughts that would normally flit through my brain instead stayed much longer than necessary and swirled around and around creating a tornado of air and nonsense. On the outside everything slowed down to an excruciatingly slow pace. Movement was more difficult, and I began to feel discouraged about working out, writing, cleaning, working, most things.

I really started to wonder if I needed to change anti-depressants. All too familiar feelings of my lack of worthiness as a writer, co-provider and life partner began to mount. I found myself excited about less and less of the activities in my life. Even packing for Sea Ranch wasn't a big thrill. It was helpful to wrap my mind around the organization aspect of meal planning and shopping, but when asked if I was excited about going on vacation I could honestly that no, I wasn't.

Maybe it is as simple as getting away from the day-to-day, from the familiar, because getting away felt so good. Breathing in the sea air felt restorative. It was as if the air that flowed into my lungs had special molecules of renewal attached to them. The stars above had the nicest things to say amidst their twinkling. Being alone with my favorite people outside of the day-to-day routines at home and work was just lovely. We could just be, or laugh, or talk, or enjoy a movie or music together. Sitting on a bluff or the beach watching the waves crash against the rocks, it is easy to get lost in the waves, they have their own soothing rhythm that pulls my mind away and it goes wandering off without a care, traipsing lightly over the foam and the sand, weaving in and out of the clouds, happy to be.

While we were there I started a new essay, blogged almost regularly, and began to reassess my work area at home. It was clearly time for a change, which I have since made. I moved my desk downstairs and out of the bedroom. I feel a bit exposed down here, but for now I think that is the point, not to be holed up in a corner feeling inadequate.

Now that we are home the heaviness is gone. I am working out regularly again, I am looking forward to going back to work. I updated my website and added some lovely testimonials from past clients. I am mulling the kind of ad copy I need to write to expand the freelance side of my writing and editing. And I'm still blogging!

Thanks to a week away, I feel recharged. That's the thing about vacation…

Seaweed and Sea Lions

2008-08-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

We took the puppies out for a much needed walk, and to find a beach for them to run around on. There are several beaches in the private Sea Ranch area, and interestingly, they all kind of look alike. They are all at the bottom of a rather high bluff, the only way to get down to the surf is via man-made stairs. There is always an alcove to the right of the stairs, full of various sizes of rocks, and often enough a large log which is a useful resting place. There is also tons of seaweed that has washed up on the shore.

The seaweed lurks just off the coast like a wild sea garden. One of our houseguests wondered if it was piles of garbage. Other than the occasional bulb I came across as a kid visiting the beach (and the stuff wrapped around my California rolls), I know very little about what looks like an alien creature floating in the water, lurking in plain sight. They resemble a giant octopus or squid in that there is a head and tons of "tentacles." But unlike what I imagine a live creature to do, they simply float, their "heads" sticking up out of the water, and move at the whim of the tide.

During another walk we found ourselves in a grove of trees, many of which were clinging to the bluff that surrounded a small inlet. We were sure that we were watching a seal bobbing up and down in that little area, maybe contemplating exploring one of the tiny water-made caves that we could see. We watched this thing for quite awhile before we realized it was not a sea lion head, but a seaweed bulb. This realization came just after we noticed that the mass underneath the head had several extra limbs.

We did manage to see some real, live sea lions while walking along a stretch of open bluff. They were cute and had what appeared to be normal amount of body mass, and only one tail.

On the second beach we found were piles of seaweed that had washed up on shore. And they smelled. The smell was akin to rotting flesh. Thankfully the beach was just wide enough that we could get some distance away from the largest piles, Molly and Teddy cavorted and played a bit and hubby and I sat on some large rocks. Teddy seems to love being near the ocean, but he also gets nervous when he is there more than a little while. Molly tends to go with the flow more. We sat for awhile on a pile of rocks until a family came down the stairs, with their dog on leash. Two pre-pubescent boys and one young girl proceeded to explore the bottom of the bluff and let the waves wash over their feet while mom held the dog on a long leash.

They were at the opposite end of our little alcove of a beach, so we watched them for awhile, keeping Molly and Teddy on-leash. Things got a bit dicey when all three kids were knocked down by a wave they weren't expecting. There are signs posted all along the bluffs that the surf is very dangerous, so we watched the kids more carefully hoping that they would stay further away from the water's edge. Ultimately their exploring and bravado turned to simply playing catch with water, which you always win unless you wait too long before running back up the beach as the waves move to nip at your heals.

On the way back to the stairs, we stumbled across a dead baby sea lion. It had been on the beach the entire time, and was the reason for the rotting smell. It was a light brown, the exact same color as the other driftwood that was strewn about. I suppose we just assumed that it was a piece of wood when we first walked passed. It is surprising that the dogs didn't notice it before we did. Even more surprising is that we didn't step on it when we were walking over the rocks and piles of seaweed. That would have been a very nasty surprise. Although it looked like a log, you can bet it didn't have the same texture, nor the strength to hold our weight.

Under a Blanket of Stars

2008-07-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

We sat on the back deck last night, turned all the lights off in the back part of the house, closed the blinds that cover the sliding glass door, bundled up under a blanket and lay back on our reclining chairs to watch the stars. There are no streetlights in the neighborhood where we have rented a house, and obviously the omission was part of the building plan. Only the occasional car drove driving one of the roads nearby, its headlights dimming the stars a tad. I didn’t go camping as a kid, but I do remember seeing a lot of stars in the sky even at home, even more when visiting friends who lived out in the country. What is lacking in those memories is the awe that we felt last night.

The sky looked–cluttered; it didn’t look clear, it looked freckled. And there was just enough cloud cover to add a dimension of wispy opacity in a non-pattern, as if to add texture or softness to a blanket. The stars were so close that it was like looking up at a blanket that had been thrown over the earth as a protective barrier. I like the idea of a protective barrier keeping us safe even in the daytime. The stars are out there even in the daytime, we just can’t see them, so the blanket is there all the time keeping us safe. Safe from the unknown. Maybe safe from ourselves

I had forgotten that stars twinkle. Oh sure, intellectually I know that Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is titled such because of the natural phenomenon. I just don’t actually think about it, or didn’t until last night. They did more than twinkle, they shimmered; they invited my eyes in for a closer look and then seemed to move, sometimes in a line, sometimes farther away, sometimes closer. Startled I would bring my focus back down to earth and blink only to see that the stars had returned to their original positions. They were teasing me, playing games from millions (or billions) of miles away, dancing around in the sky overhead, obviously delighted to be free up there in the night sky. Free to be seen, free to twinkle, free to shimmer, free to be part of a lovely, soft blanket we could wrap ourselves in just before we fell asleep.

An Affair to Remember

2008-07-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

Remember that first feeling of falling in love? Maybe the first time that you made love with that new special someone? Remember how it smelled fresh and new, how soothing the touch was on your skin. That's how the air in Sea Ranch, California felt to me last night. I sat out on the deck off the hexagonal house we are renting and looked out at the crashing waves of the ocean that were lit by the stars. The wispy tendrils of the clouds danced among those stars twinkling above my head.

It's as if I could inhale all of the physical and emotional into my nostrils and hold them there. It felt decadent and wholesome. The sea air mingled with the breath of the pine trees and filled me with a sense of calm. Serenity. For a brief moment, the air was my lover, the breeze was his arms embracing me.

The wet kiss on the mouth-that was a dog.

This year we brought our puppies, Molly and Teddy. And they love Sea Ranch. They love the yard that holds oh so many fascinating scents, and the deer that watch us pass by while on our evening walks. We haven't yet introduced them to this portion of the ocean, in mid-Northern California. We are above Fort Ross and well belong Fort Bragg.

Northern California coasts are notoriously cold and windy. The water is certainly cold, and yesterday's breeze sounded from the inside of the house like a minor hurricane, but the wind wasn't cold and the sun still shone and it was just lovely. This morning there is some fog rolling in and it looks like it might obscure the sun for the day. Even then, we are so close to the ocean that we can hear the waves roll and crash. For a water baby (I was born under the sign of Cancer the crab) this is like coming home. Like an affair to remember. So, my Irish coffee and I (cup #3 for the morning) are going back out on the deck now.

Meet Willie Brown

2008-07-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Former San Francisco Mayor, Speaker of the California Assembly, and author Willie Brown was promoting his new book, "Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times" at Sonoma State University this evening. I've read that he is flamboyant, self-centered, intelligent, and well-versed on his favorite topic: Willie Brown. All of these things proved to be true. And more.

Willie L. Brown, Jr. is a study in human contradictions. On one hand he is adamant that anyone working as a public servant in political office has only one bottom line to adhere to, serving the best interests of the people. This means that self-serving takes back seat. He also has a tendency to speak of himself in the third person. He never uses the royal "we," but he does talk an awful lot about Willie Brown–by name. He is clear that his role as speaker was to make other members of the assembly look good. He is also clear that he is and was a power broker behind the careers of many high-profile politicians, many currently in office.

He is highly intelligent and not shy in sharing his insights and his analysis. He does not, however, claim to be the cleverest man around. That honor goes (in Willie Brown's opinion) to former California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

My 21-year-old son was my companion. We were the second and third youngest people in the audience. I would put the average age of the attendees at 65 or higher. I took my son because he has an interest in politics. When Fidel Castro stepped down and handed over the reigns of Cuba to his brother, my son had been out of town that day and hadn't heard the news until it was several hours old. He then called and chastised me for not keeping him apprised of this momentous event. We talked for 20 minutes about the potential long-term impacts nationally and internationally of the shift in power. Every other young person (under the age of 25) that I spoke with today didn't know who Willie Brown was. I knew that my son would be interested in spending an evening immersed in political discourse.

The discussion eventually moved to the current presidential race. Brown claimed that Obama has been able to side-step the race issue, but that Hillary Clinton was definitely a victim of gender bias. He seems very clear that if the two were on the presidential ticket together that gender and race would no longer be an issue and that McCain would be left in the dust. He also referenced Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" as a potential primer for Obama to follow Lincoln's lead of assembling a cabinet, in advance, of rivals and supporters alike to assure good council for the presidency.

All in all it was an interesting evening, and I would imagine an exhausting one for the guest of honor. He began his day in Montreal at 2:00 a.m. our time. He then flew to New York before returning to this coast and arriving at SSU. The program began at just past 7:30 and when we left at 9:30 or so he was still signing copies of his book. I'm not sure I could survive that kind of day, especially given that it is not be an unusual schedule for him. The man is 74-years-old and has far more stamina than I do.

Sneaky Stuff

2008-05-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

Grief often cleverly disguises itself as other emotions. It is a trigger for reactions; it blows them up bigger, and often nastier, than in they would be in their natural state. And unless you are really aware that grief is the underlying cause, you can get into trouble. Who am I kidding? Even if you know that grief is messing with you it wreaks the same havoc internally, just the same. The good news is that I am pretty aware that grief is an underlying cause of many of my recent emotional reactions. The bad news is that the reactions and feelings are still there and not necessarily controllable.

Case in point–I applied for a job that I "should" get. I work at a community college, in a temporary classified position (that I love). I applied for an adjunct teaching position, or more specifically, to be in the adjunct pool. Because I already work 30 hours a week, I would only be allowed to teach one 3 unit class per semester, at most. Logically, I'm not sure I really want to teach right now. I also have a growing freelance business and only have so much time and energy to go around.

Let's be clear, I feel qualified to be a part of the adjunct pool. I applied for the full-time position a few months back, but didn't get an interview. And I was really, truly okay with not getting beyond the paper screening for that one. But teaching part-time would give me more experience and more chance of full-time work later. And honestly it seemed like a given that I would at least get an interview. Everyone in the department that I spoke with shared their assumption with me that I would. Some even offered to help with with interview questions in advance.

But I didn't get an interview for the part-time position. Instead I received a very gracious phone call from someone on the hiring committee (my boss in my temporary position no less) who assured me that I had very stiff competition and that the hiring committee thinks very highly of my work.

I have to be honest, that hurt. I was really pretty devastated. It felt like a personal rejection. In the back of my mind I had considered the adjunct pool to be a fall back place if I my current job is not made permanent. In a sense, it was my safety net. It was a side door to take me where I want to go, just down a different corridor. Fear washed over me, along with the anger and hurt of rejection. I felt as if I was on much shakier ground than I had realized and that the chances of falling, of truly failing to make a living, were much greater than I had thought. So I cried the bitter tears of someone who feels useless and worthless.

I assumed at the time, and still do, that I was upset in large part because of the grief that is lurking around me. I could vocalize that potentiality, but I didn't really believe it in my heart.

A week later, the hubby and I planned to take a power walk with the doggies around a local park for some good exercise, then head downtown and have a quiet dinner together. A date night. It sounded wonderful. Hubby fell asleep on the couch as soon as he got home from work. Okay, I thought, so we didn't need the power walk. He woke up an hour or so later, and by this time I was really, really hungry. He said that, yeah, he wanted to go out and get a bite to eat, he just needed to finish up a quick posting on a website bulletin board he participates in, then he'd be upstairs to change and we'd go. I needed to do a couple of things upstairs as well, the timing seemed okay, so off I went to do my stuff and wait for him.

An hour later he came upstairs. An hour! I was furious and felt many things, lots of anger, crankiness from being way too hungry, and really offended that our date was so unimportant to him. I caught myself thinking that I just couldn't stand to be rejected again, especially not by my honey.

Ah, there it was. I knew it as soon as it entered my head. I was reacting to the non-job. The non-job reaction was, in large part, grief related. Damn, that grief just tucks itself in and spreads like tiny poisonous tendrils. The really frustrating thing is, that despite understanding this on an intellectual level, emotionally I just can't shake the feeling of rejection from the job situation. I feel wary now of any pleasant overtures from my colleagues. I no longer believe with any certainty that my temporary job will ever be made permanent. And I am extra sensitive to any rejection, perceived or real. This is especially problematic as I am trying to get my work published. I always sending essays out hoping they will get picked up, and I'm trying to find representation for a book. I haven't been able to bring myself to submit anything for weeks.

The hubby and I ended up going out for a nice, albeit late, date. It was nice, but it took more than an hour for us to feel good with each other.

Blah. Stupid grief. It is really sneaky stuff.

Anger versus Pain

2008-05-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes anger is empowering. When it gets me off my butt and on the phone to set a problem right (generally a consumer type problem, like my daughter's replacement phone arriving broken), then it is a good thing. When it pulls me out of a really bad headspace, like when I was feeling very victimized and sexually harassed by a student at work, then it is a good thing.

But when I am angry at someone who died, who technically isn't around to argue with, it can be very frustrating and painful. Not such a good thing.

Last night I felt my bio-dad very strongly. Before he died, I believed that I could reach out my emotional feelings and touch base with him, even though we weren't speaking and hadn't in many years. We didn't have conversations when I put out those feelers, I just kind of touched base, checked to see if he was still there, or maybe wished him a happy birthday. I admit, I rarely if ever felt him reach back, or reach for me on his own. Although when he did, I generally rejected it, so who knows how often he may have tried.

Shortly before he and my bio-mom died (see the posting from last summer for the details), I stopped feeling either parent. They left a strange kind of empty place, and actually took some negative stuff with them (like my very strong aversion to tattoos). I felt a bit lighter, but I also knew that it meant they were either dead or dying. A few days later we got the call that my bio-mom was indeed about to succumb to lung cancer.

Once they were both dead, however, they came back into my consciousness stronger than ever before, save for maybe when I lived with them both as an infant. It felt as though they planted themselves on my chest, wishing to stay closer than ever in what I believe is an attempt to be with me in a way they couldn't when they were alive. They didn't want to leave me in death. And this made me angry. Where the hell had they been for the last $)+ years? Why, now that I can finally be free of the head trips that they could take me on with little or no effort, did they insist on hanging around? It quickly became clear that they wanted to prove something. Perhaps now that the physical restraints of this world have let them go they can finally be with me. To hell with that.

This is where feeling anger isn't terribly empowering. It feels like a constant fight, a constant attempt on my part to stand my personal moral ground, to insist that they stop wanting forgiveness and acceptance from me. I don't feel like they have given me what I need in return. They haven't taken away my pain, they haven't reversed the feelings of abandonment that have plagued me my whole life, and the resulting feelings of worthlessness and inherent badness that too often reduce me to a mess.

So when I felt my dad last night, so strongly, it hurt because I kind of miss him. He may have been a sporadic presence in my adult life, but we had our moments. We had a handful of really nice moments. If I miss anything about him, the real him, I miss those moments. And while he was asserting himself so strongly last night, it felt as though he was making a case for me to forgive. To forgive both himself and my mom. Talk about pissing me off! I am not ready to forgive her. Or him. They hurt me in ways that I can't begin to describe. I carry around these buttons and triggers that get tripped on all the time, buttons and triggers that they helped me construct, but haven't been around to help me dismantle. So I spent an evening arguing with him in my head. (yes, it may be all in my head, but that is beside the point)

I feel that if I forgive, then I am negating the value of my own feelings, that I am letting go of the right to feel pain, of the right to acknowledge that what they did was wrong. If I forgive, my pain no longer matters. I am not ready to devalue my feelings like that just yet.

This post is entitled anger versus pain. Sometimes they are mutually exclusive, sometimes they are two sides of the same issue. Sometimes anger can empower and reduce or soothe the pain.

Today, at least, they are battling it out inside me.

Consider yourself warned

2008-05-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

I've never actually been one to journal in any kind of consistent or regular or honest manner, so blogging has been a bit of a stretch for me. While anyone who knows me will agree that if you want to know something about you me all you have to do is ask, and likely I'll hand over more information that you really wanted, I simply don't assume that the whole world wants to know my business. Nor do I assume that putting down my most personal private thoughts is a safe thing to do in any form, yet I am a memoir-ist. Go figure.

Back to my point.

In a few short weeks the anniversary of Miriam's death will be here. This has begun a sequence of grief related responses in my house. A few weeks later will be the anniversary of my mother's death, then my father's.

Last summer simply sucked.

And dealing with the losses was not easy nor simple. So I did what I could, put my head down, and moved forward. Apparently it is time to look up again, face my surroundings, my feelings, my fears and my grief.

A blog seems as good a place as any to do that.

I am a fairly inconsistent blogger. A handful of wonderful people check it fairly regularly (according to site meter), but there is rarely anything new.

The plan from today forward is: to write what I am feeling, good or bad, about the people that have been lost to me, and to my extended family, and just how much it hurts or how much I need to process, or whatever the hell I need to write.

This is cyberspace and the possibilities for reading my blog are infinite. This is cyberspace, after all, and the probability of many reading this blog is infinitesimal.

So consider yourself warned.

American Grafitti comes back to town

2008-05-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

There is a “Salute to American Grafitti” planned in my hometown next weekend. It is three days of nostalgia. There will be Classic cars, 50s costumes, cruising, music, and more. It is a celebration of the innocence of the post World War II years, before JFK and King and Malcom X and RFK were assassinated. Theirs were deaths that would change the nation for generations. This party will be about the decade before all hell broke loose.

Yes, by all means, let us celebrate a decade of oppression, conformity, and the ever-present, underlying terror of nuclear war. Let’s root for Joe McCarthy’s Communist hysteria, black-listing, and the loss of civil liberties. We should dance with joy in celebration of our country’s first “police action” in Korea, that lovely warm-up to Vietnam and Iraq. Everyone was supposed to fit into neat little boxes. Giving birth was practically a national pastime and mom stayed at home taking good care of those babies as they popped out, and found immense satisfaction in caring for her home, washing dishes, scraping shitty diapers and waiting on her husband hand and foot. Dad was at work; the kids were at school or playing nicely in the front yard on the newly mown grass. The teen girls were readying themselves for matrimony, and hey, if they don’t find one by the time high school was over, college might be a good place to fsnag a man. There was even a box for a rebel, as proven so well by James Dean. More than one at a time meant gangs. Come to think of it, even gangs were conformists; they all wore the same cool clothes.

No one was gay or unhappy and certainly not different. It was just normal to practice bomb drills, and build fallout shelters.

An all out salute to the 1950s lifestyle depicted in the film American Graffiti is really ironic. It is a film that takes place in 1962 and was filmed in 1972, but the style is all 1950s. The need to alter our perception of history is palpable. The need to believe that we once truly lived in a simpler time is understandable. It may have been simpler then, but it certainly wasn’t safer. Not really.

But I suppose that there were good things to remember, even if we have to squint to see them, to make the frame as small a possible to keep the ugliness out of our line of sight. There is joy in most every sorrow; somewhere in there we humans have managed to survive, in part I believe, because we can find enjoyment, laughter and love. And I suppose that as much as anything, the salute to the movie and that time in history is really a salute to the good that did exist.

Isn’t that, after all, what nostalgia is?

Favorites

2008-03-27T09:19:00.000-07:00

In the move "High Fidelity," John Cusack's character has running lists of favorites: five most memorable breakups, top ten songs in some category–you get the idea. There are so few things in my life that rank as the number one favorite of anything, that I have often felt left out or discussions or a sense of camaraderie with folks.

I remember trying to pick a favorite color, I must have been 12-years-old. Lots of girls around me chose blue as their favorite color, that choice was made especially easy because we all wore jeans most everyday, and jeans go with just about anything, especially other blue clothing items. This was long before I understood how to listen to my own heart or head about what I really wanted, but I did know that it wasn't a good idea to pick blue just because the majority did.

I chose orange, not because it looked particularly good on me, not because I had tons of stuff that I had collected in my life that were all orange, not because I truly believed it was the prettiest color around. In fact, I think the only reason I chose orange was because I owned a T-shirt with a clever saying on it that happened to be orange. This was long before I understood that some colors work better with my complexion than others. Regardless, it wasn't long before I gave up orange as my favorite. I eventually understood that greens, reds and blacks look best on me. I love the deep green hills of my hometown in the winter, most reds look great with my complexion, and while whites make me look pale, blacks accentuate my positive physical attributes.

For a time my favorite movie was the most recent Star Wars film. Then my favorite was the Rocky Horror Picture Show; the fact that I saw it twice a weekend for more than a year had some influence on that decision.

I have had crushes on famous folks, some lasting longer than others. There was the long term obsession with Bobby Sherman, the occasional actor. Who didn't like Sylvester Stallone right after Rocky, or Mark Hamill in 1977? Although and as I matured I preferred Harrison Ford. But no one person or place or movie or color or food has managed to find a way into my regular thoughts and stay there for any length of time.

This is an advantage on occasion: I gave birth to 2 children, they are both my favorite.

There is the occasional exception: I am married to my favorite husband. I live in my favorite house.

I love a good steak, and the minestrone soup at Negri's in Occidental. I thoroughly enjoy my extended family and most of my kids' friends. But no real favorites.

My daughter once asked me when I was the happiest. My reply was right now, right this moment. I am happier now than I have ever been. Each day is better than the last. I suppose that means that my life right now is my favorite. That is a distinction that I can live with.

This Guy Walks Into a Bar …

2008-03-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

I once had a friend who called me everyday at work and began the conversation with the opening line of a joke. The joke was always the same, "This guy walks into a bar…" He never got passed the opening line, however, because I would start to giggle, which made him laugh, and we went from there. I never heard the entire joke, he had begun it once while sitting in a movie theater during the movie Re-Animator as a way of helping me cope with the disgusting and highly stressful moments at the climax of the movie.

Yes, I was younger; back in those days most things that made me laugh were some version of an inside joke, a shared experience. You know, those moments where something quite ordinary is funny as hell, and you can recreate the humor of the moment with a friend, even if you can't recreate the story for someone else, they to be there.

The laughter that is the byproduct of inside jokes, shared experiences and all things silly is what keeps us alive. If we have no other fun at all at high school reunions, we enjoy rehashing four years of the teacher who sat in the back of the classroom in the dark sipping from his flask while the history students watched yet another boring and historically accurate movie. Or the day at lunch when my best friend and I "shared" orange drink for a makeshift marriage ceremony as a response to reading Henlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. This was not the same lunch period when the above mentioned orange drink came out my nose, the direct result of a clever quip made by the boy I had a crush on. Many times a laughing jag was sparked by a burrito that I couldn't get into my mouth passed the rubber brands on my braces.

Lately the folks I share laughing experiences with include my own kids. They are making their way into young adulthood, and the hubby and myself are blessed that they are including us in their journey.

For her 17th birthday party, our darling daughter requested a dinner party–a complete sit down at the diningroom table with plates and silverware and beverages kind of dinner party. AND Mom and Dad were invited.

The guests began to arrive around 6pm, we served dinner shortly thereafter and proceeded to laugh ourselves silly for the next four hours. Solid. The one liners were zinging across the table ("That's what she said!") along with stories, banter, laughter, presents, cakes and condoms. Yes, condoms. The girls were putting them on their heads and blowing them up. Those things really do "swell" to quite a size before popping. Knowing that actually makes me feel a bit more secure about the statistics of failure. So does the fact that the kids are so comfortable with condoms before putting them to the intended use, that they can play with them without embarrassment or the need for disgusting or overly graphic jokes. Yes, I have pictures. No, I'm not posting them here. The pictures don't do the evening justice. You had to be there.

Perfectly Damaged

2008-02-17T12:23:00.001-08:00

The first time my mother saw me was through an x-ray taken in-utero early in her pregnancy. When she told me the story I was shocked that the doctors had taken an X-ray of a pregnant woman; there was no lead apron laid upon either of our laps to keep my tiny ovaries protected from the rays. She was thrilled at seeing the perfection of the baby growing inside her, the ten fingers and ten toes, the natural curve of my spine, my tiny ribs moving toward each other. She was very excited to share the story with me. I don’t remember if I was still a child when she told me the story, if she was trying to convey a sense of her love for me even after she left me. It may have been much later, when I was pregnant with my first child, hoping for the birth of a healthy undamaged baby of my own, that she was trying to find a connection between us, to bridge a distance.
Broken bones and torn soft tissue or similar physical anomalies can be seen by a trained eye on the fuzzy black and white image that comes from the X-ray machine; some internal damage cannot. A smudge can denote a cancerous growth, or a non-threatening nodule on a lung. A broken heart doesn’t show up even when lit from behind by a powerful bulb. Emotional damage, in fact, stays hidden. The imperfections that are accumulated through a life lived in pain or sorrow are evident elsewhere, too often by simply looking into the eyes of what was once a perfect fetus.

Before I walked in to the International Center of Photography on 6th in Manhattan, I had mostly avoided museums. In years past I would walk through a hall of paintings quickly, slowing my pace just enough to fill my line of sight with a masterpiece and register its potential, and continue on to the next and the next until I was out of things to look at and just as quickly out the door. Other times I was so intimidated by the artistic interpretations of others and the beauty that they created, that I had to leave quickly before I ran out crying over my own inadequacies.
This time I made myself walk slowly and deliberately from one display to another. I came to a full stop before each object mounted on the wall or standing in the middle of the room to be examined from all sides. I read the information placard carefully and studied each picture, mirror, or dress set out for the pleasure of the artist and patron. I turned a corner into the second room and was startled by an X-ray of a repaired vase mounted on the wall, lit from behind, treated like its own work of art. The image was less than two feet from the original vase. At first glance the X-ray was a kind of joke by a photographer who was mocking technology. The cracks suffered by the vase were highlighted on the black and white image, not as white lines, but as golden lines, winding around in rigid semi-circles. Each crack had been filled with a repairing substance tainted with gold.
The broken pieces in my home are so carefully repaired with wonder glues that the cracks are often impossible to see. The pottery that is easily distinguished as damaged is displayed less prominently, hidden behind other whole undamaged pieces, or in a part of the house where only I can see and enjoy the memory of what it used to look like before I ruined it.
Barbara Bloom was the photographer whose work was on display, and she was clearly fascinated by the broken items. She had mounted the X-ray of the vase and a teapot, each next to the repaired original. Next to each repaired piece was a beautiful hand crafted box made for storage. But it was clear that neither the vase nor the teapot would ever be hidden away inside the perfect boxes made specially to fit the size and shape of each. The X-rays, the vase and teapot were all lit from behind; the damages were on display. I stood and stared at each, puzzled, disturbed. This was bold, and the boldness was frightening. Finally I read the explanatory placard. The vase and the teapot had come from Japan where broken pottery is repaired with gold specifically to highlight the damaged areas. The Japanese culture believes that when something is damaged, it becomes more beautiful because it has a history. The damage adds a dimension to the pottery that adds to the value of the once perfect vase. A broken teapot becomes perhaps less useable in the traditional sense, but more interesting, more important, more beautiful than when it was perfect.
I felt my knees weaken and found a bench to sit on before I fell. I have often referred to myself as damaged goods. I lost the perfection that I had been born with shortly after my birth. My emotional scars that have not been repaired with gold, I have worked hard to hide them away, paste over them with a smile, a laugh, silence. Yet a perfect stranger, a perfectly strange culture, was telling me that my damage made me more beautiful, more interesting, more valuable.

Memories, Out of the Corner of My Eye

2007-12-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

There are some memories that creep into the psyche, that seep like water under a door and into the carpet of consciousness to become a part of who we are and insinuate themselves into the shape of our daily lives. Memories of cooking with my grandmother–putting dishes together for special occasions, for BBQs or Christmas or Thanksgiving–include not only the knowledge of the ingredients, the order they are added or mixed, the the timing for boiling, baking, but her movements as well. Cooking often takes the form of ritual in the way we chop, the way we season, the way we smell and taste our creations. I find myself searching my memories for the subtleties that aren't written down, that aren't included in the handwritten notes in Gram's old white cookbook. Each time I recreate a recipe from the holiday traditions of my childhood, I remember my grandmother's mannerisms, her voice inflections, the way she held the knife, or the point when she gave directions.

Recently I was putting together a BBQ sauce for chicken–not a tomato sauce with a special blend of seasonings–a wine and olive oil based one with a special blend of vegetables and seasonings. It calls for chopped celery and green onions, rosemary, oregano, worchestershire sauce, garlic and "italian seasonings." In the cookbook Gram wrote "slice garlic," but when I was a child and we made this sauce together, she always made me crush the garlic, clove after clove of these masses of garlic crushed to nearly a paste, plopped in with the wine and oil. When I am prepping the garlic, I search the periphal vision of my memories to watch her hands carefully put the garlic into the press and close it firmly before scraping the garlic off the outside of the press and scooping any pod leavings from the inside of the garlic press out to join the rest in the liquid.

I also strain my peripheral vision for the look on her face, the face I love and miss and see in glimpses in my mind's eye. I can see her lean on the sink as she does some sort of prep work into a container in the sink, although I can't recall what she was doing. Sometimes I can see a cigarette in her mouth, as much as I loath that visual memory, it is a visual nonetheless, so as much as I despised the ubiquitous cigarettes, it gives me another glimpse of her face.

I wonder what kinds of dishes that I have made for my family (and my very picky children) that they don't like know, but will learn to love later as I did. I used to hate the Christmas sandwich loaf, a behemoth of a project that involved no less than four different types of fillings, layered between slices of bread cut the long way unlike a traditional sandwich slice and held together with gravity and toothpicks. I hated this meal growing up. Gram made it every year for Christmas Eve dinner. It was serve along with sliced salami and cheese, sweet and dill pickles and olives, and some weird pickled vegetables like cauliflower and pepperoncini. I went for the dills, the salami and the cheese. And then waited impatiently while the grown-ups lingered over their loaf slices extending dinner out impossibly long, keeping me from opening presents.

Will my kids ever learn to like my homemade spaghetti sauce? I know they would like my chili recipe, and my son would like my lasagna recipe, both would like my enchilada recipe. Neither would likely care much about chicken or beef stroganoff and they can both make the breaded chicken that they love so much.

I suspect that even if they don't learn to love some things, if either is ever forced to make dishes they don't like, they will also find that the memories of cooking together are more important than taste of the food. And who knows, maybe they will appreciate my spaghetti sauce the way I now appreciate the sandwich loaf.

One Long Process

2007-10-28T22:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has lived through the death of a loved one knows that regardless of what a company policy may be, there is really no finite time limit that grief fits neatly into. Bereavement leave at work may be three days, or three weeks, but the process is as individual and unique as the life that is lost. A few days of utter sadness and pints of ice cream may be enough to allow day-to-day functioning. A few weeks in bed, unable to attend to regular daily responsibilities or personal hygiene may be the norm. Months and months of a low steady hum in the ears might create a nearly impenetrable barrier between living and grieving. Or a heaviness might slow down every movement, every thought, every memory.

And what if there are multiple deaths, one after the other? Is it possible to separate each from the other, to compartmentalize, prioritize? In my case, there is the occasional glimpse or sense a deceased loved one, a few moments or hours of thought directed solely at one soul. Most of the time one thought leads from one to another. I don't feel that I am doing any of them justice, that I am mourning each in turn, respecting their individuality in life and death. But the timing makes it nearly impossible to separate them in my head and in my heart.

Most recently is the lost grandchild. His name was Rowan. He was inside his mother for nearly five months before his heart stopped beating. When I think of him, when I allow myself a few moments of focused thought, when I can push aside the pain and numb myself sufficiently, I envision tiny fingers and toes, a face that had begun to take on unique characteristics, a little body that was on its way to becoming plump and round in anticipation of birth. I can't stay in those moments for long, the thought of his being lost is too overwhelming. When we found out he existed, and I was facing grand parenthood, I often remarked, At least it's not another death. And now he is exactly that.

When I think of the loss of Rowan, I wonder how I can still inhale with the weight of his death on my chest. I wonder how any of us can survive another loss. I remember when I found out that my dad had died, how I felt that I couldn't cope, couldn't live through another parent's death. My mind goes back one more step to my mother, knowing she was dying so soon after Miriam, feeling angry that mom's death intruded on the great grief I was feeling for Miriam. I go back at the beginning, to the loss of Miriam, to her illness, sitting with her at the end feeling the dichotomy of the pain and the great comfort in the gifts she left us.

I had originally meant this posting to be about lost possibilities, but that would infer that I was far enough along in my grieving process that I could systematically outline exactly who left behind what potential. Instead I realize that I am still facing my grief, still processing–and it is one long process.

With Age Comes…

2007-09-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have reached a point in my life when I am concerned about certain aspects of aging. From very early on in my life, I received comments about my maturity level; I appeared to the outside world to be older than my years. This was cool when I was 15 and thought to be older than my 22-year-old co-worker. It was even cooler at 17, 18 and 19 when I wasn’t carded at bars or restaurants or liquor stores. The only thing I lacked was life experience.
Now that I am mature in years and life experience, I no longer want to look/act/seem older than I really am. I in fact, to appear younger would be better. So I worry about things like wrinkles, and spend maybe too much money on over-the-counter face lotions to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. I was one of those unfortunate girls who could find gray hairs amongst the darker ones early in my twenties and often joked that I would have so many white hairs by the time I was 50 that I would be naturally blonde. I started playing with hair color cause it was fun, and at some point it became, well, necessary.
I’m not to 50 yet (despite what the AARP thinks with their stupid mailers and offers of free copies of their magazine), and have had to make the tough decision whether to continue to color to cover the encroaching gray, or let it all hang out and to hell with what the world thinks. I didn’t like the look, so I chose to go back to chemical additives and continue to be a brunette for a couple of more decades.
Many women and men of my generation, choose to follow in the steps of the younger generation who have made adorning the body with tattoos a mainstream hobby. I’m not there yet, but I do like some more adventurous piercing beyond the earlobes. So after seven years of hemming and hawing, I had my nostril pierced. I love it!
Now my hair color is from a bottle, and I am sporting an opal on my face, I’m feeling okay about my age. Hell, who has to go quietly? There’s no law, right? People these days live so much longer, so it naturally follows that what used to be considered middle age is still ramping up.
Then my son goes and decides to make me a grandmother.
My twenty-one-year old son and his twenty-year-old girlfriend are working (all too) quickly towards parenthood. They are due in mid-March. I’m not ready for this. I am delighted to have a baby in the family–I’m just not thrilled that he or she will call me Grandmother. Maybe Nana, or Grammy or Nona or Grandma Ginger, or Mamaw. Definitely not Granny or Nanny or Abuela. I have a friend whose response to the news was, “Are you even 40, yet?” God, I love this woman, she always knows exactly what to say. And the best part is–she was serious!
So I’ve said it. I’m going to be a Grandmother. I’m very glad that I decided to color my hair and get my nose pierced BEFORE I found out. Not because.
Maybe it’s time for a tattoo.

The Weight of the Dead

2007-09-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

More than one person has said to me that when a loved one dies, it brings up the memories and feelings of every other death you have experienced in your life. No one said, however, that those loved ones would take up residence in my life, intruding in my thoughts and feelings even more so than when they were alive.
My grandfather and grandmother, who have been dead three and fifteen years respectively, are perched one on each shoulder, taking full advantage of their renewed place in my consciousness, dispensing tidbits into each ear on a continual basis. I hear things come out of my mouth that I know are not my ideas. This goes far beyond turns-of-phrases. Comments, lectures and arguments that I know they would have made when they were alive, in fact probably did, are spewing out of my mouth much like, yeah I’ll say it, projectile vomit. My son and his girlfriend are struggling with life decisions and I hear myself telling them that what they want won’t work, they can’t afford it, it isn’t practical, etc. Argh! This is not the kind of mother that I am. I’m a shoot from the hip, tell it like I see tempered by love and understanding kind of mom. I try not to tell anybody how to live their life. And here I am doing just that. Get off my shoulders, get out of my head!
Meanwhile, my recently deceased mother and father can’t find room on my shoulders, so they have settled in mid-chest. They don’t say much; just make sure that I know they are there. When they were alive I always felt a kind of psychic connection, I could feel them out there somewhere in the cosmos and assumed that when they died, I would feel their absence. There were actually about five days just before my mother actually passed that I couldn’t feel her. Well, I was wrong about feeling an absence. They are with me stronger now that they are dead than they ever were when they were alive. It’s as if they decided that since they were absent the bulk of my life from my life that they are going to stick around in the afterlife and make up for lost time. To their credit it feels as though they have left the pain and other crap from their lives on earth behind, and are now more interested in offering love and companionship. If I was willing to let down the boundaries, brick walls, and various other kinds of defense mechanisms that I was forced to erect over the years to protect myself, their intentions might have some positive effect. But I’m not, so they don’t. They are offering me exactly what I wanted, but not offering it when I wanted it. And that knowledge brings up all the pain I have felt in my life, and it sits on my chest beside my parents.
My beloved Miriam, also recently deceased, my surrogate mother/aunt/loving friend, hovers off to the side, not out of sight, not out of mind, and never irritating or painful. She was no saint when she was alive, and let’s be honest, who would want a saint in their life? Not me. I like deep complicated people with flaws who offer me unconditional love. Her physical absence from my daily life is the most painful of all. With her help I found so much of myself…I don’t know how to explain…I don’t have words. I love her. I miss her. It hurts. Yet I can still feel her.
And these celestial bodies; ghosts; impressions; remnants of memories; whatever they are, they are damned heavy. And their weight hurts. Logic says that the pain will subside, as I move through my grief the strong sense I have of each of these people will slowly drift farther and farther away. Never so far that I won’t feel them, or remember them, but the pain will abate enough to function and continue to live my life. And when that happens, I will still miss them. I will even miss the pain.

And then there were none

2007-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

In just under 2 months, a span of 51 days to be exact, the last parents in my life died. The woman I called my aunt who was more of a mother to me went first. Thirty-one days later my bio-mother died. Twenty days after her death, and 41 years after they divorced, my bio-dad died.

All three deaths were caused by cigarettes. None was older than 65.

Miriam had stopped smoking nearly 20 years before she was diagnosed with lung cancer. The fact that she stopped when she did likely lengthened her life considerably. Less than a year after the diagnosis she was gone.

Mary, the bio-mom, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2004. She had surgery to remove the cancerous lung and was told that it had not spread. Apparently it hid from the surgeons because a few months ago they found that it had spread throughout her body. She died July 10.

Jack, the bio-dad, had been in failing health for a few years. The circulation in his legs was poor, he had endured a mild heart attack several years ago, and 3 strokes that the doctors were aware of (but they suspected there had been several more) . According to my step-sister, he had stopped smoking several years ago. On July 26th he suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 75% of his body after falling asleep next to a burning cigarette. (His wife and step-sister claim that his electric chair shorted out, the authorities claim it was a burning cigarette.) On July 30 he succumbed to his wounds and died alone in a hospital bed.

With the exception of a maybe 4 excursions to the dark side in my twenties during my experimental phase, I have never been a smoker. I always thought that they were disgusting. As a child when it was time to wash dishes I always saved the ashtrays for last, dipping them into the soapy water and then the rinse water before setting them onto the dish drainer still dirty. Gram didn't give me too hard a time, I think out of guilt that she smoked at all and didn't have the will power to stop.

When I was a kid and my friends would come over the visit, when they returned to their non-smoking homes they had to shower to wash the stench of cigarette smoke off of their bodies and out of their hair. Once in high school a friend commented that he was surprised I had taken up smoking. I hadn't, I had just come from home.

The smoke from a cigarette as it burns between puffs, rising up into the air like ribbons pulled by an invisible hand used to fascinate me as a child. The fascination never got beyond pretending with candy cigarettes. I am grateful that I don't have to spend my days living in a hazy house or that public places (in California at least) are smoke free. I'm grateful that my husband is a former smoker and is not likely to return to a life threatening habit.

I don't need to learn anything more about the ills of cigarettes. I don't feel the need to preach to strangers.

In reality, death is death. I am at an age when we start losing parents, that is a cold fact, but a very real one. I am lucky that I had as many parents as I did for as long as I did. But they are all gone now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not okay. I suspect, I won't be for awhile.

Slideshow of Miriam in Hawai 2006

2007-07-19T08:32:00.001-07:00

RIP

2007-07-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

Mary Louise Ross Baugher Davis (insert names here) Slusher
b October 9, 1942
d July 10, 2007

All Things have a Reason, I suppose

2007-06-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

Sometime last week, in the course of a conversation with the hubby, I realized that my very strong aversion to tattoos had ebbed a bit. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I view tattoos as a symbol of white trash. Dirty and green and without rhyme or reason. My bio-parents have some pretty ridiculous tattoos, which is of course the origin of my aversion. But suddenly one evening last week, I felt a shift, a loosening of my judgment, as if there was shift in the health of one or both of my bio-units. I have joked that once they are both dead I might be more open to colorful body mutilation.

Thursday night my brother left a voice mail. Mind you I haven't seen my brother in 20 years and haven't spoken on the phone to him in almost 15. He wanted to let me know (in an upbeat and conversational tone) that mom is dying. The doctors have given her a couple of months and she wanted me to know.

Ah. Now I understand why tattoos don't seem quite so bad.

As if a message like that isn't bad enough, it was also left on the eve of my birthday. I can count on one hand the number of birthdays my mother has remembered or acknowledged. Off the top of my head I can't actually remember one, but I'm sure there are a couple One year she actually got married on my birthday. I think that was husband #6. Two husbands ago.

She knew my brother called me. I know this in part because the call came from her number (thank goodness for call id) and because her voice can clearly be heard in the background feeding information to my bro. He left me his number and a basic schedule of when he is home in case I want to talk to him. And pointed out that he would be at mom's house on Friday. No mention of the fact that Friday is my birthday. Happy fucking birthday.

I think I'll wait until she's buried. Then I think I'll get a tiny dragonfly tattooed on my wrist.

All things happen for a reason, I suppose.

Really, I was sober!

2007-06-26T21:30:00.001-07:00

About 7:00 pm yesterday evening, a feeling washed over me that felt so strong it was almost as if some outside energy was compelling me, pushing me to do something I wouldn't normally consider.

I was overcome by an urge to call my bio-father.

I couldn't blame the feeling on too much alcohol, or on any substance altered state. I was sober and driving up I-5 from LA to my home. What I could do was reach out to my sponsors. In other words, to people in my life who have witnessed my sometimes obsessive, and always irrational, need to make contact with one or the other of my biological parents who abandoned me.

I called the husband first (thank goodness for cell phones). I'm sure he said something completely rational and convincing to counter my emotions. When that didn't work I called one of my oldest friends, the one who took the walk up the steps with me to my bio-father's door when I was 17. The one who watched me try and try and try again to build and sustain a regular relationship with both of my bio-parents. When I wondered out loud if I was feeling the urge to call the bio-dad because he really wanted to talk to me and had sent out a message through our psychic connection, she pointed out that if he really wanted to talk to me he would make the effort. I didn't bother pointing out that he doesn't have my phone number, and I'm unlisted so he couldn't easily get it.

Ultimately I pulled into a rest stop, poured some quarters into a pay phone and dialed the number I last called in 1992. Wrong number.

The feeling has mostly passed. I realize that I am likely wishing for some parental involvement from the non-parents in my life now that I have lost the only surrogate parent I had left. My grandparents first stepped into the roles of first line parents when my own bio-folks walked away from me. Then my oldest friend's aunt stepped in when my grandmother died. She died a few weeks ago. I feel like I should be okay with being orphaned. Peopled deal with it every day. But I'm not. I suspect that I never will.

A Reluctant Goodbye

2007-06-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

My mentor/friend/aunt/surrogate mother died on Saturday June 9 at 11:30 a.m. I had the great privilege and honor of spending her final days caring for her beside some truly incredible people.

She was diagnosed eight short months ago with advanced lung cancer. Those eight months were filled with doctor visits, chemotherapy, blood transfusions and blood tests. She also spent eight months lunching with friends, vacationing in Hawaii, cramming an early retirement into a finite space of time. And more importantly she spent the time learning just how loved she was.

Six weeks before she died, she and I began a list of gifts that had come from the cancer. Among them was her ability to let go of money worries, and to understand that the things that needed to get done, would. No less than two dozen people were in her home the morning she died, five of us were at her bedside, her oldest son holding her in his arms as she took her last breath. Beginning Thursday and stretching into late Sunday, the house was full of people who loved her. People who came together to celebrate her life and mourn her passing. How many people can inspire a four day house party? Miriam could.

As sad and painful as death is, if you pay close attention, it can also be an incredible experience. I was in the room when Miriam's soul left her body, leaving only a thread to hold her to the earth as her shell finished out its last hours. From the outside, the leaving resembled giving birth. It began as a struggle to cough, to breath in enough to expel the cancer from her lungs. But instead of expelling the cancer, her body mustered the last of its strength to bear down as she did during childbirth. She fought to release her soul and end her own suffering, to begin a new journey, a new life, a new form.

A few short hours later, I felt her pulse move farther in and away from my fingers, while her breathing slowly diminished. Afterwards as the body lay with Henry her bear cuddled up beside it, each person in the house visited one last time. Her dear friend, a Southern Baptist Minister who had agreed to act as her rabbi, performed a blessing and then two Buddhist Monks chanted over her. Hours later Hospice bathed and dressed her and her body was taken away.

We won't officially say goodbye until her birthday in late July. She wanted a service outside where we could all gather and share our stories of her. She also wanted to be there (ashes and all). Truth be told, she is still here with me even as I say a reluctant goodbye to her physical presence.

Leap of Faith

2007-04-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

How many times in our lives do we stand at a precipice looking out at the life we could have, wondering if really do have the strength, the intelligence, the fortitude, to take a step forward and leap into the life we have chosen?

I sit and stare at the rejection letters, and the news of dear friends who are finding work in their chosen fields, writing or teaching or whatever combination they can make fit into their lives. I'm wondering if I'm going to be able to make it out there with them. I'm wondering if I have what it takes to succeed, to believe in myself enough to fight the necessary battles within myself and within the field I'm venturing into.

In addition, I have to take a long hard look at the outside commitments I have made, the ones that involve tons of work and no pay, and wonder if I have the fortitude and the patience to work toward the changes I believe need to happen.

Some part of me wants to retreat. Retreat back into my own dark little box, the tiny space I allow my mind to occupy when my own personal demons take over. I want to hide within my misery and prove to myself exactly what kind of failure I am by remaining inactive save for the dark thoughts. Some part of me wants to give in to the voices of doubt that creep in, hand them a microphone and tell them to have at it, knock me down with their words of failure and unworthiness, shred me with truths I don't want to hear, cloak me with the invisibility of my own misery.

But alas, as tempting as giving in seems, it really isn't an option. I don't have the patience to be utterly miserable. In truth I like myself a little too much do any real harm, or allow the voices free reign.

I originally began mulling this subject over with thoughts of career in mind, but am beginning to see recognize my surroundings. I have been here before.

I suppose that when I was about to become a parent, I must have stood here. I must have surveyed the world ahead of me, one that was so new I had great difficulty fathoming what was ahead. One that didn't seem to match the words of the other parents who can gone there before me, the ones that tried to share their wisdom and experiences. I looked up one day and realized that that new world had become my entire reality, there had been no choice but to move forward.

I knew I stood here when I made the decision to go back to school and complete my long neglected college education. I must have sat here looking beyond the critical math homework that so often reduced me to tears, knowing that if I gave up on math that I was giving up on my dreams of a degree, of the education I so desperately wanted. That wasn't an option. I knew that if I gave up, that I wouldn't be able to live with myself. It's strange to receive praise from anyone, inside or outside my personal circle, that point out the awesomeness of my educational accomplishments. To me they were necessary. Kind of like parenting. There was no possibility of giving up.

I don't suppose I'll give up now, either. I'll reevaluate. That much I can do. I have made conscious choices that led me here, both in my career and in my volunteer work. I have to move forward. I have no choice but to jump, to take a leap. To have faith in myself.

Best Friends Forever and Bobby Sherman

2007-03-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

From the age of about four until I was in sixth grade, I considered Debbie Potts my best friend. The fact that we didn't attend the same school, live in the same neighborhood, and were two years apart in age probably contributed to the long-term success of our friendship. It also contributed to the time and distance that has now placed us, as adults, into the mere acquaintance category. I wasn't very socially adept as a young child, either that or the kids I attended grammar school with were all horrible people (something I don't really believe is true), but Debbie and I always got along splendidly. I have pictures of us dressed up in our warm jackets making mud pies in my driveway, and a wonderful picture in my own mind of us in our swimsuits playing in a little plastic pool that held less than two feet of water on my front lawn. Debbie always had long blond hair and was small and slender. I always felt like a behemoth next to her, with my short dark hair (cut the way Gram like it, not the way I wanted it) and my perpetually overweight child self.

We spent the majority of our visits at her house. Her parents lived on property owned by her grandparents. Her grandmother, Gladys, did my grandmother's hair. Gladys had a beauty parlor, complete with huge mirrors, cool hairdresser chairs that went up and down, and giant dryers you sat under with a head full of curlers, housed right next door to her carport. I learned to cut hair, mine and later my friends' and family's, sitting on a seat under an unused dryer watching the ladies get their hair done. Sometimes when Debbie was visiting her Grandma, we would hang out in Gladys' house and watch TV or scour some uncle's room for girlie magazines.

Mostly, though, we either hung out in the dough boy swimming pool behind Gladys' house, or went horseback riding on the property. I loved riding horses with Debbie. I loved riding horses in general. I wasn't a horsey girl–I wasn't madly in love with and obsessed like so many girls I knew (including Debbie). I didn't have miniature horses all over my bedroom, or posters of horses running, mane flying, plastered on my walls. I didn't seem to obsess about most things that girls my age did. I had very few hobbies, I didn't collect certain kinds of dolls, I didn't draw, dance or sing in a choir or like the mainstream heart throb bubblegum rockers that the other girls my age seemed to love (the Jacksons, the Osmonds and most especially Donny Osmond).

There was one singer I did love, truly madly deeply and passionately. Bobby Sherman. Almost no one heard of him, it seemed to me, but I thought he was just the best thing. Ever. He had hair similar to Donny Osmond's–longer on the sides with bangs that swept across his forehead, always threatening to fall across one brown eye. He had a square jaw, and a great big smile (a slight case of buck teeth), and dimples on his cheek and one on his chin. I loved, loved, loved his chin dimple. I remember wearing button up shirts that I made sure had the top three buttons left unbuttoned, just like Bobby Sherman, and a choker, just like Bobby Sherman (something like the one he wore on the poster on my closet door), and my hair parted exactly the same way.

The second to last time that I saw Debbie, she was working in Tuttle Drug as a cashier. She was taking classes so she would get work as a typist or secretary or something like that (I remember thinking that she was aiming way too low) and she was so excited to remember how I used to wear my hear–just like Bobby Sherman.

The last time I saw Debbie was from a distance in downtown Petaluma. She was walking with a man pushing a stroller. After that I often thought of Debbie and wondered how she was. If she was still in town, how many kids she had. I tried looking her up on classmates.com, but had no luck.

A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting at Petaluma High School. The school is in the process of renewing their accreditation and I was asked to come as an "involved" parent. Several people I knew came through the doors of the library, my friend Lynn included, who sat next to me. Equally as many people that I didn't know came in. I spent some time hanging out with the former mayor and his wife Bonnie. In walks a woman with blond hair hanging simply down to her shoulders, small and slender with a very familiar (and much older than the last time I saw her) face. I knew that it had to be Debbie. She was on the other side of the room with her husband, and I couldn't quite make out her name tag. What I wanted to do was to jump up, run (or crawl over seats) across the room and say something witty like, "Debbie, is that you?" What I did do was stay quiet as the meeting began and keep an eye on her in case we locked eyes in a moment of recognition. It didn't happen.

Plan B: Once the meeting was over and we were all invited back to the multi-use room for food, I decided to approach her. I carefully planned my strategy. I would gently touch her arm, when she turned to me I would say, "Could I bother you for a moment? Are you Debbie Potts?" If she was I would then tackle the explanation of who I am. I didn't get the question out of my mouth, she knew me. We had a nice stranger to stranger hug, and spent about 5 minutes catching up on each other's lives. I was clearly much more enthusiastic about seeing her. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't unhappy to see me. She seemed genuinely pleased. She was just so…I don't know…grown up. She was very glad to see that, "you're doing well." She didn't ask about my grandparents, which is very unusual in my experience of running into people I haven't seen in awhile. Maybe she already knew that they were gone. I asked about her grandmother and got a brief update, as well as about her parents. It was very clear to me that we had nothing in common save a few childhood memory scraps, none of which we talked about. Life now was simply more interesting, the lack of school and neighborhood memories that had cemented our friendship those long years ago now created a chasm between us. Other than children around the same age, we had nothing in common. She and her husband didn't even go out to the movies together! I just couldn't relate.

Since sixth grade when Debbie and I mutually decided that we had grown out of "best friend forever"-ness, I didn't have another best friend until high school. Counting Debbie, I have been close to four people that rated that label. Two of them are still in my life. But I still like Bobby Sherman better than Donny Osmond.

Connecting the Dots & Taking Control

2007-03-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Ever have a duh! moment, when you connect dots you knew were there, you knew were related, and that had even occur ed to you were part of a pattern, but that you simply chose not to accept as the reality? I had one of those moments this weekend. It led to a panic/anxiety attack, but an attack with a twist. My body was doing what my body does when anxiety/panic attacks: difficulty catching my breath, which led to hyperventilation, shaking, crying, difficulty forming words. But my mind was working, my thoughts were cohesive, clear. I understood what was happening to me the entire time.

Ever since the bio-mother called I have been chewing and chewing on the problem of what to do about her, about her calls, about just how I wanted to end things with her. I considered writing a letter to "break up" with her once and for all, to explain why I haven't returned the last three calls and why we can't have a relationship. I considered having Joe call her posing as a stranger and telling her that "Ginger" doesn't live at this number. I also considered doing nothing, ignoring the call and keeping an eye on call ID. And during all this, I tried to justify in my mind why it was okay to not have a relationship with my mother. My birth mother. The woman who left me with my grandparents. The woman who has messed with my mind and emotions my entire life. And I didn't get the worst of it–Grandma, Grandpa and Sonny did.

The obstacle I kept putting in front of myself to thwart any definitive decision was compassion. Not forgiveness, not empathy (well not a lot anyway), but the need to understand why she is the way she is. This need got in the way of taking care of myself and by extension my family. I continually found myself making excuses for her behavior and undermining my own resolve.

Then I connected the dots, put aside compassion and took a long hard look at a visceral memory, an innate knowing about her abusive behavior that took place years and years ago. The compassion is gone, the forgiveness indefinitely forestalled, the empathy has gone by the wayside. And the panic attack is over. What is left is the residual depression that is a natural by-product of any contact I have with her. It probably won't last past tomorrow.

So what will I do? Probably have Joe call, as himself, and tell her not to call me anymore. It may work or may not. The one thing about my mother is that she is tenacious. The one parental skill that she possesses is the ability to keep coming back, to keep asserting her presence into my life. She did the same thing to her own parents. Even when they asked to her leave and not come back, she came back, called, visited. She once sent the police to my door after telling them that she hadn't heard from me in awhile and was concerned. Never mind that I had written and asked her to make contact by mail only. Never mind that we had purposely un-listed our home phone so that she couldn't call. She just kept at it, no pattern, no regularity, no consistency. So she may continue her inconsistencies. It doesn't matter anymore. I'm done.

To Care or Not to Care

2007-02-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

My bio-mother called last night and left yet another drunken message. We weren't home, but truth be told I wouldn't have answered the phone even if we had. Thank goodness for Call I.D. It has been almost 14 months to the day since the last time she called, drunk. In fact in the last three years, all three phone calls have been while under the influence. My theory is that it takes enough alcohol to get this alcohlic drunk enough (to slur) before she can summon up the nerve to pick up the phone and dial in a vane attempt to reach out to her oldest child. She has said to me a number of times over the years, "Remember, you're my first born, Ginger." Clearly she is implying that first born means something special. But I have no real memories of feeling the kind of special she wants me to feel.

Those Silly Pheromones

2007-02-11T10:13:00.000-08:00

There is an article, more of a blurb really, in today's Press Democrat that supports about half of what I already believe about personal scent. According to a study done at UC Berkeley, "A chemical in male sweat can boost mood, brain activity and sexual arousal in heterosexual women…"

I realize that science has a compulsion to take perfectly logical ideas and prove them, but all they had to do was ask any woman who loves the way a man smells, and they possibly could have saved some money. And the scientists who conducted the study didn't even let the women really smell the "guys." Women were instead instructed to take 20 whiffs of a chemical with a hugely romantic name, androstadienone, from a bottle and then had their vitals checked. The chemical is a compound "found in male perspiration and other bodily secretions." Lovely.

I once had a crush on a guy who always showed up at the bar we were hanging out in after work smelling like he had been working all day. He had B.O. It was borderline unpleasant, but it still turned me on. There was something about him that really got me all hot and bothered sitting next to him, his androstadienone wafting off his torso and drifting toward me in my chair. I found myself leaning in toward him and inhaling deeply. It reminded me a bit of a food that on first taste isn't great, but once you chew on it awhile and let the inner flavors permeate your taste buds, it is really great and you forgot that the first taste wasn't so great. Come to think of it most alcohol is like that as well. The bitter or biting taste of the fermented grain or grapes that precedes the warmth spreading down your body as the first sip makes its way into your system eventually starts to taste good because you associate it with a pleasant feeling. That is how this guy smelled to me, I got used to the unpleasant outer shell of his end-of-the-day scent because embedded in each scent molecule was some chemical that made my heart race, dilated my capillaries and got my juices flowing.

Conversely, I have seen this phenomenon have the reverse affect on a heterosexual male. My fifteen-year-old daughter went to the movies with a new boyfriend. My hubby and I liked him fine, we had met him and spent a bit of time with him. We weren't eyeing him as potential son-in-law material, but basically he was okay. We offered to give him a ride the few blocks from the movie theater when we came to take the daughter home from the movies, to the restaurant where his parent was waiting and would take him home. As soon as the kids were inside and the car door closed, his scent filled the car. I looked over my shoulder at him in the backseat with my daughter, they weren't even touching, just smiling and chatting. But boy, did he smell great. Whatever he was wearing filled the car. Wow. As covertly as I could, I inhaled deeply and thought briefly about Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson. This kid was much cuter than Dustin Hoffman.

He was only in the car a few minutes, we let him out, the kids said a quick goodbye, he thanked us for the ride and sauntered off as we pulled away from the curb. The usual parent-child chit chat ensued.

I said "Boy, Joe sure smelled good, what was he wearing?" Whatever cologne that was, I imagined, was rivaling Ralph Lauren's Polo from my youth.
To which my daughter replied, "He wasn't wearing anything."
"He sure smelled good."
"Yeah he did."
To which my husband responded, "I thought he was just irritating."

What? Mother and daughter were stunned. What had this kid done to irritate Dad? He had said almost nothing, but not in a surly, dark teen kind of way. He's just kinda shy around adults and was making small talk with the daughter. He hadn't done anything overt to irritate Dad, just being in the car made Dad feel annoyed and irritated. Could you smell him? No. Didn't smell a thing. Ah. The androstadienone was a welcome addition to the car air for us girls, but for the man, it was all about irritation.

Those silly pheromones!

Sense of Accomplishment

2007-02-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I:
1- Worked on my book proposal.
2- Submitted an essay to a contest (to Missouri Review It Started with a Kiss and Ended in Silence).
3- Finally got an envelope to Susan Cohen for letters of recommendation.
4- Receive a very nice rejection from Sara Lawrence's publication Lumina thanking me for my submission, but regrettably they can't publish it.
5- Did lots of practical chores and errand running (including buying blinds to put up in my office).

Today I:
1- Submitted an essay for a fellowship contest (Writers at Work Dust and Dried Blood).
2- Trimmed the rose bushes.
3- Scooped the yard.
4- Checked on my dossier at AWP.
5- Printed out as essay to submit tomorrow (Lessons in Love to The Sun).
6- Did some laundry.
7- Worked 1/2 hour and got paid for 1 hour evaluating essays.
8- Remembered that I will likely have a job before all the big bills come due. I'm not lame, I'm not lazy, I'm not unemployable. I'm just getting started. (hold that thought!)

The Heart of the Matter

2007-02-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

What is it that holds an individual back from personal success? Yes, I understand that fear of success is in serious competition with fear of failure. But what is it, specifically, that nurtures those fears? What in our psyche, personal experiences, thought processes, or individual temperament that build the foundations of these fears? Foundations that are so strong, we have to find a way to move completely out of the neighborhood in order to dwell in safer, stronger, healthier homes whose foundations are built on solid beliefs, personal integrity, strength of character and are tall enough to take us to the pinnacle of our dreams?

I have spent so many years looking ahead to someday, that I'm having trouble adjusting to the concept that someday has become today.

Someday I want to try to sell my book proposal and use the advance to pay the bills while doing research and maybe having some other part-time income. So why is it so hard for me to open the damn thing up and work on it? To put the thought and effort, and research time into honing it, moving it toward the agents' mailboxes. I have and I do. But–damn is it hard. The opening part, the wrapping of my own head around part, the settling down and closing off all distractions is the hard part–the really heavy lifting. The work itself is great. I enjoy the research and being distracted by interesting tidbits that I know will further the proposal, and ultimately the story itself, along. I enjoy working the sentences over and over again, until they are molded into exactly the form I want them to be.

But when I'm not working on it, when I'm fretting about money and wondering where I can find a big enough paycheck to meet all of my upcoming obligations, when my head begins to hurt from the worry, I look past my goals and my dreams, toward what I believe to be the more practical. And who defines practical? The voices in my head. Gram and Grandpa. Their worries have become my worries. The shoulds that I fought so hard against while the Grandparents were alive are making a stealth attack comeback.

Don't get me wrong, these aren't their worries about my potential failure I'm talking about, it's theirs. Their fears that were at times projected onto my life. They always made it clear they felt that I was smart and could do whatever I set my mind to. They were from the generation that foresaw my potential to include beauty school or flight attendant school, or working for myself doing housecleaning, or secretarial work, or even a supervisory position in a bank (but not the manager). I'm not sure that they believed enough in themselves to have far reaching dreams, or consider that I would either.

When I got my substitute teaching credential, I was terrified. I wondered if I could have success one day at a time in someone else's classroom. Once I did, I found that I didn't really want to do it, I didn't enjoy it, it wasn't the kind of intellectual challenge I thought it would be. I surpassed a goal. The next goal isn't into my own primary classroom, but into a college level one.

When I try to see myself as a published writer, it is easy for me to forget that I have in fact already been published in local publications, and all I need to do to stretch that out to something larger, is to write. And submit. To take myself seriously and not allow the non-creative issues to cloud my perception. To not see myself as a failure because I don't clean house as thoroughly or often as I believe I should. Or to beat myself up because I want to write instead of scooping poop. Or to dive headfirst into volunteer work, and put aside the essays that only need a few spelling corrections and a couple of addressed envelopes.

I have put into place so many of the pieces needed to move myself towards my goals, but I have to admit that I am too afraid to move toward them. Yet I know that financially and emotionally I need to. When the financial motivates me, instead of sitting down and working on the practicals of publishing and writing, I start looking at full-time jobs in Marin county posted on Craig's List, trying to see myself 8 eights a day writing marketing material, or updating databases, or researching real estate, or watching the alcohol industry, and if the bottom line, the takehome salary, will meet the financial goals I believe I need to reach. On those days, the financially motivated days, I spend far more time fretting and surfing job sites than working toward my writing goals.

I think that I am as afraid of success as I am of failure. There are really many more reasons for my fear than a couple of voices in my head. Like everyone else, I am me because of dozens of experiences over a lifetime. I am afraid because I sometimes don't like being out in the open, being seen and noticed. Which makes if difficult to be successful, doesn't it?

As always, writing helps. It is at the heart of the matter. I am and have wanted most of my life to be a WRITER. Writers write. Writing helps. By writing, I am fulfilling goals. Which is a very large chunk of my reasoning behind starting a blog. I don't really expect anyone to read this, but I'm not posting anything here that I wouldn't willingly talk to someone about in person or on the phone. No big secrets, just working through life by writing.

The Daily Roller Coaster

2007-01-31T13:57:00.000-08:00

Three days ago, I was really excited. I had gotten this blog up and running, I was looking toward a couple of paid gigs this week, and well, the world just seemed kind of exciting.

Two days ago, I was suffering from terror. The icky intangible kind. The, "what am I going to do with my life" kind. The overwhelming, I don't have the guts to execute any of my ideas kind of fear.

Yesterday was a good day. I felt like writing, although I did none. I was very interested in applying for jobs, although I didn't. But my mood was good and I felt that I accomplished the things I set out to do outside the house. I worked in the morning subbing, I brought one donation in for the silent auction I am running next month, I spent some wonderful quality time with my lovely daughter. And I got to spend the evening with my hubby.

Today, the terror is back. This time I'm going at it head on. I'm writing–blogging does count as writing. I've hung wall-folder holders and cleaned some of my desk off. I'm going to update my resume and apply for an out-of-each, full-time editor position with Lucas Films. I'm thinking about sending out my proposal without chapters, simply to see if I get any kind of responses. I'm thinking about sending out some other submissions as well. I'm going to take the damned envelope to Susan Cohen so that she can send out letters of recommendation for me. And it's only 2:00 in the afternoon.

Failing associated with inactivity is far worse than failing after taking action. And action simply feels better. It lifts the heaviness a bit.

And So It Begins

2007-01-30T14:41:00.000-08:00

As much as I love to talk, and write, the concept of blogging has seemed out of my league. Eh, why would anyone want to know what's going on in my life? I'm sure I'm the only person remotely nosey enough to read other people's blogs. Yeah, that's why they are so popular.

Despite my naivete, I've decided to give this a try. If nothing else, I'll write more.