4/29/10 - The Gift

After school,  a former student stopped in for a visit. We were chatting about teaching as a job. He wanted to know how I could enjoy it so much. He agreed that it seemed like it could be a fun job at times, but was sure it was not worth all the "crap" I had to take from kids. My response came without permission from my brain…without a second of forethought. Like some kind of deeper wisdom I did not even know I understood: "Well, every time I do get crap from a student, I get another opportunity to practice being fabulous."

And this is how it is. This is the greatest gift inside this challenge. Teaching teenagers forces one to increase their capacity to be kind, to not take things personally, to choose joy, to reframe insights and ideas, to take deep breaths, to be an example of a quality human being.

Ekhart Tolle light heartedly acknowledged in one of his books that if you ever wanted to see if you were truly enlightened, just spend some time with your family. I would argue the same is true for spending time teaching teenagers about where to place a comma.

4/6/2010 - Venting About Venting.

My writing challenge is to rant and rave today…to let it all out without holding back…without trying to "behave." I really don't want to rant and rave unless it's about how great someone or something is. I was just having a discussion about the dysfunction of venting with my sisters. If we imagine our own suffering (which I believe we do) and manifest our own joy (which I KNOW we do), why would we give time and energy to anger and pain and frustration? All the great venters in my life seem miserable. They only seem satisfied when they have a hundred things to vent about. Who wants to be around that? I don't want to be the validator of your invented issues. I certainly don't want anyone validating my own whinings when I get stuck in a pity-rut. Gross. Slap me with a sandwich and walk away from my sorry self. Then I will have to choose… to stay in my self-created darkness alone, or to move into that fabulous light of present moment joy. I've often made a habbit of pouting and complaining, getting angry over things I can't control, but I get stuck in it less and less often. My time in that space is shinking fantastically.  I am able, so much more often now, to see it for what it is and make a different choice. I will choose joy…over and over as long as I am awake enough to see how to get there… I will choose love, and self-care, and calm. There really is not enough time for ranting and raving… even if we are here forever.

4/5/2010 - High on Bozeman

Parked in a window seat with the window wide open (no screen even), the cool air sweeps around my hot skin like love. I listen. So many clicks and peeps and hums and vibrations and pops and drips and drops and coos and quacks and move-yer-feeeeeeets and honks. How could I have gotten so lucky? How come everyone is not here in this windowseat right now? Or are they? I close my eyes and bring them.

Later:

My journal prompt asks me to write about what I'm afraid of and about coming back from despair, heartache, trauma… writing about old dramas and fear bores me tonight. I am in a bubble of love and want only to stay here. Right here. In this little bed under this sweet windowseat in this comfortable home that holds my sister friends and nephew friends and Bellalicious and sister's friend in Bozeman, Montana, on this beautiful day.

Things I was afraid of today:

1. ________________________
2. ________________________
3. ________________________
4. ________________________
5. ________________________

4/4/2010 - How I Disappear & If I Was Wholly Here

My favorite way to disappear is to walk. I walk as long as I want, as slow or fast as I want, wherever I want to the Good Stuff playlist on my iPod. I can disappear in a crowd or at a party pretty easily just by really listening and paying attention to everyone and everything else. I like to meditate, but I don't think I know what I'm doing yet. I can also disappear into a notebook, a novel, a creative project, or, when I'm super lazy, the TV.

If I was wholly here: I would be practicing and teaching raised consciousness and awareness. I would stop trying to fit my round shape into the square hole that is public education. I would sell my house and buy THE FARM with Jenny. I would spend the rest of my nows manifesting joy and modeling peace. I would become a leader and follower of non-separatist spirituality. I would almost always walk with my arms spread out like airplane wings. I would train raptors to land on my arm. I would never be afraid again. I would write books and songs and poetry. I would own horses and golf carts and many scooters with awesome helmets. I would design awesome helmets with matching goggles. I would talk to and listen to more people. I would never feel pain. I would live forever and fall more and more in love with life every moment of forever. I would throw my cellphone into an active volcano as I helicoptered over it. I would throw my judgement in there with it. I would grow my own food and flowers and raise my own meat.  I would learn and understand the ways of nature. I would forget everything.

4/04/2010 - Listing What's Positive

Things I do right:

I take ownership when I fuck up. I try to make amends.
I can forgive the unforgivable, and I do. Sometimes.
I know that when I hurt someone else, I hurt myself.
I love gently and openly and wholly, but I do not give myself away. I have learned not to sacrifice my own happiness in order to make someone I love more comfortable in their disfunctions.
I am flexible - way more so as a woman than as a girl (in mind) and less so (in body).
I have a sense of humor.
I'm kind of funny.
I love beng around funny people and honoring their ability to lighten the world around them.
I ENJOY LIFE! PERIOD.
I am learning to find joy inside every now.
I can see so much beauty in so many different places, and I can let those beauties overwhelm me sometimes to tears.
I am thankful.
I know how to pick friends.
I am truthful.
I fight consciously and relentlessly to live in integrity.
I have solid work ethics.
I also know work is not the only thing I value.
I travel well.
I can express myself well in person, better in writing, and a little in art.
I usually have a healthy sense of humility.
I can count my blessings, and I cannot count my blessings.
I appreciate my connection to everything, even if I don't always understand it.

2/27/2010 - Anniversary in Milwaukee

Once every few years, Bob and I drive to Milwaukee for a weekend of German dinners and spinning-rooftop-buffet-brunches. Tonight we locate an old fashioned movie theater (one of Bob's predilections) and find a seat in the back (one of mine). Wink, wink. The theater picks the movie for us, and we sit through Crazy Heart. Bob and I agree it is Leaving Las Vegas meets The Gambler meets Jerry McGuire ...except even more "indulgent"(said with snobby English accent). Indulgent is Simon Cowell's favorite critque this season.

Despite all of its yuckiness, it is still sweetly romantic next to my love... who never does feel my boobs like I said he could.

1/23-26/2010 - Processing Another Cose-Up Look at Mom's Mortality

1/23

Rush Medical Center Room 518 ICU.

After mom's emergency kidney removal and hernia repair, I check in on her. She seems well. I fill up on her smile. She's itchy today, and I am able to provide some relief with gross lotion and lots of scratching and massaging. With eyes closed, she utters all those involuntary noises she makes when she's appreciating the hell outta you...just a little softer than usual. About four or five times, her eyes POP WIDE OPEN, searching, and the second she sees me she smiles so sweetly, with relief and happiness to see me still there. I get to witness her grace, yet again. It always takes me by surprise, although, by now, it shouldn't.

Once, waking up for a minute, she proclaims, "I miss my grandson. Have you talked to him lately?" Her heart is always wrapped around her family - even in a morphine-induced-after-surgery stupor.

1/24

Rush Medical Center Room 982S

Went to see mom again with Jen and Katina. She is pretty good, except she thinks the nurses, the doctors, Rog, Jen and I are conspiring against her in some evil plot. She is still itchy. We are guessing it's from all the morphine, so they took her off. She trusts Katina, who manages to make her laugh some.

1/26

Rush Medical Center Room 928S

This is the toughest visit ever. Mom is sometimes mean to me. She mocks me and ignores my questions. When I tell a nurse this behavior is in no way normal for mom, mom cuts in and snidely complains, "she means I'm a big ditz, a dingbat, a dodo, dingy, ditzy!" My heart breaks. My mother's never been any of those things, and I hate that she thinks I would believe she was for a minute.

A half hour later, she's singing about her crazy foot and makes up words for body parts she no longer has. She keeps messing with her tubes - the dialysis tubes, the neck lines, the catheter. She bounces her foot on her drainage blood-ball that sits on the floor beside her bed. She sits up and talks to a doctor who tells her clearly that she has to stay at least one more night. She agrees, pleasantly. Then, less than 15 minutes later, she asks me to find her shoes. When I tell her I'll tell dad to bring them in the morning, she snips, "what do you mean, 'in the morning?' I'm going home tonight!"

After only a few more minutes, she forgets she's annoyed and is awesome-funny-smart, teasing the nurse about calling the doctors by their specializations instead of their names. Then she goes all Shakespearesque on the phone with Colleen talking about how there has been something dark and clandestine about this experience. She probably said "wearying experience wherein such horrors hath clamoured upon me thus." I am amazed and a bit envious of her Shakespearese, but I also have to fight back tears three times...I lose the fight once. She doesn't catch me, though. When you are amused, so so sad, and terrified all at once, the amused part turns into something eerie and stressful. I want my mom back.

________________________________
I have many friends who are dealing with the natural deterioration of their parent's, grandparent's, loved one's, (and even of their own) physical bodies... It's such a private kind of absurd nightmare when you are facing it up close. To try to talk about it in any real way is like trying to describe a terrifying dream. I have such respect and awe for those who sit nearby for hours and hours...for as long as it takes. Those who nurse and watch, who cry quietly and secretly, who ask for more pillows, another blanket, a fresh pitcher of ice water, and demand better care without insulting the staff. Those who provide updates, communicate, and organize schedules for visiting, medicating, feeding, bathing, care-taking. Those who scratch the itches, massage the muscles, rub in the lotions, clean the wounds, and deal with the excrement with an open heart, and all while upholding the dignity of the human spirit. Those are the gifts that matter. Those are the only gifts that matter.

1/16/10 - My Worst Critics

My sister Renee called me a self-righteous cunt and threw a cup at me when I was in college. The words stung way worse than the cup, and I know exactly why...it was often very true. I love being right and knowing it all, and I try pretty hard to do the right thing...but it's my idea of what right is. I have such strong and stubborn convictions about some things. Historically, I've not taken criticism well, but I admire the hell out of people who can. I am just now, at 41, learning to listen with interest to advice, criticism, and new ideas. I am aware of my need to practice holding back my compulsion to always give advice. Making this conscious effort helps me hear myself when I'm being righteous or uncoachable, and, wow, that is obnoxious. I'm lucky people have been able to get past this and still want to be around me. I need tough critics in my life. They are the impetus of my healthiest and most powerful growing. I will practice making it easier to bring my faults to light.

There is a different kind of critic, who I will never be great at tolerating. These are the people who seem to enjoy making you hurt. A colleague, who I thought for years was a friend, called me about a month before the election for union president. He said he had some questions for me before he could vote. I was thrilled anyone would take such an interest. I knew how smart he was and always trusted his insight...until that conversation.

He asked what I planned to do about the perception out there that I was a "dim light." I was so surprised by this question that I actually asked him what he meant by "dim light," (making myself seem even dimmer, I'm sure). He told me many of our members thought I was a little dense and asked again how I planned to deal with that. I never would have thought anyone saw me that way. I am not always super on top of what's going on, but if I want or need to, I figure it out with relative ease and deeper understanding than even I thought I was capable. I also don't mind being "dumb" about stuff I don't care about. I told him I was not aware of that perception, and that if it were true, I imagine I simply would not be elected. I reminded him that I was not running because I wanted or needed to be president, I was running because other smart, respectable union leaders believed I was ready and capable and the best person for the job at the time. I was proud of how I handled it, but when I hung up after many more minutes of strange interrogation, I sobbed quietly, alone in my classroom. Then I let that stupid conversation make me doubt myself. I had nightmares. I began hoping I would lose the election. Unfortunately, during my 3 years as president, this person picked on me many more times without warrant. He even did so via public emails and fliers that included outright lies about me.

It never really got easier, and it was not the last time I let his betrayals bring me to tears, but I did get better and better at handling it, and I learned some nice things about myself through his attempts to disgrace me. I learned to accept and fully embrace what I knew about myself... that I was good, that I was worthy of trust, that I tried to be graceful with everyone...even those who were not so with me. I learned to accept, finally, that I was not, nor ever had to be, what someone else believed.

1/5/10 - On Voices Gesund

There are voices that lift me up as soon as I hear them. My love sings to our cats and to me. He just makes stuff up, or he sings one of our names to the tune of some classic melody. Whenever he sings "geeee geeee, gee gee gee gee gee, geeeee geeeee, gee gee gee gee gee, geeeeee geeeee, gee gee gee gee gee, gee...gee gee gee gee gee gee," I tell him, quite sincerely, that it's my favorite song in the known universe (making fun of Randy Jackson is one of our routines).

I also love how "my girl" sounds when he says it to or about me. I get all silly-happy and feel full of safe and home. He talks to our cats, too. When I think of a man talking all cutsie to animals, it sounds discomforting or kind of unpleasant, but when Bob talks to Moon or Kayto it's adorable. He's funny and charming and Moon-kitty eats it up like she understands every word. I think even Kate, despite all her bitchy back-talk, thrives on attention from Bob.

Jen's voice is always full of wide-open-no-holds-barred-L-O-V-E love. The sincerity of her joy is unquestionable and unwavering. It is my wish for the world that everyone has someone like Jenny in their life...someone who notices all the small miracles and points to them and says, "WOW, that was beautiful. Did you see that?" And you see and hear and feel it with her and through her, even if you didn't notice it without her. She carries a JOY virus and everyone around her catches it. I enjoy hearing her ideas. She has five million brilliant ideas. When she describes one, I can see it so clearly. I can see it all happening in the world already, as if time stopped and we are able to get a big giant glimpse of all of it all-at-once, and there are her dreams lined up and enjoying themselves, waiting for us to come inside. The universe was so wise in its creation of Jenny.

1/3/10 - Seeing Renee

Today is a family day. Jen and Joe are on their way. Renee is in town on sad business. Her friend, who is dying of cancer, wanted Renee to help usher her to the other side. Renee is coming by later for a small love-fill-up to help hold her together through this service to her friend. I am inspired by Renee's open heart and her absolute devotion to this strange, yet honorable, assignment.

When you grow up with someone, you often miss out on their growing. You see them through the lens of your youth. All of a sudden though, during this visit, I see her sharp and clear. I see the light of so many years of love in her eyes and the honesty and goodness in her mouth. I see all the careful lines that carry stories of old worries and wounds, and I can also see those other fantastic creases that remind you of everytime she has ever smiled or laughed herself into overflowing. I am loving looking at her and really seeing her. She is more beautiful than ever before.

1/2/10 - On Being Alone

Being alone used to make me uncomfortable. Whenever I was, I distracted myself with TV or the telephone until it was over, like it was some kind of mild illness. Now I enjoy being alone. I love even the process of thinking about what I can do to make me happy. I can read and write and meditate and listen to music. I can walk and quilt and make jewelry and do laundry and grocery shop. Sometimes I get all kinds of stuff done, and sometimes I lay around watching hours of terrible TV and trolling Facebook.

I still don't want to go out to eat alone, but that's probably not too far off.

I expecially love being alone when the weather allows me to be outside with my backyard friends.

Yesterday I opted out of a gathering to spend the day with myself. I had a nice time with me.

I think I dreaded being alone before I knew I was interesting. I thought a person got kind of lost if  there was no one to witness...like the things you experienced didn't count, somehow, if no one else was there to see. Now I think sometimes the opposite is true. I get lost when I am with too many people... especially people toward whom I feel a resistance.

I do still love to be with my love and my family and my friends, but I don't feel (anymore) as if I am defined by or through them. I am finding my own kind of private definition, and I am finding I like it.

1/2/10 - A List of What Surprises Me

The journal prompt for this day was: List the big and small surprises that have happened to you.

• I surprised myself when I last minute decided not to snort cocaine. I am sure that decision changed the course of my life.
• I was surprised to be picked to ride around the circus when I was 5. 

• I am often surprised when a student who has remained almost anonymous in my classroom finds a way to let me know how much I mean to them.

• I surprise myself when I finish something I start like college, quilts, journals, a cleaning project, a 100-count-stack of notebooks to grade, etc.

• My love for Bob surprises me almost daily...and his love for me surprises me even more.
• I was surprised to win best student-mentor pair with Dana C! Five hundred bucks!

• I was surprised when I found out I was pregnant at 18 and surprised over and over with what I was capable of doing in order to raise that surprise.
• New flowers in Spring always surprise me, as do the changing leaves every Fall.

• Bob's enjoyment of Saugatuck and scooters surprises and delights me.

• My ability to be a cut-throat poker player surprises me.

• My creativity surprises me.
• Squirrels surprise me. Birds surprise me. Deer surprise me.

• I am constantly surprised at how wonderfully easy our problems are.

1/1/10 - First Musings on the Subject of Selfishness

Today is Saturday. I am warm and comfortable alone in my house. I have my caramel latte love and music that makes my heart happy. I'm doing laundry today instead of Sunday because I'm hoping to get a family day tomorrow, and I want to be present. Today is a sunny-blue-sky-bitter-cold-snow-covered day, and it is beautiful from here - in my living room. Right now, I'm thinking about sisters and the joy and suffering I experience surrounding them.

Dave Matthews Band's Sister is playing, filling my heart with thoughts of Renee and Jen, and the magic of truth, and love within that truth, they bring into my life. I am really, deeply cherishing my bond and relationships with both of them.

Colleen and I have severed our sister-bond, partly unintentionally, but if I am being honest, there is some intention there on both our parts. She has (or I always allow her to have) a draining effect on me. I am impatient with her self-pity, and I am not so gentle anymore when I feel my own beautiful life threatned by her "nobody loves me," and "everything goes wrong for me" dedications. This is cold, I guess, but I tried warm and caring and dropping everything to listen or rescue or give advice, but none of it ever worked for either of us. It fed her depression, I think, and fed my ego that loved being needed by my older, once awesomely independent, sister. Oh yeah, my ego ate that shit up. But it crushed my heart and spirit and my respect for Colleen. So I began getting real honest about my own feelings with her when we were together or on the phone, and, eventually, she stopped calling, and I stopped reaching out. I don't feel as bad about that as some part of me thinks I should. What part is that? The ego? My learned beliefs? My mom? My soul? Not sure. Am I becoming cold or cruel? Or am I learning to love and care for the ONLY entity I can have real progress with? The only soul I can work to enlighten and inspire to be better? Are we supposed to be selfish? And isn't it selfish to indulge our egos by going all daintily around people, thinking we are superior and can invoke some kind of change in them by giving them energy and money and "understanding"? Or is it selfish to avoid getting involved in the struggles of others, to focus your time and money and energy and understanding on being your best self, on being happy and content in your own life, therefore adding more happiness to the world and, in turn, not burdening others by expecting them to fulfill some perceived need? Is there a balance somewhere? Should there be?

Then, there's Wendi, my only little sister, who has such a powerful aversion to me right now that she has forbidden me to spend a single second with her boys, who I love and miss and choose to suffer over daily. She actually asked for my honesty and, apparently, did not appreciate it. It was Wendi who taught me to be so honest...to lay it out straight and direct to the person to whom it belongs (not to everyone else in your universe except that person - which is the family way). Should we hold back our own truths so others can be comfortable in their dysfunctions? Or be honest and possibly push them away?

I want joy. I want to bring joy as often as possible, wherever I go. When I am being an asshole, I want the truth from my people. I may not appreciate it up front, but if it helps me grow into a better person (when I give up being angry), then it will be worth more than all the best riches. I am lucky to have a few people in my life who have smacked me hard with the cold hand of truth. I am noticing more and more, the people who I attract are those who I never have to wonder what they think of me. They will always give it to me straight.
________________________________________

I like this entry because it shows where I was growing...and where I was still stuck. Since this was written, many things have changed, and some have not at all. But I have. And thanks to the truth and to all the ways in which it is revealed, I will continue to change. 

1/2/10 - Home

Home. Home used to be the house in Lansing, Illinois, where I grew up for the most part. It was grand and down the street from the park and walking distance to all the public schools I attended.

Home was that patio where we had bozo-bucket-birthdays for Jen, Renee, and Wendi. We also practiced our song and dance routines out there to "Love Will Keep us Together," "Muskrat Love," and "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!" We were stars, like The Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch. Well, at least when we were not screaming at each other over who wore our favorite jeans, whose turn it was to do the dishes, or who took the last Little Debbie.

Home was the family room where we sat and wrinkled old newspapers and stuffed them into our fireplace until we were black to our elbows...where the spooky clock rested on the mantle and chimed when it felt like it, and where we watched Creature Feature after school with friends.

Home was the olive green kitchen with that kidney-bean-shaped table that attached to the counters by the back door and surrounded by stools where mom sat, drinking her icy pepsi, smoking cigarettes, and talking on the phone...the yellow kitchen phone that was mounted to the wall and had a seven foot cord we stretched into a seven mile cord that globbed itself into the most amazing tangled mess when you hung it up.

Home was the green shag living room and dining room that was transformed into a Christmas wonderland once a year. It was the baby grand piano where I sat next to mom, learned to play chopsticks, and relished being close to her...unless she was sitting by herself there, playing the first heart wrenching part of Moonlight Sonata, over and over and over, getting so frustrated everytime she got stuck, pounding the keys, then trying again from the top. I don't think I ever heard her get past that first part.

Home was the basement we redecorated a hundred times, claiming the bigger part as our own. The basement where my sisters and I played school (my personal favorite) and Barbies; where we rollerskated, spun each other around on the big chair until one of us got sick, jumped rope, listened to music, and sat and spun on our sit-n-spins forever and ever; where, later, we created an environment more suitable to our teenage needs; spraypainting walls and floor, and setting up all the old furniture in such a way to be perfectly conducive to making out with boys...and making out, we did.

Home was whichever bedroom you were in - for me, mostly the biggest kids' room with Jen and Wendi, then just Wendi when Aunt Janet moved out, Colleen got her own room, and Jen moved in with Renee. I spent time in all three, though, claiming each as mine when there. Mom always gave us that freedom, to own the room we were occupying.

Home was the upstairs bathroom we often had to wait in line for - the one where I learned that "hair so clean it squeaks" required about 6 washes and made a frizzy mess of my already thick and dry mane.

For a variety of reasons I am not brave enough to discuss in this blog, home has little to do with that house anymore. I usually feel uncomfortable and sad when I'm there.

Today, home is wherever I am with Bob, Zack, Jen, Renee, or Joe. When I am with them, I feel full of home. I can also be alone, walking just about anywhere, and feel at home. I feel a strong sense of home in my classroom, in Sheryl's backyard, with Bob's family in South Bend, and in Saugatuck.

I do not feel at home in bars, hospitals, trailer parks, depressed places, churches, on beaches in the afternoon, around very rich people, or at most parties. But I will leave those for later journal entries...or not.

The picture I drew in my notebook of me hangin on my deck...most at home.