Break, Damnit!

12/19/2006

I suck today.  I am crabby and wound way tight, and I can't wait until Friday.  Two weeks of letting go.  I want to work somewhere else.  Far.
____________________________
*This was mid negotiations, mid evening-parent-meetings, mid union-parties-some-members-attended-just-to-complain-about-everything, mid mid-terms-and-student-stress, mid I-have-no-time-for-all-the-joy-everyone-else-seems-to-be-having, mid political-action-to-save-our-pensions-and-school-funding-and-tenure-and-etc, mid blizzards-that-caused-my-little-toyota-to-slide-and-spin-all-over-roads-til-I-had-to-call-Bob-to-come-and-collect-me-in-his-jeep.  


I often used up chunks of my beautiful life hoping for some future time so I could rest.  I did not allow myself breaks for weeks.  It was as if I believed I was only allowed a break during time designated for such: Christmas break or Spring break or Summer break, and often even those times were used for my graduate classwork. 

I can now catch myself missing time on as I am looking too forward to time off.  (Not always, but certainly more than when these were written.)  I am also learning to say no to doing things that cause anxiety and resistance inside me.  This has made an amazing difference in my level of happiness and in the levels of joy I am able to create at my job and everywhere else.  I give credit for this joy-giving practice to several conscious choices:

1. opting out of school politics

2. only trying to fix myself

3. focusing on what is awesome

4. reading books that lift me up

5. spending spare time with those who bring me joy

6. doing more of what I love
____________________________
Back to 2006- Christmas Eve

I've already shed about 2 or 3 layers of stress build-up.  I can physically feel them pull off me.  Then they drag behind me sometimes, and people can trip on them if they follow too close.  So I turn around and kick them off - breaking that last, weak connection, and it kind of wants to hurt and pretends it's going to (like a threat) and then, it falls off and I go, "aahhhh," and smile with little pools of relief and joy in my eyes.  I immediately want to call someone who I've neglected or taken for granted and tell them how beautiful they are.

I just bought a new journal to put in my stocking.  I am feeling a little bruised that there is nothing in my stocking yet, and Bob's and Zack's are spilling over.  It is so dumb that I even care.  I don't fill theirs in order to get mine filled.  I guess I need to look at all the other ways they think of me.  Maybe they don't know what to put in it.

Here are some things I would love to find in my stocking in case they are looking for clues in my journal:


stickers
pens
gift cards
markers
coloring book for grown ups
fat quarters
quilting markers
needles
beads
books
stamps
homemade silly love coupons
_____________________________
12/23/2006 - Later

Sitting near my mother's tree in the room that holds all of my Christmas past - Shannon's pumpkin pie is being served - momma is so sick - she sits in her spot fighting back her constant cough - the blanket I wrapped around her earlier still warming her - I see an ornament  she made when I was small - I take it from its branch and study the little paper-tolled winter scene - I want to keep it and every year pull it from its ten month hibernation and remember my clever mother sitting with her friends in this room, their greeting cards, scissors, and strange smelling glue all over the card table - creating another dimension.

_____________________________
*What are some choices you can make in your own life that would increase your capacity for giving and receiving JOY?  And speaking of you, thank you for reading these.  Although my higher self would write and write no matter who was paying attention (because big ME enjoys the process), my ego (little me) loves having an audience, and finds great joy in knowing you're out there.   

Stoney Lake 10/20/2006

Cindy and John McKinnon have welcomed Suzanne and I into their world - where meetings happen only once a year and misplaced-ugly-ass houseboats and weeds are their most distressing rivals - where all conversations revolve around grandkids and travel - where guest rooms in their stoney castle are equipped with robes and quilts and awesome fish pillows - where the fireplace crackles and the pond in back babbles and the hot tub hums and where two people ...who have paid ten times their dues...can share a secret smile on Sunday mornings because they know there will be no more three and a half hour drives back into 205 chaos.

I am so selfish, bringing too many bits and pieces of that 205 madness...carrying it with me to some of the only people I know who connect to it directly...or who used to.  Shame on me for pulling each frustration out of my baggage and trying to dispose of it here.  I picked up those bags because Cindy and John held those heavy awkward things for long enough, and have finally stopped feeling strange from the absence of the weight.  They have, alas, embraced the lightness.  They are free, and I must stop putting those dreadful things out all over their Stoney Lake world.  I will try harder tomorrow...to be a friend ...to show my appreciation ...to share their joy and leave my woes packed tightly back in those effing bags.

Salem Benefit Concert 10/13/2006

Northwoods Community Church 

Salem Benefit Concert

 - STARING - 

MY SON 

and the Salem Choir...

oh yeah, and Chris Rice.

  

The place is ENORMOUS - there is a coffee shop in the auditorium-sized waiting room for the auditorium!  Sweet Jesus, it is filling up fast.  I drove down from Thornwood...left @ 1:30, stopped for an oil change, and 5 hours later, which included a complete (but unintended) tour of Peoria, I am here. I am with my man-child who looks so handsome, and the change in his heart is radiating from him, and I feel so proud and relieved and grateful to God, and Salem, and him for being so brave and maleable.

My Girls 10/04/2006

SICU - Surgical Intensive Care Unit, Rush Hospital.  We sit in the atriumesque lounge where forgotten get well balloons are stuck to the vents 50 feet above us on the wall.  We wait an hour and a half in order to spend fifteen minutes nurturing mom.  It's me, Renee, Pauline, and Rog today.  Mom is off the ventilator, talking and even cracking jokes.  I got to watch her slip into deep happy sleep with snoring and everything.  She said to Renee, "you guys are wonderful!"  Renee and Pauline are talking chakras and reiki.  Dad is, as per Rog, handling it all like it's nothing.  He is only slightly obnoxious today.   He bought lunch and he is putting up with our jabs at his character with a sense of humor.

Going in now.

4:30 - 5:05.  We eeked out an extra 20 minutes.  Jen showed up mid visit so the 3 of us (me, Renee, and Jen) were in with her together.  Mom was upset and in pain and we were working, probably too hard, to make her feel better.

Renee asked, "what can we do to make you more comfortable?" and she said, "just what you're doing."

Jenny was crying a little (real quietly so she wouldn't give herself away to mom).  I tried to put mom in her happy place - floating her on her back in an imaginary pool at the imaginary spa with the giftshop full of fabulous stuff and everything is eight dollars...she smiled.  Some time passed quietly - Renee was sending love and strength through mom's feet as she massaged them.  Jen and I just stood nearby and opened our hearts so wide they ached -- and she mumbled:

"Jennifer?"
"Right here, mom."
"Renee?"
"I'm still here, mom, I love you."
"Gina?"
"I'm here, too, mom."

She smiled, comforted, and said, "my girls," then drifted of to sleep again.

I have never been so glad to be exactly where I was...right then.


_________________________________________
*These difficult times are always peppered (or sugared?) with joy and goodness.

For the past year, more or less, my relationship with mom has been strained.  I was choosing to feel pressured by her need for attention, and annoyed by her choices and her often gloomy attitude.  I was choosing to believe she was manifesting sickness and drama, and that did not suit my new desire to choose joy as often as I could.  There was all kinds of anger and resentment in me when I was around her.  Eventually we got into a fight which caused a 12 month silence between us.  There are several entries about this in my notebooks, which I will share or not, depending on what I decide then.  My point, now, I guess, is that revisiting this, and then reading Jason Mraz's blog: a taste of my own medicine, has opened me.  I see a version of me who wanted an excuse to exclude.  I see I've been missing out on a kind of joy that comes with caring for others...with caring for mothers.  I don't need to care for her, because that need would insist on her needing care, but I can still find the goodness in providing comfort for a woman who gave me so much.  I can still choose joy and be in a relationship with her.  I can let go of my resistance and accept her right where she is, as she has ALWAYS accepted me... until now.   And I don't blame her for that.  Today I will begin the journey to stop tolerating her, and start accepting her with my heart so wide open, it aches.