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.
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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.

12/29/09 - Joy in a Bad Haircut

Aunt Janet, Colleen, Jenny, me, Grandma Collier, and Wendy in front.

Me & Jen

My sister Jenny often thought her hair was ugly and unmanageable. It was thin, light brown, and poker straight. She would get so frustrated with it that on several occasions, she refused to go out because of it. Once she even sat in the van while the rest of us went out to eat. Due to my acceptance of my overall ugliness (or more like a lack of prettiness), I never really got hung up on my hair. I was okay, as long as I did not catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror or a car window. My long, curly reddish hair was the least of my problems. I was grateful it did a good job hiding my face...until the day I let Colleen's friend cut it, and I was left with about one inch of fuzz. I was horrified. I cried and felt like a freak. It was Jen who helped me come back. She sat me down in front of the mirror on the vanity in mom and dad's room. She put some make up on me; some eyeliner, a little blush, mascara. She said I had beautiful eyes and that this hairdo really draws attention to my best features. I saw my pretty green eyes for the first time that day. I saw they had power in them that could surpass a disaster haircut. I practiced using them, reigning in that power, and was a little impressed. I was still very self-conscious, but that ugly feeling I lived with and accepted for so many years shifted a bit and set me on a path of self discovery and eventually even love.

12/28/09 - What I Don't Remember...

I don't remember my year in the trailer park with my first husband. I don't remember that smell of other people's life inside the walls and carpet of our trailer, or the feeling that you couldn't trust the floor beneath your feet. I don't remember the life insurance guy who came and sat in our ugly, dark kitchen and sold us some policy that ensured us if one of us died, the other would be well taken care of with more money than either of us dreamed of having. I don't remember the way I wished for terrible things to happen so I could have that money and escape...so I could be free of him and that depressing, claustrophobic darkness of debt that I had no other ideas about how to lift off us. I don't remember feeling ashamed.

I don't remember that crazy girl who would come over in her tank top and short shorts when I was sitting, chubby with a pregnancy and dripping wet with sweat, on the stoop outside the door, and she would blabber nonstop through twenty cigarettes and a trillion nervous ticks and twitches, and eventually talk me into loaning her a few bucks and watching her dirty baby for hours.

I don't remember getting as craby as I got huge with that pregnancy that made me hate the smell of beer and my mother's taco salad.

I don't remember crying melodramatically, eating popcorn for dinner, and spending Valentines Day cutting out hearts and flowers and writing nice things on them (from him, to me) and taping them all over our brown living room while he was out drinking with his brother.

I don't remember listening to George Winston while I dreamed up happy scenarios of me and the perfect child I was going to have. We ran, hand in hand through parks, giggling. We played in water fountains. We danced and twirled around and around, and then letting that baby cry for hours because I was afraid of all the anger inside me. I was afraid I would hurt him. I don't remember feeling ashamed some more. Ashamed and embarassed and sad and hopeless.

I do remember pretending to be happy, pretending to be on top of it all, pretending to be strong and loving, pretending to be a grown up...until I couldn't pretend anymore.

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The challenge in this writing exercise was to, after all the "I remembers," go in and poke at something you really don't want to remember...something you avoid thinking about because it's too ugly or hard or embarassing. As I wrote this the first time (in 2009) and again, this time here, I found/find myself sobbing. This outburst of emotion, I can see, comes from several places: 1.) I am still holding on to bits of shame and guilt for those choices, for my ineptitude as a parent and a person. 2.) My heart is also breaking for that lost and crazy version of me...that me that wasn't me at all...but was. And 3.) this sobbing is also, quite clearly, coming from a beautiful wave of relief and gratitude that I  fought (with my choices) to become a truer version of me...and I am still moving closer to her. She is the best I have to offer this world, and I cannot wait to discover more of her.  

12/27/09 - I remember #3 & #4

I remember my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Hedges. She was old and short with really tall, curly grey hair. Her serious old-school strict demeanor made us all afraid of her and dread the fourth grade from the time we entered first. I also remember learning big things in her class. Important things like geography, the solar system, and pollution. We did not just read a story in her class, we had to learn about author. We also took some big tests for which we actually had to study. I remember secretly liking it all.

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I remember about 15 years or so ago, my cousin Nicole, in all her amazing thoughtfulness, treated me to a sort of spa treatment one evening in her apartment in Chicago. I forgot why she thought I needed it (must have done the trick). I am not a "spa" kind of person, but I enjoyed her company and didn't argue. When I arrived, she had a hot bath drawn and dinner in the oven. It felt so awkward for me to take a bath solely for the sake of pampering myself, at a friend's place, nonetheless. I did it anyway so as not to make her feel silly for being so gracious. When I came out, warm and refreshed (way more than anyone could have convinced me I could have been), she had this buttery, lemony, perfectly seasoned, wonderfully fluffy Orange Roughy ready. It was the best fish I ever ate - to this day. I wanted to lick the pan after we finished it. I actually remember staring at that pan and contemplating the idea.

Female friendships are brave and beautiful. We take risks. We love with acts of kindness. We often do for each other what we wish our men would do for us, without worrying about perception or rejection. I've been hugged by, kissed by, held by, massaged by, pet by, pampered by, scrubbed by, held together by, comforted by, enjoyed by, cradled by, loved by women unself-consciously. I think that in these ways and many more, we are the stronger sex.

12/27/09 - I Remember #2

I remember my great grandmother Nanny carried her money in a change purse she kept in her bra where her breast (surgically removed years ago) used to be. She never minded one bit whipping that little purse out in a checkout line. The first time I witnessed it, I was mortified, then curious, then proud. She was small and had soft white hair that always looked salon-done. I remember she wore this horrible perfume. Chanel #5? And whenever she came from New Mexico for a visit, she would come looking for us, armed with that bottle of horror and spray it all over us. My sisters and I would hide from her until we knew she was unarmed. Aside from that, we enjoyed being with her. She told great stories and was not afraid to say anything. When she was mad at Bompa (great grandpa), she would say, "oh, just stick it in the window and let the window fall on it!" My sister had to explain that one to me, which made me laugh too hard when she said it again. It was clear that she liked us, and we liked her.