song

By the time I was my daughter's age, I'd been singing in a choir for at least six years. I contemplate this as I watch her make corporate music with her classmates today—praying that similar seeds of interest and affection would likewise get lodged deep within her ready heart and take root.

Their voices are sweet, innocent, self-conscious. How long until she learns to sing with abandon, I wonder? How long until she discovers the thrill of giving herself over to the experience? How long until her joy in the glorious moment overpowers her fear of what other people think?

I flash back to my weekend—singing love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all, with my college choir Saturday night—full heart, full voice, full volume. Complete abandon. Complete accord. Complete joy.

I try to tell Beth about it at breakfast. About how alumni of the Chorale always get to join the choir in the singing of this piece at every concert. About my director and the significant role he played in that very significant time in my life. About how I've never been so happy as when singing with a choir of that caliber. But I can't tell her. Not without tears. Not today.

The Chorale sang—

What can purge my heart
Of the long And the sadness?
What can purge my heart
But the song Of the sadness?
What can purge my heart 
Of the sadness
Of the song?

("Song for Billie Holiday," Poem by Langston Hughes)

This sadness cannot be purged by any other means. Song is the remedy. Song is the therapy. Song is the salvation.

There will come a time when Song will be restored in my life. All is healed, all is health… Hearts all whole. ("Sure on This Shining Night," James Agee) I eagerly await that day—when my heart is once again whole. Until then, I merely listen, missing pieces of that which is most essentially me.

My thoughts come back to the 6^th graders before me—fresh-faced, fledgling voices lifted up together in praise. I smile, fighting back tears for the second time today. I pray for their song to purge my sadness. And I listen with eager excitement, awaiting with baited breath the moment when they, too, learn the fullness of joy that comes from abandoning one's self to the music. Until they, too, know what it feels like to be Complete.

he gives and takes away (though not necessarily in that order)

In loving memory: 1993-2010

We got them almost on an impulse. Though I'd been desperate for a cat for at least a year, their actual acquisition was, well, not exactly planned. That seems to be the way things go around here.

They fulfilled their purpose with incredible success—bringing me comfort at a time when I needed it most. Deeply depressed and struggling through my first year of marriage, I knew, I just knew, I would feel better if I only had something I could hold. Turns out, I was right. That seems to be the way things go around here.

Both incredibly affectionate and gregarious, Max and Ruthie were the kind of cats that even the most die-hard dog people couldn't help but love. They brought an immeasurable amount of joy to everyone around them—well, except maybe Beth. But she was a good friend and tolerated them both, and her daughter found a great amount of joy from being around them, so that sort of made up for that. To everyone else, they were "the nicest cats I've ever met." And we would concur.

Ruthie was the first to go about five years ago—breaking my heart in the process. The only thing that got me through it was that Max was there, waiting, when I got back home. With Ruthie gone, our affectionate boy got downright needy, and in his desperation finally made friends with my daughter, who requited his love enthusiastically. Which made his passing this past week all the more difficult.

Seventeen years old this spring, Max had begun losing the spring in his step, as well as a significant amount of weight, a few months ago. I knew the end would come, and come relatively soon. I just was not prepared for it to come quite as quickly as it did. About a week after returning from our vacation, Max took a sudden turn for the worse. Not eating, barely drinking, and unable to walk, he laid around the kitchen looking like a sack of bones for a week before I finally made the decision no one who owns a pet ever wants to make. I made the appointment to have him put down.

Though I'd cried every night for a week, that night was by far the most difficult. I lay on the floor long after everyone else had gone to bed, stroking his ears and thanking him for loving me, and for letting me love him. The next day my daughter, because somewhere along the line he'd become as much her cat as mine, held him in the car on the way to the vet, choking back the kind of tears that take your breath away. "It's okay, Max," she'd croon as he cried, never one for the motion of the car. "It's okay." I flashed back in my mind to a ride some nine and a half years earlier—she is one and a half and we are moving to a new city. Max is in a carrier on one side of her car seat, Ruthie on the other, and neither are happy to be there. My daughter croons to them the entire three hour drive… "S'okay, Max. S'okay, Ruthie. S'okay…" It is not okay, today. Tears fall fresh and I blink them away, breathing deeply and focusing on the road. We get there all too soon.

I cannot begin to describe how difficult it is to watch your child grieve the loss of a beloved friend, especially as you grieve your own. Mercifully, we have a wonderful vet, and she was gentle and tender with all three of us. We brought him home and took turns rocking him in the glider, holding him one last time, baptizing him with tears that flowed from that place where love and sadness reside together in strained compromise, two sides of the same coin forced to live back to back. We buried Max that night, on the opposite side of the raspberry patch from Ruthie, and prepared ourselves to grieve for a good, long time. What we were not prepared for was what God did next.

She crawled out from under our deck this weekend—dirty, skittish, and underweight, but quick to warm up to our attention. We fed her out of compassion, and that was all it took for us to somehow get adopted. We named her Latté—her creamy tan coat the color of milk and coffee—and wondered if she would stay. She did. We wondered if she would take to the house. She did. We wondered if she would take to us as much as we had taken to her.

She did.

We've gone back and forth in our minds about this decision—questioning if we've minimized or somehow disrespected the loss of Max by allowing another cat into our homes and hearts so soon after his departure. What I've determined, after much soul-searching, is this: we did not go looking for this cat. This cat came looking for us. Somehow, God in his infinite wisdom seemed to know that there is a certain grief that can only be comforted by holding something warm and soft and purring, and he sent us that comfort. We are choosing to be open to receiving it—because, after all, what a better tribute to Max and Ruthie than to have loved them so fully that we would be open to loving that way again, in spite of the pain such a love will inevitably bring.

We will wait a week to see if any lost kitty signs pop up, and to see how Latté acclimates, and if all goes well, we will take her to the vet after that time and we will make it official. We will, in turn, adopt the cat who has adopted us. Almost on an impulse, we will open our hearts again to loving and being loved.

Because, well, that seems to be the way things go around here.

Latté, on Bub's lap this evening...

what remains

The day began innocently enough as far as epiphanies go. After a slow start due to a late night the evening before, we were finally all up and moving—moving tubs and bags and boxes up from the basement to be dug through and sorted and stored or gotten rid of. I was nearly jubilant as I plowed through the last ten years worth of stuff (which had heretofore been accumulating en masse all over my basement, already a pit to begin with) trying to determine what were keepsakes and what was simply not worth keeping. Baby clothes, teething rings, books, baskets, tennis shoes, clothes out of date, out of style, out of size. Three carloads to Goodwill later, I was nearly finished.

Laid out before me were the remnants of babyhood to be sorted and stored, and then my work would be finished. I perused the items carefully—which child did they belong to? Was this handmade? By whom? Would they want this for their own children? I tried to identify all the important information one would want to remember but would never be able to in twenty-some years. It was at this point I picked up the dog.

He was cute—a soft, shaggy brown mutt about the size of a webkinz. I couldn't remember for the life of me to which child he belonged. I noticed he had stitching on each ear—one ear read "record," the other, "play." Easy enough, I figured. I'll press play and see if it gives me any clues.

I pressed play and out came my own voice. "Hi Buddy! I love you!" I crooned. Problem solved. It was my son's. I was not prepared for what happened next.

The recording wasn't over. After my own "I love you," there was a second's pause, and then an 18-month old voice echoed back, "I yuv you!!!"

If this afternoon in my life were a scene from a movie, that moment would look like the scene in Ratatouille when Anton Ego, the food critic, takes his first bite of Remy's ratatouille and is sucked back through a wooshing vortex of memory to his mother's kitchen some thirty or forty years earlier. I could almost feel my hair swoosh around my ears as I was transported instantly back to chubby cheeks and cherubic faces and wet kisses and infectious laughter. I lost it.

I sat there in the middle of what will never be again, and I couldn't pull myself back together. And that's when it all finally came clear in one heartbreakingly obvious moment. It was more than just mourning the passing of these stages in my children's lives, though I am wont to do that ad nauseum. No—it was something more, something deeper, something I've never spoken. Something I've ignored and stifled and stuffed and shrugged off but could never quite get rid of. And there it was, all messy and snotty and out in the open. I. Want. Another. Baby.

There. Will. Be. No. More. Babies.

There will be no more babies. After two difficult pregnancies, one of them with multiples, I couldn't have dreamed of putting my 34 year old body through that, let alone my nearly-40 body. I knew, when my son was born, we were done. I simply couldn't do that again. The nine months of terrible pain, the destruction of my body, the disruption to our lives, the months upon months upon MONTHS of screaming, diaper changing, screaming, sleepless nights, and did I mention the screaming? No. There will be no more babies. I knew this six and a half years ago. I know it still.

But there is a difference between knowing and knowing, and my heart began to understand that difference this Saturday knee-deep in blankets and bears and binkies and baby books. I grieved on and off all afternoon. I grieved lying awake in bed, unable to sleep with pre-meet nerves. And I grieve it now, wiping tears between paragraphs, putting it all into words for the first time and perhaps the last.

There will be no more babies. Surrounded with what remains, I closed that chapter yet again this weekend, flipping forward once again to the school-aged years where I will continue to suck every bit I can out of each and every moment available to me. As Buddy listened with curiosity to his younger self, he crawled in my lap, wrapping his slender arms around my neck. "I still love you, Momma," he reminded me. I held him too tight for a little too long, and I told him I loved him, too.

And then, yet again, I let him go.

on (not) singing

Normally, my mail doesn't make me cry. Normally. But today's mail was an exception. Today's mail contained the season brochure for The Toledo Masterworks Chorale, and it pressed on a tender spot in my spirit I have gone to great lengths to avoid over the past several years. This blog began as an effort to avoid that tender spot. And I'd done pretty well, as of late. But tender spots always seem to be found, somehow. Someone presses on them by mentioning the unmentionable, asking the unaskable, or mailing you a brochure that gets delivered right into your hands and says, "Hey—pay attention to me now, would you?"

We moved here nine years ago, leaving behind this fine group of semi-professional musicians with whom we had developed deep friendships and made incredible music for eight years. It was the first time since kindergarten that I had not been a part of a choir. I am still, nine years later, choir-less, and today, in particular, that makes me very, very sad.

In a season of life within which women already tend to feel every shred of their identity is laid on the altar of motherhood, it was particularly excruciating to take this part of my heart and lay it down, not knowing when or if it would ever be restored to me. Singing was not just a part of my identity, it was the entirety of who I thought myself to be. I loved singing choral music with a passion that nothing else—nothing else—in my life has ever even come close to. Passion deferred, I am discovering, makes the spirit sick.

Singing with the Chorale was a source of joy, of emotional outlet, of pride. It connected me with God and with others in a way few other things can. I ache for that, and there is nothing I can do about it. There is still, nine years later, no ram in the bush to spare this offering. And so today, thanks to the Chorale's 38^th season, I am sitting here at my computer wiping tears and grieving this empty, achy place in my spirit that cannot be comforted by anything less than being a part of that glorious sound again, and again, and again.

Best wishes to the MWC for a fabulous season. Looks like fun. Wish I could be there.

Sing loud, old friends. Sing loud.

our last days of summer vacation

If my dear friend Bob thought it strange that we spent part of our last spring break in Indianapolis, he will be completely flumoxed by the fact that our summer "vacation" was spent in Springfield, Illinois.

The kiddos in front of the state capitol building. (Should that be capitalized? I'm too tired to care...) It was one of the most beautiful domes (from the inside, of course) that I've ever seen.

Hangin' with the Lincoln Family at the White House. I HIGHLY recommend the Lincoln Presidential Museum. Very, VERY well done.

Yep, that's corn. Right next to our camp site. BUT it's the BIGGEST darn corn I've even seen--which says a lot for a girl who grew up next to a corn field. (To give perspective, I am 5'3" in shoes. That is BIG corn!)


Was thrilled to find out my good buddy, James (we've been friends since kindergarten), got back into the country the week before we drove right smack dab through the town where he's doing his Ph.D. Stopped and had lunch, then made him late to go sell his textbooks. Oops.

Not the most exciting vacation, 'tis true. But when you spend over $3000 on a broken arm, you make do! We had a great time with my folks, and it was great to see all the Lincoln sites during his bicentennial year. Now, to prepare for school!

a letter to my fifth grade self

After eyeing it for months, I finally picked up What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self (edited by Ellyn Spragins) with a gift card I received for my birthday. I was immediately transfixed and began thinking of all the different ages at which I wished "I'd known then…" I picked fifth grade for an obvious reason—my daughter begins fifth grade a week from today, and my mind is swimming with all I want her to know about all there is to know.

At ten, I was painfully self-conscious, boy-crazy beyond belief, and immensely insecure. My love-hate relationship with attention was beginning to bloom, and I swung wildly from seeking attention at any price to wishing I could vanish into the cafeteria walls. My worth was based on the label on my back pocket, the insignia on my polo shirt, and whether or not my hair laid flat that day, which meant that most days, I did not feel too worthwhile.

This is what I wish I could have understood then, and what I pray to be able to instill within the heart of my own self-conscious, developing, precocious ten-year-old:

Dear Lorie,

Hiya! How are ya? I hope you're enjoying fifth grade. Mrs. McCarthy is a great teacher—she will follow your progress all the way through college because you made such an impression on her. Betcha didn't know that, but you will in time. Oh, and get over your silly feud with James over whatever the heck it was about. You'll still be friends thirty years from now, so it doesn't really matter.

So, first things first. You need to know that one day you will love your hair. I know. It doesn't feather. I know. I know it is, at times, the sole focus of your neurotic, self-conscious attention. I know you spend hours spitting it down in class, pressing your palm to your forehead, trying to get it to lay flat. It doesn't. It won't. Ever. Not until in your 30s when you discover smoothing serum and the ceramic flat iron, and then you will be giddy over the option to have straight hair for once in your life. But you won't choose it very often. Why? Because you will grow to love your hair, as will everyone else. You're just going to have to trust me on this one. Embrace it, don't fight it. Love your hair, and in doing so, you will learn to love yourself.

Next item of important business—NO ONE IS LOOKING AT YOU. The seemingly trite saying is actually, it turns out, true: they really are too busy worrying that everyone is looking at them to possibly even think about you. Remember this. In the cafeteria. In the halls. At the mall. At church. Any time you're out in public. Hold your head up high, walk proud, and speak confidently, and the right type of attention will come your way naturally.

Here's another secret you're gonna love—all the girls you're jealous of? Miss Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans with the horse and the tennis courts? Miss Perfectly Feathered Hair with the big Goode comb and the attention of all the Goode comb boys? Miss My Father Makes More Money Than Your Father? Get this—they're all actually jealous of YOU. Your creativity, your musical ability, your confidence "on stage," your relationship with your teachers, your grades and your gift for writing—they wish they had some of that. You see, shiny hair, designer jeans, and a clear complexion only go so far. So don't wish you were them. Because they wish they were you, and they will tell you so, in time.

Finally, I can't tell you how much I wish you weren't so afraid. Of pain. Of failure. Of rejection. Oh, what we could be now if you only believed in yourself. You need to know that this is what is true: you can and you will be more than you think you can. But only if you conquer the fear and self-consciousness that that paralyzes your spirit. Be confident, Lorie. And if you don't feel confident, simply act confident. The confidence will follow. There is no need to shrink within yourself. Bloom. The world will open before a young woman with poise and confidence.

Oh, and one last thing, Kiddo. You're not weird, you're not funny looking, and you're not fat. You are gifted. You are beautiful. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And you are very, very loved.

See you 'round, Girl! I'm looking forward to it!

BFA&F,

Gertie

in memory

There are some who would insist I was one of his pets--that I only got the parts I did because he "played favorites." I don't know that this was true, but what I do know for certain is that I wanted desperately to please this man, and still, to this day, wrestle with conflicted emotions regarding my inability to do so.

My high school theater director died yesterday, and my emotions remain conflicted. Make no mistake--I am very sad to hear of his passing. Many of my best memories of high school, if not most, were orchestrated by and filled with this man and his larger-than-life personality. Innumerable shows, trips to New York, French class, co-directing the children's theater--when I flip through my photo albums, he is ever-present, even if not seen. Truly, I am very sad.

Harry Wilcox was an icon in our little hometown outside of Toledo. Perhaps, at least in theater circles, even in all of NW Ohio. It is true that the man could put on a darn good show. He was loved by many, loathed by others, raised to a saint-like status by many more. The man truly had a presence. Eccentric would be an understatement. As round as he was short, Monsieur, as we all called him, could command a room like no one else. And did, frequently.

I was asked, in a college composition course, to write an essay about a teacher who had most impacted my life. I wrote about Harry. It was heartfelt. I wrote, of course, about the positive impact, too close to and too confused by the rest to pay it heed at that time. I wrote about the courage and confidence I'd developed as a result of my days on his stage. About his willingness to drive me (and about a billion other kids) back and forth to practice on his way home so we could participate. About his ability to kick your butt into gear with a great deal of French cursing and feigned frustration, and to pull out of you things you didn't even know you had in you. I wrote about his good side, and the charisma and humor that exuded from that place. I meant it all.

As for the rest, well, I don't have a box to put that all in, still, after all these years. It doesn't seem to fit with the pictures and playbills and trophies. Funny--it didn't fit then, either, but that was part of the confusion. The je ne sais quoi with which I continue to wrestle at moments like these.

What I can tell you with certainty is that I truly loved this man, in my naive, wanting-to-please, high school student way. In all his quirky, irritating, amusing, and sometimes hurtful glory, he was, all in all, a loveable man who cared about his students. And I am terribly sad to hear his run has come to an end.

things that last

She is not my oldest, longest friend, but she is perhaps my dearest. Ours was a friendship forged out of coming of age together—struggling together (as we still do now, come to think of it) to discover who we are, what is important, and where we fit into God's greater plan.

Hol and I met the weekend of freshman orientation, as did my husband and I, and we have all been friends ever since. We schlepped through the valley together, ate smuggled-in homemade meals by candlelight in the Haven, sang in the Chorale, toilet papered upper classmen. We took long, meandering walks, stayed up 'till all hours of the night rearranging our dorm room (again), suffered through mandatory chapel (made more interesting by my creation of the "official" chapel poll), created "Primal Whine Therapy."

I carried her books when she burnt her foot with the hot pot, she listened to hours of debate over whether or not I wanted to date that geeky tenor with the big glasses and annoying sense of humor. I helped her pick out the dress for her senior recital, she suffered through my daily alarm clock ritual and still continues to speak to me, twenty-some years later. (Though she still knows better than to expect much out of me in the morning.)

We have been key players in "the best days of our lives." We went through all four years of college together, lived together for two of them. We weighed in on each others' prospective husbands. We stood up in each others weddings. We sang trios and duets at each other's churches. Our six-year-olds were born four days apart (funny how neither one of us could figure out why we didn't feel well that weekend we hiked Clifton Gorge). Despite three hours and a world of difference between our lives (but not our hearts), there is always a sense when we get together, whether here or there, of finally coming home. We had an all too brief time of homecoming this weekend, and now, as I make my way across I-70 toward the east, toward the place I call "home," I find myself desperately and heartbreakingly homesick.

There is a joy in the visiting, but always a sadness that lingers in the leaving. Would that I could coral all the people I love into a tight, tidy little area within arm's reach and keep them there forever. I know this is part of life. Sometimes we get to love people up close, sometimes we have to love them from afar. We take the moments we can steal and we savor them, hoping the flavor will linger on our tongue for a good, long while. Those moments are sometimes few and far between, but the commitment to maintain them remains. And should I ever be so fortunate as to have all the people I love all in the same place, you'll know where to find Holly. She'll be right next door, and I'll be in her kitchen watching her knead dough.

an unlikely turn of events

They were not exactly fast friends. Already five when she was first introduced into his home, Max’s first response was barely short of indifference. To him, she was basically another, albeit hairless, lap cat. But then she started moving. And life for poor Max has never been quite the same.

“Relax, Max,” we have gently intoned ever since. But despite the fact cats sleep twenty-two hours out of a day, Max is not exactly a relaxed creature. When our daughter became mobile, it finally sent him over the edge into full-fledged neurosis. A living, breathing, moving stuffed animal is intensely interesting to an eighteen-month old. And our eighteen-month old was already intense to begin with.

So began Max’s love/hate relationship with my daughter. My daughter loved him dearly, he hated her with a terrified passion. The more she tried to win him over, the more skittish and slinky he became. She’d corner him, carry him, croon over him, and he, in turn, would cower and crawl away, crying for help. To his credit, he was incredibly patient—only turning his canines on her once, maybe twice, when she forgot to give heed to the twitching tail and pinned-back ears. But those were important lessons to learn, and I let her learn them on her own.

They lived in this manner of approach-avoidance for a good seven or eight years with very little changing. But then, one fall, his littermate, Ruthie, became ill and died, and life changed dramatically once again.

An affectionate cat to begin with, Max suddenly became downright needy. It wasn’t enough to sit contentedly on your lap. Oh, no. You had to be petting the kitty. And you couldn’t just gently stroke the kitty’s soft, vibrating back. No way. You had to rub the kitty’s nose. Again. And again. And again… And if you didn’t pet the kitty, over and over, the kitty would paw at you and nip at you until you either gave in or banished him permanently from the room. Which, of course, was only possible if you were in a room with a door.

This has been life with Max for the last three years. Scared to death of small hands and feet with big, loud voices yet desperate for the attention of anyone who will give it to him, something had to change. And slowly, without our noticing it, something did.

Sometime within the last year, either the cat changed, or the daughter changed, or both. Whatever the equation, I do not know who this cat is. The-cat-formerly-known-as-Max now allows my daughter to cart him all over creation, without so much as a sigh. He has even been known to follow her—the same cat that scampered away if she got within a ten-foot radius is now following the feet that threatened to trample him. He begged last night, for the second night in a row, to be let into her room to sleep with her. Begged. He sits with her—SITS WITH HER—completely still, for hours on end as she reads, curled up in her lap in a ball. ONLY WITH HER.

How is this possible? How can it be that the child who couldn’t be still enough to lure the cat who couldn’t stand movement is now the one that the cat who won’t lay still for anyone lays quietly upon? Huh??? Who is this child? And who is this cat?

home freezing home

There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see and sees it, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more. He is constantly comparing what he sees to what he wants, so he sees with his mind, and maybe even with his heart, or tries to. If his peripheral vision gets diminished...his struggle to adjust the country he looks at to the country inside him at least keeps him looking. It sometimes blurs, and sometimes sharpens, his eye.

Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon

It will come as no surprise that I am the second traveler. It will likewise come as no surprise that my husband is the first. He is very gracious, however, in allowing me to attempt to match up what I "see" to the vision I have in my head, because he knows that, while I may become a neurotic, melancholy mess in the process, the outcome is usually worth it. Here are a few snapshots of our trip, which included seeing manatees in the wild, two swamp hikes (complete with alligators), three days at the beach (complete with shelling), dinner at The Bubble Room, and an incredibly expensive round of putt-putt. A good time was had by all, and I am only mildly melancholy upon our return, which is a vast improvement upon my norm.

Fort Myers Beach--our first, and best, day at the beach, in my opinion. This was the day I wrote the "sitting" post. It was also, more importantly, the day we had ice cream for dinner.

Standing with her Poppa against the waves of this world... (This is Barefoot Beach, our coolest and choppiest day at the beach.)

We visit Sanibel Island every trip we take to see Aunt Rhoda, and every time we take a pix of the kids on this log. I have a frame at home to put all five in, to mark the passage of time.

This is also at Sanibel, after I returned from one last shell sweep. Notice my children have no clothes on. I had on a sweatshirt. This is further evidence that I am getting OLD.


Now, I am off to bed, where I will crawl atop my heated mattress cover and not move again until morning, having worked 10 hours today and facing 12 hours tomorrow!

geeks grown up

My old high school crew out for appetizers before our 20 year reunion this weekend. Among us at the table we have three of the top ten (and five of the top 15), five national honor society members, the valedictorian and salutatorian, three graduation speakers, and a whole host of other accolades. Among my closest buds we have three engineers, a Fullbright Scholar, a professional counselor (that would be ME), a police sargent, and several other highly educated and successful professionals. Not a bad group to be associated with!

The hubby and me, pre-party.

A collage of the highlights of my evening...

The die-hard "Rossfordians" went to Moe's Bar after the reunion. Our crew went to Denny's...

20 years

Tomorrow night is my 20 year reunion. I never thought I'd be this old. Who knew?

Top left corner is my BFF from HS, Candy. Next to that is me and my director, Mr. Wilcox. The next picture is taken in the middle of the road in Times Square right after the Macy's parade went through, then a carriage ride in Central Park, then me as Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls. Sandy and Bethany and I in art class on Sr. Dress Up Day, then bottom row has my best buds James, Beth, Candy and Lance and I on the Sr. Steps, Candy and I, and Lance and I at Sr. Prom. Those were the days!

Have some stuff to post--hopefully over the weekend, or when I return!

the beat goes on

While I didn't do much posting this summer, I DID manage to do some writing. With the help of a book by Natalie Goldberg titled Old Friend From Far Away, I began doing writing practice a few days a week. I had hoped to post some of them, but never found the time. But now that the kids are back to bed at 8:00 (HALLELUIA!!!), I hope to share a few of them with you. The prompt for this one was "I remember..." I thought it fit well with the back to school theme, so I finished it along that vein...

I remember when I was at the center, not around the circumference. Eyes six inches from my own, searching, seeking, finding. I remember when only I could satisfy, only I could calm, only I could delight. I remember the days when Momma was everything—the mender of boo-boos, the singer of lullabies, the holder of hands, the keeper of secrets, the receiver of kisses. And I remember the fullness of my heart mixed with the sadness of knowing that which every mother knows. This will not last. This will not last. This will not last. With every heartbeat, I’ve tried to remember. Be here. Be here now. This will not last.

Some mothers accept this with ease—the natural rhythms of life flow through their days and they are always in step with its beat. I, on the other hand, seem continually lost in the music, swaying off-tempo, hoping the song won’t come to an end. Long known for overstaying my welcome, I still struggle with letting go and knowing when to make my exit.

My daughter is nine now, and I am moving to the periphery. I try to accept it with a smile, encouraging her independence with no small amount of fear brewing within. But my smile is strained—not the full, teethy grin of happiness but the forced pull of the cheeks upward to reassure her, and everyone else, that I am okay with this.

But I am not.

My son, my baby, is five, and I am no longer the center of his days. I share him with a delightful woman named “Mrs. Smith,” splitting my precious time with him between us. She is wonderful, but I share him, nonetheless. I do not like to share. Just ask my husband. Just ask my children. I try to share, but it is compulsory at best, insincere and begrudging at worst. And it makes me grumpy, to boot. I am not okay with this.

I remember my training. I remember the years of childhood development classes and experience working with children and families. I remember my own struggle toward independence. I know I must let go. I know I must let go well. But knowing and wanting to are two entirely different things, and the second comes much less easily than the first. (And the first doesn’t come easily in the first place.) I remember the advice to put our marriage first, because when the children are gone, we will only have each other. I remember thinking, “Well, DUH. Of course we’ll put our marriage first.” And I remember when I first recognized that my priorities had inadvertently shifted.

My children have become the center of my world, and I am slowly but surely moving out of the center of theirs. I must learn to be okay with this. I must. I will. It just isn’t going to happen tonight. Because tonight, as my children grow up before my eyes, you will find me thumbing through baby books, wondering where the years went, listening to the beat of my mother-heart…

Be here. Be here now. This will not last.

and now, for a message from our sponsors...

Having grown up in the golden era of network television, my generation has collective memories centered around three to five primary channels of broadcast programming. We can sing to you what a conjunction is, tell you how to get to Sesame Street, whisper in your ear who shot JR, tell you the blues of a bill on Capitol Hill, and recite the ingredients of the Big Mac in rapid succession. While there were many programs that continue to be sentimental touchstones to my childhood, it is the commercials that come back the quickest, and at the oddest moments.

I must admit I have a warped nostalgia for the commercials of my youth. I can sing, in one breath, the entire Oreo cookie song, and do so pretty much every time I see one. My daughter asked me one day how I did something, and I told her it was an "ancient Chinese secret." She looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. And to this day, I cannot watch a sunset without hearing in my memory, "going, going, gone..." "Do it again, Daddy!" At a time when I was naive to the evils of advertising, commercials were fun ("No, silly, I'm talking to the toilet paper") and lighthearted, and I was easily and eagerly impressionable.

I don't feel that way any longer, now that a commercial has ruined my life.

Many of you are aware that, despite my childhood nostalgia, I do not watch much television at this point in my life. I wish I had not been watching this particular night, as well, as the images and ideas refuse to leave my mind and probably never will. This is why I don't watch television, I have reminded myself. But the damage has already been done.

For the life of me, I don't remember where I was when this occurred, nor do I remember what I was watching at the time. Someone was trying to get me to buy something, and then suddenly there was a woman in front of a mirror, gazing intently at her face. The woman raised one finger to each temple, and then very gently lifted up her cheeks. And then another woman. And then another. I cocked my head to one side. Another woman. My eyebrow went up. Another woman. I began to think about how I was going to get nonchalantly to the bathroom. Ten or fifteen women, all told, all around my age, examined themselves in the mirror in that 60-second, million-dollar spot. And then one more got up and excused herself to the bathroom.

Eyebrow still raised, lips pursed, I stood in front of the mirror, knowing I should just turn around and walk away. But like a dieter drawn to the buffet, I could not help myself. One arm lifted, then the other. I placed my fingers to my temples. I looked deep into my eyes. I lifted.

I gasped.

Today I turn 37. They tell me I will be at peace one day with the wrinkles across my forehead, the jowls around my mouth, the salt beginning to mix with my pepper--but not today. Today I am 37 in a world of 27 year olds, and I wish I'd started using the Mary Kay a whole HECK of a lot sooner.

And I wish to God I'd NEVER seen that commercial...

thanksgiving memories

(This piece began two years ago at our writer’s group—the prompt was to write about a favorite Thanksgiving memory from the 3rd person vantage point. This was my free-write, with a little editing, of course! Oh—and because my Mom and Dad will be sure to point it out, I’ve taken a little liberty with which cousin is which… writer’s perogative!)

It was a scene she remembered well—two little heads of hair, one curly, one straight, bobbing up and down the same creaky wooden steps. She looked across the room at her cousin with a knowing smile—the smile was returned with a confirming nod. It had been the two of them, some twenty-five years ago—bobbing up and down the steps, poking their heads through the cutout window on the landing that allowed a prime view of the preparations, eyeing the pies and the brownies with particular interest. It had been the two of them giggling, whispering, telling secrets and generally making the grown-ups worry and wonder. This year, it was their daughters…

She marveled at the resemblance as if seeing them again for the first time. No wonder her father often slipped and called her daughter by her own name. She wondered if her uncle did the same. “How surreal this must be for our parents,” she thought. It was surreal enough for her—as if she were looking back in time and observing her own childhood. She wished she could remember her own thoughts and plans and schemes—she wished for that precious insight into the mind of her daughter as she caught the gleam in her five-year-old eyes on her way through the living room for the fourth or fifth time. “Nothing,” her daughter responded sheepishly when asked what she was up to. None of them believed her.

Her father commented to her uncle about the scene looking familiar—apparently she was not the only one finding the unfolding events to be worthy of note. Somehow, that was reassuring to her. It felt good to know she was not alone in her fascination—nor in her feelings of affection. The curly-haired one bobbed by her yet again and she grabbed the wriggling child for a quick smooch on the top of the head before turning her loose once more, catching her father’s eye as she did. He smiled, and she smiled in return. “Brings back memories,” he said to his own curly-haired girl. “Indeed it does,” she replied with a sentimental smile. “Indeed it does.”

roots

Her bare feet are as hillbilly as the drawl I slip into within the first thirty minutes of my arrival—long, lengthy vowels drawing out like taffy, soft and chewy in my mouth. She fulfills her obligations—greets her great-grandmother, tries her hardest to understand the slurring speech, answers the repetitious questions with a sideways glance, bestows hugs and smiles and freshly drawn pictures—and then in a flash she is out the door, free from the constraints of walls and tennis shoes and ground-dwelling living. Has anyone seen her? my father calls in to the house some time later. I point to her feet, naked and happy, hanging from a branch fifteen feet up in the air. He smiles. That looks familiar…

Oaks of righteousness I will admit they are not—two fairly squat Box Elder trees with branches low to the ground and proceeding upward like stair-steps, perfect for beginning climbers. Perfect for my cousins and I. Perfect for my daughter. She has finally discovered what I have known for decades—Gram’s house has the best climbing trees around. Once perched, just like her mother, she is coaxed down for little more than eating, and, indeed, would have eaten in the tree would the same mother (though more cautious with age) have allowed her. A transfer has been made—my childhood memory has become her own. Mark always used to hang from that tree, my grandmother comments repeatedly, each time as if it is the first. Yep. We all did, I reply in turn.

I watch her from the kitchen window—her sun-freckled face peeking out between a forest of green, eyes and nose and mouth disjointed by leaves laughing in the breeze, obscuring my view of her finally filling-in grin. My grandmother calls her by my name, and I smile. I am the third of four generations present, surrounded once again by the wood-paneled rose-printed flower-filled doily-covered memories of my childhood. The only constant in my thirty-six years—my grandmother’s house and all that is contained within and without. Windmills and windsocks and geese and gnomes and toadstools and trees. But this constant will not remain much longer.

My daughter has made her own hard-wired connections here, today, reinforcing the memory with all five senses, fashioning it into the very fiber of who she is, of who she will become. It is a memory I am relieved we will share. From her bird’s eye view my daughter connects with my roots—her fleshy feet against burled branch, the remnants of Sand Hill still gritty between her toes. We have a family tree, and my daughter has shimmied up it.

my second writer's conference

I followed Mrs. Brown across the parking lot, my smallish eight-year-old hands, sweaty with nervousness, gripping the text pounded out days before by my mother on our old, staccato Smith-Corona. I looked down at it, marveling at my name in print on the cover as if uncertain how it got there, then, with a glance over at James, pulled it back into the obscurity of my jacket as if to absorb it into the fabric and avoid it ever being read. It was not a real story, and I, of course, was not a real writer—a fact I was certain would be discovered at any moment and broadcast across the campus as I was asked to leave under the shaming stares of all the authentic authors whom I had offended by my mere presence at this austere event. It would all prove that I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I knew this—how was it that my teacher did not?

Yet there we were, and she was leading us, unaware of the impending doom, across the campus of the University of Toledo to a large building with a tiny banner welcoming us to the Fourth Annual Young Author’s Conference. Everything was tall that day—the bell tower on campus, the trees lining the walkways, the students in the commons, the teachers, proud, with their apprenticing authors in tow. I felt small, small, small—my story puny in my grasp and shrinking further with each step closer to its threat of exposure.

James stood tall as well beside me—an interesting fact given that he was no bigger than I. Yet his creative presence was large in my eight-year-old sight, towering over and shadowing me and my tiny little tome. As we were good friends, I did not envy him this—it was purely a matter of fact. James, with his seemingly effortless ability to fashion worlds and characters and images, deserved to be there. He was the creative one. I was the imposter. At any moment, I would be found out and Mrs. Brown would rue the day she considered me a Young Author. I was ruing the day already, and it had barely begun.

I sit here now in the sun, at my second writer’s conference nearly thirty years later—skipping out of the last half of a session where four brilliant twenty-something-year-olds talked about having already been published several times over with the not quite sincere humility of youthfulness thinking it is not youthful any longer—and I think back to my early forays into the world of putting words and ideas on paper with that same, familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach. The same, familiar voice whispers over my shoulder, unable to be ignored—You do not belong here. The same, familiar fear paralyzes my pen—What if that voice is right?

As the birds twitter around me and my notepad, unaware of the treachery going on in their midst, someone opens a window in a practice room above and a soprano voice, wandering in and out of tune, distracts me momentarily from my incessant insecurity. Repeated phrases and notes—at one moment beautiful and stunning, at another horrific and flat—float falteringly down, occasionally splattering on the pavement beside me. I am annoyed momentarily, but then I relax into revelation. She is doing, after all, what aspiring sopranos do. She is practicing—taking deep, full breaths and daring to do it wrong in the interest of getting it right. She is finding her voice—that which will make her distinct from the 50,000 other sopranos trying to likewise make their mark on the world. She is singing.

I see now, in retrospect, that I’ve never understood, even at the relative innocence of eight, how to just be myself and let the words come freely. Approaching thirty years later, I am finally learning to not force the words, to not “try” to write, to not struggle and strive to be something I am not but think I should be because that’s what I think it means to write. I am learning to take a deep full breath and put my fingers to the keyboard, writing out my scales and melismas in a faltering and sometimes out-of-tune hand, in order to find my one-in-50,000 voice. I am doing what writers do. I am writing.

Because I am real a writer, and I belong here.

Mrs. Brown was right, after all.

A Draining Experience

(Click here to see the post by Dean and the ensuing conversation which prompted this post.)

The campus was dark—the air hung with equal parts chill and anxiety as we stepped out from our dorm, our breath condensing as it met and mingled with the cold of the night. We clung together, giggling nervously, as we crossed the street deserted of cars—eyeing other clumps of students likewise headed to various pursuits, few of which were academic in nature.

We approached the Fine Arts Building, mingling with the others as we convened for the evening’s events. Christa, as usual, was chatty and cavalier—squawking and squeaking and generally enjoying all the attention it generated. Julia joked in her much quieter, goofier manner, gathering attention naturally with her willowing height and graceful long, blonde hair. I vacillated between nervousness and jealousy, as I frequently did that year, attempting to focus on anything but what was to come.

Even then, had you asked me why I was rushing, I would not have been able to tell you. I wasn’t particularly enamored with our non-Greek yet Greek-like alternatives, with their lettered sweatshirts, service requirements, and glorified Bible studies. Truth be told, all I really wanted was to buy a pretty dress and go to formal, and to do that, you had to be in the club.

And to be in the club, you had to crawl through the drain pipe.

I knew this going in to Rush Week, yet head-long I went, anyway. Christa’s enthusiasm, as always, was contagious, and Julia and I were roommates, albeit unlikely ones, so it just seemed natural we would do this together. We gathered in the darkness outside Fine Arts with the other wannabes, a nervous twittering rising among the growing gaggle of sophomore girls. What was once a knot in the pit of my stomach had grown to something more akin to a ball of yarn, and my hands were cold with the clamminess of my growing anxiety.

The object of my fear was situated to the west end of the Valley, just outside of Decker Hall between it and the Library. There, just wide enough to support a flow of water under the sidewalk, was a drain pipe intended to prevent this lowest place on campus from flooding in the event of torrential rain. It was, for the most part, ineffective, but the drain pipe, approximately two feet in diameter, served a much more important purpose in the life of the campus—torturing innocent sophomores with dreams of fancy dresses and nightmares of being trapped in small spaces.

I don’t remember how we got there that night, other than it involved, as did most events that week, a lot of running and a lot of yelling. Then, suddenly, we were lined up, panting, half way through the Valley, headed toward The Lowest Place. My heart, which pounded with nervousness if I had to crawl under the BED, threatened to explode in my ears as its beat echoed off buildings and spilled down through the Valley. Taking deep breaths, I tried very hard to keep from panicking and chickening out. I was growing closer to both (and the pipe) by the minute.

Christa and I, thankfully, had already configured a game plan to get me through the tunnel. I would go before her and she would come behind, “pushing” me to keep me from freezing up and chickening out. She rattled on behind me—half cheerleader, half cabaret show—attempting to both encourage and distract me at the same time. Neither worked.

And then, suddenly, the girl in front of me, a flaky sort from South America, was down on her hands and knees and I was down behind her, thanking our Most Merciful God that the week had been dry and therefore so was the pipe. We approached the tube and the head, then body, then feet in front of me disappeared into the cold, dark ring of metal. Lowering my head to enter, I could see a vague non-light yet not-darkness at the other end, and fixed my sights determinedly upon it.

For several seconds, all thought was suspended as a matter of pure survival. Elbows and knees moved in unison by pure instinct—propelling me toward the other side, unimpeded. Until she stopped. A dead stop, right smack dab in the middle of the tube. “Oh my god! It’s so dark! Oh my god! Oh, this is soooo creepy!” The Flake was freaking out, with me trapped behind her. I shoved at her feet, trying not to panic. “Move it,” I grunted. She did not. Panic became a near-reality. But Christa had me covered. “Move your ass! Get the hell out of here! This girl is claustrophobic, you idiot!” Movement suddenly resumed, further spurred by my own pushing and clawing, and I resolved to look at Christa in a new light if I made it out of there alive. And then, as suddenly as I had entered the pipe, I was being pulled out into the less-darkness by a concerned and apologetic upperclassman male. “You okay?” I stood up, wide-eyed, trying to further distance myself from the hole lest I somehow found myself sucked back into it. “I am now,” I replied.

I regard the drainpipe nowadays, when I return for Homecoming, with an odd combination of pride, wonder, and embarrassment. Having made it through, I joined the club and went on to attend exactly one formal before going inactive my second semester and not re-enlisting the following year. As it turns out, pretty dresses were expensive and social clubs demanded a lot of time and energy I preferred to spend elsewhere. I wish I’d known that earlier…

I pointed it out to my daughter this past fall as we went about campus reminiscing. Her eyes grew wide—“You crawled through that, Momma?” I nodded, amused at her response. “Why did you do that, Mom?”

I paused, aware of the absurdity, unable to come up with an answer. “I don’t know, Bub,” I finally replied. “I really don’t know.”

fairy tale, redeemed

“She was our age when she died, you know,” my friend says from the passenger seat. “She was only thirty-six.” Resisting the urge to comment that I’m thirty-five-and-a-half, I stop to consider this for a moment, finally coming to the conclusion that this simply cannot be true. She was so sophisticated, so graceful, so elegant—she had to have been older. But the math adds up. Born in 1961, died in 1997. Thirty-six. I am nearly the same age as was the Princess of Wales. Somewhere in the back of my mind an apprehensive little thought whispers—I’m not old enough to be a princess. But, then again, at the time, neither was she.

We are traveling to Dayton to view the Princess Diana exhibit, though I cannot exactly tell you why except to tell you that I cannot NOT see it. I am drawn to it—indeed, I plan to return with my daughter and another friend, and I’ve not even seen it yet. I am captivated by her story, her beauty, her legend—I entered it as a child and now stand toe to toe with her on some eternal timeline, just as equally in awe as before.

I, who never got up before noon unless under great duress, numbered among the millions who rose in the middle of the night to partake in the spectacle of the Royal Wedding, just four days after my eleventh birthday. I numbered as well among the millions who did the very same in 1997, watching her body travel the very same spectator-lined streets, again drawn by steed, though this time followed by her somber boys, her fallen prince, and her inflammatory younger brother. I cried on both occasions.

As we view the exhibit—the childhood artifacts, the family jewels, the charity work—I attempt in my mind to articulate the allure of Princess Diana, but fail dismally. Indeed, I have never been entirely certain what has drawn me, and millions both like and unlike me, to this woman over the past twenty-five years. By the time we make it through the gallery of dresses, however, I’ve figured it out.

As a thirty-five year old woman (note how I drop the half), I now realize how very young Lady Diana was when she accepted a proposal for marriage and was plunged into the world spotlight. At eleven, nineteen did not seem young at all (though a thirty-two year old prince certainly did cause my preadolescent eyebrow to rise), but in retrospect, I see that she was a child, thrown to the wolves, and we, the world, watched with intense scrutiny and insatiable appetites as she struggled to navigate growing up in front of an audience of millions.

But navigate it she did, and you see it nowhere more clearly than in the dress gallery. Somewhere between twenty-six and thirty-six, Diana became a woman. She shed the flounce and fluff, she shed the idiot prince, she shed the eating disorder and intense insecurity, and she finally came into herself. You can see it in the photographs; you can see it in the dresses. Just like my friend and I, commenting that we have finally, for the first time in our lives, become comfortable with our selves and our bodies and have stopped hiding them but instead have started dressing with a confidence that shows the confidence within, you see the change in Diana through the change in her wardrobe. It is as stunning as the dresses themselves.

Diana was the epitome of the fairy tale, the fairy tale gone wrong, and the fairy tale redeemed. For all her failings, and there admittedly were many, she amazed the world with her tenacious resilience and humble fortitude, and remained Royalty in more than merely name.

Suddenly, thirty-six doesn’t seem all that bad. I know I will be in good company. But I won’t look nearly as good in an evening gown…

Sigh.

the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat...

Counselors should not watch sporting events. At least, this one should not. I’ve known this since childhood, before I was even aware that I was a counselor (because, in truth, I’ve always been a counselor), yet it does not, unfortunately, prevent me from occasionally plopping my fanny in front of the tube and subjecting myself to emotional torture for hours at a time.

ABC’s Wide World of Sports was a fixture at our house growing up, back in the pre-Victorian era of cable-less television. Every Saturday and Sunday, the TV would be tuned, by hand (gasp), to channel 24 and my male relatives, who will remain nameless but include my father and brother, would be worthless until it was over. As we owned only one TV, and as it was against some sacred childhood code to have a television on and not sit in front of it, I watched an unfortunate amount of sports in my tender youth. It was here that the drama of athletic events unfolded for me, engulfing me perhaps for the first time in a surge of emotions not my own. You see, I did not merely watch sports. I felt them.

Every fall, every bobble, every foul, every error. Every heart-stopping win, every heart-breaking loss. My overdeveloped sense of empathy would wrap itself up in knots, tangling up within the muddled mess every personal disappointment stored in my memory bank. Every disqualification, every overtime, every hope deferred, every dream crushed. I felt it all. Indeed, I feel it still.

As I do not watch many sporting events any longer, unless, of course I’m at my father’s or my brother’s homes, I have managed to spare myself the by-proxied agony of defeat for much of my adult life—the last ten minutes of a Superbowl here, the last quarter of an OSU-Michigan game there. I can handle anything in small, digestible portions. I am fairly safe, therefore, until an even-numbered year rolls around and the fanfare begins on a Friday evening and our television set doesn’t cool down until over two weeks later.

Just as the Olympics are the height of athletic competition, so are they the height of emotional turmoil for the empathetic viewer. The stories, the hopes, the dreams. There are no greater heights and no greater depths than observed at the Olympic games. Fallen skiers. Fallen skaters. Fallen heroes. What makes for a good counselor makes for a miserable sports observer. I am an emotional wreck for two weeks.

“That’s just the nature of sport,” my father tells me. Michelle Kwan claims she understands this, but her tear-filled eyes tell us otherwise. My eyes fill with hers—me, who does not even like Michelle Kwan and finds her obsession with Olympic gold bordering on pitiful—I am saddened for her in her disappointment. She is but one of many who move me to tears.

My saving grace (read: copout) in our internet age has been to sit with my wireless laptop in my lap as I sit in front of the Olympic coverage. (We are, for the record, still pre-Victorian in our own household, thereby the Olympics don’t start at our house until 8:00PM.) Even this does not spare me. Even the knowledge of who wins and who loses, who succeeds and who fails, who celebrates and who mourns—even with this knowledge, I am still a nervous wreck. Skaters fall and still medal—I cry. Nerds and beauty queens stand together on a podium—I cry. One skater goes home, another gets a chance of a lifetime—I cry for them both.

In the word of Bill Clinton, Olympic hopefuls, “I feel your pain.”

Perhaps I should be a politician. The counseling experience does not serve me well come Olympic time. Watching sports is definitely hazardous to a Mental Health Professional’s mental health.