Attitude. It's Everything.

When my father was 12 years old he contracted gangrene and had his leg amputated at mid thigh. Penicillin was a few years away from discovery. When I was a teenager he told me that he could still remember the horrific pain of the amputation and that, even after decades and decades, he still felt the phantom limb. That was the first and last time he ever mentioned it to me.

My father was not defined by the loss of his leg. He never considered himself disabled. He fished, he hunted, he climbed ladders to make home repairs, he tended to our huge yard and he never took a handicapped space in a parking lot. He offered words of encouragement to other amputees. I saw him approach a young boy in a wheelchair whose leg had recently been amputated. I will never know what he said to the child but I saw my dad pull up his own pant leg and I watched the little boy take a timid hand and softly knock on my dad's wooden leg. The child smiled.

My dad wasn't a man who talked a lot. He certainly wasn't a man who complained. His wooden leg was just that...made of wood. It was heavy and it was cumbersome. The old artificial limbs were not nearly as efficient as today's lightweight limbs. My dad's had a hole cut out where he would place his "stump." He would pull a white cotton rag through a small hole and create suction that kept the leg attached. He would screw on the valve, tighten it just so, and be set for the day. The leg rarely fell off. But, sometimes it did.

After a business dinner one night in Galveston he headed downstairs with a group of men. My dad's leg made it downstairs before anyone else. Picture the heavy rogue leg bouncing down a very long flight of wooden stairs near a beach boardwalk. For the guys who drank too much at dinner and for the people passing by on the sea wall below,  I'm sure it was a shock. My dad thought it was funny. Attitude is everything, isn't it?

Lately, I've been putting that "attitude is everything" mantra to good use. My friends know how difficult it is for me to publicly acknowledge my own health issues and I'm sure they've always wondered why. My father is my reason why.

I feel like even mentioning how I feel is the same as complaining. Oh, I know that's crazy. But, I grew up with a father who spent his life propelling himself forward and upward even when faced with obstacles that seemed too high to scale. He put on a happy face. He must have saved the complaining for his private moments but I wasn't privy to it. His physical disability did not define him. He would hate that I used the word disability.

A year or so ago I was diagnosed with Connective Tissue Disease. For most of my life I have felt like there was something wrong. Over the years I have made intermittent trips to doctors and have been diagnosed, incorrectly, with a variety of things. My faith in medicine was not so great. The closest any doctor came to a correct diagnosis was my obstetrician. Both of my children were premature and he recognized that my pregnancies were very similar to the high risk pregnancies of women with Lupus. So, I diligently reported to his office every 6 months for a few years and each and every time my autoimmune tests came back negative. I quit having it checked and thought feeling bad was just my lot in life. I now know that it can take years and years to get a correct diagnosis and that it hasn't been until recently that doctors are getting a clearer picture of Connective Tissue Disease and all autoimmune diseases.

Over the years I pushed through a lot of physical pain and fatigue and just kept keeping on even though I would have stretches of time where it was an effort to get out of bed.

I just read that last sentence and I want to delete it. To me, it sounds like complaining. But, I'm going to suck it up and let it stand.

I worked hard, I played harder, I raised my kids, I moved to Los Angeles from Dallas and spent 7 long years living apart from my husband while my young daughter and son chased their own dreams. My husband joined us in LA when my health became a larger obstacle. For him, having to start over in a new city when he is past 50 has been a challenge. He keeps a smile on his face, too.

For me, a diagnosis of cervical cancer and the subsequent surgery was the impetus that brought on an onslaught of symptoms that were like my past physical ailments times one hundred and one. My body's wiring is way off. My B Cells and T Cells attack healthy tissue and muscles that they mistake for foreign invaders. It's all very James Bond. There's a war raging inside me and my own system thinks it's fighting the good fight to save me but the soldiers are getting the orders all wrong. Rashes, fatigue, sore muscles, weakness in my hips, thighs and arms, a cough that will not go away,  small blood vessels collapsing, lab results that now show high positive markers for Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus, neurology tests that are positive for Dermatomyositis and a long and boring list of other things that go hand in hand with the umbrella diagnosis of Connective Tissue Disease. And if the disease doesn't do you in you certainly feel like the drug regimens will.

I keep a smile on my face. I dress for the day each and every day. My skin rashes, swells and peels and I have not worn makeup in over a year. If you know women in the South and women in Los Angeles then you know that the one thing they have in common is that they don't even go to the mailbox without mascara, eye shadow and lipstick. I keep a smile on my bare face. I figure I save 30 minutes a day and that's 182.5 more hours a year that I can do something great. I hope that's right. Math was never my thing.

Why am I writing this now? I have a brain that doesn't shut down. I am my own best therapist. (I tried real therapy once. I tried to run the session. Did I mention that I am also bossy?) I have often said that this blog is for me and if people choose to read it I hope they enjoy it but I'm the one getting the most good out of it. There's something about writing and hitting publish that does more to clear my brain than any other tonic. My brain is switched to "on" 24/7 and lately I have been questioning why I have such a hard time letting others do for me...even my own family. They try to keep me out of the kitchen and away from the laundry and insist that I get the amount of rest that I need. I slip behind their backs and do loads of laundry and attempt to clean baseboards. I pay for it the next day. I spend time shopping for my vintage store even when my back is hurting and sorting through racks of clothing makes my arms feel like they will fall off.  I do all that for me. I do that to prove to myself that I can still do it well...or reasonably well.

I imagine my father. I imagine him never giving up. I remember him taking off his wooden leg at the end of busy days and lancing huge blisters. The very next day he would be back at work. He put on that happy face and lived his life.

The Tea Pot is Whistling

 
I've spent most of my life as a talker. Lately, I've become an observer. Learning to reign in my words has been a good thing but the problem with observing is that, eventually, I talk about all the things I see. And when I do decide to talk it all comes spewing, no filter, almost a rant, a definite emotional release but possibly off putting to some. Like the teapot ready to pour I'm letting off steam. I am an open book and if you don't like the story feel free to turn the page or set me back on the bookshelf.

Here I go. Unfiltered and with topics all over the place because that's the way my brain works.

Gender issues and stupidity.  Decades ago, the 1970s in fact, my father's secretary welcomed a much anticipated grandchild and everyone was so excited to welcome this beautiful baby into the world. When well wishers asked if they should buy baby blue or sweet pink the new parents had no answers. The precious child had ambiguous genitalia. Testing confirmed that the child had ovaries and undescended testicles. The course of treatment at the time was to immediately amputate the penis, perform a series of reconstructive surgeries, give the baby female hormones and raise her as a girl. All these years later I still wonder about this child who would now be 40 years old. Times have changed and the experts now advise waiting until the child is able to give voice to their gender.

It is beyond my comprehension to understand why anyone thinks gender issues are new issues. And if anyone thinks gender reassignment is a choice then they are wrong. It's a miracle that any of us arrive into the world with all of our parts working. We readily accept and embrace the child born without a limb, without sight or hearing or without a working heart. So why do we have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that gender issues are real?

Mean girls, mean women and what's really going on. Like most women who reach 54 years of age I've had my share of run ins with mean girls. I watch my young adult daughter navigate the waves of mean girls in her own life. I'm pretty quick to strike mean women from my list of friends but the hurt that they cause sticks around much longer than I'd like. Time puts things into perspective. The raw wounds heal but the scars are still tender. So, what is really going on? I'm not a mean girl by nature but I know that the times I have been, well, let's just say not so nice, there were deeper issues going on internally. Insecurity, jealousy, stress...they all play a part in how we react to others. How we were raised and emotional blockages that we are aware of and unaware of contribute as well. Take a step back and take a long look at the real person and not the mean girl facade. You still may not want that person in your life but it certainly helps to understand the whys of their behavior.

We are rarely what we seem to be. I have been blessed to experience many stations in life. I've lived in North Dallas, and for those that are unfamiliar with that particular portion of Texas, it is generally wealthy with a predominantly poor neighborhood sitting on its western border and Ross Perot's neighborhood sitting to the east. I've had the 4 bedroom house with a big yard and pool and I've lived in apartments. I've lived in Texas and now live in California. I've had money to burn and no money at all.

My children attended private school and public school and I have served as a volunteer at both. I grew up in the Memorial area of Houston. It's wealthy and privileged although my own family lived in a modest ranch style house and we never had an excess of money.

I have spent volunteer time in the trenches with crack addicts and alcoholics and the homeless. I have spent volunteer time with wealthy women who plan fundraisers and galas. I prefer the crack addicts.

I believe that marijuana should be legalized and that by doing so we solve a multitude of other problems. I believe in marriage equality. My heart breaks over abortion. I understand why women and young girls have abortions. I knew after my second child was born that a third pregnancy would be life threatening for me. I practiced birth control even though I was Catholic at the time. I knew that if I ever did end up pregnant again I would not have had an abortion. I can't explain that and I shouldn't have to. It's my belief and I own it. For the women I know who have had abortions I understand that it was after much soul searching and that the physical scars pale in comparison to the emotional scars. I have zero judgment in my heart. My feelings on abortion are a mishmash of emotion and contradictions and that's okay. I don't need to have an answer for everything.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because, from what I see, we are forgetting that life is a muddy gray much more often than it is stark black and white. Because what you see is rarely what you get in this world. I am a middle aged woman with a passionate mix of moderately conservative and wildly progressive ideas about my own life and the world. Yes, that is possible. No, it is not contradictory. It is me.

The Internet is only as wise as the people uploading content. Just because someone "tweeted" it or posted it on Facebook or Instagrammed it or wrote it on an obscure blog or a wildly popular website doesn't make it factual and doesn't make it worthy of reposting anywhere. When did so many people become lemmings? When did so many people stop fact checking? Facebook, sometimes I dislike you because I used to think everyone I knew was smart. Now we are all open books and the content can be quite scary. I'm sure there are plenty out there who closed the book on this blog before they even got this far.

Questioning is good. I raised my children to have open minds and open hearts.  I raised them to question the status quo. They are grown but I still challenge them to question those who think that their way is the only way, that political issues are black and white and that science has no place in religion.

In past blog posts I have commented on but never wholeheartedly lamented the lack of religious upbringing in my own life. Since my family was not deeply religious it gave me the power to make my own spiritual decisions and find my own way. God has always been in my heart. I have never questioned that. I just wish more people actually lived a Christ like life instead of spouting Bible verses out of context. I will always question people who use religion as a tool for hate and I hope my children always do the same.

The tea is poured. Lately, I write in fits and starts and without the routine that I used to pride myself on. (I also let myself end a sentence with a preposition and don't give a flip what the grammarians think.) Life changes have happened much more rapidly lately and I've given myself permission to find my own daily rhythm. I hope the stretch between writing is not so long next time. We'll see. Make it a great day. Pay forward some good.

One Hour

One Hour

I am on mental tiptoes reaching high up top into the attic of my memory. When did I first understand the concept of an hour? For a child, that 60 seconds morphing into one minute and the 60 minutes pushing the hands clockwise takes a frustratingly long, long time. I've plucked the correct memory. My first understanding of one hour as a measurement of time was the nursery school nap.

The nursery school teacher had a large mole just above her lip and a few of those post menopausal stray hairs sprouting from her chin. Her tightly wound salt and pepper curls smelled like a chemical perm. I remember her soft soled shoes squeaking against linoleum floor tiles, her wide girth and the sound of nylon stockings rubbing together as she walked past rows of small children. "Close your eyes. Close your eyes." I hated nap time, hated having to keep my eyes closed and hated waiting for that hour to end.

Fast forward fifty years and the hours race by like horses at Santa Anita, their hooves kicking up dusty memories, never finished to do lists and pounding reminders that the time between milestones and holidays grows shorter and shorter. Nine days out from Christmas and that means it will be here tomorrow. And just moments beyond that a new year starts.

A new year and time to stop counting hours and start to make the hours count.

In one hour I can smile at the cranky butcher at the European deli in our neighboring town and when he brings back my two filets, precisely cut at one and half inch thickness, he will smile back. I can walk down our little main street and grab the door for the mom with the baby girl in a stroller, bags of purchases and an unruly blonde boy intent on going in the exact opposite direction of his exhausted parent. I can see the thank you in her eyes.

I can wait in a checkout line and when the shopper in front of me has picked the only sweater in the entire store without a price tag and then opts to pay with a check rather than a debit card I can wave off the checker's apology and say "No problem. I'm in no hurry." I can see her relief that I don't complain.

I can sit on one of the benches that line our street and watch the parade of neighbors as they stroll and rush from home to wherever and I can give thanks for the peaceful diversity of my neighborhood.

That's one hour spent making a conscious effort to, quite simply, do good. That's one hour in my microscopic corner of this big world. The hours will not slow down. They will pass faster and faster and faster the older we get and it's up to us to grab them and make them count.

For some, the hours will end abruptly.

Last week our country was rocked by another tragedy. Innocents killed and innocence stolen. Heroes slaughtered. Parents unaware that their last hour with their children was really their last. Millions of hours spent tweeting, Facebooking, social networking, arguing and commiserating about gun laws, mental health, the whys, the hows and the what ifs and it's not doing anyone a bit of good.

Emilie Parker was just 6 years old when she was killed last week. Her father does not want the Connecticut massacre to "be something that defines us, but something that makes us all better." His clarity while submerged in his grief should make it clear to all of us that no matter what is going on in our own lives we have the ability to do good things.

The hours are flying by. Spend one in total awareness of your actions. Leave the nasty comments left unsaid. Stop the heavy sighs when annoyed. Smile at a child and smile at a stressed out parent. Spend an hour at a homeless shelter or volunteering for any cause you hold close to your heart. Committing to that one hour will feel so good you will crave more. Keep smiling at the neighbor who never smiles back. Extend your hand and don't pull back. This is simple stuff that has the power to make a stranger's difficult day better. This is pure good. And it has the power to make our own lives better. Do it in memory of the children in Connecticut who have no hours left.







 

 Blush Red

 I wore cherry red flats and a sleeveless dress with flowers, a scoop neck and a long zipper down the back. A very long zipper. I sewed that dress in Home Economics because in the 1970s girls were caught between two ideas; we could conquer the world and we better know how to sew, cook and clean a home like all good wives and moms. It took me three classes to sew in that damn zipper. I haven't sewn a zipper since. The shoes were shiny patent leather bought at Palais Royal, a Houston department store that's long gone. I really liked the dress and I loved the red shoes. My confidence was high.

 The school bus that took me home was filled with neighborhood middle schoolers and most of us had been sitting in class rooms together since kindergarten. On the day I wore my home made dress and red shoes, in the last row of the bus, was Craig, the new boy in the neighborhood. He had leap frogged from new kid to popular kid in the 2 weeks since school had started. I had a huge heart skipping crush on him.

 On that humid September afternoon, after the bus had dropped us off, our neighborhood gang stood at the end of the street kicking the pile of gravel that always ended up smack dab in the middle of the intersection. The all day procession of neighbors coming and going, turning left and turning right made little rocks fly out from under the white wall tires and those little rocks always ended up right back in the middle of our Queensbury Lane and the tree lined cross street that I think was named Reidel. The letters on the street sign aren't really important but spending a moment to try and remember the name is my way of procrastinating and avoiding the soul crushing sentence that I will type next...Craig, in front of everyone, told me my shoes looked like "mom shoes." The group of neighborhood kids, my allies, the same group that I raced bikes with and played a summer long game of baseball with, all agreed.

 My 12 year old cheeks were as scarlet as my cherry red flats.  How comedic and cruel that as we get older we have a hard time remembering where we left anything 20 minutes ago but in a split second we can name any one of hundreds of childhood incidents that made us feel taunted or unworthy. I imagine the back lit x ray of our hearts with patches, band aids and jagged scars.

 We remember the whens and hows of each and every mark. I know that having a boy publicly ridicule your patent leather flats isn't the end of the world. But, when you're 12 and the self conscious kind of girl who leaves the house every morning with eyeglasses on and then stuffs them in her purse before the first class of the day and then puts them back on right before her parents get home from work...well, you get the idea. No wonder my eyes never got any better. But my heart did. Only to be gashed and smashed countless more times over thoughtless remarks and acts that young girls and boys don't deal with very well. There was the same brutish but popular girl that had been my emotional nemesis from kindergarten until the final rehearsal for high school graduation, there were the times I did ridiculously stupid things that stemmed from insecurity, and there were even times that middle school and high school teachers behaved as badly as the students they disciplined.

 And then I had my own children. And I wanted to save them from the bad little seeds in preschool, the bullies in elementary school, the shovers and the hitters in middle school, and the word snipers in high school. I can hear your thoughts. "It's not possible." And you're half right.

 Insensitive people aren't going away. I knew I couldn't protect my children from every mean kid but I could give them a tough, impenetrable shell. I could remind them, day after day, that they are unique, they are worthy and they are loved. I could prepare them for the inevitable cruel barb, the jokes at their expense, and the certainty that zippers will be left unzipped, pants will rip, and they will trip not just up stairs and down and on uneven sidewalks but trip up and over life. It required being present in their lives. Very present. It required having conversations that, quite frankly, wore me out on some days and filled me with pride on others. It required face to face conversation and, for the times that I was thousands of miles away, daily phone time.

 My children are now 20 and 22. My daughter has always followed her heart in fashion and life and she thinks the people who have been less than kind must be dealing with their own problems. My son has never been a follower and has never cared much for what others think of him. Still waters run deep? That's him. They have issues and problems and the occasional crisis but they refrain from taking their problems out on other people. (Family is sometimes excluded and that's perfectly normal.)  Most of all, they are kind people. They have huge hopes and dreams but, as their mom, if all they ended up being was kind to others and happy with their life, I would be immensely proud.

 "The red shoes dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day." 
- The Red Shoes 1948

 Life is too short not to wear red shoes.  Oh, if I had known then all that I know now...well,  I wouldn't be the person I am today. Unfortunate incidents, good people and bad who have wandered into and out of my life, and a long list of my own mistakes have led me to this grateful moment.


 

 

Jump!

Writing words on paper. It sounds easy enough and I have a dozen or more first paragraphs floating through my brain. Today, I'm testing the waters. I'm putting my big toe in and checking the temperature. It seems okay. I'm not going to work on a technically perfect dive. I'm going to do this the easy way and just cannonball it. No more dry spells. Immersed. Buoyant. Back in the pool. Here I go.

All those first paragraphs I don't know what to do with? Here they are, in one rambling post. As I look back over my writing stops and starts that I don't know what to do with I often find a common thread. The latest thread is this: I've spent the last few years consciously working on becoming a better person. Just like life itself there's backsliding and progress but for the most part I can look back and see how far I've come.

Staying Positive
I steer clear of negativity and negative people. I know it's not entirely avoidable and my husband is probably reading this and sarcastically saying "Oh, really?"  I just came off of a weepy, sniffy and snot running weekend no thanks to a new medication that is toying with my emotions in a crueler fashion than any high school boyfriend. That's not the norm for me. Yes, I was that annoying young person who loved drama. I dog paddled through a sea of self imposed angst and I liked it. I guess I pictured myself as some suburban Plath or Hemingway but those days are long over and drama is overrated and highly annoying to others. For me, the repetition of positive thoughts produces more positive thoughts. Counting blessings is more productive than counting problems. How Pollyanna of me, right? It's nearly impossible to tell a negative person that concentrating on the positives really will make life better. It's not easy. It's especially not easy when you're drowning in turmoil. It requires discipline and daily and hourly reminders to pick yourself up and stop wallowing. And you know what? The more you work at it the easier it is. Sometimes it takes a good psychiatrist and medication and it always takes your own willingness to change. It took quite a while for me to see the benefits of living in gratitude and keeping  the past in the past where it belongs. I'm getting there.

Negative Space is a Positive Thing
The things we take away pull the things we keep into sharper focus. In my college design and layout classes I learned that it's the negative space that makes the subject matter pop. I try to apply that to the crazy design and layout of my own life.

I spend quite a bit of time in dead people's homes. That's not as strange a segue as you would think. At estate sales and auctions, where I find many of the retro and vintage items I resell,  I learn about people I  never met. I sift and sort through drawers and linen closets, pantries and garages and frayed velvet jewelry boxes.  This town is full of high class hoarders with collections of dusty figurines, old and brittle 78 rpm records, half full bottles of Chanel #5 and lingerie that proves that they did indeed love the nightlife way back when. So many memories living in their walls and hidden away in attics and cabinets. I find it fascinating but I couldn't live surrounded by so much stuff.

The clothes that spill out of our closets. The memory makers, trinkets and dust catchers that sit atop coffee tables and dressers. The furniture that anchors rooms. The people in our lives. They fill every space, nook and cranny in our physical and emotional world and we are so filled to the brim with things and thoughts that we often feel stuffed and clogged and sapped of energy. All this "stuff" takes the focus off of the relatively short list of things that are truly important. And as I get older I find that the list of important stuff grows shorter and shorter and the list of things I have discarded grows longer and longer. God, family, true friends and a box of memories are all I need.

Letting Go
Off my daughter went. No tears from me. Just a tiny bit of anxiety and a whole lot of happiness for her. She's 20 years old and flew across the country to film a movie for the third time in as many years but the difference this time is me. I'm not always this calm and I'm finally believing that the years of training myself to let go and let my children live their own lives is taking root.

I handle all of this much better than four years ago when my just turned 18 year old son flew from Los Angeles to Tennessee for a long weekend of music and mayhem known as the Bonnaroo Music Festival. His first trip to Bonnaroo meant 3 days of no sleep for me. I had the festival's live feed bookmarked and I crazily cleared my schedule to watch swaying and stoned patrons surge and surround stages. A tiny part of me wished I was 18 again. My brain has apparently filtered out the stench of  port-a-potties and sweaty stoners. An anxious and fearful part of me was scared to death that he would make a bad choice that would result in arrest or death. Yes, I make things much bigger in my own head than they are in real life and that's the flaw that needs addressing next.

I survived the weekend and so did he. And he went back the next year and I never once checked the live feed.

Restraint
Restraint is a good thing. As in less is more. Not restraint as in a Fifty Shades of Grey way. (C'mon ladies. I know you were thinking it.) I'm talking about restraining from excessive babble. Restraining from cruel comments. Restraining from inane chit chat and talking just to hear yourself talk. I often wish I had the quiet presence of some of my Midwest friends and not the Southern tendency to celebrate the gift of gab. I've tried to find a happy medium and I think I'm almost there but catch me on one of my more manic days and I'll chat up the customer next to me in line, post more than necessary on Facebook, offer advice to people who never asked and deliver an insensitive comment to someone I love. I've begun to ask myself, before speaking, if my words will help or heal, build up or tear down. It requires being present and living in the moment when I would much rather not expend the energy but the rewards have been too great to revert back to my old ways.

Staying True
I feel sorry for John Travolta and the "alleged" predicament that has caught him in a snare. The rumors about his overzealous behavior in spas and bath houses have persisted for years. If he is a gay man then I am so sorry that he has never been able to proudly proclaim his true self to the world. I am sorry he was sucked into a cult that dictates how he must live. I will heed my own advice in the paragraph above and restrain from spouting off about crazy Scientology.

In the Tao Te Ching, written in the 6th Century BC,  it says "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."  Staying true to yourself is apparently an age old problem. I'm sorry we live in a world that judges and demeans. When we deny our true self all kinds of problem rise to the surface and many of us are not unlike Mr. Travolta. The things we deny may not be our sexuality but they are just as important.

___________________________________________________________

You know when you're a kid and you stand at the end of the diving board for 5 minutes before jumping? The swimmers in line are yelling at you to hurry up. You think "What if I've forgotten how to swim?" When you finally hit the water, touch the bottom of the pool and push back up towards the sunlight it feels so good. And it reminds me of when my son was 4 or 5 and he was the one standing at the end of the diving board. He finally jumped...and he really had forgotten how to swim. He sputtered, arms flailed, his little head bobbed to the surface one or twice but he clearly remembered nothing about the mechanics of swimming. His dad and lifeguards were all there to fish him out and show him how to swim again. Here's hoping that all of us have people to teach us how to swim when we forget how.

Stepping Stones

How we change through the years and how our childhood affects our adulthood is fascinating to me. What we choose to build on or use as stepping stones to a better life and what we let slow us down and stop us can often be the same.

When I was very young, summers were for bare feet and by the time the first school bell rang after Labor Day weekend our little soles were thick and tough and even the scorching southern streets didn't faze us as we raced to vacant lots and remnants of farms that had yet to be razed and commercialized. We were in Houston and born at the tail end of the baby boom generation. "Space City" was a new nickname for the Bayou City and a steady influx of families from other cities and other states came to Houston so fathers could work for NASA, engineering firms and oil and gas companies. The city and the times were changing but our little piece of it, through the 1960s, was a bubble not yet popped by progress.

I remember my father staying home on Sunday mornings and making a big breakfast while we went to Mass. I remember wearing stiff petticoats, my mother licking her hand and flattening stray hairs on my head and I remember inwardly cringing when I did the very same thing, more than 20 years later, to my own daughter. I remember smelling bacon and syrup before we even opened the door on Sunday mornings. I don't recall if this happened every Sunday or that I remember it because it happened once and was so unusual. It's interesting how our memories work or don't work and what we choose to remember and what we choose to let go.

We felt insulated. We observed grown ups but didn't fully comprehend adult lives and how messy they often become. By the time we were almost teens we got it. We got how complicated life can be. We started to understand that other people's messy lives can spill over into ours and that big puddles of problems seep into and widen our own emotional cracks and fissures. We ceased play. Our hard little soles softened and our inner souls hardened. It would take some serious adult introspection, maybe some therapy, definitely an earnest search for inner peace and hundreds of heart to hearts with God and friends before some of us felt the cracks and fissures start to close and mend.

All this reflection was stirred this morning. You know those "25 Things About Me" posts that appear on social media sites? People spill their guts and tell their friends 25 personality traits or habits that make them tick. They intersperse a few comedic points so no one thinks they're whack jobs. I just read one, posted on a friend's page but not written by my friend, that made me cry the ugly cry. There was no comedy...just 25 heartbreaking comments written by a person with a sad heart. I've met enough abuse survivors to realize that her writing, even though she didn't acknowledge it, came from a very dark place.

I have always been an emotional sponge. I hate to see hurting people and animals. I catch the lizards and put them outside. I chase moths and crickets who stray inside and, with my bare hands, scoop them up and carry them to freedom. Last week, I had to mentally restrain myself from inviting the Apple store employee to come home with us after he said he was having a hard time meeting people in Los Angeles. I have to step back and not try and make it all better when one of my adult children is going through a crisis. When I was that little girl who ran barefoot through our big back yard on humid Houston nights I refused to catch lightning bugs and put them in jars. In 1967, a friend had a glittered and bejeweled cockroach on a little tiny chain, bought at a tacky traveling carnival kiosk. For a day she wore it pinned to her shirt. It crawled in circles around her blouse. I wasn't repulsed by the cockroach. I was repulsed that someone would act so inhumanely.

I'm not applying for sainthood. I confess that I sometimes say barbed words that pierce my loved ones' hearts. It's trite but true...you do hurt the ones you love. My saving grace is that I have learned to be quick with an apology and that wisdom, if you let it, really does grow with age. I realize that most barbed comments come from a place of insecurity. Confession complete.

Now the woman who posted the "25 Things" is sucked into my spongy brain and I'm afraid she will be there for awhile. I don't know her. I hope her friends who have read it will reach out. It's only recently that I chose to see some of my own stumbling blocks as stepping stones and I wish for her the same.

Thanksgiving

Grateful...

for ever so slowly becoming a glass half full kind of person and for peering into life's cup and seeing that yes, indeed,
there's good stuff just waiting to be sipped

for learning to live with an open heart
and for the people in my life who helped me pry it open
when I felt it was so much safer to keep it closed

for children who taught me to laugh more often and love unconditionally
and that anger should be fleeting and not lingering

for Thanksgiving aromas and a dinner feast-a roasting Turkey, stuffing, good gravy, mashed potatoes,
pies, pies, pies,
and that gooey Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup to make the very unhealthy,
but absolutely delicious, green bean casserole

for learning the difference between living to eat
and eating to live

for the rain, even on Thanksgiving Day, 
and for the blue sky after the pouring rain

for the ability to think for myself
and form my own opinions

for the technology that connects me to family
when we are apart
 
for the courage to hit the publish button and share my thoughts
and for the friends who read Holy Spoon...you are much cheaper than therapy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Letter to My Grown Up Kids. Again.

 About a year ago I published my first Letter to my Grown Up Kids. Common sense, Golden Rules and life lessons get lost amid traffic, stress and working to up your bank balance to cover these new things called bills. Consider this your adult time out; a written reminder to slow it down, take a seat, and reset your emotional clocks.

I can't put the Star Wars or  Hello Kitty band aid on grown up problems but I can learn from my mistakes and pass that on to you.

I can't step in and make your life perfect. Life is perfect in its imperfection. It's the little things that throw us off and the big things that we think will derail us forever that, more often than not, end up being the life lessons that make up the good that we become.

So here it is, my latest motherly meddling, with the help of Mother Teresa and Ben Affleck.

Not everyone will like you.
Oh, I know we say we don't care but there's a pretty big part of us that does care and our vigorous protests are just feel good exercises for ourselves.  They may not come right out and say it but you'll notice a subtle jab, a snarky comment on a social networking site or an eye roll that you catch out of the corner of your eye. Move on. We're all human beings with likes and dislikes and there are times you'll make the top ten on another person's list of dislikes. It doesn't do any good to try and figure out what you did or why they feel the way they do. I wish I could add every wasted moment back in to my life that I spent worrying about what someone else thought of me.  Just move on...and when they cross your path be sure and give them a smile.

Learn to cook.
If you can put your heart and soul into an Italian chopped salad, whip up a good sauce, master the art of making the perfect steak and learn to roast a bird (or a Tofurkey for your Vegan friends) then I can promise you this-you'll find your kitchen full of family and friends whenever you want. And if you can bake a cake then you're steps ahead of me because, as you know, I'm the Queen of Store Bought Cookies.

Worry is counterproductive.
"Don't worry" is the pinnacle of "easier said than done" statements. When you can least imagine it, this is the exact time that you need to muster every ounce of positivity. Put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and make a list of the good in your life. Write until your positives outweigh your negatives. Be grateful for a job; a bed; two legs; silly videos of dancing babies, lip syncing monkeys and skateboarding dogs; and the love of family, friends and God. Keep on writing until you're filled with gratitude. There's no room for bad when you're filled with good.

Hug. A lot.
Human touch solves a multitude of problems.


 "No matter how much you change, you've still got to pay the price for the things you've done."  Ben Affleck in  The Town  Guilt has a long memory. Apologize. Make things right. None of us are perfect. Forgive yourself.

Be happy in the moment.

Set goals and make plans but find your happiness in the day to day and the moment to moment. It really is all about the journey and not the destination and it's something most people don't learn until it's too late. It takes practice but look for the happiness in every moment, in daily rituals and repetition, and in building small successes on your journey to your goal. And when spectacular moments happen don't forget to find a quiet place to sit and give thanks.

Lend a hand.
Don't ever let this big city steal your compassion. Continue to lend a hand when others are rushing by. Suspend judgement. I know you'd drive 2 blocks back to give money to a frail old woman whose entire world is spilling out of a Walgreens' shopping cart. That makes me prouder than any monetary success you will ever have. I know you can't save the world but you can make big changes in your little part of it. Lend a hand to all-the unfortunate, the fortunate, and those who will never know that it was you who lent a hand.

People notice less than you think. 
Even adults need to be reminded that word stumbles, unzipped zippers, pimples that pop up before special occasions, fashion flops and spinach in your teeth are nothing more than microscopic boo boos on your blessed lives. We may grow up but an insecure middle school student still lives within us.

No way, no how will you ever get ahead without working your butt off.
You may "luck" into opportunity but the success that feels best is hard earned. Enough said.

Silence fills you up.
 "We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...We need silence to be able to touch souls." I can't improve on Mother Teresa's quote.

Thank you for remembering that your parents are people, too.
My son turned 22 yesterday. At his birthday dinner he and my 19 year old daughter wisely wondered why we never celebrate the moms that did all that hard work in labor and delivery. Smart kids. Lucky parents.

New York Rambling

In 1979 I was standing in line with a throng of New Yorkers and tourists waiting for the doors of a Broadway theater to open. The show was The Wiz. A pigeon pooped on my head. I was disgusted and without tissues and finding a restroom and losing my place in line was out of the question. Of course, because I'm as self conscious as any other human, I turn to see if anyone else notices the vile grey waste that sits atop my head. Florence Henderson just happened to be standing behind me. A very bizarre moment but thankfully her handbag was overflowing with tissues.

Before the pigeon incident I hadn't really given much thought to Florence Henderson. Of course, I had seen every Brady Bunch episode more than once and, perhaps my line between TV and reality was a bit blurred, but when I was young I thought she was the world's most perfect mom.

Post-pigeon poop I found myself stopping to watch all of her interviews. It's funny that when you meet someone famous or sort of famous you instantly think you have a bond with them. Or that might just be me blurring another line.

Florence (can I call her Florence?) has a just released book called "Life Is Not A Stage" and, although I haven't read it yet, based on the excerpts, it is full of starkly honest remembrances. I hate a sugar glazed memoir. Her honesty and tell-it-like-it-is style gives insight into who she is...a real person with foibles, a sad childhood, affairs, a messy divorce and insecurity.

It's the honesty that I love. I don't like to sugar coat my reality and I become highly annoyed when others do. If I'm broke, I don't pretend to be rich. If I don't care for the company of another person I'll make the break swift and clean. If I need to vent I do it quickly and move on. If my past has been colorful I'm not going to whitewash it.

It's hard to believe that my Mrs. Brady encounter in New York City was over 30 years ago. I never feel as old as I am.

I just returned  from another visit to the metropolis. I know I give pause to New Yorkers because I smile at them on the street and I say please and thank you to curmudgeonly cab drivers. If I take up their time with a short fare I feel compelled to hand over a big tip. On the subway, when my purse strap hooked the handle of a baby stroller and pulled it two feet down the aisle I didn't just disengage the wayward strap, mutter and turn my back like any seasoned New Yorker would. I profusely and way too loudly apologized for being so clumsy and then, not knowing when to just shut the hell up, proceeded to explain that "I just don't know why I'm so discombobulated today!" Yep. They stare at me. I'm not a country girl but for some reason that town brings out the bumpkin in me.

There are things that I appreciate about the city. I love the New Yorkers' total disregard for Don't Walk signs. I am amazed that so many people, with crazily diverse back stories, from cultures all over our world can coexist in a crowded, hemmed in space where you have to crane your neck to see the sky. They spend a good portion of each day enduring the stop/start/stop/start of mass transportation and being reminded over and over to stand clear of the closing doors. Repetition and crowds, day in, day out and New Yorkers seem to find their own little Zen place. I do notice an occasional smile from other people and I usually find the waiters spend a little extra time at my table. Even 7 out of 10 cabbies smile when I exit their taxi. Maybe they're looking for a little friendliness in a town that prides itself on being gruff. Or maybe I'm just a curiosity.

After 10 days of being jostled on crowded streets and in cramped trains it's great to get back home. Even after 23 years of marriage I look forward to seeing my husband whenever we've been apart...and we've been apart for a lot of our years together. For over 6 years he lived in Dallas while I lived in Los Angeles and it's only been in the last 12 months that we've been together again, under the same roof.

“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.” George Eliot

I've always loved that poem and after just a few months of relearning the rhythm of our routine together I can read it aloud and feel the truth of the words. The living apart was difficult and we anticipated that life together again would also be difficult. But, it was surprisingly easy. It helps that we share the same values and the same religious beliefs and that we made an effort to make friends that we both shared once he moved to Los Angeles.

So, this morning I'm still on New York time. I'm sipping my coffee, watching the sun fill the California sky and giving thanks for my blessings over the years. I'm thankful for crazy real life scenarios and the kindness of a TV mom, thankful for honest and forthright people and thankful for trips that shock me out of my comfort zone. And I'm always thankful to get back home.

Letting Go of the Status Quo...Post 9/11 Changes in My Own Life

Late Sunday afternoon I was settled on the couch, the hummingbird that had been adoring the patio hibiscus for a good part of the day had taken off in a frenzied search for sweeter flowers a few balconies over and I reluctantly decided to pick up the morning paper and give it a read. I don't have the stomach for news lately but out of years and years of habit I still pick up the paper and flip through the sections. It seems I do more skimming than detailed reading.

This Holy Spoon blog has sat idle for a few months as I have dealt with my own personal "to do" list. Doctor appointments and a couple of hospital visits have been written down, checked off, written down and checked off again. I've been anxious and bored and, for the times in between, I've been looking for things to do that would take my mind off of myself and focus it on helping others. I've always been a poetry nerd and Emily Dickinson's pretty words ran through my head. “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin up to his nest again, I shall not live in vain.”


I had also been looking for that "need to write" feeling that had slipped from my life in a sputtering gasp. When I opened the Sunday paper and saw the 9/11 anniversary coverage, I once again realized that my own problems are of little interest to me and even less interest to others and certainly nothing anyone would want to read about. I missed writing and I was beginning to wonder if one of my strongest beliefs would hold up:  If we are quiet, if we are patient and if we simply "let it be" our inner voice will speak, sometimes softly and sometimes, for stubborn souls like mine, loudly and repeatedly. On Sunday, it shouted and I listened.

September 11, 2001. Sheer horror. The searing images of the towers and bodies falling are forever branded in our memory. It changed all of us.

I have never been a political savant. I follow political events but I am not an activist for any party's cause. I believe it's damn near impossible, especially post 9/11, to find a politician not motivated by greed or a narcissistic need to use the tragedy for his or her own fame. My political views align a bit left of the middle. And, unlike what polls say is the norm, I did not fall further to the right as I aged or after 9/11. Rather, I abandoned party lines altogether and began to search for more truths, more spirituality and more humanity.

After 9/11, I watched some groups of Americans,  fueled by ignorance and stoked by anger, spew hatred  until it multiplied and reached far beyond the already irrational fear that all who wore a headscarf were members of Al-Qaeda. Hate stretched its ugly arms and embraced the notion that anyone who was different was worthy of scorn. “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt," said educator and theologian Frederick Buechner.


As the political voices in our country became louder and shriller I found my own political stance fall away entirely. I did not want to lend my voice to the already crowded landscape of right wing email forwarders, left wing conspiracy theorists, the Tea Bag nation or anyone trying to scream over a political adversary. Nor did I want to become a housebound recluse, fed up with the political rhetoric, who lived only for myself.

If I had to cull it down to the most significant change in my own life since 9/11, it is my refusal to accept the status quo in my little section of our vast universe. Life is so very, very short. I actively sought people of like mind and I found them in abundance.

Earlier this year I had written about my personal relationship with religion, the journey I had traveled and my desire to find a place of worship where equality and diversity reigned. It's not been an easy road. And for anyone who knows me well, I am not one who shouts my religious views to the world. I believe in a deeply personal relationship with my God and I am respectful of other people who practice their own religion in peace and who do not seek to elicit change through tyranny and violence. I believe the greater good comes from living a life that emphasizes charity and compassion and that good people abide in all religions.

Since February of this year we have been attending Hollywood United Methodist Church where the belief statement reads like this:

     We believe that God is LOVE, that all people are welcome and equal in the family of God, and that God is for us, not against us.
     We believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, whose example of radical love and justice we seek to follow.
      We believe in the Holy Spirit as God’s constant presence in our lives and in our hearts, always with us to remind us of God’s acceptance and love for us, and empowering us to do God’s work.  
     We believe in the Bible, interpreted through the lenses of our reason, experience and tradition, and wherever it agrees with the fundamental truth of God’s love and grace as revealed by the life of Christ.
     We believe that God calls us to actively build the kingdom of God on earth, that being Christian requires us to work for social justice.
     We believe in peace over war.
We believe in grace over works.
     We believe in forgiveness over sin and judgment.
We believe in the power of prayer, that fear is not the only force at work in the world today.
     We believe in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and mending the broken.
     We believe that when you truly embrace diversity, you embrace God, that all are fully welcome regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, occupation, or station in life.
     We believe that it’s good to question.
We may not always believe exactly the same thing, but the people of Hollywood UMC believe in God and each other. 

It has been a remarkable experience in a diverse congregation that welcomes all. No offense to any of the other churches I have ever attended but I have never woken on a Sunday morning and wanted to take my place in the pews. In my post 9/11 life I have chosen to turn away from the hateful refrains of politicians and ill informed religious leaders and focus on peace and charity. As Mother Teresa tried to teach us, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

I write this, not as an advertisement for the church, although we could certainly use more people in our congregation, but rather as a reminder to myself to keep tuning out the nasty rhetoric and keep working to make my little corner of the world a better place to live.