Time Off

Well.  We are still living without air conditioning because I don't want the dust everywhere.  That may change this week.  We will see.

We have about decided to do without the bead board and just paint two different colors on the walls and put up a chair rail instead.  Not because I don't want the bead board, but because of the cost of having the bead board PLUS the cost of the glue to hold it to the walls.  I still might do some.  We will just have to wait and see how good of shape we can get these walls into.

I took yesterday off.  Instead of working anywhere, I made cookies and delivered them to The Angel's house, where they were hosting the cutest little black-eyed grandson you ever saw.  Black-eyed as in his eyes are very very dark brown, so dark they seem to be black, not blackened from falling or getting hit.  He is only 2, so those kind of black eyes are still far in his future, though they will surely come.  At least they seem to come to all other boys I have known.  Life doesn't seem to be complete for any boy until he has a shiner.  They actually seem to like this, at least the first time, for reasons that remain unclear to me.  It's just a boy thing I guess.  At any rate, my spirits were much higher after spending time with that little cutie than they were before.  What would we do without little ones?  I would be lost and not be able to summon up the strength to keep going.

After that I took what remained of the afternoon and laid in the sun by myself for two hours.  I covered myself in coconut oil and got my mattress all blown up, then as I went down the ladder to get onto the mattress, half of the ladder came off the dock.  I stood there, poised to jump but without enough time to position myself properly to land on the mattress like I had planned, when we both splashed down into the pond.  I only used the dang thing to begin with in order to miss the moss floating in spots, which may seem ironic to you, as it does to me.  At any rate, I took a somewhat flying leap into my own namesake and for good measure drug some of it, along with the ladder, which happily floated, to shore.  There I finally got de-mossed, positioned on my mattress, and headed for open water, where I floated undisturbed by anything.  It was heaven.  When I got home the boys had fed themselves and gone on with their lives and did not seem to even notice I had been gone. What's a mother to do?  Praise God and take a nice long nap, that's what.

Lately I am noticing all these things that I am again able to do for the first time in so long.  How many years go by in our lives without our noticing?  You have kids and then little ones, and you change so much, really just in order to survive, that you don't really notice until things change back.  All those years you spent wishing you could still "whatever", then you kind of forget about whatever those things were, and then one day, it seems out of the blue, you can do whatever again, and it seems so odd.  You have to think about whether you still really can do those things, and about 1/2 the time you find you really have no desire to do those things anymore.  It is still nice to know that you can, though.  Even if you don't plan to do them often.  Options: what would life be without them?

Tomorrow it will be back to the grind.  This weekend, though, and this extra day, I have taken time to take stock.  I have not felt hurried or pressured or anxious.  I've just been hanging out.  Sleeping when I feel like it, being up when I feel like it, mudding or sanding or cooking when I feel like it.  It's so nice when you don't have a schedule hanging over your head all the time!  I call this going with the flow, and I find that most often I am the only one who puts myself under pressure.  I now know that I can control that, and having realized this, I'm never going back.  My house will get done when it gets done, and it will be done right.  Most importantly, I don't think I'll have to worry about it again for a long time and I can't even imagine what I might do then, but I can't wait to find out.

I hope you had a great weekend also, and I hope you took time to notice your life at this moment.  It changes so fast and furiously that it feels like a crazy ride at the carnival.  The kind where you get in and you can't get off but occasionally you do see some familiar faces, just for a second, before they are whisked off in another direction away from you again.  You might have time to scream "HI!" at them but you are working pretty hard just to stay safely in your own crazily spinning orb that you are trapped in, and it's all just a blur, really.  I advise you to take some time out, even if you have to steal it from the middle of the night, and take stock of where you are in life and what you value.  Especially in the middle of the night, I have noticed, things seem better.  Your children sleeping invoke much different feelings than they do when awake.  You have time to think instead of react to what they just threw onto the walls or floors.  You might be surprised what is really important and how much time you are spending on what does not, in the end, matter.  To anyone.  Just adjust your course on the river of life, (it's a wide river) and trust that you will end up not where you planned perhaps, but exactly where you need to be.

Because you will, I promise.

Letting Go: Teddy Bears and Baggage

I did a rather dark piece last year for Father's Day, and this is the other side of that particular tunnel for me. It was hard to do, but I'm glad I did and I have felt rather badly about just leaving it there, because of course  no broken heart just stays broken.  They mend in all kinds of interesting shapes, none of them perfect.

The other night I was lamenting the fact that I still haven't gotten through the Beautiful Redhead's childhood toys on her shelves, and I spied this guy.  The whole world stopped, and my mind started whirling, and I ran to get my camera and even managed to take some pictures in focus.

This is Leo, on the left.  Leo is my first real love.  He used to be a lion with a music box.  I have no memories, or pictures, of Leo when he still had a mane, or fur, or whiskers, but he has a scar from where my mother had to perform surgery on him to remove the music box. ....after she had washed it.  Laundry would be a demon my mother would wrestle all of her life.  She fought the good fight but could never overcome what she called "the bleaching gene".  I have no memory of the music box and as far as I know, I never missed it.  I was just glad he was all right, sewed up tight and still with me.
 He used to sleep with me every night.  I had a lot of stuffed animals that slept with me every night, and it caused me a great deal of anguish trying to decide how to arrange them in my bed.  I had room for about 3 rows of stuffed animals that I could fit in my bed, and I worried that only the ones on the top row would be able to breathe.  I tucked the covers under the arms of those on the top row that had arms that would bend.
My mother pointed out that stuffed animals didn't have to worry about breathing.  She *may* have even said "um, honey.....you do know they aren't real, right?" (wondering, no doubt, about the definition of "obsession").
I knew this in my head but it was my heart that was the problem, and I knew this, too.  I was about 7 when we had this conversation/revelation.
Even then I was more worried about my skills as a mother than the more practical things, like the fact that my "babies" did not breathe.  My mother did not believe imagination was a thing to be squelched in children.
But always Leo was beside me, closest to me.  I loved him the best of all.  Leo had been with me since I was a baby.

Soon after we moved to this house in 2001 and put up the shelves in this room, I must have come across him while unpacking and put him up here for safekeeping.  Here he has sat, next to the pig that my daughter loved when she was 3, for 12 years.
There is a black spot on his hand from where I threw him up, high in the air, after being warned not to do that again by Big Grandma, who was trying (desperately) to spray paint some TV trays (Remember those?) when he landed smack dab in the middle of her fresh paint.  Big Grandma was mad!!  I was in trouble!!  She did not spank me.  Maybe because I was almost as tall as her, but maybe because she didn't have to.  I knew better than to do it but I had not realized I would be putting Leo in jeopardy.  I was maybe 8.  You might think that's kind of old to be carrying around a stuffed animal but it would have been the summer my dad left.  Leo was there for me.  We went through it together.  Where I went, so did Leo. It threw both of us  into a panic thinking that Leo had been mortally wounded.  Not to worry, most of the paint came off, and what remained we both thought added character.  Big Grandma had her demons, but laundry was never one of them.

When something terrible and irreversible happens to you as a child, it is right before sleep that your heartache will find you.  Once you are alone and everything is quiet, it will well up out of you.  It becomes a daily ritual.   During the day you can "not think about it", and keep your mind off of it, but it knows where you sleep.  Every night Leo slept crushed to my chest, and every morning there he would still be, and on I would go.
As a teenager he was always on my bed, and usually slept with me, but you will be glad to know that I did not have to carry him around anymore.  I did not cry every night anymore by then, either.  The self-centered-ness of puberty had staked out that ground, and many nights I spent obsessing over acne or what to wear to the dance instead of crying. Some time around the age of 18 I realized that I had not been crying every night for quite a while.  My heartache did not come for me as often, but when it did come for me, Leo was still there.
I got married and moved away from home, Leo tucked into my cedar chest from Nana along with other treasures and keepsakes.  I got divorced and moved back home, went to college, had apartments and parties, had jobs, got married again, had kids, the whole nine yards, Leo was with me always.  Tucked away in my cedar chest until my children got old enough to be careful with stuffed animals.
Sometime in my early 20's, I realized that it had been a long time since I had cried at all, or  felt sad, or even thought much about my heartache.  It was a shock, and I thought I outgrown it.  It wasn't done with me yet, but I treasured the possibility of peace, and started working toward it.
When I was pregnant with twins and at a psychologist's office for one of my children (I thought), I surprised and embarrassed myself by bursting into tears when the man asked about my parents.  Then I got mad at him when he said it was obvious I had some "issues" with that.  Not outwardly mad, (Thank you LORD), but inwardly mad, which is less embarrassing but more humiliating, on a personal level.  That was when I finally broke down and asked for help.  From God, not the psychologist, nice man though he was, he was still, well, .....a man. Plus let's not forget my prejudice toward taking pills.  I'm against it, generally.  Let's just say I had issues in more than one category but do not worry, God could handle them all.
Then the years flew by and one day I saw Leo on the shelf for the first time in such a long time that I had almost forgotten Leo.
HOW could I forget Leo, who was my first "baby" and my staunchest friend?
And I realized that Teddy Bears are really just like baggage.  It was an epiphany.
We carry them so close, our heartaches,  they become so much a part of us, that the thought of getting rid of them hurts as much as cutting out a part of ourselves.
We (I) often (used to) sit around whining about our burden but eventually your realize that YOU are one who is crushing it to your chest, holding on so tight that you are never going to be rid of it until you let go.  It may have even grown into you by then, like those poor people who weigh so much they die in their chairs and only then does anyone know their skin has fused with the fabric!! It's ugly, but take heart, because it's also easy.  All you have to do is let go.  That's it.  Just let go.  One day your head will know that it's time and it will be all right to let go, but your heart will not be convinced.  Listen to your head.  Sometimes, the head must rule.  When it's for your own good, and your heart is paying the price, listen to your head and just let go.
Nothing will happen.  You may think at least a good, resounding cymbal crash at least, is called for, but odds are it will be quiet, and nothing will happen.  No one else will know a thing.  No one else is inside your head, seeing the tragic opera that plays on a constant loop, unless you tell them.  The only change will be the peace in your heart, which will most assuredly make itself known in your face when you smile.  You will be better than you have ever been.  More, even, than you have ever been, and grateful for the lessons you learned on your way to that place.
I have had quite a journey with both Leo and my baggage, but unlike Leo, who I kept safe on the shelf, at some point I cut my baggage loose and let it float on down the river of time.
Perhaps the hurt finally scarred over.
Like arthritis, it didn't hurt all the time, but when it rained there was a deep ache I could live with but not forget about.  Dan Fogelberg did a song that has always haunted me, that describes it much better than I can write, Hard To Say.

"Lucky in love,

 well maybe so,

 there's still a lot of things you'll never know,

 like why each time the sky begins to snow 

you cry"..  

The lyrics can be found here and I think they are brilliant.  Thank you for your service, Dan Fogelberg.  You might have just been writing about a break-up, but I see both myself and my father in this song, and it has touched me deeply.

It's the unexpected tears that you need to investigate and run to ground.
You learn to live with it to survive, but to learn to forgive it is truly an act of mercy, and will bring you grace.  Enough grace to share.
I tried a lot of things, learning to live with it. Denial, Anger, Derision, Blame (others), Blame (self), oblivion, attention seeking....the list goes on.  I thought I needed to mend my broken heart but really I think I needed to just learn that I wouldn't die from a broken heart, and trust God that it would heal in His time.
It took a lot of years but I finally got to the point where, when I could look at my dad as a child, from the standpoint of a mother, (haven't I always been one?) I could see that it was okay to love him and accept him for what he is without expecting him to be the person I thought he was, once upon a time.  His mother, my own Nana, helped me it this by pointing out that this is how God loves us.  We all have children that may disappoint us, do hurtful things, sometimes we may even feel that we don't like our own children, but we always love them.  That doesn't change, no matter what the kid has done, how long ago the end of the rope you were trying to hold onto has slipped through your fingers, or how much it's going to cost to save them.
Parents are just people, too.
Some things just aren't ever going to happen, and your life will be easier if you can accept this.
You see, I still love him. Can we ever stop?  I don't think so.  My answer is no.  Nana's answer was no.  Everyone gets to answer that for themselves.  Does this mean that I invite him up and volunteer to meet more wives?  Good Lord no!  Even Nana drew the line at that!  But at least the kids are old enough now that I am not trying to find an explanation.  For some things, there are no explanations and we have to accept that.  But I do love him, and wish him every happiness, and I have peace with that.
Everybody has their own journey, and I don't think any of them are easy.
Love what you can and keep your expectations realistic.
You have your own life.  Enjoy it and realize how much love is all around you. There are all different kinds of love, all of them good.  Stop letting your heart be broken. You really are in charge of that.  You can still love a person even if you know their patterns and have learned what will probably happen next the hard way.  Choices have consequences, and consequences must be reckoned with one way or the other.
It is always in your power to take the bull by the horns, (and that can be much less violent than it sounds), by just asking God to give your broken heart some peace and help you understand what is next, with grace.
If you can just do that much, it will help.  You will have to do it a lot, and it may take some time, but it's your journey and there is no time limit or shortcuts.  Keep your head up and your heart open to healing.  It will come from some of the last places you would ever expect, and one day, you will just feel..............fine.
You will not cry anymore.  At least, not about that old heartache.  Life may bring you others, so guard your heart wisely.  I hope you will even smile, after your baggage floats off. It will sink under it's own weight soon enough.  Let it go and be at peace.
If you are going through it right now, or just still dragging it around, I hope this helps you.  Just let go.  I think you will be glad you did.  Even if you just let the line out a little, so that it follows at a greater distance, that still counts as progress.  Don't be surprised if, after you think you cut it loose, you turn around to find it following you.  Wish it peace and turn back around.  It's in the past, where it belongs and you will face the future.  You will be uncertain of what will come next, but you won't care all that much because whatever comes next will not involve the same old circular path that was your heartache.
I burned a lot.  I am a burner, an Aries, fire is my sign, I am a ram blazing a path that burns from the friction, dragging Leo along for the ride.  He supports me unconditionally. It's what he does, It's his destiny, and he has fulfilled it heroically.
Do it your way, but do it. Do it today, at least make a start, and it could take quite a while.  You should not have to ask me how I know this, ahem.
What am I going to do with Leo? He is going to keep sitting right up there with the rest of the treasures.  I'm too afraid to wash him and The Beautiful Redhead will someday, eventually be forced to deal with her stuff.  When that day comes I will put him on my own shelf until the day when he will probably be cremated with me. It seems only fitting, as he's been there for everything else.  Leo and I will blaze into heaven, our journey not yet complete, and I expect we'll either be given a sword to fight more battles or go directly to the baby room.
Either one will be just fine with me.  I can do both equally well, thanks to everything I learned on my journey, so far.  Let the journey continue.

Coming Full Circle

This has been sitting in my list waiting to be edited since July 22, 2011.  I only mention this to encourage you fellow procrastinators out there.  You know who you are.

Lately many things have been reminding me how lucky I am to have grown up where and when I did.  If you don't know that you already won a lottery by being born in America, think about that for a minute.  The odds are not great, when you think about how big the world is.  Add in the rate of abortions and the odds get a lot slimmer.  So if you are born in America, as far as I am concerned, you are already extremely lucky.

In addition to being born an American, I was also lucky enough to split my childhood between two small Missouri towns, so everywhere I went, everybody knew me.  Or at least who I belonged to, which will go a long way toward having no need for a formal police force, as any one from a small town will tell you.

Most of my teachers in high school were long time residents and graduates of our small school, so there was not a lot of political correctness observed. Of course these were days before political correctness, the 80's to be exact.  In fact, most of us were related one way or another, and it was not uncommon for one teacher or another to lecture us as if we were their own children.  Don't get me wrong, they were our teachers, and we knew that.  But they were also our neighbors, relatives, and elders, and they took their jobs seriously in that they brought us up and trained us as if they were going to be living beside us for the rest of their lives.  In other words, we were brought up the right way.  We were held accountable.  We learned that to try to pull the wool over their eyes was futile, and that the odds of our parents taking our side against theirs were slim indeed.  Where there are few people, there is often much sense.  I believe this strongly.

So, about 6 years ago I had agreed to meet a girl I grew up with for supper to catch up.  We went up to the local Pub and got seated, as it happens, at a table adjacent to where one of our high school teachers was sitting.  The Pub was owned by her son, who is also a distant cousin to at least me if not my friend also.  You get the picture?  There are no strangers around here, not for long.  I do not want to embarrass her so I will not name her here, as anyone who knows her will not need the name provided.  Not that she should be embarrassed, but she is a lady, and I was raised never to put one in a compromising position. Ahem, (a nod to my former superintendent, who as far as I am concerned pretty much walked on water.)  But I digress...

My friend and I had at this time two daughters about 13 and 14 years old.  We proceed to dive into a discussion of how horrible our girls are behaving, how outrageous their clothes choices,and how they were driving us completely crazy.  Between the laughter and the (mostly) suppressed cussing, were having a really good conversation.  At one point, my friend is trying to find words to express her feelings on the length of a skirt her daughter tried to leave the house in and is speechless.

I look at her and say "I said the words, "Not while I'm still living."... with a wide eyed look that intimated that was the end of the line and I was now my mother  (a notion that had hounded me all my life and I was beginning to make peace with).  I knew she understood all that this implied.  Mainly, we were now old, man.........and at that point our former teacher ( and neighbor, and distant relative) bursts out laughing, wipes her eyes, and says "I'm sorry girls.........I just cannot tell you how good it is to see you two  here and know that you have teenagers now!  It's just so gratifying......."  laughing hysterically.

We looked at each other and told her we were getting to the age where we could understand her perfectly well!  It struck me how refreshing it was to be called a girl again, and I felt such comfort.  I knew that I was not alone.  I also knew that while my only teacher had only sons, she had invested her time for decades trying to prepare us girls for the experiences my friend and I had just been discussing.  Not because the former teacher had to, but because she had known, when we did not, exactly what was going to come to us, regardless of what path we chose in life.  This led to much reminiscing that night.

That teacher was the one who told me and the rest of my class that women were never to wear white before Memorial Day or after Labor Day.  Being the children of the first generation of women to work, that information had gotten lost in the shuffle. In those days I was under the impression that we were not going to have to know how to garden or can food because we were going to work.  We were going to have careers.  If I gave any thought to who would raise our children, I do not remember it.  I probably was still under the impression that the pill worked without fail.

I hope you can see that I have come full circle.  

I can remember that teacher also telling us how important it was for us, especially as women, to take some time at the end of the day to have things just be quiet for awhile.  She said life provided enough background noise and if we went to bed listening to music, we wouldn't get any quiet time and it was essential.  We rolled our eyes at the time.  Now I can only hope she knows how much I appreciate everything she ever told me, if belatedly.  She might be surprised at how much I remember, and I would hope she would also be gratified.  She should be.  She worked for hardly any wages at all and little retirement for no other reason than that she was born to teach.  I would like to thank her and all my teachers for their service.  I hope they know that it was not in vain.l

The older I get, the more I realize how much I have always been surrounded by people who have had my own best interest in mind, even when I didn't.  This was just one teacher, and just one moment, where she got to know for sure that not only were we getting everything we deserved, but we were handling it appropriately.  If I didn't feel like a grown up before then, I certainly did then.

I proudly take my place with the older ladies.  I have finally earned it, and it has been worth it.

Thank you for giving me a good example and insisting that I follow it, even if it meant yelling at or embarrassing me.  The world would have been a much harder teacher, and without you I would have been woefully unprepared.

You taught me not only that I didn't know everything, but to have the respect to listen to another side ( a miracle with teenagers and an example I have struggled to match with raising my own).   This was enough, but to listen to me complain about my own and to be on my side when I came full circle?  There are no words.  There is only me and all the other kids you taught, continuing the lessons we were taught so well.

The Beautiful Redhead sent me this link http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/ATpD9I/www.streetartutopia.com/%253Fp%253D2014
and I found this picture. 

It's me.  I love it.  It has the tree, the child, the stars, everything.  Some street artist somewhere has touched my heart.  They will probably never know, but maybe..........

This week so far.....

So, one of the boys is playing football this year.  This means that I spend most of my evenings in my car in the school parking lot waiting.  Waiting for what?  Just waiting.  Does it really matter "for what"?  No.  Just bring a book.  This my best advise.  Or blog from your car.  Multi-tasking at it's best!!

Sunday evening, after swimming,  I reminded both boys to put alcohol in their ears.  Four times.  I do not believe either of them did this.

Monday morning I reminded both boys to put alcohol in their ears.  Twice.

Monday at lunch I come home, maneuver around the giant pile of clothes, sorted by size and item, that are currently residing in my living room floor, and go to the bathroom.  On the counter I see the bottle of Glyoxide out without it's cap.

I am certain that one of the boys, probably the younger one, put Glyoxide in his ears instead of alcohol.

Both bottles are the same shape and size.  Alcohol's tip is red.  Glyoxide's is blue.

I sigh.  At some point, probably about the time your kids turn 14, you are ready to let them sink or swim on their own.  Not that you don't hope they swim.  Not that you don't have vague plans in the back of your mind, constantly, about what you will do if they sink. 

Mostly you just sigh and wait for this day to pass.

I did not even put the cap back on the Glyoxide, because that is not my job, either.

Tuesday, the youngest baby asks desperately, "Is today Wednesday"?

"No".  I flatly state, shooting down his hope.



These cooler nights are coming earlier and we are all sluggish with the desire to sleep more and/or allergies.  Our days are nothing but what we must go through in order to get back to bed, where we would much prefer to stay.  I speak for everyone in my household when I say this.


Wednesday morning I am on my second "Ok, I really mean it this time, we have really got to go now!!" trip back into the house and the boys are having a yelling fight.  Youngest baby has forgotten a form that I need to sign and he needs to turn in today, of course.  And wants Oldest baby to just "put his name on his" form and then turn in one form for both boys.  Older baby said "forget that, dude."  Youngest baby appeals to me, his mother, who loves him, for help. 

It's hell being both mother and father to these boys, but I must say I do a pretty good job of it.  I just ask myself what I would do with a grown man who tried to pull that crap on me, and then act accordingly.  I figure I am saving an unknown number of women trouble in their not so distant future this way.  It has never been my intention to raise any fools, let alone crybabies.  The world needs men, and I intend to increase this world's "men" be at least 3.  I think it was all those years of complaining about "men" that made God put me in this situation.  I hope it is clear that I no longer give God reason to basically say "OK, babe, put your money where your mouth is, I am tired of hearing this same line of whining", but I am only human.  You will have to wait and see just like I do.

So I tell Youngest baby to suck it up.  It was his responsibility to bring home the paper and he didn't, so he will have to pay the consequences.  He is not happy and sulks all the way to the car.  While we have a few minutes because we are STILL waiting on Oldest baby, I say "listen, you are getting to the age where nobody is going to accept these silly excuses.  You are old enough to know better and you are just going to have carry your own weight.  To accept these excuses would mean that I am helping to set you up for a lifetime of bitter disappointment".  He screams at me that he knows.  I shoot lasers out of my eyes and he settles into a subdued sulk.

I drop off the boys at school and am fool enough to think I am free now to remember what my own day holds.  I remember again that it is Wednesday, finally!  I start to feel the stress leave me.

My phone rings as I am just turning off of the road that leads to the school.

It's the middle school where I have just about 2 minutes ago dropped off the boys.

"Mom?  Can you come back to school and sign my paper?  I found it!"






............."yeah.  I'll be there in a minute, honey."

I also have to be the sweet mother who will drive for miles just so you don't miss turning in your papers on time.

This is my life. 

Every time it runs smoothly for any period of time, something changes.

I just go with the flow.  Right now, that involves a lot of driving, waiting, and dog hair.

It could be worse.