Though she managed to pick
plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by,
there was always a more lovely one
that she couldn’t reach.
“The prettiest are always further!”
she said at last,
with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes
in growing so far off.
lewis carroll
Try me on, I'm very you.
Deee-lite
*re-reads
so many friends experiencing illness and death the past few weeks. cancer, alcoholism, cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer. 6, 32, 40. moms, dad, daughters. curt says it happens every day, and of course, it does. but we’re now of an age where it’s happening to our peers. and that’s the scary part.
the age of love and marriage and children is for the most part, passing. and now, not unexpectedly, it’s midlife crises, divorce; and aging, ill, and dying parents. what’s throwing me is people my age becoming ill and dying. children. people younger than I am.
I’m lucky right now. and I’m superstitious just enough to not say out loud what I’m lucky for. because it’s ultimately ephemeral. but I’m grateful for life and health and love. even if it’s just for now.
I have nothing significant to say. I’m home from bookclub, and hoping that I’ve had just enough to drink to take down any barriers or inhibitions that I might have enough to write something entertaining and interesting….
I got nothin’.
I was at bookclub tonight. the word “perseverating” came up. LOVE that word. because I’m the kind of person that loves words. I countered with “interstices”. try using either in a sentence.
I miss blogging. I miss more having the desire to blog. there is much I’d like to comment on. but there are always the obstacles of my perceived lack of knowledge, or the fact that I need to be respectful of the privacy of the individuals to whom I would refer. there’s lots of stuff to discuss. marriage, bliss, children. wants, needs, desires. reality, fantasy. life is composed of so much internal and external. but much of it remains unspoken. and while that is not necessarily my default, I’ve learned to respect that that is the default of others I to whom I might refer.
buzzed, but still pretty grammarily correct. thank god college was good for at least one blog entry.
before I climb into bed that last time each night, to lose myself in a book or curt or sleep, I go to the boys’ rooms. I touch each one of them. whatever extremity or bit of skin that I can connect with through bunks and bed frames and blanket mounds and tangles. I tell them “mama loves you.” do they hear? do they know? does the speaking stave off scary dreams and badness and monsters in their slumber?
I talk to them, sometimes. confessing to their inertness. apologies for my behavior. bad moods, busy mom-ness. distraction or disinterest. about why I had to punish them, how hard it is to be a parent. how hard it must be to be a child. my child. other times I speak of what makes them each uniquely wonderful, how they’ve changed my life profoundly, and that I’m astounded at my luck of their existence. I tell them of my hopes for them. my concerns. questions. love. always love.
or I sing. their special made-up songs. songs that used to be sung every night. back when I used to stay in the room with them until they fell asleep. rocking, or snuggling. running fingers through hair or patting backs. soothing, murmuring, singing.
often I say nothing. I caress their faces with my eyes. I look at them. I see them. with awe and gratitude and yearning. trying to fix them in my mind. they are, at that moment, not the blurs that they seem during the day.
I wonder if they hear. I wonder if my parents did the same. I wonder why I don’t say and do it more often when they’re awake.
oh, weez, you sent my heart into my throat with that one. which quickly morphed into relieved giddiness. so, mom in the hospital. might be pancreatitis. might not. awaiting MRI results.
in the meantime, mom seeming suddenly fragile, and much too distant.
one day she will be gone. I’ve always known that, but that “one day” is always a theoretical, far-into-the-future thing. it feels closer and more immediate today. she is not at all on her deathbed from what I can tell. but still, she is mortal. and the idea of her gone opens up a deep, dark chasm in my head that I’m not yet ready to look into, nor ready to acknowledge as existing somewhere out on the horizon.
I try to write in here when I feel that I have something worthy or interesting or well crafted to say. but life isn’t always like that. often not.
right now we’re winding down a loungy kind of sunday. I made couple tomato pies from the basil and tomatoes my neighbor gave me. curt and the twins are playing their 3rd game of monopoly in 2 days. evan is watching a movie. pandora is playing country and jazz and funk and all manner of things. I’m drinking a ginger martini made especially for me by my husband.
next time…a different day, different minutiae, a different perspective. a different snapshot.
not good as in “fine”. or good as in not bad.
good as in good. GOOD.
good as in speak softly, tiptoe around it. don’t jinx it. don’t scare it away.
good as in I see wide open, bright space all around me. light and lightness. and maybe I’ll get to stay for a while and enjoy it.
that kind of good.
I want to be valued. I want to be appreciated. I want to be loved because of my faults and quirks, not in spite of them.
I want millions of tiny little moments of affection and acknowledgement, not the rare large gesture dependent on the calendar, or the account balance, or a moment of downtime where I can finally be fit in.
I want to know with unwavering surety that I’m needed. not just because I’m the person who happens to be there, but because I am specifically and uniquely me.
what’s so hard about that?
I’ve been surprised at the depth of my sense of loss at uncle dam’s death. he was 97. he was ill. in all the time I consciously knew him I thought him to be old and near death. first as only a young child can view any adult. then with that painful awareness of a person moving out of their teens who is becoming aware of the mortality of their parents and older relatives. and now, as an adult, fearing not just the theoretical, but the actuality of death and loss. witnessing it as it unfolds.
I haven’t seen uncle dam in years. decades perhaps. but he was still always there. always. even bedridden, he still had presence. he did not become invisible, background, wallpaper. he was invincible.
I realize now that his patriarchy wasn’t just in relation to my cousins, and their children and grandchildren. manong dam became a father/brother to my father in this new country. parentless here, dad was still looked after by his oldest sister and brother-in-law. he was taken in and housed and loved. so a bit of uncle dam is enfolded within my father, and so in turn, us and our children as well.
this was a man who survived soldiering and war and a death march, who braved a new country and culture, who brought into the world incredible children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. and loved even more than the ones who were just his own. this man is gone from the world. but his essence will echo through the generations. even when there are no longer those around who remember who he was. just as he was a creation of those before him. and as those after us will be a product of those who live on through us.
I’m aware that my loss is nothing compared to those who had the everyday of him. my loss has touched something in the very foundation of who I am. it is loss based on reflection and memories and implications. their loss is sharper, keener. awareness of an absence that is seen and felt at every turn.
but we share the burden. virtually, physically, spiritually. and the love strengthens us all.
I just removed the facebook rss feed linking to this blog. I wrote one or two blog entries, which then appeared on fb, but so many people saw or commented that it freaked me out and I haven’t written since. I don’t mind being forthcoming, but more with those select few with whom I’ve already become acclimated. and strangers. mid-level acquaintances, neighbors, old friends, not so much.
there’s a strange duality to blogging. anonymity, intimacy. literary one-night stands. nights spent in the the freedom of the dark, talking to yourself, with a stranger as a listening prop. dissecting the minutiae of the moment. the issue at hand. but also, a continued conversation with those who’ve been paying attention all along. big picture. the forest for the trees. those witnesses who can see the arc of the story. my story.
I’ve found myself craving the act of blogging. I’ve crafted some really excellent entries in my head lately. but those aren’t for now. for now, a toe in the water. a re-entry.
there. I said it. don’t know why I’m so hesitant to admit it. perhaps I don’t want to jinx it. or maybe to say it out loud makes it irreversibly true, and then I’m responsible for it. it’s scary to get what you want, what you’ve been searching for. and after years of trying to find my “thing”, stumbling across it, the ease of sliding into it, is surprising.
I like taking pictures.
I love taking pictures.
I’m obsessed with taking pictures.
I (crossed-fingers) may even have the potential, given enough knowledge and practice, to be (gulp) good at it.
I’ve been trying to find my creative outlet for years. jewelry making, pottery. sketching, painting, drawing. graphics, singing. and I’m varying levels of good at most of those things. but none of those things were mine. then one day at my friend’s home, her father allowed me to take some pictures with his new canon. I heard that little ka-chunk, and that was all it took. the heavens opened. light poured out of the sky. colors were brighter, sounds sweeter. burning bush. the whole bit.
so now my goal is to learn everything I can about my camera, and photography. to be able to capture with my camera what I see in my head. eventually, instinctively. to take my photos and manipulate and create using my graphic skills. to bring life to art. the potential of it all thrills me.
I’m going to try to balance all that with being IN the moments, not just chronicling them. get in some of the pictures myself so the kids can look back and see I was there, too.
so…finally. my missing piece. how great is that?!
well, the mantle of motherhood is once again upon me.
but oh, it was a glorious week and a half. late-night R-rated movies, spontaneous meals out, sleeping in, lounging at the pool. by the deep end! simple, uninterrupted conversations. amazing how much gets shunted aside or lost in the chaos.
it was wonderful to miss them. to not have the immediacy of their reality for just a little while. to just be a couple, husband and wife. us. to sit down and say “hi, I remember you.”
and sometimes, I got to be just me.
and now I’m back with them. they just overflow with life and enthusiasm; childhood oozes out of them. and with my batteries recharged, I am better able to keep up and appreciate it all. for a little while, anyway. because, let’s be honest. I was with them for an hour and I had to go to bed early. need to learn to pace myself again.
been thinking about religion lately. and spirituality, which is not necessarily the same thing. oft times, not at all.
I was raised catholic. still try to attend church. much I don’t agree with, some aspects I love. many things already have me tagged to go to hell.
but still, I like that the kids have a starting point. information. when the time comes, they can choose whichever paths they’d like.
as for me, I have recently given myself permission to no longer feel the need to explain or apologize to those who are more religiously structured for not believing or conforming enough, nor to those who don’t believe at all for feeling that there is more than what our senses and our minds take in.
do things happen for a reason, or do we find meaning in what happens to keep us sane? there are so many things that I’m unable to explain. and yes, perhaps smarter people, given endless amounts of time, could explain everything. but I don’t think it’s that simple. I am a skeptic, but I am also gullible. or surprisingly naive in some things. I am an optimist. I see patterns, micro and macro. and beauty. scientific and spiritual all entwined.
here’s what I know I believe:
- whether these divinities existed or not, whether they were actually divine or not, there are lessons to be learned, good and bad.
- there is something beyond what we can see and touch. art and beauty and kindness and thought IS divine.
- focusing so much on the next life, or an afterlife, that you miss out on appreciating and living in the here and now is completely missing the point.
that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in living a good life. being kind and generous. choosing right over wrong. knowing the difference.
my point, I suppose, is that I respect that everyone’s has opinion. and I think that ultimately, regardless of those opinions, what happens afterward, whether nothing or everything, is still going to happen.
so keep questioning. always. but also spread a little love and acceptance every day.
here’s what I have learned:
for me, everyday-to-extreme stress leads to mindless, comforting eating. despair, on the otherhand, leads to loss of appetite and a need to physically vent.
so while I looked fabulous all heartbroken, happiness, on the flip side, has its price.
sometimes there’s so much to say that there comes an inability to say anything at all.
so I will put that big old chunk of verbage to the side, and speak of other things. one more week of school left for the boys. next week off for me. birthday and a family vacation coming up. the promise of summer stretching out before us.
flux, in many and varying forms, occurring. the life spiral seems to have currently slowed and plateaued, but seems to have decided to head in the direction of upward. I look forward to the climb.
this whole facebook thing has been fascinating. forcing me to revisit myself. and apparently I had sectioned time periods off into phases. high school me, college me, ...all the way up to now. high school me and college me were two distinctly different girls. women. females, whatever. and here I am confronted by people who knew me in each of those environments, and others. what I’m discovering is that both those girls were me, as were the subsequent ones. as much as I wanted to block them off into easily defined hairstyles and mindsets and actions, it’s really been a continuum. and I find myself slowly, mentally integrating all my disparate selves. no more excuses about age or setting or circumstance, and a surprising side-effect of a minimization of the cringe-factor when remembering.
just me. brilliant, beautiful. mean, cold-hearted, hurtful. kind and funny. loving and compassionate. a stranger, a friend. a lover, an enemy. all of it. all in me. all okay.
I’ve been organizing my own mind attic. no fecal-throwing monkeys in mine. not right now anyway. not for a while. but I know they know how to get up here.
anyway, all these people reintroduced into my life, suddenly and simply by clicking “Add as Friend”. there are people whom I vaguely remember—the simple satisfaction knowing the answer to “wonder what happened to him/her.” others whom I considered friends—and realizing either we were friends for a reason, or we stopped being friends for a reason. often both feelings at the same time. then there are people I lost, though I don’t remember why or how—and I find that I missed them in their absence.
most of these people have file folders or stray note pages, snapshots, or a playbill lying around, scattered ticket stubs, all spilling out of the many mind bins. others have their own individual boxes. male. female. people with whom there was no closure. or who made enough of an impression on my not-easily-shared heart that they needed their own box to hold all of the residuals. I’ve been surprised that, for example, upon opening a substantial-sized box, I find it to be quite light, with only a few things rattling around. dessicated, unidentifiable, innocuous things. not much to it at all. then there are other boxes. small, sealed, all wrapped up and self-contained and put away nicely. barely noticed in all the clutter. I hold one in my hand and it springs open like a jack-in-the-box, inflating and expanding and filling my mindspace suddenly and completely, like a life raft after its cord has been pulled. and I have to work to get it back down to a managable size so that I’m able to maneuver around the rest of my brain.
things aren’t as we remembered them. sometimes they were more than. or less than.
we aren’t as we remember ourselves. or at least others’ perceptions are not always equal to our own. I wasn’t as bad as I thought. I wasn’t as wonderful. but I was still me. just as I am now.
facebook as therapy. who knew?