Moe

memories from a mother-written 10/24/04

I over heard a conversation between my 5 and 2 year old.  I had just picked up Hannah from Kindergarten and I had surprised them with the thought of picking up lunch at a fast food drive-thru.  Of course when I asked them where they wanted to go I got two different answers and the controversy began.  I told them that if they couldn't work it out between them I was going to make the decision for them.  My 5 year old suggested that they do eneey meeny to decide.  My 2 year old thought that was fair.  So Hannah begins... she is pronounced Moe.  There was a silence and calm that took over the car.  The choice had been made by the hand of fate.   On my way to Moe's choice, I realized that I was going to pass by the other choice and it wouldn't take any time to just get what each of them wanted.  So as I turned into the parking lot, my 2 year old begins to protest loudly, "Hannah is Moe mom! Hannah is Moe!"  She refused to let me get her anything from the place she wanted to go in the first place.  After all,  once Moe is determined, it is sacred and no one questions the outcome.  I found that quite remarkable for a 2 year old to be able to accept that she wasn't Moe and had fought so hard for her sister's privilege.

I miss watching my girls interact with each other.  They are now 10 and 13.   Currently, they are separated and I watch as my 13 year old becomes more and more like an only child.   It is idiocy.  They are losing such precious time with each other.  The bond that siblings make from the beginning of life should be the ultimate important thing.  Why I seem to be the only one worried about it is beyond me.   So the only thing I can do is to remind my daughter of stories of them growing up and we watch movies of them running around happily as best playmates.  And I keep hoping if I do that, she will remember her sister that way, any way at all.   Life is sacred and life goes by so fast.   They are losing time that is rightfully theirs.   A relationship that is rightfully theirs.   Amazing that it is treated so nonchalantly by people.

My Secret Lover

I have been spending a great amount of time with Anne Lamott recently.   Now, before you start tweeting news breaking un-truths, understand that she doesn't know anything about it.   I find her voice comforting and slow.  She speaks a lot like me.  I have been accused of being on drugs or  "just not quite there" before because I do speak slowly.    I find I have to think about the words coming out of my  mouth before I actually let them.    She and I say mostly different things, especially when she goes on about George Bush...  I want to scream and tell her how fed up I am with her praying to try to love him as a brother by the time she gets to heaven, and get back to  Mary picking up rocks to throw at Jesus, when in his teens,  he was certainly driving her crazy like any other teen does.    I close my eyes really tight and try not to listen until she backs away from politics.   After all, she is there to help me fall asleep.  I am finding nights to be rather quiet, long, scary and lonely.  If I can just get myself to lay down, I will pop in one of her audio books and she speaks to me of things that comfort me, almost always.

Recently,  Anne instructed me to write "really shitty rough drafts".   I found no problem there.  So if you come read something here and then come back again and it seems to have morphed its Anne's fault.  She would prefer I print out the first draft and take a red pen to it but instead I just keep coming back and reediting until I am either happy with it or sick of it and let it float in cyberland to die it's small insignificant death.   I would like to think she would be happy to know that I at least highlight in red the parts I really hate about whatever is here while I edit.  But I doubt I will ever have the chance to ask her.

I find myself resentful of her because she can just say things and her world doesn't seem to fall down around her.  I guess it's a love/hate relationship I am having with her.   I always fall back to a time when I was writing everyday.   Real "heart" stuff and ended up being crucified and complimented all in one week about a piece I had written.  It was even printed in a publication and it meant so much to so many people that I met.  Some tried to use it to as irrefutable proof that I was hopelessly incapable of being a good mother, let alone a good person.  Some others sat with me and told of their own stories from their own experiences with the subject matter.   They all were thankful for the piece but for such unbelievably (until it happened) different reasons.   The dichotomy of that week was so ridiculous.      That is why I am resentful.   As far as I know,  no one tried to take away love from her because she talked about her life.   The real one.  The life that everyone has even if they don't admit it.  The one where they pick up rocks they want to throw at Jesus or at someone or something else.   Granted, even George Bush.

I don't know how writers survive and have real lives outside of their written word.  I wonder where writers get the bravery to even go to the store, let alone, walk among the living everyday.

At least I didn't kill Ed...

It is about gratitude.   It is about fear of self.  The self you don't really know is there.  Or the self you know is there and you are too afraid to admit it.  It is about looking at life with a wider lens because if you don't you get to a place where you almost kill someone who just happens to be in your small line of vision.  It is definitely not about Ed.   Unless you are Ed and didn't know about your possible fate, sitting just inches away from me one Sunday.  If I were Ed,  it would be all about me.   I hope Ed never reads this.  But in case Ed, you do.  I apologize from the bottom of my heart.  I promise it really isn't about you.

I sat in the blue chair one day while I explained that I was horrified with what had almost REALLY happened.   What I had almost REALLY done.  For all intents and purposes, I considered that I HAD done it.   It got inside my head and then there was the fact that there was that second where I moved forward,  absolutely no one else could have seen it, it was so tiny, but every sinew of my body reacted and moved me a tiny bit forward before the rush of shamed shock and horror engulfed me.  True horror at myself.  And shame and embarrassment.

The blue chair tells me that at least I didn't do it.  That I could choose to be grateful that somewhere inside of me I had enough humanity and knew right from wrong and could control myself even if murderous thoughts got so close to the surface.   I was not having any of it.  I remember tearfully saying how pitiful and small I must be if THAT was the only thing I could say about my character.   I was grateful I didn't  kill Ed.  I started to look for a rock to crawl under.  And waiting for the guilt police to come to take me away for the crime I almost REALLY did commit.   It didn't take long for guilt police to get there.  But instead of taking me away to my cell,  they stayed.  Settled in as if I had invited them over for coffee and a danish.

I, still in turmoil, sought out more counseling from my pastor.  She saw how stunned I was.  We talked about the safe places we all have and expect to always have and when it is violated it can be frightening and confusing for our spirits.  She also mentioned that I hadn't been the only one who had experienced a jolt in our spirit over the whole ordeal.   She mentioned that I should consider, once I had  brushed the gravel off my knees, that I should sit and share with Ed, the affect that horrible Sunday had on me.  She also mentioned that I might not want to explain, in detail, what could have happened to him had I been of a different constitution.  Good plan, we both decided.

I remember sitting there after having these conversations and I was still disgusted with myself,  I took a recipe card and wrote,  "I Didn't Kill Ed"   I stuck it on the long mirror in my bathroom.  This mirror reaches from one end to the other.  A huge space, yet this note card, as small as it was seemed to be the only thing I could see.  So big and horrifying, I couldn't even see my reflection for a long time.  It was there to satisfy my sense of irony.   My desire to beat myself up over and over again and to mock myself at how truly small and stupid my attempts at living a grateful life were.


“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”   -Anne Lamott-

One Reason I Will Be Learning Advanced ASL

It is artistic, elegant and beautiful...

I am headed back to school the same week that my daughter is.   School is an exciting place for me, it always has been.  Wow,  that is a lie if I ever saw one.   I hated the early years and the forced assignments where you had to actually stand up in front of people and talk.   I hated that part of  school.  That and the fact that I was chubby and shy and people like to pick on people like me.  I hated that part of school too.  

When I went back to school in '08  I remember the fear that was rising up in me the first time I had to present my paper on Ethics in Health care.  I was suddenly 9 and needed to throw up.  I do not know how I got through it, unless it was the back pack my partner had given to me that possessed special powers.   It emitted a force field to keep me safe.   It worked and I have always been grateful for that gift.   I also realized that I wasn't 9 anymore and I began to really enjoy speaking in public.

  The school was a McSchool.  It took my money and in return I earned a A.S.S.   I love seeing that in writing.  It makes me laugh.  In all fairness, it did almost everything it said it would but it just didn't work out for me.   I am and will continue to remain a certified Cpht.   I have no idea if I will ever use it.  Because it was a McSchool none of my credits count anywhere in the "real" world.   I don't look at it as a waste of time though.  I learned a lot about myself that I didn't know and probably never would have known, especially if someone just tried to tell me.  I had to go through it.  Such is everything in life.

So as I said, I am going back to school.   This time a "real" one.   I am headed first toward Sociology and plan to wander around a bit.   One thing I know for sure is that I will be taking as many Communication classes as I can and I will study ASL for my second language.   I laugh at myself because the last thing I have been is a great communicator.  Past personal experiences prove that. That old saying about people who go into psychology, sociology, social work etc are the one's that need it the most.   And so it goes with communication for me I guess.   I plan to be a counselor when I graduate.   I tell people that I am planning a great career with a BA in one of the ology realms.   They nod kindly and take me off their list of possible relationships from the Mcdating site.  Oh well.

The Blue Chair

I pray there comes a time in every one's life when they are taken by surprise by their sudden and unexpected reactions to their surroundings or their thoughts and it is revealed who they are supposed to become.    The reason why I pray for this is because I certainly wouldn't pray for the way it has happened to me.  It has been a long excruciating journey for me to find a direction.  I wouldn't want anyone else to have to go through the confusion of 50 years before their compass finally started to work.

I have blathered on all my life about those people who profess to have grown up already knowing who they wanted to be and they talk about the one directional journey.  You know who I mean,  they are spotlighted on news programs.  But when I was pinned down once to exactly who these people where I couldn't come up with anyone I knew for certain was one of "those people".   I went for the joke then and said something to the effect of "you know, those people who say the grass is always greener,  a stitch in time saves nine, never leave the house without wearing clean underwear in case you are in a car accident..." . Then correcting myself because I realized the last one was not one of "those people" that one was my mother.   I found myself knowing most of us on earth are not pre-wired for one certain purpose.  I had been lying to myself, perhaps because the hard wiring, or for an excuse... to be less than. To give up. To date, the only one person I "know" who knew his role/destiny/purpose that I can really name as "cradle to grave" one directional, one intentional, is Jesus.

It was strange to realize that my disappointment with myself was just another unrealistic self-expectation I have carried around since childhood.   Another way to beat myself up for not knowing everything.  Its unsettling to have a pillar of your belief system crumble into nothingness.  It was never real in the first place.  Many pillars and walls disappear like that for me and it isn't an easy happening.  There were/are times I feel as if there is nothing real to prop me up.  It is as if a mountain of false belief has been rattled and it comes down upon you.  Everything you believed, or used to get you through, is gone.

It is such an opportunity each time these inside landslides happen.   It doesn't  feel like an opportunity it feels claustrophobic. It feels frightening.  We feel dangerous. We mentally, emotionally or physically claw for air and scream for help before we suffocate.  The super heated moment passes.  Some doctors say a panic attack only lasts about 25 minutes.  If you find comfort in this then hold on to it.   But if it is a deep seeded issue the "hang over" or confusion, and shame can last for a very long time.  And if you suffer you know just how long life can be.... no matter how short it is said it to be.

There are many treatments for the panic attack itself.   I do not have any public opinion about which is best.    I don't believe there is any wrong way to treat it either.   Only levels of "better"  for the individual.  I believe the only person who can decide "better" is the person clawing for air and living through the aftermath.  Personally though, I hope with all my heart that "ignoring" isn't what is decided.  It really is there to tell you something.  I ignored it for years.   Then one day, I sat down in a blue chair and firmly said, "I'm not here to goof around.   I need to understand why and the hows and fix it now.  I am 50, life is too short, no matter how long it feels..."

 Who knows how many times the blue chair had heard this from others.   But  it met me where I was and believed me.  Believed me and waited to see if I was lying...