My fancy pedicure

May 7, 2012 By

All spring, I’ve wandered around with dry, calloused heels.  I thought it was about time for professional attention, so I bopped over to my favorite day spa.  I say day spa loosely, since it’s really just a Vietnamese nail salon that happens to have daytime hours.

But I’ll take it, and I sit down to the usual French pedicure and the pleasure of a barely-functioning vibrating chair.  It’s always the same, really.  They shove a paper in front of me with all sorts of upgrades and add-ons, but I always refuse in the name of economy, or habit, or fear that they might start painting elderflowers on my big toe because of a communication breakdown. But this day was different.  On this day, I’m doing something fancy.

The lady seemed shocked with I told her what I wanted – the extra-long pedicure with citrus scrub.  She nodded at this with approval, like I had solved a world’s riddle or chosen the right name for my first-born child.   “Ah, you’ll like it,” she said.  I planned on it, since it cost an extra ten bucks. I looked forward to feeling the tension ooze out of my body through my feet.  What girl gets to have citrus scrub on a Tuesday afternoon?  I do, suckahs.

I closed my eyes as I started to ease my feet into the water, but a moment later yanked them back out.  Why is this water a thousand degrees?  Are they trying to scald my nails off? “Too hot?” the lady asked as she nodded up and down with vigor.  If she was nodding, didn’t she already know the answer?

A bit of cold water later, the nail lady reaches for a Tupperware container with a strange orange substance that looked like gritty Gatorade.  Ah, the citrus scrub. Things are looking up.  At that very moment, I received a work phone call, my old office in a panic about a constable standing there with a subpoena demanding medical records.  The lady nodded at me again as she smeared this orange salty goo on my legs.

I was in the middle of my conversation about subpoenas and court orders when the nail lady began grinding this gritty substance into my legs.  My dear woman, you aren’t trying to get dried-on egg from a frying pan.  These are my legs we’re dealing with. As she begins to rub the top layer off my shin off, my phone beeps in with a physician who wants to go over a bad patient encounter.  A vague, orange-like smell rises to my nose.  It’s like my five-year-old’s lip smacker in “raving raspberry” that smells nothing like an actual raspberry but instead some cloyingly sweet imitation that only kids (and consumers at Bath & Body Works, apparently) just love.  And it was so bright I began to wonder if it might have been radioactive.

This lady is going to town rubbing fake orange salt into my legs – really putting her weight into it – while I’m trying to conduct business.  Why is she focusing so much on my legs?  Is she ever going to get to the toenails for goodness sakes?

I finally end my phone call and try to start editing a paper.  But the television on the wall is showing a Lifetime movie about a skinny girl in a fat suit to show those mean country-club snobs how awful they are to the plus-size crowd.  Just when I’m trying to fix a comma splice, the main character rips her fat suit off. How can I possibly not watch that?

The lady proceeds to slap hot towels on my legs (that now contain multiple abrasions from all the scrubbing), which burn like hell.  She whips through the nails like it’s an afterthought and then tells me to wait under the dryer.  I look outside with a sigh.  What was once a beautiful sunny day has now turned into a downpour.

I pay my extra fee for such a fancy pedicure and hobble to the front door. “Come again!” the lady says to me.  I reach down to touch my calf, only to realize the salt residue hasn’t been washed off and there’s a sticky substance remaining.  It rubs against my jeans and I’m a bit grossed out.  And annoyed.  And wondering if I might get skin cancer from that toxic, possibly radioactive orange goo being involuntarily pressed through my epidermis.

I am beginning to think it was all one fat joke. “Did you see her face when I put on those hot towels?” the nail lady says to her cousin. “That’ll teach them to stay off their cell phones.” All the ladies double over with laughter as they turn up Lifetime television. One woman puts the orange gel back in its protective case, so it doesn’t harm the environment.  And because left uncovered, it might kill everyone in the room that breaths in the toxic air.

And to think I paid extra to get something fancy.  What a sucker.    

Filed Under: Humor, My life Tagged With: , , , , ,

What makes up a life?

May 3, 2012 By

I’ve heard it at least a hundred times.  Whether it is coming from a contestant on a reality show, an artist I’ve known, a musician I’ve sung with, or a fellow mom in book club – it’s always the same.

This is what I love.  This is what I was meant to do. This is my life.

It’s an innocuous phrase, meant to place emphasis on a particular thing as important.  I get it.  Others might wander aimlessly around, trying to find their footing on the tall and slippery ladder of life, but you?  Well you’ve got all that figured out.  No more soul searching. You have passion, my friend.  A calling that few others have.  [Art/kids/music/comedy/writing/cooking/acting] is your life and you just don’t think you could continue to draw a breath if that particular thing wasn’t in it.

You can.

I’ve been amazed at how many people put their life’s worth into things that don’t last.  Fame is fleeting.  Inspiration comes and goes.  Our senses dull over time and sometimes we lose them altogether.  You will lose friends and even the strongest earthly bonds can crumble or be taken in a moment’s notice.  Children you devote your entire life to – all those waffle and banana sandwiches, for goodness sakes – can turn and just walk away.

The value of your life cannot be measured by these things.  Even though it’s tempting.  Even when these things bring you great joy or tremendous success.  Rachmaninoff gives you goose bumps.  Playing your guitar in front of a crowd is the best drug in the world. Writing makes you feel normal instead of a crazy person with ribbons of words spinning around and tying knots in your brain.  You finally made it. These are gifts that have been entrusted to you alone, to polish like fine silver and use for a higher calling. That much is true.  But it’s still not your life.

Your life is a soul, housed in a ruff-hewn body whose organs and tissues break down with time.  A body that is complete with a mouth that says stupid things, and a stomach that consumes more stupid things, and feet that rest and stay clean more often than they get dirty.  And this soul has a decision to make.  It has to choose its master.  It can dedicate its life’s work toward fleeting fame, or something that does not disappear into dust.  Music, art, writing – these do not make up your life.  But forgiveness.  Grace.  The unconditional love from God, the Father.  And Jesus Christ, his only son. This is life. 

I was raised in the church since birth.  I was sheltered and kept in a small, clean box where truth was easy and evil was dark and avoidable.  I cringe now at the judgment I placed on others who chose different lifestyles than me, or who took long, meandering paths to express themselves.  People call themselves believers and yet go home to beat their wives, cheat on their spouses, make their children feel like pond scum, or feel absolutely nothing at all. There are horrific things done in the name of God, and going to church on Sunday means nothing, really, to sanctify one’s heart.

 I’m not saying this to be righteous.  God knows I don’t have that right.  But through the course of my life’s many misadventures, I’ve grown to realize that everyone finds truth in their own time.  In their own crazy, soulful, serpentine way.   It’s not our place to judge or tell people what to believe or how or when or why.  Last I checked, we aren’t the savior police.  But when it comes to my own soul, it has been filled with love that has no human replication, warming my brittle bones and washing clean what I used to think was white, but later realized was stained and broken.

I used to think that tangible things mattered.  Like if I wasn’t here to raise my children or be my husband’s partner that their lives might possibly end.  But people will go on without you.  Someone else can sing or write or love just as easily.  These things are not the foundation upon which your soul is supported.  You cannot place your trust in these.

But the purity of God – a light so bright that you cannot view it head-on and emotion so strong it fills you with something stronger than fear itself– this is not something found in a cheesy Christian bookstore.  It is not limited to those wearing pink silk dresses and sitting in pews.  It is not reserved for those who say the right things or look the part or tug at your heartstrings or lack all intellect.  It is simply for the soul who seeks it, and accepts it with grace.

So as it turns out, the pure, unabashed, accepting love of God is my life.  My screwed up, messy, inadequate human life.

That’s all I really have.  It’s all that matters.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

April 30, 2012 By
  • Recipes are helpful.  Like telling me to use large eggs when making a Bundt cake.  I was just about to grab those tiny little quail eggs that I keep in my refrigerator when I had the forethought to double check.  Large eggs.  Wheh.  That was a close one.
  • I abhor having to type in those random letter combinations when I comment on another blog.  The caption always says something like “Prove to use you’re not a robot!”  Who came up with that phrase?  If a robot is smart enough to surf the web, come up with an email address, and put snarky comments on someone’s blog post, shouldn’t we be encouraging it?  Wouldn’t that be utterly awesome?  The phrase should instead read, “prove to me you’re not an internet scammer who wants to download a virus and steal my bank password.”  Or,  “enter in this stupid combination of letters because it’s automatic and I don’t know how to disable the damn thing.”
  • To prove my point about eggs, I went to the grocery store.  They have large and extra-large, and they are all the same price. I think we can quit referring to egg sizes, recipe people.  For those who actually live on a farm where the small ones are common, figure it out.
  • My sweet son is running a fever.  I feel just awful because he was extra cranky a few nights ago and I just might have made statements at dinner with friends similar to “that is so annoying” and “seriously, kiddo.  Deal with it. Just let me finish eating already.” I am heartless.
  • Tonight, our daughter came into our bedroom an hour after we thought she was asleep, lost in hysterical tears.  “I love my last name,” she sobs.  “I love the way it sounds when you say it all together, and someday when I get married I’ll have to change it.”  Uh, okay.  You’re five years old.  Most kids worry about getting a new backpack, and my daughter worries about losing her identity to her future spouse.  “You don’t have to change it,” my husband says, as if he’s disclosing some big secret.  “It can always be yours.  Love’s not found in a name, anyway.”  She is thrilled.  All is well again in the universe.
  • Last weekend, when we were working in the yard, my husband asked me if I’d seen the garden hoe.  I told him we shouldn’t discuss her in public, and especially around the children, for crying out loud.  Show some respect. 
  •  I get so excited when I hear the little ding on my iphone because I just know it’s the sound of an email – THE email – from the one literary agent who loves my novel and thinks it’s a bestseller in the making.  But it’s from Shutterfly, stating that they have new portrait mugs.  Well then.
  •  I thought about changing my blog name today to something whimsical like “graceful waters” or “she who runs with kitchen shears” instead of the super lame hill + pen. It’s like I am a caveman, beating my chest. I am hill.  I use pen.  I don’t even use a pen since I type everything.  But I was lazy and had laundry to fold.
  • Writing can be torture.  It’s lonely and sad, and you feel at times that it has no meaning.  But then you start envisioning someone laughing, or crying, or changing their behavior after reading your words, and you feel like a superhero.  At least that’s what you tell yourself to keep on writing.
  • This afternoon as I went to check the mail, I saw my neighbor and his wife standing in their front yard.  “Nice weather,” I shouted.  It’s what you say to be cordial.  It’s the neighborly thing to do. “Not if you’re digging a hole,” she yelled back.  I smiled and waived.  Yup, it’s no fun digging a – what?  Huh? Should I be concerned?

And it’s just Monday. . .

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

little white lies

April 30, 2012 By

I’ve been thinking lately about the concept of lying.  It seems to be acceptable in the world we live in to lie about things that don’t matter. What you had for lunch.  Your plans Friday night.  Where you bought your shirt.  White lies, people call them, as if labeling them a certain color washes them clean and sanitizes all the dirty out of them.  But sometimes lying is just lying, regardless of the color.  Have you ever said your child is sick or you can’t attend an event because you had company? Your kid is sitting there playing scrabble and your company is really just your neighbor who came over to tell you your gate’s open.

When we lie, the truth is distorted.  The strings of words coming from our mouth are all tangled and knotted.

I’m one to talk.  I’ve said a shirt costs forty bucks when it was really $49.99 plus tax, or claimed I read a book that I only just started, or told a friend I had plans when I was just really lazy and tired and didn’t want to change out of my pajamas.  After all, you can usually justify it.  You had plans that night to watch trashy television, now didn’t you?  Doesn’t that count?

Yesterday in the car, my son was screaming for iced tea.  A shrill, piercing scream that made me want to pull the car over.  I almost just gave in and handed over the dang cup.  “Want tea mamaaaaaa!” he wailed.  He tries to wear me down, that kid.  He’s a persistent one.

“Let’s just call it water so he won’t want any,” my daughter said.  I could see her rolling her eyes and covering her ears.  Just make it stop. It makes sense, really.  He’s only two years old. It might generate a moment of peace, and he wouldn’t know the difference.

It’s technically a lie.  But it’s a stupid, white lie that doesn’t matter. No one gets hurt, and there are more important things to stress about than calling tea water, for heaven’s sake.  The light changed to green as I pondered a response.

“But it’s tea,” I said as I dreamed of Advil and a quiet room where no one was screaming.  “Let’s not call it something it’s not.”

It’s tough to teach children the value of words.  It’s all we have, really, to showcase our faith.  Our value.  Our honor.  Others might not notice if we tell them we ate a hamburger when we really had a fish sandwich.  But we are allowing our mouth to mold into knots.  We allow our mind to bend the truth like hot metal, and those habits are so very hard to break.  It becomes easier.  Lies come out faster.  Evil can always find a weak place to enter in.

You control your own mouth, even if it’s full of twisted, dirty lies.  It’s your job to untangle them.  Correct yourself.  Apologize.  After all, speaking the truth is pure.  It is sparkling and buoyant.   The words we use should mirror our very character – full of strength and freedom and beauty.

As it turns out,  you didn’t go to the dry cleaners. You haven’t started those edits.  And tea is just tea, my sweet baby girl. 

Lies are never white, after all.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

A decade of milestones

April 25, 2012 By

Yesterday was my ten-year cancer anniversary.  Those who have been in my shoes understand that it’s a day of reflection.  A day where you review all the milestones that have occurred in the last decade and wonder what will happen next.

A few to mention:

(1) I was on national television.

(2) I got to live in New York for a while.  I survived the subway and tag sales and bad Mexican food.

(3) I have been to many cancer screens, visits, and appointments, but my cancer has not metastasized.  Survival is just as good as the next test.  So far I’m hanging in there.

(4) I had many interactions with Martha Stewart.

(5) Got to eat at a fancy NYC restaurant with Donald Trump

(6) I wrote a children’s book on contract for a company in California

(7) We had a baby girl, who is so precious

(8) I had a life-threatening infection after the birth of our little girl.  I was in the hospital for a month.  I survived.

(9) I wrote a novel about the extraordinary friendship between two women.  One woman undergoes a battle with cancer, which was cathartic and memorable to write about.  Part of it’s very funny, and I like funny.   After tears and late nights and edits and hundreds of pages thrown out, I did it.  I survived the novel-writing process.

(10)                I got on facebook and connected with old friends I hadn’t heard from in years

(11)               We had a baby boy. So love that little guy.

(12)               My heart stopped right before the c-section when my son was born, as I was lying on the table. They had to do resuscitation measures.  Miraculously, I survived.

(13)               My husband and I went to Maine, and as we were on a yacht off the coastline, I was so glad he married me so many years ago

(14)               I worked as General Counsel to a large medical group, a job I never thought I’d attain and was so thrilled to have.  Being a lawyer is quite fun.

(15)               I quit said wonderful job as described above to stay home

(16)               We moved into a wonderful limestone house.  We have a garden and land to roam.  Next up is chickens.

(17)               I started a blog

(18)               Our house was struck by lightening.  We survived.

(20)               My novel is not yet published, but I’m still trying

By His mercy and grace, I keep surviving.  Here’s to the next decade.   Let it be as rich and wonderful as this one.  Let me live every day with compassion and curiosity.  After all, I want to do more than survive.  I want to sing.  I want to write.  I want to thrive.

Filed Under: Career, Health, Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Victory or Death

April 23, 2012 By

There is a subdivision near my daughter’s school called ”Travis Country.”  We pass by the limestone sign every day, surrounded by verbenas and turk’s caps, shining brightly in the sun.

“Who’s Travis?” she asked one morning. “And why did they name this place after him?”  Despite my various inadequacies, I felt relatively comfortable explaining who this person was that so important to our state’s history.  After all – I was born and raised in Texas.  I grew up forty-five minutes from the Alamo. If anyone could tell her who Travis was, I could.  Here was my very helpful answer:

 

 I think he was a Colonel in the Republic who fought at the Alamo.  Did he wear a coonskin cap?  No, wait.  That was Davy Crocket.  Anywho, it was either he or some other dude that met with a Mexican leader under a tree regarding surrender.  No wait, that can’t be right.  Well I don’t know his first name, honey. But I think his middle name started with a B.

Yes, folks.  That’s it.  Colonel Travis wore a coonskin cap while not dying at one of the biggest battles in Texas history because he apparently morphed his ghost-like dead self into Sam Houston and was busy negotiating a surrender.  Most importantly, however, his middle name started with a B.  Of that, I’m certain.  Well thanks a lot, small-town history teacher.  Thanks a lot.

That night, I asked my husband to better explain it.  His first response was “please tell me you didn’t try.”  What?  Why would he jump to such accusatory conclusions?  I lied and said no, even though I’m very well-versed on the subject and all.  He snickered at that.  So at bedtime,  my husband allowed my daughter to stay up late in order to re-tell the story of William Barret Travis dying in a hard-fought battle against Mexican soldiers, leading a team of outnumbered and starving misfit settlers.  He dramatically drew his hand across the bedcovers to imitate how Lt. Col. Travis drew a line in the sand, urging those who wouldn’t fight-to-the-death to walk away.  No one walked.  They all crossed that line. My daughter sat up with rapt attention.  Please don’t mention the coonskin cap, I thought as I tried to beam it directly into my daughter’s head.  I’ll never live that one down.     

The way my husband wove the tale you’d think it was a work of fiction, with William Travis walking away from a sordid past in Tennessee to find his home in this rugged new place, leading a pack of dirty men, all huddled behind a Catholic mission’s dirt-and-mortar walls.  They all died bloody deaths in the battle of the Alamo, but the Mexican soldiers finally prevailed.  “A woman named Susana Dickenson survived to tell the tale,” my husband said with raised eyebrows.  My daughter breathed in fast. What did she do? Where did she run? Why did they let her go?  The stinging smell of independence hung like fog in the air around her pink covers.  The Battle of San Jacinto.   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  The capture and surrender.  Gunsmoke.

I passed the sign again today and it had new significance.  It reminded me of why I live in the great state of Texas, tucked away in the hill country amidst bluebonnets and wild Indian blankets,  the soil fertilized with the blood of those who died for our right to stake a home onto this great land.  The tall, blowing grasses are moistened by their tears, and their yet untold lives whisper to me in the afternoon winds.  This state is special not just because of the stories told today, but of stories long since past.

On February 24, 1836, mere days before the end, Travis wrote to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world, saying “I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained continual bombardment and for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country. Victory or death.”

Thank you, William Barret Travis.  For the fight.  For the intensity for which you loved this place.   For drawing that line in the sand.  I thank God for you, for what you did for us so many years ago, and for your unyielding urge to never give up even as solders were climbing the wall and closing in. I salute you, my dear patriot.  Even if it makes people look at me funny while I drive by that sign, in my sweats, possibly talking on my cell phone, on a Tuesday afternoon.

Others might have chosen to walk away – but you?  In that dark day in March, 1836, as you breathed your last breath, you thought not of these things. You thought of victory.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Texas Tagged With: , , , , ,

Pioneer daydreams

April 20, 2012 By

I often daydream that someone from the pioneer days transported through time and landing in our modern culture.   One random Tuesday, they were strapped to the plow, or making hotcakes, or shucking peas, and the very next minute they are sitting in the front seat of my Chevrolet Tahoe, next to gum wrappers and sippy cups, confused and bewildered that we are whizzing down a paved road at sixty miles an hour.  I pat them on the hand and say “Welcome, my dear friend, to 2012. This is how we roll.”

In this quirky daydream of mine, I’m a time traveler interpreter, explaining to this person how modern society can be found wearing pajama pants at the grocery store, or that fried potatoes can be purchased in little stick form while waiting in our vehicles and sitting in a long line, handed to us though a little window by someone with a bad attitude and a nose ring.  I show them pictures on my iphone while we’re stopped at a red light and take them to Kerbey Lane for omelets.

While others think I’m doing something productive while waiting in the carpool line, like listening to a book on tape or praying for wisdom, I’m actually explaining to this mythical traveler friend of mine how we got to this place.  What has changed for the better through the decades and what, sadly, is left hollow and empty.

Most often I invite this person to visit when I see something strange, like when I’m driving in West Texas through a field of wind turbines or when I hear some random lady at Starbucks order a doubly-dip-mocha-frappylicious with two shots, served at 130 degrees. What would they think? I swear.  It’s as if we have developed an entirely new language.  Supersize it.  Facebook.  X-box.  Oscars.

It might not be normal to have imaginary friends visit from the 1870s.  But then again, we live in a strange place and time.  Someone should peer through the window, rub away the dust, and see what society is doing with all this modern progress.   Are we moving forward, or just faster, toward our own level of insanity and sugar and money-fueled depression?   I like the idea of living in an era that’s filled with reading, and singing, and being happy to get a stick of candy in one’s Christmas stocking.

But strangely, I don’t feel the need to be transported to their world.  I kinda like the fact that they show up here, and I can brag about how we get to ride on airplanes and order strawberry smoothies at Jamba Juice.  I can imagine what it’s like in their world, the rising with the chickens.  All that scrubbing and baking and weeding.  There is no popcorn at the movies or trips to Maine.  There are no girl nights or glasses of wine.  No nail salons or highlights.  And a life without any make-up or sparking water?  No Advil or paper towels?  Their days would be filled with mosquitos and chores.  Itchy bonnets and eerie solitude.  Any era that required you sleep in the same room with your children I’m not going to live in.  My vote’s on air conditioning and king-sized beds.

I think there must be a blend of the two worlds.  A little hot and a little cold, folded together to form a peaceful haven.  This is the world I want to live in.  The slow in-between.  A world where the strange is put in perspective, the bonnets are left in the closet, and children have room to roam the wide open spaces of our modern lives.  And at the end of the day, we rest easy in our down comforters, thanking God for grocery stores and gas-powered engines.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Infinity, plus one

April 19, 2012 By

“I sure love your daddy,” I said to my daughter once as we were walking hand-in-hand though the grocery store parking lot.  Sometimes I do that – say things I’ m thinking out loud.  It often gets me in trouble, like when I’m judgmental or harsh or wish someone would move the freak over in the fast lane.   But this particular day I was thinking about her father.  My husband.  The man I love more each passing day of our almost thirteen-year marriage.

“You love him more than anyone in the whole world?” she asked.  “Like the entire earth?” Her little hand was clutching mine as she looked up and squinted through the sun.  I’m wondering what she’s getting at, like if we lived on a smaller planet I’d just sorta hang out with him.  Maybe buy him a soda or get him a ticket to Sea World.

“Do you love him more than me?” she asked.

The question hit my face like a slap as we walked into the grocery store.  Right there by the pineapples.  How do I answer such a question?  How can I possibly explain such a love while picking out grapefruit?  This was my first-born.  My precious child.  I was the center of her little world.

“Well it’s just different,” I said.  I was really hoping she’d just let this go so I could head to the cheese section in peace.  But she was so fixated on my response that she flat-out ignored the free samples.  This was serious.  I could have just said I loved them both exactly the same – children like for things to be fair and equal and perfectly symmetrical.  Half the pie.  We each get a balloon.  Three candies each.  But I couldn’t lie.  Not to my own child.

My daughter and I gush a lot.  It makes my husband roll his eyes and leave the room, mostly because it’s (1) annoying; (2) loud; and (3) insanely repetitive.

“I love you a million times,” I’d say to her.  Of course she loved me too.  Except a million zillion times, plus infinity.

“I love you that much, plus one,” I’d say.

I do love her so.  I have an immense longing to protect my children at all costs and surround their world with freedom and creativity.  And they love me, to the extent they know how.  It’s so innocent.  Full of happy bubbles and sparkles.  It’s so squeaky and pure I wish I could bathe in it.  But my daughter has so much yet to learn.

I met my husband our last year in college. He was a fraternity boy with political ambitions.  He wore beat-up, red wing boots, pulling his hat low on his head to cover up his red, tired eyes.  I was drawn to him in a strange way that ignored all consequences.  His crooked smile kept flashing through my mind all the moments of my days, and the world was somehow off balance without him in it.  That was how things always were with us. From the very first moment we spoke, it was like that big wheel in Lost where all time and space shifted.  We didn’t really have a choice.  We were all but helpless participants in God’s master plan to yoke us together, one pushing and one pulling in all the right moments.  I melted when he touched me.  I would have followed him anywhere, to the very ends of the earth.  No matter what the size.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love my children with an emotion I didn’t know existed until their faces were raised to meet my eyes.  My throat closed up when I saw their bodies like tiny angels and thought I wasn’t worthy to own such beautiful things, even for such a little while.   Sometimes I stop folding laundry or scraping old oatmeal off cereal bowls and just look at them, my sweet precious little children, basking in the glow of the everyday.  They are the big miracles of life.

But someday, they will go.  They will take the extra china and good thread count sheets and beg me to make them cookies, but they will still leave.  Some other mother, who rocked and held and loved their child as fiercely as I have loved, will send their offspring out into the world and the two will meet.  And I will be but a memory of past days.  The woman of remember when and you just won’t believe. Then, it will just be us, my husband and I, rocking away on the quiet front porch, alone.   Or sitting in some café in France, drinking wine with grins on our faces.

I suppose when my daughter is older, after she struts headstrong into her own separate world, she might understand.  After she survives her own youthful heartbreak and finds a partner who feeds her soul.  Maybe then, she will know the answer, standing in the produce section, with refrigerated air blowing into her face and melon in hand, how to answer a question from her child about the intricacies of love.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

Living your best life

April 17, 2012 By

I am the last one who should ever judge society for its celebrity-obsessed culture.  For only reading at a fifth-grade level.  For listening to mind-numbing pop music and watching sitcoms about grown men acting like children.  After all, our generation is moving at such a mind-numbing pace with all that facebooking and making pinterest cupcakes in the shape of spiders.  Why make it any harder by struggling through War and Peace, with all those long sentences and foreign vocabulary words? I was on a reality show, for goodness sakes.  I get it.

But I worry about our children’s future.  Hell, I worry about our own future. We are not reading Pulitzer-prize winning literature.  We watch Gossip Girl instead, not realizing there are woodpeckers pecking away in our back woods, their funny little heads bobbing to and fro, or sunsets sparkling through oak leaves in the distance.  There are entire worlds of fiction awaiting us, challenging our minds to weave characters out of nothing but mere descriptions on paper.  We instead stare five feet in front of our couches, settling into our idle, boring life.

I sometimes think about the housewives in the 1950’s through the 70’s– modern conveniences like dishwashers and clothes dryers and microwaves at their disposal.  It freed up so much time and energy.  But for what?  All the energy we have reserved for ourselves by not having to rub shirts against a wash board or sweep up dust that blows in through a log cabin wall – it’s a gift. We should be planning ways how to spend it like hard-earned cash.  And yet we throw it toward wasteful, useless things.

Pretty soon, we won’t be able to hide our laziness, watching our trashy television after our children run off to bed, or sneaking a glance at celebrity gossip thinking no one will ever know. We are addicted to sugar and saturated fats.  We don’t run or walk or work the land. Our reduced vocabulary and lack of insight into the world around us grows.  It rubs off on them.

It rubs off on us.

Our children surely see it.  They can feel the anger that creeps into our days when we aren’t living purposefully.  They taste the bitterness that sets in when we are tired and useless and have nothing else to say.  They hear our dinner table conversation, void of beauty and truth, and will someday either scream with madness or settle into their own life of mediocrity.

I don’t want that kind of life. I won’t want my children to have that kind of life.  I think God places upon us a duty to live our best lives. To excel and work hard and debate established truths with vigor.  To complain less and work more.  It’s not about living a lie so your children have fake memories to hold onto.  Vanity disintegrates at the first sign of rain. It’s about men grunting it out for their families and women not complaining about it.  It’s about singing over breakfast and silly-dancing down the hallway and getting your hands dirty.  Then, when our sore and tired bodies sink into bed, we rise the next day, joyful.

It will invariably rub off on your children, your best life.  Not because you were pretending to be someone you weren’t, but because you were finally embracing yourself, and who God meant for you to be.  Filling your soul with so much richness is hard to contain.  It comes pouring out of your heart and settles on them like gold dust.  Or they might never get it.   They might have to find their own place in this world differently how you imagined it.   Children are their own people, with minds and hearts you cannot control.  They might think you worked too hard, or were too old-fashioned, or didn’t fit into modern culture. They might think you are flat-out crazy.

But it doesn’t matter, really.  You aren’t doing it for them, as it turns out. You are living your best life in honor of the one who created you.   Because you couldn’t imagine wasting all that precious, idle time.  Others can watch sitcoms, but you?  Well you’ll be skipping in the woods, singing with the wind’s natural harmony, laughing with the sparrows.  You will be out there living your best life.  One filled with peace and hope and love.

Maybe there is hope for the future after all.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Television Tagged With: , , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

April 15, 2012 By

This is a new series I thought would be fun.  At random times, I will share odd and curious things that entered my mind over the course of the last week.  They have no rhyme or reason to them, except to prove that I am actually, quite a bit, more-times-than-not, maybe-a-teeny-bit insane.

  • Today, I saw two grown men buy a cartload full of generic-brand grape soda.  Who likes generic soda? They unloaded cases of the stuff into their expensive car and drove off, and I was left scratching my head.   What in the heck are they doing with all of that?  And why didn’t they buy it in a variety of flavors? I almost stopped them to ask them a series of questions.  Are they just going to drink it?  Are they making cheap vodka shots out of it? It’ll rot your teeth, you know. Then I realized I don’t know these people. Move on, you weirdo, staring at other people’s groceries.
  • I saw a fox on the way to my son’s school last week.  Just crossing the street like it belonged there.  I felt I stepped into Aesop’s fables.  I expected there to be a bunch of grapes hanging on a tree somewhere and for the fox to learn a valuable lesson.  Okay, I didn’t actually expect to see a bunch of grapes hanging on a tree.  That would be weird. But then again, I didn’t expect to see grown men buying ten cases of generic soda.
  • I almost stepped on a scorpion last night.  I screamed like a baby and made my husband go kill it.  I couldn’t even wrap the dead little bugger up in paper towels and haul it to the trash because the stinger might still be active and pierce through the paper.   Those little pinchers are evil.  Do I really think scorpion poison can sear through paper and miraculously penetrate my skin causing extreme pain?  Do all my rational thinking skills evaporate after 9 pm?
  • Friday night, I invited friends to dinner fifteen minutes before I asked for them to be there.  As in – “hey – it’s 5:45 pm.  Wanna meet up at 6?” Because other people certainly have no life and sit around waiting for me to call.  Even if they didn’t have plans, they’d have to take the bat mobile to make it across town in fifteen minutes. Where are my manners? But how cool if it had worked out?
  • I made kale chips the other day.  Tossed them in olive oil and baked them until they were hot and crispy. I sprinkled them with salt and crunched every last one down.  My family made faces at me and said they were more than happy for me to eat up all that hot wrinkled lettuce.  “You go on ahead,” my husband said.  Whatever, people that I live with.  Those suckers were tasty.
  • A friend recently informed me that store-bought pie crusts are full of lard, which I didn’t think I cared about but it turns out I do.  I drove many miles to a store to buy whole-wheat, lard-free pie crusts, only to discover they cost five bucks each and I wouldn’t be home for hours.  It was a waste to leave them in the car to thaw.   So yes, I actually drove to a health store with every intention of buying pie crusts, and then changed my mind and left empty handed.  I am now dreaming of quiche and I wasted thirty minutes of my life last Tuesday.  I did manage to grab a free sample of hand lotion on my way out, so it wasn’t a total loss.
  • I asked my husband what type of bread he wanted me to bake tomorrow.  Did he have a special request?  What about sourdough?  Did he have an affinity for honey? He gave me a strange look, akin to find a new hobby or maybe go out more.
  • I placed numerous items (I won’t mention how many) in an online shopping cart at the most amazing/funky clothing store on the universe.  I wasn’t planning on actually buying them, because I am not cool enough and don’t have that much cash, but somehow adding them to my cart seemed entirely appropriate and not at all frivolous.
  • I was so desperate for something sweet the other night that I took a spoon and dug it into a jar of peanut butter.  After I finished the spoon-o-peanuts, I was a bit embarrassed with myself.  Have I really sunk to this?
  • Last, but not least, I received a response from an incredible literary agent in New York who said for me to be patient with him and that he promised to read my manuscript in the next few weeks.  I looked back at the version I sent him and noticed a glaring spelling mistake in the first paragraph.  I sent him and his assistant an apology email asking them to read the attached version with no spelling error.  I then made another error in the email to the agent, which caused a third email that simply said “I swear I know how to read and write.  Please believe me.”  And yet they don’t have to.  That’s the funny part.

Onward to next week, where more insanity will (very likely) ensue.

Filed Under: Humor, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

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