Misfits

July 23, 2013 By

 

Enjoying the nature

I hope that my children turn out to be misfits.  Geeks.  Nerds of the worst sort.  I hope they don’t fit snugly into a world of perfect hair and football uniforms where things come easy.  Because self-esteem comes from knowing you’re worth more than the stereotypes.  Because failing miserably over and over builds up deep reserves of character.  I want my children to fail because I love them so.  And loving them means I want them to develop a strong moral fiber, and a confidence that only comes after the breaking.  And when they hear the words “you are not of this world,” I want them to feel the words seared into their very own scars.

In 6th grade, I had a deep crush on some boy with glasses.  Everyone knew it, and the mean girls would write notes and slide them under my desk as if coming from him.  Letters covered with hearts and cheap men’s cologne that I believed for a solid four days, telling me to wait by his locker for a kiss.  It was a lie, as I soon discovered.  And when the history teacher wasn’t looking, someone threw gum in my hair that stuck and my mom ended up cutting it out and wedging stray strands free with Vaseline.  Let’s be honest: school sucked.  Especially when I fell over backwards and broke both wrists at the same time, waddling around in high tops and matching arm casts. Try and top that, fellow nerds of the world.

One day at recess in the 7th grade, before the days of school shootings and metal detectors, someone lit up and threw a smoke bomb at me, the red ball singing with pent-up explosive authority, causing me to topple off a ledge and break my ankle.  And there was the time I was so desperate to wear Guess jeans that I sewed one of those triangle labels on the back pocket of an old worn-out pair of Levis. And for a blissful few hours, I felt special.  Until the label started to unravel in English class and I stood in front of an entire room of kids pointing and staring, practically curled over in raucous laughter.  The feeling in my gut sunk deep, and I can still feel its weight after all these years.  I was so hungry to fit in.  I ached to belong. I just wanted time to rush by so I could enter the seductive world of adulthood.  But children, you aren’t ready.  These lessons have to simmer slow.

Growing up is hard.  It should be, because this world is hard, and it can at times be filled with pain.  You have to learn these lessons at a time when you can still run home to the loving and accepting arms of family.  Many times we would take weekend trips to the city, because mom could tell my sister or I had quite enough. The defenses were tearing loose at the seams, and we just needed to breathe.  That’s what true family is – it’s a space where you can let out the air and take off the mask and learn who you really are.  Loved regardless of what you do or what you say or what you wear.  A fierce love.  An elegant love.  A love that stands next to you, so that no matter how far you run, you can’t ever overtake it. We’d order pizza and flop around in the hotel pool and just be our glorious, goofy, nerdy selves.

I will die running to tell my children how they can never disappoint me.  How the lives that they see as silly and disjoined are like masterpieces to me, patching their father and their grandparents and their own twisted strands of cells into a pride in me that swells.  Oh my loves.  The flesh of my flesh.  You will never do anything too vast or too dark to create a chasm in my heart.  And if I can wrap my heart around you like this, you can only imagine how much more God can love.

There are times I wish my childhood was different.  I wish I had cooler stories or adventures across the globe or wild weekends of desire. I cringe at my own feelings of inadequacy, feeling stupid for being tall and clumsy instead of whimsical and witty. I didn’t go to fancy camps.  I didn’t join a sorority.  I wasn’t in cheerleading or wear name-brand clothes and I only made All-State Choir as an alternate.

But I was so deeply loved.  And now I’m so grateful now for the trials, because they only get harder, and your strength is tested, and it’s the ability to rise above them that matters.  After all these years, I laugh more.  I judge less.  I have learned that great courage is found in the vulnerable places and to succeed you first have to feel the sting of failure.  I rise up and arch my back against the blazing sun with tears drying on my cheeks.  I throw my hands up to the heavens and say thank you to parents that always believed, and ran along side of me until their sides heaved with hurt, and never let go. Because I know that no matter what happens, I will be okay.  I will rise again.  I will be loved.

That’s what it’s like to be a misfit. And it’s beautiful.

 

—

photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenlightforgirls/5166535531/sizes/m/in/photolist-8SxR1P-akdfhX-bMgu1F-bMgtWe-bMgtQZ-6phQVs-7agAHq-8dy5h6-7dyoo5-5D41Ga-8N68Bk-aYX5zR-a5PVqk-8ym3ak-9ftAoV-bniUuu-5PgEkR-dJz2TD-bDRPuS-6KrCDn-ciN23Q-bzd1GD-qnqgQ-f8deek-9atX92-6qeVfb-4JZYzo-f8sozW-9suffB-8MdBUz-dwCCjH-a7bmkR-brfbii-f8stCs-6vqzMb-f8smkQ-cWwwTW-f8d68t-f8ddu2-ewXdoz-7Ac25r-c7qyRs-9MtrPv-apyTJg-f8ssFA-f8d6Tz-cchaMu-aQNtkH-2kDHYR-f8sqwW-joeUC/

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Love, Motherhood, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts (regarding my weekend)

June 30, 2013 By

 

IMG_4780

I’ve been speaking all lofty lately, like “let’s assuage our common sense” and “thou shalt not raise up wimps that cannot debate like Jefferson” and if you didn’t know better you’d think I wore purple robes in my living room and sat around reading fine literature.  So I thought I’d keep it real up in here.

(1) On Friday, I went to dinner with one of my fabulous girlfriends.  Promised myself I’d eat light, cut down on carbs. Started it up with a Fireman’s 4 and ended at Amy’s ice cream, whereby some lady was filming the ice cream guy throwing scoops in the air.  No more needs to be said on this particular topic, either with regard to the carb-load or the ridiculousness of filming an ice cream guy.

(2) I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at my computer screen watching the entire first season of Suits.  I took a break from the season to re-enter humanity and went to the grocery store, but rather than walking, I sort-of strutted into the store with the show’s hip background music playing in my head.  My internal dialogue may or may not have been something along the lines of “I’m too fabulous to be in here buying eggs and milk / isn’t there someone I can pay to do this for me because I have a case to settle.” I felt similar emotions after a Downton Abby bender when I had to make my own bed.  Total bummer, reality.

(3)  I took a video of my garden, panning from one side of it to the other.  I was proud of the way the squash was getting on.  The zinnas, they are really popping.  And my black-eyed peas? Really reacting nicely to organic fertilizer.  I sort-of stepped outside myself and said, “are you taking a video of your plants?  Is that really what’s happening here? What exactly are you going to do with this video? Please step away from nerd-dom and go have drinks with someone or read something that’s published or try to act like a human being with a real life.”  But then I remembered the ice cream video and felt less alone.  But at least there were people in her video.  Mine had only squash, which is weird.

(4) Today I read an article that a woman drank nothing but soda for fifteen years (not one drop of water) and had to go to the ER for low potassium levels and fainting. After one week of no soda things went back to normal. What? That’s it? Not at all dramatic, you reporting idiots. If I take the time to read a story about a women drinking 2 liters of soda a day for her entire adult life, I want to hear that her insides have rotten fish floating around in them and she’s somehow miraculously living despite a soda can lodged in her large bowel, rusting since 1982.

(5) The only thing I can say as a redeeming point to wasting time on pointless articles is that I didn’t watch the Miss USA pageant, so that half-hour that those people brain-wasted I stored up to read articles like what Kim K’s doing these days (Napping! Watching grass grow! Feeding North!) and apparently this lady’s (minor-pointless-boring) trouble with soda consumption.  So we are EVEN, peeps.  Although it’s strange I feel life’s a competition with strangers’ wasted brain space.  I’m Type A.  Whatareyougonnado. 

(6) I cut up some fresh tomatoes from our garden and blended them together with the cheese sauce that comes with the mac-and-cheese pack and thought our children would never, ever notice.  There was no red – it all just blended in with the fake cheesy yellow color, and I felt brilliant.  Until my daughter took one bite and was all “Barf” like I had ground-up elephant tongues in there instead of organic sweet garden tomatoes (I have a video).  My son just shoved it in his mouth and said “well I like it and you don’t get dessert if you don’t eat it then” and sucked it down without incident.  This is why I love boys.

(7) And lastly, I threw away an entire arm-load of unmatched socks because I was just sick of seeing them in the hamper for so long.  But I had to have a little conversation with them first, like “well I’ve not seen your mate in quite some time” and “you’re not really that great of a Nike product anyway “ and “it’s for your own good.  No one likes to be alone.”

So there you have it.  Lofty of not, it’s my version of reality.  If you want to see how the zucchini is doing, be sure to let me know.  I’ve got that on video, wenches.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,