Should I Quit Church?

Should I Quit Church?

 

“It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken. Then the doc says, why don’t you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that’s how I feel about relationships. They’re totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”

— Woody Allen, from the film Annie Hall

 

 

 

(Trigger warning: This post is kind of spiritual-ish)

 I’ve been thinking of quitting church.

imagesTime out: I’ve mentioned before that I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, and promised to write more about it because, although it’s been around over five hundred years, a lot of people aren’t really sure what it is. Many of those people are UU’s, actually, which is part of our marketing problem. It boils down to this: we welcome everyone who comes in peace, we value freedom and work for social justice. If you want more details, you can go here, and maybe here.

Ok, so—

I joined this church back when my boys were three and five years old, because not only did the modest building have a huge banner outside that read “Standing on the Side of Love”, (referring, then, to the fight against the ban on same sex marriage in California that was raging at the time), but they also had an old school playground with dangerous “retro” equipment, like one of those metal carrousel things where kids propel themselves around until they throw up or crash into the dirt. There were big wooden climbing structures full of splinters and the occasional black widow spider and a sandbox that needed a good sift, if you know what I mean.

“Can we play here?” My son, then five asked.

“I think it’s for the church people,” I answered, looking through the chainlink fence, woven through with jasmine.

“Let’s be church people,” he said. He was little. He had no idea how loaded a statement like that was to an expat from the bible belt, like myself.

Maybe it was the voice of an angel (probably not), but I just had a feeling that these could be my people. Raising kids these days can whip you into such a frenzy of hyper-vigilance, that it not only zaps the fun out of it, but it can make you a little nuts. The lure of this playground, with it’s promise of good natured hippies who weren’t afraid of gay people, lawsuits or cat poop, was enough to get me through the doors.

We found community.

We took part in traditions like Passover, where my non-Jewish husband had an unlikely star turn as The Burning Bush in the seder play, and a Christmas Eve service, where my son, age six, was welcomed into the pageant dressed as Spiderman because, “Who knows who really attended the birth of Jesus?” said all the happy UU’s.

We got involved. UU’s are nothing if not crazy for social justice, and the church gave me a place to learn more about issues I cared about and pitch in where I could.

My relationship with church was great,

until several years passed and then…

it wasn’t.

As my boys got older, life got busier, and weekends were especially precious real estate on the calendar. The church got a new minister that didn’t take, and when he left after a few rough years,  it caused hurt feelings and a flurry of gossip that poisoned the positive vibe I’d loved so much in the beginning.

So I did something I’d never done and made an appointment with our minister. I needed to know: Is it possible to fall back in love, or had I let my relationship with church become stale, like a bad marriage, and was it time to pack up the kids and move on?

Talking to my minister was a lot like talking to a shrink. She asked questions, nodded and and listened with empathy, but mostly it was on me to suss it out.

“Maybe I just need a break,” I reasoned. “A spiritual sabbatical. That’s a thing, right?”

Again with the nodding. I tried to make my case.

“Then, when I come back, it will be a choice, not out of some, you know, obligation.”

“MmHm.”

We looked at each other. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get what I wanted. She listened, but I wasn’t going to get her stamp of approval for bailing out, and I wasn’t going to get a guilt trip about it either. Either of those would have given me the green light, but she wasn’t biting.

I went home confused.Why was it so hard to walk away?

I curate my life pretty carefully, picking and choosing what fits best, minimizing discomfort as much as possible. I shop at the grocery store I prefer, even though it’s not in my neighborhood and I have perfected my Starbucks order to a t. What can I say? I like things the way I like them. giphy

Maybe it was the voice of an angel (it was), but I started to wonder  if the problem wasn’t with church, but with me. If I did the work of showing up, even when I’d rather do something else, what might happen?

Which brings us to Easter Sunday.

My family and I woke up late, had toast and chocolate rabbits for breakfast, and made our way to church. All the familiar faces were there, and familiar songs were sung. As always, instead of eggs, we hid cans of food for the kids to find, to be donated to a local food bank, and participated in something called a Flower Communion.  It was, in the words of David Byrne, same as it ever was.

But it felt different.

Why?

I hate to say it, but I think it had to do with faith.

It felt like a leap of faith to show up, because even though I’m going through a phase where that place is working my last nerve, there’s something I need there, even if I can’t name it. And as annoying as it can be to get my ass out of bed and serve a community that sometimes asks too much, it is working on my insides, changing me for the better.

So, I guess I’ll keep going because, hey—

I need the eggs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I’m Scared, I Do This One Thing

When I’m Scared, I Do This One Thing

To state the obvious, it’s a scary time for a lot of people.

I won’t pretend to have new insight or valuable commentary on the political climate that is fueling many of our fears, because I’m not nearly smart enough to do that. But I do know a few things about fear, seeing as how I’m a scaredy cat from way back.

Just for fun (yours, not mine) let’s just list a few of the fears that haunt my mind on a regular basis. I think it will give me some credibility on the topic.

A short list of things that freak me the hell out:

    1. botulism

    2. port-o-potties

    3. heights

    4. head lice

    5. speaking in public

    6. losing my teeth

    7. water moccasins 

    8. sleeping with anything sharp near my bed

    9. marionettes

Conspicuously absent is any mention of harm coming to my husband or children because I am too afraid to even put it on the list. (Dang. See how it weaseled it’s way in here? Crafty little bugger.) But, to make it an even 10, I’ll add this:

    10. writing about things that really scare me and, as a result, making those things happen 

Ok, so we’ve established I’m scared of a lot of weird shit, in addition to the stuff that  scares most normal people. Which brings me to The One Thing I do that helps me when I’m, say, watching my sons try on all the costume pieces at the renaissance fair— including those hats that everyone and their preschooler has put on. (WTF???)

I do this:

I stop my anxious fiddling and just get quiet for a second. Then I put my right hand (it can be either hand, but using my right hand tends to relax me while using my left feels like I’m checking for a heartbeat) gently onto the middle of my chest. I name what I am feeling, in this case, Fear. I just say that silently to myself, and allow it to be there. The result is that the fear that had felt like part of me is now just a thing with a name. I’m not chasing it away, or trying to outrun it. I’m not justifying it or minimizing it.

It’s such a relief.

So, there you go. One thing.

It may seem overly simple, but it has saved me on many a bumpy take-off and landing (which would be #11 and #12). I do this when I’m a little scared, like when I have to ride a glass elevator, and when I’m fucking terrified, like when I read the Sunday Times.

It helps with both.

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t make it up. At least I don’t think I did. I probably heard about it, or a version of it, from this guy, or this gal, both of whom have lots of helpful tricks for living in a world where people are always blowing up.

 

love-826936__180And let’s be very kind to ourselves. This isn’t easy.

xo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In which I realize that I am more like a thirteen year old than I thought (plus a contest!)

In which I realize that I am more like a thirteen year old than I thought (plus a contest!)

My first born turns thirteen tomorrow! Holy cannoli, where did the time go??

Ok look, the truth is that I have never been that mom who asks “where did the time go?” It’s been thirteen years, and I am here to tell you that it seems like thirteen years, but that doesn’t mean that my heart isn’t being pulled apart at the thought of my baby growing up.

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One thing being a mother has taught me is how possible it is to have two or more emotions flood you to the brim, at the same time. I have found the parenting journey (cringing as I type that. Parenting journey??? Geez. Who have I become?) to be more fulfilling, humbling and exhausting than I expected. With thirteen comes a break in the physical labor of parenting, and a sharp uptick in the mental toil.

I’m ready. (ish)

I know the next years will probably be a bit, shall we say, rocky. As my boy treads in the bracing water of adolescence, I belly flop into the river of peri-menopause, in my Target swim skirt. It’s new territory for both of us, so at least we have that in common. In fact, we are probably sharing more now than we have in a dozen years, back when I nursed him through the night, providing him with milk in exchange for those blessed calming hormones that got me through. I remember in the morning we would wake smiling at each other (no memories of the tense 3:00am cursing under my breath. Oh yes, we’ve all done it), and I’d have just a moment with him before the veil lifted.

Sigh…

Please pardon that little stroll down memory lane that leads,

as you can see,

nowhere,

really.

A side affect of waning estrogen is that I occasionally lose my train of though or forget where I was going. Actually, it probably does lead somewhere, somewhere very profound, only my glasses are steamed up from a hot flash so I can’t see where the hell I’m headed! 

Oh, and that that rage thing? That’s hormonal too. My adolescent child deals with this temporary problem by playing his guitar cranked “to eleven” or doing backflips off the couch, while I head to my trusty key board and type into the void.

My apologies.

Not to change the subject, but hey, you guys! It’s World Poetry Day! And it just so happens that I have a poem to share here, by one of my all-time faves, Anne Sexton.

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She was a troubled soul (understatement) but God, could she get to the heart of things. In keeping with this post’s theme, thus far, please enjoy:

Young

A thousand doors ago

when I was a lonely kid

in a big house with four

garages and it was summer

as long as I could remember,

I lay on the lawn at night,

clover wrinkling under me,

the wise stars bedding over me,

my mother’s window a funnel

of yellow heat running out,

my father’s window, half shut,

an eye where sleepers pass,

and the boards of the house

were smooth and white as wax

and probably a million leaves

sailed on their strange stalks

as the crickets ticked together

and I, in my brand new body,

which was not a woman’s yet,

told the stars my questions

and thought God could really see

the heat and the painted light,

elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

Let’s just sit with that for a second. She’s so good.

 

Ok, next up, a contest…

One thing that real bloggers with lots of readers do is have contests. In the spirit of fake it ’til you make it, I am going to have my own Tiny Contest! Please email me directly, or leave in the comments below, or post on this blog’s FaceBook page, a piece of advice you really wish someone had given you when you were thirteen. The first person to do so will get their very own free copy of Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems, sent directly to you! You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter, as they say, but let’s just face it, your odds are pretty good. (Hope you don’t mind that it’s gently used, since I just found it on my book shelf next to another one of the exact same book. I have an Amazon addiction. It’s a disease).

Maybe I’ll press a flower in it, seeing as how it’s now officially Spring, and all 🙂

 

 

Pi Day and Other Things I’m Supposed To Be Interested In

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It’s Pi Day, but I’m sure you’ve heard that by now. It’s everywhere.

Suddenly, it’s a big thing to celebrate and if you don’t take your kids out for pie (get it??), or better yet, bake your own special Pi pie while wearing your ironically cool Pi t-shirt and humming this catchy little tune, then you’re fairly sucking at the whole parenting experience. But still, no matter how many people explain Pi to me, I don’t get it and I can’t care.

Days like this always remind me of a quality in myself I’d rather forget, but that I feel, for the sake of others in the closet, I need to cop to right here and right now: There are a lot of things I’m supposed to get all excited about that pretty much bore the shit out of me.

But first, because I haven’t quite conquered my approval seeking nature, I think I’ll share a list of things that, prior to having kids, used to bore the shit out of me, but that I now find super interesting:

  • Second hand smoke
  • BPAs
  • Newberry Awards
  • Cost of college tuition
  • Bullying/asshole kids
  • GMO labelling
  • Internet porn
  • Smoothies

So see? Parenting has indeed opened my eyes to the bigger world and, to the best of my ability, I’m on it, I promise.

But one thing about being a mother that I wasn’t expecting, is how many things we’re suddenly supposed to be interested in, even if we’re really not. I remember talking to my therapist when my son was about two years old, about how I just couldn’t play Little People with him anymore.

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I know. I spent money to deal with this problem.

But at the time it felt like a life sentence. It felt like, if I had to get down on the floor for even one. More. Minute. And make the little yellow haired plastic guy talk to the little orange haired plastic girl, I was going to seriously lose my shit. I don’t know. I was really worked up about it at the time, go figure.

Here we are years later, and I’m still feeling the pressure to get super excited about things that leave me cold. Only this time, it’s not my kids who are sending the message, but some all-seeing parental force that has no name, but that I shall just call People Who Are Super Into It, Smarter, and Probably Younger. PWASISPY, for short.

Here’s a list of things the PWASISPY does that I don’t/ can’t/ have zero interest in:

  • Learn Minecraft.
  • Do shit like this
  • Dress up on Halloween
  • Read Harry Potter fan fiction
  • Stand in line for sixteen hours on the day the new Star Wars movie opens with thermoses of hot cocoa and Princess Leia braids
  • Understand and get very excited, VERY fucking turned on by the concept of Pi

God, they have so much fun! The PWASISPY go camping and love it. They build really complicated thingamajigs in the backyard and launch them.

Ok.Clearly this might warrant just one more trip to therapy. And if I went, what would I say?

That somewhere deep inside, I think, If Only.

If only I could do these things, my son would open up to me more. He’d feel so loved and understood that he would share with me when the girl he’s crushing on likes another boy, and how that makes him feel. I’d know what he’s really truly afraid of, if he secretly wishes that he were as tall as the other kids or (gulp), that he had a funner mom.

Ugh. That old chestnut.

Once again and as always, it’s no one else’s deal but mine. There’s no looming dark cloud of judging super-people out there, just my own craving for confirmation that I’m doing OK here, because when it comes to a job like raising kids, we just never know, do we?  I look Out There to tell me what to do, while simultaneously claiming not to care what anyone thinks.

As I ponder this flaw in my nature, I’ll make my kid’s favorite lunch and bask in the knowledge that, while I don’t know thing one about Pi, I do make a kick-ass grilled cheese.

Oh, and a very happy Pi Day, to those who celebrate it.

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My Son Laughed in My Face (and made my day)

On Facebook not long ago, I shared an exchange that happened between my twelve year old son and myself and it went like this:

T: What are you looking at?
Me: In this light, I can see just the tiniest beginning of a mustache on you.
T: Hmm. Really?
Me: Sure. It’s small, but yeah, I can see it.
T: (squinting at me) Like mother like son. (he breaks into hysterics)

I posted it because it made me laugh, but I was surprised to find that I thought about it a lot, after it happened. Not only did it make me laugh, the way kids often make us laugh, but it made me smile deeply. It warmed me.

If you’ve ever had a kid then you probably had at least a few of those moments where you breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it was that they came into the world mostly healthy and ok. Or maybe it was when they looked you in the eye and smiled, or reached for a toy, or spoke their first word, held a pencil, ate peanuts without a reaction. It’s different for all of us, but there are those moments when you just say to yourself, “Thank goodness. Phew. They’re gonna be ok.”

The biggest one, of course, is kindness. When you start seeing your child think of someone else besides themselves, it’s a big relief. Clearly, kindness if life skill number one, but when the conversation above happened, I noticed I had a very similar reaction. It was a soft, inward sigh of relief. He’s got a sense of humor, I thought. Thank god, it will serve him well.

A sense of humor can get you out of a world of trouble and keep you afloat when things get really bad. You can be smart, beautiful and talented, but without a sense of humor, I wouldn’t want to trade places with you. If we were living in another time, a sense of humor would be like having the sharpest arrowheads, or a full set of teeth. Life is just going to be easier for you, and more fun for your tribe. A sense of humor without kindness is a recipe for disaster, but put them together, and I want to know you.

I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I will be having a disagreement and he will find a way to make me laugh. You know those moments when you’re so pissed, but then your beloved comes at you with a spot on Maggie Smith impression and gets you laughing?

No? Oh.

Well, anyway, it’s the best. Provided the timing is right (there’s a 8.6 degree of difficulty here, guys, proceed with caution), it never fails to reverse the direction of a downward spiral. Maybe it’s not a total reconciliation, where he admits I was completely right and he was completely wrong, but at least the tone has changed. After a good laugh our hearts a little softer. Things go better.

We all know that you don’t have to be funny to have a sense of humor, although I think the two usually go together, if you listen closely enough. All my friends have a sense of humor, they just do. All of them make me laugh, but I’m sure not all of them think they are funny, which of course makes me love them even more.

My son has been making me laugh since he was born. Kids are a hoot, after all. The malapropisms, goofy outfits and knock knock jokes. Hilarious! But now the laughs are different. They reveal more of how he sees life, and more and more often he makes me laugh at the exact moment that I need to lighten up. If we’re locked in one of those lose/lose battles fueled by menopause and puberty and he makes me laugh, I’m almost always incredibly grateful to him. It’s usually just what I need to get my head screwed on, if it’s come,  just ever so slightly, off.

I was at a funeral a while ago, where the adult child of the woman who had died said, with tears in his eyes and so much love, “When we were growing up, we all knew that if you could make Mom laugh, you could get away with almost anything. If you were in trouble, your best bet was to crack her up, which was easy to do.” Not a bad legacy, in my opinion. I’d be happy with that.

I hope I’m the kind of person who laughs easily, even when it’s at myself. I can’t imagine surviving motherhood (or childhood) any other way. So, just for today, I’m forgetting the math homework that hasn’t been finished, the dirty socks stuck in the couch, the twelve year old attitude, and remembering this: that, in addition to being a generally good egg, he can see the humor in life. He can see absurdity and irony and, apparently, he can see my mustache.

That’s ok, I’ll get him back. I’m his mom, I’ve got the baby pictures 🙂

 

 

 

 

 What My Best Friend Taught Me, Forty Years In

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As William Wordsworth once said, “To begin, begin.”

I have a long scar across the palm of my left hand. The story is that, when I was a baby, I fell on my glass bottle running after my mother, as she was walking out the door. I had good reason to be anxious. When either one of my parents left, it was never certain that they would come back. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. As I got older, sometimes they answered when I called, sometimes the number had been changed. My friend JoDee was the first person who’s presence I had the luxury of taking for granted; I never had to run after her because she never left.

We met in 4th grade, but it wasn’t until a few years later, when we lost our balance, like all middle schoolers do, that we were pulled into each other’s orbit. We both faked our laps in P.E., loved meatloaf day in the cafeteria, WMAK radio, and Queen. Lying on the grass, making clover chains in the heat of our adolescence, we shared stories about our lives (her father, strange and occasionally missing, and me, left on my own at thirteen) until, over time, the stories piled up, undisturbed, and our friendship took root.

By eighth grade, I had a botched home perm and a revolving door of temporary care givers. Like those random pieces of junk that turn up when you’re packing for a move, I belonged somewhere, but no one could quite figure out where, or with whom.

They had places to be, so they left.

I wish I could say I weathered this all with grace, but the truth is that I was beyond angry. I was a mean little eye-roller, and not up for loving anyone. Basically, I was a real pain in the ass.

For a while, I loved the empty apartment, where I could sing show tunes as loud as I wanted. But eventually, though I never would have admitted it, I got lonely. JoDee and I cracked each other up, and her house had an open door policy, so that’s where I found myself. Literally.

JoDee’s mother, Dee, took me in. She was a kindergarten teacher raising three kids, but  didn’t mind that I walked through their front door without knocking and went straight to the fridge for onion dip and Tab. She didn’t mind when I called her Mom, and best of all, she usually answered. I wonder how that must have felt to JoDee, to have the finite resource of her single mother’s attention stretched to nourish a kid as hungry as I was.

I didn’t think about that. Instead, I made myself comfortable on one side of JoDee’s queen size bed and plunked my toothbrush down by the small bathroom sink.

For years I gave JoDee’s mom all the credit for this arrangement and how it changed my life, but even though I still am deeply grateful to Dee, now that I have kids almost the age that JoDee and I were then, I realize I need to share that gratitude with my friend, too.

In a pattern that would repeat for decades, JoDee made room for me when I needed it.

How long did I live with her in high school, what was it, weeks? Months? I can’t remember. It seems like a lot of my Freshman and Sophomore year was spent at her house, piled together on the La-Z Boy watching MTV, or lying on her bed staring at Sting plastered to the walls of her room.

It wasn’t a perfect world. We got up to a lot of teenage shenanigans (sorry, gotta leave that part out in case her kids read this), but at JoDee’s house I didn’t have to jump when an adult entered the room, and I relaxed into not being afraid.
This was great for me, but again, I wonder how it was for her. She was the first one I’d call when a boyfriend dumped me, or when I needed a roommate, a car, an alibi, a pep talk, a date, a meal. She saw every terrible play I was in and stayed awake during most of them. I’m exhausted just thinking about it all.

JoDee thinks of herself as a fixer in remission. She’s come a long way and works very hard now on not taking on people’s problems and not feeling like she has to rescue every stray person who lands on her doorstep. I hear her struggle with that, and cheer her on when she manages to let people handle their own shit, but the truth is, if she had been a little less of a fixer, I most certainly would have stayed broken.

I would love it if she had a list this long of the ways I helped her through the first half of her life. I could say that I plan to help her just as much during the next half but, thankfully, neither of us need that kind of help anymore. She is the most grounded, big-hearted person I know. She has a wonderful husband and kids, a job she’s good at and a community of friends who know, just as I do, how special she is.  She’s all good.

I have to accept that our friendship wasn’t always even-steven, and guess what? No one is keeping score. When I see the memes and read the popular advice that you should “only surround yourself with positive people!”, I thank my lucky stars that JoDee didn’t do that, back in the day.

One of the great things about reaching middle-age is that I can see trouble coming a mile away, and I make a sharp turn to avoid it. When I see someone whose life is full of a suspicious amount of drama, I make myself scarce. (Oh the irony.) A friend told me recently that she admires the fact that I “do not suffer fools.” I think she’s probably right, and even though I’m glad that I’m not surrounded by people who drain me, or come attached to their own personal dark cloud, I wonder if I’ve missed some lovely friendships just for sheer lack of patience.

JoDee, I’m grateful that you suffered at least one fool, and that was me. I may not be able to change my tendency toward self-preservation at all costs, but, just like I did years ago when I crashed your family, I can experiment with not being afraid. I can try to have just a little more courage and make a little more room for foolishness. Who knows what could happen?

So while you may not have been able to teach me how to drive a stick shift, or talk me out of bringing that guy back from Paris, see?

I’m still learning from you.

(don’t) Burn This

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I’m stuck on this thing I’ve been writing.

That’s not an excuse, it’s just the way it is. It’s a piece of fiction, drawn heavily from my own experience, and I’ve been chipping away at it for so long that I’m embarrassed to say.

Ok, fifteen years. Fifteen years, you guys!

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long. I had a few kids, moved a few times, wrote other things, painted a little, mostly to avoid writing. Mixed in there was work and a few deaths and…well, I have my reasons. But lately I’ve been back at work on it, only, after so long, it barely makes sense to me anymore. Although I’m attached to the characters, and I like some of the story, I don’t know what it’s going to be yet, and that’s driving me nuts. A mentor of mine keeps saying not to worry about that, but I can’t help it.

OK, I’ll only admit this here: I want a guarantee that it will be at least a little good. No one gets that guarantee, of course, and that’s what has made me leave it in a drawer for long stretches of time, sometimes years. After reading that crazy tidying-up book, I went on a binging binge. I found the files on my computer labelled STORY, and dragged them into the trash. I took the box of notes, handwritten pages and chapters I’d printed out, and dumped them in the compost. Then I pulled them out. Finally, I left them, smeared with coffee grounds, on the floor under my desk and waited for the nerve to cut the cord (and my losses) and move on.

Then this happened:

My friend Wendy asked if I could come over and help make some decorations for a big event at our UU church. I said sure, and was looking forward to spending an afternoon crafting it up, cutting and stringing and doing whatever else she told me to do. A few other women would be there, and the three of them would most certainly be on to something amazing, I thought. These three together remind me of those witches from Sleeping Beauty, only more badass, with power tools and oil paint. They are artists. Magicians, in a way, or at least that’s how I think of them. They just seem to know how to make the ordinary beautiful. I was happy to be their lowly helper for the afternoon, in whatever they were cooking up.

I was a little surprised when I got there and in her driveway was, to use an expression that I really hate but sometimes fits the bill— a hot mess. There were huge pieces of paper, recycled something or other, splashed with opaque watercolors and smeared, preschool style, with some glitter thrown in there. My friends were circling their work with brows furrowed, swooshing brushes over it in wide arcs. Wendy got an idea and came back from the depths of her garage with a big box of still more paper—patterns, mismatched, some awesome and retro, some downright hideous. The other two brightened.

“Should we splash those too?”

“Yes. Uniformity!” They began the same process with the paint, the splattering and laughing. When the wind began to blow them away, Wendy insisted we could just chase them down when we were all done, but then ran away and came back with an armful of gigantic homemade hula hoops, to weigh the papers down. (Duh.)

“Who set their paint bottle down here?” Jill asked. It’s true, someone had left  dark purple ring on the paper. Uh-oh, I thought, that can’t be good.

“Oh, that was me,” Dena answered, sweeping her brush over a puddle of fuchsia.

Jill smiled wide. “I like it!”

When the wind died down, we stopped and hula hooped for a spell. You know, like you do. We worked up a good sweat.

After the paper dried, we went inside and tried to un-purple our hands, but it was no use. A few ginger snaps later, we sat at the kitchen table and we cut. We folded. We talked about politics and sex and movies. Looking around, I saw our mess evolving into something, not exactly great, but not so bad, either. And then, gradually, into something pretty, with hints of fucking brilliance! How did it happen?

“If I had been doing this by myself, I would have given up a long time ago,” I said, folding and snipping the painted paper, careful to sweep scraps into a bag by my feet. “I would have burned it in the driveway, when it was so ugly.”

“No, that’s when you have to keep going,” Jill said, looking over her glasses at me. The other two laughed a little (laughter might be their secret ingredient), and kept snipping.

“I want to burn everything I make at least once in the process,” Wendy added.

“Really??” This, I couldn’t believe. Even though I’d only seen her finished products, the drawings, decorated cakes, jewelry, clothes, rugs, gardens, and meals, art just seemed to grow around Wendy like weeds, uncultivated and effortless.

Dena pointed her rusty scissors in my direction. “It doesn’t matter what you’re working on, at some point you’ll think it’s shit. But you keep layering. Or taking away. Or whatever. Eventually it takes shape.”

They nodded, knowing just what she meant, and went on to talk about something else.

Over the course of a few hours, that pile of trash in the driveway became something more. Something beautiful and useful. A gift. And those women, who I had decided belonged to a coven of the gifted and talented, revealed themselves to be, also, much more: They were hard working makers, who had the same doubts as me, but trusted the process more.

I got the message.

On my way out, that afternoon, Wendy called to me, “Take a hula hoop with you!” I did, of course. But she gave me else. She gave me a blessing, without even knowing it, and it was this: You’ll want to burn it, we all do. Don’t. Take a breath and a hula-hoop break. Get messy, use your mistakes, and above all, keep on going.

Happy MLK Day

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It’s that time of year, y’all! Time to celebrate the late, very great, Martin Luther King Jr.  I love Martin Luther King Day because it’s one day that people in our country remember a leader who stood for our very highest values. Unlike the outdated and, in my opinion, pretty shameful Columbus Day, on Martin Luther King Day we celebrate what’s possible through peaceful means, commitment and love. I am inspired when I revisit MLK’s many accomplishments as a community organizer and leader. I hear something new every time I read  his words, or watch his historic speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s a grand holiday, all around.

This past week, my kids and I finished the book Jump Into the Sky, by Shelly Pearsall, for a middle grade book club we are in. It’s a fabulous story set in the US during WWII and, even if you don’t have kids of this age, I highly recommend it. At one point in the book the main character, a thirteen year old African American boy named Levi, while shelling peanuts, describes how sometimes he would like to crack his skin open like a shell and take it off, changing it for another color. My son, almost the same age as Levi, stopped reading and said he didn’t believe a kid his age would think like that. He didn’t think it would occur to a kid to wish for such a thing, changing his skin.

If you didn’t know already, we’re white. When I mentioned to T that maybe he hasn’t felt the way Levi feels in the book, because he happens to have been born with white skin in a country that has a history of white privilege, I saw the wheels in his mind turning. As he began to see his own American experience in relation to that of a character he had come to care about, it was like watching a flower open.

It’s possible that the only way he’s ever going to have an inkling of what racial prejudice feels like is through his imagination, since I’m not sure you can reach compassion and understanding any other way. You travel, read books, watch plays, movies, play pretend, and, most importantly, meet people different from yourself. Listening to their stories, you are able to see  through someone else’s eyes. You trade your skin for another, if only for a moment.

I was born in Tennessee in 1965. Desegregation was still an open wound for some and race wasn’t talked about in my elementary school. Not much time for it, what with all the Bible stories the teachers would read to us. Later, I attended a private school, where we frolicked around in a liberal pool of denial. “No racism here, people!” Meanwhile,  I went to a girls’ camp for several summers during the 70’s, where we were required to stand and sing Dixie every night after dinner. I never knew the history, or what that song represented, so I sang along, clapping and stomping at the end, with all the other white Christian girls. Finally, one summer, no one stood after dessert to sing the song. Just like that, it never happened. And, because we were “young ladies” no one mentioned it. Just like no one talked about why the words to “The Watermelon Song” changed, or Eeny Meeny Miny Mo. The important thing is that those changes happened, of course. Slowly (too slowly) the south moved forward. Inch. By. Inch. But what a missed opportunity to look at where we were coming from, and where we wanted to go.

So maybe that’s why I want to read these stories and listen to these speeches over and over. I want to feel it over and over, and talk about it over and over. I want to imagine what it would be like to have another shade of skin in the army in WWII,

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at the lunch counters during the 50’s,

ANTI INTEGRATION

 

and on the school buses in the 60’s,

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and on the streets of our cities today.ac6qxuw3ogsc6chngc5o

I’m forever grateful for the photographers, journalists, authors, actors, artists and storytellers who, through their work, offer us communion. And, of course, today and every day, deep gratitude to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

 

Raising a glass, raising kids and raising a question…

glasses-919071__180I drank more than usual during the months of November and December.There was Thanksgiving, Christmas, a few parties, and my birthday thrown in there. Good friends wanted to get together, laugh, trade stories, and this always seemed to included a drink or two.

To be clear, I’m not talking about binging, beer pong (what is that, anyway?), slurred words or hungover mornings. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not, but I’m kind of a pro at drinking. I know how much is enough and I always stop there. I learned this through years of diligent study during my 20’s. Thank god I lived through that decade without Instagram or Facebook, although I’m sure there are more than a few incriminating polaroids floating around junk drawers on the east coast. Anyway, I learned my lessons and now I’m a very responsible social drinker, IMHO.

Which would be fine, except that eventually kids came into the picture, staring at me with their giant eyeballs that say “teach me how to live,” and made me take a good hard look at one of my life’s simple pleasures.

Having grown up the child of an alcoholic, I am aware of how a parent’s heavy drinking can erode a kid’s sense of reality. You feel scared but you’re not sure why. Other adults say they love you and yet no one protects you. You have to be the parent of your parent— wtf? Or, you pretend everything is normal, only, since you have no idea what normal is, you get it from The Partridge Family and Love American Style. Except for the go-go boots and tambourine playing, I wouldn’t recommend it as a blueprint for happiness.

So when I had kids, I was going to do different. (Can I hear an amen!?) And I have succeeded in many ways, including the fact that, unlike my mother, I am not an alcoholic. I’m not even what I would consider a heavy drinker, but I am a drinker*.

Which brings me back to the kids. Those little people who, all too soon, will be offered a drink (or several) at a party and will or won’t say yes. They will or won’t have the genetic predisposition to alcoholism that seems to run in my family. They will or won’t down a few and get behind the wheel of a car. They will or won’t make the kind of stupid choices that are scattered, like mines, through the trippy land of adolescence. I dodged a hundred of them as a teen and young adult, so I know they are there, but I can’t for the life of me (or my kids) say where.

Maybe, instead of looking down the road for trouble, I should take a peek at my own cozy little life.

At Christmas, we had some people over to our house. There were kids and adults, a good mix. It was a fun night. Over the course of several hours I had some wine, not too much, but more than I would have if I was out at dinner or a bar, since I didn’t have to go anywhere. Late in the evening a few friends left with their kids, to drive home. I had heard a conversation between a couple, in which they confirmed who was driving, and vaguely noticed that the designated driver stopped drinking quite a while before they left. Looking back, I really do believe that everyone holding car keys was sober, but at the time it didn’t occur to me to ask.

It didn’t even occur to me to ask.

I don’t remember the last time I asked a friend if they were ok to drive. It just never comes up. Maybe, with our partying days in the distant past, a big night out now consisting of dinner, a couple of drinks and home by nine-thirty, we assume we’ve  crossed some imaginary finish line and can avoid those awkward conversations. Now it’s civilized, fun, and we’re grown-ups, for god’s sake. In other word, we got this.

Which is exactly what happened that night at my house. But it turns out that there was one person there, a twelve year old kid I love and have known since he entered the world, who, I learned only later, wasn’t so cool with it. He wondered about riding in a car with adults who he knew had had a drink, but hadn’t said anything at the time.

It took that, my friends, to get me thinking.

I remembered how often I felt afraid, riding home from a party with my mother, after she’d been drinking all evening. I remember grown-ups who professed to love me, bundling me up with a kiss and instructions to “keep her talking,” as she weaved her way down the driveway.

That night at our house, I didn’t see anyone drinking like that. But that doesn’t mean my young guest’s worries  weren’t valid. Who knows if the person driving him home  was in some small way impaired? Not me, I was eating leftover chicken wings in the kitchen, by the time they said goodnight. And even though I know it’s not unusual for kids of that age to be pretty judgy about things like drinking and smoking, I hate that it happened on what should have been my watch.

Even though this experience was a wake-up call regarding my responsibility as a host and, most importantly, a friend, I’ve thought before about how alcohol always seems to be present anytime the adults are socializing. Dinner party? Definitely. Friends over to hang out? Yep. Out for a meal? Sure. Drinking is everywhere the fun is, and I wonder about this message. I asked my friend and reality-checker JoDee what she thought:

“Do we always have to drink at every gathering?”

“Yes.” she laughs.

“Even when the kids are around?”

“Especially when the kids are around!” (She’s kidding, you guys.)

“I mean, are we saying that anytime adults are together and having a good time, alcohol has to be there?”

“I think we are. But I don’t really want to hang out at a party without having a glass of wine.”

“I know, but why is that?”

“I don’t know. It’s boring.”

Would we ever want our children to hear us have this conversation? Never. Is it the truth? Well, kinda, a little bit. Yeah. So the question is, do we reign it in for the sake of The Big Eyed Ones, or do we make like our neighbors across the pond and live la dolce vita?

My friend Sophie Venable, who is full of sage advice and, by the way, no stranger to a cocktail, says she makes an effort to only drink around her young teenage daughters if it’s a special occasion. So, for example, she wouldn’t just have a beer with dinner on a Tuesday. But, if you really enjoy a good glass of wine with dinner, and you’re of legal age, what’s the big deal? I always thought that showing my kids that one can drink responsibly and demystifying the whole thing was a positive approach.

Once again, I’m stumped. What would Shirley Jones do? I wonder…

Until further notice, I’ve decided to just be more mindful of when I crack open the Malbec. I’ll learn to use Uber, or carpool more, and I’ll tell my kids why.  If you come over to hang out at my house and have a few drinks (and I hope you do!) I might have one, two, none. Either way, I bet we’ll have a great time. I will meet you for a beer, or a coffee, or a hike, because our friendship is what I’m here for, and that, dear one, is never boring.

 

* I can’t help myself. I have to tell you that I’m a little worried that writing a blog post about drinking will make some people worried. My in-laws, my sister. What happens if I apply for a job as a school bus driver? Hey, it could happen. You’re all just going to have to take my word for it that I like to write about things I’m trying to figure out. That’s why I’m writing about drinking and how I sometimes wonder what my kids learn about it by watching me. I’ve talked about this stuff with my mom friends, so I know I’m not the only one. All I’m saying is, don’t look at me funny when I order a margarita-rocks-no salt, ok? Good. Glad we cleared that up:)

 

 

 

Happy New Year! Starting out the year right, I want to thank you for taking the time to check in here on my very humble blog, and especially if you’ve subscribed and allowed me to join the cascade of reading material that fills your inbox. Seriously, thank you.

In the past, I’ve found there to be a a problem with personal blogs, and that was that every time I found one I liked, I would read it for a while, becoming more involved in the author’s daily life, the family problems, goals, setbacks, and I’d end up getting a little annoyed. Familiarity would eventually breed contempt, but mainly because it felt so one-sided. I knew so much about her (the blogs I read are almost always written by women. I don’t know why), but she knew absolutely nothing about me. And pretty soon I’d stop reading.

So, when I decided to try writing a blog, I knew I wanted to make sure that my readers didn’t feel this way. I wanted to avoid the trap of just unloading my everyday life on you, first of all because you already have a life, why would you want mine, and second, because I want you to keep reading.

To state the obvious, there is a whole lot I don’t know about blogging. For some reason I thought I could learn by doing, which I still believe is the best and only way to become a better writer, but the blog thing is different. You’re publishing yourself. You’re saying, “Here. I made this. I worked on it and I hope you like it.” It’s scary, you guys!

When I first started, several friends told me how much they admired my courage. I didn’t exactly get it, but now I do. It’s not the risk of writing about my childhood or high school crushes, it’s the risk of saying that this is the best I have to offer. I write and then rewrite. I think about it and, a day or two later, look it over again. I don’t just press “publish.” My finger hovers there a minute while I think about the grammar and spelling errors, the rambling lack of structure, the cliches and the corny endings. Don’t get me started on the formatting bugs and glitchy links, it’s all there. It feels like the dream where you are grocery shopping naked (what, you don’t have that one?). imagesEveryone will now see my cellulite, cesarian scar and the fact that I never went to college.

Yeah, that last one’s a bitch.

Anyhoo… Back to 2016 and a new way of doing things! In this version, I’m going to give myself permission to find out what this blog wants to be. I’m never going to find out by only writing posts that I think will appeal to a lot of people. I hope that, if you’ve read this far, then maybe you’re a little interested in the creative process and will want to read more. I will write more consistently, which means that, even though I will do my best, I will not fret over each post. I probably won’t rewrite. I’m shipping, as Seth Godin says, and I’m really excited about finding out what that’s like. I hope I’ll surprise myself. I also hope I’ll surprise you.

So, thanks again. And here’s to a year of learning as we go, scars and all.