Eat Your Heart Out

With strength that could pull a Monster Truck out of a sand dune, I readied to peel apart the inner pouch of the cereal box. Apparently bound by some futuristic adhesive resistant to my iron grip, I pulled at the fused seams harder. Bearing down, grunting, squatting, I wrestled the bag. I gnawed with my teeth, trying to penetrate the weakest area of the bag that I had only been able to stretch.  

With a final act of Herculean valor, I hoisted my foot up on the counter to brace myself for what was sure to be the greatest feat of any breakfast making mother ever. 

With my elbows pointed to the sky, my knuckles turned white under the stress of the mighty choke-hold I had on the bag.

I roared with determination until a herald of angels erupted into a resounding rendition of Joyful, Joyful! as I finally ripped open the bag. In half.

In an act of celebration (or violence, I’m not sure which) I was sucked into a breakfast matrix and showered by cereal confetti as it was explosively ejected from the box. 

Thousands, millions of store-brand Whole Grain Oats littered my hair, the counter, and overflowed the creases of my bathrobe.  Cereal crunched under my feet as I crossed the room to collect the dustpan and broom.

After cussing out Jesus and mankind, I tried to shake off the hundreds of statically charged O’s clinging to my wool socks. Cereal continued to rain down from the sky for forty days and forty nights.  When the assault finally stopped, I swept the length of my whole arm across the countertop, knocking all the cereal to the floor.  Upon hearing the tick of cereal hitting the floor, the dog dutifully came running to help clean up. Generic Cheerio’s stuck to his wet nose as he sucked up my failure.  I picked wayward O’s from behind the toaster, the dish soap, the potted plant by the window, the couch, the neighbor’s driveway.  After I shooed away all the looters and restored order to the kitchen, I reached for my coffee, which of course had Cheerio’s floating in it.  I felt defeated and weak.

A similar chaotic outburst erupted last Friday in my Writer’s Circle. Instead of a shower of Whole Grain Oats, there was an explosion of the emotional variety as I sat before a panel of my writing peers and ripped my own creative self in half.  Through the journey of writing my book, I feel like I am met around every corner with impossibility. Doubt. Frustration. Procrastination. I launched into a shameless testimony about failing, fear, the haunting of the past. I ruminated at length about how hard it is to keep working on my book. I emoted about how hard it is to face my fears and visit my past.  How hard it is to open up and pour it all out.  I felt defeated and weak.

“Maybe I just need to quit? Maybe this is just too much for me. Maybe I’m not as strong as I thought I was.” I admitted.

 My writing coach’s face turned ghostly white, and I could tell that she was thinking about launching herself through the second story library window.  But she didn’t jump. She and the other writers listened to me quietly until I ran out of pitiful steam.

“I can’t do it.” Just short of unstoppable crying, I summarized my plight with an act of surrender. I wanted to quit.

“No, no, no! You can do this, look how far you’ve come. It’s hard, it is, but you can finish it.” They swept up my exposure like it was a thousand fallen Cheerios; rushing to my aid with support and encouragement so I didn’t have to get out the broom and do it myself.  Days later with a refreshed spirit, I went back to work on the book. It's incredibly hard. That hasn't changed. But, I know that I’m not going to get everything right and sometimes pieces will fall on the floor.  I may spend more time cleaning up than successfully making anything and that doesn't mean I should give up on fighting for what’s inside. It's good for me. It might even be the most important thing I do all day.   

Today, I easily opened a new box of cereal, poured a hearty bowl, and finished the whole thing.

Best Friends Forever! Kind Of.

It's a strange flux I find myself in right now. I can feel the stage being set for some sort of change or shift in the dynamic of my friendships. Reunions, new friendships, friendships headed for time-outs. My kids seem to be in the same state of flux:  battling with greed, jealousy, loneliness, and an over-saturation of texts, tweets and Facetime. To name a few. Who's been added? Friended? Favorited? Liked, winked, LOL'd at? Or worse, Deleted.

 Oh Social Media, what a tangled world-wide-web you weave. 

Two of my favorite friends have moved away in as many months. Life goes on. Marriages, do-overs, jobs. Sometimes to live the dream you gotta chase the dream. I get it. But still. I have a deficit of cool friends anymore, and I can't afford for them to just be moving away; especially at the same time. I find that as I get older, my friendships become more important to me. They mean more, they are deeper. I find that they are moving away from me. 

 "Is there something on your mind you want to talk about?" I asked my son as I tucked his covers snugly around him at bedtime.

 "Yeah..." He closed his eyes softly, and although I'm sure it wasn't meant for me to see, a tiny tear popped out. 

"What's wrong little sweet?"

"Well, me and Will are fighting." A second tear chased the first and I wiped them both away with my thumb and the corner of the sheet. 

"That's sad, what are you fighting about?"

 He emoted at length about the injustice of it all. The unfairness, the disregard, the neglect of common courtesy. 

"It's football, it's playing fair. It's talking to other friends or kids who don't like me, it's being ignored like I'm not even there. It's everything." 

Ah, yes. The everything. 

I coached him with flawless advice about how to approach Will, how to confront him with kindness and an open mind and heart. I advised him on being a good friend, even when its hard and when it hurts. 

"Give Will the opportunity to do better. Talk to him. A good friend will give you a chance to correct and adjust. Let him know what the perception of him is when he cheats. If he responds with poor choices and decisions and isn't a respectable person, we will go from there. Ok?"

He nodded, jostling another tear out of its home. There was no mucous, and the corner of the sheet wasn't too damp so I figured I had done an acceptable job of neutralizing the situation. At least for the next 8 hours of night-night. 

Today I made contact with a friend I've been out of touch with for about twenty years. I hate to admit that I am old enough to have a friend from twenty years ago--but it is what it is.  She sounded the same, but everything has changed. Marriages, divorces, kids, moves. Wins, losses. So much has happened over those twenty years, yet in the span of a 45 minute phone call, it was as if nothing had changed. Time stood still for us. A flood of memories came back to me the rest of the day. Smiles crept across my face, sighs. Giggles. Stories I told my husband about my journey with my friend all ended in, "I guess you had to be there."

 James Taylor said it best when he sang, "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time..." Amen. My friends have moved unrealistic distances away to meet for coffee, Pho, shopping. But I enjoyed the time that our paths crossed and we walked together. My hope is that Will and Jack have one of those magical friendships that can make time stand still. I hope that by November, they won't even remember the fight they had in October.  And when they laugh and tell the stories twenty years later, they will all end with,  "Guess you had to be there."

Mother's Rap

She spread the slats apart and squinted through the narrow opening. The north facing window was hazy, opaque with sun glare, rain spots and cobwebs.
"What are you looking at?" I asked as I forged for last night's leftovers in the fridge. Without breaking her concentration, mom waved behind her, "Hand me the phone. Fast."
I pinned a piece of cold fried chicken between my teeth, tucked a two-liter bottle of Orange Drink under my arm and handed her the cordless phone.
"I can't believe you still have an answering machine. Seriously, mom." Twenty years of dust was caked into the seams of the antiquated electronic. The recorded greeting was at least that old. "Ssh!" Mom urgently blasted me to keep my voice down. I defiantly asked with my 'inside voice', "what are you doing, anyway?"
"I have to call 911."
My cold fried chicken shed some of it's congealed coat and the camouflaged crumbs dropped to the speckled vinyl floor below. I didn't have to look to know that she was still at the window. Watching. Her paranoia didn't impress me anymore.
"Why do you have to call 911?" More crumbs fell out.
"Because! There's some..." She paused to find the most dramatic, least offensive, urgent descriptive she could come up with."...there's gangster raps outside!"
My laughter heaved a bolus of fried chicken into my esophagus, launching me into a fit of gagging and choking. "What the stink is a 'gangster rap?'" Now she had my attention and I looked up. Mom was in the same crouching tiger pose at the window, motionless, spying the 'gangster raps'. She lowered her voice to a whisper, "Thugs, gang kids!" She positioned her thumb on the '9', ready to dial.
I poured flat Orange Drink into a coffee mug. "What are the gangster raps doing?" She stared harder through the tiny opening in the wooden blinds. "They are standing around that car across the street."
 "So, they aren't actually doing anything?" I confirmed her observations but she didn't answer. "Mom. It's not   911 Prevent an Emergency. Put the phone down." She continued her surveillance, waiting for the gangster raps to do something-anything-litigious.
"What's mom looking at?" Lis swiped the last piece of chicken from my paper towel plate. "She's watching some gangster raps, and waiting for the shit to go down." Mom raised her voice above a whisper, "Don't swear in my house!" Lis stood beside her and looked over mom's shoulder into the street. "Oh, I graduated with those guys. One of those kids was in Student Council I think, and that other kid was in my Honors class."
Mom stepped back and put the phone on the counter beside the sink. "I want you girls to clean up all those crumbs you dropped and throw away your trash. I mean it." She was heading upstairs when the phone rang. "Will one of you brats get that?" Mom hollered from the landing where she had resumed her neighborhood watch crusade at the upstairs window.
"Maybe we should keep the line open, mom, just in case? The machine will get it."

Cardioship

Relationships are hard. Romantic relationships, friend and family relationships. Neighbor and work relationships. They all take a toll on the heart.
Relationships can make you feel good about yourself and horrible about yourself. Love, doubt and dislike yourself. Never mind how they can make you feel about the other person in the relationship.
Oy.
Some relationships are worth the never ending investment of mental and emotional sweat. Some are better left severed and walked away from.
But no matter where they end up, all relationships have to go through the heart before they go anywhere else; making the heart a sort of filter, a sciv to let the love through and keep the crap out.
Like any machine, hearts are fallible. They aren't perfect. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they even break. And that is the part that makes us human.
That is what makes our heads kick in and make up the difference when the heart falls short.
And then it's anybody's game because that's where all the crap goes that the heart once filtered out.
That's when we draw on past experience to help us make choices. Decisions. Mistakes.
That is when we have to count on the other person's heart to do what's right and hope that their heart isn't broken too.

Mutiny on the Body

There are so many things that are much easier said than done. Perhaps the one most difficult for me to do is, "Listen to your body."
Listen. To your body.
Most days, my body whines, cries, nags and even screams at me. And I ignore it like a child having a tantrum in the Market.
Shut up, body. I don't have time for you. Your needs are embarrassing me.

I know you are hungry, you don't have to keep telling me. I know you are tired. I know you want to sit down. But we must. Keep. Going. Things to do, people to see. Problems to solve.

 Worlds to conquer.

  I worked out today. When I came home, I walked the dog a mile and a half in 96 degree heat. I took a shower, and then in a moment of mutiny, my body did something it has never done before: it hit me.
I told my body that after the shower, it was time to vacuum, do the morning dishes. Mop, scrub, fold. Write, drive. Show up. And my body knocked my ass out.
 "I give you everything you ask for. Energy. Strength. We are stopping," my body said. And I listened.
 I laid down in bed, the fan whirring overhead. The room was dark and cool, the music turned up far too loud for a nap. And yet I fell hard, hard asleep.
After thirty minutes, I woke up in a panic, certain I had missed the whole afternoon. What do you know, the day was still there, the sun was still in the sky.  All the chores were still there. All my problems, all my worries, all the demands were still there. Even the World, was still there. Nothing died, nothing came to a screeching halt. Anarchy, apocalypse, famine, locust? Nope.  No one fell apart as a result of me listening to my body.
Not even me.

Blessings on the Greener Side

On a recent Facebook status update, I went on for far too many lines complaining about what a long and tiring day I had ahead of myself. Errands, kids,working out, driving, cooking, cleaning, walking the dog. Home repairs, grocery shopping and of course dinner, homework and the night shift.

I'm busy, we all get it.

These are things I do every day, but on that day it just felt like I was touching everything twice. With every click of my seat belt, every time I touched the gear shift, every time the dog jumped on me, a neighbor knocked, I felt like energy and motivation were being sucked out of me. And then it was time to pick someone up at school or turn over the laundry.

As a Homemaker, I find that I am in motion about 15 hours a day. My SUV is in motion for half of that.

It's exhausting. It's thankless.

My friend made a comment on my status implying that I was bragging about my to-do's, the Daily's that he dreams of in his single life. The hustle, the bustle. The chaos of married life. What I considered a long list of complaints, he considered bragging. The idea gave me pause.

My single friend can work late, go out late, drink, play, party. Have girl friends, have guy friends. Leave messes, leave the seat up, leave town any time. Text in the middle of the night. Come and go. No kids to baby sit, no dog to board. No bottomless baskets of laundry. Money can be spent on anything the single person desires. Not handed out as allowance, tooth fairy funds, daycare, field trips, Easter basket building, Halloween costumes. No school supplies and immunizations. No bombarding for snacks, pencils for homework (which all need sharpening of course). If he doesn't make it to the market for a while, that's ok. No one is going to be malnourished except him. A diet of peanut butter from the jar and an over ripe banana is a perfectly balanced meal in the single person's food pyramid.

It's a textbook case of "The Grass is Greener" theory.

Being married with children is a lot like enduring a difficult workout. It burns, it hurts. Sometimes, you even want to quit. It gets hard to breathe, it's uncomfortable, painful even. It's challenging, exhausting. It feels like it will never end and at times it can be a lonely place when you feel overwhelmed by the burden. But all of this could easily be said for the life of a single person, too.

It's uncomfortable. It's painful.

I've been single. I've been married. They each come with their own rewards and disappointments, like anything in life. It's hard no matter what side of the fence you are on. But it's your pasture and you were put there for a reason. As difficult as it is sometimes to exist there, once and a while it's a good idea to take off your shoes and walk around barefoot to remember how good it feels to be there. To connect with the roots and know you are growing, right where you belong.

I read my Facebook post again. Was I whining or celebrating? Giving up, or taking it all in? Would I trade my day for someone else's shade of green? Would my friend?

It's not easy. It's not like anyone else's.

It's perfect.

Say Again?

I sincerely wish I could learn to shut up.

But, since I have tried without success for years to shut up, I sincerely believe that I should have been wired with a DELETE, BACKSPACE or REWIND key. At the very least, I should wear a roll of duct tape on my wrist so I can intercept my own mouth from spewing whatever the hell it feels like.

In lieu of having actual hardware at my disposal to over ride my impulses, I must learn to accept what God gave me. Or didn't give me, in this case, self control.

I know there is a timeless adage used the world over; which is fitting for my projectile word vomit. It was something about being 'slow to think and slower to act,' or something like that. Think before you open your soup cooler.

In some cases, something might be worth thinking about for a long time before reacting to it. It might behoove someone like myself who is usually quick to act, to sleep on a matter and even think on it overnight. Overnight? Let's not get carried away.

In real life, I would never do that.

Because try as I may to hold back my initial emotions, I can't. I may tell my mouth that we are going to think rationally, reasonably, let cool heads prevail; but my mouth will almost always resist the effort.  It's the same reason I can't play poker or keep a birthday surprise. I just can't keep it in. I'm as transparent as Scotch tape.

It's a flaw that more often than not has gotten me in trouble, caused me a relationship or two, hurt someone's feelings, gotten me written up at work or ejected me from bars. My quick words have disappointed other people, and ruined opportunities. Letting my emotions come out in the form of words before my brain has had a chance to translate has rendered me embarrassed, regretful and vulnerable.

In my defense, I think this is largely because I instinctively trust my instinct. In 37 years, it has never failed me. My gut and I have an understanding, and my first feeling, my first instinct is usually spot on. And herein lies my conundrum...Because my instinct is not everyone else's instinct. Therefore, what I say, and even how I feel is not always right by worldly standards.

Sigh.

I am not always right. It was hard to put a period at the end of that sentence. I am not always right. Period.

So until the world becomes magically in tune with my ever-correct gut, or until I learn to think before I speak, please pass the tape.