Month: February 2014

26 Letters and a Maraca

Posted by

0

The coolness of the refrigerator hits my face while I try to find anything that will take me away from the banana chocolate chip cake on the counter. Back and forth goes my gaze like I’m watching two people in a fight. I longingly look at the cake, the mere smell of it adding cellulite to my thighs, and begrudgingly turn again to the frigid shelves of carrots. But I don’t want carrots. I want banana cake.
Oh these decisions when I’m alone in my sweats in the barely morning hours.

Ignoring overdue library movies and scattered Memory Game cards, I navigate a path to the couch and settle in with more books and notebooks than necessary. It’s the price I pay for reading based on mood. I string my cheese, my compromise between what I should eat and what I shouldn’t eat, and picture my little girl playing. I can hear her high-pitched voice, the one she uses to make her mice friends come alive. Their house sits cockeyed on our chair, tables and clothes and mice-folk splayed in the wake of her imagination. Cups and glasses adorn every free surface in this room, evidence that I haven’t taught my older children the concept of reusing.

Not sleeping is stupid, I text him. This is our language now, my dad and I. Twenty-six letters, ten numbers, and a maraca alert signal.
How did you know I didn’t sleep?
Huh? I didn’t. I was talking about me.

The gas fireplace hums near me and I think about how much he hates the smell of smoke. It unnerves him. I kid you not, that man can be in a dead sleep and notice a lit cigarette from another town.
If he were with me we’d be halfway through a pot of coffee. He’d be telling me about a book he’s reading that is changing his entire view of the modern church. I’d listen and bring up questions until jammies started toddling to my lap and a second pot was beginning to sputter.

I wonder if we’d had texting when I was younger, how the conversations would have flowed. I would have been restless in the waterbed that gulped with my every toss and turn. Beneath my rainbow heart comforter I would have avoided the window that creeped me out worse than the boys at school who scratched their…well, that’s a blog all its own.

Hi daddy. I can’t sleep. Can you? I am going to get apple juice. BRB.

Hi Booger. (Let the verbal abuse begin.) Sorry about that. Why not?

Its just that suzy and cindy my two friends well one is my friend and the other one is to but I’m not supose to tell the other one. They are always switching who there mad at. Like yesterday suzy was mad at cindy and I wasnt suppose to tell cindy and then cindy said she was my freind but to not tell suzy.

Tell me, Daddy. This is what I would have been speaking between the misspelled words and horrible grammar. Tell me I matter, and that these girls would be weirdos to not be my friend. Tell me my world will be okay, that I’ll survive pimples and coming adolescence and insecurities. Tell me in these lonely hours I’m not invisible. Tell me my value.

I’m sorry sweetie. I wish I was there to give you a hug. You are smart. You will work it out. I LOVE you so much.

Our real texts are grown-up, with grown-up problems and exhaustion from raising children and check-in’s about anniversaries of his dad and my grandpa passing away. They are middle of the night, early morning, and everything between.

Who knows what the dialogue would have been back then, I only need to know what it is now.

“Eve possesses a bottomless well of longing. Jesus alone is the never-ending fount, which can slake her thirst.” – John and Staci Eldredge, Captivating

Organic Tirades

Posted by

0

“Please tell me this won’t last forever,” I say in desperation.

Utterly weary of the last week, I laid my head in an easy rest while Chase drove us to dinner. Not that I would be able to eat. I had hardly gotten a bowl of cereal down for all the adrenaline raging through me like an angry river. I’d spent days avoiding Facebook, cramping my hand with journal entries and searching the book of Job for any semblance of an answer to my plea.

I’d taken medication for over three years, been through cognitive behavioral therapy (a lot of mumbo jumbo to say that I changed my thinking) and was feeling free. Plus, I was up on the big organic and vitamin supplement scene so I thought, pshh, totally got this under control.

Chase, didn’t really see the need in spending double the money on produce, God bless him. I, in contrast, thought I might die if our apples weren’t pesticide-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, gluten-free, tree-free, and apple-free (?).

“But we’ll surely get cancer and suffer a slow, painful, and otherwise ugly death if we don’t rid our pantry of junk.”
“An apple, is an apple.”
“No it’s not. It’s an apple, and MORE. It’s poison.”
“You’re going to end up dying from the stress of worrying about it before I die of the so-called chemicals.”

And then I found myself six months in whispering, I can’t do this. That’s all it took for my equilibrium to kick off balance, my belt to need tightening, my anti-anxiety pills to become my avenue for getting out of bed in the morning.

“Exercise,” my doctor said. Gladly. With my heal on your nose. How, when I feel like Snow White in that scary forest every second I’m awake? Sure, I’ll do a little jog really quickly.

Do I think organic eating is wrong? No.
Do I think certain diets like salt-free, sugar-free, or gluten-free don’t make a marked difference for some people? Not at all. Sometimes a simple change in what we consume can reverse a debilitating ailment.

It’s the extremism that bothers me. It’s the fear, and thinking I could control the outcome.
Fear of illness.
Fear of pain.
Fear of suffering.
Fear of death.

The medicine finally did it’s thing and now you’d be lucky to pry a Dr. Pepper from my clenched fists. Two years later I’m more me, and less psychotic about toxic celery. 

I’m going to get sick from time to time. Maybe even terminally someday.
I will have pain, the physical and the heart-rendering variety.
I will likely suffer in some way.
And well, we know how the story goes.

So why not have a double cheeseburger and some brownies along the way?

 

Excuse Me

Posted by

0

It was dusk, I didn’t need a jacket yet, and I was splurging on a little coffee when I saw him.

White graced his chin showing the age of wisdom. He could have had grandchildren, or no children. Perhaps he was a retired astronaut or a
war veteran or both.

But with his head leaning back against a corner he let his mouth drop open, wide and unashamed. Completely asleep.

He shouldn’t have gone for decaf.

Buying Groceries is not on the Adventure List

Posted by

0

My back is in a slump except for the few times I remember to sit up. There’s a trash pile, a file pile, a paid pile, and a tax pile hovering around my computer.

This takes me to days in my mom’s office when I’d walk in like I owned the place. It smelled of her Avon perfume and paper. I’d sit down across from her in roller blades I’d worn while riding my bike the few blocks and one busy street to the campus where she worked, lucky to be alive after such nonsense. M&M’s would rattle in my grubby hands and I’d watch her as she counted money, typed with the click of her nails, and sifted through stacks of documents. She always had a jar of fingertip moistener, what basically resembled fat chapstick. Straighten, sort, sort, dip. Sort, sort, sort, dip. I never had that kind of precision. I was more of a pull it out in a crumpled mess kind of kid.

Our basement was cold, and dark, and all that basements should be. Scary. But with the light on it was manageable. So I’d go down there to recreate that scene. Mom would save outdated and unusable checks for me, let me borrow some stationary she’d cut with an industrialized slicer that gave me nightmares about chopping off my hands. I’d set up our card table and scoot my knees under it with all my supplies: a calculator, a pen, my official business voice, and a professional aura. I would suggest these kinds of games to my cousin. “Let’s play store.” Or, “Let’s play house.” He was a red-headed farm boy who just wanted to use his BB gun on the chickens (which nearly got us both a whippin’ once) and watch the cans turn black in the trash fire near the edge of the woods. He didn’t really have time for my petty imagination. So I learned to sword fight, climb trees, and shoot at rats, and never understood why pretending to buy groceries wasn’t on our adventure list.  

Today I sit paying bills near those piles, uneven and leaving hardly a space for breakfast bowls on my table. I deduct, calculate, and proudly stamp my envelopes with leftover poinsettia postage. It’s real now, this office work. The money actually comes out of the account, the checks must be in numerical order or I get in big trouble with my register, and papers are filed for sanity’s sake. Parts of this I enjoy: great penmanship on those lines and in those boxes, organizing everything into folders, the pen resting in my hand as I search for something. But as I know myself better, clerical work has never been a fit.

So thanks, Cousin, for showing me a few things. I needed a real adventure.  

 

The Other Side of Valentine’s

Posted by

0

Holidays are as real and authentic as celebrity. They aren’t.

Jerry and Elaine are spending a quiet evening on the couch. We know in this season two episode that they are friends who used to be lovers. But when a steamy channel on the television makes Elaine pull the remote away from Jerry they start to entertain how to mesh these two worlds together. They come up with a list of rules so the tricky lines won’t cross, but neither of them can foresee “the birthday” that will test the limits of these new boundaries.

“I’m in a very delicate position,” Jerry tells George. “Whatever I give her, she’s going to be bringing in experts from all over the country to interpret the meaning behind it.”

Oh, the expectation.
Later as Elaine reaches for the floral paper and the big red bow that I know Jerry did not create, things take a turn.

“Just the fact that you remembered me is everything,” Elaine says. (Uh, huh)
“Of course I remembered. You reminded me every day for two months.”

Tissue paper is tossed, she holds her breath in anticipation. And then her teeth bare like an angry wolf.

“Cash? You got me cash?” The “sh” lingers like a hiss. “What are you, my uncle?”

There’s a question I’ve been wrestling to answer. What do I do when my expectations fail? Stop wanting good things? Become the ultimate cynic?

How do you survive this day when “we need to talk” leaves a gaping hole in your Friday night and your heart?
When you have to turn your back to the empty pillow on the other side of the bed because you can’t endure that hollow space.
When you feel like every frog prince is actually just a frog and you are weary of kissing warts.
When infidelity makes you want to burn every piece of lingerie in the photoshopped window of the mall.

Love is not Rad 4 U conversation hearts.
Love is not crimson confetti.
Love is not chocolate with mysterious orange filling (Ooo, is this a typo?)
Love is not fickle about a lost job, no make-up, cellulite, grey hair, or no hair.
Love is not one night.

Love is pulling over to a stranded woman and a blown out tire.
Love is holding your daughter’s hair while she gets sick in a big silver bowl.
Love is asking more than “how are you” but really meaning it with the way we settle in to hear the answer.
Love is putting down the phone and looking into eyes.
Love is shoveling snow beyond our own sidewalk.
Love is squeezing the fingers of a soul that has been invited Home.
Love is nails in the hands and your name on His lips.

Expectations will likely leave me disappointed, especially if I think a bag of Butterfinger cupids will fulfill, though they come close. But I won’t stop hoping for connection and love and friendship, to see and be seen.

I just want to learn how to look beyond wads of money.

Dirt Under My Nails

Posted by

0

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C. S. Lewis

Water cascades down stone tiles, there is certificate upon certificate in frames on the walls, and a background of piano keys that do nothing to stir my soul. I’m waiting on a leather sofa across from a wooden screen. It looks Asian, but I’m as unsure of this as I am of the knee-high boots and yoga pants I’m wearing. The assistant is doing a checklist of all my supplements, poking her pinky around an iPad. I’m immediately defensive because I know how I’ve been slacking.
“Well, I take fish oil every other day.” She reminds me about the benefit of a daily intake.
Yes, I know. Should I take this while my oldest snarls her acidic tongue at her brother or when my youngest begins to scream like someone has pierced her with an arrow? Just wondering, because really, I’m grateful to be out of bed.

Some days I can’t bear. Period. There is no fill in the blank because it’s all of it, that is overwhelming me. The fake waterfalls, the operator music. This forced ambiance and I, we’re not clicking. I want the casket because everyone standing at my gravesite makes me feel heavy. Impenetrable? Yes, please. I think I won’t survive unless I lock up my heart.

I’m angry? Oh. I’m angry. Why?

My pen keeps going on the page, words are coming like crumbs dropped along a path so I find my way. I follow them.

Longing. I’m longing for something. Probably connection. It’s always that. And security. A place to let down. Somewhere that is safe, and all this Fung Shoo isn’t it. Give me the smell of cattle, move my neighbors no less than two acres on all sides, let my face feel the sun through a labyrinth of branches and the grass tangle itself in my hair until my arms grow goose bumps from the shifting winds of storm fronts. Give me country, where I most often hear the voice of God.

“Do something that makes you out of breath. Run up the stairs instead of walk, dance with your kids,” my doctor tells me. “Punch the mattress.”
This, gets my attention. I’ve learned recently that out of the three types of reactions: flight, fight, or freeze, I fight. I’m a fighter. So the coffin isn’t actually going to work for me. Maybe for a quick nap, because who can’t use one of those from time to time? And after a little rest I’ll kick back the lid, dig into the dirt until my fingernails are caked, and climb to all the relationships who love me enough to do death with me, to vulnerability.

Gloom and doom, we have some business to do.