Contagious behavior

Everyday I ride a shuttle from a parking lot into my work.  Typically it's the same core group of people depending on who's late or early.  Since I sit at the front of the shuttle, it's become my habit after getting to work and trekking to the door from the drop site to swipe my badge to open the secure door and then just hold it open and let others go inside first.  Most people smile and say thanks, but there are two in particular who now, after months of this, try to take the door or encourage me to go ahead if them.  I smile and say, "it's ok, it's a good way to start the day by being nice to others!"  Occasionally one of them will GRAB the door and push me in, in a silly way, and we laugh and then I open the second door and usher them ahead of me. Ha!

Today, we got off the shuttle, the core four of us, and I am not joking here, the same two ladies RAN (in their dressy shoes and coats and carrying their pocketbooks and lunch sacs!) ahead to open the door! Funniest thing I've ever seen and I was laughing as I walked thru the door ahead of them.  But as we all went our separate ways, one sweet lady said, "it's contagious behavior, being nice to people..."

Yes, yes it is, and I intend to spread that stuff everywhere!

All the "feels"

I'm here!

It's me, waving in the dark...

I have all the hugs you need!

I am so broken tonight - just devastated, completely crushed...

Oh God, it hurts too much, too much, too much!

I'm sorry, it's not your fault baby, it's just how it is, our life, and none of it is your fault.

I will get up again in the morning, smiling, but tonight can't end quick enough!

I love you Cuz...

Those are all things I've said in the last few hours of this day - this Spring day - this endless God-forsaken day.  And they are all things I've said before, and will likely say again - but all of them? At once? On the same day? In that same order? God, please, not another day like this one, please...

Oh, well, yeah, I've said THAT before too.

It's time for a change I think...maybe time to embrace these kinds of days for what they are and what changes they bring  and what benefits they have...time to spring forward instead of springing back in fear...time to see what GOOD lies ahead in the midst of surprise and fear and sorrow.

Time to feel it - all those "feels"... And then to actually do something about it.  We DO have time for that.  We do.

Dear Momma

Tonight I miss you.  I miss you often, of course, and at certain times I miss you more than others, but tonight I am desperate for you.  

I wish that I could pick up the phone and just talk, cry, hear your voice soothing me, get your advice and encouragement, your love.  You've been gone for 20 years now, and I need you more than ever.

I don't know what I'm doing, momma.  You've done all of this before so tell me what to do now... You were gone before I ever knew I'd need you for this.  I don't know how to stop, back up, start over - I don't know how to go forward, to step out and believe that it will all be ok in the end.  I don't know how to go on... 

I imagine us sitting together, cups of creamy steamy coffee in front of us, you with a cigarette dangling from your fingers and a circle of smoke floating above you.  I see us at my kitchen table and the sun coming in thru the French doors and warming us.  (But, really, would you smoke in my house?) The dog will be in your lap, the baby will be in mine, and I will cry into his wispy hair.  You will stub out your cigarette and blow smoke off to the side (mom! Are you smoking near my baby?) as you reach out to grab my hand and hold it. I feel your dry skin, your firm grip, and I draw strength from you.  Maybe if I imagine it enough, I can pull some measure of strength from my imagination into this mess I so badly need you here for.

Be with me, but more than that, be with my son.  Whisper into your grandsons heart, be the voice in his head  that I can't be, be the lifeline he needs in my place - he won't listen to me, he won't hear me, and I'm so afraid of losing him.  Help him, momma, please... He won't let me.  I don't know how to be his momma, but you did it for two boys so surely you have the insight I need. 

I love you momma... I miss you...

For all of you, all at once...

I would slay any dragon for the sweet words you speak.  You give me courage immeasurable...

I would lay down my life to be back in your arms - to be back in your arms 10 years ago when I could have made things different... No, 15 years ago... No, 20 - that's right, it would need to take us back 20 years to make it right, but still, I would give everything I have now just to go back with this knowledge and insight...

I felt your prayers wash over me and I have to tell you the power of your good and honest prayer was a physical presence for me.  God was here, in my mouth and in my hands and in my perception and insight and emotions - He was here and it was better and I was protected.

I love you so... I see who you are and how you don't care (and yet how you ache and desire) and the mean and the kind and the hard and the soft and the tough and the weak - and oh God I love you so... You and I are bound by blood , by common experience: times when we were shaped into who we are - yet we are also separated later on by lives so drastically different which  shaped who we were into who we are NOW... But our very heartbeats thrum to the same rhythm of loss and regret and abandonment, who else could ever truly understand us but each other?

Oh how i hate hate hate you and how he love love loves you - it cuts deep, like the scars on my arms that were there before we even met - his love and my hate.  His love wins.  And it always will.  I will forever taste bitterness with you.

I ache for your strength.  I know the demons you battle and I cannot figure out how you so gracefully navigate them.  I sit closer to you, text you more often, and invite you out repeatedly just so I can borrow your strength.

I am in awe of you.  I've given my children everything with no reward and you are there on your own with the daily drama and the 40 hour work week and the evening classes and papers and exams and that smile - oh that smile!!  I want to smack your parents into the next life so they can see the tremendous beauty that is YOU!

This year, this new year... I will honor all of you.  

Listening

I putter in the kitchen, slightly unwillingly but nonetheless doing it. The sounds of laughter and voices drift in waves from the living room and I want to be back there in the middle of it, joining in, not here in the cold kitchen with the dirty dishes, dried up dips, shriveled olives, and sticky floors. It's always the mom-job though, the clearing and cleaning and puttering, and I resolutely put on some holiday music and begin scraping and combining and tossing. As I work, the sounds from the living room become sweeter than any music I could ever find on the radio though, and I turn off the old JVC and start listening. I listen to this blended family of his-n-hers-n-theirs and as always my heart is shattered into fragments of love, loss, guilt, regret, resolve, and gratitude. I don't know where this family is headed, any one of them, but I know every decision and choice I make will impact each of these precious souls. And some days I don't want to make any choice or decision at all for fear of hurting these good and sweet people currently present. The laughter is near constant, puntuated by the variety of voices telling stories, remembering past moments, and those who add embellishments. The low rumble of the older boys sets the foundation: the two college boy-men with their facial hair and endless legs and appetites. The girls voices rise and fall in a dance around them, piercing giggles from the two younger sisters in high school and the slightly fuller voice of one of the boys' college girlfriend. And weaving it all together is the bird-like chirp of the toddler that connects them all to one another irrevocably. The staccato laugh of one will set off peals of laughter from another which causes the wheezy breathlessness of a third and on and on until they are rolling on the floor with tears streaming down their cheeks imploring each other to "Stop, stop, I'm dying! Please stahhhhp". And that is sometimes what I say to myself - with tears streaming down my cheeks - Stop. I'm dying. Please stop. I so very much love these half grown people, and the tiny little toddler that ties them all together with his little bird voice and his wet kisses and undeniable self righteous demand for attention. And yet... I am alternately full of gratitude for the partner with which I share these amazing spirits, and full of the desperate need to let go of a relationship that just doesn't work. I want to listen to my heart, but all I can hear is the laughter and love of these children.

Sifting

When I first came, I held my agenda tightly, in fisted hands, and spoke it out loud.  I was serious, focused, meaningful.  I was "with purpose"...

When I first came, with my fragile and vulnerable agenda, so heartfelt and full of intention and promise, I opened up to listen, to hear, to consider and contemplate.

When I first came, with open mind and open ears and seeking soul, I was thirsty and hungry but only for the healthiest of morsels, the richest bits, a tapas of unsampled tastings.

And so I listened.  I contemplated and considered, I tasted, purposefully, the offerings.  And now I'm finished.  

I leave here with my agenda, crumpled and smudged but still intact, and still held tightly; with my intention still active, my hunger and thirst still present, and my focus only sharper...and I leave not unfulfilled though - for I have seen things new, fresh, and uncovered that I can reframe for my agenda - I have new questions, new challenges, and even a new place to begin... 

I won't give up.  I have miles yet to travel and places to explore, but I leave here because this place is not the place for me to safely do so.  I leave because I know the safe place is out there still, and I deserve to find it.  I leave because I can... Because I am free to do so, because I have the choice.  I leave because in the sifting out, I see the fluff and the chaff that belongs to the wind, and I see the hearty bits that belong to me.  Those are the bits I hold carefully and keep from harm, those are the bits I carry forward into the next safe places.  

I didn't even get a lanyard...

(From the poem by Billy Collins)

Another Mother's Day come and gone. 

I keep trying to approach the day realistically and without expectation but I failed; no surprise really but I'm trying to take my failure in stride.  As a friend of mine once said, "...well that seems to be true of so many other things in your life, it's just never enough"... Oddly she wasn't being mean but rather speaking ironically.  Though her words didn't hurt me, since they were so radically true, they have never left me and I think about them often.

And this Mother's Day may be a case in point.  Part of my day was genuinely, perfect.  Briefly, I felt spoiled and treated with exception.  But I was also dissapointed and let down by specific people...And a small bitter part of me felt embarrassed even by those same people.  

My children are the very heartbeat of my soul.  Daily I am brought up breathless with love for them.  They are also all (with the exception of the baby) old enough now to be responsible for navigating the holiday on their own.  And they didn't.  No card, no handmade token, nothing.  Not. A. Thing.  It happened on my birthday in December as well.  I raised ungrateful thoughtless children apparently.  Sad...

I am working thru those feelings now, and allowing myself to feel the bad feelings while still embracing all the goodness that Mother's Day held as well.  I don't want to devalue the joys of yesterday, the delicious bits of love that came my way so generously, so I am trying to let the hurt be there in the shadow instead of the forefront.  I can't NOT feel sad or hurt, but I CAN choose to let the happy feelings be the ones I dwell on and remember.

My children are bright and talented and creative and so funny, they are incredible gifts and I wouldn't trade them for a token card of acknowledgement, so I want to be grateful, and I want to embrace the concept of "enough".  My day, such as it was, was enough.