Slap Upside the Head

I knew what I was doing.  Put the cookie in my mouth.  Look at the bag; put another cookie in.  I knew this was not the best choice, or even a good choice. But there were only a few left.  They’ll just get stale, right? Once you’ve had two, what’s one more?

At midnight, the chocolate chips squishing between my teeth with that perfect balance of flour and egg that makes the dough, I tried not to think of the morning when my pants will be snug.

I wish the weight I had put on over the years would just go away, puff! Then I could wake up and have my twenty-one year old body back.  Cookies at midnight are not the best way to make that happen. I know. I know. But really, would instant weight loss be good for me? I don’t mean medically—I mean that other stuff--- where the mixed feelings and the protective instincts live.

Here, have another cookie.  They taste so good, don’t they? Tomorrow is another day. I’ll think about it tomorrow, just like Scarlet O’Hara.

I admit I'm a little slow sometimes.  Don’t tell anyone, okay, it will ruin my reputation for quick wit and clever banter.

But the other night I had an ugly encounter with a mirror, a bathing suit and my self esteem.  My self esteem lost.

After an anxious session of berating for allowing myself to get in the condition where a swimsuit I felt sure would fit was actually quite small, I overcame that revelation and went to the water aerobics class anyway--- wearing a lacy cover-up, of course, which got soggy and heavy in the pool.

So, I had to get a different, bigger, size for my next class. Pride swallowed is better than a cookie swallowed.

Perhaps it was the newly released endorphins from the water aerobics class, but it hit me like a slap upside the head what a friend told me about her OCD symptoms.  She had learned that all the repetitive behaviors, like hand washing and checking and re-checking doors to make sure they were locked, actually saved her life. Saved her life?  Yep, she had learned that those behaviors kept her from other, worse behaviors, and served to buffer her against the pain she was feeling.

In the dark of night, trying to fall asleep, it dawned on me.  This revelation, this epiphany, was that the behaviors I have engaged in: the close to total lack of exercise, the overeating and eating the wrong foods and the imitation I’ve been doing of a turtle pulling into a shell, were necessary to help me deal with the things that had dragged me down. I was relieved and grateful that these unhealthy behaviors may have actually saved me.

How, you may ask, is soaring cholesterol and pounds, oh so many pounds, of extra flesh, a means of salvation? Well, here's my take:  I had been sucked into a long lasting down and these defensive behaviors helped me cope. When I was finally able to emerge from this down, through a variety of resources, then I was able, yes, able to join a weight loss group and actually show up at an exercise class. I needed a new understanding, a new insight into how and why I got here in the first place.  Now I can be grateful for the life saving techniques that helped me cope.  I can let go of those techniques and move forward into healthier--- that is cholesterol lowering, heart unclogging, get off the couch behavior.

I am oh so grateful to the woman who told me about this group and the wonderful women in my slimming group who applaud each other during our journey, not only of pounds lost, but understanding gained.

I Dare You

Since I was a little kid I imagined myself living the life of a writer. There I am, writing under the eaves of a finished attic overlooking a grove of trees with an incline down to a lovely lake.  I  watch the seasons change and draw inspiration from the fresh air and singing birds and all the lovely colors of spring, summer, autumn and winter… The reality is I live in a suburb of Dallas--- flat land, the only season we have with any regularity is summer—the hot bleaching burning kind of summer—complete with lots of allergens and heat that keeps me indoors with windows closed much more than is reasonable.

Instead of having a writing cozy in an attic overlooking a lake and a big fruitful tree, I have removed the dining room furniture and replaced it with a desk---- in the front room of our house--- (the kitchen is big enough serve our dining needs) and instead of having a continual bounty of ideas to inspire my writing I have learned the lesson of any profession:  writing is hard work.  No little bird chirping inspiration on my window sill, no lovely breeze to move my hand to wax poetic on the beauties of nature while making astute observations on the human condition.

Nope, years of apprenticeship doing research, reading reading reading and some more reading; writing and re-writing and re-writing and more writing.  Most writers I know love to read, have to read, look back and see the innumerable pages and piles of books that have been our favored companions and playmates since we were tiny children.  We love words, wordplay, the sound the feel the touch of words rolling off our tongues and dancing around our brains. And if we have this thing, this niggling need, this insistent crying baby need we will write, if only for an audience of one.  And all that work that seemed like play, that seemed sometimes to be time stolen from more important tasks, shapes and persuades and cajoles and nags until we develop a voice and make it our own.

Over the years when I had the opportunity to dive into the writing world I met with a great deal of internal resistance.  What if had nothing to say?  What if what I had to say was stuff no one cared to read?  What if I get too ‘naked’ in my writing and exposed things I would rather have hidden?

These are all legitimate concerns.  They are legitimate because writing is scary.  If we write with any depth we will expose ourselves, our fears our weaknesses our hopes our sins.

And we might get rejected.

And we will get rejected.

The thing about writing, or music or art or acting or dance, is we do expose our selves.  With writing we put our guts out there on the table and ask others to critique to accept or reject or not care while all the while we are praying that someone cares, someone wants to know more, someone appreciates a turn of phrase or an insight, observation, or character that we have put down in black and white.

The truth is I wasn’t brave enough years ago to write.  I always had this inner need to become a writer, but so often I would sit and try to write and realize that the only eyes that would see this would be my own because it was either too raw or not worthy enough to share with anyone.  I hesitated to jump in feet first because I could not see where the bottom was.

But in the last decade or so I have had opportunities to write and I did dip my toe in--- with adult ed courses I taught I wrote course books, then I had a Family Life column, then I had some opportunities to write for a broader audience, then I was asked to submit to a competition, then I joined a writers group, then, then, then.

Each step along the way emboldened me to take more steps and drop deeper into that place where writing happens, sometimes whole paragraphs at a time; often, however, one letter at a time.

One of the ironies of writing is that you have to be sensitive enough to tune into the subtleties of life, feel the pain, apprehend the beauty, catch the slight changes of expressions and tone of voice to listen for the real message behind words and actions.  You have to have a thin skin to write.  But you have to have a thick skin to put your work out in the world for an audience, for a publisher, for critics.

As time passes and I become more aware of mortality I wish I had dared to dive in years ago, but the truth is years ago I didn’t have the courage or the perspective to write.  You have to reach a stage of confidence, of not caring whether your parents siblings friends teachers will approve of your writing.   You have to reach a point where you can discern when you’ve gone too far and then the draw the line in a way that makes artistic, psychological and personal sense.

You have to dare.

April fools

April fools who?  Is there a special kind of fool found in April? Are we celebrating fools, that is jesters, village idiots, comedians and fools in the more pejorative sense? Or are we taking one day a year to revel in fooling our friends and loved ones?    Ah, the questions.   What are we without questions?   That is the question (sorry Billy). I’ve been playing Grandma two hundred miles away from home a few days each month so Katie can take exams.  A couple of days ago, with a sore back from catching a lively little boy and gnawing sense that I need to get some work done, my nearly one year old grandson served to remind me that I had put aside pursuing a ‘serious’ writing career for all the years I was raising children.  Since there is a nine year age difference between child number one and child number four that is a lot of years.  I spent 15 years of my adulthood watching Sesame Street until John went off to first grade.  Jude’s cartoon of choice these days is Sponge Bob Square Pants.  The circle of life.

Years of child rearing was not what I pictured when I pictured myself as an adult.  I wanted a serious career; I wanted to do something important.  I wanted to be the hero in my own epic.  I was confessing to two of my children (one a musician, the other an actor) that I never skipped a class in college, except once.  I spent that ‘skip’ in the library studying for an exam.

I hardly attended concerts, I went to one basketball game, on rare occasions went over to Poor Richard’s with classmates and had a drink (this was way back in the days when 18 was legal).  I spent my college career chasing A’s so I could get into law school.  By the time I got to law school I was burned out, used up, stifled to the point of chucking it all and taking an extended leave of absence.  That was more than thirty years ago.

There is a character on Parenthood (a recent NBC show) named Julia (irony?) who is a lawyer.  Not just a lawyer but a stuffy, uptight, ambitious, no-nonsense lawyer who just doesn’t ‘get’ a whole lot of stuff.  With her expensive suits, coiffed hair and oh-so-professional composure, I watch her and thank God I didn’t go down that path. My children saved me from that.  They loosened me, jiggled much (not all, I admit) of the serious starch that I used to hold myself together for too long, and let me see life through young and wonder-filled eyes.

So, here’s to April and her court of Fools.  Long may you laugh.

Snowed In

I've been running into the idea of finding God in the darkness, in the cloud, in the quiet places lately.  Maybe it's the kind of thing folks write about during winter.  One of my complaints about living in Texas has been that there aren't any real seasons.  We have summer and we have something else that is not quite summer, but hardly qualifies as Spring, Fall or Winter. My son and daughter-in-law live in Boston and after a while the winter doesn't so much look like a gift as much as it looks like a prison term or a very cold Purgatory.  But closer to the equator here in Texas we usually skip right over winter and step into something that is a little chilly, often quite warm, just fixin' to cuddle up to a long stretch of HOT that starts in March and hangs around through Thanksgiving.

Maybe it's my conditioning of growing up in a part of the world where there are four distinct seasons, but I think that a stretch of winter is very important.  We need, that is our souls, our hearts, our guts, our minds, need a time to be pulled away from the rush of sunny warm activities and dig in a little.  It's nature's gift of retreat, whether we think we want it or not.

If we don't have a little winter in our souls I think we run the risk of becoming ninnies. Yep, ninnies.  All activity and busy-ness and self-centered stuff.  We need a little heft, a little gravitas, a little snow shoveling once in a while to pull us down to the quieter places where we can listen and just be.

Yes, the snow is pretty as it weighs down the branches on the trees and covers the brown lawns.  Yes, the snow will turn to slush and then to mud with just enough layering of ice to make driving or walking treacherous.  But it makes us pause, and often taking pause is the only way we will ever learn anything.  There is something sacramental in the snow.  Not safe, but sacramental.

February Made Me Shiver

Its been more gray than usual here in North Texas---- reminds me of the endless winters I spent as a kid on Long Island. February meant snow--   momentarily fresh---then quickly old,  covered in the soot of car exhaust and tire tracks.  February meant  boots and cold toes and shivers and  knitted hats and red noses and rosy cheeks.  It meant  coming in for hot chocolate of scalded milk and Ovaltine or the little packets of chocolate powder with tiny marshmallows.  It meant chicken noodle soup and play time getting just a bit longer as winter kicked up its last hurrah. February meant back to ordinary time.  Days of routine now that Christmas and New Year's were weeks behind us.  February was the lull before the whimsy that is March. February is the time to get some work done.

Oh.

Whatever New Year's resolutions we might have made and broken by now are fading into the 'good intentions' stack that gets larger and more cluttered like the back of my closet each year.

We need to have times between the highs and lows of the Christmas season and the lovely, rainy days of Spring.  Time to get our rhythm back and settle in a little deeper to where we find the core of who we are, and hopefully, carefully, sometimes tediously, produce the work that has been waiting to be discovered and pried loose.

February is often the time when Lent begins, which itself is a time of reflection and preparation for Easter.  February means days of deep reflection, without which we cannot hope to produce anything worthwhile.

Writing, at least writing where you have to drop down several levels and dig around in the dark places to find some gems, is hard work.  It is contemplative work.  We need to be able to step into places that are not always comfortable and safe.  We cannot live the whole year in a February state of mind, but I am grateful for these quieter days where the weather and the ordinariness ready me for the soul's work of what I have decided to devote my time to.