We tried. I woke up at four am. We drove as fast as possible. Silly posters in hand, I ran from the car through baggage claim, up the stairs to Delta Special Services where, breathless, my lungs hurting overmuch, I explained that my son was arriving home after being stationed in Afghanistan. Verge of tears. I could barely talk. I’ve never known that kind of excitement. Weird really.
On the drive I kept telling myself to relax. If we meet him at the gate, great. If we wait for him in baggage claim, just fine. There are things I cannot control. BoyWonder. Traffic. My puppy-like bladder. His flight.
Turns out they landed early, a half hour early and long enough before we were standing in line to get processed through security, gate passes secured.
We met him in baggage claim, silly signs in hand. I jumped up and down, holding the sign that said “Tango, Alpha, Charlie- we have incoming!” and “Welcome Home SPC Dewes, our favorite soldier.” I wrote, “That’s my son!” in the corner, so people would know. Why not?
There was no crowd in baggage. Garret. My brother, also known here as First Uncle.
Heath later asked if “Tango Alpha Charlie” meant something. I told him we tried to think up a meaningful acronym, but failed. He suggested, “Alpha, Mike, Foxtrot.” Figure it out. Starts with “Adios.”
On the other poster we said “Welcome Home” and listed “Happy….” fill-in-the-blank with every holiday he missed over the past year. “Won’t it make him sad to realize how long he’s been gone?” BoyWonder asked.
“I think he knows,” I said. “I think he was sad on the day, believe me. Now he’s just happy to be home.” I added to the poster “We missed you every day!”
ManBoy’s dad and his wife, their other lovely children and her parents met Heath walking on the concourse and came downstairs with him. We all went to breakfast where my sister, her husband and one of Heath’s girl-cousins joined us at Perkins where we ate eggs, toast, and potatoes, listening to the war stories he would tell barely loudly enough for our table to hear, not so loudly the restaurant would hear.
I drank scads of coffee. Sucked Diet Coke with my potatoes and Kielbasa sausage dipped in ketchup and yellow mustard. I finally exhaled.
And surprised myself.
I’m so big on not worrying. I listen to my gut, my intuition, the small voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to me. It’s all in there. I pray when directed and act when needed and listen, sometimes not as hard or well as I should. But I try to make paying attention a priority. I’ve tried to do this for a long, long time. I’d say I’ve gotten better at it in the past twelve months.
In July, at our 25-year high school reunion, a classmate who has seen lots of duty, Afghanistan twice, assured me Heath was fine… as long as he’s not on a FOB. I didn’t tell him at the time. But he was on a FOB. In a region I had researched. Lots of action. Research didn’t help me with the not worrying part. I decided I would engage the listening part and the trusting God part. That’s simple enough. I stopped researching.
Once- just once-I felt a sense to pray especially intensely. Heath was out on a mission… about 14 days they’d be out. He wouldn’t have contact. It seemed to me the longest stretch of time he’d been out of contact since his deployment. It wasn’t. He was just on my mind all the time during that mission. I prayed. I reminded God to please pay attention to ManBoy’s safety. To please especially protect him and his entire unit. The time ticked slowly waiting for him to get back in range where he could send a Facebook message.
That mission-where, as usual, they engaged in vertical construction- also earned him a medal for engaging the enemy or being engaged by the enemy. I don’t know what that pin is called. I just know what it looks like. It goes on his chest above the US Army patch. And I know what it feels like being here at home while your oldest son is earning it. That’s what I know.
I also know my radar works. And prayer works. And love matters. I know that for certain.
I’m a little surprised how tired I am today. But I shouldn’t really be so surprised when I consider that even when the rest of life has been happening, while I’ve grown close to friends Heath hasn’t even been here to meet, while I’ve changed careers and happily divorced, and lived all by myself for the very first time in my life, I’ve also been holding my breath every day. Just a little. Just a tiny little bit every single day.
Even when I wasn’t consciously thinking about the fact my beautiful, sweet, strong 23-year old son was living across the world on a Forward Operations Base on the rim of the desert in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan in the middle of a war. Even then.
You bet I nearly bawled talking to the gate agent. And talking to the man in the line at security who told me his nephew has been there just four months, eight to go. Of course I teared up and could hardly answer when First Uncle said, “excited?”
But it makes sense now.
Of course it hurt my lungs to run from the car to the ticket agent. Of course my chest was tight like it hasn’t been in years. Of course I could feel my pulse in my ears, a rush of blood whirling circles around my jugular.
Of course.
It hurts to let it out when you’ve been holding your breath that long. Especially when you don’t know you’ve been doing it.
I woke up in the dark for the first time in several weeks this morning. At 4:30 really. It’s lovely that time of day. Pitch. Crystalline cold. Still. It’s not even time for coffee and kitchen lights twinkling over backyard snow, across alleyways. No one is awake. Just bakers and garbage men and my friend, Lori, who opens the YMCA for crazy people who want their heart rates above 120 before six am. I used to want that. Not so much anymore.
Now I want eight hours of sleep. I want to work out in the evening and spend my mornings, once I do get up, well, doing this, or editing photos, or studying, or paying bills, or writing something I wonder if anyone will ever read. Well, I don’t wonder if anyone will read it. I know someone will. I just wonder how I will get thousands and thousands of people to read it, since I’m to the point where it seems best to have thousands, maybe millions of people actually read the good thing I’ve written rather than a few read the masterful thing I’ve crafted.
Excellence, pshaw.
Did I say that? Let me rephrase. Paralyzing perfectionism, to hell with you! You suck. You are useless. You stumbling block, you ignacius, pugnacious, insipid, self-defeating, self-righteous pompery! You don’t serve me at all. Or anyone else around me for that matter either.
Well, no. Not quite right. Paralyzing perfectionism does serve those around me who are also paralyzed by their own fears and trapped by their own human frailties yet unable to face them. Some think it would be better for them if I clung to the standard of perfectionism. If I avoided all hope of liberty. If I listened to the condemning voice of the Law as I consider my actions of the day. It might be momentarily more comfortable. Less risky.
It has certainly been more comfortable for me, the demon one knows being better than the demon one doesn’t. You know the saying.
Our mother likes to quote a verse her father recited: “Whatever you do, do with all your might. Things done in halves are never done right.” She means well. She really does. She’d take it as blasphemy knowing I disagree with her application of such a verse. Never mind it came out of the mouth of a man sorely gripped by addiction and questionable moral proclivity. We don’t talk about that. She loved him after all, and by all accounts, he loved his little girl.
And that is my point. The penchant toward effort and doing things right is not at all the point. Of life. Of human worth. Of human success. Love is the point. The truth is the point. Not telling the truth or finding the truth but being the truth.
Who really wants to have a rude awakening and get real? That would mean an adjustment of all things, wouldn’t it? Admitting the old way was not working. Admitting imperfection. Admitting flaws in the system, flaws in one’s thinking, flaws in one’s behavior. It seems to me few people are willing to do this, or know how to do it, or want to do it.
And yet, it is what has improved my life two thousand percent in recent months. Rude awakening. Getting real.
Don’t get me wrong. I am tempted again toward perfectionistic effort, the A+, the stellar performance, the pressure of the standard. Why, just days ago I was agonizing with insecurity over the merits of my hockey photography. If I’m asking people to pay for it, after all, I must be certain it is worth paying for. And everyone knows, excellence is worth paying for. But love is worth even more.
I’m not opposed to excellence. I just find its pursuit so very wasteful, so laughable almost when analyzed.
Just think: for whom am I aspiring to excellence? For my parents? A lover? My children? For the world at large? For the good of mankind? Are any of these served by my performing? And if so, how are they served?
Can any of us be so impressive that we earn our parents’ delight? Do I want to be good enough to engender the acceptance of my lover? Do I want my children to grow up with the same insatiable drive toward an impossible, unreachable intangible?
Is the world better served by my pretense or my humanity?
Imagine if the repetition of my grandfather’s verse were something like: in everything, pay attention, be 100 % present. Enjoy life. Live fully, not half way. Pour yourself into the thing in front of you as if it matters because in that moment it is the only thing that matters. Freely experience the goodness of your own lively effort and see where that adventure takes you. Don’t be afraid to fail; eventually everyone fails if they try anything worthwhile. Fail big! Live without regret because you gave of yourself, loved deeply, and lived honestly.
That to me is the essence of doing all things for Christ. Not that I can perform for God. Not that I work to impress a truly perfect being. (Can I ever really do anything worthy of impressing Him, after all?) Not that I strive and try harder. Not that I aspire to all sorts of law-abiding and good deeds. But that I love. Love IS the more excellent way. Without it, I am an annoyance. Love is all there is. Love is what I was perfectly made to imperfectly do.
So, no New Year’s Resolutions. No trying harder. No effort even to love more or love better. Just a graceful step into the next moment and the next thereafter wherein I am certain I will be invited, time and time again, in everything I do, to LOVE.
I finished decorating my two trees about a half hour ago. I know Christmas Eve is in a week. I’d have five or seven trees if I had more time, believe me, so the fact I got two trees fully dressed makes me happy. The fact one of them was all sparkly and glowing, waiting only for Boy Wonder’s placement of the pinnacle star when he got home from college finals just yesterday evening… well, that makes me even happier. I have no idea what effect it may or may not have on him. All he said was, “Why is this tree still not decorated?” about the one on the porch.
I still have lots to do. I’m not doing much buying; I simply don’t anymore now that the kids are all legal adults. Still, I have a bit of shopping. (And it’s not last-minute until Christmas Eve.)
I have candy-making to do! Hordes of it, hopefully. Stacks of English toffee,
and orbs of drunken apricots.
I may even try my hand this year at cherry cordials in cream. 
I think I’ll repeat Christmas Granola.
It ain’t low-fat or low-calorie but it is delish!
Biscotti? Indubitably! 
Swedish tea cakes? You bet your buttah! Dipped and dazzled and strewn chocolate edibles I haven’t yet dreamed up? Of course!
I’m counting on a flourish of creative energy. And enough time to squeeze it all in.
Christmas Dinner menu? Still a blurry idea of crown pork-roast with corn bread stuffing and such. Perhaps poultry with a wild rice stuffing. We shall see. It’ll be a bit of a feast. I’m certain of that. It’ll be quieter than I prefer.
ManBoy will spend his Christmas in a tent in the Afghanistan desert. Hopefully they will feed him well. He’s surrounded by people who would literally give their lives for him and yet, I know there’s no substitute for being home, surrounded by his flesh and blood. (He cares about my food, and the sweets, and the decor. He loves his mama, this I know.) And he will still enjoy all of that when he returns in early January. That’s the primary reason I took the tree in the living room out of the stand yesterday before lacing it with lights: I had to be sure the vascular system wasn’t clogged with sap; it has to last beautifully until mid-January, the latest we could see him home.
The Girl, newly married… not making the trip home for the holidays. She’s twelve hours away and at times like this, it might as well be half a world away. Hopefully they’ll come up when her brother returns from the war. She’s repeating some of her favorite traditions right there in Oklahoma. And I will sorely miss her.
It occurred to me today while flocking the final boughs, it will be colder in January when I take the porch tree down. For sure, there will be needles everywhere. (It was cold enough out on the screen porch today when it’s unseasonably warm and we have yet to see snow blanket the ground.) That’s enough ornaments, I told myself. The rest came inside where they tumbled in a festive jumble, catching light through a crystal bowl.
It’s the first Christmas in this ancient rental I moved into just as BoyWonder was starting fall semester. (Read about that here. And about his first return after six weeks. Nice.) Now his return feels almost routine. The other bedroom is clearly his. He brought five boxes of things home for the nearly-month-long break. I texted while he traveled “I’m so excited u r coming home!” He said, “I’ll be working a lot. Don’t get too excited!”
His mustache is thicker and his hair is longer under that furry flapped hat. He doesn’t care about the sweets I might produce for Christmas gifts. He doesn’t care about the cookies I’ll bake. He expects the house to be decorated, but he probably doesn’t care so much about that either. He cares about pond hockey, his friends, his bed, and the relatively expansive space in his room. He cares about a break from studying. He cares about the money I’ll give him and the gifts he’ll get, hopefully lots of money he will take shopping with us on December 26th. At least I hope I still get to do the after-Christmas shopping trek with him. It has become a bit of a tradition. (I like that one better than Black Friday.)
I understand these things, and I don’t expect a whole lot more than the sweet rhythm of his breathing, the comfort of knowing my bear cub has returned to the den for some holiday hibernating, and the pleasure of occasionally getting to stand next to him, fit nicely under his arm-pit, and lace my limbs all the way around him in a squeeze. I won’t get much of anything in the way of gifts for Christmas, I’m sure. But I don’t need anything more than that.
I’m proud of a few things: my children first and foremost! If you know me that goes without saying. My oldest is beautiful, smart, well-educated and sweet! My oldest son is serving in the military in Afghanistan. He’s amazing. BoyWonder is surviving at college!
I’m proud of the fact my blog shows up on the first page when people google turbo sex. And that that search apparently brings some people here to read.
Also another attractive search key word that brings people here (at least in the last week) is: Daniel Day-Lewis. I’m honored. Of course, no student of mine would be surprised by that, nor by the depth of my sense of honor to be among the google hits of such a revered actor.
I’m proud of the fact that last night, when I went with a girlfriend to consume a celebratory glass of wine and found myself hungry, I discovered I was craving vegetables! The wedge salad with tomato, scallions, and croutons was just perfect with blue cheese and a spot of french dressing for sweetness. Perfect with a glass of Pinot Noir.
I’m proud I know a good Pinot Noir when I taste one now. I didn’t used to.
I’ve been proud of a few things that are pretty silly to proud of: getting a whole household packed up and moved in less than three whole days, unpacking completely in less than another three.
I’m proud of some of the photography I’ve captured over the past two years, especially some of the sports photography.
Occasionally I’ve even been proud of my cooking, a thing I hope to post a lot of here in the next days to come.
But today, I am taking just a few minutes to be proud of the fact I am a NaNoWriMo winner! I finished the first draft of a novel of 50 K words (actually more) in (less than) 30 days!
No one says it’s a masterpiece. It’s a rough draft.
Yes, I will try to publish it. I certainly hope people will read it.
I’m not all closet-writerish… if I write it, I want people to read; that’s the point!
Finally, writing a novel is just like any other writing assignment and those I have done scads of. I’ve required scads of them. I’ve graded scads of them. This is no different.
It’s just a whole lot more fun.
The kind of fun I’d like to do a whole lot more of. Fiction is fantastic.
Thanks for all your support, personally or from a distance. I still need it— in lots of areas. I’m excited to have made this goal.
Next: finishing football (banquet tomorrow night), on to hockey photos, holiday baking and decorating and gifting!
Ahhhhh, what a glorious November. Life is good!
I have a friend who says the first year after divorce is open season on crazy. Any time I’ve told her about a decision I struggle with… this man or that one, go here, go there, do this, don’t do that, she says, “whatever! choose whatever; you’re still in crazy times! You can do whatever you want!”
I like this. And I shake my head about it too. I mean, I don’t want to be crazy. The whole idea was that I would do divorce more sanely this time around. Because yes, I have done this before. I was 23 back when I was single for long at all. I like to think I’ve learned something in the past twenty years. I’m trying to avoid crazy, not embrace it.
Turns out I don’t necessarily have to try one or the other. Crazy just happens.
Now, I know you might think I mean with all those men drooling over me, alert with desire, waiting for their chance to spin me around the dance floor. Well, I could mean that. But no. That’s a different post.
I’m talking about my current situation with work, how I spend my time, and the inherent challenges there!
Did I say I was going to bake soon? Make candy? Post food pics? You’ll have to wait, I think.
I’m finalizing orders of our 25 year class reunion Memory Book, a thing I should have done in August (when I was moving and shipping BoyWonder off to school.) I’m working on the football yearbook and its approximately 40 different versions for which I have taken literally thousands of photos. (Just two pages of each version are different.) And did you hear I’m writing a novel this month? Fifty thousand words in 30 days. We are half done date-wise. I am one-third done word-wise.
My online teaching gig starts in January and my boss wants the curriculum finalized this month. Of course. It would be great to get that done now instead of over Christmas break. (Still, privately, my goal is by the time Boy Wonder comes home from college. That’s still before Christmas break.)
Um, also getting an on-line presence finalized for the hockey season where I hope to be able to market individual action shots and posters. But I need some new glass in order to do that really well. That’s about a thousand smackers. (oh, glass is trade jargon for lens, in case you didn’t know.)
Suddenly, sleep seems so overrated right when I feel I need it the most. Something is definitely happening to my hormonal system and let me tell you, I do not like it one bit. Yet, I am, little by little, releasing my life to its inevitable course. (It’s like during childbirth; fight the pain and it’s so much worse.) I want to be virile and vital and fertile forever.
And wouldn’t you know, just when I sense a shift, I still want to lose some weight. Key for me there is surrendering the delight of spiking my glycemic index. I’m smart. I read. I know the science. I know what I should do. Now, doing it is a very different matter. I’ve decided I might be verrrry happy to lose fifteen pounds… instead of 20 or 30. Ten would be nice. Five would be progress.
In the midst of all this self-employment, I’ve had the privilege to work out at the YMCA. Still doing it! Let me tell you, I think I look sooooo sexy doing Zumba but it’s not as hard as it used to be. Sweat-wise. Breathing-wise. (You do realize me looking sexy has nothing to do with reality, right? I mean, it only has to do with how I feeeeeel inside. Like how those people on American Idol feeeeeel inside about their rotten singing. I could be totally deluded here.)
At any rate, I am still working out in a big way at least seven hours a week if not eleven hours. I could work out for a total of eleven glorious hours! Not that I necessarily have that kind of time to spend. (See the above list of projects.) But it does feel good. Dependably good. I just have to push myself to tax myself as much as at first. And that’s a good thing; it means I’m getting in shape.
All that said, trust me. I do feel a little crazy. I spend all my time doing what I love and I am paying attention to every little flavor! No matter what happens next, I still intend to take a big bite out of life. Every single day. For the rest of my time here.
This is just my rapid-fire apology for not doing what I said I’d do and posting a bunch of holiday cooking, baking, and candy-making posts. Or it’s me-for the first time ever-broaching the subject of DAMN! my changing hormones.
Now was that a hot flash or just a wave of anxiety?
I think I’ll call it a little wave of crazy. That works for me.
Have I told you I’m writing a novel!? My head is spinning, but I’m less than one days’ worth of words behind on the time frame of 30 days until 50k words. I love it! I happen to also be liking the novel itself, steeped as it is in all the very difficult questions I’ve been pondering my whole life. You won’t be surprised if I confess that I have to work at keeping the plot moving along, will you?
But! when I do come back to answer the question, “okay, what happens next,” some pretty fun things happen next. I even surprised myself by introducing a new character today. An important one.
One of my other characters suddenly became a smoker and I thought, “that’s so perfect! Exactly. Of course she would.” Literary inevitability. Accidentally. Such fun!
One of my friends not too long ago commented how she’s thought of writing but she doesn’t have the imperative to do it and she believes writers must have the imperative. They must feel the need to do the writing.
Our college professor, the venerable Lawrence Owen, said the difference between writers and non-writers is that writers write. Of course he let us guess all sorts of more Romantic answers first. And he liked saying “no” to our answers. “Oh hell no,” the look on his face said. I love him still.
He was so right.
My sweet Girl said recently, “write the books, Mom. Who says you can’t be a famous author? It would be such a waste if you didn’t at least try. What are you afraid of?”
I’ll tell you what. I am afraid of failing and I am afraid of succeeding. It’s a thing I’ve wanted forever. It’s one of those things like breathing with my lungs. I know I was designed to do this. And I may find I suck at it. Some higher authority may come along with a big rubber stamp and write SUCKAGE all over the thing I create.
It may be that no one will read it. No one may be moved by it even if they do read it. No one may even care about the inherent commentary or the underlying themes (Remember students: the comment or statement the author makes about human life.) Believe me, I have plenty of comments and statements to make about human life. And I have stories to tell. Mine and yours and everyone else’s.
Maybe I will succeed and you will read what I write and you will love it or hate it or respond to it or let it make you feel all sorts of intense things. But you will pay for it and be willing to pay for it and feel better for having read it and send me e-mails you hope I will answer but I’ll be too busy to get to all of them so I will hire a secretary to field my e-mails and the offers for hundreds of thousands of dollar book contracts gathering dust on my desk since I will slyly publish on the internet and make a mint from that and the speaking engagements I will have to keep to a minimum in order to preserve my own sanity. Who knows?
That could happen. And that sounds pretty scary to me too, even though I prefer the second scenario. A lot.
I have come to the point, however, where not doing the writing itself is more painful than taking the risk. So I am doing it. As silly as it seems. As clichéd as it seems. (Did you ever hear, for example, so many people saying, “hmmmm, I’ve always wanted to paint a picture. I have a gorgeous picture in my mind and I know I could put it out there, but I’m just not sure I should do it.”) So believe me, I know how ludicrous it sounds that I am joining the ranks of millions of people who have to get their gumption up to even DO the ART.
Dang, I feel suddenly pathetic for all this neurotic hemming and hawing. I’m writing the damn books, people. Like it or love it. I’m writing the damn books. Every last one of them that seems to come next after this one is finished.
“Is it true?” Larry would ask me during my independent study with him where I churned out a new draft, a brand new story every single week all semester. I let my friend Dan hack it up as best he could before I fixed it and presented it to Larry. Invariably, Larry still went to town on the draft. “Is it true? Cuz I’m only interested in true stories,” he’s say. Then he’d grin mischievously beneath his mustache. “And they’re all true, Beth. They are all true.”
And I am going to tell them. Every last one.
I confess. I’m behind on my word count by about 2 thousand words. And it’s only been two days of the crazy rush to draft an entire novel in just 30 days. Falling behind from the get-go, not such a good move. And yet, I am proud of the beginnings I have made. I got up. I wrote first. I did not check Facebook or start editing photos. I wrote.
I love how the rush of ideas crowds my head at other times of the day. I need my little notebook now more than ever.
Already I have done the thing my daughter warned against. I’m second guessing my choice of project. Maybe I should have started with the other one. But no, I think she’s right. The important thing is to choose and go with it. This is the project, my best one at the moment, my deepest, most multi-faceted piece of fiction. And I’ve only been waiting about ten years to write it. Okay. More.
God knows I’ve spent at least that long on character sketches and back-story, on research and drafting, on alternating between view points and narrator’s ages.
My college poetry professor says I’ve been writing this one my whole life and I know he’s right. (Dear lord. College graduation was almost 20 years ago!) It’s about time I get this one done though I don’t know if I will finish it in 30 days. I know this: I will have 50,000 words to upload. I will get my success certificate. Success is sometimes, after all, about productivity more than perfection. Well, always, success is about productivity more than perfection.
I’d do well to remember that one. In every area of my life.
That’s why yesterday when my friend called to see if I would follow through on the idea to pierce our navels, I said yes! YES! Let’s do it now. (Well, we waited until today since I was swamped with novel writing and picture business.) But the point is, we did it. Like we said we would.
I said yes even though I’ve lost not a single ounce for all the sweat I’ve poured out at the YMCA. I said yes even though I knew the needle would pass through my stretch-marked skin. I said yes, even knowing the sparkle of the clasp will be cushioned with the warm pudge of my soft middle, the only fat on my body that bothers me. (Remember from the former post you are supposed to forget that.) I said yes though initially I could think of no landmark reason to do it right now.
My girlfriend just turned forty. She lost a bit of weight. Why now for me? Friends asked. I asked myself.
Well. I’ve been meaning to for seven months. The moment I saw Girl’s piercing last March, I knew I needed to have one. She told her friend, Steph, “when my mom sees this, she’s gonna want one.” And she was right.
“But I have no particular reason to do it now, ” I said to her on the phone today. Really I was calling for reassurance I wouldn’t faint, that I’d still be able to dance at Zumba tonight, that the healing is not painful. I got all those assurances and more.
“You’ve had a helluva year,” she said. “That’s reason enough.” It made me tear up and swallow hard. Have I told you how much I LIKE my kids? (Dang, they’re awesome.)
On top of that, I pierced my navel because I think they’re pretty and sparkly and sexy. I don’t care a single bit whether a particular man likes the idea and thinks I should do it. I don’t particularly care whether HE thinks it’s pretty or sparkly or sexy.
I’m certain I know men who think they’re pretty disgusting. But the point is, that’s not the point. And that’s my point. Get it?
The right man will like it. And even that is beside the point.
Most importantly, it’s a way to love my middle even when my six-pack is still hiding in its insulated cooler. Who cares? Even this least lovely part of myself deserves to be loved too. And that’s why I did it.
Do I feel sexy? Oh yeah, baby. For lots of reasons.
Never mind we went to a dark whole-in-the-basement-place my dad would cringe seeing. He was a young kid I could have had in class four years ago if he hadn’t dropped out, later got his girlfriend pregnant. He loves Jesus. It’s spelled all around his shop and up his arms and around his neck in all sorts of symbolic, meaningful shapes. Never mind he pierced us, me first, in the very first open chair and made me pull up my shirt and walk to the mirror where other waiting customers could see.
Never mind when I went back to the chair, he pumped it up to height, each increment jiggling my soft, naked middle in the direct gaze of an Army recruiter who stopped by to dream about his next tattoo. And apparently watch each step of our piercing. He waited patiently. I concentrated on loving my belly. I asked Cassie to hold my hand. The kid called me a wuss, which was comfort in itself and told me to breathe deeply once and it was over.
I bet you want pictures. I will post one. When I’m not sweaty from Body Blast followed by Zumba. When I’m not exhausted from the weight of wonderful creative work I’ve been waiting way too long to finish. When my head’s not full from updating my operating system and choosing a host where my photography can’t be right-clicked and pirated.
The title refers to thousands of football photos I’ve been sorting. It refers to my absolute delight with my choice to spend time shooting high school sports. For the football project, I’m getting love letters from parents to their players. It makes me ache.
Those young men are just wonderful. Parenting is just wonderful. And I still get to see it, up close and personal. I get to show it for what it is in real life even though when you’re in it, nothing seems to slow down long enough to capture it. I get to make it into art. I get to capture life’s best moments. (c)
And that’s a beautiful life for me.
Tis the season! This weekend we launch what is perhaps my favorite time of the year. Beginning with Halloween I get to make candy, bake confections, roast succulent meats and whir together substantial soups to my heart’s content!
I just have no one to feed.
Be patient with me if I invite you for dinner. Humor me. Say yes. Bring your children. Weather all sorts of questions about allergies and preferences between cream, blue, brie, and Gruyère cheeses. Don’t mind me if I also quiz you on onions, mushrooms, garlic, and celery since I like to cook with those too. Except mushrooms- but for you and your children, I will conquer mushrooms given your desire and demand! I want your kids to like what I make. I want them to eat it and like it.
I want you to like it too, of course. You matter to me. I see you. I’m not ignoring you.
Better yet, let’s cook together. Having never shared a kitchen with anyone other than my children, who I simultaneously bossed and instructed, I’m not sure I’m good at that. But I’m willing to try.
I promise not to yell at you or shame you for scalding the milk or huff at you for getting in my way. I won’t tell you to move twice as fast and get the pepper slices uniform. I PROMISE! Not that I’ve ever done any of that before. Don’t worry, I live in reality. I know you aren’t my son or daughter and we don’t have a holiday meal to perform ten dishes and feed twenty, plating on two separate tables with separate matching dishes for each.
It’ll be a relaxing time sipping wine and sharing techniques. (C’mon, if you’ve ever said we’d cook together, look at your calendar; now’s the time!)
Pretty soon I will be posting glossy pics of dipped candies and rolled doughs and delicately sprinkled spices rolled between layers of poultry. I will. I’m gearing up. And I’m excited!
All the years of teaching I whined for time at home from now until Christmas break to revel in my domestic diva-ness. Nearly every day, I had visions of gingerbread men, of towering layered tortes, of piped and chocolate-dipped drunken apricot orbs dancing in my head. To say nothing of the garlands of tangled fauna I mentally strung on every railing. While I was teaching.
This season, although I have the luxury of more time at home, I also have other demands on my time and an equally pressing demand on my pocketbook. More than that, however, I’ve learned to Get Real and enjoy what is.
That means I am going to enjoy getting up before first light to write. (November is National Novel Writing Month; I’m participating this year.) Then I shall enjoy the YMCA where I will sweat copious amounts and feel refreshed, return home to edit photos and do some writing I’ll be paid for. In the evenings I will enjoy shooting hockey, perhaps some basketball, maybe down-hill skiing if I get my contracts in order. I will enjoy dancing at least three times a week, entertaining friends, and cooking!
The important thing: what’s right in front of me. That means this post. Never mind I’m sitting in a 62 degree kitchen wearing my bath towel and the Afghani scarf ManBoy brought last June. (Those scarves make excellent head and hip wear for the pirate I became last night for a costume birthday party and will repeat tonight for pre-Halloween dancing festivities. Thank you, Heath!)
I’m ignoring the two sinks of dishes stacked kitty-wampous from last night’s successful venture mixing, rolling, braising, finishing, and saucing six pounds of delectable beef and pork meatballs in about thirty minutes. I’m ignoring the splotches of sauce on the floor, the loaded dishwasher, the dirty and satisfyingly empty crock I brought home at 1:00 last night.
I’m ignoring the camera sitting on the table next to me, whose settings I must check for the 2pm semi-final Section playoff game I will delightfully capture in brilliant vivid color starting just about an hour from now.
I am not lying when I say I love my life. Every single moment of it is just delicious. Including the shower I will take in about five minutes from now.
Did you read the latest chapter of the sex saga? Well, if you made it all the way through the nerd words on how the brain works and how we make decisions, you probably knew soon after SEX I’d have to talk about FOOD again.
That’s weight loss kind of food talk. Decisions-about-food kind of talk.
I did something amazing today. Something I haven’t done in a long time. I returned a candy bar to the shelf at Mill’s Fleet Farm, where “if you can’t find it, you don’t need it.”
I decided I didn’t need it. Even though I went searching for it and found it. Plus, some tall, dark, handsome, overweight guy was standing across the aisle watching me and talking loudly on his cell phone about insurance rates after purchasing a used boat.
It’s a good time to get a deal on a used boat. His eyes were definitely following my every move.
I decided 1.) I did not want Handsome Guy to think I was a pig. It was a King Size Take 5. (I’m thinking that may refer to the five pounds it would help me keep on my hips.)
2.) I did not want to end up like Handsome Guy i.e. appearing like everything desirable and outwardly successful-looking and then get stuck in Also-Fat-Looking-Zone.
Listen, I have accepted, even learned to glory in the bump of my rump – it goes nowhere even at my thinnest, so why fight it? “I’m on the right track, baby. I was born this way!” (That’s a Gaga song for those of you who missed the allusion.)
I’m not so comfy with the squish of my middle, which I also know from experience, CAN go somewhere, can shrink to reveal a perfectly proportionate rib cage, abs of steel, and a whittled little waist.
Okay. So I was 23 last time I saw that. Big deal. It did happen.
My point is the flesh of my belly is really the only fat on my body that bothers me. Let me apologize with this disclaimer: If you were hoping to date me, forget you read that last line and for heaven’s sake, don’t act like you KNOW I revealed this. Treat such information as the rambling of some other crazy, wonderful woman you don’t know and will never actually meet.
Turns out my habit of sugar every day spikes my glucose, in turn elevating production of insulin, an element that helps in the (smart design if I needed it to survive) retention of (primarily belly) fat.
Isn’t science grand?
In fact, it’s the awareness of science helping me push that peak of brain activity into a definitive decision regarding sugar intake. And it’s my meta-awareness of the peak of reasoning brain activity needing to overwhelm the desire for sugar peak of brain activity that has me thinking “hey! I can DO something about this!”
I’m in charge of my brain after all. And I’m not a chimpanzee.
The last speaker at Nobel talked about a study offering chimps two piles of candy, one bigger than the other. Without fail, the chimp chose the larger pile of candy even when the larger pile went to another chimp instead of to them.
The interpretation was that the chimp was unable, with the visual object of desire, to choose differently.
They were, however, able to choose the smaller pile when taught symbols for the piles and shown the symbols as opposed to the piles themselves. Then they could choose the smaller pile of candy for the other chimpanzee. Fascinating stuff.
Lesson: do not look at food.
Or be sure to substitute the sight and smell of food with symbolic information (aka language) and then do it to such an extent you overwhelm the peak of brain activity devoted to the sight, smell, and desire for food.
Otherwise, sugar wins every time around here.
Believe it or not, all this heady analysis is just the kind of thing that actually works for me.
I have a friend who says regarding difficult choices “I just don’t think about it.” All this time, I’ve been thinking he has a steel-trap mind. After getting the scientific info, I’m realizing it’s not that his mind is a steel trap, he just makes it think about something more important.
Now, that I can do. And so can you.
I attended all eight of last week’s Nobel Conference lectures. The subject, The Brain and Being Human, offered a multi-faceted look at neuroscience and its applications. (Conference resources are available here and a thought-provoking blog offers specific commentary on the discourse.)
As one presenter explicated, application of neuroscience has gone beyond Science and Medicine. That’s not news. I’ve been using brain research data in teaching for almost ten years. Psychologists and self-help gurus lean on it for evidence. Savvy marketers are studying brain patterns of preference.
Just this morning, on my favorite stationary bike at the Y, with sweat droplets coursing down my forehead into my eyes and vaporizing up my nose on inhale, I read articles in Yoga, AARP, and Sports Illustrated exploring brain chemistry and some aspect of health. Two of the articles talked about the adrenal secretion of cortisol under stress and its effects over time.
You might be interested in knowing sex and exercise are both good for your brain, your memory, and your cortisol levels. They both help prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
Why do you think I’m going to the Y six days a week?
I’d have greater benefit and so will you if you do both six times a week. Still looking forward to that. Read on.
My dad took me to my first Nobel conference at Gustavus Adolphus College when I was a sophomore in high school and I’ve been going since. Not every year, but enough years to know there will be something I can take home from the experience even if it’s just a reminder there are really smart people in the world doing really interesting things.
This smart woman is trying to make decisions how precisely to cope with an empty nest and mid-life (I almost choked on that adjective) dating. Further, you know I’ve been doing some very interesting thinking about SEX relative to my values. When last I left that discussion, I had shared the bottom-line guiding principle of “listening to my gut” which I also likened to listening to the Holy Spirit.
That conclusion was not concrete enough for a few people in my close realm who thought I needed to say “I will not have sex outside of marriage.” I bristle at anyone telling me what I need to say. As should any sane adult. On the other hand, I try to remember such comments may come from people who haven’t experienced how well they can trust their own gut.
Some readers were disheartened by the results of the poll which heavily favored a woman in her forties becoming sexual with a decent and good candidate… without imposition of commitment. Again, the poll is of interest, it’s not something I use to guide my behavior.
The conclusion of this post, may (or may not) leave those readers a bit more comforted. Back to Nobel.
Larry Young has been studying prairie voles for sixteen years precisely because they bond for life and remain (mostly) monogamous, one of only a few mammals who do this besides humans. Of course, his work isolates the brain chemistry differences in prairie voles versus other types of voles who do not develop a monogamous bond. The existence of oxytocin and vasopressin in the female and male respectively emerged as primary agents; targeting specific regions of the brain also proved important in the bonding process.
I decided my many foibles in relationships could be linked to an excess of oxytocin, which enhances bonding between mates, between mother and child, and amplifies trust and openness. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the maternal bonding, but I was clearly excessively inundated, (quite naturally because of the way I’m made) with oxytocin.
I was using my brain, Grandma. Just not the logical parts that might have evaluated certain mates as inappropriate. I was being a different kind of smart! I’ve always known I’m not a floozy. I bonded permanently; I married them.
(An aside: Trust Liquid or oxytocin nasal spray IS available on-line. I’m not recommending it. Also, the fact it’s a nasal spray means you’d have to shove it up someone else’s nose in order to get them to trust more. It’s marketed as something you inhale to make others trust you more. Clearly counter-intuitive.)
Another speaker explored the neuroscience of consumer choice by studying the brain activity of decision. I loved Paul Glimcher’s graphics, so vividly depicting a flattened cortex with colored peaks rising from its surface in different regions of the brain during decision-making. Research found choices closest in weight or value by the thinker were the most difficult for researchers to predict.
At some point, brain activity surrounding one of the choices has to overwhelm the other choice. A peak would rise to a certain height, the other sinking to nothing and the choice was made. But if peaks remained nearly equal in height, no choice was made.
The final lecture explored moral responsibility, where research established the symbolic use of language in the decision process as a uniquely human property; the relationship between choice, consequence, imagination, and moral responsibility gathered under one umbrella. I won’t tell you all the particulars of the research, though it is fascinating for those of us who like that kind of thing. I’ll just tell you a story.
About two weeks ago, I went on a pre-birthday shopping date with a girlfriend. I was handling a pair of lovely high-heeled pumps, sometimes crudely referred to as CFM pumps. (If you don’t know what that means, I’m not going to explain it. You’re smart; you can either figure it out, or you’ll intuitively know when you finish the story even if you don’t literally know. Cuz the human brain does stuff like that!)
Looking at the desired object, considering my budget, and fully aware of my current life situation I had two very clear thoughts (using language to help guide my choice) in rapid succession. The first one was “Damn, I wish I had a husband to play with” the second, “OR I wish I were okay playing with a man who isn’t my husband and who isn’t going to be my husband.”
And that, in language, my dear friends, clearly defined my own choice and decision-making process. Here’s what I knew about myself in that moment: 1. I want a husband and 2. I’m not okay playing with a man who doesn’t fit that category.
And there you have it. No way did I expect to have a clear thought about wanting a husband so soon. Seriously, I’ve employed lots of symbolic use of language and expected a thought like that maybe sometime next spring.
But the result of the second thought was most surprising.
I don’t feel unsettled about being without a sexual partner. It’s like the weight of the other option just sunk right back into the cortex of my brain and all the symbolic language about why I don’t want to be sexual right now with any presenting candidates makes perfect weighty sense.
At least that’s true for now. I’ll let you know if it changes.
