love–can’t resist without it

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What to write? I’ve been wrestling with self-doubt, frustration, lack of time, and plain old pissedoffedness. Instead of writing, I’ve fulminated over FB posts I can’t stand and fissures in renewed relationships that have gone cold over the election of an autocratic narcissist. I flew to Florida with my sister just to drive a car back to Illinois. This was actually kind of fun because we listened to Ellen Degeneres‘ audiobook Seriously. . . I’m Kidding, bought some new shoes at a roadside super shoe store (who knew?), and laughed a lot, but it wasn’t conducive to writing.

In the last couple of weeks, the US lost a classy, smart, funny, even-handed and compassionate President (This is my opinion, and it is one shared by many people–and it’s based on facts. Seriously, there’s no reason to comment if you do not agree; I know you are out there.) and installed into the highest office a Sharpie-wielding contractor who just this weekend executive-ordered the turning away of refugees who might be Muslim in an action that is in direct odds with the values of a majority of citizens who believe in the long-standing American ideal of giving refuge to those fleeing violence and persecution.

It’s enough to make you sick, and that’s just one crazy-assed example of the shit that’s been going down.  It’s enough to make you angry, scared as hell, and too muddled to write.

In spite of all this, in spite of a spiritual fatigue fed by the constant-silencing folks who don’t like messy protests by determined patriots who will not lie down and get with the program of the new administration, in spite of my almost pathological desire to crawl through a portal to pre-November 8, 2016, I experienced something super cool this morning. It woke me up and blew me away in its simplicity and sweetness.

My kids, 18-year-old Peanut and 15-year-old Shel, walked out the door together for school.

This is the first year in a whopping 20 years of having school-age children, that I do not have to run a daily school drop-off or pick up. Instead, I stand at the front door in my jimmies and robe with a warm cup of coffee in my hand and watch them open the front door and walk together into the brisk morning air. I say “love and see you,” because that is what we say here at Jensenville, and they say, “love and see you,” before shutting the door behind them.

This happened this morning, and love showed up. Nearly knocked me the hell down, if I’m telling the truth. Love showed up and I got all wobbly-kneed and teary-eyed. It felt good, folks. It felt good to be so undone by love.

It’s hard to hold that kind of love in one hand while resisting with the other. And as I write that, I realize that it is the only way to resist. It is what keeps us soft and open to those we disagree with.

It’s hard. I know I already said that, but damn, it is hard. There are a lot of conservative-leaning folks who are tired of their liberal friends posting the latest troubling news on FB. They are both overwhelmed and disgusted by our distress. They want puppy dogs and kittens (hell, who doesn’t?).  I contend that it’s possible they don’t want to be reminded of actions that make them a teensy-bit uncomfortable about the new administration and some of its policies.

I am mostly a people-pleaser, and it’s difficult for me to post newspaper articles and calls to action because I know I’m pissing people off. I don’t like pissing people off. I’m not confident enough to piss people off. I feel under informed–what I mean is that I’d like a political science/history degree before I start making statements, but I don’t have the time for that. None of us do.

So I have to rely on love to keep me strong. I saw this video on FB this morning after my kids left for school together, their breath mingling all puffy in the cool air, and maybe because I was still all loosey goosey with love, I cried while watching.

I’m still crying. All that we share.

Love.

Love is something I share with those folks detained at airports, with women whose bodies must be self- and not government-regulated, with the Dark-eyed Junco hopping around in the bare Burning Bushes outside my window, with the people who for the first time in their lives have healthcare and don’t want to lose it, with the pine tree whose shed needles make the winter ground soft to walk upon, with the bullied and the ass-head bullies, with the bigots and the open-hearted.

Love.

We can’t resist without it.

Despair and Hope

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So Meryl Streep called donald trump out last night at the Golden Globes without saying his name even once, and he tweeted her out this morning calling her an overrated (btw, you don’t hyphenate overrated) actress and denying again that he did, in fact, mock a disabled reporter. I defy you to watch the video and not see in trump’s actions the grossest display of hatefulness and ignorance.

I don’t know what to do with this information. My first instinct is indignation–you know the kind, stomach all in knots, heat rising from the knots, brain threatening to explode out the nose, eyes, and ears with the injustice of the fact that this creep is going to be the President of the United States.

That’s how I feel at first. But then it’s despair. This despair is a full-body wash sort of feeling. It rolls on from the head down like a dark, heavy blanket someone plucked from a corner in a dank basement and threw over me while I wasn’t paying attention. In other words, it’s real.

But this particular blanket of despair isn’t thrown when I’m not paying attention, it is thrown because I AM paying attention. I could spend my time on this blog listing the trump falsehoods I’ve read in the past few days, the latest Republican-controlled Congress abuses of power I shared on FB or retweeted on Twitter, but you can get that information anywhere–it just depends on where you look. Instead, what I want to do is take a gander at my reaction to this despair–or rather to admitting despair.

I come from a long line of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps midwesterners. One of my mother’s favorite admonishments was, “Buck up.” And for the most part, that was pretty good advice. I do tend toward emotional over-the-toppery. That said, “buck up” can be internalized and when this happens, I believe it can normalize some bad shit.

When I write on this blog or in an email to a friend that I am feeling despair due to the inevitable inauguration of donald trump, my committee starts up. You remember the committee, don’t you? Some folks call the committee monkey mind while others nicely refer to them as the devil’s advocate.

I call them the committee, and I realize that most of us have one. Their voices rise from and mingle the many important voices of my lifetime, and when I admit to feeling despair, they start in with a vengeance. “Who the hell are YOU to admit to despair? Look around, ya’ big baby.” They are mean and bullying. They want me to shut the fuck up. “Look around at your nice house, your nice husband, your nice kids, your nice town. What the hell are YOU despairing about?”

And it does shut me up. I mean, really, who am I to despair? I have so much.

Whoa Nelly! (and yes, I did look up the origins of this phrase and realize that it means slow down horse–I’m okay with that)

My despair is real. It isn’t negated by the fact that I have a warm house to live in and adult children who still spend much of their time in it. It isn’t negated because I live in a small midwestern town whose mascot is a little white squirrel with pink eyes. The committee can’t negate my despair unless I give them permission to do so, and I’m rescinding that permission today.

I won’t tell myself to “buck up” as it pertains to accepting donald trump and the malicious policies this new Congress promises to vote in. And don’t get me wrong–despair isn’t a resting place. I do know that. But I believe it is a place where I can get some traction.

Despairing is human, and it serves a purpose. I do a disservice to myself if I ignore it. After all, what if Meryl Streep’s committee had badgered her into silence. I can hear them, can’t you? “What do you have to despair about? You are winning a huge award. Look at all those glowing and admiring faces out there? Seriously, Meryl?”

**

Just last night I finished reading Krista Tippett’s newest book Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. This book, and Tippet’s interviews on her also essential radio show On Being, delve into the deepest aspects of what it means to be human. Becoming Wise is an essential book for these times, an ongoing conversation that juxtaposes politics and love, hope and despair in an effort to ask questions that might bring us closer to what the Martin Luther King Jr. called a Beloved Community.

 

Tippett posits that in despair, in the depths of darkness–that is where we find hope. She writes:

Hope is distinct, in my mind, from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth. It lives open eyed and wholehearted with the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it. Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It’s a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.

And in Daring Greatly, Brené Brown asserts that “hope is a function of struggle,”that hope is a “cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity…”

This morning, as tears of frustration rain down my face, I am also buoyed by these ideas. We, and I use the term with love, are truly in the swamp, and despair is appropriate. I would go so far as to say that despair is essential. A clear-eyed acceptance of the muck we stand in can and will give rise to hope.

It must.

 

 

Things To Love

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I want to keep this simple.

I am just home from a walk around the same block I have been walking since the fifth grade. The block has changed a bit. Sidewalks mean that I no longer have to walk alongside the ditch like my cousin Daun and I did when we were in high school and exercising before the first morning bell. Fields of corn and horses have turned into a ball park, a beautiful park with swings and slides, a bike park, a soccer field, a swimming pool, and now a super cool tree-identification park. Each time the block changed, my stomach roiled. I’m not big on change. I liked the fields. I liked the horses. I liked the corn and the butterflies and the quiet.

Even so, it’s a great place to walk. And I am learning to love each change–super-cool-tree-identification center easier to love than ball park, but then I’m a slow-learner.

Just now, I went out walking in order to look for love. I’ve been adrift these past several weeks. I watch the news nonstop. I knit. I light up the house and wrap presents. I drink wine in the evenings and watch more news and go to bed with a fist-sized knot in my chest and when I wake, it’s still there.

Last night, my husband and I were watching TV (the news much to his chagrin–he prefers old episodes of Bonanza) and, of course, coverage turned to trump’s weird tweets about a jacked-up plan for nuclear security. We began to reminisce longingly about the days of George W. and his friend Dick, of how much we miss those guys and John Boehner. My husband said a couple of pretty-unloving things about the administration-to-be, and we sat silently together for a little while.

We are not mean people, and yet I feel mean-spirited, angry, frustrated, and anxious. I know what it is–I am surprised. I am shaken. I am shocked, and I do not know how to process these feelings of groundlessness so I turn to anger. It’s easier, after all, to be angry than it is to face the deep abyss of who this election tells me we are.

And it all feels a little silly to me too. After all, I have a very nice life. My house is lit up with lights and candles. My tree is in the front window, and beneath its piney-looking limbs are way too many presents wrapped with bows. I just took two loaves of cinnamon bread out of the oven, and I’ve got a ham in the crockpot. The next few days, I will spend time only with people I love. We will eat too much, exchange gifts, sing Christmas carols, go to church, laugh at each other’s jokes, drink Christmas punch, and be stupid awesome together (that’s for you my cousins!). I feel a little silly being so sad.

And yet I am.

So I am looking for things to love. And I wonder if you would too. At least for the next couple of days. I have to tell you that each time I go outside, I find something to love. The natural world is so full. Today the treetops were furred with starlings. Their soft, dark bodies perched in the bare limbs filled my heart. They are always there, aren’t they. But when the days are stark and the trees have shed their leaves, I can see them. What a gift.

There is so much love in the world, and it is love we have to cultivate. It is only love that will save us. I believe that, but it’s easy, so easy to forget. So I thought maybe we could help each other here. I’d love it if you posted pics (I think you can) or stories of things to love in the comments below.img_2303

Happy Holidays!

On Making

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I’m still angry, still sad, still reeling from the results of the election. I don’t want to be shaken out of it or empathized with. I’m not licking my wounds; I’m allowing them to fester. People continue to remind me, on the “news,” on FB, on Twitter, that donald trump (I refuse to capitalize his name) was right, that he knew what the American people wanted, that folks like me underestimated his appeal. I don’t agree.

But here’s something new, sad and frustrated and clenching-my-jaw frustrated as I have been, my Christmas tree is up. Hell, I have two Christmas trees this year. The ornaments are hung and the house is strung with lights. Cinnamon-scented candles burn alongside their dark green pine-scented sisters. The stockings are hung on the chimney and the presents are wrapped, each one with a bow, and under the tree–ALL the presents are wrapped and under the tree.

And in the midst of all this light stringing, ornament hanging, candle burning, present-wrapping frenzy, I completed a 1000 piece puzzle in two days.

This is not me, friends. I am a woman who gets her tree up two weeks before Christmas if I’m lucky (and then leaves it up till mid-January, but that’s another story). I save wrapping presents until the last possible moment. I get candles out, but I sure as hell don’t burn them because the scent is too sweet and cloying. I am not a first week of December Christmas-is-in-the-air kind of gal.

What gives?

This morning I took a walk like I do most mornings, and I stumbled across a trump/pence sign that someone has obnoxiously left in their yard in the spirit of bad-winnerism. I stopped for a moment, and pondered kicking it over–I didn’t, by the way. The funny thing is I didn’t even want to. And that bothered me a wee bit because I’ll be damned if I’m going to be complacent, to believe that everything is okay because Wolf Blitzer and Carol Costello say it is.

***

Two weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving, I attended a collage/writing workshop at Spalding University  where I did my graduate work in creative writing. It’s always good to go back, to spend time with the women warriors who make up my writing group, but this time it was particularly powerful because in the wake of great loss, we created. For a couple of hours three days in a row, eight women gathered around a table. We scissored up magazines and glued random images and words together. We made stories in that room on the 3rd floor, and it felt so good.

Then I came home, turned the damned TV back on, and proceeded to watch an endless cycle of non-news about the new president-elect. And I started beating myself up for letting the blog languish. “What about your promise to write every week,” the committee taunted me each night I hit the pillow without putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

But I HAVE been making.

That’s what I realized this chilly morning when I strode past that stupid trump/pence yard garbage. I haven’t been writing, but I have been making. And as long as I follow the impulse to make, hope breathes. Hope doesn’t exist within some pie-eyed dream, but breeds during dark times in art and language and witness.

Hope is as Vaclav Havel wrote, “not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Havel asserts that hope is “a state of mind . . . an ability to work for something because it is good.”

I’ve had those quotes on my bulletin board for years, and when I looked at them today, I realized that hope is art. Hope is making. It doesn’t matter what we make–whether it be cookies or gingerbread houses or dish rags. It doesn’t matter if our creativity manifests itself in a  beautifully lit Christmas tree or a perfectly installed car battery, we are makers. And making heals us.

Things are fucked up. There’s little doubt about that. But here’s the awesome reality–in direct conflict with soul-crushing anxiety and confusion and sadness, I continued to make. I nurtured hope like a small flame in my chest, and I didn’t even know it.

I must continue to nurture hope. We all must.

We are makers, all of us, no matter how we voted. Making is the physical manifestation of love in the world. Some of us make cakes while others make friendships while still others make words shimmer like jewels on the page. Making begets hope.

That’s why my house is lit, why my Christmas tree flickers in the front window. I’ve been making–reflexively. It doesn’t mean that my heart isn’t beating a bit too quickly or that my hands aren’t clenched or that I am not still so fucking shocked that at times I can barely breathe.

It means that hope isn’t a gift, it’s hard-ass work. We have to make it ourselves

 

Of Champagne and Elections

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I’m sorry I bought that champagne–a better bubbly than I usually buy (as if I am a connoisseur of good champagne). Truth is, I tend to buy prosecco if I want something sparkly.

But last Tuesday was special, so I walked to the liquor store and I spent some time in the champagne aisle, holding the bottles up, squinting as I read the labels, finally picking one, forking over the money, bragging to the nice man behind the counter–“I’m going to toast the first woman President tonight.” I carried that bottle home in my backpack and the sun glittered in the promising sky. Damn, it was a good day, a brilliant day, only gonna get better.

I’m sorry I showed my girls (yes, the 17-year old was getting a glass too) the champagne, how that crinkly white foil top peaked (still peaks) up over the milk jug, how I winked when I said, “That’s for later when we toast the first woman President.”

That night, a week ago, as the bottle of champagne got farther and farther away from our reality, my girls and I tried to smile. We said things like, “Ohio will go our way–it just takes a while.” or “Michigan is blue. No worries.” or “We can win this without Florida.”

I’m sorry we weren’t prepared. I’m sorry that contrary to everything I believe, love didn’t trump fear, that fear and hate and anger and displacement trumped love. I’m sorry we didn’t drink the damned champagne.

I’m sorry I do not yet feel like getting to work, do not feel like bucking up or getting with the program. I’m sorry that Hillary conceded and that the media got on board with nary a word to the appalling lack of experience Mr. Trump possesses. I’m sorry that the KKK has planned a rally for December 3 to celebrate. Sorry that Steve Bannon will be a chief strategist in this new administration. Sorry that everyone seems to believe we just need to get together behind Mr. Trump as if the republicans haven’t played obstructionist politics for the last 8 years. We haven’t had a full Supreme Court for months!

I’m sorry that when my husband pulled the Clinton/Kaine sign from our yard, all I could muster was a bitter laugh and another deluge of tears. I’m scared and angry and I’m so fucking sorry that anger won’t save the day and that the electoral college won’t save our country. Did I mention that Hillary won the popular vote?

Here’s something else I did–I appropriated my daughters’ grief.  You see, I felt so damn dumb, so tricked, so ridiculously naive. I remembered how I sauntered home with that champagne on my back, how cool and sure I’d been.

 

“I’m so sorry,” I cried.

“Sorry for what?” they asked.

“Sorry for teaching you to believe, for letting you believe we could win this thing.” Yes, I really said that. I may have been feeling a teensy bit sorry for myself, maybe even wallowing. Okay, for sure wallowing.

If I can blame myself for their disappointments, their sadnesses I will. It’s my MO. After all, blame is a pretty good insulator. If I’m all pissed off at myself for failing my kids, then I’m not spending a lot of time feeling their pain, or my own.

They set me straight pretty quick-like. “Don’t be sorry, Mom,” they said. “You didn’t let us believe in anything.” They didn’t say dumb-ass, but I’m pretty sure they were thinking it.

They already know I’m not the fairy godmother of happiness and well-being and safety. They already know that pain and grief and anger are handy emotions to harness when change is necessary. And it’s more necessary now than ever.

I’m pretty sure it’s time to crack open that champagne.

 

 

So, the Election

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I started a shit storm on my FB page by posting this meme:

fb-meme

It made me uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that I wanted to delete the entire post. I felt FB naked up there. Everyone who cared to (probably a lot fewer people than I imagined) could read what people were writing on my page in defense of Donald Trump. Others could see that I violated a new sort of FB creed–the one that says you shouldn’t post about religion or politics on your feed because it’s unseemly. I felt very unseemly, folks.

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine posted an hysterical photo of his wife, their two babies (under two years old) and himself on Halloween. One baby is dressed in a sweet little costume, and both babies are frowning and crying, while he and his wife smile with the sort of pained smiles that young parents often wear. Under the pic, he explained that he doesn’t often post pics to social media because he thought it too easy to only show the fake parts of our lives.

What a bad-ass thing to write!  It is easy to post pretty pictures that depict happy families, children winning awards, delicious home-cooked foods, bottles of good wine, sun-drenched afternoons–and we all like to see these things. I know I do. I love to see my friends living their lives to the hilt with beauty all around. God knows, all I have to do is turn on CNN to learn that things aren’t all that peachy.

And still, my friend has a point about the fakey stuff that occurs on social media sites or anywhere else we are trying to create perfect stories for the consumption of ourselves and our friends (and enemies too, because God, don’t we like to stick our bright, shiny happiness right up in the faces of those who rub us the wrong way?  okay, maybe that’s just me).

So back to the shit storm. I didn’t take it down.

Over 140 comments later, I am still trying to figure out why it bothered me so. Why I felt ashamed. You see, I want people to like me. It’s as simple as that.

It comes down to vulnerability. (Seriously, Brené Brown)  To be vulnerable is to be susceptible to emotional injury, easily hurt, to be susceptible to attack. We look at vulnerability as a weakness, but I am learning, a wee-bit slowly, I think, that vulnerability is a strength. Vulnerability is the only place where love can thrive.

 

This election is important for more reasons than I care to write about here, but the fact that so many folks are going to vote for Donald Trump is, in my opinion, the most compelling aspect of what is going on in this election and in our country.

People are in pain. And whether or not I understand the pain or its origins, I won’t dismiss it. In fact, I believe we dismiss it to our peril. Donald Trump is banking his bid for the presidency on our dismissal. His fear-mongering, his hate, his outlandish lies all depend on our continued determination to dismiss a contingent of the population I prefer to pretend doesn’t exist.

That’s why I allowed myself to be vulnerable on FB this week. That’s why I left that post up and engaged in a lengthy discussion about abortion. I made a vow to myself when Donald Trump got the nomination that I would listen to the often ugly and hurtful things he and his supporters said, that I would not whole-cloth dismiss him or his support as an ugly anomaly.

It’s hard.

I don’t like it one bit.

But if I truly believe (and I think I do, I think I do, I really think I do) that love is big enough to hold us all, then I have to practice love–dammit–and this week that meant being vulnerable on FB, listening to shit I didn’t want to listen to, engaging in conversations I didn’t want to have, leaving it out there so anyone could read it.

I want the election to be over. I want to weep with uncontrollable joy when Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the election and becomes the first female President of the United States.

Until then . . .

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.  I’ll meet you there–Rumi

 

I Get To…

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October.

For the last four years, October’s shorter, leaf-blown days signal the end of tennis season. This year, as the mums fan out in yellow and orange and deep purple blooms, as the Burning Bushes in my back yard go red, one oval at a time before dropping leaves like feathers on the grass, as tiny webs fly through the air and stick to my still bare arms, October ushers in the final tennis season.

Peanut is a senior, and last week she played her last high school singles match and qualified with her spunky doubles partner, Marie, for the state tournament where she will play her last high school doubles match.

Each of the three years prior to this one, I’ve welcomed the end of tennis season, the last of the all-day-long Saturday tennis tournaments, of the after-school matches that run from 4-8:00. Welcomed the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night Subway-less suppers, the end to the midnight oxy-wash laundering of the dingy white tennis jersey. And because Peanut has Type 1 Diabetes, the end of tennis season means that we don’t have to worry so much about overnight lows or stress-induced highs.

We catch up on our TV shows, the ones we have been DVRing since the new season began. We take walks at night and eat sit-down dinners.

As we all know, I’m a dreader. Normally, I would be dreading the state tennis tournament in Chicago. I would dread the long drive from southern Illinois. I would dread the city traffic, the distance between the different tennis sites, the cold weather, the early morning matches, the old Holidome where where we stay every year, but something funny has happened to me. I’m not dreading it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve dreaded one silly thing since tennis began.

This year, I get up early on tennis days to make sure that Peanut’s uniform–one white track shirt and a black skirt–are clean and folded. I pack the cooler with cold drinks and nuts and ibuprofen. I fill the car with gas, if the meet is not at home. These are not new things. I’ve been doing them since Peanut entered high school as a freshman. What is new, is that I look forward to all of it.

I’m not all-slumped shoulders with a deep woe-begone voice chanting in my head, “Another fucking tennis match, and I won’t be home until 10:00, and we’ll have to eat at Subway or McDonald’s for the 15th time this week.” The woe-begone voice never even showed up this year. Instead, I am Mrs. Giddy Anticipation, beaming out rays of happiness and joy. I get to attend another tennis match and watch my girl play again. I get to watch her hit her low heavy ball cross court. I get to sit with the other parents or joke around with the other tennis girls who call me Mama Bridge, and instead of embarrassment, I embrace it. I am Mama Bridge.

Is it possible that the ever-annoying, interfering auto-correct is correct when changing dread to dream or read or bread or tread? Has something changed? Is it me?

I think so.

About a year ago, I decided to insert get to for have to. Someone suggested it in an essay or a book. It might have been Shonda Rimes in her funny, smart, and entertaining memoir, Year of Yes.

I have to say, I always thought I should to learn how to say NO before I worked on yes, but because a wise, book-loving crone sent this book to me, I thought I’d check it out–and guess what, she was right. Shonda thought I should embrace my wonderful life, and I think little by little, I took her advice.

I don’t know if get to for have to came from Shonda or Pema or Glennon or Brené or Katrina or Amy, but I’ve been reading a LOT of women this year, women who know what it means to fail, to strive, to fall down, to dare getting right back up, to laugh, to cry, to be flawed and beautiful human beings, and by Goddess, I’m learning something.

I don’t know what will happen when tennis ends, but I don’t have to know. I’ll probably cry when Peanut hits her last volley, tosses the ball up for her final serve. I’m sure I will grieve a bit, the way I grieved when Peanut’s brother Lefty’s pitching career ended. Endings are a drag.

But you know what, endings are also beginnings, and I’ve been practicing all year at beginning again.

I’m learning, friends. I’m sure I will dread again, but I hope to remember how damned good it feels to dream or read or tread or even eat bread.

Tomorrow I will hop in the car, stop to pick up my awesome mom who is going with me, and drive our happy asses to Chicago. I plan to sing the whole damned way.

Does It Make You Kinder?

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Last weekend, I spent four days in Michigan with a group of women friends. This might seem a little braggy, but I have a hellacious bunch of women friends. I’m fortunate in so many ways, but I am born under a lucky star charmed in the friends department. Over the next few months, I plan to write a bit about friendships between women because as I near 50–I’m four short months away–I have never been more aware of the absolute necessity of good women friends.

Let me tell you about this particular group of friends. There are seven of us although only five made it on the Michigan trip. I like to think of us as a writing women’s collective. We met in graduate school and fell in love with each others’ voices first and then with each other. We are a wordy lot. We write group emails and group texts. We share essays and novels in progress and short stories and blogs. And we talk and talk and talk.

We get together a couple of times a year. In Michigan we continued our tradition of walking, talking, eating, drinking, writing and reading. We hiked the Sleeping Bear Dunes of Lake Michigan and took long walks along the shore of Crystal Lake and the Betsie River. We enjoyed burgers smeared with bacon cherry marmalade and swooned over parmesan crusted toasted cheese sandwiches. We waded into Lake Michigan even though the water was so cold goosebumps pricked up all over my body. We completed a 1000 piece book puzzle in 48 hours and then whined (this was maybe only me) that the puzzle was finished.

We stayed up late drinking wine and roasting marshmallows. We made s’mores with dark chocolate covered caramels with sea salt. OH MY GODDESS, they were decadent. We talked politics for ten minutes at a time. This was not because we disagree on the big issues, but rather because we felt a ten minute bitch session about Donald Trump, his policies, and his incomprehensible rise to the top of the Republican ticket was more than enough when the air was ripe with birdsong.

We’d stop talking for a minute, take in the white bark of the Birch trees and the caw caw of two crows high up in the branches, poke at the fire, swat at a mosquito and then begin talking again.

Because there is so much to talk about.

I could use this paragraph to list the variety and complexity of the overwhelming problems we face today, but I seem to do that a lot, and each time I make a list (global warming, poverty, the lack of equitable education, the continued objectification of women in church and in society at large as well as the dominance of rape culture) I  am desensitized to the possibility of change and the questions we must ask ourselves. After all, if I can sum it up in a few words and sandwich them between other words and use some pretty bullet points or em dashes, then perhaps the anxiety that wells up in my gut and threatens to sit me on my ass for the next 24 hours can be avoided.

The truth is it’s pretty damned hard to live with and in the questions.

***

Questions, however, might be a good place to begin.

Like I mentioned, we talked our mouths off this weekend. We talked about the environment because we were surrounded by a beautiful one. We talked about young black men being shot because there is barely a weekend that goes by when another tragic shooting isn’t in the news. We talked about clowns running around in small towns because it’s kind of funny and supremely weird. We talked about cultural appropriation in literature and in life. We talked about books. We always talk about books.

But mostly we talked about being women, about menopause, and oppression, about vaginas–one of us is irritated by the wholesale use of the term vagina to describe the vulva or the clitoris or the labia–and boobs and rib fat and the glory of inhabiting instead of being at war with our bodies.

We talked about religion/church/spirituality because we all believe that God is love and that divine love resides both in these bodies we are learning to inhabit and in the body of the world. One of us was a hospital chaplain, one of us a theology student, one of us a former Catholic, one of us a doubtful and often reluctant but still-practicing Catholic (that’s me), one of us a joy-filled agnostic, and all of us seekers.

Let me tell you about my good friend, Lori. She’s smart. And she’s funny as hell. She is a storyteller and speaks with brazen honesty. Her strong voice is both tender and tough as nails with just enough twang to let you know she has spent the bulk of her adult life in Texas. Lori is long on love and short on bullshit. She’s got the truth in her sites and she doesn’t pull any punches to get there.

A few years ago, she and her very lucky son (because she is his very smart mother) were having a conversation about religion and church and Chick-Fil-A. Some of his friends’  families were patronizing Chick-Fil-A in the guise of a certain sort of Christian support for the corporation’s anti-LGBT stance.

Lori told her son that religion, that church should make you kinder. She offered him a hard-earned question she had asked herself when leaving her own faith years ago, “Does it make you kinder?”

We all stopped talking when Lori offered it to us. “Church or religion. It should make you kinder, right?” she said.

Yep, it should.

You see, I’ve been thinking about questions all year, allowing myself to settle into uncertainty, but damn this one’s got an answer. I’m sure that there will be times when “Does it make you kinder?” won’t be the only question I need, but for now I think it’s a pretty good place to begin.

Again.

 

 

I Feel Bad About My Neck Sweat

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It’s early summer, and I’m standing at the pharmacy counter in CVS, waiting for the nice pharmacy staff to get my bundle of over-priced prescriptions. It’s a big prescription day, so I’ve walked here wearing a back pack. The temp outside is in the mid-70s, but the humidity is sky-high.

I walked here beneath trees swaying, leaves shimmering in the light wind. I should be comfortable, but I’m not. My body is hyper-aware of how fucking hot I am all the time, and is overcompensating in the sweat department.

Sweat runs–no pleasant trickling here–down my back and front, soaking the waistbands of both my underwear and my shorts. Sweat drips under my nose and all around my hair line. Sweat puddles in the hollow my bra has created in my rib fat–as an aside, the rib fat was a surprise when it popped up unannounced the day I turned 40. There is too much sweat for the expensive sweat-wicking tank top to handle; in fact, I have come to believe that tank-top salespeople are out and out liars. But nowhere am I sweating more than my neck.

Yes, it’s true, my neck sweats. Copiously.

I could be wearing an invisible sprinkler collar. That is how much water is rolling down my neck. I could water a peace lily with this neck, or provide ambience for your backyard garden…

 

Pretty, right. No, not if it’s your neck, and a very nice woman with gentle brown eyes is gathering your prescriptions and you can’t get too close to the counter, lest you leave a puddle of neck sweat by the cash register. Luckily, I find a pair of tube socks in my back pack–who knows why they are there, probably from a long car ride when I thought my feet might get cold, back in the 90s when I still got cold–so while I wait, I wipe at sweat with socks. They are surprisingly absorbent.

“Yes, I’m wiping my neck with a pair of socks. Menopause.” I say with what I hope is a humble sort of humor when the pharmacy tech returns.

“Oh yes,” she nods knowingly,  “I remember that.” She hands me a stack of prescriptions and looks me in the eye, “It does ease up.”

And I believe her, but I’d like a date. Like in 6 months maybe?

You see, I’m having a hard time concentrating on things that really matter with all this sweat pouring down my neck. I mean, the world is heating up, and Donald Trump is running for President and folks like Matt Lauer let him lie on TV, and the ocean is full of the little plastic beads from our exfoliating face washes, and pre-teen girls are wearing words like “chastity” on the asses of their too-short shorts, and our milk is pumped-full of hormones, and our drinking water is an antidepressant cocktail. Who the hell gives a shit about neck sweat?

The truth is I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my neck. In  I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron wrote that her dermatologist said the neck begins to go at age 43. I’m 49, and my neck looks ok. It might be the extra layer of fat or maybe long-awaited benefits of oily skin. My parents promised me years ago that my genetically oily skin (thanks Dad) would save me from wrinkles when I got older. Yes, they actually thought that a future without wrinkles would appeal to a 16-year-old with acne. Kind of hostile of them, huh.

Last night, my sister and I were walking, and I began a rant about this neck sweat problem, and she had the nerve to say, “You know, I never notice all the sweat until you draw attention to it by rubbing your neck and talking about all the sweat.”

I draw attention to it? What?

“It’s funny.” I say, and then I kind of push her a little bit because maybe she will fall down and take it back. She doesn’t fall down, though. She just laughs.

Here’s the thing. Neck sweat is kind of funny and kind of gross. I’m a lot tired of sweat. Menopause arrives with a myriad of not-so-wonderful physical and mental changes–grouchiness, rib fat, sleep problems, hot flashes, achy joints, anxiety, and that’s just a taste, but the one that is knocking my socks off (and into my backpack, apparently) is the sweating.

Here’s the kicker: sweating is pretty awesome. My own body-operated natural a/c. My internal cooling system knows the truth: I am one hot cookie right now, and it acts accordingly with volumes of cooling elixir. Sure, I’d be happier if that elixir were a little less noticeable, a little sweeter in scent. But sweat’s good!

I mean men sweat all the freaking time, and they don’t give a rat’s ass because they’re MEN, and who doesn’t like a sweaty man. But let’s not forget that if their neck sweat were bothering them, there would damned sure be a pill for that shit by now.

And yes, there are pills for some menopausal changes, but I’m partial to my Lexapro–I’m sort of a one-pill gal. So I can either embrace my sweaty neck and grow up to be a proud and sweaty crone or I can put my sweat on the back burner where it’s sure to douse the flame.

 

 

 

Love Showed Up

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My wedding was everything I wanted it to be and more.–Newly Married Isky

I’ve been thinking about my daughter’s wedding since we packed up the last box of lights and drove away from the outdoor pavilion the morning of July 31. How did it end up such a beautiful occasion when planned for a mere four months by two women almost continually at odds?

I should explain this. Isky is my second child, my first daughter. She came into the world with a puffball of bright red hair and a high-pitched wail. That kid was not one day in her childhood a pushover. She tried my patience at every turn. She wanted to know “why” and “how come” and “when” and “how” and “why not” from the time she could speak, and folks, she said, “I’m gignoring you” and “that’s ridicurus” when she wasn’t quite a year old.

She wasn’t an easy child, no, but I’ve always known that in the long run, she would be okay. I created a mantra of sorts when I told myself and anyone else who would listen, “She’s a pain in the ass now, but she is going to be one helluva’n adult.” Isky knew how to stand up for herself; no one was going to push her around. And God help them if they tried. At 5 ft tall–with a low center of gravity–she doesn’t push easy. Just ask her dad about the time he tried to push her into the lake.

Three years ago, in St. Louis, her dad and I watched her leave us at 3AM. She was moving to Georgia, with a backpack and a suitcase, following a man she’d known less than two months (they just got married), and while we both wondered if she was making the right decision, we admired her spunk. She strode off on those short little legs like she’d been flying to Georgia her entire life–and this was only her third time on a plane. We waved until she was out of sight, but she never waved back because she didn’t turn around, not once. She was full steam ahead into her new life.

Her sheer bullheadedness, insistence on a vision, and sharp tongue made our planning activities tense-ish. She knew what she wanted, and she expected to butt heads with me. I knew what I wanted too–and it was to not be planning a wedding in four months time. I will say it again although I have said it before, I am not designer-ish. I am not decoratey. I don’t see the point in pretty invitations or table runners or expensive flowers when you have hydrangea bushes bent over with blooms. And to be honest she didn’t want too much if you’re not the sort of woman who gets married in a hotel room in front of a murphy bed.

So Isky and I grumbled at each other while we planned. She felt disappointment many a time over because I didn’t pay attention to what she said–this is not a new complaint from any of my children as I tend to be a little dreamy and not-listeny. In my defense, if you give birth to four children and don’t learn how to tune them out, then you aren’t going to have any time to think about books or words or songs you want to remember, but my ability to tune people out could be called high art–subversive style. I, on the other hand, was disappointed she couldn’t see that even though I appeared dazed, confused, and slightly angry, I was, in fact, listening and planning.

How did this thing turn out so well?

Love showed up.

Love showed up in the hands of my four margarita-drinking, funny-as-fuck, talented and gracious cousins who called one day and offered their hands unasked. Hands that made table-tents and mason jar tags, hands that brought love and tiny lights and wire, picture frames, hand-painted signs, and big doors. and then hung these offerings in a wide-open outdoor pavilion that hours before had housed golf carts. My cousins’  hands turned that place into a shabby chic reception hall. And then those same hands stacked chairs and packed boxes when it was over.

Love showed up in the hands of my sisters from other mothers who drove from far-flung states. Those hands took pictures I couldn’t take myself, poured wine on my back porch before the wedding, and brought me ice-cold water to counter the flow of champagne. Those women were my Sister Sledgehammer and Attila the Nun. They were my motherofthebride’s maidens and they came with extra diapers for little Wonder and a pack of cigarettes for you know who. They watched for things I might not see and will remember all I might forget–like living journals those gals.

Love showed up in the strong, capable hands of my sister from my husband’s mother. She took my Isky under her warm and loving wing. And you better believe it, she has the best all-time wings. She did all the hard stuff Isky’s mother didn’t know how or just refused to do–like discussing table decorations and creating wonderful bridal party brunches. She texted pictures of flowers and listened, really listened to what Isky wanted. Loved showed up in her boundless basket of bride’s goodies–body tape and safety pins and needles, thread, and chalk–and in her cadre of beauty grandkids.

Love showed up in my sister’s hands too. Hands that held my own. Hands that carried flowers and hung lights and sheets of white to create a fake wall. Hands that took those same things down the next day. Hands that wrapped jars with twine and poured glasses (whole bottles) of wine. Hands that were and are so strong and present that I barely need hands of my own. In fact, I can say that there were times when I couldn’t tell where my hands ended and hers began. Her hands were and are my hands.

Love showed up in the hands of my parents, in those petunias that my mother carefully nurtured to their cascading brilliance on the wedding day. Love showed up in my parents’ carefully manicured lawn and the porch bedecked in tulle. Love always shows up in my dad’s hands, in the hankie he has at the ready and in his insistence that he buy your drink. Love showed up in his graceful and slow dance with my mom at the reception, in the way they love each other and have taught all of us how to love. The truth is that love shows up wherever they are, always.

Love showed up in the hands and the person of Fr. Bill who blessed the beginning of a life together for Isky and Chris, who took the kids’ promises and held them up before all of us, whose faith in love and goodness shone brighter than the late July sun.

Love showed up in the hands that prepared the food. In the hands that raised the groom. In the women and men who gathered round Isky and Chris. In the dancing and the music and in little Joy and Wonder who did 100 jigs at their parents’ wedding.

Love showed up.

Love showed up.

Love showed up because it was there all along. There for the taking just like those beautiful hands.

I didn’t have to ask for help one time, but it was given over and over and over. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to ask for a hand–but when I looked around during Isky’s wedding, I saw what all those hands can do.  If this is the lesson I am doomed to learn over and over, well, I guess I lucked the hell out.

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Me and the Beautiful Bride Photo by Sara Finney Photography