I Belong to Timer

I am having a bit of a meltdown, a new office, a new year, more or less a new life. Still mourning my old ‘just being a mom’ life, too. I tend to over-think things, and get well, sort of lost in space, ungrounded. And then, something old, really old, makes me feel like everything is new again. . . and puts my feet back on the ground.

On the ground, walking to the bus stop, 15 years old, having a bad day. Sad, lonely, misunderstood, my best friend is too busy to listen, so I head to the Wax Museum record store on Lake Street, determined to buy another Laura Nyro album. My parents don’t like me taking the bus down Lake Street, they think this is a bad neighborhood, but they don’t forbid me, or anything like that.

When I wear my purple velvet jeans, with all the patches that I had sewn on myself, with the little bells on a piece of rawhide leather tied onto the belt loop, my dad, who’s out raking, calls me over to him, “Theresa, don’t you have any other pants to wear?” I’m already on my way out, babysitting money in my suede purse, “But dad, I like these pants, they’re my favorite ones.” He shakes his head, picks up the rake again and I know that even if he doesn’t understand me, he still loves me. I don’t know if anyone understands me, but when I listen to Laura Nyro sing, I feel like everything will be alright.

To take the bus to the Wax Museum, I have to transfer buses on Lake and Hennepin, the busy bustling intersection that seems to be the intersection of worlds, of my world in safe Linden Hills, with the downtown world, further to the North, with the sketchy world, down Lake Street to the East, with the urban hip world, down Lake Street to the West; which leads to Lake Calhoun, and the first tier suburb of St. Louis Park. I like traveling the city by bus, by myself, and I like the Wax Museum, too.

Inside the record store it smells like incense, patchouli, and the big door jangles from the bells on it when I walk inside. The hardwood floors, and all the wooden containers full of music fill me with awe. It’s a combination of solidness, groundedness, and air, possibilities, music of all sorts, used and new. I find a Laura Nyro album (LP for long play) that I don’t own yet, and I am happy, happy to pay full price and buy it new. I find a used Joni Mitchell LP too, so that is icing on the cake. I think the clerks here are cool, a little forbidding in their hipness, mostly guys, with long hair and beads. I could have a crush on them, but they’re a bit old.

On the bus, on the ride home, I make a quick vow to myself, I will never, ever own all the Laura Nyro music in the world, so that I will always have something to count on to make me smile. When I get home, I head to my room, the batik spread on my bed, soft and colorful, I put on the new music, my friend calls me back, and now has time to listen. It’s all ok again. I have a lot of Laura Nyro music, I still love her rocketing voice and crazy lyrics. Today I found a new version of her song, Timer, a live, rowdy version, that is available on itunes, for 99 cents; I once again become grounded, and feel like everything will be ok, and there’s still Laura Nyro music I don’t own.

Happy New Space

Today I move into my new office space for my therapy practice. I’m excited and a bit scared, as I dare admit it. It’s stepping into my dream and vision, which always seems like a wonderful hard step to take. It’s incredible that we have the power within us to create and live within our vision, shaping our lives. There was a time in my life when this process seemed much less tangible, something I believed possible, but was not sure how it worked. There were so many systems that I was familiar with that seemed to be part of how things worked, like school, the system that most of us are most familiar with, and it was this system, that then led us into the work system that we were to navigate to make our dreams come true.

But there was another system at work also, that I as a girl was not overtly warned about, the patriarchal system, that permeated all the other systems. This was the system that subtly said, “You are not as valuable as boys.” This system showed me that I had to cater to men, to play nice and be pretty and this too, would ensure my success. There was also a religious system that had it’s own rules and agenda, and this system too, more overtly, taught me that I was not as valuable as men. This was why, when I was married, I somehow had more value, because if I was not a man, at least I had a man.

Is it any wonder that single moms have it so hard? Also as part of this religious system, I believed that I could only get the things in life that I wanted if God wanted these for me also, so there was always a sort of “God willing” tacked on to it. Now, this seems a bit unfair to me, like thinking, why do I always have to have permission from someone to have what I want? And so if you were a woman, it usually was a male someone, from whom this permission would come. So, I will say it out loud, I’m done asking permission, and I’m ok with wanting what I want, and that being a good enough reason to have it.

I’ve found that in order to find a place for myself, I have to know the systems, and what they can do for me, but I also have to hold onto myself, know what I want and use the systems to get what I want. I can’t get stuck in the values of the systems, but move through them fluidly, able to see the past being played out in the present, and still hold onto my vision for the future. As I move through these systems, I hope to challenge the untruths, yet not become embittered by them. Systems can be a scaffold into your vision. They can also be a trap.

While I navigated these systems, I found I really wasn’t very fond of systems at all, and wanted to play around in life without hierarchy and so many rules. There are some places where you can do this, most obviously, the arts. Going to work with my ex, and working a couple of calls myself as a stagehand, proved the existence of a world where work can be play. There are other places in the world where this is possible, and I’ve been visioning this for a while now. A place where I can go to work and love what I do and the people I work with.

A place that will be filled with good energy, much like I’ve tried to do with my home. A place that evidences what is possible. A place where all people are valued, where dreams are cherished, and hard and hurtful truths can be explored with the backdrop of safety. A place to play and to heal and to grow. For now, this new space is where I am supposed to be.

Welcome to my space, and welcome now, as the new year begins, not to just new days, but to new space. Imagine it with me, a wide open canvas onto which you can paint your dreams. Pick your colors, pick the people you choose to love and spend time with. Choose how you see life, choose how you show your emotions, or how to keep yourself safe. Choose your own systems, base them on what feels right in your heart, and trust this. Don’t make either or choices, make choices that randomly mix things, conjure up your own sorcery, your own magic, this is your year, your life, your wide open space. If you regret anything, believe it can be redeemed.

Simple Life

take walks

breathe deep

down to your toes

up to the top of your head

your crown chakra

eat with others

more

eat alone

less

smile more

listen more

ask more questions

from the heart

keep going when

you’re afraid

dare

to love

over and over

and over

again

The True Meaning of Christmas

I had an interesting phone conversation with my ex yesterday. We’ve somehow started the tradition in the past few years of coming together for Christmas, and actually even talking before Christmas to plan for our family celebration, which usually includes my ex, his mother, our children and grandchildren, and at times extended family and/or friends. This is sort of a miracle in itself, in that my ex and I are not exactly best friends or anything, but we’re learning to communicate better around the topic of our children and grandchildren. Which brings me to the interesting point, for me at least, when my ex said, “We need to get back to the true meaning of Christmas.” For it was at this point, that I realized that there is no one set “true meaning of Christmas.” My ex continued by suggesting that next year we should not exchange gifts at all, but help others, as in donate to a secret santa organization, as it was time we “gave to others who were needy" reclaiming, in his schema, the true meaning of Christmas.

At this point, I was a bit flabbergasted on a couple of points, 1) my ex had no clue that as a family, in the past, without him, while still 'needy' ourselves, we had donated to these organizations at Christmas (and other times, too) and 2) the idea that you had to deny from yourself or your family in order to donate. So, as we talked, I shared with him, that our ‘family’ had no consensus on the ‘true meaning of Christmas’ and also that ‘our’ family had already integrated giving to others into our lives. I knew when we divorced that we seemed to be on polar opposite sides on many issues, and this conversation highlighted this chasm, once again. We never had very well aligned, or defined, family values, and our families of origin seemed to have very different values when it came to understanding how people, or families thrive. We never really even talked about it. Maybe this would be a start to my ex understanding who his family had been, and now was, since I raised our daughters, without him.

This conversation made me take stock and reminded me of what I believe and value. That we can give to ourselves and others. That if we give to others “til it hurts” it helps no one. If we give out of abundance and joy, it doesn’t feel like giving, it feels like sharing. I raised my daughters to value people and to value sharing, we don’t always embrace abundance in ways we could, I unfortunately passed down my own family legacy of fear of not having enough, which I believe my parents internalized through the first great depression. It also made me wonder if sharing isn’t a socialized gender value. I know many women who share time, cookies, child-care, who volunteer, who offer to do the meal planning and making at the holidays for all the gendered people in their families, and I’m not quite as sure as to how men share their time and talents? We do still live in an economy that doesn’t value caring, do you know how much money people who care for our children and our elderly earn? In comparison to people who care for our money? Caring is not something that should be the meaning of Christmas, caring should be the meaning of life.

What do you care about? What do you value, what is your “true meaning” of Christmas? My daughters, I think would resoundingly answer, “cookies.” For me, I am so grateful for the times I was able to buy for my family and to give to others too. I can't imagine not wanting to give my own girls presents at Christmas, not out of thinking that things buy happiness, but out of the joy of giving and sharing with those I love. During the rest of the year, I continue to envision and work toward a caring economy, where each person has value, and the things they need, and we as a society work together not for individual wealth, but for a culture that believes we are all entitled to the good things in life.

3 Days Away

Christmas is 3 days away. My condo is now officially messier than it’s ever been, I think I can absolutely verify this by the cobwebs on my light fixtures, the dust bunny colonies moving in on me, encroaching you might say. The dirty clothes overflowing and the sink and counters stacked with dirty dishes. Half wrapped gifts and unopened boxes from Amazon sit on my dining room table. The only Christmas decor in my condo is a poinsettia I won at a holiday luncheon.

Err, why did it have to come so fast this year? How did I get so busy? I was the one who dragged her feet to grade school every year, dawdled to look at the snow flakes as they fell on her jacket, and would skip gym class to just sit in the locker room and eat sunflower seeds. Now I am running and never fast enough. So, what does this total blur of the season tell me? How is my life informing me?

There is always one more present that someone wants at the last minute, but guess what, I’m taking off the hat that says “Person who makes everyone’s dreams come true.” This said, I do feel bad that I never put up a tree, and mostly becomes it means a lot to my daughter who lives with me, but I also feel okay in knowing, that she will be disappointed and still be okay. There was a time in my life that I didn’t know that people could actually survive negative emotions. Seriously, so hell bent on pleasing people, I took it personally whenever someone wasn’t.

I do want to get back to having time for and liking the holiday season. I am becoming overwhelmed (in a good way) by the cards, gifts, and all the caring that people have for me. I’m letting it in, letting it soothe all the bitterness of all the years of being the single parent at Christmas. Of being Santa on a budget, of managing the hopes and dreams and disappointments that don’t just come this time of year, but all year long. There are heightened emotions this time of year as we time travel, remember back, and take stock of what’s in store for next year.

Next year, yes, that’s when we’ll have a clean home, a lovely tree, the bills will be paid off, and everyone’s Christmas dreams will come true. “Wake up.” Wake up in your life, love the dust, love the mess, accept the holiday river flowing through your life. No tree, but I am grateful, grateful and if not surrounded by lights and greenery, surrounded by the sparkle of love, of life, of friends. Merry, merry, merry life to you.

Zen and the Art of Baking Pumpkin Bread

For Halloween, I bought a perfectly cute little organic pumpkin, that sat on my pretty granite counter. I knew better than to leave it outside, where the squirrels could it eat. I knew, eventually, that I would eat this pumpkin, but for a while it was just a beautiful thing to see sitting on my counter.

A few weeks ago, it was time to cook the pumpkin, or it would end up rotten. So, I cooked my pumpkin, pureed it and froze it. Over a week ago I took it out of the freezer and put in the fridge to thaw. Wow, time flies, and once again, if I don’t cook it, it will rot.

Megan, my dear youngest, has taught me the art of following a recipe, exactly, and I will be the first to admit, that things do turn out rather consistently, better, when you measure. Unfortunately, my bread baking this morning was inexact. But it was pleasant in the making.

I plugged in my laptop by my only kitchen window. I could see the beautiful new dusting of snow on everything in the alley. I listened to jazz from Ella to Chet. I lit some candles. I measured the white sugar, hmm, not enough, ok, substitute more brown sugar. I measured the baking soda, oh crap, more than I intended fell into the batter. Oh well, spoon that part out. What do I do with this extra 1/4 cup of nummy pumpkin, throw it in rather than throw it out. It’s taking a bit longer to bake, but it smells awesome.

The recipe calls for glaze for the bread, and it’s amazing with the glaze, but I’m now out of white sugar, and the orange that I bought to zest for the glaze has such a funky soft rind that there is just no zesting of it to be done. I’m letting the bread cool, so I have no opinion on the goodness of this yet. It will have to be good enough without the glaze. Sometimes you have all the ingredients, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you can follow the recipe, sometimes, you just have to improvise.

I am making time to bake. I have to, even when I don’t have time. It grounds me, it connects me to this cycle of growing, and cooking and eating and doing it all over again. It is not an exact science, although the right amounts of the right stuff make it better. It is nearly Christmas, a week away. We put up the trees, take them down, we give gifts, we remember, we celebrate. We hold each other near, or as near as we dare, this time of year.

Next year is for more new adventures. Light more candles, bake more bread. Decide to love one or two more people next year, or love the ones you already love, better. And cherish your one dear self. Take a bite of warm pumpkin bread, inexact, but delicious. Find the recipe at Orange-Spice Pumpkin Bread, Williams Sonoma (online).

heart you

to get to the heart of the matter

where is the beginning of the road to

your self

where does the path become so tangled

that you sit and cry

in the midst of it all

until you look up

and see the dew on the leaves

the sun through the trees

and just believe

that who you are is there

somewhere

Theresa's Top Ten

After having been immersed in American Christian culture for most of my life, and then taking the time to really try to find out what many others had to say about their faith, not to mention (ok, I’m mentioning it) reading all the way through different versions of the Bible every year for about fifteen years, I’m now ready to list the top ten things I’ve learned from the Biblical Christmas story.

Top Ten Takeaways From the Christmas Story

1. Always make room reservations.
2. There’s always room to sleep in a barn (if you don’t follow above).
3. A manger is a good place for a baby. (Nice height, easy to reach, sturdy, keeps baby on his/her back.)
4. It’s important to pay your taxes.
5. Listen to Angels.
6. Pack a lunch and follow your star.
7. Stay with your woman, even if she’s pregnant by someone you’ve never met.
8. Travel in threes (the three wise men), research confirms that buying experiences (like travel) is more satisfying than buying things.
9. Don’t listen to kings (Herod). (Also see, The Emperor’s New Clothes, by H.C. Andersen.)
10. Honor young pregnant women (no matter what they told you regarding how they conceived, you never know whose mother they might be).

Advent Vespers

I finally attended an Augsburg Advent Vespers service last night. I say finally, because, I’ve been wanting to attend this event for about fifteen years. Ever since I graduated from Augsburg College and began receiving invitations to the service as an Augsburg alumni. Is timing everything? Maybe, so maybe there’s some cosmic reason that it took me fifteen years to go.

When I went back to college to finish my undergrad degree, my world was slowly falling apart. I’d been in some ways, happily married, and in other ways, more personal ways, more unhappy than happy. In hindsight, I can say that I didn’t know that I had a right to be personally happy and have my own goals and dreams. When I was single, I was going to school at the University of Minnesota, first at Morris, Minnesota, and then, after one semester and one too many blizzards, I moved back home with my parents in Minneapolis and transferred to the Minneapolis campus. I worked full-time nights, and paid my own way through college.

After Kathleen and Erin were born, I took night classes, not giving up on that four year degree. I also loved going to school, loved learning and meeting new people. But once we moved to Owatonna, and I soon became pregnant again, I gave up (at least for a while) on the idea of finishing. I guess I believed I’d traded in my own life for a home and family. Then, one day, a miracle occurred, or at least I believed it was a miracle at the time, and really, I guess it was. I received a postcard in the mail advertising Augsburg’s Weekend College. Imagine, I could finish my degree on the weekends, every other weekend, in fact. This postcard came at just the right time in my life. A miracle, no?

It seemed like a miracle, in many ways, not in the least in that it was something I wanted really badly, but didn’t think I deserved. I was brought up, thinking that private colleges were for rich people, and just generally, not for people like me. Steve, my husband, had attended Augsburg for a while, and I was somewhat jealous and baffled by his opportunity to attend a private college and just walk away from it (he’d had a scholarship even, and dropped out). I had to somehow believe that I could go to a private college, and that I could find the money to go, if they accepted me.

By this time, I had not worked outside the home for quite some time, and to say my self-confidence was waning would have been an understatement. Usually, too, when I wanted something, Steve would find a way to make me feel small for even asking. So, when I finally approached him about it, and he said, “yes” and helped me fill out the financial aid forms, it was like a dream come true. I was really going to finish college, and once again, I had dreams for myself. My imagination was reawakening to possibilities. It’s hard for me now, to imagine a place as an adult where I had to ask someone else’s permission to do something good for myself. My role as a wife and mother had usurped my sense of self so easily.

I met with an advisor at Augsburg, and we reviewed my transcripts from the U and it soon became apparent that the quickest way for me to finish college was to get the English degree I had started towards at the U, especially since I had completed more upper level English credits than anything else. Wordsworth, anyone? At the time, it didn’t dawn on me that I might have to find a job with this degree, all I knew was that I loved reading and writing. I did take communication courses, which I also liked, and so decided on a Communication minor.

Well, a funny thing happened on my journey back to school, I started growing. I started making friends on these weekends in the cities who were not like my church-lady friends in Owatonna. We’d look forward to our lunch together on Saturday, in between morning and afternoon classes. These women were much more frank about their relationships and their lives, their language not peppered with “The Lord this, and the Lord that.” As I grew closer to the friends I was making, and closer to the person who I was, I realized that Steve and I were really not close at all. I began to wonder, really wonder, what had happened to me?

To be able to attend school, my parents agreed to watch my children for me every other weekend, and I stayed with them overnight, also. Classes were scheduled for Friday nights, Saturday morning and afternoon, and Sunday morning. Most times, Steve would drive us all up, and then pick me and the girls up on Sunday, driving us home by Sunday evening, when I’d barely have time to get them ready for the school week. This was really hard on the girls. Kathleen was a young teen, and Erin and Megan in grade school. They all missed out on birthday parties and hanging with their friends on the weekends, and they began to resent staying with my mom and dad. On one Friday, before we left for Minneapolis, I knew Erin and Megan’s hamster Teddy was dying, and I just lied and told them he would be fine, knowing he’d be dead when we returned. He was.

I completed one year of weekend college. During the past year, my marriage was falling fast apart. A young woman had called me up and told me my husband loved her, not me. She was a dancer at a strip club. Steve continued to tour with Prince and was often gone for months at a time. The girls felt adrift, and I know now that I was not really able to be present for them. No one had ever really been present for me in my life, so I had no clue what that was. The church-ladies were telling me that God would save my marriage, and I really, really wanted to believe that, but I also wanted the nightmare to end. I wanted to wake up. More than one instructor at Augsburg encouraged me to write, and to keep writing. My philosophy instructor counseled me when I confided in him that my marriage was a mess. The Augsburg community was embracing and empowering.

I filed for divorce. Steve was on his second dancer girlfriend, this one not as friendly as the first, and I couldn’t stand being stuck in the chaos anymore. He’d profess his love for me and the girls and then rarely come home. The house was in foreclosure and our bills in collection, even though Steve made good money. This was not the white picket fence I’d opted for, this was like a chain link fence around a cemetery. Obviously, God was not up to saving this particular marriage, and I didn’t even care why or why not anymore. I had no clue how I would support myself and my three girls, but I did know that if God wouldn’t save my marriage, I had to save myself and my daughters. I asked Steve to move out, he moved back to Minneapolis.

My parents were there for me as much as they could be. My car was not very reliable, and my mom and dad graciously allowed me to use my mom’s car to be able to finish school. One more year of school, I thought, and everything would be okay. Only thing, during my last year in school, we found out that Kathleen was pregnant. I nearly dropped out, but my friends at Augsburg convinced me not to.

In between writing papers and studying, I was parenting a very sad and scared pregnant teenager. Megan was diagnosed with depression, and Erin was left alone way too much. Graduation was in June, and Kathleen’s baby was due in June. I really wanted to march, so much of my life had not been about me, I wanted this small ritual. I wondered, would life always be this complex? The baby waited until after I marched, and all three of my children and my parents attended my graduation.

I had no clue what the next part of my life would look like. Divorced, soon to be grandmother, and wondering, how to parent a teen mom? How to single parent? As so many parents do, I can only say, I did my best at the time. The challenges seemed insurmountable, most of the time. I was often weary- nearly lost in the chaos of life. But even if I felt that way; I wasn’t lost, and finishing my degree at Augsburg gave me hope. In the nick of time, with the coming collapse of the economy, having a degree gave me the opportunity to provide a home for my family. I was able to find a job I loved, at the Gainey Conference Center of the University of St. Thomas. This job gave me the opportunity for graduate school.

So, last night at this advent vesper service so much of this came flooding back to me, in the candlelight and Christmas light of the beautiful downtown church, in the hush of the evening, in the angelic sounds of the choirs, in the magic of the orchestra. The air was swirling with history, religious and personal. In this space I was able to contemplate, to remember, to be grateful. We are all alright now, fifteen years later. Perhaps miracles are our ability to continue to start over, again. To have hope. Advent, waiting in twilight for morning to come, again.

some day

i used to think that no one would love me because

my kids were too wild too crazy too loud

my house too messy

my thighs too big

and my intellect too proud


my children are grown

and my house is less messy

my thighs are just right

and my intellect, intact


my imagination has grown

large enough to imagine

a love big enough to dream

strong enough to embrace imperfection

and steady enough

to invite itself in and stay

coming down and the river of gratitude

today I have a whole day of no work

just play

whatever that means anymore

as my writing has become work

as my work becomes play sometimes

as my self becomes my work

as my worth has become tangled up in

measurement of cash and education

that translates into letters after my name

and the addiction to praise to being smart

enough

and I let the layers fall away

it is a bit painful

to feel

but underneath

is the soft fleshy part

that is real

and I am grateful

for the pain

for the beauty

for the intensity

with which I am allowed to live my life

flowing like a river

teeming with life

forms too many to count

so I feel my pain

feel my bliss

look upon my children

my grandchildren

my friends

my family

try to count the stars

in gratitude

for every single breath

give up counting

and just rest in

blessings

New Car

Getting what you want. How hard is that? Sometimes not so hard, if what you want is a cup of coffee. Knowing what you want? I think this is the tricky part for many of us. We are born into a life that we have no control over, except in our brain, the part of us that screams at our caregiver as soon as we can, “You’re not the boss of me.” This we know, that somewhere, deep inside, we are actually our own boss. Some people grow into this, their autonomy is nurtured, and applauded, and they learn to take steps to take good care of themselves. For others, this child's autonomy, this personal power, is a threat to their parents or caregivers, something to be squashed. My mom, for example, when I was pretty little, would actually tell me about my older siblings getting into trouble and how she punished them, and then she’d say something horrible like, “I wasn’t about to let those little shits get the best of me.”

When I was a kid this sounded bad and scary, and it still does now, and I wonder, should I even share this? But there it is, and it’s the truth. Just recently, at 85, my mom shared with me that her mom would beat all of her children with a strap, that way, if she didn’t know who was the culprit of what ever small thing a child might have done wrong, she would have at least whipped the guilty party. What does this do to the child’s autonomy, the child’s right to keep themselves safe? What does it do to their sense of caring for their sibs? Their small sense of self feels the sting, and carries this pain with them, maybe for a lifetime. Maybe then, whipping their own children. My mom went on to tell, that her youngest sister, intent on keeping herself safe, hid the strap down the drain in the basement, where their dad found it, when the sinks wouldn’t drain. I imagine, she simply got the strap, again. I wonder, how all this beating of children got started, was deemed, OK?

What’s this got to do with getting a new car? Well, really all of life is interconnected, we try to chop it up into different parts, work, school, at school, different disciplines, you get the drift. For those of us who think integrally, this can be very confusing, we have to learn to un-connect all the connections we see, to survive in some way. To get the ‘right’ answer, when we continually see, there is no one right answer. That the truth is in the interwoven-ness of all of life. But the ones who think there is only one right answer are often the ones with the strap.

Because of the circumstances in which I was born, and grew up, I didn’t think I could ever really get what I wanted, and so I was taught to be happy with what I got; even if I was unhappy. Being happy was a value, and even this, I could see and accept, what with so much beatings and unhappiness all around. I was fortunate in many ways, and happy to be alive, especially when I wasn’t being oppressed in my family. I loved the sky, the clouds, the lakes that I grew up surrounded by. I grew up with lots of music, since most of my sibs were teenagers when I was young, and there were the band concerts from Lake Harriet that would waft through the summer night’s air.

Sometimes, my dad would take us younger kids in the station wagon and park in the Lake Harriet parking lot to hear the band concert. He’d buy us popcorn, as we waited in the car, jammies on. Life could be good, and if you wanted a box of hot buttered popcorn, you got what you wanted. Every so often, like magic, your wish would come true.

A few years ago, I needed a new car. My old car was paid for, but costing me lots of money in repairs. I didn’t even know who to trust about it’s worth, or if I should continue to fix it. So, I traded it in for a newer car, sight unseen, that my brother-in-law drove down from up North. It didn’t take me long to know I didn’t like this car, but I’d bought it, and I was uncertain as to how to proceed. I was working full-time and in grad school, and I just wasn’t in any sort of place to take the time to think about what I wanted or didn’t want in a car. So, I did nothing, and kept the car, unhappy, but not knowing how to resolve it.

I kept trying to tell myself, it was ok, I was lucky to have a car, and a newer car, but really, I didn’t like the car. It didn’t handle well for me, and it was not a good fit for me to comfortably drive. I wanted a new car. I didn’t know how or if I could afford one, but the day came, just last week. My car needed work again, while I was still making payments, and I mentioned in the service garage how frustrated I was. Well, they hooked me up with a salesperson, and instead of putting more money into a car I didn’t like, I started over, putting money into a brand new leased car. A car that I like. It resonates with the person who is the boss of me, inside of me. The person who knows what I like and don’t like, but just gets lost in figuring out what is acceptable to like, what is ok to want to go after, in a world where getting exactly what one wants out of life seems, well, unthinkable. Because, well, you should just be happy to not be being beaten.

fear of flying

You’ve heard it before, fear of failure, fear of success, it’s one or the other or a little of both when we have the fear of the future, fear of the unknown, when we leave the comfort of what we know for the unknown. Trouble is with life, it just never, ever, really stays the same. Maybe the trick is to balance out the known with the unknown, if this is possible. To have just the right percentages of safety and adventure, but then I’m sure those percentages are just not the same for each person, or even the same for the same person, at different times in their life.

So, here I am in the space of the extra hour of daylight savings time, filling out paperwork for new office space, feeling very anxious, and yes, afraid. And so I had to ask myself, “What am I most afraid of?” And part of it is not wanting to let people down, not wanting to fail, and not wanting to be vulnerable, in that place of not knowing, and having to trust other people to trust me, that I can do ok. And so, I have to feel my fear, my heart racing, my shoulders tensing and move into the future. I have to still the thoughts that say, “Just stay where you are, it’s not so bad.” As if there really is ever an option, to stay where we are.

I do keep thinking about how hard life is, not necessarily physically hard, but its these existential dilemmas that keep our breath rattling around in our bodies, instead of coming steady and strong, peace in, anxiety out. The thoughts wondering if we’re measuring up, or not, the worry of “Is this all there is?” that seems to come out of nowhere, just when we think we’ve got it all figured out. So, I’m trying to figure out my base line, where is it that I can just live and love and accept myself and others. To say, so what if I fail? I can always come back home to myself, breath in, breath out, and start all over again.

Woman as Spirituality

This weekend my daughter and I attended and presented at the 30th annual Women & Spirituality Conference at Minnesota State University in Mankato. It was a beautiful weekend for the drive, and a wonderful way for my oldest daughter Kathleen, and I to spend time together. I continually am awed by what it means to be a mother. The keynote speaker this year was Winona LaDuke, Native American activist and writer, mother, grandmother, amazing woman. I’m still hoping to get her book, Naming the Sacred, soon. I should have stood in line to buy it after her speech, but I was there not just with my daughter, but also with Max, her nine year old, and he’d been sitting very patiently for the entire speech (and opening ceremony); we were all hungry and ready to find lunch.

I continue to think about the things that LaDuke presented, about who gets to decide what belongs to whom? Who does get to name what is sacred? Why do we believe our justice system is even about being just? Why do we have so many incarcerated people in our country? This morning I spent too many minutes (any minutes at all are too many for me) on Facebook. I keep vowing to shut down my page, but then I’m drawn to telling someone “Happy Birthday” or something, and there goes my meditation time, to Facebook browsing, not a good trade-off. But I was there, and found some ‘friend’ dissing the Occupy Wall Street folks, and it made me so frustrated, but I didn’’t answer, didn’t reply, didn’t want to start a Facebook fight. So, one more note to self, stay away from Facebook, except for pics of grand-babies.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the fight is over. It’s not. Ignorance and fear are hard things to fight. I know, I fight them in myself more often than I’d like to admit. A person like LaDuke, however, gives me courage to continue to ask myself the hard questions, to hold out hope, to be appalled that a company can own the rights to seed and food. Really? How did that happen?

safety of the seasons

I am not a cold weather lover. This is the time of year I am usually overcome by dread, wondering how I’ll manage yet another season of cold. The voice on the radio tells me the windchill this morning is 39. After the middle of October, telling us the temperature outside just isn’t dramatic enough, we need to hear the windchill. Brrrrrr.

This year however, I have a plan. Just like Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, I will live through this wintry season, month by month. I will survive another Minnesota winter. Since I’ve lived here all my life, you’d think the season change would move seamlessly for me, but as you might have noticed, nothing in my life moves seamlessly.

So, here it is, already halfway through October. It’s been an amazing October, blue skies and warm breezes mostly. I am still getting by most days not wearing socks. But I’ve gotten my cooler weather clothes ready, you never know when that windchill will plummet. The grocery stores are stocking eggnog, but I won’t indulge until next month.

You see, I can do this. Next month is eggnog latte every day for breakfast, and pumpkin ice cream from Sebastian Joe’s. Dinner out with the family for Thanksgiving. I know it’s not traditional, but I’m beginning to like not having to lug a turkey home and I don’t have to be resentful about doing all the dishes afterwards.

Then it will be December and that month is, well, really magical if you dress warm enough. The trees will be filled with lights and the snow sparkles and dances. The holiday brings with it lunches out and hot toddies in. So, you see I can do this, month by month. I don’t dare go ahead into January, because, well, that is just biting off too much winter for one page. I will get there, resting in the safety of the seasons, content that the seasons still change, that the world still turns and right around the corner, I see spring.

do have be

It does seem that there is a power in the concept of trinity, just ask me, the mother of three daughters. There is definitely some power going on here. Another trio, that I think we need to balance out in life is do have be. I’ve mulled this over, in different ways, before stumbling upon the simplicity of this, this morning. I’ve been wondering a lot about the do and the have, as I’ve been working really hard, ever since I was fifteen, and changed the nine on my birth certificate to an eight, so I could work downtown at fifteen, when the legal age to work was sixteen. Now, with a lot of academic work behind me also, I’m a bit tired of the doing.

I’m also pondering the having, as I wonder about what do I want to have, to own, to carry on with me into the future. As I was growing up, owning your own home was drilled into me as the epitome of having. And having your own home can be amazing, it can be safe, and a place to have fun and a place to put all your other stuff. It can also be a burden, when keeping up that home requires you not to be there, or being there just means dusting off all your stuff, when you could be say, renting something like a kayak and being somewhere on a lake. So, how hard do you work for stuff, how much do you need to hang on to “home” when life seems to be calling you out, somewhere else?

Now, (big sigh here), being. This one is the one that’s challenging me now, the one that seems, well, indulgent. The one that seems such a threat to the other two. Because, if you are being, it doesn’t really matter what you have or what you are doing, or even that big one, “What do you do?” as in, “What do you do for a living” which translates into, “Who are you?” When we allow ourselves to be, we have to let go of all the questions and all the answers that we think define us, and others. But without being, the doing and the having are empty, reverberating questions that only begin to haunt us, the more we rely on doing and having alone.

So, if we can master, and somehow integrate, do have be, maybe, just maybe that is the better way to live. The way to walk our path, without too many regrets, to face the future with both desires and the ability to enjoy what is, to savor the desires that we fill, and to be okay with each moment that just happens. Maybe...

Rules of the Road

I am a rule breaker. This is where I come alive, where the lines are drawn and I dance upon them and then sprightly waltz over them, creating mere dust in the sand where the line once was. I didn’t know this about myself for a long time, and then a long time friend said to me once, in awe, in surprise, “The rules simply aren’t there for you are they? I mean, you just don’t see them.” And at this I had to think, and I realized she was right. I really did not see them, rules meant nothing to me, and her comment made me aware; aware that I was different, that the rules that a lot of other people saw and obeyed quite simply, only made me puzzled, and made me question why people were so enamored of their rules.

And so, this is my disclaimer: I may break some rules, it is what I do.
Oh not that I don’t have any rules in my head, I have a lot of those ‘bad’ rules that parents and adults drum into children’s heads. Children should be seen and not heard, don’t tell the neighbors…. Damnable and damaging secrets and lies that forbid us to talk about our real lives. Don’t tell the whole truth. This rule too, I try to break, if only in my writing, as I try not to be too real in polite company, as it can make people uncomfortable. Teacher and writer Floyd Salas, says, "All considerations of language, of ideas, of symbols and metaphors serve only one function: to convey the soul of a living being to the soul of other living beings and in that process break us out of our isolation and loneliness and put us in touch with the universal spirit."

This boils down what I hope is my function, in life, as a writer, as a therapist—
to convey my living soul to others, to connect with others and to connect with the universal spirit. This sense of connection, of belongingness, is often overlooked as the huge motivator that it is. We all bumble along, hoping for a sense of connection in life, when things are out of whack, some people shop, for stuff, maybe, but maybe for the connection, to be in a mall, to talk to a clerk, to imagine that they are important, buying things from someone who is there, to serve them.

So, how do we create connections that move us forward, that bring us closer, tighter in to this universal spirit? How do we move in sacred steps, so that even when we back away from the spirit, we are still close in? How do we create sacred spaces that invite others in closer to us and closer to the spirit where healing occurs? One of the ways this works for me is through words, reading words on a page, speaking words aloud, finding words and phrases that invite and heal. The hard part for me is to use the academic words, use ways of using words that are required, expected, codified. As if the words that ask questions that can be quantified, are more real, more valid, more scientific. I know better, though, I know that words of wisdom will not be counted, will not be verified by numbers, but by the souls that ring out, by the vibrations that run through the body when the truth hits the heart and the heart sings and says, “I knew this all along, this is truth, this I carry within me. This connects us and this is love.”

Enough Shoes

Often weekends are hard for me; it’s a combination of not knowing how to unwind and have fun, and of having had a week that was just too busy and so all the little life chores end up waiting for me. Piles of dirty clothes look up at me to be washed, the unpaid bills menacing me with late fees. Dust bunnies scamper about, taunting me. One of the ways that I’ve learned to cope with my feelings of helplessness and fear is to shop. I don’t add to my stress by buying expensive things I can’t afford, no, I buy shoes and boots that I get at an outlet store for anywhere from $3.00 to $15.00 a pair, and I rationalize it by saying I need shoes. Who doesn’t? Especially in MInnesota, and when I spend my days running from one place to another, walking from place to place in my multiple roles, they wear out. It’s getting colder, I decided I need a new pair of boots, even though I’ve uncovered three pair in a bag in my closet. Are these still hip? Maybe not.

So, I go to my favorite outlet store, which of course is more than busy on a late Saturday afternoon, and so I wait in the parking lot for a car to pull out. On the other side of the lot, a woman drives in and starts to signal for the spot I’m waiting for, I’m first, I’m closer, and I get the spot. During this time, the woman (in a late model luxury car) honks her horn continuously. Hmm, I think, she’s a bit over the edge. This was my first clue. I then proceed to get out of my car, thinking, “I don’t need to let her intimidate me. I was waiting for the spot, it’s just a parking space.” But also thinking, “Geez, maybe I should just back out and let her have the damned space.” But I don’t. So, as I’m walking to the store entrance this woman screams at me, “What do you think you are doing?” Second clue, a angry person who asks an obvious question like this is already irrational. When I ignore her, she says, “Didn’t you see me signal for that space?” I reply, “I was signaling also” and continue walking. At this point (okay this is more than a clue), the woman yells, “Fuck you!” To which I reply, “That’s lovely.” To which she replies, “So are you.” Hmm, she’s not very good at this.

I feel strangely on edge and afraid; I’m looking through the boots and shoes, thinking, “Will she come in here and get in my face?” Also darkly thinking, “Maybe I should just leave.” But I don’t, I tell myself I’m being silly, and ask myself, really, is a well-dressed older woman a threat to you? So I continue shopping, go to a store across the street, and even mention it when some women at the counter are talking about finding parking. It seems that people get a little crazy when bargain shopping. When I get to my car, less than an hour later, and go the the driver’s side, that’s when I see it. The entire length of the two doors and the front end of my car have been “keyed.” The paint still lies curled up on the edge of the scratch. Wow, this woman really was in a state. She screams and swears at me, and then damages my property over a parking spot.

As I’m there, looking at the damage, an African-American couple get into their car, next to mine, and they ask, “What’s wrong.” I tell them, they are kind, the man asks me “Was it a black woman or a white woman?” Wow, what a question, I’m unsure of how to answer that , but I say, “A white lady.” He’s incredulous, “A white lady did that?” “Hmm, mmm, yes.” The woman calls out to me to have a good weekend, anyway, as they drive away. It gives me a bit of relief in this weird moment of wondering what to do. I call the police and report it, the officer says, I could have called when she swore at me. Who knew?

As I drive home, I ponder the whole situation, thinking, “Should I have just relinquished the spot? Should I have entered into dialogue with her when I realized how angry she was?” I could have said to her, “Obviously, this spot means much more to you than it possibly ever could to me, here, take it.” But I also wanted to not be bullied, not be intimidated, is there a middle ground? So, I ask myself, “Where was my compassion?” Granted, we can’t go around hearing people all the time, or can we? She obviously had much more going on than finding a parking spot. I can only imagine.

So for me to report this to my insurance and to try to have it fixed is probably not worth my deductible. What’s my take away? It’s only a car, and I can’t fix this woman’s anger problem. I had every right to that spot, how could I have known that this woman’s behavior would have escalated to this point? She obviously found a space, parked, and decided to key my car. I have the reminder that possessions are not important, I guess I needed to let go of having a car with an unmarred paint job. I also think I may need to let go of buying shoes and boots to self-soothe. Last night I found the message (in a book on self-compassion) to “accept yourself just as your are.” Now may be the time for me to re-embrace self-acceptance, somehow, it used to come more easily. Instead of craving new shoes, to take a walk, and next time, when someone else wants the parking spot I’m waiting for; I think I will practice mindfulness and abundance, and leave way the place, there’s always another spot, in an abundant universe.

Happy Anniversary Blend

When I go grocery shopping I usually just buy a bag of ground Starbucks or Caribou coffee, but this last Sunday, while shopping, none of them seemed that wonderful, and then I remembered that I saw that Anniversary Blend was out, the last time I was out for a coffee with a friend. Anniversary Blend is one of Starbuck’s special coffees, that they only sell for a short while in the fall. I know nearly all the Starbucks coffees because for a year I worked at a Starbucks, first as a Barista (fancy name for coffee maker) and then as a shift supervisor. I get a lump in my throat remembering, as this was not a happy year for me.

It was one of the physically hardest jobs I’d ever had, as well as I felt embarrassed, having gone from working in sales & marketing at a prestigious conference center to selling coffee off of interstate 35W in a strip mall. The hours I had to work were really hard on me and my family. It was right around the time that Barbara Ehrenerich’s book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America came out, and she was telling my story. I was resentful that an already well-off, published writer was now getting money and fame from telling this story. It’s an important story, and I am honestly glad that it is being told, but it’s difficult to read about someone living your sorry life, but hey, not really, because they get to go home to their cushy life after living your life for a while for a book. I ended up with carpal tunnel in both wrists on that job. It was then that I knew I had to find a way to leave Owatonna, I had to find a different way to live.

So, last night on my way to my second job, I stopped at a Starbucks and bought a bag of this wonderful coffee, and I can smell it now, as I write. Good coffee. Anniversary Blend, I looked at the calendar and it is September 27, and I remember, 31 years ago today I participated in a marriage ceremony, I was the bride. I had hoped for lots of anniversaries, I had hoped for a long time to be with Steve, but the Universe and the two of us said, “No.” It was a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, with the leaves starting to turn. We loved each other, and that was enough for that day, and for nearly 15 years after. Life only lets you live in a certain place for a certain amount of time, and then you have to do the work.

The work is different for each of us, but you gotta do it, or you end up hating yourself and other people. It really is like the metaphor of the butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon, you just can’t live there too long, and breaking out of the shell is hard, hard work, but you get out and you see that not only is the blue sky and the wind and the trees turning color still there, but this time you also get to spread your wings and fly through it all. I had no idea how my life would turn out when I chose to be single again, just like I had no idea what would happen the day I married Steve. Life is a series of events and choices, and getting to choose lets us create the kind of lives we hope to have. We can use our imaginations to shape our futures. I drink a cup of coffee to that. Happy Anniversary Blend baby, got you on my mind.

There and Back Again

There are spaces in between that beckon me; places that you have to squeeze into and bear the weight of to go into. In between sleeping and waking is one of those spaces and I traversed between the two this morning. Starting with Second grade, I went to St. Thomas the Apostle School on West 44th St. in Minneapolis, and then I went to Southwest High School, most of the time, walking. So, I walked from 40th and Sheridan through Linden Hills day in, day out, and as I walked I sorted out my life. The chaos at home, the confusing and conflicting things I was learning at school. Wondering why kids are so mean to each other.

St. Thomas School is now called Carondelet School, a fancy name to match the now yuppie children who attend. When I went to school there we were all just middle class folk, some more succinctly middle than others. This Catholic school is at the top of the hill and around the corner of what is the heart of Linden Hills. It has changed and not changed. Like me, like life, changed and not changed.

But this morning for some ungodly reason, I forced myself back, testing my memory. I tried to recreate the place of the past, piece by piece, store by store, so I can go back, looking for what? Where the flower shop is, a flower shop was, I’d stop in sometimes on my way home from school and buy my mom a carnation, the roses were too expensive. I’d hope it’d cheer her up.

Next to the hardware store was Hawkinson’s Grocery Store, a small family run store. My friend Mary's mom had a credit account there, and we could buy snacks after school and charge it to her mom, we grew fond of Pepperidge Farm cookies, by the box; we’d buy M & M’s by the pound. Across the street from the flower shop was a bakery, the windows steamed and the aroma heavenly on a cold winter’s day. Sometimes my sister and I would have some coin, enough to buy a glazed donut to eat as we walked up the hill. On that same corner is now Twigg’s Home & Garden, when I was growing up, no one had “art” in their yard, maybe a bird bath.

Where Creative Kidstuff is, (very cool toys) was, for a short while a shop called Accessories Unlimited. And it was, scarves, handbags, jewelry, and a hip young woman named Marcia owned the store. We became friends. She’d let me hang out with her after school, she called my mom, so she knew where I was and who she was, and then every so often after school I’d help her sort jewelry, or run across the street to Hawkinson’s and get us each an apple or a single sized serving of ice cream that came with it's own wooden "spoon" (stick). She’d give me jewelry. We were friends until she got married and closed the shop. I was invited to her wedding, but I had the chicken pox and couldn’t go, and then I never saw her again.

What happens with these childhood memories, is that they become faded, and I wonder if they were real or not. When I see the actual places, I can sometimes remember, but these memories are so laden with emotion that they just take me to a place that resides barely within my consciousness. I think of Marcia, now, and think that I must still be missing her. Her shop was a safe place for me, her words kind, then it was no more. I had no one to help me make sense of her importance in my life, so the memories retain a strange hold and detachment at the same time.

Where the Great Harvest Bakery now resides, was a dairy store. I’d wait in the car out front, parked on Upton Avenue, and watch the long strides my dad would take, as he ran in for milk, when we’d run out before dinner. He’d smile, his blue eyes kind and hand me a package of M & M’s and it seemed that all was well with the world. Next to the dairy store was an antique store that held old musty stuff and mysteries. A couple of us kids would have to be brave to go into that place, the door bells ringing as we opened the door, an older woman who might be crabby, would look our way, glasses down on her nose. “We just want to look around” we’d say. And she’d let us, amused, I imagine.

There are no markers for exploring this inner world. Developmental Psychology makes no mention of our inner journeys and Jung’s or Freud’s dream work only refers vaguely to the lived reality of the spaces between waking and dreaming, past and present. Perhaps it is a dangerous journey or a journey better left untaken. Like the child I was, chastised for daydreaming, for going away, being brought back into the classroom by a harsh voice, being brought back to the brightly lit classroom, being taught about the miracles that Jesus performed, in the past, in a land far far away; as if this information would give me all I’d need to know in a vast and complex world. Some story about loaves and fishes, and in my small child’s mind, I thought if I only believed hard enough, I too might make miracles happen.

I wonder if I’m doing some sort of trance work, evening venturing into these places in between, or if I’m just sulking and mucking about in these half remembered places, wasting time. I picture myself, small, little steps over pavement, back and forth. Looking into the window of Bayer's Hardware Store, at the fancy glass pieces, hoping to save up and buy something pretty for my mom. At 85, my mom just moved into a new condo, and she has a decorative plate, set up on a brass plate holder, on her buffet in her dining room; blue pattern on white, it says, “A Good Mother Makes a Happy Home.” I bought it for her as a child, at the hardware store, still there, same place.

Remembering Who We Are

remember: ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French remembrer, from late Latin rememorari ‘call to mind,’ from re- (expressing intensive force) + Latin memor ‘mindful.’

I recently came across the book title, Healing is Remembering Who You Are, and I like the title, if remembering who we are is being mindful that we are holy. But it also can be difficult, to say the least, to remember who we are if our memories are fraught with hurtful phrases and barely remembered sensations of not being worthy. Maybe healing is not remembering who we are, singularly, but remembering who we are, collectively. Remembering who we are in a space where someone else can see who we are. Activating our mirror neurons in a way that affirms our (and each others) wholeness and holiness.

Research shows that healing happens in relationship, in trusting, supportive and nonjudgmental relationship. How do we find this? I honestly have to say that I first and mostly found this in therapy. This is not to say that I didn’t have family and friends who have loved and cared about me. But it is to say, that how they were able to love and care about me was often suspect. Not out of malice, but out of their own not knowing, or not remembering. In therapy-speak, this has often been called “emotional abuse.” I’m trying to find words that aren’t so accusing, that are more accurate of not knowing. I don’t think someone wakes up in the morning and says, “I’m going to perpetrate emotional abuse on this person I’m in relationship with.” I believe its more an issue of that person, not remembering who they are. Too many of us have forgotten.

On the other hand, when the one who feels the “abuse” doesn’t have words for it, it is helpful to know, for instance, that the feelings you have when someone treats you less than honorable are actually accurate for the situation. So, how do we move away from blaming language into creating language that helps us remember who we are? Can we create safe ways to say things like:
“I don’t feel honored when you yell at me.”
“I feel invisible when you are in the room with me but not present for me.”
“I feel diminished when you don’t listen to me.”
“I feel unworthy when you compare me to someone else.”

So, because one of the few safe places I’ve ever known is a therapy room, how do I move on out into the larger room, (wherever I go, ideally) carrying and honoring my own sense of holiness? One of the ways to frame this is in the context of trust: how to trust others, when to trust others, and with what? And then there’s how to trust myself, and of course, how to trust the universe. If healing is remembering (being mindful of) who we are, how will I recognize myself? Some of these answers, I have found just emerge. It is a dance with the divine, some might say an answer to prayer. It is a remembering to do what we have the power to do and then resting back in letting the universe bring forth the energy we need. This energy may manifest in people or places, or even things.

Last spring, for Easter, I wanted to buy flowers for the table. I ended up buying potted yellow roses. Perfect. After a bit, I realized these roses were a small rose bush, and if transplanted just might keep living and blooming. I was happy that I’d bought something living, not cut flowers, something that might provide me with flowers for a while, for on my budget, flowers are an indulgence. Yet I’m also trying to live in abundance and trust, this balancing act of rejecting what most people around me believe about money and having enough, and well, quite literally trust. Trust that I can have joy.

As I accept more abundant living and as I’ve learned to be more trusting, I’ve been blessed with a friend who too believes in the abundant universe, who is rejecting the paradigms that we were born into. As I trust myself, I trust her wisdom also, and we are creating a bond of hopefulness and trust. She encourages me in my dreams and visions (as I do hers); and when I’m discouraged by other new therapists trying to start practices, she asks me questions like, “Why is it so hard for these therapists to be entrepreneurs?”

Just yesterday, I completed my graduate studies in Human Development. A huge milestone, but I also have to acknowledge that I’ve used my energy to master studies and achieve degrees, in a way to manage my creative energy, something I don’t want to do anymore. I want to use my energy to create more healing relationships through therapy and grow my business. To create abundance in my life. To do this I have to trust myself, the process and the universe. Trusting education systems seemed safe, and accepted. It was a framework for my energy. Now, as in the Human Development program, I have to create even the framework for my work as a therapist. It seems daunting, yet, as my oldest sister said, “You’ve taken steps, now you need to take a leap.” As in “Jump!”

Fall is nearly here, I’ve brought my rose bush inside by my small kitchen window. The leaves have been falling off of it, and I’ve scratched my hands on the thorns while watering it and taking the dead leaves off. This morning, however, there are several new buds, simply sprouted overnight. New life, ready to bloom into beautiful little yellow roses. Beautiful energy, emerging from dirt, sun, water. One accomplishment behind me; a new one just begun, beautiful energy emerging, ready to bloom.

Forty Years Later

6:00 am Minnesota public radio turns on, all by itself, in my Hello Kitty clock radio. It's shaped like a tea cup, a white plastic cup sits on pink saucer, and Hello Kitty sits on top; and placed on the side of the cup is a plastic orange slice, the night light. I leave it on all night. Classic music fills my bedroom. Blue walls, a black framed print of Frida Kahlo, matching Hawaiian prints of beautiful women from the 40’s or 50’s that belonged to my dad’s Aunt Sue. An antique brass standing lamp. Purses hung on door knobs, books piled on the radiator. I awake, rather glad as I had unpleasant dreams. The music continues, and then The Writer’s Almanac, with Garrison Keillor, and I don’t want to get out of bed. Do I really have to go to work, again, just like every other day? The air is chilly, the bed is warm, the blankets soft. Why does this feel so familiar, the feeling of wanting to stay in bed, and just listen to the radio?


7:00 am KQRS turns on, all by itself, on the GE clock radio that was a present from my parents when I turned 12. It’s a good one, a nice one, with good reception, nice sound, not tinny. On my bedroom door is a nearly life size poster of George Harrison, from his All Things Must Pass era, I think he’s cool, and maybe cute, but looks were never as important to me as persona. My sister just thinks he looks freaky. There’s a poster from an old movie, Good Night Paul sitting still backed by a piece of cardboard, wrapped in plastic, just set upon the highboy dresser. I may get this one framed, so I don’t want to unwrap it. A brass incense burner sits on the dresser, also. Two twin beds, although the room is mine alone, each with a different cotton batik spread from India, purchased at Global Village, in Dinkytown. Rod Stewart is singing Maggie May, I need to get ready for school. I don’t want to leave my cozy bed, I want to lie there and listen, just listen.

My brain is thinking of all the things I need to do today, and what will happen if I’m late for school, and I wonder, did we really mean to create this kind of world? Where kids are stressed the moment they wake up? I look around at my antique trunk, the beginnings of my hope chest, the black and white framed photos I’ve taken, sitting on top. I want to stay home, bake cookies, maybe take a walk. But I get out of bed, make my way to the bathroom, and get ready to go to school.

Dog Day Cicadas

The Dog Day Cicadas
usher in the reign of Ms. Autumn
who doesn’t care that you like it warmer,
or that you want to have berries bloom
again and again to squish into your
lovely mouth and bake into pies.

Who doesn’t care that the days grow shorter
and colder. She heralds in pumpkins and squashes and
apples and cool breezes. She reminds you of school days
and books and new shoes and the smell of classrooms
and that love of your youth, whom you walked around the lakes with
while the water formed waves and the willow branches swung lightly, and you held hands tightly. Thinking this must be love.

Its her turn, its her time, and she’ll make the leaves fall, eventually.
After she turns them one by one from green to yellow, to orange, and golden
and they will all drift slowly from the trees to the ground to form a soft rug under
your feet, or to make a lovely sound as they tumble, dried and crispy, down the street.

Sure as we know, the Cicadas are singing, bringing the return of Autumn, her breath fresh and sure, her touch cool and calm, she says, “Time to get your warm blankets out."

Date with Wisdom

things I’ve figured out so far this month

So, I had a date with a younger guy this month, someone I’d connected with a while ago, and while we both felt something, we weren’t sure what. We’d made one date that got postponed, but then happened. This whole thing of dating makes me nervous, it’s so fraught with cultural and personal expectations, most of them not reality based, that it’s amazing that people even hook up at all, right?

And I will admit, to date someone younger pushed a lot of my fear buttons. Fear of getting old, fear of looking old, fear of being a fool. Fear of either being too attractive, or not attractive enough, or not attractive in the right way. Fear of facing my own wants and desires and the fear of not knowing exactly how the whole rest of my life will turn out. The unknown. Admitting the unknown in a culture that thinks it can quantify the future. Well, to this I say, “Hah!”

The evening went well, even when he pretended not to be surprised at my age, even when he shared with me he was looking for someone to start a family with. Obviously, not me, was what he was trying to say. And in between I read, “Someone with whom I believe I can quantify the future with. Make it as predictable as possible based on what I want, and believing this can and will happen.” I of course, was disappointed, trying not to take it personally, in spite of his, well, being too young. I enjoyed his company.

The good I took away from this, however, was as I talked with my daughters and friends, all only wished good for me. I was given permission to date who I will, my desire for companionship and one day love, was honored as something good and to be encouraged. It was my own fear of admitting that I did want and need a relationship that I believed somehow diminished me. I had to face my own unwillingness to admit that I was finding too much of my identity in autonomy, of being alone.

What I also took from this, is that I realized that I am looking for someone with imagination, someone who can do a risk/benefit analysis of life while integrating their imagination. Since some of the things I’m pretty sure I’m looking for are: kindness, intellectual prowess, being emotionally connected to self and others, curiosity, a found passion in and for life (I guess it is kind of a long list); I can now add to the list, having imagination, and well, OK, a great smile, which of course, would show all of the above.

I also found that I am not immune to bumping up into still more darkness inside of myself. I sometimes acknowledged to myself that I was scared of aging, and worried about how much I depended on looking young to be charming; how it was reassuring to look in the mirror and look pretty much the same day after day. Just recently, however, I smiled at myself in the mirror and exclaimed to my daughter, “I’ve got laugh lines around my eyes.” I liked them, at first, but then, it was the word wrinkles that trickled into my brain and consciousness, as in “old now.”

It is a lesson to love myself, my wrinkles, my 52 year old body that is not quite as glowing, but is hopefully more graceful in the acceptance of gravity, the same gravity that keeps me centered and sane. The same gravity that grounds me in the present, so that I can be here for my own family, in a way that younger parents can’t be. I don’t give up on loving myself more in the passing years, and I hold out this wisdom to my now grown children, continuing to give to them increasing love for themselves and others. I’m lucky to have children, and wrinkles and any wisdom at all.

So what else? I’ve found that we have different ways of being our most authentic self. We have our intellectual self, we have our emotional self, we have our embodied self, we have our sexual self and we have our imagined self, and of course, we have our shadow self. Who leads in our relationships? The intellectual self or the sexual self? The confident self or the scared self? We get to decide if we are connected enough to our shadow self. If we are not, our shadow self leads, with it’s own agenda. That’s when we get to repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and well, we all know how dull that is. (Sort of the antithesis of wisdom.)

We also get to decide how much each of these selves wants to show up, and how much we want to be connected to someone else through these selves. If our child self chooses in relationship, how is this going to work as we hopefully grow up? If our intellectual self chooses a mate, and our adventurous self kicks in, will we stay or leave?

One more thing. Honoring the holy in each other. How do we do that? I’ve found that if I enter into any relationship, I can choose to see the holy or the unholy. I can choose to take the gift that this person has to offer, or I can look in disdain and walk away. It’s not them, it’s me. It’s me choosing compassion, and if that person is not as self-aware as I would hope them to be, to offer understanding, and to take what, in their holiness, they do have to offer.

It’s a stand of hoping to offer to others whatever is the best in me, to them, for the taking; knowing that I am not diminished by what I give, but enriched by the opportunity, every day, to encounter the holy in others. Seeing my own face with laugh lines in the mirror, reflecting back my own holiness. Compassion for self, compassion for others, love enough for each day, still holding out hope for companionship and commitment, should it come my way. Still looking, still listening to the Moody Blues, I Know You’re Out There Somewhere.

Me and The Night and The Music

I took myself out on a date last night. I wasn’t totally sure about the whole thing, maybe not so sure I’d like myself that much, but Ben Sidran, one of my favorite jazz/bebop artists was in town at the Dakota last night, and I didn’t want to miss him. I even told my daughter, voicing my apprehension, “At least when you could smoke in clubs, it gave you something to do, rather than just sit there.” I don’t even smoke.

I tried really hard to find someone to go with. One guy turned me down, acting as if I’d asked him for a life commitment, and my closer friends were just too overworked to plan to be out downtown on a Monday night. So, it looked like it was going to be just me and myself. And it was.

Strange how hard it was for me to go, really. But once I made the commitment to go, it did become fun. I worried about parking, no big deal. I worried about sitting alone for the evening, and that didn’t even happen. When I bought my ticket, they were getting close to being full and asked if I’d mind sitting at a table with someone, so I said, “No, I don’t mind.” This was after all, an adventure. I'd been a fan of Ben Sidran ever since I was a teenager, and when I'd seen him over ten years ago in concert, it was incredible, and so I knew this concert would be wonderful.

But when I got up to the second floor, and approached the table, the middle aged guy sitting there looked very surprised that he was sharing his table. It felt very awkward, and I started thinking maybe I could get another seat, but the place was filling up fast. He subtly used his left hand so that I could see his wedding ring. I was there, however for Ben and the boys, not to pick up men.

So, I decided to take things in hand and asked, “So, how are you?” It broke the ice and after that it was fine. A little awkward, in that the servers assumed we were together, but we clarified that. I ordered a glass of wine, he ordered dinner, separate tabs. When his chocolate souffle came, it was enough for me to savor the smell. I learned at the end of the evening, when we shook hands and said goodbye, that his name was Kieran.

And, once the music began, it didn’t matter who sat across the table, or that I was on the second level, without the greatest view. The music was amazing. Ben Sidran played piano and told his stories in his captivating way. And the other reason I was there, to hear 92 year old Irv Williams play sax didn’t disappoint, either. I’d seen Irv Williams with my ex, Steve, and his parents before we had married at the Riverview Supper Club, what seemed like a million years ago, and so to see him again, at 92, was incredible.

In the break I got to know my table mate a little better. He was originally from London, traveling in town with his son for their business. He was a mathematician. We talked about psychology, our families, and our businesses. I drank my one glass of Malbec slowly throughout the night, he ate his dinner. I was happy just to be out and listen to live music. The encore song was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Irv’s sax was as sweet as Kieran’s chocolate souffle had smelled. I was somewhere over the rainbow, on a date, with myself. I think I'll ask myself out again sometime soon.

Sink or Swim (or Float)

Being a single mom gave me many opportunities to be both very poor and financially creative. There was always an undercurrent of impending loss in my life, anyway. I was brought up to believe that anything good, was probably too good to be true. And then, there you’d be with egg on your face, thinking that something good might actually happen, to you.

I gave up believing things being good was an impossibility, and I do hold out that life can even be mostly good. I can remember when I was first married, at all of 21, living in a beautiful new apartment complex in Edina, newly home from a honeymoon to Paris and London, and I asked Steve, “Will it always be like this for us?” I was asking him, really, “Can I finally just let my guard down and live?” His answer was “Of course.” So, I believed him for a blessed while.

And, of course, things weren’t always like that. Because things are not always like one thing or another. Things, being life, are always changing, unless we’re trying really hard not to change them, and that brings with it it’s own strangeness. That, however, was probably the last time I really believed that things could just always be really wonderful. Finances, too change. As much as we can tout financial planning, frugality and the like, sometimes things are hard, and sometimes, people who are not that good with finances seem to always have enough. Finances, like life circumstances are fluid, not set.

I’m at another crossroads, as I now know there are many in life. My small business is going okay, but not enough to support me. I still have my day job, which only partially supports me. So, in trying to explain where I’m at to someone, I simply said, “I guess I just have to wait for the universe to shift. Someone else might say, they are waiting for an answer from God, but I’m waiting for my good energy to come to fruition.” To which he replied, “God helps those who help themselves.” A saying that I’ve come to dislike, (and I told him so) as in this is a time in my life where I’m: a) too weary to help myself, b) have helped myself repeatedly to no avail, or 3) see a). I’ve been to this place before.

So, mulling this over, driving into work, I thought of the saying “sink or swim.” This didn’t seem like a good option either, when you are weary, you can’t swim, but you don’t really want to sink, either. Unless of course, you are Virginia Woolf, and that is just a sad, sad story. So, I decided to tell myself that there is a third option, float.

I noted this to my daughter, Kathleen, who in conversation, brought up the “God helps those who help themselves” adage. I told her about my addling float, to sink or swim, and she wisely said, “Well, floating is what you are supposed to do if you are drowning.”

The Art of Ennui

en·nui   [ahn-wee, ahn-wee; Fr. ahn-nwee] noun
a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom: The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.
Origin:
1660–70;  < French:  boredom; Old French enui  displeasure; see annoy

Synonyms
listlessness, tedium, lassitude, languor.

I think at times that I have perfected the art of ennui. I have it again. I’ve just finished the last paper, in the last class for my second master’s degree. This one in Human Development, so now what? I’ve always believed in the beauty of relationship. It is what drives us, fulfills us and does, as simple as it sounds, make life worth living. That wonderful sense of sharing who we are with someone who cares. Someone who gets us.

This is what I now have space for, have almost given up on, which is in part, the substance of my ennui. Waiting for a chance to live life in relationship. Even when I was married, my ex toured the states and the world, literally. I closed on our home, alone, Steve was in Italy. I moved in, alone, with my then two children.

There’s a wonderful movie called A Simple Twist of Fate with Steve Martin in which he asks his daughter if she is experiencing ennui and then he engages her in a way in which her ennui dissolves, in the relationship, in the moment, in the magic. I’m longing for a moment like this today.

I’m both excited for finishing this program, and sensing such a sense of emptiness. If I fill up with achievement, then what? I’ve achieved enough. I know this. I’ve searched for the secrets of the universe, and guess what? For anyone who cares to know, I think I have most of it figured out. But this love/relationship thing, outside of my family, eludes me.

I’ve bought new music, Beth Orton and Dusty Springfield, music to ennui by. Waiting for the universe to step up and surprise me. Make ennui a thing of the past, or just little pieces of it, here and there to be a counterpoint to joy.

Lights Out

This weekend the lights started to flicker in my bathroom. Eventually, the lights wouldn’t go on at all. Must be the switch. The bathroom window looks out into the middle of some weird empty middle space in our four-plex, so it’s not really a source of light. So, more or less, depending on the time of day, like say morning, getting ready for work, it’s dark in there.

I was going to buy a new switch yesterday, but picking up a prescription for my daughter after work yesterday was like study in frustration, people not reading the prescription, not having the prescription and driving all over hallelujah looking for it. My daughter cannot take the generic of one of her medications, and at one in-store pharmacy, where we usually go, they filled it generic, and after waiting for it, and finding it was generic, not name brand, they informed me they only had 1/2 the amount of the name brand and would not give me that amount, but would call around for me, to find out who might have the name brand. So they called another pharmacy, to which I drove during the rush hour, with a frozen pizza (which I’d bought at the first store) thawing in my car.

At the second store, I wait for the twenty minutes they asked me to wait, picking up some ice cream, this time. Then they said, “It will be ten more minutes.” Fine, we wait, sitting on the little bench near the pharmacy with our ice cream getting softer all the time. I finally get to pick up the prescription and once again, it’s generic. This time, it’s taking all my patience, I want to just scream, “Don’t you read the freaking prescription when you fill it?” As the clerk says, “Oh, can’t she just take the generic?” I smile, and say, “No, she can’t take the generic, and that’s why we drove from the first store, who called this store to make sure you had this.”

This store, at least, as the pharmacist at the first store had told me, has the name brand of this particular drug. Now, they are nice, sorry, trying to hurry for me. We replace the melted ice cream with a new container, and finally, I’m on my way home at nearly 7:00 pm in the evening. I’m too tired and too hungry to try to find a hardware store and pick up a replacement light switch. I bake the frozen pizza which turns out funky from being thawed out in the car.

I must be getting old, because at times like this I remember that good customer service used to exist. That there was a time in the past, that had the first pharmacist called to the second pharmacy, at the second pharmacy they would have had that prescription, name brand, actually waiting for me. This is when I’m so disappointed with America, with our mega-stores, and our culture that debates whether we should still teach our children cursive, when pharmacists don’t read and look like they are so overwhelmed, when I sit and wait for my daughter’s prescription and I hear elderly folks say things like “What? $285.00 for this month’s worth of my prescription? Why, last time it was $190.00 for six weeks. I can’t pay that.” It’s depressing. Like getting ready for work in the dark.

End of July

end of july
butterfly
sunny sky
fish-fry
blueberry pie
longing sigh
kissing summer
goodbye

Playing With Matches

playing with truth

like a pack of matches

light one just long enough to illuminate

pungent smell of sulfur

cleansing

hold on too long it burns

careful

close cover before striking

don’t start the whole pack on fire

All the Aunties

I think every inch of my skin was touched yesterday, massaged with oil in a way that no one should ever die before experiencing. I was relaxed beyond measure in spite of intense pain that I’ve been in for weeks now. I simply thought that this little rotator cuff impingement injury would go away as I followed the doctor’s orders to take ibuprofen or naproxin fairly regularly. But this little puppy of pain just was not responding and seeming to continue to spasm and get worse, was my only relief a shot of cortisone? On top of trying to figure out how to get pain relief, I was beginning to get loopy and depressed from the ibuprofen. When I broke down and shared my pain with a co-worker, he acknowledged that he too had the side-effect of depression from ibuprofen. Not a good combo, intense pain and depression.

Didn’t I just read in Bruce Lipton’s work (a cellular biologist) that energy heals better and faster then chemicals? I know I did, but so hard to be rational when in pain! Strangely, in the weeks preceding this injury (most likely from lifting my darling granddaughter up in the air over my head) I knew I needed to start taking better care of myself. My client load is building up, I’m finishing up a Master’s paper and coursework, and I’m still working a full-time job (on the side). I was beginning to feel like that 50 something executive who just wouldn’t stop til they had a heart attack. How did I get so busy?

Friends were telling me that massage was a good way to take care of myself. I should know, my oldest daughter starts massage school next week. Then a friend at work gave me the names and phone numbers for two different massage therapists. But still, wasn’t it expensive? A luxury? Who was I to get a massage? Finally, though, on Friday, when I had to leave work because of both the pain and the depression, I called and left messages at both places. The first massage therapist who called back could get me in the next day. I had a memoir class, but I could leave it early and make this appointment. I was nervous, seriously, you’d never think that taking care of yourself could be so difficult.

How could I let someone massage me, while I just lay there and did nothing? As a woman, we always all pitch in, “Let me help you with those dishes” and “No, no, let me do it.” Now I was in such a bad place that doing my own dishes was painful, and I had to let someone help me heal. While I lay there on the massage table I thought of the difficult place of transition I was in. Contemplating leaving the job where I’d been for five years, my best friend there had already left and found work as a counselor only a couple of weeks before. Wrapping up all this difficult coursework, ironically, studying how people best heal. Seeing 5-6 clients a week coming in with their own pain. And in the midst of this; while just sinking into the massage table, I thought “And all the Aunties come in to help.”

And this, I realized is how I have made difficult crossings. All the Aunties show up. When I went through my divorce, I ended up in an aerobics class filled with women who could easily have been my mom or grandmother, and I wondered “Where I have landed?” These women carried me through my divorce and Kathleen’s pregnancy with their support and wisdom. I went from hanging out at closed rehearsals at Prince's Paisley Park Studios to exercising and having coffee with grey haired “Aunties.” And so here I was, in transition, in pain, the Aunties once again showing up, this time, the Aunties are women a bit younger than me, but women who know how to care for themselves and others. Women like me, pitching in, saying “It will be OK, let me help.” Using all our good energy to heal, so much better than chemical compounds.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

That is, if they can figure out how to have fun. We’re at two days and counting to America’s big, woo-hoo party, the Fourth of July, and this year, I’m at least trying to plan something fun for my family. It’s the time of year when the girls look at me and laugh and remember back, that if they were lucky on the Fourth, instead of ‘letting’ them look out the window at the fireworks a mile away, I would pack them in the car, and bring some popcorn, and drive closer so that they’d get a better view of the small town display. I’d find a spot on the street, a few blocks from where it seemed like the whole town of Owatonna was congregating at the fairgrounds, and park there. Then, I could also beat the small town traffic jam home.

Such was my life. I single parented and I was tired a lot. As Kathleen got older, she angrily accused me, “You just don’t know how to do the Fourth of July Mom!” I just didn’t know how to plan and execute these things all on my own, and I never felt a part of the Owatonna community, where it seemed all the women were pros at exactly this small town type of party gig. It made me feel like a city girl, and so, if I couldn’t be good at their parties, I’d only marginally show up, parked down the street in the dark.

So, this year I’m trying, a bit halfheartedly, but I’m trying. Growing up in my big, intact family, the Fourth was cap guns and rolls of caps my dad would pull out of his pocket. If my neighborhood friends came over, he’d bring out small hammers, and there we’d all sit on the hot sidewalk, smacking caps. Then, we’d picnic in our big backyard, and at dusk, walk down to Lake Calhoun to watch the sky light up over the lake. Since I couldn’t match this for my girls, I gave up.

More and more, I’m seeing that in my family of origin, us girls just don’t know how to have fun. I can cook, and I can write, and I can be silly too, but having fun eludes me, but I’ve realized I have to figure this out, I just have to learn how to have fun. It seems a bit easier on my own, as friends have often said of me, that I’m easily amused. It’s true, but these family things are complicated and actually require planning!

So, this year, I started planning a whole 5 days in advance, asking Erin if we could get together at her and Andy’s place if I brought the food. She agreed, but being the introvert and always tired mom of a one year old, she didn’t seem too enthused. Happy about the fact I’m bringing cheesecake, though.

So, tomorrow I’ll bake cheesecake, and make macaroni salad, and buy buns and cold cuts and chips. I’m struggling a bit with a sprained rotator cuff, but by golly, we’ll make this happen and it will be fun. I may even put blueberries and raspberries on the cheesecake, like a picture from Woman’s Day magazine. (Woman’s Day? Really?) And it will be fun, Kathleen will pick up her grandmother, and I’ll see what my mom is up to, and so we’ll have our Fourth of July. I may watch the fireworks off of my alley deck later with a glass of wine, and remember back to sitting on a blanket, friends and family around, looking out over Lake Calhoun, the sky ablaze, the murmur of “Oohs and aahs” in the hush of the night.

Time After Time

I have been traveling back in time to my childhood through the vehicle of a memoir writing class. This class has no magic buttons, and no scientific instrument panel that takes advantage of advances in quantum physics, but it does take me back. And soon, in my 10 year old girl self, I am experiencing the world through both by child self and my adult self. My child self, hurting, confused, my adult self, saying,”Oh, hmm, now I get it.” And while I’m traveling back I’m trying to also create my future. I’m looking at publishing sites again, wondering, “Will I ever find the time to get this query put together?” Trying to find a place to get my memoir on being the mom of a teen mom published. And visiting places where I hope to rent space for my growing psychotherapy practice.

And so as I find myself traipsing back and forth between past and future, I find the present more empty, more frightening, perhaps because I’m being too thin with myself, and in order to be present, well, in the present, you have to have a certain weight of being. And also, I believe, that in order to be present, and to be a fairly good therapist, you have to do some work of making sense of your own life, including your childhood. The things we don’t make sense of are the things that can take us back by surprise, when we’re not ready, and being the therapist in the room is not the place to be taken by surprise, and dragged back into our own trauma, when there’s a client sitting across from us. So, I travel in time to make peace with the present.

I’m seeing now the non-linear aspects of time, the non-time aspects of movement through space and how children can raise their own parents sometimes, and this is not in the textbooks, but it happens a lot. Of why often good people fail us, when they’re following a linear path through a circular universe. Of why time travel is often important, but coming home to yourself is imperative.

Ashes to Ashes

There was a short time in my childhood when our family didn’t live at 4017 Sheridan Avenue in Minneapolis; instead, we lived at 2109 Hawthorne Street in Franklin Park, Illinois. Nearly everything about living in Illinois was different than living in Minneapolis. Living on Sheridan Avenue, we had a big house, big yard, and I had lots of friends in the neighborhood. We had huge Oak trees in our yard, and two lakes within walking distance. Our house on Hawthorne Street was smaller and newer with no fireplace, and there weren’t many trees in the whole neighborhood. Chain link fences divided the houses, and our neighbors were not so much like us, like the neighbors on Sheridan were. In Franklin Park, on one side was Mrs. Romero, a very loud single mom, who yelled at her kids often. On the other side, were Mr. and Mrs. Hartmann, with their son, my rare friend in the neighborhood, George. The Hartmanns were from Germany. I went to first grade in Illinois, we moved there because my dad took a new job.

I remember sleeping one night in a first floor room, near the back of the house, I was alone in a single bed, with boxes all around, still unpacked. I could hear the television in the living room, my mom and dad talking, and it seemed like the only sense of comfort at all in this strange house. It had only been the year before that we’d moved into the house on Sheridan, we’d lived there while I went to kindergarten, at Lake Harriet elementary school, (now torn down, and townhouses fill the space). As I lay in this strange room trying to sleep, I felt something on my leg, something tickly, I pulled back the blankets, and there was a big, black spider on my leg. I screamed loudly, and both my parents came running, “It’s alright, it’s only a spider, just go to sleep now.” Well, I don’t think living on Hawthorne Street was ever really all right for me, and now the spider seemed a foreboding.

Eventually, my mom had both my older sister Kathy and I, and my two younger brothers, Tim and Mike, have our ‘bedroom’ in the whole second story of the house. This was a large room, and the second floor had it’s own bathroom. This was an improvement on the house on Sheridan, which had only one bathroom. Kathy was five years older than me, so she was in 6th grade, and my younger brothers were only 4 and 2 years old. Mike was still in a crib. My rowdy older brothers, 3 of them, were in the bedrooms downstairs, where my parents also had a bedroom.

I don’t remember so much being in the house, as hanging out outside of the house. My older brothers quickly made friends, and it seemed there were always teenage boys around the yard, with their banana seat bikes, and their cigarettes and their greased back hair and blue jeans. My brother Steve became part of a band, and bought a set of drums. Now, our garage became a stage, and these teen age boys formed a band. They’d play, G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria, and I was so proud that I could spell Gloria. I felt so proud of my cool brother, Steve, the drummer. This was the beginning of me wanting to be a boy, not a girl, anymore. My oldest sister, Rosie, was off to college, back in Minnesota, and my sister Kathy, it seemed got stuck watching us little kids and doing the dishes. My brothers, however, got to have fun.

My brothers Pat and Steve were 6 and 7 years older than me, so that meant that when I was in first grade, they were in junior high. While my brother Steve was more likely to be playing drums, inside the garage, my brother Pat would hang out with his friends behind the garage. There was no alley on this block, just garages in the middle of the block, separated by more chain link fence. It was quiet and private back there, and it felt a little scary to me. I didn’t go back there alone, even though just across the chain link fence was a friend of my sister’s and they had a pool in their yard, sometimes she’d take me with her swimming. But there were dark stories about that family, about how the dad had gone down to the drugstore one night to buy a pack of cigarettes and had never returned. Just like that, never returned. “The mob” my mom would say, and I’d stand there, speechless, wondering what untold horror the ‘mob’ was.

But as long as my big brothers were out there, I’d feel safe and protected and I’d hang out there until they’d tell me to scram, but I liked to be with them, just hanging around. One night, I was hanging out there and then our Dad called us all in for dinner. It was an early, warm spring night, and finally my brothers came in too. While in Illinois, my mom worked nights at the Motorola factory, so it was often just my dad and us kids for dinner, this was weird, too. Until this time, my mom had never worked; I missed her, especially in the evenings. My brother Pat must have finished his cigarette behind the garage. Finally, we could eat. We said grace, as we always, always, did. We were all around the dinner table, just beginning to eat, when one of my brother’s friends came banging through our front door, yelling loudly, “Sorry to barge in like this, but your garage in on fire!” My dad hollered for us to all get outside, while he grabbed the phone and called the fire department. Very soon, I could hear the siren roaring down the block, to our house, to our garage.

My dad joined us all on the front sidewalk, far enough away to be out of harm; where we had a bird’s eye view of our garage in blazes. It burned bright and hot, dark, dark smoke pouring up to the sky. The sooty dark smell filled my nostrils. The firemen were rushing towards the garage with their huge hoses, yelling, pulling on the hoses, spraying out the fire. I don’t remember how long we watched, our dinner cold on the table. Our horror, our surprise, at our garage’s demise. Our new swing set, still in the box, in the garage, our new picnic table, still in the box, in the garage, boxes still unpacked, still in the garage. We’d just been back there, behind the garage, and now, now it was all gone, mostly burned to ashes. Fortunately for my brother, he’d moved his drum set into his bedroom to practice. I don’t know how long it was until we finally, exhausted, went back in to finish our dinner. My mom came home from work, tired and now sad and tired. I could hear my parents up late that night, talking. Things weren’t going so well for our family in Illinois.

The next year, we moved back to Minneapolis, back to house on Sheridan Avenue, which my father had wisely not sold, but had rented out while we were in Illinois. Back to green lawns and lakes nearby and I started a new school in the middle of second grade, St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic grade school, down the hill on Sheridan, and up the hill on Upton Avenue. I’d walk that way, it seemed a hundred times, wearing away the memories of Illinois, and the house on Hawthorne Street.