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.