Buying Time

It is nearly the last day in February, and it is six degrees below zero, that is not counting the windchill. That, I don’t want to know. It has been the longest coldest winter that I can remember and we are driving ice packed tires over ice packed roads and daily see cars that went too fast, turned too close or just sadly hit that patch of ice and ended up in various conditions of crash. My nerves are fraught and I am tired. We are still expected to show up for work, to buy food and to go about our business. We don’t add up the time that we have lost to slow traffic, to needing more sleep, or to making ourselves another cup of tea to warm ourselves up. We are in this gogogo world and I’m just tired. We are not supposed to say we are tired, we are supposed to be happy and filled with passion for our work and our lives, and if we are not, well, just don’t bring it up. 

So, I’m adding another layer to my life in trying to keep it together, when I don’t feel very together. Who to tell the truth to? When to smile, and when not to? Why care about my hair when I’m just going to wear a hat that smooshes it? Why care about my clothes, when I’m wearing long-underwear, yet again? I want to just carry a blanket around, really, and have a hot toddy instead of a hot tea. I am waiting, waiting, waiting for spring.  I am angry when a co-worker tells me well, we are not out of this yet. I want to scream, let me have my fantasy that it will warm up in a couple of days, and what are you now, a meteorologist? But I don’t, I smile, she has more power than me, sits higher up in the hierarchy, and my place is precarious enough. Smile, smile, smile; tiredness and anger have no place in the workplace. They are not just buying our time. 

Keeping Faith

I’ve been wondering lately what is faith? What is it and how does it function in people’s lives? As a word, it has been mostly used in religious context, but I think it needs to be explored more broadly. Perhaps faith is just believing in what comes next, and we don’t know what comes next, do we? "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," so said Mark Twain. I want my faith to be in that what I know is so.

It has become my belief that as we connect with others, that it is in this connection and in our relationships that we allow others to know what is possible, and for me, this is becoming my faith. That that which we don’t know, gets made explicit in and by other people. If we don’t know love, we learn that through others. If we haven’t traveled to someplace, we can go there through the stories of those who have been. If we’ve never felt safe, we may find ourselves in a place of safety, if we allow it, amidst those who welcome and celebrate us. 

What we want can be evident in our longings, and even in our envy of what others have or have accomplished. And as we find more and more of how amazing life can be, along with it comes this sense of abundance, so much abundance that we can only want to share it. This then becomes love. Love that doesn’t differentiate between who is worthy and who is not, love that doesn’t differentiate between what I may or may not get back in return. We live and love to show ourselves and each other what is possible, and if you think of all the people, all the stories that live through history, that is a lot of possibility. 

As we travel through our lives, creating the path in front of us, we call into our lives the people and experiences we desire to expand the view of what can be. I wait in wonderment then, each moment, each day. And I look back in gratitude for all the possibilities that each person in my life has made me aware of. 

First Kiss

Throughout our lives, for many of us, we wonder, am I lovable? Under the word lovable, we can have whole list of what this means. It can mean popular, pretty, even being acknowledged (or accoladed) for our achievements. Sometimes, it just means being seen. Research on relationships are now showing that love in all it’s incarnations pretty much shows up the same, it is being loved and accepted just as we are, it is being heard when we have something to say, it is having our feelings acknowledged and accepted, not swept aside either by words or by the pained look on someone else’s face that might say, “Your emotions are too much for me.” 

This being said, I know now, that for much of my really young life, I didn’t feel loved, and I never felt accepted at the Catholic grade school I attended. At school, I felt generally safe, much safer than I did at home, but I did not feel accepted. I was jealous of the popular girls and boys, too, the ones who talked about having cabins to go to on the weekends, who took family vacations, and who seemed to have an easy confidence that I lacked. It pains me a little now, to remember the small child I was, trying to navigate the world with only my mother’s voice in my head, telling me how she was not accepted in the neighborhood we lived in; and how we were not rich like all the other people in all the social circles we traveled in. Always on the peripheral. 

And so, when in about 7th grade, a boy told me he liked me, I thought he was joking and laughed at him. I didn’t try to make him feel bad, by laughing and joking it off, I seriously could not believe that he could like me. I didn’t know how to like myself, and so I wasn’t able to imagine anyone else liking me. When I found out from my best friend’s brother, who was in the same grade as us, that I’d hurt this kid’s feelings, I felt bad and confused. But wasn’t he trying to make fun of me? I guess not. 

Then the next year in 8th grade, still hanging out with my best friend, and having access to boys because of her brother, one night, I actually kissed and made out with a popular boy, actually, probably the most popular boy in the school. Blond, athletic, sweet and from a good, well-off family. I was surprised by this, but again, confused. Did he really like me? How could he possibly? I was not “one of them.” I was the outsider, if only in my own head, carefully kept within these boundaries, still, by my mother’s voice. If she didn’t know how to belong, how could I? This was not my first kiss, but one of them. I never expected that we would ‘go’ with each other, or that this meant anything more than goofing off and exploring as kids do. 

That was more than 40 years ago. This makes me feel ancient. More than 40 years ago. This past fall, I attended a service for my best friend’s brother. He died young after living a hard life. A lot of people showed up at his memorial, I showed up to be there for my friend. Surprisingly, a handful of people from our Catholic grade school showed up, and one of them, the popular boy that I had kissed in 8th grade. I felt that same sense of insecurity creeping up, but by now, I’d worked through some of it. I could shake hands, make conversation, and know, that I was not ‘less than’ any of these people. It was a nice feeling. What I didn’t expect was to hear him say, “Of course I remember you, you were my first kiss.” 

My reaction was surprise, I hadn’t thought about that ‘make out session’ in my best friend’s bedroom for many years. And so I said, “Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot.” He was like, “How could you forget?” And so, while I so under valued myself, this guy had remembered, and carried with him, me, as his first kiss. So, you see, when we don’t value ourselves, it often stands in the way of believing that others value or love us. I think this is what happened with my mom. In many ways, she stayed the poor child with the immigrant dad, feeling under valued, not being able to see how valued she was , and still is. Still hoping to prove that she is lovable. I understand this too well, and so, only 40 years later, I am learning more each day to love myself, to value myself. To each day, give myself, my first kiss.