Spiral Notebooks

My writing has saved me since I was a young girl, my writing and my friends. My writing kept me going at home, where no one saw me, where everyone else was in constant survival mode and I was lost in the haze of mom watching t.v., dad was rarely home, my teenage siblings were either off with friends or getting ready to go out, I’d beg them to take me and they’d just smile and tell me I was too young. 

I kept spiral notebooks under my bed and I’d write to myself in these notebooks, notes and words of encouragement, like “you’ll be ok.” Seriously. I’d draw mod girls in fun clothes, unlike anything I’d actually wear, especially since I went to Catholic school, and had to wear a uniform. Sometimes I’d share my drawings, and the kids at school would say, “You’re a good artist.” That’s what they’d say. My notebooks of poems and words to keep me going stayed under my bed. 

In religion class one day, we learned about infinity, or forever, as in the concept of heaven and hell, that when this life was over, we lived forever, forever being a concept my mind simply could not grasp. I lay in my bed that night sobbing, terrified of heaven, of hell, of forever. My mom heard my sobs and asked what’s wrong, but she had no answers and really, no comfort, telling me to stop thinking about it and to go to sleep. I couldn’t do either, so I just quieted myself, and lay there, terrified in the dark. 

My mom didn’t know how to talk to us about scary stuff, about hard stuff. She didn’t know how to just climb into bed next to us and hold us, and smile, and wipe our faces and say, hey, “let’s go shopping tomorrow.” You know, just give us something to take our minds off of the crazy stuff that kids worry about. So, eventually, I learned to mother myself, through my piles of spiral bound three ring binders. Maybe that was the beginning of my obsession with reading, with writing, with believing we can connect through words on a page. 

First Poem

Audrey’s First Poem

My 2 year old granddaughter is running about my second floor condo, end of January, barefoot. She attempts to open the back door, which leads to the deck outside. I ask her, “Do you want to go outside?” She continues to try to open the door. I pick her up, hold her close to me, telling her, it’s cold outside, and we don’t have coats on. 

We step outside, she looks around and says, 

It’s winter outside,

dark and blue. 

Why I am a Writer

I struggle with my identity as therapist

I heal

I discern

I hold out hope

when none is in sight

I can make you believe

it will be alright

I do not diagnose

like the doctors do

having the blues

is not like having the flu

there is no pill

no quick fix

only the magic of love

and the alchemy of time

a writer scoops up

thoughts, words

and pours them out

to all who will listen

accessible

no sorcery is needed 

no combination of quick words and number

to draw a circle that you are inside of

only throwing caution to the wind

to draw so large a circle

everyone is within 

Lessons in Survival

Lesson in Survival, by Joni Mitchell plays on Pandora, the icy rain clinks against the window pane, the sound of cars on the busy street outside remind me that there is a life outside my room, outside my head. Cars drive on, life moves, I am not stuck in the feelings of fear that wash over me. I connect to my teenage self, the one that took the bus to the record store to buy For The Roses, the Joni Mitchell LP, the too serious and often sad 13 year old who then took the bus home and listened to the beautiful song, Lesson in Survival, knowing somehow I would grow up and live. 

Lesson in survival, when I’ve come to a place in my life, once again, where the road ahead is not as clear as I think I’d like it to be. So, I am hesitant, afraid, feeling alone and weary. There is only so far ahead that we can create a game plan for. We make our plans, they unfold, here we are in the dream that we held so dear, days, weeks, months or years before. So, I try to pause, and know, and feel it in my bones, that here I am. So, I need to rest, if only I will permit myself, this small luxury. Listen to the rain, the icy cold, the cacophony, the meter that changes all on its own. 

I have created a life that is too crazy for even me to live. Too much to do, too much to prove. Now how to untangle the good from the bad, the real from the projected, the authentic energy that will reverberate like a good chord, from the clanging that drowns out the untrue beliefs I hold onto, that I can’t yet deconstruct. Do I really want a doctorate degree, what in the end will this mean, to me? How can I stop trying so hard to move the pieces into a place that feels like open space? How to just stop by the side of the road, breathe in, breathe out, and let those who will, take a minute to bask in the moment, living, instead of surviving, come sit beside me.  

Gregorville

So, this past week, on Tuesday to be exact, right when I was turning off of Hennepin Avenue onto Washington Avenue on the way to Megan’s voice lesson at MacPhail; I had this overarching sense of being Gregor, the character from Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I felt completely like I was a bug, on my back, intractable, stuck and helpless, thinking that someone could come along at any moment and squash me, if I wasn’t well, so big. I remember this thought/feeling, because I shared these thoughts and feelings with my friend who I spend the half-hour of Megan’s lesson, chatting with.

I enjoy this time with her, her son at piano, two working moms, taking a break. I am envious of her, as she has found herself a job in Chartre, France, and had just returned from Chartre, and Paris; finalizing things for her and her family’s move there next month. Here I was, stuck in Minneapolis. It seems ironic as I write this, as Minneapolis was my France only years ago, when I was stuck, really stuck, in Owatonna. The story of Gregor, has been on my mind then, for days, my own stuck feeling, haunting me, scurrying in the back of my mind, like a bug.

Perhaps Gregorville is a state of mind, which I think was mostly Kafka’s point, (besides all the political and sociological implications of The Metamorphosis). For me, Gregorville is the place that Minneapolis becomes in the winter— dark, bleak, short days, cold nights. It emphasizes the elements of the story for me, stuck in a job, to keep the family going. Stuck in a system that seems to perpetuate fear; food prices rising, the fiscal cliff (why not a fiscal prairie?) guns and murder and mayhem on the news. A system that continually asks the questions, “Can I get off my back?" And, “Will I survive?”

This is also a personal dilemma, as was Gregor's. Choices for me between taking care of myself, and taking care of others, including my family. I've known for a long time now that I'm not taking the time that I need for myself, to take walks, to go to museums, and I continue to wrestle with the guilt of not taking good enough care of myself, when for a really long time, it was enough for me to be able to take care of my children. I worry that I have to choose between taking care of myself and providing for myself and my family. I need to believe that I can do both. 

And so, in this new year, in the bleak mid-winter, I use my energy to pull back from the capitalist system, from the patriarchal system, from any systems that try to drain my energy, and out of that negative pull. I pull far enough away into the system of abundance,  (where the air is better), full of enoughs, with gratitude that surrounds me. Gratitude for a place to be, people to be with, and love solid enough that it knocks me off of my back, and onto my feet, no longer a bug. Keeping warm, keeping safe, keeping fed, in the bleak mid-winter. Spring is inevitable. 

Oil Can

January 2, 2013

I have five minutes before I need to get my daughter her thyroid medication, every day, at 7:30 am I perform this pill ritual. Then she can wake up feeling ok, and I can know, (thank God) that she is finally ok. 

It is the second day of the new year and my mind has been filled with all the things I should have done, have left undone, things that I told myself I would do, “by the end of the year” and the fear of making a mistake chases me until I stop, in a panic, out of breath, and realize that there is no mistake that can’t be undone, and that really, really, everything is ok. Just last night, in reading Awake at Work, by Michael Carroll, the author talks about the difference between seeing mistakes as enemies, rather than teachers, and it is nice to think about mistakes as teachers, as the opportunity to slow down, and re-think something, rather than something to avoid, because, they (mistakes) are, after all, inevitable. This, however does require a change in my thinking, a letting go of all that I’ve believed as long as I hold onto thinking that mistakes are to be avoided. Letting go of all the anger and fear of myself, and others and all the “mistakes” that have been made. 

I hope this to be the year that my memoir on being the mom of a teen mom, Mother Love gets published, and that I find my writing stride, remembering that I hope to leave a small dent in the world, a dent that lets people know that they can think differently, that they can change their minds, and the world opens up a little more when they do. To think that having a child young is not a mistake, but a chance to say yes to life. Not in a guilty, pro-life way, but in a real embracing of what life offers us sort of way, believing that offering us a child is one of the best things that life can conjure up. Changing our minds can lead to our heart chakra opening a bit more too. My heart chakra creaks as I move it to open, but it is necessary, and I think if I relax a bit more, it might just begin to move on it’s own, like a flower blooming, instead of being like the Tin Man, needing oil. The Tin Man, who in the end, found his heart, open, beating, blooming. 

Missing Green

It is the last day of the year, and in my head are visions of couples, toasting the new year, dressed in fancy dress, surrounded by the energy of being together, not alone. Too often, I feel alone, alone in my thoughts, feelings, fears and even at times, alone in my happiness and contentment. 

When I was raising my daughters without their dad, and without a partner, I felt poignantly, the aloneness of not having someone to share their wonderful little lives with. Someone who would love them and delight in them the same way I did. Now that they are all adults, we can share our love and delight in and for each other. 

Still, this time of year, especially right at the end of the holidays, I am sad and lonely, and I think I realized this morning that the reason for this is that I am missing green. I know that I miss warmth, I miss early morning daylight, and I miss breezes, feeling them on my skin, and hearing the sound of wind through trees, windows, against curtains. But also, I miss green. I miss green trees, green grass, green flower stalks that burst forth with pinks, yellows, crimson. 

For a few more months, we will be like Dorothy in Kansas, not Oz. Brown, gray, cold, still, dark. I will hold on waiting for green. 

Christmastime is Here

The World has not Ended, Christmastime is Here, and Is it OK to be Happy? 

I woke up tired, it might be the hot flashes that are my new nightly experience, it might be that it’s been a long week, and a busy year, it also might be that kind of bone tired, when you realize that the worst really has not happened, there is tragedy in our news, but the world is still here, I saw the sliver of the moon lighting up the clouds last night when I got home about 9 pm, and felt the cold breeze through the window that I threw open around 2 am. It could also be relief, that the last of the Christmas presents that I ordered online just Sunday arrived yesterday, I love online shopping. So, in spite of being tired, I want to be able to enjoy the holidays this year. Really, to just relax and sink into being grateful, and happy. 

Can we be happy at this holiday time of year? I mean, really, is it OK? Can we be happy with what little or alot we have, can we be happy that the kids are either out of school, or home for the holidays, whether we like who they are dating or the fact that they might be out of work? Seriously, can we just be who we are, and celebrate that? I’m talking about letting go of the Martha Stewart family perfection that the media portrays this time of year. 

I’m lucky, I don’t have television, so I’m not subjected to the commercials that show families with perfect complexions, wearing brand new clothes, living in perfect homes any more, but I remember them from a long time ago when I watched television, and internalized the crazy idea that this might somehow be true. In case you’re still unconvinced, let me tell you, it’s not, and from what I know, those attempting to live this life of family perfection are miserable. There you have it, perfection is impossible, and the attempt of it leads to misery. 

What then? Love the ones you’re with, an old hippie phrase from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but apt. When you let go of the expectations of perfection, or actually, expectations of any kind, it lets real relationship blossom, and it will. Let go of who you think others should be, let go of what the holidays used to mean, or you think they should mean, use your imagination and let the holidays become for you what you want them to be, and then embrace it. This is your life, your time, you can celebrate that Jesus was born, you can celebrate that the lamps are still burning, you can celebrate that you have food to share, whatever brings meaning to your life, celebrate it. 

Years ago, I had a nativity set that I put out at this time of year, if I am honest, I will say that I put it out for my girls, so that they would know that this time of year was not really about Santa, (although I would take them downtown to sit on Santa’s lap), but about Jesus being born. When I was a child, I knew Christmas was about Jesus, and going to church, although I looked forward to getting a flannel nightie from my older sister, this I could count on, the gifts I got from Santa could be iffy, they may or may not be something I liked or wanted, and then I would not only feel disappointed, but also guilty, ungrateful and this combination of emotions was toxic. My oldest sister’s presence and her soft gift, consoled me. 

Now, this nativity set, a pretty set, from Italy, is in the trunk of my car. Baby Jesus’ hand is broken off, but you can hide that flaw in the straw around him. I was going to donate this set somewhere, that is why it’s in my trunk, but I don’t know of anyplace to bring it. So now, I contemplate bringing it in the house, setting it up, a reminder of what Christmas used to mean to me. What can I take with, bring into the future of this? Perhaps what it is, which I know my parents gave me when they shared their faith, is that this was a passing down of their best interpretation of how life works. I know that this was more than interpretation to my dad, especially, it was his hold on a tenuous life. My mom, too, holds onto her prayer life, telling me, often, that she is praying for all of us, holding out hope, holding out her best, holding her children in this tender, ephemeral web of love. Do we really need to keep trying to work out when the world will end? Do we really need to keep trying to work out how to live? Can we say we get it, yet? Can we be present, and grateful and happy?