PlazaJen: The Blog

Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

      Category: moving forward (Page 3 of 4)

      Not shaken, mostly stirred.

      April 6, 2009 /

      April 6.
      The day my father called & told me he had cancer.
      June 10
      The day he died.
      January 22
      His birthday.

      I will have these dates, like beads on a rosary, tied around my heart for the rest of my life. I’m glad today’s anniversary didn’t create paralysis, albeit, a little fluff of down, some sadness, soaking up my residual sadness of last week, when we went through layoffs. I used my father’s death as an excuse at the time, when a co-worker walked in on me at my desk, dabbing my eyes. Mentally, I kind of gave dad a begrudging grin, like, “thanks, man”…. and I also felt guilty. Lying to cover up what was going on, doing it by using the most sacredly painful piece of my life. But I’ve no poker face and I had to say something.

      So, tonight, when I walked into Panera to pick up a loaf of bread, I got the sesame semolina. It was his favorite. And I smiled to myself, wistfully. It is in those small moments I hear his voice, just the most ordinary of sentences or comments (“Oh, I love that bread.”). I love that bread, too, I love it more because you loved it, and can we pretend for just half a second that I’ll call and tell you, “Dad, we had the semolina, man that is such good stuff, I’m so glad you told me about it” and then I have to remember that there will never be another phone call, that I just have to be happy James and I love this bread, and I’ll mention it was his favorite, and life will move on. Because that’s what life does.

      My melancholy. The sweetness of love mixes with the acrid memories of sadness. Despite grief’s sharp, astringent bite, I am glad to find there is more love in the glass each year.

      Hallo!

      March 18, 2009 /

      Anymore, what with the global village shrinking to the size of a pea, combined with my own personal paranoia, I no longer announce when I’ll be out of town, or say, home alone, because even with my trusty shotgun, three black labs, alarm system and some high-quality knives thrown in for good measure, there’s just something smart about telling folks AFTER the fact that we got out of town.  Which we did,  under the guise of catching a lot of spoonbill, which sadly, did not happen, but for the first time in my life, I did go fishing at 5 a.m. In the rain. I just clutched my fishing pole and hoped my husband’s vision wasn’t allowing him to see me nodding off. (No such luck. I married Mr. Eagle Eye.) I will say this: Never was I happier to have had Lasik.  The next day, we got about a mile out & the engine clunked-kaputt. It seemed to be something gas-liney, so yours truly squished the black gas line bulb pump thingy all the way back, and the next morning, I had a panic that my knitting life would be forever altered, as my left hand wanted only to contract into a claw-like state. The Wo worked hard on fixing the gas line, but it proved to be something beyond just a line, and so there was no more boating for us.

      But all was not lost. We ate well, we napped, the dogs had a GRAND time, they made us laugh, and I got some knitting done.  And finally finished “In Cold Blood“, and then re-picked-up “Then We Came To The End“, which is probably a whole lot more entertaining if you don’t work in advertising in the midst of  recession, seeing as how it’s all about agency life and layoffs after the dot-com bust. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still entertaining, but it resonates with that “holy-shit-he-nailed-that” kind of shock, rather than just a chuckle. Plus the doom-and-gloom and paranoia and fear are right on the money, which isn’t necessarily the greatest pick-me-up! But dammit, I’m gonna finish it so I can finally read “The Watchmen“! That also bears a little foreboding for me, as it was recommended to me by a good friend who told me it reminded him of my dad. I bought it, but it’s waited patiently for over two years for me to read it.  I’m not sure where the parallels will be, but I’m at least ready for them. I wasn’t ready on my drive to the lake, as I was having a joyous Jackson Browne sing-along (could I use more hyphens today? I shall try. Post-haste!) and suddenly I saw my dad, reacting to the song lyrics in “Before the Deluge“, telling my mom, “That’s us! You hear that? Journey! Back to nature!”  How he loved Jackson Browne, and felt a kinship from that music, felt so understood in his ideals and desire for a better world. And oh so many times we listened to that song in particular, straining, trying to figure out the word “rouge”….we thought it was “glitter and the glue”, and I thought of how much the internet sure would have helped back then, and through it all I cried, mourning so many losses, including the fact that I had no idea in those moments, how much they would mean to me later.  It’s still a bit boggling, how you can go for days and weeks and feel like there’s so much progress, so much healing, What A Good Job We’ve Done With Grief, and then with just a click of the Viewfinder, you are reduced to a sniveling pouting heap of pulsing raw emotion and pain.

      Well, two years ago, I’d have listened to the entire Jackson Browne anthology and cried for hours. Instead, I switched to Weezer and the dogs & I had a new sing-along, and they asked if they were going to get some candy with their pork and beans, and I told them I was the greatest man who’d ever lived, even though I am still a woman.

      So! A mini-vacation. I’m back at work, and my non-portable knitting project is almost done – Sheldon the Turtle – ohhh, he is adorable.  And despite the woes,  Hubs’ motor is hopefully being fixed as I type, and he’s enjoying his greenhouse puttering with a bajillion seedlings of peppers and tomatoes and eggplants.  Spring is springing, the daffodils are ready to burst, and everything always, interminably, moves forward, and only once we are there, down the road,  will we know what innocuous  moments from today wait to surprise us.

      Bustle, bustle!

      February 24, 2009 /

      Yep, it’s bizzy ’round here. Big client meeting yesterday. Off to NYC tomorrow, back home on Thursday, then keep dog-paddling because there’s a big meeting/presentation next week to boot. woo-hoo! In the midst of all that, got to keep getting the ‘regular’ work done, and then handle the curve balls on top of it all. Because boy howdy, there was a curve ball, and I seriously wanted to remove heads from bodies with a croquet mallet. Yes, I was channeling my inner Red Queen, and all I can say is, good thing I read the emails at  home so I had time to explode and then calm the hell down by the time I could actually address it. GAH! Life is hard enough, when things are going well, it’s in everyone’s interests to make! things! work!

      OMG Tripper is going to start marketing his weapons-grade gas to the government. That’ll help pay the dog food bills ’round here. He is seriously, seriously toxic with his farts. I keep a bottle of Febreze ‘Air Effects’ right by my chair, and it’s almost comical – he gets royally offended when I counter-attack with one puff of “Linens-n-Sky”. Sometimes he even gets up and moves. It’s the only weapon I have, and I have to use it!

      Speaking of crazy dog stories – last Saturday night I met up with some of the LSG folks on Ravelry, which was great fun – and when James got home from his banquet duties (MWA banquet in Oregon, MO), I headed for bed & left him to take care of the dogs for the night. Good thing. Polly apparently dashed in the door, and he only caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, and knew she had something in her mouth. Uh, yeah. “Something” turned out to be an enormous full-grown rabbit that was in dire straits. At least I have a husband who can calmly handle these things, humanely. I’d just shriek and run into doors.  Just a regular Mutual of Omaha around here, I tell ya…..

      Speaking of wild kingdoms, the seed-planting is well underway, as the gardener of the house starts getting excited for planting and gardens and spring. Since he’d gotten me a Christmas present when we’d agreed not to exchange gifts, I decided Valentine’s Day would be my turn to surprise-treat. I took the rest of the money I’d left in my PayPal account from my Loopy Ewe DPN holders, and with just a smidge extra, I bought him a set of Texas Tomato Cages. After all, tomatoes are the “Love Apple”….and he grows them so extraordinarily well, with all kinds of fantastic varieties, knowing how much I love love love fresh tomatoes. Apparently these things are THE support system for growing tomatoes, so we’re just going to start investing in them and add to the pile as we go.

      Let’s see… working furiously on some more knits, including a couple of fun projects for classes I’ll be teaching, and really, just trying to not let too much slip through the cracks.  It feels kind of crazy that tomorrow is already Ash Wednesday, that next week is -yikes- March! and pretty soon we’ll see Spring really settling in, bursting through the ground and in the trees, welcoming us to a new season and another chapter. Despite being agitated about dunderheads, and feeling like I’m burning the candle at both ends, I’m really excited about what’s on the horizon this year – both with work and my life outside of work. (For instance? The Wo and I are going to take a vacation! YES! Where? Dunno! But it’s going to happen, and that’s all there is to it. The pool will be there for later in the summer, yes, but staycation be damned!)  And yes, eventually I’ll be able to throw all the nice facts up about the zombie, proving once and for all, the dead truly can live comfortably in California.

      Primordial Ooze…

      February 13, 2009 /

      Wowza. Spend one week flat-out sick, spend the next week flailing and catching up. And discovering that I am still not as jaded as I’d like to believe. What’s up with that? I want to take everything life gives me like Kathleen Turner would, with almond eyes half-shut, gazing unflinching at the bullshit and nodding to myself, “Yep. Saw that coming.” Then I’d toss back a shot of whiskey and laugh.

      My husband  is an amazing judge of character. He has met people and told me later to watch out, or that he got a bad vibe from them, or that he doesn’t trust them. Inevitably, he’s right.  I just realized how self-serving this could sound –  since he decided to marry me, that would mean he’s STUPENDOUS at character assessment, eh? ;) But I envy his unfiltered eye. I find I tend to give people some benefit of the doubt, or I see their association with other people I like and trust and transfer that to them, or I just go off the face value of things, and I don’t make instant determinations or decisions about people.  And sometimes that can really bite you in the ass, because not only is the bad behavior unexpected, but the trust you invested up to that point has been betrayed.

      Not going to bother elaborating, it’s not bloggable anyway, I just know that I can’t trust everyone, and I have to temper my expectations of people. I would prefer to not become cynical in the process! I had lunch yesterday with an old friend of mine, and I was telling her about some of the crazy things that have been going on, and there’s one situation where five of the six people involved are all confused and spending time worrying about it, and me? I’m the freaking poster child for the Tao of Pooh. I shrug. I narrow my eyes. I smile, and toss back a shot of scotch. And laugh. Because I can’t control it or influence it or even predict it, and therefore, I should spend my time minding my knitting, instead!

      It is SO FREEING. To just stop caring about  every single thing. Including the potential things. (Believe you me, I haven’t mastered this, but I’m going to trumpet when I do to remind myself it’s possible!) I have spent a better part of my life in the role of Piglet (if you have read the Tao of Pooh this will make sense… Pooh is the model of Buddhism), racing and worrying and fleeing and running with the balloon and being so frantic he eventually pops the balloon.  And I sure as hell don’t want to be Eeyore, god love him, but that dude’s a goddamned downer.

      Long ago, I toyed with the idea of volunteering at a hospital that was near my apartment. I met with the volunteer co-ordinator, a man, probably 20 years my senior. I’ve never forgotten one observation he made, because it was so wildly inconsistent with my view of myself. He said could see me in the emergency department, because he felt there was a calmness about me, that would be reassuring to families coming in under crisis. I still don’t know if I fully believe him, or if he was just looking for someone to fit a need. But I liked it. My thing is that if I have room to panic, I do. I ruminate, I dwell, I worry. But if someone else is doing it, I tend not to. I fear we’ll all lose our way if someone isn’t minding reality.

      So, discovering someone’s true colors, and the resulting anger and sense of betrayal, well, it’s normal. But today I feel confident and centered. Ten years ago I would have been frothing at the mouth for weeks.  Don’t get me wrong. I love to be agitated, I love sensory input and drama and zombies and things to move at a brisk clip. But I also enjoy – now more than ever – the ability to not be drowned by that wave.

      In some ways, I think, the peace and perspective are results of my father’s death, and the ebbing away of some of my grief. I will cry, be immobilized by my sadness, for moments as short as a minute. Yesterday, for example, I was listening to a story on Morning Edition about Darwin, and how he and his wife were so different philosophically, yet when their daughter Anne died, it brought them even closer together. The author of the biography believes that much of his grief influenced his writings. I’m going to quote the part that really resonated – it’s the author’s viewpoint of Darwin, and it was so beautifully put:

      Darwin is stating what “we now call the existential dilemma,” says Gopnik in his biography. He is saying there are two things that are true:  One is that everything dies, and things die for no reason and to no apparent end. And their death is painful. And, that process of living and dying produces something amazing and beautiful and astonishing.

      The process. Amazing and beautiful and astonishing.  I love when things so profoundly move me, like a sharp twisting of muscle, when they resonate in my core like the vibration from a bass cello.  My own evolution from inexperience and naivete.

      You Were Right.

      January 22, 2009 /

      You told me it would all be ok. I didn’t believe you. Part of me still didn’t believe you after you died. I wanted to, no doubt about that, but how could ‘ok’ happen when my heart was being pounded through an industrial shredder? Then along came all the people who told me time would help. At six months, I thought they all smoked crack, because life had gone on for everyone else, and I was still hiding in the bathroom late at night, muffling my sobs with a towel. Dark times in a small room, torn between wanting to join you and weariness at trying to walk this path I never asked to visit.

      But here we are. Today would have been your 64th birthday. Young by a lot of measures. But you lived your life hard, fully, always pushing the limits, always teaching someone and making people laugh where ever you went. It’s been 2 years & 7 months, and I will always honor this day in my heart, just as I will also honor the day you died, but I’m happy to tell you, a whole lot more of me believes you now, than I did then. Missing you can still feel as fierce and wrenching as it did in the days and months that followed your death, but it no longer feels like it will swallow me whole. You taught me well, Dad. I love you. And today, I miss you to the point of tears. Tomorrow, though, I’ll be ok.

      O Happy Day

      January 20, 2009 /

      When I was a very young child – 3 or so – I would stand in front of my father’s speakers (big, boxy speakers) in the living room of our home in Knoxville Iowa. He would crank up the volume to the Edwin Hawkins Singers, specifically on the song,  “Oh Happy Day” and I would get up close to the speaker while my sternum vibrated from the bass, and dance.

      While I was getting ready this morning, I broke into song, that song, and while I lacked a choir behind me, I felt the song swell in my heart as I experienced a wonderful rich moment of connection to my father, on this day he would have loved to live to see.  My tears have many sentiments today, but the overwhelming one is joy.

      And I couldn’t help but obamacize my photo. :) It’s been a long 8 years and I deserve one day of dancing while my sternum vibrates.

      ohappyday

      Pardon My Twang….

      December 29, 2008 /

      …But I keep hearing an old-timey version of a Ralph Stanley song running through my head, specifically the refrain, “The darkest hour is just before dawn”.

      Now, those who know me, and even those who don’t, yet come here for all the sparkling Grief Blogging might worry that I’m in a depression. Fear not. Well, I am, a little, but really, anyone over the age of 14 is bound to get the blues this time of year, what with all the manufactured joy and pre-packaged expectations that come with “The Holidays”. Nope. I’m in the darkest hour because I am cleaning and reorganizing all the kitchen accoutrements. Holy shitballs, Mabel, this is a Task and A Half! And basically, with most un-cluttering and organizational projects, you have to explode the whole thing before you can put it in order. Right now, Houston, we have esplosions.

      This morning, I moseyed down to Index, a restaurant supply store in the River Market, and boy, it’s easy to drop your whole wallet there. It gets hypnotizing, as you walk around looking at all these…things… you start to think, “Well of COURSE I could use a dozen of those little stainless cups they serve ketchup in at McCoy’s,” and you catch yourself mentally visualizing and measuring your oven, just in case this enormous cookie sheet could fit in it. And of course you’d need the matching Silpat. I caught myself eyeballing a sugar pourer. It was only $1.50. I was certain that would be useful. I could throw the old one away. Update the sugar pouring aspect of my life.  You wouldn’t believe the siren songs I hear in my head in that store.  Anyhoo, I did NOT buy anything off my list, my goal was to get some large foodservice-grade containers to put baking supplies in (flour, sugar) and then at least one more big one for rice. This is the downside of the CostCo shopping – enormous bags of flour and rice, and where in the hell do you put them? Shove ’em in the back room off the kitchen, that’s where. Alongside last winter’s birdseed, which, upon unearthing, I later caught Tripper EATING. He is such a motherfucking black lab it makes me crazy. Birdseed. To him, it must have been some gourmet trail mix. (That is going out to the greenhouse. I did not buy a tub for it.)

      So now my fantastic birthday-present-to-myself from this summer, the KitchenAid 6, sits on top of a chrome cart, and stacked in glorious organization under it are the flour, sugar, powdered sugar and on the bottom shelf, rice. I will be able to just pull the cart in to the main kitchen area & use the mixer on the cart, instead of having to lift and move the beast onto the countertop (because it’s so tall, it blocks the cabinet doors. Yep.)  And this one beacon of organization and containment is in the middle of the dining room, and its strangeness is making Suzy crazy, so she’s been lying here GROWLING at it the whole time I’ve been typing. Dogs. Thank god they can’t drive, they’d lose their minds.

      OH, but see, there’s more. There’s a huge big ol’ reason all of this is happening, besides the fact I’m on vacation, and alternating between lolling about & knitting and being productive. I got a really kickass Christmas present. Two, in fact. One from my MIL (Momma Linda) and one from my husband. We draw names in his family, and she got mine. And she has heard me bitch and pick fights with said husband over …wait for it…. a french fry cutter. He has refused to buy it for me because it is…impractical. A unitasker. No. I am not married to Alton Brown, but sometimes it sounds that way! I wanted one because the cheapy one I  had broke, and I wanted a solid, restaurant-quality, never-gonna-break sort of french fry cutter. DO NOT ASK ME how many times a year I make french fries. Because that is not the point. Here was something I genuinely wanted. For years. It started to take on a lifeblood all its own.  James would complain about how hard I am to buy for, and I would always look at him and say, “French fry cutter.” Yet he refused to get it. (There were arguments made about our walls and the fact it has to be mounted to one, blah blah blah DETAILS, people. Trivial details.) So, since my MIL and I are not unlike each other, she went and ordered me the mac-daddy french-fry cutter to beat the band. Doesn’t have to be mounted on a wall, either. And when she informed my husband of this gift, he knew his goose was cooked. Or tater was sizzlin’, whichever metaphor you prefer. Because in the past – and as recently as last week – others had offered to pool resources, to go around him, to buy it for me. I refused. I purposefully never told my father, because he would have had it shipped express the next day to make a point.  This was my lynchpin. My sand in his Vaseline.  So the Wo knew he had to do something. And he ordered a twin deep-fat fryer from CostCo. Yes. That clanging noise was everyone’s arteries slamming the doors on crazy. CRAZY. But he had to get with the program or have it forever held against him, and it has made me laugh repeatedly since Christmas day, because it’s partly an O’Henry short story, partly a clash of personalities and priorities, and through it all, completely filled with love.

      Anyway, now, all this stuff has to go somewhere, and some things need to be removed, since they are ever-so-rarely used. And I’m taking FULL advantage of the no-limit-on-trash-bags opportunity this week, going a little crazy with the tossing, but it feels good.  With the bonus that now I can have my very own State Fair in the kitchen anytime I want.

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      The sun is slowly sinkin’
      The day’s almost gone
      Still darkness falls around us
      And we must journey on
      The darkest hour is just before dawn
      The narrow way leads home
      Lay down your soul at jesus’ feet
      The darkest hour is just before dawn

      Like a shepherd out on the mountain
      A-watchin’ the sheep down below
      He’s coming back to claim us
      Will you be ready to go
      The darkest hour is just before dawn

      The narrow way leads home
      Lay down your soul
      Let jesus in
      The darkest hour is just before dawn
      The darkest hour is just before dawn

      For everyone who found their heart aching over the holidays, just remember…. you are not alone.

      Knitterventions and the Blue Christmas…..

      December 18, 2008 /

      We have a young designer here at the agency who has only knit scarves. She came to me because she wanted to knit her husband a hat for Christmas (in 9 days), and she was struggling with the yarn she had. I asked her what sort of yarn it was.

      “Alpaca.”

      “Ok, but is it thick? Thin?”

      “I don’t know. I got it from my grandma, and it’s really tangled. I’ve spent four hours trying to untangle it.”

      “Oh, dear. What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”

      So yesterday, I took her up to the Studio (just a few blocks from work) and encouraged her to look at some bulky-weight yarns, since this was her first time knitting something other than a scarf, she’d be working in the round, and, well, Christmas is next week. Always aim for success when you’re beginning, I say. Before we left, I asked her if she had a budget.  “Five dollars?” She said, hopefully. I looked at her and I said, “Well, that’s gonna be tough.” She moved it up to ten. They’d agreed not to buy each other anything for Christmas. I said we’d do our best to get her something she’d like but wouldn’t break the bank.

      Now, you don’t know her, but imagine a wee wisp of a thing, with black wavy hair, wide eyes, and pale perfect skin. She dressed up in a toga for our Halloween party, and she looked like some sort of mythical wood nymph, straight out of a Homer classic. A veritable doll, quiet and keeps to herself.  I feel quite lumbering, loud and mule-like around her delicateness.  At one point, while she was looking at some Manos, I felt like I’d thrown her into a frat party of yarn. She responded that she’d just never seen so much yarn before in her life. Wow. It took me back to when I first went to Depth of Field in Minneapolis, uh, 20 years ago, and I couldn’t believe how much it all cost.  In the end, we set her up with a $13 skein of a mellow rusty orange Manos, and I volunteered to loan her the needles.

      Before we headed back to work, I zipped over to Wendy’s for a little potato-and-chili to go, and as we were driving there, we talked. It started out with geography of Kansas City – they live far to the North, and she would like to live closer in, and I was telling her how the river and bridges definitely separate worlds, and how a situation of mine had unfolded when a friend had moved. That veered into post-dead-dad stuff, and the angry email I’d gotten, about having changed (“and not for the better!”), and I was talking about grief, and I realized I was talking like a forty-year-old woman. Which, of course, I am.  But I turned to her as I said, “I realize I’m talking to you as though you’ve never lost someone close to you, and that’s a misguided assumption on my part, I don’t mean to speak that way.” With the tiniest glitter in her eyes, she solemnly looked back at me, and said, “I lost my mom when I was 16. Right after Christmas.”

      And our words spilled back and forth – she also graduated at 16, has a strained and difficult relationship with her father, and the similarities and differences sorted themselves into tidy little piles. I hate that it’s a “club”. I hate that no matter how vividly I articulate the pain I’ve felt, and will feel for the rest of my life, still can not fully bring comprehension to those who have not gone through it. So inevitable, so dreadful, so so hard.  The holidays are bittersweet, because they bring memories, and even the good ones have the rind of melancholy. You just get through, you fake it a little bit, withdraw a little bit, and try to be aware if the sand is sinking under your feet. But in odd ways, the Dead Loved One club does prove to be a strange forger of friendships and understanding. Like those shops at an outlet mall, they stand lined up yet alone, facing outward – but they are all interconnected by a passageway a few steps beyond the stockroom.

      Last weekend, I found myself crying a little bit, just sad, just missing my father, and one of my inner voices railed at the sky, crying out “WHY”, why do I have to feel this pain for the rest of my life? And for the first time I heard a response. “Because the pain you feel is in direct proportion to the love you had for him.”  I would never give up that love, and I know that love will stay with me until I die, which is a comfort. So I have to accept this piece that wails and cries and sometimes feels as raw as June 10th, 2006.  Balance. The depths parallel the heights.  Despite my tears, I know I’m not going to be as depressed this year as I was last year, and cognitively, I can see that the next year will most likely be better.

      Ah. Death. What strange and twisted growth you encourage when you prune from our hearts.

      The Poetry in My Soul

      November 11, 2008 /

      I was driving to work today, and the new Snow Patrol song came on; the thing about Snow Patrol, and Death Cab for Cutie, is that I love their music. But, as we all do, we get associations with sounds, smells, that weave into our memories and like a single strand of thread, can jerk us back in time to a completely different place. Even when new music comes out from that band, that sound, the essence that defines a group that’s played together so long, it’s evocative. When other elements combine on top of that single thread, the tug is greater, you can leave your shoes behind it happens so fast, so strong, as you are transported.

      Today is a grey, rainy day. It’s chilly, and it’s keep-your-head-down sort of weather.  There’s only flatness in the sky, like a drop-ceiling in a basement;  perspective and instincts for the time of day are removed. When I heard the chords of that song, I suddenly saw myself in the passenger seat, on that long drive north, the day my father died. There wasn’t anything we could say anymore and we both put our headphones on, content in our solitude.  The sky was grey. Flat. A different season, but the same sky. I dreaded every minute that passed because it was bringing me closer to a certainty I could not accept. I savored every minute because each second that passed allowed me to remain insulated, in that place where Denial sits on the couch next to you & whispers false hope, while you nod and try to convince yourself as well.  Distracting you from the door you must enter when all those collected minutes have passed and the time is now.

      The largest piece of solace in that day was the fierceness in my husband, focused and doing the only thing he could do. It is part of that memory fabric, and one I’m grateful to have.  As I crested the hill on my commute this morning, tears welled in my eyes, as I felt my love for him explode through my heart like a thousand sharp diamonds, white and perfectly clear, catching and casting the light in countless fragments. Since there was no light to catch, flat greyness overhead, the light could only be coming from within.  It astounds me how we can measure so many things, weight, space and size, yet there can be such infiniteness of space and depth in our emotions.  My words feel clumsy, blunt butter knives trying to carve elaborate chiaroscuro landscapes in sand.

      The ol’ Pushme-Pullme.

      October 12, 2008 /

      I’m enclosing today’s Hazelden email below. Sometimes, I get these and they’re – meh. Too much God, too much 12-step, too much addiction, and yet I still stay subscribed, because there are days when they resonate like a clear bell above still water. I’ve grappled off and on internally with some things I don’t feel I can write about so publicly, partly because some people will think it’s about them, others won’t realize it IS about them – ha – and who needs that pressure when you’re already grappling?!  I started subscribing to these about 8 years ago, when my mother nearly died from alcohol poisoning (0.48 is a rather high number, eh?) and my efforts to get her into treatment at Hazelden failed. Wow, just typing that I saw the parallels to when I got my father into Mayo before he died. Sometimes I’m astonished by how much I grew up when I wasn’t paying attention.

      Anyway, her birthday was Friday, and a co-worker was puzzled when I was getting advice on a birthday gift – “You haven’t seen her, you don’t talk, but you still send her gifts for Mother’s Day and her birthday? I don’t get it.”

      I do it for me. There will always be part of me that loves her and wishes things were different. Instead of trying to change it, I’m letting it be. I take the actions that I want to take, send gifts because it’s what I want to do. Cutting someone out of your life is much easier in its definitive-ness; it’s a black & white world, much like rehab. You drink or you don’t, you have a relationship or you don’t. For me, that choice doesn’t work. Unfortunately, that gray area bears a lot of parallels to other friendships – things have changed enormously in two years. People I fought for and defended have turned their backs on me. Others who feel they gave me everything think I turned my back on them.  Because whenever there’s another person involved? Your ability to influence, work on or control things still only equals half.  And when the proportion of effort is out of whack, resentment builds. It gets easier to retreat, draw the line, say fuck-off, go away.  As someone who chooses not to live in a black & white world, I still do love labels and resolution.  But I’ve learned, unlike a moth to the flame, that seeking it doesn’t always work. So I am letting it all just be. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, yet I’m finding there’s peace in letting go. Not seeking.  Not tugging. In standing still, we can actually find and create direction. Peace.

      Today’s thought from Hazelden is:

      Stop playing tug-of-war.

      Letting go can be like a tug-of-war with God.

      Have you ever played tug-of-war with a puppy and an old sock or a toy? He pulls. You pull it out of his mouth. He grabs hold again and shakes and shakes and says grrrrrr. The harder you tug, the harder the puppy tugs. Finally, you just let go. Then he comes right back again, for more.

      I have never successfully treated or solved one problem in my life by obsessing or controlling. I’ve yet to accomplish anything by worrying. And manipulation has not wrought one successful outcome. But I forget that from time to time.

      The best possible outcomes happen when I let go. That doesn’t mean I always get my way. But things work out and, ultimately, the lesson becomes clear. If we want to play tug-of-war, we can, but it’s not an efficient problem-solving skill.

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