Looking Back

Just went through a box of stuff, jogging memories for this memoir writing thing I seem to be doing. Fasinating to see all those girls I am not. Thought you might like to see some of the girls I've been (sort of). Sorry about the orientation. Blogger and I are failing to communicate.

Circa 1964, approximately. I think this is the year we moved to the little town described in the Strange and Wonderful posts that follow.



Let's not forget the piano recital mentioned in the S&W post. L to R, my sister Debbie, Miss Woods, and me. Look, we've got red corsages to match the red sashes on the white satin dresses our mother made us. Oh, pardon me. No color. This is from the time when (as Evan once said) the world was in black and white. Anyway, we had taken our gloves off to play, but they're around somewhere, too. Oh, check out our corsages from Waters Flowers. Seriously. That was the name of the place.



Circa 1972. My senior picture. Didn't my mom teach me to sit up straight? What's the deal? Again, Mom made the dress. I bought the jazzy ascot myself, though.




Me, appropriately surprised at being named "Miss Something," which gave me the golden ticket to the first plane ride from our airport, also mentioned in the Strange and Wonderful posts.

Strange and Wonderful, Part 2

Now, some of the wonderful. It’s only fair.

We lived in the midst of incredible beauty and abundance. Spring-fed creeks ran everywhere, clean and cold and sweet, and the hills were alive with flowers and fruits and nuts (the edible kind).

You could get an excellent education in our schools if you tried. A handful of dedicated teachers (Florence Garrison and Shirley Piland and Harold Reed) and one assistant librarian (Gertrude McDonald) made sure of it.

One of our teachers, Wanda Williams, won the game show, “Queen for a Day,” in 1967. Like all the other contestants, she could wish for anything her heart desired. Mrs. Williams wished for—and won—a trip to a distant city, a meal in a restaurant, and a night in a hotel for all her students. (Unfortunately, many of the parents refused to let their children go to the distant city, so they ended up doing a day trip to a town 60 miles away. The kids did go to a zoo and have hot dogs, though. Now, 40 years later, some say they still remember every minute.)

We knew nearly everyone we saw from day to day. In fact, we knew them, knew their folks, even knew their dog if they had one. We knew who could be counted on to get their car washed at the Pep Club fund raisers, knew who would buy brownies at the Rainbow Girls bake sales, knew who to hit up to place ads in the Echo, our school newspaper, and the Docomo, our yearbook. (We also knew who to stay away from after dark on a Saturday night and whose business was a front for running drugs, but that’s not so much on the wonderful side of things, so we’ll let it go for the moment.)

Many of the people who landed in our town were warm, intelligent, interesting folks willing—maybe even anxious—to make friends. (The natives were not so welcoming. 18 years after we moved to town, Mom was invited to a "Newcomer's Party." She'd want me to tell you that. It still makes her laugh.)

Our piano teacher, Miss Dee Woods, had been an international concert pianist, with scrapbooks to prove it. She came to our house to give us lessons and held recitals in the elementary school gym. We wore "formals" and white gloves to her recitals and sat up straight and tall, just like she taught us. Miss Woods must have been in her 60's when we knew her. She had marshmallow-y white hair and walked with a slight limp. She lived alone in a falling-down house way out in the woods. Her house was absolutely over run with cats and so filthy Mom wouldn't allow us to step inside after she first saw it.

The local hermit allowed himself to talk for one week each year. One time Miss Woods lured him to our piano recital with the promise of tea and cookies, delicacies for a man who lived on whatever his brother monks left in front of his cave. When the recital was over, Brother Theodore sang "They Call the Wind Mariah.” It was—and remains—the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. That man's voice might have been the reason God gave us ears. It reverberated through the blue steel rafters of the gym, the metal folding chairs we sat on, the marrow of my bones. If I concentrate, I can feel it still.


So, how was it, growing up in this strange and wonderful place, you ask? Ah, that. Now, that’s a story.

Strange and Wonderful

This is what I remember about the town where I grew up: it was full of strange and wonderful. Equal measures, strange and wonderful.

First, some of the strange.

Our sheriff was illiterate. His wife rode in the squad car with him in case they had to write out a ticket.

Our district court judge was an alcoholic kleptomaniac who swam laps with her French poodle in the ponds on the golf course, wearing a flowered rubber cap and an honest-to-God bathing costume that came to her knees. (She might have been persuaded to swim in the pool if only Cherie had been welcome, too.) Everyone in town knew she stole. Don Newton, the owner of the Town and Country Grocery Store, rang up $10 before he even started checking her out each time. He figured that came close to covering what she had stuffed in her clothes and purse. Gladys never, ever mentioned the extra $10. Neither did Don.


Our mayor’s wife kept a shotgun under the counter at her café on the town square. She waved it around on more than one occasion, mostly at family members who made her mad, and once shot at her son-in-law in front of half-a-dozen patrons. Didn’t kill him, though. (Didn’t mean to or he’d be dead.)

The airport in this one-stoplight town had a tower, lights and radar. (As Miss XXX that year, I was a guest of honor at the dedication and rode in the first plane to take off and land there.)

Marijuana was the largest cash crop in the area. (Think that's how we got the fancy airport? Really? Me, too.)

Our town and the hills beyond were filled with churches, mostly evangelicals and fundamentalists. On any given Sunday you could see snake handlers, speakers-of-tongues, faith healings, full immersion baptisms in rivers, or people “struck down” by the Holy Spirit.

The Superintendent of Schools was married to a woman he had an affair with while she was his student, many years before. She had no qualms about telling people she set her cap for him and got him. She told these stories in the class she taught on "Home Arts."

There were more students in our school system than people in our town. Kids were bused in more than 20 miles. Many of them rode the bus almost two hours each way.

You could—and I knew people who did—graduate from our high school unable to read or write anything but your name.

Few of the people born there had ever been out of the county. Very, very few had ever been out of the state.

The hills were a refuge for hippies and burn-outs of all sorts. We had communes, monasteries, Wall Street dropouts and one bona fide, cave-dwelling hermit among us.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 6

We—Mom and Dad and Deb and Jeff and I—we walk into the gathering room and sit among the people of The Ranch. A commune, Mom calls it. I don’t know what to call it, but I don’t like it here. The houses look like shacks. They're all connected to one another and to the big, tumbled-down building in the middle that holds this gathering room.

Victor, the man who invited us here, is the leader. He and each of his five sons look like what they are: timber cutters and tree haulers. They are tall—practically giants—and their arms look like tree trunks; their hair and beards are long and wild. Their women are small and quiet; their hair is long and neat, their dresses long and modest.

Victor walks to the center of the stage at the front of the room. His granddaughter walks behind him, leading Teddy. Teddy must not be related to Victor. He’s short and not so hairy. Everything about his small frame speaks of power: The muscles of his arms, his shoulders—even his neck—stand out like coiled ropes. His gray eyes are blank, unlike Victor’s dark eyes where small fires burn fiercely.

After Victor's introduction, Sonia leads Teddy to a blue mat at the side of the stage and retreats to the opposite corner.

Sonia’s bare feet slap the hardwood floor as she runs. Her long ponytail swishes from side to side, flying higher and higher as she picks up speed. She flings her tiny body into the air and Teddy catches her on his shoulders. He grasps her white ankles, takes a couple of steps toward the edge of the mat, and stops. He lets go and holds his arms out wide. Together they stand, completely motionless.

Teddy brings his hands to his waist and Sonia leans down and to grasp them. She slowly transfers her weight to her hands and then kicks her feet into the air. Balanced there, her crotch rests inches from his face and his from hers.

I shift on the hard wooden bench and look at Mom. She and Daddy share a glance that reflects what I’m thinking: Something is very wrong here. Sonia and I are the same age and I damn sure wouldn't want Teddy's hands all over me. I don't even want to watch this. I want to go home.

Teddy lowers his hands; Sonia folds her legs over her head and down to the floor. A dozen children swarm the stage, tumbling across the mats. For an hour, Teddy leads the group in fantastic displays of strength and grace. When they gather for their bows, Sonia stands next to Teddy, holding his hand. His gray hair glistens with sweat; her small chest heaves. When the applause fades, Sonia leads Teddy from the gathering room.

* * *

Sonia isn’t there for the first day of school in the fall. We didn’t expect her—none of the girls from The Ranch go to school after 8th grade. We hear her grandfather performed the ceremony when he married her off to Teddy. The two of them are putting on gymnastics exhibitions around the country now. Evidently lots of people will pay good money to see a beautiful young girl thrown around by an old, blind gymnast.

Did I mention that Victor came to town in a brand new pick-up last week?

Be ON the Body

Broke my toe again last night. I've broken this toe and the one next to it 4 times in the last two years.

It's not enough to be ON the body in my writing, I've got to get out of my head and start being IN my body from day to day. Starting with watching where I put my bare feet.

Just one little whine. . .It really, really hurts.

Lighting the Fire

I’ll light the fire
While you place the flowers
In the vase that you bought today.

Outside, the wind howled like 15 Irish banshees in a basket. Inside, the smells of onion rings and Tic Tacs mingled in the frosty, fishy air as we sang along with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I scooted down to put my head on David’s shoulder, aching with the need to rest, to rest my head for just five minutes. I loved the idea of a very, very fine house. But no cats. Cats scared me.

Out on a dirt road, miles from home and miles from the lights of town, the Rambler felt like our own private world. I didn’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations—didn’t have to be a good student or a good writer or a good girl. I didn’t have to be anything but myself.

Graham Nash slid into the la la, la la la la’s. David straightened and reached behind him to turn the radio down. Fumbling for the knob, he turned sideways and moved closer to the dash, taking his warmth with him. The rush of cold broke the spell and I realized just how close I’d been to forgetting my most important rule: Never let anyone get too close.

That rule had been with me always. It was, in fact, the fiber and substance of my very first memory.

Two or three years old. Standing in front of a tall, dark dresser, trying to figure out how to get to the drawer that holds dry panties high above my head.

Too late. My older sister has seen the puddle on the hardwood floor. She runs from the room, a victor ready to claim her spoils. When she returns with our mother, they are laughing at me. They are laughing together, and I am, as always, standing outside their charmed circle crying to be let in.

They call me a baby and tell me I should be wearing diapers. They talk about how funny my wet panties look. They hold their noses and make “peeeee yeeeeeewwww” sounds. I promise myself never, ever to lose control again.

By the time David returned to my side, I had moved to another place entirely—practically another planet. I was ready to go home. Then he took me in his arms, and I slid beneath the spell of the darkness and the freedom and his warmth once again. He kissed me gently, then passionately, and I responded with the same mounting fury. My heartbeat thumped in my ears and my cheeks burned.

Minutes later—who knows, maybe it was hours later—David moved away and unwound his arms. With infinite tenderness, he lifted one hand to each flushed cheek and stared deep into my eyes. In the romance novels I’d read as a kid, women were always “melting into” something or someone. That phrase, which had always seemed ridiculous, suddenly made perfect sense. My insides felt like warm chocolate dripping down the edges of a graham cracker. David kissed me again, and the warmth began to pool somewhere south of my belly button. I drew away, bristling at the unfamiliar feeling. Panic overtook me when a strange dampness began gathering down there.

“Take me home,” I demanded.

“But, Jerri. . .” he said.

“Right. Now.”

Silence filled the car. I huddled near the door, miserable and confused. When we got to my house at the top of the hill, I threw the door open before he’d gotten the car into park. From the brick steps of the front porch, I watched the Rambler slowly round the circle drive and creep back down all 10 acres of our hill. I stood, frozen in place, until the rectangular taillights disappeared behind the scrubby elm tree at the front of the property.

Early, early the next morning I sneaked out to the garage and buried my pale pink panties at the bottom of the garbage can. My heart didn’t stop racing until the garbage truck squealed down the hill later that afternoon.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 5

Nicki sits next to me in study hall. We usually whisper across the aisle every time Miss Homsey steps out of the room. But not today. Today I'm silent. I can't think of a thing to say.

Nicki just told me she's planning to get pregnant. "It's the only way my parents will let me be with Ron," she says.

I swallow hard and look straight into her eyes. Lord God, I think she's serious.

"It's the only way," she says again.

She's probably right—no parents in their right minds would let an 8th grader date a high-school senior. Still, how can she even think about having a baby? We're 13 years old for God's sake.

* * *

Lunch time, freshman year. Brenda Kay and I sit at the soda fountain at the drugstore. Nicki puts our vanilla Cokes on the counter and turns to get our grilled-cheese sandwiches. She balances the plates on her belly and turns sideways to get closer to the counter. I lean back a little as though to give her more room. Nicki's green eyes shine bright as ever beneath her thick eyebrows, but she moves slowly and with a kind of effort I can't understand or imagine.

We smile at her and leave a tip. We walk back to school slowly, wondering how it feels to have a person growing inside you. Nicki seems really happy. I'd be scared out of my mind.

* * *

I stand on the third step at the back entrance to the funeral home, shaking. I know I should go inside and find Brenda Kay, but I can't make myself go in there. I simply can't walk through the hallway, knowing Nicki's body lies down in the dark basement. Has she been embalmed? Is she in a casket? Does she look like herself? (Maybe we should tell Mrs. C. that Nicki always wears thick black eyeliner and bright green eye shadow all the way up to her eyebrows.)

Later, the entire sophomore class—and most of the town—comes to the funeral. We oooh and aaah over the baby in Nicki's mother's arms. We hug Ron and tell him how sorry we are. We wonder how the truck driver is doing, the man whose tanker came loose in a turn and crushed Nicki's small car.

After the service, Brenda and I hear two women whispering. They say Nicki must have had some sense of her future. They say that's why she packed so much living into her short life. They say she was lucky to have married and had a child so young.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 4

She rarely washes her hair and never cuts it. Her dresses are long and shapeless. Her voice is meek. Norah moves through the hallways like an apparition—a presence you sense more than you see or hear it.

Norah's rare contributions in class are filled with references to the Bible, especially Revelations. Her snake-handling, Bible-thumping, fire-breathing preacher father taught her it will be her responsibility to cut off the heads of evil-doers with the sword of righteousness at Armegeddon.

I think she's looking forward to it.

Like two of her sisters before her, Norah will drop out of school when the baby shows too much. So far, Mr. Decker and Mrs. Robertson have been able to ignore the swelling under the gathered cotton, but it won't be long before they're forced to acknowledge what we all know.

If Norah's father is right, if the Day of Reckoning is coming soon, he better duck and god-damn cover. A lot of swords are going to be aimed at his neck. First.

I am not that kind of girl.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 3

December 26, 1970. I stand at the front of the Ava Methodist Church wearing a crimson velvet gown. Its sheer white sleeves and white velvet collar match the white netting shooting out the top of the awkward headpiece bobby-pinned to my hair. My mother made the entire get-up. Sue and JoEtta’s, too. They both look bridesmaid-perfect, but I feel ridiculous and out of place. An overgrown Christmas elf or something.

In moments my older sister will float down the aisle wearing yards and yards of silk and satin. Her train is 12 feet long and trimmed in hand-beaded lace. . .plus two or three teeny, tiny drops of Mom’s blood. Only 15 days into 19 years old, she followed her dreams to this candlelit church and the altar where Jim stands, waiting.

Jim and Deb were each other’s first dates five years ago. Neither of them has ever gone out with anyone else. Neither of them has—or ever will, I guess—kissed anyone else. Neither of them has any idea what they’re getting into.

Jim’s been in college for the last three and a half years. Every weekend he comes home to see Debbie, who is three years younger. On Saturday nights they sit in the center of town with Jim’s mom and dad to “watch the kids go round the square.”

That's a major bummer for me. Our mom’s rule is that we can only drive around the square one time. One time, she says, will get us where we want to go, and that’s all the square is good for, if you ask Mom. I don't ask Mom and I break this rule a lot, but not when Deb and Jim are sitting there. Deb would squeal for sure.

When she graduated from high school last June, Debbie turned down scholarships to music school and an art conservatory. She says all she wants to do is stay home like Mom.

I am not that kind of girl.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 2

Brenda Kay’s clothes have their own room. It’s not exactly a room, I guess. More like a closet you can walk inside. There’s a light in there and everything. Her shoes are arranged in rows on the floor beneath her clothes. Her skirts all hang together, then her dresses. She even has some slacks. Her sweaters are folded on shelves at the end of the closet. On top of every sweater is a matching pair of knee socks. Her mother buys most of Brenda’s clothes at Harley’s on the square, but some of them come from Dillards, 60 miles away in Springfield.

Brenda’s mother dresses up every day and she always, always wears make-up. Even at breakfast on Saturdays. She must not put her head down to sleep because her hair is always a perfect brown bubble on top of her head. Even here in tornado alley there’s never been a wind strong enough to defeat the hairspray that holds her bubble in place.

MaMaw and PaPaw live above the funeral home, across the driveway from Brenda Kay’s house. They’re her father’s parents. Like Mrs. C., MaMaw’s shoes always match her dress and her ear rings match her necklaces. MaMaw’s hair is gray, though, and her bubble doesn’t stand up as far as Mrs. C’s.

MaMaw and PaPaw take Brenda’s mother and father and the kids to dinner at Hutch’s Café almost every night. Sometimes they drive the hearse, but mostly they drive the “family car,” a shiny black Cadillac that Brenda’s father washes every night before they go out to dinner.

Brenda Kay’s other grandmother, her mother’s mother, comes to visit once in a while. Her hair looks like a Brillo pad after it’s been used too many times. Her face kind of collapses at the bottom because she doesn’t have any teeth. If that’s not strange enough, sometimes she smokes a pipe. But never when Brenda Kay’s mom is around.

When the family goes out to dinner, Gramma stays home in the little room at the back of the house where she spends most of her visit rocking and watching TV. Brenda Kay usually brings back a plate from Hutch’s for her—mashed potatoes and green beans and cornbread and stuff like that.

I am not that kind of girl.

Not That Kind of Girl, Part 1

Patty Bailey bounces on the trampoline in gym class. Her bleached blond hair flies in wild opposition to her skinny white legs—straight up as she falls to the surface and down to her shoulders as she bounces back up. The remaining sophomore girls and Mary Lou Sallee, the gym teacher, circle the tramp.

Brenda Kay and I hold our breath as Patty flies higher and higher. Her stomach and her breasts strain at the buttons of her royal blue, one-piece gymsuit. Mrs. Sallee tells Patty to do a swivel hip to a front drop. Patty pulls off several of the spectacular maneuvers as we watch silently. Even those of us who don’t really pray are praying now. We just don’t know for what.

Alone in her room later that afternoon, Brenda Kay and I exchange whispers. We’re sure Patty’s booming bounces had nothing to do with getting a good grade. We think she was trying to solve her problem in the only legal way available to her. We might be brave enough to ask the boy involved to help her if only we knew which of the many that might be.

I am not that kind of girl.

Lightning Striking

Listen to me baby, you got to understand
You’re old enough to know the makings of a man.

Lou Christy sang to me from the radio. I pulled the blue plaid blanket closer then pushed it away again. Like everything else in David’s car, it smelled like fish and fertilizer. David and his family never seemed to notice that the smell of the their trout hatchery lingered around them, but the rest of us did.

My breath froze on the window, silver crystals blooming in the night. I wrapped my arms around myself and tucked my chin into the softness of the chinchilla collar on my new coat. That coat had magical powers. It really did. Wearing it, cold couldn’t touch me. Bad hair days didn’t exist. Even pimples disappeared when I slipped my arms into its fur-trimmed sleeves. I wasn’t crazy about letting the fishy blanket touch it, but surely the smell wouldn’t rub off before David got changed.

“Wait for me after the game,” were words every high school girl in Ava, Missouri, longed to hear. In the world beyond our hills, the Viet Nam War raged, long-haired hippies gathered in muddy farm fields to play crazy music and smoke “them funny cigarettes,” and something called “The Summer of Love,” was supposed to be happening. But here in the heart of the Ozark Mountains, we didn’t burn the flag we saluted it, roll-your-own cigarettes were made with Velvet or Prince-Albert-in-a-can, and a girl lucky enough to have the keys to a football player’s car was envied and admired.

And so I waited. Proudly.

Players started to drift out of the locker room in twos and threes. Finally, the metal door screeched opened again and David stepped into the pool of light cast by the one bare bulb above the door. Throwing his helmet and his bag of gear over a shoulder, he shifted its weight and headed to the car. David moved with a fascinating, boneless kind of grace. His long legs sort of revolved instead of alternating, more like bicycle wheels than human limbs. His wet hair flopped over the wire rims of his granny glasses and his shirttails flopped under his blue-and-gold letter jacket. In a town filled with crew cuts and tight white t-shirts, David was a fish out of water, a rainbow trout in a stream of browns.

My heart fluttered. I pulled one arm from beneath the blanket and reached across the seat to unlock both doors on the driver’s side. When he threw his gear in the back, its sweaty boy smells added to the general stink. He folded his long body into the front seat and slid beyond the steering wheel, straight over to my side. Shampoo and Right Guard drowned out all the other smells, even the fish. He wrapped his arms around me and the smooth leather sleeves of his letter jacket cooled my cheeks as I blushed and burned. I could have stayed right there forever.

“Girl, why didn’t you run the heater? It’s freezing in here.”

At $.23 cents a gallon, who’s going to burn gas just to keep warm?

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You just wanted me to warm you up,” David whispered, his voice low and full of something dangerous. His warm breath almost burned my neck. He rubbed his hands up and down my arms and then around to my back. Even through the thick wool of my coat, I could feel the surprising strength of his long, thin fingers. Tiny bubbles popped up on my skin, tingles everywhere he touched me. He leaned back, moved his hands to the air in front of my chest and waggled his fingers in a pantomime of massaging my breasts.

With a big whoosh, all the bubbles went flat. I turned toward the door, away from his hands. Away from his eyes.

David and I had known each other forever—since I was eight and he was nine or ten. A kickball got away from me and my best friend, Brenda Kay, at recess and he brought it back. His brown eyes were the first thing I noticed. They reminded me of the puppy I wanted but could never have.

Through elementary school we grinned at one another across playgrounds, choir risers, and auditorium seats. In junior high, the puppy-dog look was replaced with a wolfish gleam that made me look away when our eyes met. By high school, we occasionally glanced at each other across the great divide of his reputation as a bad boy and mine as the kind of girl you took home to mother.

Brenda Kay and I assumed 16-year-old boys thought about sex a lot. But David was the only one we knew who talked about it. Out loud and all the time. Everyone said he’d proposition anything in a skirt, and—to hear him tell it—he got taken up on his offer more times than not. I wasn’t so sure about that. But back stage at play practice, in the school newspaper room, in the halls between classes, in the bleachers where the cool kids sat before school and after lunch—David’s internal dials were turned to sex-talk radio long before Dr. Ruth was anything but a funny little Jewish grandmother. He was all sex talk, all the time.

Brenda Kay and I thought it was because his dad had been a military man and his family had lived all over the world. Or because he had two older brothers and an older sister. Or because his mother was so flat-out strange. Every September, like clockwork, Mary Lou Sallee stepped back while Mrs. Emerson took over gym class for a week. Wearing a series of bizarre costumes, she’d tell us about the time her husband was stationed in the Phillipines. Then she’d lead us in a strange Phillipino game that involved banging long, fat bamboo sticks together in complicated, staccato rhythms while others jumped through them. All through elementary school, I associated David’s mother with severely bruised shins.

After puberty I managed to keep safe distances between us, but eventually David’s mother got my mother to talk me into going out with him. And now, here we were on the bench seat of his ‘63 Rambler Classic with nothing between us but a few layers of wool and denim.

“These seats lay down flat, you know. Just like a bed. Let me put ‘em down and I’ll get you warmed right up.” David raised his left arm above his head and swept it down the side of the seat as though to pull the infamous handle that turned the Rambler into a bed on wheels.

“Da. . .vid.” We both knew what the tone in my voice meant. Get off it before I make you take me home. No way was I going to find myself flat on my back in that car or any other. Four girls in my sophomore class were pregnant already. I was not going to spend the rest of my life trapped on a farm in the back of beyond. Cows. . .horses. . .rainbow trout. Didn’t matter what was being raised or what kind of shit was being shoveled. I was not going to be—or be married to—the one behind the shovel.

Feeling Groovy

Sitting here in the Denver airport, on my way to Portland and a reunion with the CAW. Feel like a child under a Christmas tree—all eager anticipation and happy thoughts.

Still doing laundry for the trip at midnight last night, I suddenly noticed the dryer was silent. With two loads left to finish, it had conked out. Totally. The breaker was fine, the light went on and off when I pushed the door switch so clearly it was getting juice, but the silly thing could not be prompted or babied into drying action of any sort on any cycle.

No worries, I thought. I'll finish the wash, hang it, and throw it in the dryer in the morning. Surely it will work in the morning.

This morning I threw the most necessary pieces into the dryer and pushed the button with every expectation it would leap into action, and it did. My clothes dried in plenty of time and I threw them in the suitcase on the way out the door.

A series of small delays put me into the KC airport a few minutes behind schedule, then I mindlessly parked in my usual area, completely forgetting that Frontier is on the complete opposite side of the airport. Dragged both suitcases, my briefcase and my purse through the concourse, laughing all the way, even when my duffel fell off my rolling bag for the nth time or my belt fell onto the floor. Made it to the gate with a minute to spare before they closed baggage check-in, went through the silliness of the security screening hopping along after pulling off my most awkward pair of boots, and losing my boarding pass and driver's license in the process. (They turned up in their assigned pocket in my purse. Who'd have thought to look where they actually belong?)

Now I'm in Denver waiting for the plane to PDX. While walking down the concourse a few minutes ago on a coffee search, an enormous wave of abundance flooded my whole body. None of the tiny irritations of the morning troubled me one bit, even when they were happening. I'm on my way to one of my absolute favorite towns to spend time with some of my absolute favorite humans. What could be better?

The Pin Duck Goes It Alone

Whole lot of quiet going on here lately, I know. Everything's fine, I've just been deep into work and lost in reflection a lot.

Pink Boots Guy came to visit. I called him Sunday and was stunned to hear he was in Iowa, on his way to me. He stayed less than 24 hours. We had the talk I've been dreading for so long, the one where I tell him I don't love him the way I should (and I really, really should). The one where I tell him we both need to move on with our lives, where I truly wish him every happiness.

He was his usual gracious self.

Sometime Monday afternoon I noticed that Marvin has gone MIA. When the flock leaves the pond, the pin duck floats alone in the small space of open water, right next to the edge of the ice, or on the bank, but Marvin is nowhere in sight. Now, Thursday am, there's still no sign of him.

I hope he's all right. He can't fly, you know, so where could he have gone? It's a mystery.

As for me, I'm right here, living mostly in my head. Thinking and writing and getting ready to go to Portland for the Grand Adventure of a writing workshop with Jennifer Lauck and the Circle of Amazing Women. First thing tomorrow, I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane and I can't wait.

Updates as available.

The Peace of Wild Things

Not long ago my friend Barb and I attempted to define poetry. We talked it through until we decided that a poem is writing distilled to its purest essence.

Just came across this poem by Wendell Berry. It is the absolute essence of life here on the pond (including the wood drake and heron).


The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

All Amped Up

As you'll see if you read my post from earlier this afternoon, I have questions and concerns about the way my kids grew up. Katie just called and at this moment—despite everything—it seems they learned some very good things from the way we were.

My darling almost-20-year-old daughter fixed the heater in her car this afternoon. By herself. The heater suddenly stopped working (a critical issue in Minnesota in February) on Sunday. She checked with our old next-door-neighbor, who's a mechanic. He told her the problem was likely to be a fuse.

Then that dynamic little thing checked her owner's manual, drove to an auto parts store, got the right fuse, and installed the damn thing. Now she's got heat. And a happy, grateful mother.

Who just got a big reminder that life's always unfolding as it should? Who couldn't be prouder of her little DIY girl? Who's proud as hell of the example she set?

Yep. You bet your pretty little tool bucket. That would be me.

Big Questions

The Wasbund will be checking into The Mayo Clinic again in the next few days, according to the kids. He's been there several times lately, including a month or so ago when he had some sort of skin cancer removed. The surgery requried 60 stitches and a two-day stay at the Mayo. That's all I know, but obviously it wasn't innocuous, whatever it was.

I wish him well. Truly wish him well. There are moments when it's easy and. . . well. . .satisfying to imagine that God hates the people you hate, but the thing is, I'm just not that into hate. Got clear a long time ago that hate's like a hot poker and holding onto it doesn't do a damn thing except burn my hands.

I really am good with the whole he-walked-out-on-me-at-a-very-bad-time thing. I can say in all honesty that I'm grateful for the divorce. Without his blatent infidelity and all, I might still be married to him, still fetching my panties from baskets on the floor, and—worst of all—still thinking that was acceptable.

What I still have trouble with are the things he did (and still does) to my children. Just last week, The Girl told me a story about a time he drew back is arm to hit her. She was 13 and God bless her little old soul, she stepped toward him, stared him right in the eye, and told him she'd call Social Services if he hit her. Without knowing him and the truly fearsome attitude he presents to the world, you can't know how much courage that took.

Katie will be 20 next month, and last week was the first time I'd heard this story. Both kids took great care not to let me know when The Wasbund did wretched things. Even more than his usual outbursts and temper fits, they feared the storms that resulted when I confronted him. His number one rule, stated over and over, was that they were not to tell me anything that went on at his house. If I spoke up about something, he knew they'd told me and that was the worst thing that could happen as far as they were concerned.

So, I'm still learning details of their childhoods, and many of the stories are painful to hear. For both the things he did and the fact that he frightened them so much they couldn't turn to me for comfort or safety, I have trouble not hoping he feels great pain somehow, some time. If not in this life, then in the next. At Christmas when he invited all his stepchildren and Katie to Germany and didn't breathe a word about it to Evan, I wanted to hurt him in the same way. Okay, enough. I'm not going to get cranked up on stories of what a jerk he is. Trust me, he's a grade A, USDA prime jerk.

So now that he's sick, what's a peaceful, spiritual woman to do? I pray for him when I know he's in the hospital, and believe those prayers are heartfelt. Is that somehow disloyal to my children? On the one hand, he's their dad and they love him despite everything, so it feels right to pray for his highest good. On the other, are those prayers anything more than words I wish I meant?

In an effort to be faithful to the "Thy will be done" spirit of my faith, I don't pray for him to be healed or to survive. Instead, I pray for the same thing I pray for when it comes to anyone's health—for his highest good. I also pray that the kids can be at peace with whatever happens.

Am I wimping out? I don't know. There are moments when taking the higher ground feels false and saccharine. There are others when it feels like the only way. The times when I want to set fire to his shoes are few and far between these days, but they still happen and denying that seems wrong. So does wishing harm to any living being, even him.

It's a puzzle and I'd like to hear what you guys think.

Truth Wins in the End

Missed the Grammys in my work-induced haze over here. But heard the good news and cheered my girls, The Dixie Chicks.

Katie's first concert was the Dixie Chicks (I took her and several friends as her 15th birthday gift) and their music played in our car as we traveled to endless soccer tournaments. They were first among the few groups whose music we both wanted to hear. We shouted out the sunroof to Cowboy Take Me Away more times than I'd like to remember, given what other motorists must have thought.

WooooHooo. Truth wins in the end. So does standing by what you believe.

Gotta LOVE the Chicks!

The Power of Fear

I had my first orgasm at 16.

My boyfriend and I were making out in the front seat of his car after Homecoming. After 15 or 20 minutes of serious kissing, he unbuttoned my shirt, moved my bra aside and kissed my naked breast. POW! What a feeling! Afterward, sitting alone in my dark bedroom, I figured out what had happened. I distinctly remember thinking about a magazine article I'd read about how hard it is to achieve orgasm. I can still hear the voice in my head and feel the fear it created. "That's supposed to be hard to do. What if I never get to do it again? What if I'm punished for doing it so easily now, when I'm not supposed to. What if the punishment is not getting to feel it later, when the time is right?"

I didn't have another orgasm for almost three decades.


I worked for the newspaper in Lynchburg, Virginia in the mid 70s, along with an unhappy, obese woman named Judy. One day Judy looked at my forearms and pronounced that I'd never be able to have children because, like her, I had too much hair on my arms and that hair was a sign that I had too many male hormones.

A decade later, Judy's words echoed in my head during every infertility treatment I endured.

So many, many times I've wondered whether my thoughts and Judy's words were self-fulfilling prophesies. This morning some big dots connected themselves in my head.

It wasn't the thoughts or the words that drew these things into my life, it was the feelings they created. Fear, guilt, shame, and remorse are magnets for lack, for loss, for pain.

Mystic Wing and I have spent long hours playing with and studying magnets. Their laws are immutable: whatever you run from chases you. Stop running, step toward it, and the very thing that has been chasing you retreats. Every. Single. Time.

The Law of Attraction is so damned simple. And so damned irrefutable.

Framed and Hanging

After seeing The Secret Friday night, I decided to frame this drawing and hang it. Since I want to invite more beauty, more artistic endeavors into my life, it seems I should treat my work with more respect than to leave it lying in the floorboards of Paula's back seat.

So, I got me to my favorite art supply store to buy a mat and simple frame. Of course, I had to take the drawing. Why, or why do I always, always tell the guy I'm not really an artist before I show him a piece? He doesn't care. I'm not going to do that anymore. Not ever again. From now on, if it's absolutely necessary to say anything at all, I'm going to say I'm in the process of learning to make art.

Must be true. After all, here's a piece of art I made, hanging on a wall.

Both Sides Now

I did not get the commercial.

Got the disappointing news yesterday afternoon. Called B and made arrangements to meet at our favorite coffee shop to work together. We sat at separate tables, each writing our own book, each comforted by the other's presence. When the time came, we retreated to her house to watch Oprah talk about The Secret. (Thanks for alerting us, Michelle)

Ziji sent me an e-mail last night. She tried to change a light bulb and the darn thing broke in her hands, leaving her with the metal part stuck in the socket. I shot off a note about how to get it off and got a sweet note in return.

Today I'm starting a Fat Flush with the advice and guidance of the amazing Prema.

Reread one of Amber's posts and called my daughter to talk about what home means and exactly what her experience of home had been, given the back-and-forth nature of her growing up in two households. We had a wonderful, important conversation and I'm grateful that Amber inspired it.

Once again, I'm overwhelmed by the power of a circle of loving people. (Almost wrote women but can't leave out my dear friend Mystic Wing)

So, here I sit, alone in my house right now but connected to the larger world in Spirit, in cyberspace, in the genuine love of friends. Now that's a piece of Grace.

Inward Music

Been reading The Essential Rumi again lately, just bits and pieces in spare moments. His poetry simply lights me up. Next art I make will be to illustrate this somehow:

Watch the dust grains moving
In the light near the window.

Their dance is our dance.

We rarely hear the inward music,
But we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.

Yesterday my phone rang about lunchtime. Caller ID told me it was my friend B, so I picked it up despite the deadline I'm pushing.

"Ya want to go to a movie?" she asked. No greeting. Not a hint of her usual "Hey, hey," chirped like some lovely Southern bird. Just a flat, numb voice asking about a movie in the middle of a work day.

"Absolutely," I replied. "On my way soon as I get my shoes."

I grabbed my shoes and a jacket and jumped into Paula for the 30 minute drive to B's house. On the way over, I could literally feel Rumi's blossoms of blessings dropping all around me, brushing my cheeks with their velvety petals and filling Paula's interior with their sweet perfume.

I met B quite synchronistically just before she moved to KC, mere months after I moved here myself. Now we're friends. Real friends. The kind of friends who can ask for help, even obliquely, and know the other will respond without question—one of the greatest blessings life can offer.

B's cat greeted me in the driveway and her husband, home for lunch, greeted me at the door. I breezed in, threw my purse in its usual corner, and sat down on the floor in front of the fireplace. B drifted in and we talked of inconsequential things—which movie we'd see, whether to get tea on the way and so forth. She demonstrated a new picking style learned at a recent guitar lesson and picked around on her new banjo for me. The conversation continued in the same vein as we drove to the movie and as we sat in huge upholstered chairs waiting for Volver to start. Afterward, we talked of nothing but the movie, all the way home and sitting in her living room again—B on the taupe velvet sofa and me on the hearth as usual.

It was a lovely afternoon, filled with laughter and music and stories. The light was leaking from the sky when she finally got to the heart of the matter. Moments before she called me, she'd noticed possible evidence of yet another health challenge. B is very, very ill. She faces her illness with the same grit and dignity and Spirit with which she's faced life since she was a child being raised in poverty by a loving mother and an abusive, alcoholic father. Her current challenges, however, will not be overcome by sheer determination. If they're overcome at all, it will be by miracles.

Details came slowly between long pauses for deep breaths. After only a few sentences, the jingle of keys at the door signaled her husband's return. B called to him and he joined us in the dark living room. As he sat down, B flicked her eyes and I knew we'd talk about the rest later. We told him about the movie and made plans to see another together.

Amid much more laughter and hugs all around, I headed home.

B knows, as I know, that we're all dancing to the same inward music and that the music will not stop when we're no longer physically present for the dance. People are born. They die. And the music plays on.

Sometimes it hurts like holy hell, but the music plays on.

Bright Idea

Top three reasons I haven't written a word on the novel since the last day of NaNoWriMo:

3. Christmas derailed me.
2. I've got to paying books to write before the end of March.
1. Lost the thread.

Okay, okay. You're right. None of these are reasons. They're excuses. But losing the thread did present a big problem. I've spent hours, HOURS, people, thinking about Fred and trying to figure out why he slid into alcoholism, the very thing he meant to rescue Ruth from.

This morning, lying in bed mulling over my day and its various challenges, the answer popped into my head. It's a bit of my own story I've meant to post but never quite gotten the nerve to write. That part would be Ruth's of course, but Fred's emotional response could be the needle that untangles the knot.

WoooHooo!!

I hereby promise myself to work on the novel for at least one hour today. No matter who or what needs me. Without fail. Can't wait.

Move over ceramic-tile-book—I've got me a novel to write!

How Many Souls Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

Yesterday, the brilliant and talented Ziji Wangmo commented that we'd started our friendship talking about changing lightbulbs and have now moved on to finding ourselves, which she finds much more interesting.

With all due respect to Ziji, whose work I adore, I disagree that the conversation has changed. It's all pretty much the same to me.

Even back in the day, I had the physical and mental skills to change a lightbulb. I also had an attachment to seeing myself as a woman who asked for such things to be done for her and a serious aversion to doing them myself. I had an attachment to my fear of ladders, another to my fear of electricity, another to my fear of a bulb breaking in my hands.

The first time I climbed a ladder, unscrewed one lightbulb and screwed in another, I turned loose of those attachments and found a little piece of myself. It wasn't much different from the first time I turned loose of feeling uncoordinated and attempted a headstand in yoga class or the first time I turned loose of my aversion to sitting still and meditated for a full 20 minutes instead of giving up after 4 minutes of monkey mind.

If you avoid changing lightbulbs, changing one is practice. If you've spent years finding reasons not to use power tools, picking up a circular saw is practice. And, let me tell you, if you've spent a lifetime avoiding gardening, pulling weeds and spreading compost is practice, one that becomes joyful if you let it.

It's all "Chop wood. Carry Water," and it's all part of finding ourselves.


BTW—if you haven't checked out Ziji's gorgeous artwork and photographs, go here to see some examples of her artful practice.

Bits O Nothing

They say God looks after fools and little children. I must be both.

See that candle burning brightly on my meditation altar? It was the first thing that greeted me when I walked into the living room this morning. Yep. You read that right. This morning. Worked until 2:00am this morning, last night, whatever. About 10:00 pm I lit a candle and took a break to meditate in the full moonlight. Completely forgot about the candle until I saw it warming the darkness when I opened my bedroom door this morning. YIKES! Am I lucky or what?

Been meaning to show you all the magnetic blackboard my dad and I collaborated on recently. Mom and Dad had an unused side panel for their stove (this stove is surrounded by cabinets so the panels are pointless), and they generously offered it for this project. I painted the panel with blackboard paint and when it was dry, Dad framed it with brick molding. TaDA! The perfect magnetic blackboard for my writing studio.




And this final bit: see that little drawing on the blackboard? The red door with words? Sketched it yesterday and then wrote the last words of that Rumi poem I posted yesterday beside it. Misjudged the folds and tore the paper unevenly. Later realized that my hand had gotten so far ahead of my brain I flubbed the words. And I still stuck it on the bulletin board. Leaving it there will be practice in getting past my perfectionistic paralysis.

And hey—check out my Freudian slip, if you will. "...see who's inside." Damn, don't I wish I could do that!



Finally, YES I did take time yesterday, in the midst of the craziness that way my workday, to make that strange little sketch. And YES I am aware this is the kind of procrastination that keeps me up until 2:00am and puts me into giant black holes come deadline time. Want to make something of it?

I thought not.

The Sunrise Ruby

These words, taken from Rumi's "The Sunrise Ruby", are keeping me going today. Without them, I might fall into a victim mentality, resenting the huge amount of work in front of me. Rereading them, I keep reminding myself to simply put one foot in front of the other. Well. . .more like put one finger onto the keyboard after the other. Maybe the poem will help some of you, too.

Work. Keep digging your well.
Don't think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.

Restlessness

Today I am filled with unresolved desire. No, not THAT kind of desire. I am awash in the need for more. I want more time, more energy, more beauty, more laughter.

I want more.

I want to trudge along the shoulders of mountains in Montana and merengue with the tides on the Oregon coast. I want to roll through Napa Valley, savoring the sights and the smells of harvest time. I want to learn to dance. I want to learn to draw. I want to play with color and paint word pictures that make readers sigh quietly.

Like Molly Bloom, I want to say yes. Just yes. Yes to the music, yes to the moon. Yes to the cold winds of winter and yes to the cerulean sky. Most of all, yes to my restless heart and mind. Yes, let's go to the library and read. Yes, let's learn things we'll never need to know. Yes, let's fritter away entire afternoons researching ideas that will never, ever fit into a book on designing with ceramic tile.

I want to live Molly's words, the last line of Joyce's book: "Yes I will yes I said yes." Instead, I tell myself to stop this foolishness and get back to work on the books that pay the bills.

And yes, for now, I will.

Pretty Complicated

Finally did the audition for the commercial yesterday. The process of getting ready was really something.

2:30 to 3:15 pm Wednesday: Get face waxed. Eyebrows, mustache and chin cleared of all offensive hair.

11:00am Thursday: Go shopping with close (very skinny) friend. Find nothing that fits, nothing that feels even vaguely flattering.
2:30pm Thursday: Return home feeling frumpier than frumpy. Wonder why in the hell I agreed to this.

10:00am to 12:00 Friday: Get hair colored.
12:00 to 2:30 Friday: Go shopping (alone). Find 20 things I like, 3 of which fit and look okay. Settle on one "look." Walking out of store after a torturous hour, catch sight of a cream jacket, try it on, ditch all former decisions for entirely new idea. Moan to myself about why I agreed to this.
3:00 to 3:45pm Friday Try on several permutations of planned outfit for various "advisors." Discover that no two people like the same combination. Decide to decide for myself.

2:00 to 4:00pm Sunday: Launder new clothing. Polish shoes. Search for scarf in disastrous closet. Do facial masque. Conduct search and destroy tweezing mission on hair resprouting on chin and upper lip. Ask myself what the *(&% I was thinking when I agreed to this.

6:00 to 8:30am Monday: Wash hair. Blow dry hair. Steam clothing. Hand wash matching velvet glove I spilled soup on Sunday evening. Frantically try to dry velvet glove.
9:00 to 9:45am Monday: Get hair "done" by stylist at my salon.
9:45 to 10:00am Monday: File and polish fingernails.
10:00 to 10:45am Monday: Apply make up.
10:45 to 11:00am Monday: Submit to inspection by everyone in salon. More stray hair removed. Outfit scrutinized. Lint roller employed. Search for velvet gloves.
11:10am Monday: Find velvet glove flopping around (still damp) in salon dryer.
11:20am Monday: Collapse into chair at audition, wearing my assigned number: 13

The audition itself was fun. The photographer showed me the digital stills. Surprisingly ok. I'm not afraid of video cameras after all these years of occasional tv spots, so the taping was fine. The woman who asked me to audition later told me the director really liked me. Good news, but who knows what that means. They're auditioning 200 people for 10 spots, after all.

In the end, I felt well dressed and well groomed. Sort of pretty, even, but it seriously took a village. Grooming gets pretty damn complicated after 50.

And people? I just don't have that kind of time.

A Cold Sunday Afternoon

This cold winter afternoon produced a wonderful batch of soup and this.



Still have a lot to learn, but I sure am having fun with this drawing thing.

Corn

What is it about corn? Somehow I can't get enough of it. Some Rubenesque types hanker for brownies or hot fudge. Not me. Those things are okay, but the things I long for when I'm hungry, the food items I can't turn away from all include corn. Give me tortillas, Fritos, cornbread, corn nuts, popcorn or Doritos and I'm happy. Throw in a little cheese somewhere and I'm ecstatic.

Scalloped corn is a delicacy I dare not even taste. Corn pudding? I'm totally there. Make a bowl of corn/bean/avocado salad and I'll eat til my cheeks puff like a squirrel storing acorns. Roasted corn on the cob is my favorite indulgence at any farmer's market sophisticated enough to feature a roaster.

What am I feeding with all this corn? It clearly isn't pure physical hunger because physical hunger ends when you've consumed a moderate amount of food. My hunger for corn doesn't diminish no matter how much of it I eat. One chip leads to 20 and at the end, only logic stops me, not satisfaction.

Years and years ago, a leader at a Weight Watcher's meeting asked, "If what you need is a hug and what you reach for is a chocolate chip cookie, how many cookies will it take?"

Make that nachos and you've got yourself a damn good question.

A Girl's Dreams

In 2004, Jennifer Hudson's fans were shocked when she was voted off American Idol. My daughter and her friends were outraged. Just outraged.

Jennifer herself had to be beyond disappointed. If you stopped the story of her life at that point, it would have seemed like a pretty sad story.

Who knows what would have come next if Jennifer had won AI, but her life would surely have taken a different path. As it was, she had the opportunity to do Dream Girls and rose to the challenge in a big, big way. This morning Jennifer found herself on the Today Show, trying to answer questions about her Oscar nomination. She seemed dazed and talked about needing time to reflect on her blessings.

Her story looks a very different today.

You go, girl. Lots of people, including my Katie, are thrilled to see your talents recognized.

My Story

Eight or nine years ago I read Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Remen, a book that propelled me along my path as much as or more than anything I'd read before or since. For some reason, perhaps because a dear friend is much in need of healing right now, Rachel's book has been on my mind a lot lately. This afternoon I picked up a copy again, having long since given the original away.

It is as wise and wonderful as I remembered. Listen to what Rachel says about our stories:

Hidden in all stories is the One story. The more we listen, the clearer that Story becomes. Our true identity, who we are, why we are here, what sustains us, is in this story. The stories at every kitchen table are about the same things, stories of owning, having and losing, stories of sex, of power, of pain, of wounding, of courage, hope, and healing, of loneliness and the end of loneliness. Stories about God.

In telling them, we are telling each other the human story. Stories that touch us in this place of common humanness awaken us and weave us together as a family once again.

Sometimes when I ask people to tell me their story they tell me about their achievements, what they have acquired or built over a lifetime. So many of us do not know our own story. A story about who we are, not what we have done. About what we have faced to build what we have built, what we have drawn upon and risked to do it, what we have felt, thought, feared, and discovered through the events of our lives. The real story that belongs to us alone.

Those are some powerful words, my friends, and they call me to new understandings. I'm one who all too often mistakes what I've done for who I am. My dear friend, Bryan, sometimes says that my story is that of the search for love and the prices I've paid for it. He could be right. Like every other human, I want to be heard, to be known, to be accepted. Like many others, I've traded the shining beads of my self for the blankets of getting my needs met. I've faced some fearful things with amazing courage and hidden like a child from others not nearly so dangerous. I've felt fleeting moments of genuine peace and endured long stretches when I imagined myself alone.

Tonight as I write, my only clue about my true identity is that I'm a child of God; why I've chosen this path and this life is Mystery.

The front of a card Bryan sent me recently shows a colorful person/creature precariously balanced on a fulcrum, driving a nail into the end of the main arm. The text reads: Is willing to accept that she creates her own reality

except for some of the parts where she can't help but wonder what the hell she was thinking.

Pretty much sums 'er up.

Finding My Voice

Because I said so.

Shut up and do what you're told!

Shut up or I'll give you something to cry about.

Shut up. Just shut up.

These words were the theme of my childhood, played against a soundtrack of "Jerri always has to be different."

For a child to whom words and ideas were as important as air and sunshine, it was a lot like telling me not to be. It's clearly no coincidence that I later married not one but two men who could tolerate no disagreement, could stand for no opinion but their own to be voiced. Having long since left those marriages behind, it's no accident that I bought a business with my older sister, whose main mission in life is to prove how right she is about everything. Everything.

My son (now 24) was not yet born the last time I spoke up to her. I remember every syllable: "I wish I knew as much about anything as you know about everything.

She still hasn't forgiven me.

Still when she needed help, I willingly rode into town, checkbook in hand, and hitched my time and my energy and my future to hers. When she rolls her eyes when I ask a question and then answers slowly as though to a slightly impaired child, I tell myself her response is not about who I am. When she leaps to anger when questioned in any way, I silently remind myself how painful it must be to be so defended. When she buys more orange accessories or furniture for the spa and tells me she wants me to finally recognize how beautiful it is, I smile and tell her it goes well with everything else in there.

When I was married, Bill had to approve everything purchased for the house. Before we moved into our last house together, I ordered new bedroom furniture. Shockingly, I ordered an armoire he did not approve of—it was the smaller, more graceful of the two available armoires in the style he'd picked. After the furniture was delivered, I came into the room to find him putting away his clothes in the drawers of the enormous dresser. He was using all them. "Bill," I said calmly, "don't forget that I'll need at least a couple drawers."

"Not in this dresser," he replied. "If you'd bought the armoire I told you to buy, there'd be plenty of room for your things. You didn't do what you were told. That's your problem, not mine."

I silently arranged my panties and bras and jammies in baskets on the closet floor. One of the last things he said to me the day he moved out of the house three years later was, "Look at it this way. You've always wanted a drawer. Now you've got plenty."

These are not stories about the terrible people in my life. (They are not terrible people. They're people with their own wounds, their own pain.) They are, however, stories about how well I learned to shut up, how well I learned to acquiesce to authority, how well I learned to grin and bear it. And how consistently I seek out opportunities to practice these skills.

Until Friday morning when I was tapping with my teacher/healer/shaman, I'd never connected these dots. Working around the idea of not speaking up for myself, she asked for my earliest memory of feeling I couldn't speak. Turned out it was my earliest memory, period. We tapped on several statements surrounding that memory and others from later childhood, and suddenly it came clear that in situations of conflict, I feel like a disobedient child.

Shazaam! Now we're getting somewhere!

Who Knew?

Working with a teacher/healer/shaman this morning, something rocketed into my consciousness that now seems so obvious I can't believe it felt like news.

I became a writer to have a voice, to be heard, to create a place where my feelings and thoughts mattered. (All this time I've thought it was because I just happened to like words.)

When I was a kid, family members constantly accused me of deliberately being "different," and as Barbra Streisand once sang, different was "another word for wrong." I quickly learned to keep my opinions to myself. Now that I'm in business with my sister, I'm still wrong whenever I open my mouth and so still keeping my opinions to myself as often as possible.

Except here.

Thanks for listening. It means the world to me.

Fun New Possibility

Just got off the phone with a woman who asked me to audition for a television commercial. If I get it, they'll pay me (a modest amount) AND they'll pay all my expenses to go to Florida for a five day shoot. WooHoo!!!!

I really, really want to do this. Please help me manifest it into being. The audition is Monday, January 29 at 11:30: Visualize. Meditate. Believe. If you've got suggestions for how to pull this off, let me know.

What a strange and interesting life I've got going on here. Just never know what might happen next. Isn't that great?

Be Still Like Broccoli

Just finished my post-lunch 30 minutes on the treadmill. Yep, that's me: proud owner of a brand new Nordic Track treadmill, purchased on sale at Sears last Saturday.

AND I'm publicly announcing my goal of losing 33 pounds in 2007. Not so easy for me to say, considering that it's pretty embarassing to admit I've got 33 pounds available for loss. But I do, and it's got to go.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Well, actually, it was. But that's another story entirely.

This post started off to be thoughts about stillness. Passed the time on the treadmill (just can't say that enough!), reading O magazine. Including, ironically, an article on weight loss. According to James A. Levine, MD, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine no less, people who fidget burn about 350 calories more a day than people who are still when at rest. That's 33 pounds a year!

So, in other words, this past two years when I've been working so hard at learning to be still, finding inner peace and true physical rest, I've been lulling myself into gaining the EXACT poundage I'm now struggling to offload?

You absolutely have to be kidding me.

Damn. Everything has a price. Even inner peace.

Sunday Scribblings: Ideas

Ideas are writing's life blood, and for me, they come in questions. I wonder if. . . . I wonder why. . . . I wonder how. . . . Curiosity come to life.

I vaguely remember in the book What Dreams May Come when the author said all art, all writing exists complete in the Universe somewhere. The person who produces it doesn't so much create it as tap into its vibration and then translate it for others to experience. That makes sense to me because it's only when I open myself that the ideas flow, only when I let go of my self-criticism and self-consciousness that the words come freely.

When ideas and words do arrive, I'm often surprised by them. I can't count the times a solution has presented itself to me, an idea truly beyond my ability to think up or create. Sometimes phrases appear, surprising me with their beauty or their aptness. When I'm deliberately constructing sentences or painstakingly producing ideas, the result is usually acceptable—workmanlike and orderly. But when I cast orderliness to the winds, throw open the doors of my heart and mind, stretch my arms wide and dance with the pulse of the earth, I'm sometimes carried by an idea, swept along by its current, lit by its energy.

It's the reason I write: to ride the tail of that kite now and again.

For more on ideas, go to Sunday Scribblings.

Wherever Two or More of You

My deepest thanks to all who joined the healing meditation for Mark just now. As we gathered in Spirit, I experienced a sense of peace and connection that surprised me with its strength.

It's cold and windy here in KC this afternoon. Sleet is hurling itself to the ground as though in fury. Mummified in layers, I sat outside facing my beloved pond with a plastic trash bag beneath me. The candle I keep lit for Mark was beside me.

At 2:00pm, I began my meditation and all awareness of the cold and wind left me. My hands, especially, felt warm. The geese on the pond, usually noisy and active, were silent and still. At times I felt incredibly rooted to the earth and at other times completely buoyant, as though my body could float across the miles to Darlene and Mark to deliver the golden light of the meditation.

Surprisingly, Mark's candle remained lit the entire time despite the wind. And I remained connected to All That Is.

Again, thank you. Meditating and praying with you all was an honor and a priviledge.

Peace above you. Peace below you. Let all around you be peace.

Meditation Invitation

Like many other bloggers around the world, I have followed the journey of Darlene and her son, Mark, with a lump in my thoat and an ache in my heart. Also like many others, I light candles in his honor and pray for the entire family.

And while this has been what I could do from afar, it has not felt like enough in the face of the enormous challenges faced by these dear people. Reading the comments on Darlene's posts, it seems many others feel the same.

While we can't all show up at Mark's bedside or hug Darlene in person, together we can do something real and positive—a simultaneous healing meditation.

Please join me in meditating* for Mark and his family on Saturday, January 13 from 2:00pm** to 2:15pm, Central Standard Time.

* If at all possible, please sit outside, on the ground, so that we all have a direct connection to the Earth.

** If you're not sure what time that is in your area, check timeanddate.com Click "Full World Clock" and then "Converter" and select US, Central Standard time and 2:00pm. It will quickly tell you what time that is in your part of the world.

I plan to do a very specific type of meditation called tonglen and invite you to join me in this practice.

Tonglen involves deep compassion for ourselves and for those who are suffering. After a period of preparation, the meditator consciously breathes in the pain and fear and suffering of the person for whom they are meditating, allows the love and compassion in their heart to transmute those things, and then breathes out love and peace and healing. It often helps to imagine inhaling the pain and fear as a dark cloud or as smoke and then to imagine exhaling golden light.

This is a serious mediation and requires strength and true compassion from the meditator. I consulted Liz Elayne of Be Present, Be here who is a yoga teacher. Here's the guidance she offered:

My teacher shared this meditation with me when several loved ones in my life were ill and it became part of my personal practice for several months. Because this meditation is a strong one, it is important to have an awareness of your own strength and how you feel physically and emotionally. Anyone, even someone who has never meditated, will be able to particiapte in this meditation; however, I suggest that you check-in with yourself before the meditation begins. One way to do this: Sit quietly, eyes closed, and notice how you feel physically and emotionally. Think about the idea of breathing in your own suffering and notice how that feels. Take a few breaths as you notice what comes up for you. If thinking about this feels okay for you, think about breathing in the suffering of another person. If either of these check-ins invites you to think that this practice might be too strong for you at this time, you can practice this meditation using only compassion and healing. In this case, you would inhale compassion and exhale compassion and healing.

Another important piece is to start this meditation focused on breathing in your own suffering and then exhaling compassion for yourself. My teacher explained a simple lesson to me that has had such a big impact on how approach this meditation and compassion in my life: You must feel compassion for yourself before you can feel compassion for and another. If you are new to meditation or to tonglen meditation, you might want to practice a personal tonglen meditation over the next few days, focusing on breathing in your own suffering and exhaling compassion and healing for you. This would be a great way to experience this meditation in preparation for our community experience on Saturday."

If you have questions, go here to find a discussion of tonglen written by Pema Chodron.

If meditation is not part of your faith tradition, you're welcome to join us in any form of prayer that is. It be wonderful if we could send streams of golden light to Mark and Darlene and the rest of the family from every corner of the globe. Please help spread the word. Talk to people. E-mail others who might be interested. Post an invitation with a link to this post if you feel comfortable with that. Let's invite all like-minded souls to join us as we breathe healing and compassion into the Universe for Mark and his family.

Sincere and humble thanks to you all.

Sunday Scribblings: Kisses

Ah HA! I've found it!! I've found the thing I'm a genius at (see yesterday's post), and it's KISSES. With a kiss, I can divine a child's temperature within 2 or 3 tenths of a point, assure my aging parents I will be with them and stand for them through all that's sure to come, or ignite desire in a (receptive) man.

I am a genius at kisses because they're vital to me. Kissing is one of the purest pleasures available to humans and the thing I long for, dream about, create in fantasy when it's absent. In the long, loveless years of my marriage months sometimes passed without sex, but sex was not central to the dreams that haunted me. Instead, kisses floated behind my closed eyes like mirages in a hot, dry desert.

When I reached the oasis of dating again, I drank in kisses as though from a deep well filled with cool nectar. My new love and I dated for many months before consumating our relationship, but late at night we danced in my candlelit family room and kissed for hours. Hours. When the time finally came, we explored the pleasures of lips on skin well beyond the mouth and I discovered new and unknown levels of sensory delight. You'd have thought I'd discovered fire.

In a way, I had.



For more thoughts on kisses, go to Sunday Scribblings

Lost in Translation

I am lost.

Ordinarily I feel an extraordinary connection to All That Is and, on many occasions, to the Flow of Life. When I am aligned with the flow, I am carried along by its current so that even very hard work feels like play and every day feels like the opening of possibilities.

Right now, even basic things require more strength than I can gather. Like a tire driven over a big curb or into a deep pothole, it feels like I'm working in opposition to the goal: lots of activity, no forward movement.

The other day a friend laughingly said she was a "genius" at something or another. It struck me that there's not one thing on earth that I believe myself to be a genius at. Not one. Eventually I did decide that I'm quite good at teaching others what I know through my books, but that's as close as I've ever come and trust me, it's not genius.

Whether or not I am a genius at something is not the issue here. Instead, it is believing that is important and so at first I thought this ennui was a crisis of confidence. I spent much of the last couple of days exploring the idea of confidence--where it comes from and why and how one acquires it.

You'd think that a long, long (my dear friend Bryan would point out that I'm old, after all) history of completing tasks with a fair amount of success would generate confidence. Writing for example: the books I've written or been the lead editor for have sold more than a million copies collectively. Wouldn't you think that would give me some confidence in my ability to tell a story? So far, not so much.

Art's another great example. A friend with an MFA saw one of my drawings recently and told me she'd worked with graduate students who couldn't produce such subtle shading and line. She wasn't trying to be nice, she was making a point when she said it. Three-quarters of being an artist is believing yourself to be one, yet I can't imagine getting to that point.

Lately I have spent far toooo much time lying on the sofa watching mindless TV, an electronic pacifier. It soothes my jangled nerves and comforts my outer layers while shoving my insides out of alignment much the way a real pacifier does to a child's palette if they cling to it too long. I know this. Still, faced with a little free time, I find myself horiztonal, staring at illuminated movement rather than moving to find my own illumination.

Looking back over what I've written, it sounds like clinical depression and there may be some element of that. But don't cry for me, Argentina. When I reconnect to the Source, All will be well. And all will be well. And all manner of things will be exceedingly well. (Juliana of Norwich)

Connected to the flow, in the stream of life, I feel charmed. I find things like blogging and writer's workshops and this wonderful community of souls. Fascinating experiences find me and I glide from one interesting encounter to another.

THAT's my life, that's my experience when I live from my soul and I will find my way back to it, to a connection so deep I hear the heartbeat of the earth in the lapping of waves and feel mountains singing to me in my bones. I once stopped hiking to sit on a large rock in the midst of a wild blueberry patch on an Alaska tundra, convinced I could hear nearby mountains singing to me. They told me not to fear being different, not to worry that my path's not "normal." Their song told me to live my own life and it echoes in my head and heart even now—Lindsey Buckingham urging me to go my own way. Really. As I sat on that rock, I could hear Fleetwood Mac singing "Go Your Own Way" and thought it was a Message from God. (BTW--don't try this. I could have and probably should have been eaten by bears sitting alone in a fruit-filled berry patch on an Alaskan tundra in mid-August.)

Having written this all out, I feel better. More hopeful. A connection that strong hasn't disappeared, just gone dormant for a bit. I'll find it again. Some small thing will happen and I'll follow its trail as though a string had been left for me to follow. Life is both ebb and flow. This is the ebb. Flow's got to follow.

Damn, I wish it would hurry.

WTF????

Some of you have been following Darlene's journey with her son, Mark. If not, you may want to go to Darlene's blog to catch up.

Darlene is a mother, writer, artist, and seeker with a soul as wide as the sky and a heart to match. She writes as she apparently lives—with grace and passion and love. Always love. A little more than two weeks ago, Mark was in a terrible car accident. His survival was a miracle, but still he hovers at the edge of danger. Yesterday he had emergency surgery, his 3rd since the accident. Darlene, who has lupus, visited him from the wheelchair made necessary by a flare up.

The driver of the car Mark was riding in is out of the hospital and has been charged with a misdemeanor and released.

WTF????

I do not wish the driver harm, mind you. He's going to have a heavy load to carry every moment for the rest of his life. I just don't understand. Here's a young man from a loving family, grievously injured and struggling from one minute to the next. Thanks to the blog community, hundreds--maybe thousands--pray for his recovery and for his family's strength.

Will God intervene? Does He or She control our journeys? I believe in the power of prayer but question the value of prayers of petition. In other words, I know my faith in God, in the Universe, in a Loving Spirit will help me survive, even thrive, despite difficult circumstances. I pray for the wisdom to see the Path and the strength to follow it. I pray for Mark, several times every day. I pray for Darlene and the rest of the family. But I don't really know that the hand of God will reach down and protect one individual from harm. (And I'm pretty damn sure He isn't converting pop flies to home runs when some ballplayer crosses himself before he swings a bat.)

What's it all about, Alfie?

Today I wish mine was a blind faith, writ large in ideology I dare not question. Not really, of course, but sometimes it seems so appealing.

However you pray, please join me in praying for Mark, his mother Darlene, and their family. The driver, too, while we're at it.

Moonlight Madness

Moonlight waltzes on the pond's dark water tonight, doing sparkling quick steps and slow looping turns with a silent grace and beauty that seeps into my soul as I watch. On my meditation altar, three candles burn. Theiir flickering light reflects in the dark windows facing the pond. Gorgeous instrumentals play in the background, and I am doing absolutely nothing beyond absorbing the abundance.

Well, and typing out my wishes that you are enjoying your evenings every bit as much.

Judging a Book by Its Cover

Stopped in an art supply store this afternoon to buy some more pastels and some paper. Trying to explain my level of proficiency (and establish a reasonable price range for appropriate paper), I fetched Sunday's drawing from the car. The clerk seemed to understand and we happily skittered off to the paper racks, leaving the drawing on the counter. When we returned, a lovely lady asked me if the piece was mine. When I said yes, she said, "I knew it. You look like the person who did that."

When I asked what she meant, she said the piece was detailed, intricate, controlled and precise; she mentioned that the way I was dressed and my appearance matched it.

All my life people have told me I'm sweet. Puke! I hate being called sweet. Now I'm experimenting with color and line, stepping waaaay out of my comfort zone, and a complete stranger tells me my attempt is "detailed and precise." I'm sure she meant no harm—didn't intend to be unkind—but, damn, it was like being told I'm sweet.

If you've spent your life being a "good girl," how do you break that mold? I don't want to be sweet, I want to be exotic and interesting—a little dangerous even. Not aiming for irresponsible here, just not "controlled and precise."

It would be great to make 07 my "year of living dangerously." Not risky, really. Just on the far side of sweet. Got to figure out where to start. Stay tuned.

New Year, New Goals

Skipped the parties I'd been invited to last night. Snug in my little house, I played with color. This piece, inspired by a photo taken by Liz Elayne at Be Present, Be Here, is the first step toward one of my New Year's Goals. Lately I've ached—physically ached—to draw something, to express myself with lines and color. The thing that's always stopped me is a total lack of talent.

Well, guys, fixing that is one of my goals for this year. I'm not gonna let little things stop me anymore. What's more, when I work on projects, I'm gonna show 'em to the world. They don't have to be great. They don't even have to be good. What they DO have to be is expressions of myself, attempts to enjoy even those things I'm not great at.

WooHoo!! Here's the first one, a soft pastel drawing: