Locked Out

    Looking forward to a Friday night all to meself, even so I teared up -- actually broke down, sobbing, as my four ( yes, four, Emily is as much a part of us as we are ) grown kids drove off in the spring sunshine for a weekend at her folks'.  This spring, at once, holds promise and challenge, and I am plumb wore out, as locals might exclaim. Zeus stayed behind to keep Shiloh company, and I left them to play in our gianormous yard.
    I grabbed a beer that my pseudo-sister Nancy had brought the night before, made myself a late lunch, and launched into a weekend of having the house all to myself -- when I realized that someone, possibly me, had turned the lock on my bedroom door and pulled it shut to keep out the Doggie Duo until bedtime. I didn't even know it had a key lock on it.
   Huh. I can pick this lock, I said to myself, I used to pick the lock on my old Buick back in the 80's with a barrette. No sweat.
    Sweat. Lots of sweat, compounded by the fact that my contact lenses are for distance and I can't focus close up with them in, and my contact case and solution sat quietly on the counter of my bathroom. On the other side of the locked door. Couldn't take them out either because my spares? Also in my bathroom.
   All righty then. Felt for a key on top of the doorjamb. No dice.
   I'll dismantle the doorknob. Easy enough, right?
   Two slightly sliced fingers later, not so easy. Door still locked. Tools bloody. Deep breath.
    Called the nice man I lease from and ask him if by chance he has the key -- he didn't know, either, that the set had been replaced with a key lock. No dice, again. Said to call him if I needed help.
   I don't call for help easily. Intelligent, capable, and with the Internet at my injured fingertips, I figured I could do it myself.
   A MacGyver type maneuver which involves tying dental floss to a piece of paper, slipping over the door and retrieving under the door to tie to the vacuum cleaner cord in an attempt to slip over the doorknob was to no avail...
...so I finally got a hammer and beat the thing off the door.
   Also chipped a little chunk out of the façade of the hollow-core door. In my leased house. Damn it. Damn damn damn. There's more money for repairs that I DON'T HAVE. Damn.
   In tears, sweaty, alone, and supremely irritated at myself for not asking for help, I finally took my contacts out  and had a shower and a sob.
    "I HATE MY FREAKIN LIFE!!" more than likely echoed out into the street through my open bathroom window, which I could not climb into a) because it is four feet of the ground and b) with storm window bolted-in screenage on it. ( Good thing in case of burglars... bad thing when locked out of said master bedroom.)
    As in days of old and in Seventh-day Adventist circles, on Saturday I rested. Stayed home from dawn to dusk, and beyond dusk.
   This morning I went old-school and walked to church, like people used to do in the Dick and Jane days. I haven't been to church since before we moved, since we were moving, and then the day I got ready to go back, Randall got sick. So, keeping in the theme of Staycation weekend, I decided to be a visitor at the Catholic church around the corner.
    The sermon had to do with loss. Typically Catholic ( focusing on suffering) the priest mused that our very birth is the first loss we know. I kept listening, as he talked about Christ facing his human loss. Loss of family, loss of friends, loss of His life, to gain glory. I listened as the priest recounted the Scripture, 'whosoever hates his life here on earth shall gain it in glory'.
     Meandering home in the spring sunshine, I thought of the losses I've had, and how I have fought to hang on to what I thought I needed, and how hating my life at times when it's difficult is not necessarily a sin. It means I'm longing for something better, instead of being complacent.
     I've struggled with faith and relationships, like I struggled with that locked door. I've hammered some people, and regretted it. I've hammered some churches and regretted it.
     During Randall's illness, the friends I never tried desperately to unlock are the ones who are there for us. The faith that I worked so hard to defend and uphold and unlock in others is the faith that came out of my throat this morning, singing songs I'd never heard, as easily as if I grew up with them because I simply listened to the melody and joined in.
    Jesus came to the world of oppressive government and oppressive religion to tell everyone to lighten up. In an agrarian society, where you starved if you didn't work yourself to death in the fields, he said, " My yoke is easy and my burden light." " Love others as I have loved you." " Treat  others as you want to be treated."  He didn't go militant and raise a campaign fund to fight the Romans and the Pharisees, and the only time He got seriously angry was in the Temple.It was His house, and people had set up shop. He kicked over the tables and sent people running to restore serenity and reverence to His house.  I'd run if God was kicking over tables, too. Whew.
    Today I'm not locked out anymore. I don't need to get in to where I think I belong...I just need to take a walk and get to where I'm supposed to be. There are Footprints ahead. if I look for them and put my little feet in their imprints, I'll get there faster.
 

♪ No Time At All

Where does thirty years go? This past weekend, that period of time got bookmarked three times.

   After a month of living here, I finally got to go through the jumble of boxes and bags I'd thrown into the sitting room of the master bedroom I'd moved into, early February. I told Jonathan that I had touched anything in there all this time and so most of it would probably get thrown out -- but actually all I needed to do was sort it out. Amongst Jonathan's foot lockers, assorted sleeping bags, and several boxes of books, I found a single cassette tape marked  "Pippin".  "Pippin" ran on Broadway for years in the late 60's, starring John Rubenstein and Jill Clayburgh and the phenomenal Ben Vereen, in a finding-yourself saga set in Charlemagne's realm. Gary Krinke directed it at Poly High School in '79. I went to see it as a freshman-to-be, memorized the whole score, and it stayed in my memory all these years. HA  I popped the tape in a combo turntable/CD/cassette unit that looks like the radio from Walton's mountain, and as I sang along I wondered where in the heck that middle-aged woman in the mirror came from. HA My psyche was in a thirteen year old state as I revisited the lyrics about a young spoiled one searching for the meaning of life. Perfect fit for a freshman in high school.  I trilled my way through the story and thought of my friends from high school who starred in that production who are now getting their first applications for AARP. HA
   Saturday night brought a tidbit of family news that made me so grateful for all of us who got old enough to get AARP applications. 
  A distant cousin had been traveling for the last year, on her bucket list of trips, and, at 34, she took her final trip after choosing not to treat Stage 4 cancer. I never knew Anna, who was a year old that summer of '79. (I would have chosen the same thing had I not had the boys, and just 'gone gracefully into that good night' but I need to be here to embarrass them at their weddings with the way I dance. Or not so much dance, but rather resemble Miss Piggy.)
   Tonight I read about another friend, from 30 years ago, who set out on a Saturday night motorcycle ride, on vacation in Florida with his buddies, who didn't survive the spring night. At 64, Ed had been in AARP for as long as I've lived here in Texas. I used to babysit for them when I was a teenager, soon after I started singing Pippin lyrics in my bedroom mirror back in the day. Their little chubby-cheeked boy was a love bug, and I remember Ed at about the same age that young man is now. Leaning against his motorcycle, heaping Southern gentility and grace in every word he said. 
   Took me thirty-four years to find Jonathan and fall in love with him all over again. We each got married and divorced twice over and raised a passel of kids between us while my fourth cousin Anna lived and left. Ed raised two beautiful kids, then left this earth doing what I remember most about him, riding his motorcycle. 
   I believe the actress who played Granny on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' played the role of grande dame Bethe in Pippin,on Broadway. Irene Ryan's distinctive voice played forth from my 33-year-old TDK tape, again, this morning:

Oh, it's time to start livin'   •   Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall   •   In just no time at all....

Here is a secret I never have told • Maybe you'll understand why
I believe if I refuse to grow old I can stay young till I die
Now, I've known the fears of sixty-six years • I've had troubles and tears by the score
But the only thing I'd trade them for • Is sixty-seven more....

Oh, it's time to keep livin'  •  Time to keep takin' from this world we're given
You are my time, so I'll throw off my shawl • And watching your flings be flung all over
Makes me feel young all over, In just no time, at all!

Live, and laugh and love..life goes by in just no time at all. 

Art For Dummies :-)

Writers. We always have to have the last word. As if our words carry more weight than anyone else’s… though we know they don’t. We 'paint' vividly with our words, giving us a sense of artistic license.  Since we are artists but can’t brush onto canvas, mold a hunk of clay, put notes on a score, or create a tangible work in a three-dimensional form -- our art is constantly running through our minds and out into the open air.

Perhaps that’s why we tend to run at the mouth – and these days, at the keyboard.

Frequently, I speak out of turn, but mostly I just speak of the present or past as I see it applied to the current situation. That’s what writer/reporters do --  make mental notes of moments in life and share them, in written form. It’s nearly medically necessary,  as if keeping them all inside might cause some sort of verbiage hernia. 

Reporters are usually in the crosshairs of the general public, anticipating one of three basic reactions to our phrases and perspective. 1) Anger, 2) appreciation, or 3) apathy. Sometimes we win the showcase, and sometimes Door # 1 hits us in the hind end on the way out.  

My verbiage began much earlier than most folks’. My mother still tells the story of our new neighbor greeting me, after we moved, in 1967. Perhaps I sat in the yard next to my mom, at eighteen months old, while she tended the flowerbed, when Mr. Finley stopped to chat. I don’t know why we were outside in December, or what he said to me in the front yard of the house in the shadow of Pachappa Hill, but apparently I answered him in a full sentence -- and the nice man who would be our neighbor for the next 30 years never forgot it.

Often labeled a tattletale, often lauded for my dearth of information and insight, and, once upon a time -- nominated Biggest Gossip of my Senior Class in 1983 -- I have yet to stop yammering on. (At  Senior Awards Night, I didn’t even mind. At least I knew people were listening to me and paying attention. HA)

I am a reporter by nature. Teacher, tattletale, empathizer, gossip, observer, critic, recorder, archivist, preacher, hot seat debate participant, comforter – I always want to put my two cents in. 

Frequently, I speak out of turn, but mostly I just speak of the present or past as I see it applied to the current situation. 

I have taken to heart the ancient adage, “ the tongue speaks of life and death”, and am making the change from the “painting style” of artists who throw paint onto a canvas in front of a jet engine and see how it turns out -- to one more like the masters of old. Sketch first, create layers, subtle hues mixed for depth and composition – with careful brushstrokes. As opposed to fostering brash ideas which become bold words which become chaotic canvases that make no sense yet still create interest of intellectual puzzlement ( or broad distinterest ) which had been my modus operandi.

This past winter and spring,  I have attempted to use the brushstrokes of my words to ‘paint’ better relationships.  In baseball lingo, I went one for ten. In Real Life lingo, I got verbally scourged by a few folks who would rather not establish improved interactions with others. (It’s partly fair. I’ve done my share of slapping, too, and it may be too late to recreate myself in the eyes of others even though I know I have changed.  Scourging remains unwarranted, as throughout history -- always used to silence opposition. )

Renovation of personality is a slow process.

Two and half years ago, on being diagnosed with cancer, I set about to apologize to nearly everyone from my past that I had wounded or betrayed, and also to reconnect with those I had maintained healthy relationships --- just in case the cancer overtook me and I exited this earth without making amends.( One guy that I dumped back in high school accepted my apology and told me he had used me as an example in ministry as what NOT to do in a dating situation. Talk about making a silk purse. HA! At least my insensitivity got some good use.) 

In the post-cancer aftermath, I still manage to put both feet in my mouth – but have also learned to whom NOT to share my insights and observations, nor get offended by them when they adopt a passive-aggressive defense when I strike a nerve. 

These folks include those who cannot see beyond the end of their nose, those who choose to stay ‘inside’ at all times, and those who have a vampire tendency. ( Can’t see themselves in a two-way situation, yet drain you of all your emotion.) I now carry garlic with me at all times. It’s also good for my heart. HA!

Color your world vividly, in your own style, with kind words, loving thoughts, generous deeds, and colors from your very own palette – but don’t be afraid to defend yourself or your beliefs against those who choose to be less than kind, simply because you don't fit in the lines of their coloring book. 

Just keep painting and doodling and crayoning right around them, and they pale in comparison to true beauty. They might just pick up a brush, as well, and create a work that complements your own. 

♪ All by Myself...

    1998. Randall was nine going on forty-three, Craig was seven, and Brett-Brett was three. I left the three of them in the van, listening to Radio Disney,  while I numbly wandered through Stater Brothers, our local supermarket chain. I kept wondering what kind of horrible person I was to a) leave my young children in the van and b) have people consistently and chronically leave me with misery instead of providing me with security. 
    Their dad had left for the night on a turn-around trip to Vegas with his good friend Kevin. A turn-around is a bus ride, several hours of time in Lost Wages, and then a bus ride home. To my weary, HeadStart teaching-mom to three boys-going to college at night-foggy understanding, it had something to do with some charity, which I remember thinking was odd, but whatever. I wasn't one of those wives who nagged all the time, just sometimes. LOL.    
   In hindsight, that should have been my M.O. 
   It had been over a year that their dad was out on medical disability and had gotten a settlement for an at work injury. He'd recovered, gone back to school and been certified to work on copiers, ATM machines, and other electronic equipment. He'd had a long year and the job market was slow, even though he went out everyday to the Inland Empire to apply for positions in his new field. 
   The good Christian wife that I had been brainwashed to be trusted him, expected him to provide for me and the kids, and had also learned to take Excedrin immediately after being smacked so as to keep the swelling down. I wasn't ever easy to live with, always on the edge of fear, so getting smacked and choked had become routine to me.
    Yep. (I always knew I belonged to an earlier era, the one in which you just didn't talk about such things. ) 
    That may have contributed to the non-nagging stance that I had adopted, as well as the relief at him being away for even part of a weekend.    
    Indubitably. 
    I had put the kids in the van shortly after getting a phone call. From Kevin. Asking for the father of my children.  
    "He's...with..you..."
    Nope. He was on a bus to Las Vegas with total strangers, leaving me at home again for the zillionth weekend with three little boys.      
    We liked those weekends. On Friday nights we would get blankets and pillows and "camp out" on the living room rug, watching Miracles and Other Wonders on cable TV. Brett usually conked out first, and around ten Rand and Craig would give in to the weight of their eyelids closing against their will to stay up all night. The sight of those three beautiful boys sleeping amidst a jumble of blankets and pillows -- still so precious to me. 
   The thought of my sons broke through the numbness that had overtaken me at Kevin's phone call. Grabbing a few Friday night snacks, I hurried back to the van and got in just as Nilsson started wailing, " All By Myself" on Radio Disney, since it had been recycled into a recent mummy movie. Craig, unsuspecting as to his mother's inner turmoil, said, " That's you Mommy, all by yourself." I lost it. Poor Craig. I had to quickly pull myself together and tell him I was crying like the mummy in the movie when he couldn't find his way home. 
    While they rolled around on the blankets that night, I skimmed through bank statements and ATM withdrawals, and I realized what a total dupe I had been to think that he had been dutifully job hunting. Unless, of course, he had to pay the casinos thousands of dollars to apply to work on their machines. 
     That might have been it. Hmmmph. 
      I straggled along for a few months after that, but when he went through MY teacher retirement fund, also on a false premise, I figured the God that I knew and loved didn't approve of His daughter being beaten or having her bank account emptied at casinos.
    I got divorced. On both sides of our family, folks shunned me and denounced me for 'giving up on my marriage'  from their purported higher moral ground. "She's being awful to poor Jimmy." Whatever. I guess beating me and ruining me financially wasn't enough to give me what they thought I deserved.
   Fourteen years later my sons still get shoved aside by that man, and his wife, and all the blame is projected onto me and the boys. I've never been so important to him. He sure doesn't matter to me.  
   No, they aren't little boys anymore. I don't have to live with it...and yet, more than a decade of disappointment is hard to brush off for them. 
   People say, "stop bringing up the past and let it go". 
   The problem is, the problem never went away. 
   What if it keeps happening? 
   What if your 17-year-old calls his dad and gets cut off, not getting a return call for a week, and then sees on Facebook that he was in Las Vegas, when he is supposedly so weak that he can't get a job?    
   What if his brother is in the ICU but has to call his dad three days later, to tell him how he's doing? 
   What if a college kid hasn't gotten a single card, box, or other sign of care for three years??
  There's no explanation for that. 
  That's not the past. That is the wretched present. 
  My own father had some ghastly personality traits of his own, but at least he had a long career teaching at the university level, and alcoholism to blame for most of his wretchedness. Most of it. 
  Partly he was a creep.
  I'm sure there is some goodness, somewhere in the man who fathered my children, but there is a long pause if you ask my adult sons to tell you about it. 
   Perhaps someday he will remember his baptism and live well. 
   I remember it. I was so grateful that my then-husband had come to accept God in his heart and I was proud of him, that day. 
    I certainly have not been the perfect mother. I was not the perfect wife. Not even close. I broke the rules, too. The big difference is I blame myself for my mistakes, not him. He doesn't have any power over me any longer. 
    I stayed at my post as long as I could. Among all the failures of my own life, which number in the thousands, I count against them some pretty good men that used to listen to Radio Disney. He stopped being their dad when they outgrew him, in junior high. 
    He just blew his chance at being their friend, for a long long time. 
    That makes me sad. For them.
   

Chapter 2, Vandom Acts of Randallism,

         The doves are cooing out side the breakfast nook where I sit again, two weeks later, still wondering at the days to come for my oldest son, Randall. 

        Healing hath transpired, we are no longer part of Occupy ICU, and he had come home for a brief stretch before taking up residence again in the Bethania wing of the local medical center. His room was at the far top left, and now we wait out the days just above the lower roof line, on the right. As you can see, Bethania, once the Sisters of Mercy hospital here in Wichita Falls. Although the likes of Sister Mary Ignatius and her cohorts no longer attend patients with a clipboard and rosary in hand, I personally gain a sense of comfort from the cross overhead and the Blessed Mother welcoming all.

       For we are all blessed mothers. Birthing and raising and enduring and celebrating the lives of your children remains the greatest of all miracles. Those of us with children secretly identify with Mary's song every Christmas, not the Divine aspect to be sure, but the sheer joy of knowing that your own body nurtures another, that you alone know that little person better than anyone ever will, and that you have been chosen to be their mother.

    Randall's due date, as I mentioned in the last post, could have been any time after April 1. May 13 is certainly any time after April 1, and I recall another frustrating moment of waiting, with birds singing outside, from long ago. Standing at my mother's kitchen window, I gazed out over the azure pool and the ancient swing-set, kelly-green paint peeling off, for the ten billionth time in my life. I wondered when I would ever have this baby, and why it was taking so long, staring at the mauve-blossomed crepe myrtle tree under whose frilly blooms we played as kids. My thoughts in those non-PC days consisted of,  " I am so retarded, I can't even have a baby the right way..."

     Rand has echoed a similar frustration lately, although thankfully it has nothing to do with anyone giving birth. HA " I can't even live a regular life and get sick and get better without some sort of catastrophe...". This girl knows exactly how he feels. 

    Today we wait for an IV therapy to hopefully start raising his platelets so he can get his spleen out and get on with his life. All sorts of panicky thoughts flit through my brain as I look ahead to the IV infusion of the drug, the waiting for his platelets to be intact, the surgery on a man with a chronic hemophilia-type condition.      

   Surgery and hemophilia. Two words that just don't go together. Yeesh.

   And yet, as I sit here in my Star Wars pajamas and think of all the catastrophes/events along the way, and how we have watched God forge ahead of us, letting us follow if we so chose, there is a peace. We are Star Wars nerds to the core, to the point of knowing the language systems of characters and adding them to Randall's care chart -- much to the perplexity of non-Star-Wars-nerd R.N.s. It's a cheesy movie, but today I feel a little like Luke Skywalker, on approach to blow up the Death Star with proton torpedos. 

    Hurtling through a trench, with enemy fire picking off the rest of his squadron, Luke panics. At the last second he hears his mentor's voice, " Luke. Use the Force." Obi-Wan had earlier instructed Luke, "The force is an energy field created by all living things, it surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together".  He sure needed to use his navigation system to know when to fire. ( In classic cinematography, George Lucas (the director) frames Luke's face transforming as he chooses to release his fears of failure). As peace and confidence floods through him, he shuts off his navigation, allowing faith to overtake his destiny -- fires, fortuitously makes the shot, and saves the day.

     George Lucas isn't directing Randall's life, thank God,  but we are using certainly The Force to carry us through whatever happens next. These nerds believe in the Creator of the Force, the all-encompassing love and energy and power that is God. He may not use the Force to save us, He may, but he always uses it to sustain us and release of of our fears when we choose to let Him flood through our wearied and worried minds.

   Rand-all, may the force of His great love be with you, now and always. 

   Love, Mom