Big Boy

My son turned 14 last Friday. I saw him briefly that afternoon, long enough to hand him his birthday gift of video games and feed him some buffalo wings. (2nd on his fave food list, right under pizza) That, my friends, is the definition of irony; buying more video games for an avid teenage gamer. To be honest, the only clue I have that he is alive and present some days is the water running for his two-hour showers. But who am I kidding, I love that boy like crazy and he is a solid, industrious chap. Awesome really, and taller than me already. We are in full scale summer mode here. That means a nightly argument about why bedtime should not exist when school is out of session. Left to themselves, the boys usually opt for the 3 a.m. option and sleep ‘til noon or 1. It is amazing really, but I suppose a rite or right of summer, depending on how you look at it. I am just now grumpily easing back into the work routine myself after two glorious weeks of vacation, so I can’t really blame them. I pulled a few late nighters myself, practically giddy with the freedom of uninterrupted, alarm-clock free sleep. My thoughts after his momentous occasion are that I am so fortunate. Each stage of life I have experienced with my kids I thought to myself, “Wow, this is it! This is the best age. Look what they can do now!” I have loved it all and I’m happy because it just keeps getting better. Laters.

The Vacay Is Over

Vacation is over. The pool and beach are behind me. I am tired of looking at everyone's cellulite, including my own. The kids had a great time and are as brown as nuts, in fact we all are.  Every morning, I thought, "why can't vacation be everyday?"  I know the answer, but it is nice to imagine my days consisting of lying by the pool while sipping a cold drink. Now, we are on to the less fun portion of the trip, the driving home, but that is to be pleasantly interspersed with visits to old friends, so I still have something good to look forward to. Summer is my very favorite.  Laters.

A Poem for Poetry Thursday

Address To The Lord
by John Berryman

Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
inimitable contriver,
endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,
thank you for such as it is my gift.
I have made up a morning prayer to you
containing with precision everything that most matters.
'According to Thy will' the thing begins.
It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence.
You have come to my rescue again & again
in my impassable, sometimes despairing years.
You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves
and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning.
Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs:
How can I 'love' you?
I only as far as gratitude & awe
confidently & absolutely go.
I have no idea whether we live again.
It doesn't seem likely
from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view
but certainly all things are possible to you,
and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter and to Paul
as I believe I sit in this blue chair.
Only that may have been a special case
to establish their initiatory faith.
Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement.
May I stand until death forever at attention
for any your least instruction or enlightenment.
I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty.

Unwelcome News

A post I wrote a few days ago after a talk with my doctor. More testing to follow, then options and decisons. I am feeling good though and very, very optimistic. My family has been amazing and my dad said I'm gonna be just fine and he knows everything.

I have cancer.
I have non-invasive cancer.
I have cancer.
Oh my God, I have breast cancer.
C-A-N-C-E-R……………………
Sort of like dancer, move a letter, shift the alphabet, except that I can’t dance…… not at all.
It seems like I’m speaking about someone else. This is not me. I am just a regular joe. I read about people in books, see them on T.V., those people have cancer, but I don’t. This doesn’t happen to me, only poor schmucks who don’t know any better.
I had a lump removed two weeks ago with the side benefit of a hoist and lift. I’ll can tell you, you my boobs haven’t been that perky since 1996. With all the bandages, steri-strips, and Percocet, I’ve hardly even seen the little dears to properly admire them. They are black and blue and between antibiotic ointment applications I have tried to peek at them. Is it bad that my second thought after I heard the news was, “oh, my boobs, my perky new boobs, what will happen to you now?”
The news made my mother cry and my husband call me 20 times to see if I was ok and talk with a funny catch in his voice. All in all, I feel lucky, this seems to be in the earliest, earliest stages, and I meet with my doctor tomorrow to discuss all the options and get all the particulars. I would appreciate your prayers. Laters.

Lamott Inkshed

Yesterday afternoon I lay in bed for a while reading Anne Lamott’s book, Plan B- Further Thoughts on Faith, amazed at how someone could both eloquently explain Jesus and use an F bomb so freely in a sentence. I liked her aplomb and the fierce, unapologetically introspective look at her life. It made me wish that I had the pluckiness to drop more cursing in my own writing every now and then; it really seems to get the point across. Not, that our writing is on the same level at all, but I suppose I could up my cursing and see what happens. My favorite section was titled, O Noraht, Noraht and as I read, I realized that often, complete frankness makes me uncomfortable. When she talked about her mother, and her Ahlsheizmers and what a terrible mother she was, I thought, “ugh, I really don’t want to know this” because mothers are not supposed to be terrible. They should always nurture and protect and give inspiration and hope. I know that everyone doesn’t have a mother who does, but no matter where I read it, fact or fiction, it always pains me to think that it’s true. But I realized that even though Anne was disappointed in her mother, she couldn’t help but admire and love her, and when the time came, she couldn’t really say good-bye. Feeling blue, I finally had to put the book down and come downstairs to my own little slice of heaven and be glad for my own dear family and the fact that at present, none of us were bitter or angry or facing horrible disappointments in each other. The story reminded me that each time I think that I understand God and how he moves on this earth; I am shown a new facet to his love. The things  I consider terrible and unfair that I have experienced would pale in comparison to parts of Anne’s life, yet she has found joy and peace where she is, just as I have. My quest for acceptance and my desire to know my place in life is no less valid than a former addict because I have not been in recovery. We all need to know where we are headed and it seems that no one has an easy road to get there. I felt thankful that God chooses to repair things that are broken and shower love on the unworthy and forsaken, for if he didn’t, I’m certain that I would be in trouble. In my moment of sweet revelation, the faces of my loved ones seemed brighter and dearer to me, and I watched from the back deck as my daughter shimmied up her rope swing, her face almost ethereal. Laters.

Enter Sandman

I have weird dreams. Often they involve terrible, faceless things that I can never see and they chase me mercilessly through dark alleys and empty rooms. And it never stops, and I never see their faces. After a while, it is more like a never ending game of Duck, Duck, Goose; more aggravating than scary and this is where I usually wake up. Once while having a massage, I fell asleep and dreamt that someone was chasing me. Using my ninja skills, I screamed, “hii-ya” and delivered a hearty round house kick to the terrified masseuse’s midsection. Yes, I did have to tip extra. Most of my massage time these days is spent trying to keep myself awake and lucid so I don’t get a bad name in the spa community. Another time, while sharing a bed with a fellow bridesmaid the night before a wedding (we were all poor and economizing on motels) I woke to find her pushing me to my side of the bed while saying, “Can you please just sleep on your side?” We really didn’t know each other well and I couldn’t tip her so we just tried to avoid each other for the rest of the wedding. I suppose my dreams had led me to seek some cuddly solace and she wasn’t biting. I slept a lot this week and my dreams were exquisite, full of majestic leg kicks, random jerking, finger twitches, and waking with my heart pounding. The frustrating thing is that I can never exactly remember the dreams and I did spend quite a bit of time trying. What is scaring me? What am I running from? I still don’t know. My consolation is that by now, with all the kicking and exertion, I figure I am nearing a black belt level in dreamland, so pretty soon, I will be doing the chasing. Laters.

A Sad Story

 I have a hard time keeping my writing consistent and interesting. I tend to post from the heart-my posts being something that happened to me during day or a cherished memory that I am thinking of. Lately things have been off and I feel like I have been off, so my posts have decreased. I am trying to hold myself to posting at least once a week and this “interesting” story about my thoughts while I ate a smashed sandwich was all I could come up with. Pray that my muse finds her way back.

Being a good hausfrau and an economical saver and all that stuff I try to take my lunch to work, but the conundrum is always, “in what?” How do I transport it? It might seem like a question with an easy answer, but it is not. To take it in an actual lunch box would cost me and I put “lunch box” on the list of things that I never want to pay for, like nightgowns and checking accounts. Why buy a silk teddy when you can sleep in the t-shirt you got for free at summer camp when you were twelve? I personally don’t know why anyone would.

Most of the time, I stick with the grocery bag theme and they vary between Wal-Mart and Stew Leonard’s, the latter being the most sturdy, but then I am faced with the disgrace of a cheap lunch box and so I always just shove the bag down deep in my purse and end up with a very squished sandwich. Squished or pay? Pay or squished? Please, don’t worry; this post has no deeper meaning than my sandwich and me not wanting to pay for a lunch box. Laters.