the thrill of victory (or was it the agony of defeat?)

I got my very first full-time professional job when I was 24, working as a technical editor at a research consortium. The company where I worked had about 50 employees, maybe 15 of us in our twenties, most of us married (Dean and I had been married for a little over a year). The building where we worked was located in one of those business parks, a small city created entirely out of corporate regional headquarters. So of course there was a softball league.

You know me well enough by now to know that softball was not my thing. Any sport is not my thing. I spent my childhood between the covers of a book, poking my head out as rarely as possible. I branched out into marching band in high school, spending hours sweating in the Texas sun learning half-time shows, but that was the closest I ever came to athletic achievement.

So when my co-workers came to beg and plead that I join the softball team, I looked at them as if they were swamp creatures come to ask me if I would join them for a wallow in the mud. Are you serious? NO, I will not join the softball team. Hell, no. For one thing, you wouldn’t want me, and for another, NO.

But they were persistent, mainly because you had to have a certain number of players on the roster to join the softball league. Finally I gave in. I would join the team on one condition: I would only actually play if they were going to have to forfeit the game otherwise—because if you didn’t have enough players, you couldn’t play.  That way they couldn't get mad at me for being a dud, because they would have lost anyway.

So I became the team scorekeeper, which (predictably) fascinated me—there was an entire language of softball to learn (ribbies and infield flies and errors), and a sheet of scorekeeping paper filled with rows of little diamonds where you recorded each play of the game. I loved scorekeeping.

Occasionally, dangit, two or three people would have some conflict preventing them from playing, and I would have to actually join the lineup. To everyone’s surprise—especially mine—I could hit anything in practice. They used me at bat during fielding practice because I could pop anything out into the field. I had zero control, but that was actually good for fielding practice, because you never know where the ball is going to go anyway.

But during a game, put me at bat with everyone looking at me and tensions high, and I struck out every single time. Every single time. I’m not sure I’m remembering all the details right, but I think that went on for an entire season and into the next. Usually, I was the scorekeeper. When I had to play, they put me at the bottom of the batting order to minimize my impact. They were all very kind and patient with me—they loved me and I loved them—but we all knew that I was never going to contribute much as a player.

So finally about halfway through the second season we were playing the forest service. (The women on our team loved playing the forest service because of all the cute guys.) It was one of the games that I had to play. It was hot, North Carolina hot, probably about 92 degrees and 95% humidity. We were all sweaty and sticky and we were getting whipped and we just wanted the game to be over. My turn at bat came up, and I got two strikes, or maybe I fouled off one or two, I don’t remember.

But somewhere about the third or fourth pitch, I managed to nick the edge of the ball and it dribbled out straight in front of me, maybe fifteen or twenty feet. OH MY GOD. Wayne, our best player who was the first base coach when he wasn’t on base, started yelling, “RUN! RUN, BARB!! RUN!” I took off for first base as fast as I could go, and my team erupted into frenzied shouting and cheers.

The other team, probably startled into mystified paralysis by our inexplicable reaction, took a moment to galvanize their forces, and I managed to make it to first base by a hair. Wayne grabbed me in a bear hug and swung me around while our entire team jumped and whooped and hollered. I must have been laughing like a loon.

When we managed to calm down a bit, the cute first baseman from the other team shook his head and said, “Geeze, what was that about?” I grinned at him, my face about splitting in half. “This is the first time I’ve ever been on base,” I told him. And he blinked and shrugged, probably embarrassed for me, and the game went on.

I wish I could say that my moment in the spotlight spurred us on to victory, but honestly, I have no memory of the rest of the game. That’s all I remember. So there you have it-- my greatest moment in sports: I made it to first base one time in a company softball game. This is mainly set up for another post, because when I tried to briefly type this story to make a point about something or other, it got so long it started taking over the other post (which I may or may not ever finish).

How about you? Are you a softball star? Do you have a favorite sport? What is your greatest sports moment?

stick with your strengths

Tuesday I went cross-country (XC) skiing.  I usually go 2-3 times per year, and I have for the past 20 years.  So I'm not a neophyte.  But on the other hand, 2-3 times a year is not enough to result in proficiency-- at least not in someone like me, who is not a natural athlete.  I do just fine as long as we're striding along on level ground or going up hill.  But downhill makes me kind of nervous.  The skis are considerably longer and thinner than downhill skis, so they're less stable and harder to maneuver. 

So on Tuesday my friend Joan and I went out to the Pig Farm to XC ski. I have no idea why it's called the Pig Farm because there are no pigs, and it seems to be several hundred acres of forest without a farm in sight.  But since they didn't check with me before naming it, it's not my fault.  I've been there once before for mountain biking in the summer, but I'd never skiied.  I did just fine for the first 45 minutes on the level bit at the beginning, and then the gradual uphill.

But you know.... the inevitable result of uphill.  We kept going uphill and uphill and I was getting more and more nervous because I don't like downhill.  And sure enough, a little more than halfway, the trail started to go downhill.  The good news is that there was considerably less downhill than there had been uphill.  Probably because (the bad news) the first part of the downhill bit was sort of steeply downhill.  And it involved turns.  And the snow was far from ideal-- crunchy and old over ice.  And there were ruts.

So I'm standing at the top of this one particular section and thinking, "I don't have the skills for this.  I should just take my skis off and walk down."  Then--counterpoint-- the thought popped into my head:  "I never take risks.  I never push myself to see what I can do.  I should just DO this.  I can do this!  I can do this!"

The short version of what followed is:  I took a deep breath, thought I can do this!, and down I went.  LITERALLY.  On my ass.  On my knee.  On my right thigh.  And one particularly lovely time, on my face.  I can't believe I don't have a black eye--probably only because I was going so slowly.  Joan told me later she was afraid I'd broken my neck.

If you've never XC skiied before, falling isn't pretty.  Not only because (duh) you're falling, but because it's just about impossible to get up.  You've got those long skinny skis strapped to your feet, and they get all turned around, so you have to get them lined up before you can do anything.  And then you have to make sure they're not pointed downhill when you heave yourself up off the ground, because if they are, you're going right back down.  (trust me.)  It's like that scene on the ice with Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping, except no makeup artist, no hair stylist, and no Bill Pullman.  Dang it.

So, Moral Of The Story:  Stick with your strengths.  When that little voice in your head says, "I should take my skis off and walk down,"  DO IT.

And believe it or not, that experience helped me figure out how to write the next couple of posts.  Stay tuned.

IN OTHER NEWS....  The proto-yogurt did indeed turn into actual yogurt.  It needs work, but definitely a win for the first time out.  More on that another time. 

And also:  I think I have been falsely maligning our library for years.  I often check their online catalog before I buy a book, but they never have the ones I want.  Today I actually went to the physical building (which is not easy to get to from our house so I haven't been there in a couple of years), and walked back out with five books, all of which I wanted, and at least two of which I'm pretty sure I've searched for online.  Weird, yes?  Maybe not everything is in the online database.  It made me so happy, and brought back many memories of going to the library when I was a kid, when it was like a magic house filled with doors to other worlds.  I am much more optimistic about getting through this year without buying a book.  It might actually happen.  Maybe.

take that golden mean and stuff it

We all know the ways that our culture makes us feel bad because we don't measure up.  We're not thin enough, rich enough, witty enough, beautiful enough-- oh, the list is just endless.  We get it from magazines and TV shows and movies and even walking down the street.  The frumpy among us don't attract attention; the young, beautiful, thin ones do.

But what I was thinking about on the treadmill this morning is the other end of our endless urge to fit in.  The way we don't want to own our gifts, our brilliance, our unique amazingness.  Because what then?  Lift up the lid on that reluctance and what's there?  I still won't fit in.  I might stand out, I might attract attention.  Other people might be jealous, or they might not like me anymore, or it might make someone feel bad because they don't have my kind of special-ness.  It might throw off the dynamics of my friendships, my group.  What happens to a writing group if one person has considerably more talent than the others? What happens to the dynamics in a group of co-workers if one woman is brilliant and beautiful and frighteningly good at what she does?  or my own personal one:  what if I'm spectacular this one time, and then people expect me to be that way all the time?  and its variation:  if I'm good at this, what if it leads to complicated social interactions that are way too complex for me?

And then there's the whole "stuck-up" thing, leftovers from the playground days.  If I own my own brilliance, other people will think I'm stuck up, or a snob, or full of myself, or vain or conceited.  Ah, the playground.  The whole thing was about grinding you down, making your squiggly, unwieldy, capacious self fit in that little bitty mold of acceptability. And you go from the playground to junior high.  How in the world did we survive?

Here's my treadmill thoughts for today.  First of all, forget the playground bullshit.  There's some kind of playground economy that makes us feel like there's a tiny supply of one kind of brilliance and everybody wants it.  Only a few people can be the popular people while the rest of us look on longingly from the sidelines.  Don't believe it.  There's plenty of brilliance, oceans of it, infinite overflowing barrels of it in all shapes, colors, sizes, and types.  You've got plenty, and there's still an infinite amount left for everybody else.

And secondly, you do have to watch out about becoming a snot about it.  There's a fine line here, and it's complicated.  How do I own my own brilliance, without becoming conceited and full of myself?  (We're speaking hypothetically here, because I haven't owned mine yet.)  I think it must take recognizing that although your amazing gifts are yours alone, you aren't the only one that has gifts.  Everyone does, their own unique brand of them.  Ironic as it may sound, I think you have to have a bit of humility about being brilliant-- they're my gifts, and yet in some way, I'm not responsible for them.  Whether it comes easily or you have to work really hard, there's still some way that our gifts are exactly that:  gifts.  Something to be grateful for.

I think my fear about this part of it goes back to my post about confidence the other day.  I don't want to be one of the kids on the playground that is good at stuff and makes some hypothetical other kids feel bad.  In the past, I'd rather just be mediocre than make someone else feel bad. But I'm coming around on this one.  It really is their problem if they want my kind of gifts and not their own; there's not much I can do about that. 

One final thought:  I think this reluctance to acknowledge our own gifts is different than fear of failure.  Fear of failure is about going out and trying something new, something you might be good at or you might not.  I'm talking about acknowledging who we already are.  Allowing the things that I'm good at (which may be small, behind-the-scenes kinds of things) to be just as amazing as more showy ones.  Allowing myself to feel good about who I am, because dang, I'm good at (*insert your gifts here*).  Entertaining toddlers.  Dumping stuff in a crockpot and having it turn out well.  Spiking a volleyball.  Listening patiently to my daughter describe a movie.  Putting words together in sentences.  Teaching basketball.  Organizing a bunch of volunteers.  Knowing which can of paint to buy to turn a ho-hum room into a warm, welcoming one.  Macramé.  It could be anything.

And (of course) I'm reluctant to post this, because what if people think I'm conceited?  what if someone thinks that I think that I'm special?  what if someone thinks that I think that they think that she thinks....  right back to junior high.  Let's all just blow through that and be brilliant.

another quickie

A couple of months ago, in one of the riffday posts, I said this:

Cheery-o sent me a book a couple of years ago about forgiveness. Being a hyper-sensitive sort, it is easy for me to get offended or to get my feelings hurt over little things, and then I just don't know what to do with it. You can't make a big thing out of a little thing, it leaves you with no friends. The author of this book (Lewis Smedes) said (I think in the very first chapter), sometimes you don't have to forgive people. Sometimes you can just let it go. (silence) (insert pause here).... (insert another pause....) (light bulb goes on over my head) You CAN? REALLY? It was news to me, a true life changing moment. You can just let the little things go. Who knew?

I have a ton to do today, so I decided just to cut and paste it, which saves me thinking of how to paraphrase it, and you from having to check the link.  It has occurred to me, this morning, that this applies to me, too.  I don't have to feel wretched about the little things I get wrong.  Because I forget something once doesn't wipe out the 327 times I remembered.  If I am 98% dependable, then I am a dependable person.  The 2% I screwed up is forgivable, it doesn't make me undependable.

This is mind-blowing to me. 

magic abounds

Two or three years ago, I realized I had lost my magic.  I don't know how else to describe it, and that doesn't do a very good job.  I mean that inner sense of me-ness, the knowledge that at my core is a deep well of something that is different than anyone else, that makes me who I am.  The thing is, I never had very much of that sense.  It was always overlaid with a lot of other burdens, the burdens of trying to please a parent who was never pleased, the effort to fit a round peg (me) into the square hole of my religious training (which unfortunately worked just well enough that it took me decades to figure out that I really, really didn't fit). 

But even with all that layered over the top, there was-- up until about ten years ago-- always an inner part of me that I treasured.  I would feel it at certain moments with friends and family, or while writing, or reading a really good book, or sometimes when I was looking up at the stars on a night with no moon.  I've been thinking about what happened, how I let it get killed off.  And I think it comes down to a misunderstanding about what love means.  I grew up in that Christian tradition that honors self-sacrifice above all else.  Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, right?  An acronym that floated around often in my childhood and in my head:  Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last = JOY.  Not kidding.  Somehow I took that too seriously.  Once I had kids and a spouse with a career that seemed more important than anything I was doing, the demands on me became endless, more than I could possibly do. Infinite sacrifice seemed required.  I think I self-sacrificed myself to death.  It was much easier to figure out what everyone else wanted from me than it was to figure out what I really needed.  So I took the course of least resistance, what seemed like the easiest way at the time, and kept doing what everyone else wanted until there was nothing left of me.

Not consciously, of course.  I'm not quite that pathetic.  You could have caught me at any number of times during the period of my deadness telling friends or family that they needed to take care of themselves, that you can't be a good mom if there's nothing there to mother with, that God didn't mean for us to be doormats.  But I was so clueless about what I needed, and then when I started to figure it out, I was so reluctant to do anything about it (because of the demands it would make on the people I love), that it was very nearly too late by the time I realized I had to change.

Ack.  this post was going to be about how happy I am that my mojo, my magic, is coming back, not an extended journey into the boring-ness of my past.  But maybe I needed to put this into words.  The thing is, when I first started figuring out how to take care of myself, it felt selfish.  It felt mean and hard-hearted to put my own needs ahead of what other people needed.  But I was dying, or at least slowly going insane.  I had to change.  I don't think I would ever have been able to get past the guilt of putting my own needs before others' if it weren't for that-- a selfish mom, I finally realized, was better than a mom who was locked up in a nuthouse somewhere.  Or dead from suicide (which I never actually planned, but there were a few moments where it entered the realm of possibility, which scared the shit out of me).  Pema Chodron says that tonglen, which is the Buddhist practice of infinitely returning good for evil, is an intermediate practice-- not for beginners-- because you have to have a sense of when it becomes self-destructive (since she's buddhist, I'm sure she didn't use the term self-destructive--the whole no-self thing, you know-- but it's been awhile since I read that, and that's what I remember about it). 

Now, three years later, the odd but welcome outcome of my learned selfishness, my determination to get my own needs taken care of, is the return of my magic. Now I get it.  Now I understand that it's not being selfish, it's just being yourself.  If you give away too much of yourself, you become something other than who you are-- for the theist part of me, I could even phrase this, "you become something other than the person God created you to be."

Ha.  Now I know why I needed to type this out:  because I was about to give in on something very important to me (before the person even asked) because it seemed like to much to ask. and I didn't even realize it.

Dad

My dad is dying. I guess we're all dying, if you want to look at it that way, but this is the real thing. The kind of dying where the doctor walks in to your hospital room and tells you that there's nothing they can do, the cancer (which was only discovered last Thursday) has already metastasized, chemo might make you more comfortable but there is no chance of a cure or even remission. He has a few months at best, a few weeks at worst. A month ago, he was a healthy 77-year-old. Now he could go at any time.

It's a strange feeling for me. My dad and I have never had an easy relationship, but he's always been there. I don't mean "he's always been there for me," I mean that he's always been somewhere on planet Earth, somewhere where I could find him if I wanted to, or call him, or he could call me. I could dread having to see him, or look forward to seeing him, or do my best to ignore him. But he was somewhere. Apparently that won't always be true. Quite soon, that won't be true.

Other than the occasional brief mention, I haven't written about my dad in this blog. I almost never write directly about the people in my life at all, because I don't know if they would choose to be here. It's my blog, told inescapably from my point of view, and it seems unfair to drag the people I love and live with into it. But if you know my dad and you know me, you will have seen that he is written into every post. His influence on me has been enormous, inescapable. The way I think about faith and theology, the way I read and analyze and dissect, the way I can't ever leave it alone-- it's all him. Every good thing I believe about Christianity has its roots in his teaching. And many of the angry, resentful thoughts I have about Christianity have their roots in the ways he couldn't live what he taught. Couldn't accept grace, couldn't forgive old hurts, couldn't allow himself to be vulnerable enough to admit to his own failings. And those flaws sound awfully familiar, because they are my own.

My Dad was and is an amazing man in many ways-- a brilliant teacher, an inspiring leader, a visionary who could be generous, thoughtful and kindhearted to those around him, even to people he barely knew. He spent hours talking to and counseling students, often at the expense of his own free time, his own sleep. He inspired awe and admiration in people because he was so good at what he did. But he wasn't easy to live with. You might say he was easy to worship, but difficult to love. Those of us who tried during his angry years have the scars to prove it. When his unhappiness was at its worst, he took it out on us by either withdrawing into cold, supercilious silence or scathing us with sarcastic, angry outbursts. But then at other times, he could be the best daddy in the world.

It's nothing new. It's the story of millions of parents with their children, and as I raise my own kids, I see firsthand how impossible it is to be the parent you wish you could be. The passage of time (and plenty of counseling) has helped me put my dad into perspective, to see his flaws and his brilliance as part of the whole of the complicated person that he is.

Proof of that complexity: my dad is happy now. For the last half dozen or so years, he's been the happiest I've ever known him to be. Some of it is just the passage of time. I remember after seeing him one time when I was in my early 30s, I told my husband it was like he had been de-clawed. He just wasn't so angry anymore. Maybe the idea of grace was finally sinking in.

But another reason for his happiness is his second wife. When we were growing up, he was doing a not-particularly-good job of surviving in a marriage that wasn't working. But when my mom finally had the courage to call an end to that about ten years ago, he remarried a woman who suited him to a T. She isn't really my stepmother-- she's only eight years older than I am, and I didn't meet her until I was in my late 30s-- but she is an amazing person. Not only in what she does and how she lives, but because she made my dad happy, something none of us who had lived in the same house with him thought was possible. I have come to love her dearly for that. I'm glad he's happy. I think if he had received this news fifteen years ago, it wouldn't really have bothered him much. But now you can hear in his voice how much he regrets the remaining years he might have had with her. And with his grandkids. He's a terrific, doting grandfather.

But unless he confounds medical science, those years are not to be. In spite of everything, because of everything, I'll miss him.

in honor of a friend's fiftieth birthday

Several years ago, our pastor said something in a sermon that has stuck with me for a long time. I don't remember what the sermon was about, and I don't really remember precisely how he phrased it, but at one point he said that there are two attitudes toward our existence: we can choose life, or we can choose death. We can choose to nurture and sustain ourselves with things that are life-giving, or we can choose to self-destruct in whatever ways work for us. I've thought about this off and on since he said it, sometimes pretty intensely. It's become a good touchstone for me in making certain kinds of decisions, large and small.

In context, if I remember right, he was making the point that to choose Christianity, to choose Jesus, is to choose life. I know him (our pastor) pretty well, and I know that is true for him. But in my past, Christianity was not about life, it was about dying inside, a little at a time, every time someone cut me off, ignored my questions, acted in a way that was patently not "Christian" and yet confidently claimed the label "Christian" for what they were doing.

I don't think choosing life is always exactly what we expect. Sometimes it depends on the situation. Sometimes choosing life might mean ending something-- a relationship, a job, a commitment-- which is a death of sorts. I can imagine a time when choosing life would mean rebelling against repressive authority with a blaze of anger, but another time when that same act would be destructive and deathlike. Maybe sometimes choosing life would mean eating healthy foods that promote physical well-being; other times, choosing life might mean eating a big slice of flourless chocolate cake drenched with real whipped cream and raspberry sauce. (not that I'm prone to do that sort of thing, of course). Sometimes it depends on your personality. Maybe for one person choosing life would mean dropping everything and travelling the world, where for another person, choosing life would mean deepening one's ties with the people where you are, choosing to commit to actions that renew your current situation.

And in a way, I think you can apply "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends," here. Sometimes you choose a "death" of some sort in order to help or support the people you love, which renews your commitment to life.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently in connection with getting older. My friends and I are all approaching 50. Some of us will reach it sooner than others, but we're all getting there at exactly the same speed: one day at a time. There's no doubt here: you lose a lot as you get older. Your knees start to go, or your back, or whatever. Your stamina disappears. Taking care of your skin goes from 30 seconds of slathering on some moisturizer after your shower to a twenty-minute routine that still doesn't do enough.

But the thing that has bothered me most has been the loss of potential. When you're twenty, you can go in any direction. Almost all paths are open to you. But by the time you're in your late forties, the number of paths you can still choose has dwindled to a very few. It has been very hard for me to let go of some of those paths, to realize with contentment that this is it, this is how I've chosen to live my life and many of those other paths are no longer available.

But there are also some things that you gain. When I was in my twenties, and even for the better part of my thirties, I didn't really know how to choose life. I didn't know myself well enough or the world around me. But now I do. I'm still learning, of course, but I have a pretty good idea of what things will feel life-giving to me, what situations will nurture my soul. It's a good feeling. I can't exactly claim that it makes up for not being able to do the treadmill without aching knees, but it comes pretty close.

I typed this last weekend while out of internet range, using notepad. You can tell. on re-reading, it sounds a bit disjointed and lacking in coherent thought. But I'm posting it anyway since it's been awhile.

p.s. Whatever choosing life means, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't have much to do with abortion. I can imagine a situation in which choosing to complete an unwanted pregnancy would mean choosing life, but I can also imagine situations where there are no good alternatives where choosing life would mean ending a pregnancy. just thought I should say that to clarify since the phrase "choose life" is so often bandied about in that context.

Earlier this week I was on the treadmill and I reached the end of the audiobook I'd been listening to before I'd gone the requisite amount of time, so I just switched my ipod to music and put it on shuffle play. There's all sorts of music on there: Dave Matthews, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, Brent Lewis, Matchbox Twenty, MIA and Imogene Heap (my daughter's influence), Soulja Boy and Skillet (my son's influence), and even Toby Mac, who is an evangelical Christian hiphop artist (not kidding)(actually, I love his music). So at some point a Toby Mac song comes up and one of his backup singers has a spoken bit at the beginning in which he says "I'm trying to reach a place that's real and true and eternal," and I thought to myself, "Aren't we all?" I mean, isn't that it? for all of us who are interested in digging beneath the surface, trying to find some sort of connections or meaning or whatever. The names we attach to it, the ideas we use to explain it, are all window dressing, if you ask me.

Then this afternoon, I had one of those moments, which I don't have very often, where it's just you and reality, staring you in the face, and everything else falls away. It was all in my head, there wasn't any amazing thing happening-- I was chopping up stuff to put in the crock pot to make stew, of all things-- and suddenly it occurred to me, what difference does it make right this minute if I believe in God or not? and I know there are people on either side of the issue who would very passionately argue that it does matter, vitally--how utterly important it is to have the correct theology about God so you can be Right and/or Saved, or how important it is to be rational and not delude ourselves with feel-good ideas of order in the universe, or however else they might want to argue. But I have to say, in that particular moment, I couldn't think of any reason why it would make a difference to believe one way or the other. It was enough to be standing there in my kitchen with the winter sun streaming through the window, feeling real.

no great insights here, just passing along what happened. it's always a work in progress.

AB

Two weeks ago, we were in Seattle to move our daughter into her dorm room for her freshman year of college.  It surprised me how emotional I was about it, even though plenty of people had warned me I would be.  I knew I would miss her (and I do-- a lot) but I also knew that it was time for her to go.  She was/is ready, and very excited about it, too.  We'd known practically since she was born that she would be going to college; we want her to be there, and-- well, you know, you don't raise them to stay home.  You raise them to go off and do their thing in the world.  It was time.

So given all that advance notice, you'd think I'd be prepared and the transition would be smooth sailing.  But of course actually going through something is different than preparing for it, no matter how much you prepare.  And it's been hard.  The first week, almost every day some little thing would set me off.  Not that I would totally lose it or become incapacitated by crying or anything like that.  I'd just suddenly be overwhelmed by a wave of sadness and grief that would disappear almost as quickly as it arrived.  This week has been better, but I've still had a couple of those moments.  It's not so much that I miss having her here (though I do) as the ending of an era.  She will never be under our care in the same way she was up until two weeks ago.  We have a number of friends whose older kids require plenty of parenting, so I know we're not done, but it won't be the same as it was having her home and under 18.

So enough going on and on.  I hope this doesn't sound like whining, because she's having a blast and I'm happy for her, and I get to go visit her in a couple of months.  It's just what I've been thinking about the past couple of weeks.

AB

I think it says a lot about me that it's easier and a whole lot more interesting for me to write about questions and than it is to write about resolutions. Whenever I sit down to try to write out some of the things I've been learning this summer, it just sounds so corny. Like the final chapter of a bad self-help book.  And on top of that, as soon as I learn something new, something that feels like a revelation, it seems immediately obvious, as if it had been staring me in the face all along.  Everyone on the planet must know this stuff except clue-less me.  But here is some, mainly because otherwise I don't have anything to write about.  

I have trust issues.  I don't trust much of anyone, and I certainly don't trust that the world is a safe place to be.  I could go into a therapy-style litany of all the reasons why that is true, all the bad things that happened to me when I was a child and along the way, but I'm not sure that's any excuse.  Plenty of people who trust just fine have difficult issues in their past.  I think it just has to do with the way I'm wired.  

But I've been working very hard on the Buddhist idea of keeping an open heart, which involves letting yourself be vulnerable, which means trusting.  It has become important to me for purely selfish reasons-- because when I manage it, when for a few minutes or hours I can drop all my defenses and just be there, it feels so amazingly good.  It's so much better than being hard and cynical and closed up tight like a fist.  But it isn't easy.  It is impossible for me to ignore that anyone can hurt you, even when they have the best of intentions.  Maybe even especially if they have good intentions.  And bad things can happen at any moment.  (Remember the Northern Exposure episode where Maggie's boyfriend was killed by a satellite that fell out of the sky?)  How do you manage this?  How do you stay open and spacious, without feeling like you're leaving yourself exposed to every little awful thing that can happen?  

I have no definitive answers, but some things have helped.  First of all, staying closed up tight doesn't solve the problem.  It might make you slightly more prepared defensively for bad things that might happen, but for the most part, it doesn't stop them from happening.  And you miss out on so much by always being on your guard.  But more important than that, it's occurred to me that the key to trust isn't trusting others, or trusting the universe, or at least not for me.  The key is learning to trust myself.  Yes, this person might hurt me, but I'll be OK.  I can handle this.  Something bad might be around the corner, but I know from past experience that I can get through it.  I'll be all right no matter what.

Ack.  My scared-self is already kicking in again.  It seems so arrogant to say that, like I'm asking to be tested.  There are so many things that could happen that I would not be all right about, that I could never recover from.  most of them involving my children's health and safety.  But the point still stands.  I'm working on it.

It's been so long since I've posted that it feels like I should wait until I have something really significant to say. But then again, maybe I should just plunge back in. We had a great vacation-- two weeks, for the first time in a long time. Part of it was spent with my spouse's family on the East coast, part of it was spent at home. During the last bit, my spouse and kids took off on a church youth group trip while I stayed home. I got to spend several days at our favorite lake, relaxing and reading and watching the breeze move the leaves on the trees. It was great.

In the afternoons, it would get quite warm in the un-air conditioned cabin where I was staying. So after dinner the dog and I would walk down to the lake for a swim. The reason this is my favorite lake is because the water is so clear and cold and deeply blue-green that you can see straight down to the bottom even at fifteen feet. It's not the kind of lake where you swim all afternoon.  No one stays in for long, it's way too cold, even in July. In fact, I don't get in at all unless it's really hot. But it was quite warm last week, and I swam every day.

I think it says a lot about one's personality how you do this-- do you plunge in off the end of the dock? start at the shore and wade in? run in and dive? My own approach is the wimpiest of them all, which is to slowly descend the ladder at the end of the dock, letting each body part get used to it before the next one gets wet. But there is still a moment where you have to push away from the dock and plunge all the way in, and every time I do it, I cringe. I hate that bit. But then you're in, and the water is so .... invigorating, bracing, refreshing-- pick your term. You feel all the heat and dust and sweat dissolving away, and you just chill (giving new meaning to the term, yes?). I paddle around and try to find something, some place within myself that matches that deep, clear, blue-green stillness. It's worth the hated cringe moment, well worth it.

Great metaphor, that. I have several things coming up that I don't want to do, but I need to do, so it's a life lesson all wrapped up with a bow. Just cringe and get the worst part over with. Like posting for the first time in three months.

AB

About ten years ago I read a book called Archangel by Sharon Shinn. It has become my all-time favorite beach read. I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much I love that book, because it is mainly a straight-up romance, and I'm usually pretty snooty about romance novels. Of course since it was successful, it is the first book of a series, which now includes at least four other books-- I've sort of lost count, beause none of the rest of them are as good as the first so I haven't paid as much attention to them. (Stay with me here, eventually this will be relevant to the topic at hand.)

Archangel is vaguely science fiction-y, although once the story gets started, that doesn't really enter into it. It takes place on a planet called Samaria, which is governed by a race of angels-- real-life angels that fly around with feathered wings. The head guy, the archangel, is forced to marry a slave girl, and like all Cinderella stories, it turns out happily after a series of obstacles have been overcome.

But the reason I'm bringing it up, other than to recommend it if you need a beach read, is because of an interesting subplot that runs throughout the series. What you find out, only very gradually, is that the inhabitants of Samaria are refugees from Earth, but other than a single person per generation, no one on the planet knows this. The angels are actually genetically altered humans, and they have abilities that appear magical because they are aided by a spaceship that is still up there orbiting the planet. The angels and the ordinary people of Samaria all believe that it is God who causes medicines to fall down out of the sky, or brings rain in times of drought, etc, but the reader starts to figure out that all of this is happening because of the spaceship.

Not much is made of this in the first book. But as the series progresses, the implications are spelled out more thoroughly. The spaceship begins to break down, and someone has to figure out how to repair it. And eventually, in the second book, the archangel (who is female this time) actually visits the spaceship.

So what do you do when the God you have believed in is proven unequivocally to be false? There she is on the spaceship, seeing the mechanisms that alter the weather and provide the medicines and so on. It is clear that these functions are being handled in ways that have nothing to do with a Supreme Being. But she has a whole lifetime of spiritual experiences that go beyond these pseudo-miracles that say that there is something true about what she has believed all these years, even though the framework has been proven false. So you might even say: she's learning that her religion isn't true, but her spirituality still has validity. She's trying to understand what that means.

Me, too.

AB

OK, so here's a theory. Best read late at night, which is when I usually think about it, though I'm typing it out in the morning.

Eons ago, before there were stars or black holes or even the universe itself; before time had started, there existed a Something that was Everything. There are no good words to describe this Something, because our words are bound by time and our sense of space and dimension. This Something can hardly even be imagined, let alone understood. But we must call it something, so we will call it Bob. Bob is a vast field of everything, holding all potential within itself. Everything that might ever exist is present in nascent form in Bob: light and dark, heavy and light, wet and dry, existence and non-existence. But since Bob is everything and everything is Bob, Bob cannot understand who or what it is, or why it exists, or what it might be able to be. So Bob decides to make itself into something, to more or less activate its potential and see what happens.

And in that instant, the Universe begins. Father Time winds up his clock. Mother Universe unfurls her starry cloak. The Big Bang occurs, to use language that is already becoming archaic. And it takes all of it -- all the stars in all of the galaxies, all of the black holes, all of the planets, all of the mountains and lakes and highways and skyscrapers, all of the life forms, starfish and hooded mergansers and oak trees and turtles and mosquitoes; all kinds of humans-- willful two-year-olds and crotchety 89-year-olds and bright-eyed 18-year-olds-- whatever life forms exist on other planets -- all of it, to express what/who Bob is. All of it. Bob is every atom, every quark, every gluon. Bob is always watching, learning, figuring things out, understanding what it is, what the totality of everything is.

And a further interesting part of this theory. Bob is also still there behind everything, the original vast Something, and you and I can interact with it. But Bob doesn't have a preset personality, a character or a way of being that would make sense to you and me. It is far too vast for that, far beyond what our tiny minds can comprehend. When we interact with Bob, to some extent we get what we expect. If we expect loving acceptance, there it is. If we expect a cruel and demanding taskmaster, OK, Bob can do that, too. If we expect nothing but sensory input, that's all you'll get.

So, that's all. No conclusions, just some late night ideas. Apologies for calling Bob "it" but it seemed much better than assigning a gender, and there's no other way to do it in English. I think you can sort of fit this in with string theory if you allow for more than one Bob. Or if Bob is so immeasurably vast that it can manage gazillions of universes with ease, I suppose.

AB

evidence of schizophrenia

Here is a conversation:

Me: It is stupid to keep a blog. Who wants to know my silly opinions?

Other Me: Yeah, but you enjoy it. You compose posts in your head all the time.

Me: Yeah, but nobody reads them.

Other Me: well, that doesn't mean you can't write them anyway. And besides, some people read it, and they tell you they like it.

Me: But I don't even know what I'm doing. I use this voice that sounds like I know what I'm talking about, but the reality is that I'm not sure about anything.


Other Me: I don't think you're fooling anybody. I think it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about.

And on and on. And this is why there's not many posts recently. Because the "Me" voice is usually stronger than the "other me" voice.

Shopping for prom dresses

I'm tempted to just stop right there, with the title. Because anyone who has ever gone shopping for a prom dress (redundant: with a teenage girl) will know exactly what I'm going to say without me having to type another word. There's your daughter, with stars in her eyes, and every nerve vibrating with excitement for her first prom. She wants it to be perfect. And then there's you. The one with the budget. The one who knows that even the most expensive dress will not guarantee the perfect evening. The one who knows that even the most perfect prom night ever will not end up being the highlight of her life (god help us if it does). And the one who already knows she will pay more than she can justify (on any level) for this dress, because if she doesn't, the evening will be a disaster before it even starts.

As my friend Susan said, sometimes you just have to shell out.

sigh.
Aunt BeaN

Random acts of kindness

After my previous rant, I figured I'd better post this. Tonight as I was driving home from a friend's house a bit after nine, I discovered a good reason to live in a small town. This isn't a particularly nasty night by Montana standards, but it is cold, and snowing a bit, and the roads are slick and icy. So I'm sitting at a light about four cars back from the front, when it becomes obvious that the pickup at the front of the line isn't going to be able to move. A couple of guys got out and came around the back to get ready to push the next time the light turned green. And I'm not kidding you, in about 30 seconds, everybody in the line had piled out of their cars and gone up to help push this guy across the street-- even a guy that was coming the opposite direction pulled over and got out to help. You probably don't see that every day in a big city.

It was nice. Nice is good. Do a nice thing today.

Aunt BeaN

From June 2005:

Here is a bad idea: go on a road trip with three fifteen-year-old girls and stay in a hotel room that has only one sink. And the sink is in the bathroom. So once one of the four of you goes in the bathroom, no one can use the sink until that person comes out. Not that I'm complaining. I'm being a very good sport about this, really I am.

Just kidding. It really is kind of fun. They have so much fun (as I've mentioned before, they giggle a LOT). I haven't quite figured out how to act, though. On the way down, they were listening to music. Well, WE were listening to music, but I mean, they were in charge of picking it out and controlling the volume, etc. A lot of it, to start out with, was "their" music, music that I don't necessarily dislike, but I don't really listen to it, either. I was sort of halfway listening to their conversations (which involve 3 or 4 different topics going on at the same time, in all directions, all at high volume, then all of them suddenly come to a dead stop when a new song comes on so that they can gush, "OH! I LOVE THIS SONG!" Then they listen reverently in silence for about 30 seconds before the chattering starts up again) at the same time I'm trying to figure out if maybe the word the Dalai Lama translates as "attachment" would be better translated as "addiction" and if so, what is the difference between a healthy emotional attachment to someone/something and being addicted to them/it? Who says women over 40 can't multitask?

But then they put in Queen's Greatest Hits, which is one my favorite albums (I still call them albums, can't teach an old dog some new tricks, I guess). It hasn't been six weeks since I did an extremely similar drive by myself (on my way to hear Mr. Rushdie) singing along at top volume to this exact same album. But I know it will more or less ruin their fun if their 43-year-old chaperone is seen to be singing along and enjoying the same music they are. So I sort of pretended like I wasn't paying attention. My spouse wouldn't have, he would have joined right in. But for some reason I always feel like someone needs to be the adult. And I know it's not as much fun for them to crank their music to the skies if the adults in the area actually wish they'd turn it up a little bit louder. HA. So I acted like I wasn't really listening and sang along with Freddie in my head. I love Freddie. The world is a better place because of Freddie.

We got only the first quarter of the drive under our belts tonight, still six hours to go tomorrow. I'm sitting in the hotel lobby typing this on the free computer where anybody in the world could come up and read over my shoulder, which is a strange feeling indeed. I guess I should go get in line to brush my teeth.

Feeling very mature tonight.
Aunty Bean
(get on your bikes and ride)

another one from August 2004 (excerpted and edited):

"Reading Lolita in Tehran" turns out to be less about the books Dr. Nafisi teaches than it is about the Iranian revolution and living in a totalitarian regime. It strikes me as so ironic how similar fundamentalists are in every time and place-- this blind insistence that the world must conform to the doctrines of the group, and the self-righteous ability to believe one's own judgment to be infallible, because it is backed up by one's interpretation of ... something. The Bible, the Koran, something. The Iranian Islamic fundamentalists are only too happy to pick apart the evil of American Christians, and (although she doesn't cover this in her book) the reverse is also true. The American religious right are quite sure that they know all there is to know about the Muslim faith, and that is: it is Wrong.

I was raised as a conservative Christian. Not technically a fundamentalist, but to an outsider, it would amount to the same thing. I consider some of my early training in the Christian faith to have been very much like brainwashing-- you are very carefully trained that you can't trust your own judgment, a slightly sneering, condescending tone of voice is used if you dare to presume that your own experience might merit some consideration as opposed to received "Truth." at the same time that your own ability to think and question is subtly undermined, you are trained in the beauty of the belief system of the group. How logical it is, how much it makes sense, how happy everyone around you is when you go along with it, how much it distresses everyone when you disagree or make waves.

So when I go back into that type of environment, it fascinates me to see how I respond. it's not that I want to go back to that way of believing, it's not that I start to believe it again, it's not even that I get sucked in, it's just that I can still hear that little voice I was so well-trained to hear-- "are you sure you can trust yourself? are you so arrogant that you think you know more than anybody else? Isn't it better to go along with the wisdom of what you were taught? They know so much more than we do. It couldn't have survived all these centuries without being true. It must be true."

I'm not going back. I don't believe the little voice. But I can hear it. And that is scary to me, not just for myself, but for the implications of how deeply imbedded it is in my psyche-- it has been nearly twenty years since I made my break with Evangelicalism-- and what that means about how hard it is to break free from that kind of thinking. Not just for former conservative christians but for fundamentalists everywhere.

....

Well, enough soapboxing for tonight. My brain is fuzzed (I've been interrupted three times by my son and his friend who is spending the night for Frosted Flakes, orange juice, and popcorn, and it is damn difficult to solve the world's problems when you are dealing with a sleepover) and maybe this doesn't even make sense.

ciao.
Aunt BeaN

originally posted in August '04.

Here is my "life with teenagers" moment for this weekend: We're sitting at dinner last night with some friends who have teenage boys who are avid soccer players. One of the boys comments, "Cody's dad bought him an eighty dollar pair of Beckham's."

I am feeling proud of myself that I know who "Beckham" is. He's married to that former Spice Girl, you know.

"Wow," I say, naively. "Eighty dollars for a pair of shoes! I will never get used to that."

He looks at me blankly. "Oh, no, they're gloves."

My jaw drops. "Eighty dollars for a pair of gloves?"

The two boys are a bit defensive. "Well, they're goalie gloves," one says, and the other nods enthusiastically, as if this explains everything. I say, "Oh," as if I understand, but inside I'm still thinking dumbfoundedly, "Eighty dollars for a pair of gloves????"

It continually strikes me how different a world they are growing up in than we did. It's not that they're spoiled, or that they're wealthy. If you adjusted for inflation, I bet the families of the Texas oilmen and financiers I grew up with in the 70's were wealthier than these families. It's just that there's so much more stuff you can get, specialized stuff that you don't really need, but once you try it and see how well it works, you decide you really do need it. And it's marketed so incredibly well. I just feel so old.That's happening to me a lot these days, as you may have noticed.

Aunt B.
(who has never paid more than $60 for a pair of shoes for herself, but has paid $75 for basketball shoes for her daughter)

From July 04. You know, I really thought I would only post a half dozen of my old blog entries, but here I am at 8 and we're only up to the middle of 2004. I really have left out dozens of them, promise. It could be much worse.

So here is my domestic goddess (NOT) post. I don't like to cook. I like good food, and I don't mind cooking, but I don't enjoy it. I don't do it for fun and relaxation. And if you can point out to me a shortcut that tastes good, I'm happy to use it. I don't see the point in making bechamel sauce from scratch for lasagna, lasagna can taste really good with ricotta cheese (or cottage cheese, for that matter). Come to think of it, I'm just fine with Stouffer's. I'm just not a natural cook.

But I do understand that somebody has to fix the food when a bunch of people get together, and I'm happy to help out when I know what is needed. So if we're invited to a dinner and I'm supposed to bring a salad, I bring a salad. It won't be fancy, but it gets eaten. This worked fine for the first 40 years of my life. But recently things have started to change. I've had the feeling when I show up with my dish that I didn't do it quite right. Or that I haven't measured up somehow. I wasn't really sure what it was, and I'm not good enough at social interactions to figure it out. I just knew I wasn't doing it right.

A couple of weeks ago, right after we got back from vacation, some friends of mine put on a going away party for another family that was moving. Since we had just returned from being gone for two weeks, they just told us to bring some wine, which we did. These three women who were putting on the party absolutely outdid themselves. We arrived at the park (it was a barbecue at a public park) and they had baskets and bags and boxes of food. The three of them kept pulling out more stuff. "Well, I thought we might need this." "Oh, I found this new recipe." It was very friendly one-upmanship. And suddenly I GOT it. They LOVE doing this. They love putting together a totally over-the-top party, with way too much food and all these nice little touches that really are fun and great but aren't necessary. If I had been in charge, I would have tried to figure out the simplest way we could have fed 30 people with the least amount of work-- because I don't WANT to spend two days planning and cooking and shopping. but they DO. They love it. They were having a ball.

And it was a great party. There was WAY too much food, and everybody got to take some of it home and didn't have to cook dinner the next night. So it was great. But I felt, as I often do, that I am from another planet. The weird alien down the street that just never gets things quite right, you know? I'd so much rather be reading or learning something new or -- heck even cleaning out a closet than spend two days planning a party. But my party would have been totally lame compared to the one we got to go to.

So???? What to do? I love these people, and they seem willing to put up with me even if I only show up with my relish tray. But it becomes a problem over time. Trust me. I'm just figuring this out, but I think it is the key to why I haven't been getting along too well with one particular friend who is an unbelievable cook. I just haven't been aware of all the undercurrents of what was going on. She'd tell me to bring a salad and I'd bring a salad. I didn't realize that also meant I should just whip up a little appetizer and here's a bottle of wine I thought we might try and look, I found these really cute napkins on sale.... and show up with a whole armload of stuff.

And yet watching these friends of mine (and they really are friends, they are great ladies and I'm SO glad I get invited to their parties) I realized that somehow now that we're in our 40's, the stakes have been raised and nobody wants to get a phone call at 5:00, "Hey, why don't you come over for dinner and we'll order pizza?"-- which worked just fine when we were in our 20's in grad school.

Oh, I really miss that.

But if I did all that cooking, how could I find the time to write these scintillating posts?? you see my dilemma. HA. It's not really a dilemma because I don't LIKE to cook so I'm not gonna do it. The dilemma is whether or not I can continue to hang out with all my more sophisticated friends, I guess. Still thinking about this one.

TTFN.
Aunt BeaN