The Movers And The Stayers

Summer is here, and I have not been. That's the way with these warm weather months....all digging in the yard until way too late to make a proper supper by accident, reading way too many books and going on way too many exciting outings, catching up with all the friends and forgetting entirely those I communicate with online and far away. Please, let's pick up where we left off and carry-on with grace flowing around us to fill in all the gaps and distances and things I forgot to share and mention. We'll all catch up, shall we?

First of all, the elephant in the room we went on a stupendous trip to Italy. Totally amazing.

I have to write a post on several of the things I thought about our trip. So much to process and so much to share....more on that later.

Secondly, so much else is going on with us. One of my very close friends is moving away, the garden in our second year here at Orange Blossom Cottage is finally starting to come into its own, we had a really fun trip home to Michigan to see so much wonderful family, I have been doing some homeschooling public speaking this summer, and we are still ever in pursuit of giving ourselves a rich vibrant life with lots of space and breathing room in it.

Having a close friend move is a new experience for me as an adult. I realized once when talking with my husband that I had never been dumped by a boyfriend...although I'd dumped guys several times. It was a strange self-discovery. Did that mean I was selfish, pompous, picky, or lucky? I felt like I had kind of missed out on a rite of passage and the ability to claim normalcy in some tiny way. Weird how all the things mean things sometimes. Having a girlfriend move away and leave me is like this too. I have left several times, been guilt tripped, sobbed over and begged to stay. I've had people tell me they could never replace me, that they were mad at me because I had to move or resentful because I didn't consider them in my life location plans. But, through all of that I have always kind of played the same role. Tried to thank the stayers for their love, their loyal affection, their sharing of their time and lives and feelings and tried to walk the balance of showing just enough of my own feelings about moving to make sure that my humanity shows but be strong enough to comfort my friends and help them imagine a good future while not letting the negativity and depressing guilt get to me. I've never been the stayer. My gal is leaving and while I don't resent her adventure or the stress of packing up and shifting all her worldly goods to a new state....its surprisingly complicated for me too....even though I have no real clear role in the moving and shaking. I'm all conflicted about how much to show my cards with her. Do I cry in front of her, tell her exactly what she means to me or try to just keep it light and cheer her on while crying on my own time? Or is it some back and forth seesaw of behaviors. I don't want to be clingy and desperate but of course I'd love to make sure she knows that I care and that I will deeply, rawly miss her when she's suddenly not there for random roadside berry picking and hilarious girl's nights.

This relationship stuff gets me in to trouble in my marriage too. I want to be strong and independent and never have my husband be suffocated by trying to "be there for me" but I really want to be real and open and wear my heart dissected open on my sleeve. I think the thing that really gets me is that I so badly want reciprocity. I want to be sure that I share like he shares, that he wants my dirt and my pain as well as my hips and my best jokes. I start to feel gun-shy when its not clear that we want the same depth. Nobody wants to realize retroactively that they were an over-sharer. Ain't nobody got time for that!

I worry about this kind of thing with my friend too. I want to communicate my pain at her loss and my adoration of who she has been in my life at exactly the same level she discloses with me. I'm not sure I want to feel the same...just control what I tell her to visibly be her emotional twin. I'm always the emotional one, the deep feeler, the raw transmitter and sometimes its fatiguing to be judged as the eternal mess or the out of control girl or the person who is never done processing. I don't mean to be that way and when my feelings stay inside of me it mostly doesn't feel that way....its only when I leak them in disproportionate amounts and people get their measuring tools out and point them my way that I look a mess and seem like a problem. I wish there was a neat way to let my friend know that I will miss her exactly as wildly and deeply as she misses me and that I will probably culture some even darker and deeper feelings that she'll never know too and it all means that she's been really very special to me and I wish her the world. I'm lousy at being what people expect or want although I am one of the most people aware and over observant humans I know. Its tough to wish you could be just right and feel blind about making it happen. Moving is hard, even if you're staying.

Good thing there is shiny, crinkly swiss chard in the garden and orange roses by my front door, the sound of children's laughter in my yard and more phone calls than I can answer from people who love me. Summer ain't so very bad, even if its lumpy in places.

Choose Your Marinade

Its a quiet day full of small things like egg gathering, working on the laundry, helping people sound out words in comic books and expressing awe every time the thunder booms outside the window. I have been to the mechanic to fix the random piece of plastic hanging down under the front end of the car (Zip ties? Alright!), have been to the bookstore to pick up the book I have been pouting about missing with my book club a couple of months ago, so that I have travel reading (The Orphan Train) and have made one last playdate/mama hang-out session appointment so that we leave town with our social tanks all full.

I have been learning in the past few months how important it is to accept your negative emotions but to not live in them. Learning to step outside of how I feel and observe it objectively is a really astoundingly life-giving skill. I'm still not super good at it but its in my toolbox. I love knowing that nothing I feel defines me, that emotions are real and important and yet they pass, that the weight we give to things is the weight they carry, and that I am mistress of my own ship. I can choose how I feel and what I focus on, and I can also solve the problems I feel badly about. Validation + Empowerment + Optimism. 

Any little small-time, rainy day can feel gloomy, closed-in, overwhelming or lacking in life, like a place where problems and hard feelings stew until they are your own private marinade, a flavor you own. Instead, I'm living deep, being brave, feeling peace, slowing down, looking my boys in their twinkling eyes, reading stories, dreaming up some new painting ideas and flipping through travel guides for The West Coast. 

My beehive swarmed which, basically means that the whole flock up and flew away because the queen said to. There's no telling why exactly, maybe they felt cramped, maybe they hatched a new queen and she was a rolling stone, maybe the girls didn't like the new plastic, comb frames I put in before I left for Michigan. This is disappointing, but its also a good reminder that we only give shelter to bees, we don't really "keep" them. They are wild animals and not really controllable in the sense that we normally reserve for livestock. 

The six chickens in the backyard are giving my five eggs a day, and just to keep themselves all in the running, they are rotating which lady hen is taking a rest that day. I feel slightly annoyed but if I step out of entitled ego, I realize that rest is good for bodies, even chicken bodies and I can chuckle imagining a chicken council with the elected madame being given her daily pass in rotation. Maybe they are holding out until I buy the larger coop I am saving towards!

May your day be full of quiet empowerment. May you know the power of validating your own feelings and the strength of stepping outside of them to see gratitude. May your marinade be peace and may humor cover it all. 

I'm off to start packing! 

Spring Apex

I am in major garden mode. The plants are in, all but the second sowings of certain things that wither with the heat and harvest fast. On to the mulching! The budget is tight but it is mulch season and plants wait for no man. I have been covertly hauling home the dumped grass clippings of my neighbors and I discovered that the stump that the city ground in the fall, in front of our house has become a giant pile of chips that aren't doing anyone any good, spilling off the curb into the road....so I've been shoveling them up and spreading them on the flower bed I am slowly making in the front of the house out of plant divisions and a few precious annuals. Feeling frugal and mighty and only occasionally a bit mopey and pinched. I can do this! Beauty no matter what!

The weather is warming slowly and the boys are having baths every night, the bath water turning a healthy shade of beige before the plug is pulled. There is no end to the laundry but the upside is that the line is always full of beautiful buntings waving in the wind. Love pulling into the driveway and seeing all the clothes snapping on the line.

I am having a mini-hibernation time, feeling overwhelmed by the end of all the school year stuff (programs and family nights and presentations galore!) and nervously teetering on the edge of swept under when I look at the lists of things we will be doing this summer. June approacheth. Whew! I want to be inspired and I know I will be, but sometimes the enormity of it all makes me catch my breath. In true introvert fashion I am hiding to get over it. If I don't answer your call, don't respond to your email or am a strange no-show for your event, please try to understand that sometimes a girl just pulls inward and know that I will get my feet under me again very soon.

Just in case any of this has to do with the ten pounds that crept onto my body or the lax hand I have been using with myself and sugar lately, I've battened down the hatches and am trying make a green juice a day this whole week. Equilibrium is nigh. I am also going to try to make extra effort to be outside, get sunshine, be active and get enough sleep. Amazing how much more possible the world looks when we have nurtured our bodies!

Rising Above, Y'all

Sometimes there are days when its all about kicking your own inner pain and vulnerability to the curb and refusing (even when you don't know if you can) to live in an identity of defensiveness, all strapped into a permanent victim name tag. Sometimes other people don't get you. Sometimes people hurt your feelings and leave you soaking in lonely. Sometimes you make what you think is an obvious plea for connection and understanding and you are rebuffed and told to grow up. But I don't wanna live there. I get that it hurts, even feels justified and its not about lying to myself. Its about the honesty that if I sense defensiveness in myself, then clearly I feel I have something to hide.

I am super over soaking in my bitter angst when I feel wounded. Its the most challenging mental and emotional muscle work I have ever encountered (short of the entire experience of being married and being a parent) but its the right, strong and healthy thing. Its the vibrant thing too, the compassionate thing, the warm thing, the thing that lets you lie down and sleep at night.

I'm trying to learn how to do this and its such a new technique that I have very, very few credits to my name yet. But today....today was one of them. Yes, I cried some hot tears, I ate some pastries I regret in bitter emo style, I angry texted, I snapped at my kids.

But, I also:

    ....got good advice, cleaned off a shelf in a cluttered closet, ate a fresh orange, took pictures of beautiful things, thought through ways I'd been clumsy in the conflict, I talked it out, I solved my own problems, I told myself that I mattered, I listened to spiritual comfort, I sat in the sunshine, I smiled and I drank more hot tea. 

And by the end of the day, I had clawed my way back up.

Its so hard but I'm really frickin' proud. Every little bit a tiny victory.

The Not-So-Scary Relatives

My in-laws came and they went. I didn't keel right over from anticipation stress and the visit went very well. I'm not sure exactly why but I sure am able to make a whole lot of panic out of a friendly visit. I'm so intimidated by other people sometimes, so scared of sharing my space (lest it be sneered at), so afraid of criticism and so unsure of my ability to get "included." I think a lot of it stems from not being a very strong feeling person inside, I'm not confident in my ability to hold my own, impress, blow away the competition or be what I am supposed to be.

A's parents, in the flesh.

It was just a little weekend visit, they flew all the way out from the Midwest, just to spend the weekend with us, belnieve it or not. On that weekend visit they sent A and I on a highly relaxing overnight with no kids (Oh, baby-free, king-sized, sleep-number-bed...you were heaven!), they re-stocked our kids with books, brought us sheet-music for children's songs, did all the laundry in the house, ironed anything within a 1 mile radius, took all our trash out, shined our every dish, treated us to pizza, and even maaged to hang a curtain for me on the sly that I had been battling with.... What exactly was I so scared of? I sometimes wish I was less of a ridiculously cagey bird and more placidly trusting and smoothly optimistic. But yeah, I'm still me.
 Image via Wikipedia

So, now that they're gone and all is well after all, I'm handing out the homemade cookies my mother-in-law whipped up for snack time and we're all reciting the lines from, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (which we can now recite in chorus thanks to Grandpa's astounding patience with "one more time" requests from Ru.) I feel soundly on my feet, heading into the holidays with my cap tightened down and my kitchen counters shining. I am determined to manufacture more goodwill for my fellow man, more cookies for the Christmas tins and as much good cheer as can be reasonably obtained. Morning sickness be darned!

Poetry Friday: Broken Memory

We all have things we regret in our life, scenes we'd replay if we could. I find that often the things that stick in my head like gummy label residue are fairly insignificant, not the big earth-shattering stuff people talk about. I don't regret feel stuck on major moral choices I've made, life direction selections or other headline type options. I can't let go of conversations where I said something I never should have to someone hurting, times when I missed an opportunity to be open with a person I loved and little fabulous jokes I should have shared when I thought of them. Maybe that makes me petty or maybe it just confirms that I'm a details person, but whichever it is...them's the facts.

Today for Poetry Friday I decided to work up a poem idea I've had simmering in my mind for ages. I've been slowly accumulating notes on this specific memory of a childhood argument with my little sister and working on trying to synthesize all the little pieces into a meaningful whole. I often remember the incident whenever I see broken glass. So, there were these poemy bits in my poetry file and then recently, I started reading this fabulous book on parenting and emotion and I felt like it brought the whole topic full circle. I've never been so-filled with hope about emotions and their place in the human experience...read it, you may find yourself welling up compassion for yourself, your parents, your children and all the other people around you who are feeling deeply and being shut down, shut out or pacified. Anyhow...enough from the soapbox.

Here's the poem, dedicated to you, Foxy and here's to healing!

Kid Sister

I regret that time I egged you on,

Taunting you from behind the window

Of the just-slammed kitchen door.

I should have stopped when I saw your color rise,

Saw my muted jeers inflate your rage

And fan it like a maverick breeze.

I never expected that gutsy crash

The slam of pain colliding with anger,

Window glass and your determined knuckles.

There was a blast of explosive shattering,

A war cry from your little, irate lungs and

A sudden, tinkling spray of jagged confetti.

I remember your fist flecked with blood and tears

A long, hard talking to and the sound of the

Clinking scrape as the broom erased the evidence.

I felt superiorly, that I had won because you’d felt

So deeply, been so seething with emotion that your anger

Had shattered into ten million glittering bits of public evidence.

I wish now, that I had been able to step through that window

Cup your chin inside my hands, look into your

Flaming eyes and feel the human, outrage in your soul.

Instead I slammed the kitchen door on your

Budding dignity and silenced your objection

Behind a window, not strong enough to contain it.

I am sorry now, does it still

Count if I am 20 years too late?

If you're a poetry lover, make sure to check out the round-up of other Poetry Friday participants at The Miss Rumphius Effect.