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.

Laugh, And Do Hard Things

Today was one of those ridiculous days when I really believe in Mercury Retrograde. Everyone was out of sorts, everyone keeps getting sick, the animals keep having ailments, the house keeps manifesting ridiculous messes and I can't seem to get enough sleep or coffee! My aunt came over for lunch and after getting up and trying to get her day going her kitchen cupboard doors fell off right in her hands. Seriously, y'all! There's something in the water over here....don't come over....your car might auto- reverse into one of the maple trees curbside while we're visiting!

My mama always says, "Sometimes you either laugh or cry....its always better to laugh." Today was just one of those days when you shake your head and laugh over and over and over. We all have these days, although we mostly have them in a kind of tortured, stress-balled mental privacy. Your spouse hears about it all, your kids see it fall apart but nobody else needs to know. Today my aunt was here and my sister home for lunch in the middle of the mayhem and we had a friend over and then his mama, Nutmeg came and walked into the insanity. There's no hiding that. I was embarrassed. I was more stressed than before. Wowee.

I laughed until I cried when they all walked out and all four of the kids started screaming in unison. Life is sometimes madness. Its good to be human sometimes. To let other people see you at all ends and falling apart and messing up. Its good to let yourself see it. This is reality and vulnerability and on some level this is real strength....to know we don't have it all together and to be able to look that fact in the eye and still see that you matter, that you are a good person and that you are no quitter.

I sat my hysterical, little four year old down on the steps tonight and I told him (once I got him to stop throwing books and screaming) "Hey dude....I know that you are mad because you couldn't solve that problem but listen....you're lucky. You come from a good family. We're people who do hard things. You can do hard things too because you're one of us."

I wanna hide. I wanna work towards perfect and not let myself be seen or else be seen and stop trying. It hurts to let people to see that you don't have it all together and it hurts to keep working when things are hard...to laugh as a way to keep standing when the struggle is real.

I wanna be prophetic in my speaking that ownership statement to my four year old and to myself. Our family is full of people who do hard things. I wanna push for that to be label so badly. I wanna do hard things. I wanna have a messy life, a real life, an honest life and I want to never keep trying...even if it seems insane. Life is crazy, but some of the best stuff comes in the middle of the mania if you can learn to do hard things.

Good People Are Cold People

Winter has been grueling this year. I have always been a person who has said that I love the change of seasons but I have to say that if I am truthful, I think that's my Northern Michigan roots speaking out of pride. I think in my head that good, salt of the earth, energetic, humble, country girls who grew up in the ice and snow should take a certain amount of pride in the grueling grind of winter, in the flagging spirits of those around them and their own contrasting stubborn appreciation for the beauty of ice crystals and falling snow. I feel like a wiener admitting it but I long for sunshine and warm and green, green, green and I hold no special place in my heart for chunks of ice and falling snow.

It was 62 degrees outside today and I felt positively giddy, the last of the snow seemed like a silly joke and I really feel like I am going to make it. I rolled the windows down as we drove errands, hunted up the first crocus in the woods around the corner and felt like singing a Julie Andrews anthem. I love that we have made it to the other side, warm weather is actually going to start happening now, slowly but surely.

I also ordered a SAD light to mount over our computer keyboard for sunning outselves during the last few cold and dreary days. It is time to be honest. I don't think I am a cold weather person. This year, I told my husband after years of insisting that I could never live in a warm climate, "I think I love green and sunshine more than I love four seasons." We can always visit snow and ice. I can make ice cubes. Those I love will always live in chilly places. I just feel like I need the green and the warmth and the hope of sunshine. Maybe we won't be moving to California tomorrow, (I have a friend who lives in mortal fear of her friends moving away to warmer places.) but I'm open to it. After The Bahamas I decided that I totally could even live in a place that was tropical which seems like a silly admission but took a fair bit of vulnerability and guts.  I was raised to believe that strong, good people love the cold.

The notion of "should" is really powerful. I think I feel a lot of cultural/familial pressure to be attached to cold weather and feel personal pride in my toleration of it. But that's not the same thing as actually loving it. Truthfully, for who I am it seems like a kind of insanity to keep insisting on living in the land of the chilly. I get depressed and dry skinned and weepy, lethargic and drab and filled with ennui and try to hide it under a mask of should-laden Arctic identity connected to a vague notion of strength of character. Having my sister Lucy here has been emboldening. She's gotten so brave about her own love of warm and it took me a while to unravel the fact that I'm cut out of the same cloth. Its scary to admit it out loud but I think I'm a sunshine girl. I like warm. I like grass that never goes grey brown. I like flowers all year. I like water, not dry places. I like being able to open the windows whenever I want to. I like maple syrup but I don't have to actually make it myself. I like snowmen but don't find them essential to life. I can snow shovel if I have to but I'd really rather weed. I am from Michigan but my ancestors are from all kinds of other places and I'm me, not any of them. I love being able to be comfortably outdoors all year round and I love being honest.

The good people are not the cold people and the tough people and the deprived people and the people who live in more traditional ways but the people who live honestly, the people who give their bodies the things they need to be healthy, the people who are willing to try new things and those who live authentically even in the presence of "shoulds" galore.

What climate is really "you?" Where would you live if you had nothing to lose and all your dreams could come true?