Archive for August, 2010

I did not grow up in a bad home. My parents loved and cared for us. They made sure that we had everything  we needed, and honestly more than that. But, they both worked, a lot. And they were young. They had a lot of fun; and I grew up smack in the middle of it all. Now, don’t get me wrong I had some amazing times; and how many children can say they have experienced a Poker Fairy?!  We went all over, we heard loads of music, met tons of people and had an enormous extended family.

And while this was all great, as I have gotten older, I realize that my family perhaps suffered in the area of communication. I do not think that I learned the skills to adequately convey what I needed, how I felt, and what I thought. We were not supposed to cry, and feelings, though not shunned, were personal. We had to deal with things and move on. As a result of this I am tough. I am tenacious and afraid of very little. I know that I can and that I will survive. However, as a result of this, I have only just now realized that I lack, or have lacked, in the area of communicating love.

Sure, I can buy or make a thoughtful, creative, and often aesthetic or tasty gift – and for those of you who have received them I am not denouncing what meaning they conveyed, they were created out of love, out of thought, and out of care. However, there is more to expressing love to someone than gifts.

I could never accept the words “your beautiful” or “I just like looking at you”, or ” I really enjoy talking to you”  - how do you respond to such things. Why would someone say that, isn’t it embarrassing?

Well, I know now, you say thank you, and you tell the other person moments, places, things about them, with them and of them that you enjoy. And you don’t just say it, you think about it, feel it and mean it. And you say it whenever you think about it, not just because someone else said it first.

You honor and respect personal space, time to be alone, time to be with your child, time to be without your child. This time that is devoted to the above, is time that is representative of love. And yes, a love of self is important. Without a love of self communicating how you feel about someone in an open and honest way, and through pure actions, is difficult. That communication becomes shrouded in self doubt and insecurity because you don’t know if it is what you are supposed to say or do, or if it is how you are supposed to. Well, if its honest, and its true, then it will be okay, because if the person in turn loves you than it wont matter how you fumble your words, or if you love their large ears or small eyes. Those are no longer imperfections, rather they are trademarks, tell tale feature that you cherish like a teddy bear.

I have had a hard time communicating how I feel, how I think, what I am sure of, afraid of and what I love about those around me. I think that it is a combination of not developing skills earlier on, and of lacking – time, desire and ability – to self analyze. To actually sit back, look at who I am, how I got here, where I want to be, who I want to be with, why and how I know I want to be with them, what is it about everyday that I love? What is it about myself that I love? others?

Now that my world is relatively quite, I have redirected all of that talk of myself into myself.

A lot has changed already. Im sure there is more to come, and here, in my most vulnerable, I have found strength in me .

Curves. Curves. Curves. I have recently accepted those I have, or don’t, depends on who you ask I guess. I would not consider myself curvaceous in the way Marilyn Monroe was. However, I am cavernous, which in a more flattering term could be curvaceous. I am skinny through my ribs, and through my waste. Standing I seem well – normal, but when I lay down the pit between my ribs and hips is like a valley in the Grand Canyon. I can count most of my ribs and grossly elevate my stomach muscles as a result of the hernia. But there is a geographic beauty in this, a mountainous scene of peaks, and valleys that align to form a more perfect scene.

To be honest, there is a grotesqueness to it, to the bones and to the spaces that concave between them. Yet, it is perhaps one of my favorite parts of myself. I love the distortion, the eerie feel and look that the prominence of the mountain range highly arched and reaching for more, filing only with oxygen to a capacity that levels the valley to a plateau.

The curves that a women has between her hips and her chest, especially when she lays on her side, are perhaps the most sensual, the most beautiful, the most linear, and uninterrupted.

Increasingly I am photographing myself. This in an effort to learn my camera, play with composition and also to see myself, to constantly look at what I am. To develop a sense of what I see in behind the lens, on the computer screen and in the post following. The more I look at each area of myself the more comfortable I become with my imperfections, and I begin to see those in a quite lovely way.

In conversations I have during the day I find myself processing my self. Doing this on my own is new. The dialogue is internal now. It used to be an exchange, but alas, though I love my friends dearly I am at a loss for that banter. None the less, necessity is the mother nature of invention, and so we grow, I am growing and developing a whole new set of skills. The fear here is that if you do not share these skills, these new aspects of self, you will then internalize them to such a degree that you have built a structure stronger than the Hoover Damn, and more engulfing then the Mariana’s Trench – you have built – A WALL.

Building personal walls is a skill. Like building a tangible structure of containment, a wall requires patience, a plan, and dedication to the process (At the least original walls of brick and mortar do, I suppose now they are all framed and done with poured concrete, but as I like to consider myself more of an old soul, we shall be referencing brick walls.) with attention to detail.

Personal walls are the same.

1. A reason to build – family dispute, broken heart (prob the most common)

2. A plan – where to begin, how large it should be, how to defend it, and who or what is ever allowed to transcend it.

3. materials – pack up the memories, change routine, buy clothes, get new friends

4. time – the more hurt you are, the stronger the wall you will aim to build, the harder to break it down.

The building of a wall is generally to protect oneself from something unpleasant that they themselves have experienced or otherwise have an unjustified fear  of (because if you have never been in love than being afraid of getting hurt is ridiculous because you don’t yet understand love, let alone the pain and the drive of it.). I built my wall to protect me from pain, from sadness and from disappointment.

THE PROBLEM WITH BUILDING WALLS -

The problem with building a wall is that you are not building a life. Your skills are strictly defensive, and you are always poised and ready to protect that which you have worked so hard to safe guard. As a result, those that you may want, or may have wanted around you are pushed so far away that they can not look back. Despite finding the peepholes, there is not cannon ball that will crush the foundation of the wall. At least you don’t think that there is. This is particularly tricky when the wall stems from a broken heart or a family feud. At some point, a broken heart must mend, and if it mends it will likely break again, so why let it mend? If you remember the bad, focus on the negative, expect the worse and continue to only develop the skills needed to build walls, then you will push away that which your heart desires out of fear. And a life lived in fear is not a life worth living; and when that which you love is gone, your wall will shatter in you palms.

To build a wall is to block communication, to restrict access and to assume that those who are peering in are only doing so with ill intention. But when you finally push your love, or your family so far away that they are gone, well you realize that building yourself such a strong wall cost you everything that you cared about. But when in that mode, you are afraid to stop building, it becomes all that you know. If you are not shielding yourself from those you want, then how are you integrating them, how are you communicating with them and expressing your desire for their company. Well, simply put, you are not. You are then brought to your demise by your own creation much as our tragic heros of mythology.

And thus, my wall has tumbled, and though I fear that I will rebuild, I am holding out and holding on to the little hope I have that there will be reasons, experiences, friends, and my son to keep me from rebuilding. I have begun learning the tools needed for building roads, and I hope to forget some of those for building walls.

Here is to the road in my head, and the road in my heart, may their paths meet where my road ends.

There are small joys in childhood that you carry, you bring them for the remainder of your journey, you revel in them when the chance presents itself, in fact, some may have children just to re-live these tremendously fulfilling, itsy-bitsy, and  inexpensive joys.

Tonight it was the banana split. Now, personally, I am not a fan of bananas mixed into anything, but at a loss for what to have for dinner tonight, I opted for the banana split. Because lets face it, sometimes you need to have dessert first, or just dessert, and tonight was one of those nights.

When I was a younger girl, my eldest cousin and myself would typically stay a weekend with my grandfather, and I remember eating more Dairy Queen banana splits and sundaes than at any other time in my life. Thanks Grandfather George. And to my Grandma Mary, and those FANTASTIC – still my favorite, no bake chocolate drop cookies that she freely let us eat for breakfast. And to my mother who reassured me, while I was briefly home for a holiday, that on occasion, it is okay to eat pumpkin pie for breakfast lunch and dinner.

So this one my love, dear Edan, is for you. My son and I enjoyed the Banana split tonight for dinner. As he can be picky I did not push many toppings, we went with bananas, Neapolitan ice cream, peanut butter and sprinkles. Simple by banana split standards, but thats part of the beauty of the split, it grows and changes with you, much like family.

If your not willing to pillow fight, pick up bugs, race to see who can drink an icee drink faster, eat dessert for dinner, play in a mud puddle in your clothes, run in the snow barefoot, and occasionally shoot a water gun in the house, then well, I am sorry for you. I was to a certain degree a bit like that, a bit to rigid about the maintenance of order and the systems of how things work. Having so much time with my son, and developing an increased interest in how children see and process the world, I have learned a great deal about what it means to be a mother, a friend, a spouse, and an individual.

You love your children all the more for being the key to ice cream floats and bubbles, and mud. No one needs an excuse, sometimes we just need to be reminded. And so, if you are still unwilling, still afraid something may get broken, or take time to clean up well, the time it takes to clean up is miniscule compared to the time you will have to cherish that memory – the smile, the giggle, the hug, the moments.

Memories are made when you have banana splits for dinner.

There are moments when less is more. Sometimes it’s not about what you are saying to someone, but how. This can be hard though. If you are not paying attention in a conversation you may miss something. You may miss body language. You may miss the direct looks at you the head angles, the smirks. But still yet, there is sometimes, something even more.

Eyes can read into you, can speak to you. They can comfort and harm you in an instant. Many people will not make direct eye contact. And often, those that do will break away, or blink steadily. Then there are conversations where things are being said without any words, the words are there, but so much more is as well. The silence of eyes is earth shattering. Often the determination of whether or not those eyes are comforting or painful will reside in the tone of the situation.

But to look, to really look into some one and give them something, or to try and take something away is intense. It makes the words said, no matter how few or how many, almost unimportant. You feel that the world could go silent and the two of you would be sharing that moment still, just as significantly, perhaps even more so.

The ability to translate that moment can escapes us. Both parties may be well aware of this ballet, and be so in tuned that the melody radiates from their eyes. The symphony though is heard as a jumble. The eyes may be looking past you for something more. And if it is there they will find it.

How after all do we make eyes lie? Can we, can we mask our true feelings in them? If we stop to look, can we not see so much more in someone by locking pupils, not just hands.

Through this invisible life line we speak, like through cans, hoping that the message will come clear. However, when it does not, we seem afraid to ask, to wonder “what exactly are you trying to find out, to convey, to have me know, to have for yourself”.

Eyes are the windows to the soul they say. If this is true, then you can easily read my soul. Eyes don’t lie.

I love my stretch marks and my hernia scars. These are my memories. Edan knows that my scares are his scares, and my life is told in many ways through those scars. They show the trauma of love lost and love gained, of hope and joy, and pain and sorrow.

People always talk of beauty, here is a beauty. I may not have the ripped abs of an athlete, or the perfect waist of a child free twenty something or even the forty something cougar. But I have a love of life, a love of people and a devotion to those that were a part, product and support of my journey to stretch marks. In the way we cherish natural blondes and bright green eyes and all the other glamourous images of beauty, why not the underside of beauty. Often I think that those who are responsible for determining what is beautiful to the general public are working from a lack of experience or understanding.

Birth and love are painful and amazing. Both come with their own trials and tribulations, both are socially accepted as beautiful. Why not my stretch marks, why not my imperfections? Is not my confidence in them what makes them beautiful. I embrace them, they are a part of me.

And though they remind me of better times, they give me strength and courage to go through the pain, and to keep trying, to keep pushing, and to keep loving.

As a runner, and a self conscious teenager I became obsessed with staying thin, and in shape. And lacking a strong feminine role model, as I got older, despite the words of the man that loved me, I stayed avid in my workouts, and, other than drinking, rigid in my diet. This carried over to being uncomfortable when I was pregnant, an experience I think I would feel much differently about now, perhaps cherish the change, not fight it.

Pregnancy caused great distress on my stomach. I am tiny. And, prior to my son’s birth, my belly button was blue and bruised, my stretch marks were purple and my skin burned because it was stretched so tight. There was nothing to cherish by this point except the end.

Following my son’s birth I was as accepting as I could be. I began running, and with breast feeding and working all the weight came off very quickly. As I regained the form I thought I knew so well, I realized I was in fact regaining something entirely different. My body would never be the same, nor would my life.

When my marriage began to suffer, I thought that improving my appearance might help and again became focused on how I looked, though it was only focused outwardly, on the inside, I was torn to pieces. I was confused and lacking confidence.

Recently though, the battle has ended. About a year to a year and a half ago I began to realize that I would have to work at being fat, and sloppy, that I was an active and healthy young person who could more than afford to indulge once in a while. And slowly, as I began to run less, but play at the playground more, lift weights less, but throw the base ball more, eat less routinely, but when I am hungry, occasionally eat ice cream, cake, pizza, fires, egg rolls etc. As I slowly began to let go, I also began to understand the natural balance of my body and how it regulates itself, and informs quite specifically, what I need and want.

Now, I am ok with it. with all of it.

So sometimes it is essential to have anther person around for the sheer purpose of wanting to cook food. Being alone with just Edan gives me no real reason to cook much. He wont eat it. And well, frankly it is depressing in some respects, so lately I just don’t eat, or its soups or a tuna sandwich – simple, comfort food.

But, once in a while a friend calls, or I decide it is just time to make something. Tonight it was CURRY. Not to long ago I went on what some would call an epic adventure. I went with some special people who appreciate the humor of dried luxury squid, and fried gluten balls; and while there purchased several small cans of paste – mostly curry oriented. The one for this evening was a red curry, with very simply instructions, to the effect of: sautee curry paste with coconut milk, add chicken, add more coconut milk, add eggplant. Well, I am personally not the biggest eggplant fan, just not in love with it.So I opened the fridge and played the “lets see what is not rotten” game. I lucked out. I had peppers, onion, potatoes (and coconut milk in the cabinet already, I consider it a staple). So a quick trip up the road lead to a small piece of chicken and some pre-cut squash and zucchini  ( a rather large container for $2, couldn’t beat that).

Thus the birth of my curry. And the restart of my bladder. Spicy, Spicier than I expected. Very good, but spicy.

Taylor was the lucky one tonight, she joined Edan and I for a first course of bed frame assembly paired with a lovely syrah, second course was the spicy red curry, then a match of wits in Origami (accompanied by that same delicious wine) and we finished off, all three of us, with Neapolitan ice cream and fudge covered mint oreos.

People make a meal so much more significant than it would otherwise be. I miss cooking with some one else in the kitchen and sitting down to dinner. These are things that I took so for granted and dearly miss. I have missed them. But to be fare, I recently have not been one to share my space and so have cooked and delivered my fair share of meals. Now lonely, I turn to my friends for the companionship and the community. I have some fantastic friends. Taylor is a gem, she is a great confidant, fun and most importantly great with Edan. This is critical because meals in  house with children can be difficult. Generally Edan will eat first, then we will; and he is expected while we do to respect that time (whether its one or ten of us) and then following we walk or play games and eat dessert together. So it is important that my friends are willing and somewhat accommodating.

Tonight was a reassurance, that no matter how you feel, there are always people there to remind you of the good things you have, the good things you have had and the good things you have to look forward to. They help to keep you hopeful and strong when times are tough, and when those that you would otherwise turn to are indisposed.

Here is to family, community, origami and board games!

The origami by the way- well, we found out half way through that the animals get tougher as you get into the book. So with no skill, and some wine and fierce we plunged into level three origami animals.

We performed much better in memory!

And Edan is in his new bed.

In conclusion, The memories you make are better than no memories at all.