Jules writes to ask where I’ve been and I’ve got no real excuse for not blogging.  Well, actually, I have about 200 reasons, of which I’ll share just a few. 

First, I’ve been watching so much television that revolves around cooking competition that I’ve decided I should rename my blog to UUmami.  Whaddya think?

Second, my health.  I’m fine.  Really and honestly I am.  I was diagnosed with a mild form of lupus in August which makes the rest of my life make total sense (the constant fatigue, mostly).  Still, I’m avoiding thinking about it in any real and tangible way.  The illness affects me mostly in my joints and the worst part of the day is the time between getting up and getting my nice, hot shower, which generally loosens things up enough to get me going. I continue to work; I continue to attend my children’s concerts and events; I basically keep going with all that I have been doing but I understand more fully that the truth of my life is this: I have two speeds, stop and go.

Third, we have become the parental taxi service we dreaded becoming.  Eldest daughter will be eligible to get her driver’s license this week (how can that be!), but even so, she’s got herself scheduled up the wazoo, so I don’t know that we will ever be able to rely on her to help transport the sisters.

Finally, my work.  This really is the main reason I don’t blog much any more. I have great work in a great institution that puts me in line to help some of the most amazing people in our faith tradition. I have been very busy, but I also feel like this blog can no longer be the vehicle for me to bellyache and moan.

You see, I think of the blog much as I used to think of my handwritten journal (something I don’t do at all anymore because, I think, of all the reason ennumerated above)–a place to be immediate and rash and sometimes blithely irresponsible. I vent, sometimes.  I do.  I haven’t yet decided what I will do with all the journals I wrote when my girls were young and I was the stay at home parent who really should have been working. I didn’t much like my life back then.  It just took all these years to see it.  I wrote frankly and honestly about how I felt IN THAT MOMENT. And then, when that moment passed, well, I usually went in and stroked my daughters’ heads, took a deep breath and loved parts of my life anew.  But I never wrote about THAT.  I only wrote about how much I HATED things (and people) and I vented all over the gosh-durn book.  (I think I just decided it is best to burn these tomes.)

Unless you write, I don’t think you get that–that sometimes first writing is a visceral release of all that you can’t really say to anyone lest they think you are suicidal, homicidal, or just freakin’ nuts. Not really therapy, just a release of the PC valve so that you can then address the people in your life with a strong bit of sturdyness.  This, of course, does not make sense, because this, of course, is first writing.  I’m sleepy and heading to bed and I hope to welcome a silence as I sleep tonight that will bring me back to myself. And I write this with the full realization that my next move toward a lasting sanity is to open up a blank book and start filling it with the unexpressed venom of my psyche–just not here.  Just like I don’t want my children to read what that was like, I don’t want to spew on about how tough my life is when, truly, it isn’t any tougher than the lives of a kabillion other people–in fact, it is much easier than 90% of those kabillion (if creature comforts are how we measure things). I just don’t want people to interpret how I feel IN THE MOMENT to be how I feel ALL THE TIME.

That’s all I’ve got.  ‘Cept to say I’m so glad Chef Baldhead is off of America’s Next Top Iron Chef, or whichever show that was.  This is uumami, over and, perhaps, out.

I woke from a dream this morning and in the dream was a family that had attended our church but now reside in Alaska. Also in my dream were my mother and my father. Rev. Dr. Bill Sinkford also played a cameo role, but that isn’t the most interesting part about this.

The dream was a stress dream–trying to get many things done at once and it appears that this one was about church start-up and religious education. And in the midst of this, there were my parents. Not UU, apparently visiting me.  My father was obviously quite ill. I kept running to one thing to check on something, then running back to make sure they were okay, then running off to attend to something else.  The one thing I remember was carrying a small, shallow shovel, trying to move a greasy, gooey mess  from one place in the sanctuary to another. Then my mother called me to attend to my father and when she called the grease fell onto the carpeted floor just in time for Rev. Sinkford to have to step over it.

Weird.

But the strangest thing happened when I woke from the dream. In those seconds of reckoning–is this real? is this dream?–I thought of my father and there was missing him followed and then swallowed by the relief of knowing he was dead and the words that came to me were “at least none of us has to live through his dying again.”

It seems weird to say it in that way, but it was relief.  I don’t have to do this again–at least not for real.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by gratitude.
It takes me over
Not washing over like a shower,
like a warm glow,
but like a searing pain that comes from

nowhere.

Sometimes gratitude slips in unknown
like those helicopter seeds that whirl
around the air and fall
unnoticed
until they are small trees
that have rooted
in my heart.

Sometimes I have no earthly reason
to feel that prick of joy
at least not
on the surface.

If my gratitude were a tree you could see
today
you might wonder where it comes from
and why

But today I wear it quietly.
it is the seed that has taken root
but not yet grown tall enough for you to notice

Today it is not searing me,
doubling me over with wonder.
Quietly, it grows, grounding
my loneliness in something larger,
something lovelier,
something more powerful
than I have a right to know.

And yet, I do.

Which brings me
full circle.

Again.

I offered to read someone’s novel this week. Now, I’m coming off what I may call my classic women’s literature summer if I look back at this summer in any way some day. Driving to and from work, I’ve listened to works that spanned from Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D’urbervilles to a modern-day beach-read about a woman who gets drunk in LA in 2005-ish and wakes up in 1812 England (oh, and another where a woman is gifted with a trip to a three-week Austen-like camp). I also listened to a Louise Erdich book and one by an author I’d never heard of but that I liked very much, if only I could remember the name (Julia Glass–I knew it would come to me).  My favorite books this year though, now that I think of it, were written by men.  My kids and husband got me the CDs for Slumdog Millionaire and I could not tell you how much I loved that book–especially with the narrator reading it to me.  If you have only seen the movie and were mesmorized by that, do yourself a favor and read the book–or listen to it.  It is fabulous.  The other favorite is The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb.  This is a huge book and is anchored by the Columbine shooting but delves deep into the history of women in America–those who were imprisoned by bars and those who were imprisoned by gender roles.

Right now I am deep into listening to “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” a book that, at some point in my teen life I thought was a kid’s book, but which I now listen to and wonder at its ever having been written and published at all–with it’s frank look at what turn of the century America was like and it turns out it wasn’t all that different than it is now–except we now frown on the public and casual use of ethnic/racial slurs and we don’t call unmarried mothers “dirty girls.”

So, I’m looking back at all that I’ve read over the last few months and noting the themes of oppression (poverty/class, gender, mental illness) and this is coloring my thoughts on how to respond to my friend’s first novel.  What is floating in my head are characters so diverse but so fully fleshed that I know them: I know what they are wearing and why; I know that their hair will either fly free or be tightly coiled and why; I know that their desires expand their chests and their horizons and are sometimes purposefully drowned in bourbon, beer or responsibility; and I know that the main character will grow in love and understanding and in opportunity through a revelation of their innermost character.  Or something like that.  I know that they will disappont themselves and others and that others will provide ample opportunity to disappoint them.  And I know that I have come to care what happens (well, maybe not so much with Wuthering Heights, a book I found so disturbing I just wanted to be done with it and with the load of them, but that’s another post).

And I know I’d like to say this to my friend: I read every page of the book because I know you and I said I would. If I did not know you, I would have stopped reading somewhere between paragraphs three and four. But I kept reading, asking myself every 30 pages or so–is anything ever going to happen?  There is a story here, but it is buried in words and thoughts and ideas. I don’t know these characters very well and, frankly, I don’t want to, as written. All the characters are two-dimensional and rather predictable.  And DON”T write in dialect.  Ack!  And, if your character shouldn’t know a word don’t write “and I don’t even know where that word came from.”

Here’s what I will say: If you are writing this story to show that ideas matter, you miss the mark.  You spend too much time telling us that ideas matter and too little time showing how that happens.  Not all dialog is spoken–and no one, save a college professor, speaks in three paragraph spurts.  People are more than their religion.  A well-written, three-dimensional fundamentalist character will provide more depth than a characterization/stereotype. The first rule of writing fiction, as far as I’m concerned, is that you msut love your characters–even the shitty ones–they are there for a reason and will haunt you if you don’t do them justice.  Besides, I wish I remember who said this and I don’t feel like googling right now, but your going to spend a lot of time with these people–you should have respect for them and show it. (Hemingway? John Irving?)

I miss writing fiction.  I miss the way my characters became real while I wrote them, how I looked forward to spending time with them and learning, with them, what they needed to learn. I miss transcribing those characters, because, once I knew them, their lives seemed to play out in front of me.  Maybe that’s why I wasn’t a very good fiction writer–but am a good reader of fiction. I assume that people have a story to tell and that that story is about who we are as a people.  I will follow an author just about anywhere if they lead me there with a character who is true and likeable in his/her humanity (even if not always acting as such, see list above for references to this). A novel is about ideas and is about transcendence, but, fundamentally, it is about the people who have ideas and who transcend.  It will not work the other way around.

Okay.  Thanks for listening if you still are.  I’ve worked this issue through.  On to church.

(Hint, the one who is smiling)

Happy 11th Birthday, youngest daughter.

So, Thursday I got a preliminary diagnosis from someone who will most likely become my new boyfriend, as my husband has dubbed my dentist, my endodontis*, my periodontist, all of the guys at the mechanics shop, and any other male who comes in contact with me on a semi-regular basis.

I’m not ready to go public with all of the details save to note these two details:

1. Do Not Want
2. My past health and lifestyle now make more sense

I will live; and, according to WebMD and MayoClinic.com I shall live well, if only slightly differently.

But here’s the deal: my mother had a similar diagnosis but not til she was 70-ish; I’m now 47 and have just been diagnosed.  I would like to have my daughters tested so that when they bump up against energy issues and wonder why they can’t seem to manage what all their friends can manage they don’t turn 47 or 70 and say “Doh! That makes sense.”  But as soon as I think this, I think ”no, I can’t saddle them with a pre-existing condition–what will that do to their insurability?  And would my insurance even cover the tests for children who are not symptomatic except for the usual slothful sluggishness of adolescence (kids who have no energy to empty the dishwasher but can muster the strength to ride their bikes downtown for a crappacino).

Then all I can think is: Fix healthcare, dammit, so I don’t have to make these choices.

While I’d rather not give my children the ”gift” of a condition that may or may not be hereditary but would last their lifetime, I wonder how much self esteem I would still retain if I’d known sooner that my fatigue is a biological flaw rather than one of character?

I think my anger of the last few days is pointed there more than at the fact that I have this issue–that I’ve had this issue for years and thought what was wrong with me was fixable if I just got up off the couch and DID something; which I sometimes could do.  And other times I couldn’t.  Sometimes I just didn’t.

The last few Saturdays I have gotten up, cracked open my computer, turned on HGTV and played games on Facebook.  And not just for 30 minutes or so.  i’m embarrassed to say how long I sat there like a big old bump on the couch.  But that’s what I was.  This a.m. I’ve read a bit of the blogs, some Forrest Church, done most of my laundry (note: MY laundry, not all the other laundry that accumulates in a house shared by 5 humans and 3 cats–one of which (cats) likes to pee on clothes left bunched up on the floor whether they (the clothes) are dirty or not), and lit a fire under my youngest’s behind to get her closet cleaned out (Holy Sa-moly is all I can say about that!) so we can paint her room sometime next week.  While not a huge accomplishment, it is something compared to weekends of mostly non-movement.

If you are reading this as if I am wallowing in self pity, I assure you I am not.  I have a lifestyle-threatening condition, not a life-threatening condition.  I am cognizant enough to know the difference.  And I am, in turns, mad at and grateful for the diagnosis–preliminary as it is.  Not grateful that I have it, but grateful it has come to light. And I’m not going to like it much as I work on the changes I will need to adopt.  This is okay.  This is what we do, is it not?  Change as your world does.  Doesn’t mean we have to like it, right?

Enough about me.  Fix healthcare, dammit.

—

*Though I haven’t seen much of him lately, can’t say that I miss him all that much, though he did have a nice way of fixing pain with more pain.

So I went to the local coffee place yesterday morning and this was playing on the radio as I waited for the coffee to brew:

I started doing my old white girl moves from back in the day–in my head at least.  And then I decided this is a most excellent way to start the day–much more reasonable on a sunny summer morning than, say, NPR. 

Have a “groove thing” day. A litttle freaky now.

As I was driving into the city yesterday, I had this moment of … what’s the word? nostalgia, maybe?  I had just finished listening to the book I’d been “reading” on the drive to and from work all week and had turned off the radio so I could think through the end and back to the beginnings of the book, letting the themes rush over me.  I was in the fast lane, having just passed someone, and was in a reflective mode so probably wasn’t driving as fast as I could.  I checked my rearview mirror and saw a car approaching fast behind me.  I moved back out of the fast lane and looked at the car as it truly sped by me.

There were two young women in the front seats, the window were down, their hair was blowing about them and they were gone. And I remembered summer.

I remembered summer as a young woman, out of college, on my way to work, in high heels and panty hose and shoulder-padded suits in a fast car zipping by old women in reflective moods.

I remembered summer as a teen ager, with long stretches of time in front of me and nothing to do and both revelling in and hating the boredom of it all.

I remembered summer with young kids in tow, looking for others to drink coffee with as kids played in sand or water or both. I remembered that there is an actual photo of me pushing my kids in the swings that used to be in our side yard back when there were only two girls. Our side yard is next to a busy road and a photographer from the local paper (the one I would later write for) was out looking for pictures of people enjoying the finally-warm weather. And I am smiling, pushing my kids on the swing, remembering the games we used to play, the songs we used to sing in those endless hours of “‘wing me, Momma, ‘wing me.”

I remembered all this in the span of a minute, maybe less, as I hurtled away from the house that held those daughters, now old teenagers, still sleeping. I revelled in the maturity of those same daughters who worked together to clean a house so we could host a church retreat Wednesday night. Grateful for all they are doing to make life easier for all of us as I work more hours than I have in what feels like centuries even as I learn that the reasons I’m so tired these days have only a little to do with the hours–that my body is working against me right now, but not in a life-threatening way. “Life-style threatening” is how I put it to my husband.  But there is a new specialist to find and see who will help determine what, exactly, I need to change and why. And in the midst of that I realize how much I miss my daughters. How much we are all missing, together, this summer.

And all this goes through my head and heart in a manner of seconds. So grateful. So scared. So grieved. It all goes hand in hand at times.

This is, I suppose, why this blog has been so empty lately. The urge to write never left, but the draws on my energy are rightly placed elsewhere at the moment.

I had a diatribe to write about the last General Assembly of the UUA, but have decided that this is something I’ve wasted too much energy on already. With limited stores, I’m going back to spirit, going back to feed the wolf that has been neglected, the one who has led me before and will lead me again. Polity and process keep us strong and I am glad that there are people who find their energy in this struggle.  I, too, have. But today, the sun is now shining, there are weeds to pull and floors to scrub and a pile of stuff that has not been attended to in I gasp to think how long. The world will move on with or without our communal faith; but I will not move on one inch without attention to my own right now.  And I think that last can be read in many different ways.

Ours is a strong faith, strong exactly because of the internal dialog we have about, well, everything. But that also makes it seem tenuous and uncertain, fragile even. There are days when I don’t want to argue. I just want to pick up a book by Forrest Church and feel connected, understood, spiritually caressed. There are days when I just want to sit in the sun and be still and let the angst fall into the grass to be carried away by ants and earthworms. So, here’s the thesis of my (mostly) unwritten diatribe: we can argue about words and meanings for centuries, but at some point, our faith calls us to act. That seems not possible in the collective and so it must be done by the individual. This is, my friends, in my opinion, the main reason why we have not and perhaps will not grow as a denomination.

I nearly quit my church over this (and this has less to do with denominational affiars and moer to do with my own congregations’ approach to same). Nearly quit the church and had a conversation with a young adult who felt this GA was more about not doing than doing, roadblocking. This is a youth who has strong ties denominationally and she, too, was wondering if this truly is the faith for her–the faith she has grown up in. This is not about who is president; this is about how we work together (but mostly, it felt, against each other).  There are layers that the smart, educated people I know would say “need to be unpacked.”

Right now, this morning, I’m not sure I have the desire to unpack one more thing, so I’m going to leave all that to y’all. Because I remember summer, and it is waiting for me.

A few years back I started a writing project of short and short-short pieces that all started with a character saying “So, here’s the thing …”

I started it because I kept hearing people use the phrase to get to the point they wanted to make two or twenty minutes earlier. What I found, once I began listening to what came after this key phrase was either self-indulged  justification for bad behavior, a request for permission to engage in bad behavior for all the reasons expounded on before the key phrase, or, in the best of cases, a simple, honest request for what they really wanted.

I’m feeling the urge to dig out that project. It was pure fiction, which allows me to say the next: it was primarily about sex and sexual tensions.  Boy was it fun to write.  I guess I’m thinking about it as I hear about how elected officials are doing all of the above.

• “Here’s the thing, I want you to hear me say I’m not a quitter even though I’m quitting.”
• “Here’s the thing, I really want my wife to stay married to me (so she can stay home and do all the responsible stuff) while I either hike the Appalachian Trail or screw a broad abroad.”
• “Here’s the thing, I’m not gay, I just like to touch feet  with strange men in public bathrooms frequented by gay men.”

I wonder if this would be a fun communal blog project: Short-shorts (three or four paragraphs max) that must start with “Here’s the thing.” But fiction.  REally.  That’s more fun.

***Note: old post found in drafts folder.***

Middle daughter just turned 14 this week … was it this week?  I went in to work on Saturday, very early while the house still slept, trying to pull together what I could before leaving for GA tomorrow. Middle daughter was at a “sleep-over” with friends.  I won’t even go into the oxymoronic name of such gatherings.

When I pulled into the driveway about 3:00 that afternoon, I sat in my car and watched her dozing in her brand new hammock–the only thing (besides books) this kid really, REALLY wanted for her birthday.  I didn’t think we were going to be able to pull it off, I mean, hammocks are expensive, aren’t they?  At one point I joked with her father that we should just give her a macrame kit and tell her to make her own durn* hammock.

But there it was, at Target, a cloth hammock for under 40 bucks, which seemed a steal considering what we had seen elsewhere.

So I sat and watched her for a bit, waiting for her to hear the car and notice me, but she didn’t. She didn’t even wince when I closed the door of my van.  Not a glimmer of a movement as I walked toward her. Ear buds in, she couldn’t hear me. Tired as she was from NOT sleeping over, she was in that place, she told me later, between being conscious and not.

Eldest daughter and I had been out the night before, a long-overdue mommy-daughter date, and during the evening the conversation turned to Middle Daughter in a way that was neither teasing nor mean-spirited as we agreed that she was just so fully herself, we can’t imagine her needing much protection from the rest of the world. I can’t remember my eldest daughter’s exact words, but she said something along the lines of Middle Daughter being “the most realistic person about reality.”

What was really cool for me was to hear eldest daughter admire her sister’s strengths in a way that was neither envious nor mocking.  She was just being real about her sister’s reality.