A Roll of the Dice

This is my life now.... Palm Trees, Slot Machines, Casinos.... I remember six months ago driving through the snow in northern Utah, wondering if I would ever feel so far away from home again.

Now I know the answer.

And the funny thing is, I have the nagging suspicion this is only the beginning of the craziness. I think the next Great Adventure may be just around the corner. So, hang on. I'll tell you all about it. Just not now. Now, I have to leave for work. Hard hat - check. Steel toes - check. Security badge that says I'm allowed to go in the mine - check.

Funny. I never thought I'd be a miner.

Where I've been....

Can we talk?

I haven’t posted this because I didn’t want to ignite a three alarm fire, but 6 weeks ago I got the call that we might lose the ranch.  Again.  Only this time, there was nothing I could do about it. No money, no payments, no nothing was going to stop the force of nature.

I sat at my desk, head in hands, and stared at the wall. It's 2009 all over again. How could this happen?

So, that’s the main reason I haven’t blogged. I haven’t had one modicum of energy that wasn’t channeled into coping with the loss of the ranch.

Why? That’s what I need to know. Why does it matter to me? It’s a thing. A possession.

It is also the vessel that holds my memories. It is the soil that grew my family. It is the only thing I have that resembles a home besides my grandmother’s house, which I will never again live in.

This month I’ve really soul searched, trying to unroot the hold this place has on me. I don’t live there: may never live there again. And yet its talons reach into my deepest self, unearthing 48 years of need and loss and pain, turning them over like rocky soil, exposing them to the light of day.

Here’s what I learned: Get a note pad, you’re going to want to post this on your bathroom mirror.

It’s better to let it go willingly than to have it ripped from your bloodied fingernails.

I kept remembering a picture of my granddaughter, at 2, arms loaded with toys. She wanted up on the bed but couldn’t get up there without letting something go. Stubbornness seems to be a family trait, so rather than lay it down, she tried every other way of clambering up, always falling back on her diapered bottom. Frustrated, she stomped her foot and started to cry. My daughter leaned over the edge of the mattress.

You want up here?

Jaiden nodded yes.

Grace picked her up and set her on top of the bed.

A light went on in Jaiden’s eyes. All she had to do was ask.

God, I don’t want to lose the ranch. I know I can’t stop it. So do what you’re going to do. But I want it. I want to keep it. You know why.

I got the call Friday.

Safe for now. One more bullet dodged.

For now, I am a two year old, legs dangling off the edge of the mattress, little toys clutched in my hands, trying to remember why I didn’t just ask in the first place.

ETA

Smart Mouth Girl has told me if I don't get my butt back to the blog, she's going to take over. So, while I'm not going to blog tonight, I will promise to have something up this week. I'll either tell you about the latest adventures on site or I'll confess to my venture into ...
Nevermind. I'll just tell you about the latest adventures on site. Hold me to it, y'all.

Out on a Limb

I’m sorry I’ve been absent so long. I’m going on the third week of Hell Month, except my month is actually five weeks long. Today I only had to work twelve hours and when I got home I discovered I had extra time on my hands. What to do? I could clean my room. It’s a disaster. Or I could take care of business from home. But that’s too much like work.

I could climb a tree.

Yes. You heard me.

Climb. A. Tree.

This is what exhaustion does to you: it makes crazy ideas seem logical.

While changing clothes, I looked out my second story bedroom window and spied apricots growing on the tree that grows along the fenceline.

Apricots.

August.

They glowed orangish, tempting. Big succulent orbs of juicy fruity apricot-ness.

I tugged on my shorts and tennies.

Safety caught me at the door. “Where’re you going?”

“There’s an apricot tree out there.”

Her brow furrowed. “So?”

“Get a basket or a trash bag or something.”

Awareness dawned. “No,” she said firmly. “No. No. No.
Hopping on one foot, I pulled the other sneaker over my heel. “Yes,” I said, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Fifteen minutes later, with branches spearing my breast, I perched in the fork of the tree. Damn fruit was all out on the ends of limbs, just out of my reach. Okay. Well out of my reach.

“You’re crazy, Stella.”

“I am NOT crazy. I want an apricot. I’m getting an apricot. That’s not crazy.”

“Why don’t you get one of these on the low branches?”

“There aren’t any on the low branches,” I snarked.

She moved into sight, biting into a perfectly formed, fuzzy, fruit.  “There’s a whole bunch down here on this side.”

Dang it. I didn’t look on that side.

Slowly I exited the tree, scraping my chest, elbows, knees and one leg all the way down to my ankle. Safety looked at the peeled skin and shook her head. “Pshss. You’re crazy.”

I don't know. Maybe she’s right.

A Tale of Hula Hoops and Toaster Ovens

In lieu of the traditional methods of weight loss which require denial and sweat and vegetables, I have decided to take up Contour Tanning.

Contour Tanning, or CT, is based on the artists’ concept that dark areas recede while lighter areas move forward.  Dark = invisible. Light = not invisible. Pretty simple.

With this in mind, I stood in front of the mirror and took a quick inventory of the things I wanted to make go away.  Thighs, inside and out. Wiggly inside of upper arms. Waist. Hips… ugh. I would like for them to disappear entirely, but that would leave me looking like one of those shimmering heat mirages. So, okay…just the outsides. The outsides definitely have to go.

Plan in place, I bought a pass to one of the tanning salons and, armed with ultra-dark bronzing lotion, I crawled in the toaster oven and begin the disappearing process.

Problem:

It is nearly impossible to expose those specific areas to radiation at the same time unless you are a pretzel. Notice I said ‘nearly’. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Lay on back. Flatten arms against glass on either side of torso. Twist hips and legs 90 degrees to the left. Bend knees or your spine will break in half. Bake 7.5 minutes, then rotate to the other side. Continue baking until skin is sufficiently browned and/or you are unable to feel your legs.

After one of these disappearing sessions, I was wandering through Walmart with my roommate in search of nourishment (we are single, and therefore hunter-gatherers) and we stumbled across a display of hula hoops. In a moment of weakness, I challenged her on the hula.

What was I thinking?

Hoops in place, we distanced ourselves appropriately and began to swing. Well, she began to swing. I took one half-hoop and froze, pain piercing my left hip.

Two days later, as I tried to explain the hula hoop incident to the chiropractor, I began to wonder whether those CT sessions might have played a part in my injury, but I could tell by the expression on his face that he was already sufficiently freaked out by the mental image of Hula-Hooping Grandmas and decided I would not further frighten him with my theory of CT.

Besides, I’m not sure it’s working the way I planned, anyway. I may think my hips are smaller, but when I try to squeeze by the filing cabinet in my office, I’m reminded (painfully) that reality supercedes illusion. In other words, I think I’m going to have to go back to the old fashioned way of doing weight loss.

Or maybe I’ll just move the filing cabinet.

Losing our Balance, Part II

Excerpted fiction - copyright 2011

The Wall.  I have this Wall, you see.  It’s at the cabin.  I started building it back when I first started losing my balance.  It was my first wall and my husband - well, now he’s not my husband, but he was my husband then - David, that’s his name, anyway David said I couldn’t do it, but that just made me want to do it more.  So I got Wesley to help me carry the rocks. Wesley’s my son.  He’s thirteen.  He’s—not here anymore. 

They say he’s dead.

You know, if Jesus can raise people from the dead, what’s the point in dying?  What makes it any different than, say, sleeping?  We sleep, we wake up.  When you’re dead you just sleep longer, that’s all.  I hate funerals. 

David always called it The Wall, like it was the Berlin Wall or something.  I hated it when he did that; we used to fight about it.  Married people fight about the stupidest things.  Funny, because I call it that now, too.  The Wall.  Only not Berlin.  It’s the Wailing Wall.  Because I cry there.  And I write things and when I pray, I sometimes put my prayers on paper and fold them until they are very small and slide them into the cracks between the rocks.  When the cement is wet, it works best, because then the words become part of the mortar that holds it all together.  And holding it together is important when you’re building a wall.

It’s also important to me.  Very important. 

Because I’m not that great at building walls.  And sometimes I lose my balance..

Losing Our Balance

Excerpted fiction - copyright 2011

It’s been said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  By that definition, we’re all a little bit crazy, aren’t we?  I mean, let’s talk about dieting.  Or dating.  Or credit cards.  Credit cards are crazy, aren’t they?  But, okay, that definition might be true to a point, but don’t you have to take into consideration what we’re doing over and over again or even why we have to keep doing it?  Edison did not create a light bulb the first time he threw a bunch of wires together, but that doesn’t mean he was insane.  It means he was patient.  It means some things take repetition.  And then, let’s face it; sometimes the most insane part is thinking it up in the first place, doing it the first time.   Like, loving the wrong person.  Loving too much.  Or loving at all.  Loving.  Yeah, love can definitely make you crazy.

By the world’s standards, Jesus was insane, you know.  He said he would raise the dead.

I think insanity is when you want something that isn’t real so badly it becomes real, at least to you.  And then you live in that reality.

Oh no.  That’s faith.  I always get those two confused.

You’ll have to cut me some slack.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that people out here don’t talk about that kind of stuff.  They talk about the weather and movies and news and coffee—what’s the deal with coffee, anyway?  All I see is gourmet coffee—everywhere I go, gourmet coffee.  Whatever happened to plain old Joe?  I mean, coffee is coffee, right?  There’s a Starbucks in my bank for heaven’s sake.  Can you believe that?  It’s crazy.

There I go again.

I’m not supposed to use that word.

Native Americans, I learned, do not have a word for insanity. They call it being imbalanced.  I like that.  It feels right.  You know how you can be walking along and you trip and lose your balance and you do the arm-cartwheel-dance trying to get back to normal, trying not to fall, but you fall anyway?   That’s what crazy feels like.

It feels like falling.  Falling and falling and you can see where you were, and where you don’t want to be, but nothing you do changes anything.  No matter how hard you dance or how fast you spin your arms, you fall anyway.

I build walls.

I used to be an artist, but I’m not anymore because when you’re an artist you see things differently from other people and that is almost as dangerous as loving.  So, I build walls now.  And I like them.  They hold everything inside them.  Especially what I’m hiding.

Hey, that would be good to put in the wall...

It's Impossible

Mornings are the only part of my day that follow a routine.

Boot up the computer. Start the coffee. Warm up the printer. Pull the sign ins from the day before. Check the email. Copy the receipts and scan to the office. All while fielding the typical early morning banter. Morning Stella. How You Doin, Sunshine? Oops spilled the coffee. Where’s the paper towels?

Enter yesterday’s time into the cards. File. File. File.

Safety meeting.

It’s an interactive soundtrack that repeats itself every morning. Like the dialogue from “It’s a Wonderful Life” I have it memorized right down to the pauses. On occasion, Civil Soup will whistle a few out of tune bars from some country song but that’s about as exciting as it gets.

This morning, as I was making the coffee, however, a different soundtrack wafted in from that end of the trailer.

Strangers in the night. Two lonely people, they were strangers in the night.

I frowned. Sinatra? Really? The voices in my head don’t usually do Old Blue Eyes.

Tendrils of Sinatra curled beneath the closed door of Mechanical Soup’s office, wafting toward me in buttery streams. Just then, the door opened and Zorro emerged, all six foot five of him, moustache and all, singing in a strong rich baritone.

 Up to the moment we said our first hello, little did we know, love was just a glance away, a warm embracing dance away…

He was deep in a set of drawings, his brow furrowed in concentration, but his steel toed boots weren’t feeling the isometrics. Instead they heel-toed their way along the vinyl in perfect time to the beat. Never looking up, he shifted seamlessly from one song to the next, like an old vinyl 72.

Heaven, I’m in heaven. And the cares that hung around me through the week seem to vanish like a gamblers winning streak when we’re dancing cheek to cheek.

Zorro. Sinatra.

Sinatra. Zorro.

I poured myself a cup and returned to my desk but my brain refused to reboot. I just sat there, feeling the universe shift beneath me. Hardhats and safety glasses don’t sing Sinatra. They just don’t.

Call me irresponsible. Call me unreliable. Throw in undependable too. Do my foolish alibis bore you? Well I’m not so clever, I just adore you.

Call me unpredictable. Tell me I’m impractical. Rainbows I’m inclined to pursue. Call me irresponsible. Yes I’m unreliable. But it’s undeniably true. I’m irresponsibly mad for you.

Seriously. The power of music is astounding. I was transported out of the dingy trailer to another place, where the world turned to black and white women wore crimson lipstick with clip on earrings and men tipped fedoras and actually knew how to dance. It was all I could do to keep from kicking off my shoes and twirling across the floor.

And for the rest of the day, I couldn’t look at Zorro without wondering ...
Who are you? And with a voice like that, why aren't you on  Broadway? 

Simple Mans Simple Prayer

I love this canyon country

Love the sacred in the land

Watching a new calf learn to stand

The acrid smell of burning brands

Soft feel of leather in my hands

And I am nothing - just a man

But Lord, I love this land

I love standing on a rimrock

With an updraft in my face

As I thank God for this time

And I thank Him for this place

And I think that there is nothing

Like an eagle on the wing

The promise of early spring

The best horse in the string

 I know I’m just a simple man

But Lord, I love this land

I love sitting on the front porch

When the thunder rolls to town

Lightning flashing all around

And the rain comes pouring down

Broken canyons, broken hills -

Broken people.. God, and still

I know I’m nothing - just a man

But Lord, I love this land

I love to see Old Glory

Snapping proudly on the breeze

And that lady in the harbor

That calls across the seas

Saying “Come, share in our bounty

In our fields of fruit and grain

In the grassy covered plains

And the crimson colored stain

that flowed so every man could be free

even me

and I’m humbled.. I’m just a man

But God, I love this land

Sugarbutt

There was a day when women in the workplace expected to be called ‘Sugar’ or ‘Hon’ or ‘Sweetie’ by their male coworkers. Maybe it was a sexually demeaning game. Maybe it was a colloquialism. Either way, it was the norm.

Nowadays, not so much.

Not that I long to return to the ‘Good Old Boys’ way of doing business… I don’t …. But it has gotten to the point where the threat of sexual harassment in the workplace has grown horns and a tail and hovers menacingly over the desk of every woman. I have watched men nearly kill themselves trying to recover from an innocent slip of the tongue.    

Men from the south seem to be particularly vulnerable. And you know what? I’m just going to say it. I don’t care. I don’t care if they call me Sweetie. I don’t care if they call me Sugar. I don’t mind if they open the door for me when my hands are full, or step aside to allow me to enter the room first. That’s not sexual harassment. That’s POLITE.

Sexual harassment is when a male superior calls you into his office and shuts the door behind him and gropes your body while you try to get a desk between the two of you.

Still… there’s a fine line to be drawn.

 I work with an older gentleman from Texas who is prone to verbal gaffes when it comes to me. He’s called me everything you can imagine and apologized more times than I can count. Yesterday, we were alone in the office. I was filing and had my backside to him when suddenly I heard, “Hey, Sugarbutt, what’re you doin?”

I slammed the filing drawer closed and whirled to face him. “WHAT did you just call me?”

He looked up, face frozen in fear. It was then that I noticed the cell phone dangling from his ear. “I’m, I’m talkin to my girl,” he stammered.

I laughed so hard I cried. I laughed so hard Safety came to see what was the matter. And when he tried to explain, I laughed even harder.

In fact, I’m pretty sure when I see him this morning, I’ll laugh again.

So… here’s Sugarbutt, giggling her way into a new day.

Little White Church

There’s a little white church sitting round the bend

Grandaddy’s preachin on the wages of sin

Looks like it’s gonna be hot again

That’s how we spent the summers in Arkansas.

Picking muskidines til our hands were raw

Sitting round the radio yelling ‘go hawgs’

Uncle’s running coons with a flop eared dog

That’s how we spent the summers back in Arkansas

Sipping kool-aid eating chocolate moon-pies

What a way to live- what a way to die

Red dirt, dirt poor just the facts of life

Spending every summer back in Arkansas.

I hear those bare feet slapping on the gravel road

Did ya see that racer? Can ya catch that toad?

Jumping off the bluff into that old bluff hole

Laughing through the summer back in Arkansas

We would talk to each other on that old CB

Put our feet up on the table, try to watch TV

Just my aunts and my uncles

Grandmamma

Granddaddy

A bunch of cousins,

The dog

And me

Hillbilly summers back in Arkansas.

The Miracle

Open my eyes, the sun is rising

Draw in a breath, I’m still trying

To figure it out - I don’t know why

Why I’m still alive

You must have a job for me, Lord

And I must have a reason to be, Lord

Point me there and show me what you see

What do you want of me?

Show me a miracle

Everyday, you

Show me a miracle

In so many ways, you

Let me live, you let me love, you let me see

I need a miracle in me

You lifted the lame, and set them dancing

Touched blind eyes and gave them a chance to

Look on the one who thought even life wasn’t

Too much to pay

You just gave it away

And bound up the broken hearts, still they cried

Begging you to show them a sign

Jesus, I don’t see how they could be so blind

When I’m just trying to

See your miracles

Everyday

To see the miracles

You have proclaimed

You let me love, you let me live, you let me see

sometimes

I even see you in me

And - that’s a miracle

Out of The Darkness...

I don’t like darkness and I don’t like pain, in spite of the fact my own life has taught me that’s where the growth happens, that’s the most fertile soil for creativity. And yet, when it comes to dealing with it, I’m like a dog, turning around and around in my bed, trying to find a better way to lie down.

Sure. I don’t like pain. Who does?

In writing, as in art, my best stuff always comes when I work from dark to light. And yet, whenever I sit down to paint, I start with a white canvas. Light to dark. Why? Same thing happens when I write. I have no problem creating characters with interesting thought lives, witty dialogue and memorable experiences. Heck, I’ll even kill them off if I have to, but when it comes to hurting them… to prolonging their emotional pain, I freeze up like a February stream. Why?

Because single focus creates white space and white space pulls the eye away from the goal to the great empty nothingness  surrounding it. From there, the imagination begins to doubt. It asks what’s going to be there? What hasn’t happened yet? 

 Ironically, it is extremely difficult to cut darkness in at that point.

Darkness must be preexistent.

For example, don’t you hate it when you’re reading a book and everything is going too fine for the main character? Nervously, you wait for the other shoe to drop… only it never does? The story ends and you close the book feeling vaguely dissatisfied. No dragons were slain. No mountains scaled. Just lots of fluff without any fire.

Even worse is when the author adds drama as an afterthought.  They throw in a fiery plane crash and an outbreak of the bubonic plague late in the third act, as if the reader doesn’t realize  there are only five pages left in the book. How much suspense can be built in five pages?

Depth of character, it would seem, works best when it’s an organic process.

When I begin a painting with a black canvas, I'm in familiar territory: I know what I have to do. From the first touch of brush to canvas, there is nowhere to go but up and out of an inky pit of darkness. Slowly, the colors emerge as tiny rays of light begin piercing the black gessoed canvas, outlining form and shape, bringing the subject to life.

Interestingly enough, black space has the opposite effect of white space. White space in a painting distracts from the subject. The human mind wanders inside white space, creating its own storyline. But black space repels the viewer, frightening their attention back toward the center where the subject is happily nestled inside a secure halo of light.

Come in from the dark, the subject seems to say, stay here with me, where you’ll be warm and safe and happy.

Two months ago when I left home, I didn’t want to go back into that dark night. I wanted to stay on the ranch, in a shrinking halo of light.  I wanted to be warm and safe and happy, blissfully ignorant of the wolves clawing at the door.

But God knew better. He knew it was time for me to get back in the fight. 

Ignoring the whiny little girl with the I-don’t-wanna-go-to-battle-today excuses, he set me on my feet, dragged my steel-toed boots on, packed my lunchbox, stuffed a hardhat on my head and sent me packing into the fray with a loving swat to my backside.

Daily, I’m tempted to feel sorry for myself. Tempted to be a crybaby.

Clutching my SuperGirl lunchbox to my chest, I try to look into the darkness: to remember how much worse it can get. Broke isn’t the same as bankrupt and bankrupt isn’t the same as dead. Aging isn’t the same as cancer and cancer isn’t the same as dead. Alone isn’t the same as abandoned and abandoned isn’t the same as dead. 

In fact, if I step back and take a long view of my life, I realize that there is very little white space left. I am surrounded by a darkness filled with slain dragons and mountains scaled. And since I’m not dead yet, I’m pretty sure there are more waiting in the darkness. For all of us.

Game On

“That’s it!” I huff, entering the job trailer with a sharp slamming of the door behind me. New Boss looks up from his desk, a startled expression on his normally placid face. Stripping my heavy fleece lined jacket off my shoulders, I stomp the moisture from my (slipper clad) feet.

“It’s freaking summer everywhere else! 90 freaking degrees! I finally got a day off and it freaking snowed! And there’s bugs in the portajohn!” Freaking is my new favorite word.

The coat snags on my belt buckle. I give it a harsh jerk that snaps it free.

“What kind of bugs?” New boss asks.

I shoot him a sharp look. “An arctically-adapted spider.”

He nods knowingly. I return to my desk and crank up the heater. Civil Soup enters, leaving the door ajar while he helps himself to a fresh cup of coffee.

Shoving away from my desk, I stalk past him and re-slam the door. He looks up.

“This coffee smells funny.”

Smart mouthed Girl struggles against captivity. I fold my arms across my ribs in a vain attempt to thwart her escape.

“Did you put something in it?”

My lips part. The word arsenic balances on the tip of my tongue, wings spread. I clamp my jaws shut and go back to my desk.  The last time I checked, Smart Mouth Girl had nearly gnawed through the duct tape.

“What’s this?” he asks, dragging the can of Folgers Secret Blend out of its hidey hole behind the napkins. “Cinnamon Swirl? Who made this crap?”

I think about my words, measuring inappropriateness against getting fired. “I did. And no one else is complaining,” is what I decide to say.

“Well I am. It tastes like sh*t.”

The door opens and a young man enters. He is dressed in camo and a hard hat, his boots just as muddy as the next guy, and yet he likes froofy coffee in the afternoon.

Smart Mouth Girl breaks free with a gasp. “Civil Soup says the coffee tastes like sh*t,” she tattles. I sigh, slumping my brow into an open palm. Here we go.

“Well,” The Kid says. “Maybe he shouldn’t drink it.” He fills his thermos, winks and puts a dollar in the cup.

Later, after Civil Soup has retreated to his office, I am summonsed to New Boss’s doorway.

“Who buys the coffee?” he asks.

“Me.  Safety. Sometimes The Kid chips in.”

“Then make whatever you want,” he says, “and tell the runner to buy bug-killer for the portajohn. Make sure it’s for ‘arctically-adapted’ spiders.”

I turn to go, feeling both validated and dismissed... Smart Mouthed Girl sticks her tongue out at Civil Soup’s closed door.

Game on, she whispers.

Oh Happy Day!

This week has been totally crazy. It started out with a personal issue: a bit of a legal disruption… apparently my attorney didn’t file all the paperwork he was supposed to file. This is causing ummm… stress. With an emphasis on the SSSSSSS!

For a few days, while he was avoiding my calls and I was developing an intimate phone-relationship with his voice mail, I started to wonder whether I was divorced or not. I mean, all the papers were together. Maybe he didn’t file those either?

I did the only logical thing: I began doing an online file search on myself. I even subscribed to one of those invasive people-finder thingies that allow you to have an insane amount of information on perfect strangers.

Except I was spying on myself.

This is just… wrong. On so many levels.

Not to mention, it was embarrassing. No wonder no one has stolen my identity! I'm boring.

He finally emailed me. Yes, I’m divorced, but no, we don’t have an LLC. So now either my ex-husband or myself could destroy the ranch financially, should we so choose. Ironic.

And then, at work, we had an evacuation. Whoo-hooo. Could it have been on a warm day? Could it have been after I went to the blue room? No. I got to stand on the highway for 45 minutes on the coldest morning of the week tweaking like a puppet on meth. Of course.

At the end of the week, I got a call that someone is going to arrive at work to serve someone else with some sort of mystery papers. Nothing like a little tension in the office. Apparently, no one is immune to fear of the words ‘you’ve been served.’

In the words of my granddaughter: Oh Happy day!

Happy, happy day!

You know what? I’m starting to get a little pissed off. I’m ready to have one of those 'happy days.' I’m ready to have several in a row. Like… whole years of happiness. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get there. I don’t know what it’s going to cost me. I don’t have much left to give… but today I am going to choose to move toward that goal. Purposefully, intentionally, deliberately.

One step at a time.

I will get out of this house today. Go somewhere. Even if it’s only Walmart.

(Looking outside)

Sigh. I suppose it would be a good idea to go drag out the winter coat first.

A Woman at the Well

I been doing this forever, God, turning hours into days

And I know I’m only worth what a man sees fit to pay

Don’t even whores need bread and water,
even whores too tired to pray?

I guess not.  I’m just a woman at a well

I wear bells to hear them jingle

Like the laughter of a child

That I will never hold against me

Never kiss them as they cry

And I wear veils because they cover

All the things I want to hide

All the scars the wars the battles

All the weary working miles

Dear God, I’m tired. 
I am the woman at the well.

                                             

I clean the house and pay the bills,

take out the trash, wipe up the spills

Drive kids to school and football games
and home again…

After the kids are bathed and fed,

the dishes washed, school papers read,

I take a shower, climb in bed and try to feel
Alive.

Alarm clock rings, I’m out the door

It’s barely quarter after four

To beat the rush and be the one 
who offers more

Coffee for breakfast, and for lunch,

served over schedules, forms and such,

I don’t have time for nine to five

I just survive. Im just a woman.

at a well.

And I wear suits because they cover

All the things I want to hide

All the worries and the hurries and

All the weary working miles

I have to fake it til I make it, but oh

God, I am so tired.

I’m just a woman,

Just a woman at a well.

I been sitting by this well for nearly fifty seven years

And in all this time of waiting Lord I’ve cried a million tears

Thinking surely someone somewhere’s gonna see me sitting here

But all they see is just a woman
A woman at a well

Why Not?

Not a big Shania fan. Nope. Maybe that’s because her star was on the rise while I was changing diapers and heating bottles. My fave song back in those days ended in, “Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?”

I’m sure it didn’t help one bit that she was so dang pretty and I was carrying around 30 pounds of extra baby weight.

Anyway. No love lost.

And then I happened to catch the showing of American Idol when she was the featured guest mentor. She cracked me up. She was funny. Vulnerable.  Sarcastic. Still too darn pretty, but hey, I guess it’s not her fault she has superior genetics.

This year, I live in a house with a television. The only night I am ever awake long enough to watch it is Sunday. But guess what? Shania has her own show called, Why Not? On Sunday night, no less!

It’s cheesy.

Utterly and ridiculously cheesy.

I hate it.

But I am glued to the set as I watch her and her sister and her new husband traipse across the country in search of wounded hearts in need of healing (and a little splash of celebrity). I listen as normal people tell their tales.

Parents died in a car crash leaving behind a houseful of orphans.

Husband unfaithful, wife left in lurch.

Kids gone astray.

Shania listens. Sometimes she talks too much, I think, but that’s okay. She’s only human.

It’s like Reality TV meets Prayer Chain.

Last Sunday, as Shania described the choking sensation that had overtaken her during the year of her divorce, describing it as ‘that feeling like you have a lump in your throat, like you’re going to cry…,” my hand crept to my neck. For four years I have struggled with that exact malady. I lost the ability to speak. I sometimes struggled just to breathe.

And I realized why I love/hate this show. I hate it because it serves me no purpose to watch it. It’s a complete waste of an hour of my life. But I love it because it gives voice to so many people who just want to say “I’m hurting,” and not be told to suck it up, get tough, get over it.

And… okay… I admit that I totally want Shania’s hair.

Totally.

Sharp Pencils

About a year and a half ago, I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant in late afternoon sharing a bowl of Chicken Chow Mein with Mr. Minor Navigational Change himself.

If there is such a thing as a kindred spirit, he is mine. He is also balding, has one crooked tooth and I really hope he doesn’t know that I blog.

We hadn’t seen each other in over a year, though we’d spoken on the phone a few times. Still, it was as if we’d stepped back in time, comfortable in a relationship that was as worn as a favorite pair of Levis.

He’d seen me through the shooting. Through the PTSD that followed. Through the realization my marriage had died, but my husband and I were still entombed within it. Through a loss and regaining of faith. We’d shared some funny moments. Sad moments. Fear. Through it all, our friendship became its own drama and we were now just bit players.

So, there we were, talking about the latest and the greatest events in our lives – his health, my divorce. He asked me what the split was doing in my life, how was it affecting me. I just shrugged.

I’m finding out things about myself that I didn’t know, I told him. I didn’t realize how many concessions you make within a marriage. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s just when it’s over, you have to sort through your possessions, but also your life, figuring out yours mine and ours.

Explain.

Okay, I say and I try to find a way to quantify it for him. I like to go barefoot.       

It takes a divorce to figure that out?

I like … I like sharp pencils.

He laughed, head thrown back, crooked tooth twinkling. Sharp pencils, huh? As opposed to nubby pieces of pencils or just other writing utensils in general?

I plucked a piece of chicken off his side of the bowl, my chopsticks faster than his.

So tell me about this blood clot, I say, changing the subject.

Yesterday, eighteen months after the Lo Mein, I felt an urge to contact him and reached for my phone. The display said I had one text message barely two minutes old. I knew who it was before I ever opened it.

You remember saying you like sharp pencils, it said.

I felt a tug in my heart. I know the road he’s on, though his reevaluation is vocational, not marital. I know it’s scary and dark and feels like it will never end. But I also know he’ll make it through to the other side. Finally, in a life that has become so unrecognizable, I find a familiar thing: a compassion. And I’m strangely relieved. I can do this. I can help. Because I’ve been through this chaff-burning process before and even though I hate it and it hurts and thinking of it brings back horrible memories, I will go there, just as others went there with me.

That’s what friends are for.

And I’m beginning to realize, that’s what pain is for. It is our friend, not our enemy. Like a good trainer, it pushes us to places we don’t want to go, so that when we need to lead others through, we can do so. Sometimes, it is God’s way of saying no.

And sometimes, it is his way of saying, no…for now.