Words

Words have always played a large part in my life. When I was a teenager, my friend and I used to enjoy looking for new words in the dictionary. That was what we called “fun”. For a good time, call Webster. We also went through a phase when we’d make up our own secret words. Then I learned how to type, and I started to type things out in my head throughout the day – conversations, things I read… I know, that’s an odd thing to do. A touch of Aspergers perhaps? Self diagnosis. How to explain…. I loved the words forming, gathering and overflowing in my mind.

During the dark days, I often battled tortured words. Self-hating words. Those were unwelcome. I guess this is why I love the library and bookstores. They calmed my mind and I looked for comforting stories and phrases to shoosh away the ugliness.

These days, the landscape of words is a vast and open field. My mind is no longer busy gushing out a million words a minute or fighting off words of loathing. There’s often silence… and it’s good, it’s peaceful. There are actually just two words that stay lingering in my mind now. Clarity and Compassion. Those are the words. Perhaps they are my longings. Or the simplest of prayers.

clarity: the quality or state of being clear

compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress with a desire to alleviate it

(courtesy of my old friend Webster)

Today

This Easter I am thinking about Jesus. Sounds logical for some, but Easter has come and gone for more than a decade with probably more thought to the Easter bunny. But somehow this one is different. I feel a blanket of peace over me… what is this warmth that seems so familiar. I pull it up to my face and breathe in… there is a lingering scent of a time past when I was young and innocent. This smell of innocence brings tears to my closed eyes. So long ago.

This Easter I see myself in doubting Thomas… asking Jesus if I can touch those wounds. I want tactile proof. Maybe I don’t need it. Maybe I just long for it. I don’t know. Jesus, how it must have been to have seen you – the respected prophet of Islam, the rabbi of Judaism, and the incarnate of God of Christianity. I have a strange longing this year to be one of those who sat at your feet, with my legs criss-crossed like a child, gazing up at your face to hear you speak of love. How you must have spoken. I want to travel with you with my wandering heart, to understand how to belong anywhere and everywhere. I want to follow you and watch you walk so humbly confident, above and apart but among the people. I want to see you in flesh, the one from whom nothing can be taken because everything is given away freely.

Prodigal longings….

trying to shift gears

Nina is laughing as she reads.

She told me to write.

Here I am.

Release release release.

We’re all in the Oldsmobile again,

But, well, we’re big.

Squish.

Shift shift shift.

Elbows poking, have to fight for space.

How’d I end up in the floor again.

Small loser.

They’re fighting in the front seats too.

We giggle.

Fighting makes us laugh.

It’s familiar. Family.

Happiness is a stranger.

Another family trip.

Off we go.

Could third time be a charm?

Well, I’m working on my third paper now. I say “working on”, but I’m actually just brainstorming and thinking of a good thesis. Apparently the thesis is the key to getting past a B paper. Did anyone know that?? I didn’t. Now I’m obsessed. I feel like I’m learning to walk, and now I’ve mastered walking but getting into a full gallop is still so elusive. So I guess I’m still stumbling around.

The thing about going back to University after a decade is that you forget all those things you learned from first year English and even from high school lit. classes. Okay, I shouldn’t say “you”, I should just own it and say “I”. I, me, myself, I can hardly remember anything.

What I do love is the sense that I am improving, and, I can, in a really strange way, feel my thinking skills sharpening (not sharpened but sharpening – significant difference there). My brain probably has more blood flowing through it now that I’m using it just a bit more each day. We’ll see if my professor agrees this time.

Let go

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. I guess with moving back, there are so many plans in progress, but not much materialized. Plans are exciting when you are young, but when you have three kids, plans can be quite stressful. I look back on the journey of that very lost person (some former version of myself) and I sometimes wish I had just followed my doctor’s advice and taken some anti-depressants. I like to look back and say, “Hey, I worked it out on my own”, but sometimes, I wish I’d have just taken the medicated route, and maybe I would have felt better so much faster and my plans would have materialized by now.

It’s ridiculous to think that way, I know. I don’t usually. I’ve lived fully, and the beauty of it doesn’t escape me. And I guess I got through because I was strong enough to do it on my own. Anyways, all this backpedaling is just counterproductive, isn’t it? But just once in a while, the thought seeps in. Usually when I’m worrying about how we’re going to pay for three kids and myself to go to University in the next 10-20 years. “Lady, why did you have to take such a scenic route to get here?”.

The last week I’ve been thinking about how the big things in life always require some letting go. Love, Birth, Death. So much of embracing life fully requires release. I think it’s what Buddhists call detachment, and Christians call Grace. I don’t know why my brain always comes up with images from two religions but whoop, there it is. I guess in our physical beings it’s embodied in breathing. Embrace, Release, Repeat.

Sometimes I’m not embracing or releasing though. I’m just a tight grip. I want to put my doubts, my worries in soft, cupped hands, in offering. Unclenched hands. Let go of the past, let go of anxiety, let go of future do-or-die plans. Let go, let go. Peace for the weary misfit.

It happens

I’m having one of those days. One of those days of wishing… wishing that my kids were born to be nomads. We could all put our favourite things into our own little backpacks. We’d lay a big map on the floor. And then we’d take turns playing rock, paper, scissors until a champion was declared. The champion would close his/her eyes and pick a mysterious spot on the map. We’d take a taxi to the airport, and fly off somewhere far away. And then we’d just land, and go wherever we wanted. I’d be a natural at homeschooling so that wouldn’t be a problem – no problem at all with self-discipline and organization. And all we’d need is each other. Everyone would be fine back here, too. My mother would have found a perfect soul mate and friend to keep her company always. Ooooh, they’d get along splendid.

Don’t worry, family and friends. Not planning on moving again, I SWEAR IT. I just need to give myself that little talk that a crazy wild child/sad child must hear sometimes.

“Hey. Get yourself up off that floor, and get your act together. You will stop being so hard on yourself right now. You will take your own advice. You will brush off the emotional cobwebs and dust, and find your centre. Close your eyes and take a deep breathe. You need to remember your blessings, and you need to remember that you cannot be in control of everything. Let it all go.”

Then I will take my worries, my insecurities and put them on my index finger and blow them away. Like a little eyelash full of wishes.

She ain’t heavy… she’s my mother

Sometimes I wonder (yes, I wonder about things obsessively a lot) just when is too much… well, just too much. I wonder how many ranting messages I can listen to, I wonder how many times I can wait for her to find a new bottle of water because tap water is poisoned, I wonder how many times I need to brush off some really hurtful comments which she then apologizes for.

And sometimes I just really hate it all. I hate that my mother has either schizophrenia or is bipolar – whatever she has, she is just a mess. Because I am a bibliophile, I will have to say that if she were a book, she would be a very tattered one but completely laminated (doubly laminated to keep out germs) and FILLED with all the wrong facts. I hate that I go and visit her, but I can’t give her my address because she’ll start “dropping by” constantly without warning (and I mean constantly). I hate that I give her my number, and then she leaves me a mean message. I hate so many things. And, most of all, I hate that she probably doesn’t really mean it all. She just doesn’t know any better. She is confused, she is lost, she is alone, and she is getting bitter about being confused, lost, and alone. I hate that she will most likely stay this way. I hate that sometimes it’s just too late for some people. Because then I feel hopeless, and shouldn’t there be hope for every one???? It only seems fair. And then I think of little babies born to HIV mothers, and even little babies born with HIV, and then I really don’t get how it all works. Yes, I really know how to be hopeless and think and think until there actually develops a large, black cloud with rain pouring over my head as I walk around shaking my fist to the heavens. When people say, “God has blessed us”, I wonder what that means… God has chosen for good to happen to some and for bad to others? Why to little children? Lost children who become lost adults. And no one thinks they’re even a bit cute anymore.

One day, Bubba was telling me about how her friend has not been very nice to her lately. So I told her to surround herself with people who are good to her. But it’s just not that easy, is it? (Or maybe it’s just not that easy for me…) Her friend is a little girl trying on different ways of being, and hopefully she will become a compassionate, happy person. Some adults stay like that forever. I remember hearing this story that’s always stuck with me about a nun who asked God, “Well, what about all the poor and the sick, Lord?”, and God told her, “Yes, that’s why I made you”. But sometimes a person can get so tired, because she is not a nun but just a mother with three noisy children, an immigrant partner, and a long list of errands. (I really need to get that story out of my head – I wonder if mothers are exempt, especially with a baby)

Sigh………. I’m a martyr, that’s what I am. Ha. This blogging thing really is better than therapy, I tell you. “And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” That’s what Paul McCartney says in Abbey Road. And in the end of a noisy day, I can sit very quietly, close my eyes, and remember that I choose to stay in touch for some reason (some reason I really can’t think of sometimes – okay, I’m kidding about that). And I can picture all the completely illogical and sometimes very hurtful comments rolling off my shoulders… until all I see is a big cactus heart (not mine, hopefully). And then I just don’t feel quite so mad for now anymore.

The strongest man alive.

I am not the strongest man alive. But, y’know those big men, pulling cars, lifting boulders?… that’s how I’m feeling today, my arms pushing up, trying to hold up the weight of the world. Too many worries, the blues are coming, I cannot save everything, everyone. I’m sorry to you, to you, and to you. I’m sorry little boy soldier, I’m sorry little hungry child, I’m sorry mother. No, I can’t save the world. Who the hell asked me to, anyways? No one. Just me, pushing up against the weight of the world I choose to carry.

I want to know, I want to help, I want to understand, and I want to love. But there are those times when the wisdom to do all that is so evasive. Sometimes all of those life lessons that I’ve learned just can’t soak in because the world seems so LOUD. I just need a few moments to be still with myself, by myself so I can hear what I already know… I’m not sure what to call that which I am listening for.. Is it the Holy Spirit, or the third eye, the urna? The peace. Sometimes, though, this little person here is not all about wisdom or humour or grace or even hearing… sometimes it’s just all about the heart and that big knot that gets stuck in one’s throat.

Dipping in the toes…

Well, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I thought I’d better type something before I changed my mind. Following through is not exactly on the top of my best traits list. Anyhow, I’ve been reading blogs for the last few days, and decided this will be a great way to a) practice trying to communicate semi-coherently before starting school in the spring, and b) record events, thoughts and memories for the kids to read later – as I find myself straining to remember facts about the kids when I am asked to conjure up the goods. No, I am obviously not one of the moms with the detailed scrapbooks – I was too young and unprepared with the first, and decided it just wouldn’t be fair for her if I started with the other two. HA!

It’s interesting to begin typing and to wait for my “voice” to come out. So many styles of writing. Will I be casual but clean? Sarcastic? (Who me? Neeeeever!) Sentimental? Painfully honest? I guess we’ll see as I go along. I do know that I’ve never been good at small talk…