Alert, Alert

This is the 24th blog post I've ever written. Other than my three sprouts, and the gem of a man I landed for a husband, this may be my greatest accomplishment to date. What? There are bloggers out there with hundreds, even thousands of posts of their own? Yes, but they are not Me.

Imagine your brain. I know, kinda gross...go with me...I'm going somewhere with this, promise. Now imagine those new, freakish little toys they market to parents who refuse to buy a real rodent (who, me?)...you know the ones....Zhu Zhu pets. Man, those things really freak me out. Not quite as much as the fake "real" cat my neighbor got for her daughter though. The thing would just look at you or make a mew when you entered the room and all of a sudden it was Bride of Chucky all over again.

Incidentally, I am currently sitting on our deck, it's 7:08 AM and I just did my first "cup the hot cup of coffee in the cold brisk fall air" thing. Yes, it felt just as good for me as itdoes for that chick on the Folger's commercials. There was no Irish step dancing though. There will never be any step dancing. I'm sorry if you thought there might be.

So back to Zhu Zhu, now that I've illustrated, in a most ironic, unknowing sort of way, the state in which my mind constantly resides. Sometimes I think of it as one step away from an institution....other times, rarely, a gift. One thing I've recently stopped doing (ok, about 5 minutes ago when I thought of this) is referring to it as something I've been "stricken" with, my "plight". That's mainly because my therapist back in OH, who I adore, would tell me it's probably a good idea. And she's pretty much right there after God. It goes: God, my therapist, coffee. Wait...no....maybe God, my therapist, the color kelly green? Anyway.

I refuse to label the way I think, even though I have many times in the past and I'm sure in this blog. I'm sick and tired, quite frankly, of the way It is viewed, distorted, abused. When a psychotherapist diagnoses someone with it these days, they may as well be saying, "sure, no problem, I'll write you the freakin Adderall....hey, I've got another patient in five minutes....oh no! no problem! you totally passed the (five question, yes-or-no answer) test....got all the classic symptoms....k! call me for that refill! you know you've got (insert any small type of project requiring the smallest mental fortitude here) coming up".

I write in run-on sentences, fragments of thought, and parentheses. I rest my case. Not that you were arguing it, if you're still reading.

My father, who I completely respect and value, has always complimented me on my gift of writing. Secretly I think it kind of bugs him to death to read my stuff like this. Though I think I've yet to meet a man so easily unruffled, I'm pretty sure he'd much prefer for me to wrap things up in a more tidy, readable fashion. He just looks out for me. Maybe if I could do that - learn how to tame this Zhu Zhu pet-riddled brain with some better punctuation, complete metaphors, etc. - maybe I could even write a book. For now though, this blog is my release, my escape into (or maybe escape from?) Me world.

I think tomorrow (or later today, or in a week or a year) I will start chronicling my search for my biological mother. That should be interesting.

Babies, Fiction and French Food.

This morning, my husband and I were milling about in the kitchen - he brewing his Irish Breakfast tea, me trying to get my brain percolating. I was just surprised we'd beaten the 3 sprouts out of bed (oh, how horrible does THAT sound? but you know what I mean. That is, until I heard the cooing of The Littlest, through the monitor. I had a thought. "Hey, Nick. Wouldn't it be great if, like, when we heard her through the monitor she was always belting out an aria or something?"...."Yeah! aaah-aaaaah-aah-haaa!"...(especially amusing, the sound of a grown man attempting to simulate what a little girl baby would sound like, doing operatics). (me again) - "Yeah, and then every time we tried to catch her in the act, rush up there, she'd just look at us like we were crazy." We're both giggling sleepily at this point...I continue..."but there'd always be clues, right, that we'd never get. Like she'd have the sheet music under the crib mattress or something...". Just call her Stewie's G-rated half-sister.



This is what we do.



So today I began "Anne of Green Gables" again - just twenty pages or so, but quite enough to fall in love with L.M. Montgomery all over again. It was a sad day in my (elementary-aged) life when I finished her last book and knew there would be nothing new to discover from this author, because she was gone.



The plot is SO fanciful, ya know? Clumsy yet emotionally undamaged orphan (is there such a thing?) melts the heart of legalistic, type A, take-no-prisoners Marilla Cuthbert, thus finding her place in the world.



I was quite delighted with this Prince Edward Island world of Anne's as a ten year-old, however. While my appetite was much more satiated by descriptions of orchard and furrowed brows and kittens in the woods than by, say, a journal of my own real-life experiences at the time, things have changed. And somewhere along the way I think I decided that I was too good for fiction. That Real Life, with it's jagged edges and pretty imperfections, was much more worthy of my attention than Silly Stories someone just made up in their mind. Truth is, I think maybe, that I'd be terrible at writing fiction myself.



So in moments I've stolen away for myself, peaceful hours painstakingly squeezed from days filled with diapers and bottles and sippy cups and dinners, I've turned my attention to food memoirs, true accounts of substance abuse, books on psychological disorders. And I've been enthralled, mesmerized to the point of losing hours of precious sleep just to get to the bottom of things.

I think it just might be getting to me.

I'm going to give good old ragged Anne a go again. I think I deserve it. Besides, I'm sick of salivating over French recipes, each of which would quite possibly take a couple weeks of my grocery budget at Whole Foods to prepare.

(I promise, though, if I ever make money off of this very-much-for-fun writing gig, I'll make a delicious buttery duck confit that will be out of this world. And I'll totally write about it).

thoughts on what's after THIS.

So there's this fear I have....dates back to my early(er) years. You'd probly have to ask my dad at which age, specifically, he had to begin the ritual of praying the devil out of my bedroom...shielding me from those spiteful little demons who twisted my tiny mind with fear.
I still grapple with, wrestle against this terror and it's bottomless and inexorable in it's pursuit of me and I suppose the irony is that its very subject is infinite as well: eternity.

So you know, while Jimmy down the street didn't really dig big snakes, and Janie across the block was stressing over an impending math test, here's scrawny, shivering little Me, in sleepy suburban Columbus, cowering under the covers, breathless at my lot in life....or rather, my lot after it.

Afterlife. It's an insane concept that we teeny humans have tried mightily to bottle up with special sermons dedicated to the topic, sacred reincarnated cows, with men marrying multiple wives in order to obtain a more rewarding afterlife. If you ask me, their reward has mostly been fulfilled here on this globe. But just if you ask me, I guess.

I had this vision tonight. This is not a normal occurence for me. Well, I suppose it is, but normally my nighttime daydreams are heavy with pain and suffering and fear, anxiety over the family I read about in the paper, the one where the dad committed suicide after taking the lives of his two boys, or the very popular (in blog-world) little boy with a heart defect, or just the general certainty I carry with me that something awful will happen to my little ones the minute I drift off.

This place felt uncannily light, satisfyingly open. I was walking along a road, and I was not walking alone. Matching my slow gait was a dark-skinned woman - beautiful, soft-spoken yet articulate with deep kind eyes. She had the kind of eyes that made you think of that Aaliyah song - Age Ain't Nothin But A Number (right?). Anyway.

I suppose a birds-eye view would have shown my new friend and I flanked by an endless calm sea and a towering stone wall on the other side of the road. The wall did not frighten me (normally I would have been afraid of it) and somehow I knew it had a story or two to tell.

She held my hand and I sensed I needed it for the journey, so I left my palm in hers.

In low tones she began to explain to me how this wall - this fortress, almost - came to be.

An entire family had sacrificed their lives for one small group of stones that ran along the base. We stopped at intervals, and when I pointed out gaps, her tears were a keen explanation of the tiny lives that never stood the chance to get their part of the wall built. And the tears dried and the eyes shined as she spoke of the valor of men and women who'd been chiseled, scraped and torn, molded and not folded under the pressure to bury their stones in wealth and certificates of worldly acclaim...those stones she pressed gently, thoughtfully, lovingly.

Almost placid remained her demeanor as we matched stride for slow stride, and it was with no concern at all that I came to realize I hadn't a clue as to where we'd begun this journey or when we'd finish with it.

Her hand was strong and I sensed she knew me, my uncertainty I always felt in that Other Land, and she asked me if I needed a break, a rest from the teaching, the telling at times of acts so horrifying they'd normally infest my heart with their evil for days.

All this heart felt, in this place, was a love and light and a peace that I could not understand because it was nothing I could ever have come up with on my own. Telling, that.

I conveyed as much and it took only a glance at her well-worn sandals that she'd stay this pilgrimage, though the details all seemed familiar to her already. Most importantly, I was convinced that I'd not be left and I'd continue to walk in love and peace, learning of what had only ever really mattered.




So what do you make of THAT? As I told my husband, usually when I write, it's only of what I know, b/c it's the only thing I've ever learned of writing, that if you write about your own experience it's going to be worth a little more than anything else you'll come up with.

I asked him what he thought heaven was like. Do our loved ones who've passed on (in his case, his father) see us? Feel emotion towards us? He's a philosopher, so his response was probably quite wise and not altogether understood by me, little old mom of three whose days are consumed by play-doh and diapers. But the gist of it is this: that those already there have always been there, just as we have, and our finite minds cannot grasp the concept while we're limited to this human skin.

I guess all I know at the end of it is this: I hope heaven is like a big love-fest in Hawaii, and that I can feel that grace of that place here, even for a little bit.