and, before I begin, I *will* say this.......................some of these were lies of omission, some of them not lies, really, just misinformation I thought was true at the time....
1. SUGAR IS A VEGETABLE. Sugar is not, in fact, a vegetable, and I knew it all along.....but it is vegetative, and I do think, (much like carrots supply us with a necessary nutrient) that a certain amount of sugar each day is essential for good spirit development.
2. YOU CAN DROWN IN A TEASPOON OF WATER. In my defense, this lie began well before I became a mother,........and if it kept you all from falling asleep in a swimming pool, I will not apologize.
3. IT'S AS EASY TO LOVE A RICH MAN AS IT IS TO LOVE A POOR MAN. This could not possibly be anything but a lie, as noone, and I mean NOT ONE SOUL that I have ever known has fallen in love with a rich man.
4. NICE GIRLS DON'T WEAR THONGS. Nice girls DO wear thongs.....if they feel like it. They wear granny panties, bikinis, the occasional pair of men's boxers, and even no panties at all. "Nice" is a function of the soul, not the behind.
5. UNSWEETENED TEA IS ILLEGAL IN 8 STATES......(refer to lie # 1)
6. OUR REFRIGERATOR IS A TEST GROWING SITE FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS OFFICE ON HOMEGROWN ANTIBIOTICS.... Not..........Mommy has no time to clean the refrigerator, but it felt like you all would buy this lie. Mold after all is intriguing.
7. A CLEAN HOME IS A SIGN OF A SICK MIND....Truthfully, a dirty home is the sign of ADHD run amuk....................the only thing sick about someone who can manage their life, their job, AND their home is that they often run in families, and alas, not ours.
8. "THE FORMULA"...(Girls, you remember this.......when you buy something, and then have to explain the cost of it to your husband, you subtract 70% of the purchase price, then add 1.87 for the total that you tell him)... It is 2012.....you deserve it whatever the cost, and it is alright to tell the truth..however, a brief mention of an overstock sale can still go a long way. Also, the purchase of some small incidental for said husband can really smooth the way for your new purchase.
9. MOM'S SPECIAL RECIPE................one word here............"butter" If it tastes better when mom makes it, it is just the addition of one little ingredient...
10. "I NEVER INHALED" ....................enough said....
11. CHOCOLATE IS A DAIRY PRODUCT.....just because some of it is called "milk chocolate" does not mean you need 3 servings a day.
12. DUCT TAPE IS A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND.... a loving, caring and kind husband is a girls best friend, but without a doubt duct tape IS a girl's best thing to have in an emergency.
13. A BUBBLE BATH WILL RELAX YOU MORE THAN ALCOHOL... all those long baths you remember mommy taking? can we all say amaretto sours?...(I am kidding, kids.....kidding!!)
14. LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE....money is actually the best medicine. It can buy real medicine, good food, a night on the town, a good night's sleep and a night at the comedy club....
15. THEY CALLED ME EINSTEIN WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL....No, they didn't....they called me "short bus, Lori"
16. MY FAVORITE GIFTS ARE CHILD MADE MISSHAPEN CLAY ASHTRAYS. My favorite gifts are grandchildren.
17. PRETTY IS AS PRETTY DOES..really? This lie has been told for generations.......let's face it, we all know that beautiful woman who routinely lies and cheats and steps on everyone in the name of attention, and has anyone EVER said, "that woman is just soooo ugly"?
18. YOUR TEACHER KNOWS WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT....she might just be fudging to get through the day to that bubble bath.
19. REAL MEN EAT QUICHE.....none of the real men I know do...............they eat meat that has been drug through the yard by cats, cookies left in the oven for days, and cereal after all the marshmellows have been picked out, but they do NOT eat quiche.
20. IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS....only to your mother. Everyone else wants cold hard cash.
21. GRAY IS THE NEW HOT....this is the desperate claim of a not so gracefully aging Mama..
22. IT'S NOT FAT, IT'S RELAXED MUSCLE. It IS fat....( and I apologize for the genetics you have inherited...
and HERE is the list of something that has never been a lie................NEVER HAS, NEVER WILL.
I love you all more than you can imagine,.....more than all the sands on all the shores of all the seas..
more than I ever thought possible, and YOU, all of you, are my crowning jewels, and nothing you can ever do will change the amount of love I have for you.
(disclaimer....regarding number 13.....I never drank......wasn't safe to keep in the house with you all.)
MamaMcCares
Sanity is all relative!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Broken hearted
So yesterday..............Friday, my in-laws took us out to dinner. (by the way, I HIGHLY recommend the crab cakes at the Blue Ridge Grill).....It had been a glorious Friday. A sunny beautiful end to a tiring week. All things considered, not a bad week......but a tired week. Five straight days of toiling away, doing jobs I like (mostly), but don't love....or to be more specific, I love and yet oft times don't truly feel like myself when doing.
So we are lingering over coffee and dessert, and I hear a small child-like voice behind me, "it's my art teacher"....Then I look up to see this beautiful child, and her family and the mama says, "oh my goodness, look Reagan,....................it is your art teacher" And then came the hurtful words:
"We'll see you in a few weeks....Reagan has signed up for your class again".............I smiled, said the appropriate words, even joked a bit with Mom and Dad, and told Reagan that she mostly clearly had become a successful artist, since she was wearing something pink and shiny.
The heartbreak? I am not teaching art this summer....and sadly, may not ever again...not exclusively..
And then it hit me....
I can remember feeling the paint flow through my fingers like cool blood.......giving life to everything in my soul......and giving a voice to all I want to do. The sound of fingers rubbing oils into pastels, making them into colors that only I have names for.....the way that wet clay opens itself up to you to become anything you choose it to be, (or...if you are like me, anything IT chooses to be)....
I remember a class last year with only 4 girls....we spent every idyllic summer day that week in quiet rhapsody, each of us moving from station to station, going where the spirit moved us in open studio.
Music played low in the background, and there was the gentle murmur of quiet conversations, spoken to oneself, mostly, or now and again to the artist working beside you.
It was during that week when I made the realization that all of us, every thinking, creating one of us is an artist, deserving to be heard and seen and understood, no matter what our age or our station in life...and these girls taught me that.
When I think about my teaching, and about where I am now and what I am doing....I feel this salty, gritty lump rise up in my throat. It feels like I am struggling to breathe, as I writhe against it...Sometimes I show my kids art, how to make it, who else makes it, how people think about it, but I never truly am one with them in spirit, and in the spirit of the art these days...
I lay out the paints, the paper, the tools of my passion, and then I take as much time as I can to tell them what we are "trying" to do, but time, that cruel stealer of all things worth caring about is a harsh taskmaster, and while I try so desperately to say this:
"You are the master of your own art destination. You can go there in any color you wish, in slow motion or at a breakneck speed...you can paint yourself into your picture or anyone else...someone you love, someone you are afraid of, someone you want to be....You can feel good or bad or angry or sad or any way you choose to feel, and no one can take that away from you...There is joy in creation"
while I thinking this, feeling this, willing this for my students, I have one eye on the child in the corner, trying to put fuse beads up his nose, and one eye on the clock, so I am not late putting snack away....I am trying so hard to please the teacher, to be her helpmate and supporter, to know her needs before she even knows them herself....I am trying in my own way to be all things to all people, and in the mix, I lose the soul,...the "milk" of this art that I so dearly love, and dearly love to share with these young and talented thinkers.
So yes, it feels like heartbreak..............I am only a child myself, unable or unwilling to put away the pleasures in my own life, or at least, unable to do two things at the same time, and do them well.
I hate this...........................I hate doing something halfway..........I want to BE their art teacher....No, I don't, because in all reality, I am not teaching them anything they don't already know. Yes, I might show them a new technique or a new material, I might introduce them to cubism, or impressionism, I might even guide them in a study of contemporary American artists, but what I really want, what I really need to do,.......I want to BE with them in that moment when they recognize a part of themselves in that crayoned landscape....I want to be a part of the fabric of creativity. I don't want to miss a thing....I want to be a part of the conversation, and the beautiful realization that we are all together in this...There is a union among artists...It transcends age and race and gender, and most of all, I want to be THERE when these tender young artists find their voice. I want to be the one to hear it first, acknowledge it, and give it the glory and purpose it deserves.....
But, in the meantime, I go on....the teaching assistant, a child herself.....learning to give in and give up, to show patience and dignity and kindness and tolerance, all the while stamping my foot at the gate, waiting for my race to begin...
And in the waiting, I grow......and my heart breaks......
So we are lingering over coffee and dessert, and I hear a small child-like voice behind me, "it's my art teacher"....Then I look up to see this beautiful child, and her family and the mama says, "oh my goodness, look Reagan,....................it is your art teacher" And then came the hurtful words:
"We'll see you in a few weeks....Reagan has signed up for your class again".............I smiled, said the appropriate words, even joked a bit with Mom and Dad, and told Reagan that she mostly clearly had become a successful artist, since she was wearing something pink and shiny.
The heartbreak? I am not teaching art this summer....and sadly, may not ever again...not exclusively..
And then it hit me....
I can remember feeling the paint flow through my fingers like cool blood.......giving life to everything in my soul......and giving a voice to all I want to do. The sound of fingers rubbing oils into pastels, making them into colors that only I have names for.....the way that wet clay opens itself up to you to become anything you choose it to be, (or...if you are like me, anything IT chooses to be)....
I remember a class last year with only 4 girls....we spent every idyllic summer day that week in quiet rhapsody, each of us moving from station to station, going where the spirit moved us in open studio.
Music played low in the background, and there was the gentle murmur of quiet conversations, spoken to oneself, mostly, or now and again to the artist working beside you.
It was during that week when I made the realization that all of us, every thinking, creating one of us is an artist, deserving to be heard and seen and understood, no matter what our age or our station in life...and these girls taught me that.
When I think about my teaching, and about where I am now and what I am doing....I feel this salty, gritty lump rise up in my throat. It feels like I am struggling to breathe, as I writhe against it...Sometimes I show my kids art, how to make it, who else makes it, how people think about it, but I never truly am one with them in spirit, and in the spirit of the art these days...
I lay out the paints, the paper, the tools of my passion, and then I take as much time as I can to tell them what we are "trying" to do, but time, that cruel stealer of all things worth caring about is a harsh taskmaster, and while I try so desperately to say this:
"You are the master of your own art destination. You can go there in any color you wish, in slow motion or at a breakneck speed...you can paint yourself into your picture or anyone else...someone you love, someone you are afraid of, someone you want to be....You can feel good or bad or angry or sad or any way you choose to feel, and no one can take that away from you...There is joy in creation"
while I thinking this, feeling this, willing this for my students, I have one eye on the child in the corner, trying to put fuse beads up his nose, and one eye on the clock, so I am not late putting snack away....I am trying so hard to please the teacher, to be her helpmate and supporter, to know her needs before she even knows them herself....I am trying in my own way to be all things to all people, and in the mix, I lose the soul,...the "milk" of this art that I so dearly love, and dearly love to share with these young and talented thinkers.
So yes, it feels like heartbreak..............I am only a child myself, unable or unwilling to put away the pleasures in my own life, or at least, unable to do two things at the same time, and do them well.
I hate this...........................I hate doing something halfway..........I want to BE their art teacher....No, I don't, because in all reality, I am not teaching them anything they don't already know. Yes, I might show them a new technique or a new material, I might introduce them to cubism, or impressionism, I might even guide them in a study of contemporary American artists, but what I really want, what I really need to do,.......I want to BE with them in that moment when they recognize a part of themselves in that crayoned landscape....I want to be a part of the fabric of creativity. I don't want to miss a thing....I want to be a part of the conversation, and the beautiful realization that we are all together in this...There is a union among artists...It transcends age and race and gender, and most of all, I want to be THERE when these tender young artists find their voice. I want to be the one to hear it first, acknowledge it, and give it the glory and purpose it deserves.....
But, in the meantime, I go on....the teaching assistant, a child herself.....learning to give in and give up, to show patience and dignity and kindness and tolerance, all the while stamping my foot at the gate, waiting for my race to begin...
And in the waiting, I grow......and my heart breaks......
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Sunday morning (old draft, just recovered)
"You sure look fine......" It is Sunday morning, and I so wish I was one of those *mama's coming out of the church house* with their freshly scrubbed young ones,heading off to a nice lunch at a local casual french eatery, then heading home to my CLEAN (yes homes can be clean on sunday)home, where I will take off my polished cotton church dress and put on my size 8 jeans
Very short entry here, I guess, but it speaks to a state of mind.....
I want to be a nice girl, it just keeps getting harder and harder.............
Very short entry here, I guess, but it speaks to a state of mind.....
I want to be a nice girl, it just keeps getting harder and harder.............
Summer Heat (an old draft, just recovered)
I know..................it has been exactly one month and 17 days since I last posted.
One month and 17 days of mostly hot, HOT days.
I am tired, worn out really, and am looking forward to enjoying summer vacation. Alas, I realize it is half over and I have not even started yet. Will this be the summer I remember years from now as "THE" summer? It's funny how we never know while we are in it, while we are living it, that these may be the days we will remember in years to come, as the "good old days", or the "worst days of my life".
I want to memorize every sound I hear, every sight I see. I want to make a clay impression of my life, in my mind, so that years from now, I will remember everything that mattered, but instead, I think........................I will remember the heat. I will remember a hot wind blowing across a parched brown lawn, cracks enlarging in the dry brown dirt in my garden.
I will remember "the cusser", a young (very young) JD (juvenile delinquent) running the streets of my town, with no respect or regard for himself, let alone anyone else. I will remember his faceless obscenities, spoken to the night, his trying to make sense of the injustice of HIS life, and me trying to make sense of how one child can already be so jaded, so ugly minded that already he has lost the ability to feel anything but meanness and hatred and it so fills his mind and his heart and his spirit that he feels he must defile everyone within hearing distance by swearing and cursing and tainting the night air.
I will remember the smells of this town, especially as they linger in the hot afternoon sun, and I will remember how the smell assaulted more than our nostrils. I will remember how they tore apart the safety and loving kindness in our community, how they made us feel afraid in our own town, afraid to even be out with one another, distrustful and violated. I will remember the sadness when I realized how much life can be disrupted by strangers, and their own brand of insanity. When I remember this summer, I will remember it for it's inequity, it's violation, the taking away of something that should be intrinsically ours................our peace of mind.
I will remember the fear and desperation in my heart, I am sure, as I struggled to leave the last remaining vestiges of innocence and child-like trust on the cutting room floor. "I am afraid", I thought. Afraid of my Daddy getting sick and not recovering, afraid of him not loving me anymore, afraid of him not knowing how much I love him.
I am afraid of working so much that I feel as thin spirited as onion paper, paper that will dissolve and disintegrate when my many tears fall upon it. I am afraid of not working enough to support my family and myself and having to count change to buy milk and bread for the young. I am afraid of working my life away at a job I don't love, only to discover that when I retire, I have no time left. Mostly I am afraid of the lack of hope that permeates the very air I breathe, no hope for a brighter future for me and my family....only a certainty that I can no longer follow my magical thinking to it's logical conclusion, a dream I built on the promises of a different time.
Will I remember this as the summer that I learned the truth? The summer when I gave over my want for something more on this earth to the certain knowledge that I will never attain it? Will this be the summer that I started looking more forward to life everlasting with it's heavenly possibilities than to life among the living here on earth? Maybe, this, then, is when we finally grow up, when we reach that threshold and step over it into real adulthood.
Or,......................is this the summer that begins a new life? Will I look back and remember these hot and dusty days as the dark before the storm? Will there be a silver lining? Is there the promise of peace and prosperity on the other side? We never know...........................and in the not knowing, we continue to salvage and plunder all of the good we can glean from the here and now....
Mother's Day 2012
Mother's Day.....
So, once again, it has been months since I have written.....months since I have had time to write....The words in my head are bumping around, running into each other, changing their meaning, and I think, for sanity sake, I need to let them out.
Sometimes I ride in the car.....(Let's face it, between commuting between two jobs, going to visit my Dad and going to physical therapy, there is a SURPLUS of time for my mind to be alone with itself, which may or may not be a good thing), sometimes I am driving in the car, and the thoughts are rolling out like steam from a steaming pot of Chamomile on a January morning in Maine. Sometimes I feel that if I put up double sided tape all over the inside of the car, I could catch some of these words, these thoughts, before they go flying off into the universe. If I am being honest, my best thoughts, my best work is going on in the car. (not saying I am the safest driver out there),.....but then by the time I try to put the words on paper, the only words I can remember are words like "should" and "ought", and we all know that those words are the voice of someone else, certainly not me, the radical, secretly rebellious me.....
So yesterday, during my rendez-vous with obligation, I was trying, OH SO HARD to wax poetic, to formulate strong sentences, filled with positivity and wisdom, and most of the words got stuck on the figurative roof of my mouth on the way out, and what I was left with was the word blog....
Blog,......fog......smog,...........jog,.......and it occurred to me that all of these rhyming words mean something to me, (not necessarily for the good), and that when the time came, if nothing else came to mind, there was always this,....this perchance coincidence that I am one with the words.....(egotistical? ME?)
Bog....
(noun) wet, spongy ground composed mainly of decayed vegetable matter...
(verb) to sink in, or as if in a bog....example :" I was bogged down by overwork...."
(need I say more?).....I would say that bog, both noun and verb apply....
Cog (skipping a few definitions, but going directly to the heart of the matter), "a person who plays a minor part in a large organization , activity or enterprise" example "She is just another cog in the machine"...(Do you all see where I am going with this?)
Dog (and again, skipping the obvious definitions.....)
(verb) to follow or track like a dog; especially with hostile intent; hound
example: "She was dogged by responsibilities"
Okay, so am I sounding a little bitter? Not meaning to,......
I think I am going to take a little break from homonyms,....(or is it homophones....how soon we forget), and get back to the subject of this entry.
Mothers Day.....the children, of both sets, (hereafter known as the "big kids", and the "little kids", though I am sure none of them want to identify with the title "little kids") have made a very nice birthday/mothers day weekend for me, as has Michael, the poor man who is unfortunate enough to have to live with me....
Last night Jboy1 invited us all over to his house for a cookout,.....which was awesome and amazing and quite relaxing, as it is set in a sloping wooded community, and when night fell, and we sat on the deck staring up at the stars between a canopy of trees...All of the kidlets were there(except A, who was otherwise previously engaged), as well as the grand kidlets....even Jboy2 who often prefers his own people, that raucous group of late teens, early twenties...
This morning, while Michael made me meat candy (bacon) of which I have not partaken of in perhaps a year), C and L went out into the garden and cut some of my beautiful roses and brought them to me in a lovely pink teapot, they sit here at my side, their fragrance reminding me of youth, and bubble baths and prom night.....
A will be arriving soon to take me to the restaurant across the street for a mother's day brunch....,
and speaking of that, I fear I must finish up, close up shop, and retire to my bedroom to dress like a mother ought to when she is going out in public with her daughter... I "should" be ready when she gets here...
There are those words again.....
So, once again, it has been months since I have written.....months since I have had time to write....The words in my head are bumping around, running into each other, changing their meaning, and I think, for sanity sake, I need to let them out.
Sometimes I ride in the car.....(Let's face it, between commuting between two jobs, going to visit my Dad and going to physical therapy, there is a SURPLUS of time for my mind to be alone with itself, which may or may not be a good thing), sometimes I am driving in the car, and the thoughts are rolling out like steam from a steaming pot of Chamomile on a January morning in Maine. Sometimes I feel that if I put up double sided tape all over the inside of the car, I could catch some of these words, these thoughts, before they go flying off into the universe. If I am being honest, my best thoughts, my best work is going on in the car. (not saying I am the safest driver out there),.....but then by the time I try to put the words on paper, the only words I can remember are words like "should" and "ought", and we all know that those words are the voice of someone else, certainly not me, the radical, secretly rebellious me.....
So yesterday, during my rendez-vous with obligation, I was trying, OH SO HARD to wax poetic, to formulate strong sentences, filled with positivity and wisdom, and most of the words got stuck on the figurative roof of my mouth on the way out, and what I was left with was the word blog....
Blog,......fog......smog,...........jog,.......and it occurred to me that all of these rhyming words mean something to me, (not necessarily for the good), and that when the time came, if nothing else came to mind, there was always this,....this perchance coincidence that I am one with the words.....(egotistical? ME?)
Bog....
(noun) wet, spongy ground composed mainly of decayed vegetable matter...
(verb) to sink in, or as if in a bog....example :" I was bogged down by overwork...."
(need I say more?).....I would say that bog, both noun and verb apply....
Cog (skipping a few definitions, but going directly to the heart of the matter), "a person who plays a minor part in a large organization , activity or enterprise" example "She is just another cog in the machine"...(Do you all see where I am going with this?)
Dog (and again, skipping the obvious definitions.....)
(verb) to follow or track like a dog; especially with hostile intent; hound
example: "She was dogged by responsibilities"
Okay, so am I sounding a little bitter? Not meaning to,......
I think I am going to take a little break from homonyms,....(or is it homophones....how soon we forget), and get back to the subject of this entry.
Mothers Day.....the children, of both sets, (hereafter known as the "big kids", and the "little kids", though I am sure none of them want to identify with the title "little kids") have made a very nice birthday/mothers day weekend for me, as has Michael, the poor man who is unfortunate enough to have to live with me....
Last night Jboy1 invited us all over to his house for a cookout,.....which was awesome and amazing and quite relaxing, as it is set in a sloping wooded community, and when night fell, and we sat on the deck staring up at the stars between a canopy of trees...All of the kidlets were there(except A, who was otherwise previously engaged), as well as the grand kidlets....even Jboy2 who often prefers his own people, that raucous group of late teens, early twenties...
This morning, while Michael made me meat candy (bacon) of which I have not partaken of in perhaps a year), C and L went out into the garden and cut some of my beautiful roses and brought them to me in a lovely pink teapot, they sit here at my side, their fragrance reminding me of youth, and bubble baths and prom night.....
A will be arriving soon to take me to the restaurant across the street for a mother's day brunch....,
and speaking of that, I fear I must finish up, close up shop, and retire to my bedroom to dress like a mother ought to when she is going out in public with her daughter... I "should" be ready when she gets here...
There are those words again.....
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