The Big D

I am 47 years old.  For at least the past five of those 47 years, I have lived with a recurring mantra of sorts.  Maybe it was more like a silent threat.  Or was it a reassurance?  Whatever you want to call it...it sounded like this: I'm getting a divorce.

Like the Wasatch Fault Line, it lay hidden under an otherwise peaceful environment.  I heard it's rumblings several times a month but spoke of it to no one, ever keeping up the peaceful, happy landscape that was to everyone the essence of who I was.

Why?  You want to know reasons.  I have reasons, three of them to be exact, but for the time being...they are not what is important.  In fact, I would discourage you from asking the reasons for a divorce of anyone unless you are yourself entering a relationship with them.  They just took giant, courageous steps to leave their yesterday so they could have a healthier today.  Meet them where they are.  Help them now.  You can gawk at their back then's later...when they are ready to bring it up.  Instead, just know that it was a heavy, painful decision and one that, just like any natural disaster, will alter the landscape of multiple lives for a long time.

So the thing with mantras or promises or whatever it is, the longer you listen to them, the bigger and more powerful they grow until they manifest themselves like a magnitude 8.5 earthquake.  All the dirt, homes and streets will move aside to loose the monster.

And that's exactly what happened in my case.  I took the echoing four words that rang inside my head from ear to ear for years and I invited them to come out of my mouth.  I invited them to leave. They left my head and entered that of my husbands.  And of my children.

That was a year ago.

We have all since walked through the rubble.   This is critical information.  We WALKED through it, which means we are NOT lying beneath it.  We were not buried or destroyed.  Our futures are still wide open and ready to be whatever we decide to make them.  The pieces of yesterday stare back up at as we kick them around, but we decide if and how to use them and then we move on.

You are View-tiful

I'm sitting on the stoop of my duplex in my underwear.  I can't decide if this makes me trashy or classy.  They are boyshort underwear for your information, so as far as skivvies go...these could easily pass for exercise shorts.  But technicalities aside...I'm sitting outside on my stoop...in my underwear.

Let me tell you some more.  My stoop is in the shade of this enormous tree whose branches stretch out wide and low and that cover the entire width of a three car driveway.  So as far as stoops go, this one is pretty chill, both aesthetically and climatically.

I don't know what kind of tree it is. The leaves don't match the standard and easily identifiable shapes of the oak, maple or pine. It's pretty.  It's old. It's big and often messy.  I'm obviously no expert...but I think it's doing a kick-ass job of being a tree.  That's all I know.  Thank you tree, for being you.

Some people cut trees down, because they are messy.  Or because they block their view of something they would like to view. An old neighbor of mine campaigned to cut down a huge maple tree that blocked his view of the mountains.  The tree in question didn't just sit on my property next to my bedroom, it hugged my bedroom.  Branches from the same tree graced the window behind my bed as well as the window next to my bed.  Reason after reason as to why I would not let him cut down my tree fell on deaf ears until one day I simply said "You can't cut down that tree because every time I wake up and see those branches outside my window, I know God loves me."  The campaign ended.

He wanted to cut it down because it blocked a view.   How come he couldn't accept that the tree was a view? A perfectly good, useful view.  Who better to ask that question than nature observer extraordinaire himself,  Henry David Thoreau? He is quoted as saying "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

To be honest, I can't help but wonder if some people will want to cut me down because I'm blocking their view.  I mean right now.  If I post this, will someone be upset that I'm sitting outside in my underwear, and that I had the nerve to write about it publicly?  Scandalous, I know.  Will they want a different view of the world, where 47 year old women do not sit on fabulously cool stoops on lazy summer evenings and quote Thoreau on the internet in their undies?

Me and my tree. Not pictured: my underwear.

Of course they will. They (and when I say they, I mean WE) do it all the time.  We decide how we want people to be and then when they show up as just themselves; just old, big, pretty, messy themselves, we fire up the chainsaw. "Hey....you're blocking my view of the pretend people that I made up in my head.  Please don't be you right now."  Brrr...umbrumbrumbrumbrumbrummmmm.

But wouldn't it be more fun to find out why I'm out here without pants on?  Oh yes.  The answer is yes.  If you saddled up here next to Henry and I, I promise you'd have way more fun hearing my story than you would by merely walking by and rolling your eyes at me in disdain. Way, way more fun.

So back to my original question: am I trashy or am I classy?

My Aunt Holly says, "You are at your best when you are true to yourself.  Classy all the way."

So there lies the answer.  I'm not sure what kind of tree I am, but I'm me.  I'm a view.  And I don't know what kind of tree you are either, but it doesn't matter because you're a view.  And he's a view and she's a view and I'll be damned if we aren't doing a kick-ass job of being our own view-tiful little selves. Look at us being all classy and stuff.  And when you look at us, I hope you see a bouquet of incredible persons all ready to open up their worlds to you; give and receive light and love in ways unique to each of us.

So thank you, for being you. I see you, you're amazing.

Love Always Wins

I’m just a little

Freckle-faced girl

Who wears a scar

From a crazy home-base slide.

Who loves that scar

Because she played with all her heart

To get it.

You, you threw the ball

That put me there; pushed me there

Where I met me

Now I proudly wear

A jersey spun of sun and dust and grins

And though I've never played it
Without the pain

It's always been love

That wins the game.

Denial by Screen

Turn on the news feed
And show me
Something other
That what just happened.
Give me
A new reality
For what I can't unfeel
Or eyes unsee.

I'll take anything.

Where I'm Coming From

It's 2017 and I still think it's entirely possible that someone will want to steal my iPod Classic.  It's a 120 GB 7th Generation.  Yes...we're talking about this bad boy:

Did I mention that it's 2017?

You should also know that it took me over two years to try the bidet at work.  It's just that the words "learning curve" and "toilet" made me incredibly uncomfortable.  I don't know what I thought could go wrong...all I knew was that the darn thing had a control panel with more than one button and not one of them had the word "dignity" on it.   

Purge

And so tonight, I hope I cry
Push up, not down
The twisting knife
Go out; release; and let me free
Take all my pain, tears
As you leave.

Nothing is Gone

And so now it’s quiet

The rush has gone

It’s quiet

I look around

Hello me!

It’s just you now.

They’ve all lost interest

For some beautiful reason

Or another

A quiet phone

A silent app

A strong me

Thanking you for looking

For dancing; wanting and taking

And then leaving

Because now I know

That nothing is gone.

Hot Yoga

Thoughts on my first hot yoga class…

I walked out of my first hot yoga class tonight with double the not-quitter points. How did I manage to rack up so many not-quitter points in one night, you may ask?  Probably because I wanted to quit like, twice as much as usual but I didn’t.    Not once, not twice, but SIX times I wanted to quit and leave the class but I stayed until the very, very end.  I didn’t quit!  Did I mention that?!  I didn’t quit six times. That’s the most not-quitting I have ever done. 

So then I’m driving home from the yoga class and I start to feel so happy because the next day is Friday.  Only it isn’t.  Because it is only Tuesday.  Apparently, I had done so much work in yoga class that my body and my brain both assumed that that was it.  “Ok, good show people.  We have obviously just completed a weeks’ worth of work.  So, let’s hit the weekend and make it a great one!” Silly brain.  

Also, it's important that you consider yourself to be somewhat mature before you attend a yoga class.  You do a lot of stretching.  Standing and stretching, sitting and stretching, twisting and stretching.  STANDING ON YOUR HEAD AND STRETCHING.  It just seemed like there were just so many hands in the air all the time, reaching...stretching.  It took a lot of maturity on my part to not constantly be giving high fives to everyone.  Just so you know, don’t do it, just leave them high fives hanging.  Booty slaps, same goes for booty slaps.  Don’t do it.    

And it’s expensive. If I want to keep this up and keep earning double the not-quitter points, I need to find a yoga class for poor people.  Which is the most ridiculous problem to have because, wasn’t yoga like invented by really poor people?  In India?  

15 Minutes of Emily

The Other Side of the Lemonade Stand (aka The Canary in the Coal Mine and Other Aviary Atrocities)

The food truck vendor was even more charming than usual tonight.  When asked how my day had been, he was not satisfied with my brief but courteous "meh", he wanted to know more about why it had been so.  As sincere as he was, I still wasn't sure how I was going to explain to him the source of my lament, which just so happened to be:  "I didn't stop at the lemonade stands."

See what I mean?  Even you look perplexed.

I will try to explain.

Many years ago (like 39) I spent a blistering summer afternoon watching my first lemonade stand fail miserably. As I sat there and watched car after car drive by without stopping, disillusionment began to creep in. So I did what little kids everywhere do when they don't understand grown-up behavior...I promised myself that when I grew up, I would stop at EVERY lemonade stand that I passed.

I will confess, over the years I have broken more promises to little me than I have kept.  Like "I will always shop in the Juniors section" or "I will never ground my kids".  But this one has been different. In fact, it's almost impossible to break. Just the frenetic energy alone that erupts when these young entrepreneurs see a car actually pulling over is enough to make you keep coming back for more.

That is until today, the day that I was just too busy and too stressed to stop.  It was a big day for the stands too. It was the season opener to end all season openers.  It was the first day of summer break PLUS the first day of high temperatures which equaled THREE lemonade stands on my way to and from my errands. It was killing me.  But I passed by every one of them like the traitor that I am.

And I think I could have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that stupid bird.

So there I was driving and minding my own lemonade-less business when a bird flew out in front of my car.  He was doing that little kamikaze-dive thing that they do sometimes. That thing where they give you a heart attack as they swoop down in front of your car but just when you are about to hit the brakes they pull out of it and fly off laughing to tell their buddies. Right?

Well, not today.  Today the dive was followed by a small thud, or maybe it was more like a thip, but whatever it was it was the sound that little bird heads make when they clip your windshield.  It was the thip of karma. It was the thip that called me out and told me that by not being true to myself I had just unbalanced the universe.  And it came with a question: Was I really that attached to my little stress-fest?  It was 39 years later, and there I was still not understanding grown-up behavior...and this time it was my own.

I learned my lesson, this time from the other side of the lemonade stand.

You know, you don't even have to drink the lemonade. Sometimes it is rather questionable.  But you do have to stop and be a part of the magic of that time honored childhood tradition and all that it symbolizes.  You are giving them more than a quarter and taking more than a cup.

You will see what I mean.