Book group

Last night I was a guest at my sister’s book group. They read The Given Self. “They” were her friends from high school. I had memories of each one of them and, of the six gathered – Mary Pat, Char, Chris, Barb, Maureen and Janie – five of them had siblings who were friends of mine: a brother who’d car pooled to the U of M with me, a sister who was my first friend (they lived two-doors up), a brother who was in the same school from 5th through 10th grade, a sister who was a best friend for a year or two, and another who I hung out with in the 7th-8th grade years. The one who knew me least (not having a sibling who gave us a little more knowledge of each other), asked for a little of my history and that of the books I speak so much about within The Given Self.

Because of who they were, I began this history from when I was a teen, talking about how much things changed between when they were teens and when I was. I spoke of the difference in the spacing of our family. My two older brothers are ten and twelve years older than me, my sister Susan five years older, and my younger brother eight years younger. I told of how I admired my hippie brother who was graduating from college in the pivotal 1968 while I was graduating from grade school, and how I watched my sister go to a dozen proms, thinking I’d have the same fairytale-like experience. And then how I didn’t have either.

I do think it made a difference. Seeing the whole changing of the culture play out in my brother’s life and my sister sort of missing it and living the version of the teenage years you see on TV. I felt my draws to both but didn’t really want to admit that things like proms held any attraction. I openly coveted my brother’s experience and secretly could have gone in for a little more of my sister’s.

As far as I know, they were all “good girls.” My sister was up for homecoming queen and Janie won the title. You get my drift.

So there I am, the little sister sitting in on the gathering of the big sisters, separated by five years, but feeling pretty comfortable. In a certain sense, having your story “out there” gives you the freedom of not trying to hide anything.

So I spoke of how, by the time I was a teen, dating wasn’t much in style. The free love of the sixties had caught on but the meaning factor separated my brother and his generation from mine, and the innocence factor my sister and me. I spoke of being a rebel in the sense of always wanting to escape expectations and being somewhat adamant about not wanting to fit in.

Later in the evening my sister said, “I don’t know if this book was written for us.”

One of her friends lightly told me, “This is the way we talk,” as they discussed ailments, jobs, lawn-cutting, pets, parents, children and grandchildren. I believe I made a few disparaging remarks about this sort of conversation in the book, but I asked after my old friends and was interested in the details. It was sincere and pleasant conversation and some of the best of it came before we sat down to “discuss the book” as always seems to happen.

One of the women said, “Everything happens for a reason,” and later in the evening I brought that up and said, “Sometimes I feel as if my rebellious nature is my nature for a reason.”

Another of the women said she thought my husband and me were brave to live an alternative kind of life. One nodded her head at certain sentiments as if she shared them. You get a sense sometimes that more could be said but that the “more” is held in check by the group.

Maureen actually told a hilarious story about sitting on an airplane where the most horrid noise was scaring all those in her section and how none of them said anything. “I was thinking,” she said, “that if the plane went down, I was going to be sorry.” She’s a nurse, and went on to speak of the training they get – so often someone, she said, is uneasy or fears a mistake is being made and doesn’t say anything. I knew she “got” the underlying theme (of sorts), the one that’s about stopping with the reticence we have about saying what we really want to say (and living the way we want to live). Giving ourselves that freedom.

When I left, I felt as if the others might be happy to get back to the comfortable conversation.

This was all okay. I didn’t fret over any of it for a minute – not before or after.

The friendship among them was evident. They’ll be there for each other. And the book wasn’t written for them as far as I know. But you never really know, do you?

Walked out to the cabin in the dark tonight. Haven’t been out nearly as much in the evening dark as the morning dark and tonight it was really really dark. Last night, or maybe two nights ago there was full moon and it’s still out there. I can see it from the cabin window. The trees canopy the path pretty good though and the tree tops shield the moon.

With my new video craze I was out taking pictures of the moon the other night – about half to capture the moon and half to record the sound of the crickets. They almost overtake the noise of the freeway. I had to walk out into the thick undergrowth to find a break in the trees where I could find the moon with the camera’s lens. Then, as I was recording, clouds went over the moon and swirled like mist and blurred the round edges and covered her over and then moved on so that she popped back out again. I was so excited – thought I’d really caught something magnificent, but then, being the amateur that I am – I couldn’t focus in on the moon and it looked like a golf ball sitting on a black tarp.

Despite the moon tonight, there’s a different quality to the darkness. I know the path out here like I know Henry’s got his mother’s neck, the neck that used to make me almost weep when she was a little girl – this skinny little neck so fine and fragile. Still, there was a shape at my feet that I paused over as I walked around it…just a dark shape. There wasn’t enough illumination to define the edges of anything. It was a swampy mess of darkness.

There was the place where the tree branches hang low and I walked automatically around that, but still it was odd. Odd when the place you know so well feels suddenly unknown.

I could use the yard light, but I don’t.

What are you afraid of?

I posted two new videos today.

The first is short and different (and different for more reasons than being short!). It's of the "shadow" pictures I've been writing of taking lately. I swear, when I'm feeling rattled, I've been opening this file of "shadows" and doing a slide show. There's something so quieting about them. So that's basically what this is: a slide show called "Light and Shadow."


A new "Hello from the Cabin" (number 8 believe it or not) caused me to want to write a note about the strange segue at the end. I go from talking about taking a year off from “outside help” to talking about reading Melody Beattie on codependency. There was a reason that Melody followed on the “year off” idea that I didn’t say! In talking of care giving, she said that if you’ve been a caregiver for a while you might want to take a year off from giving. That idea felt really good to me and that’s the connection that I didn’t make as I ended the video.

It’s a connection I’m finding hard to make in life too!

Honestly, you could say my whole problem in my family boils down to an inability to say no.

People ask me, “What are you afraid of?” I don’t feel that I’m afraid of anything. Then I might say I don’t want to disappoint the person asking, so I guess you could say I’m afraid of disappointing. I’ve been a mother since I was 18 and meted out a lot of disappointment in those years. I never liked it. It always seemed like life was disappointing enough. Your kid waits all year for the field trip to Valley Fair and then it rains. Or they don’t get invited to the birthday party. Or they’re not as pretty or smart as they’d like to be. Whatever!

But it's more than that because sometimes I really want to say no, and I don't care if my "no" disappoints anyone, and I still don't say it. I guess it’s become such a habit to say “yes” that I’m challenged to break it. You think such things should be easy and can really get to worrying over your psychological health when they aren't.

But a few days ago I told Mia I’d rather not host the party and she invited me to the bar with her and her girlfriends, so I’m getting somewhere slowly, and even giving my adult "kids" a little more room to be understanding. Whew! That feels good.

I can do it

Henry is into do-it-yourself projects.

I bought him a ball of twine at a garage sale. It was .10. I have not seen a ball of twine anywhere else – not that I’ve looked (and where would they be? – a hardware or craft store?) and have no idea what they might cost (1.95? 2.95)? I only knew as I bought it that he’s been into rope since his grandpa let him bring in a rope from the garage and would likely enjoy the twine.

Henry immediately set about to throw the ball as a way of unraveling it, so I see that a little instruction is necessary and start by holding the ball while he walks with it, then “Can you walk to the tree?”

Once he got to the tree it was a done deal. He can’t tie yet, but he knows if he wraps the twine around the tree enough times it will stay. Then coming back, I had to suggest the cabin doorknob for a second tying place. From there we were off and running, making things open and close. When grandpa got home he quickly threw more twine over a tree branch to make a pulley and left again. Donny and I both thought Henry would play contentedly with the pulley for hours. But Henry says, “I can do that Umma,” and spends the next hour not playing with the pulley, but trying to do what he’d seen grandpa do – throw the twine over high tree limbs.

Then he asks, “Umma, can I get the rope out of the tool drawer in your desk?” I’m surprised he knows I have one and don’t remember him exploring it or a rope being inside. I go look. It’s a synch – one of those rubbery tools with heavy ends that hook, the kind you use to hold down the trunk of your car when you’re carrying something that doesn’t fit. With instruction in how to use it, he takes off by himself, leaving the woods and climbing the swing set to work on the little tree-house-like portion that sits atop the slide, throwing the “rope” over something more manageable than high tree limbs.

I’m worried about him hitting himself in the head so I intervene once again and we end up synching onto the top piece of lumber and using the line to climb the slide and then to repel. By the time the rest of the family is home and he proudly wants to show off this new feat, he’s too excited (or maybe tired) to do it the way he’d already done it a dozen times, but he’s still proud of himself.

He’s in Montessori school and the motto on the door says to never do something for a child that he thinks he is capable of doing himself. Within the limits of preventing injury, you encourage the “I can do it.”

It got me wondering about myself and the things I run away from. The feeling of “I can’t do it,” or “I can’t say that.” Henry does it too. He gets frustrated with one thing and moves on to the next. He’ll return to the one he got frustrated with when his skill set (or his size) is a little bigger. He can do more when he’s fresh than when he’s tired. I don’t judge it. He doesn’t judge it.

Being off

Can you tell…any of you who’ve been reading this blog a while, that I’m a little “off”? I don’t even know what I mean by that. Maybe it’s the video. Moving into a new way of expression.

What makes you do that kind of thing?

I had a friend try something new and then tell me she felt foolish after and I thought, “It must be universal.” There’s a glow from it at first…from whatever the initial creative impulse was, and then that fades, and then you feel foolish. The nice thing about hearing something like that from a friend, is you quit feeling like it’s a big deal. You remember, “Oh yeah, this is the way it is. This is the way it is when you take a risk.”

There always seems to be that element of risk taking in “putting yourself out there.” It’s the kind of thing you feel when you have a conversation and wonder afterwards if you “said too much.”

When you put something “out there” over time, like you do with a blog, you get more used to it, but then, every once in a while, you realize that, over time, you’re telling a story and you wonder what it’s about, what it says about you. And you wonder if people can tell when you’re “off.” Or maybe they just get bored.

But I’ve realized that if I thought about it as I was doing it, I’d likely never do anything, and if I did, I’d never say anything real. I’d censor too much. I’d always be thinking, “I can’t say that!”

And I realize that when I tie myself to a schedule I get something like writer’s block. I know that no one else cares about my self-imposed schedule. It’s one of those things that become a figment of your own imagination. So “my plan” to do video on Sunday’s is now defunct. I feel better already.

On our own two feet

On my way to the cabin

As I was walking out to the cabin this morning, the coffee pot in one hand, my coffee cup in the other, and my camera bag slug over my arm, I thought, ‘The reason women need purses is that we’ve always got two hands full.’ It seems sometimes as if men travel lighter through life, but then again it just cracks me up that I’ve got to make two trips most days, just to sit for an hour or so. Last night I left my laptop here, so today I didn’t have to make two trips. But then, as soon as I got here, I had to go to the bathroom.

I’ve just started bringing the coffee pot and have been thinking about getting a coffee maker. But then I’d have to bring water. I could get a dorm-sized refrigerator, but I’ve less need for cold drinks. I’d like a more comfortable place to sit, but then, with any of those things, I feel as if I’d lose the charm or the simplicity. Walking back to the house isn’t a big deal, it’s just that, other than for in the early morning, I know I can get stuck there. If Henry wants to see me, if a meal is being made, if I notice something that needs doing…I feel that conflict between coming back out and staying inside.

I had another one of those mornings when I woke up early, about 4:30, and thought how lovely it would be to get up and have a little more time out here in the dark. But I stayed until I realized my cell phone wasn’t on the table next to my bed. I didn’t get up long before its alarm would go off, or get out here much sooner.

The cabin door creaks like one of those in a scary movie and Simeon just came in and creaked it as he came.

The sky is white and the ground dark back here at nearly 6:30, but when I look out toward the yard the day is evident, the stucco of the house visible, the tall yellow galardia a spot of color in the green.

I’m slowly realizing people won’t change until they’re ready. You’ve got to feel the pain of being disorganized enough times before you’ll get organized. You’ve got to feel the pain of the sedentary life before you get moving.

I’ll walk today. It’s Saturday. I take Henry (and Sam) on an adventure early on Saturday mornings. We go to the neighborhood park and walk the trails. So far Henry’s not keen on the mud but he knows mornings are wet and that the ground will dry. I ask him how it will dry and he says “From the sun.” That thrills me. He wants me to carry him over the muddy places and I tell him that explorers have to stand on their own two feet. When his grandpa came with us one morning he whined about being carried practically the whole time…when it’s just him and me he doesn’t keep that up.

Donny feels like he is here to meet the needs of his family. That’s been a pretty tough job and he’s getting worn out. Men have their burdens too.

But we’re all on an adventure and have to stand on our own two feet. That’s what I’m discovering anyway.

Fluttering movement

The sun coming in my window

Now this morning, it’s truly beautiful. It’s been so hot that it stinks outside like things rotting. I can hardly sit out here for the heat and humidity. I’ve had the fan going for a week or so, and sat here anyway…sweating. But in the mornings it’s still lovely and today the sun has been slowly rising, climbing the rectangle of my window, casting her lovely shadows. I take pictures and feel better. Like I feel better as soon as I walk out the door.

I wrote a whole thing last night on expectations – the expectations I feel are made of me in certain relationships – all of them of the type that I’m supposed to accept things no one else in their right mind would accept…because I’m a mother, daughter, sister, or wife. It’s one of those things when you look at it that is so ridiculous that you want to either laugh or cry – or both really.

Yet there’s some movement. Yes, there’s movement going on and I’m grateful for it. Awareness brings movement. I don’t know where it’s taking me but I feel a sense of being guided in how to be with it, to move with it, to find my contentment with what I have and to be grateful. And to accept some changes too, damn it!

The shadows are alive with movement. All is a flutter.