A Writer's Soul

The humidity is staggering today as I sit confined to my bedroom, one of the only places in our home that actually has air-conditioning.  You have been on my mind a lot, lately.  Yes, YOU.  My lovely, intelligent, sensitive, dynamic, unique blog readers, especially the ones who have stuck with me during my unplanned, unannounced, fade-into-the-ethers blog hiatus.  I love you for sending me private notes, for continuing to check in on my blog, for knowing what I mean when I discuss my "Angel Daughters" in other places on social media.  I adore you for cajoling me, for gently poking at me, and for not forgetting about me.  I am not exactly sure why, but something shut down inside of me about a year ago.  I began to seriously lose/doubt my writing voice and it started to  frighten me…A lot.  I believe that I was born with a "writer's soul" meaning that it feels very natural for me to paint my life in words and for most of my twenties and thirties, I kept that portion of my soul buried deep within my life of domesticated, wedded, maternal, Orange County lifestyle bliss.  I put everything, and I mean everything, into raising my Angel daughters and maintaining a lovely marriage, family and home, but there was definitely a price to be paid for all of that loveliness because when the roles began to shift and I was not needed as much, I did not have a place to turn my attentions to.  I am not at all saying that I would choose a different path if I could go back to those decades when being a wife and mother was more than enough.  I am not even saying that in retrospect, I would have done very much differently because the product of all that I put in is a very successful husband who still loves me deeply after almost thirty years of marriage as much as I do him, and four incredible daughters who really are angels in so many ways.  But, the thing about being in my early(very early) fifties now, is that I do have the luxury of hindsight and reexamination and reconsideration which is forcing me to take inventory as to what worked and what did not work so well.  And one of the things that might not have worked quite so well for me is what I gave up as an individual and as a soul on a singular journey alongside a tribe of other souls whom I adore with all my heart.  It really is not so much about what I gave up because what I gave up in some areas, I gained in other areas tenfold.  It is much more about the things that I did not do for myself.  I allowed myself to get lost in the mix of the lives that surrounded mine(and this includes those outside of my immediate family) in a way that caused me to forget who I am, who I was before I became a devoted wife and mother.  I immersed myself so deeply, so fervently into who I always knew that I wanted to be, that I lost track of my own spirit and the things that called out to me as a singular person.  I lost hold of those other things that define who we are and what we should explore in order to still remain relevant to ourselves.  I completely ignored my writer's soul when I should have taken the time to nurture that part of myself.  I dismissed my own needs as a separate entity when there was someone or something else that seemed more worthy(or more needy) of my time and attention.  I allowed the voices of those around me to drown out that of my own.  I allowed myself to wilt as they blossomed.  None of this was intentional on anybody's part.  It just happened.  I am not placing the blame for this on anyone, including myself.  Self-blame would only continue the pattern and that is something that I do not wish to continue.  I will acknowledge the fact that I became who I am, who I was, because I did not have a proper role model.  My own mother would tell you that she was a "stay-at-home" mother meaning that she stayed at home when my brother and I were in school, and then mysteriously disappeared on the days when we were actually at home.  She would flit around with her friends going shopping or to lunch, never doing anything much of substance.  Or she would send us to camp during the summers, much to my protest…Anything to get us "out of her hair".  It felt like outright rejection to me and although I cannot speak for my brother, I do believe that the effect was even more profound for him than it was for me.  Even my father, who did take the time to show me affection and attention when he was around, often made me feel insignificant by spending so much time away from our family by going on "business trips" and also by pursuing women outside of his marriage to my mother.  He was a very strong father figure but he was(is) also extremely expert at compartmentalizing the different aspects of his life which is something that I realized and understood at an unusually young age.  My earliest memory of this was when I was around eight years old and my dad would bring my brother and I into his office once in a while.  He had a lovely secretary named Jennifer who I was also particularly smitten with.  She was young and beautiful and smiled at my brother and I a whole lot when we would go in to visit.  And even though she was seemingly wonderful, I would get a very strange sensation in the pit of my stomach when she would greet us, for I somehow knew that it wasn't just the fact that my brother and I were exceptionally adorable children that caused her to be so Popsicle-sweet.  She was trying to impress my father.  And as I look back now through much older and wiser eyes, I understand that Jennifer's focus was on my dad and not what pinchable cheeks my little brother had.   I liked her and I felt abject contempt for her all at the same time.  It is sad that an eight year old child was placed in a position that caused so much ambivalence at such an early age.  It is sad that my parental role models taught me more about how I would behave as an adult not through their positive behaviors, but through the selfish behaviors that I would most adamantly try to avoid as an adult, wife and mother.  I became just about everything that my parents, most especially my mother, were not.  Extensibly, I worked very hard to encompass the qualities that my parents lacked the most, so that I would be a good wife, mother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt and friend.  I would include my daughters in my social activities.  I would spend summers participating in outings along with my children.  I would be present and not just pretend that I was.  These were the most mindful years of my life.  And yet, like my parents who successfully failed both my brother and me, I ended up failing someone very important too.  Myself.

I am entering my fifty-third year of life as of about two weeks ago.  Even at fifty-two years old, I know that I still have so many lessons to learn, only during this second half of my life(give or take a few) I believe that the lessons will be meant to be more about fine-tuning myself.  My parents are getting not just older, but old, and with their progressing years they are becoming more like abhorrent teenagers who are definitely not as cute as they used to be.  They are teaching me to be much more self-protective and much, much more forgiving…to myself.  I can no longer languish in the self-serving nature of the expectations that they have set for me without also allowing myself to expect a certain level of respect and honor for me, their only child.  I am, I have been, and I will continue to be a good daughter, step-daughter, wife, mother, daughter-in-law, friend, etc. as long as there is the balance of reciprocation in these relationships.  I am not even requiring that the reciprocation be equal, just present.  There will be a lot for me to muddle through as I decide where, when and how the boundaries will establish and reestablish themselves, time and time again.  And if someone wants to be exceedingly angry with me for no valid or apparent reason I will no longer beg for their forgiveness.  I will only forgive myself for not being the person that they would like to try to make me into.  I will float above the guilt that I used to drown in.  I will let them do them, and I will do me.

I will say it here as it will force me to be much more accountable from now on out.  I am going back to exploring my writer's soul.  Writing brings me clarity and balance and peace.  Seeing my own words reflected back at me on a page allows me to feel validated in a way that nothing else does.  It makes me feel heard and uninterrupted.  I cannot be cut short by spasmodic breaks in my train of thought when I write.  And because I am also a good listener, certain people cannot resist the temptation to take advantage of the spotlight that I seem to provide when they inadvertently interrupt what I might be saying out loud.  Writing allows me to be heard without constant fits and starts that cause me to give up trying.  One of my goals is to write a book.  In order to accomplish this, I will have to honor the part of myself that is a writer.  I will need to become more authentic about how I present my own story and if there are certain people who are a part of my story who might not like or appreciate what I have to write about them, then that will have to become a part of their life-lesson, no longer mine.  Maybe it would have done them some good to have behaved better, kinder, more thoughtfully, or more respectfully.  My story is about me, not about them.  We are all adults here.

*If anyone has any suggestions about how to get started in a regular writing routine, please do share them with me!  I would love some feedback about this as a fledgling writer whose wings are still quite wet!

And now, a few photos of the Four Angel's Momma family to catch everyone up a bit!  I promise more in the near future.  I hope that everyone is well!

So happy together. 

Angel Daughter Number Three and my beloved Angel Husband, Mark.

Angel Daughter Number Two and her sweet boyfriend, Justin.  AD4 is holding their puppy Layla Rose.

Angel Daughter Number One enjoying her 27th Birthday in June!

Angel Daughter Number Four is still dancing her heart out!

I See Charlotte

There are two sides to my life.  The first side is filled with the love that I feel for my angel family.  The wonderful life that we have conceived together.  The values which Mark and I have instilled in our girls.  The idea that life is beautiful.  It is the side of my life which I vowed to myself as a little girl that I would create.  A peaceful, contented life.  A family in which the members all love and cherish one another.  Mark and I have succeeded in building that kind of a life.  I am not saying that it doesn't take a lot of work and dedication, but I am saying that it is worth all of the effort that I have put into it.  My angels and my husband are worth it.  I am worth it.

The other side of my life is that side which I have eluded to in some of my previous writings here.  It is the side where people bear thirty year old grudges.  It is the side where the cruel irony of an early death leaves relationships unfinished.  It is the side that is filled with hatred and pain and lies.  It is the side of right-fighters.  It is the side that I never chose to live in, yet there I was, and sometimes, here I still am.

My brother chose a different kind of life and a different kind of wife.  He created a different kind of life.  He allowed the muck of growing up in a very chaotic household to color his life with different hues.  Whereas I saw bright, he saw dull.  Whereas I saw a chance to escape the kind of life that made me ill, he saw reason to continue the ugliness of how we were raised.  He remained stuck in the web.  He was a good guy in many ways, but that didn't prevent him from leaving behind an absolute mess.  A mess that my nieces must now live in.  A mess that I am now trying to sort out.  A mess that I know he would be absolutely disgusted to discover, yet still a mess that he had some responsibility in creating.

I have spent the better part of the past week in emotional and spiritual pain.  I have been containing my own feelings about my SIL's actions towards me and my family in an attempt to reserve any small chance that I will be allowed to continue a relationship with my two nieces while they are still children.  I have been told to be patient.  I have been told to wait.  I have been told, I have been told...  And then the letter came.  A letter filled with hatred that spewed off of the paper like a soda can that had been shaken before it was opened.  And my soul cracked open as did my mouth.  I am finished waiting.  I am finished being patient.  I am finished allowing my brother's memory to be ground into the dirt like some useless piece of trash.

When I took the picture of the garden spider above, I was watching it build it's web with awe and admiration.  In so many ways, just looking at the spider repels me and makes me want to run screaming in the other direction.  But in other ways, I can see the absolute beauty of it's intricate web.  I can see how the spider moves with such purposefulness and even grace as it spins the threads which will contain it's home for the night.  Some might just see a very scary spider.  I can see Charlotte.

And so, as I sit here pondering all this and trying to make some sense out of it I realize that every life must have two sides.  And what makes the beautiful side so much more vibrant is the fact that we must also live with the other side.  The side that hurts our spirits.  The side that causes us pain.  The side which we never chose, but if we remain brave enough, we learn to live with.

May you always honor the beautiful side of life even while sometimes having to face the darkness.  May you fight for what is good because you are worth it.

A Moment in Time. A Moment to Keep. A Moment to Dwell on.

I wasn't raised in a family that encouraged the power of positive thinking.  My dad can look past the bigger picture towards what is ultimately going to be fine, but my mother is another story.  Everything is "nag, nag, nag".  "I want what I want when I want it, which happens to be RIGHT NOW."  I suppose this is a small part, a very small part, a tinsy-winsy, itty-bitty little part of why they ended up divorcing.  And as I have explained to my dad over the course of the past several years, when he was ready to really hear it, he was able to divorce himself from my mother and marry someone who is a much better fit.  I, on the other hand, happened to remain irreversibly stuck with the hand that life dealt me.  My recently deceased brother chose a different journey in which he decided to remain estranged from our father, but I know that he had to live with his own demons because of the choice that he made.  They both did.  I couldn't, can't, won't do that with my mother unless I am left with no other choice.  And so far, I feel fairly comfortable with the choices that I have made when it comes to relationships.  I would much rather suffer some discomfort in a relationship, than make an irreversible choice by shutting someone out of my life permanently, whom I view as difficult.  To me, that would be missing the lesson, and Lord help me if I am forced to repeat some of these lessons again, in another place or at another time.  I would much rather complete the course now.

This past week brought with it a couple more "slams", and so, while taking the time to recover my bearings, I decided to take some time to dwell in the positive.  For as much as life tends to slam us, there is always, yes always, something good which can be unearthed.  For me those "somethings" are first and foremost, my husband and our Angel Daughters.  After that comes our dog, our kitties and yes, even our birds.  These are the things that remain steadfast and loyal in my life.

I was clicking through some pictures and came upon these which were taken a bit over a week ago.  Angel Daughter Number Three(my sixteen year old) was really itching to go on a mother/daughter adventure with me, and so we got into the car and began driving.  Having four makes it sometimes difficult to just steal away with only one angel at a time, so that made our outting even more special.  As we drove along, without any particular destination in mind, we turned the radio up loud and sang along to 70's and 80's songs that we both knew.  The more I allowed myself to relax and sing, the more we giggled.  By the time we arrived at our surprise destination, I felt almost like a teenager myself.  Looking at my daughter and how much she was enjoying our trip to "nowhere" allowed me to remember what it felt like to be sixteen, and for a little while, I was sixteen again, just hanging out with a friend!  How fun it was to go back in time with my own child!  We even sat in the parking lot until the song we were listening to was over.  When I turned the car off, I said to AD3, "Now you see what Mom might have been like at your age!  I was fun, too."  AD3 turned to me, smiling, and said, "Mom, you are always fun when you want to be."  A moment in time.  A moment to keep.  A moment to dwell on.

We decided to stop for an impromptu dinner at this interesting little place called The Gypsy Den.  We tasted one another's food and chatted freely about life, friends, and stuff.  The waitress noticed that I was taking pictures and asked if we would like her to take one of us together.  I am very glad that we said yes.  A moment in time.  A moment to keep.  A moment to dwell on.

There were some very interesting places to take pictures and so I convinced AD3, who doesn't usually enjoy having her picture taken, to "model" for me.  We also went shopping and I bought her and my other three angels, some fun stuff.  How joyous it was to think of nothing but food, fun and shopping for a few hours!
We both noticed these colorful, ornate bottles which were on a shelf in the restaurant that we ate at.  It struck me that objects which might look pretty, but quite ordinary alone, really created a beautiful display when grouped together.  It made me realize that each one of my angels, alone, is quite lovely and unique but as a group of four strong sisters, they are a dynamo.  A force to be reckoned with.  Special alone, but stronger when placed in the beautiful light of one another.  Reflecting off of each other in ways which only sisters can do.  I am the singleton, but they, they are sisters.  

And so, as a new week begins, I am choosing to dwell in the positive.  Yes, this has been an incredibly rough year, and yes, it continues to be one in ways that I once could not even fathom, but I am strong.  I have a choice and for now I would rather think about beautiful days with my angels and not funerals, lost nieces, hospital rooms where my father's health is being constantly challenged, and a "clinically depressed" mother who is clinging too tightly.  I am fighting to dwell in the positive, a place that has always felt much more at home to me than the alternative.

May the coming week bring you moments to keep and moments to dwell on.  May you share your own stories of "dwelling in the positive" with those who need to be reminded that there are always two sides to every coin.  We all need to be reminded.  I know that I do.

Glass Flowers or Leaving Las Vegas, Part II

Since you have embraced the sadder times of life with me, it is only fitting that I share this little miracle with you.  This is my youngest angel getting to know my great-niece, soul to soul.  And yes, she smells as wonderful as she looks.  There is something about a new baby...Let's just say that I might have had another one if my husband and my OB hadn't nixed that idea.  I am one of those kinds of women.  Extremely maternal and naturally in tune.  As a child, the only thing which I knew for sure about my future was that I would have children.  I am very lucky that I married the man that I did.  He is also a natural father.  Strong, paternal, and a total goof-ball with our daughters.  I only hope that our angels marry men who are a lot like their father is.  My future son-in-laws will have some big shoes to fill.
Ah, Las Vegas.  Interesting town.  Whenever we go there to visit our dear friends, I think about how many times this town has redefined itself.  From the days in which the mob ran this place to the failed attempt at making it a wonderful family destination(Bad idea. Very, very bad idea.), this city has changed it's facade dozens of times.  Being the "card shark"(tee-hee) which you now all know me to be, I have witnessed several of the major changes, myself.  I will tell you one thing.  People do not go there for the shopping.
I'm not sure who the man in the white shirt is(good thing he still has his shirt after spending some time in Vegas), but I can tell you who all of these lovely, smiling individuals are in the center of the frame.  On the left, is The Cheesemiester, my oldest daughter's boyfriend, and my newest Black Jack student.  I think, from now on, I will also refer to him as "Grasshopper". Next to Grasshopper is Angel Daughter Number One, Angel Daughter Number Two, Angel Daughter Number Four(I get so confused when they mix themselves up!), and Angel Daughter Number Number Three.  Next to AD3 is...Wait who is that pretty young lady and what is she doing in our picture?!?!  Okay, just toying with you.  That's B, one of AD3's very best friends.  She came with us to Vegas, and I am very glad that she did.  B is a very sweet girl.  Polite and friendly.  It makes me happy to know that my girls have such wonderful friends.  She was a delight to have around.  You should have seen our suite after six kids and two adults got finished with it!  Oy.
If you have never been to Las Vegas, this is the ceiling at The Bellagio Hotel where we stayed.  Those are individual colored, glass flowers which were placed up there to resemble a giant flower garden.  The colors are vibrant and magical.  I must admit that with the endless supply of money that Las Vegas takes in, they do use their imagination to create interesting and creative casinos.  However, people sometimes forget that glass flowers are still made of glass and can easily shatter unlike the real thing.  This town can fool people into thinking that what they are seeing is real.  Most of it, is in fact, a facade or an illusion.  Much of this isn't reality.  Once again, let me remind you as a kind of public service announcement.  People do not go to this town for the shopping.
And finally, here is my family.  Look!  All of our angels are in the correct order, surrounding their daddy.  He is a very lucky man.  We are a very blessed family because we have each other. This is what is real.  No glass flowers here.(except on the ceiling)

May you be blessed with as much good as your heart can hold.  May you always find a way to recognize what is important and holy in a life which can sometimes be painful.  Life is a classroom and we are both the students and the teachers.  May you find ways in which to learn from all of the experiences of your days, and may you sometimes stop to contemplate who your teachers are and who your students might be.  Distinguish what is real, and hold fast to it.  Balance.  Balance.