Untitled.

My husband's family is kind of nutty. Everyone's up each other's butts, everyone knows everyone else's business, they gossip about what they know, and if they don't know anything they speculate and over several repetitions, speculation often becomes believed as fact. But I love them (well, most of them). It's very cool for me to be a part of a big busy family, because mine is so opposite of this.

Go back a few generations and there were plenty of us, but they're all dead now. I have one brother. My mom has one brother and my dad is an only child. I have two cousins that I really don't even know. My husband has 62 first cousins alone. 62!

But that's not the part that bothers me.

My parents' parents were wonderful people. Loving, caring, and supportive of their children. But they were SO up in their business. My mom and my dad were virtually smothered by their parents while they grew up. My mother left her hometown to go to a college many miles away just to have some elbow room. My dad stayed in his hometown for college because his parents wouldn't allow him to go away.

Attributed to this, my parents have always been very adamant about not intruding on my brother's and my life once we were grown and on our own. They said it was because they knew what it was like to have your parents always around, cramping your style when you're trying to start your life, and they didn't want to be that way with us.

I'm not saying they don't love us. I know they do. They were wonderful providers and teachers and have always been there for us when we needed them. But extenuating circumstances aside, I have barely seen them at all but a few times a year since I've been out on my own. And even since the birth of our son, we practically have to beg them to come over. They are always up for a visit from us if they're around, but I bet they haven't visited me 5 times in 10 years.

They visit my brother a lot. He is the oldest and all, and has 2 kids. But my brother lives on the other side of the country. They live less than an hour away from me.

The truth of the matter is, I have often wondered if they just didn't want to be around me anymore.

"Gut" Instincts?

I was watching one of those “weird stuff” shows last night and caught a story on cellular memory. Have you ever heard of this? Very interesting concept.

A woman received an organ transplant due to an autoimmune deficiency in her liver. She knew very little about the donor except for his name. After she received her transplant, she developed a hankering for cheese doodles and peanut M&M’s, two things she never really cared for before. She discovered an interest and a draw towards music she never liked nor could even understand the words to before. She also began having dreams of a young Latino woman with light hair.

One day she attended a donor club meeting and just by chance met her donor’s family (recognizing the name). They began talking about the young man from whom she’d received her liver. This man was 18 years old and had put a gun to his head. His two favorite junk food snacks were cheese doodles and peanut M&M’s, and he was very into rap music. And the Latino woman with the light hair? She was his girlfriend. She was the last person he saw before he killed himself.

Is this possible? To transfer a person’s memories simply by transferring cells? Can living tissue retain thoughts, emotions, and characteristics?

Fascinating. I couldn’t stop thinking about this. If this were indeed possible, it throws a whole new spin on metaphysics. It would mean that traces of the “soul” may stay in the tissues residually, and/or that the “mind” clearly is not housed in the brain.

I realize this might be an urban legend. I don't really care if it is as I’m not endorsing nor debunking this concept. Just turning it over and over in my thoughts. I love this stuff. There’s so much to know.

Rebirth

I have a blog friend who is traveling a difficult road right now. She is in the final stages of closing a rocky chapter in her life. I went through the same thing several years ago, and as she writes of her journey through to the end of this chapter, it causes me to nod my head along with her knowingly.

I don’t know her well, but I remember these steps and the emotions accompanying them, vividly as if they just happened. This alone seems to bring her deep into my circle of concern and empathy.

I find myself wanting to tell her things. Things for which I can’t seem to find the exact words. I’d really love to just sit with her for a while, with a steaming pot of tea to split between us, and just talk about things. When I went through it all, it seemed there was no one in my life who could understand. People tried to help, usually by making jokes about it or saying completely inappropriate things as people tend to do when they don’t know what to say. She has said things that indicate to me she’s running into this as well.

Much as I knew it was the right thing to do to move on, and regardless there would be no returning to where I once was, ever – it didn’t make it easy. It hurt like hell. Even being awake hurt like hell. It’s very difficult to accept that a huge part of what defines your life turned out to be wrong, and in effect you must start over with yourself.

I remember how valuable one particular friend was to me while I went through it all. The only person in the world who could even closely relate to what I was going through. Others were sympathetic, but no one else really understood. This wonderful Godsend companion is still very, very close at hand. :) My blog friend has a similar figure in her life – and for this I am very happy. They are learning and growing together, and I see that already she is healing.

It’s difficult to understand why we must go through such times of trial and heartache. It’s hard to wrap your head around what the benefit could possibly be, to bear such burdens. All things do happen for a reason though. The older I get, the more I see and believe this to be true. I walked through the depths of hell those many years ago, but I can see the difference it made in me. It changed me into a wiser, more grounded person – it equipped me with tools I needed to continue into broader lands and deeper valleys and greater challenges. My friend is being tempered in the fire, and when she’s through it, she’ll be stronger and wiser for the wear. She is becoming what she was destined to be.

A fire can decimate a forest. Leave a once thriving ecosystem all but wiped out. But in time, shoots come up through the black carbon. Flowers bloom. Saplings become trees and fauna returns. A richer, more lush fortress replaces what was there before, nourished by the ashes left by the tragedy of what came prior.

Wishing Stones

On the far eastern coast of Aruba, leaning stubbornly against crashing brutal Atlantic surf, lies Wishing Stone Beach. An atypical landscape, this part of the island. Rocky, rugged and stoic. Rather than sand, this stretch of the coastline appears to be constructed of lumpy stalagmites. Upon closer examination, it’s discovered they are not solid pillars, but carefully balanced columns of stones. Smooth, oval stones, shaped by the ages and constant flogging at the hand of the elements. Stones in shades of pale plum and gunmetal and caramel. And as far as the eye can see in either direction – thousands of little columns line the shore.

You may think their placement is way too deliberate to be by nature – and you would be correct. Here is observed an old island tradition, where visitor and resident alike come to offer three sacred wishes. One for health, one for wealth, and one for happiness. The wisher is to select one stone to represent each wish, and from only those not already engaged in a column - Only the elements are acceptable disassemblers of any of the previously constructed piles. The wisher is to meditate on their wishes as they stack their three stones atop of one another. They then leave their wish-encapsulating stones there by the shore.

In February 1999, I visited Wishing Stone Beach, and added my wishing stones to the multitude. I remember the day – the smell of rain in the air – the ocean wind whipping my hair against my cheeks – the tails of my shirt lapping behind me. I remember my wishes. They were indeed answered, but not in ways I’d expected. God has a funny way of doing things like that.

I’m sure that by this time, my column has succumbed to collapse, and my stones so carefully selected and wished over have gone on to become pieces of someone else’s altar – maybe several - just as what we strive for our lives to become is built up and torn down and restructured by forces beyond our control, and in the process we become a part of one another.

Lovers and the lost. The ambitious and the broken. The naive. The jaded. Newlyweds. Expectant parents. Clean-slaters. Children. The aged. Perhaps even a young girl from Alabama, while celebrating her new life and possibilities - and later her mother, weary and pallid from searching for her. How many have come to this spot and offered their wishes, their prayers to the Heavens and have symbolically left them there to be tended? Only our Heavenly Father knows, and He has heard every one.

We must still the racket around us to recognize His answers, and still ourselves to accept them.

Awakenings

At about 2:30 am, my most beautiful dog rang the bell to go out.

He was never one to bark or whine to go outside, he would just quietly stand by the door and if no one noticed would often end up piddling there - so when he was still a youngster we trained him to ring a bell hung from the doorknob. We have a bell on the front, back, and bedroom doors. He caught on in about half a day and it’s worked well ever since.

Hearing that bell clang around at 2:30 am is equivalent to fingernails on a chalkboard to my weary head, but I try not to doubt him when he says he has to go. I forced myself up and took him out (on the leash, as he tends to get the notion to gallivant around the yard for a while at the times I most desperately want to return to my warm bed).

He did indeed have to go, and I waited patiently on my end of the 30-foot lead in my cuddle duds and old frayed robe. While he tended to things, I tipped my head back and gazed up at the black suede sky. In the east I noticed Orion in hunting stance – a sure skyward sign of the coming winter. The moon, 4 nights past the full Harvest phase, was still bright enough to bathe the property in a comfortably spooky glow. A thin brushstroke of early morning fog was sliding lazily through the back acre.

The dark sweet country chill ran its fingertips across my skin, like a lover’s touch. The song of crickets, toads, and something that sounds like an organic spacecraft serenaded me, more loudly than I’d noticed upon first shuffling out on the deck. I closed my eyes and breathed in the cool damp night. Smells of dewy earth and cut grass and dying campfires and faint traces of manure from the stables behind our property filled my lungs – filled my heart.

Suddenly I felt wide awake.

Most beautiful dog was ready to return to the business of sleeping, so we went back inside. He snuggled down in, between the Hub and me, and in seconds was snoring softly. I, however, was wide awake – thoughts still out on the deck - dancing, swirling, intertwining like the shimmering stars and embracing scents of the night air.

In God's Hands

On “Miami Ink” last night, a couple came in the shop. The man wanted to get a tribute tattoo. The thing he had in mind was a pair of hands holding a tiny baby, donned with a halo, with the words “In God’s Hands”. As the tattoo was being done, the man explained that they had been expecting a baby girl and had learned she would be severely brain damaged. Faced with a choice of options, they decided to place the baby in God’s hands and if God allowed her to be born, than they would follow that path – and if she would leave this Earth, it would be by God’s decision only. The baby was born and they held her for two hours, praying over her. At her second hour, she died peacefully, and they submitted her sweet little soul into God’s hands, grateful for the time they’d been given with her.

Naturally, I was crying through the whole thing. This is a very sensitive subject for me.

Before the birth of my wonderful boy, we traveled a very difficult road. We lost 5 pregnancies. Those were the blackest days of my life. There is no possible way to describe to someone how devastating losing a baby is. How deeply you can love someone who isn’t even in the world yet, and how destroyed you can be - and for how long – after they are gone. And as horrible as it was to live through these times, others have had it worse.

My best friend lost her baby to what the medical profession politely calls a “cord accident”. The umbilical cord wrapped around the child’s neck, cutting off his bloodflow, and he died in utero. She was far enough along that they had to go through with delivering him before planning their baby’s funeral. They then went on to lose several more pregnancies to miscarriage before finally being blessed with their little boy.

To this day I have no idea how she managed to survive such a tragic course of events. I don’t think I could have done it.

My brother and sister-in-law had a little girl in 1988. Everything seemed perfect, until she was born and never started breathing. She died. An autopsy revealed that her lungs never developed properly – she didn’t have a chance. In the days before ultrasounds were as clear and precise as they are now, no one knew.

Logically, it doesn't seem that cutting ties to a being that never really got a chance to become anything doesn't seem like that big of a deal. But it is, in ways that defy logic and transcend sensibility.

I realize people just - don't know. So if there is anything I could tell anyone who knows someone suffering such a loss, it is this: Be understanding. Be patient. Be careful what you say. Understand that though you never saw or held this child, that he/she was very real to their parents. Recognize and acknowledge the child and the loss – it will let the parents know you care and you remember. Understand that if they cry when you talk to them about it, it’s not because you hurt them. You are helping them grieve. Don’t think that the thoughts of the baby are bad memories – the bond, love and dreams they had for their child were good and full of love. Don’t stay away – it only makes grieving parents feel forgotten. If there are times they wish to be left alone or move on to other subjects, they’ll let you know, but to let them know you remember and care is a powerful salve for them – not to mention many others may have the same idea and they are subsequently left with no one around them who says they care. Don’t say anything like “You can have another baby”, or “It was nature’s way of telling you something was wrong with the baby”. While this may be true, babies are not interchangeable and another baby will not be the same – and even if something were wrong, that baby was perfect to its parents. To say otherwise can feel like a slap in the face for the heartbroken. Be understanding if they don’t want to be around other expectant parents for a while. It’s not that they aren’t happy for them – but it’s a painful thing to witness others being blessed with an event that was taken away from you. Naturally there will be feelings of jealousy and emptiness, and it’s not selfish of them at all.

Most of all, be understanding that this is not something anyone can get over in a few weeks or months. Or even years. Allow them to heal at their own pace, and be unconditionally supportive of them. That’s what friends do.

Each path of mourning is as individual as the ones affected. I remember when we lost our first child, the Hub told me he found his comfort in thinking that his Dad, who had died in the early eighties, is with our baby, his grandchild, in Heaven - and they are both in our Lord's loving presence as they await our joining them. Though it did not make my heart nor my arms ache any less, I liked that thought too. This heartbroken couple was using a memorial placed on the father’s skin to aid in their healing over the loss of their baby girl. Would it be the method I’d choose? No, but it wasn’t about me. We each grieve and rebuild in our own ways and in our own time. I pray to God that this will help them along their path.

Bella Luna

Did you see the moon this weekend? The Harvest Moon. Gorgeous. A night after the full moon, the Hub and I hauled out our telescope last night as a massive cantaloupe colored moon rose above the bean field. We love to moon gaze a day or two either before or after a full moon, as the contour of the peaks and craters is best accentuated by the sliver of the waxing/waning new moon.

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE trivia and any useless facts that will clutter my brain in the place of more vital information. I also love Native American lore. While visiting my blog friend Michael’s post from this weekend I was reminded of the moon phases and their Native American monikers. For your interest (or boredom, depending on who you are), here are the Native American seasonal lunar phase titles.

Wolf Moon (January) – Wolves are getting hungry, and habitually howl outside of the villages.

Snow Moon (February) – Heavy snow season is here. Also known as the Hunger Moon, as harsh conditions and the length of winter has set in, hunting is difficult and rations are getting low.

Worm Moon (March) – The ground is thawing and the worms appear. Can’t you just smell that damp wormy smell of spring?

Pink Moon (April) – The phlox blooms of spring are appearing. Also known as the Fish Moon, as shad are returning to spawning waters.

Flower Moon (May) – Wildflowers are everywhere now.

Strawberry Moon (June) – Marking the short harvesting season of the treasured strawberry fruit.

Buck Moon (July) – Bucks are budding their velvety antlers. Also called Thunder Moon, for the plentiful summer thunderstorms of this month.

Sturgeon Moon (August) – Fishing season for the large sturgeon fish of the Great Lakes region. Also known as Red Moon, for the fiery hue taken on while rising through the hot summer haze.

Harvest Moon (September) – Marking the autumnal equinox and harvesting season. Farmers could work late into the night by the light of the bright moon in the clear fall air.

Hunter’s Moon (October) – With fields reaped and leaves fallen, it’s time for hunting up winter meat rations for the long cold winter.

Beaver Moon (November) – Time for setting traps for a supply of warm winter furs.

Cold Moon (December) – Also called the Long Night Moon. The nights are their longest and darkest. The moon is now in its longest nightly trajectory.

As the lunar phases vary slightly, each being normally less than a calendar month, placement of where the full moons fall can vary, and occasionally a full moon will occur twice in one month. This, as you may know, is the beloved Blue Moon.

Enjoy the velvety black sky and bright silver moon of this delicious autumn season!

I hate this dream.

So I had that dream again last night. The one where I have to go take an exam for a class I’d cut all year. This time it was psychology. I thought maybe I could cram a little beforehand if I went and got the textbook but as it turned out, in my absence from going to classes they’d moved everyone’s lockers. Thank God I’d painted the knob of my combination lock with pink nail polish or I’d never have found it. (I hadn’t thought about that in years! Strange what your brain dredges up from your bed of forgotten memories when you sleep). By the time I found my locker and got the psych book out, which incidentally looked like it’d been published in 1910, there was only 10 minutes till the exam and it was going to take me 15 minutes to get to class anyway, so I knew I was screwed and wouldn’t be graduating.

I woke up with a headache, too.

I have this stupid dream a lot. Many factors vary, but the main plot line is always there - I need to go take an exam for some brainiac class that I haven't gone to all year, and my entire academic career depends on me passing it. Along my hurried journey to get to the class on time, a series of unfortunate events trips me up and therefore I run later and later. The dread and panic of the situation always makes me feel like I didn't sleep a wink all night.

Must have been the clash of cultures in my gullet after going for sushi and sake with the gang, and then heading across the street to the Mexican place for salsa and Tecate.

Oy.

Old Letters

I read a really sweet news story yesterday about a soldier’s final letter. It seems that some fellow in Kansas bought an old stack of newspapers from 1915 at a yard sale. Tucked inside one of the newspapers was an unopened letter with a military postmarking dated March 1944.

The man felt a strong pull to find its rightful addressee and thus placed an ad and picture of the letter in the paper, hoping to find remaining members of the family or someone who knew their whereabouts.

Word of mouth reached the letter’s author’s sister and she was thrilled to claim it. Her brother was an infantry soldier stationed in Italy during World War II ~ he had written a thank you letter for a watch, candies and nuts sent for his birthday. He had been killed in action in May 1944. This letter had been the last he’d sent home, and it finally arrived 60-some years later.

Isn’t that remarkable? I mean, can you imagine how precious it would be to receive such a letter from a loved one who’d been dead for nearly a lifetime? It would be as if his spirit was reaching through the veils of the dimensions to become a material part of your life again. Whispers of their soul’s presence captured with pen and parchment. Written so many years ago, the words “I love you” still remaining, fresh and crisp as if the ink had just dried.

In a similar experience (much downscaled), I unearthed an old journal not long ago, and while flipping through the dog-eared book ran across a letter tucked between the pages. It was a letter from J, written 15 years ago, almost to the day. I read through the letter, holding the pages as gingerly as if they’d disintegrate in my hands, though the paper didn’t seem brittle or ancient. The writing was mid-conversation as our letters always were – phone calls in long-hand, we’d call them – and I reflected bittersweetly as I strained to recall the situations and cast of characters. Many I remembered but many others had faded from our recent lives and memories. I was still with S, she was with C. R was just a baby. Her health issues were retrospectively minor compared to what she’d struggle and suffer with in the later years. She was getting ready to go back to school for the psych degree she ultimately earned. She asked about the classes I’d be taking in my upcoming final semester in college. She commented on two poems I’d written and apparently sent to her. One I remember. The other I do not.

Details have a disturbingly stealthy way of fading on you.

Such an unexpected glimpse back, finding this old letter, and it reminded me of how though we lived states away, how interwoven our friendship managed to become. It was always like that with us.

It was sixteen weeks ago today that she died. I'll never stop missing her.

When we moved last summer, I threw out a bunch of old letters and stuff, many from J. Had I known how precious they’d be a mere year later, I’d have kept them all.

Between you and me ...

A guy I work with is a recovering alcoholic. He’s been sober now for like, 9 years. And between you and me I just cringe whenever the conversation starts veering that way.

I’m terrible, right? Well, let me explain. First of all, he’s the same age as me. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, just maybe because he loves to seem like the experienced old timer about things. Next, he talks about his drinking days like he’s immensely proud of them and that we should be in awe of his capacities.

“I used to come home from work and grab two beers. I’d have the first one drank before the second one would even start to sweat.”

Okay … So?

Finally, I’m not convinced he indeed was/is an alcoholic. Just because you drink a ton of beer for a period in your life doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an alcoholic, it just means you’re a binge drinker. And this big display he puts on about needing to stay away from any situation where alcohol is accessible seems just a tad overdone and a little self-gratifying.

Between you and me, I bet I have consumed more alcohol than he has.

I drank a lot when I was younger. Booze and pot were the hip drugs to do when I was in high school – I never much liked pot so I just drank. I drank whenever I could, and usually a lot. I’m not bragging, I’m just saying. College is, well – you know – college. What happens in the bars stays in the bars ;). Then in my 20’s my friends and I went out every night. EVERY night. We laughed, danced, and invariably got snot-slinging drunk and crawled home some way, some how. And being that I don’t like the world’s #1 and #2 selling beers, not to mention am always looking for the shortest route between point A & B, I drank liquor.

I drank the most around the time the Hub and I first met. We killed a liter or two of Canadian Mist every couple days. That’s a lot of booze.

I don’t drink anymore – well, not much anyway, just now and then. But it’s not due to hitting rock bottom or anything – I just grew out of that phase in my life. When I quit smoking, man that was a job. VERY hard habit to break. But booze was just take it or leave it.

So why did my hard stuff-drinkin’ butt just walk away while AA-Boy wrestled so hard with … (crinkling eyebrows in disbelief) … beer?

Then I think, I’m a real piece of poop. How do I know what burdens my friend bears? To what addictions he’s more susceptible than I? Why should I assume what is easy for me is easy for everyone?

I don’t and I shouldn’t.

But between you and me, it still bugs me. Like he’s grandstanding or something.

What’s up with that?

I'm sure a bunch of people are going to beat me up now, but I'm just saying ...