On Being a Dire Warning

I could die in my sleep tonight you know. People do.

Perhaps they've an undiagnosed heart condition or throw a pulmonary embolis, who knows? But I wonder, perhaps, if they just stopped wanting. Or, more likely, have tired of wanting. Wanting things they cannot have, love, friendship, acceptance, kindness. To mean something to someone who means something to them.

To matter.

Matter. Matter is anything that occupies space and has mass. And that's the crux of it, really. We want to occupy space and have mass. To have a place. A space. To be missed when we're gone. To be welcomed home. To be important. To be that thing that has space and occupies mass and without which someone cannot do.

I am not matter. I am ethereal. A mirage. I mean nothing. I am Nothing. And I am tired of wanting, and tired of pretending, and tired of being tired.

I probably won't die in my sleep tonight. I haven't looked it up but I am sure the odds are fantastically, depressingly against. Usually, this would be a comforting thing. Usually.

Not tonight. Tonight, I hurt and I want to be done hurting. I want it done, this life, and I no longer trust God to take it from me. Apparently, He doesn't answer that variety of prayer. Or perhaps only for the deserving. Those who have been Something.

Two things keep me here, tethered precariously to this life, hope, a fickle thing that comes and goes and for long streteches fails to come at all, and Bailey. Bailey who has learned more about life and how to live it in his 15 short years than I have in 42 and am likely to in 42000.

"If you can't set a good example, be a dire warning." And that is my Something. I am what not to do, what not to wear, what not to eat, how not to love. I am his dire warning.

The Hokey Pokey

It really is what it's all about, you know? When you die and meet God, He's going to ask you, "Did you put your right foot in?"

Did you live you life, really LIVE it, or did you sit on the sidelines and watch it slip by?

The Hokey Pokey is a one of the great metaphors of our time, an instruction manual on living. Start with just a little bit, put your right foot in, test the waters. What do you think? Does it interest you? Maybe put your left foot in. Still good?

At some point, you put your whole self in. Or not. Maybe it's not the right thing for you, the right career, the right relationship, the right life. But how will you know if you never put your whole self in?

Life is risk. We engage in constant and sometimes subconscious risk/benefit ratio calculations and we strive to minimize those risks. It's why cars have seat belts, why there's an FDIC, why we buy sunscreen.

But risk is unavoidable. You can hide inside your bedroom in the darkness and try to escape it. But when the plane crashes into your house, you're going to wish you went out and enjoyed yourself instead.

The Hokey Pokey tells us to take it slow, a little bit at a time, just give it a try. When you find the thing you like, then, by all means, take the risk and committ. You'll find the reward was worth the gamble.

And, you'll have a great way to answer God when you get to heaven. Yes, Lord, I did put my whole self in.

Huh...

Well, it's been awhile, hasn't it?

I have jury duty today. I have to say, I'm already tired of this damn courthouse. I was just here for the first of what looks like many court appearances regarding the dissolution of my marriage.

I just want to be done with it all.

I've never been called for jury duty before and the walk from the juror parking lot to the building seemed impossibly long. And there were stairs, of course. My knees have been better since I've lost some weight but stress and no sleep are taking it's toll today. It looks like rain too, which is never good for knee pain. The bottom line: ouch.

They are checking us in now. I don't know exactly how I feel about this. On the one hand, it would be very interesting to sit on a jury. On the other hand, I have so many things I could and should be doing. Work included.

I did bring some work and I am sure I'll actually get around to doing some of it eventually.

Maybe.

Right now I'm reading "Hate Mail from Cheerleaders" by Rick Reilly. Great book. Funny and poignant and thoughtful. Reminds you what's good in your life.

And I'm thinking. I have more to say. Stay tuned.

I'm Ready for My Close-Up

It's a beautiful day in DC. The breeze smells of rain though there's not a cloud in the perfect blue sky. The Newseum gave away balloons, apparently, that said "Free Speech Rocks." I saw some that ran away from their owners and floated free, ever-skyward, and I wondered where they might finally end up. I had the windows rolled down and the radio blaring. The breeze kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear like a lover. It turned the radio off after a time, to listen to the sounds of the city, fractured laughter, a virtuoso drum solo played on overturned plastic garbage cans and paint buckets, admonishments and instructions from parents to children, snippets from someone else's radio, promiscuous horns, assorted languages.

It's the kind of day that makes you feel everything is right in the world, even though you know it's not, one that gives you a glimpse into an urban Eden, though thankfully the tourists are clothed.

I got to thinking about free speech as I drove by the White House, and the Newseum is right, it does rock. I can have a bumper sticker that says pro-life, pro-choice, Obama, NObama, Give Blood. One that's pro-soldier or anti-war. A fish for God, one with feet for Darwin, a shark because it just plain looks cool. I believe the particular opinion is less important than the right to state it.

And then I got to thinking about bumper stickers and what people believe.

I believe that issues like abortion cannot be condensed into bumper stickers, but if a sticker starts a conversation, then that's a good start. I believe in God, and evolution, and karma, all at the same time because I don't believe these are concepts that are mutually exclusive. I believe in love, but that it doesn't conquer all. I believe a fight now and again clears the air and that it's easier to steer when there's no fog. I believe a big hurt now and then reminds you of how important it is to pay attention to little things. I believe that flowers have magical powers and that therefore spring is a sacred season. I believe life is precious and ends long before most people have figured out how to live it. I believe there are things we are not meant to understand and if you don't know which things I am talking about, watch the eleven o'clock news. I believe there's a good kind of crazy.

Most importantly, I believe a little goes a long way, unless you're buying gasoline. A little smile, a little love, a little hope, a little music. A little sunlight and a little laughter. A little of you, a little of me, and a little of we. With that and a few good bumper stickers, we can change the world.

The Mermaid's Child

I've always been a mermaid, born of the water, yet tied to the earth. I can passably mingle in any crowd, but there's scarcely anywhere I feel completely comfortable.

As an adult, I've (mostly) come to terms with this, even getting a mermaid tattoo a few years ago in an effort to embrace this facet of me. I've come to see it as a strength, this ability to adapt to a variety of situations, to befriend an assortment of interesting personalities, but this was not always so.

It's difficult growing up as the weird kid, looking in on a life you think you'd like to have but can't. I wanted those girls to like me, wanted to be one of them, wanted for just one day to be the center of attention in a positive way. It was not to be.

I never played sports in a school where girls' soccer was queen. I never cared for it and, because of an unlikely congenital knee defect, running was physically painful. I was a tomboy, theoretically a positive in a sport-centric culture. However, I also loved school, and spent my recesses and gym classes grading papers. Note: "Teacher's pet" is NOT a compliment.

They teased me mercilessly, calling me all manner of horrible names I cannot bear to recount. I was a sensitive child and they knew exactly how to provoke tears. I was beaten up once, but I wouldn't fight back, and that, at least, seemed to prevent routine physical harassment, having successfully taken the entertainment out of that pursuit.

I have carried these scars into adulthood.

My child is very much like me. He gets along best with adults, who appreciate and are not intimidated by his intelligence, and small children, who delight in his silliness. His peers, however, are quite another matter indeed. He is at the same time too sophisticated and too juvenile to relate. He is socially awkward, fearful and confused about how to approach the building of a friendship. He, too, is a mermaid, grasping at adulthood yet bound to childhood. It is the nature of his chronological age and of his pedigree. As my boyfriend says, "You can see where he gets it from."

I have, over the years, wondered why I had to endure the insults hurled at me, the indignation, and especially the isolation of being extraneous. My son is experiencing a childhood something like mine, teased and forsaken. He feels alienated, and he can't understand why. He longs to be a part, instead of apart.

Now I understand that every pockmark of my past was in fact essential preparation to guide this child through his own darkness and into the light, where he can bloom.

I hope to spend these scabs well.

Bats in the Belfry

Strange things happen to me. I'm a weirdness magnet. I often say that if a frozen chicken were to fall out of a cloudless summer sky, it would land at my feet. I'm not complaining, really, I just spend a significant amount of time wondering what the hell that was all about.

So I came home late the other day and found a bat in the house. See? Strange. And it's not the first time either. Stranger still. Has this ever happened to you? I didn't think so.

The bat was hanging upside down on the intake grate for the air conditioner above the basement door. I woke Tremayne to help me free the bat. He's not acclimated to this weirdness magnet thing quite yet I don't think. He still looks at me funny when I say things like, "Babe, would you get up and help me get this bat out of the house?"

I climbed up on a step stool with a leather glove on my hand and tried to coax him into my hand while Tre stood on the landing of the stairs to discourage him from heading that way. The bat backed up and opened his little mouth as wide as possible to hiss at me, exposing tiny, razor-sharp teeth. Very fierce for a kiwi in a jacket and I told him as much.

He left the relative safety of his perch and flew around the house for a bit, buzzing me like a jet in Top Gun. I think this is the coolest thing ever. If you could have seen me then, you would have witnessed an expression of childlike wonder I'm sure. It's amazing to me how they fly, the silence of it, their wings only flapping sporadically and sounding of a silk curtain fluttering in a light breeze. They seem to hang in the air, like a slowly falling leaf on an autumn afternoon. Finally, but too soon for me, he found the open French doors to the deck and flew into the darkness.

It's not such a bad deal to be a weirdness magnet when cool stuff happens.

Charity

I saw a man on the side of the road today, dressed in dark blue coveralls unzipped to the waist, maybe two sizes too baggy, and a torn, grungy undershirt, formerly known as white. He had a crutch under one arm, his right foot turned out from his leg so that he walked on his ankle. He had steri-strips on his head, the thin white bandages that pull your skin together when you almost need stitches, and his head had been shaved haphazardly, leaving little tufts of blond hair at odd places and a square swath of the stuff in the back, like a mullet cut by a deranged stylist.

I had seen him before, but never like this. With the crutch, sure, and needing new shoes, but never with his foot turned out like that. Never in such bad shape.

He had a cup, as usual, fished from the garbage I'd guess, which he held out in the hopes of a donation. I gave him one, two dollars, not nearly enough to do any bit of good. He said he'd had a terrible night and had to go to the hospital.

I can't help thinking, how does this guy get up in the morning? How does he face his day, gear up for standing on a street corner, hoping for a handout?

And how is it that someone who has most of everything, a job, a home, people who care enough about him that he'll never have to stand on a street corner and beg, how is it that someone like that can't bring himself to face another day?

Sean

I am sitting in the waiting area of the mechanic's, thinking of Sean. Sean and his damn VW bug with the rear-mounted, air-cooled engine that no one has any right to attempt to drive in the Phoenix heat. I can still hear my dad cursing that car which seemed perennially scattered in his father's driveway.

Sean, I think, looked up to my father the same way I did, saw his busted knuckles as a badge of honor, the result of a victorious tussle with a carburetor, alternator, or some other mysterious and probably dirty car part ending in -ator. I was a little jealous of Sean, consulting with my dad, the sage of all things mechanical, working side by side, bonding with him in a way I never could, bleeding and cussing and finally, triumphantly, making the damn thing WORK!

From the day my dad taught me how to clean a carburetor, (I think I was five), I have been hooked on muscle cars and gearheads, like my dad. He smelled of grease and gas and WD-40, black grime in the whorls of his fingertips, burns and divots on his stubby plump fingers. When he'd clean up, he'd carefully scrub his hands to the elbows like a surgeon, studiously comb his hair into place after a shower, emerging smelling of Brute and hairspray. Sean was a young, blonde version of him with tousled hair, a smear of grease on his forearm, but most importantly fluent in the language of car.

And, oh, what a crush I had on him. My ears pricked up like a bird dog's every time my dad mentioned his name. Usually "Sean" and "that damn car" appeared in the same sentence. I never understood about that car anyway. It seemed so un-Sean-like, seemed like he needed something more muscular, like a Nova or a Chevelle. I'd say something more reliable, but the bug very reliably sat.

And now Sean sits, or lies more specifically, perhaps yet in a hospital bed, waiting for a surgeon to harvest his organs, much like he would have pulled a part from a dead car in a junkyard to give life to another. More likely this has already occurred and he is lying in the morgue while someone else is living for him, because of him, a life he no longer wanted.

Hard to say why, but I think he came upon a problem he didn't know how to fix. I think he should have called another mechanic.