What I’ve Been Doing Instead of Blogging June 27, 2008

1) Working
2) Running around changing my name
3) Honeymooning

Just because my darling husband and I got married Saturday did not mean that the bosses did not expect me back at work on Monday. And Mondays suck - at any job there is. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are slightly better but nevertheless, it’s been a little daunting to switch mental gears from ooey gooey and back again to go to work.

And in the mornings before I go to work, I have been absorbed in the great adventure that is called Changing My Name.

Actually, the name was legally changed in ten minutes on Saturday of course - but no one knows that until you take the certified copy of the marriage certificate here, there and everywhere and have it changed on things like your driver’s license. Then when you get it changed on your driver’s license, you have to have it changed on other things like your checks, your debit card, and - omigod I almost forgot!! - my nursing license.

Oh. And my Social Security card. I might not be going to New York, but I absolutely had a multicultural experience at the Social Security office.

And honeymooning. Ahhhhhhh yes.

Since, as mentioned previously, we have no paid time off until September and we both went right back to work, our method of coping is to treat any day off we have together as a day of our honeymoon.

As in yesterday.

So we slept in together. And then we did a lot of running around to various agencies and places, but then we treated ourselves to lunch at Applebee’s. Which I love, because they have a way of serving things cooked in a way which I never would have thought of. I had a chicken sandwich with cheese AND Ranch AND some spicy something and thought - wow - this is awesome. I never would have thought to put all these different flavors together.

And we were holding hands and chatting and apparently glowing enough at each other at the table that an older woman stopped by our table and said “Keep that up! I’ve been married 42 years and that’s the secret!”

Insert huge grin plastered all over both our faces.

Then we went to the casino, which always seems very decadent in the middle of the day. Then we drove around looking at the way people have landscaped their yards, which is a thing for me.

And at night we came home and built a fire in the fire ring and just sat out there, with my head on his shoulder.

Sigh.

Tuesday was one month since the tornado hit Parkersburg. A whole month - it’s hard to believe.

And as I’ve said before so many times, everything has changed.

Everything.

It’s like decades of anger and bitterness and defensiveness I didn’t even realize was there - or at least to that extent - swirled away in the debris.

What’s left is just bliss.

I haven’t been keeping up on any blogs but one.

But it’s been a week of heaven.

The Most Wonderful Weekend Ever June 23, 2008

OK that last picture makes me laugh. I don’t know what got into me and no - no - no, Britt. Put down the knife or whatever. I’m very obviously not pregnant.

But I am - I remain - funny as hell.

I had the flu on Thursday. I haven’t had the flu since I was pregnant with Britt - and that was like, wow, 29 years ago. The sit-on-the-toilet-with-the-garbage-can-in-your-hands kind of flu. I thought I was going to die. I prayed I would die.

And I was all better for my birthday. And I got the three best birthday presents ever.

And then Saturday. I don’t have the words. It was sweet and informal and very very us.

And Saturday night about 65 friends and neighbors showed up and we grilled and sat around the fire ring on the patio and played with babies and told more funny stories. It was relaxing and fun and we both felt so freaking grateful we could hardly express it.

On Sunday we got up, cleaned up the backyard, hauled tables and chairs back to the fire station where we had borrowed them, and went golfing.

I really suck at golfing. I particularly suck at chipping, or pitching, or whatever they call it. To make a long story short I tried to chip and actually got under it for once - and damn near knocked out my new husband’s - uh - family jewels.

Hehehehehehehehehehehe

And then we went for what I was envisioning as a romantic stroll around Pine Lake. Except that he is 6′4″ - almost a full foot taller than me - and would have to be almost comatose to be strolling at my pace.

So we set off on this enduance hike, went further on this trail than I had ever gone, and then, seeing my distress, uttered those fateful words that should make every woman weep…

“Look, honey. I’m pretty sure that’s a short cut.”

Again. Long story short. We made it back to our cars - some people even offered to give us a ride back on their golf cart - yeah, we wandered onto another golf course in our adventure.

And it was the best best best best weekend ever.

Going back to work today was like when I lived in Mexico as a teenager and had to come back to the United States. I was glad to be home, but it felt like another planet.

No woman on earth is more fortunate than me.

What’s Left June 16, 2008

About a week and a half ago I ran into Chris, who is the 29 year old Chief of Police in Parkersburg. I’ve known him since he was very young, as he was the best friend of my daughter’s first serious boyfriend. He also, after he married, bought the little house next to mine, and his first child was born there to him and his high school sweetheart-wife.

Chris has a job I wouldn’t want anyway, as a local boy turned police chief in a small town where he will be known for decades, still, as a wet-behind-the-ears-gung-ho kid.

But on May 25, when the tornado struck, his job became a burden I couldn’t imagine bearing. I couldn’t do it. And throughout everything, I would catch a glimpse of him in the Command Room at all hours of the day and night, in full uniform, conferring with people from a million different agencies.

In fact, now that I think about it, in the hour after the tornado struck, I remember seeing him at Triage, where I was, helping to carry his neighbors and relatives (he has a million relatives) up to the sidewalk to be laid down and assessed and treated and sent on.

Anyway, as I said, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him until about a week and a half later, when there happened to be a quiet half-moment at Incident Command, and I walked up and hugged him. He’ll always be another son-figure to me.

We talked a little bit about how he was holding up, how his pregnant wife and three children were holding up. Chris is a young man of amazing faith. Some of which he talked about with me.

And I told him that from the first coherent moments, the thought kept coming to me that, when everything else has passed away, these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. And how we had all seen that lived out in the past ten days.

His rubbed his hand over his tired face and put his arm around me and said to me quietly, “I’m going to have to steal that one.” We both laughed.

So I’ve been thinking about that.

Faith, I’ve heard tell, is about accepting. It’s in the present. It’s when the babies, amidst everything, are happy and laughing and cooing as long as someone is holding them and cooing at them and playing with them. It’s a feeling that somehow, though the surroundings are unfamiliar, everything’s OK. Under control. As it should be - or soon to be. Faith is what enables our muscles to un-clench. It lets us sleep at night.

Hope, then, is in the future, it’s expectant. That things will get better - that they can’t stay bad forever. It enables us to see crocuses in the snow, the flower in the crack of the sidewalk, and envision things as greener, and safer, and happy again.

And love.

Oh, Lord. Love.

Sorry, kids, it’s not to be found in a song. Or even in a movie.

In fact, it’s so damn over used and bastardized, I prefer the word “compassion” to love.

It’s acknowledging a connection between the most disparate people. It’s caring about strangers, caring enough to put yourself out. It’s when things like being right, and being heard, and being first matter less than understanding, hearing, and sharing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how little love you see in some places, and how much I am privileged to see where I work. I’ve really learned a lot there, and I’m so grateful for that.

I have felt overwhelmed by the sadness of our own tornados, and then the nearby flooding, and the knowledge that it seems to be going on everywhere. Tragedy, unfairness, and sadness, I mean.

And I can’t function that way.

But neither can I close myself off and refuse to care about anyone to save myself.

Thinking about these three things has helped me regain some balance. They remain, as they always have. As they always will.

I believe that there is no “them” - only an “us”. That anything that angers me in someone else, I can find only too readily, if I’m honest, in myself. I believe the greatest contribution I can possibly make in this world is to live compassionately as much as I can.

Including being compassionate with myself.

I read something once that said the most important person in your life is the person in front of you at any given moment. The most important thing yu could do with your life is to attend to the task at hand right now. And the most important time in your life is right now.

I’ve lived far too much life engrossed in navel gazing - that is, the obsessive and constant analysis of my own life, my own feelings, my own whatever. Me, me, me, me, me.

I am suddenly far more interested in the people around me.

The Hardest Thing June 13, 2008

This is a very hard thing for me to write. One I’ve thought a lot about in the last three weeks. One I’ve talked about with my fiance and a little bit with Britt but not with anyone else.

Because you’ll see me in a very unflattering light.

Like being in my underwear in one of those dressing rooms with awful flourescent lighting. With socks on. And believe me, no one wants to be seen that way.

But I have to. I owe it to myself. And to my fiance. And to my kids.

Yesterday, a lovely little friend dared to ask the question that’s been on a lot of people’s minds who know me - who know that I am now planning a wedding with a man I left less than three months ago.

Specifically - WTF?!?!?!?

And I fobbed her off as I have most people by saying, honestly, all I can tell you is that I’ve done a lot of soul searching, I’m not crazy, thank you very much for caring about me but I really do know what I’m doing.

And then Britt and I were talking on her way home from work about another situation, and she said the sentence, referring to someone else, “You dragged us along with what you were doing, and then you change your mind and you want us to be happy for you and support you, and you’re damn right we’re hurt. We’re confused.” And then, she said, “I don’t feel that way with you because, to be honest with you, I’m used to it with you.”

That’s it right there, ladies and gentlemen. That right there is the crux of the matter.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a drama queen extraordinaire. No. Really. Like no one you’ve ever met.

Not on purpose. I really do feel everything a hundred times more intensely than a normal person does I think. When I’m happy, I am blissfully happy. When I’m pissed, I have been pissed all my ife and this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone and by God someone has to pay.

But because I’m eloquent and also likeable, I have dragged people along in my ups and downs all my life. Especially my kids. You care. They care. And you root for me, and you support me, and you pray for me and send me hugs.

And then I go and switch currents on you - hell, I switch whole oceans. And you have every right to say…

What. The. Hell??????

I’ve done it all my life. Recently a co-worker with whom I’d been butting heads forever, in a tiff, said to me, “I’m not like you - it doesn’t have to be all drama.” I almost jumped across the desk and strangled her. Except I’m too old and immobile to jump across anything.

In my relationship with my fiance, I’ve been all about drama. In fairness to myself, he’s a pretty big drama king himself (he refuses to call himself any kind of queen - heh) but I will only talk about my side of the street here.

When we got together almost two years ago, I was so screwed up I had no business being with anyone. Those two months I spent living in my “tipi” were the best time I’ve ever spent in my life as far as getting my head untangled.

During the year and a half we were together, I had no idea who I was pissed off at - but I was pissed off all the time.

Not only that but I was trying to keep up a persona that, looking back, I have no idea who she was. Or who she was for.

When I tell you that everything changed for me standing there on that devastated street in Parkersburg the night of the tornado, what I didn’t tell you was that what I saw, very clearly, was my own penchant for drama.

My own selfishness. My own arrogance. My own self absorption.

Hell, even this whole blogging thing, for me, is an excercise, most of the time, in self absorption. Not for everyone - I’m not saying that. But for me, yes.

Remember the infamous post I wrote? Do you want to know why I chose that headline? Honestly? Because I knew it would attract readers. Jesus H. Christ. I’m a salesperson, if not in my current job, then at least by nature. I know what attracts attention.

Don’t get me wrong. All of the feelings have been real, all along. It’s been a mish mash. And yes, as I said, getting away, for both of us, was exactly what we both needed. We both were acting like freaking forty something morons.

And I will never ever ever in a million years forget what it felt like on that street that night.

When I was telling him I was sorry, I meant that I was sorry for my freaking bratty, blind, self obsession. I was sorry to him, to my kids, to people who suffer a hell of a lot more than I do, and to the people who love me who I’ve “dragged along” on all my adventures, leaving them worn out and me ready for another “adventure”.

I’m regretful. And remorseful. And ashamed and embarrassed.

And I’m realistic.

I know that I didn’t turn overnight into Mother Theresa, although I wish I could - minus the sari. I saw an interview once with a young woman who had gone and spent some time with Mother Theresa in Calcutta, and she said that the most remarkable thing about the woman was that whoever she was with at the time held her full attention. All of her focus and regard.

How many of us do that?

I want to be a kinder person. One who takes herself a little less seriously.

I want to give joy instead of demanding it and whining about it all the freaking time.

Most of all, I want to be a good wife to a very good man. One I am, honestly, so in love with I can’t find the words. Once I stopped worshipping myself that night, I was able to fully feel what I had been rebelling against for a long time.

The man makes my heart sing. And feel safe. He’s the funniest person I know outside of my own family - what? C’mon. We’re funny people! He’s also the most honorable and ethical. And talented. And he “gets” me. And he “gets” what I’ve been feeling since then - cuz he’s been feeling much of the same.

I want to be a good mom to my grown kids and, more importantly, a good nanna to my grandkids.

So, um, there. Now you know. I sorta suck. Oh, I have awesome things about me but in this particular regard, I suck a lot.

And I don’t want to anymore.

When I tell you that I have felt ambivalent about everything all my life, and that now, today, I feel 1000% sure about my choices, believe me when I say that I mean that.

I’m an ass. He’s an ass. But he’s my ass, and I’m his.

And I’m grateful as hell - as hell, I tell you - to be marrying him next Saturday.

Whaddya Know? Does This Make It A “Destination Wedding”? June 12, 2008

Ahhhhh. What little girl hasn’t dreamed of a “destination wedding”? Somewhere ocean side or lakeside - sun setting dramatically on the water, blah blah blah.

Besides me, I mean. I think I was the only little girl who never once planned her wedding as a little kid. I was going to be a world class war correspondent capturing the horrors of war and its effects on women and children so brilliantly that the world would wake up and go “Whoaaaaa - we have to stop this.”

Or a circus clown.

But I digress. (And I wasn’t kidding. About either.)

So we were going to get married on July 12, because that was going to be our first day off together. We, of the schedules-written-in-stone-that-can’t-be-changed.

And then his boss changed his schedule. Out of the blue.

My response. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

No. Apparently he wasn’t.

So after some schedule swapping around, our first day off together is now going to be Saturday, June 21. So my darling accosted his friend-who-happens-to-be-a-judge at home grilling in his backyard, and the date is set. 10 am on our deck that morning with just our kids present - minus that little Florida one - er - what’s her name? heh

And grilling out in our backyard that evening with whoever shows up.

Except that the weather does not stop here!

Two and a half inches of rain again last night. Darling is out right now doing traffic for what he refers to as “the city boys” who are pumping water on Main Street. Basements are flooding everywhere, and this ain’t shit.

Yesterday he went to a fire (he’s also a fireman) started by a sump pump that self immolated in the basement of an accounting office.

The entire freaking state has become lakeside property. My little pharamcy delivery guy came in last night, white faced from trying to reach us. His dad’s house is gone. Foundation crumbled, windows blown out.

They have taken, I hear, to preemptively flooding some basements all the way up to the top of the foundation in the path of the flood waters because at least that will keep the water pressure - uh - the same? So it doesn’t rush through and crumble the foundations with it.

Because unlike tornado damage, which is covered by insurance, flood damage is not.

Which means everything you see on TV washing away, and everything you don’t - furnaces dead, water heaters, cracked foundations, blown out windows, everything ruined - well, kids, that’s just tough cookies. Act of God and all that.

Another goddamn tornado hit a Boy Scout camp last night in western Iowa, killing four teenage boys and wounding 30-40 more that we’ve heard about now.

And somewhere around midnight the page went out and Darling (see how stringently I’m avoiding the term “my man”? Hmmm?) hopped up, jumped into his clothes and headed out the door to do “spotting”. This time, with me on his heels.

“What are you doing?” he says to me.

“I’m going with you.” He gives me a strange look and I say, “I’m never going through another two hours searching for you like I did in Parkersburg.”

So I sat in the front of that fire truck with two fireman, scanning the horizon, trying to see funnel clouds whenever lightning lit the sky enough to see something through the rain. My teeth clenched. Silent as a stone. When I get nervous, I chatter. When I get really scared, I clam up.

“Hey honey,” he says to me, trying to lighten the mood. “You can talk. you know.”

I look sideways at him and say, “Remember you said that.”

hahahahahahahahahahaha

Seriously. Is God mad at us all?

The Antidote June 11, 2008

I’ve been going through something lately.

The tornado and its aftermath that I can’t escape - the flooding two weeks later…

I don’t know if it’s given me a heightened sensitivity to tragedy and pain or what.

But I’ve just been bone crushingly…not sad. Just very very aware of all the pain and shit around us.

There was a guy on Oprah yesterday who’s dying of cancer. And there was a guy in his late 40’s that our ambulance crew responded for - massive heart attack.

I think it’s stuff that’s always around us, but ever since the tornado it seems to me that that’s all I see and hear.

It makes me feel helpless and vulnerable and almost hopeless.

I was talking to Britt about it this morning, telling her I needed to find some balance between being open to other people’s pain and empathetic - and letting it crush me.

Wondering how to get back to that sunny optimism I usually feel.

I want to keep the gratitude and humility, without the heavy weight of despair on my shoulders.

Then this morning my fiance and I went flower shopping.

See, flowers and gardening have always been one of my things, and last summer our yard was downright lush with pots and plots and stuff.

This year of course, as I mentioned before, it’s been bare. Not only did I not live here for two months in the spring, but since then, there’s been no time for such frivolity.

Ah, but this morning I came home with two delicious hanging baskets spilling over with some kind of gardenias. And wave petunias - yes, wave petunias! in two big pots that I sat in the cormers of the patio around our fire ring.

A shepherd’s hook and a hanging pot of New Guinea impatiens with their dark waxy leaves and their neon bright flowers. Hard to kill those babies.

And several assorted little bedding plants - regular petunias, lobelia, sweet potato vines and impudent pansies.

And when I came home and set those pots out and around, I was cheered.

And I realized that the antidote is HOME. As they say on my favorite TV channel, HGTV, Start At Home.

Home is where I can feel safe and nurtured and relaxed. Where I do the little caring rituals that I’ve always done, cooking and doing laundry. Where everything is familiar and cozy. Where I can dream - and daydream.

Yes, “home”, as in a building and its possessions can all disappear in the blink of an eye.

But as of right now, I have my family. My fiance. My puppies. And my loving them and caring for them and laughing with them doesn’t dishonor anyone else’s pain and tragedy. In fact, I think it honors it.

It embodies hope.

At least it makes me feel more balanced.

And boy you should see my pretty flowers!

Some Things Are Just Too Big June 6, 2008

It would be nice, I suppose, to have a blog about low carb living or style things. Ha. Like I could do either. But when all I write about is the vagaries of my life, there are times when things are just too big to write about.

So I haven’t. Written, I mean. As you can tell.

I have been busy, that’s true. Either working extra hours at work, or working relief stuff in Parkersburg, which thankfully now is slowing down as progress is being made and the major relief stuff is gearing down as people are able to do a little more for themselves.

Like feed themselves.

As usual, my baby and I were discussing this this morning, and I hung up the phone with her in tears at the profound relief it was to be able to talk about this with someone who understands.

The past two months have been such an introspective and reflective time for me anyway. Probably the best time of my life in terms of honest self evaluation.

And then the tornado experience on top of it - I have been flooded with - gosh, I don’t even know how to tell you.

New insights not polite enough to be kind. Glaring revelations - mostly about myself. No, that’s not true. ABout everything.

I have had a recurring mental visual image of myself standing naked in the midst of unimaginable rubble (yuck - thank God it was only a mental image!). But I still see it - and me - with so much stripped away.

Anger. Self righteousness. So much false “certainty” and at the same time so much uncertainty.

I’ve said this several times over the last two weeks but I feel a clarity and a certainty and at the same time a strength in myself and a vulnerability that I’ve never felt in my entire life.

I could tell you how dumb and sad it was for my man and I to ever have gotten involved with each other two years ago when we did - how pathetically wounded we were at the time, and clinging to those wounds, lingering over them, chewing on them. And grasping at each other, trying to shove each other into the hole that had been left there by previous relationships. Taking out our anger on each other, and our suspicions and our raging, unrelenting pain.

We treated each other like shit and had no idea why.

No - actually, we both kind of knew what we were doing. We were just powerless to stop.

Over the past two months, we talked. And we actually talked more honestly than we had in a long time. But we kept banging into the same stuff.

If you haven’t lived through a life changing experience, you will be bored of hearing about this. And although you will understand my words, they won’t have the same gut meaning that they do for me.

But if you have, you will know that there can come a moment in life when absolutely everything changes.

It’s like. Shit. What is it like.

Like growing new eyes.

I have gone back to abusers in my life and justified it to myself and everyone around me, and I know what that’s like.

I have deluded myself and everyone around me into believing anything I want so badly to believe.

This is different.

What my beloved and I did to each other in our relationship was sad and lonely and hurting. In fact, I know for my own part, a good 50% of me was never present. It was back there, still chewing on the corpse and mourning and howling and pissed off.

And how we both look at each other now is totally and completely different. And there’s no way for me to explain that.

It’s just too big.

But I can tell you this.

We picked up our marriage license yesterday. We picked up our wedding rings the day before. And we’re getting married at 10 am on our deck on Saturday July 12. Because that’s the first day off we have together.

Think about that. We won’t have a day off together for 36 days - and then only because I did some begging and stuff to get my weekends switched.

I am more fortunate - on every hand - than I can ever express to you. My life is not without its problems, like anyone else’s.

But kids, don’t kid yourself. We are all in the middle of one shit storm or another. If you look around, there are some real tragedies around you all the time, and real pain.

And yet, here I stand. Naked and stripped down in the rubble. I am so freaking fortunate to still be standing. To have a very kind and honorable man standing beside me. To have a kid who embodies loyalty and heart to understand me when some things are too big to say.

To have people who care about me and my family.

I really do mean this - thank you so so so so much.

I’m Sorry June 2, 2008

…but I just don’t know what to say.

The ability of word craftsmanship has completely left me, at least for the moment.

Honestly, no one can say it better than my daughter has.

I have never seen a more beautiful and precious face than hers - tear stained, exhausted, strained, her little chin stuck out in determination and frustration.

Boys from the high school football team dug graves by hand with shovels for the first two residents of the town - a husband and wife - to be buried. That sticks in my head. Who ever thinks their teenage kid will be called upon to dig a grave?

Britt’s right. The spirit rises. And there is laughter amidst the tears. On Saturday the Iowa State football team was in town working on a site - clearing away the rubble. They asked a girl to take their photo together - not knowing it was our own rabid University of Iowa fan Molly, who said, “OK everybody, everybody say…HAWKEYES!” Hehehehehehe

My friend Betty came back in to work. I said, “Why are you using that walkie talkie, I thought you had your own? Where’s yours?”

With a perfectly straight face she looks at me and says “I don’t know. Wisconsin maybe?”

Life is so so good. So precious.

And a good huge percentage of the bullshit around which I have whirled most of my adult life is nothing but crap.

I’m talking about the shit in my head. The mental gymnastics.

I’ve been seeking some Zen kind of “meaning of life”? I found it. In the rubble, racing around town on a Gator trying to get to people who are getting hurt afterwards, trying to clean up.

In the face of my child, and her husband. And my neighbors.

The meaning of life is to live. To get up every day and attend to the task at hand - and in the meantime to encourage the person God puts in front of you at that time.

To hug the babies, because I’ve seen that a baby can lose their whole house, and they could care less, as long as someone still picks them up and plays with them and gives them their full attention.

I haven’t slept in my proud little tipi since the tornado. Not at all because I’m afraid to, but because I’m afraid to spend one unnecessary minute away from the man I ran away from two months ago.

I can’t imagine what I’ll write about in the future. Although I know that I will. I write as I breathe, like Britt does, like Selma does. Like so many of you do.

Time to go to work. Because that’s what I do. And darlings, that is so much more than enough for me.

I’m Fine May 28, 2008

Thank you everyone.

I’m fine.

And Britt, Jared, and the kids made it here safely, thank God. I haven’t seen them yet because, rightfully so, their focus is on helping their Jared’s parents and Jared’s brother and sister-in-law and their babies.

I can tell you that everything is changed. Nothing is the same, and I don’t know that it ever will be again.

That I have seen horror and heroism I have never seen the likes of before - and never want to again.

That the photos and videos you see don’t begin to capture what it’s like.

That it’s like walking on the face of the moon. You can’t tell where you are in a town where all your kids grew up - a town you know every inch of - because all the landmarks are gone.

And that I have come to the humbling realization that most of the shit upon which I have been spending my precious time, energy, and thoughts - just doesn’t mean shit.

Whether or not someone likes me, how someone should act or respond to me, or think, or speak, or dress.

The man I ran away from at the end of March - when he heard a tornado was on its way toward me and Creed and he couldn’t get me on the phone - he jumped in his car and headed right into it to get to me to make sure I was safe. Luckily, all he hit was the debris, and made it into Parkersburg minutes after the 15 second toranado took everything. He stayed there because there were bodies everywhere, and he is trained to handle those things. And with phone service out all he could do was attend to the task at hand, and pray for me.

I have heard a lot of songs and read a lot of books and magazine articles about what love is, and I could have told you very clearly on Sunday afternoon what I believe love is.

A few hours later I knew it in my bones.

Being a nurse, as soon as I was assured that I was OK and my residents were OK, I raced into the same war zone and spent the rest of the day helping people I’ve known most of my adult life,

And searching for him. Asking every fireman I saw where his crew was. Asking every familiar face if they’d seen him.

And then I found him.

And I got down on my knees in the rubble and the rain and with the shell shocked people wandering around me and asked him to forgive me for my self indulgence, my arrogance, my holier-than-thou bullshit.

This morning is the first morning that we had more than a few hours’ worth of sleep at a time. I will go back to work here in a few hours because the most productive thing I can do is to calm the fears of those I am resposible for, many of whom lost their homes, or their families did, and can’t comfort them.

And work for co-workers who have lost everything and don’t know when they will be able to come in again.

Everyone has been touched and I know, more than anything, that I am blessed beryond measure. None of mine went to the hospital while the rest of us searched for them. There was one terrifying moment on Sunday night when the man and I searched frantically for Creed, who had spent the day pulling people out from under destruction, carrying food and water from one staging area to the next and had given his cell phone without a thought to a woman trying frantically to reach her family.

Running from place to place, asking everyone “Have you seen Creed? Have you seen my son?” And the mud stained, bleak faces of my friends and neighbors, shaking their heads. “He was here a while ago.”

I could give a shit now about karaoke or - gosh. Anything.

Except my children and grandchildren. And collecting underwear for people, and diapers and formula. And holding the hands of the elderly refugees who have come to us, bandaged, fractured, lacerated and sutured, who ask over and over again, “Tell me again what happened. I don’t understand what happened.”

Hug your children and grandchildren.

Ode to the Inner Bitch May 19, 2008

I have said the same sentence so many times to my baby. “Honey - release your inner bitch.” If you’ve read or met Britt at all, you know she has some very strong and well thought out opinions on a lot of things.

But like her mother before her who taught her - and like a lot of women I know - there are times we feel justified in expressing those strong opinions - strongly. And times when we sit back and mewl like kittens, all in the name of “being nice”.

“Release your inner bitch.” I became so enamored of phrase I coined that I started using it with other women I talk to. Mothers whose teenage kids talk to them with disrespect. Wives and girlfriends whose men do something we wouldn’t tolerate in a girlfriend.

And I am all about live-and-let-live. And compassion, and everybody has a reality from their own perspective. And listening. And letting it roll off my back. I’m a hippie, remember?

But there are times, damn it, when it’s time to draw the line in the sand, bare one’s teeth, and dare some stupid ass to cross it.

Everybody has their own triggers.

I have two.

One is to insinuate, or say outright, that I lie. Because I don’t. I think it’s childish - what are you going to do if you don’t like my truth? Spank me? Ground me?

I also don’t have the attention span to lie because then I would have to remember what story I told you, in order to perpetuate it.

And foremost, I hate having to try to have any kind of a relationship with someone who lies, because I’m building my half of the sand castle leaning against yours - and if you lie, there is no support on your side for the castle - er- relationship.

I taught my kids when they were little that the two worst things they could do in the world were to lie and be mean to people. All three of them, plus various other kids who I “mothered” over the years” can repeat that phrase by rote.

So don’t fucking ever say to me that I lie. Or sunny sweet Nanna will turn into rabid nasty Nanna with a vocabulary arsenal that will cut you to shreds.

The inner bitch is released.

That happened to me this weekend. Someone knowing my aversion to lying, in an attempt to get my goat, implied that I was a liar. And the needle buried itself in the red zone in less than a second.

I let loose and said all (no, most) of the things I’ve always bit my tongue from saying before because, typically, women have brakes on their tongues. You can fight and argue and say hurtful things but there are always those things that are never brought up. The deepest insecurities. The most putrid wounds.

But damn it, you asked for it.

And afterward I felt a little ashamed of myself because I really do try to be a “good person”.

And then today I thought to myself, nope.

There are times when you have to let people know that here is the boundary. You may trespass this close and no farther. Because if you do, I will fuck up your world. I will remind you that I took the time to get to know you, and I know where your skeletons are buried.

My number two trigger is to threaten me. Not so much with bodily harm because, seriously, I’ve had my ass beat before, and lived through it. At this point in my life, someone who raises a hand to me is going to have a scrap on their hands, because I’m not at all afraid.

But don’t ever threaten my ability to take care of myself, to support myself. I’m paycheck to paycheck as it is, and will be for a couple more years yet (or longer, if I join the cultural trend), and I lay awake sometimes at night trying to figure out how to gracefully make it to payday.

So don’t freaking ever threaten my income.

I will come barrelling out the door with the zeal of every peasant woman who ever brandished a broom to protect her home.

Except that my broom is my mouth - and it has spikes on it.

Today, instead of having that anger hangover that I dreaded, I feel finally more centered. As if I took hold of the leash someone had been yanking me around with and yanked it back into my own two little hands.

This is my life. My best advice to anyone who has a problem with my life is to stay the hell out of it. Find your Zen elsewhere, if I’m so damn upsetting. This is my dance space, and yours is way the hell over there.

I don’t get headaches, baby. I give them.

I’m almost 48 years old, and I don’t need another parent figure. I don’t need a moral compass. I don’t need teenage relationship drama.

What I need - and what I can create for my own self, thank you very much - is peaceful surroundings splashed with beauty.

I need stimulating conversation about things that matter to me - my kids and their kids, the environment, the upcoming election, the sad decline of Christianity into the Pharisaic mentality that my Lord died to free me from.

Stuff like that.

You can clutter my life with whining and moaning and a list of “should’s” for me for so long. But when you cross that line, look out.

I will release my inner bitch.

And I promise you. You will come away remembering her.