I write every day.  Sometimes when I’m driving I have to pull over to the side of the road when a fantastic bundle of words shoots through my brain and wants to be a sentence, or a paragraph, “RIGHT THIS SECOND!” says my mind, and there is always a pencil, pen, and paper within my reach.  I also still hand write letters, and some people I have written to ( or is it ‘to whom I have written?’ ) have cherished my letters and have told me so, but a couple of them have dismissed them, and me, as sappy or silly, or too emotional and serious, and those people, well, I never write to them again.  Some days I write a lot and some days I write very little, and sometimes what I put on paper really matters, and sometimes it is a whole lot of nothing.

In February of 2006 I wrote many long love letters to the people who I cared about.  I was going to have major surgery and was told I would be under anesthesia for at least four hours, it turned out to be seven, and while I had no fear of the operation and full confidence in the surgeon, I had read enough novels and seen enough movies to know that sometimes it’s the anesthesia that’s what kills you, and on my drive to the hospital that day I knew that if it was to be my last day on earth, the letters on my desk were addressed and nothing would be left unsaid.

A few weeks ago as I was packing for a short trip with a group of girlfriends, I was thinking about doing this again, writing my ‘Just In Case’ love letters.  While I had no real worries about our plane crashing on the way to Florida, or falling off the deck of the cruise ship out in the middle of the Atlantic, or being kidnapped and murdered in The Bahamas, I still spent a lot of time wondering if I ought to write some letters.  I like the feeling of closure, and knowing that when things end, there is nothing un-said.  I am well aware that I could be in an accident when I leave for work tomorrow and be dead by dinner time, but that can happen to anybody any day, which is why  it just seems sensible to me to sometimes write when I have things on my mind, to say what I want to say, just in case.  I write to him, Justin Case, more often than you might think.  Justin Case is frequently on my mind when I write a thoughtful letter, whether handwritten or typed.  Sometimes I have to say what is on my mind, you know just get those words out, or I feel like I might go mad.   Out, damned words! out, I say!  …and then once all the words are out of me, I press delete, or I throw the paper in the trash or the shredder, but at least the words are free from the confines of my brain.

I have many people who I love so much and have been so good to me in my life.  I have a daughter for whom I always did everything I possibly could, so she would have the best possible outcomes in her life.  I have those two beautiful granddaughters of mine who, jeez-louise there are simply not enough words in my limited vocabulary to describe the depth of feelings that I have for them, other than what I often say or write, that I had no idea how much love was inside of me until they were born.  I have some friends I really treasure, and a boyfriend whose smile still makes my belly flip and my spine tingle.  I have a lot of people who I would want to know how deeply I love them, just in case…but I didn’t do it.

I did not leave any letters for anybody.  Instead I left for my trip comforted with the knowledge that I love people honestly, and that I often tell them how much they mean to me, and I show my love as much as I can in as many ways that I can.  I try to express myself truthfully whenever the mood strikes, and I felt pretty good with the thoughts that the people I love know that I love them, and I felt like it was a pretty good measure of how I am living this life, that I  had nothing really left to say to Justin Case.

I read an article over the summer about the singer, song writer, and musician Alicia Keys and her decision to stop wearing makeup and how she believes we women are wearing masks, trying to fit in, or be accepted, and how it continues to put too much emphasis on appearance rather than substance.  Yesterday on The Today Show she made a comment about how she wanted women to feel empowered and be their most authentic selves, and to hear her words, while looking at her bare face, I felt really happy.  I have met and known women who LOOK so pretty on the outside, but come to learn they are so very ugly on the inside.  I am at a point in my life where I want what is real and beautiful and honest, I could give a flying fig for phoniness.  A woman in the ‘public eye’  saying  these words on a morning television show aired around the world, without a drop of makeup on her own skin made me feel like she gets it, that she gets what matters.  She wrote in May, “I hope to God it’s a revolution. Cause I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.”   

I have watched many men in my life ‘get ready’ to go out and I have never seen one spend minutes plucking his eyebrows, filling in his brows with pencil and powder, applying anti wrinkle serum, pore primer, tinted sheer moisturizer, and then setting the skin of his face with translucent highlighting powder, then using liner on his eyes, then blending it in with a brush, then applying shadow, then curling his eyelashes, then applying mascara, then dabbing a bit of blush on the apples of his cheeks, then using a sponge to blend in any tint along his jaw line into his neck, and then applying lipstick, lip gloss, or lip balm of some sort.  Never.   However this order of operations has been performed by me, countless times over the years when I “got ready” to go out and by countless women around the world.  I can’t blame the magazines or the catalogs, but somewhere, somehow it got to be the norm that men did so little to “appear” attractive and women did so much.  For me, and I am sure for many, it didn’t matter either whether it was getting ready for an event or just to go about town on errands,  it was just part of getting ready, and no matter how pretty it might have made me look, I was still just me, going to a party or a concert or the grocery store.  What mattered about WHO I am or was, and HOW I think or what I thought about, had and has nothing at all to do with what is on the outside, what you see…How we as a society strayed so far from that is confusing.  I am going to be 50 years old later this year and if ever there was a moment to want nothing but authenticity in my life, and if ever there was a moment to say no more acceptance of phoniness, I think it is now.

Honestly, when I’m all made up and see a photo of myself or look in the mirror, it is far more pleasing to the eye than a photo where all of my flaws are so obvious or I look in the mirror and see those lines in my forehead getting deeper, but what does it matter really?!  Does it make my love for others or myself less intense if I am less pretty?  Does it make my brain, which is always so excited to learn more things, any less ready to absorb and process information?  Does it say anything about my need for an organized linen cupboard or spotless house if my eyes are lined or unlined?   I have read in books and seen in movies women using the expression “I have to put my face on” and I think about how liberating it would be to be a man and brush my teeth and shave and say, “ready!”  I am not implying that one is right and one is wrong, but a face full of makeup, while it might make me seem much prettier than I actually am, it always feels like a mask to me and I can’t wait, no matter where I am, or how long I have to look ‘put together,’ to scrub it all off.

I was thinking about this a lot yesterday on International Woman’s Day, which by the way seems silly to me since EVERY day should be women’s day, since nobody would exist on the planet if it were not for our ability to incubate fertilized eggs, but anyway, I digress…I want to sing out that I am tired of masks and falseness and personas that are aimed to project an image that all too often is not indicative of the real quality of the person, and most importantly, sometimes hides what matters most.  I have met and known very beautiful women who, on the outside were nearly perfect, with thick hair and tight asses and fantastic cleavage, but who, when they opened their mouths, showed me they were stupid and shallow, and who were so ugly inside that I would never want to know them well.  I have also met women who were not all that physically attractive or were overweight, or their proportions were out of whack, or who had bad skin or bad hair but when they talked it was clear that they were well read, vibrant, curious, and wicked smart, and women I would want to know better and whose company I would very much enjoy.

Let me be clear, I am not against makeup, I do feel pretty when I wear it and I buy it and own quite a bit of it and I think to enhance your eyes to make them more sparkly or bring out the color is all well and good, particularly when your eyes look for the beauty in others.  I love lip gloss, lip stick, any sort of lip product actually and truly have an addiction to moist and shimmery lips, but I think they are beautiful more because the words that generally come from my mouth are loving and kind, and my bright lips just enhance my words, meaning that a beautifully lined lip around a mouth that spews toxic words is not pretty to me, no matter the color or quality of the gloss.  Some women have their eyes perfectly lined, their fake tits perfectly stuffed into their tight sweaters and their pants snug in all the right places, but they are not good people, no matter how good they look.  They make bad choices or disrespectful decisions and show me by their actions, flirting with men who are otherwise engaged or attached for example, or talking about other women behind their backs, they are not part of the “sisterhood” that I treasure.  I have learned and seen that ugliness comes in all shapes and sizes and the masks are so varied that it’s sometimes hard to tell who is wearing them and who is not.  I want to be free of those kinds of people.  If you want a face full of makeup, I applaud you and might comment on how well you do your eyes or remark about how I love the iridescence of the gloss you are wearing on your lips, but I want you to be a good person not just a person who looks good.  THAT has come to be something I understand; some women just talk about other women and some women want to talk with other women, if that doesn’t ramble on like nonsense to you, I think you might be one of my kind…

There are many moments of every day when most of us have to engage with others and check-in with those we care for or are accountable to, but I believe that the person we most need to touch base with is the one we all seem to address the least…our own selves.  I don’t have growing young children who need my care and supervision, I don’t have a demanding husband who requires dinner at a certain time or his dry cleaning picked up, I don’t have unwell or infirm elderly parents for whom I have to schedule appointments or medical services , & I don’t have  snarky boss to answer to.   I don’t have the daily dramas or upsets that many others suffer.  I do babysit my granddaughters, and have a boyfriend who lives with me, my parents are well and happy and vibrant, and I’m self-employed, which sure can be stressful at times, but I really do like all the different jobs I do, so I simply don’t have many of the same stressors that other people do.  This does not imply that all is rosy all of the time; certainly I’ve got issues in my life that I very much want or need to tend, and sure, one or two sometimes cause me irritability or occasional sleeplessness, but it does mean that I am perhaps more able than some to sort out the things that demand more of my attention, and sweep away the things that don’t really matter quite so much. I am accountable to so few people.  I have started this new year in a new mind-set, that so far I think is working out nicely…I am checking in with myself more than I’m checking in with anybody else, and I am adjusting and editing and modifying as needed…I am becoming accountable to me.

We live in a world where it is very easy, almost too easy, to allow what is outside of us to dictate the level of happiness inside of us.  I am a student of many philosophies, which sounds haughty, but what I mean is that I read, a lot, about so many different ways to be and ways to think, and while the authors vary, the message at the end is almost always is the same…it is all in us at all times…none of it is outside of us.

This is not to say I don’t get mad, or upset, I do.  BUT I don’t let it linger and implant and grow…or better said, I try very hard to process information, make a choice how to act and proceed and be done with it.  I get annoyed and then I ponder the annoyance and then I try to let it go.  It’s a process and it isn’t always easy to do and I often fail.

Sure, sometimes I find myself over thinking about some issue, or some wrong that I think ought to be righted, and when I discover this is happening, I check in with myself.  The ability to let things go that have hurt me turns out to be one of the healthiest changes I’ve made so far in this new year.  Some people cause hurt to others and don’t even know it…they go on about their days without even realizing their actions hurt my feelings or made me suffer in some way, or maybe they just don’t care, however small or big the hurt might be, but by dwelling on it, the only person who continues to hurt is me.  What on earth is the good in that??!!  So when I am hurt in whatever way, I must not let that hurt linger.  “Snap out of it!” in a Cher in Moonstruck kind of way.  Check in with myself:  how did this make me feel?  Do I want to keep feeling like this or do I want to move on?  How can I better handle this feeling if ever it happens again?  Am I at all culpable?  These may seem like silly questions to ask yourself, but they are questions that you need to answer if you want to let peace and happiness be your way of life.  It’s looking like today is going to be beautiful weather.  If your soul and heart and mind are stormy you’ll miss out on this perfect gift from Mother Nature.  I hope you have an early check-in with yourself today and I promise, you’ll enjoy your stay.

When a person tries to practice mindfulness, I think it mostly means to pay attention to what is going on in your mind or your body, at that moment, and not thinking about the past or fretting over the future, just being one with “what is,” at this time.  Some mornings I awake & feel like I’m the most kind and most loving woman on this earth, or at least in my town, or at least on my street.  Some mornings I wake up angry, and while I can’t say exactly what I feel mad about, I feel like I’m the harshest critic and least compassionate woman on this earth, or at least in my town, or at least on my street.  Some mornings I rise up feeling so excited, with the enthusiasm of a small child on Christmas morning, for the new day ahead of me and all that wondering of what good I might do, or what good might come my way, or what good might happen to somebody I love, and I start those days with the innocence of a person who has yet to be hardened by the realities of life, and I feel like I am the luckiest woman on this earth, or at least in my town, and absolutely on my street.  BUT the funny thing is that some mornings all of these women wake up with me…I am all of these selves under one skin, and that sometimes makes life a little bit complicated.

If I am to practice mindfulness on those days, when I’m all these women at once, what I am mostly mindful of is that my brain wants to go several directions at one time…forward/backward/now…and it’s chaotic and loud and unsettling in there, it’s SO very unsettling.   When I was young I sometimes hid behind the humidifier in the hallway of our house to look at the tv in the living room without my parents knowing.  I once watched my parents watching a movie that frightened me near to death called Sybil.  I don’t remember too much about it but that it was about a woman who had multiple personalities, and she could BE any one of many different people at any given time.  It scared me as a kid and it still scares me now as an adult, how very many of me live here in my head, as recently as right this second!   I wonder, now that I am growing older, that this is maybe not such an unusual condition after all.  It is perhaps far more pervasive than we imagine.  The more women I meet and get to know, the more I start to think that we all are playing too many different characters on any given day, and mindfulness becomes a little bit perplexing and certainly ambiguous when there are so many women to account for.   Some days I feel like I am many different people all rolled up into one; and some mornings I am not sure which one will greet me when I open my eyes to get on with my day, and if I am not sure that I like my morning me, well, there are hours ahead for changes, and I have all day to play my own mind game I sometimes call, “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?!” One of my favorite prints by an artist whose work I collect, man from Iowa called Brian Andreas, is called “Selves to Agree.”  I bought this particular one in 1998 and no matter what day I look at it, currently hanging in my living room above my bar, I am reminded why I love it…  “I think my life would be easier, she said, if I could just get my selves to agree on something.”   I could have bought it in 1988, or yesterday for that matter, it always speaks to me.  There are some things that parts of me tolerate or wholly accept, which the other parts of me totally abhor.  Some moments have my brain thinking loathsome thoughts and making sweeping conclusions about what must be done and when and why…Boom-Boom-Boom inside my brain, BIG thoughts and BIG decisions…but in a split second, there are other parts of me that pay no mind to any of it, and the Boom-Boom noise and intense energy falls on the deaf ears of the peaceful mellow parts of me…the one who is always having a joyful mind frolic on the dunes, and getting through most of her day without a care in the world.

That these parts of me all reside in between my ears is sometimes problematic, in that, like many women, it takes only one cog in the wheel or pebble in the shoe to throw me off the deep end and unable to sort them all out and find balance.  I don’t know if everybody suffers this way, or if it is just women, or maybe just me, but sometimes I just want to sleep for days until they sort it all out among themselves.  In a Rip Van Winkle-esque way, I wonder sometimes what it would be like to just wake up one day and find it’s all settled, and all those nagging words from all those different voices are quiet.

Yesterday morning I got on with my day with a zip in my step and super positive vibes from a job well done the day before, but before it was even noon, I felt super angry about a situation that came totally unexpected into my life.  Like turning on or off a light switch, just one emotion to the other, flipping from euphoric girl to sorrowful wretch, BOOM!  that fast…BUT this morning awoke in a rather blissful state, as if yesterday’s upset didn’t even happen.  It’s funny, how much like the weather, today is balmy and mild, while tomorrow it’s expected to be bitter cold, dreary gray and snowy, we too can be completely different from day to day…our attitude, our thoughts, our demeanor, our tones of voice, our goals, our expectations…ALL of it can change day to day or even hour to hour…So love yourself, I guess that is the message for today, whichever SELF you woke up with this morning, just love her, and take comfort in knowing that even if she isn’t the one you like best, somebody else might be around by dinner…

Today my father has been alive for 75 years, and he has been in love with my mother for 51 of them.  There are few women alive on this earth who are loved like my father loves my mother. You might not know it, because maybe you were not so lucky as I, but it’s a very big deal to grow up around this kind of very big love.  I have been thinking about this for days; mostly because the other night I was watching one of those Hollywood “news” programs and there was a “big story,” and quite a fuss made over a star seen for days without his wedding ring, and it made me laugh…I have watched my father love my mother for all the years of my life and I have never, not once ever, seen him wear a wedding ring.  For almost 51 years my dad has owned a ‘golden ring’ as a symbol of his love and faithfulness, and yet I never saw him wear it.  I’m here to tell you that wearing a ring means nothing, despite what the tabloid entertainment shows might tell you.

That your presence makes a person want to be the best version of themselves, that your presence makes a person’s life richer than it would be without you, what you do, and how you act, and the person you are, is all that matters.  “it’s not much, but it’s the best that I can do”  so sings George Jones to Tammy Wynette, “only love can make a golden wedding ring” and so it goes…one of my favorite songs of my childhood called Golden Ring, and it’s been in my head since that breaking couples news…My parents, my kind, generous, and loving parents loved, and still love, country music.  Not this ‘country pop,’ I mean real country music, “old-fashioned” I guess it is now…Johnny Cash, Gary Stewart, David Allan Coe, Emmylou Harris, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard…oh the list is long, and George Jones was, and still is, a favorite at their house, but this blog is not about country music, and it’s not about Hollywood couples news, it’s about my parents and my dad in particular.

I have never heard my father raise his voice to my mother.  I have never heard him say a mean thing to her or a cutting remark, even “just joking” as so many people say, when they say hurtful things, expressing what I think are their true feelings, and then trying to hide them by saying they were “kidding.”  Not my dad.   I can count on one hand the number of times I heard them “fight” during my childhood, and each time, if my memory serves me, it was my mother being uppity over how she specifically wanted something to be; the placement of a kitchen cabinet during construction of one of our houses comes to mind, and the pattern and direction of a fabric on a project my mother was doing in her sewing room is another one that comes to mind…so maybe it was only two fights…and my father being calm, always calm…he never cursed, yelled, slammed doors, stormed off, zoomed out the yard and drove away, went to a bar, vented to his friends…never told her she was being ridiculous…none of those things you often see in movies, or read in books or hear from other people, that happen after a “fight” or an argument…he just waited for her to mellow, and went right back to his slow and steady and peaceful way through life.  It seems, in the memories of my childhood and my thoughts as their adult daughter, that no matter what the circumstance or situation, he simply loved her more…we may differ in almost every way politically in my family, truly them versus me in most of the circumstances, but love always wins.

I had, if not a perfect and idyllic childhood, one that sure was close. You might think I am exaggerating but I’m not. Sometimes I feel a little bit like I have survivor’s guilt, having that kind of childhood with that kind of parents when so many people I know did not.  He is the best of men, and that I had the good fortune to be born as their daughter is something I have never taken for granted and for which I am truly grateful. His sense of what is right, and how to do right always, in all ways, is one of the many things I admire about him.  To grow up and grow old with parents truly in love, and parents who worked hard and parents who were not lazy, or drunks, or liars, or abusive, or, well, just not good, is as big a deal as any, as far as I can tell.  The older I grow and the more people I know, and stories I read, or tales I hear, I become more and more aware of how remarkable it actually is to have parents like I do.  I know I’ve been lucky.  I’m thankful for them every day.

My father has never told me he was going to do something, and then didn’t do it.  My father has never taken advantage of a person, or used a person in a way that only benefited himself.  My father has never started a project and then just didn’t feel like finishing it.  My father has never gotten my hopes up for something, and then let me down by not following through.  That is just not his way.  He does what he says, and does everything well, and he has never failed us; not me, not my sister, and not my mom.  He was the only “father” my own daughter ever had, and there is not a day of my life that I am not so appreciative, that my child got so blessed too, even when it wasn’t initially my own plan for my own life, she got just as lucky in the “dad” lottery.  He does not look his age and he doesn’t act it either…he is vibrant and busy and strong, and just as hard working now, four years into retirement, as he was all of his years working 50 and 60 hours a week as a carpenter.  He often said he was “just a carpenter” and never did anything but build and fix and make and do, but for me, my sister, and our mom,  he was everything.  He has always been as good a human as one could hope to know.  I have been disappointed by much and many in my life, but not my dad.

     If you watched just one, or even all three of the presidential debates this past fall and are female, you should be concerned…soul-crushingly, mind-blowingly, deeply concerned about your access to affordable reproductive healthcare and family planning services.  If you don’t mind the projected estimated added cost of $365 million dollars a year in additional security expenses so that Mrs. Trump does not have to move her son from their three floor gilded penthouse mansion to the White House, but you do mind the estimated cost of $528 million dollars a year in national planned parenthood funding which allows, among other things, some random 15-year-old girl in Detroit to get free birth control pills, then you are perhaps not interested in today’s blog.

     Do you believe, or think for even one minute, that if men were the ones who got pregnant and gave birth, there would ever be even the most minimal efforts or arguments that would possibly lead to legislation that might deny a man his right to choose to terminate a pregnancy if he found himself with child and did not want said child?  If more than 270,000 men were tested for cancer every year at Planned Parenthood clinics, do you think that there would ever be politicians shouting about defunding it and spinning false statistics and phony details about the health and social services they provide?  Do you believe, or think for even one minute, that if men were the ones who got pregnant there would ever be even the most minimal efforts or arguments to make effective birth control methods less available and less affordable?  Do you believe, or think for even one minute, that there would ever be efforts to restrict access to affordable reproductive health care services if it was 77% of men who had to lose, on average, 12 weeks of pay or more, because of a pregnancy?  Do you believe, that if it were 89% of men who had jobs where there was no paid family leave policy in place, there would not be great efforts to create some sort of legislation to make universal policies so that not just the lucky 11% of pregnant men had the kind of employment that provided both job security and some bit of financial aid or income during a maternity leave?  In my ever so humble opinion, if it were men who got pregnant and gave birth there would not be a march today in Washington, D.C. and in towns and cities across the country; there might be no need.

     Despite what some heartbroken couples might tell you, it is very easy to get pregnant even when you are making efforts and taking measures to have that not happen.  Accidents happen.  Accidents happen all the time to responsible people and irresponsible people alike.  Accidental and unplanned pregnancies happen to democrats and republicans alike.  Pregnancies happen all the time that are not happy, celebratory, joyous occasions; they are devastatingly bad news, and that cluster of dividing cells is a most unwelcome parasite to a person who does not want to be pregnant, and does not want to have a baby, cannot afford to have a pregnancy or a baby, and does not want to raise a child.  You have every right to think what you want about a person’s right to choose, but I’m sitting here writing to you and letting you know that until it happens to you, you do not know how you will feel, you do not know what you will think, and until you actually have to face that choice, you don’t know exactly how you feel about the implications for yourself and your future.  Don’t believe me?  How about this one…it’s your child who is pregnant and does not want to be, your straight A earning, soccer star teenager, on track for a full scholarship to college…Now there are implications for you AND for your child.  It’s so much more complex than just saying you are not pro-choice.  You might not believe me, but I know this much is true.

     I have heard and read some comments this week about the Women’s March on Washington, asking ‘why march?’  Asking, what is the point?  Wondering what is to be achieved?  It’s not just reproductive rights that are at possibly at risk with this new administration in place, but since I am not black, gay, disabled, or an illegal immigrant, it is the part of the Unity Principles of the Women’s March on Washington mission statement that matters most to me.  The official press release from the group states simply,  “that we stand together in solidarity and we expect elected leaders to act to protect the rights of women, their families and their communities.”  That is a clear explanation as far as I can tell.  It’s not just women, it’s the men who love them, or know them, or live next door to them.  Women’s rights are human rights…Those aren’t just words from a 20 year old speech.  They are words that matter.

     Access to affordable family planning and reproductive health care is not a woman’s issue, it’s a human issue.  You want to argue with me about family values, christian values, go right ahead…there is nothing christian about taking away a woman’s right to choose, thus forcing her to carry a pregnancy she doesn’t want and give birth to a child she doesn’t need…laws have been in place for more than 40 years that make abortion legal and safe, and that matters to women and men equally.  Women do not get pregnant alone, and if you think abortion is wrong then perhaps you might like to know that the more available birth control is, the less prevalent unintended pregnancies are.  According to a recent NPR interview with Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, the teen pregnancy rate is at an all time low, and she believes that high quality and affordable and accessible birth control is one of the reasons.  You might think that abortion is wrong, but I think having to have a baby that you don’t want, or having no access to safe and affordable medical services is so much worse, and if you disagree with me, that’s fine.  I respect your right to disagree with me.

     Never would I ever demand that you think like I do, or claim that you are wrong and I am right.  I don’t want to restrict your choice to have a baby when you get pregnant even if you don’t want to be.  I don’t want to take away your choice to welcome a new infant into your already financially stressed life, or overcrowded house, or unstable marriage, or vehicle that won’t have room for a car seat, because you do not think abortion is okay under any circumstances, and you choose to have a baby because of your religious or personal beliefs.  I get that, and I don’t want to take that from you.  I don’t want to take away your choice to bravely face an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy because you would not ever choose an abortion, no matter what circumstances you were in.  In fact, I might even crochet you a blanket if you are somebody I know, or a friend of somebody I know, and I would never, ever want to deny you your right to choose to have that baby.  I get that.  I would never want to deny you your choice to eat healthy food, quit smoking, stop drinking diet Coke, and take those pre-natal vitamins every day and carry that baby to term because you do not believe abortion is an option for you.  I would never want to take away your right to choose to birth that baby and bring it home and raise it, and provide and care for it lovingly through adulthood because you believe that abortion is wrong.  I get that.  BUT why would you want to take away my choice to do the opposite?  Because you think you are right and I am wrong?

     Never would I ever want to take away your personal choice to take the results of  that little blue plus sign in the window of your EPT test all the way to the big grand finale of ‘it’s a boy or it’s a girl!!!’  I would never want that choice to be taken from you.   NEVER would I ever deny you your choice to take that unplanned, and perhaps unwanted pregnancy, from birth all the way to high school graduation, or better yet college graduation…congratulations, your child turned out to be fantastic, and it is so wonderful that you brought her or him into the world and made such a generous contribution to the gene pool!!!  It’s terrific, and I mean this, I am very happy for you.  Your choice worked out for you…but how dare you want to see my choice eliminated?  My choice to not do any of what you did when you peed on that stick and saw that it was positive.

     In my ever so humble opinion, THAT is why people are marching this weekend.  IT is not about you and your choice, and it is not about me and my choice, it is about ALL OF US.  THIS IS US, we are humans sharing a planet and there are men and women roaring, begging, please do not attempt to take away our  right to choose what is best for me or for my family, or to purposefully make our access to affordable reproductive healthcare even more expensive or more complicated than it has to be, because you see, we promise we would never attempt to take away your right to choose what is best for you.

Three months ago today my daughter became a new wife, with a joyful and beautiful ceremony in a restored barn at a County Park.  One year and three months ago today my daughter became a fiancée, with a  brilliant and big diamond in front of the fountain at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  31 years and three hours ago I became a mother, to this daughter, with a quiet delivery in the early morning hours of a Thursday, in a room with ugly  rose-covered pale blue wallpaper, with my Sister by my side and my Mom, Aunt, and Nana down the hall…and my life was forever changed.

And she was, at once, nothing that I ever wanted and all that I could ever wish for.  And she was, with her first breaths, everything that was right in my world and the reason I suddenly cared so much about all the things that were so very wrong.  And she was the biggest baby with the roundest head in the nursery, while I was the youngest mother with the most uncertain future on the maternity floor.  And she was a dream baby who ate and slept and hardly ever cried, while I ate too much and hardly slept and often cried. To write that my first weeks and months as a mother were scary is an understatement.  You see, my life was a whole big mess of awful, but I, inexplicably, did not want to have to move back home to my parents’ so I lied, a lot, about everything…everything is fine, everything is fine, everything is fine…nothing was fine, nothing at all was at all fine, but she was.  That perfect little baby, through no fault of her own, came into this world with a confused mother who had made terrible choices, but there  she was, by my side, often in the crook of my left arm, accepting, all ten pounds of her, the consequences of my decisions.

And she was a girl who grew up without a dad, and for that I have yet to forgive myself.  And she was a girl whose grandpa could not have loved her any more than if she had been his own, and for that I will forever be grateful.  And she was a girl whose grandma could not have loved her any more, no matter how disappointed she might have been with me, over and over and over…I disappointed my parents but my child never suffered, and truth be told, neither did I, since my parent’s love was always, and has always been, without conditions.  And she was blessed to be born to a family where, despite our frequent and perpetual disagreements about most things, love always wins.

I found the courage to get out of a very bad and terribly difficult situation, and my family welcomed me back home with overflowing adoration for my daughter.  And she was the reason I often worked seven days a week.  And she was the reason I never called in sick.  And she was the reason I started college.  And she was the reason I finished college.  And she was why I tried to always be the best possible woman I could, because while it’s a popular sentiment now in our current political climate, it moved me deeply from the moment I first read it,  Strong Women- may we know them , may we be them, may we raise them.  And she was fine.  And she is fine.  And it turns out that she is now, as a grown woman and a mother and a wife, a culmination of all that I ever did right in my life.  There are many things that have happened to me, and because of me, that I wish had not ever happened, but these 31 years later, I love to say that she isn’t one of them.  And she was, at once, nothing that I ever wanted and most of what would matter, for all the rest of my days…

There is an elf at my house from black Friday til Christmas Eve.  She has a cute cheerful face & wears a red jumper and is supposed to sit on the shelf or hide among the decorations and my granddaughters named her ‘Everbloom Woodsong’ when she came to live here in December of 2010.  This is the 7th season that the little one has come to my house every single morning to look for her.  This is the first season that her older sister did not.

When the eldest comes to my house, either after school or at some time over a weekend, she will say, “where’s Everbloom?” and I love that she asks, particularly if her sister is here anyway, but I am quite certain, as she achieves very high marks at school and is now almost 11 and a half years old, that she does not think, for even a moment, that Everbloom flies back to the North Pole nightly to report to Santa how the girls have been that day.  I am pretty sure that on Christmas Eve morning, when she spies Everbloom at the top of the Christmas tree, where she has her final landing-place every year here, she will grin happily and she might even try to catch my eye, and I will know how much she loves this tradition, and I will know that she knows…if she does not try to catch my eye, there may still be a hint of wonderment but I suspect there is not.  She will however continue to be “The Magic Keeper” for her little sister.  I read an essay on The Huffington Post the other day about that confusing time of year as a parent, or in my case, a grandparent, when you have a child in your life on the edge of believing at Christmas.  The author wrote that when she had THE Talk with her son she told him he was now the magic keeper for his little brothers and I thought that was one of the most beautiful ways to describe it.

I am in my last year of my forties and my parents never had THE Talk with me.  I don’t know when it all changed or how it changed but never once did my parents say there is no Santa, never once did my parents say anything other than “if you don’t believe, where is the magic?”  and for that I am still to this day, grateful.  My Christmas memories from childhood are so full of joy and happiness and love and comfort and all those good words that so many children grow up without.  To say I am thankful for my nearly perfect childhood is a tremendous understatement.  Even after I was first divorced and had moved back into my parent’s home that June with my little toddler by my side, once again sharing the second floor of the house with my sister, in the morning that Christmas, when we awoke, there were presents under the tree.  I never saw my mother or my father place one, I never saw them hidden in the basement or my parent’s bedroom.  My mother never said a word and not one gift with my name on it was seen by my eyes until Christmas morning.  We simply never stopped believing in our family.

When I walked my granddaughter to the bus stop this morning she reported to me that yesterday at school there was some talk among the children in her 3rd grade class that many of them don’t believe in Santa.  She then went on to describe to me in great and animated detail what she discussed with her friends  and that she argued  her point that, “your parents have to pay the electric bill, they have to pay for the house where you live, gas for their trucks, and at my house there are violin lessons and my sister takes like ten dance classes, how on earth do you think parents can pay for ALL of that PLUS all of the presents that we find under the tree at Christmas, are you kidding me that you don’t believe?!”  My heart felt glad, as she stepped onto the bus that although she is taller than most of her classmates, she is still very much a very little girl.

Full disclosure to report here…It is said, although I can’t remember doing it or it actually happening, that one Christmas when I was a young teenager, I found the hidden gifts and unwrapped lots of the presents and then re-wrapped them.  I LOVE surprises and I can’t for the life of me imagine that I did this act, and I have no body memory of performing this act, but I am told that I did do this act.  I remember SO many details from my childhood, adolescence, and teenage years, and am one of those people who just remembers so much random stuff, but I swear to you, I have no memory of doing this, it is just told to me that I did it.  It is a great shame to me still,  if it is the truth…Perhaps that is one of the many reasons why now, all these years later, I am more aware of why the magic matters.  I am going to bake today, and I am going to have Christmas music pumping through all the hidden speakers in all the rooms of my house and it is going to smell wonderful in my little house.  It is going to feel like the special day it is, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the day I always like to think about the new year to come, how the days will be longer from this day forward, and how I can make some magic in every one of the days in this new year ahead.  I will find great joy in the simple pleasures of my home and the happiness of the holiday season and, because Everbloom was discovered this morning sitting on the jingle bells hanging on the stainless steel handle of my front door, I will be a very good girl today, just in case…

I’m the last person who could even think to tell somebody what their future might hold as I often have a hard enough time trying to see myself through the next few days, let alone the next year or at all into the future, which for me is most uncertain.  ‘Take each day as it comes and let each day end and be done with it’ seems to be the best way to live, however this time of the year is often so difficult for so many, they want answers, they want to know if things will get easier, if things might get better…some want to think of the closing of a door as the end of a year and gather ideas for a fresh start or a new way of thinking, some want to contemplate things they could drastically change or simply improve, or determine clear ways in which they might better their present circumstances or perhaps more importantly, themselves.  I could easily insert the words I, mine, our, and my here, as we really are all in this together, and regardless of what narrative I use, this blog could just as easily be for you as it is for me.  There are some days and weeks that I feel so hopeless, like I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag, and those kinds of thoughts do me no good.  Those kinds of thoughts are many things and soothing isn’t one of them.

Honestly, who does not need some emotional soothing especially this time of year when it’s dark before dinner, and it’s bleak and gray in the morning, and it’s raw and cold in the evening, it’s really no wonder so many suffer from seasonal affective disorder or get those most dreaded winter blues. It’s almost too easy to find yourself falling into a month or more of melancholy.  BUT this is something I do know for certain; what we think about, or dwell on or perpetually ponder, becomes the main theme and thread of our thoughts, AND those voices become our narrator…and they repeat, over and over like late night reruns of Friends.  The more we think the heavy thoughts, the heavier our thoughts become and whether you believe me or not, heavy things are really hard to move.  That is not a soothing thought at all is it?  That is not salve for the bitter cracks and painful sores that some of us might be suffering right now in general, and this time of year in particular. The only panacea that seems to work consistently and effectively is controlling the words that you let live between your ears.  This advice for wellness might be the equivalent of spying your cardiologist having a cigarette behind the office dumpster, or finding out that your yoga instructor was home alone over the weekend eating a box of Twinkies with a McDonald’s milkshake and watching “You’ve Got Mail” for the fiftieth time and crying over where she might have gone so wrong…what I mean to say is that it’s all well and good to be told what we should do, how to live better, what kinds of things we can do to make ourselves feel good, but words can only go so far…words can soothe, but we have to put those soothing words into practice if we want to see the benefits.

There are many people I know, some better than others, who are in serious need of soothing right now…some are aching so badly and deeply over recent tragedy that it’s a wonder they don’t break into a thousand pieces from their overwhelming sadness and heartbreak.  A couple of people I know remain so terribly angry over things that happened in their pasts that they keep spinning in circles and just can’t seem to ever heal, and no amount of salve or Syrah can comfort them.  It’s almost too easy, when you are not the one suffering in sadness, to tell somebody else that ‘it will get better’…how do I know that it will get better for them?!  How dare I even try to say “I understand” and offer my sympathy when I myself actually have no idea how awful this person might be hurting?!  These thoughts got me thinking about what I could do, what I could say, what I could write that might offer some level of comfort, however miniscule, to those in need of soothing support right now.

I am writing as an offering, this I can give…comforting words that may or may not provide any recovery of any sort.  It’s easy some would argue, for me to spout cheerful thoughts and quotes about how no pain lasts forever, to make positive affirmations about healing, but really, who am I kidding?  You see there is nothing I can do to heal the heartbreak of a woman I know who recently lost her beautiful, vibrant daughter to cancer; her daughter, the same age as my own, leaving behind a husband, two babies, sisters, parents, friends…there was not one card at the store that even said a little bit of what I felt in my heart for this woman’s immeasurable sadness.  BUT what I can do is write my daughter text messages out of the blue and tell her I love her.  THAT I can do.  You see there is nothing I can do to heal the heartbreak of a woman I know who for months was by her mother’s side at hospitals and worked arm and arm with the nurses, advocated for the best possible care from the doctors and staff, so she would only to have to say goodbye this week, just like that.  BUT what I could do was have lunch with my mom the other day and when we got to her Jeep and my truck in the parking lot, I hugged her and told her I loved her.  THAT I could do.

We’ve all read those quotes about how everybody we meet is fighting their own battles, how what we see on the outside isn’t necessarily indicative of what’s going on inside, and that sometimes explains why people are nasty in line at the grocery store, or driving aggressively or honking you out of a parking spot…all those little things that make us think somebody a real jerk, might very well be aches and unhealed wounds, and the nasty way they behave is just the way they cope…counteract meanness with niceness every time you can, that’s my advice.  Emerson wrote, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”  One smile might be the only one some mean old curmudgeon gets that day.  One pleasant ‘good morning’ might be the only one some miserable gum cracking too perfumy lady in Shop Rite gets all week.  You just don’t know how far your little effort can go…You have no idea how much goodness you might have done somebody, just by taking a split second to show the smallest bit of attention or understanding.

I can’t soothe the sadness that people are feeling but I can make the world a better place by giving and spreading all the love and positive thoughts and kind behaviors that I can in each day I have.  AND guess what?  You can too.  We all can give comfort to those we know and those around us by simply being more loving, being more kind, being more tolerant, being more accepting, being more generous, being more cheerful…Soothing spreads farther and wider than we can imagine but it starts right here, now, in your heart. All of that energy goes out into the universe and when we feel that there is NOTHING we can do to make a friend feel better, the truth is that we absolutely CAN do a lot, because it all circles and swirls and twirls throughout each of our days on this earth.

I live in the same county in which I was born.  My back yard, in this house, what I fondly call my “last house,” is 1000 feet from the field and woods and marshes surrounding my “first grown up” house where my daughter played and found adventure as a little girl. We have a small barrier island near here across the bay where my mother’s great-grandfather settled in the late 1800’s and on which she and all of her siblings were born in the late 1930’s and early 40’s.  The same island where my father’s parents vacationed and had a summer home in the 50’s and 60’s .  This island is where my father worked his whole life as a carpenter and where I have been employed since I was 14.  This island is about a ten mile drive from where we all live now.  We have not traveled very far from where we started.  When I was young I used to dream about getting away from here, this place that is sometimes a cultural void, and imagined living in a city or a bustling artsy town, filled with fantastic diversity and magnificent restaurants and unique shopping, but here is where I’ve stayed, despite the few chances to be elsewhere…

I went to a small art show on Saturday that made me feel connected to “here” in a way that was oddly comforting.  When I walked into the space the first person I saw was a woman who I worked with on that island more than 25 years ago.  She sold real estate and worked at the same gallery I did during her slow times of the year.  She also happened to go to school with my mother 25 years before that and she currently owns the only health food store in our area, where I suspect every one of us in that room at that moment, has shopped.  She was speaking to a man who I now work part-time for in the winter who owns a publishing company in our area and who I met more than 29 years ago at that same gallery on that island where we sold his calendars which feature photos of the Jersey shore.  They were standing in front of the woman who was the host of the art show and in whose space the event was held, a woman I had not seen for more than 39 years; you see, when I was a little girl and learning “Hop-Shuffle-Tap-Flap-Ball Change” at the dancing school a mile from my house, where I took lessons for a couple of hours a week for all the years of my youth, she was doing the “time step” from 42nd Street and “shuffling off to Buffalo” with the girls I so looked up to and admired, the teenagers who were called The Starlets, and the dancing school was owned by a woman who had been a Radio City Rockette and with whom my mother went to high school.  This thin and fit woman with the sexiest silver hair and super cool sea-glass necklaces around her neck happens to be married to a man who I see at least twice a year, and sometimes more, who owns a canvas shop on the island where I take my customer’s boat cushions and covers to be sewn and repaired every season, a man who also grew up on the island and who knows both of my  parents.  I then chatted briefly with a woman who is a local writer and artist who I have been friends with on Facebook for more than five years but who I never had met, who dates a man who is the ex-husband of a woman I also worked with at a gift shop on the island almost a decade ago.  Her booth of framed drawings and watercolors was beside a booth where my part-time-boss’s wife was sitting with her fun and funky upcycled objects for sale, one of which I HAD to have, and for which I specifically went to this Artisans’ Festivus Market.  Her table was across the room from a woman who is both an extraordinary seamstress, who owns a store on the island where she sells her handmade bathing suits, and also a potter who does beautifully glazed functional stoneware.  I met her years ago, when I briefly dated a man who turned out to be ‘oh so wrong’ for me, but through whom I met a lot of cool people, and she happens to live on the same street where my former boss once lived, the woman who owned the gallery where I worked, off and on for more than 25 years and her sister-in-law is a woman I was friends with in high school…

“And the seasons they go round and round,  And the painted ponies go up and down,  We’re captive on the carousel of time.  We can’t return we can only look behind from where we came,  And go round and round and round in the circle game…”

AND there I stood, feeling so connected to so many people in such a small space…this strange feeling washed over me, how just a few threads join us all in this splendid tapestry…and I was walking beside  the man I love, who I met only 1,619 days ago, but who went to my high school at the same time I did, the same high school where my mother went three decades before us, and with whom I share so many mutual friends and acquaintences…and yet we never had met, never had even known the other existed.  He often says to me, “how could you not have known me, I had long hair and was the drummer in a really cool band?!”  and I respond, “well how did you not know me, I was the captain of the cheerleaders and was tall and thin with big boobs?!”   We laugh a lot about it, how we were so near each other so many times but never met.  We probably were just feet away from each other playing Pac-Man at the arcade on the island when we were 13 and 14, we were probably just feet away from each other near lockers in a hallway when we were 15 and 16, we were probably at some of the same parties or events and no one ever thought to introduce us, and yet here we are now, 49 &50 making a life together, joining his daughter and my granddaughters, perhaps creating a friendship that might last throughout their lives, mixing his martini glasses with my high-ball glasses, his vegetable peeler with my Oneida flatware…I think it’s sometimes these little connections, these tiny bits of glue that join us and create the strongest adhesive.