I know a number of women who have “bad mom” stories.  I know a number of women who have “no mom” stories.  I know a number of women who have both stories. I am not one of those women.  My mother is one of those women who steps up, no matter what, regardless of the circumstance or event, whether or not the situation appears to be difficult or may cause unease, every single time…From the morning of my dreadfully complicated birth, causing her great pain and needless suffering, and numerous complications, because she did not have insurance and therefore what should have been, even back THEN, a Cesarian session, was instead a spinal-block and an otherwise natural birth, that could have left both of us dead, she has been there for me.

In my years on this planet I have done things, said things, initiated things, participated in things, denied things, and started things that she neither liked nor approved, and while she has been very disappointed in these said things I did, she was not disappointed in ‘me,’ in the person that is who I am.   You see, the characteristic that seems to me most special about her is her ability to separate the behavior from the person.  I see these contemporary “yuppie” or “millennial” parenting books, that espouse these new and latest ways of discipline, that the child should not be disciplined, but the behavior that was bad or wrong is what should be punished, making sure the child’s sense of self is left unharmed, or lessons of that nature, and I have to write, in all honesty that she did this, long before it was such a “hip” way to parent.  She has been very upset, and truth be told, rightly so, over things I have done, choices I have made, and decisions I insisted were right, that were in retrospect, very wrong for me, or just in general very poor judgments, but she never denied me her love or care or shoulder to cry on when I “came to” and accepted the errors of my ways.  I have been disappointed and let down by people time after time in my adult life, but never by my mother.

When I found out that I was too far pregnant to get made un-pregnant at the clinic, and begged that my little sister tell my mother, because I was too ashamed, on my sister’s 15th birthday no less, my mother was so sad and so mad, but she never ever said bad things to me or against me.  She never said mean things about what a mess I had made of my life, of which 17 of them she had been so diligent to make “good” years.  AND most significant, to me at least, was that she never once said, “how could you do this to me?” or acted embarrassed or ashamed over what was happening to her daughter, me, in her world.   She never once made her upset and worry seem somehow more valid than my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad situation, and for that, I am so very thankful.

The first time I left my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad marriage, was eight months after my wedding day, and she and my Dad and my sister came to my cold, sparse, paneled, island house and started packing and moving what little I had into my Dad’s work truck, but I was inexplicably not ready to give up, and did not want to move back home.  I reluctantly went with them.  WHY?  Why I did not want to be in my family’s beautiful home with people who loved me and treated me well is still a great one of life’s mysteries, but I really did not want to be there, and so after only six months with them I moved back out, this time to a tiny apartment with intermittent heat, very little food, no car, no phone, and a bike to ride myself to and from work, and a not very nice man who I called my husband, and it was, as I should have expected a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad situation and again my mother did not judge me harshly, never kept her love from me or from my child, and I suppose just waited as best she could for me to come to my senses.  In June of 1987 I did just that, from the pay phone at 7-11 while my baby lie asleep in her crib a couple blocks away, called one of my two best friends and said, “I need you, please come” And she did.  And she drove me and my things back to my parent’s house and my mother accepted me with open arms.  When my chin starts to quiver and my eyes begin to well up, no matter what has led me to that point, my mother’s first inclination is to open her arms as wide as she can.

My mother and I, as all, or I suppose most daughter/mother relationships go, have had our share of spats and upsets, slammed doors, stomping up the stairs, rolled eyes, exasperated sighs, and raised voices.  I always apologize if I lose my cool and when she has blurted things that she wishes she could take back, she too has always apologized…I am a huge fan of knowing when to say sorry and knowing when to forgive and moving on.  My mother tells me that when I was only about four years-old I stopped letting her hold or cuddle me or hug me…I have no memory of this of course, but it must have made her feel bad.  I can list many things that I did as a daughter that were not nice, and I can list a few things that she did as a mother that were not nice, but always being able to say “I’m sorry,” and meaning it, and saying “I forgive you, forget it,” and meaning it, really matters in relationships.

Yesterday afternoon I talked to my mother about some things that have been weighing heavily on my spirit, things that have been keeping me from sleeping soundly, and things that keep me overstuffed with many emotions, none of them peaceful, and in mid conversation my chin began to quiver, and my eyes began to well, and I really REALLY hate to cry…I’ve always felt like it made me seem weak and needy, and have spent many, many moments of my life fighting the action, but yesterday, before I could hold back the deluge of tears and that heavy first breath that comes with the immediate release of deeply buried feelings, her arms were open and wide and extended to me before I could gather my strength of will to hold back or compose myself, and again without a word, she opened her loving arms, and I felt that she knows how to save me, even when I can’t figure out how to save myself…

In July of 1994 I packed up my car with a six pack of Tab, a pack of Carlton’s, my eight-year-old, and two cds, Pearl Jam’s second album, and Stone Temple Pilot’s Core, and off I went, north on I95 to have an adventure.  I had a friend at the time who had recently suffered an unimaginable loss; two weeks before her due date, her unborn baby did a somersault in her uterus and knotted his own umbilical cord, and arrived on this planet already dead…her sadness was too great, being at the supermarket and having women notice her flat belly and two older daughters in the shopping cart and ask, where was the baby?  did you have the baby? what did you have? etc., so she told her husband he needed to find a job someplace else, away, and they rented out their house and went north to heal their hearts and their young family and asked me to visit, and so I did.

I was working a full-time job that I loved, but that did not afford me the luxury of living “well,” and I was going to college full-time, both at night after work and on my days off, and that summer, although I was young, and although I did not then know what I know now, that life would become much, much harder and that I was then perhaps living the best life I would know, I was sad that summer…not boo-hoo sad, but wondering where my life was going, what I was doing, what was I working for, was what I was doing worthwhile, was I a good enough mother, was I good enough human, would I ever meet a man to share my life with?  I had that winter gone on six blind dates.  Back in those days when we had new computers and very limited understanding of this gigantic “thing” called the internet, we still had dating classifieds in the back of the Asbury Park Press, and because I had no interest in meeting a man who thought bars were a worthwhile way, or place, to spend one’s time, and because I had only met one man, in all those years of college that I thought good enough to date (full disclosure: I thought he was, but he turned out to be a person who lied to my face, and cheated on me with some girl who worked at a Dunkin Donuts and then got her pregnant while he was my boyfriend, so to write that I was feeling confused is no exaggeration) I tried the dating pages of the paper…where else was I ever going to meet somebody?  Well, I discovered it was not in fact the dating pages of the newspaper.  Back in those days you wrote a little blurb about yourself, and read little blurbs others wrote about themselves, and then you dialed a number and used your personal code to listen to the messages left in response to your blurb and then called back, or didn’t.  Six times I went out on a date with a person who called my ‘number’ and who I liked talking to, and seemed to enjoy getting to know, and six times, as soon as I walked in the door of the place we were meeting, said that I was sorry, that my child was home sick with a sitter and I would be able to stay no more than one hour, but did not want to cancel on such short notice.  Six times I just knew that it was not a good fit for me and I was not going to be interested in dating this person.  I admit it may have been horrifically superficial but if I did not feel a spark or an immediate tingle in my belly upon locking eyes with the person, or if I just did not like his face, I knew it would not work for me, no matter what…I needed the jolt, the zing, the spark of chemistry…and years later I would understand how that karmically works out in the universe, but then, it was simply how things were, and my “sick baby” excuse, seemed to be the best way to handle a less than desirable situation.

So…by that summer, after a lonely winter of trying and wishing to meet somebody, and by springtime having accepted that perhaps I was simply meant to be alone, I was feeling terribly confused…Most nights, after putting my book down and turning off my light, I fell asleep with the same questions swirling and turning in my head, how can it be so hard to meet people?  who would not want a girl like me who works so hard and goes to school and gets good grades, and likes to cook and clean?  when will I finally meet somebody to share my time and space with?  So when my friend asked me to come up to Rhode Island for a few days and to bring my daughter, and she could stay with them for a week and then I could go back to get her, and it would do me good…I thought, “um, yes.  Yes it will do me good.”

When I got to Rhode Island we did not talk about my friend’s sadness, loss, or move, we just hung out and ate good food, listened to good music, watched three little girls play…and then the morning before I was leaving to go back to New Jersey she told me we were going to Block Island.  Her husband was in charge of three little girls and we were off…we took a ferry, which at first for me was challenging, as I need Dramamine to be on any sort of vessel, but my enthusiasm for an adventure and my ability to keep my eyes on the horizon line, kept me from feeling ill for the entire hour…I loved the rocks and the buildings as we neared the dock and I loved the vibe from the moment we disembarked.  We wandered around a bit; first I found a coffee shop and then a lady who sold handmade batik fabrics, and I bought a dress…dark blue/black and covered in white stars, moons, suns, and galaxies, and I put it on right over top of my tank top and shorts, and felt immediately, well “open” is the only word I can think of all these years later, I felt open…and then we rented bikes…

I had not ridden on a bike since I was a teenager, or maybe an adolescent, to be honest, thinking back to then, and remembering now, I don’t know how long it had been, but it had been a L O N G time since I had been on a bicycle and I wondered, those first few tentative pedalings, “can one forget how to ride a bike?”  …and then something wonderful happened…we started pedaling and we did not know where we were going, but we just started riding and we were hot and sweaty within moments and we just explored this island, this place with rough craggy edges and magnificent buildings and we went around a curve and suddenly, unexpectedly, the whole world dropped away…growing up at the Jersey shore in what can easily be described as the flattest place on earth, one does not expect to go around a curve and suddenly find the road dropping…dropping many feet per second, or so it felt like, and finding oneself on a hill, which to me felt like a mountain, on a bike going so fast, SO SO So fast…and noticing as the land becomes flatter, that the road before us becomes less straight, not only is it less straight, it’s a curve, kind of a sharp curve, and I am now not peddaling, and I am now kind of terrified of braking, having gone over my handlebars as a kid in a situation with far less altitude, and I am doing what feels like much more than coasting…I am soaring, I am free, I am sweating in my new batik celestial dress and it is flowing and my hair is flying and I am absolutely terrified that if I don’t turn the handlebars “just so” as the curve nears at the bottom of the hill, that I will just catapult myself over the rocks and into the ocean and likely will die…but I did not die and I did navigate the curve just so, and when we got onto some straight paved road, I felt a sense of peace that I don’t know I had ever felt before, and thinking back, I don’t know if I have felt since…The exhilaration and excitement was so fulfilling and breathtaking that I felt everything, and nothing, at the exact same time…

Is it silly, to be almost 50 years old and to think of that day as being one of the most fun days, one of the very best days, of my adult life?

I didn’t think about boys, or men, or wishing I had one, or more,  for the rest of that summer…I felt like me, and I felt like “me” will be okay if she is alone for the rest of her life, or she will someday find somebody who fills her up, like that sensation that day on Block Island, or maybe she will never feel that complete or peaceful again…it wasn’t that I didn’t care, but I guess I stopped caring so much…

I want to feel that peace and that excitement and that sensation of bewilderment, and I don’t know how to do it…“Things were different then.  All is different now” as Eddie Vedder so often sings into my soul…That friend and I parted ways four years ago after almost 20 years of friendship…and I missed her for a long time, and then I just accepted that she was done with our friendship and I healed from that loss, just like we all heal from all losses.  I think about that day on Block Island every now and then, and I learned recently that she’s left her husband, and bought an RV and is going to California…I suspect she is going to have an adventure…and I wonder, if after all these years, she too thinks about that day, and remembers how it felt, on those rented bikes with the breeze blowing our hair and the sweat stinging our eyes, how free and easy life felt, seemed…godspeed my old friend…

Unless you have suffered the agonizing and devastating emotions that come along with peeling open that purple wrapper and  peeing on a plastic stick and watching, dreading, the longest two minutes ever, as the little blue lines turned into a ” + ” sign, when what you were dearly wishing and hoping, and dare I write, praying for, was the ” – ” sign, you really can’t say with certainty what you would do.  Sure, you can say all you want that life is sacred, that a baby begins being a baby at the moment of conception, and that you would never have an abortion, or that you would never let your daughter have one or procure one for her…sure, you can say these things, but are you sure?  It’s all well and good to believe that life is sacred, but is one cluster of dividing cells MORE sacred than the actual human being that you are, or that you gave birth to or raised, and is about to start her sophomore year of college?  Is that little cluster of parasitic dividing cells more important than the girl who you raised into a woman who now finds herself un-wanting to be pregnant?

I do not generally write or talk about politics.  They are often divisive and I try to live my life in a harmonious, ‘peaceful easy-feeling’ way, but today I am writing about how I felt when I watched the news late last night and then again very early this morning and learned that Ted Cruz won on the side of the republicans in the Iowa caucus.  I don’t know much about him but what I have seen or heard on the news, and what I saw and heard during the two debates that I did watch & I learned that he does not believe that abortions should be legal and safe and available in the United States of America.

I don’t know ANYBODY who is “for” abortion.  Nobody I ever met at the clinic felt happy, or excited to be there.  Nobody I ever talked to in college felt joyful that they made the choice they made.  Not one woman I have ever talked to about this subject has NOT thought about how old that child might now be, had she made another choice…would it have been a boy or a girl…what my life would have been like if I had chose a different course of action…you see, from what I know for sure, nobody thinks it’s just terrific, oh it’s swell, no biggie, to have an accidental pregnancy and make the choice to terminate it.  In my opinion the people who prosthelytize the sanctity of life, the value of this cluster of cells,  would have you believe that those of us who have made this choice don’t find a value in an unborn fetus.  This is not true.  I cried each time for the “what could have been” and would cry again, if I had to make this choice.  What is true, what I believe to be true, is that we value our own lives, and our own futures, more.

When I hear people who are not pro-choice talk about these babies, these valuable lives, all I can think about is, “are you and your family going to adopt one, or three, or five of them?”  “Will every family in your congregation accept the responsibility of adopting these unwanted fetuses that grow into full term humans and  will each family who belongs to your church take at least one of these ‘precious lives’ and make it their own child, part of their family?”  “How about the church in the next town, or the bible college in the next city?  Will every one of those families take and adopt and support and raise these humans?”  I read several different statistics this morning and it seems that based on state-wide available data, in 2014 there were approximately 977,000 abortions performed in the United States.  So I ask, if abortion becomes illegal, if Roe vs. Wade is overturned and Ted Cruz is elected president and does as he is promising, to make the Supreme Court one of the most right-wing courts in history, to appoint the most conservative judges he can, to fill the spaces which might be open from the four judges who are expected to retire within the next few years, and to use the 14th amendment to outlaw abortion in all circumstances, basically to give an unborn cluster of cells the same “rights” as a living human being, WHO is going to take and raise and provide for these 977,000 humans???

It’s MUCH bigger than just me and just you.  It’s MUCH more important than you might think.  I know, I know, there are many issues that matter when it comes to politics; what we think is important for our own self, our family, the economy, the country…I understand there are MANY things that matter, but some things may seem unimportant to you because you think that they don’t matter for you…but that just shows how you are neglecting to see the big picture, to think outside of the tiny box that is your household or your town…It’s all well and good to say that you value life and that abortion is wrong, but tell me, if your 16 year old daughter/ honor roll student/ soccer star/ cheerleader finds that she is pregnant, and does not want to be, and wants to finish high school and go on to college and create the life she imagines without the emotional and financial burdens of being a young single mother, you are going to take away all of her dreams because she made a mistake and accidentally got pregnant?  What about HER life’s value??  What about your granddaughter, or your niece, or your neighbor, or your sister or-or-or…It’s so much more important than just what YOU think, what matters to YOU.  If all of your pregnancies were planned and wanted and you never had an accident or mistake, then good on ‘ya, you are a better woman than I.  I have made the choice more than once and I would make the choice again if I had to.  Accidents happen, we have to make choices in life that are sometimes sad, and sometimes hard, but we make them based on what is best; what is the best ending to this situation for us, for me, for you…if you don’t believe that matters FOR you, to have that choice, then at least believe that it matters for your daughter, or your son’s girlfriend, or the future women of this country…

There is no way to slow it down, the change, the growth, the blossoming, the becoming…it is, like Joni Mitchell says, A Circle Game…I’m not ready for it to stop, but sometimes it turns faster than I can handle, and truth be told, sometimes it moves so slowly I can’t breathe…I suppose the balance is in the understanding, that in life, in living,  there is constant motion.

Today is warm, compared to the last few frigid weeks and the mounds of icy snow from our weekend blizzard are getting smaller and smaller by the hour, so I take a deep breath of the fresh January air and realize that the days are growing longer, minute by minute a sliver more sunshine each evening, bit by bit, little by little…round and round…

I watched a silly short video of my grandchildren the other day which I took four or five years ago, as they sang Christmas songs at my breakfast bar, and even those snippets of time make me pause and think, how fast it is going, and how ill prepared I am for when it all stops…I’m thinking a lot about time lately, recognizing that there is not enough time for all that I want to do, or perhaps maybe there is just enough time if I get on the ball, or maybe, there is an abundance and I’m just being silly or anxious or needlessly worrying in my mid-life.  I knew a person for a short while several years ago who was positively obsessed with the NOW.  Seldom if ever did he recognize any wrongs he had done in his past, and seldom if ever worried about his future, but always just felt the only thing that mattered was right this second, every second.  It’s something I have struggled with for all of my adult life, the dreaming and wishing and planing and hoping, and I suspect it’s something that I will continue to struggle with until I give up this fight and just be in the moment.

I visited with my grandmother three times in the last month.  She just turned 98. The second of the three visits included my father, my sister, my daughter, and my nephew, and it that small room, packed tightly with people who share deoxyribonucleic acid, and history, I felt time stop for a moment…we are all in this circle game whether we are mindful of our participation or not.  My daughter recently celebrated her 30th trip around the sun and my dad is about to celebrate his 74th, the man I say “I love you” to, will be turning 50 in just eight weeks, and shortly thereafter my parents will embrace their 50th anniversary of marriage…it’s all just time isn’t it?  Time on this planet, breathing in and breathing out…

I know several women who are suffering right this hour, who are sad, and worried, or scared and uncertain…some of them are distressed about themselves and some of them are fearful over their daughters, and all of them are thinking about their dreams, their wishes, and their time on this earth and what to do with it… do they have enough of it, and if not, how best to spend what time there is…it’s heavy in my heart, the hurting of these women who are my friends.  I am a woman without religion, I may even go so far as to write that I am a woman without faith, but I am however a woman who likes the idea of praying.  I like thinking that if in fact there is god, god knows I am a good human and a loving person and will be receptive to my words, and I also like thinking that if there is no god, the universe is vast, and bigger and more beautiful than any of us can even begin to imagine and it’s magical that we are in it, and my words must go somewhere…So I have been praying and thinking about these women I love, some more intimately than others but love just the same…that’s the thing about love, it’s magnificent and it’s open to any possibility…it’ll go where I send it, no matter what…

I think what I am feeling is maybe a recognition that I want my time on this planet to be much more than breathing in and breathing out…there is so much that I wish to see, so much that I wish to do, so much that I wish to change, so much that I wish to stay the same…it’s all up to me, and what you wish for and dream to do is all up to you isn’t it?  What we do with the time we’ve got is our choice.  Who we choose to love, who we choose to lose, how we choose to find joy in little things or simple pleasures, or demand our happiness come from the big and the bold, how we spend our time, how we earn our pay, what we take in and what we send out…it’s all choices, time isn’t waiting for me to make them…like Joni says, “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…

Many years ago, 30 this morning, to be exact, I received a congratulations card while in the hospital after the birth of my baby girl, and on the cover it read, in pastel pink calligraphy, with little white birds flying about the clouds above a big green lush spring-bloomed tree, “There are two lasting gifts we can give our children, one is roots and the other is wings” and while I do not recall who brought me that card, I never have forgotten the words…How is it that what turned out to be one of the happiest days of my life is already thirty years gone?  And how is it that I managed, despite so many hardships and obstacles against me, to bestow both of these lasting gifts onto this beautiful child of mine?

If you have ever heard the song by Carole King called “Child of Mine” then you know the lyric “I don’t want to hold you back, I just want to watch you grow” and I have loved every minute, well almost every minute, of these three decades, watching this big bald baby blossom and burst into this long lovely lady.  When I look at her, or see photos of her, I think she’s one of the most beautiful women I have ever laid eyes on, and when I watch her love her own daughters, I see a beauty in her that is profoundly more magnificent than that which is on her outside…her love for her children is a deep as the ocean and as infinite as the universe, and sometimes when I watch their faces watching her, see their eyes light up when she enters the room, I think to myself, “I did that,” that I made this human who these other humans love so much…it’s just one of the most amazing feelings in the world, that I’ve got no simple words to describe…

She spread her wings at 18 when she flew away to North Carolina, and while there she made these two little girls, but she planted her roots when she moved back here to New Jersey, when she decided that she wanted her children to grow up with their family so near and so close, as she did.  She loves my parents more than maybe most women love their grandparents because frankly they did as much parenting as I, if not more so, during her youngest years; they helped me raise her, and that was a gift in her life and mine, to be sure.  That I get to now live next door to her and the children is one of the greatest blessings in my life, particularly when I speak to people who have children and grandchildren far away, and I wonder, how would I live or breathe without hearing their voices nearly every day, or seeing their faces almost every day?

I’ve read whimsical t-shirts and signs that say things like, if I knew grandchildren were this awesome, I would have had them first, and it’s true that the love you feel for the child of your child is extremely different from that of “mothering,” purer is a word that often comes to my mind, and I’ve said and written countless times that I had no idea I had THAT much love inside of me, until I loved these girls, but even so, what touches me most thoroughly about watching and experiencing my daughter as a mother, is seeing her loved so deeply and so completely by her children…I feel strong and confident and certain, when I see her loved by those girls, that I did a fine job raising that human, and it’s a present I get to receive every day of my life…

I have done everything in my power for my daughter that I could.  I thought of her before I thought of myself from the moment she took her first breath of air and was welcomed to this world.  In retrospect, I could have done many things better than I did, but I also could have done worse.  We grew up together in a way, that girl and I.  I knew from the beginning that I would never be able to give her the kind of childhood, or kind of life that I had, but I knew that I could do the next best thing, which was have my loving family close, and ‘in’ most every step of her life, and I needed them to help me, so we all were better for it…that whole “it takes a village” idea is a universal truth.  I laughed and read with her, comforted her and wiped her tears, scolded and praised her when either was required, and taught her everything I knew, and showed her what love is.   It’s said that there is no way to be a perfect mother, but that there are hundreds of ways to be a good one, and if I gave my daughter no other gift in her life than this, I would believe I did enough.  The love that I feel for that girl and her girls is, like the lamp in A Christmas Story, ‘indescribably beautiful;’  it mends me when I am broken, it feeds me when I am empty, in warms me when I am cold, it soothes me when I ache, it’s a restorative like no other, love like that…

My daughter is smart and my daughter is beautiful and my daughter is a good person.  A parent can’t really ask for much more than that in a human, and anybody would be lucky to have her as a friend and as a neighbor.  I get to have her as both, and I sometimes wonder how on earth I ever got so lucky?!  That she stretched her spine and arched her back and spread her wings when she felt like she needed to fly, made me feel like I had raised her right, although I thought my heart was breaking, when she first left, I also felt that my mothering made her brave and confident and fearless, and that I gave her those gifts was what strengthened me during the initial sadness of her absence…that she has planted and watered and sunned herself in such a way that she now has such sturdy deep roots beside me, is a gift she gives me in return…no wrapping or bows required…

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”  ~ Ernest Hemingway

“Make peace with your broken pieces” I read this sentence the other day and it made me think of a word I learned a couple of years ago, kintsugi, a Japanese word which means ‘the art of embracing the damage.’  I read that in Japan, this is a method of repairing broken objects that uses lacquer mixed with metals so that the repair is visible and becomes a recognition of the damage, the history that the object has had, and not trying to mask the repair or crack as if it is flawless…here we use Super Glue, we try so hard to get the right number of dots of glue on the broken edge, and then the right number of dots on the edge of the broken off piece and then we piece it together, trying to not get our fingers stuck together with hands as still as a surgeon’s and we clamp it, or tape it, or balance the object with a dictionary on it in such a way that the crack we hope will become invisible, like ‘nobody will know it has been broken but me.’  I like the idea of this Japanese technique and the philosophy behind it.  It seems more honest.

As we leave 2015 behind tonight and move into 2016 I think it’s only smart to reflect upon our year and think about making peace with our broken pieces…we can use the Americanized technique of Super Glue and Scotch tape and try to pretend that nothing’s been broken, or we can use the Japanese technique of recognizing that something has indeed been broken, it was surely damaged, and it has now been repaired, and it’s okay, beautiful even, to embrace the imperfect…I think this is something of a problem we are mired in, in this modern United States, it’s not very united and it’s hardly perfect, but so many people want to pretend that everything’s fine…we hide behind big houses and straight fences and perfectly manicured lawns with the 2.5 children who are honor roll students who play violin and soccer and our dog that neither sheds nor drools and we have a new car every three years and we eat healthy meals as a family and we go on vacation every Easter and we love our mother in law and we get along with our neighbors and-and-and…and it’s so unattainable…so impossible to achieve…this modern America is all super-glued and scotch taped and pretend…and we let it be that way…

I’m neither feeling cynical nor suspicious of this American life, I am after all part of it, and I don’t begrudge those friends or family or neighbors who are ‘living the dream,’  I simply think a lot of the dream is fake…I am guilty too.  There are a number of things in my life that are so far from perfect I no longer have a map to navigate the terrain I find myself lost in…I go to sleep almost every single night with some sort of confusion or worry or regret…and you know what that gets me?  A bad night’s sleep…so it’s so much easier to pretend that all is well…and I think that’s how it is for most of us.  For those of you who are perfect, and have perfect marriages, big fat mutual funds, disposable income, and no debt, I applaud you…you made far better choices in life than I clearly did, but for the others who like me are far from where they want to be, or far from where they thought they would be “by now,” join me if you will, in making peace with your broken pieces.  Let 2016 be a year to heal.  Fill the damage with gold and silver and platinum.  Let the cracks shine and glimmer and draw your eye right to them, embrace the wound and celebrate the repair.  I’ve grown in this year to believe it’s okay that I’m full of flaws, I just want to be more authentic.  I intend to live more fully in the light and honesty of that statement in this new year.

So we move forward together, into 2016.  We can keep dwelling on the last year, and the one before that, or our pasts or our childhoods or our whatevers, or we can close the doors, turn the pages, step off…whatever term you wish to use that engages your wonder with what’s new for you, that gets you off into a new way of thinking, of being, or living.  There is no right or wrong way to live or to be, we all choose how to act & how to interact, the only “rules” are the ones we choose to live by or recognize as valid.  Some of us can just keep on pretending that nothing is broken, some of us can super glue the cracks and hope they hold, and some of us can come forward with the art of kintsukuroi, embellish the damage and sing out “I’ve been cracked, but I’m not broken” and if that isn’t making peace with your broken pieces, I don’t know what is…

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”  ~ Rumi

I’ve seen the movie Love Actually too many times to count.  While it is not my favorite holiday film, it’s one of my favorites and I generally watch it the first day that I begin decorating after Thanksgiving and usually once while wrapping gifts, and then almost always while I start the undecorating, which I am doing right now…well, now, as in I stopped undecorating to come upstairs and write.  I just stopped the movie after the office Christmas party scene where Karen, so brilliantly played by the glorious Emma Thompson, says to Harry, “you know she is darling, be careful there” regarding the attractiveness of the  stunningly sexy and provocative assistant named Mia…and I got a little teary eyed, wrapping up the Santas in tissue paper and bubble and storing and stacking them with care in a giant red Rubbermaid tote, because I know what is coming up shortly…and it is heartbreakingly tender, this part that crushes me so, every year…when Karen opens up her gift, a cd, Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now…when she was expecting a gold necklace which she spied in her husband’s pocket after shopping…and she goes to their room and she cries and it breaks my heart every time I watch the movie, even though I know it’s coming, and I know what happens, because nobody wants to feel that way, ever, and if ever they have been broken-hearted or crushed or deceived, they don’t want to feel it again.  I suppose my tears are in solidarity every holiday, with good women treated badly and who deserved so much better…even when they are fictional characters…

I think when you actually love someone, care for that person deeply and wholly, and in friendship and with compassion, it is impossible to break that person’s heart.  You can make them angry, and sometimes you can utter things that you wish you could take back, and you can even make them sad, but if you actually love that person you could not do the thing that would be soul crushing and heart breaking.  What I’ve  learned most from Love Actually is that many of the people who say the words “I love you” really don’t know love at all.  If you really love a person the way you wish to be loved, then you could not ever do to that person a thing, or multiple things, that would devastate that person.  It’s actually that simple.  All of that *do unto others* business means that you have to walk the walk if you want to talk the talk.  You have to act in love if you wish to say the words.

I know that there are some people who do not like the holidays because of bad memories or maybe continually dashed expectations and so they just have a sort of “Bah” attitude towards these two weeks.  I am not one of those people.  I admit that I had a beautiful childhood and now have a beautiful adulthood and feel really blessed and lucky most days of the year.  I have a lot of love in my life and I am glad for it.  Even when I am having an off day, or feeling low or regrets or any kind of negative thought, I remind myself that I have one thing that many people don’t and that is love.  I am loved deeply by quite a number of people and I deeply love quite a number of people. It’s not anything I ever asked for, it’s just what I got, and it makes me happy. I have many favorite parts of this movie, and I have the same four parts that make me teary and sometimes cry, every single viewing, but more than anything I like so much that it reminds us, I mean, it tells us, several times, that love is actually all around, and we believe it a little bit more every time we see it.  If your life feels like it is missing love, I hope in this new year, you find it.  If you think that you were not as loving this past year as you could have been, I hope you love a little bit harder this new year.  There are lots of things we buy and give, but love really is the truest ‘gift,’ not just the words, not saying words but really doing it, loving.  As this year comes to an end, and I put away this dvd until next November, I want to wish all of you a happy new year, filled with friendship and compassion and love actually…

Sometimes I feel like life is like an algebra problem; you know that both sides of the equation have to be equal, and you have a variety of variables and operations that have to be resolved before you can solve for X.  That the “solving” is what matters…it ought not be so difficult right? Solving for X… I finished the interior Christmas decorating this morning and found myself crocheting baby blankets on the sofa in the early afternoon and turned on the show on Oprah’s network called Super Soul Sunday.  It is an extraordinary show if you are looking for inspiration, or meaning or guidance, or just wish to be uplifted by listening to people talk about what matters to them and why.  It’s a real question in life, to solve for X or Y, isn’t it?

Why things don’t go as we had hoped or planned?  Why our great expectations are dashed by reality?  Why some people come into your life and what on earth is the lesson we’re supposed to be learning?  Why you said what you said or did what you did?  Why it appears on the surface that some people flow so smoothly and why others seem to suffer, constantly and perpetually?  What am I missing?  What is the cosmic clue that I can’t seem to grasp?  Today I watched this channel for a couple of hours while my fingers wrapped around the yarn from my basket and I felt something I can only describe as an alignment.  I felt like I was “supposed” to be hearing these words.  It felt like I think people must feel when they go to church, like they are connected with something that they don’t fully understand, but that fills them up and lifts them up in ways that they can’t quite describe, but they certainly can feel.  I listened to three different authors; Gary Zukav, Sue Monk Kidd, and Zainab Salbi and the funny thing was, at the end of the talks and the interviews, Oprah asks them ‘what they know for sure’…and despite having very different journeys and very different failures & successes, and very different experiences in this journey of life, they all said something about how what they know for sure is that love is what matters.  So I found myself wondering; is love the thing that matters when you already have achieved financial success and security and have no other monetary or emotional or physical worries, so you can say, Love is what matters?  Or, is it true that all the other bullshit of life; the worries over paying the property taxes, and paying the income taxes, and getting out of credit card debt, is meaningless, and that Love is really the only thing that matters?

I feel like people who have no worries about being able to pay their mortgage are the ones who can say, and mean it, love is all that matters.  Those of us who are worried all the time, and anxious about our present and our future and our jobs and our work are the ones to whom love is not all that matters…all that matters is being able to pay the bills month after month as you try to get yourself back on your feet after a problem or a turmoil or a disruption…so it gets me thinking…am I being sucked into this cosmic worry, or is the equation as simple as X or Y = Love?

Is all this external nonsense just external nonsense?  Is it true that nothing else matters?  Is it true that when I am on my last breath on this big blue ball I won’t worry about how full or empty my bank account was but will only worry about did I love well enough?  Was I kind enough to those who mattered to me?  Did I let the music fill my soul?  Did I stop to smell the flowers?  Did I delight in the divine sound of the laughter of children or the chirping of birds?  Is all of this modern world’s ‘worry,’ just fluff?  Just smoke and mirrors?  Should I just let my story unfold, however it is going to unfold?  Am I in fact someday going to find the great and powerful Oz behind the curtain and find out I had the power to just be happy with what is, with both the nonsense and the lovely, all along?

Today’s blog is full of questions and not any answers at all…I don’t want to be so wrapped up in the recognition of what is missing, that I miss what is here all along right in front of me.  I suppose I am comforted in knowing that I am not alone.  Why do we say or do things sometimes that just make somebody else feel bad, only because it makes us feel better?  Why do we let what others do or say sometimes pull us out of our own gloriousness and grace?  Some of you wonder, just like I do, about ALL of it…the big picture, and what are we missing?  Why am I here and for how long?  I for one let myself get sucked into these dismal thoughts about how things did not go as I had planned, but does that mean that all that has happened has no meaning?  It can’t be.  It all has to be part of the equation.  It all has to be part of the lesson…right?  What is happening to each of us has to matter.  It can’t be for nothing, that we are even thinking these thoughts, having these worries and wonderings…I am not religious, in that I practice no faith, no rituals…but I wonder.  I wonder what matters.  I wonder what I can do better.  If it is all just an equation that can be solved, then can’t we just solve it?

It’s not difficult to say “I’m sorry” and mean it.  It is however not always easy to stop doing the things for which you apologize, but, it still seems a worthwhile effort.   I think of myself sometimes as like the verse my Nana used to read to me:  ~There once was a girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid.~   I am as guilty as the next person in thinking myself “good,” but being well aware when I am unkind or wrong, or have not done unto others as I would have them do to me, and at those times, not liking myself one bit.  Now, it’s true that some people are rather awful and simply don’t know it.  This blog is not about THOSE people.  It’s about us.  You and Me.  The amiable and the kind, the loving and the generous, who sometimes lose our footing and stumble off the track.  You know the track; the nice straight and strong one, with solid anchor spikes and smooth rails that the goodness train runs on.

When we get derailed, through no fault of our own, or due to our poor engineering or awkward steering, the only way to get back on track is to right ourselves and rewrite our itinerary with a specific destination and route in mind.  You can’t go forward unless you get yourself situated.  You might think that you can move even if you are still off kilter, but you are wrong.  It might sound elementary and silly, but it’s rather a matter of fact that you have to realign and redefine and get-right, before you can go on.  I am very comfortable with accepting my flawed behavior when it flies into my consciousness, and don’t feel at all embarrassed when I say or write or admit with humility, or sometimes with humor, that I’ve screwed up.  I am not fond of mistake making, but am pretty sure that mistakes build character and I generally am fond of the person I’m becoming, flaws and all… I’ve come to realize that people who play like they are perfect and have never made mistakes, and are quick to judge everyone else’s failings, and always jump up with enthusiasm to point them out, are either just hiding behind an image they are trying to protect or, who knows?  maybe they’re aliens and really have achieved perfection, but I don’t think so & that’s not for me to decide and I certainly won’t waste more time pondering it.  I enjoy the company of those who are comfortable with their humanness, the ones who can say, and mean it, ‘I am sorry, please forgive me.’

This week of Thanks and giving I am feeling profoundly grateful for so much.  I also am feeling like it’s the right time for any of us to say ‘I’m sorry’ to anyone, and for anything, that we’ve done that was less than kind, or thoughtless, or well, you know, any of those things for which a reasonable person would think an apology is warranted.  I have learned that a ‘mea culpa’ does wonders for your soul.  Lots of people use a new year to start fresh, but for me, Thanksgiving is really the “right” time to get right.  My Dad is one of my favorite humans and his favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, so it seems sensible to me that this week is my week to realign.  I have apologized to everyone I have ever been involved with or related to, when I have done wrong.  Truth be told, some cases of apology have been forced out of me, when I really didn’t think anything was wrong with my actions or choices, but then came to believe otherwise upon prodding and discussion. I think the holiday is filled with stress and tension for some families because of this very issue…deep feelings of anger or regret or long ago wrongs and if at the table somebody just could gather the strength to say, “I’m sorry for ____” it would probably do the person to whom the apology is extended, a world of good.  Sometimes digesting the truth is much harder on our bodies than an enormous plate of deliciousness.

My apologies in this life have been heartfelt and honest because I ultimately knew I had done or said something for which I was truly sorry.  I have said “I’m sorry” and meant it, to my parents, my sister, my daughter, my grandchildren, my aunt, a boss, a friend, a boyfriend, a neighbor…I have many times in my life done things, or uttered things that I immediately wished I hadn’t, or even much later in time, upon deep reflection, truly wanted to take back & re-do, so in those circumstances I am genuinely sorry and then, here’s the best part, you just go on.  I have learned that a humble and honest apology is all you need to move on.  No need to dwell and contemplate and over think and over analyze, just go on.  In this week of giving thanks don’t hesitate to give an apology if you think one is needed, it’s a pretty great way to move forward and it’s just two words.  Think of it as a second helping of dessert to your soul.  Gobble gobble!

If you believe that human life starts the moment of conception, I don’t think you would want to ever have an abortion.  If you are very religious as well, I am pretty sure that even if you got pregnant by accident, you would never have one.  If however like me, you believe that life starts only at the moment you decide that you want this cluster of cells to keep growing, and eventually leave your body as a fully formed human baby, which you want to care for and raise to adulthood, or perhaps put up for adoption to a loving person who can’t have children, then I think if you find yourself pregnant and don’t want to be, you would be consoled to know that there is a safe, clean, comforting, and legal way for you to get un-pregnant.

I am not interested in a debate.  Not at all.  It is pointless for both of us, because I believe what I believe and you believe what you believe.  If you don’t think it’s right to abort a fetus then don’t do it.  EVER.  NEVER WOULD YOU EVER, so just don’t even consider it for a fleeting moment, it is not an option for you.  If you feel so strongly that abortion is bad, wrong, immoral, sinful, ( you could insert any word here that you like: vile, wrong, wicked, unholy, believe me, the thesaurus has TONS of synonyms, )  it’s likely that you have been diligent with your birth control methods and make certain you never have an “accident,” and if you got pregnant, because of your beliefs, you’ve accepted the obligations, responsibilities, and financial strains and burdens of having a child, and I imagine you are most pleased with your decision, for all the reasons that deeply and profoundly matter to you.

Much like it troubles me enormously to see a beautiful clear-red-cedar shake house re-covered in vinyl siding, like, I think sadly to myself, “how on earth could they do that?!”  You see, vinyl siding goes against my sense of aesthetics, it goes against almost everything that I find beautiful or pleasing in an exterior of a home.  I choose to live in a house with wood siding and would never EVER build or buy a house with vinyl siding.  I HATE it,  I hate it very much, and because it so violently troubles and offends me, and my belief of what a house should be, I won’t ever consider owning a house with vinyl siding.  I would not however go to Universal Supply and march in front of that big warehouse where they keep all this offensive vinyl siding and try to keep other people from buying the vinyl siding.  I feel strongly that if you are building a house you should want to side it with wood, but since it is YOUR house and not MY house, and it’s your own money, and you want to have vinyl instead of wood, you should be able to side your house with whatever material appeals to you, despite the fact that I personally hate it. I don’t think it’s right, or reasonable, that I should  have a “say,” or that I would want to have a say in the way you choose to side your house.  I do what I want with my house, and you should be able to do what you want with your house.

My next door neighbor, who I like, A LOT, has vinyl siding on her house.  She loves it.  I don’t mind that she has it on her house even though I look at her house every single day.  It’s HER house.  She chooses what she wants HER house to be.  Do you see where I am going with this?

I don’t understand how, on the news this morning, there was discussion about, yet another Fox News republican debate tonight, and that THIS issue, the issue of CHOOSING WHAT TO DO WITH THE SIDING ON YOUR OWN HOUSE, THAT YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR AND PAY TAXES ON AND TAKE CARE OF UNTIL YOU’RE READY TO SELL IT, is still an issue that people feel the need to discuss and debate over and over, year after year.

What I choose to side my own house with is my choice, and what you choose to side your own house with is yours.  If you don’t like wood siding, by all means, buy a vinyl house, but please don’t think that everybody should have to like vinyl siding, or want vinyl siding, or be against cedar in all circumstances.  Please don’t think it should be the law, that all new construction has to be covered in vinyl siding and that cedar siding should no longer be available.  If you like vinyl, have it, but please please please, don’t force others to share your views, beliefs, or opinions.  I respect your choice to not have a cedar house. My choice to have wood siding is yours to respect as well.  It’s not one-way, it’s balanced in fairness…what you think is important is no more valid than what I think is important.  Your beliefs that vinyl is better, only means that you would WANT vinyl.  My belief that vinyl is ugly and offends my senses and love of houses, only means that I want wood.  I know it troubles so many of you, that I don’t like vinyl siding, but there are so many more important things in this world that should matter than whether or not your neighbor prefers wood to vinyl…Don’t you see, the neighborhood is so much lovelier when we get to choose…