I sat in the dark of my living room for a bit last night, just in the quiet, and enjoyed all the beautiful decorations and lights, so many twinkling sparking lights and glitter on just about every horizontal surface, and marveled at how much I love my house and my life and how beautiful everything looks this time of year…then I started to cry.

I felt a mix of blessings and confusion.  So many people I know have lost so much, some I know have lost everything, and now only a few hours north of me, 20 families have lost their wee-ones, and I felt drained.  I was thinking of 20 women, probably not much younger than I, who might be sitting in their living rooms right at that moment too, looking at their decorations and I could almost feel an ache in my belly for them, in my heart, in my soul, trying for just a moment to feel what they are feeling right now, as if somehow, FEELING loss would help me accept all that I do have.  I know it may seem silly, but it felt almost like guilt, that there is so much that is good in my world, that at least perhaps recognizing that it could all be taken away from me in an unexpected instant, is at least a way to be truly thankful.  I suppose if nothing else, this fall storm and this horror in the news since Friday is a reminder that we must take nothing for granted at all.

I have a great love of list making.  I don’t make them often mind you, and find at the grocery store for example, that I frequently don’t get what I intended to get and spend more money than I intended to spend, so I know the importance of lists, I just don’t implement the action.  I like the idea and the order and organization of them mostly.  I don’t make To-Do lists really either about the house, but do make them for new jobs or new customers.  I think I like the mental challenge of having to remember stuff.

Three little girls, about a month ago, sat down in the living room with all the toy and store flyers from the Sunday paper and went about making lists for Santa.  The littlest wee-one pointed out what she wanted while the other two took notes.  I don’t really think they want all of what they asked for, but I think they liked the idea of wanting.

I’ve often said and wrote that I can truly, honestly, count on one hand the number of things I want and don’t have.  I feel pretty lucky.  I’m quite fond of giving, more than getting, and find that making somebody else happy or bringing joy to another is far more rewarding.  That whole “peace on earth, good will to men” concept is so beautiful to me…be kind, be a friend, try to right your wrongs, all of that “feel good” stuff is all that is on my “list.”  I just want to be a better person, a better friend, better daughter, mother, Nana, sister, neighbor, worker, you know, just be better than maybe I was last year, or yesterday for that matter.  I’d like to eat healthier and exercise more and drink less vodka.  I’d like to appreciate the sound of my neighbor’s deranged rooster more, savor the magic orange sky to my west every night after work, marvel at the lavender clouds to my east more often when I awake each day, smile at the drummer boy and hug the wee-ones more.  What I want can’t be bought.

Santa can’t bring me anything that is on my list, it is just my own obligation to myself, and I’d like very much to think that on Christmas morning when I hear the squeals and laughter of three little wee-ones sitting on the floor in front of my tree, tearing apart all the holiday wrapping, those sounds and smiles will be my cue that it’s time to get on with the business of checking off my list.

It’s just a computer program, Facebook, isn’t it?  Yet I hear people, often say with deep feeling, “I hate it” or “I love it” and we don’t really hear people say that about Adobe, or Norton, or, well, you get my drift…Facebook may just be a computer program but it did change my world.  My world that was sort of content in my aloneness, my world that was sort of content in my solo life, my world that was sort of content in my isolation, my world was changed because of a computer program.  That’s not an insignificant statement.

I have heard people say that there ought to be a civil suit someday against young Mark Z. because of all the cheating that has gone on, all the marriages that have broken up, all the inappropriate pictures that have been shared, all the splits and fights and awful that has come from those who found “something else” all because of Facebook…but I, silver lining seeker that I am, have found so much wonderful, that it seems young Mark Z. really pretty much changed my life.  To be clear, a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad relationship came into my life because of this website, but that’s gone now.  We silver lining seekers tend to dwell on the bad for only so long and then move our thoughts on to the positive, the beautiful, the splendid.

I have a handful of women in my life now, some “real” friends, meaning those I actually can see and touch and hear, and some “cyber” friends, meaning those who I can’t or don’t, but their value to me as friends is equally significant.  I TREASURE these soul-sisters, these kindred spirits I now have found, who I would not have found if it were not for this cyber space that is now part of most of our lives.  Before this site I had two really good girlfriends and a neighbor with whom I shared time.  Now I have more women in my life, who I really can call friends, than I ever had before, even in my youth and teens.  I have reconnected with grade school friends and high school friends and found, joyfully,that we have so much common ground as adults even if in our adolescence we seldom spoke.  My “alone-ness” is a thing of the past, even when I am here in my office, at my computer, alone.  I am connected to the world in a way I never was before.

In mid  June, one quiet night after work, on my computer screen in a section of “people I might know” was a picture of a man with a little girl with whom, according to Facebook, I shared 41 mutual friends.  “Who the heck is this?” thought I, that we went to the same high school at the same time and know all these same people and I have no idea who this person is…So I wrote this person a message with my friendly joyful tone, that I thought it was so funny that I had no idea on earth who he was and yet we know all these same people.  We wrote each other a couple of notes and planned three times to meet, each time I chickened out.  I was shy, a wall-flower, lacked self-confidence, busy with the wee-ones…those were my excuses, but they were also the truth.  The first time, I went in late June to see him play drums with a band he was in and I felt like a teenager again…the energy the laughter, seeing so many people out on a Wednesday night excited with the anticipation of another fun summer ahead of them.  I loved his energy, his enthusiasm, and oh my God he was an amazing drummer…but I did not have the courage to walk up to him and say hello.

At the end of June he was playing at a mutual friend’s wedding but I had to babysit, so I did not go.  I wanted to meet him but “life” seemed to be getting in the way.  On the 4th of July, the third invitation to meet, I was supposed to go see him play again.  He invited me, through this cyber space site, and I was frankly too tired after taking the wee-ones to the fireworks.  It was hot, I was showered and content under my ceiling fan in bed with a book.  He wrote me and asked me why I was not there…then he texted me, why was I not coming?  I told the truth.  I could not stand the thought of putting contacts in my eyes and I was not about to meet this beautiful drummer boy in my humble dorkiness of glasses and no make up…and then after his show was over, my cell phone rang and I first heard the voice that is now the voice I want to hear every single day.  A few hours later he came over for a drink and I first saw the smile that I now want to see every single day.  And there I was, at home, with no make up on, I was just simply me. And now, all these days later, I am thankful, that because of this cyber space world, this “evil” Facebook, I have a best friend, another wee-one in my world,  and more soul-sisters  than I ever could have possibly dreamed.  I have never felt less alone, even when I am here, in this house, all by myself.

Cinderella got the boy when the odds were not at all in her favor.  I love the Dinsney cartoon and to be clear, I have seen the Drew Barrymore “remake” Ever After, probably as many times as I have seen Cinderella.  I believe, BELIEVE, in the stories, what my Mother always made be understand, be a good girl and good will always come to you, and what my father in his beautifully philosophical way taught me about making plenty of deposits in my karmic bank, that being GOOD and doing what’s  RIGHT and working hard, will always win in the end…

I’ve struggled and wrestled and battled through all  my adult life with the green eyed monster, “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;  It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock.”  I’m not too proud to admit that I have cried myself to sleep a number of times in my life as a woman with the “what is wrong with me?” question swirling around my brain as I watched or knew women in my life who were “getting” the dream when I was not.  I hated myself, loathed myself, when I drank myself into nearly a Cognac induced coma the Christmas night my sister got engaged.  I have drank myself into dreamless sleeps many nights after being at weddings, looking at new engagement rings, wishing somebody I knew happiness, laughing at a bridal shower or a baby shower or any one of the occasions when the spotlight is on some other woman living her dream and it is embarrassing, deeply, to be this kind of person.  But alas, it is who I am, or who I became, and I am hopeful that someday I will “SEE” the wrongness of my thoughts and change.  But, change seems so slow and arduous when it is one’s self that needs changing.

I can change a room by rearranging the furniture and getting rid of hideous Thomas Kinkade prints and switching out some lighting.  I can change a space by painting a ceiling and painting the walls and painting the trim.  I can transform a yard by planting decorative pots and adding colorful annuals and flowering shrubs and pruning overgrown bushes.  I can transform a property,  a house, or a room, but still can’t seem to remodel me.

I’ve never walked away from a job and said, no, can’t be done.  I’ve never declined an opportunity to make a house or a yard better with my magic touch…all my work is always done with love, truly, I love what I do and whether I’m cleaning a refrigerator for a millionaire or raking leaves in a random yard, I do it from a place of caring, it’s just how I work…I’d never dig up a garden and then NOT plant it.  I’d never sand a wall and then NOT paint it, so why?, why I ask myself, do I constantly and consistently walk away from the job of reconstructing that which is me?

I have smudged, prayed, wished, had my tarot cards read, my palm read, have read too many “self-help” books to name…and I keep dreaming, yearning, waiting, to have the strength to be who I think I am, or ought to be.  I’ve been told I am “maladjusted” I’ve been told I am “bi-polar” I’ve been told I am “confused” I’ve been told I am “immature” …I’ve been told I am many things, and have at times believed these words that have come from the mouths of others.  I suppose I need to tell myself the right words, the true words, the helpful words that I know are the core of who I am, what I believe in, what I stand for, and believe them above all, because as juvenile as it may seem, I still deep down in my very soul believe “When you’re fast asleep, In dreams you lose your heartaches, Whatever you wish for, you keep.  Have faith in your dreams and someday Your rainbow will come smiling thru.  No matter how your heart is grieving, If you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.”

…and you may say to yourself, well, how did I get here??   …is it that it’s dark at 5 that I feel blah, or is it that it is Christmas decorating time and I have not decorated anything that I feel blah, is it that our island is in ruin and I feel like I am chasing my tail running in circles with so much to be done and not getting enough done each week that I feel blah, is it just that my hormones are a mess and I just had my 45th birthday 21 days ago that I feel blah…I have so many questions and not many answers.  This is new to me.  I was the girl who always got the “A” and the extra credit…I was the girl who always had answers.

There are some “messy” parts in my life at the moment, and the slightly O.C.D. natured parts of me do not like messes, of any sort.  I am aware, painfully and sleeplessly so, that the only person who can “fix” these messy bits is me.  I’d like to write that I’ve got a plan, detailed ideas of how to take action and clean it all up,one step at a time, one day at a time, one task at a time, but I don’t.  I don’t know where to begin.  I suppose noting that I have a bit of a mess on my hands is at least the first step.  I know people who literally have huge messes to clean; people whose lives are still being picked out of debris piles on streets, and sifted through sand piles in what was once their driveways, or plucked out of the wet marsh lands that surround the place where their houses once stood…my mess is more figurative, less clear…but I suppose,  when I think clearly about it, the clean-up is the same.  One piece at a time.  One step at a time…and so, another clean-up begins here at the Jersey shore…

T:   three wee-girls, the awesome drummer boy, togetherness.

H:   house, health, hugs.

A:   affection, acceptance, attitude-adjustments.

N:   new love, new dreams, new future.

K:   kisses, kindness, karmic deposits.

S:   soul-sisters, sage smudges, supine Sundays.

…sure, the list can always go on, but spending a few minutes thinking about thanks, is a good lesson in figuring out what matters to us today and why.  We “deserve” nothing, are “entitled” to nothing, and in my ever so humble opinion, must earn all that we cherish, whatever it may be.

One could say that really giving thanks is having the wisdom to do it daily; but reality bites us too often, more often than not, and we simply go about our lives, seldom pausing long enough to say to the universe, or god, or to those who matter dearly to us, “Thank you,” for, well, whatever…so today I am very thankful and I hope I can train my brain to start to give thanks daily for all that is good and all that is right in my world.

One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, (please don’t mock me, I love the film) Ever After, “do not speak unless you can improve the silence,” says the evil stepmother…I love the line but seldom heed the advice.  I wonder sometimes if I say things purposefully or if I just don’t think before I speak; both occurrences leave me wishing life had a rewind button.

I have often said and written these last four months that I am happier than I have ever been, that I was fine before with my “alone-ness” but that I love life so much better now that I am part of a pair, a couple, a unit, and then too frequently, carelessly I utter some statement or thought that, as soon as the words have left my mouth, I wish I could take back…I suppose we all do this, we are after all only human, we all have failings and regrets, and make mistakes, but still, I can wish to be better at being human.

I started a mental list last week before my birthday of things I want to change about myself, both on my inside and my outside.  I want to change them, the list is not terribly long, but then wonder if I have the energy to do so.  I wonder if wanting to make changes has any value at all, or if it is only the success of changing that matters?  I am of the mindset that the wanting and wishing carries no weight whatsoever and that it is only the purposeful act of changing a behavior that has significance.

I drove out early this morning to get coffee and to look at the bay; the beach road in my town is finally open, and I got to see some of the destruction that the recent storm has left in my town.  The sky was black with a perfect white crescent moon and so many stars, and I made a mental note that life is seldom so black and white, it is vastly filled with shades of gray…we can be happy or sad, in love or not, fat or thin, rich or poor, but really, the reality is, most of us are usually somewhere in between.  Words are this way I guess as well…they have definitions, but the context in which we use them, or the tone in which we utter them, is part of the gray…words alone can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, misunderstood.  In my effort to be better at my humanness, I want to hold my tongue when the words will not improve the silence, because after all, there can be no misunderstanding from a quiet smile, the touch of a hand, a loving glance, a gentle nod, or a soft kiss…those actions speak louder than words…

I have known a few mean girls in my life; some personally in high school, maybe  one or two in grade school, and a couple just through stories of awfulness in my adult life,  and one last week  too close for comfort.   I find that for a girl like me, who I think most consider to be almost anything but mean, they are not easy to deal with, they confuse me, how they choose to behave and act.  They and their behavior are anathema to me.

Last week, here at the Jersey shore, we met a girl named Sandy and I think I can safely write that none of us liked her very much.  She stormed onto our island and into our neighborhoods and took everything from some of us and nothing from others.  We knew she was coming…for days, so we planned as best we could for her arrival.  She was more fierce than some of us expected and blew through town faster than most of us anticipated, but she left behind heartache and destruction like I only had seen on television and now have seen with my own eyes.

A very dear friend of mine lived in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi a few years ago and met a very mean girl named Katrina. My friend did not have time to get over her bridge before the storm hit her small town and I have seen her photos with my own eyes and heard her stories with my own ears, and because of all the loss she suffered, and how deeply painful her recovery was and how long it took her to regain a level of comfort, and because I love her, I took the weather reports seriously and I prepared as best I could. In her honor I took the weather reports for tidal flooding and storm surges and 100 mile an hour wind gusts earnestly.  I had plenty of gas for the generator, plenty of food that would not quickly spoil, plenty of flashlights, candles, cash, and moved all my patio furniture and art around the yard and things that could smash through the windows…we prepared as best we could, here down by the bay in Barnegat, and then we very anxiously waited.

I was very lucky.  My house,which I built just three years ago, is 17.3 feet above sea level.  I knew this number because I helped site my property and was involved in every single phase of construction.  I heard over and over on the weather channel and radio that an 8 to 12 foot storm surge was expected here and because I am just tenths of a mile from the bay, I anticipated no major flooding, but because I live in a beach community, I knew that many of my neighbors both here on what we call the mainland, and across our bridge on what we call our island, were either at sea level or just above it and I feared for what that storm surge would do to them.

Yesterday in the late afternoon, after almost 7 days, we got power back.  I felt almost guilty for being so happy, because hours earlier I drove through a friend’s neighborhood and saw one of the prices to pay to have a waterfront view and the Atlantic City skyline as your back deck scenery…30 foot boats blown right through the backs of houses and out the front doors, houses pitched and perched at such an odd angle because they were nearly swept off their slabs and seemed to be standing by only the strength of a few 2 x 4 boards and some 10 penny nails.  I saw piles of debris in front yards, entire contents of homes, mounded up in what was once a front yard and what is now a brief history of a life lived, ready for a dumpster.  I know people both personally and indirectly who will not be “home” again for at least a year…so imagine my “guilt” that I sit here in front of my working computer, under lights, with heat, when I know that for many, all they want right now is what I have…a hot cup of coffee, a comfortable chair, and internet access…

I work on the small barrier island that was so badly damaged during this storm.  My family has been on ‘the island’ since the late 1840’s, but none of us live there anymore, it is however where I make my living.  My customers are all rather wealthy philanthropic professionals from Philadelphia and some from north Jersey who had the good fortune to buy beach properties when they were somewhat attainable or affordable to the upper middle class years ago, or who are simply part of the 1% in today’s economy who have the good fortune to have sufficient disposable income to not only buy a home at the shore, but to be able to afford the property taxes.

I love my customers.  Some of them treat me like a sort of helpful daughter, some of them simply are good to me and “find” work for me to do around their homes, some of them give me work all summer long and make lists of projects for me to do in the winter, and some only need me in the spring and fall to open and close up, but they all are dear to me, and are I say lovingly, my bread and butter.  Because of them, I have the life I have: Because they ask me to plant their flower pots, rake their yards, fill their gardens, pull their weeds, paint their bedrooms, freshen up their fascias, pressure wash their decks, and scrub their bathrooms, I am a single girl living in her dream house.   So I feel a bit guilty, that I am now going to be part of a major clean-up and “rebuild” of our island, that as winter nears and I normally am freaked out about hoping to find steady work for the winter, instead, because of this storm, I pretty much will have plenty to do all winter long…because of their loss I will have plenty of bread and butter…feeling secure through somebody’s misfortune is a confusing sensation.  Gratitude mixed with sympathy.

The man I share my life with came home yesterday and said, “people are being nice to each other.”  He announced this as if it were some surreal complexity of human interaction, but I knew what he meant.  Here in the southern part of the Jersey shore, we have something of a disconnect; the tourists versus the locals.  We locals don’t like that some of the tourists often have this rude horrific accent and demeanor, and needlessly honk their horns and often, in line at the store for example, we don’t interact much…an odd modern day segregation, us and them.  He noted that people were smiling at each other, speaking kindly to each other, asking, both curiously and with care, if somebody suffered damage, did they need anything… He told me that during the 17 plus years he lived in southern California, one of the most noticable differences he found when he came back to visit, was how nasty and moody and on edge people were in New Jersey compared to the pleasantly dispositioned southern Californians he lived amongst.

So we have suffered here at the Jersey shore from the mean girl named Sandy, but if somehow through her brutal treatment of our communities, we have found a way to pause before we are unkind to one another, and found a way to care about our neighbor in a way we did not before, and found a way to be less materialistic and less self-centered, then maybe, just maybe, we will be better off as a community because we met a mean girl named Sandy…

When I got a brief text message from North Carolina late one hot mid- July night in 2005 that read simply “9 pounds 5 ounces” I felt my heart grow in a way that I never experienced before.  Two years and three months later, five years ago today, in that same hospital from where that summer text was sent, I watched a swaddled newborn be carried like a football down a long hall to the nursery, and felt my heart grow in a way that I never experienced before. Before the birth of wee-one #2, who is lovingly referred to as “Bug” I was afraid, truly, as to how I am supposed to love more than one grandbaby and thought often, “how can I possibly love another child like I love this one?” (meaning wee-one #1 who is lovingly referred to as Sweet-Ti) and having had only one child of my own, the way the heart grows when it gets full was confusing to me…OR I guess it could be better stated that I did not realize that the heart is nothing at all like the stomach, which on Thanksgiving for example,  gets so filled that you can’t possibly imagine putting anything else in it…I have learned, through the births of the daughters of my only daughter, that the heart just expands and fills and swells and does not get stuffed, that you can’t over-fill it.

I used to say, after the birth of Sweet-Ti, that I had no idea how much love I had inside of me until she came into this world.  I just could not believe how much I could treasure this human who was not mine.  I thought I loved my daughter, but the love that I felt for her daughter when she arrived in 2005, just boggled my already often boggled mind.  When my daughter and son-in-law told me a year and a half later that they were having another baby, I was really perplexed as to how on earth am I supposed to do this???  LOVE another one…

The first morning with wee-one #2 at home (I went down to North Carolina this time too to help)  I had awakened to give her her early morning feeding so my daughter and son-in-law could sleep, and I was on the couch holding her, watching her eyes dart around under her droopy eyelids and feeling her little body sigh with contentment with a satisfied belly, and wee-one #1 got out of bed and sat beside me, and I reached for her with my free arm and there I sat, holding all that love and I realized suddenly that I did in fact have enough love inside of me for them both.  It was like a miracle.  I had no idea I could do THAT.

When their family decided they wanted to be in NJ and moved back from NC I knew my life would never be the same.  I was prepared to be a hands-on single Nana.  I seldom call either one by their given names.  I hear their laughter through the woods between our homes and they are in and out of my house as if it were just an extension of their own.  To be so in love with my neighbors is a most beautiful thing.  Now my heart is full in a way I never ever dreamed it could be…I not only have the daughters of my daughter occupying much of my heart but I now have the daughter of the man I love as well.  I often was told during my life that I was cold and distant but somehow this cold and distant woman has found herself hopelessly devoted to little girls who are not her own.  Love grows, in wonderous ways…

I’ve heard people say that, about where they live, and I guess for some it is just four walls.  To be clear, mine is just a rectangle with a bright silver roof, plywood siding, painted sheetrock walls…nothing “special” by most people’s standards…but I know what this rectangle means to me.  Four years ago today I got a building permit and three years ago today I got my certificate of occupancy.  Exactly one year, of working here every morning before work and every night after work, doing whatever needed to be done that I did not sub out.

I bought a big fat Sharpie marker and wrote myself loving notes and blessings during construction…on the sheathing, on the sub-floor, on the joists, on the rafters…I designed the plot plan, I pounded nails, I wired a few outlets, I installed walnut floorboards, I learned how to do custom trim, hung doors, drilled hole after hole after hole to run speaker wire, and stained all 84 boards that became my siding and hundreds of feet of pine and cedar boards that became my trim and fascia…there are too many tasks to name when you write about building a house from scratch.  Some nights it was just hours of sweeping nails and sawdust.  Some nights it was music blasting while caulking baseboards.  Some days I realized that I had used more power tools that day than most women ever use in their lifetime.  Day after day and night after night I watched as my vision came to life.

I drew my own plans and watched in awe and amazement as each day what I saw in my mind’s eye over those moths of planning came to fruition.  A few things did not go well, and I did have one big sob fest when I walked into the house one day after work and found all my switches and outlets were standard and not  modern.  It all got changed the next day, but not before big stupid sobbing tears from frustration…funny how something so “petty” to some was such an “issue” for me…and then one day I realized I was done.  My dad and my mom and my friend and I had worked countless hours together along with all the subcontractors I hired and the morning came when I got my phone call that my C.O. was ready.

It is “just a house” sure, but it was truly a labor of love to bring an acre of woods into a place to call my home.  It is now so filled with laughter, and music, and love that I can hardly believe this is my life.  I have had to move furniture to make temporary room for drums, and the two beds upstairs in my loft are now inadequate now that I have three little girls in my life, and I have had to reorganize drawers and closets to make room for two where I just assumed only one would ever be…but my “plan” was to make a home for myself not just a house to live in, and I still get a little giddy when I go up my driveway, that I get to live here.   It may be just a rectangle with a roof, but it is truly where my heart is.  I still have dreams of being able to afford to travel and see the world, but I am comforted to know that even if I never get to go anywhere again, I have a place that I love that I call home.