Tag Archives: life

” *Who Lives? Who dies? Who Tells Your Story?* “

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I have joked, for decades with my daughter, and these last years with her daughters, that if I die in some sort of dramatic or fiery way, there are decades of my journals under my bed in a purple Rubbermaid tote labeled “HerStory.” AND to be clear, it’s doubtful I will die in some exciting story-worthy way, but it’s important to plan…My dad questions me, teasingly, but I think in all seriousness, several times a year, “when are you going to write your damn book?” and recently I looked in the drawer of the filing cabinet at my desk at the printouts of my blogs & only the ones since 2012, not even all the ones of the years before…and when I hold the hard-copies in my hand it is in fact a pile of paper thicker than most books I get from the library!

…but here’s the problem, I am not a writer. I am a person who likes to write. It’s not at all the same thing. I read, a lot. I do not believe that I have the momentum, and I do not believe that I have the confidence, and I do not believe I have the descriptive vocabulary it takes to write a book…my blogs are more like little essays I guess, and if I’m being honest, which when blogging ought to be the ONLY way TO be, I mostly started blogging because my penmanship got worse as my fingers grew more crooked with arthritis as I got older, and typing is faster and easier. My journal writing and “dear diary” notes really simply started with my ‘The Secret Garden’ diary, with a lock and key, that I got for my eighth birthday…and so it was, throughout my teen years and twenties, and well into my thirties, a form of therapy or emotional cleaning. Journal writing, and now for the last 15 years or so blog writing, remains a way for me to get things off my mind, it’s as simple as that… the no-cost form of therapy that I find most useful in keeping me sane and centered and as mentally balanced as I can be…other than yoga, it feels like it is what keeps me from losing my mind.

You will recognize the song lyrics as this blog title if like me you have watched HAMILTON a ridiculous number of times. Some people leave the Weather Channel on their television, or sports or news if they just want some background noise at home, but for me, at least the last few years, if it’s not music throughout all my speakers, it’s HAMILTON on the television. AND EVERY time I hear these lyrics I think of my journals, my blog, and my future book…Who tells your story is kind of a big deal…there are things that happen in families and to families and behind closed doors that are never spoken, or written, or even recognized. Some people spend their whole lives wishing that someone had acknowledged their pain, or struggle, or hurt. I guess for me that, the silence, just feels like a disservice to my soul. I am pretty much an open book…I tell people how I feel and I share with people things that are going on, or going wrong, and I know that suits me fine, and for others it does not sit well with them to air their laundry, dirty or otherwise… I get it. Both of my granddaughters share my love of writing. They both have kept journals since they were little and as far as I know they both write in them often. They frequently share their school work with me; research papers, essays, debate scripts, book reports, whatever, they often send me a copy, and every time I am impressed. I just wrote out the birthday card for the baby of our family, I call her The Little Blonde Wonder, and she turns 18 this week. I suspect if I don’t get around to ever writing my book, THEY will live and tell my story, and until then, I guess I will just keep up with my jibber-jabber therapy sessions between my fingers and this keyboard…

Scar Tissue

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I was thinking last night as I opened my book at bedtime that reading is part of my self-care/wellness regimen. I could never go to bed without a shower and I could never go to sleep without reading. Some nights I get through a few paragraphs and my eyes start to droop, and other nights I get through several chapters, but my “rule” is that the minute I feel like it is time to sleep, I put down the book and turn off the light…I don’t push through because I am one of those people who really needs her full nine hours! To be clear, I have on a few occasions just kept reading to finish a book, plow through the sleepy sensations to get to the last page, but this is not a regular occurrence and I don’t recommend it unless you are retired can sleep til you want and take naps!

I have come to a conclusion that I have not a minute left to waste…I have been tending to a wound (metaphorical wound, not physical) for almost four years now and it is still not healed and still causing me frequent pain and daily discomfort. It is my own fault that I am in the situation I am in, & I take full responsibility for my poor judgment and deeply regret some of my choices…but none of that matters, because here I am, right here right now. I am tending to scar tissue from a wound that was not my fault but the healing from it is my responsibility…I read a quote like this, four years ago, and I think I wrote the words wrong, but I get the meaning and it has been on my mind ever since. I have put myself in a bad situation and I have to tend to my wellness while I try to get this situation resolved and scar tissue gets thick, and fast, and so tending to this metaphorical wound has a time element…tick, tock, tick, tock…if I don’t get this injury closed up it’s going to leave a dark scar that will never go away, my point is, while I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking about how to heal myself, and I realize that, as a bookworm, what I NEED to do is re-read the books that spoke to my soul and use those words to heal.

I still journal and I write regularly and that is how I vent, it’s like therapy, but reading the ideas and words that other people think of and put together is a different kind of medicine. There are MANY books that I have read over the last 50+ years that touched me so deeply that I feel like they became part of my cells, part of who I am. You might think it silly for a woman who has not yet turned 60 to reference books from her whole reading life, but I kid you not, it started with The Secret Garden at eight years old, then Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret in 6th grade, then The Outsiders in 7th grade…Great Expectations and Jane Eyre in 9th grade, The Diary of Anais Nin at age 15, The Stand in my senior year of high school, The Handmaid’s Tale, Women Who Run With the Wolves and Beloved in college..the list goes on and on and on, but these are the ones that stick out to me when I quick-think about the books of my past that really changed me…in the 90’s Outlander, in the aughts I Know This Much is True and The Secret Life of Bees, Eat Pray Love was the first book I read after I moved into my house in 2009 & The Nightingale in 2017 & Demon Copperhead last summer just to name a few LOL I think a “few” is really supposed to be three or so, but if you are a reader, you get my drift and if you are not a reader, you surely think I am a nut-case!

Where I live the property taxes are outrageous but the only two things that don’t make me mad about them are the library tax, because I have used the library every week of my life since I got my library card at nine years old, and the school tax because my daughter and granddaughters went to public school here and my daughter teaches here…otherwise every quarter I am fuming made when I write my check, but I digress, my point is that I love LOVE L-O-V-E the library and only buy books occasionally. They allow you to have 20 books “on order” at a time and so on any given day I have about four on my nightstand and 20 in my queue. I keep them organized to come in every ten-12 days or so because it usually takes me a week to read a book. Sometimes I make an error with my request dates and I end up with three books arriving on the same day and then I put post-it-notes on the covers with the due date and I reshuffle the order in which I will read them. This is all a lot of jibber-jabber silliness if you are not a reader or don’t use your library.

I am going to read the books that I have on order through November and then starting in December I am going to begin a re-reading regimen. I am going to heal my sadness and anger and disappointment (and to be clear, it is not just the election that makes me sad and angry and disappointed, that just exacerbated the sadness and anger and disappointment I was already carrying) by reading again the stories that shaped me. The stories that I read from age 8 to now that I feel like were part of what has shaped me into who I am…I don’t like the “me” that I am now, these last years have been rough…I don’t like the thoughts that I think and I don’t like how and what I feel about the current state of my affairs. It’s not at all who I thought I would grow up to become, or how I thought these chapters of my life would be…so I am feeling deeply scarred and feel like I need healing and am going to start the process with books. I know some people heal with booze, and some heal with benzodiazepines, but I am going to try to heal with books…smooth out that scar tissue…one page at a time…

Who Dis?

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Who is this person? This person sitting at her desk on a very cold morning in November is not the same person who was sitting at this same desk weeks ago, months ago, years ago…This person who always joked that she was a “silver lining seeker” is feeling disappointed, disenchanted, disengaged, distressed, disheartened…and is finding it harder and harder, day by day, to see any silver lining whatsoever…who dis??

Usually at the week of Thanksgiving I am just bubbling over with gratitude and overwhelmingly emotional about all that is good and beautiful in my life, and all of that is still true this year too, but there is an ugliness inside of me that is darkening and inking out the light of who I think I am. There are people I love very much to whom I am related and people I work for who I cherish and am deeply thankful for, but the way that these people think is anathema to me, and it pains me. I can’t end my relationships with my loving and generous family and I can’t end my relationships with my trusting and generous clients but it feels like there is a wedge between me and them now and it makes me sad.

They certainly have every right to think what they think and say what they say, but I continually come back to the fact of the matter that is this; I have watched in real time this person talk, this new incoming president, and have heard in real time what this person said, this person who did not even get more than 50% of the votes and yet still wins, and cannot believe that any thoughtful person would also hear and watch this man and think, “yes this is the best choice for myself and my family and my country” and these people did, and it has made me feel bad every day since.

I can only wonder if this is the same feeling old people had in the sixties when their college students were hippies, and these old people wondered how on earth their kids could think like they did about civil rights and war?? I can only wonder if this is the same feeling as picky eaters at fine restaurants where they sit and eat buttered rolls while the other guests around them eat beef Carpaccio with Beluga caviar, and wonder how these foodies could enjoy these things??? Or is it more like when someone picks the ugliest wallpaper, or itchiest sweater, or most uncomfortable shoes? I don’t know what it is but I do know that I don’t like how I feel about it.

I don’t have any answers. I did all that I could and read all that I could and acted accordingly. I simply have a really hard time believing that the people who voted for him actually did read any of project 2025, and read the part about how the incoming administration would aim to cut more than 96% of the budget for social security and think that was great and would somehow make their lives better. I simply have a really hard time believing that that people who voted for him realize how many billions of dollars immigrants bring into our country every year, and what the loss of those tax dollars will do to our economy, or how the loss of laborers will hit farming, hospitality, and construction. If you were mad about the price of lettuce or berries over the summer when they were picked by mostly brown low paid non-American workers, imagine how mad you will be when farmers have to pay white college students off for summer break a living wage to pick them. It’s certainly not that simple and it’s certainly not anything easily conveyed in a blog, but it does make me wonder when the buyer’s remorse might set in?? Will it be when your daughter’s insurance that she buys through the marketplace gets canceled and then months later she finds out she has breast cancer and loses her house because she can’t afford the treatment?? Will it be when your granddaughter has an accidental pregnancy and can’t get an abortion and neither wants nor can afford a baby?? Will it be when you get the notice next year that direct deposits for any social security numbers that end in an odd number will now be cut in half and every social security number that ends in an even number will now be cut by one third, is that when you will wish you had read more of the fine print? Maybe it will be when all of these tariffs are put in place that are supposed to make America great but will perhaps make consumer costs higher, unemployment higher, and plunge the stock market into decline, and nobody but the very wealthy will be able to afford to buy a new washing machine or television?

If I am wrong I have no qualms about accepting my errors or ways of thinking. If I am wrong I will admit fully that 49.6% of the voters saw something in this person that I clearly did not. If I am wrong I will be so happy to have cheaper vegetables and fruit and chicken next year. I’m just an angry woman who reads, I’m like Ruth Langmore from Ozark, “I don’t know shit about fuck,” but what I do know now, at least for me in this moment, is that nothing feels good and nothing feels like joy and nothing feels like a silver lining and that disturbs me and disrupts my brightness, and that kind of Dis does not suit me at all at the time of year that I am normally abundant with thanks and kindness.

She could be me…I could be her

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There is a woman in Asheville North Carolina just like me, except now, well, as of Friday morning, she is no longer just like me. She is no longer even herself…

Just like me she probably got her first job at 14 and just like me she has worked ever since. Just like me she might have made some really awful choices as a teenager and by the time she was twenty, had been married, a mother, and divorced. Just like me her constant narrative in life, when life got hard, was that she was doing the best with the cards she was dealt, and just like me, she probably hated when she thought that way, self-defeating as it was, because just like me she knew it was her frequently wrong “well, I picked the wrong door” kinds of decisions that got her the life she was living.

Just like me through determination and strength of will, she put herself through college while working full time and raising her little girl, and just like me her little girl grew up and made her own choices and moved away. Just like me she floundered a bit those first couple of years, with no more role as mother to play and wondered what she might do with her life now, now that her “baby” was making a family of her own miles and miles away. Just like me she was elated when after her second grandbaby was born her daughter decided, just four years after leaving the area, she really wanted to be closer to family while she made her own family and wanted to “come home” and just like me she wondered where her daughter would live, as the rentals in the area were so expensive…here in a destination vacation area of the Jersey shore and hers a destination/vacation area in the lush mountains and rivers of Asheville.

Just like me this woman’s mom and aunt had a brilliant idea; some family land would be sold and two new houses would be built, and her daughter would have a place to live, right next door to the dream house she would build for herself. Just like me she started drawing her house on scrap pieces of paper, post-its, on graph paper and in notebooks and eventually even started learning how to use a CAD program. Just like me her mom & dad started building a house on the other piece of acreage for her daughter & just like me she planned every single inch and foot and detail of the house and maybe her dad told her too, “we’ll start her house next door so you can practice for yours.” Just like me she was positively giddy, every single day, as she watched her dream house become a reality. Just like me she worked at the house every day before work and every night after work and could not believe she was going to get to not only live in a house she created herself, it was going to be right next to her daughter and granddaughters.

Just like me, alongside her dad & mom & the subcontractors, one year and one day from the date she got her building permit, she got her certificate of occupancy. Just like me she didn’t splurge on granite countertops and chose instead formica to cover the plywood kitchen counters that she and her dad built together. Just like me she used a huge chunk of her budget to splurge on her silver metal roof and solid black walnut floor boards. Just like me, other than the first three rows her father started for her, she picked and placed and hammered in every single floor board in the whole house, EVERY SINGLE BOARD and she knows exactly where her errors are and where she missed and had to use her bee-keeping bar to pull out a bad hit and start over and she knew exactly where she was going to put a sofa in what would be the living room so she made sure the ugliest boards were in the middle of that place that nobody would really ever see. Just like me she wrote notes to herself with big fat sharpie markers on the sheathing the morning before the sheetrock installers came and laughed while she did it, thinking some day, when she was dead, that someone would want to remodel her perfect one-off-custom-creation-little house and would tear down the sheetrock and find these notes of hard work and determination and love for a home.

Just like me she found it the truest joy to help her daughter next door to raise her family and just like me she walked down the shared driveway every day for more than a decade getting her granddaughters onto the school bus every morning so her daughter did not have to rush getting ready for work. Just like me, as recently as last month, she realized that her time to be needed was coming to an end really, one of the granddaughters is in her second year of college and the other to get her driver’s license in just weeks, and so whenever they asked her to do anything, she jumped to do it, because she was well aware her Nana-ing time is coming to an ending chapter.

BUT…but…B U T… as of Friday she is nothing like me. As of Friday everything she worked so hard to created and build and maintain and love is gone. I hope and, non believer that I am, dare I write “pray,” that she is physically unharmed and that her daughter and granddaughters survived, but I believe her heart is broken into a thousand shards of pain and might never heal from this loss…Just like me she loved her house almost like it was a person and she cleaned it and cared for it with the loving care she once used to tend to her child and her granddaughters, and now it is gone, splinters of 2x4s and shards of standing seam metal roofing material, and chunks of soaking wet insulation…maybe her walnut floor boards are still nailed together in parts, she probably picked one up out of the mud over the weekend, and wondered which room it was from as there are no more rooms and no more house.

I guess what I am writing this morning is that my heart is broken these last days for a woman I don’t even know and a woman who I simply think must exist and I am feeling a depth of gratitude for my life and my home that I don’t have words to describe. When hurricane Sandy came here to the Jersey shore we had no power for nine days. I had filled all my gas cans and my generator worked well all nine days and while I am only one mile from the bay and only 200 feet from a flowing stream, my house is 17.3 feet above sea level and the surge came, but it did not come to me. I am so sad every time I watch one of these short videos on the internet of the devastation and destruction in an area that did not ever expect to have hurricane rain and wind destroy their lives. I have made some financial donations and today after work am going to buy supplies that are being collected locally to donate and while I don’t have an “extra” hundred or $200 in my budget this month, I do have my house, and she does not, and for that anguish that she surely feels, I can modify my spending a bit to see that a stranger in need gets something she needs. It could have been me. It could have been you.