You Know You're Hairy When . . .

I caught up on a friend's blog this week and had a great time laughing along with the stories of herself and her family. She started blogging in September last year, rather tentatively, and is now an avid blogger (26 posts so far in July!). Her writing reads easily and with much humor and openness these days. I just hear her saying, here it all is, warts and all. She had quite a funny entry titled "You Know You're Fat When . . ." in which she bravely discloses some embarassing facts about being over weight. This got me thinking about the embarassing fact of how hairy I am for a woman.

Way back when I was in third or fourth grade, I was at gymnastics practice (at the gym where I first did an aerial - oh, the feeling of flying!), and one of my coaches said something to the effect of, "You have legs as hairy as a gorilla." I remember where I was standing in the gym, who I was with, and being absolutely mortifiedopenaholeundermeandletmedisappear. I started wearing some stunning hot pink leg warmers to practice. Yeah - you're definitely hairy when you're called a gorilla at age 9 (a trait I most likely get from my dad).

Ever since, I have been a wee bit shy about how hairy I am. I have dark brown head hair and dark hair on my legs and arms to match. I have for some reason lost some of my eyebrow hair since high school (what a blessing) and still pluck a little, but I used to pluck and trim a lot more in high school and college. One of my most embarrassing moments in high school was walking out of a makeup session before a silly fashion show my high school put on each year with seniors, and having my larger than normal eyebrows made even larger by the makeup artist - who had them standing up on end like freakin' feathers! Fortunately, my sister was there and oh so bravely defied the makeup artists and smoothed them down for me (duh). I remember my boyfriend freshman year randomly asking me if I plucked my eyebrows, and I flat out lied. (I still want to clear that up someday because I keep thinking about it, and I just don't give a crap now about it). Michael once mentioned that I need to trim my nose hairs, and I was about mortified. At some point in high school and maybe college, I bleached my arm hair (when summer sun and pool didn't do it fast enough) and upper lip hair, pluck a few random chin hairs that have shown up, and once tried home bikini waxing (I highly recommend not trying that at home) and Nair (not all it's cracked up to be but the TV ads are so seductive).

My favorite cosmetic tool that I've bought EVER is an electric personal razor that includes a nose hair and bikini line attachment. YES! I own three pairs of tweezers and highly prize the pair that works really well. And if there was any cosmetic procedure that I would have done (outside of laser eye surgery), it's electrolysis of my arms, legs and bikini line. Maybe I should title this blog, "You Know You're Obsessed about Being Hairy When . . . "

Note: The picture of scissors and razor came up titled "Mistaken masonic symbols." Hilarious.

Capacity

In one of my therapy sessions with Rhonda, she forewarned me that when I entered a new relationship with a man, I would experience painful emotions again as the new relationship triggered old wounds. I was no where near a new relationship when Rhonda told me this, and I filed the idea away.

For almost two months, Michael and I have been seeing each other and going to couples counseling. Our new relationship and time together brings up so many emotions - happiness, joy, fear, distrust, sadness, excitement, anger. As we work through our individual and combined issues, I am partly fascinated by what I am learning about myself and partly (because of that perfectionist in me that I really thought I had dealt with in a perfect way) mad at myself for not seeing them and contributing to them.

One Saturday after returning from California, I was driving back from Boulder with my friends, Shari and Linda (Ardis' mom), and Linda was talking about the kind of care facility her mom, who has had Alzheimer's for 10 years or so, is in. I shared with her how hard it was to find care for my dad when he got really sick because many care facilities didn't want to care or didn't have the capacity to care for Huntington's Disease patients. This conversation, having visited my grandmother's house and catching myself looking for my grandfather who passed away six years ago, and having put my dad's ashes in the Pacific Ocean with my sisters during tht visit triggered a snow ball - well, maybe, avalanche - of emotion. Michael was in Alabama, and one night as I tried to fall asleep (in my bed, which seemed to be cursed for a few days by the gods of no sleep), I began to cry and then wept and then wailed. Great pain of the last two years sits my chest - the day Michael told me he wanted a divorce and the first night I spent alone after Michael moved out the second time. Crying in bed, the pain returned as I grieved not my dad and grandfather's death, but not having Michael with me through my dad's passing and handling his estate. A new relationsip had indeed triggered old pain.

In our counseling session today, our therapist again reminded us of the importance of letting difficult emotions out, unfreezing them in a way, and having them witnessed by others (my dear friend, Maraiya, might like to hear she's not the only one who thinks of memory as being lodged in the body, remembered by our cells). They have to move through us for us to heal, that familiar idea of feeling it to heal it. How overwhelming the hard emotions can feel as if they will overtake us and just never end! I have had to build my capacity for feeling deep pain and trusting that when that wave comes, it will roll over me, might knock me down, but I will stand again (Jesus, heal me now).

I was curious today, sharing this with a friend, why we don't have the same fear of joy, of joy never ending. When I am happy, I fear being happy because it might end. I read in the book Conscious Loving how we have to actually build up our capacity for happiness and joy in levels - really feel joy, then more joy, and slowly learn to trust joyful feelings. It might just be harder for me to build up a capacity for joy.

I Will be with You

Since I was young, I have gone through periods of time where I am seized at night by thoughts of death and imaginings of death leading to nothingness - manifested in my mind as sightless, soundless, feelingless. It's frightening and overwhelming and constricting. Everything screams, "I don't want to be nothing!"

With my dad's passing and discovery that he had Huntington's Disease, I have recently lain in bed and thought about what it would feel like to have Huntington's and to progress through the illness, losing physical and mental capabilities to the point that my body one day can't function and wondering if I would mentally understand what was happening (when my dad was quite sick, he told my sister, Lesley, that he was part bat to explain all his movements. Did he know he was sick and ailing?), if my dad knew he was dying at the moment. I imagine death like a relief but also as fear, an end into nothingness. I worry about my children losing me too soon.

I wonder at times if I lived in another country or earlier time where or when death is a bigger part of life, a daily part (and not in a sensational news - fear this - way), if I would be less fearful of death. I haven't been to a single funeral, which feels like a blessing.

In February of last year, I was still breastfeeding Harper. I was at a women's Bible study at my friend Megan's apartment, sitting on the carpet and listening to a discussion about heaven and different visions of what heaven will be like. In the midst of the discussion, I imagined death as another part of living, a next step, and I felt this physically as the sensation of milk being let down, a fullness and and then release. This seems to match with what elderly people sometimes say, being "ready" for death, welcoming death. I am still forming a vision of heaven and struggle with doubt of it's existence, but the sensation of death being part of the fullness of and release in life felt real and comforting.

This Father's Day, we attended All Soul's Church of Boulder, and the pastor - love when this happens - spoke about death, describing the deaths he remembered on this Father's Day, his first marriage and a baby named, Sarah, who he and his wife adopted and who died in infancy of trisomy thirteen. He was a father for a very short time. I cried during the sermon, and my friend, Shari, asked if I was thinking about my dad. I wasn't at that moment, but it was probably part of the emotion of the day and the vision of losing a child young, of having "lost" my marriage, of the fear of my children losing me.

During the sermon, the pastor quoted C.S. Lewis (from Transposition and Other Addresses), "We remain conscious of a desire, which no natural happiness will satisfy. But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it?... A man's physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely that man's hunger does prove that he comes from a race that repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. I do not believe that my desire for [heaven] proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called 'falling in love' occurred in a sexless world." I hunger for something beyond death, a next step after this life, a rich something that is far beyond the fearful nothingness, regardless of how my life ends. I find comfort in the idea that this longing is an indication of heaven's existance.

I believe in God's love for me (even as I wonder how to interpret it in this life) and felt it deeply once during a therapy session, felt it as pressure in my upper arms. How I wanted to hold on to the strong, loving sensation and walk every day of my life in that love. I came to realize one night, talking to Ardis and Shari, that if God loves us like that and even more (how much can we feel it even at the best of times), no doubt He has amazing plans for our death. No doubt He will be there, and as in all things (a hymn that can make me cry at church - I have done a lot of that), "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, And the waves will not Overcome you. Do not fear, For I have redeemed you, I have called you by name. You are Mine. . . . When you walk through the fire You’ll not be burned, And the flames will not Consume you. Do not fear, For I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, You are Mine." (Isaiah 43)

Home Pieces

A few posts ago, I wrote about not feeling like I have a family home to go to and how my maiden name feels like a homecoming. On my recent trip to California, I found a few more pieces of home.

My kids and I flew to the San Jose airport and spent the first three days of our trip in Portola Valley. My mom has worked at Woodside Priory School there for over twenty years (this is mind boggling to me). We moved on to the campus when I was ten, and I lived there until about my sophomore year of college. My mom still lives there but in a new location so that I thought certainly my home is no longer there. But watching my kids walk around the campus - like they owned it, as kids will - swimming in the school pool with them, tromping the big hill, playing outside in view of Windy Hill (pictured), smelling the wonderful smell of dried grass and oak trees, I felt home. I felt that sweetness of my kids walking where I walked, discovering warm steps and walkways that I walked in the dreaminess of childhood.

On a run one evening in Portola Valley, I found my way again along familiar trails; crushed the golden dry grass that reminded me of playing light and dark games with Jen in the hills behind her house; ran past the pool where we used to swim in the summers (me off and on trying to avoid the adolescent boys when the Priory was an all boys school and where I once sat on gym roof overlooking the pool eating fresh doughnuts at midnight with my best friend, James) and a one room apartment over a garage on the Priory campus where my mom and sister Lesley lived for awhile and where I once raked leaves for woman who worked at the Priory and had been severly burned in a fire on the campus started by an electric blanket (I remember her disfigured face and the smell of medicine and damp in her house when I went to collect the money she paid me to rake). I continued down the gravel path that I used to ride my bike on to school, where once, in fifth grade, two boys had blocked my way with their bikes and teased me, where I used to walk when my parents fight, where there used to be two blue healers who barked viciously at passersby. I ran past the elementary school where I attended fifth grade and admired the face lift. I remembered where to turn to continue up a hill, past a house where my friend Katie Collins used to live, down a hill and past a house where Darcy used to live (Darcy who was obsessed with "Gone with the Wind" and named her two golden retrievers Rhett Mutler and Scarlett O'Hairy) and to a trail that led past blackberry bushes and back to the Priory where I one walked holding hands with my first boyfriend.

I don't have a home structure to return to in Portola Valley - though my mom's apartment is quite lovely, and I could sit all day in her living room listening to her fountain and watching the humming birds in her garden - but there is home at the Priory, the memories of childhood and adolescence, the familiar paths and smells, a place where my life was built and where I love to watch my own kids play.

Plexi, Plexi

I remember some time in high school my mom commenting one morning before school as i took my time in the kitchen making breakfast, eating it standing at the counter, packing my bag, that I don't like to be rushed. This was surprising to hear but so true - I don't like to be rushed. I like to have the time I want to think about what I'm doing and to do things in a calm manner. Calm. Peace. They can be idols for me - peace above all else. But there are times when I don't have the time or the peace I desire, and I have to force myself, dig in and speed ahead - usually with tears and a scream of, "I don't want to deal with this." Maybe this is why I hyperventilated as a kid when I swam in a race (not a pretty sight).

I've been flirting with the idea - like a bee looking for just the right flower - of getting back into some kind of regular exercise. I get lots of sprinting exercise - to the kitchen for food or milk or towels for the kids during meals, to different places in the house and yard to pick up a screaming child, and between the car and the house in the mornings (to get milk (check), a spaceship, ninja, and Lego man (check), blankets (check), another blanket (check), my sunglasses (check)). But after my lovely hike up Twin Sisters, I realized I wanted to do more and to get this body I've been given into action. I was waiting for just the right time, not rushing into it (maybe waiting for an engraved invitation), and then - spurred by Michael starting to ride his bike to Boulder and by a beautiful evening - I made a quick decision last Tuesday to just get out and, well, just do it. And it was lovely, and I went again on Thursday and can't wait to go this evening.

One of my other idols/obsessions is education. I can get sucked into a report on what works in schools like Asher gets sucked into cartoons. So as I started to look at preschools for Asher last fall, I laid out a possible plan for him and Harper - when they might go, options for them (I have to say that as much I look for the right timing and want to take my time, I do have the ability to change my plans - I love plans but can be quite flexible. So when I found out last month that a Montessori charter school may be opening in Longmont, I jumped on the bandwagon), how we would decide where to send them, backup plans (yes, Asher really is only 3, but this is an obsession). Part of this plan was for Asher and Harper to stay at the daycare they attend until fall 2009. Uuuurrrr (tires screeching). And then I got an e-mail from our daycare provider that she is closing and her family is moving to Texas - in three weeks. Not the right timing - tears and a cry of "I don't want to deal with this" and denial and disbelief. I told a potential daycare provider as she was trying to make an appointment with me for an interview that it was all just happening too fast.

"Plexi, plexi bend don't shatter" sings Jack Johnson in his word fun song "Sexi Plexi." And so it is that I learn when to bend, when not to, when to take a step back or a run outside to return to a problem or emotionally charged situation at a later time, when things don't seem to be moving too fast or when I can take my time with them so as not to shatter.

Prairie Dogs, Hikes and Sticky Children

When it's been too long between writing sessions (and work writing, as fun as it is, doesn't count!), my brain gets a little antsy with all the ideas and words floating around. Eventually the ideas and words congregate, form a swarm and start beating ever so more insistently on the inside of my head. And my head, spurred by the swarm, craves to enter the space of letterings. Back in the saddle for a short blogging stint.

I have been absent but for good reasons (yeah!). I spent the second week of June in Estes Park directing a Christian youth conference - without my kids. It was a wonderful week, and my soul was fortified in different ways by

how God helped to work out the details even as I panicked every day about something or other. On one day in particular, I had several activities to coordinate and no good way of either contacting people or having a central place to find people on the expansive YMCA ground with limited cell service, but the people I needed to find either showed up at my room door or were easily located walking near the lodges.

the hilarious incident of the prairie dog in the lunchroom and coaxing the poor, diseased thing out of a corner with a cardboard box while Ashley Rieves stood on a cooler and shrieked (we are forever bonded) and praying no one came down with junta virus.

watching incredulously as a young man who had strayed from his group on a hike to rock climbing ran down the trail breathlessly, so happy to see us and his dad and explaining that he had taken a turn on what he thought was the right trail BY HIMSELF.

a hike up Twin Sisters, a 11,400 foot peak with a group from Independent Presbyterian Church. I stood at the top peak with four men (me, the only woman - that's the group in the picture) feeling victorious, feeling scared for my life that I might be blown off the top, loving the adventure of knowing what I wanted to achieve but adjusting at every step to the trail (dirt, roots, rocks and finally large, rough boulders), the weather (sunshine, overcast, snow, wind), my thirst, my hunger (M&M cookies satisfied low blood sugar at the top), my aching knees and the group. (Much of the way I contemplated how much life is like a hike - an idea of where we want to get to but know idea of what that trail will really look like and needing resources and friends to help us navigate directions and the trail, and needing to adjust to new discoveries).

laughing hysterically with Rachel Rieves and Frosty Howell - a table will never mean the same thing again when I see Rachel (wink, wink).

watching 270 high school students and youth leaders worship together each night.

calling my mom on Wednesday and her asking me, "Alexa, are you high or relaxed or . . . " and me replying that I was hanging out with friends from the south (how my adopted accent resurfaces!). My southern friends thought this was quite funny.

spending a late night with new friends and old friends (Amy Lowe!!) swapping stories and other fun things (wink, wink).

having a week of going and going and going without children but still not getting enough sleep.

calling home Friday evening in tears because the last dinner was near disaster, and I was exhausted and so homesick and being able to hear home.

feeling like such a woman Friday evening, having kept it together all week and then needing to just sit down to have a good cry and to talk to those I love and then getting back up to finish the week (Rachel and Frosty assure me I was just being human, but I felt a little wimpy at that low point).

ending the week with brunch with the Lowe's by the river and coming home to my sticky, half naked children watching cartoons and spending the day with them and Michael.

Worst Mother of the Day

I thought I'd just - for the heck of it - throw my hat in the ring for this one. After all, I let my kids play in the street water after it rains and in the hail (but it was small hail, fun to eat and I didn't know there was a tornado warning yet). Today started out quite good. Asher didn't get up until 6:30, but then he self entertained. And Harper was happy in her crib until around 7:30. But shortly after, Asher decided it was THE day to be bandito Asher, aka big, bad brother. So for a good two hours, I attempted to do a little bit of clean up, breakfast making and feeding, and dressing while Asher was a bandito, perching on the living room chair and darting out to steal Harper's baby and blanket ("gengki" as she screeched it) while also serving a good dose of hits, kicks and whips with Mardi Gras beads. I lost count of how many time outs Asher had and how many toys he lost the privelege of using (don't even ask me about the foam swords he can't use for a few days).

I decided it was finally time to take the two bags of bread heels I'd been saving to the duck pond and feed the birds there, something new and exciting, and the weather was beautiful. Oh, yes, I was thinking, mother of the day, right here. Innocently enough, I made two phone calls on the way and found out that I had a slight emergency with the youth conference I'm working on - a surprise extra 10 attendees!

We unloaded at the duck pond and had a good time chasing geese, not worrying about all the goose poop on the walkway, throwing bread willy-nilly, watching the stork float around the pond, eating bread willy-nilly, watching for more geese and ducks to feed. Shortly after we arrived, the geese started to migrate to another part of the pond, so we started a nice walk around the pond.

We stopped at an inlet where Asher wanted to walk down and see if he could find any more birds to feed. "Careful," I told the kids, urging them to step back from the water. I snapped some good pictures of the kids, the pond and the Rocky Mountains to our west. It was gorgeous! My phone rang, a call back about the surprise emergency, and I answered it. As I was hanging up, I saw Harper f a l l i n t o the water - threw my phone down, tried to reach her from the shore as she started to sink face first, yelled s*%! several times, water closing over her back, stepped in, grabbed the back of her overalls and hoisted her up, wondered if I could remember CPR, checked her face to see that she was surprised, soaking wet but perfectly fine. THANK GOD. I was shaking, and a woman asked if she was okay. No thanks to me, yes. Harper burped, and I wondered how much of the filthy pond water she had taken in. Sweet Asher looked at me and said, "Harper almost floated away." Again, thank God.

We enjoyed the rest of our walk, my shoes squishing and my clothes almost completely wet and Harper drying slowly in the sun, and almost two more hours together at the pond. I was so shaken at one point that I wanted to verify with someone that Harper was indeed okay - was I imagining her walking beside me? Thank God I wasn't. Needless to say, I didn't let either Asher or Harper get closer than three feet from the edge of the bank, and I learned a valuable lesson about multi-tasking.