2 posts in one day...

need a place to vent. recovery friend is standing on my last nerve today and i need to organize my thoughts so that i don't have future amends to make...

it has also triggered mom memories and for that i am grateful, but i have been re-living some of my most painful memories with my mother this morning.

my daughter's best friend is this woman's daughter. and yesterday she called needing help getting ready for her graduation. my friend had taken a shift on the day her 8th grade daughter graduated from middle school. this young girl had no one to help her get ready for her grad and her grad dance and she asked my daughter to help. i knew my daughter might be stepping into a land mine, so i suggested she come here, instead of getting ready by herself alone at home.

i have sensed that this woman, who has lived in our community just under a year now, leans toward narcissism. last night it was confirmed and i watched as she humiliated her daughter in my home, blamed me for it and made it all about her. i relived moments of my own teen years as i saw the daughter fold herself into tight places, her joy of the event stolen and her mother shame, blame and excuse herself for taking an extra shift on her daughter's big day.

i had volunteered the night before to help her. it was brushed aside and was told she wouldn't need any help. i took the little time i had with my family before my meeting last night and cared for this girl. i fed her, flat ironed her hair, gave her little hippy braids to tie back her hair, painted her toes and finger nails - the whole spa treatment. mom came just as i was finishing her nails and crushed us both and had a temper tantrum in my home in front of my children.

i awoke this morning to a "i'm sorry you" email from her and it just iced the cake. i want to blast this woman a new one, but know that will only succeed in driving her further into her martyrdom and blaming. so i'm processing here so that i am calm enough when the next interaction happens...

this has re-framed so much of my childhood - helped me see why i feel responsible for everything around me. so much blame. so much shame. so much martyrdom. because mom was so sick it masked a lot of her worst behavior. her life sucked and we all knew it. but the blame for that suckiness was never her own. she never took responsibility for it. she always put it on me. always.

looking back i am amazed at how clear certain events are now. any large event that cast any light on me (or off of her) was regularly highjacked to be all about her and how difficult her life was because she had to help me with mine. she then used every excuse in the book to make her behaviour okay and mine intolerable.

this daughter is a joy. she is so helpful and sweet. she is being remade into the mother in this relationship and it's so obvious to me in watching this that is what happened to me too. while this was a total pain in the ass, i am so grateful for the living color illustration it has brought...

now where do we go from here?

capturing the memory

i'm at that point in parenting where i'm not "allowed" to talk about my kids anymore. i hate it. so i'm blogging this here so that i remember it.

we took a drive yesterday after a picnic just because we all so wanted to be out and not heading home yet.

we drove through a part of town we don't frequent often and there was a couple playing tennis.

buck says "OH, i didn't know they had tennis courts here"

mom - "i didn't know you liked tennis buck, did you want to learn how to play"

buck "oh yeah mom, it's like ping pong, only you get to stand on the table!"

:D

powerlessness

i realized as i read my daily reading from yesterday (about powerlessness) that it is truly where i am at. smack, dab in the middle of powerlessness, more than i have ever been in my life. i don't like it at all.

in the midst of all of this i have realized that my addictions have morphed (with all of the push ups they've been doing shape shifting gets pretty easy) and begun to look much more subtle than they used to. i think the issue that i dealt w/ below has a lot to do with my sexual addiction rearing it's head in a very different version of itself.

on feb. 13th at around 7:00 i realized that i had a wicked case of heartburn. i haven't had heartburn in years. i got a wake up call when i faced the fact that i was truly tempted to purge. if you know my story you'll know how despicable vomiting is to me - but it was my addiction changing itself. it also meant that i had overeaten and used food to comfort myself that day. i hadn't eating any of my trigger foods, but i cringed at the thought of telling my sponsor about it and was tempted to lie (or omit) and i realized that if i had something to hide, it meant i had something to hide. secrets mean shame for me, and shame always plunges me back into my addictions - so i have reset my abstinence date to feb. 14th. clean abstinence is far more important to me than a big fat number.

i have been abstinent for one week.

i also broke the chain of writing on the 12th (think they might be linked?) i was just too tired to put pen to paper and didn't want to have to look at my fear for buck and the powerlessness of the whole situation. dang.

so, just for today i am embracing my powerlessness. i head back to the hospital and liam assures me that i will see a boy who looks far more like my son than the one i left behind. i had horrible sleeps while here at home. ironically i slept so much more deeply at the hospital. sounds strange, but i realized that it was the assurance that the nurses would come and knock on my little lounge door and wake me if something went wrong. when i awoke at home the fear and anxiety was oppressive. powerlessness. it has nothing to do with geography, but being closer to him in proximity will be quite a relief. thanks for your prayers.

and i thought i was cracked open last week...

oh my. this has been a hellish week. i feel like i've gone from the frying pan into the fire. our son buck (who is t1 diabetic) was vomiting all last week and they finally figured out that he needed to be in hospital. they didn't know what was wrong, but knew it wasn't right. fast forward - ruptured appendix and abscess removed and the recovery has been 1 step forward 2 steps back all week.

poor kid. it's excruciating to watch your 10 year old son have to endure this kind of pain, confusion and prodding. the medical care has been outstanding and he has a dozen of doctors on his staff. he's been in picu the whole time and the nurses have come to adore him. but somehow in the big important things happening to him they weren't understanding that he hadn't been getting real nutrition for the past couple of weeks - and so his body is literally breaking down. they put in a pic line yesterday and have started him on tpn - the most basic form w/out the fat so that he can slowly build back up what has been lost. how does a child in north america become malnourished? it doesn't make any sense. and please this is not socialized medicine - his care is stellar - it's just that surgeons have been so concerned that the infection in his gut would rear it's head and they would have to operate again that keeping him off of food was important because his bowel isn't working.

so he literally has 4 iv lines running into him and he's retaining so much fluid - it's horrible to watch this vibrant young boy trapped inside this body that isn't working. i hate this.

liam took two days off so that he could man the post as he heard in my voice that i was running so thin. i got my period yesterday and knew that i couldn't break down in front of buck so that i wouldn't scare him. i didn't want to leave his side, but knew that if i didn't care for myself i wouldn't be able to care for him. liam walked me to the car and as i got in i realized all of the picu noise, alarms and buzz was gone and i was truly alone. that is usually a good thing, but i have had so much head time lately - too much thinking and not enough processing - that i realized i needed some input. i turned on our 21 year old stereo and tried to find a station. i haven't turned on a radio in over 7 years. i really love silence and my thoughts, but knew that this wasn't the time for it. i was exhausted and needed to be alert for the next 90 minutes.

i found a dreamy enya like song and thought 'okay, this will work', paid for my parking and headed home. by the time i hit the highway the old stevie nicks song landslide was playing - i haven't listened to the radio in 7 years and THIS is the song that comes on the radio? i started to keen. i could barely see through my tears to pay the bridge toll and stay on the road. the next song was luba's "every time i see your picture i cry" and i began to scream "YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM" over and over at the top of my lungs.

i am flat out cracked open and have no place safe to hide any more. this has stripped me bare to my core and everything feels like it's on the line.

i am home, drinking my own fair trade scandanavian blend with my wonderful daughter on the computer next to me - we have been given the blessing of a snow day and will be spending it together some how. we both need this, and so i needed to get this off my chest this a.m. so that i could be present for her and not terrify her with the depth of my deep emotions.

please pray. i can't seem to find god in this. that is my prayer. (other than heal him NOW) - that we would all see the places that god is with us in this moment. to know that he has not abandoned us to our pain and fear. we have all been face to face with our deepest fear this week and it is horrible. i want to be face to face with god in this fear and i can't seem to find him.

this is your brain on abuse...

oh. my. gosh.

research shows that abuse and neglect actually affects our brains. this is ground breaking.


Abuse Changes Brains of Suicide Victims

angry, angry, angry

i have been blindsided by anger these past couple of weeks. absolutely blindsided. the murder of my girlfriends daughter by her husband awoke such violence within me. it gave me a face to hate. a face to channel my rage toward. that ugly, mouth-breathing, festering rot of a human being awoke a place in me that i really thought i had worked through. i did deep anger work a couple of years ago - and i'm not naive enough to believe that i wouldn't need to circle back, but dang this has spun me back so fast and so furiously that i can't seem to catch my breath.

i wrote to a blogger friend last night about some other issues i'm dealing with. i'm just going to quote it here because i am crunched for time today.

the deepest places in me want to be stuffed with food to make everything better. i know it's not better, ever with this stupid way of coping, but anything else just seems stupider. hurting and not doing anything about it seems senseless. at least anesthetizing the pain feels like i'm doing something...

i have been so angry and reactionary lately. i did some deep emotional work during the ignatian prayer class and realized that my mom gagged me twice in the bathroom. once because i ate baby aspirin and once because i ate maraschino cherries - both times out of the liquor cabinet - just a kitchen cupboard, but where they stored their booze - and both times because i was too old to take the nap she tried to make me take so she could pass out on the couch, i got bored and when she woke up and saw the empty jars she was ashamed/angry/scared and took it out on me by inducing vomiting with her nasty cigarette stained fingers as she me held over the toilet.

both of these times were right after the rape, in the same bathroom with the same exact motion. i realized that basically i was raped three times that summer, twice by the woman who was in such denial that she didn't protect me the first time and perpetrated it two more times. is it any wonder why feeling full is so important to me? empty means scary, lack of control and violated. full means safe.

damn.

i am so angry at her. and at my stupid father for not doing anything about it either, and for talking at his birthday party this summer about that very same party where i was raped with jokes and laughs about how drunk he was and how at the end of the party he and another guy ran down the road to the lake and jumped in and he lost the $200.00 my grandfather had just given him. i sat there and thought "old man, you lost way more than that that day" - he knew too. he knew i was raped that day. we have talked about it before. and then on my own birthday he never even bothered to call. i am so angry. so very angry.

sorry to unload on you, but i just have to get this junk out and now that i've started i just can't stop. i think i'll probably clip some of this into a blog post.

i just keep snapping at liam and the kids. i have no patience at all. i know i need to start therapy again. dang i hate winter. i can feel it creeping in on me already. i don't want to go outside because it's so cold and so i'd rather just isolate myself. i hate it.

i love this community and everything else is going so well. i just really need to get some closure on this junk i've mucked up. i can't do it on my own.

okay, now i have to go and get this day started. thanks for listening.

csi my mother

in the organization of last weekend i finally tackled a large trunk of musty, mothy paperwork that i have lugged (oh who am i kidding - liam lugged) from pillar to post on the many moves we had made. i had thought it was filled with my mother's old writing. i was wrong. it was a treasure chest. filled with bounty from my childhood, my mother's childhood and my father's childhood. pictures, letters, scrapbooks and ephemera from decades gone by. i have a huge sinus headache because of the mold and i can't bear to put everything away again. it feels like i've found pieces of myself i never knew existed.

did you know my mother went to college and dropped out in her first semester? i did not. nope. never knew it. i found that in a letter typed in a round-about by one of her high school crushes who was a math geek and at technical school pining away for her. he called her dumb for dropping out. i was shocked. i never knew. i knew she worked for the college, but i never knew she enrolled. i think i have stumbled upon a family secret.

my grandfather was a brilliant man. he held the formula (in his head) to some aluminum magic mumbo jumbo that was in high demand. he just could never seem to roll that into income. i think he was such a kind-hearted soul that people took advantage of him. i remember hearing about loosing investments and bill collectors. the shame of it all drove my grandmother into seclusion and no one ever talked about it in detail. i only remembered fragments of information overheard or talked about above me.

i wonder if she had to drop out due to financial reasons? she was so bright, excelled at everything she did. all of her friends went to college. but she was left behind. i can't imagine how disappointed she must have been. it feels like a piece to a puzzle i don't know where to put yet. i have so many questions, but don't know who to talk to about them. the secret keepers are still in full force in some bastions of my family.

i also saw the scrapbook of her first love. things were gangbusters and then nothing. zip. zilch. no information. it just evaporates. like the trail into the forest that ends at a stream. which way to go? what happened here? my mom always told us she was a virgin when she married dad. he tells me now that he doesn't think she was. i wonder if they had sex. she moved out to wisconsin shortly after the trail of the relationship died. maybe he just broke her heart. maybe she just needed a change of scenery. but it would answer so many question marks as to why she told me what she told me about men and how life can treat you. again, more questions, very few answers. i really feel like i'm reconstructing bobbie.

i could spend all my days looking over pictures, reading old letters, trying to piece the fragments of information together. she called my dad "tiger" in her letters to him. he bought her extravagant cards for every holiday. she saved them all. when did the alcohol begin to overtake their marriage? i can see the glamorous pictures from "before" - then in the beginning they start slack off, only a few snapshots here and there, not nearly as glamorous, and then hardly any from the time of the heavy drinking. i wonder if that's why there are only a very few pictures of my sister's childhood.

i know this is a gift. that there are answers here to some of the questions i have, and maybe leads to find the answers to others. i only know that looking at the pictures of my parents together, or my mom in her career clothes, riding in parades for being the "top-seller" are ties to a life gone by that fill in the gaps of my memories and brings me closer to the woman that she was. i am grateful.

Stay-at-home Moms Are Priceless

happy mother's day!

Stay-at-home Moms Are Priceless: "Reuters has this report yesterday - Stay-at-home mother’s work worth $138,095 a year. Given today’s current salary levels, mommies are earning even more than top-level corporate honchos. Now would you look at that. A six-figure salary!

According to Salary.com moms are the real pros, working at least 10 jobs that include:

housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist."

postpartum depression

watching the horror of what britney spears is going through right now is bringing back a lot of my own story and pain from my own battle with postpartum depression.

after buck was born it hit me hard. we were living out on a dirt road in a town of 400, working for a church that hated my american soul and liam was working on the average of 70 hours a week between his job at the high school and the church. i had a 2 year old and a newborn and began the darkest slide into the biggest, blackest hole i have ever experienced.

dooce blogged this morning on her own journey with postpartum. it too reminded me of my own. what few people realize is that the break that happens in the mind of the mother is so severe that nothing in life makes sense anymore. the desperation is terrifying and you can't even remember what normal felt like.

there is no hope, no light at the end of the tunnel, no realization that there even is a tunnel. no understanding that this just might not be your fault. the shame and the despair is so crippling that it seems there is no future to be had.

looking back i can remember how it felt to regularly place my crying son in his crib and have to close the door and walk away because my own hands wanted to shake him till he stopped. hiding under the covers to escape each day. the thoughts of drowning my children in the bathtub so that they could go to heaven and have a better "life" went through my head more times than i can count. i was steps away from being one of those women you see splashed across the headlines. i loved my children more than life itself, but hated and loathed myself for my inability to be the mother they needed.

my addictions were out of control and my life bottomed out into such a dark, dismal place. no one knew. no one cared. no one stepped in to say 'hey, are you okay"? no one loved me enough to give me a break. get me some help.

so please, please if you think about her, pray for britney. i don't mean this in a syrupy, churchy way - i mean this in a 'change your own heart' kind of way - i believe that by praying for her your own heart will be turned to notice those in your own lives that have this kind of struggle, are facing this kind of shame and confusion.

it happens every day. you have someone in your life who is struggling with this.

maybe it's you? please know you are not alone. it's not your fault. tell someone. tell me. call this hotline, get some help. you don't have to do this alone like i did. you are worth it, and your babies are worth it. there is hope and a future - reach out. please.

Postpartum Support International (PSI)
Wikipedia - Understand Postpartum Depression

Marigold Path Grid Blog: remembering mom

image designed by adam walker cleaveland

It is still so new
& all we see is
the empty space,
but that is not
how it is in the
landscape of the heart.
There, there is
no empty space
& he still laughs
& grapples with ideas
& plans
& nods wisely with each
of us in turn.
We are proud to
have known him.
We are proud to
have called him friend.

for bob who put this grid blog together, from Story People .

grief and remembering is something i must do intentionally lately. it's been 18 years since my mother, the real bobbie died. i was 21, she was 43. there is never a good time to loose a parent, but this time for me was very traumatic. she seems so very far from me now. like a distant friend living in a far away town who i haven't seen in a very long time.

i never thought i would say this in the middle of all of my grief, but it has gotten easier. it's not easy - but easier than i'd imagined it would be.

she was a bundle of contradictions, my mother. i think it was her sickness that made that real. i got stuck for quite some time in the anger stage of my grief. a lot of unresolved emotions that i had to untangle. what was god's and what was hers? it took me years of therapy to figure that out, heck, it took me years of therapy just to be able to admit it. i guess that's why it was such a drawn out stage of my grieving process.

she was so ugly to me before she died. they told me it was the medicine. the mass doses of prednisone and constant frustrations with her inability to care for herself. i think that by finally admitting how angry i was at her i was finally able to have her back again.

that's what i tell people now when they speak to me of their grief. that it's okay to feel any way you need to - even angry. it doesn't mean you don't love them any less. anger and love are both valid, deep emotions that can co-exist within a heart at the same time. and by admitting the anger i was able to deal with it and move it out of the way to make room for the good memories to show up again.

one of my mother's favorite things to do was to go out for breakfast. i don't know how many saturday mornings she would awaken my teen-age self and try to coax me out to go junkin' with her by first bribing me with breakfast. that's probably when i miss her most. in the simple things. like finding an amazing antique at a yard sale and knowing she would be right by my side if she could have been.

or raking and burning leaves together. how many times the smell of burning leaves brings her back to me. i can see her with her red bandanna on, flaming rake in hand, carrying the fire from one pile to the next in our old back yard. she loved to burn those piles of leaves.

i smile as i remember her sitting with a golf umbrella in the sunshine of the bleachers watching me play first base, while others stared, wondering if this woman thought that it was going to rain. she was allergic to the sun, her lupus made her so sensitive and the sun took so much energy from her. but she wouldn't miss a game if she could help it.

the clacking of the typewriter will forever remind me of her. sitting at her smith corona desperately trying to write something that someone would publish. it was her greatest dream. she would have LOVED blogging. hitting that 'publish' button would have fulfilled a great void in her life. she was never so sad as when the mailbox held the large envelopes with her manuscript, rejected, inside. i could never understand why she kept doing that to herself. i do now.

i wish she had written about her pain, her struggles, her journey through living with terminal illness, that would have been something that could have captured a publishers eye. there aren't even journals. just forced poetry and sad pre-teen, christian romance novels. she so desperately wanted to figure out what the magic combination was that would get her words read.

i know she would have loved recovery too. i think she longed for it her whole life. serenity, wholeness, healing. she died with so much unresolved. so many questions, resentments and bitterness. i wonder if it exacerbated her sickness? did that emotional baggage weigh her down and she bore the consequences of that in her body?

i know she would be proud of me today. thrilled at the level of healing and wholeness i have found. rejoicing with me in the choices i have made. i also know that i wouldn't be where i am today if she was still here. i think realizing that was one of the biggest helps to my grieving process. we had quite an unhealthy co-dependent relationship. i think i am stronger and healthier today because i don't regularly have to navigate a relationship with her. i hope that doesn't sound bitter. it's not meant to. i just know that she who installed 'my buttons' knew how to push them like no one else.

so today, i remember you bobbie. thank you for the life you gave me. thank you for your strengths and weaknesses. i have learned and continue to learn from them both. i miss you mom.

read other's stories here: Marigold Path Grid Blog

joe's story - part three

here's joe's story - part three:

I wanted to follow up with a post tying up some loose ends surrounding my story. I wanted to emphasize that i really am a fairly average, normal man who had basically a good upbringing and no bizarre occurrences to place me in a *twilight zone* category. I am pretty much like all of you reading here, at a basic level. I have really come to more totally comprehend Paul's statement that no temptation happens to any of us which is special or unique, we ALL face the same array of trapdoors. This really helps to make it so we can all relate to one another in our common struggles,though the specifics may widely vary.

I believe my family background played a significant role in my issues. My dad's mother was an alcoholic and very much like an agoraphobic. She liked boys more than girls and treated me as her favorite, being extremely over-protective and sought ways to have me rely on her for protection and emotional needs. My mom was raised by her aunt and uncle, her mother choosing not to raise her, her father an alcoholic and she was molested by her uncle at a young age. Her family was emotionally distant let alone the trust issues she faced because of her uncle.

I have a very hard time recalling things about my dad. i can remember snapshots but that's about it. I was always surrounded by women after he died, most all my teachers in school were women. My most significant male role model I found was my theater teacher in high school with whom i became very close, only to have him die of cancer a year after i graduated. The counselor i spoke of before, we were in process of deepening our sessions together, I had even gone to one of his Masters classes and shared my story with class, more dealing with my fears and relational struggles than anything to do with sexual addiction. Soon after he was killed in a car accident.

Even though all of these men dying were entirely unrelated i think inwardly i felt as though i was bad luck or something. My mom told me once a while after my dad had died i was sitting at the kitchen table and said to her.... *so are you going to leave us soon too?*

I think i turned to sexual release and the immediate gratification it supplied as a means to block out and suppress emotional pain. I think some of my struggle also has to do with a struggle in relating emotionally to my mom seeing how she was dealing internally with pain from her own molestation. Affection and emotional intimacy were very strained due to these factors and i also had no male role model to guide me into dealing with my questions/wondering as to how to deal with what happened once i became a growing maturing boy. I wanted to share also that i have dealt with all this as a single man. I was engaged for a short time, it too was a relationship fraught with emotional distance and tension. I often felt more like a lil boy as opposed to a grown man in dealing with the needs faced as an engaged couple.

I was and have been fully functioning during all this as well. I had friends, I got very involved in theater, was able to relate well socially and was never an outcast in that way. I was able to achieve a perfect gpa in jr college as well as go on and participate in preaching and teaching and doing many leadership activities within the church while having all of these things go on. I was not trying to lead a double-life in anyway, I knew i had issues i struggled with yet i always sought to turn myself best as i could to God and Christ and be as strong a christian as i knew how. Again, not sure just how to label the disconnect fully. I sincerely hope many who read here will find something that resonates within themselves to allow God to bring healing and wholeness. i know He is using the opportunity to openly share myself for just that purpose. Rich blessings and growing peace be yours!!

a day for the struggling

from 1988 to 1996 i loathed mothers day. my mother passed in 1988 and i was infertile for the eight years following. for women who are single and wanting to be married, married and struggling to conceive, those grieving the loss of a child or mothers with prodigal children this is the most difficult day on the calendar.

i loathed being forced to go to church, listen to some man give lip service to females one day of the year and then have to walk out as they 'honored' mothers with a cheap lousy carnation or bookmark. i wanted to beat them with it. one year i actually refused to take one.

the memory of seeing the blood each month, proving i was a failure, not fit to bear children or mother them - it's truly devastating. your own body becomes your enemy.

so today, i stand with you. i know it is only a gesture - but i remember the pain, the grief and the longing. i stand with you today.

a mother's wait

pink drew this last year and i found it so moving i've kept it at my computer for the past year. i loved it's simplicity - mary, alone, worshiping at her altar. it's sacred to me. it makes me think that there was that time when the animals were put out to feed, the shepherds had stumbled home to share their good tidings of great joy and joseph ran out for diapers. and she was left with the sleeping jesus.

there is nothing like that first quiet nap - everyone else is gone and you finally are allowed to study the face of your baby. what must mary be thinking?

"such tiny fingers, and oh, those fingernails, could anything be more beautiful? well, maybe his lips, those lips. the face of god. this beauty incarnate came from my body, i carried this child deep within my innermost parts and now i must share him with the world. but just for this one moment, in this quiet time he's still mine. mine alone."

scott mcknight is blogging advent this year. it's helping me a lot. i feel so disconnected, so cut off, especially from ritual or anything communal. celebrating advent is helping. if liam and i could afford to both go to north park, and survive the cost of living in chicago we'd be studying with scott.

scott writes:

Zechariah and Elizabeth were both “upright in the sight of God” or “righteous before God.” That is, they were tsadiqim – those whose lives were conformed to the Torah. I sketch some of this in Jesus Creed (chp on Joseph), but there is force in the Jewish world in being described as “righteous” or a tsadiq. Profoundly pious, rigorously committed to the Torah, and enthusiastically obedient are the sorts of ideas connected to Z and E’s reputation.

In spite of their obedience, they are barren. This description in Luke 1:7 immediately throws us into the world of Abraham and Sarah (Gen 18:11), Elkanah and Hanna (1 Sam 1), and Manoah and his wife (Judg 13:2). Barrenness is a sign of God not blessing, and they were humbled by their condition. That they were aged complicated their condition.

Zechariah, in his bi-annual opportunity to perform the priestly function in the Temple and in his perhaps only time ever to get to do the incense offering, is met by Gabriel. Gabriel is famous for letting Israel in on the future plans of God (Dan 8:17; 9:20-21; 10:15). That future now includes two things that must thrill the hearts of Z and E: first, they will have a baby boy and this boy, to be named John, will be the instrument of God for a revival in Israel (Luke 1:11-17). In fact, he will be the Elijah figure promised in Malachi 3—4.

Zechariah’s experience occurs when all Israel is praying – this would be about 3pm at the time of the evening sacrifice. It is also the time when Israel gathered at the Temple to say its prayers (perhaps the ha-Tepillah, today called the Amidah, or something like it, perhaps also the Shema).While the people prays for God to come for redemption, which is inherent to these prayers, God is actually doing something about it – in a surprising way by bringing into the world a prophet destined for revival.

The boy’s name is to be Yohanan – “Yahweh has given grace.” But this boy will also be one connected with joy and delight and rejoicing and greatness and the Spirit of God (1:13-17).

Yearning is a theme of the first Christmas characters – they are all longing for the day when God would enter history and reverse the tides of injustice, violence, impiety, disobedience, and poverty. In the hearts of Z and E is a yearning for God’s promised redemption.

i've always felt more kindred with elizabeth than i did with mary. mary never really had to wait. she was the young virgin - didn't have to wait for a husband, didn't have to wait for a child. but elizabeth - oh, she is a sister to my story. elizabeth knows what it is to yearn.

i know what it is to yearn for a child.

we struggled with nine years of infertility before pink was born. every month i became a failure. my body rebelled against me. reminded me i was unfit to parent. unfit to be a mother. i can't imagine the yearning that comes both from longing for a child, and yearning for a messiah. to have both of these satisfied in john and jesus brings me to my knees. two women, related, but so very different - both become social outcasts because of their pregnancies - one bearing a child in her old age and one under mysterious circumstances that cause all to whisper her shame. connected by the fulfillment of the promise, tied together in a way that only god could orchestrate. the waiting of the world satisfied in the wombs of these two mothers who must share their sons in such extraordinary ways.

as we celebrate the waiting this season i will remember these mothers, i will remember their wait.

technorati tags: waiting, infertility, advent

talking to kids about sex - part one

cheryl left a comment on my post about sex and mentioned her concerns about talking to her own daughter about this topic. she mentioned her struggle when the instruction she was given was so very lacking, this is true in my life too. how can we teach what was never taught to us? it is the question of every adult raised in a home of addiction or dysfunction.

i am no expert here, my oldest child is almost 9, so i've never talked to 'my own' kids before about sex, but i have talked to 100's of other people's. this would be my 'free advice' on the matter.

i know that my 'learning' came from very distorted sources - on both extremes of the spectrum - pornography and the church - neither of those extremes help anyone to have a real, healthy, life-giving understanding of sex and intimacy.

the most damaging aspect to my 'education' was that both extremes were so shame based. being a female was objectified by the pornography and degraded and impugned by the church. (my experience - not all i know). neither equipped me to be female. i still struggle with this today.

so i think it's most important that when teaching is done that is filled with grace, truth and love, not shame and fear. first of all i know that i can't teach anything that i don't believe to be true myself. i am wrestling with my own female-ness in part because my daughter is blossoming into a beautiful young woman and i want her to accept her femininity as a god given blessing instead of resenting and fearing all that life has in store for her. we need to own our own brokenness in this area before we can teach it to our kids. remember they have a 'b.s.' (pirate warning) detector that can sniff out hypocrisy and inconsistency from a mile away.

the best answer sometimes is 'i don't know, but i'm going to find out'. liam and i have committed to answering our kids questions honestly and age appropriately. we figure if they ask, they are old enough to know the truth. preparation for puberty comes early now as they are developing much more quickly than we did at our age.

pink and i have been reading the care and keeping of you together since november. it's a great start that begins with things like brushing your teeth and combing your hair. all things that were totally left out of my education - no one every did basic hygiene with me - i always felt like i was trying to keep up, and watching my friends to learn and copy. it was a horrible place and made for a very insecure childhood and teen age years. i don't want pink to have to learn anything from copying - who knows who she will think is worthy of copying? i know the people i copied were definitely not the kind of people i want my children to model themselves after.

liam is on the lookout for something similar to begin with buck soon. he's only going to be 7 next month, but we know that being intentional with these precious things needs to be one of our priorities.

the book eventually will come to the place where body parts and feminine hygiene will be discussed. this will bring many questions (as it should) and i want to be there to be able to answer each and every one.

one of the other things that i feel needs to happen with children; is that they need never to be shamed for asking questions. parents who project their embarrassment with these issues on their children punish them for their innocence. too many times of shaming and kids will know they're on their own and search for answers elsewhere.

the other area of sensitivity that i would caution about is not punishing your children for telling you the truth - even if it means they have broken the rules or 'sinned'. there needs to be consequences for these actions, but not for the truth telling. punishing your children for telling the truth creates liars and sneaks. children are brilliant - they know the logic of relational math - [i tell you the truth] + [you punish me] = i am stupid and will stop telling you the truth.

most parents fail to realize the real effects of this kind of economy in their homes. thoughtful consequences vs. reactionary punishment will build the kind of relationship that will keep communication open with your kids in a way that keeps you in the circuit. it's not fool proof, but you've got a better chance of being the person they come to instead of going to places where misconception and ugly lies dwell.

the next item i've been realizing is that metaphor speaks truth into my life in a much less threatening manner that facts and figures. i think we can use story and metaphor to describe those things that are conceptual about marriage, sex and love in ways that honor our children's brains and souls, and in a way that stays with them into the times when they really need it.

the only equipment i was ever given was 'just say no'. it worked for a year or two, but when i realized i didn't want things to stop i was out of ammunition to fight temptation and the emotional/hormonal/societal pressure i was facing.

my parents, youth workers and the church couldn't admit that in marriage sex was fun, wonderful and something to be desired to themselves, so they were unable to prepare me any farther than they were willing to go themselves.

honesty and transparency without graphic details at age appropriate times is the best direction to take - speak the truth in love.

love casts out fear, is never shame based and honors the other person and yourself in a way that brings hope and life. it takes courage. most of the time we avoid it because it might bring up our own baggage - but when we take the time to unpack our bags and deal with those things that are holding us hostage our children will benefit, but more importantly so will we.

so, i guess it's taking longer to get to the 'birds and bees' - so i'll make this part one.

decade of pain - part one

ragamuffin diva is someone i just found, i don't know how i missed her, how our blogging paths had not crossed yet, but she is a rare gem, a heart of gold and a very talented, deep soul-d writer.

she blogged a week ago about her scars and her brush with suicide and it got me thinking about my own decade battle with that horrible demon. her story put me back in touch with my own and i hope i'm brave enough to face it now with words.

the psychology world will tell you that life changes, even positive ones when they link together can become overwhelming to the psyche. 1987 was a year that threw me into the richter scale of change very quickly. liam and i were engaged, we graduated from college, my mother was very ill, she still encouraged me to travel to canada to work with liam at a camp for the summer, she got close to death many times that summer, but i wasn't told until camp was over, we rushed home by plane to find her hospitalized and very sick indeed. she was granted remission and was sent home.

liam and i (by the advice of an ins agent - a long story for another post) eloped later that month. we had dated for 3 years in college and because of work visa issues had no dinero for a real wedding. god gave us one himself anyway. (another even longer story for another post). i was never a wedding dreamer, all i knew was that the only thing i really cared about was that my mom was there.

a month after the wedding we had a celebration party to invite the friends and family who weren't at the wedding to join us. according to my mother's version it was the fact that i didn't send out the thank-you's in a timely fashion that put her in the hospital again.

she became very ill again, and bedridden. and this time she becomes mean, but only to me. i begin to care for her during the day, when my father is at work, no one knowing how mean and nasty she has become. she is the queen of manipulating my emotions - go away, come back, go away, come back - she used that little piece of elastic she had installed in my back long ago effortlessly that winter. the guilt cards and emotional issues were played secretly when no one was looking. i felt trapped, guilty and alone. this wasn't how it was supposed to be.

one day my aunt happened upon my mother's abuse and sternly reprimanded her (gosh this is harder than i knew). the doctor tells me later it is a 'prednisone induced psychosis' and she has broken with reality in many areas. the abuse was a bit better after because i now had the freedom to talk about it and we had moments of bonding and sweet times in and amongst the dying and the pain.

liam and i retreated for a weekend away and returned to find her hospitalized. we walked into the room. she was on a vent tube so she couldn't speak. through her mouth anyway - her eyes said it all as she looked at me with hatred and yanked the iv tube out of her arm. it was her way of telling me it was my fault she was hospitalized. she had instructed us that she was never to return to the hospital - she wanted to die at home. my father just couldn't bear it though and called the ambulance while we were gone. they kept her there.

after that night she became unconscious. i never again saw her eyes, or heard her voice. they took her to madison to the real doctors and proceeded to try any and everything to save her. we were there for weeks - liam and i staying overnight in the waiting room, relieved by my father the next day, we'd take the car and return to try to work, to then return and relieve my father. it was a 2 1/2 hour commute one way and we were doing that for what seems like an eternity.

then they transferred her to the even bigger hospital where she became a lab experiment and they started to study her instead of treating her like a human. brain surgeries and anything they could think of. her body was shutting down. my poor father allowed them to try anything and everything to save her. finally my grandmother and aunt came in - i knew it was the end. her neurosurgeon told me that he had never seen anyone as sick as my mother was.

we decided to tell the doctors to turn off the machines that were keeping her alive. she was retaining so much fluid that it was seeping out her feet. the whites of her eyes had become little waterbeds. she was drowning in her own body.

because there was no 'living will' the only way the doctors would turn off the machines was if we had 'permission' from the patient. everyone thought that she was still responsive, though i knew better in my heart. they voted and elected me to be the one to ask her if she wanted to die. somehow at the time i took that as a compliment. 'she responds best to you, you ask her'. her own mother, sister and husband are there and they ask her child. i didn't know it then but that decision would haunt me for years.

i held her swollen hand and said 'mom, we need to know if it's okay if we turn off the machines. squeeze once for yes, 2 times for no' - she 'squeezed' once. they finally turned off the machines. we all sang hymns and cried and waited for her to die. she didn't cooperate. as usual my mother's timing was her own. i could stand no longer, so liam and i went into the waiting room and i stared at the television. i think a mash re-run was on when they came to tell me she was finally gone.

i re-entered her room, kissed her, held her hand again and told her i loved her and said goodbye. and i left her room and entered a bubble that surrounded me for nearly a decade.

that bubble insulated and isolated me from the world. it was then that my addictions shifted into drive. they had always been my friends before - but now they were my lifeline.

i was told not to be sad, 'she was in a better place' and both my father and my sister seemed to be strangely unaffected by her death, somehow their lives went on like before. i seemed to be feeling the emotions for the three of us. poor liam had no clue how to deal in this situation. my mother's funeral was the first he'd ever attended. he supported me through the whole episode like a rock, but had no idea of the storm he was headed into.

the shame that awoke after the loss of my virginity during my first year of bible college (not liam) created a deep desire within me to kill myself. it became my secret fantasy. the summer between my first and second year of college was filled with blackness and pain.

re-entering my second year i met liam and things seemed to calm down a bit now that i was able to self medicate with food and spiritualize the blackness away i was functional, and even happy. since i had 'learned my lesson' and liam and i had 'recycled our virginity' my shame turned to pride during the remainder of our college years. there was a darkness around the edges of my memory, but i managed to keep it away through sheer determination and activity.

after my mother's abuse and death none of that determination was left. i was empty. no drive, no activities, not even a desire for them. liam was scrambling. he is a fixer by nature, and he couldn't 'fix this'. so if you can't fix it, relocate it.

the move to canada came at such a bad time in my mental health. moving in with my in-laws until my green card arrived was a really bad idea and i spent months watching the soap operas my mother watched while bed ridden, crying and eating anything i could get my hands on. no one was home during the day, so i had hours and hours of nothing to do and no where to go. at that time depression wasn't the watch word it is today, it was 1988 and prozac hadn't even entered the market yet. so i sunk deeper and deeper into the darkness. television, naps, masturbation and binge eating became my way of life. my step-mother-in-law tried to shame me into any productive behavior, it didn't work. we had no church, no support and no friends.

planning my suicide became a game i played in my head. trying over and over to figure out a sure way to die. i knew that until i was sure i'd really die that i would actually try it. i just couldn't come up with 'the' plan. but i'd spend hours thinking about it. it was my new hobby.

finally my green card arrived and i was able to enter society again as a responsible adult. liam was selling used cars, and i was telemarketing. can you think of two more undesirable jobs? all we knew is it allowed us to rent our own place. getting out on our own was enough of a kick start for me that i was able to function again and keep the wolves of depression at bay.

i'll blog part deux later...

decade of pain - part 2
decade of pain - part 3

hospital people

it's a melancholy day and i can't stop thinking about sam. his little face is now the wallpaper on my computer. it could be buck, or pink. he's directly between their ages. and i can't imagine how i'd breathe, let alone thrive as it seems his parents rudy and kafi are doing.

i was so pleased to hear that trevor was able to go and visit them at the hospital. so many people i don't really know experiencing trials and pain, and yet it is so very real to me.

i was grateful to trevor for going because i knew that he knew exactly what it was like to be in their place. that his being there left the family with 'more' instead of 'less'.

it takes a very special person to be a hospital person. it is a rare gift. one that i cherish deeply. i spent too many nights in hospital waiting rooms during my adolescence and teen years. my mother, the real bobbie, was very sick. there were more close calls than i can count, and constant fear of relapse and hospitalization plagued our family.

during those times i saw the vivid difference between 'hospital people' and those who should stay far away. hospital people are those who after they've left make you glad that they came. they aren't needy during the visit, they give more than they take. they know that silence is okay, and that eye contact conveys far more than their lips ever could. there is a solidness to hospital people, a core that brings hope, not empty words and jesus-y shame or advice.

it is truly a rare gift.

because of our lengthy experience with hospitals our family has a ritual that kind of developed. we remember what it was like to be pinching pennies at the hospital, or returning home to an empty fridge. we investigate the likes and favorites of those families who have loved ones in hospital and shower them with groceries. simple, dumb, indulgent things. things that they would forget themselves because of the cloud they are existing in.

i remember my sister telling me of a woman in her church who came home to 2 grocery bags on her doorstep after leaving her husband at the hospital. she looked in the bag and found a 'clearly canadian' and sat on her doorstep and wept. she wrote my sister telling her that finding that drink waiting for her was a reminder that god would take care of them, even through the horror of sickness they were facing.

it's a simple thing, but it's a practical way of being there, and leaving more than we take.

i pray god surrounds rudy, kafi and sam with hospital people. people who can love on them and be jesus to them. thinking for them without asking. making life easier and less complicated. allowing the silence and the eye contact to convey more than their words could ever say.

it's real, it's real, it's real!!

wooooooooo hoooooooo! it's real. i'm really published. i can't link to it here, but it's real! sigh. i actually thought that at the last minute they'd change their minds, but it's real. i've seen the cover - IT'S REAL!

i haven't had a job in over 8 years. no paycheck, no pat on the head, no immediate validation. i proposed an article for a trade journal and not only did they like it they are featuring it, and i've got my name (my real name) on the cover - wooo hooo! this is really validating for me. someone else realized i have a brain in my head. for some strange reason that is so important to me.

you may be able to put 2&2 together and figure out who i am, and that's never been my reason for anonimity here on my blog. it's truly so the sr. pastor/board and our church or my extended family can't google my name (like they don't have better things to do) and find out i'm airing myself (and sometimes them) in public). if curiosity is killing you (and i'm sure you have better things to do too) email me and i will send you the link. the article link isn't active yet, but the cover and the descriptions of the articles are there. they usually activate the links about a week into release.

i sent it to a friend who i respect and she told me the article was 'beautiful and brave'. it's that brave part i'm still a bit nervous about. i know that it could fall into the hands of those in authority at our church, and it's a challenge to them, and to all churches to use power properly. so, for as excited as i am that this is soon to arrive on my doorstep, i'm also a bit anxious.

i watched my mother bobbie, the real bobbie, write her whole life without getting published. it broke her heart. i hope she's happy for me. my father's reaction will be a crap shoot. he may love it, or he may hate it. it's kind of critical of churches that think they have it all figured out. we'll see. either way i set out to accomplish something and i did it. i'm really proud of myself, i hope that doesn't sound vain (because you know pride comes before the fall... as my mother would remind me EVERY time i would be happy about something that i had accomplished...)

father help me to glory in the fact that i have accomplished something without being prideful. help me to find that balance. i don't want to fall. i don't want to be prideful. i just truly want to enjoy the fact that something i did worked. amen.

taking as jesus did this sinful world as it is

this was the line in the prayer that really got me thinking, and wanting to pull apart this prayer. i had been saying it for years and i never really caught this line until a couple months ago.

it was like my brain said 'wait, what was that? back up.' so many times i expect god to just sweep into my life, clean up all of the problems and fix everything. everything. why would my friend have a sick child, why would this teenager die unexpectedly, why wouldn't we have more financial freedom? why, why, why?

and then i really heard this line:

...taking as jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as i would have it..."

jesus didn't come to earth, heal everyone, feed everyone and make things all better. why? i don't know, but he didn't. he had a purpose, and he even faced his own share of hardships while on earth. why should i expect any different.

the jesus of my childhood and youth was more like mr. rogers than the son of god. i adore mr. rogers, so that was okay for awhile. but he was so emasculated and so 'nice' that when life got hard he just didn't have the grit i needed to help me, so i set him aside.

it was only when some women from my church wanted me to teach a study on phillip yancy's 'the jesus i never knew' that i even remotely started to understand how wrong what i had been taught was.

i fell in love, deeply in love.

this jesus was real, he respected women and let them speak. he loved them and redeemed them IN THEIR SITUATIONS - not plucking them OUT and giving them new circumstances. the woman caught in adultery was told to go and sin no more - jesus didn't make it easy for her. he just loved her where she was at.

that 'name it claim it' theology is dangerous, not because it's making some bad preachers rich, but because it puts a wall between the seeker and god when all the 'claim it' stuff doesn't fall into their laps. church is not an amway convention. church is where jesus should meet us in our circumstances and give us the strength to climb out of them. we think that means from lower middle class to upper middle class. nope. that means from brokenness, generations of addictions, to health and healing. jesus never promised me an suv and a fancy house.

he actually said the opposite.

i'm glad that reinhold neibuhr added this line. i'm glad he didn't make it all about sunshine and posies. jesus didn't come to earth with a big agenda, he helped those in front of him, who screwed up the courage to ask. yes, some got healed, but 1000's didn't. that jesus rarely shows up at our churches.

when i said 'should' and 'rarely shows up' i don't mean that it's HIS fault - it's the churches fault. rarely do we teach or talk about this jesus. we want the big medicine in the sky, the big slot machine in the sky - give me the bling bling jesus, not the one who 'took this sinful world as it is' and left it with more problems and confusion than when he got there.

god is such a mystery to me. he works backwards most of the time as far as i'm concerned, that's what makes him real to me. that's when i know that i didn't just invent him as a crutch. because trust me - i could invent a super sonic, never let me down, opiate of the masses kind of crutch. god doesn't just make everything better, he challenges me, spurrs me on and causes me to reach. he will never do for me what i can do for myself. trust me, if i was inventing a god that's not who he'd be. my god would have given me remote control finger tips. i wouldn't have to leave my couch to do anything.

that's really why we try to sugar coat it and make it pretty, shine it up for the world, because in truth, our god is hard to swallow. he requires a lot of me, expects a lot of me - but gives me all the strength i need to accomplish it. i'm glad jesus didn't get his followers together, build them a resort complex and say - 'enjoy, look what i've done for you - look at the place i've prepared, live here and all your problems will be taken care of.' that's the jesus i see far to many 'christians' pushing in our world today.

my mother (the real bobbie) was very sick for most of my life. shortly after our family found jesus in 1973 she began to get very ill. the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. we heard diagnoses from 'cat scratch fever' to you've got cancer, and 2 weeks to live, go home and prepare your family. what really was wrong was that my mother had SLE nephritis, more commonly called 'lupus'.

lupus is a very personal disease, it affects each person in their own curious way. basically my mom had these really eager white blood cells that thought she was sick all through her body, and so they would attack her organs and eventually injure them, and then she really would get sick. it destroyed her kidneys and lymph nodes.

our church didn't 'do' healing, but i know she wanted to meet that jesus who would take that away. when he didn't 'hear' her prayers it made her very angry. anger was my mom's way of dealing with the things in the world that were out of her control. a seething, slow burn kind of anger.

so i grew up thinking god was pretty impotent. i would have never admitted it out loud, but really i didn't get why someone so powerful would choose to let bad things happen to people who followed him. my world was so small i never thought about 'why are people starving in third world countries' - i just thought that if someone was wearing god's badge that they should at least get some club membership priveledges.

taking as jesus did this sinful world as it is...

today, just for today i am going to try to see a bit from his perspective. how facing my hardships makes me better and stronger, that by leaning into the wind i am developing the spiritual muscles i need to face each day. as jesus did. help me jesus.

sick jokes

i was raised in a tiny denomination that called itself a 'new testament church' and believed in the 'priesthood of all believers' (well not 'all' just men), no pastors, only laity and itinerant speakers. three, hour-long services each sunday (one at night). the first was 'the breaking of bread' or 'the lord's supper'- a quiet contemplative service where men, nudged by the holy spirit (or their wives) would be moved to share through scripture, prayer or suggesting an a capella hymns all focusing on the death of christ.

women were to be silent with their head’s covered. i grew up in the left side of the fourth pew, learning to daydream and that god didn’t care what i had to say, or if i had an opinion. it was a very confusing time for me.

my father wasn’t given any ‘up front’ or public gifts, which the church didn’t respect and regularly forced him to the podium. he would get physically sick every time he had to participate publically. because the church was small (dying actually) every man needed 'to carry the burden'.

i watched my mother, outspoken and resentful most of the week, except in church on sunday, where she would feign not only a covered head, but a covered heart, slowly erode and crumble in her spiritual life because she had no outlet for her gifts, which by some sick joke of god were the 'up front gifts' that my father was lacking.

the church taught me that my father was weak and my mother was shameful. and it also taught me that god had a sick sense of humor.

as i aged i realized that i too was 'honored' by the sick humor of God because i was so much like my mother. i fought every tendency within me to distance myself from the gifts rising to the surface in my own life. i longed to be the 'silent, submissive woman' the church ideal held up. what i saw in my own life were the same gifts that so ruined my mother, and made my parent's marriage so painfully difficult.

watching them relate was confusing. they'd reverse their roles for sunday morning and fight the rest of the week because they were learning that neither of them were equipped for the kingdom of god.

my father was a helper, an encourager and the most dedicated, loyal worker a church could hope to have. that was never honored. his confidence was ruined, he was a failure to god and ashamed of himself.

my mother was an evangelist, a teacher and a speaker/writer. god had no use for a woman with those gifts. she couldn't sing or play the piano, and teaching children's sunday school was not 'up her alley', so she too was ashamed, disgruntled and seethingly angry at a god who would 'save' her for this.

this heresy made a mockery of spiritual gifts and the love of god. to those of you who don't 'get' why it's so damaging to misinterpret pauls teachings this is why. the wall that it places in lives and the damage that it brings is so completely ungodly.

i hated the parts of me that reminded me of my mother. why did i have to be like her? why couldn’t i be quiet and content, respectful and silent. wasn’t it bad enough that god wrecked her, why me too?

it has only been since coming out of that brainwashed 'sect' that i have had the understanding that god has made me (as he made my parents) to be exactly who i am - and that he doesn't want me to be the singing submissive silent piano playing stepford wife.<b>r>
he truly adores my opinionated, passionate zest for life, my perspective and my voice. he created me this way for a purpose. i don't know exactly what it is yet, but i do know that i am not a reject in the kingdom of god - not a sick joke. god doesn't have a warped, punishing sense of humor.

how sad that it's only been in the past six months that i've realized the true implications of all of this. how it distanced me from my mother, how failure still haunts my father, how distorted teaching masquerading as the 'truth' forced my family, and so many others from having a close, personal, intimate relationship with the god they were so trying to promote.

emergent church, church of the future - please get this right. please allow each of us to participate by using the gifts god has placed in our lives - and honor each of them for the glory of god. if you screw this up you will truly not be changing anything but the decorations.

the bus stops here...

bus brakes. about 14 times a day buses pass my house. school buses, picking up, dropping off. always engaging their air brakes at the four way stop outside my front door.

each time i hear them i jolt, anxious fear rises up within me - my children - i've forgotten my children. i could have just placed them on the bus at 7:35, but at 7:45 when i hear those brakes my soul lurches within me.

what is it that rocks me to the core every time i hear those brakes?

could it be the fear of god my mother placed within me that i would in fact miss the bus? missing the bus was the worst disappointment i could have afforded my mother. it was a way to wreck her day. i wasn't careful enough, fast enough, focused enough, vigilant enough.

the bus stops here.

anne lamott says, 'i have a black belt in co-dependency'. me too... disappointing my mother was a sure way to a day, a week or a month of 'it's all downhill from here.'

it was always my fault. i held the weight of the family on my small shoulders. maybe that's why my shoulders are so broad now? i don't know, what i do know is that bus brakes make me jump inside.

even after pink and buck are both home safe and sound for the day, hearing those busses stop outside my house lurch me into a place that i don't like to be.

missing the bus may have meant a ride to school, there were probably some of those. but i remember vividly the long trek up the hill, alone, feeling like i had let my mother down. crossing the four lane highway alone, wishing i'd get hit.

when the weather was right i would push my bike up that long hill (it's even long still now viewing it as an adult) just so that at 2:50 i could fly home. feel the wind in my hair. go faster than I'd ever gone before - flying like I so wanted to. i was tempted many times to just forget to hit the brakes and speed directly into the lake and have the water surround me, folding over me, enveloping me, hugging me.

those were probably my first thoughts of suicide. hoping to get hit crossing the highway or riding my bike into the lake. that would show her, she'd miss me then.

getting to school and beginning the day with those thoughts in your head just made for a really bad day.

as i write this the brakes just squealed outside. did I forget buck? is he out there in the street thinking i'm a horrible mother and about to be kidnaped by rapist pedophiles between the stop sign and my front door (20 feet?).

it wasn't, i've got 24 minutes until his bus comes. until the squealing is really the one's i'm listening for. heck, who am I kidding - i stand at the window 10 minutes early, or on the porch (even in freezing weather) so no one, not even the damn bus driver would think i was shirking MY stuff. that i was my mother.

that's really it, that's probably why they make me lurch. there must be forgotten memories of getting home to an empty house, being forgotten or having to make do alone.

i don't remember. maybe writing this will jar them loose.