Yes, Yes, and a Thousand Times, Yes!

Happy November, my friends!  Now, before I start, I need to say up front that this post is going to upset my mom, who, as my mom and my first official blog subscriber, deserves special consideration.  But you know, I’m over 40 and all, and can decide what to do with my own body, even though my mom always insists on coming into dressing rooms with me and checking things out (don’t deny it, Ma’am–we were in Marshalls together not too many months ago and they ain’t no spacious dressing rooms up in there.  I saw what you got hanging out and you saw what I got).  AND she was going to find out at Thanksgiving anyway, because my sophisticated world-travelling parents are coming to see us out here “on the prairie,” as my father calls it (i.e. one of them there “fly-over” states, so we’re gonna try real hard to pick the straw out our teeth and kick them chickens out the yard so we can all have a good old turkey day together.   But anyway, this is a good story.  So here we go. 

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Why Everyone Needs a Superhero

Halloween at Gabe's daycare

In the dark early hours of the morning, I saw a shadowy figure in my bedroom, and my first thought was that it was Jesus.  I’d been reading some Anne Lamott the night before—the part of Travelling Mercies where she describes what she later came to believe was Jesus’ presence in her bedroom as she was struggling alone, drunk, strung out, through the aftermath of an abortion.  Anne writes that she could feel the presence so strongly that she got up and turned on the light to see if someone was there. 
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As Cool as the Air in a Redwood Grove

One of the chapters of Anne Lamott’s Travelling Mercies is an account of a health scare she had with her son Sam.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective (and mental health), we had a similar experience this week with Gabe.  But before I tell you about that, I want to show you this picture by Toni Frissell, a female photographer in the 1940’s and 50’s. 

It’s from an underwater shoot of models all wearing white, fluidy gowns.  To me, it evokes many things: surrender, descent, freedom, and something of the seductive power of depression.  It also reminds me of the scene in “The Piano” where Holly Hunter almost drowns because she lets her leg get tangled up with her piano when it falls overboard.  (Hunter plays a mute woman in the 1850’s who is sent to New Zealand for an arranged marriage.  Her piano is, quite literally, her voice).  She is very calm at first, quietly observing the water around her, gracefully allowing herself to be pulled down, down, down.  Then suddenly it’s like she wakes up and realizes what is happening, and she struggles to free herself and swim to the surface.  The camera shows her discarded boot sinking slowly deeper, while she swims up, towards a life that she is not sure she wants, certainly one she knows nothing about, but one she is not ready to give up. 

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Being What You Don’t Know How to Be

 

One of the most common pieces of writing advice is to “write what you know.”  It makes sense on one level, because the most compelling writing is typically the most authentic.  This advice has never worked that well for me though, because my first reaction is to immediately decide that I don’t know anything, and my second is to feel irritated and think, “If you already know something, why would you need to write about it?”  So with that not-quite-a-disclaimer disclaimer, I’ve decided to write about something that I know absolutely nothing about and yet feel very attracted to, and that is: living as an athletic person.  To that end, I’ve made a little list of 10 things to keep in mind if you are not an athletic person and wish to try being one.  

curtismorley.com

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September Heart of the Month: A Challenge to All of Us

Happy September, my friends!  Today I have some good news and some good news.  Which would you like to hear first?  Okay, I’ll start with the good news.  My freshman-in-high-school son has now made it through two full weeks and so far has: figured out how to take the bus there and back (mostly), learned how to open and close his locker (sort of), found people to sit with at lunch (the hardest thing about high school, in my opinion), met a girl who has drawn his name on her notebooks and binders (of which I hope she has more because it seems a bit early in the game to make that kind of commitment), not gotten anyone pregnant, not contracted an STD, and has actually spoken enthusiastically about a few of his classes.  Thank ya, Jesus!
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Transitions & Resilience: “Just do your best, then say ‘Amen'”

Today in Target I had one of those thoughts that I suspect you should probably not say out loud.  For the first time in my life, I thought, “I’m not sure if I should have had kids.”  Since I am not Jennifer Aniston, i.e. since people are not constantly querying me about my desire and motivation to have children, and since my children are already here, I’ve never spent much, if any, time thinking about whether I should have had them.  And I certainly think someone should have had them; I truly believe they add something to the sum of human goodness.  I just don’t know that that someone should have been me.

Me before I had kids

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“Nothing here to be afraid of, it’s just the mornin'”

If anyone ever offers to grant me three wishes, one of them is definitely going to be “to wake up happy.”  But not to worry–this isn’t going to be a self-indulgent whinge about being unhappy.  I’m often happy throughout the day.  I just don’t wake up happy, and I’m haunted by the idea that some, if not many, many people do.  If I knew that most people woke up with a slight feeling of dread, or a sense of being oppressed by their responsibilities, or a lack of conviction that they were really up to the task of what their life would require that day, I wouldn’t worry so much.  But my self-torturing fantasy is that other people wake up filled with energy, optimism, and excitement.  That they don’t feel like they need to step through some kind of frightening psychological curtain to get to normal, rational emotions like contentment and self-assurance.

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June Heart of the Month: Bring Your Heart to Work

Well, I’m getting June’s Heart of the Month in just under the wire, but I have a good reason:  today my mother, MaryAnne Crowley, officially completed 34 years and nine months of a truly inspiring teaching career.  She did a few other things in the meantime, such as gave birth to and stayed home with three children, moved house 5 times, supported my dad as he went to law school at night to pursue his own professional dream of becoming a lawyer, got a Masters Degree as a Reading Specialist, learned to play golf, travelled to more countries than I can think of, and compiled a truly spectacular shoe collection, especially for someone with size 5 feet.  The best line at her retirement party was spoken by one of the younger teachers my mother has mentored: “You may have tiny feet, but you have very big shoes to fill.”

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