Day 2: Where did you grow up? Share some memories...

Well, it's 1:40 and I have to get ready for work in just under an hour, so today's post will be an exercise in speedy writing. I am not good at speedy writing. Here we go.

I grew up in two places, really. I was born in New Mexico and we lived there till just before my 8th birthday.

Several years ago I drove a roommate down to New Mexico for a wedding and on the way back we were able to stop at my old house. The woman who lived there was so kind, she let me wander around the property and even let me come in the house to use the bathroom. I don't know if I've ever had a more surreal experience than that trip. Finding the house (I had to call my grandpa for directions) I kept driving past unexpectedly familiar things that would jump out of the background of an otherwise completely strange place. Things like an old bridge with odd wire shapes on the side, or the street up to the church building. Or the ice cream place my grandma took me that I thought for years after was Orange Julius, but is in fact called the Vanilla Moose (we stopped and got the very same drink and it tasted exactly as delicious as I remembered it, which was freaking magical). Then getting to the actual house where everything was both incredibly familiar and also so different. My grandparents' house had fallen into complete disrepair and was basically a rundown shack. Our old place now with a closed in porch all around.

But what are some specific memories I have of that house? I remember standing on the porch down at the end by the driveway. I think the porch was still level at this time; it hadn't yet been been left all akilter after my uncle had to excavate a skunk out from under it (I remember so many skunks having to be removed out from under our house, which was a single-wide trailer with an addition built on). I'm standing there on the porch and someone....I think maybe one of the Hinke children, which would have made it Heber since he and my uncle Jesse were best friends...has just given me a piece of candy.  I put the candy in my mouth and almost instantly begin to cry. It was a Warhead and it felt like it was burning through my tongue (this was not a lesson I learned as I later on developed a great love of Warheads and did in fact burn a hole in my tongue from eating an entire bag in just a few days). I cried, but I didn't spit it out. I remember getting to that last tiny burst of sour in the center.

I remember my mom making us popcorn in her black and white and orange air popper. We would sit around the stove up in the living room and listen to records. Bible stories that were in black and gold sleeves, or the soundtrack from Popeye (whenever that came out). Mom would scratch our backs and I don't think anything in my life since has ever been that cozy.

I think the top on my mom's was much more yellow. But otherwise it was just like this

oh my gosh. I actually found one. I freaking love the internet.

I think we must have been incredibly frustrating children, my brother and I. We would play these games at night. Mom would tell us we were not to get out of bed, so we would take our blankets and sheets and our silkies (my mom's old nightgowns which we were absolutely obsessed with and each had our own collection of) and we would stretch them out end to end. And at the very end we would be stretched out, literally one toe still touching the chain, laying on the floor declaring that we were still technically in bed. We could make it almost to the kitchen that way. I am not sure how mom didn't strangle us on those nights.

I remember so clearly the day my brother came in after crashing on his bike. His knees were bright red, though thinking back they must have just been thoroughly skinned. There was no blood running down his legs. But that was the moment I became terrible afraid of bikes. Instead of learning to ride my own (I got a beautiful white and pink and purple one for Christmas one year) I would run along pushing it. Or I would just run along with Dan as he rode his. That was back when I liked to run...

I didn't actually learn to ride a bike until we moved up to Oregon. This is where I finished growing up (did you see that segue? maximum smooth!). I eventually forced myself to learn to ride my bike on the dirt road behind the house. I think I must have been 10? I don't know. But I would push myself along and coast as long as I could keep my balance. It took a while before I got up the courage to actually pedal.

In the Union house I got my own bedroom for the first time. Up till then Dan and I had shared a room. In high school I decorated by putting up pictures of wild animals salvaged from calendars. I lined them up in a border around the ceiling. It was very hard for me to throw those away when I moved out for college. I have the heart of a hoarder.

pretty sure I had the 1999 version of this exact calendar

Mom has always loved rearranging the furniture, but when I was 9 or 10 she put together a configuration that left a tiny alcove between the couch and the wall. This became my little hiding place for what felt like quite a long time. I would hide in there and write. I wrote an incredibly stereotypical story about a girl who found a magical horse by a river and tamed it. I don't remember why, but eventually mom banned me from hiding in that little place.

I started public school in Oregon. Up till then I had been home school. There were kids my own age. More than that, there were girls my own age. I experienced my first sleep overs, my first birthday parties, my first experiences with the politics of childhood friendship. I was not good at it. When asked which boy I liked the most I did not know that the correct response was to giggle and drop hints. I just said I liked Remington the most because he was quiet and shy and seemed nice.

It's almost time for me to get ready for work, so I have to wrap this up. Of course there are so many more memories. These just happened to be the first to pop into my head. And very unedited because I didn't have the time. Ah well...

Funeral

(This post is my answer to a challenge to write a story in 250 words. Tell me what you think, unless what you think is that you hate it, in which case, keep your opinion to yourself.)

He stared at the dead animal. This was just too perfect. He smiled grimly, envisioning himself scooping up the broken, bloody bundle of fur, and taking it with him to the funeral. Perhaps even laying it in the coffin, beside his great aunt’s body, to enjoy the same pompous last rites. She would have laughed. She always laughed when he was funny.

The rest of the family, of course, would stare in open-mouthed horror, whispering their outrage.

“What’s wrong with him?!”

“Surely even he can respect a funeral!”

His mother would be silent, of course. Humiliated once again by her strange son. She probably should have put him into an institution years ago, but now he was too old…

He shook his head, dismissing the daydream.

He picked up the small body and gently carried it across the road into the field. He laid it down in a hollow and slowly ripped up handful after handful of grass to cover it. It would make a welcome meal for some fox tonight, but for now he could honor the life he had taken.

“It ran under your wheels,” he heard his aunt say, “it wasn’t your fault.”

He did not feel better.

“You cannot control these things,” she’d said, “Animals know when their time is up. But sometimes we need help to let go.”

She had always called him her little helper.

This small funeral completed at last, he got back in his car and continued driving to the next.

We cannot change the world unless the world wants to change...

Yesterday I spoke to my mom.  It did not go well.  Which is ironic, because I was so excited; I thought I'd come up with a Christmas present to rival the year I gave her Mr. Darcy on DVD.  Well, I say excited but that's not entirely accurate.  I also knew that brilliant as this idea was, my mom almost certainly wasn't going to want it.

With so much build up you're probably expecting something really amazing.  It's not.  I just wanted to buy my mom a dress.  Just a dress.

But the thing is if you know my mom you know that buying her a dress isn't as simple as it sounds.  I have already talked about my mom here.  I've talked about the way she sees herself and how that affects me.  Succinctly, my mother's life is an eternal struggle to conquer an adversarial body.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in my mom's wardrobe.  For the last 15 years my mom has carefully curated a collection of one dress.  The sack.  Not unlike the travesty that is Molly Ringwald's "dress" at the end of Pretty in Pink.

yes, this one, only with shoulders and without lace

To her, "clothing I like" means clothing in colors she likes.  Because styles she likes are non-existent...no, strike that.  There are actually quite a few styles my mom likes.  She actually has a really lovely and distinctive (if rather old fashioned) sense of style.  But you'd never know it to look at her because she wears none of it.  Why?  She's too fat!  It isn't comfortable!  She's too old!  All clothing beyond the shift is off limits to her!

except this pattern is definitely too busy for her...

So this Christmas I thought "Hey!  I happen to know of a great website that will custom build dresses to your exact measurements!  Wouldn't it be great if I were to get my mom a new dress, customized specifically to her that wasn't another of those wretched shifts?!"  It seemed brilliant.  If I could show her that even "fat" people can look good; that the world of pretty clothes that make you feel attractive wasn't forever beyond her; that she can wear whatever she wants!  If I could, with this one dress, open that door even just a crack, then what a magnificent gift I could give her!  So much more than just a dress!

from here, where there are several other cute outfits

But there was a problem.  I couldn't figure out how I could get her measurements any other way but to ask her.  And I knew that if I asked her she would need to know why.  See, I knew that this had to be a surprise because if I were to tell her she would instantly shut me down.  After 60 years, truly she has come to love her prison, if that's not too melodramatic a spin to put on it.  But it is the truth.  She has reasons, she has excuses, she has justifications, but the fact is that my mother is comfortable within her rigid world of body hate.  She knows the rules there (how could she not, she made them herself).  So I knew that at the slightest hint that I was thinking about breaking them she would close ranks and lock down.

But I couldn't figure out how to get those damn measurements.

So I convinced myself I was wrong and maybe she'd see what a great thing this was and suddenly change her personality.  After all, wasn't it smarter to supervise her picking out her own dress rather than risk getting one she hated?

No.  The answer to that question is no.

I called her yesterday morning and told her my plan and exactly what I knew would happen happened.  She shut me down.  She did let me show her the website (after I harassed her) and she managed to find the one sack dress they had.  But I couldn't handle listening to all her justifications for why she wouldn't even try something new.  Not when I had been so excited about this.  I got mad at her and ultimately had to get off the phone.

Because I am angry.

As a person who considers it a fundamental element of my identity that I almost never get really angry, this is important for me to say.

I am angry.

I am angry at my grandfather, whose obsession with arbitrary definitions of physical beauty warped his children's perspectives of themselves for their entire lives.  Every one of them has fought against and hated their bodies from childhood.  I'm angry at a society that both gave my grandfather that arbitrary definition and then told him it was okay to pursue and teach it the way he did.  The society that reinforced his beliefs in my mother's mind and proved to her he was right.  Right or wrong, I'm mad at my mom.  I'm angry that she cannot see through all of this stupidity and just let it all go.  I'm angry she can't see that "this is just who I am" only because she has decided it is.  And I'm angry at myself because I am still fighting the same battle myself.  Because I just had the exact same experience of feeling like I couldn't wear something because my body shape forbids it.  (Side note: I bought the dress anyway and wore it to church today and looked damn good, if I say so myself).  All of these "rules" are the purist form of bullshit and I'm angry that it still exists in the world.

And in the end, I'm angry I couldn't buy a dress and fix my mom's issues with her body.  It's an overly simple idea that obviously would never work, but I wanted it to so badly.

I think this is what I would have gotten her.
Nothing crazy.

A Woman of a Certain Age...

So today was my 28th birthday.

All my life birthdays have been a big deal.  When we were little my mom would go all out.  You would wake up on your birthday and find the dining room decorated with streamers and balloons and a preliminary present waiting for you at the kitchen table.  Because mom wanted to make sure that we were always excited for our sibling's birthday, she would make sure that whoever's birthday it wasn't also had a small gift at their place setting (this remains to this day one of my mother's most brilliant parenting ideas).  She made us these intricate, amazing cakes that were works of art.  One year she constructed a whole clock tower for me, complete with columns.  I could not tell you a single birthday present I ever received but I still remember those cakes.  Of course we have no pictures.  We were the anti-hipsters before anti-hipsters were a thing...

I'm not even joking when I say that my first birthday at college was a bit of a blow.  Nothing quite made the point that I'd left home like waking up to a sad empty dorm room with no streamers in sight.  To be fair, I'm having a vague memory of a possible party thrown for me later that evening by the girls on my floor.  Maybe combined with other September birthdays?  Idk.  But still, that "first thing in the morning surprise that wasn't actually a surprise" hadn't been there and I'll be honest: I still wake up on the morning of my birthday with a teeny tiny hope that somehow there will be balloons and streamers, and every year that there isn't I am a very small, reasonable adult level of sad about it.

The early college years all were rather underwhelming like that.  It wasn't till I came back to school after my study abroad that birthdays began to regain their former glory.  It's amazing what happens when you start having friends...

When you have friends birthdays become a big deal again, even in the absence of breakfast streamers and balloons.

Fun fact: my first ever blues dance happened to be on my birthday.  I had no idea what a "birthday jam" was and I was terrified; when they announced it I kept quiet and thus missed out on one of the best parts of being a dancer.  Had to wait an entire year for my chance to roll back around.  Tragic.

I was the happy recipient of one not-so-surprise party, and another party that was such a surprise that I didn't even show up till I was called and frantically begged to come to Slab "because".  Both experiences were delightful.

I think it was at 25 that I started planning my own birthday party.  That year I asked everyone to bring me something wrapped.  I didn't care what it was, I just wanted to unwrap things.

that is me about to unwrap a sled and my own butcher knife

enjoying a birthday dance which I have never been so foolish as
to pass up ever again after that first poor decision

The next year I asked for flowers.  Fresh, paper, plastic...I would accept anything but those nasty craft store fabric ones.  I got some really silly ones and some really lovely ones and it was absolutely perfect.

Last year Anneke volunteered to throw my party.  She did such a good job!  All my friends stopped by and even though I hadn't asked for anything at all that year, several of them brought gifts (some less "serious" than others).  After the party we went to Red Robin.  Again, amazing.

But last year also felt a bit like an ending, at least in retrospect.  Between 27 and 28 the last of my closest dance friends moved away.  Other friends graduated and moved, or got married or made babies, or got adult-type jobs.  At 25 I had literally a crowd of people I loved and who loved me and bringing them all together was simply delightful.  I must confess that at 28 the crowd has, with all reasonableness, dwindled.  The currents of life have swept a great number of that crowd down different paths to different places.

So this year I didn't throw a party. It just didn't feel right, as idiotic as that sounds.

Instead I dressed up for work, makeup included. I clocked out early. Kara and I ordered pizza and watched some Gilmore Girls and then went to institute.  I ordered a slice of cake from The Chocolate, ate the cake and left the frosting, and questioned who I even am anymore.

And now here I sit at 12:30 am feeling apparently incurably contemplative and wondering if this is what people mean when they talk about "feeling old".  I've never dreaded old age.  My personality is, in fact, far better suited to an old woman than to a young adult.  No one tells grandmothers that they're wasting their lives because they prefer hot chocolate and a good book to an afternoon's hike.  But "28" keeps running around in my head knocking into the bookshelves and disturbing the cats.  "28" tells me I don't want a party this year because it will just remind me of how few friends I have left and how many I haven't made to replenish the pool.  "28" says that I should have, if not a solid plan for my life, at least a definite direction.  "28" says I should stop talking about being an adult and just go ahead and be one.  "28" says that old age might be something I'll enjoy when it gets here, but that the middle bit that I thought was annoyingly long is perhaps not nearly as long as I thought.

When you're little you experience finite eternity, measured in endless summer days.  I suppose "getting old" is the realization that school will come eventually, and each day, no matter how glorious, is NOT endless, but rather one day less before the end.  And 28 is the year that I am realizing that summer cannot last forever.  The day I thought would never come.

The day when I worry "I'm getting old"

Prompt 23: A Photo of Something that Means A Lot to Me

I feel a little bit self-conscious about using this.  I feel like I mention my grandma too much, for some reason.  That is her spoon ring, which she wore virtually every single day (I believe she used it to keep her wedding ring, which was just a little bit big, on her finger).

I keep it on that chain (because grandma had unbelievably skinny fingers) and I wear it on days when I miss her.  Which I continue to do with a regularity I never expected.  I wore it today, in fact.  It's comforting to have something of hers that I can keep with me.

And...I think that is enough about that.

Day 1: Are Writing Prompts Always Stupid? I Hope Not...

You guys, I'm already behind.  This is so sad.

Ok, so I am officially starting the 30 days of prompts.  Prompt #1 was to post a picture of something I ate today...or, in this scenario, something I ate yesterday.  That is the world's stupidest prompt and since facebook is already swamped in food selfies, I refuse.  Also, I ate very little yesterday and have pictures of none of it.  So I shall instead write about...

Day 1 [as suggested by Kara]: my most poignant/evocative smell

I've never really considered my sense of smell to be terribly keen, to be honest.  But I can tell you that there were two smells that instantly came to mind when Kara gave me this prompt, and they both come from my grandparents' old place in New Mexico.

The first is the smell of my grandma's food room.  Imagine a dark, mysterious room out in the barn that you've only ever been inside a few times.  In my memory it was lit with a single low-wattage bulb, giving me only partial view of lines and lines of jars from ceiling to floor.  Those jars held magical things like canned peaches and pears and cherries and surely many many others though I have no idea, now, precisely what.  We lived in New Mexico, but that room was always cool, no matter how hot it was.  I'm realizing now, thinking back on it, that she must have packed oodles of insulation on the walls, which would explain why I remember the door being so thick, like the door to a vault.  Somehow it smelled cool in there.  I don't know how.  But it was the smell of cool, just ever so slightly damp soil, mixed with glass, and a hint of dust.  As a child it was purely exciting to me, signaling my presence in a room as mysterious and promising as Lucy's wardrobe must have felt.  Now that I'm an adult, I still get that same feeling of expectant excitement, as though I can find a treasure if I explore long enough, but I also feel utterly comforted and at home.  I judge all food rooms based on the presence or lack of that smell.  My mom's food room in Union has it.  The last time I was in my aunt Marge's it also had it.  Those are the only other places I have found it.  But it makes them two of my favorite places in the world.

As for the second smell...let me tell you a story.  Perhaps the most revolting of all of my habits as a wee toddler was the intense joy I had in sucking on my grandpa's watch.  Mind you, my grandfather's primary business, as I remember it, was selling bolts and nuts, and his spare time was devoted to manly tasks like clearing land or simply washing his hands with grease and machine oil.  Thus, his watch was absolutely caked in years of collected oil, dirt, and other grime.  Sitting on his lap and sucking on that disgusting watch I apparently absorbed, all unknowing, the scent of machine oil straight into my amygdala where it lurked in secret till last year, when Caleb bought his CnC mill.  He put it in his garage, where it sat for a day or two seeping the smell of machine oil into the entire room.  I opened the door and it was as though I was walking into a hug from my grandpa.  I literally stood in the doorway inhaling deep breaths for minutes.  It smells a little bit like gasoline mixed with dirt.

Thusfar, those are the two smells that have had the most profound visceral effect on my memory.  Interesting that they both are related to my grandparents, and I described both as reminding me of dirt.  I don't know what that means.

Coming up next time (later today) is prompt #2: Post a picture of yourself and describe your day (seriously, who is writing these???)

Graduation: A Summary

I am a college graduate.

In a matter of two days I crossed the threshold from student to…bachelor? Plain old label-less human? At any rate, not a student. Thursday, out-going university president Cecil Samuelson “bestowed” upon me and one or two thousand others a degree, the physical manifestation of which will arrive in a couple of weeks via the thoroughly unceremonious United States Postal Service. Friday I was handed an empty vinyl cover in which that magical piece of paper will eventually reside.  I shook the hands of men I'd never before laid eyes on and walked from one side of a stage to the other. Thusly was my education declared complete and my life, as a student, pronounced over. 

If all of this sounds like I am terribly prosaic and unsentimental, I am. If you recall, I have previously declared a complete apathy for engaging in the ceremonial hoop-jumping known as walking for graduation. To me a nine year bachelor’s degree feels less like something to celebrate than something to just get over with as soon as possible…    

The problem is that, though probably less so than it was in high school, a student’s graduation is by no means an achievement which belongs solely or even mostly to them. Even a relatively self-sufficient person like me is still indebted to her parents to some extent, albeit perhaps more in intangibles than otherwise*. Hence I feel that all this pomp and circumstance surrounding graduation is not so much for the graduate’s sake as for the family’s. Which is why I decided not to let my graduation pass silently in the night like my brother. Well, that and I was hoping for congratulatory cash donations. Because I’m classy like that. And poor. Mostly poor. 

Unfortunately, letting your family celebrate your achievements isn’t exactly fun for them when you yourself couldn’t care less about them. In fact, I can tell you from my own experience that it’s actually incredibly irritating and insulting. So it behooved me to strive after some level of engagement in the hoopla which, after all, was specifically for me (and also Dan). 

Alas, behoovement does not engagement make. 

It doesn’t help that there are apparently only two questions anyone can think to ask you post-graduation.  “Do you feel any different?” and “So what’s next?” These are especially trying when you have weaned yourself out of school as gradually as I have. I had exactly zero changes pending the ceremony and, in fact, slightly resented it for awkwardly interrupting my regular schedule. If nothing else, this makes for dull conversation—though I discovered on Sunday that it is still preferable to the guy who uses his congratulations to humblebrag about his own self-funded education, graduation, and consequent disposal of student debt 25 years ago (after his fourth or fifth assertion of hatred at the idea of dragging that debt around with him I was forced to reply “Oh really?  Because I just love it!” because I can only handle so much humblebragging)

In the end, I guess I can be grateful to the fifteen year campaign my brother and I have inadvertently waged upon my mother to strip her of any vestige of hope for a nice family moment. Sadly, we not only lack sentimentality for educational milestones, but for pretty much every other thing my mom cares about. Because my mom is practically nothing but sentiment. Poor woman was somehow cursed with two pragmatically stoic children who could never satisfy her need for heartfelt and teary-eyed moments. But despite my mom’s enduring optimism on this front, Dan’s and my war of attrition has, at least, conditioned her to accept an incredibly low level of participation as satisfactory. She’s like an emotional migrant worker living through the Dust Bowl years of her children’s lives—she can make do with practically nothing. 

This is not to say that I didn’t try. I sincerely tried to glean wisdom from [stay awake through] the speeches, even the incredibly pompous student speaker on Friday. I rebuked myself when snarky commentary about all the arbitrary traditions rose, unbidden, to my lips. I even pulled out Rory’s graduation from Yale to strive after inspiration.

Alas, it was all in vain.  I am as I am; incredibly unimpressed with the ceremony of graduating college.

Luckily, as anyone who has ever talked to me about my birthday can attest, I do love any occasion where my friends and family get together, especially if it involves presents and/or food (as we all know, food is kind of like a very frequent gift to your mouth, so they’re basically the same thing).  Therefore, on that front—that is, the front where tradition dictates the giving of some sort of graduation gift—I found the weekend to be quite nice.

Of course, I admit this with some embarrassment, though my feelings on being an enthusiastic receiver of gifts should probably wait for another post.  Suffice it to say, I have a feeling that it is generally deemed tacky to openly admit that you look forward to events for the presents.  But in this case my natural tackiness came to my assistance, buoying me up to find some enjoyment in an otherwise boring and rather inconvenient weekend.  If I couldn’t muster a tear for the ending of an era, at least I could easily smile for the bouquet of lovely flowers I received to commemorate it!

Thus my favorite part of my graduation weekend had nothing to do with actually graduating, save that it was the occasion that brought us together. And that was our big dinners Thursday and Friday nights. All four of my parents were there (a first-time experience that I very much enjoyed) as well as some of my closest friends. There was delicious food and even a couple really fantastic gifts. 

I am left wishing that it didn’t require some arbitrary ceremony or “milestone” for people who love each other to get together and eat and even give each other presents. If I had the money, I would make weekends like this happen far more often…only without the polyester robes, ridiculous hats, and time wasted in uncomfortable chairs. Perhaps then I wouldn’t be left with a vague feeling of failure at the end. Regardless, I am glad that I got to see my family this weekend, and even that I graduated, though that’s more in an abstract, reasoned sense than any sort of emotional response. That’s how I feel. 

And before you ask, I don’t know what’s next…

*Let us pause a moment for the obligatory disclaimer about how I’m making some assumptions here and that I acknowledge that actually there are plenty of kids who may not have anything at all to thank their parents for and I’m sorry if they’re feeling marginalized right now and they have my sincere apologies

Hal Steinbeigle

It was my dad's birthday last week.  I've been thinking about this post for a while now, but I think it was his birthday that finally prompted me to put everything into words.  I'm kind of nervous to share this because, while I meant it to be happy, and I feel like I said the good things I wanted to say, I am aware that there's a long of hard stuff here.  And I don't want to hurt my dad's feelings anymore than I already have in the past.  But I also really feel like I want to say all this aloud, so...dad, please take this as I meant it--and that is with the very best of intentions...

Several years ago I had a different blog on a different website.  There were only about three people who read that blog and to be honest, I thought of it more like an online journal that a couple of my friends happened to read than a public forum.  But apparently I had, at some point early in the blog's history, given the address to my dad and, unbeknownst to me, he was reading at least some of my posts there.  He read one, in particular, that I regret to this day.  I'm not really sure what it was about, but in it I talked about how sad I've always felt that I never got to have the doting father/daughter relationship I would see in movies or books.  I talked about it at some length because it honestly has been a sore point to me for most of my life.

Some time after that, during one of his weekly calls, my dad brought that blog post up.  He had read it and he was sad and I think a bit hurt by what I'd said.  Understandably so.  He told me that he'd always loved me and doted on me.  I don't remember exactly what I said to him but it was something along the lines of "it's ok dad, don't worry about it" and I left it at that.  I don't think I particularly believed him, but I didn't really think about it.

You see, I've long believed that, despite what they say about divorce--how it's so terrible and hard on the children and it inevitably leaves scars--my parents' divorce was the lone exception to that rule.  I didn't think  that I had any of that baggage that they say every kid picks up.  That might sound stupid, but that is legitimately what I thought for many many years.  But you're right.  It was stupid.

I say that with all due respect to my mother.  I know that she and my dad both did the very best they could to keep me and Dan out of the divorce.  But unfortunately, there's only so much you can do in a situation like that, and so some of my mom's feelings got passed along to me.  And I think I picked up a few on my own.

Because I had a hard time with my dad growing up.  Not a dramatic hard time.  We didn't get into screaming matches or have knock-down-drag-out fights.  But that may just be because that is neither my style nor my dad's.  Instead, I just didn't like him.  I went through a very distinct phase of disliking my dad at every age.  I remember explaining that, though I loved my dad--you have to love your dad--I didn't like him.  I hated it whenever anyone would tell me I was like him in anyway--that I looked like him or acted like him or thought like him.  I didn't want any part of him.

And I thought I didn't have any baggage from the divorce?

Once I hit college I thought I was over my childhood issues with my dad.  We talked fairly regularly and I didn't dislike him anymore.  I didn't really have any opinion about him at all.  He was just there.  I could honestly tell him not to worry about it when he called upset about a blog post where his daughter complained that she hadn't felt loved by her daddy...

I'm sad to say that it wasn't until these last few years that I've finally begun to really look at my relationship with my dad.  Rather, I've finally begun to really look at my dad himself.  Because I think that has been one of the biggest problems for me...

I haven't ever looked at my dad as an actual person.

Some several months ago I asked my dad for the first time ever why he went inactive after he and my mom got divorced.  I was surprised when he told me that it was because he felt ashamed and embarrassed...just like my mom had felt.

During a Thanksgiving visit (either last year's or the year before) dad and I were walking together, just the two of us.  I think I asked him about how my Uncle Phil and Aunt Vickie had started dating, but he ended up just telling me stories about all of them in college.  I had never heard any of them before.

And then there was the time maybe a year or two ago.  We were talking on the phone.  I have no idea how it came up, but dad told me about one of his favorite memories of me when I was a baby.  He said he loved to come home from work and put on music and sit with me on the floor and I would "dance" the way babies dance.

That conversation was the turning point for me.

I know it was probably just a bit of conversation for my dad, but the fact is...I cannot remember any sweet simple moments like that with my dad.  Beyond that, I can't remember him ever even telling me about any thing like that.  Until that conversation.  At that moment I realized that I didn't really know anything about my dad, either when I was a baby or at any other time in his life.

I had an epiphany about the divorce and my baggage, and it was that I had it.  I had picked up my mom's pain, and my own, and from a very young age my dad had ceased to be a person and had instead simply become a sort of blank figure that had failed to be around.  And for the first time I could see that and how it had warped my opinion of him from my earliest memories till that moment.  And I realized that I was not happy with that fact.

I can't really explain a process or describe an overt effort.  I don't even know if, should you ask my dad, he would be aware that anything about our relationship has changed in the last few years.  But I can tell you that it has.  Because I like my dad now.  And I love him--not just because everyone has to love their father.

I found some letters over Christmas that he and my mom had written to my Uncle Adam while he was on his mission.  I discovered that my dad's cursive handwriting (at least at that time) looked exactly like mine, and it made me happy.  Because I no longer hate the idea that any part of me comes from my dad.  I am sporadically and strangely left-handed, which I can only assume comes from him.  We both enjoy walking instead of driving.  We both like debating with people (some might call it arguing).  And we have a shared love of books and movies.  I know that my love of analyzing and evaluating stories comes from him; he is the best and only person I call to have those sorts of conversations.  After twentysome years of rejecting any similarities with my dad I am at last appreciating each and every one I can find.

I know this seems like more of a painful blog post than a happy one to dedicate to someone for their birthday.  Unfortunately, the past is the past and I cannot change what was.  But I wanted to make it clear exactly where I have come from so that it would be in context, with it's full significance, when I say that I love my dad and I am grateful to have him as my parent and friend.  I may not have known it growing up, but I know now that he loves me.  I am sorry for my behavior as a child, a teenager, and a young adult.  I'm sorry for my insensitivity and ignorance.  And I want to thank him for enduring all of it.  He has stuck with Daniel and I the best he could and I am lucky.  I admit, sometimes I'm a little bit jealous of my little brother Seth.  He's getting the childhood with my dad that I never got to have.

But the good news is that we get to have the rest of our lives to make up for that.

Filling the time till I die...

So...post-college life.  As you all know, it kind of snuck up on me (sneaked?  really?  whatever, we're sticking with "snuck" because I'm a rebel).  I haven't had my moment of college closure.  Rather I've been doing a lot of thinking, and the conclusions I've come to are...depressing.  Especially for me specifically (that is, a single Mormon girl getting uncomfortably close to 30).  Growing up Mormon I never questioned that after college I'd be married and making/raising the babies.  But shoot!  I'm out of college and ain't no babies up in here.  And there aren't likely to be any for a while.  Suddenly I am faced with the realization that there is no guarantee that I'm going to get married.  I may not get to have the babies.  Don't worry...I'm still holding at bay the full-on panic of that thought.  But what I am doing is trying to figure out what an adult life is supposed to be full of if it isn't full of family.

The fact is, up till now I've been living my life like a video game (for lack of a better analogy).  I've had all these benchmarks that are like leveling up.  Start primary; level up.  Go to high school: level up.  College; level up.  Just like a video game, the goals have been clearly explained and set in front of me.  But graduating from college was pretty much the last level I could beat on my own.  Like I said, the next level has always been family...but I kind of need a partner for that one.  Which means that, for the first time in my life, while I do have a next level in mind, it has become a much more misty, on the horizon sort of thing rather than a planned, scheduled surety.  And maybe the next level I have in mind isn't even the right one!  Basically, my life has gone from Tetris™ to Myst™.  Lots of wandering around and exploring with only minimal actual game progress.

well, technically this is Riven. It had prettier worlds.  

So here I am, unable to level up, stuck exploring for secondary games and sub-challenges and easter eggs and any clue what I should be doing.  The big one I should be working on is a career.  After all, we Americans are all about our careers, right?  That's what TV tells me.  You all may remember that post a while back flirting with the idea of buying a bookstore.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) that idea hasn't exactly progressed.  But I have been thinking a bit lately about my current job situation.  As I've said many times before, I absolutely love my job.  But I mentioned that I worry that perhaps part of the reason that I love it is that it is so safe and doesn't challenge me at all.  Honestly, I'm not really sure if there's anything wrong with that.  But I will admit that I'm starting to think maybe I should pull a resume together and at least have my ears open for any opportunities.

But that means that, for the time being, the sub-quest of Job is taken care of.  I have a job, achievement unlocked, plus 250 coins (per month)!  So what else should I do?

Well, the depressing truth is that life doesn't actually have clearly delineated quests, achievements, or levels anymore.  I don't have any more socially dictated benchmarks that can reassure me that my life is progressing.  All I have is an indeterminate length of time that ought to be filled before I die.  My job is to fill that time in the most worthwhile way that I can.

Quick story.  Way back in 2010 when I worked at Target, in a desperate attempt to find some way to keep my mind occupied, one day I started asking every person who came through my line which was their favorite fairytale between Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, and why.  Sadly, I no longer have the exact results (though I remember them generally).  But I did come up with some really interesting anecdotal data.  At the time I came up with this great idea for a research project built on that data and I was legitimately excited about it (almost as excited as I still am about my epic Batman/V for Vendetta/Sense and Sensibility analysis).  However, all that actually got done was the research about one single fairytale that ended up as this blog post.  And there it ended.

it is absurd trying to find non-Disney images of these stories...

This week, as anyone who follows me on the fbook knows, I returned to my fairytales.  Unfortunately, I have no idea now what my great research project was going to be.  But I decided to go ahead and finish researching the history of the stories anyway.  I think it's fascinating and, who knows?  Maybe in the course of my research I'll remember the overall project?

 But mostly, it just seemed like a better way for me to spend my evenings than they way I have been--either drifting aimlessly in the directionless eddies of facebook and buzzfeed, or turning my brain entirely off on TV binges.  Surely there must be more value in learning than there is in comatose internet browsing....right?

I guess?

That is...yes.  I cannot accept that nearly vegetative clicking is on par with learning; even if that learning is pretty much without use or even reason.  Because that is what my research is.  I don't remember what that project was supposed to be, so as of now I'm just learning about early fairytales for no other reason than that I find them interesting.  And that's the problem.  My Mormon conditioning tells me that information and education are worthwhile for their own sake.  But another part of me keeps whispering that simply taking in information is...kind of a waste.  After all, what really is the difference between three hours of facebook status updates and buzzfeed articles vs three hours of JSTOR and wikipedia articles about 18th century marriage traditions and the literary tradition of the animal bridegroom?  Cause the facebook time is giving me information too.  I'm learning who is pregnant, who is engaged, who is hungry, and who is addicted to instagram.  So why do I feel less like I've "wasted" my evening after the JSTOR articles than the facebook?  Is that feeling justified?  Why?

baha! this came up when I googled "what's the point?"

I'm actually still working on these questions.  Because I feel like answering them will help me with the bigger question of where is my next level up.  Or rather, with no levels left to reach, what exactly am I supposed to be doing now in this game?  How should I be using the time I have?

I would legitimately like to know what you all think...

Just life and stuff...or whatever......

It has been brought to my attention (by someone other than my mother, amazingly enough), that it has been rather a long while since I last updated my blog.  I usually try to update at least once a month, but time seems to have gotten away from me.  Guess I just didn't have anything to say.  I know I had a request to review The Host, but unlike most of you, I actually kind of liked that movie, which doesn't really make for a particularly entertaining review.  But maybe I'll still work one up one of these days.

The fact is that I still don't really have anything in particular to say, but if people are asking you about your blog, surprising as it may seem, it would appear that at least that one person is interested in reading stuff you've written.  So I guess I'll write some stuff for them to read.

Dear Bill Waterson...is this an illegal use of Calvin?  If you feel that it is,
please email me and let me know. I'll take it right down...

Let's see.  Last thing I was talking about was the beginnings of the car hunt.  It seems anti climactic to just say "Well, I ended up buying a car."  But I did.  I bought a car guys!  It is actually really exciting.  I mean, I've had the car for two and a half months and I still think "dang I love my car!" every time I see it.  Because guess what.  Remember how I said that my dream car that I would never ever ever be able to buy because it would be crazy times out of my price range was an '09 Honda Fit?  Well, after careful perusing of KSL and several disappointments I came across an orange '09 Honda Fit for exactly how much I was willing to spend!  Downside?  Turns out it was so cheap because it was a rebuilt title.  Right at the same time I came across an '06 Scion XA for about the same price.  There was some serious (and I do mean serious...I was giving myself stress headaches worrying about it) debate between the two.  But in the end, after taking him to the Honda dealership and getting him checked out by their mechanic, I settled on the Fit and promptly named him Chester.  And we've been ever so in love ever since.

The next big problem for me to solve was Sharry Baby.  What was I going to do with this now superfluous car that was cluttering up the street in front of my house.  Though my roommate's boyfriend offered to sell her for me, I decided to give it a try on my own.  Through keen and penetrating reasoning I decided to list her for $1000.  I needed to get $800 for her and I figured I should give a little room for people to barter so they could feel good about themselves.  If you're friends with me on the fbook then you may have seen my post about a rather insulting text I got from someone who was mildly interested.  While I posted the text because I appreciated the humor of the situation, I must confess, it was not a little upsetting being treated like that.  Not to mention discouraging.  Especially as that text was the last response I got for several days.  I was starting to worry it was a no go, when I got a text at work asking me if I still had the car.  The highlights of the story are as follows: car wouldn't start, guy says he's a mechanic and can fix it, I pick guy and his buddy up, guy and his buddy tell me all about how they just got out of prison where they both found Jesus, guy magically makes car start, me and guy and guy's buddy go on a very extended test drive, guy buys car for $900, parents express a lack of enthusiasm that I'm hanging out alone with two ex-cons (they were actually super cool guys, albeit a little unorthodox).  And that is the story of how I managed to sell Sharry Baby for $100 more than I expected to.

for some reason this felt like the right thing to put here...?

Let's see...other news I guess would be that I spent a couple of months seriously considering altering my living circumstances.  For a while I was going to move in with Kara and one other mystery roommate.  That didn't pan out because Kara works in Salt Lake and I work in Payson and there's no way to split that commute so that both people are happy.  So I guess Kara and I will have to live together another time.  But that then got me started thinking about how, now I'm not a student, I have no actual reason to stay in Provo.  So I started looking in to finding a place a little closer to my job.  I did find an adorable place down in Payson with a really nice guy for a landlord.  But it just didn't feel right...as amorphous a reason as that is (especially for me).  Part of it was the fact that I really really love my bishop and ward here in Provo.  I think that Bishop Pickering is exactly the right bishop for me right now.  He heckled me today because I haven't come in to talk to him lately and he said the reason he likes me so much is because I give him so much crap.  His words.  Yeah, we get along well.  But anyway, I decided to stay here in Provo at least for one more winter.  Perhaps after that I'll move down to Payson, or somewhere else entirely.  I can't deny that the idea of having my own place really appeals to me.  But now isn't the time...

this is 100% what it would really be like
pic from Pretty Bland Comics

I went home twice in the last month's time.  The first visit was for my grandma's memorial.  It was just too inconvenient for all the family to come up back in January for the funeral, so it was decided that we'd have a big memorial later in the summer.  My grandma's death has been the first time I've really actively mourned for anyone and it has been harder than I ever expected it to be.  I was hoping by the time the memorial came up it wouldn't be such a big deal, but I'll admit, I spent a fairly significant part of the service crying.  A few days after the memorial Jesse and Grandpa were going to be driving down to North Carolina, so I also was dealing with the realization that if I don't make it down to visit Jesse and Erin relatively soon, it is likely that I won't see Grandpa again.  Suffice it to say, it was an exhausting weekend

Just a few weeks later Kara was heading up for her nephew's notfarewell and she invited me to join her.  I thought it would be nice to get to visit mom and dad with a little less stress so I decided to go.  It ended up being a lovely visit.  And while we were in LaGrande one day we passed by my favorite little bookshop.  I don't remember if I wrote about how I realized at Christmas that what I really really want to do, like for real, is to have my own little bookshop that has tons of personality and can get you whatever book you want.  I also don't remember if I mentioned that Sunflower book is the inspiration for that dream.  I found out at Christmas that it was up for sale and would be closing soon if no one bought it.  When I saw it again a few weeks ago it was all closed up and I think it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen.  The owners, who decided to retire, just never could find a buyer.  But it started me thinking.  I started to wonder just how crazy it would be for me to.....buy it.  Right now.  See, when I decided I wanted to own a bookstore in my head it went something like this: stay in Provo and work for Caleb for a few more years while I pay off all the debt and get my feet under me, so to speak, as an adult; spend a few more years saving money; in about 10 years when I'm rather more solvent and prepared, apply for a loan and open my store.  But here's a sobering thought--in 10 years I'll be 37.  37!  That's nearly 40!  And who are we kidding?  I totally plan on being married with at least one kid by then (well...plan is maybe a strong word...I really hope to be married with a kid by then).  The point is that 37 is not really an age you think of when you think "crazy decisions to take major risks".  Nope, see, that's the kind of thing you're supposed to do when you're young.  So suddenly I'm looking at this empty store and I'm thinking "What if I did it now?  What if I tried to open my bookstore right now when I have student loans to pay off and absolutely no idea what I'm doing or how I'm going to do it?"  Even just thinking about it like that, like it was an actual possibility, was absolutely, physical-response-inducing terrifying.  See, the thing is...I'm not exactly a risk taker and I'm not exactly an efficient, get-a-million-things-done-a-day person.  But then I started wondering if maybe the very scariness of it wasn't a pretty good reason why I should do it.  I started to wonder...is my plan to stay here in Provo and work for Caleb really a good solid plan?  Or is it a nice safe plan?  Much as I love my job (and you all know how much I love my job), do I actually love it for the right reasons?  I mean, how much of that love is actually just a love of comfort?  This is a job that doesn't challenge me at all.  It allows me to sleep in and set my own hours and just hang out with one of my best friends.  These are all great things, but what if I could be doing something even better but I'm too afraid to inconvenience myself to discover it?  When I try to look objectively at my life I cannot say that these are not reasonable worries.  So what if I decided to...well, to completely ignore my personality and dive into the scariest possible (realistic) adventure I can imagine?  I'm nearly 27 years old.  There truly will never be a better time for me to take that kind of risk than right now.  If I crash spectacularly and burn my life to the ground the consequences will be so much more manageable right now than they ever will be any other time.

um...this picture actually feels freakily applicable...

Explaining this all makes me get all anxious and excited about the idea again.  Thinking about the "what if....?"  But sadly, it isn't so easy to ignore one's personality.  Your habits of behavior exist for a reason.  Usually it is because you've spent a lifetime cultivating them.  So even though I can rationally think through why it might actually be the perfect moment for me to dive into a nausea inducingly terrifying adventure...I just don't think I can do it.  It is too scary.  Scary seems like such an insufficient word to describe the feeling that envelops me when I think about the idea.  C'est la vie?

And...I guess that's it.  I'm not sure how I feel about these "this is just a big update of what's going on in my life" updates.  They feel so...narcissistic.  But then, my great long philosophical treatises are just plain boring, so maybe this is a step up?  I don't know...

The distorting properties of the inner looking glass

Those of you who read my blog (all 3 of you) know I've sort of been on a little bit of a theme recently.  A self improvement theme.  If you missed them, here's the first and second post.  I'd like to continue on that theme today, but from a slightly different angle.  This post is about my mother.

I have been suffering recently from a lot of frustration with my mom.  It's not what you're thinking.  I'm not talking about your typical teen/young adult parental angst.  I haven't lived with my mom in years, I'm pretty much done with all that angst.  No, I'm talking about something else entirely.  My mom is brilliant, extremely gifted, and beautiful.  My frustration stems from her absolute inability to accept those facts.

Let's start with a description of my mom.  My mother is beautiful.  She has brown hair and brown eyes and a uniquely lovely face.  I have always felt like she looks like a real-life Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painting.  

something much like this painting by John Williams Watherhouse 

She has these beautiful delicate hands and long wrists that, odd as it may sound, have long been my great envy.  As for her abilities...

My mom was strong enough to separate from my dad when he abused their relationship.  She was strong enough to forgive him completely and take him back, and then to leave for good when he abused that relationship again (I respect her for every single one of those decisions).  My mom raised two very young children singlehandedly.  She worked incredibly hard at some very menial jobs at first and then essentially created the need for a completely new position at the local boys and girls club in New Mexico for herself.  She then packed us up and moved us up to Oregon ostensibly to help my great aunt who was, at that time, taking care of my great grandmother whilst also dealing with a newborn.  However a large part of her motivation was nothing but her faith in a prompting she received that she would meet her future husband in Oregon.  She did  meet the man she ended up marrying; she then committed to this man with significant and sometimes frightening baggage of his own.  She has remained committed to him for the last 18 years and poured herself into their relationship.  And in the last couple of years she took the entire weight of caring for her own mother throughout the progression of grandma's dementia with no help from any of her siblings.  

My mom is an excellent cook and baker.  She decided there was no reason to pay exorbitant prices for store-bought chocolates so she taught herself how to make her own hand-dipped gourmet chocolates.  Her children wanted absurd and impractical birthday cakes so she taught herself how to make them.  She created extravagant costumes and dress-up clothing for us purely through trial and error--she didn't have patterns or Pinterest to tell her how to make a crown or a scepter or an entire Native American costume complete with teepee.  She taught herself how to paint and draw and sing and play the guitar and piano.  She makes cards, and hand-made boxes, and face pins, and Ukranian easter eggs, and  so many more amazing things I can't even remember them all.  She writes songs and makes her own jewelry.  She has created a beautiful, calming space in our front and back yard.  She has recently started writing a story.

these are nothing compared to some of the ones my mom has made

I haven't even mentioned my mom's ability to empathize with people, her sincere concern for others, her commitment to her responsibilities, her ability to understand and help people, or her determination to put others before herself.  Truly, the list of my mom's achievements, abilities, and gifts is a long one.  

But do you know what she'd say if you asked her to list her own gifts?  She might say something about her proclivity for counselling (the vocation she's always dreamed of), but almost immediately she would start telling you about anything but her positive qualities.  She might tell you about her sister and how much greater Vicky is than her.  She might tell you about her husband or her kids.  Or she might start telling you about all her own failings and faults and flaws.  This is because she legitimately does not see all of those amazing things that I just told you about.

You might say my mother has anorexia of the mind.  Just like an anorexic girl looks in the mirror and sees an obese delusion rather than the slender (often even unhealthily so) reality, my mother looks at herself and rather than the capable, creative, beautiful reality she sees an ugly, incompetent, stupid, inadequate illusion.  

No matter how many times you tell the anorexic that she's crazy; she isn't fat; she has to eat something because she is quite literally wasting away...she will not listen.  She cannot.  She can see herself right there in the mirror and she can see how fat she is.  So it is with my mother.  No matter how many times I or my aunt Vicky, or everyone else in the world tells my mother that she is smart and talented and able; no matter how many times we tell her that she can do things; we tell her that she is hurting herself and those around her...she will not...she cannot believe us.  Can't she see for herself how untrue all of that is?  Can't she see how inadequate she is?  

I cannot remember a time when my mother was happy with herself--with her weight or her appearance.  And I have a remarkably good memory.  My entire life I've been listening to my mom say that she isn't smart enough for this or that; she's not skinny or young enough to wear that dress or those earrings; she's not talented enough to play that song.  She is never good enough.  Never.

It could be argued that what divides us from the "lesser" animals is self-awareness.  But, like so many things in this life, our great blessing and strength is also our great weakness.  There is no more vicious voice of criticism, judgement, and critique than the one inside your head.  Because you are aware of exactly how often you fall short of the mark.  Outsiders don't have the benefit of seeing our expectations, intentions, and goals alongside our actions like we do.  So they don't know just how often those actions are actually pathetic, half-assed failures.  At least, that is how it seems to us.  Because that mark you're falling short of?  It is self-imposed.  It is your mark, not the rest of the world's.

So when people tell my mom that she is wonderful she looks at her self and her life and her plans and she sees that they aren't what they're "supposed" to be so she says "it's all fine and good for them to say that...but they don't know what's really going on."  

How do I know this is what is going on inside her head?  Well, I suppose I don't for sure.  But I'm pretty confident.  Because she passed this right on to me.  

came from this guy's pretty awesome blog here

Kara came over last night to visit.  We had a really great talk, during one point of which she said to me "We've both turned out to be pretty great.  We're both confident, smart, capable women."  Do you want to know what my instant mental response was?  Something along the lines of "hell no I'm not confident!"  I am terrified all the time of every single thing!  I don't feel capable of dealing with things, I don't think I am particularly good at much.  I think I'm smart, but I'm constantly worried that I'm about to discover that that is not the case.  I assume people don't want me around or they don't like me.  I believe that the man I marry will have sacrificed being married to a woman he finds physically attractive to be married to one with "other qualities".  I am not exaggerating.  These are the constant refrains inside my head.  

Where did I start this?  I said I am frustrated with my mom.  

My mom has told me that she is convinced that her children hate her.  She thinks that my brother and I hate her.  Our mother.  And that is why I am frustrated with my mom.  Because her self-loathing and self-doubt are reaching crippling levels.  And there is nothing I can do to shatter that mental mirror that is showing her such a lie.  There is no way for me to communicate to her that that inner critic is lying.  That her children love her.  That she is brilliant.  That she is creative and capable.  All she can see and all she can hear are her own perceived inadequacies.  Every conversation, every interaction, is filtered through the distorting lens of her insecurities so that it inevitably comes out supporting her negative opinion of herself.

As I struggle through the process of conquering my own issues, dealing with my own self-doubt and self-loathing I keep looking at my mom's life and that is what keeps me motivated.  Even before I started this project I can see that I have been doing some of this.  I am trying desperately to not be my mother.  Not because I don't love her and not because I don't think that she is amazing...but because she does not believe she is.  And that is what I don't want to emulate.  

To my brilliant, beloved, and wonderful grandmother...

I went home for Christmas and was lucky enough to see my grandmother right before she drifted off into the sleep with which she will end her life.  I spoke to my mom this afternoon and she confirmed that grandma hasn't woken up and will likely die within days.  I can't begin to explain how I felt the first time I saw her there at Wildflower, the home we've had to put her in.  This is a woman who I have looked up to my entire life and she was diminished to a skeletal creature in a wheelchair.  I couldn't stop crying that first visit.  It got better the next day, and the next, but only because I was able to disassociate and disconnect.  The woman in that chair was not the grandmother in my memory.  They were two different people.  

But finding out that she is leaving for good, that the end is here (mercifully sooner than anyone expected) is not as easy as I thought it would be.  Certainly I am glad that she (and my mother, who has born the entire weight of her care as well as my grandfather's) will be spared the years of senility that her own mother suffered.  But that doesn't change the fact that my grandma is dying.  She's going to be gone forever.  And in the end I find that I'm just a little girl who misses her grama and doesn't want her to leave and can't understand that it's better this way.  

I wanted to write something here to commemorate her.  Something that would represent what she was in my life.  But I couldn't think of anything better than the final that I wrote for my English Literature class on my study abroad in 2007.  With some minor alterations and additions, here it is

            The assignment was to write an essay that related the class readings to the places they’d visited.  My fingers hovered above the keys expectantly—waiting for inspiration to strike.  All that struck was a hand on my bedroom door, giving me a distraction from my un-inspired thoughts.  The harder I tried to focus the more my mind wandered.  I asked myself how ideas might relate to places…

            I’d heard of memories being related to smells, and smells could be related to places.  For instance, I remember very distinctly the smell of my grandmother’s food-room back in New Mexico.  It was a cold smell and somehow pleasantly musty.  Like the smell of damp earth, even though the room was above ground.  Whenever I smell that smell I remember the room, cool and dark, even when the light was on.  It was one of my favorite places at my grandmother’s house, especially when it was my grandmother who took me there.  And because I loved my grandmother’s food room, I loved the food-room in my aunt’s house, and then finally the one in my mom’s new house. 

            The connection, then, was food-rooms to the idea of my grandmother, I supposed.  But really, that was not an example of an idea being connected with a place, except in barest technicality.  In actuality it was simply a fragment of my definition of my grandmother.  It was part of what made my grandmother in my mind.  She was many places and things and actions and ideas. 

I considered the idea of my grandmother and saw a kaleidoscope of things:  My grandmother teaching my addition; admonishing me to “burn the sums into my brain”.  My grandmother giving me raisins out of a Tupperware pitcher with a yellow lid as I sat on the wooden stool in the corner of the kitchen.  My grandmother bringing me a golf ball-sized blob of peanut butter cookie dough as I played in my uncle’s room on the green fuzzy carpet.  Then, more, after they all moved to Oregon.  I saw my grandmother’s small brown dish, or the blue plastic one, with two small scoops of Tin Roof Sundae ice cream in it and her sneakiest smile that told me this was a treat just for us.  I heard my grandmother teaching me and my brother one single phrase of Latin to say to the kids at school when they were mean.  There was my grandma sitting with my mother and uncle, singing “Dooley”.  Overarching them all were the bookshelves full of carefully organized and jealously guarded books.  Endless shelves hiding tempting treasures.  Sherlock Holmes and Freckles and Wind in the Willows.  That part of my grandmother that was a passionate love of books was also a part of me.

            I thought about these aspects of my grandmother.  I thought about the things that I refused to accept as part of her.  Those first years when the most articulate woman I knew started forgetting words; joking in the yellow light of our kitchen about the time when all it would take to entertain her would be the magnets on the fridge.  We’d cackled all the more at the looks of others who couldn't understand our morbid sense of humor, that it was better to laugh than cry.  Then the breathtakingly quick crescendo from a disoriented woman who wandered ceaselessly around her house and still harmonized at the family singalongs even if she couldn't remember the words…to a stranger huddled in a wheelchair in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar building, mumbling indistinctly from lips that were no longer quite under her control.    

None of these memories were places, though places were a part of the memories.  Yes, there were places in my mind, but to limit my grandmother to one place was like limiting the ocean to one grain of sand on one beach.  Would that be the same for anything? 

I remembered when we read “A Room of One’s Own” in class; how, before I even began to read, my mind resolved to like the story, based only on the fact that, long ago, my grandmother told me that someday I needed to read it.  Now I had read it, and liked it very much.  I thought it was brilliant, in fact.  But the only thing I could remember distinctly was that the book was everlastingly bound to my grandmother.  So, it seemed that a book could be connected to one single thing; perhaps if that single thing contained many things within it.  Perhaps it was only because it was my grandmother to which it was connected, and my grandmother contained all of me.

My mind floated back to the beginning.  There were my fingers, still expectant.  There was the screen, still blank.  Another hand was knocking at my door.  I smiled at the thought of my grandmother and began to type.

Gratitude and stuff...

Things for which I am grateful:

• My hair
• That I have it

• That it is long enough for me to braid, both in the French style and the notFrench style

• That it is in moderately good condition and doesn't look like Yetti hair

guys, the Yettis had warrior's wolftails!

• My car
• It does run….most of the time
• It plays the music
• It gets gas mileage
• My laptop
• The fan no longer makes an angry noise
• The internets
• Pinterest
• Blogs
• webcomics
• The technologies
• Paper
• For to draw
• For to write letters
• For to make origami
• For to light fires
• For to make into a wad

• Massages
• Do you really require more words about this?
• Food
• Sleep
• Sometimes it happens
• Sometimes it doesn't
• My job
• My boss
• That he's one of my best friends

• That he has a very generous concept of personal property

• That he is very very good at bossing and usually doesn't get impatient or annoyed (visibly) with me

• That he willingly helps me with projects like fixing my laptop
• My coworker Zack
• My ever-so-flexible schedule

because sometimes all you can do is lie in a puddle on the floor
but really....this is how flexible my schedule is

• The money I make

• The fact that I don't ever have to deal with anyone but Caleb and Zack…no customer service whatsoever!

• That I have one
• The innumerable perks of working in a house
• Kitchen
• Laundry
• Daylight
• Climate control
• Walk-shoveling opportunities
• Laundry
• The opportunity to drive and not feel guilty
• The SCIENCE!
• My house
• Roommates
• My own room
• Crazy dance party!!!

• Bathroom shared with only one other person
• House!
• Very reasonable rent
• Roommates!
• Ward
• People are my age
• Nice people
• New people
• Dancing
• Connection

fun fact: I know these people!  sort of...their names are
Ben and Gretchen and they're phenomenal dancers
(this picture was found here...yet again this guy is blowing me away with his
blues photography)

• Activity
• Connection
• People
• Music
• New music
• Happy music
• Cathartic music
• Life soundtracks
• Moment appropriate music
• Books
• Always and forever in every way

• Movies
• To pass the time
• To entertain
• To inspire
• To stimulate
• Fall
• The intoxication of crispness
• Winter
• Snow
• Playing in it
• Sitting inside watching it exist
• Hot chocolate
• Delicious food
• Scarves

one of Gingerhaze's feral sweater boys

• Hats
• Christmas!
• New Year's!
• Life

no, a wholelife

• People
• Family
• Moms, dads, aunts and uncles, nieces, grandparents, siblings, cousins
• The friends
• Roommates
• Old!

• New!

• Perpetual, regardless of actual location
• Pseudo-boyfriends
• So. many. of. them.
• Ex-boyfriends
• Not mine

can't let these things go to waste

• Domestic goddesses

• The slightly damaged (most often in the brain, but I'm not picky)

• The listeners

• Smarts
• Not being in school
• Independence
• Memory
• Real
• Not as real
• Eyes
• Even ones that work as poorly as these ones

• Things that make my defective eyes work correctly

• science
• Cars
• Airplanes
• Microwaves/ovens
• Toothbrushes
• Teflon
• Google

for science!
please look at all the other things here

• Beauty
• Silliness

because ridiculous word play is what makes life worth living

• Feelings
• Humor
• Privacy
• Singing
• Writing