Thursday, June 30, 2011

A Leap of Faith

Back in 2008, before the government economic melt down, I had an economic melt down of my own. I lost the only careers I have ever had with no hope of finding a new one that paid decently anytime soon. It's when Mike decided for me that it was time to write the book, my first "Advancing Backward". As I went through all my notebooks and scoured notes, half written pages and outlines I had previously started, I cried. What I lost was profound, immense and the hurdles that lay in front of me seemed insurmountable. I had faith that things would one day get better, but my realism told me it could take years and I wasn't sure we had years we could stay afloat. You see, I had always solely supported or partially supported my family in the absolute tangible monetary way, so having no income, well, I was devastated in a way I couldn't possibly have seen coming. I reacted by mourning the death of an identity I could no longer hold onto. The Kellie that existed before July 2008, died in a way that would be permanent, forever put to rest with no reprieve.
I had applied to every place I could think of, since my usual jobs were off limits. Nothing was out of the question for a non-college educated person who had no current usable skills. Every restaurant, grocery store, drug store, home improvement store, mall store, I mean every place I could think of I sent in applications with attached resumes. I never got one interview, not one. The book came out and I busied up with promoting myself on what I refer to as false feet since my confidence was completely in the toilet. I plastered a smile on my face and kept trying to believe things would work out for the best, but I must confess, I was deathly afraid I would not be so fortunate. I prayed, a lot.
We sold the house and moved to a much smaller house and a simpler lifestyle that could be paid for by our single income. Still, cars need work, kids need college and groceries aren't cheap and I continued to feel guilty, sad, almost hopeless...almost. I continued to throw my resume out into the world to hear nothing in return. It has taken a toll on me, my ego had been blown to smithereens.
In October of last year I sent our town paper The Tribune a sample of my writing skills and asked for an advice column. I had no prospects and remained in utter isolation from the work force, so I thought why not? I heard back within days and my column, "Dear Kellie" was born due to the extraordinary generosity of my editor, Mrs. Calvert. So generous was she with teaching me about AP style and the production of newspaper columns. Having never written a column before, I had no idea what I was doing, but she remained patient and allowed me the creativity to give it a try. As you well know, I continue to write that column every other week. I love that job so much and I appreciate my boss even more for a taking a chance on me when I needed it so badly.
I continued to send more resumes, more applications, not really hoping something would ever happen. That's what happens when you try for years and no one "sees" you. I remained invisible until yesterday. I had applied for a part time position at the community college that my kids attend, right here in town. There was a position in the financial aid office. For the first time since my column, I had a feeling of really wanting this particular job. As a writer I make well under poverty level, as most do, and I needed a second job. I love the school they attend, the way the atmosphere of it feels. It is a place that puts it's money where it's mouth is. Lone Star College is affordable, really affordable, and easily accessible, and it is growing by leaps and bounds. As I filled out one more online application, updated my resume and answered any and all questions, I wondered if I would ever even get an interview again in my life time, let alone a job.
Yesterday the most wonderful thing happened. A woman called and asked to schedule an interview for the financial aid position. Could I come? Was I interested? Uhhhhhh, heck yeah!
Today I had my interview with the lovely lady from the phone. Thrilled to be acknowledged by an actual human being instead of written off by a computer, I couldn't help but smile the entire time. What I knew for sure in that moment, as I told her out right I wanted the job badly, was I really was just completely happy to get interviewed. I did want the job, I did love the college, but just getting the opportunity to sit in front of a person instead of a kiosk, or computer was good enough for me.
Five hours later after I got home, still smiling at the positive hopeful experience I had had this very morning, she called once again to offer me the job. As I thanked her profusely jumping at the opportunity, she asked if I needed a minute to scream or something. Laughing, I said, "I will wait until we get off the phone." I ran to tell Mike the wonderful news that I was indeed employable and Lone Star College wanted me to start as soon as possible. We hugged my husband and I. With tears in my eyes, I looked in his eyes and said, "I promise, you are not alone in this. I will do whatever it takes to help you and this family." He smiled back at me with his warm brown eyes glued to mine and said, "You do every single day."

Dear Kellie - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - Copyright 2007 Ourtribune.com

Dear Kellie - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 - Copyright 2007 Ourtribune.com

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Writing A Wrong

As I was sitting down to write with a large cup of coffee to my left, my bifocals perched on my nose and my noise reduction head phones on, I was discovering the difficulty of having to figure out what my voice was going to be in my second book. Just how far could a very neurotic, anxiety driven, with a hint of paranoia go in order to achieve the perfect combination of truth, authenticity and composure. On one hand, to speak freely about some the more horrific events in my life is something I am able to talk about without hesitation to nearly any audience who would listen, but to put it all in writing was something I struggled to do. I have made jokes about some of the more awful things that have happened to me and my kids and my husbands. Just now writing the word "husbands", specifically the "s" on the end makes me wince a little as I type out the reality of what being me is truly like. I had been completely unconvinced that having one husband was a good idea for someone like me with all my nervous energy, my tapping toes, and my never ending supply of compulsions. I have defended my status as having multiple husbands as if I were sitting on a witness stand explaining to a judge, jury and executioner that "Yes, Your Honor, I did get married more than once even after I knew for certain I was hardly marriage material, but I felt saying no would be unnecessarily rude. Besides, Michael doesn't count, he knows how silly and ridiculous I am. He made an informed decision to take on my bag of crazy. I should be held harmless for any and all transactions that may or may not transpire after that."
I have several incidents in my life that although I joke about them, they were quite serious and telling the story, even joking about it, may inadvertently hurt some of the precious few who know and love me. Had I just had me to consider, everything would go into the stories I plan to write. There are very few things I am not able to laugh about, simply because there is always something funny that has happened within the confines of the story. It is the reason I have never considered myself a victim in the story of my own life. I simply cannot reconcile laughter and martyrdom. The minute I can find the funny, any kind of overtly dramatic, heinous crime is reduced to a morality story of sorts with a punchline.
I had done stand up comedy briefly in the 1990's in order to shake up my life in an extreme way. I suffered from stage fright so bad I would literally find myself going to the bathroom 12 times in ten minutes trying to squeeze out the last drop of pee because I was certain I would wet my pants on stage. I wrote on index cards the outline of my jokes in order to stay on topic, and dropped them every time I went to stand in line at whatever dump had an open mic night. I did lots of jokes about divorce, kids and being single with stretch marks that could be used as AAA trip tic.
While Danny and I had several laughs about his cancer, putting that material in my comedy was less than a stellar idea. I knew there would be those in the audience who find it distasteful to talk about the silent killer that had taken so many lives. Even our children managed in all their fear and unresolved curiosity, to make jokes about amputation, cancer and their father's disease. You see, we had to laugh, to make it human, to make it personal without allowing it to control our every day existence. That and sometimes things were just funny. Tom, only six years old at the time of Danny's cancer asked if his "new" leg, the prosthesis he was scheduled to get, would have hair on it. Danny promised to let the kids draw hair on his leg the second it arrived. Danny would walk through furniture since he had no leg to prevent it, he jumped around laughing about being the best in a three legged race, and made jokes about how his right shoes would last forever.
During the time Danny drank his heaviest, when he was his most violent, I still cannot find a way to write without feeling as though I am betraying my children. I have spoken and written about the idea that Danny's addiction was not the sum total of who he was. I have pushed hard for years to allow my children the benefit of knowing their father as an entire entity not some soulless monster with a penchant for beer, or a sainted martyr who died perfect in sack cloth and ashes. He was neither of those things and in some ways both of those things. I had originally written the more violent stories in my notebooks, reliving the pain, the sociopathic strain of addiction, trying to get it all out of me, as if putting it on paper would release the memories from the tightly bound place in my heart. I wanted all of it to just go, as if my frantic writing, scribbling in ink on paper would be able to push the pain out and I would never have to feel it again. By the by, that is not really how it works, but it sounded good at the time. The continued problem I have is putting it in ink in front of my children, because it is not just my story, it is their story too.
There are times in my life which I now find ironic, allowing for me to laugh at criminal and volatile events, which had I not learned to laugh, I am not completely certain I would be in tact as a human being.
My coffee is almost gone and I have to catch a nap so I can go to the Museum of Fine Art downtown to see a "found objects" artist. He is giving a lecture and Mike, Christine and I are planning to go and see what makes him so interesting. There is another exhibit at the same time showing for a brief period we are going to look at, but I couldn't tell you what it is. I let Christine handle all the details, so my mind is left vacant for other pressing problems, like remembering to buy toilet paper by the ream due to the amount of butts in our house. The book is coming to me in snippets on some days and lengthy dream like movie versions on others. I have writers block, but continue to put stuff out on the blog hoping that if enough words are written it will disguise the lack of content. As far as what I will write about, if the tragedy/comedy conundrum can be conquered...well, I will have to have a conversation with my family.
I learned one of the most valuable lessons from my favorite writer, David Sedaris, who has a story about his sister he wanted to use for a book. It was story that was horrifying to her, one that made her wince and open wounds like a stigmatic. His idea was to write story because, hey, it's not like she was using it. The story he eventually wrote told about how insensitive he had been and how sorry he was for taking something personal and trying to turn into entertainment his sister's expense.
My intention is always to connect, but not at the expense of those I love, so I have to plod my course carefully, without my usual foot slapping, blinded, thoughtless stumbling , bumbling schtick. Even though the book is about me, I cannot afford to be selfish either to the reader or especially to those who had no choice being related to me and in my life.
My daughter used to yell at me in frustration, "I didn't ask to be born!" to which I would reply, "Yeah? Well,I didn't want your opinion, either!"
But this time, I do, I really do.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Father




Father
I was thinking about the definition of the word “father”, what it means, and why certain people bring so much meaning to the word. In truth almost anyone can become a father. The biology is a simple process of a man meeting with a woman, but what of the deeper impact of what transpires between a man and a child? Webster says the definition is “a man who has begotten a child” another definition says “to sire, a man’s relation to his natural born child or children”, but I think the definition goes so much further for father than that. My definition was so much more complicated than the simplicity of just biology.
My grandfather was a tall, bald man who wore his heart on his sleeve. By all appearances he was tough, a Teamster, a truck driver, a man’s man, but to us he was a gentle giant, who cried when he mourned, laughed when he was happy, held us close when he wanted to express his love. I found out when I was young, around 11 or so, that he was not my biological grandfather. I had never known until I was told that he was not my blood. Everything about the way he treated us, the love he held for us, said he was our family. Confused by this new information I had received, I talked to my grandmother about it. “Does this change anything? Should I feel different?” I asked my grandma. “No, Kellie, its love, and love is love.” “Do I have to call him my step grandpa?” Grandma looked me straight in the eye and said these simple sentences that would change my definition of the way I saw blended families forever. “Kellie Lynn, the only steps are the ones that lead into the house. He is your grandfather, the one who has loved you since the day you were born. He loves your mother as if she were his own, probably more, actually.” I took it all in, the words my grandma had carefully spoken about the man I had always loved, the man who would have given his life for anyone of us. I had seen the love he had for my mom, hugging her tight when they would enter or leave our house. This man, this gentle giant was so much more than a human Petri dish full of chromosomes. He was my grandpa, the one who patiently sat through every performance I ever had, every big moment in my life, even driving three hours to see me off to prom. I was a part of him in ways that defied biology. I was a part of his heart and he was a part of mine. When I tell stories of my family, I speak of the only grandfather I ever knew. I call him “Grandpa” because to me, to us, that is exactly who he was, and the way he will live in my heart forever.
I have heard a phrase I used to love being bantered around in the political world, tossing it in wherever a point is made to the benefit of whoever is speaking. The phrase “Teachable Moment” is the one I am referring to. I had appreciated the depth of those words because my father had taught me to appreciate my failures as learning, evolving past one’s own self. My dad never said the phrase “teachable moment”, he used words like “lesson”, but the idea was clear, I would absolutely fail at things in my life, and when those moments happened, he wanted me to learn something from them. My father could be eloquent in his speech and manner, but he could also be very effective in just stating what he thought in simpler terms. “Listen, Kellie, shit happens. You have to learn to pick yourself up when it does.” My father wanted me to have the tools to be able to get up after being knocked squarely on my ass. We all go through it, these moments in our life when by either our own hand, or by the hand of someone else we find ourselves flat on the floor, hoping it swallows us up. My dad knew this, he had lived long enough to experience it for himself, and wanted me to not live in fear avoiding the inevitable, or wallowing in my own humiliation any longer than necessary. I have enough stories of my old man, where he was swearing like a sailor, screaming at me to do something. He was tough, insisting that we never drink out of his cup, touch his dresser or move his keys. Use his favorite cup one time and he would come at you with a verbal assault. My dad raised us to trust that when he said he would punish you for something, you could take that to the bank. Because of my dad I rarely make the same mistakes twice. Being imaginative, I seem to come up with new ways to botch things up all the time. My father, the man who “sired” me, was more dad than biology could indicate. Because of the time he invested in me, I am able to pick myself up. Because he talked to me telling me stories of his own failures, I knew I would survive, even when it felt like it was impossible. My dad’s persistent teaching remains one of the loudest voices in my head. His biological DNA resides on my face, but it his love for me that is most visible.
You only get one set of parents, those who gave birth to you, donated DNA, chromosomes and biological history. You only get one mother and one father. Once they are gone, they are gone. My children found out what it was like to have half of their support system, their teachers, mentors, ones who love you unconditionally disappear as if they had been an apparition. Once their father was gone, he was gone.
I have kept Danny alive for my kids through stories about him, telling them over and over how much he loved them. Every day there seems to be reason to tell them something I had forgotten to tell them earlier. He is very much alive in their hearts, but only as a memory of what they once had. When Michael and I had gotten married, he had expressed real worry about not being a good father. Just because I loved him didn’t guarantee the kids ever would. But I knew Michael would be a great father, mentor, adviser to the children I adored and he would grow to love. In the beginning, my love for Michael was all the more reason for the kids to detest him. The kids and Michael walked around each other unsure if they could trust. I had insisted that this would eventually work out, it just needed time. “Michael put the old ketchup in the new ketchup bottle. It’s disgusting and I won’t eat it. Thanks for bringing him here, now I don’t have any ketchup”, said one of the kids. “Kel, I told Dan and Tom to rake the yard and they haven’t moved from their room”, Michael looked at me desperate for how to handle my stubborn kids.
“Go punish them”, is all I said. Michael and I had agreed that once we had gotten married he had carte blanche with the children. I figured if I trusted him enough to marry him, then I certainly should trust him to punish the kids. And in fact I did trust him, completely with our children. The kids went from being ‘my children” to “our children”. Michael has never tried in any way shape or form to take Danny’s place. I am awe struck by how respectful he is to our kids and their need to continue their ties to their father. The kids need Danny to be a part of their lives. Michael is indeed their dad now, doing what their father no longer can. He has taught them to drive, taken them to school meetings, college tours, gone through job applications, found them car insurance, helped with their banking, held their hands when they needed it and kicked their butts when they needed that too. I have watched all of them grow together, talking on the phone, laughing watching a movie together, spending time with each other. When the kids need advice they go to their Michael. He will always be “Mike” to them, because the word “Dad” belonged to Danny, but Michael knows he is their father, too.
Although it is true you only get one father and one mother, you may find yourself with a few more parents than you ever thought possible. Families are based in love, not biology. Much to my dismay, there are lots of people who have fathers and mothers and no family. These men who show up every day, working jobs, teaching us what we need to know to survive in the world, they are so much more than shared flesh and bone. They are our Dads. For every man who stepped up for a child, who taught love and how to ride a bike, for every time they cleaned a scraped knee, held a nervous hand, regardless of blood type or DNA, this day is dedicated to you, thank you!
Happy Father’s Day to my dad and my beloved husband. Your love has taught me there is no greater gift.