Getting Through the Night

It's Halloween night and I can honestly say, I brilliantly ignored it. I didn't carve one pumpkin or pass out one piece of candy and I am grateful for the opportunity. This was definitely not my preferred behavior on this night. Embracing Halloween and celebrating all things ghoulish is my norm, but with everyone gone from the house, all I wanted for this night was that it pass quietly and it did.

I ignored the night that usually brings me such joy because we are not in a "normal" place. All I wanted from tonight was to get through it without feeling incredibly sad and focusing on the loss. Last night I made a plan of how I would spend the entire day and night alone. I made my to-do list and decided to actively ignore the obvious. No sense making myself feel bad about something I and my family had no control over.

One of my to-do's was to go to the drug store and get a loofah. It would get me out of the house and I would not be spending money I don't have. I took a shower, dried my hair, grabbed my purse and drove to the store. I searched quickly through the store to find my purchase, in order not to hear the giggling kids picking up last minute Halloween items. I walked to the register and stood in line absently looking at the woman behind the counter. She looked so familiar. I couldn't place her face, but I was certain I had seen her before somewhere else. My turn was next and I gave her my card to scan and she told me the total as I dug through my very sloppy purse for the money.

"Sorry I am taking so long", I muttered, "I am having one of those days, well actually one of those weeks." And I laughed in spite of myself.

"I am having one of those years," the clerk said to me rather wide eyed. "I feel you,"I responded. "No, really," she said. "Not like this one."

I stopped what I was doing and looked at her. I wanted to really see her face. I knew I would regret it if I didn't look at her and see what she was trying to tell me. She looked down in embarrassment, possibly thinking she may have said too much. "Trust me whatever it is,' I said, " I have probably gone through it." I smiled directly at her. My eyes told her to go ahead and tell the complete stranger what it is that has her so sad. The invitation was there and as open as an upward palm.

It turns out she returned to work after years of being some one's wife because her husband left her. She is barely getting through the days that stretch out before, because she no longer knows if there is any good to come her way. I watched, I listened, I empathized. I told her I had written a book about what she was feeling, the isolating loneliness, the depressing idea of waiting for every shoe to drop directly on my head, the saying,"it can't get any worse", then watching my life implode from all the worse. I told her I would bring her the book, so she could see she is not alone and yes, Virginia, there is happiness after all the terror. I told her about my manfriend, Michael, and how kind he is. She said, "To you? My husband was nice to everybody else, but not me." I looked at the sorrow in her eyes and I made sure she got the importance of what I was saying to her,"Especially to me, mostly to me. He puts me first." I heard a small gasp come from her lips. I knew exactly what she was thinking. I had been her. She struggled to believe that such a man could exist. I leaned in and told her, "Be grateful you got free. There is so much more out there than some stupid guy who can't see who you really are." I promised to bring her my book, so she could see she is not alone. I promised her there is happiness after all the pain. I reminded her to be grateful for what is, even when what is feels like crap.

I left that store knowing that I had just witnessed horrors far beyond anything special effects could drum up for my favorite holiday. I left feeling that I was supposed to be there, spreading hope to one very discouraged woman, working at a drug store. I was exactly where I was supposed to be in that very moment. I felt so grateful to my core that my day allowed for me to be there for a person who needed the smallest amount of reassurance. Tomorrow I will go back up to the store and see if she is there and give her a copy of my book. I will let her know that there are many of us who have been crushed and have been resurrected from the ashes like the phoenix, to become better, stronger and happier people.

Here's what I know for sure- I know the biggest reason I wrote my book and will continue to write, is for that woman in the drug store and every man, woman, and child who feels like they are completely alone in there tragedies and sorrow.

We are all in this together. I believe my job is to let everybody know.

I am not a Pumpkin Head

I love, love, love Halloween. Orange is one my favorite colors and everybody looks good in black, so what is not to love? Usually this time of year I am setting up the yard for the trick-or-treaters. Ghosts are placed, tomb stones cover the yard, gallons of fake blood are dripped over the scene, and motion sensor goblins are screaming into the dark. I have black lights, strobe lights and sound effects that can be heard down the street. I spend hours and hours covering every tree and bush with cob webs. Dead bodies stick out trash cans and shrubs, skeletons are hung, and jack-o-lanterns are carved. By now all the heavy lifting is done and I would spend the evenings admiring my handy work. But not this year.

Because of life or something like it, I just don't have the time to celebrate Halloween like I normally do. The kids will all be away, and I don't have the time or the energy to do it. I am usually picking cobwebs off of plants well into the Christmas season. The thought of more work on top of my already very full plate has caused me to opt out this year. I am not even sure I will turn on the light this year. I guess, it is just as well the kids get used to us being gone from this house. Next year we, hopefully, will be decorating our new house with all my gory guys.

I am leaving a window open for me to do some last minute decorating if I have a change of heart. Although, I seriously doubt that will happen, you just never know. I am a little sad and a more relieved that I don't have to lug around heavy containers filled to the brim, trying to change every inch of our landscape. With all the other house stuff going on, instead of fun, it just sounds exhausting.

The good news is on November 1st, I will be enjoying a lovely Sunday, rather than peeling guts off of trees. I will miss not having Halloween around the house this year, but I knew the day was coming when all the kids would be gone and I would have to decide if it was worth the effort without them here. Right now, it's not. For me, this is more about watching my little ones fly the coop. I had a really good run with my kids. I celebrated holidays fully, cooked for hours and sewed costumes well into the night. Every time I think of them at Halloween, I laugh. We all had a great time. I thought originally it was celebrating Halloween I missed, but it turned out what I missed was celebrating with my kids.

Next year I will be back at decorating our new house from stem to stern with every type of scary Halloween ghost I can find, buying candy, smearing blood and staging dead bodies.

Next year, when things settle down, I will do it just for me.

Happy Halloween!

The Feeling of Falling

It's raining, a steady down pour of large droplets in constant rhythm, just outside my window. I listen to the big kurplunks and soft tinklings of the water as it hits the concrete pool deck. In my mind it is no different from being in Ohio in the fall, during the chilly, rainy days that had me wearing sweaters and sipping hot tea in the afternoon in front of a fire in our family room. But here, it is most definitely different, since the rain is warm and the air is thick and muggy, a balmy 80 degrees, a sign that summer is still very much a part of our landscape in the south. The trees are lush and green and the tropical flowers continue to bloom. Fall here in Houston is merely a fading of color rather than the brilliant changes I used to know back home.

I miss home and my family so much I ache, right now. Like clock work, every fall, I begin pining for home and the smells and sights I loved so very much. I get lost in the memories of the falls where the leaves crackle beneath my feet, the sweet smell of apple orchards hung in the air and the the leaves turned red, yellow and orange as a way to warm the palette of the woods. I miss walking through the woods in the long stretches of parks that smelled of pine as I snuggled deeper into my sweater or sweatshirt and holding hands with my beloved Michael. I miss the smell of burning wood, the smokey embers glowing in our fireplace as I made soups, pies and breads in the kitchen filling the house with delicious and spicy aromas. I miss the season of richness. Fall has always been my favorite season. The one season I was most comfortable in my own skin.

I felt weepy yesterday, as I ran my errands and went to the superstore to pick up the odd assortment of items we needed. As I walked the isles every where I turned there were signs of fall in the store. I could purchase my leaves in assorted colors if I chose to do so. Ceramic pumpkins, soup tureens and table cloths were displayed in brilliant hues of burgundy, burnt orange and amber. I stood in front of the displays for the longest time, breathing deep the pot pouri that sat out, smelling of ripe apples. It's the closest thing I can get that is the most like home. I admit that I felt a little pathetic wallowing in fake leaves and canned smells. But my deep sense of mourning I feel every fall was weighing heavy on me and I felt fortunate to have the reprieve.

I am packing up some of our belongings we won't be using until we find another house. I have given away box after box of things that no longer serve a purpose here and given it to charity. Room by room, I sift through every item and remind myself to let go of what isn't NECESSARY. The house we will move into will be so much smaller than what we have room for now. I have to let go and get rid of so much stuff. We will have to live simpler, smaller, adapting to less. This very process is the exact opposite of what fall has come to be for me. Fall for me was a time of bounty. Crops came in, trees bore fruit, food was pinnacle in celebrating before the snow began to fly. This year it is me saying goodbye to my home one unnecessary chachki at a time. The season, the job I was doing and the family reunion I was unable to attend, all made me weepy.

At the store I bought pumpkin spice candles to manufacture the smells I long for. I bought things to hang on the front door that look like leaves and dried pine cones. Guilty of bringing in stuff in a time when I am supposed to be weeding out stuff, I regretted my purchases for a moment. The monetary part was next to nothing, but dragging in more stuff was not my brightest idea. Except, it did and does make me feel better every time I see it. It looks like fall, even if it did come packaged up shrink wrap plastic and a price tag. It was almost like those Visa commercials. Wreath-$10, Pumpkin spice candle_$5, being grateful that I have a family, friends and hometown that still makes me cry-priceless.

No News Is Good News

I am off the news for a while. Usually I am a news junkie. I flip between news stations like the character "Tommy" by the Who. I watch everything from financial to social shows absorbing in as much data as I can. I read the news, go to political sites on the web and try and keep up on C-SPAN. But no more, not for a very long while, I fear. I may be stricken down with the "I can't believe my eyes and ears" syndrome After seeing all the horrendous stuff about businesses we bailed out, missing children, incestuous relationships with fathers, children murdered in cold blood by their mothers and Congress, well, to be quite honest, I believe it may have weakened my heart. As in the olden days I decided to take to my bed and try to sleep my way out of this. I stayed there approximately 10 minutes before the family asked what was for dinner. Though the 10 minutes did my heart good, I had to get up and get on with it. There was no time to ween myself off of all the goings on in America.I had to act quickly if I was going to save myself, so I cut it off cold turkey. My original thought was to only watch things like Entertainment Tonight, but then there was all the coverage of that terrible divorcing couple and their eight kids who are caught in the middle. Nope, it was going to have to be a complete blackout for me. I have decided in order to insure my sanity and a retain a modicum of hope I will read my little town paper and that is all for now.

I have no idea when I will go back to my Brian Williams and his sexy, soothing voice. He's my news junkie's eye candy. Gone is Anderson Cooper, a girl's best friend. So long Ryan Seacrest and your ridiculously perfect hair. I am not even going to tune in to the weather channel anymore. It's all too much.

I miss Walter Cronkite so much I could weep. I grew up with him and David Brinkley. They came on at 6 pm and delivered the news in an objective, professional manner. They said what had to be said and disappeared into the night as quietly as they had come in. They sugar coated nothing and fact checked everything. They didn't suck all the oxygen out of the room like the news today. I feel no better knowing everything than I did growing up knowing only what was reported at 6. In fact, now I feel overwhelmed and exhausted by what is considered to be news these days.

This is not a negative for me. I plan on looking at it like a fast of sorts. I will do this cleanse and come out on the other side and see how I feel. Chances are very good that my Brian Williams will be back on my screen within the month. The rest? I will probably have to do some purging and let that go. My newly uncluttered mind may actually be able to come up with some new opinions and original thoughts.

About every 6 months I write about not watching the telly so much and doing things differently. This time I think I mean it. I believe I have turned a corner here. Today I have already been up for hours and the TV remains off. My goal is to not watch any today and tomorrow take one hour at a time. The withdrawal may cause me to crave the Internet, but I am going to keep myself down to the bare minimum on that, too.

It's fall here in Houston and cooler weather is right around the corner. My only news for the next few months will be what the neighbors have to say and the football scores for our high school. If anyone feels there is something dire I need to know, send it in a letter or email to me. Otherwise, all this ignorant soul will know is bliss.

First Impressions

One of my kids has a professional mentor I had the opportunity to meet. My child was excited and I was a little nervous. I was at a book signing and I had my smiling author face on, partly because it's the polite thing to do and partly because I have every reason to smile when I am signing books. I met this person and talked to them for about fifteen minutes. I thought it went well. Turns out I was wrong. Not a little wrong, like when I think it's Tuesday and it's really Wednesday, but all out dead wrong. The mentor thought of me as a weak housewife who had nothing better to do than write a book. The mentor mentioned to my child that they were unsure if I was someone they could depend on. My child mentioned to me their dismay about the meeting and thought it was all crap. My first impression turned out to be disastrous.
My reaction? I laughed. A fifteen minute conversation hardly determines who I am, no matter who I might be meeting. Let's face it, if I had been in the grocery store frazzled and pressed for time I might have been considered mean spirited. Catch me outside looking at my front yard and you might not know that the inside of my house is completely torn apart, but you would definitely notice my rumpled, paint splattered clothes. Maybe you would think I didn't care about my appearance. maybe you'd think I was a crazy artist type. Catch me in the hardware store and maybe you'd think I was a complete idiot, because half the time I can't remember why I went there to begin with.
I tell my kids all the time, "You determine your worth." I say that because it's true. No one gets to tell me who and what I am. Only I get to know all of me and my motivation, well, me and God. My child feeling the unfairness of the judgement, was upset by the reaction of the person she respects professionally. I told her to let it go. It doesn't matter whether that person thinks I am a boob. In the end the mentor doesn't know me or my child's relationship to me. They don't know what goes on behind closed doors and late night phone conversations.
I thought it was funny that out of all the things that were said that day, the mentor took only the negative away from it. Such is life. I can't change the way they view me or what they think they know. I can go on being me and hope for their sake they are more careful about being judge, jury and executioner next time they meet someone. Judging too quick no matter what the situation is usually hazardous.
I could, I suppose, ponder the implications of what I may have done to create such an impression. I could spend my days evaluating my posture, tone and language. I could pick apart every move I made that day, in order to possibly better my next first impression. Or I could forget it and keep trying to be the best me I can, knowing that perfect is not optional. I am going for the latter choice. I am not sweating this. I feel bad for my child and how disappointed they are, but in retrospect I wouldn't change a thing. That day was a good day for me. I harbor no resentment to the person who judged me rather harshly in a short time, but rather feel the connection only through my child. What they think of me is unimportant. What I want is for them to see, really see my child for all the brilliance and talent they have. That does seem to be the case, so as far as I am concerned everything is a success.
Obviously, I haven't forgotten it, yet, but I am sure I will the next time I am standing in the hardware store frantically trying to remember why I am there.

Wow! What a Week!

I made the local paper on Wednesday with this incredibly beautiful article by a lovely woman named Trilla Cook. http://http//www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=8317 When I got the paper I noticed my head was huge. My picture was about 4 inches long and in newspaper speak that is indeed giant. She compared me to my lifelong idol Erma Bombeck and noted that we were both from Ohio. Having my name even in the same sentence as Mrs. Bombeck brought me to tears. I read every one of her books. Watched the movies that were made from her books and followed her articles in the newspaper as if they were a map to maturity. I adored all of her work and followed her every move professionally. If she was on a talk show, I watched. I listened as she used her quick wit to tell a story, recall a memory or spin a yarn. I found her fascinating. Actually, I still do. I had dreamed long ago of meeting her in person one day, just to be close enough that her incredible intellect might rub off just a little. I unfortunately, was not that lucky. My luck, good fortune or blessing has come now in the form of the ultimate compliment.

I was checking out Amazon.com to see if I had sold anymore books. I used to check everyday, until I realized I had become obsessive/compulsive about the sales rank and used it to injure myself as if I were a cutter. You can't un-ring a bell, so once the realization set in that it might not be the healthiest thing for me to check everyday, I backed off to once a week. The article came out this week so I gave myself permission to peek at the sales ranking. While I was on my book's page I noticed that I had another review. I braced myself for what I always worry will be my first bad review. Happily, I noticed the review was comprised of five stars. Immediately I looked to see which family member had gone on to keep my reviews in "perfect" order. I was reviewed by the Midwest Book Review, a group I queried months ago to review the book. I sat and screamed, stunned that a professional reviewer thought my book was worth five out of five stars. The review was very complimentary without being over the top. I had a great review from a professional.

Covered in paint with my hair firmly glued to my head, I laughed out loud at the great fortune I was having professionally, and the disgusting way I looked ( and unfortunately, smelled) personally. Still working diligently on the house in order to get it all sparkling new, I have forgone any concern for my appearance and just keep working day after day painting, replacing and remodeling. I have indeed, a glamorous life. I stay grateful for the able body and the knowledge of home improvement, to do what needs to be done. I may not be pretty right now, but I am very functional and that is what counts these days.

I have had a wonderful week of joy and surprises. It's such a nice life. Paint splattered or not I wouldn't change a thing.