What is it we want? What do we really want? There are many answers mulling through my head. The one at the forefront, however, and coincidentally, the scariest one, is "I don't know." See, you would suspect, that at my age, with three children, a college degree and, for the most part, stability in life, I would know.
I've had a song in my head for weeks, as I once in a while do, when I hear something that speaks profoundly. Or, in this case, sings it. J.J. Heller's "What Love Really Means" is the song. In the lyrics, she describes multiple situations when people are searching for the love that will make them feel whole. And as I listen to it, I wonder how many people there are, doing that very thing. I am one of them, to be sure.
It's not what you think. I'm not greedy or discontent. I even thought I knew what love really meant a couple times. I suppose the first time I was absolutely positive I knew was the moment I saw my first baby's little wrinkly red face. And then the second one, and the third. Perfect, innocent little reminders. Let's face it though, that's not the kind of love we're talking about. Or is it?
Is it romantic love we seek? Is it the excitement of a new love, a "Bad Romance" as Lady Gaga would say? A frightful yet exciting, thrill-seeking, emotional high? Note: Mom, that's for you. I will never lose the mental image of you making claw-like hands and singing "Love, love, love."
Is it the concept of a soulmate? The romantic in me still believes that soulmates exist; the cynic in me says "fuggetaboutit." I think, if they do, in fact, exist, the whole theory is reliant upon flexibility. Your soulmate might not come in the perfect package you envisioned. Which is why so few of us have found them: we are too jaded by the fantasy of perfection.
I listen to Don Moen's Sunday morning radio show on my way to teach the teen Sunday school class every week. I love the inspirational stories. I always, always cry. Because I believe, deep down, that these people who are sharing these amazing stories of love have something I don't, but I'm convinced that I'm thisclose to finding it. I remind myself about timing, constantly. It's not up to me. God can count the hairs on my head, how foolish am I to think that I can control timing? Don said he heard a quote, I forget from where, about searching for peace, love and contentment. The quote was something like "Are you searching? Join the masses who are, the people who feel the emptiness, like a vacuum, inside. The truth is, that's there for a reason, and can only be filled by God. When you give up on looking for tangible things, or even people, to fill the vacuum, and you realize that God's love for you is the greatest form of fulfillment there is, you will feel whole." So is that it? That's what J.J. Heller says in her lyrics: "You will love me, for me. Not for what I have done or for what I become."
So, it's God they're talking about. And I can jump on that bandwagon and agree, but it doesn't mean I've accepted it or invited it myself. It'd be hypocritical to say I have. I'm still among the masses of searchers.
Inevitably, it's a process, like anything else. Accepting God's love, filling that metaphoric vacuum, is likely the first step. Maybe even not so much a "first step" but rather, a pre-requisite to step-two: the mysterious human love we crave in our every day existence.
So I'd love to hear from anyone who can tell me what that means. What is the love you crave? Are you still writing bad romances, or are you "filling your vacuum" too?
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Salon
Beauty salons are very scary places to me. They are wonderful places, don't get me wrong. I can walk in with eyebrows mimicking Bert from Sesame Street and hair like the Mad Hatter, and "poof" I walk out looking like Eva Longoria. Or something like that. I mean, if I was Latina, perhaps. Bad analogy.
Anyway...
I went to the salon last Friday. I look forward to these trips more than some holidays, I think. First of all, I am alone. My loud children are left behind, to fend for themselves. Well, not really. But they sort of are, because I'm not sure what my husband does to really "hold down the fort." There are these sleek, red leather club chairs in the salon, that immediately make me feel stylish when I sit in them. One of the multi-colored hair girls behind the counter (it's a hip place, go with it)saunters over with a wine glass full of ice water and asks if I'd like anything else. I can barely whisper "no" because I am overwhelmed that I'm holding a real glass. I would browse through the hair style books, but I'm too busy gawking at all of the artwork, the colors, and listening to the easy chatter of hairstylists with their clients. I glance at the lady next to me, in the other red club chair, and she is oblivious to the things I am noticing. Her water glass sits untouched as she thumbs through a People magazine and checks her phone every 2 minutes. I decide that this must not be special for her. She does this all the time.
My hairstylist, Jenn, is a cute girl in her 20's, with a bubbly personality. She asks me questions about my family, and I answer, dutifully. She asks what "we're doing" today, as if I will be handed a pair of shears and invited to cut along. I say the same thing I usually say: "I'm still growing it. Just the ends, and trim up the bangs, I think." She nods and says she'll give me a stress relief. Stress relief? I expect a cart of Ben and Jerry's, Diet Pepsi, and a stack of Gerard Butler movies to appear. Instead she weirdly massages my head. And it feels nice, I suppose, but my hair is getting in my eyes and it reminds me of when my boys (yes, my boys) "style" my hair at home.
We head to the awkward, neck-paralysis sinks. She washes my hair with things that smell expensive and she chats about her dog, her husband, and what they're doing for Halloween, which, she mentions nonchalantly, includes a trip up north for a weekend party. She asks what we're doing, and I tell her, just staying home and trick-or-treating. As I say it, I realize it must sound lame. But to me, it's an excursion, because on any normal weekend, we do much less than even that.
I feel a little grateful when she starts the blow dryer, not because I don't like talking, but because I am running out of things to say. I wonder what my kids are doing. I wonder if I turned on the dryer.
This appointment, I also scheduled an eyebrow wax. I did this because I have shamefully let things get out of hand, and even the best tweezers couldn't bring me back. I need wax intervention.
I sit back in another paralysis-inducing chair as another jovial little elf-like gal comes to examine my mess. She says "Are we just shaping up?" and I giggle, thinking of how she's GOT to be trying to be polite.
"Divide and conquer," I tell her. She chuckles a tiny bit, but she has no idea what I mean.
As she leans over me, she apologizes that her scarf is falling into my face. I mutter some dismissive response, and she says "I hope it at least smells good. I sprayed it with perfume this morning. I always do, I would hate it if I smelled bad and I'm leaning over people all day."
I haven't gotten past the spraying of the scarf. People do that? I have never thought of it. I tell myself I am going home and spraying all of my scarves.
When they announce that I'm finished, I examine my red skin on my eyebrow area, but I'm not bothered, because at least I see skin. My hair is shiny and even, and I am secretly proud that I wore a skirt and tights, because now I'm "complete."
On the outside, anyway.
Look out, Eva.
Anyway...
I went to the salon last Friday. I look forward to these trips more than some holidays, I think. First of all, I am alone. My loud children are left behind, to fend for themselves. Well, not really. But they sort of are, because I'm not sure what my husband does to really "hold down the fort." There are these sleek, red leather club chairs in the salon, that immediately make me feel stylish when I sit in them. One of the multi-colored hair girls behind the counter (it's a hip place, go with it)saunters over with a wine glass full of ice water and asks if I'd like anything else. I can barely whisper "no" because I am overwhelmed that I'm holding a real glass. I would browse through the hair style books, but I'm too busy gawking at all of the artwork, the colors, and listening to the easy chatter of hairstylists with their clients. I glance at the lady next to me, in the other red club chair, and she is oblivious to the things I am noticing. Her water glass sits untouched as she thumbs through a People magazine and checks her phone every 2 minutes. I decide that this must not be special for her. She does this all the time.
My hairstylist, Jenn, is a cute girl in her 20's, with a bubbly personality. She asks me questions about my family, and I answer, dutifully. She asks what "we're doing" today, as if I will be handed a pair of shears and invited to cut along. I say the same thing I usually say: "I'm still growing it. Just the ends, and trim up the bangs, I think." She nods and says she'll give me a stress relief. Stress relief? I expect a cart of Ben and Jerry's, Diet Pepsi, and a stack of Gerard Butler movies to appear. Instead she weirdly massages my head. And it feels nice, I suppose, but my hair is getting in my eyes and it reminds me of when my boys (yes, my boys) "style" my hair at home.
We head to the awkward, neck-paralysis sinks. She washes my hair with things that smell expensive and she chats about her dog, her husband, and what they're doing for Halloween, which, she mentions nonchalantly, includes a trip up north for a weekend party. She asks what we're doing, and I tell her, just staying home and trick-or-treating. As I say it, I realize it must sound lame. But to me, it's an excursion, because on any normal weekend, we do much less than even that.
I feel a little grateful when she starts the blow dryer, not because I don't like talking, but because I am running out of things to say. I wonder what my kids are doing. I wonder if I turned on the dryer.
This appointment, I also scheduled an eyebrow wax. I did this because I have shamefully let things get out of hand, and even the best tweezers couldn't bring me back. I need wax intervention.
I sit back in another paralysis-inducing chair as another jovial little elf-like gal comes to examine my mess. She says "Are we just shaping up?" and I giggle, thinking of how she's GOT to be trying to be polite.
"Divide and conquer," I tell her. She chuckles a tiny bit, but she has no idea what I mean.
As she leans over me, she apologizes that her scarf is falling into my face. I mutter some dismissive response, and she says "I hope it at least smells good. I sprayed it with perfume this morning. I always do, I would hate it if I smelled bad and I'm leaning over people all day."
I haven't gotten past the spraying of the scarf. People do that? I have never thought of it. I tell myself I am going home and spraying all of my scarves.
When they announce that I'm finished, I examine my red skin on my eyebrow area, but I'm not bothered, because at least I see skin. My hair is shiny and even, and I am secretly proud that I wore a skirt and tights, because now I'm "complete."
On the outside, anyway.
Look out, Eva.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
A Patchwork of Thoughts Unspoken
It happened again last night, and it keeps happening. The feeling like I have rocks in my throat when I try to swallow. It waits until it's quiet, usually when I'm finally resting in bed. And my eyes burn. It's a weird "I'm about to cry" sensation, like I used to get when I was embarrassed as a little girl...but I don't cry. Instead, I think. Thinking is way worse than crying. Thinking leads to more thinking, which leads to things like...wishing...regret...but sometimes, something good happens. Sometimes thinking leads to prayer. I have, for as long as I can remember and even as a little girl, wondered what happens next. Beyond next as in the expectable "next up" situation. I mean next...in life. So I evaluate. I evaluate that I've had a weird past, which is not really weird to me, because I remember it all and I can piece it together just fine chronologically, but my life now is not anything like it used to be. And it's hard to show people the pieces of me that I used to be. It's like...people who meet me now wouldn't even know that the old me existed. And I'm oddly enough bothered by that. The other day, I was speaking of my life "pre-kids." Of the years I sold houses in Savannah. Of the time I was accosted in the project house down on MLK. How my hair was really blond, which is why the guy called me "Blondie," but how it didn't matter a minute later when I was spraying mace in his eyes. As I was telling it, I thought about how Sarge used to go with me everywhere. Never on a leash. Always happy, his dark brown fur a compliment to his dark brown eyes.He was my sidekick, I didn't imagine needing anything beyond his companionship. Even about how I didn't worry, after that incident on MLK...because soon after I began carrying a .38 special in a purse holster. And I even got a license to do that. Anyway, I think about that life, before...and then my life now...and I realize how generic my life must seem to those who don't know me "pre-kids, pre-Indiana, pre-proverbial-housewife." Which is even funnier since I'm dressing up as a 1950's housewife for Halloween, as if it is my inner desire to channel this June Cleaverish existence. So I wonder what's next. I wonder, to the point, apparently, of getting the rock-like sensation in my throat, which may mean, to some, that I'm worrying. And that'd be correct, too. I feel a little stuck in my current life. I don't know if there's any adventure left for me. Not that I need a purse holster to feel adventurous...but it's just that...there's more to me than this. Alas...just trust that even if I don't make sense to you...I do to me.
Additionally, to add to the patchwork mix of thoughts unspoken, I feel the need to touch on my son's progress in life. Isaac, in particular. I attended my first ever parent-teacher conference yesterday. It was enlightening, for sure. It's Kindergarten, people. I always think, when I see these moms who are so obsessed with their Kindergarten child's progress - Oh, Ian is soooo smart, he knows all of his sight words and all of his numbers to 200 and..."- that every kid catches up to the basics sooner or later, so don't go banking on a Nobel Prize. And then I see my kid's progress report. And I see this pattern. When it came to testing, he did awfully. He rushed. The teacher says to me "I actually watched him test. He looked at the computer screen for 2 painful minutes, and then spent the rest of the time plugging in answers, just to get done, because he obviously hated it." Isaac does what he wants. When he wants. Horrid, right? Well, here's the thing. When he wants to, he does amazing work. The stuff his teacher showed me that represented that situation was unreal. His artwork was somehow "deeper" than stick-figures and scribbles. It meant something. Like the one picture he drew of himself sitting on the ladder to the pool, Yukon (our sled dog) watching him from the deck box, and Jesus watching him from somewhere in the clouds. And when I pointed that out, he shrugged like it was nothing out-of-the ordinary, and said "Well, yeah." They were supposed to draw their favorite summer activity. Many kids drew themselves swimming. Isaac wasn't swimming. He was sitting on the ladder, looking at the water.
His answers to questions were thoughtful, imaginative. And, although his math testing scores were deplorable, his math work in the classroom was probably better than I would have done. He not only answered questions, but he drew images of "why" he came to certain conclusions. So, he puts on this hard-core, "I do what I want" front. He annoys people. Often me. People think I don't get it, maybe, that my kid is irritating. And then I think of my aforementioned "previous life" and it makes me wonder what this stage is in his life. Because I have seen, on numerous occasions, that this kid is exactly like me. I can only imagine that he will soon be able to harness his own wants and become more agreeable to being flexible with what other people want. I also know, however, that if you are not a flexible person, it is best to not allow many people in your "circle." Perhaps this is a thought for later years, though...so strike that.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that he's a kid, he needs to roll with the punches, right? Yeah...but he has a "previous life," too, when I think about it. In six years, he's moved 1100 miles,lived in 3 homes, he's lost his real dad to the Army-life, he's struggled with feeling like he has no dad, he's struggled with a step-dad, a little brother who can't identify with that situation because he was too little when it all happened, and now, a little sister who simply has no idea that his "previous life" existed. So, maybe he feels kind of like me. Minus the epic failure part, I hope. The only constant this kid has had is...me. Yeah, so, people say he should learn to roll with the punches. People, however, say that as a way of dismissing a situation. A situation too complex for them to take the time to think about. It would take too long. It's not their life. But, see...he's my kid, so I do think about it. And I blame myself, mostly, because I'm the one who kept shifting around and adding patches to this life-quilt, and son-of-a-gun if I'm not laying in bed at night, rocks in my throat, thinking of how I could change it again. I really wish foresight was 20/20, instead of hindsight.
Additionally, to add to the patchwork mix of thoughts unspoken, I feel the need to touch on my son's progress in life. Isaac, in particular. I attended my first ever parent-teacher conference yesterday. It was enlightening, for sure. It's Kindergarten, people. I always think, when I see these moms who are so obsessed with their Kindergarten child's progress - Oh, Ian is soooo smart, he knows all of his sight words and all of his numbers to 200 and..."- that every kid catches up to the basics sooner or later, so don't go banking on a Nobel Prize. And then I see my kid's progress report. And I see this pattern. When it came to testing, he did awfully. He rushed. The teacher says to me "I actually watched him test. He looked at the computer screen for 2 painful minutes, and then spent the rest of the time plugging in answers, just to get done, because he obviously hated it." Isaac does what he wants. When he wants. Horrid, right? Well, here's the thing. When he wants to, he does amazing work. The stuff his teacher showed me that represented that situation was unreal. His artwork was somehow "deeper" than stick-figures and scribbles. It meant something. Like the one picture he drew of himself sitting on the ladder to the pool, Yukon (our sled dog) watching him from the deck box, and Jesus watching him from somewhere in the clouds. And when I pointed that out, he shrugged like it was nothing out-of-the ordinary, and said "Well, yeah." They were supposed to draw their favorite summer activity. Many kids drew themselves swimming. Isaac wasn't swimming. He was sitting on the ladder, looking at the water.
His answers to questions were thoughtful, imaginative. And, although his math testing scores were deplorable, his math work in the classroom was probably better than I would have done. He not only answered questions, but he drew images of "why" he came to certain conclusions. So, he puts on this hard-core, "I do what I want" front. He annoys people. Often me. People think I don't get it, maybe, that my kid is irritating. And then I think of my aforementioned "previous life" and it makes me wonder what this stage is in his life. Because I have seen, on numerous occasions, that this kid is exactly like me. I can only imagine that he will soon be able to harness his own wants and become more agreeable to being flexible with what other people want. I also know, however, that if you are not a flexible person, it is best to not allow many people in your "circle." Perhaps this is a thought for later years, though...so strike that.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that he's a kid, he needs to roll with the punches, right? Yeah...but he has a "previous life," too, when I think about it. In six years, he's moved 1100 miles,lived in 3 homes, he's lost his real dad to the Army-life, he's struggled with feeling like he has no dad, he's struggled with a step-dad, a little brother who can't identify with that situation because he was too little when it all happened, and now, a little sister who simply has no idea that his "previous life" existed. So, maybe he feels kind of like me. Minus the epic failure part, I hope. The only constant this kid has had is...me. Yeah, so, people say he should learn to roll with the punches. People, however, say that as a way of dismissing a situation. A situation too complex for them to take the time to think about. It would take too long. It's not their life. But, see...he's my kid, so I do think about it. And I blame myself, mostly, because I'm the one who kept shifting around and adding patches to this life-quilt, and son-of-a-gun if I'm not laying in bed at night, rocks in my throat, thinking of how I could change it again. I really wish foresight was 20/20, instead of hindsight.
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