Oh, the plans that I have for our front yard! I know that a high-maintenance flower garden isn’t practical when small children are about, but someday it will be mine.

In the meantime I will settle (happily) for a lack of weeds a some semblance of form or purpose.

And with that in mind, I present - the beginnings of a rock wall. Booyah!

Patriotic holidays are hard for me. They have this nasty habit of ruining a perfectly good three day weekend and reminding me to think about our country - past, present, and future. For the most part this sort of thinking scares the crap out of me.

Being an American is such a tricky endeavor. I love this country. I really do. But I hate it, with the hate that only comes from love. I want to work for change and I want to run away and disavow any connection with anything American. This tension makes appropriate patriotic celebration legitimately difficult.

I saw a bumper sticker on the drive home from the beach. It had a picture of an American flag with the words “It wasn’t earned to be burned” next to it. Now, I know this may be a little nit-picky for some, but wasn’t freedom of speech one of the Top Ten Reasons America Is Cool? Oh, wait, I just checked, it’s number ONE on that list. So, if I may point out the obvious, the flag was just as much “earned to be burned” as it was earned so that people could have ridiculous bumper stickers plastered across their cars.

God bless us. Every one.

We joined the masses at the beach this weekend, honoring our fallen servicemen (and women) by planting our lazy asses in lawn chairs and getting that first sunburn of the season.

It was a great time of rest and play and hanging out with family. Andrew also learned the important lesson of why one should not run headlong in to the ocean without holding an adult’s hand. So the teaching opportunities were not wasted.

I’m so glad that summer is here! The rest of our pictures are up on flickr.

When I started this blog, I had a purpose. I wanted to open a venue for the truth about me. I wanted to have things in print so that I couldn’t change stories at will and argue someone away from their recollection of a situation. I was in the middle of upheaval and I wanted a place to sort things out and put them together.

I know I am not fixed – or actually anywhere close to fixed – but instead of sending me under my bed with a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, that knowledge allows me to take my mistakes in stride and continue on the journey. And while that sort of healthy thinking is great for my life and my family, it makes for some difficult blogging.

I have been introspective for so long that I don’t know what to write about when things are going okay. Or rather, I don’t think that my reports of daily life are all that compelling and I understand that most people don’t want to know what I ate for lunch today.

So the question becomes, what is the purpose of continuing to blog? Why am I still here?

Here are a few of my answers to that question:

I like writing. And although I harbor no dreams of “doing anything” with my writing, I still enjoy it and, if nothing else, my writings chronicle this time in my life, giving me and my family something to spark memories.

I still have shit that needs to be dealt with. I always will. And as that comes to the surface, this space allows me a place to air it out and keep it real.

I need something creative to do. I think that the necessity of a creative outlet is too often overlooked in our task-oriented world. Creating and working on something is essential for me mental health.

So maybe Jen is contagious. Or maybe the two years we spent in recovery together led people who are really quite similar to the same conclusions. Or maybe I’m just a copycat. But things are going to be a little different around here. I don’t know how that is going to look yet, whether it will be fewer posts, or more anecdotes and pictures, or more of the same just from a different perspective.

All I know is that the burning desire to spill my guts and sort through the mess is lessened. And I think that is a good thing.

PS – Did you notice my new masthead picture? It’s cheerful.

As Justin and I walked through our neighborhood last week he asked me again about my intense aversion to Rhododendrons. I know. I am a native of Washington State. But I hate those damn things, and my practical husband doesn’t understand why.

Finally, after some lame excuses about too many bees and plants that might eat my house, I hit on it.

“I need flowers that fairies could live in,” I said cautiously, bracing myself for the guffaw, “like lavender and foxglove.”

But the guffaw didn’t come, and after pointing out the immensely sensible but none too fanciful idea that a good sized Rhododendron could house entire numerous fairy apartment buildings (c’mon, there is nothing of dream-world in apartment living), he shrugged and did not try to talk me out of my whimsy.

I like that in a boy.

Yesterday, Andrew and I packed up and headed to the zoo. Apparently, so did every other school and daycare in a 30 mile radius. So we didn’t see too much because most of the exhibits were very crowded.

We did find a lone peacock though, and the boy was pleased.

Yeah, yeah… I’m late on my Mother’s Day post. I just spent two years learning how to ease up on myself, so I’m not going to worry about when this gets done.

This post made me cry. Big. Loud. Tears. Happy-Sad-Happy. You see, Andrew and I have a song too. It’s the same song that my mom sang to me when I was a kid, and for many of my adolescent years I mocked her for it. But I still know all the words.

I know a place where no one ever goes
There’s peace and quiet, beauty and repose
It’s hidden in a valley beside a mountain stream
Lying there beside that stream I find that I can dream
Only of things of beauty to the eye
Snow-peaked mountains towering in the sky
Now I know that God has made this world for me

One can imagine himself as in a dream
Climbing up a mountain or down a small ravine
The beauty of this peace and quiet ever more shall stay
To make this place a haven each and every day
Oh, how I wish we never had to leave
All my life this beauty to receive
Now I know that God has made this world for me

So give me the light of a campfire warm and bright
And give me some friends to sing with
I’ll be here all night
Love is for those who find it
I’ve found mine right here
Just you and me and the campfire
And the songs we love to hear

Having a song connects two people. I relax when my mom sings it. Even as a smart-ass teenager, I would feel the quiet come to me as I heard her humming in the other room. She sang it to Andrew when he was insane with the acid reflux because she didn’t know what else to do and while it may not have helped him, it gave me a place to rest. I heard it and relaxed at some internal, core level. After that, when I was sitting up with the screaming baby and The Crazy was out of control, I sang it through my own tears.

Now, when the worries of this life get to be too much for him, he climbs up in my lap and lays his head on my chest in the same spot that, two years and four months ago the nurse laid a little baby. He calms down, takes a deep breath, looks up at me with those unreal eyes and asks, “Do you want to sing I Know A Place?”

“Yes, buggy,” I say with a lump in my throat, “I do.”

It is supposed to be Justin’s day off, but he has a deadline next week and one of the speakers at church is broken, so it’s off to the job site for some measurements and then to church for some troubleshooting and muttered curses (I know, church doesn’t usually involve curses, but when there is a huge speaker suspended from the ceiling and no sound is coming out, thus introducing the possibility that the speaker might have to be taken down and sent off for repairs, a curse or two might be in order).

I went to bed last night feeling sorry for myself. I just want to hang out with my husband. Why does he have to work? Can’t someone else do it? This is his second Friday off in a row that he has worked.

whine. whine. bitch. moan.

But then …

I woke up before my alarm to a beautiful day and went for a walk before Andrew got up. HIP!
I turned over my compost pile (and trust me, there are few things sexier than fresh compost), and transplanted some plants. HIP!
I went to Costco, did our shopping, and shared a berry smoothie (or coldy as he calls them) with a little boy in froggy boots. HOORAY!

So I guess it is a good day after all.

I’m sure that somewhere, in that elusive parenting manual, it is written that when your son starts talking about pens and you can’t see what he’s doing you should go check on him.

If you don’t, you might find this:

It could have been much worse. It was, after all, a permanent marker.

Yesterday Jen and I packed up the kids and headed over to Ellensburg to visit our friend Heather and her family.

If Andrew can get over his fear of four-wheelers (or motorquads as he calls them), and of dogs, and horses, and chickens, and tractors, and lawnmowers, and mild chaos, he may have a career as a farmer in his future.

Seriously though, it was good for both of us to go somewhere that was such a challenge for him. We made it through the day without resorting to self-destruction or the destruction of one another and, once he stopped shrieking and clinging to me, we had an awesome time.

It was good.

And that is enough.

(all of the pictures are here)

I was worrying about my lack of comparative fitness while planning a hike with my comparatively more fit cousin.

She wrote back with the following:

You ARE tough. I know because I once hit you in the mouth with a baseball bat.

I thought she raised a very valid point and consequently felt better about myself for the remainder of the day - and beyond. And then I laughed because I had actually forgotten (repressed?) that particular childhood adventure.

As our two year journey of recovery came to an end a few weeks ago, I tried to make sense of the conflicting thoughts I had about it. For weeks I had been mentally absent from the group, short-timers syndrome, unacknowledged grief, and more than a small case of spring fever forcing me to check my watch and wonder when this would all be over. It felt like June during my senior year of high school.

I know that there is a healthy part of me that wants to look up and breathe, to walk away from the incessant naval-gazing and start enjoying the air and Life that surrounds me. There is an unhealthy part of me that wants to believe that, with the closing of a book, I am cured and can walk away and never see The Crazy again. I know that this is not true, but I still like to believe that it might be - I guess I am in denial. I think it was time for our group to be done with the material. I think the idea of keeping my babysitting arrangement for Thursday afternoons and using the time formerly spent in my group to write or walk is one of the healthiest ideas I have had in a long time. I think The Crazy will always be a part of me and that I will need to find another way to stay a couple of steps ahead of it, now that my group is done.

It is hard to end something when the ending is so much different than I expected. Throughout this process, there was a part of me that expected to wake up one morning, thin and cheerful, ready to face the world. I figured that when that happened, I was fixed. But here we are at the end and I am neither thin nor cheerful, in fact, I am in the middle of a phone anxiety issue (read: the thought of talking on the phone to someone makes me want to get under my bed and throw up) the likes of which I haven’t seen in years. Why? You ask. What happened? I don’t know. It is just a lingering part of The Crazy, keeping me on my toes. Naively, I thought that I would hand God a list of things to fix at the beginning of this process and come out with everything neatly crossed off. The things on my list were hardly touched though. Instead of tilling a small patch of earth and growing a few, choice fruits, I have undergone a complete plowing under and re-seeding. The journey was not a slight re-direction of certain habits, it was core of the earth, geologic upheaval. The entire terrain of my life has shifted and I need to learn to walk on these new paths.

I think that one of the most profound things we talked about during our last weekend together was the idea that we are never going to be fixed. Reaching the understanding that some wounds never fully heal and that some parts of life are fundamentally crappy, allows us to see that victory is not necessarily in utter conquest but in continuing to walk on the journey that we started.

I realized that the reason I was mentally disengaged is because I was trying to protect myself from the grief of an ending. After all, it is much easier to quit something that you are not invested in than it is to leave the only place in your life where you can put your soul out on the table and let others care for it, and for you. Diane wondered if we would ever again get together and touch souls? I can’t deal with that sort of question! So I laid my plans for withdrawal, build some walls and retreat, tucking my soul away to protect it from the possibility of more pain.

After my big grief revelation, I knew that I couldn’t let it end this way. But the grieving is hard. It hurts. I feel tender and bruised.

And on Thursday afternoons, while I sit by myself and write, I miss my girls.

You know, for a couple of introverts we can really pack a weekend with plans.

On Thursday night we went out to dinner at McMenamins and saw Nickel Creek in one of the coolest live performances we have ever seen. They played to a packed house (about 2000 people) but there was almost no production. No flashing lights, no video screens, just musicians and their instruments. And, in case you didn’t know, these kids can play. I mean, anyone who head-bangs with a mandolin is good with me.

Then, on Friday, we went to the Mariners game where not only did we have awesome seats thanks to Justin’s office, and we got to see Blake Lewis sing the national anthem (yes, I watch American Idol. So what?), we also saw the Mariners beat the hated Yankees. As a very profound banner stated, “A-Rod - $27 million, Giambi - $23 million, Jeter - $21 million, Yanks Sub .500 - Priceless”. It felt somehow wrong to me that the only game I had seen this year was at Yankee stadium, so it was good to set the world right again with a trip to Safeco Field.

On Saturday night we had some friends over for dinner and while the night was full of quality conversation and good laughs as Matt played trains with Andrew, it was still a night of people. And when it was done, we were tired.

The thing that extroverted people do not seem to understand about us introverts is that we have a limit to the amount of time we can spend with people. Even if they are people that we love and enjoy, we still need a break. I am a mild introvert, I need a little time each day to myself to recharge, but for the most part I like being around other people. Justin is hard-core. He needs a lot of time by himself and we often have arguments about the activities that we agree to do. (In fact, we are having one right now, so I’ll stop talking about it, lest I write something that is less than fair)

I know this post wasn’t very thought-provoking or purposeful, but I needed to decompress too. Maybe I’m more of an introvert than I claim.

I seem to have misplaced my instruction manual for grief. I’m sure I had it somewhere…. There’s no way that I would be expected to navigate this world without it, right?

No?

What’s that you say?

There’s no manual?

Are you sure?

Oh. Well, I guess that explains a few things.

Like how I could spend a week in New York with my grandmother’s sister and pass much of the time wondering why she was still here and my grandma was gone. Or how I could dismiss the thought of my high school reunion this summer because there are so many things I don’t want to think about again, all the while obsessively pouring through yearbooks and spending way too much time on MySpace trying to figure out what happened to some people. Or how I can’t listen to Romeo and Juliet without crying. Or how I could have spent the last month praying for my Recovery group to end only to realize that I was systematically building walls to push it away in an attempt to avoid feeling the loss of our time together.

To say that I don’t grieve well is an understatement. I don’t really know anyone who does. When I saw Anne Lamott speak some weeks ago, she talked about our society’s skewed view of grief. She said that we have an allotted time for legitimate grief (say, six months for an extended family member or a year for a spouse) and that after that time is up, we are expected to be healed. When we fail to meet the prescribed standards for grief, we make people uncomfortable and it becomes our responsibility to cover our emotions - as a public service of course. I run my grief through this matrix; first deciding whether or not my loss is “legitimate” and then making sure that I don’t make anyone else uncomfortable as I deal with my emotions.

Because of the major and fundamental flaws in this system, I never really allow myself to grieve the way my heart wants to. I have never had The Big Ugly Cry over my Grandma, or junior high, family and friends that have died, or the ending of a group that was so important. I could explain to you how some of those things are legitimate griefs and I am just waiting for the cry to come, while others are so ridiculous that I mock myself when I want to cry over them, but I’m guessing it is pretty obvious. Instead of just allowing myself to be me, I feel the need to justify my grief or hide it away.

One of the books I am reading, Captivating, talks about how important it is for us to grieve the things that pierce our hearts – no matter how trivial they seem. It reminds me that there is not a hierarchy of importance to life events, rather that the events in my life are important to me, because they happened to me. Things could always be worse, I understand that, but that does not diminish the magnitude of my experience. To do so would be selling myself short and believing the lie that my life is not significant or worthwhile.

“Grief helps to heal our heart. … Let the tears come. Get alone, get to your car or your bedroom or the shower and let the tears come. Let the tears come. It is the only kind thing to do for your woundedness. Allow yourself to feel again. And feel you will – many things. Anger. That’s okay. … Remorse. Of course you feel remorse … Fear. Yes, that makes sense. … Let it all out. … Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered. That’s not the way life was supposed to go. There are unwept tears down in there – the tears of a little girl who is lost and frightened. The tears of a teenage girl who’s been rejected and has no place to turn. The tears of a woman whose life has been hard and lonely and nothing close to her dreams. Let the tears come.” (p 102)

How do we miss that message? Why is there no room in our society’s view of grief for the understanding of its importance in acknowledging our worth as humans. I missed that lesson. I missed the idea that the things that wounded me mattered. I bought in to the lie that unless my wounds were ‘legitimate” I was being frivolous in my grief. And so I stuffed it farther down and told myself that I was not important enough to worry about.

I think it is important for me to remember that the goal in walking through this grief is to acknowledge it lest it keep popping up like a persistent toddler. This acknowledgment is not weakness, it is strength. Saying, yes, I see you. I hear you. I am not afraid of what you might do to me. I know that my life and worth are found elsewhere. But you are important. I need to hear what you would say. I respect you enough to hear you out. I respect myself enough to hear you out.

And then we let grief have its say.

So right now I am grieving. I am letting it be what it is and not trying to explain it away by calling it exhaustion or depression or feeling out-of-sorts. I am spending time with the things that wounded me and acknowledging that those wounds mattered, and then I am putting them down and reminding myself that those wounds do not define me. They were just things that happened to me and that Life - good, fun, beautiful - Life happens apart from those wounds.

It is baseball season. I miss my Grandma.

My friend Cherie and I decided to pack the kids up this morning and head over to the Mercer Island, where Cherie’s husband is busy tearing down a house.

Suffice it to say, Andrew enjoyed himself.

I think I need more hours in my days.

In my efforts to organize and effectively use my time I have set up a workable (read: slightly flexible) schedule for my week. But as the days get longer and sunnier I find myself wanting to be outside. And the thought of ironing when I could be at the park makes a part of me die just a little bit.

Unfortunately, it is now 8:30pm and I still have all these indoor chores to do. Justin has no clothes to wear to work tomorrow and the walk I was planning to take after Andrew went to bed is looking like a lost cause if I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Sometimes I forget that being a stay-at-home mom is work.

I want to go out and play.

The house I grew up in sold in less than 36 hours on the market. After 30 years in one place, my parents are going to move in two weeks. When these people decide to change they don’t screw around.

I supported my parents’ decision to sell from the start. The house, and especially the yard, is way too big for them and they spend way too much time and energy keeping it up. I watched them get stressed out every year when the time came to trim the hedge or start the spring maintenance on one of the three ponds. Everyone asks me how I am doing and I have to disappoint them and tell them that I am fine with the decision, that I support my parents’ quest to simplify.

I started to wonder why I wasn’t grieving this situation more, I wondered if I was just suppressing my feelings in an attempt to put on a happy face. I wondered why I wasn’t having the ‘normal’ reaction that everyone seemed to expect from me.

And then, on my way to my parents house the other day I drove past my high school baseball fields, and the boys were out playing in the sun and the dust was flying as they dragged the field before the game and it hit me, I will never have a reason to drive up that road again. And I started to cry.

The neighborhood that I grew up in wasn’t much, as neighborhoods go, but it was mine. Those were my parks, my sledding hills, and my lake to swim across because that is obviously the easiest way to get from Teri’s house to Katie’s house on a hot day. Those are my schools and my baseball fields and I will miss them.

I don’t have a lot of grief for the house; I’m too practical for that. But there are a lot of things I am going to miss.

I’m feeling Dickensian. Gloomy and dark. Lonely. Sad. The sky darkens outside and the rain pours down, while in the background my child begins to cry.

I look for joy and I find it in the most surprising places. Another mother remembers me at the playground and comments on how well Andrew is doing with the other children. Plans change and I have time for a nap while Andrew sleeps. My garden blooms and I can breathe.

I try to run from grief but it blocks my path. A season of fellowship and safe haven ends. Questions arise. Where do we go from here? The ending becomes real. Doubts creep in. I retreat. At first I try to retreat in health, in quietness and contemplation I search for answers and peace. But old habits are hard to break and when the peace is too hard to find, I reach for sugar. I am blindsided by a friend’s withdrawal. I mask my grief with anger and I harden my heart, giving myself over to bitterness and self-pity. I crawl behind my defense mechanisms and self-medicate.

A few weeks ago, I decided to seek some help in my journey toward physical health. My calloused heart felt no guilt lying to the server on the Weight Watchers website and I spent weeks ignoring their form-letter reminders to get back on track. I joined an actual meeting situation and am encouraged by the way my little, people-pleasing heart seeks to make my leaders proud of me. Sometimes peer-pressure is a good thing. But now, when the grief tears at my heart, I am confronted again with my utter dependence on food. I know that we need to see our wretchedness before we can seek to change, but all I see is this ugly, horrible neediness. In five short days of upheaval, I have fallen.

I wrote this on Wednesday, the low point of my week. Circumstances conspired so that I didn’t get a chance to post it until today (Friday) and an update is in order. My friend and I had a good talk on Thursday and have decided to push through the rough spots together. Real relationships are so hard. I wonder where I ever got the idea that these things came naturally to my treacherous heart. The idea that any relationship worth having is going to require a lot of hard work is something that I hear a lot. What I don’t hear is the actual working-out of that process. I don’t see too many people who are fighting tooth and nail to make a relationship last. So when the time comes for me to do that, whether in a friendship or my marriage, I am always caught off guard.

I am tired and wrung-out. I need inspiration. I need to hear the hero’s anthem as Rocky climbs the courthouse steps. I need to see the bigger picture as the camera pans out over the crowds at Gondor and the little Hobbits are honored by a King. I need to read the story of a ne’er-do-well orphan who makes his way in the world despite all odds.

I’m rooting for the scrappy underdog.

Today was my first Thursday without my Recovery group.

I decided to pull a Jen and take my laptop over to a coffee shop for some dedicated writing time. And then I realized that the three intense drafts I have started are saved online. And that I don’t have an internet connection in this location.

So now I am slightly pissed (because I HATE disorganization, especially in myself) and feeling a bit lost. I guess it’s a good thing I brought my book.

Give me a few weeks and this Thursday thing will be awesome.