Teacher's Pet

My eyes seek the source of the jack-hammer laughter assaulting my ears and blocking the instructor's words. This is a small room, so the search is short. 

The woman sits front row center. She's laughing so hard her face is the same burgundy color as her over-stretched T-shirt. The instructor's story about wolverines is not that funny. It wasn't even that funny the first time he told it. It's definitely not so funny now in the third or fourth or fifth telling. It will be teeth-grinding material by the end of class. 

But she barks out delight as though her life depends on it.

This writing workshop has turned out to be a lecture class. Fourteen of us sit in two rows facing the instructor (a Kenny-Rogers-before-plastic-surgery look-alike) who stands behind a lectern. He delivers words of wisdom and tells stale jokes. We take notes. We are all writers defined by distinctly different criteria with little to bond us beyond the act of writing itself and our presence in this tired hotel space. 

The woman has a clear need to be teacher's pet. I know this because it was not very long ago that I might have occupied her seat. As a veteran teacher-pleaser, I recognize the signs. As it is today, I sit with Kari at the far right of the back row, with no interest in pet status. I am not so far grown out of  that need, however, that I can study her without squirming a bit.

She's a romance writer. Her book is about an older married woman who falls in love and has an affair with a younger male celebrity. If I were to judge this book by her cover, the only romance in her life, past or present, is this story.

Her hands are beautiful - hand  model material. Graceful with long tapered fingers ending in perfect unpolished ovals. Pale, unblemished, young.

I might not have noticed them except for their sharp contrast with the rest of her. 

Limp, dull brown hair - straight bangs offer the only hint of style. Thick-lensed glasses nearly obscuring small but startlingly blue eyes (Was she called four-eyes, or worse, as a child?). Wide nostrils (Was she called piggy as a child?). Two front teeth are much whiter and larger than the rest, outsized only by her even thicker gumline (Was she called bucky beaver?).

Full lips that might be pretty, but are not. No makeup. No jewelry except for a genderless watch. Ears have never been pierced.  The beginnings of middle-age jowls forming corners at the bottom of her face.

Overweight and lumpy - her profile is folded arms and two rolls of fat, one of which turns out to be her breasts.

It's as if she's been told so often what she's not, that she stopped trying  to be anything at all. 

Except a writer, whose work she believes can define her far better than her appearance. And a teacher's pet - hanging on his every word, laughing wildly and flipping her hair when he turns his attention to her, never once taking her eyes from his face. And a member of this strange tribe gathered for a few hours in a tacky hotel meeting room seeking a certain kind of truth.

While I don't know her specific story, I do recognize the wounds and the armor with which she protects herself. If she can only show the teacher how sincere she is, how committed to her craft, how intuned to him she is, then surely his kind and mildly flirty attention is proof of her worth. If she can laugh with such wild  whole-hearted abandon in this group of strangers, then surely she belongs and maybe it even means she's happy. 

If only she could know that beauty more glorious and brilliant than she can imagine rests inside her imprisoned heart, just waiting to be released. From the sisterhood of teachers' pets, I offer her prayers of healing love.

 

photo from Flickr

Down the Road

Two years ago, on a Friday much like this, I was in the middle of a regular winter school day so nervous and excited that all I really remember about the day is the raw energy. I left school that afternoon and headed for Portland for a writing workshop, my first ever,  with a New York Times bestselling author. 

By the time I arrived at the beautiful home of our hostess I was so terrified I could hardly breathe. What did I think I was doing? Who did I think I was? How long would it take for them to tell me I didn't really belong in a group of women who called themselves writers and seekers of truth and believers in love?

As it turns out, that weekend changed the course of my life forever. Such a dramatic and cliched thing to say, yet as true as anything can possibly be. 

In the two years that followed that first act of facing-the-dragon bravery much has happened:

Two more powerful retreat/workshops, this blog, and the development of relationships both real and virtual with women whom I consider sisters and for whom I would do anything.

I wrote a book. God Has No Daughters took the better part of the two years to be born, but she is real. The healing that's resulted from writing about my young adult decade in a small Bible based cult, and revealing my longing for daughterhood and motherhood, has been deep and continues even now.

I decided to stay in my marriage of 22 years after spending most of it thinking I would have to leave in order to be whole. It turns out that a choice made decades ago for needs that no longer exist can still be the right one. It turns out that being loved completely and without reservation is a gift I can receive safely. It turns out that my heart is wiser than I give her credit for.

I gave up a potential career as an educational administrator after three years of classes, thousands of dollars, and a change of districts that would have allowed me to intern and become a principal. I knowingly turned away from the status, the income and the power - things I had spent my life believing I needed in order to matter.

Today I'm getting ready to head to another workshop. This time I took the day off. I travel with a completed manuscript to work on, my lovely laptop, and a dear friend whom I met at the first workshop two years ago. I'm excited in that first-day-of-school way - the possibilities unfurl before  me in a bright ribbon of hope.

It turns out I am one of those women: a writer, a seeker of truth, a believer in love. This path is home in a way no path has been before. Let me head on up the road and find what's around the next bend. Thank you for traveling with me.

photo from Flickr

Life Without Error

Last week these Mary Oliver words from her book, The Leaf and the Cloud, attached themselves to my consciousness:

"The dragonfly lives its life without a single error. . . ."

A simple insect. Beautiful and evocative of amazing symbolism. Sublimely unaware of the many metaphors born from its being.

A simple insect, whose life consists primarily of feeding and reproducing. At no time does it concern itself with whether it's enough, or whether it's eating the right kind of mosquito, or whether its mate is communicating enough. It does exactly as its meant to do without any concept of error. 

Yet it appears so extraordinary to humans, who question everything, that we've given it great meaning. We look to it for answers, for comfort, for the wisdom of the ages. The dragonfly existed before dinosaurs and in that time of outsized life was the largest insect to ever have existed. Maybe those credentials are enough to warrant the faith we place in its appearance in our lives. 

Its adaptability is surely a model worth looking at. I doubt that at any time did a dragonfly think tank get together and decide that the species needed to fly faster, change colors or become smaller in order to survive. Dragonflies have lived life without error for eons. Because it's all they can do.

A simple insect which stands for so much: spiritual maturity, reflection of light, the power of light, balance, joy, the souls of the dead. The dragonfly inhabits two worlds, water and air. Born in water, moving to air, but never far from its birthplace. It finds its power and full color in the warmth and light of summer.

One legend tells of dragonflies darning closed the lips of those who lie. So, in a way, this perfect insect is also the keeper of truth.

A life of sunlight and endless sky with water for ground. A life of color and dancing and unconscious importance. A life lived without error. 

A simple insect.

photo from Flickr

Blueberry Yogurt

Oddly, I'm nostalgic, in a deep longing sort of way, for blueberry yogurt. I first became aware of this wistful yearning a few weeks ago as I was stirring my morning carton of  fruit-on-the-bottom fat-free Cascade Fresh blueberry yogurt. Something in the way the sweet pungency hit my brain took me back to late adolescence/early adulthood - the time when yogurt and I first became friends.

In the late sixties and early seventies of Northern Idaho and Spokane, eating yogurt was something those damned hippies did. I loved the outlaw aspect of being a yogurt eater, but I also fell in love with the flavor and the texture and how whole and healthy I felt afterwards.

Yogurt was simpler then. Not so many choices. Not so sweet. Not so fancy. The fruit was fruitier. The yogurt more sour. And thicker. 

In my early yogurt days I was on the verge of stepping into the world. I had my whole life in front of me. Limitless possibilities. Possibilities that I discovered I couldn't follow because the cost, my family's approval and acceptance, was too high. 

As a senior in high school, with the help of the girls' counselor who also happened to be my best friend's mom, I was accepted by a small prestigious private college. She helped me get grants and scholarships to pay the tuition. My parents wanted me to go to a community college so I'd be closer to home. When they found out about my decision to go away to a four year college, they were furious. And betrayed. And disappointed.

They and my brothers drove me in the family rambler station wagon to school the September of my freshman year. The two hours it took us to get from home to school were silent. While I had longed for years to be away from them, to be finally free, their driving away from me on that beautiful fall day felt like banishment.

And so I failed. Spectacularly. Repeatedly. To prove to them that I really did need them.

Oddly, I remember finding comfort in yogurt during those years. The healthy normality of it in complete defiance of my family's tastes and values. There were many stretches of time when yogurt was all I ate. A diet of only yogurt when you're twenty-something is a great way to save money and to lose weight and not feel deprived.

I also found comfort in a wide range of less healthy pursuits. All of which ultimately left me feeling even more empty than I had before.

I joined a cult to fill the emptiness. That didn't work either. During that decade, yogurt became the food that no one in the group except me liked. That give it the power to make me special. It became something that no one could take from me. 

When I couldn't take the loneliness and pain any more, I left the cult. And became respectable. Married a good man with a stable job who loved me (and still does). Became a teacher. Bought a house. Got a dog and a cat. Spent holidays with families. Found a brilliant therapist. Ate yogurt for breakfast with wheat germ mixed in.

I thought for a long time that I was fixed. That life was exactly as I had always wanted. It's turning out not to be the case. 

Like the recently remembered pungency of my first yogurt, the unrealized possibilities of those early years have surfaced again. With no small amount of insistent nudging. I buried a huge part of myself in my attempts to regain my parents' approval. I buried a huge part of myself to make myself acceptable to God when I joined the cult. I buried a huge part of myself to become a respectable good-girl wife and teacher.

All of those buried parts are pushing against the surface of my heart like the crocuses just under the frosted ground in my garden.

To let them out, I need to take a step away from what I think I'm supposed to be doing.  I need to take a step in the direction of my heart's urging. This step will mean leaving the security of a significant part of my respectable life behind. It will mean trusting in my own abilities. It will mean trusting that I don't have to do everything alone - because I can't. It will mean believing in something improbable and currently unknowable.

I am nearly frozen with fear. Sitting still in stale security. Flying forward to freedom. The choice, put like that, is simple. Except for the choke-hold of terror that wakes me in the dead of night and makes me gasp for air in the middle of a random conversation. 

If I have been able to trust in the steadfastness of yogurt all of these years, should I not also be able to trust in the rightness of my being and the gentle voice of my heart?

photo from Flickr

Love in a Cook Book

My mom did not know how to cook when she married. She used to tell stories about Daddy teaching her how to boil water and how to cook hamburger.  I could hear her newlywed desire to please her husband in those stories. I could also hear her satisfaction in the self-sufficiency that drove her to bake bread and butcher her own chickens in the early days of her marriage.

Four children, the grueling work of running a dairy, and the disappointments of life with a man who didn't know how to love, drove all the romance out of cooking (and most everything else) for her. Surviving her life became all she could do. Self-sufficiency was no longer a point of pride. There was no other choice. Nurturing, parenting, loving - all got short shrift - which meant that so did her kids. 

But we were fed well. And because she didn't have a natural affinity for food and its preparation, she relied on cookbooks. She had three. One was a huge binder filled with booklets, each on a different topic, with the impressive title, The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedia of Cooking and Homemaking. Another was Elsie's Cook Book, Tested Recipes of Every Variety by Elsie the Cow. The third was Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book.

I have all three. 

I acquired them after we moved Mom into Assisted Living a few years ago and I was closing out her house. I had always wanted them, and hoped that they would be passed on to me in an act of love and  sharing. There was no final reconciliation between us, and so I had to satisfy myself with  possession and with the sweet memories held in the pages of the books. 

I love to cook. I don't remember learning to cook. I just always have. Mom was happy to turn as much of that job over to me as I could handle. So as soon as I could reach the stove at seven or eight, I was in charge of the nightly potatoes. Chocolate chip cookies became an early specialty, as did spaghetti. I played with spices and combinations and flavors. My failures were tolerated. My successes encouraged and praised.

Cooking was something I could do to please. Something that came easily. The only other thing besides reading and writing where I could lose myself and find myself at the same time.

So the cook books came to represent all of that to me. And in that, to represent what little love and approval I was able to experience with  my mom. 

This fall, I pulled the battered, stained and frayed Betty Crocker out of my cupboard when I decided to bake cherry pie for Thanksgiving. It's one of the few times in all the years those cook books have lived in my cupboard that I sought one out to actually use. It was so satisfying that Betty, and my mom's food-stuck pages, became my primary source for Christmas cooking this year.

For the first time since my mom's dementia removed any hope of our being adult friends, I felt close to her. As I followed the recipes in her cook book, the losses of my childhood no longer had the power to wound. The expected tooth-ache longing for her approval never did appear. The satisfaction of creating food that once nourished our bodies and our relationship was enough. I love that Betty Crocker cook book. I love my mom. I love that I can, finally and simply, love the woman whose recipes I use to enrich my life.

photos from Flickr

Magi Gifts

If ever there was a good Christmas to be snowed in, this was it for us. We had not planned to travel. We hadn't planned a big gathering. In fact there were no firm plans at all.

My middle brother, Mark, was maybe going to come down from Tacoma, but even that wasn't firm. So the house was decorated for us. The meal was planned for us. And I was open to whatever might come, and open if nothing came.

Mark decided to come Christmas Eve in an attempt to beat the next storm. He had other offers for the holiday that would have been much easier for him, but he drove for three hours on what turned out to be mostly dry pavement (until he got to our nightmare road) to be with his big sister. 

That was the first gift.

My three brothers and I have a complicated adult relationship, probably not that unusual. Until very recently you needed a play map to understand who was speaking to whom, and the possibility of the four of us ever being together happily under the same roof seemed about as likely as two weeks of heavy snow in the Pacific Northwest.

Mark arrived at our house later than he might have because our baby brother, Geoff, wanted to send a gift with him. I was puzzled by that because we don't exchange gifts usually, and financially Geoff is not in a position to be buying gifts this year. 

He made a picture album - the same one for all three of us. It includes prints of pictures of our paternal grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. There are pictures of our dad as a child, our mom as a child, and one absolute favorite of the four of us on a couch as very young children. The captions for the pictures are  moving, informative, and laugh out loud funny. The cover letter that my baby brother (who barely graduated from high school, struggles with reading and does not have an intimate relationship with words) wrote is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.

The theme was the power of family love and especially sibling love. It was an offering of a heart no longer willing to exclude members of family because of disagreements or differing beliefs. It is a peace offering to my older brother, and opens the door to the possibility of the four of us being together again.

That was the second gift.

Mark's gift came wrapped in gift wrap, tucked in a huge gift bag. As I picked it up I could feel plastic through the paper - the kind that blankets come in. So even before I got the paper torn off I had an idea what he'd done. My brother made me a quilt. From fabric we had picked out together on his birthday last spring (for a quilt for him)  on one of my favorite all-time days with him. On a very busy schedule in a very tiny home. He made me a quilt. The colors are warm, the pattern  (which he created himself) eye-pleasing, the weight that of a loving hug.

That was the third gift.

For my part, I had decided to make jam for my brothers for Christmas. Our mom used to make a jam she called apple butter, but which is really spiced apply jelly. Made with apple pulp instead of apple juice because she didn't want to take the time to strain the pulp to get the juice. Geoff has asked me for the recipe countless times and lost it the same exact number of times. So I pulled out mom's original browned and stained recipe, bought the ingredients, and made apple butter for my brothers. In honor of one of the rare common pleasures of our childhood. Mark surprised me by telling me it's his favorite jam. I wish I could be there to hear Geoff's laugh when he sees what I've done. I hope it touches Frank in the same way I hope Geoff's album will.

In an amazement of synchronicity - without discussion, plans or questioning - we surprised each other with gifts of the purest, simplest love I can imagine. The world is a brighter place, my heart beats a lighter tune, and hope is a more certain blessing than I believed possible before this Christmas.

Top photo: Mark, Frank, Geoff, Big Sister - circa 1957. Geoff's caption: "Debbie, why are you squeezing my hand so hard?"

Snowbound

From the perspective of my office window, the world is snowbound. Tree branches bow to earth and begin to break under the weight. Squirrels scamper across the surface in search of food, somehow knowing that movement is all that keeps them from sinking. White has erased every color but gray and green, and significantly muted those.

And the snow continues to fall.

It's just warm enough that the icicles on our eaves are drip, drip, dripping. Great clots of snow avalanche from fir branches, driven by some unseen combination of weight, heat and gravity. Change is coming.

We're far enough from town that it's easy to believe the whole world is this beautiful, isolated, whiteness. It's easy to believe that this will never end - that we'll be stuck here forever with no easy way out. It's easy to believe that nothing that mattered so much a week ago really matters at all.

But we got to town yesterday, with relative ease: Walt carefully driving our four-wheel-drive pick-up over packed snow ruts and barely thawed pavement, me sitting warm, cozy and carefree on the passenger side. Town, three miles away, was bustling. 

The store was full of men pushing shopping carts as wives figured out what to substitute for the many things that were missing from shelves. Neighbors greeted each other heartily and happily, as though it had been an entire winter rather than days since they saw each other. The clerk who checked us out was more interested in telling us about her frozen shower drain and two feet of snow than she was in the looks of mild frustration from the several people in line behind us. 

I think we could probably get to town again today if we needed or wanted to. My brother is sure he can make the drive south from Tacoma late this afternoon. The mailman drove up to our door with a package just a bit ago.

Yet there is a part of me that isn't quite ready to release the quiet, no-expectation peace of these last few days. I like the rhythm of days centered around Toby's exercise and playtime, cats' needs for lap time, and hour upon hour here at my computer doing what makes my heart laugh and dance. I like choosing, guilt-free, to sit and read until the book is done (or to sit and do nothing at all). I like enjoying Walt's gentle, comfortable presence.

And that leaves me with this question: Why do I need to be snowbound to give myself, guilt and anxiety free,  those gifts?

photo by Walt Shucka