I Believe in a Ghost

I believe in ghosts.  Or a ghost...singular.  The ghost of him...when he was him.  He can appear anywhere when I least expect it.  I caught a glimpse of him through my kitchen window last weekend.  He was on trampoline in the body of a new neighborhood boy flipping and stuffing a basketball in a suspended hoop.  I found myself mesmerized by this child so clearly embodied by HIS ghost. Memories pelted my brain, both visual and auditory.  The incessant squeak, squeak of the trampoline bouncing coupled with throaty laughter and grunts of disappointment when a death defying flipped was not quite reached.  Before I knew it, I was white knuckling the kitchen sink, eyes full of tears, heart full of pain yet unable to look away because I didn't want to miss a moment of HIS specter.

Then one day this week I saw him walking down the street just outside his old elementary school.  He had a skaters cap on and his long shaggy hair hung down over one eye.  The hair was lighter than HIS but it didn't fool me.  I'd know that swagger-filled gait anywhere.  I watched longingly from behind the wheel of my car wanting to once again brush that hair from his face and have him pull away.  A hearty "honk" from a car behind me alerted his ghost so that the boy turned back into an unknown pre-adolescent, and because I didn't know how to summon HIM back, I drove on so that the impatient driver behind me could get home to his family.

His spirit is channeled through the familiar as well. November first is a big day in our house.  It is the day the Christmas music comes out.  When the Muppets and my daughter sang along to The Twelve Days of Christmas, I could have sworn I heard HIS voice come from the backseat  making fun of Beaker's "mi mi mi m mi mi."  On my vanity mirror, his eyes twinkle in a picture of HIM.  They ask me to make some food; grape jelly meatballs and fettuccine Alfredo. They tease me, dance and blink with amusement, but I can't laugh. Those ghostly blue eyes bore into me until I take the photo and place it in the hall closet where he can't haunt me anymore.

 I sometimes see him at the head of a  pack of cross country runners, long legs reaching, arms pumping, brow furrowed with concentration.  HIS natural born speed creates an illusion of flying.  He is there-flying by me-until he disappears rounding a corner with all the other runners trailing behind him.

His ghost visits at night during those in between moments of wake and sleep.  I hear his voice, his laugh, his protests.  I feel that spirited boy zoom by me as if  a hot summer day was calling to him. I sit up and dangle my feet over the bed, listening intently for the slight possibility that it just may have really been HIM calling to me, needing me, flying in the door to tell me the latest news in the sports world or play me the newest song he loves on Youtube.  How I wish to be jolted out of bed by one of his boisterous proclamations.  But all is quiet, he is gone again and all that is left is the sound of sadness for what might have been and what used to be a very long, long time ago.

I believe in a ghost.  I BELIEVE in that ghost.  He is here.  HE is there...somewhere waiting to take his rightful place back where he belongs in the body of the young man he somehow tragically got separated from. But until then, that ghost, HIS ghost will continue to haunt me, to stay with me, and I will keep him safe and remind him that he's loved just as if I was his own mother.

We Are Not What We've Learned. We Are What We Know

Image by @HarryVorsteher

Leo Buscaglia is credited for having said, "Change is the end result of all true learning."  No words have ever been more on the money, especially in my life at this current moment.  So many lessons bring about true, rich, deep and rewarding change.  Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't teach an old dog (or young dog, or human for that matter) new tricks.  That is simply not true. False--100 percent.

Lately I have had the immense pleasure of watching my oldest child mature and yes, change, at a rapid rate.  Don't get me wrong, he is a great "kid"--stayed away from drugs, and alcohol and smoking and many other temptations that teens his age face daily.  He chose a girlfriend that any mother would praise the heavens over.  His soft spot for his sister is heart melting.  Yup...he's a good egg.  However, like all of us, he had some pretty rigid, dug-in-deep, flaws that made me worry about him.  (After all, that is what we moms do best.)  And like most of us, those behaviors, personality flaws, that humaness, whatever you want to call it, caught up to him in several different ways.  To say caught up doesn't quite paint the picture...how about, came crashing down on his head rendering him close to unconscious.  When the world cracked open and swallowed him up, I worried about the way he'd handle it.  But shockingly...he handled it like a man, like someone who had the intellectual realization that things just couldn't go on the way they were going if he wanted the most out of his life.  To protect his privacy I won't go into the things HE instituted in his life to begin the long road to change, but it is clear to me, his mom, that the hard lessons that he experienced are bringing about very clear changes on his part.  He KNOWS now that certain behaviors and choices won't work on the road to success.

It doesn't escape me that some of those flaws that my oldest learned along the way were taught by me. I am not above admitting that I made mistakes.  The models I used for "competent parenting" were clearly not competent at all in many ways.  And while I most definitely have developed that introspection now, I obviously hadn't the introspection that my son has been able to figure out at monumentally young age of 18.  He's on the cusp of adulthood and starting that road the correct way.  It wasn't until I was 30 that I began to understand, just scratch the surface mind you, that some of the things that continually plagued me were due to my behavior or dug-in-deep personality flaws.  If you know me, you know that I am 43, and I will tell you that the lessons never stop rolling in and therefore the changes in me continue.  Looking back on my first therapy session October 8th, 1997, I had NO IDEA how much of my personality that made me...well...ME I would have to adjust, change, get rid of, replace in order to be a functioning human in society.  Change is hard work.  The lessons that FORCE us to change are probably harder.  At least they are to me.  But I know after I walk through the storm, that the work I've done to undo the knots of knowledge and erroneous experiences that I've relied upon as "what one does" since learning it as a child is satisfying to the core.  When the shackles of mistaken ideas cultivated during my childhood, during my child's childhood are removed, clarity and illumination remain.  `And it seems that both of us find that so satisfying that we plan on continuing our enlightenment.

The reasons HE'S changing may be different than the reasons I've chosen to slowly change over the last 15 years.  His is for the love of a girl, a special girl.  Mine are for the love of my children and the love of my husband.  My changes are for the love of a loyal sister.  My changes are for the love of a whole ginormous in-law family.  And while so much of me is different than who I was 15 years ago, I have a long way to go.  A VERY VERY long way to go.  But one thing my son and I DO have in common is that our changes are being brought about because we love OURSELVES as well.  We WANT to live a life in which we are open to making mistakes and learning from them so that we KNOW better.  Because when it comes right down to it...as they say--knowledge is POWER.  The more my eldest and I learn to undo what it was that we erroneously established as truth when children, the more of that stabilizing, strengthening knowledge we will gather, and the more powerful we become in our assurance of who we are.

It makes me happy that my son is on a path to self-assurance because in life we will constantly run into those who haven't done the hard work, who refuse to change, who refuse to see that the strife they constantly run into could possibly be due to their shortcomings.  When we meet up with that kind of narrow-mindedness, we will need strength of character (and a wonderful posse of supporters) to stand our ground.  The bad news (that my sweet Dr. Speed Dial reminds me of constantly) is that we can ONLY change ourselves, and so those who love to hate, to spew, who have self-serving righteousness behind them will ALWAYS hate, spew and stand behind that false rectitude unless they learn...which leads to change...which leads to understanding...which leads to strength.  And I am thrilled to see that my eldest develop a fortitude of character.  I am thrilled to continue develop a strength of the core of who I am, even in the midst of a storm or several.  I can only change myself.  My son can only change his self.  You are the only one who can change you.  It takes courage.  It takes stamina.  When you fall it will take an enormous ability to pick yourself back up again.  But most of all it takes the ability to look yourself in the mirror and say, "The things that happen to me, I am partially responsible for.  What knowledge can I take away so that I can learn and then KNOW what is necessary to understand and be a positive part of the human race?"

After 25 Years, I Am Gettin' Out of That Box

"You Luce girls, you're tough to deal with."  I bit down on the inside of my cheek to suppress the rising rage that would sharpen my tongue and prove this snarky former classmate correct in his assumption.  Instead, for reasons unknown to me, I admitted--acquiesced--that I indeed did understand that I could be difficult. This man whom I barely knew then responded "Wow! It is good that you know yourself like that.  It's good that you know that you can be tough.  I am impressed with the fact that you know yourself so well."  At this point he nodded satisfactorily and walked away. Heck I wouldn't have been surprised if he had patted me on the head, and even though THAT didn't happen,  I stood stunned and up to my ears in emotions.  Awash with rage and shouldhavesaids and howdareyou's, I mentally chastised myself for not saying so many things....so many responses, retorts, come backs I could have uttered...but instead I stood mute.

This one sided conversation took place this past weekend at my 25th high school reunion, and although I had many amazing encounters with people I haven't seen in years, although there were moments where I felt like Cinderella at the ball, what has stuck with me is this little slice of conversation with a human being who is so insignificant that I have probably had less than ten surface conversations with him in my entire lifetime.  And perhaps that's what gets me.  This man, this man who lives in my town, who owns several businesses, who's legendary for both the good and bad, this man who doesn't know of my joys, my struggles, my stories, my work, my successes or my failures, this man who for reasons unknown to me presumed to know me well--perhaps through rumors, perhaps through one-sided stories, perhaps through 2nd hand, 3rd hand or 4th hand accounts of moments and happenings, this man had placed me in a box, a box that was wrapped and had a tag attached to it that read: Handle With Care--Difficult Person Inside.

Perhaps it was appropriate that this small mindedness happened at my high school reunion.  I think it is easy, easy for all of us to hear, see or remember something about a particular person or persons that may have taken place briefly and way in the past and BAM!  we place them in a narrow cardboard container that have labels like "loose" or "volatile" or "liar" or "cold."  Those boxes we put people in...those blasted boxes wrapped up tightly in paper and twine keeping the residents seemingly stagnant, all contorted and twisted and cramped in the tiny space we allow them.  No room for growth.  No room for change.  No room to even stretch their legs and forget about unfurling any wings. Hasty decisions made about a person or people, assuming that we know a person based upon the way they were 25, 20, 10 years, heck even 10 days ago is presumptuous and kinda ignorant.  Because here's a news flash...those boxes that they placed us in, those boxes that seem indestructible and permanent are anything but...

What these purveyors of our tiny libelous cubicles forget is that minute by minute, day by day, week by week, month by month,  moment by every-lovin' moment things happen that unravel the twine, rip the wrapping paper to shreds and burst the boxes we've been shoved into to minuscule pieces.  Even if we tried to put the box back together, it would be forever changed like shattered glass re-glued into place.  Shards would be missing, lines would indicate the fissures that still existed, and the pieces would no longer be as impenetrable as they were before. In short, those boxes would no longer be the same, because humans rarely stay the same.

We all change.  It is inevitable.  Relationships develop.  Relationships end.  Relationships teach us and help us to mature.  Relationships will demolish our psyches and will reveal our strength.  Children will fill our hearts and grown up children will break them.  Friends come and go and leave behind valuable lessons that help us to grow and bend and sometimes snap in half. Over time we are forced to face the worst of ourselves and if we are really evolved we will set out to set those things right.  There will be moments in which we will have to make moral decisions.  Sometimes they will be right and sometimes we will choose wrong. No matter--because each outcome will hold life lessons that we couldn't do without, that will shape and mold us.  Each and every experience whether gigantic or teeny weeny is monumental to creating the human we are today, and each day will bring new experiences that will make us different humans tomorrow.

So Mr. Snarky 25th Reunion Man, I'd like to change my answer if at all possible.  What I should have said to you is "Yes, I used to be a difficult person.  I was preoccupied by looking perfect--perfect family, perfect image, perfect marriage, perfect career.  I was weak and surrounded myself with human beings who would dominate me and direct my every move.  I needed to be acknowledged as the best and the brightest in order to feel some worth....any kind of worth.  I was controlling and sometimes I did things, horrible things, without thinking about others' feelings.  But life happened to me.  I made many mistakes that taught me what it was like to live with humiliation and humility.  I experienced heartache that brought me to my knees.  I felt depressions so deep that I was sure that I'd be swallowed up in a black hole never to be seen again.  I have also known the greatest of happinesses--the kind that make it feel like your feet are floating over the asphalt on an invisible magic carpet soaring over any obstacle in my way.  I also know what it feels like to almost die and regain a semblance of health which taught me to appreciate each and every instant of my life;the good, the bad, the ugly, the horrific--I appreciate it all, because I am alive to encounter it all.  I know the love and the warmth of a a child pressed against me and wrapped in my arms recognizing full well that the love they feel is unconditional.  I know what it feels like for family to turn against you and for some to stand beside you.   I have learned that I am never without fault and that it takes years and years and years of work to actually change who you are for the better.  And just so you know Mr. Snarky Business Owner Hometown Boy, I have done the years of work.  I continue to do the work.  I am not perfect by any means.  I have a long way to go.  But you can't put me in a box, not any box, not even several boxes.  Who I am is a totality of my experiences both good and bad, and unless you have walked beside me every second of every day, you couldn't possibly know me or my layers.  You couldn't possibly label me and package me up in a neat and tidy box tied with a ribbon.  You see, who I am doesn't fit in one box.  The essence of me is expansive and wild and free.  It is a seeker of knowledge and enlightenment.  It is spacious and is constantly growing.   And for those reasons and many more, I don't and won't ever fit inside your box.  And although you offended me by placing me there in the first place I will make you a promise that I will try my hardest to be a better human an not put YOU in a box all tied up with twine and wrapped in paper with a label on it that says:  Handle with Care--Narrow Mind Inside.

A Universal Wind

My daughter turns 3 in two weeks. Three. That means that it has been three years and nine months since the surprise of my life happened. Since I stood in my miniscule bathroom with the new-fangled electronic EPT test in my hand that kept blinking the word “yes” over and over until the motion of that, coupled with my utter shock, made me feel dizzy and faint. I am sure that I have discussed in this column before that my reaction was less than enthusiastic.

Parenting my sons had been well just a crap shoot in many ways, and the waders I wore didn’t protect me at all from that raw sewage I sludged through daily trying to match that perfect mother in my head. The do-do seeped in deep; a constant reminder that I was nowhere near doing a great job. Now I know that there were MANY other factors that made my role difficult; absent grandparents, an ex hell bent on saying, doing, thinking and breathing the exact opposite of anything that I did, genetics, environment…on and on…and I guess that was EXACTLY what was going through my head that fateful day as I held that EPT….I did NOT want to go through the “on and on” again. Ever again. I had had enough.

To read the rest please click on the following link:

http://hilltownfamilies.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/fisher-44/

Don't EVER Call Me a Player!

I am not a player. No, no…I don’t mean the polyester-wearing-Victoria’s-Secret-peekin’-buttons-opened-to-my-navel player. No! Sheesh. I am NOT talking about THAT kind of player. I am talking about get-out-the-Fisher-Price-sit-down-on-th-rug-make-your-voice-high-for-the-girl-doll-and-a-low-voice-for-the-boy-doll kind of player. I am not kidding when I say that playing dolls or tea party or with a Dora kitchen gives me the anxiety of a bomb-squad member trying to keep an explosive from blowing up a town (okay that may be a WEE bit of an exaggeration, but…you get the idea.).

When my sons were younger, the five words I dreaded the most were “Will you play with me?” Ugh! How I’d cringe. I would twist. I would turn. I would grasp for any plausible idea that I could come up with for not succumbing to action figures or catch or hide and seek.

To read the rest, click on the link:  www.hilltownfamilies.org/2012/07/17/fisher-43

Go Ahead...Laugh...I Can Take It!

I recently got a shout out from one of the greatest websites EVER (in my humble opinion) www.kindovermatter.com.  Amanda writes, 

"Hi Beautiful You! Whether you're a writer or reader, I'm super excited to share these new series with you! 

Jo Anna & I will be sharing nearly every week & the Kind Kindred series will still be shining every Monday, as usual, but the rest of the series will pepper every month!

The first post will be next Thursday in the Laughter Lover series! (Do you remember the Granny Panties story Logan shared last year?! Oh yes! It's going to be SO FUN!)"

Ah yes...my "Granny Girdle Panties" story.  Who could forget my utter humiliation??  WHAT???  You haven't read the Granny Panties story????  Well, by all means....PLEASE do! Have a laugh on me I can take it!  Click the link below!  

http://www.kindovermatter.com/2011/09/laughter-is-best-medicine-granny.html

Omniscience: A Parent's Dream?

I have recently been working on a novel; my first endeavor into fiction.  Writers are readers at the heart of us, and so it is no surprise that I have been reading all I can find on the "hows" of planning and penning a made-up story. The other day I was reading about the merits of different points of view.  You know, 1st person as opposed to 3rd person.  To be honest with you I had not even considered writing this story in the 3rd person.  I am an essayist first and foremost and it is just so natural that I write in my own voice.  This book that I planned on writing, (OK if I was being TOTALLY honest here,  I'd tell you that I have already STARTED writing the book but have gotten stuck, hence the frantic reading and researching...) anyhow, while writing this book, I planned on just embodying the protagonist, being her so to speak, and then telling her (or rather my) story as if it were happening to me.  Telling it that way just seemed natural to me, the essayist.  However, after reading and reading and reading and reading about the two points of view, I am rethinking my plan for the book.  Writing in the 3rd person seems to perhaps be easier when writing fiction because the narrator is of course omniscient, being able to know all, see all, hear all, and ultimately show the reader all that is happening.  An omniscient story teller can anticipate what might be coming down the pike and even forewarn those that have decided to turn the pages of the precious book.  

During my point of view research, I learned that my definition of the word omniscience was flawed.  I have always thought that it meant "all powerful", but instead I learned that it is simply having infinite knowledge.  Infinite knowledge is something that our children, when they are younger, rely upon us to have.  In fact most small children would believe that their parents WERE in fact absolutely omniscient.   As they get older however, somehow we lose that omnipotence and our teens, according to them anyway, gain it. 

It got me thinking.  To be omniscient, all-knowing, all-seeing, preeminent..how handy would that be for us, Mudders?  To know what is coming around the corner, a couple of years down the road, to know whether or not our decisions are the right ones--with the power of omnipotence we could perhaps help to prepare our children, heck even ourselves for the future; for the twists and turns and raging storms that families have to plod through.  I am not nearly suggesting that being omniscient would cause me to try and change events because I am a firm believer that every experience is meant to mold and shape who we are, but to tell you the truth, I am pretty sure omnipotence would allow me to plant my feet in a firm wide stance to keep me steady when those winds do blow in.  Having your legs cut out from beneath you, and falling on your rear end (even if it IS well padded) feels horrific, no matter how many times you tell yourself that you gain strength from strife.  And while I am all for spontaneity, I would have liked to know about...well...I would have just like to have known that certain things would happen to my family.

Because I am from a small town, and because I openly write a blog about the difficulties that often come with motherhood, I am sure that it isn't news that 2012 has been a nightmarish year for me, Logan, the mother of two boys.  And while I am lucky that things with Ila have been idyllic and blissful, life-changing even, I have not spoken much of my sons because I am so disillusioned by what has taken place over the past 7 months.  For their sake, I will not delve into the nitty gritty details, but it would be safe to tell you that neither boy is living with me any longer.  It would be safe to say that not living with me also means that I have seen very little of them in seven months.  It would be safe to say that their absence has sliced an extremely large chasm into the very soul of me.  It would be safe to say that a little omnipotence would have and would be nice.  To have seen this coming.  To have known that I'd be without them for the several thousand reasons that have arisen that keep them from me or me from them--being a little prepared might have made the sting a little less, the resentment a smaller boulder in my solar plexus, the tears less prevalent.  The untethered feeling that I have had these past seven months, the lack of a compass has plagued me, and I wish with all that I have that I had been omniscient--that I would have known that someday, they'd be gone in this seemingly final way.

And there again, omniscience in the here and now would be such a gift because not only would I have been able to foresee these last disastrous months coming but I would be able to know with certainty that this situation may or may not get better and plan accordingly; steel my heart against any further hurt or keep it open for that someday that we'd be a family in the strongest sense of the word.  Well meaning friends say with a fortitude that I don't possess that those sons of mine will come back someday knowing that I had tried my best parenting them.  They are so sure, these friends of mine, that the hard work that I put into trying to be the best mother I could (even if some of the decisions were wayward) will cause them to come back, to want to be part of our lives again in a healthy familial way.  (Does that even exist?  Perhaps that is fodder for another post!)  


A good  friend of mine disagrees with my wish for omniscience.  He thinks that I may be still leaning on  my flawed definition of the word--hoping that being "all powerful" would somehow keep the immense disillusionment and hurt at bay.  He is a firm believer in fate, and reminds me that having the real definition of the word--the power of knowing all --wouldn't be able to change the past days, weeks, or months--no power in the universe would be that strong...and maybe someday looking back on all of this I will understand why it took place.  After all, using the past to make decisions about the future is truly the ONLY way to be purely omniscient.