Just a beginning list.

Gratitude. A not complete list. Just a list for today. A small micro-shift in my outlook.

1) Coffee.  Not having an allergy to coffee. The social aspect of coffee.  Having coffee made for me.  Having the coffee made for me brought to me.  Having my own travel mug for the coffee made for me.

2) A job. Accrued time to take off from the job.  The paycheck that the job provides.  The money from that paycheck that lets me pay for my life. A boss who gets that I have a life.

3) My ex-husband’s claim of sobriety.  My ability to see how his lack of sobriety affects me.  My ownership of how toxic our relationship was. My ability to see my role in our toxic behavior.  My belief that genuine sobriety exists and that he can have it.  My self-trust that I can see myself clearly with or without his sobriety.

4) My children. Everything about their amazingness in this world.  The knowledge that we can fight and still be amazing.  Faith that they know I am doing my best.  My best being good enough. Their best being good enough.

5) Chocolate.

6) This quote: “The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion.  The tunnel is.”

7) Email.  Spell check. Keyboards with backspace keys. Not immediately hitting the send button.

8) Willingness. Openness. Honesty. Mistakes. Forgiveness. Ownership. Freedom to take another path.

9) People. People in my world who keep showing up even when their path is hard, too.  People who love me. People who see me.  People who talk.  People, who, when they talk, talk with me and not to me.  People who are flawed.  People who are human.  People I have the grace and good fortune to be allowed to love.  People who let me in.  People who hold my hand.  People who kiss my tears. People I trust.  People who trust me. People, who, when they read this, if they read this, know who they are.

10) Journeys. Growth. Change. Progress. Backsliding. Learning. Sharing. Giving and receiving support.  Letting go and holding on. Knowing when each is important. Knowing how.  Failing at knowing how. Starting again.  Trusting that I am on the path I am supposed to be on.  Hope, that when I am not on the right journey, something with guide my path.  Never giving up. Acknowledgement that if I can change, I can hope for it and see it in someone else.  Holding hands while on the journey so as not to get in each others way.

11) Emotions. Every single one.  No hiding. No Fear. I get them all.  That any single emotion is not all-consuming.  That the strongest emotion is love.  That love really does work.  That I can love without apology and without regret.  That I can be all in and not lose any part of myself to it when I remember to do it from a place of love.  That the people in #9 get them, too. Humility to understand that I cannot control someone elses emotions, nor have any right to.  The wisdom not to try.

12) Happiness.  Not as an emotion, but as a state of being. Knowing I can claim it and not take anything away from anyone else. Grace to not flaunt it. Happiness where happiness is.

13) The amazing power of truth.

No kleenex in this pocket.

I hate funerals.  I actually don’t hate just the funeral part, I hate everything about them.  I hate the flowers.  I hate the required attire.  I hate the music. I hate the tissues, and the dim lights, and the satin pillows. And the cold. The lack of life.

My dad died 13 days ago.  His funeral was 5 days ago.  I haven’t cried yet. My blog today is all about wanting something else. Choosing. Balance.

In the pocket of my jeans, or sometimes in the side pocket of the purse I am carrying on any given day, I carry two different items.

The first is one of about 10 different “tokens” I have had for years.  I own a pocket angel, a rock, a couple metal stones with sayings on them, and a rather smooth amethyst worry stone.  These rotate through my pocket depending on my mood, and right now, the one I have been carrying most is a token that says “balance”.

The second is a coin.  It doesn’t technically belong to me.  The man who actually owns the coin is currently carrying the coin I usually carry.  It was potentially a selfish trade right at the time I requested the swap.  A little bit of commitment and possession, wrapped up in a tiny piece of plastic, in the middle of not having any idea if I have any claim to the feelings at all. I am grateful.

I have been holding on very tight to these two items (actually to the point of having a crease on my left hand) for the last four days.  I wake up with them in my hands in the morning.  They are currently right on my laptop as I type.

I was gifted with a total moment of perfect clarity on Sunday morning, with the tokens cutting into my hand all night.  I had slept nine hours straight after having not slept more than 2 or 3 hours a night in the last week, and everything else has been pretty much a blurry nightmare.

The clarity came in the form of understanding that the coins I have been carrying are attached to feelings and actions I have zero control over right now, and even less insight into where they are going. The clarity came from understanding my own fears and insecurities being really unmanageable.  The clarity came from knowing I had just walked myself into something with my eyes wide open, and lost myself anyway.  I knew I had been put in a box of accommodation to lots and lots of other people, and it had left the authentic me raw, vulnerable, and frankly a kind of fucked up emotional mess with absolutely zero soft place to fall.

This has me scared in a really awful way. I am currently risking losing all my emotions at all.  That sounds dramatic, I know.  Like I should I be concentrating on the really good stuff.  I am pretty good at making other people know they are loved, and wanted, and real in my world.  I have been a friend, a lover, a confidant.  I have been understanding and willing in the face of unnecessary dishonesty.  I have been a dutiful daughter, a balanced sister, a frustrated but present mother.  All those roles, all that responsibility, and all that strength made it so I have shut off. I don’t want to shut off.  What I want is balance. Equity. Ownership.

The kind of grip I have had on the pocket tokens is essentially the same reason I  hate funerals.  I get no say, none at all, in some of the things around me.  I get to comply. Because even though I may looking at the same thing, there is a view that is uniquely my own and no one can see it but me. 

I want flowers now, not in some wreath with fancy ribbons left on a grave to blow over in the wind.  I want to see people I never see NOW, before the only time we hold each other close is in pain instead of in joy.  I want adventures, and love, and commitment, and friendship, and support, and happiness, and I want to know that the people around me want it, too.  We all get to have it.  The good stuff doesn’t run out.  Until it does.  And then the funeral is all that is left.  Funerals sometime feel like a way to kick us in the head and remind us that we don’t have time to waste, life is short.  What are we waiting for? Can I hope to find some balance, so that at the end of everything, the people I have invited in won’t sit at my funeral, in dim light, with boxes of tissues, grieving never having enjoyed my life.  Balance. Tradeoffs.  Living outside of boxes, and in perfect clarity. Willingness to live. No regrets.

Maybe I won’t have to cry, not really.  Maybe when I do I will find someplace soft to be because I will have built it, created it, celebrating the amazing life I am lucky to hold, and the places of love that expand as I hold on to little tiny tokens. I get to choose. Funerals aren’t like that, but love is.

Do you have a token to share? I would like that.  Invite it even.  I am all in.

Top of the first, bases loaded.

My father is dying.

Even saying out loud sounds weird, and I feel more than a little guilty that I am that kind of blunt, but it is true. His body is failing.  He is being kept in comfort, and pain controlled , which makes him “half” here, and only some of the time.  He is in the hospital and has been for the past 11 days.  We are now just waiting.

So before the only memory I have is the hospital smell in my nose, the taste of hospital food on my lips, and the sound of the snore-gurgle my father makes as he slips in and out of sleep in his bed, I thought I would write this.

This is about my daddy, as much as I can write right now.

I have a picture of me, about age two, riding a tricycle in front of our garage.  The tricycle was purple, though the faded picture makes it look like it was teal.  I am smiling  and being all cheesy for the camera.  My brother, just a baby of maybe 8 months old, is in a wind up swing, sleeping, in just a diaper, looking like he is about to fall out. Sitting in a lawn chair, in the shade created by the open garage door is my dad. Shorts. White T-shirt. Sandals. He is smiling at something, maybe something I just did, or maybe something my mom just said that made him laugh.  I only assume she is the one taking the photo.

In all the years since, as if this memory happened yesterday, this is how I see my dad. Happy.

My dad is the quiet one in our house.  Not a man of many words, though when he did say something, you knew to listen.  His voice and laugh was deep, and you could hear it across rooms, and baseball fields, and lakes.  It spoke volumes in one or two words, knowing right away his mood, or need. Praise was limited, but if given was meant.  There was never anything false in his words. You knew exactly what he meant.

He was not classically affectionate, and I would not need more than one hand to tell you how many times he felt comfortable with hugs, especially in public.  It was not his way.  I often wished it was because the couple of times I remember holding his hand, I knew I was safe. 

He showed love in ways you had to search for. 

He assembled and stained a desk for Christmas the year I was 10.  I still have that desk, and (when not being used as a catch all for laundry) has been a place I have read at, and written in my journal, and sat at just to ponder the world for years and years.  I think about seeing that desk for the first time, with the ribbon on the matching chair, every time I sit down.

He washed my car.  Grumbling the entire time about how I never took care of my stuff, and why did he have to do all the work.  It was spotlessly detailed, interior windows cleaned, vacuumed, and wax applied.

He took me to dinner on my 15^th birthday.  Just me.  We went together to the fanciest restaurant I knew at the time, and alone because one of the few things we had in common was that we both loved crab legs.  We ordered them and ate them by the bucket, which should have been a dead give-away the place was not all that fancy with its plastic bibs, and he ordered me a glass of wine, and then a second one, without even flinching.  We laughed, and tried to talk, maybe the only time we ever really did, and I walked out feeling deliciously happy, and maybe a little drunk.  It was fine.

He whipped me with a belt one time, for lying and being hours late, then cried more than I did because of it.  He never hit me again.

I only ever saw him cry two other times.  Once the day his father died, and once the day my son died.

He was a really good swimmer, and although he threw me in the lake off the swimming barge once when I am sure I was whiny and scared, he swam behind me all the way back to shore, just out of my reach.  I remember throwing sand at him when we got there I was so mad.  He still brought me a towel.

He made me do yard work. 

He liked to barbeque.

He was wicked skilled at horseshoes. And cribbage.

He built me a toybox at some point before I remember, and put a bunny decal on the front because supposedly I liked bunnies.  I have that toybox.  I refinished it back when my children were too little to remember, but I didn’t cover up the bunny.  It lives in my living room.

The most gentle I ever remember my dad being is when he became a grandfather.  My daughter had him wrapped around her little finger.  She could crawl on his lap any time she wanted.  She could get him to read any book she wanted.  She could give him kisses and hugs and he didn’t flinch. And she could make him smile just by being in the room.  For her (though maybe for other kids too, but not really) he worked the Easter Egg hunt every year, and would point out for her the “hidden” eggs.  My son, the ever crabby baby, could still crawl up on Papa’s lap, and they would watch TV together, both stretched out on the recliner.  My dad taught my son to love baseball.

Every memory I have right this minute, as I see my father struggle, reminds me how much I have loved him, do love him, will love him.  With all the imperfection, kept at bay, I can honor the parts that were and are really good, without any smoke and mirrors to what wasn’t perfect. I can do that right now.  Because there is a complete full life to know before I fall apart. And so much more to remember that is not limited to these final moments.   

This is just the first page, before I forget.

Hot Dogs and Burnt Bacon

A song came on the radio as I was driving to work this morning.  It talked about how if only the good die young, then he (the singer) would outlast them all.  This sorta goes with my theory of myself, that I have reserved seating on the party bus to hell (complete with a bbq, and vodka Jell-O shooters, and bacon, lots of bacon), and have applied, with conscious effort it seems, to be the intoxicated designated driver for this ride at the end of the world.

But I know that isn’t really true.  If there is a Hell, and no one actually has me convinced yet that I need to be worried about this, then the concept that I have been so terrible in this world that I would end up there just doesn’t fit.

Trust me that this is not me blowing sunshine up my own ass, or believing my own PR bullshit.  It is just a realization that I have already done both the Catholic acts of contrition, and the rites of forgiveness with enough programs, steps, and friends to know that the past does not get to define me.  I choose.  No fear.  All in.

Last night, in a rather amazing conversation (though why ALL of these conversations happen late at night while standing in the cold I have no idea. Worth it, but damn, couldn’t they happen at like noon, on a beach, with mai tais?) I admitted something that I hold really close to my heart.  It is about trust and the relationship that trust plays in my world, and in the love I have for people. And, frankly, what I know I am capable of in the really dark part of who I am.

Right up until the end of my first marriage, trust had never been an issue.  I have never been the “jealous-type”, always knowing that I had very little say over whether or not a man in my life stepped out of his committed words or not, and that my response to it was more often me blaming myself than to ever risk hurting him in any way. This is something I still struggle with, the feeling of never being good enough (or even just “enough”, without even considering the word “good”) while standing right in front of someone screaming notice me, notice me, notice me.  I have issues, clearly.  But trust was never one of them.  I either trusted you, or I didn’t. There was no gray scale here.  I suppose, with time and practice I might be able to learn to trust someone again depending on the infraction, but for the most part, I know when I won’t trust you.  The trust was always immediate, naive maybe, but never with any fear or reservation. Given.  Nothing else required.

Most people think that trust is earned.  I think that is one way to get it, say from and employer or from a paid professional.  A working relationship based on experience, a little forethought, and a great deal of follow through.  I don’t think trust inside of relationships works that way.

Back to my ex husband for a minute, and the whole conversation that brought him up at all.  When my ex and I split, two things had just occurred.  First, I found out that he had put his dick in another chick without the benefit of any form of appropriate protection against anything, and they were now set to spend the next nine months (or 18 years, depending on your perspective) with the consequences of their choice.  Second, he had left, taken nothing with him, and was now asking to come back, after asking me for a divorce based on whatever kind of guilt and desire was spinning in his head at the time.  My heart, unequivocally wanted this.  I wanted him in my life, back as my sweet and wonderful husband who made me stuffed French toast and knew my favorite color and left his socks next to the shower.  But that guy.  He was already gone. Because my husband could never have cheated on me, and the guy that was left in my world, had.  I loved my husband deeply, even in the middle of all of it, but knew that there was no way, way down where it counts, that I would ever trust him again.

I know, back to trust.  So when I say I knew that I would never trust him again, even as I loved him, I knew exactly what that meant.  It meant that I would torture him for being unfaithful.  I would make him pay for his mistake in a thousand different ways, even if I forgave him, and right then that was a huge if. In the future I imagined I might have questioned all the money transactions he made.  I might have questioned any overtime work he did.  I might have doubted his Christmas list, his choices from the Chinese restaurant menu, and the way he tied his shoes.  I would never have ever let him forget it that I was hurt, that I was scared, that I was lonely and unable to forgive myself for not being enough for him to hold on to me.  I would, everyday, then make him believe that mistakes cannot ever be forgiven, love cannot ever be given freely, that trust was not anything he deserved, and basically that he was worthless in my eyes.  The same kind of worthless that I was in my own eyes.  I had failed. And I would never have let him forget it, because truth is, I didn’t trust myself right then.  I didn’t trust myself to be faithful.  I didn’t trust myself to not give into whatever immediate desire I felt, because I couldn’t see a future.  It was dark.  And I knew, even as I made love to him that last time (which isn’t quite accurate, because it could best be described as a fuck, because there was not a whole lot of love involved) and let his arms wrap around me, I was already lonely. Grieving the man I adored who no longer existed.

So back to the conversation (you remember, the one in the cold, without mai tais), I figured out something about myself.  I no longer use trust as a weapon.  Somewhere along the path I have been on, my  belief in trust came back, and with it, the freedom to give it freely.  To trust and love without expectation, because I had learned, maybe on a really hard road, that I trusted myself again. 

The man that was there in the conversation, holding my hand, just as cold, just as present, just as vulnerable as I was, deserved more from me than my fear about ever really trusting anyone.  He already has his own demons, his own doubts about misplaced trust, his own reserved ticket on the bus to hell.  I am sure my ex husband had them, way back then, but I could not see them.  I was too lost in my own head and fears, that I couldn’t find love in his quiet words asking to come back.  This time, quietly, I am getting off the bus.  I am inviting everyone else to get off, too.  I am worthy.  The man standing in the cold with me is worthy.  Trust can be given and received, even in the middle of doubt and mistakes, even if the only person trusting me is me. 

I think am going to stop listening to the radio, or at least get a better playlist. And I am going to live a really really long time.  The future is fine, because the present is fine, and I kinda like it here.  Yep, turns out love and trust is like that.  I’ll bring the bbq tongs.

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