End of the month - and still Missing Pieces

Here it is the end of the month and as I reflect back on the last 31 days so far this year has been a waste. Why is it that we have so much hope for the new year, that "new number". Do we really think things will be better just because the year changed a number. We are silly fools aren't we.

Looking forward to an unknown is useless what I really miss is the past to the missing pieces of joy I actully had. My childhood. Do you know what I miss most about my childhood? Besides the luxury of just being a child, with all that implies?

I miss having a great place to grow up. From toddler to teenager, we were always on the road and there was always two places that I could call home, my Aunts and my grandparents. Both of which were on opposite sides of the map.

I miss all of my Grandparents who in each of there way gave me the love and kindness I longed for. Poppy King teaching me how to whistle he’d say “If you are going to learn be different – whistle backwards”, Grandma King sewing me a cute purple bathing suite “just for me”, Grandma Dill I was her “snookie” and Grandpa Dill who never said no to me.

I miss toiling in Grandpa's wood shop. I had a little corner patch, all my own. My most important job of all was peeling the glue off the bottles of wood glue and sweeping up all the sawdust. Grandpa's shop was more of a backyard than I had most of the time. After all our hard work was done, we'd grab a Dr. Pepper and some cheese curls from the kitchen. Then we'd sit side by side on the couch in comfortable silence, eating and generally feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

I miss my Aunt Sylvia. My Aunt was (and still is) the coolest ever. She'd wake up in the morning with brilliant, spontaneous ideas. I remember once she loaded five or six of us in the Jeep for a spur of the moment afternoon of exploring the State Capitol building. Next thing, we were cru zing down to the local swimming pool where I learned how to swim. All the kids in the neighborhood loved being at her house. I grew up in the military so spending my summers at her house was always a wonderful treat. I was always outside playing from morning until night, and sometimes beyond (when I could get away with it). Four square and kick ball. Spotlight and hide-and-seek. Riding bikes and camping out. Board games on rainy days and forts in the pretend woods. Barbie clothes and Barbie's camper. Playing 'house' and 'school'. Running through sprinklers and 'truth or dare'. I miss the picnics. The good old fashioned kind, with fried chicken, garden fresh tomatoes, homemade potato salad...homemade everything. Coolers full of drinks, carloads full of cousins.

I miss the sleepovers and never knowing where you might wake up. I miss The Brady Bunch and popcorn on Friday nights. I miss the older kids, especially my cousin Karen who was groovy enough to enjoy teaching me how to "be cool". I miss the constant presence of my best friend, my dog “Suzie” always by my side. I miss unlocked doors. I miss lightning bugs in mayonnaise jars. I miss storms so fierce they scared me to death and kept me in awe.

We played as if it was our job, and we were all dedicated professionals.

These days, I'm mostly too tired to play with that much passion. That's just sad.

I miss all of it.

And all of them.

Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was.
~ Will Rogers

Now that it's all over, what did you really do yesterday that's worth mentioning?
~ Coleman Cox

It's never safe to be nostalgic about something until you're absolutely certain there's no chance of its coming back.
~ Bill Vaughn

Dear Journal

What do I want from this experience? A million things, and nothing, really.
I've had forty-three years of life, and nearly that many years of living, to learn about myself. There have been a good many lessons along the way: questions asked, weaknesses exposed, emotions expressed, purpose explored. But it's been a insulated exercise. A self-guided journey, limited by definition to parameters dictated either consciously or subconsciously, where tender spots could be avoided, unattractive truths danced around.

What I want from this experience of life, mostly, is to be pushed. Beyond the self-imposed boundaries, beyond the surface scratches into something deeper. Beyond the simple identification of traits and tendencies and into an understanding of them.

It's not enough, now, to know that I cycle through periods of self-destructive abuse. It's not enough to know that I martyr myself to everyone else's needs,to the point that my own emotions are so entwined with theirs, I lose my Self. It's not enough to know that I set the bar of expectation across the spectrum of my life so high, that let down and failure become inevitable, again and again.

And I do know these things. They - and others like them - have become clearly identified parts of Me over time. It's not enough, anymore, to know they exist. It is time - and I am ready - to understand where they come from, what it is inside of me that allows me to be content to figure out ways to live around them.

It is time - and I am ready - to effect change in patterns of behavior that are neither healthy nor productive.

It is time - and I am ready - to discover who I am. Without the constraints of conforming. Without the masks of being who you think I need to be. Without the pretense of hiding the scary, ugly parts, even if only from myself.

What do I want from this experience of life?
I want to follow where the journey leads, with an open mind and willing heart.
I want to grow, adapt, change, and expand.
I want to examine what I want, and learn how to get there from here.
I want to wake up on a morning near the end of it, look in the mirror, and like what I see.
I want to introduce myself to Me, with love and understanding.
This is my journey.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
~ Muhammad Ali

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that's where I renew my springs that never dry up.
~ Pearl S. Buck

Ya Think Maybe?

"Although the thoughts the mind produces when wandering are at times useful, such instances do not prove that the mind wanders because these thoughts are adaptive; on the contrary the mind may wander simply because it can..."

http://www.willa.com/tealeaves/reading.html
What could be better than a daily reading of the tea leaves? I'm thoroughly loving this, and although I suppose it's "proper" to click once a day? I do get greedy. Who can blame me, with insight like today's:

You need to create a quiet space for yourself within your heart where you can be silent and listen to yourself. You spend much time listening to other people. Your family, your friends, everyone you know considers you a good listener. Begin to listen to yourself. You have a lot to say. Give yourself the benefit of your own wisdom.

It occurs to me that I'm racing against some felt but unseen opponent these days, and the path to victory is one I'm traveling blind. Although it would appear, if you were watching, that I believe nothing short of a purely virtuous life will win the day.

It's all overcompensation, it occurs to me. A misguided belief - or maybe only as innocuous as a wayward hope - that if I am Good Enough, it will be enough, and things will change. Things will right themselves, and life will go on the way it was meant to.

All is not right with the world, but is it ever, really? Is it ever Just So? Just as we would have it be, by force of free will, by determination of desire? I wish it, and so it shall be. If only life were that simple.

But then, simplicity would come complete with its own collection of complications; either that, or bore us to tears. Bore me to tears, surely. Simple is as simple does. Life is not about the easy. Life is about the craggy places, the jagged edges, the glimmers of what might be. Life is about the journey up and over, around and through, above and beyond.

Sometimes life can exhaust you to the end of your breath, though; leave you panting for simple.
In. Out. Eyes closed. Count to ten. Or twenty if you need to. It comes back around, the want.

It always does.

Until it doesn't, any more.

And even then. Wait for it. Long enough.

Even then, it will.

One Night

When I was very young, too small to reach the cookie jar without dragging a kitchen chair to the counter's edge, too quiet to be seen eavesdropping on grown up conversations I shouldn't have understood, I knew things.

I knew that life was hard, and that love could be expensive. I knew that being smart could buy you trouble, and behaving badly could borrow you attention. I knew that people marched to their own drummer's beats, and that it didn't matter if I couldn't hear them, or feel them; I knew it wasn't very likely that I would ever follow, even if I could.

When I was very young, too inarticulate to tell you all about it, but far too wise not to comprehend, I knew things.

Now I am older and I feel as if I am in the dark trying to figure out what I do know. I still eavesdrop on conversations (some people never grow up) but now I understand what I don't want to hear. Now I know life is hard and love has been very expensive and that being smart now days doesn't buy much. I know the cost of what behaving badly can bring. And that my drummer beat was slow and silent whereas I lagged behind and couldn't fit in.

Somehow being young was so much better because learning lifes lessons is a school I had hoped to not attend.

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
~ Erma Bombeck