Don't Be a JIVETURKEY!

I like to make lists. Not to-do lists, but to-done lists. As in ta-da! It makes me feel productive, as though I've accomplished something. One of my best friends recently told me her ex-boyfriend once asked her (about me), "But what does she do all day?"

Hmmm. Let's see:

Today I made breakfast for three, cleaned up afterward, then took the kids to Target for some last minute shopping which included locating a birthday gift for my father-in-law. Grabbed some Subway with the kids, let them take a lap around the toy store which meant I had to "look at this!" and "check this out!" and "can't I please?" times two, mind you. Then we hit Ten Thousand Villages where I picked out my own anniversary gift (ALPACA GLOVES hand-knit in the Andes!) before heading into the HELL we usually refer to as the grocery store. But this is the day before Thanksgiving and in that spirit people were mowing down their neighbors for parking spots and throwing elbows over canned pumpkin. Good times.

At home I guided four little hands in making two Orange-Scented Dark Chocolate Shortbreads, prepared cranberry sauce from scratch, and prepped for the garlic mashed potatoes I'll make in the morning. I cleaned a knee boo boo and made it all better. Not one of the kids' knees, but the Mr's. Darn those tricky razor scooters. After dinner, I gave the dog a bath, and packed my suitcase for our anniversary weekend at the cabin. I washed and dried mine and the Mr's down puffer coats. I finished as much laundry as necessary to pack the kids for their weekend away at the grandparents house. I scrubbed the bathtub, ran a hot bath, filled it with epsom salts and flung myself into it. Then I tucked my babies in bed (grumpy, and in tears because they were called down for acting a-fool!), wrapped both my mother-in-law's birthday gift and my father-in-law's gift and my husband's anniversary gift, too! Shhh. He gets mad when spend money on him. This time I practically didn't spend any thing, but still it's something. And I bought a card, too! And then I sat down to blog all about it to you, my six faithful readers.

Mr. Ex-boyfriend of my dear friend, I say to you...there is a reason you are single! Ha!

Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll. And remember, don't be a JIVETURKEY!

Tales of a Volunteer

This morning I searched the arrest records as I do most every morning. I was so disappointed to see the mug shot of one of my birth mothers. I had been lobbying hard for her to get her kids back, coaching her on the phone for an upcoming job interview, etc. I requested an early court hearing so we could reunify her with the girls before the school year begins. This way the kids wouldn't have to switch schools in the middle of the school year. She had done so well! She had separated from the abuser, moved house, changed her phone number and mostly, she was the only birth mom that I have seen that had that "thing." You know, that thing a mom either has or doesn't have when it comes to her children. It either rocks your world when your children are taken from your care and you get your act together, or it doesn't. It rocked her world. She couldn't have faked that.

So this arrest was for larceny. Apparently it's shoplifting unless you are caught outside the store with it, then it's a misdemeanor. What's so disheartening about this is that I spent about a half hour on the phone with her a few weeks ago encouraging her to keep the kids away from her sister who had recently been arrested for discharging a firearm in the city, hit and run, damage to personal property, etc. I told her it was important that her sister not be there during her overnight visits with her kids. We talked about the importance of staying out of trouble. She called me a few weeks later and asked if I would run a background check on her like I did her sister. When I first confronted her about her sister's arrest, she initially thought I had just been "poking around in other people's business" but soon realized that I was trying to help her stay on track to get her kids back and looking out for their safety. She had a job interview the next day with a company that she said paid really well and she really wanted it. That job paid 13.00 per hour. How little must this single mother of two currently make if this paltry salary is substantially more? I explained to her that I didn't run any background checks on her sister, but that I check the arrest records every morning and I came across her sister's arrest there. I knew her sister's face because she always attends court hearings with the birth mom and they share the same last name. But you see, the birth mother herself had been arrested a few years back for a misdemeanor charge of assault because of a fight with an ex-girlfriend of her now ex-boyfriend/abuser. I coached her, I said to be honest if it comes up. I told her to be humble, but confident because everyone makes mistakes. Not all of us, however, get caught. She wanted this job so badly, but feared her record would cause them to turn her down. You see, she wanted to know if it showed up in a background check.

Reading through her DSS file, I saw where she told the social worker that she likes nice things for herself and her children and also where she said she doesn't care how her boyfriend (at the time) makes his money as long as he gives her money. For the record, he sells drugs and that was the point of their discussion. I thought about the pressure we all feel to have this or that, to look as though we live a certain way, to feel as if we live better than we do. Sometimes it does seem impossible that our situations will ever change. I've wanted things bad enough to steal them and steal them I did. That might be shocking to most of you, but more than one of you reading this right now did it right alongside me! But how old were we? Certainly not in our 20s! We weren't even poor or without hope! And for those that were caught, you were young enough that it doesn't affect your employment options today. I wasn't caught, but I was guilty. Thankfully, I have grown into a person that can't even lift an old magazine from a doctor's office.

I don't know what this means for her or for these kids. I'm just glad I'm not the judge. I do feel sad for her though. Even her mother (the children's grandmother!) seems to get arrested on a pretty regular basis. Both her babies fathers have spent time in prison for selling drugs. Is this type of crime something viewed as "normal" within the confines of a socio-economic group? It's a topic in which I am not even qualified to sound off. But I'm thinking about it. It's on my mind. My heart is open and I am hoping for the best for all of them.

Update: Upon doing a little research, I saw that the abuser (the father of the youngest) was arrested again the very next day on charges of marijuana possession.

HOPE

Hope burns brightly in the face of fear. What else do we have to cling to when we are suffering, when we are terrified? Without hope, can a person rise to the occasion in the midst of a personal crisis? Without hope, wouldn't we just fold? Wouldn't we settle? Wouldn't we most likely take the path of least resistance, deeming every other path to be more work than its possible pay off? Without hope, would we have the courage to do the right thing when the right thing feels anything but right?

I know my answer to all the above. My hope comes from what I know about God. And just in case you didn't already know, I don't really fit into any kind of spiritual box and I don't think Jesus did during his time on earth either. I'm not interested in spiritual debates, not because I'm closed-minded, but because I know that no amount of persuading can equal the belief that comes when the voice of God finally reverberates in the hollowed out places of the soul.

My friend is hurting. She's in pain and I can't fix it. I can't fix the broken heart of her man that ultimately led to her currently broken life. I can be hopeful and I can remind her where her hope lies. I can listen, I can pray. I can make her laugh. What I can't seem to do is understand, no matter how undisturbed by passion the relationship, how a person can ruin the innocence of one's own young children and steal their childhood by walking away from their marriage right into the arms of another person and think that somehow the misplaced affection will fix all their broken places. Twenty, thirty years ago? Maybe we didn't know better. We didn't have enough distance yet to see the damage of this new way of thinking. But now we do. Can you move through this world without hearing about Hollywood's failed attempts at family? After all, celebrity divorces regularly make the CNN ticker these days. I fear judgment, I do. So, I'm not meaning to judge; I just don't understand. Maybe I should be jaded, after all, I have seen my fair share of failed marriages up close. But I'm not jaded. I have hope and I have it in spades. Easy for me to say though, seeing as how I'm not the one clinging to it for dear life.

High Fidelity is one of my most favorite movies, after all, it has the element of this subject AND the element of music. John Cusack's character finally figures out that the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence. There is no electrifying connection beyond the immediate thrill of newness. In the end he says, "I'm tired of the fantasy, because it doesn't really exist." I hope and pray my friend's husband comes to this conclusion, finds his source of hope and returns to his family. I hope my step dad gets there, too and maybe even decides there is room for me in his life again. I hope and pray my children grow up to know this innately and just never go there...never go there because fidelity and family is all they have ever known. I hope.

Loyal Geese & Yoga

Two geese were sitting right outside the door of the yoga studio tonight when I arrived. I thought it was odd and I commented to the attendant. She told me they had been there since about 5:00. I went on into class and when I came out an hour later, I saw that the wing of one goose just wasn't sitting at the right angle. Then it hit me, one goose was hurt and it's mate had been sitting vigil for nearly five hours. I went back in and told the yoga instructor what I suspected and asked if she would call the raptor center. She was eager to help and I felt sure she would follow through. If that goose can be rehabilitated, I hope they take the pair together. Would they think of that? Why can't I sleep for not knowing?

Securing Faith

Security is defined as freedom from danger or as a place of safety, as freedom from cares or the absence of anxiety and doubt. Security is sometimes seen as a well-founded confidence or as an object that secures. Some people relate the feeling of security to what they recall of their childhood. And then there are those of us who know it only as “a state of being” that has eluded us for a lifetime.


My mom says I came into this world rather reluctantly, and not just because I was born late either. She said to me, “there I was all excited to hold my baby girl... only to discover you had no interest in being held at all.” The only way I’d take my bottle is if she propped me up so I could feed it to myself... and according to family lore, I always kept people at arm’s length; especially the men in the family.


Mom loves to tell the story about the time when I was only the tiniest little 3 year-old girl and we had this huge German shepherd, named Sox. He was a massive dog and so regal looking. He had the typical coloring of his breed, but all four of his paws were white, and that’s how he got his name. My only sibling, my sister Angie, was six years older than me and so it was Sox that was my constant companion. I woke up early one morning, got out of bed, put Sox on his leash and went out the back door of our apartment. My parents woke up a while later and discovered that I was nowhere to be found. They ran outside, I would imagine, frantically, calling my name. They found me, more than few doors down, having breakfast on the back of porch of elderly male neighbor of whom they did not know, but with whom I had become friendly. Sox lay on the ground right there by my side. If I could remember this, it would be my favorite memory. I’m guessing that, in my smallness, I felt safe next to the intimidating size of my dog, even back then.


Not too long after that we moved to a house right on Lake Norman in a tiny town called Denver, North Carolina. We had what was, without a doubt, the ugliest looking house on the street. It was a boxy, brown, two-story house with a garage that had one of those decks on top that looked fine until you put some furniture on it. The walls were covered in both gold shag carpet and brown, floral, foiled wall-paper. The inside of the house was decorated with abstract art, heavy wooden furniture and thick upholstery, which seemed almost in direct opposition to the bright green pines, red clay mud and blue water of its landscape. At the entrance of our neighborhood there were open fields of tall, itchy grass that spread out for what seemed like forever. This provided plenty of burial ground for all the cats that the neighborhood dogs would kill and the neighborhood kids would haul up the hill to bury in shoe boxes. I remember one time when Sox came home with one of his ear's half torn off. He'd been in a dog fight, too, but unlike the cats, he'd won; or at least he’d survived. This was life before leash laws in Lincoln County. It was play outside at your own risk, and we did; but I had Sox.


I was five years-old and sitting alone at the breakfast bar eating Capt'n Crunch cereal and drinking OJ out of one of those Smurf cartoon glasses from Hardees. The cereal used to tear at the skin on the roof of my mouth and the OJ would sting the rawness as I drank it. I knew something wasn't right, mom had been sad, really sad and Angie had been angry, really angry. Dad came in and knelt down beside me. He told me he was going away for a while and that Sox was going with him, but I would see them both again real soon. “Like a vacation?” I asked. He said, yeah, sort of. I think he hugged me and I’m pretty sure he looked sad and that must have been what gave him away. I know I smiled, which would have spread the freckles wide across my face. Then he probably reached up and smoothed away the dirty blondish colored-hair that hung straight down on either side of my face just like a curtain; a curtain that would close whenever I looked downward. I must have understood the reaction he needed from me; a non-reaction. So, I waited and then I cried at the sight of his broad back. Another spoonful of cereal and another sip of OJ would bring the stinging comfort of what would soon become a familiar pain.


By the time I turned seventeen we had moved twelve times and I had never attended the same school more than two years in a row. I was perpetually the new girl in school yet it didn't occur to me then that was probably the reason I could never find a place to fit in. I thought it was me, that there was something wrong with me because I always ended up orbiting the outskirts of all these tightly wound circles of friends. I’d sit in class with my hands in my lap and repeatedly crack my knuckles hard, and then wring my hands until the skin there would dry out and crack and bleed. This secret self-inflicted pain gave me something else to feel, it was familiar and distracting. In every neighborhood we lived in, I would find some grandfatherly man, grandmotherly woman or elderly couple to befriend. I was always searching for some peace, some truth, some measure of comfort, and I thought it might be found somewhere in the warm wisdom of their aging eyes.


Years later, during yet another time of uncertainty and transition in our family, I was living out of a suitcase in my grown sister’s home. She, like many other twenty-something’s, spent most nights at her boyfriend’s house and I slept alone in her bed. When she did come home, and planned to be there for the night, there was one sign I always looked for; her ring. It would lay on the bathroom counter by the sink. It was unlike every dainty thing I’d ever owned. It had a rather masculine, wide gold band with three square emeralds down the middle and three horizontal rows of diamonds on either side. The ring itself seemed to possess strength; it had a real presence. It was substantial looking. I loved it when she was home. It was like a more slumber party, but it felt like home and to me, the ring became a bearer of good news. Nearly a decade later, after I’d become a working, married mother of two, with a home of my own, my sister and I stood in her closet attempting to accessorize my suit before an important meeting. We were looking through her jewelry when I saw the ring for the first time in years. I stared at it for a moment and just let that familiar feeling wash over me. I told her about the memories it brought back. She just smiled and nodded. When I turned thirty that summer she presented me with a small box and a card. The card read, Dear Shel, this ring never meant anything to me until it meant something to you. Wear it in good health. Love, Angela.


I was the kid with the woobie. It started out as a velvet pillow in a nappy pillow case and then later on, I adopted a white full-sized cotton blanket. It was my security blanket. I went on to be the college kid with the woobie. Even on my wedding day I packed the woobie in the suitcase, where later that night, stuffed down in the bottom of the bed it would en-circle the ankles of my new husband in a gesture of welcome. It had always given me a feeling of comforting familiarity, during times when things were far from comfortable or familiar. I continued to sleep with it and travel with it long after I remembered why I’d began doing it in the first place: On girls’ trips to the mountains, Christmases at my in-laws’s house, business trips to Manhattan, even while six months pregnant with my own child.


Surely, all those years I must have believed in God, because I whispered and sometimes even shouted my prayers. Yet, I held on tight to the leash, to the ring, to the woobie. I knelt and prayed, “Now I lay me down to sleep” and yet, in childhood and in the decades to come, I continued to join my parents every time they boarded the roller coaster ride of alcoholism, extramarital affairs and multiple divorces. In the absence of their peace, I never experienced the feeling of being free from my cares, anxiety and doubts. Security never revealed itself in the wisdom of aging eyes, in the familiarity of my self-inflicted pain, in twisting the coolness of diamonds and emeralds between warm, anxious fingers. Every night for years, just hours after having folded them in prayer, my sleepless, searching hands would start to feel around for white cotton in the dark, still needing the reassurance that I was in a safe place.


Peace of mind wasn't found in my prayers, but in what it took me nearly 30 years to learn. That prayer has a counterpart and that counterpart is belief. I’d always prayed, but I didn’t believe my prayers would be answered; I prayed, but I never felt any relief. Those prayers were simply wasted words and wasted breath spiraling in a panic from my mouth to the sky and maybe hovering somewhere above the clouds. I finally grew weary under the burden of keeping people at arm’s length, pulling around intimidating dogs weighing close to my own body weight, repeatedly causing myself pain, lugging my lucky jewelry and my torn, tattered blanket with me everywhere I went. The God I prayed to all those years is the very same God that heard me when I finally threw both arms in the air, looked heavenward and cried, “I sure hope you’ve got all of this, because I’m letting go of it now.”


These days God is showing me that beauty can be wrenched from a painful journey…and it’s a beauty just hoping to be seen as such. My heart tells me that He was always there, protecting me, keeping me safe, waiting patiently for the all these years to pass, as they must, while I came to realize that He never gave me more than exactly what I needed in order to become ME. What was once letdown after letdown, and heartache after defeat, has become a hard-won inner strength and the well-founded confidence of something that secures……… and that feeling of security is no longer “a state of being” that eludes me.

Coffee Shop God

http://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Shop-God-Therese-Bartholomew/dp/159494038X/ref=dp_return_1?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Coffee Shop God is a straight-forward account of unfathomable loss where an honest soul is bared, a universal truth is wrenched from the gut of the author and the reader is left holding an unexpected gift.

Therese Bartholomew's book Coffee Shop God is an emotionally raw and surprisingly honest account of the days and weeks that follow the fatal shooting of her beloved younger brother. In this collection of essays, Bartholomew writes the things one might think, but would probably never speak aloud. "Dad knows, like all of us, that Joe is the son who should be dead.-the middle of the night phone call son." But she doesn't leave herself out of this because later as she looks around at her family, she writes, "I wonder, if they, like me, are running down a list of people they'd rather see dead. I blink slow and heavy and wonder if I'm on their lists."

The reader experiences the horrific late night phone-calls, the funeral arrangements, the police investigation, a courtroom encounter with the sister of her brother's killer and even scenes from the author's living-room; scenes we all have anxiety over but most of us have never experienced first-hand. Bartholomew speaks to us in heartache and humor revealing a refreshingly brave humanity. Her story is so redemptive, in the most unexpected way, that I had to turn right back to the first page and read it again. Then I mailed my copy to a friend and purchased another copy for myself the very next week. Heads up readers..this is at least a three-hanky read.

I'm Down

A painfully honest account of a mixed up childhood in which the author was not black enough for her white father (there's a lot to laugh at here) or the ghetto where they lived and not white enough for the rich, high IQ school her mother insisted she attend. She envies her little sister who manages to be "down" enough to bum a cig off older school kids at only five years old while the author herself can't seem to fit in anywhere. In the end, Wolff makes some friends, takes a peek into their family lives and discovers what my beloved pastor recently pointed out to his church, "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but there's poop in every yard." The only minor disappointment for me was the ending lacked closure, but that's probably good news for the author; if she writes a sequel I will surely run right out to buy it. ~Shel