Summer vacation's almost gone...

Pretty soon I'll have to wake the kids up in the morning so they can get ready for school.  As it stands now they usually rise around 11 AM.  They may get dressed by one or two in the afternoon.  I give them a call around nine or ten and they still beg to play a little bit longer.  This summer has truly been a 'minimal schedule' stretch.  I'll also be getting to work and will have to re-learn how to confine myself to a grownup schedule.

I remember summers as a child.  Our side yard sloped down to a ditch and was half the length of a football field.  Day and night were only divided by light and dark and meals were only governed by the gnaw in our stomachs.  June and July lent themselves to chains of clover and dandelions smeared on our faces.  As they sun disappeared in the west we grabbed our canning jars in our sweaty little palms and ran up and down the yard with our hands cupped, carefully depositing the fireflies into the jar.

I'm not sure if my mind jumps to exaggeration when remembering or if the memory of childhood just seems bigger, but I rarely see fireflies lighting up the sky like Christmas lights.  The cicada and cricket sounds seem muted and the clover and dandelions have gone the way of weed and feed.  Everything seemed brighter and louder and bigger as a child.  I think our ability to see the world and all of it's wonders starts to dim in our teenage years and slowly we peer through the cataracts of old age. 

I almost hate the idea of bedtimes and alarm clocks as much as my kids do.  I think someone should want to pay me a salary for taking walks, picking flowers and laying on my hammock listening to crickets as I gaze up at the stars.  It sounds like a job description that I could through myself into wholeheartedly. 

Skunks smell

Women love women so differently than the ways that women and men love each other.    I chance to say that most relationships between men and women are played like a game and are integrated with strategies like those used in warfare.  Women want to be loved and cherished, touched for touching's sake, and appreciated.  I have watched so many men dangle pieces of the aforementioned offerings, like a carrot before a horse, but all the while see them as bait to get what they want, sex.  Granted, I have little grace for the opposite sex, especially men who claim to be "christian" husbands.  I've seen too many husbands screw, both literally and figuratively, their wives, and in the end treat them as a piece of property.  I know there must be men out there that know how to be selfless and caring, those who can love for loves sake, in a lifetime, I've not known many. 
 
I recently watched a couple at Price Chopper as they slowly worked their way through the cooler of beef and chicken.  She pushed the cart and he wandered around teasing her and flirting with her.  He would come up behind her and nuzzle her on the ear and whisper things that made her giggle.  After twenty years of marriage I don't have a clue what that would be like.  It makes me sad, it makes me angry.  I wish I would have known in 1982 what I know now...that sex is one of the lesser important components of a marriage...that being friends is the cornerstone to being lovers...that even though hard times can draw two people closer, those same hard times can shine a light through a marriage built on illusions...that sometimes, no matter what you do, things don't work they way that you want them to...and, that life is too short to wrap your identity around another person or a relationship that has died.
 
Dead relationships rarely happen all of a sudden.  Usually one or the other person drags along the corpse of what used to be, or desire gone south, until eventually they realize that they are flat worn out from carrying the dead weight.  Or maybe, they finally are able to smell the stench of the deadness, not unlike the reawakening of smell after a long cold.  My cold lasted for over ten years.  I still get stuffy once in a while, but generally I can smell a skunk a mile away.
 
 

God, what the hell's going on?!

My friend just told me something she heard this morning. She sounded stunned and relieved. I am angry and so very sad. Mostly I'm sad for what people do to each other without regard, without love (not romantic or deep friendship love, but just plain love for fellow man; basic goodness of heart) and I'm angered beyond words at the crap some of us have to wade through. Sometimes we are the last to even know that it is crap. I'm talking about being emotionally and spiritually stunted and retarded because of tyrannical and overbearing tendency in the churches that we were raised in as children. The very institution that should embody "true" love and trust was often the place were our small hearts were terrorized. I remember coming home as a small child and the house was empty. Even though my mom was just next door at the neighbors I was sure that the rapture had happened and I had been left behind. I hadn't been good enough. There must have been one unconfessed sin that I didn't even know about.

We are such a f*cked up race. The very thing (church) that should/could be built on pure love and grace has often become the most common place of abuse; abuse of power, abuse of gender and secret and blatant sexual abuse. Souls have been raped and there will be hell to pay.

I'm not sure if I've actually worked through some of my religious "stuff" or if I just don't care anymore. I do know that I have become so very tired of the mental and emotional gymnastics that I have to go through to try to know God. One time Jesus told someone that it would be better for them to have a big rock tied around their neck and be thrown into the sea than to hurt a little child. I guess that gives us an idea of what He thinks about all of this, huh?

The Hidden Life of Pictures

I came across a website about a photographer from the early 1900's named Mike Disfarmer. His photography focused on portraits of everyday people in the Heber Springs, AR area. When he was alive he was viewed as an odd fellow, but whenever people came to town they spiffed up to get a portrait taken. Since his death he has been discovered and celebrated. His photos are haunting, each one begging for a story to unfold. When you look at a couple you begin to wonder, "do they love each other?", "is it a utilitarian union?", and the thoughts go on and on. Many of the photos were taken during the war so there are fathers in uniforms with babies and women with children without fathers.

This same theme was repeated in Elizabeth Berg's newest novel, The Art of Mending. Three siblings in their fifties remember life growing up in their house very differently. Pictures and mental snapshots are a very important part of retracing the memories, the practice of looking into the pictures for the emotions, the body language and the hidden soul smiles as well as the quiet cries for help.

I have some of those pictures in a drawer in the armoire in my bedroom. There is the one were my younger sister and I are sitting on the concrete steps in the front of our house. She is in a stripped nautical bikini made from the 'wonderful' man-made fabrics that were ever so popular in the sixties that itched like crazy when you were wet. I'm in a plain one-piece, I was told it was because I was a thick child. We had been in the blow-up kiddy pool on the patio in the backyard and mom wanted us to come to the front step so she could take a picture of us in our bathing suits. There were pictures of every season, every event, every first day of school. These weren't candid shots, but each one was carefully and painfully choreographed and staged, capturing the perfect family that we weren't.

The concrete was as hot as a griddle and the water dripping from our fingers and toes evaporated on contact. Our little girl bottoms were frying like meat on a grill. My sister started puckering and sniffing. Her nose started running as the tears in her eye welled up. And still we waited for the perfect moment, the correct expression and the smiles that showed how 'happy' we were and how 'lucky' we were to have our new bathing suits. Four year olds are usually not capable of pulling it together and stuffing it like adults can. So, SNAP, the picture was taken, the memory preserved. I remember. There is so much I don't remember, but I do remember the pain, how I wanted to help my sister in my own helplessness. I remember being locked out of the house, because we might mess it up with the dirt and wet of summertime childhood. I remember muttering to myself the unfairnesses of life, my life, as I sat on the hot concrete in the 12', 2 ring blow up pool.

As I look at the stack of photos I struggle to pull out good memories. I know that every waking moment of my childhood was not spent in pain and unhappiness. There is the picture of my great-grandfather. He adored me. There are pictures of my grandparents. They played the game and took the perfect pictures, but my mom's mom told me truth in our special times at her house. My list of happy memories is littered with her face and touch.

I think in all things spiritual there is a balance of good and bad. Babies and children love. There is no guarantee that they will be loved. For every unloving memory I want to take the time and love myself enough to balance the scales with a picture in my mind of being loved. The memories are usually there only sometimes I need to dig through the garbage can to get to them. Almost always it is worth it.