Scribbles and Bits

Have you ever come away from a situation and questioned what you're doing in life? Not in the negative way we're used to, where you lay out the list of comparisons and see nothing but failure. But questioning in a way that is actually helpful. Like asking yourself "Hey, you once had dreams right? What were they and what stopped you from going after them?" Or when you realize that the sounds of children running around and being silly was a different (and absolutely preferable) kind of loud compared to the tv blaring Hallmark movies and old westerns all day. Last night, I spent the evening with people I'd never met in real life (though Twitter is another story entirely). We shared a meal around the table, laughed as the boys performed skits between slices of pizza, had my first experience with a Jessie tree, and heard myself saying "THIS (the family moments) is what I look forward to the most." I drove home thinking about the different ways in which hope a...

In a chat about DNA tests and family, I started thinking about what we know about those who've gone before us and how those tales affect us. For years, I didn't know much about my family. I knew that my parents weren't married, that I was given a name separate from theirs, that my grandmother was the first person to hold me, and a few scattered memories that remained confusing until I was an adult and able to ask questions. Later, there would be stories only told at funerals: The grandmother who chased her grown grandsons past the fire department, brandishing a bb gun; the estranged alcoholic who showed up as his ex's home after the bar closed, demanding to search the house while verbally berating the mother of his children; The cousin of a relative who was put on disability for being racist. However, the stories that took their toll on me were the ones from my time in the Midwest. Slow, quiet threads woven in the fabric of our day-to-day which ended the same every time...

I spotted a bearded ax at the renaissance fair one year and joked that with it, I could finally stand up to rude and unruly family by merely greeting them at the door with the dragon-etched tool. It drew a laugh from my grandma and the next day, that ax hung on my wall. I shared the story with our bible study group last night when the subject had somehow turned toward toxic relationships. You see, I never actually wielded that ax while opening the front door to dubious family members, but the idea took on a life of it's own. Whenever family pushed Grandma to the point where her health or safety was affected, I would ask "do you need me to greet them with an ax?" With a simple yes, I would step in and be the muscle that she needed. I would announce the unpleasant news or dispense the medicine of action needed to steer Grandma back to health. The idea of the ax was like an extra backbone, someone to step in when boundaries were ignored, or be a source of strength when som...

The question came up today: What do you want for Christmas? Now, you might be thinking "Isn't November a little early to jump into Christmas?!" but stay with me on this... For the last decade, Christmas has been bittersweet. It's the time of year when my grandma swears she's dying and that this is her last Christmas with us. We deck the halls and binge on Christmas movies until we're convinced that love is just one kiss under the mistletoe away. Christmas isn't a day, but months of fighting with darkness. Three years ago, just after quitting my job to be a full-time caregiver, we found ourselves sitting vigil at Grandma's bedside in the hospital. For two weeks, we wondered what would become of us if she didn't recover from whatever mystery that had left her unable to communicate and unaware of her surroundings. Since then, each week (sometimes, each hour) has been lived in a kind of triage as we try managing the pain and heartache that comes w...

Dear reader, It's a truth universally acknowledged that a writer never ceases to write, but merely stores up the words they long to share until they can no longer be contained. With that sentiment that I say "I never stopped blogging. I simply took a very long break after gutting my blog." I think it has been four years since deleting my entries and walking away from chronicling my ongoing conversion to Catholicism, the years as a part-time at-home caregiver, and my interest in swing dance. The time since then has been...rough. In just the last few years, we've made it through multiple surgeries, another battle with anemia, heartbreak, reunions, weddings and deaths. I've said before that to write is to exercise one's demons. I feel that at last, it's time to pick up my pen and return to battle.

Three Decades of Yankovic The Weirdest of Al's taught me to parody my sorrow into joy.

I saw a show about Mission bells where a priest said “Silver makes them sing” so swiftly there I bring my sorrow and begged the bells a song to borrow. My voice, long gone ‘came mended by the metal and the sweetness of its singing ringing bringing out the shouts of joy now piercing through the sky as I cry “thanks be to God!” ...my hopeful hallelujah

I avoid politics like the people in The Village avoided the world. Do you remember that movie? With the strange-talking people dressed in superstitious colors hiding from imaginary monsters of their own design. The twist wasn't that they lived hidden in the modern world, but that they made reality out of a coping mechanism. Clinging to an idealized past. They willfully chose to live in a fake world less painful than the world outside. And the world outside with its #metoo and kids with guns is no different than theirs. I don't want it to be real anymore. I turn off the news before it begins and don the color coat that won't get me killed.

Upon the 34th Anniversary of My Arrival Twelve thousand, forty-five days perfecting the art of w a l k i n g  on e g g s h e l l s around someone who disowned me three times through text and email. Three hundred ninety-six months placating a woman who would abandon her child with near-strangers in a place seventeen hundred miles away from normalcy. Three decades living on edge, startled by loud noises and careful to make myself small and contained. But this year I wanted something different: Permission to empty my world of the people and things reluctantly hoarded out of guilt or shame. To make space to breathe, to find my voice, to find myself buried long ago in the crushed dreams and abandoned pursuits of a love-starved little girl. To find what sets my soul aflame… To know what my laughter sounds like… For my thirty-fourth birthday I laid my past to rest, and launched a mission to rescue myself.

Red light blackens as the narrow door creaks open an invitation to enter the sacramental space. Feet are hesitant to move into the void where I am stripped of my mask and my sins made known. I kneel The springs of the padding beneath me groan a song of neglect mimicking the ache of years in my bones. I cross myself before the closed window between me and my confessor. Sliding wood and the reminiscence of a face disguised by woven metal reveal I'm not alone. "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned it's been far too long since I faced myself." Long enough for the paint to peel curls of white revealing brick. Long enough to forget how claustrophobic my secrets feel, how trapped, how small I am in this prettied closet. I have come to unburden this heart of a load to heavy to carry further.

The house is never truly still. There is an almost endless punctuation of shrill beeps of mechanisms I've long resented, shoving aside peace and mind with their demands for attention. A disrespect for my time that mirrors their insensitivity toward the restlessness and frustration their interruptions leave in their wake. I just need time enough to finish one incomplete thought... Just one train of thought that isn't hijacked by a notification.

We are never more alive than when embracing our grand finale. *** My death sentence came in the exam room-- brief, with apologies and a note of sorrow in the directive to put my affairs in order. But in the upside-down of my mind, there was no order: only lists of regrets that needed to be unwritten. I refused to race toward the end of my tomorrows and reluctantly greet Death at the finish line. No. I ran to the warmth of each day, telling strangers they were beautiful, loving embracing laughing. I learned to dance for joy with my failing body. And in those last few months, I lived more than those I left behind

The doctor asked how the meds were working for me, but I was too engrossed in the haziness outside. It was daylight but not bright. Blue, but not blue. Grey, but not grey. Not-grey, not-blue, full of clouds that glow like fire when the sun begins to set. Curiously, I cannot see the sun. No sun. No clouds. Just a blanket of not-blue covering all above until I've forgotten what blue looked like. Oppressive and unimpressive. Real and light, but shades of wrong The sky, never truly dark anymore, but also, not quite right. But I've forgotten what the sky looks like and now it's all not-blue, yet not-grey. "I guess it's working" I reply, still lost in the wrong colors outside

There is no Summer in the Golden State, just heat and fire with no ending date. In April begins the temperature climb until nature wins once it hits June-time. Constantly weary for four months on end, sun-tanned and sweaty 'til Fall makes amend with fresh soothing rain quenching ground again

New amber pours out into a readied pint glass, piquing my curiosity: "What does it taste like?" The cask-fresh concoction is passed my way. "It tastes like time-travel" But I do not understand until golden brew touches parched lips and I'm transported to younger days surrounded by the laughter of joyful men toasting to new life, the excitement of first-born fading as I swallow and my taste buds dry. Warmth flows down my limbs hitting empty stomach, igniting the butterflies of a first kiss, expanding until my body glows warm like the spring day of our first meeting. I open my eyes to empty glass and ask for another trip.

My soul is poisoned like tule fog rolling into the valley, flowing from the emptied slough and swallowing us whole. A bright swift cloud low and rolling like the bobcats that roam the foothills looking for smaller prey. The cold endless grey unyielding pressing against every space until the world disappears and you are abandoned within. It's easy to lose yourself in the fog.