We all need some manure in our lives

Stomping manure is not my favorite exercise, but it had to be done, and I was the girl for the job.

Last Friday I spent a great deal of time dancing on top of manure as if at a grape-crushing party. Of course, I didn't do it in my bare feet. That would be some kind of pedicure! I did it in an old pair of sneakers that are very likely to end up in the garbage can by the curb in the near future.

Why did I develop this intimate relationship with animal waste? I was putting in a winter lawn. And considering that I gave up on my summer lawn last winter - because I believe with all my heart that bermuda grass is what grows in hell - putting in fresh grass was quite the exciting if exhausting venture.

I scalped the demon grass by hand where it persisted in several patches across the yard despite the fact that I have neglected it for months. I used a hard rake to scrape up the disaffected soil. I spread seed and fertilizer as my Yorkie attacked my manual spreader, making the seed dump out in piles that I later hand-tossed. The flexible rake was then used to spread my seed and fertilizer more evenly.

Then came the manure, five bags of it. I knew pretty quick that a. I was dang tired already as I hugged the smelly bags and tried to distribute them evenly, and b. that I didn't have nearly enough excrement to go around my big yard. I tried my best with what I had, shaking out clumps of manure and the occasional wood chip and large rock. In the end my paltry if incredibly stinky supply of manure was not enough to keep the birds away from my seed.

So that afternoon after a shower that couldn't possibly make me feel clean, I purchased more manure, 15 bags of it exactly, to dump on my yard, keeping the birds, our neighbors and our neighborhood's roaming cats away.

My darling husband and son lugged the heavy bags into the yard, spacing them out nicely. And that evening I cut open the bags with my demoted kitchen scissors and dragged them in a snake pattern across small areas. Again I grabbed my soft rake and spread that manure out beautifully. As I spotted large miscreant clumps, I stomped on them mightily and repeatedly, figuring that if my arms could be so weary with this labor of yard love, then my legs might as well be, too.

It was my first time attempting a winter lawn. Would all my work be for naught?

This whole week I have watched my yard between deep waterings, waiting for some sign of new life. And this whole week I have been struggling with a loss of hope in other, more vital areas of my life. I needed to see the little blades of rye grass in an almost spiritual way. I needed some symbol of hope, some payoff for all my imperfect but valiant efforts.

And yesterday I saw them, appearing overnight it seemed, sage green, delicate sprouts. Gorgeous and very welcome they were! My hope was renewed with them. My heart swelled with pride for my work. I showed them to my kids and man excitedly, gratefully. I paroled the perimeter of my yard with my Yorkie, bending down to peer sideways into new, tiny life.

For days I had stared at a yard full of manure anxiously, seeing only that seed had not, and possibly would not, sprout. And now? Fulfillment of promise.

My yard is a lesson in life, I think. At least I got something deeper from it. As I reflected on my relief and joy in a new lawn yesterday, I realized that we human beings need seeds of a good life planted, too, by God, our parents, our teachers and other role models, and we definitely need the fertilizer of compassion, education, experience, and good relationships. But we also need manure, those often stinky and sticky situations, those many challenging and often unexpected times, that occasional or frequent interior turmoil. We need those things even if they obscure the seed and the fertilizer for a while, because in the end we spring up fuller and taller and stronger than we were before. We become resilient.

And we appreciate the little things in life, like a winter lawn, even more.

Give it a year to...

I'm in a slump. My vertigo returned last week. The house is a perpetual disaster. I'm exhausted, and I've been wanting to tackle a subject that's hard enough to write about and makes me vulnerable.

The anniversary of our car accident had been in my thoughts even before it arrived Saturday, sitting on my consciousness, playing with threads of memory and skeins of emotions - difficult to untangle into words. Some might scoff at my use of the term "anniversary", but I'm reminded of those events most days and especially these. I'm reminded when I sit at a red light behind the ghost of a hulking black motorcycle, when I see a white and gray Kia van like our old one at a medical building, when I see someone drive recklessly or feel I've made a mistake and been unsafe myself.

It's a very selfish topic, but I trust my dad when he told me, Sometimes you have to write for you and not care about anybody else.

For a long time before that late September day, I had felt that I was extremely blessed and sheltered, that I had no conception of the sadness, trauma, distress others go through routinely in life. I didn't ask God for our experience, but when it happened, it simply felt like my turn for some adversity and challenge. There was no, Why me? That's folly to some, and I'm explaining it poorly, but it felt like something God could and did use to instruct me. And still the trauma has never seemed as if it could compare with what others live through on a weekly, monthly, daily basis, but it helped me learn compassion, empathy in a radical way for people I would not normally meet at church or a sports practice or within a mom's group.

It taught me about the human kaleidoscope of circumstances, especially while in the county hospital with rotating roommates, across the hall from a room with a sentry to guard the prisoner of the county jail who reclined in its bed, his ankles secured to it by chains.

Nevertheless, I did act like a baby when I got home from the hospital. I felt, particularly, that my husband couldn't comprehend the minefield of my emotions and recollections. The day after I returned home was my birthday. While we were eating an apple pie our friend Vivien had brought me at the hospital (with paper plates and plastic forks, God bless her), Daniel slid off his seat and got his leg momentarily caught between the chair and a bench. He started crying, fearful more than anything. Ella became frightened, and I quickly descended into hysterics. Ella and Daniel, still fragile as well, joined me immediately.

"He's fine," Matthew said, holding our little son and staring in disbelief at my sobs and convulsions.

It was the sound of Daniel crying, that's what Matthew didn't understand. I heard again the sound of his and Ella's terrified cries after the accident, and it made me come apart. Matthew was angry that I upset the children. I tried to explain why I was falling apart, that I had control over nothing. I failed.

I didn't respond to my children in the first several dazed moments after the wreck, you see. I don't ever remember asking if they were okay. They were crying, and Ella was screaming for me to respond, to tell her if I had something stuck in me. I finally forced myself to speak and raise my right hand, but my voice was so faint, they couldn't hear me well....or maybe I sounded so strange, it was no comfort. Later, I tortured myself with what if - what if they had been hurt, too? Would I have forced myself to move, to climb to them regardless of pain? I comforted myself that I knew they were okay by their strong voices, by the point of impact, but it wasn't surprising that I had nightmares for a long time after, bad, bad dreams in which I failed to keep my children safe in one way or another.

I know this is part of the reason why I'm so grateful to the firemen, my friends, and my husband for taking such complete, beautiful care of my children for me.

It was because of Ella and Daniel being in the van with me, unharmed physically by events but very frightened, that my family and friends were baffled by my sadness over the death of the motorcyclist who hit us. But I found the way in which he died horrific, and I was distraught that I was part of the circumstances.

I wanted him to have a second chance, a wake-up call. I knew a tiny bit about his situation - that he hit the rear of a truck two intersections before he hit me, that he fled that scene, that he had suspicious substances on his bike. My dad told me simply that I could not know how many second chances he'd been given. A friend told me that I couldn't know; perhaps God used me to keep him from hurting someone else, that sometimes God chooses us for these experiences. But I cannot discern between time and chance and will and meaning.

But still I was sad. I struggled right into this past summer when I had a breakdown at my sister's house in which I yelled at my husband to pray for those he loves, and I confessed that it bothered me, scared me that I didn't know where this man's soul was who died in our accident.

My sis Vinca calmed me down, talked to me and held me as I sobbed.

At 2 am as I finally got ready for bed and looked sheepishly at my swollen, weary face in the mirror, I felt God's displeasure just as clearly as I felt his approbation months earlier in the hospital when I had no anger against the motorcyclist. This time, though, I knew I had to lay my emotions to rest. It was God telling me, It's none of your business where this man's soul is. It's My business. Let it go. Now.

And apologize to your husband.

And I have, really - apologized and let it go. I'm still sad for a man I know nothing about, but who I will always feel connected to because of the events of a late September day. So I pray for his wife, and I pray for one of my hospital roommates, and I pray that God will shine his light on the path of the doctors and nurses who treated me those five days.

And I hold and rock my littlest ones when something reminds them of our accident, and I pray that God will guide me to be the best mother that I can be and a very safe driver, and I take a deep breath nearly every day and let it go.

Starry, Starry Night: There are always points of light in the darkness

A month and a half ago, I was going through my quarterly Vincent Van Gogh period. No, I do not mean that I was inspired to paint pictures to rival Starry Night, The Potato Eaters or Sunflowers. Instead I was going through an artistic depression that, had it progressed further, might have had me contemplating cutting off an ear and mailing it to a relative or some random person.

Of course, I would never do that. I am not even close to being as Vincent Van Gogh as Van Gogh was himself - in manic depression or creative ability. Yet, you must give the beautiful genius this provision for his insane choice: his talent was never properly appreciated or rewarded in his lifetime. No wonder the lady who used to sell him his art supplies, while giving an interview on her hundredth or something birthday, said he was a morose jerk. Ask any creative person, and they're likely to tell you that when they get depressed about the reception of their work and the result of their efforts, they can go to some pretty dark places. And then, on top of it all and because of it all, their generative powers just about die (writer's block, apathetic painter's brush, composer's recalcitrant keys, etc).


We love you, Vincent. You were a genius, if unstable...and aren't we all?


As for this creative person, things turned around on Holy Thursday night. I was a Lector at Mass that evening, and I read the Old Testament reading of the first Passover. While crying and complaining to my husband on the phone at lunch that I was pathetic, he encouraged me to shift my focus from myself and my frustration to something more worthy of my attention. He told me to go over my reading for Mass. I didn't feel like doing it, but I did. And I stayed off my computer. When the time came to depart for church, I got on my knees and asked God to forgive me for snapping at my children every moment and for being completely selfish the whole day because of my self-centered disappointments. During my reading, a miracle: I did not make one mistake - no stuttering, no mispronunciations, no loss of the rhythm in the reading, and I was astounded that such a thing could be on a day when my attitude had been venomous.

My husband whispered, "Good job!" when I returned to the pew, and I replied with conviction, "By the grace of God."

My cry since, whenever I begin to crave the sour berries of self-pity, has been, "Father, save me from discouragement!" Sometimes you have to reject the all too alluring, soul-numbing and dead-ending gospel of "ME".

Anyway, some great things - great to little me - happened in the past couple months. The domesticated bohemian shared one of my posts to Google +. (Thank you, Philip!) My friend Holly wrote a great guest post about her grandfather. I wrote three other fairly popular posts of which I am quite proud. The writer Jennie of A Lady in France gave me some calming words of wisdom. My dad also wrote a guest post, and though it was very short, it of course brought in a slew of traffic, because his pieces always do. And I was gifted with words of encouragement from a cousin, a childhood friend, and my brother who told me that he reads each new post. Of course, I immediately got nervous and upended by writer's block upon hearing this from my big brother. Go figure.

Points of light in the darkness. All I can do, like any of us, is to keep striving. Sure, I've had days when I avoided the computer, and yesterday I missed the once-a-week posting goal I set for myself. As each and every weekend approaches, I resolve that this Saturday I'll sit down and pitch another post to a humor site; yet, for the past three months, being very busy, I haven't. And, okay, SEO does not exist for my blog, and technology to me is like an uneasy alliance with an alien network: great plans, poor communication. But I don't despair. No, indeed. I keep working, keep hoping, keep creating and seeking those points of light in the darkness.

They are always there, those starry, starry nights. They are there for all of us.


Mr London Street published again, and, as usual, it is a beautiful and funny post. He is always brilliant in reflections about his relationship with his wife. His posts, like fine wine, have an excellent finish. I am ashamed that I chronically feel twinges of jealousy when I read his words, but I am sure that I could never so well keep an audience's attention when writing about my mouth guard or my need to fill a prescription. Ah, well, we can't have it all, and I comfort myself that at least he can't write about what it's like to be a mama, or mum, or an accident-prone girl from Tennessee currently living in Arizona - ha!

P.S. Nathan, you're not old, and your words are vibrant. In the words of an American, keep truckin'.

Quest for Oonie

One evening last week, not feeling well and mourning the fresh loss of my beautiful earring (a Christmas gift from my husband Matthew), I ended my kids' bedtime ritual by clutching a ratty teddy bear to my chest and sobbing over it like a baby.

The emotional ordeal that would progress to my irrational breakdown began as I tucked my youngest daughter into bed.

"Ella, where is Oonie?" I asked. "I haven't see him."

I said the words and panic dropped with a thud into my chest. I hadn't seen Oonie, my little girl's best stuffed friend since toddlerhood, in a few days. He always slept with her, but he simply hadn't been around to tuck in beside her, to kiss his dingy brown fur as she usually wished me to do. She had asked for him the night before, but I hadn't been able to find him where she said he would be. I hadn't worried about it then, but now a new thought struck.

"Ella, did you leave him at the football field?" The panic had now traveled into my voice, and Ella responded anxiously, "I don't know."

"Ella, where is Oonie?" I repeated futilely and stridently as I left abruptly to check the likely places in the house.

"Maybe he's in the car," she called after me.

"I'll check," volunteered my son Berto, who saw the building emotional storm in my features, but I knew he wasn't there. He would have been buckled into the passenger seat beside me, and I had not noticed him there for some time. No, Oonie had been left at the football field where Berto had played Saturday. It was now Tuesday, and with each passing moment my conviction that he was lost forever grew by distressing leaps and bounds.

Foolishly, I spilled my anxious thoughts and began to bemoan the fact that I ever let Ella take Oonie out of the car. Matthew, irritated by the uproar over a bear and baffled by my mood, reiterated, "She should never have taken him onto the football field. He should always stay in the car. Ridiculous." And he strode out the back door with a flashlight to search.

My eldest daughter Ana was following me around, waiting for me to read her a Nancy Drew book. I settled uneasily into the recliner, and I tried - I did try - but my thoughts were agitated and visions of Oonie being thrown in a dumpster by a grizzled and sour-faced custodian played before my eyes. The first tears began to spill over on the book, and when my husband returned from the backyard, responding, No, to my urgent inquiry about Oonie, I dropped it.

"Ana, I can't. I'm too worried about Oonie," I said, and then I wailed to Matthew, "He's in a dumpster somewhere. A janitor found him at the football field and he's so dirty, they just threw him away."

My man was losing patience with me; I could see it in his eyes before I dashed down the hall to the girls' room. Ella was crying. Crying noisily myself, I didn't comfort my little girl. I was completely failing in my parental shore-them-up responsibilities. I should have held Ella, assured her sedately that we'd find Oonie very soon, that we'd search the length of the football field and ask the school's custodian. I should have recited "that's life" platitudes and invented tales about someone finding Oonie and keeping him safe until we could reclaim him. Instead I flipped on the bedroom light and leaned over her to peer with blurry eyes into the shadows under her big sister's bed. Ana was the one who held her little sis as she whimpered, "I'm sad about Oonie."

Then, suddenly, my man appeared at the door, holding out at arm's length a raggedy, saggy, big beige-colored teddy bear. He was holding him out more toward Ella than me, but I am ashamed to say that I snatched him from my husband's hands and let out great sobs as I squeezed him against my chest and buried my face in his fur. After a few moments, aware of my selfishness, I relinquished him into my baby girl's arms, pressing him to her chest now, and held them both against me as I rocked.

"Where did you find him?" I asked softly.

"In Berto's room."

I remembered then how I had let her play in there with an old game the day before. I also remembered how Oonie had been invited to a tea party in the afternoon of that day and had sat with other stuffed friends. Why had I forgotten that?

Meanwhile Berto was lecturing his little sister on why "that bear" should never have been in his room to begin with - that if he trespassed again, he might just stay lost forever. But nothing could disturb Ella and me now; we'd already swum through the sea of agitation to the shore of restoration. I tucked her into bed with Oonie, whispered, "I'm sorry," several times against her cheek, and gave the bear a kiss without being asked.

When it was all over, I couldn't explain myself very well to Matthew. I just kept saying the same things over and over. It's Oonie. She's had him since she was a little baby. I lost my earring today: I didn't want to lose something else, too. Natie gave him to her. But maybe that explains more than I could say. My big brother Nate, who I so rarely get to see because he lives far across the land and sea in England, gave the big, squishy bear to curly-haired baby Ella. In due time he became that special one, the bear she slept with nearly every night after moving to a big kid bed, the bear she christened "Oonie" as a toddler, the bear she dressed up in all manner of strange garb and buckled into the car with motherly care...the bear the firemen found securely strapped into the passenger seat after our car accident.

Ella Belle's best bear, Oonie, will never, ever, ever go to a football game again.





And I plan to grow up.

Anakin No More

As I had promised him, I got around to watching the Star Wars films with my son, Berto. And I cried more than I should probably confess. 

Yes, I'm a dork, but in the Star Wars Saga as in any truly great tale, I see the truths about human experience and about incremental choices made in everyday life to work toward good or evil. This drives my husband crazy sometimes, how I must delve into films, books or songs instead of purely escaping through them, extracting and dissecting their emotional, intellectual and spiritual assets in my examination of their merit. Then, heaven forbid! I must talk about it.

But I did learn a couple superficial things, too. I learned I grew up, because though I may have found him fascinating as a kid, I now find Jabba the Hut to be one of the most universally revolting characters ever created. I could barely bear to look at his vulgar, slimy, slug-like hideousness on the screen. I discovered that men's fantasies about Princess Leia in her bikini are valid, because, boy, that is some bikini. It looks like a beast to wear (what is that top - metal?), but it's an iconic image of female beauty even though it happens in far off fantasy land and with impossibly coiffed hair, fortunately without the ear braids.

I understood while watching these films, however, that this was also a teaching moment. My son had been telling me for some time his perspective on the tale. He sympathized with the unfortunate Anakin who becomes the hyper-cool and vicious Darth Vader, but I'll be damned if I don't take the opportunity to point out everything Anakin forfeited in his restless, self-seeking path of anger, revenge, hate and death.

"Berto, shame on Anakin. Shame on him," I kept saying, shaking my head at each new development in Anakin's journey to the dark side.

"But, but..." Berto kept saying. There's always buts.

**************************

The Revenge of the Sith is quite stressful to watch when you have a two-and-a-half-year-old awake from his nap, but you're inexorably sucked into the epic battle between good and evil in one crazy, complex and fascinating character. Your mama judgement is affected.

"Berto, quick! Get up here and help me block out the screen," I said over and over again when disturbing scenes - just guess how many there were - played out on the TV. It didn't work too well; Berto and I had to shuffle around hip to hip as my Danny boy kept trying to see around us.

Plus, Danny just wanted Mama to play. I wasn't in too light a mood, you understand, because my emotions are easily manipulated by what I'm observing around me, and I was observing a whole lot of chaos, fear, and anguish diced up for my...amusement? Several times I just turned the screen off, especially when the Emperor appeared in all his...uh...glory or during moments of the horrific but impressively choreographed battle scene between Obi-Wan and Vader.

I did try. I bounced the ball back and forth with my little son to distract him while trying to twist one eye ever to the hypnotic screen. But when my little guy bounced the ball into the netherworld beneath the couch or entertainment center and couldn't find it, he threw an enormous tantrum; I think all the tension in the room was wiring his emotions, too.

"Bawl! Bawl," he whined.

"I don't know where your ball is!" I shouted back repeatedly. "Find it yourself!"

Yes, that's ugly. I think I'd taken a step or two toward the dark side at that point, but I was sick of all the getting up and sitting down, migration between real life and fantasy, bouncing balls and light saber combat. I was up to my neck in conflicting interests. I should have just turned off the movie, of course.

Finally, the end at last. Anakin and Padme's babies are orphaned, essentially, and separated.

"Oh, Berto..." I began, but then my voice broke. "Anakin lost...everything..."

Initially small, selfish steps easily led the volatile Anakin to take broad strides toward the corruption of his whole being, and he, through his vice, lost not only the one he bartered everything for, but he gave up knowing their children as well. I sobbed because I am a parent, and I understand what was lost. Obi-Wan's grief over the loss of his Jedi brother even as he combats him, his cry, "Anakin! You were supposed to bring balance to the Force, not plunge it into darkness!", overwhelmed me, too.

Yes, I know it's fiction.

"I'm going to make a list of all the movies you've cried at," said my son, but gently as I raised my wet face from my hands.

**************************

A blank screen where all that energy had been. With my emotions still unbalanced, I picked up the Sunday paper, discombobulated, and read a terrible story about some woman's boyfriend abusing and allegedly murdering her young child. This mother was selfishly willing to leave her child for her own convenience in the care of someone whom she knew had harmed her child before. She herself had even reported the abuse. How many times have I read just that same story in the paper? Human folly, in all its subtle variations, is without end, but the themes are always there - selfishness, pride, stupidity, lust, greed....power.

I stared into space, watching my thoughts dance around the bonfire of my rage, and perhaps my eyes took on a red tinge, because Berto said in concern, "Mama, what are you thinking about?"

So I told him without giving him the specific details. I told him about my anger against these wicked people in the world who disrupt the natural order. Especially against those who hurt children. How I knew it was wrong to want revenge against others, but how the things that people do to each other distress and infuriate me.

Then I pulled him onto my lap, this tall nine-year-old son of mine who loves Star Wars, and I hugged him tight and buried my face in his chest while I wept for fictional tragedy and real life evil.