so sorry but blogging will be sporadic. with last minute everythings, I didn’t prepare those posts as I’d hoped. However I feel odd leaving that deeply personal post up at the top of the page for days on end. so, I am writing a quick note between being muscle, organizer, cook, interior designer, mediator, electrician and moral support, to say that I look forward to connecting with all of you very soon.
i found me. surprisingly i was there all along. but the transition from your stool to my own took longer than i thought. most days i never thought to escape. honestly not even sure if i wished it.
remember how you used to sit me down in the bathroom for hours to set my hair. especially the night before school pictures. you were so careful with the hot rollers. every single strand was in place before you’d consent to securing it. every section meticulously brushed. i’d preen when you were done. somehow only you could make me feel that beautiful.
the stool became a throne when we bought grandmas house. made of metal but painted creamy offwhite, i sat ensconced in style. certainly not yours though. you would never have purchased such a thing, all curled armrests and decorative scrollwork. once meant for a pretty lady to sit before a vanity mirror, i sat before you.
the throne was my power and shame. my reign upon it rather embarrassing. it kept me your little girl who didn’t like walking barefoot in long grass and who prissed her curls for the camera too long. where hairdressers invented frankenstein versions of myself to look at, you at least found something of the emerging me. so there was reason to endure.
recreating that moment over the years without you has been painful. always torn between some notion of beauty and some inkling of myself. your ghost ever at my shoulder. did I feel beautiful? sometimes. mostly ridiculous.
many years later i sat before different hands. i’ll always wonder what made that day different. which stars were in the sky, what made me call for that appointment, why i got that girl. the time had come. i watched her and the horrific invention in the mirror cracked and fell away.
a whole person unearthed, chiseled out from a brush and a blow dryer, so long undiscovered at your hands or mine.
and what she found came home with me. she did not hide. i could bring her forward any time i choose. the inner lining of the cloak i’d long worn.
This is the exact lesson we are currently on in my ASL class. It’s the unit on story telling, and this first example story had me in stitches upon first viewing.
Laughing is one of the things I enjoy most about sign class. Two hours every week is quite a commitment, but once I get there, there is always laughing.
We laugh easily at ourselves and each other, but feelings aren’t hurt. We all know that we look equally ridiculous and just go with it. There will definitely be tons of giggling when we have to get up and tell a story like this one for the exam at the end of the section!
ps. No, she is not exaggerating. All those facial expressions and pretending like she’s talking to someone that isn’t there and gesturing is part of the language. We feel like we are in drama class sometimes.
Facebook has been bothering me for other reasons on top of the current uproar. And the pile of stress was so high that I finally recognized it for what it is. A constant flowing stream of updates and applications that have little importance to my daily life. My exuberant reach at the start went way too far. My daughter said it best when she confided: “Mom, I like being involved and busy, but I don’t like doing everything and having no time to relax.” Exactly! Thank God for my ten-year old fount of wisdom.
The deluge coming from Facebook feels just like that to me. Too many people to keep up with. One liners are funny when you post them on a wall, but do they penetrate? are they a building block? do they make a friendship when after years the only thing left is a hyper-link from one insecure social media webpage to another. There was way too much time reading somethings and not enough Skype calls to my girls, my real friends who have been there through thick and thin and who read my blog. Not enough blog writing – you should see the backlog in my drafts! – and expressing and reading and spending time with the people that matter.
So after much hand-wringing – just ask my husband how many times I asked him a question like “what will people think?” or “will they hate me?’ or “should i tell them what i’m doing?” still trying to please – I seriously downscaled my Facebook: chopped my friend list in HALF, tightened privacy settings and removed any information that I do not want totally public.
When I left high school, I made and kept a promise to myself: that I wouldn’t feel obliged any longer to keep in contact with people just because there were the only game on the block. Facebook changed all that and put me right back in 1995, a pleated plaid school skirt standing in front of a baby blue locker absolutely covered in pictures of people who don’t call me on the weekends. Sheesh, why did I do that to myself?!
Where is my Internet heart?
Where my real one is. Right here. And from now on, my online presence will not be what Zuckerberg wants. It will be what I want. And I like Twitter better anyways.
Phew. Look at that. My first reading challenge. And I’m finished 6 months early. It was easy. Finding nonfiction to know and love was no issue, contrary to what I thought starting out. Five of my nine books were nonfiction, and I enjoyed them the most.
I am immensely proud to call myself a Sister Suffragette!
So, yes, I am done reading but definitely not done discussing my nine books. In fact, most of them have been neglected as far as blog posts go. In this too, I shall be faithful. I’m writing my thoughts in advance so that I can leak them out to you while I’m deciding which cupboard to put my pots in and where the extra toilet paper goes at our new house.
Look out for future posts on these books and happy reading to you!
cecilia: "just omit the meat from your bean meals, like meatless chilli and spaghetti. we love lentils here, lentil soup, lentil curry over rice… I’ll put some more thought into this." (read)
Kalanna: "Amazing, eh?! I’m going to have to read up on what to do with them next. hehe But it is lovely to have a bouquet of lavender on my kitchen table in late November. They kept blooming!" (read)
"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." — C.S. Lewis
cecilia
Kalanna
Holli
