So says Posey
She wants her hornican before she will go to bed. Hornican? Yes. Hornican.
Spring, Glorious, Um What the Hell Is That?
The snow is mostly melted Up the Valley, although there is still a deadly sheet of ice remaining conveniently around the base of our front steps. My HSH fell on his teakettle the other morning. I nearly did the same this afternoon while trying to take Nora the Destroya out to the fence. Fortunately, she pulled me like an expert sled dog across the microtundra. It is just today that the snow has completely melted. And although we expect another dusting tonight, we are revelling in the promise of spring - the muddy, scrubby, branch-scrapy promise of spring.
When the snow melts, it reveals a whole world that you forgot existed. There, by the back steps are a pair of Xerxes' shoes that he must have taken off because they were too disgusting to enter the house. Now I will have to go out with a stick and nudge them into a plastic bag, which I will double tie and put into a larger garbage bag, which I will also double tie.
And along the front walk, where soon there will bloom crocuses and daffodils, there are two deer tails. In the back yard, a deer jaw bone.
Either my dogs have found the secret place where my Country Neighbors clean their kill or my HSH is a member of a blood cult, and sooner or later I'm going to find myself in one of those typical Rosemary's Baby situations.
Who hasn't been there?
Meanwhile, Bee wants to go back outside and look at the bone.
No, I tell her. It's icky. I don't want to go look at the bone.
It's not icky to me. I don't think it's icky to see things that are under your skin. Did you know that under your gums there is blood and under the blood there are bones?
Yes. I think maybe you'll be a doctor one day.
No. Ballerina.
Yes. A ballerina with a dark side.
~~~~~~
Later, I am putting both girls to bed. Bee is characteristically first to fall asleep. Posey takes longer.
I luz you, Mama, she says.
I love you too.
She holds up her hand, signing "I Love You." I return with the same sign, and we touch fingers.
Then she holds up her whole hand, fingers spread.
Five! she says.
No. No five. Time for night-night.
Four? Three?
Four years
Four years ago today, I spent a full day in bed. A hospital bed, getting scooped out and diagnosed with cancer. It was one of the more eventful days of my life.
Even still I am discovering the ways that that day has changed me.
One of the things that has become clear is the way cancer - and specifically surviving cancer - distorts your sense of self and sense of accomplishment.
"Hey, Bettie, You've just survived cancer! What are you going to do next?"
"I'm going to start a new career start a new family write a new book go back to college write a different book start a different career be a stay-at-home mom be a church secretary be a monk be a priest be a bishop no maybe write a book but not that book or the other one but a third one or move across country and have more kids and wait the life of an alpaca farmer seems pretty awesome maybe I would really love that and I could keep alpacas and learn to spin their fleece into yarn and learn to knit and travel to fiber shows or maybe I am going to be a social entrepreneur and start an art spa or get a degree in business or get a degree in nonprofit management or get a degree in communications or get a degree in creative writing and then get my MFA from an easy program or get my MFA from a hard program or get my MFA from a residential program that will mean moving again maybe there's a program in someplace like Nepal or Antarctica or Greenland or some other place that's even harder to live than here and I will blog about it every single day but first I should probably have a regular job so I can pay these oil bills and maybe that job will be my real calling and maybe I'll be really good at it then again maybe I'll be a teacher no wait maybe I'll start my own school no not just one school but a worldwide franchise of schools or maybe I'll write a book."
That's what's in my head every minute of every day, only without the nice spaces between the words. Instead of spaces, there is this incessant reply that groans and drones and lets me know with absolute certainty that no matter what I do it will never, ever be enough.
And that is why my Lenten vow was so utterly unrealistic.
I am so unbelievably happy to be here. I am so happy for all the ways my life has transformed. I am not scared anymore in the way I was before (eg: clinically, pathologically). If anything, I am clinically optimistic. Pathologically idealistic. I want to put on a show in the barn. No - I want to put on a thousand shows in a thousand barns. I want to put on every show in every barn.
At least I'm not the governor of N3w Y0rk
Because I once ordered a gift for someone, the Tiffany catalog comes to my house every so often to remind me that I will never ever own these. And I am 100 percent OK with that. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind owning these, which is also not going to happen. Whatever.
This morning, Bee was up early and apparently browsing the catalog. She picked out an eternity band with diamonds and pink sapphires, and she just could not understand my reticence to order it for her right away.
"It costs a lot of money, Bee."
"I don't like that. I just want it without giving any money."
You and nearly every adult in the United States, honey.
Permanent Snow Day
All of the students in the distance program I've been enrolled in the past two semesters got word this week (Spring Break week - ya - parteeeee) that the interim dean of special programs, who oversees this particular program, is recommending its closure. He assured us all that the school is committed to helping currently enrolled students finish their degrees either at the school or at another institution (Hello Phoenix University!). The students are rallying. Certain members of the faculty are rallying.
I have no idea what this will mean for me.
Do-Wa!
As I have mentioned before, Posey loves Dora with the intensity of a thousand suns. She would walk 500 miles to be the girl who walked 500 miles to fall down at Dora's door. She says, "BAPPAK!!"
All morning, she has been asking to watch Mermay Kingdoh. That would be Mermaid Kingdom. We wanted also to look at the disc, which features a vision of Dora as a mermaid princess.
Posey smiled and tenderly placed her finger on the picture of Dora. "Das Do-Wa's cwown. Dat make me feel happy."
What must it feel like?
When I was 16-years old, I learned that not every person has allergies. I learned that many, many people breathe effortlessly through their noses almost every day of the year. Seriously, I had no idea. I thought everyone spent the first hour of every morning blowing their itchy noses and coughing.
Today, I think I had another, similar realization. Some people feel successful. Some people go to sleep feeling like they've done the best they could and are absolutely happy with that.
Just as I once realized that I experienced allergies that not everyone feels, all the time, like they could have and should have done more.
I also have never felt exactly like a failure - it's not that dramatic. I just have always felt like I didn't quite live up to potential. Like all those notes my third-grade teacher wrote on my report card were not just correct, but an eerie premonition.
I live under the constant, pressing, URGENT notion that I should be doing more, doing better, achieving something I'm not.
Is it just me?
Or is that Clue No. 1 that, hey, maybe you should be doing more? Maybe it's not neurotic self-doubt, but an actual, constructive self-realization that has lasted for 38 YEARS.
I've been thinking about this for days, and another realization came to me. During the year after my surgery and cancer diagnosis, that feeling was gone. It's as though I was so focused on getting better, I gave myself a short reprieve from the constant strain of being better.
MyBloPoLe, SchmyBloBoLe
Have I been observing my Lenten promise to post every day? No. Do I feel guilty about that, like it's one more area in life where I've failed? Yes. Am I the product of a Roman Catholic legacy? You tell me.
Where's the Rev. Geraldine Granger when you need her?
This is why I love the Innernets. After I posted about the rector retiring from the Little Church That Could, one peripatetic polar bear commented:
Well, the way these things go,you're most likely to hire a 'freshoutofseminaryIcansavetheworldandthechurchtoo' rector who will be shiny and new and get all sorts of new members for the church while solving mysteries in her spare time with the hotter than hot local police officer who is unhappily married. No, wait. That's a mystery series I read--but it's set in your part of the country--does that count?
Yes. Yes it does count. Although I'm sort of hoping for the Vicar of Dibley, who seemed to have a congregation of about 7, and never seemed to have to worry about fund-raising initiatives or growing her church.
Seriously though, your scenario sounds about right, because only an idealistic, energetic, foolhardy new priest would take on two congregations whose average age is Dead in a region of the state where the population is steadily declining. There literally is no membership development to be done, short of recruiting new residents to the area or convincing people within 50 miles that the church offers something they just won't find anywhere else - something they want so badly that they'll wake up early on Sunday mornings and travel for it.
And while I love zeal as much as the next person, I'm not sure that a church full of people who make a serious weekly pilgrimage is the right place for me. I like my Episcopalians a little calmer.
And yet, there is always a part of me that is all Big Ideas. I start to wonder how a growth campaign might be possible. I start to think about fundraising. I forget that I already have too much to do.
There Will Be Snow
It's falling all over. And right now, there is no wind, so it gathers heavy on the limbs of all the trees around the house. Earlier, I leaned out of the upstairs window to sweep it off the satellite that keeps me connected to the outside world. And tomorrow is supposed to bring more.
I am hoping the wind blows a little tomorrow to ease the trees' burden and decrease the likelihood that limbs might fall.
