Talk Thursday: The Invisible Worm

I’m going to assume that inside everything there is a nigglely little worm. The worm that dines on the skinny ribs of self confidence, the fat of second guessing, and the sweet desserts of all left feet in mouth syndrome. I have learned over the years that rarely can you go back and make something right. So oft nights at 2am I awake with a regret I will never be able to right my ancient wrongs. Or a thought triggers a memory of behavior so embarrassing I burn in shame seemingly for ever. Maybe hell really is of our own making here on earth.

Psam and I were just talking about the nigglely little worms inside. She had her demons and I have mine, we’re not unusual tell me about your nigglely little worms. Mine, the terror of faux pas past.

I break out in a panicked sweat when suddenly my mind travels back to a moment best forgotten. These dirty little deeds are the reason I fully embrace my personal motto, “Where we’ve been is who we are.” Once I was a shy wallflower. Apparent inflicting pain on others with my razor sharp tongue was something I thought would elevate me in the opinion of others, isn’t that just a sad, sad thought? If inflicting pain is what it takes to be “in”, it is a sad comment on the me I was.

I want to impact people’s lives in a positive way. But the actions of my past will have done the exact opposite. I’m not a Catholic where I can go confess my sins to some middle man and have all transgressions erased from my record with a litany of hail Mary’s. No I’m a person who wears each wrong; for each transgression I committed there is a person whose existence I made more unbearable at an awkward, personality forming time of their life. I can’t take those back, and that is so wrong. Yes, it was wrong in the first place, and my stupidity is no excuse, but knowing I am responsible for a black hole of pain in a person’s past is unbearable at times.

Do I feel that all mighty and powerful? No, I don’t and I am hoping that I’ve blown them out of proportion in the years and decades since. Could I be so lucky that the misdeeds have been forgotten? I think not.

Now I take every opportunity I have to apologize to for my wrongs and mistakes. And I take every opportunity to thank people for the lessons, the friendships, and the impacts they have had on my life. I try to give people my all and never fall back in to the mean girl mode where I try to climb over the backs of others.

That person of then is so alien to me. To who I am and what I stand for. Maybe my nigglely invisible worm keeps me on vigil against becoming what I once was.

Sith.
Cele

Talk Thursday: Aftermath

I believe when I originally named this topic I was thinking of "post Easter sugar coma." But then I thought about the aftermath of the West Virginia coalmine disaster. My father was from West Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, a small little burg named Valley Head, 150 east of Montcoal. I have lived the majority of my life thankful my father was neither an alcoholic or a miner. What more can I add? It’s heartbreaking, things won’t change, and people will continue to give their all to a job that could care less. ‘Nuff said. Smog, electricity, life, black-lung and sorrow the aftermath of coalmining.

Then I read Psam’s blog. I miss my daughter when she is offline, it’s our connection to each other. This is something my husband (and a world of other people) do not understand. I hate talking on the phone. I am a talk one on one face to face type person. I am hideous at small talk. Put me in the middle of 100 partying people, I am the wallflower – I suck at small talk. It’s not that I don’t want to hear from you, I really do, but I’m not good at it. Psam knows this. My mother (who is much better at phone than I) knows this.

My husband, doesn’t know this. He’s forever pushing me to call. Check on Psam. Find out how her job situation is going. I know that if I call Psam and I ask her about her job situation, did she get a second interview, did she get her call back? Has she heard any rumblings from her work cronies? My call and questions will only drive home her sorrow. Placing more pressure on her shoulders is not what I want to do. I know when something happens she will call me. It’s the way we work. Ducky does not compute this.

Now in my sixth decade I know life is a progression of education, challenges, learning opportunities missed or utilized, and metamorphose. We are born a blank slate. We become a mirror of our parents, peers, religion and society’s mores and norms. I was blessed with a mother who told me to go out and learn. To question (I hope I passed that on to more than just my daughter.) My viewpoints are ever changing, usually the basis stays the same with the fine points refined. And then other times everything is sent topsy-turvy and I end up re-evaluating, reconsidering, redefining because someone gave me a discussion point that struck home and really made me see something vital from a different point. Growth, the aftermath of discussion.

I may get mad by something I hear, and unless I see resultant red I will take it in, digest the finer points and adapt. Difference makes the world go round. Or as Ex-One was oft want to say, “Variety is the spice of life and that’s what the judge is going to tell my wife.” He had the sentiment right the rest of the things in his life he screws up on a regular basis. Sadly little of the world respects and embraces variety of life, opinion, religion, favorite colors, and pets. That is the aftermath of rigid humanity.

So I guess in the spirit of Green Earth Month it is rethink, reuse, and recycle. It all works.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: On Further Review

During last Thursday’s girl’s night out my mom revisited the old “If you make a mistake and you learn from it, the mistake was worth making.” I live by this motto (one of several,) I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life. A Lot! But when she saw the look on my face she automatically jumped to my first marriage and ensuing divorce.

“You got Psam out of that marriage” (relationships are broken down into marriages and situations to my mom).

That wasn’t where my thoughts had been. I believe what my mother’s words actually had been were, we gain things from each experience, each relationship. While I didn’t have to marry One-X to get an awesome daughter (I was unknowingly preggers when I said, “I do”) I did learn other things post my marriage to One-X – I learned I am strong, capable, and as damageable as everyone else. An innocent person I adored depended on me to be at my best. I grew during my first marriage and subsequent divorce.

No, the look on my face, mirroring the thoughts I’d caught myself on in shock, were the realization that I had gained absolutely nothing from my marriage with Two-X. WTF? Yes, I wound up with the house, but excuse me I’d paid for half of it – he walked away, I didn’t push him out. This is a topic you’ve heard me whine over many times. I lost my personality, my identity. And lately have come to realize that I lost more than a decade of my life to nada.

It’s quite a shock to find out that you wasted more than a decade with nothing to show for it. Almost like being an alcoholic or drug addict that wakes up one morning and can’t remember the last ten years and has nothing to show for it. I threw away over a fifth of my life on a worthless man. I have done several things in my life that I despise, but you know what? Upon further review, this may top them.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: It Was The Best of Times… It Was The Worst Of Times

If you haven’t noticed how really fast time flies, well then you are either pretty young, or live perpetually “in the moment.” I’m over half way through my life, if my life line runs true to form, and parts of me think that is far too long, and the other parts think "Crap!" it’s not near long enough. Thank heavens I believe in reincarnation.

It was like yesterday the first time I said, “I remember about twenty years ago, when…” What I don’t remember is “the what” I was remembering about at the time; what I do remember was stopping in my tracks, mid sentence, and laughing out loud at the moment. Now I remember back over twenty one years ago (at least two decades since the first time I said “I remember about twenty years ago…”) I long knew there was something a matter in my marriage, I didn’t know the what. I didn’t know it wasn’t repairable, because it apparently had never been right in the first place, to become broken in the second.

All I knew was that I had been happy and in love, sadly he was neither and he told me so one Sunday afternoon. It had to have been bad; he interrupted a 49’ners game to tell me so and then left. I don’t remember where Psam was; I just know she wasn’t at home. I left the potato salad on the counter and walked west to the dune and sat down and cried.

For days, about three, I cried. And then he came back and told me, and I quote, “I think I made a mistake.”

“Yeah, you did, live with it.” If I was so devastated, and I was he’d just ruined my mine and Psam’s lives, why did I say that back to him? Because I knew that I could remain married to him but wonder forever more when he was going to walk out on me again. I could have dealt with an affair. There are myriad reasons for an affair. But for not loving a person, there is only one.

He was nice enough to deed over the house so Psam and I weren’t out on the street. I think it was a guilt move, but I’ll take it. In her early teens at the break-up, Psam was going through the changes and challenges of life that only a teenage girl can endure…along with her mom. But even more so she was there for me.

In the years between 2-X and Ducky, Psam and I we grew, endured, and triumphed. I worked three jobs, and she got her first. A friend of mine lent us her time-share in Reno and we made a week of it. I taught her to drive; she actually learned. I’d get a boyfriend and she’d beat his ass at chess (oh, crap the temper tantrum he threw.) She discovered boys that she didn’t want to beat up and her fingernails (she’d change the color every day – no lie); I’d find another boyfriend (yes, I was that crappy a mother.)

While I love my husband and life now, I could easily go back and relive those years when it was just Psam and I, maybe without the boyfriends. Because really, while for most it would have been the worst of times…remember there was a heart rending divorce in there, the truth of it all… it was the best of times.

Sith,
Cele

Five Four Things I’ve Quit aka post number 100

Have you noticed how CV Rick is a great source of MeMe’s? Every Saturday Rick post a MeMe, today’s an interesting offering, one I’d never have thought up myself, but delicious in concept and content. I will now apologize for the length, because it is long. But there are only four.

I’ve always been taught not to be a quitter. Winners don’t quit. What doesn’t kill you, will make you stronger. Okay that last one is a great saying.

So here is my stab at Five Four Things I’ve Quit.

Girls Scouts. Anyone who reads my blog, with any regularity, knows I loved being in Girl Scouts. Scouting laid a foundation in my life to attain my goals. It didn’t hurt that my mother was the leader for a large portion of the time I was in scouting. I learned nature craft, good work ethics, self-reliance, and outdoor skills. I learned a love and stewardship of this planet and the universe.

I began in Brownies, I remember loving a comradery with the girls in my troop. Girls I went to school with from kindergarten through tenth grade, girls who often didn’t speak to me outside of meetings, camping trips, and cookie sales. My mother was our leader through Juniors and Cadets. In my ninth grade year I moved into Seniors, my mother didn’t move with me. Neither did any of the girls in my troop, really how many high school co-eds did you know in high school?

The girls in my new troop had been together since the beginning, had their hierarchies formed; cliques that didn’t have room for the new geek in the group. I was seemingly on the outside, did things different than they did. I’d been to Summer Camp nine years in a row, I’d been to Gam, hell I was a Mariner and they were into gossip. I had been the number one cookie seller two years running in our branch, had done regional advertising campaigns. I was not them. I was not popular. I was forever odd man out. And my attitude was resented.

I loved Scouting. Having never been popular in school, I had always savored the comradery that Scouting had given me, and now it was gone. I loved camp and had been looking forward to a summer as a CIT (councilor in training), quitting scouting meant no summer camp. Walking away from scouts, in some respects, was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, in others one of the easiest.

Dance. All my life I’d wanted to dance. I’d begun tap dancing at age four, ballet at five. When those classes ended at first grade, I still danced. Really how many little girls do you know who don’t dance to their own tune? We danced a lot in Scouting, summer camp had given me a love for folk dancing, the Horah, the Maya (my favorite), country dances, high country, and dances I can’t remember.

In school dancing was a definite part of our education. Beginning in fourth grade with square dancing. Fifth grade we began adding folk dances into our repertoire. And by sixth grade it was ethnic dance. I loved to dance.

Both Benton (my junior high school) and La Mirada (my high school) offered dance. La Mirada offered a dance troupe. So I took not only PE, but two dance classes a day. I dreamt of dancing as a living. It never occurred to me that girls, bordering on six feet tall were not made to dance, they were made for Basketball.

Side note: I hate basketball. I cannot shoot hoops. Have never been able to shoot hoops, unless it was playing horse, and I was standing with my back to the net over the Taylor’s garage door. That was the whole sum of my talent and ability.

When I moved to Oregon there was no dancing. No dance teachers. No dance classes in school. Sadly, the high school refused to accept my dance class credits and I had to take night school and full course to make up for the credits in order to graduate.

Side note: After taking night classes and full course, the school and state decided my dance classes did count, and I graduated with 4.5 extra credits.

So maybe I didn’t quit dance, maybe it quit me. I tried going back in my thirties, but the skill was pretty much gone.

My first marriage. I’m not sure it is fair to say I quit my first marriage, but I did. One day, in my senior year, I was sitting in the back of the bus with a bunch of girls, when I spied a blue 1953 Chevy Panel Wagon. I’ve always had a soft spot for panel wagons. I was looking at the car, while all the girls were looking at the bad boy behind the wheel. Oohing and Ahhing over Bad Boy.

Damn, he was hot. And I loudly proclaimed I was going to marry him. Sheesh, I’d never even met him. Fast forward a year or so later, summer after my senior year and I ran into Bad Boy at the Fourth of July fireworks show. He struck up a conversation and asked for my phone number. I didn’t hear from him again.

Well not for three months or so. Then one day he walked into the restaurant where I was working and sat at one of my tables. It wasn’t by design, of that I am certain, he’d forgotten me. So I walked up to the table and said, “Should I still keep waiting for that phone call?” Yeah, I know, stupid.

Two weeks later we were living together. A year later we were married and preggers. Two years later we were in Germany, and it was suddenly evident he was an alcoholic. How I didn’t see it before was beyond me, because the evidence had always been there, I just had refused to see it. But now it was worse. He was suspicious when he didn’t need to be. He was abusive. And I’m pretty damn certain he had a girl friend named Denise on the side.

But marriage is a life long commitment, and stupid me loved him. We had a beautiful daughter together. He was in the Army, I was working for the CPO and finally had friends, but something was wrong. The first big indicator came when I woke up one night and he was sitting on my chest, choking me. He swore he’d never do it again, and I believed him. Don’t they all?

Life was better for maybe a month or two. One Sunday afternoon, watching tv, I asked him to chew with his mouth closed. God please chew with your mouth closed. It continued, and I hit him upside the head with a bowl of cornflakes. Out of the blue, no sign it was going to happen, no preconceived though process involved, suddenly my cornflakes and milk were running down the side of his head, into his ear and under his collar. He was understandably livid. I was mortified, I mean how shrewish? I was appalled. And then I started laughing, but he didn’t.

Side note: I now realize this was the first PMS episode someone in my life suffered through, but by far not the last. And that is not an excuse; it was an unforgivable action. Funny, but unforgivable.

It wasn’t much later that he asked for a divorce. I cried for a whole weekend, devastated that my marriage was apparently over. Which of my cousins was I going to turn into? What in the hell was I going to do? How the hell did this happen.

Then he said he was wrong (a theme in my life apparently) and wanted to try again. He could have said this three days earlier and saved me a weekend of crying, but I have now come to realize that for some men, me in tears is an aphrodisiac. Less than a week later I realized making up and trying again was a bad move and I decided to leave.

Me leaving him was not an option. Or at least he wasn’t going to make it easy. For three months he took every dollar of my paycheck, made my life living hell. But he was true to his word and bought both Psam’s and my plane tickets home. The night before our flight was to take off, he came home and pounded my head into our cement floor until I faked passing out.

Hair Dressing. Yes, I went to Beauty College. At the age of twenty-nine I went to Beauty College. Wow, twenty years ago. I had to drive 125 miles each day to school for over thirteen months, and never missed a day, and hour, a minute. I was the first in the school’s history to do this. I passed my boards and license exams with the highest scores to date for 1987 in the state.

Having a perfect record, the highest scores, and ability does not a hairdresser make. I lasted five years. Five years of people telling me things I considered myself better off for not knowing. I was divorced, again. I was working three jobs to make ends meet and fund our gym memberships. Raising a daughter by myself, again. And I was always exhausted. I didn’t enjoy the clientele. I did not enjoy the pressure. But I can give you a damn good haircut. In fact I cut my own hair.

I went full time into radio, and haven’t looked back.

What are your top quits? And do you regret them?

The Wall

A flurry of flashing lights, blue and red hailed the arrival of the motorcade. The air was a throbbing pulse of motorcycle engines announcing the arrival of the wall. I sat in my car a the corner of 18th and Highway 101 filing a report about the motor procession that brought the Vietnam Moving Memorial Wall to my small community for a second time. Vets who’d served at the beckon of their country, some drafted, others at will, the memories of those who never came backed solemnly followed the procession into Miller Park. I finished my report, closed my phone, and felt the first tears roll down my cheeks.

I do not believe in war, but I believe in those who serve. Whatever their reasons, barring hate, I mourn for the personalities and lives lost. Your not being here is the reason. The gapping holes left in the fabric of lives that revolved around your smile. That doted on the child that way you. The promise of a future that will never be fulfilled.

Days later I stood quietly at the wall. Bouquets of flowers laid at the base of different panels as gifts to the lost where names stand timeless, etched in the granite’s once smooth blackness. I ran my fingers over the Tees of Thomases now gone, the crossed Efs of Frank who never knew their sons, the dotted Js of James, and I’s Isaacs who never watched their daughters dance. The never forgotten comrades of the broken, the ones who came back and can’t quite ever look forward without you. The ones haunted by sweaty dreams of your screams and theirs.

I look into the black, etch the letters that reflect none of the warmth that was you, and I cry. I never knew you and I cry for your lost. For the hell you were sent to suffer at the hands of our government. I mourn for the spit and the jerks you endure at the spite of those in opposition to a war that never should have been. One much like the war being waged today quarter of a world away from that jungle.


Requiem of the Demigods

Dealers of Death sell their wares,
In the name of security and peace.
Thank the mothers of young
Sacrificed on the alters of democracy,
Good youths blithely thrown
After the negligent wants of old men.
Demigods whose clocks are ticking
Fear no legacy in time.
Your mark spilt blood on the world
Rents in the soul of humanity,
Renewed hate and ignorance.

© 21 September 2004 Calista Cates

Sith