tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81742082024-03-13T09:38:53.763-07:00Veritas & VignettesA place to discuss the truth and humour in the world around us. Truth IS stranger than fiction. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-52930194114491221592011-06-23T05:03:00.000-07:002012-07-26T11:51:43.215-07:00When Push Comes to Shove - 2 Quotes That Mean Move On, Go ForwardThis morning, as I walked into my place of business...I found my way to the library to return a copy of National Geographic I had borrowed earlier in the semester. On the 2nd floor wall there is a white board with a daily quotation.<br />
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Most days its inane or esoteric, and perhaps today I was looking for meaning. But this one was clearly meant for me to see. In Dan Rather's own words it read:<br />
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"A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well."<br />
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This stinks. But unfortunately...it is true. Be it misunderstanding or otherwise...it is human nature to fear what we don't understand, recoil at what we cannot control and rebut that which we find unfamiliar...even if its right.<br />
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Later this morning, the student government president came on the loud speaker with the announcements and quote of the day. Again these are 8th graders so its usually very vapid, a quote from Snoop Dogg or other such nonsense.<br />
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But today the voice of a child, in its child-like wisdom advised the whole school<br />
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"A couple: truly, madly, deeply in love will always find a way."<br />
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Well...it looks like we press on from here.<br />
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To my beloved...you are worth the striving. Always - Hanna JaneUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-51051760818623650072011-02-28T15:48:00.000-08:002012-07-26T11:51:29.930-07:00More on my calender....<span style="font-style: italic;">How interesting it is; I remarked to a friend, that when one finds oneself in a relationship, there seems to suddenly be so much to DO.<br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: italic;">Only a few simple months ago I waxed poetic about banana cream pie and an impossible arrangement of meetings at my dear friend's camp. Dear reader, it should come as no surprise that the last few months have been a myriad of ups and downs with more up than down which is why...I'm making more pie tomorrow night.<br />
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In the last few months I have taken a serious shine to my blackberry. I say that because I think I have asked my darling paramour a few too many times, "what exactly are we doing this weekend????" But the ubiquitous plural possessive pronoun is a symbol of change all by itself; for "we" has so much more to do with what you discover with another person than what you even bring to the plate.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">10 Lessons learned of late as a We rather than a Me: </span><br />
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<ol>
<li>How to cook lamb in any and all formats and ensure that mint is somehow included</li>
<li>How to recognize the "hungry grumpies"<br />
</li>
<li>How to accept compliments (current grade...C+) I'm being generous to myself</li>
<li>How to know where my boundaries are, and where his are and vice-versa</li>
<li>How to know when there have been too many "stay in the house" dates</li>
<li>How to play darts and bowl and win and lose</li>
<li>How to cheer for the New York Jets, and mean it. </li>
<li>How to win, and lose at Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune</li>
<li>How to intermingle with a large, loud family...which isn't the one I was born into.<br />
</li>
<li>How to slow dance ... and forget there is anyone else in the room.</li>
</ol>
The first two of these really have to do with that period of time where you suss out each others on and off buttons. For my partner, eating things he likes and eating well make a huge difference. To me it seems a way to communicate<span style="font-style: italic;"> "I'm paying attention and it matters to me that you are well looked after because you are precious to me."</span> In previous iterations of a relationship situation, I have been the sole provider of this courtesy. This is often a <span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">red-flag</span> that I'd ignore because I would get "high" off the good feeling that looking after someone gave me.<br />
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But then number 3 comes along...and my significant (and he is) other begins to lavish me with the same little morsels of TLC. Only this time something utterly astonishing arises! This man actively goes out of his way to illicit in me the sincere belief that I'm truly being cherished...and pursued! What's more, he seems to do it for the same "high" that I truly relish...in other words, just because he likes to see me smile.<br />
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I will admit fully that I have never been the type of woman to say "oh well, yes, I'm attractive." I've never felt that way particularly...I mean, I don't think I'm, to coin a term, 'pug ugly' and I have been told I'm pretty by people but I just never felt good about saying it about myself. It probably sounds like false modesty...but I assure you it absolutely a darker driving force. Its the still small voice that says <span style="font-style: italic;">"be careful, the moment you feel good about yourself, someone will undoubtedly remind you that you shouldn't."</span> Ah the demons of the past...<br />
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This voice has a new enemy in the form of this gentleman who, just today, declared, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Hate all you want... I'm still comin' for ya. Miss Nasty-little-voice is doomed." </span>That nasty voice has really got a formidable foe as this man does NOT like to be directly contradicted when he believes he is in the right. Me, unfortunately...I seem only to be able to puff up my cheeks and roll my eyes when he calls me his "beauty worth waiting for." Humor is truly the most user-friendly defensive response.<br />
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Ahem...back to my list:<br />
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Lesson 4: I suppose boundaries exist on many planes, but the usual suspects are to be expected...they are personal...and so why on earth would I put them here? But a piece of this spectrum exists which is fit for public consumption that lends itself more toward introspective assessment. It begs the questions....<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">"Are <span style="color: red;">all</span> my boundaries really boundaries? Or are some of them elaborate defense mechanisms built not to preserve me but to keep others away from me?"</span><br />
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Again these assertions in specific are not fodder for public display but it must be said that on both parts it appears we have had to do some deconstruction in order to further construct our "us." <span style="color: #009900; font-weight: bold;">The only way this has worked....man oh man...is because we share some serious faith.</span> If we did not have the Lord seated at the center of our decision-making processes...yeah we'd be in sore shape.<br />
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Lesson number 5 (golden rules la la la....ahem...sorry) To the end that boundaries are good, and Christ at the center is a good compass...it makes one sit up and pay attention to how many areas of a relationship have to be submitted to that standard. After a while...I won't lie to you, that man's face....and being near him can be a bit of an all-consuming desire. Where pit-falls go...yeah this can be a big one...for both parties. And so keeping my eyes open and my ears as well...I noticed on more than 2 occasions that our story would stagnate a tad and upon further reflection...it would happen when we spent too many "date nights" only in each others' company having a movie night in.<br />
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Its a strange thought I'm sure, as it seems counter-intuitive, but couples need community. I'm mentioning this because a very wise friend of mine, she once counseled me that one ought never to mistake their significant other for the person who will fulfill all your emotional needs. Its illogical, improbable and indisputably isolating.<br />
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I've had more fun learning about how he learns, in our small group, hanging out with other couples and seeing how he interacts with other men, and how he accommodates women altogether as he interacts with my key ladies. A word to the wise darlings...when he texts to see if you got to your girls night out and asks you to be sure you tell the girls hello...he's honestly glad you are having community time. <span style="color: #009900; font-weight: bold;">*green light*</span><br />
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Point 6: Darts and bowling....ok so the darts are random. We played because there was a wait to get a bowling lane. This.man.loves.bowling.like.whoa!!! In our early days of dating he explained to me that he had been a seriously angry competitor in his youth. You know the type what screams at the TV during (enter sport here) and storms off staying mad for hours/days if the (enter game type here) did not end to his liking.<br />
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In all my interactions with him I must say I'd never seen this in him. But playing games more and more with him I have seen signs simmering beneath the surface. Very very mild, but familiar as a previous relationship with a man who actually fit that hot-headed description left me more than wary. I would find myself wondering "<span style="font-style: italic;">Should I throw the game? I don't need to win...what if he gets mad at me!?!"</span><br />
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Okay first of all if a man EVER does that to you it is an undeniable <span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">red flag!!</span> If a man can't play with you,...really just kick back and have fun...this is not a good signal. However nervous...I had fun tossing darts and made it a point to laugh at MYSELF as well as use encouraging words and gentle ribbing toward him until I realized...he was really having fun and wow what a fun way to flirt!<br />
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The bowling let me learn an important lesson in practice...team dynamics. Not only did I try to enjoy myself and bowl a decent game...I made it a point to cheer for him and purposefully choose words of encouragement. And even though he didn't bowl as well as he seemed to want to...something incredible began to happen...he began to do the same for me...coach and teach me a little. It felt wonderful. I have no idea who won...really I couldn't tell you the scores (I'm certain he can) but what I do remember are the quick kisses, high fives done with crossed arms when one of us knocked down all 10 pins and the sight of him making gobbling sounds when I hit something called a turkey. My efforts were rewarded in the end when he actually told me afterward that what he enjoyed most of all was my voice behind him cheering him on.<br />
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Lesson 7 is really more compromise...melded with the boundary/wall distinction. I was raised a NY Giants fan. I really really like football...heck it was this love that initially got the two of us chatting in the first place. However...after an almost NY Mets caliber meltdown...my beloved Giants didn't even make the playoffs...Harumph.<br />
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Green is not only his favorite color...his NY Jets are a physical manifestation of his ability to be passionate about both the color and the sport! In truth...I couldn't tell you very much about this team. I confess I paid almost no attention to them. But when they arrived in the post season...I couldn't mistake that hopeful visage on my sweetheart and I wanted to be part of the adventure.<br />
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When I arrived at his mother's home to watch the Jets/Patriots game (in order to correctly convey his distaste for the Patriots...the word is vitriol) it was remarked that I was some type of traitor for wearing a pink Jets jersey for the festivities. I smiled very contentedly...fully having prepared for this type of commentary, and simply asserted, "No no...I'm not posing as a Jets fan, I'm not a NY Jets fan, I'm a fan of my man. So I'm cheering with him." This lesson really should be called "Its not always about me." Needless to say...I was awarded with many proverbial gold stars.<br />
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This is a great time to stop and make note that <span style="font-weight: bold;">"It's not always just about me and what I want" </span>is really a saving grace mantra of sorts when attempting to successfully stoke and maintain the fires of a courtship. When we make it all about us, it turns out that we downplay our partner and I want my partner empowered and to be empowered in kind. Saying this I will ask that you, dear reader, apply the same thoughts to how well we have turned Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune into party trick caliber stunts done by the smart "couple" in the room rather than just need for he or me to be the lone star. Besides...the high-fives are something to see. *wink*<br />
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Lesson 9 is an altogether different scenario. I have a very small family. It didn't used to be, however we are very small now. We more embody the quote from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275847/">Lilo & Stitch</a> where the little blue fella describes his family as "little, and broken....but still good." Though good, I miss the big family gatherings the gobs of cousins and the NOISE. Some would say its crazy to miss noisy relatives but the symbiotic rhythm of relatives co-mingling is wonderful. It smacks of community and involvement and generally people investing in you, your life and your choices because they love you.<br />
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His family is ENORMOUS! The funny part is that he was almost apologetic about their numbers and volume at the outset. True, at first it was a little overwhelming...but that was mostly just because it was so many new names/faces at once. I despise not knowing people so that I can call them by name. Personal pet peeve. Otherwise...it was a comfortably intense setting that took me back to the family I was missing on my own. In my wanderings through the large home of his aunt and uncle I met so many fun and loving people. I was welcomed into a kitchen, offered to cook, made a point to help clean and listened to as many stories as I could take in at a time.<br />
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Being snowed in around Christmas let me be cared for while sick, watch more family traditions and learn to be a gracious recipient of care. His aunt however, caught me by surprise. On my own I had surmised that there had likely been few if any women in my sweetheart's history who had ever been kind to him in the ways I so dearly enjoy. Moreover, I was given the chance to see him through their eyes. An incredible perspective; they love him because of his big, kind, gentle, quirky, distinctive heart. What a coincidence. Me too.<br />
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On the morning after the big Christmas blizzard I thanked his Aunt for taking in a relative stranger and letting me drink her clean out of mint tea in my sniffly state. She smiled warmly, put her hand on mine and said, <span style="font-style: italic;">"You're welcome Hanna. You have no idea how welcome you are." </span><br />
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His mother and siblings are another story...a good story too. Again...with respect to privacy which he and I truly enjoy, I certainly won't give specifics here...but I will say that this group represents another place where I thought I would be made to prove myself worthy when in reality I was met with a place wherein I could be appreciated as is. I have built bridges with the repairs I'd done in my own family through faith and even use some of the special gifts God blessed me with in my work place.<br />
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The secret to so much of this has been three-fold. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Time</span> to invest in myself and my partner as a pair and to understand how he came to be the man he is, <span style="font-weight: bold;">prayer</span> for all those things and a willingness to do more <span style="font-weight: bold;">listening</span> than talking because at the end of all this...if the usual heady Hanna had showed up and bossed and controlled her way through it all...I'd never have learned any of these things.<br />
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And ya know....I really make great lamb ;)<br />
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Lesson 10 ----- Two nights ago, all these lessons paid dividends for us both. For all the things we'd done...this was brand new and like all good things it wasn't planned to the teeth by either of us. While fulfilling another of our calendar appointments at a party for a friend in common, we found ourselves at a beautiful restaurant, dressed better than we'd ever been in each others' company, enjoying the company of <span style="font-style: italic;">our</span> community. Then the icing...the DJ. In all our adventures, sports, car-rides, to-do's etc,...we'd never danced. I'm convinced we weren't ready to dance until then. Because all these months of learning, living, and leaning on the Lord and each other, brought us to a place where Garth Brooks crooned "<a href="http://www.lyrics007.com/Garth%20Brooks%20Lyrics/To%20Make%20You%20Feel%20My%20Love%20Lyrics.html">To make you feel my love.</a>" We swayed simply on a small dance floor, to a song that talks about a love that would cross boundaries, build bridges and strip away all the old to make a way to a good new place where love can be perceived by all 5 senses.<br />
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As we swayed, the room shrank and the voices faded...and there in front of me, I saw him, maybe for the first time. I saw my love...and he saw me, and it was so very good.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-36708574407057063522010-12-06T16:32:00.000-08:002010-12-07T18:15:35.768-08:00Bread and Banana Cream Pie: PrologueIt isn't often that one willingly walks into a cliche with the feeling that there is no way the cliche could possibly apply to them. Either we walk in fully expecting the obvious; or we avoid the setting entirely, refusing to subject ourselves to the inevitable.<br /><br />I went to camp that weekend to work in the kitchen. One of my closest life-long friends had recently become the director of a Christian Campground, and all I wanted to do was spend a weekend in selfless service to God in support of this ministry. I didn't exactly know who it was I'd be serving from that kitchen, but I knew I'd be spending it with my friend's mother who, for all intents and purposes, had long ago adopted me as her own as well.<br /><br />In the wake of my own mother's passing away, eleven years earlier, this one woman saw through to the heart of who I was in good times and bad. She knew when to prod, when to push and when to simply sit and listen. Anything that felt like real mother-daughter interaction with her was so satisfying and the chance to serve her whole family, especially her son, Tim, in his new ministry was like being offered a cool glass of water after a day-long walk.<br /><br />The previous year of my life had taken me so far away from my Christian identity. I had sacrificed myself on the altar of a Godless relationship because my desperate desire for a family and an identity within a family bamboozled me into believing that anything was worth sacrificing to attain that goal. I.was.very.wrong.<br /><br />So in the wake of that marring detour I had rededicated my life and my focus to my job, teaching, and re-centering my identity and faith in Christ. I know it sounds prosaic and predictable, but I cannot apologize for the fact that a Christ-centered lifestyle is a remarkable anti-psychotic not to mention it helps heal a lot of wounds because it forces us to surrender things, weights that would break our own backs if we insisted on continuing to carry the burden of them ourselves. Not that it's easy, but its worth it. Completely.<br /><br />And so there I was; focused, serving and driving out toward camp on a warm autumn afternoon with the top down on my convertible. I pulled up the long gravel driveway, with the radio turned up and parked in front of the main house. On the porch, I noticed a man with a piece of poster board paper, making a registration sign for what I assumed was the group we'd be feeding and hosting that weekend.<br /><br />I park, turn off the radio, leave the top down and step out of the car. "Good afternoon" I wave to the stranger and bound down the service road toward the trailers where Mom and Tim and the rest of the family would be found.<br /><br />Once everyone had hugged me hello I had my marching orders for the weekend. Apparently the group the camp was hosting was a men's group. I couldn't help but be amused at the irony of this fact. "Ha! Great, I'm going to be feeding a whole bunch of Christian men all weekend. Maybe one will like my cooking enough to ask me out."<br /><br />There was once a wise man who said, "Be careful what you wish for."<br /><br />I slept in the room right off of the kitchen area in the main meeting building. The men's group had all their meetings in the main room literally 20 feet from my room on the other side of the kitchen doors. Normally a curious little thing, one would assume I'd take no small delight in eaves-dropping on their comings and goings. I mean, the chance to listen to the inner workings of the Christian male pow-wow is an enticing proposition.<br /><br />I should have figured it out from the moment when my little interior voice said, "This is not for you to be listening to" that this weekend wasn't going to be run of the mill. Once I had ascertained that the message their leader was sharing with them was one that truly encouraged their pursuit of a Christ-centered life, and the pursuit of a woman's heart through His eyes, I didn't need to listen any further. It was sacred, and I just couldn't, wasn't comfortable listening in. So I didn't.<br /><br />On Saturday morning, 5:30am, I made and filled all the coffee, tea, cocoa pumps and set out the basics. When Mom and Mr. P arrived, I hopped on the griddle and started my mountain of breakfast potatoes. I heard a friendly booming voice from the main room coming in toward the kitchen. I recognized it as the men's group leader.<br /><br />He and I had had a keen exchange the evening before when I recognized the book he was teaching the men with, and commented that I thought it was brilliant. The leader was dropping off 6 large loaves of round bread he asked that we warm for their lunch meal where they would enact a symbolic bread-breaking among their brotherhood. "Sure thing, Captain, you got it."<br /><br />I smiled broadly at the portly, jolly man and put the bread away for safe keeping. A whirlwind, enamored with my current devotion to Christ in this service weekend, I fried potatoes, made sausage, filled coffee and checked on the tables to see what else might be needed.<br /><br />It was somewhere in the middle of my practically dancing through my chores that I noticed someone noticing me having a little too much fun logically for someone up to their eyeballs in kitchen chores.<br /><br />He cracked only a half smile and I could have sworn he gave an almost imperceptible chuckle. Our eyes locked for a split second, I smiled and thought nothing of turning around and bounding back toward the kitchen like a child running out to recess.<br /><br />"One of those men sorta smiled at me." I threw the comment out halfheartedly for Mom to hear. "Maybe you will meet someone this weekend, sweetie." She smiled her wry grin and I rolled my eyes. "Puh-leeze. That's ridiculous and besides, that is SO not what I came here for." Another wry grin and a shrug sends me wandering off into the pantry muttering about fruit cocktail and pudding.<br /><br /><br />After breakfast, and pre-assembly of all the baked ziti pans, Mom and I make a run to the supermarket. Getting off the campground felt nice, driving in the beautiful Indian Summer sun, but I couldn't wait to get back. Camp was always a magic place. Whenever we'd go away on retreat as youth group kids in high school, the weekend always held a kind of magic, no matter the camp location. Some remnant of this magic lingered as one of my friends now ran the camp to boot.<br /><br />Back in the kitchen that afternoon, pans of ziti flew in and out of convection ovens, garlic bread was buttered and meatballs boiled in vats of hand-spiced sauce. Having to use a jarred sauce is a necessary evil of cooking for the masses. But a balanced addition of all the right herbs, garlic, basil, and a little sugar to cut the acidity goes a long way.<br /><br />As the meal finished cooking, the Captain appeared in the kitchen again. "Hello sweetheart." A smile, "Hello Cap, needing that bread?" He nods and so I head into the pantry, slice the round loaves into halves and pop them in the convection oven for 10 minutes.<br /><br />"Mom I have to take this bread out to the men. Should I use the glass plates?" Nodding her approval, she sends me out to the tables with bread plates in hand. Two halves to each of the 4 tables were my instructions. I dropped off the first two along with a plate of sweet cream butter. The men had been incredibly thankful and gracious, constantly thanking us and complimenting the camps hospitality.<br /><br />The second table was the Captain's. There were other men sitting with him but, as had been my habit all weekend to that point, I raised my eyes to meet no one's gaze save the Captain's. "Here you go fellas." I smile broadly and place the plates on the table. Then a voice speaks. The voice is resonant, fluid and actually rather remarkable.<br /><br />"That looks beautiful...and the bread doesn't look bad either." I chuckle offhandedly and keep busy about my chore, not registering who spoke and what was said. But just before I leave the third table, I turn back toward the voice, and see him and meet my gaze. My ears turn red and I immediately retreat into the kitchen.<br /><br />After serving the rest of lunch, we the staff partook of the spread we'd created. The Captain and one of his men, the tall, dark-haired man who had smiled at me earlier that morning, approached us as we sat eating our mid-day meal. "Ladies, this sauce was really incredible. I mean, I'm a New Yorker and I've had my share of good sauce, this was excellent."<br /><br />Both Mom and I began laughing immediately. We confessed that it was doctored Ragu but thanked the Captain profusely nonetheless. Unwilling to believe that we'd merely "cheated," he insisted we were kitchen magic. "Well whatever you all are doing in there, keep doing it. We've never eaten this well at camp before, have we?" He gestured to his companion who looked directly at me and said his own thank you. Another smile, a protracted moment of eye-contact.<br /><br />Why my stomach did a back-flip I could not have told anyone at that moment. Looking back it may well have been because I recognized this man. Handsome, but not overtly so. His eyes were kind as he walked away, smiling. I went to check the coffee again and he appeared suddenly again at my side, with the guise of surveying the dessert offerings. He spoke of the weather, the weekend, the camp. He thanked me for the food, and I quickly began telling him how his group being here at this camp was giving my brother a chance to live this ministry and do what he'd always wanted and I was just as grateful to their group as they appeared to be to the staff and the camp. I did not talk about myself. I did not ask him about himself.<br /><br />One of his fellow group members sidled up along side to also offer thanks and I instead lobbied their group to help with the revamp of the camp in the weeks to come. He smiled all the while, and again looked at me with a countenance that spoke volumes but that I couldn't yet discern its intention.<br /><br />"Well I'd better get back in the kitchen. Dishes need doing and your dinner needs prepping." We exchanged a look that said <span style="font-style: italic;">We'll talk again later, </span>and off I went back into the kitchen. "MOM!" I didn't yell but I heard myself sounding gob-smacked. "What's the matter dear?"<br /><br />I told her I was pretty sure I'd be talking to this man again later and that he kept smiling at me. I wasn't unnerved by this attention but it just seemed so out of place because, heck, I was so focused on just reveling in serving God and the camp. I desired no distraction, this was too important.<br /><br />Sunday morning got a later start than we'd have wanted. The men told us that breakfast would be at 7:30 and it wasn't until nearly 8:45. Admittedly a little annoyed, as its hard to explain how difficult it can be to maintain fresh pancakes freshness for 2 hours once in the steam tray, we served them breakfast and began prepping lunch.<br /><br />Running again to the supermarket, mom and I decide that the vanilla pudding the men have not been partaking of needed to be reincarnated into banana cream pie. A fortuitous choice as that afternoon, their last meal, the smiling man opted for a double portion.<br /><br />"Try the one on the right." He raised an eyebrow. "Why that one?" I told him it was filled with jello mix rather than the re-purposed pudding. "It'll taste better. Whipped cream?" He smiled his smile. "I love banana-cream." I felt pleased he was enjoying my little invention.<br /><br />"So where do you all hail from?" He explains that the men's group is an amalgamation of several 'platoons' from several states including NY, PA, VA and New Jersey. He is from New Jersey it seems. Its only at this point that I tell him I also hail from the same state and am a French Teacher at Piscataway.<br /><br />"So you are a Chief" he grins while telling me the name of the High School mascot. "Yes, oh yes, I'm a huge Chiefs fan. I'm really a huge high school football fan." Now his expression goes wide as do his eyes. "Really?" I reaffirm my enjoyment of the sport in general and he enthusiastically explains that high school sports are his job. He is a writer for a news paper and covers sports exclusively.<br /><br />With an almost unnecessary but equally involuntary amount of awe in my voice I gush, "You're a writer? Reeeeallly?" and immediately felt like a big ball of cheese. Gathering my thoughts I blurt, "Well I'd love to hear more about what you do." He smiles a little. "Sure yeah yeah I'd love to chat." I suggest we perhaps get coffee some time. He grins a bit wryly. "Actually, I should be asking YOU to coffee, so, coffee some time?" I apologize for doing his job, and he laughs along.<br /><br />Quickly I scurry back into my kitchen to let the men get into their closing session before the end of their weekend retreat. Back in the kitchen, I announce a little mystified, "I think I just got asked for my number." Many eyebrows raise. I confidently assert that I'm not here for this kind of thing and immediately immerse myself in kitchen duties.<br /><br />Not at all looking in this man's direction again that early afternoon I dash in and out of the main room picking up after the meal. In my peripheral vision I can see him occasionally glance my way. But I cannot take my mind off how delicious it is to be at camp, in service to God!!! I hum praise and worship songs and keep my focus on the goodness that is this service experience.<br /><br />As we begin our final cleanup the voice approaches me a third time. "Um, so I did want to be able to get in touch with you so I went to my car and grabbed a business card." I thank him and put the card in my pocket without looking at it. "I'm really best reached via email." I dictate my address once aloud and then finally endeavor to look him squarely in the eye and shake his hand.<br /><br />That moment is suspended in eternity somewhere. It had the feeling of a prologue to a play's first act. An act which we are presently engaged in playing out.<br /><br />I left camp at 4:30 that Sunday afternoon. There was a first email in my inbox by 9:45am the next morning. I did not expect to see it ever, but there it was. A week later, the first date, then a second and third and so on.<br /><br />This prologue is the beginning of a story I am committing to let God write. I'm writing it down Lord. Trusting you with its contents, and with its outcome, every breath, every moment, every day and night.<br /><br />Looking back on those first days and moments, he tells me a story that involves the voice of God in his head. He was not there for me that weekend, as I was not there for him. But God said, "Go talk to that woman." What's more, he tells me how God bids him pursue me every day. His beauty worth fighting for.<br /><br />If in this life I never know anything else of love, I will always know what it is to surrender my heart to God and have Him welcome me home, make me beautiful in His service such that a man after His own heart would find the desire to know me because I know Him.<br /><br />I'm happy with today, sitting on my couch in a living room this smiling man helped me design, lit by a Christmas tree he helped me decorate. Rooting for a football team in which I, prior to these last months, had no vested interest. Simply because seeing this man smile makes me feel like I can take on the world, with God's help.<br /><br />Stay tuned my friends, I'm on one heck of an adventure. Pray for us.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-33102864628837003482008-12-09T18:52:00.000-08:002008-12-09T19:00:29.688-08:00On taking the job home...<span style="font-family:georgia;">My chosen profession is amazing. Its a full contact sport mixed with a reality TV series meets a live-action adventure roll playing game. Pick your genre of human interaction and well...you can pretty much bet that inside of any given day I will run the gamut.<br /><br />Today was really heavy. I have no other word for it. It was full, and it had range...lots of range. I am in love with my students. Yes it sounds odd and those who want to take that statement in some lewd way, well then just stop reading now. Because what I have to say has nothing to do with lechery, stupidity or foul intention.<br /><br />I have learned to give myself, my time, my all away to 150 people at a time and its addictive. My love for teaching is as strong today and it was the first day and probably as it will be my last day. High school is an infurating and challenging and inspiring setting. It is my mission field, my Eden...I understand it. I survived one of the cattiest places on earth myself. But public high school, wow...<br /><br />Perhaps it is because I am in search of a "good man" in my own life that I have so eagerly undertaken the task of helping to build good men in the school where I work. I am a staunch disciplinarian, friend of manners, chivalry and acting not like a boy but a man. These young men...and many of the young women, they flock to me, seeing someone who doesn't see them for their young years but for the human kinetic energy they possess. I envy them, I extoll them...I admonish as best I know how.<br /><br />Today I watched one of my "sons" realize his dreams of championhood. He is strong, willing, determined and, now, focused. Focus. I am busting with pride to know I had 5 minutes worth of time in helping him realize for himself this good way. It is return on an invaluable investment. The best kind.<br /><br />Today I realized that one of my littlest ones has tried a few times in the last few months to end his stay on this earth. I wept. I weep as I write. So bright so young so fun so dramatic and special and intuitive. So heavy with worldly woes at 14. Yet...he gives hugs whenever we meet, seeks me out to have an occassion to laugh and morphs from stone faced and sober to a wild-waving fanatic from across a quadrangle when he sees me and OOHH! in that moment he is the carefree child he should be again. How I want to give him as many of those moments as is possible.<br /><br />Today I realized that one of my seniors is sabotaging himself purposely. He is testing those who are trying to see him realize a most patriotic and noble goal. He has all the tools and oh when he is in his little cadre he is in complete control however....he's just been reduced to deck swab on my watch. This young man is daring me to quit on him. Begging me without word or gesture to discipline him...keep him accountable. And now...I'm afraid I won't be enough.<br /><br />Today I wallowed momentarily in the knowledge that the student I have had the longest is giving up on himself. He has no goals...only a social agenda that I suspect he doesn't realize will pass him by with age. How do you help a person achieve who believes they are worthless, brow-beaten and well...lazy. How do you help a man who is failing 6 classes stop the slippery slope...how? How can I, as a teacher, love him better, teach him best, reach him, HURRY! I'm running out of time.<br /><br />Today I was reminded that another of my "sons" is beyond my reach and I can't help him when he's out of my little snow globe. Sadly I am not omnipresent...and I can't do for all...but I can do all for some.<br /><br />Today I was given back the inkling of a gift I thought I would never see returned and I scarcely have the heart to hope...so I'll just lay down my hands and let God do the driving.<br /><br />Yes I seem to have taken my work home with me tonight. I'm not just some French teacher....I'm helping or hell trying to help be a good influence to build good men and women. Men and women who know truth, hard work, hard play, hard love, and hard laughter. Perhaps if I build enough good men...I'll know one when I meet him and he me.<br /><br />But for now I'm souled out *pun intended* to these, my "sons" and I will do all I can. I am single-minded...but not obsessed. I feel called, compelled. It is not a game, it is not a chess match. These are real people, real lives...and I a lynch-pin, hair-trigger season ticket holder.<br /><br />God give me wisdom....please!!!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-61106505960480183522008-06-11T05:56:00.000-07:002008-06-11T08:20:20.667-07:00Quarter Life Catharsis<span style="color:#3333ff;"></span>It occured to me one over cast Monday morning as I sat at my desk in Georgetown, that I was created. I'd had a chat with a good friend over the previous weekend, and it was he who brought up this unwittingly prolific statement. Since then, I hadn’t been able to really get it out of my mind. Created…what does that mean anyhow?<br /><br />Well there’s always dear old Merriam-Webster which states the obvious, <em>“To cause to exist; bring into being,”</em> but that’s not very inspirational. Sure the old B-I-B-L-E says that in God’s image we are <em>“fearfully and wonderfully made,”</em> but again, I ask you…what does it mean? Okay, I promise I’m not about to launch into some creepy diatribe about the meaning of life, Aristotle’s theory on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God or anything so mundane. For mercy’s sake it IS only Monday.<br /><br />I will say, however, that another definition of the word created did strike a cord with me in a way I never would have seen until today. The same dictionary, in its 4th definition defines the word created as a verb meaning, <em><span style="color:#3333ff;">“To produce through artistic or imaginative effort.”</span></em> The key words that stood out in my mind are artistic and effort. Somewhere, somehow, regardless of your personal convictions or belief system, each of our lives has been created. The evidence is, well, self-evident. There you are. But the notion that this has happened with effort, that we were artistically produced, tells me that it’s on purpose. Life is no accident.<br /><br />Now, personally, I’ve had a bit of a go of things lately. Since my last entry I’m no longer locked in the dungeon of corporate America. I was “down-sized” for “budgetary purposes.” I thought I was bitter…but now that I’m gainfully employed elsewhere, my perspective on a lot of things have changed. In some ways that’s natural. But in other ways, it’s taken a conscious effort to see past my own foregone conclusions about the process of life to see the reality of life for its own good sake.<br /><br />What I mean is…I’ve looked at this created life of mine; what it has been up to now, where I am this minute and what I hope it will be in the future. All the usual rigmarole comes to light. Health, wealth and prosperity, but that’s only natural. Everyone is a relative subscriber to Maslowe’s hierarchy of needs. What I’m finding is, even though mathematically, the quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line; life is not geometry.<br /><br />It’s a convoluted process this coming into one’s own. I laugh at the many versions of myself that I thought I had figured out. As a high school senior I wanted to be a physical therapist. As a college freshman I was enthralled with languages and astronomy. And I’ll never quite forget the day I tripped over a knapsack in Saint Thomas Hall and smacked right into the poster on the wall of the graduate school I would attend the very next academic year.<br /><br />Life, as I’m learning, is a process of reinventing yourself. Not for the sheer need to bend to the will of those who keep you in their employ. No…it’s more a factor of continual self-discovery.<br /><br />Sitting now, in my office at a marketing firm in Georgetown Harbour, I’m munching calmly on sushi and potato chips. I have no pressing engagements for the afternoon and I aspire to get to the gym this evening as I am on one of my health kicks again.<br /><br />Finding contentment where one is at is a virtue, I believe. For a young woman such as myself who, since age 13, and probably before, has been pushed and nudged and challenged to succeed and excel and blow the doors off the world at large, it’s come as quite a shock that, right now, my Creator requires of me nothing more than to be silent, simple and still. And where silence and stillness are not so much the challenge, simple, in a world of drama queens and Jerry Springer scenarios, is less attainable.<br /><br />You see I fall within a range of young people just at the bitter end of generation-X and not quite within the same frame of mind as the generation-next. We are the founders of the quarter-life crisis, the survivors of the dot COM revolution and the victims of the corporate chasm and hiring freeze generated by the War on Terror.<br /><br />We have Master’s degrees, some of us, Doctoral degrees. We work 50 hours a week for forty thousand dollars a year and we all have an average of fifty thousand dollars in college loan debt. Myself, I boast a bit above the average…but who’s counting?<br /><br />We are commitment-phobic. Marriage is no longer a social norm, monogamy is easily scoffed at and singleness…for my fellow ladies out there, is viewed more often than not as a season in purgatory, to quote Josh Harris, rather than a time during which we can simply enjoy getting to know ourselves.<br /><br />Yes it’s an interesting age. But I think, perhaps, I’ve decided I don’t wish to subscribe to this norm any longer. I don’t want to work 50 hours a week for people who hate each other and say loathsome things about you, me and everybody under the guise of raising money or lobbying the Appropriations Committee to make up the short-fall of Fiscal Year funding.<br />No. No I think perhaps, in a world, which all my life has demanded excellence of me in terms of productivity, I turn now to myself and decide to produce a more mentally and spiritually healthy and prepared human being. Not as a means of steeling up against a destabilized job market but, rather, to contend with the face in the mirror.<br /><br />It’s a good thing to have knowledge, but wisdom and knowledge, I’m learning, simply aren’t the same. Gaining wisdom has shifted my priorities to aspire to a lifestyle and work ethic that has less to do with gathering an abundance of ‘stuff.’ Rather, I believe this is a time in my life to make good memories again. Like a born-again childhood, I can look at age twenty-something and even perhaps 30 something and know I don’t need to have all the answers today. To find these answers I’ll need to embrace many adventures and mysteries in days to come. Wide-eyed trepidation and nervous anticipation for what lies ahead on the road of life should not be gone by one’s mid twenties.<br /><br />You see I realized that I have the entirety of my life to toil away on analysis of legislative strategy initiatives and policy briefs, homework and lesson planning. I do not, however, have the rest of my time to enjoy being a young woman, falling in love as an adult for the first time, traveling, having a home of my own and trying one last time to know the family I love with all my heart. I have only this season to enjoy this part of who I was created to be. If I fail, I will miss it, undeniably and irrevocably.<br /><br />To be sure, there are plenty of clichés to toss around regarding this renaissance or cathartic overture to la vie en rose, but I think I’ll abstain. There is a freedom I find when one will simply absolve themselves of the irrational and unreasonable bars we set for ourselves at unrealistic heights.<br /><br />This epiphany is not a license to slack off. No, certainly it isn’t. I’ve never been very good at slacking off. (A long since diagnosed over-achiever, I can’t sleep when I feel I’m not doing my best.) Rather this realization seems more in line with giving yourself permission to live a life you enjoy and to work hard at preserving the joie de vivre that goes along with it. For without this, I fear that life becomes little more than a chore, a checklist of to-do’s that never seems to get shorter despite our sweat and strain.<br /><br />Perhaps this translates as an exercise in literary homiletics. Perchance it is because the dear friend who shared with me how he marvels at his created nature is a pastor that his tone has pervaded these pages. Regardless of my muse, I sincerely believe that what Anne Shirley says to Gilbert Blythe at the end of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea sums my point up nicely.<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#ff6666;">“It’s just that I went looking for my ideals outside myself. I’ve discovered it’s not what the world holds for you. It’s what you bring to it. The dreams dearest to my heart are right here.”</span></em> Judging from all I’ve lived and learned up to this moment, I suspect the bottom line is, at the end of any of our days, rich or poor, young or old, man or woman, the race is only with ourselves. To not actively seek out joy in the life that purposefully was created for us is a misuse of the gift.<br /><br />We as a consumptive race go scrambling about trying to ingest from the world as much as we can, afraid that we won’t ever get enough or as much as the next guy. We walk an imaginary line trying to personify some standard of what it truly means to be “male” or “female” prescribed by goodness only knows who and yet we fail to actually meet ourselves in the process.<br /><br />What seems to have been forgotten is that the real joy comes when we take the time to give the best of who we are and what we’re made of back into the world; to our children, our grandparents, our spouses, and ourselves. Will we spend our entire lives taking as much as we can rather than appreciating the world as it was fashioned or valuing the simple beauty in ourselves as we have been created; artistically and purposefully? When the sun sets on my brief race through this lifetime I want to know that I took the time to enjoy it and to make it enjoyable in kind. That being said, I think that I’ll walk this lap, and savor the scenery for a change.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-54588477237139075792008-06-11T05:03:00.000-07:002008-06-11T05:06:41.499-07:00How the Other Half Laughs<div align="left"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;color:#3333ff;"><em>Well I meant to post this years ago...my favorite funny vignette. Jess if you're out there...thanks!</em></span></div><div align="center"><br /><br /><strong>Do Men Giggle???</strong></div><strong></strong><div align="left"><br /> Being women, we notice the little nuances about life that, often, men will overlook. It's not that they don't care, they just don't think the way we do. You know, Mars and Venus and all that. Quite often it's these petites choses quotidiennes that lend themselves to why women laugh so darn much.<br /><br /> Take for example you and your best girl friend at age 13. I know that I remember Heather or Kristen and myself driving my poor father bananas with the sound of girlie giggling until every ungodly hour of the morning during all-too-frequent sleepovers. Worse yet, more often than not, if you asked us, we probably had little to no idea what was so blessed funny. Often things that normally would not be so funny on their own would appear, for that moment, the funniest damn thing you'd heard or seen in a century.<br /><br /> It came to my attention late one night, not so long ago that I had never actually heard a man giggle the way that I so often did and do with my girlfriends. I even went so far as to pose the question to some of my own girl friends to see if they, too, had come to the same questionable conclusion. Does the male species actually giggle? Not laugh, not chuckle...giggle. </div><div align="center"><br /><br /><strong>Phone Parts, Farts and Marshmallow Hearts</strong></div><div align="left"><br /> I can think to put it no other way; we cavorted! Through the driving snow, Jessie and I laughed until it hurt. The whole weekend was an utter and complete loss. We’d driven 5 hours with the band (presumably to work all weekend helping with album pre-production…) but upon arriving we were, instead, perceived as “band aids… or groupies.” Heinous. The lady of the house hated us; the guys were in recording session more than 12 hours a day. The best we could do was run errands; which we did.<br /><br /> Between preparing and serving meals, retrieving items left behind at pre-production, grocery shopping, obtaining copious amounts of pink bismuth for the drummer who had elected to dine on cold pizza for breakfast and buying flowers, we laughed. We laughed at things that were mildly to uproariously funny but despite their level of laughability we giggled like 15 year olds until we were doubled over.<br /><br /> First on our list of goofy guffaw-worthy scenarios were men in the morning. More specifically, why it is that men expel gas at an alarming rate upon waking up out of any which orifice is most readily available. Per our query, the drummer, Scott, offers that he must swallow a lot of air while sleeping open-mouthed, then promptly farts and gives us girls a satiated cheese whiz grin. <br /><br /> Next on our list of inter-gender inquiries was food. Men will eat anything...anytime. Our trip to Maryland with the guys was over Valentine's Day weekend and so Jessie and I decided to get each boy a rose. We quickly amended our choice, however, to marshmallow peeps in the shape of hearts when we saw the price tag on the flowers. Yikes! We reasoned that the guys like junk food so they'd appreciate this. It was red, sticky sweet and smelled like the strongest strawberry flavored bubble gum we'd ever encountered.<br /><br />On our drive back to the studio, Jess and I decided we'd give these sugar bombs a try. The red sugar melts on your pallet as the sweet scent of strawberry assails every sense. Your mouth puckers at how sweet it tastes but you chew and chew and chew knowing full well that this IS your dentist’s worst nightmare. The marshmallow disintegrates in your mouth and the candy dissolves. After one and a half of these crazy treats your body goes immediately into the preliminary stages of diabetic shock at which point we decide anything this sweet is better off left as chewing gum.<br /><br /> With that in mind, I turn to Jessie saying, "Whoa." She agrees and says. "Yeah kind of intense, like bubblegum on steroids." I smile at her assessment and with a loud burst of laughter respond, "ABSOLUTELY...Strawberry cream hearts,....good for chewing, not for eating." Well that was the end of us. The ride to Mechanicsville from Waldorf takes 20 minutes. We laughed the whole way.<br /><br /> About a year earlier, I experienced the same phenomenon with two other girlfriends. At this point we all of us were over the age of 22 and decided we needed to have a girls night in, or, in plain English, a sleepover! I had just bought a new cell phone, which I was fiddling with all evening in a vain attempt to master all the little technological nuances thereof.<br /><br /> Along with my phone came a little plastic pack complete with the hip clip and a little rubber stopper with directions as to how to use each with my phone. According to these, the plastic plug in the back of the phone had to be removed so the hip clip could be used. That seemed straight forward enough. However you can imagine the kind of raucous laughter that was generated by the instructions concerning how to employ the little rubber stopper while the hands free jack is not in use. <br /><br /> Now I KNOW someone did not proofread these directions or they would have known that, in modern colloquial American English, an instruction to "Jam plug in jack hole" would set a LOT of people laughing. Truth be told, I'm having a good laugh about it now. I collapsed out of my chair onto the floor, with my two girlfriends demanding to know what in the name of heaven was so funny. When I handed them my "directions" it took two hours for the laughter to cease and more than two weeks before statements like "Pssst....Hanna! You're jack hole is showing!" to finally slow to a halt.<br /> </div><div align="center"><br /><strong>A Hung Jury</strong></div><div align="left"><br /> With these stories retold, I truly want to know, do men laugh themselves silly the way we women do? I really hope so. Last week while falling asleep with my friend Jessie and laughing so loud about David Bowie's "obnoxious package" in Labyrinth, that we had to lay face down in our pillows, I asked her again, "Do you think Tucker and the boys actually giggle like this?"<br /><br /> She gave it a good minute's thought and came to the conclusion that, whereas she'd seen her boyfriend give a good belly laugh or two, she hadn't known any guy to really giggle for a prolonged period of time. "Not like we did just now" she said. <br /><br /> That's too bad, I thought. I mean, although I don't relish the stomach cramps and reprimands from tired parents in rooms only across the hall, the incredible freedom in that moment when you laugh so hard you cannot see straight is a feeling no one should ever miss. </div><div align="left"> </div><div align="center">-------------------------------------**-----------------**----------------------------------</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-86095932793791988682008-01-08T13:57:00.001-08:002008-06-12T07:05:20.650-07:00Requiem unposted version<div style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0.75pt solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 6pt; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 6pt; BACKGROUND: rgb(255,243,219) 0% 50%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: 0.75pt solid; PADDING-TOP: 0in; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial"><h3 style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; MARGIN: 6pt 0in 0pt; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 0in; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none"><span lang="EN" style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: rgb(27,4,49)font-family:Georgia;font-size:17;" >Requiem <?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 0in; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none"><span lang="EN" style="COLOR: rgb(41,48,59);font-family:Georgia;" >This blog is dedicated to C. Anderson. No one will ever read it, I don't intend to publicize it...it's just here.<br /><br />Someone told me that you were not going to be part of the thing I identify you most with anymore. Well, no they didn't actually <strong>TELL</strong> me. I read it. Several times in fact, in press release after press release after blog posting after Myspace bulletin.<br /><br />It's a strange concept to me, you see. For I remember the very first night we met, the very first words we spoke and I remember holding my breath with excitement and delight the first time I saw you walk up my driveway to hand me promotional materials (I still have the box they came in)...for I had been acquired by your band. Kicking and screaming.<br /><br />I remember an e-mail on a cool October afternoon announcing I was "<em>on board</em>." I distinctly felt my guts say, "<em>Hell, no, not this again</em>." I remember the first time I realized...I was safe with you and yours.<br /><br />I remember CBGBs, recording over my 25th Birthday in Waldorf, Maryland, I remember road trips to Connecticut, nights at the Frat house in Long Island. I recall, fondly, practices off Route 46 and the night I told you all I was leaving for Washington in a week. I remember our one and only fight, I remember the sincerest apologies from us both. I remember laughing more than I remember worrying. I remember nearly killing a roadie from Wakefield for smoking "you-know-what" in your bedroom.<br /><br />I want you to know that though my sincere prayer for you is that you wake from the Peter Pan identity you cling to...I will never forget you as you were, as you have been, as you one day promised you would be.<br /><br />You see...the thing you did for me was recognize me. You saw the diamond that had been roughed up, you knew its value and you pursued it with vigor.<br /><br />Sir... I have the open doors I have because I was brave enough to follow my heart and your invitation to step out of myself and into the world as it was ready to receive me.<br /><br />My dear brother I pray for you to wake up out of your musical dream, awaken to all God has called you to become and I pray, oh Sweet Heaven, it gives you your wish...but I promise, you'll never "Sprout" wings living like this. So embrace your true age, and know that with it, wisdom will be profound. Live so you can be proud of your track record, and record tracks in kind.<br /><br />I may never know what happened but I've seen the inside of the T the P and the R... and I don't know how it can possibly go on existing without you in it. I cannot fathom the pain but if my words mean anything I pray you hear me say Hope with abandon, pray with ambition and thrive in your grown up identity. It's time to grow up Peter Pan....and that's okay. I cannot wait to meet you on this side of the fence when you finally cross over.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-29880839132125880522007-08-22T07:32:00.000-07:002008-06-11T09:09:12.135-07:00MIAMISBURG RHAPSODY<em><span style="font-family:courier new;color:#ff0000;">written in August 2006</span></em><br /><br />I have inherited a nightmare. It is a legacy of achievement that seems, without fail, to prevent me from being, in any way, simple. There is NO simple in my life. Looking around at my peers I see their lives carving out sensible and tangible niches in front of them. I have no niche. I have multiple ports of call…and I’m beginning to question WHY?<br /><br />Raised in a loving but mostly non-practicing Catholic home, I was pushed, by my parents to achieve. My father, an ex-marine who only has his GED, had been a construction worker then a project manager and finally an administrator for buildings and grounds facilities in school systems. My mother was an educator with a bachelor’s degree so naturally education was a focal point in our home if not always than at the very least, from the time I was about 10 or 11. Just in time to send me off, admittedly of my own choosing, to an all-female, private, elite, Catholic high school. Let the fast tracking begin.<br /><br />The faculty whispered, “College,” in our ears from the first day of my freshman fall semester…it wasn’t a suggestion. This was our reality. Academy girls went to college; and so I did. Then came three years of grad school because, hey, if anyone in our family was going to be the first woman with Master’s degree…it would, of course, have to be me. After all, mom had said, “don’t stop, go and get all your education finished!!”<br /><br />At the same time my only sibling pursued a bohemian lifestyle funded by my newly widowed father. Six would-be months of study in Europe turned into a full year. The later six months of her jaunt were nothing more than a sabbatical for my poor sibling who simply couldn’t “deal” with the loss of mom. Meanwhile I studied, taught French, worked part time and got straight A’s.<br /><br />To what end?<br /><br />Well let’s skip the music industry mental breakdown period. It’s a tired subject. Fast forward…<br /><br />I live in the busiest Metropolis on the East Coast. Perhaps some would argue that title is rightfully held by New York City; but this year being a presidential election year, I’m going to have to beg to differ.<br /><br />So anyway here I am. After surviving a rough freshman year in DC, I finally feel like I have my feet under me,, (a real job, health insurance, good roommates, friends I care for, a car I like, a city so beautiful and majestic that I fall in love with it anew every morning (though perhaps groan at its traffic at night). Then three months ago BANG, shockwaves!!!!!<br /><br />I’ve attempted to set aside all the most complicating factors in my life, or so I thought. I ditched the political career, quit music consulting, and just decided to accept a regular Joe job. I figure I can just enjoy my life a little now and smell the roses. Perhaps it’s just that I am twenty-six, but it’s as if there are things I so deeply desire in my life that I feel short of breath at the mere thought of their absence. What are they? Good question…let’s run a list.<br /><br /><strong>Intellectual stimulation –</strong> I need challenge. I need to be surrounded by people with whom I can discuss books and music and law and government, fine wine and movies. Ya know, stuff I like.<br /><br /><strong>Intimacy –</strong> I’m talking the real stuff. The kinds of relationships with people that let you speak to them, really. Close together, spatially and shoot right from the hip.<br /><br /><strong>Family –</strong> I don’t have one anymore. Time with them is the thing I desire more than anything, I think.<br /><br /><strong>Culture –</strong> I am a creature of internationalism. I am anything but white-bread. I can not subsist on a culture of norms and status quo.<br /><br /><strong>God -</strong> the most important of all needs. It is that force which drives my search for the four previous desires and, at the same time, confounds me. It leads me to question what I am destined for and what I must consider an acceptable opportunity cost to achieve it.<br /><br />So why create a list as “heavy” as this?<br /><br />I’ve just spent the weekend in Dayton, Ohio *enter long blank stare and the sound of crickets rioting*. I will admit I was rendered completely claustrophobic by all the wide-open spaces and huge industrial plants. I felt ridiculous but couldn’t help wondering to myself, good grief where in the heck would a girl get a decent set of highlights and pedicure around here? And even if she could find them, who would ever know?! They’d be hidden under her hard hat and steel-tipped Doc Martens!<br /><br />But then there is the question of him. (Of course there is a man involved.) We’ll just call him the Prospect. He’s tall, decent looking, has a good heart and a real love of life. Oh, and did I mention, he really likes me. He’s the settling type, a family man in the making. A lot of his closest friends have wives. Almost all have steady girlfriends. He speaks to those things on my list, which I feel I desire in my life most.<br /><br />He is close with his fraternity brothers and remains exuberant about his college days. He talks with his parents often. He’s educated and appreciates art, beauty and a cold beer with a simultaneous and fluid adaptation. The Prospect works hard at his job because he truly likes it. He’s quirky in an endearing fashion and is floored by my capacity to read his body language. Again, he feeds my need to set up intimacy.<br /><br />However, he’s contented in his mid-western surroundings and is acutely aware of my instant culture shock the first night I arrive. Perhaps it was the cool manner with which certain friends of his treated me. Perhaps it was that they could not seem to understand why I spoke of politics and wore a pashmina and Vera Wang perfume instead of Eddie Bauer and Vanilla Fields.<br /><br />I am an initial outcast; too smart and way too metropolitan for their tastes. A night at the fancy Irish Pub serves as the living end of fine dining in their realm. When he visited DC we took him for Ethiopian cuisine and outdoor dancing at the Reagan Building pavilion. But, to be fair, I reflect back to the rooftop hotel jazz bar we sat in that first night in Ohio. Lovely low lights with a view of downtown Dayton. (mainly parking garages and non-descript edifices)I sat there, swilling Cabernet, as they drank Zinfandel and Budweiser. One drank Merlot, but grasped the stem of the glass as though it were a lollipop handle. I stifled a chuckle.<br /><br />My thoughts drifted to a similar rooftop bar view I’d seen from the top of the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City. The Capital Dome, Washington Monument and all of Downtown DC glittering in the panoramic distance. I relay this view verbally to the Prospect who blinks and nods in non-committal fashion.<br /><br />Oh my word I’m a snob!!!! But I feel as if it’s a nurtured thing. I don’t mean to be perceived as believing I’m of a superior frame of mind. I think that it’s just that, unlike the other 5 people at this table, have seen most of Europe, shopped in the market in the Old City on David Street in Jerusalem and seen Broadway musicals on Broadway. I grew up in New Jersey for pity’s sake! It was right there. Those are MY only bases for comparison. I’ve never felt so stupid for sounding so “smart.”<br /><br />My absolute confusion and angst derives, lately, from a true desire for familial attributes to my life and the unavoidable blockade to this reality. For starters, MY WHOLE LIFE!!!<br /><br />I am what one might call a debutante, educated by the best to work for and with the elite. Sometimes I’ll admit that lends itself to my feeling like a trained seal. Lately it makes me feel like I have no way of communicating with regular people. I like fine wine (and don’t have to pay more than 9 dollars a bottle b/c I know the difference between what is good and what is just pricey). But even that is a product of actually taking a viticulture course in Burgundy itself. Oy!<br /><br />I am a showpiece; an unintentional braggart. I have limited means of interacting with people from the Mid-west who have no concept of a life like the one I’ve lead. Up until this past weekend I felt mediocre, same as everyone I knew. I thought I hated it. I was wrong.<br /><br />I know for a fact that the men I have met in the greater DC-Metro area are much like the, ahem, ‘gentlemen’ I attended graduate school with. We referred to them as “men who believed they were currency on two legs.” I rolled my eyes a lot. Self-importance, I think, is one of the great intimacy killers. I know that I prefer to marry a simple man who can latently appreciate some of the finer things in life for their own sake, not for the sake of status or erudition. That is my honest approach to these same things.<br /><br />My dilemma lies in the fact that I can’t even speak to men like this for the most part. Simple men that is. Why not?? I scare the hell out of them or come across as “high-maintenance,” or at least, snobby. I’m not snobby. I just, ya know, had pushy parents who made me do all kinds of brainy stuff as a kid. Like that’s MY fault. I’m feeling moderately annoyed at the fact that my educated upbringing saddles me with a need to apologize for that which my first life lessons predisposed me.<br /><br />Oh it’s not just men. My own godmother has disowned me for reasons which, until recent years, escaped me. All my formative years were spent with members of my family whispering to me how bright I was and how I should go here and do this and what an intelligent young lady I was. How they bragged. Frankly it was embarrassing! But as I grew and gained diploma after diploma, what was once pride was quickly replaced with reproach, as if to say, “Humph, just who do you think YOU are, Miss Smarty-pants?” Well that’s just great.<br /><br />By about my freshman year of college, I realized I liked being smart. It felt right. I didn’t like not knowing things or not being able to offer relevant and interesting contributions to discussions and research. I’m hardwired like that. I have no problem with that. It’s what has always been expected of me and now it’s what I expect of me.<br /><br /><br />I’ll never forget my first semester freshman public speaking class where a boy named Dan Ferisse, who continually sniggered each time I spoke, said the following when I asked him what his problem with me was. He’d said, “why do you have to sound so smart all the time?” with a wry grin on his plump face. I shook my head and very levelly replied, “Why do you have to be so negative all the time? At least I’m productive.”<br /><br />Years later I’d meet Brian. He’s a dear friend and had, at first, been a romantic interest. We talked often and he pointed out how he enjoyed being challenged by my intellect. The caveat always came, however, when we spoke of significant others, that I probably was still single because, and I’ll quote him directly, that, I’m “too intelligent, too quick and too witty. It’s a turn off sometimes. Guys don’t like to feel intimidated.”<br /><br />This conversation, though it had me looking at my calendar to, in fact, be sure it was not 1953, called up the same old question. Smart outspoken women are under appreciated and avoided or castigated because they use the gift they are given. If Jessica Simpson, who, in my humble opine, cannot find a coherent intellectual thought with two hands and a flashlight, forevermore uses her beautiful voice to sing, no one will knock on her all that much. True, she’s goofed about using all the requisite blond jokes, but she has a hunky hubby, a fat bank account and all the nice things in life. Why? Pretty and sings.<br /><br />Now most of the female population does not look like Jessica Simpson or even Marge Simpson (thankfully), but what I know to be true is that if it were a man, whose pursuits were intellectual he’d be considered a renaissance man or an aficionado of some kind rather than a snob or a know-it-all. Okay, okay let’s not go down that road. You’re right. I’m not a feminist; I’m a humanist. I like people and believe if you have a gift it should be appreciated rather than scoffed at.<br /><br />So here I sit, missing the Prospect. Unable to get my mind off the whole weekend I fluctuate from looking at job postings in Ohio to feeling claustrophobic at the thought of the entire state of Ohio.<br /><br />What do I do? I feel short of breath at the thought of forgetting about the Prospect and starting over. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Mostly I’m afraid that whatever it is I have been raised to become was a mistake.<br /><br />I have no niche. I am not skinny, rich and/or the daughter or some well-known professionals. But I have two bachelors and two masters degrees in business, international relations and government. This means I can be somebody’s administrative assistant in DC speak.<br /><br />But I can’t hang out with regular blue-collar folks either. Why? Because I have two bachelors and two masters degrees in business, international relations and government. And these people pigeonhole me as someone who will pigeonhole them before even asking if I mind drinking light beer. (Make it a Coors Light thanks).<br /><br />Not erudite enough for the erudite and too smart for the commoners. Is this an actual sect of the human race, or am I and others like me just the mal-contented enigmas who live in limbo?<br /><br />How much of one part of my life and personality must someone in this situation sacrifice or view as opportunity cost to fit-in with one side or the other? Does a choice need to be made at all? Why can neither extreme acquiesce to my middle? Do they?<br /><br />All the while I dream of an empathetic spouse and warmly lit home in the country to which I can return after a long day of work at a job I love for a glass of dark red Burgundy wine and a meat and potatoes meal.<br /><br />A divine and elusive juxtaposition.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-6420670764190141022007-02-16T07:00:00.000-08:002007-02-16T07:16:24.019-08:00Ten things for which I am thankful...on my 29th Birthday<em><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Thanks for the idea Jessie!!!</strong></span></em><br /><br /><br /><strong>10)</strong> I am thankful that I woke up this morning and there was snow on the ground. The white covering is a beautiful reminder that God, even in barren times, makes all things beautiful.<br /><br /><strong>9)</strong> I am thankful for my family and the way that God, time and experience has allowed us to be a cohesive unit once more. Our season of purgatory is over.<br /><br /><strong>8)</strong> I am thankful to have spent four years in the most beautiful, magical and overwhelming place I have ever known, Washington, DC. And for all the lessons that time and place brought with it.<br /><br /><strong>7)</strong> I am thankful for girlfriends. I am thankful for Karyn, Kate, Connie, Julie, Shelley, Jessie, Amie, and Francie; for what they have taught me about being a woman, a woman of God, a chocolate lover, a race car driver, a red neck, a professional, a lover of pink and Tiffany’s blue and of course Little Debbie.<br /><br /><strong>6)</strong> I am thankful for my health and for my renewed commitment to staying healthy so that I can accomplish in this lifetime whatever it is God has for me to do without fear or resignation, rather with resilience and exuberance.<br /><br /><strong>5)</strong> I am thankful for The New Originals. I am thankful for the fun, love, laughter, quietude, struggle, and camaraderie I have discovered within their niche. For the renewed sense of expertise rejuvenated and no longer lying fallow. For the courage not to let a resource go untapped simply because I am afraid to use it at all. Thank you for exercising my demon!<br /><br /><strong>4)</strong> I am thankful for the Thouret Family and their entire network of wonderful family and friends. Through my time with each and every member I have learned well-timed bombast, wisdom in the pursuit of knowledge, faith, patience, and most importantly for the lesson I have learned in how to receive and accept grace and caring from others. I am so entirely humbled by their benevolence that no words approach sufficiency.<br /><br /><strong>3)</strong> I am thankful for the Crossroads youth group which, upon the moment of my return, opened its arms, pulled me in and put me straight back to work for Him with the young people I love more than my own life. This is my legacy, my treasure trove, the thing of which I am most proud and inspired by and the thing to which I commit my heart of hearts.<br /><br /><strong>2)</strong> I am thankful for Travis, Julie, Joshua and Victoria. I am only half a person when I am not serving with you, laughing with you, praying with you and “doing life” with you. Thank you thank you thank you for loving me and letting me love you in return.<br /><br /><strong>1)</strong> I am thankful for having the courage and good sense God gave me to know that I was braver than most when I chose to leave home and braver still to return when God opened the door knowing full well I had nothing left to prove other than that I know my Shepard’s voice and trust it fully.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-20492789326338985912007-02-13T10:07:00.000-08:002007-02-09T08:07:59.186-08:00Don't look now...Auto-pilot.......<br /><br />So many parts of my life feel as though some other person, force (God) has the reins and I can do little but remain a spectator. I don't suspect that I am complaining entirely but it is, to say the least, highly intriguing.<br /><br />My life has been an experiment in failure, railing against impossible odds and social climbing for most of the last seven years. But in the last few months since I abandoned my pursuit of a life and career in Washington, DC, my life has taken on a whole new feel. I have friends everywhere. I have men friends...lots and lots of 'em! In Virginia I had one male friend in whose company I could find myself on a semi-regular basis. But here...well, for lack of a less crass terminology, I have my very own man-harem. Now, certainly that title is not meant to encompass a lewd connotation in any way. But I am, for sure, surrounded by 'my boys' once again.<br /><br />Romance has worked its way back into my life despite my best efforts to block it out, ignore or avoid it. And for the first time in my life it is effortless. Completely effortless...<br /><br />Today is February 13, 2007. Tomorrow is, for many people I know, a completely hateful "holiday." Valentine's day marrs the senses with a feeling of inequity if you find yourself without a paramour and for those who do, by and large the prom-night pressure of the thing usually spoils it.<br /><br />But for those who, somehow, are wise enough to hold to the idea that spontanaety and an unrehearsed observance of the holiday is wisest, something really terriffic has the chance to transpire.<br /><br />Allan and I sat on the couch last night as we do most Monday nights these days. We are fans of the show 24, but for different reasons. He for the explosions and plot twists, and I for the fact that I view the plotline from the point of view of a former Washington, DC insider. Either way, we are both enraptured by and ensconced in the thing for the whole hour, or two as the case was last night.<br /><br />I had come over early because I wanted to cook Allan dinner. I really miss cooking since I'm no longer in my home in Virginia and well...you know what they say about the way to a man's heart. :0)<br /><br />Allan has become a strange and beautiful blessing in my life. We have such a normal and easygoing relationship with one another. I offered to cook him dinner, honestly, forgetting the whole proximity that last night's date had to Valentine's Day. My birthday is Friday, the 16th, so every year, I usually just ignore the Valentine's thing and skip straight to my little day. Convenient and effective!<br /><br />I arrived with two bags of groceries and set straight about my task after borrowing adequate pots and pans from his neighbor Toni. In truth I was pretty impressed with how well I pulled off Tuscan Chicken Rollatini with asparagus and red bliss potatoes in his little under-stocked galley kitchen. In between chopping and cutting, Allan asked me if he could help in anyway. I asked that he pound the cutlets flat. He watched quizzically as I combined ingredients, heated pots, and searing pans in my now bare feet in his little kitchen. We sipped light beer and he snacked on pita and hummus while we waited for the meal to finish.<br /><br />Now that our program was coming on, we settled in, in front of the entertainment center and clinked our forks. I nibbled an asparagus stalk as he cut into his chicken. He spoke easily until he put the food in his mouth when he stopped, chewed, looked at me, and in his very Allan way praised my cooking. <em>Oh my gosh, this is bangin! </em>I chuckled and thanked him, myself, cutting into my chicken. He was right, I outdid myself. In my own thoughts I congratulated myself and merely nodded my agreement.<br /><br />After we finished our plates, I went to powder my nose during a commercial break. When I got back to the couch, snatched up the pillow I'd been cuddling with and went to sit back down. Allan whooped like I was about to kill something so I leaped back up, spun around a half dozen times looking like "<em>what the heck's goin on here</em>" and when I finally settled back into my skin, there he sat, with a sheepish expression on his face, in his hand he held a velvet heart-shaped-box of chocolate truffles he'd rescued from being sat upon.<br /><br />My mind took a moment to registere exactly what was goin on. In truth my gut check reaction was that the scenario was so precious I nearly could have died. Bound and determined to keep my cool comportment I acted appropriately surprised and grateful. We shared one of the Dove truffles and I thanked him with a kiss, maybe two. So here I am, 28 (for the next 3 days) and I have a Valentine for the first time in so long I honestly cannot imagine.<br /><br />I guess it is true, things like this come 'round when you are in no way expecting or looking for them. I'm a cliche and a statistic. Ha. But in truth... this easy-breezy valentine of mine has been the nicest by far. Who knew that not over processing, orchestrating and analyzing could be so nice. (yeh....I know)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-36290164189835166372007-02-09T06:35:00.000-08:002007-02-16T07:41:59.944-08:00OhYe Men of Corinth!I recently lay watching TV in the company of a gentleman with whom I have an ongoing flirtation. I enjoy his company. He's handsome, funny, actually likes to have good conversation and is even brave enough to let me pick the wine. During our evening, it struck me that perhaps the disconnect between men and boys is that they simply don't know they are men. In truth, if a man does not know he has become a man, versus the boy version of himself, how can he truly be a man?<br /><br />The word "guy" bothers me. It has all the appeal and polish of Betty Rizzo or Frenchy from <em>Grease</em> calling their paramours "fellas." Well any male can act the part of a guy or a fella. But a real man...who can find him?<br /><br />As I reclined with this gentleman, I remarked that I enjoyed his company because, though I knew a lot of guys, it was nice to be in the company of a man for a change. Bemused, he mulled the thought over in his head. When I asked him about his quizzical countenance, he remarked that he looked the way he did because, in truth he'd didn't know if anyone had ever referred to him as a <strong><em>man</em></strong> before. It was rather precious, I must say, in one respect. His comportment looked a little like a young boy with a superman cape on in front of a mirror, posturing to admire his new-found manly stature. But on the other hand, it was disconcerting in the extreme to believe that a twenty-eight year old man could not recollect ever having been called a MAN before that moment.<br /><br />When do we become adults anyway....??? I suppose that in practice we become adults when we move out of mummy and dadums' nest, get a job, buy a car, pay taxes...all that rot. But to be honest, I have friends and acquaintances in their forties doing all that who act like teenagers, are unmarried, and some, sadly, still live with mum and dad.<br /><br />I suppose because my generation has been made to pack so much "have-to" responsibility into 23 years or less, we just assume we're doing what all the other kids on the block are doing and we lose track of time altogether. Meanwhile, we get to my age...late twenties...and suddenly we want to have some fun. We've earned degrees, won and lost at love and work, moved out and in and out of different place. It's all so "normal." We're young people, young adults. But men? Women?<br /><br />Anne Shirley, a character I quote often, arrived at her first big job far from home, better than prepared professionally to succeed. But upon meeting her mentor Miss Stacey at the train station she confessed that had Miss Stacey not been there she'd have sat right down and cried because she felt completely green, provincial and only ten-years-old. Now, Anne's character was only 17 at the time, but in the 1910's, 17 was an age by which time a lady was already a career woman or married and keeping house. Certainly I'm not suggesting I'd rather have married my high school sweetheart and been saddled with a half dozen offspring by now, but I think that the heart of the matter is that people in that time were compelled to be adults, women and men, at a much earlier age and given much less leeway to meander about aimlessly under the guise of "finding themselves."<br /><br />As a Christian woman, there are a lot of expectations that I and my cultural niche have of me. As such, there are certain expectations I have of any potentially serious beau. Chatting with my former roommate Francie of late, I confessed I was all for being the traditional Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 woman, as per what the Bible says a good, godly-wife and woman should be. The problem I have with our present society is that, if it mandates, in my case, for we females to be women who live up to lofty and good ideals such as what is in Proverbs and the book of Titus, then, for the love of GOD (literally) we're gonna need some 1 Corinthians men.<br /><br />Men need to know they are men. We want you rugged, reserved, wild at heart, your eyes on God, and fully aware that you are MEN MEN MEN not guys, fellas and heaven forbid, boys. We want you to know that we women are not here to "tie you down," burden you, nag you or strangle your dreams. As I said to my Aunt Maria only yesterday, "Heck if he wants to run around the world ten times a year, I'll run with him!"<br /><br />I suppose our culture has painted the portrait of monogamy, marriage and relationships as that which suffocates dreams. And as such, it must be difficult to, as a male, see yourself as a man versus a young man, fella or guy. I say this for two reasons. The first it that, at times, it is no picnic being someones spouse unless you are a committed, go-getter, goal-orientated person with a marathon mind frame. This reality just smacks of a necessary level of maturity. Second, the Bible says it is not good for a MAN to be alone. If a man doesn't know he is a man, how can he know he ought to have a wife?<br /><br />My man, should I find him, should know he is a wild stallion I'm in no way trying to tame. My spirit is as adventurous as anyone else's. But he has to know I need him to be strong enough to lead me, not be lead by the nose. No woman, who wants to be with a man for the right reasons, wants a pet or a surrogate child.<br /><br />It's an awesome thing, to see a real man. As a woman I have to be honest. And yes, I have my green and provincial moments even-still, but for the man who would be there to be just that and protect me, not coddle me, wow is that attractive, alluring and desirable. Go be men, gentlemen. Trust and believe that no amount of toys, awards, bragging, notches in your belt or other status measurement will make up for the lack of it in your own heart.<br /><br />How could I, a woman, possibly know that? The young man whom I called a man, presumably for the first remember-able time in his life just last week, we'll use his example. I've heard him talk about his work in architecture, his car, his women of yore, and his recent totally braggable business trip to London. None of those stories have ever carried the kind of countenance, posture and aura that my calling him a man in that fleeting moment did so richly deliver.<br /><br />Don't leave us gals wondering where the men like our fathers have gone. As we women are beseeched by you men to embrace our qualities, our feminine wiles if you will, we ask the same in reverse. Not so much the "Me Tarzan, you Jane, " archetype, rather a real man. Simply a real man who knows he is a man, and seeks to use all the best parts of what he learned in his life as a boy, young man, fellow, and guy to be the best version of himself. Words don't do justice how magnificent it is to see and be in the company of men such as these.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-30694602607556986902007-01-11T10:31:00.000-08:002008-06-11T09:07:29.680-07:00Never Meet Your HeroesOnce I knew an absolute <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">sonofabitch</span> who spoke a great bit of truth to me. He said, "Never meet your heroes." I understand now what he meant. When we meet our heroes, or people we admire or are in some way smitten with, they will, inevitably, become more human and less the picture of perfection. Meeting your heroes leaves you liable to see their warts in lieu of their overwhelmingly positive traits which attracted you to them in the first place.<br /><br /><strong><em>The everyday Adonis...</em></strong><br /><br />Regular people carry that same risk factor. Oh no it's not just the George <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">Clooneys</span> and Margaret Thatchers of this world who are subject to hero worship. Take for example the friend you've had from a distance for many years.<br /><br />You know the one I mean. Two, maybe three times each year, you'll get together and its all smiles and laughter and grandiose professions of adoration and undying friendship or kinship or even romance. Whatever the case ... each remains idyllic to the other because both of you put your best foot forward for those brief 12 to 48 hour periods of time thrice yearly. Under those circumstances, its not hard to maintain an air of mystery or idealism or perfection, even.<br /><br />Undeniably, each sees something greener on the other's grass that keeps them coming back if only for a brief escape of how normal their lifestyles are when an outsider isn't there to covet its differences from their own.<br /><br /><strong><em>Absence makes the heart fond...</em></strong><br /><br />I've recently learned that part of the covenant between hero friends is distance. When hero friends suddenly have an overlap in lifestyle or in their groups of friends that makes them more constant companions, the covenant is breached the magic is broken and Cinderella and the Prince go back to being the maid and the pumpkin. All the amazing things about my life that he escaped into, things I took for granted, were suddenly always there to be seen and experienced. I became a common experience. And all the bohemian appeal of his lifestyle in which I loved to <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">occasionally</span> indulge like a guilty pleasure became grotesque in their <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" onclick="BLOG_clickHandler(this)">ubiquitousness</span>.<br /><br />I long for the days when I could know that when we met he would be more happy to see me than anyone in the room, sweep me off my feet with that signature hug and talk to me for hours. I long to dance with him, laugh wildly, talk for an hour on the phone, or merely call at all and not feel for sure that when I do get <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">voice mail</span>...he's dodging my call because he's simply tired of hearing my voice in his ear.<br /><br />I long for the days when his language merely made me blush instead of cringe with its constant colorful adjectives. I long for seeing him as my little treasured one and not the harried mini-version of something I've already seen and fearing I can do as little now as I could then to prevent or buffer the inevitable. Mostly I fear that because I am now very ordinary to him...and he to me, that we have nothing left to say at all and I will be no better than a utility, used for my head <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">knowledge</span> of a lifetime I fought hard to escape. There's no way I'll escape being bitter if that is true.<br /><br /><strong>Don't fish just cut bait...</strong><br /><br />No, don't meet your heroes, and forget weekly visits with special <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">occasion</span> friends. The bloom wears off the rose and our faults more oft than we hope, over-shadow how fabulous we were when we were each other's escape from reality.<br /><br />So I pray he remembers me and Virginia, running errands, a matching tuxedo, the polka, and falling asleep roommates be damned!<br /><br />From those moments till now, my hero became my herald and that herald a fortuitous bridge. I've paid its toll and crossed its length...I can't really go back across now so I'll need to leave it altogether and hope that I can put enough distance between me an it so that when it is nearly disappeared on my horizon it sparkles with all its idyllic perfection once more. And when it does, I'll think, I need to get back there and visit some day.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1151252684985454032006-06-25T09:12:00.000-07:002006-10-23T13:01:56.032-07:00Brave New World<span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>For such a one as myself who dearly despises math in all its forms, I find it highly ironic that God, Himself, finds joy in communicating to me through numbers. I can often be overheard swearing up and down that the number 311, in its many forms has been persistently following me for years now. Every dorm room I've ever had; every time I look up at the clock in the afternoon...and, heaven forbid, even once, my GPA. </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>Life throws many curveballs. Big events take place in all peoples' lives. Mine usually requires some kind of air travel. And as such, God chooses to communicate the tone of my trip through my departing flight number. Far fetched you say? 'Fraid not. </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>For example, while schooling in Dijon, France, around Thanksgiving time, I found out that my mother, may God rest her soul, was very sick with cancer. In a bit of a panic, I decided I should fly home for what I did not know then but would learn would be her last Thanksgiving with us. The travel arrangments were a blur until the insurance agent booking my emergency flight home 24 hours in advance informed me that I would be on United Airlines Flight 911. Despite my desolate attitude I laughed inspite 0f myself. I actually remember asking her if she was joking as I thought to myself, 'well, either I'm getting home early or I'm goin' down!' </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>Right now it's 12:15pm on June 25, 2006. Numerically speaking no indicators that today should be all that different from any given Sunday. However, I'm getting on a plane at 4:30pm today bound for Atlanta, Georgia. My orientation and on-boarding training for my new career is taking me the entire length of the Eastern Sea Board. And, again, God's made a joke with me by putting me on Delta flight 1492. </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>So what is he telling me? I'm out to discover a new world like Columbus,...or that I'll spread small pox to the native Atlantans? *good grief* Perhaps He knows to joke with me because I'm a small details person. They say the Devil is in the details but I think that, instead, it is a place where His still small voice has the power to remind us He's still at the helm. </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>So today I've decided to feel intrepid instead of intimidated despite the biting sense of bitterness in my gut that wishes a certain woman were still here in body and spirit to coach me through this. If our God in heaven is indeed the God of all comfort He's described in the Scriptures to be, He'll stem the tide of that sadness too. I'm excited, if a little lonely, for this next leg of the journey. I grow weary of going these big steps alone but I know that when He does this, He wants my full attention. </em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em></em></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><em>So,...Delta flight 1492 will add itself to the other Ninas, Pintas and Santa Marias of my life...and away we go into the horizon toward a brave new world. </em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1147894695766543272006-05-17T12:20:00.000-07:002006-10-23T13:01:55.918-07:00RequiemThis blog is dedicated to C. Anderson. No one will ever read it, I don't intend to publicize it...it's just here.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1137966914804955782006-01-22T13:49:00.000-08:002006-10-23T13:01:55.862-07:00As Needed...Sometimes I sit back, look at my life and just straight laugh. I have an incredible life. No I'm not a rock star, no I'm not a corporate CEO. I'm only me, myself. But let me tell you about myself. I've managed to earn 4, yes, count them, FOUR, college degrees. Two of which I paid for all on my own. (yeah, SallieMae and I have a standing montly appointment from now until about 2036) I've managed to live in three states, and two countries, traveled to more than a dozen countries the world over, moved to the craziest city in the whole blessed world, worked in nuclear energy, marketing, the music industry, youth ministry, corporate real estate and federal government policy. *whew* Oh and that's all in the last 10 years. So I guess I've accomplished more since my 17th birthday than in the first 17 years of my life. That's progress and so I suppose that's good.<br /><br />Now that sounds like a big brag list. It's not. Honestly.<br /><br />So, what is it if not a narcissistic homage to la vie en Moi? It's a reminder. This world can loom up pretty big, and in the hustle of the life I've chosen to lead, a life of politics and jet-setting for work, long work days, not marrying young, and living 100 miles away from my nearest relative. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm not sure if I know exactly who it is that is staring back through the glass.<br /><br />Amid all my career paths it would seem to me that God does a funny little thing to remind me of just who I really am. How, you ask? God opens a door and lets a voice from what I perceive to be a more sensical past lifestyle to return into my throng of friends. He's creative in His choices too.<br /><br />The last person that God put back in my life, goodness only knows I never thought I'd see him again. However his voice had been with me even during the 5 years we'd spent apart. You see, before the music industry was even a part of my world...I still loved music. This man's music and that of his friends, are, now a sonic yearbook for my collegiate experience. Years that, though confusing and difficult in their own ways, were filled with much more laughter than pain. For me, my memories are priceless. And as a writer, I remember them with a sharpness some find uncanny. Personally, I find that music only sharpens the images further. For that gift I am grateful.<br /><br />I know that God puts people in my life for a season. Some seasons are long, some very, very, short. Others come and go sporadically. My favorites, though sometimes most complicated, are those I call the "As-neededs."<br /><br />"As-needed" are those people in our life from whom we draw strength, centeredness and a realistic view of who we are now vis-a-vis the person we were the last time they entered our lives. Like living Ebenezers, these people often show us how far we've come, and sometimes, how far we have yet to go.<br /><br />I have several "As-neededs" in my life. God is very jealous of my time. He knows that these "As-neededs" are often people whose attention and company I crave like a thirsty plant craves cool rain. So what does He do? He gives me their time and them mine, "as-needed."<br /><br />I think I may be an "As-needed" for many people. Its hard. As such, people tend make use of you like a source from which to draw energy. Any good "as-needed" knows that can be just as enthralling as it is, well, draining. "As-neededs" are people built to give. Conversely, at least in my case, we have a real problem taking for ourselves and the words "No" or "that's enough" are really a challenge to come up with in context.<br /><br />What a life as an "As-needed" has taught me is how to be an investor. Many people have stocks that they buy and sell with some measure of regularity. Most, if not the lion's share, of stocks are the type that ebb and flow in value with the business cycle. Friendships too have their cash cow times and times of barren restructuring. From the point of view of an "As-needed" who's attention is sought, we have to be so careful how much time we invest in a certain stock...er, person lest it become a losing investment.<br /><br />Now, be mindful, I'm not trying to objectify emotional and intimate investment into the very dust. I only know that a relationship between people where one is totally dependent or continually drawing from the other person without any switching or time of less dependence lends itself to becoming unhealthy in a hurry.<br /><br />I'll be the first to point the finger at myself. I'm lucky however. My favorite "As-needed" is sooooo much better at putting distance between us than I am and may ever be. It is why we are still the closest of friends to this day and why I will always feel an extremely logical and healthy kind of love for them.<br /><br />As the "As-needed," it's so very hard for me to put up a hand and claim a need for distance from the one who I am needed by. In my more recent encounters, I seem to vanish a bit more often as a means of trying to get my point across.<br /><br />Long described by my family and friends as a defuser, diplomat, intervention specialist, peace-maker...pick your moniker...I'm loathe to butt heads with someone who wants to dictate how much of my time they merit anymore. Perhaps its a function of growing up and growing older, but I find I am not investing in as many people if only for the fact that working for dear Uncle Sam takes a great deal of my time and, in doing so, have learned to empathize with others burdens....not carry them.<br /><br />You may find it surprising that "As-neededs" have a hard time with forgiveness. What? Why? How? Well I'll tell you. First and foremost, "As-neededs" are very tolerant, patient people nearly and most often up to the point of self-deprication. We are not clingy and are easily spotted as that person you are friends with that you can not see for months, even years, at a time, but when you get back in touch...its as if no time has passed.<br /><br />But, when someone is daft enough to cross the threshold we set for how much we can bear, they've done something that was either incredibly stupid, tragically cruel or plain old mind-blowingly <em>wrong, wrong, wrong</em>. The mind of the "As-needed" has a really hard time understanding why anyone would NEED to have pushed them to this point and we find its difficult to trust that the offending party will refrain from pushing our envelop on another occassion.<br /><br />In the event of a <em>wrong, wrong, wrong</em>, forget it, you've lost us, we're outta there...don't call us, we'll call you when we're 6 months removed from the offense. Mercifully that kind of hurt has only happened to me once in my life as an "As-needed" and it was quite a number of years ago. By the way...he has NO idea how good it feels to finally forgive him. However, the ultimate conclusion is that, though he has my complete forgivness, he can count on never having my company, my counsel or my confidence again as long as we both live. It's just better that way.<br /><br />Yes, that's the hardest thing to learn when you are an "As-needed," knowing when to not be available to certain people again. We love to give; so cutting people out of the picture is against our nature. But, to be fair to ourselves, we have to admit that some alliants or dependants are toxic and no measure of adjustment on our end will fix that or make us feel any less like a public utlity to them.<br /><br />So what possible up-side is there to being an "As-needed." *wry grin* It's truly an awesome calling. From my vantage point, God's picked, hand-selected, me to trust with dropping into peoples's lives when they are dealing with some of the harder things they have yet encountered. No, its not all sweets and walks in the park. Its a lot of trudging through baggage and guilt and self-loathing. But "As-neededs" are the type which carry candles into the darkest corners of the people we encounter with boldness and sense of purpose. We do it without fear, with little or no expectation for ourselves but with every expectation that we're going to see something amazing happen. And it does, it really does.<br /><br />But what about when an "As-needed's" time is up. Well, I have come to understand that each "As-needed" has their own type of exit strategy, or, God is pretty bold and plain about the fact that its quittin time. However, "As-neededs" are devoted people, and we can sometimes be pretty thick headed about when we believe its quitting time and what God's concept of time to cut bait actually is. Over-achiever is often a synonym for "As-needed." We're extra-mile people and that can be to our detriment.<br /><br />I always think of Scott Bakula's character in Quantum Leap. He was the epitome of "As-needed." He would drop into lives at a point of critical mass and need to, with his objective pair of eyes, reason out the tragic flaw or potentially life threatening problem. It was only when that was fixed or accomplished that he would leap to his next situation. Now, in most cases, I've never necessarily helped mitigate lethal circumstances. But I know that objective wisdom can change perspective, and perspective can bring hope. And hope...well that's a priceless gift that we all need.<br /><br />So I suspect that "As-neededs" are bringers of hope. We honestly and earnestly want the best for those who are in our lives; and, like Scott Bakula, we're searching for those who help bring out the best in ourselves. What an amazing thing to be a person who garners a sense of accomplishment in this way. What a humbling gift.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1123269472365277742005-08-05T11:57:00.000-07:002006-10-23T13:01:55.785-07:00What I did with my Summer Vacation...a little late.God's moving in my life BIG TIME right now and I feel a lot like I did three years ago when I moved to the DC-Metro area...as if my life, or at least all the major parts, are on auto-pilot and someone else has control of the reigns. Many of you know that I recently returned from Juarez, Mexico wherein I helped lead a group of high school youth on a construction and missions trip. We mixed and poured concrete, cut and tied reinforcing steel bars and broke and hauled rocks in buckets onto the roof to backfill walls, hosted pinata parties, lead worship, replaced the heads on all the drums at Paster Joel's (pronounced ho-elle) church, Templo Victoria, ate watermelon and bounced on a trampoline with orphans and we did it all in 106 degree heat. It was a joyful, joyful thing. Now I'm sure if you read my Myspace page...you have the rest of the details on that. But what I failed to place there was the change in my appearance, yes even my physical appearance, from the day I first arrived in Newark before we left...versus on our return date to Newark when we had finished the trip. I'll paint you a portrait. It's lengthy but the details of the trip are so wonderful and manifold that I don't want to keep my experience in its entirety hidden from those I love.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">Saturday 7:30 a.m.</span></strong> I bolt out of bed...shower, get into my cutest outfit, blow dry and curl my waist length auburn hair and apply an appropriate amount of makeup (never was one to lay it on thick). Giving myself a once over I decide..."yep...adorable. Mwah...love it." <strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">9:00 a.m.</span></strong> Karyn picks me up and we're Dulles bound. She gives me a great card, I'm nervous. I haven't done this in years and I'm honestly afraid I'm not going to cut the mustard. The 6 weeks I'd been running 2.5 miles 4 times a week in the gym were all I clung to as proof I would not collapse under physical stress. Karyn prays with me in the car and I head out to the boarding area. I text Josh to say I'm on time...he replies, "Eggcellent"<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">11:55 a.m.</span></strong> I see the familiar soft top of Josh's green Wrangler pulling up to the curb and can't help but smile. I'm most myself around him. He's my favorite human to be frank. He smiles, loads my bags for me and we run<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> <strong><em><span style="color:#cc0000;">A MARATHON DAY</span></em></strong></span> which includes hauling garbage and mopping floors, runs to Target, Rite Aid and Walmart, that does not end until 12:30 a.m. In truth, it was a pretty accurate forecast of how much sleep we'd be getting nightly while in Juarez. He and I decide to carpet picnic with our Wendy's takeout and then collapse on our respective couches in the living room promptly finding sleep.<br /><em></em><br /><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">Sunday 4:45 a.m. </span></strong>Up and at 'em!!!! I'm now an adrenaline junkie. I have showered, changed...repacked and am out the door with Josh...in search of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, by 5:20am. We get to church at 5:50 because Travis calls us realizing he's left the front door unlocked. We go back to close it. <span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>6:30 a.m.</strong></span> I am now in full-on efficiency mode. Quite funny really. My sunglasses pushed up on my head, I'm in sandals and khakis my backpack a permanent fixture on my back and am chasing down kids for their ID cards and passports. Josh has to take Dave to get verified....something about the skycap thinking he was a minor traveling alone. Annoyance...our flight is also delayed...but only by 25 minutes.<br /><br /><span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>8:00 a.m.</strong></span> Waiting to board. Kids are sleepy, Josh is tuning his guitar, Travis is searching for sustainance. Then I hear, "Okay, okay ...just ...c'mon guys." Josh looks visibly irritated, so in my wisdom, I offer, "C'mon y'all let's get some breakfast." I look at him. "You need something?" He smiles with a look I can read as, "your timing rocks! and yes I do." So I bring back OJ and he's better. <strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">9:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.</span></strong> We're in the air...sleep...who me? Yeah, not likely.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3366ff;">1:30 p.m.</span></strong> Landed in El Paso. Josh, Travis and I help return vans with our Missionary in residence, Maria, leaving the kids with the Intern, a girl named Rebekah.<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;"> 2:30 p.m.</span></strong> LUNCH! So far this trip rocks... the kids are in high spirits, photographing Travis, the youth pastor, as he comes out of the ladies room....the men's room was out of order. Naturally, they found this hee-larry-us. Meanwhile...in the 24 hours I've been in Josh's company I've managed to earn myself a humungous bruise on my left arm from all of his pokes, prods and pinches. We play how we play...ya know. But it's so not fair because he's so much bigger than me!! As we leave from lunch at Jack in the Box, Gus, the master plumber on the project asks Josh and I, <em>"So...how long have you two been dating?" </em>Yeah so right about then I want to swallow my head. I offer some crazy ejaculated response sounding like<em>..."Nah we're just friends."</em> Gus doesn't get the hint, <em>"Oh well, you just seem to really enjoy each other's company."</em> I'm running out of clever things to say so I weakly offer, <em>"Eh well you could call him my favorite pain in the butt."</em> Gus presses further and now Josh is shaking his head chuckling. <em>"I don't know Miss, that's how these things start."</em> So now I'm thoroughly agitated and embarrassed...mercifully Travis enters the scene, <em>"Hey Han, betcha you'd love to be the one to drive over the Mexican border."</em> Bless his heart that man knows just when to interject.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">4:00 p.m.</span></strong> we are finally at the dormitory building in Juarez which will serve as home base while we work. We are orientated by Maria...and then haul the luggage and the kids up 40 stairs to the top floor. Surprisingly I still have a bounce in my step...but after Gus' assertions I’m remiss to interact with Josh who rode all the way in the back of our 12 passenger van after lunch and whose gaze in the rear view I avoided as best I could.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">5:00 p.m.</span></strong> Kids settling in, unpacking, ground rules for my girls: I run out to the bathroom to put my shampoo in the rack and slam (literally) into Josh in the hall on the way back. (I was wearing flip flops...the floor was very smooth.) He intercepts my out-of-control person and gives a hearty chuckle. I look into his face and the eyes I know so very well and have to laugh too. <em>"Jay...I don't wanna do this whole awkward thing...so can we just skip it this time." </em>He nods in agreement, pinches me, I swat at him and, well...we're back to being us.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Monday - Friday The alarm on my Timex Ironman wristwatch goes off at 4:48 a.m.</span></strong> I groan to myself. It is a quiet alarm that wakes only me. I rise, walk down the hall, shower very quickly and on my way back knock on the boys' door. Now It's 5:00 a.m. Josh's head is right at the door as his bunk is closest; therefore, each morning I am treated to a variety of grunts, shouts, snores and every other manner of indistinguishable retort. Yet...they continued to thank me for waking them and asked that I keep up the good work. Speaking of time...Travis took to hollering <em>"Hey Ironman, what time ya got?"</em> I'd chuckle and report back <em>"11:40 a.m. sir."</em> Later I made the mistake of joking with Josh saying<em>..."Geez I feel like a West Point Cadet answering to POP OFF KNOB...WHAT TIME IS IT."</em> Invariably Josh fouled it up later that same day demanding, <em>"Blow off Dork, What time is it!!!?"</em> Served him right that I refused to give him the time unless he queried in just that fashion for the rest of the trip.<br /><br />Meanwhile, joy abounded in the simple idiosyncrasies of the kids on our team. Olga, tough as nails and nearly 16. Dark black curls always swept up on top of her head by a gravity defying assortment of clips and pins. She found herself displeased one afternoon when her teammate, Sarah, was returning to where the kids were breaking the blocks with only a small piece of cinder block in hand. These pieces were then put in buckets that Josh, Dave and I were hoisting up a wall onto the first floor roof and used to backfill the top portion of the perimeter wall of the school. From my rooftop vantage point, I saw Olga's face screw up at her teammate as she bellowed, <em><span style="color:#ff0000;">"I KNOW that's not all you brought."</span></em> I very nearly fell off the roof I was so amused and pulled Josh and Dave in to share the moment. Sarah, our chatty and not quite socially graceful twelve-year-old, is, no doubt, a funny little child. She worked so hard, and MAN you should see her wield a sledge hammer!! However, Sarah has a habit of wearing a totally vacant, drop-jawed expression on her face if she is not being entertained or stimulated continuously. I worked with her throughout the week, even bringing it to teammates' attention as an extra reminder, but the blank stare persisted. Huge applause to Josh who came up with the following regarding Sarah's blank stare issue. <em><span style="color:#ff6600;">"Man oh man, it's like she's got a screen saver or something!!"</span></em> No surprise we all of us collapsed into laughter with that little assessment. Even Sarah endured the whole thing with grace and ample humor.<br /><br />Now...regarding the boys...Dave and Derek...they do what the boys do every year on the first work day in Juarez; they vomit. Yes, vomit. They either work too hard, too long, drink too much or too little water (not carrying one's water bottle around the contstruction site equalled automatic repercussions of a negative kind) or some combination of these which, apparently, induces nausea.<br /><br />After a long day on the site...I should have been tired. As Travis, Matteo (the missionaries' oldest son) and I poured another piling in a rather precarious area of the site, we'd been going for 4 hours since lunch. The Breakfast Song by the Newsboys came on the radio and I found myself singing and dancing and hoisting heavy 5 gallon buckets of wet cement up to travis on the scaffolding. I was light on my feet and danced as David did before the Lord. God's amazing. In times when I should be totally wiped out...He gives me exuberance and poise. Awesome, my God is big.<br /><br />Late in the week, I was blessed by God to see the softer side of our boys. Both Dave and Derek are 15 years old. Dave is a completely thoughtful young man and despite his hulking figure (he's tall for 15) he's a gentle soul with impeccable timing and sensitivity to the needs of those around him. He'd hand me things I needed when I never expected them. You know how you make an off-handed comment about wanting, needing or liking something...well if Dave heard me say it...and he had it...I'd get it. Simple, sweet and a servant heart. He'll make some young lady very happy one day. Derek,...I believe, is the 2nd of 8 children in his family. His mother is a saint! One of those ladies just called to have a dozen kids. But Derek is a funny, resilient boy. Blond and blue-eyed like all his siblings, and also with the trademark family freckles. I'd have to call him adorable but ... in order to preserve his manliness...we will leave it that Derek is good looking.<br /><br />There...well, that said, he'd been working on the roof cutting re-bar with the boys whilst the girls and I demolished three walls and a toilet on the neighboring building. The team wanted to build a new bathroom for Rebekah the intern. She helped too. As the official nurse in residence, my ears perked when I heard either Josh or Travis (perhaps both) holler, <em><strong>"MEDIC."</strong></em> I put down my hammer, looked up to the roof and gave them both a look that said, "Okay, what gives?" They were sending Derek down because he'd had a run in with a piece of rebar. I thought little of it until I saw the freckled, blue-eyed, young man wearing an expression more like one would see on a child who had just been frightened half to death. From aloft, the guys shouted manly encouragement.<em> "Suck it up man. Just a scratch. C'mon Derek, whatever, man you're okay."</em> I shot Josh a look that said "Hush up” and “I'll take it from here." He shrugged and I ushered Derek inside.<br /><br />He had a scratch on his arm; the bar had also knicked his nose and left an inch long scratch just beneath his right eye brow. No wonder the kid was quaking, he'd nearly lost an eyeball! I sat him on a cooler and knelt before him. Swabbing his cuts with an alcohol wipe, I confessed it might sting. He didn't flinch as cleaned his wounds. As I cleaned his brow I just kept telling him, <em>"Its okay, you're okay, nothing serious, you're safe now."</em> I fell in love with this boy as I watched one huge alligator tear roll down his cheek. Now I'm sure if Derek ever reads this he'll want to murder me for making him seem un-manly. But Derek, if you're out there...no way man. You showed me the beauty that comes with showing mercy as Christ shows us mercy. You let me minister to a need you had and, man oh man, did that fill a God-shaped hole in my heart. You are wonderful!<br /><br />While this flurry of activity became, all-in-a-day's-work...I found myself talking a lot with the Missionary Intern, Rebekah. The more I chatted with her, the more alarmed I became. I know that sounds insane, but it felt like I was looking at myself at age 18. Precocious as heck she is almost too smart such that it weirds people out. I had a student like that once. Naturally, she too was a 'favorite.' But Bekah was special. She and I have spooky amounts in common; including a devotion for serving Christ. She, like me, seems strong and self-assured, self-sufficient. But later in the week we broke it down and I found I was looking at a small girl, away from home for the first time for a full year. She had an unrequited love issue...and a self-sufficiency facade that was suddenly crumbling since I'd arrived. Boy oh man if only she knew how similar our circumstances. We cried together, laughed together, she joined my girls and me for facials that night in our room, with all the requisite munchies and accoutrements. Its an experience to get to minister to my own "inner child" and pray to God she's smarter than I in the choices she makes in the coming years.<br /><br />Toward the end of our week we donated some instruments and changed the drum heads at Templo Victoria for Pastor Joel. It takes Travis, Josh, Dave and me to get the tuning right. I love that Travis includes me. It is fun to watch him play. The kids, meanwhile, discover a sickly kitten that we deter them from handling. Poor thing. Being a cat lover it is hard to see.<br /><br />Meanwhile Josh is positively a rock. He is the kind of person who, when he enters your life, you suddenly remember exactly who you are and why you love being that person. He beats the ever loving stuffing out of me...but ya know...he doesn't touch people he doesn't favor. He's still not much of a hugger...but when I'm crying he holds on for dear life. I'm blessed to have a dear friend in whom I can find such strength. Yes...people have their opinions of our friendship and the nature thereof...but Jay and I, well we've left it in God's hands. We take our cues from there.<br /><br />He, too, let's me cater to him and be his help. I never feel useless when we work together. Both of us slightly acrophobic ('fraid of heights) our first ascent up the rickety ladder to the roof of the school are laughable at best. Thankfully, my fear subsided quickly after the ladder is adjusted. The way down is much less terrifying. I dismount first and Josh afterward. As he prepars to climb down, he begins to recite a steady mantra "<em>Imma die, I'm dyin, I'm dyin"</em> I look calmly up the ladder and say, <em>"C'mon babe,...you got it. I'll catch ya."</em> At that I stick out my arms and he roars with laughter. Without further reserve he descends, pinches me and I swat at him. Yeh...same old.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Night Falls</span></strong> Since wake up call is so blessed early...bed time was usually 9:30 and lights out at 10pm. After dinner, leaders and kids shower, relax and play cards. Egyptian Rat Slap is the order of the evening along with War and a game called Pallace. But the first game is the rowdiest and, therefore, preferred. If you've heard of Slap Jack...yeah there's lots of slamming the hands down on a table to claim a pile of cards when two of a kind or sandwiches arise. Seems harmless enough between 15 and 13 year olds...but how about a 22 year old youth leader the kids call <a href="http://www.shrek.com/meet_characters/images/meet_shrek.jpg">Shrek</a> added to the mix? I am referring, of course, to Josh. Whose comparatively colossal hands would come slapping down to flatten the kids' hands...then, if he did not win the hand, his competitive spirit would invariably get the better of him and he would re-slam his hand, now a fist, on top of the winning offender...namely Derek.<br /><br />At the end of one particularly heated session, Derek comes whimpering down the hall, playing hand curled up and quivering as if he had palsy. I address what I call his "spooky hand" in front of his peers and Josh asking, <em>"Did Shrek tie you down and make you play?"</em> Derek laughs and shakes his head no. <em>"Well then I have no sympathy...silly." </em>I shoot Josh a look that pleads for him not to insist on breaking the children. He gives me his usual mischievous toothy grin in reply. I roll my eyes, he pulls my hair, I swat at him...you see the pattern?<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Bedding Down...</span></strong> Each night before bed, I'd gather my girls up in our room on our bunks, Bibles in hand. The boys didn't do devotions at night but I felt it necessary to keep downloading the girls to make sure frustrations, among other issues, are addressed in a timely way. I take them through James chapter 2 on faith and works, and Philippians 2 on what a Christ-like servant is and why. But more than this we study <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs%2031:10-31;&version=31;">Proverbs 31</a>. The passage speaks of a wife of noble character...I, of course, amend it to apply to women of noble character. The girls really absorb it. Each morning as we'd do our Pilates stretching, I remind them that though it is early and we have a long day ahead of us, we are in the direct employ of the Living God and we ARE Proverbs 31 women.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">On the 7th Day</span></strong> So on Saturday we rested. We took a two and a half hour drive out to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Strangest thing I saw all day, other than the boys insisting on doing their best Smegol impressions in the caves, was my cell phone. The carrier changes from T-mobile to whatever the local carrier in the area. In Carlsbad...all the phone said was US PLATEAU. I found that strange. The caverns were amazing, cool and crisp. Full of odd looking formations, birds and bats. A welcomed reprieve from the heat. We walked the entire 3 miles around. I took pictures of some of the most enormous and unbelievable rock formations I'd ever seen. God's amazing. He simply breathes and these things come to pass. I almost strangle Sarah when she touches a stalagtite...human skin oils can damage their ability to grow. But she is genuinely repentent, so I show her grace and give a mere stern warning.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">The Last Day - Old El Paso</span></strong> After a crazy busy Sunday morning of leading worship at the missionary church we were now ready to do our puppet work. I had never done this before but was besotten with a blue-haired googly-eyed disaster I named Esmerelda. We "sang" two songs and then Maria, the missionary guide, asked. <em>"Does one of the puppets want to give it's testimony of faith." </em>Immediately I got four faces staring at me behind our felt curtain with none-too-subtle looks of frightened decline. I, therefore, announced that I would do this Katie Couric-style and interview one of the puppets. Maria would translate.<br /><br />I was so proud. The kids came up with <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%203:23&version=31">Romans 3:23</a> and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%203:16;&version=31;">John 3:16</a> all by themselves off the cuff. It felt amazing to share the Gospel with the kids who live in the colony. Afterwards, Josh took me aside and told me how impressed he was that I'd come up with that little charade. I grinned for an hour, and thanked the Lord for His creativity.<br /><br />The afternoon was a whirlwind of activity. We went directly over to the market after church. The kids bought little knick knacks and Bekah and I went shopping for earings. I told her it was a cultural adventure to invest in a huge pair of earrings. I got a pair too. We both looked great. Travis bought a traditional Mexican dress for his daughter, Victoria, who, at that time was still yet to be born. From here it was back to the dormitory to pack up and get on out of Mexico. We stayed in El Paso at a Quality Inn our last night out West. Travis took us out to meet his friend Keith and his wife Pam. We sang for them. They gave us ice cream and shared with us their mountain view from the backyard. Keith played mandolin along with Josh who borrowed his twelve string.<br /><br />It's amazing to watch Josh and Travis make music. They're so perfectly happy and especially when they are praising God. I'm in awe of this passion. It's a blessing to see. Travis laughs more this night then any other on the trip. He's happy to see Keith, a.k.a. "Stanger." It's nice to see him relax with an old friend. Back at the hotel...it's now 10pm. Time to drown the children. Ha! Yes we were treated to our hotel having an utterly luxurious pool under the starlit sky. I floated with Bekah while Josh and Travis drowned the boys and launched Sarah with gusto. Invariably, Josh could not resist dunking me, but I didn't really mind. In all, what's a pool visit if you've not been dunked at least once.<br /><br />Later that night, Bekah, Sarah and I snuck out to the Circle K mini-mart to get snack foods. We girls stayed up watching Cosby show re-runs and consuming Oreo cookies and mozarella sticks then fell asleep just before 1:00 a.m.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Leaving on a Jet Plane...or Two</span></strong> Two different alarms went of in our room too dang early. Someone had clearly sabotaged our clock radio. I was annoyed considering I had both my wrist watch and cell phone already programmed. So, twice I came close to unceremoniously hurling the thing across the room. Now awake, I stretched in the queen sized bed and clean sheets and decided, if I was going to have quiet time before God, I'd better just get a move on. I gathered my Bible, pen and CD walkman and sat out on the walkway of our second story block of hotel rooms. The sounds of Bebo Norman filled my ears and tears streamed down my face as I spent time with the Lord. In the distance, a mountain loomed. The same mountain we'd passed every morning on the way to the construction site in the dump. Larger than life the mountain read, yes read,<strong><em><span style="color:#009900;"> La Biblia es la verdad. Leela!</span></em></strong> In other words, The Bible is the Truth. Read it! How majestic and simple this statement is all at once. A feeling of meloncholy I had been trying to ignore for two days was finally beginning to get the better of me as I concluded my time with God. I took a deep breath, wiped the tears from my cheeks and made myself re-focus on waking three other girls.<br /><br />Looking at my watch I see that it's already 7:30 and I have to get the girls out of bed minutes. I shower quickly after nudging each of them out of their slumber. When I emmerge from the steamy bathroom, Olga is folding laundry. <em>"You're turn girlfriend."</em> She smiles at me, grabs a towel and goes to wash up. I poke my head into the adjoining room where I find Sara watching Sponge Bob, or something like that, and Bekah is showering. At 8:15 we arrive in the hotel's cafe for breakfast. Our booth is in the sunshine and overlooks the pool. The pancakes are too dense but the coffee is good. Bekah and I talk about her going to seminary. She gets that "you're leaving" look on her face and I joke her out of her duldrums mostly because I can't withstand much more.<br /><br />Maria arrives for us at 9:00 a.m. We load into the van and head directly to El Paso airport. Travis has to help take the van back. Josh and I begin checking ourselves and the kids in with a skycap at light speed. Bekah agrees to hold Travis' ID, Boarding pass and carryon until he returns. Josh and the kids hug her goodbye then I do. She's weeping and strangely I'm not. As we disappear into the airport doors, I look over to see Bekah standing there with a pitiful look on her face, crying with a hand over her mouth.<em> "Oh man, I can't take it."</em> I turn on my heels, jog back outside and we collide in a hug. "<em>It's not what the world holds for you, Bekah, it's what you bring to it. You're strong, you can do this."</em> She shakes her head, we laugh, I tear up a little. Then I run after my group. Our flight takes off at 10:09 and we've managed to get everyone through security by 9:25. Not bad if Josh and I say so ourselves. Travis joins us only minutes later and, soon there after, we board yet another S80 jet.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Gang way...!</span></strong> Josh begins to bellow at the top of his lungs as our entire team walks the boarding ramp. <em>"Honestly, ya know what if we do this next year and they stick us on this airline, Hanna I want you to tape me up in a box and just send me FREIGHT!!!"</em> I laughed, couldn't help it. My gaze begged him to set a better example in front of the kids but my mouth curled up and I giggled in spite of myself. From my vantage point just one row behind he and Travis, it was sadly funny to watch the two broad shouldered men jockey for elbow room. Then in what can only be described as an, "Insult to Injury" moment, I watched as Josh, having finally found a semi-comfortable posture for take-off, reached behind his head to bend in the head rest, (one of the only comforts that this airline had provided) only to find that this model plane did not have one. Needless to say Derek and I began laughing only a moment before he made his disappointing discovery. Derek was unfortunately closer, sitting just behind Josh, and therefore received a pinch on the knee. He utterred an "ouch" amid more laughter and even Travis couldn't help himself but to laugh inspite of his scrunched circumstances.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Dallas, Ft. Worth</span></strong> We changed planes in Dallas and had about an hour of downtime. More music, more coffee, more laughing. Olga and I took a trip to the ladies room. On our way out I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and had to crack up. <em>"Was up ma?"</em> Olga asked as I stared bemused at my reflection. I told her, <em>'Man oh MAN do I look like a youth group leader.'</em> She laughed at me and said I looked cute. I examined my reflection, kakhis, collared shirt, big Mexican earrings, Teva Sandals, sunglasses on my head, backpack permenently on my back and my hair braided over to the side. Pretty much an advert for a Land's End catalogue. <em>"My word, it's contagious."</em> I gave one more hearty chuckle and returned with Olga in time to herd the kids onto our next plane.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Legging it out...</span></strong> Finally, I am exhausted. I fall asleep for about 20 minutes of the four hour flight from Dallas to Newark. As I feel myself falling into the peaceful darkness of slumber, I swear I see a shadow before my eyes. It is Josh’s hand waving up and down in front of my eyes as if to test that I’m actually asleep. Once the hand ascertains that I am, indeed, unconscious, the same hand reaches beyond my head to close my window shade, lingers for a moment and then is gone. So am I. A brief and blissful unconsciousness that lasts until Egyptian Rat slap starts again.<br /><br /><span style="color:#3333ff;"><strong>Touchdown….Monday, again</strong> </span>The air in Newark, New Jersey made you feel like you were breathing through a sock. The difference in humidity was unbelievable from Texas to the East Coast. We land 50 minutes behind schedule at nearly ten in the evening because some government dignitary is taking off from Newark. <em>“POTUS or Kofi”</em> I offer to the confused group. I, of course, get raised eyebrows. “<em>Ya know ya’ll…POTUS or Kofi.” </em>I explain that POTUS is an acronym for President Of The United States and Kofi is the little guy who runs the United Nations.<br /><br />The closer I get to Washington, DC the more I seem to drawl in my Virginia drawl and the more I seem to suddenly want to talk about politics again. I notice, while we wait at the baggage claim, that Lance Armstrong has won his seventh Tour de France and smile. The kids return with bags and a dolly to transport them. “Where’s Travis?” Derek explains that he’s complaining to baggage because they have cracked his drum. Josh looks at me with a knowing glance. <em>“I told him not to check the thing. Why do you think I won’t check my guitar?”</em> I nod with a sigh that acknowledges he’s preaching to the choir. Julie meets us out front with Olga’s parents and we, again, find ourselves loading gear into another fifteen passenger van.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Beautiful Diaspora </span></strong>Back at the church parking lot where this whole adventure began, parents are congregated beneath the parking lights. Children leap from the van to be kissed and hugged by parents. I finally begin to cry as I watch as Dave lifts his mother clear off the ground in a big hug and, with abandon, kissed her cheek. I miss that kind of love. Derek’s little sister Rebecca gave each of us welcome home cards. She signed each of them in her own little way. Josh’s card was, of course, green and had pictures of Shrek rendered all over the cover. Mine was pink, had quite a few hearts, but, unlike all the other cards, it was not signed with “we missed you” or “love.” Instead, mine merely read, “I trust you – Rebecca.” How strange and significant. Had she known I’d be keeping her big brother safe and treating him when he was hurt? God knew.<br /><br />I hug the kids individually as they begin to make their way with their parents to their respective vehicles. It hardly seems possible that nine days have slipped through my fingers. Nine days…nine wonderful, tiring, scary and significant days with four relative strangers and close friends. Funny, though, now they are all kindred spirits, dear to my heart. I’ve heard more than once that mission trips make for what are commonly known as ‘mountain top’ experiences in faith. I had had one. There is no way that I am ever going to be the same.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Mi Mancarai</span></strong> That night as I fell asleep in Julie and Travis’ living room to the sound of Josh snoring, I feel numb. Somehow, in nine days I have forgotten what in the world I was ever thinking when I left my home for Washington, D.C. My heart clearly longed to make this my little place my world. My heart aches as the sound of rhythmic breathing attempts to lull me to sleep, but the wet tears on my cheek are constant, fresh reminders of the life that I had forsaken in favor of pursuing my own intellectual investments. What have I done!!!!<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Fight or Flight</span></strong> Tuesday morning arrived just as every other; the sun rises, the world awakens, the planet keeps on spinning. Josh and I ate breakfast with Julie and Travis. She makes the mosst wonderful crepe pancakes. We regale Julie with tales of the week, I describe the other bruises I’ve collected and Josh proudly points out his red-neck suntan.<br /><br />I calmly gather my things and pack them into Josh’s Jeep. We’ve got a good bit of errand running to do with the portion of the day that remains before I’m bound for the airport. Only after finding out that a flight change would cost an upwards of 200 dollars, I succumb to the inevitable reality that I must go back to Virginia.<br /><br />The closer we get to the airport, the more difficult it becomes for me to hold back tears. I sniff as quietly as humanly possible, Josh jokes to try and maintain levity. The curbside drop-off point feels like an alien space station. I grab my carry-on while he hoists my bag out of the back. “ Now fly nice, okay, Hanna.”<br /><br />I can’t bear it any longer. I break into sobs before him and he wraps my heaving form up in his embrace. “I love you, Joshua Lee.” He doesn’t say anything, but I feel his grip tighten. “C’mon now I’ll see you in a few weeks for Tim's wedding.” He makes a silly face and I finally manage a smile.<br /><br />I check in through tears. I can’t watch the Jeep pull away. Now seated in the boarding area, I cry through my hair over my eyes. I’m losing a battle I had no idea I’d have to fight. My own self. In nine days I realized that I had, after a long battle with myself, my intellect and my faith, rediscovered that I only ever wanted to be the girl that I had been in high school. To quote a dear friend, “Totally sold out for Christ.”<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Karyn…I can’t get on this plane!</span></strong> I sent that very same text message to Karyn 10 minutes before the first boarding call for my plane. Flight 1020 was scheduled to leave at 2:30 with non-stop service to Dulles International Airport. My face in my hands I weep as silently as possible while at the same time panicking completely. My chest heaved. I gripped my hands over my mouth.<br /><br />I pick up the phone and call Travis, no answer. Then I try Julie….same problem. Karyn’s text message wants to know what’s gone wrong. I tell her that I am frightened to death that I can’t be the girl I want to be if I go back to Washington, DC because everything that our friends do at our church feels like some kind of social status booster. I tried as best I could to avoid saying straight away that I felt like everyone was faking it for the sake of being politically correct.<br /><br />Meanwhile my panic refused to ebb. I tried to pray, I tried to breathe, I begged God to tell me what I was supposed to do. I think hard about my job, that I truly love. The people are wonderful, the office is full of Christians.<br /><br />But even as I try to think like a rational adult, the little girl who has been so very much in control of my life for the last nine days screams, “Hanna please, Oh God, please don’t go!”<br /><br />I believe I have perfected the art of silent screaming. I learned it while getting a root canal. I sat perfectly still in the dentist’s chair while the dentist dug with that crazy little file into the canal of my tooth. The first of these procedures I’d had, he hit the nerve and it wasn’t as deadened by the novocaine as it should have been. Blinding pain. There I sat, root canal #2 underway screaming and praying at the top of my lungs in my head for God to protect me from any pain like that.<br /><br />Here again, I sat screaming wildly inside my own head. Pleading with God to just take my pain. The voice said, “Call Joshua.” I flatly responded, “No.” I returned to insane pleading, and the voice merely repeated, “Call him or you’re not going to get on the plane or go anywhere at all.”<br /><br />He picked up the phone in his usual fashion, he belches. I cannot reply with my usual disgusted remark. Weakly, I manage to say his name. “What’s up?” I get through the words, “I can’t get on this…” before I collapse into hysterical sobs that rob me of any ability to make noise at all.<br /><br />He lets the hysteria subside and very steadily insists that I get on the plane. I beg him to remind me of why on Earth I’d want to do that. His reply is instantaneous and manifold. His reassurance simple, straight forward and ever ready. He stays talking with me as I board the plane and until the stewardess has to ask me to conclude my discussion. The sound of his voice is about the only thing keeping me sane. I muse at that fact since I know I should have more faith in God and His plan than to panic so profusely.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">It takes 82,000 lbs of thrust…<br /></span></strong>I love to fly. Take off is my favorite thing. Your standard commercial airliner requires approximately eighty-two thousand pounds of thrust to successfully take off. This flight marked the very first flight I have ever taken where I have cried straight through take off. Duty-bound, but barely reassured, I land in a very foreign feeling Northern Virginia only forty-three minutes later.<br /><br />I collect my bags and wait for Karyn who arrives. I cry with her, hug her and she asks what I want to do. I do not want to go home. I can’t quite face it yet. I go with her to a church service for young adults that night after a quiet dinner and coffee. That night as I sleep in her apartment I cry and pray and wonder.<br /><br />I reflect back on what possible purpose God could have for sending me on this trip if only to return me to a place where I feel its impossible for me to be used in as powerful and affective a fashion as I had those last nine days. A very familiar part of my heart ached. It was a piece of me that had begun aching about two weeks previous and that I had not been cognizant of for many years beforehand. It was the piece of me that had been, in effect, shut away by years of abuse, misuse and estrangement from the original calling to which my heart was beckoned.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1109012846721700392005-06-26T14:50:00.000-07:002006-10-23T13:01:55.731-07:00Love Languages - Sort of a Book Review, Sort of an EpiphanyFunny how love is this unqualifiable thing that we all of us try to wrap our minds around, box up and even quantify. I'm learning alot about it recently. Not just for myself...but in general. I'm learning that love is as much a many splendored thing as it is a snarled, windy path to compassion, upheaval and self-awareness.<br /><br />In fact, let me start there and say that in order to truly be able to express and experience the receipt of love, I think that we, as individuals must be honest with ourselves as to who we are at our most basic level.<br /><br />If we don't understand who we are, how we express love and what we expect in terms of love in return, we cannot begin to be honest with ourselves and come to a true and deep working understanding of love. Whoa...that was a packed sentence. But if you follow then maybe you're nodding your head.<br /><br />In simpler terms, we all have a way of expressing love, and we all know how we most enjoy receiving love in return. The starting point for really enjoying love is to acknowledge "this is what makes me feel love."<br /><br />I'm learning to do that. I think, finally, after five years of being shut off, shut down and shutting out love in terms of receiving. I have had to learn how to accept loving gestures from others. That's such a hard thing to do.<br /><br />There is a book currently out called <em><strong>The Five Love Languages</strong>: How to Express Heartfelt Committment to Your Mate</em>. The book sounds to be preachy but I am thinking...okay so many people have spoken about it...let's see what the fuss is about.<br /><br />I'm writing from only having read a few of this book's chapters...but it's premise is true. We all learn to express and understand love in specific ways. Much like we learn the language of our country and parents, we learn the language of love in the dialect of our environment. The author, Gary Chapman, outlines that there are FIVE love languages he can recognize; <em><span style="color:#ff0000;">Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service & Physical Touch.</span></em><br /><br />I have learned from my environment that I probably have, as the author suggests, 2 main love languages, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. Those two hit me hardest. They are the things I know I use most to convey my love to and for other people. I won't touch people I don't like and care for and don't expect to be touched in return. And, as any of my most kindred will confess, I'm often the one who is constantly serving others. However, I don't know that I have am comfortable enough in my heart to accept the service of others. As other stories have expounded, I've had to learn to be more picky about whom I share my love languages with, in as much as I am a doer and a giver... many are takers, relentless takers...and that has injured my understanding of what I see as one of my primary love languages.<br /><br />Anyone who can say they know me knows I am a language buff. I speak four, English, French, Italian and the Sicilian Dialect. (you better believe they are as different as night and day...a regular verbal gerbil) But unlike a verbal language, I am challanged to trust and understand other people as they "love on" me.<br /><br />Often lines of love get blurred. There are those for whom we can feel strongly and know fully in our hearts we do love...but the boundaries are blurred and we may transgress. There are those whom we think we understand who suddenly challange our ideas of love entirely. It's a pretty complicated mess. But it can be a good mess I guess.<br /><br />What I suppose is up for discussion here is that love has languages, specific modes of communication. Do you agree? Do you think its psycho-babble? If you do then what languages do you think you speak? Pick up the book it's a good read regardless of your "religion."<br /><br />The question of love is a manifold issue. It makes me wonder a lot about its reasons, its whens, wherefores and whys. I'm a little less concerned with the "who" at this point I suspect inasmuch as I'm trying to re-learn the language of love, in a healthy way, in my life.<br /><br />Big questions? What's loveable about me? What misconceptions do I think my specific love languages pose to my being understood by those of the same and opposite gender?<br /><br />So here is what I know to be true, I think, at this point. I love, love. I truly enjoy intimate conversations, the kind where you really share, not to be mistaken for pillow talk. (not my point whatsoever) I love to be touched and to touch other people; hugs, tickling, silly gestures: physical connections whatsoever. I understand this as a conveyance of a level of comfortability, trust and a true desire to be in the company of the person I am encountering.<br /><br />I am also petrified of love. Everything I have invested love in has systematically been taken from me, or some circumstances arise in which the loved person/idea/goal leaves me totally sttricken with betrayal or disappointment.<br /><br />I am a worrier. I can't just let things be. This = trust issues or something of that nature I'm sure. But I suppose that committment is perhaps the thing I lack. Not just in love but in life.<br /><br />I have noticed of late that I am a constant transient. It would appear from the outside that I am forever waiting on the next big thing. If I do not stay still long enough for love to grow roots...I suspect the outcome is obvious. Perhaps we are all waiting on that love worth growing roots for.<br /><br />For a generation such as mine I believe we are so pushed to be driven, that the idea of slowing down long enough to enjoy love is petrifying. Perhaps at 27 I'm getting ready to slow down...<br /><br />Anyone have anything to contribute to this stream of consciousness??Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1106076900583830162005-01-18T11:03:00.000-08:002006-10-23T13:01:55.659-07:00Turn About is Fair Play: <div align="justify"><strong><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;color:#cc33cc;">This is a story I've been waiting to tell. It is the tale of a year-long dalliance which almost cost my life. It is the lesson from which I have learned most, lost the most and emerged strongest. The humor is that I along with all others involved in "Hayden's World" were all miserable. This is the story of a social cancer. I am setting its memory free as I no longer want it for my own.</span></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:85%;color:#cc33cc;"></span></strong> </div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:85%;color:#cc33cc;">If you know "Hayden"...tell him his secret is out. This is my "Manifesto." </span></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:85%;color:#cc33cc;"></span></strong> </div><div align="justify"><strong><span style="font-size:85%;color:#cc33cc;">Feedback always welcomed. Sorry about the length. This is the oldest of my stories and it is, unfortunately, the truth. </span></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-size:85%;color:#cc33cc;"></span></strong> </div><div align="right"><span style="color:#33ff33;">Because you saturated sight, </span></div><div align="right"><span style="color:#33ff33;">and I had no more eyes for </span></div><div align="right"><span style="color:#33ff33;">sordid excellence as paradise </span></div><div align="right"><span style="color:#33ff33;"><strong>From: "In Vain" by Emily Dickinson</strong></span></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong>-------**-------</strong></div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"><strong>Trip to the Dark Side of the Moon</strong></div><div align="justify">
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<br /><span style="color:#3333ff;">The Beginning of the End of the Beginning</span>
<br />It took a long time and was with a great deal of remorse that I came to understand that the world may very well be a cynic's paradise. You see, I never really wanted to believe it. I've always been the kind of person who sees the good in everyone, has a silver lining for every situation. You know the type. And while my intensions have always been good, it seems that the "world" chews fools like me up and spits us out just when I should be reaping the fruits of our labor. A sad thought, but very true.
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<br />Lessons in unrequited love can never, I'm sure, hurt as badly as lessons in violated friendship. Yeah, I learned that one the hard way, again, lately. To tell you the truth, I'm pretty sure I knew the whole idea was terminal from the word go. However, when you take one previously jaded, career academic who has become fed up with pandering to white-color wishes and diplomat's dreams, and dangle la vie bohèmme in front of her face, incredibly, it seems idyllic. Years spent studying international government and relations, diplomatic practices and erudite theories left me wanting something more tangible.
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<br />I think that the method to my madness is just that I'm curious and I can appreciate the beauty and mystique in all kinds of lifestyles. I ventured deep under cover when I leapt from the safe predictability of academia and into the potholed pathways of the music industry. The transition was easier than you might expect.
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<br />It began on a cool February evening. I was on my way into a local quick mart to get a cup of coffee before heading home from a lecture. As I entered, two young men I'd known for years came out. Tom and Hayden had both been at a party I'd thrown the previous weekend. We said our hellos and got to talking when Tom seemingly queried, "You got plans March 8th?" When I answered "Um, I don't think so," Tom quickly corrected my misunderstanding saying firmly, "No, I said you got plans March 8th."
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<br />So okay I now had plans for March 8th. I promised to see Tom and Hayden's band play their first show. I had known that Hayden was a musician since we were both about 12 years old and it had been an eon since I last saw him play. It sounded like fun and I wanted to show my support, so I went, and sure enough I was star struck. They looked great up there. He looked great up there. </div><div align="justify">
<br />I learned that night that both Tom and Hayden had quit their jobs to pursue music full time. Hearing that, it took no time at all for my maternal instinct to kick in and it wasn't long before I was hanging around at their house and bringing full meals to them at least once a week. After all they were starving artists.
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<br />Following a few weeks of purely social interaction with the boys and their cohorts, I was party to a conversation between the band members concerning their plans for the near future. Among the four of them they'd decided they had all they needed in the talent department, Hayden had all the right connections, they even had a guy to run a website and a gal to design T-shirts. When all was said and done, the only thing missing was someone who knew how to do "the business end of things."
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<br />That's when, like in some bad moment in an old Parker Lewis Can't Lose episode, all heads in the room literally snapped to my direction. Intrigued by the proposition, I threw myself whole-heartedly into learning the tricks of the music trade. Hayden served as my Yoda and I spent every day of that summer at his beck and call booking gigs, running errands, getting his life in order. I was good too. I had a flawless rapport with venue liaisons, producers, contacts you name it I could get what I needed from them for my client. I took my job very seriously. The only problem was my client never took me seriously.
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<br />By September of that year I was becoming totally worn out. At least a half dozen times a day someone told me to "shut the fuck up" if I spoke for more than fifteen seconds in succession. Hayden took it upon himself to discuss with me at length one of my personal character flaws should my morale for the week grow too healthy or buoyant. By this time I began to realize that I spent more time scrubbing Hayden and Tom’s toilets and bathroom floors, running Hayden from the store to unemployment, than I did making sure that I had my own house in order. Things were not going well. But I wouldn't totally believe that. After all, I was not a quitter simply because things got difficult. Now it was a matter of pride.
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<br />I became locked up inside a pattern of behavior that hinged upon gaining Hayden's approval all over again each day. Every day would start out with my wondering if I'd be in his good graces and he knew it. Every morning the same as I would not think to knock on his bedroom door without a large black iced-coffee in hand and my head lowered. He knew he had me exactly where he wanted me and he knew when he'd ragged on me too much that it took only a latent hug or random one line e-mail of quasi veiled thanks to heal all my hurt. Like a Spaniel he could whack me with the proverbial newspaper ten times a week but for the one time he praised me, all would be forgiven and set my tail wagging again ready to make his future a reality while it cost me my sanity, femininity, friends, family and self-respect.
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<br /><span style="color:#3366ff;">Too Much is Not Enough</span>
<br />The end of my captivity came, in my opinion, rather suddenly. Whether or not Hayden, Tom, the other boys in the band, or even I fully realized it, my exit strategy was already firmly in place. I knew I could not go on being treated like an idiot, used and under appreciated. By October they'd even gone so far as to refuse my request to start working with more than just their band . I knew it was a stupid thing for someone in my position to only have one client but Hayden knew I'd learn to like being treated too well if I worked outside of his realm. He was already too late.
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<br />In mid-September I had been persuaded to casually meet with another group of four young men. They were also very talented. They are a little better "hooked up" in the contacts sense of the business, and let me tell you about amazing performers. I pitched them my services as a mere test of my own marketability and they agreed to see how they could work me into their project. After the show they even introduced me as a manager and took myself and a girl friend I'd brought along out for pizza and beers.
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<br />We laughed until it hurt. It was fantastic and sad all at once. I had forgotten, perhaps I'd never known, that working in the music business could be so much fun. From word one, this new group treated me as a professional and as a lady, well at least as a girl, a luxury I'd all but forfeited in joining in with the likes of Hayden and Tom's greaser ruff necks.
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<br />As time had passed, Hayden placed an ever-changing and confusing array of rules and restrictions upon me regarding when I could and could not associate with the band and their clique as a friend, go to bars, go to the diner and when I should know to go home. This was Hayden’s idea of not mixing business with pleasure.
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<br />He did, however, have a point. As the months had ground on I'd found that imbibing in alcohol around this group was an increasingly bad idea. Because I silently endured so much criticism, the idea of in vino veritas quickly reached a critical mass with me. I would get buzzed and seem happy for a bit but soon become angry and indignant, condescending and enraged. The aggravation and pain I'd stuffed for weeks and months on end wanted out, and in my quasi-inebriated state it found its voice all too easily.
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<br /><span style="color:#3366ff;">Chicks or Tricks
<br /></span>Within Hayden and Tom's social circle, women generally came in two categories, chicks and broads. You want to be a chick to these men. Chicks are usually old pals, sisters of guys in the group or have some quality about them that makes them cool but irrevocably places them in the platonic realm. Broads however were meant to serve as notches in headboards, used at any hour of the day or night for sexual gratification, verbal abuse or house cleaning. I, myself, teetered somewhere in the middle of these two categories . I did scrub bathrooms but I was also never used for sexual gratification, however, verbal abuse and rough physical treatment were regularly thrown my way latently or otherwise.
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<br />After three weeks and seventeen hours of research I finally finished both this band's partnership agreement, to be signed among themselves, and my own personal management contract. I'd told Hayden some three weeks earlier, "Fine, you know what if you want me all to yourselves I need some kind of guarantee or you know I can't stay. It's stupid Hayden, it's not the way it works in this business and you know it. So if you want me, I want a contract." After two hours of going over contract language with three of the band members as a beer bust went on around us, I gave them a "win one for the gipper" sort of "we've really got to get focused" speech which sent them into a closed session of conversation. Can you believe I thought nothing of it when that happened? Sure they had a lot to swallow, and big documents to sign. They needed to talk.
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<br />When they came back out...I suddenly didn't have a job. We went round in circles among each other talking for another 20 minutes until I began to feel heat rising in my throat, eyes and up the back of my neck. I demanded, "What are we talking about? You seem to have made a choice but not one of you has the balls to say it. After all I've done for you the least you can fucking do is say it. Say the hard thing we're all dancing around here." That thing was that they no longer wanted me for their manager. No one spoke though for about a minute because after I finished, I began to do the craziest thing imaginable to Hayden, Tom and Jed (the bassist). I actually broke down and began to weep.
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<br />In hindsight I know that those tears were not bitter. They were a sign of catharsis and release. I was free and my mind and soul knew it. Through my long auburn hair over my face I could not see him, but I could hear the unfamiliar sound of shock in his voice when Hayden said, "Oh...my...God...don't cry." I'm sure he'd been prepared for me to shout or argue or even beg, but I didn't. I wanted truth and for the first time in about 7 months I allowed myself to actually feel what was happening to me without regard to how it would affect "the boys."
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<br />The beauty of the next few minutes would be fleeting. But they were lovely nonetheless. Hayden lifted me sobbing from my chair to a standing position and hugged me kissing the top of my head. Many times in those long months I'd seen him do that to other gal pals (read chicks) and wished he'd lavish the same reserved affectionate gesture on me. He never did until that moment.
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<br />I heaved uncontrollable sobs into his chest (he's six foot five so I only come up to his chest) for only another few seconds before Jed, angel that he is, came practically sprinting across the room and threw his arms around Hayden and I. He buried his head in my shoulder and cried with me. Even Tom, the ever stalwart tough guy, looked choked up, as he finally said, "Fine, Hanna, you want someone to say it than, fine, Hanna we don't want you as our manager anymore." Sad as it's going to sound, that's the only time they ever used the term manager to describe me. In public they always held me just shy of the coveted title calling me "promotions coordinator" or something to that effect. Bastards.
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<br />The melancholy beauty of that moment between the four of us dissolved totally later on that night when, alone, in the laundry room in the basement of Hayden and Tom's house, Hayden and I sat talking. He touched me and hugged me more in that hour and a half than he had in ten months. Then he claimed, "ya know Han, I'm glad you're just one of our friends now I want you to be like this with us. The business shit just made things difficult." He was, to an extent, right. However, the truth was that it was he who made my job tough, not anyone or anything else. </div><div align="justify">
<br />The conversation, rather monologue, took a dark turn when Hayden came around to face me. As I sat atop the drier, he placed one hand on either side of my legs, leaned in and said, <strong>"Ya know, now that you're not workin for us anymore, I’d hate to think that you would go out and say stuff about us, the pranks we pull, the stuff we steal, the under-aged drinking that goes on here or anything. Because, ya know, Han, I'd hate to have to see bad things happen to you."</strong> He leans in closer.<strong> "Because ya know I could do it,"</strong> pauses to burp, <strong>"and I don't leave a trace."</strong>
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<br />Shocked, I decide, to give him the chance to make a joke out of this. "Ha ha oh yeah Hayden tell me all about the bad things you'll do to me." But he didn't laugh. He didn't even blink. Bastard. Two days later, I'd discover that, while I sat downstairs talking contracts with the boys, one of the other team members tricked me into giving them my car keys under the auspices of reclaiming the merchandise bins, retrieved my laptop as well and erased all the files on my computer having to do with the band and the contacts I had made. Worst of all, the only person who knew where I kept these files on my computer was, you guessed it, Hayden.
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<br />This was a gesture that I now know was born not out of bravado, but rather, fear. Perhaps it was the fear that I just might actually get ahead. Fat lot of good that did. In this day and age who doesn't keep back ups? Well...Hayden, plenty of folks know now huh? What 'cha gonna do?
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<br /><span style="color:#3366ff;">New Lease on Life
<br /></span>It's been four months to the day since that night. I'm a personal assistant and publicist for a very successful music group and do freelance promotions coordination for several other acts in my area. I'm with the band that, in mid-September said they'd work me into their project. Work me in they did and they are incredible. These young men are the epitome of talent and have a work ethic to support it. These are not dreamers but doers, not musicians, rather music industry professionals. </div><div align="justify">
<br />In four months I haven't felt used, under appreciated or belittled. I joke often with them saying they all make me cry once weekly. Not for the reasons you might think. Remember they are NOT Hayden and Tom. These boys make me cry with the beautiful, unsolicited thank you e-mails they insist on sending me. They have let me grow as a person and as a professional. They have needed me and they have let me need them. It's great work if you can get it. Along with this, I have the privilege of knowing our promotions lady, and have even adopted a roadie or two on whom I've gotten to appropriately lavish my mommy tendencies. </div><div align="justify">
<br />In the coming months there are real promises for recording sessions, record deals, showcases and touring. I'm excited, nervous, scared and happy all in one. We have worked hard for this and I know I'll enjoy it to whatever it amounts. These boys have invested as much in me (connecting me with people who have offered to teach me the ropes of tour management) as I have in them (endless pending issues lists, meetings, twice weekly practices, road trips, calls, dealings with sketchy booking agents and the like). It's a 100%-100% two-way deal. </div><div align="justify">
<br />Last night on the phone with one of the roadies, I came to the same conclusion for about the sixtieth time. I'm a lucky girl. I have some of the nicest young men in the known world at my disposal 24 hours a day. Each of these is eternally happy to hear from me and always ready to listen or contribute. I'm a lucky girl. I know for a fact I have laughed enough in the past four months to make up for how much I cried in the last ten.
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<br /><span style="color:#3366ff;">Fate is Funny
<br /></span>Until now I've kept silent about my sorrowful experience with the first band. I've actually spent some time truly being afraid. Obviously, I no longer am afraid. Perspective will come about things like this when you least expect it and in ways you would never imagine. Last week, we all found out that our drummer was going to be a father. His wife is already three months pregnant with their first child. Well this is great news. He is married to a nice lady named Rebecca; both have amazing jobs, make plenty of money and have a nice new home. The sad part is that we needed to go shopping for a new drummer. No problemo...a new drummer found us!! Our darling, Southern, Jack Daniels swigging drum prodigy who exported himself all the way to NJ and strangely enough has the exact same birthday as our previously loved percussionist. </div><div align="justify">
<br />It's sad to lose our drummer because, hey, let's face it, we'll miss him, he rocks and we love him muchly. However, there is still joy in the new little one to come! Sure that makes plans for the immediate future a little on the destabilized side but only temporarily. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. </div><div align="justify">
<br />But just as I was getting over the shock and joy of our own blessed event news, I got a phone call from a friend of mine with a story that would all but leave me speechless. (For this person's privacy we'll call them "Pal.") Pal leaves me the following message on a Sunday morning. "Hanna, its Pal. It’s like ten after eleven. You have GOT to call me back as soon as you get this. Okay? Bye." Immediately fearing the worst I call Pal back asking if everyone in our circle of friends is still breathing. Pal assures me no one is dead or comatose but encourages me to sit down so they can recount the tale of the prior evening. </div><div align="justify">
<br />As it would seem, Hayden and Tom have been on very tense terms with each other for the past few days and this tension apparently erupted into a near fist-fight at their house the night before. Pal and another friend decide to go the local diner to escape the tense situation and find food. While at the diner, Pal inquires of the friend if they know what the higher than normal tension level is all about. The friend heaves a deep sigh and swears Pal to secrecy. It's at this point that I'm holding my breath on the phone with Pal dying to know what's gone wrong. Strangely enough, I feel as if I already know what Pal is going to say. </div><div align="justify">
<br />I only remember screaming the word <span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>"NO"</strong></span> with a half smile playing across my face when Pal tells me that Hayden has gotten his girlfriend pregnant and she is also three months along. Pal goes into a few other details and says Hayden's girlfriend has also not been around lately. In the next sentence divulges that Tom, too, has gotten his girl pregnant as well. Now I'm floored. "It's over." I keep whispering into the phone. "Oh my gosh it's over. He's ruined it." All I could think about as I laughed with Pal on the phone was that Hayden, himself, had just put the last nail in the coffin of his dreams of being a professional musician. </div><div align="justify">
<br />All this time Hayden had refused to get even a part-time job to support himself. He would claim, <em><span style="color:#ff0000;">"Leaving oneself a legitimate fall-back is the quickest way to finding yourself there."</span></em> Well, poetic notions are dandy but highly impractical in real-time. Not having a job at all left him eternally indebted to creditors, without car insurance, spending money or cash to help support daily band needs. That's what I had been for. I spent a lot of money on cigarettes that summer . What on Earth will he do if and when the question of child support arises? He's ruined everything. And he's brought it upon himself. Dammit Hayden. Dammit, DAMMIT, DAMMIT!
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<br /><span style="color:#3366ff;">The "Race" Is Over</span>
<br />In the midst of that infamous conversation that took place in the laundry room during which Hayden threatened me, he also challenged me. He wanted me to stick with the music biz. He threw down the gauntlet saying, "beat me there, Hanna, I dare you to try and get there before I do." With all this new turbulence, it's not going to be hard. It's almost as if I feel like shouting, "IT'S NOT FAIR!!!" Some part of me wanted him there, looming in the darkness, trying to catch me. Now he won't be, he can't be. </div><div align="justify">
<br />And so now, Mr. Hayden, your creation will beat you there. You made a monster when you created me. You gave me all the tools to use skills I already possessed in the political world and make a name for myself in the music business. And even if I never get beyond small time, and even if I never manage a tour in my life, I still would have been able to if I really wanted. Why? Because, quite simply, and forgive the cliché, I used my powers of professionalism for good and not evil. I loved and respected people and ultimately they have done so in turn for me. All the time you wasted belittling everyone around you so that we’d never see how insignificant and flawed you were. To what end? You thought you’d win somehow. You probably still think you have. I suppose I really ought to thank you for teaching me how to do what I do and for teaching me what kind of asinine, swollen-ego bull never ever to put up with from anyone again as long as I am able to draw breath. </div><div align="justify">
<br />These days the word around town is that Hayden’s band is no more. The website is gone, the leftover merchandise remains unsold, the fans have disappeared and the band members and most of their former entourage simply refuse to further associate with Hayden. Worst of all, some really decent music will evermore go unheard. I honestly hope that one day the music he's so talented at creating shines through his decrepit veneer. Poor, foolish, band-less, emotionally bankrupt Hayden. How I so dearly cared; and for what reason? Even I’m not so sure anymore. At this point the best I can offer is to say is better luck next time. You done good kid, but I'm doing better. By the way, you never did beat me after I won our last game of chess. Checkmate old friend.
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8174208.post-1101852055839441552004-11-30T17:00:00.000-08:002006-10-23T13:01:55.530-07:00The Awakening....<div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#006600;">Waking in Tandem</span></strong></div><div align="left">
<br />Insofar as I’ve spent a good bit of time away from the topic of music and the music industry and the effects it’s had on my life and the lives of those around me for quite some time now, I’d ask your indulgence to let me reprise the issue one last time.
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<br />To be frank, I had no intention of talking about my memories or experiences in the music business at length ever again. In fact, as these words put themselves down on paper before me, I’m fairly certain this tale will have little in the way of recounted nostalgic scenarios. But the notion to return to this area of my life, examine it again from the angle where I now sit, came about in much the same way a lot of my creative fits arrive; music.
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<br />I was riding home from my cushy job in Georgetown one afternoon and I realized I was listening to a song on the radio from much the same genre as the musicians with whom I’d worked. I quickly realized that not once during the enjoyment of said tune had I analyzed the technical, vocal or instrumental aspects of the tune. *!* That hadn’t happened to me in years.
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<br />A week or so later, I had a phone conversation with Liam, the former singer of my last and most favorite client. He and I traded stories of life after the industry. He told me of his most recent visit back to see his former band mates at CBGB in New York City. “Hanna you have NO idea how hard it was for me to stand in that crowd and watch that guy sing my music. I was so ready to just get up on that stage and perform.” I told him I understood. But on the inside I was no longer certain that I did.
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<br />Liam and I have often, since our coincidental and simultaneous departure from the music industry, talked over a process we’ve dubbed “the awakening.” To explain a life in the music industry, one is better off explaining a dream, a surrealist painting; by comparison to any concrete real life archetype. It truly is a lifestyle of willing suspension of disbelief. To operate and feel at all normal in this business you have to be able to get up every day, look your reflection in the mirror eye-to-eye, and say, we <strong>WILL</strong> become rock stars. That has a real time equivalent of any other person waking up in the morning looking themselves in the mirror and saying, I <strong>WILL</strong> create anti-matter out of peanut butter!
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<br />But “the awakening” is that procession of time following one’s conscious decision to leave the music industry. It is turbulent, dissociative and mottled with uncertain terrain. Life on the inside of the industry is a lot like pretending you’re a superhero; especially for the musicians themselves. For the crazy working slugs like me, it is a daily grind of demanded perfection, expert timing, cat like reflexes and a necessary superiority complex. Careful, don’t get too uppity, it’s always someone’s pleasure to put you in your place if you’re not careful. Mostly my job was to be the most popular kid (other than the musicians) in town. Popular with the band, the staff, the venues, sponsors, fans, parents etc. Friends of mine from school and life before music would laugh out loud at how many times a day my phone rang on the day of a show (an average of about 45 times). I was the gal with the answers, the right things to say, the right connections and I was always dressed to the 9’s.
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<br />For Liam, he was a hero. He could sing, really command an entire room of people no matter how big or small. He’s a handsome devil with a smile that can only be described as devastatingly mischievous and he knew how to use it to his advantage. Women swooned, guys high-fived him and no matter their gender; musicians lauded his vocal range and versatility. A master of his craft.
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<br />Larger than life, in our own little microcosm. Helluva darn good way to live.
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<br />Until you wake up.
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<br />The ironic nature of “the awakening” is that it is voluntary. You wake up from the larger than life microcosmic, super-humanism because you suddenly lack the capacity to continue to suspend your disbelief. Pragmatists wake up a lot faster than the naïve that much I’ll admit. That is what took me so darn long. I love an underdog, but when that underdog perpetually became me, I decided I needed to re-evaluate.
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<br />The things one sees in their sleep when the mind is arguing with itself are interesting too. I have few clear recollections of those which called me to take a look at my life and really decide what the heck I was doing with it. But I think, again, through music, a song I heard just recently by a group called Ingram Hill, I have found my credo for leaving the music industry.
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<br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">I woke up from my sleep to the sound of that voice</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">From the words that I heard I had no choice</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">They told me that I had to turn around</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">My assurance slowly faded down and I wondered</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;"></span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Will I ever make it home, will I ever leave the ground</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Leave this place so far behind ,till there is no turning back,</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Will i ever make it home, get to where I wanna be, </span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">find the ones who wait for me </span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">..to the place were i belong..</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Will I ever make it home</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;"></span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">The plans that I had were quickly destroyed</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">The problem was one I couldn’t avoid</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">They welcomed me to stay overnight</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">I’m too tired to complain so I just might </span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;"></span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Will I ever make it home, to the place I recognize</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Far from here and where I’ve been, </span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">and all the things that I’ve been shown</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;"></span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Will I ever make it home, can they keep me here for good</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">Where I hardly know a soul, </span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;">and my fear keeps going on</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Will I ever make it home</span> </span></div><div align="left">
<br />The most destructive part about involving oneself in the music industry is that you risk the possibility of involving yourself in a lifestyle which has the potential to estrange you in profound ways from everything you knew and understood before music was a factor in your life. I am no push over, and have long been described by my contemporaries as someone with a lot of business savvy and a cool head. But I was called away by what I personally believe was a divine voice of reason. In the face of an insane dream and a lunatic’s self-image, I woke to the sound of a voice I realized I had not heard in a long time.
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<br /><strong>My own.
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<br />Inasmuch as I had grown bored with politics and school and all the “normal” and “right” things, after nearly seven years, I felt all those things calling after me. I thought myself a quitter. It was the easy thing to just go back to being a bright young girl with the hopes of a career in policy analysis and a life in Washington, DC. It’s safe. Or at least safer than this and that felt like cowardice. I’m no coward.
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<br />Yes dear reader, you begin arguing with yourself. Out loud sometimes. But as these arguments continued to rage on in my head as I worked away at the industry which pushed back against the “me-I-used-to-be,” my old self started to get pretty loud and insistent.
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<br />It comes to mind that we all have things to which we are called, gifts of intelligence, charisma, pure talent. Ignore any one of these gifts solidly for too long and you may find yourself at the precipice of an “awakening” experience.
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<br />I learned, some weeks after Liam announced he intended to leave the band, that he was no fool. The oldest band member at….well he’s older than me, Liam had been a stock broker and done rather well for himself before abandoning his lucrative job situation to move back in with an ailing father and give his dream of musicianship one more try.
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<br />What both Liam and I learned as we literally walked out the door of the industry together was that our old selves had decided we were more that person than we
<br />would ever be those personalities we had cultivated as music industry professionals.
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<br />When you laugh as much, work as hard, lose as much and toil as relentlessly as Liam and I did, side by side with the rest of our project mates, being asked by your own self to give up the ghost is aggravating, and very depressing. Waking up only days after I tendered a letter of resignation to the band, I remembered feeling hollow. Several young bands came clamoring to my proverbial doorstep for my consultancy and the temptation was so great to re-involve myself that I even gave in once or twice. Or at least I tried to.
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<br />A funny thing happens when you decide to pursue “the awakening.” Like the song said, ‘leave this place, there’s no turning back.’ It’s a strange built in caveat. Liam shared with me how he chuckled at the fact that his present girlfriend has no concept of him as, Liam, front man of a successful semi-national rock act. I share that melancholy bemusement.
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<br />For me, coincidence, God, fate, kismet, whatever you wish to call it, places physical road blocks between myself and my former industry lifestyle. Timing issues, miscommunication and even Liam’s former band breaking down for the first time ever has kept me from seeing them play live for more than nine full months. This fact blows my mind. But in the end, I suppose it’s the same clear message.
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<br />I have no choice. I had to change back and my assurances regarding becoming a professional handler and publicist for a rock band have all but faded to a pleasant memory which now feels more like a dream or good movie I saw long ago. I hardly remember the self I was in that time. The only remembrances I retain are in these pages.
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<br />These days I don’t spend any time really with people I knew in the industry. There are the few and far between catch-up phone calls to the select individuals with whom I have an actual or intellectual bond. But in reality it is impossible to relate to those who have yet to awaken. It is a cave analogy for the musically inclined. And I am one of a number who have left the darkness of the endless string of walk-in closet sized clubs, smoke filled parties and long car rides to return to the desires of my true heart. I am a professional business woman, a linguist, a political fan, and an active Christian.
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<br />Am I any better on this side of Aristotle’s proverbial cave? I’m not for casting dispersions on anyone’s lifestyle. But for me, I know I am right where I need to be and that’s enough.
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<br /><em><strong><span style="font-size:78%;">Dedicated to The*Pennyroyals. My smile never fades at the memory of your music. You are <span style="font-family:georgia;">amazing</span>.</span></strong></em></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1