As Yet Untitled

I’ve been writing this particular story, trying to finish it since 2013 when I took that very first Christmas morning family picture. Remember? 

They say, "a picture's worth a thousand words," and I can go along with that, but what does this particular one really say?

It really was a beautiful picture, and I loved it, and everything I had to say about it in that post was deeply felt. Maybe I also wanted to be a rebel, a non-conformist, and not for one second be a part of that social media false imagery. Maybe I was angry about it all, and wanted everybody else to be angry too. Maybe I was sad or tired or relieved or maybe I was all of those things. "For all the "perfection" that a picture can portray, there is always something behind the scenes.  Something you don't see.  Something you can't know unless someone tells you. What I'm telling you is that my family is not perfect."

When I wrote about the 2014 family picture, I wanted to go all the way, to explain why why why. In hindsight, I can see that I was trying too hard, though I didn't actually know what I was trying for.

By 2018, I'd made "THE annual Christmas family picture" the pinnacle event, the primary reason we gathered ~ so that we could prove to ourselves more than anyone that we'd survived another year, that we remained a family. I was the only one noticing its absence (via pithy blog post). ...or so I thought.

Publisher's Clearinghouse tells pretty much everything that I'm fighting the urge to tell again here and now, that I probably already have told again and again, as if there's no story at all without those pieces, those years. But it's because there's something yet unfinished. There's a lingering uncertainty that I am ever trying to resolve. There's a piece of the story ~ the entire story ~ that I am ever trying to claim and control and write so that I never have to wonder about it again.

There's a thin, pale thread that runs through all my stories, really, but that is double- and back-stitched in that first, formal, Here Is My Family photo from 2013.

who will not be here next year?

My story is hanging in the balance.¹ For the last however many years, while I do think the thing, or draft the post, or take the picture, I put very little of it out there. In some small part, I am trying to respect the boundaries of other people's stories, but it's more that this thing remains unresolved. I am stuck, pressed down, unable to do the new or the next thing until the previous thing is finished.² I need the ending.

As for the absence of my pictures, the Christmas picture in particular, maybe no-one out there notices, but I never have to bring it up on Christmas morning. I could actually linger here for several moments, appreciating the unspoken fact that the picture matters to all of us. We have breakfast and then we clear the spot.

2018 "made it."

2019

"There are years that ask questions,

and there are years that answer."

2020 (Shared in Jan '22)

MAYBE you know that I've taken this picture and shared it via pithy blog post for more than a few years now. I'm STILL trying to write last year's post. Eventually ~ I suppose, probably, maybe ~ I'll figure out what to say about '21.

Maybe.

Til then.

2021
(This is the first time anybody's seen this one.
I still haven't figured out exactly what to say.)

Christmas 2022 was (good) different, and while we did take the picture, I told the story a different way. The whole of it gave me great hope.

This year, we did not gather, and that's all I have to say about that.

I'm finishing this now, closing this and moving on without the ending I'd hoped for. I'm finishing it so that I can move on because no amount of lingering or reflecting or hoping or trying will give me the power to know or control the ending.

This is not the close or start of a new year but of an entire decade. May God guide us gently through the next. He alone holds the ending.

1 All of our stories are hanging in the balance, of course. Mine is no more important nor precarious than anyone else's.

2 It’s in writing this that I realize just how many things I leave unfinished because I still haven’t finished that one thing.

Bad Teacher

You:

Me: I know more than a few ELA nerds, but does anybody know the backstory?

English and literature were just about the most boring possible subjects anybody in the history of the world could ever be subjected to ... is how I felt. Until ...

I was in highschool and learning about gerunds¹ (I know ~ that’s So last year 😒), and (still randomly) remember ~ with acute clarity ~ that time the teacher stumped the entire class when she asked us for the past-tense of “flee.” (No spoilers.)

And then came the moment ~ that monumental event after which all other (English / grammar) events would be marked as ‘before’ or ‘after’.

It was sophomore year. I was in second period English (because that’s what we called All of our English classes back in the day.) It was the second-and-a-half year of my crippling crush on [an unnamed person²]. And also the second week of my going steady with one of the school's fairly popular and genuinely kind-hearted star football players. I'd clearly given our relationship a fair chance ~ so thought my still-a-child mind ~ but I could not overcome my infatuation with the aforementioned [not so genuine, not so nice dude.³] So I began writing a break-up letter.

I began writing a break-up letter

in my second period English class

and my teacher - who wasn't too keen

on the misuse of my time - took possession

of my letter

and read it

aloud

to the class.

Terrible, right?

It gets better.

After reading the letter aloud to the point I'd reached before confiscation, which got to something like, "I'm sorry, but I'm still in love with"...

... Actually, it might be worth noting here that I was, at the time, not only not fairly popular but rather the target of a great deal of disdain from the actual real-life mean girls who hunkered like hyenas³ and moved through the school like a brood of ... help me out here. What's an animal that likes to torture its prey for (school) days and (school) days before letting it die? In any case, those girls tormented me daily as the [aforementioned jerk] was (publicly, anyway) going steady with a member of their [cult].

Oh, and it might also be worth noting that [jerk-face] liked me before he fell in with the [horde of regina georges], and actually continued to [string me along] for most of those aforementioned two-and-a-half years. The [girl vulture clique] knew that and never missed an opportunity to deride me.

But I digress.

After reading the break-up letter aloud, 

she asked the class to correct my grammar.

One. sentence. at. a. time.

Hold on.

Still gets better.

After the class finished correcting my letter to the point I'd reached, she asked them to fiiiiniiiish the letter. So that group ~ which, should be noted, included one of the [&^$@ clan] ~ finished one of the most horrible possible break-up letters that anybody in the history of the world could ever have to read.

… Did I already tell you that my [dysfunctional attachment to] [blech!] was a secret crush? Because that wouldn't be exactly right. [(Dingle-berry dude's) (vile, actually) (exploitation of my affection)] ~ that was the secret! Everybody in the school knew the name that would follow "still in love with" ...except maybe for Bobby, the young man superstar so truly undeserving of such a public mockery.

Side Note:

When I started this, it was supposed to be humerous.

I still believe it can be.

Maybe.

Once the teacher and my classmates had completed their studious work on my letter, she returned it to me with slashes, commas, parentheses, and general notations, all in red, so that I could now pass the better-ized version of it to the intended recipient. You may aptly deduce the sheer unnecessity for that.

It changed me.

For the remainder of that school year, every time a friend (I should say the friend; there was only one) passed me a note, I returned it to her with my corrections in red. Lol before lol existed. I was the only one laughing. I moved to another town before the start of my junior year.

It’s a little bit like one of those classic MCU storylines, right? There I was, a child-like girl with a yet unrealized skill. ... One traumatic event containing all the imperative parts of speech and I became another (better-ized) version of myself. 

From meek to (grammar) monster 

at the drop of a perfect passive participle.

Gosh, that got weird. 

Glad that part is over.

Get ready, here comes humor.

Don't pass me any notes.

You won't like me when

you pass me any notes.

L. O. L.

I have become the Bad Teacher

1. I think "learning about gerunds" is an actual gerund, but I'm not positive, so did I learn??

2. My name-calling is for entertainment purposes only, because,

3. I genuinely harbor zero ill about any of this, but, you know, humor helps a hurting heart.

Bonus #. You can assess every bit of my grammar if you like, but I'm a grown woman now and I write what I want.

What You Can't Not Write

Foreword
I’m about to tell you something that I’ve only said out loud one other time. It’s very deeply personal, maybe more than I should share with anybody, really, but especially with people who may not even know me. Also, though, I’ve not shared this because (I believe) my greatest fear in life is that I will cause harm or hurt for another person ~ and sharing this could hurt some folks on a very deeply personal level. Holding it, though, is also causing pain and if I’m really weighing it out . . . (I believe) sharing this will do more good than harm.

I.

I’ve never really understood children. Even when I was one of them, I didn’t exactly know how to be one. I was never the girl who daydreamed about a future life filled with children of my own. My sister was the one who had the names for her seven lovely (eventual) children by the time she was 11 or 12 years old ~ which I did not understand. As it turned out, my sister was only able to have one little girl ~ and my experience has been not at all what I planned or expected.

(I believe) it goes without saying that a person who doesn’t understand or necessarily plan to spend time with children may have a very difficult time playing with them.

"If I've had any nameable ambition, it's been to not hang out with kids. 

It's really not that I don't love them.  The Lord knows that I do love them ~ particularly my own.  I just don't understand them.  Don't know how to play with them, for sure." Ambition, 2015

II.

(Eventually) I had six grandbabies, all quite lovely surprises, but still, I had not planned for them. To say I was intimidated by the prospect of playing with them would be an understatement. Once, I tried to duplicate a game with one of them that I’d seen the parents playing ~ and I accidentally bit the kid. Hard enough that we both cried. It would have been a great excuse to quit trying so hard, but instead, with some minor adjustments, I learned how to play in a way that worked for both kid and me. Mostly, it was just about spending time together marveling at the world around us. Eventually, I was at a certain kind of ease when I was with my g’babes.

In other words, I gave up my ideal, overcame my extreme reluctance to hang with children.

My Little Box of Cupcakes

III.

And then we lost one of them. 
It was as if someone took a corner of the universe and ripped it from heart to hilt.
It’s a pain that’s deep and lasting and spirit-changing.
Because I either don’t want to or can’t say any more about that,

"I lost a nearly four-year-old grandson this year in a tragic accident.

God bless his momma and his daddy and his cousins and all his other grandmas and grandpas, all his other family, all those who knew him and know the void he's left behind." Antithesis, 2017

Suffice it to say that I retreated entirely ~ from most everyone I loved, but especially from my grandbabies. It was neither intentional nor obvious (to me) until years had passed. I did not fully realize I'd done it before I could look back with some measure of clarity on the years I'd left barren of any real and lasting memory.

IV.
Imagine now that this is a paragraph all about the comeback. It's not complete. It's not graceful. It's not without fear and trepidation. But it's here. It's come this far.

I have come this far.

V.

Recently, I answered a plea (or a conviction) to assist with the little kids at church on Sunday mornings. I'm starting as a floater and only once per month. Baby steps. On my first day, I began in a room full of nearly-four-year-olds, and specifically with a little girl who was having trouble separating from her dad. It took a minute (for me) but I finally sat on the floor and took his place in playtime. Next, we went to the tiny table to glue eyes, etc., to a paper face.

It was odd the way that she kept looking at me, and especially the way she noticed my hair. [I'd left in a hurry (slight dread) with wet hair and it was expanding as it dried.] "Your hair is crazy!" she said, and later I remembered a story I've told about my mom's second cousin who visited us once when I was six or seven years old. She was a hitchhiking hippie, and had a little bag full of tiny treasures she'd collected along the road, and she let my sister and me each pick something to keep. I remember all of that pretty keenly, but the height of that memory is of her hair. We were sitting together on the floor, and she was asking questions about our daily lives and seemed genuinely interested in our answers ~ and she had this wild, unruly hair that framed her face and from which I will always swear a light was shining. In that moment, she was the most like a real, live angel that I've ever met.

Back to baby girl ~ within minutes of her exclamation, I was called to assist in another class (of actual-four-year-olds.) I told her that I'd thoroughly enjoyed our time together and regretted having to leave and that I hoped I'd see her again.

"Are you dying?" she asked.

Three times I asked her to repeat because I could see no context for her question and I was sure I wasn't hearing her correctly until she said, "When you die, you go to Jesus."

Conclusion

This isn't the ending I thought it would be. In fact, it's only as I was writing that last part out that it fully dawned on me: this isn't about me. This is about what and who we are to the children we encounter.

The real conclusion is yours to write.

Happy Broken People

"The only way out is through."¹

In 1998 ~ a year following a particularly traumatic one for me ~ I read a (fashion) magazine article titled something like, "10 Things That Happy People Do." I remember Only One of those things. 

Happy people deal with their difficult emotions. 

Old School (aka I am the OG)

Now, I was born in 1970 and grew up in the culture just beginning² to take mental health both seriously and personally (meaning we have some measure of responsibility and control over our own mental health.) I didn't grow up hearing much talk about such things, let alone being intentionally taught how to process [anything, emotionally speaking], how to cope. And somewhere along the way (the 80s³ would be my guess) a sort of pop psychology developed which insisted that the best way to deal with difficult emotions was to ignore them, pretend your way out of them, act as if, etc. (Whole Other Story) 

By 1998, however, I'd learned that ignoring emotions (and more to the point, their source) would only prolong the pain and difficulty of it ~ that if I tried to run from it, it would chase me, would haunt me (probably for the rest of my life.) I'd also begun to realize that doing so was keeping me from knowing what it was to be truly happy in life. I was pretty sure I wanted to be happy, and it appeared the only way to get there was to work my way through [difficult emotions.] 

To be super clear, the "difficult emotions" on which I would practice this “new trick” were the result of a particularly dark traumatic event (another story, another time), but I applied that "Happy People" principle and downright wallowed in the depths of it. I thought and I felt and thought and felt and so on and so on until it's difficult to imagine there could be an emotion left to have. While I do still experience some residual effects of that year, I also feel relatively healthy and clear about it all. 

Higher Learning

Listening to a podcast⁴ this morning, Jonathan Fields referenced the contrast between pop psychology and “positive psychology.” He said, “The year is 1998. The gathering is the American Psychological Association… The newly elected president, Martin Seligman, says, “We have looked at psychology in the history of the practice as the quest to take people who are in pain, who are sick or ill, who are potentially broken and make them whole, bring them back to baseline, bring them back to the place where they don’t feel that level of suffering anymore. But…” [and positive psychology] starts to evolve and all of a sudden people feel like they’re given permission to dive into this because for generations, psychology didn’t really value the part of the human condition that was about that less tangible feeling of being connected and hopeful and possibility oriented and positive and alive.” 

The point of all of this is to tell you that they had it straight in ‘98. Happy people deal with their difficult emotions. This is certainly not to say that I am happy⁵ all the time, or that I aim to be happy all the time, or that anybody should aim to be happy all the time. But dealing with their stuff is one thing that happy people do. Bet. 

Because I'm Still The OG⁶

Sometimes it happens in fits and starts, but I’ve yet to stop practicing what I’ve learned (for the most part) or attempting to learn “new tricks.” I’m currently learning⁴ that happiness is more a side effect of other pursuits such as meaning and purpose ~ some of my favorite subjects anyway, so gravy learning, that!! 

Happiness is attainable, though, and something for which we have a measure of control and responsibility. I’ll never be the expert for how we get there, but I can absolutely and confidently assert that we can get there. 

(But often enough,) the only way [to it] is through.

1. Attributed to Servant of Servants, Robert Frost

2. This is a fairly broad, interpretive statement on my part

3. The idea that ignoring emotions is a good idea developed long before the 80s ~ but that's when I began to do it (on purpose)

4. Fields, Jonathan, host. "How To Feel More Alive" Good Life Project, #780, 29 January 2022, goodlifeproject.com/podcast/how-to-feel-more-alive-the-2022-plan/

5. If I had the time and space right now to do it, I’d launch into an entire thing about the difference between happy and joyful because there is a difference.

6. Can you believe I just learned what that means?!

6a. Don't judge

Deux

Avant-Propos 

You know . . . you think you know a thing, all about a thing, all the angles on the thing when it's your own personal thing. And there's definitely no way you can tell me how to feel, how to react, how to process this terrible thing that I've experienced.

Unless, that is, it's your thing as well.

Deux

It was at least a year after we lost Joshua before I knew that one of my daughter's friends spent some time in a "safe place" because of what happened. She'd been there that morning, after the fact, and saw things from which she'll likely never free herself. It was so shocking for me to learn. Why hadn't someone told me sooner? Where is she now? Is she okay?

Later still, as Ethan was being enrolled for pre-K at the same school that Joshua had attended, I learned that Ethan would have the same teacher Josh had known and loved. And also that she'd had to take a year-long leave of absence when Joshua died.

The hardest one for me to hear, however, was Chandler's experience. He and I were alone together at the house that morning when my daughter called. (I still hear that call sometimes. Completely out of the blue. I can be driving along; it's a beautiful day; zero stress, then bam!¹ "Mom!! Mommmm!!!")

I don't know how long it was just Chandler and me that morning as I was catapulted into that horror, snatched back and pummeled, over and over and over again. I don't know when my husband got home. I don't know where Chandler was the rest of that day. If I try to remember ~ and I really don't like to ~ I can only see myself on the floor, trying to twist myself into some alternate reality where it had not just happened.

And there was little three-year-old Chandler, witnessing it all.

Switchback

As I shared a couple of weeks ago in Panic At The Disco, my youngest grandson recently graduated from pre-k and I was not there. Chandler, however, did get to attend, and here are some things he said when he got home.

"Meme, they said my name on stage!"

"I wish you had been there."

"It's okay that you weren't."

"Really, Meme! They said my name!

They said that Ethan said that I am his best friend!"²

But the thing that really chokes me up is this: I was in bed pretty early that night ~ beginning to experience the physicality and brain haze that comes with a full-blown panic attack ~ when Chandler crawled into the bed, scooted up really, really close behind me, put his arm around me, and just stayed quietly there with me for a considerable amount of time. He never said anything and he left quietly and it's the only time he's ever done this (with me.) I knew (hazily) at the time that there was something very significant about this, but it was a couple of months later before I realized what exactly that was.

Back To Reality

Because of an entirely separate thing that's happened in the time since we lost Josh, Chandler wound up at our local Children's Advocacy Center to receive trauma counseling.³  Part of that process was for him to write his life story, hitting the high and low points and especially focusing on the source(s) of his trauma.

His counselor gave us a fair warning about a few particulars before the day that he read his story to us, so I was a tiny bit prepared to hear him read:

"I remember MeMe got a phone call and she fell on the ground and she started crying and screaming."

He stopped reading to ask, "Remember that, MeMe?"

"And then Pop came home, but I don't remember anything else about that day or when they told me that Josh had died."

And that's how I learned that Chandler's loss of Joshua trauma has been rooted in My Reaction to losing Josh.

He'd not only just lost his very best friend ~ which would take some time for his tiny heart and mind to comprehend ~ he also witnessed for too long a time and completely unequipped to emotionally process as his meme came completely unglued.

Now what?! To learn now, these years later, how deeply I've imprinted a terrible memory into his psyche is much to bear. How are any of us ever going to be okay?!

But we will be okay.

Ethan graduated in May and it's taken me three months to get this far with this one. But I'm here, and so is Chandler, and each of us is healing in our own ways. 

It still doesn't feel quite finished, but if we're going to keep moving forward, then it's time to take the next step. 

[Publish.]

At Chandler's CAC graduation, we painted rocks to represent our journey.
His mom, Pop, and I left ours in the CAC rock garden.

   Chandler brought his home.

***

1 Sometimes I think that beautiful, stress-free days actually Are the trigger because it had been such a lovely, peaceful morning

2 It's possible that I don't have the quote exactly right, but the idea of it remains.

3 Thank Jesus for the CAC

Panic At The Disco

Avant-Propos 

I used to get so mad at my sister. 

If I even believed her ~ which I didn't at least half the time. 

I still have doubts, in fact, and still get mad about it even though she's been gone for five years now. 

I also didn't believe my doctor when he presented the diagnosis. 

I still don't believe him most of the time. 

Until it happens.

Partie Une

Ethan graduated from Pre-K the other night.

Ethan is my fifth grandbaby, my third grandson.

He is Chandler's cousin. (Chandler, my first grandson, lives with us.)

Ethan is Joshua's little brother.

Joshua, my second grandson, was Chandler's best friend¹ in the world until we lost him in a terrible accident four years ago.

I did not make it to Ethan's graduation.

It's been long enough since I had a panic attack that I had myself thoroughly convinced ~ again ~ that I do not have panic attacks. It's not that I don't believe they're real (anymore.) It's that I'm just too strong and sound and capable to have such a thing. 

Until it happens.

I also can't remember the first one that I had, but I do know that it was after we lost Josh. And that happened just a couple of months after his graduation from Pre-K at the same school that Ethan attends.

The entire day of graduation, I felt "off" but had no idea why until it was getting near time to close the shop and I realized how much I didn't want to go home. Which was weird. I mean, I do love my job but I don't usually dread leaving it at day's end. From there it wasn't hard to figure out what was wrong with me.

Which ought to be a good thing, right? Realizing the cause of an issue is usually the first right step toward correction. However, the more and the harder that I tried to be excited about my grandbaby's graduation, the faster and harder I began to spiral. Some of the reasons are obvious: triggers lead to flashbacks, etc. Another contributor was worrying about my husband's reaction to my reaction. He's a fixer and while I know that his heart is right, his efforts don't always help. And then I started thinking about all the other family that would be there and the various ways they might react, and so by the time I was face-to-face with my husband, I'd become a blubbering lump.

I wanted so much to be there.

But the thing about these panic things is that they pretty much run the show.

It's one of the reasons that I hate them as much as I do.

While I have a much lesser desire (than I used to) to control my environment,
I have a very hard time being controlled.

The reason I used to get so angry with my sister is that I was 100% positive that she could stop it if she really wanted to. 

But you really don't know what you don't know and 

I wish I hadn't had to learn this in such a difficult way.

And I wish I could tell my sister that I'm sorry. 

1 Best friendship at 4 years old may seem like a stretch, but it was the real deal with those two.

Jesus Take The Wheel

Alternate title: Some Things Never (Seem To) Change

Eventually, we bought four-wheelers and for a while, we spent our brief weekends traipsing through the woods. It felt like freedom.

On one of those late afternoons, somewhere in the country, I took the wheel (handlebars) and drove back and forth through a giant mud-puddle, screaming, "I can drive the [SCAT] out of this thing! I can drive the [SCAT] out of it!"


via GIPHY

It's a wonder I didn't die that day. I never changed gears on the thing and probably had one hand in the air like the yippee-ki-ode to stupidity that it was. I couldn't drive the anything out of anything.  Although...

There was this one time at tech school... 

For context, I was nineteen. My two-year-old daughter and I were living with my mom and step-dad while I attended classes at Columbus Technical Institute. I was going to be a ... [something great.] I'd only learned to drive in the previous year and frequently visited my dad on weekends forty miles north of home.

So one Saturday, my chevy omega wouldn't crank and I had to leave it at my dad's house until he could figure it out. The next day, I borrowed my mom's car to go back to my dad's because I'd left my school books in my car. When it was time to leave, my mom's car would't crank.

Now there's some history here between my mom and dad that I suspect I don't completely know. Suffice it to say, my mom told me not to let my dad touch her car and that I'd better drive it back "right now."

So I did. I started driving that car right on back to her. Never mind that for 10 miles from my dad's house, it smoked and gurgled and lurched. I was driving that car back "Right. Now."

And then, as I was dragging the thing up a hill, parts started to fall off of the car and roll down the road behind me. There began to be roiling smoke from under the hood, such that I couldn't see to drive it if I'd wanted to. And clearly ~ I wanted to.

When the power steering went out, I finally thought it might not make it the next 30 miles and so I pulled into a driveway. You need to know that it is Super Rural between my dad's and mom's houses. There are no neighborhoods, just random gated driveways. So I got out of the car and tried the gate that was 300' feet from the house, but found it locked. When I turned back to the car, the hood was a HUGE bubble of very angry metal. I looked past it to see my baby girl in the backseat, and that's when I freaked.

I grabbed her and ran for the (literal) woods. There was a dirt road that led to another house where people let me in to use the phone. When we came back out, there was a plume of black smoke rising above the trees. When the firetrucks arrived, all that was left of my mom's cavalier station wagon was the frame and steel tire threads.

Even my books were gone!

It's ironic in a way because when my mom first bought the car ~ I think it was probably her first ever brand new vehicle ~ I must have been about twelve years old, and for some stupid reason, I didn't know what the cigarette lighter was for and so I tested it on the upholstery of the front seat. So in a way, I did sort of finish what I started.

Lord, my poor parents!

Anyhow, there's a reason I'm telling all of this. It's in hindsight that I can see I have certain personality traits that seem to withstand the test of time, despite all my efforts to mature and change. I am driven and determined ~ or ~ I am stubborn and stupid-acting. It's possibly a very fine line.

My get it done/I can do it/do it myself mentality has brought me a long way ~ or so I tell myself when I am deciding how to do a thing. In truth, it's a real wonder I've made it this far, and while I'd like to toot my own horn, tell you stories that illustrate my tenacity, it's by God's grace that I'm still here to tell anything at all.

I pray that if there's one solid shining truth that makes it through all of my stories and nonsense, it's Jesus. I'd be nowhere and nothing without him.