My World My Words

My 7 month old grandson is already there.  Overnight he discovered the thrill of desire and fulfillment. I want that, I got that and for this moment I am happy.  We all watch and wait… how long will it last?  Usually not long enough to give the grown ups the peace and respite that is their entitlement. It all begins so early – does it ever end?  Are we ever finally and completely satiated?

I don’t remember my first taste of that fruit but I also don’t remember a time of not having that hunger.  The big ones stand out.  A Little Bowl of Beans, why wasn’t it more? Why wasn’t it making me happier?  Why do I feel so empty and sad?  Little kids love to love stuff.  They love to long for stuff and then it finally appears.  Zap! Just like that the thrill is gone and it’s on to some other stuff.  Sometimes it was just as nothing as seeing that new cereal on tv – Fruit Loops or Lucky Charms.  Wow.  Could Mom ever afford to buy us that?  Fancy.   Colors.   New shapes.   I want it.   I got it.   Looks a lot better than it tastes… Sorry Mom.

Vacation. Now that was an exciting word.  The possibility of who knows what? Going to someplace I’d never seen or heard of.  Will the people look the same?  Will the water taste funny?  How cold will it be?  I’ve never been really cold.  New Mexico?? What does that look like?  Carlsbad Caverns here we come!!!

When that sojourn came to an end I was hooked. Gimme more places to conquer.  Monterey, the REAL Mexico. Overwhelming. Maybe more than I ever could have imagined in1968.  Even the ice cream was not a match to my palette.  But it was exotic.  Nothing like home.  Travel bug is also REAL, as real as the real Mexico.  I got bit and started putting a notch on my belt for every new conquest.  More More More!

Teenage years are cruel and demand the worst kind of suffering. Longing.  Longing that burns.  And coming on the heels of the ‘Golden Years” of pure fun and play that precede it exaggerates the condition till it feels unbearable.  Ten year olds are in their Prime. Life is no worse than who am I going to play with today?  Will Linda Shacklett invite me to spend the night?  Will I get a glimpse of the picture on their new COLOR tv?  Can we climb trees? Make a rock collection?  Take off our ankle socks and wear our flats with naked feet?  That was edging into my teenage years.  The decline had begun.

Things were for the first time getting kinda intense.  My teenage innards wanted EVERYTHING.  Clothes top the list, at first – clothes, Clothes, CLOTHES. A girl just wants Go Go boots, A line skirts, Mod dresses and that Yardley look.  Can’t wear the clothes without the bod.  Oh, if only  my legs weren’t so skinny.  No way to fix that one.  Live with it.

Boys were the next phase of this downward spiral into desire.  Hours and hours and hours of daydreaming and mooning and wishing and hoping. And then it happens – invite to the Home Coming dance with Billy Bauml.  Shrieks of ecstasy.  Could life get any better (for a moment). Begging Dad and my brother to agree that I could stay out past midnight.  The perfect night followed by a couple of years (literally) of obsessing over Billy with little or nothing to show for it…

College took the edge off. Way cooler and much less time for mooning and dreaming. But the drug had taken hold and gone somewhere underground.  Freedom reigned.  Or so it seemed to me.  On my own.  Making my plans.  Pursuing the culmination of eons of pure desire. Choices were big and they were MINE.  I can make it happen.  Santa Fe in 1970 with hippies in the Plaza made me feel like Dorothy, “We’re not in Kansas, anymore.”  It was Trippy.  I was beginning to think maybe I was kinda cool and hip.  Then off to DC with lots of congressmen riding my elevator (no space to explain here, later). Back to REAL Mexico again and this time it was dreams coming true that I hadn’t even yet imagined.  Wild countryside and pueblos that were almost magical.

I was getting mighty sucked into the illusion that I was making it all happen.  I wanted it, I got it!  I was having some fabulous experiences and that made me feel powerful. But there was a dark side that I was ignoring. My life was also falling apart.  It finally crashed right around 1975.

Yes, I made it through and found my way up again.  Getting back dictated how I spent my middle years.  Dreaming and desiring – first and foremost, just make me normal, God.  Thank you.  I wanted to be like everybody else. They seemed so happy and all together.

Once that hump was behind me I used the same tactic to get even more ‘normal’. I started to look around (like a teenager but not so open about it) declaring inwardly to whatever god or spirit would listen, “Give me whatever they’re having.”  And it worked.   A husband appeared.  The love of my life.  Three children followed.  A stay-at-home mom lifestyle (straight from the 1950’s!).  Everything was quieting down in my head after years of frantic chatter.  Lots of friends, a move out of the state of Texas (ADVENTURE!!), some fun family vacations and Christmas mornings that put my childhood dreams to shame.

30+ years into it I see now that I was naive.  As a  kid, I asked and sometimes got it.  Pretty straight forward.  No nonsense.  My teenage years were full of angst and yearning but I managed.  College took me down the road of SPECIALNESS.  That ended too.

As my life got better and better I couldn’t, should’ve and wouldn’t know that I was taking a fun activity like ‘wanting’ or ‘desiring’ and making it my obsession, compulsion and dare I say, ADDICTION?  As an adult I felt more and more in control of my life.  I thought life was going my way and all I had to do was micro manage and micro manage some more. Situations and circumstances could be managed.  They were the stuff of which my happiness depended.  Daily life has now become totally an exercise in pursuing my longings – itty bitty and big as Dallas . I’m a full blown Circumstantial Junkie now…

Staring into the eyes of my youngest grandson – this one is only 4 months old, he is lit up like a Christmas tree. I’m lighting up too!  Why?  We didn’t get anything.  Nothing happened.  No want or desire was fulfilled.  He just looks deep into my eyes and the smile expands. Laughter too.  I’m out of control. My eyes are shining my mouth grows side to side.   We are both in bliss and it is about to explode us both.  This is new.  This is my new ‘want’ – my most current desire.  I think this is a clue.  A change in direction.  The key to moving beyond the ongoing pain and suffering of a circumstantial junkie.

In the words of my 83 year old anthropology professor, Senora De Aloja, many years ago in Cholula, Mexico as she ended each class, “Well, we shall see….”

Summers in South Texas are hot.  San Antonio was hot and  in drought during the 1950’s and so some accommodations had to be made.  Bare feet were the norm. We ran the neighborhood with them bare, heck, even the grocery store was not off limits to our shoeless peds.  Come bath time (mandatory every night) black filthy feet were scrubbed and made ready for white sheets. Stickers in our backyards and alleyways were a real hazard and too much pain and time were wasted picking them out of layers of toughened dermis.  OUCH!

If memory serves me, sometime in the early sixties the THONG was introduced to our dime stores and our fashion footwear was altered. Rubber slippers with two straps coming to a point between the big toe and its neighbor changed everything.   They were so soft, easy to slide into, gender neutral and most critical,  THEY WERE CHEAP. A pair could be had for just 10¢.  Everybody had ‘em.   Every family had hoards of them.  They hid out everywhere – under beds, in the wrong part of the closet, under the couch, between things, in the bathroom, in the car, on the patio.  After a while you didn’t even see them.  They blended in with the rest of the household. It seems it was just as easy to make them in a rainbow of colors as just one.  Pink and all other pastels, were in keeping with the times,  girls only.  In a rare fluke of female freedom they could also wear any other tint or hue that was hanging around the house and available for the snatching.  In a family of 7 like ours thongs were breeding in every nook and cranny.  At any given moment I could easily and without much effort hunt down close to two dozen.  Now, of course, that was not 12 PAIR of flip flops (the more fun way to say thongs) but a wonderful assortment of colors and sizes and new and old scattered like Easter eggs.   The booby prize was finding a flip flop with a broken strap.  As in, that big blob of rubber keeping the straps in place got pulled out of its hole.  Drat! Now it was useless.  One shoe… garbage, ready for the trash (and no chance of being recycled – kapoot ).

The real drag was when the this tragedy struck while stomping around in the thick of stickerland or far far from home and the hope of grabbing a replacement. Ugh, Ugh, Ugh. the worst kind of One Shoelessness…

It is simply unnatural to walk around half shod. It throws the world out of kilter.  Lopsided. No balance. DANGER!  Self pity sets in.  Why me, God?  One foot scorched and full of dry stickers, the other safely protected and happy to be cushioned and loved.

Flip flops were the main culprit of this One Shoe thing.  There were others….

Stop right now and go to your special shoe place and count every pair you possess.  Is it more than one pair for Sunday, one pair for school, and one pair for after school play time in the cooler temps?  That was standard in my day.  Shoes were worn until the soles had holes… until the shoe laces were threads… the glue let go and you had two pieces of shoe…. the patent leather strap on your Mary Jane’s broke and one way or the other you found yourself in that One Shoe!  Clomping around like a pirate with a wooden leg.  Socks exposed to the elements.  The indignity of it all was beyond what any child should have to endure.  Mild traumas as such add up.

My life has given me many ‘One Shoe’ moments. Sometimes those moments stretch into days or years.  The decades go by and my cheeks sag a little more, the forearms are sprinkled with giraffe markings, I work harder to battle the grays and yet life feels more and more precious.

My 3 children flew the coop years ago and landed where weekly, and mostly tri monthly visits now form our family dynamic.  I miss them.  They were part of my steps.  And I always paraded them around with TWO shoes!  Grand babies that can put a smile on my face bigger than Dallas and bring laughter deeper than the ocean we cross to mingle for a while are part of that same deal. In between, I travel my days in One Shoe.  A little off balance. Leaning to one side. Hoping to come across another flip flop and feel back in the groove.

Time marches on for my mom now 93 1/2. A reminder to me to drink in the good, the bad and the ugly daily.  What a gift my mom’s thirst for life is for her and me!  Every day must have adventure or she will make it happen.  Staying in the house even one day is not an option… My feet follow behind and I wonder how I will one day have to manage with one shoe only?  Will I ever feel complete again?

40 years of marriage has become the cornerstone of my life. Everything now springs from that communion of me and him.  Our steps have been in stride together for so long now that I cannot imagine walking alone.  Even a fabulous vacation with a girlfriend in Maui (one of the most spectacular islands on the planet!) was the least bit empty without his flip flops along side mine.  It was another hot San Antonio summer of neighborhood fun and games and I was trying to keep up with just one lousy thong…. Life is best when I am confidently strutting my stuff saddled in the comfort and security of my other half – my other shoe… Not to say that the union has been 24/7 heavenly bliss and there were not days when I hobbled alone and endured the pain of uno zapato … but how else would I have come to delight in the fullness and feel the glow of journeying in my favorite pair.

I was looking down at a small bowl of beans. They were pinto beans and prepared like every other Mexican family made them in San Antonio in the 1950’s. Maybe these had been cooked by Olive. She took care of me and my baby sister while my mom was teaching school. Or maybe my mom was home and she stood behind me just being there. This is one of my earliest memories and I was around 3 years old. I was in our kitchen, our first house on Nassau St. And it is important that I remember it because it is my earliest memory of feeling sad. Big sad. Complete sad.

For a long time I have wondered why a three year old would be feeling sad? Recently  I did the math and I’m now pretty certain that was around the time that my grandmother died. My mom’s father was a motorcycle policeman in San Antonio and I’m told that while cleaning his pistol one day it discharched into his knee. He was diabetic and gangrene set in. That was before penicillin and so he did nor survive. My mom was 11 years old at the time. Two years later her older sister, 21 died of pneumonia. At the time of my bowl of beans my mom was 29 with four small children and then her mom passed away too. Those were lean years for my parents and my mother depended on her mother for many kinds of support –  much more than just financial. I’m sure this was unbearable for her. My mom’s grief must have been a lot deeper than just the loss of her mother. So much death in so few years of her life. A three year old feels all that sadness without knowing what it is or where it comes from. That’s what I was doing.

The next time I felt that sadness that I can remember was in sixth grade when Mr. Riley passed away a couple of days before Christmas. Everyone in St Paul parish knew the Riley family. They were beloved. Because they were Irish like the nuns that taught us there was a special bond with the family. Betsy was my very good friend. I’d been to her house a few times and her father had a large presence. I was impressed. But I had no idea that he was sick so his death was a shock for me. I remember not knowing what to do with it. Death was scary.  I couldn’t even imagine what Betsy would be feeling. How would I know what to say or how to act when I saw her for the first time? It weighed heavy on me. I don’t remember ever finding the words to express my sadness to Betsy. I was still too young.

Sadness and grieving didn’t touch me again till I was out of college. My Uncle Albert (husband  of my mom’s only sibling and surviving family member) died in March of 1975. This time my bones turned to chalk. It felt unbearable to contain my sadness and a host of other feelings. A fear rose up that something big was happening and that our family was changed. Uncle Albert had been a grandfather figure as well as an uncle. This was a lot of loss. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with all this awful sadness.

We hadn’t become comfortable with the word depression in those days. It wasn’t usual to talk about most feelings and death, sadness, grief and mourning were to be experienced as best you could in silence. That was the culture of my family.

My sense is that by my hormonal teenage years it didn’t take a death of any kind to unleash  in me what would now be labeled ‘mild depression’. Nothing to fall apart about – more like a moodiness. It was so mild that it just became another color floating through me from time to time – blue for my blues.

Twice in my college years it did become all consuming. One time I tried to describe it to my boyfriend. I used every word and phrase and description I could imagine. I said I was in a ‘fog’ and didn’t desire anything. Funny that I never once used the word depression? Nobody did. We just simply didn’t use that word in that way yet…

My husband, Steve still doesn’t favor that kinda talk. He will only admit to being in a funk!  I like that. Sometimes words can get in my way. It matters which ones I choose. It doesn’t do me much good to deny what I am feeling because it won’t make it  go away.

We had a feral cat that adopted us. When we were living in the trailer this fluffy gray cat would not leave our screened door. Whenever we looked she was there…It was a no brainer – we named her Hope.  That was about 8 years ago.  Two days ago she left us. She was dying and there was nothing we could do to help. Before we could take matters into our own hands Hope decided her own fate. She walked out our back door and went to die in the woods. Instead of great sadness I felt relieved. It was a heaviness lifted. This time the grief came before … Not what I expected.  

The memory of a little bowl of beans can still evoke a sadness in me sometimes. All my feelings of the ‘Blues’ or a funk pass through me at the will of what seems like some other entity. Allowing is my best bet. Get out of the way and let the past pass through and make a space for tomorrow.

Ginger and Blondie were our Christmas dolls that year. It was easy to give them names. My doll, Ginger had bright reddish hair (the kind that feels like toothbrush bristles in tight curls – you couldn’t comb it but you could get it wet!).  Roberta’s, Blondie, of course, had yellow yellow hair.  Back then it was sort of an unofficial  tradition for little girls to get a ‘dollie’ every Christmas morn.  Ginger and Blondie were extra special because they came with their very own baby doll clothes and a pink plaid metal carrying case. One side housed their wardrobe and the other was for strapping them in (apparently they didn’t suffer from claustrophobia or fear of the darkness?).  We had many pleasant hours playing with our babies especially in the summer when our non air-conditioned house sent us outside seeking relief from the Texas heat under the shade of the front yard mesquite tree. One doll a year – that’s how it worked. Next Christmas would bring a replacement. I think that made me really love and appreciate Ginger, or the Madam Alexander ballerina the next year and each year’s doll until finally the time came when it was all over.

Claude dog arrived when I least expected it. Santa wrote that script, not me. I was still in ‘dollie’ mode.  Was it 5th or 6th grade? No accurate recall but that year I awoke to a yellow shaggy dog with blue ears. I guess I needed a gentle transition into puberty and stuffed animals were somewhere in between???  Don’t get me wrong. I instantly fell in love and proclaimed him my Claude Dog (still have him to this day…) but I felt sad too. I knew instinctively that he came to tell me to move on.

I loved all my dolls and stuffed animals. They were a big part of my childhood happiness. The very word doll was equivalent to happy in my lingo. So when those Worry Dolls appeared sometime in the 1970’s I was confused. They were a big hit and so much so that they are no longer novel and have taken their place in our culture. I didn’t see how Worry and Doll could be put together?  A kind of oxymoron in my opinion. And, anyway, who went around bringing attention to WORRY – that’s just wrong. Worry is something I did in private. Nothing to be shared publicly.

The way it works in my family worry is for the women – a female responsibility. We are good at it and it feels natural. I would almost venture to say that it is our birth right and like a vocation – our calling. To worry is to handle the situation. The more you worry the less likely to actually have to experience whatever is unwanted. Or so it seems to us gals. Logically and reasonably we know that our thoughts are not controlling the outcome. But worry fills that slot of time until things go our way. Maybe it just feels good! 

It is certainly one of the hardest bad habits I have to tackle daily. I’ve come a long long way from being riddled with chronic anxiety and a constant physical verve pulsing through me – a reminder of uncertainty and the unknown.  Too often there is no concrete problem or issue staring me in the face, and yet there it is, that  nonspecific – generalized feeling of something awful is about to happen.

I had to take this bull by the horns a long time ago.  It had gotten way too big and had  taken over my life almost completely.  This was back in the day (1975ish, to be exact) when nobody talked about anxiety but we were fine to say ‘worry’ in every other sentence   So I was mostly just experiencing the discomfort of anxiety without the label… A rose by any other name… Slowly over the years I have learned to manage my anxiety and perpetual worry mostly by simply becoming very very aware of it.  Hello.  There you are my little friend.  What have you brought me this fine morn?  How clever and creative you are.  Where do you come up with all these wonderful worries for me?

It is what today they call ‘staying in the moment’.  The temptation is mighty to wallow around in all those juicy worries – dive into the future of scary possibilities.  Nobody can keep me out of those ponds except me, myself, and I.  The comraderie and solidarity of hanging with the Worried Dolls has to be traded in for the delight and freedom of Trust.  If nothing else, my life has taught me that it only gets better and better…

***In the dolls’ original Guatamalan tradition, a local legend about the origin of the Muneca quitapena refers to Mayan princess named lxmucane.  The princess received a special gift from the sun god which would allow her to solve any problem a human could worry about

In traditional and modern times, worry dolls are given or lent to brooding or sorrowful children.  They would tell their doll about their sorrows, fears, and worries, then hide it under their pillow during the night.  After this, the child will literally sleep over the whole thing .  At the next morning, all sorrows are said to be taken away by the worry doll.  (WIKEPEDIA)

,

Roberta ate jelly sandwiches. I ate peanut butter sandwiches. That is, Roberta would only eat Welches grape jelly sandwiches.  And I would only eat Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter sandwiches…  That’s just the way it was.

Roberta is my sister. She is almost a year and a half younger than me. We ate our sandwiches with each other all the time when we were little kids. I would look at the jelly oozing out of her white bread and my teeth would hurt. Jelly looked very appealing. I was mesmerized by the purple color. The consistency was kinda like jello (I liked jello) but it moved around more. It was squishy and shiny. By appearance I should have loved the stuff. But I wouldn’t touch it. Not even a tiny taste…

Why? Can’t say. I do know that even as a child I wasn’t much hooked on sugar. Not only were my teeth too sensitive, my tongue contracted in response to intense saccharin offerings. (Uncle Albert took me to the circus and bought me PINK cotton candy – What!?  It didn’t taste like it looked. One of the biggest disappointments of my life. I couldn’t believe I didn’t like it!  Same thing with Cracker Jack. I was losing out on basic kid treats…)

Grape jelly was easily avoided. But it was one of my first experiences of being different or separate (maybe that explains my complete dislike – just to assert my own identity?) It was a kind of different that was neither good nor bad. Just different.

I must have been around 4, 5, or maybe as much as 6 or 7 years old when I ate all those peanut butter sandwiches. The years rolled on and my palate expanded but never enough to include jelly.

Other parts of me changed too. Now a simple difference like peanut butter vs. jelly could cause mild to severe disruptions. Differences were now weighted. They were no longer neutral. Peanut butter is BETTER than jelly. Being taller is better than being shorter or older is always (in a kid world) better than being younger. By 5th grade these differences were getting ugly. This kinda hair vs that kinda hair or my Barbie doll is not only different than yours but better. At any given moment I could be feeling superior to my girlfriend or I could be feeling crummy and less than.  Differences made the difference…

My life began to be more complicated. A preference for peanut butter or jelly now had me drowning in the Jelly Sea.  Jealousy, resentment, pity (both kinds – for myself or someone else), anger, envy, superiority and inferiority and on and on were swimming in my new ocean of emotion. All because sometimes what I had, or did,  or felt,  or said was different from my girlfriends. It was getting to be painful…

Not too many years ago Steve and I were visiting our son, Eddie who was spending a few months on the island of St. Lucia. The island is actually the top of a mountain jutting out of the Carribean. Thats why the water right off island is very very deep. And that’s why it is almost navy blue in color. Something about that color has never left me. So a few months ago we were on Eddie’s boat (he lives in St Maarten) and though it is not a mountain island like St Lucia right off shore the water is that same midnight blue and deep deep deep. Eddie’s boat has a screen that tells you just how deep. It was blowing my mind that we could be in 1200 ft and only a small distance away it would be 37 ft shallow! The water is a spectacular clear light blue when it is shallow.

I’m pretty sure my Jelly Sea has these depths and shallow waters too. Differences and preferences –  they seem to start all the trouble. You like to do this and I like to do that. You wanna talk about that and I want to talk about this. I want what you have that is simply different than what I have. Sometimes I’m mad because you see it your way and I see it mine. I can feel inferior because what they have is fancier than my stuff. And then there are all my thoughts! Judgement! Secrets of my mind!  Why are you different than me? Why do I care? Why can’t I tell you? Why are those folks so annoying?  Why do they make choices so different from what I do. Churns up the waters and disturbs my peace…

As my friend, Lisa says, “Enough already”. I want out. Out of these Jelly Seas that can be deep as a mountain or shallow and rocky. My knee jerks and in an instant eons of programming send me tumbling back into old familiar waters.  I call them the RED emotions. Each a derivative of anger in some way. Wasting my precious moments better spent in the sunshine, smiling and soaking up the joy of pure life.

Soon it will happen. The Jelly Sea and all its silly sea monsters will morph into playful neutral differences once again and peanut butter will just be peanut butter…

P.S.  Nope. I don’t have one. As my husband let me know I don’t seem to have a plan for getting rid of my jealousy and all the rest. Just confidence. Whenever I figure out that I really want something a whole whole lot I get 100% all about it. And then – WHAMMO  –  things happen. I can’t stop thinking about it. I picture how happy my life is going to be. It’s #1 on my plate. Always first on my list of things to do. Sooner or later the change does happen. It sounds very simple but it works for me. Bye bye to the Jelly Sea.

DISCLAIMER: My grown up taste buds LOVE jelly on my breakfast toast but never ever ever on my peanut butter sandwich… YUK.

“Good morning, Mary Sunshine. Why did you wake so soon?  You scared away the birds and bees. You scared away the moon. ” That would be my dad singing to me and my two sisters, hunkered down under blankets making no movements to depart.   I was cold and miserable. It was dark and too early for me to smile or appreciate his loving ditties (there were others). Bless his heart. I would never be a ‘morning person’. But I was obedient. Dragging myself into our warm  bathroom (gas heater built into the wall – Woo Hoo!) and taking my turn with 3 other siblings all I wanted was silence. Lots and lots of silence. Nobody TALK. Please. It hurts my ears…  And usually nobody did. We got down to the business of getting everybody out the door.

I was the Chatty Cathy of the kids. Any other time of day you couldn’t shut me up. Wee hours of the morning were queasy tummy time. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t talk. Yuk. Just get me through it. It wasn’t  just my lack of enthusiasm for school days I was equally ready to throw up before dawn on summer days that promised freedom and all kinds of fun.

The older I got the worse my affliction and the more I slept in. Weekends in middle school till 9am. High school 10 am and later and later. By my college days I was a serious sleepy head. Sleep became my drug…

It wasn’t a real problem until I found myself with child at the tender age of 32. Yes 32. I panicked. How was I going to get up in the dark with an infant?! Maybe even toddlers still favor those ugly hours to arise. I didn’t know? How awful was it going to be?   5:30am might as well have been 2am. No different to me.  Three kids into it I was walking into walls in the middle of the night and crying when I  went to bed already anticipating the few winks I would get before the ‘cry’ to duty. It was tough and I got through it. My mom would simply say “Judy, this too shall pass”. Yeah, like the Ice Age… Eons

Then came my children’s early morns.   I won’t name names but she loved 6am as much as I did.  The boys needed no alarm.  Cartoons awaited and they LIKED to eat cereal or even EGGS!

We all know the truth. There are only two kinds of humans. Those who are chipper and cheery at the first hint of sunshine.  And all the rest of US!!!!

Something is happening. I’m getting old… Older?  Anyway, I can handle it now. IF the occasion demands I can Rise and Shine with the best of them (actually, Rise and Shine was another of my dad’s pleasant hold overs from his army days. Didn’t work on me…). Those awful headaches and roiling stomach don’t  happen anymore. I can manage a lift at the corners of my mouth (smile? Maybe). And much to my husband’s chagrin – I CAN TALK.

What I know now is that I can wake up and function fairly well in the dark hours of what many call ‘morning’.  I still maintain it is not normal. Anyway, the better find is that I have discovered that if I do the right thing CLOSE MY EYES AND GO BACK TO SLEEP great things happen. After that second round of shut eye and BEFORE I open my eyes I partake of a delicious state of consciousness or awareness.  All my best work is done under the influence. I can float back into the past and re experience it like the original complete with smells and touch. So divine. I can go into the future and have the sweetest ‘daydreams’. No limits .  I indulge.  I have dreamed awake during these hours so many dreams that have already come true.  It’s also the time that I let go and let answers come to me.  Thoughts surface and with no effort at all I discover depths of my psyche that turn the key and take me to the next level of happiness.

I may never be a real true Morning Gal but I certainly have discovered how to enjoy a Good! Morning…😍

I got lucky. My kindergarten was brand new. It had the smell of bars of soap . We each had our own little wooden cubbie with soap and soap dish that we brought from home. And a little towel too.  My very own small place for my things. Our desks sat in a big open space that had floor to ceiling windows and outside was nothing but  trees and green stuff. Long tables for eating lunch or doing arts and crafts were just across  in another open area with lots of windows and light. Even the kitchen was open on to that one big room. I loved the whole set up. It felt expansive and I felt grown up, like a big girl in the big world. The nuns who taught us were warm and sweet like nice ‘huggy’  mamas.  That kindergarten was, as they say, special. And I was double lucky because most kids  had moms that stayed home  – no need for early education…

I don’t know why Blessed Sacrament was a stand alone campus. No other grades or kids – just kindergarten?  It was a Catholic education and the nuns were either from Mexico and/or Mexican American. Puro Catolicas.  And yet I don’t remember even one mention of The Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  As far as I remember they didn’t tell me about God or angels or saints?  Nada. Maybe I just wasn’t ready and so if they tried to teach me it didn’t stick?  It was all fun and games and simply perfect. No guilt and shame, no sin, no confessions. Happy days.

First grade was a major revolution. Big kids all around me – all the way to the 8th grade!  Yikes. And all kinds of kids. A few Mexicans like me but mostly any and every color shape and size. It made me dizzy. So much newness.  On top of all that it seems I was of age to take in some of the Catholic church’s must-know truths. First and foremost GOD. He was the heavy. He was the One that made it all, did it all, gave out the punishment and He was the only one to say you were good again (forgiven…). I caught on right away. I feared and respected GOD. Images of GOD were almost always a man of a mature age with flowing robes and beard to match. It didn’t take me long to impress this pic in my mind somewhat permanently (like maybe to this day?). There was plenty about The Holy Family, (Jesus, Mary and Joseph), The Trinity ( The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), saints and Angels (especially Guardian Angels). Adam and Eve and Devils and demons. They covered it all. But GOD was the super star. It was His show. It seemed pretty simple.  I got it.

No body stays in first grade forever. I moved on. I learned lots of science. I took in facts and ration and reason. I lacked common sense but logic came somewhat easily to me. By high school I was learning from the nuns to expand my GOD without too much confusion concerning  the apparent contradictions. Juggle Juggle. Some doubts but nothing to shatter my world. College was a Catholic school too and the brothers who taught us seemed even less worried about our strict or literal interpretation of the whole business. GOD was getting fuzzy. I decided to opt out for a while. I was too cool for Catholocism now. Forget about Sunday mass obligation. I dared to make that mortal sin…

Life kept happening. Mine totally fell apart and then started coming back together. GOD and Jesus had been floating in and out. New choices had to be made. Bottom line – what did I believe???  My conservative side won out. I decided GOD and Jesus were cool again BUT wouldn’t go all the way with all the Catholic rules. Too much guilt and too lazy to put in the effort. Mortal sin seemed old fashioned. Nothing to really fear.

I changed but the world changed more and faster. New ways to have my GOD. He could be more abstract . Super cool. I could imagine him as SOURCE. He could be simply energy.  No longer the old man or angry dad and trying to stay out of His way. This felt pretty good. More like my kindergarten days. Was it possible that He was somehow connected to my higher self?  What is the difference between the two?  Is He pure intelligence?  Now I didn’t feel so lucky. It seemed easier to never have to figure out how all this added up.

I know now that the greater truth or REALITY is that GOD is not the old man on the His throne calling the shots. I know this very very well. And I know that Source or energy  and Higher Intelligence or Nature or Spirit  or Universe and many more mature  labels are the greater truth.  Especially in this Age of Feminism (finally! And hurray!!!) it would be so true to exchange He/Him for She/Her. I can feel how true that is and  some days those are my words too.

And yet, I still go up and down and all around.  My GOD in flowing robes can be kind and loving or have a wagging finger. Sometimes When things are too too tough He is my go to.  I pray to Him and I need my GOD in His first grade costume.

I guess what I know is this:  GOD is too big to go by just one name. I can dance in and out of all of them AND have a lovely night swaying with JUST ME AND MY GOD…

First grade. The question goes out. “Who’s the most popular girl in the class?”  A chorus of little girls squeal, ” Betsy Riley!”  Could that possibly have ever happened? I don’t know.  I do have a lot of imagination.  Classmates screaming her name or not – it was true…

Betsy was what any noticing adult would have labeled Charismatic. Not to embarrass  her but but you won’t believe me otherwise – she played piano by ear, she went toe toe with Johnny Neutzling in the spelling bee, her curlicue handwriting drove the nuns nuts ( too pretty…) she could Sing!  She was a quick learner (first reading group whipping through those primary readers).  The perfect face, unforgettable green eyes. She was fun and and her greatest gift and asset … she was Happy!  Doggone but she was perpetually full of myrth.  Almost nobody could resist her.

We are 66 now and I am still practically best friends with Betsy.  Nothing has changed. Yakking with me on her cell phone  while walking her dog every neighbor stops to get a bit of her attention. If you run into me when she’s with me and I introduce you to her the NEXT time you see me you will ask,”How’s your friend, Betsy?”  It happens every single time… She’s got It. And that IT is her Vibe.  That overall sense that she likes her life. That life is good.  She is a real live smiley face.   Everybody wants a piece of her sunshine.

My husband, Steve is another kind of BETSY.  He loves to be happy. Talking about our kids or THE grandson his smile lights him up like a Christmas tree.  It’s the small things that set his joy rolling. Fields of flowers or a single bloom easily unleash his bliss.  He has a mild devotion to Jerry Garcia and the Boys and retreats to another realm of contentment with them in his ears. He can be talking to me about the most insignificant topic, mundane and ordinary and can’t contain his ebullience.  In short, he can’t stand to NOT be happy!

I have my moments.  I gush.  I glow.  I laugh a little too hard and loud.  But I don’t think I’m often taken for a Betsy or Steve.  They get the permanent title.  Feel Good Folk.  You can rely on them in most social situations to anchor the happy.  They like to do that, it seems.

I have been noticing  that the older I get the more life seems to turn inside out.  Upon close examination (40 yrs later) Steve can enjoy an occasional funk and Betsy (60 yrs after the fact) can be delightful even when she’s ragging about society’s social ills and injustice of it all.  They’re not Perfect! They are not 100% Peace  Love and Joy… Uh oh.  More and more I find it natural and easy to fill in for Steve when he is running on empty.  And there are times when the Pollyanna in me can unnerve Ms Riley.

I’m still pretty sure the two of them have a monopoly on the happy stuff.  It’s who they are.  It’s just nice to know that sometimes I have a contribution to make too. Deep down inside I’m every bit the optimist as two of my happiest and favorite souls. They just wear it very well.  So while most days I silently request of them, “Please pass the optimism”  I know for certain that I have also answered their call to: PASS THE OPTIMISM, PLEASE..

I was a snobby kid in kindergarten. I mean I was a almost like a ‘mean’ girl. I ran with the cool kids and we put apple and orange seeds in our ears to prove it. It made  us a clique. My girlfriends and I were would walk the playground lifting just the right side of our nose to indicate some other poor classmate was not one of us… There was still lots of 5 year old in me so I wasn’t as nasty as I’m depicting.  I was also kind and inclusive. I had friends.

Kindergarten was great. It is the last time I remember feeling whole and confident.  So very nice. When I left Blessed Sacrament and made my way to first grade at St. Paul I became Mexican. A whole new ball game…

You see, before that, everyone that I encountered in my small world was just like me. Brown in origin. It wasn’t like that at my new school. My classmates were more on the pale side. So were my mom and one of my sisters but it was years before I made that observation. I don’t know for sure that it was skin color that tipped me off or if someone not too delicately brought my ethnicity to my attention.

For sure in second grade Linda Schaklett told me and Elizabeth that her dad said we had all been baked in ovens. Linda, with her yellow blond hair, blue eyes and enormous freckles had been underbaked. She was raw, it was reported, Elizabeth (I didn’t know she was pure Italian, yet) with her hazel green eyes and beige skin tone was JUST RIGHT.  Baked to perfection. I was burnt. There it was. It was the 1960 not too subtle way of informing me that I was Mexican.  Ok. Deal with it. More messages came that Mexicans in San Antonio were NOT as good as everyone else. (Talk about karma…). In time I learned everyone else were called Anglos. I’m not sure where the Merys and Karams fit into this scheme. They were Lebanese.

I noticed these things. They stuck with me. Maybe that’s why I later loved Anthropology so much and it came easily to me. The more I heard about San Antonio Mexicans (just watch the ten o’ clock news, that demographic was portrayed as poor, uneducated, low and criminal) the more Mexican made me feel lousy. I bought the whole enchilada…

And thus was born my lifetime love affair with self pity. THE SILENT KILLER.  Poor me. It spread to every minor or major Judyism. As in, anything that made JUDY different from all the rest. Frizzy curly hair, poor me. Not in the first reading group poor me. Too skinny, poor me. I had an entire litany before I left third grade.

All my life I compare and compete. I want to be at least as good and pretty as her. Or as smart. Or funny. Or rich. And it is ALWAYS God’s fault! Why did He make me less than?  He didn’t give me the full package. Poor, poor, poor me.

I’m beginning  to feel it now the older I get. Feeling sorry for myself, it just makes me an eternal victim.  Mexican doesn’t get me anymore. I’m beyond that. Brown and proud. It’s the little slights that God makes that slowly eat at my soul. My day doesn’t go exactly as I demand. I’m let down. Sad. Not fair. I want more. I deserve better.  Someone can use the wrong tone of voice and I dive into the pity pot. It seems some days it doesn’t take much. Or am I just more attuned to singing my woes? Do I hear how pathetic my troubles sound. My life long habit is wearing thin.

My cholesterol can get a little on the high side but I manage it.  It’s my other silent killer, my self pity that is going to take me down.  I’m on it!  There is still a little over confident, super hip, happy go lucky, life is as full as I want kindergarten Judy making a comeback.  Bye bye self pity.  Life is too rich and every moment too precious to waste on you…

Most kids get sent to their room with no supper when they misbehave.  I was the opposite.  The overly sensitive middle child of five, I could inprison myself, running to my room (shared with at least 2 other sisters at any given time) in tears.  The exact reverse.  I’ll punish my family.  They’ll feel so bad that they’ve hurt my feelings and made me cry.  And now they’ll  really feel sorry for me when I’m in my room with no supper.  YEAH.  WHEN PIGS FLY.  Let’s see, 7 humans crowded around a tiny kitchen table – one less and more food for everyone! Who cares? Who even noticed?

Those are my earliest memories of my anger.  I was a bit older before my hurt and frustration came as anything other than Tears.  Around 10 years old I maybe had some screaming matches with my sisters.  The three of us so tightly sewn into each other’s spaces – inevitable.

By high school I had abandoned even that outlet.  Avoidance was my tactic.  And in my entire life I never let fly ANY form of the loud uglies at my mom…So it was my dear friend, Betsy Goodloe who became my target (and only one time, as I remember  it).  Betsy was known for her moderation.  In fact, she was extremely moderate about everything. The normal seething teenage anger about life in general that I was managing to tap down was no match for Ms Goodloe.  Her moderation was a Provocation.  We were slumber partying at Carolla Rodriguez’s luxurious mid century sprawling house. We were seniors in high school so alcohol was involved. I have trouble managing my emotions on cough medicine. You may as well have filled me with dynamite and lit a fuse.  To say I exploded is very accurate.  She took it even better than any ‘moderate’ would. Stoic. She listened. It never affected our friendship that I know but I was left owning the carnage and a new truth about myself.

My rages went dormant for another decade. This time it was my sweet precious 2 yr old daughter, Junie that unleashed the angry lion. I could be super warm and fuzzy for 9 times in a row but if it didn’t produce my desired behavior a demon took over my tongue. Let’s not relive that. Just reporting a regrettable truth.

The only other creature that I felt safe enough to share my secret and explosive energy with has been Steve, my soulmate and husband. Lucky him…Who else would stand by while I wagged my righteous finger in his face.  Sometimes I’m certain I know EVERYTHING. And I’m obliged to share it. Until one day I ‘outed’ myself.

I was studying with Gary Zukav, the author of SEAT OF THE SOUL (that should tell you what nature of knowledge he was imparting). Gary said that anger is fear.  That seemed absolutely and simply very accurate. Now I found myself in the kitchen, finger wagging, tongue sharp and loaded for bear when a little voice reminded me Gary says anger is fear. Go away. But it wouldn’t. Once more.  Anger is fear. I said, Beat it. I’m busy here. Gary is a ‘mind pest’. He wouldn’t scram. I gave in. With my first act of conscious courage I stopped. I said to Steve, Gary says anger is fear. I have to find out what I’m afraid of right now. I felt deep inside. My constant companion surfaced. I’m not lovable. He knows it. I’m fighting and getting angry to distract Steve from noticing. I don’t remember what words I found to express my fear but something did come out. It was the beginning of a much more kind and loving relationship with myself (and Steve!).

I wish I could honestly report that my strong defenses have never surfaced since that day. They do. But within moments, minutes or hours I hear the voice, Anger is fear. It helps. I back down. It’s lonely in my bedroom all alone with no supper. It’s nice to know how to liberate myself and return to my family table.