Don't be afraid, my pretties!

Fearless. . .a word I don’t use in my vocabulary very often. I’m fearful of just about everything, sometimes all in one day. There are snakes, dying, going to prison, belts, drowning, not being liked, heights, my car breaking down, being left behind, and so on. However, whenever I think about raw bravery, three women from my past come to mind.

In my 30’s I found myself in an eating disorder support group with three other women. One was anorexic, one bulimic and two of us with overeating issues. All of us had abuse in our past. The primary purpose of this group was to be available to listen to each other’s story.

Julie was a beautiful 20-something who could very easily have walked down a runway for a living. When she shared in our group she peppered her words with laughter that rang clear and contagious. She brought to the roundtable a history of incest and when reporting about her week trying to starve that demon out of her body, a new persona appeared—a blond, blue eyed little girl who needed someone to notice her pain. When our facilitator asked if she could touch her hand or put her arm around Julie, that’s when the tears would flow and the pain would ease. At that moment a calm would descend on our group.

Every week a fellow overeater named Catherine arrived with a 64 oz. Pepsi from the 7-11 and told many stories about the endless responsibilities of being a mother of five children. As she expressed her fatigue, boredom and her food binging, episodes of verbal abuse by her parents aimed at Catherine’s parenting skills would surface. She never cried in front of us.

We made Barb the matriarch of our little sisterhood because she was almost fifty and that seemed ancient to us at the time. She’d been practicing bingeing and purging since high school, through the years of her marriage, motherhood and a divorce. Her honesty about her disease and the laundry list of its effects on her body as she entered midlife were sobering. I’ve not forgotten her ability to cry and smile and rage all in one group session.

Each week we would drag our baggage into the session and back out again afterwards. That was before the advent of suitcases on wheels. When we left we had a heightened sense that things might work out. Looking back, I remember them as three imperfect, hurting women but unwilling to give up, fearless.

Sunday Scribblings' prompt this week is the word fearless. See more bravery here.

Happy Birthday, big guy!

Two birthdays in one week you're asking?

Yup. . . and today's feature is Dave picking up his new (to us) 1998 Royal Star Tour Classic touring bike on Saturday when there was a break in the weather before the next last snowstorm of the year--an exciting day for him because it has been over two years since he's ridden. Before then he owned a Yamaha Virago that he literally rode into the ground and reluctantly put out to pasture when we moved to Minnesota. He was smitten by motorcycle riding at age 7 when he put his hand on the shiny exhaust pipe of a motorcycle he'd seen in Red Lodge, Montana. He left a little skin behind and kept dreaming of the day when he would ride one himself. He's made several cross country trips, riding and writing, on the Virago, as well as Illinois events--yearly Ride for Kids and Toys for Tots and countless charity and poker runs. He rode with fellow veterans as part of Veterans for Kerry' Tour of Honor in '04 on a speaking trip through Wisconsin. For several years he attended the Rolling Thunder® PoW/MIA Demonstration Ride in Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day--Erica rode once with him when she was in undergrad there. I rode with him on the Trail of Tears Remembrance Ride from Tennessee to Alabama one year. He's active in CMA's yearly Run for the Son and the ministries of that Association, was president his chapter in Illinois for 3 years, and is presently VP of this local chapter, RevElations.

Now that we have a bike to ride we are both planning to join BACA (Bikers Against Child Abuse) which requires one year riding with them before starting the membership process. I'm impressed with these bikers who are willing to step out to offer protection and advocacy for abused children. Being a fair-weather rider, I enjoy cruising the winding back roads scouting out antique stores and roadside stands. This bike has an exceptionally comfortable back seat and foot boards instead of pegs, roomy side bags and there's plenty of room for both of us. For now, as long as we can, this will be the next chapter in our empty-nest, apartment, no pets-- life. . .actually how we started out 37 years ago.

So, here we go:

Thursday's child has far to go.

Yesterday was Erica Joy's 27th birthday--the Joy is for the joy she has brought into our world. She's always been the, umm, busy one in our family, the one up for a challenge and actually pretty adept at not getting caught at some of her. . .pursuits. Outdoorsy, pyrotechnic aficionado. smarty-pants, saxophone playing, boxer, friend to unfortunate animals and people, generous, silly, energetic cook, med student, sister to Audrey and daughter who is dearly loved.

Her birth flower is the rose but not her favorite. The diamond gemstone of April is perfect--although she'd argue the fairness of the diamond business--because she generally has to work hard to get where she wants to be. But she shines as clear and brilliant as a diamond. As parents, Dave and I are the luckiest.

Never leave me

L is for leaves--

the many,

the exotic or plain,

the large or small,

the colorful, shiny or velvety.

Isn't Mother Nature clever and flamboyant? She certainly knows how to dress for a party.
If you spend the night she always has a blanket for you and she can nourish you with her remedies.

From season to season. . .

I'm posting these 'leaves' for ABC Wednesday, for today's letter of the alphabet is "L". Stop by Mrs Nesbitt's to see all the creativity.

Thoughts become things.

Dreary weather is predicted for the rest of the week. This is not good news for a melancholy temperament but in spite of the ever present pull toward being a pessimist, today was different. Some of my many flaws don't bother me as much as they used to. But my goal for the next part of my life is not to turn into a brittle, cranky, intolerant, mean or worse yet, pretentious old lady. Not that there aren't days. . .

Anyway, I remembered Pam's advice at her blog, Art and Soul. She said: thoughts become things. So I made up my mind that at least for today, I'd fill my head with good things and off to the botanical gardens I went. Now, I am aware that good intentions can be tested at every turn like inconsiderate drivers, no toilet paper in the stall I chose, and later when I bought groceries on the way home I had one of those Chiquita banana stickers stuck on my hair for who knows how long, that no one told me about. . . the usual stuff.

But the flowers that filled my vision, the birdsong, delicious smell of hyacinths, stocks and lilies, koi in the ponds and the little mice that scurried out to eat below the birdfeeders all found their way to those hungry parts of my soul.

Here's what I saw:

reflections of stocks, lilies and tulips in the Sunken Garden

“O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.” John Milton


“Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.” Francis Beaumont

one of a pair of colorful tropical birds nestbuilding high above the palms. . .look carefully!

bleeding hearts for my friend, Marianne

lilies that could have been fashioned from bolts of silk

In April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower.

Geoffrey Chaucer / Canterbury Tales (modern version)

(painting: The Girl at the Gate--1889--George Clausen)

Monday madness!

Monday begins with snow...again and nothing makes me sillier that seeing snow every month since November...or flipping through the family album. This photo showed up on Erica's Facebook page this week and I had to share.

Yes, my children had rats for pets and yes, I waited until they were over 21 before sharing this fact with very many people.

Erica, on the left has Midnight perched on her shoulder. Audrey has Chelsea and I Can't Remember His Name on the other shoulder. This all came about when some close friends' son had outgrown this whack phase of his life and they instantly thought of our girls as the lucky recipients of their menagerie. We were assured that laboratory rats actually made nice, clean pets who exhibited an affinity for humans. Well, there's still the creepiness factor which didn't seem to bother these guys, especially Erica who went on to own a gerbil, hamster and cats.
Never a dull moment when these girls were around--I was scheduled to bring Midnight for Audrey's 3rd grade show-and-tell one afternoon. I collected the rat in a shoe box and on the way to the car, she jumped out and I stepped on her, squishing her. My neighbor heard my scream and, what a gentleman, collected her flattened remains and disposed of her for me. When I got to school Aud wanted to know why I had Chelsea instead of Midnight and I gave her some lame excuse like Midnight was taking a nap and I didn't want to wake her.

Or the time one of the rats was scurrying under the family room couch and Aud pulled its tail which and it came off in her hand (!) After a trip to the vet where the remainder of the tail was glued shut we had to put out heads together for a cogent and unified version to explain the vet bill to their Dad.

They were, in fact, nice little pets; playful, friendly, soft, clean, and amiable...
...and as for the rats, I never could get past the creepy hairless tail factor--which I never did.

Now I'm off to find the snow boots I packed away for next winter. Silly me.

Make gentle the life of this world.

During my life, Martin Luther King's battle for desegregation was fought far away from Idaho. Though I digested what I read and heard of the news, our blue collar town was made up of white, mostly Mormon residents, farmers and the transitory migrant farm workers. On that score I could easily make the connection between poor working conditions, wage or religious discrimination. Our town had a small population of African Americans living on one side of the tracks who worshipped at a Baptist church across the highway from the Safeway store where my mother worked. I was thirteen when King gave his famous 'I have a dream' speech which opened my heart to a larger problem that I had been distracted and insulated from living out West.

When Rev. King was assassinated forty years ago this week, I was suffering from senioritis, more than ready to graduate high school the next month. It was an election year and I was excited about Senator Frank Church's reelection and Bobby Kennedy's running for president. But the word assassination had already taken up residence in my subconscious, right next door to atomic bombs. Little did I know that just a month after my graduation my hopes about the nation's future would die a slow, tortuous death in the next few years. That's when I learned one of the biggest lessons of my life: things change and then they change again. (words borrowed from Nicoloe Krauss' novel, The History of Love.)

I can recommend this particular video of Bobby Kennedy's words about the King assassination. They seem hauntingly familiar today.

Our Sunday Scribbling's prompt this week is photograph. See more photos here.