This is My Body, This is My Blood

Waking Life

If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside me, threatening the life it belongs to. "Breathe 2 AM/Wreck of the Day 2005" by Anna Nalick

As the daughter of a literary Bible preacher, I grew up on the "Do as I say, not as I do," hypocrisy of good people with good intentions who often forgot the sermon before the brimstone had cooled beneath their Sunday pot roasts. Even my dad, who taught us never to curse would sometimes mutter, "shit!"  as he pawed at his gravy-tipped tie with a shredding paper napkin.

And here, I wrote a couple books about the importance of writing as personal catharsis, yet how often do I allow my emotions to pile up behind the levee until someone pokes a finger between two sandbags and, poof, here comes a flood? More often than I care to admit, thank you. And just like the nice folks who were warned of the dangers before Katrina, I act all surprised when I suddenly find myself perched on the roof of my heart as the sewage of backed-up feelings threatens to carry me away.

As evidenced by Nalick's title of the quoted lyric, it usually isn't until you're alone with your thoughts when you first become aware of that niggling in the back of your mind. You can't blame the insomnia on coffee or spicy food or menopausal night sweats because this thing that has you wide-eyed in the middle of the night has nothing to do with food or hormones and everything to do with unattended issues. Ain't no pillow fluffing or warm milk gonna fix the kind of wakefulness that stares back at you in the dark like a hungry dog next to the dinner table. The only remedy is between the covers of that neglected notebook tucked into the back of your night stand.

So you creep to the living room, trying not to disturb your lover or the cat at the end of the bed as you slip down the hallway with pen in hand. And finally, you write. You write and you write and you write, until your hand cramps and you notice the first bits of light sneaking up on the shadows. You look down at your scribbled pages, a mess of uncivilized sentences riding up and down the paper as if each word was planted by a different hand, and you can't remember writing them. All you know is the thing inside you, that hard little knot of discontent, has left and suddenly you feel weightless.

So you float back to bed and snuggle against the warm back of your lover who asks if you're okay and you say, yes. And for the first time in weeks, you mean it.

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, journaling, essay, blog, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, insomnia

Photo Credit: Still capture from The Pillow Book

Right Livelihood

It is not doing the things we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do
that makes life blessed. Goethe

Last week we had dinner at Chow Novo to celebrate our friends anniversary and S's birthday in one fell swoop. Sometime between the first bottle of Pinot Gris and a tapas plate of Samosas, the conversation turned to livelihoods. Our friends are nearing retirement, and looking forward to when they can live each day as they choose instead of peddling like mad just to keep pace with yesterday's bills. I replied that I love my work and couldn't imagine doing anything else.

"Well, you have all day to do whatever you want," S commented.

Although it's true that my hours are certainly more flexible than people who work outside the home, it's not just the schedule I love. I love the work itself. In fact, if I were financially endowed, I'd probably practice massage therapy anyway, at least to the degree that my body can sustain the physical demands. Especially if I had the opportunity to offer bodywork to those who most need it, and are the least apt to be able to afford it.

When people complain about their work, I wonder what it is that keeps them stuck. Sure, we all need a paycheck, but if you're not enjoying your work, why aren't you aggressively looking for a job more suited to your needs? And if it's absolutely impossible to change jobs, why not just change your attitude toward your job? Thirteen years ago, I was just beginning my second decade in real estate. When I'd first started, the job was about helping people find a home and helping others find a buyer for theirs. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? It was, mostly, and I loved the challenge of bringing the right buyer and seller together. But then gradually, the closings began to take much longer, as the escrow papers grew from a trust deed and a purchase agreement to a stack of legal forms thicker than Barry Bonds biceps. What was once a fun and rewarding career had become mostly litigation prevention. As one who loathes paperwork, I started thinking about a new livelihood.

At the time I was a single parent of three children, but knew it was better to take a financial risk than come home to them crabby from a job I no longer enjoyed. Besides, I'd always encouraged them to explore and develop their innate gifts, so I needed to mentor that philosophy. A few months later I enrolled at KCHA, and made the segue from guiding people into houses, to guiding the bodies that housed those people. Obviously, I didn't go into massage for the money. Although I'm blessed with a faithful clientele and the opportunity to work with lots of interesting, new people at my Avila gig, when it comes right down to it I do this because I love the work.

Take today, for instance. A bride's mother had booked massages for her daughter and seven of her friends. One of those young women requested a clothed "mat massage" so I put her at the end when I could fold up my table and put down the pad. When her turn came, she looked at the table rather longingly, having watched as six of her friends each returned to their suite blissed out from their massages. It was immediately clear that she was afraid she was too heavy for my table, too embarrassed by her body to undress.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a table massage?" I asked. "It feels really good."

"I've never had a massage," she said. Moving toward the center of the room, she put her hand on the foam pad. "It feels really soft."

"How about we give it a try? Nothing too deep--just a relaxing, nurturing massage."

"I suppose we could do that," she said.

Half an hour later, as I cradled her head in my hands, I thought about how much I take for granted in this world. How blessed I was to be giving this girl her first massage. How much I love this thing I do.

Technorati Tags: aging, retirement, right livelihood, body image, dieting, weight gain, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, prose, women, massage therapy, massage

Double-Wide Eyed

This photograph I took of an uprooted tree in Los Osos Oaks Preserve reminds me of how I feel whenever I start thinking about moving. Every single time I settle into a new place I tell myself  this is the last one and yet there I go again, pulling myself up by shallow roots, making plans for yet another transition, be it across town, or all the way across the country.

When I was a little girl, my parents would herd all six of us kids into our VW bus on Saturday to make the 30-minute trek to Muskegon, Michigan, where my grandparents lived in a little yellow house with a huge oak tree in the front yard. My little sister Vonnie and I used to catch toads in the basement window wells, which our grandmother would bat out of our hands and make us scrub until we bled, for fear we'd end up with warts. My grandmother believed this just as strongly as she believed that colored people would "cut off your ears" if you crossed them, refusing to let us play with the dark-skinned kids across the street.

A few years later, when they and one other lady were the last whites on the block, my grandparents sold their little bungalow and moved to Springport Trailer Park, acres of metal boxes in neat little rows like forgotten caskets waiting for a proper burial. I was devastated. How could they give up their beloved house with its claw foot tub and windowed porch for a tin can squeezed between wheeled homes that weren’t nearly as mobile as the people who lived in them?

I got my answer earlier this week when--after weeks upon weeks of unrelenting rain--I was faced with the reality of maintaining an old house with a big yard that needs more work than I have time or money to address. The yard needs more french drains, the skylights are leaking, and the old crank-out windows are long overdue for vinyl replacements. As I added up the projected dollars and hours of labor, it occurred to me that I could sell this house, pay cash for a brand spanking new modular home with almost twice the square footage and a tenth of the maintenance of this place.

It's tempting, to say the least. And yet. And yet no matter how you look at that fancy garden tub, beamed cathedral ceilings, community swimming pool, or even the fact that the lot is near the back of the park right by the off-leash dog area, it's still a mobile home and it's still in a trailer park and despite what anyone says, there's always going to be that apologetic pause before giving directions to one's home. Creekside Estates? They'll say. Oh. The trailer park on South Higuera. I can almost feel the contrasting roots pushing their way out of my head, a Nascar t-shirt tied at my waist as I drink Blatz in long-neckers straight from the bottle on the front porch where fifty yard-ornaments line the carport and no less than a dozen wind chimes hang from the eaves.

But I'm still seriously considering the move, given the advantages. Yes, I love my little house, and I don't want to be married to it. S made it clear he wasn't into yard work and house projects before he moved in, so I can't fault him, but it's starting to feel like every spare nickel and every spare hour is spent on The House. As much as I've enjoyed fixing up this little homestead, I'd rather use that money for concerts and plays and travel and...?

So I can understand now, in retrospect, why my grandparents did what they did. I can almost feel my grandmother's bony hand on my shoulder, telling me it's okay to let go of this house in exchange for an easier life. However, I can't help but also feel her lift my hair, checking my ears, knowing one of those scary kids now sleeps beside me at night. One woman's toad is another woman's prince, Grandma. Warts and all.

Technorati Tags: aging, relationships, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, moving, mobile home, trailer, grandparents,

Through A Glass Sparkly

Why is it we act as if our days are innumberable, as if we have the luxury of wishing time away, so unhappy are we with the daily challenges of our empty lives?  As if  we expect the clouds to part, traffic to clear, clocks to speed up at the mere hint of our pathetic suffering. Let me tell you something. The day will come when the sun beats at your neck like a hot pestle on cracked mortar as you play tug-of-war with Bermuda Grass--leafy snakes with an unwavering death grip on all that is green, all that you hoped to grow. Resting a hand on your lower back, you'll rise and pick at a sliver under your dirty fingernail, as salty beads of toil chase each other between your breasts. Standing outside the bedroom window, you'll have forgotten mornings you woke to rain battering the glass, cold floors beneath bare feet as you made for the espresso machine, longing for a sharp angle of burning light  to dry out your aching bones. All the while, cursing the rain: go away!  go away!

A morning not unlike this one right here, and the six before it. By the looks of those blotchy patches of yellow against the radar screen, several more of them working up a good sweat, just over the horizon..

There comes a time in one's life when you realize happiness cannot be measured not by the hours of sunshine in a day, fat bank accounts, shiny car(s) in your driveway, or one's peg on the career ladder, but by the weight of each moment  as it leaves you once and for all. There will always be another car, another day to prove yourself in the corporate world, another paycheck to deposit, but once a moment is squandered, there's no getting it back. I feel this as deeply as I feel the immediate quickening, like an invisible seam suddenly taken in, with every instant lost to a word or an act or the mere passing of of silence between two breaths in each careless step across this finite life.

Sometimes I pay close attention to my little package of moments, but more often than not, they escape unwitnessed until night time, when I lie in bed and grasp at bits and pieces of my day, gather broken fragments against my chest, hoping for a second chance at retrospective redemption. Did I infect others with a smile? Did I pause to notice the texture of wet grass under my feet? Did I give thanks for the unconditional love of these amazing creatures in my care? Will I remember how good this feels, the soft pillow under my head, my lover curled around me, as I fall asleep tonight?

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, relationships, essay, blog, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, sunset, regrets, weblog