So This is What Happened

True story: a) I have now lost 20 lbs in about 6 weeks. b) I felt pressure about it. But it was all me. Kind of.  First, I feel the best when my body is healthy and it hasn’t been in about a year. I am not big-boned in any way, so extra fluff looks bad on me. I’m not particularly tall, so I have no place to spread it. And a good part of the time I don’t care. But sometimes I do. Sometimes I do a lot…. And I’m going to say this as a disclaimer: If you are in my family, I will say things that will not probably, but will, definitely  hurt you. Don’t read any further than this, because what I’m gonna say will stick.

There was a premium, an A+ given to family members on both my mom and my dad’s side of the family if you were thin. Period. And, in my mind, you were not as valued if you weren’t. You were something else, like ” thicker,” or “big-boned,” or really just lazy and of less value because your body was a representation of the real you. Everything about you. I would like to say that I was strong enough to say ” Eff- off” to that, but it wouldn’t be enough and more importantly,  it wouldn’t be true..  I have been sized up, told that I might not get married if I kept it up (eating) when I was well under even a reasonable weight at 16, asked if I was pregnant when I was 13, told my butt got bigger when I hit puberty and that I couldn’t wear anything I wanted because I wasn’t  a rail. I cannot rise above a life time of this and I will not point fingers at a specific person. But it haunts me, and has every day for the better part of the last 20 years.

The best thing that has happened to me is that I met Corey. I can barely write this and not cry because I am such a complicated person and still he see’s me. He know’s there is always a rusty screw and I am forever trying to find an easy way to fix me, but he stays. He wants to see “the end” of our story, which will hopefully not be for years to come. That said, I am not doing anything dangerous, but running my ass off and watching what I eat.  And for the first time, unlike the last time I started running, I feel free. I am doing it because I want to. Because I feel in control. Because I feel stronger. Because I know that all you will find at the bottom of a carton of ice-cream or a can of Pringle’s is that it’s empty. Much more empty than the shell of the person you have walked around pretending you are for the last 20 years of your life. And for once, I am running towards something, instead of away from everybody.

If You Were Here, What Would You Say?

I have found myself asking that question a thousand times over the years since my dad died. There are some answers only a dad can answer, problems only the person whose DNA you carry in your skin, your heart, your soul, can understand and when that person is gone you’re left seeking. Filling in the blanks from real life scenarios, only wishing that he was there to tell you your guess was right.

This is what I do know. A boy in 6th grade, pulled down his pants at the back of my math class and waived his ass in my face. I told the teacher and she disciplined him. I told my dad and he went nuclear. I had to go to conferences with my dad and the math teacher that year and the tongue lashing he gave her was scary. And epic. I felt like an outcast when we moved to Reed City when I was in first grade, so I came home every day and hid in the library and read voraciously trying to escape the inadequacy of knowing no one. I also typed  out stories on a typewriter in my bedroom to the point where my dad contacted the local newspaper editor who gave me my own column and my first paying job at $20 a pop in the Herald News. My dad also tried to get me on the Johnny Carson show… (that didn’t pan out). He flew home early when I got the measles, took my calls at his job when he wasn’t supposed to, and bought me a cake at Big Boy when I started my period.  And then he was gone.

I didn’t cry at his funeral. I hate to cry in front of anyone, especially large groups of people. It was a spectacle almost; all the people that came to pay their respects and say good bye and to wish us well and how sorry they were that he was gone. Gone…..It would almost have been easier if he was a dead beat Dad.  Someone I wouldn’t have had to miss because he chose to miss it anyway. Someone I knew who was out there but I could get some therapy and deal with my daddy-issues, and move on.  But instead we were given an amazing, world class Dad that made every day of my 13 years with him, worth it. And every day of the last 19 that he has been gone, painful.

My brother; the most complicated and delicate of souls, has missed having the man who was so proud to have a son, raise him; to teach him how to swing a racket, strum a guitar, make nice with a girl. And I know Steve grieves this… and wonders. And this is what I know: My brother has broad shoulders and works hard. He has a wicked sense of humor and a great, self-depracating laugh. He loves his family and would do anything for any one of us, just like his dad would have. And if I could fill in the blanks for my dad, he would say to him, and to my sister and to me…. Love God, Love Your Neighbor and Remember Where You Came From.

And I hope that’s enough.

Sometimes Babies CAN be the “U” Word

I often write about matters from the heart; things in my life that I have observed from a holistic and real-life approach. But as E L James “50 Shades,” books have described over and over and over and over again,  we women have an inner goddess inside us all and mine is quite funny. I might not be funny, but my inner goddess, or maybe more appropriately, wart wearing Medusa is.  Most things that go on around me I think could be parodied into a SNL skit. I wish I could stop this train of thought especially when something serious arises, but I can’t. And it makes life more interesting. In other words, if you see me laughing to myself one day, don’t be alarmed and call Network 180 to haul me away. So goes my Ugly Baby Story….

It happened about 8 years ago that between our travels from GR to a destination up north we stopped at a McDonald’s for a quick bite and bathroom break. I was going to say “potty,” but that’s on my “nope” word list too. Corey took little Pete to the bathroom while I stood in line. In front of me, a baby that was maybe around, say 15 months old was standing near his mother, when he toddled backward in my direction. Instinctively, I caught him before he hit the floor, but when he looked up at me I recoiled in horror because he was truly one of the most unattractive babies I had ever laid eyes on with vampire-like teeth, hair that couldn’t decide which way to grow and eyes that disappeared when he smiled.

It actually pained me greatly to write that last long line above. Not because it isn’t true, but because I know that everyone who is reading this is thinking what a “B” I am right now. But, before you pull out the spears people, I think we all silently and collectively need to agree that not every infant is the gossamer, glowing love bug that we envision when we hear the word “baby.” The good news is that a good 98% of these babies probably grow up to be normal/average looking children- ya’ know when they get teeth and regular hair and don’t drool on themselves. I was in the 2%.

I don’t know that I was a particularly ugly baby, but I was definitely an unattractive 5 thru age 13’er. In fact, my 4th grade year my hair was so short ( I’ll save that story for another time) and I had non name-brand chuck shoes with obnoxiously thick soles that when I walked into the girls room at my elementary school, a girl laughingly remarked the boy’s room was next door. And then I went to my locker where I had saved a whole $3.99 chocolate log covered with shredded caramel and coconut from the school PTO Christmas catalog and ate the entire thing in that very lonely, green stall. I still eat treats in the bathroom today; comforting bad habits are hard to break. But I’m really well-adjusted now. I am!! See, I had to write it twice just saw that I, I mean you, got the point.

I hope I haven’t revealed anything that most of you, probably really all of you, have felt about an unattractive baby that you have come across in your life. I write this to let your guilt be free and I could not have laced that statement with more sarcasm if I tried. That said, these little children are absolutely precious miracles sent from above….. even if for a little while they have faces only their mothers could love.

Bucket List

The biggest lie I could tell you or that you could tell yourself is that something in your life; whether a long, well-lived life or a relatively short one like my own, is that something hasn’t happened to you along the way to make you pause and wonder why you were placed in a world where tragedy was allowed to exist with you in the center of the storm. Maybe you will go through life seamlessly for awhile, but it will hit. Something will happen that will knock you off-kilter. Someone close to you will die, someone will hurt you, reject you, make you feel like next to nothing. Addiction might rob you. Life will one day throw you up against a wall. But you will bounce back,  because when you’re brave, you do.

Nineteen years ago, my dad died. At 44 years old that seems so tragic. Only 12 years older than I am right now. If I had a bucket list and 12 more years to add promising drops to it, what would they be? Hmmmm…. what if they had already happened? Like the time we grilled on a beach by the sea in Florida. My kids fished in a nearby channel, while we met strangers, also grilling, that became instant friends because they played Joni Mitchell, had chilled white wine and shared the breeze and a sunset with us. Or the time I watched my sister try on her wedding dress. I didn’t know it at the time, but my heart lurched ahead a thousand years thinking of her belonging to someone other than us that would make her so happy; and I was the first to see her in it. Or the times Corey read the Bible to the boys; times he could have been doing a million other things but spent the time sharing God’s promise to our children.

Yes, yes…. things will happen to us. Many things…but our bucket list doesn’t have to start the minute we know our life won’t be a dress rehearsal. The drops can come and we can accept them, appreciating each day without overturning the bucket.

My Therapy Bill

My sister did the kindest of things and told me she would take 2 of my kids off my hands the first weekend they got out of school. Naturally, I was willing to shed my 2 most challenging; the bottom 2. My sister has a pool, basically buys the boys whatever they want, and lets them eat ice-cream before bed-time without making them brush their teeth.(In other words, she doesn’t have her own kids). But, nevertheless, she was the first person besides my husband to lay eyes on Remy and they all think she’s the shit. Her credibility is upped by the fact that she plays basketball and can whip me in a wrestling match. And an arm wrestling match. And a…….. just forget it.

But my most independent of children is most dependent on me. Stellan. He never wants to leave , even for a weekend that is a promised good time. It kills me to think of all the opportunities he gives up so that he can stay in my shadow. The one and only time my mom kept him as a toddler in her nearby home (without Peter), she returned him at 3 am. I did stay home longest with him after he was born, and nursed him well past the age of 1. But this is a boy that just today, caught a baby blue gill with his bare hands. Who saw a fellow classmate, also today, climb to the top of a pole at the park and had to do it 3 times just to prove that he could. And could do it better. This same boy who wasn’t afraid to walk across the street the first week our neighbors moved in and ask if he could eat dinner with them because their dinner smelled good. He was 4.  But, you see,  all of these experiences are within the safety of being an arms reach away from me.

He tells me often that he loves me most. That no one holds a candle to me, because, after all I gave birth to him. The intensity of his physicality is also matched by his personality which is never ending and always asking for more. More of life, more of me, more of the toy aisle as Meijer, the hidden candy drawer, and 2 more cough drops. Because he needs them. When my sister offered up a weekend without the challenges of raising a boy that tests your every button for the 15 waking hours he is in your presence, I couldn’t resist. But Stellan wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t leave me. He couldn’t leave me and tears filled his long lashed eyes with a thousand reasons I couldn’t let it happen. Because my sister and I are meeting halfway and likely at a place with a bathroom, for a half second I thought maybe I could have my sister take him to the bathroom and I could make a break for it. Sure he would cry..maybe even for two hours, but he would recover enough to make it bearable for 48 hours. And I would pay his therapy bill in 10 years and address his abandonment issues by paying his cell phone bill and insurance well into his 30’s while letting him run a black market operation out of our basement.

Except in the end, I have come to this: I don’t have to understand Stellan or the way his clock ticks. God never promised me the child I dreamed of, but the child  He dreamed of for me. I don’t have to get it, but I do have to show up every day and be Stellan’s person. So Pete filled in as the 2nd child in my sister’s promised awesome weekend. Remy has seemed to follow Pete’s laid back way of letting life come and go and is going also. And Stellan and I will have  a weekend of time together and whatever that brings I am open to it. And I did discover this– if our weekend is spent near water, we’re sure to not go hungry.

Love Me Like That

Who didn’t have Keds in 1988?

I credit the singer Jeff Buckley for making me feel like writing again. Truth be told, I actually haven’t been in the mood, because for a minute I didn’t feel like I had anything interesting to say. That changed. I started to think of one my favorite topics: L-O-V-E. Oh that messiest of emotions that I swear is at the root of life itself and the things that motivate us most. The way we grew up surrounded by it, fighting for it, figuring out how to get a bigger slice of it. The way we do it, and hoard it… and yes, even at times when it seems to be most convenient, withhold it, even from those that mean the most to us. Don’t even get me started on the different way we love different people. We should view all people as equal, in terms of their rights, but we sure don’t love them all the same.

A few days ago, I noticed that my brother had written something very sweet and touching to my sister on her Facebook wall. Something like, “I love you SO much and miss you.” Really, I didn’t feel jaded, but in jest, I wrote my own little comment that said, “Hey what about me? Am I chopped liver or something!?” He didn’t respond (immediately) and I let it go without a second thought. But then I woke up this morning to a very tender hearted email from him explaining how his relationship with Emily is different, closer in some ways (they are closer in age, after all) and how he did love me, but how hard it was to think of my sister as someone that might not perpetually wear sweat pants and high tops and to think of her as someone wearing a gorgeous gown in a few months to marry her best friend. To join someone in a matrimony that means she will legally and officially fly the Samuelson coop and start her own nest. I paraphrased the last part, but that is the gist of it and actually, I get it. I flew that same coop 9 years ago, and left those two birds behind. One can feel like the loneliest number.  This is one little corner of the way we have circulated as a sibling group with our own sets of rules, and ever shifting loyalties among each other, but a united front to outsiders, even extended family.

I found out a whole different kind of love existed when I had my own children. Don’t get me wrong, I love my immediate family and my husband to the point where I feel like my heart could explode, but I have practiced manipulative love with my mom, stepdad, Corey, Emily and Steve at some point in my life. Sometimes, at particularly tense moments that EVERY family goes thru, I tried to convince myself I felt the oppositve of love for them and would withhold it. (If we’re being completely honest, sometimes I still do). But this crazy, knock you down so hard you have to surrender to it, thing happened when my babies were born. It was this unwrapped shiniest and best gift that no one told me about, but for them, for all three little boys full of puppy dog tails and mischief and bright eyes, and prayers for a freer Cuba, I have found something that feels the closest thing to PURE, I have ever felt in my life.  Ahem, at least since I was 17.

We all learned how to love when we were little. I hope all of you were raised by people who showered you with it and told you what a wonder the miracle of your life would be. Sadly, I know for some of you that wasn’t the case.  But inside of us we all have the capacity to give it. It’s the free-est and best gift we can extend to “our people.” Just this evening my neighbor boy, practically my 4th son, called from across the street that he couldn’t play because he had his 5th grade graduation. I yelled “congrats and good luck,” and went back inside, but not before I heard Stellan call across, “I LOVE YOU BRADY!!!!!” To shout it from your heart, so the mountains can hear you, to a boy that is everything you dream to be in five years, is love at it’s finest.

Even in the middle of being the lonely bird in a nest that has protected you your whole life, love will always come back and bring you along for the ride….

Can we all say a collective, “awwwww”