24/7

Baal

2011-02-22T00:32:00.000-08:00

Each spectral port,
each human eye

is shot through with a hole, and everything we know
goes in there, where it feeds a blaze. In a flash

the baby's old . . .

--Heather McHugh (quoted in lit by Mary Karr)

Bazemore thinks she can steal my illustrations and get away with the crime, because, as she stated, "I have the PhD and you don't. Who are they going to believe?"

We aren't considering the same "they," are we? No, indeed, we are not.

Essential Nancy-ness

2010-04-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Sociologists say the Baby-boomers are the first American generation to leave their world worse than they found it for reasons such as: poor economy, greater social strife, and a damaged environment. Nutritionists say my children’s generation will be the first to die before their parents due to obesity and lack of exercise. My generation, labeled “Generation-X,” was deemed angst-ridden, disenfranchised, and lost. Chuck Klosterman has the most dead-on assessment of my generation stating: “Twenty-somethings in the nineties were by and large depressed about the future, mostly because (a) they knew there was very little to look forward to, and (b) they were obsessed with staring into the eyes of their own self-absorbed sadness.” Yet, “Gen-X,” which has many labels, has been the generation to make many contributions to American society such as: the band Nirvana and Spongebob Squarepants. I want to be one of the major contributors of my generation. I want to be revolutionary. I want to change the way people think.

How do I achieve such ambitious goals amidst an unrelenting tide of people who speak negatively against my desires? “You’re a dreamer” and “it’s unlikely” and “good luck” along with not-so-subtle eye rolling accompany comments of those with whom I have shared my dreams. So when asked to write a short essay communicating my hopes and dreams, I stalled. But, dear reader, because I am not looking you in the eye and will not firsthand feel or sense any negativity towards my dreams, I shall make you privy to my plans.

I hope to change the way people think about beauty, about women, about themselves, and about what is truly important in this life (no, it’s not a Hummer, a big house, a boat, vacation property, and a precious stone delivered from the exploitations of slave labor). Beauty: what is beauty and who defines the term? Women should not have to choose between a successful career and a close family. I should be free to work hard and well and reap the rewards of dedication to my field. Yet, I should not be penalized because I was late or absent due to wiping tears from my daughter’s face and holding her until she felt better. What kind of society makes a mother decide between advancing her career and caring for her child simply due to a schedule conflict? I am not a cog in the wheel. I am the wheel.

My dreams are to become a prolific and best-selling author not for writing what is popular but for writing was is good and right. My dream is to leave a legacy of educating others to create a world which is not only good for themselves but also good for their neighbors. My dream is to leave this world better than I found it. I was born in 1968, a year in which my country was in great turmoil. My dream is that my daughters long outlive me in a world in which women are appreciated for who they are and given opportunities based upon the strength of their character. One person can make a difference and I intend to be that person for my generation.

Rooster

2009-08-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

Does a piece of our parent’s soul imprint upon us? Do our dreams play scenes from our lives as well as scenes from Mom’s life and Dad’s life? Does my hell play a phantasmagoria in my children’s sleep? Is it real or hyperbole and how do I differentiate?

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

2009-06-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

I need another chance. I need more time. I need you to hear me. Why did you run away? Why did you hide? And why did you take your life? I abhor your self-absorbed pity. I loved your smile—the happy one—when you were sober.

Damn it. Damn you. Go to hell—but—not really. Don’t go.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

2009-06-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

It was the ancient superstition that unhappiness resides in the country without not within, and that one may cure a broken heart by a simple change of address.
Ellen Glasgow

I prefer to attend a funeral rather than attending a wedding. I still get to dress up and enjoy a nice buffet. There is generally no dancing which is fine with me because my dancing skills are still at the three-year-old level. And people seem to be more sincere when reflecting upon the life of one who has died.

Why do couples marry? Religious reasons aside, why do couples feel the need to legally entangle themselves to the point where autonomy becomes a foreign concept? Why then, when one or both believe the union no longer works, must there be such contempt?

Breaking up is difficult—yes—but holding on and reopening a wound is worse. Time and distance are necessary. The belief in The One is a myth. There are many good people out there. And many who will be attracted to you. Yet you don’t have to marry the next good guy or gal who comes along. Commitment is much more than a legal document.

Reincarnation

2009-06-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

Mary Karr presents her childhood in an almost unbroken panorama. Mine is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear like isolated trees . . . the kind that look as if they might like to grab and eat you.
Stephen King

Write first and then read books after. That is the deal. I agreed because I need to focus on writing. To write is to give my demons a voice. I fear what they say. And I fear re-entering the dark forest of my past.

Several nights ago I had a dream in which I found a make-shift grave. At first glance there were weathered gray pieces of small flat wood. The wood was neatly stacked over a coffin shaped mound. Rocks held the wood down. I began to pick up the rocks and toss them aside. Then I began tossing the wood aside. Under the wood and rock was chicken wire. The chicken wire formed a cage around a human body.

I completely uncovered the body from its grave. Unafraid and curious, I began to unravel the muslin which covered the figure. Upon exposing her face, the body came to life with a smile, “Hi Nancy.” It was my mom.

She, my mom, came to life and I forged a new relationship with her. We got along. We talked. She listened and took interest in my life, in my interests.

Details in the Fabric

2009-06-06T09:54:00.000-07:00

The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle.
Stephen Crane

I cannot grasp the life unlived. A mind unlearned. Holding onto hope until the last breath and yet still unrealized. Why did she stop trying? Why did she give up? Why couldn’t she love me and hold me and tell me everything will be all right?

Lachrymose, I sit unable to identify the ache. Lamenting a relationship never realized. Why am I unable to move on? Mom, I need you—still—I need you.

At the time, Mariam did not understand. She did not know what this word harami--bastard--meant. Nor was she old enough to appreciate the injustice, to see that it is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born.
Khaled Hosseini

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

2009-06-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw

I’m sitting here eating a large piece of white cake, the kind with the thick lardy hydrogenated oil frosting, thinking of how I wish you adored me. I feel like a silly junior high girl with a crush. I take another bite of cake and shake my Starbucks cup. The soy chai latte is all gone. The cake will make me feel better. The cake will fill up the emptiness inside. But the cake doesn’t cure the aching and the longing. The cake doesn’t make me laugh until my side hurts—it doesn’t make me laugh at all. It doesn’t make me feel like you do.

2009-03-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

Human beings are made up of flesh and blood and a miracle fiber called courage.

~George Patton

I run in honor of every person I couldn’t save. Many people in my family on my dad’s side, including my dad, died of various forms of cancer. Several people on my mom’s side died due to conditions related to mental illness. I know powerlessness.

With Team in Training I take back some of the power because the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is making progress. Every week I learn of someone who has survived because of research and patient care through LLS. Please donate.

Team In Training

2009-02-28T07:09:00.000-08:00

You haven’t truly lived until you’ve done something for someone who can never repay you.

~Unknown

I am running the inaugural Seattle Rock n' Roll Marathon on June 27, 2009 with Team in Training which is a branch of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. My goal is to raise $2800. Seventy-five cents of every dollar raised goes to patient care and research to find a cure. Please visit my Team in Training web-page to make a donation and to check my progress. Thank you.
http://pages.teamintraining.org/wa/rnrseatl09/nzook

Be the Change

2009-01-22T20:09:00.000-08:00

Your Own Reality

2009-01-22T19:27:00.000-08:00

People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.

Jim Morrison
The Doors

Soak Up the Sun

2009-01-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

Driving Lessons

2008-12-31T09:50:00.000-08:00

Oh sure, I can get around town, manage the freeway, and even drive through Oregon blizzards, yet pulling into my driveway was the most daunting challenge. I got stuck in a snow burr.

Everything

2008-12-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

Christmas music is grand. I enjoy the time of year when Christmas tunes are played nearly everywhere. However, I feel comfort in getting back to my alternative digs. Creed, Hinder, 3 Doors Down, Nickleback, Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots, and Tonic put me in my comfort zone. The edgy riffs tap my creativity. It’s good to be back.

Music enables me to escape to a place where I feel I belong. Often I have a longing to be anywhere other than here. Perhaps it’s selfishness. Perhaps it’s fatigue. Or perhaps I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and regret becoming distracted upon the path to self-actualization. I wanted to be a rock star.

Edna Pontellier walked out into the ocean and drowned herself. Why? I mean really—why—why couldn’t she find contentment in her life? Was it resentment? Love lost? Self-absorption? Or was it simply because her happy place was in the ocean—free from obligation—freedom and autonomy.

When Words Fail

2008-12-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

Conditions would some way adjust themselves, but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life.

Kate Chopin
The Awakening

A woman at work told me, “Reading is a waste of time.” I looked at her as she smiled, shook her head, and leaned over her reheated left-over meal. I returned to Jude the Obscure. I haven’t spoken to her since then.

I love words. I enjoy the way many sound and work. I work with great earnest to increase my vocabulary. I love reading and writing and consider it as essential to my well-being as eating. Yet often when I work to put some words down, I fail. They don’t work. I prefer written words to spoken ones.

Today, I was told “you shouldn’t talk like that.”

I said, “Why not? It’s the truth.”

Then he walked off because listening to me was a waste of his time.

When Hell Freezes Over

2008-12-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

As of right now, at 7:45 pm, it is 7º with some wind. And I’m thinking hell doesn’t sound like the absolute worst place to be. Antarctica or The Arctic Tundra would be far worse. I have seen images of the faces of those crazy-insane people who brave the harsh elements. It’s scary.

I’m leaving Cheney this week to head back to California for Christmas. I haven’t been back since moving up here four years ago. On cold days like this I question my motives in moving from the sunny weather. I will be in Sacramento for two days and then down to Anaheim to play in Disneyland for five days. Yay!

Pop Culture Belongs to Everyone

2008-12-14T09:36:00.000-08:00

This morning I awoke burdened by the complexity of pop culture and its influence upon each generation. I was still hung-up on how today’s twenty-something group is listening to the music of my past, when my husband said, “Pop-culture belongs to everyone.” Huh. Then as I lay in bed--he on his way to work--he kissed my cheek and said, “The Doors and Queen were before our time.” Huh. I did the same thing. I clung to the good stuff, timeless music with kick-ass lyrics and sound.

Perhaps the problem isn’t within who is listening to what, but rather how the hell did I get to forty this fast? I was still lying in bed, thankful my children were not yet awake, wondering, “Is this a mid-life crisis?” Is the mid-life crisis when I wonder how did I get here and how much time do I have left?

The Doors:

Living in My Past

2008-12-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

Recently I discovered my twenty-something friend is living in my past. I think “very cool” and then “wait a minute—that’s my past.” The music I grew up on, made-out to, and recovered from heart-break with, are favs of the new twenty-something crowd. I’m unable to discern my thoughts on this phenomenon. I don’t understand it.

Another recent discovery is of author Chuck Klosterman:

When sociologists and journalists started writing about the sensibilities that drove Gen Xers, they inevitably used words like angst-ridden and disenfranchised and lost. As of late, it's become popular to suggest that this was a flawed stereotype, perpetuated by an aging media who didn't understand the emerging underclass.

Actually, everyone was right the first time.

All those original pundits were dead-on; for once, the media managed to define an entire demographic of Americans with absolute accuracy. Everything said about Gen Xers--both positive and negative--was completely true. Twenty-somethings in the nineties rejected the traditional working-class American lifestyle because (a) they were smart enough to realize those values were unsatisfying, and (b) they were totally fucking lazy. Twenty-somethings in the nineties embraced a record like Nirvana's Nevermind because (a) it was a sociocultural affront to the vapidity of the Reagan-era paradigm, and (b) it fucking rocked. Twenty-somethings in the nineties were by and large depressed about the future, mostly because (a) they knew there was very little to look forward to, and (b) they were obsessed with staring into the eyes of their own self-absorbed sadness. There are no myths about Generation X. It's all true.

Chuck Klosterman
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Tracy Chapman:

Fair Weather Christians

2008-12-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

We were afraid of crude Salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes.
C.S. Lewis

Some people try on Christianity like trying on a new hair color. Like the ridiculous cliché of “blondes have more fun,” some believe Christians have an easier life. As though “giving your heart to God” is the key to the door of Candy Land. They give their heart to magic Jesus.

Yet when the devastation of rape, suicide, or chronic illness occurs, they abandon their magic Jesus stating “I cannot believe in a God who would allow such a thing.” People will believe what they want to believe about mere mortals and spiritual deities.

I believe. Yet, I am not naïve. I wonder. How do I know if my interpretation of the Bible is accurate? How do you know if your interpretation of what I am writing is accurate? Where is my mom’s spirit right now? Is she in heaven, or in hell, or at the Columbia Basin Cemetery, or with my sister, or with me? What really happens after the body dies?

School Lunches

2008-12-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

My dad was born during the Great Depression. He was the youngest of eight children. His mom was an immigrant from Stockholm, Sweden and his dad a disabled veteran from World War I. In his family it was an honor to serve in a branch of the United States military. One of his brothers, Robert Lee, gave his life for this country in World War II and another brother, Wayne, served as a Merchant Marine during peace time. My dad enlisted as PFC in the United States Army at age 18 and was soon sent overseas to fight in the Korean War (then called a police action).

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950. Troops from Communist North Korea invaded South Korea. My dad was on the front-line. I have lost the photo that indicates which infantry he was in,or more likely, I ripped it up. Dad destroyed many of the war photos because the battle was devastating. The images were burned into his brain. My bedtime stories consisted of how his platoon fought the “Guucs” and how land-mines were everywhere. One day, my dad and two buddies were walking through the South Korean Jungle, not far from Pusan, when a land-mine exploded beneath them. His buddies were blown to bits. My dad lost consciousness and woke some days later in a military hospital.

Usually, an injury such as Dad’s meant a ticket home to the States. He still had all of his limbs, and because the casualties were great, Dad was sent back out to the front-line. One night when he and his platoon were in a ditch they sensed the “Guucs” all around. Unfortunately one of the guys was too anxious. The enemy was close. The soldiers were scared. The guy peaked out and suddenly North Korean soldiers were jumping out of trees and bushes. My dad was captured and taken as a Prisoner of War until the armistice agreement was signed on July 27, 1953. For the first time in our country’s history, the soldiers didn't come back as heroes. Their return was not at all celebrated.

On the train ride from the east coast to the west, back home to Spokane, Washington, my dad ripped off all of his medals, including the Purple Heart, from the breast of his jacket and threw them from the train. The Korean War was one of the bloodiest wars in history. He fought for freedom. He had to integrate back into society. Several years later he married and started a family.

―

My mom was a nurse at the Veteran’s Administration hospital in Spokane. She worked graveyard shift. When she got home from work she would drink several Bohemian beers while she set her hair in pink rollers leaving Dad in charge of getting my younger sister and me ready for school. This included making our school lunches. Sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper and a fruit or vegetable from our garden. Occasionally, a graham cracker with frosting sandwiched between. Lunch-time was a humiliating experience for me.

At school, kids were separated by cold lunchers and hot lunchers. For cold lunch, we got in a separate line to buy our milk and sat at tables on the left side of the gym/lunch room. The privileged kids who got hot lunch sat on the right side of the gym. The hot lunch line was on the left side of the gym which provided the opportunity for the evil children to mock us cold lunch kids for what we brought. The humiliation of a peanut butter and lettuce sandwich was more than a second-grader should have to bear.

Dad didn’t get it. I would come home with impassioned speeches as to how I desperately wanted a “normal” lunch. A peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich please. An apple or an orange was fine, but no rhubarb. No radishes. My dad would just shake his head. Then he would talk about waiting in line, during the Great Depression, with his mom and brothers and sisters for government issued food. He would tell me about the rice slop given to him in the Chinese Communist concentration camp. As the soupy rice was tossed to him the soldiers would constantly say: “You American piece of shit.”

Being teased for a peanut butter and lettuce sandwich didn't seem, to him, worth crying about.

Love Vibes

2008-12-04T17:35:00.000-08:00

My experiment worked well. I wrote a love-note. It consisted of two epigraphs, an introduction, and then the love-note portion. I had fun. Additionally, I received a great love-note which made me laugh and smile. Try it. Send a note to someone you are fond of. Make it friendly, creative, and fun. Send out the love vibes and see what comes back at you.

The Way to My Heart

2008-11-30T12:17:00.000-08:00

I love baked goods—yummy—especially those baked up at All American Desserts in Spokane. They have Humbles which are a delicious, make you feel good, molasses cookie. Their cakes are good too. I have tasted: Washington apple walnut cake with cream cheese frosting, orange cream cake with vanilla butter cream frosting, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and raspberry filling, and white cake with vanilla butter cream frosting and raspberry filling. I have enjoyed each slice with great pleasure and enthusiasm. Homeostasis is achieved within my body, mind, and spirit.

Oh sure, I like non-dessert food too. For instance, my lunch today consisted of a turkey, mayo, and cranberry sandwich on sourdough bread with Baked Lays original chips and a green tea. You may call it comfort food; I call it being good to me. True love lies within a soy latte with two raw sugars and a couple shakes of nutmeg alongside a fresh scone. And I am most fond of my friends who feed me. Recently my friend likened me to a cat. Okay. Just love me and feed me and I’ll be yours for life.

Time-Out

2008-11-29T14:01:00.000-08:00

The first week at August's was a consolation, a pure relief. The world will give you that once in a while, a brief time-out; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

Sue Monk Kidd
The Secret Life of Bees

Merry Christmas Darling

2008-11-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

Christmas shopping is out of control. Society is crazy. How is the Christmas spirit of peace and love realized when a man is trampled to death in pursuit of a discount gift? Sure, I enjoy gift-giving, but not to the point of killing another person. One well thought out gift is superior to several. Like words, if there are too many they begin to lose their meaning.

I have a romantic and idealized Christmas fantasy: a warm winter cabin amidst a cold and snowy night, a toasty fire, hot coffee, pumpkin pie and gingerbread cookies, twinkling lights, and being surrounded by those whom I love and who love me back. And since we’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Perhaps it is asking too much to give of ourselves, our time, and our lives. My mom worked holidays at the hospital because she was paid time and a half. She was a single mom just trying to get by. I put on my brave face and decorated the small tree with whatever I could create from around the house. My little sister and I occupied our time with make believe and reading. There weren’t any gifts under the tree and Santa stopped filling my stocking. Meanwhile, I wished for the happy ending as in A Christmas Carol. My Christmas wish was to be loved.

As a little girl, I wanted a mom and a dad who loved me. I wanted a big feast of yummy food and a large family gathering. I wanted to feel safe. I wished for the Christmas miracle and the happy ending. I still wish and dream and hope—for happily ever after—I suppose I always will.

A little girl in my pre-school class, whose family consists of her and her mom, shared her wish with me: “This Christmas I want a dad, a little brother, and a puppy.”

What is your Christmas wish?

Love Notes

2008-11-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

Is someone sending you handwritten messages? Is he or she putting pen to paper and declaring unyielding devotion to you? Does your certain someone believe you hung the moon and your smile lights the stars? Yes? Good for you and send some love right on back. No? I’m there with you. And I am sad.

I’d be feeling swell if a fella was sending me an occasional note saying, “Gee, I sure think you’re neat.” Original, grammatically correct, and a little goofy would due me just fine. Don’t know what to say? The words don’t have to be awe inspiring, just sweet and sincere.

Do you have a special someone? Send your sweet-heart a love note. See what happens. Maybe you’ll receive one back. Perhaps you will add a delightful new dimension to your relationship. I was in seventh grade when I received my last love note. Back when adoration was pure, simple, and fresh.

Obscurity

2008-11-22T12:41:00.000-08:00

Perhaps Sue was thus venturesome with men because she was childishly ignorant of that side of their nature which wore out women's hearts and lives.

Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure

Personal History

2008-11-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge; I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others, but the world may judge for itself: shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture, and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.

Anne Bronte
Agnes Grey

Mistakes

2008-11-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

Recently I have noticed dialogue in several movies professing the value of making mistakes. The characters claim to not regret making them because of lessons learned. Oh brother. Part of my brain wants to accept the advice thinking perhaps I haven’t yet reached the maturity to grasp such a concept. However, I am more often on the side of regret. I prepare, research, and weigh out the pros and cons of each decision attempting to avoid mistakes. Yet I still make many.

I fear trouble for myself and I fear hurting others. Having children makes me more cautious. I feel like I am reading one of those books where I can choose which path the character will travel upon, and then I skip to the designated page. I read on through the chapter knowing there will be another choice which will affect and direct me to the predetermined ending.

When I was a kid, I read all possible endings and then I read through all of the options. Once I knew all of the character’s options and possible outcomes I would read the book for enjoyment. I could then enjoy the story because I felt confident in my decisions. Unfortunately, life doesn’t play out as neatly as children’s literature. The line between right and wrong choices is blurred.

For example: where is the balance between selfish and self-sacrificing? The thin piece of monofilament is often invisible to me. I need to know which pieces of me are healthy to give away and which pieces are vital before I am broken and eviscerated. Right now my thoughts on are graduate school and beyond.

I want to continue my education in earning a Master’s degree and then I would like to earn a Doctorate. However, moving on to a Ph.D. means forsaking time with my children for study. It would mean moving my family, again. The changes could be good. The example I set for my girls could be good. The opportunity for achieving my educational and career goals is within my grasp. Yet a plethora of wrong-doing lurks. Considering all of the potential outcomes is paralyzing.

We Mortals

2008-10-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime, keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us, and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts-- not to hurt others.

George Eliot
Middlemarch

Love is Free by Sheryl Crow

2008-10-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

Read

2008-10-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been writing much lately. It isn’t due to lack of ideas nor is it because I have nothing to say. Recently I have chosen to spend free time entirely on reading. When I am not reading, I am thinking. I am listening to the voices, the characters, and the syntax. I encourage you to do the same.

Read more. Make a book list. Get a library card. Shop used books. Make no excuses. Read to yourself, read to your kids, read to your grandkids, read to your students, read to anyone who will listen. Read.

I Agree

2008-10-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

Dorothy L. Sayers
quoted in Writing a Woman's Life
by Carolyn G. Heilbrun

"All Hallow's Eve"

2008-10-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

I had this theory. It was based loosely on the unremarkable observation that the old are always looking back with longing while the young, with the same longing, look ahead. One man remembers what the other imagines. I think the theory holds for women, too. The vision of pleasure in the arms of the beloved, or of triumph after great effort, of safety snatched from the hold of peril, or of comfort after long struggle-- whether produced by memory of expectation, age or youth, the ache is the same, and so is the vision.

My theory held that we could calculate the precise midpoint of life by an application of these none too ponderous truths. And knowing the precise midpoint would, of course, give me the Thing Most Unknown: the day I would die. Knowing the middle, the end could be known. It was algebra: x's and equal signs, a's plus b's.

If the past is a province the aged revisit and the future is one that the child dreams, birth and death are the oceans that bound them. And midlife is the moment between them, that frontier when it seems as if we could go either way, when our view is as good on either side. We are filled less with longing than with wonder. We fear less and worry more. These are only a few of the symptoms. The old write memoirs, the young do resumes. In midlife we keep a kind of diary that always begins with a discussion of the weather. The present is where we live, equidistant from our birth and death.

[. . .]Of course, the middle of your life was back in Kansas where the horizon seemed endless on either side. You can see for miles, the stars come out, you are balanced between your infancy and decrepitude, your Bronx and Santa Barbara, your beginning and your end; balanced by your equal vision of what's behind you and before you, the done deals and possibilities. Upright, at ease in your skin: Kansas. It only lasts a moment. When you recognize the terrain, you are in the middle. Double your age for the day you will die. If it happens when you're twenty, figure on forty. If you're forty when it happens, count your blessings, save more, pick names for great-grandchildren. It's a simple theory, really. Algebra, history, geography, nothing fancy.

Thomas Lynch
The Undertaking

The Power of Enthusiasm

2008-10-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

Think enthusiastically about everything, but especially about your job. If you do, you'll put a touch of glory in your life. If you love your job with enthusiasm, you'll shake it to pieces. You'll love it to greatness. You'll upgrade it, you'll fill it with prestige and power.

Norman Vincent Peale

Blaze a New Trail

2008-10-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Excuses are a waste of time. Excuses are clanging in my ears. If you are an excuse-maker, attempt to trade action for excuses. We will all benefit.

October

2008-10-01T15:26:00.001-07:00

The month is amber,
Gold, and brown.
Blue ghosts of smoke
Float through the town,

Great V's of geese
Honk overhead,
And maples turn
A fiery red.

Frost bites the lawn.
The stars are slits
In a black cat's eye
Before she spits.

At last, small witches,
Goblins, hags,
And pirates armed
With paper bags,

Their costumes hinged
On safety pins,
Go haunt a night
Of pumpkin grins.

John Updike
A Child's Calendar

Seeking Answers

2008-09-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

'Listen!' said the White Spirit. 'Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry is for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now.'

C.S. Lewis
The Great Divorce

The Author to Her Book

2008-09-28T11:09:00.001-07:00

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
Thy visage was so irksome in my sight;
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could;
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet;
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save homespun cloth i' th' house I find.
In this array 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known;
In for thy father asked, say thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

Anne Bradstreet

Give a Little Bit

2008-09-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow try this:

Greet everyone with a sincere, smiling, and warm face. Say “Good Morning,” “Good Afternoon.” Respond to any question or comment in a pleasant and positive manner. When you ask someone a question, really listen to his or her answer, and then respond with a follow-up question or comment. Say “Goodbye,” “Good Evening,” or “Goodnight” with a warm smile. Notice how the world responds to you.

Big fish in little ponds leave a lot of poop.

2008-09-24T16:56:00.001-07:00

The best you can do for yourself and those around you is to be content with whom and what you are. Your talk is loud like clanging symbols. I can see through your insecurity. The most attractive and fun people aren’t the ones who know the most, or have the highest education, or make the most money. People I enjoy hanging around with aren’t those who are perfect. Knowing who you are, imperfections, limitations, along with your strengths, makes you interesting. Having the ability to laugh at yourself makes you irresistible.

The Way I See It # 112

2008-09-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

If you've got a dollar and you spend twenty-nine cents on a loaf of bread, you've got seventy-one cents left. But if you've got seventeen grand and you spend twenty-nine cents on a loaf of bread, you've still got seventeen grand. There's a math lesson for you.

Steve Martin

Dinner Conversation

2008-09-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

Me: "David, do you realize today is the last meal you'll have with Em as an eleven year old?"
David: "What!"
Me: "Yes, her last year of twelve and under. Then we'll have a teenager."
David: gulping sound
Me: "And Anna will soon be out of the single digits and officially a tween."
David: "What!"

The girls start discussing their ages.

Anna:(shaking her head) "I cannot talk about all of the old ages right now."
Rosie:(smiling) "I'm going to enjoy my young ages."
Emily:"Enjoy them while you have them."

October 1973: Part 2

2008-09-21T09:59:00.001-07:00

Growing up we didn’t have much food. When I was little, while my parents were still married, my dad grew many fruits and vegetables from the garden. Those were the good ol’ days. My dad grew up during the Great Depression and he often recalled waiting in lines with his mom and seven siblings for government issued food. His parents were Swedish emigrants and the only work his dad could find was serving in the United States Army. As a World War II Veteran, with no other skills, his dad became an auto mechanic. Money was scarce so they learned to grow much of their food.

I often complained because my friends got to eat at McDonalds. I wanted to eat at McDonalds. I didn’t appreciate the home grown and home baked foods my dad provided. I didn’t realize how well I ate until my dad left.

I was five years old and counting ants on the front sidewalk when Dad burst through the screen door carrying his army trunk over his shoulder. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m leaving” he grunted without making eye contact. He walked up the street.

“Can I come with you?”

“No.” He didn’t even look back.

I looked in through the screen door. I couldn’t see my mom, but I heard her sobs.

My little sister and I played for a while longer then went inside. Mom was sitting in a living room chair with a cigarette and a brown bottle of beer. Her eyes were swollen and red. Then she went into her room and passed out.

It wasn’t the first time I had seen my mom like this. Many days she came home from work with blood all over her white uniform. She got a beer, lit up a cigarette, sat down in the chair, and tearfully related how a patient had died despite efforts to keep the person alive. I thought my mom was brave.

Before Mom went to work that night, she smiled as she handed me a bowl containing a hot dog with cottage cheese. We had a few M&Ms for dessert. Mom was an Emergency Room nurse at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Spokane, Washington. She didn’t cook. She didn’t like to shop.

Forster and Beethoven's 5th

2008-09-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted. He appeared in person. He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in a major key instead of in a minor, and then--he blew with his mouth and they were scattered! Gusts of splendour, gods and demi-gods contending with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death! Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible. Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.

And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return--and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous notes, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.

Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered. He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion. But the goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.

E. M. Forster
Howards End

Kill Your TV

2008-09-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

This month we opted to buy groceries and gas rather than paying for satellite television. At first we weren’t sure how we’d fair without Good Morning America, Wipeout, Meercat Manor, and Spongebob Squarepants. But we’ve done all right, better even.

Oh yes, we still have our Netflix account, we’re not going totally archaic, but the time without our shows has been fun. The girls have started playing cards and enjoy the extra reading time before bed. Anna has asked for a “kill your TV” t-shirt. I don’t think we’ll be turning the television back on.

Nitrous Oxide

2008-09-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Dental visits are a terrifying experience for me. I put on extra deodorant and dress lightly. I wear no eye make-up in case I start crying. So yesterday when the hygienist asked if I wanted nitrous oxide before proceeding with the cleaning, I issued an enthusiastic “yes.”

At first I felt only a light tingle. The hygienist turned up the power. Shortly after, my psychedelic experience began. The articulate background voices had moved into a vague chamber of sound. The hygienist’s movements now resembled an episode of the Bionic Women in slow motion. I could have had a cavity filled under such circumstances.

Dissolution

2008-09-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

This morning I was at physical therapy bright and early, seven o’clock, where Chris discussed the results of my MRI from a physical therapist’s point of view. The C5-6 disc bulge is pressing on a nerve. I also have some spondylosis, a little arthritis, which is normal for someone my age.

“For someone your age” is an ugly phrase. I am in denial and would like to stay there. Afterward, I went out to the Cheney Trailhead for a nice long brisk walk into Turnbull Wildlife Refuge. My age is forty on October 7th. All of the exercise, green tea, fruits and veggies, great blood pressure, and low heart rate, don’t change the date on my medical records.

When I returned home, I had my chocolate Slim-fast shake, my single serving of Wheat-thins, and an apple. As I finished, I thought about how delightful a bag of fun size Snickers would be. I wished and imagined them to be in my pantry, but they weren’t. I thought about the difference of having the bag of Snickers, consuming about fourteen or so, and not having them. I concluded the relationship to be similar to the difference of loving someone and being in-love.

Although I am content with the snack I had, adding a bag of fun size Snickers would produce elation. However, just as the ephemeral joy of being in-love fades so too would the joy of consuming all of that sugar.

If Van Morrison wrote a song about Emily Dickinson

2008-09-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

It's just a couple of bulging discs. NBD

2008-09-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

I recommend not talking to your doctor on the phone at 8 am when you are still in your pink bathrobe, with a toothbrush in your mouth, and thinking about how today is your annual female doctor visit. I did. What I thought I heard varied from what I read on the printed report.

As it turns out, I only have a couple of bulging discs in my spine: one at C5 and C6 and another at T1 and T2. The image at T2 also noted a 3 cm cyst in the left kidney. No big deal. So Barista bring me another soy latte and throw a little raw sugar in there just for fun.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

2008-09-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

I had a CT-Scan when I was a teen. We lived in Oregon. I remember my mom and sister were there. My mom, a nurse and IV Therapist, was anxious about who would be injecting the fluid into my veins for the test. She was adamant about doctors not being any good with needles. My mom was one of the best. She was called in on the worst of veins and caused her patients the least amount of pain. She also maintained she would not want to work on my veins. She was anxious.

The doctor made two attempts to get the needle into my right arm, and then finally succeeded on my left. The warm fluid flowed through my body, and then emptied back into the container it came from. The worst part was over.

When I schedule the MRI, I asked, “Are there any needles involved?” With the “no” response, I assumed there was nothing to fear. I needed no other information. I thought I was prepared. I was wrong.

I entered the softly lit room and lay down on the entrance to the MRI machine. My neck rested in a neck-holder and was then padded in. After earplugs, more padding, a blanket, and a towel over my eyes, I was ready to enter the chamber. The first images were of my neck, then my upper spine, then my middle spine. With each section I retreated farther into the chamber. The loud knocking and buzzing sounds were frightening. I felt a swirling of warmth inside my body.

During the forty-five minutes inside the large magnet chamber, I tried to occupy my mind. “What was the word of the day? ‘Lachrymose’ and what did it mean?” I was lachrymose as I attempted to find my happy place. I was taken back to my pre-school immunizations when we lived in Stockton, California.

My mom took me in. I climbed up on the patient table and lay on my tummy. The nurse made a comment to my mom about how chubby my butt was. They laughed. I was scared. The nurse said to think of something that makes me happy. My mom promised me ice-cream afterward. I closed my eyes and imagined a bright blue sky full of colorful latex balloons. I also imagined chocolate birthday cake. Thirty-some years later, the image still comforted me.

Blue Dolphin

2008-09-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

The warm beast…that lies curled up in our loins
and stretches itself with a fierce gentleness.
-Albert Camus

Early in the break of day
violet and orange streak the sky
as the sun rises above the earth
clarifying the desires of the heart
brightening faint hope of night.

Autumnal force of crisp vivid air
to fill my chest or take my breath away
warmth and strength of gaze
gentle caress without touch sending
blue currents towards a red horizon.

Tree stretches up from roots
near banks of the river’s edge pouring
into the ocean’s alluring powers of persuasion
vertical through the core reaches green
dancing outwards and enticing.

Beauty of the dolphin pulling up
then diving down following the cadence
of the waves, feeling the pulse of
blue rush.

Mr. Rochester's Song to Jane

2008-09-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

I hied me to the window-recess; and while I sat there and looked out on the still trees and dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones, the following strain:--

The truest love that ever heart
Felt at its kindled core
Did through each vein, in quickened start,
The tide of being pour.

Her coming was my hope each day,
Her parting was my pain;
The chance that did her steps delay,
Was ice in every vein.

I dreamed it would be nameless bliss,
As I loved, loved to be;
And to this object did I press
As blind as eagerly.

But wide as pathless was the space
That lay, our lives, between,
And dangerous as the foamy race
Of ocean-surges green.

And haunted as a robber-path
Through wilderness or wood;
For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,
Between our spirits stood.

I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;
I omens did defy:
Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,
I passed impetuous by.

On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
I flew as in a dream;
For glorious rose upon my sight
That child of Shower and Gleam.

Still bright on clouds of suffering dim
Shines that soft, solemn joy;
Nor care I now, how dense and grim
Disasters gather nigh:

I care not in this moment sweet,
Though all I have rushed o'er
Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
Proclaiming vengeance sore:

Though haughty Hate should strike me down,
Right, bar approach to me,
And grinding Might, with furious frown,
Swear endless enmity.

My Love has placed her little hand
With noble faith in mine,
And vowed that wedlock's sacred band
Our natures shall entwine.

My Love has sworn, with sealing kiss,
With me to live - to die;
I have at last my nameless bliss:
As I love - loved am I!

Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

2008-09-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Today my children are girls. Soon they will be women. My oldest daughter will be twelve on the twenty-third of this month. She is in seventh grade. Through locker-room talk, she already knows of girls who are having sex. My nine-year old told me her friend's big sister, a junior in high school, is pregnant. And so the talk goes:

Don’t do drugs. No matter how bad life seems, it will be worse if you are addicted to drugs. Don’t smoke. Smokers stink, have grey skin, a raspy voice, and die from emphysema. Only drink in moderation and if you get drunk, call me, I will pick you up. Don’t follow a stupid act of drunkenness with a funeral. And don’t get pregnant until you’re married. Don’t.

Anyone can have a baby, but not everyone graduates from a big time university. Any one can have sex, but not everyone can make it to the Olympics. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Be extraordinary. It would be difficult to backpack through Europe with baby and diaper bag. And don’t be in a rush to marry. Take time for you, to find yourself, to have fun.

Jewel: Stronger Woman

2008-09-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

The Second Day

2008-09-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

On the second day of school my children rode on the school bus for their first time. After they boarded the big yellow vehicle of independence, I followed. Delilah, the dog, and I followed the bus down the gravel road for about a quarter of a mile. Then the bus turned the corner and my girls were gone.

After school I left for the bus stop early. I wanted to go to the point which I last saw the bus in the morning and wait. When it reached the corner and headed towards the bus stop, I thought I could run alongside waving to my girls who sat inside. “Hi girls. I missed you. I’m so glad you’re home.” When the bus stopped, and my girls descended the steps, I scooped them up into my arms and kissed their faces.

Repetitions

2008-09-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

A truck motors down our hill,
sun on its windshield, a white, rusted hood.
I glance at it and its anonymous driver.
The time must be earliest spring
or late autumn--
long shadows, and no leaves on maples.
The truck turns our corner and goes on

and there, flat on the pavement,
is my daughter.
Even as the truck passes over her, she is screaming
and I have never heard such terror.
She wears a white shirt. She screams
and stands, red stains widening as she runs toward me.
There is a look on her face. . .

Dream, I say to myself,
to ignore the tears, her terror, my own
mortal panic. Dream. Dream. And
if she runs, it must be she survives.
But what I see is her body, arms outstretched,
a reddening shirt,
an open, bloody mouth.
As she runs toward me, I wake.

Rational, calm,
I'd say dreams
carry their curious meanings like music.
When I wake crazy out of that vision,
I want only to order her mother: never dress her
in a white shirt. I want to instruct all daughters
with a permanent, terrifying intensity,
don't play in any street ever.
I want to abandon this house.
Instead, rational,
I write out the dreams on paper folded in thirds
and burn it. Ink curls and is ash.
I write it again here to ridicule my fear.
What a strange, disturbing dream,

says my reasonable self, before it goes upstairs,
before it brushes its teeth and avoids the mirror,
before it looks in on my sleeping daughters
and finds them as they are,
the regular,
hushed respirations. Rain falls like pebbles.
Face, and face. Name, and another name.

Lex Runciman
The Admirations

Listen here my pretty. . .

2008-09-02T16:57:00.000-07:00

Ladies, stop hating on each other. Insecure moms are the worst. They peck away with passive-aggressive comments. Just learn to love yourself for better or worse, and then you may be more pleasant to be around. Otherwise you may end up as an evil witch character in a piece of children’s literature.

When September Comes

2008-09-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not mature? Spongebob Squarepants

My darlings head back to school tomorrow. I feel melancholy. I’m going to miss them. I enjoy hanging with my kids. I find comfort in the smell of Crayola crayons, warm laminating machines, and hot school lunches. I watch Spongebob and laugh out loud. I believe Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. Fortunately, I won’t have to login to a boring grown-up job. I will be working at the YMCA/EWU childcare center as an assistant teacher for pre-schoolers. Yay me!

Time Continuum

2008-08-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

No one in the modern world is more lonely than the writer with a literary conscience.

The power to write anything comes and goes like the winds of doctrine, and I am scarcely more than a medium.

Ellen Glasgow

Recently I have felt my ancestors present within me. Previous generations cry for a voice. My gift and talent is not my own, but a vehicle of communication for those who preceded me. I am a ghost writer for the ghosts.

Assumptions

2008-08-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

Assumptions lie behind the work of all writers. The writer is unaware of most of them, and many of them are weird. Often the weirder the better. Words love the ridiculous areas of our minds. But silly or solid, assumptions are necessary elements in a successful base of writing operations. It is important that a poet not question his or her assumptions, at least not in the middle of composition. Finish the poem first, then worry, if you have to, about being right or sane.

Richard Hugo
The Triggering Town

Know Your Words

2008-08-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

Several times on any given day I hear the word "awesome" misused. Stop it. The definition is:
awe·some [aw-suhm] –adjective
1. inspiring awe: an awesome sight.
2. showing or characterized by awe.
3. Slang. very impressive: That new white convertible is totally awesome.

Based on the above, is what you're referring to really awesome or is there another, more appropriate, word you could use. Think about it. If you don't know a word, look it up. Carry a pocket dictionary around with you. I do.

Playing Pin Ball on my Spine

2008-08-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

You're in pretty bad shape. Chris, Physical Therapist

Yesterday, Chris mapped out several curves in my spine from my neck to the small of my back. Then he called his supervisor in to double check his work. She agreed completely with what he was seeing and they both marveled over one vertebrae which is located 7/10 of a centimeter off-center. Gross. Restoring my spine from the injurious car accident is a daunting task. What is very cool about this experience is how much I am learning about how the body works.

I will give you more details after my MRI.

The Tuft of Flowers

2008-08-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the leveled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been, --alone,

'As all must be,' I said within my heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him,
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

'Men work together, ' I told him from the heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'

Robert Frost

October 1973: Part 1

2008-08-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Autumn is fast approaching. I am eager for this whimsical season. The children go back to school fresh and renewed. They have new plans and high goals. All is possible. Emily is going out for drama club this year. Anna will run for ASB Vice President. Rosie is anxious about first grade.

We are already planning our Halloween personas. I am thinking about following up last year’s Bat Girl costume with a Minnie Mouse debut. Emily will be a black cat. Anna is unsure if she will replay Little Bo Peep or will she venture to the dark side and become a pirate. Rosie is trading in her pirate dress for a fierce lion. It is fun to be someone or something else for a day.

With autumn comes birthday season. We all age-up. The children greet aging with enthusiasm: new possibilities and increased responsibilities. “Don’t grow up too quick” I advise.

Last night, instead of sleeping, I lay awake wondering why time is in such a rush. Of my twelve aunts and uncles only two remain. My grandma, my last living grandparent, died earlier this year. As a child, I was close to her. My mom, the middle child of five, was estranged from her brothers. However, she remained close to her mom.

Every week Mom and Grandma talked on the phone. I wrote many letters to Grandma and she would write me back. I was proud of myself when I memorized her address at 424 South 4th Street, St. Helens, Oregon. Every spring break we made the trip to Grandma’s house. My memories are buried in the small town of the 70s and 80s not the bedroom community of today.

My first memory is of being dressed in blue coveralls similar to the ones Grandpa wore. Early one morning, Grandpa decided to take me for a drive on his riding lawn-mower. I was around three. Mom’s handwriting noted “Nancy ‘71” on back of the photo. In the seventies, behind their house was a vacant lot and an alley which led across the street to another vacant lot. Grandpa took me out and across. On the way back, he decided to let me drive.

I wrapped my chubby hands around the grips and straightened my rubber-band wrists. Soon I ran over a pipe which stuck out of the ground in Grandpa’s backyard. He became very angry really quick. The smiles on Mom and Grandma’s faces disappeared. Mom took me in her arms and then Grandma began admonishing Grandpa because I was too young to be driving the mower anyway.

Later that evening, after walking over to a neighbor’s house, Grandpa picked a rose to give to Grandma. It was a big deal. Mom took a picture. At the time I didn’t understand the significance. Now, I remember how fondly we looked at the photo. Grandpa, in his blue-green coveralls, sat beside Grandma where she sat on the concrete steps. He presented her the red rose. Grandma looked at him, squinting. They were both smiling.

Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat

2008-08-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream:
Their scaly armor's Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretched, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no nereid stirred:
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard.
A favorite had no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters gold.

Thomas Gray

Hell's Gate, Idaho

2008-08-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau
"Where I Lived and What I Lived For"

Pithiness and Reverie

2008-08-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
the waking up is the hardest part
John Mayer

We met in my dream last night. It was good to see you again. It has been a long time my friend. I was walking through Patterson holding my soy latte and a deli sandwich, something with tomato and avocado, when I noticed you in the common area. I delighted in the ephemeral joy of seeing you.

After talking for a while we walked to get a cup of coffee. You held my hand. Butterflies fluttered within and around me. I felt safe.

Then we walked upstairs to a room with open windows. The wind blew fierce through the curtains. We sorted through stacks of books and talked. You became quiet. I looked out the window and he was there. It was time to go. We walked out of the room into an abandoned street. The wind blew debris from behind us and beyond. We embraced and then you disappeared backwards into an invisible vacuum.

I awoke lamenting your absence.

Broken

2008-08-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body: no less are the thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.
Thomas Fuller

And yet as angels, in some brighter dreams,
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
Henry Vaughan

Yesterday the physical therapist worked to push a protruding rib back into place. An hour later I attended my final class at EWU. I was in such a ridiculous amount of pain that I couldn’t think of answers to questions I knew well. My final grade will suffer.

Aesthetic Sentence

2008-08-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre.

Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre

A well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat.

2008-08-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and a well fed, well-petted and properly revered cat--may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

Mark Twain
Pudd'nhead Wilson

More Time

2008-08-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

Affliction worketh patience: and patience experience; and experience, hope.
St. Paul

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
Shakespeare

I am nauseated. Today I went to the first of eight physical therapy appointments. I’m hoping PT helps and I’m hoping to avoid the doctor prescribed MRI. I don’t care for the tight chamber. Unfortunately, I am in worse shape than I suspected. Fortunately, I found the new information about nerves, muscles, bones, and the body’s response to sudden impact fascinating, another leaning opportunity. The time spent in a darkened area with electrodes hooked up to my back, and heat pads strapped around my neck and under my back was stimulating to my creativity.

Immediately I thought of Harriet Martineau’s Life in the Sickroom. This is the only non-fiction Victorian literature I have read. I enjoyed Martineau’s honesty and candor throughout the book. As I lay there, extremely comfortable, I realized what I am missing in my writing process: quiet and solitude. Raising three athletic, gregarious, and curious children does not allow me much quality time for writing.

This year all three of my girls will be in school full-time. I may finally have some time to get a book-length manuscript ready for submission. I may finally have something ready to start sending out, and anxiously await rejection slips, and eagerly await the prospect of publication. I will have more time for walks and runs which is essential to my creative process. I will have more time to read. I will have more time to write. I will finally have more time.

As the Sweetapple Reddens on a High Branch

2008-08-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch
high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot--
no, not forgot: were unable to reach

Sappho

The Things They Carried

2008-08-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh."

True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis.

For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can't believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside.

It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.

Tim O'Brien
The Things They Carried

Writing began for the purpose of preserving oral tradition. It was a means of recording, sorting, and storing information. Several weeks ago I requested my dad’s military records from the National Archive and Records Administration. There was a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center and my dad’s records were destroyed.

As I prepare to write my Statement of Purpose for a graduate school application, I wonder about how and why I became a writer. Many writers recall staying up late reading by flashlight under their covers. Many reminisce of their rookie efforts at story writing. I think about the stories my dad told of fighting the Guucs in South Korea, of men in ditches with rotting feet, of military hospitals and guys scratching with limbs no longer there. I felt the war stories my dad told in my stomach and I still do.

Cat Tales

2008-08-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Baby Love

2008-07-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

The nurse said she needed to shave my tummy. I didn't recall ever having hair on my tummy, but maybe some had grown on the underside. It had been awhile since I last saw south of my belly-button. When she said tummy, she meant pubic hair because that is what was shaved off. Based on the nurse talk, the OB didn't usually cut that low. However, she had promised me that I would still be able to wear a bikini.

Then I was wheeled into the operating room. Everything was cold and sterile and bright. Everyone was dressed in blue scrubs and blue caps. My husband had to wait in the hallway while they put the spinal block in me. I wasn't prepared for that. I thought there was going to be an epidural. As I was being transferred to the operating table, a smiling nursing student came up and introduced herself to me. She was going to be taking notes. I smiled.

Oh-God! The most painful thing ever was going into the small part of my spine. "We just need you to bend forward a little more, Mrs. Zook." I was thirty-nine weeks pregnant; there was not much room to bend forward at that point. God—again—the burst of pain into my spine. "I know it hurts, but we're all most done." I began shaking uncontrollably. Then one more push of thunder crashing pain into my spine. "You can lay back now."

My arms were strapped down on long, horizontal, table wings. Strapped at my wrists. A curtain was put up at the top of my swollen tummy and my husband was brought in and sat by my left strapped down arm. "Isn't it cool" he said "they are going to see what your insides look like." Geez. I don't need small talk right now.

"Can you feel that?" the OB said. And again and again. "Okay, we're going to begin. Do you still want the tubal ligation?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"You do not want anymore children?"

"No thank you, this one will make three."

"Do you need to see her first."

"No."

Very shortly after the conversation I heard her crying. My baby. Her tiny voice sounded angry. She was passed over to another blue capped person and bundled up. The first blanket soothed her cry a bit. The second one even more. With the third blanket and a little pink cap, she had stopped crying completely. She was handed to my husband. And the OB asked, "Do you still want the tubal ligation?"

"Yes."

Then smoke rose from beyond the little blue curtain over my tummy. My husband, smiling, said "that's you baby." My tubes were up in smoke.

I watched my little girl while the doctors stapled me up. I didn't realize how beautiful a baby who hasn't gone through the birth canal could look. Her head was so round and perfect.

My first daughter was pulled out of me in the Superman pose, all purple and not breathing. "Why is she purple?" No answer. She was taken to the corner where all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men worked to bring Emily back to life again. The OB made small talk about how my placenta did not want to come out while he looked over towards all of the doctors and nurses surrounding my baby. When she finally started crying, the OB smiled and went back to pulling on my placenta.

As I looked at the OB, I noticed my white socks were splattered with my blood. The OB’s scrubs had my blood all over them and my blood was in a puddle beneath the table. Then, I was given my daughter, all bundled, pink and perfect. When I tell her the story of coming into this world, I say that she had to temporarily die to gain her superpowers. She smiles.

My second daughter had been an enigma the whole pregnancy. I had a placental abruption in the first trimester, so I was told to wait. To wait for the miscarriage. But I prayed and prayed and rested and prayed. And she stayed alive within me. I was hospitalized twice during the pregnancy and went through far too many tests. My body was giving out on me.

I was able to keep her inside until forty weeks. It was a miracle. But after I was fully dilated, my uterus gave up. I couldn't push hard enough. My tail bone was fractured. I screamed and screamed and screamed. The nurses and doctor mumbled and muttered amongst each other. Then she was finally pulled out, as with my first daughter, by cutting my vagina wider and using suction and forceps.

She was laid down on my chest, umbilical cord still attached. I never knew how beautiful a baby, still covered in slime could be. She cried and I began to talk to her. Mid-cry, she opened her big blue eyes and looked at me. She stopped crying and just looked at me. Then she blinked. I cried. Several minutes later, the OB said they had to take her now.

I cannot imagine any love stronger than the love of a mother for her children.

Another Perspective

2008-07-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

If you historians, or poets, or mathematicians had never seen things with your eyes you would be ill able to describe them in your writings. And if you, O poet, represent a story by depicting it with your pen, the painter with his brush will so render it as to be more easily satisfying and less tedious to understand. If you call painting "dumb poetry," then the painter may say of the poet that his art is "blind painting." Consider then which is the more grievous affliction, to be blind or be dumb! Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings, for while poetry attempts with words to represent forms, actions, and scenes, the painter employs the exact images of the forms in order to reproduce these forms. Consider, then, which is more fundamental to man, the name of man or his image? The name changes with change of country; the form is unchanged except by death.

Leonardo Da Vinci

The Rise of Silas Lapham

2008-07-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

The silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain of wrong and insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without lesion; and sometimes the strength that knits society together might appear to the eye of faltering faith the curse of those immediately bound by it. Two people by no means reckless of each other's rights and feelings, but even tender of them for the most part, may tear at each other's heartstrings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity; though if they were any other two they would not speak or look at each other again after the outrages they exchange.

William Dean Howells

Gone

2008-07-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

He is a tall glass of lemonade that I never want to end
in the heat of a summer day.
He is the cool breeze blowing through the leaves
on the tree that brings me shade.
He can work faded paint splattered blue jeans and a white T
as well as the yummy Mr. Kenny Chesney.
Leaning against his old pickup truck he crosses his
arms across his chest.
He shoots a smile at me and I’m gone
daydreaming again.

The Moon

2008-07-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

The stars about the lovely moon
Fade back and vanish very soon,
When, round and full, her silver face
Swims into sight, and lights all space.

Sappho

How Do I Love Thee?

2008-07-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
I love the purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Sunset

2008-07-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

With the first kiss
colors of a sunset
glow like embers.

Breath taken from
my chest
tingling, lighted.

My heart beats
like a lioness
on the hunt.

Anticipation

Wanting to make
one out of two,
pushing closer
to the horizon.

Entranced
by the heat, I
get too close to
the flame.

Where Did You Go?

2008-07-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Salmon pink and fresh
bit my no trans fat peanut butter
and apricot jam sandwich.
Yes he did.

The thief.
With another bite he said
I truly enjoy this home cooked
bread.

You must be joking oh
fish above all fish.
Coveting sustenance from
my own hand

Disrupting the greater
plan. I will roast you with
lemon and onion. Your spine
will be pulled out and gone.

Warm and juicy in my
mouth. As it should have
been all along.

Organically Grown

2008-07-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

You and I walked along the flower path
of the roof up to the constellations
not far from the moon.

It is too windy up here for me.
I long for the song of the little boat
as it sings to forest creatures
who dance in reflective light upon the brook.

Strings of a lyre strum in the darkness
musical notes make their way
candle lit flames grow and burn.

Words written flow through thoughts
upon moist dew drenched lips
waning towards morning.
Night is short.

Life goes around and is ended.

letter to my husband

2008-07-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

Dear David
I have decided to
give up on fitness
I want to be real
just as women who are
not small
consider themselves real
no more running
or weight lifting
not even a swim
you will notice boxes
of Ho-Hos in the pantry
those are for me
it is not that I am
depressed
I have finally found
my mind to be
free
to eat baskets of
curly fries
chocolate milkshakes too
I hope you won’t mind
that my clothing size
will change
love

your wife

Like the Swan That Takes Flight above the Pond

2008-07-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

like the swan that takes flight above the pond which hunters
with their rifles in hand fire and pure down falls white

Imitation of Sappho, “Like the Hyacinth in the Mountains”

Remains

2008-07-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

Beating blood warm
coursing through my veins.

Air fills my lungs in and out
in and out again.

The clouds gray rush by overhead
seagulls free screeching about.

Crash the waves back and forth
mist rises about the shore.

Waves unfurled, cold, unrelenting,
tug my clothing, pull me under

And down and down and down
and under.

Take the air
(I want it back)

seize my chest, I can
hold no more.

Final thoughts
find no rest

Spinning, spinning, spinning
around.

Light of day
distant now.

Peace warms my spirit
the body grows cold.

The Great Divorce
of body and soul.

A fish upon the shore
can breathe no more.

I swim
in a brand new sea.

Gone.
My life

I am free.

Fat Is Where It's At

2008-07-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

With the 80s came the phrase “Thin may be in, but fat is where it’s at.” For many years I believed the saying to be a sad attempt to justify being overweight. But as I age, I am beginning to think the statement may be factual. If I wasn’t worried about my figure, I could freely purchase and eat an entire box of Hostess chocolate cupcakes along with a bottomless glass of cold soy milk. I could also purchase bulk bags of “fun size” Snickers and Tootsie Rolls. Items I cannot keep in my home because I have no self-control and will eat until the bag is empty.

The opportunities fatness could provide are endless. I could regularly meet friends for Blizzards. I could eat baskets of Curly Fries, dipped in ranch dressing mixed with ketchup, while sucking down a frosty chocolate milkshake. Maybe I would be happier. Maybe bacon does equal love. Bacon and waffles with lots of butter and maple syrup—yum. I could be a chubby wife to my chubby hubby, and when the going gets rough, we could make pancakes.

I often see chubby couples holding hands, hugging, and looking content. They always travel with folding chairs and cans of carbonated happiness. Pssst—and they crack open some joy. I want that. Sure working out is great for my anger management issues, but when I start to slip, I fall. Instead of getting down on myself, I should bake brownies. The smell alone must have healing properties. I need to stop looking for happiness outside of myself and look inside my pantry. Then, surely, life will be good.

Times Like These

2008-07-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

By Foo Fighters

I am a one way motorway
I'm the one that drives away
then follows you back home
I am a street light shining
I'm a wild light blinding bright
burning off alone

it's times like these you learn to live again
it's time like these you give and give again
it's times like these you learn to love again
it's times like these time and time again

I am a new day rising
I'm a brand new sky
to hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
do I stay or run away
and leave it all behind?

it's times like these you learn to live again
it's times like these you give and give again
it's times like these you learn to love again
it's times like these time and time again

If Tomorrow Never Comes

2008-07-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Here is the question I asked:

If I don't wake up tomorrow, is there anything you would have changed about today?

Ich lesen gern Kafka

2008-07-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

Kafka knew that writing was his vocation, but did not feel he could make a living at it--nor did he particularly want to try. It was something purer and more desperately personal to him--a "form of prayer" and a temporary respite from his demons.

Why do I write? I write because I must. It is a form of prayer, but to whom? It is a means of respite from and occasional exorcising of demons, but there are so many. I do not want to follow. Nor do I seek companionship upon the lonely road to pure form. I am a character in an unpublished book.

"Each character is only an anguished voice, vainly questing for information and understanding of the world and for a way to believe in his own identity and purpose" (The Kafka Project).

How can I tell you?

2008-07-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

By Cat Stevens

How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say
I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you
I’m always thinking of you, but my words
Just blow away, just blow away
It always ends up to one thing,
And I can’t think of right words to say
Wherever I am, I’m always walking with you
I’m always walking with you, but I look and you’re not there
Whoever I’m with, I’m always, always talking to you
I’m always talking to you, and I’m sad that
You can’t hear, sad that you can’t hear
It always ends up to one thing,
When I look and you’re not there
I need to know you, need to feel my arms around you
Feel my arms around you, like a sea around a shore
And -- each night and day I pray, in hope
That I might find you, in hope that I might
Find you, because hearts can do no more
It always ends up to one thing, still I kneel upon the floor
How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say
I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you
I’m always thinking of you....It always ends up to one thing
and I can’t think of right words to say

Hello Darkness

2008-07-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

I awoke from a nightmare and into the darkness of my room. My hands were above my head. My wrists were crossed. I lay on my back and looked around the room. Is he still here? Is he hiding?

The room in my dream was bright with sunshine. He came in, wearing black slacks and a black button down shirt. His hair was black and slicked back. He wore black rimmed glasses. To my twelve-year-old self he was tall. He was thin. I was content in a make-believe game when he stopped in the hallway. Then he came directly towards me. His face looked like my mom, or my dad, or was it the devil.

He grabbed my hands and held them above my head with one hand. Then he forced me to the floor. I struggled and used my legs to try to push him off of me. With his free hand he used a knife to cut into one of my wrists. My bright red blood was dripping down onto my face, rolling into my eyes and mouth. I moved my head from side to side trying to avoid the increased flow of blood.

I gave a strong kick and he fell to his side. He curled up in the fetal position. Yet I wasn’t safe. He was still alive. I went into the next bedroom where my children’s softball and tee-ball bats rested against a small white dresser. I pushed aside my green North-face back pack and reached for the largest bat. As I entered my room, I saw him start to move. He groaned and moved his head in my direction. I paused.

The thought of hearing a scull crushed made me feel sick. If I didn’t hit him, he would kill me. I swung. The bat made a dull thud on his head. I hit again and I saw the bone shatter. The sound is indescribable. Blood began to flow through. My eyes opened and I was in the darkness of my room. Who had I just killed?

The Inferno

2008-06-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. How shall I say

what wood that was! I never saw so drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
Its very memory gives a shape to fear.

Death could scarce be more bitter than that place!
But since it came to good, I will recount
all that I found revealed there by God's grace.

Dante

Body Image

2008-06-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

When I was very young, three maybe four years old, living in an apartment in Stockton, California, I remember my mom telling me that I had a big tummy. I stood beside her in the bathroom as she looked at me and told me to suck my tummy in. She said something like "there, that's how you're supposed to look."
Throughout my early childhood, my mom continually told me I was fat. By the time I was in fifth grade, my mom had enough of my chubbiness. She told me about how she solved her weight problem, by vomiting after she ate. All I had to do was stick my fingers down my throat to trigger the gag reflex and up the food would come. However, I wasn't good at vomiting. I felt like my whole fist was down my throat. My fingers were small, suitable for playing second violin, but that was about it.
I didn't want to face further condemnation, so I read my mom's medical books about how to induce vomiting (in case of ingesting poison). I made the nasty homemade concoctions. Sometimes they were effective. The great discovery which lead to my vomiting success was syrup of ipecac. It was sold behind the pharmacy counter and at that time I was only twelve, so I couldn't purchase it on my own. I learned to forge notes or make up stories, using my allowance to purchase the wonder drug. Success.
However, I still wasn't thin enough for my mom. I began running with my mom somewhere around sixth to seventh grade. Running along with syrup of ipecac made me the size my mom appreciated, until my senior year of high school, when I ripped the tissue which connects muscle to bone on my right hip. The doctor said that maybe I wasn't meant to be a runner. He was wrong.
I still ran cross-country and long distance track. Even through all of the teasing because I couldn't lift my knees high enough and I ran with a limp. I remember the pain of limping through the hallways between classes. The injury wasn't healing. My aerobics teacher took notice and she arranged for me to use a hot tub after school each day. She also encouraged me to take up swimming in order to make my muscles stronger without further injury. It worked.
The solution to my problems seemed to be in getting away. I followed the yellow-brick road to college, many miles from my mom. I thought that once I reached Oz all of my problems would disappear. I was wrong. My grades went way down and I was on academic probation. The disillusion of making my life just what I wanted it to be wasn't working. I was haunted by insecurity. I didn't realize how damaged I was.
The only control I seemed to have over my life was to control what went into my mouth, which I reduced to nearly nothing. My hip injury had healed, so I was running again. I also ran eleven flights of stairs, up and down, in my dormitory. Finally, I was in charge. But that didn't help either. I had to face my demons.
_____

Bulimia and Anorexia are considered sister eating disorders. For many years the disorders were considered similar, but recent studies demonstrate wide differences. Bulimia is still shrouded in mystery. It is about binging and purging, but why. Why do we do it? Bulimics don’t like to discuss their disorder because there is vast shame involved. We blame ourselves and our inadequacies. The view of ourselves is distorted. Studies have shown that bulimics generally come from mid to lower income families and were victims of childhood sexual abuse, but how does that relate?
As a young girl I was sexually abused by two different men. One was on-going for several years. Sex involves semen being taken in either conventionally or orally. When this occurs outside of a respectful and loving adult relationship, the victim is filled with self-loathing and sickness. The natural reaction then is to want to purge any vile substance within. Self-loathing becomes self destruction. The victim will resort to whatever may make herself (or himself) feel better or at least numb the pain.
I would eat more to make myself appear unattractive, thus hopefully averting the abuse, and then I would purge to make myself feel better. Within the cycle food was no longer fuel, it was a vile substance. I would eat without letting my lips touch the food or the fork. Any fatty substance or food derived from an animal was disgusting. I felt like a failure when I did eat, like I had caved to my own shameful desires. When I ate, I would quickly vomit. If I couldn’t get myself to vomit, I would run longer and harder. My weight went up and down. However, I had not yet reached my lowest point.
_____

When I was twenty I withdrew from EWU and took a job as an au pair in Manhattan. I arrived New Years Day, and despite the signed one year contract, I returned to Cheney the following June. Within that time I found comfort in pints of Ben and Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie ice-cream topped with hot fudge and whipped cream. Living in New York City was exciting, however, my physical activity level dropped. The consequence was me gaining a tremendous amount of weight. After going into a Gap store for a new pair of jeans, and realizing I didn’t fit into anything near size six, I got on a scale. It reported 172 pounds. Yikes.
Within a month of returning home, and working at my summer job as a camp counselor at Sweyolakan, a Camp Fire camp on lake Coeur’ D Alene, I returned to my original size. I am still amazed at how I gained so much weight without even noticing. I didn’t come near my New York size in any of my three pregnancies.
I got married in December of 1995 and gave birth to my first child in September of 1996. I was twenty-seven years old. At about seven months pregnant the obstetrician said I was gaining too much weight, although dieting while pregnant wasn’t recommended, I didn’t need to gain any more. I topped off at 164 pounds. After giving birth, I quickly dropped back to the 120-125 pound range. It was easy since I went back to work eight days after giving birth. I worked as a store manager of a stationery store.
About a year later, I accepted a department manager position with FAO Schwarz and started working even more hours. I dropped down to 113 pounds. Working hard felt good. I was promoted to Merchandising Manager. Then I got pregnant again. This pregnancy didn’t go well. Eight weeks into it I began to bleed. It was a placental abruption, which meant the placenta, the baby’s source of nutrition, was separating from the uterus. If it separated too much, my baby would die. I became very ill and couldn’t gain the recommended weight. This pregnancy the Obstetricians kept telling me to eat more. By the end of the full-term pregnancy, I was 152 pounds.
In the seventh or eighth month of my second pregnancy, my father-in-law greeted me with “I see you’re still fat.” Fat. The obese man called me fat. He smiled when he said it like it felt good to call me fat. What I heard was “failure.” After giving birth, I wanted to rid myself of the fat. Remembering the incident makes me feel sick. What I need to tell you next, well, it’s difficult, but you must know.
_____

Words hurt, especially words that fester. I mentioned being abused by two men. Actually the first one was a teenager. He was the son of the pastor of the church my younger sister and I attended. After my parent’s first divorce, my mom hired a babysitter to watch my sister and me while she worked nights at Sacred Heart Medical Center. The babysitter was the big sister of this teenage boy. I suppose it all seemed fine, since the babysitting was in the family home: the dad was a Presbyterian minister, and the wife was an ordinary minister’s wife, with two daughters and a son. We slept in a common area in the basement between the sister’s room and a storage room.
One night, the parents were out, the sister was out, and the babysitter had another babysitting job elsewhere. We were left alone with the teenage boy. This occurred on other occasions. We usually played games. Once he tried to help me pull out a loose tooth by tying one end of string around my front tooth and the other to a door handle. Then he slammed the door shut. No good. The tooth was still attached to my swollen pink gum.This time though, the playing went too far.
There was tickling involved. Then I was tossed on the bed. My shirt went up and my pants went down. I don’t remember anything else until my sister and I were standing in the living room and I was insisting that my mom be called at work to come and get us. The parents were mad at the daughter for taking another babysitting job that night. The teenage boy was in his room, on the top bunk of his bed, peeking around the door at me. My mom came to the house and brought us home. We soon stopped going over to their house.
The other person was a man. A man who knew better, and who would say he was sorry. He said that’s how grown-ups kiss and this is how grown ups show they love each other. He said he loved me. He also said that God loved me. God loves all children because they are innocent and pure. He taught me about God and the Ten Commandments and how I had to be good because Jesus would come like a thief in the night, so I must be prepared.
He talked about the fifth commandment, which is the first commandment with a promise, “Honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” He told me if I told anyone about what he did that I would go to hell. For a long time I believed him.

Words hurt. When I withdrew from EWU the second time, I was twenty-one, and I moved in with my mom down in Oregon. I attended Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, because the only thing I seemed to know for sure was that I needed an education. I played nice for as long as I could, a month or maybe more. Then one day she was berating me. I think it had something to do with a guy I was dating. She didn’t know I had been afraid of guys. Whenever a guy showed interest, I felt sick. Dating was a nice start to feeling normal.
I wanted to tell her in a cold and unemotional voice, but I couldn’t. I began to cry. I told her she wasn’t a good mom. She didn’t protect me. I told her Dad had raped me, many times. You were at work, or drunk. That time you came stumbling out of your room, when I was screaming and calling for help. Didn’t you still have a beer in your hand? Dad had me pinned against the kitchen wall with his hands around my throat. Do you remember that time mom? I told him he was going to burn in hell for what he did to me.
She stopped. She looked at me with anger and disgust. “You’re telling me he forced himself on you?”
“Yes, mom.”

“He forced his penis inside of you.”

“Yes.”

She fell. Her pale face turned ashen. I would like to think she gasped, I don’t know for sure, but I had succeeded. I had finally hurt her back.

Words hurt. When my father-in-law called me fat, I felt an old wound rip open. I wasn’t healed, just bandaged up. “I see you’re still fat.”
I went back to work at FAO Schwarz two months after giving birth to my second daughter. However, it was too much for me. So I went back to the stationery store I worked at before I got married and started a family. I worked part-time as an assistant manager. I would nurse my baby on my breaks. Because I was so tired and busy between work and raising two young children, I didn’t realize how unhealthy I had become.
On September 23, 1999 I held my oldest daughter’s third birthday party. The picture my friend took of my daughter and me that day is one of my favorite. The blouse was a size 1 and the skirt was a size 4. Even now I look at that photo and think about how I was my perfect size on that day. However, between September 23rd and December 19th, on my second daughter’s first birthday, my health took a turn for the worse.
I had been struggling with a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) which had moved into a kidney infection. The doctor had been concerned about my weight, but I wasn’t listening. I was too tired. I just wanted the pain to go away.
Before the guests arrived for my daughter’s first birthday party, I got in the shower. I moved the body wash around my torso and realized below my ribcage there were odd lumps in my abdomen. At first I was startled, but then I realized those were my organs. I turned off the shower and stepped out onto a towel and looked in the mirror. I was aware of my collar bones, ribs, and hip bones showing, but what I discovered frightened me. As I looked in the mirror, I noticed that all of the vertebrae, from the top of my neck and down my back were visible. I looked at my face and into my eyes. I felt hollow.

_____

Today I think about my third child who was conceived from my last attempt. I look at her and wonder what I imprinted upon her while she grew within me. I spent many days crying from the sorrow inside my soul. I cried for the responsibility I took upon myself in raising and protecting three little girls. I was inept. I fell out of love, but I wonder if I was ever really in it. I think about the kind of life I wanted to build.

The Final Countdown

2008-06-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

I'm in summer-school hell right now. Tuesday, I have a discussion and exam on Dante's Inferno. A book which I have cleverly avoided reading. But now I must, and I haven't yet begun. My only consolation is that in seven weeks I will have completed my BA degree.