Uh-UH.

He said the words without hostility. I knew he was only repeating what he’d been hearing the other children say since the party crasher had jumped aboard, but still…uh-UH.

I called him by his first and last name. “Come here.”

“I don’t like you to exclude people,” I said to him. “We don’t do that. It’s not nice to make someone feel left out.”

He looked down. “Okay.”

I thought about telling him that the cool thing to do would be to make friends with the new kid, and then tell the others, “He’s with me.”

But it was a party, not an episode of the Book of Virtues, so I smiled and and let him get back to having fun. He bounced off.

There were a few other parents within easy earshot of my little teaching moment. And though it pains me to reveal to you what a douche I can be, I’ve got to admit, I reared up a little on my moral high horse.

Catch that? We don’t do that.

The hell we don’t.

Not fifteen minutes later, I caught myself having a laugh at someone else’s expense. That moment was also within earshot of others. If they knew me well, and they knew the person who was being chuckled about, and the situation, they might have thought none the worse of me. But to anyone not in on the joke, it would have sounded mean.

As soon as I realized it, I was ashamed. And not because it obviously contradicted my mini-lecture to my son of moments before, either. Oh, no. See, you got that right away. It took me hours to realize that in addition to being a jerk, I am a hypocrite. I was just ashamed of the being-a-jerk part.

I stared at the ground, wishing I could disappear. I stole a cowardly glance around. In my imagination, everyone had heard me snickering. Everyone was thinking what a harsh and hateful bitch I must be. I’m a fraud. I’m no good. I make baby Jesus sad.

Then my son bounded by, and it occured to me to look at my mistake the way I had looked upon his; the way a loving parent looks at your shit when they catch you knee deep in it. 

In my heart I heard the one who brought me here calling me by name.

Hey. We don’t do that. 

Okay. I’m sorry.

Can you feel a smile you can’t see? I believe so.

Now get back to playing.

If anyone had been watching very closely (oh, the conceit of imagining others are listening to every word, watching every step), they would have seen me lift my head, and move on with a little bounce.

“Melinda Mae” from Where the SideWalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein

I’ve been eating a whale in small bites this weekend–tackling little things I’ve put off until they acquired sufficient collective mass to great to be ignored. The beast is comprised of tasks like organizing my tax receipts, filling out cub scout camp applications, small copywriting jobs, and various other things I apparently signed on for.

Procrastination is my lifelong companion. At thirty-eight, I’ve accepted that it is an incurable condition, like alcoholism or diabetes. It can only be managed,  never eradicated. Today I am less inclined to view it as a curse, and more disposed to understand it as a natural offshoot of many positive character traits (creativity, intuitiveness, flexibility). My brain is far-sighted. It’s the nuts and bolts of daily life that are blurry to me. 

I’ve had to learn a trick or two, and I’ve had to learn it, like everything else, the hard way. I’m a gulper, not a nibbler of life, but I’m getting better at taking small bites. When it comes to the good-for-you-but-tasteless bits, anyway.

 And so, this weekend, I started right in at the tail, opening envelopes, pulling files, signing forms, forcing myself to click the dreaded “new blank document” option from my word processor menu. I didn’t lock myself inside the house until it was all done. I didn’t binge. I didn’t beat myself up for not doing it sooner, or for having to fork over a late fee for camp, or over all the bounced check notices of last year that had to be faced, and filed. I didn’t make myself sick over any of it. I didn’t despair over the enormity of what had to be swallowed. I just bit off a piece of whatever was in front of me and chewed, slowly, until I was full. Then spent some time living life.

It’s Sunday night, and my plate is hardly clean. But I’m amazed, like I always am, at how much has been accomplished. Little Melinda Mae was hip to Goethe: the act of beginning something has power and magic in it, inverse to the terrible drain of avoidance.

In a 12-step program I practice, we tell newcomers if they stick around a while, they’ll eventually hear their own story. Some seriously doubt it. They are the ones who think they can’t be helped as others have, because, you see, they aren’t like others. We call that being terminally unique, and I suffered from it when I was a newcomer. The main symptoms are martyrdom, loss of perspective, and  a wildly distorted perception of your own part in the grand scheme of things. It’s also been aptly called “the belief that you are the piece of shit the world revolves around.”

For people thus afflicted, hearing someone else give voice to the very thoughts they have been thinking, the very feelings they have been feeling, is the miracle cure. Someone else’s truth can set you free.

If you know where to go for the good stuff, if you hearken to authenticity, blogs can be like that sometimes. Like sitting at a table, hearing story after story. You might react, you might judge, you might get bored. And then, there it is, your story. Or a page from it, at least.

This happened to me last night, reading  Cafe Mama. I’ve gotten to know its author, Sarah, just a little. Enough to guess that we don’t have much surface stuff in common. But when I read this passage, from December, I wished I could run down the street to Portland and give her a big hug:

The only people to whom I am expressly not writing this blog are certain of my in-laws. Why? Because they use my words, often out of context, to dig up dirt on me, and by association, my husband. No one cares about this dirt except other members of the family. So it swirls around like water in a clogged sink, angry and poisonous, sticky and yet bound by its own porcelain borders, sometimes splashing out into my life in the messiest of ways.

(December 13, Losing Grace) 

Some of that same brackish water has backed up into my own life this past year, and I am surprised to admit that it has given me pause. I suppose I have been spoiled by an overwhelmingly supportive community of readers and a string of lucky breaks. It would be naive to expect it all to be a lovefest. But as the writing goes further, and reaches more of the people I want it to reach, there are other, less welcome people, who latch on.

They are so much like each other, their emails to me could all be written by the same person. The details—the specific grievances—change, but they are all in the same key. Each has penned a drama with themselves in the starring role. Each is utterly convinced that what I’ve written is all about them. It would be funny, if they weren’t so obviously sick and unhappy.

I thought I’d moved through each incident with as much grace and detachment as I could muster. They seem to come nested in each new level of success or exposure for my writing, and I’ve shaken them off as tests of my commitment to it. But my hands have not been as loose at the keyboard recently, in spite of my mother’s emailed encouragement to never let anything keep me from writing my truths.

Sarah’s words would have had no fire in them for me if I wasn’t feeling a little chill. The truth is, as big a girl as I am, it’s unnerving to realize that not everyone who is reading means well, or is well.

“…you need love and compassion and grace,” wrote Sarah to the poisonous people she wasn’t writing for. “You need what I do not have today.”

Neither do I have what my ill-wishers need. Though they look hour after enraged and lonely hour, they won’t ever find anything in me or my words that will fill whatever it is they are missing from their lives. 

I do wish them love, compassion and grace. I hope they find it somewhere. And mostly, I wish them a seat at a table where, if they stick around long enough, they’ll get to hear someone tell their story, and realize their own truth.

Flawed:

• sloppily & impulsively throw a sit down fiesta for eight women together via email
• have a budget of ten dollars
• don’t leave yourself enough time to clean, decorate or cook
• use dollar store shelf liners for table covering
• make mexican paper flowers that more closely resemble cabbages
• use whatever happens to be clean instead of proper margarita glasses
• have the guest who was to bring garnishes and main course cancel due to illness
• forget the fiesta salad in the fridge until after dessert

Authentic:

• trust candlelight & tequila to overcome all the above
• tell your true stories
• laugh from the belly
• listen from the heart
• celebrate
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