flawed but authentic

It was 1977, and Mrs. G. was eleven-years-old. She was living in the deep south, culturally deprived and pining for the finer things in life. Having recently graduated from the fashion breakthrough known as Grr-Animals, the Healthtex children’s clothing line that helped children match giraffe head shirts with giraffe leg bottoms, Mrs. G. longed for a pair of these…

bell bottoms jeans to go with the tube top she was not allowed to wear because her mom said only sluts wore tube tops. Mrs. G. also longed for…

one of these babies, because they were so fresh.

Despite spending many an evening with her Clairol hot rollers and Vidal Sassoon curling iron, she never achieved Farrah Fawcett hair, but Mrs. G…

used Farrah’s shampoo and conditioner. In between showers, she placed both bottles prominently on her dresser with the labels facing out. Mrs. G’s mother called them false idols and turned the labels facing in every time she came into Mrs. G’s room to snoop change the sheets.

After combing out her tangles with her cutting edge wide-toothed-comb, Mrs. G. would spray every inch of her body with…

 a half gallon of this. When she got to school, away from her mother’s slut detector eagle eyes, she would slick her lips with fruit punch shellac Kiss Me Stick and pray she might someday walk on the beach…

with them. If she were forced to choose in a game of Truth or Dare, Mrs. G. would have picked Starsky. She was a big fan of the belted cardigan.

But what Mrs. G. wanted more than anything she had ever wanted in her life was …

a mood ring. For those readers who might be younger than Mrs. G. or who were living under one of those pet rocks, mood rings were made with this clear jewel-like stone that changed colors in response to your moods. One of Mrs. G’s co-workers (a science teacher) told her these jewel-like stones were actually thermochromic liquid crystals that respond to body temperature and have absolutely no connection to mood. Fine if science is your thing, but Mrs. G. thinks this teacher is a buzz kill mistaken and prefers to think mood rings are pure d magic.

Mrs. G. saved her pennies and finally bought her own mood ring at this classy store at the mall called Spencers. She focused on John Travolta happy thoughts so her mood ring would stay blue, the color that represented peace, harmony and passion. She wore it for three days until, one morning, the stone just fell off the silver band and landed on her shag carpet. In one fell swoop, a dream killed and $3.99 down the drain. Mrs. G. was majorly bummed.

Mrs. G’s grandfather heard about her mood ring tragedy and decided he could fix it as he was too cheap to buy her a new one handy that way. Mrs. G’s grandfather was a tightwad frugal. He lived through the Depression and never let anyone forget it as he wrung out paper towels and hung them up to dry for later use. She will never forget the time he called her at college and told her he had bought her a new winter coat. When it arrived in the mail, Mrs. G. opened the package to find he had bought her a neon orange hunting parka. His note said he hoped she liked it because it would be warm and help her friends easily spot her on the large campus. Oh yeah, because nothing says be my friend like a neon orange hunting parka. Consequently, this was the year Mrs. G. froze her butt off, and all the deer in Eugene, Oregon ran for their lives when they saw her coming.

Back to the story. Mrs. G’s grandfather decided that the trick to restoring the mood ring to its former glory was to get out his solder gun, set it to hot-as-hell and melt the metal on the back of the stone and the top of the band and hold them back together until the metals cooled. To his credit, Mrs. G’s mood ring never fell apart again. Unfortunately the heat of the soldering gun damaged the inner magic of the mood stone and it always looked

like this. Black. Angry, tense, depressed, nearing suicide black. There were some dark days for Mrs. G, but then disco hit, and it was all about the Bee Gees.

Google Image photos

Am I the only person on earth who still loves flying? I love the whole thing, from the whiff of jet fuel you get as you approach the airport to spending $3 on rock-hard cardboard pastries at Starbucks that I would never purchase in any other situation.

I arrive schlepping my bags with a goofy grin on my face, make happy talk with the gate agent, eye my fellow passengers with glee. It is all good for I am going somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t even care where it is. I just like waking up somewhere else.

(The only down part of the equation is of course Security. Even Buddha would have been a little cranky going through Security. No one likes to walk across that nasty carpet with their shoes off.)

People complain about waiting at airports, but ever since Wifi, airport time is happy time for me. I get to go somewhere AND I get to waste time on the Internet without having the nagging feeling that I should be doing something more productive, like de-molding the shower or preparing my taxes. Airport time is time off.

Then there’s the boarding which is a bit of a hassle, what with the getting smacked in the face by bags and umbrellas, but that is okay because the very best part follows.

Takeoff. I am the antithesis of a nervous flyer. I am an ecstatic flyer and takeoff is my favorite part. The engines cranking up to full rpm and bumping faster and faster down the runway, the grass becoming a blur…that rush of extra gravity as the plane fights to become airborne and then…flying.

It is a miracle to me, being airborne. People wished for this ability for tens of thousands of years as they watched birds wing through their air, and I get to do it. It feels like a very special blessing to me, every single time.

This was originally posted at Oh My Stinkin’ Heck in December ‘07. Recently the same lesson reminded me to share it with you here.
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Yesterday I went to Meredith’s school to watch her run in the school’s annual Turkey Trot. This is the equivalent of what we used to call Track-n-Field, but in a sort of Cliff’s notes version. There is only one run - the 50 yard dash - and it isn’t an all day event. The winner of both the boy’s and the girl’s final heat get to take home a turkey to their family. The 2nd place winners get a bag of fruit and the 3rd place winners get a bag of candy.

THAT is a way to make a child strive toward mediocrity - I could hear them arguing in the hall, “No, I WANT TO BE 3rd!”

But in the end, when that gun pops off, those kids kick it in and the bag of candy is forgotten for the stardom of crossing that finish line first.

I’m a mainstay in my kids’ elementary school. I wish the Intermediate school had more room for parental involvement, but then again, I realize that 5th graders are not so enamoured with their parent’s presence at school as are Pre-K and 2nd graders.

Meredith was still in class when I arrived yesterday - having a lesson in grammar.

Peeking in from the doorway, I took in the aroma of school. If you can get beyond the smelly bodies and the lingering scent of Pine-Sol, you can catch the familiar whiff of paper, well-worn books, and hear the hum of overhead projectors and the grind of the pencil sharpener as another kid gets up to sharpen their tip. I love school supplies - now, office supplies to me.

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A typical day for me begins by plugging in my unnamed laptop, grabbing my portable two-way radio from its charger, and listening to voicemail. It’s nothing for me to have 5 or 6 to listen to and take notes on before I begin making calls. It’s the busyness of the job and I’m stopped several times a day for students who come to see me about a myriad of issues. Changing classes, telling me what courses they want to take next year, finding out about driver’s education and my favorite: being forced to take summer school classes.

They don’t want to take summer school, but if they’ve failed something in a semester they must take it over for credit. My list of students has gotten longer as the year goes on, but it’s Freshman Syndrome. They don’t pay attention to what they are doing right now that will affect them later on. I hear, from my colleagues, that this subsides by junior year. Something to look forward to I suppose.

Sometimes discipline becomes my job and students can sometimes behave quite differently when I’m wearing that hat. Where they don’t normally roll their eyes and cuss under their breath, they have been known to resort to that when I have to suspend them or write them up for alternative schooling. When I confronted two girls about bullying another girl in their PE class they assured me they hadn’t done anything. That they were being nice to her and telling her that her hair was nice and she misunderstood them. While I wasn’t so sure, I told them I expected better behavior and was wearing my “counseling” hat after lecturing them.

Later, I found out they lied to me and I realized my Pollyanna-like naivete bit me in the ass. Some of the other administrators teased me about it, but I do like to trust them and give them a chance. This was a perfect instance of being entirely misled. Stupid me. Everyone isn’t always nice, I know this. But my previous dealings with these two girls had been positive and I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

They were caught, much to their dismay, by cell phone recording and when I watched it I was immediately sickened. My stomach lurched and the reality of Mean Girl Syndrome made its way into the moment.

When I suspended them for their actions I got eye rolls, lots of DANGs!, and an instance where I had to call security to detain one of them. She was pissed. And she did all she could to let me know it. Pollyanna turned into a warden and a guard and a police officer and all she saw of me was Authority Figure. Big, badass AUTHORITY.

I thought, “God! Why do you have to be so stupid? Why couldn’t you just own up to it and take the consequence?”

Back to work, I busied myself with the tediousness of the job. Meetings, typing things up, visiting classrooms, handling other student situations. My office has a big window and when I’m at the computer I can see, peripherally, the people who enter the office. Normally, I like to look up to see if there is a student, teacher, or parent that needs to see me so that I may welcome them into my office. On Friday, it seemed as if every problem in the world hit our school and it made for a whirlwind day. Looking up to see who was there wasn’t an option. My eyes focused on the computer screen and I refused to give notice to things going on around me.

When a body entered my room I didn’t look up. I even finished typing my sentence and could sense that they were sitting in one of the three chairs I have so I assumed they really needed to see me and were waiting patiently for me to finish.

I stopped my busy doings and turned around to see one of the two girls who bullied. And lied. Pollyanna would not make a comeback today, I thought. Hardass it is! Cast Iron Bitch From Hell steeled herself in my bones and I sat up straighter in my chair to posture myself. Do I look imposing enough? I wondered.

The art of dealing with this was not to be the first to speak. I remained silent.

“I came here to apologize, Mrs. Mocha. I’m so sorry for lying to you. You trusted me and I messed up.”

Pollyanna returned. She slouched. She sucked in her breath. The hot tears of a forgiving woman returned. Thank God. I hate maintaining that level of ugliness. Back to work.

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.

Mrs. G. was teaching a class a while back, and she and the kids (4th and 5th graders) were discussing The Captain’s Dog by Roland Smith. This is a wonderful book about the Lewis and Clark expedition told from the perspective of Captain Lewis’ dog Seamen. The conversation had just turned to the wretchedness of eating a black tailed prairie dog when a new boy walked into the classroom. He had a yellow slip in his hand indicating he was a new student to the school. He was a cute little guy with shiny black hair and John Lennon glasses. He looked a little fearful and was white-knuckling the strap of his backpack. Mrs. G. went up to him and welcomed him to the class. She asked the boy his name and he didn’t respond…and didn’t respond…and didn’t respond.

It was just starting to get awkward when one of the boys in the class, busting with excitement, shot up like a rocket and bellowed I MET HIM THIS MORNING. HIS NAME IS HOWARD AND HE DOESN’T TALK MUCH. HE’S ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS! This morning? Best friends? It turns out Howard really doesn’t talk. Ever. He has a disconnect between his brain and his mouth. But Mrs. G. saw Howard breathe a sigh of relief and slide into the chair next to his new best friend. And after this stunning moment of grace, the discussion resumed.

My sister Laura and I were wandering around the streets of Chicago in summer - hot, sweaty and red-faced. We sought refuge in the cafe in the basement of the State building downtown, the one that looks like a giant silver beehive.

An obviously mentally ill woman came up and began talking to Laura. She was friendly, but speaking so rapidly and so close to my sister’s face that I could tell Laura was a bit taken aback.

“Do I scare you?” the woman demanded, sensing Laura’s discomfort.

“Um,” said Laura. I could see that she was frantically thinking of something polite to say. “No, no, it’s just that I’m a little discombobulated because it is so hot outside.”

“Well, that’s God for ya,” the woman said, and walked away.

“Well, that’s God for ya” became an instant classic in our vocabulary of sisterhood. Whenever anything was beyond our ken, that phrase capped the conversation. We used it for good things and bad, beautiful and ugly.

It always made us laugh and reminded us that, in this crazy world, the answer to so many questions is just “That’s God for ya.”